There is no future

Not so long ago I finished and published on the Internet the novel “# Dasha_on_ Moon” - and if you have not read it yet, then I suggest that before reading this text download it and read it.



Hard science fiction, near future, space, geopolitics and all that - as you love! (The novel was conceived for publication on Habré, but did not grow together.)



Here he is on Flibust and Samizdat



The following story is intended primarily for readers who read the novel. And also for those who are not afraid of small plot spoilers. I decided to open the veil over the writing kitchen, simultaneously completing one funny gestalt.



When I, as a reader, read about the close relationship of writers with their characters, I laughed. Then it still seemed funny to me. Then, when I began to look at the world through the eyes of my characters, it was not so much fun. More precisely, at first, when I wrote on behalf of a young, vz-zz-zbalbaloshnoy girl, it was still fun.



But then Helga happened to me.



Not the most pleasant character is the main antagonist of the book, whose role, according to the plot, was reduced to confrontation with the main character. And which, when the plot need for it was exhausted, I planned to kill. Simple and easy.



Which turned out to be unexpectedly difficult.



During the writing of the novel, the NASA astronaut I invented has gained flesh, personality and voice. So when, moving along the plot, I came to describe her death in a USS Defiant blown up by a Chinese rocket, I simply did not want to describe it.



The fact is that in the original plot, Helga was dying quickly. But, when it came to modeling the collision of Define with the Phantom Dragon attacking him, it turned out that Helga survived. How? I determined the likelihood of her instant death, after which I threw the dice. And so:



An attacking rocket cannot aim exactly at the target - it prevents engine pulsations and imperfect controls. Therefore, it explodes itself, a few milliseconds before the impact, turning into a cloud of metal shrapnel. And only a few of the resulting fragments fall into the target.



Destroying Define, the Chinese “Dragon” acted according to the proven scheme - it exploded, turning into a cloud of gas and metal grains of sand. And only a few of them got into Define, turning fuel tanks, destroying engines and breaking through the cabin in several places. The fragments didn’t fall into the crew, but I can’t say that the astronauts were lucky - instead of an instant death, a delayed death awaited them.



“Trivia, I’ll add how Helga dies later,” I thought. Later it poured out in two months. I woke up, had breakfast, rode the subway ... and all this time in a lunar orbit Helga Schroeder was dying. Unable to kill her immediately, I left her in limbo, pretty poisoning my life.



One fine day, I'm tired of it.



“Am I a demiurge in my own world or who ?! I said to myself, “The problem with Helga is not worth a damn, and if I don’t want to kill her, then I don’t need to.” Let him live".



But it was unexpectedly difficult to save Helga. It would seem - my world, my rules. What I want, then I turn over. But no - once I created the rules, I was bound by them, like ropes. The world lived its own life, resisting my attempts to change it.



The fact is that the novel, for all its seeming fantasticness, is based on a really existing technique. Of course, the novel describes the near future, but since I believe that no one will open antigravity in the next few years, no one had time to get to the lunar orbit.



The next month I spent in futile attempts to organize the rescue of Helga. I came up with and discarded dozens of plans - some of them were spoiled by other characters, some were impossible from a technical point of view. Finally, the plan was ready. Dangerous, difficult to implement the plan crossed the boundaries of the rational, boldly stepping where no human foot has stepped.



Everything as the Main Heroine loves.



And this was precisely the main problem. The plan was too technically complicated to possess, no, not a warehouse, but a modest, humanitarian pantry of the mind. The Main Heroine could compose it. A similar plan could only be born to a techie - an engineer. But all the engineers in the novel had complex, conflicting feelings for Helga. And they would not save her.



Having reached a dead end, I tried to find workarounds. Unable to independently come up with a complex plan, Dasha could use a similar situation from science fiction. This made the situation psychologically reliable. But even I, having read almost all the significant science fiction, could not recall a similar plot twist.



Helga was doomed.



And then I appreciated: "no fate"



There is no future. Fate is not defined. The fact that in modern science fiction there is no such plot twist does not mean that it will not be there by the time of Dasha’s Lunar Epic. You already understand where I'm driving.



Of course, publishing a fantastic story on Habré, to be read by the fictional heroine of your own fantasy novel, is not the most logical act. But what it is. I am a postmodernist - and this is not possible for us.



Now, Dasha, you know what to do. Four years later, once in lunar orbit, you will remember this story and find the arguments you need in it. And again: you probably heard the expression "the Creator does not play dice with the Universe." I, apparently, are a bad creator - I play. So I apologize for the scar. It happened.



The published fragment belongs to an earlier cycle of my stories, which I gradually bring to mind. I really like Alice Kira Bulycheva, but I do not think it is possible to use her image - so I came up with a plot in which the original Alice is not involved. On the eve of the most important speech, Alisa, who has grown up and has become a young politician, is being abducted by villains and earth special services find a girl from our reality to replace: Alice Shtrikh.



