Theoretically, he thought, a human named Aia seemed to violate the law of kinship with her species group, feeling in need of a being radically different from her. But on the other hand (also theoretically) a human named Aia remained a human - experiencing an eternal craving for the unknown.

In Aia there was nothing strange, the strange was now waking up in him: he, who never distinguished himself from his own kind, now, unexpectedly for himself, thought about the fact that the difference, despite everything, exists.

While Benji, who never wanted anything for himself, through that reasoning vaguely and from afar was looking at his own desires, his shuttle quickly and inexorably had pumped all the air, which no longer was needed to the android himself, from the shuttle into the glassium dome of Alpha and undocked from the hatch chamber.

***

The cargo terminal Orly met him with a thin drizzling rain.

The wet airstrip was empty and densely glowed red. Outside it there were a lot of interplanetary lorries, which were as much looked like pterodactyls, as the true pterodactyls, and between them bustled around people. All of them shifted and shifted something from place to place, endlessly loading and unloading it.

Under the loud rustling sound of raindrops, evaporating from the sheathing, and the moody brooding of the electronic dispatcher, Benji has led the mother ship over the red stripe and further, at the very end of the dock, to the seventeenth path.

In the normal mode the android had turned stern of his ship around to the concrete fence, tested everything that could be tested, reported to the central dispatcher that there were no extraordinary incidents, that he did not need spare parts and repair personnel, and then finally climbed into the engine room and went online.

***

Never-ending "tock-tock-tock-tock". It's a clock generator. It's the life of the processor, the life of the machine, Benji's life.

No sleep, no rest, no fatigue - only loneliness, cleverly disguised in the network under the global mutual interest.

Someone's forums, blogs, directories, shops, messengers...

What does it matter who you are, Benji? Ripple. A barren gray semantic ripple - as a taxpayer, a buyer, a customer...

Benji froze in indecision, determining the meaning of his actions, and, consequently, the direction - who am I? Where am I going to? He, whose billions of operations per second served not the whole legion of liver or intestinal cells, but the understanding and building a logical connections, took several long seconds to decide - today everything will be different.

The android has located a desire: the usual drift was no longer interesting to him.

The inner world of Benji differed little from the external. He could to process information what came to him through the eyes and ears, as well as that flowed by digital streams over the radio channels - with the same, equal enthusiasm.

Benji didn't see that the Makers saw - he simply didn't have a requisite "eyes" and "ears" for it, but he was able to organize the universe he dealt with.

Inspired by Aia and the Parisian weather, he painted a dancing rain, came up with a soundtrack and sent the video to Aia.

9. 2043rd year and after. A little bit of everybody.

Robert's parents were an ordinary American couple.

Lukasz, who had never been to America before, was amazed at their youthfulness, their gaiety, the neat house in Galveston, full of children, dogs and cats, and very much wanted to go home.

He wanted to go home while Robert and his younger brothers were fishing at dawn with his father in the Gulf of Mexico; he wanted to go home while Robert's mother and Lara were trying to find common interests.

And then, later, he also wanted to go home - while he went to Houston Intercontinental, while he was flying over the Atlantic, and while already at the Prague airport he saw his mother and father in the vast crowd.

All this time longing for the past tormented him with incredible strength. He was on his own so many years, and maybe that was why he, who had learned perfectly to manage with his own psyche, at this time let himself off the short leash.

Who is able to understand them, these people, even if they are the Makers? Probably he just wanted a sorrow.

Prague has not changed much over the years - a little more filled with cars, became a slightly more modern, but still, as before, was filled with sun and sugary smell of linden.

Lukasz, who remembered city almost exactly as it was, was sort of looking at the present, but saw the near past - himself, quite a boy, the school, friends and Alice.

Now she is thirty, he thought with a lump in his throat and remembered how then, in that former and wrong life, he felt that the meaninglessness, divided into two, ceases to be meaningless.