Babylon. Unfinished. Урса Минор

Nigel said. "You have to take the stairs down."

      Baby turned around and took the stairs.

      Starship

      The big gray starship was lying in the wreckage of the dome on the traffic area, half-way along the concrete track, almost completely blocking use of the track along its entire length. The giant ball of Jupiter was floating in the open black sky, surrounded by birds doomed to death. Also, at the crash site there were a smashed flyer and people lying around.

      Baby's other family had appeared as a black dust right before the shell of starship cracked.

      "Don't move," the dust said. "You'll survive."

      Baby froze up.

      There was a dull noise, the shell of ship shuddered and many fine interconnected openings snapped on the lateral surface of it. Few people around the wreckage rushed in different directions.

      "Run," Nigel said.

      "Don't," the dust protested. "There's no safe place for you here, not anymore."

      Baby swallowed and stayed still.

      The edges of the openings collapsed inwards, the nearest ship cracked silently in the airless space of the shattered dome and broke apart. Its parts started to move, grow pseudopods and crawl in all directions. Then the second ship broke apart.

      For a while, Baby watched in fascination as this river of machinery spilled over around by her, and then someone turned off the sun.

      Night

      A night on Ganymede isn't much fun. Without the artificial sun, cities become dark and echoing, not like cities at all, they are lost among large glaciers and icefields of Outer Lands.

       Jupiter continues to float in the space high above the ground, but it only bathes everything in the dim pale light, and Outer Lands stretch across the surface of entire Ganymede – formidable and fearsome for human.

      The city, however, was more formidable and more fearsome now: dark, silent, airless and full of lurking beings.

      "Nigel?" Baby whispered.

      "Still here," Nigel said.

      "Is home okay?"

      "It's still intact," Nigel said. "But there is no air there."

      "What am I supposed to do?"

      Nigel made an unintelligible sound.

      "Are you asking with a view to make opposite?"

      "I'm a little girl, not a monster."

      Nigel made an unintelligible sound once more.

      "You are supposed to assist," Baby whispered.

      Nigel was quiet for a while.

      "I don't have any rules about this emergency stuff," he said finally. "I can't get in touch with your parents, but there supposed to be adults around here somewhere. Do you want to find them?"

      Baby blinked.

      "Yes."

      "Don't mind if it will be military?"

      Baby blinked.

      "Do you mean yes?"

      "Yes."

      Baby heard the rustling of static, and then low voices appeared:

      "Coordinates of impact…"

      "Colonel, we've located the position of both things…"

      "A similar thing had attacked the bulb above the dome and went to the other side."

      Nigel cut in:

      "Good morning, gentlemen officers. I have a child here."

      "Who are you? Where is here?"

      "VDass. My name is Nigel. Our location matches coordinates of impact site… Oh, no!.."

      The rest of the nearest alien ship moved slightly, transformed into a giant gray millipede and rushed to Baby.

      "Run!" Nigel said.

      "Run!" the black dust agreed.

      And Baby took off running.

      Huh…

      If you think a little child can outrun a train, you are wrong. The legs of little child are short, the mechanics of its body moving are short, its energy reserves and accessible energy sources are short, too.

      Baby hasn't gone twenty meters, when she'd tripped over a piece of flyer wreckage and fell down. And maybe that is what saved her life: the millipede missed her helmet by a hair. The metal monster whizzed upon Baby, and fine black dust swirled through the narrow space. Ten seconds passed in complete silence.

      "Cool," finally Nigel said.

      Baby clenched her jaws.

      "You are supposed to assist", she said while looking over her shoulder at creature speeding away.

      "I'm only in your chip," Nigel said. "In fact, I'm only in your head. I have quick access to databases, but it's all I have. Oops… I haven't: there's no more net here…"

      The wreckage of second alien ship, meanwhile, started to transform, too. Baby turned around and quickly wormed her way in a crashed flyer through its window.

      "What are you talking about?"

      "I mean there's not much I can do without net. Sorry," Nigel said.

      Part 2. Consciousness

      I think we all exist at least as much as time itself exists. Perhaps, eternally. Consciousness 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