1.
It turned out to be a bad day. It started with me waking up in new props. That is, in the old ones, of course, but those that were no longer mine. The red curly arrow in the corner of the interface blinked, signaling the completed movement.
"Damn you!"
Becoming a migrant for the second time in a year is a bit much, of course. Things are not going my way.
However, there was nothing to be done: it was time to reel in the fishing rods. All that was needed was for the owner of the apartment to show up - they could be fined for being in someone else’s premises in excess of the established limit. However, I had a legitimate half hour.
I jumped out of bed, now a stranger to me, and pulled on my clothes. Just in case, I pulled the refrigerator's handle. Of course, it didn't open. The expected inscription appeared on the board: “Only with the permission of the owner.”
Yes, yes, I know, now I'm not the owner. Well, to hell with you, I didn’t really want to! I'll have breakfast at home. I hope the previous owner of my new home will be kind enough to not leave the refrigerator empty. There were miserliness when moving, but nowadays petty behavior is not in fashion, at least among decent people. If I had known what would happen that night, I would have left breakfast on the table. But for the second time in a year - who could have guessed?! Now you have to wait until you get home. You can have breakfast along the way, of course.
In frustration from the unplanned move, I didn’t even bother to study the new details, I just set the jeep on the path to its new home. I wonder how far it is?
“Go out the door, please.”
Yes, I know what’s at the door, I know!
Before finally leaving the hut, he patted his pockets: taking other people’s things as souvenirs was strictly forbidden. No, there's nothing strange in the pockets. One bank card in my shirt pocket, but it's okay. Her settings changed during the move, almost simultaneously. Banking technologies, however!
I sighed and forever slammed the door of the apartment that had served me for the last six months.
“Call the elevator and wait for it to arrive,” the prompter flashed.
A neighbor from the apartment opposite came out of the elevator that opened. She is always preoccupied with something of her own. I have developed quite a friendly relationship with this neighbor. At least we said hello and even smiled at each other a couple of times. Of course, this time she didn't recognize me. The neighbor’s visual was set to the same me, but now I had a different identifier. In fact, I became a different person who had nothing in common with the old me. My visual was set up in a similar way - I would never have guessed what kind of woman I met if she had not unlocked the neighbor’s apartment with a key.
The tipster was silent as if dead: he shouldn’t have greeted his former acquaintance. She apparently guessed everything and didn’t say hello either.
I got into the elevator, went down to the first floor and went out into the courtyard. The car should have been forgotten - it, like the apartment, belonged to the rightful owner. The lot of immigrants is public transport, we had to come to terms with this.
The jeepie blinked, pointing the way to the bus stop. Not to the metro, I noted with surprise. This means my new apartment is nearby. The first encouraging news since the beginning of the day - unless, of course, the bus route runs through the entire city.
"Bus stop. Wait for bus number 252,” the tipster said.
I leaned against a pole and began to wait for the indicated bus. At this time I was wondering what new details my changing fate had in store for me: an apartment, a job, relatives, just acquaintances. The most difficult thing is with relatives, of course. I remember how, as a child, I began to suspect that my mother had been replaced. She answered several questions inappropriately, and there was a feeling: in front of me was a stranger. Made a scandal for my father. My parents had to calm me down, reconfigure the visuals, and explain: from time to time, people’s bodies exchange souls. But since the soul is more important than the body, everything is fine, honey. Mom’s body is different, but her soul is the same, loving. Here is my mother's soul ID, look: 98634HD756BEW. The same one that has always been.
At that time I was very small. I had to truly understand what RPD – random transfer of souls – was at the time of my first transfer. Then, when I found myself in a new family, it finally dawned on me...
I couldn't finish the nostalgic memories. I didn’t even hear the tipster’s scream, only out of the corner of my eye I saw a car bumper flying towards me. Reflexively I leaned to the side, but the car had already crashed into the pole where I had just been standing. Something hard and blunt hit me in the side - it didn’t seem to hurt, but I instantly passed out.
2.
When he woke up, he opened his eyes and saw a white ceiling. Gradually it began to dawn on me where I was. In the hospital, of course.
