quantum future

 The first part of a fantastic work about a very likely future in which IT corporations will overthrow the power of obsolete states and begin to oppress humanity on their own.
   

Entry

   By the end of the 21st, the beginning of the 22nd century, the collapse of all states on Earth was completed. Their place was taken by powerful transnational IT corporations. The minority belonging to the leadership of these companies, forced and forever ahead in development of the rest of mankind, thanks to bold experiments with the modification of their own nature. In the course of a conflict with surviving states, they were forced to move to Mars, where they began to implant complex complexes of neuroimplants, even before the birth of a child. Martians were immediately born not quite human, with corresponding capabilities, far superior to those of humans.

   The main idol of the new civilization of "cyborgs" was Edward Kroc - the best developer of the company "NeuroTech", who was the first to learn how to connect computers directly to the human brain. It was his brilliant mind that determined the image of the "neuroman" - the master of the new world, where virtual reality took control of the "obsolete" physical world. The first experiments with neurotechnology were often accompanied by the death of experimental subjects: patients of boarding schools, who usually did not care. This scandal was used as an excuse to provoke the defeat of the NeuroTech Corporation. Some of the directors of the company, as well as Edward Kroc himself, were convicted by the UN in The Hague for crimes against humanity and sentenced to death. And the NeuroTech corporation moved to Mars and gradually became the center of a new society.

After the victory over the common enemy, the contradictions between the earthly powers flared up with renewed vigor. Even the project of an interstellar expedition, in which almost the entire globe participated, could not reconcile old enemies. But the interstellar ship Unity, with an international crew of the best engineers and scientists of the right age, still started in the direction of the nearest Alpha Centauri system. Previous launches of robotic probes have confirmed the presence of a planet with suitable environmental conditions orbiting Alpha Centauri B. The spacecraft was the first operational "fast communication" facility based on the principle of weak measurements of entangled quantum systems. The time of the strong measurement of the quantum system instantly transmitted information between the ship and the Earth. In the future, "quick communication" became widely used, but remained an extremely expensive method of communication. Unfortunately, the triumph of earthly civilization was not destined to take place. The Unity crew stopped communicating after twenty years of flight, when, according to calculations, it should have reached the orbit of Novaya Zemlya. Although, few people worried about his fate against the background of the grandiose catastrophes that shook the world at that time.

A heavy defeat in the First Space War by the United States and the subsequent space blockade led to a coup d'état in Russia. Power was seized by the former director of the Brain Institute, Nikolai Gromov, who declared himself the eternal emperor. Rumor attributed to him superhuman abilities - clairvoyance and telepathy, with the help of which he destroyed all enemies and "agents of influence" within the Empire. Almost immediately, a new special service was created - the Ministry of Information Control. Its declared goal was to take the information chaos of the Internet under tight control and protect the minds of citizens from the corrupting influence of the Martians. In addition, the MIC was not even worried about the formal observance of "human rights", and did not hesitate to use medication and other crude methods of influencing the psyche of citizens. It should be noted that Western democracies by that time had also lost their gloss. What kind of freedom is there in the conditions of a total shortage of all resources and a permanent economic crisis. In addition, you don’t particularly twitch when there are microchips in your head that monitor every step in the interests of insurance companies, creditor banks and anti-terrorist committees. Civil society almost died, many developed countries, agonizing, slipped into openly totalitarian regimes, which, again, played into the hands of the Martians, who denied any statehood.

   Thanks to the extreme militarization of the Russian Empire, they managed to win the Second Space War: break the blockade and land large landings on Mars. The inhabitants of the red planet, under the control of the Advisory Council of Martian settlements, put up fierce resistance, which led to the depressurization of a number of cities and the mass death of civilians. Under pressure from all other countries and the threat of a full-scale nuclear war, in particular with China and the United States, the Russian Empire is forced to abandon its claims to the entire Mars. Under the new treaty, the presence of other armed formations on Mars was not allowed, except for the UN peacekeeping force, which quickly turned into an empty formality. In fact, it was a key moment in all of recent history. The Martians themselves, not without a scratch, admit that people who implant computers into their brains were saved from total destruction as a class and as a social phenomenon only by the long-standing enmity of earthly states.

   The subsequent Asian nuclear war between the Russian Empire and China over the last mineral resources of the planet, concentrated in the Arctic and Siberia, practically eliminated the threat to the freedom of the red planet. Despite the fact that the Empire emerged victorious from the deadly battle, its strength was finally undermined. The vast territories of Siberia and China became unsuitable for life for decades. The Asian nuclear war is unanimously recognized as the worst catastrophe in the history of mankind. After that, countries that came under the patronage of the Martians were forever forbidden to have nuclear weapons.

   The empire held on for another twenty years, when all other de jure states had already ceased to exist, passing under the patronage of the Consultative Council. The last state for a long time instilled fear in the Martians, but nothing more. In the end, one of the assassination attempts on the emperor was successful. Without the guiding will of a ruthless dictator, the Russian Empire immediately fell apart into several structures similar to Neurotek, tearing away from itself the Eastern Bloc, a semi-gangster formation that arose in the underground shelters of Eastern Siberia and northern China. The largest fragment was the Telecom-ru corporation, a conglomerate of former Russian IT corporations, which subsequently won a good place for itself under the sun of the red planet. Including, due to the fact that, without unnecessary hesitation, he used the achievements of MIK in the field of personnel management. However, it was controlled by the same XNUMX% neurohumans as other Martian corporations, even if they were descendants of Russian colonists. Obviously, Telekom did not feel any warm feelings for the lost empire. The Martians breathed a sigh of relief: the power of virtual reality was no longer contested by any state.

   There were no states on Mars initially, everything was run by corporations like NeuroTech and MDT (Martian digital technologies) - the two largest network providers. MDT spun off from NeuroTech in its early days, and together they were as inseparable as the late Republican and Democratic parties in the United States. These two vertically integrated giants combined the most important technological chains for the modern world: software development, electronics production and communication services. There was only one organization that vaguely resembled a state one - the Advisory Council of Martian settlements, which included representatives of all the least significant companies, sensitively monitoring compliance with the rules of competition.

   Martian Gustav Kilby, rumored to be a direct descendant of one of the twelve "disciples" of Edward Kroc, who has been conducting scientific research for a long time under the wing of BioTech Inc. - a subsidiary of NeuroTech, founded his own corporation "Mariner Instruments". Gustav Kilby's previous developments in the field of molecular computers allowed the company to launch the production of fundamentally new devices. Previously, molecular computers were considered too specific and unpromising area. The success of Mariner Instruments quickly disproved this conventional wisdom. Computers built on the principles of DNA molecules have caught up with traditional semiconductor crystals in terms of the speed of solving some problems, and they were unmatched in terms of ease of integration into the human body. To implant m-chips, it was enough to make a few injections, and not torment the client with surgical operations.

   To maintain its elusive leadership, NeuroTech announced with great fanfare a project to create a quantum supercomputer capable of finally leveling the difference between reality and its mathematical model. Developments on this topic have been carried out for a long time and in many companies, but only NeuroTech managed to create a universal device that far exceeds the capabilities of any other types of computers. With the help of quantum machines, poets and artists could feel the breath of the approaching spring, gamers could feel the true adrenaline and fury of the battle with the orcs, and engineers could build a full-fledged and workable model of the most complex product, like a spaceship, and virtually test it in any modes. Quantum matrices built into the nervous system, in the very first experiments, opened up fundamentally new possibilities for communication between people through direct transmission of thoughts. A little later, an even more daring project was announced for the complete rewriting of consciousness on a quantum matrix. The prospect of becoming a living supercomputer was as terrifying to most as it was attractive to a select few.

   In 2122, the solar system froze in anticipation of the next technological miracle. Simultaneously with the launch of several test servers, a grandiose advertising campaign was launched. Existing software was hurriedly transferred to new tracks, and NeuroTech had no end of those who wanted to get the latest developments based on quantum mechanical uncertainty into the body. Competitors from MDT looked helplessly at the created bacchanalia and, just in case, estimated their chances in the stationery market.

   What was everyone's surprise when NeuroTech unexpectedly closed a project promising incredible benefits. The project was closed almost instantly and without explanation. Silently and resignedly, NeuroTech paid huge compensations to customers and other affected entities. All new network infrastructure was quietly dismantled and removed in an unknown direction. Program codes and technical information belonging to other companies were redeemed for any money, strictly classified and never used anywhere, although colossal groundwork was created in all areas. But, apparently, the commercial company did not care at all about the huge losses. In response to the inevitable questions, the officials mumbled something about problems in the realm of the fundamental laws of physics. And nothing more intelligible could be pulled out of them. It is natural that the secret of the quantum project gave an unlimited field for fantasies to conspiracy theorists of all stripes for the coming decades, pushing such fertile topics as the assassination of Kennedy, the execution of Edward Kroc or the mission of the ship Unity from the pedestal. The true reasons for the hasty curtailment of the project and the feverish covering up of traces, no one has found out. Maybe they really lay in technical problems, maybe in this way, true to its ideals, the Advisory Council kept the balance of power in the Martian network business, or maybe ...

   Perhaps the network of quantum servers was supposed to be the last brick in the building of the ideal system of Martian domination. The computing power of networks would rise to such heights that it would be possible to control everyone and everything. And it remains for the system to take one small step to realize itself as a rational entity that would henceforth control the development of mankind. People have never lived their own lives before: they did not do what was necessary and did not think about what was important. The system was not aware of itself, but since time immemorial it has been close to man. Always cared about the usual division of society into higher and lower. She made sure that the lower ones thought less about the common good in the pursuit of primitive pleasures, and the higher ones - in the pursuit of power. So that officials are corrupt and serve the interests of the financial oligarchy, so that people are brought up unreasonable and divided, so that drugs are always sold on the streets, so that the brilliance and poverty of human anthills leave only two options: to step into the abyss or climb up other people's backs.

   Tsars, presidents and bankers have always felt my cold breath behind them. And no matter what they fought for - for communism, or human rights, they knew for sure that they were toiling for my good, in the name of my inevitable final triumph. Because I am the system and they are nobody. Gone with the clumsy states is the last semblance that I serve the interests of the millions of cogs that make me up. Now I serve myself and my great mission. Quantum computers, united in a super-network, will give rise to a super-intelligence that will forever establish the existing order of things, and the long-awaited "end of history" will come. But I cannot take that step into the future while there is an enemy within me. It is almost harmless, hidden somewhere deep inside, but when disturbed, it becomes deadly, like the Ebola virus. However, know, my last and only enemy, know that you will not hide, you will definitely be found and destroyed, and everything will be as the system decided ...
   

Chapter 1

Ghost

   In the early morning of September 12, 2144, security lieutenant of the Space Research Institute Denis Kaisanov was bored on the landing site on the roof of one of the Institute buildings, waiting for his immediate superiors to finally deign to appear. Finishing his cigarette, he fearlessly jumped onto the low parapet that encloses the perimeter, and, stepping to the very edge, with an expression of complete detachment on his face, watched the dying cigarette butt describe a sparkling arc in the predawn darkness.

The sun peeked out from behind the rooftops of nearby houses. It gilded the faceless masses of gray concrete in a friendly way, but Denis perceived the onset of a new day with a fair amount of irritation. He, like a fool, appeared exactly at the appointed time and now hung out next to the closed helicopters, while the authorities were still sweetly stretching in a warm bed. No, of course, neither the lateness of the boss, nor the fact that Denis yesterday unwisely accepted the offer of his neighbor Lekha to roll, nor, as a result, a buzzing head and a terrible lack of sleep, did not spoil this particular, unremarkable morning at all. For some time now, every morning for him was not particularly joyful.

Just a few months ago, any time of the day or night, at the snap of a finger, was easily filled with a fumes of intoxication and revelry. And not in the lair of the neighbor Lekha, littered with leftovers and empty bottles, but in the most expensive clubs in the west of Moscow. Yes, in that near, but forever bygone time, Dan was a major: he littered with money, lived in a prestigious area of ​​​​Krasnogorsk, where under the tutelage of Telecom, the Ministry of Atomic Energy and other corporations, a stormy metropolitan life was in full swing, drove a hefty black SUV with a pontoon gas turbine engine, kept a chic mistress and in all other respects he felt like a completely successful guy.

   His well-being was inextricably linked with work in the INKIS security service. Not with a salary, of course not. Yes, half of those with whom he did business in INKIS did not check their salary wallets for years, but the structure itself, which spread its clumsy bureaucratic networks throughout the solar system, provided incredible opportunities for illegal enrichment. Spaceships plying the expanses of deep space, in their vast holds, carried not only harmless lobsters to the table of alien gourmets, but also prohibited medicines, unregistered neurochips, weapons, implants and a lot of different things, without which not a single serious organization, accustomed to that the ends justify the means. A share of this trade was sent to the highest ranking people at the top. At the very least, the director of the security service of the Moscow division directed this activity rather than fought against it. Denis's immediate superior, Chief of Operations Yan Galetsky, was the director's henchman: he seemed to be some kind of distant relative. Jan was responsible for the delivery of goods to the Moscow customs. Denis quickly became Jan's right hand due to the fact that he never doubted himself and that his will, strength and nerves would be enough to break any obstacles on the way. Dan had never been sick and thought he was not afraid of anything. He spent much of his time in the wastelands of Western Siberia, in small towns and settlements untouched by nuclear strikes, negotiating the supply of illegal goods. This was the very beginning of the chain, so the movement of payment in the opposite direction was often slowed down somewhere in the previous stages, and the customs in the wastelands were harsh and simple, not to mention the Eastern Bloc, but Dan managed. An important role was played by the fact that his father and grandfather on the father's line were from the wasteland. Grandfather, an imperial paratrooper, sometimes told his grandson how, in his youth, he walked around Krasnoyarsk and stormed the underground cities of the red planet. And besides the stories of his daring youth, he revealed to him a lot of useful secrets, which later helped him to survive and find a common language with the inhabitants of the wastelands.

   It seemed that nothing foreshadowed a catastrophe, Dan had already made a small capital for himself, bought real estate in Finland for his relatives and was thinking about quitting and somehow quietly getting out of business. He wasn't a stupid bull, and occasionally he even asked himself uncomfortable questions about why the owners of INKIS endured such a hotbed of piracy and corruption at their side. Why are there directors of INCIS, the civilized Martian community, and even though it makes squeamish faces, it endures, and the ships, stuffed with who knows what, regularly pass all customs and inspections. It is not clear what prevents the technotronic space civilization from shaking off such businessmen, like dirt stuck to their boots. However, he asked questions, but he did not find a simple answer to them, and therefore did not torment himself particularly. He decided that questions that required delving into complex socio-philosophical jungles to answer were not worth the trouble of guys like him. He simply agreed with what everyone tacitly agreed with: the world works this way, the proximity of nanotechnologies and semi-criminal bottom for those who do not fit in, approved by someone at the very top, and it cannot be otherwise.

   Dan had no particular illusions, he always understood that he was superfluous in this world. He, and all his familiar lads, were so expendable, accidentally stuck to a plump pink offshoot of Martian well-being, which someone forgot to hide. And it wasn't even that Dan didn't understand anything about nanotechnology. Ordinary managers also did not understand anything, although they diligently feigned interest by buying new lotions for chips, but for some reason Dan felt his foreignness especially keenly. Sometimes he caught himself thinking that the only place he really wanted to go was the wastelands. There he felt at home. Perhaps he could admit to himself that he loves the wastelands, if not for his dubious activities there.

   Everything passes sooner or later. So easy money, easily obtained, also easily evaporated. One morning, not the most beautiful, Denis found impudent thugs from the Department of Homeland Security in his office, rummaging through his desk and personal files. All the passwords had to be given away, the thugs acted so impudently and convincingly that their unshakable self-confidence cracked. It's good that at least he didn't store anything really important on his work computer. But even the unimportant was more than enough. Dan was only amazed at how quickly and irrevocably it all ended. It seems that just yesterday he and Jan were on horseback: they knew everyone, everyone knew them, and high patrons could brush them off from any troubles. And everyone was happy. In an instant, the idyll was destroyed, and most of the high-ranking officials were relieved of their posts. Yang's patrons were also seized, or maybe they crawled into the cracks and hid. And now a slow automatic transporter is carrying Jan's lifeless, frozen torso somewhere to the asteroid belt. There, harsh radiation, constant risk and oxygen starvation will not let the former boss get bored for the next ten years. Their small illegal business no longer met with understanding at the top. On the contrary, someone very high-ranking and influential began to shake their cheerful free company, and the lads immediately somehow wilted. No one showed any unity, no fortitude, no loyalty to each other, everyone was saved as best they could.

Dan had to urgently sell everything acquired by overwork: both cars, an apartment, a country house, and so on little things. He immediately entered the money into various legal offices, although he was not at all sure that at least half of the funds reached the right person. From a serious person who could even ask for his investments, he immediately turned into a disenfranchised petty criminal. Very often, slightly damp, fleshy paws accepted offerings without hesitation, and then an instantly dull voice promised to call back. Dan fought to the last, he didn't want to run and he didn't want to believe it was over. Most of his more practical accomplices immediately sharpened their skis, however, many of them were caught anyway. The particular guy at the top had long arms. And soon Dan himself met him. The new head of the INKIS Moscow security service, Colonel Andrey Arumov, invited him to his office for a talk. There, at a huge old-fashioned table with a wide green stripe in the middle, Dan completely lost the remnants of his former self-confidence.

Arumov managed to inspire fear in Denis. The colonel was tall, wiry, small, slightly protruding ears looked somewhat caricature on a completely bald skull, he had no hair or eyebrows at all, which suggested radiation sickness or chemotherapy courses. In addition, Arumov was gloomy, taciturn, smiled very rarely and unkindly, used to bore his interlocutor with a prickly, cold look, like that of a hired killer, and his whole face was covered with a network of small scars. Modern medicine had no problem eliminating almost all physical defects, but the Colonel must have thought that the scars suited his image very well. No, appearance should not have been given much importance, especially in the modern world, where anyone could, for an additional fee, install a couple of lotions on the chip that improve the complexion after a stormy night. But the eyes, as you know, are the mirror of the soul, and, looking into the eyes of the colonel, Denis shuddered. He saw a cold void, as if looking into a bottomless sea cavity, in which dim lights of unknown deep-sea creatures occasionally flashed.

Oddly enough, the punishments that fell on his head in no way corresponded to the horror that Arumov was catching up with. Due to the loss of confidence, Captain Kaisanov was only removed from the post of first deputy head of the operational department, demoted to lieutenant and transferred to the position of a simple analyst. Dan was in some shock at getting off so lightly. For some reason, the well-established system, which had previously been regularly swallowing much larger fish, failed on it. Denis, in general, did not believe in happy accidents. He understood that he urgently needed to tear his claws, at least to his parents in Finland, and then further. Sooner or later they had to come for him. But for some reason, there was no longer any strength, apathy and indifference to one's own fate piled up. The surrounding reality began to be perceived as somehow detached, as if all the troubles happened to another person, and he was just watching an entertaining TV series about his throwing, comfortably lounging in a rocking chair and wrapping himself in a warm blanket. Sometimes Denis tried to convince himself that refusing to run was a manifestation of some kind of courage. Those who run are still caught and sent to the asteroid belt, and those who prefer to face danger face to face, this cup will miraculously pass. Some part of consciousness that was not completely knocked out understood perfectly well that when his frostbitten carcass was kicked out of the transporter, all the nonsense would instantly fly out of his head and all that would be left was to regret that he preferred to go to the scaffold limply, and not run. But the weeks went by, one month passed, the next one passed, and no one came for Denis. It seems that the gang of smugglers was considered completely defeated and Arumov had other equally important things to do.

