Luna is a harsh mistress robert heinlein read. The moon is a harsh mistress
Robert Heinlein
Moon - harsh mistress
I look - in the newspaper "Lunnaya Pravda" they write that the city council of Luna City adopted a resolution in the first reading, which allows to inspect, license, inspect, and most importantly - to tax enterprises Catering within the boundaries of the municipal zone. And they also write that a mass meeting will take place tonight, at which the interpretation of the "Sons of the Revolution" will be organized.
My parent taught me two rules: "Don't stick your nose out of your own business" and "Always remove the deck before surrendering." Politics didn't interest me. But on Monday, May 13, 2075, I found myself in the computer room of the Lunar Administration Complex, stopping in to chat with Mike's main computer while the other machines whisper quietly among themselves. Mike is not official name; I named him that after Mycroft Holmes, one of the characters in a story written by Dr. Watson even before he founded IBM. The hero of the story did nothing but sit and think - well, exactly like Mike. He's a real smart guy, the smartest computer in the world.
True, not the fastest. On Earth, in Bell's laboratories in Buenos Aires, there is one smart guy who is ten times smaller than Mike, and answers almost before he hears a question. But is it really that important - will you get an answer in a microsecond or a millisecond? It is important that he be faithful.
However, Mike does not always give the correct answers; sometimes he is not averse to cheating.
When Mike was set up in the Moon, he was a common smart guy with flexible logic - "Homo-Oriented Logical Multi-Criteria Supervisor, Version IV, Model L" - HOLMS FOUR. He calculated trajectories for unmanned cargo barges and controlled their ejection. It took him less than one percent of his computer time, and the Lunar Administration did not approve of idleness. And they began to attach to it more and more new hardware - "decision-action" blocks that allowed him to control other computers, countless banks of additional memory, new banks of associative neural networks, an additional package of twelve-bit random numbers, RAM expanded to an incredible volume. The human brain contains about ten to the tenth power of neurons. In the third year of its existence, Mike had at least one and a half times more neuristors.
And then he came to life.
I'm not going to argue about whether a machine can become "truly" alive and acquire a "real" self-awareness. Is the virus self-aware? No! What about an oyster? I doubt. Well, what about the cat? Almost certainly. Human? I don’t know about you, comrade, but I definitely am. Self-awareness is cut somewhere along the path of development from a macromolecule to the human brain. Psychologists say that this happens automatically when the brain accumulates enough big number associative chains. In this case, I don’t see any difference whether these goals are protein or platinum.
("Soul"? Does the dog have one? What about the cockroach?) Note that even before all the modifications, Mike was designed to answer questions based on incomplete information - just like you do. Hence all the "homo-oriented" and "multi-criteria" in his title. So Mike had "free will" from the beginning, and its boundaries expanded as his own structure became more complex and knowledge accumulated. Just do not demand that I give you the definition of "free will." If you like to think that Mike is just juggling with random combinations of numbers and switching chains in accordance with them, go for it, think to your health.
In addition to all of the output and printing devices, Mike had the driver and vocoder blocks adapted so that he understood more than just classic programs, but the programs written in Loglan and in English, knew other languages, did technical translations, and most importantly - read, and read voraciously. Of course, it was better to give him instructions on Loglan. If you did this in English, the results could be absolutely fantastic: the ambiguity of the words confused the computer, giving too much greater freedom choice.
Mike's field of activity expanded indefinitely. In May 2075, he already controlled not only unmanned vehicles, but also manned ships, controlled the telephone network of the Moon, as well as video and radio communication Luna-Terra, regulated atmospheric pressure, water supply, temperature, humidity and sewage in Luna City, Novy Leningrad and in several smaller settlements (with the exception of Hong Kong-in-the-Moon), he conducted accounting for the Lunar Administration, and for a special fee - for private firms and banks. As you know, logic circuits can sometimes fail due to a nervous breakdown. An overloaded telephone network, for example, begins to behave like a moody child. Mike did not suffer from nervous breakdowns, but he had a sense of humor. True, low-grade humor. If he were human, you would have to constantly be on your guard with him. He would have thought it was the height of wit to throw you out of bed at night, or to put scabies in your spacesuit.
