Prologue
I have always wanted to fly.
I have desperately wanted to own an aircraft for many years. This addiction started on one morning when I was out in the fields. I was six years old then, so I had never seen real clouds yet. Those days even light clouds were as rare as an eclipse, to say nothing about the rain.
Suddenly, the horizon darkened. The rising sun disappeared, overshadowed by a black curtain. I have already heard that storms might be quite dangerous, but I was too excited to run home immediately. For a few minutes I had been gazing at that unfamiliar thing, and then something flashed in my head. But it was too late. The home was too far, and the clouds moved much faster than I did.
After a few minutes, I was out of breath. At that moment, however, somebody grabbed me out of dust. I looked up and saw a woman and her shiny red quadrocopter. These machines used to fly extremely quiet back then, therefore I did not hear it landing just behind me.
We got in, took off, and she asked me if my town was protected. I answered, that there were storm shelters, of course. But it turned out that she meant another kind of protection. She had pointed on the black clouds eastwards, and I realized that it was not a hurricane. It was a firestorm. An unbelievably big one.
Such a disaster was thought to be impossible in this region. The residents of the town had a good reason to believe they were safe: numerous wildfires left nothing to fuel an all-eating monster like this...
The quadrocopter landed in the middle of the street where I lived with my parents. Even though it was not the first time I flew, I wished all my friends saw me. But nobody was there, of course, because everyone had already heard the warning sirens. All residents either took shelter or fled, save firefighters and volunteers.
The pilot said, she could not stay with us. She had to keep flying, because of some urgent business. Anyway, to wait here was as dangerous as to fly with this cataclysm just behind you. Frankly, I never tried to find out if she had survived. I did not even ask her where she was from and what her name was. I should have had to: after all, this woman saved my life.
Ever since I have been crazy about aviation.
1
A thick fog covered the harbour, making everything even more fade and colourless than usual. This morning was rather cold, but Jane was sitting outside. As always, she was barefoot.
In fact, very few of my colleagues wore shoes. They thought it old-fashioned, uncomfortable, and even dangerous. As to me, I cannot tell exactly, what my reason is. Maybe, it is about the tradition: I mean, in good-old days there were uniforms and proper shoes. Or, probably, I just like to be, in a sense, special.
I looked at Jane again and noticed that the engine cover was removed. She opened it just for inspection, as we had not experienced any problem recently. But something was wrong about Jane herself.
"Are you smoking there, Jane?" I yelled.
"Yep", she answered slowly, "But it's okay, it's filled with biodiesel, it would never explode."
She glanced at me and smiled. She had an absolutely fantastic smile, and her sky grey eyes were unbelievably innocent. So she had defeated me in the battle for the safety, even before it started. Well, the flash point of our fuel was relatively high, indeed. But to put it out might be an extremely unpleasant experience.
"Anyhow, we should move, Jane. Is the engine okay?"
Her "yep" took more time to be drawled than the two sentences of my question. She enjoyed the process of speaking. She somehow managed to pronounce each word very carefully, yet she spoke fast. It was like a good kiss. I really enjoyed each word, no matter what she was talking about.
Her smile was quite amusing too: shy and wild at the same time. This smile could catch you and hold for the rest of your life. Yet, Jane was not really pretty. She was neither ugly, nor beautiful, but her eyes and lips were wonderfully magnetic.
A fishing boat passed nearby, making our vessel to heave and sway a little. It was not a big deal, but I was outside and there were no rails. In such moments, it always comes to my mind, that to walk barefoot is a good idea, after all. Unlike my boots, bare feet have an excellent grip and enable you to feel the surface. Now I struggled to keep balance, and Jane laughed at me:
"Take your boots off! There are no snakes here!"
"Snakes? You know, Jane, you are perfectly right. It's about them."
Jane was six years younger than me, therefore she did not remember the Desert. To this girl snakes and spiders were only a fairytale. But for me, it was natural to wear tough boots. Even today, despite the fact that snakes have already extinct. Old habits die hard. I kept doing this automatically, without thinking. She laughed again, because I looked too thoughtful:
"Yep, you know a lot about the Desert, captain. Don't you know some stories of the Ice age too?"
"I think, you mean the Snow age. In this case, I do. I'll be delighted to tell you some stories later. But now let's get in and do some "romantic" routine."
By this, I had meant the prestart checks, which we finished pretty quickly. Meanwhile, the fog thinned, and with a roar of the engines, we left our base. The takeoff was rough, though, we gained speed in the Harbour, protected by a seawall. The transition from a boat to an aeroplane always makes a kind of storm inside the vessel.
As soon as we were in the air, I made a relatively sharp turn. To my delight, the manoeuvre was accompanied by Jane's weak exclamation "Easy! Careful!", barely heard in my headphones. I knew she was afraid because she had survived an accident, flying with her ex-boyfriend. This stupid guy crashed his plane into the ocean. I hated him, because he had caused her injuries and, in general, he did not deserve such a brilliant person by his side. But I was also a bit angry with her and jealous because she used to be with him.
So it was my "unconventional" way to punish her. To take revenge on them both. Time to time I flew in this slightly violent style, pretending that it was not intentionally. I considered myself a good pilot capable to control the aircraft easily. Even though it was not exactly a plane, but a ground effect vehicle. It was able to maintain a very-low-level flight and only to leap to the clouds for a short time. During my wild stunts, this beast might be much more dangerous, than a classic Snow age plane. Yet the altitude was perfect, the thrust and, especially, lift were insufficient.
Jane did not comment my sharp turn after I had rolled the plane back to normal flight. She never spoke about these brutal stunts afterwards. In fact, she was a brave girl. So maybe she had forgotten her fear when the manoeuvre was over. I have never asked her.
Anyway, all of us were crazy to some extent. We flew in a terrible weather with no air traffic control. Moreover, we were making a good money, exclusively thanks to this weather. Jane was not afraid to smoke while sitting on the open engine, and it was far more dangerous than my "flight exercises". There was a difference, however: here I was in control, and Jane hated to be controlled. I have never wanted to hurt her, but it is so nice to have her in my power. As if she really is "mine". But she is not. She has always been a nobody's girlfriend.
When we reached our so-called flight level, the fog had already disappeared. But there was not much to see down there. Our relatively high speed combined with ridiculously low altitude made it impossible to recognize any details. The Harbour was too little to be seen, only adjacent farms were visible: white dots of windfarms, greenish patches of airfarms. From the former we get an energy, the latter produced everything else: oxygen, fuel, and even some food. That was all: my hometown with its tiny port surrounded by a very thin circle of the farms, and endless ocean around it. The desert where I had been born was gone. This place was absolutely unrecognizable now, but still, it was my home.
The autopilot was out of order. Actually, it had been broken long before I bought this plane. But our missions often were too long and exhausting for two of us to pilot in shifts with no automation. Here Jack came into the picture. He lacked many of our shortcomings, such as tiredness, drug addictions, and constant inclination to do some "romance" during the flights. Besides, he has never had to make that philosophical comparison between walking barefoot or wearing a pair of shiny shoes. There were two reasons for this specific advantage. Firstly, he was legless, so he did not need any footwear, naturally. Secondly, Jack preferred an absolutely clear logical analysis, to a vague philosophical thinking, for he, or rather it, was a robot. Yet, we never call him "it", because Jack was almost a human to us.
But there were some problems with the robot. For example, instead of the lower limbs, he had wires and antennas, which were incompatible with our plane's equipment. Therefore, in his original condition, he was unable to operate the rudders. But we gave him a long stick, to address this issue. Jack also cannot speak, and there are many situations when you expect your co-pilot to do so.
But as a replacement for an autopilot, Jack was great. His reaction time was close to zero, his movements were overwhelmingly precise. As a result, he piloted very smoothly, and we could take a relatively good mid-air rest.
