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I was standing in the middle of the grotto. Somewhere in the sky it rumbled as if a giant drill was working, rushing at the speed of the subway through the yielding rock. Crumbs of stone fell from the ceiling and into puddles accumulated in the recesses. The light came from me, and it was visible for about twenty meters, then darkness began.
Looking at myself, I found that my body had changed. It was as if I was standing inside several mirrors reflecting it many times. And when I began to feel the body, I touched several variations of it at once: male, female, medium and not at all human.
“Hey! Master Bike," a familiar voice called out to me.
I turned around and saw a whitish figure approaching me from the darkness. The thin body barely held upright and swayed as if a strong wind was blowing.
"Don't be surprised, Savior, it's me, Baraman," the figure waved to me.
As it approached, I saw it’s completely flat face with narrow eyes, a thin mustache and a huge smile.
“Don't be surprised, don't be surprised,” the face smiled even wider, “we all look a little different here,” and squinted at me.
I looked at myself again and took a step, feeling that something was dragging behind me.
“The Worm's world is multifaceted," Baraman said thoughtfully.
"I... I'm sorry you died."
“It's not worth it, Savior, Baraman is not grieving, he has a new body here,” he said and looked at himself, “But Master Bike does not have a body here.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, startled.
“Look, among the fragments of memories from which you are collected, there is no street urchin from Plotania.”
I felt and looked at myself with horror, trying to find at least something that would connect me with my idea of self. But I came across something else in my memories. A falling ship, someone's hairy leg with a brand, a lipstick inscription on a hand.
Looking up, I saw a young man in front of me. His face was very familiar to me. He was standing in the place where I saw Baraman and smiling with his wide smile.
“You see, no,” he burst out laughing and gave me a ringing click, from which I was carried somewhere far, far away.
“No!” I shouted in fear, “There is! I am!”
257Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTUGYyIsLvv
I opened my eyes in the burning ruins of the Ancestral Museum. Coughing, I rolled over onto my back. The sacred DVD box was still in my hand. Only the edge of it is a little charred.
“Sacrilege… Sacrilege!” There was a hissing sound from somewhere behind the wall of smoke.
I sat up in an attempt to see the speaker, but then he himself rushed to me through the flames. A large candelabra struck the place where my head had just been lying and the heavy body of the Oracle fell on me. He began to choke me, which made me let go of the box in an attempt to pull his hands away. The Oracle screamed and froze, watching the flames consume the plastic. I took advantage of this and punched him hard in the face. My opponent fell back, and I began to push him off me. His head fell into the flames, and he jumped up, clutching his burning hair and ran screaming into the smoke.
Getting to my feet, I looked around the ruined museum. The vault above the nave partially collapsed. Bodies of people and military vehicles could be seen under the ruins. The area around the sacred box was littered with burning fragments of a huge wooden chandelier. The fire was steadily crunching it. Listening to this, I remembered the waffles that were given on Sundays in the dining room. Sweet and cloying, I picked them up for the seagulls at the port. This memory made my chest tighten so much that I forgot to think how the chandelier didn't fall on me and bury me under it. I was saved by a miracle, the same miracle that has always saved me. And then I realized that the worm was full. And my powers are limitless.
Inspired by my new feelings, I looked around again, closed my eyes and imagined the site where I was standing clean, and the building restored, the same as I remembered it before the attack. The wind rustled in front of my face and everything around was transformed. The building stood in front of me almost as it was before, but the details were different from the original. The dead have not gone anywhere, as well as the remains of war machines. Swallowing, I turned back to the pedestal. The sacred DVD box was still there, slightly charred, just as I remembered it.
The pedestal was surrounded by five metal rectangles, standing a few steps below. During the service, the nobility sat here. I went down to one of them and mentally stripped off its casing. It flew off, and, as I expected, there was a computer unit inside. The same as I saw on St. Sophtia or Playa, as it was called in its archives by the Outs. Coming closer to it, I took out a flying ship control hoop from my jacket, put it on my head and turned it on.
“Sharamash karan. Are you alive?” the voice of May-e-oka instantly rang in my head, “There are explosions thundering on your square, the building collapsed, I already wanted to fly.”
“Alive, alive, wait. The building is already in order, look for yourself.”
“Really… Wow. Your wormy miracles again.”
“Better tell me, does this thing that I put on my head have a way to connect to an unknown system?”
“You ask, Ogunter Lag, as if I had invented it.”
“You gave it to me, so you came up with it. Everything is simple in my head," I tried to joke.
