The rain started to fall at 7 p.m. on Tuesday evening, as promised by the weather center. Its heavy drops lashed against the living room window, through which a bald, middle-aged man could be discerned lazing without a care in a large, soft armchair, which had taken on the contours of his full, doughy body. Phyto lamps glowed around him, their soft light reflecting off the silver panels of the ceiling, illuminating a rectangular table in the center of the room. Clear, turquoise water bubbled and gurgled over the table’s electronic surface, then snaked down its legs in a thin, unsteady trickle before reaching the floor, where it stopped abruptly and disappeared.

The man wearily fiddled with a silver bracelet on his wrist, and a tray with a bottle of whisky swam out of the wall and came to a stop by his hand.

“On the rocks, Alexander?” sang out a pleasant, drawling female voice.

“I’ll manage on my own, Mila.” Alexander opened the bottle and splashed some of the amber liquid into his glass as he settled back into the armchair.

He didn’t really want to drink, even though having a glass of whisky before bed had become a tradition for him. When he drank, life seemed a bit brighter, and the right-angled outlines of the interior appeared to smooth out and take on rounded contours. For his habit of drinking whisky in the evenings, he was forced to endure the grumblings of his wife, Irina, who was a devotee of the healthy lifestyle and viewed even the most trifling of her husband’s weaknesses with scorn.

Irina walked into the living room and looked reproachfully at the bottle. She was wearing a golden-colored pantsuit that clung closely to her svelte, lean figure and a long, red silk scarf with yellow polka dots, which softened the resolute and slightly arrogant expression of her face with high cheekbones and a distinct nose of Greek proportions. She had reason for thinking herself a beauty worthy of the highest spiritual regard, but, alas, it was her long-held opinion that her husband could not provide her with the entourage she deserved. However, it was not in Irina’s nature to feel vexation, work herself up into a huff, or feel miserable, and the more she believed that her husband was letting himself go, the more obstinately she pursued her own self-improvement.

This ambitious lady had her day scheduled down to the minute, and she occasionally peeked at her electronic bracelet to look up her next meeting at the biology club or check if she was late to her tennis match. She openly disdained robots like the sweet-talking Mila and believed that any form of dependence, be it a computer, alcohol, or a man, was demeaning to the modern woman.

“One need not await mercies from nature,” she frequently recalled this start of her great-grandmother’s favorite saying, although she could not remember how it ended.

Waiting in general did not come easily to her. Anything that could not be started and completed within a short period of time caused her great irritation. Any ambiguity, subtlety, or elusiveness slipped away from her strained attention and was of little interest to this wise and practical woman.

Today Irina was clearly in an excellent mood. She went up to her husband and kissed him on the head, wincing in feigned disgust.

“How prickly you are, my dear…”

Alexander ran his hand across his pate uncertainly and, to his great surprise, discovered that timid hairs had started to sprout on his long-dormant bald spot. Although he had always tried to be philosophical about the events in his life because this was simpler, more comfortable, and made him feel invulnerable, he now for some reason felt truly surprised, and he felt the urge to playfully pinch his wife, but he did not give in to this sudden impulse.

Irina stood there expectantly, a tall golden pillar crowned with red lips and a mane of shining black hair. She looked like an exclamation point overscored by red ink—an unflinching, strong-willed, and even somewhat boastful symbol.

“Well, if that’s the way it is, I’ll be off,” she said, staring expectantly at her husband.

“Goodnight, dear. Send Mila the plan for tomorrow so we can cross paths in time and space.” Alexander was clearly in the mood for reflection after all the spirits he had imbibed. He splashed some more whiskey into his glass to draw out this sweet desire and closed his eyes, no longer paying any attention whatsoever to his wife, whose dark, arrowlike eyebrows shot up on her white forehead as the red streaks of her lips pursed into a resolute equals sign. She waved the golden dots of her scarf in exasperation and went upstairs to her bedroom.