Since he was not able to do this, Mike amused himself in his own way. Could for no reason at all give a false answer based on "twisted" logic. And just recently, I suddenly took and gave out a paycheck to a janitor at the Administration office in Luna City in the amount of $ 10,000,000,000,000185, $ 15 coupons, with only the last five digits being the correct amount. Neither give nor take a mischievous overgrown child who should be pushed hard up the ass.
He chipped this number in the first week of May, and I had to figure out the cause of the failure and fix it. I am a private contractor and am not paid by the Lunar Administration. You probably know ... however, how do you know, times are different now ... In those bad old days, many prisoners, having served from bell to bell, continued to harass the Administration even after the term, and they were glad that they worked for money. But I was born here, I am a free man, and that changes things.
One of my grandfathers was sent here from Joburg for armed attack and for lack of a license to work; another was exiled for subversive activities after the end of The War of the Wet Fighters. The maternal grandmother boasted that she had arrived on the ship that brought the brides to the moon ... but I saw the lists. In fact, she was an ordinary (and by no means a volunteer) of the Peace Corps, which means ... exactly what you thought: being a juvenile delinquent. Since she was in an early clan marriage (the Stone gang) and shared six husbands with another woman, the question about my maternal grandfather remained open. But this is a common thing, there is nothing special here, and I am quite satisfied with the grandpa she chose for me. Another grandmother, a Tatar, was born near Samarkand and after being reforged in the October Revolution camp "voluntarily" volunteered to participate in the colonization of the moon.
My parent swore that our pedigree was very respectable and ancient: one of our ancestors, they say, was hanged in Salem for witchcraft, one of the forefathers was on the wheel for piracy, and another progenitor, along with the first batch of convicts, was sent to Botany Bey.
Being proud of my ancestors, although I had dealings with the Overseer, I would never have gone to his salary. It doesn't seem like a big difference: I've been serving Mike this way and that since the hour it was unpacked. But for me this difference is significant; I could put my tools down at any moment and send them all to hell.
In addition, a private contractor was paid much more than an employee of the Administration. And we have very few computer adjusters. Do you think there are many lunar people who can go to Earth and complete computer science courses without getting to the hospital ahead of time? Of those, of course, that will not bend right off the bat?
I can only name one. Personally myself. I was there twice, once for three months, another for four, and received a profession. But this required merciless training, centrifuge exercises, sleep - and even then he did not go to bed without weights. And then on Terra he did not risk unnecessarily - he never rushed, never climbed stairs, in every possible way protected the heart from overload. Women? I forgot to think about them; however, with earth's gravity, great efforts were not required for this.
I look - in the newspaper "Lunnaya Pravda" they write that the city council of Luna City adopted in the first reading a resolution allowing to inspect, license, inspect, and most importantly - to tax public catering establishments within the boundaries of the municipal zone. And they also write that a mass meeting will take place tonight, at which the interpretation of the "Sons of the Revolution" will be organized.
My parent taught me two rules: "Don't stick your nose out of your own business" and "Always remove the deck before surrendering." Politics didn't interest me. But on Monday, May 13, 2075, I found myself in the computer room of the Lunar Administration Complex, stopping in to chat with Mike's main computer while the other machines whisper quietly among themselves. Mike is not an official name; I named him that after Mycroft Holmes, one of the characters in a story written by Dr. Watson even before he founded IBM. The hero of the story did nothing but sit and think - well, exactly like Mike. He's a real smart guy, the smartest computer in the world.
True, not the fastest. On Earth, in Bell's laboratories in Buenos Aires, there is one smart guy who is ten times smaller than Mike, and answers almost before he hears a question. But is it really that important - will you get an answer in a microsecond or a millisecond? It is important that he be faithful.
