I must have done a couple more turns on the spiral stairs than necessary and descend into the lobby. The recent visitors are not here anymore, they must be enjoying the life's pleasures already.
Just one guy stands by the table browsing through the black album, short and stooping, with a face like of a famished marmot, with long strands of hair breaking loose from under the cap that's hung low above his eyes. I almost pass him going to the door into the service area when I get it. In the meanwhile the guy had put the album back and started to move towards the door.
– Hey, Cap! – I call him.
He stops and turns around slowly, his eyes are empty and as cheerful as the ones of the boiled fish.
– You're Cap, – I repeat.
No reaction whatsoever, the guy goggles at me absolutely blankly.
– I don't like you! – I say with a sudden joy, – Do you hear me? I don't like you at all!
– 'Haha' three times, – replies Cap averting his pale gaze and turns to the door again. He doesn't have any curiosity at all. He's a compatriot at least.
– Stop! – I shout into his back and he stops, waiting indifferently, – You shouldn't return here anymore, – I say.
Cap smirks – the first emotion on his face, but it looks so mechanic as if I'm talking to a program instead of an alive person.
– What do you want here?
Looks like it's the question that he's ready to answer.
– Some collective psychology research.
– Conduct it elsewhere.
His pale eyes examine me from feet to the head.
– Do you work here?
– No.
– You're mutant then.
I feel myself lost after such a weird characteristic and Cap explains:
– The loss of social and ethical orientation. Personality decomposition. What an inevitable and disgusting metamorphosis.
Already opening the door, he adds:
– Boring…
…Vika's voice reaches me by the exit:
– Leonid, wait! Don't!
It's quite difficult to get back to my senses. I realize that my right hand clings to the belt and the left one squeezed in a fist. I look at Vika feeling how my fury slowly fades.
– Was it Cap? – I define just in case.
– Yes.
– I think I'm starting to understand your reaction.
– Have you cooled down already? – inquires Vika, – Good boy. Let's go.
I'm already feeling uncomfortable of my recent outbreak. Strange, I never thought it's so easy to start me, by in general quite meaningless words.
– Who is he, Vika?
She feels that she'll have to answer this question.
– Nothing special. Just a person who thinks he has a right to judge everyone around.
– Virtual prostitutes for instance?
– Not only. I know a couple more places where Cap conducts his experiments.
– He said something about psychology…
These words amuse Vika for some reason:
– The person that is unable to be creative always tries to justify his destructive behavior. Very often this is done in a form of aloof watching of the world's imperfections, especially ones such as our brothel…
We enter the door from which the black kitten is smiling, and Vika goes on:
– Psychology is a very simple science according to the general opinion. People aren't able to hammer the nail in by themselves or to rhyme at least a couple of lines never doubt in their ability to understand – and to judge others. In extreme cases it becomes the essence of their lives and the source of self-confidence.
– Who are you, Vika?
– A psychologist. PhD, if you want to know.
She sits down, sweeps the gravel from the table. The room obviously needs cleaning after the earthquake. Since there's no second chair here, I just squat nearby.
– And your Thesis' subject is?…
– "Abnormal behavioral reactions' sublimation in the virtual space environment".
As if in apology, she adds:
– It's common to formulate this way.
I see…
– You're studying those like Cap? – I ask, – The real hunter for the fake ones?
– No, and for a long time by now, Lenia. It was interesting to study for half a year or more. But now – all they are similar, that Cap and others alike. All pathologies are the same and if you know one psychopath, you can guess the behavior of thousand of them.
– Then why?..
– Because they exist. The destruction that comes out of them can hurt just a couple of people here. In the real world they'll leave a trace of broken lives, poisoned love, ridiculed friendship after them. Maybe even blood. But here they are harmless, all their arrogance, animal reactions and self-conceit is just a dust, dust on the wind.
– But it's hard for you here!
– So what? It's not real me who is hurt but a drawn one.
– Vika…
– I beg you – don't meddle in the Institution's business. Otherwise Madam will cancel your access.
She smiles and I feel confused.
– Okay, I'll not meddle in the Institution's business inside it.
