Contents

Agree friends, we are interested in knowing what a socialized consciousness looks like, which can become the basis of a perfect world. People — computers included in the World Wide Web, communicating with everyone, now or in the past: what is it? Knowledgeable, powerful, immortal, who ran to Paradise faster than anyone else.

There can be many branches along this path. Perhaps best of all, the theme is revealed by the British television series «Black Mirror». Computers are an incredible addition to a person, his chance for immortality, lasting joy or nightmare.

The book shows that the already existing biological basis of a person has a huge resource for improvement. Computers, smartphones, and other gadgets are just crutches for people ascending to heaven. And, someday the time will come to resolutely discard them.

…The idea is periodically raised: a chip has been implanted in the man of the future; location identifier, which is a passport, wallet, medical card, and the like.

The bond with it, however, is easily shielded by layers of metal, concrete, water or earth. Interference can be caused by thunderstorms, magnetic storms, and distance devices.

Therefore, the next step in the world order presupposes the exodus of mankind into the only House, designed for several billion people. It is forbidden to live outside of it.

The entire space here is covered by Wi-Fi, so that any person is constantly under the control of the Government. If he starts doing something wrong, he will be stopped very quickly.

But man is characterized by a striving for diversity. Otherwise, life becomes simply impossible. The house is divided into separate Sectors. Each of them has its own way of life, architecture, temperature and humidity. Sometimes, in accordance with certain principles, residents move to other places. The inhabitant of the technologically advanced, reminiscent of the office of Univer City, is transferred to Setan, stylized Central Asia, with dates and heat. A happy rentier AurumCity falls into ExoCity, a prison full of snowdrifts and stew that must be fiercely fought over. This state of affairs suits the owners of the House — after all, the game of fate is never attached.

Almost everything that was told about them and the House remained in the deleted six chapters.

Terminals are located throughout the House. To live, people must re-register regularly. Something like this is already common. This is how all social networks work. From time to time you «lose» your password. The system rejects your option, although there can be no error. You restore it by requesting a confirmation code that comes to your mobile phone.

Today, users are registering to enter the Network, and the day after tomorrow they will register all of themselves with devices that are somewhat reminiscent of modern payment terminals.

When registering, we enter a «captcha» — a set of letters and numbers. It is worth deviating somewhat from the mental norm, and this is already quite difficult.

It will be replaced by an interactive film. Letters and numbers flash across the screen, forming invisible questions. By observing the feedback, the machine determines your moods and thoughts. A similar psychotechnological device (MindReader) was created in the early nineties. The program diagnoses the state of mind in a volume unknown even to the owner of the brain. «Open your soul. Be a child. Tune in to goodness ”- after this call, the machine easily extracts from you everything that you think about, what you remember and what you have forgotten a long time ago.

In general use Terminals will appear first in corporations and government structures. Then they will occupy airports, train stations, streets, supermarkets and intersections.

It is unlikely that an ordinary computer is suitable for the role of the Terminal. The social role of the device is too great and requires some external reverence. A laptop that is regularly exposed to spilled coffee cannot earn the respect it deserves. Personality terminals will be installed in public places, where they will at least be protected from vandalism.

It is hardly possible to avoid this. Nature loves to test everything with practical experience.

Thanks to the Strong Intelligence program, matured smartphones will be able to communicate with their owners, advise and guide. The Mobile Friend manages money wisely, looks for a job, a life partner and the most acceptable way. All this will begin with the fact that mobile phones will display contextual advertising not only by reading what we write, but also by eavesdropping.

However, this is already there.

Communication means will become pets. Now they call us with flicker and vibration, in the future they can come up and bite. They will accompany you everywhere, a cross between squid and crab, wrapping around your flesh. Such they will become Assistants, capable of conducting a line of communication between the Government and the person.

…In the new, thoroughly controlled world of the House, people lack immortality. Older religions are forgotten or not taken seriously. There is no belief in a posthumous existence.

Wealthy people want to achieve eternal life on their own.

The souls of five people from the group of Guardians created in the USSR wake up in the midst of the World Order. They are calculated through the I-Di Terminals. They offer to lead the business of resurrecting customers-Trusts from any degree of decay. After all, only the citizens of the former superpower have some kind of Knowledge. They are given unlimited funding, materials and workers to choose from.

