I left the director's office, barely restraining myself from slamming the door with force. I was just shaking with anger, indignation and unfair resentment. Still would! I just got fired. To be absolutely precise, they reduced it, taking it out of the state and transferring it to the category of “freelancers”, whose help the company can turn to from time to time, but whose constant services it does not need. Well, yes, a standard excuse not to pay the compensation required by law to a dismissed employee. At the same time, both I and the director of the company were well aware that there would be no appeals to a “freelancer” for help, and my current situation is no different from the state of the unemployed.

The dismissal that happened was completely unexpected for me, and I still could not believe in the reality of what happened. How so? I did not give any reasons for the dissatisfaction of the authorities, and on the contrary, I naively believed that I was in good standing with the leadership. He stayed late and worked resignedly on the weekends, if the need for production required it. I went to objects, traveled to other cities, and even once, in a sixty-degree frost, flew to Novaya Zemlya to the semi-mythical and inaccessible to ordinary citizens scientific village "Termos", where the world's northernmost thermonuclear power plant functioned and some top-secret experiments were carried out to help set up purchased from our company modern access control systems and identity recognition. Was a kind of trouble-free "magic wand", which, at the first whistle, will rush in and connect complex equipment, set up video cameras and scanners of identification chips, install the necessary programs and databases, set everything up and fix it, allow the company to retain an important client and not disrupt the terms of the concluded contract. It would seem that a valuable employee, whom the authorities should cherish and cherish. But he was not needed and fired "to optimize the company's costs." How unfair and shameful!

Although, looking back now, I understood that everything was going to this. The previous year was difficult for the company, when, due to another, either the third or the fourth global pandemic in recent years, sales fell seriously and the first layoffs began. No bonuses or bonuses for employees at the end of the year, no dividends for shareholders. The expectation of restoring customer activity by spring did not materialize, as far as I heard from the conversations of "salespeople". The hope for government contracts or at least for minimal assistance from the city municipality also turned out to be in vain - this and next year the budgets did not provide for money for the purchase of very specific equipment produced by our company. When it turned out, very quickly they left half of the managers, and in the accounting department,

A wave of layoffs has also reached our technical department. A month ago, "of their own free will" left the head of the department and his deputy, after which it became possible to count qualified specialists with all the certificates and permits necessary for work on the fingers of one hand. I was made “acting Head of Department” and even promised to raise them officially, with a triple increase in salary and an expansion of the range of tasks. And what was even more attractive for me than money, at the expense of the company, they promised to install the latest CyberGo-III cybernetic connector on the back of my head, which allows me to connect directly to a huge range of the most modern equipment. Frankly, I really counted on this, I even went through very expensive refresher courses to obtain the certificates and admission levels necessary for future work. I've done everything,

With the bypass tablet I received from the personnel department in my hands, limping and dragging my right leg inappropriately, I wandered along the seemingly endless corridor of the huge office center, trying to gather my thoughts and figure out what to do in this difficult situation. Habitual measured and predictable life collapsed overnight, anxious uncertainty awaited ahead. I stopped by the coffee machine and chose a double cappuccino without sugar. It was necessary to think carefully about everything and decide on our further actions.

I had barely enough money before, but now I’ll have to save on everything until I find a new job and a stable source of income. In addition, the dismissal sharply lowered my social status, and I will have to say goodbye to the current fairly prosperous category A2. By the evening, when the information in the state database of citizens is updated, my category will drop to B2, and possibly even to B3, since I did not have any significant savings, like my own housing. It is hardly possible to get a loan from a bank to overcome temporary life difficulties - banks prefer not to get involved with category B3, the risks are too great. So the renewal of my pool and gym memberships ending this month, which I was going to do immediately after receiving my next paycheck, seems to have been put on hold indefinitely. Yes, and you will have to move out of the rented apartment soon, because it will not be affordable to pay for it. My destiny now is a cheap capsule hotel, and if the financial problem cannot be quickly resolved, then a completely free rooming house for downtrodden homeless people and poor fellows like me ...

"Something wrong, Arthur?" You don't have a face.

