The Makers (СИ)

From somewhere on top of its branches a wet ouzel had flew up, shook itself and, tilting his black head, stared at the boy with its small dark bead.

"How can you be my friend if you don't know anything about me?" Matt smiled lightly at him.

"Nobody knows about anyone, and it doesn't bother anyone," the ouzel pointed out and tilted its head to the other side. "Are you cold?"

"A little," Matt said.

"It will be warmer now," the ouzel once more shook itself, jumped to the very end of the twig and looked anxiously out from under the foliage, as if waiting for something from the rain pouring outside. As if in response somewhere high above, once again, a dull rumble passed, didn't struck, but rustled, and around the linden tree, under which Matt sat, a white sparkling weaving appeared from the wet air.

"All right, just don't touch it," the ouzel warned, again bouncing closer to the boy.

"What don't to touch?" Matt was surprised.

"Lightning, what else."

"All right," the boy nodded, feeling that the earth on which he was sitting is getting warmer and warmer.

"You'd better tell me why you ran away from home."

"I?" Matt asked. "I didn't run away. I wanted to change the future."

"Whose?" the ouzel, in turn, was surprised.

"My, of course."

"Oh, you are a little egoist," the bird shook her head. "It seems to me it's a common trait in your family. Do you know that you cannot change your future without changing someone else's?"

"Why not?"

"Because the future is always shared. What's fault of the next evening?"

"I don't like looking at other people's feet," Matt said grimly. "They are not interesting. And I don't like looking at jackets or gowns. And I don't catch a faces, because I'm small. And many things cannot be done when visitors come, because they can misunderstand it. No, rather, they cannot understand it."

The ouzel bounced on the same place, whistled and quite humanly grinned:

"Do you ever try to sit a little bit higher?" and, looking at the boy who had opened his mouth from surprise, winked at him: "Come on, today we will slightly change the usual course of things."

Matt appeared at home almost immediately after the thunderstorm - wet, excited, happy, almost in daring, with a small black ouzel sitting on his shoulder.

Lukasz waited for him in the embassy yard, cross-legged and leaned back on the back of a wrought-iron bench:

"Well, traveler, do you know what an ouzels are being fed?"

"There're those who live in cages and they are being fed," the boy retorted. "And I'm not holding anyone by force."

Then there was a drink reception, and for the first time it didn't seem to be depressing to Matt. He walked between the buttoned all the way up guests and with a charming smile gave each of them a living crystal flower. The guests were crouching down to meet and shake hands with the boy, and the flowers were stirring their transparent heads and rang.

And at night Matt spiked a fever.

25. 2330th year. Aia.

Aia wouldn't remember that she ever cried the way she was crying today, sitting under a dome in a transparent glassium tunnel at the quiet generator Bibich: out loud, sobbing, with every breath, repeating "I can't bear it anymore!"

However, it didn't last long, and after half an hour after the fit of hysteria, what had tormented her became so unsteady and blurry that if someone asked her about the reason for that that had just happened, she would hardly give any intelligible answer.

What "I can't"? Why "I can't"?

After crying, she sat for a long time in silence, listening to what was happening inside her.

Usually if she was filled with despair, it happened in dreams, but when she was conscious and oriented - on the contrary - there was always a relief.

All of it was unexpected - and this not yet melted sensation of what was happening, and this bottomless hole, in which her heart was loudly crushing.

She understood that the fate of the Maker is not the worst fate: to foresee the future, to look into the past - well than, how can you be upset by having an eyes or ears?

However, it turned out that it was possible. There was a kind of thin border that she was afraid to define for even herself.

There, beyond this border, the grass was also green, the water was also wet, and the blood pounded in the veins at about the same rhythm, but the creature hidden in the depths of her soul revealed some unthinkable eyes and saw behind it the eternal abyss.

She knew that this abyss was neither terrible nor strange.

Strange were her feelings: one day they could be dull to the point of extinction, the next they could burn Aia from the inside, just like in the fit that had overwhelmed her half an hour ago.

At such times she felt that this burning, deep and nameless feeling she experienced was the only right one, for which in life it was worth doing something at all.

Of course, she also realized that it wasn't so. Of course, she knew that it was as ridiculous and as wrong as be trying to draw with all colors at the same time: every note in this universal fugue, like every brushstroke in the picture - from barely visible to intertwining dense, saturated, colorful - should have its own, special, timbre and its own, special, loudness. However, what rolled on her, covered her with such force that this tune got lost and trembled, like a swarm of moths at the time of the tornado.

This feeling wasn't hopeless at all, at least because Aia wasn't an ordinary person.

Of course, she inherited from people so much: she also had to eat and breathe, she also needed love and understanding, and the love and understanding she lacked were exactly the same utopian, and get them was also unrealistic, but there was a huge difference. The seeds of Benji's love were planted on fertile soil of her own love and her own understanding.

She saw the future - and her, and Benji's. She saw it as clearly as she saw, for example, droplets of moisture on the glassium pane or her hand getting around her knees, and this future was inevitable.

It turned out that her "I can't bear it anymore" meant that the future struggled to be realized in the very this way .

Aia sighed and, under the rustle of the wind tickling between her wingless shoulders, slid down into the hole, like a little tin-soldier.

26. 233the year. Benji.

As a machine, Benji could well afford not to waste a time.

"Ding-ding-ding", tinkling inside him, caught him in the process of transforming idle cash into a loan capital. He still didn't have a little more than fifteen million euros to buy the shuttle.

"Hello, Benji," have said the message that was tinkling inside him with Aia's voice .

"Hey," the android responded, shifted the priority of financial operations aside and made a room for the opportunity to talk.