However, Mike does not always give the correct answers; sometimes he is not averse to cheating.
When Mike was set up in the Moon, he was a common smart guy with flexible logic - "Homo-Oriented Logical Multi-Criteria Supervisor, Version IV, Model L" - HOLMS FOUR. He calculated trajectories for unmanned cargo barges and controlled their ejection. It took him less than one percent of his computer time, and the Lunar Administration did not approve of idleness. And more and more new hardware began to be added to it - "decision-action" blocks that allowed him to control other computers, countless banks of additional memory, new banks of associative neural networks, an additional package of twelve-bit random numbers, RAM expanded to an incredible amount. The human brain contains about ten to the tenth power of neurons. In the third year of its existence, Mike had at least one and a half times more neuristors.
And then he came to life.
I'm not going to argue about whether a machine can become "truly" alive and acquire a "real" self-awareness. Is the virus self-aware? No! What about an oyster? I doubt. Well, what about the cat? Almost certainly. Human? I don’t know about you, comrade, but I definitely am. Self-awareness is cut somewhere along the path of development from a macromolecule to the human brain. Psychologists assure that this happens automatically when the brain accumulates a sufficiently large number of associative chains. In this case, I don’t see any difference whether these goals are protein or platinum.
("Soul"? Does the dog have one? What about the cockroach?) Note that even before all the modifications, Mike was designed to answer questions based on incomplete information - just like you do. Hence all the "homo-oriented" and "multi-criteria" in his title. So Mike had "free will" from the beginning, and its boundaries expanded as his own structure became more complex and knowledge accumulated. Just do not demand that I give you the definition of "free will." If you like to think that Mike is just juggling with random combinations of numbers and switching chains in accordance with them, go for it, think to your health.
In addition to all the output and printing devices, Mike was equipped with the driver and vocoder blocks, so that he understood not only classical programs, but also programs written in Loglan and English, knew other languages, did technical translations, and most importantly - read, and read binge. Of course, it was better to give him instructions on Loglan. If you did it in English, the results could be absolutely fantastic: the ambiguity of the words confused the computer, giving too much freedom of choice.
Mike's field of activity expanded indefinitely. In May 2075, he already controlled not only unmanned vehicles, but also manned ships, controlled the telephone network of the Moon, as well as video and radio communication Luna-Terra, regulated atmospheric pressure, water supply, temperature, humidity and sewage in Luna City, Novy Leningrad and in several smaller settlements (with the exception of Hong Kong-in-the-Moon), he conducted accounting for the Lunar Administration, and for a special fee - for private firms and banks. As you know, logic circuits can sometimes fail due to a nervous breakdown. An overloaded telephone network, for example, begins to behave like a moody child. Mike did not suffer from nervous breakdowns, but he had a sense of humor. True, low-grade humor. If he were human, you would have to constantly be on your guard with him. He would have thought it was the height of wit to throw you out of bed at night, or to put scabies in your spacesuit.
Since he was not able to do this, Mike amused himself in his own way. Could for no reason at all give a false answer based on "twisted" logic. And just recently, I suddenly took and gave out a paycheck to a janitor at the Administration office in Luna City in the amount of $ 10,000,000,000,000185, $ 15 coupons, with only the last five digits being the correct amount. Neither give nor take a mischievous overgrown child who should be pushed hard up the ass.
He chipped this number in the first week of May, and I had to figure out the cause of the failure and fix it. I am a private contractor and am not paid by the Lunar Administration. You probably know ... however, how do you know, times are different now ... In those bad old days, many prisoners, having served from bell to bell, continued to harass the Administration even after the term, and they were glad that they worked for money. But I was born here, I am a free man, and that changes things.
