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Ave and Rond tried to intercede for a comrade by writing a fraternal petition for a deferment for the time of restoring health, an additional explanatory and positive characterization, drawing the attention of the leadership to the significant experience and merits of an excellent employee in the past, but nothing, alas, did not help. The sentence was ruthless, severe, and irrevocable, without any appeal consideration. The small monthly allowance, which was supposed to be paid upon elimination from the place of work for the first six months to support life, was insignificantly miserable, completely insignificant and completely miserable, in fact it was only enough for a week…
“Can you imagine, Rond, a monthly allowance – for a week!” – Ave spoke vehemently to his friend. – “How to live in such a situation?” Can you answer the question? The direct question is the direct answer! But, after all, there is no answer! There are much more days in a month than one short week for which this allowance is enough for you! Or is it just that way? Here it is – real life… Those at the very top do not understand how we live here…”
In a word, in such a situation, ants living on auspiciousness had to starve. And for a sick Lertz, a lack of food was the worst medicine. Within a two-week period, Lertz was evicted from the A-745 room, the property of the enterprise, because he was no longer an employee of the radio factory. His comrades supported him as best they could, but they could radically change something; they were not able to.
There was still a worthy option to solve a vital issue – getting a job, but finding a permanent place, and even with housing, or with decent wages so that there was enough to pay for housing, was unrealistic. Lertz could not change his profession and try to earn his daily bread in some other way because of his age and character traits. He devoted his whole life to the service of one single enterprise, and now, like waste slag, he was thrown into the trash.
Neither Ave nor Rond knew how Lertz’s further fate came about, and after a month or two they didn’t remember “fellow soldiers” at all: working days take away all mental strength and make you think only about the present. Neither about the distant past, nor about the near future – there is practically no thought to think, neither strength, nor time, nor desire.
– There is no Lertz with us, and perhaps there isn’t anywhere else… though… – somehow, a week after the elimination of Lertz, Ave told Ronda, “our Lertz seemed to have sunk into the distant and irrevocable past, having given his debt to… – and then Ave fell silent, not knowing who to pay the debt to, and, after a minute, he decided to finish the tirade. – He gave a debt, probably to the State… here I don’t know.
– Yes, you’re saying everything right, old man! Correctly! – Rond decided to support a friend, seeing that he doubts. – It’s a pity that Lertz is not with us, we are very used to him.
– Sorry, exactly…
– But life is such that yesterday – he, and tomorrow – maybe we… no one knows what will be behind the twist of fate… there are all kinds of turns – both smooth and sharp…
– That’s for sure, life is such… though, we always blindly believe in tomorrow’s stability – isn’t it? We have a job and we don’t even think that we can be in the place of Lertz…
– Do not think, because there is no time. We just plow endlessly in our production and that’s all…
The memory (which is still an infection) which is typical to be selective, imperceptibly for friends, was carefully taken by an eraser and, closing her eyes and heart, mercilessly erased almost all the pages about Lertz in the Life Book of A-745 apartment. Out of a thousand applicants, they were lucky enough to be selected by an ant named Ski for a vacant workplace. Before Skye found himself on Sixty-second Street, he humbly pulled the strap on the industrialist Pax, his younger brother Theik Dee, a senior assembly fitter on the conveyor of a car factory, day and night, and fell under a massive, by the standards of the time, reduction in the number of good four hundred ants that flooded with a cold storm wave with the introduction of modern, fashionable robotics. Then, more than five years ago, a similar step by Pax to re-equip his enterprise evoked the ironic smiles of most tycoons, because the maintenance of the “live” labor force was much cheaper than the purchase of expensive equipment, and additional financial injections were required for constant maintenance of the equipment. Only two short years passed, and Pax admitted his obvious tragic mistake, but, of course, the money spent idly could not be returned.
