Shinie’s Ritual
Natalia Afanaseva

   © Natalia Afanaseva, 2015
   © Alexey Gorokhov, translation, 2015
   © Natalia Afanaseva, translation, 2015
   © Aleksandr Delistyanov, illustrations, 2015
   © Anna Delistyanova, illustrations, 2015

   Created with Ridero

   It’s a well-known fact that our Future is mighty world rescuers wearing exoskeletons, and heroic spacevessel captains prowling the Universe. The smart things capable of doing all yourdaily routine work. Super-geniuses and explorers creating the new reality.
   Maybe itwill be this way, but to err is human. Stumbling and ending up with eggall over the face will be as human-like in the future as it is today. However… not unlikely, with the advent of anti-gravity, the egg will be able to hop and smearitself over your face, and, with the appearance of artificial intelligence, itwill try to catch up with you and rub itself in your face once again. I’m here to invite you to take a fresh look atthe Future uncrowned, with a large dose of irony.
   I’m here to invite you to take a fresh look at the Future uncrowned, with a large dose of irony.

Human Factor

   – 1 —
   Wahl crinkled. His right foot was encapsulated in a glass cube and was a sorry sight. The swollen bluish-black flesh was oozing drops of some nebulous liquid. Although the cube kept the smell inside, Wahl felt like he could smell it internally. The smell was a kind of saturating his entire body and oozing treacherously from every pore. The worst thing was that the leg itched terribly.
   Doctor Tim, a merry fat little man, as ill luck would have it, commenced his round with Wahl’s chamber mate. One minute, two… Wahl could not bear his boisterous cackling any more. Finally, the doctor turned to him and took an indulgent look at the guy’s dying limb.
   “Won-der-ful!” he clicked his tongue with enjoyment and shook what was left of his red locks. The thin hair was drawn back in a puny neither-here-nor-there bobtail. Indeed, the doctor’s appearance was that of an aging punk-rock fan rather than of a world-class head of science. Wahl hated him.
   While the “Wonderful!” followed by either one or two exclamation marks, had lasted for a month, what was left of his patience could last him for but a few moments. And, right away, the doctor said what the whole thing was all about.
   “Ti-da-da, ti-da-doo, surgery tomorrow…", he chanted in the manner of his favorite song by the Clash, and Wahl all but joined him, although under any other circumstances the Clash’s “Should I stay…?” would have made him want to curse and swear.
   He did not say a word to the doctor about the alarming itching, since now his biggest dream was to lapse into sleep and wake up five minutes before the surgery. Yet, he was in for a rather complex preoperative assessment. Everything had been discussed beforehand, and Wahl was aware that there would be no food and, most important, no pain-killers, during the following twenty four hours, plus he would have to go through a whole batch of unpleasant procedures.
   But still that was going to be just one day! And he was nearly “off his rocker”, already cherishing a to-hell-with-that-leg-an-artificial-one-will-be-ok thought. All the more so, today’s prosthetics had grown dexterous enough to craft a limb barely distinguishable from the real one, so to speak. If it were not for surfing…
   That was how the whole thing began. Surely, the higher the waves, the bigger the sharks. However, in 99,9999% of cases a shark will not attack you unless you are bleeding. What is left is a one-in-a-million chance of an unprovoked attack. Wahl remembered himself being carried away from the beach, not able to even look at his shredded led, and a rescue man saying to him: “You’re one in a million boy, Wahl!” He did have to say something anyway.
   If it were not for the surfing, he would hardly have thought about the new method doctors had come up with – protomass limb regeneration. But for the government’s financial help (Wahl was an investigator at a local police department), nothing would have come of it either. The cost was far beyond an ordinary citizen’s capacity.
   Now the government did help him, and at first Wahl was very happy considering himself a lucky boy. Later, he repeatedly tongue-lashed himself, since he knew that he would have rejected it, had he been aware how it would have ended.
   The creepiest thing was that it was his leg rotting in the cube that actually generated the protomass. The beasts dressed in lab coats had set up a blockade to let Wahl’s leg rot completely. Frankly, the shark did a great job, and, it might have been a hundred years since it had brushed its teeth last time… It took only a month and a half. Only a month and a half! Wahl was a crazy surfer…
   Alright, tomorrow he’d receive his batch of injections, the “protomass” would be loaded with nano-particles featuring DNA elements, and here we are! Wahl’s right leg’s second birthday – Happy Birthday, maam!
   – 2 —
   Everything swam before Wahl’s eyes. He felt a scalding pain in the leg. “Can you hear me? Good boy!” Tim the Merry Greek spoke in an unusually serious tone. But he beamed right away, not being able to hold it: “Everything was won-der-ful!”
   “You stay here for a while,” the doctor absently waved his hand sideways, “but we’ll put you back in there (another wave) soon. We have them coming in one by one, applicants, one by one…” And off he ran, jumping up and singing something of his most favorite stock again.
   Soon Wahl was transported back to the chamber indeed. The well-recognizable cube was there too. Wahl would superstitiously turn his eye away from his leg until he really knew it was ok. Two weeks later, he was liberated from that glass contraption, which had embittered the last two months of his life, and discharged from hospital. Although there still would be a lot of screening procedures, examinations and treatment, he was back home!
   The leg ached, itched and tingled, but it was. Regeneration was surprisingly rapid, and shortly after that Wahl started using crutches and was able to reach the window; and after a month he was giving his leg full-scale training by walking along the coast with a stick.
   There was only one thing that worried him – a strange pain in the heel. He had telephoned his doctor on that and was advised not to walk too much. Wahl obediently reduced the mileage, but the pain persisted. Not that it was severe, but all nasty sensations seemed to concentrate in the heel, and stepping on it would hurt pretty much.
   Nevertheless, going to the clinic was the last thing Wahl wanted to do. He rightly feared detection of a serious problem and, consequently, having to get back to that place indefinitely. But one day in the morning he groped a small lump in the area where the pain was concentrated and realized that further postponement of his visit to the Esculapian lair was no longer possible.
   – 3 —
   Doctor Tim looked unusually gloomy. Known for moving around the clinic in a fashion of a well-pumped ball bouncing from one wall to the other, he suddenly fell into the habit of shrugging sharply and speaking with long breaks, during which he stared at the floor with his dull eyes.
   Wahl briefly described the problem and provided a visual demonstration of his swollen heel. He told the medic about the pain, craving for, if not interest, at least a tiny bit of sympathy, but Doctor Tim continued to indifferently rock heel to toe and hardly deigned to even look at the leg. Finally, feeling outraged, Wahl requested at least an X-ray of the tumor, but the doctor brushed it off wearily.
   “I know, Wahl. You don’t think you are the only one who has it, do you? Every seventh does, Wahl. Every seventh patient who has undergone the surgery. Everyone of you has the same thing.”
   “What is it?” Wahl felt cold creeping through his chest. “What… what’s happening?”
   “Teeth. You all have teeth cutting. My first patients already have fully grown ones.”
   The world-class expert was a pitiful sight. He would not look Wahl in the eye. But Wahl… The doctor’s words were blowing his mind.
   “Doctor, please, tell me more details. Why… is this happening?”
   “Nobody knows. We have been through three checks. They’ve mopped us length and breadth. Both for sabotage and negligence. Negligence! Do you understand me, Wahl? They found nothing. Nothing!”
   “How is that possible?” Wahl began to get the message, “I’m not a medic, Doc, but I remember what you told me. We apply tissue extracted from unaffected areas, which is structurally similar to that in the damaged area, and we do not have jaws growing on our legs, do we?! And why every seventh one?
   “I have no idea. This should not have happened, no, it should not!” The doctor looked suddenly alive and he began to furiously kick the first available treatment couch. “I don’t understand. I don’t un-der-stand. Hypothetically, tiny fragments of other tissues might have gotten in there… But you remember, don’t you! The whole thing is gno-to-bi-otic. You didn’t spit on the samples, did you? Did you? Neither did I. Neither did anybody!”
   The doctor’s energy expired rapidly, and he melancholically shook Wahl’s hand.
   “I’m sorry. See you when they are fully erupted. And, so far, take good care and do not expose it to heat.”
   …
   Wahl had a case of tinnitus. He did remember how absolutely strict everything had been. All samples were selected as if Wahl was going through no less than a case of Ebola virus disease. He did remember the pink plastic strips and the doctor literally scrutinizing every single one, not letting anybody touch them. All by himself!
   Wahl pulled on his sock and shoes. Now all he could do was go back home, and he’d have to forget about his job. He sniffed. Yes, indefinitely. That was the expected result. He should have chosen an artificial leg, shouldn’t he?! Why, why, why?! The treatment couch caught another shot.
   – 4 —
   Wahl limped along the corridor. Nothing has changed here. Except a visible decrease in the number of employees. Nobody would walk out into the corridor for a chat with an associate or a patient. During Wahl’s hospitalization, there had been much more amicability. Now all doctors were locked in and sitting still as mice, not wanting to stick their heads out.
   Miss Granzer, the nurse manager, was the only one who kept her door open. Wahl remembered that battleaxe woman, whose voice was audible throughout the department. Her powerful janitor growl made everyone of the cleaning personnel jump up and mop whatever they had close at hand with twice the energy. Well, well, this one would not care a cuss.
   Wahl looked briefly inside as he walked further. Then he stopped, still not realizing what it was that had caught his attention. Then he returned and peeped in again. Granzer was standing at the table and sorting a pack of pink plastic strips. One, two, three, four, five, six… The plastic wouldn’t stick to her hands. Then she licked her finger… Seven… Miss Granzer looked up.
   “What is it, sweetie?” she yelled, “it’s an stocktaking day, move on, move on!”

