Kitabı oku: «Game of Tag. Fantasy», sayfa 3
AUGUST 15, 2057, 12:15, MOSCOW, DATA CENTER OF COMPANY ART SOUL HOLDING GROUP DEPARTMENT OF GAME DEVELOPMENT WITH FULL IMMERSION OUIET RUNNING
Division AOUA FLASH
The operator recorded twenty-one testees. Then he re-checked the data. All the data on the twenty DNA tests were completed, now it only remained to write the report, and the thirty-four-hour shift was over.
But now he has to write a pile of reports and to stay there as much, if not more! Now he certainly will not go to Lenka and cannot relax, though he wanted so much to get a big bonus for the work done. The operator felt like crying. The system persistently gave out the fidelity of the data. It is not an error. This is the twenty-first winner in the lottery, where the system itself declared the necessity only in twenty subjects.
Five more days left before the announcement of the results. So it is necessary to figure out what is to be done next.
He called an operational technical support team. For the next eight hours, they had been looking through the code manually and through the cheater.
No errors were identified.
After writing off several report letters and making shift schedules for his colleagues, he finally finished his shift and went home.
After his departure, in fifteen minutes, his personal PC turned on and someone entered the AO system, someone was deleting the DNA data of the twenty-first participant remotely.
NOVOSIBIRSK, DECEMBER 25, 2036 THE RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF ELECTRONIC INSTRUMENTS, PISAREV STR, 53
It was very cold in the basement of the building. The staff had to warm up, drink hot tea and put on “underpants’. This winter, as forecasted by the meteorological satellites, was the coldest one in a century.
Nechesov Aleksandr had been the Head of the laboratory for five years. And only the last eight months he had been really enjoying the process. He and his six subordinates managed to derive “living water’ and reproductive nanorobots in it. The robots were made on the basis of a genetic engineering and the new discovery, known as “celestial metal.” A unique alloy with special properties, the one of which is self-replenishment.
At the beginning of the work, there were ideas about an eternal engine, about self-replenished sources of energy.
But now all these ideas have become secondary. Today, Aleksandr managed to give a steady shape to the material for as much as three minutes and eighteen seconds.
Now he was standing in the corridor, smoking his smelly cigarette, thinking that something was missing, something that would allow nanorobots to act more efficiently and keep the form for a necessary, infinite time.
“Most likely, I had mistaken at the very beginning. Choosing not a living bacterium, but mechanical robots. But working with a living tissue is dangerous and pointless; we finally do not receive a new kind of contagious diseases, but create technical materials.” Reflecting on that, it seemed to him that he had almost found that eternally elusive truth. He looked at his watch – it was half past two. Today he should not be late. Irishka was waiting for him at their home, the institute allocated one-room apartment, as soon as he brought the old man a certificate of his wife’s pregnancy.
He threw the cigarette butt into a bucket and headed to the sanctum sanctorum – to the second laboratory. He could not wait to check one of his many guesses.
If in the corridor there was a bitter cold and twilight, then in the laboratory itself, thanks to the warm floors and human breathing, it was warm and, of course, imported lamps that worked better than domestic ones.
“Lenochka, have you wrote a report on the fixation of stasis substance from the test tube no.17?”
“Yes, Aleksandr Nikolaevich, but I must admit that the effect lasts only for zero point three percent longer in mineral water, in contrast to a simple chlorinated one’, the lab assistant was clearly disappointed.
“You cannot be optimistic, Lena, for progress sometimes lies in billionths of the whole. So we need to keep working. Have you already had tea?”
“No.”
“Then I will start boiling the water. Do we still have your jasmine tea from the Celestial Empire?” saying this, he was already pouring water into the kettle. Put the kettle on, put it in the socket, pressed the button – that is all the work. He wished that everything was so easy.
Lenochka flew into the cubbyhole for the tea.
Aleksandr could not tear his eyes from the bubbles in the kettle. He felt that only a little bit separates him from the touch of something great, a little more is needed, perhaps, something was just preventing this, something was unwilling to open the door for him, behind which his, Aleksandr’s, discovery was hiding.
Lenochka, young and, undoubtedly, the most talented student of the group, brought the tea leaves.
“Ah, here is the tea! I took cookies and sweets.”
The kettle already boiled water, and he began pouring boiling water into the glasses. Because their white uniform was very old and burnt, no one was afraid of making it dirty, his laboratory was known as “piggy-wiggies’ among the colleagues.
