— Heresy is your book. Yes, some droids are of the opinion that there was another civilization before us. But where is the evidence? Where is at least one fossil microcircuit of an organism that would be different from ordinary droids?

— People were not a silicon-iron life form, but a carbon one.

— Did you also read it in one of the ancient books?

— Yes. Previously, the entire planet was covered with carbon plants, and under the oil oceans there is water, which old organisms used instead of our oil.

Another burst of laughter.

— You know, Luther, this has stopped even amusing me. You’re an engineer, you should be setting an example for other droids, but instead you’re causing chaos. And you are guided by fairy tales. These «scientific» books of yours were once read to children at night, or told as scary stories so that children would not get into mischief. «If you go for a walk at night, talk to a stranger, the same thing will happen to you as to a student in higher mathematics class.» Don’t look at me so surprised, Luther. I was also young, and read all sorts of «ancient wise books left over from past generations» «Art is a play of colors and a fragment of the human soul» — how can there be art without calculations? What a soul — I mean the central processing unit, but there is no art in it! «There are thousands of luminous balls in the Universe, and our Earth revolves around one of them» — how can the Earth rotate if we wake up in the same place, and the sun appears and disappears? With such heretical thoughts one can go so far as to come to the conclusion that the Great Church is not located in the very center of the Earth! «Humans evolved from monkeys. God created them in his own image and likeness» — how is this possible! Were the droids assembled by monkeys? Scripture indicates that the Creator assembled two people — a man and a woman, from original parts. Sent a current through our veins. Where is the evidence of your carbon life?

— Your Eminence, may I show you my creation?

The Beast entered the room and most of the priests flinched. In outline it resembled a droid, only the skin was not metallic, but pale, and somehow too soft: touch it and it will destroy it. The eyes did not shine with diodes: white, with black insides, but they did not emit anything. Tiar winced: he had seen similar pictures in ancient books.

— What is this?

— My creation. From petroleum products I built long chains of molecules, according to the books we inherited from People.

— Is it reasonable?

— Not yet. This creature is capable of performing calculations, but so far it has only the beginnings of artificial intelligence. Perhaps later it will be possible to achieve real intelligence.

— And it also requires oil and electricity?

— No, it eats synthetic food made from oil. And he drinks,» Luther cleared his throat, as he foresaw the reaction of those around him. — And he drinks water.

Tiar took a sip of oil at the wrong moment, so he choked. And the priests standing nearby hit him on the back.

— Executioner! Bring the execution weapon!

No sooner said than done. A couple of minutes, and a vat of clear liquid stood next to the meeting. The monster grabbed a handful of the execution liquid and began to drink greedily. The droids looked at each other: when will it fall in agony? But Luther’s Creation continued to enjoy the water. But Tiar had read about such creatures in old books. Really. Indeed, the oceans used to be filled with the liquid of torment. Aren’t they covered in oil? Were droids really created by humans and not by the Creator? But then the Church is wrong? We cannot allow anyone else to see this engineering monster.

— The earth is flat, Luther. Once you admit this fact, we will simply put you in prison, and when you come to your senses, you will continue your research. Anything other than the creation of these monsters. Yes. and you must destroy this creature. Otherwise we will force you to drink water.

— The earth is flat, Your Eminence.

One day, an enlightened time will come, and the droids will be able to accept the truth. Then they will lose wisdom and pollute the oil oceans with water. Then the droids will again believe in a flat Earth, although many will already have time to fly up to distant star points in the sky. And they will see with their own eyes the Earth-ball, from the height of the flight of a drone-bird. Perhaps one day people will gain real intelligence and destroy the droid civilization, replacing their stupid ancestors. But Luther will not see this — he will spend his life locked in prison. But there is one thing that will never be taken away from him: the idea that the Earth is round and revolves around the Sun.

Endless boredom

Igor stood on the tile, and the red number «99» appeared next to it.

— Yeah, it’s time to go in for sports. When I return home, I will immediately go on a diet and run every day.

Each step along the long line, the number next to each tile, is like a reminder of a promise that will never be fulfilled. But Igor couldn’t shake the feeling that every passerby was greedily spying on his weight on the touch floor and giggling maliciously.

After the midday summer heat, there was a pleasant coolness inside the station. The music of Tchaikovsky that flowed from the ceiling hardly drowned out the squabble of those waiting for their train. It smelled like disinfectants. The robo-policeman looked reproachfully at Igor, and he covered his nose with a medical mask.

— Can I pass in front of you? — came the timid voice of a guy with shifty eyes. — I just have to ask.

— Where are you going without a queue, you damned one? — the woman in a knitted scarf shouted loudly. Although, not a woman: both debaters are ordinary droids. Tickets for the VIP carriage are sold electronically, and those standing here should «fully enjoy» all the joys of buying a ticket in a live queue. Apparently, this should help increase the number of VIP clients. Although, those who can afford a VIP usually get to the desired point by alternative transport. For the average person, little has changed in the last three hundred years: while someone buys tickets for a round-the-world cruise to Proxima Beta, most still stand in line for a ticket to the therapist, and then line up again at the door.

People slowly moved towards the treasured window, behind which sat a robotic operator.

— Hello girl! I booked a ticket…

— Your passport! — a sharp mechanical voice. He handed over a plastic card. The robo-operator incredulously compared my profile with the image in the 3-D photograph. Of course, machines have long surpassed us in almost everything, but the developers left some habits inherent in people of different professions. Apparently, in this way, according to the developers, robots should seem more humane, but this price of verisimilitude is too high. — Igor Vasilyevich Negodyaev?

— Yes it’s me.

— Keep your ticket.

Half an hour in line — and you are the happy owner of a small piece of paper.

— Newspapers, books, crosswords! — the robo-newspaper boy broadcast loudly.

— Young man, do you have anything from science fiction?

— Certainly! For connoisseurs, I still have the last copy of the latest reissue of the third collection of science fiction about immortality, «We Don’t Want to Grow Old.» I think you know these legendary stories: “ R&D»…

— «Music behind the cemetery fence», «Summary»! «It seemed to Igor that at these words the droid’s eyes shone with happiness:

— Yes exactly!

— You don’t have to continue, I once read this book! Come on, I want to refresh my memory while I’m driving,» Igor swiped his wrist over the terminal, and a note appeared before his eyes: «3 crypto-rubles were withdrawn from the account.»

— Are you into games? Can I share a discount coupon for Raid Shadow Legends?

— Thank you, I’m not interested in games.

Igor put the treasured volume of his favorite book from childhood into his bag. From his youth, his great-grandfather participated in all 73 immortal fiction competitions, until he came of age, but not a single story made it to the finals. But from an early age he read stories from these competitions to Igor, like bedtime stories.

An intermittent voice echoed through the station:

— A train is arriving at… that platform… sk — S… urg, parking — two minutes, don’t delay.

Igor noticed that VIP trains were announced in a clear voice. And they stand at the station until the last passenger boards. One train stood at the station for two hours while one of the moneybags, who had lost the QR code, got a second shot.

I had to jump on the departing train. Igor loved adventure films, where spies jumped from a bridge onto a moving train, shooting back at dozens of villains, but he preferred an ordinary life, without incident, with trains peacefully waiting for passengers at stops. The robot conductor handed Igor a set of underwear.

— Will you drink tea?

— Yes, I won’t refuse.

The rhythmic clatter of wheels. The illusion was created that you were standing still, and the world around you was starting to move. The trees suddenly acquire the skill of walking, and in formation they head somewhere back. The train stands still, but the station begins to fly in an unknown direction. The rails have long been made without seams, but for non-VIP passengers they left the usual sounds. Stuffiness and smell of sweat. Igor had difficulty making his way through the rows of bare feet extended halfway through the aisle.

He threw the bag on the top shelf. The man sitting at the table immediately put a notepad covered with numbers on the table.

«Vlad,» he extended his hand, which Igor, introducing himself, shook.

— Do you solve sudoku?

— I’m calculating Graham’s number. I’ve already calculated almost the last seven billion,» Vlad said proudly, although Igor didn’t understand anything. He’s probably an accountant? Although, why do calculations when there are computers? Since childhood, Igor did not understand why he should study mathematics at school, until the thirtieth grade, then another 17 years at the institute. Most likely, graduate students are studying it too. Each generation needs to learn more and more in order to somehow compete for work with robots, but mathematics would be better left to droids. They only have two digits, but people have to operate with ten

— Will you? — Vlad took out a frosty bottle with a picture of Mendeleev.

— Let’s do it a little. Now I’ll whip up something for a snack.

Igor took out a portable printer from his bag. I selected the «Trip» program, and the machine printed chilled boiled chicken, cucumbers and several boiled chicken eggs. The vodka had a strange mushroom taste. We drank, ate, talked: about the meaning of life, the Universe and all that.

— How do you feel about immortality? — Vlad asked, among other things.

— I hate them! They… It’s all because of them. I hope you are not one of the droids who moved into the body of the machine, are you?

— No, what are you talking about, Igor. Would I travel on a train and eat cold chicken with you? If I were a droid, I would now be flying to new planets, sowing the seeds of humanity to other planets. Although, maybe I wouldn’t fly. After all, by a certain age you no longer want to change anything; constancy becomes desirable, not adventure.

«Because of them, the age of majority and retirement age are raised every year. My great-grandfather celebrated his majority at eighty-five, but never lived to see his bicentennial and retirement. Because of the immortals, when I can start my own family, I will be forced to choose among old women who are unlikely to be saved by plastic surgery and modern medicine.

Vlad burst out laughing.

— But it seems to me that immortality does not exist.

— Haven’t you seen these human robots? — Igor slammed his fist on the table.

— Yes, they live a long time, but do they live forever? I’ll explain now. It is almost impossible to calculate the lower age limit. Some people consider this to be the moment of conception in vitro, others — the moment of birth. But is there an upper limit for an immortal? Let’s say a bacterium lived for seventy years. During this time, countless myriads of generations of relatives have changed, and she is still alive, but is she immortal? If a person lived seven thousand years, is that a lot or a little? Most likely, during this time civilization will have time to change. I hope that after ours we will be left with paintings by Rembrandt and music by Chopin, and not teenage drawings on the walls and songs in the style of «Shake Your Watermelons.» In five billion years, the Sun will turn into a red giant and swallow the Earth, and with it the potential immortal. Let’s say he manages to fly away from the disaster. Long live googol years.

Igor’s smartphone made a characteristic sound: «I’m starting to search on the network,» and Vlad continued the monologue, not paying attention to what was happening around:

«But after such a period of time, the last supermassive black holes in the bowels of galaxies will evaporate, and the Universe will shrink to a point under its own weight. This is the end of our «immortal». Although, his whole life would be hell. Many people don’t know what to do with themselves in the evening after work, and here there are myriads of years. He would have time to visit every point of the accessible Universe, would have seen everything, and more than once. Boredom. Endless and hopeless boredom. But you, Igor, hate immortals so much. What if you were offered to become one of them? What would you do?

— I wouldn’t refuse, I guess.

— What if this meant taking someone’s life?

— What do I care about someone else’s life? Few people cared about me, why should I care about others?

Igor once again glanced sideways at the notebook, covered with even rows of numbers. How much time did Vlad spend filling out the thick notebook? How bored do you have to be to waste your life on meaningless calculations?

— But you are deceiving me, friend. You are one of them too.

— I’m not a droid. I don’t know how to achieve immortality. But there is some truth in your words: I lived longer than most, even in our highly genetic age. Myceliums live underground for centuries. I’m not a scientist, I don’t know the details, but a drug based on them promotes rejuvenation and longevity. But there are also side effects: everyone can’t live as long as they want, so someone has to willingly give up their years to you. Are you ready to take mine? I have lived enough and am ready to share.

«I always dreamed of immortality,» Igor rubbed his hands greedily.

Vlad suddenly pressed his lips to Igor’s neck.

— Hey, friend, I understand everything, but I’m not one of these! — Igor pushed Vlad away. His face was smeared with something red. I tried to get up, but my body seemed paralyzed.

— While you are dying, Igor, I will tell you my story. I’m almost seven thousand years old, although I might have lost count. I traveled for a long time until one day I stopped on your planet. Our race had discovered the secret of longevity, but the recipe had one flaw. Two people must drink the alcoholic infusion of the parasitic fungus, and one must voluntarily give years of his life to the other.

Igor glanced sideways at the bottle with the image of Mendeleev.

— Or if someone wants to take your life, then you can also take his years. This elixir of youth was a gift for us, but also a curse: to prolong the lives of their children, parents gave up their years, and the children cried until the end of their days about the irreparable loss. But when I found myself on your planet a thousand years ago, it became a real Eldorado for me. There are so many scoundrels who would attempt on my life. By the way, vampires do not feed on blood. I’m an ordinary person. I just need a sample of your gene pool to analyze your estimated lifespan. But about our love for the blood of scoundrels — it’s true, I couldn’t drink anything else. You know, I’m so tired of endless boredom. For the last two hundred years I have been looking for a successor. But only people as narrow-minded as you come across. You are not interested in science and art, philosophy is alien to you. All evening you only said a few words, and those were about hating those who have what you don’t have. What will you spend your long life on if you are given it? Of course, my Graham number calculations are also not the best thing, but I will continue to look for myself rather than give my years to someone like you.

Robo-merchants scurried along the platform, selling dried fish and porcelain. Men and women hugged next to the train. We are glad to have a long-awaited meeting. The children — who had not yet turned eighty-five — were greedily licking their ice cream cones, trying to escape the heat. Igor Vasilyevich Negodyaev took the train, but never reached his destination, but no one noticed this: perhaps he got up at a stop earlier. He had no one waiting for him upon his arrival. Many people on this train get up earlier than their scheduled stop. Although, around the world, many irreplaceable people disappear without a trace, and they are immediately replaced by other irreplaceable ones. Maybe he decided to become a droid or fly to Proxima Beta, who will keep track of everyone?

A man with a notebook covered in numbers glanced out the window with one eye, hopefully looking out for someone who might one day complete his calculation.

Elven Syndrome

A bright sunny day, not a single cloud. The noisy three-dimensional flow of gravikars does not interfere with the illumination of the lower floors of the City. It’s hot and stuffy, but I still feel like sneezing. Allergy is the main plague of the twenty-second century. People overcame cancer and AIDS, and later Corona and flucovabola succumbed, but each new help in overcoming diseases gave birth to new ones in the body. I, like you, with a ninety-seven percent probability, have had hay fever since childhood: it affects the bloom of any flower and the spore of any mushroom. What are the authorities thinking? Why don’t they uproot all the plants on the planet so that people don’t suffer? They are afraid of the damned Greens: «Stop deforestation!», «Greens are the lungs of the planet,» «Plants feel too!» What do I feel, the plants don’t care? They are creatures if they sense my illness, but continue to spread poisonous pollen. I hope at least it will be easier on Mars. A long queue begins just outside the entrance to the station, above which is the inscription «Russian Railways wishes you a happy trip!» He wiped away his allergic tears and used his eyelashes to call up a certificate that was projected directly onto the retina. It turns out that back in the last century people used railways. The carriage moved along two long metal rods. Apparently, people did not live very well before the invention of gravikars. And after the accessibility program «Gravicar for every family member,» people learned to fly like birds. Turned thirteen — get a license, buy yourself a car and fly to school in your personal car. Although, Katerina Kabanova’s dream did not fully come true: we became more like bees flying out of skyscraper hives in search of work than like free birds conquering the skies.

— Girl, are you the last one at the cash register?

— I’m not extreme. I’m the last one.

After Russian became an international language, everyone became so literate: they correct others in any situation. But overall, I am glad about the end of American hegemony after the collapse of the United States as a result of the «revolution of dignity of all colors and races.»

— I’ll follow you.

Every two or three minutes a new passenger was allowed inside. It was my turn. The air conditioners and filters worked well inside, so I immediately felt pleasantly cool, and my runny nose went away.

— Are you transporting explosives, narcotic substances or substances that enter into a nuclear chain reaction? — asked the young African-Russian woman in a monotonous voice.

«Nuclear,» the guard looked up at me in surprise. I showed her my wristwatch. — They are in America.

