- "To a certain extent, yes. At least, I can always pour a gla.s.s of water out of a cloud."

- "OK, let's a.s.sume that you can always get yourself some water for free. But your house - even if we a.s.sume that it will be completely built by NanoTech and won't cost you a penny - it will still be standing on land, and a plot of land costs money, and that means that you still won't be able to build it, if you don't have any money!"

- "Tell me Colonel, have you ever camped out? Ever put up a tent in a forest?"

- "Suppose I did."

- "You didn't pay any money for the land you put up your tent on, did you?"

- "But I put up the tent for one night only, while a house will stand there permanently!"

- "Who said that a house must stand in one place permanently?"

- "What on earth do you mean by that?" - asked the Colonel. The feeling that he had been dragged to the very brink of an abyss and was being forced to look down there, at another, frighteningly alien world, that feeling became almost unbearable.

- "Our team of comrades have formulated for ourselves three rules of 'good' design practices that are most consistent with the NanoTech System capabilities. The first, and the most important rule is that things must be what we call 'living'."

The Colonel opened his mouth to ask something, but Levshov had antic.i.p.ated his question: "Let me explain what I mean. Take for example that very first VCR that we produced, the one that we a.s.sembled in the replicator. That one was an absolutely 'dead' thing. 'Dead' not in the sense that it didn't work - it actually worked perfectly - but it didn't hold a single living cyborg-bacteria, and that meant that it could not rebuild itself, couldn't change its own design, couldn't repair itself and so forth. It was a very ordinary thing, one of those things that we usually find all around us, the only difference being that it had not been built with machine tools at a factory, but rather had been a.s.sembled by cyborg-bacteria in a replicator. That was the only difference, and the difference lay not in the thing itself, but in its earlier history, which was absolutely immaterial from the standpoint of its consumer qualities.

Now, let's have a look at the VCR which I have just produced before your very eyes, the 1995 model. This one is already what we call a 'semi-live' product. It already incorporates quite a lot of living cyborg-bacteria. They provide power to this thing, they can even re-grow the video heads, if they get worn-out. However, this product also contains a lot of 'dead' parts, that, built by the cyborg- bacteria though they were, don't contain cyborg-bacteria themselves. And this means that this thing will never be able to instantaneously disappear, to decompose itself into individual cyborg-bacteria that could once again disperse."

- "Why would they need to do this?" - asked the Colonel, baffled.

- "Don't you see it? As things stand now, you'll finish watching your video ca.s.sette, switch off the VCR, and it'll just be left standing in the corner gathering dust and occupying s.p.a.ce to absolutely no purpose, until you once again decide to watch something. How much more convenient it would have been if, for the time between the two viewing sessions, it had just disappeared, with the cyborg-bacteria that had been its building blocks re-a.s.sembling into some other thing, the one that you need at that specific moment in time. They could have become a part of a plate, a spoon, a toothbrush, a razor, a coat, a shoe, a chair for you to sit on, anything that you actually need at the current moment in time. And they would have left that thing as soon as the need for that thing is no longer felt, and they would have gone into a new thing, the one you are going to need at the next moment in time.

Look at this empty chair near me. Why does it have to stand here, while n.o.body is sitting on it? And nevertheless it does stand here and occupies s.p.a.ce. In a perfect world, it should have only appeared here if a third person came into this room. And this applies to the majority of things around us - we only use them one percent of the time, at best. But they occupy s.p.a.ce in our houses the whole one hundred percent of the time. Dead things demand that their owner dust them, maintain them in proper condition, and always take them with him every time he moves house. Oh, those moves! There seems to be nothing so terrible as moving house, and this terror can chain a man to one and only place of living forever. Dead things turn their owners into their slaves!

