There are days when you really don't want to wake up.
You slip out of the edge of drowsiness and realize: don't bother, pal, there's only pain, despair, nausea, and a mouth that feels like every cat in the neighborhood used it as a litter box.
That's about how I felt at that moment.
"The metrics have changed," cut through a woman's voice, like a scalpel on living flesh, and without anesthesia.
"Is that bad?" another woman's voice. Only, unlike the first, it was familiar. But where and when had I heard it?
"No, it's good, as far as I understand," the first lady answered. "Vital signs are normal, he's coming out of the coma."
"Finally," relief sounded in the second woman's voice. I felt someone holding my hand. "Mikhail, can you hear me?"
Oh, for crying out loud, woman! Why are you speaking with a jackhammer?
"I hear you," I knew it was my voice, but it sounded like it was coming from a couple of meters away. Like I'd shouted through a tube... A nice little trip. "Could you speak more quietly?"
"I can't make out anything," said the second woman. "He's wheezing, gurgling, sounds are incoherent..."
"These are probably the aftereffects of the double stroke he suffered," the first woman's voice sounded uncertain. "Apparently, the healing device couldn't repair all the damage to his brain..."
Great, just damn great... What the hell is going on‽
It took the effort of fifty Atlases to lift my eyelids. Oh, how I understand Gogol's character now... This is truly an impossible task, you need help.
But the eyelids lifted.
And immediately, just as the murky haze before my eyes began to take on human contours, a bright light hit my eyes. First one, then the other...
"The pupils react to light, the brain is functioning, he's conscious," reported a gray-orange veil as it receded. And immediately my eyelids became unbearably heavy. "I think he needs time to come around. From what I know, it's a miracle if he can even speak. We need to observe and prepare for any eventuality. Up to and including Mikhail's complete incapacitation. Most likely we're seeing a degradation of higher nervous functions..."
Alright... Not funny anymore.
A minute ago I was adjusting the Hippaforalkus's orbit, and now I've got strokes and the prospect of being a vegetable for the rest of my life?
What a fun landing in my favorite universe. I wish it on all my enemies. Do it three times a day, and your back will stop hurting!
"Can we do anything to help him?" asked the second woman.
"Unfortunately, I still don't know enough about these systems. I would suggest putting him in stasis until I have more knowledge. And Ihaar promised to find something suitable for this situation in Atlantis's database."
"Stasis..." the second woman seemed to taste the word. "All processes in his body would be stopped. That's good if there's a cure. But if there isn't?"
"There might not be one now," the first woman said, again with doubt. "But in a hundred years? In a thousand?"
Are you two out of your damn minds‽
What stasis‽ What thousand years‽
Here I am! Alive! Healthy! Something's wrong with my eyes and speech, but otherwise... I need to run from you before you heal me to death! Only... What's wrong with my body‽ Why can't I feel anything below my neck‽ What inhuman experiments are they performing on my brain‽
Something beeped with such a sound that I wanted to smash it with a baseball bat. It must be some device from the Konovalov Brothers company.
"What's happening?" the second woman worried.
"Increased brain activity!" the first answered. "Neuron bandwidth has increased. Nerve endings are transmitting signals from the brain to the limbs! His fingers twitched!"
Aha! I have fingers! So I have arms and legs, a torso, and what's most sacred for a man — a stomach!
Know our kind, Russians never give up!
"Why is this happening?"
"I don't know," the first woman said in a panic. "I... I think it could be convulsions, but the brain readings are confident, not random..."
I'll show you convulsions! Where's your throat, let me shake it, you neurosurgeon by targeted referral from some backwoods village medical station in the province of Buttsville! I'll teach you the Hippocratic Oath!
I don't know how, but I managed to open my eyes.
I began to feel my body again, and my ears kept catching some incoherent muttering, or maybe the breathing of an asthmatic...
"He's fully conscious!" the second woman declared triumphantly. "See, he's trying to sit up..."
Well, theoretically, after I rid this universe of one quack, I could sit down for a decade or two... Ah, they mean my physical efforts! Actually, I'm trying to roll onto my side because I feel like I'm lying on my back...
"Mikhail," a vaguely familiar scent hit my nostrils, and a perfectly clear human figure appeared before my gaze. "Everything's fine..."
