Mister Thinker
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I answered Mr. Thinker that he himself had lost his human form and his words made no sense. The future person will develop harmoniously. And besides, he forgot about other worlds, about new planets that we discover during space flights and to which our spaceships descend. It would be very sad if only one sun always shone above the head of humanity and another star never rose. If people were always doomed to tinker only with their Earth, remake, improve – only it! But, fortunately, the human spirit, his hands and thoughts have found new, unexplored areas of application on distant planets. You will know happiness when you meet it, but you need to know grief in advance, before it enters your life, this is the only way to defend yourself from it.
I wanted to clarify this thought, but the gentleman, as if not hearing me, continued to mutter his own:
“Today you all don’t even remember what these feelings are – heaviness, fatigue, pain, you don’t know how pleasant physical work is. The greatest pleasures are not available to you – to taste black bread after a long hunger strike, to taste a sip of water after a long journey, to fall asleep exhausted from hard work. You are sissies who equate yourselves to gods! We have not yet been born, but everything is already prepared for you. Schools are being built faster than new students can grow up, you have hospitals, but there are few patients in them. Your gyms, playgrounds, stadiums are so big that they will never be filled, you have so many art galleries, so many concert halls, so many theaters that you are tired, fed up, brain poisoning has begun. And no one ever knows where to stop.
What could I say to this? That a person will remain a person, and people will remain people until they lose everything human. His words – whatever he says – are a eulogy for our times. He rejects excesses and prosperity, but who knows whether his current rejection of all goods and voluntary starvation is not the result of yesterday's satiety?
Everything in the world is now perfectly organized, and harmony reigns in it. Each person resembles the pipe of a giant organ playing a symphony about life on Earth. And if a false note sounds during this performance, which is not surprising, since there are billions of pipes, then he is one of those cracked pipes.
The whole world is currently sterile. The streets, for example, are watered with foam, which is then washed away by artificial rain. Houses sparkle with bright colors, but white predominates, a symbol of purity and health! An army of hygienists has risen to fight against those who defile cleanliness.
“And you,” I told him, “are one of them.” I can't allow this! I must fight you as a champion of anti-aesthetic norms.
“Oh, you are a wonderful dreamer,” said the gentleman, noticeably offended, “know that dirt will never disappear from the face of the Earth, because every speck of dust is, in fact, a particle of our planet.”
“Oh, you piece of the planet,” I answered in the same tone, “if these specks of dust accumulate under your nails, this is already dirt, and it needs to be removed with water and a brush! By the way, come on. My sense of smell refuses to perceive such strange smells.
“Nobody invited you here,” the gentleman answered, but he got out. – If you, in addition to a long nose, also had an imagination, you would have noticed a blooming apple tree in the place where you climbed and which irritates you so much.
– Don't remind me of flowering trees! I was angry.
“For your information, I made all the trees around me angry!” I did this to improve the soil structure. This entire garden is the result of many years of research into the problem associated with artificial fertilizers. If you were to walk up the hill with me, you would find that the higher you go, the older the trees become. On each trunk there is a plate with data – how much nitrogen-phosphate fertilizers and how much peat were used to feed the tree. Do you see a row of pegs hammered in last fall? This is the border of my garden. You probably already guessed that these are the places of future landings. Below I sow, above I harvest. I treat the birds with cherries, and the surrounding boys with pears. However, I need to make sure that they fear me a little.
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