The flight.
A flow of sparks pierces my body.
Spiral lightnings sweep at my face.
I feel pain and for the first time in virtuality I understand – it's not an imaginary one. It's just a weak echo of the pain that tortures me in the real world. I'm doing something that a human can't, shouldn't do, I communicate with computers directly, walk through the Net pulling data from programs terminated long time ago.
It's painful, hard but I must overcome that.
It seems that I moan and scream, pressing nonexistent hands against my forehead, a red-hot nails are hammered into my eyes, the skin is torn off with a sandpaper. It's a retribution for the impossible.
When I come back to my senses, there's a door before me.. I'm lying in the corridor, a long and dull one, with hundreds of such doors. Is it one of the virtual hotels?
The pain haven't faded yet but became weaker, softer. It's possible to rise from the floor – very carefully, to lean against the cold wood of the door with forehead.
So you enter virtuality from temporary addresses too, Romka?
I push the door without even thinking that it can be locked and almost fall into the room. Posters with half naked beauties are on the walls, a table with drinks stands by the wall. It looks somehow strange… An unfamiliar man sits with his back towards me, drums at computer keyboard murmuring something out of tune. A half empty bottle of gin and an ashtray full of cigar butts is by his hand. The man is just finishing a glass of cheap 'Hogart'.
– Hi Romka, – I mumble, trying to get a grip against the wall. The man turns around, looks at me in confusion, then jumps up, catches me on his hands and drags towards the armchair.
Now I can let it slip…
Romka brings a full glass of gin under my nose and the smell of juniper finally returns my consciousness.
– Take it away, I'll puke… – I push away his hand.
– Len'ka, is it you? – asks the diver unbelievingly.
– Me…
– Come on, drink, you'll feel better!
– Damned alcoholic, – I whisper something that I never got a nerve to tell him before, – It's you who can gulp pure Gin down.
– Want me to add some tonic? – guesses Romka, – It's fine for me just like this…
He splashes most of the glass' contents out on the floor, fills with tonic and gives it to me. This time I don't refuse, I drink feeling the blessing numbness streaming all over my body.
– How did you enter? – asks Romka, – The door was closed!
It's too hard to explain why closed doors don't hinder me anymore. I wave my hand and suck in the rest of the liquid.
– And how could you find me?
– I just could… – I answer indefinitely, but it seems that Romka is glad to see me too much to keep trying me.
– Did you manage to get away from that bastard? – he asks.
– Yes…
– What an asshole! – swears Romka, – He busied me alright!
– How did you crawl out?
– The virus was a clean one. It froze my machine but croaked after restart. Everything according to the Convention, but cool, damn it! – Romka laughs forcefully, – What an enemies have you got, Lenia!
– Feel envious?
– Yup! – confesses Romka sincerely, – I feared you'll have no time to escape…
– We had…
– She's pretty fancy, that chick of yours, – winks Romka.
I nod, looking around more attentively. Romka's living place is really strange. All these beauties on the walls… plenty of cigars and alcohol on the table, a couple of fresh issues of Playboy on the bed together with a teens' pop-music related newspaper…
Romka averts his gaze.
– Do I distract you too much? – I ask.
The werewolf glances at the working computer, lines of a primitive program on its screen…
– Not really… I was preparing for a test… Never mind.
– What test?
– Informatics.
– How old are you, Romka? – I ask, suddenly 'regaining my sight'.
– Fifteen.
I start laughing and see how the man opposite me clings his jaws gloomily. I laugh, Romka stands up, lights a cigar, pours Gin into his glass and asks finally:
– Well, and what's so funny?
– Romka… – I understand that I behave badly but I have no strength to hold it back… – Romka, have you ever drink vodka in glass shots or pure Gin?
– No.
– And don't even try. It was really dumb of me not to notice this before. You… you behave with too much fortitude to be an adult man!
– Is it so noticeable? – asks Romka gloomily.
– No, not that much… It's kinda unusual though…
– Why unusual? There's many teens among werewolves.
– How do you know?
– Well… Probably we're more sincere to each other. Those who are older than 18 seldom can live in a non-human appearance. But it's fine for us.
Plasticity… plasticity of mind. I look at Romka and think that there must be a lot of teens among those diver friends of mine who tell dirty anecdotes too excitedly, or always demonstrate their coolness. It's easier for them to pass the barrier of the deep program. Easier – as strange as it might seem. Their mind have grown on the movies and books about the virtual world, they know that Deeptown is drawn not only in their minds but in their hearts too. They won't drown.
Maybe there'll be more of them and divers will stop hiding.
