what was recorded
	Ovin: recording just the sound because this helmet camera has a weak infra and we're going through much of a darkness. We've found traces of people here though nothing can be seen. Both Pinifa and I record at times. We tried to call, but there's no screens in these corridors; the pocket one gets nothing, just a message that connection is not available due to interference. Probably the walls are done in some special material, or we're too far away from the net.
Pinifa: it's some half an hour later now. Traces are rather easy to follow. We roughly know where we are: we started almost without looking, pulling a finger over the wall from Murphy's plate to the right. At random, I must say. Nose took us to some little door below the staircase. They said we'd rely on the hunch and "any rubbish that comes to your mind, who know why it's (maybe) good, try it, and there's always time to decide what is rubbish, and what is not". Who knows if we'd find it otherwise. It smelled somewhat of burned insulators, which reminded me of some childhood events (failed trying to build a threedee projector out of grandpa's computer; all parts molten: important event which finally directed me into the only thing crazier than electronics - psytronics). It was dark behind the door, but didn't matter much. I felt by the smell and the mild hum through some wall plate at the end of the corridor, that there's some other door there. Then Ovin took the search over.
	Ovin: they say I see in the dark, but I used the torch a bit there. Sounded a bit like sacrilege to the space, but I just had to check if the wall in front of me was really somewhat differently greasy than elsewhere. True, someone hand marks remained. There we found some buttons on the wall, and I watched them carefully until I understood that only three of them were pressed more often. Pinifa gave it a random try.
Pinifa: there I was already taken by the feeling of the place and the habit it makes; a routine of someone who passes there for years. The fingers ran by themselves and the door opened. So we found it. It wasn't right behind that door, but the next few doors and elevators opened in a similar manner.
	Ovin: This seems to be the last door. It's not even locked. We enter the room. Room is strangely big, when you remember where it's pulled in. I would never imagine there's so much space between the city water tank and the main air filtering supply tunnel. This sentence feels too rough; they must have had better words for all this tech stuff in the old days. Neither Pinifa nor I knew there's such a place in the city.
Pinifa: the room is miserable. Lacks basic equipment. Kitchen doesn't recognize voice, and... when I think it better, no machine responded so far. Refresher has water only. No ionizer, no massager, no vibrator. But there are things purpose of which is totally unclear to me. A primitive bed in the corner. Some old woman sleeps on it. Doesn't look old; just some traces of face work are seen, tiny cuts above the ear. Who knows how many beautifies done? On the plate next to the console a go game board. Don't remember the name of this position, but surely is one of the hundred main unsolved problems. It's covered with dust, as many other things are. Probably if was forbidden to the autocleaner to move them, or it's malfunct. I don't see it anywhere. The only nice thing here is a huge screen over half of the wall. We try it. We couldn't get any decent recording on it. It gives only some fine abstractions. Not much of a big truth on life, suppose it's because of too much detail. Looks like a sketch for something big. Too many nervous tiny, no, not tiny, but painfully thin lines, connecting parts. Strange picture of the world: many separate like figures, but in reality they are all connected. Child's picture of man? Who knows. She seems to have lived in a voluntary exile, disconnected from the world.
	Ovin: in this room we found a lovely senseless composition of metal threads covered with plastic of all colours. Cover is removed at ends, where they appear, and there's some other metal used to connect it to a plate. These threads disappear somewhere in the walls and end up in the console by the screen. Before the console, a big soft seat, one can sleep in. She still asleep? All right, let her. Judging by the mess, she fell asleep after some strange state, cause there are no visible signs of cleanup being ordered, or whatever other     things that usually get done before sleeping. Can't find a recorder, and the purpose of the console isn't clear either. My grandpa had one before he got his first dictowrite, and then he threw it away. He had to use fingers to move each individual letter. We've found three cursor balls. They work: they lead us well through the image on screen. Though, the layer we get when we go deeper isn't much different. Let me try another one. Lines change. Other lines, of other colors, appear; general picture doesn't change.
Pinifa: it could represent growing: the same man in other times, in other relations. Further, I see a lot of bad pressouts. They are mostly small, they can fit on two fingers. Shiny metal pods peek out of them. Insectomania? Mostly regular shaped, made of plastic. Some are malformed, aberrant. In the niche, a minimal autodoc, collection of medicines, some personal things, toys, chess set, some games written down, by hand, some printed by machine. Let me take a little better look at the kitchen. Doesn't respond to voice, and I'd really need a stronger tea. Though, it doesn't look bad. This could cook anything, I just don't know if anyone else beside the old lady knows how to give instructions by the console. Why did they make consoles at all? I think its completely superfluous for a man to remember what does which key do, or how to type correctly. How doesn't she mistype?