Is the second woman stupid? Or does she take me for one? They want to toss me in a fridge as a vegetable! That's not fine at all! No, if I were a sweet pepper or a cucumber, then yes, the fridge would be the place... But...
"Please, calm down," the first one said with a hint of hysteria. "The brain must not be overloaded so heavily and all at once! Seventy percent activity! It's blocking his speech centers!"
"Seventy percent brain activity?" the second one seemed to be stunned. And I was a bit too. Isn't about ten percent active in humans? "Among lesser races it's no more than forty, rarely fifty... But he's Lantian! That's normal for him!"
"No, it's not normal!" the first one squeaked. "Lantians had sixty percent active, rarely sixty-five percent — those were their highest readings! I read about it in the database! This activity is dangerous... Seventy-three! It's rising..."
Oh, for Morgana's sake, play an organ on my grave, let me go, you demonesses! I'm not getting in the freezer! Just let me see who you are, I'll remember, I'll finish you off!
As if by magic, the murk before my eyes finally cleared, revealing sitting before me... Trebal.
Yes, not in her form-fitting uniform where regulations forbid, but in a gray Ermen one with polymer armor elements... But it was her.
And I don't remember a single moment when she was smiling or happy. But now...
"Mikhail!" she said, as if she understood I recognized her. "You need to calm down. We're on Atlantis. You were injured during the last operation, but the worst is over. Your brain isn't working the way it should. You can't overexert it, or you'll fall back into a coma and..."
Suddenly, I couldn't care less, and my left hand felt very cold. Turning my head, I saw some pretty girl in a white Ermen uniform. I think medics are supposed to wear those... but where are medics on Atlantis? And... What was in that pneumatic syringe she was holding? It can't be an empty ampoule just for show, can it?
And then came darkness.
* * *
"Readings are back to normal." I flung my eyes open, simultaneously squeezing them shut against the bright light hitting my lenses. What sadists, damn it?
Deciding to shield my eyes with my hand, I felt how heavy my head was... Very heavy...
"You're conscious," came a voice to my right. And again, that familiar, barely perceptible scent...
"Trebal," I said.
I thought there'd be more wheezing, but no! Quite articulate, even loud. The latter was very unfortunate — my head was splitting.
"It's me," the Aurora's senior officer sat down next to the cot and smiled. "You'll have headaches for a while — your brain needs time to recover from the increased activity you pulled five hours ago. We thought your mind would boil in your own cerebrospinal fluid..."
Oh my god... And I was hoping that was just a regular deathbed hallucination, one of those coma dreams.
But it seems it really happened...
"I almost died..."
"We noticed," she informed me. "You spent a week in a condition where even the healing emitter couldn't guarantee your survival. We thought it wouldn't help either — the damage to your brain and central nervous system was so extensive..."
Healing... Wait, damn it, are they talking about that device that repairs body damage‽ It can't be turned on for more than five minutes! Chaya warned that it would cook your brain! That it was only for high-ranking Lantians and...
And who am I physiologically? A Lantian. It's logical they used it. But I doubt they consulted Chaya.
So, where's Sar herself? I don't like everything that's going on around my humble person.
"How do you feel?" Trebal asked.
"You probably don't know what a hangover after a college binge is," I admitted, unable to find the right words.
"That sounds dangerous... As dangerous as you almost killing yourself! You performed nearly five hundred corrections!"
"There was an error in Ihaar's calculations," I remembered immediately. "The ship would have slowed down, but on an unstable orbit. The onboard computer calculated that in a couple of days, the Hippaforalkus would have crashed into the atmosphere. After the hundredth correction, I had to correct his algorithm and calculations..."
"In a couple of days, we would have fixed the maneuvering thrusters," Trebal said reproachfully. "At least a few. Or done it another way... But you stayed in contact with the ship's mental interface for too long. It almost killed you!"
"Probably," I agreed. "But it revealed a great truth to me."
"What?" Trebal was surprised.
"I figured out what to call a person who knows all the subtleties of the legendary Vdaizon hair product," looking at the girl, I saw mild panic on her face. It seemed she didn't understand the full importance of this discovery.
"And... what?" she asked cautiously.
"Ibuprofen."
Trebal blinked a couple of times, then nodded with a perfectly serious face.
"Okay, I'll ask for that to be recorded in the database," she muttered.
"That was a joke," I explained. "I just have a headache, so I remembered the name of a pill from my homeworld. They really help in this situation..."
