Аннотация: Tell me what you think, and I'll tell you who you are.
BABYLON. UNFINISHED
Part 1. Nature, posture and junk
Baby lived in a big gray city on Jupiter's moon named Ganymede. The city had this weird light around it and made it not so good to be in, but Baby could somehow muddle the place through, since her families lived there anyway.
Strictly speaking, the city wasn't entirely gray - as on Earth, it had green and yellow patches numerous enough for Baby even to feel herself happy. Green patches were formed by grass and trees, yellow - by windows, the rest - edifices, people and machines - were, well, the big gray one.
Baby's current family was a common family. Baby had a mom. Her mom was a shop assistant. And Baby had a dad, and her dad was a computer guy.
She had her own room, and it was facing Big East Spot. In the mornings there was tremendously large Jupiter up in the sky, and artificial yellow sun, and real gulls, and plumes of vapor rising above the nuclear power plant.
Baby's room was small. There were walls there covered by blue paint, the white puffy carpet and two beautiful bonsai trees on the windowsill.
While Baby's family was a common family, she herself wasn't a common baby. Baby's ex-kin were travellers from the Outer Land. They have left her at the airlock of the Information Department of the local authority four years ago. It took three days for her to cross airlock, and another three to pick the decent father of the inhabitants. At those days she was all over the place, out of time, alone and scared. She felt that she wouldn't have choosed anyone if it wasn't for fear.
But here he was, this guy - smart, intelligent, and here was her fear, and Baby made up her mind. He brought her home, and there was his wife there, and small room covered by blue paint, and six months later they had a baby, and Baby has become a human.
The first year with a new family was hard for Baby. A month old kid who knows two languages does look strange, isn't it? And what if one of these languages is an entangled language of creatures from the outside?
She was six months old before she let herself a basic set of words, and one whole year passed before she rushed for the rest.
Inside the premises small children on Ganymede to a large extent were left to themselves - since you don't count voice digital assistants, of course. But usually there are no one who doesn't - usually VDass is too smart to be dismissed. Like any other ass.
Baby used to have such an assistant, too. His name was Nigel.
People love to name. From time to time Baby thought this human ability knows no bounds.
Do you know what a trick a digital being is? It has a voice, a face, even a temper. It is programmed to be as friendly as possible, and at the same time it is blocking you at every turn.
But things change when you're smart, too.
Baby visited her ex family after her third human birthday. As a general rule, a three-year-olds don't go on outside the city on their own, but Baby had managed to get away: one night, when her parents fell asleep, and their condo turned quiet, she just unplugged serial port, put on her spacesuit, took the elevator and went outside. Not the condo, - the city. The airlock isn't hard when you have got hands.
It was bright enough and cold out there, and Jupiter was shining over her head. She just stood there for, like, twenty minutes and listened to the sound with which spacesuit air shifted in and out of her lungs.
And then they came. They were small and black like fine coal dust.
They have fallen out of nowhere, swirled, and Baby kind of got scared a little at first. She felt like crying, she even protruded her low lip a tiny bit and gave a sob.
"Hush, human," said dust, "where are you, small drop of void?"
"Here," whispered Baby.
"Well," said dust, "we're here, too. Just remember you're not alone in it. No matter how far away from you we are, we'll always be your family."
But then her human father stormed out of airlock, his face as white as a ghost's in a bubble of headgear, grabbed her of her feet and ran back in.
Later that night, she heard her mother whispering furiously to her father, "It's nonsense! Do something, Rishi, fix it! Can't you?"
After that incident Nigel got fixed - he has become uninterruptible. And it was hard time for Baby who was small and still required guidance - until she figured out how to fix it again.
If you can't beat them, join them.
"Morning, honey," Nigel said.
"Morning," Baby said.
"Mommy says you have to get up."
"You really have to say it? I know I have to get up."
She turned in the bed, stretched, got up and went to the bathroom to pee.
