
- Do you plead guilty?
- Not.
- Illumine yourself with the sign of the cross with your thumb and swear to pray to the Lord for the health of Big Brother.
- I'm a Neomuslim.
- We have one instance for all denominations, but I will call a colleague - having said this, he left.
An old inquisitor with a face disfigured by his official position. Cold eyes that look through you, a dry face and hands like a dead man's.
My eyes fell on the slogan hanging on the wall "I swear to honor Big Podolsk in the name of Big Brother." A completely new, yes, better old will be "Podolsk fields will feed me and you." Recently, the Inquisition decided to rename everything large in honor of Big Brother. Big Moscow, Big Podolsk. Klimovsk and a handful of villages have joined us. And all this periphery will now be called Podolsk ... Hmm, the limit, everyone knows that they have always envied us. We have a better ration, and water is given twice a day, and even a hot one is included on Saturday. Podolsk is the pearl of the Greater Moscow Region, and what is Klimovsk? Here you know? You do not know and do not, it is no more. Big Brother is really great. Big Brother is twice as magnificent as Moses. Moses led his people out of Egypt, and the Big Brother came from Egypt and Turkey. This joke is not approved, although it is very popular.
Illustration: Pal Palych')
Two people entered the room - the senior inquisitor and the special, apparently, this concerned Neo-Islam, this could only be understood by a green patch.
- What is your name? What is your position and where do you work? Do you know why you are here?
- But, I already answered these questions.
“The old form had to be written off,” said the new inquisitor in a tone that did not have objections.
- My name is Oleg Ilyin. I am a mechanical engineer. I work at the Podolsk Mechanical Plant. I am informed that I am accused of a thought crime.
- There is no such charge against you. There is no such crime. We just want to talk to you. When you searched your desktop, you found undocumented drawings of an unknown device, as well as thirty centimeters of a copper pipe with a cross section of 20 mm, fifty centimeters with a cross section of 16 mm, and one hundred and twenty grams of sulfur. Tell us why you need all this? Did you want to take it out from the factory?
“But, you know, just asked me if I plead guilty?” No, I just wanted to finish the boiler, which we are preparing for release! - the lie turned out unconvincing and everyone understood that.
- Circumstances have changed. You are free. We cut you a family ration by 20 percent.
- But we already live hungry.
- Now you will miss everything. Mors certa, vita incerta. Death is certain, life is not defined. Are you leaving already or do I need to listen to you?
I was thrown into a cold sweat. The Inquisition is omnipotent. Any person can be found guilty and sentenced to death, they can be nullified or recognized as initials. If the Inquisition recognizes a person as an initial, then even after the sterilization process, he ceases to be a full member of society. The fact that they let me go, even without a formal labor accusation, was very strange.
Coming to the door, I heard the pressure in the steam pneumatic system being injected. This remote control output, inquisitors utilitarian technology recognize and actively use. A click, the door opened, and I went out into the street. In appearance, the building of the Inquisition looked like a water tower, it was an old water tower, but with the development of utilitarian science it became no longer necessary. They paint it every year, they patch it, but that doesn’t make it look fresher than the rest of the city. Everything is buried in the dust. Dust last time so much that it is everywhere. The seen mansions, which are randomly scattered around the city, still remember the former beauty. Like old maids, these mansions became decrepit, not seeing youth. The youth of the whole generation, the youth and the flourishing of the city was stolen by the war, but not about that now.
Outside there was an unimaginable heat. The very beginning of August and from the dry hot air all around ringing, only quiet winds carry dust. The first thought was to go back to the porch, as in childhood, when we were in the heat, sweating from running, hiding with the guys in the porches of the five-story building. But voluntarily no one came here, so I went faster to work. I was summoned during the working day, only one hundred twenty minutes pass, time was running out and I had to hurry.
Previously, I would have thought that to be a thunderstorm, but we did not have rain for several years. I caught myself thinking that today they would hang someone else, but not me. Strange, but it pleases, although no, it is not strange. This is the sixteenth general rule "Cleansing society is the key to prosperity." Behind the beautiful words was the fact that every day at least one person should be sentenced to death, and the sentence carried out.
I had already seen the entrance door, when the junior inspector met me, it was still green in appearance. There was not a single cross on the epaulets; the youngest rank was immediately clear. From such always some trouble, they want to curry favor. Chunky, straight nose, mischievously smiling lips, small shifty eyes, just like from the poster "Join the Inquisition."
- Why are you in working hours not in the workplace?
“I swear to honor utilitarian science and despise pseudo-scientific progress.” “Every time I said this phrase that was alien to me, I hope someone, against the other end of the earth, did something good. - I have a pass for 120 minutes, I was called into the Inquisition.
- Let's make out the protocol. Do you know what the penalty is for being late?
- But, in fact, I have time, I still have five minutes.
- The protocol I will draw up ten minutes, by this time you will already be late. Where do you live?
- I live in the Big Yellow House on Bolshaya Serpukhovskaya. Let me go, I will have time to work. Can you explain what's wrong?
- You are not supposed to know this. And I was supposed to issue a report. You just have to linger after work for an additional half of the shift, do not aggravate your situation.
