《Flash Crowd 》作者： - Larry Niven【EPUB】

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Flash Crowd Larry Niven -1- FROM EDGE to edge and for all of its length from Central Los Angeles through Beverly Hills and West Los Angeles and Santa Monica to the sea Wilshire Boulevard was a walkway. Once there had been white lines on concrete and raised curbs to stop the people from interfering with the cars. Now the lines were gone and much of the concrete was covered with soil and grass. There were even a few trees. Concrete strips had been left for bicycles and wider places for helicopters carrying cargo too big for the displacement booths. Wilshire was wide for a walkway. People seemed to hug the edges even those on bikes and motor skates. A boulevard built for cars was too big for mere people. Outlines of the street still showed through. Ridges in the grass marked where curbs had been with breaks where there had been driveways. Some stretches in Westwood had a concrete center divider. The freeway ramps were unchanged and unused. Someday the city would do something about them. Jerryberry Jansen lived in what had been a seaside motel halfway between Bakersfield and San Francisco. On long-ago summer nights the Shady Rest had been packed with transients at ten dollars a head. Now it made a dandy apartment house with swimming pool and everything including a displacement booth outside the managers office. There was a girl in the booth when Jerryberry left his apartment. He glimpsed long wavy brown hair and the shape of her back in the instant before she disappeared. Janice Wolfe. Too bad she hadnt waited. . . but she hadnt even seen him. Nobody was ever around the booths long enough to say hello to. You could meet someone by hovering outside the booths but what would they think Meeting people was for the clubs. A displacement booth was a glass cylinder with a rounded top. The machinery that made the magic was invisible buried beneath the booth. Coin slots and a telephone dial were set into the glass at sternum level. Jerryberry inserted