Isabella 2
Last weekend, the 19th International Literary Conference on Fiction Issues, RosCon, was held at the Lesnye Dali pension near Moscow. Within the framework of the conference, many events are held, among which there are also workshops aimed at beginning authors - master classes by Sergey Lukyanenko and Evgeny Lukin.
Those who wish to send a story. The organizing committee conducts a primary moderation for compliance with the formal requirements, and also selects the required number of stories for each master class.
As part of the master classes, a discussion of the stories of all the participants is held, and the distinguished master gives his recommendations, criticism and, in the end, chooses the best story. The winner receives a commemorative certificate on the main stage of the event.
')
I was lucky to take part in the event of Sergey, and now I am publishing a story for everyone to see. Writers perceived the story, let's say, ambiguous. Partly, perhaps, this is because he is very "geek". I hope on Habré he will find his reader, and I will have the opportunity to make an A / B test of reviews from different audiences.
The story itself is under the cut. Have questions or criticism? I am waiting in the comments.
There were no parking spaces at the entrance to the perinatal center. Angelica wrapped circles in small streets looking for where to park, but there was absolutely no space.
Behind her in the child seat was her two-percent daughter, a girl of three and a half years old, extremely smart and active. My daughter has just reached the age at which a person is aware of the rules and was extremely angry with everything that goes against the restrictions. Inscriptions were left on the walls of the houses.
- There are some hooligans, we have to put them in jail!
- We can not all imprison
- But they are criminals! They spoil the walls! - daughter's indignation knew no bounds
The car drove another third of the short street and ran into a traffic jam. Directly opposite her daughter’s windows was a gray wall of a house with a bright rainbow painted on it. Daughter thoughtful:
“Mmm ... and these are some kind hooligans ...”
Angelica in her head immediately flashed a series of associations associated with the rainbow, and she sighed sadly. It was necessary to mess so originally clean image.
Shallow until she could concentrate on one thing for a long time, so she switched:
- Where are we going?
- We are going to buy you a brother
We arrived.
As soon as the small car left the car, she immediately screamed that she wanted “on the handles. Thin Angelikina back immediately ill from such severity. But Angelica did not regret. The daughter so gently laid her head on her shoulder, so pressed against her that Angelica swam with emotion. Petty was only a two-percent daughter, could she still SO snuggle at someone?
The entrance to the perinatal center was carried out through the registry office. The little robonies took the baby to the waiting room, and Angelica proceeded to the paperwork.
- You must pay a starting fee and sign an application for alimony.
- Well, I would like five percent.
- Sorry, but our parental scoring only approves two for you. More precisely, the initial payment of twenty thousand loans, the minimum for alimony is half a percent - a maximum of two, but if you pay an increased fee and insurance. You are too young a parent, you are only sixteen and you need more professional solvency.
- But why?
- Sorry, scoring algorithms are not disclosed in more detail.
Angelica came for the second child, but again she was given only two percent. She already knew that with two percent she could claim about seven days a year. Angelica agreed to everything, but she became noticeably sad.
The next to come to the bot came a shy young man with a chevron of a space IT service. Angelica had never seen him before. He's probably an acquaintance of Anton. Anton warned Angelica that he would introduce her to someone new in conception. Edward designed his papers. He was only slightly older, but he was allowed seventeen percent. Perhaps they would have been allowed more, but he asked exactly seventeen. A very thoughtful young man.
Angelica looked at Edward enviously. Seventeen is a cool thing ... It's sixty-two days.
Edward is seventeen. So she began to call him to herself. It is necessary to establish relations with him - he looked the most responsive of all the other parents - it will be possible to agree on convenient dates.
By law, if it is more than fifteen percent, then you can already choose which days you will be, if less than five, you are not a minority shareholder and you don’t have to choose - you can be with the child only on the days determined by the main parents. Don't even dream about holidays and weekends.
Soon other parents appeared, the rest she knew and friendly smiled at everyone.
Came up to the chatbot, which moderates the conception procedure and issues the appropriate certificates. The bot's voice rang out in silence with cold solemnity. In the vast Hall of the Conception, a pretentious speech rushed, supported by a slight echo.
- On this solemn day, we gathered to carry out conception.
Angelica flinched.
- Stand in a circle.
The laser drew a circle on the floor and marks on it where each of the future parents should stand. Angelica quickly found her initials on the floor and stood in the right place.
