System requirements

Comrade Borro offered a very interesting thing - if you copy this script to your address line, the story will be about you.

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Along the oncoming lane, already heeling to the side, the fuel tank truck was flying. {name} even managed to unscrew the steering wheel when he saw him fly into the oncoming lane, but at the same second he realized that a collision could not be avoided. The last thought that flashed through my head was “at least it’s not a wagon, not everyone dies with such a firework”.

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{name} blinked. He stood in a spacious room, furnished in a modern low-key style, in which freelancers often live, combining his bedroom with an office.

Outside, a beautiful view of the mountains. Opposite the window was a large desk with a wide monitor, a middle-aged man sat behind him, who seemed to have fallen asleep a long time, with his head comfortably leaning back on his chair and folding his hands on his stomach. In principle, {name} never complained in principle, as neither his colleagues nor friends complained, but now he refused to analyze the situation and give out something other than randomly repeating the same questions “Where am I? How did I get here? Where was the fuel truck? ”.

The man at the table started, opened his eyes, and slowly turned to {name} .

- I see you have arrived, {name} , good evening! These lags sometimes tire ... Well, you know, the finite speed of light, relativity, everything. However, it’s not for me to tell you, this physicist is sick of you at the university.

{name} was finally able to merge the rattling private questions in his head into one more general one.
- What happened to me?

- The fuel truck ran into you! - the interlocutor happily explained - It just happened that you could not forget it so quickly. A gasoline truck crashed into you, you died, and your dying thought about “fireworks” won the “best death thoughts of the day” competition. By the way, the fireworks were, generally speaking, modest. Fuel trucks are now making durable and reliable. Unlike their drivers ... We will see it one more time, but, with your permission - a little later, you need to finish some things.

{name} mentally counted to ten, trying to calm down and present some, even if unlikely, explanation of the situation.

“Did you save me?” Like in fantastic stories, somehow pulled out of the car for a moment before death?

- saved? No, that you. I told you, you died. But you are a more interesting interlocutor than the driver of a fuel truck, so you are still here.
Had {name} been less excited, this “for the time being” would have caused him to feel bad suspicions, but at the moment he was occupied with more fundamental problems.

“Am I already ... there?” - {name} hesitantly pointed to the ceiling.

- Rather - there, the man responded, waving his hand somewhere behind him. - We are now in {location1} , and you crashed into {location2} , which is approximately in that direction, a few thousand kilometers. But you think correctly, I am the one that many expect to see after death. It is not clear, really, why. I have never made it clear that I am accepting guests, however, from somewhere these conjectures have gone ...

{name} understood that his picture of the world was cracking, so I decided to just ask questions, spinning on his tongue, not trying to collect a new outlook from the fragments of the old on the move.

- Why me?

- I liked your dying thought. Probably got into the mood, I do not know. Maybe another day I would not pay attention to you.

“No, why should I have ... like this?” I still have a wife ... - {name} felt how hard it was for him to finish the sentence.

- Oh, that. What do you mean why? Because the fuel truck ran into you. Because his driver got this position at the expense of his brother's friend, despite the fact that it is better not to let him even go to the bike. Because this friend at one time owed his brother to the driver, as he covered his petrol theft at work. These chains can continue endlessly, a very exciting activity. In the end, you can generally go down to the quantum level, although I do not like it. It is more interesting to watch the macrocosm.

- That is, it was an accident?

- Absolute, just a little in the sense. You see, {name} , the most interesting thing to follow is not the reverse chain of events, but the direct ones. If you make a small impact, then this - he hesitated a little, picking up the word - resonance may not happen. It is like a game of roulette. You throw a coin on the street in front of a passer-by, and you think “what will come of it?”. It may be that nothing - he will not notice her, or he will notice, but he will not. Or raise, but it will not affect anything.
Or maybe he will raise it and think “wow, I'm lucky today,” and he dares to go play in the casino. They will win a million, quit their jobs, return to their long-abandoned hobby and write a song that will stir up millions of people. Or on the contrary, he will lose the entire salary, get drunk with grief, and then sit behind the wheel of a fuel tanker. In this case, the main source of "chance" can be considered my thoughts and actions - the idea to throw a coin came to me completely unexpectedly, I also chose the venue at random. So — yes, what happened to you is a complete coincidence.

{name} stood for a minute, comprehending what was said. The man in the chair smiled good-naturedly, looking at him, then, apparently, he was fed up with it, and he turned his eyes to the mountains outside the window.

- This is not an accident, you did it! Or you, how is it customary to contact you? Why do you need it at all?

- Address as it is more convenient for you, you have come up with so many names and so many different fictions, choose any that is closer to you. This is entertainment. Do you play computer games? Here, consider the same thing, only with far greater opportunities. And, ”he grinned,“ the graphics are fine. When you get tired of just watching, you can temporarily pull out one of you, like you now, to talk. By the way, you can not be afraid, I'm not such a psychopath, as many of you see me, I am not going to send anyone to bathe in cauldrons with hot tar for all eternity. And where, let me ask, how many of them to place? Or a cloud with harps, for those who did not hit the boiler? For you the path ended there, in the car, during the accident. There is nothing further. And the fact that now - this is so, an exception, a pleasant bonus before you disappear from this world.

- In our games, people do not die.

- The players themselves do not die, you mean. Have you seen the Sims game? Surely saw. And he probably saw it, and he even did it himself - he let the sim swim in the pool, and then he cleaned the stairs, because of which he could not get out, and, as a result, he sank. The only difference is in the level of detail and, as a result, in very primitive forms of exposure with uninteresting sequences of events. But did someone stop pulling the stairs out of the pools when the new version came out, with improved graphics?

- But we are not in a computer simulation, how can we compare the drawn little men with living people?

- Of course, not in the simulation. It is impossible to achieve this level of realism in approximate computer models. Each game has its own requirements for the "hardware", it is quite logical. Mine, ”he circled the space,“ requires all of this. Gravity, nuclear forces, everything that is taught in physics at good technical universities.
Now I ask you to excuse me, I still have to finish my business, and then we can watch together the whole chain of events that brought you here.

{name} felt an incredible rage rising from the depths of the soul. Perhaps his interlocutor looked like the ancient books describe, something harsh omnipotent, promising eternal torment or eternal salvation, he would have felt something else, but now he saw an ordinary person playing with computer games.

“You have no place to put coppers for you, bitch?” Thought {name} , snapping a decorative palm tree standing in a small tub for a thin trunk and putting all his hatred into this blow.

The man still retained the same benign facial expression, only seemed to slightly raise an eyebrow.

“The anti-virus database was successfully updated” - the synthesized voice wrested {name} from sleep.
The body was numb from a long half-sitting-half-lying in front of the monitor, although this feeling was familiar. Working late, he often fell asleep at the computer. {name} slowly looked at the monitor, trying to remember at the same time what he did before he fell asleep, and what he dreamed. If the answer to the second question has not yet appeared in the mind, then the answer to the first one was remembered easily - having finished programming the next driver and not finding any entertainment in the traditional shooters for myself, {name} decided to look at what these new Sims looked like that constantly played his wife.
Challenging, he looked at the monitor. In the large stone pool, the sim was floundering, unable to climb out - there was no ladder, and the program did not allow jumping onto the side.

"Idiotic algorithms, who so kodit ..."

{name} looked at the weakening sim for a few seconds, cursed softly and handed him a ladder.