Leaving the atmosphere.
- Well, now the flight will be smoother, - announced Landskricht. - We left the atmosphere.
Instead of answering, Zavirdyaev again focused his gaze on the video camera and said.
- Well, how did you like it? My ass flew over the continent and made, as I see, quite a bit of noise. For some reason, one of you is persistently trying to hit my car. You know what I'll tell you? Have fun without me, I think you'll find something to do.
Then he began to sing "starman waiting from the skies".
- I'm a "starman" now, everyone understands? Well, just because I'm really cool. I've been hanging out in Superfederant since 2115 and was very depressed by what I saw there. Now I understand that you and everyone else are exactly the same. I still plan to get to the Moon. Goodbye!
- That's it, you've made your speech, - Landskricht announced.
She released his wrist, which she had been holding with her unexpectedly iron grip since entering the atmosphere, and suddenly clapped her hands sweetly.
Zavirdyaev suddenly felt as if some unknown shackles had fallen off him.
Apparently, this was how Landskricht's influence was felt.
- Now you have nothing but holidays ahead of you. And rest. I won't do anything else to you. Unless you ask me yourself. The yellow lights that you didn't like so much can do good things, relieve a cramp, for example. Start the heart. It's not a weapon of terror.
Zavirdyaev began to unfasten himself silently. His head was spinning, but that wasn't surprising.
- Do you know what the strong point of the current situation is? - Landskricht didn't stop talking. - I don't mean on a global scale, but on the scale of the Western part. This advantage is that it will be possible to carry out a fairly clean and effective reboot. This means that history, I'm talking about any nation, will remain in the closet in the archive, and will not ferment in heads like berries for wine.
Zavirdyaev suddenly felt that it was time to end this bad dream. It would also be good to land soon. The flight plan and the political document had long been forgotten and were dangling in a cloth pocket on the side of the seat.
- I want to land! - Zavirdyaev growled like a drunk, partly expecting some kind of reaction to his words from the onboard computer.
- We'll land, but not now, - Landskricht answered instead of AI. There's something wrong with you now... I know what it is, though. It's because you don't have a biochip anymore. Finding yourself in completely unexpected circumstances, your trained subconscious mind began feverishly searching for an answer, however, it has already found it. But the chip needed to perform this last task is missing. Say thank you to me.
- And for what?
- For taking away the gun that you were given so that you could shoot yourself if necessary. Of course, the gun is figurative. It is a biochip. It and the frames hammered into your brain performed such a role for you... an overseer with a gun, or something. Without a chip, frames are a disarmed overseer. And this overseer is furious now.
- I am fine, Madam! With this device, I performed all the tasks like a fucking cyborg. Then you ruined everything.
- You know, you better sit in a seat and stop twitching.
- Don't talk to me like that! You yourself constantly did one reckless stupidity after another. What is this to you? A joke? Why did you have to fly like that?
- How should it have been? Pull yourself together. Did the shelling scare you that much?
- No, it didn't, but I don't think it was necessary to climb under those bombs.
- You calmly climbed under conventional anti-missiles before. How are those kilotons on anti-missiles more dangerous than shrapnel? Both are equally deadly if they hit the target. An ordinary soldier at the front has much stronger sensations, so don't pretend that you've experienced something extraordinary.
What was the reason for the sudden rage that had overwhelmed him, he himself now found it difficult to understand. All these missile defense attacks and adrenaline? This had happened before. A clear awareness that the entire Earth was on the brink of an abyss and destruction? So the Earth, or rather humanity, had been standing like this for years. A meeting, as she said, face to face with deep, distant space, that is, with her? Well, yes and no...
Instead of answering these stupid questions, he suddenly realized with astonishing clarity what he needed to do. To begin with, he turned around and slammed his fist hard on the folded computer attached to the top of the instrument cluster.
- Ooh, nah! - he exhaled.
Unlike everything that had happened before, this rage was not some kind of obsession from this "Aelita of an unhealthy person," as he once called her to himself. This rage was his own emotions - now he felt the difference between the two quite clearly. It was something inside him, his own, that had broken loose. Maybe... the biosphere was helping, or its field, as they say... Well, that would be even better.
The monitor panel that had flown off tumbled somewhere near his head - before that it had managed to bounce off the wall of the compartment.
- Maybe you should fly away to your home? - he finally voiced his proposal.
- And where do you think I am?
- I'll tell you where you are now! - he clenched his right hand into a fist and made his left hand ready to grab the impudent collar or something else. Weightlessness was not his friend in this case - the movements were even more complicated than if it had happened in water: making a thoughtless push with your foot, you could fly off in a completely different direction than you wanted, and even start spinning, trying to grab onto something. He could have ended up hitting his head.