- Stretch your right hand forward.
Everyone stretched out their arms.
- Do you agree with Mary to conceive?
- Yes, I agree!
- Do you agree Anton?
- Yes, I agree!
So one by one.
The robotic arm emerged from an imperceptible niche in the ceiling and with a barely noticeable needle took a tiny drop of blood after each “Yes, I agree.”
Finally, all permits are obtained and the biological material is collected.
All the samples were moved to the cube in the middle of the room with the precision of a robot surgeon. It seems that nothing special happened, but suddenly it became somehow very disturbing. Angelica felt a kind of frosty silence hanging around her. She guessed that the light background music had disappeared, unobtrusively accompanying the ceremony all this time. But not only that.
Silence came for a reason. It seemed to whip a bit to vibrate and from a neutral white suddenly turn luminous green.
Voice announced:
- Conception happened! Congratulations to the parents!
Further he continued not solemnly, but iridescent and lulling:
- As in ancient times, six hot hearts merged together under one roof and, in unison, performed the greatest sacrament of joint sin and gave the world a new life ...
Angelica thought that she didn’t really merge with anyone now, well, she stretched out her hand so what ...
- In the name of the planet “New Tver”, by the authority given to me by the senate of the planet and the people of the empire, I name you accordingly:
- Anton, one parent.
- Mary, the parent of two.
In sequence.
- Angelica, the parent is six.
The music sounded again, playing a solemn, old march.
Fedor swore softly. He and Maria gained twenty percent, but the Chinese-random chatbot identified him only as a parent-three. In Mary’s gaze, on the contrary, she was gleaming.
Angelica also received her testimony. Parent number 6. Now she is a mother of two children. This can already be proud of! It is a pity that the child himself to wait at least two months.
- So, stop! There is an error!
Angelica already blew blood to the face of indignation.
- Where do we have in the testimony of the parent-seven? There were six of us!
- Parent-seven is a DNA donor that corrects critical gene sequences for deliberately correct
- I do not understand, we pay for it, and he is free?
- Proved - that this leads to the birth of more sensible and healthy children
- Well, you do not even want to introduce us?
- Do not worry - the parent-seven is no longer alive - his exemplary DNA is stored in Kostanay center of standard measures and weights ... It is well studied and absolutely safe - therefore, they are complemented by chains in the formation of embryos.
Edward approached:
- The state sponsors the birth rate, takes over up to twenty percent of the costs, and in return wants to get healthy and mentally developed members of society - so all is good.
- Well, it's some kind of cheat!
- Do not worry. - Edward turned to chatbot: "Robot!" How much does our DNA intersect with the parent-seven sequence? ”
- Ninety nine and nine tenths of a percent.
“You see, we are almost defective and almost nothing was corrected ...”
Edward smiled and therefore instantly ceased to like Angelica. She was somehow uncomfortable with this intervention. How can a person who has long been dead be a parent?
Edward over his shoulder saw the Angelica documents.
“Wow, will you have this second child?” Do you like children so much? Why?
- Probably because I'm an orphan and I was raised by robots?
Angelica turned her back on him and went to the exit. She was determined to no longer communicate with this nasty type.
A train
Angelica just turned eighteen. She is a young, pretty, purposeful girl. She has straight combed blond hair, long, below the shoulders. She traveled alone. However, she needed to go not far. Three hours in the train, and you're on the spot. Ahead of her marriage and a new life.
Angelica was nervous. For the third time during the trip, she decided to check the documents that will need to be presented upon arrival. There were only two documents.
The registration certificate with the coat of arms of the cosmo fleet, and the personal instruction of a member of the crew of the spaceship with a mark about passing the exam is excellent.
The assignment stated that from tomorrow she was appointed to be married to Lieutenant Venichkin V.V., who lives there ... That she was announced to be his wife from nine in the morning of the corresponding day and she needed to arrive at the location of her husband before that date. Marriage is appointed for the entire life of the spouses except when ... when there are no children in the first two years of the marriage or one of the spouses dies. Seal of the Commissariat for Family and Marriage.
Below in small print were the terms of the termination of the contract, deportation and fines in the absence of offspring and a lot of everything else. This was part of the standard contract and did not scare Angelica.
The instruction was dramatically monstrous. She regulated everything - the daily routine, the distribution of responsibilities, how to prepare, how to wash, everything ...
