Part 4

Sacred duty

Chapter 19

* * *

"Hey, get up."

Olga crawled out of her half-slumber like an insect after a molt, that is, slowly, heavily, and sadly. Now she wanted to sleep all the time, chronic fatigue firmly entrenched in her muscles. The girl glanced apathetically at Savlar from under a blanket that looked like a fleece blanket that had thinned into a handkerchief. Many generations of purificators must have slept under it...

"Get ready," he muttered. "They're calling for you."

To be more convincing, the noseless man kicked the leg of the shelf where the girl lay down. Olga looked critically at the old coat of brutally murdered young fabrikoid, then asked: "Look, aren't you tired of it?"

Spoiler: T.N. Fabrikoid it's a leather substitute and obviously can't be killed. It's just an ironic way to say that your coat is a cheap and ugly piece of shit.

"What?" Savlar was confused.

"Well, that, making an experienced 'convict' of yourself? You're not a convict," Olga suggested honestly. She was already in a bad mood, and her new eye was weighing heavily on her orbit, her body did not want to get used to the new part.

"I am!" He was about to cry out Savlarets, but under the calm indifferent gaze of the girl, he stifled.

"I stomped out all the Moons," he muttered without much enthusiasm.

"Come on," she smiled crookedly, without anger or criticism, maybe that slowed down Savlar, preventing him from exploding into another scandal.

"I've seen prisoners. If they were in jail on a case, they had... ...bad things in their eyes. They're bad people. You're not."

"Am I the good guy?" The noseless man asked in a puzzled manner, and all his patterns broke at once; even his speech changed, and the shrill tones of a hysteric with a soul in squares disappeared from it.

"Yes. You're mean and scandalous. But you're good in your way. I guess so. And you know poetry. Real convicts don't read poetry, they have other things."

The Savlar twitched his cheeks, his lips twitching like those of a hurt child about to cry.

"But I won't tell anyone," Olga promised confidentially and quietly.

The noseless man raised his fist and waved it in sad despair.

"The hell with you!" he blurted out with unconcealed resentment. "And that's just the way you are!"

"Yes," the girl agreed. "I'm a good one."

The seasoned jailer only waved both hands, flapping his rust-colored sleeves, and jumped out like a klutz and cackled one last time:

"Third wagon! Now! They're waiting!"

And almost ran down the corridor.

Olga sat on the shelf for a while, like a schoolgirl with a toothbrush in front of the sink, realizing that the backpack and the school bell are inevitable. After the burning of Smoker, the girl was not only tired but was freezing all the time. The girl had just enough energy to work off the assigned workouts, ensure minimal functionality, and listen to the Priest's lessons (which had become very rare). In her free time, Olga preferred to wrap up in a blanket, pull on a sweater beforehand, and sleep. Well, or at least doze off. Waking life was too frightening, and in her sleep, the panic was gone, the permanently stuck expectation that now she would be dragged to the bonfire. But the nightmares came, in which the unhappy scout stretched his burnt arms with grown claws, trying to drag Olga into the awful warp. Often the Madman was nearby as well. The quiet madman died the same day as the burned Smoker, passed away quietly and unnoticed, from a heart attack.

However, everyone had nightmares now, even the God-fearing Sinner, mute and demented for the sake of his emperor. A couple of times, too, Kryptman woke up screaming to save some Tanzin, after which Fidus looked at the girl confused and askew.

Third wagon...

The girl finally slid off the shelf and staggered off to wash, dragging her legs, feeling her joints ache as if she had a fever. After a symbolic splash of cold water on her face, she changed into her work overalls and put on a pirate-like blindfold, made from a long handkerchief to cover her artificial eye. The prosthesis, though it formally produced an image, in practice hindered more than it helped. The combined image was poorly colored and blurred, and I could distinguish light and darkness with it, but at the very most I could orient myself in space. In addition, I quickly became dizzy with all the effects of spinning on the Ferris wheel. So, as the girl bitterly thought, she was still disabled in the end, only with an extra handicap that hurt and itched and left her with the ever-present feeling that her face was a quarter full of lead.