- Why are you pretending to be a gorilla? - a voice was heard, in which there was clearly a mockery.
He also managed to notice that now she was looking at him not with the same carefree attitude, but somehow, if not confused, then at least with an expression of seriousness and some dejection.
Having finally calculated the efforts for the decisive throw, he, who had been behind his seat all this time, pushed the side of the compartment with his foot and rushed into the attack. On the way, he hit his knee on the top of his pilot's seat, but managed to kick the instrument module and level the movement.
The worried face was approaching. When there was about one and a half meters left, he put his left hand forward and aimed at the neck area. The right one clenched into a fist.
Nevertheless, to the deep disappointment of some inner part of his mind, which had maintained its composure all this time, he still did not reach it. Or rather, he did fly, but not as he had planned - literally at the last approaches, he lowered his head, as if wanting to butt, and his right hand unclenched his fist.
He buried his face somewhere in her shoulder, then growled and howled. One must assume that the blunt blow to the head was also unpleasant for her, but she did not utter a sound.
After some short time, he felt her hand run through his hair and press his head.
- I didn't think you would do that… - she said without her previous cheerfulness, - I told you that we did everything that was necessary, we won't do anything like that anymore. I thought we would land in a deserted area, and then fly back to the Super Federation, like on a plane. We can go to either the right or left bank.
- I don't want to go to the Super Federation! - he almost whined.
- Where do you want to go? - a sincerely affectionate voice sounded. - I don't know, - he sobbed, feeling himself shaking for some reason. Some inner mind, probably the same one that was disappointed by the failure of the assault, he understood that from the outside it looked like a complete disgrace, but he could do nothing.
- Well, what do you mean "I don't know"? We already knew one thing - that you don't want to join the Super Federation, - she said softly as before.
- You'll laugh again.
- I won't laugh. I've never laughed at you. At your big bosses - yes, at commoners, there's no point in hiding it, but not at you.
He felt her breathing right into his hair, into the top of his head. Now he grabbed her with both hands. Somewhere behind him, the AI reported another anti-missile attack on the shuttle.
She still freed her left hand, and began to stroke his head. Along the way, she shouted something in her own language somewhere to the side, probably addressing it to the onboard computer.
- Well, where did you want to fly? I was thinking of going back to where the shuttle took off from, but since you don't want to...
- You don't want to go there either.
- Well, yes, it's a place, but not so bad that you'd be so upset.
- I want... - he groaned, - I want...
- Well?
- To the Soviet Union.
- So what are you going to do there? Actually, there is such an Earth, but it also has its own... all the same... and its own Oppenheimers and "Komm.batts"... That's probably how the world is arranged.
- I want to go to ours, - he whined, and quite unceremoniously grabbed both hands. It was obvious to his inner mind that he was doing this not as a man, but as a capricious child, so if you consider this as a situation, it was disgusting. And as a spectacle.
She, it was necessary to give her credit, calmly continued to mess with him, not even thinking of resorting to the help of her finger lights, which would quickly solve the problem. For some time, there was still heaviness. Very small, no more than a tenth of the Earth's. It was the AI that turned on the engines, leading the shuttle away from the attack. Judging by the meager acceleration, the danger was insignificant.
- What kind of union is yours? - she finally asked.
- Further into the past, into the First - he answered, even slightly surprised at how it was possible not to understand.
- Do you want a time machine? There is no such thing as people imagine. It's fiction.
- Why isn't there one?
- Because there isn't.
- You're a black hole, - he buried his head even deeper.
- Well, now you believe it, otherwise I kept arguing... Okay, let's talk about your Soviet-Soviet... I can't argue with you about time travel now... Tell me, why do you want to go there?
- I don't know.
- Who knows? Well, tell me... Tell me, what draws you there so much.
- There were other people there, not as evil as now.
- These are all naive movies. Old movies. In life, everything is different.
- I know, - he whined.
- Let me make you fall asleep now? Do you want that?
- You promised that you wouldn't do magic.
- Okay, I won't. But would you like to fall asleep? For all this to end.
- Yes, - he groaned, and buried his head in her once again.
Meanwhile, he felt how it became colder. Or not colder... The air somehow became... Like a cold morning or something... It also seemed to be blocking his ears, but somehow it completely escaped his attention.
Some inner mind, still clear, tried to convey something about the neurochip and the vile story around this neurochip, about the training that he, a minor employee of the RF Ministry of Foreign Trade, had once undergone before the War, about the millions "new dollars" poured into this and into him personally and about the promise, but now the rest, so to speak, the main part of his mind somehow didn't care. He tried to raise his head and look at her face, but for some reason he saw nothing. And after that, he didn't want anything at all.
- How stupidly I wasted it all, - was the last thought that flashed somewhere in my numb head.