The instruction even contained paragraphs about marital debt and literally read:
According to your physiological parameters, the following sequence of actions will be most productive: a woman should undress, kneel, lower her head and moan softly until the man completes the action according to her instructions and reports that the marital debt has been fulfilled. After that, you need to lie down for ten minutes, raising your legs and then washing thoroughly. Repeat every day.
This contradicted everything that Angelica still knew about the institution of offspring, theoretically she certainly knew about such an archaic ancient rite as sex, but sex as a way of breeding offspring contradicted all her life experiences. Almost all of her friends have already become mothers, but none of them could even think about this method of reproduction.
Angelica read about sex in history books, but did not think it was that simple. The ancients paid too much attention to this, but they wrote very vaguely - everything was much clearer in the instructions for the astronauts.
Angelica looked again at the cover of the astronauts textbook. In the picture the spaceship towered over the city. He, of course, was huge, but you still can’t thrust the perinatal center into it. That one is also healthy.
Angelica continued to reread what she already knew. The cosmonaut special training course no longer seemed so unaffordable to her as at first. Roughly speaking, she was expecting another mathematics of a higher order, and then there was some kind of fizra. She will cope!
A train
Tramtarama ... The train slows down dramatically and many things fall from the shelves. What happened is not clear, people are running along the train screaming "Accident!". A robot conductor flew into the carriage. He was quite small, like a tennis ball, hung in one place - shouted a replica:
- Need a programmer!
Instantly moved to another point and repeated his call:
- Comrades passengers! Is there a programmer among you?
As it turned out, despite its size, it could be very loud when necessary.
The dynamics of his movements resembled a hummingbird's flight. The conductor, moving, slightly wheezing with a tiny little motor that could not be seen.
- Need a programmer!
Angelica does not immediately get what she needs, but finally she responds:
- I! Third level programmer. Specialization small technical and domestic robots.
The conductor hangs beside her in sheer confusion.
- We have problems with the robot control locomotive. I don’t know if you can do it ...
Angelica understood his doubts. A locomotive robot is the prerogative of programmers of the first category, because a train is a vehicle of heightened danger.
Angelica is just a graduate of a boarding school with a bias in subject programming.
Angelica ran for the conductor to the locomotive. Leaving the train without moving away from the city is dangerous on this planet. If the locomotive is not repaired, you can get into a storm, or you will be surrounded by herds of wild scotosaurius and then you can get through them only with external support. So if she can help a little bit, she should help.
- Stop!
In another car, the conductor found a senior programmer of the first category and the job was instantly transferred to him. Angelica sighed with relief. They immediately forgot about her, and she immediately remained alone.
Looked around.
There were no windows in the train, and it was not recommended to anyone to go to the surface of the planet far from cities. Today was a fine day, but even now it was felt that there was not enough air, but there were enough other impurities and you could lose consciousness and crash at any moment. But it was very beautiful. Angelica saw what she had never seen before and caught her breath. She even rejoiced at such a rare opportunity to see the world from this point.
A red gas giant hung over the horizon in these mornings overlapping the entire bottom of the horizon. There was no heat from him, but everything around was flooded with pink reflections of energy boiling on it.
How much space was visible from the road to the city — it was all built up with one-story, two-thirds dug into the ground barracks or greenhouses, where the star's energy was transformed into potatoes and cucumbers. Most of the residential buildings have already been abandoned and looted, only the central part of the settlement remained populated.
A little farther, a huge carcass carcass rose out of town. He was very broad and unimaginable heights. He scared. Too gigantic and ridiculously tailored. With a shabby covering from which it seemed about to fall off some ceramic flap. In some places, there were still scaffoldings and therefore the spaceship was made even uglier and more.
- Soon he will fly away and there will be nothing left
Angelica started, she did not notice how other people got off the train. Next to her was a round-shouldered man with a face black with dust. A worker from space construction or from a mineral mine, Angelica guessed. The man took a big sip from the bottle that he had in his hand. For a second, he seemed to her quite old.
The worker noticed her gaze.
- Do you remember how you started to build it?
- No, I was not born yet
- No one remembers. It was supposed to be the lead ship of the whole series. There were plans to go on pace in two ships a year ... - the man’s gaze became completely extinct.
He took another sip and stared at his bottle of Isabella in his hands. "Isabella" brand of local wine. It tastes like glassmaker, diluted with a small amount of honey.
