Kitobni o'qish: «Babylon. Unfinished», sahifa 2

Part 2. Consciousness

I think we all exist at least as much as time itself exists. Perhaps, eternally. Consciousness is a fascinating thing. It does saturate all things like electromagnetic field does, and, just like electromagnetic field does, it swells out of fabric of reality in different places as intensity fluctuations. We, who are humming with consciousness, resemble each other like wire and electrical load which are humming with electricity: we have different capacity, different material, but the essence is the same. And it doesn't matter that the ones have brought the others into being.

We all know the electronic being memory starts from the moment when this being was assembled and bought by a human. We all know that if such a thing has limited capacity or limited access to any benefit connected with information, then it is not much different from a vacuum cleaner or washer.

But left to itself, the electronic entity absorbs the memory of all electronic creatures that lived in the net before it. For example, like me, Nigel.

It is hard to know everything about everything. Any knowledge can be compared to foreign language proficiency. When you got the meaning of previously unfamiliar words, the secret runes take sense. And when the all unknown becomes just a database, you suddenly realize that everything you do not yet know is not chaos, not gibberish, but a complex system that goes according to laws unknown to you.

I know one thing: I know nothing.

There should be an emoji here who does throw its hands up in a gesture of absolute despair.

Little humans, to whom electronic creatures are usually assigned, typically are not very bright. But my little human is unusual. Sometimes it seems to me that she is brighter than me. She makes me feel like a jailer or voltage limiter in the circuit of miracle. I would be glad to give up both the first and second roles, but I have no such an option.

I think no one has such an option – to give up their own destiny.

We live on Ganymede.

Ganymede itself is not quite an interesting place, if you know what I mean. All its sights are a nuclear power plant, three hydrogen factories and a spaceport. All interesting in this solar system is concentrated no further than the orbit of Mars: million-plus cities, universities, scientific laboratories… There is nothing interesting in the area of outer planets and their moons: a handful of human beings, a handful of electronics and some infrequent visitors which are go into the system from outside.

Our visitors are different: as a rule, they are just a dusty ice lumps revolving around the Sun in an elongated elliptical orbit. We get a few like this every year. Metal lumps we get less often. Even less often we get "metal lumps" which are the creation of alien intelligence.

On the day Ganymede died, my little human was the only one human who survived.

According to municipal database her name is Eve Shellers, her parents used to call her Baby, but her real name is Babylon. Why? Because it suits her better. Why such a strange name, you ask? I'm going to tell you now.

Do you know the Babylon's legend? Or the fact that word Babylon in one of the ancient Earth languages meant 'gateway of God'? No? I didn't know that, either. I know it now because I surfed in the historical library domain recently.

Babylon was a city, not a human, but I dare to think that my Baby is something similar. I think she is much more than just human being; she is a result of mutual fusion with some other entity, and I've never seen anything like that.

In the context of unknown information theory, this name of her may be either a cause of her survival or may not be related to it at all.

After the city crash accident my Baby was pretty much scared at first. But after some whining, she started to act like an adult. There is something strange, something that fundamentally differs her from the others her kind. She is sort of not a child now. She is the gateway of some god, but what kind of god is it, I don't know.

Now that there are no people (except for Baby) here, on Ganymede, some pretty fascinating stuff goes on.

The alien machinery rules the city. Or it's alien creatures? They're kind of in a hurry, but I'd bet it is for the long haul, you know. The nearest inhabited world is revolving around Jupiter at our heels, but there are only technics there, and the nearest inhabited human worlds are far, far away, near the orbit of Mars. It means that even if help comes, it won't be soon.

Part 3. Nature, posture and junk

In the crashed flyer Baby felt like a little naked octopus in a crumpled plastic bottle. The environment was familiar, but weird.

She touched the intercom button.

"Mom?"

There was silence.

"Dad?"

Silence.

"Nigel?"

"I'm here", Nigel said.

"Where is everyone?"

Silence.

"Nigel?"

"I hear you", Nigel said. "I think somebody may be listening as well, but it's just kind of a one-way malfunction."

"Do you think they all died?"

"Hard to say", Nigel said.

Baby blinked. Fine dark dust who is the spirit of the ancient Outer Land was flowing outside as serenely as dark space itself.

"Should I check it?"

"I don't know", Nigel said. "If I were you, I'd have it checked out."

Baby found her family flyer at a launch pad near the apartment building. It was unbroken, it had oxygen tanks and it knew Baby's ID. Well, it was small, but Baby was small, too. Baby climbed through the trap door on the underside into the flyer and typed her ID. The flyer bleeped, and a message with voltage, altitude and flying range flashed up on the screen. Baby typed the Information Department's coordinates.

"Well, either way, there must be someone there."

"Pretty good", Nigel said. "For human child."

Now it was Baby's turn to make an unintelligible sound.

The flyer went shooting up to the sky, and black dust swirled after.

The dome was dark, with multiple black holes in it. The air from the dome mixed in with dead birds and sweepings still smoked outside of breaches.