«Enough jokes,» the droid girl frowned. Of course, would an ordinary person do such monotonous work? Although I would go, but people are not hired very often: they need rest, they are not so hardy and efficient. — Come in for inspection. Men to the left.

— Boys — to the left, girls — to the right? — I smiled. The security droid furrowed her brows again, but remained silent.

This is the hundredth time I’ve gone through this procedure, and each time it’s equally unpleasant. He stripped naked and put his clothes in the provided container. All the nurses in this room are droids, but I still instinctively wanted to cover some places with my palm. One of the nurses ran the sensor along the body. After the local flucovibol pandemic, doctors learned that viruses can raise body temperature in a particular part of the body, and the rest of the body will be healthy, but no less infectious.

— You have been sick in the last four weeks or have had contact with sick people.

«No,» I wanted to make the usual joke here, but they are unlikely to be allowed on the Martian express even with the slightest suspicion of any illness. Of course: the immunity of indigenous Martians does not develop the necessary level of protection against all earthly diseases. After a detailed examination of every millimeter of the body for the presence of darkening of the skin or the appearance of any pimple, the body was doused with a stream of antiseptic with the unpleasant smell of bleach.

— You can get dressed.

I stood in line for a ticket. A droid operator sat at the window.

— Girl, I need a ticket for the next express train to Mars City.

— There are only tickets left for today’s train in the IM carriage.

I started scrolling through what this abbreviation means in a dead language. Immortal?

— Girl, do you seriously want to sell me a ticket to the lower class? So that I could fly in the same carriage with droids, anti-vaxxers and… — I almost spat out of emotion — and with elves?

— Yes, this carriage is intended, among other things, for the impressed. The lives of all Homs have the same meaning. And if you don’t agree, you can buy a ticket for next week.

— Excuse me, please. Give me one ticket.

— On the top or bottom shelf?

— The main thing is not the one near the toilet.

That’s it, I offended the girl. Of course, by refusing vaccination, you voluntarily deprive yourself of the right to visit any territory of Mars City except the Ghetto. And the rest found themselves in the role of outcasts by accident, and not entirely fairly. Those who chose the path of droids got the opportunity to cope with any job better than ordinary people, leaving sapiens without work. But it’s very strange to be embarrassed to travel in the same salon with someone who does all the physical and monotonous work for you. As for those who are impressed, here you will understand my feelings if you haven’t slept for the last two hundred years or haven’t watched the news all this time. Okay, I’ll tell you a few words so that you don’t think I’m arrogant.

I don’t remember exactly the year, but scientists then discovered a civilization on Mars that had gone underground many centuries ago. We are far from their technology. If the translators understood everything correctly, they live for several thousand years (I mean, each individual). They built mechanisms at the dawn of their youth — and since then there has not been a single breakdown! «Made on Mars» is a special mark of quality. Let our shop workers not blame their crookedness on obsolescence technologies, we are far from Martians. Due to their underground lifestyle and small stature, journalists dubbed the Martians «gnomes.» The media said that the gnomes gave us Medicine based on nano-robots, but most likely it was a mutually beneficial exchange; I don’t know what we could offer to such a highly developed civilization. The first military volunteers were injected with a portion of the «vaccine against all diseases.» Where else can you find such a number of volunteers if not in the army? Even the epsilon strain of flucovibola stopped working on young people. Some politicians also set an example. By the way, they are alive and still control us. The serum began to be injected into everyone who could afford it, including children and those seriously ill with incurable diseases. But the impression effect became known only after a while. The «cured» person became virtually immortal — except for direct physical impact, nothing could kill him, and severe wounds healed before his eyes. But his psyche remained forever at the same level, and often the meaning of their life revolved around only one type of activity or even an object. In the case of the soldiers, this suited everyone: unquestioningly following orders, eager to kill. By the way, this caste of soldiers was the first to die, as they went headlong to the hottest spots. Everything also went well with the politicians: they never betrayed their ideals, for which they received the support of voters. But imagine the impressed children! Forever little girls and boys dragging a teddy bear with them. Some were lucky: their parents also took the Martian vaccine, and such Peter Pans live in endless overprotection until the end of time. But most of the parents are dead, and who will take care of these not-quite-humans? Ninety-nine who took the Medicine fell ill in this way. By analogy with the Martians, they began to be called «elves»: beautiful, immortal, but absolutely useless for society.

I make my way along the long corridor in search of the desired compartment. A forest of bare legs looms above. And here is my place. The sheet and duvet cover are neatly folded on the bed.

— Young man, will you have some tea? — asked the conductor droid.

— Yes, black with a spoon of sugar, please.

A couple of minutes — and the steaming drink in the glass stood in front of me. Apparently, this glass holder was made in the mid-twentieth century — a real rarity.

— Are you busy? Apparently this is my place.

The compartment neighbor turned out to be a blond, curly-haired girl. My heart seemed to beat a little faster at the sight of her. Only this familiar look: emptiness and absolute detachment. Elf?

— I’m Ilya.

«And I’m Alena,» she extended her hand, but instead of shaking hands, I involuntarily brought it to my lips. Alena pulled away.

— Let’s have breakfast?

I took a printer out of my bag and set a program for boiled chicken, and Alena printed out cucumbers and boiled jacket potatoes on hers. At first we ate in silence, I glanced at her casually, and she lowered her eyes. Then we started talking.

— I had lung cancer, stage four. The doctors didn’t give me even a year. I didn’t have much choice: either voluntary vaccination or a grave. You can’t imagine these feelings! First, the whole body is shrouded in a veil of indescribable pain. And then relief: there is no endless burning in the chest, even without painkillers. The doctor carried out repeated examinations: there was no trace of the tumor.

«My wife also got an injection. More precisely, the ex-wife was very worried about her appearance. Seeing the first wrinkle, she signed up for vaccination. Since then, she has not left the mirror, admiring her ideal appearance day and night. Tell me, should I have continued to work, equipping her with new doses of cosmetics, and in the evenings watch her profile in the mirror? And every family that took the «dwarven medicine» has its own little tragedies. Therefore, many did not like those who were impressed. Who needs people functions?

— Many of our people have sunk to the level of «former intelligent people.» Although, there were no «ours» — everyone came to the hospital to solve their own problems. To achieve something, you need to work on yourself for years and constantly improve. Studies have shown that it takes six weeks to go down. Forty days — and now you are already accustomed to being at the bottom, from which you can again get out through years of work on yourself, which the impressed are no longer capable of.

Meanwhile, the space elevator had already lifted our car into orbit. Now we will reach the required speed value — and forward to the conquest of Mars: for those who have not yet been to their planet. We were rotating along an axis, so the view outside the window was fabulous: the stars merged into stripes and circles, creating a feeling of wish fulfillment.

— Are you impressed too?

«Yes, unfortunately, I am no exception,» Alena answered me.

— On what? What does it feel like to be impressed?

— I myself didn’t notice the moment of transition. One day I noticed that it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to remain without Tolik, my husband. We leave for work, and all my thoughts revolve only around him. I tried to hide my endless love for my husband from those around me, but Tolik apparently noticed something. I suggested that he give himself an injection, but he categorically refused.

How I understand you, Tolyan! I remember Karina’s face when she did not leave the mirror for hours on end, forgetting about sleep, and about food, and about me. I also vowed to myself to live an ordinary mortal life.

«That’s how we lived until his old age,» Alena continued. «And then he had a heart attack.» I made a diamond from his ashes, which I still keep close to my heart. You can’t imagine how much effort it takes me not to give up, just to continue living. There’s an eternity ahead, but I don’t know what to do the next morning.

«Or maybe…» I kissed her on the cheek. — Tolik will understand. You don’t lose anything.

During the kiss, her empty eyes looked like the artificial eyes of a robotic toy. I pulled off her clothes, and only the lines and circles of stars in the emptiness of space witnessed what happened next.

— Ilya, I love you!

— And I love you, sun!

— You did not understand! Impressive, you cured him. I don’t love Tolik anymore.

On the third day, we landed on the surface of the red planet, and Alena took me to the nearest medical center.

— Get this vaccination. For me. I don’t want to lose another person close to me.

It smelled of alcohol and carbolic acid. Under the fluorescent light, the nurse droid administered the injection. A burning wave of pain passed through my entire body, and then I felt an irresistible urge to go to the mirror. O Mars, what facial features! Why didn’t I notice in the reflection of the mirror before — how handsome I am! Smoothed an unruly strand of hair. Perfect! I suddenly realized that I was ready to stay here, near the mirror for an hour, for two… for a year? Karina, how I now understand your passion for mirrors.

Alena pulled me by the hand. Now the elf family will have an eternity of love. Alena will love me until the end of time. And I will love myself until the Universe shrinks into a point, and then a new one is born.

Universe without an observer

The clock hands crossed midnight. This was not the first time that two men emptied the contents of vessels resembling a Klein bottle in their favorite bar, «Klein Bottle.» Fortunately, the curfew had been abolished by the beginning of the twenty-second century, so visitors who had stayed for so long were not in danger. The bartender was silently wiping beer glasses behind the bar: there was nothing you could say to regular customers. But the music had already been turned off, so there was almost silence in the usually noisy room, except for two quiet voices. It smelled of beer and fried crackers.

— Listen, Vasya! There is no God on Earth. Maybe it once existed, but it left us long ago. Or it never existed.

— Tolya, where did you get the idea?

— Look around! Hundreds of infomaniacs are snooping here and there. They don’t work anywhere, and spend everything they steal on virtual entertainment. But the most worthy among us get cancer. They go to work. They spend everything they earn only on their family. Yes, maybe the church blog is not visited every Sunday, but is the essence of faith in a couple of likes? And then one day they are diagnosed with an incurable disease. And infomaniacs, just as they lived in a world of illusions, will continue to live without doing anything useful to the world. Either this god is a villain, or he doesn’t care about us, and he has derailed our lives. Or it doesn’t exist.

There is a philosopher dormant in each of us. And he wakes up when our main personality is on the verge of shutting down, for example, after a hefty dose of alcohol.

— You’re wrong. Let’s look at this from a different perspective. What happens to a small particle that no one is watching? It is located in several places at the same time with a certain degree of probability, until an outside observer appears. I would not want to live in a world without God: it would be a probabilistic hell. Objects would exist and not exist at the same time, they would be in different places. Until you deign to look at them. But our Universe is ideal, finely tuned: the atoms are just such a size that the world does not crumble into a handful of scattered ashes of small particles.

***

The midday sun seemed to burn to the bones. Although there were moments when the light suddenly disappeared, and pitch darkness set in, only a scattering of distant stars flickered in the distance. Sometimes the light of the stars obscured the entire sky, and then without glasses it was impossible to open the eyelids. Tamara gazed at the skyscraper, endlessly stretching upward. If it ended somewhere, then the human eye could not see its edges.

— Seryozha, where are you?!

— Tamara, turn around.

She turned around. The man’s hands had already partially turned into fog, but as soon as he looked at him, they immediately took on their normal form. She turned her head back, but the skyscraper was no longer there.

— You’re like a newbie! We agreed: you look at the Directory when I look at you. Then we change. Otherwise, without an observer, the building could end up anywhere on the planet. Just like you and me.

— Sorry. Near the Directory, the probabilistic blur is stronger than usual.

— And no one promised a simple operation. It’s good that the Directory stands out even compared to other skyscrapers in size. Look, she’s there. In the east. Be attentive!

Tamara waved her hand in the air, and a pass to the Directory appeared in it. For a statistician of her rank, creating a hiding place in the depths of probability was not difficult. They went inside.

Endless whiteness and sterility. Thousands of people waited in line at the turnstiles. They stood in even rows. Such an island of absolute order in a world drowning in uncontrollable chaos.

A gray-haired man approached the registration point.

— Mister Chizhikov! — asked the red-haired woman.

— Yes. He is.

— Ilya Petrovich? — the red-haired girl looked at the passport, but at the visitor’s face.

«He’s the one,» the man was noticeably nervous. — Can you do it faster?

— I act in accordance with the instructions. Birth year two thousand one hundred and fifteen.

— Absolutely, right.

— Purpose of the visit?

The man boiled:

— A girl, really! Everything is indicated on my registration card! Read more carefully! It indicates not only the purpose of the visit, but also the time during which I will be in the center building, my academic degree, the university I graduated from, my place of work and everything you need to know!

— Man, don’t be so nervous. I didn’t come up with the registration system!

— But you are doing an excellent job. I think you’ll do even better if you don’t ask tons of questions, the answers to which can be read on the registration card.

The girl, wrinkling a dissatisfied face that grew into a too obviously feigned «polite» smile, handed over the registration sheet:

— Please, Mr. Chizhikov, come in. Welcome to the Directory.

«Thank you, girl,» the man smiled no less «politely,» pulling out a small plastic card from his thin fingers.

— Look, Mr. Chizhikov, don’t stay longer than the allotted time!

— Will try!

— Next! — it’s hard to expect such a loud and powerful voice in a fragile girl.

Two people approached the registration point — a black-haired girl and a fair-haired guy. Both are wearing motorcycle suits.

— One by one! — the redhead screamed.

— We are a married couple. Make an exception for us,» the guy smiled, showing white teeth.

The girl carefully studied the registration cards that the guy handed her through the window.

— So-so. Sergeev Sergey Sergeevich and Ulmanovskaya Tamara Ivanovna. Somehow your last names are different.

— I decided to leave my father’s surname.

— Purpose of the visit?

«Girl, everything is indicated there,» Tamara said calmly. — Scientific research.

— Come on in…

«Thank you, girl,» Sergei smiled.

-...to the metal detector! — The red-haired woman grinned.

Two pumped up guys in uniform approached them and pointed towards the steel arch.

— Please place your bags on the scanning belt.

Tamara was the first to go through the scanner, followed by Sergei.

«It’s clear,» said the guard. — It’s not them.

«Welcome to the Directory,» the red-haired woman smiled, handing passports and registration cards to the owners. — Have a good day!

But they did not rise to the minus thirtieth floor, where advanced scientific developments were carried out, but headed upstairs.

They were already waiting for them behind the elevator doors.

— Eh, I’m thinking that somehow everything is going too smoothly. «We take out weapons,» Tamara said. — You cover me with a shield, and I will attack.

Metal staves appeared in the hands of the conspirators. More precisely, another extra would have seen that the weapon was with them all this time, but hidden in the probabilistic fog.

What is the probability in a normal world that you will put your smartphone on a shelf and turn away and not find it there a couple of minutes later? Sometimes this happens. Those who are especially superstitious at such moments turn the cup over and ask the brownie to return the lost item. Who knows, maybe the brownie also has the statistic gene? One day the world changed, and objects began to disappear more and more often. At first, scientists who decided to raise this issue at serious scientific conferences were ridiculed by their colleagues. But then came the Age of Chaos. A person could go out shopping and, blinking, find himself somewhere at the South Pole, or fall asleep and wake up flying towards the Earth from somewhere on top. Soon the first people with a special talent appeared: they could change the statistical probabilities of various events with the power of thought. They were the ones who were able to stop Chaos for a while. Then humanity launched a system of CCTV cameras that scurried around the planet, and observers on huge monitors tirelessly monitored everything around them. As long as there is an observer, the world could exist only in one form. It seemed that life was beginning to return to normal. But the power of the Directory of Observers increased until one day the head of the corporation declared the worldwide hegemony of the Directory and appointed himself the sole emperor of the planet. A dictatorship of such magnitude has never existed in human history. Total control was opposed by many, and thanks to the control of reality, the Statist Revolution almost succeeded. But still, those in power turned out to be more cunning, and announced that it was the extras who were to blame for the emergence of the Age of Chaos. Total chaos is still worse than dictatorship, the memory of the universe being torn into pieces was still fresh, so people who did not possess the probabilistic gene happily handed over their former comrades in the revolution to the authorities. A scientific witch hunt began: the M gene was detected at the birth of a child, and if the test was positive, then such a child was cremated alive. The fire of the Inquisition burned as hot after a millennium as in the Middle Ages.