– Romka, do you connect from your computer?
– From Dad's. I was always punished whenever caught in virtuality. Dad thinks it's only debauchery and fist fighting here. So I had to enter somehow… to notice what's going on in the apartment. When the door is opened, I can hear that.
– I'm glad you're fine, Romka.
The werewolf nods:
– And how I'm glad! I have a strimmer, but restoring all disk is a pain. You were looking for me to find out how I am?
I really want to say "yes" but it'll be a lie.
– Not only… I also wanted to ask for your advice…
– And now you don't want to?
He's right, I don't, but after these words I don't have any way out.
– Romka, a strange thing had happened to me… – I rise, pour Gin into my glass, two fingers thick, add tonic. – In the Net I've run into a guy… who is not really a human.
Romka waits patiently.
– I even don't know, where's truth and where's lies, – I say, – Possibly he's an alien from the stars, possibly he's a guest from a parallel world. Or maybe he's a creature of the computer mind or mutant that connects to the Net directly, without a computer. He's being searched for by at least two big companies…
The werewolf nods, I don't need to name "Labyrinth" and Al-Kabar to him.
– … And Dmitry Dibenko.
– Dibenko?
– Exactly. They want to get at least something useful from him. But he wants to leave. Forever.
– And you're thinking whether you have to give him away?
– Nobody can stop him, I'm sure. But in any case… it's a different world, right Romka? A different knowledge, different culture. Maybe they'll manage to persuade him, to learn at least something from him. Just a bit of his knowledge might become a new stage of evolution for the mankind.
– It might, – agrees Romka willingly.
– … Because after all, he could… change me somehow. I would never find your trace without new abilities. I don't know whether I have a right to stay silent and hide him.
– You want my advice? – asks Romka with some sudden fright, – Seriously?
– Yes Romka. Right because you're a kid yet and I'm an old cynicist. Tell me, does one person have a right for a miracle?
– No.
I nod, I didn't expect any other answer, but Romka isn't finished yet.
– Nobody has a right for a miracle. It's always by itself. That's why it's a miracle.
– Thank you, – I say and rise.
– Are you hurt?
– No, on the contrary… I'll go home. It's great that you're fine…
Already in the doorway, I stop for a moment and add:
– …And don't be so hard on alcohol. You're grown-up Romka, don't try to prove it. Good luck on the test.
– Thanks! – shouts Romka behind me.
Miracle – it's on its own…
I walk along the hotel corridor, smiling to Romka's words.
This impatience of mind, this great unsatisfiable thirst…
To understand, to explain, to conquer!
The miracle must be tamed and docile. We even made God a human – and only after this we learned how to believe. We reduce miracles down to our level.
Maybe it's good, otherwise we still would hide in caves, feeding the Red Flower set out by the lightning with wood.
You're a great kid Romka, you managed to get a right conclusion going the wrong way, as if walking along the mirror labyrinth, hitting the glass but passing it after all. I can't yet understand why are you right Romka, but you're right anyway…
I pass by an indifferent porter, open the door – Deeptown street, people, cars, neon signs. I know what can change the world. I can give a miracle to the world.
But I have no right to – because it's alive.
It's on its own, there's neither our life, nor our joys, nor our griefs behind it. What does separate me from Unfortunate – a cold of space of unimaginable eternity of the other world? What's the difference, he's alive anyway!
I walk along the street not raising my hand for the joy of Deep-Transit, this is known in all details Russian block, I'll manage on feet. I need to understand Unfortunate completely before he leaves forever, I have to say, to do something.
The church block – gold covered domes of the Orthodox temple, Catholic cathedrals, modest synagogues and Moslem minarets, stone lace of Alexandrians' temple, black pyramid of Satanists, and – as the best of all mocks – a fiery red sign above the pub, the den of friendly, suffering from a little overweight sect of Beer Lovers.
I could show you much, Unfortunate. Zoos where Steller's cows and mammoths live, book clubs where they argue over good and clever books, exhibitions of spatial designers where new worlds are being born, a medical conference where the doctors from all over the world meet to consult a patient from some God forsaken provinces… They won't let us to the conference of course, but I'd hack the door and we would stay silently in the corner watching how an American anesthesiologist and a Russian surgeon plan a surgery for a miner from Zaire… I would take you to the Opera where every musician is the citizen of the world and to the play where everybody in the audience is a part of the action. We would bow to all gods in temples forgetting that they are evil. We would stand by the playground where kids ride 'real' racing cars and would sympathize with Greenpeace people who save hedgehogs on European highways. Deeptown's picture gallery would take at least a month – it's impossible to pass at once through the Hermitage and the Prado gallery, the Tretyakov's Gallery and the Louvre… But at least one day you could sacrifice for that instead of sitting under "Labyrinth"'s blood-red sky. In the student block you would help a freshman from Vologda to conquer the Resistance of Materials course's mysteries, and I'd tell the Canadian artist why it's not necessary to make too much detailed elaboration for the autumn forest. The deep isn't an evil world at all, not a fist fight and debauchery. Is it my fault that your way here had passed through fighting arenas and brothels, with pursuit on your heels and uncertainty ahead?
