Czytaj książkę: «Parsec to Earth»

Food on the campfire

The era of the omnipotence of information, when it can read thoughts, create entities in the network that can live independently, and also control the person himself, his thoughts and desires.

Teleportation allowed a person's consciousness to move to different parts of the world, when there was a need for this, people almost stopped traveling and flying anywhere themselves.

The infinity of knowledge shifted the horizons of boundaries in learning, but although at some stage people stopped learning new sciences and skills, all the things in ordinary life and discoveries in science were made by network entities. Even a famous director made a movie with blue men once, but I've already forgotten what it's called.

SethWai's telepathy and empathy through videographs allowed us to convey emotions that people managed to quarrel and arrange conflicts in this ideal world, where a person did not need to do anything, absolutely nothing. All the actions that people did, they were voluntary.

Cloud files will startstoring not only photos and videos, but also emotions and taste memories. Tariffs were particularly popular when it was possible to record childhood memories from memory and then convert them to a video file and watch them for a separate fee in old age.

The Internet has become not just a drug, but everything.

* From the memoirs of a man who cooked food over a campfire in a cave.

The Emperor's Lost Report

Point I: A new beginning. The Emperor orders that to this day it is necessary for everyone to provide their data, who has how many cattle, slaves and bread, before accessing the Internet.

Item II: Intertwining space and time. The limits of the use of the Internet are determined by the supreme order of the Emperor and can be terminated after a citizen violates rules that violate the freedom of another citizen or the Emperor.

Item III: Education and training. The use of the Internet aspart of training seminars with teachers is possible only during the day, so as not to load the electrical networks in the evening, when workers return from work and turn on the heating, light, and radio at home, increasing the load on the electrical network.

Item IV: Culture and art. You can't use video recordings during gladiator fights or theatrical performances. When placing an order online, you must receive a written order from the Emperor.

Item V: Trade and economics. The Internet can be used as a trading platform with foreign countries, but with mandatory payment of tax to the state treasury.

Item VI: The social paradigm. You can create communities on the Internet, but you can't write private messages. All messages must be public. Aristocrats have the right to withdraw information about themselves on the Internet.

Item VII: Parenting. Rome, as the center of the Internet, should unite everyone, as well as the center of moral and educational process for young people. It is forbidden to give access to the Internetto children under 10 years of age. Item: Legacy. Information on the Internet should be duplicated in special information storage blocks using encoding. As a code, use a system of rearranging bits every three characters. The file extension must be .rom.

Spilled coffee

Vasily was a brilliant inventor. He had a lot of ideas constantly bubbling through his head, but none excited him as much as creating something that could change the course of history and science. In his laboratory, Vasily began working on his latest and most ambitious project – a time machine that worked with the power of thought.

Everything turned out to be simple in operation: one click on the red button moved you back a year, and the green button moved you forward a year.

The main thing was that it was impossible to lose this bulletfor communication with the main processor, which was located in the present time. Vasily's first development only allowed him to see holographic images of the past and future without being able to interfere with the process in any way, but even this made him insanely happy.

He held his emotions together with a great effort of will. Vasily wanted to organize a scientific conference, and he had already sent aninvitation to the most prominent scientists. I decided to make coffee and then with a mug of aromatic drink approached the window. And he saw people and cars soaring up into the sky, and he was stuck to the ceiling without taking a sip of coffee. A huge rock was approaching from the sky.

Magus

…

Objects could change their shape when exposed to physical force. Food could be prepared using a special device, with the push of a single button.

There are such boxes on this planet that can drive without the strength of a person, you just need to press somewhere with your feet and rotate the wheel, which is at chest level.

…

Mort read the beginning of a novel by a writer and, closing his left eye, the information disappeared from the wall of his house.

– It is he who is interested in what planet he lives on, it would be necessary to fly there on vacation, and why is his work called fiction? he said, and after yawning once, a table of food appeared in front of him.