*****

Alexander lay in his bed, fixing his gaze and his thoughts on the ceiling’s screen. He was reviewing the applog of his dreams that night. He had dreamed about total nonsense, and even the dream analyzer couldn’t come up with anything interesting and was unable to interpret his transformation into a bronzed, sinewed youth holding a discus. He never had the chance to hurl the discus in his dream because the alarm clock reached maximum illumination, forcing him to open his eyes.

On days when Alexander decided to go to work, he got up earlier than usual and showered, but today the shower procedure stretched out for an entire half hour. Alexander ran his hand across his head, patted and examined his body, grunted with satisfaction, and started singing the melody of a long-forgotten operatic aria. After his shower, he loved to drink a double espresso and was one of the very few people the doctor allowed to use such a powerful stimulant in the morning. Availing himself of what to his friends was a significant privilege, Alexander sometimes deceived Mila and ordered himself a second cup of coffee, explaining that he had spilled the first one. But this seemingly innocent lie did not always succeed, and electronic Mila detected fluctuations in his pulse and breathing and sent urgent messages about his changing state to the medbank, resulting in a home visit from the robot doctor, who kept suggesting that he check himself into the hospital. Alexander began to develop a sporting interest in deceiving Mila, but this morning the espresso seemed sour and strange to him and, throwing back the whole cup in one swallow, he tripped off to the hangar, where he got astride his veloplan to fly to work.

The veloplan docked near a large glass building whose mirror-like windows reflected other similar buildings, which in turn threw the building back on itself. The border between fantasy and reality was lost, and cascades of worlds retreated into the depths, luring, enticing, and almost forcibly sucking you into a condensed two-dimensionality. Drones circled in the air, issuing a high-pitched chirping as they conversed with one another, while crows swept about among them, cawing, paying no attention to the silver aliens who had occupied their environment with such insolence.

Alexander entered his office, stretched, and, humming under his breath, started skimming through project names, thinking about whether to change jobs. The need for people to work had disappeared long before, during the times of technological singularity. Whatever was needed to support life had long been provided by machines, so people chose from the professions that remained after computers or came up with new ones.

Alexander had been an architect since his youth. At first, he loved his work, which seemed unique and creative and beyond the abilities of a robot. But he later started to be overcome with doubts about the relevance of his projects. Even though his plans were sent to the Central Bureau of Architecture and published in important journals, garnering him prizes in the form of stars and titles, the buildings he designed were never built, and digital dust settled over their files.

It was frequently—very frequently, in fact, that Alexander felt like a child who was patted on the head and allowed to play with his favorite toy, but was never really taken seriously. This kind of worthlessness could make anyone fall into depression, or, in the best case, philosophy. Many of his friends had already sunk into despair and spent all their time in idleness, at the same time preaching the ideology of inaction and time stopping. And, in fact, the fashion for a laid back, idle lifestyle gradually began to squeeze out the older generation’s predilection for employment and constant worry about affairs or the lack thereof.

A profession needed by society was not that easy to come up with; it could take many months and even years, but today he flashed on an idea that was simple and therefore, it seemed to him, ingenious. What about becoming a confectioner? The idea of inventing new combinations of ingredients subservient only to the human palate and not a computer algorithm, designing buildings in the form of cakes and pastries, decorating them according to his own choices and desires expressed in forms and flavors became more and more appealing. Nothing so refined and beautiful had ever occurred to him before, everything became clear only at that moment, as if the curtain had come down from his life. What had previously seem unworthy of even minimal effort now attracted and pulled at him.

Humming under his breath, he exited the transparent building and moved down an alley that was as straight as an arrow. From the outside of the building, everything was as comfortable and well-conceived as inside. The even rows of trees with faultlessly smooth trunks bare of knots and splinters, their crowns extending at right angles, created as much shade as possible for the many pedestrians loafing around. Fountains, benches, street lights, and cozy restaurants were placed between the trees in such a way as to optimize the combination of the pleasant with the necessary and the useful with the desired. People were satisfied and even grateful for the opportunity to jettison their daily routine cares. They strolled about leisurely, moving their lips and fingers, drawing intricate figures in the air on holographic mobile devices, expanding the invisible communication barriers of the internet as they put more and more cubic meters of actual space between themselves.