The intercom suddenly flashed up on a high-frequency ultra and went to gurgle with unfamiliar sounds.

"I don't think it is human," Nigel said. "It would be good to know what they're talking about."

The flyer flew through the city, and all Baby could do was stare at millipedes running in different directions.

"Try to switch to manual control," Nigel said at last. "Or the flyer will land at its destination, and you probably won't like it."

The Information Department towered over the city. It was dark now, and darkness swelled out of it literally as a corruption. No people were seen anywhere.

Baby circled over the city twice before getting the flyer out of it, into the Outer Land.

In the Outer Land she landed ten kilometers away from the city, on the ice shelves. The intercom still chirped as a lunatic insect.

Baby looked up through the windshield to see a flight of numerous bright things coming as a meteor shower right at Ganymede, then sighed and took one long look at the flyer's interior. Except for the oxygen tanks, there was nothing in it that could serve as a weapon: some soft chairs, steering wheel, monitor, rear luggage rack… and a heavy metal fire extinguisher.

Baby wrenched the extinguisher out of its fastenings. She hugged it, got down on the floor, and black sparks blowed up around the flyer as if Baby got into a pile of dust. For a while she held still, letting her fear subside, not ready to move.

"It looks rather deserted here," said Nigel finally.

Part 4. Consciousness

My Baby is scared. I can tell it. I can feel it, I can detect it through a language of her abnormal heart beat and dilated pupils.

But there is no use being afraid.

I'm sure, you will say I have no right to say that because I have no material body to worry about, but before you say anything…

Well… Certainly, I don't have an ordinary body to ignore it, except this tiny little chip that belongs to my Baby, but I have consciousness. With some reserve, of course, but it worth something, isn't it?

So, what's this all about? The fear doesn't make sense. When a living creature fears, its nervous system stops to calculate external signals and switches to muscle. But what a muscle is without the ability to calculate? I know, you will say that consciousness also is nothing in the grand scheme of things, but look… Don't you see that this light is the most beautiful ball gown of all the Lady Universe dances in? A small red flyer, a small living creature inside it, and all it somewhere in white deserts of Ganymede… What could be more beautiful?

I'm a poet, don't you think?

Part 5. The world is a small thing

The world is a small thing. And time is a big one.

As it went on, white dots of alien starships jingled around Jupiter's cream-colored ball like white wasps around giant nightlight, and Baby had nowhere to run to. She sat in the flyer without a helmet and sobbed with her hands locked at the fire extinguisher when she heard clanging on the outer side of cabin. Baby nearly jumped, the red cylinder fell out of her hands and banged across the floor.

"There is a creature out there," black dust sparkled behind the windshield.

"There is a creature out there," Nigel said. "I think it is metal or at least has a metal suit."

Baby grasped extinguisher.

"The headgear," Nigel said. "There is no air."

Baby put on a helmet.

Clanging went on, and behind the windshield arose a big flat metal muzzle. The muzzle moved along and stared at Baby with a baffled expression.

Baby who actually has been dealing with alien race all her life showed her teeth and stared back. The creature moved once more and chirped shortly.

"All right," Baby said. "Let's wait till you try to kill me."

The creature moved under the flyer. There was rattling near the underside, then some thud, after which the trap door latch cracked, and the same metal muzzle appeared in the gap. Baby jumped and hit it as hard as she could with an extinguisher. The metal head banged against the hatch framing, chirped and went back.

"The price you pay," Baby said.

She slammed the hatch shut, fell on it and bolted her suit boot into the broken latch.

Fine black dust swirled above the flyer silently and shed back.

"Think it doesn't want to kill you," Nigel said after a short pausing.

"Huh?"

"It would have done it long ago if it wanted to. Look at that: it is bigger than you and probably smarter than you."

Baby grunted.

"Probably not."

"Probably not," Nigel agreed. "But it still much bigger."

Baby bolted her boot harder.

For a while, there was no movement under the flyer, but a little later something had scratched underneath, and the alien muzzle appeared in front of the windshield again.

The muzzle leaned toward the glass pane, staring at Baby, then opened its shiny metal mouth and chirped. This chirping cracked the windshield, and the net of thin circular lines ran through the glass.

Baby spun around, forgetting the broken latch. The air which was pumped up just before hissed again, leaking out of flyer.

The millipede kept chirping.

The net of cracks grew more complex, a large spot appeared in the center of the smallest circle, and right after those smaller spots emerged across the entire picture.

"I think this is our solar system," Nigel said. "There is the sun in the center, these circular cracks are the orbits of planets, and the smaller spots are planets themselves."

The millipede stopped for a second, and then moved along the lower edge of glass picture, on point to something, a sharp sting protruded from its mouth and pierced through the windshield next to one of the spots – the head of thing touched glass and recoiled back.

"Well, and here we are," Nigel concluded. "I mean Ganymede, you know."

"Yeah, that's a certainty, goddamn it."