The new chronology of Iyon the Pacific

Stanislav Lem is a great writer. But sloppy.

At least that's what I thought when I was a kid. Because in his cycles there is no internal chronology. The pilot Pirks, who lived before the advent of interstellar flights, could easily, in one of the stories, end up on fraction Iota 116, fraction 47 of Proxima Aquarius, and Iion Tikhiy wandering the galaxy listed Professor Tarantoga as friends in post-war Poland.

For years I spun these facts, trying to build a consistent story. It turned out somehow not very - especially when you consider that Mr. Stanislav himself constantly threw a coal to me - writing novels that shook the chronology even more.

It’s easier for modern children. They have a multiverse. Batman can do absolutely anything with a Woman cat: make friends, quarrel, be her - and this will not affect the reliability. The worlds are different, understand?

Having cut the further narration, I will immediately proceed to the conclusions. I managed to put together a consistent story.

I present to your court my supplement to The Diary of the Quiet John. Do not take it seriously!

- Iion S. Quiet, Alice, not a fictional character. This is the cousin of Stanislav Lem. At the end of the century before last, he worked in a small bicycle repair shop on the outskirts of Lviv and turned to him with a request to fix a flying saucer a real alien.

As we now believe, this plate, that is, an alien spacecraft, belonged to the Omni race, but was stolen from them and hacked. Without this, no mechanic, not even the most talented one, could repair something, or even just open the engine compartment.

A hacked plate was reflashed and lacked copy protection. So Iion, while repairing, was able to make copies of the nodes for himself - Omni devices are equipped with a self-repair system and resemble starfish. Not externally, but by properties - if a starfish is cut and thrown into the sea, a new star will grow from each half of the star. So it is with Omni machines - if their navigation computer is cut and supplied with time, energy and metal, then you will have two computers.

Usually, by the way, this does not happen - Omni do not want to organize an endless source of spare parts for everyone from their equipment. But, in our case - I repeat, this restriction has been removed.

Why, then, with such a magical technology of self-repair, was Iion needed at all?

Because because of self-repair, an accident happened. The alien who stole or bought a stolen plate was not Omni and was breathing a mixture of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide.

First, he reconfigured the life support system to his own standards, and then she self-reposed and began to issue the usual Omni nitrogen with oxygen into the cockpit. The pilot almost bent, but managed to reach the nearest planet. Which was our Earth. Landing on Earth was prohibited by the Convention, so he did not advertise his arrival, but tried to fix the ship privately. Turning to Iion.

And Iyon repaired the ship. He made a hydrogen sulfide supply system, corrected the case that was rumpled during landing. And at the same time copied all the important alien devices. I do not know, however, with the permission of the owner or not.

So, when the alien continued to fly on the repaired plate, Iyon began to build his spaceship. He had money - he patented several outstripping alien technological innovations for front companies.

The ship turned out to be chimerical. In 1898, even a light bulb was a technological miracle, so the ship was a set of nodes between which thousands of years of engineering development passed. The mu quark reactor boiled water in the boiler of a steam engine, the data from paper maps of the starry sky were loaded into the navigation computer, and ship latrine, with incorrectly turned on valves, could easily suck and throw into the vacuum an unsuccessful visitor.

In this case, the ship flew. Near and slow, by modern standards, but millions of times faster and better than spacecraft of the twentieth century.

And Iion went into space. He traveled for years and decades, visiting many planets in search of miracles and wonders. He met hundreds of alien races, thousands of cultures and tens of thousands of worlds. He saw burning warships on the outskirts of Orion. I saw C-rays flickering in the darkness near the gates of Tannhäuser. He did not forget about the Earth, returning to it in order to rest and replenish supplies.

Decades passed between his arrivals, which Iyon did not notice due to the relativistic effect of time dilation. His relations with other relatives were not so hot - Iion did not share the profit from the patents, he was aging, due to the reduction of time to the offensive, he slowly, and in general, wandered in the unknown. In general, a cut chunk.
The funny thing is that Iion himself and his closest comrade-in-arms remaining on Earth, the ship's designer Professor Tarantoga, did not at all make secrets out of flights. They simply were not taken seriously, considering either urban lunatics or cunning hoaxes.

This was also facilitated by the fact that the ship, although assembled by friends personally, had too many Omni nodes in which the main directive was built. Since the ship was located on a planet that is subject to convection, it could take off and land only if the natives did not see it.