EVOcuation

   – 1 —
   There were six of them. Six young confederates ready to go on any desperate adventure to achieve their goal. Perhaps, this was the only type of behavior a nineteen-year-old could show. Fiery speeches and admiring eyes contemplating the world – they seemed to have sought rather than lived – they had sought for an idea, which was worth living for.
   They disappeared in the jungle of Central Africa, leaving nothing but a small camp, which was found four hundred years later by a mere accident.
   No bodies were found, but that was no great wonder. What was really curious was the order, with which their gear was arranged and packed – as if to wait for their owners who had gone on a long trip and were to come back one day. There was a stock of food that would not spoil for years, if not decades. Clothes were all new and never worn. ID cards.
   Nature did eventually interfere in the order, but it was clearly observable that they had not meant to leave for good. But where did they go and why? They might have known the answer, but they were never found, not even the bones – neither then, nor after a century, nor later.
   – 2 —
   Three months before the group of six stepped upon the wild lands of Central Africa, a heated debate took place in a classroom of the Institute of Biology in one of the cities of Siberia.
   Professor Popov was watching with delight the young men trying to stand their ground. There were a good deal of sophomore bravado, highly flown arguments and scientifically weird statements. Every time he heard yet another absurdity, he lowered his eyes, trying to conceal a smile, and would wipe his spectacles with a rag.
   He did not mean to offend anyone. Neither those who were heartily fighting for their moot point, nor those parrying with hackneyed textbook clichés. Such arguments were useful even if no truth sprouted from them.
   To be brutally honest, it was the group with the moot point who appealed to Popov. However, it was time to break in, because the lecture was going to be over in seven minutes, and Professor was a man of completeness.
   “Dear guys, I can say you are not fully right,” he finally said after two frantic waves of his hand, calling upon the disputers to calm down and keep silent, “you are trying to prove that а man is capable of evolving…”
   “He should be!” a collective response thundered. Professor drew a horizontal line with his hand in the air to signal that, first, he had understood everything and, second, he wanted the guys to let him speak.
   “Yes, man can continue to evolve, because now we have an opportunity to distract a little from gaining our daily bread, so to say, and concentrate on the vector of evolution, as you have put it… the term sounds quite moot, but I’ve seized the point and I’d like to make a correction… In other words, you mean that it is possible to focus on a particular ability and develop it, say, using methods of artificial evolution.”
   Popov wiped his spectacles again, fumbling for correct words that would neither offend the guys nor discourage them from directing their quest in their chosen vector.
   “You have left out the fact that any evolution is a reaction to external challenges, and the key factor, which has contributed to our breaking from the evolutionary loop, is the absence of this challenge. You see that as a species, we are currently above the evolution, do you understand? We don’t need to adjust our lives to nature, and we adjust nature to our needs, which is a reverse process.”
   “But we are talking about…”
   Professor drew another rigorous line.
   “What you are talking about is selection. It is an imitative and therefore more predictable and less stable process. Your idea sounds very interesting, but it must be applied otherwise, do you get me? Do you?”
   Nobody looked up once. It’s ok, these boys are strong enough to face it, and they’ll be grateful in the end.
   “So, during the recess, I advise you to,” Professor gave a sly blink, “have a good rest! That’s one! (cries of approval and chuckling); not to lose the knowledge – that’s two! Think once again over your absolutely respectable opinion, yet from a different standpoint, got it? That’s it, see you in the fall.”
   Boys and girls, now buzzing and bidding good-byes, began to leave the room, some singly, others in twos. Six of them – three boys and three girls – would never get see it again.
   – 3 —
   They stood near the edge of a huge plateau covered with dense vegetation. As far around as the eye could see, the ground billowed into hills and cliffs laden with lush greenery. A pit yawned right next to them. Raging hundreds of yards below was the jungle of Central Africa. Mountaineering equipment, clothes and tools lay at their feet.
   “So what? That’s it?” they looked at each other in the eye once again. Each nodded silently. The unanimously appointed group leader walked up to the pile of ropes and tools and dealt it into the pit. After looking down to make sure that nothing had gotten caught on rock outcroppings, he turned to his mates.
   “Now that’s it. Let’s go.”
   The scenery opening before their eyes was completely wild even by African wild jungle standards. There were no predators, as, notwithstanding its enormity, the plateau was isolated, and so long as they had shed their equipment, they had burned their boats.
   Instead, there were tons of stuff around they really wanted – cliffs and rocks, tall trees with smooth trunks and lianas hanging unreachably high.
   And down they stepped into the mirage trembling over the torrid ground…
   – 4 —
   A small glassy helicopter hung over the raging green mass. It looked nice and fragile, resembling a soap bubble, which was about to go down, touch the green carpet and collapse.
   However, nothing like that happened. A small scientific expedition crew landed safely on the plateau, where the group of six had gone centuries ago. It was a rather routine research, and if anything could add a touch of life to it, it was zero awareness of the area.
   Now that the aerial survey was finished, all they had to do was get down, take soil and water samples, examine the slabs piled at the plateau’s highest point, which had caught the inspectors’ attention. Actually, they were located within the landing area.
   Getting there proved unexpectedly difficult. Every following step threatened to trigger a rockslide, but finally, two men reached the black holes, which, most probably, led to deep caves. They looked inside and, not daring to climb down themselves, sent down a camera-carrying drone.
   That was all so routine. Nobody was ready for what happened next.
   All but knocking them over, a huge pale skin-winged creature shot out of the hole and settled itself on a nearby rock outcropping. It sat there blinking myopically at the humans and shading itself from sunlight with its membranous limbs. The copper crew was all eyes…
   “It's…it‘s… a human!” the phrase slipped out from the pilot’s mouth.
   “Whought?” the creature chirped, cocking its head questioningly. “Whought? Whought?”
   Then, considering the inspectors too big to prey on, it bounced up heavily and flipped back down into the hole.

Superperson

   – 1 —
   The Superperson was going through its free phase in one of the cities of New Zealand. A significant amount of power still remained unused, so it could analyze the most recent changes in the control group’s behavior. It would take 3,78% of free resources, and that was a rare opportunity.
   The Superperson’s separate elements performed their functions in the Philippines and in several European cities, but that was no hindrance for the already launched process. The world’s smartest machine was doing was what people referred to as ‘searching for an answer’.
   The question was that the Superperson did not have the qualification to guide the control group’s behavior during the last 6 379,15 earthly days. The types of control group members’ behavior and categorization parameters had been specified by the machine’s creators. However, they had programmed the Superperson to be able to launch its own categorization process with an over 55% parametrical disparity with any of the behavior patterns.
   By the time, the Superperson had accumulated set of 14*10Е6 incidents, and their parameters demonstrated an over 55% similarity between each other, and a more than 55% dissimilarity with her accumulated set.
   In fact, it had defined and coded all categorization indicators. Now the Superperson was in for a much more complicated assignment – to evaluate destructive behavior according to the degree of hazard for the members of the control group.
   The problem was that some of the indicators had estimates, which generated controversial conclusions. The revealed evaluation indicators would not let the machine categorize this type of behavior as ‘hazardous’, although they did not meet the criteria of ‘non-hazardous’ incidents either.
   – 2 —
   The Superperson once again aligned the non-standard indicators in the order of decreasing frequency rate. The first indicator was absence of motivation. None of the incidents had been motivated. The objects, which had showed behavior deviating from that defined by the standard program, had no reason to act as they actually did. That followed from the analysis of voice records.
   Second, incidents were supposed to inflict consequences, which could not be regarded as the only possible ones and therefore could not be predicted. Man would call them “absurd”.
   Third, the criminals did not seem to try to hide at all. The analysis of the controlled group members’ body movements, given the destructive act they had committed, had demonstrated perfect calm.
   Had the Superperson obtained an ability to assign qualitative characteristics to its own condition, it would have referred to it as ‘in confusion’. Since a group of scientists and programmers had designed it in back the twenty-second century, and since the global system of supercontrol over offenses against person – the Superperson – had been accepted worldwide, it would not have reached its current parameters.
   Capable of assembling its own physical body from nanograin containers, which were located at a decent distance from each other, so that it could arrive at the scene of destructive act within 27 seconds, the Superperson, connected to a full-range detection network, chose to accumulate more data.
   As soon as the decision was made, i.e. after 4,45 seconds since the launch of the process, the Superperson once again tuned all its resources to signals coming in from the detection network. There it was: one of the signals was non-standard again. The Superperson directed 4,59% of its resources to the scene.
   – 3 —
   There were two of them standing face to face. One was checking the time and the other one was looking around worriedly.
   “Where is the THING?”
   “3, 2, 1… here we are.”
   The Superperson materialized the nano-particles, which were contained in the nearest tank, and all but walked up to the two.
   “Destructive act 3112—05—14789564 detected. Offence against person Category 2, Type 1, Code 3. Non-accomplice theft, minor loss.”
   “Oh, come on”, the number-one objected with factitious resent, “No theft.”
   “You don’t have anything against me, do you?” the number-two uttered with a snort.
   “Nothing, Dr. Cooper.”
   “Well, thank you for sharing your sandwich with me.”
   “The analysis of your action shows signs of destructive behavior, Dr. Cooper Arc-ID-17895462879.”
   “No, that’s wrong. Why should I steal – you mean I did it, don’t you?” Doctor did realize that the Superperson would not appreciate his irony, but he could not hold it.
   “Affirmative, Cap,” his swashbuckling companion trumped. “Thank you for being alert, Sir… erm… Miss (there was hardly anything in the whole world that the doctor’s companion liked better than sneering)”.
   “Charges of destructive behavior withdrawn, proceeding terminated for mutual denial”, the Superperson turned around and, followed by the “criminals’” choked-back laughter, started toward the nearest container. To an onlooker, it might appear that it walked heavily and was quite low-shouldered.
   – 4 —
   As soon as it collected a sufficient amount of resource in one place, the proceeding was resumed. It started with the question: is the offence against the Superperson an offence against a person?
   An affirmative answer was received in 10,87 seconds.
   In 14,35 seconds, the Superperson decided to categorize this type of destructive behavior as ‘highly hazardous’.
   98,52 seconds later, the first member of the control group became the thirtieth-century’s first life-termer.

