Ирина Пименова – No Names, No Signs. Technology I Virus I Life (страница 6)

The doors of the offices were frosted glass, and did not stand out much against the background of the walls. The feeling of airiness and openness did not leave anywhere.

Nikolay Nikolaevich, passing by the indoor orangery, noted that Taya, an assistant, was watering flowers in pots.

– Taya? Why are you watering them again?

«I don’t know,» she hesitated.

A minute later, a fussy cleaning robot drove up to her, smiled happily, caught himself quite humanly, muttered something, and began to clean the orangery. Taya called him Ziggy, not «number 4041» as it was written in his passport. Ziggy straightened the branches of the bushes that accidentally shaded the flowers of Middlemist red, checked the complex system of automatic watering and the optimal microclimate. He constantly fussed and minced back and forth in zigzags. That’s why she called him Ziggy.

Nikolay Nikolaevich noticed long ago that people need to take care of their neighbors, even if they are flowers. This is how they keep their humanity in that digital world.

In the laboratory everything has been seething since morning, but somehow hectic and nervous. The results of research on nanobots kept themselves waiting. The floating screen, at the level of assistant’s height, reflected the numbers of the night tests. No dynamics. Nanobots successfully reached the goal, moving through the body fluids of the body of a laboratory pig-clone, but nothing more. The desired injection of the drug into the cell infected with the virus did not occur. Ann, deputy of Nikolay Nikolaevich, has been already informed just before his arrival. He was the head of that laboratory for a long time, which sometimes chaotically but rather Nikolay Nikolaevich effective was holding scientific researches in the field of nanovirusology. This time he faced a very insidious virus. Nikolay Nikolaevich began to suspect that the virus he was studying was a chameleon virus that could pretend to be a normal cell and hide when the nanobot approached it. Hide and seek game.

Nikolay Nikolaevich has entered the laboratory. His deputy rushed past, disheveled, her glasses on one side. Here is another human feature – wearing glasses. After all, you can cure vision and even improve it by inserting an improved bio-eye, although expensive, but very convenient. But no. Some preferred to wear glasses, choosing frames of the most incredible shape, inventing fashion for them, and making it clear that they belong to a respected stratum of society – scientists. Sometimes Nikolay Nikolaevich thought that she was cunning, and her eyesight was normal, just in glasses with simple glasses, she looked more solid. Catching her on the move, Nikolay Nikolaevich asked:

– Well, Ann?

– There is no dynamics, – she said doomily, – we should try the third variant of protein chains….

Ann was always very worried when experiments went awry. She was tall, slender, dark-haired, usually slightly pale, and wearing inconspicuous clothes, her whole life was subordinated to the laboratory. A simple bob haircut made her face look a bit long. She was very young, not very experienced, but very promising. Her brown eyes darted excitedly from one indicator to the next. Her cheeks were covered with separate red spots – she was worried.

By lunchtime, Nikolay Nikolayevich had already completely immersed himself in the discussion of the scientific problems of recognizing infections by nanobots, talking with his colleague on Mars. He felt he needed to talk to someone sensible, calm, and maybe he would find a solution by applying his favorite practice of brainstorming. This often helped.

There was a large colony on Mars, also scientific with huge scientific prospects and good technological supply. Bright minds from all over the solar system have been flowing there.

– How is the weather? – Nikolay Nikolaevich asked his classmate, who has flown to Mars long ago.

– The storm ended yesterday and we saw the Sun in the morning, – he answered cheerfully, – we are fighting with a sugar plantation on the northwestern slope of Mount Olympus.

Scientists hoped that the glacier, or rather its lower, regularly melting spurs, would provide water access to plantings, and thereby help their rapid growth. But a problem arose. Martian storms, distinguished by their power and ruthlessness, each time covered all the plants with a deep layer of fine dust, just like flour. They had to carefully dig them out and wash them leaf by leaf.

By evening, a little encouraged by the conversation, Nikolay Nikolayevich, was getting ready to go home. Grabbed a charger for his onphone and went to the parking lot.

Onphones were like usual phones but had the better connection everywhere. People could call everywhere on the planet. Besides last makes became very useful. Onphones could be worn on hand wrists and had a one little screen-button. By pushing the button, the floating digital screen appeared in the air next to the hand. It had everything – icons, buttons for calls and applications and while talking to someone the owner could see his face on that screen. The creator of onphone was an English scientist. His name nobody remembers now. He wanted to simplify phones and give people the opportunity not to hold the phone while conversation. To free hands was a great idea. People call these new phones – onphones exactly because these makes could be held on wrists like wristwatches. Chargers for such gadgets were unconnected – just a plate. People put their onphones on these plates to charge during nights.

It was clearly visible from the roof, there was gathering a thunderstorm. Violet-lead clouds piled up on the spire of the old television tower.

Chapter 2

Nikolay Nikolaevich, fatty, curly-haired, but a bit balding, a man of 45, on the whole, was pleased with his fate. He was doing interesting things – he was a chief of a scientific laboratory working in the field of biotechnologies and genetics. He had a large family – a wife and two little sons. And also, a cat! Incredibly white and fluffy!

The head of the scientific genius has always been filled with ideas, the implementation of which suffered a little in discipline and organization, since God did not give him strictness towards himself, but generously endowed him with talent and openness. He was characterized by some lack of concentration and even absent-mindedness, but he knew his business.

Quite often, Nikolay Nikolayevich, with his features to find cause-and-effect relationships in everything, as well as the inability to turn off these qualities after leaving work, often wondered about the decline of society.

Against the backdrop of a wonderful tandem of nature and technology, it was obvious.

The opponents of social networks have long calmed down, because the further people moved, the more they plunged into the network, and the network plunged into them. In the first half of the century, people still used the Internet. But after a short but very revealing military incident, when the most powerful power net at that time was disabled for several hours, it became obvious that the digital world is very dependent, and technologies that do not work on traditional electricity are needed. The modern Brainnet has become completely different and much more convenient.

No, Nikolay Nikolaevich was not inclined to give gloomy, decadent prospects to modernity. As a man of science, he always looked ahead. Sometimes, he wondered if observation and logic were given to him from birth, or if this was a boon acquired in the profession. Paying attention to society, he saw subtle, slow, but important changes. And they bothered him. He understood that his intellectual, even conservative upbringing could influence his perception. But it became more and more obvious that something was wrong.

He and his family led a quiet, non-public life. Theaters, occasionally cinemas. In art, everything has been captured by augmented reality. As if you become a participant in the process. It was very bewitching. Sometimes, for weak people such an experience did not bode well.

In general, life went on as usual. Vacations on Mars, in their favorite region of Tharsis. Periodic visits to work on the Moon. The little was out of the standard work schedule. The children have not yet gone to school – they were still small.

Perhaps it was the measured lifestyle that exaggerated his reaction to the misfortune of their friends. A week ago, his friend’s son died. A young, handsome young man with a good education, from a prosperous family, simply got into a flyer and flew into the spaceport fence at full speed. So stupid…

Evil tongues said that he became a victim of a social group where people did barbaric things to get extreme pleasures. Of course, it’s one thing to experience the virtual sensations of augmented reality and not crap yourself, and it’s quite another – to commit a crazy act yourself and survive! And don’t screw up! Wow! Real feelings! They considered it almost heroic. The fact that such sensations would almost certainly be the last in their lives did not bother them.