- Everything was doomed from the very beginning, but every year it became only more depressing. In the end, we always had a lot of Isabella. We drank it in the evenings and weekends, and when melancholy became unbearable, we began to drink in the mornings. Gradually, the very word "Isabella" migrated on board the ship - became its name.
- I thought it was an advertising contract?
- Then it is an advertisement of hopelessness.
Angelica wanted to say that actually this is the only chance to get out of here, and she is one of the six hundred boys and girls selected for the flight on this ship, what kind of hopelessness is he talking about? But she did not dare ... What are several hundred people for several millions who will stay here forever?
Angelica saw the film, which showed the first settlers.
It said that this star system is located at the optimum point - exactly in the middle of two large star systems. It was said that there will always be travelers passing by and they will have to make a stop to replenish stocks and rest. This “new Tver” was happily informed by the announcer in the film. Angelica did not know such a name as “Tver” to appreciate the temptation of the proposal, but the voice of the announcer was fascinating with its enthusiasm.
- We are between the two metropolitan systems, it all depends on us!
- Yeah, we're in a hole with one cinema and dumplings, in which there is absolutely nothing to do.
In the video, the planet itself was described as a bright prospect, but in fact, the prospect died almost immediately after the film was finished.
Even in the first generation of colonists, new engines appeared, more likely even new principles of movement, which once again changed the concept of distances in space. This dramatically changed the attitude to the Planet. Now it was an unnecessary, forgotten under construction. Not even a province, but almost no habitable refuge of eccentrics.
So it was two generations ago before Angelica, and so it remains now. Everyone who could - was ticking away.
Angelica coughed. Of course, she has resistance to this atmosphere, but you still can not breathe such air for a long time.
“It's good that I'll fly away from here soon,” she thought. "It is terrible, of course, that there is far away, but it is better to take a risk than to regret all my life that I did not try."
She returned to the train, waiting for his repair hiding behind the air filtration apparatus.
Husband's house
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Angelica quickly dressed, tidied her hair and carefully looked out the door.
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Those who wish to send a story. The organizing committee conducts a primary moderation for compliance with the formal requirements, and also selects the required number of stories for each master class.
As part of the master classes, a discussion of the stories of all the participants is held, and the distinguished master gives his recommendations, criticism and, in the end, chooses the best story. The winner receives a commemorative certificate on the main stage of the event.
')
I was lucky to take part in the event of Sergey, and now I am publishing a story for everyone to see. Writers perceived the story, let's say, ambiguous. Partly, perhaps, this is because he is very "geek". I hope on Habré he will find his reader, and I will have the opportunity to make an A / B test of reviews from different audiences.
The story itself is under the cut. Have questions or criticism? I am waiting in the comments.
Isabella 2
There were no parking spaces at the entrance to the perinatal center. Angelica wrapped circles in small streets looking for where to park, but there was absolutely no space.
Behind her in the child seat was her two-percent daughter, a girl of three and a half years old, extremely smart and active. My daughter has just reached the age at which a person is aware of the rules and was extremely angry with everything that goes against the restrictions. Inscriptions were left on the walls of the houses.
- There are some hooligans, we have to put them in jail!
- We can not all imprison
- But they are criminals! They spoil the walls! - daughter's indignation knew no bounds
The car drove another third of the short street and ran into a traffic jam. Directly opposite her daughter’s windows was a gray wall of a house with a bright rainbow painted on it. Daughter thoughtful:
“Mmm ... and these are some kind hooligans ...”
Angelica in her head immediately flashed a series of associations associated with the rainbow, and she sighed sadly. It was necessary to mess so originally clean image.
Shallow until she could concentrate on one thing for a long time, so she switched:
- Where are we going?
- We are going to buy you a brother
We arrived.
As soon as the small car left the car, she immediately screamed that she wanted “on the handles. Thin Angelikina back immediately ill from such severity. But Angelica did not regret. The daughter so gently laid her head on her shoulder, so pressed against her that Angelica swam with emotion. Petty was only a two-percent daughter, could she still SO snuggle at someone?
The entrance to the perinatal center was carried out through the registry office. The little robonies took the baby to the waiting room, and Angelica proceeded to the paperwork.
- You must pay a starting fee and sign an application for alimony.
- Well, I would like five percent.
