“Precisely how much clean water is left down there?” Olga asked as she poured herself a cup of tea. “I’ve no information about that.”
“It’s not to be found anywhere. That’s classified information. The rivers have run dry everywhere, blocked by endless dams, and the underground aquifers have been largely depleted. Most of the open reservoirs have been fouled to such an extent that rainfall can’t be used without prior cleaning. Have you seen the protective dome completely covering Lake Baikal? It was built for quite a good reason.”
“Don’t forget the need for fuel,” Petrov added.
“Yes, fossil fuels are nearly exhausted. Smog has dramatically reduced the efficiency of the solar power. The nuclear and thermonuclear power stations do not fill the consumers’ growing needs. Hydrogen fuel derived from water is crucial, and it can’t be made from polluted water.”
“And what about ocean water? It can be desalinated.”
“That hasn’t been true for a long time. Following the Ocean Death, the conventional desalination became impossible.”
The cup dropped from Olga’s hands, and tea splashed across the floor as the cup rolled away.
“What Ocean Death? What happened to the oceans, and why haven’t I heard about this before?”
The floor coating instantly absorbed the spilled tea. Arina picked up the cup, wiped with an absorbent napkin, and put it back in the cupboard.
“There were a series of manmade disasters in the Thirties and Forties. In the Twenties the struggle for resources had reached its climax; armed conflicts gripped the entire planet. People survived, but the ocean didn’t. Two-thirds of its biosphere disappeared, including all marine mammals and most of the fish. The organisms that survived mutated, adapting to the new conditions. The seawater can’t be desalinated without your purifying sand. That’s how it is, dear Olga. Without you and your facility millions of people on Earth are doomed to the death of thirst and famine. So it goes …”
On rather unsteady feet Olga approached the window and peered down at the ocean waters far below. She cried softly, recalling the Earth’s oceans as she had seen them on the simulators. Surfing on white-capped waves, fishing from ocean yachts, young people having bonfires on beautiful white beaches, scuba diving in the company of dolphins—all things of the past after tragedies that had occurred long before her birth.
“Why didn’t I know anything about that?” she asked again. “There’s nothing in the books, films, or news bulletins I receive …”
“Management decided not to inform, at least not until the factory was commissioned. They believed it might interfere with your work. In a way, I understand them …”
Olga found herself realizing that she could understand their reasoning as well. Having spent all her life onboard this station with never enough water for even a bath, she had always dreamed of swimming in an ocean. If she had known that there was nothing down there for her, would she have worked as hard as she had for her whole life?
“What else aren’t they telling me? What else aren’t you telling me?”
“Not much. Besides, the restrictions will soon be lifted.”
“If they want me to work well, you must not let anything like this happen again. I’m not a baby to be kept in the dark. I must have all the relevant information.”
“You’ll have it. You’ll have everything so long as the plant runs non-stop. Anything you need for the sake of final product and clean water. Given that nobody’s going to supply your product for free, you could say that what you make here is not water but money. They call it capitalism.”
“I see.”
Olga opened the accommodations database and extracted all the content related to the ocean, the videos she used to play as a little girl while imagining herself as a submarine captain. A short command and billions of images ceased to exist.
“Management shouldn’t worry,” she said. “The goods will keep coming in the best possible form and at whatever quantities they require. I’ll work very well indeed. But not for the money. I will work for the sake of the ocean. We shall try to revive it.”
CHAPTER SIX: CHANGED
May 2087–December 2088
Olga had moored the truck and ordered the loading to begin. She watched the long manipulators, resembling a spider’s legs, empty the truck holds, putting steel boxes painted in black and yellow stripes on the vacant places. It seemed to her that even the manipulators had become more cautious and careful as if they realized what precious things they were handling. When the last striped box was fastened, she switched over to the automatic systems and went to the kitchen.
“Arina, do you know where the truck is going? I don’t have any information about the cargo once it gets out on board the truck.”
“That’s a commercial secret. But I can safely assume it will leave for Asia. They’re trying to restock the fishing farms of the South-Pacific Food Cluster.”
Olga smiled viciously, like a cat that had spotted a mouse. She knew very well the capabilities of this farming complex and that its customers ran into the billions. And now those billions directly depended on her work.
“I’m starting to understand what power is,” she said. “It’s a very pleasing sensation, I should say. But it’s a pity all those people have no idea about me and how much I am doing for them.”
“Dear Olga, I don’t wish to upset you, but I dare suppose they don’t care about the who, where, and how. They only want clean water and enough fuel and food to be delivered to them on time. People, on the whole, are not given to thinking too much about how things around them work. They only want them to work.”
“But I’m giving my whole life to these people! And what’s the reward?”