Which, with a strong common resemblance to the missing Alice, practices a slightly different approach to solving problems - she grew up on the radioactive ruins of Moscow, so she burns with napalm. Further development of the plot in general terms coincides with a children's horror story





So:



“I do not trust your Old Man,” Alice sighed. “Forgive me, I can’t help myself.” He is the head of Cosmopolis - the largest special services of the Earth. A decent person in such a position has nothing to do - he will chew on me, spit it out and not notice.



“You simply are not familiar with the facts,” Chuck boomed, “Let me tell you how the Old Man in general became the Old Man.” He started as a simple courier - he transported doctors, spare parts, champagne to the discoverers and other urgent cargoes along the route "Central Moon - Jupiter Moon". There weren’t enough stars from the sky, just a young pilot, thousands of them. The ship, however, was special. Thin, sonorous and small - but extremely, prohibitively nimble. Class: "Lifeguard courier for special assignments."



The young Old Man himself designed and built it, together with his university group, as a graduation project. And then an epidemic happened somehow on Titan. Local virus. All the inhabitants of the base, all two hundred and eight people became infected.



The medicine on Earth was synthesized quickly, but there was a hitch with the delivery. Monstrously unfortunate combination of circumstances - the ship sent meteorite damaged. And all the other ships that can fly, either under repair or at the other end of the system.



Everything except the Starikashki spaceship.



All duplicate systems were removed from the boat, filled up with fuel, handed the old man a thermos with medicine and sent to Titan. At the same time, the track was calculated - the tyutelka into the tyutelka. Without a reserve. Because time is running out, and the path is not short. The ship accelerates halfway, slows down the second half. Sits on the last liters of fuel. Back to back.

But he managed to deliver the medicine on time. If everything goes according to plan.



It is clear that this is risky. What is there to do? Without medicine, the entire population of the base will die within two weeks. Women, children. All two hundred and eight people.



As the old man started, he immediately drowned the gas pedal on the floor and rushed towards the Titan, riding a column of roaring flame. As it was calculated. At least at first. But after a couple of days, the deviation began to increase. The Starikashki spaceship was behind schedule. It would have been noticed before, but all the control equipment was screwed from the spacecraft nafig. To reduce weight.



It appears that there was an advantage with the ship. He was harder than he should have been. The old man began to search his spaceship and found ...



- Hare? Asked the prudent Alice.



- Zayu. The young woman who climbed into the ship, as her boyfriend on Titan worked as a technician. They had love before the grave, but then something went wrong and the guy stopped answering calls. So Zaya decided on the spot to solve the problem.



It is clear that this was a sentence. At least Zae. Too end-to-end they have all been calculated. Due to excess weight, the boat accelerated more slowly, slowed down longer, did not have time to extinguish speed in the Mimas gravitational well ... and according to calculations, it turned out that the Old Man and Zaya flew exactly the same day after the death of the last sick person.



Two hundred and eight lives from a bush.



Well, if it does not do anything. But if you kick Zaya out into the cold, in the sense of pushing him out of the ship, then death will be exactly one. Zaina. The ship will catch up with the lag. The question, if you think about it, is not worth a damn egg. One life of a fool, who, to be honest, is guilty herself and two hundred and something terrible deaths from illness of the station's inhabitants.



That's just the old man got into a mess. He said that he was not recording as an executioner, but as an astronaut. And what if humanity considers acceptable the murder of a girl, then such humanity, either in whole or in part - in the form of workers at the base on Titan, is not worthy of salvation. And it can go to hell. Canine.



They tried to convince the old man. The President of the World Council called, implored, the Pope called, convinced that the sin of the murder would be forgiven, the children of the workers of the station on Titan call, sobbed and begged. Demonstrations took place all over the Earth. With the requirements to kill a fool.



The old man listened to all this and sawed. Lightened the ship. Dismantled, removing and throwing away what you can do without. Sometimes he assented, agreeing with the arguments, but at the same time he didn’t stop sawing. He didn’t enter into discussions, he had no time. Having looked at his persistence, one or the other engineer on Earth contacted him, saying what else could be unscrewed without harm to the purpose of the mission.



At first it was purely monkey work - as a ship do not lighten, you can not argue with physics. And time is lost and there is not enough fuel. But when the engineers, attracted by the stubbornness of the Old Man, in the headquarters of salvation exceeded one thousand, something began to loom. Enthusiasts across the globe put things off, connected the largest computers into a single network and calculated a monstrously complex maneuver, maneuvering around the Saturn moons in the manner of a ball in a pinball and damping speed in the atmosphere of Saturn, simultaneously paralyzing the work of the world economy.