Strategic Mistake

   That was an act Trent could not have expected from the rival. He pulled the collar of his uniform coat. The move seemed robotic, and the body was signaling fatigue and oxygen deficiency. However, his conscience kept ordering him to stay calm. In any case, a response action would follow in minutes.
   The general nodded to signify that the information had been admitted for examination and then nodded his subordinate out of the room.
   Goddamn it! GODDAMN ALL THESE ANALYSTS – the analysts, who had sworn to him that the blacks had invested all their stuff in defensive weapons! And now he had to generate some IDIOT way of solving a puzzle, to which there was actually no good solution.
   Trent felt a drop of sweat run down his temple. They had been plotting the operation for two years, and now it was on the brink of failure. Everything had been precalculated. No, Trent corrected himself, they just had THOUGHT that everything had been precalculated. Now that the budget had been set up to the tiniest detail and all orders had been distributed… there was no way to change it.
   Certainly, there would be ‘emergency expenses’ that would allow him to occasionally deviate from the agreed budget sum. However, the blacks had not exercised their right so far and, GODDAMN THEM ALL, he did not feel like revealing his weakness to them.
   Minutes went by, but General was aware that he’d better give vent to his anger. Give vent to his fury, his rage, and not until he did would he look at the disposition map.
   To start with, the blacks had gained the right to choose territory (they were all so damnably lucky this time!). Surely, they would have chosen the woodland grass – an area, which they all had at their finger-tips. Happily, we did have a good thing to offer, but for this, as it turned out, strategic mistake! The balance of powers did not seem in the whites’ favor at all.
   Trent felt the hot band, which had been squeezing around his head from the moment he heard the officer’s words, finally let go of his temples, relieving the raging headache, which had pursued him all these days.
   I just hope this won’t happen during my duty time… It suddenly struck him that he was thinking about a defeat as an inevitable thing. What’s wrong with worrying about your clear name? This is all but life instinct. An instinct, which was subject to suppression at that point. Now all thoughts about himself, his honorable ranks and his ancestors’ lineal nobility were to be brushed aside. There is no Trent, there is just the General. And he, BLAST HIS GIZZARD, will fight to the last!
   Trent turned his face to the group of five men, who seemed to have missed the war raging inside of him. While he was torturing himself with self-reproach, fumbling for excuses and wondering who of those around him would be good as a substitutive victim, they were talking quietly, discussing the response actions. These guys are not to be messed with – they are all freelancing civies.
   “So”, Trent forcedly stretched out his lips in a suggestive smile, ‘so, dear chessmen, do we still have a chance to make this game a draw?”
   “Sir”, the one who was considered the chief said in a twang, “we think that if we start our combination with moving infantry to f3, the whites will get a chance”.

The Day of Silence

   Una woke up at 7 a.m. as she usually did, although today she could afford a longer stay in bed. There was quite a reason – the day of vacation! Definitely, that was not a day to start with lounging idly in a bed. Every single minute of her well-deserved (and it really was!) vacation was scheduled.
   A quick glance at the interface. Mom was still in bed, since she had watched a talk show well past midnight, which meant that she would be up by lunch time. Wow, Kris had already slipped out. That was strange, since the little sister had usually stretched her bedtime to the longest possible point, and then she jumped up to rush about like crazy, leaving you no choice but to dodge in time. Una had to program breakfast for two and drive the little idler to school.
   Una blindly dialed the breakfast combination. She did not advocate diversity, and since she had developed a menu that fitted her ideally, there was no turning back. However, programming her kitchen printing machine for a month ahead, as some of her friends did, was not something she really wanted to do, as if she enjoyed this daily ritual.
   Mom said that she had been just as consistent and judicious in girlhood too. That gave her peace. So she was now, as she hung her legs from the bed and adroitly got her slippers on her feet. The breakfast will be ready to serve in five minutes. There were seven minutes for a shower. Just enough time for the protein soufflé to cool down a little.
   One, two, three… the habit of counting seconds had pursued her since her years in the nursing school. She had had a lot on her plate back then, so she was trying hard to spend her time with maximum efficiency. Every minute scheduled. One hundred and ten… Water smelled weird on that day, and some extraneous and long-forgotten smell had stuck to her favorite jasmine too. Later Una remembered her mom’s threat to call a technician to clean out the pipes.
   The house was fed by a deep water well, not a public water main, and that did take its fee. They could have fixed an UV filter, but it was hardly possible to convince her mother that it would have been less costly than annual clean-outs… Four hundred… Una decided not to use the fog mode today. There was no telling how skin would react to the supplement to plain water, and she did not want to inhale an unknown chemical.
   Strangely enough, the dining room did not smell like what she was accustomed to either. Raising her eyebrows perplexedly, Una decided that she’d better put up with it. “That’s strange”, it occurred to her, and she even frowned to check her observation, “although there is nobody around, I’m experiencing this sort of reaction anyway”. Was that a habit?
   She sat down at the table and dug her spoon in the soufflé. The breakfast did not seem to succumb. Well, well. This little jacko Kris had used the 3D kitchen printing machine to produce some stuff like new earrings for herself!!! Now Una could see the source of the strange smell. The food. It was all plastic. The little sibling had just failed to replace the cartridge after using the printer for a purpose that was in no way related to cooking.
   “Happily, I don’t eat sandwiches for breakfast” Una giggled to herself. She would not be angry to her sister, Kris was her little sweetheart. Still she had to wait for another five minutes before she could finally get her soufflé and coffee. Having made the standard manipulations with the kitchen machine’s interface, she stared at the window. Strictly, that was a projection, but it was calibrated to display the landscape outside, so it was quite possible to figure out the weather.
   Everything promised a perfect day, and even the weather forecast in the corner of the projection was beaming with a cheerful golden circle – not even a cloud, as if on cue! Una recalled the feelings she had experienced a month ago, when, looking at the projection (as she had used to do for all of five months’ mornings preceding the vacation day), she had seen the sun, not the usual lead-colored drop. Oh, she made quite a jump! How come the forecasters could have messed up a short-term forecast such as this! Definitely, that day was meant to be the happiest one in the year! After finishing her breakfast and changing into her loose overall, she recorded a verbal message, addressing it to her mother. She was not going to return before evening. The handbag, the ID bracelet… wow, she nearly forgot her vacation card. Una felt infuriated imagining that all her plans could be ruined just because of her failure to take the card out of the pocket of her office suit. Eventually, the card was dangling on her thin neck chain. Una hoped that she would not have to use it too often.
   She walked out five minutes later than she had planned to. Immediately a number of vizors made a straightaway to her eyes, and torrent of data obliterated the girl. Ads, news, latest job ads, a message from her friend and the overdue message from Kris… 364 days of year – that was an everyday duty of all citizens. Commonly, there was no escape from the escort.
   Surely, the ad boys were a little louder than it was permitted by law, and usually that had made Una want to crinkle without feeling really annoyed. There was no way to prove anything to anyone. Nevertheless, today she is not going to put up with that!
   Una undid the top button of her overall, took out the card and put it beneath the vizors’ scanners. The devices faded out instantly and disappeared into the recharging slots. That’s it! That was her day. Her well-deserved vacation. Just one day in a year. The Day of Silence.