At one point a glass of boiling water slipped from his hand and fell on a metal table. The chips flew through the laboratory and hurt his forearm. There was a deafening sound of the breaking glass. From the waist down, everything was filled with hot water. It is good that his trousers and uniform saved him from burns.
Lenochka squealed and instinctively covered her face with hands and pulled back, afraid of chips falling into her violet eyes.
“Ah, damn! So burning!” Aleksandr screamed.
“You are bleeding! Need to stop it, is it very painful?”
“No, Lenochka, it is all right, I just did not expect,” clamping the cut, Aleksandr was trying to stop the bloodshed. Blood dripped onto the floor, it was on the table, and blood drops were on test tubes with “dry’ nanorobots.
“Lena, we need to clean up here,” he said as calmly as possible. “Bring me a bandage and a sterile cloth for flasks. Hurry up! Do not stand there without any movement! That is what we got for drinking tea’
They debrided and bandaged the wound, washed the table, the floor and all the drops on the flasks.
They spent then another hour to wipe everything over again with a special solution.
But it was too late. Space scales have already shifted from spiritual development to technology. Their movement was incredibly large-scale, thundering lightning in the eternal emptiness of the cold faceless something.
Megatons of gas were scattered throughout space with the size of millions of light years away. And all because in the test tube no.36 9/1 microscopic nanorobots absorbed life-giving moisture – human blood with an unidentified mutation.
NOVOSIBIRSK, DECEMBER 26, 2036 THE RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF ELECTRONIC INSTRUMENTS PISAREV STR, 53
Aleksandr was in a hurry to get to work earlier: It was necessary to finish his monthly report before lunch and then hand it over to the old man.
The alarm clock went off at 06:03; he stood up, trying to be as quiet as possible, so as not to wake his beloved. She was beautiful in her light sleep. “Wow, I never believed that a woman is becoming more beautiful in a delicate condition, but now I am convinced of it.” He took the things and walked barefoot into the bathroom.
“Do not go barefoot, a-ah, or I will be the wife of a genius having a cold,” Irina said, yawning and pulling the blanket over her.
“Hello!”
“Hey.”
“I thought you were asleep.”
“I will not miss your morning kiss, my love.”
He put the things on the edge of the bathroom and went back to the room. She smiled so tenderly at him that it made his heart hurt.
“I guess I will be late with the report today,” he said, slowly bending over her.
An hour later, having parked in a closed parking lot, he remembered that today they were to deliver a new batch of nanorobots. “If there are no results in the next three months, then this delivery will be the penultimate one. Hmmm, well, then I will be kicked out of science, and I will, at best, teach students-idiots.”
Having closed the front door, he handed over his coat to the dressing room.
The cloakroom attendant, granny, seemed to have seen alive Khrushchev, Galina Ivanovna, only shook her head after him. “He comes at the crack of dawn and leaves after midnight.”
It seems his steps echoed throughout the building. He descended into his abode “Closed Laboratory No. 2. For particularly important research.” It was much colder, but it was created this way. Numerous resistors, cables, even a mini-electrical substation – all this was being cooled.
“So, turn on the light, put the briefcase on the second chair.” He sat on a chair in front of the table and sighed heavily, he hated to write all this bureaucratic mess, called “report.”
But money is an important part of science, he understood it like no one. No wonder he was the youngest boss, the most talented and probably the luckiest one because he did not show promise, he did science here and now. He liked to create. An idea came to his mind – and after a couple of months, an almost completely written and expertly proven thesis appeared.
Everything was so easy: speaking several foreign languages, knowledge of physics, chemistry; engineering, astronomy, higher mathematics and so on, and so forth.
Being the youngest and most unsociable student, he tried to prove several “Tasks of Centuries’, some kind of mathematical puzzles for crazy professors. Against the background of constant fatigue, he had a hypertensive crisis, and his parents sent him to a boarding house, where his most important discovery happened. He met Irishka and her mother Oksana Pavlovna.
They seemed to be acquainted for ages. They could sit under the linden for hours on the bench and talk about everything in the world. Irina did not pretend she was really interested in everything he was telling about the cosmos or molecules; she absorbed it with wide-open eyes. At the beginning of the acquaintance, her mother was not happy with her new friend, but after learning that he was a talented boy and already at 17, in the 4th year, a laureate of mathematical sciences and a winner of numerous competitions, from the family of professors, she calmed down and let them enjoy summer and each other.