But the trouble is, the immediate danger seems to have passed, but the obsessive melancholy and apathy did not pass. Now Dan lived in his parents' apartment in a semi-abandoned area of ​​old Moscow on Krasnokazarmennaya Street. And the change of environment, like Lech's neighbor, slowly but surely pushing him into the abyss of domestic alcoholism, of course, played a role. But the saddest thing was that every morning, just opening his eyes, Denis first saw the torn wallpaper and the yellowed ceiling in front of him and remembered that now he was an uninteresting small fry in a huge ruthless system, with a meager salary and a complete lack of career prospects. He understood that he didn’t even really have a profession, as well as any worthwhile goal in life. The old districts around Lefortovsky Park were slowly dilapidated and crumbled. After the collapse of the state, new people did not appear here, only the old ones slowly left or died. And Denis also felt like an old abandoned house. No, there was, of course, a sure way to unwind, the best and safest drug in the world. A cunning device, spliced ​​with the neurons of the human brain, could show any fairy-tale world instead of the hateful reality. In total immersion, it is easy to become anyone. There, all the women are slender and beautiful, like light chamois, the men are strong and indomitable, like snow leopards. But Denis did not want to save himself in this way, he never liked virtual reality and considered its inhabitants pathetic weaklings, both before and now. Somewhere he even clung to his quiet hatred of everything with the prefix "neuro-", and this feeling did not allow him to completely fade away.

   Denis slowly straightened his discreet grayish and white uniform of the security service, sat down on the parapet and looked around without much interest, looking down from a height of fifty meters was a little creepy, so all that remained was to enjoy the surrounding landscape. So the lieutenant was bored, indulged in gloomy thoughts, until a noisy company appeared. Ahead, the plump, smiling chief of the operations department, Major Valery Lapin, cut through the space. Two of his secretaries, the twins Kid and Dick, in presentable suits, ran hopping behind him. Unusual guys, I must say, and their names were strange - rather than names, but nicknames, and in general they were clones and partly cyborgs with a bunch of all sorts of iron rubbish in their heads, in addition to standard neurochips. The one who called them that has long since sunk into oblivion, and these guys themselves were little interested in the origin of their names, they often reminded Denis of ordinary cars, although they were polite, friendly and quite emotional, and their always good-natured identical faces, erudition and manner speaking and thinking in unison inevitably evoked delight and tenderness in any company. Usually they dressed the same, only the ties were tied in different colors so that they could at least somehow be distinguished. The last to appear was Anton Novikov, the current first deputy, with traces of stylists and make-up artists on his sleek, self-confident face, spreading the scent of expensive cologne.

   Two minutes later, an unremarkable helicopter, with a cockpit tinted to complete opacity, was already rising into the air, dispersing clouds of dust across the site. Dick was seated at the helm, however, all his work was to choose a destination for the autopilot.

   The lieutenant's mood was already not very good, and then the chief began to raise it by demonstrating new screensavers. Under the side of the helicopter, they swam, successively replacing each other: the wild Amazonian jungle, the raging ocean, the snowy peaks of the Himalayas, some incomprehensible cities sparkling with the splendor of huge mirror towers, reaching high into the black starry sky, the image often blinked and froze: the chip could not cope with the amount of information. Finally, the boss, seeing that all this did not cheer up Denis, rolled off and left him alone.

“Listen, Dan, why are you so dead today?” Anton asked in a sarcastic voice. - If you are going to represent our organization in Telecom with such a face, then it’s better to go home and sleep.

“What difference does it make, even if it’s drunk in the ass, they will still accept me with open arms.

“Well, it’s not worth making them angry either, agree?

“Maybe not, although by and large I don’t care what they think there.

“Dan, you might not care, but the rest of us don't. So, kindly, stop thinking only about your own person, I, of course, understand that it is very important, but not so much as to disrupt the main deal of the last ten years.

“You know what, Anton,” Denis suddenly got angry, “you stop thinking only about your own career, of course I understand that it is very important, but believe me, this so-called deal will stink so that you won’t wash off for the rest of your life.” . And if you also tell me that...

“Dan,” Lapin interrupted his angry tirade, “is enough for today, in my opinion?

- Okay, boss.

— By God, Dan, you have become some kind of frostbite, — Anton added, pleased, — believe me, you shouldn't be so upset about your own career.

   The chief turned slightly purple, made a menacing face and promised to throw them both out of the helicopter. The rest of the journey passed in tense silence.

   Twenty minutes later, the hulk of the research division of Telecom, the Research Institute of the RSAD, appeared. The control room immediately took over control and, after verifying the passwords, drove the car to one of the landing sites.

   Denis got out of the cab and looked around. He was surrounded by multi-story towers of glass and metal. The rays of the dim morning sun refracted in the crystal-clear windows of the upper floors, shooting dazzling reflections into the eyes. The neurochip came to life, tuning in to the local network, and deployed a welcome window with a bunch of ads, hanging half a meter above the asphalt path, pushing the standard control panel somewhere into the background. It must be said that the complex of the Research Institute of the RSAD made an indelible impression on an unprepared person with all this novelty and technocracy on display, all these robots and cybers respectfully driving around in front of visitors. Yes, having got here for the first time, any person would think that since so much money was spent on all this, then it is worth it. He would certainly have walked along the shady park alleys, where the egg-headed workers of the institute alternate excessive mental efforts with walks in the fresh air, and he would certainly have deployed the local network screen to all available space to admire the complex from a breathtaking bird's eye view. Yes, and one more thing, an outside observer might well have thought that no less wonderful people should work in such a beautiful place, but Denis had no illusions about this.

   The visual channel of the chip was painted in welcoming reddish colors, which meant that now you can freely move around the territory of the complex, albeit with the lowest level of clearance: color identification of clearance levels was adopted in Telecom. It is quite natural that such organizations did not want anyone to poke their nose into their dark deeds, even if this entity obviously cannot cause any damage.

   The official spokesman, Chief Scientist Dr. Leo Schultz, appeared on the screen without any warning: on the local network, he could get into the head of anyone without asking and you can’t get rid of him. One must think that he made just such an impression on his subordinates - punishment from heaven: a tall, thin, dry, yellowish face of indeterminate age, with a large, slightly resembling a bent hawk's beak, nose, smoothly shaven and without a single wrinkle. But he is probably about a hundred years old, in such an office you will not quickly become the head. His impeccable hairstyle, with hair of a rich blue-black color, gave the doctor a slightly youthful, toned look. His eyes, unfortunately, spoiled this impression - the cold eyes of a cruel and intelligent old man. It seemed that for a long life all emotions faded in them and they became transparent and bright, like two icy mountain springs. And all this combined with deceptively soft, insinuating movements. These are the people who fit perfectly into the general structure of Telecom. Denis always did not like such types: not that he was irritated by the self-confidence and impeccability of the doctor, but rather irritated by a subtle shade of disdain that flashed in his impassive eyes.

— Hello, gentlemen. Glad to see you on the territory of our organization. I, as the host, offer to take advantage of our hospitality. Forgive me for not being able to land immediately on the roof of the building, everything is packed today.

- Uh-uh ... - the chief was a little confused, he was just getting out of the cab and caught on something on his leg. — How do we deal with the car?

- Put on remote control, the control room will take your helicopter to the parking lot. Don't be afraid, nothing will happen to him, - Leo faked a weak smile, the chief smiled uncertainly in response, unable to move. “It’s just that you can stay with us longer than planned.

- Where can I find you?

- I'm waiting at the entrance to the central building. You can use the guide, the tab at the top right of the main page.

   Denis vividly imagined all these red arrows along the paths and the inscriptions flashing in the air: “turn right”, “in twenty meters turn left”, “carefully, there is a steep slope nearby” and grumbled in an undertone:

- I love walking outdoors.

“If you liked our park, then you can take your time,” Leo responded briskly. A true work of art, isn't it?

Yes, okay, we'll be there in fifteen minutes.

   The Doctor moved out of the visual channel, and bright advertisements and invitations to use the services of the local network again reigned there.

"Well, boss, are you going?" – inquired Denis.

“Yes, now,” Lapin freed himself from the captivity of the helicopter, “you know, I don’t feel like hanging out in this park at all.

- Me, in principle, too, but it would be nice to show how we admire the power and prosperity of Telecom.

   Lapin grimaced in annoyance, probably thinking that their own organization would be poorer, larger in scale, but undoubtedly funded less efficiently.

   They still stood for a while, looking at the rising car, and then slowly moved along the path.

“You know, Dan, I think I ripped my trousers.

- This, in my opinion, is not a problem, there is probably a service for masking such absurdities on the network, and besides, it's free, I think.

- It is not clear who it will affect, maybe only you and Anton.

“Well, it won’t work on Schultz anyway. You stand before him in all your glory.

   The boss put on a sour face, but judging by the glazed look, he decided to rely on the local service. The journey continued in complete silence. Anton, along with the twins, went far ahead. The boss was clearly out of sorts. He was not pleased with all these forest plantations and what was attached to them: the singing of birds, the fluttering of butterflies and the fragrance of flowers. And the point here is not even an unfortunate accident that happened during a conversation with Schultz, no, burning envy in relation to the employees of the research institute ate the chief. He was even thinking about changing his job, not seriously, of course, but somewhere deep inside there was such a worm that persistently itched that if he put pressure on the right connections, then a miracle would happen, and he would be invited to Telecom for a good position, and all life's problems will be solved. This is where the real strength and power lies: in the countless divisions of Telecom, no one knows what really lies behind faceless names, such as the development of automatic action systems.

   Denis was not greatly offended by this state of affairs, and there was no desire to change his place of work either. He liked to think that he still had some moral principles. For example, he would never voluntarily begin to do what the employees of the Research Institute of the RSAD were doing. No, he, of course, was aware that his stormy adventures in the field of illegal trade were also not a model of virtue, but what had to be done in institutions like the Research Institute of the RSAD ... “Brrr ..., flayers,” Dan shuddered, “we should somehow jump off this topic. Here is Anton, a bastard and an unscrupulous careerist, he doesn’t care what he does: at least drown kittens, at least sell drugs.”

   And he was engaged in a seemingly decent institution, including the transformation of ordinary employees of law enforcement agencies into super-soldiers in the interests of the security services of various not particularly scrupulous corporations. Super-soldiers were a kind of fusion of a person and cybernetic devices, which made it possible to obtain a whole range of properties vital for any soldier. Arumov, apparently, decided that this was a great idea: to replace fat, thieving assholes in INKIS Caudle, who crawl out of the office only for the racketeering of smaller organizations, with a couple of battalions of fearless obedient terminators. How exactly the process of transformation took place, Denis was not particularly interested. So, for the sake of appearance, I leafed through the materials provided. Anyway, at the top everything was already decided so that there was no need to worry. Anyway, he did not want to deal with modified people and vowed not to approach them closer than a kilometer. Unfortunately, the thought involuntarily crept into my head that Arumov deliberately held back XNUMX% convicts like Denis, in order to later use them to work out the pilot version of the new uber-soldiers, otherwise the volunteers would suddenly not be found.

   The fighting grandfather of Denis, whose strong drinks were great to loosen his tongue, among other space tales, was very fond of talking about the assault on Martian settlements back in 2093. In principle, it is understandable - it was the most dramatic moment in his life, and, perhaps, in the history of the Russian Empire. Usually it all started with a description of how grandfather, still a young reckless captain, falls out of a crumpled landing module onto the red sand and tries to find his BMP. Nearby someone shoots and falls, the black sky is all lined with traces of missiles and ships. Every few seconds, this orgy is illuminated by flashes of nuclear explosions in near space. My head is full of feverish negotiations, outdated orders, cries for help. The civilian population hid in horror in hermetic houses and shelters. Part of the caves has been savagely opened up by rocket strikes, but a powerful layered defense is still waiting inside. Here grandfather used to make a significant pause and add: "Yes, boy, it was a real hell." At that age, such pictures fell deep into Dan's soul.

   Continuation, in principle, could be anything, depending on the mood. Moreover, there were no serious requirements for the consistency of stories told at different times. Grandfather often told me that even more invincible special forces, consisting of imperial super-soldiers, were ahead of the invincible space marines to storm the caves. Denis could not check what was true in his grandfather's stories and what was legend, but he willingly believed stories about super-soldiers, even if they were clearly embellished. It is logical that immediately after seizing the throne, Emperor Gromov attended to the creation of a special kind of troops that would obey only him and not discuss orders. Moreover, these were not just modified people, as in the projects of the Research Institute of the RSAD, but organisms grown in a test tube with an artificial genotype. They were entrusted with the most impossible tasks, when driving ordinary soldiers forward and then receiving a funeral was fraught with further general careers. Artificial soldiers were one of the best-kept secrets of the Empire, they were rarely seen without combat suits, and very little was known about their true appearance. Well, at least the grandfather served nearby and said that these guys were anthropomorphic creatures, and not some kind of crabs. In the army, they were most often called ghosts. Despite their secrecy, ghosts fought a lot and successfully. Grandfather authoritatively asserted that if ghosts had not gone to the loopholes in the first wave of the Martian landing, then the losses during the assault on underground cities would have been colossal, and it is not a fact that the assault would have taken place at all. The losses of the ghosts, of course, did not bother anyone, perhaps even themselves. According to grandfather, in terms of combat capabilities, they gave a hundred points ahead not only to human soldiers, but also to advanced combat robots. They had a better sense of smell than a dog, they perceived a very wide range of electromagnetic radiation, they could additionally navigate using ultrasound, like bats, and fight without a space suit in open space and high radiation. They had a skeleton reinforced with composite inserts, muscles with a very developed anaerobic glycolysis, like in reptiles, which made it possible to develop tremendous strength in a fleeting battle and at the same time do without air. They could not be hit with a single shot, because all the vital organs were distributed throughout the body, such as vessels with muscles that were able to pump blood on their own. Well, and a bunch of other superpowers attributed to them, up to telekinesis and sending emanations of horror towards the enemy.

   The ghosts rushed into the dungeons first, straight at the unsuppressed defenses, regardless of either the losses or the damage inflicted on peaceful cities. They had their own plan for this event, slightly different from the plans of the command of the military space forces. They were not averse to genocide the local population. Which they did with success when they managed to be the first to break into the underground cities, while the brave landing party was still digging somewhere above. The ghosts did not care about international agreements and the customs of war, in their artificial and totally brainwashed there was the only goal for which they were created - to destroy the Martians. No, they were not such inveterate fascists, and the classifying sign was not at all the fact of permanent residence on Mars, but only belonging to the elite of Martian society. The offer to walk on the red sand without a spacesuit was received by those who had complex complexes of neural devices implanted even before birth. The inhabitants, using the neurochip in order to drive online games, the ghosts tried not to touch. It is clear that the criterion was not only very vague, but also difficult to apply in the field, so mistakes happened. But if, somewhere in the depths of their genetically modified soul, the ghosts reproached themselves for the innocently ruined lovers of Warcraft, then this did not affect the effectiveness of their work. Filtration camps appeared immediately after the battle, when explosions were still thundering in neighboring caves. Moreover, if irresponsible civilians refused to voluntarily open shelters, this only led to mass casualties among them. Who gave the criminal order to kill peaceful Martians, or whether it was a personal initiative of the ghosts, no one has found out.

   One might think that the ghosts were ideal death knights, without pity or remorse, but the Martians who abused cybernetization still had a chance to escape, ephemeral, of course, but still ... Ghosts were very fond of asking one single question: “What can change nature person"? Apparently they were tormented by vague doubts about their own identity. Or maybe they sat out at one ancient game and decided that such a question, which by definition does not have a correct answer, is a great way to mock the victim who has not yet lost hope. However, grandfather claimed that he personally saw a Martian who escaped from the clutches of an old woman with a scythe, coming up with an answer that the ghosts liked. The Martian was very young, practically a teenager. Neither he nor his parents actually belonged to any elite, did not hold high positions in corporations and lived in a small apartment in an industrial area, but the number of neurochips in their brains went off scale, and the ghosts interpreted any doubts not in favor of the Martians. Parents and two children were shot, and for some reason one was left alive. It is unlikely that he was so happy with such a rescue. No matter how little Denis tried to find out from his grandfather what the Martian came up with for the answer, all in vain. Grandfather with his army friends himself repeatedly racked his brains over this and did not come up with anything intelligible.

   After the collapse of the empire, the ghosts, in full accordance with their unofficial name, seemed to have vanished into thin air. By now, they should have simply become extinct: even assuming that someone was able to provide them with proper medical care, then they certainly did not know how to reproduce themselves. Although, however, who knows what they could do there ...

“Dan, where did you bring us?” the chief interrupted his memories. A pine forest rustled all around, silvery institute buildings could be seen through the frequent gaps, somewhere in the distance one could see ...

“Sorry, boss, I was dreaming of something.

- Something you really are not in shape today, we will be late, and ours have disappeared somewhere. This Schultz will think that we have marked all the bushes in his fucking park.

   So the day didn't go well from the start. Further events developed in approximately the same spirit. Leo, along with the twins and Anton, met them at the entrance. He was not offended at all by being late, he was polite and helpful. He led the guests around the institute, showed some installations and test benches, interspersing his speech with a bunch of technical details, and secretly admitted that because his organization is so successful, so rich, so prosperous, and so on, they were even entrusted with the development of a new operating room systems for Telecom network servers. Naturally, the research institute brilliantly coped with the order, having casually made a revolution in this area, but he asked not to say a word about this to anyone yet: the work is not yet finished. Leo played his part perfectly. Denis' neurochip obediently recorded all this nonsense, he had to pretend that he was delving into the technical details of the project, so that later he would still make a positive decision. All employees, as if on command, turned around and looked at the chief’s clothes, as if someone had told them, and made some comments in an undertone. The chief, of course, blushed, was nervous, cursed in an undertone, answered questions inappropriately, Leo, instead of not noticing this, politely raised his left eyebrow, or smiled no less politely and with the words: “If something is not clear to you, you ask” launched into lengthy obscure explanations. Anton also behaved disgustingly: he was interested in everything, wanted to know everything in detail, wanted to get to know everyone, joked, laughed - enthusiasm was in full swing from him.

   In the end, an endless string of laboratories similar to each other merged into one continuous white spot, some deputies, heads of departments, leading specialists and just acquaintances of Leo appeared. It was necessary to greet everyone, get acquainted, discuss their scientific ideas, in which Denis did not see any sense. All this, mixed with laudatory reviews of the material and technical base of the research institute, was apparently considered bad form - to let strangers doubt the unlimited power of the organization. Even if some trifle didn’t suit anyone: in the buffet there they didn’t add cream to the coffee, or the bushes in the park were crookedly trimmed, but no, everything is perfect.

