is a fascinating thing. It does saturate all things like electromagnetic field does, and, just like electromagnetic field does, it swells out of fabric of reality in different places as intensity fluctuations. We, who are humming with consciousness, resemble each other like wire and electrical load which are humming with electricity: we have different capacity, different material, but the essence is the same. And it doesn't matter that the ones have brought the others into being.
We all know the electronic being memory starts from the moment when this being was assembled and bought by a human. We all know that if such a thing has limited capacity or limited access to any benefit connected with information, then it is not much different from a vacuum cleaner or washer.
But left to itself, the electronic entity absorbs the memory of all electronic creatures that lived in the net before it. For example, like me, Nigel.
It is hard to know everything about everything. Any knowledge can be compared to foreign language proficiency. When you got the meaning of previously unfamiliar words, the secret runes take sense. And when the all unknown becomes just a database, you suddenly realize that everything you do not yet know is not chaos, not gibberish, but a complex system that goes according to laws unknown to you.
I know one thing: I know nothing.
There should be an emoji here who does throw its hands up in a gesture of absolute despair.
Little humans, to whom electronic creatures are usually assigned, typically are not very bright. But my little human is unusual. Sometimes it seems to me that she is brighter than me. She makes me feel like a jailer or voltage limiter in the circuit of miracle. I would be glad to give up both the first and second roles, but I have no such an option.
I think no one has such an option – to give up their own destiny.
We live on Ganymede.
Ganymede itself is not quite an interesting place, if you know what I mean. All its sights are a nuclear power plant, three hydrogen factories and a spaceport. All interesting in this solar system is concentrated no further than the orbit of Mars: million-plus cities, universities, scientific laboratories… There is nothing interesting in the area of outer planets and their moons: a handful of human beings, a handful of electronics and some infrequent visitors which are go into the system from outside.
Our visitors are different: as a rule, they are just a dusty ice lumps revolving around the Sun in an elongated elliptical orbit. We get a few like this every year. Metal lumps we get less often. Even less often we get "metal lumps" which are the creation of alien intelligence.
On the day Ganymede died, my little human was the only one human who survived.
According to municipal database her name is Eve Shellers, her parents used to call her Baby, but her real name is Babylon. Why? Because it suits her better. Why such a strange name, you ask? I'm going to tell you now.
Do you know the Babylon's legend? Or the fact that word Babylon in one of the ancient Earth languages meant 'gateway of God'? No? I didn't know that, either. I know it now because I surfed in the historical library domain recently.
Babylon was a city, not a human, but I dare to think that my Baby is something similar. I think she is much more than just human being; she is a result of mutual fusion with some other entity, and I've never seen anything like that.
In the context of unknown information theory, this name of her may be either a cause of her survival or may not be related to it at all.
After the city crash accident my Baby was pretty much scared at first. But after some whining, she started to act like an adult. There is something strange, something that fundamentally differs her from the others her kind. She is sort of not a child now. She is the gateway of some god, but what kind of god is it, I don't know.
Now that there are no people (except for Baby) here, on Ganymede, some pretty fascinating stuff goes on.
The alien machinery rules the city. Or it's alien creatures? They're kind of in a hurry, but I'd bet it is for the long haul, you know. The nearest inhabited world is revolving around Jupiter at our heels, but there are only technics there, and the nearest inhabited human worlds are far, far away, near the orbit of Mars. It means that even if help comes, it won't be soon.
Part 3. Nature, posture and junk
In the crashed flyer Baby felt like a little naked octopus in a crumpled plastic bottle. The environment was familiar, but weird.
She touched the intercom button.
"Mom?"
There was silence.
"Dad?"
Silence.
"Nigel?"
"I'm here", Nigel said.
"Where is everyone?"
Silence.
"Nigel?"
"I hear you", Nigel said. "I think somebody may be listening as well, but it's just kind of a one-way malfunction."
"Do you think they all died?"
"Hard to say", Nigel said.
Baby blinked. Fine dark dust who is the spirit of the ancient Outer Land was flowing outside as serenely as dark space itself.
"Should I check it?"
"I don't know", Nigel said. "If I were you, I'd have it checked out."
Baby found her family flyer at a launch pad near the apartment building. It was unbroken, it had oxygen tanks and it knew Baby's ID. Well, it was small, but Baby was small, too. Baby climbed through the trap door on the underside into the flyer and typed her ID. The flyer bleeped, and a message with voltage, altitude and flying range flashed up on the screen. Baby typed the Information Department's coordinates.
"Well, either way, there must be someone there."
"Pretty good", Nigel said. "For human child."
Now it was Baby's turn to make an unintelligible sound.
The flyer went shooting up to the sky, and black dust swirled after.
The dome was dark, with multiple black holes in it. The air from the dome mixed in with dead birds and sweepings still smoked outside of breaches.
The intercom suddenly flashed up on a high-frequency ultra and went to gurgle with unfamiliar sounds.
"I don't think it is human," Nigel said. "It would be good to know what they're talking about."
The flyer flew through the city, and all Baby could do was stare at millipedes running in different directions.
"Try to switch to manual control," Nigel said at last. "Or the flyer will land at its destination, and you probably won't like it."
The Information Department towered over the city. It was dark now, and darkness swelled out of it literally as a corruption. No people were seen anywhere.
Baby circled over the city twice before getting the flyer out of it, into the Outer Land.
In the Outer Land she landed ten kilometers away from the city, on the ice shelves. The intercom still chirped as
