Chapter 1.1

Have you ever had adventures in your life?

Maybe you hitchhiked or traveled to another country "as a savage"?

Or maybe just a long hike through the mountains and forests?

If so, which of the above would you call the most amazing? I had nothing like that. Until recently. I was a typical city dweller, working five days a week, and only on weekends did I allow myself to relax more or less normally. I was not interested in active recreation - I was tired at work. I preferred a comfortable and convenient bed and four walls, and not a sleeping bag and tent.

The most I could afford was a barbecue at the dacha. I did not even think about the fact that I would suddenly get into a real adventure, like one hobbit or any other character in adventure films. My life was too gray and monotonous, and the fear of something new and unknown served as a good brake on the accelerating fantasies.

Why? How? What if? These are the questions that visited me every time I occasionally thought about it, having watched various films or documentaries about people who travel and learn new things. For this you need money, special things and equipment, and, what can I say, courage and willpower. I was lacking in the last two points.

Loneliness, a dead-end job and an incomplete family took their toll. But what I have understood in my short life is that not everything goes the way you want it to. And that many things have already been decided for you. And so someone or something decided that my life lacks adventure and extreme sports. I fell asleep in my apartment, setting the alarm clock on my phone exactly 7:00, because the next day I had to go to work, and I woke up not in my bed. Not in my body. Not in my world. To say that I was in shock is to say nothing.

I knew about such a genre as "time travelers", Russian science fiction writers love it very much. But all these "time travelers" always ended up in the end after death. Stabbed in a gateway, fell awkwardly, some entity simply descended upon them after death, or hit by a car. Ninety-nine percent of ordinary Japanese schoolchildren ended up in the end. As if a truck that suddenly turned the corner had a fierce hatred for them. But to end up like this... just when you went to bed? Like thousands of times before? This is something new. There was no panic, hysteria and screams, or, on the contrary, joy and anticipation. There was only a feeling... of wrongness.

The new body turned out to be slightly younger than my previous one - twenty-three years old. Brown hair, short hair, green eyes, thin body, a very simple face, only a small burn near the right eye, as if a soldering iron or a hot piece of iron had been applied there. It seemed that the reflection in the mirror was even slightly similar to my old one. I woke up, as one might think, not in a hospital, a conscription circle or deep in the forest, but in bed. In a pretty decent apartment. A studio room, a kitchen, a bathroom. Everything is furnished expensively, but without excesses.

A huge plasma, a sofa and armchairs made of genuine leather, a designer coffee table,a double bed. Everything else was small - like a bookcase (half-empty), a couple of paintings, rugs and just small interior items. The bathroom had a bathtub, a shower stall, a toilet, a sink and a mirror. The kitchen was also not very diverse - cabinets, drawers, a refrigerator, a stove, a hood, a sink, a kitchen table with a couple of chairs. But the main thing was the view. The panoramic windows offered a view of the countless skyscrapers of New York. From the photo in the passport I found on one of the shelves (an American one, what a surprise) my, apparently new, face looked out. In the name column, in neat block letters, was written - Peter Richter.

At first, I just looked out the window for a long time and silently and thought. Gradually, my head began to hurt, when the memories of the previous owner of the body slowly began to emerge. In dim visions, and, at times, in sharp flashes. It was like something elusive on the edge of consciousness. It's like you're about to remember what you wanted to say or do, but it eludes you. Still, by concentrating, I was able to catch some particularly vivid memories, and they plunged me into even greater shock. Some events and names were suspiciously familiar. Seeing a laptop on the table, I went online. The password for it popped into my head, although it gave in to a new sharp flash of headache. Here the second surprise awaited me. In what was probably a past life, I knew English more or less, I could understand and explain myself with great difficulty, but here I read, typed and spoke like a native speaker, and my knowledge of Russian was also still there. I was stuck at the laptop for several hours. Well, what can I say, I ended up not only in the body of another person on Earth, as I thought at first, but in a person from a parallel Earth. Or another? Let it be parallel. And not just any kind, but full of heroes and villains. One of the many variations of Earth in the Marvel Universe, and a very unique one at that. After all, here all the heroes and villains I knew swapped genders! Instead of Iron Man - Iron Lady, instead of Spider-Man - Spider-Girl, instead of Captain America... um, Captain America, but only female. Moreover, both Anita Stark and Stephanie Rogers were stunning beauties! And in most cases, they appeared before the public far from their superhero costumes. A nude photo shoot? Please.

