Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - Spontaneous Reflex

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Arkadi and Boris Strugatski. Spontaneous ReflexÎöåíèòå ýòîò òåêñò:Íå

÷èòàë10987654321 ÏðîãíîçArkadi and Boris Strugatski. Spontaneous Reflex

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Origin: "Spontanniy refleks"

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Utm got bored.

In general, boredom as a reaction to the tedium and monotony of

surroundings or inner dissatisfaction with oneself, and loss of interest in

life, are only characteristic of Man and some animals. To be bored one needs

to have something to be bored with, so to say, - that is, a delicately and

perfectly organized nervous system. One needs the capacity for abstract

thought or, at the very least, suffering. Utm had no nervous system in the

common sense of the word, and he did not ponder abstract thoughts. What is

more, he did not know how to suffer. He only took in his surroundings,

memorized and acted. Nevertheless, he got bored.

The thing is, nothing new around him was left to memorize since the

Master left. Accumulation of new impressions was the main stimulus governing

Utm and triggering his actions. He was possessed by insatiable curiosity,

voracious thirst to take in and memorize as much as possible. If there were

no unknown facts and phenomenon, they had to be found.

However, Utm's surroundings were familiar to him 'til the last

brushstroke and last touch. He remembered this spacious square area with

rough gray walls, low ceiling and steel door from the very first moment of

his existence. It always smelled of warm steel and insulating fluid. Some

barely discernable low humming could be heard from somewhere above - people

could not hear him without special equipment, but Utm could hear everything

perfectly. The fluorescent lamps below the ceiling were off but Utm could

see the room perfectly in infrared light and through the impulses of his

sonar.

So Utm got bored and decided to go in search of new sensations. It had

been half an hour since Master left. Utm knew through experience that Master

would not come back any time soon. This was very important since once when

Utm had endeavored to take a little walk around the room without an order,

his Master caught him in the act and did something that left Utm

incapacitated and unable to move even his sonar arrays. Though it seemed

this was not something to be worried about at the moment.

Utm swayed and made a heavy step forward. Cement floor resonated under

his thick rubber soles and Utm stopped for a moment to listen. He even

stooped. But the range of sounds emitted by the vibrating cement had nothing

unfamiliar in it, and Utm again headed for the opposing wall. He came up

really close to it and sniffed. The wall smelled of wet concrete and rusting

steel. Nothing new here. So Utm turned, scratching the wall with his sharp

steel elbow in the process, crossed the room diagonally and stopped in front

of the door. It was not self-evident how to open the door and Utm did not

immediately figure out how to accomplish that operation. He stretched out

his jagged left arm-manipulator, nimbly grabbed the door knob and turned it.

The door opened with a long low screech. This was amusing and Utm spent

several minutes opening and closing it, iterating between slow and fast,

listening and memorizing. Then he crossed over the high doorstep and found

himself in front of the stairs. The staircase was narrow, with stone steps,

and somewhat high. Utm immediately counted eighteen steps till the first

landing which was lighted. He unhurriedly proceeded upstairs. Another set of

stairs, wooden, with ten steps, was leading from the landing, and a wide

hall was opening up on the right. Hesitatingly Utm turned right. He did not

know why. The hallway was in no way more interesting than the stairs.

Perhaps Utm did not like the look of the wooden steps much.

Warmth was coming from the hallway which was brightly lit with infrared

light. The light was emitted by the ribbed cylinders hanging low above the

floor. Utm had never seen steam heaters and these ribbed cylinders captured

his attention. He stooped and grabbed one of them with both pincers. Short

sound of ripping metal could be heard, and a thick cloud of hot steam rose

up to the ceiling. Boiling water gushed at Utms feet. Utm lifted the

cylinder to his head, looked it over carefully, and investigated torn edges

of the pipe. Then the cylinder was tossed aside and Utms feet splashed in

the puddles. Utm reached the end of the corridor. A red sign lighted above

the low door. "Danger! Do not enter without an environment suit!" read Utm.

He knew the word "Danger", but he also knew that this word was always

applied to people. The word had no relevance for him. He stretched his hand

and pushed the door in.

There was a lot new and interesting here. He was standing at the

entrance to a vast room filled with metal, stone, and plastic objects. A

round concrete construction covered in steel or lead shielding that looked

like a flat stand stood in the middle of the room. Numerous cables emerging

from it ran along walls covered in marble boards with sparkling gadgets and

switches. Copper-wire fencing surrounded this concrete pedestal and shiny

jointed rods hung from the ceiling. The rods ended in the same forceps and

pincers like the ones Utm had. Silently stepping on the tile floor, Utm

approached the copper net and walked around it. Then he stopped and walked

around it again. There was no break in the net. Utm lifted one leg and

walked through the net without an effort. Torn pieces of copper web clang to

his shoulders. Not two steps before the concrete stand he stopped dead in

his tracks. His round globe-like head cautiously turned left and right,

acoustic receptors moved out and about, sonar antenna quivered. Lead

covering on the stand emitted infrared light noticeable even in this warm

area. Aside from that though it gave off some ultra-emission. Utm could see

pretty well in x- and gamma rays and it looked to him as if the lid was

transparent and opened up into an endless narrow well filled with sparkling

dust. An order surfaced from the depth of Utms memory: leave immediately.