“I don't know, try to think that you want to connect to another device. That's how I learned to fly, haha…”
I bent down to the data storage of Outs and pressed some buttons that I didn't know about myself, but my memory knew. The device came to life and pulses of glowing shapes passed over its surface. Glowing pulses also passed through the rest of the benches. I thought about connecting to the archive. And either my wish worked, or the devices really found a way to connect to each other, but I fell into a neural network sleep. This time I realized that I was in another world. And could even feel my body in the museum and in this other space. Having called up all the data on Angels and imprints from the depths of the archive, I began to absorb the information.
The Outs represented reality in a completely different way than the official history of the Central Computator drew it. The very name Out originated during the first technological revolution, when a person connected with artificial intelligence. At that time, the Earth, the cradle of humanity, was already engulfed in war. Wars have always accompanied people, but this one was special. If at the beginning it seemed that the battle was going on for geopolitical influence and resources, then very soon it became clear that it was a battle between the old and the new. Part of the world's population was categorically against interference in the human body, and the other was in favor. And this war lasted a long time. Contributed to the speedy exploration of the nearest space. But it did not subside there either. Mars was settled and again erased into dust. The colonists race to Alpha Centauri ended with an artificial macro gamma flash in the landing zone. Where some imposed restrictions on the use of artificial intelligence, others integrated with it. Out was a brand of special deodorant that sprayed a substance that prevented the penetration of nano-bots into those people who preferred to be out of a permanent connection to the network. Hence the name.
Angels were presented by the Central Computator as a new stage of evolution. But for the Outs – they were invaders, snatchers, aliens. It was they who planted technologies on the Earth and developed it according to their patterns, imperceptibly pushing a person to integrate with a machine. And only the holy champions of human greatness stood in the way of enslavement. Yes, according to the Outs, the Angels were aliens. Although the archives did not provide any evidence of this, it was the belief in aliens that kept the population of pure people in fear and under the control of an authoritarian government machine.
Milky Communism imposed by the Central Computator was also exposed as a purely diabolical and alien creation. Human nature, albeit unbridled and wild, was recognized by the Outs as the very gift of life. And the cheap morality of universal freedom of socio-cultural choice was branded as decadence and the machinations of extraterrestrial intelligence seeking to enslave honest people.
Death is the only way out of the trap of life. Having betrayed it, a person becomes a hostage of his new masters, who sell him endless suffering under the guise of immortality and superpowers.
All the ideological data for the colonists who were going to the anomaly were filled with such information. Reading these lines, I felt as if something in me agreed with them.
“That's who I didn't expect to meet here,” a familiar voice rang out.
I concentrated and switched to the sensations of the body, which brought me back to the reality of the Ancestral Museum. Taking off the hoop from my head, I saw Master Eleanor Grummays lifting his huge body up the stairs to me. A whole army was lined up behind him, pointing rifles at me.
“And it's great, great, great, you've rebuilt everything here,” my former teacher laughed, “the curls on the capitals on the columns are a little wrong, and the vault, the vault is definitely crooked, but very, very similar.”
“I…”
"Don't make excuses, son. Not worth… You and I have no one to justify ourselves to. We are the winners.”
Master Eleanor went up to the platform with the sacred DVD box and examined it.
“Burnt. Now you can't read part of the text. I'm afraid there will be a split in the church.”
“Master, do you know the meaning of the text written on it?” I asked.
“No. But I guess it's some kind of nastiness.”
“Not at all,” I shook my head, “this is a description of a second-rate performance that was shown in special boxes with kinescopes…”
“What's the difference? Really. Really, my friend, what is it? Whatever is written on this sacred piece of plastic, which we can't even really replicate. This is what gives us a goal. A symbol, you know, a symbol of movement towards the future. Our ancestors could do what we can't. And this is our driving force. Every nation, I will say more, civilization must have such power within itself, otherwise it will fall apart time after time. But with this strength comes a great weakness. Everything is balanced. Our frustration, our impotence before the genius of our ancestors. This is our curse…”
His hand reached for the box, but froze. He clenched his fist and lowered it.
“In these archives,” I pointed with my hand, “everything we wanted to know about the ancestors. On the Ops...”
“Did you manage to learn? Learn their technologies?”
“Yes and no. It turned out to be harder than I thought. A very deep knowledge of all fundamental sciences is required. I just didn't have time…”
“It's sad, sad, I had so many hopes for you," Master Grummays frowned and turned his back on me.
“Master Eleanor, I'm sorry, I... we found another...” I stammered.
“Nothing, nothing, my boy, look,” he waved his hands around the hall, “we are standing here, the enemy has fled. Everything worked out... yes… Everything worked out well without you.”