The maneuver was very complicated, depending on a thousand “If” and “Maybe” and practically impossible, but ... but ... this plan gave a chance. And the Old Man began to realize it. With the medicines available in the medicine cabinet, he immersed Zaya in an artificial coma to save oxygen. And he began to saw, hammer and weld. For the remaining 12 days of the flight, he did not sleep for an hour. And they didn’t sleep on Earth - they copied and downloaded over the radio into the idiot computer complex of the boat a special maneuvering program written for a lightweight ship in the rings of Saturn.



From his spaceship, the Old Man as a sculptor, cut off all that was superfluous, turning the proud, beautiful, special, predatory beauty of the space yacht into a flying toilet - choosing the smallest from the available rooms and demolishing the rest. The walls, bulkheads, reactor protection panels - everything was cut off and thrown into space.



He even cut off his leg and threw it to reduce the weight of the ship.



- A leg? Really? Alice asked in surprise.



“You doubt it in vain.” An old man got a micrometeorite in his leg. Just above the knee. Already while maneuvering in the rings of Saturn. Almost all protection was removed. Krovische and air whip in a vacuum. The spacesuit squeezed the stump to stop the loss of air, but that’s all that’s below the tourniquet is simply frozen. Heating interrupted. Here is the Old Man and sawed off a leg with a hacksaw, so as not to interfere, and continued to remodel the ship. By that time, he had already consumed so many tranquilizers from the first-aid kit that he almost did not feel pain.



And with clarity of thought there were certain difficulties.



But even in a half-crazy state, the Old Man, with the help of a reflash navigation computer and such a mother, managed to pilot with a bang. Performing a maneuver of gravitational inhibition near Tefei, he almost struck the surface - 17 meters remained to it. Braking at Saturn, it swept along the border of the atmosphere, like a pancake stone on the surface of the water, in a cloud of falling parts and incandescent plasma.



It didn’t burn out just because it turned the ship with the nozzle forward and gradually bleeding off the working medium of the reactor flew in a cloud of relatively cold gas. This effect was known for a long time, but no one before the spacecraft slowed it down - the calculations are complex, the effect is untested ... It is easier to strengthen and slow down the thermal insulation in the old manner. Engineers do not like novelty. But when they recalled and remembered the effect and checked on the models and wrote a program for autopilot - for those days that the Old Man flew to Saturn.



In general - the epic flight turned out. Neither before nor after the Old Man, nobody flew like that. The final race was happy. I managed a swift outhouse on Titan almost on time and even survived when landing. Well, as it survived, the fuel ran out at an altitude of fifty meters, so the landing turned out to be quick. Not to rattle, but close. But everyone survived. And a thermos and Zaya and the Old Man.



Luck did not end there - the colonists, the first to fall ill, were deaths, but no one died. The rescue mission was fully completed. Patients received the medicine and immediately started recovering.



The old woman then lain in the hospital for six months. The locals, among other things, also broke his jaw when they got out of the wreckage. They could not forgive that he risked their lives. And it is good that they were all sick - otherwise they would have beaten to death. Zaya lay in the hospital even longer - at first she was treated for the consequences of the barbaric artificial coma, and then for poisoning - at first, the rescued station inhabitants expressed their phi to her, driving her into depression. And when she ran to the recovering Old Woman in the ward for support, he told her so much that she was poisoned right there with pills. Do not die, and thank God.



Alice was silently depressed. To her, an active practitioner, a story in which the main and, as it were, positive hero, decided to risk the lives of two hundred people to save the village fool, who was doused with a tub of contempt, after rescuing, it seemed wild. Already something, but she would never have done that.



Chuk, catching Alice’s confusion, said: “Alice, you just did not understand the algorithm. Let’s explain with an example. Look, ”- and pulled out of one of the hundreds of pockets decorating his vest, an ordinary matchbox.



From which I got six matches.



He put ordinary, wooden matches with sulfur heads and laying five in one group, sixth at a distance, continued: “Imagine, Alice, that a heavy, uncontrolled trolley rushes along the rails. On its way there are five miners tied to the rails by a crazy robot. Fortunately, you can switch the arrow - and then the trolley will go in a different, alternate way. Unfortunately, there is one person on the siding, also tied to rails. Attention is a question. What would you do? ”



- Put the stone on the rails.



- Good, Alice. Answer accepted. I clarify the problem - you do not have a stone.



- In a cave? No stone? - Alice waved a reproachful finger, - it doesn’t.



- You are absolutely right Alice, the tasks that give us life always have more than one solution. Let's add another parameter. You can push the trolley off the rails. Then everyone will survive. But for this you need to solve the problem - to collect four triangles, with the side of the triangle equal to the length of the match. Without breaking or splitting the matches - with these words, the robot moved six matches lying on the table to Alice.



- Collect triangles to push the trolley? Which, sorry, figs? Alice asked again.



