2

- Bosh`t... - I was taken out of my thoughts by the voice of the lady who was still holding her stomach and lying on the floor. To be more precise, it was not a voice, but a wheeze that could hardly be heard. And it was that voice that brought me out of my thoughts. And there were many of them. The first thought was, "Uh... What the fuck...". And then the second thought was, "FUCK, WHAT THE FUCK! I'M IN THE GETH BODY! I'M IN THE MASS EFFECT!!! WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?" And I would have cussed to myself about the situation, but after a minute I picked my head up and it sobered me up a bit. The problem was that I didn't have a head as such. It was more of a prop for the movement of one single torch eye. After that, I began to assess the situation more soberly. Well, at least I tried. And then this Daro spoke up. Strange names these Quarians have. Well! You're not thinking straight! What are we supposed to do anyway? Okay, don't panic, don't panic, don't panic!!! From all that, I just slapped myself in the face and... All I felt was that I pushed my head. No feeling at all. No feeling at all. So, thinking about what to do... I just started looking around for a way out. There was a way out, but that immediately fell away. The Quarians would turn me into a colander as soon as I got out. Well, maybe... Oh! There it is! Ventilation. The best friend of those who want to travel unnoticed. Suddenly, just as I noticed the vent in the ceiling, I heard this man, Zaal, start to purr and moo and generally come to his senses. Okay, that's the last thing I need! That's it, I'm out of here! Standing under the vent, I just jumped and grabbed the lattice with two fingers, and it immediately went down. Along with me. By this time, Zaal was already trying to get up. OK, now this is dangerous. In a panic, I just threw down the bars and jumped up. Immediately I grabbed the edge and started shoving my entire carcass into this rather expansive shaft. A metre by a metre. That's pretty good. And then, when I'd already crawled a couple of metres, I heard the beauty of the Quarian language.

- Bosh`t! Val'trag gadolod dolodit! - I've heard all sorts of things, but this... And I understand it all! Yeah, even my classmates had better language. And they were a bit of a bum. If you translate what Zaal said (and his voice was that of a man) into Russian, then the only words you could think of were... Shit, there aren't even any prepositions! All three words are obscenities. Yeah, and admiral. You should wash your mouth out with soap. Although, if you wash his mouth with our industrial soap, he won't be out of the hospital for the next month. If he gets out at all. Okay! You're not thinking straight!!! They're about to go into the vent, or worse, shut it off and let him out into outer space. And being Bender wasn't part of my plan, isn't, and won't be for centuries. All right, we've got to keep crawling before these send out the suicide bombers.

- Bosh`t! Val`trag gadolod dol`dit! - said Zaal as he tried to stand up. His head immediately rattled so much that the admiral did not go into his pocket for a word. And when he did stand up and assess the situation, he applied all his experience of restraint and appropriateness that he had gained from years of dealing with Khan at College meetings. Zaal immediately ran up to Daro, who was still conscious. Relative. As soon as he turned her on her back and tried to straighten her out, he immediately realised that his vocabulary was just smoking in comparison to Daro's.

- BOSH`TETORD! Grog`log val`trig gadlog brudlin sikt! - said Daro, oblivious to all the other admirals, chain of command and other bullshit.

- I hope that is not addressed to me? - Zaal asked hopefully, not really eager to be the subject of such invective and cursing.

- Noooo... aaaaay, goeth, bosh`t. Where is he? - Having already gathered her thoughts somehow, Daro was able to ask the most important thing.

- He's gone. Shit! He's hidden in the vent...

- WHAT?! - Daro reacted instantly, but was immediately reminded, as if she had been punched in the stomach by a goeth.

- Yeah. There's the vent cover. I'm surprised he didn't kill us. Shit, we've got to notify the crew! I'll be right back!

- Stop! You can't do that! The Admirals are going to find out about this. - Daro started to fight back.

- Daro, you can't be thinking about your career right now. What if that Goethe gets into the mass core? Or on the bridge? Or the climate control system?! It could just take over the controls and ram the farm ship! You can't just think of yourself! The whole Fleet is in danger now!