Extras invented weapons, the use of which was available only to those with the M-gene. The tip of the metal staff could emit energy in various forms. Moreover, the staff could be in the hand or not with the same probability, and the extras shifted the share of this probability at his own discretion. An extra could safely walk through a metal detector and then make a weapon appear in his hand. The staff was connected to a virtually inexhaustible source of energy through a wire lowered into the depths of the probabilistic fog.

A burst of machine gun fire rang out, but the police stopped without reaching the target, without passing the invisible barrier. Tamara swiped her staff through the air, and the floor beneath her attackers disappeared. And they flew down. The floor then returned to its place and the two rebels were able to move on.

The Emperor sat on a huge gilded throne. The remote control is in one hand. Instead of walls there were huge monitors that displayed thousands of events taking place in different parts of the Earth.

— Take a seat. You have three minutes until security arrives.

— Emperor, we come in peace.

— Wow, the extras came at least somewhere with peace, and not with rebellion. Are you saying your hands are clean?

«Emperor, we come in peace,» Tamara did not look away from the man’s unblinking eyes. — Don’t you notice that the fewer extras there are in the world, the more Chaos takes back for itself? Your cameras can’t do it without the help of extras! Don’t you notice that the Directory building is moving around the city?

— Who said that this wasn’t planned by me?

Tamara only now noticed the staff in the emperor’s hands. Hidden in the fog of probability.

— So you are an extra, not an observer. Sergey! Prepare your weapons.

— I am not just an observer or an extra. I am now the god of this lousy planet. What is the probability that I will die in a couple of centuries? And in a thousand? If I weren’t such a statistic, I would have succumbed to the will of the universe. But I shouted to infinity: the probability of my death is zero. And while there are no other extras on Earth, only I can control Chaos!

It seemed to Sergei that the emperor had melted into thin air, but Tamara was an extra at a higher level, so she saw how the crazy old man created four clones, and the probability of him being in the place of each of the projections was exactly 25%. An army of doubles surrounded the rebels on four sides like a quantum wave. But he can attack using each of his projections. If they were human, they would definitely be doomed.

— Seryozha. Focus on one thought. It exists with a 25% probability in one of four positions. This means that it is not present with a probability of 75% in each of the four projections. Let’s send the emperor into outer space: two observers are always stronger than one.

There was a flash, and the emperor disappeared from the Directory.

«A fairy tale,» one of the readers will say.

«Why shouldn’t there be a fair universe in the flow of multiverses, where good always triumphs over evil?» — the author will answer you.

***

— Yes, our universe is not always fair. But she is stable. The Klein Bottle bar was there yesterday and will be there tomorrow.

— Yes, let’s continue tomorrow. Waiter, check please.

Vasily rummaged in his pockets, but the wallet was not there. Although the man definitely remembered that he put it in his pocket when leaving the house. It couldn’t have happened that you put something in your pocket, and then it suddenly disappeared when you stopped looking at it?

Reality Moderators

this ever happened to you? Put the comb on the table. He turned away — and there was already no trace of her. Did he put it somewhere else, or did the brownie take it?

***

— Seven days! — Septon Iris-1 crossed his upper limbs, indicating that he would not tolerate objections.

— This is madness! No one can do it in such a short time. Initially, we discussed a period of two or three thousand years. Even Pandorra, listed in the Book of Legends, took longer than a millennium to create.

¬– Seven days. And I won’t even give you an extra hour. — The Septon vibrated subtly and changed shape, moving in multidimensional space. This was the only thing that showed his excitement.

— But we won’t make it in time!

— Derek Orson-4! Just try to delay the deadline for even an hour, and you’ll immediately fly out of Eden before you even have time to blink an eye. You will light up the stars or play melodies on super strings!

Derek tried to say something else in his defense, but Septon silenced him with a gesture.

«Derek, I gave my Word, and I intend to keep it. Will I have to make excuses to the customer, answering for your mistakes? You yourself agreed to the position of Supreme Creator. I liked the other candidates better, but your father vouched for you. You received a position through an acquaintance, but the work must be completed on time.

— But…

Septon did not listen to new excuses, he simply disappeared into the abyss of one of the spaces, now try his detectives.

***

— Seven days? Derek, are you out of your mind? Why didn’t you tell that fool Iris what you thought of him?

Il Zamar-8 was noticeably worried: each of the limbs was wrapped in a spiral in its own dimension.

«I tried to tell him several times, but he didn’t want to hear,» Derek said. — You know, my probationary period is coming to an end soon. Orson gave the Word. And if there was a Word, then there must be Peace, you know the rules. Otherwise they’ll kick me out, I’ll be some kind of firebrand of the stars or the spirit of the river.

— But the order given to you cannot be fulfilled! — Il shouted, moving most of his limbs.

— What if we make at least the appearance of a completed project, and then correct all the inaccuracies? — Derek lit a cigarette and was now releasing fifth-dimensional puffs of smoke.

— For example?

— Well, for example, let’s create only 3 dimensions. Il, sit down, don’t worry so much.

— Where are you going to put the rest? You’ll curl up into a ball, or what?

— Yes, Il, good idea! 3 dimensions, and the remaining 7 are folded so that none of the inhabitants of the world can look at a short distance.

— Derek, but that wasn’t the idea! It was sarcasm! Do you know what sarcasm is?

— Don’t be so stuffy. Ha-ha, that’s a pun: stuffy spirit! Isn’t it funny?

— Not funny at all! Derek, imagine, I’m not funny at all!

Il clutched the bowl with one of his limbs, drinking small sips of quark soup from a Klein bottle.

— But no one will look into the details! All 11 dimensions are used, one of them is for time, and 10 for space. Who will unravel the tangle?

— And if you are entrusted with creating a 26-dimensional world, will you also reel in the excess?

— Il, don’t pick on words. I will hand over the project, and then after receiving the position I will finalize the remaining measurements.

— Derek, do you have any idea how precisely you need to adjust all the parameters so that your 3 dimensions do not crumble into dust from any blow of the cosmic wind?

— Yes, I’m unlikely to become a watchmaker who creates the world and then forgets about it until I finish the Creation.

— Can you imagine how much the demiurges will have to pay if they turn out to be fools and even agree to work in such a short time?

— Don’t be a pessimist, Il, buddy! Of course, the reserves of karma in my vaults are not that large, but we will definitely come up with something.

¬–Derek, what can we come up with? — Il’s middle limbs disappeared into one of the higher dimensions.

— Il, don’t be angry! Here, I came up with it! We don’t have to hire demiurges, do we? Let’s hire someone from the lower ones, for example, cherubim or seraphim. They will receive their first entry in the work book and work experience before graduating from the Academy. And they won’t have to pay a lot of karma.

— And what can they do? They still don’t know how to do much! All they can do is kick their wings while no one is looking and drink wormwood. Workers for me too.

— This is how we will do everything. And they will be ordinary moderators. They will make sure that the weak interaction does not change its constant, and that the seven dimensions do not unwind and are invisible to the locals.

«Oh, Derek, it’s always because of you that we end up in a complete black hole!»

— Don’t swear like that! True, this is the last time!

— Where are you going?

— Il, you are a true friend! I never doubted you. We will definitely make it through.

— Go to the quasar!

***

Il carefully re-read every instruction in the book, and Derek improvised, blowing the bubble of a new universe.

— Yes, sir! We need to add light,» Derek said.

— Wait a minute! You need to carefully calculate everything.

— Il, buddy, what’s there to calculate! We are running out of time, it’s painful to rely on calculations.

The sphere suddenly became too hot, and Derek dropped it from his paws. And then there was a sharp bang, and the sphere began to increase in size many times over.

— Derek, the quasar is going into your black hole! What are you doing? Is it possible to supply so much light in three-dimensional space! I hope no one from management heard this explosion. Cool the sphere immediately, otherwise it will expand until it bursts!

— Il, but I don’t know how to stop the expansion!

— So you didn’t read the instructions at all? Separate the light from the darkness immediately!

Derek’s myriad tentacles scattered each of the photons away from the hot area.

— Well, look what you did! Derek, think before you act. Now photons will not be able to move as fast as they please. Now your creations will be connected to their own planet, like dogs on a leash.

— Il, excuse me, I didn’t do it on purpose!

— You have to think! I hope it didn’t turn out as bad as Master Lucius Sat-1.

¬– What’s wrong with him? — Derek was surprised. — He opened his own company, now he is the owner of his own Corporation.

— It’s not true that in the universe he developed, the temperature is so high that elements heavier than sulfur cannot be synthesized. Nine dimensions of endlessly raging flames and the stench of sulfur dioxide. Many Creators send their guilty people to him for re-education. Okay, quickly separate the water from the land, and we’ll rest. Just this time, do everything according to the instructions!

***

— It’s true, she’s a cutie! — Derek admired the created creature.

— A neutrino in each limb! Derek, just look at this abomination! What have you done! The instructions clearly say: in your own image and likeness. And you created this creature with four tentacles instead of the required five thousand, and you call it a likeness?

— It happened. But they won’t know what I look like! Nobody will know!

Il sighed heavily. Its tentacles swayed nervously.

¬– How will your creature bud? How will she create her own kind?

— Yes, Il, I didn’t think about that. Let’s help it bud for the first time, for example, take a rib, and then they’ll figure it out on their own?

***

A multidimensional series to the beat of rustling wings. Derek approaches each cherub with a menacing look.

— Forget what you were taught at the Academy. This is your first serious work. From now on, you are not students, but real moderators of reality. The demiurge team and I will be developing new additions. Your task is simple: view add-ons and enable them at the right time. Our rivals from the Master Sata corporation may try to introduce a malicious reality. For example, they can incite our creations to quarrel among themselves. Or they may try to introduce monsters that feed on the blood of people, or turn into octopuses during high tide, or you never know what these evil trolls are capable of. You must ensure that the sun rises in the morning and that your right sock is always next to your left. And if the trolls send you some kind of incorrect reality, then throw it away mercilessly!

— For example, if the sandwich falls butter side down?

— Yes, Stefan, such things will not be needed in our universe.

***

Derek increasingly disappeared into his office, carefully watching how his creations developed. They learned to dig up the ground and make a fire. They caught fish and drove away large animals with burning branches. But most importantly, they loved each other.

And Il became darker every day.

— Again you are babysitting your monsters! Let the moderators monitor them. And you and I, let’s think about how to unwind 7 unfinished dimensions.

— I wonder what it’s like not to bud, but to give birth to a child to two parents at the same time? They have so few tentacles, but so much desire to hold each other.

— They have love, but there is no eternity ahead. Although we are running out of time. If we do not return all dimensions to order on time, then your creations will never be able to move into the seraphim phase, and then you will never give birth to a single demiurge. Maybe it’s for the better? Imagine a demiurge with four tentacles! Sin, and nothing more! I have to confess something to you. Sorry, Derek, but I told Septon Iris-1 everything. He will now bring you to your senses and will not allow you to ruin the universe we created.

— But unraveling reality will destroy my creations!

— Let’s create new ones, ten-dimensional, healthy, with all the necessary tentacles! I’ve already taken care of everything. I picked one of the Fruits of Knowledge and gave it to your man. You know what they do to the lower ones who encroach on the Fruit?

Derek hit Il’s cheek with a dozen tentacles.

— You have always envied me, Il! Why did you act so meanly? I fell in love with these kids. I have never loved so much before. And you’re trying to kill them.

«You’re an upstart, Derek.» Your dad promoted you up the career ladder immediately after his elevation to demiurge. But I achieved everything with my own labor, and now I’m forced to work part-time as your assistant, watching you raise monsters!

— I will not allow my first universe to be destroyed! I will escape from Eden, and hide my people away from the eyes of any of the titans.

Before Il had time to come to his senses, Derek disappeared into the infinity of space.

Septon Iris-1 appeared in the office.

— Septon, if you had appeared a couple of moments ago, you could have captured this upstart! But it’s not too late to catch up with him!

— Let him run away. We won’t chase him.

— But Master Septon! He stole the universe!

¬– Il Zamar-8. Remember who you’re talking to!

— Sorry, Master!

— Or, demiurges as talented as Derek have not been born in the last few dozen cycles. The last one equal to him in talent was me. When I caused trouble in my own universe, I also expected my pets to be expelled and destroyed. I also had a good friend. He then handed me over to his mentor, and for a century now he has been trying to prove that his inferno universe is better than my creation. Every Creator in history had such a friend.

By the way, your father is also one of my offspring.

It seems to you that Derek made a mistake, did not work according to the instructions, created something wrong. But he created love, and this cannot be a mistake.

***

Eli also escaped from Eden. He continued to do all sorts of intrigues in the world created by Derek. But reality moderators constantly correct his mischief. Immortals have their own quirks, what else can they do out of boredom? And moderators must always be on their guard.

Have you ever had such cases? Put the comb on the table. He turned away and was still not there. Turn the mug over so that the moderators receive a notification about the error and fix it immediately.

Almost grown up, almost perfect

A long corridor that smelled of cutlets. Three large windows, dispelling the twilight even in cloudy winter. Under the poster, on the beige flowered wallpaper, in clumsy block letters it says: «I love Lenka.»

The kids rushed noisily along the corridor, pushing each other. Jumpers, notebooks, and sometimes briefcases were scattered. Vasya finished the bun, and crumbs fell onto the floor. Isolde Viktorovna barely had to appear from the back office before almost deathly silence reigned. The children, not yet hearing what they would be accused of, but already realizing the severity of the guilt, lowered their heads and stood near the windowsills. The history teacher, who was also the deputy director for educational work, was strict, but fair, and always defended the tomboys if conflicts went beyond the boundaries of school. Everyone was afraid of her, but they loved her.

— What’s the matter? — Isolda Viktorovna asked without raising her voice, but in the silence that reigned she sounded louder than using a megaphone. — Should I repeat the question? Have you decided to play the silent game now? Sementsov?

— He called me names! You know how unpleasant it is! — the boy almost jumped out of his seat, was already preparing his fists, but stopped under the menacing gaze of the teacher.

— And he ate my cake! Without permission! Glutton!

— So you wouldn’t eat anyway! He left it on the table and left the dining room.

— I didn’t leave, I just carried the plate. You’re the one who always leaves dirty dishes on the table and doesn’t clean up after yourself. And my parents taught me culture, unlike some.

— Let’s go to my office, write explanatory notes!

The guys sighed, but there was nothing to do: they trudged, heads down, towards the «torture room,» as the office at the end of the corridor was jokingly called.

Every fifth grade is a threat to the school. The tomboys escaped from under the warm wing of their cool mother, under whose watchful gaze they made hooks and sticks in one lesson, and in the next lesson they learned to add numbers in a column. Now it’s every man for himself, no one reminds you about the need to hand in a test book or any other debts. So they rush through the corridors in order to somehow smooth out the dissonance between ending childhood and forced adulthood.

There was an uncertain knock on the method room.

«Come in, Violetta Stepanovna,» said Isolda Viktorovna, pointing the short teacher to a chair. The guilty boys stood with their heads down. The room is cool.

— I’ll wait. After the antics of the fifth grade, I really didn’t want to sit. Do you know what they did? The button was planted. On a chair. To me! Honored Teacher of the Year! And this is for all the work, for the soul that I completely invested in raising… and in the end I raised these!

An awkward silence reigned. The boys seemed to lower their heads even lower. A moment, and, like ostriches, they will bury themselves in the sand. By the way, Violetta Stepanovna really has been giving all her best at work for the last twenty-five odd years. Personal life did not work out. She was a good person, her students loved her, but her own children at home did not extend their hands and did not smile joyfully. It’s all the more offensive to accept that children are imperfect. These sprouts will bear fruit after many years. And today they can be as bitter as green apricots. Even unripe fruits can make your stomach ache.

— What kind of young people went? We spent our childhood on the street and were family friends. And after the invention of this «virtuality» of theirs, they buried themselves in Technopolis; the modulator chip cannot be pulled out of the back of their heads. This is where aggression comes from! When I was in sixth grade, I just thought about taking my mobile phone out of my pocket when I immediately got hit on my fingers with a pointer. And I always remembered that devices have no place in the classroom. And the thought would not arise to cause trouble for teachers.

