The Makers

33. 2330th year. Matt.

Matt once again was alone and unhappy.

He no longer admired the Earth. The vast scenery that greeted him a long time ago, no longer filled the abyss that burned out this summer somewhere deep inside his chest.

His personal meanings - that had been cherished on Alpha by a wonderful sister and brought from there - here on the crowded Earth, collapsed successfully, and the place for the common ones in his soul was not allocated yet.

Yet there were bright days: when the blue sky or cumulus clouds brought him joy, but this joy was short-lived, and the moments - all less and less. More and more often, he very much wanted to return home - to where along the banks of the Valley large green houses crawled like a big alive caterpillars, where the Earth was not densely crowded and noisy, but distant and round, and where the stars were visible in the black sky both day and night.

To say that he's missed a miracles is not to say anything. No, of course, he's missed: the house, the lemurs who used to come running in the mornings for the sweet porridge, the monsters woven from the fog, but he was oppressed by quite different things: he just wanted to be a Maker. And couldn't.

The third day, Global News practically non-stop have been pouring the same pictures from the moon: the Carlini titanium mines, the white spaceship and the small blue-eyed boy surrounded by a gloomy military guard.

Matt, who grew up among the Makers, was not impressed by the magnitude of what was happening, an aliens in general, and their young delegate, who could walk through the walls and speak the main terrestrial languages as native, in particular.

Two days earlier, in the evening, when his parents were setting in the living room in front of the holo, watching Aia on the Moon, he suddenly, sharply and irrevocably have realized that these days he lost something very, very important.

Aia, who was intensely looking at Benji playing with a strange blond child, caused him a whole range of conflicting emotions: the betrayal that he had seen in his sister's affectionate glance became a real revelation for him; he realized that it was jealousy, that he is alone and that his childhood is over.

And the next morning it rained again.

It was Saturday midmorning. By this time, the rain outside the window already for the second day in a row had been lashing wet, soggy roofs.

The air was so moist that the Prague seemed to Matt some ancient, sunken city, and he himself was a dreary, lost fish.

The wet ouzel sat ruffling up on the street lamppost and didn't want to return to the house. In the absence of Lukasz a thoughts wandering in his small black head were full of a vague forest voices and gray, obscure shadows.

When a white-and-blue government flyer landed behind a cast-iron fence, and four blurred silhouettes appeared through the rain, Matt rather guessed than recognized Benji, his own sister, and the boy among them, and his heart sank.

"Oh my God! Aia!" the mother clasped her hands and silently froze on the threshold.

"Oh, Mom, please, come on without tragedies," Aia said.

She let go of Danek's hand, helped him to undress and hang the raincoat on the peg.

"The weather here is wonderful. Much nicer than there, on the Moon. What do you think, Benji?"

"Ano samozrejme!" Benji suddenly gave a bass voice.

He still looked like himself - the terracotta face, thin silvery hands, all-wheel drive and many points of freedom - but something in his appearance almost imperceptibly changed, making him both more charming and human.

He took Aia's umbrella, put it in the corner, affectedly pressed his hand to his chest and half-bowed addressing Aia's mother. Then he slowly walked toward the living room, watching the aquatints hanging on the walls of the hall. The dramatic content of the forms depicted on them didn't worry him, but the nuances of texture saturation and the depth of etching of the tonal planes were very much pretty cool.

In the hall lingered Matt, his parents, Aia, the boy, and the stranger with some strange long suitcases and cameras.

"Ahoj, Prague!" Said Danek and held out his right hand to Matt.

"Ahoj," grimly agreed Matt, looking not at the boy, but at his own sister, and demonstratively ignoring the outstretched hand. "Where is Lukasz?"

"Officially it looks like an exchange of delegations," Aia shrugged. "There, on the Moon, he was the only one who suitable."

The sky, despite the morning, was heavy and so dense that in the living room a light was switched on. But, maybe, it would be switched on in any case, - Matt didn't know the peculiar properties of holographic recording.

"Honestly, I didn't notice a big difference," half an hour later Benji spoke to camera hanging in the middle of the hall.

The voice of the android was very beautiful - low and velvety, and the guest listened to this voice, furtively glancing in turn at Aia and at the child opposite her.

An alien boy, who sat with his feet in a large leather armchair, looked quite ordinary, an earthly child.

"Of course, both sides are radically different from people. And, of course, both sides are far ahead of us, machines, both in terms of vision of the situation, and in terms of control over it. But they are very similar to each other. I think that humanity can just watch in this situation, and nothing more."

"And learn?" asked the guest.

"It's impossible to learn, because there is nothing to learn there for mankind. It's like there is no details in a machine to experience a fatigue."

Matt looked at his sister and mentally agreed with Benji.

Yes, he thought, the human who wants to understand the Maker would look like a snail that believes that it would master the field theory if it'll creep along every page of the book. It's ridiculous, miserable and pointless at the same time.

"I think the issue of the difference is more political."

Aia unclenched the fists on her knees, and tiny blue sparks slid poured to the floor from her fingers.