“When will you be back?”
“I don’t know, Olga. Some of the staff down on Earth have been trying to get rid of me for a while now. I doubt they’ll let me return.”
“Will they replace you? With whom? It’s impossible. No other android knows our station!”
Arina smiled sadly. “I don’t think they’ll send anyone. They think you’ve grown up enough and can do the work on your own.”
“I don’t care what they think down there. I need you!”
“Olga, please try to be realistic. We must—”
“Yes, you’re right. We must be realistic. You say you can repair everything except yourself. Suppose I try to repair you under your supervision?”
“You?” Arina asked uncertainly.
“I’m trained to adjust the nervous systems of artificial intelligence and to manufacture the relevant components—I just haven’t passed the exam yet. Your operating system is more sophisticated than the plant’s nervous system, that’s all. If you can point out the portions of your hard disc that were damaged by the radiation, we might succeed. I can remove the faulty elements and create new ones in their place. After that, you’ll perform an overwrite.”
Arina looked doubtful.
“Come on! You and Uncle Misha have been teaching me this work for years. Now let’s do it. We have nothing to lose. If we fail, you can go to the Terminal as planned.”
Arina pondered Olga’s words for a second, then burst out laughing. “You’re an exceptionally smart girl, Olga,” she said, ruffling her ward’s hair. “All right, let’s cut those bureaucrats on Earth down to size!”
An hour later, they stood in the living room, now an improvised operating theater. Olga dragged a folding massage table to the middle of the room, carefully wiped it with antiseptic, and laid out a row red steel toolboxes. Arina set down the standby memory units and started checking the equipment. Some essential components were missing, so Olga made a brief spacewalk to the factory for them. In the meantime, Arina drew up a bogus report to send to headquarters.
“Well, it looks like we’ve got everything we need,” Olga said, rubbing her hands together. “Let’s get started!”
Arina rechecked the cables connecting her to the standby memory and lay down on the massage table. Olga fastened miniature cameras and lamps to her temples, wrists, and fingertips.
“I’m ready,” Olga said. “Are you receiving an image from the cameras?”
“Yes. But we need more light!”
The ceiling lamps above the improvised operating table brightened.
“Drawings and charts!” Olga ordered. She was instantly surrounded by screens with numerous computer circuits and three-dimensional models. “Arina, open the occipital porthole.”
Arina gathered her long hair in a ponytail, tossed it aside, and removed part of the skin on the back of her head revealing a titanium skull. “Can you see the porthole?”
“Yes, a small closed square porthole. But I see no fastenings.”
“Set a sixteen-fold increase.”
A tiny porthole approached Olga’s eyes. “I can see now the screw heads. They encapsulated in a transparent resin.”
“That’s insulation. Remove it using the five-gauge tweezers.”
Olga brought a thin steel cylinder resembling an ancient fountain pen and held it to the back of Arina’s head. One of the needles on the flat end started to move, peeling off the resin. With precise and adroit movements, Olga removed the insulation from all eight of the screws.
“Bring the camera closer. Now turn the screws, starting with the one on the upper right. Use the cross-point screwdriver and put the removed screws into a separate packet.”
There was a barely audible hissing as Olga removed the screws. Then she carefully cleaned the hatch cavity with the vacuum and treated the surface with an antiseptic solution.
“That’s a fine job,” Arina said. “Wait a minute for the solution to evaporate completely and then remove the hatch.”
As the solution evaporated, Olga intently studied the technical documentation and drawings showing the hatch design and the space behind it.
“Fit the vacuum grip to the hatch,” Arina said.
Olga rested a grip resembling a tiny thimble onto the titanium plate.
“Pump out the air.”
The grip engaged the hatch with a light screech.
“Now raise the grip with a single movement. Smoothly—don’t tug.”
Olga took the grip with her fingertips and gracefully raised the hatch lid. There was a pop as air rushed into the hatch. Olga put the lid into a solution bath and looked into the cavity, using her headlamps for illumination.
