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Corporation 70
The vault was asleep. Submerged in half-asleep, life-support mechanisms barely audibly murmured to the beat of his breathing. Occupied, however, with the same concern - to postpone his death for a second, then for a minute, then for another couple of hours. In this stressless race there was neither the excitement of a running sprint, nor the emotional intensity of a firefight, when it was either-or, when it was a zero-sum game, when it was won or lost.People are mortal. We all lost in advance, even at birth, each of us begins to prepare for our own end, no matter how close our eyes are, no matter how hard we try to delay the inevitable, everyone will find their destiny sooner or later anyway. And the only question is what is "early" and when will be "late" in each case.In his case, it was already too late - to be afraid and regret, love or hate, but how to measure what has not yet happened and how to compare with what has already happened. Not to worry about what is not yet lost - t
Corporation 71
Ma Shenbing turned around in surprise. How did they even get here? In his own body, far from the murmur of the storage devices, without a respirator mask and a lot of wires entangling it, he seemed to immediately return to that distant past, when he still did not feel, did not remember himself as a “canned food”. He must be wondering about all this.“But I always remembered him differently. In that sense, it only became closer to my visions.Visions? What does shadow mean?“That aurora in the sky,” a raised finger thoughtfully described a wide loop, as if the speaker was trying to remind himself of something, “should be purple.” On Krasnaya, it's called a "steve" or "proton arc," caused by its high-energy beams, which ionize hydrogen in the upper rarefied atmosphere, devoid of the cover of the geomagnetic field. Does this tell you anything?- Where will the proton aurora come from on Matushka?The shadow continued to stare at the green auroras above its head.“Really, it’s a mystery.
Corporation 72
The hexapod continued to dig into the crevice with an internal rumbling, not responding to commands.Here is the goat.Klaus glanced at the dial again, trying not to get angry. This piece of iron is not obliged to obey you. Say thank you for helping, you see, she had enough consideration that she couldn’t survive here alone, but if she were interested in something in the ruins, you couldn’t drag her out by the ears. If only she had ears.But something needs to be decided, the blue on the other side of the breach continued to thicken, for another quarter of an hour - and it will finally get dark, and in the darkness it is better not to rummage around the Megapolis if you want to live. Again, nitinol with a rapidly falling outboard temperature begins to lag, the hexapod stumbles on an icy ramp and remember your name. How is he then, without a hexapod.Klaus whistled, his ears stuffed from the effort. In response, the mechanoid obediently froze, stopping its erratic body movements, but d
Corporation 73
The echo pulse of the sonar obediently jerked the comb, the copter immediately shifted to the left, entering a safe route according to the directives of the navigation unit. The tactics of passing through the comb is always the same - do not poke your nose into someone else's question. It is better to fly around the fresh collapse sideways, the comb is large, wherever you are going, you will definitely find a workaround with good clearance and direct visibility. The main thing is not to rush. The hurry-ups did not drag it out here for a long time, sooner or later running into a short and evil revenge of the Megapolis to the one who, without asking, encroached on his icy insides."Thank you, lapul."It is curious that where people gave up, the Megapolis itself still survived. Hundreds of meters of snow blockages over the years have turned into ice tongues, clearly visible from a height. No, it was not the shock wave of the impact that knocked down the towers, it was the glaciological f
Corporation 74
His fingers were glassy in the light.The usual effect after exhausting duty on the bridge. The retrained visual centers continue to broadcast the supporting star fields of the surrounding space into the half-dead isocortex, phantomly visualizing navigational parameters even now, when its neurocircuits are left without signal feeding of external systems.The human brain quickly gets used to unusual functions. This is its main advantage over artificial decision-making structures. No matter how much you design these quantum systems, they all turn out to be either an inefficient tangle of gloomy introspection, when the machine goes into itself forever, calculating complete nonsense, and each time it’s different, or they quickly turn into a dumb conveyor of the simplest decisions that are made quickly, but need constant additional training on new boundary conditions.The man, placed in the control center of the machine kingdom, appropriated any external circuits as his own with amazing ef
Corporation 75
The onboard observatory of the flagship, although it was focused on tracking objects located no further than a hundred kilometers from the Sun, nevertheless, gave a background image rich in details and colors, enriched with spectra outside the visible range from microwave to hard X-ray inclusive. The resulting composite panoramic banner only at first glance resembled the familiar picture of the starry sky - the former tracer did not need to be reminded of what deep space usually looks like to the naked eye. The white pupil of the distant Sun and the barely noticeable points of the brightest stars plus the planets, that's the whole poor visual range. Immediately at the disposal of the navigator, free from other activities, was given the multi-colored world of the contours of the Galaxy and entire star placers of the nearest cluster.When looking at this rich panel, made up of billions of stars, gas clouds, globular clusters and nebulae of the nearest galaxies, for once it became clear
