A folded sheet and a crumpled bed sheet.
- How long have you been living among people?
- Long enough to understand some things. In general, I have lived on other planets, in other human races. Now here with you. Regarding parallel worlds - this is somewhat different from what is usually imagined. This concerns the Earth and the nearby region of space, which includes only a few stars. From more distant stars, from the stars of the ladle or dragon known to you, your region of space is seen as a dark nebula. In fact, it is a kind of crumpled part of space. Imagine taking a piece of fabric and crumpling it in one place. That would be an illustration. Such areas are not uncommon. Usually they show a sheet folded in half and pierced with a pencil. This is not about our case. In our anomalous region there are several dozen parallel spaces, each with its own solar system. They are like carbon copies. Both people and countries. There are differences, of course. Here is the card I showed you, from there. You can fly from one parallel world to another on an ordinary ship like this one. In centuries. But your devices won't show you where to fly. You can't see another Earth through a telescope. And the distances seem to allow it - you observe planets orbiting distant stars... We observed them until more pressing matters arose. In general, some kind of navigation is needed here. But you can fly out to distant stars of the same ladle with only the navigation you are accustomed to and know, your scientists. You know, like in fairy tales about some enchanted forest. And there are also planets around other, distant stars, and there are people there too. And there, of course, there is no Russia, no Soviet Union, no USA, no Reich. And if you suddenly think that I have seen dinosaurs, then this is not so - as a physical object, a black hole is one thing, but how intelligent life began to settle there is something completely different. I myself don't know how. And I wouldn't even know about black holes. But there are others like me who give some hints, albeit very implicitly and unobtrusively. There are people - they have science and everything else. I only mean normal science, and not these scientists in uniform who are engaged in the supernatural.
- After everything you have shown me, you criticize those who are engaged in the supernatural, as you called it, - Zavirdyaev chuckled nervously, - it looks a little funny.
- There is nothing contradictory in my attitude towards them. How can I treat them differently if they are all charlatans?
- All are charlatans or maybe not?
- Absolutely all. They have arranged a feeding trough for themselves, and live off of it. And they invented all this, all their non-existent science. An ordinary person, if you ask, will rarely allow himself to doubt that if not all, then some of this is justified. And this is not even alchemy - at least in their desire to get gold they came up with something useful and actually discovered something. It's a complete quagmire here.
Their psychics predict enemy missiles hitting. This makes me doubly irritated and I don't know whether to laugh or grab my head. Do you know why? I just... she grinned, I just can.
- You can feel that the enemy has launched something.
- Not much differently. I can know that something will fly in. There are some reservations here too. About time. Time travel is not possible, at least I've never heard or seen anything like that, but seeing, how can I put it... a little ahead of your nose - that's true. I mean in time.
- Black holes seem to be somehow specially connected with the topic of time, - said Zavirdyaev.
- Yes, yes, that's exactly the topic. But without a time machine.
- So you would have turned to our scientists, well, to those you just scolded, in uniform, and their activities would have acquired some kind of meaning. Or to ordinary "scientific" scientists. Or do you see them as a danger to yourself?
- There is no danger in them. But anyway... Why do I need them? Let them continue doing their crap. I'm talking about occultists. I sometimes engage in conversation with "scientific", as you said, scientists.
- You probably don't care about us. Right? You don't interfere with anything. Missiles fly, fall... This is the plan you told us about. War. And there were wars before that too. Okay, now everything is really complicated, but two hundred years ago. Why didn't anyone stab or shoot Hitler in his command center? Or even earlier, during the First World War. Although since that's the case, if you don't make anything out of these upheavals, then it's your right... Although I would have interfered.
- If I didn't care at all, I wouldn't be here with you, - Landskricht answered. As for you intervening... Something would have worked out, of course, but you yourself wouldn't have wanted to look at that "something" afterwards. It's always like that. On the scale of one human life, it is not so obvious, I mean after several decades, and then everything develops, and when you understand that it is your doing, then... as they say, "It is better not to meddle if everything works somehow without you." In the past, by the way, everything was also complicated. Well, now, of course, humanity has moved forward a little and some things have been added - for example, the Internet and AI, but this scheme has always been complicated and not like killing the main villain or bombing the headquarters, and everyone became good. When there were swastikas, they were there because there was a demand. Should everyone be convinced? Even now, AI and the Internet cannot do this, although now there are individual approaches and all that. And in the past... Hitler would have been killed, especially before he became himself - then a super-Hitler would have appeared to replace him. Someone less emotional, more calculating and healthy as an ox. Like the previous president of the USA, I will not compare Oppenheimer. He is not like that. - They compared it too, - Zavirdyaev chuckled, - and by the way, what about anti-American sentiments? As far as I understand, they, our bosses, proceed from the fact that they, these sentiments, will be able to be completely done away with?
