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– Let it be “excellent” if you think so, – Amina-the second wedged into consciousness again.
– Yes, thank you, so be it! And only so!
– Immediately how… At a conditional level, everything is interconnected: everything that we invest in the world invariably returns to us! Everything flies to us in a boomerang. You say “excellent”, which means that the highest mark will return to you.
– Exactly, that’s how it goes!
– Of course, for sure!
– Does anyone deny this? I always adhere to the same opinion… give the world good – will return a hundredfold… so…
– That’s very good! I am extremely happy! I’m extremely glad that everything is fine with you! Let it continue to be easy and smooth! – unexpectedly, a stranger cut off Amin’s stranger, turned sharply and walked away. Amina just managed to send her a short one: “Happy to you!” – as she disappeared without a trace behind the nearest trees. Perplexed Amina did not have time to see when the detached “mirror” couple on the far side of the meadow parted – now there was nobody. “Brains have been completely awkward lately!” – Amina thought to herself distantly.
The sunny pancake, pulsating with endless positiveness, had not yet managed to rise high enough, but its burning, ruthless, all-penetrating tentacles already mercilessly burned the earth. A single, golden, lacy, cloudy, puffer coat resembling a cosmogonic sleepy fish swam across a demon-blue sky.
Morning heat foreshadowed a painful, excruciating and unpleasant day… Tiny annoying flies, one after another, stuck to open parts of the body – to the muzzle and upper legs, did not lag behind and irreconcilably tyrannized. Amina endlessly brushed the nervous frustration of small fry away.
“They got it, got it, got it! And what do they want from me?” – The black-eyed beauty could not understand in any way.
A small slippery snotty green lace rustled near the hind legs of an ant and disappeared into the thick grass.
“Well, where am I? Where am I now? What will be next? Who can help me?” – One after another, restless thoughts instantly grew to the most sky-high heavens and became a powerful, insurmountable stone wall. “And after all, in fact, not everything is so excellent if you frankly admit to yourself!” – Amina sighed heavily and remembered a recent guest.
– What are you doing here? – unexpectedly in front of a dreamy Amina an unfamiliar ant grew up. Where did he come from – Amina could not explain herself even after his departure. It just suddenly appeared molecularly, apparently by removing the invisible magic hat from the heated forest air – like a fairy genie. – Hi-hello, wandering bun! Come on, tell me how you got here!
For the first time in her life, she saw such an unusual dark-brown giant, as it seemed to her, with an impressive multi-ton truck. Expressive, almost rectangular gray-green eyes gazed steadily at her, carefully studying the ant, droplets of sweat lazily slipped through the temples of the traveler. The stranger’s infinitely long, grayish tendrils moved slightly, it seemed he was not going to go anywhere without receiving an answer. A snow-white plastic helmet was sitting on his dimensionless stump, like a glove, the same color – a jumpsuit from an air material adorned with chocolate color with a simple double emblem pyramid. Because of the widespread propodeum*, an even more powerful backpack was sticking out, on which God knew what was worn on all sides: some worn by time, distant dirty blue colors polyurethane rugs, rectangular bundles neatly wrapped in foil, over which the blinded, centuries-old, faded labels with once printed rainbow barcodes, a couple of lanterns: one in a rather strange, rounded case, most likely – waterproof, solid-looking, about the size of a soccer ball, the other – just min it was a fake one, as if toy, with an elongated ribbed handle and a flattened lamp, and a spare helmet, exactly the shape and color of an apricot. In his right foot, he confidently held a small hatchet with a sheathed blade. The coloration of this very propodeum – the ant back – shows a high degree of kinship between some of the species of ants. It was on this good-natured topic of “kinship of individuals” that the further development of any other thoughts of the pregnant individual was stalled. She perfectly understood that the ant who appeared before her was a slightly different, alien species, and how he would behave in the situation that had arisen was the main question. But she did not feel the incense of fatal danger, which usually “looms” from afar, so everything should be in perfect order. Involuntarily puzzled by the appearance of the guest, the ant blinked awkwardly, her eyes ran restlessly, like crazy squirrels in a wheel vicious circle, but she herself was in the pose of a stiff polar bear.
– Hey, hey? Do you hear me? I ask, how are you doing here? – the stranger tried to stop the racing car racing thoughts of ant on the freeway of life, but all attempts seemed naive and unsuccessful.
He smiled broadly and softly to the seated one, who seemed helplessly icy, and at the same time his Arctic helmet squinted, rode off and nearly fell off the back of his head. The carefree trick of the “merry white helmet” amused Amina and her matte mandibles lifted slightly.