One of my grandfathers was sent here from Joburg for armed attack and for lack of a license to work; another was exiled for subversive activities after the end of The War of the Wet Fighters. The maternal grandmother boasted that she had arrived on the ship that brought the brides to the moon ... but I saw the lists. In fact, she was an ordinary (and by no means a volunteer) of the Peace Corps, which means ... exactly what you thought: being a juvenile delinquent. Since she was in an early clan marriage (the Stone gang) and shared six husbands with another woman, the question about my maternal grandfather remained open. But this is a common thing, there is nothing special here, and I am quite satisfied with the grandpa she chose for me. Another grandmother, a Tatar, was born near Samarkand and after being reforged in the October Revolution camp "voluntarily" volunteered to participate in the colonization of the moon.
My parent swore that our pedigree was very respectable and ancient: one of our ancestors, they say, was hanged in Salem for witchcraft, one of the forefathers was on the wheel for piracy, and another progenitor, along with the first batch of convicts, was sent to Botany Bey.
Being proud of my ancestors, although I had dealings with the Overseer, I would never have gone to his salary. It doesn't seem like a big difference: I've been serving Mike this way and that since the hour it was unpacked. But for me this difference is significant; I could put my tools down at any moment and send them all to hell.
"The moon is a harsh mistress"(in other translations - "The moon is laying firmly", "Risen Moon") (eng. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress) is a science fiction novel by Robert Anson Heinlein. First published from December 1965 to April 1966 in the pages of the magazine "IF". Translated into Russian in 1993.
Plot [ | ]
Background [ | ]
On the moon, in artificially created cities that are below the surface, offenders from Earth (Terra) live, exiled for criminal and political crimes. Their descendants will forever remain "Lunars": as a result of physiological changes in the body under the influence of low gravity, after a few months of stay on the Moon, it becomes impossible to return to Earth - a person can no longer live in high gravity.
In the most difficult conditions of physical survival, in the absence of any written laws on the Moon, historically peculiar traditions have developed. For example, for an attempt to kiss a girl by a tourist from Earth without her permission, for the latter it almost ended with a flight to the surface of the Moon without a spacesuit. At the same time, there are no moral restrictions on any types of voluntary sexual relations, but the woman chooses herself. This was due to the lack of female criminals in the initial contingent.
The moon is actually a colony of the Earth, most of the inhabitants are employed in the agricultural sector, and most of the food produced is exported, although even this cannot fully meet Terra's ever-growing needs. The Lunar Administration, which obeys the Federation of Nations from Earth, buys grain from the Lunars at monopoly low prices and sells them the rest delivered from the planet. Every year the difference in prices worsens the position of the Lunar people - they are getting more and more into debt.
Most Lunarians have a negative attitude towards the colonial policy of the Earth Federation of Nations in relation to the Moon. The Lunar Administration, as a conductor of the will of the Earth, does not enjoy the support of the Lunars, who, if possible, generally avoid cooperation with it. Lunari cooperate with each other voluntarily; they resolve their conflicts quickly and radically, involving the most respected Lunaries as arbitrators. (Judge - Manuel, the case of the above-described earthling, who allegedly insulted a girl. Everyone got it, and quite rightly) The main principle of relations between Lunar people is the principle of "darzaneba"
Manny and Mike [ | ]
The main character, on whose behalf the novel is narrated, Manuel ("Manny") Davis, the best computer technician on the Moon, sometimes working for the Company, communicates with the supercomputer revived as a result of unsystematic and unnecessary improvements by the Company, which controls almost all systems on the Moon. As a result of self-awareness, the revived computer Mike (on behalf of Mycroft Holmes, brother literary hero Sherlock Holmes) has almost inexhaustible computing power, a childish sense of humor and suffers from loneliness. He considers most people (with the exception of his only friend Manny) to be fools, with whom there is nothing to talk about, and therefore no one except Manny knows that the computer has come to life.