As she pulled herself together, Olga staggered downstairs just as leisurely. The Wretched man was listening to the radio with music and hymns, and the others were draped in their closets, even Kryp. As she descended the stairs, Olga saw the tank, in which Driver was again rummaging, hanging his hat on the antenna. Some complicated operations with the machinery were supposed to be carried out strictly by 'cogs', but the old machine often needed minor repairs, and he always invented a technical activity for himself. The mechanic looked at the sprayer from under the tank helmet, hatched up to his eyebrows, nodded, and remained silent, returning to the interrupted activity. Olga pulled up higher the collar of her sweater, pulled on her fingerless mittens with flap pouches, then went into the small vestibule.

For three days after the burning of Smoker, there was a severe snowstorm as if nature was angry at human injustice. But then the weather cleared, and now it was moderately sunny, for a change, as if in feeble compensation for the past. Servitor Luct was leisurely and measured. He did everything just so, without haste, thoroughly - he swept the parade ground. The zombie robot saw Olga off and remained silent, like Driver, though he usually greeted the girl.

The world around was almost unchanged, only a little brighter and homeopathically cheerful under the yellow sun. The wind died down, and the temperature felt like five or six degrees, hardly more. Olga breathed a little fresh air, lifted her blindfold, and was saddened. The prosthetic eye worked even worse outdoors than indoors. The picture became completely blurred like a black and white watercolor in which a cup of water had been knocked over.

Olga put on her blindfold, slouched down, shoved her hands in her pockets, and walked to the third wagon, dragging her feet so that her feet scraped against the concrete. The train - after several wagons had been unhooked and the locomotive had been driven away for maintenance - seemed very short and disproportionately tall. Like a strange toy. The girl paced without haste, wondering what had gone wrong. Why hadn't she asked Savlar where to go and why? Who had told her to go through the masquerading poet? And what would some psychologists say about it. She remembered the test to determine personal freedom and autonomy, the one where a non-smoker was offered a cigarette. Having realized that it was as if she had no will at all, Olga felt even more bitter. At a certain point, she began to feel that her legs were dragging her very heavily, with a loud scraping sound.

The girl stopped and realized that it was not her making noise, but something approaching from the side, weighty and noisy. It was coming pretty fast. Olga looked around, just in case, and found no sign of panic. No one had sounded the alarm, no one was running with guns, so everything was going as it should. Still, what was buzzing like Godzilla? Just to be on the safe side, the shepherdess moved closer to the wagon, so she could duck behind the wheel, which was a meter and a half in diameter, just in case. Godzilla drew nearer, panting and making noise, until, at last, something large, grayish-black-and-white, of distinct geometric outline, flashed over the roof of the distant warehouse.

"Wow," she exhaled, not surprised, though. She was used to the fact that 'here' regularly happens something amazing and unseen. For example, a walking machine the height of a five-story building. Why not, after all?

The machine was bipedal, like a hybrid of a chicken and a tortoise. Its mighty 'legs,' which seemed to have a lot of joints, carried a wide, flattened body like a hypertrophied body of a bodybuilder. A cockpit protruded from the hull, making it look like a lizard with its muzzle down before lunging at its prey. The powerful 'arms' had no fingers or anything like that, but rather manipulators to hold the gun barrels.

The artificial beast seemed both slow and dangerous. There was a predatory fluidity to its movements, like that of the Tyrannosaurus from the Spielberg movie, where someone else was eaten right on the toilet. The car thundered with its iron shoes leaving deep indentations in the concrete with a fine network of cracks; jets of steam or some gas spurted from its joints; lights on its shoulders swirled like parking lights. Each part of the amazing mechanism sounded different, and together they created a bass-like melody, like a rhythmic breath. Above and behind the car, the air was shaking, probably the exhaust from the engines.