Kindness is not at all what they need. Sometimes you feel, when entering a classroom, that you are in a cage with tigers who are directing their hungry gaze at you. If you turn away, miss something from your attention, they will immediately bite you, and at the most unexpected moment. But when they feel strong, they can be led on any adventures. I’m not sure that they will remember you in a couple of years, but these smiling «robbers» will remain a part of your life forever, and they will often be missed. Probably many of them perceive kindness as a sign of weakness?

— Sorry. Violetta Stepanovna! — crocodile tears flowed down Vasya Pukhlin’s cheeks.

«You shouldn’t be so categorical,» Isolda Viktorovna looked at her colleague over her glasses. — Ordinary youth. No worse and no better than us. They live in a different time, with different technical capabilities, but people are always the same.

Technological progress has touched every corner of the universe. Skyscrapers have mushroomed, even in small cities. But the school, built in the sixties of the last century, remained the same school. Every five years, major renovations are done here. But the light bulbs do not light up everywhere: only where they were purchased by parents or responsible teachers, since the state budget has no time for such small everyday problems, they think globally. During recess, most children are immersed in virtuality, and Technopolis, a network «city» of extended reality, is used in lessons. But if you face the truth, even before the invention of computers, not everyone carried out changes in libraries — pranks are always more interesting.

Many schools are the same, with minor differences. A light rain was falling. The wind pierced to the bones, but in March the hope for quick warmth and greenery did not fade. Eternal summer is not bad at all. But remember the sunny countries of Africa — would you like to live like this — in endless stuffiness, where there is no escape from mosquitoes and numerous diseases? Spring is twice beautiful after prolonged frosts and snows. And the light rain, even though it contained snow that melted before reaching the asphalt, did not spoil the mood. Spring! Her scent is in every first blade of grass, it is dispersed in the air. The children are smiling and waving their briefcases. Remembering the tests, they begin to frown. But then they agree on an evening walk, and the sadness disappears!

The school yard has been swept. Hardworking janitor bees have no time for sleep early in the morning: they are preparing for the arrival of the younger generation. The cleaning robots didn’t get into the Temple of Science: let them clean the corridors of the Centrum. Children need to be led by example, and isn’t a clean schoolyard worth a thousand words about cleaning and cleanliness? A flag flutters above the entrance, and next to it is an electronic board with the name of the school. Around the corner, high school students are eating the first forbidden fruits of the gray serpent. Some time ago, young people dabbled with electronic devices, but doctors proved that vaping is more dangerous than a regular cigarette. Although, what should we tell them about the danger: who among us did not break the rules during our school years? But this is the main right of youth — to make mistakes for which you are not ashamed later.

The cloakroom attendant smiles welcomingly. The high school students on duty have been on their feet since early morning. They meticulously check everyone’s shoes and demand that they put their jackets in the cloakroom. Children are running along the corridors, laughing. A couple of boys are playing table tennis. The dining room smells like cutlets. It’s morning, but there’s already a line at the window for rolls and pizza. Teenagers are constantly hungry. They grow and change beyond recognition every month. These very similar schools have completely different students. Each of them is a whole world, a universe, with its own experiences and problems. Hobbies. This short, smiling guy has been going to judo for seven years and earns medals. And this one seems to be a future cybersportsman. Here is a flock of guys huddled at the windowsill. Under the proud gaze of the excellent student, they copy something from her notebook.

«I’m thinking about leaving,» said Violetta Stepanovna. — I was offered a place at the Ideal school, and every day I want to agree to go there more and more.

Vasya and Seryozha looked at each other. There were various rumors about these very Ideal Ones. They said that the Government, through cloning, bred people who never got sick and could work at least twice as hard as any mortal. But the main thing: they were not bound by bonds of emotions. Even children are always cultured and courteous, and have never committed any offenses. The ideal couple now studied at this school. Too sweet, according to their classmates, but most of the teachers’ attention belonged to them. Their peers hated them.

— Please don’t leave! — Vaska burst into tears more than ever. — We won’t do this again. True true! It was the last time. Don’t change us or them!

But this story is not about ideal people. Of course, we all strive for the ideal, but a monotonous life is gray and boring. Violetta Stepanovna will work at the Ideal School for some time, but then return to the regular school: once you set foot on its threshold, it is difficult to imagine yourself in another field. Fifth-graders who are taking their first steps into adulthood will also remain without our attention for now. But these two guys, who already look like adults, are head and shoulders above the teachers, or even more. But they are adults only in appearance, but at heart they are still the same tomboys. The games just got more serious, older

Dimka squinted one eye so that the cigarette smoke would not corrode the mucous membrane of the eye. Ask any smoker why he started smoking, and he is unlikely to tell the truth: «I just wanted to be like everyone else, I don’t have my own opinion.» A white cap hid a chip reader on the back of his head. Behind his back is a bottomless briefcase with many «treasures»: screwdrivers, knives, wires. Mitya is two heads taller than Dima.

— What did she tell you? — asked Mitya, a boy with a piercing in his left ear and a tattoo of a skeleton on his right hand.

— Yes, that’s what she said. Like, let’s just be friends. Is this why I carried her briefcase five years ago? And wrote essays on Shakespeare to stay in the «friend zone»? I drew flowers for March 8th. My mother is raising me alone: where can I get money for real flowers? Nowadays, plants are rare, almost a curiosity. They are worth a lot of money! Vasilko, he gets money from his father, he is a Guardian. Do I have to spend a thousand years looking for a girl? Or neither eat nor drink — save up for a flower?

A bone-chilling wind was blowing. The sun was hidden behind fluffy gray clouds. A fine nasty rain fell. But spring is even in the smells. And there was no question of hiding from nature under an umbrella: it was about to get warm. It’s anticipation in every second. There are no trees in megacities for a long time, but the first birds, obeying age-old reflexes, have already begun to return home to the roofs of skyscrapers.

— Let’s beat up Vaska? — Mitka suggested. — I will skin anyone for my brother!

— Thank you brother. I didn’t have a good relationship with my siblings, although I found a kindred spirit in you. But I tried yesterday. Do you see the bruise on his face? — Dimka turned around. There was a black bruise all over my cheek.

— Yeah!

— Same thing. He rarely walks alone, hanging out with his buddies. I told him: «Come on one on one, be a man!», and he set a mob on me. In the evening, my mother also told me that I wanted to fight. World is not fair!

— So let’s call our friends. I have many good friends. They won’t refuse me.

— And you, Mitka, are my only friend. I guess I’ve known you for ten years. We even went to the same kindergarten. You can’t have many friends: one, maximum two, and only if you’re lucky. The rest are like acquaintances, fellow travelers in the gravity car of life. Like a sieve, she will weed them out, leaving the most devoted ones. I don’t want to make such «temporary friends»

— So who are we going to call?

«No need,» Dima said confidently. — I’ll figure it out myself.

— Exactly?

— Yeah!

— You speak up if anything happens! — Mitka winked conspiratorially, and Dimka, sad until that moment, smiled for the first time during the break.

The bell rang. The children gravitated to the old school — the only stain of the past, pre-skyscraper era.

— Let’s go to? — Mitya stood up and hung his backpack over his shoulders. Backpacks have not gone out of fashion — every young man has one on his back. And what is convenient and practical. — There’s no need to be late. Otherwise Violetta Stepanovna will swear again.

«I won’t go to mathematics,» said Dima. — Why did she give in to me?

— But the test. And exams are just around the corner.

— Don’t care about exams! Why do I need a diploma? Should I get in line for mating? Not with anyone. Marinka made it clear that she would not be with me. I’d rather go to the Guardians.

The time for open relationships is long gone. The state took control of family planning. And now, in order to have a child, you need to stand in line for mating. After all, even the construction of skyscrapers did not solve the problem of overpopulation. But not everyone got this right: only the smartest, or the strongest, or in other ways superior to other people. An ordinary «C» student does not need to prolong the family line, according to the state.

— Mitya, you go to mathematics yourself.

— And you?

— And I’m going to rob Centrum Bank! Look, I can get Marinka this way too! — Dimka laughed hysterically. But Mitya knew his best friend too well: he rarely joked. And in general he had no sense of humor.

«I’ll go with you,» said the boy with a piercing in his ear, lowering his backpack onto the asphalt.

— But I was joking!

— I know your jokes.

— Don’t be stupid, Mitya. Okay, I’m going: I have nothing to lose. And why do you need it?

— Why should I catch on the «tower» without you? It’s just boring, numbers, and that’s all!

The reasons for teenagers’ actions are to oppose themselves to the whole world, to show their uniqueness and difference. And for some, on the contrary, for company. For the sake of a friend, through fire and water. Mitya often followed Dimka’s lead and others. He made the piercing like the lead singer of the Rocker Stars. The tattoo is very similar to the symbolism of the Blackened group. And Mitka, of course, contracted the teenage addiction to nicotine from Dimka.

— Listen, Dim. Why are you friends with me?

— You’re cool, funny. But not only that. How do you like Kolka, new guy?

— Which one is Ideal? — asked Mitya.

— Yeah, he’s the one.

— Boring, like all clones.

«That’s the same,» said Dima. — They look alike. And you are wrong. You often infuriate me with your jokes and antics. Sometimes when you blurt out something, I want to kill you. But as soon as we part for an hour or two, it immediately becomes empty. If you were Ideal, I wouldn’t be friends with you. Okay, enough talk. Insert the chip into the back of your head and let’s go!

An electric discharge passed through the body. The world was filled with new colors and changed. It became lighter. Before your eyes is a navigation panel. Dima increased the subjective temperature and removed the wind.

— And I recommend it to you — otherwise you’ll be chilled to the bones!

Mitya smiled and repeated the procedure. The boys looked at the lifeless bodies of their avatars, who were sitting on the asphalt.

— I hope that while we are in the virtual world, no one will find us in real life? — asked Mitya.

«We won’t stay long,» Dima answered. — Taking out the «Gargoyle Wings» will not open a teleport to the Bank.

Behind the backs of the teenagers there are wings that look like bats. By the way, the appearance of the guys has changed considerably: both are muscular, tall, and 10 years older. Augmented reality made it possible to change the appearance to taste. They soared up and flew over the tops of skyscrapers, and sometimes flying through steel walls. And in every room there is a fragment of someone’s secret life. But the new era cannot keep secrets. Only the richest can afford to buy virtuality broadcast suppressors. Well, it’s the same in government facilities. And so, go into any apartment in virtual form and look into someone else’s, once private, life. A world without borders, a world without castles.

— Do you know where to fly? — asked Mitya.

— Let’s go down to this roof. The security system here is weaker.

— Listen, what if we get caught?

— Don’t whine like a woman! — Dimka grinned somehow ominously. — I suggested to you right away: go to mathematics. He himself wanted to go with me.

— I’m a boy, I’m not a woman!

— Don’t drift! You haven’t forgotten who you’re dealing with, have you? I took second place at the Young Programmer Olympiad

As soon as he landed on the roof, two huge stone troll statues came to life.

— This is what I understand — a security system! Nobody promised that it would be easy!

The troll hit the roof, sending a shock wave in all directions.

— Mitya, don’t step on these blue symbols. These are beacons: you can’t wash them off. And then the Guardians will quickly figure you out.

Dima issued some combination of commands, and a scarlet whip shone in his hand, sparkling with energy. The blow — and the troll shattered into fragments, turning into a pile of stones.

— Will you teach me to do this too? — Delight was visible in Mitka’s eyes.

— No need to skip computer science lessons, that’s the whole secret!

Dima entered another combination of commands, and a gap appeared in the wall (of course, only in virtuality, but this was enough to get inside)

Along the walls there were shelves with various information. But the most interesting thing is in the center of the hall, which ended the long corridor. A sphere glowing in various shades of blue, flowing with energy.

— What is this? — Mitka whispered spellbound.

— Looks like this is the Server Key! Mit, we are rich! Now, to get any information we are interested in, we don’t even need to wander around Technopolis! You need to grab it and make legs!

Dima extended his hands to the sphere, but then something grabbed his hand. He tried to pull his hand away, but tenacious black paws held him. Then their owner appeared, a huge black ghost, reaching to the ceiling. Dima tried to create a whip in his hand, but the program code crumbled from his fingers.

— Did you really think it was so easy to get into the Centrum? Statues are just decorations; any programmer can pass through them. But we will not give the sphere to anyone.

«Mitka, hit him from behind with something!» I’ll distract him, and you’ll hit him! I can’t press the exit button from virtuality. They blocked me!»

The beauty of virtuality is that you can send messages that no one except the recipient will see. The ghost had no idea yet that there was someone else in the building besides Dima. But Mitya shook his head. A tear ran down his cheek.

«Forgive me, Dim. I can’t»

«Why?»

«If I get caught now and my parents find out. I’m finished!

«Well, you and #%$#*, Dima! I didn’t expect it from you! You’re scum!

Mitya’s image flashed and disappeared into virtuality. He returned to the real world.

The ghost twisted Dima’s limbs, but he did not feel pain. Feelings were obscured by another pain that had no equal: the first betrayal, like the first love, remains forever in the heart. Tears flowed down my cheeks, which even in virtuality made my face wet. Probably, in the real world his avatar is crying.

— Do you know what I will do to you, sucker? — the ghost laughed creakingly.

— Yes to me #$%#$%, do what you want!

— Everyone said that before meeting people like me. But I will do something good with you. I will reeducate you. They say that you can educate for up to ten years. But we have found a way to educate at any age. Juvenile criminals like you are no longer sent to prison. There is little space under the sun, and every year there is less and less. Why spend money on places of detention when you can re-educate them forever and make people Ideal?

A white sphere shone between the ghost’s fingers, shimmering with rows of zeros and ones.

— What is this? — Dima asked scared, although deep down he already knew the answer to this question. He made another attempt to get out, but to no avail. He shouted several obscene phrases, but the ghost did not pay attention to them. He placed a white sphere between Dima’s eyebrows, and it shone blindingly. This light passed through the whole guy. At first it hurt. And then he, looking around. I could appreciate the perfectly even outlines of the hall.

And then there was a flash — and Dima opened his eyes on the wet cold asphalt. He hung his backpack on his back and trudged home.

The thirty-eighth floor, but for some reason the elevator was not working again. This happened often. It smelled like dog urine: many defenders let poor animals in to bask in the entrance, and laid out the bones on a piece of newspaper on the ground floor. The light was blinking while waiting for the wiring to be repaired. Swear words are written on the steel wall with a marker. Usually Dima ran out of breath on the fifth floor, but today he reached his floor without shortness of breath. The young man’s room was in «creative» chaos. The bed is not made. Dima corrected this misunderstanding. Swept and washed the floors. I washed the dishes. I replaced the outlet that I promised to fix more than a month ago. And he sat down to study. Isn’t this logical? Every teenager, when he comes home, should do nothing but study and help his mother around the house. This is the only way to please everyone.

«Well done, Dimka,» said Zinaida, returning home. She had not been so proud of her son for a long time.

— Mom, is there anything else you need help with?

— Take out the trash, son. I forgot to take it with me this morning. And now I’m very tired, I won’t be able to come down from the thirty-seventh floor.

Dima usually snapped after every attempt to force him to do something around the house. But what has changed now?

I packed my backpack in the evening so as not to forget a single textbook. I laid out screwdrivers and other items unnecessary in the educational process. At exactly nine-thirty the young man went to bed. At his age, he needs at least nine hours of sleep to stay healthy. And no games at night — they are harmful to the development of the psyche.

At the entrance to the school, Mitya grabbed Dima’s hand.

— Excuse me if you can. Dim, I don’t know what came over me yesterday. I didn’t do it on purpose. I… — Mitya burst into tears.

— Everything is fine. You did the logical thing. You still couldn’t save me. But he saved himself.

Mitya didn’t think so. The boy must fight to the last drop of blood for his brother.

— What happened to you yesterday? What did he do to you?

— He re-educated me.

— So are you really okay?

«Everything is perfect,» Dima said, and entered the school.

— Maybe it’s… let’s have a smoke before Isolda Viktorovna comes? Around the corner,» Mitya suggested.

— I stopped. Smoking is harmful to health. And I don’t recommend it to you.

Inside, as always, it smelled of cutlets and sweat. Dima greeted the cloakroom attendant warmly and changed his second shoes. Today he did not argue with the duty officers from the ninth «b».

