Chapter 1.

This day was unremarkable. The sun hid, not wanting to disperse this gloomy mood that covered the megalopolis, even the smallest. Here, among the high-rise buildings, a height of a little less than a kilometer, and so rarely could one enjoy the sunlight, and now even more so.

It was late morning, but the streets were no longer overflowing. Amid a stormy gray stream of people rushing to — where was the guy walking. Nothing interesting, at first glance, and at the second, to be honest, too. The same gray spot, which looked like it was thirty-five. And it would be necessary to peer very closely, to notice that in fact this person is still very young, just a little over twenty, not more. But the pale face contorted by the grimace of pain, fading eyes and shuffling, completely lifeless gait clearly did not rejuvenate him.

Right now the poor fellow was returning from a specialized pharmacy. Drugs that were supposed to prolong his life a little, though they acted, but caused so agonizing and strong migraines that the guy was not too happy that he had not yet died.

Pulling a sullen look, he silently wandered forward, resisting a living wave of people who, as always happens, were not too worried about the fate of the first comer.

"I can't take it anymore ..." — a similar thought in one form or another came to this person for a whole month now. Every day and many times. But he stubbornly endured this joke of fate, while continuing to take medicine.

The incurable neurodegenerative disease progressed extremely quickly and, even according to the most optimistic forecasts, it remained for not more than a month. And this is subject to taking exorbitantly expensive drugs. Even despite the level of development of modern medicine, such diseases could not even be stopped, therefore the poor guy had no choice but to accept the outcome.

Continuing to walk slowly, he heard the sound of water, but was surprised only for a moment. This hologram advertising the game has been here for a long time. The guy still raised the seemingly so heavy head and looked in front of him. There was a small hill above which a three-dimensional optical projection was created. An old wooden ship was swinging steadily on the waves, cutting the sea azure. There were quite a few people aboard, dressed in strange outfits that had been stolen from the past. The ship continued to sail, gradually the camera drifted away and it became clear that there was an entire armada of similar ships on the water. Their destination was also well known. It is unlikely that there are still people on the whole planet who have not heard about it.

REVOLVE is a new game built on the principle of virtual reality, the technology of which has been developing for more than 40 years. Just think, today it is difficult to imagine a regular walk without such devices, but it was not always like that. The developers were able to predict the development of technology for decades to come ...

In fact, to call REVOLVE a game could only be greatly minimizing the scale of this brainchild of scientific thought. The developments, in the process of its creation, have found application in almost all spheres of human activity, from medicine to mining. The main achievement was not even the technology to create a holistic virtual world, but a unique artificial intelligence that designed it.

At the very beginning, only the basic laws of the world were given, and the process of its creation and settlement was placed on the shoulders of a specialized, completely unique AI. And so, so many years later, in the 2065, the game was supposed to see the light. The scale of the marketing company was so large that it would not be surprising if they caught up with the cost of its development. But in fact, the game, before it even came out, completely paid off. The principle of working with the human nervous system was used for completely different purposes. The main of which was the creation of perfect AI, which brought the developers a fabulous profit and attracted the attention of the whole world to the creation of the game. And now, before the long-awaited launch, there were two days left.

The game had only one flaw: in order to visit the new world, it was necessary to pay an unbearable amount of money for the average person. The gameplay itself took place in the offices of the developer's company, where there were special installations for connecting the user to the virtual world. This was due to some incompleteness of the technology of working with human neural networks. To ensure complete security when connecting to the game, you needed constant supervision and strict adherence to the rules of the company. For each player, an individual schedule was created for diving into the game. In between the person underwent a small therapy to raise the tone. Virtual reality settings could keep the player in optimal condition for nearly a month, but the load on his brain was somewhat higher, due to which interruptions were needed. It is thanks to these interruptions that the cost of the game process was determined. The person paid for each individual session. The amount was so large that it would be enough to buy a small house, but this did not stop the powerful people from the beginning of the large-scale occupation of new lands, which in the future promised to become so popular that they had to completely replace the current planet. And the sooner they have time to settle there, the more influential they will be when large-scale resettlement begins.

This information was publicly available, or rather, it was made publicly available to further increase the popularity of the game. This type of marketing had booming success.

The guy who was currently looking at a hologram that had already passed a full cycle of display also knew all this.

"I decided ... I have nothing to lose." — he turned and headed in the same direction from which he came. How easy it turned out to make a decision when you already were one foot in the grave.

He came back home in the afternoon. He had just sold his car, most of the things, and took a rather big bank loan. In fact, he was given a loan for two reasons only, the first was that his illness was not known on the territory of this country, and the second was that he had a house almost in the very center of the city. But tomorrow he planned to sell it. Even after the guy actually remains with nothing, the money will be enough for a little more than 25 days of connection. But it made no difference at all. In fact, without drugs, he will not last for so long. His heart will stop beating in a few days, but a person who has lost faith in the future will be able to live them without pain.

***

Now the guy was in a small reception room, which was individual for each player who paid a lot. They put a contract in front of him, the size of a small book that the guy had signed without looking. The consulting girl standing next to him did not even blink an eye, noticing such negligence. With a sharp movement, she took the document in her hands and placed it in the hole right in the wall.

