The Makers
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Her voice came out unexpectedly sharp and unpleasant.
"Well, no, no!" hastily contended android. "I just wanted to say that the way the machine communicates with the universe does not provide for the universe to be populated with myriad copies of machines. Interest for us is different thing. And understanding is different."
"What exactly?"
"Packaging of the incoming external in the available internal by the most harmonious way."
The girl nodded and again leaned forward slightly:
"Do you know, Monsieur Shabra, what is half of humanity talking about at the mention of you?"
Benji looked up at her: about what?
"About how the commercial component is included in your theory of packaging of the incoming external. What do you need your business for, monsieur Shabra?"
"And how about that part of the mankind which is engaged in it too? What do they need their business for?" smiled Benji.
15. 2330th year. Aia.
"It looks like Benji is really cool in many regards."
Robert gently touched Matt's shoulder, drawing his attention, and nodded toward his Mora: look, Matt. In the meantime Mora was as completely self-absorbed as a molting cobra: slowly and majestically it blossomed into the numerous violet St. Elmo's fires.
Aia glanced at her brother, grinned and let loose the floundering reality: in one second Mora lost its tight grandeur and blew its jaws in an incredible shot - so that Aia, who was sitting apart of the company, in one elusive movement ended up inside it.
Matt gasped, but he didn't have time to get scared.
Light, that a few seconds ago was running with purple sparks along Mora's fur, suddenly dived down as the glowing plankton in the darkness with the warm ocean current, and the jaws that had devoured his sister started glowing purple from the inside.
In this violet glow the boy saw Aia, who had suddenly fallen to her knees, then rose and arched, looking through the Mora's head at the high sky, and then took a deep breath and exhaled vertically upwards with something dazzling-white.
Opening his mouth with amazement, Matt watched as the white cloud in the air above Aia's head stirred, rustled and crawled along the Mora's entrails, literally gnawing it from inside. And then - blow!
– and the violet light which remained from the giant Mora's lump, sparkled and turned into a myriad of tiny purple moths.
Aia waved her hands, and moths, frightened by her, fell off, for a while had been stirring among the people, and then flew high up.
Robert sighed with the fake regret.
"Oh, again your delicate stuff... By the way, it was the beautiful beast...
"Was? Come on, puss, puss, puss..." called Aia, again slumping down between Matt and Lukasz, and the purple moth cloud, before melting in the dark, smiled somewhere in the sky with a huge toothy Cheshire smile.
"Does Benji talk to you sometimes?" Lukasz asked.
Yes, Aia nodded, he does talk.
"He's going to buy the shuttle, because he wants to come here?"
"He wants to be free. And one cannot jump out from Earth with your own power. At least, he is the one who does not jump so high."
"The one doesn't jump out, and another one doesn't jump in," Robert winked. "I even don't remember last time when I was there."
"Yes, there is a charm in a large space," Lukasz agreed. "Clouds, winds and rains are real, not requiring of effort."
"You surprise me, Lukasz," Aia said. "For as long as I could remember, I always thought that a laziness and a Maker don't go hand-in-hand."
"Oh ... You're just not yet well-versed in the peculiarities of the male psyche," Robert grinned. "Come to us more often, especially in the evenings after dinner, and I'll show you what it means to be really lazy."
Lukasz gingerly picked up the lonely violet moth from the ground and put it on Aia's shoulder.
"Definitely! She's not a pretty good in judging of characters. Of all the twenty-five billion people, living there on Earth, and of two dozen local dummies, she's chose this machine."
"Don't be silly," Aia waved it off like it was nothing. "Sure, if I can get to the bottom of something, it's only about my own femininity. And, of course, I'm not very good at this, because I even like being a woman. I like it so much that I'm ready to repeat this experience in one of the following lives."
The darkness began to crackle and rustle, once again thickening and gathering into a black mass: Mora, implemented back by Robert, sighed, heavily spreaded a long dragon body on the top of the hill and again curled as a huge cold black cat around the Makers who were sitting in a tight circle.
Robert leaned with a relief back on its huge side as on a back of a chair, stretched out his legs and crossed his arms over chest:
"I thought once of reincarnation. I actually think about it every time when I gather some similar pleasure against the vector of chi dispersion. And there is some interesting things coming out: we all need to spend a lot of energy for this kind of pleasure. And who will then be spended for me, when I've gone? Who will do it so to preserve the integrity of my energy shadow?"