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obstacles.

To win a popular girl, accustomed to all the very finest compliments and tired of constant attention, you had to fight really hard. You always had to fight for love. Everything was complicated.

But then girls fell in love easily too and suffered over some absolute jerk.

“Bikie, listen,” he said, breaking the silence. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about, I’ve got this dilemma. I need your outsider’s point of view. Only, please, without your usual gibes.”

“So talk.”

“From the age of ten I lived side by side with my stepfather’s daughter. We basically

thought of each other as brother and sister, and at the same time we were good friends. But now I’m starting to realize that she’s becoming more than that to mean that bothers me. What do you think?” Isaac paused, but then went on. “How does it look to you from the outside?”

“It looks okay to me…” not a single muscle twitched in Bikie’s face. “I wouldn’t bother about it. What’s could possibly be wrong? You’re not related.”

“We’re not, but it’s still not exactly the right situation for starting an affair.”

“Isaac, you shouldn’t get all hot and bothered over it. If you like her, I don’t see any reason why you should not woo and date her. Only I don’t know how she’d feel about that.”

“I don’t know how she’d feel about it either. I just wanted to get clear for myself how weird it is.”

“You know, Isaac, we have enough real obstacles in this life. There’s no point in

inventing more. If you love her, then love her. I’ve never really fallen in love in my life, so my relations with women aren’t clouded by prejudices and fears. And believe me, lots of girls like guys who are direct and know what they want, without clouding the issue pointlessly. Although, of course, you have to be aware of the subtle line between directness and coarseness.”

Isaac looked so gloomy that Bikie decided not to press him anymore and looked out of

the window at the colorful patches on the fields. But those colors didn’t arouse the slightest romantic impulse in him.

Great progress in agriculture was another achievement of Einsteiner’s work. “The energy of each person for the good of humankind” – as Collective Mind put it in its promotional material.

All the existing knowledge about agriculture, from the moment the primordial man first

began working the land right up to the present time, had been systematized and integrated. A

bundle of ideas from biological sciences, soil science, meteorology, astronomy, chemistry and God knows what else had been pooled together. And the result was that Collective Mind could indicate precisely what to plant where in order to produce the largest harvest of the most delicious fruit per acre of land. Even the demand and supply on the market was taken into account.

The technologies cost megabucks, and the first year saw a wave of protests from farmers, but then everything quietened down. The correct use of the land produced such large harvests that, despite a general reduction in the price of agricultural products and the high cost of patents, farmers still made good profits.

Futuristic miracle-machines of gleaming metal worked in the fields. As a matter of fact, if something looks like it’s arrived out of the future; it means the future is already here. The freakish combine harvesters with dozens of robotic arms droned as they harvested and processed.

Up on the hills wind generators spun their curved blades soundlessly, with five propellers on each. Hothouses with solar-battery roofs shimmered opaquely in bright light, like iridescent patches of petrol on water.

The contents of supermarket shelves changed instantly. From then on no one used GMO

technologies; they’d been outdated by the arrival of new methods for growing organic produce.

Fertilizers stopped being harmful to people and animals, their quality improved and they became more effective.

In general the environment had benefitted a lot. Chemical barriers and filters, waste

disposal systems, technologies that reduced fuel consumption, high-power hydrogen and solar energy motors – these were all technologies that could not have been implemented without some powerful impulse. The world had definitely improved with the arrival of OE and taken an innovative leap forward.

Bikie was the one who hated the new order of things. This sweet, utopian world of

smiling people had become too sterile to be regarded as real. It was more like a world of obedient, squeaky-clean robots. An advanced computer game.

Pleasant-looking, identical, nine-story buildings of a residential district flickered past the window. . The little town looked lovely. It was a Happy Ghetto. Actually these settlements were called Happy Cities, but Bikie’s name for them was ghettoes.