– Only the one who does nothing does not make mistakes! – Pax stated with philosophical calm. – And yet I am sure that the near future is in progress! The time has come for an all-common robot life! Robots will flood our factories and our homes, they will not only come to our aid, but will crowd us out from everywhere. Just kick us out! We will be forced to yield to them in many vital sectors! You’ll see, I’m saying for sure! It sounds scary, but it will. I believe that our real world is now almost ready to surrender to the mercy of robotics, and what can we say about what will happen in ten to twenty to thirty years. Of course, this is not good, no, not good, but this is simply nowhere to go, it is simply impossible to get away. Soon you will see for yourself that I am telling you the truth. Life itself will put everything in its place!
In fact, few ants believed the words of Pax, nodding indulgently towards his expensive mistake, but the handsome progress, in fact, tirelessly paces-runs-hurries with quick steps, and here the whole clue is not so much in words there was something overshot in the calculations of the industrial tycoon, how many in the actual, in practical application of new inventions. Unsophisticated world-renowned scientists and brainy eccentric inventors from time to time present, naturally or unexpectedly, any surprises and discoveries: not only pleasant and useful in everyday life, but also completely useless and, sometimes, even dangerous. After all, how can you create, for example, a flawless robot driver? Now, just drones are being tested. Yes, it’s possible to teach a motor vehicle to move according to a given route, but all life collisions cannot be taken into account, there can be hundreds of options, even thousands, of emergency situations on the road.
A computer program ideally reads changes and errors on the road, comprehensively scans many objects during movement, evaluates the sudden appearance of pedestrians, developing and correcting the traffic algorithm. But after all, it is impossible to foresee. So, the most ordinary example, when an ordinary robot transporter moves at an average speed at “rush hour” along the intended route along an congested highway, and suddenly for no reason, it stops in a dug, and the reason is quite simple – A simple accident happened ahead. One imprudent driver could not navigate in time in a busy traffic stream, and his favorite car suddenly ran into another car (and where he got out of, damn him!) When changing lane to a neighboring lane. Everything! Dead end! These “dead” cars, which are scolded from all sides, are standing, cars that tightly sealed not only one and a half or two lanes, but also all the traffic with the most difficult traffic jams, and which you have to go around, cars are waiting for the transport police… But the stream of people passing by vehicles endlessly and the robot will wait for the right moment to travel, but this very moment can only come in an hour, which is likely at this time.
In everyday life, in the place of the “auto-drone”, nine out of ten drivers will slowly begin to move, emotionally asking their traffic colleagues to let the car go, and they will certainly miss out of solidarity: not the second or third, but the fifth motorist. And such uncomplicated situations on city roads – an infinite number. So, the conclusion follows only one thing – robots can not always save the world! In one thing, Pax was right when he said that “life will put everything in its place.”
All technical equipment, “modern and reliable,” as unconditionally stated in the annotation, purchased by Pax, and failing with its enviable stability, was dismantled overnight and immediately sent to the metallurgical plant in Vourdeks-9, where it found a new life. Over the next two days, new staff was accepted, and the auto-factory conveyor was bored, breathing again, booming, and noisy with resurgent force. Of the four hundred ants that were eliminated from the Pax factory, about fifty remained alive (a tough, harsh life without a permanent job, unfortunately, did not spare anyone!): They were lucky – they found and took the ants to your previous job. Ski and twenty other highly qualified specialists were offered jobs in the new workshop at the radio factory upon dismissal. These paths led Sky’s fate to the dwelling of A-745. To say that “the ant was very pleased that he has a new job and housing” is not to express all that universal happiness, the boundless happiness of salvation and gaining a new life.