- Sorry, but our parental scoring only approves two for you. More precisely, the initial payment of twenty thousand loans, the minimum for alimony is half a percent - a maximum of two, but if you pay an increased fee and insurance. You are too young a parent, you are only sixteen and you need more professional solvency.
- But why?
- Sorry, scoring algorithms are not disclosed in more detail.
Angelica came for the second child, but again she was given only two percent. She already knew that with two percent she could claim about seven days a year. Angelica agreed to everything, but she became noticeably sad.
The next to come to the bot came a shy young man with a chevron of a space IT service. Angelica had never seen him before. He's probably an acquaintance of Anton. Anton warned Angelica that he would introduce her to someone new in conception. Edward designed his papers. He was only slightly older, but he was allowed seventeen percent. Perhaps they would have been allowed more, but he asked exactly seventeen. A very thoughtful young man.
Angelica looked at Edward enviously. Seventeen is a cool thing ... It's sixty-two days.
Edward is seventeen. So she began to call him to herself. It is necessary to establish relations with him - he looked the most responsive of all the other parents - it will be possible to agree on convenient dates.
By law, if it is more than fifteen percent, then you can already choose which days you will be, if less than five, you are not a minority shareholder and you don’t have to choose - you can be with the child only on the days determined by the main parents. Don't even dream about holidays and weekends.
Soon other parents appeared, the rest she knew and friendly smiled at everyone.
Came up to the chatbot, which moderates the conception procedure and issues the appropriate certificates. The bot's voice rang out in silence with cold solemnity. In the vast Hall of the Conception, a pretentious speech rushed, supported by a slight echo.
- On this solemn day, we gathered to carry out conception.
Angelica flinched.
- Stand in a circle.
The laser drew a circle on the floor and marks on it where each of the future parents should stand. Angelica quickly found her initials on the floor and stood in the right place.
- Stretch your right hand forward.
Everyone stretched out their arms.
- Do you agree with Mary to conceive?
- Yes, I agree!
- Do you agree Anton?
- Yes, I agree!
So one by one.
The robotic arm emerged from an imperceptible niche in the ceiling and with a barely noticeable needle took a tiny drop of blood after each “Yes, I agree.”
Finally, all permits are obtained and the biological material is collected.
All the samples were moved to the cube in the middle of the room with the precision of a robot surgeon. It seems that nothing special happened, but suddenly it became somehow very disturbing. Angelica felt a kind of frosty silence hanging around her. She guessed that the light background music had disappeared, unobtrusively accompanying the ceremony all this time. But not only that.
Silence came for a reason. It seemed to whip a bit to vibrate and from a neutral white suddenly turn luminous green.
Voice announced:
- Conception happened! Congratulations to the parents!
Further he continued not solemnly, but iridescent and lulling:
- As in ancient times, six hot hearts merged together under one roof and, in unison, performed the greatest sacrament of joint sin and gave the world a new life ...
Angelica thought that she didn’t really merge with anyone now, well, she stretched out her hand so what ...
- In the name of the planet “New Tver”, by the authority given to me by the senate of the planet and the people of the empire, I name you accordingly:
- Anton, one parent.
- Mary, the parent of two.
In sequence.
- Angelica, the parent is six.
The music sounded again, playing a solemn, old march.
Fedor swore softly. He and Maria gained twenty percent, but the Chinese-random chatbot identified him only as a parent-three. In Mary’s gaze, on the contrary, she was gleaming.
Angelica also received her testimony. Parent number 6. Now she is a mother of two children. This can already be proud of! It is a pity that the child himself to wait at least two months.
- So, stop! There is an error!
Angelica already blew blood to the face of indignation.
- Where do we have in the testimony of the parent-seven? There were six of us!
- Parent-seven is a DNA donor that corrects critical gene sequences for deliberately correct
- I do not understand, we pay for it, and he is free?
- Proved - that this leads to the birth of more sensible and healthy children
- Well, you do not even want to introduce us?
- Do not worry - the parent-seven is no longer alive - his exemplary DNA is stored in Kostanay center of standard measures and weights ... It is well studied and absolutely safe - therefore, they are complemented by chains in the formation of embryos.
Edward approached:
- The state sponsors the birth rate, takes over up to twenty percent of the costs, and in return wants to get healthy and mentally developed members of society - so all is good.
- Well, it's some kind of cheat!