Utm did not know who gave this order and when. Most likely he emerged into

this world with the ready knowledge of this, along with many other things.

But Utm did not obey the order. Curiosity was stronger. He leaned above the

stand, extended his pincers and lifted the lid with some effort.

The flood of gamma rays blinded him. The marble boards blinked with red

warning lights, as an alarm went off. For a brief moment he saw the bowels

of the concrete abyss through the transparent outlines of his arms, then

dropped the lid and exclaimed in a low rasping voice, "Danger! Opasnost'!

Gefar! Waysan! Abunai!"

A loud echo resonated throughout the room and died away. Utm turned his

upper body full hundred and eighty degrees and hurried towards the exit. The

shock caused by the radioactive particles in his control circuits was

directing him away from the concrete stand. Without a doubt, neither the

harshest radiation nor most powerful floods of particles could cause Utm any

harm; had he been in the active reactor zone itself he would not suffer any

severe consequences. But whoever had created Utm gave him a preference to

keep as far away from sources of strong radiation as possible. Utm came out

into the hallway, carefully and meticulously closed the door behind him,

stepped over the ribbed steam radiator and found himself once again on the

stair landing. There he immediately saw a person hurriedly coming down the

wooden steps.

This person was much shorter than Master. They wore loose-fitting

light-colored clothing. Their hair was unusually long and of golden color.

Utm had never seen such a human before. He sniffed the air and sensed the

familiar smell of white lilacs. Master smelled the same exact way, but

fainter, sometimes.

The landing was faintly lit while the stairs behind the girl were lit

brightly, so she did not see the bulky outline of Utms immense body right

away. Catching the sound of his steps she stopped and called crossly, "Who's

there? Is that you, Ivashev?"

"Hello, how are you?" Utm replied hoarsely.

The girl shrieked. Glimmering head with protruding glass eyes,

abnormally wide armored shoulders, thick jointed arms, were approaching her

from the dusk. Utm stepped onto the first wooden stair and the girl shrieked

again.

Never before had a Man failed to respond to Utms greeting. However,

this strange high-pitched sound, shrill and piercing, definitely

unintelligible, did not conform to any of the standard answers known to Utm.

Fascinated, he determinedly followed the retreating girl. Wooden steps

groaned and creaked beneath him.

"Go back," yelled the girl. Utm stopped and bowed his head a little,

listening, "Go back, you monster!"

Utm knew the "go back" command. Following the command he had to turn

his upper body around and make several steps in the opposite direction until

the "stop" command. However, generally orders came from Master, and besides,

Utm wanted to explore. He resumed his ascent until he found himself at the

entrance to a small brightly lit room.

"Go back! Back! Back!" yelled the girl.

Utm did not stop any longer, although he was walking slower than he

could have. The room captured his attention - two desks, chairs, a drawing

board, a bookcase filled with books and stuffed folders. While he was

opening drawers and folders and reading aloud notes clearly marked on the

sides of the drawings, the girl sneaked out into the adjoining room, hid

behind the couch and grabbed the phone. Utm saw this since he had an optical

sensor on the back of his head, but he was no longer interested in this

little long-haired human. Stepping on the papers scattered on the floor he

headed on. Behind him the girl was yelling into the phone:

"Nikolai Petrovich? Nikolai Petrovich, this is me, Galya! Nikolai

Petrovich, we are being assaulted by Utm. Your Utm! Utm! U as in Uma, T as

in Tim, M as in Mike. Did you hear the siren? Yes! I dont know... I ran upon

him when he was leaving the main reactor room... Yes-yes, he was in the

reactor room. What? No, I dont think so. They already know at the main

controller...

Utm stopped listening. He went into the hallway and stopped dead in his

tracks energetically moving his sonar arrays. Something big, sparkling, and

cold was hanging on the opposite wall. It looked like a gray impenetrable

square in infrared light, but sparkled and gleamed in daylight, which in

itself was not the source of confusion for Utm. Some black monster with

moving horns on its round globe-like head was standing inside the square and

Utm could not figure out where it was located. Visual range-finder told him

immediately that a distance of twelve meters eighty centimeters separated

him from the unknown object; the sonar however contradicted this fact.

"There is no object. Instead there is a smooth almost vertical surface at

the distance of six meters four centimeters," it said. Utm had never

encountered anything like this before, and never before had the sonar and

visual range-finder provide him with such contradictory readings. His body

had a built-in need to make clear and understand everything he encountered.

So he decisively moved ahead noticing and memorizing along the way a certain

rule; the distance given by the range-finder was twice the distance given by

the sonar. He walked into a mirror. The mirror broke in a ringing shower of

fragments and Utm stopped, having come to a wall. Evidently there was

nothing more to do here. Utm scratched the whitewall, sniffed, turned around

and walked towards the exit crunching on the broken glass and completely

disregarding a pallid security guard clinging to the alarm activation

switch. Snow and blizzard enveloped him.

*****

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摘要：

ArkadiandBorisStrugatski.SpontaneousReflexÎöåíèòåýòîòòåêñò:Íå÷èòàë10987654321ÏðîãíîçArkadiandBorisStrugatski.SpontaneousReflex-------------------------------------------------CopyrightArcadyandBorisStrugatskyCopyright2002TranslatedbyVeraZaychik,zaychik@drexel.eduOrigin:"Spontanniyrefleks"-----------...

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Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - Spontaneous Reflex

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