On thefar shelf was a single paper book with a blue planet painted on the cover, with patches of gray in some places. It was left to him by his grandfather, who said that he was one of several people who were able to fly away from it.

Flying House

It was early morning when I found myself between the clouds of clouds. I managed to take off, even though I planned to do it after lunch, as soon as I had lunch.

The flight lasted long enough that I was very hungry, and my eyes were quite sad, I was constantly thinking about food instead of enjoying the beauty of nature from above, and most importantly – the fact that I managed to make a flying house, which took me five years to build.

I decided to go back to earth, to the place from which I took off, and I came back.

When I stepped on the ground, I noticed a lot of people approaching my house.

I had to drive them away for a long time and even guard my house when it was already night. Towards morning, I dozed off and was woken up by a small noise coming from a lonely old man outside my house.

This man, as it turned out, came up in the early morning and tapped the wings of the house with a cane, after which they melted and flowed down. A foreign object disturbed the quantum equilibrium of the plasma wing. I didn't have time to write down the composition of the metal in the plasma state in a hurry, because I had tried many components before and didn't want to waste time on it. I added a pinch of one substance or another.

I didn't manage to restore the exact composition of the wing for the house even after a few years, receiving new compositions every day. I couldn't use the other wing for spectral analysis, or rather, I tried, but I also broke it by accidentally touching it. And after тогоit melted completely and flowed to the ground, often substances, freed from quantum bonds, volatilized.

In one day, I stopped all attempts to restore the physical and chemical composition of the flying wing and switched to repairing the roof of the same house.

The Baron

In a remote forest, hidden from human eyes, lived a dog named Baron. Once it had owners, but when they were gone, it went into the forest, thinking to find its relatives. He was unusual in that he could talk. No, not just bark or howl, but in real words and phrases.

Baron grew up among other dogs, but always remained lonely because of his way of communicating. Other dogs were afraid of him, not knowing how to react to such an unusual creature. The Baron himself felt like an outcast.

One day, fate led him to meet a young boy named Tim, who lived with his parents on the edge of the forest. When Tim saw the Baron, he realized that he had never seen such a dog before.

Baron and Tim became best friends. Tim taught the dog to speak in other words, and the Baron helped Tim learn the secrets of the dog language. They spent days and nights together, their friendship growing stronger by the moment. The Baron became more cheerful.

In the next vacation, they managed to go on vacation with the dog to another country. Only animals that didn't know the "sit"command were allowed on planes.

The Baron understood when people understood him and always greeted him with loud squeals, he was used to it. One morning, he ran off into the woods for a walk while his new owners were sleeping in the bungalow in the morning. Despite the good care and delicious food from his new friends, he didn't have enough communication with his own people, even though they still didn't want to accept him into their team.

Running to the edge of the palm trees, he saw people who were not so dressed as in the city where he lived.

He asked the people in strange clothes where the local dogs lived, but no one even looked at him, only the people looked around among themselves, did not even pay attention to the dog, and then continued to plan the boat out of a large tree trunk.

"They don't want to talk to me," the Baron thought, and walked slowly back to the bungalow, where his young friend Tim and his parents were wandering around shouting as they approached.

– B-a-a-a-r-o-o-o-n!

Fridge

The night fog was thick on the doorstep as Richard left the house for a walk with his faithful dog Bailey. The breeze of the autumn wind tickled his face coolly, and the leaves rustled softly under his feet.

A few minutes later, Richard noticed that the forest was changing before his eyes. The trees became increasingly lively and dense, which penetrated through the foliage of the forest.

… my heart started beating faster.

So suddenly, they saw a ring of fire floating above the ground above the seaweed near the shore. Bailey began to squeal like a child, but Richard felt no fear, if only a little, and the need to see and unravel, to understand the unusual phenomenon in the middle of the forest, roused him, and the fear disappeared.