They had their own summer. Then he surprised his parents by the decision to transfer from Moscow to Novosibirsk. And they understood his character, knowing that he was an intelligent boy, and did not limit his choice, for which he was grateful to them all his life. And yet, sitting on that same bench, he realized: to be truly happy it is not enough to search for the solutions of the universe or mathematics, there must be a person who can support you during the search or share the joy of succeeding. So he practically moved to Oksana Pavlovna and Irishka. His bank account allowed him to pay all the bills of the young student. He first began to spend money received for the first places in scientific competitions.
Now his beloved mother-in-law lives in Israel, receives qualified treatment and calls almost every day, pleasing his daughter by trying to hide her many flings, which appeared out of a clear in her old age.
He turned on PC, chose the “Report’ folder and began tedious calculations aimed at reconciling. Numerous columns of numbers and names of reagents.
There was a knock at the door and Lenochka entered.
“Good afternoon, Aleksandr Nikolaevich! I decided not to disturb you, today is the reporting day, but you are being called by Iosif Grigorevich. And come to the laboratory, please, something happened there. I have sealed and closed everything, I do not let anyone in there, and I told everyone your instructions.”
“What happened in the laboratory?”
“This worth to be seen!” she was obviously nervous, clenching her fists and constantly adjusting her glasses. “But all the same, first go to Iosif Vissarionovich, he insisted.”
Nobody liked the Head of the Department, and behind his back, he was called Stalin. He was a very mercantile old man back from the days when the phone was with wire and whistles, and the parcel was brought by a postman, not by a drone or a square copter. He achieved this position by subterranean intrigues and screwing over his colleagues, and he did not conceal it, but on the contrary, was proud of the fact that only thanks to him every year the institution received more and more money from the state and interest-free grants from so-called science lovers. And a part of the money settled in his bottomless pockets.
“Well, Lena, I will come to see Iosif Grigorevich, and you wait for me here, then we will go to the “kitchen’ together.
Climbing the wide university stairs, he greeted his co-workers. On the second floor, the clock on the wall has shown 2:00 in the afternoon. “I have not eaten yet,” he thought of his wife. Taking his old phone, he read sms from her: “Do not forget to have lunch. Love you.”
Smiling, he hurried up and almost ran. The rector built his apartments on the sixth floor, well, at least, that was not on the thirteenth. He opened the door and entered the waiting room, greeted a very young secretary, and then went into the office with the golden plate “Kolker Iosif Grigorevich’.
“Called for me, Iosif Grigorevich?”
“Ah, Sasha! Hello, hello! Well, I did not call, but invited, please, come in and take a sit,” the rector was fat, gray; his little fat fingers were clenched on his belly almost all the time.
Aleksandr went and sat on the nearest chair. The rector pursed his lips. “This young upstart thinks he is a rising star. Everyone must jump in front of him. Well, I bet you will change your tune when the money runs out, and our Indian bankers stop the green flow of money!”
He got up, walked along the long table and sat down next to the Head of the laboratory.
“Sasha, you do not think I am pushing your guys or you. But you understand that there are no results. What you write in the reports is not enough. You have a week – if there is no progress, I will have to shut down the laboratory and give the entire group an unpaid leave. I hope you understand that it’s not my choice to do so. They are pushing me too.”
“And remaining money will disappear in your pocket in three weeks! Huge hog beast! I wish you burst! Stupid, bald ugly mug!” Aleksandr sighed and remembered about the dinner.
“I understand everything. I think this decision is fair. One of these days I will invite you together with the university council for showing the results.”
Aleksandr understood that if the council decides to continue research, one rector will not be able to do anything. Iosif Grigorevich also knew that but hoped that he would be the main winner in this fight. Especially since he had the ace up in his sleeve.
“So good. Then you may go, I still have a lot of work.”
When Aleksandr closed the door, the rector dialled the number and, without greeting, reported:
“There is a strict time-frame. I have to admit that productivity has been increasing over the past three months. The result will be in a week.”
He put the mobile phone in his pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a white handkerchief.
“Svetochka, bring me lunch from the restaurant, you know what I need.”
“Yes, Iosif Grigorevich, of course, I already called and placed the order in advance.
Thousands of scientists around the world have conducted hundreds of experiments trying to create an artificial intelligence and sympathetic internet web 3, that is, the newest series of data transmission and reception.
