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"You, Matt, the strongest, smartest and kindest of all the boys who have ever visited Earth," whispered the President softly, and tried to pat Matt's head, and Matt faintly dodged and his head cracked with pain. "Obviously such a boy must have a big beautiful medal."

The President smiled sweetly and waved his hands, and then, with some barely perceptible movement, got large artificial butterfly almost from Matt's mouth:

"Here you go."

The butterfly was so beautiful that, in addition to his desire, Matt stretched out his hand and took it.

"Oh!" he cried: the whole butterfly was studded from the inside with needles, not even studded - it consisted of many needles.

With a feeling of deep disgust, Matt dropped it from his punctured arms and at the same instant felt that his mouth, between the tongue and the palate, also had the same thin metal needle sticking out.

In horror, afraid of accidentally swallowing it, he tried to get it - first with his tongue, and then with his fingers, but it just slipped down farther and farther, and, completely frightened, Matt ripped a thin sting outward, ruthlessly tearing his own throat.

The blood began to drip, and, looking through the spread palms at the way it covers with stains the polished and shiny floor, he suddenly saw that he was holding his own heart with a thin needle protruding from it.

Help, he thought and woke up.

His throat was so sore, and his bed was so wet and sticky that he was frightened again, now already awake.

"Aia," he whispered, knowing at the same time that she is not here and she will not be here, and then, with immense relief, he's could heard his unharmed heart beating in his chest.

He slid off the bed and stomped with his bare feet to the window.

There, outside the window, in the pale sky, flowed toward the dawn thick heavy clouds.

Frrrr! The bird that slept on the windowsill flinched. "What's going on?"

"I had a bad dream," Matt said hoarsely. "I so wanted attention that it made me heartless."

"Ee..., it's August. In August, I also always have nightmares. It's because soon will be winter."

"Winter?" Matt was surprised. "What is this?"

"Have you dropped from the moon?" The ouzel, in turn, was so amazed, that at that moment even someone who understood something in the causes and consequences would not find in him a shadow of a resemblance to the Maker implicated in the performance: "Winter is a terribly bad time. No food, no warmth, every time you fall asleep you think you'll be gone forever."

The ouzel sighed heavily and ruffled up, looking at the way the darkness floats outside the window, and then its eyes glittered from below upwards like a beads:

"In my opinion, you are not so well."

"My throat hurts," Matt complained.

"Wait!" said the ouzel.

He fluttered to the palm of Matt's hand that was leaned against the windowsill, tromped all over it like a little black chicken, then sat down, listening, and finally gave the final verdict:

"You're almost as hot as I am. In my opinion, you caught a cold. And, in my opinion, for you, human, this is not good."

"But what should I do?" Matt asked.

"Sleep," the ouzel said confidently. "I always sleep in such cases."

28. 2330th year. Benji.

Benji, just as he planned, waited for Aia in the waiting room at the exit from the migration terminal - where the crowd were meeting, and where was a sharp and lingering scent of surrogate coffee.

He sat up aside the crowd, under one of the transmitters, covering the hall with free Wi-Fi, and, taking the opportunity, used the local search engine with the request entitled "human needs".

As for his own needs, about them it was clear, simple and more or less understandable. By and large, in the absence of a driving purpose, even the only one that could be considered basic - the need for periodic recharging - wasn't one: Benji realized that if he somehow didn't get in time to the power source, he would be neither sad nor worried.

But for a human it all was important: the constant involvement in a universe passing by a human and through a human must necessarily have a nonzero degree. Smells, sounds, reflections - all this was the very essence of human life, all this was it.

It has to be said, Benji's curiosity was not entirely idle: gazing intently at the abstract human, he peered through him at Aia.

By the time she appeared at the entrance to the hall, he had managed to understand that the satisfaction of all human needs was not only impossible, but also undesirable, and was just finalizing the contract for the purchase of the apartment in the area of Rue des Lilas.

"I don't know what I'm going to do with you," he told Aia, "Because I don't know what you're going to do with me." But it seems we already have a common apartment for all this.

"Well," she said, so calmly, as if she was from the beginning sure of everything. "Then tonight it should smell of apples."

Rue des Lilas was a narrow green street, which faced the tenth gates of Orly. The proximity to the spaceport made it noisy and crowded.

Benji immediately recognized this house: it was exactly the same as on the advertising hologram in the network - yellow-white, with varying levels, wide green galleries and semicircular transparent balconies along the vertical edges.