Iyon himself circumvented this condition by taking off and landing on Earth in remote, remote places, at night and with his eyes closed. But how to explain this to skeptics? Hence the ears of his distrust of official scientific circles. Also, I cannot but mention that when Iyon arrived on Earth, he relaxed and behaved like in a resort. After forced silence during space travel, he reveled in communication with people.

“As I understand it, he reveled not only in communication,” said Alice, who understood well the omissions, recalling some of the confusion of the “Diaries”.

“Well, Iion, of course, was not a teetotaler, and sometimes allowed himself to skip a glass, another ... third.” Well, as a shoemaker, in general, drank. But - only on Earth. Of course, the spiteful critics allow themselves to insinuate, as if he had given himself to his vice and for many years of space travel. This, of course, is nonsense - on his primitive ship, and it was sober to fly deadly. And drunk, Iion could either fall asleep in the reactor, or while airing the ship for several seconds longer, leave the window open. And voila. But, but such are the people: they are more likely to believe all nonsense than to true facts.

But, I continue: in the rare hours of rest on earth, Iion loved to chat with his cousin Stasik, then Stanislav, then Stanislav Samuilovich Lem. And he told him a lot of interesting things. What Lem then, becoming a writer, used in his books.

- That is, everything that is written by Lem, right? - Alice was surprised.

- Of course not. Pan Stanislav was too good a writer for this. But facts only interfere with a good writer. But he remembered and reflected many of his grandfather's stories in his novels. For example, about the OOP, we learned precisely from Lem’s story in which he retold one of his grandfather’s travels.

“Do sepules really exist?”

- Of course. They are now bred on Earth. They are very similar to murkwa, and in their color scheme they resemble soft bees. Of course, their practical function is different, but I think you, an adult girl, I do not need to explain.

Alice’s face clearly read that how to explain it once needed. This part of human relations so far lay outside the field of her interests and was largely incomprehensible.

- And who are you so slow-witted? - Lera toad sighed pretentiously, rolling her eyes. Sepulki, actually - porno vegetable. In the sense: a plant for masturbation. Do you know why nuns buy cucumbers?

Alice did not know, but said nothing, realizing that Lera would continue to broadcast anyway.

- This is such a fruit, sometimes structurally similar to the female genitalia. True, bright orange. But this is not about color. Density, elasticity ... or vice versa softness and roughness, make it an excellent replacement for women.

In local culture, sepulch has a significant place. More than a dozen dishes prepared from sepule are known. Dishes, frankly - frankly filthy. The icicles are bitter, and they somehow smell what they look like. So, the more sepules are put in these dishes, the more dishes are even. Well, love, we are not for that. If at all we love.

And they got into the national cuisine only because local men had a decent reason to buy sepule in the market. Fun fact: the top of the local cuisine: the sepulcé salad is so good because the sepules are thoroughly washed, then peeled and cut, successively throwing the skin, seeds, flesh and spine. Yes, yes, - Lera laughed, the salad of the sepules does not contain any in any way.

Shocked Alice froze with her mouth open. The mystery that occupied her in childhood was solved, but definitely somehow not the way she wanted.

“Welcome to the adult world Alice,” the Old Man, cheered by her dumbness, said, and they with a toad Lera looked at each other knowingly.

“Well, since you adults know everything,” Alice said sweetly smiling, “maybe tell me what the Muskrat’s false teeth turned into?”

- And what does it have to do with it? Asked Lera, surprised.

- And this is the second important issue that Pasha and I were interested in when we were discussing books lying on the roof of the house.

“This is not in the book, so I don’t know for sure, but I guess ...” - what exactly the Old Man suggests, remained unknown, as Toad Lera interrupted him.

“If you want to know what Ondatra’s false teeth turned into, ask your mother,” she blurted out, and looked straight into Alice’s eyes, “be sure your mother knows that.”

Alice, right there, got squeezed. Moving a couple of steps away from the fire, she wiped the tears from her eyes, but then returned to the fire. She will not encourage Leroux, pouting aside at her every taunt - from this the number of taunts will only increase.

- Where is he now? Alice asked, calmed down. Of course, she knew how to count, and understood that Iion was born more than two hundred years ago, but ... but ...

- Travels. The space is great, Alice. The last thing we heard about him was a rumor that Iion was going to explore the surroundings of a black hole. So Iion can return to Earth any day, over the next billion years.