And, they agree.

Hunt is a Level 3 Mechanic.

Hart is an ambulance attendant.

Stele — Diko dancer, psychologist. Dies from the «Landfill disease». Agent «Lazaret» in the other world.

Tim is an office plankton who dreams of becoming a spy with a license to kill.

Dory is a teenager who doesn’t want to grow old.

There is also Alex Tour, a thirteen-year-old scientist, on whose behalf the story of the Infirmary is being conducted, his companions and Friends: Baby, Livi, Eri, Hett, Kyra, Agatha, Binga, Max Grudener, and others.

They haven’t got together yet. They live in different corners of the colossal House.

The house is a serfdom that grew out of a system of contracts similar to those now applied to professional athletes. Feudal relations, socialism, communism and fascism, separated by strong bulkheads, against the background of a developed technocratic society. There is something similar in the photographs of the Chinese city of Kowloon City — merged multi-storey buildings with a pair of courtyards. An immense communal apartment.

Population — a billion people, in a building so high that there is no longer enough air to breathe on the upper floors. Why was the House created? Protection against terrorism, in the conditions that a bomb similar in power to a nuclear one can be created in the kitchen, environmental protection, which has reached the point of absurdity, control over capricious humanity. But, probably, those services that always want to know your location, your phone number, and a lot of things that are more convenient to deal with people who constantly live in a space permeated with Wi-Fi know better about this.

Phone for talking to the dead

…To avoid meeting with persons of higher status, Hunt ordered a three-dimensional elevator for one.

Minus 25 units for uncommunicativeness, — replied Prilipala ((literally — «the one who stuck»).

Maybe today it is permissible?

The outskirts of the quarter appeared unusually quickly. Here you can meet your young self. Scoop up meaning from childhood. Now it is important to see the tasty past.

At the intersection of the corridors, Hunt studied the hatchway to Setan for several minutes. A completely different world is hidden just a couple of meters away. A part of the House, arranged for a patriarchal life with incubators of children for the production of work in the civilized Sectors. Medieval Asia. As soon as you open the hatch, take a few steps, and the novelty dies in your face; the smell of sand swept over concrete, figs and salty blood. Crowds of relatives unimaginable for UniverCity, meat indistinguishable from the real, dates, halva, the indisputable power of the head of the family and trade shops without price tags.

Besides Setan, Hunt only visited Exo City, at the invitation of Prilipala. Refrigeration pipes, prison cells that look like boilers, tears and fervent laughter of even more powerless prisoners than himself. An attraction for those whose secret desire to torment and escape.

Hunt walked to the partition that separates the world from the Dump of one of the courtyards of the House, large-scale, reaching almost to the Roof. Once there was a park with a fountain in the middle.

The dump was amazing. It looks like an ocean dried up in the light of a supernova. Dunes of rags that were once someone’s clothing. This tank is a whale without a tail, and if you turn the point of view, it is a crumpled bathyscaphe. Dishes, household appliances, loose furniture. Some of the things equipped with their own power sources make strange sounds, as if calling to restore them and return them to their former life.

The bones of nameless people, those that have not been recycled in recycling plants, form vast geological strata. The breath of the ventilation pipes makes the ash flutter like torn confetti. If you crawl down the network of cracks now, you can find a rarity — a bent laser disc, a TV with a vacuum tube, or even a paper book.

Birds with scruffy wings, a cross between ravens and bats, scream in the air. They fight insects for a piece of prey, losing feathers and quite correctly pronouncing the curses they hear from the boys.

— It is time! — said the Friend. — The dump is not ours. Penalty for non-standard behavior 355 units. Watch — commercial for the new White with Spices, 3 minutes.

Enter elevator 349, line 34.

But, now Hunt could not miss communicating with the Garbage Ocean, although he suspected that this was a desire to escape from existence. Or, more precisely, the beginning of life, where there is no repetition of what has been passed many times, which has already lost its color and taste. In general, it is interesting to meditate on such a messy, with a taste of freedom, mandala.

— Lumm. Rumm. Remy, Hunt hummed.

Remy. That was his name in that childhood life. Why — no one will tell.

