Roman Rumyantsev - Cyborgs among us

– Yes… at a friend’s.

– Such a beautiful, chic, I need the same! Yuki burst out laughing. Now she came to school in a regular school uniform, and wore a suit only for special occasions.

– Mom, I’m home!

– Well, they didn’t kick you out of school?!

“This is still someone who kicked someone out,” Yuki thought to herself.

“No, they didn’t,” Yuki snorted.

– How is it… no…

– We have something to eat, I’m terribly hungry!

– Yes, look in the refrigerator. However, Yuki, don’t wear that stupid fancy suit anymore!

– Yeah.

– And where did you get it at all?!

Without thinking twice, Yuki answered:

– I exchanged the laptop for this thing.

– Are you crazy?! Is this the laptop that we gave you?!

– Was there some other one? Yuki replied with a smile.

– This isn’t funny, Yuki! You don’t know how to appreciate things!..

– And you and your father don’t know how to appreciate me! You are so rich that you can buy an entire island! But you don’t even care about me! Never ask me what I want, what I like, what I don’t like! You don’t even give me money for nothing!

– If we gave you a lot of money… then you would be promiscuous!

– Trust me! Promiscuity lies not in money, but in relationships and actions! Yuki reacted angrily.

The mother, after thinking about the events for a long time, said:

“Okay, Yuki, maybe I was wrong, mir?

– The world…

Yuki grew up a pedantic and eccentric girl with a cold look, looked down on everyone, was sometimes treacherous, never suffered humiliation and insults from others and always achieved what she wanted.

Their house was “super smart”, her father, Kazuhiko Kanayama, personally designed such a house, you can even say a computer house. The floors in the house are heated and activated by voice command. There is no need to plug something into the socket when it is far away or in an inconvenient place for you, you just need to bring the plug to the wall, and an outlet will immediately appear absolutely anywhere. But how does it work?! This is a very complex AI system. Special micro-cameras, proximity sensors and scanners are hidden in the walls, which scan objects and choose the optimal application for them, they are necessary without electricity. The wall object becomes transparent in order to scan any detail, then the system, recognizing the plug with the wire, triggers mechanisms in the walls that deliver the outlet, something like a transport tape in factories. In total, 15 sockets are hidden in the walls. Also, the walls can change the color of the wallpaper at the command of a voice or gestures of swiping a hand. But how?! The walls of the house are not made of wood or concrete, they are made of super-strong thick glass, billions of tiny organic LEDs are attached behind the glass, which change the wallpaper or color. You can change the brightness or turn it off altogether when necessary, for example, at night. But the ceilings are ordinary, as in ordinary apartments and houses. There are also built-in speakers with a subwoofer in the walls that play music or the voice of an AI. The house also has air regulators that make sure that the air is always clean and fresh. The house is closed and opened by a fingerprint, or you can set a password or PIN code. Everything else in the house is like in ordinary “smart” houses: temperature regulators, a security system, lights are turned on from a smartphone, electric kettles, irons, vacuum cleaners are also controlled by a smartphone.

Evening was falling, sakura was blooming, couples were walking in the parks and basking in the warm rays of the setting sun. In the city of Nagasaki, a monument was erected to an eleven-year-old boy who died during a bombing with the Americans. Every morning, the students, going to school, bowed to him. Despite the multiple losses, the city is flourishing. Despite the fact that Japan is a small country, the Japanese built an artificial island out of garbage. When night fell in Tokyo, the skyscrapers shone with thousands of colored lights, especially the advertising and the poster on them stood out. In the evening, you could go to a karaoke bar and perform your favorite song of the virtual and popular singer Hatsune Miku in Japan. In some people, you could notice an “electronic skin” – this is a kind of film with sensors made of micro-leds, which monitors the user’s health, shows the heart rate, pressure.

Yuki’s mother, Rieko Kanayama, worked as a journalist, wrote articles, took interviews and was a presenter on TV news. Once during an interview, a terrible tragedy occurred, when Rieko was interviewing a famous director of horror films, she asked: “Will there be a continuation of the series of films, because you have been releasing films under the same name for about twelve years.” He replied: “Of course, we are just starting to write the script for the last film, which will become… will become…” He felt something wrong in his condition. He was running out of air, he was almost suffocating, his eyes were starting to get dark, and everything was blurry around. Rieko was scared and asked: “Are you ill?! Can you talk?! Someone, call an ambulance! “Everyone immediately became alarmed and quickly began to call an ambulance. Then a little girl came up and said firmly loudly: The director felt his strength leaving him, an ambulance arrived and he was taken to the hospital, but soon he had a stroke in the hospital, and it was not possible to save him. Rieko was shocked by what she saw. “I don’t know if it had something to do with this girl or if it was just a coincidence…” she thought.

They had another son in the family – Hayato, he went to the third grade, and if he was “run over” by high school students, then Yuki protected him. Everyone in the family lived together. Yuki also had a grandmother, Hiroko Ichikawa, who lived on the outskirts of the city, and it was necessary to look after her, her husband died at the age of sixty-seven, then she was seventy-four years old, now she is seventy-eight. When she lost her husband, she developed a mental illness-agoraphobia, or fear of open space, with every month, year, she slowly went crazy. In terms of physical health, everything was normal for her, except that she was blind in one left eye, this eye was covered with a cloudy white shell. She had thick, long, wavy, gray, ash-colored hair. Yuki was afraid to visit her every time and reluctantly went to her to bring her pills, necessary medicines and clean up the house. She lived in an old two-story wooden house. The house was not painted and had a dark gray texture. When Yuki came again, it was cloudy and rainy weather, the sharp bare branches of trees near her house “cut” the darkened sky. It was very creepy for her to be in this house with her. Climbing the low broken stairs into the house, opening the heavy door with a terrible creak, she carefully entered. In the hallway there was a huge and dirty mirror with cracks, the house smelled musty and damp. Everything in the house creaked: floors, doors, stairs and even furniture, which was very old and nondescript. Flies were circling in the house, rats were running around. Creeping quietly into the hall along the long corridor, she could hear the white noise on the TV better with every step when there was no signal. She had a TV set from the late seventies. The walls were all scratched with something sharp. When she entered the hall, she saw her grandmother sitting with her back, and she was scribbling something on the floor with a knife. It was a hideously creepy picture. Yuki quietly approached her grandmother. Hiroko turned around sharply, seeing the pills in her outstretched hand, she froze without uttering a single word, then abruptly took the pills from Yuki and turned away, continuing to scribble on the floor with a knife and pull out clumps of her hair. Then Yuki cleaned up the house and left. Yuki hurried to her home, she could not hold back her tears. She didn’t want to eat anything, she was sick. She felt very sorry for her grandmother, and she understood that she could not be cured.