OUTCAST

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I do it sometimes. I'm crazy, what do you think? - may be. Not often, but sometimes I want to - and I do it. If you turn everything off and turn nothing on. I mean turn everything off. And then there is silence and darkness. At first, it's stressful. I can’t believe that, really, nothing will now burst through some sense organs into your brain. You need to sit in this for a couple of minutes to believe, to make sure that in fact absolutely nothing is seen or heard, nothing touches you, does not impose itself and does not take your attention.

The clock is turned off and it is impossible to understand how long the buzz of emptiness lasts. But it feels like it's short. Then the fear begins. No need to be afraid, you need to continue to sit and listen to yourself. The fierce horror from the emptiness grows quickly and suddenly it already seems that something is about to burst from animal fear. From that momentary joy of freedom nothing remains, nothing frightens as much as nothing. It doesn't threaten anything specifically, it doesn't even threaten. But there is a void in the knees, discharges shoot down the back, and the pelvic bone turns to stone below the back. The feeling that every second could be the last - right now everything will end. This is not a fear of a threat – a threat can be overcome... But there is nothing to overcome “in this”, the horror is that “this” cannot be overcome. "It" is definitely stronger than you, it will outlive you in any case. And in "it" there is nothing of yours, for you, it does not hate you. It does not come into contact with you and never will come into contact, but it can simply crush you, flatten you, drive over you. This horror can only be endured, although it seems unbearably long. As if you are flying from the roof to the inevitable asphalt, but o-very slowly ...

Then, after fear, the next station is resentment. When you feel that you have not been killed, fear becomes dull and at first, imperceptibly, then stronger, disappointment sets in. And then resentment. You feel that “this” is not empty, there is something in it. But you don't care about him. It sees you, hears you, knows all your thoughts, wishes and dreams, but it does not respect you, does not appreciate you. It is eternal, it does not care about your birth and death, all thoughts and desires. You are empty space for him. And it doesn't love you, it never will. And there is nothing but "this". Despair comes to trembling, shoulders and jaws tighten, presses temples and rolls anger. In anger, as in fear, there are moments of time freezing. You want to fly to the asphalt already, hit it, but it's not there. In the ears, as if standing under a power line, the same buzzing is only very loud, deafening itching. The elbows are pressed into the chair, the legs are bent so that the feet are pressed with terrible force into the seat from below. The palms do not even clench into fists, they are cramped, the fingers are bent and trembling. Your eyes seem to burst, and instead of darkness you see sparks in front of you, instead of silence you hear the rumble of blood through the vessels feels the seat, feels the sweat. The whole body hears not even heat, but fire. You dived into a boiling water bath. It just overflows with signals from all the senses - you can hear your fingers, even the hair on your head is audible. You can't grab the emptiness, you can't take it, but the hands already feel themselves, and then the chair that they grabbed, The ass feels the seat, feels the sweat. The whole body hears not even heat, but fire. You dived into a boiling water bath. It just overflows with signals from all the senses - you can hear your fingers, even the hair on your head is audible. You can't grab the emptiness, you can't take it, but the hands already feel themselves, and then the chair that they grabbed, The ass feels the seat, feels the sweat. The whole body hears not even heat, but fire. You dived into a boiling water bath. It simply overflows with signals from all the senses - you can hear your fingers, even the hair on your head is audible.

Anger disappears suddenly. Simply, all feelings disappear, again silence and darkness. For a while, my heart beats tiredly. In the temples you can hear its echoes, as if heavy bags are falling on the concrete. Then it's empty again. This is no longer the freedom that in the first seconds - happy, curious, brave. This is fatigue that flattens out on the chair, smears it, the head falls on its side. Cheeks that trembled in anger relax and hang like wrinkled curtains. The jaw hangs down, there are still some sensations from the fingers, which, in anger, he dug with his nails to the wounds. But in this feeling of hopelessness, nothing worries me anymore. In this state of vainness and uselessness, you look with your head to one side, at emptiness - without hopes and requests. Like something broken or dead.

So you can sit for a long time. It is lazy to look and listen, to see and hear that “it” does not move, does not react, does not glow and is silent. Maybe he doesn't exist?

The body somehow decides when to turn on the background. I don't remember ever making a conscious decision to leave my journey and come back. It's just that the hands suddenly turned on the background themselves. First, turn on the engine noise simulator. I used to like to change the track often, I was looking for different backgrounds with jokes. For a long time I flew under the track, where the rumble of the engine was beautifully mixed with African drums. Now I'm too old to suffer all this crap. I have a quiet, light hum set up, no melodies and no high frequencies at all. The world around takes on a sound - muffled, barely noticeable, without a rumble, even without a rhythm beat.

