Mens (english version)

by Quelli di ZEd

  10.

  I returned home that was dark. Mine had to have already dined; I looked at the lights of the residence, the stay was illuminated and they was seen some shades stir over the curtains.

  I entered house feeling me rather in guilt for the delay; Daylight had not called me, sign that however it was everything to place. When it felt at top speed me to the entry raced Teo me meeting.

  «From the, it is some that it waits yourself!» trafelato exclaimed.

  I greeted him/it disheveling his hair and I entered stay, with the strange hope of finding me Dan and family quietly sat on the couch. I had not recovered from the two strampalates conversations of the afternoon yet.

  But the day was not ended yet.

  There was no Dan to attend me, as instead I had hoped.

  There was the mayor. I immediately recognized her: I had seen her on TV a lot of times. A forty year-old lady, of pleasant aspect but some in meat, with the fresh voice from twenty-year old and a crystalline laughter.

  I am not lover of the politics, but I was interdicted when I saw her/it. Not how much him was her, however. The woman got up standing and quadrated me in an instant of difficulty, as if you/he/she didn't make her/it to contain only me in a look. But he immediately took back; you/he/she had gotten used to face difficult situations.

  «Angel, imagines» it said.

  My daughter watched me to make to understand me to behave well me. I handed her the hand and I tightened his from true gentleman. You perfectly seemed already to his/her ease.

  «Pleased to know I verify her/it» I said me.

  My voice was set on the warm tones and the woman it reacted as if it definitely had by now me classified as human.

  «No» it did her. «I am me to be pleased. I counted to know for a long time already her to thank her/it than you/he/she has done to the Whip, but I didn't want to disturb her/it. I know that it didn't need other pressures. Certainly that it is an amazing man, her.»

  It seemed a very frank type; it was then that it started to like me. I made her sign to take a seat and I also took a seat me me.

  His/her children started to make some uproar and Daylight it excused him in exaggerated way.

  «I also have some children me» it said the mayor shaking the hand.

  The woman looked me fixed leaving half open a few the eyes. Scattered Pieguzzes were formed around her eyes.

  «You leave that I/you/he/she tell her that I affirm him to reason view. I have visited his/her laboratories and I have talked to the technicians and the physicians that deal him with her. It has an unique mind.»

  They were not my laboratories, obviously. I wondered me from how much time me same waiting, there in house; but the mayor didn't seem intenzionata to leave to join in conversation me.

  «I wonder me. if she was prepared to also repeat his/her good job in another situation of emergency. It would be an enterprise put on to brush for her.»

  The mayor had already filed the matter of the thanks thing of which I was her thankful.

  I looked at Daylight to see he/she knew something; my daughter almost imperceptibly shook the shoulders, knowing that I would have noticed him even if now she was behind of me.

  I didn't want to show me available, but I was curious.

  «Of what he treats?» I asked.

  The woman didn't wait for other; in his/her eyes there was a sudden lightning of urgency that the voice didn't reveal. From excellent political it slowly leaned the back against the couch, taking himself/herself/itself the whole time that held necessary to make greater impression.

  «We don't live badly, doesn't he/she believe?» it started. «The times of the great globalization with its disasters are distant, by now. Before the global village there were rich countries and poor countries, with the globalization all became poor: the triumph of the economic entropy.»

  I recognized him/it: it was his/her preferred strong point, you/he/she had ridden him to the elections, certain expressing himself/herself/itself in more comprehensible way to benefit of everybody.

  By now you/he/she had departed, I patiently attended that he discharged.

  «There were not enough resources for all» it continued. «Not to have acceptable conditions of life. A rich country exploits that poor up to a certain point, but a poor country sucks from another poor man up to the last droplet. This way they increased the international conflicts and the struggle for the primary resources. When the oil started to be scarce the things they worsened. The world was in unstable balance on the disaster. But the miracle happened. Or, if we want, the scandal.»

  «The reactor Williamson» I said, hoping to conclude the discourse.

  «Yes. Had they been having him for many years, do you know?» it said the mayor arousing enthusiasm himself/herself/itself, not without an evident note of bitterness. «A simple but effective technology. Combustible cheap, ecological. Effortless to build. Based on a cold fusion that all were given a big from do to disown since the theoretical bases.»

  But it worked. I remembered well when they announced the experimentation of the reactor: a wave of enthusiasm pervaded the planet. When however he/she was known that the project had slept in a drawer for years, that you/he/she had valiantly been opposed by the political system and that many knew, the enthusiasm turned him into rebellion. You came a step away from the civil war; it seemed evident to everybody that the poster of the hydrocarbons had pushed for the insabbiamento with money and threats.