An assistant to the chief accountant, who was running past with a pile of papers, stopped abruptly next to me. I turned around. Anita Smirnova. Pretty girl. Petite, fiery red and smiling all the time, a real embodiment of positivity and cheerfulness. Actually, why should she worry? Wealthy oligarch parents got their bearings in time and managed to leave France, which had fallen under the onslaught of migrants, having managed to quickly integrate into Russian society and achieve a high position. Social status A0, the elite of the modern thoroughly computerized world. Anita's father is a big shot in the city government, and her own uncle is the owner of our entire company, the owner of a controlling stake. So no matter how difficult the company is, even the CEO will not dare to look askance at the niece of the owner of the company, let alone fire her. There were rumors

“Maybe you need some help?” – a young red-haired girl lifted the translucent augmented reality visor that covered her face and looked at me with her real emerald green eyes. It seems that Anta sincerely wanted to help me, but I just shook my head.

There are no censorship words left in my vocabulary now, but I didn’t want to break loose in the presence of a stranger, emotionally complain about the injustice of fate and talk about my difficulties, scaring a young girl. Therefore, I just smiled with a forced smile and, looking at the bypass tablet in my hands, said that I would soon go to their accounting department myself. Anita nodded, lowered the bluish visor over her face again, and ran away, carrying papers for the headmaster to sign.

I slowly finished my coffee and immediately ordered more. Passed by colleagues, or rather already former colleagues. Someone greeted me, I answered at random, mentally being very far away now and thinking about things that have little to do with this work. Suddenly, a heavy hand fell on my shoulder, rudely tearing me out of my thoughts, and I turned around. Gleb Slepakov, my colleague in the department. You can even say a friend, partner and assistant. A large, almost two-meter tall guy with broad shoulders, pumped up like "Mr. Olympia" and smiling all the time. And now Gleb was smiling, but for some reason rather forcedly, while constantly looking away.

"Arthur, don't be mad at me. I didn't "hook" you at all. I myself only found out yesterday that you are being fired, and I am being appointed head of the department.

- Yes? But why didn't he say it yesterday, or at least this morning? - I hardly managed to filter out obscene words, but I couldn’t cope with emotions to the end, so the phrase turned out to be too loud and harsh. - When the director called me today, I thought that he needed some kind of another heaped "gadget" to set up or, like last time, to program a transformer robot bought for his son. And this is not at all...

- Sorry. I thought you already knew about your dismissal. The order about this was signed yesterday, as well as about my promotion. Okay, Arthur, never mind. Give me the bypass sheet, as the new head of the department, I will sign it.

Gleb extended his palm demandingly and actually snatched a thin tablet out of my hands. I checked the data on my handheld and demanded to hand over the keys to the server room and warehouse, and my electronic pass at the same time. I sighed heavily and obediently gave my colleague a bunch of electronic key fobs and my pass.

“You still have a working laptop with installation programs,” my friend looked up at me.

- I have a laptop at home. This is the one where the system constantly crashes. I wanted to find out why and try to fix it. I can only bring tomorrow.

Gleb thoughtfully scratched his shaved head with the stylus from the tablet and suddenly put his painting on the touch screen.

- All right, Arthur, stop it! All the same, the computer is old, it is only for decommissioning. Leave it to yourself, just delete the working files from it. Consider this my gift to you through an old friendship.

I didn't react, didn't even smile. Seeing my depressed state, the big man again patted me reassuringly on the shoulder and spoke deliberately cheerfully.

“Don’t be so upset, Arthur! You can easily find a new job, with your knowledge and experience. So we will meet again at some exhibitions and conferences. In addition, rejoice - you will now have more time for your favorite online toy!

About the toy sounded insulting, like a mockery. Although Gleb understood what he was saying. He was the only one in the entire company who knew about my passion for the MMORPG Empire Divided Online. I saw how I sometimes came to the office with black eyes from fatigue and slept in the server room after many hours of nightly gaming sessions. This happened quite rarely, but still sometimes it took place, and at such moments the partner covered me and took on the main part of the work. I was grateful to him for that, but now I have the feeling that Gleb can't wait to get me out as soon as possible.

Weird. Maybe he feels embarrassed about taking my place? If so, then he was worried for nothing. Despite what happened, I did not feel any negativity towards my friend at all. But Gleb ruined everything, deciding to finally read me notations.

– In general, Arthur, my advice to you: take what happened as a chance to change your life. Throw away your useless online toy and, in the end, take care of your destiny. You are already twenty-five years old, and you still spend all your money on donations in order to get virtual items and enhance your character's characteristics. Think about it, when was the last time you had a normal human rest? Not in the sense of hanging out in the game, but flying with a girlfriend to the sea, or at least just sitting in the company of friends over a mug of beer. The guys from our department and I go somewhere almost every Friday - either to a virtual cinema, or to a sauna, or we drive the ball on the football field ...