Two dozen microscopic sockets formed a figure resembling a beehive. Switching to the twenty-four-fold increase, Olga made out black marker digits at each connector.
“Be careful, you can penetrate my mechanism via these connectors,” Arina said, her voice a little duller than before. “Each of them leads to its separate part. You need connector six, which goes straight to the hard disc. Use the internal manipulator, caliber eight.”
Once again Olga looked attentively at the connectors. Then she took a striped case containing small transparent flasks, extracted flask number eight with the tweezers, and brought it up to her eyes. The flask would have looked empty to unaided eyes, but inside it was a tiny needle, two hundred fifty times smaller than a match. With extreme care, Olga fit the flask end into connector number six.
“Ready for launch. All right, Arina, let’s wish each other good luck.”
The manipulator disappeared from the flask. Olga saw a long dark tunnel illuminated by the bright rays of light. The tunnel is floating toward her, making abrupt turns. It seemed to the girl that she was an engineer of an ancient subway train winding somewhere beneath Moscow.
“Does this thing know where to go?” she asked.
“This is a self-guiding implement.”
Another few turns and the ray of light rested on the blank red wall.
“We’ve nearly arrived,” Arina said. “The red wall before you is a protective sealant at the entry to the hard disc. There’s no way to bypass it. You’ll have to cut through and close it on the way back.”
“Cutters activated!” Olga said, feeling like a burglar on the job.
Ten seconds later, the manipulator entered the hard disc giving Olga a direct access to Arina’s database.
“Here we are. The rest is up to you.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll cope. I’ll be right back.”
Olga ran up the spiral staircase, switched on the main computer, performed the required diagnostics and sat in the operator’s chair, fully connected to the Matrix.
“I’m on site. Supply the general hard disc layout.”
The ceiling illuminators went out, leaving just one red lamp. In front of Olga were phantasmal structures resembling semi-transparent pyramids. Those were Arina’s hard disc units.
Olga enlarged the pyramids. Now she could see the cubes of heavy water molecules one on top of the other. These were the primary carriers of Arina’s hard disc. There were several trillion of them.
“Pick out the damaged sectors,” Olga ordered.
The cubes started to glow blue, and the radiation-affected nodes that emitted red light. As the pyramids enlarged, the number of red sectors increased.
“I didn’t imagine the damages was so serious,” Arina murmured. “Will you be able to handle it?”
“Of course, I can. It’ll just take some time to stretch the chain conductors. Don’t worry, everything will be all right.”
The manipulator extracted a damaged sector of fourteen million cubes. With a short command from Olga, the first row of three hundred thousand cubes disappeared. New units were manufactured, followed by calibration and inspection. Then the manipulator replaced the previous row with a new one, which glowed blue instead of red.
“The replacement is completed. Arina, were you able to overwrite the data on the
repaired sectors?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll continue.”
The old chronometer counted the seconds. More and more red sectors were replaced by blue ones. The High House continued to move in its orbit. Olga sat immobile staring into infinity, fully absorbed in restoring Arina’s hard disc.
Two hours later, the girl rose from her workstation. “I’ll take a fifteen-minute break and then continue,” she said to Arina.
“Good. I’d make you some hot chocolate if I remembered how to do so.”
After five complete revolutions around the Earth, the last red cube was replaced by a blue one. Olga had not only rectified all the damage but also updated Arina’s hard disc in compliance with the latest standards. The work was draining, and only a powerful dose of an invigorant had kept Olga from collapsing from exhaustion. After completing the last operation, she exited the Matrix and went to Arina.
“You’re tired,” Arina said. “Get some sleep. We’ll take out the manipulator later.”
“No, I can’t leave you lying here with an open skull. I have to finish the job.”