«Hello Laz! (Luke). Is it still overgrown with crystalline concrete?»

Through the technological hatch, which was probably left by the builders of the House, young schoolchildren, the seekers Evin, Ri, Remi and Zhanna, made their way to the Dump. Here’s someone who could help remember everything. Just ten, or, let’s be honest, fifteen years ago, they were here together.

Hunt made his way between the shields covered in graffiti betraying the intent of the curious little bandits. He pushed aside a metal sheet familiar from childhood.

— It’s illegal! — reminded the Assistant. «You’ve already made three mistakes today. Follow the specified route. Check your loyalty to the Government at the Terminal.

An excavator with a bucket famously dug into the ground may be the same age as the House itself, as it was so legendary stood on the hillside. Just like when Remi was thirteen years old. Memory helpfully propelled Hunt into the bulky machine. The engine compartment is spacious, as if the designers took care of the comfort for dozens of mechanisms. Dark fatty oil. Rectangles of acid-smelling batteries. Everything is angular, but excruciatingly pleasant. Here, far from teachers, TV cameras and microphones, everything that was sneering, the boys sneaking into the excavator one by one took off the burden of the onset of puberty, as if fertilizing soulless mechanisms.

In a chipped pipe that once passed subway cars through itself, you can slide into a pile of sand poured out of giant fuses. From the top of this ride, little Hunt saw for the first time a special girl with white hair living in a carefully isolated half of the Orphanage. Of course, organic glass lenses distorted reality, surrounding objects with a pink aura, but undoubtedly the creature was incredibly beautiful. The creature (as Remy called the stranger), noticing Hunt with homemade binoculars, once made a friendly wave of his hand. Remi could not talk to this girl, or maybe he was afraid of it.

With the brunette Jeanne, who studied with Hunt together, the relationship was much easier. With her you could wander around the Garbage, chat, collecting mechanisms for the construction of an airplane. In search of levers, wheels, pipes, airtight fabric, they wandered as far as the Black Lake, on the surface of which, on hot days, the tentacles of what was aptly called the Squid were wriggling.

Played Time Lift travel, Eloi Morlocks, and hostile classmates fighting.

New types of unidentified living creatures constantly appeared at the Dump. In order to find their correct proper names for them, they had to seriously strain their imaginations. Chemicals and mitochondria gave rise to unpleasant but strangely appealing species. Spiders were like lizards, and lizards with articulated legs were like venomous arachnids. Dogs with outstretched jaws forgot that they were obliged to bark and only chomped, looking thoughtfully at people. Cats with colorful tufts of feathers watched the birds and tried to follow their example. The owner of a seething imagination, girlfriend Jeanne could not find a suitable name for them.

They also played with the same habits. Snap with your fingers at the same time. Wear television cameras under glasses, so that against the background of reality, you can view the translucent what the other sees. Remi introduced himself to her. Jeanne imagined herself to be him, even when Hunt was in the shower. It was really fun.

Jeanne. Not a bad friend. Too bad she went to the Junkyard with another classmate and never returned. For another three days, the cameras showed a section of the wall, a concrete slab and a piece of gray sky.

It was then, when Jeanne called at night and joyfully began to say something unintelligible, Remi began to sketch out the diagrams of the apparatus for communicating with the dead. In some ways, this device resembled an ordinary telephone. Only instead of numbers on the buttons, as it seemed in the dream, there were special signs. You have to press them many times to connect with the soul you need ...

...

..So, a person who has no better name than Hunt walks through the quarters of the House, according to the instructions of the electronic assistant or «Sticky». And, he begins to follow the cues of his new, special, awakened Friends. Hunt sees the world through their eyes, senses mood swings. Associations, thoughts and memories lead to where something important will happen.

It so happens that people, confused by a special connection, sooner or later meet at one critical point.

…The control system of the House realized that the person was thinking incorrectly. The terminal issued a command to eliminate. This kind of operation looks like a voluntary wish. In this book, informal people are brought into the arena of the Amphitheater, as if they had applied for participation in a dangerous game. Hunt heads to the site of his execution. Here he meets with unknown Friends — Dorian, the wanderer, «Fox», the doctor Hart, a certain Tim, who wants to eliminate all evil individuals and Stele, the dancer Diko. Together they slip away from the unpleasant embrace of death. The united consciousness of new people works wonders, up to the flight by the force of a common desire.