Old lady: matter of practice, girlie. How did you get here. Pinifa: Ah, you woke up. We have found you, finally. Ovin: good morning. Do you need anything? Pinifa: just say. You don't have to do it yourself anymore. Old lady: all right, children. So, the day has come. Start the morning routine on seventh channel, it'll do me good. Ovin: on what? Old lady: on seventh channel on the console. The ef seven key. Ovin: I see it. What should I command to it? Doesn't it recognize your voice anymore?
Old lady: It never could. Good old handwork. Press it! So. Ahh, this feels good. Give ef twelve. Type "coffee. cheese. ham. eggs. /mirrored /no_ketchup". Push the little table over here, when it gets it a bit kicked out of the box. What stopped you? Oh idiot to be idiot! "Coffee" is written the way it reads: C-O-F-F-E-E, then period, then blank, it's the long key down there. So. You'd be seen to order something in a tavern some hundred and fifty years ago. You'd starve dead before you typed the order. Ah, here it is. My cook has done its job faster than it took you to order it what to do. Where are you staring at? The table has no engine of its own, but it's easy to push. Ouch, if only I could stand up, I'd have shown you! Listen now. You record? The better, you never know what you'll forget. No much time left, so I'll tell you right on what may be important to you. We used to be pirates once. Not on the sea, we're not that ancient, on systems. We broke into all possible systems, for pure fun. To show ourselves off. We made trophy collections. My nicest pearl was when I've sent to the oldamerican president, while he was some meaningful figure, to all of his channels, to all of his screens, two hours of riots of all the youth groups who opposed him, so for two hours he couldn't watch anything else. His passwords were, of course, rubbish, all the charlie99's and such stuff. It turned up later, that what we, old pirates, do, is not much of a skill, and that any moron with a plastic contraption of hardly half a mega can break into anything, as soon as he keeps up the interrupt frequency of the system. Moreover, the law woke up, so there had been machines confiscated, slammer... what's it you don't know? What's a slammer? Prison. See history, don't stall me, I won't take long. The little eyeglasser burned together with his Pittsburgh. He managed to raise some kind of a simultaneous alert. Watch it, not a general alert, but hundred individual alerts. He alerted fire squad, epidemists, army, seeuyay, the angels, blue and black, and don't know who else, and when it all set into motion, there was a desperate mess, fighting at every corner, crashed into each other, shot molotovs and nobody put them out: literally everyone was fighting. Find Pittsburgh now. There may be some automatic steel plant with no living man. Then we gathered, hooked up our modems into a net, some ten kay of us, and started negotiating, each from his own lair. First we smoothly brought our pirates' codex; it had some quarter meg of text, but it was almost bug free, do you get that, ten kay people doing one thing, and it turns out to be not just oh kay, but fullproof, both oos long, foolproof. Getting the image? Whenever one of us did some damage afterwards, got kicked out of the net and connected directly to the cops. Though, the cops never knew who does it and how; never mind. We had to fight for the honour of a non-existent profession. Our renegades grew fewer and vanished after a while. We had to limit the better ones among them; you know the thing, you set a controller on his entry, and if he tries to push himself into a network of some importance, you block him inside so he has to reset himself. Of course, we didn't bring the controller to his home, but roundabout, somewhere in his city system, to filter out his calls. In some cases we even intruded some bugs into their personal systems, I mean, we didn't filter them, we intruded into them. One had even gone schizo. He never understood why does his computer switch off and his heating goes mad whenever he calls Pentagon. We've always had bread as much as needed. The convention allowed us to lift a half off the savings we make by improving the system we break in. Of course we improved them! Else, where would we find the pleasure? I liked it best to try to manage a city. You know, it's both a child and a lover and you also become some kind of a Robbin' Hood, just no robbing. You should be the classical movie director who is the best when he's not noticeable. So I've found this pit. Of course, by studying the city plans; the program to calculate the place was hardly twanny kay, and it worked slightly below two seconds, plus two hours while i reviewed the solutions on the scanner simulator, old Uzlib made it, just 15K, a candy. This sty conformed to my requests with .997, except my monitor worked in left-hand co-ordinates, I've forgotten that Uzlib was a left-hander, and later I was too lazy to... when was it? type ef thirtyone, not so, keep control pressed, and read the screen. What does it say? Seventyfive standard and keep the change. Later the whole matter settled somehow. Gradually we managed to clean up our ranks, though there where still some kids with chip oozing out of their ears. We had to pour it into them that we're not buccaneers, but more of barefoot healers of big systems. Later they grew thinner too; the matter began to be unfashionable and attracted more psychopaths than the creative ones. We submerged even deeper into our lairs and enforced the protection of our communications.   We went into loneliness. Some suffer from it, which is visible in their cities. The automatics are somewhat low-spirited, the air frowning, the climate foreseeable and boring. Of course, the people run away from there and only those who like it that way remain. Nice company. City pirate must love his people, to provide them a life that suits them.
