Project "Eye" Part 9

_{Photo: AV Photography}

Good day, dear readers. I would like to immediately say that the ninth part was not too voluminous for several reasons:

1. It is of great importance for the plot.
2. I deliberately focus on the events described below your attention, so the whole part is devoted to only one scene.

For those who do not understand what it is and what happens:

Eye - my personal literary project, the work on which I started in May of this year. From a small sketch, he turned into a science fiction work, the heads of which I post, as I write, on GT.
')
Previous parts:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8

The text, as always, under the cut. Enjoy reading.

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Ivor walked along one of the capital's streets, approaching closer and closer to the center of the city. Not so far behind him, he left the gate of the checkpoint, the soldiers of which checked the level of access of citizens wishing to get to the center. One of them, gloomy fellow, took Ivor’s personal card, checked the photo and the man standing in front of him, and missed the old surgeon further: the status of a B + citizen gave him the opportunity to walk across the city and go beyond it, accompanied by soldiers.

And now, having passed the post of control, Mike moved to his destination. In the central sector, rare public transport, which was used by service personnel and workers, for the most part had levels not higher than C, did not go, and only commanders of army units and citizens not lower than A level were eligible for a private car.
Occasionally, electric cars and army buggies swept through the roadway, and on the pedestrian zone fenced off by a high steel fence it was completely empty. Ivora was stopped several times by patrols in the city, trying to arrest for not being at work at this time of the day — it was noon outside — but he was saved by a letter with an official summons to the Council.

The closer the old doctor approached the center of the city, where the Council building with the residences of its members was located, the more places of entertainment met on its way. Now the neon signs did not burn, but on Saturday evening, when the army lifted the blockade and restrictions on movement within the Capital, the streets were filled with crowds of simple hard workers and cheerful girls. The first ones were looking for drinks and opportunities to lower their savings to the casino, others - easy money overnight or just entertainment, if there is no solvent "male".

Ivor never understood this weekly orgy, in which from time to time all the cities controlled by the Council were plunged. Fuel to the fire was added to rampant drugs and venereal diseases. And if the second in the army, which acted as the patron saint of what is happening, was strict, then the command and command closed their eyes to dust and other chemical rubbish melting the brains and burning people from the inside. Those who could not afford the metropolitan casinos and drinks were sent to the ghetto, now standing in ruins: about a month and a half ago, the troops razed it to the ground, killing all the members of the gang that cooperated, as it turned out, with resistance.

After passing two more checkpoints, Mike ran into the gates of the government quarter, access to which only soldiers of the garrison assigned to him and clerks of various stripes, who lived, in their main mass, nearby, in the inner ring of the city, had access to. The indiscriminate middle-aged lieutenant ordered Ivora to surrender his citizen identification card, a letter to the Council and wait.
It was already cool outside. Trying to snuggle up in a breech cloak and shifting from foot to foot in the downtrodden, but neat and cleaned shoes, the surgeon, under the supervision of two fighters, waited for him to be inside.
Ivora was summoned personally by the adviser to Harris, and the doctor was wary of the conversation to which he was invited. In general, things were going well at the center: Deimos survived the operation, the memory lock was successful, the sisters' performance grew, and the troops under the leadership of the operators showed extreme efficiency during the global Ghetto sweep. But Ivor was afraid. Though Harris was his patron, but, at the same time, he, Ivor, lacked natural resourcefulness, an instinct, for safe communication with such people. With all his experience and value for the state, in front of Harris, he felt like a dull boy who climbs into adult affairs, deadly deeds.

After about fifteen minutes, the gloomy lieutenant came out to him, silently returned the letter and the map and offered to go inside, accompanied by one of the fighters. Another five minutes on the way to the government quarter, and they went to the Council building, rounded it on the left, passing the main entrance, and headed for one of the doors for the guard and personnel. Passing through narrow corridors, they emerged from the door labeled "service entrance" and headed for the elevators directly in front of them.