I squinted my eyes down and tried to move my limbs. Thank God, they acted. However, my chest was bandaged and ached dully; I couldn’t feel my right side at all. I tried to sit up on the bed. The body was pierced by a strong, but at the same time muffled pain - apparently from the drugs. But I was alive. Therefore, everything worked out and you can relax.
The thought that the worst was over was pleasant, but the underlying anxiety haunted me. Something was clearly not normal, but what?
Then it struck me: the visual is not functioning! The vital status graphs were normal: they danced unusually, but I was after a car accident - deviations from the norm were to be expected. At the same time, the prompt did not work, that is, there was not even a greenish backlight. Usually you don’t notice the backlight due to the fact that it is always on in the background, so I didn’t immediately pay attention to it. The same applied to jeeps, entertainment, personality scanners, info channels and information about yourself. Even the basic settings panel was dimmed and inaccessible!
With weak hands I felt my head. No, there is no noticeable damage: the glass is intact, the plastic case fits tightly to the skin. This means that internal failure is already easier. Perhaps it’s an ordinary glitch - just reboot the system and everything will work. We need a biotechnician, the hospital probably has one.
On a clean machine, I tried to turn on the distress beacon. Then I realized: it won’t work – the visual is broken. All that remained was some kind of Middle Ages, just think! – sound a beep.
"Hey!" – I shouted, not really hoping that they would hear in the corridor.
They wouldn’t have heard it in the corridor, but they moved in the next bed and pressed the call button. I didn’t even know that such relic technology had survived. On the other hand, there must be some kind of alarm in case of technical damage to biological systems. Everything is correct.
The call light above the door flashed invitingly.
A man in a white coat entered the room. He looked around the room and unmistakably headed towards the person in need, that is, me.
“I am your attending physician Roman Albertovich. How are you feeling, patient?
I was a little surprised. Why did the doctor say his name - is my personality scanner not working?! And then I realized: it really doesn’t work, so the doctor had to introduce himself.
It smelled of the transcendental, the ancient. I could not determine the identity of the interlocutor using the scanner, so I was actually talking to an unidentified person. Out of habit it became creepy. Now I understood what robbery victims feel when an unknown person approaches them from the darkness. Now such cases are rare, but twenty years ago technical means to disable identifiers existed. Illegal, of course. It's good that they were completely eradicated. Nowadays, surviving such horror is only possible in the event of a technical malfunction. That is, in my case.
These sad thoughts flashed through my head in an instant. I opened my mouth to answer, but fixed my gaze on the dimmed prompt panel. Damn, it doesn’t function – I’ll never get used to it! You'll have to answer it yourself, live.
There are undeveloped people who cannot utter a coherent sentence without a prompter, but I was not one of those. I communicated quite often on my own: in childhood - out of mischief, later - realizing that I was able to formulate more deeply and accurately. I even liked it, although I didn’t go as far as outright abuse.
“My side hurts,” I formulated the sensations I was experiencing without the help of automation.
“You have a piece of skin torn off and several ribs broken. But that’s not what worries me.”
The doctor answered noticeably faster than me. What do you mean, any fool can read the subtitles of a tipster.
The doctor had an elderly face with an overly massive nose. If a visual assistant had worked, I would have adjusted the doctor’s nose downwards, smoothed out a couple of wrinkles and lightened my hair. I don't like thick noses, wrinkles and dark hair. Probably, the figure didn’t hurt either. But the visuals didn’t work—we had to observe reality in an unedited form. The feeling is still the same, it should be noted.
“It’s natural that this doesn’t bother you, Roman Albertovich. Broken ribs bother me. By the way, my visual is also broken. Most of the interface elements are dimmed,” I said, almost without straining.
The intellect of a man talking freely without a prompter could not help but make a favorable impression on the doctor. But Roman Albertovich did not move a single facial muscle.
"Give me your soul identification number."
Wants to make sure I'm sane. Isn't it clear yet?
"I can not."
“You don’t remember him?”