Corporation 76
The evacuated moon domes were far more depressing than he had expected. Live on Krasnaya for a couple of dozen turns, and you will no longer be surprised by its lifeless expanses. The lifestyle there was such that everyone seemed to be afraid of both this sand and each other. For a thousand sols you can not meet a single living soul, only chains of heavy copters stretching in the bloody skies remind that this world is inhabited by someone. But Muna... Muna in his memories was always a grandiose covered anthill, where everyone was in a hurry somewhere. The main staging post of the Sol system has remained the true heart of the Sol system since its inception.So it was before Ceres. And so it was before the Arrival.Now, looking at the empty galleries inside the domes and the cleared launch pads beyond, he only thought about what they had missed.What happened to the people who once set foot on the gray lunar regolith in the hope of developing a new frontier? The easiest way was to say t
Corporation 77
And what, it's even reasonable on their part. Less emotion, less stigma, less inevitable exophobia. It makes less sense to talk about something.Inside the makeshift conference room, to which the gateway led, already gathered, meanwhile, quite decently people. Apparently, their shuttle did not arrive first.It is necessary to get out somewhere far away to the side, very few people here would like to see him alive, let alone face to face. However, he was lucky, there was still a pleasant exception.- Companion Urban.— Ilmari Olsson.Both nodded briefly to each other, but not at all in the way that Lilia nodded to him when they met. Two intense gazes, clinging for a second in the surrounding crowd, managed to show each other enough emotions to immediately calmly part. Unlike the Companion of Ulysses, they always knew how to disperse peacefully with Urban. Of all the Companions, only Jean Armal still retained a certain amount of humanity. After all, only he knew what it was like to phys
Latest Chapter
- Corporation
Epilogue
Deprived of the present - does not live, deprived of the past - was not even born. I don’t remember who said so, all these books merged into one mess for me during the flight. But, returning in my thoughts to my life on Earth, I cannot help but think about the Corporation, and I cannot help but think about the fate that brought me to the Corporation. The place where I grew up has long ceased to be a sleepy town far from the big and noisy world, the suburbs of the metropolis have moved in on it, comparing hills and raising faceless towers of cheap high-rise housing around. The black cubes of factory buildings, lined with light-absorbing tiles, seemed to be the focus of secrets in the dark and musty chaos of thousands of people who were not interested in anything; no one thought about it. I hardly remember when Corporations appeared in our lives. Sometimes I feel like they've always been there. The faceless masters of the world, at first they were somewhere far, far away. Not here. Per
- Corporation
82
The roof breathed a thick smell of hot metal, the sun was so hot that even the familiar tropics of the lower levels seemed like a resort from the coast of the Northern Ocean. In such places, in the middle of the realm of dusty iron and a web of wires creaking in the barely perceptible wind, a normal person will not linger. And if you remember the composition of the local air, full of carbon monoxide rather than oxygen, you involuntarily catch yourself thinking - why did you get here, run away from here, run ...There was little use for these thoughts. The introduction says clearly - the "patient" will try to break through here, and you should not worry about his plans, sweat between your shoulder blades and dry concrete crumb under your tongue. Whatever he is looking for here - he should not pass by. Neither alive nor already dead. If you do your job, you will head north, or even south, across the sea - it is dry there, there is no eternal smell of rivers rotting in the concrete bowel
- Corporation
81
The drowned city was empty again, and did not really have time to become a new home for immigrants from the Megapolis, which surrendered under the pressure of the Glacier. Until quite recently, life was in full swing here, shuttles took the last pax from the gravity well, heavy trucks delivered here and unfolded giant cubes of fabricators, but now everything was quiet, and only the quiet lapping of the waves of the Tethys Sea beat against the metal-polymer supports of the newly erected towers here.- Are you happy? she asked that day with what he thought was sincere curiosity.- Satisfied with what?“Because we leave this world alone.“Ah, that,” Romulus shrugged, “I will be pleased when they leave me alone. And Mother, she still does not hear us. She doesn't care what we think about her.- Stupid humanity tired even the all-powerful Romulus.- Don't bother with words. You have only lived with this for a quarter of a millennium, but I have been dealing with people for more than four h
- Corporation
80