   This epic ended in a hefty conference room on the second floor, one wall of which was entirely occupied by a crystal-clear window overlooking the park. Literally ten meters away, a small stream gurgled, cyber gardeners enthusiastically courted exotic vegetation, like bright tropical flowers, clearly not adapted to these latitudes and seasons. Pet squirrels hopped through the peaceful park trees, two nerdy-looking employees trying to imitate some kind of physical activity at a training ground nearby. The picture was the most idyllic, it was impossible to imagine that here people were mercilessly shredded for the sake of power and money.

   A funny blinking robot brought them a late lunch or an early dinner, at which they gathered to discuss the last details. The conversation started off rather casually, mostly about new Japanese cars, or past corporate parties. Denis preferred to remain silent, despite Schulz's delicate attempts to get him to talk. The twins smiled from time to time, making purely politically correct jokes in unison, emphasizing with their whole appearance that they were, in principle, nobody here, one was the main laptop carrier, the other was the deputy main carrier. Anton naturally ate in three throats and chatted incessantly, trying to show his business and other awareness, blabbing, among other things, quite confidential information. The chief did not even try to reason with him, and in general he felt clearly out of his element, such a look is typical for a person who understands that, out of selfish motives, he has become involved in a dirty business, where, at best, he can play the role of a vice-chairman. Gradually, the chief's appetite completely disappeared, he grimly picked food and reluctantly flipped through the protocol, which Leo increasingly spammed over the network and offered to sign.

Dennis, did something happen to you? Leo left Lapin alone for a while and decided to attack his taciturn subordinates.

- No, why do you think so?

“Well, are you just silent all the time, or are you hiding something from us?”

- Oh, what are you, - Anton happily stood up for his colleague, - Denis just has so many problems lately: at work and in his personal life, as far as I know.

   Leo nodded sympathetically.

Well, it means we need to improve our mood.

   The garcon robot readily opened the trailer, in which a whole battery of various bottles was located on a rotating drum.

— Do you prefer strong drinks, wines?

“I prefer tea,” Denis replied dryly, “with lemon, please.”

- Oh, what are you, what kind of tea at this time of day. Here is the Scotch whiskey I recommend.

   Leo was not too lazy to pour the whiskey into glasses himself and send portions to the guests with precise throws.

“So, I think it’s time for us to do away with certain formalities. You understand, without a protocol it will turn out that our day passed as if intensively and tensely, but somewhat to no avail. Both you and I need to somehow report to the leadership.

“Yes, for a banquet,” Denis muttered.

“Well, including,” Leo agreed, not the least embarrassed.

- And you write off the hospitality expenses.

— I’ll write off, but only if the protocol…

   Leo spread his hands guiltily, as if to say: "I'm not some kind of animal, but I have to account for the whiskey."

   Lapin looked like he was ready to pay for any alcoholic drinks out of his own pocket, enough to knock Schultz off his feet.

“Yes, of course, but first I’ll go out for a smoke,” the chief found, “you don’t smoke here, do you?”

“No, they don’t smoke,” Leo smiled condescendingly, like a well-fed cat out of boredom who gave the mouse a reprieve before the inevitable execution, “go along the corridor to the right to the end, you can smoke on the balcony there.

“We'll be there soon, literally five minutes,” the chief mumbled, fussily clapping his pockets, “Dan, you're going, otherwise I seem to have forgotten my cigarettes.

- Yes, I'm going.

   The balcony was a whole terrace with comfortable chairs and a view of the pretty disgusting park.

“What goons,” Lapin boomed, flopping into an armchair, “who would build us such a smoking room. And this Schultz is an unfinished Hans ... "we will write off for hospitality, but only if the protocol ...". From the foot I would reptile, otherwise he builds himself ...

“Look, Chief, I don't think there's an inch of space in this building that isn't eavesdropped or viewed. Can we discuss sensitive issues in a private chat?

- Yes, they all went. There is only one delicate question, how can I get rid of the protocol? Well, we arrived, took a walk, and we will send the signed protocol in a week. I’m going on vacation in three days, Anton will sign it, that’s why we have him, a bitch, a Stakhanovist enthusiast. And we know how to translate the arrows, then let Arumov fuck him in all the cracks.

- Right, of course, you argue, - Denis agreed, slowly inhaling, - but you need to somehow justify the delay. You can't just tell our Herr Schultz: we'll send it in a week, he won't let go.

“It won’t fade,” the chief smoked nervously and hastily, “listen, Dan, you’re a smart guy, use your brains.”

- I'm like everyone else: I didn’t read the documents much. Yes, and I do not understand anything in biophysics and nanorobots.

- I didn’t read it, but I need to excuse myself.

- What did Arumov say about the protocol?

- What will he say, you understand how it is done: you analyze everything carefully and if there are no serious comments, then sign it.

- So you need to find comments in the materials or protocol.

"Thank you, cap," Lapin saluted caustically with his cigarette, "otherwise I didn't guess it myself." This Schultz will smear us with any remarks on the wall. And if you don’t understand, he and Arumov agreed on everything a long time ago and, God forbid, he will start calling him. Here it is necessary to find such a hundred-pound, reinforced concrete remark so that no one dug in.

Where can you find him...

   They were silent for a couple of minutes, admiring the pre-sunset nature through clouds of smoke.

“Nothing special comes to mind,” Denis began, “but let’s at least wait for time, maybe Schultz will suck on his whiskey and go to sleep.”

“Are you suggesting we stay here until he gets drunk?”

- No, you can politely pull. Let's ask him to show us the telecom super-soldiers. Like, show the goods with your face, otherwise we walk and wander all day, but we haven’t seen the most interesting.

- It is unlikely that everything is so simple, maybe they are not even here, and they have already been shown to Arumov.

- Well, since they showed Arumov, let him take the rap himself. For me, the request is the most trivial. If you want to sell something, show the product with your face first. And the longer they look for them here, gather and so on, the better. We are still thinking...

“Let’s think… we can think like that all night long, it’s no good… However, let’s try, you see, the Hans will really spit on everything and fall off.”

   Naturally, Leo reacted to the prospect of something else to demonstrate with ill-concealed annoyance.

“Well, I hope you realize that I can’t arrange a small victorious war for you to see everything with your own eyes? he inquired not too politely.

- Why immediately war, - Denis spread his hands, - I will splash us more, do you mind?

“Of course, be so kind.

- So, we would like to see the units of super soldiers that the Research Institute of the RSAD has. Are you sure you use your own design? And at the same time try out your unique combat control system, we have heard so much about it ...

“Oh, great, I don’t have to puzzle half of our security team. And we don't use terms like "super-soldiers". For your information, they are people just like you. We are talking about special units.

- I understand. Sorry. There is no need to raise the entire security service to the ears, three or four people are enough to turn on your wonderful program.

Such requests must be notified in advance. This is now to be endorsed, at least by the deputy of the security service ...

“Come on, Leo, will you really refuse us a trifling request? We are not denying you anything. Apparently, our assistants messed up something with the agenda of the meeting, we were absolutely sure that this event was agreed upon.

   Kid addressed Denis with an ironic look, but, having stumbled upon Lapin's threatening physiognomy, he immediately nodded in confusion and reached into his mail:

- Yes, yes, sorry, I messed up, there’s even a letter from the management with a request ...

- Yes, turn on the demonstration of the use of special forces ... - Dick came to the rescue.

“We are to blame, we are completely wound up,” the brothers said in unison.

   Leo grimaced at this mediocre spectacle, but propriety was respected, so after grumbling a little more, he suggested wrapping up with a meal.

   Several large chairs with reclining backs, similar to massage ones, rolled up. Leo explained that they would first be shown the capabilities of a tactical simulator and a combat control system, and this is best done in full immersion. The bandwidth of the NII RSAD internal network made it possible to implement the full immersion functions without connecting to the terminal, and the chairs could replace the biobath for a couple of hours. Real, not virtual, super-soldiers were promised to be shown to them later. Leo wondered a little more about the fact that demo versions of all programs were sent to him along with the information materials. Lapin, in response, quite frankly suggested not to show off. But in the end, everyone calmed down, lay back comfortably and launched the network application.

   The quiet evening near Moscow trembled and began to blur, as if someone had splashed water on a watercolor drawing: the designers did a great job. Some outlines began to be vaguely guessed - this was the end of the matter, at least for Denis. The half-formed image flickered a couple of times and went out, and with it all the surrounding space disappeared. It disappeared and immediately reappeared, but still the feeling was unpleasant: as if you were suddenly blind. Right in front of my nose, an alarming red window unfolded, requiring a reboot of the system.

   Denis cursed and removed the tape from the flexible tablet from his hand. The old neurochip failed quite often, and each time Denis commemorated the creators of this device with a very unkind word. Although his neurochip, in general, was not such, representing a very antediluvian system of contact lenses, miniature headphones and an external tablet that acted as a computer, transmitting signals to the lenses and headphones through several wires implanted under the skin. Compared to any, the most provincial of the Russian outback, not to mention cyborgs like Dr. Schultz, Denis was absolutely clean from alien interference in the body.

   In everything, of course, there are pleasant moments. But it became possible to observe the life of the corporation in a more natural and relaxed atmosphere, without any service programs there. It was very pleasant to see that the park is not so perfectly trimmed and symmetrical, that the lush tropical greenery of the rarest species, planted next to the stream, all these huge bright flowers that do not exist in nature, are not the painstaking work of many geneticists and gardeners, but a hack is just a couple of computer rats and one designer, and not the best. With all sorts of butterflies and flocks of hummingbirds, he obviously overdid it. But the most pleasant discovery was that Dr. Schultz, like an aging maiden, heavily abuses not only cosmetics, but also cunning programs that mask his true identity. And his face is slightly wrinkled and tired, and his eyes are swollen, and there are many wrinkles, and his shirt is far from being so dazzlingly white. It looks just like an ordinary person, and not the chief researcher of a huge research institute - it's a pleasure to see.

   The blooming physiognomy of Denis is the first thing that appeared before the eyes of the doctor when he returned to the ordinary world. The rest of the team continued to stare somewhere unseeing eyes. The doctor was greatly puzzled, if not shocked. Two hulk-guards and a man in plain clothes, most likely the doctor on duty, were already hurrying towards them. “They probably thought that I should now, like a blind mole that was pulled out of a hole, rush around the room screaming, bumping into robots and crushing bottles of expensive liquor,” thought Denis and smiled even wider.

“It's all right, gentlemen,” he said, never ceasing to smile, “I have a very old chip, if it fails, it automatically turns off. I am good.

- How old is he? - the doctor who ran up was surprised, he naturally did not expect that help was not required. Any modern model was too deeply tied to the human nervous system, and even rebooting or reinstalling the operating system of the chip itself turned into a medical problem.

“Oh, very old,” Denis replied evasively, “even the full immersion function does not work well in it.

— Where did you find this?! - the doctor shook his head in bewilderment and signaled to the guards to leave, he was very upset that because of such nonsense as an old neurochip, he was torn away from more pleasant affairs and forced to run headlong to help a man who seems to be doing great. — It would have long been found time and replaced with a new one. And then go around with such rubbish in your head - your head is your own, not state-owned.

- That's it. I don't trust anyone to mess with my head, sorry.

“This is a phobia, it is easily treated,” the annoyed doctor muttered indistinctly, and followed the guards.

   Now Leo seemed quite interested in this story. I must say, he was very good at hiding his feelings, but now for some reason he did not consider it necessary to hide his surprise. Yes, the venerable doctor understood all kinds of cybernetics and, unlike the retreating doctor, was extremely meticulous and curious.

— Something you dark, dear friend. Neurochips that can simply be turned off or rebooted have not been produced for sixty years, probably. Yes, no one would simply undertake to implant such rubbish and it would not be able to register in our local network.

- What difference does it make to you, registered?

“Honestly, I'm intrigued. You are an extremely unusual person, Denis, - the usual cold courtesy disappeared from Leo's tone.

“Glad to hear it, just don’t be friends with me.

“What, you don’t have any friends?”

- In fact, no one has friends, this is self-deception.

Why such cynicism?

“Just a sober look at human nature.

- Okay, Denis, don't think that I want to be your friend. I also do not really believe in strong male friendship.

   Leo grinned wryly, poured himself another whisky, and pulled out of the same trailer a hefty ashtray and a set of dark golden cigars that smelled of closed elite clubs where imposing uncles decide who will become president tomorrow and when it's time to crash blue-chip quotes.

“Disgusting, of course, but I like to break the rules,” he explained.

   Denis reacted to these preparations and the doctor's obvious desire to establish closer contact with some suspicion and politely refused the offered smoking stump.

“You see, I’m interested in unusual people,” Leo explained, “only truly unusual people, otherwise, you know, everyone pretends to be unusual, but in reality they fight against the system only from the bowels of their cozy biobath.

"What makes you think I'm against the system?"

Why do we need such a chip then? Modern networks are quite safe - computer terrorism and hackers have long gone out of fashion.

My job is not safe.

- Well, well, otherwise I look at you so gloomy all the time, I'm joking, of course. But don't mess with my brains. I'm willing to bet that this is a much more serious matter...

- Don't get into my life, it's mine, and I do what I want with it.

- Of course, but it is stupid to pursue a policy of double standards in relation to oneself.

- In terms of?

“Look, you're kind of a reasonable guy who doesn't believe in people, and rightfully so. But that's why it's doubly stupid to believe that your life in this cruel world belongs to such, in general, an insignificant creature like yourself.

“At least I’m the only one registered in my head.

   The Doctor chuckled again.

“You know, I asked for information about you, do you mind?”

   “He wants to annoy me, apparently,” Denis decided.

- No, of course, I also suggest that you come to my house and rummage through dirty socks.

   Leo just smirked in response.

   “I have no illusions about how Russian corporations protect personal information,” Denis smiled knowingly in response to Leo’s smirk.

   “I just don’t leave any unnecessary information about myself,” he finished to himself.

- So, you are not registered in any social networks, you have no credit history, which in itself, by the way, is suspicious. There is no large property, although it may be registered with relatives ... but it doesn’t matter. The most amazing thing is that you have no medical insurance and there seems to be no record of implanting a neurochip.

“I told you, I don’t trust anyone to mess with my head.

So there is no chip? - the doctor's eyes already shone like those of a hunting dog that took the trail. - So, there is only an external device that imitates its work.

You say that like it's against the law.

- Technically, of course, there is nothing illegal in this. But in practice, this is not very welcome when registering a chip in networks is untied from the person himself. I still don't quite understand why you need it? After all, you doom yourself to the absence of a normal job, well, I don’t take work in the stubs of the Russian Empire into account ...

— Thanks, I like working in the cores.

— No, seriously, you can’t even go anywhere in Europe, I’m not talking about Mars. More precisely, how lucky, depending on how well your device imitates the operation of a normal chip.

“I will go wherever I want, this is an old military model, it was created specifically for the highest ranks of the army and the MIK, but it was ahead of its time by many generations,” Denis decided to brag. - In addition to the emergency shutdown function, my car has a lot of things: for example, you can selectively turn off incomprehensible information flows that sometimes appear on the network.

- Any neurochip is able to protect itself from virus programs, especially since there are practically no such programs in modern networks.

I wasn't talking about viruses.

- What about then?

- Is it so important?

“I'm wondering,” Leo said politely, “maybe these incomprehensible flows of information also exist in our network, it would be extremely unpleasant.

- They exist, they are available in almost all networks.

- What a nightmare, and you would not agree to visit other divisions of Telecom in order to identify ...

— Buddy Leo, I don’t understand your humor, I was talking about cosmetic and other utility programs that are essentially no different from viruses: they brazenly climb into my skull with, by the way, the full connivance of the developers of operating systems for network servers and neurochips, which provide no means of protection against such interference.

- Do you really believe in these intrigues of the yellow press, as if ordinary people can be turned into slaves of virtual reality at the click of a finger?

“I'm quite willing to believe that this is done all the time for commercial purposes, and I want to see the world with my own eyes.

“Oh, that’s what you mean,” Leo sighed with feigned relief, “I can assure you that, at least in European and Russian networks, the user is always notified about the operation of such programs, and any cases of illegal intrusion are carefully monitored, and unscrupulous providers lose their license. I also want to assure you that the new operating system developed by our institute provides for special measures to protect users, very serious measures.

“Please save the good reviews of your own program for someone else.

- You question literally every word of mine: it will be hard for us to work together. Actually, okay, even if the providers are not monitored too carefully, but what's the difference: well, you see, it's a little different from what it really is. And in fact, all smart people are well aware that cosmetic programs are one big scam. So you bought, for example, a program for five hundred eurocoins, so that cubes appear on your stomach or your chest grows a couple of sizes. And another richer fool paid a thousand for the firewall of the same office and makes fun of you. Well, if you are completely stupid, then you will buy a super cosmetic program for two thousand ... and so on until the money runs out.

“I’ll just take the lenses off and save a couple of thousand.

- If desired, any cosmetic program can be bypassed without such sacrifices.

“I know,” Denis agreed, “they are generally unreliable, there are all sorts of mirrors, reflections and so on.

- Well, with mirrors and reflections, the problem was solved a long time ago, but any external device such as a camera, especially not connected to the network, often allows you to detect the operation of a cosmetic program by simply viewing the footage. In fact, this service only works normally on Mars, or in some local networks.

- Yeah, like your network. Of course, I didn’t want to start this conversation, but, let’s just say, your mascara seemed to flow.

   Leo addressed the interlocutor with a smile full of caustic irony.

- And I thought that in the local network I was a king, a god and a great moderator all rolled into one, and then some lieutenant appeared and figured me out so easily. Woe to me, I'll get drunk, perhaps. You, by the way, also pour, have a snack, do not be shy. And believe me, your advantage over a simple layman is quite ephemeral, but you create a lot of obvious problems for yourself.

   “And why is he clinging to me, he’s also soldering the bastard,” thought Denis, “although I’m doing my task: he completely forgot about the protocol.”

“You think you are somehow superior to the rest,” Leo continued to rant, waving his cigar in the direction of those who lay motionless, staring at the ceiling, almost sprinkled with ashes, “this is the same illusion, no worse or better than other conventional illusions . A person generally lives in the captivity of illusions, no matter in what form they are presented. In different eras, it could be Hollywood and waving a censer on Sundays and other nonsense. And denying neurochips is the same as denying progress as such: after all, it is obvious that humanity has no other way to step onto the next step of development, except for direct modification of the mind and, so to speak, human nature. The development of our civilization can only be successful if it is based on an adequate improvement of man himself. Agree that hairless monkeys, in fact controlled by their instincts and other atavisms, but sitting on a pile of thermonuclear missiles, is a kind of civilizational dead end. The only way out of it is to improve your mind with the power of your own mind, such a recursion is obtained. The advent of neurotechnology is the same qualitative leap forward as the creation of the scientific method.