Shelter

   – 1 —
   “Daaad, it won’t turn on hot water. It’s ice cold.”
   “Jack, I have to leave, you’re a big boy. Come on, no follies.”
   Jack’s father had raised five kids and he knew how to make rejections. There was no sense in being insistent. However, there was Bryan who might have agreed to stay with Jack in the bathroom while he would be washing himself and cleaning teeth, couldn’t he? He heard his father’s voice outside:
   “Bryan, hurry up, last time your friends had to wait for us.”
   No hope… Today his father was driving Bryan’s friends to school, so they were leaving first. Jack would not turn to his mother or sisters for the world. He was already seven, he was a man. Now he was in for another cold shower.
   “Jack, hurry up!”
   That was his mother. She was pushing him, since the school bus was coming in thirty minutes. Jack squared shoulders and dove into the dark bathroom, as if into an ice-hole…
   – 2 —
   When Jack took his seat in the bus, he was still shivering. He chose the most sunlit seat and kept silent all the way to school trying to absorb as much heat as he could. The school kids around him made a lot of noise outshouting each other, and he would not say a word. That was a silence of understanding that he could not bear it for long
   Jack Oldrich, seven years old, a second-grade student of the Printstown Elementary School. A little boy, who had fallen out with his own house. What an absurd thing! That was the kind of thing he wouldn’t dare discuss with someone, because nobody would believe him.
   He was just a boy. Yes, he did fail to clean his shoes at the porch at times. On a couple of occasions, he had forgotten to close the refrigerator doors… A homeless dog locked in the cellar for a night… Would the house really take revenge for stuff like that? Indeed, it all had started gradually, and it was not before a good portion of time passed that he understood what was happening.
   Later, when the house downright refused to fulfill its obligations in relation to Jack, he recalled that there had been vestiges of it before. Doors would have closed faster behind him than behind other family members, and toasts would have burnt inevitably – he had noticed that about six months before. But his lean body could slip through the narrowest openings, and he was not a fan of toasts either, so he would not have cared much about them.
   Also, there had been what one could call minor accidents like a window opening on a rainy day, or a dryer not functioning and leaving Jack struggling with a prospect of going to school in damp socks; stale milk in the room fridge, and many more. The house was intent on resource saving, and it seemed full-on thrifty with Jack.
   However, none of such things matter much for kids, so Jack would forget about these annoying accidents instantly. Except for his collection of stamps, which he had really grieved for. The house ‘forgot’ to close the window exactly when they were lying on the window sill.
   Later his father said that Jack had immobilized the window lock himself, but he already knew what the matter was. And by the time he was really scared.
   – 3 —
   The school day flew by. Elis, his elder sister, was to drive him back home. She loved Jack more than everyone else in the house, so he felt like she was the one he could tell about the house. However, he was so happy to ride and chat and let the shade cast by tree crowns and mingled with streaks of sunlight engulf them, that he would not dare break this placid order.
   Elis let him in and followed. Jack, the youngest one in the family, had hardly stayed alone once, and he was all so happy that he was not going to this time either. All the more so, Elis was there. He could ask her to make him a cup of cocoa and a sandwich with jam.
   He could remember himself trying to make a cup of cocoa the day before, when the MW roared intimidatingly enough to make him want to switch it off right away and drink it cold. And the water was cold. Ice-cold. The house knew something about people’s physiology, and it must have drafted an elaborate plan about Jack.
   As Jack watched Elis fuss over his little snack, he thought: could that be my fault? Here is Elis – she is all so kind and sweet – and the house won’t treat her that way. Does it really have a good reason to love Jack? What for? For failure to turn off the tap and flooding the bathroom? For cutting scripts on the attic beams? Or maybe for scratching the Robin Hood’s riflemen’s emblem on its window?
   It had used to be the most ordinary house on the outskirts of a typical twenty-second century American small city. Jack had been all so glad to have moved there! The only thing that had scared him was a blind built-in wardrobe in his room. It was big and dark and devastatingly dusty.
   His mother had to clean it with her hands, because it did not feature any automatic indication or clean-up systems. Light had to be switched on manually too, and to do so, one would have to almost reach its end through pitch darkness. One day, Brayan had put him inside the wardrobe, and while he was blocking the door, Jack was crying with horror and banging his fists on the inside of it experiencing the most terrible moments in his life.
   Later, there were a couple nightmares featuring the wardrobe, following which Jack confessed to his mother that he would under no circumstances ever use it. Eventually, it was surrendered mercifully to oblivion after being stuffed unnecessaries. But now the entire house was haunting Jack.
   Of course, it was not Jack’s fault. He was no more scrupulous or concentrated than many of his peers. A nut from his toy construction kit falling into the floor cleaning system seemed to have become the last straw. After half the day of digging the ground, Jack’s father did eventually repair the system, but the house’s formidable appearance was much eerier than his frowning father.
   While what had been happening prior to that constituted all but minor damage to his life, the nut made the house pick on him to a high standard. There was a fairly broad spectrum of tools for that, as long as the electronic intellect had permeated the house from top to bottom and seized control over all amenities, home appliances and, partially, furniture. Jack put his hand to the top of his head, on which the lid of the veranda drop-table had ‘landed’ yesterday. It hurt.
   – 4 —
   Elis put a plate with two neat sandwiches and a glass of hot cocoa in front of him. Excellent! But…
   “Can you sit here by yourself for half an hour? I need to go to Inna and take some magazines. Just a little round trip, I won’t even use the car.”
   “May I go with you, Elis? Please, wait, I’ll be right back. Please!”
   “You silly little boy!” Elis ruffled his hair and then smoothed it gently with her hand, looking her brother in the eye. “Don’t worry, I’ll lock the door.”
   Now I have to stay face to face with the house for half an hour… maybe I’ll be all right.
   – 5 —
   When the door closed behind Elis with a dry and much-promising click, Jack was still chewing on his sandwich. Well, it seems to be ok. If I sit right over here without standing up, he thought, I’ll be all right. Jack looked around for a sign of danger.
   The tea-kettle is safely far away. The ironing board was fixed in the corner of the room, so it wouldn’t get him. What about the robotic vacuum cleaner? Lately, it had sought to get under his feet and trip him up where he would have least expected. No signs of that. Jack shivered, since it was a little cold.
   He could add a bit of temperature, since the console was right there on the wall, but the house would not listen. Oh, no, it’s getting too cold. He began to shiver. Was that how it was?.. He climbed cautiously off from the chair having thoroughly checked it for possible threats. This is it! The temperature was dropping, since the conditioner was in cooling mode. Jack gave a sigh. He’d have to go and get some clothes on.
   Suddenly, something small and dark lunged at him from the corner. Jack screamed and fled from the kitchen. He would not bother calculating the direction any more, since all he had to do was dodge the household items attacking him. The flick coat-hanger all but hit him in the eye as he evaded a jet of air freshener issued by a spray bottle, and there was the robotic vacuum cleaner stalking him at the top of the stairway – a barrier, which Jack eventually cleared in a giant leap.
   Finally, he got to the room. The window was open, and there was a whole heap of dry leaves on the floor, and there was even some earth, wasn’t there? Had it been brought from the cellar? The stuff was neatly strewn all over the room, and there was a huge pile of dust – the vacuum cleaner’s nasty little poo, Jack thought. Something began to knock at the door.
   Jack blocked it with a chair and began to dash frantically about the room, wishing there were a place to hide and Elis were coming back right now, right over here! “I hope I’ll live”, it suddenly rang out in his mind, and he felt horror coming up from deep inside.
   He hesitated in front of the wardrobe’s door for a moment – oh, no! Not for the world! – and dashed under the bed.
   – 6 —
   Elis was returning from her friend in high spirits. First, she had just received a good stack of magazines, and they had spent about ten minutes chatting about their routine matters. Second, she was fitting well in the thirty minutes she had pledged to Jack. The high spirits were gone once she entered the hallway.
   It looked like a disaster area. Also, she could hear the thudding and cracking of furniture being smashed. Jack!!! She grabbed the stick, which their uncle had left in their house after his last visit, and rushed upstairs.
   There was a huge hole gaping in the door, which led to Jack’s room. Elis ran slap into it, but there was something on the other side that would not let go. Dismissing any thoughts of danger, she thrust her arm into the hole and groped the chair. After what he felt like was a lengthy effort, Elis pushed off the chair and broke into the room. It was sheer hell. All home appliances, which might have been carried over there, were either moving by themselves or lying on the floor in leaves, dirt and debris. The walls looked as if somebody had just tried to comb them with a rake. Bed sheets lay crumpled on the floor, and the bed was upside down.
   “Jack!!! Jack!!!” – Elis yelled, feeling panic gradually evolve into a much more terrible thing. – “Jack!!!”
   “Elis!” – she heard his brother’s voice from inside the wardrobe. – “Elis, I’m here!”
   “Jack!” – Elis burst out crying at the realization that her brother was all right. She pulled at the wardrobe’s door, but it would not go. “Get out of there now!”
   After a few moments of silence, Jack, finally, answered:
   “I don’t want to get out, Elis… I… I like it better here…”

Shinie’s Ritual

   – 1 —
   “Once upon a time there lived a little bug, and what was its name?”
   “Little Shinie”
   “And who named him so?”
   “Mummy!”
   Misha’s mother smiled, pausing for a few of seconds, and Misha moved under the blanket, making himself comfortable. That was their ritual, which they carried out every night unless the mother was really busy. The fairy tale about little Shinie. Well, come on!
   Now the mother was the only person to speak.
   “One day Shinie went for a walk without warning his mother. When she came back home from work, Shinie was not there. First, she did not worry much, not until it began to get dark, and she walked outside to look for him. She went to aunt Ant, uncle May Beetle, but Shinie was not there.”
   “Mummy, why didn’t she phone him?”
   “They did not have phones, baby, I told you. Well, she continued to look for him and felt very scared. Shinie got so engrossed in playing that he could not see it was already dark. He went home, but his mother was not there. Then Shinie…”
   Misha’s mother continued her story about the kind lightning bug, who was (what a coincidence!) six years old, just like Misha, and how he had gone to look for his mother, and about their reunion, how she had reprimanded him and cried… And she was asking herself: what would happen when Misha turned sixteen, not six, like he had the day before? Would these sweet stories help him, actually a grown-up boy, understand his own life?
   – 2 —
   Misha was going to the ‘base’ with his pals. That was what they called a classified military installation, which was located in close vicinity of their town. Classified? Ha-ha! Yes it was, but not for a bunch of seven-to-eight-year-old boys!
   They took Misha along as a fill-in boy, because thus they would make the dozen, which for small fry was a special kind of pageantry. Then they met girls in the way, who delightedly accepted the idea to ‘take a ride’ to the base, and Misha’s mission in the bunch lost all significance right away; however, he had a kind of cunning, which helped him blend into the bulging crowd of schoolchildren, so none of them remembered about him. It was not before they actually reached the ‘base’ that they did, but at this point his presence was the last thing they’d care about.
   The base was classified for the military, but there was nothing classified for the little boys, as they had crisscrossed it, so long as the majority of objects were underground and scattered pretty far away from each other, and there were a fairly sufficient number of observation bunkers in the forest.
   The bunkers were monolithic concrete domes with edges buried deep into the barren woodland soil. They looked like a flock of giant turtles burrowing between the crooked birches and pines, scanty light from the polar sun refracting dimly in their glossy shells barely peeping through the gray moss.
   However, all the ‘turtles’ were guarded. Sentries stood at the entrances all the time, yes, all the time… but not today. The nearest ‘turtle’ remained unguarded.
   – 3 —
   …one day, Shinie’s friends treated him to a pear when he was taking a walk. It did not occur to him to wash his hands, so he ate the pear and it gave him a bad stomach ache. Shinie’s mother would give him camomile tea and carbon… Shinie lay sick for two days, and his mother even had to call a doctor…
   – 4 —
   While the older boys were deciding whether or not they’d have to ‘reconnoiter’ the bunker and, if they would, who would be the one to do that, Misha was settling his own inner disputes. On the one hand, he knew that if they got caught, they’d be in for hard time, very hard. And his mother would be very upset. Although she had never thrashed him, there’d definitely be a couple of days of guaranteed silence. Misha gave a sigh. Maybe they wouldn’t go anywhere.
   In five minutes, despite all fears and doubts, the kids made a chain and started toward the nearest “turtle’s” gaping mouth. After moments of hesitation at the entrance, they promptly walked downstairs. Promptly enough to reach the second underground level and hide from the squad of soldiers, who had arrived to the bunker on a truck.
   As they peeked from beneath a network of metal flights, they saw the soldiers quickly unload the truck and carry in heavy crates, blocking the entire first underground floor. The men were in a hurry, with faces crimsoned and all sweating, and they would not so much as fan away gnats and mosquitoes circling them or hint at a smoking break.
   One of the drivers – the senior one – jumped out of the truck and silently, just like the rest of the squad, joined the mission of carrying and stacking the crates.
   “Is that all?” his raucous voice finally rang out. “Let’s go for the last bit now.”
   “Can we really make it in time?” a soldier said in a feeble voice. “There’s enough food to last one for a thousand years…”
   “Carry on!” the driver croaked in reply. “We’ll make it in time!”
   And off they went.
   – 5 —
   …Shinie’s friends were fishing, and Shinie had already caught a bucketful. Then he decided to go home. His friends tried to talk him out of that, but Shinie wanted to take his fish to his mother right away, and off he went alone. And he got lost. His mother and his neighbors went out to look for him, and it was not until late at night that he was found… oh, you’re my little trouble…
   – 6 —
   The soldiers’ agitation passed on to the kids, and, honest, that was a great risk, which everyone realized. A quick decision was made in a whisper – let’s get out of here!
   Misha was getting the goosebumps – so much he wanted to leave, and, deep inside, the little Shinie had long been howling with fear. So, once the truck’s motor sound dissipated in the distance, he was the first boy to dart toward the stairway. Too late. A plaintive howl, which they all knew from war movies, filled the ‘base’, and down went a concrete slab – the bunker’s door, cutting off the route back home for the kids.
   Lamps went on instantly, and distant engines started, forcing a light breeze past the petrified children. It was no longer dark or quiet, but it felt much creepier. Then a rumbling sound came, gradually building up, and the ground shook – one, two, three times…
   The kids rushed along the corridor, which led further down. Boys tore ahead, and Misha was the youngest boy, so he fell behind, unable to keep up with even the girls. Finally, he stopped, and cried as loudly as his shaky voice could handle:
   “Stop! Stop! We can’t, we can’t… we must stay together…”
   “Stop! Stop!..” the girls backed him, since they were now too exhausted to run.
   The kids grouped. They took their wind and decided to send scouts ahead, but Misha started yelling again. To be exact, it was Shinie – the unreasoning little bug, wishing he were with his mother right now…
   “We can’t walk around one by one, because we may go astray. We must choose the direction and go together!” The boy burst out crying, feeling sorry for his decision to disobey his mother and follow the older boys, but staying alone would be worse. “Listen: once upon the time there lived a little bug…”
   …
   Although the sobbing ruined the effect, the kids did eventually listen…
   – 7 —
   Sasha was assertive by nature and he always knew what he was heading for. Yulia bit on her lip. Every time she had to all but persuade him.
   They were the twelfth generation of the Descended living in the dark caves, and so far the ritual was followed strictly. But Sasha… She had repeatedly seen her husband off the premises and into the cold lands, and she knew that he’d do his uttermost to leave without permission.
   “Sasha, please, for my sake,” she put out feelers, when they were still far from reaching the destination.
   Imagine – that happened every month!!! How could she have married a getter? But experience did its job well, and by the time they reached the cold land’s boundary, they had fallen out and made it up, and she did eventually convince him.
   As they stood in front of the door with REFRIGERATOR written on it in huge orange caps, he stared at her for a very long time. “For your sake,” his eyes told her. “Thanks,” she responded with hers.
   The young man turned his back to the door and raised his hands in a ritualistic pleading gesture. Yulia stepped back into the shade.
   “Mama, may I go take a walk?” Sasha said.
   “Yes, you may,” Yulia uttered a ceremonial phrase. “Yet, don’t be late, my little Shinie.”

