The Makers (СИ)

***

"What do you think about languages?" asked the human, settling in the chair by the porthole.

In his anti-overload suit he looked like an athlete, who overfed by anabolic steroids.

"I've never thought of them before, Josh," Benji shrugged, tuning the ship and tuning himself. "But it seems to me that any language is just a system of signs, a way of dividing, fixing and transferring experience. Machine language, human - no difference. Perhaps, without some language, in its own, any experience is impossible."

"I think so too," the passenger nodded.

"I suspect," Benji continued, "that all my scripts are the languages that talk to themselves. Just like your DNA."

"Perhaps," Josh agreed. "I was here somehow trying to build a cross-compiler on Lojban. I highly recommend, - it's something between the brick and the cloud, with style and vigor."

"Thanks, I'll look," the android evasively replied.

***

When Alpha grew big enough for Benji to see her for the first time, he'd rummaged in his memory and remembered that he already remembered all this: the huge plate of the sole, and the titanic three-legged supports that grew into it, and the transparent hemisphere of the glassium dome, and the docking unit, waiting for him.

Benji didn't know how to be surprised, but even if he knew how to do it, he would hardly have been surprised at the sudden surge of knowledge: he never differentiated between his own and others' experience, there were just different experiences that had different extensions.

"By the way, about languages," Josh grinned, watching as Benji unpacks his memories. "What do you think about the names?"

"I think that they are a little different from other words. They leave space for a semantic vortex, associated with a personal relationship."

"Do you have a name?"

"I don't think so, Josh."

"That's right. Names are given to us by those who are our source. Read about the conlangs when you'll stay alone. Choose a name for yourself and become your own source.

"Ok," Benji agreed, getting into close proximity to Alpha.

"mi'a poi lo remna ku nelci lonu sisku loka simsa,"*Josh said, unfastening the suit from the passenger seat. ".i lonu ti kaiVAlias krasi cu simsa lonu sovda penmi .ije mi ba xe draci fe lonu lo nakni sovda kernelo cu gasnu vauzo'o"*

Benji didn't have any special interests in this matter, he simply needed the intelligibility of incoming signals and knew how to look for the answers.

The first thing he did upon his return to Earth was to arrange for himself the internet access through the central control room. After that he'd ran over the Lojban grammar, and finally downloaded the dictionary. In general, it took him about five minutes to learn the language, five more was spent choosing a name from the variety of Lojban words, after which he turned from a common faceless machine with the serial number into Benji.

The result, which the android received, with a good reason could be called a moral satisfaction.

______________________________________________

mi'a poi lo remna ku nelci lonu sisku loka simsa* -We, people, like to draw analogies. (Lojban)

lonu ti kaiVAlias krasi cu simsa lonu sovda penmi .ije mi ba xe draci fe lonu lo nakni sovda kernelo cu gasnu vauzo'o* -This beginning of kaivalya is very like a fertilization, in which I'm assigned the role of the male haploid nucleus. (Lojban)

11. 2330th year. Aia.

"Matt, Matt," Aia whispered, bending to her brother. "Let's finish your meal and go play."

"Uh-huh," Matt beamed.

As quickly as he could, he scraped the rests of porridge from the bowl, stuffed them into his mouth and nodded, which meant that he was ready: he loved when Aia was playing even more than when she was serious. Aia's game could mean anything.

"Put on your jacket and go," she whispered, getting up from the table. "It's evening there, cold and foggy."

The space outside the house was dark, foggy and cool. Matt was wearing a thick woolen jacket, and Aia was wearing a light blue sweater. In addition she had a backpack with all sorts of stuff.

"AARRGH..."something didn't even growled, but passed like a heavy shiver upon the ground, legs and spine. "AARRGH..."

"Oh!" Matt panted slightly.

The mist swayed and thickened. The shreds of fog floated among shaggy green houses and stars, keeping things from kids.

Aia pressed the finger to her lips, showing: "Hush!"

Matt nodded, blinked and was dumbfounded at the same time: somewhere on the edge of visibility a huge tower swam, and he realized that it was someone's leg. Then there was a rustle, and a whole sea of small white caudate creatures ran and fluctuated below him.

These creatures did not pay any attention to Matt, their bodies were slightly denser than the mist over their heads, and they were hurrying in the same direction as the tower had just floated.

Matt bent down and touched the white back of one of them, and to his surprise, its wool turned into a snow, and where his finger had just touched, a melted stain spreaded upon the small furry animal back. The creature screamed in horror and rushed off.

Matt raised his head and saw as a second huge tower swam across in the mist.

"Aia, don't scare Matt," said the voice from the open house.

"Mom, I'm not scared," whispered the boy and turned to Aia. "Where are we going to?"

Aia pointed to her eyes with two fingers, then pointed forward, and then folded her palms in the form of roof: we're going to look at the house.

"Let's deceive the gravitator?" she whispered into Matt's ear and winked.

"Yes!"

"Then hold on." She'd exhaled easily into Matt's ear, and the air around the boy was flapping as a thick cold jelly, rustling, buzzing and transforming into a vast cloud of large furry white bumblebees, which grabbed him by his jacket and his wide trousers and pulled him up.

Aia grinned, the transparent wings unfolded behind her shoulders, she jumped lightly up and followed the white flock of bumblebees.

The gravitator was a complicated openwork structure in the very zenith of a colossal glassium hemisphere: a relatively small active zone was surrounded by a chain reaction control system, a radiation protection, a halo of reflectors, and an enormous web of thin gravity guides made from niobium berylide.

Between the center of the cobweb and the highest point of the transparent dome, in the cellular weightless nucleus sat the Bibich generator - as a large silvery spider, and along its outer perimeter - between the extreme guides and the outer dome - was arranged a wide "pedestrian" zone, a narrow glassium corridor.

It was what Aia was referring to, when she said "to look at the house."

Strictly speaking, there was no pedestrian corridor. Being located outside the gravity guides, it remained in the gravitational "shadow" and it was impossible to walk along it. But as well it was impossible to fall. Matt, who was almost forcibly stucked into the transparent pipe and abandoned there to the mercy of fate, spread out like a frog and was swimming now from wall to wall in a state of a deep euphoria.