The giant was walking quite purposefully toward the train, and for a moment Olga thought that the machine was about to step over the wagon... No, the legs were too short after all. Mecha-Godzilla, as if listening to her thoughts, crouched down a little, so Olga thought: now it will jump over! And again she was wrong - the machine was just changing course. The girl looked after the terrible monster, made sure that indeed, on the iron ass blowing heat bars of the giant radiators. It must be really hot in there...

Olga hunched over as if that could save joules of her heat. She wanted to run next to the walker, climb on it and warm herself against the warm, probably even hot metal. Olga sighed and went to the third wagon, where she had never been before.

The third wagon was no different from the first, second, and others, the same two-and-a-half stories, the hinged ramp for machinery, the narrow slots of windows with flaps. Olga climbed the gangway with a thin railing and knocked on the door. Nothing happened. She knocked again, with the same result. When she brought her hand up a third time, curving her lips in displeasure, suddenly something clicked, and the door said: "Come in."

In a surprise, Olga swayed and almost fell from a height of two meters.

"Come in." With the same mechanical intonation repeated the hidden speaker.

The girl shook her head and turned the lever with effort.

The third wagon, judging by its decoration, was for maintenance. There were no vehicles and no fire-chemical supplies, but the instruments were piled up like archaeological layers, literally one on top of another, all different, and each as if it had been assembled by hand, from whatever was available, without a blueprint or template. It was so much like Jennifer Wackrufmann's workshop that Olga was not even surprised at first to find Jennifer herself.

"Hello," said the 'cog'.

"Hi," the girl replied, thinking about her own thing. "And who here is... Oh!"

For the first time in the three days since Smoker's execution, Olga felt alive. She was genuine - just like a close friend - pleased with the metal woman who did not consider herself a woman.

"Hello!" Olga wanted to jump on Jennifer and hug her tightly out of sheer emotion (and the mechanicum were warm), but she held back. A needle of suspicious mistrust pricked her heart - the purificators seemed like decent people, too, until it turned out that they really had a habit of burning living people. Who knows what the 'cogs' will do?

"Praise to Omnissiah, we meet again, "Wakrufmann indicated a ceremonial bow, and then the sine line on the screen that replaced the mechanicum's mouth folded into a smile. "I'm glad."

After the Priest's lessons, Olga already knew that Omnissiah, aka God-Machine, is one of the hypostases of the Emperor. He is worshipped by a caste of special technical priests who - and no one else - are allowed to work professionally with machinery more complex than a tractor. Wackruffmann was one of them.

"But how... what are you... here...?" The girl fluttered her arms, unable to find the right words.

"Your train is in an undignified state," the priestess explained. "Lots of work, increased wear and tear, sparse staff. The spirits of the machines are sad and weak. I will shine a brighter light of Omnissia."

That's a good thing!" The girl decided it was rather good news after all. "I'm glad!"

"Me too."

Now Olga could finally examine the priestess of the mechanical god carefully and without haste. The mechanicum was slightly taller than the earth girl. The details of her build (or should she say construction) could not be discerned because of the simple red robe that fell to her heels. On the one hand, the look of the priestess caused a smile and strong associations with children's movies - the metal arms and head seemed deliberately simple, no markings, no complicated connections and details, like, for example, in the terminator. Smooth metal and glass, polished seams, corrugated rubber in the joints, just some kind of Tin Man, only small and very neatly made. On the other hand... Jennifer's plasticity, the barely noticeable inertia of her movements, the slight creak of metal under her feet, indicative of solid weight, were all extremely far from toys and movie props.

Also, as far as the girl remembered, somewhere under the cloak lurks a tentacle with claws, which is very usefull at burning brains.

"Did you fix that... What's its name..." Olga wrinkled her nose, trying to remember.

"A hypersonic torch with a magnetostrictive material working part," Jennifer clarified. "No, I disassembled the base and replaced it with an acoustic screwdriver. And I also brought a magnet."

"Yes, that's right, the second magnet," Olga smiled.

"Sit down," Jennifer pointed to a ball of wire with sticks sticking out. Olga didn't understand at first, but then she tilted her head and realized that, at a certain angle, the bundle looked like a chair.