I left my seat and joined Jane at her desk. Of course, it is against the rules, but who cares. We had time to talk, so I decided to tell Jane some stories.
"This morning you have asked me about the Ice age, aren't you? It was a long time ago, Jane, and I cannot remember it myself, of course. But I have read a lot about it. There were really big animals called mammoths. They were very similar to elephants, save the colour: they were dark-brown, not light-blue".
"Elephants were pink", she said firmly, looking at her instruments, not at me.
Frankly, I am not sure about their colour. I have never seen one. But as a child, I used to have a toy elephant, which was blue. Probably, Jane's reasoning was similar to mine.
"Two different kinds existed", I said, "They were different in their size, habitat, and few small details. Anyway, the mammoths were bigger than them and harder to hunt. Prehistoric people had really hard times with them, but there was no choice. They were hunter-gatherers and the animals were their only source of meat. Well, that's all."
I paused, waiting for her reaction. Jane was still busy with the radars and seemingly did not listen at all. But the very moment I stopped, she spoke:
"Yep. Now to the Snow age, captain."
"This era had ended shortly before I was born. Scientists used to think the climate would warm up. In general, it did. But there were so-called fluctuations. Floods. Droughts. Hurricanes. Then droughts again. Snow, actually, was seldom falling in our region.
For decades the climate was highly unstable. There were years without summers, or without winters. There were fearful attacks of insects, animals, and hail. But then the Desert had come, and everything became peaceful. For a decade or so. We experienced some problems, of course. Dust, snakes, famines, and criminals. But it wasn't a bad time. Well, maybe the hot air of our childhood was better than the humidity of today for my generation only."
I was not absolutely convinced that the Dried out years had been good altogether, so I decided to ask Jack:
"Jack, do you remember the Desert?" - the robot turned his faceless head to us and nodded. I continued: "Was it a good time?" - he raised his left hand and waved, describing how uncertain and dusty the matter was. I made one last request: "Was it better to fly then, compared to now?" this time Jack's gesture symbolized a clearly negative answer.
"You know the rest, Jane."
Meanwhile, we reached the Meteorological centre. This base was huge, it even had a real Air Traffic Control, Ground control, etc., so I had to return to my seat. Jack was obviously unable to contact ATC on the radio, nor this was his duty. In a place like this, I would prefer to have Jane by my side. This option has its pros and cons, and Jane, in fact, acts as a co-pilot sometimes. But to transfer the robot to her station is nearly impossible in the middle of the flight.
All in all, our speechless companion was doing his job brilliantly even now. Naturally, Jack was always faster than any human to spot an air traffic. But he was pointing out with a finger, and I could not help laughing watching his gestures. Here was the problem. I was supposed to report all planes in our sight to the ATC, but instead, I was laughing after seeing Jack's hand near my nose.
At our home base, this matter was of no importance, as the airspace was uncontrolled there, and planes were scarce. Here, on the contrary, the landing harbour was always busy. Especially, today.
Yes, this time I could smell big money: the harbour was full of vessels. Most of them were GEVs, ground effect vehicles, similar to our aircraft. But I also noticed two old-school planes with their beautiful wings, long and thin. They routinely flew on high altitudes and were almost twice faster than GEVs, but these advantages had their price. Jet-powered flying boats have always been expensive to build and to maintain. They also needed more fuel than the short-winged competitors. The bottom line: when you see them, you can expect a widescale operation. In other words, lots of high paid flights.
Such campaigns might be exhausting, but now we had plenty of time to take a rest. The briefing was scheduled for the next morning. We could not afford a hotel, but we had some money to spend in a cheap bar nearby. We returned to the plane after a beer or two, a little drunk. Just a little.
"Don't we have something to roll, Jane?" I inquired.
"Yep. A good stuff. But we should smoke it carefully. Not too much, okay? There will be some hard work in the morning."
Fortunately for us, the practice of "substance tests" had been abolished years ago, so everybody was drinking and smoking before flights. Who cares? No passengers on board. No cities to fall on. You are allowed to risk everything. Your plane, your fuel, your life.
Jane rolled the perfect joint. It was light, either by its weight and impact. As we shared it, the reality became a bit better. My eyes had caught the altimeter, and after a moment I considered it very funny. I started to laugh. Jane was in my track soon.
"Yep, it's good, isn't it? Okay, come here..."
The world, as I seen it, was perfect. The floor in the cabin, definitely, was not the most comfortable place to sleep, but it did not matter.
2
Next morning both of us overslept a little. The last night sins made me predictably hungry and thirsty, so I dedicated a few minutes to eat and drink. As a result, I had to postpone some of the routine checks until after the briefing. It was okay, but our departure would be inevitably delayed on account of it.
The briefing was surprisingly short. "We're here, the target is there. Full tanks, full speed. Good luck!" The point was clear: the target moved fast and it was big, so hurry up, no time to speak.
"I knew this one was serious, Jane. I had absolutely no doubt it was a big storm. Maybe, the biggest we have ever seen. So I am out for a quick walkaround, I haven't finished it in the morning."
Frankly, I had not even started, but I did not want to tell her all the truth about my lengthy breakfast. Now we were in a rush, thus I should skip some steps. For example, the manual fuel level check is out of the question. Because I have to reach our starboard to perform it, and the pier is on the opposite side of the vessel. In other words, it would have to be a "swimaround", not walk. Of course, there were many ways to get there, but all of them were good for a thoughtfully organized working process.
The weather had already worsened, when we took off, but we were ready for that. You should expect these conditions when you are hunting a hurricane. Nowadays, it is always windy and rainy, there are fogs and heavy clouds, and grade four storms are usually considered just a bit of wind. Our mission is to prevent them from reaching densely populated islands.
Many people call us "stormstoppers". This terribly misleading name is never used by ourselves. Because nobody can just arrest this devastation. What we do is actually a "stormjamming": the unstoppable beasts are weakened or redirected as much as possible. Sometimes the results of this fight look like a complete victory. But even in such cases, the whirlwind strikes back shortly afterwards, and there is nothing to stop it, as all the big continents of the past have been submerged.
Disastrous storms return sooner or later, inviting us to fight them time after time. As long as it happens, we have our fair fees. In order to survive, people manage to act together producing everything we need for our operations. Despite mankind is fragmented into millions of islands, and many resources are in short supply, we get our fuel, food, equipment, and energy.
Scientists are convinced that the current state of the atmosphere will never change. Well, I know from my personal experience: the life on the planet is likely to become even harder. Hurricanes grow stronger. For instance, the one we have today is maybe the most fearful in my practice.
Fearful, yes. I believe, everybody is afraid a little before the mission of this sort. As soon as you get to the work, most of this fear vanishes. There is no place for it, no time for silly emotions. Any complex situation keeps you occupied. You think and you act, you may sweat a bit, that is all. The panic or even tears might come, since you are human, but it never comes when you are up there.
We simply got used to it. The stormjamming is dangerous, this fact is our starting point. I should note, however, that sometimes swimming or just walking is dangerous not less. But still, this business is rather risky. Even those two reconnaissance planes are vulnerable to the weather, to say nothing about our GEVs.
As to those thin-winged Snow age aircraft, they are harder to land and, in general, much more fragile in comparison to ours. The ability to fly higher is their advantage, but sometimes it is literally dimmed by these heavy clouds. The GEVs are tough-built, but we take them right into the storm. This is our work. The scout, meanwhile, keeps a distance from it, coordinating our efforts and confirming the results.
Today we had a pair of scouts: one to monitor the hurricane, the other to direct our attack. The coordination was crucial, because our swarm was unusually big and, as always, poorly organized. The majority of the pilots were thinking mostly about money, and each one wanted to make as many round trips as possible.
The storm was closing to the Meteorological centre shrinking the flight time needed to reach it. After the second landing, we put Jack to the flight engineer's seat, and Jane took the duty of the first officer. Due to the short distance, the autopilot was not necessary, so Jack could operate all the equipment instead. Needless to say, he was an excellent flight engineer.