The soldier was silent all the way. Occasionally glaring gloomily at Ivora, as if not realizing that this poorly dressed old man had forgotten in the Council building, and why the adviser wanted to see him, he nevertheless obeyed the order and led the surgeon to the Harris office, bypassing the main entrance - away from prying eyes .

They climbed to the third floor and went through a long corridor with marble floors and antique ceiling lamps. When he reached the massive dark wood door - Ivor could not determine his breed by sight - the soldier knocked carefully, paused and, opening the door, took a step inside.

“Counselor Harris,” the soldier greeted the officer, “Michael Ivor is here, as ordered.”

“Thank you,” Harris sat at a small writing desk to the right of the door, with his back to the wall, “come back to the post, fighter.”

Keeping a gloomy expression on his face, Harris watched the soldier look to the door and, after he went out into the corridor, got up from his seat and locked the office with a key. Then he offered Ivora to hang the coat on the back of the chair, and he went to the control panel of the room and opened the music catalog. After several finger movements from the speakers built into the wall, the melody of the twenty-third Mozart concert flowed. Harris froze at the wall and enjoyed the first seconds of the recording, and then turned to Ivor:

- Now you can say hello! - Harris colleagues on the advice would say that at this moment another person appeared before them, - Hello, Michael! - he said in clumsy Russian.

Mikhail Nikolayevich Iverenev, and the last three decades, Dr. Michael Ivor, only smiled at these attempts by the adviser to greet him in his native language and silently embraced his old friend.

“James, you could send me a car too,” he sarcastically remarked in English, “walks are certainly useful, but not at my age.”

“Well, I'm sorry, conspiracy,” Harris replied with a smile, “of course, sooner or later, the army command will know that you were with me.” And maybe it will not come. Have tea

- Yes it would be nice.

While Harris was conjuring at the buffet, Ivor sat in a chair at a coffee table and looked at the capital's sullen concrete pillars. Huge, by today's standards, the city seemed dead. In some places, smoke was rising from the pipes of factories, whose equipment has not yet been transferred to the use of solar and wind energy, but this did not save the overall picture.

- Stagnation.

- What? “Harris just set up herbal tea and now came up to the table with a bowl of cookies and caramels,” did you say something?

“Stagnation, James, that's what I said,” the surgeon glanced at the bowl, but decided to wait for tea, “the same picture as fifteen years ago, like twenty, when the city was just rebuilt.” We all hoped for a return to normal life, but only got its likeness. Surrogate world reflected in a crooked mirror.

Harris looked at his old friend and silently returned to the sideboard for cups and a teapot with brewing. Sitting in a chair opposite Ivor, he poured a hot drink and, trying not to burn yourself, took a small noisy sip.

- Understand, Michael ...

“I’ve been Michael for many years now, you don’t need to disturb old wounds,” Ivor interrupted him.

- Good. Understand, Mike, we did everything we could. Including you.

“Sometimes it seems to me that it was worth staying at home,” Ivor was now somewhere far away on the other side of the globe, and come what may. Not such a future, I expected, really, not that.

He took a cookie, bit off a piece and took a sip of tea. Harris gave Ivor some time to enjoy a drink and sweets and said:

- Okay, let's talk about business.

Played Shostakovich.

“But for starters,” Harris continued, “I'm sorry that I spoke to you like this a few months ago via video call, of course, that we were listened to.”

“Nothing, I understand,” Ivor answered.

“Would you see your face,” Harris laughed, “didn’t you think to become an actor in your youth?”

- Never.

- You have a talent.

“Not at all,” Ivor unlocked.

- Never mind. How is the captain doing?

“Deimos is stable,” Ivor took another sip of tea. Now he has cooled down a bit and the doctor could fully enjoy his taste - all indicators are normal, to be honest, even surprising. The blocking of personality was also successful. True, we almost killed him during the operation for this, but he turned out to be a hard ass.