– Yes I…
– Yes!
– Did I drive past here? – with a hoarse throat in the throat Amina began to come true. – Passing, and now it turned out… it turned out…
– In what sense did it “drive through”, may I ask you? How to get through here? Here from all sides – do not drive, do not go! – the brown giant looked at her in bewilderment and tried to understand what she was talking about, while still continuing to hold a wide, good-natured smile. – You’re not alone here, or what?
– Why? I’m alone here… It seems to be alone!
– One or not one, I don’t understand? Have you been thrown away? What happened? – endless questions poured with thorny arrows from a curious passerby, and the answers? The answers were in no hurry to be born in the light milky fog in which the forest traveler was.
– In terms of? Ah yes! It so happened that they brought me to the city… Wow, they brought me to the city…
– Well, well, well!
– Yes, yes, they drove to the city… And then, it seems, something happened… Something happened, something happened! And I don’t remember at all… I don’t remember what happened – she calmly folded her legs on a neatly protruding petiol – a stalk connecting the abdomen with the breast, which until recently was very narrow, and now has become unusually round. – What else to tell? When we hit the road, was it evening? Evening?
– Are you asking me this? – the ant inclined its muzzle.
– No, I think… it seems like it was evening… I think it was evening…
– Ahh, well, then what? Yet when you, I turn to you personally, and not to the whole company, with whom you went, so, did you personally go to the town or where did you go there? Where did you originally go? Was there any purpose? – The ant gazes steadily at Aminu. – In each individual case, we can say that practically – in each, any ant, regardless of status, mood and much more, each ant, when it goes somewhere, has a specific purpose, final or intermediate destination, so to speak. Was there a destination in your personal case?
– Yes, yes, you say correctly, there was a point… you all say correctly, only now…
– Of course, I’m right. Wrong – completely impossible. If it were “wrong,” I would be silent. And-and-so, your point is destination…
– Point – this is all true, but something does not converge! Morning now, now, ooo-morning, and I don’t understand anything! Everything somehow twisted, got confused, turned around… we went in the evening, left in the evening, but how did it turn out, in the sense of – I ended up, I don’t remember… and where then is it? Strange… I can’t understand anything that happened! What… – the lost ant quickly blurted out everything previous with such an aim that they say: “I told you how to eat, and there you’ll figure out what to do with it and how to live with it,” and it would seem to continue to continue endlessly chatter like that.
– Well, well, and I won’t understand it at all, – her stranger retorted slowly with the arrangement, concluding that nothing sensible could be achieved from the stranger. – And there are no more or less traces on the grass or around the clearing! There are no traces of crime, so to speak! And this is not good! – He gave an all-penetrating look to the surrounding area and scratched the hump on his frontal lobe*. – There is simply nothing at all, amazing! It seems nothing and nobody! The main thing is to decide what all the same to do to you, that is, now not only to you, but to us, and how then, where to move! – a stranger barely audibly rumbled monotonously, and slightly adding volume, he said: – In any case, you need to get to the city! You won’t leave you here! Now we’ll come up with something. Since I met you, then you need help, how can you be alone without help? Now come up, come up!
– Thank you for… – Amin began to wheeze again, but the ant was already hurrying away from her somewhere.
Chapter 3
WHITE
This is how folded, as if plain, non-woven, bustling patterns of the blind maze of Fatum appear and multiply, as if fragile, delicate multi-storey houses of lightweight matches grow, simplest like clear mountain river water without poisonous twisted impurities, or patterned intricate, filled and diluted with all kinds of chemical bromines and magnesium (it’s not up to us to decide), the fate of the great blessing of the stars: the life paths of Ave and Rond constantly crossed, and to be more precise, they just always ran alongside, and Siamese twins poke parallel to manual trolley on the rail track. We can say, practically, one common destiny (simple-straightforwardly ordered) for two with barely noticeable differences, spotty blotches, but, if you deal with meticulous scrupulousness, then for many working individuals the life paths are parallel with respect to each other, like properly stacked railroad tracks. So they go, run, flow, sad and rejoice, harmoniously and stubbornly, monotonously and endlessly – one next to the other (the right stretches near the left, and the left is the neighbor of the right), sometimes disappearing after a slight, sometimes unexpected, turn of events, and again, manifesting itself somewhere in the distance, growing and dying, but not changing to the very ghostly horizon…
Ave spent about fifteen years with Rond in one beautiful boarding school, one of the twenty best educational institutions in the country, from birth to graduation into “Big Life”, such a standard, such a labor and such a rootless. Together with him, he successfully completed specialized technical practice for one year at the largest urban training combination, at the end of which, with star ratings, they were freely admitted to the factory, which had become a loved one over the years, along with him and two dozen of the same poor fellow comrades, they hunched for three months, endlessly long ninety days, in the godforsaken uranium plant, where they managed to get punished due to the absurd oversight of the senior foreman during the night shift, along with to them he devotes the sixth year of the factory radio-technical details and I am sure that will work with it to the end of life.
