In the name of freedom

The coffee maker gurgled, pumping my coffee into a mug. Now I can take a short break. Coffee is a ritual. Pause. Setting up for a new stage of work. Taste meditation before a long visit to a difficult project. It's a pity that the mug ended almost imperceptibly.

Will Hoona call the security guards? Don't know.Rather, he will complain to his friends. Or he will call, but with what presentation? What did he think he saw there? So they won't come because of this. There's too much work to do. The patrols are all loaded. Rather, Huna and her friends will appear at my door. But then I'll call the security service. Because I'm a designer, I need iron to work, and these gifted people thought who knows what!

The plan was so-so, but I couldn't think of more. My computer was waiting for me.

The assembly took a couple of hours. With all the preparations, saving backup files, installing drivers, checking compatibility. The decisive moment came when I was checking the work of the game designer and the rendering speed.

Does not slow down! Great

And now let's have some fun.

I clapped my hands, gathering my thoughts, but the sound abruptly knocked me out of the mood when one nasty thought whistled through my head. Namely, what will I do if the game does not accept me? That's something I hadn't thought of. I spent all my savings on iron, naively deciding that What? Will I press the button and my consciousness will be dragged into the "Aden"? Yes, of course! I'm a fucking idiot. I forgot that nothing depends on my desire.

Stop. You can't get to work like that. Just not with this mood! I jerked out of my chair and began pacing my small room. The last stage before the final decision. The last choice. Yes, I bought iron, but it can still be wrapped in work. You can even join a group of hackers who are still trying to break the game.

So what do I want. No, not like that. Who am I? And where will I find my place? On the islands? In the resistance? Or in a new world?

I could weigh the pros and cons for hours. He could inflate himself, tormenting himself with doubts. But I looked at my hands, which had recently been covered in blood from a fight, and I was afraid of becoming a cripple through the fault of such attackers. What if I die from a blow to the head, with my muzzle in a garbage bag?What if they break my back, my arms, or gut my stomach with rebar, just to get me to the hospital? This is no longer public kindness. It's hate. Contempt. And the thirst for harassment over those who, in their opinion, are weaker.

I won't survive here. I just can't. I don't want to respond to the same familiar neighbors with retaliatory violence and fighting. I don't want to prove my right to live here. I do not want I don't want anything. This apocalypse is not for me. I'm afraid to die in it!

Fear pushes for action. Fear pushes you to madness. Being squeezed into a corner, people are often able to change for the sake of their freedom. And now, the adrenaline rush that tickled my nerves again from fear made me stop panicking and rush to work.

Spinning the chair sharply, I collapsed into it, and as if I had started some kind of preparatory ritual. I pulled the keyboard panel closer, started the connection to the network, adjusted the armrests, adjusted the screen to graphic mode. Actions. Small actions, as if I was sitting at the helm of my own spaceship, taking me to a distant other world. When the last stage of preparation was the map of the city I had prepared earlier, called for demonstration.

Like most players, I used to start building the capital on a flat plateau with access to the coastal zone. I'm not a fan of castles, so my cities resembled smeared megacities. It was assumed that I would protect myself from my neighbors with a wall, a border with a patrol, techno and riding aircraft. I will build a fleet, let the people follow the mago-technical path of development, I will feed my equipment with the energy of crystals already scattered by players in the form of deposits around the world.

I thought I could build a perfect city with a population of creators and inventors. But... the words of my engineer friend stopped me in time. Big cities pose a threat.

Megacities are always the safest place for any problem. If some kind of mess starts in the game reality, from war to infection, then every open city is like a target. A lavishly spread tablecloth for any conqueror. Therefore, I kept my first project in reserve, got more powerful hardware and started a new one from scratch.

I called up the developer environment for the player "Aden" on the screen. Icons and sidebars with parameters flashed in front of me, generously supplemented with various mods and plugins. Among them were hundreds of standard sets of different baida to choose from. From castle throne rooms to ship bridges. But the main thing I need now is a simple threedimensional game environment with a flexible ability to "sculpt" the desired objects. I fundamentally don't want to use someone else's standards. If someone managed to design them, then he can just as easily break it.