Taking the report and the penalty bulletin, I set off with a calm step to the checkpoint. Still, I received a labor fine today. Everything falls into place. I went to the Avtovakhter and tried to take a level position, not leaning against the wall. Someone thought of in order to optimize the cost of repairs to upholster the walls at the plant with iron sheets. By the middle of the day, the places where the sunlight fell were heated so that it was impossible to touch. Two monoculars looked at me, inside the process of sorting cards began.
Avtovahter us put in the past year. He worked on the well-known principle of light pressure. For all employees, contour maps were created, when someone wanted to go through the checkpoint, the machine accepted the visitor's contour and superimposed the contours of the employees in turn. Upon receipt of identical lines, the light passing through the combined lines set in motion the door opening mechanism. I knew this because I was involved in the installation and configuration, but for the majority, God's fishing was done inside.
Religion is closely related to current technology. After the war, our society perfectly mastered the latest developments. I always remember these words when I see a high-tech device. Technologies make the world more accessible, everyday activities more convenient, but we delegate to them too many of their natural abilities. Would not our imagination and imagination become a price for convenience?
At the factory, passing by shop number three, I cringe every time. It was necessary to pass along a long unlit corridor between two workshops. You can tear your eyes. An oily gum flowed from the walls, forming huge puddles. I am not supposed to know what is going on inside. By the sound of there, some millstones worked furiously, valves of steam release were buzzing. In the depths of this workshop, probably, miraculous power was born, which triggered the machines in the entire plant. All the walls of the aisle were inscribed with slogans from the week of tolerance: “If you shout, you will acquire a hernia”, “You will get riddled, the pig is sewn up, the skin of the face is already lousy”. The pungent smell did not let me breathe, I could feel the wave of anxiety and fear rolling through me. I felt uneasy, I wish I had gone a long way.
I went to my shop number thirty-six. The room for me was native, it was a warm spirit. The ceiling height of eight meters, no less, on all the walls stretched endless string of pipes. These were power pipes, pneumatic mail and pipes for supplying raw materials. The warm breath of the world, unhurried and lazy. Everything was under a layer of dust, the haze from the work of the machines hung in the air. Mitya Golokhvastov walked towards me. He is from Klimovsk, after joining they have not yet been given a new uniform, so he stood out sharply in his gray overalls with a stripe on his chest. A book and two bullets. Well, why did these people shoot books? Here you know? And I did not know, but it turns out that KLNS (the Central Pseudo-Scientific Sterilizer) is still in Klimovsk to this day. Now the need for it has disappeared, since all science, which has no applied character, has been exterminated as a class, and earlier all the objectionable and pseudo-scientific literature was brought there. That's from the war so moved.
- Hi Oleg! Heard about yesterday's history of cleansing? From the fourth neighborhood, the family tried to escape without a permit. On one steam engine, three of us, with a half-empty boiler. Escape, the chase, the child falls from the car and the Inquisition rides through it. They were caught up and judged. Yesterday we went to see the penalty in the center. They shot both at once, the entire scaffold was covered with blood. Fat was an infection. Where is he going to run then. "In the Big Podolsk live a great joy" that's all they know.
- I did not hear, I'm in a hurry, I'm sorry. - here it is the ideal of a citizen, stupid and obedient. Rhymes and slogans are our everything. I went straight to my boss, past a row of machines. Everything worked, spilling hot blue sparks around.
The senior engineer in the workshop was the only one with his office, all the others huddled along the wall of the workshop, seated between the machines. When I entered, he received instructions from the center through a mental trainer. He used this mental receiver for more than a year, but he never removed the stickers from his factory. I never understood such people. He will also take care of the coffin, he will ask to be laid next to him, probably. Because of the smoke in the room, it was difficult to distinguish objects. Filling his lungs with a caustic mist, he, whining, wrote down the directives. The boss looked like my grandfather, and that bad one was a man. De mortuis aut bene, aut nihil. Oh well…
My grandfather died when I was thirteen, but by that time he managed to get tired of the whole family. In his youth, he was a hairdresser. I don’t know if it’s true or not that he ransacked his grandmother into a grave, but he was much older than his grandmother, suffered from gout and complained all the time. But he survived the war, but the grandmother did not, although everyone knows a ration card for a family.
Diplomas, diplomas, slogans. And stamps, stamps, stamps. Like all sob ... "By the decree of the chief inquisitor of Bolshoi Podolsk, by permission, Big Brother will generously forgive all sins for services to the Inquisition and reward ... ..", "Fortuna - non penis, in manus non recipe", "Generosity for yourself is greed for society. "
Looking around, I did not notice that Peter Vasilyevich had already finished the conversation and was looking at me. Looks special look. There is no malice in this look, but there is no approval either. So usually look at the pet, which is naughty.
“I swear to honor utilitarian science and despise pseudo-scientific progress” - do you understand the meaning of these sacred words for a scientist?
- This, too, we all know, Peter Vasilyevich. We are all in the glory of Big Brother can repeat the experience of the past. But you can not resist the temptation of pseudoscience, even nothing to try. Everything that was needed for a happy life has already been invented. The rest is sinful and all this obscurantism.