“Ahh, it cannot be otherwise! This is so obvious! Together we will work and work!” – constantly categorically exclaimed Ave on this occasion. He recklessly believed that work and stability are the most important thing in his life, as in the fates of millions and millions, and millions of hymenoptera, like him.
“We were all born to work! We are all the beloved children of our vast country, and we love it recklessly! We love her!” – directly and irrevocably stated the Charter of the Society in its first all-encompassing article, making it clear that high-ranking state men sincerely, that is, with all their great hearts, cherish the rights of all citizens, and, first of all,” universal right to work.” To know and implement all the Statutes and Codes, and about twenty of them were recruited, was considered the duty of every full-fledged citizen of an independent State.
“You know, my friends, I’ll say this… Maybe a little grandiloquent, but absolutely affordable, absolutely simple, absolutely… The whole spirit of the universal labor service penetrates our whole life, we plow from morning to night, and are ready to continue to work hard and work hard, and all this is for the good of the beloved Motherland!” – once in the dark purple evening hour, when the working day murmuringly brought up another exhausted digital icon, so, between things, easily and philosophically showed a weary Rond, who didn’t want to say anything like that, but it was born of its own accord, out of breath him, along with fatigue, this rather simple, but deep expression once and for all with a small splinter sunk into Ave’s mind.
Sad, gloomy, and at times indecently tedious, Ski appeared in A-745 two and a half years ago, after an unfair dismissal (as some individuals believed), or, as is commonly called, after the “removal” of the previous third resident of the apartment -Lerz. The full name is Lertz A-79AK, although no one remembered exactly what his name was all. He conscientiously rattled at the largest radio engineering concern for more than three decades. A law-abiding worker, a production foreman, caught an unforgivable cold one October morning even after a traditional labor ritual, that is, after an ordinary eleven-hour working day, he went to bed dead. The next day, a joyful sunny bunny loomed a ghostly happiness – according to the internal house schedule, it was his home duty that was the reason, and therefore it was not necessary to go to his native plant and give his precious health for the benefit of a mechanical heartless fellow. After some work on the small farm here, hopelessly feral Lertz, gathering himself with all the unearthly forces, went for fresh nectar to his life key, which at that time was almost an hour’s walk from his home. Quite predictable and inevitable events developed further in a terribly active arithmetic progression. Forced autumn walk in the wild fresh air under a drizzling cold, stinking rain did not help, but only hurt the sick ant. Returning home with two ten-liter cans of nectar, he was completely exhausted, hopelessly collapsed at the very threshold of the apartment, losing consciousness.
When Rond and Ave arrived from work, they found the poor fellow in a helpless state: the painful heat didn’t let the ant go away for a minute, it seemed that under the thin skin of the patient, an insanely fiery fire was burning, ready to break out. Three short days allotted by the district doctor to recover a sick individual did not change anything significant. The next day, Rond, on duty, diligently looked after a fellow, spread out on the bed, as on a deathbed, indecently high degrees saving drop by an hour, but when they reached normal, the temperature rose again, and inevitably only one way was seen: the hardworking Lertz worked perfectly, and it will be eliminated only. That is exactly what happened. After three fleeting days, the doctor faithfully recorded “non-recovery of the patient and the impossibility of going to work.” The ill-fated metapleural gland*, responsible for the production of antibiotics, which protects ants from all kinds of bacteria, was damaged. Under the Code of Privileges, Lertz lost any right to a workplace – who needs a sick ant?
