Hello everyone reading this thread.
A couple of months ago I wrote a story for a competition held by one site. Unfortunately, the readers there turned out to be somewhat irresponsible, and I never received any criticism or any assessment of my work, but I want to find out whether the story was worth the time and mental energy spent. In the end, I decided to post it for everyone to see here.
Reasoned criticism, indications of logical mistakes, errors, typos and electric pianos in holographic bushes are strongly welcomed.
Happy reading.
Night. Deserted city street. Abandoned multi-storey buildings with broken windows. Huge skyscrapers rise nearby, sparkling with neon lights and thereby illuminating this dull, deserted place.
Near one of the houses, a man in shabby black clothes and a heavy body armor lies in the mud. He shuddered and slowly opened his eyes. His head hurt terribly, but the pain went away pretty quickly. His heart was beating wildly, as if he had just run a cross-country race. The man tried to sit up and screamed: a sharp pain suddenly shot through his left shoulder. Touching his aching shoulder with his right hand, the man groaned, his whole palm was covered in blood. He could not move his left arm at all; the humerus was clearly broken.
"What’s happened? Where am I? What’s wrong with me? I’m bleeding.- and then the man realized the worst thing. – “Who am I?”?!" – he could not remember his name, nor his past, nothing at all. – “Damn, what’s happening to me??!».
Somehow getting up, the man began to rummage through his pockets with his good hand, hoping to find at least something that would clarify the situation. In one of his pockets he found a crumpled piece of paper with the inscription: “Reeser, 2851 Grove Street.”.
"An address, some address. "- the man pushed off the wall and looked around the house in search of the street name. The sign I was looking for showed up immediately and read: “2851 Grove Street.”.
“It looks like I’m in the right place,” the man thought, and slowly moved towards a large hole in the wall of the building. Inside were two people wearing the same body armor that he was wearing. They also had helmets on their heads, and in their hands they held shields and sawn-off shotguns. "Soldiers?" – thought the man. They walked around the room and stirred up the remains of broken equipment. One of them bent down, put down his shield and picked up his dark glasses from the ground.
“The IEMK of agent 017 has been discovered,” the soldier who found the glasses reported to someone unknown.
— Find the agent himself! – came from the helmets of both soldiers.
Suddenly, the man felt an attack of weakness and his knees began to buckle. “I’ve lost a lot of blood,” he thought before bursting into the room.
“Help,” he groaned. – I’m wounded.
Both soldiers instantly raised their sawed-off shotguns in his direction. One of them approached him and dragged him by the collar to the second soldier.
— Agent 017 detected. What are the further instructions?? — the same soldier reported that he had found the glasses.
The wounded man’s gaze fell on the place where the soldier found the glasses. The man grew cold. In that place lay a yellow-haired guy with a torn chest. Gagging had no effect only because the man’s stomach was already empty. He looked up at the soldiers.
“Eliminate agent 017,” came from the soldiers’ helmets.
A soldier puts the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun to a man’s head.
The dust from the explosion had no time to settle when people with shields and sawed-off shotguns began running into the room. A man with yellow hair sitting at the computers jumped up and shouted:
“Don’t shoot, I surrender…” he didn’t have time to finish the sentence, his chest literally exploded from the explosive shot charge that entered it.
The second man, who was in the room with the yellow-haired man even before the explosion and who was wearing the same body armor as the people who burst inside, did not wait for such reprisals against himself and dived into the nearby door. Shots rang out after him. My shoulder burned with wild pain. The man screamed and almost fell. The left hand hung limply. Holding the injured limb with his right hand, he ran on. Having quickly crossed a small corridor, the man pushed the door that was in his way and found himself on the street. Without stopping, he rushed around the house, intending to run away in the direction from which the people with shields had come. It is unlikely that they will expect such a maneuver from him; most likely they will run straight after they get out of the corridor.
Having quickly reached the opposite side of the house, the man stopped and carefully looked around the corner: the street was empty. But he didn’t have time to run across the road: clutching his head with his good hand, he fell to the ground with a groan.