And now imagine a house built in the true spirit of NanoTech. At any given moment in time, only a few things exist in it physically. Actually, only those things that you need at that particular moment. And at the same time, there exist in it an infinite number of things - all the things in the world that have been entered into the NanoTech Network database are potentially present in that house, since any of them at any moment can be brought out of non-existence and be given a material form. And the NanoTech-type house itself , if you live in it alone, contains only one room, since you cannot simultaneously be in more than one room. And at the same time, potentially, it contains an infinite number of rooms, since that one and only room can indefinitely change its appearance and size, filling itself with all kinds of things, effectively transforming itself into a different room, into an infinite number of rooms. And as soon as you leave your house, it disappears or transforms, for example, into your car, or into a house for another man who was pa.s.sing by and decided that it would be a good idea to live in that place for a day. And if you, during your outing suddenly have a wish to find yourself back at home, your house will immediately reappear in front of you wherever you are."

- "Immediately? I find that hard to believe." - said the Colonel - "It took you almost four minutes to grow only one VCR.".

- "Let me repeat it once again - this VCR is a semi-live thing. It grows so slowly only because in this case we force NanoTech into reproducing a thing which was designed to be manufactured using an absolutely different method of production, that is, the serial industrial machine production method characteristic of capitalism. In this case we abuse NanoTech by making it operate in a manner which is completely inconsistent with its character. I have done this demonstration on purpose, so as to show you that in principle NanoTech can even cope with such difficult task as an almost perfect reproduction of things characteristic of a historically antecedent method of production. It is worth noting here that machine production cannot always cope with the task of reproducing, by its own means, things that are characteristic of an antecedent era - the era of master craftsmen working manually, the era of feudalism.

And now I'm going to give you a demonstration of a video system designed in the true style of NanoTech. Please note the difference in the time required for its manufacture.

This time I won't need much material, so I'll just use the bacteria that live inside my body."

Levshov put his hands on the table, palms up, and suddenly the palms started to cover with a sort of perspiration, to glisten with little beads that began to quickly grow and turn whitish. The beads began to roll off onto the table, and in a second they merged into a single thin white sheet. Half a second later the sheet suddenly changed its color to deep black.

- "So it's ready now. Two and a half seconds." - said Levshov.

- "What's ready?" - asked the Colonel.

- "The video system is ready. Please, order the movie you want to watch."

Only then the Colonel noticed that the sheet lying on the table was no longer black, but was glowing as if it were a computer screen, and on that screen a list of movie t.i.tles was slowly scrolling.

- "We don't have a very wide selection yet." - apologized Levshov - "as of now, only a few hundreds of movies have been stored in the NanoTech Network memory, but we believe that as soon as the Network becomes accessible to the general public, the users will transfer to it everything that is now available on video ca.s.settes... Don't be shy, Colonel, choose a film t.i.tle and touch it with your finger!"

The Colonel warily poked at the t.i.tle of his favorite movie, the list of t.i.tles immediately cleared off the screen, and instead the Colonel saw the familiar movie characters, in full color and motion.

- "I just can't understand where the sound is coming from." - said the Colonel after a few seconds of viewing.

- "The film soundtrack is fed directly to your auditory nerve, by-pa.s.sing the phase of its transformation into sound waves, which makes for the high quality of the sound, because there are no intermediaries, no loudspeakers which usually introduce sound distortion. Generally speaking, the picture could also be fed directly to the optic nerve, and this would be more consistent with the Third Principle of good design in the style of the NanoTech. The Third Principle says: always use only direct interface between the human nerve system and the NanoTech Network, without any intermediaries like human body's sense organs or muscles. In practical terms this means that if, for example, we design a automobile for the NanoTech, it should not have a dashboard - all the necessary information about the status of the car systems should be fed into the driver's optic nerve, to be superimposed on his actual field of vision. Also, such a car should not have a steering wheel or pedals - mental commands from the driver should be routed directly to the car's final controls, without any mechanical intermediaries. All this allows to radically simplify the design, and consequently, to considerably reduce the time needed to "grow" a car.

- "You said it was the Third Principle. And what is the Second one?" - asked the Colonel.

