Time of great architectural structures. Story

Audiobook



- You have something fried. You go to the kitchen, turn off the gas, or it will burn out.

Standing in the doorway, sniffing. Here is a scoundrel.

He had a slightly mournful and intelligent look, and now he still wiggled his nose, drawing in air, and became completely like a mongrel dog. He climbed in the door and knows, you bastard, that it is not so easy to push him out.

However, Anna has not seen such.

- Exactly. Wait here, I'll go to the kitchen, turn off the gas under the frying pan. And then I'll take it and punch your forehead.

“It's illegal,” the guy replied instantly.

- Is it legal to break into my apartment?

“I didn’t break in,” he said immediately, thought for another half second and added: “Let me take a step back and find myself behind the threshold. Then, according to the law, I am not in your apartment, and you talk to me voluntarily.

- Yes! Take a step back, then another step, and then, and go to hell. I repeat: I am not a private investor. I do not invest my money, I manage the fund's money. It makes no sense to come to my house. Send your business plan by email. If you are interested, we will call you back ...







- I have no business plan.

- Then the more roll! - Anna began to close the door.

- Stop! How can I interest you?

- What? Come on ... Should I call the police? Today is Saturday, I want to rest.

- Okay, rest. A trip to Malaysia at my expense.

- I don't want to go to Malta.

- To Malaysia, not to Malta. Here, take a look.

He handed her a postcard. There was a hotel on the postcard: a swimming pool in the foreground, a pretty castle-like building with turrets in the back. Blue roofs, creamy pink walls.

- Two minutes, - the guy continued to bend, - you give so much to entrepreneurs to speak to an investor, right? Elevator pitch is an opportunity to talk about your idea while the elevator is moving.

- So take the elevator. From here, - Anna snapped.

But for some reason she didn't close the door. The smell of fried garlic came from the kitchen to the hallway. It smells the same in Malaysia, in the hotel restaurant pictured on the postcard, Anna thought. - Probably". She couldn't know that.

The guy saw her hesitating and grabbed the opportunity with his teeth.

- We can afford to go there. It will take no more than seventy-two hours. You don't have to do anything. Just watch. You will have the opportunity to share information. But I will not oblige you to do this. If we solve this case, you will receive the next percentage of the amount.

He showed her a printout with the amount and interest. And, it seems, he was about to put his paws on his chest.

- Ah, that is, there is still a business plan, - Anna smiled.

- I'm not a businessman. I'm a private detective in a way.

Anna got into the habit of finding weak points in business presentations.

- In some way?

The guy nodded.

- The police have more than six hundred unsolved cases a year. Every fifth person has a reward in one way or another. I solve these cases and make a living. In this particular case, I need your help.

- Investigators have already come to me. And I have already told them everything I know. And I know absolutely nothing. Where did you get the idea that the smartest?

- I, you see ... - the guy touched the back of his head with his hand.

- I see, - Anna stopped smiling.

The guy still looked like a dog, only now like a toy one. Pretty, but not alive.

- So you have an illegal chip in your head. Access to the police base - let me guess - is also illegal ... The

guy was silent.

- And you illegally break into my apartment in order to invite me to go to the end of the world in order to solve a crime there, to which I have nothing to do? Am I setting it right?

“There is a risk of wasting time,” he nodded. - But you are an investor, you know how to work with risks. You are investing seventy-two hours of your time so that I can work on the case and save the person. And in return you get a chance to earn a part of the reward.

Anna opened her mouth, but he interrupted her quickly:

- Listen: yes, I have a chip in my head. By the way, legal: it is not legal to install it, but to own it is quite. We have a concrete fact: in a certain hotel in Malaysia, every free room is booked for yours - yours! - name. Instead of corridors, yours appears on the monitors of surveillance cameras! - the photo.

- But I didn't ...

- You didn't know anything about it. It is an accident? Failure? The police decided it was a glitch and left you alone. They may be right. But chances are not. Another fact: it was in Malaysia that the daughter of the Russian ambassador was kidnapped last week.

- But I have nothing to do with it ...

- Seems Yes. Therefore, everyone decided that the electronics just went crazy. But it might be a mistake. Let's just say that the police did not extract any useful information from these facts. And maybe I can.

- And ...

- Or maybe not, I agree. But every Tuesday I solve the cases that the police put in the trash can. I come to the place, look with wide eyes, stuff my brain with information. And since my brain is more powerful than usual - if you don't know - then ...

Anna made a stone face.

“Why don't you know,” the young man continued. - I am aware that your fund invests in guys who blow their minds. Legal or not. “We invest in people, not in business” - is that your slogan? So I suggest that you invest in my intuition. Into my nose.