A man in dark glasses, black shabby clothes and a bulletproof vest walked quickly along a deserted street. Suddenly he stopped and turned towards one of the buildings.
“2851 Grove Street,” after reading the sign, the man ran to the metal door and began knocking on it:
— Reeser! Open up, I need help!
A small window opened in the door, and the barrel of a pistol stuck out:
– Don’t bother me, idiot! Who are you?
“I… I’m Mal… Malcolm Lake,” he recalled.
“Mal,” you say,” the voice drawled suspiciously. – Who sent you??
"Me? Sent? No one… unless. “, thought Mel and blurted out:
“Ferron, Ferron sent me,” he said the name he had recently heard, the only name he knew other than his own.
The window slammed shut and the door itself opened.
— Come in.
Mel obeyed. Upon entering, he found himself in a room chock full of computers and various equipment. To his right stood a man in a torn sweatshirt and equally torn jeans. The most striking feature of this man was his yellow hair. He suddenly bared his teeth:
— I never thought that I would voluntarily let an agent come to me.
— Agent? – Mel didn’t understand.
– Well, you’re an agent of the corporation? — Reeser asked, squinting.
– I don’t know… maybe..
– Maybe?
– I don’t remember! This is my problem, I was told that you will help me!
– How can I help?? “I’m not a doctor, I don’t treat amnesia,” Reeser snorted.
– No! Not amnesia! Here,” Mel took out a flask with a gray substance from a small pocket in his right boot. – I need you to inject this into my brain.
The yellow-haired man took the flask and turned it over in his hands:
– Well, let’s say I can do this, I have one setup. But it will cost you a pretty penny.
Mel froze. Money, where can he get money from?? Then his gaze fell on the constantly flashing inscription *PLAY RECORDING?* in the upper right corner of the right lens of the glasses. “Glasses, it’s something like a computer? There’s a map and a video,” thinking in this way, Malcolm took off his glasses and handed them to Reeser:
“There should be information about money here,” he said half-questioningly, half-affirmatively.
“Perhaps,” the hacker chuckled. – I’ll check now. Keep in mind that if there is nothing about money there, then there will be no deal. I don’t do charity work
Mel pursed his lips, Reeser was his only hope. And at this time he had already connected the glasses to the main computer and was quickly moving his hands over the holographic interface.
– Well, well, well, let’s see what we have here… and what’s here?? — the hacker muttered to himself. While he was working on his glasses, Mel walked around the room and stopped at the door located directly opposite the entrance.
– What’s there??
“My personal harem,” Reeser neighed. “The exit is there, there’s a reserve…” the yellow-haired man suddenly faltered and suddenly shouted. – Oh, your mother!! You have a spy here!
At that moment, part of the wall was carried inside the room by a powerful explosion.
The pain that was squeezing my head has subsided. A man in a bulletproof vest and dark glasses opened his eyes, everything was swimming, but his vision quickly returned to normal. Unexpectedly for himself, he screamed and fell back: a man was lying in front of him, bleeding, and he held his hand tightly, he looked searchingly at the man.
— Mel? – the wounded man croaked and tried to pull the man towards him. He screamed again and, pulling his hand away, began to quickly crawl away from him. “Mel, it’s me—Fe…” the man coughed, a trickle of blood running down his chin, not the first time. “Damn it, Mel…” the man was able to exhale and fell silent.
"What’s happening? Where am I? Who am I? What happened to me?“- thoughts were feverishly spinning in the head of a man stunned with fear. Looking around, he suddenly noticed a flashing sign *PLAY RECORDING?* in the upper right corner of the view, at the border of visibility. The inscription moved with his head. Putting his hand to his face, he realized that he was wearing glasses.
“Uh… Play the recording…” the man said, and at the same moment an image appeared on the glasses: the face of a man in glasses, judging by the moving backdrop and the shaking image, he was making this recording on the go.