Then I turn on the light. By old age, he also began to avoid all shades (once he loved red, then he loved blue). Just dim evening light, even, without flashes and special effects. I never liked all these creative light vibrations, as if you had a Christmas tree in your house or a police car with a flashing light drove right into the house.

There is no need to rush to include everything at once. Sit, bro, in this one - in the quiet noise of the engine, in the cozy peace of the emergency lighting. Love your machine - a hard-working horse, your dear beauty. Take a look at the salon calmly - soft white, with a matte tint, ceiling, silvery, metallic, walls, floor stylized as concrete slabs. I don't have a lot of furniture - but, dear, by the way, they were made to order. Cabinets, tables - everything is clear, I already spoke a little about the chair - it is huge, with adjustable seat softness and temperature, rotating, rolling, transforming into a trestle bed and a mini sofa. My pride is the bed, about it later.

Leaning my head back on a comfortable cushion, relaxing my legs, just hanging them down, relaxing my arms on the armrests, I’ll sit a little and look at my home. It happens that it bothers me to the point that I want to blow everything up ... But now, after the “journey”, I feel good here, comfortable, I am pleased with myself, with everything that surrounds me. At some point, I feel like I'm smiling. A little bit the right cheek went to the side and the lips twisted, with the right edge up. The forehead feels like wrinkles have gone over it - this is my quiet joy. I don’t know how it looks from the outside, but it seems that my eyes are now a little glowing. Not sparks of delight, of course, but such, as it were, flickering coals of complacency.

At such a moment, I really like to look at the extinguished fire, where tiny fast lights run in the black ash - they hide in the abyss, emerge and sparkle. We will not make a fire on board. For this moment, I have a favorite imitation of the external view panorama. Company item. Well made, thought out to the details. As it were, the shutters open to the sides and a view of the surrounding space opens up. Black abyss with red lights of stars. You can look at it endlessly. Maybe not so long, but I, remaining in the chair, will look into this abyss for about five minutes. Today, according to the mood, I set the speed of “as if my movement” in this space to zero, and I will look at the motionless black haze with static, stellar sparks. They are certainly not static. If you look into some piece of black emptiness, you begin to distinguish there over time, little stars, you peer deeper and see more - the program draws the space into which you look endlessly, so that you can drown in it. Space fascinates with its infinite depth, immensity, immeasurable abundance and at the same time spaciousness. It takes your breath away when you think... No, you don’t think, but you even feel the limitless possibilities - where you can move, what you can do... There, in all directions, in all planes, along all axes, wherever you fly, you can fly forever. And everywhere there is something special, millions of worlds not similar to each other. And everywhere there is something to do ... when you think... No, you don't think, but you even feel the limitless possibilities - where you can move, what you can do... There, in all directions, in all planes, along all axes, wherever you fly, you can fly forever. And everywhere there is something special, millions of worlds not similar to each other. And everywhere there is something to do ... when you think... No, you don't think, but you even feel the limitless possibilities - where you can move, what you can do... There, in all directions, in all planes, along all axes, wherever you fly, you can fly forever. And everywhere there is something special, millions of worlds not similar to each other. And everywhere there is something to do ...

In principle, all the necessary control of the machine fits on a small device - a keyboard and a monitor 20 cm diagonal. But now I will turn on my mega control panel. Two meters high and five meters long. Almost five hundred indicators, with running numbers and letters, holograms of charts of states, maps, course. At the top right is a large plasma. The machine itself shows, as it were, news about its condition. You can control this and turn on an overview of different units and compartments, or you can give everything to the computer - it will generate “news releases about the state of various components of the machine, speed, pitch and heading, about the external environment, about objects that we are approaching ... The leading girl (her image I designed it myself) tells everything in a voice, at the bottom of the screen a running line with info runs. In general, there is not much useful information here, but this control panel creates a feeling of "fullness of being" with events. Right now, for example, presenter Polina reports news on electricity consumption, gives analytics and forecasts. How much will the batteries last in this situation, and how much in such a situation. In the other corner, the nearest planet is shown with its charts and a summary of the main data.

The views from the window, the news, the flickering of the control panel - revived me, so I got up from my chair and walked around the cabin. My refrigerator is not an imitation. I open and explore the range of possibilities. In the blue, slightly nervous glow, I find dumplings and spicy cabbage. Half a kilo of dumplings obediently goes into the pan, where boiling water is already raging, ready for anything. Tired of ketchup, mayonnaise and stuff. I’ll season the boiled dumplings with yellow butter and sprinkle a lot of ground black pepper on top, more than is considered normal. With hot cabbage I will put all this on a sparkling mirrored metal table. Equipped with a spoon, taking a fighting position sitting on a chair, I enter into interaction with dinner. The laws of physics are one of the few things in this world that does not require imitation or embellishment. Energy transformation can be different. She can move in space can be transformed from one type of energy to another, for example, from the energy of motion to electrical energy, and can change from the point of view of the perception of the one who observes it. But in any case, when it decreases somewhere, it arrives in another place. I casually think about it as I watch how dumplings, which were initially energy observed by my eyes, and I interacted with them through light waves, gradually disappeared, leaving my eyes with an empty and uninteresting plate. But at the same time, the stomach came alive with impressions. The belly, about which, I did not remember for many hours, now sent enthusiastic messages about its fullness with sensations, impressions and dumplings. If my belly had a phone and I*******m on it, it would be flooding the feed now, like a radiant young girl who reached the sea, put on a new swimsuit,