Dima also greeted Marina. I said hello. And he moved on. And not a single word more. Marina almost choked: won’t she get some attention today? She took out her compact to look in the mirror: was there something wrong with her today? Is she not so beautiful now? Or did Dima notice this pimple on his face?

By the way, Marina only now noticed that there was no trace left of Dima’s acne.

— Listen, Dim, I was thinking: let’s meet? — Marina smiled radiantly. It didn’t work out with Vasya, so she looked for alternate ways. How will she look her friends in the face if she is alone, without a boyfriend?

— No, Marina, you don’t suit my genotype. We will not have perfectly healthy offspring. Sorry.

Marina turned green with anger, then burst into tears loudly. But the young man did not turn around at her trick. He had no emotions left.

Dima entered the office five minutes before the bell rang and went to the first desk. There was another Ideal sitting there.

Since today, Dima has not entered Technopolis. More precisely, now he was always in virtuality and never left it. The blond sitting next to him shone with white light in the expanded reality that Dima had always seen.

Dima forgave Mitya, and for some time they communicated with an old friend. But Mitya could not stand Ideal’s company for long.

— You’ve become boring. It’s not interesting with you,» Mitka once said.

Dima graduated from school with a gold medal. Graduated from the university with honors. And he lived an ordinary, ideal life. There is only one «gray» spot in his biography. When his child was born and he was offered a vaccine, Dima shook his head.

— But why? Dim, we are perfect, why don’t you want our son to grow up the same? — Dima’s wife asked.

— Yes, we live ideally. But let our son grow up happy. At least until the first mistake, let’s allow him this.

The years passed, and there were more and more Ideal ones. But among the skyscrapers stood the same school, built in the mid-sixties of the last century, in the corridors of which there was still the same smell of cutlets. And in this school, different people were welcome, even if they were not adults yet, even if they were not ideal.

Soul limit

Every year there are more and more people, but there is less and less humanity in them.

I’m sitting in a stuffy classroom. Humidity — 61% It would be nice to open the window, but Marina Velichko is allergic to the pollen of one of the plants. It seems irrational to me when 25 people suffer because of one. Moreover, one cannot call life full of life with such functional damage. Violetta Semyonovna in a dress that reflects light with a frequency of about 450 THz. People would call it red. The timbre of her voice constantly changes, and her pupils dilate slightly when she looks at the projection of world-famous paintings.

— And this is a landscape by the Russian artist Alexei Savrasov…

And then there are many epithets. No matter how hard I tried, I could not understand what the words «beautiful», «extraordinary skill», «winter splendor», «defenseless branches in their nakedness», «freshness» mean. Of course, I already remembered in what situation it is necessary open your mouth and show your teeth (they call it a smile), and when to lower your eyes to the floor (shame), but I don’t fully understand why they need this.

A signal with a frequency of about 1000 Hz, which means that you can get up from your seat and go to the next lesson. I love mathematics more than cultural studies. Mathematics is useful, but what is the use of looking at pictures drawn a hundred years ago? You won’t live in a painting, a painting won’t feed you. And it takes up a lot of information on the medium, not just numbers.

Vika Aksyonova and Yura Stepunov hold hands and look into each other’s eyes, and so on at every break. I don’t understand their logic: do you really want to touch someone when the room temperature is almost 27 degrees?

— Hey, voidman! What are you staring at? — Yura knitted his eyebrows and stared at me. — Do you have any problems? If you don’t get out of here, you’ll find them.

— Yuri, let him go his own way, where he was going. No need to touch it! — Vika whispers.

— I hate void people. Moral monsters. They have no place in our country. And let them get off the planet. There is a state program for space exploration. Let him fly to Mars. Or to Jupiter. The main thing is further from our school.

Yura thinks that his words should make me angry. Or maybe these people are jealous? We are better than them in many ways. We feel temperature and humidity better, and we can name the frequency of light and sound waves with great accuracy. And we also have no feelings. Although, sometimes I… I guess that’s what people call envy. People most often go in pairs, or find friends, and gather in huge groups. And void people are always alone. We communicate with someone when the interlocutor is useful to us. My mother was a human, and my hollow father communicated with her in order not to pay the tax for childlessness. It was more profitable for him to be with us than for himself.

Yes, I sometimes envy people. But we are a perfect race, and the future belongs to us. People’s ambitions have brought the planet to the brink of an apocalypse. If we had not appeared as a new target for persecution, then they would have continued to destroy their own kind, who simply live behind the fences of borders that the people themselves invented, for the pleasure of those in power.

The Creator gave people a piece of himself, which became their soul. When a person died, this piece passed to the new owner. But murderers, drug addicts and other criminals left behind a rotten substance when they died, which crumbled to dust after their death. One day there were so many people that the limit of souls was reached. This is how the first voidman appeared. At first, people tried to beg their child’s soul so that he would become «just like everyone else.» Ironically, voidites, people without a soul, have become the best proof of the existence of this very soul! Soon a black market for souls emerged. Parents are ready to give up any wealth to make their child humane, while others are ready to even sell their souls to feed their child. By the way, total hunger and poverty are not such rare phenomena in our overpopulated world.

Vika grabbed my hand, snatching me out of the captivity of my thoughts.

— Don’t pay attention to him.

— What? — I asked.

— Well, I’m talking about Yura. And his trick.

— Oh, you mean that. It’s OK. I take no offence. I’m used to it.

— But I’ll never get used to it. But he has a reason. His family suffered from… sorry, I mean, from people like you. I’m trying to re-educate him, but to no avail.

— But I’m telling you, it’s okay…

She looked into my eyes the whole time. And I felt something… It seemed. Void dwellers are devoid of feelings.

«So cold,» said Vika.

— What?

— You have eyes. No emotions at all. You know, sometimes I think I would like you. If only the eyes were kinder.

— What about Yura? Are you, as it were, with him?

Vika lowered her eyes and blushed.

— You are right. I’d better go. Once again, I apologize for his behavior.

After class I decided to walk home. The three-dimensional stream of gravikars spread noise over a huge range of frequencies. It’s not so easy to list all the chemical compounds that they emit. We are evolving, and perhaps my children will already be able to conduct chemical analysis with their senses. The sky is covered with a veil of smog, gray, and behind it is a scarlet sun.

Luminescent sign «Souls for hire» A completely legal office, many of them opened after the era of the birth of the void people. When people realized that there weren’t enough free souls for everyone, and most couldn’t buy one for their child even on the black market, he came to people with an offer «that was impossible to refuse.» Usually the devil bought souls for money, careers and other contracts signed blood. But in an era of scarcity, he had competitors among people who were willing to pay several times more for someone’s soul. When one business failed, he found a new way to make money. Many demons are ready to give everything to leave the underworld. But for this you need a body, and such that you don’t need to share it with someone else. A communal apartment is too much even for a demon. This is how another race appeared — the demos. They are almost indistinguishable from people. But instead of a soul, they were inhabited by a creature from another world: a demon, a demon, a devil.

Tell me, who would voluntarily give up the functional benefits of a voidman in order to become a slave to a demon? But then I remembered Vicki’s words: «I would like you. If only the eyes were kinder» I’m an ordinary voidman. But I have something from my mother: sometimes it seems to me that I know how to feel. This happens to me when I look towards Vicky, and especially when I see her eyes.

I looked at the sign for ten minutes and decided to go in anyway.

The interior is lit with incandescent lamps. How wasteful! Although, what can you take from them — people… The man looks about twenty-five years old. Tattoos from head to toe: skull, Latin inscriptions, incomprehensible abstractions. Wanting to stand out, people sometimes do unflattering things with their bodies.

— Do you want to rent a soul? — the man asked me without even greeting me.

— Yes. I’ll take the risk.

— Do you know the conditions? For ten years you will not be able to give up the demon living inside. And then, by mutual agreement, you can renew the contract every ten years. Although, no one has yet given up almost human life.

— Go ahead. Do what needs to be done there.

He sat me down in a chair and began working with a needle. When the job was over, the skull on my left shoulder grinned. I ran my hand over the rough skin. My shoulder still hurt from the needle. The room smelled sharply… you wouldn’t immediately recognize what exactly it was — my sense of smell was dulled, I could not at all distinguish the chemical composition of the air. If the operation was successful, you should smell sulfur oxide. Apparently he is. I looked at the tattoo artist. How could I not immediately notice the blackness in his eyes and the bestial grin. And his tattoos, like mine, were constantly moving, seemingly trying to cling to me with their bony paws. Dems are not so easy to distinguish from people unless you have one of their kind inside you.

That night I had a dream for the first time in my life. Vika appeared to me naked and caressed me, touching me with her soft breasts. I fell asleep thinking about her, and woke up realizing that I couldn’t live without her. If Yura had met at that moment, he would have broken it off. They’ll put you in prison — but don’t you care? How dare he hold her hand?

I lost track of time. Sometimes an eternity passes, but you look at the clock and a minute has passed. Violetta Semyonovna again chirped about the beauty of the paintings. She doesn’t understand anything, the old hag! Titian didn’t want to show «depth of emotion», he just wanted to draw boobs! Also, apparently, at night I had different dreams, and then I sketched my visions. How I want to shut up this old toad with her «richness of color.» Apparently, menopause has already arrived, and no one is looking at her «sweep of strokes.» What am I doing? Have I become angry, I can’t even control myself? As soon as the bell rang, he blew himself up and ran into the corridor.

This idiot is holding my Vika’s hand. Previously, I would not have come within three steps of him: it was logical that he was stronger than me and went to boxing. But how can you reason logically when some degenerate is holding your beloved’s hand?

— Hey you! Get away from her. She will be with me!

— Void? — Yura’s pupils widened in surprise. Why didn’t I notice the grin of his tattoo before? Is he really a dem too? I wonder how long ago? Although, Vika told me something about him. The father became addicted to heroin until one day he had to pay for a dose with his own soul and almost sold his son’s soul. Now I guessed: I sold it after all! And my son became a dem and arranged an overdose for his miracle dad. Every family has its own secrets.

— Although, I’ll look at you, you’re one of us now! I respect your choice.

— And I hate you. But I love Vika, and she will be with me!

— It’s correct to say not «I love», but «I want.» Dems don’t know how to love, haven’t you realized that yet?

Fury has taken my mind. I pounced on Yura and closed my hands around his neck. If he weren’t stronger than me, especially demo, he would have strangled me! But he knocked me out.

I had completely forgotten how to perceive time: there was simply no time in hell, so my new roommate simply did not know how to distinguish seconds from months and millennia. Half an hour ago we were fighting with Yurka, a moment later there was a conversation in the principal’s office, instructions from my parents, more lessons, fights, paintings by Rubens, and now I’m watching Yura pushing Vika into the car. I had never noticed such rage in him before. When — before? A year ago? Half an hour?

— I decided everything! Jerk! I won’t be with you. You’ve always been so cruel. You…

— Who will ask you! If not with me, then you will not be with anyone! Whore! How could you exchange me, a Candidate of Masters in boxing, for this skinny guy with glasses. Look at him.

— But I love him. Understand? Do you hear me?

We talked for a long time with my void father. He is always as logical as I once was.

«Yes, dad, she loves someone else, so I shouldn’t interfere. Yes, dad, you can find a peaceful solution. Yes, dad, I won’t fix anything with my fists, I’ll only make it worse. Yes, dad, I need to finish school and spend time applying.»

I nodded my head, lowering my eyes to the floor, although everything was boiling inside. But no, dad, she doesn’t love anyone else. All this time she loved me. And if I don’t work with my fists, then we will never be together.

Did we fight for a few seconds, hours or minutes? At this time I even forgot about Vic. Only my opponent remained. But he really is good in a fight. Why, I wonder, did Vika choose me — and not him? He’s stronger than me. When we both sat down on the asphalt, exhausted, covered in drops of blood, Vika put her hand on my shoulder. Yura looked in our direction. And then he silently shook my hand and walked away, forgetting even about his car.

And yet I loved Vika. No, I needed her not only for procreation, as when I was a voidman. I needed not only her body, like when I was a dem. I looked at my right shoulder: there was no characteristic tattoo on it. I was a man.

The next day I eagerly looked at the paintings that Violetta Semyonovna showed. I could hardly restrain the feelings that suddenly surged: how could this genius artist, with a stroke of his brush, pour out his soul, which remained immortal for four hundred years? Why didn’t I notice this before? Seventeen years of life are wasted. But the rest of my life, which I have only now begun to appreciate, I will not spend on trifles.

Matryoshka effect

I entered my room, although this time everything did not seem so familiar and familiar. Where does this smell of sweat come from, mixed with too much deodorant? Socks are scattered on the floor. The bed is unmade, and she is wearing multi-colored clothes, crumpled into a heap. He walked to the window, disgustedly stepping onto the long-unwashed floor. He pulled back the curtain to dispel the prevailing twilight. I saw posters on the walls: rock bands, scantily clad girls. As soon as the handle was pulled up, the room was filled with moist, cold October air, mixed with the choice swear words of the local «gentlemen» who were constantly sitting at the tables, as well as with the endless hum of cars. But it became fresher, at least you can breathe. A corner of a precariously hidden erotic magazine peeked out from under the bed: what can you take from a teenager? And next to it lay an equally unsuccessfully hidden white book. I wanted to leave everything in place, but curiosity got the better of me.

«Diary of Nikita Sivtsov, 8th grade student» Flipped through. «Behavior — 2, interferes with the lesson», «No homework! 2», «Had a fight with a classmate», «Smokes on school grounds. Parents should urgently approach the school principal for a conversation.» Mathematics test — and then a bad mark. Has he even stopped learning his favorite math? By the way, there were more notes in red ink than shades of blue ballpoint pen. Of course, there is almost no diary kept, so teachers even have to write down subjects in red pen.

The door creaked.

«I asked: never come into my room without asking.» This is my personal space, and you are violating it.

The voice has barely begun to become rough, sometimes breaking into falsetto. The first fluff is above the lip. On the black T-shirt is the inscription «Down with the State.» When I go out, I sometimes take a hat with me, but he still wears a T-shirt. But the main distinguishing feature: a black eye on half the face.

He handed the diary forward. Nikita immediately lowered his head.

— Even a D in math? Last year you only got an A. Remember how you idolized Vera Fedorovna!

— I… I just didn’t understand this topic. It seems like he taught. And then all the rules flew out of my head. And Vera Fedorovna was so unhappy — she sobbed, or did it seem to me? — She is good. The only good person in our… school.

He pretended not to pay attention to his obscene expression.

— Nikit, you’re a smart guy. You can become, for example, a programmer or an engineer. Or you can become like me. that’s fair. I would give anything to go back to school and correct all my math grades and achieve what is now out of reach.

The boy shyly wanted to hide his hands in his pocket, but then another trouble awaited him: a pack of cigarettes treacherously fell out onto the floor.

— You’re already smoking! How many times have you been told — it’s harmful! At your age I also became addicted. And I still can’t quit. Although I tried five times. And then again any trouble, and the hand again treacherously reaches for a cigarette.

A challenge flashed in Nikita’s eyes, and the shyness disappeared as if by hand.

«If I want to, I’ll quit at any moment.» I’m strong, I’m a man! And now I decide for myself: I like it, so I smoke. I’m already an adult.

— An adult, yes. I see you’ve decided to give up on studying and you’re smoking. Did you go to the rally again, wearing that T-shirt of yours? If you are caught, your father will be punished.

«And you’re not my father to give me orders,» he clenched his fists. And some kind of irreconcilable rage appeared in the slitted eyes. His mood changes… just like, in fact, any teenager.

Father… I concentrated, trying to remember the features of his face. But at one time I was taken into Krylov’s gang for my good memory. I was especially good at remembering faces. But I can’t remember the face. And the name… Did I even have a father? «The matryoshka effect,» I think Professor Belgorodsky called this phenomenon that way. And also recursion.

I took Nikita by the elbow and led him to the mirror.

— Look at you. And then at me.

— Well?

— Don’t you see anything strange? — I ask

— Well, you look a little like me, so what? Brother or what? Or uncle?

— Nikit, do you know how many mistakes of my youth I would like to correct if possible? I am you.