- "The Second Principle of good NanoTech-style design says: for a power source of the device you are designing always use the internal power of the cyborg-bacteria, and the power should always be generated at the same location where it is to be consumed. This allows to eliminate all the contraptions for transferring power within the device. For example, our semi-live VCR complies with the Second Principle only in part: the power is indeed generated inside it by cyborg-bacteria, but after that it has to be transferred to 'non-live' components, such as electrical motors, integrated circuits, and so on. That's why it has so many extra wires, levers and shafts serving the only purpose of transferring electrical and mechanical energy from one location to another. From the standpoint of the Second Principle, a much better design is the video system that you can now see on the table." - Levshov nodded towards the glowing sheet, where the scenes from the Colonel's favorite movie still continued to unfold. - "Each luminous dot on this surface is a cyborg-bacteria that itself generates the power for its own glow. That means that the power is consumed at the same spot where it is generated. This is only possible in a completely 'live' product."

- "So, if I understand you correctly," - said the Colonel musingly - "an automobile built in compliance with the NanoTech principles doesn't have any transmission, and the function of the engine is performed by the wheels themselves?"

- "You got the idea absolutely right. And to completely visualize a NanoTech-style car, please remember that it always has just as many seats as it has pa.s.sengers and its trunk is never larger than the luggage it carries. And if you take into account the fact that it just doesn't make any sense to transport things that can always be grown at your destination, it means that usually such car doesn't have any trunk at all."

- "And all of this, all this things, cars, houses, all this will immediately become available to every human being on Earth as soon as you give a command to activate the system?" - asked the Colonel in a slightly trembling voice.

- "In principle, yes, although it will take some time for the people to learn to use the system. But it's not very difficult, anyway. We have recently developed a graphic user interface, where the signals are fed directly to the user's optic nerve which results in the user seeing an illusory, or a "virtual", to use the current buzzword, s.p.a.ce, or rather a "virtual store" filled with all kinds of things, where he can walk around and choose whatever he or she needs. After that it's just a matter of the user reaching for the chosen thing and grabbing it in virtual s.p.a.ce. The thing will immediately materialize..."

- "That's not what I was asking about." - interrupted the Colonel, impatience showing in his voice. He felt that the abyss had already opened up under his feet, and he was falling, falling, falling... - "It's money. The money in your virtual shop - is it also virtual or is it real, after all?"

- "You know Colonel, I just can't imagine what other explanations do you need. I've been speaking about this for an hour now, and you still don't seem to understand that there'll be no money at all. Think for yourself: who and for what purpose may need any money at all, when any one can get out of NanoTech any thing he or she may need, absolutely for free? Money will take its rightful place in museums as an evidence of a past-and-gone era in the history of mankind."

In despair, the Colonel squeezed his head between his hands and fell silent. The world around him was coming down.

The Colonel had spent all his life to make a career for himself, to reach the position which allowed him, back in the days of the total chaos of late 1991, to grab hold of a certain amount of the Party's money, to transfer it abroad and stash it away in a Swiss bank account. This money was supposed to provide for a comfortable existence in his old age and a secure future for his heirs. All the terror he had to go through to do that, all the nerves and energy spent! And, as it turns out, everything was in vain?! The monstrous unfairness of this all was searing the Colonel's soul. His brain was in hectic search for a reb.u.t.tal.

- "There can be no market without money, and the market is the only force that can fine-tune the required amount of production!" - spluttered the Colonel and immediately realized the stupidity of his remark.

- "Why would you need to additionally fine-tune the production when everybody produces exactly what he needs, at the exact moment when he needs it, and in the exact quant.i.ties he needs?" - Levshov seemed surprised - "The market forces are only needed to adjust the amount of production at that phase in the development of productive forces where things have to be produced before they are actually needed."

- "Without money there'll be no incentive for increasing the efficiency of labor!" - persisted the Colonel.