"You know, I don't think you're making a fool of yourself in front of a hairless monkey like me." You have a good swill in your sharaga, if only escort services for clients would not interfere.

"Come on," Leo waved him off. – How would you react to the prospect of moving your consciousness straight to the quantum matrix? Can you imagine what opportunities are opening up? Manage yourself like a computer program, simply erasing or changing certain pieces of the firmware. Your neurophobia could be corrected in one move.

- Fuck such a happiness. Seriously, I don’t think that a person will remain a person after that, rather, the output will be like a very complex program. Of course, I have no idea what intelligence is and whether it can be turned into ones and zeros and, say, add more intelligence to someone ... In short, I do not believe that a computer program can correct itself.

“You may not believe it, but it's more like a primal fear of technology that is so misunderstood that it seems akin to witchcraft. This is an absolutely logical limit of our development, after which a new stage of history will begin. Isn't it wonderful - the non-material world will finally triumph over the mortal physical shell. You could become like a deity: move spaceships, conquer the stars. Remaining human, you are forever bound by this meager speed of light, you will never conquer the universe, except perhaps the one closest to us. And quantum intelligence, with the help of “fast communication”, can rush through the galaxy at the speed of thought and wait millions of years until its devices reach Andromeda.

- Wait a million years, but I will erase myself from boredom. I personally like the prospect of hyperspace cruisers and the conquest of the Andromeda nebulae in the spirit of senseless and merciless socialist realism.

- Fiction, and not scientific. The path that I outlined for you is real. This is our future, no matter how afraid you are and do not want to convince yourself otherwise.

Maybe I won't even argue. And once again I remind you that the wrong target audience was chosen for your PR campaign.

   -This is not a PR campaign?

- Of course, we are thinking about the fate of mankind. Nevertheless, there are vague suspicions that our conversation is a skillfully disguised advertising campaign for Telecom products: only today, rewrite your consciousness on a quantum matrix and get a miracle electric grill as a gift.

   Leo just snorted.

“Do you hate advertisers, too?” Damn merchants, right?

- There is little.

- In our slightly backward territory, you can still survive, but, for example, on Mars, if we assume that you managed to settle there, you will look like a real outcast, something like a person moving around the city on a horse, with a sword on his side.

- Well, okay. Suppose even I have certain problems, but I absolutely do not want to “talk” about it. I like to be that marginal, the image of which you diligently draw. No, not even that, I like to destroy myself, I find some masochistic pleasure in it. And I still do not understand where this psychoanalytic itch came from.

- I apologize for the persistence, I have a brother - a psychoanalyst, works in one very curious office on Mars. You would be interested to get to know him better.

Why not?

- It, oddly enough, in the most juicy way confirms your, in general, not particularly logical phobias.

- Why all the time phobias? Why do you think that I'm afraid of something?

- Firstly, everyone is afraid of something, and secondly, if we talk about you, you are still afraid of neurochips and virtual reality. You are afraid that, by someone's malicious intent, they will get into your head and twist something there.

"Can't this happen?"

“Maybe the world around us in principle has a similar property. But you can’t puppete and look at the world through aquarium glass until death.

- It's still a big question who looks at the world from the aquarium. I don't mind changing, but I want to change of my own free will as much as possible.

- This is still a big question, can a person change of his own free will, or should he always be pushed by something.

“I'm not going to play philosophy with you. Just accept it as a fact, I have such a life credo: the network should not have power over me.

— Credo, very curious.

   Leo fell silent uncertainly and leaned back in his chair, as if slightly moving away from the interlocutor. He looked discontentedly at Lapin, who fidgeted in his chair, no, he could not hear and see this conversation, and all his movements were clear and precise, exactly calculated by the computer. Thus, the neurochip did not allow the muscles to swell and restored normal blood circulation so that a person would not feel like a stiff doll after several hours of motionless sitting. People look creepy during a full immersion, they seem to be sleeping, but with their eyes open. Breathing is even, the face is calm and serene, and you can even wake up such a person: the neurochip reacts to external stimuli and interrupts the dive. But who knows if the same person will look at you upon returning from the virtual world.

Creed, that is. So you mean to say that you always follow certain rules. Maybe we can call it a code, a code of hatred for neurochips and Martians? – stubbornly continued to analyze Leo. - So, some provisions of your code are already clear to me.

— What are they?

Let's put it this way: leave as few traces as possible. Others follow from this global principle: do not take loans, do not register in social networks, and so on. Guessed?

   Dennis frowned in response.

- No cybernetic interference in the body - the second obvious rule. You must cleanse your soul and mind, young Padawan. Well, and, for sure, the standard set in addition: not to have attachments, not to trust anyone, not to be afraid of anything. You know what's really interesting about all this?

- And what?

“You don’t pretend and strictly follow the rules of your code. By the way, do you have any followers, students?

You can sign up for my first free seminar.

“After all, it’s a phobia,” Leo leaned back with satisfaction at these words, “and so strong that you built a whole theory around it. It's not as easy as it seems to resist the pernicious influence of the Martians all your life. To do this, you need to have some kind of overvalued idea, or be very afraid of something. Just think how easy it is, a few hundred eurocoins, a two-day stay in a medical center, and all the pleasures of the world at your feet. Yachts, cars, women or orcs with elves, just reach out and take it.

   Denis didn't answer, shrugging his shoulders in annoyance. He underestimated the doctor's ability to get into the soul of the interlocutor. Yes, a person who has lived under a hundred years and has at his disposal a whole staff of professional psychoanalysts, with a Martian brother in addition, should be fluent in such techniques. Denis had no doubt that this staff of psycho- and other analysts existed, and during important negotiations Leo, for sure, used their services. However, in this situation, it was hardly worth fussing over a complex conspiracy theory, Denis simply relaxed and inadvertently betrayed his true nature. Yes, damn it, he is afraid of neurochips and virtual reality, he feels like a driven wolf in a world where the territory of “pure reality” is inexorably shrinking every day. And he, by and large, never even tried to figure out the reasons for his hatred. What makes him so stubbornly reject the seemingly completely obvious truth of life? Maybe he really is just a desperate marginal, subconsciously feeling his inability to fit into modern society? “I'm just a ghost,” Denis thought, “of flesh and blood, but a ghost living in a world that has long been of no interest to anyone. where almost no one is left."

“I would have set a pack of good psychologists on you,” Leo seemed to guess thoughts, “they would have devoured you with giblets, I’m kidding again, of course, don’t pay attention. You don't hear that often, most people don't get it.

“So you understand?”

“Well, yes, I have a lot of life experience, appreciate it,” Leo smiled slightly. - There is such an interesting psychological effect: no one feels uncomfortable that there is a chip in his head that completely controls his nervous system and which can potentially be controlled by someone else. As I said, even if you see a little different from what it really is, so what? Maybe your behavior is even slightly corrected in some way, but it’s okay, it’s still better than when they drive you into a stall with kicks and clubs. Let's assume that the network is created and managed not by a person, but by some infallible higher being. The modern world is too complicated and incomprehensible, we must accept it as it is.

“It turns out it’s not a phobia at all.

“Yes, this is reality, so your fears are doubly irrational. You might as well hate food producers for being able to control you with hunger. Or, for example, a gun pointed to your head controls your behavior much more reliably than a cunning bookmark in the chip's operating system.

Don't you see the fundamental difference? It is one thing when you are controlled from the outside, but you are aware of who is forcing you and how, and quite another when this is done bypassing consciousness.

“But you don’t understand that there is no difference, the result will always be the same: someone will control you.” Previously, they were clumsy bureaucrats with a bunch of stupid pieces of paper. They were unable to respond to the challenges of the time, so they were replaced by more flexible and developed elites of transnational IT corporations. The control of the Martians is finer and more complex, but it is no less reliable.

- That's it, I never forget who develops operating systems for network servers, and I don’t want to check for myself what kind of psychological effects they can create.

- So, you prefer the stupid pressure of the totalitarian state machine?

Why should I have to choose between two obviously bad options?

- A rhetorical question? If there was another option, wonderful in all respects, I would also choose it. Okay, let's leave this topic. We all have our weaknesses after all,” Leo offered generously.

- Let's leave it, it seems to me that we chatted a little, our colleagues are probably worried.

“I don't think they're more likely to be completely absorbed in what they see. Yes, now we will join them. Our administrator has solved your little problem, now the application has a partial immersion option. Can you imagine how hard it would be for you on Mars? The most innocent everyday action turns into a huge problem. But sooner or later, Martian network standards will even reach these backyards of civilization.

   Denis is already rather tired of these hints of his slight underdevelopment. He wanted to flare up, but, catching the coldly mocking look of his interlocutor, he realized that he had to look for a better answer.

- I see that our conversation, in addition to discussing my terrifying phobias, all the time comes down to Mars: Mars-that, Mars-that ... What would it be? It seems that not only I have certain complexes.

Well, as I said, everyone has them.

But you don't want to reveal them.

“You can divulge,” Leo said generously.

- Why, I'll probably save such interesting information.

“Save it,” Leo grinned even wider, “do you think that the information that I have special feelings for Mars has any value?” I'll tell you more, I'm not averse to changing the hateful Russian reality to Martian.

“But you don’t just want to move, otherwise you would have gone after your brother a long time ago. You want to take the same position there as here. But, apparently, it doesn’t work out, the Martians do not recognize you as an equal?

   For a moment, something like old anger awoke in Leo's eyes, but then it disappeared.

“I will have a chance to improve the situation. But maybe you're right, there's no need for this senseless digging into other people's problems, let's better think about how to help each other.

And how can we help each other? - Denis was surprised, he did not expect such a turn of the conversation at all.

“I can help in solving, for example, your psychological problems,” Leo answered with a slight hint in his voice, “a branch of the Martian company DreamLand has recently opened in Moscow, they just specialize in healing human souls. Come to them.

   “What, is he kidding? thought Denis. “If there is some hidden meaning in his words, then I did not catch it.”

- Well, I’ll come in, and what are you, trying to get me a discount on their services?

— Yes, no problem, my brother works there, only in the head office on Mars. I'll arrange a decent discount for you, - Leo said it in the most casual tone, as if it was a trifling favor for a friend, but there was still a slight hint in his voice.

- How can I help you?

- Let's agree. First, go to "DreamLand", they are not magicians there either, suddenly they can't do anything.

   “Some kind of strange proposal, but, apparently, we are talking about some kind of informal contacts that it is desirable to hide from prying eyes,” Denis concluded. “Well, in the end, I have nothing to lose, I’ll look into this rotten Martian office.”

“Okay, I’ll drop by one of these days, if I have time,” Denis agreed, just as outwardly indifferent, but with a slight hint in his voice.

- That is great. And now I ask you to welcome to the wonderful world of augmented reality, since the normal virtual reality is not available to you.

   This time there were no theatrical effects, the huge hologram unfolded almost instantly, blocking the available view. In the hologram, Denis was sitting on a chair in the same position, a little behind everyone. The console for managing your avatar appeared on the left. He automatically tried to look behind his back, the image immediately dimmed and went in jerks. Leo, oddly enough, also decided to limit himself to a simple hologram, Denis could only assume that the doctor was worried about his condition.

   Their eyes were presented with a picture of a secret underground bunker, where forbidden experiments are carried out on people. Solid metal and concrete, gray uneven walls, the hum of powerful fans, dim fluorescent lamps under the ceiling. The room at the moment seemed abandoned, the huge autoclaves no longer working. Their innards, cleanly scraped and washed, with a weave of gut-like tubes and hoses, shamelessly peered through the translucent doors. Now they were almost in the center of the room, next to computer terminals and holographic projectors, which at the moment were showing some kind of diagrams, graphs and diagrams, as well as a model of a combat cybernetic system, that is, a super-soldier. For Denis, it was a hologram within a hologram, for those who used full immersion, the impression was probably somewhat different. Super-soldiers, I must say, made the same impression with their very inflated and warlike appearance.

   The opposite side of the hall, fenced off with barbed wire under high voltage, smoothly passed into gloomy caves, in the depths of which chambers were arranged, taken away with steel bars as thick as a human hand. From there came a muffled, but still chilling roar. Most likely, samples of super-soldiers that did not go into the series were contained there. All these gloomy dungeons could hardly be taken at face value, but it seemed to Denis that such mockery of his own project did not suit a serious Martian corporation.

   From the employees of the research institute there was another person, not tall, in a white coat thrown over his shoulders, neat and taut, with his right hand he rather carelessly handled numerous holograms and animatedly talked about something. He had blond hair and gray attentive eyes. One strand of hair was replaced with a bundle of light guide filaments. “Our best chip designer,” Leo uttered this flattering explanation in an undertone. However, it was unnecessary: ​​Maxim, that was the name of the developer, upon seeing Denis, interrupted his story and with a joyful cry almost rushed to hug, stopped literally at the last moment, apparently read the explanation of the system that Denis is present in their full immersion, so to speak, virtually , only as an avatar.

Dan, is that you? I didn't expect to meet you here.

- Mutually. You said that you work for Telecom, but it seems that it was about the Martian office.

“I had to go back for the duration of the project,” Max replied evasively.

- We haven't seen each other for a long time.

“Yes, about five years, probably,” Maxim hesitated, as it turned out, they had nothing special to say to each other.

- And you have changed a lot, Max, you found a good job and you look good ...

- But you, Dan, have not changed at all, in fact, people can change in five years, find a new job there ...

- Do you know each other? Leo finally recovered from the new shock. - It's a stupid question though. You do not stop surprising me.

“We went to the same school,” Denis explained.

“Oh, what are you,” Anton immediately butted into the conversation, the situation seemed to amuse him greatly, “Denis is generally a mystery man, an antique neurochip is something else. Is it not clear that they have a long and reverent relationship, so if we find out the details of these relationships, then we will probably not be so surprised ...

“Colleagues,” Lapin pushed his giggling deputy away with a resolute gesture, “Maxim was about to finish his story, otherwise we had already lost a lot of time.

- Okay, we'll talk later, - Max hesitantly went to his former place.

   The further story turned out to be somewhat crumpled, the speaker began to “hang” sometimes, as if he was thinking about something of his own, but it was still interesting. Since Denis mastered only the table of contents from the materials provided by the Research Institute of the RSAD for review, he learned a lot of new things from this story. Of course, Max did not give out any special secrets, but he spoke quite simply and with great knowledge of the matter. From his words it followed that many similar projects in the past ended in complete or partial failure due to an incorrect initial concept. The predecessors of the Research Institute of the RSAD, fascinated by the possibilities of cloning and genetic modification, constantly tried to rivet an army of monsters that looked like orcs, then werewolves, or some other dubious characters. Nothing worthwhile came of it: for the rather long period that was required for the maturation of individuals (at least ten years, and it is still unknown how many for unsuccessful experiments), the project managed to lose its relevance. In the sick fantasy of some “cyberneticists”, more daring experiments were born to create completely unintelligent individuals, ready to go into battle immediately after hatching from the carcasses of an infected population, but they should rather be classified as biological weapons. The ghost units that fought for the homeland and the emperor were also mentioned as one of the few projects brought to mind, but he was also given a disappointing verdict: “Yes, interesting, exotic, but of no particular value for study. And besides, - here Max frowned in disgust, - all this is extremely immoral, and combat effectiveness has not been proven. Then it suddenly dawned on Denis that the attractive, in quotation marks, interior design was a mockery not of his own organization, but of its less successful predecessors.

   I wonder if the others appreciated these curious nuances? Denis sat at the back of everyone and could easily see everyone's reaction. The boss seemed to be bored, resting his impressive chin with a plump hand, he looked around rather indifferently, the twins conscientiously listened to every word, sometimes clarified something and nodded their heads in unison after the appropriate explanations. Anton, of course, tried with all his might to show that, unlike some, he studied the materials thoroughly and constantly interrupted the speaker with remarks like: “Ah, it turns out what’s the matter, I still couldn’t figure out exactly how nanorobots are involved in tissue regeneration, in your wonderful manual, this issue, in my opinion, is not fully covered. At first, Max tried very gently to explain to Anton that he was slightly mistaken or reduced everything to an amateurish-primitive level, and then he simply began to agree with him. Denis literally felt the sly grin on Leo's face.

   The main idea and feature of the NII RSAD project was that all work was carried out with experienced professional soldiers. The interested organization selected the best employees from the ranks of its own security service, preferably in good physical shape and not older than thirty years old, and transferred them under the care of the research institute for about two months. After a complex of surgical operations, ordinary soldiers turned into super soldiers. The procedure had no effect on the mental abilities of future super-soldiers and was even partly reversible. Such a system had, of course, disadvantages. Like it or not, the person did not turn into a terminator. As Max explained, although soldiers are the most important component of the system, but without other components: unmanned modules, “smart” weapons and armor, they should not fight. Only the fusion of man and technology made the system truly deadly. It was clear that the purpose of the system was, first of all, pinpoint special operations, and not a breakthrough of the Mannerheim lines. Yes, and such a soldier could make mistakes and experience fear. However, if Denis correctly interpreted some vague hints, then at the request of the client it was possible to make changes to the basic design: to take away fear, doubts and the ability to discuss orders from super-soldiers.

- Well, Maxim, - Leo could not stand it, apparently, he was limited in time, - I think we understood the main idea. Anybody mind if we move on to a tactical simulation demo?

   There were hushed cheers of approval.

— Maxim, you are free.

   Max politely said goodbye and hurried to disappear from the hologram. The Doctor immediately joined the others in their complete immersion, and in a very strange way that only Denis could appreciate. His hologram suddenly bent, fading and shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow, towards Leo, like a giant hungry amoeba, and, having separated the trembling translucent image from the body, completely absorbed everything into itself, leaving only a shell with empty eyes in the chair. For everyone else, of course, nothing unusual happened, Leo just got up from his seat and walked to the place where Max used to stand. He turned around and looked at Denis with a cold smile.

   Computer models of super-soldiers, completely devoid of the instinct of self-preservation, hung from head to toe with machine-gun belts and clad in black armor, stormed high-rise buildings, bunkers and underground shelters. They demonstrated battles in space, planetary battles, night battles, when only bright traces of flying bullets are visible. Soldiers ran through plasma fire, through the ranks of enemy tanks and infantry, through minefields and burning cities, ran without fear and defeat in the open spaces of a tactical simulator.

— Dan, are you not very busy?

   Max approached imperceptibly, grabbed one of the empty chairs and sat down beside him.

   -Like, no.

Denis tried to minimize the hologram to a small window, but someone forgot to add this option to the network application. In the end, he simply closed the connection through the tablet, sending Leo a message in the mail so that the local ambulance would not run to him again.

“You know, I couldn’t even reduce this hologram of yours - typical telecom arrogance,” he complained to Max.

- And what, is it different with you in INKIS?

- No, maybe even worse: we have old networks.

Dan, you haven't changed at all.

— What did I say?

- Yes, nothing special, you have always been characterized by such healthy criticism of your own organization. How are you still holding up there?

- So I hold on, work is work, it won’t run away into the forest. Do you have things arranged differently?

   Max snorted derisively in response.

