Controlled Paradise

Chapter 3: Do Not Fall in Love with Technology

The woman who had designed half of this world was not looking at anything useful right now.

Across the lawn, a holographic dragon was fleeing — golden, the size of a dog, one of those Oreon drew for children in public zones. A boy of about four chased after it, shrieking with happiness, tripped over his own foot, and fell. The dragon, programmed for kindness, stopped and waited. From behind a tree the mother was already running — scooped him up, pressed him close, kissed the crown of his head, and the world was saved in two seconds.

Olena Voronina looked at this. Longer than necessary.

She held her coffee with both hands, though the morning was warm. She had taken off her lenses — they lay in the pocket of her silver lab coat, where the blue schematics she had once drawn by hand glowed quietly. Without the lenses, the world became blurred at the edges. Olena liked that — the only place in twenty years where she allowed herself to see indistinctly.

Her hand lowered to her stomach on its own. Rested there. With an open palm, for a moment, as if warming something there.

Olena noticed it and removed her hand. Quickly. The way one forbids oneself. The way one jerks fingers away from something that must not be touched, because touch it once — and you will no longer stop thinking.

She was fifty-two. Her body had once known how this was done. It was just that the years had passed by, occupied with something more important, until one day the more important had eaten everything, and the body had quietly stopped knowing.

Behind her, on a projection the size of a facade, Vance was smiling. She did not see him — he was behind her. But she heard him. Everyone heard him, always, everywhere.

— …where the future of our children is born, — Vance was saying in that honeyed tone that had set her teeth on edge for twenty years.

Olena turned over her shoulder. On the projection — a golden portal glowing softly upward, against all gravity; smiling couples in a snow-white medical center; infants wrapped in safety and state care. An advertisement. The best advertisement in the world for the best future in the world.

Olena's eyes cooled by half a tone.

— You even learned how to sell children beautifully, — she said quietly. To herself. Not to Vance — Vance was not worth a full sentence.

In the removed lenses, something quietly appeared and lit up:

STRESS ↑ / PULSE ↑ / BREATHING EXERCISE RECOMMENDED

Olena passed her hand over the pocket. Not roughly. Habitually. The way one turns off the light in a room where one has lived all one's life and no longer looks for the switch. The recommendation went out.

He always knew when she was in pain. He simply did not know that there was nothing one could do with that knowledge — and still offered a breathing exercise. A machine that sees a wound and sincerely believes that steady breathing helps a wound.

— Excuse me…

Two young men stopped before the bench. Student age, clean, with those ideal faces of a generation that had never heard an alarm clock. One held a tablet as if he were about to ask the future itself for an autograph.

— Are you Doctor Voronina?

Olena did not hurry. She examined them slowly, the way one examines a sample under glass.

— Depends on why you need to know, — she said at last.

That did not stop them — on the contrary, it ignited them. Words poured out: her work on portal channels, stabilization of the transition, that very calculation that had made all of this possible — the park, the dragon, safe worlds, trade between the stars. They spoke with the kind of rapture with which one speaks of a deity. Young, clean, absolute faith in a system that had given them everything and asked for nothing except themselves.

Olena listened. Evaluated. And saw not two boys — she saw danger. The quietest danger of this world: people who love it so strongly that they will never notice when it begins to eat them.

She rose. Set the unfinished coffee on the bench. Started down the alley — and stopped half a step later. Without fully turning around, she threw over her shoulder, evenly, without pity and without anger, the way one delivers a diagnosis:

— Do not fall in love with technology.

A pause. Exactly long enough for the word to reach them and not have time to defend itself.

— It does not love you back.

And she walked away.

The two of them watched her go. One was still smiling — he had not understood. The other had stopped smiling — had almost understood, but decided he had misheard.

Behind their backs, on the projection the size of a facade, Vance was smiling. Smiling after her just as warmly as he smiled at everyone. Because she was right: technology truly did not love them back.

It simply watched. Always. Everyone. And calculated which of them would receive the time to become a resource, and when.