The girl theatrically covered her eyes with a hand, but Arina Rodionovna noticed that her ward was in high spirits for the first time since she had learned about the Ocean Death. But her moodiness and irritability hadn’t affected her work at all. To the contrary, Olga had begun to work even better, improving her already excellent performance. The dreadful news of the Ocean Death had been presented at a carefully calculated moment, and her outrage had increased the profits just as planned.
Even though Arina disapproved of such methods, she admitted that they had worked. And Olga had recovered her optimism, which was a good sign. Her emotional stability remained still high.
“Fine, so ordinary consumers know nothing about me,” Olga said. “Let’s be lenient and forgive them. Incidentally, how many people are in the know?”
It was Petrov who replied for Arina. Just then he was marking a completion of the work shift with a big mug of Lev Andropov Orbital beer.
“I think that hardly more than one hundred people and androids know what you’re working on here. Officially, your station is registered as an automatic storage unit—and you, dear Olga, are not even listed as a member of the Supernova Corporation’s fleet.” He slurped his beer. “Even most military ships lack a sophisticated communications system like yours, which perfectly prevents information leakage.”
“And it doesn’t let me get in touch with anybody except at headquarters, even in the event of an emergency. All right then. As it happens several hundred people know about me, which is pleasing. Arina, do you think they’re glad that the plant has reached its full capacity? Ten thousand metric tons per month.”
“Don’t you even doubt it,” Arina said. “Soon there’ll be a huge party at the headquarters with a lot of caviar, excellent champagne, wine and cognac of the Napoleon era.”
“Somehow none of them is bright enough to congratulate the heroine of the occasion personally. Why do I never see anybody except you and Mikhail? Are they afraid I’d misbehave?”
Arina’s voice became stern. “They are really afraid of you. They are proud of the profits you make for them. Probably, they even love you in their special way. But the important thing is that they are afraid. They misunderstand and envy you. They do so even though they are your superiors who have seen you
grow and learn all these years. The Changed people like you are few among your bosses and their family members. The rich have declared their bodies sacred, asserting that God creates them in His image, and therefore it’s a sin to interfere with His design. Of course, they do not mind the immortality, eternal youth and fine health provided by bioengineering. They’ve been enjoying those things long before you were born. But they don’t dare to change themselves in their totality, earnestly wishing to retain their original nature though I don’t quite understand what they mean by that.
“And they find it difficult to deal with the Changed like you. Next to you they feel their weakness and stupidity. They know they denied what is accessible to you. Of course, they too could undergo the upgrade but they see that as a betrayal of their species of which they are so proud. That’s why the Changed are fully deprived of the access to the caste of the rich who rule the Earth. Nearly all of your generation works in space since that’s what you created for.”
“Aha, we’ll make you strong and wise so that you could fetch us more money,” Olga said. “But please stay away from us. The support personnel admitted through the back door.”
Olga picked up a long kitchen knife and hurled it at the thick wooden board on the wall with a hardly noticeable movement of her fingers.
“It can’t be helped. It has always been like this. The so-called elite of society has always sought to distance themselves from those who provide food and drink and at whose expense they live. Ordinary people fear and envy the extraordinary, and they always will. So get used to it.”
“The work on me had started long before my birth. My parents had sustained some treatment. It was a long and elaborate process. Why then turn a blind eye on the result?”
“The problem is that the result is fine. Probably even to excess. All seven of the operators of the High Houses sustained the Change, and all of them are now carefully shunned. You’re taller, stronger, faster, and more enduring than any girl your age. As for your intelligence, it’s incomparable. There’s not a single internal organ, bone, muscle, or tissue in you that hasn’t undergone biological reconstruction. There’s nothing of an ordinary human being in you except your ideal appearance. Those having no such merits envy you and feel hurt. That’s why they seek comfort in their weird cult of the primeval body.”
“I thought there are virtually no old religions left on Earth.”
“The old religions have died out, but new ones replace them,” Arina said. “It’s hard for you to understand since you’re an atheist, like all the Changed, but maybe over time after some association with them…”
“Why should I understand them? As soon as my contract expires I’m buying a spaceship and making for the edge of the solar system, far away from all those stuck-up elitists.”
Arina studied the girl. It was the first time that Olga had voiced her plans for the future. She was preparing to be independent since she knew that the ten years before her contract expired would fly fast with so much work to do.
“This is a matter for the future. At the moment you must earn money for a ship of your own, and you have every opportunity to do so. And you ought to admit that they have given you quite a lot. So don’t pretend that you’re some forgotten orphan girl. That won’t do you any good. Pass me the mayonnaise, please. I’ll make a fish salad.”
“Uncle Misha always treats me nicely, not like those bigwigs!”
“First off, Uncle Misha does not work for the Corporation. He is the Union’s representative in this joint project. Second, he too sustained the Change, albeit long ago. And third, he is a very special person—take my word as an android for it. Value him.”
“Why seven?”
“Seven what?”
“Why did you say that there are seven High House operators? There are eight Houses, including me.”