I liked this distribution of roles. Jack was able to send us messages using a keyboard. Jane was sitting by my side, and I enjoyed this fact, of course. Because there were moments when I could just talk to her and watch her beautiful knees. Like now, awaiting our fourth take off.
"I think it should be three or even four more, Jane", I declared, scanning the horizon.
She did not answer. She wanted me to look at her. I did so. Her big eyes were wide opened, the head leaned nearly to the yoke. Her red hair sparkled in the dim light. Actually, the colour was not true, her hair had become grey some time ago despite she was young.
"It's okay, we can do it", she drawled in her regular manner. But her smile was sad.
We were already exhausted with these endless flights. But every attack translated into money, and we were young and, basically, penniless. What did I possess, but this GEV? What did Jane own, save this legless robot?
We had the clearance to taxi and moved the aircraft slowly to the middle of the harbour. Jack was listening to our conversations carefully and send a message anticipating the wrong thing we were going to do. One word only. "Sterile." He was right. A "sterile cabin", in other words, no small talk now.
The vessel was shaking so violently, I barely noticed the moment we left the water. It was perfectly normal, taking the weather into account. Then we flew eastwards, gained the right momentum and leapt to the clouds. All the way, the noise was unbearable and the wipers struggled to deal with the rain.
Suddenly, Jack gave us another advice. "Glasses." I did not believe it and glanced at him. The robot put his sunglasses on, though, he did not need any eye protection. He did it only to ensure us that his message had been absolutely serious. We were going to fly above the clouds.
"I like your sense of humour, Jack, but..." I intended to say, that the upper layer of this cumulus puffy inferno reached much higher than we could jump. But instead, I said only one word: "Amazing."
Seen from above, these white glaring fields of clouds were amazing indeed. As well as Jack's ability to predict the flight conditions using our humble radar. The air here was less turbulent, yet the strong wind was blowing. Anyway, this gap in the upper layers was not large, and walls of terrifying clouds stood around us. Soon, we entered one of them.
Immediately a rain and a hail started to batter the plane again. The sound of our engines remained very loud. Some relief had come only after the chemicals were dropped. We lowered the thrust, starting the descent to our normal altitude. However, we did not reach it.
We waited eagerly for the confirmation of our drop from the monitoring plane. In the place of it, the second scout was on the radio. The controller directed us a bit higher to avoid another GEV, which had experienced an engine failure.
Moments later, a message came from Jack:
"LOOSING THRUST"
Fortunately, the robot had noticed the danger, before it caused a big problem. But the situation was far from over. The low temperature exacerbated by other factors caused intensive icing in the air intakes of our engines. We reported the problem to the controller and went carefully down in a desperate attempt to maintain the speed. At the certain point, however, we failed to do it. Immediately a calm unfamiliar voice informed us:
"Minimum speed."
"This plane speaks", I exclaimed with a laughter pushing the yoke down.
I thought our warning system had been completely out of order, but it worked. Yet, this thing was only a basic pilot's aid, rather old and simple. No complicated AI was involved, as well as no any voice synthesizer. So the system provided standard recorded phrases, with no modifications. For example, if you fly too slow or too fast and in few other cases. But it will never enunciate something like "Traffic! Climb!", because the GEV does not have any automation for avoiding other aircraft.
I believed, the system used to cover a wider range of problems, but it had been limited at some point. Apparently, due to numerous malfunctions, only the emergency warnings remained active. Until now, we have experienced nothing dangerous enough to trigger one of them.
Now, we were in a big trouble. Nevertheless, it was not too bad: the turbines were still running and the plane was controllable. But the temperature out there remained abnormally low. Something was wrong with the storm. It might be caused either by natural reasons or by our ongoing bombing.
Temperature, pressure and humidity often fluctuate violently during the stormjammers' raids. You should expect such a phenomenon when trying to dry a hurricane. The chemicals we spilt cause the tempest to shrink and collapse, and these monsters never go to sleep peacefully. But this one is really unique. Unique enough to kill us.
Suddenly, our GEV made a sharp yawing motion, as if it lost its tail. I felt my jaw going to the right, and my eyeballs moving in the opposite direction. The G-force was not so great by its value, but the direction was absolutely unexpected and hard to understand. To stop this unwanted rotation of the plane, we had to find out its root cause. Needless to say, we had no time to react. The instinctive split-second decision was to compensate this strange yawing with the rudder.
The plane reacted to the controls in the perfectly normal way. However, it continued to shake with the new gusts of the wind. I was keeping to struggle with the yoke when something heavy struck my head causing me to black out.
On a glance, stormjammers' raids are chaotic. To some extent, it is true. In general, discipline is not the strongest point of the GEVs' pilots, and sometimes, they do what they want in the air. But attacking a storm is a pretty different matter. The flocks of the aircraft are organized similarly to a pack of wolves. The most experienced crews go first, the rookies follow them, and the leader stays in relative safety far from the action.
Even though the arrangement is not perfect, it is certainly not bad. Despite unbearable flight conditions and a large number of aircraft, the ATC manages to prevent most of the accidents. Fatal mid-air collisions, for example, almost never happen during the raids. But when the mighty storm sent several planes down simultaneously, some crashes became inevitable.
Jane hardly avoided one of these troubled GEVs. She had been lost for a while, but she made it through the storm and she was safe now. As safe as it could be in the middle of nowhere.
Jane sat on the sand in the unfamiliar cove. The ocean was as grey as always. As grey as Jane's eyes or clouds. But there were no black silhouettes of aeroplanes up there.
Not a single one.
The storm was over. There was almost no wind, and the heavy rain stepped back welcoming the light fog.
"Where is the plane, Jane?" I whispered, "What happened to us? Are you okay?"
"Yep. I'm okay, as well as Jack, and the plane, and you. Well, everything is almost alright. You were struck on your head by Jack after he had been thrown out of his seat. With both of you out of business, I navigated on my own for a bit. Then I saw this place on the radar, while the visibility was close to zero. An instrumental landing was impossible, because there were no beacons in this bay. Neither lights, nor radio navigation. At least, I tried all the frequencies and found nothing. So I did my best, but it was a crash-landing, but the plane is okay, it's right here", and she waved her hand.
I turned my head and raised it a little trying to see the GEV, but immediately a burst of intense pain flattened me back. I finally became fully aware of my condition and got the whole picture. There was a lot of sand, but no slightest motion natural to vessels at the sea. Neither roll, nor heave. We were ashore.
My next question was predictable. Why on Earth have we left the plane? We used to live inside, to sleep and to eat there. Jane explained that Jack thought it was better to go out, because of possible fuel leaks. It was an obvious precaution. The robot just acted in line with the Emergency Instructions. So they evacuated the plane in perfect accordance with this checklist remembering even to use a stretcher when they pulled me out. Well, I guess, Jane actually dragged me, and Jack somehow administrated this process.
I managed to turn my head to the opposite side, and to my surprise, I saw an aircraft. But it looked so badly damaged, that I cried involuntarily:
"This is not my plane, is it?!"
Jane assured me it was not, and it was easy to believe her. Since that vessel was visibly old and had a gear. It turned out to be a ruined early snow-age plane, not a GEV.
"Have you seen other people here, Jane?"
"Nope, captain. They might be, but I haven't looked around yet."
"What is this place?"
"I have no idea."
It was really bad news. There was almost no fuel in our tanks, we lost our way completely, and nobody answered us on the Emergency Frequency. Probably the storm destroyed the few antennas in the area, which had been fixed since the previous hurricane. To be honest, most of them were being repaired endlessly.
On the other hand, our radio and the emergency transponder were seemingly intact. We had some supplies and needed only to wait until some of the antennas would be repaired. We could do nothing but wait. Yet, it was not a problem at all. We were patient.