The robot in response expressively rolled his eyes, wondering at the incomprehensibility of the girl.



- This is a conditional task from a speculative example, Alice. So yes - to stop the trolley, please collect triangles.



Alice nodded and began to move the matches across the table. But enthusiasm quickly faded away - the triangles did not add up. Three matches formed one triangle, the second three - another. If you connect them together, you can save one match, due to the fact that one of the sides became common in two triangles. But, this free match was completely nowhere to go. Yes, in general, there is no reason for it - triangles, even if you add one more match, only three came out. And that was not enough.



- What, does not go out a stone bowl? - Chuk asked with a spite, after a couple of minutes of waiting.



“It doesn’t work out,” Alice grunted up to him, “this task simply has no solution.” Of the six matches you cannot add four triangles.



- Sure?



- Absolutely. Do not add up and no one.



“And what will you do with the trolley?”



“Do I have a choice?” I’ll switch the lever, of course, although I will crush this unlucky poor man. Well, it's better to kill one than to watch the death of five. There is no other way.



“There is always another way, Alice.” This theorem is truly wonderful evidence, but it is too voluminous to bring it in this conversation, - with these words, Huck composed of six matches like this





Alice was ashamed, silent. All four triangles were present. After a pause, the robot continued:



- You see, the decision was. And you would have found it, you would have found it if your brain had not been busy solving another task - to kill one miner or five. Therefore, remember, memorize, slaughter on your nose that in any situation, absolutely any, when you don’t know what to do, don’t think how to do less evil. Think - how not to do evil at all. Because to do evil, for good purposes it is impossible under any circumstances.



“But, Chuck ... wait.” Look, I haven’t solved your riddle. Did not find a solution - did not stop the trolley. Crushed five. Or from the story of the Old Woman - tremble with his hand, while flying near Tepheus and the bastard. Two hundred and eight corpses. What to do with this?



“Two hundred and ten corpses, Alice.” And stop counting the dead - that's a bad sign. In fact, I’ll answer - the principle of avoiding evil does not lead to the fact that people generally cease to die. Accidents happen. It's unavoidable. Just less people dying. Significantly less.



Human thinking is inert, and vile decisions always lie on the surface. And if you do not stop the search, simply sweeping away the options that are evil, then you will certainly get to the bottom of the solution in which no one will suffer. Of course, a predetermined position sometimes brings negative results. The cases are different, but the main thing is that the total sum of wins and losses with this strategy is positive - statistics and analysis on game theory have proved this.



So just try to act decently in any situation - and this will surprisingly quickly become a habit first, and then a philosophy of life.



The last words the robot shouted already in the back of the furious Alice, who, realizing where he was driving, jumped out of bed and rushed to the door, shouted from behind the threshold.



“It's good for you to reason like that.” Clean and healthy. And here, we are not up to kindness, we just need to survive. Teach better than your spider.



Her voice broke, tears stood in her eyes.



Chuk jumped up, grabbed the dumbfounded Alice with soft, foamy fingers and pressed him to his chest. Inside the robot, a servo motor was quietly buzzing and something gurgled. The girl did not resist.



- Alice, my dear Alice. I’m sure, absolutely sure that you have always acted decently. Of course, I personally do not know you, I knew only that, our Alice. But all my knowledge - the knowledge of people, the sciences of psychohistory speak about this. You are a good person, Alice. You are doing the right thing.



“Even when she killed?”



“Killing armed enemies is not a bad thing.” A bad deed is the killing of prisoners, without investigation and trial. But you never did this, as I understand it.



- Did not do. But not because she’s kind, but because she’s greedy. The roads themselves will not be repaired, and the prisoner is not only valuable uniforms and boots, but also labor.



- Do not slander yourself. How many prisoners have you already released after a year of work on construction sites? A few thousand?



- This is a forced decision. The remaining prisoners, learning that they were being released for hard work, began to work much better.



- And the fact that you feed them, in fact, as well as your combat units?



- Hungry prisoners do not work well.



“Alice, and you don’t see any pattern here?” Being kind is economically viable. The universe, as it were, hints to you that you need to do good. In the end, you managed to become the head of the united tribes of Moscow only because you earned a reputation for honest and fair power - they began to trust you.



“But you don’t know that in this whole company I am playing the part of Joan of Arc?” - Alice grinned, - that the military and managerial decisions are made by others, and I only stand in armor at parades?



“And the first one breaks into the walls of enemy fortifications,” Chuk continued.



- It was at first. From hopelessness. I haven’t been doing this for a long time.



- But it was. And it helped you become a symbol, attracted companions to you. Just like the Starikashke - the fact that he turned out to act meanly, set him apart from the community of people, bringing glory and moral authority. Thanks to this, he got his post. You can believe him as yourself.