The Path is a book with a huge world, many famous and new characters who participate in canonical and completely new events. For the hustlers: the first canonical (according to bextori) event occurs in Chapter 11, and the first game event (Eden Prime) occurs in Chapter 24. At the beginning, there is a description of many key characters and important events. Read from the beginning, the author has succeeded well in conveying the feeling of an inevitably impending catastrophe. I have started putting the text of the book in order and plan to get to the end.

* * *

The day is long over, and the stars are about to light up in the sky. It's time for my next shift at a part-time job in a taxi. I take the order from the dispatcher and pick up the client — an attractive girl wants to spend time at the club. The road, rarely crossed by the junctions of overpasses, glistening with puddles in the sinkholes on the asphalt, is moderately broken, but still allows you to drive at a decent speed. From behind, the heart-rending howl of engines running at top speed is approaching. Driving at ninety, I am bypassed by two "chepyrki" (VAZ 2114) standing up — painted, tinted in trash, with loud rhythmic music bursting out of the windows. They rush past and disappear ahead of us behind a smooth turn of the city chord. There's an interchange four kilometers away, so I'll have time to admire the jerks in the oncoming lane. I'm slowing down automatically, ahead of the speedcams on the trellis farm thrown over the road. I'm always surprised when these assholes don't get caught. The descent is smooth, and a couple can be seen flying out from around the bend on the oncoming lane. One of the "caps" flies into a puddle and catches an aquaplane at a speed of 180 km.

Time has almost stopped, and I'm watching what's happening in slow motion. The idiot skids, throws it under the second one, and now two idiots are spinning loops in the oncoming lane. One hits the metal bump on the right side with a swing, pieces of bumper fly in all directions, sparks, the car crumples into a shapeless lump of metal and plastic. Consciousness notes all this as if automatically. The second one hits the side of the high curb of the dividing strip, the car bounces, it flies sideways onto the divider and hits the metal fence post with all its might. Glass splashes, the rear bumper, torn off by inertia, slowly takes off, and the car begins to tear in half. I see a long metal pin fly out from under the bottom and fly towards me in a smooth parabola, rotating. "Fucked up!", it flies by in my mind, and with a pop like a gunshot, the piece of metal smashes into the windshield. A blow to the chest, the pain flaring up and fading. I slam on the brake, the car stops abruptly, I feel the jolts of my ABS in the pedal, the passenger squeals across the front seat, burying her face in the headrest. My swallow got up, the engine stopped, the locks clicked, automatically unlocking the doors.

"What are you doing!" It's coming from the back seat. "Don't you know how to drive at all? I'll report to the dispatcher! They'll recruit anyone with purchased rights!"

"You need to buckle up, you fool!", it floats sluggishly in my thoughts. I look at the ragged hole in the windshield with cracks radiating in all directions. I look down, and there's a pin sticking out of my chest with a cut-off bolt at the end. Why doesn't it hurt? My consciousness begins to swim, and a hot feeling spreads in my chest.

"There's something sticking out of your seat, I've hurt myself! What's it? Something sticky!" the ceiling switch clicks, flooding the interior with white LED light. "Ah-ah-ah!" It's coming from the back seat.

What are you screaming about? My ears are already ringing. Or is it just my imagination? The ringing in my ears is getting louder, black flies are in front of my eyes... why is there no pain? Darkness and silence, there are no sounds, no movement, no sensations. Only on the verge of perception is a feeling-a whisper-a thought: "Forget everything, accept peace and oblivion, forget pain and fear, memories bring pain, why do you need them? Forget it, forget it, forget it..."

"Who am I! Answer me!" a thought flashes by. "I don't want oblivion! I want to remember!"

"Are you sure you want to remember?" It was as if a strange alien thought-feeling appeared nearby. "Are you sure that's what you want?"

"Yes! Yes, I do! Give me back to you. You are welcome."

"As you wish."

And I remembered everything. All my life: kindergarten, school, college, army! I remembered my wife, my children, and my job at the factory. I remembered everything: every day, and most importantly, I remembered my death.

"Fuck, did I die? Yes?"

"The biological shell has stopped functioning. However, death is quite controversial. Don't you think?"

"I think means I exist. So what is it?"

"Right."

"And what's next?"

"As you wish. You want to go back, don't you?"

"Yes, I do. Can I?"

"May. But with some condition."

