The story "Sakura" is included in the collection "Sensation on Mars".

A brief summary of the work (opening the spoiler - you only have yourself to blame!) Inspired by a visit to the First World Symposium of Science Fiction Writers, which was held in Tokyo (Japan) in 1970, as part of the International Exhibition EXPO-70, Vasily Berezhnoy writes a short story “Sakura” (1971), in which the supercomputer Unicum seized power over people. At first it was created to ensure railway transportation, then other transport routes and communications were increasingly connected to it, until Unicum realized his “I”. One day he calculated that in order to save people from the possibility of nuclear war, it was necessary to hide in artificial caves. After the population began to live like moles, they were taught that there was terrible radiation on the surface. Salvation came only a few decades later, and the impetus for this was the little girl Mika-chan, who so wanted to see sakura - the tree that her mother so often talked about. Then everything came together like a puzzle. The girl's mother, Kyoko, was imbued with the girl's desire and began to think that it was better to die above than to live here. Kyoko had a loved one who once worked as an engineer near Unicum. At first he did not share Kyoko’s desires, but after they accidentally ended up on the surface and realized that there was no trace of radiation, he took the path of decisive action. He planned to turn off Unicum. And the underground organization “Sky and Sun” helped him in this. As a result, Unicum was neutralized, and his faithful robots became a pile of useless scrap metal.

© Vitaly Karatsupa, 2004-2009