The Makers (СИ)

The darkness that enveloped him seemed to him the best time in his life.

It was so dense - no lights, no flashlights - that if Benji was a man, he would have breathed a sigh of relief. He stopped and looked around. Apparently, the power outage was so wide that it was out of the question to determine the coordinates through any local base stations.

However, also it was impossible to delay, - the android realized that as soon as the light will be given and the surrounding electronics will work, his chances would immediately drop down.

He looked around in search of some working vehicle around there and saw an abandoned flyer nearby the enormous metal hangar. The machine responded to the standard request and opened.

Benji, in a jiffy, climbed in and was about to start, but suddenly it occurred to him that the bright side markers would make him an easy target for a possible sniper. The android blinked and bent down to look for a power line of markers under the shell.

When he took off, it was the fifth minute of darkness.

Now it was easier: Benji had anchored in the coordinates stored by the flyer and turned to the southeast, towards the Channel. From the height Limerick was not so completely dark: the avenues were shining, transport was running along them, - people, frightened by the sudden night which came down in the city, were hurrying to get home.

Codes, Benji thought, damn me. And his hands, lying on the control panel, for the first time in all this time, had treacherously moved: he gave out the bank codes and completely lost sight of it.

"Damn! Damn me!!" he whispered aloud whether to himself or to the darkness hanging from the outside of the flyer, and zeroed out the coordinates of the target, without turning off the engine. The flyer came up keenly.

At an altitude of four hundred meters far in the north appeared a light strip. Benji turned the car around and set the new coordinates: as quickly as possible, while Limerick was still cut off from the outside world, it was necessary to find a working ATM and open access to the network.

Galway was shining. He had not slept yet: on this evening he got not only bread, but also great entertainment: local television was showing with ecstasy on the network and on LED street screens the blackness lying near the southern horizon. Everyone understood that the matter was in the neighboring nuclear power plant, but nobody knew how things really were.

It was the twenty seventh minute of darkness.

In fact, Benji also didn't really know what was going on. All he knew was that while the horizon was dark, he had a chance.

He parked the stolen flyer at the station square, waved off the attendant with bulging eyes - yes, yes, it's problem with markers - and rushed toward the nearest ATM.

"Wake up, wake up, lazy piece of iron," he hummed while the ATM was loading. "I wish your magazines are as empty as your brain is empty in your head. So ... UBSAG ... Bankaccount... Blockcode..."

The ATM had squeaked and agreed.

"Where do you have a diplomatic mission here?" Benji turned to the duty attendant. "My name is Benji Shabra. I am a citizen of France, was kidnapped in the Besancon area over the E23.57 highway, the coordinates of the kidnapping location plus 47.206917, plus 6.120501, coordinates of the forced delivery place plus 52.676382, minus 8.635480. My chip with money and metric data is melted."

And then he spread his hands and smiled confusedly.

Oh... what a mess you made, Aia, he thought, listening to the duty officer who was calling the police patrol unit, it doesn't matter at all if it would be one Unix less, there's not a soul other than you, which would be upset. If anybody could ever notice it.

21. 2330th year. Aia.

"What a mess you made," said Lukasz at last.

"They could kill Benji," she said into the cool cupped hands, and looked up at him with her frightened eyes. "Is nothing can be done now?"

"They already killed him," Lukasz snapped. "And everything that could be done has already been done, but only now nobody cares. What's the good now to snivel and show your weakness. We'll wait for the guests."

The delegation arrived the next day at eleven in the morning by Greenwich. Two smiling, broad-shouldered twins of Scandinavian appearance and a silent pilot.

To meet them came the entire population of Alpha: everyone wanted to be involved.

"Hello," Lukasz smiled in a most charming way, opening the airlock.

"Well, and where is the guarantee that this won't happen again?" sadly sighed one of the twins, stepping over the boundary of the gravity. "How will do we know what form will take your intervention next time?"

"Let's leave unnecessary curtsying. All these protocol rules look now slightly old-fashioned. I think they couldn't give us guarantees of tomorrow, such guarantees in principle nobody could give," - the second twin waved off and, looking around with interest, added: "What a charming little place you have here."

"We are used to our way of life," Robert said.

"Then you won't be surprised if I say that we are also used to our own," the guest looked at him sadly. "And last night for two hundred people didn"t just the way of life has changed, they are now almost insane: the whole evening shift of the Munster NPP unexpectedly turned out to be in total darkness in the open field."

"And it was good that it was dark," said the second guest. "Because it's one thing to just sit for half an hour in the dark and it's quite another to watch the Makers work. The Earth wants to know why has happened that happened."

"Because we are scared of death, too," Aia said softly. "I was scared."

The two twins simultaneously flinched, exchanged glances with each other and turned to Aia:

"Is there any of you on the Earth whom we doesn't know about?"

"No," said Lukasz.

Yes, Aia thought, and the twins looked at them in bewilderment:

"Is this one of us?"

"It's an android," said Aia. She said it so simply, as if the Makers spent whole days only watching that no one of human could inadvertently offend one of the DII brothers.

"That is the third party. It's even more interesting."

Lukasz nodded to Robert, who at first grinned, then sighed, and then easily and casually, like a good friend, took both twins by the elbows and led them away from the assembled crowd and from the airlock - toward the embarrassed green houses nearby:

"Oh, what nonsense. There is nothing weirder than dividing what can"t be divided. We had been waiting for you not in order to blame you or, what is even more senselessly, to be blamed. Inhabitants of the Earth have for a long time not been pampering us with their attention. And we think that is wrong."