"So it was you who called me? - the girl asked, cautiously sitting down. The 'chair' looked suspicious and dangerous as if a sharp end of the wire would stick into her skinny ass at any moment.

"Yes. I am performing an inventory. I'm evaluating the effectiveness of the prayers and the sequence of rituals. I found a surgical entry in the logs. Basic novice augmentations are not of outstanding quality. Your functionality is probably partially restored, but accompanied by discomfort and side effects. Is this true?"

"Yes," Olga wanted to sob in a self-pity fit, but she held back. "It hurts. It hurts all the time. And it presses on the eye socket. And it itches."

"I thought so."

Jennifer hovered over the seated patient and suddenly froze, emitting a modulated buzzing sound. The line of her 'mouth' bounced in sharp peaks. Olga cringed, looking suspiciously at the priestess.

"What are you doing?" The girl cautiously asked after a minute or two.

Jennifer hummed some more and then suddenly answered:

"I pray."

"I thought you were checking the eye," the patient said disappointed.

"It's the same thing," the priestess said briskly and touched Olga's temples with her warm, hard fingers. "Keep still. You may speak."

"The same thing?"

"Yes. We serve the Omnissiah, and our service is work. All that is done with reverence and respect is a service to the Machine, all prayer to Him is an act for His glory."

Olga did not really understand this tirade, but risked to clarify:

"And when I turn on the light, I pray too... To the Machine?"

"No. You just turn on the lights. But when you need to fix a rheostat, it's prayer embodied in action. Or an action that is itself a prayer. It's hard to explain," Wackrufmann suddenly complained. "Human language is very poor. A scarce set of symbols, a limited conceptual apparatus."

Olga thought that there was nothing complicated about it, it sounded logical and in line with everyone's religious craziness. But she decided to keep it to herself and clarified: "I don't feel anything. Is it supposed to be like this?"

"Yes."

"What about it?"

"Rough work. Painstaking, but unsophisticated. The lowest level of worship, functionality without grace or beauty."

"The beauties..." repeated the girl. "And I thought you were not about beautiful things..."

"Who do you mean by 'you'?" Wakrufmann was still touching Olga's head.

"Well... you, those who serve the Omnissiah."

"We love beauty. We appreciate beauty," Olga thought the priestess's synthetic voice became a little harsher and sterner. "But this is a different beauty. It largely coincides with the understanding of ordinary people who are not blessed by Omnissiah, but it goes far beyond that understanding."

Again Olga wanted to object, but the girl literally caught her tongue.

Jennifer withdrew her hands and straightened up, looking at the girl with green eyepieces.

"The micro-movements of your face and neck muscles are indicative of the words being spoken. You want to say something, but you are silent. From this, I deduce that you think words are inappropriate. Usually, people are silent for reasons of tact or fear. The emotional connection between us defines a lower threshold for communicative assumptions. Thus, I assume you want to say something, but are afraid. Does this have to do with the public execution of the deserter three days ago?"

Olga stubbornly pressed her lips together, deciding for herself that a fly would not fly into a covered mouth.

Jennifer let out a strange high-pitched squeak, a little like the modem sounds from the movie 'Hackers'. From somewhere above, two servo sculls came down at once. One was quite traditional, with a red lens and funny handles. The other was more serious, with a long cable and a battery of instruments that looked suspiciously like surgical instruments. From behind the priestess, clanking metallic horseshoes, a dubious robot emerged, looking as if it were a coat rack. It was a robot, not a servitor, which was unusual.

"I'll help you now. It gets better," Jennifer promised.

"Will I be able to see normally?" the girl asked hopefully.

"If you mean 'as before' - no."

Olga exhaled disappointed.

"Functionality will be brought up to eighty-six percent relative to the original state of the eye. Some special features will also become available. I will tell you about them later."

The robot-hanger stepped closer and suddenly gripped the patient's head firmly in its grip, securing it for surgery. The skulls moved lower, snapping and twitching their claws bloodily. Well, at any rate, Olga sensed the bloodthirstiness, the flying heads seemed very sinister.