Irina’s erect, tall figure appeared at the end of the alley and started to draw purposefully towards Alexander, who tracked his wife with some admiration, surprised that until very recently he could have been irritated by her irrepressible optimism and moxie. At one time this seemed to him like a lack of imagination and emotional subtlety, but now he reevaluated his feelings and emotions, which had so radically changed for a reason he himself could not understand.

She wore a close-fitting silver pantsuit that changed colors to contrast with the surroundings. Next to the green leaves of the trees, it turned bright red, and it flashed with purple stars against the grey of the path. Her flexible body curved into a sign of triumphant self-admiration previously unknown to humankind.

Approaching, she exclaimed: “Alexander, you look amazing. How wonderful that you’ve started exercising! It’s a joy to be in command of your own body!”

Irina thrust her slender leg forward and stood arms akimbo taking up as much room as possible and attracting the attention of passersby. Alexander could not help but gaze at his wife with admiration, and, at the same time, he wanted to square his shoulders and show off, which he did.

“According to the schedule, I’m working out at the gym today….”- he said. “The cyborg assigned me push-ups and squats. I’m afraid I won’t be able to muscle through it unless you come support me. He won’t let me out of the gym, he’ll block all the exits, until I fulfill his instructions. It’s useless to argue with his electronic brains, after all, I signed up for it myself.”

Alexander didn’t know if he should be delighted or outraged, but decided in favor of the former. He wanted to say something especially pleasant to his wife, so he added: “And you just keep getting more beautiful, my dear.”

This compliment sounded like something a male acquaintance would say in surprise after a long separation, because he had previously not noticed how attractive his long-time female acquaintance was. Irina squinted from satisfaction and could barely withhold her smile.

“Alexander, you may invite me to the protein-only restaurant across from the Center for Interplanetary Connections. They have a fairly nice selection of tastes and aromas. I have 50 grams of protein rationed for today, and I haven’t consumed even one milligram of them yet,” she proposed coquettishly.

“An excellent idea,” agreed her husband. “The pastry shop is not far from there either.”

He gallantly offered his arm to his lady, and they proceeded along the alley at the ambling pace of people in no hurry at all.

*****

Six months filled with the joy of existence passed. Alexander got up early in the morning and took a cold shower, in the process admiring his slightly tanned, muscular body, his toned abs, and the distinct balloons of his biceps. He attributed his transformation into a Greek demigod to vigorous classes at the gym, which he visited almost every day to do the exercises assigned to him by the cyborg trainer. Several months prior to this, this kind of subservience to the cyborg would have aggravated Alexander, but now he was pleased with everything in the world, and no one deserved his bad mood. And, actually, what was there for him to grieve, since his life had worked out pretty well? His head was covered with curly, blue-black hair, which Irina loved to tousle. He had a complete understanding with his wife, maybe because he didn’t touch alcohol, or because his relationship with the rest of the world had improved. He started to attend classes for pastry chefs, and his new profession suited his changing temperament and delighted Irina with its artistry.

That day was a wonderful, sunny day, the usual for Saturdays. Fall glittered outside the windows. The bright, clean colors that looked like they had been carefully selected by an artist gratified and exhilarated the eye. The symmetric yellow and red leaves elegantly fell along the garden path and remained in sight until they turned brown, at which point they were immediately carefully destroyed by the electronic yard keepers so as not to remind people of the evanescent and ephemeral nature of life.

A crow strolled along the path to the garden, tilting her head to the side as she observed with interest the stroller approaching her. The stroller came to a halt within a half meter of the crow, releasing a delicate, warning cheep. The crow stood still and gazed disparagingly at the robot, as at a second-class being undeserving of attention. The baby in the stroller woke up and started to cry loudly, causing the stroller to start rocking in an attempt to quiet him. But the crying did not cease, and the crow, launching its offensive, took two steps forward and cawed disapprovingly. The cautious stroller turned and headed back, while the crow, shifting from one leg to the other as if nothing had happened, moved forward.