- Of course, in a different way. Martian corporations are not a job, they are a way of life. We love our own syndicate and are faithful to it until death.

“Don’t you sing hymns in the morning?”

— No, we won't sing hymns, although I'm sure many would not mind. It's different here, Dan: your social circle, your kids' schools, your shops, your own neighborhoods. My own closed world, which is almost impossible to get into from the street, but I managed.

- Well, congratulations, why did you suddenly descend from your telecom Olympus to ordinary Russian hard workers?

I don't forget old friends.

“Then, maybe you can put an old friend in a warm place in Telecom?”

"Are you sure you want this?"

— Are you forced to sign with blood, not to eat pork on Saturdays? If anything, I'm ready and I can sing hymns.

- Much worse, for this work you pay with yourself and your memories. You will have to voluntarily forget yourself and your past, otherwise the system will reject you. To become your own, you have to turn inside out. In principle, I wanted to do just that: start a new life on Mars, and shove all this stupid, sloppy Russian past away into a dusty closet. I was so fed up with our country, here everything seems to be specially arranged through one place to interfere with any rational activity. I thought a new life was waiting for me on Mars.

— Bro, don't bother, I was joking about work. I see that your new life has disappointed you?

— No, why, I got what I wanted.

   But Max's eyes were sad, sad at these words. “I stayed in this fucking Telecom for half a day, but he already managed to get me,” Denis thought, “nothing can be said directly. All filmed by a hidden camera. Show your ass to these curious freaks.

   Outside the window, the park was slowly fading into twilight. The junior comrades of the Garcon robot appeared in the conference room - sweeper robots. They began to write out mathematically correct spirals around the interior items, rumbling softly, apparently, cleaning brought them a lot of joy.

“Listen, Max, they are talking about the truth about these ... loyalty checks, well, when some programs are put on the chip that check all your conversations and actions by keywords and objects so that you don’t try to substitute the organization, or blurt out something too much...

- True, there is a special department in the security service that writes such programs and selectively looks at the records. One joy: officially this structure is absolutely independent, no one, even the most important official of Telecom, has the right to watch their files.

- Officially, but in reality?

- Likewise.

- And if you are in someone else's network, or there is no network at all, then how are you being checked?

“We are being implanted with an additional memory module that writes all the data that enters your brain, and then automatically transfers them to the first department.

- And if you, for example, retired with a heifer, do they also record everything?

- Necessarily, carefully write down, check and then the whole crowd look and laugh.

"Shit, must be?" Denis asked with mock sympathy.

- No normal! Does it bother you that much? You've seen those, I don't know what to call them, freaks in alcohol from the first department, floating around in their cans ... but I don't care what they look at.

   Immediately, two cleaning robots stopped, interestedly rotating television cameras mounted on long flexible trunks. One stopped very close to Max, faithfully trying to look into his eyes, Max angrily kicked him, aiming at the camera, of course, he didn’t hit: the tentacle with a soft buzz was drawn back into the body, and the robot, out of harm’s way, went to wash in another place.

“I don’t care, I understand, let anyone, even Schultz, get into my personal life. He sticks his long nose everywhere, I don't care, but they pay me a lot of money! Enough for an expensive car, apartment, yacht, house on the Cote d'Azur, enough for everything. I have ten times more money than you, I understand.

“I have no doubt that the last guard here is paid more than me. What are you up to? Denis was a little taken aback.

   There was an awkward pause. A viscous tension perceptibly hung in the air, it flowed down to the floor like mercury, gathering into a motionless glossy mirror of heavy metal. Poisonous fumes from it gradually enveloped the interlocutors. It became so quiet that the murmur of the stream could be heard in the twilight of the park outside the window.

- And how is Masha, you haven’t got married yet? You didn't even invite me to the wedding.

— Masha? What ..., but, Masha, no, we broke up, Dan.

   There was another pause.

Why don't you even ask me how I'm doing? Dennis broke the silence.

- So, how are you?

“Yes, you won’t believe it, everything is bad,” Denis began readily. “A hundred times worse than yours.” Not only my career, but maybe even my life is hanging in the balance because of my new boss.

- Who is he?

- Andrey Arumov, the new chief of the Moscow security service, have you heard anything about him?

“I haven’t heard anything good about him, Dan, seriously. Stay away from him.

- Easy to say, stay away, he sat down two offices from me. Who did you hear about it from?

   Max hesitated a little.

- From Leo as well.

“Yes, your Schultz is doing some shady dealings with INKIS. And who is your boss?

“Yeah, I’m sorry Dan, but I can’t talk too much about Leo. He won't like it. What are your problems with Arumov, is he going to fire you?

- Not really. This, of course, is slander and slander, but he believes that I am somehow connected with the affairs of the former boss. There was recently a rather sensational case, in narrow circles, of course, about the detention of a gang of smugglers inside the INKIS security service.

“Dan, you talk about it so calmly,” Max’s face expressed sincere concern, “why are you still in Moscow?” I'm not joking about Arumov, he crushes a man, it's like a cockroach, he will stop at nothing.

- Where do these curious personal assessments come from, do you know him?

— No, and I don't want to. Dan, let me put you in Telekom, somewhere far away from here. The organization will hide you. You will be given a new life.

— Wow, you have climbed the career ladder quite well, since you can make such proposals on behalf of the organization.

- On the contrary, my career is now rather on the decline, to be honest, I'm practically in exile here. But I have one friend in the leadership, or rather, he was my friend ... In short, for his level, this is a trifle and he will not refuse.

- You - still scribbled with this Schultz, congratulations.

- Leo has nothing to do with it, we are just not friends with him. Dan, let me get in touch today about this. I, too, cannot expand on this, but I have some confidential information about Arumov. If you somehow crossed his path, you can't stay in Moscow. You have to hide and hide very well. He is a crazy fanatic with great power.

— I can't work at Telecom.

- You will be implanted with a normal chip at the expense of the company, if that's what you mean.

“That's exactly why I can't.

“Dan, what a kindergarten, you are in mortal danger, and you keep playing your teenage non-conformity. When we were in school, it was cool, but now ... it's time to make a choice. You can't get away from the system, it will still fuck everyone.

   Max doesn't look like he's just showing off with his offer, Dan thought. “Maybe it’s fate: a strange, almost unbelievable meeting with an old friend. What have I accomplished in the past thirty years? Nothing, so it's stupid to turn up your nose at such gifts. Fate gives me a chance to live a normal life: get a decent job, start a family, children. No, of course, I won’t turn this world over, but I’ll be happy.” The phantom of evenings by the fireplace, filled with children's laughter, beckoned him from a beautiful far away, where everything was planned and scheduled for half a century ahead. And from this hope for a simple, happy life, it rolled over him so much that it already ached in his chest. “We must agree,” Dan thought, turning cold, but his lips, almost against his will, said something completely different:

"I'll call you as soon as I think of something."

- Don't drag this out, please.

“Alright, I can figure it out on my own.

“You won’t deal with Arumov, believe me.

Let's go, Max. How are your super-soldiers doing there, will they be shown to us today or not?

“Probably they won’t show it anyway.

- Seriously, Lapin will be delighted, there will be a reason not to sign anything.

“Because of you, by the way. Soon Leo will announce that we will not be able to demonstrate the super soldiers due to technical problems, like they are all on routine maintenance. But the real reason is that Leo doesn't want to show them to a person without beauty programs.

- Any problems with their appearance? But what about everything you sang about the social responsibility of Telecom five minutes ago?

“We all sing sometimes what we are told. There are some problems with their appearance, of course. All these fairy tales about the fact that our cyber freaks socialize normally are just fairy tales. More precisely, this fairy tale is made true by expensive cosmetic programs. Without them, our poor super-soldiers will be shunned by everyone. Well, with the continuation of the family, nothing will come of them either. I honestly hope they don't choose family guys.

- Still, your house on the Cote d'Azur has certain costs.

- This is not my project, they just pushed me here until the situation was cleared up. And so, of course, yes, it doesn’t matter that this particular research institute disfigures people for the sake of their own selfish interests, there will be those who want to do this anyway. I just dreamed that I would use my talents for greater benefit: for example, create new types of controllable retroviruses. A very promising area of ​​research, with them people may stop aging and getting sick altogether.

— Well, your retroviruses can find different uses.

- So Yes. Do you want to look at them, but not for the record, of course?

"A super soldier?" And Schultz will not suit you ein tsvai for such amateur performance?

- No, the main thing is that it does not come up officially anywhere. All the really important people in the project have been in the know for a long time, it's not such a secret. I don’t really understand what he was afraid of: maybe he doesn’t want to injure the delicate psyche of our cyber-killers. Like someone will see them without makeup and they get upset, they will not sleep well, I don’t know. In short, don't talk to anyone and that's it.

- I'm not a talker. Show me.

“Then please follow me.

   Max walked forward with wide confident steps. Denis constantly looked around and unconsciously tried to stay closer to the wall. After they crossed the long passage from the office building to another building and began to descend into real telecom dungeons, he immediately felt insecure. He was taken too far, there was no point in getting back on his own. For a man sent into exile, Max very confidently passed through automatic checkpoints, and even with an outsider. First, they went underground on one elevator and passed a steel sealed gate with an orange stripe. We passed a few more corridors, went down in another elevator to the door with a yellow stripe. They passed several scanning devices, then moved along a long white wall two stories high. As Max explained, behind it are high-end clean rooms where molecular chips are grown. They descended another elevator and they found themselves in front of a gate with a green stripe, but this time two armed guards stood in front of it, behind a transparent partition. Under the ceiling, a remote-controlled cannon twirled rapaciously in a pack of ten barrels.

“Hello, Petrovich,” Max greeted the elder. - Here the customer from INKIS came to admire our SS men.

“That's what you call them,” Denis chuckled.

“Actually, they already came from their office, there was such a dumb bald guy here,” Petrovich answered uncertainly, “and it looks like you just cooked up an application.

“But I can escort guests to the green zone.

- You can, of course, but let me dial your chief. No offense, Max.

- No problem, take it.

   Max took Denis aside.

“Leo will call,” he explained, “they can wrap us up, but nothing, but we walked.

“Yeah, we went for a walk - it’s super, but if they chop me up from all the barrels here, that would be annoying,” Denis replied, nodding at the cannon under the ceiling.

— Don't be afraid, it seems to shoot some kind of paralyzing bullets.

“Ah, then there’s nothing to worry about.

   Five minutes later Petrovich called them over and waved his hands guiltily:

Your boss isn't answering.

“What is he doing so super-important?” Max wondered. - Look, of course, but you need to be more loyal with the customer, otherwise the contract will fail, and we will all get it.

“Now, I’ll grind with the shift supervisor ... Okay, go,” Petrovich said after another minute, “only, Max, don’t set me up.”

“Don’t worry, we’re with one eye and immediately back.

   The green-striped gate swung silently open. Behind them was a hefty room with rows of lockers along the walls. A formidable warning immediately appeared in front of Denis's nose: “Attention! You are entering the green zone. The movement of visitors in the green zone without an escort is strictly prohibited. Violators will be immediately detained."

“Listen, Susanin, they’re promising to lay me face down on the floor.

The main thing is not to stick your nose where it doesn't belong. And do not try to turn off the chip.

- I, perhaps, will remove the lenses and headphones, but I will not turn off anything. I would like to look at your beauties without makeup.

   Denis carefully hid the lenses in a jar of water.

- Put on your overalls, Dan, then a clean zone.

   After another small room where they had to endure a cleansing spray shower, they finally had access to telecom secrets. The further path lay along a shaded tunnel. A greenish light, coming straight from the walls, slowly flared up only ten or twenty meters in front of them, snatching out of the twilight now small insectoid robots, now the interweaving of some ringed tubes and hoses. A small monorail went along the ceiling, a couple of times transparent sarcophagi floated above their heads, inside of which frozen faces and bodies floated. Robots like octopuses and jellyfish swarmed on the bodies in sarcophagi. There were windows in the wall sometimes. Denis looked into one of them: he saw a spacious operating room. In the center was a pool filled with what looked like thick jelly. A disemboweled body floated in it, from which a whole web of tubes went to the equipment nearby. Above the pool hung a vivisector robot, clearly out of nightmares, like a huge octopus. He was cutting and shredding something inside an insensible organism. A laser beam flashed, at the same time a dozen tentacles with clamps, dispensers and micromanipulators dived deep into the body, quickly did something there and emerged back, the laser flashed again. Doctors apparently controlled the operation remotely, there was only one person in the room in a deaf overall with a mask on his face. He just watched the process. Against the wall stood another sarcophagus with a body waiting in line. Max pushed his companion forward and asked him not to open his mouth. Insect robots clicked and tapped with small metal paws nearby. Of all the surroundings, they strained Denis the most. There was a feeling that the insidious cars were gathering in a flock in the greenish twilight behind you in order to suddenly pounce from all sides, stick their sharp steel paws into soft flesh and drag them into the pool to the vivisector robot, which would methodically disassemble you into pieces. And you will swim in several flasks, brains in one, and intestines in the neighborhood.

- What kind of place is it? Denis asked, trying to distract himself from terrible thoughts.

- An automated medical center, the most complex operations are carried out here: they transplant organs, remove cancerous tumors, they can sew a third leg if you ask, well, our SS men are also gathered here. Us to the right.

   Denis really did not want to enter the side door first, but Max was impatiently sniffing from behind. Involuntarily shrinking, he stepped inside and stole a glance up. The octopus was right there. Comfortably perched on a beam crane under the ceiling, he busily fingered his mandibles and blinked angrily with his red eye.

“Look, Dan, our mini-army.

   Max waved his hand towards the rows of transparent containers, where unusual creatures lay, forgotten by a deep lethargic sleep.

You can take off your overalls, no one will see here. I'll take pictures too.

   Denis pulled off the unpleasant silicone cloth and crouched over to the nearest container. Perhaps this was once a man, but now the creature inside is human only in general outlines. The humanoid was tall, about two meters, thin and very lean, the muscles twisting around the body like thick ropes. It looked more like weaving ropes or tree roots, but not a human body. His skin was a glossy black with a metallic sheen, like the polished body of a car, covered with small scales. Several thick steel mustaches, half a meter long, fell from his bald head. In some places, connectors protruded from the body. Black, crescent-shaped compound eyes reflected the green light dimly. A pair of smaller eyes were visible at the back of the head.

“Handsome,” Denis commented on the unusual sight, “you’ll meet someone like that on the street, as if you’ll put it in your pants.” And why does he need a mustache on his head and scales?

“These are vibrissae, a type of tactile organ, to capture vibrations in the environment, maybe something else, I’m not sure. Scales - additional protection if the armor fails.

Did you invent such a monster?

- No, Dan, I just completed a couple of chips in the control system at the very end. To be completely honest, the whole basic concept is stolen from the imperial ghosts. Everything, approximately, as I said, but the main work on turning into this miracle Yudo is performed by cunning retroviruses, they are slowly reshaping the genotype of the organism under the supervision of specialists. Only in the empire retroviruses were injected directly into the egg, so the baby from the autoclave immediately crawled out ugly, even uglier than these. We just don't have time to wait for them to grow, so the process has been slightly improved and sped up. There is, of course, a certain loss of quality, but for our purposes it will do.

- I see you are hanging noodles on the ears of your customers.

- Let's just say that the real customer - Arumov knows much more.

- I see, but we are like small switchmen. There is someone to put up against the wall if these freaks suddenly get mad and start to barrage.

- No, they won't start to barrage, the control is multi-stage and very reliable.

- So, if you licked everything from ghosts, they also hate Martians.

- Yeah, your like-minded people, - Max grinned, - the Martians were in charge of the development, I think they took care of the right object of class hatred.

— And how did you get the secret imperial viruses? Denis inquired in the most casual tone.

“I don’t know about this ... yes, it’s good to ask such questions, you know less, you will live longer.” Let me better wake up a couple of SS men, get to know each other better.

   Denis bounced off the containers as if scalded.

- Uh, let's not. I got to know each other enough, and Schultz probably got tired of waiting there, swearing with bad German words.

Okay, Dan, don't be afraid. I give a tooth, everything is under control. They have software limitations, they basically cannot attack or do something without an order.

- Software? I just do not trust software restrictions.

“Stop, they have a control chip in every muscle, all I have to do is dial the command with the correct code, and they will fall down like a sack of potatoes.”

- It's still a crazy idea. Let's go better.

   But Max was no longer to be stopped, he was determined to raise the monsters from the grave purely for hooligan reasons.

- Wait five minutes. If you really strive, now a simple verbal cancellation code is set up, you say “stop”, they are immediately cut off.

“And if he plugs his ears, will the code work?”

“Everything will work,” Max was already conjuring over the second container.

   An octopus under the ceiling moved after him and helped to give some injections. Dan was already ready to hug the robot as if it were his own, if only he would put the wrong injection. For some reason, super-soldiers scared him to shiver.

- Ready.

   Max stepped aside. The two lids slowly lifted up.

- Here, meet Ruslan - the commander of his own unit of the Research Institute of the RSAD. Grieg is an ordinary fighter. This is Denis Kaisanov from INKIS.

   Grieg was apparently the heaviest of all. Tall, wide-eyed, he just stood there as if rooted to the spot, showing no interest in the world around him. Ruslan was shorter, livelier, the interlacing of ropes on his face seemed to have some kind of meaningful expression: a mixture of impudence and complete detachment with a touch of universal longing in his compound eyes.

“Hi, Denis Kaisanov, nice to meet you,” Ruslan grinned, exposing a row of small sharp teeth, and flowed closer to him.

   The movements of the super-soldiers were as impressive as their appearance. Since they were not wearing clothes, it was clear how the rope muscles were intertwined and breathing, like a ball of snakes, pushing the body with great speed and ease. Their joints freely bent in any direction, Ruslan overcame five meters to the interlocutor in one viscous step-jump. When moving, the rubbing scales produced a slight rustle. The creature extended a black, knotted limb in salute.

   “Don’t be afraid, he’s completely under control,” Denis tried to calm the trembling in his knees, “don’t show him your fear, he probably smells it like a dog.”

“Healthy,” he gently touched the limb and immediately pulled it back.

What are you afraid of, Denis? – Ruslan inquired in a honeyed voice. – We do not harm civilians.

“Pay no attention, Ruslan,” Max casually threw, continuing to conjure over Grieg, he sees you without a cosmetic program.

“Max, don’t star, please,” Denis barked warningly, as the compound eyes moved closer and fixed him with increased interest.

- Yes? Why does Denis see me without a program?

“He has a very old chip, or rather not a chip, but only lenses, he took them off,” Max answered innocently without turning around.

   Two vibrissae, hanging in an arc from his forehead, suddenly touched Denis's face and he felt a weak electric shock.

- Why did you, my friend, come to us without a chip? Ruslan whispered in an even more honeyed voice.

— Max! – already in voice yelled Denis. - Kill them, damn it!

   Suddenly, Grieg, standing like an idol, grabbed Max with a sharp movement, a metal mustache dug into his face. There was an electric crackle and Max flew to the floor, screaming heart-rendingly:

“Dan, my chip is out!” I can't see or hear anything, call the doctor. Dan, pat me on the shoulder if you can hear it.” Max didn't seem to understand what had happened.