The first thing Richard felt afterward wasthe cosmic silence and lack of hunger. He completely forgot about his usual need for food. Surprisingly, his body began to extract energy from the surrounding environment, fueling the unusual energy sources around him. The dog was no longer there.

Richard witnessed a tribe of giant ancient trees that communicated with each other through their roots,creating a network of intelligent communication. He visited the city of underwater creatures that breathed water and possessed the magic of the oceans. From afar, he watched the life of human birds that can fly over gorges, he saw dinosaurs grazing peacefully in a meadow like cows.

Richard didn't know how much time had passed, but he wanted to go back home, because he was getting uncomfortable and even scared.

And he decided to go back home, and just as he thought about it, he appeared next to the tree where he got into the portal, his dog was sitting.

– I looked for you there and didn't find you."

Bailey wagged her tail and began to curl around his feet. So they returned home. The dog ran ahead and constantly showed Richard the way.

When they got home, he found that the calendar had the same date on it when he left for the woods. The refrigerator, which had been broken before, he began to use instead of a shelf for books.

He wanted to tell them everything he had seen and gone through, but no one believed him.

But it became difficult for him to communicate with people, people shunned him, avoided him, old friends thought that he was crazy. So Richard decided to go back to the forest where he had passed through the portal before, but he couldn't do it. The forest has completely changed, or rather, it has burned out, and only the firebrands of this place remain. He started walking in different directions in hopes of getting into the portal, but each time he felt that it was getting harder and harder for him to walk.

The sun was already sinking below the horizon, and before nightfall, Richard decided to head back home before he got completely lost. It was getting harder for him to walk. When he reached his house, he greeted the neighbors, but no one greeted him in return.

When he got home, he decided to take a warm bath and shave. A very old man was looking at him in the mirror.

Gestures

All the people suddenly didn't understand each other. It is clear that at first this caused confusion and fright, but soon turned into real chaos. People have isolated themselves, avoiding all communication, hoping that this is a passing crisis. However, the hours turned into days and the days into weeks, but the situation did not change.

At the same time, animals – dogs, cats, birds – began to communicate with each other without any difficulty. It turned out that they had long understood each other, but simply did not have the opportunity to say it out loud. Understanding and co-ordination enabled them to actively discuss current events and even plan their actions. The animals gathered to listen to each other, understand the reasons for the strange state of people and decide what to do about it.

Thus began the real era of animal diplomacy. The animals held peaceful conferences, argued, and developed strategies and action plans. They managed to find a common language and cooperate with each other, despite the diversity of species.

The longer the animals gathered and discussed their plans, the more it became clear that they were decidedly anti-human. Their anger and indignation increased with each new day of indifference and misunderstanding on the part of people.

Finally, the animals decided to start a war against humans.

The war began unexpectedly and mercilessly. Animals used their instincts, speed, and strength to fight humans. They knew how to complete their mission, and they were determined to reach their goal.

People, in turn, lived in fear and fragmentation. They had no understanding of why the animals went to war, only misunderstanding and fear. They tried to organize a defense, but they did not have unity and coordination of actions. There was only panic and confusion.

The war continued for several years, and with the destruction of the city and the worldwide panic, almost nothing was freed from the influence of animals. People realized their helplessness before the animal world. They finally realized that the impact of the animals was so strong that they can no longer control what is happening.

People tried to communicate with each other with gestures and somehow arrange resistance to animals, but this was a bad idea, because animals that saw people waving their hands at each other passed this information to predators.

People had to escape from predators, pretending to be animals, dressing in their vestments. But one day everything changed, as it turned out, one animal decided to stand up for people and started a rumor among its relatives that people are just like them, they just don't grow hair.

One day, frightened people began to feel that they wanted to talk, and it happened so suddenly that for a long time they were silent and started talking loudly to each other.

The beasts who found out about this quickly agreed to pretend that they couldn't speak, and everything went back to the same place, when people communicated, the beasts were silent.