– What about outside?
– This is a matter of my personal freedom.
Vika parts her hands.
– Leonid, how old are you?
– What about exchange? – I ask quickly, – Information for information?
Nobody does advertise their biographical data in virtuality but Vika doesn't have any idea how much am I not used to it.
– Okay Leonid. I'm 29.
Before I answer, I have time to rejoice.
– 34.
– I'd never think that, I'd give you just a little more than twenty.
It's not necessary to mention that my fears were quite opposite.
– Virtuality is deceitful.
– No, virtuality is like an ice, we freeze into it once and forever. It's impossible to take off our first mask. We can invent hundreds of bodies afterwards, but that, very first one will be evident always.
– Madam was your first mask?
Vika picks the purse from the table, takes the cigarette from it and lights it.
– Yes Lenia. We had got a grant for the research of human sexual behavior in virtuality, the Westerners were a little crazy about that… at least one third of all information in the Net was tied to sex somehow. So I've invented this personality – a brothel owner, self confident, experienced, the one who saw everything in this life.
– You were successful, – I admit.
Vika exhales the smoke and asks with a slight irony:
– Maybe I'm really like that deep inside, how do you know?
– I don't care.
I'm lying of course but Vika doesn't argue.
– Did Zuko reassure you?
– Almost.
– He's a good specialist. You can confidently bring your friend here.
I look at the watch, there's still some time left.
– It's not that easy, Vika. It's very important to guess right and come to fetch him in time.
– You hackers are funny folks, – says Vika. How interesting. Geez! I was considered a cool programmer.
– Will you allow me to sleep here for a while?
– What?
– To sleep. I'm in the Deep for almost 24 hours while it'd be better to work with a 'fresh' head.
Vika – how wonderful – approaches this business-like.
– Do you want me to wake you up?
– Yes, in two hours.
– Sleep, feel yourself at home, I'll wake you up myself.
She pats me on the head, the gesture that would fit Madam better but I'm pleased anyway. She nods at the bed and exits through the door that leads into costumier room. In a minute Madam will come out and will go to order the girls around.
In the meantime I do something not very polite, I get a spool with a thin thread from my jacket's pocket, the little weight is tied to the end of it.
The wind doesn't calm down outside the window, the thread is waving but I let it go to the end nevertheless. When the weight touches the slope I glance at the thread: each meter is marked with red paint.
Seven and a half meters (~24 feet). Bed sheets won't help here. Ah well, there must be some ropes in the brothel, at least in the rooms intended for sadomasochists.
I throw the spool outside feeling a little uncomfortable but convincing myself that most likely Vika would allow this little experiment. Haven't she said to feel myself at home anyway?
I plop down at the narrow bed, right on the comforter and close my eyes. But just before I allow myself to fall asleep, I exit virtuality anyway and order Windows-Home to wake me up in two hours.
The sleep comes almost instantly. For some reason I hope to see something prophetical and with a plot again, like as it was the last time when Alex shoot Unfortunate but what I see is a complete mess.
The rainbow shining above Deeptown, its blinding bright flashes look like deep program, but this rainbow is built of ledges, it's the biblical stairway to Heaven. I walk along it just as Computer Wiz in his slippers. I realize that the colors have different density – I fall in being on violet and blue layers, lean against the green ones slightly and step against the yellow ones confidently. The city below me is colorful and bright, I can see it through the multicolored mist.
I even know in my dream why do I ascend into the sky. Somewhere up there is a crystal dome of the Deep which had divided the world in two. I must break it, either using the Maniac's weapon or with my bare hands, no matter. The crystal would crack and stream down on the city, in a blinding bright star rain, because the stars are undoubtedly made of crystal, of a pungent crystal that reflects the light of our eyes.
And then something would happen; maybe the stars will burn us or maybe they'll have time to cool down and will fall right into the hands set below. I don't know for sure what do I want.
It's just most important not to make a mistake and to strike right in time. This time had already been defined, the time when I'll be able to turn the barrier into millions of crystal stars, it have almost come, the time…
– It's time… Time, Leonid.