I wished to know one more thing: where was Jack, and Jane readily helped me to find the answer. This time she wisely restrained from pointing anywhere, protecting me from an instinctive attempt to turn my head again. In place of it she carefully rotated my stretcher, and from this new position, I had a perfect view of the GEV. Nothing seemed to be wrong with it, but we had to check everything thoroughly. I assumed Jack had already been busy with this, but I was wrong.
The robot hung from the side window of the cabin, like a dead body. He resembled a pilot who happened to be thrown away, but accidentally stuck halfway out. A closer inspection of the scene revealed that Jack was moving. He was painting a new bomb-raid marking near the window, a small symbol of a tornado under our attack. It was a whirlpool smashed by triple "J", which was the first letter of all our names.
"I'm sure, Jack has already finished with his favourite after-crash-landing checklist."
"Of course, he did", agreed the girl, "Jack would never do this funny formalities, unless he had inspected the plane. Don't you forget the military past of this robot."
Frankly, I used to think the story about Jack's army career was just a joke. When Jane told it, both of us were not especially clear-headed. I only remembered his real name. It was Victor 82. But we never called him by this name. Anybody who has just one android on board, naturally calls it Jack. The shortest name seems to be the best, and numbers are not needed since the robot is alone.
Clouds darkened announcing the nightfall. I struggled to my feet and was able to walk with some assistance from Jane. It was clear now that the plane was safe, there were no fuel leaks, so we get back in. Outside everything was quiet too. Neither people, nor animals, nor robots were in sight, and even Jack with his antennas detected nothing in the fog.
Nevertheless, we took no chances. I told Jack to stay on duty and gave him one of our flare-guns. We had no other weapons, except these two single-shot firearms. They were rather primitive, but deadly. Their barrels were converted to accept high-explosive rounds and buckshot, not only flares. As to low fire rate, Jack was able to reload fantastically fast. Together with his superhuman eyesight, it guaranteed our safe nap and allowed us to sleep together, not in shifts.
3
In the morning, however, we were surprised to find a visitor. He came with the rising sun, and I suggested that it jammed our robot's sensors. The sun had become a very rare guest in the sky a long time ago. This fact made me think Jack was just unable to tune his eyes and radars to such exotic conditions. So he gave us no warning.
"My sensors were capable to detect this man", said a very strange male voice I had never heard before.
"Jack? Have you just said a sentence?" Jane was first to realize that our mouthless companion had learnt to speak during the night.
"Yes ma'am", the robot answered, "This function was somehow unblocked, when our guest came."
"Wait a moment, Jack", I said pointing to the stranger, who stood very quietly near the plane, "You saw the man and did nothing. But you were expected to wake us up in a situation like this, aren't you?"
"No, sir. You have asked me to inform you, if something dangerous comes. This man is absolutely safe."
Naturally, I wanted to know, how exactly had Jack discovered this outstanding fact. The robot explained:
"He does not carry any weapons and speaks truthfully. I have scanned him with all of my scanners and have analyzed his words using all the possible methods of analysis. Besides, he declares it himself in a written statement."
I strained my eyes and saw words on the stranger's t-shirt. Yet I was unable to read them at this distance. Meanwhile, Jack concluded:
"In addition, if this man suddenly becomes unsafe by any means, I will easily shoot him. I have him in my sights."
Jack was sitting near the door and held the gun very smartly. His arc of fire was excellent, but it was hard to see the gun or to hit the robot. I came closer to study the position by myself. The text on the stranger's chest was, in a sense, amusing: "Don't shoot! I'm unarmed". I asked Jane to watch the other side of the vessel and yelled standing near the door:
"But what if we decide to shoot you, though?"
"In this case, you will undoubtedly kill me", shouted the visitor.
I could see his face through the porthole. There was no fear in his reply, nor in his eyes. Maybe, he was old enough to stop being afraid altogether. But I was sure, that was not the reason. There was something more. He spoke as if an army stood behind his back.
"Hello, stormjammers", he continued, "and welcome to the Forgotten Archipelago of Freedom. I volunteered to greet you here as a representative of the community. My name is Chao Johnson."
In a sense, he impressed me. This cove might be an interesting place. Most likely, friendly people lived here. Well, at least, not hateful. The old man invited us to their village.
I still had a headache and suffered from a dizziness, but I had to go there. There were no other options: Jane and I should go, and Jack should take care of the plane. The robot was an excellent sentinel, but not a great hiker. Even though he was able to proceed slowly using his arms, it was impractical. In her turn, Jane considered sitting in the plane boring. She was likely to fall asleep, or something like that.
We went down to the point, where the visitor stood, still aimed by Jack's gun. I kept a distance, because it might be a trap, despite all the nice words. Jane was too young and unnecessarily brave, so she approached him, greeted and asked the silliest question she had:
"Would you like a cup of tea?"
Mr.Johnson thanked her, but refused. Instead, he offered to go to his place, where the breakfast had already been ready. We followed him to the village. The shore of this small bay turned out to be a long sandy cape. There was almost no vegetation, nor animals. Soon, however, the cape became wider, and we saw more and more greenery. We went deep into the bushes. The old man stopped and turned to us:
"You are asked to refrain from using your guns here."
"What makes you think we have any?"
"In your case, it is obvious", his Asian eyes became even narrower than usual as he smiled: "your tiny custom-made grenade launcher is too big to be hidden under your coat. Besides, all pilots carry them always, despite the fact that few people dare to get involved with you. It's hard to find a person reckless enough to attack stormjammers. Undoubtedly, you will never meet aggressive people here, among our country folks."
"What about wild animals?"
"Most of them are harmless. Do me a favour, do not hunt them. As to the few predators, we have learnt to deal with them. Similarly to the way I have communicated with Jack, your android, this morning."
We promised to behave. Shortly after this brief, we saw some light-brown houses between trees. Walls and fences were made of bamboo. Mr.Johnson clarified this seemingly primitive coating was mainly ornamental. The real building material behind it was a much more sophisticated mixture. Even though it also had bamboo as its most important component, some ingredients were added to improve it.
All the houses were relatively small, but presently bigger buildings also became visible indistinctly in the mist. I saw them and remembered the old man saying he was acting on behalf of his community. This word carried me back to my childhood. We used to use it for big centres, remnants of the Snow age. So I guessed these vague silhouettes could shelter similar facilities.
My imagination took me even further. I supposed all the people may eat together here. Moreover, they should do everything cooperatively in a place like this. There might be large dining rooms, shared by many members of the community. Probably, our breakfast was waiting for us in one of these buildings. I expected a kind of big gathering on such a rare occasion as an emergency landing of a stormjammers' GEV.
My guess was wrong. Our guide took us to one of the neat little houses, which happened to be his own. Mr.Johnson and his wife, whose name also was Chao, gave us a hearty welcome.
The astonishingly good meal was served on the verandah. There were fruits and vegetables, I had not eaten for months. These days many of them appear for only a few weeks each year. They are expensive to be transported or to be cultivated in greenhouses. But here we found an amazing variety of greens: asparagus, and artichokes, and fresh salad and tomatoes. The food was simple, but fresh and tasty, especially in comparison to the canned snacks we had consumed last night.
I wanted to ask a few questions, but the host said it was desirable to take a rest. My first thought was, of course, about the shower. Before the breakfast, we washed our hands using a primitive sink in the garden near the terrace. I have heard about this device, called wash-stand. The presence of such an antique thing made me think, they had no running water here. But there was a bathroom in the house. The water was much hotter than we had ever managed to heat it in our plane's tiny boiler. Of course, the room itself was bigger than the cramped shower cabin on board. I was told that the water supply was unlimited, but I did not dare to fill the bath. I was accustomed to using this liquid responsibly.
Outside a cold wind started to blow again, and Mr.Johnson invited us to the living room.
"I wish we could speak on the terrace, but the weather is bad", he said.