  Luckily that happened that was only of a more step under in comparison to the civil war: the system was broken up alone. Anybody state would have more approved than to follow the political consumistiches and the deceitful economies of the most influential countries, those for which the globalization meant to conform the whole planet to his/her own rhythms and values, in beard to the I degrade environmental and to the million of poor men and suffering that had lived then with few resources until. That same paupers that it was worthwhile, for some, to maintain such, and that they were million. Million that complained revenge. As often happens in the history, that loves the extreme, the reaction to the failure of an exaggerated globalization was exaggerated in turn: in one brief timecourse relatively the nations themselves collassarono. Central power dissolved him, the most important organism for the management of the public thing became the city. Not more is, only city. Two things had encouraged this trial: the unbearable impoverishment of the local natural resources to work of foreign busybodies and the practical aspects of the same reactor Williamson. The researchers had discovered that the output of the reactor decreased to increase some dimensions: so many small reactors were better than few great. Because then to produce energy in a solo point and then to also disperse a part of it to distribute her/it? The cost of the small reactors was decidedly contained. The production of electric energy was decentralized; every city had its reactor, every city had a source of proper energy that handled all of its needs: communications, industries, transports.

  They returned in top the Poleises, the city-is of Greek fret memory. In ancient Greece you/they had been born for the difficulty of a territory that prevented easy contacts; in the modern world they were born because these contacts had arrived to be so unrestrained and massificanti, so stamped to the plagiarism by the old and tyrannical economy sciupona, that every individuality was disparaged from there.

  But a cultural isolation didn't happen. Rather. He/she thought of us the web: the net served by now for everything and was so diffused that to try to delimit its confinements would have been unthinkable. Thanks to it we kept on living in the world, only that had learned to reason more some with our head.

  The mayor got excited on the couch. My immobility was putting her/it a few to uneasiness.

  «Today we have our reactor» it said the woman with pride. «The things are all right. And we have stopped ransacking our planet.»

  It was enough right; thanks to the reactor Williamson the distances were not important
. There were a lot of mines on the Moon and on Mars, automated systems they handled the extraction of the materials and numerous freighters they incessantly crossed the rout Earth-moon and Earth-Mars in less than a week. Never as then to travel in the space you/he/she had been so economic and sure. They were not anymore by now the nations but the single cities to organize consignments and mining excavations.

  «Unfortunately» it said the mayor «the reactor needs periodic maintenance. The intermediary chemical reactions, to the inside, they are deadly for his/her structures and the wrap in league of iridium you/he/she must periodically have replaced. Does the iridium have two particularities, do you know? It is rare on the Earth, and it is the only metal to have the resistance to the enough corrosion to make to work the reactor.»

  I also knew him/it me. It was above all for this that had been a big resumption of the trips in the space. You knew that the iridium was abundant in a lot of fallen meteorites on the Earth; it was the great presence of iridium in a layer deposited ago him sessantacinque million of years, that had pushed the scientists to conclude that the disappearance of the dinosaurs was due to a grandiose meteoric impact happened in that epoch. I am not particularly cultured, but Teo has fixed on the dinosaurs and in his/her books the matter you/he/she is described with great trivial detail.

  However pits, if the Earth was watered of iridium by the space, because not also other celestial bodies? So much more than the most greater part of the fallen meteors on the Earth was destroyed entering atmosphere; but there were worlds without atmosphere or with attenuate atmosphere where the meteorites could be preserved intact up to the impact. The Moon had been studied for before, but it was small and a lot of meteorites suffered the terrestrial attraction rather than that, weak, of the same Moon. Therefore we went looking for iridium on Mars, the more world similar to the Earth. It was an appropriate choice and said his/her fruits.

  Did every terrestrial city boast the possession of a piece of ground Martian, done enact by the World Assembly of the Mayors; our territory (or martitorio?) it was enough wide and it boasted numerous impact craters: it was there that we found big part of the iridium that we used for the reactor.

  The mayor fixed me for a moment.

  «From the mines Martian we have always picked up more iridium than it served us some. Up to today» concluded.

  I hesitated, then definite to give her satisfaction.

  «Thing has happened?» I kindly asked.

  The mayor tightened him in the shoulders.

  «We don't know him/it. Our men are up there. They don't communicate with us anymore, their reserves of air won't last to the endless one. I/you/they are worried for them. And also in the city: the moment of manutenere the reactor has come and we doesn't have enough iridium to do him/it.»