— Please follow me. — with an extremely angelic smile, the female worker chirped, pointing to the side of the door. For almost five minutes she had led the client with ornate corridors until they reached the room, about a hundred square meters in area. There were ten installations for immersion in the game world. At the moment, they were all empty. The mindless signing of a contract is not the fruit of excessive trust in a world-renowned company, in any case. This is just one more example, personifying the whole degree of despair of a person on the verge of death. When they entered the room, the guy noticed four people in medical uniform who seemed to be responsible for the connection.

— How do you feel? - asked one of the doctors, rather out of politeness, because the game installation itself conducted a body diagnosis.

— I am perfectly fine. Except for the fact that I am overwhelmed with anticipation. — a pre-prepared mixture of truth and lies easily left his lips. Just a few days, but he would spend them on a truly interesting occupation - exploring the unknown to no one world...

"But the new world is, in fact, unknown." - the guy thought, pulling off his clothes. In the last couple of days he managed to learn quite a lot about REVOLVE.

Aria - that was the name of the specialized AI, independently brought the game world to a state of complete autonomy. At the moment, the developers almost could not influence it directly, except, perhaps, for connecting new players, for whom, after the moment of appearance in the new world, Aria was also responsible, generating their appearance, parameters and everything else.

The death in the game, as previously reported, was punished rather severely - a person lost all collected items and one of the specializations. This was done to maximize the realism of the gameplay. The world itself could also be called real without any doubts, all the phenomena occurring in it were strictly subject to the laws originally set, which directed its development together with Aria. Of course, the developers worked out the main points that would make staying in the game more pleasant and they took into account the mistakes already made in the real world.

For example, in REVOLVE there was no garbage, all the objects thrown away disappeared after a while. Although the player could get sick, but organisms smaller than a certain size simply did not exist about, which excluded the majority of the diseases caused by viruses and parasites. Surprisingly, there were not even small insects.

Players' feelings, be it pain, thirst or something else, were also dull, they simply could not exceed a certain threshold. It caused a lot of controversy, because they wanted to remove the discomfort, but the experiment confirmed that it could cause some harm to mental health. Still, forgetting what pain is, players could involuntarily harm themselves, having already returned to reality...

Also, despite the fact that people had to eat in the game, their bodies did not produce waste, and only the outer layer of skin got dirty. This was done mainly because the world in the game was close to the early Middle Ages and personal hygiene was decided to be as simple as possible.

However, the characters of the players did not grow older. During the generation, their bodies were of a similar build, which gradually changed, depending on the direction of development. It was impossible to choose a set of characters, the player could not even name his character. All parameters, ranging from hair length, ending with the innate characteristics of the race, were formed by Aria.

It is also worth noting that the organisms inhabiting the virtual world could rightly be called alive, because each of them was answered by its own AI of a certain level of complexity. It was even possible to have children in the game who were not inferior to a real person at all. The list of such global and not-so-great differences was quite extensive, but not all of them were disclosed - the players had to feel all the charms of the game on their own skin.

Sighing, the guy finally completely undressed, finished remembering what he had read on the project website. He, following the instructions, lay down in a fairly overall installation. She looked like a three-meter, spider cocoon placed on the floor, externally coated with metal. The first connection procedure took some time. The surface on which he lay for a few moments remembered the shape of the user's body and changed accordingly. The boy felt as if he was covered by a thick liquid that left only his head untouched, to which several dozen electrodes had already been attached.

— Close your eyes and relax. — one of the people in medical coats monotonously instructed him throughout the process. The guy didn't care at all about the tone of the doctor's voice, he tried to quickly and clearly execute the commands he heard and now he managed to close his eyes, falling asleep a few moments later. The young man could no longer see, like a small indicator, on the surface of the newly closed "cocoon" lid, slowly fill up, indicating the progress of its synchronization process with the user's nervous system. The indicator successfully filled the entire scale, but after a moment, an error message appeared on the display. The device stopped syncing and slowly opened. It was visible, as the body of the guy shuddered from electric shock. One, two, three times, but the doctor who was quietly watching what was happening, simply continued to monitor vital signs in the retina of his eyes. A few seconds later, in the same calm voice, he said:

— The first case of death was recorded when connected. The device is fully functional. — sharing observations with colleagues standing nearby, he gave the command to pick up the body and, turning around, left the room.

***

Ten hours later, the head of the department responsible for connecting new members to REVOLVE was finishing up a report to the company's general director...

— So, during the connection session that ended today, more than 290 thousand people were introduced into the game, in fact, only slightly exceeded the initial calculations. Also a gross error was discovered that was not taken into account during the development process. People with certain types of diseases of the nervous system can not be connected to current models of immersion devices. There was one case of a lethal outcome, due to overloading of neural networks during synchronization. According to the protocol, Aria immediately began to check the state of the nervous system of each plug-in, before synchronization began.

— Was that someone important?

— No, sir. A young man, 23 years old, no family, sold all his property before connection. I suppose that he just wanted to spend his last days in the game.

— Excellent. Continue to work.

Not a single emotion flashed across the faces of both people as they talked about the death of another person. The head of the department slightly bowed his head, turned and left the office. Only the main session of connections was completed, he still had a whole sea of ​​work.