Kristeen woke up later than usual the next morning, but she wasn't rushing. She finally felt like exercising again. The familiar movements had their beneficial effect. It was no coincidence that the Church emphasized the importance of physical activity. Her thoughts, meanwhile, were jumping all over the place.

  “Judy! How was my check-in received? Any feedback?”

  “Both your check-in and your notes have been posted on the New-Humanity page. You’ve been given a section, with quite good reach. Meanwhile, Daan is seizing every opportunity to promote you and your current work. He emphasizes how brave you are for coming to the Zone, and how wonderful it is that you’re helping him. Of course, he’s also attacking the Bhicoog and the Truth Stamp. Overall, you have readers from every continent, and the feedback is very positive. It seems you’re famous again!”

  “It must be acknowledged, Daan is a really good marketer. It’s incredible how much energy he has.”

  Kristeen was satisfied. Even if not entirely for her own sake, she had managed to participate in something important, and apparently, she was doing it well. She decided that even though she didn't have to, she would still do a check-in today. "Because books are good!" she thought.

  “Anything else?”

  “The area is calm. At home, everything’s as usual. The biggest news is that another carrier has disappeared, this time in Asia. The AP and the Bhicoog have issued a statement on how they will compensate for the loss of the colonization spacecraft. Sveta was at a Killed Dolphins concert with Fred and her friends. The logs indicate they had a good time. Jonathan seems to be starting a family again.”

  Jonathan’s new life hit Kristeen in the stomach. She had thought a thousand times that she didn't want to be with him again; it had been good, it had been fine, the excitement had long faded, it was high time to move on. And yet… Was it that easy to replace him? On the other hand, why did she find it so hard to find a new partner? As if Jonathan was more suited for this, and she less. Though it could be the other way around.

  “I don’t think I want to hear any more about him. It’s not good for me,” she finally muttered to herself.

  Judy acknowledged it with a discreet green flash.

  “In books, everything was still different. ‘Till death do us part.’ Of course, there’s the other side: cheating, abandonment, abuse. A tangled web of lies and violence. This is better now. Everyone says so. Just a fixed-term contract. Predictable. Keeps you on your toes, you don’t let yourself go. At least in theory. But this whole thing hurts like hell. If only I knew what I wanted! I’m thirty-six. There’s time for anything. If this giant out here wasn’t so unreliable…”

  “Excuse me, but I don’t feel like getting dressed up that much, so I just put on their clothes right away. I’m going to find Brin! But I don’t think you’ll miss anything important,” she called out to Judy as she left the room.

  “Go for it!” Judy said, bidding her farewell.

  Brin was sitting at a low table in the hotel lobby, having breakfast. When he saw Kristeen, he gestured widely, inviting her to the table. Kristeen appreciated his cordiality.

  “Have you never wanted a family?” She asked Brin. “I can imagine you…”

  “M-m-m, I’m not dead yet,” he smiled back. “But you know, I’m not a reliable person. Your assistant probably told you. It’s hard to build on me. I have too many quirks. But if you’re up for a little sex, my door is always open, I won’t take it as being pushy. I’m really good at that.”

  “It might be worth a try. We’ll see. It’s a shame about this unreliability. Long-term is out. Though in a way, this might make things easier for me. Well, we’ll see.”

  “I’ll consider it, but don’t base your evenings on me,” she said, biting into her breakfast, then changed the subject. “So, were you a soldier then?”

  “An intelligence officer, scout. I used to monitor the news, read reports, and think a lot. We used to look for disturbances to prevent crises.”

  “I thought the Bhicoog did all this. And they also did it with machines, algorithms.”

  “You thought right. That’s one of the reasons I left. There is individual interest, as Australia’s secession shows, but it ultimately doesn’t divert humanity from its goal of conquering the universe. It seems that a strong, common enemy image is enough for cooperation, and Earth’s ecosystem is definitely such now. And the universe is indifferent, as always, we can only rely on ourselves. Sungsen makes us especially strong.”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “The awakened god…”

  “Yes. The idea of the grumpy, awakened god. Earth is a vengeful, hysterical deity from whom we must flee, and whom we should somehow pacify enough so that she doesn’t sweep us off her back. This is a state of war. Everything is based on this fear.”

  “Did you know that its name first appeared in a comic book? Later it had a dazzling career,” Kristeen no longer remembered if she had read the book or just looked it up once. But she seemed to recall an image of the planet changing from blue to red and throwing people off its back with its hands.

  “No, I didn’t know about the comic book thing. But I’m not surprised. Gods mostly climbed up from stories. Right now, he is our limiting god. “Bhicoog is doing a great job of keeping it in the public eye.”