"Like what?"

"People like you, those who have given up oblivion, are offered to return for a reason. They need to help the world they're being sent to. You will be given the skills and gifts to be able to cope with the task assigned to you."

"What are these gifts and skills?"

"Different, for example, how do you like absolute memory?"

"Normal."

"Normal?! The brute."

"And which world will I be sent to? What should I do there?"

"One of the worlds you know."

"What kind of acquaintances?! I've never been anywhere but Earth."

"Many of them are described in your fiction."

"So you're giving the authors plots! But why?"

"We can't interfere directly, but with the help of people like you, it's acceptable. You are bound by the laws of that world, and you are mortal. Therefore, based on our predictions and assumptions, we use information delivery tools like books and others in other worlds to raise people like you, and then send you to help other worlds. Remember: what you have described may differ from reality, it is close, but not the same, and the forecasts are not absolute. Foreknowledge can fail you. Check it out."

"And if I fail? I'm not a superhero!"

"So we'll raise the next ones."

"What about me? What will happen to me?"

"If you don't break down, we'll send you somewhere else. There are many problematic worlds."

"What does it mean if I don't break down?"

"There are quite difficult situations there, but a reasonable person cannot live in a vacuum, he acquires friends, relatives, and just reasonable relatives. Not everyone can stand losing, and then oblivion awaits them. And after oblivion, what good are they? They leave for another incarnation in the usual way."

"And in case of victory?"

"You win first! If you win, we'll talk."

My crazy thought flashed by: "Oh, I'll turn around!"

"And so that you don't get distracted, I'll change the boundary condition. That's not why you're being sent there!"

"For what "for this"?"

"For everything as they like to say in your homeland. That's enough talking, you should go."

* * *

It feels like I'm falling, and the fall is getting faster and faster. A dazzling white dot appeared ahead and began to grow rapidly. The dot turns into a cloud of light, the feeling of the body comes, it is compressed, as in a vice, there is a soft elastic tightness and darkness around, I am not breathing. What's happening? The darkness pulsates, strange sounds are heard, as if someone is moaning. The body is squeezed to severe pain and pushed forward by the head. Suddenly, I feel freedom and a bright light. Everything is cloudy, there are some colored spots and voices. I feel a blow on my ass, it hurts so much that I want to scream. I take a breath, my chest explodes with wild pain, I scream and pass out under my own scream.

Chapter 1.1 Hello, am I your Zhenya?!..

Eugene (Mendoir, March-April 2355)

March 11, 2355

The realization came somehow suddenly. I saw a giant bending over me, who smiled at me and said:

"Who is it that I have here, so small, and already awake?"

Damn, is he talking about me? And why is it "small"?! I tried to feel myself with my hands... and I broke off like that. Hands! My fucking hands! THEY DIDN'T LISTEN TO ME! He tried to touch his face and stuck his finger in his own eye.

"Whoo, your mother!", I tried to swear, but instead something came out of me like, "Augo mugo ao!" Ooooh, I can't even speak properly! A complete polar fox! Have arrived...

The man picks me up, and I feel like my head is being pulled back so badly. With a noticeable effort, I straighten my head and slowly look around. The decor is nothing like that: laconic, futuristic, all kinds of screens, a half-wall window, bent furniture made of polished metal. A tablet made of transparent glass with glowing orange symbols is lying on the table. Am I the one who got into the future? And that's bread! That voice would have sent me back to the Middle Ages, which was really tough back then. No sorters, no medicine, you'll shudder when you think about dental treatment, the church is militant with all sorts of inquisitions! So, I'll try to look at the hand anyway. If you bring it up to your face quietly, deliberately... that's it, your hand obeyed! No, adults don't have such hands, the fingers are plump, the nails are pink. So I'm a child, not "Gulliver in the land of giants"! But the question about "my little one" remains open. How can I check it? That's an ambush... oh, I thought of it! I start kicking my legs and groaning. There is a contact! The man bends down and takes out a metal pot from under the sofa — well, the most ordinary kind, my boys had the same in a previous life, only plastic, not stainless steel. So, down with your pants, and they put me on an iron friend, we lower my head slowly and...

Oppa! And HE's not there! Masculine, that is, dignity! fuck! Bitch! Ah-ah-ah-ah! This is a change in the boundary condition, damn, it's just mean! But I really wanted to go to the bathroom, so we're doing it, hmm, it feels strange, different... damn it! Of course, they are different, the platform is different! Uh-huh... well, there's no way out, let's get used to this!..

