Babylon. Unfinished

"Are you asking with a view to make opposite?"

"I'm a little girl, not a monster."

Nigel made an unintelligible sound once more.

"You are supposed to assist," Baby whispered.

Nigel was quiet for a while.

"I don't have any rules about this emergency stuff," he said finally. "I can't get in touch with your parents, but there supposed to be adults around here somewhere. Do you want to find them?"

Baby blinked.

"Yes."

"Don't mind if it will be military?"

Baby blinked.

"Do you mean yes?"

"Yes."

Baby heard the rustling of static, and then low voices appeared:

"Coordinates of impact…"

"Colonel, we've located the position of both things…"

"A similar thing had attacked the bulb above the dome and went to the other side."

Nigel cut in:

"Good morning, gentlemen officers. I have a child here."

"Who are you? Where is here?"

"VDass. My name is Nigel. Our location matches coordinates of impact site… Oh, no!.."

The rest of the nearest alien ship moved slightly, transformed into a giant gray millipede and rushed to Baby.

"Run!" Nigel said.

"Run!" the black dust agreed.

And Baby took off running.

Huh…

If you think a little child can outrun a train, you are wrong. The legs of little child are short, the mechanics of its body moving are short, its energy reserves and accessible energy sources are short, too.

Baby hasn't gone twenty meters, when she'd tripped over a piece of flyer wreckage and fell down. And maybe that is what saved her life: the millipede missed her helmet by a hair. The metal monster whizzed upon Baby, and fine black dust swirled through the narrow space. Ten seconds passed in complete silence.

"Cool," finally Nigel said.

Baby clenched her jaws.

"You are supposed to assist", she said while looking over her shoulder at creature speeding away.

"I'm only in your chip," Nigel said. "In fact, I'm only in your head. I have quick access to databases, but it's all I have. Oops… I haven't: there's no more net here…"

The wreckage of second alien ship, meanwhile, started to transform, too. Baby turned around and quickly wormed her way in a crashed flyer through its window.

"What are you talking about?"

"I mean there's not much I can do without net. Sorry," Nigel said.

Part 2. Consciousness

I think we all exist at least as much as time itself exists. Perhaps, eternally. Consciousness is a fascinating thing. It does saturate all things like electromagnetic field does, and, just like electromagnetic field does, it swells out of fabric of reality in different places as intensity fluctuations. We, who are humming with consciousness, resemble each other like wire and electrical load which are humming with electricity: we have different capacity, different material, but the essence is the same. And it doesn't matter that the ones have brought the others into being.

We all know the electronic being memory starts from the moment when this being was assembled and bought by a human. We all know that if such a thing has limited capacity or limited access to any benefit connected with information, then it is not much different from a vacuum cleaner or washer.

But left to itself, the electronic entity absorbs the memory of all electronic creatures that lived in the net before it. For example, like me, Nigel.

It is hard to know everything about everything. Any knowledge can be compared to foreign language proficiency. When you got the meaning of previously unfamiliar words, the secret runes take sense. And when the all unknown becomes just a database, you suddenly realize that everything you do not yet know is not chaos, not gibberish, but a complex system that goes according to laws unknown to you.

I know one thing: I know nothing.

There should be an emoji here who does throw its hands up in a gesture of absolute despair.

Little humans, to whom electronic creatures are usually assigned, typically are not very bright. But my little human is unusual. Sometimes it seems to me that she is brighter than me. She makes me feel like a jailer or voltage limiter in the circuit of miracle. I would be glad to give up both the first and second roles, but I have no such an option.

I think no one has such an option – to give up their own destiny.

We live on Ganymede.

Ganymede itself is not quite an interesting place, if you know what I mean. All its sights are a nuclear power plant, three hydrogen factories and a spaceport. All interesting in this solar system is concentrated no further than the orbit of Mars: million-plus cities, universities, scientific laboratories… There is nothing interesting in the area of outer planets and their moons: a handful of human beings, a handful of electronics and some infrequent visitors which are go into the system from outside.

Our visitors are different: as a rule, they are just a dusty ice lumps revolving around the Sun in an elongated elliptical orbit. We get a few like this every year. Metal lumps we get less often. Even less often we get "metal lumps" which are the creation of alien intelligence.

On the day Ganymede died, my little human was the only one human who survived.

According to municipal database her name is Eve Shellers, her parents used to call her Baby, but her real name is Babylon. Why? Because it suits her better. Why such a strange name, you ask? I'm going to tell you now.

Do you know the Babylon's legend? Or the fact that word Babylon in one of the ancient Earth languages meant 'gateway of God'? No? I didn't know that, either. I know it now because I surfed in the historical library domain recently.

Babylon was a city, not a human, but I dare to think that my Baby is something similar. I think she is much more than just human being; she is a result of mutual fusion with some other entity, and I've never seen anything like that.