But who knows, maybe it wasn't just a coincidence. You had chosen this path yourself: "Labyrinth", "Stars and Planets", "Any Amusements" and the Elvish Lorien… You absorbed the deep and showed, not to yourself but to me, what it really is, all intolerance and stupidity, all aggression that lives inside us. And you know not worse than me: the virtual world doesn't consist of this only.
Such a pity that you're right after all, Unfortunate. The world is never judged on its best qualities. Otherwise fascism would be a golden age of technics, of fast planes and mighty engines instead of concentration camps' chimneys and a soap made of the human fat.
You've made your judgement and explained why it is so.
Do we have any right to feel hurt?
Do we have any right to hit ourselves in the chest and shout "We're kind!" ?
But you can't, you shouldn't take just this with you – a human dirtiness and the beauty of desolate mountains, the technology serving vice! Otherwise why we are in the deep? What do we worth at all?
… I'm standing by the door of the Catholic cathedral, luxurious and suppressing, great and ridiculous. I can enter and pray to an ancient God that doesn't exist after all. I can return home and shake Unfortunate's hand in parting. And neither decision will be right.
– Leonid?
The person that approached me is completely unfamiliar: he's short, with unexpressive dull face, dressed in old shabby jeans and stretched sweater. He's dull and ordinary, not in virtuality is his place but in the queue for carry-out Zhigulevskoye { beer }. But he knows my name – it means he's an enemy.
– Who are you from? – I ask, – Al-Kabar?
The shortish guy doesn't avert his look.
– Leonid, you saw me in a different appearance. Without face.
– Dmitry?
– Yes. Maybe we should address each other less officially?
– You're an asshole, – I agree.
– Leonid, I ask you for a talk, for just five minutes of talk.
Is it really the main Dima Dibenko's guise? I saw his picture, long time ago, he was too young on it. So, he's plain and ordinary? A little dog
– a puppy forever. Was it this guy who invented the deep program and dunked the whole world into the deep? The one who grabbed millions and had got the share in Microsoft and AOL? The one who was the first to understand that Unfortunate is a visitor from the Outside?
– Five minutes.
– Leonid, let's go somewhere…
At least his voice doesn't correspond with his looks too well: if he ever could speak in requesting voice, it's now in the past.
We walk around the cathedral, Dibenko opens the door into the garden with the intricate key. It's quiet and silent here, willows, poplars, straight paths… stones… of familiar shape.
– Shit, – I just say.
– Yes, it's a graveyard, – mumbles Dibenko, – I… I like to come here. It calms me down somehow… brings me a philosophical mood.
Probably there's nothing unusual in this. I look at grave monuments, at the alleys, at the girl that sits on the grass by the small bust, hiding her face in her hands. It's not a mourning human, it's just a drawn weeper, an electronic equivalent of marble angels.
Virtuality is life but life can't be thought about without death. So friends bury here those who will never dive in the deep again, will never put on the virtual helmet anymore.
"He believed in the miracle" – short like a curse, the phrase on the nearest stone.
Forgive me, anonymous man. You believed in miracles and jumped into colorfulness of the virtual world. But now, the memories of you lie here, and somewhere in reality your grave overgrows with tall weeds. Your friends come here spending half a dollar while the soil that took you gives birth to a new life. Maybe it would be more honest for your friends to expend a couple of hours of their lives – to get a shot of vodka by your real grave?
It's freedom! I'm not the one to judge.
– I'm listening, Dima.
Dibenko has red eyes, as if he lacked sleep lately, and crumpled face. He dragged me into the miracle which doesn't need me, he finishes divers off as blind kittens. But he created this world and I must listen to him.
– I don't ask how you got away, Lenia, – says Dibenko, – As I understand, you've got your reward after all…
– What reward? For what?
– For betrayal, – Dibenko looks me straight into the eyes, – What, does the word hurt? It *is* betrayal! Betrayal of all of us, all the people that live today! You've managed to become his friend, I knew you'll be able to do this, I knew and that's why I hired you, you and nobody else! It must have been a mistake. What I could offer in return was nothing…
– Dima, do you understand what have virtuality become?
