Shinie’s Ritual - Natalia Afanaseva

Nobody looked up once. It’s ok, these boys are strong enough to face it, and they’ll be grateful in the end.

“So, during the recess, I advise you to,” Professor gave a sly blink, “have a good rest! That’s one! (cries of approval and chuckling); not to lose the knowledge – that’s two! Think once again over your absolutely respectable opinion, yet from a different standpoint, got it? That’s it, see you in the fall.”

Boys and girls, now buzzing and bidding good-byes, began to leave the room, some singly, others in twos. Six of them – three boys and three girls – would never get see it again.

– 3 —

They stood near the edge of a huge plateau covered with dense vegetation. As far around as the eye could see, the ground billowed into hills and cliffs laden with lush greenery. A pit yawned right next to them. Raging hundreds of yards below was the jungle of Central Africa. Mountaineering equipment, clothes and tools lay at their feet.

“So what? That’s it?” they looked at each other in the eye once again. Each nodded silently. The unanimously appointed group leader walked up to the pile of ropes and tools and dealt it into the pit. After looking down to make sure that nothing had gotten caught on rock outcroppings, he turned to his mates.

“Now that’s it. Let’s go.”

The scenery opening before their eyes was completely wild even by African wild jungle standards. There were no predators, as, notwithstanding its enormity, the plateau was isolated, and so long as they had shed their equipment, they had burned their boats.

Instead, there were tons of stuff around they really wanted – cliffs and rocks, tall trees with smooth trunks and lianas hanging unreachably high.

And down they stepped into the mirage trembling over the torrid ground…

– 4 —

A small glassy helicopter hung over the raging green mass. It looked nice and fragile, resembling a soap bubble, which was about to go down, touch the green carpet and collapse.

However, nothing like that happened. A small scientific expedition crew landed safely on the plateau, where the group of six had gone centuries ago. It was a rather routine research, and if anything could add a touch of life to it, it was zero awareness of the area.

Now that the aerial survey was finished, all they had to do was get down, take soil and water samples, examine the slabs piled at the plateau’s highest point, which had caught the inspectors’ attention. Actually, they were located within the landing area.

Getting there proved unexpectedly difficult. Every following step threatened to trigger a rockslide, but finally, two men reached the black holes, which, most probably, led to deep caves. They looked inside and, not daring to climb down themselves, sent down a camera-carrying drone.

That was all so routine. Nobody was ready for what happened next.

All but knocking them over, a huge pale skin-winged creature shot out of the hole and settled itself on a nearby rock outcropping. It sat there blinking myopically at the humans and shading itself from sunlight with its membranous limbs. The copper crew was all eyes…

“It's…it‘s… a human!” the phrase slipped out from the pilot’s mouth.

“Whought?” the creature chirped, cocking its head questioningly. “Whought? Whought?”

Then, considering the inspectors too big to prey on, it bounced up heavily and flipped back down into the hole.

Superperson

– 1 —

The Superperson was going through its free phase in one of the cities of New Zealand. A significant amount of power still remained unused, so it could analyze the most recent changes in the control group’s behavior. It would take 3,78% of free resources, and that was a rare opportunity.

The Superperson’s separate elements performed their functions in the Philippines and in several European cities, but that was no hindrance for the already launched process. The world’s smartest machine was doing was what people referred to as ‘searching for an answer’.

The question was that the Superperson did not have the qualification to guide the control group’s behavior during the last 6 379,15 earthly days. The types of control group members’ behavior and categorization parameters had been specified by the machine’s creators. However, they had programmed the Superperson to be able to launch its own categorization process with an over 55% parametrical disparity with any of the behavior patterns.

By the time, the Superperson had accumulated set of 14*10Е6 incidents, and their parameters demonstrated an over 55% similarity between each other, and a more than 55% dissimilarity with her accumulated set.

In fact, it had defined and coded all categorization indicators. Now the Superperson was in for a much more complicated assignment – to evaluate destructive behavior according to the degree of hazard for the members of the control group.

The problem was that some of the indicators had estimates, which generated controversial conclusions. The revealed evaluation indicators would not let the machine categorize this type of behavior as ‘hazardous’, although they did not meet the criteria of ‘non-hazardous’ incidents either.

– 2 —

The Superperson once again aligned the non-standard indicators in the order of decreasing frequency rate. The first indicator was absence of motivation. None of the incidents had been motivated. The objects, which had showed behavior deviating from that defined by the standard program, had no reason to act as they actually did. That followed from the analysis of voice records.

Second, incidents were supposed to inflict consequences, which could not be regarded as the only possible ones and therefore could not be predicted. Man would call them “absurd”.

Third, the criminals did not seem to try to hide at all. The analysis of the controlled group members’ body movements, given the destructive act they had committed, had demonstrated perfect calm.

Had the Superperson obtained an ability to assign qualitative characteristics to its own condition, it would have referred to it as ‘in confusion’. Since a group of scientists and programmers had designed it in back the twenty-second century, and since the global system of supercontrol over offenses against person – the Superperson – had been accepted worldwide, it would not have reached its current parameters.

Capable of assembling its own physical body from nanograin containers, which were located at a decent distance from each other, so that it could arrive at the scene of destructive act within 27 seconds, the Superperson, connected to a full-range detection network, chose to accumulate more data.

As soon as the decision was made, i.e. after 4,45 seconds since the launch of the process, the Superperson once again tuned all its resources to signals coming in from the detection network. There it was: one of the signals was non-standard again. The Superperson directed 4,59% of its resources to the scene.

– 3 —

There were two of them standing face to face. One was checking the time and the other one was looking around worriedly.

“Where is the THING?”

“3, 2, 1… here we are.”

The Superperson materialized the nano-particles, which were contained in the nearest tank, and all but walked up to the two.

“Destructive act 3112—05—14789564 detected. Offence against person Category 2, Type 1, Code 3. Non-accomplice theft, minor loss.”

“Oh, come on”, the number-one objected with factitious resent, “No theft.”

“You don’t have anything against me, do you?” the number-two uttered with a snort.

“Nothing, Dr. Cooper.”

“Well, thank you for sharing your sandwich with me.”

“The analysis of your action shows signs of destructive behavior, Dr. Cooper Arc-ID-17895462879.”

“No, that’s wrong. Why should I steal – you mean I did it, don’t you?” Doctor did realize that the Superperson would not appreciate his irony, but he could not hold it.

“Affirmative, Cap,” his swashbuckling companion trumped. “Thank you for being alert, Sir… erm… Miss (there was hardly anything in the whole world that the doctor’s companion liked better than sneering)”.

“Charges of destructive behavior withdrawn, proceeding terminated for mutual denial”, the Superperson turned around and, followed by the “criminals’” choked-back laughter, started toward the nearest container. To an onlooker, it might appear that it walked heavily and was quite low-shouldered.

– 4 —

As soon as it collected a sufficient amount of resource in one place, the proceeding was resumed. It started with the question: is the offence against the Superperson an offence against a person?

An affirmative answer was received in 10,87 seconds.

In 14,35 seconds, the Superperson decided to categorize this type of destructive behavior as ‘highly hazardous’.

98,52 seconds later, the first member of the control group became the thirtieth-century’s first life-termer.

Strategic Mistake

That was an act Trent could not have expected from the rival. He pulled the collar of his uniform coat. The move seemed robotic, and the body was signaling fatigue and oxygen deficiency. However, his conscience kept ordering him to stay calm. In any case, a response action would follow in minutes.

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