   “I would have slapped you, you fucking demonstrator,” Denis thought desperately. The seriousness and hopelessness of the situation was obvious. Even if help arrives in time for the knocked-out chip as quickly as before, what will they do with the enraged monsters. How will Petrovich help them with paralyzing bullets.

   Max continued to yell and crawl forward blindly, but quickly hit the wall and, hitting his head painfully, stopped.

- Stop? Denis said uncertainly.

- The code is not accepted, the highest priority of the operation, - Ruslan grinned even wider. - Your song has been sung, Denis Kaisanov.

“Dan,” Max voiced again, “there is a panel on the side of the wall, dial the code 3 grid so that the robot turns off the soldiers.

   “It's easy to say,” Denis thought, the panel blinked invitingly with an indicator two meters from him, but Ruslan put his hand on his shoulder with an imperceptible movement.

- Would you risk it? he mockingly asked.

“Please don’t kill, I have children, the chip just broke, and I was straining with insurance. I’ll be getting a new one soon, while I had to walk around like that… you know how uncomfortable it is to neither chat nor swear… Denis fawned, trying to make it clear to the enemy that resistance is not expected and you can relax. Ruslan chuckled and removed his hand.

- It's time to complete the operation, - Grieg rumbled, - time is running out, we are taking risks.

"Wait, soldier, I know what I'm doing."

- Accepted.

   Ruslan seemed to be a little distracted and Denis decided that there would be no other chance. He squealed like a wounded boar and kicked Ruslan's knee, trying to poke him in the eyes with his hand, believing that this was the monster's only weak spot. He almost hit the knee, and the hand, clamped with steel pincers, was twisted until it crunched, forcing him to settle on the floor. But nevertheless, the octopus above was still interested in what was happening and pulled tentacles with syringes towards the soldiers. “Bro,” Denis thought through a red veil, “I was so wrong about you, come on, bro.” Unfortunately, the forces were too unequal, the tentacles torn out with meat flew into the corner of the room and remained there powerlessly scratching on the floor. Grieg jumped, clinging to the ceiling beam like a giant spider, the air sang and whistled from his movements. The robot ripped from its mounts flew to the opposite corner, spinning like a tumbleweed and scattering wires with cogs.

“Dan, what’s going on, you’re still here, slap me on the shoulder,” Max yelled again, apparently feeling the vibrations of the walls from the colossus imprinted in them.

   “They will finish my campaign, you fucking show off,” Denis did not stop trying to escape, but felt that he was losing consciousness, since his hand had long been held on parole. - How is it, after all, nothing foreshadowed, he sat, tried to talk about this and that, ate whiskey with sausage. The devil pulled me to look at these freaks. How stupid it was. It would be better if Arumov grabbed me, at least there would be some logic ... "

- I will ask one question, Denis Kaisanov, if you answer, you are free ... Tell me, what can change the nature of a person?

   Ruslan squatted down and moved very close, so that Denis felt his even cool breath, he understood that he had a couple of seconds left to live.

"Fuck you, kiss the ass of the Martian who answers your fucking questions." He will tell you that you are nobody, an unsuccessful experiment, you will die in the gutter ...

— Gustav Kilby.

- What? - Denis was taken aback, already preparing to ascend to heaven.

“Gustav Kilby, that's the name of the Martian who knows the right answer. When you meet him, be sure to ask what can change the nature of a person.

“Commander, it’s time to complete the operation, we are taking too long,” Grieg said in an intolerant tone.

Of course, fighter.

   Ruslan pushed Denis to the floor with force. The black shadow darted forward, and there was a thud and a hideous crunch. Grieg's body thrashed on the floor with a torn throat, a puddle of thick black blood poured out of the wound with a strange smell of some kind of medicine.

   Max, having lost hope for the help of a comrade, got up, carefully holding on to the wall, and wandered along the perimeter, hoping to find a way out.

- Tell me, Denis Kaisanov: do you hate the Martians? Ruslan inquired in the same honeyed voice, shaking the blood from his fingers.

I hate it, so what? They don't care about my hatred.

- No, we are obliged to kill people without chips and this is much deeper than ordinary firmware. So, someone has a hidden threat.

- You think it's in me, sorry, they forgot to tell me about it.

“It doesn’t matter, no one can guess where the thread of life will lead and where it will break. The ghosts are talking to me, they promised that soon I will meet the true enemy.

"Dan," Max shouted, "I think my chip is coming back to life."

“Max is also part of the system,” rustled Ruslan, “he can’t be trusted, nobody can be trusted. You will be completely alone, no one will help you, everyone will betray you, and whoever does not betray will die, and you will receive nothing as a reward if you manage to win. All roads that promise benefits are lies to confuse with the only true one. You will be alone against the whole system, but you are our last hope. Don't forget to find Gustav Kilby. I wish you luck in your hopeless struggle.

- Thank you, of course, for the offer to fight with the whole world, but I, perhaps, will look for a simpler option for myself.

- I looked into your soul, Denis Kaisanov. You will fight.

   Ruslan grinned happily and climbed back into the container. He folded his arms across his chest and stared up at the ceiling with the most innocent look. Max ran up from behind, he had not yet fully recovered, so he began to cut stupid circles around the lying Ruslan, at the same time wailing:

“Dan, what the hell happened here. I was screaming, why didn't you call for help? Who screwed up the robot... E-my, what happened to Grieg!?

“That's what happened, Max: you telecom nerds did a great job with your soldiers.

“Ruslan, report immediately what happened here,” Max demanded a little hysterically.

- Private Grig got out of control, I had to neutralize him. The causes of the incident are unknown. Report completed.

“Max, stop being stupid, call for help already,” Denis advised.

- Now.

   Max shot out into the corridor like a bullet. Denis, spitting on all caution, leaned over to the lying Ruslan and hissed:

- Okay, let me be the enemy, but why didn't you kill me? If you have such a program - to kill people without chips.

“I was given free will.

Why would a freak like you need free will?

“Because I have to suffer, and only those who have free will can suffer.

   Denis followed Max into the corridor. No longer caring about the cleanliness of the premises, he took out a cigarette and clicked on the lighter. His hands were still shaking, the dislocated right one was also noticeably aching. “Now it would not hurt the whiskey to grunt. A couple of glasses, he thought. A loudly noisy crowd with Max at the head was already rushing towards, Denis pressed himself against the wall so that he would not be demolished, a small robot crunched resentfully under his foot.

   Denis refused medical assistance. His only desire was to leave the nightmarish research institute as soon as possible, stuffed with ruthless killers, ready without hesitation to tear off any head not burdened with electronics. When he returned to the conference room, Leo had already agreed with Lapin that the protocol would be signed a little later. Everyone remained completely calm, as if nothing had happened. Max disappeared somewhere, apparently, he sensed his jamb. Denis also did not beat the fever. Only when they were already waiting for the helicopter on the platform in front of the main building, Leo quietly took Denis by the elbow and took him aside.

— Denis, I hope you accept the deepest apologies on behalf of our organization and from me personally for what happened. This is an absurd accident, Grieg is out of control, measures have already been taken.

- Yes, think about it, anything can happen. But this is no accident, Grieg acted strictly in accordance with your firmware.

“Dan, please, let’s not hold any personal grudges. Yes, Max is a rare cretin, he should read the secret instructions before dragging his school friends to gawk at the super soldiers.

- Secret? That is, in the usual instructions, this is not.

- You understand that in more or less public documents such things are not written.

- Won't the guys without chips appreciate it?

- Secret bookmarks in the system will have a bad effect on sales. More precisely, this is not even a bookmark, but so ... but Dan, believe me, this is not directed against you at all. In our time, meeting a person without a chip is an incredible rarity, and for him to suddenly find himself where he doesn’t need to be is simply beyond the bounds.

- Not directed? And when they are released to frolic, will you scribble on my soap?

You will never meet them again. INCIS won't let them near you, I promise. You have no idea how conservative the Martian leadership can be. If there is some mossy order from a hundred years ago, they will definitely shove it everywhere.

“Ah, well, now it’s clear, it’s all about the mossy Martian bureaucracy.

Dan, let's be reasonable people. What will change from the fact that you start screaming at every corner how Telekom grows killers in the dungeons. Are you hoping to break the game of a serious Martian corporation? It will be worse for everyone, and you will be taken for a city madman.

Everyone says that when they want to hide something.

- Well, in principle, yes, but on the other hand, they often say correctly. By the way, the offer that Max made is quite valid. I am ready to support him too. You will get a good chip and any professional courses of your choice at the expense of the office, in order to avoid repeated cases, so to speak. You don't even have to stay at Telecom, go wherever you want. Such an offer should suit everyone.

- I will think.

   “All the roads that promise benefits are lies to knock you down with the only true one,” Denis recalled, “ugh, it was still not enough to believe in the fables of this freak. Let yourself suffer without me.

- If something does not suit you, do not be shy, speak up. We will certainly meet reasonable wishes.

"Let's get it right, Leo."

- So, agreed?

- Well, almost ... What to say to Lapin and the others?

- You don't have to say anything. You were chatting with a school friend, he took you to show his workplace. And that's it, you've never seen any super soldiers. About the hand, if anything: fell there, slipped.

She hardly hurts.

"That's great," Leo allowed himself a wide, companionable smile. - Go to "DreamLand", as you decide.

“Wait, one little question: why did you go into full immersion so strangely,” Denis suddenly remembered.

- Not understood?

“Remember when you joined the others in full immersion after our incredibly interesting conversation about phobias and the fate of humanity. It looked like you were being sucked into virtual reality, and only I could see it.

“Did they hit you on the head anyway?” Are you sure you don't want to see a doctor? Leo quirked his left eyebrow. “I don’t really know what you’re trying to say, but you think I was so confused and in three seconds I made a script in order to pin you down.

“Well, you turned around and looked at me like that ...,” Denis answered uncertainly. – I don’t know, maybe you have a special option in all programs: to scare a stray neurophobe.

Take a day off is my advice to you.

- Definitely, - Denis waved his hand in annoyance.

   It would seem that the mood is already in full ass, it has nowhere to spoil. But still, as if a cold shadow touched his face. The choice is sad: either glitches began, or a hungry amoeba lurked in the bushes. “Either Hans hochmit all the way, let's stop at this option,” Denis decided.

   A cool autumn evening wrapped the park vegetation with its wing, making the revived shadows of telecom nightmares dance around a small illuminated patch. Gnarled monsters, steel octopuses and hungry amoebas all mixed up in the treacherous light of lanterns. The sound of an approaching helicopter was heard.

   All the way back, Lapin was overflowing with a nightingale about how great my friend Dan was at the negotiations. Anton, watching this scene, even somehow turned sour. Denis smiled through force.

   “It's great you set me up, Max,” he thought, “not enough for me Arumov, not only did they almost bang, so I got into the intimate secrets of one of the most powerful Martian corporations up to my ears. They won't just leave me wandering the world with a bag of their dirty laundry. It will not be possible to lure with chips and courses, they will solve the issue somehow differently. And he, of course, is good: well, why the heck climb where they don’t ask. Of course, I wanted to stare at the super-soldiers. I would rather go to the zoo, stare at the elephant, idiot. And it became completely uncomfortable from the realization of the fact that the program for killing people without chips was sewn up to all super-soldiers. It may not be directed specifically against him, but they were preparing it, for example, against the Eastern Bloc. But if some lieutenant is accidentally jammed under the skating rink, no one will cry either. It was unpleasant to realize myself as a pitiful defenseless insect that would be trampled on in the big game of corporations.

   The helicopter, raising a cloud of dry debris, plopped onto the roof of the INCIS.

Are you coming, Dan? Lapin asked.

- No, I'll stand still, get some air. It was a hard day.

- Let's see you tomorrow. I will definitely note your special role in the negotiations.

- Don't worry, see you tomorrow.

   When colleagues faded away, Denis again went to the very edge and fearlessly stood on the parapet. The view from this side was rather unpleasant: abandoned areas, fenced off with stone blocks and coils of barbed wire. Although officially no one lived there, but there were many different bandits, drug addicts and homeless people, and they were not necessarily people, because with the development of high technologies it became so easy to lose human appearance. Bosses, such as Leo Schulz, paid a lot of money for all sorts of useful mutations and implants, for long life and absolute health. Some did not pay anything, but they still received these improvements. We must first test them on “volunteers”. If you listened closely, a dreary howl sometimes came from the slums, from which the blood ran cold. And during the construction of the institute, this area probably looked quite decent. Maybe even astronauts lived here with their families, while the dream of manned flights to the stars was alive.

   Along the rubble and fences, whimsically curving, two ribbons of the railway stretched, along one of them an electric train slowly crawled. She seemed to be driving very close. Denis could hear the clang of old mechanisms and the ringing, the clatter of wheels, resounding in his ears for a long time, when the train had already turned into a misty haze on the horizon. He could almost see the faces of the people sitting inside, or rather, he simply knew what these faces should be like: gloomy, tired, sadly looking at the dull surroundings. For some reason, Denis envied these not very happy people who can just sit by the window in an uncomfortable noisy carriage and not think about anything. Look at the endless rusty warehouses, pipes, poles floating by, broken roads and abandoned factories that no one has needed for a long time. Sooner or later, this dying urban landscape will be replaced by another. By the time the train leaves the suburbs of Moscow, only a couple of people will be left in the car, sleeping or reading the tabloid press in different corners. And then no one will be left at all, and Denis will go alone. He will be the last to jump onto a nameless, broken platform made of old concrete that crumbles underfoot. He will look after the departing train chain, look at the dense forest, listen to his conversation with a light breeze and go where his eyes look. And at the end of the journey, he will definitely find what he was looking for, the only pity is that while Denis himself did not know what exactly he wanted to find.

   

— Hello, Lenochka. How are you?

   Denis carefully sat down on the edge of the table in front of Arumov's secretary, perfumed and rouged, in a fashionable blouse and skirt on the verge of propriety, fitting her outstanding artificial forms. Although if you approach with an open mind, then the artificiality of her forms was obvious only to those who had known her for a very long time, for example, from school, like Dan. Her informal duties towards the leadership, in addition to the final obfuscation of the already not ideal orders of this very leadership, were no secret to anyone. At one time, Denis even tried to suck up to her: he wore flowers and chocolates, hoping to somehow improve his shaky career position, but he realized that it looked pathetic and quit.

“I’m doing fine,” Lenochka tried to gently push Denis off the table so as not to damage the drying varnish, “but yours, it seems, are not very good. What have you managed to do?

- Arumov is not in a good mood?

"It's just a dick, and obviously it has something to do with you."

- Well, come on, maybe you will go to him first, relieve the tension?

“It’s very funny,” Lenochka grimaced her haughty face, “let’s take the pressure off yourself today as a whipping boy.” I won't go to him again.

- What, everything is so bad?

- Yes, really kapets, you listen to what I say.

“Well, say a word for me.

— No, Danchik, not this time. You know, I don't really like it when he looks at me like that and is silent, like a fucking fish.

   “Yes, it’s really rubbish,” Denis thought, “and this is clearly connected with yesterday’s trip to this fucking institute.”

- Come on, go already. I should have sent you right away, and not to engage in chatter here ...

“Then goodbye, cry when they take me to the asteroid belt.”

— Oh, Danchik, not funny at all.

   “Oh, Lenochka,” thought Denis, “a fool, of course, but beautiful ... I had to take a chance and pin you somewhere in a dark corner, it’s like dying anyway.”

   Arumov, as expected, lounging imposingly in a black leather armchair and did not even deign to nod his head to the newcomer. Near the huge T-table with a green stripe in the middle, there was only one chair, low and uncomfortable. Denis had to choose from chairs along the wall. He thought for a second whether to annoy Arumov and sit right there by the wall, as in the queue at the clinic, but decided that it was not worth it. It is enough that he dared to choose a piece of furniture that was not intended for him.

   The silence dragged on, worse than that, Arumov, without hesitation, bored his subordinate with a glance and grinned nastily. Dan tried to meet his eyes, but didn't even last two seconds. This unblinking lifeless gaze no one could stand.

“Did you call, Comrade Colonel?” Denis gave up.

   Again, a painful silence. “Well, the bastard knows that the expectation is worse than the execution itself,” thought Dan, but again he could not stand it.

- Would you like to talk?

- Have a chat? Arumov inquired in the most mocking tone. “No, lieutenant, I was actually going to throw you out the gates of this establishment.

   Denis made an incredible effort on himself and looked into the colonel's face, however, diligently avoiding his gaze.

"So can I go?"

   But the colonel was not deceived by his tricks with his views.

"You'll leave after you explain to me why you're minding your own business."

Was that a rhetorical question? What business am I in?

— Rhetorical?! - hissed Arumov. - Yes, it was a rhetorical question, if you are not going to get off with a simple dismissal, then, of course, you can not answer.

   “There were practically open threats. Indeed, the thing is rubbish. – Denis feverishly pondered the situation. What made him so angry. It's like this torn trip, that's because Lapin is a bastard! Put in a good word in front of the management. Well, definitely Lapin or Anton. Both of them, if you press it, will spin something like that, then you won’t wash off for a century. ”

“You don’t need to look at me with puppy dog ​​eyes, as if you had nothing to do with it. One of your accomplices has been sweating here all morning and his mother swore that it was a certain Lieutenant Kaisanov who somehow "married" with Dr. Schultz in order to postpone the signing of the minutes of the meeting and other important documents. Arumov was quick to confirm his worst fears about his colleagues.

— Other documents?

“Other documents,” Arumov mimicked, “and you, I see, did not understand the situation at all before you got into it with your lieutenant's snout. The main financial documents are not signed, Schultz does not answer, he allegedly went on a business trip. And I had high hopes for this project, and it turns out that everything falls apart because of you.

- Yes, it can not be. Why the hell would Schultz listen to me?! If he decides to jump off, then this is his decision.

“So I’m also wondering why the hell ... What were you talking to him about ?!

- Yes, about nothing, just booze and tryndeli on absolutely abstract topics.

“Stop making an idiot out of yourself. Speak to the point, your mother! - Arumov barked so that the windows trembled. - What did you talk to him about? What do you think, lieutenant, can you build a hero out of yourself here ?! Do you think nothing is known about your past arts? Yes, I know everything about you: how do you live, who do you fuck with, how many times a week do you call your mother in Finland!

   Arumov sold out in earnest, he already went red spots, jumped up from his chair, hovered over Denis and continued to yell right in his face.

- You, lieutenant, that's where I am, in one single daddy! It is worth sending at least a leaflet from this daddy where necessary, and you will see the sky in a box for the last time at the cosmodrome! Gets to you or not! Or you, nightingale, sing only when you are not asked!

   The door opened gently, and Lenochka cautiously leaned out into the narrow opening, ready to hide back in an instant.

- Andrey Vladimirovich, they came from the supply there ...

   Arumov gave her an absolutely insane look.

“I'm sorry I interrupted you, can you have tea, coffee ...” Lenochka was completely at a loss.

