Wars captured the world.

The earth has been burning for a good one and a half decades. People with such frenzy gnawed at each other's throats that the only right decision for those who did not want to participate in this and could afford it was to leave the others away, taking with them only those who also most wanted the flame, raging around, left forever behind. Leave and never again. Never. Never to see the fire embracing the city in the country, nor those who caused it. Do not see, do not remember. Cross out all of this from life. Leave in the past. And try to forget, although it is simply impossible to forget such a thing without losing one's mind. Remember, however, is not easier.

- Captain!

Efraim Longstocking raises his head from the diary laid over the logbook. To pour emotions on paper helps. He needs to keep calm: in the end, he has not yet completed his project. The logbook has long been only one of many habits, to abandon which did not make any sense. But a personal diary was not just a habit. The diary was an opportunity to share your own feelings with at least something. Ephraim would not mind if there was an opportunity to share with someone, but there is no such possibility. Subordinates are not supposed to see the ruler of weakness in the person of the ruler. And she takes his problems too seriously. Ephraim is not ready to see sadness in her eyes.

"An unidentified object has been fixed within our waters," Fridolf, the navigator of the Atlantis head submarine, who appeared in the captain's cabin, looks worried. Usually, all alien objects are modifiers, the destruction of which takes prohibitively much ammunition. And the production of ammunition in conditions of complete autonomy is not an easy task, although not exclusively complicated. But each projectile fired means that you have to tighten your duty schedule to appoint people to work in workshops.

"Send the submarines," the captain and supreme ruler of "Atlantis," the mobile "island," consisting of a large number of specially designed and docked scuba and surface ships, was never afraid of unexpected guests. - Comb the entire area in which the enepeshnik was noticed (1). All that you find is valuable to us. And make sure that the side ships do not attempt to prey. There will be something to divide - divide as it should.

The sea is rich. The ocean is even richer. After so many wars in the oceans, you can find materials for another three or four wars, if humanity is engaged in cleaning the bottom. True, humanity does not need this. Need Atlantis. During the design, the complex was designed for autonomous existence, but it is always better to have a wing from some plane or part of a dead ship at hand, so that there is something to quickly close a hole on board. And the complex has to be patched regularly: the modifiers spoil everything that they can, including weapons and skin. Occasionally, emerging mechanoids are not one iota better. A swarm of English Wasps, who lost touch with the base and therefore got out of control, at one time spoiled the captain and his people a lot of blood and nerves.

"Sir, is bio-ballast considered valuable?" - Fridolf clarifies, after a couple of hours breaking through the interference on the communication line. The combing of the nearby squares is apparently nearing completion.

- Man? - fate clearly decided to surprise Ephraim.

"The man and the remains of the aircraft, sir." I dare to report, the device is similar to Swedish. Only technically perfect. It was. Something like a mechanoid, but I have not seen such before.

This is unexpected and strange. The Swedes did not fly by themselves for a long time, only their creatures flew, controlled by the accursed Swanteson. Why design something that requires a pilot when you can use the trouble-free mechanoids of the Kid? So a lone pilot over the Atlantic is really suspicious. Nothing for pilots to do in this region. Nobody, to be honest, has nothing to do here. Only if…

"Take the man to me, Fridolf," Ephraim breathes.

His world wraps his master in a tight embrace of expectation. Sometimes miracles happen, and Ephraim hopes that a miracle will happen right now.

Hope does not deceive him. A skinny, blond-haired Swede is brought to him - he is given a flag sewn on the left sleeve of an olive-colored military jacket - and a disassembled machine with an antigrave in the core. The Swede does not even need to be interrogated in order to guess who fell into the hands of Efraim Longstock. However, the pilot will not answer anything. For anyone, even the most gentle interrogation, he must first be patched up and brought to consciousness. Friedolf ?reports that the Swede was in a protective suit that was supposed to retain heat, pressure and oxygen at sea depth. Compression was provided for by the design, thanks to which even a partially damaged suit saved the owner's life, although it did not protect against frostbite. They managed to pick out the costume, spending a lot of time: it was made with the expectation that sharks would tear it - and they would really have to sweat pretty to have lunch. The chief engineer of Atlantis was already sitting in the laboratory, studying the wonders of technology.

Svante Swanteson. Efraim is sure that his captive cannot be anyone else - it is worth calling him that because the captain would not have called him a guest in any case. Ephraim thinks over the current situation for several minutes, gives the order to place the prisoner in the medical compartment and begins to wait.

The Swede does not recover for a long time. Engineers are not hardened people, they are not intended for drowning at great depths. At shallow depths they prefer not to be without a scuba gear - even the British living on the island, although it would seem: if there is only water around, learn to swim, it will come in handy. What can we say about the Swedes.

Only five days later, doctors report that the prisoner regained consciousness. Ephraim looks at the calendar and smiles at the coincidence.

In the medical compartment, the instruments are quietly buzzing, smelling slightly of medicines - nothing new or unexpected.

"Happy birthday, Baby," Ephraim says wryly, grinning, and looks into his pale cheeky face. Swanteson reciprocates: his lips twist dryly, turning his wrists in plastic handcuffs a little. He radiates all fatigue, as if ready, that his life will be appreciated in a dozen or two new deadly projects. But Efraim does not need this from him at all. And that Ephraim will require from a brilliant inventor, he does not know right away. The captain is somewhat amused by a man in a hospital bed. He is younger than Efraim for a good two decades and has seen, perhaps, a couple of wars less; gray hair in fair hair is almost invisible - but it is. And at the same time, he knows that if he wakes up, it means that he does not face death. There is no one among that couple of tens of millions of remaining living inhabitants of the planet who would have nothing to ask - or demand - from the Kid. Perhaps, for a couple of barely surviving states, the captive of Efraim would have seemed more magical and impossible than Santa Claus with all his deers and a bag of gifts.