Romulus climbed along the ridge with a measured step, from time to time looking back at the stone labyrinth of the Megapolis slowly plunging into the blue haze.Here, fifty kilometers from the edge of the Glacier, it looked quite familiar, if you do not remember how deep into the multi-year snow layers these stone skeletons now go. Towers, Bauhaus and palazzos sink deeper and deeper into the compressed ice pack every year. Go get it.Nothing, the fabricators have already reached the product capacity, releasing a million of their hardworking rats a day to the borders of the agglomeration.Romulus watched them work with his own eyes yesterday. Three individuals fiercely fought for a kilogram stub of monothread steel, zealously grinding their diamond cutters on it, only sparks flew around.These mechanical laborers will open any deposits of debris, make their way into the very hodgepodge of ceilings, dig their way into the depths of permafrost, but in the end they will wipe this abscess
- Corporation
79
We have seen a new humanity. People are weakened, divided, they will be even more crushed by the Age Outside, but sooner or later, one way or another, they will begin their expansion. But until that moment they cannot be left alone with Romulus. They need to be kicked in the ass into the Galaxy and locked up within the boundaries of the Barrier as much as possible.The guest thought, now for a long time. The clouds grew darker, the sunset faded, the snowflakes hit her cheek more and more painfully, and she stood still and was silent. Finally, when she spoke again, her voice was cold and formal.“I will speak to the soorn-infarh. But I don't promise anything.The redhead bowed again.“We couldn’t have hoped for more, wise one.” But I can see that something is bothering you.“Romulus confuses me. Will he fall into such a trivial trap?- Who knows who knows. Perhaps they themselves want to be deceived.The guest gave a short nod and moved away, through the oncoming gusts of a piercing no
- Corporation
78
The three from the chest were comfortably seated at the very edge of the cliff. One of them, a tall, desperately red-haired old man, waved his arms all the time, trying to jump up and run, in every possible way depicting general excitement. The other two, on the contrary, reclined comfortably in hammocks, pulling their blankets up to their chins, and hardly moved. A slight, but at the same time filled with internal contentment, a smile wandered on the face of both.All three would look very suspicious to an outsider's eye - what fate brought them to this windy land and what was the purpose of their today's observation, even the most desperate detective could not figure out, even if one happened so far south of Maharashtra.But in fact, there was no one here for a long time and reliably. The Goan land lay empty, and only the cold winter wind carried dust whirlwinds along these once populous lands, throwing handfuls of sand in the face of a random oncoming one.But these three were not
- Corporation
77
And what, it's even reasonable on their part. Less emotion, less stigma, less inevitable exophobia. It makes less sense to talk about something.Inside the makeshift conference room, to which the gateway led, already gathered, meanwhile, quite decently people. Apparently, their shuttle did not arrive first.It is necessary to get out somewhere far away to the side, very few people here would like to see him alive, let alone face to face. However, he was lucky, there was still a pleasant exception.- Companion Urban.— Ilmari Olsson.Both nodded briefly to each other, but not at all in the way that Lilia nodded to him when they met. Two intense gazes, clinging for a second in the surrounding crowd, managed to show each other enough emotions to immediately calmly part. Unlike the Companion of Ulysses, they always knew how to disperse peacefully with Urban. Of all the Companions, only Jean Armal still retained a certain amount of humanity. After all, only he knew what it was like to phys
- Corporation
76
The evacuated moon domes were far more depressing than he had expected. Live on Krasnaya for a couple of dozen turns, and you will no longer be surprised by its lifeless expanses. The lifestyle there was such that everyone seemed to be afraid of both this sand and each other. For a thousand sols you can not meet a single living soul, only chains of heavy copters stretching in the bloody skies remind that this world is inhabited by someone. But Muna... Muna in his memories was always a grandiose covered anthill, where everyone was in a hurry somewhere. The main staging post of the Sol system has remained the true heart of the Sol system since its inception.So it was before Ceres. And so it was before the Arrival.Now, looking at the empty galleries inside the domes and the cleared launch pads beyond, he only thought about what they had missed.What happened to the people who once set foot on the gray lunar regolith in the hope of developing a new frontier? The easiest way was to say t
- Corporation
75
The onboard observatory of the flagship, although it was focused on tracking objects located no further than a hundred kilometers from the Sun, nevertheless, gave a background image rich in details and colors, enriched with spectra outside the visible range from microwave to hard X-ray inclusive. The resulting composite panoramic banner only at first glance resembled the familiar picture of the starry sky - the former tracer did not need to be reminded of what deep space usually looks like to the naked eye. The white pupil of the distant Sun and the barely noticeable points of the brightest stars plus the planets, that's the whole poor visual range. Immediately at the disposal of the navigator, free from other activities, was given the multi-colored world of the contours of the Galaxy and entire star placers of the nearest cluster.When looking at this rich panel, made up of billions of stars, gas clouds, globular clusters and nebulae of the nearest galaxies, for once it became clear
