The Makers

But Benji was a machine, and machines are not stupid.

The first thing he understood was that no matter how advanced the employer was, he wouldn't ever pay such money within such a period of time, and don't turn out to be insane. The second was that now he should have studied the human market in order to outwit him.

He glanced once more at the snowy morning over Orly, at the white, snow-covered mother shuttle, turned and walked back to the dark and cold niche in the engine room. There he again stucked his thin fingers into their electronic sockets, closed his eyes and went to get acquainted with the laws of the world economy.

The snow, that he has brought inwards, hasn't been melting for a long time on his cold metal shoulders.

***

So Benji was a machine.

He could do without a London economic school or a Jewish background behind him: there were enough electronic resources like ESY and ESA at his disposal.

It took him a week to understand the theory of money and credit, a week more - the fundamentals of banking and investment management, two more - macroeconomics, taxation, civil, commercial and labor law, after which, at the very beginning of 2329, he began his great game.

The first thing which he counted on was that people let every member of the AI-DII family, when they reached the age of fifty, to take a machine retirement and feel like a human. And it meant no more and no less than the fact that, from the legal point of view, his peers DII in such a case didn't differ from people in any way and could, for example, organize their own financial project.

The second thing that he had hoped on was his, Benji's, personal ability: the law didn't limit the number of financial projects for the same individual.

At eight o'clock on January 18, 2329 Benji had to leave Orly for a short time - under the baffled looks of the Paris fonctionnaires he acquired an international passport under the name Benji Shabra.

A few hours later, at twenty-one seventeen, on one of the Icelandic servers appeared the first legal Internet Bar with procedural accompaniment, belonging to the machine with artificial intelligence. At ten thirteen on February 1 of the same year the federal institute of intellectual property in Bern became richer for one patent, and at eleven twenty-seven on May 28 in the Berne State Register for the first time in history was appeared Gmbh, belonging to the machine.

13. 2330th year. Aia.

Aia caught up with her brother very close to the ground, the sole was now only hundred meters below. She waved her hands - shoo!
– and grabbed Matt by his jacket and pants, fluttering in the airflow. White flakes were blown out in all directions.

"Look down!" she shouted.

"The Valley..." gasped Matt.

While Aia was carrying him lower and lower, the water in the low part was rising, hunching, growing up in a fanciful blue fringe, and by the time when Matt's feet touched the ground, in place of the Valley there were gigantic water jungles: a colossal "trees" with flowing transparent trunks, transparent blossom and transparent thin leaves, interwoven with them and with each other liana streams, trembling underbrush.

All that what until recently were quietly and serenely floating somewhere in the Valley, was now fussy and loud shifting up and down inside of this unfathomably fantastic forest, flashing scales and fleetingly flicking its paws. And below all this in the muddy-green "grass", in color and texture very reminiscent of perennial bottom sediments, rustled those very small white animals with icy fur.

"Do you hear?" Aia quietly asked, carefully putting Matt on the ground, and Matt has really heard that somewhere near him the lemurs started singing.

"Look! Look! Water forest will remain here forever!" one of them sang enthusiastically.

"You are the foolish, foolish lemur!" outraged another one. "Humans have nothing forever!"

Aia waved her hand and raised an eyebrow: so we go?

Go, he nodded willingly.

She stepped aside, giving way to him, and behind her he noticed a path, running deep in the water forest. The path was narrow, with tiny icy flowers, glistening thickly on both sides of it in the pointy gray-green grass. Matt listened and went toward the almost hushed, subtled lemure song that still could be heard.

When Matt and Aia went out into the clearing, the lemurs were sitting by the bush, overhead there dangled a large water balls, the setting sun reflected in this balls, and inside of them swam a numerous dragonfly larvae swam.

"Chillllly..." sadly complained one of the lemurs.

His head with a white triangular spot on his forehead was lifted towards the sun, he squeezed his eyes shut and tightly pressed a long striped tail to his chest.

"But beauuuutiful..." another one comforted him.

"Hey, katta!" Aia called to them. "What are you doing here in the middle of this puddle?"

"Aia! Aia!" both lemurs jumped as the one black-and-white lump from surprise. And then they hopped over to meet them and shouted, competing with one another:

"We saw the Valley makes a forest! We ran to look!"

"We didn't see you on the bank! But there was another Maker there!"

"Another?" Matt was surprised.

"Other! Other!" the lemurs nodded happily. "We'll show! We'll!"

Matt glanced at his sister, and she nodded: "Run, run," then she smiled, took a backpack from behind her back, took out from it a transparent jar full of small scintillant sparks that moved and poked into the glass and then poured them in front of her on the ground.

The sparks broke out even brighter, spun over the path like a flock of frightened moths, and flew forward, outrunning Matt with lemurs and lighting their way.

The other was Lukasz.

He was sitting on a top of hill, where the bank of the Valley was still half an hour ago, and looking at what Aia was doing. Not interfering and, in general, not even wondering.

For three hundred years he's lived among his own kind, and now he was philosophically looking at the fluidity of the world. A long time ago he outgrew such childishness: both his daughters and both grandsons became adults a long time ago too, and he more and more often wanted to be the cause of stability, and not changes.