At the Agency they hadn’t immediately realized that by downloading energy from low

level individuals they would run into the problem of homeless Happies that no one would look after. Those whose payment wasn’t enough for a long, normal life in a boarding house or who lost the money they were given proved incapable of adapting to the outside world. To give the Agency its due, it didn’t just cut these people adrift. A limit was quickly introduced, specifying a minimal level of creativity before downloading, and the downloaders were required to get insurance contracts for lifelong support, or at least have a guardian who had to obtain a license from the Agency. The homeless Happies were gathered together and housed in specially built residential districts. Of course, these weren’t holiday resorts by any means, the apartments were small with no frills, but even so they were quite adequate for the undemanding new residents. In any event, they didn’t complain. Before moving to Peter’s place, Bikie had lived in far more modest conditions, even in Monaco. These little towns were built quickly, on inexpensive land, and dubbed Happy Cities. They had a pretty good infrastructure: sports grounds, parks and cinemas, even leisure and entertainment centers. The Agency chose jobs for the Happy residents, often building some factory nearby. The problem was solved and no more homeless Happies appeared.

The settlement and its residents were left behind. “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions,” Bikie recalled.

“Listen, Isaac,” said Bikie, surfacing from his reverie. “Do you think Link will agree to stop all this? If we destroy the system, we have to offer something to replace it. If you think about it seriously, for most people we’re just ordinary terrorists, and death is too good for us.

Wars and epidemics will start up again; lots of people will lose their chance in life. There’ll be an economic collapse and chaos like the world has never seen before.”

“Ah, but we won’t destroy what has already been achieved. We’ll just slow the world

down a bit and reduce the speed of evolution. I’m not saying that Einsteiner is all harm and nothing else.”

“There are so many benefits, I sometimes have doubts myself. Criticizing is one thing,

smashing is a different matter altogether.”

“The distance between Collective Mind and the other corporations and governments is

growing so frantically fast, we’ll have a dictatorship before you know what’s hit you.”

“That’s just theory, but there’s concrete, positive, practical achievement there outside the window. How many of these people will end up in the street? Die on drugs? Wars, starvation, will start again. Sometimes I think we picked the goal out of anger for being losers, - Bikie looked upset. – What if people finally created paradise on the earth? Well, they are stupid, they really are. But so what? As if in the nineteenth century everyone was smart. Veggies have no creativity, but they can feel joy – they watch movies, fuck, see no evil, obey the scripture. What if this is just the future that has come too fast? What is the future you want? What if Einsteiner saved us from nuclear war, terrorist attacks that never happened, God knows what else? Lots of folks might not have been alive by now, but they are! Don’t you tell me that it’s better to be a dead smart guy than an alive Veggie. As for me, I don’t mind a fuss, I’m following you, and I’m really interested to reach the goal. But you, where the hell are you going? Well, there’s theoretical danger, indeed. This way you can accuse the creators of the Internet that the terrorists use it to exchange information or fuckers store child-porn there. Or the creators of cell-phones can be blamed that their gismo can be used as detonators. One can find potential threat in every goddamn invention! Actually speaking, this artificial intellect that Link invented is the safest possible. This machine doesn’t work without man, doesn’t make any decisions on its own.”

“We’ll find Link and then figure it out.” Isaac was still absorbed in his own thoughts.

The train arrived at St. Pancras Station in London.

They both got out of the carriage with its long, streamlined nose that reminded Isaac of his mother’s flat iron, while Bikie thought it looked like a red-and-yellow Japanese dragon.

After they went up in the lift, their eyes were met by a huge, bright dome of glass and iron set on walls of red brick with archways and plastered columns. Beautiful, raw neo-Gothic architecture.

“Bikie, did you know that this place has the longest champagne bar in Europe?”

“I don’t know what you’re hinting at, girlie. Let’s just have a coffee from the machine.”

The machine poured them coffee in cups that had a new stag printed on them: “2. soluble plastic”: in two years there wouldn’t be a trace left of those plastic cups. They each bought a sandwich from the next vending machine and sat down under a sculpture called “Meeting Point”.