“But Rob, that is, the enemy, that is, whatever you call him, is still on the moon. And I can get to him now…”
“I don't think it will be necessary,” Grummays turned to me again, but his face stopped expressing friendliness and became cold and indifferent, “we are successfully sabotaging the enemy's landing modules. Our mechanized infantry does not allow him to gain a foothold anywhere except in mountain gorges, from where we knock him out with the help of heroic suicide bombers. Anti-aircraft systems removed from the Irian towers successfully cope with its flying fortresses. It's only a matter of time before we force him off the west coast. In a direct collision, his metal soldiers are not worth a pinch of salt. They are stupid and slow.”
“But… But he has a Mushroobomb.”
“Eh?”
“He attacked us with it in the sea. It is capable of wiping out the capital from the face of the earth. Rob promised to drop one on the city at dawn. We must hurry.”
“What… What do you mean, promised?” Master Eleanor frowned and turned his gaze to the glow outside the city.
The luminaries were about to appear over the horizon.
“How stupidly you're trying to deceive me, how stupidly," said Grummays and began to walk along the stairs, "you're trying to prove your usefulness. But you can't make amends so ridiculously. Yes, you can't make up for the failure with lies, which, in your opinion, should… should win me over to you again. I managed without your help. Yes. And now, I'm sorry, but you're a needless detail in my plan. Fly to your moon, even to devil’s back yard," he grinned, "I like, you know, to turn a pretty phrase of these Outs expressions. Yes. Fly to devil’s back yard, Master Bike.”
I felt indignation boiling up in me.
"I can get us out of here right now," I said, struggling with myself.
“To what? To deprive me of my triumph? Yes. Triumph! Really, did those advocates of mumbling in the circle of handshakes have lured you away?” he said, stopped and turned to me.
There was a rustle near the pillar behind him, and Master Thiel jumped out at Master Eleanor. The old man hung on the huge body of Grummays like a scarf. Hundreds of rifles, which had already been lowered, were raised again. But no one dared to shoot. Thiel wrapped himself around Eleanor's thick neck and raised a sharpened metal pin to strike. My hands flared up again from the pain. The soldiers in the crowd could not stand it, needle guns whistled. Two bolts hit Master Thiel, but one still landed in the chest of Grummays. Both fell down the stairs. A fight broke out among the soldiers, no one rushed to help. I looked with horror and triumph at the bodies of my teachers sliding down the steps.
“Traitor…tr-a-itor," Master Eleanor moved his lips.
A serious struggle unfolded in me. One voice shouted that it served him right, and the other begged to save his named father. I rushed to one side, then to the other. Needles whistled over my head. But my decision was not destined to happen, my whole being felt the approach of universal horror. I didn't have time to think about anything else. The space was instantly filled with the brightest white light.
The incredible force of the blow slammed me into the ground. I felt everything turn to glass. And there was no difference between me, Master Eleanor, Thiel, soldiers, mechanical spiders and all the inhabitants of the city.
I remembered May-e-oka whom I had left behind and was afraid that I would never see her again. Moreover, this fear was so deep, it touched such depths of my nature that I did not expect to find that I had become so attached to her.
But... no… Wait a minute.
Something in our common mass, burned in a single instant, was wrong. There was something else in it. Some kind of will, not subject to this destructive effect. It was moving completely in the opposite direction. Collecting all our bodies, buildings, rivers and bridges, our energy paths and feelings according to quantum states. And this will became stronger with every moment, with every restored essence.
I felt my body being restored, through which, obeying this will, the energy of the worm, that had only recently been sated, was spewing out. My eyes were weaving back from the tissues. Finally, I could see. A glowing white ball was shrinking above me. Its size was huge, it hung over the city as if the luminaries themselves had descended on it. Seething energy, smoke and ash were woven back into it. It devoured them. It was devouring me.
This sight was stunning. It brought down into oblivion and trampled on any confidence that I knew at least something about the world. The very presence of such power deprived a person and his ideas of the right to speak. It didn't require words. It spoke a language that destroyed any word. I experienced a similar feeling in my neural dream on St. Sophia when I was flying near clusters of stellar gas. Does anyone think he can control this energy?
I turned my attention back to the will that was squeezing this ball. And it evoked the same mixed feelings in me. It was akin to the energy of a ball. It despised words. And then I heard singing. What a paradox?
“In the name of chaos, swallowed and born, spewed and deprived. In the name of the pain of love and the eternity of peace in a cup with my fate!”
Instinctively, I wished to be near the source of this voice. And the worm on its remaining fuel carried me to the roof of a small factory. People were standing on it and, staggering to the chant, continued their song. And I recognized their faces. Faces that are impossible to forget. They were colonists from my neural network dream. Instantly, my memory weaved before my eyes the face of the person I encountered that night on the street. It was Jon. One of those who was my guide on their ship. I closed my eyes and, anticipating the denouement, wished to be next to him.
ns 15.158.61.6da2