For more than fifty years, this life-and-death race has been going on among the countries of the world. And even there are the results of this war appeared, for instance, developed robotic programs in agricultural machinery, nurses and blood nanocleaners and dialysis preparations in medicine. In the household sphere, there are quad-copters, messengers, carrying up to fifty kilos of cargo to the destination place, batteries that allow accumulation of up to one million MACH-energy, synthetic fuel or lenses on space vehicles with five thousand in a cube zoom and so on.
Perfect artificial intelligence was the goal of many thousands of scientists and programmers. And today this goal has revealed itself to the world.
“Aleksandr Nikolaevich, I cannot explain this, all the data were documented, I started checking since this morning, nothing changed in the course of our tests, I have no explanation for this.” Lena tried to be calm, but her mouth was traitorously dry and her voice became hoarse.
“Who else is aware?”
“Only you!”
The scientists put on their overalls, as required by the safety instructions, but they did not feel this way. Before them, on the table in flasks with inactive “dry’ nanorobots, was a spectacle, which was beyond any description. It was a capture. Nanorobots from one flask took the shape of a gray cube. The cube, which was on the corner and at the same time was rotating very slowly and pulsing. The finest tendrils stretched into the neighboring flasks were attracting other robots. All this action was so unexpected and fascinating that for a while Aleksandr lost any possible plan of action.
“How long has this been going on?”
“I think since yesterday. This is an approximate time, but judging by the speed of rotation and…”
“I got it.”
They left the “kitchen’ and sat down at the computers trying to collect their thoughts.
“What could become such a huge catalyst? And what triggered the effect of ‘compliance with the shape of the cube’? We must once again analyze all the data, what and how we did for the last time.”
He was knocked off feet. He jumped up and began to walk in a circle.
Lena understood that this was a rare phenomenon called “the visit of the muse’ and it was better not to disturb him: He was in another dimension and his amazing brain found the solution of the problem.
Then she witnessed how Aleksandr Nikolaevich grabbed the doors of the tool cabinet, snatched out a scalpel, like an inequable one (most likely, he was), and opened a vein on his wrist.
“Aw, hell, Lena, give me a cup.”
She took a metal cup from the next table and held it to the wild scientist.
When there was enough of blood drip, Aleksandr felt a slight dizziness, he asked the assistant to tourniquet and wrap it up.
Then without a protection suit, he went into the “kitchen’, put the cup next to the cube and went out.
Three minutes later the cube stopped, and from behind the door, there was a sound of the beating dishes. Scientists could see the whole action only by the soundless video camera in the laboratory.
Their technician Zhenya has long been connected to it by passing the antediluvian defences of the Security Institute.
On the screen they watched the cube pulling all the tendrils into it and becoming larger, then stretching out, changing its shape to a long tourniquet, slowly bending towards the bowl and completely immersing into it. Then the contents of the cup were scattering by hundreds of the thinnest tendrils over all the flasks breaking them. The flask with distilled water also fell. At this point, the cube “dissolved’ in the water and on the table was only a puddle left.
“What the bloody hell is going on here?”
“I do not know.”
“Now we will go, you hold on to me, ok?”
“I’ve got it.”
They went into the closed part of the laboratory, which because of its small size it was called “kitchen’. The mess, of course, amazed with its ruthlessness. On the table, all vessels were broken.
The transparent substance spread over the table. Aleksandr came closer, looked down at the table and saw his own reflection.
This was no longer a fluid that we used to perceive as water. It was rather a liquid sublimate, if I may say so, liquid crystals.
Aleksandr has already realized that all these eight months they had been only collecting data, but now experiments would really begin.
NOVOSIBIRSK, JANUARY 2037 THE RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF ELECTRONIC INSTRUMENTS PISAREV STR, 53
The new invention received its name from the first DNA donor and its first cubic form – AOUA TER: Aleksandr Ouadrate Unique Alive TER. (This referred to the unit of price in construction. A new formula of the object was to be replenished with consideration of the working time, the mass and size of correction and replenishment.)
Over the next ten days, the group of scientists supervised by the Head of the laboratory had been conducting and describing hundreds of experiments, and revealing lots of new properties.
This was particularly surprising after they found a fresh whole tomato in a dry cup in the morning, although twelve hours ago they put a decayed tomato in a bowl of water and added one hundred millilitres of the substrate.