Ave and Rond tried to intercede for a comrade by writing a fraternal petition for a deferment for the time of restoring health, an additional explanatory and positive characterization, drawing the attention of the leadership to the significant experience and merits of an excellent employee in the past, but nothing, alas, did not help. The sentence was ruthless, severe, and irrevocable, without any appeal consideration. The small monthly allowance, which was supposed to be paid upon elimination from the place of work for the first six months to support life, was insignificantly miserable, completely insignificant and completely miserable, in fact it was only enough for a week…
“Can you imagine, Rond, a monthly allowance – for a week!” – Ave spoke vehemently to his friend. – “How to live in such a situation?” Can you answer the question? The direct question is the direct answer! But, after all, there is no answer! There are much more days in a month than one short week for which this allowance is enough for you! Or is it just that way? Here it is – real life… Those at the very top do not understand how we live here…”
In a word, in such a situation, ants living on auspiciousness had to starve. And for a sick Lertz, a lack of food was the worst medicine. Within a two-week period, Lertz was evicted from the A-745 room, the property of the enterprise, because he was no longer an employee of the radio factory. His comrades supported him as best they could, but they could radically change something; they were not able to.
There was still a worthy option to solve a vital issue – getting a job, but finding a permanent place, and even with housing, or with decent wages so that there was enough to pay for housing, was unrealistic. Lertz could not change his profession and try to earn his daily bread in some other way because of his age and character traits. He devoted his whole life to the service of one single enterprise, and now, like waste slag, he was thrown into the trash.
Neither Ave nor Rond knew how Lertz’s further fate came about, and after a month or two they didn’t remember “fellow soldiers” at all: working days take away all mental strength and make you think only about the present. Neither about the distant past, nor about the near future – there is practically no thought to think, neither strength, nor time, nor desire.
– There is no Lertz with us, and perhaps there isn’t anywhere else… though… – somehow, a week after the elimination of Lertz, Ave told Ronda, “our Lertz seemed to have sunk into the distant and irrevocable past, having given his debt to… – and then Ave fell silent, not knowing who to pay the debt to, and, after a minute, he decided to finish the tirade. – He gave a debt, probably to the State… here I don’t know.
– Yes, you’re saying everything right, old man! Correctly! – Rond decided to support a friend, seeing that he doubts. – It’s a pity that Lertz is not with us, we are very used to him.
– Sorry, exactly…
– But life is such that yesterday – he, and tomorrow – maybe we… no one knows what will be behind the twist of fate… there are all kinds of turns – both smooth and sharp…
– That’s for sure, life is such… though, we always blindly believe in tomorrow’s stability – isn’t it? We have a job and we don’t even think that we can be in the place of Lertz…
– Do not think, because there is no time. We just plow endlessly in our production and that’s all…
The memory (which is still an infection) which is typical to be selective, imperceptibly for friends, was carefully taken by an eraser and, closing her eyes and heart, mercilessly erased almost all the pages about Lertz in the Life Book of A-745 apartment. Out of a thousand applicants, they were lucky enough to be selected by an ant named Ski for a vacant workplace. Before Skye found himself on Sixty-second Street, he humbly pulled the strap on the industrialist Pax, his younger brother Theik Dee, a senior assembly fitter on the conveyor of a car factory, day and night, and fell under a massive, by the standards of the time, reduction in the number of good four hundred ants that flooded with a cold storm wave with the introduction of modern, fashionable robotics. Then, more than five years ago, a similar step by Pax to re-equip his enterprise evoked the ironic smiles of most tycoons, because the maintenance of the “live” labor force was much cheaper than the purchase of expensive equipment, and additional financial injections were required for constant maintenance of the equipment. Only two short years passed, and Pax admitted his obvious tragic mistake, but, of course, the money spent idly could not be returned.
– Only the one who does nothing does not make mistakes! – Pax stated with philosophical calm. – And yet I am sure that the near future is in progress! The time has come for an all-common robot life! Robots will flood our factories and our homes, they will not only come to our aid, but will crowd us out from everywhere. Just kick us out! We will be forced to yield to them in many vital sectors! You’ll see, I’m saying for sure! It sounds scary, but it will. I believe that our real world is now almost ready to surrender to the mercy of robotics, and what can we say about what will happen in ten to twenty to thirty years. Of course, this is not good, no, not good, but this is simply nowhere to go, it is simply impossible to get away. Soon you will see for yourself that I am telling you the truth. Life itself will put everything in its place!
In fact, few ants believed the words of Pax, nodding indulgently towards his expensive mistake, but the handsome progress, in fact, tirelessly paces-runs-hurries with quick steps, and here the whole clue is not so much in words there was something overshot in the calculations of the industrial tycoon, how many in the actual, in practical application of new inventions. Unsophisticated world-renowned scientists and brainy eccentric inventors from time to time present, naturally or unexpectedly, any surprises and discoveries: not only pleasant and useful in everyday life, but also completely useless and, sometimes, even dangerous. After all, how can you create, for example, a flawless robot driver? Now, just drones are being tested. Yes, it’s possible to teach a motor vehicle to move according to a given route, but all life collisions cannot be taken into account, there can be hundreds of options, even thousands, of emergency situations on the road.