Anna broke down and laughed.

- Into your nose?

The guy did not understand what exactly amused her.

- Intuition is just the work of the brain. Work that passes by consciousness. And thank God that it passes: because consciousness works slowly, and intuition works quickly. Plus, intuition can be trained. An experienced chess player can make a decision by barely looking at the board. And in addition, my brain's capabilities are significantly expanded.

- Yes, yes, I know. Who are you holding me for? I have seen hundreds of such arrogant types with a box in the back of their heads. So I have intuition too. And also trained. Do you know what she says to me? For me to close the door.

- Wrong.

The guy objected confidently, as if it was a math problem.

- Listen to her again. You didn’t slam the door, although you could have been. And the decision to go was made at the moment when they saw the photo of the hotel. You know something about him. But you don't know what exactly.



The guy introduced himself as Constantine. Abbreviated - Kay, he added. So she began to call him: "Kay for short." For some reason, she didn't like him. Like all other people who hide microcircuits under the skin on the back of their heads. Why - she did not know and did not want to know.

In short, Kay sensed this and far-sightedly chose the tactic "I'm not here to please you." On the plane, they sat in different rows, so that she could look at the top of his shaggy head in the front row. He didn’t look around, although she thought he was wiggling his ears, picking up every sound in the cabin. Why not? It was boring on the plane: Anna tried to focus on the film, but none could keep her attention for more than ten minutes. She left the tablet and listened to the announcements on the speakerphone and the woman who told the story to the child so that he would not squeak.

In the taxi, Kay did not start a conversation, stared fixedly out the window. At the hotel, however, he insisted on adjoining rooms. Anna didn't mind. If he wants to watch her, let him watch. She was interested in being inside the investigation. The detective looks after her, behind the hotel, behind the servant - and solves the crime.

Her business is small - to live in a hotel and rest as she pleases. She had nothing to do with kidnapping - she knew that for sure. And by virtue of her profession, Anna has repeatedly seen how young people spend time and money on crazy projects. Most often wasted. Someone gets caught up in a fantasy - to produce sets of computerized toothbrushes - and off we go: presentations, seed investments, failure with a bang.

Setting up advertising, assessing the volume of the target market, unit marketing, failure with a bang.

And other things that lead to disappointment, loss of family and miserable failure.

However, Anna thickened the colors a little. About a tenth of the projects survived and turned out to be a plus. But according to this statistic, it takes nine disappointments for one takeoff. Therefore, every day cheerful young guys walked past Anna, gathered in teams and motivated to give a year of their lives to the embodiment of their fantasies and lose.

By the way, about fantasies.

As she sat with her feet in the pool - the same pool she had seen on the postcard - she struck up a conversation with the maid. Anna complained that there were no towels near the pool. The maid excused herself, ran away, returned with a towel, and then, since they spoke to her, began to tell that the hotel had gone crazy.

Anna listened to her out of idleness. According to the servants, it turned out that the hotel - it was strange before - had gone mad. The doors are locked and unlocked by themselves. Rooms book themselves for strangers, including the dead. Sometimes the system says that someone stopped by and checked out - but no one saw him; and the bed is untouched. Electrical appliances come to life by themselves. Especially TVs. As if someone invisible is walking along the corridors and turning on the same transmission. In particular, this ghost - it was understood that it is a ghost - likes to include news about the kidnapping of the diplomat's daughter in Malaysia.

The abduction took place in Kuala Lumpur, and not on the island where the hotel stood, but the ghost, apparently, was keenly interested in the criminal chronicle of the capital.

Sometimes the ventilation came to life, starting in one side of the wing for blowing, and in the other for blowing. And after half a minute it switched in the opposite direction. In another half a minute back. And so on until the technician came and turned it off manually. The doors of the rooms opened and the wind rose in the corridor. The wind changed direction. The wind died down. The wind changed direction. The wind died down.

Anna imagined herself standing in an empty corridor, and the warm breath of the hotel, smelling of cleaning agent and ironed linen, swept past her. She felt a little uneasy.

Quite recently, she thought, my photograph had appeared and disappeared on all the surveillance monitors of this building. The one where I am in a raincoat near the coffee shop, holding glasses and smiling at some ex. And the hotel that went crazy showed the Malays that according to the booking system, I checked into forty rooms at once.

Anna politely listened to the maid and took her legs out of the water, because she felt chilly, despite the heat.



- Breathing, you say?