	Ovin: I'd interrupt you now: how can a city, how you called it, pirate, adjust the life of a city? It's all automated and obeys the personal request of an individual or the vote of interested majority. If somewhere personal wishes collide, a vote is taken, and that in just a couple of seconds, we all have communicators, ten times a day the city asks for our opinion on various matters.
Old lady: and how many times were you interested in what it asks? Can you be in the interested majority if nothing occupies you except your art research? I give you bread to eat and warm you up to sleep and you don't care about the rest. What's your recognition?
	Ovin: GDT66SHAIQ, if you mean numbers.
Old lady: type just ef nine, then your number, then push the left ball down. What do you see? The whites are areas which were of no interest to you. Hey, my little one, you have at least 0.92 white! You're all like that. What do you think the city does then, when you are not interested in what it should do? It offers you the calculated best solution. Have you ever refused it? Never. And how will the city know the base upon which to calculate? Someone must supply it the data on human wishes.
Pinifa: and that's your job?
Old lady: It's not. Matter of fact, I'm jobless. This is a part of what I do. That aside, a lot of subsystems need surveillance, specially since my old Uzlib died.
Pinifa: for example?
Old lady: Here, Weather. Communications. Food. Water. Garbage. Rhythm of sleep. Heating. Health. Fashion. Sexual fashions. Schools. Transport.
	Ovin: Sometimes I wander whether those transport cabins go anywhere.
Old lady: No. They stay, just you leave.
	Ovin: all right, say if I tell it I want to go to Pittsburgh. Where will I arrive?
Old lady: To south quarter. I've just clearly said there's no Pittsburgh, and since you, for one, wasn't curious to ask around what happened to it, neither am I curious to know where will you arrive, so I send you down. You may meet someone. I think you met Fagnija when you asked for Honolulu.
	Ovin: I did meet her in Honolulu.
Old lady: you are somewhat ripe for a hard reset. Where were the palms, where the sea, eh?
	Ovin: Doesn't matter. All the cities are the same.
Old lady: You were at the pool in eastern Lamstye. It says so in your register, there down the screen. Lift the left ball, so, now roll it left. Of course! You haven't ever been even to western Lamstye, and no word of ever seeing another town.
	Ovin: Let's say it is so.
Old lady: There's no "let's say", there's just one of the basic things in the Codex to keep only checked data. One thing unchecked and there I go to reprogram kitchens or do something as creative
	Ovin: Cooking is creation.
Old lady: It was. With nine kay standard years of gourmet experience archived, it's more a matter of digging it up the library than up the inspiration.
Pinifa: How did you feed? Did you go out of here?
Old lady: Of course. I've ordered what I needed, or went to town.
	Ovin: Do you have documents?
Old lady: You're a cop? How many do you need?
	Ovin: Just the ID card.
Old lady: What do I need it for?
Pinifa: Well how did you move around town?
Old lady: I am the town.
Pinifa: Then, is there hope for our town.
Old lady: And what would you want? Deus in machina?
	Ovin: Ex machina.
Old lady: Yes, but to get back into his machine and not disturb you. Well, it won't go. I'm over two hundred standard, I won't do long, and I'm fed up with you already.
Pinifa: You don't like us?
Old lady: Not too much. You carry some value; I appreciate psytronics, art... but can't love you as much as I think it takes. I didn't create all this trouble out of malice; it was a call for you to discover me.
	Ovin: And if we didn't... Pittsburgh?
Old lady: Not necessarily. May go easy, every day someone leaves.
Pinifa: Doesn't your organization have more people?
Old lady: And how many should we have? How many left? Are there the young? Think.
Pinifa: World is, therefore, decaying?
Old lady: Yes, because you as... not necessarily. I need an apprentice.
	Ovin: A volunteer? To learn to be a Technician?
Old lady: It's a must, and not just one. A school, while I can still make one. Let me sleep now. Type first ef twanny one, to close that draft on the south. I think they've already had enough. And you report to yours.

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