- "Whose labor?" - asked Levshov, surprised - "The labor of cyborg-bacteria? Since it's them who'll be doing all the work."

- "What I mean is creative work. There'll still have to be somebody who'll be inventing new things for NanoTech, otherwise the progress will stop. Does it make any sense for an inventor to work, if his invention won't in the end give him any advantage over the rest of the people?"

- "You know, Colonel, I think you are seriously mistaken about the motives behind creative work of an inventor. The desire to create is a need deeply rooted in every human being. This need exists not only because in satisfying it one may gain some advantages for oneself, but also because of the very fact that a human being has a brain which needs a workout from time to time, just as muscles do. Just as you'll never be able to sit in an unchanging posture for hours - you'll finally need to stretch your legs - your mind also needs stretching from time to time. The brain wants to work just because it exists, however, under the existing method of production, only a chosen few can afford the luxury of brain-streching, while most of the other people have to earn their living by doing purely mechanical mind- numbing jobs. Under capitalism only a few lucky ones can afford to do some creative work, but even they are forced to sell their creative products in order to be able to buy their freedom from mechanical work. In contrast to this, NanoTech opens up the possibility of doing creative work to every person on Earth, and also allows any person to immediately use the creative products of any other person. I think that as a result of this we are going to see a creative progress like we could never imagine under capitalism."

The Colonel would not give up: "I just don't want to listen to all this babble about mind-stretching, need for creativity, and the like bulls.h.i.t. The people won't understand your system and won't accept it, because the motive force behind the progress of the human race has always been and forever will be the desire of each individual to get ahead of his neighbor, to become richer then his neighbor, more powerful than his neighbor, to become famous and make his neighbor green with envy, to buy things which only you can buy and never your neighbor. You want to destroy all this, to let everybody have anything he wants, but the people will never accept such a state of affairs where n.o.body can envy anyone. If this happens, n.o.body would want to live at all, because there would be nothing to live for! Imagine a typical everyday situation: one guy, let's call him Kolya, strolls down the street and meets his friend, let's call him Vasya, and says to him: 'Come and visit my place, I want to show you something. Show what? Just come and you'll see.' And it turns out that Kolya has, for example, a luxury model VCR, a genuine Panasonic from j.a.pan, and Vasya does not have anything like that! And Kolya also has video ca.s.settes, direct from US, with the latest Hollywood blockbusters, and Vasya still has none of these! And that's what makes Kolya happy! And that's why he needs a VCR and ca.s.settes! He doesn't really need these idiotic blockbusters! He needs the satisfaction of knowing that he is superior to Vasya! But if Vasya were to have the same VCR, and the same movies, why would Kolya need a VCR at all, if this VCR doesn't help him to become superior to Vasya? Why would he torture himself watching these idiotic movies? And, on the other hand, why would Vasya want to have a VCR, when Kolya, Petya, whoever, can at any moment obtain the same VCR for themselves? You have invented an absolutely useless thing, Mister Levshov. The people won't understand you."

- "People? What do you know about people, Colonel? Do you know how many people on planet Earth are starving?

Physically starving, and can actually die of starvation.

NanoTech can feed them and save them from death. Do you know how many illiterate people are there on Earth? Really illiterate people, people who cannot read, people who are denied all the wonderful treasures of knowledge acc.u.mulated by our civilization? NanoTech can open up to them these treasures. And a VCR, as a means of obtaining knowledge, could be very helpful in doing this. But when the age of NanoTech arrives, neither a VCR, nor any other thing will ever be the means of establishing Kolya's superiority over Vasya, or Vasya's over Kolya. The time of apish games is over. And, I hope, forever."

- "What do you mean by apish games? Explain yourself!" - said the Colonel through clenched teeth.

- "You see, Colonel, human beings did descend from apes.