"Don't you have stormjamming forces on your islands?" Jane enquired.
"Our commune doesn't need them. We do not try to stop the unstoppable. We protect ourselves by other means. We use what we call bamboo bulletproof blocks for construction. They can withstand a direct hit of a tornado. They are also waterproof. Hurricanes cause some damage, of course, but we work hard to bring everything back to its normal state."
He paused and smiled. I thought it was the right time for the question I wanted to ask:
"Do you mean, you replant all these vegs you grow after any flood or storm, Mr.Johnson?"
"Please, call me Chao, first of all. Presently you will see how these plants are grown. We'll show you some other achievements too. All of them are vulnerable to the weather to some extent. But we are able to protect and to repair what little we have."
"Well... Chao", I nodded, "It's interesting, but I'm afraid this philosophy may cause over-expenditure. I mean, it's cheaper to supply stormjammers than to suffer. Even though this Archipelago may be too small to have its own fully equipped team, you can join other territories."
"Undoubtedly, we can, but we do not want to. We believe the stormjamming is much worse than the storms. Your system is very similar to the old way called subjugation of nature. Do you understand me?"
"Well, yes", I murmured hesitantly, while Jane shrugged her shoulders. The old man continued:
"When I was younger, the World was bigger and better, but we used to be selfish. We consumed too much and wasted even more than we consumed. Similarly to our ancestors, we didn't think about the future, about our children and grandchildren. Then nature struck back. It happened much earlier than it was expected. It struck us, not the grandchildren. I'm sure, you know the rest."
Both of us nodded. Jane pulled out a cigarette and asked if she may smoke.
"It's desirable to do this outside. In general, we do not consume nicotine at all. Anyway, I suppose it's time for you to see the temporary accommodations we will be delighted to provide. If you wish to stay, of course."
A young man waited for us in the garden. His skin was dark. Not black, but darker than the Johnsons'. He said, his name was Basihr. I have never heard this name before. This guy spoke very little. He only introduced himself and informed us that he had been appointed by the community to be our guide.
The weather was still rather bad, but our destination was just around the corner. Besides, the path was paved with a yellow material, which drained all the water and prevented any mud from building up. After a short stroll, we reached another bamboo house.
"It only has one bedroom. Is it okay?" the young man asked. We agreed, he said goodbye and left.
The door was not locked. There was no lock at all. To us, it seemed very strange. Even though our GEV also did not have them, there were improvised bars instead.
Big planes and ships are never left unattended, so there is no need for keys. You always have armed robots on board and security guards in a harbour. Nevertheless, you might like to have some additional means of protection.
When we entered this house, however, we found only two small flimsy bars: one in the toilet and the other in the bedroom. Neither the front door, nor the stockroom, nor any other vital place had no locks of any kind.
"I think there are no thieves here, Jane."
"Or they have nothing to be stolen. It's great, but they also have nothing to smoke."
After a while, somebody knocked the door. I thought they would invite us to dine with the old man or, maybe, with our young guide. But when I opened the door, nobody was there. Well, that was my first impression.
"I am sorry, sir, I have not called you. I cannot do that, because they jam our communication devices."
"Jack?!" I looked down and saw the short robot just in front of me, "What happened? How could you leave the plane?"
"Please, let me explain. There is no reason for panic. The locals who came with two motorboats said they would tow the plane to the safer place. They said, a storm was coming, so it was better to move as deep into the bay, as possible."
Jane stared at us in silence. Her blissfully ignorant look made me think that she was going to say something like "Would you like a cup of tea, Jack?"
"Jack! You're a blessed killing machine!" she murmured instead, "Why on Earth, didn't you stop them? What's wrong with you? Your direct order was to take care of the plane..."
"Sorry, ma'am, I am not your property anymore. According to the local rules, I am a free android. So, I would prefer any other word, but "order". Besides, the plane had been in an immediate danger, so I took the necessary steps to protect it."
I asked Jack to come in. He jumped over the doorstep and swiftly rolled into the living room using the small cart attached to his legless body.
"The locals gave it to me to increase my speed", the robot explained, "since I needed to speak with you, and the only way to do so was to go here."
"The way to contact us is exactly what I wanted to ask you about. But first, could you please scan this house for any bugs, Jack?" I asked and kept silence until he checked the house and found no hidden electronic surprises: "So, you have just said that the locals jam our radio, aren't they?"
"Yes, sir. They do not want any signals to reach the outside world. As to their own communication devices, they use them in an emergency only. Towing the plane was not such an occasion to them, so they did not bring any radios with them."
" 'They do not want any signals to reach the outside world' ", I repeated thoughtfully, "So they might want to keep us here as prisoners or even want to kill us!"
"Impossible, sir. They do not kill people. Besides, they know very well that we have gone astray. Thus we cannot reveal the coordinates of this place."
I did not dare ask Jack how he had come to these conclusions. Probably, he witnessed more "written statements" on their t-shirts or some other similar signs. Anyway, Jack's arguments are always egregiously convincing.
Meanwhile, Jane started a quarrel with Jack about her property rights. She could not accept that her robot had suddenly become a free person. They were still wrangling when I heard a strange ringing sound, which was similar to weather radar warning, except it was even more annoying.
I found the source of this noise on the wall near me. It was a funny apparatus, a box with two wires, one of which went to what seemed to be an odd phone receiver. I picked it up and realized that the gadget was a cable radio, also called a telephone. This technology has been out of use for ages. Cables do not work well in the world fragmented into countless islands. On the Archipelago, however, distances were relatively small, so I suppose, locals managed to build the system easily. They also kept it in the perfect condition. At least, I could hear every word Basihr told me.
"Hello, it's me, Basihr. I have nothing interesting to offer you now. But I'll be pleased to invite you for a dinner tomorrow, if you wish."
Of course, we wished. Without a question. Just because we had, basically, nothing to do here. Yet we could not leave, as we had almost no fuel, and we did not expect any help, as our emergency beacon was jammed.
"For now, there's plenty of food in the kitchen", the young man continued, "and some wonderful books in the library."
I heartily thanked him and went to the kitchen, leaving my colleagues with their argument. They were too busy with it, so I decided to tell them about the invitation later. Most of the foods I found needed some processing and cooking. There was all the kitchen equipment in place, but I did not want to potter about. Instead, I took some bread and cheese, made a simple sandwich, and went back.
When I returned to the living room, Jane and Jack had already reached an agreement. From now on the robot will be a crew member, but he will be free. As a captain, I will remain his boss during the work hours, though, not on his own time. Pleased with himself, Jack left on his way back to the aircraft. He had some maintenance to be done. Besides, it was better to sit up there at night. Just for the case, if something unexpected happens.
I was better, but still a little weak. I felt hungry, and it was good. You need a good appetite to recover. Frankly, Jane was not as good at cooking as she was at drinking and smoking. But here the ingredients were fresh, making even my humble sandwich very tasty, to say nothing about her salads. Jane promised to prepare a great dinner, I said it would be great and stretched myself on the sofa.
I wanted to take a nap, but ended up studying the titles of the numerous volumes on the bookshelves. I spent the rest of the time before the supper doing this. As I learnt from the titles, these books were on an amazingly wide range of disciplines and genres. From psychology to engineering, from scientific research to fairytales.
The meal Jane prepared was really not bad. We found few bottles of domestic wine and opened one of them. I took only one little sip due to my condition. The wine was sweet and had a peculiar taste. Jane almost finished the bottle. Even though, it was a light wine, the girl started to do crazy things after the supper.
Well, probably not only the wine contributed to her behaviour, but also a luxury bed. It turned out to be much more comfortable than the floor in the plane we got accustomed to. In a good bed, you can jump, and turn, and go crazy. Stormjammers often want to go wild at night after what happens to them during the day.
