Parallel Worlds pro et contra - стр. 22
– Rutra, look! Tell them to do something! Please! -Catherine shouted, followed by Julia.
She was pointing at the screen. Ruthra was at a loss to understand what was happening. One of the operators down the tier, realizing the cause of his concern, explained:
– That's the third stage falling. It's not a warhead.
Ruthra, looking closely, figured out what he was talking about, but didn't understand what they were talking about. IrAn, apparently realizing this, decided to clarify, warning him first which one was speaking.
– It's me," she said first; clearly a local wouldn't have started that way. – One of the missile fragments falls in the area of town where the girls are from. They have families there, small children.
Ruthra nodded reassuringly to the ladies, but not with a grimace of frantic fear, and decided to ask a leading question of the security chief, so that he would know indirectly who they were talking about and not give away the strangeness of his behavior.
Going over the last thing the supervisor had said in his head ("…the madam you call…"), he was a little surprised, and it prompted a question.
– Isn't that what you call her?
His answer, however, was workmanlike and, to Rutra's regret, did not solve the riddle.
– I prefer first name and middle name. Or better yet, last name.
– All right. Uh-huh. Give me the gist.
– She, with access, perhaps in collusion, perhaps out of friendly naivety, logged into the settings system and allowed him to put a similar algorithm into the program. He may have been in cahoots, or he may have been on a mission for the former president's clan.
Ruthra already knew it was a "he". But who? Andrian? Ruthra had been waiting for the security guard's next story to clarify the situation, but then the reality of the situation dawned on him. It took him a moment to realize what had happened. It took him a while to realize how real it was, just as we don't understand reality when we awaken suddenly from a sound sleep.
He was in the lab hall. "Can this be?" – He asked himself. He was answered, "If the end of the world were to come, it wouldn't come on schedule." Only who? It wasn't himself. It wasn't artificial intelligence. It was that voice.
***
…YatSan didn't realize where she was. Whether she was still in the installation, or awake in one of her many copies, or hanging somewhere in the interstellar void. She could see the stars, but not like she could from Earth. She saw the void, but not like an empty space. She hung in that void, and only the cold light of the distant stars told her of the reality of space. She had no body, or herself she could not see. When the pause lasted too long for inaction, YatSan tried to make reflexive movements. She tried to walk, to swim, to fly. No, it didn't work. She was hanging in the void. Twisting her virtual head she could, she could also just unfold her gaze. YatSan heard a sound, and something twinged in her soul. She couldn't mistake that sound for anything. It was the crying of an infant. She turned around. It was him. YatSan tried with incredible effort to imagine moving toward him. Nothing worked, as if she were in a vise. Something was holding her, the child was quietly "floating" towards her. She stretched out her virtual arms in her mind toward him. He was approaching her and had already begun to smile. And YatSan became joyful, smiling, anticipating the moment of a beautiful meeting.