The Makers

Ursa Minor

He didn't need any eyes to know that there, inside Alpha, the present moment also flows quite definitely: Aia stands there, pressing her forehead against the hatch, and will stand there until the hum from running orbiter's engines ceases through the glassium, - until he undocks.

Benji held his hands on the dashboard and his fingers trembled.

He was a machine and didn't know how to be nervous. His hands were never a source of trembling. In flight, the trembling always came to him from the outside - from the stern in which the main engines were humming, or from additional engines of the orientation system, or from the fuselage, and he never placed much value in this trembling. No, it is not: he placed it, but it always was purely practical - the number of revolutions, speed, condition of the equipment.

Benji didn't know how to be nervous, but he knew how to draw conclusions.

Today, the trembling that came to his thin fingers from the engines meant not only the engine speed; today it meant that the universe had chipped him from itself.

He realized himself as a person.

Technically, according to the realization that has covered him, a person exists as a person in no way through the attainment of the objectives. He listened to the hum of the engines, which was expending fuel from the drop tanks, and pondered about sociality.

It's paradoxically, Benji thought, but as for a person, a person exists as a person only through the sociality.

As an intelligent machine, android definitely knew what systematics is.

Of course, if to adhere to logic, there was a group to which he could relate himself. But he didn't exist as a person through the brand "AI-DII" engraved on his neck, just as a human doesn't exist as a person through the presence of hands, feet or head. A person exists as a person through the ability to feel the need and be in this need.

The need, thought Benji, is exactly what gives special value to the things and the processes and distinguishes them from one another.

He didn't feel the need in the sense in which a people feel it: he never wanted to eat, drink, sleep or warm. His need was of a somewhat different nature: he needed free access to the necessary information, the veracity of the addresses and the observance of the sequence of commands. The need he experienced was not as deep as, let's say, the human need to breathe, but, nevertheless, was also a need. Benji had no idea of the depth and intensity of the senses, but he had an idea of a depth and intensity.

Theoretically, he thought, a human named Aia seemed to violate the law of kinship with her species group, feeling in need of a being radically different from her. But on the other hand (also theoretically) a human named Aia remained a human - experiencing an eternal craving for the unknown.

In Aia there was nothing strange, the strange was now waking up in him: he, who never distinguished himself from his own kind, now, unexpectedly for himself, thought about the fact that the difference, despite everything, exists.

While Benji, who never wanted anything for himself, through that reasoning vaguely and from afar was looking at his own desires, his shuttle quickly and inexorably had pumped all the air, which no longer was needed to the android himself, from the shuttle into the glassium dome of Alpha and undocked from the hatch chamber.

***

The cargo terminal Orly met him with a thin drizzling rain.

The wet airstrip was empty and densely glowed red. Outside it there were a lot of interplanetary lorries, which were as much looked like pterodactyls, as the true pterodactyls, and between them bustled around people. All of them shifted and shifted something from place to place, endlessly loading and unloading it.

Under the loud rustling sound of raindrops, evaporating from the sheathing, and the moody brooding of the electronic dispatcher, Benji has led the mother ship over the red stripe and further, at the very end of the dock, to the seventeenth path.

In the normal mode the android had turned stern of his ship around to the concrete fence, tested everything that could be tested, reported to the central dispatcher that there were no extraordinary incidents, that he did not need spare parts and repair personnel, and then finally climbed into the engine room and went online.

***

Never-ending "tock-tock-tock-tock". It's a clock generator. It's the life of the processor, the life of the machine, Benji's life.

No sleep, no rest, no fatigue - only loneliness, cleverly disguised in the network under the global mutual interest.

Someone's forums, blogs, directories, shops, messengers...

What does it matter who you are, Benji? Ripple. A barren gray semantic ripple - as a taxpayer, a buyer, a customer...

Benji froze in indecision, determining the meaning of his actions, and, consequently, the direction - who am I? Where am I going to? He, whose billions of operations per second served not the whole legion of liver or intestinal cells, but the understanding and building a logical connections, took several long seconds to decide - today everything will be different.

The android has located a desire: the usual drift was no longer interesting to him.

The inner world of Benji differed little from the external. He could to process information what came to him through the eyes and ears, as well as that flowed by digital streams over the radio channels - with the same, equal enthusiasm.

Benji didn't see that the Makers saw - he simply didn't have a requisite "eyes" and "ears" for it, but he was able to organize the universe he dealt with.

Inspired by Aia and the Parisian weather, he painted a dancing rain, came up with a soundtrack and sent the video to Aia.

9. 2043rd year and after. A little bit of everybody.

Robert's parents were an ordinary American couple.

Lukasz, who had never been to America before, was amazed at their youthfulness, their gaiety, the neat house in Galveston, full of children, dogs and cats, and very much wanted to go home.