Doll

Converted from the field lab, an armored van with the smeared but still discernible sign "Chemical Synthetics Inc" stopped at the edge of the highway.

A few minutes later, the driver’s door opened and a man in an oxygen mask and a yellow protective overalls with a corporation emblem — a stylized image of a benzene molecule — emerged from the van. There was not a single open area on his body: his head was covered by a hood, tight to the mask, his hands were protected by gloves, pressed with cuffs of sleeves, trousers were tucked into high army boots.

Then the passenger door opened and two more men jumped onto the highway: a woman and a girl of seven. Both of them were in oxygen masks and dressed in gray-blue overalls of chemical protection without emblems.
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“Ray, Suzy and I will walk along the coast, I promised to show her the ocean,” the woman said, and taking the girl by the hand, led her down the embankment toward the ocean.

Over the decades since the last repair, the asphalt surface has cracked and eroded, and only huge concrete slabs protruding from the sand like the bones of extinct giants of the Mesozoic era did not allow it to collapse completely.

Many years ago there were fields around the highway; now, on one side, a dead plain with salty sand, clay, and several dried black skeletons of trees, which had grown to grow in the absence of a man, turned gray. After rare rains, the plain became gray-green for several days from rapidly developing blue-green algae in an excess of carbon dioxide. On the other - the ocean due to the melting of the polar caps of the planet bit off a significant piece of land, forming a shallow bay, and a hundred-mile-long highway section was partially flooded.

Ray knew this, even at the station he looked at maps of satellite imagery, he would have turned to the west much earlier, if not for the desire of a little girl who dreamed of seeing the ocean. He took the binoculars and, having turned off the autofocus that was useless in these conditions, brought it to his eyes. Above the surface of the water was a yellow, barely visible fog consisting of small droplets of sulphurous acid, colored with oxides of nitrogen.

The surface of the water, covered with small ripples, was covered with a thin brown film of hydrocarbons. Waves rolling on the shore left spreading rainbow spots on the gray sand. From time to time gas bubbles burst on the surface of the water.

Jenny had never seen so much water at once, huge space was overwhelming and at the same time beckoned her. And the ocean girl did not seem to be impressed.

“He’s somehow not alive,” she said disappointedly, “not like the photographs.” On them he was blue, and this gray.

- These photos are many years old. At that time, he was blue, and now he's just very dirty.

“Can you help him become the same?” Asked Susie.

“I don’t know,” answered Jenny, “but we will do everything in our power.”

- You speak quite like doctors in films to a dying patient!

Jenny smiled.

“Well, our patient is still ...” she hesitated, and the smile seemed to wash away from her face with a dirty ocean wave.

- I need to take samples of water, do not want to see?

“Nah,” Susie shook her head negatively, as much as the protective suit allowed her to do. - Can I take a walk?

“Only not far,” the woman replied, “and be careful!”

Jenny uncovered the laboratory case she had taken with her and pulled out a telescopic sampler and a box of test tubes. Filling the first tube into the instrument, she plunged a thin tube into the water; then, when the test tube was filled with turbid liquid, she did the same with the others, immersing the tube in the ground at different depths.

The device showed a high content of methane, hydrogen sulfide and other waste products of anaerobic bacteria. The rest, including the composition of microflora will be available in the laboratory.

"At least some kind of life, if it were possible to organize a full-fledged expedition ..." Despite the internal protests, the scientist again spoke to her.

Jenny somehow calculated that even the modest amount of oxygen produced by algae living in the open, least polluted parts of the world's oceans would be enough to maintain its concentration in the atmosphere at least fourteen percent, instead of the current miserable seven. But, as it turned out, almost all of it was immediately used by bacteria to oxidize a huge amount of organic matter washed away from the continents into the ocean.

“It is interesting,” she thought, “what if somewhere deep in, far from ocean currents, the oases of life with pure water still exist?” It is a pity that we will never know ... ”

The woman’s thoughts were interrupted by Suzy’s scream, in which Jenny could only make out her name. Throwing everything she abruptly jumped up, from which she had darkened her eyes for a moment, and began to look around the neighborhood in search of a girl.

Susie showed up a few hundred yards south, leaning over something. Jenny breathed a sigh of relief. “It seems that everything is fine with her, how could I forget about her?” It was impossible to let her go alone. ” Thoughts flashed in her head, like frightened birds. Noticing that Jenny was looking at her, the girl waved to her.

The beach was littered with heaps of garbage that could be used to study the human history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Perhaps someday, they will become real finds for future archaeologists. The wreckage of televisions, glass bottles, rusty cans, plastic boxes of various colors and sizes, torn rags, once clothes, broken phones, pencils, mirrors in rims, sunglasses ... The ocean kindly returned his uninvited gifts to a man.