– So, listen carefully: We are Malcolm Lake, they injected some crap into our heads, because of it we are gradually losing our memory. Now I no longer remember most of my… our life, and if you are watching this recording, it means you have forgotten even more, perhaps even everything. Listen further, I got the antidote, it’s in the small pocket of my right boot. There is one problem: it needs to be injected into the brain, which is difficult, but I am now going to meet a friend, Ferron, he should give me the address of a person who can help. Check your pockets, you may already have the address. If not, then say “map – destination point gamma” and the path to the meeting place with Fer will appear on the screen. You can also then get to the place we need: say “map” and then the address. Well, that seems to be it. Good luck. And remember: you must inject the antidote into the brain!
For a minute the man sat and digested what he heard. He looked towards the lying body… apparently it was Ferron… Mel vomited. When his stomach was completely empty and there was nothing left to vomit, the man began to rummage through his pockets. First he found two pistols, which he immediately threw aside in fear. He also found a folded piece of paper. Mel unfolded it, read: “Reeser, 2851 Grove Street,” crumpled it, put it back in his pocket and said:
— Map — destination 2851 Grove Street.
The glasses detected three https://vegasspinscasino.co.uk/ heat signatures. "Three! How did they find me?! Bastards!“- thought Mel, dragging the wounded but alive Fer behind the trash cans. Some kind of shelter, but still a shelter. – Fer, how are you?? You can shoot back?
“Yes, I’ll put these bastards to rest without you,” he croaked in response, clutching the wound in his chest. “Sit me down,” Fer asked, pulling out his favorite super-fast-firing SMG. The accuracy of such a weapon was crap, and it overheated quickly, but it fired suppression shots in a way that some machine guns couldn’t even dream of. “I’ll distract them, and you come in from behind,” he outlined a simple, in general, plan. “Come on,” Fer wheezed and, sticking his hand out from behind the tank, pulled the trigger.
When the wounded friend began to spray the agents with machine-gun fire and obscenities, Mel quietly climbed into the nearest window of the house, fortunately all the glass had been broken a long time ago. As Mal made his way through the dark interior of the building, he heard a rustling. He froze, listening. It looks like there was at least one other operative in the building, they are not idiots, and instead of just shooting back, they also decided to make their way through the building and enter from the rear. Another rustle told Malcolm the location of the enemy, and he, having fired three shots at the source of the sound, tumbled towards the nearest doorway, changing his firing position. There was a burst of machine gun fire where he had just stood. Having risen to his feet in the corridor, Mel immediately received a blow to the head from the left with a butt. His vision swam for a moment, but various cranial implants started working and immediately returned him to his “working” state. Mel fell to the floor, two bullets whistled over his head, and they shot back. The enemy screamed and, grabbing his leg, fell. Without getting up, Malcolm shot the wounded operative in the head, thereby reducing the corporation’s army by one agent.
Mel stood up and walked stealthily down the corridor. Turning the corner, he found a dead agent. Looks like one of his three bullets found its mark after all. Just in case, Mel shot him in the head.
A hoarse cry came from Fer’s direction:
– Die, creature! — followed by a long machine-gun burst.
Cursing, Malcolm ran to help his friend, however, when he ran to the window through which he made his way into the building, he found the corpse of an agent literally riddled with machine-gun fire.
“What do you mean,” said Mel, getting out of the building.
“I said, ‘I’ll put them down without you,’” Ferron exhaled hoarsely and coughed up blood.
“Don’t you dare die, you old asshole,” Mel squeezed his friend’s hand. – What will I tell Erra??
– And you won’t tell her shit if you don’t get this shit out of your head. Go ahead, or do you want to watch me throw away my skates?? – Fer smiled faintly.
Mel was about to answer, but then pain squeezed his brain like a vice – “flash”.
Mel stood in a dirty alley and looked at his watch every now and then: time was flowing away like water, but Fer was still not there.
— Hello, Malcolm! — the voice came suddenly, Mel shuddered.