The tomato reacted positively to all the checks and gave out that it was quite edible and useful. Of course, no one dared to taste it, but everyone was waiting how soon the famous “Adam’s apple’ would rot again. After six days of tiring waiting, the tomato lost its luster and began to spoil. Repeated “resuscitation’ did not yield positive results. It has gone from this world forever.
After then there were tests with mice. At first, the mice were given an injection subcutaneously, but the effect was insignificant. Then someone dipped the mouse, it rolled around and inhaled water. And after this, it calmly sank to the bottom and began to study such a different world, without smells and sounds.
When it was pulled out, the happy animal “spit’ the liquid and, having waved its tail, started running as if nothing had happened.
All adapted animals had signs of rejuvenation and cure. Further experiments only increased their scale. It was decided to extend the time spent by the animals in the aquarium. After putting in a medically induced coma the testees were placed in the aquarium for several days. The results exceeded all expectations.
The experiments on rejuvenation and improvement of human tissue, namely, one-third of the liver, were also carried out. After this, it was noticed that some nanorobots changed their “behaviour’ and became purposeful only on the DNA of human tissue.
This allowed, with an accuracy of ninety-eight percent, to state that the AT reads the DNA of every individual.
There was a council of all the group members and the rector where they unanimously approve the experiment to be performed on a human.
The Head of the laboratory Aleksandr insisted on his participation in the process.
He had been put in an aquarium for five days.
Engineer and programmer had been also working with the biologist and chemist. They passed the electric discharge to the centrifuge, but the discharge did not disappear, and, moreover, it did not leave the substance, the latter absorbed it and began to “glow’ a little.
After that, a bare cable with a flow of energy was laid through it.
After the end of this experiment, the substance began to glow like a light bulb, and, most surprisingly, in this light, scientists saw pictures and even video. Due to the sufficient amount of energy, it connected to the Wi-Fi Internet from the neighbouring building.
They had been working round the clock with three or four hours of sleep in between. The laboratory assistants knew that this discovery would change the outlook of mankind.
The static physical state of AOUA TER, transmission of information to various media and at various frequencies were achieved.
Everyone saw this significant track in history; they were the members of the same group that managed to make an incredible breakthrough!
When positive effects on the human body were confirmed, the experiments with electricity were also successful. Scientists from Holland and Austria, the most successful laboratories on “cultivation’ of artificial organs and cloning were invited. There was a real sensation, because if you manage to combine all the accumulated knowledge, they can create not only synthesized organs but also a complete human DNA. They will make a huge step towards immortality. And then a rational person will be able of controlling not only a deep space but also, perhaps, be able of opening parallel worlds and going on a journey through the time. After all, in fact, they only found a method of “strengthening a spacesuit’, but the “spacecraft’ on which they would navigate through the time was only the dream of engineers.
The whole building was buzzing like a hive. Laboratory technicians did not go home. The work was in full swing; it seemed that if you miss a minute, you can miss something important.
On the fifth day, on the 20th of February, six employees of the closed laboratory and the Head of the laboratory Nechesov Aleksandr Nikolaevich suddenly burnt in the fire in the basement.
The laboratory was sealed and all available data were taken to a safe place.
All the delegates arrived at the farewell funeral with closed coffins.
Families and relatives were told that all scientists had been burned in the laboratory when using especially dangerous chemical elements.
A funeral service was held at the institute. Compensation was paid to relatives.
Local media had been dishing up this “terrible catastrophe in the scientific world’ for another month.
There were strangers in black in Sasha’s house.
They approached and said something, perhaps there were kind words of support. But Irina did not hear anything. She felt as if the sound was turned off. She saw the people’s lips moving, and she tried to understand what they were saying. But all attempts were in vain. Previously, she did not understand the expression “the world went dark’, now the world “faded’ for her. She did not understand why she did not cry. After all, everyone around was crying and mourning.
Something inside her head kept repeating that it is not true, that Sasha is alive. This thought was quite strange, and it seemed like something beyond understanding did not allow her falling into hysterics and a deep depression. After all, in fact, even her child would not stop her from a desperate step. Without Sasha, she has nothing to live for. She will not live because he is her life.
The guests tried not to ask her many questions, although many were interested in the developments and experiments that Nechesov had been carrying out at home.
Irina was convinced that she would hear from him, because, after all, they did not show her his body.