A computer program ideally reads changes and errors on the road, comprehensively scans many objects during movement, evaluates the sudden appearance of pedestrians, developing and correcting the traffic algorithm. But after all, it is impossible to foresee. So, the most ordinary example, when an ordinary robot transporter moves at an average speed at “rush hour” along the intended route along an congested highway, and suddenly for no reason, it stops in a dug, and the reason is quite simple – A simple accident happened ahead. One imprudent driver could not navigate in time in a busy traffic stream, and his favorite car suddenly ran into another car (and where he got out of, damn him!) When changing lane to a neighboring lane. Everything! Dead end! These “dead” cars, which are scolded from all sides, are standing, cars that tightly sealed not only one and a half or two lanes, but also all the traffic with the most difficult traffic jams, and which you have to go around, cars are waiting for the transport police… But the stream of people passing by vehicles endlessly and the robot will wait for the right moment to travel, but this very moment can only come in an hour, which is likely at this time.
In everyday life, in the place of the “auto-drone”, nine out of ten drivers will slowly begin to move, emotionally asking their traffic colleagues to let the car go, and they will certainly miss out of solidarity: not the second or third, but the fifth motorist. And such uncomplicated situations on city roads – an infinite number. So, the conclusion follows only one thing – robots can not always save the world! In one thing, Pax was right when he said that “life will put everything in its place.”
All technical equipment, “modern and reliable,” as unconditionally stated in the annotation, purchased by Pax, and failing with its enviable stability, was dismantled overnight and immediately sent to the metallurgical plant in Vourdeks-9, where it found a new life. Over the next two days, new staff was accepted, and the auto-factory conveyor was bored, breathing again, booming, and noisy with resurgent force. Of the four hundred ants that were eliminated from the Pax factory, about fifty remained alive (a tough, harsh life without a permanent job, unfortunately, did not spare anyone!): They were lucky – they found and took the ants to your previous job. Ski and twenty other highly qualified specialists were offered jobs in the new workshop at the radio factory upon dismissal. These paths led Sky’s fate to the dwelling of A-745. To say that “the ant was very pleased that he has a new job and housing” is not to express all that universal happiness, the boundless happiness of salvation and gaining a new life.
“Without labor, there is no point in our existence!” – with such an unpretentious stereotypical phrase, good-natured Ski met the new comrades-in-arms, good-naturedly unconsciously checking his response. He did not deny, fully accepting the philosophy of labor and productive pastime. In the future, it was not noticed by the ant that he was lousy, lazy, and losing his job, was ill or chooses a easier labor operation. Ski always tried to fulfill the production tasks assigned to him by the “excellent”. Maybe something didn’t work out completely, but he devoted himself to the work process one hundred percent. Ski became friends with Ave and Rond – of course, not immediately, but step by step, gradually, since a common household is a very difficult matter, and it takes quite a long time to find individual approaches to solving many issues. For all those two little-tail years that Ski lived with Ave and Rond, he still once thought about leaving. He was attracted by the profession of a military officer for a long time, but inexorable time passed, it flew rapidly, and the ant kept putting off the solution to this vital issue, and when it was too late to enter a military higher institution, there was only one thing – to enlist for contract service in the army. For health and physical fitness, Ski would probably have gone through the appropriate medical commission and been accepted into the troops: people like him are always welcome there. The solid stone Ski had more than enough energy, in all his life he had never turned to doctors, except for vaccinations, and apart from a broken upper paw in early childhood, when he awkwardly fell from a tall tree and could break everything, but escaped with only a simple fracture. Strong, well-knit, muscular Ski did morning exercises every day, as did most ant individuals, but in the evenings, it turned out only once or twice a week, stubbornly “pulled pieces of iron”, pumped muscles with dumbbells at home, plus almost every Thursday – volleyball training with friends.
Everything seemed to push the ant to pursue a military career, but each time an impossible-strange, inexplicable force stopped the development of Ski’s thoughts about changing his life path, something did not add up, and he always saw a certain mystical side in this.
But a couple of weeks ago, the ant again thought about military service, he faced his neighbor Torill, an ant soldier, who once again offered his help in registering for contract service, face to face. Ski solemnly promised to think carefully and give an answer.