“We need to pull ourselves together, he’s a good agent, every sound makes him flinch,” the former operative thought irritably.
“Hi, Ferron,” Mel hugged his old friend.
– Stop it, I’m married! – Fer snorted, and he himself laughed at his simple joke.
– Stop it, Fer, I’m not laughing. Give me the address.
– What, everything is so bad?? – he asked, putting his hand in his pocket.
– Worse. I’m losing my memory.
– How is that? – Ferron raised an eyebrow.
– It’s silent. It’s like she’s just erased from my head.
“Holy shit… Okay, here you go,” Fer handed Mel a piece of paper, on it was written “Reeser, Grove Street 2851.” “It’s not far from here, I already warned him.”. If you say that it’s up to me, he’ll do everything… not for free, of course, but..
“Money is not a problem, as long as you get rid of this crap in your head,” Mel interrupted his friend. – Thanks for your help. I hope we’ll see you again…” said the operative, turning around. “And I recognize you,” he added quietly.
“See you Mel,” Fer smiled and also turned around to leave.
The silence that followed was broken by an unexpected shot and Ferron’s subsequent cry.
— Ferron! – Malcolm shouted, turning to his friend who had been shot and scanning the area.
– … must inject an antidote into the brain! — Mel pressed a button on his watch and lowered his hand. He had just made a note to himself describing today’s events and his main goal, in case he forgot everything. — Enable a constant reminder about this entry.
*COMMAND ACCEPTED* – was displayed on the lenses of the glasses, and in the upper right corner of the right glass the icon began to blink: *PLAY RECORDING?*.
Recently there was another “outbreak”; the agent could no longer remember anything that happened before his 25th birthday. It’s good that he met Fer later, at least he can recognize him. Mel cursed quietly and quickened his pace.
Having moved a safe distance from the laboratory, Mel gave the command to the glasses:
— Number: 332758649001. Channel: 746AF72D. Connect.
The following message was displayed on the lenses of the glasses: *CONNECTION IN PROGRESS*. The ear speaker started working:
– Who?
— Mel.
– Hello, buddy! How are you? What kind of judge..
– Not now Fer! – Mel interrupted the joyful stream of questions. – I need help, urgently. I’ve been injected with some kind of crap and I need an antidote.
– You have it? — Fer’s voice immediately became serious.
– Yes.
– Then what are the problems??
– Must be injected into the brain.
– So that you! – Fer cursed.
– That’s it. Can you help??
– So, okay, I have one geek friend – a hacker, a computer scientist and all that. He has a device with which he implants nanochips into the brain, I think he can get your medicine there too.
– Good.
– Let’s meet on the outskirts, in the old place, in the old time. In communications, you understand, we do not transmit addresses.
– Ferron, I don’t have that much time!
– Mel, I’m sorry. You know that I’m not just sitting on my ass either
– I know. “Okay, see you,” Mel muttered.
*CONNECTION ENDED*
Suddenly, Mel’s brain was struck again by a flash of pain:
– Your mother! What’s going on?! – the former operative howled, clutching his head.
When the pain subsided, he realized that he did not remember his name. Starting to frantically delve into his own memory, he was able to remember that he had just been called “Mel”. “Just now… but before. " – Mel realized that he had absolutely no memory of his childhood and his family.
“Your mother…” he whispered. – Holy shit… – so this is what happens to him: he loses his memory.
Having risen heavily, Mel slowly wandered to the outskirts, there is a lot of time before meeting Fer, but does he have it??
And at this time, below, in the central laboratory, on the holographic interface of the computer to which Mel was connecting, the inscription was blinking: *ATTENTION! SPY SOFTWARE LOADED SUCCESSFULLY. AGENT COORDINATES ARE TRACKED.*
Having gone down a couple more floors, Mel found himself in the central laboratory. Quickly walking along the perimeter, he planted several explosive charges at the entrance, which were stored in the sole of his boot; they exploded only at a strictly defined signal from his glasses. Such charges could not cause serious damage; they were used to distract attention.