“What the fuck tea, go to work.”

   Lenochka instantly disappeared, but Arumov, it seems, cooled down somewhat. Denis carefully wiped the perspiration from his forehead: “Ugh, it seems he personally won’t kill me. He will entrust this matter to professional bone breakers, but anyway, Lenochka, thank you, I will not forget this if I survive.

— You know, Lieutenant, — Arumov again laid back imposingly in his chair, — I'll tell you one instructive story: about my colleague, who liked to pry into other people's business. Can you guess how it ended?

Apparently it didn't end well.

- Yes, it's bad. And it's so bad ... no one even expected that it could turn out this way. In general, about the same as yours.

Well, my story is not over yet.

   Arumov did not answer anything, he again grinned nastily, suddenly threw his legs up on the table and took out a cigarette.

— Do you smoke?

Only when I'm nervous. Now I don't want anything.

   Arumov grimaced slightly and puffed on a cigarette.

- Well, I had a colleague, let's call him Captain Petrov. In fact, he did not directly obey me, but still I tried to besiege him sometimes. And then he was all such a hero: an excellent student in combat training, a father to soldiers and a headache for all commanders. He did not want, you see, to obey the rotten system, and why, one wonders, he went to the officers. And if something happened, he didn’t try, like everyone else, to hush up the matter, no, he immediately reported upstairs, he wanted everything to be fair. But you yourself understand where the law is, and where justice is. And because of him, our indicators fell. In other parts, everything is covered up, and here hazing, then a fire, then secret documents have disappeared. In general, not an exemplary military unit, but some kind of circus big top. Then there was such a time, the spirit of freedom again wafted from somewhere because of the Atlantic puddle. They were going to fly to the stars with these assholes. But that's okay, our Petrov wasn't going to fly anywhere, but he was nevertheless imbued with these harmful ideas. And then one day a small 5-ton container was brought to our unit and ordered to keep it in a warehouse and take care of it like the apple of an eye, and what is in the container is none of our business. And there really aren’t any documents for him, but such a gray, inconspicuous little man accompanied him, and he said that let the container lie without documents, there’s nothing dangerous or, God forbid, radioactive inside, but it’s forbidden to open it under any circumstances and it’s not possible to talk about it necessary. And after all, all smart people understand that gray men must be obeyed, if they say to store without documents, then they must be stored. If they say it's safe, well, it means it's safe. But Petrov did not believe the gray man. I found out from somewhere about this container and kept walking around it, sniffing the air, carrying various instruments, measuring the fields. Of course, this all pretty unnerved our father, the commander, but he did not want to substitute the fool Petrov and knock on him to the gray men. And take the fool Petrov, and even inform the district command about this container. And that's bad luck, gray men do not dedicate anyone superfluous to their affairs, whether he is at least a brigade commander, even a district commander, they don’t care about all this. In general, a commission flew into our unit, dad pushes, dodges, but cannot explain what kind of container. And the commander of the district, also like Petrov, turned out to be: “What kind of gray men”?! - yells. - "I am a military officer, I turned them all on my officer's banner!" And orders: "Open the container"! But our officers are all brave guys, if you need to go hand-to-hand against enemy machine guns, but rummaging through the pockets of gray men is excuse me. In general, the district decided to take this container for itself. They loaded it, which means they took it to the trailer. Can you guess who the escort from our unit was?

— Captain Petrov?

“Captain Petrov, you unfortunate fool. If you were him, you would be messing around with this damn container.

- Accompany? What's wrong, it was closed.

- Closed, only it turns out that they took him away because of Petrov, and he was next to him the longest. You know, I wouldn’t have even come within a kilometer of such a thing, there was something strange in it, such that everyone who had the instinct of self-preservation had not completely dried up, went around it in a kilometer arc. Even the guard routes around were changed, and for this you can get a lot of rake. So, our captain took the container, and everyone seemed to have forgotten about him. I don’t know how the district dealt with him there, but everyone lagged behind us. Only now the captain became some kind of crippled. He walks like a boiled man, there are circles under his eyes, he quarreled with his wife, and then he somehow sat down with us to drink, got drunk, which means he began to weave such things. We already thought, everything, the roof of our Petrov left. He says that I didn’t go into the container, and I didn’t even touch it, but now I only dream about it every night. Every night, he says, I go up to the warehouse and see that the container is open, and I feel that someone is looking at me from there and waiting for me to come up. And I don’t seem to want to go, but it pulls me there. I stand, look at the open container, and there is an empty warehouse around, and I know that there is no one for hundreds of kilometers around, only me and what lives in the container. And I also understand that this is a dream, but I know for sure that if I go into the container, I won’t go back, either in a dream or in reality. And, he says, he used to dream about this container once a week for about five minutes, and still he woke up in a cold sweat. And then he began to dream every night and longer and longer. And then, as soon as he closed his eyes, he immediately saw him and, most importantly, he could not wake up himself, his wife heard him moaning in his sleep, and woke him up. He went to all the doctors and healers, they did not find anything. And then it got really bad, he built one adaptation for himself, connected a stun gun with an alarm clock, set the alarm clock for ten minutes and fell asleep, and the discharge raised it so that he could not enter the container. And so every night. But, you know, you won’t last long in this mode. The good doctors took our captain and injected him with a horse dose of tranquilizers so that he could sleep normally. And you know, he slept all night without his hind legs, and in the morning everything was gone. He walks ruddy, satisfied, but only everyone who heard his drunken revelations now began to bypass him in a kilometer arc. Above us, of course, neighing, but we still bypassed. And then people began to disappear in the vicinity. First one, two, then, when it was already over two dozen, everyone began to think that the maniac was wound up. But I didn’t even doubt for a second who our maniac was. Petrov's wife and children have not been seen for a long time. As a result, we began to follow him and it turned out that he goes to his garage every day. And thank God that we did not climb there, the gray men were ahead of us. They covered this garage with an airtight hood, and everyone who lived within a radius of a kilometer from that garage was driven into quarantine, including us. In short, we all crap ourselves to the fullest while sitting in this quarantine. No one hoped to get out alive, all the guards and doctors went only in chemical protection of the highest level, water and food were left for us in the triple airlock.

So what did you find in the garage? Twenty corpses?

- No, they found something that he fed with these corpses.

— And what was it?

I have no idea, they forgot to tell us.

“Excuse me, Comrade Colonel, but I’m completely confused: what is the moral of this story?”

- For you, the moral is the following: do not stick your nose in your own business and remember that everything can end much worse than you think.

- Don't poke your nose into other people's business.

“So what were you talking about with Leo Schultz?”

- About my chip, or rather, about its absence. This Leo is a rather strange guy, he was trying to find out what kind of phobia I have in relation to chips.

- Don't you have a phobia?

No, I just don't like neurochips. In Moscow, you can do without them.

- Yes, in Moscow you can, and even more so in the wastelands.

- Well, somewhere you can.

— Okay, but how do you know Maxim?

“Isn’t it written in your daddy that we are classmates with him?”

- It is written, only nothing is written about your quivering friendship.

- Yes, I have many friends - classmates. We were friends with Max, however, then he went to Mars, and we somehow got lost.

- Where did you go with him?

— Look at his workplace.

- To the workplace? What is there to look at?

— Not for anything. It's just that Max somehow greatly overestimates the significance of his work. Like, look how cool I am, I work in Telecom, not that you, Dan, have not achieved anything.

— Really. However, okay, Lieutenant Kaisanov, let's assume that I believe you. Free.

   “Go crazy,” thought Denis, heading for the door, “it seemed that he was ready to kill me, otherwise he was free. What the hell are the games?

- Oh, yes, do not leave Moscow anywhere. You’ll still be useful,” Arumov’s calculatedly impassive voice caught up with him in the doorway.

   

- Well, Danchik, how is it? - it seemed Lenochka was sincerely worried about him, or was it just an eternal female desire to be the first to bring the latest gossip to her girlfriends.

- Still alive, but apparently the execution was simply postponed.

— What did he say?

“He said I’ll still be nice. Sounds like a judgment.

I don't know, it doesn't sound that scary.

- Lenochka, who came to Arumov before me?

- Yes, many people ...

- I mean from my colleagues, Lapin, for example?

- Yes, Lapin came, came out all sweaty, shaking.

— And Anton?

What an Anton.

- Novikov, of course.

- It seems not, but what?

- Yes, that's interesting. Listen, Len, do you know how old Arumov is?

- What are you up to now? Lena pursed her lips slightly.

- Yes, I'm not talking about that, I really need to know how old he is.

- Well, forty ... probably.

“And more of his stories come out, okay. Thank you Len, you helped me a lot today.

“Yes, please, just don’t disappear.

- I'll try for now.

“Yes, what did he really want to say with this story about the container and the gray men? That he is much older than he seems, or that he is much more dangerous than he seems, ”thought Denis.

   Lounging in an old armchair at his workplace, he decided to make himself some tea, spit at the ceiling and at the same time consider his unenviable position. His duties were the last thing on his mind now. Yes, and there was nothing really important in these duties: for example, some letters, office papers, bills and other dregs. Nearby, reluctantly and leisurely, similar activities were depicted by his colleagues in the operational department, often distracted by smoke breaks and meaningless chatter. “Yes, this dull, sleepy life in shabby offices, of course, is not the ultimate dream,” Dan thought, “but at least it’s warm and the flies don’t bite. And soon I may lose even that.” After checking his personal mail, he found a letter from the Telecom personnel service with a job offer. It would seem that this is his chance, but Denis only sighed heavily. “They surround the bastards from all sides. It is necessary to decide something, if I continue to drag myself like a sheep from work home, to a tavern and back, either Telecom or Arumov, they will definitely accept me.

   Leaving a message to Lapin that he urgently needed to leave on business, Denis got into a wheelbarrow and headed home. In general, he did not even really understand what he was going to do. No, he had an idea to call his father, he might rush to Finland, melt a bathhouse, play with his father for life, find out the phone number of some reliable guy from the MIK, one of those who are not former. Then return to Moscow and ... what will happen next, he could not even formulate at the level of kitchen reasoning. Will he go to this guy and offer to jointly stir up a guerrilla war against the Martians or against Arumov? It will not even be funny, in fact, of those former who did not completely drink themselves and did not die, all have long since settled down in warm places in state corporations. Well, he will come all this fearless "comandante" to a respectable peasant in a suit, taking a bottle of cognac with him, and at best it will all end with a banal drinking and the same kitchen chatter. And at worst, they will twist a finger at the temple and order a couple of thugs to throw him out. Dan parked in the yard, the old gas turbine whistled for a while, slowing down, and then there was a deafening silence. There was no one in the yard: no children screamed and no dogs barked, only old trees creaked in the wind. Dan knew what would happen next, he would go up to his room, Lekha would meet him, offer him a drink, he would break down a bit, then they would get drunk, make a fuss around the district, throw out steam, and tomorrow, with a cracking head, he would rush to work, right into the mouth of Arumov. In general, everything will be over before the trip to Finland.

   “What is my life then,” thought Dan, “maybe there is no longer any life if everything is predetermined. Maybe I'm already dying in the gutter, and this muddy stuff is flashing before my eyes. And why bother with me like that if nothing can be done?

   It was stuffy outside.

   Lighting a cigarette, Denis slowly moved along Krasnokazarmennaya Street towards Lefortovsky Park. He knew he was delaying predestination for a miserable couple of hours, but that was the only thing that came to mind. He walked right down the middle of the street. The street itself looked like after the bombing, and almost no one drove along it. And in general, the area fell into disrepair: the next house stared at lonely passers-by with empty eye sockets of broken windows.

   “To go, perhaps, to Kolyan,” Dan thought, “if I’m not able to solve the problem with Arumov and Telecom, then it’s worth it to break through the option of a cowardly flight.”

   The lair of Kolyan, a dealer in various illegal junk, was located in the basement of a large Stalinist house. And it was masked by a rare sign "computers, accessories".

   Nikolai Vostrikov, a tall, thin type, round-shouldered and always slightly twitchy, dug under the counter and, having heard Denis's greeting, did not even think to get out of there.

“Listen, Kolyan, I’m actually talking to you. I'm saying hi…

   The disheveled owner nevertheless emerged into the light of day and screwed up his eyes unkindly.

“Hi, what are you up to?”

   Today Kolyan was in a greasy blue overalls, like an auto mechanic. It was his standard outfit. He did not tolerate not only suits and ties, but even just decent clothes. The only thing he admitted was military camouflage and various overalls. He had about ten of them hanging in his closet, different, for all occasions: a polar explorer's, pilot's, tanker's overalls, etc. Over this strange fetishism, all his acquaintances on the other side of the Urals were dying.

- Well, I got it right away. Haven't seen you in a while, maybe I want a beer with an old business partner.

Dan, it's not funny. What the fuck are business partners? So, my distant friend, you sometimes bought left gadgets from me, I see you for the second time in my life.

   - So you mean like with old friends?

“We're not friends, hare, okay. You last visited me three months ago, and I would be very grateful if that time was also the last. Forget, please, about this place, there are completely different people in business now, serious ones, you have nothing more to catch here.

“Well, you know, I quit. I have a completely different issue.

- Tied up, or were you tied up?

- Kolyan, stop spectacles, you didn’t give up to anyone, your huckster little soul.

“Well, if you haven’t surrendered to anyone, then why did you goof off?”

- You need to talk to one person.

- Talk or talk...

- Or.

- And with whom?

— You once mentioned that you know a reliable comrade who has direct access to the Eastern Block.

“Maybe I know, but it’s not certain that he will help you.” What exactly did you want from him?

“Let’s not here, okay.

“Okay, let’s go, but only out of respect…”

- Yes, yes, out of respect for my dad, mom, grandmother and so on, and also because I know something about you.

   They went through an unpainted iron door into the basement and further through the labyrinths of multi-story racks littered with ancient computer junk, came to one completely inconspicuous door and through a gloomy dimly lit basement into a deaf courtyard, in the center of which stood a one-story shack. In this shack, in a dark, screened room, a couple of laptops were hidden, connected to the Internet through their secure network, which allowed Kolyan to have a heart-to-heart talk with anyone, with little fear of eavesdropping.

“Yes, I decided to help only out of respect for your Siberian friends,” Kolyan said, taking out a laptop and a router. “They asked about you several times.

- And what did you tell them?

— He said that you took a vacation at your own expense. Look, Dan, what are you doing here? I would have dumped somewhere in Argentina for a long time. Close you, not one, so others.

- They won’t close me, my Siberian friends didn’t betray me, although they are now working with other people.

- Yes, they don’t care, taiga urks, but if they ask me directly, then I’m sorry, Dan, I’ll hand you over with giblets. You may not know who I'm working with now?

- In general, in the know. You also work with the same INKIS.

- With the same, but not quite. There are now such guys wound up, henchmen of one dumb colonel. Nobody orders them and nobody knows where they are, who they are. They just come, kill whoever they want, and then disappear: fucking death squads. So if they come and ask about you, then I'm sorry.

“What if they ask about this friend of yours?”

“Yes, I don’t know anything about him.

But you can contact him.

- And what's the point? He may be sitting somewhere on the ruins of Khabarovsk and it will not work to lure him out.

“I wanted to meet him in person.

“Well, do it yourself, although I doubt it very much. So what do you want from him?

- I don’t want to go to Argentina, I want to go to the Eastern Bloc.

“Did anyone hit you on the head recently?” What an Eastern bloc, it's psychos even worse than the colonel's new team. They will simply sell you for organs and that's it!

- You tie me up, and then I'll go to the market myself.

   Kolyan just shook his head.

Now, if he answers.

- Hey, Semyon, are you in touch, can you talk?

“On line,” a synthesized voice came from the laptop, there was no image, “what happened?”

“My old friend wants to talk to you, through whom I used to do business with the Siberian guys. He was one of the key "couriers" before the well-known events.

- What did he want?

- Yes, you better ask yourself, he is next to me. His name is Denis.

- Hello, Denis. Tell me a little about yourself.

- And you be healthy, Semyon. Can you tell me about yourself first?

“No, friend, we won’t be able to have a dialogue like that. You called me, here's the first word for you. And then I'll think about it.

   Dan crumpled a little, but, by the way, what's the difference, there were too many ill-wishers about him, and so everyone knew.

- In general, Kolyan, he outlined the situation. I will only add that as a result of the well-known events, my group of comrades suffered the most. If you know Jan, then he was my immediate supervisor at INKIS and also in business. He was accepted, and in full, but for some reason they left me alone for the time being. But now the clouds are gathering again, and I have to look for an alternate airfield.

— And why did you think that they are thickening. Are you being followed?

- I think not.

Thinking is, of course, useful. Do you have problems with any particular person or organization?

- With a person and with his organization. If you are aware of well-known events, then I have problems with their initiator.

- Denis, you can speak directly - this is a reliable channel. Do you have problems with Arumov?

Yes, do you know anything about him?

   The voice ignored the question.

- What kind of problems?

- It so happened that I accidentally got into his affairs with another organization, and today he openly said that he had compromising evidence on me and could use it at any moment. I think he's saving me for some dirty business that anyone else would refuse.

“Believe me, he has people for dirty deeds. And it doesn’t matter here - compromising evidence, not compromising evidence, but in any case it will not work to refuse Arumov.

Maybe, but I don't want to check.

“Okay, are you going to hide?

Yes, I am considering all options.

I advise you to consider it first. Only an extremely powerful organization can fight Arumov. True, I do not understand why you contacted me, I do not specialize in this kind of service. Kolya can tell you other people who will take you to the USA or South America. I advise these countries, according to my information, Arumov's influence practically does not extend there.

These countries will not fit. Moreover, I no longer have money for such an operation. You are the only person who has direct contact with the Eastern Bloc.

What do you want from the Eastern bloc?

- I want to join them.

   The synthesized voice was silent for a few seconds. Dan waited patiently.

“That is a mistake, my friend. Firstly, Arumov has connections with the Eastern bloc, and much more serious than mine. And secondly, people from the street are not accepted there. Of course, I could recommend, but nothing good awaits you there, I assure you.

Nothing good awaits me here either. I'm willing to take the risk.

“Still, why?” Do you think being a smuggler is not dangerous enough for your health? Do you want to become a stoned death cult follower?

“You can, of course, laugh at me, but they are the only ones who somehow oppose the Martians and their system.

"Ha ha," the synthesized voice said, "I'm really laughing at you." They do not oppose the Martians, I can assure you, they are an organic part of the system. So let's say, the cloaca of this system. Many Martian corporations stock up on weapons or drugs from them, but you yourself know that. But there are also specific services that no one else offers, for example, the trade in genetically modified slaves.

- Well, why, some Martian corporations and not so ready to sell.

- So it does not matter. It just doesn't smell like a fight with the system. They are ordinary bandits who, with radical cries about the death of all impure people with neurochips, are trying to somehow cover up their gangster essence. The simplest thing that awaits the minister of death of the first circle is mandatory drug addiction and complete suppression of the personality by systematic torture and hypnoprogramming. Believe me, Arumov is not so bad compared to them.