Eggs again!

   – 1 —
   “No, I won’t,” Harry was trying hard to sound as confident as he could, “That’s it! I’m sick with it!”
   “Harry,” his mother squatted beside him, so he could see a vein throbbing on her temple, “Sweetie!”
   Harry was staring hard at the floor. He knew that if he looked his mother in the eye, he would eat the doggone eggs without leaving the smallest piece over.
   “Harry, please, look at me. Please. I promise, I’ll take you to Doctor Cooper on Monday, and I’ll ask him to replace eggs with… well, maybe milk. And what about meat? Harry?”
   Finally, the mother caught his eyes and smiled. “Just another three days. I promise, we’ll make a change.”
   “Ok, mom.”
   “Well, then… please, be so kind as the Hero-Superman-Batman-Robin… eat the eggs, my dear son!”
   “Ok. I’ll catch it, maam. And I’ll kill it, maam.”
   “Just eat it, sweetie.”
   Harry obediently turned to eating, trying not to concentrate on the taste. In fact, he liked eggs. He had used to. About five years ago. And he knew, that was the cheapest thing, which they could barely afford though.
   Milk and meat would be extortionate. To say nothing of the fact that it would take at least a year or two before a replacement was available. So, mom’s words were nothing less than an attempt to buy another two or three extra mornings with fried eggs.
   Harry’s body had ceased to digest protein five and a half years ago. Any protein-based food would cause excruciating pain and convulsions, proteins would not dissolve and would transform into poisons shortly after getting into Harry’s stomach.
   It had been after a long while that doctors had realized what was wrong, and then they had sought for a solution. They had tried all sorts of vegetable proteins, as well as animal proteins – dried and dissolved… but nothing worked.
   Over the tree months, which had put Harry through a whole batch of tests, he shed ten kilograms. Then he was prescribed a diet, and it was not before ten months passed, robbing him of another fifteen kilos, that the solution became available. Ten laying hens inoculated with Harry’s DNA. By the time, he was a skin-covered skeleton.
   Every egg cost a fortune, but Harry felt better. His mother found another job, Harry knew how difficult it was for her, therefore, last morning’s scenes occurred less frequently than outbursts of anger and disgust.
   – 2 —
   Contrary to Harry’s expectations, his mother did take him to a hospital on Monday. Doctor Cooper greeted them with a smile. He did not try to amuse Harry like he had before, since the issue had been fixed forever during one of their first visits. However, he did seem to like the boy, who had the strength to bear the ordeals life had inflicted on him. Fried eggs. Yes, on a plate. Harry returned a smile.
   “Hello, Harry! Hello, miss Anacrater. So what,” the doctor decided to take then bull by the horn, “Omelet is over with, isn’t it?”
   “Fried eggs are, Dr, Cooper. Omelet is abominable.”
   “U-huh, u-huh. Well, is it that indeed?”
   Harry looked down. His eye fell on his mother’s hands. All wrinkled.
   “Are there alternatives?”
   “Yes, there are. However, it’ll cost you more, and it won’t come quick.” Doctor Cooper was the last man to take to weaseling, and that had been settled between them.
   “I guess I can handle two or three more years of fried eggs,” Harry smiled, but the smile was lopsided.
   “Great! Then we’ll have an ordinary examination. Miss Anacrater, I’d like to talk to you after that, so please, stay here.”
   – 3 —
   “Take him to the laboratory. Definitely, he’ll be excited to see the pets working for him. Maybe it will reduce his aversion to food, I don’t know. I’ve notified Doc Teese, he’ll tour you around the place.”
   “May we go now? I have half a day off, and I have a bit of time right now…”
   “Yes, sure. Just let me warn him. Come here: can you see the pavilion over there? The grey building. No, the next one. Doctor Teese will meet you at the checkpoint. Good luck!”
   – 4 —
   Doctor Teese was a tall young man with blond hair. Harry’s mother had to look up during the conversation, and Harry would not even care to. From his low vantage point, the doctor’s head seemed to be swinging high up in the clouds, and his voice – a bass that sounded a little too low for such a young man – thundering from above. However, the doctor was concise.
   “I knew you were coming. Harry? Hello. Miss Anacrater? Good afternoon. My name is Adam. Please, follow me and try to keep up.”
   After a dozen or two of turns and bends, he rumbled again:
   “Now we’re going outside. They’re in an enclosure.”
   “They?” that was the first time Harry said a word since their meeting. “I thought there was only one.”
   “Hens? No, there are thirty six of them. The human DNA has changed their physiology…”
   Suddenly, the doctor shut up, probably not wanting to disclose information. Then he rumbled again:
   ““Thirty six. They must reproduce – that’s one. They do not lay eggs every day – that’s two. On the whole, they live longer than usual chickens. But we need them anyway to reproduce. We have already replaced two chickens.”
   “I understand, thank you very much, doctor!”
   His mother wrapped her arm around Harry’s shoulders. She had been here once, when she had received their first bunch of eggs, but she had not seen the hens. “What is their life expectancy?”
   “We have no idea. The oldest one is over four years old. It was brought here first. The rest are a little younger.”
   The conversation continued until they reached the enclosure.
   “Here they are, can you see? It’s tidy. There is sand bedding. The box over there is the nest. There’s only one nest. Here are the troughs. And these are feeders. The newspapers are an entertainment. They peck and tear at them… generally, they need a varicolored thing, it keeps them busy. Or they’ll fight.”
   “I’m very impressed, Doctor Teese! I grew up on a farm and I know how hard it is to keep it this clean! That is… very good.” Finally, Harry’s mother picked up a decent term. “They’re… they’re a bit larger than usual laying hens.”
   “On the average, they are larger by half. That’s quite a result too… would you like to look at the lambs? We’re breeding lambs for a g… for another patient.”
   “Oh, yes, we do. Do we, Harry?”
   “No, thank you, I’ll wait for you here.”
   “Ok, Harry. I guess you wouldn’t mind a little talk with your saviors, would you. We’ll be right back, won’t we, Doctor?”
   “Five minutes.”
   – 5 —
   Harry went closer to the hens. Now the only thing separating them was a glass partition with ventilation holes. All thirty six stood motionless, scrutinizing him and producing barely audible sounds. They were really big. They had brown feathers, but they were almost crestless. Was that normal for the breed?
   “Hello. You’re saving my life, know that?”
   The hens, still not moving, stared at Harry with their bead-shaped eyes. Then, as if at a command, they went about their usual businesses – digging the bedding with their legs, pecking and tearing at the newspapers. Harry turned away. What’s the big idea?
   He looked at the neighboring enclosure. There was poultry, as well as in the next one. He had to go to look at the lambs. He turned to ‘his’ chickens with a sigh.
   “Well, my dear sav…”
   Words stuck in his throat. The hens formed a line along the rear wall of the enclosure, and, in the foreground, in the sand bedding, all studded with chicken footprints, he saw a well-discernible scribbling (‘like chicken scratch’, it flashed through Harry’s mind): “We hope you’re doing better now, aren’t you?”