Approaching the first computer he came across, Mel tore off a strip of skin from his wrist, a hole opened there from which several plugs protruded, choosing one of them, inserted it into the computer port and entered the laboratory network. The brain began to analyze the information that had been revealed, it didn’t even have to hack anything, the admission of a corporation agent did everything for him. Mel peered into the lenses of his glasses, looking through the information appearing there, and just as he managed to find the basic information on the seven-year project, the doors swung open and five operatives burst inside.
Mel immediately gave all charges the order to detonate. Many explosions merged into one. The room filled with smoke, the fire safety system went off: water splashed from above. Stunned operatives rushed about, not expecting such sabotage. Mel, having previously switched the visor mode of the glasses to the thermal spectrum, ended their lives with five shots to the head. Quickly approaching the nearest body, the former agent took off his glasses and, with a sharp movement of his hand, tore out an eye from the dead operative. He needed access to the laboratory storage, and his own eye would no longer work, the corporation would not allow him to use the same trick several times. Having collected a couple of flash-noise grenades from the same body, Mel ran out of the room; there was no time to examine the rest of the bodies.
Having reached the vault, he put the borrowed eye to the scanner, a metallic voice said:
— Corporation Agent. Serial number – 013. Clearance level – highest. Access allowed.
Upon entering, Mel immediately noticed a transparent suitcase containing flasks with golden liquid. Along with them in the suitcase were the same flasks, but with a gray liquid. “I found it,” Mel was delighted, taking out one flask with an antidote, he put it in the pocket on his right boot.- “We need to get out of here, I won’t have time to enter it here.”.
The former operative turned out to be right: a special squad was already waiting for him on the stairs. Deciding not to waste time on trifles, Mel threw both flash-bang grenades onto the stairs at once and ran out onto the stairs as soon as the explosions sounded. Bursting into a crowd of blinded enemies, he shot them all point-blank, holding a pistol in each hand. Armor-piercing cartridges did their job; neither helmets nor armor saved the heavily armed soldiers. Without wasting any time, the former operative quickly took off his raincoat, put the helmet of one of the specialists on his head, put on his body armor, picked up a sawed-off shotgun (the main weapon of a special squad is a sawed-off shotgun with explosive cartridges and an under-barrel grenade launcher; an excellent weapon for close-range combat and clearing premises) and a shield, and ran towards the checkpoint.
Moving down the corridor towards the two guards, Mel shouted:
– Call for reinforcements, this bastard killed all of our.
As soon as one of the guards turned to the terminal and the second lowered his rifle, Mel threw away his shield and fired a grenade launcher at the guards. Those were simply smeared across the walls, and Mel himself was thrown back by the blast wave. He did not receive any damage, and therefore quickly got up and ran towards the exit.
Mel entered a laboratory disguised as an eye implant factory. Having gone down to the “minus first” floor, he ended up at a checkpoint. Two guards immediately pointed their weapons at him: pulse assault rifles that fire in short bursts of three rounds, they have zero recoil, so all three rounds hit the same point. From such a short distance they can even break through the shield of a special squad, let alone an operative whose main criterion has always been speed.
Mel took off his glasses and walked over to the scanner. The scanner read information not from the retina, but from microfilm implanted into the retina. This tape contained all the information about the corporation’s man.
A metallic voice said:
— Corporation Agent. Serial number – 017. Clearance level – highest. Access allowed.
The guards lowered their rifles and saluted. Mel ignored them, he had to hurry – the corporation already knows that he is here, and soon the operatives will be here, and a little later the special squad will arrive.
Running to the elevator, Mel opened the doors and jumped down. Already in flight, he put on carbomelite gloves (the strongest metal artificially created in 2174 began to be called carbomelite) and grabbed the cable. The arms, genetically modified and strengthened with muscle implants, survived, but Mel clearly felt that they were almost pulled out of their shoulder joints. “I definitely won’t do this a second time,” the agent mentally groaned. Having thus reached the first floor and opened the elevator doors, Mel was about to climb out of the shaft, when his head was struck by a “flash”, if not of pain, but definitely of unpleasant sensations.
