x
One day, a whole ship of Chinese pioneers was brought to the launch site. The generation ship, which one of the ancient governments of the Earth launched during the time of "great space discoveries". Two people from the Central Computator teleported to my office, and they didn't even let me finish a joke about two fat men and a portal specially prepared for these bastards. I can wait for an answer for years from them, and when they need something, I have to tear my ass like a chain dog of the regime, missing the owner's sausage.
The Chinese pioneers had to be sent to the black hole immediately, and with the whole ship. For such cases, we have a special gravity slingshot prepared on the far side of the asteroid. But I have never used it and even found it difficult to find access codes and keys. But both were already in the hands of two glossy mugs from the Central Computator, who already occupied half of my office for their equipment.
I slammed the door and went out, in unbridled irritation yelled at Rob, who was preparing a loader to collect personal belongings from the ship. Then I calmed down and explained that this time there was no need to observe any protocol, and the pioneers would be sent to the Baby along with their antediluvian trinkets.
And then I saw them landing on an emergency landing pad, lost, struggling to move in adaptive gravity. The pioneers tried to smile and babbled something in their own language. The auto-translator did not understand it, because over the millennia, the language had undergone such changes that none of the dictionaries registered in the galaxy could find a clear key for it. Of course, the AI would learn in five hours, but there won't be time for that.
The young and cheerful pioneer herself hobbled up to me, handed me a tie and slippers. Probably, this is the most valuable thing that the unfortunate ones have preserved. I accepted the gifts and stuffed them into an endless pocket. Her eyes sparkled with gratitude, and she began to recite something. As I understood it — it was poetry. When she was done, she tugged on my sleeve. I succumbed, looking back at the robot Kesha frozen at the back door.
The pioneers took me to their ship and began to show me how everything was arranged there by the great Communist Party of China. The pioneers felt much more confident on the ship. They ran and scurried around me, bringing miniature cacti, printed, as I understood from the strained attempts of the auto-translator, from recycled urine.
Then they took me to the gym and left me alone on the podium. I was already worried, but then the lights went out and streams of children rushed to the center of the hall in sparkling luminous costumes. There were so many of them that they filled the whole hall and began to dance in the anti-gravity field, portraying first, as I understood the archaic idea of people about the big bang, the expansion of the universe and the formation of galaxies.
It was a little boring, but then the same pioneer girl sat down with me with a glass in her hands. It was vodka, also made from some kind of excrement, apparently not human. But after a couple of sips, the performance suddenly acquired new colors, and after a couple more, I was already clapping to the beat with a pioneer of an intricate melody in a language that was becoming elusively understandable.
Soon we were sitting on the roof of the ship and singing "A Lullaby for a star named after Comrade Mao." I smoked and watched the eternal sunset created by the radiance of the matter devoured by the Baby. I offered the pioneer a cigarette, but she shook her head and babbled something about lungs. "Yes, fool, soon all of you..." - I started, but stopped, because the ship shook, and it began to turn towards the gravitational slingshot at the other end of the asteroid.
“Are you insane?” I shouted into the switchboard on my wrist. "Jump, gravity control should let you through," rang in my head, and an unknown force dragged me sideways and down the hull of the ship. The pioneer looked at what was happening with surprise, while I was grabbing the smooth body of the ship with my palms, and the sparks of the dropped cigarette burned my eyes. I screamed, not out of pain, but out of desperation.
My body plopped onto the landing pad, leaving a shallow dent. When I got up, I immediately ran to the office.
There was no one inside, and the equipment of the people from the Central Computator was also missing. Only on my desk was a list of violations for the last 15 years. I stopped reading, took the paper and started tearing it to pieces, but resisting my efforts, it immediately gathered back, so that there was no trace of tears left on it. I crumpled it up and threw it into the bucket, but the paper flew out of it and lay back on the table, smooth and glowing in the rays of light. Cursing, I spat and went back to the landing pad.
Rob was already standing there, and Kesha was hanging next to him. I went up to them, took out a red tie from an endless pocket, put it on and lit up a cigarette again. Sparkling in the rays of the black hole, the generation ship was entering the launch trajectory. This is the first time I've seen this happen.
345Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ26COa1dyQO
"Laugh, laugh, evil comet,
You have the fate of the earth in your hands,
But there is no more beautiful and sweeter light,
Than the light of the stars far ahead," I sang a verse from the song of the pioneers.
345Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMtKYzNH6pr
The ship flashed and disappeared.
345Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMr5EHC0fNg
