Роман Алексеев – The Abyss Kisses Ya Back (страница 5)

"Not as alive?" she offered.

"Exactly. Like something important gets lost in translation from the language of feeling to the language of science."

Dima stopped tuning his guitar and looked at me with interest:

"Or maybe it's the other way around? Maybe when you understand how a sunset works, it gets even more beautiful?"

"I doubt it," I shook my head. "Remember last year when we studied the structure of the eye? Rods, cones, the optic nerve... After that I couldn't look at girls normally for a week — kept thinking about photoreceptors."

Everyone laughed. Lena added:

"And after I studied digestion, I couldn't eat for a month. Kept imagining what was happening to the food in my stomach."

"Exactly," I said. "Knowledge sometimes kills the immediacy of perception."

"But it's interesting, though," Vika objected. "To understand how everything works. Why the sky is blue, why water is wet..."

"Vika, water is wet by definition," Dima laughed.

"Well, you know what I mean." She nudged him playfully with her shoulder. "I think real beauty doesn't suffer from understanding. If something is truly beautiful, it's beautiful on every level — both on the level of sensation and on the level of knowledge."

I looked at her with admiration. Now there was a thought! And said so simply, without any pretension.

"So beauty is something universal?" I asked. "Like the laws of physics?"

"Why not?" Vika rested her chin on her hands. "Maybe there are laws of beauty. Like the law of universal gravitation, only for aesthetics."

"Len, what does medicine have to say about this?" Dima turned to our doctor.

"Medicine thinks you're all about to lose your minds from an excess of philosophy and pheromones," Lena answered seriously. "And the prescription is simple: swimming, fried potatoes, and songs with the guitar."

"The doctor is right," Dima announced, and struck a chord. "Let's just sing something instead. 'Pack of Cigarettes'?"

We sang until it was completely dark. Vika's voice blended surprisingly well with Dima's guitar, and I sang along in bass, feeling like part of something big and good. Lena corrected the lyrics from time to time — she had a phenomenal memory for song lyrics.

When the songs were over, we sat for a long time by the dying fire, looking at the stars. The city hid most of the sky from us, but out here the whole infinity opened up.

"Hey," Vika said quietly, "somewhere out there, there could be other worlds. Other people, sitting around their own campfire, looking at the stars."

"Quite possible," I agreed. "Statistically, the universe is way too big for us to be alone."

"Aren't you scared?" Lena asked. "You know — that we're not alone?"

"What's there to be scared of?" Dima looked surprised. "If they're sitting around a campfire singing songs, that means they're normal. And if they're not normal — they won't make it all the way here, it's too far."

"And what if they do make it?" Lena wouldn't let it go.

"Then we'll show them how to grill kebabs," Dima answered pragmatically. "Cultural exchange, so to speak."

We laughed, but Vika continued seriously:

"I think meeting another intelligence would be beautiful. Can you imagine — finding out how they think, how they understand the world? That would expand our consciousness to unbelievable limits."

I thought about my conversations with the AI. In a way, that had been a meeting with another intelligence, too. Or had it? A difficult question.

"Sash, you're thinking again," Vika noticed. "What about this time?"

"Oh, nothing..." I didn't want to bring up the AI here, in this perfect setting. "Just wondering how we'd know if we'd met another intelligence. What signs would we look for?"

"Well, if they talk to us," Dima suggested.

"And what if they communicate some other way? Not in words?"

"That's trickier," Vika agreed. "You'd have to find a common language. Mathematics, for example. Or music."

"Or beauty," I added. "You said it yourself — maybe there are universal laws of beauty."

Vika smiled at me, and I felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the fire.

"Exactly. If something is beautiful to us, maybe it's beautiful to them, too."

We talked a while longer about the stars, about other worlds, about how amazing it would be to fly to the stars. Then Lena announced it was time for bed — "sleep schedule's still in effect" — and we headed off to our tents.

I lay in my sleeping bag and looked through the open tent flap at the stars. Somewhere nearby, in the next tent, the girls were whispering. I caught fragments of sentences: "...do you think he..." "...obviously, you can tell..." "...but he's so shy..."

Were they talking about me? I wanted to think so. And if they were, what exactly were they saying?

Dima beside me was already snoring — he fell asleep fast and slept like a log. I tossed and turned for a long time, thinking about the day. About how easy and natural it had been between us. About how Vika had smiled when I'd mentioned universal laws of beauty. About how tomorrow would be a new day, and maybe something important would happen.

I woke up early, before dawn. The tent was stuffy, and outside it smelled of dew and cool air. I quietly crawled out of my sleeping bag, trying not to wake Dima, and went down to the water.

The lake lay motionless as a mirror. A light mist was rising above it, and on the far shore the silhouettes of trees were barely emerging. It was quiet — only a bird calling somewhere far off and a fish splashing.

I sat down on a fallen tree at the water's edge and just watched. In moments like this you don't need words, you don't need thoughts. You just sit and feel yourself part of this world.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" I turned. Vika stood behind me, wrapped in a blanket. Her hair was a mess, a pillow crease still on her cheek. And she was beautiful.

"Can't sleep either?"

"I woke up, saw you were gone. Thought maybe something had happened."

She sat down next to me on the log, snuggling into her blanket.

"No, everything's fine. Just wanted to watch the sunrise."

"And how is it?"

"It hasn't started yet. But you can feel it — it's about to."

We sat in silence. I felt the warmth of her body next to mine and was afraid to move, afraid of breaking the moment.

"Sash," she said quietly, "do you really want to go into philosophy?"

"I do. Why?"

"I don't know... It seems hard — spending your whole life thinking about such serious things. The meaning of life, the nature of reality..."

"What do you want to think about?"

"People. How to help them be happy. I'm going to study psychology."

I turned toward her:

"Aren't those connected, though? Understanding what happiness is, what a human being is — those are philosophical questions too."

"Maybe," she smiled. "But I think I want not just to understand, but to help. Concretely, practically."

"And I want to understand," I said. "I think if you really understand something, you've already helped everyone at once."

"That sounds a little grand."

"Maybe it's stupid. I don't know."

The sky in the east was beginning to lighten. The mist over the water was turning pinkish.

"It's not stupid," Vika said quietly. "I like that you think about everything. Seriously, not like... not like other people."

"Like Dima, for example?"