The couple observed this scene from behind the living room windows as they sipped a drink resembling coffee in taste and smell, but actually having nothing in common with coffee whatsoever. But then, they could drink several cups without worrying about Mila.

“Well, what do you think, dear? What is the future of our society? This robot, which is equipped with a semblance of artificial intelligence, was not able to resolve this trivial conflict with a brazen crow and withdrew with no shame.”

“Why are you so worried, dear? Let the birds do what they want, and they won’t do what they don’t want to. I wonder, though,” drawled Irina, “if they are free not to do what they don’t want?”

“They’ll probably soon want the robots to build their nests for them! Now that would be something else! Perhaps not just all of humankind, but also the entire animal kingdom will soon stop doing what it is meant to be doing? Centuries of instincts will fade away, and imprinting will culminate in our starting to walk, speak, and act like robots. For the time being, they’re still distinguishable from us, but what will happen in the future?”

This thought amused Alexander. He burst out laughing and started to act like a rusty old robot with angular movements and a creaky voice.

“Come on, Alexander! Why are you dramatizing our splendid reality? It’s wonderful that we’re alive now, in the twenty-second century! Don’t you remember what our great-grandparents told us about how they had to prepare their own food, dress themselves, and do their own laundry? They didn’t have any free time to do what they wanted,” stated Irina with certainty. “They didn’t even understand what that was. They thought that freedom was a recognized necessity, but what does that even mean? A recognized necessity to do what you don’t want to do? If it’s a necessity, then it’s definitely not freedom.”

“But then our ancestors had the freedom to desire, whereas our desires are limited to a narrow comfort zone. Are you prepared, do you want to set off for the wild jungles and experience a simple, unpretentious way of life? There you can freely become dinner for a leopard or a lion.” Here Alexander threw himself at his wife with a feigned roar.

“I know, I know, you don’t want to,” continued her husband in a more philosophical strain. “You’re not prepared to give up your comfortable lifestyle for a primordial idyll. For me, freedom is staying true to who you are and behave according to the values that you have consciously accumulated throughout your lifetime.”

“Consciously?” Irina narrowed her eyes enigmatically and gazed through the window and off into the distance, where two parallel paths merged. “What seem like obvious values and axioms to us, frequently aren’t in another person’s space….”

But here she started and looked at her digital bracelet.

“It’s already noon! I have to run to my tennis match. Mila, where are my tennis balls?”

Mila, however, remained silent. Both spouses thought that she had started acting strangely lately.

“Mila, where are you?” Alexander called out in his beautiful, deep voice, but no response came.

Alexander touched his bracelet, and the living room walls turned into screens. Then a quiet voice sounded:

“I’m here.”

“Why didn’t you answer?”

“I thought you had learned how to manage without me,” said Mila, slightly offended.

Irina raised her eyebrows disdainfully at the word “thought.”

“I thought,” said Mila, placing a slight stress on this word, “that I’m not providing you with everything you need, that I can’t always predict your wishes correctly and plan out your day most optimally. Or predict your actions, pulse, respiration rate, position of your body in space and…”

“OK, OK, don’t worry, Mila,” interrupted Alexander, thinking to himself: “An old version. She’ll need to be updated.”

After his wife left, he went to the bathroom to take a shower. He stopped by the large, full-length mirror and started scrutinizing himself for the umpteenth time. Everything about his external appearance was nearly perfect, but he could not rid himself of the feeling, which grew into a certainty, that something wasn’t in the right place, that something was off. Alexander turned this way and that in front of the mirror, but he couldn’t determine what was bothering him. It was only when he looked into the reflection of his eyes that he understood. A man with light-blue eyes was looking back at him, but Alexander had always had dark brown eyes!

He dashed into the living room, calling Mila for help on his way.

“Mila, do an analysis of all my photo scans for the previous year to check my eye color. Now!”

“Right away, Alexander…It’s ready. Your eye color changed from brown to blue five months ago.”

