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2024-10-29 19:42:56
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Corporation 1
The congress to the ring stood dead, you can’t disperse it with any cracker, one headache and reciprocal swearing, breaking through bulletproof glass. And most importantly, why the hell did he drag himself here, to lock himself in the coolness and quiet of the office now, to resolve issues. By phone, fuck you, and then drop everything and drag yourself to God knows where in the official Gelendvagen, waste your time. And his time is precious!- Marat Zinyurovich, so maybe turn around through the region?Grimacing, Marat silently waved to the driver, do as you like.And most importantly, as much as I can remind you, he could not stand his patronymic. Dad was from the Soviet nomenklatura, the Union Deputy Minister, no bullshit. Everyone in the family hated him. For bitter alcoholism, for constant beatings. It was drunk that he got good, while on a sober bench he spoke with his mother and with his three brothers equally harshly, through his teeth. In the teeth, if it was impatient, he str
Corporation 2
Let the kid not think that he was so frightened by his announcement. You never know where he's going. We will discuss all this later, but for now we need to probe it and in more detail, as if it were really not the last time such an opportunity.I will leave you the last...Drrrrr!..Oh, what a day it is today, Marat hurried to find the damn vibrating alert in his pocket, but he had already died. Literally.Angrily twirling the lifeless Blackberry between his fingers, Marat limply dropped the device that had become useless, to be sure, crushing it from above until it crunched with his heel. He already knew how it was. The kid really did not like any electronics. Probably, he was afraid of wiretapping, but not only. She burned close to him only on the way.- Again?- I apologize. Hurry, completely out of my head.And why is he fawning over the boy? He decided to throw it anyway.“It doesn't matter, I'll leave you the final instructions, and this time everything must be as clear as poss
Corporation 3
From the outside, the city looked like a living being, a collective mind of tens of millions of minds merged into one common goal - to live, multiply, gather a supply of resources around itself, which later, or maybe here and now, can be spent on improving conditions for life, reproduction and further concentration resources. It is easy to guess that it was all just an illusion. There was no collective mind, most of the desires and needs of even a single individual in this city contradicted each other. Children interfered with a career, a career interfered with personal life, one cannot save and spend at the same time, and no expenses for an empty and formal in their temporality and chimera improvement of one's own life have ever paid off.People liked to mindlessly accumulate and spend money on nonsense. They could not even decide on who or what could make their life even a little happier. But the pleasure centers in their brains worked regardless of the wishes of the owner. Get drun
Corporation 4
Boulevard Saint-Germain in early May is especially good.The elms had already blossomed, sheltering in their transparent shade those who wanted to eat on the side table of the cafeteria, and the first spring rains beat down the annoying spring dust. Noisy Chinese tourists, of course, have not gone anywhere, but in the mornings it’s still too cool for the bulk of them, and what’s the point on Monday, after yesterday’s collective races on Cham de Mars, which is literally a kilometer away from here, to rise before eleven? Except in caring for the freshness of croissants, but it is unlikely that this public will be so worried about pastries.Another thing is if you are a doctoral student of Science Po, then such an early wake-up is quite reasonable for you, and this time there are quite reasons to change the usual scooter for the city for a leisurely walk three blocks from the campus to the native laboratory.It’s so quiet here except in winter during infrequent snowfalls, when there are
Corporation 5
Slowly, unhurriedly, imposingly, as in a rapid speed train, a flaming tire swept past him on a deserted pavement. The black soot rose behind her in a dense, suffocating wave, so that Gilbert automatically reached into his pocket for a life-saving handkerchief. A sweaty rag is not exactly a salvation from subsequent asthma attacks, but it's better than nothing.The first thought - to quickly return to the sterile recirculating atmosphere of the lab - was immediately discarded. The black failure of the silhouette is just waiting in the wings to return and swallow it headlong.What jokes, at such a pace he will not work - he will lose his last brains.The crowd, meanwhile, surrounded Gilbert on all sides.Motley groups in acid-colored driver's vests over civilian ones ran at him from clouds of smoke lined obliquely by the rays of the sun, ran up, shouting something about fair prices, and immediately rushed away, not paying any attention to the lost Gilbert.Their sonorous voices, to the
Corporation 6
I got the capsule by the window, but what's the point - the southeastern branch most of the time went through the tunnels, and I didn’t have time to catch the rare glimpses of night lights overboard, so as soon as the train turned behind Verdun, I immediately unscrewed the transparency of the walls capsules to a minimum, touched the pump sensor, which was burning with expectancy, and immediately fell into a dead drug sleep until the very arrival.The informant who woke me coldly said that it was already five in the morning, 12 minutes remained before arrival. Sleeping under sedatives is still a pleasure, every time you wake up refreshed, like after a cup of strong coffee, but your head is still plaguey, as if you were sleeping in an utterly suffocating room, and even in a wet suit.Turning off the privacy of the capsule and looking around, I did not notice anything suspicious. The first-class passengers fiddled with their briefcases with a displeased look, someone already, out of habi
Corporation 7
The blades of the aforementioned helicopters flashed overhead a couple of times, not at night, but the needles of the crowns and the glow of dawn on the scoreboard covered me reliably, and the helicopters were clearly not interested in me, but in the doppelganger, which was now taking them away from me further south, into the valley.Lord, where is the end of all this. My throat was gurgling, my ears were ringing, before my eyes again blackness, and my legs go forward only when supported by a vertically placed board, which successfully replaced my crutches.As a result, the house was drawn right in front of my nose. Dense, structured darkness in the very center of the field of view."Choose any entrance." It just now dawned on me.Two wooden steps rested against a symmetrical door - to the right and to the left. So you have no idea where I am now. Thanks for the tip.Opening the right door, I stumbled inside like a sack, rattling my mask against the floorboards and scattering clods of
Corporation 8
From the "Sluice-2" there was a queue of empty ore carriers, so they went on the farthest, either the seventh or the eighth descending. Novak had already forgotten how beautiful it was here. The northern ridge of Cabeus Crater rose majestically from the horizon as the lights of Shackleton's open pits glided below, and the hypertubes linking Shackleton to Haworth gleamed in the sun ahead.You will not find anything similar on external routes. There, Saul is distant, weak, and in general there is no activity - to look at the flashing light on the distant radar, the entire duty brigade comes running, and, well, tryndet on the air. How are you, traveler? Where are you heading?In general, this hungry familiarity after returning had to be squeezed out of oneself drop by drop. So that every oncoming outsider at the interchange does not want to clap on the shoulder and ask for chewing gum to get sober after yesterday.It is more difficult with the inners, the inners are all gloomy and, if no
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- 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