Kay smiled briefly. They were sitting in a restaurant on the veranda. When Kay invited her to dinner, Anna decided that he would ask her about what happened. But Kay asked her to say anything. He will choose what he needs. Therefore, she told about a ghost that wanders around the hotel and switches the televisions in the halls to the same program. And about how the ventilation of the hotel makes it look like a regularly breathing giant.

“I don’t understand,” she said. - First, why doesn't anyone call the sysadmin? The computers controlling the building are clearly malfunctioning. Secondly, why didn't the police search the hotel if there was a connection between this building and the crime?

- Alas, in Asia it is not so simple. Searching the hotel is hype. Owners don't need this. And since they are influential people, even if a corpse is found in the hotel, they will make sure that it is found quietly. The corpse will get up, bow, folding its hands in a boat at its chest, move back to the exit and transfer it to another place. In addition, everyone here is trying to save face. If you stop on a highway and ask a local for directions, he will never tell you that he doesn't know the way. He will mumble something confused, smile with all his mouth, but never confess.

- And why is that?

- Because otherwise he will lose face. Such a national trait.

- How strange.

“Moreover, getting angry is also losing face. You shout - no one respects you. If you smile, you are in control.

- That is, if they smile at me ...

- That doesn't mean anything yet.

- And maybe they really want to rob?

- It is not excluded. However, they are quite peaceful.

- But people are being kidnapped.

“I don’t think they were locals.

- What do you think?

- About the kidnapping? I think nothing. My job is to find the kidnapped, not to find out who organized it.

- So how are you doing?

- Not much. But I learned one interesting detail: the central computer changes the music on this veranda. It takes tracks from the Internet, selects it according to some - God knows what - algorithm and turns it on all over the veranda. So, apparently, to make people more pleasant…. pour lemon juice on the fish, put slices of watermelon and a handful of rice on a plate ...

Kay listed what Anna had just done.

- What do you want to say?

She was uncomfortable.

- You are uncomfortable.

- Still would. You are hinting at something. It's like I have a secret in my head. And you want to get it out of there with a surgical instrument. Curved, eerie, with denticles on the sides. Just keep in mind, young man, it is you who allow all sorts of pieces of iron to be thrust into your brains, and I am not one of those who ...

- No. You felt uncomfortable much earlier. Three songs ago. I notice this by the pupils and fine motor skills.

- Let's say. And what are these songs?

- I do not know this. But they mean something to you.

He listed the titles.

Anna shrugged.

- Regular songs. In any restaurant these are included.

- Yes, but here and now they serve as a message.

- From whom? From a ghost?

Kay didn't react to the hairpin. He just became sad.

- People tend to forget the bad. There are a number of harmless medications - anti-anxiety, antidepressants, and others. They reinforce this process. Triroxetine, Velbutirox, Pentosodone. It's not that people completely forget the past. It's just that the memories don't reach consciousness. Here you have reacted to the second name of the medicine, but not the fact that you remember how and when you took these pills.

- Perhaps once upon a time.

- Perhaps, once upon a time you had something to do with these songs.

- So. Again you brought a shiny sharp thing to my eye and began to try on. Please note, I will screech all over the hotel.

- There are substances that will gently help awaken memory.

- We did not agree on this. Let's get along without them. I hope you didn't add anything to my juice?

- No. In general, I think to do without pharmacology. I read your behavior well enough.

Anna believed him. These guys - who had a bump of skull where the chip stood under their unwashed hair - felt the people around them frighteningly thinly. The famous maternal instinct - the same intuition - looked pale against such a background. Anna usually didn't worry about it because it was just a business. But now, for the first time, the cyborg set her intuition on her. She felt like she was under the spotlight and shivered.

It was forbidden to insert chips into the brain. The official reason is that the percentage of failed operations is too high. People went crazy, fell into a manic or depressive state, or even simply received a stable focus of infection at the site of the implant. Now Anna thought that maybe, in fact, the authorities were simply afraid of them.

- Don't be afraid of me, - Kay guessed her thoughts in Abbreviated form, which frightened me even more. “You’re not hiding anything from me. You just forgot something. I'm honest with you too. This is my policy of working with colleagues. I am very open to them. And they pay me the same. Unfortunately, they don't always pay themselves the same.

“Are you saying I'm not being honest with myself?

- Do not be offended. I say: you just forgot something.

- Maybe because I wanted to forget it? - Anna turned up.

- Your right. Just look at what happens. Someone - and maybe not even a person, but a computer - includes three songs in a row. Your heart rate increases, your pupils dilate, your mouth dries up. Appetite disappears. But you cannot explain what that means. Neither me nor myself. You are being manipulated. I am only bringing this to your consciousness.