“I had an accident half an hour after moving in. I didn't have time to remember. If you need my ID number, scan it yourself."
"Unfortunately this is not possible. There is no soul ID in your body. It can be assumed that at the time of the accident it was in the chest area, and it was torn off along with the skin.”
“What does it mean in the chest area? Isn't the chip implanted in the hand? But my hands are intact.”
I raised my hands above the blanket and twirled them.
“The chips are implanted in the right hand along with the ports, yes. However, currently separate floating structures are used. After installation, the ports remain in the hand, and the identifiers begin to move freely around the body in accordance with the program embedded in them. The goal is to make illegal shutdowns impossible.”
“But... I remember my old ID, before the move. 52091TY901IOD, make a note. And I remember my previous last name, first name and patronymic. Zaitsev Vadim Nikolaevich."
The doctor shook his head.
“No, no, that won't help. If you moved, Vadim Nikolaevich Zaitsev is already a different person, you understand. By the way, it is precisely because of the lack of a shower identifier that your visualizer works in limited availability mode. The device itself is fine, we checked it.”
"What to do?" – I wheezed, heaving my broken ribs.
“The Department of Unidentified Souls will determine where your soul has moved to. This will take time - about a week. In the morning you will go to bandages. All the best, patient, get well soon. Sorry for not calling you by name. Unfortunately, it is unknown to me.”
Roman Albertovich left, and I began to figure out what was going on. I have lost my identifier, as a result of which I am currently an unidentified soul. Brrrrr! Just thinking about it made me shudder. And the visual doesn't work. There is nothing to hope for its recovery - at least in the next week. It really was a bad day – it didn’t go well from the very morning!
And then I noticed the man on the next bed.
3.
The neighbor looked at me without saying a word.
He was almost an old man, with disheveled hair and a beard sticking out in different directions in faded tufts. And the neighbor had no visuals, that is, none at all! Instead of eyepieces, naked, live pupils looked at me. The darkening around the eyes, where the case had previously been attached, was noticeable, but not too noticeable. It doesn’t look like the old man just freed himself from the visual – most likely, it happened a few days ago.
“It was broken during an accident,” I realized.
After a long silence, the neighbor spoke, rather sarcastically for the beginning of an acquaintance.
“What are you afraid of, my dear? You didn't organize the accident yourself, did you? My name is Uncle Lesha, by the way. You don’t know your new name, do you? I’ll call you Vadik.”
I agreed. He decided to ignore the familiar poking and “blue”; after all, he was a sick man. Moreover, in the bandages I myself was helpless: not even a few hours had passed before I was hit by a car. And in general, my ribs are broken. By the way, they began to ache - apparently, the effect of the analgesics was coming to an end.
“What are you afraid of, Vadik?”
“It’s unusual to be unidentified.”
“Do you believe this?”
“What?”
“The fact that souls fly from one body to another.”
I choked. The old man, it turns out, is crazy. Judging by his appearance, this was to be expected. At the same time, Uncle Lesha spoke non-stop, almost without thinking, although he also did not use a prompt. Well done, though.
“This is an established scientific fact.”
“Instituted by whom?”
“The brilliant psychophysicist Alfred Glazenap. Haven't you heard of him?
Uncle Lesha laughed deliciously. At that moment I presented the famous photograph in which Glazenap gives horns to another famous psychophysicist - Charles Du Preez. If old Glazenap had looked at the elderly senile man whom I am observing, he would have strengthened his disdain for humanity.
“And what did your brilliant psychophysicist establish?” – Uncle Lesha choked in laughter.
"That souls move from body to body."
“You know what I’ll tell you, Vadik...” - the neighbor leaned confidentially from the bed in my direction.
"What?"
“Man has no soul.”
I didn't find anything better than to ask:
“What then moves between bodies?”
“Who the hell knows? - Uncle Lesha muttered, shaking his goat beard. - How do I even know about the soul? I won’t be able to see her.”
“How can you not see it? You see it on the interface, in your own data. This is your shower ID."
“Your shower ID is faulty. There is only one identifier. It's me! I! I!"
