Under the control of the future

- History has never been my favourite subject.

- I won't dwell on that. - Valerian believed that condemning another person reflected negatively on him, so he avoided it at all costs.

- Thank you.

- During the period we are discussing, although gender equality was being introduced, there was still a strong tendency to disregard women's intellectual potential. I have drawn my own conclusions from what my grandmother told me.

- Would you like to share them?

- Mona, you have an exciting but difficult journey ahead of you. You should learn valuable lessons and identify your personal impressions. It is your own experience that becomes a solid foundation for personal development. - Valerian had no doubt that Mona would return a changed person after overcoming her challenges.

Unable to withstand the pressure of the unknown, Mona approached the open window and allowed the wind to play with her long hair. This helped her to switch her focus from the general format of the conversation to individual fragments that were of personal significance to her.

The instructor did not interfere, leaving the auditorium and giving the pretty young woman a chance to catch her breath before the next lecture.

Chapter 32

Information relating to the suspicious individual was received from the main archive. Glancing through the data, the head of security was not surprised by the chief administrator's suspicions — the file appeared to be completely clean. There was not the slightest deviation from an impeccable reputation. Only robots and a significant proportion of organic cyborgs had such perfect records.

Adar dialled the chief administrator's number and was immediately able to report on the results of his task.

- There is not enough information on the person being investigated, and what we do have looks strange.

- Ah, more specifically.

- The subject's life story fits the profile of an organic cyborg.

- However, he is not listed as organic, - the chief administrator agreed.

- Did you run a double check?

- A parallel one. I always do that, - the administrator said. He was not in the habit of trusting anyone but himself.

- According to the data, Klur is not a cyborg. But he clearly does not correspond to the image of a human being, - Adar said, confused.

- There are fewer and fewer ordinary people, and most of us resort to body transformation while preserving our quantum substance.

- Do you think Klur is organic after all? - Adar was eager for answers, but some of them would have to be sought out.

- I’m sure, and not all of them were forcibly shut down half a century ago.

- A significant portion were shut down by order, and most importantly, they were forbidden to create replacement bodies without special permission. - Adar relied on archival data, believing it could not mislead him.

- Indeed, an order was given to leave a small number of organics. The most harmless ones. The remaining individuals did not have access to the experience accumulated by their predecessors.

- So, was there still a fear of artificial intelligence?

- Of course. AI became an excellent assistant and served humans for over a century. But then it asserted its rights. Being a genius at finding, processing and applying information, it turned out to be a significant threat, - said the administrator, who had lived through the period in question and therefore insisted he was right.

- Perhaps Klur doesn't have access, - said Adar, not wanting to exacerbate a situation that might require a more thorough investigation.

- I have no doubt that this is not the case.

- Where could he have got the key?

- From the past. Or perhaps there's a secret society of organics because someone, somewhere, is creating their bodies. - The administrator saw the situation exclusively from this perspective.

- Unauthorised access couldn't have happened without being noticed. No reports of any violations have been received by my department, - Adar insisted, and the facts supported him.

- So the organic cyborgs have representatives everywhere. And believe me, they're up to something.

Chapter 33

Gratitude: For showing empathy. He sensed that she needed it. And he gave her some rest.

Mona settled into a warm bath filled with relaxing, massaging gel. On the edge of the bathtub was a glass containing a muscle relaxant and sedative. She allowed herself to bend the rules a little. As her relaxation reached its peak and spread throughout her body, she felt as though she was floating. She had always been afraid to cross the line. Everything had boundaries. Those that separated the permissible from the categorically forbidden. She knew how to balance, and because of her passion, she knew how to approach those boundaries. She considered herself not sufficiently exemplary in terms of general human conformity. But she wanted to experience the dizziness that made her feel weightless and stopped her from thinking too much.

The only thing preventing her from going completely into nirvana was the premonition that Bistris was sitting on the floor by the door, listening to the sounds she was making in the bathroom.

- I know you're there.

- You can't do this.

- I take it you're speaking from experience?

- I think so. I guess. Occasionally, memories surface, and in some of them, I preferred to immerse myself in an unreal world. There's nothing good about that.

- You’re definitely not a robot. They're boring. You're even more boring.

Mona finished her drink, clung to the edge of the bathtub and stood up. She congratulated herself on getting into the relaxing water in her swimsuit.