Anna crossed her arms.

- Let us suppose. So what?

- Imagine a dam. The river is your memories. The dam shut off memory from consciousness. Each thin stream that breaks between the logs is a detail of a memory. We need to make sure that there are more and more streams, so that the dam was washed away and it collapsed.

- Oh well. You present it poetically. What exactly are we going to do? Wait for streams?

- The streams appeared at the moment when you first saw the photo of the hotel. Let's remember what happened next. What have you seen and heard from that very moment?

- Taxi? Aircraft? You have seen and heard the same thing.

- We watched and listened to the same thing. But they saw and heard different things. Tell us.

Anna was once again surprised at the arrogance of the young man. But for some reason she obeyed and began to talk about the taxi, the airport and the plane, hoping that he would interrupt the boring transfer. But Kay listened to her carefully. His doggy eyes began to annoy her, and Anna began to fumble around the tablecloth, and then imagine that she was talking not for Kay, but for the head of a fried fish on a plate. But after a while it began to seem to her that flour appeared in the eyes of the fish.

- A woman was sitting in front of the chair ... - Anna was so tired of this monologue that she even left sarcasm. - A middle-aged woman with a child. The woman had a red blouse. No, raspberry. The woman was telling a story. The same one, in a circle. Then they brought sandwiches.

- And what kind of fairy tale was that?

- A common fairy tale. About three bears.

- Do you remember the tale?

- Don't you remember?

- Tell us.

Anna reached for the knife and cut herself a slice of lemon with much more force than needed.

- Damn, you are stubborn. The first bear cub ... so that he was empty ... The first bear cub built a house of straw. The second of twigs and twigs and some other shit. Where did he get it? - Anna, ignoring propriety, squeezed a lemon slice into tea with her hands, imagining that she was strangling Kay. And she sang: “I have a good house. New home, solid home. " Well done, bear, on the other hand. With our mortgage rates….

- And the third bear?

- And the third pig built a house of stones. He was smarter than everyone. His name was Naf-Naf. A good name, by the way, is almost as pretty as Kay.

- What was the name of the first pig?

- The first bear? I.e…

Anna felt dizzy. For a second, thoughts were confused, as if falling asleep. A drop of lemon juice fell into the tea, and the sound of the fall mixed with the music, making it seem like Anna had dripped juice into the song. She had a feeling of something irreparable. Fortunately, it ended quickly. Kei made her take a long breath in and out. Everything returned to the rails of rationality, and the feeling of madness melted away. Sting was still upset, but not at all with a sour drop in the guitar notes, but with the fact that his girlfriend was breathing and walking without him, and he had to watch her every step.

Anna dabbed her forehead with a napkin and raised herself from the table.

- What does it mean? She asked quietly.

- This means that the dam is about to burst.

- Because of a fairy tale?

- Due to the fact that you unconsciously replaced the piglet with a bear. While you were coming to your senses, I went over in my mind all your acquaintances who could act as a symbolic bear cub. Most likely, the matter is in the similarity of the surname.

He wrote something on a piece of paper, folded it in half, put it on the table and moved it to Anna.

- Perhaps this will be the decisive stream. I think you will want to read this in your room. Delicate, bastard, Anna thought.



She crawled under the covers with her legs without undressing. I turned on the air conditioner at full power and the TV set at half volume.

She wasn't mad at Abbreviated Kei. Of course, what he offered her was rougher. But Kay knew perfectly well how she would take it. Her job - for ten years now - was to ask uncomfortable questions to entrepreneurs. Find weak points - and hit them. There is nothing more ordinary than a person, carried away by an idea, who at close range does not want to notice unpleasant facts. For example, the fact that few people want to stick too much understanding toothbrush in their mouths and pay twenty dollars a month for it.

Apparently, the time has come for her to ask herself uncomfortable questions. People who have nothing to hide from themselves do not end up in hotels they have not booked. Is not it?

So this type is probably right. But how unpleasant he is. Forever right, cold. Although no, not cold. Fair. Sad even a little. As if he is a doctor, and she - Anna - a fracture. And although it is not Anna's fault that she is a fracture, she has every reason to dislike the doctor. He will watch as it grows together. And from this, probably, everyone will get better, but it will cease to be a turning point. That is, it will cease to be itself. Some stupid ornate comparison. What's going on with her head? Is the dam already breaking?