“Without labor, there is no point in our existence!” – with such an unpretentious stereotypical phrase, good-natured Ski met the new comrades-in-arms, good-naturedly unconsciously checking his response. He did not deny, fully accepting the philosophy of labor and productive pastime. In the future, it was not noticed by the ant that he was lousy, lazy, and losing his job, was ill or chooses a easier labor operation. Ski always tried to fulfill the production tasks assigned to him by the “excellent”. Maybe something didn’t work out completely, but he devoted himself to the work process one hundred percent. Ski became friends with Ave and Rond – of course, not immediately, but step by step, gradually, since a common household is a very difficult matter, and it takes quite a long time to find individual approaches to solving many issues. For all those two little-tail years that Ski lived with Ave and Rond, he still once thought about leaving. He was attracted by the profession of a military officer for a long time, but inexorable time passed, it flew rapidly, and the ant kept putting off the solution to this vital issue, and when it was too late to enter a military higher institution, there was only one thing – to enlist for contract service in the army. For health and physical fitness, Ski would probably have gone through the appropriate medical commission and been accepted into the troops: people like him are always welcome there. The solid stone Ski had more than enough energy, in all his life he had never turned to doctors, except for vaccinations, and apart from a broken upper paw in early childhood, when he awkwardly fell from a tall tree and could break everything, but escaped with only a simple fracture. Strong, well-knit, muscular Ski did morning exercises every day, as did most ant individuals, but in the evenings, it turned out only once or twice a week, stubbornly “pulled pieces of iron”, pumped muscles with dumbbells at home, plus almost every Thursday – volleyball training with friends.
Everything seemed to push the ant to pursue a military career, but each time an impossible-strange, inexplicable force stopped the development of Ski’s thoughts about changing his life path, something did not add up, and he always saw a certain mystical side in this.
But a couple of weeks ago, the ant again thought about military service, he faced his neighbor Torill, an ant soldier, who once again offered his help in registering for contract service, face to face. Ski solemnly promised to think carefully and give an answer.
Chapter 4
GREEN
Endless dozens, hundreds, thousands of cars, similar to each other, like dirty brown bumblebees, muttering morning prayer confidently and heavily under their breath, skipped at a frantic speed over a wide and deliberately fanciful bridge that loomed starlessly in two corners from the maternity hospital. Divided, sawn like a birthday cake, into several equal parts, the flip-up architectural structure, rather, resembled the fortress defensive towers of the Middle Ages, connected by a continuous, irreconcilable, impassable wall. Menacingly buzzing metal ropes, mercilessly piercing right through the bridge from the beginning of the ascending cross-over structure to its foggy-dense end, completed the gloomy picture of the mega-caterpillar monster. Thick stranded black threads twisted by powerful snails seemed huge sharp spikes, needles of a bristled hedgehog or an angry porcupine, ready to do anything to repulse the attack.
Under its heavy, heavy armor, in a bluish haze, a calm river flowed, humbly carrying its waters of time to an unbounded blue ocean: here, in a bustling city, the river drowsily spilled over the great expanse, endowing the inhabitants of the beloved town with its priceless beauty. The weather did not favor. A shy little ball rode gloomily across the sky back and forth behind gloomy heavy clouds and was in no hurry to appear at all, and a nondescript, incomplete sketch pressed, seeming half-dead, onto the city with its heavy pessimistic load. Somewhere nearby, every minute above the high-rise office buildings, a military helicopter grunted alarmingly and risky: it either completely disappeared into the thick draconian ultramarine sky, then it suddenly popped up in an unexpected place, and, hanging for a couple of seconds, as if scanning a picture of what was happening, drowned again in the unconditional splendor of moist clouds. Amina distinctly saw how far away, on the outskirts of the city, a stockade of factory pipes was bursting incessantly bursting with unpleasantly dark thick puffs of smoke.