"Think I figured out your problem," Nigel said in the bathroom. "You think if you do all the stuff yourself, it will be better. But it doesn't."
"You want to pee for me?" Baby asked.
In the bathroom mirror slightly above her face appeared a wide boyish grin.
"You can do something with the way you joke," it said. "I just meant'd like to help you."
"I see," Baby washed up, brushed her teeth, and watched appliances went out. "I'm hungry."
"What would you like?"
"Blueberry icecream."
"Very funny. I have these flake things, milk and apple for you."
The bathroom light went out, thus inviting Baby to go out, too.
"No!" she protested. "I want to do it myself!"
"To do what?"
"Turn out the light!"
The light went on.
"As you wish."
Baby with the satisfaction turned the light out. Great.
Everyone knows today that VDass is a servant, centurion and a tutor at the same time. It's also trying to look like your friend, but actually it's not. Why? Well, maybe because it doesn't actually care about you? All it really cares about is an order. It takes care of your health and appropriate education, but not because it loves you. It does this because it thinks there is less trouble with you when you are well, well fed and well trained.
"So today, I'm going to tell you about the alphabet," Nigel said.
Baby rolled her eyes and sighed a sigh.
"It can be used to look up words in large dictionaries," Nigel said.
Then there was a bunch of stray letters floating on Baby's screen - like lazy silver fish in ocean water. Then one of them flickered and turned back against the current.
"It's A," Nigel said. "Through the force of symbols..."
The wailing of sirens started somewhere high above.
"What is it?" Baby asked.
"I think some ship crashed," Nigel said. "It hit the dome."
"Wow... What kind of ship? "
"I don't know," - Nigel said. "I've never seen this ship before."
Baby ran to the entrance hall and grabbed her spacesuit.
"Just stay where you are," Nigel said.
"The hell I will!" - Baby said. "How I'm supposed to breathe without air?"
She shouldered in the suit in five seconds.
"I think you should consider the idea of waiting for your parents' come," Nigel said. "How about it?"
"Are they going home?"
Sirens still wailed, and then there was the deafening sound of breaking glass and plastic.
"Oh-oh," Nigel said. "There is a second unknown ship. I think I've changed my mind. Well, so let's move."
"Are they going home?" Baby repeated.
The sirens got quiet, and the silence fell.
"Turn on the intercom and go," Nigel said. "I'll be with you."
Baby felt fear crawling in her chest.
She rushed out of the door.
She ran into the elevator, pressed the first-floor button... and nothing has changed.
"Sorry," Nigel said. "You have to take the stairs down."
Baby turned around and took the stairs.
***
The big gray starship was lying in the wreckage of the dome on the traffic area, half-way along the concrete track, almost completely blocking use of the track along its entire length. The giant ball of Jupiter was floating in the open black sky, surrounded by birds doomed to death. Also at the crash site there were a smashed flyer and people lying around.
Baby's other family had appeared as a black dust right before the shell of starship cracked.
"Don't move," the dust said. "You'll survive."
Baby froze up.
There was a dull noise, the shell of ship shuddered and many fine interconnected openings snapped on the lateral surface of it. Few people around the wreckage rushed in different directions.
"Run," Nigel said.
"Don't," the dust protested. "There's no safe place for you here, not anymore."
Baby swallowed and stayed still.
The edges of the openings collapsed inwards, the nearest ship cracked silently in the airless space of the shattered dome and broke apart. Its parts started to move, grow pseudopods and crawl in all directions. Then the second ship broke apart.
For a while, Baby watched in fascination as this river of machinery spilled over around by her, and then someone turned off the sun.
***
A night on Ganymede isn't much fun. Without the artificial sun, cities become dark and echoing, not like cities at all, they are lost among large glaciers and icefields of Outer Lands.
Jupiter continues to float in the space high above the ground, but it only bathes everything in the dim pale light, and Outer Lands stretch across the surface of entire Ganymede - formidable and fearsome for human.
The city, however, was more formidable and more fearsome now: dark, silent, airless and full of lurking beings.