"What the? What was that? What kind of crap did they inject me with??“- thought Mel, getting out of the elevator shaft. – “I don’t know what it is, but we need to find an antidote. Craft would not create something that he could not protect himself from, which means there must be an antidote."- thinking in this way, Mel got out of the building; no, there were some incidents, several guards noticed him, but usually this happened a few seconds before their death, the agent (now a former agent) broke their necks before they had time to report his location. So he acquired a couple of corporation pistols and clips with armor-piercing cartridges for them, not his personal weapon, of course, but not bad either.
“Zelten said that I was the first operative to be tested, so this was a prototype. The rest of the drug, and along with it the antidote, should still be in the corporation’s laboratory,” thinking in this way, Mel headed to the lower city, where the corporation’s secret laboratory was located.
*ATTENTION! BRAIN FUNCTION IS DISRUPTED! ROLLING AWAY!* – the inscription on the glasses blinked.
Mel opened his eyes: he was lying on the floor of Mr. Craft’s office, Selten was standing near the table, and next to Mel were two operatives. He remembered what happened: he was injected with some kind of experimental drug. “It looks like the corporation has decided to dump me,” Mel thought, “We need to get out of here.”.
From a lying position, Mel kicked the nearest agent in the groin, not expecting such meanness, but generally any action on the part of the lying agent, 022 did not have time to defend himself from the blow, and naturally curled up, holding on to the affected organ. Instantly standing up, Mel attacked the second agent, but he had already managed to get his bearings and, blocking his blows, counterattacked. Mel, having defended himself from the first two blows to the kidneys, ducked under 005’s arm as he aimed for the head and hit the operative in the Adam’s apple. While 005 was coughing and trying to breathe, Mel turned around and rushed headlong towards the exit. Running out of the office, he heard:
— Eliminate Agent 017.
Mel gritted his teeth. I would have killed that bastard Kraft, but staying here meant depriving myself of all chances of escape – the guards were already rushing here.
Three operatives in identical black raincoats and dark glasses entered the office and silently lined up in front of the table, at which a man in a business suit was already standing, awaiting further instructions. Without turning around from the window where he stood, as always, Mr. Kraft ordered:
– Grab zero seventeen.
If individually 005th and 022nd were inferior to 017th, then at the same time he could not do anything with the two, he simply did not have time. Standing with his hands turned behind his back, Agent 017 muttered:
– Mr. Kraft, what’s going on??
Instead of Kraft, who was not going to answer anything, a man standing next to the agents spoke up:
— Hello, agent 017. My name is Dr. Selten. Today you are lucky to be the first operative who will experience the effects of the newest drug, the development of which has been going on for a good seven years now,” Dr. Selten opened the case lying on the table and took out from it a certain device that vaguely resembled a headdress with a long “appendage” on the back of the head, from which an equally long needle protruded. The scientist put this device on the operative’s head, took a flask with a golden liquid from the case and attached it to the “appendage”. “The Technocorp Corporation thanks you for your faithful service,” the scientist said with a smile and pressed a button on the device near his temple.
The back of Agent 017’s head burned with wild pain, the operative screamed, and then sagged in the hands of two other agents. They stopped holding him and he fell to the floor.
— How does the drug work?? – Mr. Kraft spoke up.
– Oh, this is very interesting, Mr. Kraft! – Selten began to answer excitedly, it was clear that he liked this topic. — The needle passes through the lamboid suture of the test subject’s skull and delivers the drug directly to the brain. The hippocampus is affected first, it stops changing neural connections and, as a result, the conversion of short-term memory into long-term memory stops. Then the cerebral cortex is damaged, first in the temporal lobes, and then in the frontal lobes. Neural connections are being destroyed: a person forgets everything he remembered, all the knowledge accumulated over his entire life. And then short-term memory begins to “break down”. The drug affects the coordinated functioning of neurons, which simply prevents the brain from remembering anything. The longer the drug affects the brain, the less a person is able to remember before everything is “erased” again. With prolonged exposure to the drug, a person simply turns into a “vegetable”, unable to comprehend or remember anything,” the scientist smiled at the end of his speech.
