"It's true."

"Is it true that there are so many people on the Earth that if they will fly to our Alpha in turn, everyone will be able to visit here only once a hundred thousand years?"

"Who told you so stupid thing?" genuinely surprised Benji and glanced at Aia. "People don't live there that much."

Aia hugged the android with one hand, while the second her hand gently ran over his broken face; and plastic and metal has stuck together and aligned under her thin fingers as obedient, as raw clay.

"What?" she shrugged. "It's his idea."

"I'll take them to Ruzyne," Benji said, embracing Aia in response. "I'm sorry."

"There is no need to be sorry. Prague is a good city. They'll be there alright. Is it true, Matt?"

"It's true," the boy agreed hurriedly. "We'll be alright there."

Benji had been preparing to the tragedy from the very moment of the call, but that didn't happen, - either because there was no any tragedy, or because the world of Makers meant completely different miseries, and Benji was floating in it like a complete fool, worse than in human sympathies and preferences.

Things were packed up, the goals are clear, the tasks are set, and the actors are balanced and calm. At least, from the outside it looked just like that.

Matt ran away to pack his bags, leaving Aia and Benji together. Both of them sat on the grass right there, by the hatch, leaning back against its thick transparent cover.

They sat like some kind of weird couple of angels guarding the hermetically sealed entrance to heaven.

"You know, sometimes it seems to me that they simply didn't finish with me."

Benji waved his hand somewhere toward the weightless space, where, from the outside of Alpha, the shuttle was hanging like a large metal wart, which still didn't belong to him, and in his intonation slipped the fatigue unnatural for any sort of machine.

"It seems to me that somewhere deep inside of me there is some kind of stupid incompatibility of my software and the world around me."

"Don't be absurd, Benji. The world around us has perfect compatibility with everything in the world. And you'll never be an exception, no matter how much you want it."

"But I don't want to be an exception," the android said. "The problem is different. The problem is that at times I don't want to be at all. I don't want to start from background mode. And, worst of all, I don't want the background mode as well. It seems to me wrong. I think it's some sort of system error."

"Of course, it's an error," agreed Aia. "Only it's yours, not those who did you. The error is to think that if you leave, something will change for the better in this world."

Benji looked up at her silently.

"Stop it, Benji. No one of us is to blame for the fact that the world is as it is."

"I don't blame anyone." He reached out and covered Aia's palm with his silvery palm. "It's just recently that it strangely struck me to watch myself: you are too crucial for me, and I'm not sure that it's right."

"It's hard to surprise the one who knows everything in advance," Aia chuckled bitterly. "I know more: I also know that you are not sure about the opposite."

Yes, nodded android, not sure.

"Do you want a piece of advice?"

Yes, he nodded.

"I think that such a layout - what is right and what is wrong - matters only in the context of goal-setting. Let's say you need to get from Paris to Stuttgart. If you took off and took to the east, you are approaching the goal, and, therefore, did the right thing. If the other way..."

"Mm-hmm... I got it," Benji nodded. "If at first sudo rm-rf, and then defragmentation, it's not very correct. Although..."

He suddenly reached for Aia's shoulders, gently turned her toward his face and kissed her so humanly as he could, whispering to the girl's little ear:

"Although in the reverse order, in my opinion, it's also wrong."

"Benji!" Aia gasped.

"I knew you'd like it."

24. 2330th year. The Earth.

In August, Matt caught a cold for the first time in his life.

By that time it had been exactly two weeks since Benji left four of them in Prague's Ruzyne.