"Don't be afraid," Wakrufmann advised.

"How about a shot?" the patient timidly suggested.

"I will," the priestess promised firmly. "By the way, this 'don't be afraid' was not just about expecting physical pain."

The girl was silent, not knowing what to say here. The hanger intensified its metallic grip, but without stiffness. Then followed a sudden pinch under her sore eye. Olga twitched and cried out.

"Anesthesia," reported Wackrufmann. "It takes the pain away."

"Thank you," the patient grumbled. The pain didn't disappear, but rather became more distant, farther away than it had ever been before. Now it felt like an ongoing mosquito bite, not painful, but very unpleasant.

"I'll say it again, don't be afraid."

"With these words Jennifer began humming again, this time fading quietly, somehow soothingly and softly. Olga remembered (and immediately forgot) the word 'infrasound' she had heard a long time ago."

"What are you talking about," the girl muttered, listening to her condition. The sting of the mosquito seemed to melt away, dissolved by the gentle pressure of the drug and the humming of the priestess. Warmth poured around the damaged eye socket and went further under the skull as if enveloping the brain. Her thoughts cleared, becoming surprisingly clear.

"Assessing your behavioral pattern and reactions, I come to the conclusion that your homeland belongs to the medium-developed worlds, where reverence for the Emperor is weak and Omnissiah is not revered at all."

"The Emperor protects!" Olga reacted in a rote manner, imitating an aquila. "I love him with all my heart! He is the father of all men, the giver of blessings, and the merciful protector!"

And the bloodthirsty dead man, may he go to hell with all his admirers.

But as if Jennifer didn't hear the energetic declaration of love for the Imperium deity.

"For people of this kind, the encounter with the more energetic forms of worship of the God-Emperor of Mankind has a demoralizing effect," the priestess paused and added, apparently in clarification, "Depressing."

"I know what 'demoralized' means," the new, enlightened Olga easily recalled words long forgotten. She wanted to talk to an intelligent man, even if she was made of steel and weighed two kilograms. But it was still a little scary.

"I honor the Emperor!" she repeated, just in case. "And probably Omnissia, too, for he is one of the faces... or guises... He is part of the Emperor. Or a side of the Emperor."

Olga was completely confused and embarrassed, but the priestess did not seem offended or angry.

"That's normal," Wakrufmann reassured her. "The concept of several hypostases of a whole and incomprehensible force is not easy to understand. I understand what you mean, and I appreciate the respect you've shown Omnissiah. But back to the old question. I repeat: don't be afraid. I am not going to do anything to harm you, much less to punish or kill you."

Only now Olga suddenly realize that she could not feel half of her face, and strictly along the midline, passing through her nose. No feeling at all, and it happened quietly, unnoticed. The girl leaned back comfortably on the wire seat, letting out a sigh of relief. She felt decidedly good and relaxed, as well as warm and safe. Olga glanced suspiciously at her companion, just in case.

"Are you sure you're not going to?" the patient sternly clarified.

"Exactly," Jennifer promised.

"Well, okay," Olga agreed, and exhaled once more, enjoying the feeling of warm air washing over her palate and tongue. It felt good to inhale, even better to exhale. Each gulp of air felt like it was clearing her lungs, drawing pain and fatigue from her body. And if she concentrated on the process, she could feel the breath rushing further, almost to the heels, widening the tiny capillaries on its way.

"Will you give me a tooth?" The suspicion almost melted away, but still remained somewhere on the edge of consciousness.

Spoiler: T.N. It's a kind of idiom. When 100% sure in something you put your tooth as a bet. But proper translation spoils the next phrases.

"I have no teeth," Jennifer admitted honestly. "I don't have a vocal apparatus at all. I got rid of it a long time ago. It's inconvenient and impractical."

"But how do you eat?" the girl is amazed.

"I don't eat. My biological part needs nutrients, but I get them in a concentrated form and optimized for my metabolism."

"Oh, poor..." the patient was upset. "You can't even munch properly."