Curious, Mike wants to know what will happen at an illegal political meeting in a room where he does not have microphones, and Manny heads there with a tape recorder in his pocket. During the meeting, armed guards of the Lunar Administration burst into the premises, a clash occurs, as a result of which the underground kills all the guards. Manny escapes with a beautiful underground agitator Wyoming Knott ("Wyoh"). Later, they are joined in the hotel by one of the leaders of the lunar underground - former professional revolutionary Professor Bernardo de La Paz ("Prof"). Manny introduces them to Mike and with his help they decide to start a revolution that should free the moon from the tyrannical rule of the Federation of the Earth.
Preparing for the revolution[ | ]
The main problem for the solution of which the revolution is being started is the rapid and catastrophic drying out on the Moon. natural resources(primarily water, which is on the earth's satellite as glaciers located below the surface) due to the fact that they are used in only one direction: the supply of food to overpopulated and hungry Terra. The conspiracy system is created and maintained by Mike, since all communication systems are under his complete control. The Lunari, who hate the Lunar Administration and despise the people of Terra, support the underground. The organization is growing rapidly, and the Administration's security service cannot introduce informants - their lists are constantly under Mike's control and are known to the leadership of the underground.
Mike arranges for the Head of Administration - the Overseer and his subordinates - to sabotage. Lunari openly express their dissatisfaction. The overseer, in a panic, calls for reinforcements from Terra - a company of dragoon-pacifiers and introduces passports that must be presented to the dragoons for movement between settlements. This further inflames the situation.
Mike creates himself a virtual personality named Adam Selene. At first, he only speaks by phone with members of the underground, then through an image that can be seen through video communication. Everyone knows Adam Selena in absentia as the leader of the underground, but only three people (Manny, Vayo and Prof) know that this is not a person, but a computer. Manny recruits an agent on Terra - Stu, a wealthy adventurer rescued by Manny from a lynching trip to the moon.
The revolution [ | ]
The revolution itself was a success easily and almost bloodlessly, but the colonists have practically no weapons, and Terra has a space fleet, missiles, bombs and an army. However, the Lunari managed to use a special catapult (originally designed to deliver food to Earth) to bomb the planet with rock debris and repel the landing. The final victory in the form of recognition of the independence of the Moon cost the life of the ideological inspirer and the actual leader of the revolution, Professor Bernardo de la Paz. As a result of the bombing, the supercomputer Mike stopped showing its human qualities and turned into regular computer... In the finale, 100-year-old Manuel is about to set off to colonize asteroids - by lunar standards, he is not an old man at all!
main characters [ | ]
- Manuel Garcia O'Kelly-Davis- a driller who lost his hand, a computer adjuster, later - the plenipotentiary ambassador of the Moon to Earth, Minister of Defense of the Free Moon.
- Wyoming Knott Davis- a blonde, an underground agitator, earned a living by surrogate motherhood (carrying other people's children).
- Professor Bernardo de la Paz(translated by A. A. Shcherbakov de la Mir) - exiled to the moon for subversive activities theorist and organizer of the revolution, later - the head of the government of the Free Moon.
- Mike he is Adam Selene- supercomputer HOLMES IV (Homo-oriented logical multi-criteria supervisor, version IV, model L)
Dedicated to Pete and Jane Sensebo
Taken: BOOK ONE.
MIRACLE-YUDO WISE
Taken:, 11
What am I reading? Lunosite Truth. What's the last thing you read? That the City Council of Luna City passed on the first reading the Bill on Knowledge Testing, Licensing, Inspection and Taxation of Food Dealers within the City Hermetic Zone. And that this evening the founders of the Children of the Revolution Society have appointed a meeting with a big khural.
My old man taught me two principles: "Kolupay and do not tweet" and "Whistle all the way." I was not interested in politics. But on Monday, May 13, 2075, I found myself in the exhibition center of the Glavluny complex. I should have looked at the chief computer Mike while all the other cars were whispering among themselves. "Mike" is an unofficial nickname. It was I so affectionately nicknamed him in honor of Mycroft Holmes from the story of Dr. Watson, this doctor sprinkled detectives ahead, and only then founded the firm "IB-Em". This Watson had such a character, he sat within four walls and thought. So Mike is exactly the same. Wonder-yudo wise woman, there is no other such in the world.