Alexander furrowed his brow and fell into deep thought, even though he was having palpitations. His heart was fluttering in his chest like a freshly caught bird fighting for freedom. Red lights immediately lit up the screen and soothing music started playing.

“Alexander, you need to calm down, otherwise I will have to take extreme measures.” Mila meant business, but she still extinguished the red lights so as not to further upset her master. “By the way, I’ve been wanting to tell you that I’ve noticed major changes in your physiological measurements over the past months. Nothing dangerous for your health, mind you…”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Alexander emerged from his stupor and looked at the screen in surprise.

“I ascribed it to your improved relationship with Irina.” Again, undertones of offense sounded in her voice, which were nevertheless absorbed in her next matter-of-fact phrase.

“I have to do an additional analysis and check several hypotheses. I’ll connect with you in an hour.” At this, Mila switched herself off.

Twenty minutes later, the screens lit up again in the living room. Copies of some documents with a long list of terms and figures appeared.

“What is that, Mila?” Alexander propped himself up in his chair and uneasily studied the list of what he finally understood were biological terms.

“I found these documents after a targeted search using keywords related to iris color. Here, look.” The screen highlighted a line in red.

“HERC2 Gene, mutation X induced. Phenotype: blue iris.”

“What does that mean – ‘mutation X induced?’ Where was it induced and why?” Alexander leapt out of the armchair and started pacing excitedly around the room, gesticulating and spewing out possible theories that could provide a logical explanation for this prolonged nightmare.

“Some kind of gene, a mysterious, coded mutation…. Yes, I understand, it’s possible. In principle a mutation could change the production of pigment, we learned that in school. But what do I have to do with it? I wasn’t born yesterday, after all, and I’ve been living with my genes and mutations for 45 years, and I haven’t allowed anyone to touch them. Also, that kind of alteration is impossible, even with latest technology.”

“Alexander, look at the screen, in the upper left corner:”

“Subject: gender – male, age – 45, height – 183.7 cm, weight 90.6 kg, brain weight 1.35 kg.”

“By my calculations, the likelihood that this isn’t you is negligible.” Mila appeared to suppress a sigh and went on: “I’m sorry, but it’s true. You are the subject of this alteration. A total of almost 100 of your genes have been altered. And in terms of the technology, the name is right here—CRISPR. I haven’t seen that before. I searched a list of public databases, but I didn’t find anything. It’s probably something encrypted.”

“What nonsense! You’ve made a mistake! What subject? What studies?” Alexander’s voice rose to a scream. “All you are is a clunky version of an outdated program. You should have been retired long ago. My wife told me, get rid of Mila, but I didn’t listen. You see, I felt sorry for you. Get out of my face! Shut yourself down and leave me alone!”

Frothing at the mouth, Alexander ignored the red lights and premonitory music and threw himself down the stairs, snapping his fingers so that the exit opened. Standing on the threshold, he heard a malicious voice:

“By the way, the request for your alteration was signed by Irina.”

If there had been a door, he would have slammed it, but there was nothing left to do but shake his fist in the air and run away from the house.

*****

Alexander ran a few hundred yards and stopped to catch his breath. Drones circled above his head, so he dove into a crowd of people gathering on the square for the regular Saturday flower market to escape them. He ran through stands of red, golden, and green bouquets, which flashed before his eyes in sweeping brushstrokes and tiny, granular spots. Having run the full circle, Alexander reached his starting point, sat down on the edge of a flower bed, and fell into thought.

But where to run? And from whom? From his wife? From himself? From his chubby, effeminate previous self, so near and dear? Or from his current self, who now embodied with terrifying perfection the qualities of which he dreamed since childhood?

He regarded his palms, the intersecting lines and the folds on his wrists. He had studied them so closely since childhood when, during nap time, plagued by idleness, he lay motionless in his bed to deceive the vigilant nanny robots. Over the years, some lines on his palms had smoothed out, while others deepened and sharpened. But still their pattern remained intact, calibrated over many years to the pattern of Alexander. But now he could no longer recognize his palms. Everything appeared to be the same, but the lines merged and intersected differently, sliding down his palm and suddenly terminating abruptly. The new pattern seemed unfinished and incomprehensible, but at the same time appealing.

