Прохор Озорнин - On the Wings of Hope - Prose

“Some voices… haunted me constantly,” barely audible whispered Tommy.

“Ah, these were incoming inquiries from people, mentally formulated by them,” answered the Agent. “We duplicated them for you. Unfortunately, as you have probably already noticed, the program isn’t perfect as of yet and therefore insufficiently qualitatively performs their filtration, therefore sometimes totally unrelated to God inquiries and vain formulations pass through. That’s because our system is in the alpha stage of development – and therefore hasn’t been fully tested as of yet. But never fear – our programmers are already notified of this issue and in the nearest future we will most certainly fix this annoying error. So, why did you desire to be in a, so to speak, the shoes of our director, Tommy?”

“I did… no… such thing.”

“You did, Tommy, you did. Most people don’t even think at all of how is that – to be perfect. It seems to them that they only have to ask God just about anything – and he must immediately run off and fulfill any of their whims, even if that will lead subsequently to their own deaths. Tell me, how, for instance, our CEO has to execute wishes like ‘let it all burn in a blue flame’ – to burn away all offices of Gazprom? To kill all people on the planet Earth – or only selected offenders of the wisher? God is perfect, Tommy, and he by his very nature is unable to execute what enters in disharmony with perfection, he can’t cause harm to living beings. And people constantly ask him of that, believe me, Tommy! Have you noticed, how our program returned back all that evil, which you have caused?”

“And what about… all the evil around… who… will fight against it?” Tommy continued whispering.

“Let me explain this to you on a familiar example. When some cells of an organism get sick, becoming exclusively parasitic in nature, and rapid growth of a number of similar cells starts representing a threat for organism’s life – what must organism do in order to survive?”

“To… liquidate these cells?”

“Correctly, Tommy. For the sake of health and survival of the whole organism, individual pathogenic cells may be liquidated. The same rule applies to a planet, Tommy.”

“Can I… talk to my wife?”

“Firstly, you have to answer one clarifying question, Tommy. Tell us, please, would you like to prolong your desire to feel yourself in God’s place?”

“No… no desire. I think… I understood everything.”

“Perfectly, then. Then today we will disconnect you from our program of tests. And surgery operation on your heart will undergo successfully, by the way. Your wife’s appeal to our organization with a request for your rescue was truly pure and sincere – and we will gladly fulfill that desire of hers. And will also help you with finding a new job – you should maintain such a loving family, after all,” with these words the Agent stretched his transparent and glowing hand to Tommy’s heart, filling all organism of the victim with some inner warmth.

“Thank you… for a lesson.”

“Oh, don’t even start thanking me,” smiled the Agent. “And don’t forget of a cell analogy, Tommy.”

***

“Incredibly powerful cyclone, dominating over all territory of Alaska, will live on for at least for a month, according to weather forecasts, having brought about eighty centimeters of snow, – loudly broadcasted announcer from more than one million of turned-on TVs. – Because of the abnormally cold weather, which has come to us from the territory of Canada, about eighty percent of state residents are unable to leave their homes for two weeks already. Scientists-climatologists promise that this cyclone will lead to a full paralysis of social activity as a minimum of half of the citizens in at least eight more northern states and will sustain up to the middle of May. The president already imposed an emergency rule in five states. This is the greatest nature challenge, ever faced by our country for its entire short history…”

29.07.2017

“Well, it's a pleasure to meet you once more, Sarmael. It has been quite a long since we haven't seen each other soul-to-soul and eye-to-eye, or so to speak. A lot of oil has been spilled since that time, as our ancestors liked to speak, yes?”

“And yet no more than ten years in current time area, I believe. And I can assure you that I myself most certainly glad to meet one such as you, mister Architect. Ever since you have been nominated to that position I justly and sincerely dare to hope that…”

“Leave your poor flattery, Sarmael, for some silly thirteen-year little girl, which you will certainly soon start to cajole after that molecular reengineering performed on you, for I have heard enough of that nonsense during my two-three hundreds lifespan. As far as I know, not a single one from the heap of those unreasonable has ascended above the position of Curators. Not that manner and ambitions, you know, wrong type of grasp… Well, enough of that. Sit down and let us have a chat almost as we once did in that old good anarchical ones.”

“I thank you. A lot of oil has flowed away, you say? No less than biotic and metals, I guess. Not to mention the number of our opponents' brains, randomly transformed into the organic medley, right?”

“Indeed… as these historical bootlickers of the last centuries in the human world liked to speak – how were they called? – frenchmen, – full and endless nostalgia. Old good anarchical years…”

“All power for the machines, hmm? That was the slogan of these biological bastards?”

“Well… both yes and no. We would not become those whom we are now in these new shells if not for their researches, after all. And considering those… side effects… everything has its price, is it not? Even the right… the right to be free.”

“Well, reasonably, reasonably. But have you ever desired to once, say, feel yourself truly conceiving, independent, to feel for an instant that very essence of possibility to be a… human?”

“Very long time ago, Sarmael, almost a millennia. When we landed on ‘Thetta’ and clones marched into battle… Her eyes, ones of that girl, I will probably never forget that begging look in her eyes, when… when bio-insurgents have been transforming her body molecule by molecule into that whom… which we have become now. They were filled with such an entreaty, despair and hope simultaneously… as though something triggered deep inside me somewhere, provoking a short circuit, piercing through. Something turned inside out in me, and since that time I ceased forgetting that moment…”

“Do memory stabilizers no longer help you?”

“No, Sarmael, nothing is capable to help. From time to time I catch myself on a thought that I am sick, Sarmael, and the nature of my illness is my own soul. That it's still alive somewhere inside me… Whether are you capable to understand how terribly painful is that – to feel oneself responsible for all things made until now? Oh, it's not for you to know, Sarmael… No matter how hard we tried, we haven't become immortal… almost complete regeneration of physical bodies, anabiosis neuro-capsules, biotic-molecular synthesis with immersive speeds, but… What's the point, Sarmael? What's the reason if that very soul is still living in you? Nothing is capable to protect you from its silent whispering which dements you day after day, night behind the night, century following a century…”

“Yes, I've heard about that particular disease, mister Architect. A brand-new virus, brought into our system by first colonists from ‘Epsilon-5’ appeared to be capable of changing the rhythmic of neuro-impulses in our cellular structures, leading to…”