When Jenny came closer, she saw what attracted Susie's attention.

An Asian hinge doll lay in the mud on the shore, about sixteen inches long. Time and aggressive conditions thoroughly patted her: the once-blue dress and bright hair faded, the polyurethane skin swelled and cracked, and the internal cables weakened or decayed, due to which the doll found itself in an unnatural posture with twisted limbs.

“Jenny, take her with you?” The girl asked. - I'll call her Lisa.

- Sue, do not touch her! - shouted Jenny. - Look how dirty it is, there may be dangerous germs on it. We will not be able to take it, and even if they took it, the military will not let us through with it.

- But she is cold and sick! - Suzie sobbed, as if it was her, and not the doll had to stay on a deserted beach.

“This is another problem ...”

Jenny looked around and noticed the remains of some reinforced concrete structure sticking out of the sand five hundred yards to the north. Perhaps it was one of the supports of the second web, which was never completed.

“Well,” she said, “we assign it to this wreckage, they will protect it from rain and wind as much as possible.”

Jenny pulled out sterile wipes from her pocket and, carefully wrapping the doll around them, tried to pick it up. The dirt resisted for a few seconds, but in the end, let out a loud sob, let it go, which made Jenny almost lose her balance. The doll itself, in a difficult doll, crammed a lot of dirt, and this made it even harder.

Rusty steel rods protruding from the coastal drift, like giant petrified tentacles, wrapped around and pierced the broken concrete slabs.

Leaving the girl at a safe distance from the support, Jenny walked around this symbol of past human greatness: neither mosses, nor lichens, nor even algae were on it - only gray-green patches of bacterial film in damp places.

- Sue! - Jenny called, - there is a gap between the plates, quite a safe place for her. How do you think?

The girl nodded.

Coming close to the crumbling slabs and trying not to catch on to the bars, the woman gently placed the doll in a niche, removed the napkins from it, and returned to Suzie.

“That's it,” she said, processing the gloves with an antiseptic spray. “Let's go to the van, rather,” Ray must be already worried.

She took the girl by the hand and they headed in the opposite direction. After a few steps, Susie suddenly stopped, turned toward the improvised sarcophagus, and shouted, “Farewell, Lisa, I will miss you!”

This template phrase, usually sounding falsely from the mouth of an adult, so hurt Jenny with her naivety and sincerity that she caught her breath.

There was a thought in my head: “No, not now. I have no right to show my weakness. ”

But one stubborn tear still rolled down her cheek. Jenny ran her free hand over her face to gently brush her away, but her hand slipped on the glass of the oxygen mask.

As luck would have it, the walkie-talkie came on and Ray’s voice rang in the earpiece

- Is everything OK?

Jenny swallowed, collected her thoughts and answered in a firm voice:

- Everything is fine, we are already returning.

Approaching the place where she had thrown her tools, Jenny stopped and looked again at the dead ocean; her gaze at first wandered aimlessly near the shore, and then suddenly broke off and rushed off into the horizon-lined horizon where the ocean met the sky, and it was already impossible to tell where the one ended and the other started, because both of them were equally gray and dirty . And even brown acid clouds thickened in the sky during their walk were reflected in the water by torn oil stains.

One cloud was like the tent of her Indian ancestors, which her mother had told her about. Jenny thought that she heard the sounds of tom-toms, and she was already prepared to see the run-out Indians in national costumes and headdresses with feathers, but soon realized that it was just blood knocking at the temples.

These images awakened in her ancient instincts, lost in the fog of millennia, they bound her mind and caused a desire to immediately tear off her mask and protective suit - this second skin without which a person cannot survive in modern conditions - and inhale, finally, deeply, feel the smells of the world and feel the touch of the wind.

The woman did not notice how her hand reached for the air valve of the jumpsuit.

- Jenny, what's wrong with you? - frightened asked Susie.

Jenny came to herself and pulled back her hand.

“Nothing ... just a little thought ...” she answered, breathing harshly, “go to Ray, I am now ...”

"God, what am I doing!"

Sweat ran down her face, her back was wet.

“Sigh - exhale, inhale - exhale, inhale - exhale. So much better".

Regaining her rhythm and starting to breathe more slowly, Jenny stood still and looked at the ocean for a few more minutes.

“Farewell,” she said, cutting off the connection, “I will miss you,” and smiled.

Then she took an old shabby photo card out of the pocket of her jumpsuit, looked at her for the last time, and, lowering her hand, sidled, as if ashamed of her action, opened her fingers, letting her fall on the dirty sand.

