The Makers

The honor to accept and (in order to avoid possible misunderstandings) at first to create financial security of the newly appeared diplomatic representation was fell upon the Czech Republic, the cradle of Makers.

Matt was the only one out of this diplomatic mission who was really happy about the upcoming trip; he had three good reasons for this. First, he has never been to the Earth. Secondly, he wasn't a Maker. And thirdly, he was only the ordinary little boy.

Aia had been telling him a lot about the Earth from what she remembered. He heard a lot about the sky, the rainbows, the mountains, the rivers and oceans, the changing of seasons in the temperate zone, the skyscrapers, the autobahns, the malls, the schools and the universities - and the boy's imagination pleasantly pictured in his mind's eye an air racks filled with cars, which looked exactly like the orbital shuttles, and a smiling, sluggish, multi-layered, pyramidal concrete giants, inside of which lived not wizards-Makers, but ordinary people. People are the same as he, Matt.

When in the old metal building of the maternal station began to ring the call signal from the airlock, Matt and Aia were just sitting on the cool metal steps.

"Benji, Benji!" a few minutes later, melted with delight Matt, almost forcibly dragging the poor android from the airlock chamber. "Tell me: is it true that this time you'll take me with you?"

"It's true."

"Is it true that the houses on the Earth are so large that a thousand people can live in them at the same time?"

"It's true."

"Is it true that there are so many people on the Earth that if they will fly to our Alpha in turn, everyone will be able to visit here only once a hundred thousand years?"

"Who told you so stupid thing?" genuinely surprised Benji and glanced at Aia. "People don't live there that much."

Aia hugged the android with one hand, while the second her hand gently ran over his broken face; and plastic and metal has stuck together and aligned under her thin fingers as obedient, as raw clay.

"What?" she shrugged. "It's his idea."

"I'll take them to Ruzyne," Benji said, embracing Aia in response. "I'm sorry."

"There is no need to be sorry. Prague is a good city. They'll be there alright. Is it true, Matt?"

"It's true," the boy agreed hurriedly. "We'll be alright there."

Benji had been preparing to the tragedy from the very moment of the call, but that didn't happen, - either because there was no any tragedy, or because the world of Makers meant completely different miseries, and Benji was floating in it like a complete fool, worse than in human sympathies and preferences.

Things were packed up, the goals are clear, the tasks are set, and the actors are balanced and calm. At least, from the outside it looked just like that.

Matt ran away to pack his bags, leaving Aia and Benji together. Both of them sat on the grass right there, by the hatch, leaning back against its thick transparent cover.

They sat like some kind of weird couple of angels guarding the hermetically sealed entrance to heaven.

"You know, sometimes it seems to me that they simply didn't finish with me."

Benji waved his hand somewhere toward the weightless space, where, from the outside of Alpha, the shuttle was hanging like a large metal wart, which still didn't belong to him, and in his intonation slipped the fatigue unnatural for any sort of machine.

"It seems to me that somewhere deep inside of me there is some kind of stupid incompatibility of my software and the world around me."

"Don't be absurd, Benji. The world around us has perfect compatibility with everything in the world. And you'll never be an exception, no matter how much you want it."

"But I don't want to be an exception," the android said. "The problem is different. The problem is that at times I don't want to be at all. I don't want to start from background mode. And, worst of all, I don't want the background mode as well. It seems to me wrong. I think it's some sort of system error."

"Of course, it's an error," agreed Aia. "Only it's yours, not those who did you. The error is to think that if you leave, something will change for the better in this world."

Benji looked up at her silently.

"Stop it, Benji. No one of us is to blame for the fact that the world is as it is."

"I don't blame anyone." He reached out and covered Aia's palm with his silvery palm. "It's just recently that it strangely struck me to watch myself: you are too crucial for me, and I'm not sure that it's right."

"It's hard to surprise the one who knows everything in advance," Aia chuckled bitterly. "I know more: I also know that you are not sure about the opposite."

Yes, nodded android, not sure.

"Do you want a piece of advice?"

Yes, he nodded.

"I think that such a layout - what is right and what is wrong - matters only in the context of goal-setting. Let's say you need to get from Paris to Stuttgart. If you took off and took to the east, you are approaching the goal, and, therefore, did the right thing. If the other way..."

"Mm-hmm... I got it," Benji nodded. "If at first sudo rm-rf, and then defragmentation, it's not very correct. Although..."

He suddenly reached for Aia's shoulders, gently turned her toward his face and kissed her so humanly as he could, whispering to the girl's little ear:

"Although in the reverse order, in my opinion, it's also wrong."

"Benji!" Aia gasped.

"I knew you'd like it."

24. 2330th year. The Earth.

In August, Matt caught a cold for the first time in his life.

By that time it had been exactly two weeks since Benji left four of them in Prague's Ruzyne.

For these two weeks, Matt has already relatively used to living on the Earth. He managed to get used to the fact that the houses and their inhabitants aren't quite as he imagined. He managed to get used to the skyscrapers, to people, to the wind, to the strong smell of flowers in the Prokop valley, to the sky - the blue, then the orange, in which the inexhaustible rivers of aircars were constantly flowing, and to the clouds crossing the sky.

The adults - Lukasz and parents of Matt - all this time, almost never stayed at home, constantly went to somewhere: the meetings, negotiations, seminars, congresses, conferences, and on those rare days when they were at home after all, the house was full of strangers.