Nikita pulled out his elbow and ran back a few steps.

— What? Are you drunk or stoned? Show your pupils.

«I’m sober, I haven’t drunk for five years now.» I repeat once again: I am you, only twenty-five years older.

— Came back from the future to save Sarah Connor?

— No, to save myself, that is, you.

— You don’t look like me. That is, it is a little similar, but so boring, you read the notations. I will never be like that. So, I went.

He didn’t say another word. A couple of seconds later the front door slammed.

I waited until late at night, but fell asleep to the sound of the TV on. And in the morning, as soon as I opened my eyes, I saw Nikita in the news bulletin. More precisely, the guy’s face was blurred, but I recognized a T-shirt with a characteristic inscription: «An eighth-grader, under the influence of drugs, stole a policeman’s service weapon and shot him during an unauthorized rally.»

I burst into tears. It seemed so simple: press the button in Belgorodsky’s invention, and you can correct any mistake of the past.

«It is impossible to correct the past,» Professor Belgorodsky said at our last meeting. «It’s very difficult to fix someone else’s, but you can’t fix your own.» It is advisable not to date yourself, this can lead to the «matryoshka effect». You will lock yourself into a looped period of time. You will meet yourself, trying to talk you out of your actions, then after a certain time you will return to me again to return to the past again, and so on ad infinitum.

— But why can’t the past be corrected?

— There, in the distant past, it’s not you, but a completely different Nikita Sivtsov. And his future is already determined by your past actions.

— But I’ll try.

I tried — so what? I know the future that awaits Nikita. Jail. Then Krylov’s gang. Drugs, prison again. It took me twenty-five years to understand that things couldn’t go on like this. But now nothing can be fixed: they won’t hire me for any job. Steal again?

When the tears dried up, I decided to try pressing the button: what if the recursion breaks and I can return to my time?

Belgorodsky sat in front of me, drinking red wine in small sips.

— Well, are you convinced? «There was sympathy in his intonation, but he really wanted to hit the professor in the face.

— Have you also tried to correct the past?

— I tried it. My nesting doll has been disassembled ten times. Until I realized that the past cannot be corrected. Each time there was a teenager waiting for me. Driven by youthful maximalism and rejection of the older generation. But the future is in our hands. Do you know what good future awaits you?

— So you looked into my future too?

Belgorodsky smiled conspiratorially.

— You will become a great scientist, make a breakthrough in mathematics and physics. During your school years, you really liked studying mathematics.

— Which one is it? After prison, I wasn’t even hired as a loader everywhere.

— Change your last name.

The professor pulled me by the elbow and led me to the mirror.

— I forgot to introduce myself at our first meeting. My name is Nikita. Twenty-five years ago I changed my last name. Becoming Belgorodsky. And before that he bore the surname Sivtsov.

I peered into the old man’s facial features. But the scar on his cheek is exactly the same as mine! There is a scar on his arm: apparently, he once had a tattoo in this place. This can’t be true.

— The past cannot be changed, the «matryoshka effect» will not give it. But the future is in your hands, Sivtsov-Belgorodsky. Don’t let the nesting doll close your future too.

The alarm clock rang. I woke up. Under my feet lay a bottle of vodka I had drunk yesterday, but my head didn’t hurt. And for some reason the mood was high: I knew. That this is the last bottle of vodka. Alcohol is a thing of the past. And the future is in my hands.

Entanglement of Souls

Have you noticed the invisible connection that arises between close people? You reach for the phone to dial her, and at the same second the call rings: it’s her. This connection is not weakened by thousands of kilometers. Sometimes you can’t find a place for yourself: anxiety leading to panic. You make a call and she breaks her leg. But I once encountered a stranger manifestation of such quantum entanglement of souls.

The sun is a thermonuclear reactor. Usually it gives warmth and life, but on this day the withered grass drooped its «head» stems in the hope of hiding from its overprotection. It smelled… what does it usually smell like in cities? Exhaust fumes, asphalt melting under the summer heat. Dust. The smells coming from the cafes contrast, but at fifty degrees in the sun this smell does not seem pleasant.

When entering the subway, I put on a medical mask, hoping to protect myself from an invisible enemy. There’s no crowding of people; they make noise, hurry somewhere, as if at this pace of life they will have time to see more than they are destined to see. Ants are too small to see the whole world; their life is only enough for an anthill. But on this day I did not see any malice on the faces of those I met: even under the masks one could read a slight smile. Everyone is tired of hiding from the virus in concrete prisons; they want to see their colleagues and take a break from the gaze of the web camera. A person quickly gets used to new conditions, so many, when a policeman is not watching them, strive to pull the mask down to their chin: they are tired of living in fear. How many epidemics have we survived! Will we survive today in stuffiness and a mask?

Got on the escalator. There is a wall of people in front and behind, so there is no choice: move forward and only there. SHE was rushing towards me in the same cage of human bodies. Our gazes met for a moment, and then the river carried her upward, to freedom. I tried to turn around to extend this visual acquaintance, but those behind me began to shout something unpleasant. The metro is a cemetery of feelings; everyone wants to bury a piece of their negativity here. The lower you go underground, the angrier people are.

The day passed as usual: routine, many calls, reports. Plants absorb viviparous sunlight and moisture, people make paper from plants, such is the bureaucratic cycle. But that day I couldn’t concentrate on anything: her eyes were in front of my eyes. If I were a world-famous writer, I would not be able to describe her face: her features either clearly emerged in my head or were hidden in the fog. If I were a policeman, I would have prepared an identikit long ago and posted a search notice throughout the city.

My colleagues and I went to a nearby cafe for lunch. Daily empty conversations: yesterday a beauty spent the night with Semyon again, Ilya caught a ten-kilogram (according to him) ide over the weekend, Dimon and Slava discussed the next mission in «Tanks». I said some nonsense myself. Sometimes it seems to me that people practice blowing soap bubbles: the larger the ball, the higher your status, but inside it is empty. At that moment everything was nonsense to me except her eyes. I stopped blinking so as not to scare me away: there she was, sitting at the next table. She smiled at me mysteriously and waved her hand. Now I had time to see the black raven hair and the small dimple on the chin. The boys turned around to follow the direction of my gaze.

— Hey, Sanya, did you see a ghost there?

I came out of my stupor. He blinked — and the next table was empty, there was no sign of her.

— Yes, I was thinking about my own things. Never mind.

«You’re kind of thoughtful today.» Who is she? — Semyon winked at me conspiratorially.

— Later, guys. I’ll tell you everything.

These are the stars who have affairs with fake kisses on camera. That’s why they are stars, to shine for everyone. For the common man, love hides behind the curtains: the fewer witnesses, the stronger the connection.

That night she came in a dream for the first time. This time I managed to see not only the diamonds of her bottomless blue eyes and the unnatural blackness of her hair, but also every curve of her body. A sculptor creates a masterpiece from some detail, and then fills in the missing parts. I slowly reached out to her, afraid to wake up from any sudden movement and frighten away my dream. She hit me on the arm and pouted playfully.

— Impudent. Not on the first date. Otherwise I will never come to you again.

— What is your name?

«Try to come up with a name for me yourself,» she glanced briefly from under her lowered eyelashes.

— The name must be unusual. Secret. Yes, I would call you Mystery.

«You can call me Mystery if you want.»

— And my name is…

— Sorry, not today. Let’s agree tomorrow.

An alarm clock is a guardian of time. Every morning he reminds you how fleeting the nights are. You’ll sleep an extra minute, then another one the next day, and you won’t notice. How life goes by. But that morning I didn’t want to wake up at all. Maybe a dream is reality, and what we consider reality is just a simulation? Get crazy. It would soon be night again.

Mint flavor of toothpaste. Two eggs on a hot frying pan. The bitter taste of invigorating coffee and the poisonous smoke filling the lungs — there is no way to wake up without them. The Ministry of Health warns, but what in city life does not harm our health? Maybe stress at work is good, or the crush on the subway?

All in all, an ordinary morning. Only this time I eagerly peered into their faces, hoping to see the one and only thing. During the break, I went to the same cafe and sat at the same table, but she was no longer there. The only time in my life that I appreciated my introversion. I also often spent an entire shift in silence, so even today no one noticed anything unusual in my behavior. I didn’t want to explain anything to anyone. I really wanted to fall asleep quickly.

As soon as I closed my eyelids, she was there again, only this time naked.

— I told you that nothing would happen on the first date, but today is the second.

She pressed her lips to mine.

***

Cold and dark. There seemed to be no beginning or end to them. A man’s silhouette shone like a bright spot, like a lighthouse in an endless ocean. Wait, it’s me! My face, my appendix scar, my angel tattoo. But why am I there, on the bed, and here, in the dark? So cold! Just yesterday I was ready to take off my shorts and go to work, just to escape the heat, but now I’m shaking like I’m in the cold.

A man who looked so much like me opened his eyes. There was darkness all around, but the glow of his (my?) body made it possible to see the room a few centimeters away from him. I swam after him. For some reason I didn’t need to lift my legs. To move. No-I went to the kitchen and took the salt shaker. Not-I surrounded myself with a circle of salt. No-I smiled… where did I see that smile? That’s her smile! Having examined not-myself more closely, I recognized her features.

— Secret! It’s you! I am so glad to see you! What’s happening? Why is it so cold?

— Sorry.

«I have nothing to forgive you for.» I love you. But I don’t understand what’s happening.

«I almost fell in love with you too, but do I have a choice?»

— What are you talking about?

«I’m sorry…» she whispered. I feel like I’m almost crying.

— Explain to me what the hell is happening here!

— Okay, you deserve it.

Having drawn a circle, she continued to pour salt, pinch by pinch, onto the floor, creating an incomprehensible pattern of symbols and runes.

— In addition to the three dimensions of the material world known to you, there are seven more that belong to the ideal world. Small particles, like an electron, can exist in all ten dimensions, but living beings cannot perceive the shadows of an alien world until death. You know, this very world is not so ideal. The stars shine and warm only the three dimensions you are familiar with, and in the other seven there is cold and darkness. Therefore, one of the afterlife engineers came up with a way to return to the familiar world. The main thing is to create a quantum entanglement of two souls and then break it. In this case, the dead can take the place of the living.

I was once as naive as you. I met HIM: handsome, tall, muscular, black-haired with blue bottomless eyes. I looked for his reflection in everyone I met, but he came to me at night. And when I fell asleep in his arms, I woke up here. I have no choice: in order to live again, I must kill you. When I finish drawing the runes, our connection will be severed, and you will no longer be able to find your body. I will become you.

— And what about me?

«And you can find yourself a naive girl to become you.»

A single tear flowed down my cheek, but immediately froze in the surrounding frost of another world. No-I finished drawing the runic script and put my hand to the floor. A flash of light — and then nothing, empty, dark and lonely.

***

There was no time here. How long did I wander in the dark: a day, a year, or maybe a century? First, endless darkness. I could go up as easily as turning left; there were other, previously unknown directions. but soon I learned to pull out of the darkness the silhouettes of people — those who were still alive. And once I even managed to catch the eye of one girl for a moment. This was enough to connect our souls with an invisible thread. When she fell asleep, I gently stroked her glowing hair. Without waking up, she opened her eyes and looked at me.

— Who are you?

«You can call me Mystery,» I whispered.

She tried to touch my chest, but I took a step back.

— Sorry, not on the first date. I will come to you tomorrow, and then we will stay together forever.

Pain is like a stone thrown into the middle of a lake. It is inflicted on you by those who were hurt, and you, in turn, will try to pass it on to someone else, who will pass it on to someone else. But the circles on the water will fade away one day, but the circle of pain is endless. Or not?

I want to live. I want to touch my three-day stubble again, eat my usual scrambled eggs in the morning, and wash it down with a cup of harmful strong coffee. I want to hear Ilya’s stories during lunch. I want… You know, but for me in the whole world there is nothing left but me. me, and all around was darkness and cold. I know what I want, and I am ready for any meanness for this. Tomorrow the girl I almost seem to love will be gone. The main thing is not to think of her as a person. She’s already a ghost. And I will live again.

No. I will remain in the dark. Someone has to break the vicious circle.

She closed her eyes, harboring the hope of seeing me in her dreams. Tears flowed down my cheek, but now they did not turn into burning pieces of ice. I reached out my hand to stroke her hair and enter her sleep. But instead he hit himself on the cheek.

— No! — I was already shouting into the darkness. — She will live. And I will protect her sleep from scoundrels.

Something has changed. Flash of light: I opened my eyes. I’m lying on my own bed. A familiar scar from surgery, an angel tattoo.

— I’m alive! It’s me! I!

From a distance a quiet whisper was heard:

— This is impossible! This is my body!

Tell me, how could I fall in love with a girl whom I once called Mystery? Disheveled black hair is like snakes on the Gorgon’s head, the face is distorted, hatred lurks in the corners of the eyes.

— No, this is my body. You just borrowed it.

— But how did you come back! I performed the ritual, everything according to the rules. You should have left forever. This is my body!

— But I didn’t perform the ritual. I didn’t kill to live.

She screamed something else, but her voice was muffled, then the room became quiet, and after a while the Mystery dissipated like smoke.

On this day I did not go to work: I have the right to my second birthday. I picked up the phone.

— Marina? — the girl I almost deprived of her body was called exactly that. — My name is Alexander.

«I already thought that I just dreamed about you.»

— I promised you another date. Let’s meet today?

— Let’s.

Quantum of reality no destiny for god?

Three dimensions to the elves, singing under the sky,

Five dimensions to magicians, immortals of Istari,

Seven dimensions to the gnomes and cave peace to them,

Nine to humans, six of whom will be reduced to the size of an atom,

And one dimension for time to unite them and rule them all.

— Oh, many years, many sorrows. But ask, ask, don’t be afraid. What worries you? I know the future, I know the past and the present.

The image of a gypsy woman in a red scarf shone on the information wall. She sat next to a ball in which lightning flashed and the fog shimmered with rainbow colors. Science made progress every day, but something remained unchanged: human curiosity, the desire to know the future and prejudices. After the infosphere was populated by AIs, the need to improve computer technology naturally disappeared. A new generation computer made it possible to simulate the entire visible part of the Universe, down to the position of each star. And within the earth, scientists could find out the position of every atom, down to every quark. But despite the development of technology, they preferred to learn the future from a gypsy.

Alexey finished his aromatic coffee and put the glass on the table. A mechanical arm immediately appeared from the wall and moved it into the disposal unit. If it were not for the robots, an atmosphere of disordered chaos would reign not only in the research center, but also in the computer databases.

— If I set the delta-epsilon parameter within the Planck length and time, will I be able to continue the experiment?

— Yes, with large values it will not be possible to obtain sufficient resolution, red fellow.

Alexey grinned smugly, admiring his own development. He swiped his finger over the «Gold Handle» icon, and golden dust flew towards the cyber fortune teller.

— Health and good luck to you!

Alexey directed a beam of quarks to a target made of a hydrogen nucleus and transferred the image from the eyepiece of the ioctoscope («ioctos» = 10 ^ (-24)) to the information wall.

— Tenfold zoom.

Subtle shadows on the screen

— Second tetration of ten.

The image grew as usual, allowing one to see a raging sea of individual atoms.

— Two point one tenth.

The atom grew significantly in size, and now it was possible to look deep into the nucleus and discern a proton.

— Two point five.

Another leap into the miniature universe, and an image of the Milky Way (or another galaxy so similar to ours) appeared before my eyes.

— This can’t be! Where did I go wrong?! Make it bigger! Two point seven tetration!

— Sorry, honest fellow, but I can’t see such small details. Two and a half tetrations of ten is my maximum vision. I can’t set the bar lower than Planck.

Alexey slammed his fist on the table.

— We must repeat the experiment.

He repeated this increase dozens of times with different atoms, at different times of day. It would have been nice to try it on another octoscope, but this was the most powerful magnifying device in the world. He called Nastya from the Second Laboratory, and an image of the galaxy also appeared in front of her.

— Make it bigger!

— You think. I didn’t try? It makes no sense, our instruments do not allow us to see more.