"I love you, Jane", I whispered, and she cuddled up to me. I have never expected her to say the same words. She never loved me, and I knew it, and I was okay with it.
4
The next morning Chao Johnson knocked the door.
"Until tomorrow, you are our guests. But according to our tradition, nobody is allowed to be a visitor for more than three days. So tomorrow I'm going to ask you, if you wish to stay with us longer. For this reason, it's desirable to see as much as possible and to ask any questions you have."
Jane and I looked at each other. She moved her hand a little, and for me the gesture was clear. After all, we had flown together for some years, so any hint became easily understandable. The meaning of this one was: I want you to ask him everything.
"I'm sorry for the question", I started, "Why do you prevent any radio signals to be sent from here?"
"Undoubtedly, you know the answer", he smiled, "We just try to protect what little we have. Your world is unfriendly. I will show you today, why exactly it poses a threat to us. The picture is worth a thousand words."
"Okay. Now, you said we were allowed to stay here until tomorrow, right?" I asked.
"Not exactly. Until tomorrow we will consider you our guests, then you will be asked to choose from the following options. The easiest one - to leave. The second one - to stay, accepting our rules. Finally, you can ask for a special permission to stay here as a tourist for few more days."
After the breakfast, Mr.Johnson took us to the greenhouses and farms. All of them were built to weather out any storm, or flood, or frost. They were able to float and had emergency supplies of water and energy. All the villagers worked here then and now. The shifts were short and the work was not especially hard thanks to automation.
We also saw the desalination plant and the windfarms. The moto came to my mind immediately, the old slogan we used back home: "We have water, we have wind, we have everything we need". Here, however, nothing was written. Nor were pathetic words said by Mr.Johnson. But they managed to make this old idea to reality: they needed only seawater and wind to survive. They used these technologies on a much greater scale, than we did.
Several big buildings were located near the wind turbines. We were surprised to found these were high tech production facilities. The villagers possessed the knowledge, which was probably superior to ours, but they never flaunted it. On the contrary, they hid all of their achievements from the world. For instance, the roofs of these hangars were covered with a lush greenery.
"It's a good thermal insulation", the old man told us, "it is also a good camouflage. Now you are invited to see the reason for our antipathy to your way of life. But first, you need some training."
We entered one of the hangars. Unlike its neighbours, it was not an automated factory, but a swimming pool.
"We have built this place not for a sheer luxury. It doubles as an emergency fresh water reservoir. But an important point is that we can swim here, when the sea is too stormy. This opportunity is especially important for the children, because to swim is vital for their education. You will presently see that we take education very seriously."
Chao gave us flippers, masks, and snorkels. Frankly, I was a bit confused, because I had never used this gear before. Surprisingly, with these big fins my speed was lower.
Yet, stormjammers learn fast. Soon, I have mastered this swimming. Jane had no problem at all, since she had had some diving experience before.
"Yep", she drawled, "but it was just for fun, I didn't learn it in a serious way. I cannot even call it a hobby. But we used a professional diving equipment, not just masks. One of my boyfriends owned the school in the harbour: swimming, diving, yachting et cetera. So he had all this stuff."
"Undoubtedly, it's amazing to dive using compressed air cylinders", Chao smiled, "But we believe it is wasting precious recourses. Nor we use surface breathing supply apparatus just for recreation. You will see that mask and snorkel are the perfect choice for our today's purpose. Let's go."
We put our clothes on and left the building. After a few minutes, we saw a wonderful blue lagoon with very shallow water. The place was similar to the bay where we landed: calm water, sandy shore. The overall impression strengthened by good weather was even more peaceful. We had walked a bit further, before we reached a pier. Two small boats were docked at the end of it. Mr.Johnson invited us to one of them. The boat had no engine, but the old man proved to be an excellent rower, so we travelled fast to the centre of the lagoon.
Here we entered the water. It was only a bit salty, but I found even this small percentage much more irritating, than the fresh water in the swimming pool. They used no disinfectants there, so the water was perfectly clean and sweet. But here I felt an annoying presence of salt in my nose. In addition to this, the water was very cold.
However, these slight inconveniences were soon forgotten. The marine life is often very rich in coastal waters, and this place is not an exception. Chao pointed to a dark-green seaweed, then to his mouth showing that the plant was edible. Not until this gesture, I noticed the absence of the mask on his face. He was holding his breath instead of using a snorkel. His freedom was limited only by his lungs volume.
Mr.Johnson looked at me with an expression, which suggested that he had completely understood my thoughts. He smiled, waved his hand, and pointed down. His message was clear: it made no difference, how you breathe and how long you could stay here, but the things at the bottom of the sea were really important.
The first thing I noticed was an enormous elaborated structure. It had numerous ramifications different in size and shape. I have seen something like this before. Before the ocean took over the desert, there had been so-called concrete roads. In many places, they coiled around each other forming gigantic snake balls commonly known as interchanges. Now I could see a big one, which had at least four levels, one above another. Most likely, there were more, but they had sunken in sediments on the seabed.
The roads were partly destroyed around the interchange, as well as buildings. This was the last detail I had remembered before panic struck me. The pure terror came into sight. The deadliest predator on the planet was perfectly seen in the clean water. A shark.
Sharks are perfect hunters. They can see, hear, and smell the prey, and they can even detect the weak electric pulses of its body. Their teeth are always sharp. They never sleep, at least in our way of doing so. But they rarely enter shallow waters, so I have no idea, why this one is here now.
Jane was looking down and surely did not spotted the danger yet. I moved towards her, but the fish was incomparably faster than me. I had almost no chance to save her life, even sacrificing myself.
Then I saw Chao. He seemed to swim even faster than the shark. Amusingly, his limbs were almost motionless, the whole body moved instead. The old man penetrated the water like a fish. The shark tried neither to attack him, nor to avoid. It pretended to just pass by rather close, but its behaviour somehow demonstrated a deep respect. The predator made a circle around us and swam away.
Mr.Johnson raised his finger, and we climbed back to the boat. He gave us blankets and almost immediately started his speech anticipating our questions:
"What I have just done to this monster is similar to my successful communication with your robot. Undoubtedly, a shark is a far more extreme example, as it is seemingly impossible to communicate with.
Now, believe me, we can negotiate even with ICBMs the same way. Do you know, what I'm talking about? Yes, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. There had been large quantities of them, so some survived all these climate changes.
Yet we can stop any possible enemy. The problem is that there are too many of them. This aggressive world is still overwhelmingly big, and we are few. But you will presently learn how the situation will change. It will be similar to what has already happened to all the infrastructure down there.
As you have just seen, highways and skyscrapers lie in ruins. But we still can see the remnants and learn from mistakes of the past. Wide roads full of big cars, big cities full of cramped flats. It resembles the Roman Empire just before its collapse. The Romans were absolutely fantastic builders, but their society was poisoned with hate, cruelty and perversions.
Since then, roads and high-rise apartments evolved a bit, but not the society. You can say, there was a great progress, and many new ideas appeared. But most of them were just sloganeering. Despite so-called progress, many wrongs never disappeared, such as poverty and injustice.
Let's take just one example. Poverty. It was there, when the Romans built their first multi-storey residential buildings. It also was there, when the "projects" for social housing were erected in the twentieth century. The only difference was that the location of the best flats changed. Thanks to the invention of the elevator, the upper floors became the most comfortable place to live.
Poverty still was not rooted out, even after the next great machine was introduced. I'm talking about the highly automated personal flyer. It had a socioeconomic impact maybe greater than the elevator had had in its time. High-rises saw their finest hour, when this machine became popular. But again the change was merely cosmetic. The floors in the middle of the towers became the most expensive. Far from the polluted and overcrowded surface, but not too high to suffer from the lack of oxygen and the tumult of the tenants on the landing pad located on the roof.