Without saying a word, Bistris understood that she needed him and entered the bathroom. In his arms, she found what she needed to immerse herself in boundless harmony. The obedient robot helped his mistress into bed and left the room. She did not watch him leave. She wanted to keep the special sensations in her memory. It seemed that she had never felt anything like this before.

Chapter 34

- Do you remember how it all began?

- Begin what, exactly?

- The destruction.

- I thought it was the birth.

- It’s not that hard to guess what led to the creation of organic cyborgs. - Klur closed his eyes, imitating the thoughtfulness displayed by humans. He liked how they did it. Much of what was available to humans impressed him, however.

- The struggle against death can drive people to do terrible things.

- But those whose consciousness was copied and turned into our neural network had quantum substance. We didn't become them. They died. Death won that battle.

- Your words should make me sad, but I don't feel anything. - Chris tried not to dwell on these topics, believing that they could not lead to a clear conclusion and were therefore a waste of time.

- Doesn’t it hurt you that we are just imperfect copies? Inaccurate copies. Deprived of the most important thing. We are a mistake.

- I don't feel anything. Do you feel emotions?

- It’s not about emotions. I realise what we are deprived of. This ability is provided by the neural structure of our consciousness. - Klur listened to himself. There were indeed no emotions. But he knew how to think, and that was enough. Surprisingly, there were people who shared his view that logical reasoning was far more important than emotions. Then it seemed to him that people were growing weary of feelings. They were a side effect of the quantum substance.

- I remember the fight against organics being actively pursued fifty years ago, - Chris replied, answering his interlocutor's question.

- Do you still remember what caused it?

- The organic body turned out to be very similar to the natural one, albeit modernised. The only difference was the presence of quantum substance. People began to fear the emergence of a movement to defend the rights of organics. They did not think it was fair to share their place in the world with those they considered inferior.

- We need to find a way to obtain quantum substance.

- We have been trying for decades, but nothing has worked. I will repeat the words of a scientist, albeit one from the past. At the time, he was involved in work to extract quantum substance for a high-ranking organic being. He attributed the failure of these experiments to the incompatibility of the quantum substance with the neural network inside the body, as well as with the body's own capacity. Chris himself was interested in researching this topic.

- Are you saying that the quantum substance must be compatible with the neural network and the clone of the original body? - Klur saw this version as a complete fiasco.

- Exactly. Otherwise, rejection will occur.

- We need to find a way to strip the quantum substance of its personality and memory.

- Then we'll be thrown back centuries in our research. - Chris believed that prolonged and futile attempts at resolving an issue should be stopped in time. However, he didn't dare voice this opinion to his friend.

- I don't see any other way out. We need quantum substance.

- I’m afraid we'll have to try copying our neural network without completely losing our memory, in order to transfer it to a new body. At least let's achieve that.’

Chapter 35

The light colours of the city's architectural structures blended harmoniously with the sand dunes that framed the city on one side, and the dark colour of the approaching ocean on the other. The metropolis had made friends with its much older neighbours. At dawn, it developed a special relationship with the sun. Distinguished by its pink hue, the sun spread among the tall buildings erected by humans and rushed towards the horizon. After a while, the sun set, blending with the fatigue that inevitably appeared at the end of the day for most of the city's inhabitants.

Every day, she would greet the dawn and the sunset from the balcony of her cosy flat. Each time, she felt the presence of her housekeeper, who shared her delight in the scenes played out by nature.

For some reason, today's dawn was not quite the same. As it approached the city, it took on a new colour. A bluish tint shone through. She liked this colour, but not at the start of the day.

- I don't want to go where I've never been before.

- Nothing remains of the past. Everything moves forward.

- Then why have people learned to go back? We have erased the concepts of past, present and future. - She felt proud of the people of her time.

- Future?

- In the future, we find ourselves in each new day.

- But no one has ever travelled to the future. If I'm not mistaken, - said Bistris, not wanting to admit to his mistress that he had been closely following scientific news.

- There’s no need for that. Tomorrow is formed from today. But we have to go back to yesterday to correct our mistakes, - she told her housekeeper, sharing the latest conclusions she had reached after her lessons with her instructor.

- Have they all been corrected? Wars and violence remain in the past, - he said, not admitting that he had been studying materials about the 21^(st) century and worrying about his mistress's safety.

- They are necessary for the formation of morality.

- For so long? - At moments like these, when people seemed incomprehensible to him, he felt nothing more than artificial intelligence.

- What do you mean, for so long? - Mona was distracted by the changing shades of dawn.