Anna reached out from under the covers to look at her watch. However, where is she in a hurry? Nowhere. Or did she want to get home faster? It just pisses her off his expression. He's honest. He is sad. To the point of his honesty! Once she almost got married to the same one. Also with a chip in my head. Then it was still a wonder. And legally. And the chips were not so powerful. It's just memory expansion. It helped a lot in the work. Arthur worked as an architect. Anna, on the other hand, was just shifting papers in some small investment fund. He invited her to dinner. She agreed. He always said something interesting. She listened. He was a romantic. She liked it. Then ... at some point ... Why does the TV show this channel? She seemed to be playing the news, but music was playing. He was a romantic. She liked it.Then at some point he became too romantic. He kept asking her to quit and go somewhere. What for?

He talked about work. It was interesting. What does the building do? It's worth it. It seems that there is nothing more permanent than a house. Solid concrete. In fact ... Indeed, the channel switched by itself. Okay, not scary. The main thing is that instead of cold water, suddenly hot water does not go. This hotel is really crazy. It's good that she won't be here for long.

In fact, the building - how did he say? - looks more like a vortex than a box. Streams of people flow in and out of doors. They are ascended on elevators, sucked into cinemas and pushed out at the end of the sessions, like blood from the heart. Air is drawn in by ventilation, water is sucked in from the water supply. Food arrives in vans and leaves with the sewers.

Open the tap so that the water swirls in the sink and flows in at the same rate as it decreases. Is there water in the washbasin? It seems like it is, but at the same time it flows away. So the buildings - they seem to be immovable, but at the same time they are changing all the time. Just like people. With every bite of food, with every breath, with every tear, with every flake of skin, with every sip of water, with every glass of wine, with every pill.

By the way. She had long forgotten Arthur. Perhaps the pills really did help. They built a dam between memory and consciousness. But now the dam is crumbling because of that bastard Kay. Well, they are bastards - chipped. Although she herself does not really understand what is happening to the person to whom the microcircuit has sunk its teeth into the back of the head.

Anna opened the piece of paper that Abbreviated Kay had given her. Arthur's name was written on the piece of paper.



Okay, Arthur. What's wrong with him? Arthur talked about what it is like to design a huge building with a chip in your head. How many things can you usually keep in working memory? Five to seven. And with a chip - the whole project. No blueprint, no 3D model can replace this. It's all in your head.

Well, or you're in it.

Spin it as you want, think it over. Imagine. Change it here - and immediately feel how it will be reflected right there. Wander the corridors, fly through the ventilation. Remove square windows, put round ones, look at them up close, from afar, from a bird's eye view or pressing your nose against the glass - and all this without opening your eyes, without touching a single key.

The result was beyond praise. This was the time of great architectural structures.

The two buildings in which Anna's company was located were just such. It looks like ordinary office glass. But from the inside ... Anna could not even imagine that architecture could have such a strong effect on the soul. British colleagues nicknamed these twin buildings "a pair of old shoes." An old pair of shoes. There was no such expression in the Russian language, but Anna well understood the feeling of comfort, which was fixed in a proverb that has come down to us from the times when leather shoes had to be worn for a long time and painfully, so that the shoes would take your shape and hug you whenever you put them on. ... These buildings were so cozy.

Anna hated them.

The corridors hugged her. Windows and doorways greeted her like an old friend. But Anna remembered that someone gave their soul for these houses.

Steve Jobs invented the brain bike. The chip in the head is a racing car, a library, and a construction crane for the brain. The neocortex is no longer inside the skull. You lick semiconductors with axons, feel bytes, send signals, receive signals. You read lines, go through arrays of numbers in your mind's eye, juggle vector graphics in your memory. You are an all-knowing doctor, an all-seeing investigator, and an all-seeing architect. A quick-witted businessman, a writer from God and a politician from the devil.

But apart from the buildings, hasn't anything changed in the world? Of course not.

When the first neurocyborgs appeared, Anna's favorite publicist said that the world was ready for the most exciting chess game in human history. It was understood that this is war: modified people will enslave ordinary people. Well, or at least they will be squeezed in the corner of the board. But the black pieces did not want to jump from cell to cell, but tried to dissolve among the white ones. Belykh was gripped by fear.

Any new invention causes fear first. Be it "Train Arrival". Whether it's an implant in the brain.

The chess game got bogged down in trampling, trampling interspersed with rare scandals. Can a neurocyborg win the Nobel Prize? They quarreled and decided that they could. Can a cyborg sit in the US Senate? They quarreled and decided that they could, but better not. This is just what has surfaced from the gurgle of news, theories and guesses. The bishops approached the rooks, peered into their eyes, looked for bumps on the back of their heads and asked - was he one of these? The rooks avoided questions. Or they simply left the public field.