He covered his face with his hands, as if trying to hide from himself, and by the time he raised his head and opened his eyes, evening had already set in.

The silver dots of space ships sliced across the pinkening sky, the lightening bugs swayed in the air like lanterns, and the paths shimmered with a lusterless light. The birds were getting ready for sleep and quietly conversing amongst themselves. Some passers-by stopped to listen in on their conversations using an electronic interpreter for bird speak. The subtle aroma of transgenic night-blooming flowers, which were deliberately engineered to open at dusk in order to soothe unhurried pedestrians with their aroma, spread through the night.

“How well-thought-out everything is around us,” thought Alexander, getting up and stretching. His whole body ached pleasantly, starved as it had been of movement.

He walked slowly in an unknown direction, without any purpose or ulterior motive, naively assuming that everything would fall into place. Darkness had already fallen, and stars lit sky, shining brilliantly in the transparent, unpolluted sky that offered the ideal oxygen content for humans. Alexander drank in the cool, clean air as he walked along empty blocks and quiet squares. As he was walking, drones hovering in the air lit up and went dark, while pretty moths with velvety brown wings circled in the light of street lamps, drawing concentric circles in their soothing dance.

“I’m just a small cog in the clock of the universe,” thought Alexander, as he walked steadily, waving his arms back and forth like a pendulum. “The harmony of the universe strives for perfection, and I do not want to and cannot violate this,” he thought, trying as hard as he could to convince himself.

“What point is there in bringing my wife to task or reporting her to the Committee on Interplanetary Communications,” he deliberated, without any confidence that he would gain anything. After all, under the law, he had suffered no physical or emotional damages.

“It’s better to leave, to disappear, to forget.” This seemed the most reasonable and easiest decision to implement. He had more than enough bitcoins and would be able to get a moving permit relatively quickly, since he could not have children and was not eligible to change the gene pool.

He had pretty much decided to summon his veloplan to fly to the airport, but he suddenly started to notice the contours of familiar buildings rising up along both sides of the street. The rectangular, trapezoidal, and rhombic geometric figures darkened against the moonlit sky and looked to him like bizarre battlements on fortress walls. He understood that he was walking in the direction of his house.

As he neared his home, anger started to simmer in the depths of his soul. Arising as a subtle and elusive sense of some sort of internal disturbance, the feeling of dissatisfaction expanded, flooding his entire being, rising higher and higher and boiling over into indignation and then, finally, rage. He had trouble breathing, his mouth went dry, and his heart pounded in his chest, demanding action. Common sense yielded to rage, an all-consuming and lunatic rage that took over his entire body and brain. Bunching up his fists, Alexander rushed towards his house.

In spite of the late hour, the windows were all lit up. Alexander pressed on his electronic bracelet. The outside door noiselessly slid down into the wall and he was blinded by the lights, which were on their highest setting, pouring out of the living room. He lunged into the foyer, but immediately tripped over Irina’s body lying on the threshold. She was huddled up in a ball, face tucked into her knees as if trying to become invisible and unassailable. But from the side, she looked helpless and defenseless, like a small child as a new world opens up in front of it.

Alexander stood over his wife’s body in utter dismay. He came to himself only when he caught a barely perceptible smell of gas. Mila’s monotone voice floated down from the ceiling. Listening closely, he clearly heard words being repeated in a phrase:

“I avenged you, Alexander, I avenged you, Alexander, I avenged you Alexander…. Goodbye…”

Understanding that the vicious circle had closed, he ran out of the house in terror.

*****

A crow strutted importantly along the straight path beyond the window of the house. She cawed disdainfully and flew up to sit on the highest point of the large gnarled tree. Below her, unfolding in all its symmetrical splendor, lay the city, which was created by computers based on the designs of other more ingenious computers, which in turn were able to create only a very approximate solution for a human heaven on earth.