“Where is our world heading for? Where it goes… it’s a real kata stanza… what is the ecology and ephemeral care for our mother nature? These are the most naive environmental issues for a long time do not bother anyone! Well, it seems to me that they don’t bother… naive… did they come up with beautiful terms sparkling in the summer sun, take at least the recent one… They called last year the pathos ‘Year of Ecology’, but what did he give us? He gave us an empty ‘shhhh’. A couple of voiced problems were also voiced by business… But real vital questions remained unanswered. We build – we work – we produce – we throw away… and all this – for what? Is there an answer? If dividends shine fantastically in some small matter, then, despite the unresolved environmental issue, the proposed project will be agreed, in any case, sooner or later, but it will be agreed anyway, and only so… The hypersensitive marker engraved with the name ‘Profit’ clearly highlights the main line ‘Total’ and that’s it. It’s all in the hat: the state is supposedly happy that the number of jobs is growing from the launch of the new project, and there will be new tax deductions to the state treasury, new employees are happy get a job with stable earnings, and the boss with a team of investors are happy from dripping into the account in countries free of taxes, percentages of invested capital! Profit is all! And more absolutely nothing is needed. And we will deal with ecology… then… maybe we will deal… if we have time…”
Deadly, overwhelming technical emissions mercilessly rose endlessly winding paths to the gray, tired of the heaviness of breath, the sky, firmly connecting and attracting to each other two worlds, two universes: the heavenly world and the earthly world. Poisonous technogenic umbilical cord tightly bound and did not let go, giving rise to genuine fear. The harsh, merciless wind hysterically, incredibly straining his muscles, squalled with all his might, eagerly trying to take the poisoned clubs away from the hard-working city. And among this lead industrial world, on an open platform, on the roof of a neighboring high-rise, surrealist-artist-ant. Neither inclement weather nor the dirty darkness covering the city did not bother him. Cleverly hiding behind a double brick ledge, under a strange, improvised small canopy, it seemed that the ant completely did not pay attention to the strong wind and drizzling rain, he, as if in an illusory oblivion, hurriedly drove his brush on the canvas fixed on a ventilation ledge, enjoying the process of drawing, the creator was dissolved in his work, leaving for posterity a dog-sympathetic gray landscape on the canvas. What for? For what?
On a small windowsill, near which Amina stood, there were blooming violets. Here is the true beauty.
The noise of the restless, buzzing metropolis barely came through the dense double-pane window. In some slipping moment, Amina quite realistically thought that on the site of high-rise buildings she sees a terrible apocalyptic picture: rare dilapidated houses, stinky, fetid, dilapidated shed shacks, laminated-shingled plywood pieces and wooden bricks, shabby tent wigwams, cardboard resemblances of houses built from faded advertising posters, amateur rolling dugouts.
Around the bright bonfires that restlessly play between themselves here and there amid the surviving houses and abandoned cars, wilted ants doze off on tattered boxes, shamelessly wrapped in torn clothes, which are strange to call clothes, everywhere to the dark blue the sticky streams of smoke of the abandoned country conflagration stretch to the black sky, and the mercantile-harsh, completely lifeless sun, akin to a fiery indefatigable bird with an amber-agate reigning plumage, calmly flies itself from place to place, but a life-giving, saving light that from her, from the solar star, alas, does not come. The depressed Amina sighed heavily and slammed her eyes, trying to turn off the pessimistic and gloomy picture in the mourning imagination.
Time flowed sluggishly through the sad irregular oval of the window, round, tired of expectations, Amina comfortably housed herself in a cloudy, wide, freely fit two medium-fed ants – almost a double, double-breasted armchair made of pleasantly soft skin of young dandelion rams, from which – there was an amazing aroma of a blooming lotus from a distant delta of the southern river, saturated with the inherent notes of working days of hymenoptera. The ant twitched slightly, as it happens in the first milliseconds of slipping into the slippery transcendental parallelism of sleep, but Amina did not sleep, and did not even doze, she looked into the distance, through a ghostly transparent, huge double-glazed window. Her lucid, velvety kind eyes sparkled unusually brightly – either from the joy overwhelming her, or from endless fatigue. Go, take them, these ant women, why do their eyes shine?
Every minute someone passed by her in a humbling manner: either jaunty, restless young medical sisters, now pregnant ants dazed by thoughts, immersed in the som-nambulistic world of the future, then restless doctors, sometimes laborers, business-like and important, like peacekeeping guards, and it happened, and small, still very small pearl ants ran through, noisily sorting out some of their intricate mischief.
“Where did they come from here?” – Amina was perplexed and smiled idly. – “Shouldn’t a special building have to be assigned to such a trifle For some reason, I always thought that baby-ants are placed separately? It is strange how such small ones were released into the general adult corps? And when will the weather improve and the world will become colored?”
Suddenly, a completely relaxed ant heard a couple of ghostly sonorous clicks, and an unfamiliar voice right behind me whispered faintly: “So, we work, we work, we work, friends, we start the process, we start shooting! Motor-motor-motor!” In dismay she looked around nervously, desperately got up from a friendly chair and confidently took several steps towards the elevator, but suddenly changed her mind and immediately returned to her former place. An accidentally flustered uneasiness melted in an instant, leaving no trace.