All of them are captured by the Lazaret organization, whose goal is to resurrect its founders, most of whom have long been dead. Their wills are valid. People with unusual abilities are offered to head the new department of the Lazaret And they are recruiting a new team — very young workers.

I have a low opinion of teenagers as the basis of a scientific breakthrough. Children often copy adults without hesitation. It is unlikely that you will create a team that can solve an important problem. Another thing is that their mental immunity and, generally speaking, differentiation are not yet so strongly developed. Being in a single form-forming field, they, like the cells of a growing fetus, are able to create an efficient, almost omnipotent organism.

Let’s listen to the story of the Lazaret (infirmary) recruit:

Tour Alex — Lazaret Newbie

…It cannot be said that I have always dreamed of getting into a dimensionless bunker buried in a pile of damp concrete.

Until then, the stages of my life have flowed quite smoothly in the Service Boarding School, which, in addition to the usual course in people management, is distinguished by the study of technical sciences. Parents, judging by the map I looked at in the director’s office, are the owners of the first and fourth blood groups, without stupid sores like Or-Or. Admirers of free love, and not opponents of children, gave me the opportunity to live until about ninety-five years old, matte skin, green eyes, black hair, developed muscles and different correct proportions of hormones. Where they are is unknown, but do you really need to know everything?

You need to know everything.

Ten days ago, having passed the Iron Numbers exam, I was strolling through the quarters of Ul-Karbon. Free walks in the Metropolis of Setan are provided, we note, my unknown friend, to the best students.

The Setan Sector embodies the diversity of life; the roar of camels churned in a copper pipe, fake gold, neon silver and, a piece of halva and a spoonful of molasses, free goodies at the crossroads. Endless ornaments on the walls, the giant Golden Quarter, flowing into the depths of the mines, the streets are gradually darkening. This is now only in memory!

How did the change come about?

…In the gazebo between the shop of rhinestones, the tall neon ring and the well of the Church of Euthanasia, recruiters approached me. My first thought? Let me remember. «These are the artistic bandits who love to play with people; they meet in a dark corridor, scare, talk heart to heart, shake their fingers and let them go safely. "Sartans, midnight psychologists, need fear and gratitude no less than your money, our dear Alex Tour.

Alex Tour.

Sixth course of the Boarding Service.

Plastic surgery, physical chemistry, management, stack ownership, practical hypnosis, plus a few more subjects to choose from. You can already understand who I am. And I’ll tell myself. If you are too smart, you get confused in your own thoughts. You go on an adventure. Between me, a boy and still a boy, the percentage of intelligence is given in return for common sense.

Seventy-first year of birth. Tour Alex Noah

The recruiters only smiled when asked if they were bandits. They purred like Odysseus sirens. Well, if I had not agreed to go to the Infirmary, towards adventure, what would they have done, who seemed, at first glance, trustworthy? Injected with a drug so that the boy’s memory was recaptured? Have you sent it back? It’s too late to think about all this now. What has been done cannot be returned.

A sickening journey in the dimly lit swings of long-range A-class elevators. This brought hope, because those who want to be disassembled into scarlet parts for more prudent and wealthy boys are not honored with such a long cruise.

Destination.

Lazaret

The atmosphere is like in a labor camp when you are settled there first. Euphoria rolls over, freedom with the lightest smack of despondency. You go into the chambers, splashing paint, sleep wherever you want, if whim comes, you mark the corners in a funny doggy way. A week later, the impudent people arrive, easily capturing the territory designated by you. And there is no way you can explain to them that you have already discovered everything here, and called it by its proper names. They ignore good advice, do not show much respect for the discoverer. Wow-wow to you! Only my protests don’t bother anyone either.

Construction of the New Infirmary

Newcomers are moved into Section A, level three, sleeping on wide beds, five people at a time. I would hardly agree to the move if I knew that I would lose almost all of my lion’s mane. Such a condition. I’m embarrassed. My room is in sector B, next to the laboratories. Five and a half cubic meters, rounded corners, cozy, like a chick in a nest. Residential Egg! The bed, an armchair, a table, shelves, a toilet seem to be ordered by the dwarfs, but in practice it is quite comfortable. The atmosphere is reminiscent of a «half-star» hotel, which has become a cult everywhere. There are more hatches here. Students will hide diaries, candy, maybe synthetic drugs in them. On the left side, if you reach through the plastic, your fingers will crawl into the Hangar.