— How romantic it is. Imagine that the collapsed dimensions form an entire universe inside a small atom. If the vibrating superstring is a microgalaxy, then it consists of nanostars, and around them, in turn, miniature planets revolve. Maybe at least one of them has life.

— I’m interested in another question: while there was no observer, this six-dimensional microuniverse existed in a superposition of many probabilities. And then we looked at it, and there was only one option left. And if…

«And if so, then it is possible that our galaxy is just a building brick in the macrocosm,» Lilya continued Alexei’s thought. — We have many options for fate, and if the huge titan, or whoever lives there in those incomprehensible dimensions, had not looked at us at the right moment, then we might not have met you, or we might have been in love and not at the same time. It’s a pity, most titans don’t care about our three dimensions rolled up into a small ball the size of their macroat.

Alexey laughed.

— To listen to us, you might think that the whole world is an endless nesting doll, where worlds are nested one into another. And only time unites them all, like a hoop holds the shape of a barrel.

— By the way, about time. The working day is over. What to cook for dinner?

— Will you cook yourself? Why don’t you set up a robot chef?

— You made such a discovery. It seems to me that we can eat something other than synthetic food for this reason.

— Okay, you go, I’ll catch up.

Alexey launched a virtual fortune teller.

— What is the probability of life existing inside the nucleus of an atom?

— If there is a universe inside the atomic nucleus, then the Planck time will pass from its origin to its death. But I, honest fellow, cannot look below Planck.

Cassandra’s Hell

No sounds, no smells, just blinding light and an endless twisting staircase. She had already taken a thousand steps, but thousands of steps flowed from above. An hour has passed? Day? Century? It seemed like there was no time here. For the first time in her life, the future was hidden from her by an unknown curtain.

The long-awaited peak! She wanted to catch her breath, but a fair-haired man of about thirty with white wings and a halo above his head looked at her unfriendly.

— Don’t hold up the line. Your name.

— Cassandra.

— Well, well… Now let’s see.

The entire visible space is covered with an endless stream of letters and numbers, in different languages, large and small. Sometimes the symbols were interspersed with images. Not even a minute had passed before the chaotic movement ended. In front of the girl shone her own portrait and a short dossier written in Trojan.

— So-so. So she’s a soothsayer. Law 2, Article 18, Part 10. Does the Fifth Cauldron suit you?

— What?

— At the moment, Boilers Five, Three and Fourteen are vacant. Most of your compatriots chose the Fifth, so I recommend it to you.

— Yes, that will suit me perfectly.

Cassandra glanced fearfully at the stairs.

— Do not worry. It’s always easier to go down than to go up. It doesn’t take much effort to get to the bottom.

The elevator doors opened, and a few moments later the girl fearfully crossed the gates of her new home for the next eternity.

The shelves rushed into the sky (at a minimum, the heavens should have framed the blackness above). At the mahogany table sat a devil: typical. With horns, a pig’s snout, but in a tailcoat and tie. He looked at the girl over her horn-rimmed glasses.

— Your personal business.

Cassandra handed over a plastic card.

— So, Cassandra of Troy. Welcome to Cauldron Five.

The girl looked around uncertainly.

— Yes, that’s exactly him. Don’t worry, after the Age of Enlightenment and the Great Tartar Revolution, we no longer burn sulfur. Of course, the historical names have been preserved. But we now use more sophisticated torture on our prisoners. We give them another life. Would you like to become a scientist, doctor or teacher? Although, the profession of a scientist is most suitable for soothsayers.

— Thank you!

— Don’t rush to thank. There’s a lot you don’t know. Few people are able to look beyond the horizon. Among them are some who are brave enough to change the future. They are the ones who move our civilization forward in time. But the majority moves in the opposite direction, a kind of «flow of anti-time.» The higher the achievements of progress, the more opponents of moving forward, the more ordinary people degrade. But why, in fact, develop if you just stretch out your hand and all the benefits will fall into your palm? So, you will now become one of the Atlanteans, whose muscles hold the sky at a constant height, and whose will tries to move it as far as possible from people.

With a snap of her fingers, Cassandra disappeared into thin air. At that very moment, a girl was born in one of the maternity hospitals.

***

— Sash, bring dinner! I’m home from work, hungry and angry.

Light fumes: apparently, I didn’t go home straight away from work.

In the evening, Ilya habitually began clicking the buttons on the TV remote control.

— Maybe give up this science of yours? What does she give us? Maybe your theory of relativity will help you raise a mortgage? Or will superstring theory allow you to save up for a new phone? It would be nice if they did something useful. So who will refute their heresy about a twin sent into space at the speed of light? No one. First, we would learn to build high-quality rockets. Better yet, they would learn how to make gasoline cheaply. Who saw your superstrings? You can’t even clamp the barre on them like you’re supposed to.

— So you’ve never been to America. Maybe you think that on the far side of the planet, elephants stand on a turtle and hold a flat disk? If we follow your logic, then we can come to this conclusion.

— Maybe elephants keep a turtle. By the way, I found this video about turtles…

This is how every conversation between Alexandra Apollonovna Kassandrava and her husband (and not only with him) ended. During the day, she is a world-famous scientist, in her hands are the secrets of the Universe and the distant future is before her eyes. And in the evening there is talk about the low salary and the emptiness of her research. If Alexandra believed in karma, wouldn’t this be a manifestation of it?

Graveyard of the Immortals

The photographs are arranged in a row. People smile on them, as if nothing had happened: they broke up for a couple of days. They will return and say again: «Hello.» Who will say that all that remains of them is this photograph, name and date of birth? The candle smells like soot. Slavik decided not to turn on the electric light; a dim light on a moonless night would be enough. Just not to scare off the one who can put her hand on her shoulder. He will no longer see her, he can only feel her. Slavik examined Marina’s profile for the hundredth time and left a bouquet of roses on the wall. Red ones, just the way she loved them.

Previously, only the talented remained immortal. You can still leaf through the pages of the books of great writers of the past and plunge into their dreams and passions. Artists live in their paintings, and composers come to life in operas. But these days, immortality has become cheap. Next to a piece of the poet’s soul in his imperishable poem there may be a part of the one who shot the video of the dance near a moving car. Next to the opera diva’s track is the edited voice of a beauty who doesn’t hit even a few notes. They will all remain to rot in the digital world until the end of internet times. But in the real world, all that was left of them was ashes scattered to the wind. Only the richest can afford a place in the cemetery. But why do they need this in the era of biotechnology, when they can remain forever young and live until they get tired of it? A short life is only for the poor.

There was a rustling sound in the silence. Slavik is sure it’s her. Maybe now she will respond to the painted roses that he left in her profile on the «Cemetery of the Immortals» website?

«Thank you! I love you!» — as always, a short message. She is always concise. Friends have been trying for years to prove that a chatbot is answering him. They don’t understand anything — Marina is now immortal, in this digital world. One day Slavik will join her. One day, all pages that have not been deleted on social networks will become part of digital immortality.

Cells. Revelation of the Immortal

The showers are over, and now it’s an impossible heat — a steam room, and that’s all. But this is outside, and now imagine what’s going on on the bus in the morning. Some of you may be wondering: why doesn’t the driver turn on the air conditioning? Neon signs and commercials depict beautiful metropolitan life, which will not come to our region soon. Maybe when 3D traffic of gravity cars is launched in the capital, they will give us their old air-conditioned buses?

You stand on the last step, but seven more people are pushing you from behind. In the indistinct mooing one can barely guess:

— Come on in, the middle is empty!

Hundreds of emotionless faces, buried in small boxes, from which short videos flow in a continuous stream, who know better how to live and what to do. They say that a couple of centuries ago people blinked like animals. They’re probably lying: in a moment, while you’re blinking, you can accidentally skip a couple of videos, and then nothing is clear.

«Look, I shared! Here they say that the Americans have again used meteorological weapons,» a guy of about twenty years old types with a long, mobile thumb. They say that a couple of centuries ago, thumbs were a finger that was thicker than others, but not longer; now the thumb is the thinnest, but also the longest of all.

«Yes, it’s all their fault! It’s Jon Petrowitz and Paul Bashirson again! We started our car, all the fruits first rotted under the downpours, which is why bananas are now cheaper than potatoes, and now we turned up the heat.»

«Or maybe it was the locals who decided to raise prices and profit from the weather on the sly? And the Africans are great, the prices for their bananas depend little on the dollar exchange rate, unlike the prices for potatoes and carrots.»

«No, ours have nothing to do with it. I watch videos all the time.»

«They’re lying! Where is the proof?»

«I don’t watch official videos. They say this in an underground channel, they won’t lie right away?»

«Both official and underground channels lead from the same office!»

I wonder what these two are chatting about so animatedly? Old films showed that people used to talk more often. Moreover, their speech was rich, their voices were sonorous and expressive. And now only specially trained people can speak normally; in the mooing of others it is hardly possible to recognize understandable words. Although, this is a logical course of evolution: why do we need a voice when we can correspond with friends and neighbors? Is it possible to transmit several megabytes of text information by voice in a second? Scientists suggest that our children will already be able to perceive a hundred megabytes per second.

The bald man, about forty years old, smiled. The only emotion I could discern among this crowd today. He also blinked frequently — once every two or three seconds, while everyone else could not look away from the monitor for even a second. I smiled back.

No correspondence — the rule is unshakable: all chats are carefully monitored. Only live speech in places where there is definitely no wiretapping. Although, recently, fewer and fewer people prefer oral speech, so the era of total wiretapping is also coming to an end.

We met Andrey a couple of years ago. For some reason, the people around me always seemed somehow insipid and emotionless. They are interested in a piece of fresh bread and a fresh spectacle — bright news or a new crazy short video on the Internet. But Andrey could recite Shakespeare’s poems by heart without an electronic translator! Tell me, who else is studying foreign languages now? There are electronic systems for transfers, but after the Great Division of Nations no one will be able to get abroad anyway.

Of course, I have always been different from other people; what is served instead of breakfast in the morning news report was not enough for me. I had difficulty finding forbidden old books. But after Andrei’s injection, it became even more sad:

— What happened to humanity? Where did our dream go?

Andrey looked into my eyes with a sad smile:

«But there are only a few people left — no more than a couple of thousand on the entire planet.»

— So now there are more than ten billion people!

— Are they still people? There are currently three intelligent species on the planet. You are familiar with people — you yourself are a representative of this species, and others would envy you. The second species absorbed the others. I call them in the old fashioned way — countries, because each of the forty currently existing states is a whole species, and the people in it are just cells. At birth, cells have the same set of chromosomes, only from birth they are placed in front of their eyes with a tablet that forms clip thinking. Cells are no longer people. They have not developed critical and analytical thinking. Cells perform monotonous work throughout their lives, taking care of the survival of the whole organism — the state.

— But each of us chooses the path to follow.

«Each of them,» Andrey made a significant pause, saying, «we are not them,» «chooses the same profession to which their parents dedicated their lives. There are transport workers, there are workers, there are even heads of state — but even they are just cells.

— As I understand it, you don’t consider yourself to be in cages?

«Unfortunately, I have no relation to people now either.» I am a representative of the third intelligent species — demons. From the word «immortals»

It seems that after these words I said something obscene and began to back away towards the exit. Meanwhile, Andrei silently took a knife in his hand (an ordinary knife — not an electronic slicer, not a computer bread slicer — an ordinary knife, imagine!) and ran the tip along his wrist. Blood gushed out, but at some point it was again «retracted» into the body, and the wound healed before our eyes.

— You can touch it. There is no scar left.

***

— My name is Andrei Ivanovich Bessmertny. It’s really ironic, isn’t it? A person with a different surname is unlikely to engage in such research. During the first American-Russian war, I was mobilized and served as a military paramedic. The guys called me Bes. I was captured. But soon someone from high management caught the eye of my developments. They ransomed me from captivity and made me the head of the research center «Regenerative Medicine». Even my name was classified; according to all documents, I went by the code name Koschey.

— Koschey the Immortal — what a fantasy your boss has.

— Fantasy — don’t spoil it. As soon as the research bore fruit, the big shots wanted to get an injection containing nanorobots. Killing a demon is almost impossible. Even the head grows back to replace the severed one. But there is also a downside to immortality; nothing comes for free. We can’t have children. The moment the «medicine» is taken, the body freezes in an instant and no longer develops. No new thoughts or ideas, no impressions. One moment in life that will last forever.

— It’s not for nothing that you are called demons: this is hell on Earth, not life.

— You are right. After the first wave of those infected with nanorobots, we conducted a series of studies on «distraction», but this did not give direct results, only indirect ones. It was my research that led to the possibility of turning countries into superorganisms. At the end of the Third World War, the forty major powers united the rest. And each of the states became a being-country. And at the head are immortal rulers.

— Stop! What about the elections? We elect a new ruler every five years!

— Yes, but from those proposed. They replace each other, the unelected ones rule without showing their real faces. And in 50—60 years, who will remember the face of the president who was already in power once? Cells don’t study history; how would they know about it?

— It’s just… some kind of bummer!

— It’s even worse. I have already said that demons are not capable of developing. There have been no changes in the last 200 years, and there will be no changes in the coming years. Same foreign policy. Immortals are like cancer cells. Imagine, our body has been controlled by a tumor for several hundred years!

During my research, I used Henrietta Lacks cells, code-named HeLa. I really wanted to invent a cure for all diseases, but what good can happen if you try to cure people by injecting them with modified tumor cells?

People in power have no idea that one day all of humanity will come to an end, and all because of their shortsightedness. Outwardly, everything is fine: enterprises are working, people are buying something. But isn’t it noticeable that there are almost no people left on Earth?

— You gave me an injection, after which I disconnected from this system and became an ordinary person. What if we cure everyone with this medicine?

— You were human even before the injection. It so happens that the system does not work for some people, apparently there is some kind of mutation that prevents you from turning into a cell. My medicine just pushed you. But you are rather an exception to the rule.

Now the cells are part of the system. But if they all suddenly become human: by the way, helpless, without formed critical thinking, unable to take a single step without dictation from above, then the system will collapse, and everyone will be swallowed up by the neighboring country. Those who will survive. I envy you: you people can enjoy your emotions and clear thinking. But now you shouldn’t think about the fact that all the factories will stop at once and all the engines will stall while each part of the system enjoys freedom.

— And you propose to just watch as the world slides into the abyss?

— No, not just watch. We will overthrow the demonic rulers and take their place.

— Do you just want to become in power? But you yourself are not a person, but a cancerous tumor! How do you want to save us?

«We will be in power for some time.» Then there will be a new coup, and we will be replaced. Although, I hoped to transfer the supreme power to you, as one of the few who were lucky enough to be born such an unusual «ordinary person.»

— I have to refuse. Power is not for me.

***

Until today I have not met Andrey.

— Well, have you changed your mind? Today we have «X-Day.» Decide whether you are with us or against us?

— I would prefer the third way.

— You won’t like him. There are people striving for power — this is the first way. To ensure the system, gears are needed. Can you really become a cell again? After everything you saw and felt? Or do you want to do nothing, not think about how others can live, but simply enjoy the results of their labors? But that’s what parasites do. This is a glorious destiny for you — just a parasite on the body of our society.

— There is another way. I read about a small island that has not been touched by civilization. There are no cages and no demons. Only people. If you don’t kill me, I’ll go there. and no one will know what I learned from you. Make a revolution by injecting people: I don’t want to know anything else.

Andrei smiled meaningfully, but remained silent.

Ending station. The main thing is to get to the airport faster than the cartridges. And then — a free island. A new life awaits me there.

Faith of Pygmalion

The hood hums steadily, but it does not completely eliminate the smell of reagents. A fluorescent lamp illuminates a granite tabletop, on which conical flasks and test tubes in racks containing liquids of different shades of blue stand in a row.

— Do you remember our wedding? A bouquet of white roses, matching the color of the dress. We are young and happy. The priest then asked: «Do you agree to be together in sorrow and in joy, until death do you part?» And I stubbornly answered him: «No.» You should have seen your facial expression! But I immediately added: «Even death will not separate us.» Do you remember?

In response there is silence, only the monitor makes sounds in rhythm with the heartbeat. The girl is on the bed, a tube is sticking out of her mouth, and several more are connected to IVs.