This is a firmly established scientific fact, whatever various naysayers may say. Therefore, every human being carries in his genes a burden inherited from the past - the instincts of his wild ancestors. The apes are tribal animals, and each tribe has its own hierarchy: it has its chief and its outcasts, and it has all the rungs of the hierarchical ladder between them, and each ape craves for a higher rung on that ladder. That's the source of the people's craving for power, glory, recognition, money, in a word, for getting ahead of one's neighbor. All the social systems of the past used this craving as a driving force for their own development. The capitalistic system is especially outstanding in this respect - it's not just an apish game, it's a whole apish Olympics, which very efficiently exploits all the instincts that humans inherited from beasts of the wild. But human nature is not confined to b.e.s.t.i.a.l instincts, human beings have one thing which beast lack. Humans have reason. Reason can overcome instincts. Reason is the only chance of freeing man from the tyranny of instincts. But this chance cannot materialize while the social system itself makes people to take part in the apish games.

NanoTech gives us a chance to stop this protracted apish Olympics, to stop living as apes live, and at long last start living as human beings should live, that is, live by reason, not by instinct."

- "I can't understand you, Mr. Levshov. You seem to be an intelligent man, an outstanding inventor, but your reasoning is ridiculously naive. Do you really believe you can go and change all the social structure just like this? You want to carry out a world revolution which will make everybody equal overnight. To make the powers that be as powerless as anyone. How can you seriously hope that those who have power and money, and high social status, let go of their privileged positions? What a political naiveness! And you still hope that we shall help you to get time on TV? Of course I'll report your request to the higher authorities, but it's a foregone conclusion that n.o.body will give you any time on the air. Moreover, you'll go to jail for stealing governmental property, disclosure of military secrets, and, as it has just turned out, also for an attempt to overthrow the existing social, political and economic system of the Russian Federation!"

- "First of all, Colonel, it's very difficult to imprison me. Physically impossible..."

- "Why so?" - asked the Colonel.

Without saying a word, Levshov picked up from the table the "video system" which was still working. He held it at the edge and it hung down like a piece of soft cloth. For a fraction of a second, a moving picture could still be seen on its rumpled surface, but suddenly that picture disappeared to be replaced with a checked pattern... like on a handkerchief. It took the Colonel one more second to realize that what Levshov was holding in his hand was indeed a handkerchief. Levshov used the handkerchief to loudly blow his nose and then threw the handkerchief on the floor, where it sort of dissolved into nothingness before the Colonel's very eyes, and then said: "Well, just try to imprison me, and then you'll understand why it's impossible. That was the first thing I wanted to say. Now, the second: n.o.body is going to take away from the ruling circles of the Russian Federation their villas, Mercedes-Benz cars, Swiss bank accounts, portfolios - all their playthings and baubles. If they still want to play their apish games - let them play themselves crazy. The only thing that NanoTech is going to take away from them are the people of the Russian Federation. But from the very moment when the Russian Federation came into existence as an independent state in 1991, the people were only a burden to them. They have brought the industry and agriculture in this country to ruin - and thus deprived the people of any means to fend for themselves, so now the people have to be fed "from above".

That means the new rulers have to share their petrodollars with the people, but they don't want to, they are too greedy. And although they starve the pensioners to death with low pensions, and although they have destroyed the public health system, and reduced the standards of living to such a low level that the birth rate has dropped almost to zero, and although they are waging senseless wars where they kill off young men, the surplus population has not been sufficiently reduced (from their standpoint), and there are still more people around than they know what to do with.

NanoTech is going to rid the government of this burden by taking upon itself the responsibility for maintaining the people, so the government should actually be thankful to us for this. And the only thing we want in return for this service, is that government forever forget that the people exist, and never again bother the people with taxes, elections and army drafts."

- "So, Mr.Levshov, you are going to let people live without a government. Then will you be so kind as to explain how are you going to maintain law and order among the people? By the way, could one use NanoTech to produce arms and drugs?"