Solar

   – 1 —
   Circling a teaspoon in her cup of coffee, Mila stared at Polis, whose boiling mirage shadow was vibrating over the horizon. No, a nighttime view would be definitely more beautiful. At daytime, the city, which was the closest to Mila’s reservation, looked maybe not like a mirage, but at least like a blast-furnace’s vent. All sunrays seemed to have converged upon the city’s concrete structures. Polis. Wouldn’t they all melt in there? And Mila knew they wouldn’t.
   Notwithstanding its hellish environment, the city, encircled by a tall concrete wall, was an object of desire for all reservists with no exception. Finally, it was there that all advanced technical thought was concentrated. While the residents of the reservation were shaded from the unbearable heat and radiation by thick clay walls, the residents of Polis owed their comfortable life to air conditioners and the buffer dome.
   Mila looked around. “How many generations will it take for reservists to adapt to the permanent twilight? And to realize that there will be no choice but to go deep underground?” a mad thought flashed through her mind. Mila had no idea. “I’m not a technical specialist,” she snorted. “How should I know? And I’m not a genetics expert either – when will they all degrade?”
   “And not a historian either,” she asserted, grating her teeth. However, it was quite observable that the local community was splitting into two camps. So far they were getting along well with each other, and maybe they would continue to do so. However, there was nothing to guarantee they would.
   Mila and a group of 38 people were first-generation reservists spat out by the city onto the sizzling frying pan that the reservation was. Ok, let’s call them frontiermen. Those were people rejected by the city as ‘poorly engaged in Polis’s life’. What did that mean in practice? That meant that if you were an artist, and a not so good one at that, just like Mila, there would be no place for you in the city. You are not a sanitary technician or builder, are you… Oh, no, you’re not even an educator. Artist was a profession fit for the waste-paper-basket. That had served as a lesson, and the entire Department of Fine Arts became vacant. When the source of drop-outs was drained, they began to shed those who had failed to pass the qualification examination by the time of the induction. Then the real fun began – downright dumbheads began to arrive in the reservation.
   However, the city would magnanimously send assassins, thieves and junkies to tougher places. Still, the crowds that arrived two or three generations after Mila, would give her a feeling of extreme disgust. She never got married, although there had been two potential matches. “Oh, no, I don’t want my future kids to live here,” she had asserted on her first day in the reservation.
   – 2 —
   Not that there was no way out of the place. Yes, there were, if you were a technical genius. Just like Sandz, who had come up with a brand new electricity generation method based on using the difference between daytime and nighttime temperature. Do you believe the method was ever applied in the reservation? Ha-ha!
   Well, Sandz did receive the status of a citizen and was appointed as a department manager in Polis. And he had been one of Mila’s potential matches. If only she could have known that. Eventually, it was Eva, not Mila, who had left for Polis with Sandz in the status of a spouse and with a pair of snotty little children.
   Well… no need to palter. There were truly talented people – poets, painters, composers, and they had not been ousted. Was there a chance to return in this status? Mila did not know. The nastiest thing was that it was not until she got into the reservation that she began to tackle really decent things. Even if one wouldn’t amount to as much as a masterpiece, it would give her a straight A.
   Mila took her pieces to Patrick Snade – her teacher of Fine Arts (third generation frontiermen), and he said that they were ‘not quite so bad.’ To grasp the meaning of the ‘not quite so bad’, one had to grasp Snade himself. At classes, he’d beat Malevic and Kandinsky all black and blue. And impressionism fans would not even dare open their mouths about their preference.
   By the time, Mila had accumulated a whole thick folder of sketches. She knew she’d better have had them bound and sent to Polis, but she hesitated. Not for financial reason, just because she realized that it was going to be her last chance. There would never be one again. She had missed last year’s competency test, because she had felt like she’d been well prepared. Although she was nearing the next test, she did not feel more confident by a fraction.
   Mila looked at the vibrating mirage over the funnel window once again, then at her unfinished cup of coffee. A decision was to be made, so, leaving the coffee on the table, she grabbed the folder and the handbag. Time was running out.
   – 3 —
   Mila walked up to the list of the attested. Over the three weeks that passed since she applied, she had gone through three stages: hope, fury and despair. Now she did not care at all. A paper with a list of twenty names hung lonesomely on the wall. Not bad, considering the fact that the entire reservation counted two thousand residents. That was as much as one percent!
   Well, let’s see! Kizz, Tomsin, Arbite… Why not arrange the lists alphabetically? Oh, yes… they are alphabetical – by professions, not by names… Mila moved her eye to the head of the list. Agronomist, cook, driver, … One more time: agronomist, cook, driver… This is it: artists are out of favor again…
   Well, to hell with it. I shouldn’t have hoped. Cook! Driver! Of course, we won’t stand a chance. The needle of Mila’s mood-meter swayed toward the red notch.
   …
   Well… If you cannot change the reality, change your attitude – that was the decision Mila made after her seventh glass of tequila. What’s good about this city, huh? Talk to me! Who are the residents left in it? Sanitary technicians? Decorators? Cook-ibn-gastrologists? If she ever went to that hell-be-damned city of Polis, she would not even find a guy to chat with.
   Here, here… Here is life hustling and bustling, a true highly intellectual society, all pink and white. We are going to build our own state based on equality and respect. Well, as to the flunk-outs landing up here… They’ll be happy too! And we are the new intelligenzia… so many opportunities… Kaleb… High parties… the Empire of Sun.
   – 4 —
   Happily, alcohol was putting Mila down quickly and mercilessly. That was why the ‘high bunch’ would never hear about the ‘new Empire’s’ apocalyptic plans. And in the morning, Mila was too busy struggling with hangover.
   Shortly before the afternoon, somebody knocked at the door, but Mila did not open it. First, the door sign said clearly and concisely that she was away from 11:00 a.m. until 17:00 p.m. If there was really a fool who’d have the strength to trudge his way to her house in the hellish heat only to turn back and return unaccepted.
   Second, Mila realized early in the morning that what was to be her good looks was terrible, and she was sure she would not be able to fix that by the afternoon. Fortunately, the visitor must have adhered to the intimidating door sign and would not knock any more. Instead, at three p.m. she heard someone as much as banging at the door. Oh, what a day!
   “Wait! Give it a rest!”
   Mila looked in the mirror. It would be not before she’d clean her face that she would open the door. They wouldn’t have banged that hard without a good reason…
   Mila washed herself, brushed her teeth and ran a comb through her hair. Finally, she walked up to the door. Kaleb literally stumbled into the room.
   “You’re one wild tormentress, mam. It’s hot as hell, I all but got fried!”
   “I recommend using an umbrella.”
   “What? You’re a one! I’d never have thought it would have jolted you this hard! Well, could you, please, give your old buddy one last glass of water?”
   “Yes, I could. What about a cup of coffee?”
   Admiring her friend’s face, now iridescent with a palette of emotions, she went off to fill the glass. Overwhelmed with generosity, she added two cubes of ice. “At least somebody is as sick as I am,” a stupid thought went through her mind.
   “Why one last glass of water?”
   “How can you drink coffee on a hot day like this?” Kaleb guzzled down his water and bit on the ice. Oh my head.
   “Kaleb! Please, not this loud… oooh.”
   “Wow!”
   Toning down seemed to be the last thing the so-called ‘buddy’ was going to do. “Did you commemorate it yesterday? You should have invited somebody to join the party!”
   “Commemorate what?” Mila’s patience had worn thin, so her last words were a growl.
   “What do you mean – what? How come? Haven’t you seen the lists? You’re in! Your name is right in the middle!”
   Bastard! This is it…
   “Kaleb! Get out of here. Now!”
   “Mila” the man piped down, “Mila, I’m serious. Did you look up Letter P? Painter-decorator, Mila Kravitz.
   “Painter-decorator?!” the world went dark before her eyes.
   – 5 —
   Nearly all reservists came to see Mila off, since she was a first-generation expat, so she knew everyone by sight, if not by name. She was smiling back and responding to well-wishing for nearly thirty minutes, so the driver of the rattletrap truck assigned by the city administration for transporting reservists, made a expressive remark about her not wanting to leave. That didn’t matter to her, and that was no good reason to ruin her high spirits. She was heading to Polis. And that was it!