– The freedom!
– Then what do you blame me for? We are in no right to demand anything from Unfortunate! In NO right!
– And why not? – Dibenko leans against the tombstone of the "miracle believer" and smirks, – Okay, let it not be formulas and drawings… not vaccines and recipes of the fair society. But couldn't he at least give us hope? To all of us! If he came – it means everything will be fine! If he exists – it means we didn't choke to death on the freedom!
Looks like I miss something again.
But Dibenko goes on and I stay silent.
– Do you think I knew what I was doing then?… No! I got drunk, sozzled, plastered! I glued myself to the machine, I neither wanted to sleep nor to play, I felt sick of work, I began to compose a color palette, some image rhythm… I really wanted to add music to it but the machine was a piece of crap, without a sound card!
So the legends are true…
– I don't know how! – shouts Dibenko, – It was IT that wanted to be born, not me who did it! It's the deep itself, came through me – into the world! I understood, I felt it – but I'm not a creator, just a conductor, a pen moved by somebody's hand! It reached me from far away, through the darkness, through the silence, reached me and made me to create! It! The deep program!
I suddenly shiver, and not because Dmitry mentioned the silence, just because this feeling is familiar to me too: a terror of the creator who can't understand what and how he created.
– Some people called me genius… – a little man with shadows under his eyes grabs my hands, – Others called me a dumbass who found the pearl in a pile of dung! But neither is true! The deep came into the world through me. It means – somebody wanted that to happen! Not now… later…
Dibenko looks at me, with greed and awe, whispers:
– Did he tell you at least anything? Just a hint… where is he from? A year, century, millennium?
– Dima… – I mumble, – Just why do you think…
– When you escaped, – whispers Dibenko, – You were trapped, you couldn't escape from my machine. But you did… you blasted all data away from the disk and escaped! Was it him who taught you? Was it?
It's a pity to look at him. I don't like pity so much – it kills as well as the hate does, but now I want to pity Dibenko.
But just the voice… his voice doesn't sound right. This is how a great actor in the tragic role can humiliate himself.
– You can't even imagine, – says Dibenko, – how much effort have I spent for this! What I was risking with… with my position in Al-Kabar's Board of directors, with my agents in "Labyrinth"… You wouldn't understand, you still can't understand that over there, in Russia… But I split you up, I traced your channel! I know who you are! Leonid, I know your address in Deeptown! Polyana Company, apartment 49. You're in my hands! I can find out your real address too! But I don't want to threaten you, I just ask: let's be together!
Looks like the time have made a full circle, not Guillermo but Dmitry Dibenko offers me his hand now.
– They can't understand, – he whispers, – Whatever. Aliens from parallel worlds, space aliens, machine mind… Bull! There's nothing out there but us! In the past or the future days – only us!
I understand…
– One can believe or one can laugh, – Dibenko hits his fist against the poor tombstone, – But the only thing without borders is the Time. Computer network lives and will live, and the memory about this guy will outlive all of us! Information doesn't have any limit in time, Unfortunate, he peeked into the past of the humankind. From that wonderful 'far away' to which we will never live to see, from the future of the Earth – he stepped into the virtual world's childhood. Okay, okay, let us be ugly and wild! But can't he tell us at least something? Can't he give us… a faith?
– Dmitry, but why? Why do you think so?
– Because I know! – Dibenko looks into my eyes, – I couldn't create the deep program accidentally! It's as if I would shoot – and hit a thousand targets in a row! I'm not a genius at all, I'm an ordinary man. Just there, in the future, they decided to create virtuality. Possibly, it was predetermined. Maybe they just needed a bridgehead… an observation point to look into our world. So I became… a pen in someone's hand…
– A bridgehead? – I ask, – A bridgehead means war.
– Yes! And one must kill at war… and to take prisoners.
– Do you know how many hypotheses exists about Unfortunate?
– Yes.
– What if he's not from the future but from another world?
– Let it be! Even more reasons then! He's in our world and here are our laws! We must understand who is he.
What does he want from me after all?
I look at Dibenko: trembling lips, tired eyes, shabby and low appearance. What does he want? Does he want me to change my mind? Does he want me to hand Unfortunate over to him? In any case it's not in my powers. We'll just waste the time…
The time…
He knows my name and address. He knows where I live in virtuality.
He even could trace me at Romka's place.
And now he's biding his time.
I step back and rush to the gates. Dibenko looks as I leave not trying to stop me, only a smile appears on his face – a proud smile of an actor who played his role well and now listens to an applause.