This laboratory was created by order of the domains; our strange, flying bosses. From above it looks like a blank for playing tic-tac-toe. Now there are boring empty rooms and packed furniture. There is electricity and water supply, but in general the cells are empty. On the right side of the Egg, if, in the form of a ghost, you pass two meters of wires, tubes, dried spit, you will look into the elevator shaft leading to the hall of the organization that disguises the Infirmary.

I am the only one who knows how this whole laboratory communal apartment was born. Nobody bothered to supervise. In a year, all this faceless will be covered with the initials of subjects called enemies or friends, a film of sweat, fat, dust of the epidermis. I can speak beautifully, right?

Just ten days ago, the setting of the future hostel, Anthill, was a set of parts that the silent Technis specialists were unwrapping while sipping a permitted 3% beer. The morning before last, having passed the service elevator, I did not recognize this area. No oil drip from the impressive tunneling shield. The sewerage water of the dismantled apartments has been pumped out. Several tanks with traces of crystalline concrete, worn out inscriptions, scraps of striped ribbons. The gloomy hall, the diverging footprints of workers’ shoes. That’s all, comrades!

…The concrete box was filled with swinging contours. As if you, a curious bacterium, climbed into a developing organism. Cells multiply and become more complex. The light seeks out the nodes in which something still imperfect is visible, migrates, as if he himself acquired eyes, a brain, hands, and took up work. The command of the master — crystalline concrete becomes soft like chewing gum, pulls away from the car, forms new cavities, rooms, tunnels.

I am one of those who successfully sews names to things. Bunker. Infirmary — general. The department for us, who are still babies of science, is Dzot. Well, or already, Kubotur. That could be the name of a branch of purgatory, a puzzle or a company that organizes extreme tours to the hot zones of the House.

A ribbed waterfall streamed in the middle of the hall. Escalator. Exclamations of approval by employees. New flashes of light.

The aluminum frames are covered with plastic shells. Here and there, veins of wires, nerves of optical fibers, intestines of pipes materialize. Dzot discovers energy and will, like a maturing homunculus in a warm flask of an alchemist.

In the interweaving of plastic ribs, the diaphragm of the camera appeared, a hatch with petals, leading still nowhere. The worker turned the screw with a screwdriver, and the trill of opening doors flew up over the hum of the servo, an intricate «tur-lur-l» hunt for an unknown animal.

The workers left, leaving behind piles of rubbish, garlands and cigarette filters.

It’s all for me?

I culturally turned off the lights and climbed into the Egg.

For tonight, my invention is the surest way to hide thoughts from strangers. It is only when they remain inside that you protect the person from unnecessary reading.

In two minutes, the pages of the diary will become ghosts. I will burn the page on which the day is written! I will put the ashes in the box, which was previously occupied by unnecessary, albeit expensive, compasses. So no one will read the Burning Diary, unless the successes of resuscitation will restore it from these gray feathers. But then, you see, Friend, a completely different story will begin.

Acquaintance at the Kitchen

I met Baby.

…I remembered what I wrote in the Diary last night. Not quite normal, like the composition of a child prodigy tortured by classmates. It is necessary that each phrase be businesslike, with a grain of humor and cynicism, this is how you need to communicate, even with yourself. And, perhaps, they will accept you.

I walked around, examining the safety posters in the passage from the Hangar to the buildings of the laboratories of the Old Infirmary. Towards a girl in a gray overalls.

We stopped opposite each other. More precisely, friends. And they were silent for a long time. They just breathed, considering their future colleague.

Until I hissed «hello».

Hello is the right word for the beginning of most important dating.

— I’m Baby. More precisely Aqua.

— Alex Tour Noah. The number… well, why does she actually need my ID number?

She could turn and walk into the newcomers’ manifold, to the old business acquaintances. This is the custom in a cultured society; you can’t be friends there for a long time. But, we went together, almost arm in arm, where the eyes look and starting all sorts of conversations.