102
TALES FROMTHE FUTURE
Dasha looked at the photograph of the square projectile again indiffer-
ently and replied calmly,
“If I take back my promise, those projectiles still won’t blow up, Papa
dear.”
“But why?”
“Because you talk too much, Papa dear. And when I looked at the photo-
graph, I immediately disliked these square goblins. They’re ugly and now
. . .”
“What now? Dashenka . . . What?”
“Forgive me, please, Papa dear, but you talked so much after you showed
them to me that since then they’ve been almost entirely eaten up.”
“Eaten up? What’s been eaten up?”
“These square projectiles are nearly eaten up. As soon as I didn’t like the
projectiles I could tell—they’d been set in motion and started eating them
very very fast.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“Oh, the little ones. They’re around us everywhere and inside us. They’re
good. Kostya says they’re bacteria, or microorganisms. But I’d rather call
them ‘my nice little ones.’ They like that more. Sometimes I play with them.
People pay almost no attention to them, but they always try to do something
good for each person. When a person rejoices, the joyous energy makes him
feel good; when a person is angry or breaks something living, they perish in
great numbers. Others rush to take the place of those who have perished. So-
metimes others do not manage to replace the dead, and the human body
falls ill.
“But you are here, Dashenka, and the missiles are hidden far away under-
ground in different countries. How could they, well, these ‘little ones,’ learn
of your desire so quickly in other countries?”
“Oh, they tell each other everything in a chain, a lot faster than the elec-
trons run in your computer.”
“My computer . . . Communication . . . Just a second . . . I’m going to verify
everything. Video cameras have been installed around every missile on our
territory. I’ll be just a second.”