Passengers walking by seemed not to see a high sculpture of an embracing young couple,

frozen in cast metal.

Not far away was another sculpture, a bit smaller: a respectable-looking man gazing up so intently at the dome that he had to hold on to his hat to stop it from falling off. It was Sir John Betjeman, a poet who adored railways and had been feverishly active in the middle of the last century in the campaign against dismantling the platform of this station. “Look at him, an example of a man who grabbed tight hold of the past in good time. A good sign.”

From the station they went to the University campus, which was a forty-minute drive

from London. The University was now named after Jeremy Link.

The genial Hindu taxi driver asked if this was their first time in London.

“Yes, we’ve come to repair our karma,” Bikie informed him.

The Indian gave a broad smile and said that you didn’t repair karma, you restored it.

“My name’s Rashid. Would you like me to explain what karma is and how it influences a

person’s life?”

Bikie nodded. Rather than travel in silence, he could listen to something interesting, and not just from a journalist, but from a real Hindu.

Isaac didn’t listen; he was again caught up in his thoughts about the ups and downs of

love.

“Thanks Rashid, that was interesting.” Unlike Isaac, Bikie had spent the entire journey discussing and arguing about his karma with the driver. “When we go back, I’ll call you and you can pick us up. Did you get that, Isaac? If you spat in someone’s face in a past life, it may hit you in this one!”

“What?” Isaac had missed the conversation and he didn’t understand a thing.

“Look at you! What a blockhead with leaky karma you are! You’ve got two holes, in your

left ear and your right one. It all flew in one and out the other. You missed everything!” Bikie explained disappointedly. “All that interesting stuff you were just told and you didn’t pick up a thing.”

“Sorry, I wasn’t in the mood for listening. And I do know what karma is.”

“In your case that’s as much use as a straw hat against a meteor shower,” Bikie replied acidly. “I’m not going to repeat it all. Listen to me next time, and I’ll swap your karmic sombrero for a decent anti-tank helmet!”

“It’s a deal,” Isaac said with a smile. “But can I have an anti-Bikie helmet?”

“There you go. You’ve just made another hole in it!” Bikie exclaimed indignantly. “What you’ve got isn’t karma, it’s a colander. And your head hasn’t got cerebral convolutions in it, just spaghetti.”

“I hope it’s Italian, at least.”

“Yeah, Italian, hard-shell noodle.”

Isaac and Bikie walked up to the library building. They wanted to look inside – it must be really beautiful! It was centuries old and the collection of books had to be huge. All universities unofficially competed with each other to have the best library. Another depository of the ideas and thoughts of great people, only not computerized. If the Agency could have found a way to augment its capacity not by using people, but the books they had written, what immense power that would have been! The book-learning machine! Though there was nothing good about

artificial intelligence either. All the films on that subject inevitably ended with a computer declaring war against mankind.

The University was beautiful and it had a certain aroma of aristocratic dignity. Neatly trimmed lawns on all sides, with students on them, discussing something or other: some sitting there, reading textbooks, some lying on the grass and fiddling with their laptops. A scene from a fairytale. And lots of attractive girls.

“I’d come here as a lecturer,” said Bikie, impressed by two young girls who had just

walked by.

“And what would you teach? Rebellion and rock-n-roll?”

“Libertarianism and freethinking. Epicureanism, as well.”

“This is a mixed University. You ought to go straight to one with just women to do your lecturing. Although you’re more interested in the practical classes aren’t you?”

“Screw you. If you envy my high-flying fantasy just say so. You’ll never reach such

heights with that spaghetti of yours.”

“Do I understand right that you won’t take me as a lab assistant in your department?”

“In my department I conduct all the lab work in person,” Bikie declared solemnly,

adjusting his jeans lewdly. “But we’ll find a sweet little fat girl for you.”