Part VIII – One way ticket
14 August 2020
“We will not be in time, in any case we will not be in time,” kept wailing Katrin. ”Only three
minutes left before he is to step into nowhere but we are only approaching the institute. What is
going to be further?”
Ayuna gave no sign in response. In her fighting uniform on she had a look of a paratrooper
being just on the point to leap into a battle hell.
“Why is the whole district being evacuated emergently?” went on Katrin. “I have seen such a
thing only in movies.”
From the height of the flying limousine they could clearly see the capital lit by yellow electric
light for distance of hundreds of kilometers. And only one site, the area of the institute, had all
kinds of the illumination blinking with red emergency light. Tens of thousands of rescue drones
with people caught and packed in capsules were flying away in different directions. Each
building was shooting every second tens of rescue capsules also.
–Hundreds of years of wars made the mankind develop deferent technologies of self-protection
of them as species. Anthropogenic evolution brought people to necessity to join numerous
medical possibilities to replace nearly all human organs by synthetic analogs and application of
compulsory demands, in correspondence with safety engineering, to provide any structures,
while construction of each dwelling and house of any purpose, with a system of emergency
capsule evacuation in strategically important cities.
The capital, having the flowering plant view, exposed at close observation the technosystem
separated into the districts with autonomous feed and protection systems for all known kinds of
threats. At any moment the Global artificial intelligence had an opportunity to evacuate a district
within 5 minutes.
“Dear friend, you must not fall in love,” whispered Katrin in extreme shock. Only now, having
seen an increasing plasma explosive, she understood what was going on.
Dome-shaped protective energy shields, which were capable to reflect and disperse any kind of
rapidly flying substance. started activating themselves above the whole capital except one
district.
Approaching the area of destruction, the magnetic field, which was purposely used for wrapping
the plasma sphere of the charge, started to disperse slowly emitting protuberances in the
atmosphere.
The whole city was watching the globe lightning, created by the combat cruiser, fall like a small
sun on the district prepared for the attack which in an instant turned into the sea of fire wrapping
also protective energy shields of the city. And in a half of a minute on the site of the former elite
district there was gapping a great black hole with the supernatural space of the Gates spreading
on its bottom.
Gravitation limousine was slowly getting down along the scorched tunnel, created by the plasma
blow, and was approaching the place of the popular show studio.
The system of the global artificial intelligence, going by the errand of the 11 th level of the access
to deliver Ayuna to the Gates urgently, didn’t start evacuating citizens which happened to have
turned out in the deep underground premises. Firstly, it had turned out to be much more
profitable to protect them by the local force fields having generation systems on each
underground level of any Empire’s construction according to the provision of the World
Government “On total security”. Secondly, the “Empire’s citizen” chips were taken down from
the people setting out in that day to the Gates and they were officially considered disconnected
from the common system of the capital’s control, and in case of their evacuation the artificial
intelligence would not have the access for the further steps of their rescue.
By the moment when the limousine, having landed on the studio’s level, blew the door open and
Ayuna dressed in complete fighting uniform of Empire guard officer got ready for landing, Tars
and other guests who had arrived to the studio in that day for the show were standing at Gate’s
edge. Everybody wanted to know the source of the recent vibrations and the reason of
appearance of the great hole above their heads letting them see the night star sky. Numerous
telecommunication drones flew away and about from the studio to have better overview of the
future scene – the show was going on.
“Ayuna, you are so beautiful!” exclaimed Tars, admiring involuntarily the girl in fighting uniform
on and standing on the limousine’s footboard. Her brown hair came uncurled under the up-
going air flows, playing in the rays of the projectors of the studio’s lighting drones.
“Don’t move, Tars! I – “exclaimed Ayuna.
“Have you ever thought about the purpose of life?” said he and stepped into the bluish abyss of
the Gates.
The crowd exclaimed. The complete people’s attention switched to Ayuna who stopped dead in
shocking amazement over the Gates. The previous half an hour she had been the main
information pretext for the Empire’s mass media but at that moment her rating was off-scale. But
Ayuna didn’t care and it resulted in increase of the curiosity of the spectators who had got tired
of the television hypocrisy and got missing the pure emotions.
After several seconds of the numb scene during which the majority of the processes in the
Empire seemed to have stopped dead because everybody was stuck to the screens. Ayuna
shifted her gaze to the bracelet signaling by the slight vibration about the message received via
the government communications channel.