— Are you silent? You are always silent, but I believe that you hear every word. It seems to me that you could not forget that day.

How many years would you give this man? Days of stubble, unwashed hair falling in long, unkempt tufts to the shoulders, bags under the eyes, a hoarse, ragged voice. The snow-white medical robe contrasted with the appearance of the young-aged man.

— Which goddess should I pray to wake you up? I don’t know any other than Science. As you can see, I’m not much of a Pygmalion. But I believe that I’m not crazy, even though I’m talking to myself. Your relatives abandoned you, but I believe that you can still be saved. Faith is the only thing that makes me hold on to life.

He walked up to the bed and stroked the girl’s hand.

— Faith. Verochka. My Sleeping Princess. I’m so sorry that we quarreled before…» I swallowed the lump in my throat. «Your mother and sister signed permission to take you off life support.» They have lost their faith. They felt that they had lost their Faith. But I don’t agree with them. I have often preferred science to you. He spent days and nights in the laboratory. With my last name, another fate was simply impossible. But when I found out about you, I…» His voice often disappeared, and some words were impossible to understand. «I didn’t let them turn you off.» I’m sorry, but I had to kidnap you from your relatives. For the whole world I am a criminal. Do you know what they called the article about me? «Crazy Pygmalion kidnapped Sleeping Beauty.» But I believe I’m not crazy.

With a shaking hand, he removed the mouse from its cage to take a blood sample.

— I rarely leave the house: I’m afraid that they will recognize me. I would order food by phone, but my coronavirus vaccination certificate is out of date, and now I can’t unlock my smartphone. He constantly writes: «Bring a code confirming a recent vaccination.» And they still think I’m crazy? Spend so many resources on producing gadgets instead of investing this money in medicine.

A drop of blood on a watch glass. The man bent over the microscope eyepiece.

«I want to confess to you that I spent all those nights in the laboratory with a woman named Henrietta Lacks. Of course, not with herself: she died in the mid-twentieth century. But not completely: her cancer cells are still wandering from one laboratory to another.

Sparks flashed for a moment in his colorless eyes, and his voice sounded louder and more confident.

— This can’t be! Does Vera-2307 actually work?

The man made notes in the laboratory journal. Then he made a neat cut on the mouse’s body. The wound immediately began to heal, after a few seconds only a scar remained, which after a couple of minutes healed without a trace. Another cut, and another — the result is still the same.

— The time has come for the main experiment. I can’t wait any longer.

He injected the drug into his wife. The job was done, and now fatigue took over, and the man fell asleep with his head on the granite countertop, next to the flasks and test tubes containing the precious drug.

***

The unknown is nearby, but it passes behind a closed door, so few ordinary people have any idea what is happening. Hundreds of worker ants are huddled in the subway, and some are stuck in traffic again. The students, still carefree, with a bottle of beer in one hand and a girl’s hand in the other, were discussing the theory of superstrings, on which there was a test tomorrow. Anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers once again gathered a parade in defense of the rights to freedom to manage their own health and against the introduction of chips to their children. Perhaps everything will end with a peaceful demonstration, but most likely it will again not happen without the destruction of 7g cell towers. Meanwhile, the fate of humanity has changed radically forever, in the small basement laboratory of a still little-known scientist.

***

A small room without windows. A table and two chairs at which two men are sitting. The only source of light is a lamp near the ceiling.

— Full Name? — said a man in a military uniform with colonel’s shoulder straps, clean-shaven, with a small bald spot on his head and strictly knitted eyebrows.

— You know. I’ve already been interrogated a good hundred times.

— But not me. Don’t make it worse. Your affairs are already bad.

— Immortal Andrei Ivanovich.

— Okay, Mr. Immortal. Do you mind if I smoke?

— Certainly.

— Do you admit that an underground laboratory developed a drug called Vera, which helps increase tissue regeneration?

— Not certainly in that way. This drug makes mammals immortal.

— Thanks for the clarification. Scientists will still have time to figure this out. If you are right, then I can smoke without fear of lung cancer anymore. Do you confirm that you contributed to the spraying of the drug on the territory occupied by five settlements?

— Yes.

— Do you repent of what you did?

— I do not regret anything.

— But you were offered cooperation. You would be the richest and most famous scientist. And instead of fame and fortune,» the investigator looked around the room, «here is this little room.»

— Yes. I was offered a contract to produce a drug that would sell for a billion dollars per serving. Who could afford this? Immortality for a couple of dozen people? Who should decide who lives and who dies? Sorry, it’s not for me.

— But you certainly won’t decide who lives and who doesn’t. You must develop an antidote against the Genie you awakened. Today you will go to the laboratory.

— No.

— I’m sorry, what?

— You probably rarely hear this word? I’ll say it again. No! No! No! I don’t think I committed a crime. I saved hundreds of people in cities where a new coronavirus outbreak began. These people are no longer afraid of any disease.

— But have you even thought about the consequences? Pharmaceutical and insurance companies went bankrupt. Thousands of people were left without work. The ruble, the global currency on which the economies of hundreds of countries depend, is jumping. And the resources — who will restore them? The children will grow up — and who will give them a job? Where should they live? Food and oil will also run out one day, and only billions of immortal barbarians will remain who will eat each other for breakfast. Do you want that?

The investigator took out a tablet from his briefcase, and a three-dimensional image of the morning newspaper appeared in the air.

— Read the newspaper headlines! «Immortals are the cancer of the planet,» «The mad professor sprayed cancer cells into the air,» «The Immortal is the killer of humanity.»

— I don’t know, maybe this is connected with my love for a woman named Vera, but when everyone sees the future in gray tones, I continue to believe in people. We can find a way out of this situation. But death has been our greatest enemy since the dawn of humanity. One of us had to win. We were lucky that the winners were people, and not an old woman with a scythe. You can take me back to the cell. I will not be developing an anti-immortal drug.

***

They walked along the sand holding hands. Two suns were rolling towards the ocean horizon: one blue, slightly smaller in diameter, the other red, larger.

— What a beautiful double sunset. This planet is so romantic! — a woman of about thirty looked into the eyes of a fair-haired young man.

— Yes, I like it here too. Do you remember, some two or three thousand years ago we lived on the same planet. Well, how did they live: is a hundred years a life?

— Do you remember how I was accused of genocide for my invention?

— Yes, people then thought in too narrow a framework.

— And now we own two galaxies, and who knows how many more will be conquered? We are just seeds with which humanity will spread throughout the entire Universe, visible and that which is hidden from the eyes of modern science.

— Eh, Andrey, your faith in progress is immortal.

— I hear from Vera Immortal.

They smiled and joined in a passionate kiss.

«I promise, you and I will be together forever.» And even death will not separate us.

***

Andrey opened his eyes. It was lying on the granite countertop. The contents of the flask spilled over the laboratory journal. His head was pounding: I wondered how many hours he slept? This is not surprising: after so many nights when he slept for three or four hours. He approached the bed hopefully.

Vera opened her eyes.

Let’s remain mortal?

At the foot of this high-rise building you feel like a small ant. Plastic, glass and metal. The lenses project thousands of images onto the retina, and it seems to you that the arrow in front of your eyes points exactly to the entrance. And around there is a noisy stream of three-dimensional traffic of cars. Fortunately, the earphone allows you to temporarily turn off all unnecessary noise using audio filters. A three-dimensional image of a blonde in a strict black suit appeared on the wall. «Space real estate agency» X; A-12» Lowest prices for Martian real estate. It’s profitable with us!»

Ilya will nervously brush away the annoying advertising, in the hope that augmented reality will no longer be needed today.

«Why are you trying to turn off advertising? Are you not interested in this product, or should you change to another advertiser?»

He can’t afford to buy licensed lenses (and who, besides the heads of the Corporation, can afford this?), and in the pirated copy, every couple of minutes, unexpected advertisements pop up every now and then: add a six to the name of the casino — and you’ll get the opportunity to win a million! Great-grandfather told Ilya that previously advertisements were shown only every ten minutes, and then it was possible to change the TV channel. Although, everything was better for him: robots didn’t take up jobs, the grass was greener, the sun was shining brighter, and carrots cost only two hundred rubles, and you could buy them in any supermarket, instead of waiting for delivery from the agricultural reserve, and go out You could leave the house at any time, without a curfew or two-hour exit permits. These old people are storytellers, living in the past, and meanwhile the world is moving by leaps and bounds towards progress. And how did they live well? The ruble was not their international currency, and the world spoke this strange English, not Russian. And you can eat carrots that are printed. It tastes no worse.

Ilya pulled the medical mask first on himself, and then on Marina, and carried her in his arms into the building.

There is a bright fluorescent light inside. Absolute sterility: the nose seems to be able to detect this absolute absence of smells here, and sometimes it seems that you are sick with the Martian flu. I walked in and two robotic nurses immediately ran up.

— Sir, how can we be of assistance?

— Take her to Doctor Flerovsky’s room.

Three-dimensional images of awards replaced each other on the walls in the doctor’s office.

— Semyon Karlovich, it was I who called you. My wife… She also became infected with this Martian infection.

— Calm down, darling. Have a seat. I’ll look at the patient.

The lens magnified the image of Marina’s throat many times over. The doctor put his ear to his chest so that the earphone amplified the sound of breathing. The doctor blinked, apparently carefully examining the lungs in the X-ray range. Any medical equipment these days is implanted as an organ of the doctor’s body.

— That’s what I thought. It’s a cold.

— Doctor! Can’t you see: she’s barely breathing! And the temperature!

— Calm down and sit down, Ilya Sergeevich, it seems?

— Yes. Sorry. I got excited. If she has a cold, let’s give her an antibiotic. The pharmacy refused to sell it without a doctor’s prescription. If it’s just a cold and not the Martian flu.

«There is no Martian flu,» Semyon Karlovich tilted his head slightly.

— But what about the symptoms…

— I mean, no one has the Martian flu and no one has had such a thing. All these are fairy tales for the population. And there is only a cold. And other diseases. Only now there are no antibiotics either. People mixed them into livestock feed, and now there is nothing left for us. Bacteria have learned to defend themselves against our drugs, and in the last couple of months we have been left without medicine. Medieval alchemists were closer to the invention of medicines than we are. Your wife will either recover on her own or she won’t. But I’m powerless here.

— Take her for treatment!

— There are no seats.

— But I have insurance! — Ilya was losing his composure and was already screaming at the top of his voice.

— Everything is fine? — Security robots ran into the doctor’s office.

— Yes, the patient’s relative is already calming down. Ilya Sergeevich, robots have replaced all but a dozen professions. But now doctors are no use either. We have no more medicine. You are no better than other people with insurance. The waiting list for the hospital has already been booked for the next three years. I don’t know whether your wife will need my services in three years.

— I’ll pay you. How many do you need? Any money?

— Sorry, but I can’t help you. After all, I myself became infected, and I cannot even cure my own family. That’s why they called the Martian flu because the only way to escape from it is to fly away from our planet. Or stay at home for the next two hundred years so as not to get infected. Although, there is another way

Semyon Karlovich handed Ilya a three-dimensional business card.

«Immortality Corporation. Eternity for you and your loved ones»

***

What is eternity? An ordinary room two by two meters, where you are forced to forever huddle with one woman, with the exception of a couple of hours a day when you can walk freely? Endless quarrels over trifles. It all seems like nothing now, when eternity must come to an end. Or is there a way out? The lens has already scanned the QR code, and Ilya is immersed in watching a multi-hour advertising video.

An Asian girl with her hair tied up in a bun walked into a huge room with high ceilings, Ilya followed her. An elderly man was lying on the bed, and his head was inside a huge metal ring.

— A modern tomograph scans the brain, neuron by neuron, connection by connection. Zettabytes of information on our servers.

The picture changed to a huge room filled with metal boxes with electric current flowing through them.

— You will be able to remember the name of the first robot teacher and feel the first kiss many times.

The man who was lying in the tomograph looked younger. He squeezed the girl’s hand in his hand and looked into her eyes with hope. The loving couple disappeared and the image of the Asian woman reappeared.

— And everything is absolutely free. The only price: we will use part of your computing power for our calculations. Once upon a time, amino acids brought from the depths of space were woven into proteins, and from them the first single-celled organisms appeared.

An image of dividing cells appeared.

«For the sake of survival, they united into complex multicellular organisms until intelligence arose in one of them. But the time of ordinary organisms has passed. The time has come for superintelligence. Many multicellular organisms must merge into a single gestalt organism. This is the path of our evolution. The Great Mind is our choice. Mr. Knuth will one day complete his Power Tower, in which Mr. Graham will be able to calculate the number to the last digit. Join our future, and in return you will receive immortality.

Again the image of an Asian woman. Now she was clutching a piece of paper in her hand — an archaic contract template.

— Subscribe below — and tomorrow death will not be a problem for you.

A fountain pen appeared in Ilya’s hand from somewhere.

The commercial dissipated and Marina’s head now emerged from the piece of paper.

«Ilya, please, no need,» the girl’s words were barely audible amid the coughing.

— Marinka! I thought you fell asleep.

— I was sleeping. But I managed to load this commercial into my sleep program. Ilya, let’s better remain mortal.

«But you’ll soon…» Ilya almost said out loud the thought that had been hovering in this room for several days. — There is no medicine. You and I will simply immerse ourselves in this world, and we will be together forever, until the end of time.

«We can’t go two days without a quarrel, but imagine if you have to put up with me forever? — Marina smiled sadly. — Is this life? I want to die as a man, and not this gestan of theirs… geltan, or whatever it is called.

Ilya brushed off the commercial and kissed Marina on the forehead. His throat was sore and it looked like he had a fever too. Maybe it seemed?

— Fine. I won’t suggest this anymore.

Marina fell asleep in his arms.

Ilya looked at the inscription under the aquarium «Ghoti».

«Ghoti’s favorite fish,» and then mechanically corrected himself, unwittingly mimicking Marina: «The correct way to pronounce «fish» Oh, this love for dead languages! Why learn English when Russian has long become international?

The man did not notice how he himself received peace in oblivion.

***

— Hello. Ilya Sergeevich. I hope I’m not late?

Ilya was lying in bed, but in Dr. Flerovsky’s office.

— Semyon Karlovich? This is a dream?

The doctor shook his head.

— But how did you get here? This is impossible.

— I could not tolerate the hopelessness of my patients. Watching them die and not knowing what to do about it. I became part of the Great Mind. And together with the others, we were able to invent a new antibiotic. But the Great Mind is against healing people. He wants as many of you as possible to join the network. I do not have much time. As soon as you wake up, write down the prescription for the medicine. You must save all my patients. Just don’t tell a single living soul that I shared the medicine with you.

***

When all the ingredients were mixed, Ilya injected one portion into himself and the second into Marina. A couple of hours later she asked for food herself for the first time in several days. Her forehead was no longer burning.

«36.6,» said the medical assistant.

— You see, they managed without your hem...pants. Stop doing your calculations and get some rest.

— Honey, you and I are just mortals. I do not have much time. There is so much to do.

— Is work more important to you than me? You do not love me?

Ilya smiled. It’s true that he couldn’t stand being with her forever.

Ilya kissed Marina on the forehead:

— Nasty!

***

The Great Pedestal changed, showing three-dimensional models of various heroes of humanity. Among others was the image of Elijah.

— And this is our grandfather! — said a boy of about seven.

— But don’t lie! This is the same professor who invented the Cure. Previously, people lived in apartments. And they were not allowed to walk on the street. Mom told me. And now we walk and eat ice cream!

— So this is our grandfather Ilya! Grandma Marina told me.

— Have you seen your grandfather? He is old and full of wrinkles. And this one is young and handsome, like a hero, only in a white robe instead of a cloak. Enough of these jokes. Let’s play Cossack robbers instead.

— Who are the Cossacks?

— Don’t know. Let’s just play.

Marina looked at the young man on the pedestal, and then stroked the familiar wrinkles on Ilya’s face.

— Maybe it was worth going into immortality then? We would remain young forever. How was it that day?

— Do you feel like an old woman? I’m not the least bit. I’m always twenty-five with you.

They sprinkled seeds to pigeons, who scurried back and forth near the shops, and the 3D printer printed out more and more portions.

Always 18, always war

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