- "Theoretically, it is possible. But we are going to close access to programs for manufacturing dangerous things like that to ordinary users of the NanoTech Network. Only the System Administrators of the Network will have access to arms, just in case somebody does make an attempt to use NanoTech to harm people and we have to fight such an offender."

- "Well. That's great. That's terrific. That means that in your brave new reasonable world everybody will be equal, but some will be more equal than others. Marvelous." - said the Colonel. The world which had all but completely collapsed around him, began to gradually restore itself.

There was not going to be a uniform ma.s.s of people with equal rights after all. Everybody would once again stratify.

There might not be money any more, but there would certainly be levels of access to information. The higher you are in the social hierarchy, the wider the access. And of course, they would need a police. Everybody needs a police. But still it was sad that there would be no money - he spent so much nerves on it. The Colonel's spirits slightly uplifted.

The system based on the apish striving of everyone to stand above everybody else was unshakable and eternal and it would live as long as human beings live. And that was the only system that the Colonel believed in. Intellectuals might invent capitalism, communism and all kinds of other "isms", but in reality what had always existed and would exist was only one system, The System, and it was only this System that the Colonel had served and would ever serve, because only within this System the Colonel was worth something in his own eyes. The idea behind The System was primevally simple, and it was exactly from this simplicity and primitivity that it drew its unshakable and eternal nature.

The idea behind The System was the struggle for power. This struggle could be waged by all kinds of means: by acc.u.mulation of money, by political games and by pa.s.sing laws, by palace intrigues, or, as a last resort, simply by bludgeoning the compet.i.tor. It was not the means that mattered. What mattered was the final objective, and the final objective was power. This was part of the human nature, and therefore, it could not be uprooted...

The Colonel's reverie was interrupted by Levshov's voice: "I know what you are thinking about, Colonel. You are thinking about The System." The Colonel started and wanted to say something, but Levshov antic.i.p.ated his question: "Don't worry, I'm not eavesdropping on your thoughts, although, in principle, NanoTech does have such a capability. Your thoughts are easy to guess. You are thinking that the new world opened up by the NanoTech will be the same as the old one, that the apish games will continue, that n.o.body as yet has managed to suppress apish instincts in humans, neither the church in a thousand years, nor the communists in the seventy years of their rule. But you've got to keep in mind one thing: up till now a human being who might have wanted to leave The System didn't have a chance to survive outside it - he would have simply died of cold and starvation. For the first time in the history of mankind, NanoTech gives us this chance. For the first time in history, one won't need to snap the food out of the hands of one's neighbor so as not to be hungry. Will we be able to use this chance to get from under The System, and to conquer at last our animal instincts? If we don't, we'll turn the new world into a semblance of the old one, but even more terrible, where the power of one group of people over the others will be infinitely amplified by the new, previously unheard of means of NanoTech. The loss of this historic chance will result in an unimaginable tragedy for the mankind."

- "But if you are not certain that you'll succeed, why did you have to start all this in the first place?"

- "I just had no choice. I know what is happening now in nanotechnological labs all around the world. Tens of thousands of scientists are working on creating a new terrible weapon of enslaving man by man, a weapon which will give the rulers a complete and absolute control not only over the actions, but also over the very thoughts and feelings of people, a control none of the tyrants of the past could even dream of. The last chance to stop the impending catastrophe is to put NanoTech into the hands of the people, and hope that in the long run the reason will prevail over the dark instincts. There is no other way out.

Whatever happens, it won't be worse than what is now being prepared in secret labs. And there still is a chance of creating a society ruled by Reason, Freedom and Equality.

It's a small chance, but it does exist."

2.8. An hour later, in an office one story up.

The video recording of the interrogation ended and the Colonel switched the VCR off. The General was silent for half a minute and finally said: "Yea, this son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h has us up against the wall... We know next to nothing about his real capabilities, and he uses this to put pressure upon us. And what's most frustrating, we just can't quietly finish him off, because we don't know how his "Team of Comrades" will react in that case. They are all at large, and probably all of them have access to NanoTech."

