Макс Глебов – Prohibition of Interference. Book 1 (страница 12)

Of the few civilizations that have managed to stay on the edge and cross the chasm, most are dying as a result of man-made, ecological, or social disasters, or often all three at the same time. They are slowly killing the nature of their planet, with their own hands they are turning their own children into appendages of electronic devices, for which virtual spaces become closer and clearer than real people, they legalize drugs and all kinds of perversions, they reform the educational system so that to disaccustom people to think for themselves. More and more decisions are given over to artificial intelligence, which seems to be controlled and understood by its creators, but only up to a certain point. It seems to them that all this is done for people, for their own good, to improve the manageability of society, but at some point a critical mass of hidden contradictions, negative changes in ecology, small but critical errors in the management systems of giant production complexes is accumulated… And an explosion occurs.

And then each civilization has its own unique path to the abyss. Letra showed me footage taken on one of these worlds by scout drones and scientific satellites. In general, this information was considered secret, but not so much that my girlfriend strongly feared the consequences of its disclosure. And then I was scared. Maybe for the first time in my life I experienced such a feeling of fear.

That world died from weapons that got out of control, and those weapons combined the latest developments in psychotropic poisonous substances, advanced nanotechnology and combat viruses. The strain that broke free was not killing living things – it was changing them. The virus itself was only a transport – a capsule for delivering psychotropic poison molecules and nanomachines, compactly packed inside the protein and lipid shells of the viral particle, into the affected organism. The psychotropic drug, entering the bloodstream, subjugated the human mind to the sole purpose of transforming all the people around him into the same ideal and perfect creatures as himself. The nanomachines that infiltrated the body made the infected person strong, insensitive to pain, hardy, and even highly intelligent, in his own way. But all this was short-lived. Such violence to the organism burned it out in a few months, but as long as the host was alive, it acted cunningly and sophisticatedly, trying to infect as many people as possible. The tricky thing about this weapon was that the infected person, after just half an hour of malaise, would feel rejuvenated and full of energy, and this would become visible not only to him, but also to those around him. All diseases, including chronic ones, receded, people felt better, their wrinkles smoothed out, their efficiency increased dramatically. And in the same time, there was an irresistible desire to make everyone around them as happy and young as they were, all they had to do was hold someone's hand, kiss them, or even just exhale air in their direction from a close distance.

But the happiness did not last long. Two months after infection, the old diseases would return with tripled force, followed by new ones, and the person began to age rapidly. Death came from the avalanche-like failure of all body systems. No one has lived more than a hundred days since the infection. The virus spared neither humans nor animals.

The videos Letra showed me were compiled from various sources and very competently edited. In the space of an hour, the last six months of a world that had been coming to its apocalyptic end for millennia passed before my eyes. I never thought it would be so scary to watch.

This example was probably the most striking and shocking, but by no means the only one. Nevertheless, unlike more than two dozen civilizations that failed to survive their 'adolescence', the Sixth Republic was lucky. It happily avoided a nuclear conflict, although it was literally on a knife edge for some of the most dangerous years. Well, then a grandiose breakthrough in space technology prevented the Sixth Republic from plunging into a world of virtual reverie and drug intoxication.

This breakthrough allowed us to escape to the stars, not by single research ships, but en masse, using colonial transports equipped with hyperdrives. The discovery of hypertransition with the then amount of technology and fundamental knowledge could be called a frank miracle, but we were lucky, and deep space gave people purpose and work for decades to come. We had already decided that the worst was over when the Revolt broke out… This insurrection, terrible and irrational, struck several of the largest colonies at once, and then spread to the Metropolis. At that time I was already serving on the lunar base, and because of the strict military censorship I did not know any details except those that were communicated to us by the leadership. A month before the base was killed, a support transport flew in and unloaded a self-deploying anti-space defense system. The batteries dipped into the lunar soil and went on alert, and the transport went back and took my Letra with it. No one else from the central worlds came to us until the rebel cruiser showed up.

Colonel Niven obviously knew something about what was going on in the Metropolis and the colonies, but he wouldn't tell me, even before he died, or maybe he just didn't have time. But I drew a simple but disappointing conclusion – by breaking out into space, we only delayed the death of our civilization, and now it has hit us.

Letra said that we study primitive civilizations to see where the error that leads to self-destruction is. That's why there was a ban on interference – for the purity of the experiment, so to speak. And now here I am, and the ban has been lifted. But what to do, I do not know, or rather, I know exactly what not to do. I will not go to the authorities with my technology and knowledge. If I want to change something and live here happily ever after, and then leave this world to my children and their children's children, I myself must become the power, and take that power non-violently, at least in this country. I buried my hope that someone would come for me from the Metropolis almost immediately. Something in Colonel Niven's voice told me it was foolish to count on that. Well, let's save this world from itself, and at the same time save myself, because I really expect to live here all the 150 years that nature has given me.

I was thinking about global things, but in the meantime, I had to solve current problems.

“Comrade Sergeant, there's a road a kilometer and a half ahead. I can hear the sound of engines,” I reported to the commander.

“Could it be our troops?” Boris, who was walking on the right, asked.

Pluzhnikov immediately reacted to the insubordination:

“Red Army man Chezhin, if you open your mouth again without an order and not for a report, you hand the rifle to Sintsov. Understood?”

“I got it, Comrade Sergeant,” Boris grimaced, “it won't happen again.” But he kept looking at me, waiting hopefully for an answer to his question.

“Squad, halt!” Pluzhnikov softly ordered and signaled Sintsov, who was walking ahead, to stop, “Everybody keep quiet. Listen carefully, Nagulin.”

I closed my eyes.

“The column is going, Comrade Sergeant. Trucks and infantry. The engines are not ours – they are Germans, and there are a lot of them. I hear at least five cars at the same time.”

“Well, trucks I see,” said the Sergeant thoughtfully, “though I don't hear anything at all. But last time you said everything right about the motorcycles, so I guess you heard right here, too. But how could you hear the infantry?”

“The weapons are tinkling. And that sound is spread out over a wide front. It's a big column. At least two companies, I think.”

“So,” the Sergeant thought for a few seconds, “Chezhin, Sharkov, catch up with Sintsov and stay where you are. Take cover in the bushes and don't make a sound!”

“Copu that!” answered the Red Army men softly.

“Nagulin, follow me!”

When we moved a hundred meters away from the road, Pluzhnikov said quietly, “You wanted to ask me something, Nagulin. Now would be a good time to ask.”

I sighed.

“Comrade Sergeant, why did Senior Lieutenant Fyodorov raise his men to counterattack? Well, it was obvious it wasn't going to work out.”

Pluzhnikov nodded. He had obviously been waiting for this question and had prepared an answer in advance.

“This is a war, Nagulin. It is a brutal war, with its own rules, not invented by us, and not for us to change. The Army Regulations require a Red Army man to lead an offensive battle. It says that if the enemy imposes war on us, the Workers and Peasants' Red Army will be the most attacking army ever. And the offensive battle consists in the decisive movement of the entire battle order forward and is conducted by suppressing the enemy with all the power of fire, attacking his battle order with all the forces. That's how Comrade Senior Lieutenant Fyodorov acted. And you, fighter, do you think he should have run away?”