They climbed the highway along the same gentle slope, which they descended earlier to the shore. Opening the door of the van, Jenny helped Susie come in first, then climbed herself. The vacuum mechanism retracted the door into the grooves and firmly fixed it, after which the cold synthetic female voice of the onboard computer sounded:

"Attention! The camera is being purged, do not remove protective suits. ”

Air pumps rustled, and through the cabin pulled cold.

After the noise subsided, and the green letters lit up on the wall, Jenny opened her jumpsuit with delight, pulled off her mask and helped Susie to undress.

In the air for a few more minutes, there was a fresh smell of ozone.

“Jenny,” Susie called softly.

- What, my dear? - Jenny sat next to her.

- Liza is probably very sad now alone. Say, - she suddenly looked up and looked at Jenny with her big blue eyes, - won't you leave me?

- Of course not! - Jenny hugged her. - You are the most expensive that I have.

- And we will never part?

- Never! - she stroked the girl's head. - Now, get some rest, we still have a long way to go.

She lowered the chair, put Suzy down and covered her with her jacket, then left the cabin into the cabin and, closing the door behind her, fell into the passenger seat. Her head just cracked from the obsessive thoughts and sensations that she experienced on the shore.

- How did everything go? - asked Ray. He sat in the driver's seat, his eyes fixed on the emptiness and his hands on his knees, not stirring, like an ancient plaster statue; only his eyes from time to time looked at the screen with a satellite map of the area and again returned to the contemplation of the highway.

Ray was a thin physique, one of those who are called people of no age: if you did not look closely at the fine wrinkles near the eyes, he could be given equal success with thirty, and forty, and fifty.

Eternal indelible sadness, mixed with indifference, as if imprinted by a deep personal tragedy many years ago, has frozen on his face.

“I wonder if I could tell him about how I almost killed myself?”

“Great,” Jenny replied.

- You can't tell.

“It’s just a terrible headache.” - Jenny for a long time could not get used to his slightly sarcastic manner of communication, but in the end I realized that otherwise he could not and learned not to pay attention. Especially if her father considered Ray his friend, despite his tremendous ability to offend everyone around, without even noticing it. Although Ray himself, in her opinion, did not consider anyone to be a friend.

- Did you take the samples?

- Yes, they are in a thermostat.

- Anything interesting?

- Nothing special, methane and hydrogen sulfide in large numbers indicate the presence of anaerobic bacteria, gasoline there is probably no less than water, even heavy metal salts - the electrical conductivity just rolls over. A detailed analysis will do without me.

For a few minutes there was a pause in the air. Too tense to last longer.

“This is the point of no return,” Ray said, once again looking at the little green numbers in the corner of the screen that were counting down the remaining air reserves.

- In terms of? - Jenny did not immediately understand what he was driving at.

- Now you can still come back, but if you change your mind later, there is only enough oxygen for the way back, and if you turn on the air filters, you will not have enough fuel.

“I won’t change my mind,” said Jenny dryly, “I decided everything many years ago.”

“Do you think she will be better off with the military?”

- And we are not going to live with the military.

- Is that so? - Ray didn't look surprised. “So you decided to stay in Albuquerque?”

- Exactly, you heard, the military restored several skyscrapers in the center of the city, sealed them with foam and put air filters. There is a greenhouse and swimming pool. They resettled part of civilian families with children, so Suzy would have someone to play with.

- Still stupid of you.

- And why is that?

- Between the military base and the city - forty miles, if something happens to you, the military may not have the time or desire to save you.

“I know,” answered Jenny, “and yet I want to live in a comfortable apartment, sleep and wake up in bed with a loved one, look at the Sun, just walk along the street after all!” Even in overalls ... I know that this is just an illusion, but I want at least the illusion of a normal human life - and at your Station, minus fourteen floors of glass and steel, I feel like in prison, and I don’t want so Suzy could feel the same.

“But why are you sure that she will feel bad in the Asylum?”

- Because I see how she has changed, she always looks sad. Suzie is increasingly paying attention to the fact that the world about which she learns from your studies and the information network is not at all like the world on the surface. She always gets upset when it turns out that an animal or a plant from a photo disappeared many years ago. Just like me in my time. But I had a father with my mother, I had a sister, I had a childhood, and she had nothing but endless examinations, tests, classes ... Damn it, I wasn’t even allowed to see her!

“I am very sorry,” Ray said in his characteristic manner, “that the best research center of our Corporation has left you so negative memories, but let's look at it a little differently.” At the Station, she will be able to get an excellent education, she will have excellent conditions for self-realization, and, last but not least, her life would be better protected than anywhere else. This is your future and the future of all mankind ...