Then she thought that 'munch' was not a word that should be used in decent society, giggled, and covered her mouth with her palm. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Jennifer reassured her. "The advantages of diffusion nutrition may not be obvious to the average outsider."

Olga was quiet for a while, concentrating on the sensations, trying to understand what was happening to her eye, but no avail. However, there was no blood (at least in plain sight), already good. As if reading her mind, Jennifer commented on the operation: "Removing the prosthetic."

One of the skulls swayed. It looked as if the flying head nodded in agreement. It was very funny, and the girl smiled with one side of her mouth; she couldn't feel the other. Meanwhile, the second servo skull handed the priestess something that looked like a drill, the machine looked ominous, the end of the 'drill' was flashing multicolored sparks that looked like electrical sparks.

"I'm scared," she suddenly admitted.

"It's safe," Jennifer reassured her. "It's necessary to disconnect the contacts without traumatizing the nerve tissue."

"No... I'm really scared. Well, not right now... in general. Very, very."

"This is the natural state of man, programmed by evolution. A living subject must strive to survive. Survival must be motivated. Feeling fear and wanting to get rid of it are good motivators."

Jennifer was silent for a moment as if to make sure that her interlocutor had understood what was being said.

"When I was human, I was often afraid too," the priestess said confidentially.

"And then you became a machine and stopped?"

"This is a simplified view. But it is generally correct. As mentioned above, fear is an element of a complex mechanism that ensures the survival of the population. Fear gives life. And it also poisons it."

"Some kind of ambivalence," Olga remarked. She felt warm and very good. The barely perceptible humming of the Wakrufmann was soothing, as if in a cradle. There was an unfamiliar but pleasant feeling of calm vigor, a peacefulness that energized her.

"It's called 'dialectics,'" Jennifer said. "And when one becomes a servant of God, one throws off many shackles of the flesh. Fear is one of them."

"All religions promise salvation and goodness," Olga herself was surprised at how cleverly and beautifully she could articulate it. "Serve and you will be saved!"

"That's true," the priestess agreed. "But they all promise salvation someday. Later. In some indefinite future, usually beyond the boundaries of physical existence."

"And... the Emperor?"

"And so is he," Jennifer confirmed without hesitation, in a way that made Olga's jaw drop. "Belief in God the Emperor is constructive and effective. It serves the interests of the whole, that is, humanity as a multiracial and multicultural community. However, it is dialectically ruthless to the fate of the basic elements of unity."

"Wait... I'm confused..."

Olga tried to somehow organize Jennifer's words and fit them into her mind. The state of intellectual euphoria expanded into a stage of burning desire to think, to search for truth, to argue. Wakrufmann waited patiently, the medical skulls continuing their work, chirping softly, apparently conversing in their machine language.

"Are you saying that the emperor's church supports the existence of people as a whole, but easily tramples on people individually?"

"Exactly."

Olga recalled that the Priest had said similar things before, only in different words. A million worlds, perhaps billions. Infinite thousands of cultures, traditions, and customs. And a faith as the only standard in which to fit this unimaginable multitude. The girl shared these insights with Jennifer, referring honestly to the author. And ended with a critique: "But it's still wrong... Here's the Smoker, for example... he didn't do anything! He was good and honest. Anybody could have been in his place! Anyone, even our commander. And he got burned."

It became so sad that the girl sniffed her nose and an unwanted tear rolled down her cheek. One of the skulls immediately wiped the tear away with a piece of gauze. The flying head's concern reminded her of its counterpart, who had been swept away into space, and of the Machine. Not the Omnissiah one, but the ancient cogitator computer. She wanted to talk about it too, but she intended to discuss the organization of the Imperium first.

"This is a characteristic of large systems," Wackrufmann mentored. "Managing them requires impersonality, protocol, to reduce the level of entropy, energy losses in large-scale communications. A side effect is statistical neglect of the fate of those who fall out of protocol and pattern."

"I understand," Olga agreed, after thinking for a while. "And I don't agree with it."

"So are we," Wackruffmann said briefly.

"Am... what?"

"We'll talk about that another time."