“Well, I'm glad,” answered Harris, “what about his loyalty?” Deimosu prepared not the last role in our company.

- Everything is fine, from the chained dog he was before the operation, there is not a trace left, but the potential is enormous. True, I’m worried that warriors may start asking questions about where Captain Henry Johnson has gone.

“Do not worry,” Harris also took the cookies, “it was long since written off as being killed in battle.” I have a couple of friends at headquarters. Not very important bumps, but a couple of signatures can be put. Nobody will remember him. Plus, I made sure his subordinates were at the forefront of the ghetto attack. Almost no one survived.

“Mozart again,” said Ivor, “I don’t really like Mozart.”

- Why?

- It seems to me to be somehow too joyful, superficial, unreal. In any case, in the context of modernity.

“I like it,” Harris said.

- To each his own.

- Your truth. More tea?

- If I may.

Harris poured the remains of a teapot into cups. The drink has already noticeably cooled, but it has not yet lost its taste. The men took more sweets: Harris cookies, and Ivor caramel.

- James, I'm not completely sure what we are doing. Yes, we are entering the home stretch, but I'm still not sure about the correctness of our enterprise, - Ivor was worried: his speech was colored with a barely audible accent that only those who knew about his true origin could distinguish. Of the living, only Harris could do it.

- My friend, we have already discussed this more than once. Look out the window. What do you see there?

Ivor complied, rather for the sake of appearance, since the sentence was metaphorical, glancing at the gray heights of the Capital:

- Stagnation.

- Exactly, my friend. Stagnation. You know, - Harris finished his already slightly warm tea in one fell swoop and continued, - once, during the war, I was in an ambush in one of the houses. There I came across a book. The front line moved away, I had absolutely nothing to do and I began to read. It was an old, shabby and yellowed from time a little book of some twentieth-century science fiction writer, I don’t remember the name, but the name sounded in my memory: “Triffid Day”. So, Misha - Harris could not resist and called Ivora by his real name - there was a beautiful idea. And the essence of this idea was as follows: if after the fall of civilization we have to constantly work without straightening our backs to feed ourselves, the next generation will grow as farm laborers, and our grandchildren will already be savages. Because there will be no one to teach them, to do science, to move the machine of progress forward. Even our ultra-modern army costumes, this fantastic armor - only the logical conclusion of the development begun before the drought. Over the past three decades, we have not created anything fundamentally new, parasitizing on the corpse of the old world.

“I understand that, but ...”

“What about but, Mike?” Have you seen young people for a long time, about twenty? I understand that each generation calls the next one lost, but everything is much sadder. They are already laborers, Mike. Most do not know how to read and really count. Education today is the prerogative of the offspring of the elite: high-ranking military, engineers, doctors, part of the clerks. And the saddest thing is that access to knowledge is artificially limited. Instead of ubiquitous education, additional television shows are launched, entertaining the crowd, and new brothels and casinos are being opened. And all this is done with tacit approval and with the support of two parasites: the army and the Council. Yes, I understand that America could not replace your homeland, but since you could not save yours, then at least help me to save mine.

Ivor raised an eyebrow:

“We’re not at the Council’s meeting so that you would be so crucified.” Motherland ... Help save ... James, is that you? - he laughed.

“No, I am another talking head from among the Council members,” Harris grinned back, “you yourself can see perfectly well, Mike.”

- Yes I see. With the current state of affairs, the population of this part of the land has no future.

- Exactly. And we both know who is to blame.

“Too loud a statement, Jamie.” I prefer to think of this as an adaptation of the existing regime.

- That is, for the survival of the regime it is necessary to poison and turn their own population into idiots?

- Idiots easier to manage.

- Some people still have enough sense to express dissatisfaction. God bless them, Mike, because the potential threat in the face of resistance would not be enough for such powerful financing of the Eye project. I would be torn apart, learn the Council, where so much effort and money went.

Ivor took another caramel and gladly sent it into his mouth.