- That's what I'm thinking of! Zaal, look, as soon as the Collegium finds out, we'll both be exiled. And after that, no one will be able to contradict Khan. A few officers below us respect him and support him. And Rael and Shala don't have enough influence to say anything against him. They'll just be forced to shut up. Hell, you know what would happen if everyone started listening to Khan. One thing he can do is talk and persuade. You want the Fleet to go head-to-head with the Goths again? He's like Zhukov. He's a professional, but the casualties...

- I'm sorry, who? - Zaal asked immediately.

- Ah, sorry, that's... it's from people's history. Sometimes I read it before I go to bed. Okay, that's not what this is about. Okay, here's what we're gonna do. One goeth is dumb as a warren. He can't do anything. He can't figure it out. He won't be able to communicate with the other Geths, either. The only way he can hide is in the vents or the tech corridors. Anyway, we'll call an unscheduled inspection. Then all the engineers will leave the tech corridors and we can find the goeth without any witnesses and disarm it. And everyone is happy. - Finished, Daro looked at Zaal, and he was willing to swear she was now pleading with his gaze. And once again Zaal berated himself for a certain soft-heartedness that had been inherent in him since birth.

- Eh, okay. At least it looks like a plan. Give me your hand. - I didn't have to be persuaded twice. Daro took his hand and Zaal immediately raised it.

- Aaaaay... Shit, aaah. He's got me hard... Bosh. Now, let me... Just a minute. Whoo-hoo. That's... that's it, let's go. To the bridge. - Daro was barely able to straighten herself up, but she went with Zaal to the captain's bridge.

Well, this is where they won't find me. I was able to get into, well, a very dark and, well, very narrow corridor. The only thing that could give me away was a torch eye, but I was able to solve that. I simply turned off my vision and amplified my hearing. Now I could see black nothing again, but I could hear a fly nosing around me. Where did it come from? Okay, we need to figure this out.

Okay, I'm in the body of a Geta Stormtrooper. White colour, blue tubes of hydraulic fluid. Three fingers on my hands. Two on my feet + a third toe, an offshoot of some kind. Legs twisted the other way, but apart from the legs, three-toed arms and oddly shaped head, the geths look human at all. Two arms, two legs, body, head, all in place. So, let's move on.

My name is Seryozha. Born in Yekaterinburg. Okay, I remember that. I went to school number 10. All 11 grades. All 11 grades in "A" class. Okay, I remember that, too. Now the real question is, how did I get here in the first place? Come on, think back. Okay, I remember it was May 25th.

Last call. The results of the USE have already been told. All excellent, only maths not so good, but it didn't matter any more. Everyone rejoiced. We were invited to class. To say goodbye to the teacher. A young girl had been teaching us since the fifth grade, half the class wanted her. We were sitting in the classroom, the teacher was talking about how we were her first class, and that she was happy to teach us. Suddenly, a guy bursts into class. Oleg. The black sheep of the class. What's that in the class - in the whole school. Everyone said he was a virgin, though the reason was different. He was the best in school, but he didn't let anybody copy his homework, so he was branded by Ilya, our main bully/thug/alpha-male/walking wardrobe. And so, Oleg bursts into class, and he's holding a double-barrelled gun! And with a shout of "WOW!" he shoots. First he hits Ilya, and then he shoots Alina. Our main slut with a capital "S". Except she was sitting with Ilya, and he was sitting behind me, on the next desk. The first shot hit Ilya right in the head, but the second hit me, because Oleg didn't have time to aim. The buckshot hit right in the chest. The last thing I saw was Oleg just running out of the classroom. Then darkness, and then letters in Kwarian that told me there was a danger of a break-in. Hell, Oleg probably only had two bullets, so he shot our sweet couple and fled. Except the second shot hit me! That's great! Fucking Voroshilov's shooter! Well, I can't do anything now, so let's move on.

Oh, yeah, I'm in the Mass Effect universe. Yeah, that's one thing I didn't expect to end up here.