Throes of creation

   – 1 —
   We-e-ell… Marina felt a blush begin to creep up her cheeks… Serves you right, darling. You should have stopped messing with everybody’s heads a long time ago, shouldn’t you? She had tried to take on that old this-does-not-mean-anything-yet look, but… the editor-in-chief was staring at her.
   “Well, let’s continue.”
   Sir Tr., J. Gorny was shooting out Russian phrases at a speed of a tennis ball bouncing off the world’s top-ten-to-twenty tennis player’s racket. She wondered where he had bought such an exquisite interpreter… that must have been an individual order. Oh, dipping into her wallet was the last thing she wanted to do now…
   “Now take a look at this SLIDE image.”
   Ooooh… the ‘slide image’ sounded so sincere as if Gorny was calling on to look at as much as godhead. Why look at it, it’s all pretty clear. Here it is – the four-layer map of the publishing house.
   The heap of what in third-millennium editors’ slang was called ‘rough’, meaning ‘overall written material’, towered over like a lofty mountain, and the monthly dynamics extended over half of the conference room, its edges touching the employees sitting in the first rows.
   It was a little worse with texts approved for further processing. However… on the average, they seemed to be as good as last year’s. Well, last month had been far from perfect, but it was not bad on the whole… Many offices would have taken great pains to achieve this result! But the “Frigate” driven by admiral Gorny (Marina all but snorted) felt dissatisfied.
   The heap of texts, which had passed the focus-group test, was much smaller. My aunt! Over the last five months the text bulk had plummeted hard enough to crush all hopes for Christmas bonus payments. The feeble violet curls were barely visible in the cross-section view of the 3-D model.
   And what about commercially successful texts? There had not been one.
   Sir.Tr.J. Gorny was meaningfully silent. It was not for nothing that he had gathered writers who had been the most successful over the last several years. He wanted them to take their first-hand look at the picture and tell him – how come, HOW COME? How come he had to explain the past year’s failure to the shareholders?
   So much for the merry Christmas…
   “I want you, ladies and gentlemen, to revise your technical equipment once again. By December 20, our marketing department will submit a plan for the next year. We must be ready.”
   Gorny swept his eyes over the room. His best employees…
   “I must admit that I’m in for a tough conversation with the shareholders. I have to explain to them what I don’t understand myself – how come the best authors and marketing service in the country and elsewhere have failed to earn a penny. I’ll discuss it individually with the authors who are guilty of ineffective TST. You’ll find emails with invitations to my office in your mailboxes, and I hope you’ll take it as it is.”
   Wow! That was new stuff. Gorny had always realized that all authors he had dealt with were creative personalities and he’d always wrapped his requests and desires in a colorful envelope, like a sundowner or a weekend trip – whatever tool he could use to keep a person on the right track toward creating another masterpiece. Things were far from good, weren’t they…
   And, by the way, Marina seemed to have done worse than everybody. Ok, take a walk to my little office. Maybe an idea will dawn upon me before I get there.
   – 2 —
   She had to beg the bank for another loan. Everything would be on the art’s bucket list – that was why she had bought a country house. She wished she had used the authors’ hotel, which the publishing house had kindly provided for everyone who needed a rest. But she had sought total quietness, which nowadays costs a fortune.
   And here we are now – hello, collectors. If the problem persisted, they’d cut down her salary, and the country house would be no longer affordable. To say nothing of the past two years of hardly being able to make both ends meet.
   She had to get a new machine no matter what. It did not take an editor’s admit card to see that Marina’s text had barely met the terms. The narration line was a sheer squiggle, and Mario, the main character, could well end up being Tornundul by the end of the story.
   Although she did run through her writings, she could not handle the whole bulk. Had it been a squint of disapproval on the editor’s face last time, or had it been her imagination? Reaching the office, Marina fumbled for her facility agent’s ID card in her handbag on the run…
   “Hello, Angelica, I’d like to meet you today…” Marina took a glance sideways at the PC screen showing a blinking email mark. “No, not really… and what about tomorrow? Great! Tomorrow, twelve o’clock.”
   She breathed in enough air to fill her lungs to capacity just in case and opened her inbox. First came a message from her ex-husband: “Hello, I’m writing to remind you that it is almost time to pay home insurance, you’re always forgetting…” Next came spam, then another spam, again and again, followed by a message from Veronica: “Marina, I’d like to remind you that we expect you to attend your next massage session today at…", and that was it… well, where’s the message from the Frigate leader? Hmmm, that’s strange…
   Well, what would she do next, go back home? Oh, no, massage… Oh, should she cancel it? Too late. She was not quite in the mood to attend it. Ok, she’d go to massage… She’d had a hard time arranging for it. You’d better appreciate what you get for free these days.
   – 3 —
   Marina walked out of a taxi cab and went straight to the technical section of the Art’s shop. She did eventually get the loan, since a good half of the bank officials who were authorized to determine her wallet’s thickness, were her fans. The shop assistant recognized her too and began to show her around the section with the most expensive machines. That was the price of popularity.
   “Well,” Kira, the shop assistant, started with a machine exhibited at the edge of the shopboard. “This is ТR-58S45 featuring voice recognition function. Now it has a database of more than two thousand plot lines, a database of geographical names, common names and a complete dictionary of flora and fauna. The previous version had a mineralogy database malfunction, but that is no longer an issue. This one also includes post-processing and standard text purity monitoring mode. Generally, all you need to do is download – vocally or directly – and get a complete text. We have tested it, you know, it writes wonderful poems! That is beyond understanding… The price is not so low, but I can say it’ll work for at least three years and, given your talent, you’ll write wonderful books. I’m dying to read your new novel about Testy Wisetachen!”
   Marina took an apprising look at the machine and moved her eye down to the specification sticker and, on the fly, the price tag… What?!
   “Thank you very much, Kira, but, you know, I put individuality first, and what I really need is a device with a substantial author’s participation support. This one is very good and comfortable, but it does not fit my style, you see?”
   “Yes, sure! I understand! I should have noted that what makes your books really great are the sweet little trifles and details, that minor roughness making one sound like a childhood book… This modification is not good for you anyway…”
   Kira paused for a couple of seconds and, much to Marina’s relief, went toward the end of the product line. There were one, two, three machines, which she could afford. So, which one to choose? The hefty MAC-89 or PKR – more compact but less functional.
   MAC was her current machine, an older modification, so that would be a fair exchange anyway. She was pretty much accustomed to the interface and the output procedure and she was aware of its weak spots… On the other hand, MAC looked too cheap to her… and it was cheaper, she checked herself. What a torture!
   Finally, she chose PKR. She was in for a holiday, which would give her time to figure it out. Also, there was such a thing as sick leave, and the district doctor, who worked at her local hospital, was her talent’s fan.
   The PKR was not bad at all! Of course, compiling texts with it would not be an easy cake, but it could last her several seasons, maybe a year, and that would be a better thing than the obsolete rattletrap she was using right now.
   “Yes, home address, please! Now, let me sign it, thank you very much, Kira. Expect new stories!”
   They would not deliver it before evening. Marina wanted to see it standing on her desk badly, even though installing and operating it would take quite a bit of figuring out. Marina felt another pang of regret – she could have chosen the good old MAC… it had saved her so many times… And now she was to tighten her belt…
   Now, no more slobbery, it’s time to go to work and there’s a bit of focus-group attendance to be done. “Happily, not mine!” Marina thought. “That would be a disgrace!”
   Focus-group was a mandatory part of pre-sale testing of editor-approved texts. Essentially, sessions were attended by a representative of the trade union and an author group member, and today it was Marina’s turn.
   – 4 —
   Marina dashed into the focus-group sitting room, being ten minutes late, but the comfortable seats, in which experienced readers had usually sat, who were hired by the company for the target audience to conduct preliminary evaluation, were still unoccupied. At least, she had time to take her wind, so she flopped down into the nearest seat.
   Three days before wage – not a penny in the pouch! She laughed. Never mind – now she had a machine, a brand new one, and text would be up to the mark again… Natasha – the secretary – walked into the room, and on seeing Marina there, her face took on a look of sincere astonishment.
   “Marina, what are you doing here? The focus-group has been disbanded. They’ve called the whole thing off for today.
   “Here we are. I’ve been out in the city since lunch time. I had no idea. What day have they rescheduled it to? Tomorrow?”
   “Oh, no. This is for long. There won’t be any gatherings before they repair the focusizer. Wow, you’re not aware, are you… Can you imagine, the focusizer has broken down and has been forming focus groups improperly for about three months, I mean – off the topic. For instance, it could assign a group of medics to discuss an adventure story. Likewise, a bunch of housemaids could be assigned to evaluate a science fiction story. Generally… Marin, what is it? Oh, Dear, Marina!”