"I wonder who hit you?" - is interested in Ephraim. For those few days that the Kid was lying in oblivion and all the injured and dead tissues of his limbs were restored, the captain and his subordinates not only went over the Swanteson mechanolet, but also, as far as they could, figured out those inhabitants who were dead, but and interesting. Part had to be postponed - the self-destruction system by Swanteson was beautiful, and I did not want to climb there with my bare hands. The part was not created by Toddler at all.

"I will not design anything related to weapons," the Kid warns simply and calmly. - If your chatter is a prelude to this "request" - better discharge your gun into my head, Herr.

Ephraim laughs. In fact, it would have been rather unexpected for politicians in most countries of the world to hear this from this person. Others would count on ways of coercion, but Ephraim knows how to look in the eyes. In the eyes of Swanteson, Antarctica spread its snow dunes. And it does not even melt a pair of dozens of dotted torture fires.

"Your death will please a couple of my enemies, boy."

- Just a couple? - skeptically clarifies the Kid. "My people will be delighted with as many people as they will be upset." Rather, even more.

"I have fewer enemies than you," Ephraim laughs. "So, if you want, you can try to find out who brought you down, O great Svante Svanteson."

"I want to find out where I ended up." The kid shrugs wearily. It is evident that it is difficult for him to move.

"This is not interesting," Efraim is almost offended that the "guest" does not want to at least try to play by the rules of the household.

- Interesting.

"Not for me," Longstocking grins, sitting down on a chair opposite Swanteson's bed and lowering his chin and hands to the back of the chair, which is facing his chest.

"Good," Swanteson shrugs again, and from his aggravating pallor, Ephraim realizes that the Kid is tired.

We have to call a doctor who again connects Svanteson to a dropper and an oxygen mask. This is a little disappointing, because Efraim expected that the captive would listen to him in a completely clear mind, and not in a slightly floating mind. The story of Ephraim Longstocking is fascinating enough to be heard.

Ephraim was not an inventor. He was a bioengineer.

He spent his childhood in a small village in Siberia, where his ancestors had once been exiled. He studied with the best biologists and biotechnologists of the United Siberia, fortunately, after they realized that nature is their trump card in the global political game, they gave a lot of time and resources to the development of biotechnological sciences. While Europe and America measured the level of technical innovation, Siberians improved biological weapons.

The "gray gnomes" - the very first modifiers launched into mass production - were collected by nucleotides in the laboratories at Efraim. And then, one after another, a flame swept over the country. Efraim always knew that military intelligence of different states not only did not sleep, but actively acted. And therefore almost no surprise It appeared when, in a report from Oslo and Trondheim, he identified in the mechanoids used in the first wave of the attack on these cities the recycled modifiers that had left his laboratory. It was foolish to expect another.

Few managed to keep their secrets. And Svante Svanteson was one of them. The kid, who seemed to be working with all the possible powers of Sweden, riveted military mechanoids one by one, but only a few were able to repeat the samples that fell directly into the hands. Not only because Svanteson sometimes used paradoxical decisions, but also thanks to an impossible, unprecedented self-destruction system, mounted in each mechanoid.

Ephraim Longstocking for a long time looked at the death of the world with colleagues. And then the forests of the Amazonian jungle burned. And the next blow of biological weapons that came out of Efraim's hands launched several epidemics on the planet at once and knocked the scientist off track. Biosib launched a third, even more terrifying project, while Ephraim's eyes twitched, and the latter was echoed by arms and legs in an effort to escape from wars and endless weapons. All he wanted was to disappear. In another situation, he would have committed suicide, but he was not only responsible for himself, and suicide was impossible.

Fedor Dmitrievich, a young partner and boss of Ephraim, noted that his colleague had become too tense. Already on the third day after the launch of the project, Efraim found in his pencil case a business card with the telephone of a certain "N". The full name of the mysterious owner of Atlantis Efraim has not yet recognized. He didn't even know if the owner was in the complex, because if so, why would he give the authority of the captain recommended by someone to Efraim? However, each has its own quirks. Maybe the owner of the complex, the same "N", sits on one of the subordinate ships, listens to Schubert and plays the "Requiem" for the harmonium. He does not need to bother with the issues of allocating resources, organizing regular repairs, adjusting the work of helium-dependent greenhouses and other problems that the captain of Atlantis is currently occupied with.

When Ephraim first stepped aboard, he, to put it mildly, felt exotic among the black team of the complex. The Atlantis was Africa's hidden trump card. Africa had nothing, neither science, nor production, but there was a desert in which it was good to hide all the developments. And, paradoxically, a certain number of leaders, who in the supposedly civilized world were called Papuans, managed to understand earlier than others: strength is in secrecy. While the world laughed at the savages, the savages either grabbed a couple of little boats, then in the savannah completely by accident (and what you want, there were plenty of wild places, lions and other predators) the well-equipped expedition disappeared ... bowing and shedding tears that turned out to be crocodile, if any incident occurred. And it's really hard to imagine how much you can steal if you steal for a very long time. From the equipment stolen in different parts of the world, an autonomous mobile complex was created that replaced a whole mainland for a number of peoples. Ephraim was one of the first to enter the Atlantis coalition, and even set up and refit some of the ships himself.