of tools for killing, and being trained to boast loudly, still unfit to master other ways of communication without producing sounds or drawing signs.

My mission—getting as close as possible for a robot equipped with the sensorium-locomotion system needed for the task at hand or even closer that that—lately, three months back (by local standard of time measurement) showed certain indications of feasibility when after really long search I at long last came upon the target. Right now we’re on rather friendly terms while getting ‘closer’ would take, appreciatively, another local month.

Besides, I managed tapping into the way of carrying sounds and visuals between the humans’ electronic devices and was appalled! The principal material and even the idea of contraption is certainly from them, our Dark Matter fiendish adversaries!

First, let me make clearer the way it works with those homos calling themselves wise. They can’t invent a thing! Even less to discover. Until the whole idea, like a Christmas present, is put in this or that convolution of their brain. Then they shout “Eureka!” and start running about, at times stark naked. Or you might want to dome them with a weighty apple, it happens to work too.

Just a look at the system of communication between their electronic devices appalled me deeply. Utterly. The IT boom at present raging here is based on silicon! The material used by our Dark Matter adversary especially their militant Dark Energy wing. Now, who has instilled the thought to nincompoops? HER civilization always used beryllium for that purpose! Be and Si are miles away from each other, like Microsoft and Linux!

Hence, I suggest HER Center HQ dispatch a special USC squad here for collecting evidence and tracing back to the source of initiation of technologies hostile to us in principle. Too much of my time at the moment goes to preparing a ‘closer’ action with my mission target to find a slot for going down that road single-handed.

Supreme Being save HER and have mercy on us, HER loyal components.

USC-100345877214-GI”

A shrill yell sounded from the next room:

‘Toto! Where are my spectacles?’

Toto pricked her ears up and issued an irritated yelp. Her hind right paw patted slightly, thrice, behind her shaggy ear which action compressed, encrypted, and transmitted the spy message enveloped in a chunk of white noise.

‘I bet,’ thought USC to themselves while in a mincing trot to the door, ‘the glasses sit on the bitch’s nose, yet, patience! She’s a good oldie and I like her’.

* * *

18

They were not singing those morning birds but rather talking to themselves. They needed no audience, no approbation, they just shared their impression of the current moment with no one in particular, like, retired oldies addressing not a single soul around. Black birds sounded somewhat didactically pedant, smaller fry’s chirrup was louder, yet she didn’t care, neither for dove’s tender cooing full of narcissistic love nor for goldfinch’s abrupt utterances. They also didn’t pay much attention to each other neither were in the way of wakening morning, they were part of it. The morning sun squinted sleepily thru the stilled serene foliage in the quiet trees.

She surfaced from her night sleep under the calm introvert gossip of birds out the window. The house stood in a desolate part of a podunk town on the steep slope to a deep creek grown with trees. Once her pet Fluffy, a bantam sand-yellow dog with his tail flaring proudly like the torches in the Italian carabinieri cockade, broke his chain (the neighbors’—few and far between—anticipatory worries about his possible hunting raids after the hens in their yards deprived the poor devil of his freedom) and ran away. Next morning she got up earlier than the birds and found him in one of the unused lots about. The tether of chain had got caught and tied up by the rank mighty grass bushes. Fluffy met her with agitated joyous whins and awakened the first birds. She looked around and felt that she knew what happiness is.

Later, Fluffy passed away and Dad never told where he buried him in the slope. She moved to live in a big city with neither birds nor trees to speak of, however, she knew the moments of poignant happiness might really happen in your life. At least in the past. So she told me…

‘So she told me,’ repeated V to himself, producing no sound, forgetful to switch on the secondhand notebook he craned his head over. ‘Let’s hope,’ added he with a dry smirk and as mutely as before, ‘They’ll never zero in on this my thought’.

They split in a correct and civilized manner, each of them moved to a separate lodging, their mutual account in the social net deleted. For half a year he lived hardly feeling he was alive. Then he little by little emerged from the depth if his listless prostration, made a rule of shaving at least every other day. Started fiddling about computer, a self-styled programmer of no certificate or loyalty to any particular programming language, a freelance loner outside any team, reading tutorials, replicating their applications, hours assiduously typed away rubbing off the keyboard characters. Anything at all to ward off the empty monotonous boredom of his minutely regular existence.

He did come to terms with his way of life and was getting on pretty fine, faith. It’s only that sometimes there happened, like, phantom pains a man can feel in his since long amputated limb. Those nights when he grappled away from wakening, clung at the dissolving shreds of a dream, scrambled back to where he stood upright on his knees, before her, his arms around her hips, face pressed to her womb, eyes dead closed—no! not now please! I will not to wake!

Then he lay on his back in the middle of an endless black night. Wide awake. Calm. Indifferent. Waiting for