Matt was born exactly at midnight on January 1, 2323.
Wow, here is the future friend, the mate in games, Aia thought, having a lot of big ideas about what both of them would like to do in games and watched him closely from head to toe, as he was lying on the mother's arms.
And the future friend and mate in games at this time tried to understand the enormous external world that had fallen on him. His eyes already adjusted to the soft muffled light, and the consequences of the first breath sting were slightly blunted, so now he was completely captured by the desire for skin-to-skin contact. And Aia, obeying the ancient female instincts, mutely stretched out her arms to take him.
"Aia..." he smiled by his toothless mouth and opened one of the wet malachite eyes, causing an involuntary spasm in his mother's throat while she resignedly hand him over to Aia.
***
Matt was a child prodigy growing up without even realizing that. And why would he need to know that understanding result from neither the size of the brain nor belonging to a particular biological species? Why would he need to know that the neural connections in his head are packed with the most optimal way for human?
That wouldn't do any good.
He didn't see anything unusual in that he began to speak almost from birth; he never wondered why his games were unlike ordinary childish pranks. He didn't have peers, with whom he could compare himself, and Aia was so out of reach that there could be no comparison.
***
When Benji has delivered the next Maker to Alpha, it was 2326th year. At that time Aia was fourteen years old, Matt was about three.
They met at the gateway and now were sitting in the Valley, near the water: Benji, next to him Aia, then Matt, the lemurs and the cat.
Aia held a package with biscuits on her lap. Matt wasn't hungry, so he was crumbling his cookies into the grass near Aia's knees. Matt's cookies turned out to be green and crawled, and Benji, hand over fist, was picking that green pieces in the green grass up and molded it into a tiny green people and tiny green lemurs.
"Aia, Aia, give us another piece!" the lemurs cried shrilly. "We want to distinguish Matt from the cat by all the one thousand seven hundred signs, not just by eye!"
Aia took another cookie out of the package.
Lemurs instantly had broken the gift and got a mouthful of it.
"We looove you!" they'd squeezing their eyes tight shut and sang in ecstasy.
"Happy beings," Benji smiled.
"Yes," Aia agreed. "Love is not a bad feeling. I love you too, and it seems to me like happiness."
"Why me?" Benji just had molded another tiny figure, put his thin silvery hand on the grass and opened it with his palm up. Holding on to what could be called a thumb, a miniature but exact copy of the android slid down from the metal hand into the grass.
Aia lowered her palm beside his, and the tiny green Benji bravely climbed on it and let her bring him to her face.
"Because," Aia said, closely examining the tiny green features. "Don't you know a preferences are very illogical matter? But if you really need an explanation, then you speak a language that I understand. You are free and I've got a real pleasure watching you."
"When are you free?" Matt asked, as though by the way.
"You are free when you don't know what you want. Isn't it, Benji? - Aia grinned and winked at the teensy tiny android on her palm.
"True," true Benji agreed. Now his hands were not occupied, and he almost humanly held his arms around his knees. "When you don't know what you want, you don't act. And when you don't act, the density of your servitude is minimal. And it might be okay. Because what have been happening there..." the android waved his hand toward the Earth floating high above Alpha, "...It's wrong. They are all subordinated to the mania of creation."
"As for me, I don't like such a freedom," Matt said and sighed. "Because I don't like to just sit like that. And I'd like to know what I want. "
Benji blinked and turned to Matt:"e'u kelci"*
"mi fitytu'i, "*, he agreed sadly. "What will we play?"
"Let's play verses. A little mouse named Jones has dried a little pine cones. Now it's your turn, don't forget about rhyme and rhythm."
"How rich with cones a little Jones, he's distributed them as loans. "Matt was already smiling. "Benji, let's just play the transformation?"
"Oh..." Benji looked upset. "This should be asked of Aia."
"And we too, and we also!" the lemurs sang. "And us too, and us also!"
No one has ever seen what was happening inside the Maker at such moments.
Aia didn't flinch, just her eyes darkened a little, and the next instant the water below hove up and rose, taking the form of the huge blue transparent dragon. The dragon snorted thickly and loudly, so that its "frrrrrrr" passed through them like a low shiver, slowly curved its long serrated back, spattering them with mud, and opened a huge transparent blue mouth, where a fish were caught unawares.
"Oh!" screamed the lemurs.
The dragon's head had sunk toward the ground, and one of its huge transparent eye marveled at them as its nostrils sniffed, loudly breathing in.
Even the cat, which was tranquilly sleeping in the grass at some distance, jumped, hissed and arched its back in a fear. The air has nearly frozen over.
"Wow!" Matt has amazed.
He jumped to his feet in a fit of wish to embrace the dragon's muzzle, but his hands passed through the water on the fly, and he got drenched from head to toe.
The dragon squinted its eyes and looked at the bewildered boy, then again uttered rumbling "frrrrrrr" and went noisily back down to the wet bottom of the terrace. The water was gurgling for a while and finally subsided.
_____________________________
e'u kelci* -Let'splay. (Lojban)
mi fitytu'i* -I agree. (Lojban)
7. 2043rd year. Robert.
It was a banal viral infection.
Needless to say, people would cope with it without assistance, if they had had more time for lurching from one crisis to another - the UN, WHO, medical research programs, social support and all that...
But they did not have any time.
However, under the current circumstances the healing was much more prosaic: Robert just slightly focused, and the cheeks of the boy, who was lying behind the glass, in the sealed ward, almost immediately flushed.
If there was something weird, it was only Robert's own feelings in the matter, as if he had picked up a page in a score and scared the notes off it like a bird's flock.
Then the two of them covered Mexico and Texas with a huge dome. Everything that happened afterwards did not even require any excessive effort from them.
***
Soon after the fuss in the Thomason Hospital had ceased, all cases were miraculously recovered with no fatalities, Robert and Lukasz were released to the hotel with a firm recommendation from the FBI - don't leave the hotel.