Uncle Lesha slammed his fist on his chest.
“All identifiers cannot fail at the same time. Technology after all. If one of the identifiers lied, people with identical souls or people without a specific body would form. You are simply confusing your body with your soul. But these are different substances.”
We continued to talk without prompting. The accustomed gaze still slid over the idle panel, but the brain no longer waited for the required response, but generated it on its own. There was definitely a relish in this – semi-forbidden, which made it even more pungent and sweet.
“And just imagine,” said Uncle Lesha after some thoughtfulness, “that the identifiers fail in concert.”
"How is that?" – I was surprised.
“Someone is pressing the button.”
“That is, they do not detect the mutual movement of souls using wave interference, but are simply reprogrammed?”
"Well."
“A conspiracy, or what?”
The point that the old man was turned around began to dawn on me.
“Exactly!”
"What for?"
“Vadik, this is beneficial for them. Changing places of people at your own discretion - I guess it’s bad?”
“What about modern scientists? Hundreds of thousands of articles on RPD - random transfer of souls? Are they all conspirators?
“Yes, there is no soul, dear!” - the old man, losing his temper, yelled.
“Stop calling me blue, Uncle Lesha, otherwise I’ll ask you to move me to another ward. And man has a soul, let it be known to you. At all times, poets have written about the soul - even before RPD was discovered. And you say there is no soul.”
We both leaned back on the pillows and fell silent, enjoying the idiocy of our opponent.
Wanting to smooth out the pause that had ensued - after all, I had to be in the hospital with this man for several days - I turned the conversation to what seemed to me a safer topic:
“Did you also have an accident?”
"Why do you think so?"
“Well, how about it? Since you are lying in a hospital room..."
The old man grinned.
“No, I refused to wear my visual. And the bloke who came to move into my apartment was turned away from the gate. And when they tied him up, he broke the visual, right at the police station. Now they will restore it, then firmly attach it to the head, in an armored budget version. So that means he couldn’t take off any more.”
“So you’re a maximalist, Uncle Lesha?”
“Otherwise.”
I rolled my eyes. For maximalism in our time they gave up to 8 years.
“Don’t tremble, Vadik,” continued the criminal old man. - You got into a normal accident, you didn’t set anything up. The Department of Unidentified Souls won't keep you long. They'll let you out."
I turned over with difficulty and looked up. The window was covered with metal bars. Uncle Lesha didn’t lie: this was not an ordinary district hospital, but a hospital department of the Department of Unidentified Souls.
Well done for me!
4.
Two days later, Roman Albertovich informed me that my shower ID had been installed.
“The chip was manufactured, we have our own equipment. All that remains is to implant.”
The procedure itself did not take even ten seconds. The biotechnician wiped the skin fold between the thumb and forefinger with a cotton swab soaked in alcohol and injected the chip. After that he silently left.
The dimmed interface blinked a couple of times and came to life. In the week since the accident, I have almost lost the habit of using the prompt and other modern conveniences. It was nice to have them back.
Remembering the sad experience, the first thing I did was look at my personal data. Razuvaev Sergey Petrovich, shower ID 209718OG531LZM.
I tried to remember.
“I have another good news for you, Sergei Petrovich!” – said Roman Albertovich.
For the first time since we met, he allowed himself a slight smile.
Roman Albertovich opened the door, and a woman with her five-year-old daughter entered the room.
"Dad! Dad!" – the girl squealed and threw herself on my neck.
“Be careful, Lenochka, dad had an accident,” the woman managed to warn.
The scanner showed that this was my new wife Razuvaeva Ksenia Anatolyevna, shower ID 80163UI800RWM and my new daughter Razuvaeva Elena Sergeevna, shower ID 89912OP721ESQ.
"Everything is fine. How I miss you, my dear ones,” the tipster said.
"Everything is fine. How I miss you, my dear ones,” I did not contradict either the tipster or common sense.
“When you moved, Seryozha, we were so worried,” the wife began to tell, with tears in her eyes. - We waited, but you didn’t come. Helen asks where dad is. I answer that he will come soon. I answer, but I myself am shaking with fear.”