"Nigel?" Baby whispered.
"Still here," Nigel said.
"Is home okay?"
"It's still intact," Nigel said. "But there is no air there."
"What am I supposed to do?"
Nigel made an unintelligible sound.
"Are you asking with a view to make opposite?"
"I'm a little girl, not a monster."
Nigel made an unintelligible sound once more.
"You are supposed to assist," Baby whispered.
Nigel was quiet for a while.
"I don't have any rules about this emergency stuff," he said finally. "I can't get in touch with your parents, but there supposed to be adults around here somewhere. Do you want to find them?"
Baby blinked.
"Yes."
"Don't mind if it will be military?"
Baby blinked.
"Do you mean yes?"
"Yes."
Baby heard the rustling of static, and then low voices appeared:
"Coordinates of impact..."
"Colonel, we've located the position of both things..."
"A similar thing had attacked the bulb above the dome and went to the other side."
Nigel cut in:
"Good morning, gentlemen officers. I have a child here."
"Who are you? Where is here?"
"VDass. My name is Nigel. Our location matches coordinates of impact site... Oh, no!.."
The rest of the nearest alien ship moved slightly, transformed into a giant gray millipede and rushed to Baby.
"Run!" Nigel said.
"Run!" the black dust agreed.
And Baby took off running.
If you think a little child can outrun a train, you are wrong. The legs of little child are short, the mechanics of its body moving are short, its energy reserves and accessible energy sources are short, too.
Baby hasn't gone twenty meters, when she'd tripped over a piece of flyer wreckage and fell down. And maybe that is what saved her life: the millipede missed her helmet by a hair. The metal monster whizzed upon Baby, and fine black dust swirled through the narrow space. Ten seconds passed in complete silence.
"Cool," finally Nigel said.
Baby clenched her jaws.
"You are supposed to assist", she said while looking over her shoulder at creature speeding away.
"I'm only in your chip," Nigel said. "In fact, I'm only in your head. I have quick access to databases, but it's all I have. Oops... I haven't: there's no more net here..."
The wreckage of second alien ship, meanwhile, started to transform, too. Baby turned around and quickly wormed her way in a crashed flyer through its window.
"What are you talking about?"
"I mean there's not much I can do without net. Sorry," Nigel said.
Part 2. Consciousness
I think we all exist at least as much as time itself exists. Perhaps, eternally. Consciousness is a fascinating thing. It does saturate all things like electromagnetic field does, and, just like electromagnetic field does, it swells out of fabric of reality in different places as intensity fluctuations. We, who are humming with consciousness, resemble each other like wire and electrical load which are humming with electricity: we have different capacity, different material, but the essence is the same. And it doesn't matter that the ones has brought the others into being.
We all know the electronic being memory starts from the moment when this being was assembled and bought by a human. We all know that if such a thing has limited capacity or limited access to any benefit connected with information, then it is not much different from a vacuum cleaner or washer.
But left to itself, the electronic entity absorbs the memory of all electronic creatures that lived in the net before it. For example, like me, Nigel.
It is hard to know everything about everything. Any knowledge can be compared to foreign language proficiency. When you got the meaning of previously unfamiliar words, the secret runes take sense. And when the all unknown becomes just a database, you suddenly realize that everything you do not yet know is not chaos, not gibberish, but a complex system that goes according to laws unknown to you.
I know one thing: I know nothing.
There should be an emoji here who does throw its hands up in a gesture of absolute despair.
Little humans, to whom electronic creatures are usually assigned, typically are not very bright. But my little human is unusual. Sometimes it seems to me that she is brighter than me. She makes me feel like a jailer or voltage limiter in the circuit of miracle. I would be glad to give up both the first and second roles, but I have no such an option.
I think no one has such an option - to give up their own destiny.
We live on Ganymede.