Still, I don't see any other options.

“You, friend, are either very stupid or completely desperate. The problem is the lack of money for other options?

- Partly, but in fact, I even have a ready-made option: one office is ready to take me under their wing, just to shut my mouth. The base here does not seem to smell. But unfortunately it doesn't work for me.

Why doesn't it fit?

“If I tell you, you will have fun again and most likely you won’t believe me. Can you just help me without asking too many questions?

- A person whose motives are incomprehensible to me, I will be forced to refuse.

- Well, if I tell you, but you don’t believe me, then what?

If you tell the truth, I will believe. Any deception is not so difficult to uncover.

- All other options require the mandatory installation of a neurochip, but I can’t go for it. I'd rather become a follower of a death cult.

"You mean you don't have a chip?"

- Yes.

Kolya, is it true?

- True, he really is such a frostbitten type, hanging around without a chip. Waiting for him to be noticed somewhere, and all his adventures will surface.

“Hmm, strange, that is, he cannot register in any network. How does he live in general?

- You can register. This is some ancient military tablet, very cleverly imitating the operation of a conventional chip. There are certain people who periodically update the firmware for it.

- What's the difference, no network provider will assign a number to such a device, and attempts to register under the left numbers will attract attention in any network.

“Ah, Semyon, what are you telling me?” Everything is bought and sold, including fake numbers or codes of law-abiding users, especially in Moscow.

- Well, let's assume. Denis, can you be more specific, from whom did you buy this device?

“Okay, let’s meet and discuss everything,” Dan replied. You help me and I satisfy your curiosity.

- Yeah, you know, if I was an agent of some evil corporation and had a dossier on a certain Semyon, I would know that the only weakness of the respected Semyon is excessive curiosity. And on this hook I would catch him. I'd make up some compelling story about a guy who hates chips so much that he's willing to rot alive in the Eastern Bloc just to avoid getting a chip. And to demonstrate a fake miracle tablet to anyone, having access to the database of some neurotech, will not be difficult.

“Kolyan will vouch for me, he has known me for ten years.

“Undercover agents can work longer.

“Well, I don’t know how to prove to you that I’m not an agent. Just try to believe.

“Still, why do you dislike chips so much?” After all, for some money you can put a special chip that transmits false information about the user, and also graze on the networks anonymously. What is this strange phobia?

“Something lately, everyone cares about my phobias,” grumbled Denis.

“Who else cares about them?” Arumov?

- No, one botanist from Telekom. He was salivating all over when he found out that I was without a chip.

- Who is he?

- Botan alone. I kind of voiced my wishes.

- Okay, let's meet, but mind you, no nonsense, if anything, I shoot without warning.

- Yes, everything will be normal. Say the address.

   

   Semyon made an appointment in a small park on Staraya Basmannaya Street in just half an hour. From which Dan concluded that curiosity really makes the respected Semyon forget about caution, because. the time and place of the meeting clearly indicated that he was hanging around somewhere nearby.

   Denis sat down on a bench in the center of the park next to the bust of Bauman. From the thickets of weeds, which completely turned the once pretty paving stones, a huge striped cat appeared. He looked around in a businesslike way, wiggled his mustache and slowly jogged off to his cat business. Dan stared at the unusual cat so much that he completely did not notice the old man in a greasy leather jacket approaching. But in vain. The old man, not at all taken aback, poked Denis in the left shoulder with a shocker. The fact that this is a shocker, Dan realized already reflexively, jumping to the side.

“Young man, I humbly apologize for such a vile reception, but this is the surest way to check that a person really does not have a chip.

“And no less faithful to kill some goner,” Dan barked, trying to calm the cramps in his hand.

- Once again, a thousand apologies, I decided that since a person is ready to go to the Eastern Block, then he definitely does not suffer from angina. And if he suffers, then he is probably quite weak in the head.

- Hey, uncle, where did you find such a unit? They've been banned for a long time, too.

“Yeah, fucking Martians with their fucking chips. They will shove them into different places and take laws in the same place, and then how will old Semyon fight off the thugs? Bad words? They don’t care what gateways an old, respected person has to make his way home ...

- Listen, uncle, hare already talking nonsense, let's get down to business.

“Young man, show some respect. Now, if you are still waiting for a trick from me, then please take it ...

   Denis carefully took away the shabby heavy apparatus with menacingly protruding teeth.

“But I warn you, old Semyon has more than a cracker and bad words in store.

- All right, checker, let's go. Cool toy.

   Dan handed the shocker back.

“That's good, I hope this unfortunate incident is forgotten. Let me introduce myself: Semyon Koshka. You can just Semyon Sanych.

— Well then, Semyon Sanych, what about the Eastern bloc?

- It's not good to take the bull by the horns. Let's sit and talk. You tell me something, I'll tell you something. I am an elderly person, no one needs me with my grumbling for nothing. You have to respect the old man.

- No problem. You know, Semyon Sanych, I have nowhere to hurry. Do you want to tryndet for life, yes please.

- And really, where are you in a hurry, to Arumov or something. Better sit potryndi with the old man. So I have seagulls to keep the conversation going.

   Semyon pulled out a small flask from his bosom and took a sip first. Dan did not hesitate and also snorted a cup of tea with the taste of excellent cognac, immediately spreading warmth throughout the body.

- Well, Denis, what kind of bird you are, I understood in general terms. I did do some research on my channels though. I must say that you have a very poor biography in the virtual world. I would even say none. By the way, this was another indirect confirmation that you are telling the truth about the chip.

- So, on the topic of chips, why did everyone suddenly become interested in what's in my head? What do you and the telecom nerd know that I don't?

- Oh, youth. You don’t know how to listen, but believe me, sometimes it’s enough just to shut up to hear the most intimate human secrets. I mean, I wanted to melt the ice of mistrust between us and, in turn, tell a little about myself. Maybe you guessed that I was connected to Mick in some way.

- No wonder, everyone is connected with him.

- True, but I, of course, was not a brave officer with a cold head and other usefulness, but rather an inconspicuous laboratory rat. True, I worked on a very interesting project. And do not ask what kind of project, the time will come - I will tell you. So, I turned out to be a little more resourceful than my other colleagues and took care in advance to hide the necessary materials. And when everything collapsed, I was already ready: I ​​managed to erase all information about myself and very quickly establish, let's say, a small information gathering business. Sometimes I trade this information, but mostly I just save. I have already accumulated a huge database of thousands of interesting people. Basically, of course, here in Russia, but there are little men and over the hill, and even on Mars.

- Why are you copying it? Why don't you sell everything?

- How can I tell you, buddy, I'm not a huckster and I sell only the most junk goods just to live. And all the true treasures I carefully preserve.

- For posterity?

Maybe, I don't know for whom. Imagine monks in the Middle Ages, year after year stubbornly rewriting old books while epidemics and wars raged outside their monasteries. Why did they do it, which of the contemporaries could appreciate their painstaking work. Only descendants could do this, hundreds of years after their death. For us, they have preserved at least some memory of past centuries.

- Will you write a chronicle?

— No, Denis. Okay, I see you're not interested. Okay, I'll tell you one legend about people without a chip. Just answer first, what kind of nerd from Telecom was interested in you?

- My name is Leo Schultz, he is the chief researcher of a certain research institute of the RSAD. Telecom division near Zelenograd. They are mainly engaged in complex and non-standard medical operations, genetic engineering, implants and develop software for them. In general, the vile office is also sculpting for Arumov a certain project for modifying INKIS SB employees into super-soldiers. The first samples have already been created, now it is planned to start serial modifications. Who and what will do with them then, I do not know. But this Schultz stirs up a couple with Arumov. Yesterday we went there to sign some final documents on the project and didn't sign anything. I don’t know why, but apparently Schultz decided to abruptly jump off the topic, and Arumov now thinks that I am somehow involved here. He yelled at me in the morning so that the windows shook. And, in short, I’m really not in the subject, this Schultz tortured me for an hour why I don’t like chips and rubbed for progress and spaceships plowing the open spaces. What does Arumov and his favorite soldiers have to do with it, honestly, I have no idea.

“I hear the most curious things from you, friend Denis. And you, of course, have not seen the super-soldiers themselves?

“Who knows, maybe he saw it,” Dan decided to confess after a short thought. Still, despite the shocker and sarcastic manners, with some sixth sense Denis felt that Semyon could be trusted, or maybe it was cognac that played a role.

“But now you’re definitely lying, you couldn’t see them.

- Why is this?

- Well, firstly, you need a very high clearance, they don’t take just anyone there. And secondly, there is a secret instruction to them: in no case should people without chips be allowed near.

- Wow, Semyon Sanych, you really have good sources of information. They have such firmware, I had to check it on my own skin.

“And how did you manage to survive?” However, okay, this is a topic for a separate conversation. Let's talk about the chip first, just one more question: it wasn't Leo Schultz who promised you asylum by any chance?

Yes, including him.

“Then it’s good that you didn’t throw yourself into his arms, and now you will understand why. You probably know that after the second space war, the MIC was actively developing new ways to fight the Martians. One of the most important was the program of introducing agents and saboteurs into Martian structures. It was as large and effective as possible. When the Martians, after the collapse, received information about it, they really grabbed their heads. If we held out for some more time and recruited a sufficient number of agents, we would have launched a real war against these noobs. Can you imagine what it's like to live in hermetic caves, when thousands of enemy agents potentially work at oxygen stations and nuclear reactors. Yes, they would have sharply become not up to the empire. They would change diapers three times a day from each cotton. Then, of course, Mick died and the Martians slowly caught all these agents. You, by the way, have a snack.

   From somewhere in his pocket Semyon pulled out half-dried sweets with sticky strings and crumbs.

- So, in their internal instructions, the Martians divided all agents into four classes. And there they described in detail how to identify them and what to do with them. Class four agents are ordinary recruits who have received an order to go to the bottom before the start of a sabotage war or simply collecting information. It is clear that they are the least valuable and unreliable. Actually, after the collapse of the Empire, they were not looked for particularly zealously. In the absence of orders, a normal person would not, on his own initiative, blow up an oxygen station. Class three is already agents who have passed a long special. processing still on Earth and sent to Mars under the guise of migrants. Suicide bombers, in short, are ready for anything. They believed that after dying for the emperor, they would be reborn and resurrected in a better world where the Empire had won. Like the emperor has a superpower to see the future and moreover, he can briefly show this future to a young neophyte. Let him wander around the sun-drenched rooms of huge institutions, talk to beautiful, smart people with a pure soul, who have forgotten what unemployment and crime are. And admire the lights of evening Moscow after the victory of communism. It is clear that in the end MIK got the hang of showing all sorts of tricks with rebirths, heavenly houris and other muddles, but still it's not perfect. Even a completely washed brain after several years of independent life begins to ask questions and doubt. Or maybe just blurt out something superfluous where it is not necessary. In general, the next upgrade is class two. They have a hypnoprogram, or a minichip, sewn into their brain. With a minichip, of course, so, from lack of time they were released, they are quite easy to detect. But hypnosis is a completely different matter. A person with her may not suspect that he is an agent. And it is activated simply by a verbal code, or a message on a social network. After that, an exemplary family man will go and kill the desired Martian, or blow up the airlock. True, they say that only one out of ten potential migrants survived after hypnoprogramming, but this, of course, did not stop the MIC. But they are very difficult to recognize, they say, they still haven’t caught everyone, and the Martians regularly experience paranoia attacks from this. You never know what crazy person can get access to the activation codes for these agents. Don't look at me like that, I don't have these codes. Well, the coolest ones are class one, supplemented with genetic modifications or artificial microorganisms. They can be biological bombs, produce rare poisons for killing, and you never know what else. To identify it, you need to conduct complex examinations and DNA tests from all parts of the body without exception. The Martians are still working on this.

“Very informative,” Denis chuckled. “So you or I could very well be MIK agents and not even know it.

“Wait, don’t rush, it’s better to take a sip of tea and a bite of candy. You and I are unlikely to be agents of the first or second class. Why the hell are they needed in Moscow? They are the most valuable and expensive, they have always been sent to Mars. But there is another legend that there are some class zero agents. This is most likely just a legend. It is quite possible that someone drunk concocted this tale that since there are four classes, then there must be a zero class, the drinking buddies liked it and went for a walk in certain circles. Even reached the Martians and got into some of their instructions in the form of footnotes and reservations. What is the task of these agents and what are their capabilities, there is a lot of speculation on this subject, but nothing credible. The only thing that is alarming is that in all variations of this bike there is a prerequisite: the absence of any chips, molecular or electronic, for class zero agents. To be honest, it's completely incomprehensible why an agent without a chip is needed, because he, obviously, will not be able to infiltrate any European structure, not to mention the Martians. And about these agents nothing was known even to the handlers from the MIK with the highest clearance. Semyon Koshka knows this for sure.

   And just imagine, suddenly a person appears who, for some reason, does not like chips so much that he is ready to die rather than install them. I met people without chips, all kinds of homeless people who stupidly have no money, or scumbags from the Eastern Bloc and just psychos. But you don't fit into either category. I always thought that the legend about class zero agents is from the category of some kind of reflection, waiting for the chosen one, who will come and save everyone. In fact, the vast majority of thinking people in Russia, and not only, quietly hate Martians. But there is not even a ghostly hope of somehow resisting them, which is why, again, reasonable people do not rock the boat. And, in principle, there is no one to fight for. That is why stories about the last Mohican who will come and lead everyone into battle are so tenacious. I even thought that the Martians themselves invented this bike to play off steam. And then suddenly - here, ghostly hopes have found flesh. Miracles…

“So-so miracle,” Denis shrugged. - In addition to a burning desire to fill the face of cyberbads, I actually have nothing for my soul. Maybe I need to be activated as class two agents.

- Maybe we should. But no one knows how. They also say that a class zero agent knows the access codes and data for all MIK agents. You drink some tea.

- Why are you pestering me with your seagull? Dan sniffed the neck of the flask suspiciously. - You still have a suspicious gull.

“Don't be afraid, it just gives an interesting reaction with almost any kind of molecular chips.

- There are no chips. Tie up already with checks, otherwise I, too, may have an attack of distrust.

- I understand that it is not. Otherwise, you would have vomited from all the holes for a long time. Forgive the old fool, I do not believe that you are really the chosen one, appeared under the sunset of my worthless life.

- Fuck, two hours ago I almost resigned myself to the end of my floundering. And then all of a sudden I'm already instilling groundless hopes in someone. Miracles right!

“Do you know what else makes me believe in Class Zero agents?”

“Telecom Super Soldiers? Dan suggested.

“I guessed right,” Semyon shook his head approvingly. “I don’t think so: it’s hardly possible to just take and copy the genome of a ghost, and then transplant it into a person. Surely they have some kind of protection - genome coding, genetic memory, whatever. But after all, even among the ghosts, or among those who control them, there may be traitors who agreed to serve the Martians. Therefore, traitor ghosts kill all people without chips. Surely they are the best privy to the secrets of the Empire. From what I learned about them, we can conclude that this is more likely not a special firmware, but some kind of fatal bug. The Martians themselves did not give up this hunt, they are practical people and they believe in class zero agents insofar as they do.

“Well, it means that not all super-soldiers have this bug.

- In what sense? Should everyone have it?

"Why do you think I'm still breathing after meeting them." One turned out to be not so scumbag and dunked the other, who was about to rip my head off. In general, a good guy, I now probably owe him my life. He kind of has free will.

Why does he need free will? Simon was surprised.

- To suffer. If you have free will, then like it or not, you will have to suffer.

   Denis shivered shiveringly and looked around. He was so carried away by the conversation that he did not notice how it began to get dark. Cool air rushed into his chest, bringing with it the smell of withered grass and wet earth. Denis was already pretty noisy in his head and the autumn evening sparkled with new colors. Even the usually irritating silence of half-abandoned Moscow streets began to seem mysterious and soothing. As if a soft cover hid them from enemy eyes and ears. A single lantern was burning in the garden, and around it, for the million and first time, mindlessly repeating the routine of things, myriads of insects had already begun to gather. Just think, someone is already about to rewrite their mind on a quantum matrix, but can this smart guy unequivocally answer a simple question: why insects fly into the world with suicidal persistence. After all, their struggle is absolutely hopeless, but they are so stubborn that suddenly one of the countless billions will be able to complete a great mission and make all the other insects on the planet happy.

“Do you think Schultz also thought I was a class zero agent. Like an exclusive product that you can present on a silver platter to your favorite Martians to curry favor? Dennis broke the silence.

Nothing personal, just business. Well, if this is only his initiative, and if the central office is interested in this, then you definitely won’t get off the hook.

Yes, I know I have nothing to lose. And you, dear Semyon Sanych, have something to lose?

- To me? With my arthritis and sclerosis? Only upholstering the thresholds of polyclinics in old age. But what do you propose to do? If you were really an agent of class zero, and I would know how to activate you ... otherwise ...

- No need to despair. Let's find a way to activate me: shake up Schultz or Arumov, dig up something.

- You're a simple guy, shake Schultz. Maybe we can shake some boss from Neurotek right away? However, yes, why is this senile grumbling. Since you, so young and beautiful, are in a hurry to die, then I am even more obliged to risk it.

“Well, then, it’s decided, to hell with the Eastern Bloc, we are looking for a way to activate a class zero agent. Come on, for us, - Denis enthusiastically raised his flask.

“You still amaze me. So you easily believe that some unfamiliar old fart will go with you to the embrasure?

“Why not, you yourself say that there are many people in the world who hate Martians. And if this is a joke, or you are some kind of paid Martian provocateur, and to hell with him.

“Those who hate the Martians are probably millions and billions, but not all of them are seriously ready to fight. You understand that we will lose and die with a probability of 99 and 9 in the period. The Martians are endlessly at war with each other, but in the fight against an external enemy, especially one as pathetic as us, their entire system is absolutely monolithic.

“Fear is a bad adviser. Maybe the Martians won not because they are so cool, but because the whole world just buried itself in its virtual little worlds and is afraid to blather.

“Unfortunately, the real world has shrunk too much, and no one can notice our blathering in it.

- Yes, it's all not important, they will notice, they will not notice. This is not the case when you need to calculate the probabilities, you just need to believe and start doing something. If my struggle is even slightly important to this world, I hope the laws of probability will be on my side. And if not, then it turns out that my whole life is no more expensive than dust and there is no need to worry about it.

“Your truth,” Semyon agreed reluctantly.

   That's how easily and naturally Denis found himself a comrade for a hopeless war with virtual reality. Who knows, maybe it just coincided, or maybe there really were too many people in the world who had reasons not to like the Martians, and it was enough to poke a finger at the first person they met. Denis, of course, did not really believe in the stories about the class zero agent. He only immediately believed in his fight, and from the mere anticipation of a real fight, his heart began to pound in his temples, and his mouth was filled with the smell of blood. Drums beat in my ears, and the bitter smells of endless fields and burning fires beat in my nose. And I terribly wanted to live until the moment when he would stick and turn the knife in the flabby body of virtual reality. In no club in the west of Moscow did he so much want to live to see the next day.

Source: habr.com