Using the restored capabilities of the interface, I, with slight movements of the pupils, adjusted Ksenia’s face and figure in the likeness of the wives who had visited my body before. I didn’t make complete copies - it was considered bad form, with which I completely agreed - but I did add some similarities. This makes it easier to settle into a new place.
Lenochka did not require any improvement: even without any adjustments, she was young and fresh, like a pink petal. I just changed her hairstyle and the color of her bow, and also pressed her ears closer to her skull.
Welcome back to your family, boy.
“Who knew that the car’s brakes would fail,” said the tipster.
“Who knew that the car’s brakes would fail,” I said.
Obedient boy.
“I almost went crazy, Seryozha. I contacted the emergency service, they answered: this has not been reported, there is no information. Wait, he must appear."
Ksenia still couldn’t stand it and burst into tears, then spent a long time wiping her happy, tear-stained face with a handkerchief.
We talked for about five minutes. The tipster received the necessary information by analyzing the behavior of my soul in the previous bodily shell using neural networks. Then he gave the required lines, and I read them out, not being afraid to miss. Social adaptation in action.
The only deviation from the script during the conversation was my appeal to Roman Albertovich.
“What about the ribs?”
“They’ll grow together, there’s nothing to worry about,” the doctor waved his hand. “I’ll go get an extract.”
My wife and daughter also came out, giving me the opportunity to get dressed. Groaning, I got out of bed and got ready to go out.
All this time, Uncle Lesha was watching me with interest from the next bed.
“What are you happy about, Vadik? This is the first time you’ve seen them.”
“The body sees for the first time, but the soul does not. She feels a kindred spirit, that’s why she’s so calm,” the tipster said.
“Do you think this is the first time I’ve seen them?” – I became self-willed.
Uncle Lesha laughed as usual.
“Why do you think the souls of men move exclusively into men’s, and the souls of women into women’s? Both age and location are approximately preserved. Eh, blue?”
“Because wave interference of human souls is possible only in gender, age and spatial parameters,” recommended the tipster.
“So a man’s soul and a woman’s soul are different,” I remarked thoughtfully.
“Do you know about the existence of people who do not move? Nowhere at all."
I heard such rumors, but I did not respond.
In fact, there was nothing to talk about - we talked about everything in a week. I learned the old man’s simple argumentation, but there was no way to convince the maximalist. It seems that throughout his entire life, Uncle Lesha’s body has never been given a professorship.
However, they parted amicably. They promised to deliver the visual for the old man tomorrow - therefore, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow he will have an implantation operation. I did not specify whether Uncle Lesha would be sent to prison after the operation. Why should I care about a random neighbor in a hospital room, even if it’s not a hospital, but the Department of Unidentified Souls?!
“Good luck,” I read the tipper’s final remark and stepped towards my wife and daughter, who were waiting outside the door.
5.
Imprisonment in the Department of Unidentified Souls is a thing of the past. The ribs had healed, leaving a twisting scar on his chest. I enjoyed a happy family life, with my wife Ksenia and daughter Lenochka.
The only thing that poisoned my new life were the seeds of doubt that the old maximalist Uncle Lesha planted in my brain so that he would be empty. These grains haunted me and never ceased tormenting me. They had to either be carefully sprouted or uprooted. Still, I was often moved around among scientific workers - I got used to the need to solve personal problems through logical introspection.
One day I came across a file about the history of the RPD: an old one, in an ancient, now no longer used format. I did not fail to familiarize myself with it. The file contained a review report submitted by a certain official to a higher authority. I marveled at how civil servants could write in those days - efficiently and thoroughly. I had the feeling that the text was composed without the help of a prompter, but this was impossible, of course. It’s just that the style of the report did not quite match the style usually produced by linguistic automation.
The information contained in the file was as follows.
In the era of syncretism, people had to exist in dark times of the inseparability of the soul from the body. That is, it was believed that the separation of the soul from the body is possible only at the moment of bodily death.