Box

In the gloomy world of humans, sleep enveloped my consciousness, my hands and feet were cold, but I needed to sleep, and I began to doze off.

…angry birds with distorted faces and a feathery mane danced clumsily around me, pressing in with their sharp beaks. Something in the area of my knee was biting excessively, like a bee pretending to be a flying fly.

But suddenly I woke up abruptly and saw a man approaching the garbage can.

– Why do they throw it in that bright box?" And where do they get food on this cold day, now nothing grows and it's hard to hunt? I thought as I watched the car pull out of the yard.

I sat quietly by the side of the road, like a grown manthrowing out bags that smelled like food. "They probably print it at home, since it's not a pity to throw it away," I thought again, remembering my own planet, where they worked very hard for food and in the end we had to move to this planet to save ourselves from starvation.

At the time of the flight, as my parents told me through the tradition of generations, the dogs quarreled and swore to get to the blue planet, which was the third in a row from the bright star, to stop communicating with each other, and everyone will continue to survive in their own way. Yes, we are dogs.

So we lost the connection and secret knowledge of our progenitors, and nowwe are forced to beg in towns and villages in search of food. We continue to communicate through thoughts between other dogs, without making any sounds, occasionally barking, pretending in front of people who occupy a supreme position here that we do not know how to talk.

Parsec to Earth

– Aloise, I don't even know how to say this, but I'm quitting my job, – Jessica said in an uncertain voice, trying to hide the worry in her eyes. She worked in the company's labor dispute department.

– What? Are you serious? Aloys looked at his colleague in a daze, – but why? You recently got a job with us, I think it was just last spring.

Jessica sighed, trying to find the right words.

– Aloise, this job is just not for me. All those long hours spent in front of the computer, soulless reports, endless meetings, – her voice dropped to a whisper, and she slowly turned her head in different directions, for some reason, although you could tell if she was mentally denying what was happening or just stretching her neck, it was impossible to say for sure.

– But we both know that this job is chosen not because of our own desires, but because of the inability to find something better. The economy isn't at its best right now, – Alois said, trying to find a common language with Jessica.

– I want to become a writer, I want to create and share my ideas with people. This is something that really excites my heart, not the processes and documentation and not the sad faces when hiring and firing from work.

– You're going to fire yourself now, you're the head of human resources, – Aloys laughed loudly, and Jess joined in.

Aloys looked at Jessica thoughtfully and nodded slowly.

– I understand you, Jess. This work does not always bring joy and satisfaction. And if you are confident in your abilities and your passion for writing, then you should pursue your dream.

– Thank you, Aloys. Your understanding means a lot to me. And I know that the decision to leave this place is the right move for me, although I may regret leaving my job after a while and losing the income that I would have received if I had worked for a fixed job, small but guaranteed.

John smiled and shrugged.

– I wish you nothing but success, Jess. I am sure that you will become a great writer, and your stories will inspire many. Good luck in your creative journey!

Jessica smiled, a sign of Aloyse's understanding and support warming her heart.

– Thank you, John. I also hope that our paths will cross again in the future, – she smiled coquettishly.

Aloys went outside, where the sun was less hot and the wind was coming in from the bay. He stood up and silently looked towards the river port and then up at the sky. Everything that had happened in his life before was completely unrelated to what he had planned, or rather planned.

He spent three years assembling a teleporter in his garage, and once, accidentally directing a beam at a neighbor's garage, he even sent it somewhere. The police came to investigate the theft, but they couldn't find any evidence, so the case was quickly closed.

The investigators also went to his garage, but apart from strange devices with wires, they saw nothing and quickly left.

– Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow…, – said Alois quite loudly as he saw a girl in a beautiful dress passing by.

– Do I know you? – Hearing his words, the girl asked, slowing her pace slightly.