No way. I'd rather use my brain. Fortunately, nothing is hurrying me yet, and I am able to come up with everything I need myself. I'll go from the opposite. What if we make the habitat as unsuitable and unsightly as possible for others? What if we hide in a place where no one just wants to go? I myself will find where to hide and how to survive. But outside I need a place that will alienate any potential neighbor or invader.

So. Start. Landscape. Let it be a sharp impassable mountain ridge. Shallow valleys. Green foothills. It is worth tweaking the height differences so that they no longer look passable. And also to grind off part of the rocks. Sprinkle large boulders at the foot. No decor. No mountain romance and beautiful views. Untidy, rude, boring, crooked. No passable passes.

My hand with the tablet pen froze over the screen when I decided that the crooked daub was enough. Otherwise it will be too much. The three-dimensional landscape of the mountain range already resembled the killer ridge, in which you can only settle at the very foot, and everything else is meaningless and merciless in terms of surface development. Well, yes, I love mountains! I've always dreamed of living with a view of the ridge.

Further. Weather: from minus fifty degrees on the peaks to plus fifteen at the foot of the mountains.

Nobody likes the cold. Me too. But I'll get dressed!

Precipitation: heavy. Snow, wind, blizzard. Low cloud cover. No airworthy weather. So that no fucking pterodactyl flies by. A kilometer up, and then all the rocks will be covered with an even layer of white snow.

I will have huge supplies of drinking water! Clean, fresh, frozen and always safe. And it is also convenient to cover crystal deposits with snow, if it is possible to form them there. But that's a little later.

No one likes to settle in the mountains. Give everyone plains, roads, small navigable rivers And I will have streams that are outgunned. Just to get my feet wet. And no mountain rafting on boats.

Greenery: grass. Rare bushes, steppe trees in patches. A few variegated berry plants on rare plateaus between rocks. There was not much greenery, but enough for small-scale construction. Still, I don't need to make a wooden fleet out of this forest later, but let it go for small needs.

And now we need to figure out how to settle my people in all this

Mansions don't disappear here. It would look strange. No jerks would live in such a zone in stationary, monolithic mansions. Suddenly the blizzard will descend lower. Suddenly an avalanche will start. Or a mudslide. In the end, I do not rule out seismic activity. Only nomads will be saved in such an environment. And nomads are caravans. Lightweight portable frame houses.

Wow... I, a squeamish and devoted lover of all the benefits of civilization, am building myself... caravans!

The main thing is to finish my plan to the end and not fall off, stopping only on these caravans.

I was a little scared, but I quickly pulled myself together. It's too late to be afraid! We have to work. So, he pulled himself together, took his brains, did not look at the clock. We need to get back to where we left off.

Well. The number of tents: twenty pieces is enough for now. I will multiply three more of the same groups on other plateaus.

Choosing a rounded kibitka tablet from standard models of buildings, I added uniqueness of forms to it with sweeping strokes of the tablet pen. I turned on a random search of the color scheme of warm tones. I downloaded several examples of angular ornaments from the web, mixed, glued, got something of my own. But this is not the main thing.

The main thing is not to get carried away with the bullshit that I will cover the main city with.

So. And what will my potential people do in the eyes of others?

Mining and gathering? Nonsense. Not profitable. Agriculture? Where?.. on the rocks? But cattle breeding is a thought! Exactly. What survives well in the mountains? I remember being conquered by mountain goats at one time. It seems that such a beast will pass everywhere. Not even sheep. They're dumb buggers compared to goats!

I brought a model of an ordinary white goat to the screen and thought, tapping the back end of the pen on my lips.

So, this will be the main visible source of survival. Goats are milk, cheese, cottage cheese and other edible joy. Fur is clothing and material for tents. Horns are objects and weapons.

Weapons?

And what if we strengthen their horns? In the mountains, in theory, there are always predators. I don't want my goats to be eaten by predators!

Stop. If I didn't make predators there, then they won't be there. Is it logical? Yes. But I need predators to control the mountains and attack uninvited guests! But after all, at other times they will eat my

Filth! I don't have time to get carried away and dig into the external biome! That's not what I got in for. I really need to do the underground territory, and I can't think of external predators here. Some fucking goats.