Undoubtedly, there were many other wonderful inventions and improvements. But none of them helped the poor, and despite all of them, slums didn't disappear until the population growth had stopped in the Snow age. Or, in some regions even later. In the Desert era, when the extinction of Humanity begun in earnest.
But even today, poverty is still here. People have not changed, they dream of a big boat and a big house. Exactly like their parents dreamt about a big car. These people still live according to the ideal, we call PSS:
Prosperity
Stability
Stupidity
But do you really need a large yacht to navigate the green waters? Undoubtedly, the answer is no. Nowadays, most of the owners of those preposterously big boats never take them to the ocean. As I said, it had been the same problem a long time ago. Many people used to buy jeeps before the Snow Age, when the roads were good. Those cars with their off-road capabilities were impractical in cities, but it was the matter of status.
This way of thinking, however, belongs to the past. As I said, the situation would change. People like me will become the majority soon.
Have you ever heard of "storm-surgery"?" Mr.Johnson asked. We both nodded, and he went on with a smile: "You probably consider yourselves surgeons, and maybe even think of your plane as a scalpel. But this is an absolutely incorrect application of the term "storm-surgery". The wind is the scalpel, the lancet, the double-edged sword. The Nemesis is the surgeon. It knows no mercy, and in order to save the patient, it has to amputate some parts of the body.
Hurricanes know no borders, nor they ask you about your origin and social status. Many people of integrity died, and many "green" cities and towns were wiped out by storms. These are hideous side effects of the storm-surgery.
When the old world almost vanishes, it will be the time for us to take over.
Let's move on, I want you to see what is really important in our community."
We went back to the village. Because of Chao's stories about the "side effects", I started to think about my father. He was one of those brave men, who gave their lives trying to save this rotting world. I can say he have died a hero. Basically, it is the truth, but with one remark. He had suffered for years before he passed away, moreover, nobody recognized him as a hero. He was a good man, who happened to live in bad times.
So, should I accept his death as an inevitable sacrifice for the sake of this new world? As to all those "people of integrity", I do not really care about them, to be honest. But my father's sacrifice is quite another matter to me.
We strolled in silence all the way to Basihr's house. I sunk in the thoughts about my family. Mr.Johnson was probably out of breath after his talk and his barbaric dive. Jane seemed to be simply tired of Chao's lecture and possibly of the memoirs similar to mine.
Jane's father has been missing for years. No funeral, no medals, no pension for the family. To tell the truth, it was rather common in our times.
When we arrived, Basihr was working in the garden with his younger brother. Chao greeted them and went away saying he had some other things to do. Jane and I entered the living room, where the dinner was being served. Surprisingly, it was being served by Jack, who was also invited.
"I am trying to be useful", the robot declared on his way from the kitchen to the table, "I had taken the appropriate measures to protect the plane, before I left it."
All I answered was "Well done, Jack". I was too tired to ask, or blame, or argue. Jane said nothing too. She felt even worse than me, as far as I could judge. She was sober, because we were short on alcohol and other stuff. But the girl did her best to look as cheerful as always.
After the meal, Basihr and Adeel, his brother, wanted to tell us some stories. The first one was short. Their family story. It was clear, that these boys lived here alone. Basihr explained how their parents died in the Desert Era. They were immigrants and struggled against power cuts and complete lack of water. The notorious heatwaves of the time killed a lot of people.
I remembered that time myself, though in my town the drama had been played a bit differently. In comparison to Basihr's story, my early life was like a fairytale. We had the water supply all the time. Blackouts were relatively short. No armed clashes occurred in the town. Even though my family was relatively poor, nobody of us died of starvation.
Well, here was a big difference: my father of blessed memory had never owned a flyer, so he had been considered a poor man. Basihr's late father had no food, to say nothing about a flyer. They were foreigners in an overcrowded city. There were violent uprisings of any possible kind, there were diseases and famine. Basihr was younger than me, so his first memories covered the end of the Desert Era. Like any other period of transition, it was a hard time to live.
When the ocean finally took over the planet, it ruined not just cities, and roads, and solar energy sector. It also ruined families. Nobody knows how many children have become orphans. Basihr and Adeel had lost both of their parents, but were lucky to reach the Archipelago.
"The community members adopted thousands of children like us", Basihr stood up and pointed to the group photo on the wall, "You see my classmates here. Half of them have nobody in this world. No relatives at all. But you've seen today what we are capable to build on the ruins."
I would say, the locals' unspoken motto was "Out of the rubble came a dream". It worked not only with buildings and infrastructure, but also with people. The community members did their best to bring up these children to be honest hardworking people and to respect others. These troubled orphans were educated gradually and underwent a thorough change. They provided a good example to others, children and adults alike.
"There were many similar experiments in the past", Basihr continued, "In the twentieth century, they tried to reshape the human in Soviet Union, Israel, China and many other places. All these attempts were failures."
The social change on the Archipelago, however, was a complete success. It took years, yet it was relatively fast for such a great thing to happen just in one generation. The key to the success was the effort they put into education. They carefully picked up the brightest people among them to be full-time teachers. In addition, amateurs could share their knowledge too.
Anyone has skills to share. How to catch fish with bare hands, for example. Or how to do mental arithmetic. Or even how to fly a plane. Well, as far as I knew, the locals did not have any planes, but they used simulators and scale models.
Students were encouraged to do this amateur teaching too. Time to time each of them chose a subject and presented it to their classmates. The schoolmaster was always ready to help, of course, with the topic the children wanted to discuss. But the help ordinarily was purely nominal, as the students took subjects they had learnt well.
This afternoon we were invited to participate in one of the stages of this learning. Adeel, Basihr's younger sibling, wanted to practice his homework. He gave a kind of a lecture on history. Being ten years old, he did it in a childish manner, for example, he paused several times trying to pronounce a term or a name. But all in all, he did great. I think even Jack was somewhat excited despite his overwhelmingly cold logic.
To tell the truth, Jack's way of thinking was exactly the main reason for inviting him. Adeel asked the robot to record and analyze the speech and the discussion. Jack commented on few insignificant mistakes only and found the lesson very interesting. Jane was also impressed, though the topic was unfamiliar. She, basically, had nothing to say, so she whispered to me "such a clever boy". As to me, well, I like stories about the past, but I have never studied something so thoroughly.
Adeel told us about the war, which took place in 1812, hundreds of years ago. But what he scrutinized closely was actually not the conflict itself, but the descriptions of it by the historians who lived two centuries later. Two countries were at war: the United States and Great Britain. The later had been also troubled in Europe at that time, but for Adeel's research this fact was less important. He was interested in the comparison of the interpretations of the events in North America. In short, historians on each side thought their army and navy were victorious, yet Americans acknowledged their defeat.
However, they were somehow "optimistically positive" even writing about the battles they lost.
At the end of the war, it was clear that the USA had failed to conquer the British colony called Canada. But 200 years later, American authors and their Canadian colleagues named absolutely different reasons for this outcome. The Americans pointed out that their offensive had been unsuccessful, because their so-called state troops had repeatedly refused to cross the border. The Canadians believed their ancestors had won thanks to the consolidation of their forces: British troops were assisted by local volunteers of diverse origins.
"In conclusion", Adeel pronounced the parenthesis slowly and looked at his brother, who nodded giving him an encouragement, "historians in the both countries emphasized the things important to them. In the US it was patriotic rhetoric: they taught the reader to be brave at war. In Canada, it also was about patriotism, yet less military... hm... aspects of patriotism: by writing about the local volunteers they meant that the common effort was crucial for the country. Okay, it's natural to pay attention to things which are relevant in your time. But I was surprised with their descriptions of the same battles. Each side tells us how great its armed forces were, but... hm... "forgets" to mention the battles it lost. They kept writing in this manner even two centuries after the war when their countries had become friends. I mean, allies. I think we should avoid this approach, if we want to do a good research."
When the discussion was over I said to Adeel that in my opinion, he is going to get excellent marks with his project.