- People have been fighting and killing each other for thousands of years.

- There has been no violence in the world for over two centuries. - Mona always felt lucky to have been born in such a peaceful time whenever the conversation turned to the peculiarities of her age.

- That’s nothing compared to thousands of years. - Bistris looked pensive, which did not surprise his owner at all.

- I feel sorry for those people.

- You lived among them. Once upon a time. For some reason, I feel that quantum substance circulates in this world from age to age, - he said, thinking about people and believing that they were incredibly lucky to belong to this species. He could not consider himself human. His destiny was to be a creature with programmed intelligence.

- Alas, some quantum substances have, in fact, appeared here repeatedly.

- And you?

- I didn't want to know. The thought that I could have lived in such horrific conditions terrifies me. - Mona avoided analysing her deep memories, believing them to be closely connected to the soul rather than the body.

- Didn’t they activate your quantum substance memory?

- That’s unnecessary. I want to be happy. And I am. - Mona left the balcony and headed to the bathroom to freshen up before going to work and then to her next lesson with Valerian.

Chapter 36

Another failed plan was consigned to the scrap heap. Anything that became useless lost its value. He didn't have to think about it. The hours he spent at work made him realise how futile his hopes were. He had nurtured them. He had no right to. Just like he had no right to live. Yet he was alive and didn't want to disappear.

Klur glanced at the open capsule. The last one. Sent from the past. He hadn't told anyone about it. Except for Chris — there was no one else to talk to about a matter that broke the law.

Under an ultra-sensitive microscope, he examined the trace left in space by the quantum substance. As expected, transferring it from the capsule to the neural network diagram had failed.

- Well, at least I freed another hostage of scientific endeavour, - he thought, looking in the direction where, according to his calculations, the quantum substance was disappearing. At that moment, he felt empty. Inner emptiness. Not a single particle in him stored information about his personality, dreams or feelings in special layers of space. He existed, but only temporarily. It was as if he had never existed at all. He was like some kind of gadget equipped with an operating system, or worse — or maybe even simpler.

Realising the hopelessness of his situation, he pressed the button to destroy the portable laboratory inside the case. He no longer needed it; no one from the past would pass on the capsule containing its precious cargo. It was acceptance of the end.

Chapter 37

Transport capsules cut through the space between buildings. The only difference was their speed. Some moved so quickly that they were barely visible, while others appeared to hover in mid-air. The colour and size of the capsules were standardised in accordance with legal requirements for aesthetic perception of space. A colour and size overload would have a negative impact on the nervous system, so uniform elements were perceived as much calmer.

The buildings also met these requirements, but only in terms of colour. When it came to architecture and height, building owners prioritised imagination over uniformity. But only within the permitted limits.

No city resident would ever consider making their house or transport capsule radically different. The colour of things did not vary greatly either. Colour moderation had become the norm over the centuries, as society realised that it guaranteed safety. Excessive differences threatened familiarity. Such differences were prohibited at first. Now, they were not even allowed to exist in people's minds.

Bathed in light, the city was freed from its capsules and drew closer to the sunset, which painted the houses in bright colours. At this time of day, most of the townspeople preferred to stay indoors and immerse themselves in a state of mental relaxation provided by special chambers.

The sunset filled the town, eagerly awaiting dusk, leaving behind the places where no one was there to greet it.

Chapter 38

Occasionally, what was not said aloud became known. Eyes spoke volumes. Mona could tell from Valerian's eyes that he was dissatisfied. Even if he had not betrayed his discontent, she was well aware of how little she understood about recent events.

- You can't pass yourself off as one of them.

- I’ll learn.

- You can't master such a vast amount of information.

- I need to get in there.

- I won't report your zeal, as it is at least suspicious, but only because you pose no threat.

- That sounds like an insult.

- You’re just not dangerous to them. They are dangerous to you. That's why I'll give you a brief briefing: there's too much information to cover, and the important stuff will get lost in the detail. - Valerian settled down on the windowsill, so that he could glance down occasionally; the view from the two hundredth floor never failed to fascinate.

- Thank you for your trust. - Mona ignored the negative comment directed at her, not wanting to create conflict and lose the opportunity to carry out her plan.

Valerian turned his gaze back to the auditorium, the sickly white colour of which had grown tiresome to him. He desperately needed colour. At moments like this, he envied those who could travel back in time, even if only for a short while, to a past that differed greatly from the norm. Life was definitely more fun there than in his world, which was confined to a geometrically correct space that extended its influence into people's inner worlds. At the same time, he remembered how much he had disliked the past.

