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OUTCAST 38
Three minivans turned from the night highway into the forest to a country road, shook a little on the bumps and, turning off the headlights, drove into a moonlit clearing, and then carefully rolled between the trees, hiding among the darkness between the trunks and branches. Dismounted.Hot, and with him 12 fighters from the capture group of the Central Directorate of the Anti-Drug Committee of Krum, clubfoot, so as not to make noise with brushwood on the grass, silently went through the forest to where the lights of the estate were barely guessed. We went out to the edge of the trees, seeing a cottage in front of us, more precisely, almost a castle - three-story, with towers, surrounded by utility yards, a bathhouse, a swimming pool, garages and a long one-story house for servants.They cut off a couple of coils of barbed wire, dashed across the treadmill and pressed against the wall of the warehouse. In a squat, in single file so as not to stick out in the light from the windows, we
OUTCAST 39
Ratmir looked at the thickets around him and was surprised. He remembered the swamps as trees, but he had never had a chance to lie down like this, without being distracted by anything with his muzzle in the ground. The captain was waiting for the appearance of lavenders on the road and was amazed that he did not know about the existence of a whole separate universe of life from nature on this floor. Dozens of different forms of small insects swarmed among the roots, busy with pressing matters. It suddenly seemed to him that he did not see the difference between the flies, which he had previously considered disgusting and charming butterflies. Everyone here had a legal residence permit, friends and enemies, a mission.All these little bits of life climbed through the mud and grass stalks - also colorful and varied. Some stems stuck out powerfully, like a power line pylon, or a pillar of stability, firmly and solidly. Others - thin, shaking in even a small wind, intricately making thei
OUTCAST 40
Messages and pictures about the columns of troops and armored vehicles entering Marchand were pouring into the chat from everywhere. The night streets of the capital trembled under the weight of tanks, hummed under the wheels of heavy armored personnel carriers and trucks with soldiers. Battalion after battalion surrounded the area of the Cathedral from all sides, the infantry scattered over the floors of nearby buildings, located at the windows overlooking the square. The surrounding neighborhoods were cut off from the power supply and drowned in darkness. The square and the Cathedral were snatched out of the darkness by a sparkling spot of fire, and above it in the sky, cutting circles, several helicopters rumbled.Last night it looked like we won. Guards and city guards were in a stupor. Hammer with his political supporters, in groups of several hundred, rushed to expand the bridgehead, seize administrative buildings in the city center, block the main avenues, overturning police
OUTCAST 41
Vastu News was reporting from a drone from Al-Aranb, a city on the central highway of the Choban Valley, where nomads had broken into in the morning. Several houses were on fire, robbery was going on in the city, residents fled in different directions. Black smoke billowed from the mall, and dust swirled through the streets, kicked up by a swarm of jeeps. The broadcast was silent, but social networks were full of videos taken by participants in the events. In horror, residents posted how SUVs with machine guns were moving through the streets. Bearded haired men drove in jeeps directly into adobe huts, which one they liked, and broke into cabinets, climbed into basements, grabbed computers, household appliances, took them out and put them in trunks. Behind them, trucks with women and children drove into the streets, who ran home, raking out everything else - dishes, food, clothes, toys. They scoured the cellars and roofs in search of residents who did not have time to escape - they had
OUTCAST 42
I looked into the forward view camera. Unlike the simulation program in the "windows", there was real space here, this is how it looked like where I was flying. Gray ripples, not disturbed by anything. No objects, nothing but gray flickering gloom. Only in the lower right corner of this void is a running stream of numbers - the distance traveled, speed, coordinates, course parameters.The ripples were not in the cell, but in my eyes. There was a lump in the throat, nausea, all the time disturbing with the urge to vomit. His forehead hurt, heartbeats were hard to feel in all veins. I just started to come to my senses, at least I began to roughly understand where I am, what day it is ... I flew away from Belolessia, consider it automatically. Set a course to the side "to hell away." Well, at least all the batteries were charged before "everything".The shower did not help, it immediately felt sick there. Sleep didn't help. Instead of sleep, I fell into a resounding failure and only saw
OUTCAST 43
The co-chairman of the Intergalactic Commission on State Building and Law, Gilats, who agreed to an exclusive interview in his hotel room, is simply incredible luck for Wagner and his team. Beginners are lucky, although colleagues in the workshop, looking enviously after them, were sure that this was due to “some kind of secret smear”. Precisely, no one “punched” this contact for the guys, it was really lucky. Toli Lilit somehow very gracefully threw her legs over her legs, sitting in an armchair in the first row of the commission's meeting room. Toli Gilats saw their reports from the Choban Valley (I must say, they thundered and were noted as very successful. The filmmakers were noticed and respected). Tolya liked Wagner's hilarious question at the press conference... In short, suddenly, caught in the corridor, Gilats told my filmmakers to come to him in the evening with a camera, to work.In the room, while the four were fiddling with cameras, sound, background and light, Wagner beg
OUTCAST 44
Hot in the back seat of the gelika with tinted windows comfortably stretched out his long legs and looked out the window as the car drove out of the sanatorium, where in the gym now his 12 fighters were sleeping sweetly in anticipation of morning coffee and buns. They were here under the guise of a team of workers - plasterers and painters, and he was like their foreman, who went to the city for paint and other things.Five days ago, a "legitimate" drug lord received him sincerely at Wolf's Beach. We spent the night with cognac and shish kebab on the shore of a quiet moon pond, listening to night birds and frogs, having a swim in cool water, having a chat for life. We also talked about mournful matters, and the baron gave a normal contact. They crossed the border along the path of drug couriers and surrendered to the local border guards in the Valley of Thunder, who brought them to this sanatorium. For three days we slept and ate in the gym without going out into the street. Finally,
OUTCAST 45
After all the troubles in Marchand, I still didn’t even want to play any shooting games or strategies. I flipped through the new toys and closed the app. Yes, and with all these thoughts about reality and virtuality, I wanted to deal with something material. Saved my ship. Nothing was broken, but I got into the service compartments - wipe the nodes with oil, tighten the screws, check the voltage and temperatures.Still, it was real iron, without any holograms there. It was hard or flexible, hot or cold, it responded with a tinkle or a hum to my touch, I felt my aggregates and wires with my hands. Even if it comes to that, and I myself am all virtual, then my spaceship is real. He has mass, speed, coordinates. He has an age - the date of manufacture and the registration certificate is genuine, and not glued together by hackers or rogues from the village ovir. So, if doubts about the reality of my existence crept in, then he has a real body ...He has not only a body, but also a mind -