- Oh, come on, it could be worse. - my soul mate suddenly thought. I think they call it conscience, or intuition. So that's what it is, just a voice in my head. - He could have been an Elkor, or a Volus, or a Khanar, for that matter! You know what, I'd rather be a get than a jellyfish. There's a lot of advantages to being a Geth.

- What are the benefits, if you don't mind me asking? - I was getting indignant.

- You don't have to eat. You don't have to drink. You don't have to breathe. You don't even have to go to the bathroom!

- Yeah, and don't have sex either. I can't even do it now. That's a hell of a prospect! - I immediately started arguing with myself. With my thoughts. This is so weird. Arguing with someone who's, like, yourself. I'm a weird person.

- Look, you're already a virgin, so don't get smart. You got nothing to compare it to, so it's no big deal. - I just started talking to myself. - Keep going with the list. No more pain, either. None at all! So now there's a train and a small lorry. Let anybody try to call you a wimp, like Ilya. She'll get it in the face, like that quarian.

- She didn't call me any names.

- But she was trying to reprogram you. - Yeah, you can't argue with that. - And actually, the Gets aren't welcome anywhere! Even in the most outlandish little town in the Galaxy, they'd either call the police or take you apart into pieces themselves. But you can still be upgraded. And with your imagination... We're gonna crush this galaxy. Everyone here will dance by our rules.

- Shut up! I'm not like that, all right. Okay, we need to figure out what year it is. I know the plot of the game all right. We'll figure it out. - And then I got all these numbers and names in front of me. If you translate it into Russian, it's "23 Kila'stun, 3152 from the ascent of Kila. So, the Goths have a Kvarian calendar. Okay, can we do a human calendar? Connecting to the extranet? Okay, we'll wait. Oh, in two seconds, already. That was fast. Okay, planet Earth, System Alliance calendar. Oh, there it is. Okay. It's "August 3rd, 2183." Taaaaaaaaah. That's... I see. That's a start. And now I can give you... I can tell you that right now Shepard is flying full steam ahead to Eden Prime with SPECTRE Nylus to retrieve the Protean beacon that started it all. Okay, moving on.

What's next? What do I even do? What do I even know about people like me? I know for a fact that they call them "hitchhikers." I've been hanging out at the fanfic book a lot, though. It's a nice site, but it's been hacked a few times. Oh, well, the admins there are very good at solving problems. All right, let's stay on topic. I know three good fantasy fanfics about a Pomeranian.

The first one is Tony Stark in Shepard's body. Not our kind of guy. That genius/billionaire/playboy/philanthropist is as far away from me as Moscow is from Vladivostok. On foot. By foot. So it's out.

The second is a German popadan. Humanity took a different path there, with the Russian and German Empires still intact, the monarchy thriving, the Earth Bloc instead of the Alliance of Systems, and Shepard being a super-soldier, per the programme. Been in training since he was six years old. That doesn't work for us, either.

The third one's a Zhenya hitchhiker. Okay, that's the one closest to us. The assassin is also Russian, gets into Jane Shepherd, wakes up at Cerberus base. And then follows the canon in his own way. Closest to us as a fellow countryman in every way except the city, and that's not a fact.

Damn, and I haven't finished any of the fanfics. There was no Prod and I waited and waited. Now I don't get to read them. Okay, no distractions. What do all these fanfics have in common? What all the characters have in common. Don't panic and live by the rules of the universe? Yeah, that's what these fanfics teach us. Play your part and then get used to it, accept it and enjoy it. It's kind of okay, but there's a "but"! How am I supposed to do that if I'm GET?! Although, why should that bother me? It's true. I'm a get. I don't need anything at all, so I still have my memory and my sanity. And most importantly, I have an imagination! What else do you need to be happy? Heh heh heh, yes, thank you, authors of three good fanfics. What would I do without you guys. At least now I know what to do. Eh, I'm gonna have to save this galaxy. But first, I have to escape from the submarine... ...space boat. But how do I do that? Damn! Someone's coming! Now we've got to keep our heads down and our heads down.