System requirements

Comrade Borro suggested a very interesting thing - if you copy this script to your address bar, the story will be about you.

javascript:((function(){var post=document.getElementById('post_195332'),name=document.getElementById('footer').getElementsByTagName('a')[0].innerHTML;post.innerHTML=post.innerHTML.split('{name}').join(name)})())

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A fuel truck was flying along the oncoming lane, already tilting to one side. {name} even managed to unscrew the steering wheel when he saw how it flew into the oncoming traffic, but at the same second realized that collisions could not be avoided. The last thought flashed through my head was "at least it's not a truck, not everyone is dying with such a firework."


{name} blinked. He stood in a spacious room, furnished in a modern restrained style, in which freelancers often live, combining their bedroom with a study.

Outside a beautiful view of the mountains. Opposite the window was a large desk with a wide monitor, sitting behind it was a middle-aged man who seemed to fall asleep a long time ago, conveniently leaning his head back on the back of a chair and folding his hands on his stomach. In principle, {name} never complained about how neither his colleagues nor friends complained, but now he refused to analyze the situation and give out anything other than a random repetition of the same questions, “Where am I? How did I get here? Where did the gas truck go? ”

The man at the table flinched, opened his eyes, and slowly turned to {name} .

- I see you have arrived, {name}, good evening! These lags sometimes tire ... Well, you know, the finiteness of the speed of light, relativity, all that. However, it is not for me to tell you, this physics is sick of you at the university.

{name} was finally able to merge the thundering private questions in his head into one more general one.
- What happened to me?

- A fuel truck crashed into you! - the interlocutor joyfully explained. - It just happened, you could not forget it so quickly. A fuel truck crashed into you, you died, and your dying thought about “fireworks” won the contest “The best dying thoughts of the day”. By the way, the fireworks were, generally speaking, modest. Fuel trucks now make strong and reliable. Unlike their drivers ... We will see it once more, but, with your permission, a little later, you need to finish some things.

{name} mentally counted to ten, trying to calm down and imagine some, if unlikely, explanation of the situation.

“You saved me?” Like in science fiction stories, somehow pulling out of a car an instant before death?

- Spas? No, what are you. I said - you are dead. But you are a more interesting conversationalist than a fuel truck driver, so you are still here.
If {name} were less excited, this would have “led” him to some bad suspicions, but at the moment he was preoccupied with more fundamental problems.

“Am I already ... there?” - {name} hesitantly pointed a finger at the ceiling.

- Rather - over there, the man responded, waving his hand somewhere behind his back. - We are now in {location1}and you crashed into {location2} , which’s roughly in that direction, several thousand kilometers. But you think correctly, I am the one whom many expect to see after death. It is not clear, however, why. I never made it clear that I was hosting guests, however, from somewhere these speculations went ...

{name} realized that his picture of the world was cracking, so I decided to just ask questions that are spinning in his tongue, not trying to collect new things on the go a view from the fragments of the old.

- Why me?

- I liked your dying thought. Probably in the mood, I don’t know. Maybe another day I would not pay attention to you.

“No, why should I ... like that?” I still have a wife ... - {name}felt how hard it was for him to finish the sentence.

- Ah, that. What does it mean why? Because a fuel truck crashed into you. Because his driver got this position at the expense of his brother’s acquaintance, despite the fact that it’s better not to let him even go to the bike. Because this acquaintance once owed a debt to the brother of the driver, since he covered up his theft of gas at work. These chains can go on endlessly, a very exciting activity. In the end, you can generally go down to the quantum level, although I do not like this. It is more interesting to observe the macrocosm.

- That is, it was an accident?

“Absolute, just a little in the wrong sense.” You see, {name}, the most fascinating thing is not to follow the reverse chains of events, but the direct ones. If you have a small impact, then this - he hesitated a little, picking up a word - resonance may not happen. It's like a roulette game. You throw a coin on the street in front of a passerby, and think, "what will come of it?" It may turn out that nothing - he will not notice it, or he will notice, but will not raise it. Or raise, but it will not affect anything.
Or maybe he will pick it up and think, “Wow, I’m lucky today,” and dare to go play in the casino. There he will win a million, quit his job, return to his long-abandoned hobby and write a song that will stir up millions of people. Or vice versa, he will lose his entire salary, get drunk with grief, and after that he will sit behind the wheel of a fuel truck. In this case, my main thoughts and actions can be considered the main source of “chance” - the idea to throw a coin came to me quite unexpectedly, I also chose a venue at random. So - yes, what happened to you is a complete coincidence.

{name} stood for a minute, comprehending what was said. The man in the chair was smiling good-naturedly, looking at him, then, apparently, he was tired of it, and he looked at the mountains outside the window.

- This is not an accident, you did it! Or you, how is it customary to contact you there? Why do you need it at all?

- Contact as you prefer, you have come up with so many names and so many different fables, choose any that is closer to you. This is entertainment. Do you play computer games? Here, consider the same thing, but with much greater possibilities. And, ”he grinned,“ the graphics are on top. ” When you get tired of just watching, you can temporarily stretch one of you, like you now, to talk. By the way, you can’t be afraid, I’m not such a psychopath as many of you see me, I’m not going to send anyone to bathe in hot tar boilers for ever and ever. And where, let me ask you, is there so much to place? Or a cloud with harps, for those who did not get into the boiler? For you, the journey ended there in the car during the accident. There is nothing further. And what is now - this is an exception, a nice bonus before you disappear from this world.

- In our games, people do not die.

- The players themselves do not die, you wanted to say. Have you seen the Sims game? Surely I saw. And I probably saw, or even did it myself - let the sim swim in the pool, and then clean the stairs, because of which he could not get out, and, as a result, was drowning. The only difference is in the level of detail and, as a consequence, in very primitive forms of influence with uninteresting sequences of events. But did someone stop pulling stairs from the pools when a new version came out, with improved graphics?

- But we are not in a computer simulation, how can we compare the drawn people with living people?

- Of course, not in a simulation. It is impossible to achieve this level of realism in approximate computer models. Each game has its own requirements for hardware, it is quite logical. Mine, ”he swept his arms around the space,“ requires all this. ” Gravity, nuclear forces, all that pass in the course of physics at good technical universities.
Now I’ll ask you to excuse me, I still have to finish my business, and then together we can see the whole chain of events that brought you here.

{name}felt an incredible rage rising from the very depths of the soul. Perhaps his interlocutor looked like the ancient books describe, with something stern omnipotent, promising eternal torment or eternal salvation, he would have felt something else, but now he saw in front of him an ordinary person playing with computer games.

"Cauldrons, bitch, nowhere to put?" thought {name} , grabbing a decorative palm tree, standing in a small tub, by the thin trunk and putting all his hatred into this blow.

The man still retained his former complacent expression, only seemed to slightly raise his eyebrow.

“Anti-virus database has been successfully updated” - a synthesized voice pulled {name} out of sleep.
The body was numb from a long half-seat-half-lying in front of the monitor, although this sensation was familiar. Working late, he often fell asleep at the computer. {name} slowly looked at the monitor, trying to remember at the same time what he was doing before falling asleep, and what he dreamed about. If the answer to the second question has not yet appeared in consciousness, then the answer to the first one was easy to remember - when I finished programming the next driver and didn’t find amusement in the traditional shooters for myself, {name} decided to look at what these new Sims were constantly playing his wife.
Stretching, he looked at the monitor. A sim was floundering in a large stone pool, unable to climb out - there were no stairs, and the program did not allow jumping onto the side.

“Idiotic algorithms, whoever codes like that ...”

{name} looked for a few seconds at the weakening sim, cursed quietly and handed him the ladder.