I open my eyes accompanied by Windows-Home's whisper, a couple more seconds passes until I finally realize where am I. A moment later Vika enters.
– You're awaken already?
I nod, sit down on a messy bed and rub my forehead. The head is heavy, I had to either sleep more or not to sleep at all.
– I'll make coffee, – says Vika.
Leaned against the wooden wall I watch her. She takes a small sack with coffee out of the dark sideboard, dark not because of dirt but because of its age, then grinds the beans with a small manual polished brass coffee grinder, lights the fire with experience. I can smell the dry pine wood, boiling coffee and some abstract, not medical cleanliness… either the one of a water in a mountain stream or the one of the hot sand under the sun.
So good.
I can whisper my rhyme and exit into reality, to make a real coffee and even to spice it with remaining cognac, to wash my face with a cold water.
I'll be damned if I do that.
Everything is real here: the clean air, the live water, coffee grounds on the bottom of a cup, Vika's caring look. Outside there's only an abandoned dusty room, dampness and rotten water from the faucet.
… Too often do I feel that suicidal wish to become just as everybody lately …
– Some cognac? – asks Vika and pours me a little cup of Achtamar.
– I have five more minutes, – I say, – Then… it'll be time.
– You'll return not alone?
– I hope so.
– Take your friend by the hand when you enter, in this case he'll be given privileged status too. I'll ask Wiz.
– Thanks.
– You'll thank Madam for that. Everything depends on her.
– We're good friends with Madam, she'll allow that. – I smile.
I have time to drink two cups of coffee and two cups of cognac before my time really runs out.
I have to go.
Vika starts to clean the room when I exit, and involuntarily I remember fake families that started to appear more and more often as of late, all these couples that live in different cities renting common apartments in Deeptown. They say that they love to do house work, to vacuum clean and to do laundry – as if imitation of common life would make their union a real one.
"Do you have a family?"
"Yes. My wife is a prostitute, we have a small mountain hut in the brothel. You're welcome to visit us, she'll make a great coffee. It's always clean in our place, even after the earthquake."
I start feeling dread, just because such picture doesn't irritate me at all.
The situation requires an urgent solution, any solution.
I lag along the street to the entrance portal, pass by a small pavilion of some airline company with a bored operator inside. The beggar is perched by the pavilion, this is also some new phenomenon – paupers in virtual space, they weren't here just a month ago.
The beggar is clean but ragged and scraggy, his figure is a bit transparent and moves jerkily – it's how they try to demonstrate the low modem speed and the weakness of the software.
– Help me… – moans the beggar. { In English in the original }
– The God will give, – I inform him.
– Mr Hacker, at least one dollar… – cries the beggar behind my back.
They say that the majority of those beggars are Russians. They say that none of them needs money, this is just a new fun for the "New Russians", a rare amusement, to beg, to be in the pauper's skin for some time. It's like a fashionable and effective psychic therapy. Maniac once swore that he managed to glue a marker on one of such beggars who turned out to be a director of a big bank.
– I worked for Microsoft, – mumbles the beggar lagging behind, – Once I called Windoze a buggy proggy and praised OS/2. Bill Gates had personally fired me the next day and included me in the black list. I was a cool hacker… Look how low did I sink…
– What interruption is your modem hung to? – I shout turning back to him, – What does the display of the message "Press this button to begin" in Windows-Home depends on? Three best ways to freeze Windoze? Who invented texture graphics? The best protocol for the modems manufactured by….
The beggar flees.
Looks like Maniac was telling the truth.
But at least these amusements are less dangerous than the car races that were stylish among Neuve riches a year ago. That was the reason for the private cars to be forbidden in Deeptown, after which Deep-Transit had triumphantly occupied the transportation service niche.
The encounter with the beggar amuses me and by the time I approach the "Labyrinth"'s portal I have a completely different mood: a battle-like one.
The crowd is dense as usual, "Labyrinth" is still functioning which means that everything was calculated correctly, but the fear to run into the shut door at the last second doesn't let go of me. I elbow through the players in hurry and only when I type in my code and enter the 33rd level I finally calm down.
Let's begin!
I'm Gunslinger!