The chessboard was covered with a sheet, and the further fuss was of little interest to anyone except the couch paranoid. If Anna hadn’t come across aspiring entrepreneurs (and many started by modifying themselves), she would have completely forgotten that humanity - if you believe the well-hung languages ​​- has entered a new stage of development.

Out and out. So far, this is the "Sicilian Defense" under the sheet, guesses and predictions. As a result, the only visible and noticeable traces of the presence of electric superhumans were the buildings created by the modified architects. Like Arthur.

Because they were not politicians or even doctors. Build yourself a building - build. The frightened society allowed to do this. Well, do it. Remove square windows, put round ones, look at them up close, from afar, from a bird's eye view, pressing your nose to the glass - and all this without opening your eyes, without touching a single key. Build, create. Look at the building as if it were your face, and anticipate each next brick as the next note in the melody. Like a rhyme in verse. Walk around the rooms, look out from the balconies. Run the fire escape route or get lost.

And he started to get lost.

Anna took a deep breath - she felt that the dam was breaking, and now she is ready for this.



Once at dinner, Arthur did not bring the fork to his mouth and froze for half a minute. When he came to, he explained: while eating, he bit his tongue and, out of resentment, thought about how dreary and humiliating it is sometimes to be human. A creature that could get hurt so foolishly.

And he stopped being.

It turned out that this was not the first time with him. Sometimes - only sometimes - he suddenly stopped being himself and started being a hotel. The part of the brain that was his "I" was connected to the model of the building. Instead of the usual thoughts, desires, signals from the body - what we call the feeling of ourselves - there was only a hotel.

Watch for five minutes how your thoughts are running: “I’m hungry,” “I need to check my mail,” “Something hurts my knee,” “I need to call, but I don’t want to,” “I want a new car,” “I need to go to to the dentist "," The dentist is scared "," But the tooth hurts "," You shouldn't have eaten so much sweets. " "I saw a new chocolate bar." "The saleswoman in this store is impolite." "I was rude to my mom yesterday, too."

And so on. Train of thoughts, as the English say.

All this is not. There is a hotel. You stand. You're cool. Under the scorching sun of Malaysia The roofs are baking, but your walls keep cool. People come into you with suitcases. They admire you. They enter you. Now they are cool too. They sleep under crisp white blankets. They dine on the veranda. Slices of cold watermelon are waiting for them. They rent cars. They are leaving. You stand. The ocean is reflected in the windows of your upper floors. No thoughts about the dentist. There are no worries at all. No care. There is no desire to earn more. There is no desire to scratch. No envy. There are no short pleasures of chocolate and sex that can be drowned out for only an hour, and then want and want again. And want to.

There are only walls. There are doors, there is the scorching sun and the coolness of you.

Arthur said we have a lot to learn from the hotels. Wait, share the coolness. People come to you, people leave you. Take advantage of you. Sometimes they stay longer. No offense, hope or regret.

Where did he get it?

The human psyche is designed in such a way that sometimes our "I" can switch to others. You listen to the song and empathize with the singer. How does this happen? It seems to you that his voice is your own. When you watch a film, at the edge of your consciousness you merge with the movie hero.

We have a door in our head through which we can leave our own psyche for a short time.

And if this door does not lead to a song or a movie, but to a huge and damn realistic hotel ...

Hearing this, Anna decided that she had had enough. She needs a loved one, not a hotel. And she wants to be a wife, not a guest. She let him know that they had better stay friends. Or was it wrong? Anna - honestly - didn't remember. She remembered that there was a conversation on the threshold of her apartment. She closed the door, and he gently tried to stop her. There was an awkward scene: for half a minute she pulled the door towards herself, and he gave way. Finally, the lock clicked. Anna stood, biting her lips, and was afraid that the neighbors would look out. And then Arthur left.

Why would she have to remember that? Anna dabbed her tears with the edge of the blanket. Yes, now she doesn't like chipped-brained youths. And I remembered why. Who needed it? Where is Arthur now? Is everything good with him? Does he manage to live like a hotel? Let people in and let them out the next morning? Share, God forgive me, what vulgarity, coolness on a hot day? You might think such thoughts will lead to something good. Is that in a psychiatric hospital. Of course, only there. If you really want to become a hotel, then the way is for you to see a psychiatrist. You can't really become a hotel after all?

Anna's breath caught in her throat.

She read something like that recently. Some terrible notes. It is about Southeast Asia. People connected to computers. And photographs: a man with the back of his head pressed against the control panel of either a power plant or a subway. All wrapped in wires. Why did they do it? Did you save on computers? Or thought it would work better this way? Anna didn't remember.

