“Yes, I received the goods, thank you,” – replied Kmykh.
“Have a nice day, sir,” – said drone, ascended to a height of 12 meters and flew in the opposite direction. In the meantime, Kmykh’s capsule was lifted from the Carousel, and it had to be taken from the parking space.
“Hello, Alice,” – said Kmykh.
“Hi! Long time no see!”
“Give me the instrument panel of my capsule.”
“As you like, Eugene,” – Alice said, and a virtual capsule dashboard appeared in front of Kmykh. He turned on the ignition and directed the capsule closer to the bench on which he was sitting. Then he turned off the engine and opened the battery compartment. Replacing the battery with a new one, Kmykh noticed an approaching drone.
“Sir, the municipal battery recycling service,” – the drone introduced himself. "Do you want to keep the old battery for yourself or do you want to return it for recycling?"
“Take it,” – said Kmykh.
“Thank you,” – drone said, – “you got the gift from municipality – you can sit on any paid bench in London for 1 hour, plus 1 hour of parking at Sobyaner and Sons, plus 2 hours of sleep you can get at any time at any red telephone cabin of London. All this was paid by municipality."
Then drone descended to the old battery, and clamped it with two tentacles. Having wished a good day, he rose to allowed height and flew away.
Meanwhile, Kmykh sat in the back seat of his capsule and said, – “Alice, hello!”
“Hi! What do you want, Eugene?”
“Take me to the berth 1015 with the minimum allowed speed. I'm not in a hurry.”
“Already taking it,” – said Alice, and the capsule rose to the permitted level for Renault capsules and slowly moved toward the pier. Kmykh wanted to slowly watch the surging waves, buy a pair without excise cigarettes from a huckster, and also slowly to consider a job offer.
The houseboat of the R-118 model slowly moved with its maximum speed of 6 knots towards London. Waves eight meters high were not dangerous of him. The house was assembled using old technology from puff pontoons, and its height was 12 meters. Fishermen called houses of this type a convertible. At a wave height of more than 12 meters or during rain, an automatic transparent dome extended from the sides and completely covered the house. The center of gravity of this house was deep under water and even a tsunami could not have turned it over. From the point of view of safety, this was the best development of Tangier Marina Company, but this old model did not have modern equipment for tracking underwater objects. Bill was going to install such equipment later, after selling his cells in a rustic camping skyscraper near London. This house also did not have engines with gyroscopes for wave compensators, so there felt rolling on the waves on the deck and in the cabins. Such engines could no longer be installed on this outdated model, but Bill was happy with that. He liked the size of this eight-cabin two-deck house, on the upper deck of which was a small garden with two currant bushes and an artificial apple tree. There was also a place for barbecue, a small pool and from the stern there was a seat for two capsules. Now his Volvo capsule was parked there. On board, in addition to Bill and Priscilla, there were a robot, Irwin, and a service drone of the guard of the federal Company Geology of Britain. He was in the wheelhouse and controlled the movement of the houseboat along the route. Bill was one of the best geologists in this Company. But even with his high income in this Company, Bill had to take a loan from the London branch of Naibul Bank to buy this house. It was evening. The waves had crashing with noise on the side of titanium-bermudium alloy. Priscilla lit briquettes with the smell of natural coal smoke and put the flounder caught by Bill on the grill. Bill went to the capsule and then brought to barbecue a bottle of dry real French wine from 4016 harvest made from real grapes. Bill and Priscilla did not wait for the guests. They were going to celebrate the purchase of a house in their family circle. There was no need to be afraid of air pirates in this part of the North Sea, since all flights at an altitude of more than 12 meters were controlled by the federal rescue service on the water. However, a tinted capsule suddenly rose from under water. Bill could not see her – she was hovering on the port side and five people and two security drones, armed with Kuznetsov’s tubes for close combat with nervously-paralytic rays, got on board from her. Drones flew up to Priscilla and Bill. One of the drones commanded – "don’t move, wait for further orders."