Just as a reliable and generous "daddy", touched by the delight of such a young girl, is proud of his greatness at such moments, so I was now touched by the sincere and direct joy of my stomach. And not only proud, but pleased with myself that I don’t swell from hunger and don’t eat some penny chemistry. Dumpling, of course, is not a meat tenderloin ... But in that ass in which I was now sticking out, it is not even sour.

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Finally, it's time to "immerse yourself in reality." I didn’t want to immediately go where I needed to, so I opened a general news feed from all subscriptions. Wow, "Demiurge" again announces a project for the materialization of a virtual ideal woman. Two previous attempts were unsuccessful. The names of their past projects confirmed the truth that as you name the ship, so it will sail ...

Their first project "Lilith" failed because the materialized "girls" were completely out of control. Their programs failed so much that they turned out to be much more independent than living ones and began to live their own lives, moreover, mysterious and unpredictable. The girls from the next Eve project were better protected from virus attacks and consumed less cache garbage from the network, but they were too dependent on the manufacturer's software and, in fact, were controlled by their admins. It turned out that these Evas were, in general, not yours. Someone “out there” decided what she would do and what not, and she was also inspired by thoughts “from there”.

As a result, both projects were rejected by the consumer, ridiculed by bloggers, and punished by investors. But the stubborn guys from the "Demiurge" after so much time, as we see, swam out of the shit with another attempt. The new project was called "Solaris" and they promised that they took into account all the past negative experience ...

I didn't really try the creatures from the previous projects. But I thought to myself that "Solaris" is a fire-dangerous name. Probably quick-tempered, like a solarium.

No matter how many subscriptions you clean, the feed is still gradually filled with advertising. You subscribe to a normal account, and he, the bastard, will gain more followers and sell it to advertisers. And here's a vacuum cleaner for you. I wind down the tape - for toilet paper, new overalls, a tool and a lot of different software. - Oops, here it is!

It happens that you wait for something for a long time, you know that it's about to happen, but when it happens, it's like a bolt from the blue. The Argun strategic forces are inflicting a complex attack on the Kaulnin region during these hours. I drop the tape, turn on the Apollo Z system news feeds on the plasma in full screen. I upload a special program there (it is an exclusive closed subscription. I am one of only a few million users), it gives a three-dimensional hologram of what is happening at any point of the 5th planet of the Apollo Z system, with analysis and reduction of similar numerous objects into units. Allows, by selecting a square, to quickly get all the stats and information on everything that is in it. You can quickly zoom in and out of the picture, take it at any scale. I will now be able to see in real time a panorama of what is happening on some square in the center of Kaulnin,

Judging by the huge black spots lying in the middle of the city, according to Kaulnin, the Argun strategic mine complexes have already been worked out. Now, heavy bombers were floating smoothly over the city, approaching for a new blow, enlivening everything with anti-aircraft guns with salutes. When the bombers changed direction and lined up to strike, when it became possible to try to predict where they would drop their bombs ... Even my exclusive program was mercilessly buggy, and the picture either shook, or blurred, or hung up. Millions of chats now filled the network with clues to those who are "below" where to run to escape. Relatives and friends, hired assistants sent text messages “down” to their own. Commerce tried at the last moment to throw in rates, thieves, scammers, lawyers, brokers - you can’t list them all, what a lot of people are now staring at hologravimeters, at a map, at a news feed, looking at the war, like a mother, like that puppy, looking out, how to grab a boob. The Argunians have made a satisfying trough today, and scavengers, predators, couch analysts are now rushing here from all galaxies...

The Argunians, trying to deceive the air defense and observers, turned sharply over the center of the city and, turning a loop over the river, six bombers crawled towards the industrial zone. For ten seconds they were approaching the factory building. The picture hung mercilessly, and finally the bomb carriers dropped their gifts on the industrial area. A strip ten kilometers long and two wide, stretching along the railway, flashed white, like a filament in a lamp. Then for a second it played with all the colors of the rainbow, then it turned crimson, and then the picture hung completely. There, as if time had stopped, and space began to distort and break. Millions of chats hung on questions of who survived and who did not. Some mothers are now frozen, staring into that black and red arc, waiting for answers from their children. The owners of the enterprises tried to find out the level of damage at their facilities.