"Ibuprofen is a medicine?"
"Sometimes it's the only thing standing between a person and suicide," I confided.
"What a... versatile medicine," Trebal muttered, clearly confused. "It understands hair products, is a subject of humor, helps with headaches, and prevents suicide..."
Um... I think I broke another Ancient.
My thoughts must have shown on my face, because the Ancient's thoughtful expression changed. As did her caring attitude.
Punching me in the shoulder, she smiled when I winced.
"Why didn't the stroke hit the part of your brain responsible for jokes like that?" she asked as if I knew the answer. "You need to get back on your feet as soon as possible, because Celise has run herself ragged looking for ways to cure you!"
Now it was my turn to be stunned.
"Have you all lost your minds?" I asked quietly, glancing at the pretty girl in white uniform who had entered the room. "She was ten years old!"
"Actually, twelve, almost thirteen," the pretty object of all doctor-related fetishes smiled at me. I don't remember seeing her among those I saw on board the Aurora. Though, I saw about a hundred people in passing, and there were three hundred of them! "But you can't tell now," she smiled shyly, shifting from foot to foot. "But Kirik still forbids me from going on dates..."
"Stop it," Trebal said, like a bucket of cold water, returning to her role as a bitch. "Composure! We talked about this!"
"Yes, sorry," the girl withered. "Sometimes I want to talk about so many things, I can't hold my tongue. Jinto will be surprised when he sees me... Mikhail, what's wrong with you?"
Now I know what the expression "his face lengthened in surprise" means. It, damn it, really does stretch!
I ran my eyes over the light brown hair with dark streaks, curled into wide, wavy locks like Trebal's. I noted the slightly freckled face, thin eyebrows, dark green eyes, the formed figure of a young woman of about twenty...
Her facial features had changed, yes, and she'd shot up in height, and her jacket was tight in front, but... This is, damn it, her! It is!
"Well, I'll be damned! Celise ?!"
Celise had grown up a bit.
The girl smiled charmingly and waved her hand at me:
"Hi," she said. "And it looks like I saved your life... Trebal!" horror appeared on her face. "His eyes! His eyes are rolling back!"
The light faded again.
* * *
The Atlantis mess hall was quite empty. Strange, considering it was noon... But, as it turned out, everyone had their own business. And lunch... Who needs it when you have those wonderful and incredibly nutritious food bars. You know the ones, that are somewhere between plasticine and crap. Turns out, they're a Lantian high-calorie delicacy.
The green porridge in front of me made an impression...
"Has anyone definitely not eaten this before me?" I asked Trebal, scooping up a bit of the substance on a spoon and carefully turning it over. Resembling a swampy jelly, the mass returned to the plate. And immediately restored its uniform consistency. Is that even legal ?
"This porridge contains the full set of vitamins and minerals Celise prescribed for you," Trebal reminded me. "So don't act like a child, just eat it."
I looked at the Aurora's senior officer, hoping my face showed the full range of emotions.
"Do you hear yourself?" I clarified. "You want to feed me seaweed porridge prescribed by a ten-year-old!"
"First, it's not seaweed, it's plankton," Trebal corrected me. "Second, Celise underwent the initiation procedure. Biological age no longer matters. Third — she's thirteen."
"Back home, we'd call that an accelerate," I explained. "And they wouldn't even give her a passport, despite her appearance!"
"I think back home, they'd be fighting over her," Trebal retorted. "After initiation, she not only became an improved version of herself, but also gained basic knowledge of Ancient medicine..."
Any desire to eat this slop completely disappeared.
"The only thing she'd achieve on our planet is that all her boyfriends would be sent away for eight years to places where the sun shines a little dimmer. Or the sheer fact of her existence would make pedophiles and gerontophiles clash with knives."
"Why would these two groups of people fight with cold steel over Celise?" Trebal didn't understand.
"They're not people, just humanoids," I clarified. "Biomass that hasn't found its reactor yet. But that's not even the point! Damn it, Trebal! The girl is thirteen! And she looks like she's twenty!"
"I don't see what's so surprising about that..."
"We were away for two weeks! Fourteen days! In that time, she aged seven years!"
"Technically — twelve... The biological age of her body is twenty-five years old, she has reached her body's biological peak..."
"She lost part of her life!"
