I never liked walking the streets at night. It can't be said that I lived in a downright crime-ridden area, but getting home in the darkness was definitely uncomfortable, and not at all because of the autumn coolness. But I could hardly imagine what awaited me on the day when, due to an accident on the tracks, the train was late by almost half a day.
Thus, I arrived in my city from the neighboring one almost after midnight. It's amazing how I managed to squeeze into the last minibus from the station and finally get to my hometown. Otherwise, I would have had to call a taxi, spending a good third of the scholarship, which I certainly couldn't afford.
In my native area, the lights were on every other day. The cicadas chirped loudly, as if with all their might. The last week at the university was not very successful - I failed to retake two tests that were not completed during the summer session, and as a result, expulsion no longer seemed like a vague prospect.
However, I understood perfectly well that my passion for Japanese cartoons was hardly conducive to my studies. But I couldn't force myself to pore over notes instead of a new series with cute little guys, generously flavored with fan service. And now I was paying for it with a sucking feeling in the pit of my stomach and the anticipation of a retake with the commission, which I would most likely fail. And there the only hope is for the dean's favor... From the second year they are expelled in batches, I knew that for sure.
Therefore, my mood was not at all great. And when, on top of everything else, I heard a hellish roar and screeching behind me, my first thought was "There hasn't been enough earthquake yet!" But it was not an earthquake. When I turned towards the noise, I saw something that made me doubt my own sanity.
In the middle of the street stood and screamed a creature straight out of nightmares. A fanged mouth, scaly paws, horns on the forehead and bright scarlet luminous pupils - one could imagine that this is a carnival costume, if the monster were not three meters tall, and did not clutch in its forelimbs a certain device, an acid-green ray from which burned a hot hole in the wall of the house. Stones and pieces of ceilings fell inward from the edges of the hole. They created the noise.
I looked at this horror in shock. The squealing, which in some places turned into ultrasound, made my ears pop and my teeth irritate. The first reaction of any normal person would be to run away from there at breakneck speed, but it was as if all my nerve endings had failed, I just stood rooted to the spot and watched as the demon incinerated the house.
Finally, the entire building collapsed, throwing up tons of dust into the air. The monster stopped screaming, turned and looked at me, raising his apparatus. He's about to pull the trigger and incinerate me. I couldn't even close my eyes, numb with horror. And at that moment salvation came.
She appeared out of nowhere, as if she had materialized in thin air - a petite blonde girl of about eighteen, wearing a plaid skirt, high white socks and a blouse with a blue collar. In a few steps, the heels of her shoes clicking on the asphalt torn apart by the monster's paws, she reached him, extended her hand and formed a figure with her small graceful fingers that resembled the letter "V." Lightning shot from the girl's fingertips, striking the demon directly in the stomach, covered with bone plates.
The monster staggered, its sharp swamp-green claw flying off the trigger, and he was unable to pull the trigger. Turning towards the girl, the demon let out a powerful roar, not at all similar to the screech that he had made a minute earlier. The earth shook from this roar. A beam shot from the bell of the apparatus and slashed a bright, smoking strip across the wall. A second ago there was a girl there, but she fantastically flew into the air and from there began to shower the demon with fire and lightning.
Small fireballs and sparking charges literally drowned the monster. He stopped growling and started screeching again, but now not triumphantly, but desperately angry. One of the well-aimed charges knocked the device out of his paws and it flew towards me. Every time the electric clots hit the demon's body, he shook his head in amazement, losing more and more speed and strength. It smelled of ozone and burnt hide.
- Why are you standing? - the girl suddenly exclaimed. She had an unusually pleasant, ringing timbre of her voice.
- Uh... What should I do? -- I asked in bewilderment, looking at the girl hovering at the height of the third floor. Suddenly I realized that cute Chan's short skirt allowed me to see the very edge of her panties.
- Grab your blaster quickly! It's under your feet.
I immediately followed her order. The device was still warm and lay comfortably in my hands.
The girl sat down next to him.
"We need to leave before he comes to his senses!" Quicker!
- Uh... Well, okay, just explain... - but I didn't have time to finish the sentence - the girl grabbed my hand and lifted me into the air. And then we rushed several blocks away from the discouraged and stunned monster, which continued to growl quietly and stomp on the spot, waving away the sparks. The city seemed to have died out; not a single siren of the emergency services could be heard, which should have already responded to this whole mess.
- Why so quiet? - I asked her. We flew in complete silence, no cicadas, no noise from cars, only the whistle of the wind in our ears.
She didn't answer, she just squeezed my hand tighter with her palm, with which she had just created fire and lightning out of the air. Meanwhile, my savior raised her other hand to her ear and said:
- Tinny Center, I repeat, Tinny Center - cell one hundred six fraction four hundred twenty lost. The cyclicity is erased, all entities in the cell are destroyed except one, the Destroyer is localized by me, but not for long. I'm leaving for the base for reinforcements.
