«Let’s go», Mansour carefully took her hand and led her further down the side street. «You know, I have a somewhat unusual hobby. Perhaps, if I show my work to the Central Artificial Intelligence bureau I might get the white-and-gold bracelet, too. Maybe. I don’t know; because I don’t want to show it to anyone. But feel like I want to tell you about it».
«This is your secret, and you want to entrust it for me?» Margaret was surprised. «Please don’t do it! Although… wait… Go ahead! Tell me! I might then just have the reason today not to inject myself with a lethal dose of poison».
«Poison?» Mansour even jumped from surprise. «Why would you want to poison yourself? We live in a perfect world, and you have a white and gold level! That’s like the ultimate. Most people can only dream about it. I can’t even imagine what else one can dream about?»
«That is it, exactly – nothing to dream about!» Margaret stopped and looked closely into his eyes. Her eyes were thunderous. «You can’t even imagine how disgusting it is when there is nothing more to strive for, every day looks like yesterday, and tomorrow will be the same as today! I can no longer parachute after I had a fracture, and I have this white-gold level for life as injury compensation! So, I drive around different cities and streets like this one. Went all over the world. This city was the last one on my list. Everywhere – everything is the same. Here, at least, you and your secret. So what is it?»
«I wrote a book», Mansour shrugged.
«A book? Is that it?» Margaret resented. «…with the help of programs-editors any fool can do that».
«No, I wrote it without programs», Mansour hastily explained. «And in general, without gadgets».
«How’s that?» Margaret asked doubtable inquisitiveness.
«We’ve already come to the pond», Mansour said. «Let’s sit down. There are benches, and you can even see the sky from here. By the way, at this very crossing once there used to be a cafe named after you – «Margaret».
«This wreck?» with disdain Margaret looked at the ruins of a two-story building, incredibly preserved in the center of a huge metropolis.
«In photos of the beginning of the twenty-first century it looks much more sympathetic», Mansour pleaded. «However, it doesn’t matter. Let me tell you about the book. Once I learned that my great great great… anyway, my distant ancestor was a writer».
«So this little puddle is all that is left from the ancient Patriarchal ponds. It is a historical monument now precisely thanks to the most popular of his books. I became interested in plunging into that era and joined the reconstruction club. Artificial Intelligence even likes to mess with our club because we create requests for the production of unique objects. Imagine – it took AI several days to bring to life my proposal».
«Wow!» said Margaret. «I can’t even imagine what you might have wanted?»
«A ball pen and a pack of sheets of white paper», Mansour laughed.
«The AI even hung when it accepted a request to make such an irrational thing as a „ball pen“ – and eventually offered me a rapidograph. According to reviews from the twentieth century, the rapidograph is more pleasant to use, and now it turned out to be easier to produce».
Margaret’s merry laughter spread in the void over the pond’s dark water.
«So you hacked the system?» she couldn’t stop laughing. «Amazing! I met a man who managed to hang the AI system!»