What if

This is my land and my game. My territory. My animals. Then what limits me?

With a lopsided smile, I finished drawing and grew sharp fangs from a three-dimensional goat model. I liked the view. I added another row of teeth. Then he opened his mouth, dug into the settings of the plastic forms. I'm a designer.

Under the pen of the tablet, the goat's mouth turned into mandibles. A row of canines and molars was added inside. There will be omnivores. Outwardly, it is impossible to distinguish from herbivores.

Further. External forms. Predators are usually flexible. So, it is necessary to remove the fat belly of my goats. Smaller intestines. They will eat more meat. And I will cover the flexible structure with fur.

And you can also add a cutting edge on the hooves. For self-defense. Straighten the antelope horns. It will come in handy for an attack.

Keep the weight the same. Strengthen the backbone.

Eyes set up for night vision including. The pupil is wider.Add the possibility of polarization. Improve visibility in bad weather. A heat sensor? Come on!

Strengthen the smell receptors. Snake tongue? Even ironic.

Strengthen the fur. We will make fabrics stronger than nylon

Milk. To leave. How about goats without milk!?

Method of reproduction

I hung up for a while. The shit that I get can only become an even bigger problem in one case.

Method of reproduction: hermaphroditism.

So that if some bastard decides to steal at least one goat from me, then this bastard would run away and multiply in the nearest forest! And then she would have arranged genocide for my neighbor. For it's no good stealing my cattle!

And these goats must also be smart enough not to flood my entire zone in the first place and turn it into one big goat house. Everything is in moderation. Instincts are cool. But the brains should dominate even the instinct of reproduction, being aware of their habitat, the minimum sufficient population size and the possibility of satisfying feeding of each individual.

And they will also need brains to distinguish their own from others. And allow yourself to be stolen, without harm to your health, so that you can then escape and arrange sabotage.

This will be my first and most implicit line of defense... Goats.

No one will suspect the goats. And so that no one would guess that they are reproducible, then I will make the second subspecies larger and a little darker. They will be conditionally males.

But if anyone comes to me in the mountains... I will create a separate black nightmare for them.

I never thought that I would fix the models of black mountain shaggy bulls for wild monsters. There is something predatory and dangerous about this animal. Fascinating and powerful. If you fix the skeleton, then you can hide the real muscle relief behind the fur. And behind the bangs a few extra pairs of eyes.

These creatures will tyrannize over everything they see in the mountains. Guard all mines, ventilation, emergency exits. Everything I can't see through.

The work took time. Not all changes were easy in a couple of strokes. I sculpted my monsters with such interest and dedication, with which I probably have not worked on any project before. I woke up at night.

When I accidentally held my gaze at the window and realized that it had been dark outside for a long time. I don't remember turning on the light. And I didn't go to lunch. The whole full day was taken up by some fucking goats!

I clutched my head in horror when I realized how I had killed time. I told myself not to dig into nonsense! I haven't even started work in the capital, and I

Having saved everything, he sadly left to cook dinner for himself. I'll have to work all night. You can't sleep. The excitement will pass. And a clever thought seems to fall out of my head. While designing the unfortunate hooves and the material of the horns, I managed to come up with the properties of another material. You can't stay away for long. We need to write down the idea.

Piling a heated ration of food into a plate, I ate at the monitor, making hasty theses with a pen and forming a three-dimensional blank into the archive of the future project.

The metal is dark, oily gray. It has the properties of a crystal lattice. Capable of growth. It is difficult to melt. Low thermal conductivity. Low electrical conductivity. High hardness, elasticity. It can be deformed and chipped only when exposed to the force of a certain polarization ... in other words, magic.

Does not oxidize, does not corrode.

Stop. It's all nonsense.

The main thing is different. Metal is materialized energy. Its effects on any other type of energy are enormous. It doesn't matter what gets in his way. Wood, other metal, polymer it will cut through everything. Not at the expense of sharpness and molecular sharpening. I need a substance that will retain its cutting properties, even remaining just a sharp sawn crystal.