- But they have already disappeared. Besides, if everything works out, then Oppenheimer or Harlington will become the last presidents of the USA in the form in which the country and the position exist now, and they know about it. But this formulation only sounds so threatening. They perceive it in a positive connotation, although if you said it in such words in the mass media, there would be an undesirable resonance. Such are the secrets of the American court. However, these are trifles.
- And what are you going to do? You are going to do something, aren't you?
- I am. This unkind Titanic, figuratively speaking, will also crash on the ice.
- And the people? Or you...
- Or what? - Landskricht answered, feigning irritation. - For them, on the contrary, it will be a deliverance. I am not literally going to cause a catastrophe, although in some sense there will be a catastrophe. Only a harmless one. An electromagnetic storm. The end of all Internet communications, or rather a temporary blockage. Then they will thaw. That should be enough for everything to work out.
- That means anarchy. You don't have to be a genius to guess that. And what will happen then? Where will you roll us? And the Asian nations? It would be better if this plan was implemented and the Titanic, which you didn't like so much, would sail to its right place.
Yes, yes. The floating prison will sail to the shore, and there they will round everyone up and force them to build a concentration camp. Great.
- Why do you describe everything like that? A prison, then they will build a concentration camp. If we compare it with past centuries, even the slum dwellers are not so bad. As far as I know, in the last century, those who lived in the Super Federation... in the Kuznetsk region, would have been delighted if, like in the slums, they had cables installed that would have given them practically free heating. I'm talking about how everything changed when thermonuclear reactors appeared. Not all people from the last century would have exchanged their homes for slums, but there would have been some, and from the century before that! I've seen various videos about those times. A person from the twentieth century, from the Soviet Union, if he found himself in the slums, would have exclaimed that communism had arrived, which they, in the twentieth century, dreamed of. Heating, hot water, decent work, I won't even mention the Internet. Well, yes, anxiety sometimes happens, but Conversion will solve this problem too. - What kind of communism is this? - Landskricht giggled, and the astronauts in white tight-butt spacesuits... On Mars... Where are they?
- What are you getting at?
- Unlike those pictures, the modern approach consists of the constant culling of some part of the population, citizens, call them what you will. And now - for Assembler we need so many, so to speak, in the inner circle and so many in the outer, service circle - farmers, seamstresses and others. The rest of you live like in the slums, and consume more you-know-what.
Then Assembler will build fleets of such ships - components for their reactors are already being manufactured. We are flying now, so you know, just on a truck with a combat missile launcher. And there is also a project for a normal military ship, or rather ships - it is not rational to build one at a time. This whole horde, I cannot say otherwise because these starships will also be nomads, the whole horde climbs to the Moon and Mars and all these Titans with ... what other satellites are there. They drag Assembler's machinery into space. In zero gravity, some technological processes generally work very well. Again, those who remained on Earth are being weeded out.
- But won't they need armies of workers there, - objected Zavirdyaev. - So they'll take everyone who wants to from Earth.
- Usually, when they take all the machinery into space, they don't need that many people. At least, not knowing all the details initially, they always imagine that, on the contrary, there are more. In fact, no. Just look at this ship. Functionally, it is a very deadly combat machine, almost like a naval cruiser, only it flies. And what kind of crew does it have? Well, it is designed for seven people, but that is for an expedition, in modern realities for long-term combat duty. But the two of us could handle a standard combat mission. Of course, we can handle a non-standard one too. But only two officers could really fly on this ship. No technicians on board, no loaders or shooters.
A very high-level technological process, of course, pulls along the chains of those that are simpler, but they can and should be sparsely populated. Another thing is when all this is just being built, starting with the construction of those lower levels. There really is a need for a lot of people from time to time. But they, these levels, have been built a long time ago. Starting from who knows how many centuries. At least since they learned how to make bolts and nuts. So, when everything is built, this entire iron palace of technology can be very sparsely populated.
If you purposefully develop planets, then everything there will not start with a peasant with a plow, so everything happens as I said. You don't need a lot of people. Are the AEX and GBA management rational? I have no doubt about it.
Now, if a landing force of people were to land on a habitable planet without anything, only with axes and shovels, then everything would have to be started from scratch - build primitive housing, domesticate cattle. Well, let it be there. We would have to go through everything, from the ancient order and knights to the industrial revolution and beyond. We also need fossils. This is just chatter, it has nothing to do with our case. Here is another point, that rationality can be different. There is just no single approach. The communists who wanted to pull everyone out of the deep darkness to one acceptable level were also rational in their own way. They just did not take human nature into account and fell face down in the mud. The second time they did not try very hard. What do I think and know about the second time? It was mostly a manual project of the West. The West was not averse to preserving the first Union.