Trebal closed her eyes, inhaled and exhaled, then looked at me again:
"Mikhail, this is a simple initiation of a lesser race representative. There's nothing dangerous about it. I and the Aurora crew members, and tens of hundreds of thousands of other people have gone through this. A simple change in human biochemistry to accelerate growth to predetermined parameters..."
"A simple change?" I repeated. "Then go explain to a child who thought Chaya was just teaching her sciences that she's possibly lived a quarter of her life in two weeks!"
Trebal deflated.
"It was underhanded of her to hide her true intentions, of course," the officer admitted. "But it's a standard procedure. Children of lesser races undergo genetic modifications that allow their bodies to grow faster, to better absorb colossal amounts of information that even Lantians couldn't assimilate in centuries of life through normal means! This method has been used for as long as I can remember. And thousands of years before that. According to rumor, it was invented back when the Ancients first came to the Milky Way..."
"It's wrong!"
"From your point of view, maybe," Trebal got angry. "I and others don't see anything wrong with it. This is the only way to absorb, in the shortest possible time, even a fraction of the wisdom and knowledge the Lantians possessed! You yourself wanted their knowledge!"
"And you said that loading the Atlantis database into your brain is extremely dangerous!"
"Yes, because the volume of information is simply enormous and cannot be simplified through the chair. The holographic room was used for growing Ancients to acquire the necessary knowledge base..."
"There you are!" a cheerful voice rang out. "And how does my first patient feel?"
Celise sat down next to us, holding a tray of fruit. Smiling from ear to ear and clearly pleased to have joined the circle of adults, the girl seemed oblivious to the problem...
But it existed!
And its name was — what absolute degenerate scumbags you are, Ancients!
Honestly, I thought I had nothing left to be surprised by when it came to the unscrupulousness of this race. Turns out I hadn't even touched the tip of the iceberg.
In the series and movies, when the plot concerned the Ancients, Ancient children were never shown. As if they never existed in nature. Understandably, if they weren't needed for the plot, there was no reason to show them... I thought.
In reality, it's much more sinister.
The Ancients did have children. They were born rarely, for some reason, but they were born. However, for the population to grow and develop, this was catastrophically insufficient. That's when the Ancients began to increase their numbers not by improving their demographic situation, but by incorporating, to their beloved themselves, the most developed human races. Which, in turn, they had seeded every galaxy they settled in since the Milky Way. That is, at least the Milky Way and Pegasus.
When the Ancients considered a race suitable for assimilation, they performed genetic intervention on their DNA. And this wasn't just about implanting the Ancient gene — that was only the first stage of the changes. Next came deep genetic restructuring — but only for children. Adults were not eligible for such a procedure, as their bodies were no longer suitable for it.
Because only a child's brain can rapidly change and memorize the vast amount of information the Ancients placed into young minds.
In the end, cheaply and efficiently, thousands of Ancient children were produced, who already looked like adult "men and women" who possessed knowledge surpassing everything their ancestors had by millions of times.
There were criteria for selecting a race for admission into the "Lesser Races" category, but Trebal didn't know them.
But she knew quite a lot about Chaya. And, from what she'd told them… Using a little stupid girl to leave at least someone in the city while she herself vanished in an unknown direction…
"What are you two so puffed up about?" Seliza asked, biting off some bread, looking in turn at me and Trebal. "Did something happen?"
"It's just that Mikhail doesn't want to eat plankton porridge," the senior officer explained.
"It's not plankton," Seliza declared. "Microorganisms, mostly from the marine environment, bacteria, single-celled organisms, protozoa… A couple species of crustaceans, mollusks…"
That muck became even more disgusting.
"In other words — plankton," Trebal summed up. "In the generalized sense, of course."
"Just her description turns my stomach," I admitted, trying to catch my breath somehow.
"In vain," the former girl worked her jaws. "These aren't just microorganisms I caught with a sieve at the bottom of the ocean. This is a specially cultivated biomass, more precisely, ten to fifteen varieties of it with beneficial properties. They'll help you recover faster, as they contain a lot of useful things and nothing harmful. Actually, I was planning to make more conventional types of medicine from it, like pills or mixtures, the way the Ermen do. But I haven't assembled the conveyor and bioreactor yet…"
A girl of thirteen looks like a young Miss World, and she's also lamenting that she couldn't assemble a closed-cycle pharmaceutical laboratory… God, where is this world heading, huh? Clearly into the abyss, but… Maybe sooner rather than later?