  “Still, it’s hard to deny how much it contributes to our survival! If Daan’s plan is realized, it will be followed by more and more ruptures. Eventually, we will end up where we started. Small groups thinking short-term and competing with each other. Chaos and mass graves. We’ve been there before!”

  “A goal can be achieved in many ways. Now, most of our decisions are made by machines. We’ve become comfortable.”

  “Machines don’t decide!” Kristeen snapped.

  “Actually, they do. You won’t accept something that has a red stamp on it, and the reverse is also true. You accept it without thinking if it has a yellow one. That’s how we are. Your assistant told you I was unreliable, and you have accepted it. Even though you don’t even know me.”

  Kristeen was embarrassed.

  “But I can check why something is red, or why you are unreliable. And anyway, the Church, the scientists wouldn’t want to mislead us.”

  “But have you checked? Obviously not. Nobody checks. On the other hand, the Five Great ones have immense power. Why would they want us to see the truth? The scientists in the Church, the soldiers at the AP, and the others. We wake with them, we sleep with them. They determine where the entire humanity is going. They also determine your salary, your worth. They determine what it means to be human. They can do anything to you!”

  “Of course, but what would be the point of misleading? Why would they deceive?”

  “For power,” Brin answered between two bites. “But I think let’s leave this, it’s pointless to argue. Society is very complex. It’s close to a chaotic system, so it’s hard to prove who is right. I think power is too concentrated, and you think differently. In truth, we wouldn’t be able to decide, because neither you nor I have proof, and a repeatable experiment cannot be done. I think change is needed, and I think it can be done in a way that our goals remain common, and we don’t shatter again. But now let’s go to work.”

  Brin’s resigned calmness embarrassed Kristeen. She tried to understand the man, but she couldn’t. Like a point of light, you only see it when you watch it out of the corner of your eye, but if you look at it, it disappears.

  She watched his eyes. Deep, brown eyes, with slightly drooping eyelids making him seem constantly sleepy, but the tiny wrinkles around his eyes danced cheerfully. “Unreliable,” Kristeen murmured to herself.

  When they stepped out of the hotel, she had to squint; the sky was so clear blue, and the sun shone was shining so brightly. The scrawny trees breaking through the stones among the abandoned houses, nature’s advance, new life after destruction—there was something comforting about it. The certainty of transience and survival.

  In the library, out of curiosity, she started the book Daan had asked for, although she had already read it. It was a book about the future from 170 years ago. It was quite interesting. Then she thought about it and requested the digital version on the console. She started comparing them. The two texts matched for a long time, then in the digital version, there were minor differences in one of the chapters. Sentences and words were missing here and there. It didn’t seem like a big change, but it was undoubtedly a change. Her bad feeling from the morning returned. Uncertainty gripped her. She walked over to Brin, carrying the book. Brin was reading a thin book among large, spread-out maps.

  “Well?”

  “Missing, a lot of things are missing from the digital version!”

  “It happens. Show me?” Brin reached for the book. He read both versions, then flipped forward. Both were the same edition, yet the texts differed.

  “This is something I was talking about this morning. The digital world is unreliable if it’s in one hand. They can modify anything. The past, the present, the facts. Everything. I’d rather trust my own eyes, or not even that. Variety is tiring, but it trains the mind.”

  “I have felt so good until now!” Kristeen burst out. “Why are they doing this?”

  “I can’t answer that. The goal, it seems, is appropriate. Everyone accepts it, same as the path we are on. This isn’t a bad world. Yet, it seems something is wrong. And in such cases, it’s worth following the path of power or money. But since wealth doesn’t matter today, power remains. Control, shaping the future, and fearing for that control. We are in a soft, cozy prison.”

  “Maybe there’s no other way…”

  “There may be. Our civilization is currently mimicking the results of nature, of evolution. Because these visibly renew, and that has become the only important thing. But evolution has produced many things. For my part, I don’t want to be a worker or a drone in an ant colony. But not the queen either. Puppets kept in ignorance, mini robots. In human society, there must be equality, and an individual’s talent and will must determine their opportunities. But if they treat us like this, if they put chewed pulp in front of us, if they atrophy our brains, then they trip us before we even start. They make us stop thinking too. Erase our only evolutionary advantage. This can be fatal!”

  “That’s why you work for Daan.”

  “Yes, that’s why. Our dream is to be free. And not just us, but many others. We must do away with the stamp. We must do away with the tiny lies. We must face what we have done wrong. Things are fundamentally good, but this is lukewarm water, in which one can only die out. That’s why New-Humanity exists.”

  Kristeen thought about it, then looked at Brin and the maps.

  “This battle cannot be won with books and political statements.”

  “We’ll see,” Brin’s face darkened. “We’ll see how the other side reacts.”