D A Novel (George Right) - By George Right Page 0,139

How can it be any fundamental cosmic force?"

"If a person is forcefully hit on his head, he sees a short flash–the proverbial stars before eyes. It is a subjective illusion, but it doesn't mean that an objective light doesn't exist somewhere. This is the analogy of that despair which we feel in common life. And now compare this flash to a necessity to look with the lidless eyes, with the eyes capable neither of blinking nor of looking away–to look at the Sun, no, at thousand, trillions suns, at all the stars of the universe simultaneously! In comparison with this torment, with the force of despair, on 120 orders of magnitude surpassing the force of gravitation, any of the most horrible physical suffering is only a desired strategy at least somehow to distract, to get relief at least for a moment! And we, we ourselves, drew it nearer! Developing science, improving our mind, aspiring to comprehend the world–that is, to comprehend the despair... Though wise men still in the ancient time smelled a rat and warned others, who increases knowledge increases sorrow. And the statistics accurately showed that the highest level of suicide is in the most advanced countries. But we didn't come to these conclusions even when ‘Hyperion-1’ has returned. The next triumph of human science... automatics completed its mission faultlessly... and then the scientists who worked with the returned probe started one after another to commit suicide, go mad or slip into a coma. And besides this, they have felt only residual emanations of dark energy. But the instruments registered no threat to life for the whole flight time, and even the samples of protozoa, worms and insects onboard were okay. Their organisms were too primitive to feel despair. Therefore, certainly, the fate of scientists was hushed up ‘in order to avoid a sensation in the yellow press that would damage the image of the program’; explaining all as a series of tragic coincidences. But nevertheless, before sending humans to the stars, they have sent one more starprobe with a chimpanzee onboard. And ‘Hyperion-2’ has disappeared without a trace. If it had returned with a dead or mad ape, possibly, our flight would not have taken place. But it has simply disappeared, and it has come to nobody’s mind that the reason could be in the live being who had no access to the control systems. Everything was written off as a failure of the onboard computer. The launch of ‘Hyperion-3’ had been too widely advertized already, and a great deal of money had been invested in the project, so it was too late to give it up. But because of this series of accidents, some changes nonetheless have been made in the flight program. It was planned from the very beginning that people wouldn't land on massive planets of Gliese 581. This role has been alloted to biorobots created and modified according to arising tasks directly onboard, in a biosynthesizer with the protoplasm stock, placed on the second from below level. The miracles of Earth gene engineering... The crew should only process the data collected and delivered to them. But under the pressure of skeptics who pointed out the dangers of the flight for people, it was decided that the most of this data would be processed on Earth. The ship had been already designed and constructed for eleven crewmen, but only two have flown. You still haven't remembered, Linda? There are not twelve corpses here, but much more, this ship is full of them. But actually there is nobody here–except us!"

"You... you’re trying to tell me that all these dead persons are biorobots?"

"No, no, everything is much worse! Our technologies don't allow us to create exact copies of a human! Biological models for which our synthesizer is designed are too primitive. But IT doesn't need an intermediary in the form of a synthesizer, for IT is itself the life creating force. And it won't release us."

"It?”

"Despair! Aren’t you listing? Despair! It is capable of organizing life from lifeless matter, but that requires millions of years because it doesn't have its own mind. But with such a gift as an already-existing protoplasm all happens much faster. All these creeping creatures are the life which has evolved here onboard! Consequently they are so ugly and clumsy. They didn't pass through natural selection, apparently. The majority of them are even not capable of eating and breeding. But the main thing is both of us, Linda, we! The microcosm is