Linoktan struggled to solve the problem he had been given - to create an equation that could complete a geometric calculator. But Linoktan came to the conclusion that he could not create what his consciousness could not understand. So to do that, his consciousness must be changed. And to do that, you have to understand how consciousness came to be as a phenomenon in the first place.
Since he worked on the Herald project, Professor Linoktan was not denied much. He was given a robot-destroyer of the Great Plague times from the warehouse and allowed to take the hull of an ancient ship Knopfelzaurung, which still had a working power plant - still a steam engine and with a mechanical gravicompensator.
Why? Linoktan decided to study consciousness on the oivinge. It was worth saying that the oivinge had long been known at the time. They had been discovered back during the first flights of spaceships. When Elva ships tore through space and time, they left patches of weakened matter where shards and clusters of information could swarm, gradually gathering into oivinge, they were called "shipborn". They were found through radio interference. They were recognized as pests.
And when it became clear that at a critical mass, these things could materialize in physical form and were terrible predators - seriously was raised the question of extermination of this species.
At that time, Linoktan had already developed his "Rod of Restrain" - another equation, a pivot of reality, which was the basis for the Defragmenter technology - which could destroy the very structure of the Oivinge, since they were like bags of sugar - a bunch of grains of information in a kind of shell - if you cut it open, everything would fall out and you couldn't put it back together again.
And the Oivinge became an endangered species. Of course, some scientists and cosmozoologists were against genocide, but the Expeditionary Corps, namely the Transportation Security Department, didn't care.
So, Linoktan, with the help of an ancient ship's engine, created himself a shipborn oivinge.
He kept it in a containment magnetic chamber and with the help of radio equipment watched its growth and development, helping it. After all, they are information and if you artificially introduce it, they will develop faster.
Without speaking at length, at one point Linoktan began to speak to the oivinge as if it were a Chinese room. But one that could and wanted to evolve. Realizing that it was impossible to explain many concepts to a being without eyes or senses, he removed the field and allowed his oivinge to take physical form with help of robot he had.
When Nainainax, the chief inspector, came to see him, he had a near stroke when he saw the creature. He called for the oivinge to be sent to the defragmenter immediately, but his report had been seen by Aksuurnoth himself, who had forbidden the killing of the dangerous beast. Because of the eyes. They were like Ilnis's, the color of the fathomless depths of the cold sea. He believed that at least a small part of Ilnis, after her death, could travel through space and gather in this creature.
Linoktan named the oivinge Stellaryne. But the safety committee's solution was to shackle the animal with a built-in defragmenter set up so that if Stellaryne started acting like a predator, it would immediately disintegrate on the spot.
Linoktan saw in him a growing mind and treated him like a son. Linoktan himself had no children, he had thought to give his life to his work and die at it, which was an honorable thing for an Elva. But with Stellaryne he had known love for the first time. In some ways they were alike. But they were actually a robot, an oivinge, born to think like a AI, a machine, but which was learning to feel, and a living being who had voluntarily deprived himself of feelings, bringing himself to the likeness of a machine.
Linoktan broke inhibitions. In moments of changeover, he would walk with Stellaryne around the huge Herald ship that was still under construction and sometimes even remove his collar, allowing him to fly in space and feel as he was born. As long as it wasn't noticed.
But they came for Linoktan. For thousands of years, the Elva had subjected themselves to a terrible and cruel selection process, erasing from themselves on a genetic level the very fact that they could break their vows. Linoktan was to be culled.
Stellaryne, tried to protect him, to push away those who had come - the officers from DERGAS (Department for Elimination of Reality Gaps and Anomalous Species), the collar started to work, but he still guarded Linoktan, making a terrible effort just to keep his disintegrating and defragmenter-burned consciousness in a one piece.
Then they used horrible AMD (Aggressive Megafauna Defense) weapon, hoping to destroy the physical shell. But it didn't harmed his illusory body. Stellaryne realized the defragmenter wasn't working. Stellaryne had learned the sacrifice - something only a living sentient being could do, so the collar wasn't working.
Yes, he devoured his attackers in the most gruesome way possible, but he was still a predator.
But the bullets pierced through Stellaryne and mortally wounded Linoktan, whom he was shielding.
In his last breath, Linoktan said a strange request. He asked to be swallowed whole, to take the old sword from the wall and pierce the ink stain in the study at the exact moment Linoktan would die, not a nanosecond earlier or later, which only a creature like Oivinge could sense.
And Stellaryne, feeling the professor's heart stop and the last spark of consciousness fade away, pierced the stain with the sword. And the sword melted in his paws, and Linoktan appeared in the study unharmed.
Stellaryne didn't realize what was happening, he could still feel the dead Linoktan inside and dropped tears.
Linoktan didn't even pay attention and ran to write down the formulas. Stellaryne tried to hug him and cried. He knew what love was and the pain of loss that came with it. Linoktan explained that he was another Linoktan, a copy.
At a certain moment of death, the line between a moment and infinity is blurred, opening up the possibility of modeling a new universe in his head, a blank universe, a tangential universe to the existing one. For Stellaryne it took a moment, for Linoktan it took billions of years, trillions of calculations in his mind until he was able to return to the right point and at the right time. A metal artifact, a sword, pierced space and time at the right point and the tangential universes overlapped. Now Linoktan had turned the theory of tangential universes into an axiom by his example and could finish the geometric calculator.
Linoktan told Stellalryne to fly as far away as possible, for DERGAS would be looking for him. But Stellalryne didn't want to leave, even knowing that the DERGAS could destroy him even in his more powerful form. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with Linoktan. But Linoktan convinced him that the Oivinge cannot die of old age, they are eternal, but Linoktan will barely live more than 5 years. He's already 45. And Elva very rarely live more than 50. He promised that after he die the shards of his consciousness would travel through the universe and sooner or later they would meet, already for eternity and without any swords and ink blots.
Stellaryne flew away and Linoktan completed the geometric calculator and died at the age of 48. The Herald ship was completed 65,000 years later. But for the Oivinge, these were years of prosperity. Based on Linoktan's research, the Elva learned to "raise" the ship-born Oivinge into sentient beings, except without letting them take form themselves - putting them in motorized hulls and leaving them in an intermediate form between machine and living being - and the Oivinge became another of the races in the Oversky Republic.
When the Herald ship came on the move, the Old World died. And all the shipborn Oyvings died. They didn't fit the laws of the New World.
But did Stellaryne die if the defragmenter didn't work on him then?