D A Novel (George Right) - By George Right Page 0,141

already. I hoped that I would go mad. That such pain would destroy my mind, and I wouldn't revive any more."

"And I had agreed, though I understood that there would be nobody to render me the same service. But all the same it was no go. And then we tried to achieve the same goal by destroying our own brains. But it also didn't help. Only the amnesia after revival was deeper. Maybe the point is that the nerve tissue of a brain itself cannot feel pain."

"But why did we destroy all equipment? Simply out of despair?"

"Not only. The devices would quickly reveal the truth to us. We tried to prolong the pleasure of ignorance after the next revival. After all, in order to feel the whole power of despair it is necessary to realize it to the full extent."

"And now? Are we realizing? I myself feel awful and frightened, but I wouldn't again go in for that, about what I've asked you before."

"Still not realizing to the full. Some time is required. It's like an automatic tuning... but later even that pain will seem to you the lesser evil, than the despair! We already have gotten rid of tools because of fear of the pain which we would cause ourselves with their help later, and when ‘later’ came, we damned ourselves for having done so."

"I've told you, we had not to read it!"

"Sooner or later the despair all the same would cover us–even without hints. It happened already many times, since the very first time when we didn't know what was what yet. And beyond that, with each new death and revival this period is reduced."

"Thus, we haven't much time." Linda stood up. "We should do something!"

"We can do nothing." Victor shook his head. "We or anybody in the universe. Despair is not a god, not any sentient essence with which it would be possible to negotiate. The most cruel god can be cajoled with prayers and victims. But we deal with an absolutely stupid natural power–with the fundamental law defining the direction of all processes in the universe. Against it everything is impotent."

"Last time we jammed the doors of several rooms where I usually revived," Linda had remembered, "but I have all the same appeared in one of them. How does it do this?

"I think those are the features of the dark matter. Remember that our coordinates are actually smeared out across the universe."

"So, we can pass through walls?"

"Consciously, no." Victor punched a wall to make his point. "But the death is probably similar to the transition into a quantum state, and revival to a collapse of a wave function–only not within the universe, but within the ship.

"Can our souls exist without bodies?"

"As far as I understand, no. Anyway, such a condition would be unstable. Therefore, each time new bodies are formed."

"But it happens only on a ship entered into the dark phase by the Kalkrin generator. We cannot leave the ship, can we?"

"No. From our point of view, the space is closed within a field created by the generator."

"And if we blow up the ship?"

"I don't think that it will destroy the field. I've said already, it is kept stabilized during a long time not by the generator, but by ourselves."

"But in an explosion we would be lost simultaneously! Till now we could not achieve that, even when we tried. Probably, in that case a field will slack? And, the main thing, the biosynthesizer with its protoplasm will be destroyed! New bodies will simply have nothing to arise from!"

"Well," Victor responded slowly, "maybe we still have a hope to die–theoretically. For in practice we can't destroy the ship. Only in idiotic old fiction were spaceships equipped with self-destruction systems. I would like to ask those authors of such bunk, whether their own cars, trains, planes were supplied with such systems? And if no, why the devil would the designers of spaceships should behave differently?"

"We have no fuel," Linda reasoned, "but that is speaking about a reactor which fed the generator. But we still should have onboard landing modules for delivery of biorobots to planet surfaces and back. And they have their own engines. If I remember correctly, it’s a chemical fuel.

"Yes," he nodded. "We didn't want to cause a damage to planets' biospheres . Therefore, no radiation, but chemical components should be enough for a good explosion. I do not know whether we can manage to do it. All right, there is nothing to lose all the