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 samozřejmě!" 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.
"And this policy is rooted in the fears."
"But for billions of years, fears had been helping the living beings to survive," the guest spread his hands. "Yes, people are afraid, but their fear, in principle, is quite justified..."
_________________________
Ano samozřejmě* - Sure. (Czech)
34. 2330th year. Lukasz.
Good heavens, Lukasz thought, sitting with closed eyes on the floor near the endless white wall, what kind of wrong things I did in the past that it now should be balanced with what is happening now?
You're afraid, the creature next to him was silently surprised, breathe, breathe, you just don't like to play, it's strange that they left you.
Yes, agreed Lukasz, obediently exhaling spicy smell of pine needles, I'm afraid.
The creature lifted up the yellow palms from the floor, went around the maker, easily shook itself up, like a wet puppy shakes, and a young copy of Alice knelt down in front of Lukasz.
"Well, Lukasz," she said, holding his gray head in her arms. "Does anyone want to offend you?"
"We, humans, are designed by the evolution to know how to gnaw ourselves from the inside."
"You are not a human," the girl shook her head. "What's bothering you?"
"Possibilities and impossibilities."
Lukasz opened his eyes, and there was so much pain in his glance that the creature recoiled in horror.
Show me your possibilities, it said silently, when its excitement subsided, and if you can, then impossibility too.
Lukasz slightly moved his hand, and the reality wavered submissively, responding: the Earth blinked in a half-second blackout, somewhere far away, in Prague, the girl named Aia and the android named Benji exchanged glances, thinking each his or her own thoughts, the DII brothers shivered simultaneously as one enormous creature, and grinned with a broad orca muzzle Robert swimming under the water on Alfa.
I got it, seriously nodded the creature in front of Lukasz, and how about impossibility?
"Impossibility..." Lukasz grinned bitterly. "Look."
He touched the creature with the hand - not his own, but the yellow and long - and from this hand a wave of change swept over him.
"Who am I?" a few seconds later the yellow creature said to the girl in front of him. Lukasz's clothes absurdly bagged on him.
"Ffoall Hhoffall ..." she gasped.
"No," Lukasz shook his big-eyed head. "No. And even shared memory won't turn me into him. And your love won't turn."
"Won't turn..."
"This is impossibility."