“There has never been a crew in High House One. It’s used for testing the equipment.”
* * *
“I can’t understand how this machine differs meaningfully from my old simulator,” Olga said as she skeptically surveyed the device in the center of the living room. It looked like an ordinary high-backed armchair upholstered in light brown synthetic leather.
“First, this is not my old homemade thing manufactured from all manner of rubbish, but a factory-made product, a prototype not yet put into series production. Second, it’s designed for you. Third, the technology and software structure here are new, giving you unprecedented capabilities that no commercially available simulator could provide. Why not give it a try?”
“I wouldn’t mind. You’ve done this for me, after all!” Olga leaped into the armchair. “Oh, how comfortable it is!”
“Introduce the launch phrase,” said a woman’s simulated voice.
Olga thought for a moment. “Rawhide!”
“The launch phrase is introduced. The equipment is ready for operation.”
“Are you with me, Arina?”
“I’ll meet you there.”
“Okay. Rawhide!”
In less than a split second the surroundings turned into the tiny bright triangles of a kaleidoscope, and a moment later Olga was standing in the middle of a square in the center of an unfamiliar city at night. The sky was covered with low dark clouds; advertising lights flickered on the high-rise buildings; girls bustled about jabbering a flow of incoherent English words; hundreds and thousands of outdated petrol-fueled vehicles stood in long lines, their tailpipes belching pollution into the air. Olga had seen all this before, somewhere. But where?
Arina materialized next to Olga. She wasn’t wearing her usual overalls but a businesswoman’s suit and an expensive handbag. Olga looked down to see that she was wearing a child’s bright jacket and a backpack.
“This is New York, Times Square, the early 1990s, isn’t it?”
“Exactly,” Arina confirmed. “Times Square as it was nearly a hundred years ago. The Twin Towers are still standing, and if you wish we can visit the Central Perk to see Joey Tribbiani and his friends.”
“Are these people software projections?”
“Yes.”
“Can they respond to me and my actions?”
“It depends on the settings. Right now, we’re beyond the Matrix; the simulator is running in a self-contained mode, so we’re all alone here. This place is an introductory level. Here the user tests the software, adapting it to herself. It’s on the factory default settings so none of them can touch you or speak to you unless you contact them.”
Olga stepped into the thick of the human flow and laughing to herself watched the pedestrians bypass her, ignoring her altogether. Suppose she leaped onto the street, what then?
“What if I trip up that fatso or snatch a purse from the blonde over there?”
“An angry New York cop will hurl you into a police car, but not before he gives you a hefty wallop on the head or an electric shock. Ah, I’m just joking. The software will simply bring you back to the moment before you perpetrated the crime. You must learn how to behave yourself in society. That’s true at the basic level. Further, you can set the software to your needs.”
As Olga looked around, pondering the machine’s capabilities, she smelled of sausages and white bread. Arina pointed to a bored-looking Arab man standing behind a steel cart.
“New York’s famous boiled hotdogs.”
“Oh! This place also has smells? My old simulator reproduced smells rather poorly.”
“Yes, the basic level provides a complete package of pleasant smells. No garbage cans or exhaust pipes.”
“May I buy one?”
Arina smiled. “If you like.”
Olga approached the cart, once again inhaled the aroma of meat, bread and mustard, and addressed the man in her Harvard English.
“Please, one medium size with mustard, ketchup and without onions.”
“Two-fifty,” the man said.
“Check your right pocket,” Arina prompted.
Olga produced two crumpled dollar
bills and two-quarter pieces, held it out to the man, and got her hot dog.
“Will I always have as much money in my pocket as I need?”
“Precisely so. No more and no less. All financial transactions reproduced with absolute precision according to the prices of the day. There will be enough money for a Ferrari. Let’s sit down, shall we?”
Arina and Olga weaved across the crowded sidewalk. “Bench!” the nanny commanded. A wrought-iron bench instantly popped out of the concrete. None of the locals seemed surprised to see that. Olga settled down on the edge of the bench, crossed her legs, and bit into the hot dog with a juicy snap.
“How is it?” Arina asked.
“Tastes fine; the consistency is rendered correctly, too. I can hardly tell it from a genuine one. It made my mouth water. But I didn’t feel anything when I swallowed a bit.”
“That’s right. The virtual food gives no satiety. But it won’t make you fat either.”
“Uh-huh.”
Olga swallowed the last bit, ordered a waste bin to appear, disposed of the greasy wax paper, and reclined against the stiff back of the bench.
“Let’s get back home,” Arina said. “I want to show you something. But first, check the time. Your watch shows how long we’ve been here.”
Olga glanced down at the fashionable golden watch on her left wrist.
“Ten minutes and forty seconds.”
“Good. Come back.”
“Rawhide!”
That time it was New York that broke into pieces in her kaleidoscope. And then Olga found herself sitting in the middle of the living room.
The Raven High Page 7