Not the fastest. The Bell firm in Buenos Aires, Erzla, has a shy woman ten times smaller in volume, and answers almost earlier than asked. But, in principle, what's the difference, after a microsecond you were answered, or after a millisecond? If only they answered in essence.
And it's not like Mike has to get it right off the bat. He was not tuned into this.
When it was installed on the Boulder, it was just a sage with flexible logic - "Holo Operator Logical Multi-Circuit, Fourth Model". Abbreviated as HOLMS-4. Calculated ballistics for unmanned freighters and controlled their launch. But this took him about one percent of the time, and in Glavlun they look askance at the nets. So they began to attach attachments to him: expanders so that he could run other computers; additional memory; blocks of associative neurosystems; another capacity of twelve-digit primes; wildly overgrown random access memory. In the human brain, there are about ten in tenth neurons. By the third year, Mike had enough neuristors and half that many more.
And he has matured.
I am not stuck that machines are "truly" alive and that they are "truly" conscious of themselves. And, say, the virus is aware of itself? Niht. What about an oyster? I doubt. And the cat? Almost certainly. And the man? I do not know how about this with you, daragoy tavarisch, but I have about this full order... Somewhere along the path of development from a macromolecule into the human brain, self-awareness is cut through. Psychologists believe that this thing happens automatically, as soon as a sufficient number of associative connections are formed in the brain. I do not see the difference between the bonds for protein and, say, for sprayed platinum.
(Oh, you mean "soul"! Does a dog have a soul? And a cockroach?)
And do not forget: even before any appendages, Mike was designed so that he would respond when there was a noticeable lack of information. Hence the prefixes "holo-" and "multi-" in its name. So he started straight out with "free will," and as he grew and learned, he only got better. And don't ask me what free will is. If you are more comfortable with the assumption that Mike is randomly picking up random numbers and memory addresses, if you please.
Mike got a voice shaper and analyzer plus an image recognizer, a printer and system expanders, so that not only classical programming languages, but also Log-Yaz, and English, and a dozen more languages at the level of technical translation. And he read voraciously. But it was still recommended to introduce instructions to him on the Log-Yaz. The answer to normal speech promises surprises. Normal words have too many meanings, they give too much semantic scatter to the evaluative chains.
Robert Heinlein
The moon is a harsh mistress
I look - in the newspaper "Lunnaya Pravda" they write that the city council of Luna City adopted in the first reading a resolution allowing to inspect, license, inspect, and most importantly - to tax public catering establishments within the boundaries of the municipal zone. And they also write that a mass meeting will take place tonight, at which the interpretation of the "Sons of the Revolution" will be organized.
My parent taught me two rules: "Don't stick your nose out of your own business" and "Always remove the deck before surrendering." Politics didn't interest me. But on Monday, May 13, 2075, I found myself in the computer room of the Lunar Administration Complex, stopping in to chat with Mike's main computer while the other machines whisper quietly among themselves. Mike is not an official name; I named him that after Mycroft Holmes, one of the characters in a story written by Dr. Watson even before he founded IBM. The hero of the story did nothing but sit and think - well, exactly like Mike. He's a real smart guy, the smartest computer in the world.
True, not the fastest. On Earth, in Bell's laboratories in Buenos Aires, there is one smart guy who is ten times smaller than Mike, and answers almost before he hears a question. But is it really that important - will you get an answer in a microsecond or a millisecond? It is important that he be faithful.
However, Mike does not always give the correct answers; sometimes he is not averse to cheating.
When Mike was set up in the Moon, he was a common smart guy with flexible logic - "Homo-Oriented Logical Multi-Criteria Supervisor, Version IV, Model L" - HOLMS FOUR. He calculated trajectories for unmanned cargo barges and controlled their ejection. It took him less than one percent of his computer time, and the Lunar Administration did not approve of idleness. And more and more new hardware began to be added to it - "decision-action" blocks that allowed him to control other computers, countless banks of additional memory, new banks of associative neural networks, an additional package of twelve-bit random numbers, RAM expanded to an incredible amount. The human brain contains about ten to the tenth power of neurons. In the third year of its existence, Mike had at least one and a half times more neuristors.
