NANO-MAN

«Here the Sun had turned to supernew star, and humanity was shattered into parts and had dissipated on all space…»

Theodore Sturgeon «The Skills of Xanadu»

Prologue

— Look. It is like a man in a miniature. It has a full set of human chromosomes plus a nano-robot. Outside of human body it lives almost as a normal unicell. It multiples by division. But all of these only until it would not reach a woman. Afterward no protection against pregnancy can help. Even the ovule nano-blocking.

— That is, if a woman bathes in water with these «dandies»…

— Yes, a good child with a healthy heredity will be conceived. Then more and more. So in the nearest future our depressive planet will start completely other life. Perhaps, on my time we shall revive the large spaceships industry.

Five centuries later

— What do we know about this planet? — The man asks.

— One attempt of the output in the hyperspace about three hundred years ago is fixed. Then all is empty. No data. - The woman answers.

— It is strange. No attributes of a intelligent life in the present, but too many thrown cities! Listen, maybe it was a wrong idea to remove our survival suits?

— Why we have to worry about anything with our internal protection nano-system? Gauges have not fixed anything suspicious too. Even chemical pollution was completely «digested» by the Nature. Oh, look, so much years have passed, but the newspaper under glass still stay on. Can you read?

— I'll try. Something like «…girls become pregnant until to be ripen… afterward they never can be mothers…» Frenzy.

— Distortionists.

— Yes, they have ruined whole planet.

— But maybe, on the contrary, they have kept it for us? You know, I always dreamed to walk in a wild forest and to swim in a virginal lake.

(2004)

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