The situation changed in the middle of the 21st century, when the Austrian scientist Alfred Glazenap put forward the concept of RPD. The concept was not only unusual, but also incredibly complex: only a few people in the world understood it. Something based on wave interference - I missed this passage with mathematical formulas, unable to understand them.
In addition to the theoretical justification, Glazenap presented a diagram of an apparatus for identifying the soul - the stigmatron. The device was incredibly expensive. Nevertheless, 5 years after the opening of the RPD, the world's first stigmatron was built - with a grant received from the International Foundation for Innovation and Investment.
Experiments on volunteers began. They confirmed the concept put forward by Glasenap: the RPD effect takes place.
By pure chance, the first couple to exchange souls was discovered: Erwin Grid and Kurt Stiegler. The event thundered in the world press: portraits of the heroes did not leave the covers of popular magazines. Grid and Stiegler became the most famous people on the planet.
Soon the star couple decided to restore the shower status quo, making the world's first relocation of bodies after souls. Adding piquancy was the fact that Grid was married and Stiegler was single. Probably, the driving force behind their action was not the reunification of souls, but a banal advertising campaign, but soon this did not matter. The settlers felt much more comfortable in the new places than in the previous ones. Psychologists all over the world are up in arms—literally standing on their hind legs. Overnight, the old psychology collapsed to be replaced by a new progressive psychology - taking into account the RPD.
The world press conducted a new information campaign, this time in favor of the therapeutic effect tested by Grid and Stiegler. Initially, attention was focused on the positive aspects of resettlement in the complete absence of negative ones. Gradually, the question began to be posed on a moral plane: is it right that bilateral consent is necessary for resettlement? Isn't the desire of at least one side enough?
Filmmakers seized on the idea. Several comedy series were filmed in which funny situations that arise during relocation were played out. Resettlement has become part of the cultural code of humanity.
Subsequent research revealed many soul-swapping couples. Characteristic patterns for movement have been established:
- usually the movement occurred during sleep;
- pairs of souls exchanging were exclusively male or female; no mixed cases of exchange were recorded;
- the couples were approximately the same age, no more than a year and a half apart;
- Typically, couples were located within 2-10 kilometers, but there were cases of distant exchanges.
Perhaps at this point the history of the RPD would have died down, and then completely ended as a scientific incident with no practical significance. But soon after that - somewhere in the middle of the 21st century - a visual was designed, in its almost modern version.
The visual changed literally everything.
With its advent and subsequent mass spread, it became clear that immigrants can be socially adapted. The visuals had individual interfaces tailored to the individual, which made the settlers indistinguishable from other citizens, who also read out remarks from the prompt panels. No difference was observed.
Thanks to the use of visuals, the inconvenience for displaced people has practically disappeared. Bodies were able to follow the displaced souls without noticeable damage to socialization.
Legislation - first in several countries, then internationally - was supplemented with clauses on mandatory soul identification and mandatory resettlement in the event of a recorded RPD, and the effect was achieved. The number of psychoses among the renewed humanity has declined. What kind of psychosis if at any night your life can change - perhaps for the better?!
Thus, resettlement became a vital necessity. People found peace and hope. And humanity owed all this to the brilliant discovery of Alfred Glasenap.
“What if Uncle Lesha is right?” – I had a crazy thought.
The tipster blinked, but said nothing. Probably a random glitch. The interface picks up thoughts addressed directly to it and ignores others. At least that's what the specification says.
Despite the absurdity of the assumption that arose, it should have been considered. But I didn’t want to think. Everything was so nice and measured: work in the archive, hot borscht, which Ksenia would feed me upon my return...
6.
In the morning I woke up from a woman's squeal. An unfamiliar woman, wrapped in a blanket, squealed, pointing her finger at me:
"Who are you? What are you doing here?
But what does unfamiliar mean? Visual adjustment did not work, but the identity scanner showed that this was my wife Ksenia. The details were the same. But now I saw Ksenia in the form in which I first saw her: at the moment when my wife opened the door to my hospital room.
"What the heck?" – I swore, without even looking at the prompt panel.
When I looked, the same phrase was shining there.