Okay, it's done, they're probably carrying me to the bathroom. That's right! Oh, the mirror! Well, well, we look at ourselves... Small as small, it looks about a year old, I try a smile, oh, dimples have formed on my cheeks! There are about eight teeth in his mouth. There's not enough hair yet, and the color is so strange, reddish like. The eyes are green, no, GREEN, like malachite! So they washed me, put my pants back on, and carried me back. We look around, it's spacious, there are a lot of windows, all kinds of equipment, and this is probably a TV! Shit, it looks like two meters diagonally! There are columns of one and a half meters on the sides with grids on the outside, columns, probably. Everything is turned off, the red indicators are winking.

We returned to the same place where we came from, the man sat me on the sofa, propped me up with pillows on both sides, put some crap with a pen in his hand, I shook it, and it started to squeak, lights inside. Bah, it's a rattle! Well, let's take a closer look at it. Well, what can I say, nothing special: made of transparent plastic, a ball with another ball inside, the second one with built-in LEDs, the handle is also made of plastic, only soft to the touch. Well, that's it. There was a "pssssssss" sound from the right. I look, and there's a piece of wall moving so slowly, and the opening we entered is closing... closed. And on the wall to the right, a green circle about ten centimeters in diameter lit up, and the circle itself seemed to be hanging in the air without touching the wall. Wow, it looks like a hologram!

Then I felt that someone was looking at me. So, turn your head slowly to the left. Wow, what a huge cat! The head is bigger than mine, hefty, sixty centimeters at the withers! Thick long paws, a meter-long tail like a tube, and only the tip bends back and forth. He stands on the couch next to me and looks at me with his green eyes, paying attention.

The man sat down at the table, and says:

"What, Barsik, Zhenya woke up, and you're right here, on guard duty?" The cat looked at the man, stood on the pillow with its front paws and folded itself into a ball so that its head was right under my hand. I reached out and ran my fingers through the wool.... and the fur is soft, I scratched him behind the ear with my little fingers, went down on his cheek, the cat threw his head back, purred like an engine. I was looking at the man, and he turned sideways to the table, pressed something with his hand under the table, and in front of him a hefty hologram lit up for about a meter and a half. He put gloves on his hands with metal claws on the tips of his fingers and began to think in the hologram: he pokes somewhere on the left, then moves back and forth with both hands at once, then launches his hands into the hologram itself with fingers spread out, as if holding something, and twists his palms, as if turning. Bah, it's such a punch line, you see! I wish I'd been like this in a previous life!

The man appears to be in his thirties, has blond hair, blue eyes, and is wearing what looks like a pair of light-colored overalls with hip pockets and a white T-shirt with a large blue inscription "LC" LOKI EI-14 "TAS NAVY" on the left side. On her feet are soft-looking, short moccasins made of white material. I stared at him like that for twenty minutes. In the end, he couldn't stand it, got out from behind the table, walked through the hologram, came up to me and said:

"Why are you looking at the Dad, my daughter, as if you've seen it for the first time!" And he's smiling. I return his smile, he bends closer to me... and I am covered with love, tenderness and some kind of joy mixed with delight! Damn, why am I so overwhelmed? Didn't you feel anything like that just now?! The man kisses me on the forehead and returns to the table. The feelings went with it! Oh, how! So it was HIS feelings! That's the second bonus, I'm an empath now, no, an empath, that's cool!

"Should I turn on cartoons?" He says "Dad" and clicks something on the table. There was a buzzing and clicking sound above my head, and right in front of me, about two meters away, a three-dimensional picture appeared in the air, with some icons scattered in groups on a blue background, and numbers in the corner. "11:03:2355 10:22". Wow, we've decided on the date... it's the 24th century! The icons are signed with different abbreviations such as "CPiKRK from 1UO", try it, understand. Here the cursor appeared, it hovered over the icon with the image of a paper folder, signed as "miscellaneous", several windows flashed in a row ... and voila, a picture with a roaring lion appeared! She went all over the "screen", and... no, well, it can't be! "Tom and Jerry"! Hold me seven! It was worth dying to watch these cartoons again in a new life! Oh, ha ha ha, I can't, fack! Well, let's see!

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