"The other one? Will you be here for a long?"

"For a while. That's it, it's over."

The "hanger" opened its strong embrace and obligingly handed her a mirror. Olga quickly looked into it, biting her tongue with impatience and expectation of a miracle... and could not refrain from a sigh of disappointment. Wakrufmann did not even remove the prosthesis, only placed it somehow more accurately, removed the protruding parts, treated the edges of the inflamed eye socket with some ointment, taking away the pain. The cable was no longer sticking out of the temple, but went under the skin and was hardly felt. And that was it.

"Thank you," the girl said sadly, struggling to keep from crying.

Now I'm a total freak...

She wanted to hurry away, to crawl under the wagon, behind the huge wheel, and cry there, so no one would see. It would probably hurt again, though, and even worse.

"I detect a change in an emotional state, which can very likely qualify as resentment and frustration."

As usual, when Wackrufmann switched to high-sounding machine slang, it was unclear whether she was being serious or mildly ironic. A skull with arms flew somewhere in the depths of the workshop. The other moved over to the nickel-plated cauldron with a lid and began busily dropping tools inside, probably for sterilization.

"Olga," the priestess seemed to call her for the first time by name, with perfect accuracy, no 'olla,' and the right accent. "Are you in a hurry?"

"Really," the girl slouched down again, as good spirits and feeling of warmth and security melt away irreversibly.

"I'm a Martian," this time the artificial voice had something like pride with the slightest hint of arrogance. Not an overt superiority, but rather a sense of objective superiority, like a person with a passport of a real country among the Papuans.

"I am Mechanicus. The Machine God does not approve of silly jokes, deceived hopes, and senseless cruelty. Unlike others."

It seemed to Olga that Wakrufmann had put special emphasis on 'others', but she had no time to think it over. The first skull was already returning, the dead head dragging a kind of box, strangely similar to... yes, a gift wrapper.

"Surprise," Jennifer again painted a smile that surprisingly enlivened her glassy-metal face.

"What is it?" asked the patient as the skull put the box down on the palms of her hands.

Olga felt feverish and excited impatience. She had not been given any gifts for a very, very long time. I mean, gifts and favors had happened, for example, from associates in their hard work, but a special present for her... Mars doesn't cheat and doesn't joke, I think that's what the priestess said. Could there be a real new eye inside?

"Open it. I think you'll like it. By the way..." suddenly asked Wakrufmann, while the girl hurriedly rustled the wrapper. "Do you understand how visual prostheses work?"

"No."

In the box, on a rolled-up handkerchief, there was a strange thing that looked like glasses with one eyepiece. Like in 'Universal Soldier' with the handsome Belgian guy whose name Olga had completely forgotten.

"What is it?" The girl asked with curiosity, carefully taking out the object.

Jennifer took the glasses from her hands and put the device on the girl's head.

"A personal calibration needed. It will take six minutes and fifteen seconds. In your case, the main factor in the blindness was the cessation of retinal function. The retina is an organic sensory photomatrix that forms signals and transmits them to the brain. The sensory diameter of a single monochrome photoreceptor is averagely two-thousandths of a millimeter. Thus, approximately one hundred million matrix elements are involved in the active human visual field."

Jennifer tilted her head and looked at a confused Olga.

"Pixels. Got it?"

"Nope," the novice answered honestly.

"In the basic implant that you had, the active matrix consists of four million single elements."

"Four is less than a hundred," the girl suggested.

"Yes. Also, because of the higher response threshold, these elements need about one thousand one hundred and eighty times the amount of light for the organic optic nerve to perceive it as a signal. In other words, this matrix is practically useless in normal light. There is a solution, of course, and it consists in combining the elements in clusters of two thousand units, which bring the received signals to one nerve, connecting the matrix with the brain. This is analogous to five thousand single elements working instead of the average hundred million. In other words, the quality of the implant was twenty thousand times worse than before the injury."

Olga nodded in agreement. The mysterious 'pixels' and 'sensory matrices' were still incomprehensible entities, but the numbers were quite clear. So her living eye saw a hundred million dots, but the prosthetic eye saw five thousand. That difference explained the disgusting quality of the artificial vision and the headaches.