- Do not worry. - Edward turned to chatbot: "Robot!" How much does our DNA intersect with the parent-seven sequence? ”
- Ninety nine and nine tenths of a percent.
“You see, we are almost defective and almost nothing was corrected ...”
Edward smiled and therefore instantly ceased to like Angelica. She was somehow uncomfortable with this intervention. How can a person who has long been dead be a parent?
Edward over his shoulder saw the Angelica documents.
“Wow, will you have this second child?” Do you like children so much? Why?
- Probably because I'm an orphan and I was raised by robots?
Angelica turned her back on him and went to the exit. She was determined to no longer communicate with this nasty type.
A train
Angelica just turned eighteen. She is a young, pretty, purposeful girl. She has straight combed blond hair, long, below the shoulders. She traveled alone. However, she needed to go not far. Three hours in the train, and you're on the spot. Ahead of her marriage and a new life.
Angelica was nervous. For the third time during the trip, she decided to check the documents that will need to be presented upon arrival. There were only two documents.
The registration certificate with the coat of arms of the cosmo fleet, and the personal instruction of a member of the crew of the spaceship with a mark about passing the exam is excellent.
The assignment stated that from tomorrow she was appointed to be married to Lieutenant Venichkin V.V., who lives there ... That she was announced to be his wife from nine in the morning of the corresponding day and she needed to arrive at the location of her husband before that date. Marriage is appointed for the entire life of the spouses except when ... when there are no children in the first two years of the marriage or one of the spouses dies. Seal of the Commissariat for Family and Marriage.
Below in small print were the terms of the termination of the contract, deportation and fines in the absence of offspring and a lot of everything else. This was part of the standard contract and did not scare Angelica.
The instruction was dramatically monstrous. She regulated everything - the daily routine, the distribution of responsibilities, how to prepare, how to wash, everything ...
The instruction even contained paragraphs about marital debt and literally read:
According to your physiological parameters, the following sequence of actions will be most productive: a woman should undress, kneel, lower her head and moan softly until the man completes the action according to her instructions and reports that the marital debt has been fulfilled. After that, you need to lie down for ten minutes, raising your legs and then washing thoroughly. Repeat every day.
This contradicted everything that Angelica still knew about the institution of offspring, theoretically she certainly knew about such an archaic ancient rite as sex, but sex as a way of breeding offspring contradicted all her life experiences. Almost all of her friends have already become mothers, but none of them could even think about this method of reproduction.
Angelica read about sex in history books, but did not think it was that simple. The ancients paid too much attention to this, but they wrote very vaguely - everything was much clearer in the instructions for the astronauts.
Angelica looked again at the cover of the astronauts textbook. In the picture the spaceship towered over the city. He, of course, was huge, but you still can’t thrust the perinatal center into it. That one is also healthy.
Angelica continued to reread what she already knew. The cosmonaut special training course no longer seemed so unaffordable to her as at first. Roughly speaking, she was expecting another mathematics of a higher order, and then there was some kind of fizra. She will cope!
A train
Tramtarama ... The train slows down dramatically and many things fall from the shelves. What happened is not clear, people are running along the train screaming "Accident!". A robot conductor flew into the carriage. He was quite small, like a tennis ball, hung in one place - shouted a replica:
- Need a programmer!
Instantly moved to another point and repeated his call:
- Comrades passengers! Is there a programmer among you?
As it turned out, despite its size, it could be very loud when necessary.
The dynamics of his movements resembled a hummingbird's flight. The conductor, moving, slightly wheezing with a tiny little motor that could not be seen.
- Need a programmer!
Angelica does not immediately get what she needs, but finally she responds:
- I! Third level programmer. Specialization small technical and domestic robots.
The conductor hangs beside her in sheer confusion.
- We have problems with the robot control locomotive. I don’t know if you can do it ...
Angelica understood his doubts. A locomotive robot is the prerogative of programmers of the first category, because a train is a vehicle of heightened danger.
Angelica is just a graduate of a boarding school with a bias in subject programming.
Angelica ran for the conductor to the locomotive. Leaving the train without moving away from the city is dangerous on this planet. If the locomotive is not repaired, you can get into a storm, or you will be surrounded by herds of wild scotosaurius and then you can get through them only with external support. So if she can help a little bit, she should help.
- Stop!