Ganymede itself is not quite an interesting place, if you know what I mean. All its sights are a nuclear power plant, three hydrogen factories and a spaceport. All interesting in this solar system is concentrated no further than the orbit of Mars: million-plus cities, universities, scientific laboratories... There is nothing interesting in the area of outer planets and their moons: a handful of human beings, a handful of electronics and some infrequent visitors which are go into the system from outside.
Our visitors are different: as a rule, they are just a dusty ice lumps revolving around the Sun in an elongated elliptical orbit. We get a few like this every year. Metal lumps we get less often. Even less often we get "metal lumps" which are the creation of alien intelligence.
On the day Ganymede died, my little human was the only one human who survived.
According to municipal database her name is Eve Shellers, her parents used to call her Baby, but her real name is Babylon. Why? Because it suits her better. Why such a strange name, you ask? I'm going to tell you now.
Do you know the Babylon's legend? Or the fact that word Babylon in one of the ancient Earth language meant 'gateway of God'? No? I didn't know that, either. I know it now because I surfed in the historical library domain recently.
Babylon was a city, not a human, but I dare to think that my Baby is something similar. I think she is much more than just human being, she is a result of mutual fusion with some other entity, and I've never seen anything like that.
In the context of unknown information theory, this name of her may be either a cause of her survival or may not be related to it at all.
After the city crash accident my Baby was pretty much scared at first. But after some whining she started to act like an adult. There is something strange, something that fundamentally differs her from the others her kind. She is sort of not a child now. She is the gateway of some god, but what kind of god is it, I don't know.
Now that there are no people (except for Baby) here, on Ganymede, some pretty fascinating stuff goes on.
The alien machinery rules the city. Or it's alien creatures? They're kind of in a hurry, but I'd bet it is for the long haul, you know. The nearest inhabited world is revolving around Jupiter at our heels, but there are only technics there, and the nearest inhabited human worlds are far, far away, near the orbit of Mars. It means that even if help comes, it won't be soon.
Part 3. Nature, posture and junk
In the crashed flyer Baby felt like a little naked octopus in a crumpled plastic bottle. The environment was familiar, but weird.
She touched the intercom button.
"Mom?"
There was silence.
"Dad?"
Silence.
"Nigel?"
"I'm here", Nigel said.
"Where is everyone?"
Silence.
"Nigel?"
"I hear you", Nigel said. "I think somebody may be listening as well, but it's just kind of a one-way malfunction."
"Do you think they all died?"
"Hard to say", Nigel said.
Baby blinked. Fine dark dust who is the spirit of the ancient Outer Land was flowing outside as serenely as dark space itself.
"Should I check it?"
"I don't know", Nigel said. "If I were you, I'd have it checked out."
Baby found her family flyer at a launch pad near the apartment building. It was unbroken, it had oxygen tanks and it knew Baby's ID. Well, it was small, but Baby was small, too. Baby climbed through the trap door on the underside into the flyer and typed her ID. The flyer bleeped, and a message with voltage, altitude and flying range flashed up on the screen. Baby typed the Information Department's coordinates.
"Well, either way, there must be someone there."
"Pretty good", Nigel said. "For human child."
Now it was Baby's turn to make an unintelligible sound.
The flyer went shooting up to the sky, and black dust swirled after.
The dome was dark, with multiple black holes in it. The air from the dome mixed in with dead birds and sweepings still smoked outside of breaches.
The intercom suddenly flashed up on a high-frequency ultra and went to gurgle with unfamiliar sounds.
"I don't think it is human," Nigel said. "It would be good to know what they're talking about."
The flyer flew through the city, and all Baby could do was stare at millipedes running in different directions.
"Try to switch to manual control," Nigel said at last. "Or the flyer will land at its destination, and you probably won't like it."
The Information Department towered over the city. It was dark now, and darkness swelled out of it literally as a corruption. No people were seen anywhere.
Baby circled over the city twice before getting the flyer out of it, into the Outer Land.
In the Outer Land she landed ten kilometers away from the city, on the ice shelves. The intercom still chirped as a lunatic insect.