Finally we landed on the ground, near the wall of an abandoned factory far outside the city. She waved her hand and a silver cloud separated from her fingers. Then it shrank into a narrow strip from the ground to the sky, flickered a little and disappeared.
-- What does "all entities are destroyed" mean? What did you mean? Where did everyone go? -- I blurted out questions one after another, not hoping to get answers. Tinny, and apparently that was her name, just squeezed my hand harder and looked at me carefully.
- What... What happened to my family? -- I asked, lowering my tone.
- There is none of them. Your whole world, or rather what you considered the world, its ring is broken.
- How is it not? What other ring? What are you talking about? Yes, explain it at last! -- I almost started screaming.
- What is your name? - she suddenly asked.
"Nikita..." I said more quietly.
- I'll explain everything later, Nikita...
Tinny fell silent again. She looked at me with a sad smile and snapped her fingers. A vehicle that simultaneously resembled a flying saucer and an ultra-modern airplane emerged from the ruins of the factory.
A hatch opened in the vehicle, and a ladder slowly crawled out of it with a quiet rustle. Tinny motioned for me to come up.
- You still have no other choice, understand. You were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although, this is still a question, perhaps just this, because all the other people you knew were actually destroyed.
-- Destroyed? How can you destroy all the people without affecting the city? -- I pointed my hand at the city blocks, brightly lit streets and windows of houses.
- Well, he was going to destroy the city too. That's why he needed a blaster," she pointed with her gaze at the thing that I continued to grip by the handle.
- Wait, what about the police, weapons, soldiers? Why didn't anyone defend themselves, did everyone just disappear?
"Understand, everything that they told you from school about the structure of the world, the Universe, space - how can I put it mildly..." she wrinkled her forehead, searching for a word.
"All this is nonsense, if you just say it," the girl continued. - Absolutely nothing to do with it. You think that there is a huge piece of rock floating in space among other similar pieces around an even larger hot ball, the so-called star, right?
- Uh, well, yes. You don't want to tell me that the geocentric theory was correct?!
- They are all wrong. They are all fiction. Reality has nothing to do with this illusory picture.
- Stop talking in riddles already! - I exclaimed in my heart. - Tell me what's happening. If it's all an illusion, then what is real?
- I will not only tell you, but also show you. But to do this, first go on board the boat," she pointed to the aircraft hanging half a meter from the ground behind her.
I reluctantly obeyed. The inside of the device turned out to be even more futuristic than the outside - winking lights, two chairs and a dashboard, smooth lines and a springy floor, and all this under an even, calm illumination. Tinny approached the device, which, as it turned out, was a real food generator. She typed the code and a second later a plate with mashed potatoes and a cutlet appeared in a special field.
- Are you hungry? Eat, your strength will come in handy.
"Won't you... won't you join?" - I asked.
"My meal will be later," the girl smiled somehow strangely. I didn't pay any attention to it then.
I didn't even notice how I filled the entire plate and asked for more and compote. The device fulfilled my request without question. Any other person in such a situation would have completely lost his appetite, but not me - I'm used to eating up a bad mood. Having had my fill, I began to worry a little less.
"Well, start telling me," I said, looking questioningly at Tinny. She looked at me carefully and said:
- Well, listen. To begin with, the population of your piece of rock is by no means seven billion, as you were taught. And most of the territory that you saw on the maps simply does not exist.
-- But there are videos, panoramic shots of cities and so on! How is this possible?!
"Only those people you saw with your own eyes, not in videos or photos, really existed, but you could come up and touch them. And even then not all. Video, photo and even a voice on the phone are an illusion, a dream of reality, not a fake, but a dream. The world sleeps, it dreams, and cells like the one in which you lived are only a small percentage real, the rest are nightmares, erotic dreams, phantasmagoria. And each cell, they are also called "bubbles", "nests", "honeycombs" - so, each cell is a looped cast of historical material, a fragment of a chronline, containing several hundred, sometimes thousands, of real personalities and seven billion shadows that exist only in the imagination.
- What?! You're delusional? After all, any person has the opportunity to travel to distant countries and make sure that they are completely real, touch the buildings there, shake hands with the inhabitants of those places! How can you say that?
- But have you ever been to distant countries? Well, at least one? "Tinny narrowed her eyes and looked at me.
- No, but... Wait, did you say "timeline fragment"? So time is also an illusion? And memory? -- I began to rub my forehead, on which sweat appeared. I wanted to pinch myself, her, to break this damn table at which we were sitting, to destroy the drug delirium in which I found myself... But then the realization came that this was not delirium, and everything that Tinny said was true. The realization was sharp and sudden, like a fork in the skull.
- Partially. For example, your cell covers the period from January to September 2019. When September passes, the cycle repeats itself, all personalities return to January and all events replay themselves. In other cells there are other time periods and other territories, but even according to the most optimistic calculations, if you add up the population of all cells in the Universe, there are no more than one or two million real individuals.
- And this cyclical nature is one hundred percent confirmed by the effect of déjà vu... - when it seems to you that it has already happened, everything repeats itself...