"How are you feeling?" I asked.
The young wo… the girl thoughtfully crunched on something that looked like leek, clearly pondering my words.
"Strange," she answered at the very moment my patience was starting to run out. "Just recently I felt like playing with dolls and wrapping myself in Kirik's jacket, waiting for you to come back…"
"And now?" I clarified.
"And now I'm thinking about how good it is that I figured out the medical equipment in Atlantis," she smiled. "Can you imagine, one of the technicians, while fixing the wiring, broke his arm. I healed it in half an hour," she wiggled her eyebrows. "Half an hour."
"She understood," I glanced from under my brow at Trebal.
"Yes," the latter replied. "Usually it takes forty-five minutes."
No, she didn't understand.
"Seliza, would you leave us?" I addressed the young wo… the girl. "Officer Trebal and I need to talk privately."
"Yes, of course," Kirik's ward smiled and fluttered away. "I'll have a snack in the infirmary. I'll also check on the recovery of the two crew members thawed from stasis."
After she left, Trebal explained:
"While you were lying in a coma for two days, Alvar managed to find common ground with the Wraith and delivered him a group of Genii from Ermen. We were able to bring two more crew members back to life."
"And how many did he devour this time?"
"A dozen."
"And he only resurrected two?"
"He needed a lot of energy to restore his own broken limbs and ribs," Trebal explained. "He… wasn't too eager to make contact with Alvar. And I considered it a great stupidity to keep prisoners who attacked our mine."
"Greater than trusting a thirteen-year-old to heal people?"
"Mikhail, I already explained…"
"Damn it, Trebal!" I exploded. "She's just a child! She should be playing with dolls, walking with boys under the moon, worrying about pimples and all the other horrible things in a teenager's life, not all this!"
"And what do you suggest I do?" the senior officer replied with pressure. "Ihaar is busy repairing the battleship, his people are restoring Atlantis, the Athosians are gathering food for us, digging mines, quarrying flint, and doing all the other grunt work! People get injured, fall ill… And here we have a fully qualified medic who knows her job better than any of us, if she decides to study that science!"
"She's a child!"
"She already," Trebal emphasized the word with undisguised irritation, "is not a child. And she became that way thanks to your precious Sar! I don't know what your hang-up is about children, but if you want to take it out on someone, go find your precious one! I tried, but she's not on Proculus! And I'm not going to waste Atlantis's limited resources searching for a crazy scientist who even death would be too good for, to answer for what she's done in the past!"
Jumping up, the officer knocked over the chair she'd been sitting on.
"Trebal," I caught the girl by the arm. "I'm not blaming you, but… I agree our resources are finite, however… Using children…"
"Don't lecture me about that," she pulled her limb out of my grip. "Though, I don't understand why you're making such a tragedy over this, when the project you proposed is hardly different from what she did to Seliza. You should sort yourself out, telling one thing — that you're ready to fight by any means necessary — and preaching about some kind of morality to others. Oh, and by the way," the girl reached into her pocket and placed a small crystal on the table. "As a farewell, Sar left you some recommendations regarding your brainchild project 'Spartan.' I think it's important."
Without another word, Trebal left the dining hall.
And I… I don't even know what could drown out the "aftertaste" of a conversation like that. I need time so we can talk about everything without emotions.
Picking up the crystal, I turned it between my fingers. I need to be smarter when planning things like this. Even theoretically.
My conclusions have already led to conflict with my own assistants for the second time. This isn't the right universe, it's not… Though, double standards are the lesser of evils.
"Awkward," I said, pocketing the crystal.
And then I started eating the plankton. But even its disgusting taste was nothing compared to what was going on in my soul.
As it turned out, even the bitchy Ancients aren't that different from Earth women.
"Control point," I activated my radio. "I'll need a jumper."
"Understood, Mikhail," the emotionless voice of one of the Ancients replied. "By what time should it be prepared?"
"And how long does it take to drown out self-loathing with plankton?" I asked the invisible representative of a more advanced branch of humanity.
The silence seemed deafening. Well, at least even the Ancients don't know the answer to that question…
"Forty-seven seconds," came the reply. "Your ship will be ready in a minute, Mikhail."
They're infuriating…