Neoteric Medicine

   – 1 —
   Professor Annabel Grunder was rushing to work. No, she was not pushing on the throttle and she had not drunk instant coffee instead of brewed one, since that would only be the case if she was really late. She was just in a hurry. If somebody stopped her to discuss weather, he or she would be pretty much surprised: mentally, Annabel was already sitting in her office. Most likely, she would have responded randomly or stammered out a couple of indistinct phrases.
   On moments like this Annabel could well be mistaken for an insane person, but for her flawless appearance. And it presented her in the shape, which she actually strove to demonstrate. Her clothes, hairstyle and jewellery were strongly indicative of success in business. It was not for nothing that the pool of private investors, which included international mega-corporations, had trusted no less a person than Frau Grunder to manage Germany’s biggest psychiatric hospital.
   It was there that big heads of psychiatry had gathered under her leadership. Some of them were as tough in communications as their patients, but Frau Grunder was capable of building truly effective teams.
   However… the opportunities were almost boundless. All cutting-edge solutions, which had budded within the walls of her hospital, would materialize and be tested here too. Many of those were launched and managed under her direct supervision. That was a kind of power a woman could handle. Notwithstanding the commercial success or, to be exact, contrary to the general opinion, Annabel was a brilliant scientist.
   The few placing a high value on her managerial talent did in fact understand what that way-up tandem rested on: the primary thing was the knack for science supplemented by her superb business acumen, enabling her to select truly socially oriented projects and, surely, investor-oriented ones as well.
   The project she was currently working on was exactly the kind of. It was not before one was far into it that it all its prospects could be highlighted. And now she was in for its most important part – testing and evaluation of its effectiveness.
   – 2 —
   Annabel ran over her today’s schedule in her mind. In one of the houses on Trisenstrasse, Eiten, a little girl lived, and Professor was to visit her today. Professor’s lab assistants had selected the girl from a large group of patients wanting to join the test group, and it was here – in Eiten – that the whole thing was to be launched.
   The girl was an ideal candidate. One of the most tragic family issues – autism – had been detected by her parents way too late. That was a very common situation, Professor sighed. The axiom was, the earlier socialization started, the better it would go and the sooner the child would be able to merge into the society. Of course, an autistic person will never become fully competent. She’d need her loved ones’ care and help for the rest of her life… Well, she was going to the office now, next she’d attend the morning staff conference and, finally, she’d go to Zara.
   Zara’s house was not far away. That was another plus for her. While waiting for the green light, Annabel took a pad with the diagnosis page open. Zara Kelebeck, five years old. Autistic. Two suicide attempts had taken place before her parents had realized that something was definitely wrong with their child. Certainly, it was an amateur’s way to call it a suicide, so Annabel highlighted the paragraph to later point out the importance of using correct terms to her assistants. Words… Our profession requires extreme caution when using words. Words make up descriptions of diagnosis, and you never know how just one word can affect the little girl’s life. It is hardly possible to suspect a five-year-old patient of an intended suicide attempt.
   Professor put the pad aside. During the meeting at the Center, she had discussed the two ‘cases’ – let’s put it this way now – with reference to the girl’s parents. The first ‘case’ opened their eyes to their daughter’s condition. Like many parents did, they had waited for way too long for their child to abandon her individual world and begin to communicate with her peers.
   Annabel remembered Alexander – Zara’s father – telling her about their not wanting to face the truth, even though the symptoms had become downright alarming, and their district pediatrician’s echoing and telling stories about children’s individual ways of development.
   Annabel did not feel like blaming the parents. It is always hard to accept THIS KIND of reality, particularly in relation to a loved one. But she was determined to have a conversation with the pediatrician. Of course, the girl was in for a lengthy rehabilitation and in a less than comfortable environment, taking into account the tomorrow’s procedure. But they could have started earlier, much earlier.
   – 3 —
   Annabel Grunder knocked at the door of a grey one-story house with roof covered with clay tile. So obsolete! There were flowerpots in the windows, but only in those on the groundfloor. The first floor was deprived of greenery. The windows were shielded by screens.
   Unlike the house itself, Zara’s family was not what was called a traditional German Familie. Her mother and father were Turkish – second generation immigrants. Yes, they were citizens of Germany, but the difference was readily observable; or did the misfortune just leave its imprint? Zara’s mother opened the door to let Professor in, and the grief fluttered from her questioning and wistful eyes right into Professor’s.
   “Oh, Pr. Grunder, hello, please, get in,” Zara’s mother would start every second phrase with “Oh”. “Please, come here and go upstairs… Oh, no, no need to. Keep your shoes on here too. Zara? No, Zara goes barefoot. Oh, yes, sure, whatever you say. What about coffee? Zara? Tea. She likes camomile tea. Does she? Ok…”
   Finally, Professor entered Zara’s room. Yes, it looked Spartan. All pieces of furniture had cut off corners and were bolted to the floor. Window screens, plush toys, cards in wall pockets and no place to climb upon or jump off from. Both accidents Zara had been through had involved height.
   Her mother had lost her vigilance twice, and Zara had climbed up a high thing twice with the goal of jumping off. The first jump resulted in a fracture, and the second time she all but tipped over a barrister on the second story of the local mall, but for somebody catching her just in time.
   “Would you like to talk to Zara? We’ve been bracing her up for it for the last two weeks, oh, chances are it’ll be ok.”
   “No, Frau Kelebek. I’d like to see myself how she is doing and what she likes to play with. Today, I’m not intent on setting up a contact. We’ll communicate with her tomorrow.”
   “Tomorrow? Oh. That’s wonderful. We… we just couldn’t believe.”
   “Take it easy, everything will be all right. Tomorrow I’ll have a clearer idea of how we can help your girl. Maybe tomorrow I’ll know how to treat her. In any event, your life won’t be this tough any more.”
   “Yes, that’s what we’re expecting! You don’t understand… Lately she breathes in a strange manner – she inhales and holds it for a while… Children’s threshold is high… Our pediatrician says it’s ok, but I’m in despair!”
   “Good-bye, Frau Kelebek. See you tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. at the Center.”
   Annabel smiled to whittle it down. She had no right to succumb to emotions and that would be the last time ever she was going to give Zara’s mother a chance.
   – 4 —
   Unhurried and word-weighing by nature, Annabel held her line on that day too:
   “Dear participants. Today we are going to accept our first patient – Zara Kelebek. You must have studied her diagnosis and chart in the Patients section. In ten minutes, she will enter this room, and by the time she does only those who have talked to her must be sitting here. The entire strategy has already been scheduled, so I’m not going to repeat. I want you to demonstrate your professionalism, which has paved your way into the team and the project. It promises a breakthrough in treatment of patients like Zara, and bringing the moment, when we can ease the life of autism patients and those caring for them, closer, is within our strength. Well, let’s prepare the site.”
   In the cabinet, whose interior maximally mirrored Zara’s room, there was a bed for the girl. Now they were going to have a little game – only the mother and the daughter. Autistic patients’ games rule out any partnership, but all her mother was going to do was just stay with her. Just another familiar interior element. A comforting one.
   Then the girl would have a cup of tea with a sedative and fall asleep. It would be the lab assistants’ and Annabel’s turn. Zara would have to be attached to a whole load of cutting-edge medical equipment. Thousands of electrodes were to detect changes in the girl’s nerve stem; a scanning device was to track the brain’s work, and a mobile analyzer was to monitor chemical reactions taking place in her body. Electrocardiogram, respiratory functions and muscular movements – all would be calculated and converted to a common digital format.
   However, it was all about the device developed by Annabel Grunder and her team. That would be a capsule embracing the bed with the little patient lying in it when she was fast asleep. The INC (Interpreting Neuron Center) would reconstruct in the recipient’s (Anabel’s) brain whatever the girl would see, and would let her experience what the young patient would be experiencing, and make a step toward understanding what makes an autistic person perceive the world as he or she perceives, the absence of reaction to external stimuli and… At the moment, Annabel did not want to take long shots at all.
   Well, imagine the whole spectrum of opportunities just for a minute… She, an infinitely experienced psychiatry professor, was hoping to discern a mechanism, which was to be launched by no other method than chemical and, possibly, electric stimulation, to help the autistic to establish a contact with the outer world. The mechanism, which would help them join the society, become its fully-fledged members, find a job, start a family – generally, live life to the fullest instead of living a life of a butterfly mummy hiding from the world in a cocoon.
   – 5 —
   Finally, Zara fell asleep. The sleep was expected to be deep, and they had at least two hours. Professor was not intent on extending the first session to longer than 10—15 minutes anyway. The lab assistant promptly tuned the equipment, and the much longed-for moment came: Annabel put on the receiver helmet. She had already got the sensualization suit on. It was laden with sensors so hard that Annabel would not dare move her hand. Her associates helped her to get into the capsule.
   Quietness filled the room, as everybody except the equipment maintenance team had left, and those remaining had been warned about absolute impermissibility of any noise. Everybody was on the alert.
   The plunging was gradual. That had been deliberate, and there were two reasons for that. First, that was a kind of experiment never held before, and it was imperative that sense transfer systems be tested one by one. Second, nobody could tell what exactly the recipient would feel, and the researchers were fairly concerned about the possibility of a shock.
   Finally, all systems were smoothly connected. Annabel still could not feel anything, but she could maintain control of all her feelings, so that she could recognize the first one, which would be the patient’s, not hers. However, nothing was happening. Minutes and scores of minutes passed, and neither the equipment nor the woman’s feelings would show any activity.
   Upon an agreed sign, the lab assistants launched a reconnection procedure. All devices were reconnected one by one, but there was no effect.
   Annabel sighed. It was time to end the procedure; although there had been no effect, the girl began to wake up. Her eyelashes trembled, and she moved.
   Had they made a mistake? How could they have supposed that the girl’s brain would have remained dormant all the way through her sleep? They had not made an encephalogram during her sleep, since, considering her diagnosis, that would be extremely difficult; but they could not have imagined that Zara’s brain would have shown zero activity.
   Annabel was still trying to detect at least something. Just one little flash, emotion, physical or chemical influence – even a little thing like that could be a breakthrough. Nothing came. It was time to make a decision.
   What a pity! What a goddamn pity! She had hoped that she could help the girl, but… now the little patient was in for nothing but dull existence. There is no help doctors can provide for the autistic.
   “Now”, Annabel repeatedly told herself checking her feelings over and over again. She could almost physically feel the glances of her colleagues who were expecting a signal from her. Even though nobody had touched her hand yet, that was a conditioned signal that it was ten minutes before the test was over, and Annabel’s biological clock was signaling the approaching end of the experiment.
   Quite unexpectedly, Zara opened her eyes. The lab assistants who were within the experiment zone saw that. Annabel saw a completely different thing.
   – 6 —
   A stream of data came pouring down on the woman. First, she could not understand what was happening to her, as it was the first time in her life she was experiencing such a sensation. Her body suddenly felt lightweight and strong, and the air seemed thick and warm. She felt like the air was buoying her up, and it was then that Annabel could draw a parallel: one day she had bathed in a saltwater lake and experienced a similar yet not identical sensation.
   Professor did realize that her body was still in a comfortable anatomic capsule, but it felt real enough to make her want to resort to a conscious effort to distort the reality with the goal of understanding the girl’s feelings. Regaining her bearings, Annabel took a horizontal position.
   The kaleidoscopic tapestry of colored spots began to look more articulate, but was still far from understandable and not fully familiar. All around and, for the most part, below – on the horizontal, right under my feet, Annabel reasoned, a diffuse sea of colored balloons was rolling.
   To Annabel, the upper over-the-horizon part of the space looked like some kind of abyss filled with a multitude of vector fields, which alternately pushed and pulled her and sent her spinning down a vortex. At times, she felt like she was gliding over a smooth and ideally polished surface, which formed slopes and slides and felt so warm and so springy.
   Sadly, the smell transfer function was very bad. Man-made devices could not decipher the diversity of tints and flavors, which were normally detected by countless nasal receptors, and the range of smells being transferred was very limited. The woman formulated the smell as the scent of roses, and her life experience filled in the gaps left by the technical thought.
   Annabel felt the muscles of the ribcage and the abdominal area tighten, so she had to breathe in as much air as she could and hold it. Now the air in her lungs began to get warmer in the sunlight, and she’d be able to fly a little higher and evaluate the perspective. Now! Annabel flipped her wings.
   She soared and rushed ahead. No effort on her part was required, since all she did was perceive the little patients’ feelings, as the girl seemed to know how to pilot. Annabel’s body stretched out, she threw back her head, and they began to go up at an even steeper trajectory.
   The following five seconds passed in an uninterrupted ascend. The world around them looked like a fabric woven from scents and the warmth of sunlight, which provided a fairly tangible footing for the creature now rising to the face of the sun. Not letting the body indulge in the tranquility of the flight, Annabel exhaled. It was time to touch down, since she seemed to have seen what she had flown to see.
   A wave of fragrance rushed over her when she landed on a large double tuberose. Her heels could feel the solid and cool silk of the petals, and then she dipped her proboscis into the middle of the flower.
   The equipment was not capable to render the taste with due precision, and the sense had been turned down as irrelevant. Annabel had no more than a hunch on what the liquid she was drinking tasted like. Nevertheless, her brain did receive a signal of satisfaction. One more second, and up in the air she rose again. High up in the air into the realm of warmth… but not light.
   The picture faded from Anabel’s brain, so did the sounds – the vague humming and rustle… the last train was caught by the sensation of lightness and warmth, parting with which made her feel unbearably sad. Annabel heard the sound of her capsule being opened by the lab assistants.
   – 7 —
   She heard voices, which painfully cut into Annabel’s contrast-stricken brain, ask her questions. They sounded definitely agitated, and Annabel made an effort to focus on her colleagues’ words.
   “Professor, are you all right?”
   “Yes, I’m all right. Please, let me regain my senses. How’s Zara doing?”
   “She’s ok, her mother has already gotten her out of the INC.”
   “What was the time span between her wake-up and the switching off of the last device? Approximately?”
   “We disconnected you almost instantly, but it took more than a minute anyway, we could not have done it earlier.”
   “Well, ok, please, help me get out of here. I should see Zara. I’ll answer your questions later. Have you recorded it?”
   “Yes, we have! That was quite a load of information…” several voices sounded simultaneously.
   “Ok, later.”
   Annabel walked up to Zara, who was sitting in her mother’s lap and staring vacantly at the wall.
   “Frau Kelebek. How’s your daughter doing?”
   “Oh, I have no idea… just as usual. Even if she does feel bad, she won’t tell you. Do you understand it?”
   “Yes, I do…”
   Professor stared at Zara, looking away from her mother, who did eventually catch and hold Annabel’s eye. The concealed pain was still there.
   “Professor, you already know how to treat Zara, don’t you? What are your recommendations?”
   “It is too early to speak about that,” Annabel used her stock phrase, but, remembering the sensations she had experienced minutes before, she changed the direction. “More flowers. Bring as many flowers to her room as you can. Make sure that the windows face the yard – you have a front garden there, don’t you? Change your place of residence. Move to the countryside. Take her for a walk, go down by the riverside, bathe…”
   Annabel stopped suddenly as she spotted incomprehension in Zara’s mother’s eyes.
   “We… thought about drugs, radical methods… about making her happy! Professor?”
   Annabel had to sigh before she said what she would never have thought about before:
   “Frau Kelebek, you can’t make Zara happier than she is now, I mean it. This is not a medical matter, it’s all human. You know, Zara is happy.”
   “And what about me?” she asked herself silently. She turned away from the stunned woman and headed toward her office. She had to make at least some kind of account.

Shinie’s Ritual Natalia Afanaseva