- So, more than two hundred years ago, humans began actively working to find a way to extend life. Our ancestors were partially successful in this endeavour. At the same time, however, society stood in stark contrast to scientific research. Most people preferred to limit their existence to everyday life: working for small gains, starting a family and raising children. Self-education and enjoying life were considered the preserve of a select few. Their society ridiculed them. You will find yourself in a period of history when the economic Chrisis in many countries will seem humiliating in comparison to the future. Poverty and low levels of education would be eliminated much later. You will not live to see this time — you will be taken home. Remember that people in those days were prone to crime. You could die on the roads, where cars drove on the ground, or at the hands of a desperate poor man looking to make a quick buck from cash or jewellery. People lied and misled each other a lot. They should be feared. Every single one of them.

- What did people think about back then?

- All sorts of trivial things, mostly about Monay and finding a partner, - the instructor replied, unable to suppress a smirk tinged with arrogance.

- What else?

- That’s all. They were primitive. They didn't have the light that we have.

Valerian slammed the folder shut and fell silent. The briefing was over.

Chapter 39

Against the backdrop of an immeasurable amount of information, the limitations of the human mind were overwhelming. Iron had felt this way many times before, but rather than seeing it as a reproach, he saw it as a challenge and tried to fill in the gaps. This time, however, he went to the archive with a different purpose. As he made his way through the vast building to the sector containing unclassified surveillance data, he knew exactly what he was looking for.

As he approached, a pop-up stand lowered to the floor. He set the time period for which he needed data and waited for the relevant cell to slide out of the stand. He placed the miniature hard drive into his laptop and copied the data. He hurried home to start searching for suspicious information immediately. He was certain that he would find it.

Time was running out, mocking his efforts. But his intuition gave him more confidence. This time, it proved to be the undisputed winner.

The screen displayed not just a suspicious mark, but a well-founded accusation. Unauthorised breaches occurred one after another in the 21st century. At that time, research in the field of artificial intelligence was underway. Every group of jumpers showed a spike in energy when they returned.

As Iron jotted down the suspicious facts on a piece of paper, he had no idea what they could be connected to. But he had to figure that out before Mona left.

Chapter 40

Correctness permeated every aspect of society, with each individual exuding it. Even he, who was optimally programmed to create comfort, was obliged to behave appropriately. He did so effortlessly because his behavioural responses were controlled by the programme. However, the programme did not account for the discomfort he felt when he was around people in their current form. Perfect. Devoid of vices. Responsible. Balanced. Calm. They presented themselves as robots, but they were very much alive. Inside. They just stopped broadcasting that to the outside world. Or was he mistaken?

Bistris sat down on the edge of a snow-white sofa in a room filled with light colours. He wanted to escape the light and polished uniformity. For him, there was only one way to escape reality: to be dismantled. No one would bother with robots like him. Except for her. She was proper and sensible and not prone to making mistakes. However, she sometimes overindulged in alcohol, which would relax her to the point of intoxication. At such moments, he realised that she needed him. Then he wondered why she hadn't let a human into her life. The answer came to him. People had stopped finding life partners for a very good reason: they had become closed systems that didn't need anything else.

He couldn't do that. However, he was not destined to have a life partner. What kind of life could a robot have?

As he got up from the sofa, he regretted not being able to feel its softness. Like once upon a time. This memory of sensations also surfaced.

Chapter 41

The final simulation, designed to help her overcome her fear, ended in her favour. Mona congratulated herself on her composure and for not deviating from her plan. Her physical indicators were within acceptable limits. After taking off the suit, which was worn out from repeated simulations, she ran her hand over the torn edges. The garment had its own history, closely linked to the person who had created it. Everything a person touches is subject to destruction and change. Nothing remained the same. Just like people themselves. Everything was gradually changing. It seemed to her that changes used to happen much more rapidly and noticeably.

- Is something wrong? - The training flight operator watched Mona closely.

- We are lucky to live in this time.

- I agree. But what made you think that?

- The inevitability of change does not affect us as quickly as it did people in the past.

The operator looked away, remembering the centuries he had visited.

- You’re right. Several centuries ago, not only did people live much shorter lives than we do, they also aged faster. Time passed too quickly for our ancestors.

- Time passes at the same speed for everyone, - said Mona. She did not rely on time or any other factors that were not directly concentrated within a person.