- Ray, wake up! - Jenny exploded, - I'm trying to tell you all the time, but you can't hear me! Humanity has no future and we have none. Just look around to see this. You, all of you in the corporation, still live in the past, as if nothing happened, trying to save it all. Why Ray? Wouldn't it be better for all of us to just disappear? After millions of years, the planet will be cleansed and will once again become habitable, and bacteria and algae will evolve into new diverse species that will fill it, as if it always has been; only we will not be there, but for the better - we did not deserve the right to live on Earth, after what we did to it.

Jenny, who herself did not fully understand why, considered this strange devotion to Ray to the interests of the Corporation deeply wrong.In the present circumstances, when the time of humanity was coming to an end, and nothing could stop its final disappearance, it seemed to her somehow not right against ... - she could not find the right words until it finally dawned on her: against the natural course of history ! Exactly!Trilobites, stegotsefaly and dinosaurs - they all eventually died out. Of course, unlike people, they didn’t have a mind, but there was something better: a self-preservation instinct. They desperately resisted the best of their abilities, trying to adapt to the new conditions of life, a possible cause of which they were changing. And yet they are extinct. Evolution always reserves the last word.

“It is better to leave yourself quickly and painlessly, than to stretch the agony for several generations. Otherwise, our children will curse us for giving birth to them in the conditions of a planet completely unfit for life. ”

- You know, sometimes it seems to me that your leadership has long realized the meaninglessness of this imaginary struggle. When was the last time they contacted you? I would not be surprised if they left the headquarters in Osaka to spend the remaining time with their families. Can we all do the same? Oh yes!You have no family!

Jenny was silent, she hoped that Ray would somehow react to these, as it seemed to her, insulting words for him: raise her voice, slap her slap in the face or console her. But he was silent.

“No, humanity has a future, perhaps too distant, but it does,” Ray said in a minute with his usual calm voice. “This little girl — your niece — is the future.” She is the first child grown artificially outside the woman, she is smarter, she learns faster, she needs less oxygen, and she is able to withstand great pollution ...

- First of all, - Jenny interrupted him, - she is a child who needs a family, not your experimental rabbit .

- The experiment was a condition to which your sister herself agreed. We acquainted her with all the information concerning the project and the participation of her unborn child in it.

“Probably it was easy to bargain with a dying person,” thought Jenny with offense, and said out loud:

“But she had no choice!”

“There is always a choice for everyone,” said Ray, “it's just that everyone has their own price.” Your sister made her choice consciously, and thanks to him you now have this girl.

“Ray, why have you never called her by name?” Is she just an experiment for you?

Instead of answering, Ray pulled a small silver plate out of his pocket and put it on the chair next to Jenny.

- What is it? She asked.

“Her medical record,” Ray answered. - I recorded just in case, I hope you will not need it.

Jenny knew that it was secret information, and Ray could be in trouble if this became known. Suddenly she felt guilty. In the end, Ray did much more for them than he promised, despite the fact that after the death of her father, there would be no one to influence his decision.
“Ray,” she whispered, “I'm sorry ...”

Jenny leaned over to embrace him, but Ray turned away without answering, and Jenny, embarrassed, returned to her chair.

She didn’t know what Ray really was guided by doing these risky things: first, deciding to personally accompany them on this journey, and second, copying secret information, Ray was always a mystery to her, but she wanted to believe that the main reason was concern for Susie, and not a desire to preserve important scientific results. Well aware of all the naivety of this hope, Jenny, however, could not help herself.

“Hug him goodbye,” she promised herself.

Meanwhile, Ray put his finger to the fingerprint scanner on the control panel, and a green laser beam ran through his eyes.

- Ray Galakher, status: access allowed, control mode: manual. Welcome aboard, Ray. - came from the speakers.

Jenny involuntarily cringed.

Again that nasty mechanical voice, she thought. “Couldn't it be possible to record a living person or at least make it a bit more natural?”

No matter how far they went when she heard this voice, it seemed to her that she was still at the Station, that the voice of the on-board computer is the voice of the Station, cold, underlined synthetic, devoid of any emotions - he was a reflection of her atmosphere, from which Jenny wanted to leave.

The van gently moved, smoothly drove to the middle of the highway and began to pick up speed. When he had already disappeared in the morning mist, a sudden gust of wind turned over a photograph thrown in the sand. It was captured tropical beach with white coral sand, green thickets and the ocean with blue clear water.

And after a few hours, the rays of the sun looked into the niche with the doll, illuminating its eternally open blue eyes, the same color as that of Susie.