And then he came to life.
I'm not going to argue about whether a machine can become "truly" alive and acquire a "real" self-awareness. Is the virus self-aware? No! What about an oyster? I doubt. Well, what about the cat? Almost certainly. Human? I don’t know about you, comrade, but I definitely am. Self-awareness is cut somewhere along the path of development from a macromolecule to the human brain. Psychologists assure that this happens automatically when the brain accumulates a sufficiently large number of associative chains. In this case, I don’t see any difference whether these goals are protein or platinum.
("Soul"? Does the dog have one? What about the cockroach?) Note that even before all the modifications, Mike was designed to answer questions based on incomplete information - just like you do. Hence all the "homo-oriented" and "multi-criteria" in his title. So Mike had "free will" from the beginning, and its boundaries expanded as his own structure became more complex and knowledge accumulated. Just do not demand that I give you the definition of "free will." If you like to think that Mike is just juggling with random combinations of numbers and switching chains in accordance with them, go for it, think to your health.
In addition to all the output and printing devices, Mike was equipped with the driver and vocoder blocks, so that he understood not only classical programs, but also programs written in Loglan and English, knew other languages, did technical translations, and most importantly - read, and read binge. Of course, it was better to give him instructions on Loglan. If you did it in English, the results could be absolutely fantastic: the ambiguity of the words confused the computer, giving too much freedom of choice.
Mike's field of activity expanded indefinitely. In May 2075, he already controlled not only unmanned vehicles, but also manned ships, controlled the telephone network of the Moon, as well as video and radio communication Luna-Terra, regulated atmospheric pressure, water supply, temperature, humidity and sewage in Luna City, Novy Leningrad and in several smaller settlements (with the exception of Hong Kong-in-the-Moon), he conducted accounting for the Lunar Administration, and for a special fee - for private firms and banks. As you know, logic circuits can sometimes fail due to a nervous breakdown. An overloaded telephone network, for example, begins to behave like a moody child. Mike did not suffer from nervous breakdowns, but he had a sense of humor. True, low-grade humor. If he were human, you would have to constantly be on your guard with him. He would have thought it was the height of wit to throw you out of bed at night, or to put scabies in your spacesuit.
Since he was not able to do this, Mike amused himself in his own way. Could for no reason at all give a false answer based on "twisted" logic. And just recently, I suddenly took and gave out a paycheck to a janitor at the Administration office in Luna City in the amount of $ 10,000,000,000,000185, $ 15 coupons, with only the last five digits being the correct amount. Neither give nor take a mischievous overgrown child who should be pushed hard up the ass.
He chipped this number in the first week of May, and I had to figure out the cause of the failure and fix it. I am a private contractor and am not paid by the Lunar Administration. You probably know ... however, how do you know, times are different now ... In those bad old days, many prisoners, having served from bell to bell, continued to harass the Administration even after the term, and they were glad that they worked for money. But I was born here, I am a free man, and that changes things.
One of my grandfathers was sent here from Joburg for armed attack and for lack of a license to work; another was exiled for subversive activities after the end of The War of the Wet Fighters. The maternal grandmother boasted that she had arrived on the ship that brought the brides to the moon ... but I saw the lists. In fact, she was an ordinary (and by no means a volunteer) of the Peace Corps, which means ... exactly what you thought: being a juvenile delinquent. Since she was in an early clan marriage (the Stone gang) and shared six husbands with another woman, the question about my maternal grandfather remained open. But this is a common thing, there is nothing special here, and I am quite satisfied with the grandpa she chose for me. Another grandmother, a Tatar, was born near Samarkand and after being reforged in the October Revolution camp "voluntarily" volunteered to participate in the colonization of the moon.