Nickolay Popov - The Doll

“The case let,” demanded from the audience.

“All right. Let us listen to our institute graduate Tom Brexler. His phantom machines he called engines of creation, but with no less confidence we can call them engines of destruction, too.”

Eugene knew the scientist coming to the podium. So he turned to the audience waited for absolute silence and began to speak. He was listened in silence, without interrupting. Ghenya realized that this man was going to say something very important.

“… badly smelling and lumbering machines are already beginning to seem old-fashioned in the background of integrated circuits and molecular physics. We are proud of the technology that gave us life-saving drugs and desktop computers. However, our spaceships are still primitive, computers’re “stupid”, and medications do not always help to overcome a disease. From ancient times so as to make a product, people used one and only technique: rearrangement of volumes in one or another substance. Diamond and coal, gold and sand, living tissue and cancer – right along cheap out of precious, sick from healthy differed only by way of placing atoms. I’ve already talked about the achievements of genetic engineering, about the construction of DNA molecules. Our works are now in a crucial stage. But, as my colleague said here, we cannot know what stage similar works in European laboratories are currently. I will come back to this issue.

We are on the verge of creating such a technology of forming, that will allow us with our micro or nanomachines – let’s call them assemblers – and nanocomputers penetrate in one taken separately molecule and rearrange the atoms in it at our discretion. Thus, there is a real opportunity to get out of any matter any substance, as well as from a sore living tissue to create a healthy one. As regards the technology for products with adjusted properties, here we do not need metal-cutting equipment. Molecular technology will allow us to collect the desired product atom by atom, molecule by molecule, which would make the production process as environmentally friendly as the cultivation of an apple-tree. In order to get the product from raw materials (anything can be used for raw materials), you need three components: raw materials, assemblers and nanocomputers. The last two, placed in a neutral liquid medium represent a viscous liquid of any color. In contact with raw material work begins, the outcome of which depends on the program laid down in nanocomputers. An assembler that executed its program puts an end to existence. Later assemblers will reborn , so to speak, in replicators, self-replicating nanomachines. Components for these machines, i.e. atoms, do not need in manufacturing – they are given by nature.

I want to draw your attention, gentlemen: here is the most dangerous trend in our work. If we don’t reprogram a replicator from self-reproduction to the creation of something or even to the destruction of something, I hope, you know what happens next. The raw materials in the world are enough – so none capable of replicating assembler should not get into the environment. Well, if I mention about destruction, I want to add that assemblers from a military point of view represent as an environmentally acceptable weapon. One liter of that sort of programmed viruses , pulverizated over a city of 300 thousand inhabitants, less than for 24 hours are able to turn the town into a fertile field. Whether assemblers will serve a man or use him as a raw material? It depends on us.

And one more quick note. I am alarming to tell you about the information from Eastern Europe where at the Romanovsky’s laboratory the first-generation assemblers had already been synthesized. Unfortunately, we have currently no information neither of the fate of Hermes Baromeevich himself nor of his laboratory. The political situation at the scientist’s homeland is extremely unstable. I believe that we must somehow through the Embassy to contact with Romanovsky. Thank you, gentlemen.”

Not sleepy. Ghenya went to the kitchen, brewed strong coffee. Pacing out the room looked at his watch. 2.45. It was dawning. June nights are short. How much time he had left before the arrival of the police? At 9 a.m. the secretary comes to work. She will sit down to the computer and detect the leak. Cannot fail to notice the alarm will be triggered, has already responded. So, at the latest, they will call on him at 9.30. One must do something. So far, he’d been led by the program. He took the information by dialing the code numbers in the sequence, which prompted him a service table. Here it is. Randomly appeared on the monitor and already without his participation. What’s next? The endless columns of numbers slowly crept up the screen as useless titles at the end of a film. A black blank frame between the numbers. Stop. At this point must be the clip code. Enter the code. What is it? Arithmetic example appeared in the black frame: 16 3 x 9 +1215. Well, let’s solve it = 38079. The code number of the video clip. Ghenya slammed his palm against his forehead. It’s a children’s word game! It is only necessary to turn the result upside down and read it. GLOBE. Entering this word on the keyboard, on the screen he saw his old house. Invisible camera climbed the stairs, the door opened – heart shrank in the chest – a familiar corridor, familiar walls, here there were the same way as many years ago. Here is the room where he spent so many years. An iron bed is in the corner, the political world map is on the wall, a desk and an old school globe. GLOBE!!The whole world! – “… the fruits of our research can bring to the whole world and to all of humanity both blessing and infinite evil… ”

“Please, I’m not a burglar; I urgently need to be in the north-western region. There and back! I’ll pay, I’m not a bandit!”

“That’s evident. Sit down.”

The driver opened the door. Zhenya slipped into the car.

Anna Yermilovna, despite the early hour, was bustling beside the house in a flower bed. Having caught sight of Eugene running along the path to the house, she clasped her hands:

“Zhenya, what’s happened?”

“Do not worry, Aunt Anna.” Zhenya was panting, wondering what he could tell the hostess. “I just have urgent work; I need a map right now.”

He spoke wide, portraying the ball with his hands. “Forgive me, please. I haven’t been here for ages. Scary little time… left.”

“I don’t understand what you want?”

“A globe, Aunt Anna, a globe that stood on the desk in my room.”

“Oh, globe,” Anna Yermilovna smiled. “I threw it in the attic. One can’t see anything on it; even Riga is not clearly visible.”

“I’ll find what I need.”

Embraced with the globe, Zhenya took a back seat.

“And because of this damn you raced through the city early in the morning?” The driver asked, looking at him in the mirror.

“It’s not a damn thing. This is our land.”

“Yes,” the driver smiled crookedly. “The whole world is in your hands.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

Zhenya slammed the door behind him. Then checked up all the windows, closed ventlights and started to wet cleaning: vacuumed a carpet, sofas, chairs, upholstered in soft capes, pulled out of the closet flypapers and hanged them around the room. Only after all done he set the globe on the clean-washed wooden parquet and sank to his knees. Zhenya carefully inspected the surface of the ball and found a thin seam, rising from the base of the stand, on which the globe spun, from the South Pole up exactly along the meridian of Greenwich. He took a knife and gently introduced it into the ball. The flutter of his beating heart was immediately delivered to his trembling hands; the blade struck the finger and blood dripped on the parquet. Ignoring the injury, Eugene finished his work, cut through the seam to the equator, and then looked inside, pulling apart the narrow slit with the help of fingers. No doubt remained – on the axis inside the globe, in tight embrace of iron flower resembling lotus a glass bulb was resting. With a fine hacksaw Eugene sawed off a half of Africa, stuck his hand in the globe and gently drew the flask out of the flower.