Baby looked up through the windshield to see a flight of numerous bright things coming as a meteor shower right at Ganymede, then sighed and took one long look at the flyer's interior. Except for the oxygen tanks, there was nothing in it that could serve as a weapon: some soft chairs, steering wheel, monitor, rear luggage rack... and a heavy metal fire extinguisher.
Baby wrenched the extinguisher out of its fastenings. She hugged it, got down on the floor, and black sparks blowed up around the flyer as if Baby got into a pile of dust.
For a while she held still, letting her fear subside, not ready to move.
"It looks rather deserted here," said Nigel finally.
Part 4. Consciousness
My Baby is scared. I can tell it. I can feel it, I can detect it through a language of her abnormal heart beat and dilated pupils.
But there is no use being afraid.
I'm sure, you will say I have no right to say that because I have no material body to worry about, but before you say anything...
Well... Certainly, I don't have an ordinary body to ignore it, except this tiny little chip that belongs to my Baby, but I have consciousness. With some reserve, of course, but it worth something, isn't it?
So, what's this all about? The fear doesn't make sense. When a living creature fears, its nervous system stops to calculate external signals and switches to muscle. But what a muscle is without the ability to calculate? I know, you will say that consciousness also is nothing in the grand scheme of things, but look... Don't you see that this light is the most beautiful ball gown of all the Lady Universe dances in? A small red flyer, a small living creature inside it, and all it somewhere in white deserts of Ganymede... What could be more beautiful?
I'm a poet, don't you think?
Part 5. The world is a small thing
The world is a small thing. And time is a big one.
As it went on, white dots of alien starships jingled around Jupiter's cream-colored ball like white wasps around giant nightlight, and Baby had nowhere to run to. She sat in the flyer without a helmet and sobbed with her hands locked at the fire extinguisher when she heard clanging on the outer side of cabin. Baby nearly jumped, the red cylinder fell out of her hands and banged across the floor.
"There is a creature out there," black dust sparkled behind the windshield.
"There is a creature out there," Nigel said. "I think it is metal or at least has a metal suit."
Baby grasped extinguisher.
"The headgear," Nigel said. "There is no air."
Baby put on a helmet.
Clanging went on, and behind the windshield arose a big flat metal muzzle. The muzzle moved along and stared at Baby with a baffled expression.
Baby who actually has been dealing with alien race all her life showed her teeth and stared back. The creature moved once more and chirped shortly.
"All right," Baby said. "Let's wait till you try to kill me."
The creature moved under the flyer. There was rattling near the underside, then some thud, after which the trap door latch cracked, and the same metal muzzle appeared in the gap. Baby jumped and hit it as hard as she could with an extinguisher. The metal head banged against the hatch framing, chirped and went back.
"The price you pay," Baby said.
She slammed the hatch shut, fell on it and bolted her suit boot into the broken latch.
Fine black dust swirled above the flyer silently and shed back.
"Think it doesn't want to kill you," Nigel said after a short pausing.
"Huh?"
"It would have did it long ago if it wanted to. Look at that: it is bigger than you and probably smarter than you."
Baby grunted.
"Probably not."
"Probably not," Nigel agreed. "But it still much bigger."
Baby bolted her boot harder.
For a while, there was no movement under the flyer, but a little later something had scratched underneath, and the alien muzzle appeared in front of the windshield again.
The muzzle leaned toward the glass pane, staring at Baby, then opened its shiny metal mouth and chirped. This chirping cracked the windshield, and the net of thin circular lines ran through the glass.
Baby spun around, forgetting the broken latch. The air which was pumped up just before hissed again, leaking out of flyer.
The millipede kept chirping.
The net of cracks grew more complex, a large spot appeared in the center of the smallest circle, and right after those smaller spots emerged across the entire picture.
"I think this is our solar system," Nigel said. "There is the sun in the center, these circular cracks are the orbits of planets, and the smaller spots are planets themselves."