With bleary eyes, dazed from her exertion, Olga removed the manipulator and closed the hatch on the nanny’s head. Her hands worked mechanically all on their own, and twelve hours later she found herself in her bed. A big cup of hot chocolate steamed on her bedside table, and she could hear the nanny singing some merry tune on the upper floor. Normal life was obviously coming back. Olga gulped the chocolate and ran to the kitchen where Arina was finishing the preparation of a festive breakfast. The nanny solemnly shook the girl’s hand.
“Thank you very much, Captain!”
“You’re always welcome, first mate!” Olga danced around in a circle and laughed with happiness, holding the nanny in her arms. All was well. Another tough test passed.
CHAPTER FIVE: SAND AND WATER
April 7, 2087
Seven hours in the deep Matrix. Her third working day as an executive operator was drawing to a close. The final exam, which Olga had been preparing for all these years, had been passed two weeks ago with surprising ease. The Supernova Corporation was pushing hard to commission the factory, and Arina darkly suspected that the exam had been a mere formality as opposed to a true evaluation of her ward’s skills. The test runs, which were to have taken forty-five days as required by the standards, were not carried out at all. The production line was loaded with raw materials and the power was switched on.
The blocks in the form of a framework of monomolecular graphite fibers were slowly moving one after another over an infinite line of the factory pipes. Olga, whose consciousness had divided into hundreds of thousands of individual fragments, was working simultaneously on incoming blocks, fastening by threads the separate molecules of heavy water and silicon dioxide, which she picked up from the raw compound flowing through other pipes. The compound had been shipped to the High House a year ago, and since then it had been undergoing treatment and purification. Now it was fully prepared for use.
The assembly process resembled the setting of concrete slabs on reinforcement rods of a building under construction. The work proceeded in a vacuum that assured the highest possible purity of the product. The weightlessness of the factory was running enabled the operator to model and assemble the structures, a process that was impossible in conditions of permanent gravity.
As the block picked up more and more molecules, Olga moved it farther along the line, periodically irradiating it with ultraviolet or X-rays, adding non-ferrous metal molecules and grinding the product with micro-lasers. The temperature of the operating conveyor steadily increased, but when the sun sank behind the horizon and a short night fell the void quickly cooled the overheated mechanisms.
Somewhere beyond the Matrix, Arina Rodionovna carefully dampened the resounding oscillations from the neuro-interface that would otherwise ruin Olga’s nerve endings. Simultaneously, Olga’s work was monitored by two dozen technical experts from the headquarters as well as her curator Mikhail Petrov. Olga maintained permanent contact with them, answering their questions and explaining her actions without suspending the operation. Finally, the first lot was ready and shipped for packaging. Olga picked out several grams of the finished product for quality check and stopped the conveyor.
With a thousand-fold increase, a finished component resembled a cube with beveled edges. Olga and Arina scrutinized the image with the aid of an electronic microscope and turned the hologram at different angles, changing the illumination and periodically checking against the blueprints and other technical documents.
“A reject,” Olga passed her verdict, addressing Arina and Mikhail via the local network.
“Olga, how many times must I repeat that you should talk by word of mouth, not via the radio channel or you’ll lose your speaking ability altogether,” Arina said. “You’re a fine operator, but don’t forget that beyond our House few people can communicate nonverbally. We’re not in a hurry now, so be good enough to speak aloud.”
“All right, all right,” Olga said, her voice slurred after the long session in the Matrix. “This part is faulty.”
Uncle Misha made a helpless gesture.
“Faulty! Can’t you see it?” the girl repeated loudly. “Look here. These two edges are beveled at an inadmissible angle. The error is nine angular seconds and the maximum is two. Besides, there’s too much production dust on it. See here and here. The ultraviolet shows it very well. Didn’t I ask to replace the filters in areas two three four through four five one? I even submitted a report, but nothing came of it! I’m afraid the entire lot won’t be any better. This is an utter disgrace!”
The girl deactivated the hologram and flopped into the armchair, scowling at her nanny and the curator. Fifty-five minutes ago the plant had turned out its first lot of products, two hundred and fifty kilos of an outrageously costly water purification agent.