But he could arrange it. He could leave here and connect to his favorite hotel. Not a blueprint, but a real building. Lose your self and become a hotel.



She sat up in bed and slowly looked around the room. The TV blinked, and a familiar song played. The air conditioner slowly picked up speed and fell silent. Then it slowly picked up speed again and fell silent. Just like breathing.

Anna got out of bed, took a few careful steps across the carpet and put her hand on the wall.

No, it can not be.

Arthur? Somewhere in the basement of this building? Wired into one with the hotel? With air conditioning, doors, windows, restaurant speakers, reservation system, washbasins and showers? All this now is he? She felt the wall, as if she hoped to find living flesh under the plaster.

The door opened by itself. Anna looked out into the corridor. There was no one outside the door.

Afraid to step, she went to the door, grabbed the handle and pulled it towards herself. The door gave way reluctantly, as if someone was interfering with it. As if someone was standing outside and pulling. As if he knew in advance that he would allow Anna to close the door, but still did not want to let her go.

Persistently and slowly Anna closed the door. The lock clicked. Anna burst into tears.

She tried to imagine what it would be like to be a hotel. There are no hands, no mouth, no thoughts, there are windows and corridors. There are armored rooms and revolving doors. There are surveillance cameras, but no eyes.

How free he must feel. He told. Endless freedom and peace. Freedom from every next thought. No plans, no worries. No doubt, no pity. No sense of danger, no instinct for self-preservation, no paternal instinct, no hunger, no pursuit of petty pleasures. No desire for a drink, no regret for an extra bottle.

Calm, handsome, cool son of a bitch in the heat.

Anna hit the wall with her fist.

Are you happy? Happy? Satisfied?

Left me alone. Moved here, turned into this beautiful castle. You are all the envy of the sea. And I ... What about me? A smart metropolitan bitch with a salary of six zeros and an empty apartment. With human thoughts and desires from which you so happily escaped.

Coward. This is who you are. Well, live. Think TV and move the vents instead of hands. Watch with video cameras. By the way, why did you even call me here, huh?

Anna kicked the bed.

There was a knock on the room. Anna expected to see Abbreviated Key, but there was a mechanical order delivery boy outside the door. The robot rolled the beer cart into the room. Anna ordered no beer. Looking at the check, she called the detective.



Kay briefly noted Anna's puffy eyes, but said nothing. Anna pointed to the cart. Kay eagerly studied what was on her. Two bottles of beer and a check.

“You didn’t order beer,” he didn’t ask, but asserted.

- Yes.

- And the number is not the same. We have 193, and here 174. What else?

- I don't know what else. You are a detective, you have a computer head, so you think with it. I don’t want to help you.

Kay listened to the rudeness calmly, absorbing every word.

- And I'm not going to pay for beer, don't even think about it.

- Oh yes, exactly. Thanks.

- What thanks?

- Price. This beer doesn't cost that much. In general, this is very expensive for a beer: a four-figure sum.

- So figure it out.

“Apparently, someone broke into the hotel's control system and sent us a signal. Go to number 174. And the numbers are the code. From the safe, I guess. Here, each room has digital safes. Let's go?

- I need to be alone.

- I see. But we had an agreement. Plus, time is running out.

Anna headed for the door, stomping loudly.



They stopped at room 174 and looked around. The door didn't budge. Kay knocked delicately, then began to drum louder.

“Wait,” Anna interrupted him.

She introduced herself as a hotel. How people enter it. Nice people, ordinary people. Tourists and businessmen. Bad people. Can you understand this if you look with cameras? Does he have a lot of human intelligence left? Apparently, there is something. If, say, an insensitive girl is brought to the hotel at night and kept in her room, then the hotel realizes that something is wrong. And he begins to worry. Breathe loudly with air conditioner. Call for help as best she can: remember acquaintances, book rooms on them ...

Anna looked at the nearest CCTV camera and stood under it. She removed the bangs from her eyes and looked through the lens.

A breeze swept along the corridor as if someone exhaled.

The lock clicked. The door to room 174 opened.

Abbreviated Kay peered carefully into the room and beckoned Anna.

On the bed lay a girl with matted hair covering half of her face - either asleep or unconscious. Her skin was pale, almost gray. Anna looked at it and touched it.

“Don't,” Kay said in a commanding tone.

He rummaged in the closet. I found the safe and dialed the combination - the cost of the beer. The safe opened. Kay took out a bundle of documents and two ampoules.

“Our job is done,” he said.

