The Makers (СИ)

In the normal mode the android had turned stern of his ship around to the concrete fence, tested everything that could be tested, reported to the central dispatcher that there were no extraordinary incidents, that he did not need spare parts and repair personnel, and then finally climbed into the engine room and went online.

***

Never-ending "tock-tock-tock-tock". It's a clock generator. It's the life of the processor, the life of the machine, Benji's life.

No sleep, no rest, no fatigue - only loneliness, cleverly disguised in the network under the global mutual interest.

Someone's forums, blogs, directories, shops, messengers...

What does it matter who you are, Benji? Ripple. A barren gray semantic ripple - as a taxpayer, a buyer, a customer...

Benji froze in indecision, determining the meaning of his actions, and, consequently, the direction - who am I? Where am I going to? He, whose billions of operations per second served not the whole legion of liver or intestinal cells, but the understanding and building a logical connections, took several long seconds to decide - today everything will be different.

The android has located a desire: the usual drift was no longer interesting to him.

The inner world of Benji differed little from the external. He could to process information what came to him through the eyes and ears, as well as that flowed by digital streams over the radio channels - with the same, equal enthusiasm.

Benji didn't see that the Makers saw - he simply didn't have a requisite "eyes" and "ears" for it, but he was able to organize the universe he dealt with.

Inspired by Aia and the Parisian weather, he painted a dancing rain, came up with a soundtrack and sent the video to Aia.

9. 2043rd year and after. A little bit of everybody.

Robert's parents were an ordinary American couple.

Lukasz, who had never been to America before, was amazed at their youthfulness, their gaiety, the neat house in Galveston, full of children, dogs and cats, and very much wanted to go home.

He wanted to go home while Robert and his younger brothers were fishing at dawn with his father in the Gulf of Mexico; he wanted to go home while Robert's mother and Lara were trying to find common interests.

And then, later, he also wanted to go home - while he went to Houston Intercontinental, while he was flying over the Atlantic, and while already at the Prague airport he saw his mother and father in the vast crowd.

All this time longing for the past tormented him with incredible strength. He was on his own so many years, and maybe that was why he, who had learned perfectly to manage with his own psyche, at this time let himself off the short leash.

Who is able to understand them, these people, even if they are the Makers? Probably he just wanted a sorrow.

Prague has not changed much over the years - a little more filled with cars, became a slightly more modern, but still, as before, was filled with sun and sugary smell of linden.

Lukasz, who remembered city almost exactly as it was, was sort of looking at the present, but saw the near past - himself, quite a boy, the school, friends and Alice.

Now she is thirty, he thought with a lump in his throat and remembered how then, in that former and wrong life, he felt that the meaninglessness, divided into two, ceases to be meaningless.

***

She worked as a waitress in the cafe called "Malostranska Beseda."

Lukasz didn't go inside - what was he supposed to do there?

He was sitting at the round wooden table in the street and for about ten minutes didn't think about anything. He simply watched through the strange stained-glass window: there, inside, the loved one has been moving, straightening her disobedient blond hair and smiling to the visitors.

Lukasz admired her gait, the familiar line of her smiling lips, her thin ankles and waist, just as the day before he looked from the parental balcony at the Prague dawn, or how someone is enjoying the snowfall - delighted and slightly aloof.

He admired and waited for her to feel that something going to be wrong. Herself.

Women are amazing creatures, he thought, looking at how she at first froze, then perplexedly looked around and finally stared at him, who is sitting outside.

And then he never understood what coincided with her desperate "whoa": whether the collapse of his heart, or its escalation.

"Hi."

The past ten years slightly sharpened her features, but have not yet indicated the feelings that she lived with through a wrinkles.

"Hi." Lukasz nodded. "How are you?"

They stood hugging each other. He stroked her back, her shoulders, felt himself strong, big, smart and terribly unhappy at the same time and thought why, why this tiny piece of the universe is more important to him than all the rest of the universe.

"Ok, Lukasz." She looked up at him. "Today is great. You haven't changed at all."

"I know. And you?"

"I don't know. From the inside it seems that no. Yesterday, they showed Mexico and Arizona. Local hospitals are empty, right up to psychiatric; doctors and policemen are unemployed for two days. You were in on it, weren't you?"

She smiled, turned away, wiping her eyes, and Lukasz's heart began to ache.

"I was in on it," he echoed. "I thought about you. Often."

"And I thought about you. You've come for long?"

"Sometimes it seems to me that I'll be here forever." A smile slipped over his face. "But I understand that it's more desirable than real. What are your plans for today?"

"To break away from you, to leave work, on the way home to pick up some milk and bread. I hope they coincide with yours."

"My..." Lukasz closed his eyes. "My plans for the next couple of days can be expressed in one word - you."

***

"People! People!" screamed the lemurs, waiting on the inside of Alpha for the equalization of pressure in the airlock. "A lot of them! A lot! We missed you!"

And people smiled and waved their hands in response. Both old and new.

The former were condescending, the new ones were shy and surprised. And then the lock was opened.

Both of the lemurs jumped up to say that the rains all the time went on regularly, that the oxygen content in the air without people is not less than here ever was, that the glassium is durable and transparent, that the Earth is hanging in the sky for days on end.

"We waited for you! Waited! Why have you been there so long?! So long!" they lamented.

***

Definitely, Alpha was not quite a ship after all, because the women who appeared there brought with them no trouble, but a new life.

After their appearance on Alpha, the first walking house was born - big, shaggy, soft, green and obedient. He, small and shy, was given to Lara by Robert.

As a round, large-eyed lump, he'd been crawling slowly along the dining room floor, looking and with great pleasure eating everything that could be digested, sometimes forgetting and licking the human hands and feet that came along the way, and when the burning white sun emerged from behind the Earth, the house sat in the Valley at the very water, fluffed its fragrant green hair and froze in a quiet chlorophyll bliss.