In another car, the conductor found a senior programmer of the first category and the job was instantly transferred to him. Angelica sighed with relief. They immediately forgot about her, and she immediately remained alone.
Looked around.
There were no windows in the train, and it was not recommended to anyone to go to the surface of the planet far from cities. Today was a fine day, but even now it was felt that there was not enough air, but there were enough other impurities and you could lose consciousness and crash at any moment. But it was very beautiful. Angelica saw what she had never seen before and caught her breath. She even rejoiced at such a rare opportunity to see the world from this point.
A red gas giant hung over the horizon in these mornings overlapping the entire bottom of the horizon. There was no heat from him, but everything around was flooded with pink reflections of energy boiling on it.
How much space was visible from the road to the city — it was all built up with one-story, two-thirds dug into the ground barracks or greenhouses, where the star's energy was transformed into potatoes and cucumbers. Most of the residential buildings have already been abandoned and looted, only the central part of the settlement remained populated.
A little farther, a huge carcass carcass rose out of town. He was very broad and unimaginable heights. He scared. Too gigantic and ridiculously tailored. With a shabby covering from which it seemed about to fall off some ceramic flap. In some places, there were still scaffoldings and therefore the spaceship was made even uglier and more.
- Soon he will fly away and there will be nothing left
Angelica started, she did not notice how other people got off the train. Next to her was a round-shouldered man with a face black with dust. A worker from space construction or from a mineral mine, Angelica guessed. The man took a big sip from the bottle that he had in his hand. For a second, he seemed to her quite old.
The worker noticed her gaze.
- Do you remember how you started to build it?
- No, I was not born yet
- No one remembers. It was supposed to be the lead ship of the whole series. There were plans to go on pace in two ships a year ... - the man’s gaze became completely extinct.
He took another sip and stared at his bottle of Isabella in his hands. "Isabella" brand of local wine. It tastes like glassmaker, diluted with a small amount of honey.
- Everything was doomed from the very beginning, but every year it became only more depressing. In the end, we always had a lot of Isabella. We drank it in the evenings and weekends, and when melancholy became unbearable, we began to drink in the mornings. Gradually, the very word "Isabella" migrated on board the ship - became its name.
- I thought it was an advertising contract?
- Then it is an advertisement of hopelessness.
Angelica wanted to say that actually this is the only chance to get out of here, and she is one of the six hundred boys and girls selected for the flight on this ship, what kind of hopelessness is he talking about? But she did not dare ... What are several hundred people for several millions who will stay here forever?
Angelica saw the film, which showed the first settlers.
It said that this star system is located at the optimum point - exactly in the middle of two large star systems. It was said that there will always be travelers passing by and they will have to make a stop to replenish stocks and rest. This “new Tver” was happily informed by the announcer in the film. Angelica did not know such a name as “Tver” to appreciate the temptation of the proposal, but the voice of the announcer was fascinating with its enthusiasm.
- We are between the two metropolitan systems, it all depends on us!
- Yeah, we're in a hole with one cinema and dumplings, in which there is absolutely nothing to do.
In the video, the planet itself was described as a bright prospect, but in fact, the prospect died almost immediately after the film was finished.
Even in the first generation of colonists, new engines appeared, more likely even new principles of movement, which once again changed the concept of distances in space. This dramatically changed the attitude to the Planet. Now it was an unnecessary, forgotten under construction. Not even a province, but almost no habitable refuge of eccentrics.
So it was two generations ago before Angelica, and so it remains now. Everyone who could - was ticking away.
Angelica coughed. Of course, she has resistance to this atmosphere, but you still can not breathe such air for a long time.
“It's good that I'll fly away from here soon,” she thought. "It is terrible, of course, that there is far away, but it is better to take a risk than to regret all my life that I did not try."
She returned to the train, waiting for his repair hiding behind the air filtration apparatus.
Husband's house
When Angelica woke up, she first was frightened of an unfamiliar place, but then she remembered where she was. She is in her husband's house. Judging by the sounds outside the door, he finally came home.
Angelica quickly dressed, tidied her hair and carefully looked out the door.
Husband. Yes, after nine she could call him that, stood in front of a mirror and measured the shirt she brought. There was such a tradition, carefully written down in the instructions, that when she first met the girl gives a shirt of her choice.
She liked the way he looked in her. My husband had a good figure, he was tall and muscular. , , , . , . , , , .
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/447802/
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