He put what he found near the girl, photographed her along with documents and ampoules and sent the photo with some kind of messenger.

- Now let's get out of here.

- But she needs help, perhaps?

- Here's the antidote. Where and how much to inject, I do not know. You too. The police will be here soon. Maybe the mafia too. We're superfluous in the shootout. Need to go.

Anna obeyed and they headed down the corridor.

- Do you always work like this?

- No, sometimes I pose for a long time for the press. We won't be today. You are not in your best shape either.

- Tactless remark. And I'm not going to explain anything.

“I’m not asking.

- Aren't you curious?

- Curious. But I don't meddle in my own business. But don't think that I haven't guessed everything.

- About everything?

- Well, it's simple. At least three thousand people live in Southeast Asia who have problems with the law at home. Sit for years in Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia. Sometimes until death. The local police have nothing else to do but look for them, and Interpol will break a leg here. So the picture is as follows: one such acquaintance of yours, a former colleague, dishonest, receives information about the abduction. He wants to help and gives signals as much as he can. He does not send e-mail, he is afraid. And he does the right thing. Lures you here. Gives information without explicitly betraying its presence. Mmmm ... some kind of paranoid scheme for me. Is it so difficult to send a message over an encrypted channel? On the other hand: there is no message - there is nothing to present to the investigation. Apparently, he is afraid that you will surrender him. What, no? I can see from my eyes that it is not. Well, okay.

- What else do you see in your eyes?

They returned to their room. Anna closed the door.

In short, Kay obediently looked into Anna's face.

- I see that you are very angry with someone.

- And?

- And you want to kiss me. You licked your lips and looked at my mouth.

- Right.

- This is strange. You can't stand me. Specifically - for the chip in the back of the head.

“That's right, Kay,” Anna answered quietly. - Right to the point, Kay.

- By the way, I don't fully understand why. Let's say chips in brains are unnatural. Well, we live in an unnatural world. We wear clothes. We fry and salt food. We live in houses, and do not hide under trees from the rain. Fans replace the wind for us, and heaters are fires. We use cosmetics. We always improve everything - for ourselves. We take the natural - we turn it into an artificial one. And ourselves too.

“And myself, too,” Anna repeated angrily. - As if a man is ... a motor in a car that needs to lubricate the gears.

“Well…” The first time, Kay thought for more than a split second. - Yes! On the whole, this is a quite sensible analogy. It must be lubricated. You might think it's better to walk around unlubricated. The same physical education is very useful for the brain. However, these are all abstractions. Specifically, you personally know dozens of people who illegally improved their brains. How many of them did it for money? Or to enslave the planet? No, such things are not done for the sake of money. The risks are too high. To take such a risk, to endure pain, you need to have a higher goal. You are an investor, you know entrepreneurs - they want to change the world for the better.

Anna snorted.

- A cliché for naive programmers who are manipulated by merchants. I hear this phrase forty times a day. You have a dump in your head.

- Dump? I seem to express my thoughts very consistently, and ...

Anna kissed Kei in Abbreviated form. He pulled away and looked at her in surprise.

Anna looked around the room. It seemed to her that something quietly crunched in the room. Like a hand that was clenched into a fist to the limit of strength. “Get it,” Anna thought and pressed her lips to Kay's once more. Get it, she thought. - You wanted to be a hotel. Not attached to anyone. Cool in the heat. So that every person in your life is a guest who doesn't even leave behind a toothbrush. Not a friend, not a boss, not a wife. I didn't hurt you, I didn't quarrel with you, I didn't argue, I didn't pull. Didn't want anything from you. Neither your time, nor your precious freedom. And if so, here's to you. It is for you. And so". She dug into Kay's lips, arched and pressed her whole body against him. And she kissed him until he pulled her away from him.

“Okay, that's enough,” Anna said aloud, “I'm sorry.

- AND? Why should you forgive? Consider my head a dump - your business. But for me, it's an organized repository. I keep what I think is necessary.

"Will you keep the kiss too?"

- Yes, - Kay was surprised. - And the solved crime too. For some reason you continue to hate me. Even when you kiss. But I'm also changing the world for the better. I… I saved the kidnapped girl.

Kay threw up his hands.

Anna turned away and went to the window. She parted the curtains. Outside the window, there was a view of the hotel's courtyard. Graceful openings, balustrades, windows, blue turrets, pink and cream walls.

- And the hotel, - asked Anna, - does the hotel also change the world for the better?

“I don’t understand,” Kay replied. - Hotel? The hotel doesn't do anything. He just stands there.



Writer Pavel Gubarev... Download the entire book, subscribe.