The Makers
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***
The year 2322 was marked by the fact that a new Maker appeared on Earth, and Benji had to deliver her to Alpha.
Benji was standing with his back to the ones who came.
"coi doi nixli*,"he said.
There were three of them. The man, the woman and the Maker child. Benji turned to face the passengers to see them. The man and the woman were excited; the girl was smiling and holding the black skinny cat.
"What is your name?" she asked.
"Benji," Benji replied, and his charming terracotta mouth stretched into a smile too. "On Lojban it means courier. Do you know Lojban?" and he held out his thin hand to the child.
"I don't know yet what I don't know. I'm Aia. You have beautiful fingers, Benji," and she turned the silvered palm upward, so that she could better see the star plugs that covered android's palm with bizarre patterns.
***
The passengers had a little baggage. Exactly as much as the rules of deportation prescribe: a hand luggage, a light vacuum suit for each, three hundred liters of water and some chemistry.
Benji had helped pack it all in the cargo hold, then, according to the job description, checked once more the fastening of the passenger gondola to the forward of the fuselage in all four points, closed both hatches, waited until the passengers calm down in the armchairs, neatly inserted his hands into the fossas of the touchpad and began the countdown.
"Tell me about yourself, Benji," the child said.
She was sitting in the passenger seat - a small, skinny, like her cat, tightly wrapped in the anti-overload suit, which reached her ginger ringlets.
The android had defined the task of communication as having equal priority to the prelaunch preparation and turned to the child his serious terracotta face: "What do you want to know, Aia?"
"How do you like, for example," and she stirred her little legs sticking from swelled compensating pants.
"The way how I like is a little different from the way how people like," Benji smiled. "I like to receive the information and like to delete it. I like to have the correct identifier and like to confuse the traces among strange servers. I please to distribute the currents between the tasks and I very please it when this task is one. I'm different. .ije ji'a .ai galfi da* And what about you?"
"I like ice-cream and when I don't flattened like a dead jellyfish on the shore," Aia barely squeezed out: the shuttle that Benji held with his fingers for a hard electronic bridle, at that time had slightly wagged his stern, turned, shifting the dynamic pressure so that it passed through the center of gravity of the whole system, and headed toward the vast gloomy thunderclouds.
".uenai*," Benjisaid. "You're a human being and you like a human stuff. When I was born I'd got a nothing inside me, but the simple algorithms. But I found everything else myself: "ssh myworld -l benji" - the password, the login... and "welcome home, Benji!"
Aia barely turned, straightened the blown cradle that had slid aside, and from this cradle has heard a meow.
"I wonder how you see the network from the inside," she whispered.
These nine minutes to the orbit were excruciating for her and for her cat.
"I think, it takes place about the same way as you see the reality from the inside," Benji's elbows neatly shifted as he was tracking the reports of the ship's systems -the angle of attack, the fuel level and the amount of the excess heat on the shell. "The difference is that instead of the biochemical stimulus and physical strength I used to use the electromagnetic field in order to communicate with my world. And I can play several instruments at the same time. I've got enough."
Meanwhile, the sky gradually darkened, became black and velvety, in it densely appeared sharp stars. The water droplets, which were trailing behind the hydrogen stabilizers, finally turned into a glistening jet of sparks. Then the Earth had fell down keenly and rounded out.
Alpha was somewhere above and to the right.
"Alpha, do you hear me? It's Benji. How can I get a docking?" the android shifted his hands to the long slot of the communicator.
"O! coi doi benji .i .ui tirna do*,"he was answered the pleasant, dense baritone. "The hatches are at your service."
"ki'e*,"Benji responded and began docking.
"I'll miss you.I'd like you to talk to me sometimes while I'll be here," Aia said.
"tezu'ema*," for the first time in his life, Benji surprised while his orbiter was attaching to the elastic glassium with a loud smacking sound.
______________________________
coi doi nixli* -Hi, girl. (Lojban)
.ije ji'a .ai galfi da* -And I'm going to change something.(Lojban)
.uenai* -No wonder.(Lojban)
coi doi benji .i .ui tirna do* -Hi, Benji. I'm glad to hear you.(Lojban)
ki'e* -Thanks. (Lojban)
tezu'e ma* -What for? (Lojban)
5. 2034th year and after. Robert.
The first segment of Alpha was put into the orbit after almost exactly a year after the incident at the Vysehrad beach.
The Earth was in a hurry: Lukasz periodically slept, and these dreams were uncontrollable by him. He was saved only by the fact that the large transformations were accompanied by a sharp temperature drop, and the cold froze his monsters.
Lukasz slept in an embrace with Bibich's generator, trying to somehow curb the situation.
About a month before Lukasz's migration to Alpha, a new Maker appeared on the Earth. The world is filled with astonishing occurrences of coincidence and synchronicity that defy explanation. The new Maker was a thirteen-year-old boy named Robert Vandarli, the son of one of the engineers of the Flight Control Center in Houston. This was a surprise for everyone, exept Lukasz, who had ceased to be lonely. At the end of October, 2034, the shuttle delivered two passengers to Alpha, and one of them was a child - for the first time in the history of astronautics.