- God, how I miss the sweets at times. Speaking of resistance. Is there news from Troika? As far as I remember, until we agree with them, it does not make sense to begin the sweep.

- Scraping? - Harris laughed - we are going to unleash a new civil war, and not to clean up.

“In my opinion, getting rid of parasites is more cleaning than war,” Ivor answered, “so what about the Troika?”

- While quiet, there is no news from Melissa, but I am sure that she will cope. Matthew was always distinguished by sanity, unlike our generals. For now, we need to focus on Deimos and the sisters. We have lost most of the operators after their distribution among the army units, and only these three will be able to return them to our ranks. Or destroy, if necessary.

From these words of Harris, Ivor flinched. So many hours of work, so many hours of operating, then to destroy the fighters he created. But no one promised that it would be easy.

- By the way, do you know that I am considered the most vile person among the members of the Council? - smiled Harris.

- Seriously? You?

- Yeah.

“Is that how you do it?” - Ivor was intrigued.

“It's very simple, my friend,” it was obvious that Harris was pleased with himself, “a nasty smile, a violation of personal space, and always look in the eyes.” This is very unnerving people, even the most thick-skinned, with time, penetrates.

“You're a monster,” the surgeon laughed, “seriously?” Do you walk and drill everyone?

- Well yes.

- And because of this, you began to be considered the most unpleasant person in the council?

- Exactly. And for one and the most zealous fighter for the preservation of the current order of things.

“How ironic,” Ivor was amazed.

- Yes. Given that I am probably the last member of the Council to whom the army did not launch a hand in the ass. By the way, she launched some of her hands so deeply that she could even move her lips at any convenient time.

Melody again changed.

- Beethoven.

“He's the one,” Harris confirmed.

- We see each other for the last time?

- Most likely, Mike.

- You do not believe in success?

- I'm a realist, but it's worth a try.

- Anyway, a lot of blood will be shed, James.

- I know.

Ivor rose from his seat.

- Will you go already? Harris asked.

- Yes, I still have business in the city, more precisely, I want to take a breath, I think, Anna will cope this week without me.

- Good. You know, - Harris got up from his seat and helped Ivor to put on his coat, - I will now order you to drive the car, you look unimportant.

- What about conspiracy?

- When they ask me who came, I will say that you are my personal proctologist, and my hemorrhoids broke out. No, not that. Better let there be problems with walking on the need.

- Are you serious now? - eyebrows rose from Ivor's surprise, - is a personal proctologist?

- Well, the glory goes about me that I prefer boys to girls, so why not a personal proctologist? - Harris winks conspiratorially.

- Fe, an abomination.

“You're extremely politically incorrect, Mike,” Harris reproachfully joked him.

- Political correctness remained in another world and died during ethnic cleansing before the drought.

- Yes, I agree. Well, let's say goodbye, in fact, for this you came.

Ivor nodded in agreement. They shook hands and hugged each other.

- Take care, James.

- You, too, take care of yourself, Michael.

“Okay, see you later.”

- Yes.

Both knew that they had little chance of a new meeting.

- Oh, thank you, Dr. Ivor! - Harris turned off the music, and along with it the jamming bug of bugs in his office and already opened the door, - I hope I will be much better!

“Good day to you, adviser to Harris, good day,” Ivor played up to him.

- The car will be waiting for you at the main entrance, Dr. Ivor! And thank you again!

“Bend over,” Ivor thought, but he said aloud the following:

- Thank you so much, Counselor, all the best!

“Goodbye,” said Harris.

Ivor asked to take him to the outskirts of the capital, to his old apartment. The old surgeon decided to spend a couple of days on the surface, maybe even be able to catch one of the last sunny days. The long months spent under the ground, oppressed. Ivor was sorely lacking in sunlight, he could feel it. "Okay. A couple of days, and then back to the center, to work, ”he thought. "Soon. Soon, Mike, a meat grinder will start, in which you are unlikely to survive. Well, let me, I have already lived his. , , ?»

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