The Writer. Danilo Clementoni

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Pasadena, California – The hideout

      As soon as he opened the door, the decidedly overweight man was hit by a pleasant blast of fresh air. The room’s air conditioner, left running since the previous evening, had done an excellent job.

      "That’s wonderful," he exclaimed. "I couldn’t stand that suffocating heat any longer."

      "Perhaps if you decided to go on a serious diet and got rid of all that fat you’re carrying around; the heat wouldn’t bother you so much."

      â€œWhy are you always so negative about my reserves?"

      "Call them reserves. You could safely spend an entire month without eating," exclaimed the thin guy, breaking into a peal of laughter immediately afterwards.

      "I’ll pretend not to have heard that."

      The décor in the small apartment that the two were using as a base was decidedly spartan. In the main room there was only a simple, light-coloured wooden table with four chairs of the same colour and a heavy dark grey sofa with worn seats and armrests. In the corner near the French window that looked out onto a dismal inner courtyard, a brown plastic pot contained the remains of a small Washingtonia filifera that despite its great resistance to dry climates, had died several weeks earlier due to lack of water. The tiny bathroom also showed evident signs of neglect. Several tiles had fallen off and large dark spots on the discoloured ceiling were evidence of unrepaired water infiltration. Two shabby bedrooms, each with a single bed and a cheap bedside table, together with a kitchenette with a cabinet that was at least twenty years old, completed the furnishings of that anything but pleasant apartment.

      "Well one thing’s sure, in terms of taste in the choice of our hideouts, you really are great, huh?" commented the tall skinny guy.

      "Why? What’s wrong with this place?"

      "It’s a dump. That’s what’s wrong. Here we are always talking about making loads of money but, in the end, we always end up in these damned dumps."

      "Oh, you're always complaining," replied the big one. "Let’s try and clinch this deal then you’ll see, we’ll be able to settle down once and for all."

      "If you say so.... I’m not all that convinced really."

      "Come on, pass me the laptop and I’ll show you something."

      The thin guy pulled a black bag with a shoulder strap out from behind the sofa and took out a dark grey notebook. He looked at it for a moment then passed it to his crony who placed it on the table and turned it on. They both sat still for a while, looking at the screen as the system completed its start-up procedure until, at a certain point, the thin guy blurted out, "I can’t stand these things any longer. I spend hours watching progress bars, hourglasses spinning, miscellaneous updates... Why can’t they just make a computer that works like a television? Press the button and it turns on."

      "Yeah, that really would be nice. Instead, what I hate most, is when you’ve finished using it and want to turn it off to go home, it presents you with a nice little message that says "Do not turn computer off. Installing update 1 of 325..." and you have to wait half an hour while it does what it wants. I mean couldn’t it just do its stupid updates earlier? Must it really wait for me to be ready to leave?"

      "Huh, that’s ‘IT’ for you. The programmers who design these systems probably enjoy seeing us poor mortals as we become more and more irritated when faced with their ‘creations’."

      "Are you saying they do it on purpose?"

      "If you think СКАЧАТЬ