— Antidote?
— Manufactured. He will not be able to restore the damaged brain, only stop the effect of the drug.
“Okay,” Mr. Kraft pronounced the verdict.
The large office was practically empty, the only piece of furniture was a table standing in the middle of the room. A man in an expensive business suit stood at a huge panoramic window and watched the city at night. He did not look like a man admiring the view, as the casual observer might have thought, but rather like a lord surveying his domain.
Suddenly a pleasant female voice rang out, and the speakers built into the wall spoke:
– Mr. Kraft, Doctor Selten has come to see you.
“Let him come in,” answered the man standing at the window.
The door, merging with the wall, opened, and a man of about forty entered the room, also dressed in a business suit, although less expensive than Mr. Kraft’s. He carried a case in his hands. Entering, Selten bowed:
— Good evening, Mr. Kraft.
The man at the window ignored the greeting, immediately moving on to the topic that interested him:
– How are you doing??
— Excellent, Mr. Kraft! The Memory project is nearing its final stage, ahead of schedule, the scientist reported with a smile. — Human trials were successful. “I think we can start a control test,” Selten said, implying that the drug could be tested on an operative – a genetically and technologically modified person.
– Who?
— Agent 017.
– Why? – if Mr. Kraft was surprised by this choice (and there were reasons to be surprised, 017 was one of the best operatives), he did not show it at all, his pose did not change in any way, and his voice did not express any emotions, as always.
— Based on his reports and reports, the corporation’s psychologists concluded that he was experiencing a crisis of faith. I’m afraid he will soon decide that Technocorp’s politics are alien to him and will want to leave. He knows too much about the corporation’s security protocols and needs to be eliminated. And this is the last time the agent will be useful to us.
– That’s for sure? – Mr. Kraft clarified about the crisis of faith.
— Absolutely, Mr. Kraft.
– Fine. Brought?
“Yes, Mr. Kraft, everything is as you ordered: I have a prototype of the drug and a compact installation with me,” Zelten put the case on the table. – We can start right now, but we’ll need more agents to keep zero on the seventeenth.
“Agents 005, 017 and 022 to me,” said Mr. Kraft, addressing the virtual secretary.
“As you order, Mr. Kraft,” the speakers responded.
Two men in business suits stood in a large office. Mr. Kraft was still standing at the window, it seemed as if he had not moved in the past 24 hours. Dr. Selten stood at the table.
– What went wrong? – asked Mr. Kraft.
“The autopsy showed that agent 017 installed an unregistered implant in his head,” the scientist began to answer readily. — Memory block. He actually copied his entire psychomatrix onto him: all his memories, emotions, his entire personality. When the drug worked, the implant detected a disturbance in the functioning of the brain and made, so to speak, a “backup”: it loaded into the brain all the information contained in it, the old, working version of the psychomatrix. Memory including. However, this did not affect the effect of the drug in any way. The time before a person turns into a “vegetable” has only increased.
– How much?
— If another person or agent has a similar implant, then, according to our calculations and forecasts, from the moment the drug is administered until the cerebral cortex becomes completely nonfunctional, about 24 hours will pass. By the time 017 was discovered, he no longer remembered anything that had happened to him up to that moment.
– Fine. We came up with a name?
“Well, we thought,” Selten suddenly hesitated. – it will sound good – “Memorium”.
“Memorium,” for the first time in Mr. Kraft’s voice something reminiscent of emotion appeared – it was as if he was tasting the word. – Fine. Figure out how you can expose it to masses of people and hand over several samples with installations to the sabotage department.
“As you order, Mr. Kraft,” bowing, Zelten left the office.
After standing for several minutes in complete silence, Mr. Kraft suddenly said again:
– "Memorium".