Without replying, Alois got into his car,which was no different from the others, except that the bodywork was slightly dented in several places and there was rust on the hood. But he had spent all the weekends of the last few years on his spacecraft, trying to fly to the first planet outside the solar system and quickly get back to Earth.

He did not want to stay on other planets, he did not understand at all those who wanted to fly to other planets forever, leaving all their relatives and friends here. Flying, or, more precisely, moving through space with the help of his teleporter, interested him as a scientific event, rather than just a tourist trip.

The idea was quite simple. Charge the device through a plasma generator, accumulate enough energy to overcome the light barrier in flight. Drop the flag with the license plate of his car from the ballast, and then use a powerful telescope to find him from the ground, announce that he was there.

The whole event was supposed to take a couple of Earth days. And Aloyz planned to return to work early next week, but he might be late at most. But, given his high position in the company, his absence from work for a couple of hours would not have been noticed by anyone, because he never held personal receptions and conducted all business through an electronic secretary.

He wasn't going to take any food with him, because he was on a diet, and secondly, he just didn't have time to make a full bathroom in the cabin, although he took water and a package of chocolates with him.

The entire flight was supposed to take five minutes, Earth time, and ten hours of preparation to wait for the convenient location of the Earth side to teleport to a nearby planet that he had selected from the astronomical reference book. There was nothing to breathe, but the main thing was that the temperature was almost earth-like, so there was no need for extreme materials for the body of the teleportation device.

To protect himself from the aliens, he took his own annihilator. Taking a deep breath, he wheeled his phone out of the garage and closed it. It was already dark, and the stars were beckoning.

Sitting down behind the chair, he closed the cockpit light and began to fasten himself to the seats, but when he accidentally touched the launch lever of the quantum accelerator with his elbow, the engine began to grunt, and the picture changed to darkness, which after a while he felt that the device had landed on some metal. It was pitch-black, and you couldn't see anything but the same stars, but with different brightnesses, and here they were more grouped around a single spot.

– It's a nebula, okay, but I don't know where I am, I guess I should go back, there are no aliens.

Alois remembered that he had forgotten his camera to shoot, but he remembered to drop the flag on the surface of the planet, which he did with a simple push of a button.

The control for the return involved a reverse inversion by means of a lever latch in the opposite direction.

– Time to go home, – he muttered to himself.

A moment later, he was indeed in the place of his garage on the outskirts of the city, but he felt that he had landed on something high. After making sure that the gas analyzer for the outer atmosphere was turned on, Alois made sure that it was Earth, and opened the cockpit light. I took a breath of fresh air and got up, but I couldn't get down right away. He couldn't think of anything else to do but just jump down from the height. He succeeded, but he fell a little on his left side and closed his eyes a little from the slight pain he experienced.

When he opened his eyes, he found that what he had "landed" on had actually come with him, it was the garage of a neighbor who had disappeared after being accidentally annihilated.

– And how will I explain this event to my neighbor? Okay, I'll figure something out, but the flag never came back, it got stuck between the roof of the neighbor's garage and the teleporter, " Alois said almost aloud to himself.

He placed the teleporter in the garage in "home" mode, but the neighbor's garage remained standing crookedly in the middle of the road.

– If anything, I wasn't here, – the homegrown astronaut thought, and got into his old car and drove home.

He got to work on time, even managed to sleep at home.

From work, he called Jessica, who had recently quit and wanted to become a writer. He told her everything as it was, but she laughed and said that she would probably start her literary work with a fantasy novel, although she was going to start with romance novels. Alois had never felt so funny, he wanted to fly through space with a teleporter, then tell and prove his flight with the flag and marry Jess. As a result, she laughed at him, and the neighbor will also try for a long time to find out the reason why his garage first disappeared, then appeared, while he saw him Aloyza often in the garage, and he will definitely pry him. – I haven't been anywhere, I haven't seen anyone, that's all! – I said aloud this time and, getting into my old car, after work, I drove towards the river port in the hope of meeting a girl.