It's always like that with wives. Is it really difficult to guess what moved me? The visual adjustments set to my Soul ID were set to their default values, making it impossible to recognize me by my appearance. Unless, of course, Ksenia used visual adjustments, but I didn’t know that. But you could have guessed about my movement! If you go to bed with one man in the evening and wake up with another, it means the man has moved. Isn't it clear?! This isn't the first time you've woken up with a displaced husband, you fool?!
Ksenia, meanwhile, did not let up.
I rolled out of bed and quickly got dressed. By that time, my ex-wife had woken up my ex-daughter with her screams. Together they formed a two-voice choir capable of raising the dead from the grave.
I exhaled as soon as I was outside. I gave the jeep the address and it blinked.
“Go left along the square,” the prompter flashed.
Shivering from the morning cold, I walked towards the metro.
To say that I was choked with rage would be an understatement. If two moves in a year seemed like rare bad luck, then the third lay beyond the bounds of probability theory. It couldn't be a simple coincidence, it simply couldn't!
Is Uncle Lesha right, and RPD is controllable? The idea was not new, but it was overwhelming with its fundamental obviousness.
What actually contradicts Uncle Lesha’s statements? Does a person have no soul? All my life experience, all my upbringing suggested: this is not so. However, I understood: the concept of Uncle Lesha did not require the absence of a soul. It was enough to accept the syncretism of the ancients - the approach according to which the soul was tightly tied to a specific body.
Let's say. Classic conspiracy theory. But for what purpose?
I was still in the active thinking stage, but the answer was known. Of course, for the purpose of managing people. Court and confiscation of property is a too long and burdensome procedure for the owners of life. It is much easier to simply move a person to a new habitat, as if randomly, without malicious intent, on the basis of physical law. All social ties are severed, material wealth changes—literally everything changes. Extremely convenient.
Why was I moved for the third time in a year?
“For the study of RPD. With a certain amount of bad luck, it can lead to maximalism,” a thought flashed.
The tipster blinked, but said nothing. I was horrified and sat down on a bench. Then he pulled the visual from his head and began to carefully wipe its eyepieces with a handkerchief. The world appeared before me again in an unedited form. This time he did not give me a distorted impression, rather the opposite.
"You feel bad?"
The girl, ready to help, looked at me sympathetically.
"No thanks. My eyes hurt - probably the settings were wrong. Now I’ll sit for a while, then I’ll take the device in for repair.”
The girl nodded and continued on her young path. I bowed my head so that the absence of visuals would not be noticeable to passers-by.
Still, why this third, clearly unplanned relocation? Think, think, Seryozha... Or Vadik?
The visual was in my hands, and I didn’t remember my new name - and didn’t want to remember this time. What's the difference, Seryozha or Vadik? I am me.
I remembered how Uncle Lesha beat himself in the chest with his fist and shouted:
"It's me! I! I!"
And the answer came immediately. I was punished! The migrants are accustomed to the fact that in each new life their material wealth differs from the previous one. Usually the difference was negligible, although the poles existed. Consequently, in my new life, material wealth will be reduced.
I could have checked the bank account right now by wearing a visual device, but, in the excitement of thinking, I didn’t bother.
I concentrated and put on my visual aid. At the same time, I tried to think about what the weather would be like next week. It would be nice if it didn’t rain: walking under an umbrella is inconvenient, and your shoes are wet afterwards.
Following the jeep, I, in a state of artificial retardation, reached my new home.
When I entered the elevator, I suddenly realized: it doesn’t matter whether my material wealth goes down or up. The masters of life will not succeed. I don’t know for what reason, but one day the RPD will turn an unpredictable reverse side towards them. Then these secretive and ruthless creatures will be wiped out from the face of the planet.
You will lose, you inhumans.
The elevator doors opened. I went out onto the landing.
“Go into apartment No. 215. The door is on the right,” the tipster said.
The jeepie blinked, indicating the direction.
I turned to the right door and placed my palm against the identification plate. The lock clicked confidentially.
I pushed the door and stepped into a new life.
Source: habr.com