“Your possibilities of acquiring hostility are incomprehensible.” Oleg, do you understand that you are casting a shadow on the team? You do not read common prayers, but you are forgiven. Do not participate in the restoration of temples. This is a voluntary matter, we are each in the shop happy to help recreate the world order, and here I am going to meet you. You can close your eyes to everything, but we found an unknown drawing in your desk, and I know from the position all the drawings that you are allowed to know. You understand that I could not do otherwise than to inform the Inquisition. It is forbidden to make drawings of devices that do not exist in reality, and there is no point in this. What do you need to explain to me as a child? Is this all alien to the faithful, do you understand me, Oleg?
- But I…
- Shut up, sit where you sit, listen and remember. I have been working here since the end of the war and have already seen more of yours. How can I make drawings of non-existent products? And most importantly, why? Not ours with you is a crazy thing. It is impossible to do something new. You have to remember it yourself and tell your friends about it. There is no divine providence in this, it is a road to nowhere. How can you draw something that is not? Tomorrow you draw a horse with wings? Or refute the law of the world? Or two or two you will be equal to five? This is a frantic truth, as the tear of the mother is pure.
Well, everything, the old man finally suffered, we must end this conversation. But, I had to answer something. What to answer? That I am not such that I hope to come up with something new? This would be akin to recognizing insanity. They say that only in Stolotovo in the temple of science is allowed to make drawings of devices that have not yet been. Drawings of devices that were not, but which will not. But in this I do not believe.
Here again earned the receiver. Everyone knows that for a public official, the receiver is the mouthpiece of fate. Through him, they receive directives and plans that are required to execute or pass on to the shoulders of subordinates. That's how we live.
After working one and a half shifts, I returned home exhausted, but happy. At home you could be yourself, leave your tracing paper and rules. So did everyone, but no one admitted it. At home, everyone became atheist, no one believed in the identity and indestructibility of Big Brother, in the prosperity of society. We are told that life is getting better, but just who? In our country, everything is done for a person, and I even know his name. I received a reprimand and labor service. Reprimand and labor service is not the worst punishment for what I dare to think otherwise. The main thing is that my secret will remain a secret, no one has learned about my plan. I opened the Pandora's box and was not pleased myself, but there is nothing worse than not doing what you consider necessary.
Having entered the room, at the first moment I still did not understand what was the matter, it is not every day that I manage to see people from the “Corps of Good” - this is the power body of the Inquisition. There were three people in the room, all facing the same person, two were holding my wife and son, and the third approached me. With a lightning movement, he brought a device to me, and I lost consciousness in convulsions.
When I woke up, I didn’t even understand if it was all true. I woke up on the floor in the room. After going into the kitchen, I saw on the table a sealed cake with tripe, but this is normal for Thursday. On Thursday, the best ration, and the cake with tripe, I love since childhood. All things were in their places, it is even strange. No one responded to my call, but maybe it all seemed so good to me? Everything was normal, but from the apartment, as if life had gone, all things were lying too right, too smooth. I did not immediately notice the sheet on the table.
With a terrible tremor, I took a sheet with the arms of the Inquisition. “Do not judge the wrong of your poor. Get away from untruths and do not kill the innocent and the right ”(Ex. XXIII, 6-8). On the reverse side, “We inform you about the progress of the process in your case. Our testimonies and materials of the case turned out to be insufficient to find you innocent. You need to appear to receive a decision, but, like any citizen, you have a choice. The Pass is open for you. ”
This can not be. The passage could open for everyone together or for each separately. All of us from childhood are being prepared for the opening of the Pass, but the Pass of the common, the Pass of the Doomsday. And if this happens, you must follow the rest. It doesn't matter that you are far from your home or temple. Since ordinary brothers and sisters are supposed to use their receivers at least once a day, during the Judgment Day everyone will learn about Walking to Heaven.
It was so called, according to church doctrine. Hike to Heaven. Flight to Egypt. Exodus from Egypt. In the Bible, everyone constantly goes somewhere. From place to place. It may take time until you find out, but when you find out, you must immediately shoot yourself or drink poison, drown yourself, hang yourself, open your veins, throw yourself from the bridge or the roof. Leave behind everyone or accept this responsibility personally. To heaven.
I did not understand what was happening, there must be another way out, I could not, I was afraid, I ran. As a child I always had a side pain after running. But recently I noticed, now it never hurts, my legs may ache, I can feel tired, my heart will hurt and beat like a piston, but my side has stopped hurting. That's why it is, you know? I'm not, this is just a fact. I was intoxicated, with my heavy burden running, and the wind was breathing dust in my face.
I hate it. I was about to run across the square to the building of the Inquisition, when suddenly I was numb. On the neo-eshaphote were those same Inquisitors who interrogated me during the day, my wife and son were also there. Everyone was just waiting for me. And the process continued.
- The High Court of the Inquisition finds you guilty. Your spouse is recognized as an accomplice as an accomplice and is subject to sterilization; the society will take care of your young son, you are sentenced to death. . ?
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