“The cargo will leave for Earth with the next truck,” Petrov said. “This is a direct order from headquarters. The entire lot is prohibited for retreatment. It must be packed and prepared for shipment. The new blocks must be delivered to the conveyor by seventeen hundred hours Moscow time so that at least one hundred kilos of product will be prepared by the time the next truck arrives.”
“They must be furious about these errors,” Arina said.
“Nobody’s complaining,” Petrov said. “Everyone understands that the factory began operations much sooner than planned without the necessary equipment installed, which is why the quality of the first water purification particles proved to be lower than expected for reasons beyond Olga’s control. Management expects that once the factory is fully equipped and reaches its full capacity, the product quality will attain the required level. Simply put, nobody is accusing you, dear Olga, of anything. To the contrary, everybody is pleased with your work. It’s just that those sand grains of yours are needed so badly that we can’t wait anymore. Will you forgive us for that?”
“So be it!” Olga said with a laugh. “I’ll forgive you for today. I just hate being made to do my work badly. If you had waited just ten days, everything would be fine. Those cubes won’t be even forty percent as effective as they should be. That’s not right!”
The girl was about to continue, but Arina held up a tiny grain of white sand in a pair of tweezers and brought it up to Olga’s eyes.
“Heed the adults, Raven. One kilo of these imperfect sand grains may yield five thousand tons of clean water. Imagine five million liters of the dirtiest possible water—flooded with residual oil, filled with all sorts of liquid refuse and contaminated with all types of bacteriological and chemical pollutants. Considering the chronic shortage of pure water on Earth, this sand grain made by you is not just precious like gold, it’s simply invaluable! You’ve manufactured two hundred fifty kilos of this liquid medicine! What a smart girl!”
Olga imagined the purifying sand grains falling into a lake of muddy, oily water. She saw the cubes swaying on the surface, gradually abso
rbing the muck, sucking it in, inflating in the process and slowly falling to the bottom. The liquid garbage, suspended in the water, starts to dissolve into the finest particles as it disappears into the silvery cubes. Falling to the lake bottom like snow, the cubes would continue to process the sludge accrued on the bottom, transforming it to usual silt. Now that water was safe to drink. One kilo of this substandard sand would produce five thousand tons of clean water, and once the factory was fully online she would be able to increase it to fifteen thousand tons per kilo. Would that too be insufficient? The demand for her products was so high that Earth was prepared to accept the junk she’d made today? Were they so short of water down there?
“More than two-thirds of the planet is covered with water. How have you run out of it all?”
As Arina carefully packed the samples she spoke to Olga in a quiet and confident voice as if reading her ward a piece of classical literature like she had when Olga was a tiny child.
“The essential word is uniqueness. That’s what engenders a crisis. Imagine coming back to Earth and deciding to build yourself a nice little house. What would you build it from?”
“Well, I could build a house from plastic using prefabricated components. That would be the cheapest version. Or I might use concrete. Or bricks, or beams and logs if I could afford wood in the olden times. There are a lot of options.”
“Yes, a lot. That’s how it is with everything. You can get energy for your house from a thermonuclear reactor, a windmill, a solar collector powered by a Sterling engine, fossil fuel, a hydroelectric station, or a primitive dynamo machine driven by hand. Your furniture and clothing could come from hundreds and thousands of different materials as long as you have money. You might wear clothing made with synthetic fibers, natural flax, and cotton or processed hides and pelts. As for the diversity of food, it’s endless. Thousands upon thousands of versions of anything you might need. And there’s only one irreplaceable substance.”
“Water.”
“Exactly. Water. Dihydrogen monoxide. The irreplaceable and irreproducible basis of life on Earth and everywhere life has spread. Two liters of clean water a day, no less, for every human in the solar system. You can survive without electricity, medicine, even clothes, but not without water. Bear in mind that industry and farming can’t function without water, either. The need for it is so high that the clean water has replaced currency in some countries. Water is gambled for and distributed as rations. People kill for water.”
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