  «I believed we had some escorts» I objected.

  «We had her» it said the woman, slowly, with a veil of apprehension. «Until yesterday the same terrorists of the Whip you/they have not made to shine all of our stores.»

  I surrendered me to a light low whistle. The reactionary globalistis, the disagreeable residue of a past epoch, had struck the heart of the city: without the reactor Williamson we could not live, the mayor would be due to go around with the hat to hand imploring the administrations of other cities for a loan of iridium difficult to get, or to conditions of purchase from I strangle.

  It didn't surprise me that our mayor appeared worried for the situation. What I didn't understand was because it told him/it me.

  «We need help» it still said. «It serves us someone who goes to give up there a glance and hurries him/it, before our boys remain without air. We say. someone in degree to torch the uneasiness of to trip from the Mars Earth to time of record, without need of great preparation and without making use standard of shuttle.»

  If I/you had been able I would have remained to open mouth. Daylight did him/it. His/her children that, playing around there, they owed to have grabbed something, they stopped chasing each other himself/herself/themselves and they jumped for the joy.

  «His/her grandfather goes to the space!» they howled.

  The mayor fixed me. You/he/she had been very clear, it waited only for one comment of mine.

  It was a person a lot of main point, our mayor; in a world in which the cities were the widest political body, in the hands of the first citizen prestige and enormous powers were assembled. I had to clearly answer and with respect.

  I leaned out me toward the woman. I lifted a hand with solemn slowness. I regulated the voice with the prouddest and deep tone of which I was able.

  «With the cabbage» I said.

  My daughter held back the breath.

  The mayor didn't beat eyelash.

  «Dad!» Daylight exclaimed.

  "Angel" I corrected inside of me.

  «I have a family to which to mind» I observed flatly.

  «Today the spatial trips are very sure» it said the mayor with caution.

  It delayed the word sure of a pair of tenth of according to. I had unconsciously measured the time intervened among every word of the sentence up to the fourth decimal figure and the last two they a lilt that would practically have been constant otherwise. I mark that the woman didn't believe big that to how much I dictate.

  «Unfff» I did me. «Two centuries ago the missions had around a probability on sixteen to fail. Last century. one on twenty-five. Today we are to one on seventy. Acceptable. But he is speaking of tested missions and well you study, not of an attempt mended what proposes me.»

  «Not so mended» it objected the mayor.

  You/he/she was discussing with me without any authoritarian tone; I knew that instead it was able impuntarsi: the money that university spent for the project that concerned me was in good part public. I was what his/her. This did me her to appreciate even more.

  «Its laboratory is at work already» it added smiling as soon as.

  Excellent. The woman had already organized all, you/he/she had come from me as last thing.

  I imagined Vladi and Kurt: they had to be enthusiastic of this adventure as little boys.

  «Besides, here is a copy of the project that concerns her/it.»

  It handed me a small orange cartellina. I opened him waiting me for diagrams and sketches, calculations and statistic extrapolations.

  For a while I had developed the fast reading: I flowed the five pages written dense sharp pains in few instants and I closed again the papers.

  I mentally assigned another stings to the mayor.

  It was not a project, it was an insurance to benefit of Daylight and the boys if the things had gone badly me. My daughter would have had a good annuity and the education of the boys you/he/she would have been insured to expenses of the city. There was the zampino of doctor Berliz in that document.

  Daylight fixed me uncertain, without knowing whether to encourage to go me or to hold him hold its dad.

  «It will is necessary to guarantee a certain reserve to the whole operation» it said the mayor, as if I/you had already accepted. «If people knew about the thing there would be a lot of worry. You imagine a life without the reactor Williamson.»

  I didn't imagine at all him, especially for me: my body worked thanks to a minuscule Williamson, if it missed the iridium for the city it also missed for me.

  «It is a good project» I commented. «I will go.»

  Daylight shelled the eyes but it didn't say anything. His/her children howled of emotion.

  The mayor openly smiled, now, but he left that a fleeting wriggle of apprehension crossed her the face for an instant: you/he/she was worried indeed. If I read well his/her expression, and I read her/it with all the tones of the ghost, you/he/she was not waited for to have to whether to do with a real human being coming from me. Now it felt to send to I him/it a man to everything round; its fears made me feel such, and God knows if I didn't feel the need of it.

  It is so that the things are: when a woman tel
ls us men to do something of very disagreeable using the correct way, we are well pleased to obey. As true idiots.