Here, in the city maternity hospital in just two days of stay, she felt so comfortable and calm for the first time in the last two months that she would love to stay here for a couple more months, she still has nowhere to hurry. Nowhere and no one to go to…
– Sorry, sorry, can I help you with something? – the nurse on duty kindly turned to Amina.
But Amina “lost consciousness” and did not hear anything at all, the medic touched her paw to the pregnant woman and repeated the question.
– No, no, everything is in order. No, thanks, everything is in order, – Amin hurried to answer. – I have everything… I will ask if something suddenly… Thank you!
“Caring paws! Caring, caring, caring! That’s why I didn’t have enough all the time. Here they take care of me and my future baby…”
Outside the window, through the hazy hopeless cap of clouds that covered the city, and indeed the whole world, the burning, living rays of the sun erupted, as if a mysterious surgeon had carefully made an incision with a mysteriously bright scalpel, and in an instant the gray and earthy houses and streets came to life, breathing, turning the gloomy area beyond the area into colorful and truly vibrant habitats. The gray-dirty industrial monster in an instant unrecognizably transformed into a polyphonic-colored town.
“How little, it turns out, is necessary for true happiness – for someone a tiny drop of warmth and care, for another – a few rays of the sun? Life-giving sun. Although, maybe it’s the same thing?”
– Admire our beauty? – with a proud smile, the approaching roommate of Amina, the ant Piyo, nodded at the marble-blue snake. “But today she’s hardly impressive!” Today it is cloudy, and not at all… She is very beautiful here! You just need another time…
– Yeah, I look at everything. To the city, to the river! I like everything very much, – Amina answered with a little confusion in her voice, and she was surprised at her shaky uncertainty.
– Yeah, our Miisa* is perhaps one of the most picturesque rivers in the whole continent. And for me – she is the most beautiful and is. The most-most-most! In the summer, especially on hot days, Miisa is generally irresistible! You look at her in the summer! What places will you be from?
– Have I seen few rivers? More precisely, this river – the first one I met, – Amin said a little embarrassed. And then blurted out joyfully: – But I really liked her! True, really liked it. We also have a river in the city, but somehow we couldn’t get to it. Do not believe it, I have never seen her. All work and work, but endless vanity, but there is no time for the beautiful… there is no time to think about the beautiful. It seems that work eats up all my life… And from the city I am from San-Prittu*.
– Well, about work – that’s what you are saying! So many folded. We have to plow from morning to night without a break and a weekend.
– Yes… Work is our everything… without it – nowhere…
– There certainly isn’t anything beautiful. All for the common cause…
– Yes, yes, everything is so!
– And sometimes it seems better not to stop and not think what we are for and why we all work… the main thing is the process itself…
– You are directly speaking in my words. Well, talk about work! – Amina said in surprise.
– So this, I think, not only you and I… but about the river… if you talk about the river, then in general, any river calms and gives an inexplicable force of life, – Piyo became sad for a second, thought for a moment, and began to think aloud. – I don’t know how to explain it, but the course of the river… It fascinates and captivates with its calmness, with such good calmness, it draws you in, attracts you to you. Chess-word, it fascinates and calmly so, calmly… you look at the current like that, you stand and look, and you think… you think… uh, now you would immerse yourself in warm water and completely relax! – dreamed Piyo immediately closed her eyes, and a slight smile froze on her face.
– Ahhh, and the truth, probably the truth, is so cool! Amin caught her thought, delighted in a completely childish way.
– Yes, this is not the right word, not the right word! It is cosmically great! Fine! Phenomenally! Be sure to swim sometime. Take your time and drive to the river… In the summer you need… – happy Piyo shone with emotion and added. – Highly recommend!
They stood still for several minutes in complete silence, enjoying the panorama of the city, which eagerly absorbed solar energy, and the picturesque river, until they were called into the dining room for a mid-afternoon snack.