- "Do we know who they are?" - asked the Colonel.

- "The members of his laboratory staff who, together with Levshov, refused to be transferred to our secret facility. We have complete files on them - their names, pictures, home addresses. The only thing we don't have is their present location. Half a year ago these people, all twelve of them, disappeared without a trace. n.o.body saw them afterwards. But he must be keeping in touch with them through this network of his. And they must have instructions telling them what they are supposed to do if he gets killed.

We need him alive. We've got to get out of him the pa.s.sword for the NanoTech System Administrator. The future of Russia as a great power hinges on this now."

- "What about giving him a shot of truth serum?" - suggested the Colonel.

- "Won't work. I talked with our experts. Everybody says that whatever we inject him with, the cyborg-bacteria in his blood stream can decompose the substance and get it out of his system in a fraction of a second, before it has time to produce any effect. And if they can, they sure as h.e.l.l will do it. I a.s.sume he had done his homework before he came to us. This option is out of question. In this case we've got to find a more subtle approach. Could you run once again the end of the interrogation?"

The screen once again showed Levshov and the Colonel.

The Colonel: "Levshov, I hope you realize that we just can't let you walk away now, and you'll have to spend the night here, in the lockup ward."

Levshov: "Colonel, I agree to spend the night in the lockup, but I want you to clearly understand that it's purely a goodwill gesture on my part. I reserve the right to leave the lockup at any moment. This is to give you notice that I have the capability to do so, and that you are not going to have any chance to stop me."

"What a rascal!" - said General, his eyes glued to the screen.

"Comrade General, what about a copy of this ca.s.sette? Are we still going to hand it over to that American or not?" - asked the Colonel.

- "We have to. If today we try to withhold the ca.s.sette from their liaison officer with special powers, tomorrow they'll know about this at CIA - I am pretty sure that we have a CIA mole in our directorate. Then we'll have diplomatic notes - you know, unwillingness to cooperate, and all that. And of course, we will be the guilty party. Better turn the ca.s.sette in. But there is one thing I want you to do..." - the General suddenly lowered his voice - "Arrange for me a visit to Levshov's cell tonight. But do it in secret. n.o.body else should know about this. I'm going to have a man-to-man talk with him..."

2.9 At the same time in the lockup ward.

Levshov could not get to sleep. Or rather he could have, if he had chosen to use the services of the NanoTech. But he did not want to. His thoughts were focused on that gray March day of 1983...

2.10 March 1983, Kremlin, Moscow. The office of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

"...Thus, Karl Marx was absolutely correct when he predicted that capitalism would be superseded by communism.

He was also absolutely correct in believing that this change would come about as a result of the development of productive forces. He was in error only about one thing, that is, at what level of the productive forces development this change was to occur. Back in the nineteenth century he believed that the mankind had already reached the level where the capitalism could be superseded by communism. This error in judgment was caused by a very human weakness - the author of the theory was too eager to see it put into practice. But this error resulted in his violating history, in his trying to force upon the mankind a kind of social system for which it was not yet mature enough."

- "Well, well, young man..." - said General Secretary Andropov and smiled slyly, smiled to the extent the continuous ache in his kidneys allowed him to - "So, in your opinion, Marx was not right, after all?"

Levshov stopped short and fell into a frightened silence.

Finding fault with Marx's opinions in the Soviet Union was fraught with a lot of trouble.

- "That's OK." - said the General Secretary, giving Levshov a wink - "you can discuss things like that with me, but I don't recommend that you do it with the others."

Levshov recognized the quotation - a line from a popular Soviet spy TV series - and smiled back.

- "So you say that it was a violation of history?" - asked the General Secretary. His face grew serious once again and turned into a mask of stone - "But imagine for a moment that the Great October Revolution of 1917 never happened and all of the world now belongs to capitalism. Who would you have come to with your invention in that case? To monopolies? But they are interested only in one thing - in power, in an absolute power over everything and everybody.