《Kindergarten 》作者：- Clifford D Simak【EPUB】

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Kindergarten Clifford D. Simak He went walking in the morning before the Sun was up down past the old dilapidated barn thatwas falling in upon itself across the stream and up the slope of pasture ankle-deep with grassand summer flowers when the world was wet with dew and the chill edge of night still lingeredin the air. He went walking in the morning because he knew he might not have too many mornings left anyday the pain might close down for good and he was ready for it hed been ready for it for along time now. He was in no hurry. He took each walk as if it were his last and he did not want to miss asingle thing on any of the walks - the turned-up faces of the pasture roses with the tears ofdew running down their checks or the matins of the birds in the thickets that ran along theditches. He found the machine alongside the path that ran through a thicket at the head of a ravine. Atfirst glance he was irritated by it for it was not only unfamiliar but an incongruous thingas well and he had no room in heart or mind for anything but the commonplace. It had been thecommonplace the expected the basic reality of Earth and the life one lived on it that he hadsought in coming to this abandoned farm seeking out a place where he might stand on ground ofhis own choosing to meet the final day. He stopped in the path and stood there looking at this strange machine feeling the roses andthe dew and the early morning bird song slip away from him leaving him alone with this thingbeside the path which looked for all the world like some fugitive from a home appliance shop.But as he looked at it he began to see the little differences and he knew that here wasnothing hed ever seen before or heard of - that it most certainly was not a wanderingautomatic washer or a delinquent dehumidifier. For one thing it shone - not with surface metallic lustre or the gleam of sprayed-onporcelain but with a shine that was all the way through whatever it was made of. If you lookedat it just right you got the impression that you were seeing into it though not clearlyenough to be able to make out the shape of any of its innards. It was rectangular at a roughguess three feet by four by two and it was without knobs for one to turn or switches to snapon or dials to set - which suggested that it was not