"Marks..." - the boy repeated looking at me upwards, as he was only four feet tall, - "We have learnt what marks are, but we never use them. The teachers can teach using no marks, and the students can learn without being labelled all the time".
We left and went back to "our" house. Jack returned to the GEV. Shortly after the dinner, Jane said she had to go. I did not ask her where she was going. I did not ask her why. I knew her habits well.
She came back faster than I expected, and she was clearly dissatisfied with not getting what she wanted. Her behaviour was so disgusting, it made me sick for a moment. It was like a terrible dizziness. Despite the fact that I was laying on the sofa when she appeared, I suddenly felt as like I slipped while walking and was falling backwards.
Jane hugged me and sighed:
"We should escape from this place, captain. Nothing to smoke, nothing to drink, and no freedom to love".
"Don't call it love, Jane", I hissed harshly.
For a split second, she paused, as if I had shut her point-blank in the chest. But then the girl continued to describe her recent discoveries.
The locals had peculiar rules regarding the concept of free love. Every unmarried person was allowed to marry any other unmarried person. Any single was free to date another single. Casual relationships were common, and any emotion akin to love was not necessary in this case. But it was possible only for singles. As soon as you had a permanent partner, you were expected not to start other relationships. For instance, Jane was with me, therefore any bachelor she wanted to sleep with would ask her to choose. It was unacceptable to have several partners at the same time. Naturally, it was impossible to marry multiple spouses or to flirt with a married islander.
I did not want to ask Jane if Basihr had a girlfriend, or had already managed to find a wife. His status was of no importance. She already had me as her boyfriend, and to Basihr this was enough to reject her attempt to chase him.
In our town, people took this matter not so serious. After all, Jane was not my wife. Yet I had this awful fit of anger when she came in. Because I loved her. But for the same reason, I have already forgiven her.
"Don't call it love, Jane", I repeated and went out to the terrace.
It was dark, so I lit a lantern. Immediately gigantic ugly shadow sprang up to the wall. I had started, but after a second I grasped that it was just a bird near the lamp. A big black raven.
5
Next morning I got up earlier than usual. Jane was still asleep, so I slipped out of the bed slowly and silently. I looked at her thinking about the options I had. Today it was the time to decide. To stay or not to stay.
I started to the bay where our plane was moored up, but stopped half a way. Something was wrong with this islands. Everything was too good to be true. Then I heard a roar of jet bombers and bursts of distant shots. Have the people of "disintegrity" came from the big world to destroy this place? No, it was just a noise in my head. Just a strange glimpse. Strange, but very realistic. Like a "bad trip" you might have when taking certain drugs. In the reality, such an invasion was impossible. Thanks to Mr.Johnson and his friends, this place was immune to any attack.
When I reached the beach, Jack came to meet me with two plastic sun loungers on his back.
"When did you get them?"
"I made them, sir. I synthesized them using bamboo. It is fantastically strong material", the android lay down cautiously, illustrating these words. I occupied the second chair, pulled out a roll from my pocket, but did not light it up.
"What do you think, Jack?"
"I think your joint is the last one on this island."
"I mean, what should we do? They want us to decide today."
"Sorry, sir. I have got you wrong. As to the question, it is clear that we should fly together and try to popularize the ideas of the Archipelago. The locals will provide us with fuel and will also program the autopilot. Which I have recently fixed, by the way"
"Do you mean, they can program it... hm... "one-way"? So, we won't be able to find out the coordinates of this place. Okay. I see... But, you know, it's too altruistic to go there to preach trying to make people better. I would rather stay here..."
I knew, the robot was absolutely right. As always. This community was a pure perfect magical ideal. So Jack advised spreading the ideas. But I was not ready for such a crusade. I tried to find words to explain:
"Maybe I'm just lazy, Jack. But the old man himself said the world would be changed by hurricanes, so shouldn't we just wait here? By the way, take this to the plane, Jack. It's illegal on this shore."
I handed the joint over the robot, closed my eyes and listened to lapping waves for a few seconds. Then Jack's voice came:
"Amazing stuff", - the android exclaimed.
I opened my eyes expecting to see him actually smoking the grass, but I was somehow disappointed to realize that he was analyzing it by sniffing.
After the breakfast, we were asked to go to the farm again, but this time we were not just guests. They told us it was the high time to get a taste of a real work. First, in the greenhouse, then at the factory. Less than half a day. Not especially exciting, yet also not too boring. At noon, Chao Johnson met us in the small dining-hall located at the production facility. The room could seat only about two dozens, and it was half empty.
"We do not need an army of laborers here, owing to the automation", he commented on this and went on: "I suppose, you have already understood the point. Now, you have time to ask me any questions you like".
I was sure, Jane would inquire about the freedom of flirting, but she did not. Therefore, I decided to ask:
"We have learnt recently about the local rules regarding sexual relations. By the way, I found these restrictions very harmonious with my personal beliefs. But why..." I paused trying to express my slight lack of understanding. Before I said a word, I heard Jane speaking faster than usual.
"Smoking is prohibited here... Alright. The weed too. Yep, I can also understand it. But why on Earth don't you permit free love?"
The expression of the old man's face changed a bit:
"Undoubtedly, your society degraded far more than I thought. For any civilized person, it goes without saying that permanent partners should be faithful to each other.
In our community, people do share the means of production, communication, transportation, and so on. But we do not share our homes, closes, and spouses. Let me explain to you why. Human beings need some privacy for their descendants' sake. Children need their mothers and fathers. Otherwise, children will not understand what family is, and they will never be able to educate their own offsprings.
It is an illusion that a community of decent people may bring up the next generation while families took almost no part in the process. Many failures of the past were caused by this fantasy. No matter where and when, was it a whole country or just a small group. Even highly motivated idealists failed to pass their ideals to the next generation using "all-day kindergartens" or something like that".
The workday was rather short. Nothing like our overtime-underpaid-double-to-triple-shift flights. So before the supper, we had some time. The time to make the decision. In the evening we were supposed to inform the community if we would like to join it or to leave. To observe the rules or to remain as free as before.
Chao asked us to visit the nearest shrine before we would make up our minds. The shrine was located on a hill. It was just a cube made of bamboo-concrete. Unpainted. Undecorated in any way. Inside it was empty as well. Just a quiet place for meditation. Jane and I entered it one by one, and each of us spent a few minutes inside.
I experienced no sudden "enlightenment" in this place, and I expected nothing like this. I used the few moments of silence to think. To finalize my resolution. Jane said she did the same. Chao explained it was exactly what these shrines were built for.
They also doubled as storm- and flood shelters.
We went to the plane. I wanted Jane to see those nice sun loungers Jack had constructed. It was so romantic to be on this beach at the sunset. I sat down looking at our gigantic weather-beaten GEV. The red sun was shining through the narrow breach beneath the clouds. Jane laid down looking at me.
"Paradise, isn't it?" I said.
"Yep, but..." she drawled with a smile and stopped.
This "but" was always present. Somewhere between us. I loved her so much, but I knew she would never be mine.
Epilogue
Jack's voice was emotionless.
"The anchor is down, the thrust levers are in the neutral, the engines are off, the wipers are off"
Jane echoed almost as calm as the robot:
"Turning the batteries on, executing the APU fire check, the check is okay, starting the APU, started"
"The controls are checked, ready to start the engines"
"Number 3 - start"
"Number 3 - fire check, okay, engine mode - start, ignition"
With all the engines running the crew cabin became a bit noisy. But thanks to the headphones my friends could hear me clearly:
"Time to go. I know, you have never loved me, Jane. But I don't care anymore. I love you, but I shall stay here. Jack, you are the most clever android I've ever worked with. Do me a favour, take care of this girl. Godspeed!"
I left the plane and watched it taxiing to the point in the bay from where it would take off. I hoped I would be useful on this shore.
Even if I never fly again.