An advertisement for erotic underwear? Easy. Almost on the verge of 18+. And so did many heroines who did not hide their faces. Yes, even a few villains were spotted! The cover of the March issue of the main glossy magazine for women was adorned with Scorpia, the enemy of Spider-Girl. A tall, attractive girl with a cute snub nose, freckles, long red hair and fourth-size breasts, covered only by the tail of her costume. Looking at all these delights, my body began to react naturally. As it turned out later, there were almost no ugly women in this world.

And that wasn't the only thing that caused cognitive dissonance. Having decided to find out how this world differed from my past, I started googling everything,what came to mind. So, the Twin Towers are standing, but the Statue of Liberty is not - it was destroyed by the Chitauri invasion less than a year ago. By the way, it was their beam weapon that caused the scar - they hit it with an unfortunate shot, good thing it was only tangentially.

But he still had to spend a lot of time in the hospital, where all the doctors and nurses stuck to Peter. The Soviet Union collapsed only in 2000, which is why Russia has a slightly larger territory here, compared to what I was used to. Two-thirds of Australia has been bought by numerous companies and organizations, where they conduct all sorts of possible and impossible experiments and research. And a huge meteorite fell on Madagascar and brought with it some kind of crystal, which quickly grew and made almost the entire island uninhabitable, since it emits some kind of harmful radiation. But, perhaps, the most important thing is that men are in the minority here. Literally.

About one in ten. I don't know what causes this, but I haven't found any explanations on the internet, like a virus or something else. It's just that men are born like this rarely.magic-x-store.comAdvertisingSmartphone HONOR X9cFind out more This led to the fact that almost all positions in all organizations are occupied only by women, and many men sit at home, raise children and do housework. Although, if a man wants to apply to some prestigious university or strives to move up the career ladder, he will be helped in every possible way and will be preferred to hundreds of other candidates. Therefore, men are valued, pampered and cherished here.

Due to their shortage, polygamous marriages were allowed all over the world. For example, the father of this body (who was a major businessman. This clarified where such a nice apartment came from) had four wives and seven children. There is only one boy - me. Memories of how his mother, aunts and sisters tried to introduce him to their numerous girlfriends surfaced in his head. But due to his character, Peter Richter always found excuses. No, he was not gay. He was just... um, very phlegmatic. Because of his rich father and the great attention of the rest of the family, he got everything he wanted and when he wanted. One might think that this would spoil and pamper him, but it turned out quite the opposite - getting everything and more, he stopped realizing the value of many things. Gradually, year after year, but it happened. Peter did not work anywhere, groceries were delivered to him by couriers, fortunately, a large sum of money from his father came to his bank card every week, but he did not spend even a third of it. While thinking and collecting information, I did not notice how the sun sank below the horizon, and the huge metropolis was covered by darkness, which was instantly dispersed by the numerous lights of windows, signs, lanterns and headlights of cars rushing somewhere.

My stomach treacherously growled, reminding me that I had not eaten anything since morning, only a couple of times I left the laptop for water. Opening the refrigerator, I involuntarily grimaced - only semi-finished products. Something that does not take long to cook. Just heat it up on the stove or in the microwave and it's ready. Or everything you need for sandwiches. I ate all of this in my previous world, but it was due to a banal lack of money and time, and not a reluctance to cook. Having quickly grabbed some sandwiches, I decided that tomorrow I had to go get some normal food. Fortunately, I had money, and I didn't know how long I'd be stuck here.