"For you, I developed a different solution, optimized for your problem and needs, taking into account the interfacing of the already installed element base. In fact, I used myself as the basis, but in your case, there is no possibility to place the computing units and energy cells inside your body, so I improvised. The part of the glasses that are placed in front of the damaged eye is essentially a light amplifier. It is controlled by a miniature cogitator, so as not to cause coagulation of nerve tissue proteins from overheating."

Very primitively, the device does not transmit the light flux to the matrix but forms such an image at the input that when it is perceived it will transmit the desired picture to the brain. The built-in battery is enough for eighteen standard hours of continuous work, but there are also adapters for typical power sources, including batteries of handheld laser weapons. And by pre-calculating, the light flux, the quality of your eye, in general, will only be reduced by a factor of three, and only twenty-three percent in the center of the field of view.

"And I will be able to see normally?"

Only in monochrome, but yes. Somewhat later, we will remove the prosthesis and replace it with a better model, which will be quite consistent with the original. But not all at once. I've also added datablock slots so that you can record an image and view the recordings. Just in case, let's set the ability to quickly lock the playback mode, so as not to be distracted unnecessarily while working. I set them for myself all the time.

"I don't think I want to review my... life..." Olga did not understand much from the priestess's detailed explanation, but the main thing she understood was that the amazing glasses would not replace her lost eye, but they would be better than a prosthesis, and they also had a recording function.

"Especially during work."

The shifting safety shutters on Jennifer's eyepieces gave a strange impression that the mechanicus was squinting.

"Who said anything about reviewing? Have you heard about "The Knights of Zuen World"?"

Here appears familiar to Olga tentacle. It slipped out of the folds of the cloak, a harmless segmented arm clutching something rectangular, matt, and translucent in its claws. The thing looked like a small keychain made of hardened resin, only instead of the usual insect, there were sparks of electronic parts frozen there.

"This is my favorite arc!" This time Jennifer spoke with genuine enthusiasm. If you closed your eyes and didn't see the mask that replaced the priestess' face, it was easy to imagine she was just a young woman with a strong accent.

"I recorded for you the first one hundred and thirty episodes!"

"Knights... Zuen?"

"It's a story about the Questors and the conflict with the Forge, located on a satellite of their planet. In the end, it ended in a war, and they sort of destroyed the Forge, but then when the techno-heretics came, the Questors' powers weren't enough, and it turned out that the Forge was actually... But you'd better watch yourself, it's very interesting!"

"Wait, wait!" Olga put her palm forward like a player taking a time-out. "What is this, a TV show?"

She was used to the fact that in a world of a bleak and brutal future, the pinnacle of public entertainment was radio plays like 'The Emperor's Chosen Warriors', 'The Commissioner's Life', 'Die or Fight', interspersed with production novels about melting a billion tons of steel and a "burning" plan to produce armored vehicles. All the conflicts were built around the confrontation between two specialists, one of whom just wanted good things and the other wanted even better things. In the finale, the conservative and the radical invariably united, smelted the metal, tightened the last nut themselves at the last minute, and solemnly escorted a batch of laser rifles, tanks, and so on to the abstract front.

And now Jennifer just hands her a gizmo that would pass for high-tech even by the standards of her native twenty-first century. And it comes with a flash drive with a real soap opera on it! A soap opera, damn it! This Mars is a sanctuary of progress and culture.

"Yes, the work is divided into separate series. There are several main plot lines, and there are love lines too, although they are not the main ones, and a lot of generic ones," Wackrufmann answered.

Olga laughed heartily and sincerely.

"Jennifer, how old are you?"

"In ninety-eight standard twenty-four hours it will be fifteen," replied the 'cog'. "Does the age of your interlocutor matter to you in any way?"

"No," Olga clutched tightly at the 'flash drive' with one hundred and thirty episodes of knights, adventures, love lines, and the mysterious 'jen'.

"Not at all..."

* * *