The Makers (СИ)

She liked Benji. It was easy and natural. But when she began to ask herself why, it turned out to be both uneasy and unnatural.

Usually people like each other either because they are handsome, or because they are similar, or simply because they designate a comfort zone for each other. It wasn't true that in the situation with Benji everything was quite different, but also it was impossible not to notice the difference.

What I want to know is what is he doing now, Aia thought, watching Earth bathed in the rays of the white sun. What kind of thoughts are wandering now between his alloy silicon wafers? That is Paris, - it glows as a tiny asterisk slightly above the Italian boot, covered in white cirrus. There is evening there too.

What, Aia thought, what for you can be responsible at this distance? And what you can respond to?

She often thought about what would have happened if she and Benji lived together somewhere in Canberra, Moscow or Danang. Everything that pleases every normal person - a good-night kiss, a glass of milk in the morning, walks in the park, the sea, mountains, rollerblading - all this would surely seem to him stupid, pitiful and useless.

Of course, he could find in all of this his own, special, pleasure - for example, in the search and calculation of shades of red in Moscow's Sokolniki in the fall or in search of the center of gravity of a bicycle... But completely different things would be a matter of truly satisfaction to him. No doubt about it.

And no doubt about what would be a matter of great satisfaction to her.

She narrowed her eyes and tried to see him, a tiny speck of dust in endless barkhans, stirred by the samiel of eternity. And failed - Benji was so far away, and the too-thick noise was woven by Bibich's generator, which hung at the zenith of Alpha.

Nevertheless, while she was looking, in this human-made rustle something suddenly grew dark and vague.

At first Aia's heart began to race anxiously, and then at once collapsed down: she suddenly, sharply and irrevocably realized that right now somewhere far away, something wrong was happening to Benji, - something bad and incomprehensible, and she, with all her unnecessary abilities, couldn't even see what.

It's all because of this damn generator, she thought.

For the first time it seemed to her not just needless, but insanely, mortally dangerous: led by some not sixth but sixty-sixth sense, somehow she has felt that the coming near future had narrowed to such small dimensions that that active metal Bibich's spider and alive Benji no longer fit in it simultaneously.

It's been a long time since Aia last time was so confused, - so she has confused for a moment. But just for a moment, after which she jumped up, spread her thin transparent wings and flew up as a brave little fairy toward the buzzing monster.

And then it turned out that the emergency switch which shall turn off the generator doesn't turn off the generator.

No, you, damn degenerator, she cried, tearing off the incredibly thick wires connected it to the solar panels, you're killing him! And then she tore them off...

She tore them off and screamed in pain; this sharp pain has exploded in her, as if from the very depths of the great blue hell hanging over Alpha, something big and eerie fell and stung her. There, far far away, Benji - tightly bound, studded with an incredible amount of wires, with his head thrown back - was melting in the agony.

"Benji!!"

And the reality, no longer protected, had flinched and swam.

"It's not love!" she cried, falling into the cold black abyss of a soulless night. "Don't listen to them, Benji, don't listen! It's death!"

Aia, lying unconscious, was found by her own house: it, like a large green hairy snail, had fished for her thin, painful smell and crawled toward that smell. The house wasn't the only one who detected something wrong: it has simply managed to be the first.

It turned out so that while it was crawling, the Makers were busy with very different things: with returning from the dead Benji who had died in Limerick in the hands of the Irish crackers, with restoring the Munster NPP that was destroyed by Aia and with figuring out ways to cope with the wave of total amazement diverging from Ireland around the world.

All this happened, because it is difficult for women to think. Even if they are Makers.

Aia was a Maker, but she was a woman. Surely, she saw people swarming nearby dying Benji, but the pain flowing into him through the conductors was so acute, and the source of this pain caused such disgust that in an attempt to protect Benji, she wiped the Munster nuclear power station away in one fell swoop, without thinking about any consequences.

And the consequences were not slow in coming: in the completely switched off large cities of Munster, the unpowered life-support systems and distribution led to congestion on the ground, a couple of dozens of accidents in the air and, albeit brief, but still panic in all sorts of public places.

For half an hour, while Munster was de-energized, the irreparable happened: Houston learned about the disconnection of the Bibich's generator, Dublin learned about the disappearance and subsequent restoration of the Munster NPP, and the Irish, British and even the French press learned that had happened something extraordinary.

It was not the first one or even the second that was irreparable: it was the third.

Half an hour in the world, where it's all tied up in high speeds and digital technologies, meant the following: it was impossible to hush the incident.

20. 2330th year. Benji.

The first thing that the android heard after he was being able to hear again was a great stir caused by Aia. And he still couldn't see anything: in Limerick, as, indeed, in the entire Munster district, for the first time in a few hundred years, there was a real dark night.

Benji stirred his hands and almost remembered where he was and what happened to him. A light blackout - from the scotch and paralysis to the possibility of moving - in view of the circumstances, seemed so insignificant to him that he wisely decided to equate this unknown with zero and not to give it any meaning.

People in the dark around him fussed and cursed.

Taking advantage of this fuss, Benji hurriedly pulled apart the now harmless stings and cautiously slid from the chair to the floor.

Oops, he thought, stumbling along the way on the immobile human body, and figured out that, unlike the kidnappers, he could orient himself not only with the help of light. He rummaged in his memory, took out the first melody he came to and started to whistle it at a very high octave, trying not to drop below a hundred kilohertz and listening to the echo coming back.

The outside door that leaded out was at the opposite wall. Benji had estimated the distance and jerked towards it.

The corridor behind the door was long and narrow, people ran along it in both directions, but now the kidnappers no longer posed any danger to the android: he was the only one seeing among the blind. Dodging the men who were trying to bump into him, he ran to the stairs, twice jumped over the railing, pushed a heavy metal door and found himself on the street.