Gleb stopped short, looking at my leg and realizing that he had not given the best example. I broke my right leg at the institute when I was “showing off” in front of my fellow students and fell extremely unsuccessfully while jumping over the stairs on a stunt bike. Displaced double fracture, multiple bone fragments plus torn knee ligaments. Six months, first in a cast, then with titanium wires in the leg, when the bone began to heal crookedly. Three knee surgeries in less than a year. Despite all the efforts of the doctors, it was not possible to fully recover, my right leg has since become two centimeters shorter than my left, and I noticeably limped when walking. What kind of football...

- Yes, the leg is nonsense! - as if reading my mind, objected a friend. - But if the knee is so burdensome, I would have put a cybernetic prosthesis a long time ago. You are a normal physically developed guy, all the girls from the personnel department look at you. I would use this! Find yourself a girlfriend, and immediately computer games will fade into the background!

Considering the mission to guide the erring comrade on the true path, Gleb grinned merrily and hurried about. I looked at the receding figure of the newly minted head of the department, simply glowing from the happiness that overwhelmed him. Still, such a career growth! But the more I thought about it, the less I believed that my friend had nothing to do with my dismissal. After all, it was enough for a couple of timely thrown phrases to the director so that he made his choice and, in the conditions of the crisis, decided to get rid of the employee-gamer, giving the vacant position of the head of the department to a more trustworthy employee. In addition, Gleb's shaved head ... More recently, my friend flaunted a lush head of hair dyed bright blue, but ten days ago he suddenly surprised all his colleagues by shaving his head.

However, even if my suspicions were correct, I did not hold a grudge against my colleague. God be his judge. And it is unlikely that we will ever see him again. I wasn't going to come back here to the office, and the days of our joint game with Gleb in the "Shattered Empire Online" are long gone. We really started together once, but for my colleague the game did not become something important, and for the last year he practically did not appear online. The virtual world into which I plunged into during my bedridden due to the plaster and the metal frame on my leg dragged me unexpectedly strongly.

It's in the real world that I'm a nobody, a fired loser. In RIO, my character, the human assassin Shadow Kane, has become a real legend! He broke the system and refuted generally accepted dogmas. Like the fact that humans as a race are weak and playing as a human, you will not achieve anything for any of the game classes. That a serious player simply cannot exist without a clan. That a top player is necessarily millions and millions of real money poured into the game. No, of course, I couldn’t play without a donation, but in comparison with the amounts that the leading players poured into the game, I can say that I didn’t spend anything at all. The only character in the TOP-100 of the strongest players who plays solo without any clans and alliances. Albeit at a fairly distant fifty-fourth place in the first hundred of the game rating, but still a well-known player,

I sighed heavily, glanced around the hateful office at once, and it was at that moment that I finally made up my mind. Why should I meekly endure injustice and humiliation? Am I a trembling creature, or do I have a right? It was this phrase from the audiobook “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoevsky that I listened to at school for some reason that popped up in my brain and completely captured my consciousness. I'm tired of being an obedient performer and wasting my life working for someone else's uncle, especially since, as today has shown, my efforts were still not appreciated at all. And after all, even if I find a decent well-paid job, which is very difficult to do in the context of the global crisis and extreme unemployment, there is absolutely no guarantee that in a year or two I will not be thrown out into the street without a livelihood. It was necessary to finally decide and become completely free, not dependent on the whims of extravagant bosses and directors who had lost touch with reality. You need to provide yourself financially at once for the rest of your life. And I knew this way. But this method was not easy and even somewhat risky, besides, I needed money to implement it. Big money. Which there was nowhere to take. Vicious circle?

I ran out of coffee again and I threw the cardboard cup into the wastebasket. I went to the window and from the height of one hundred and sixtieth floor I looked at the huge twenty-million metropolis. The highway, as always in the middle of the day, was packed with unmanned vehicles barely crawling in endless traffic jams, and courier quadcopters scurried among the skyscrapers in great numbers. At the same time, expensive cars with real live drivers were hurrying somewhere along dedicated toll lanes, bypassing traffic jams, and high in the sky it was possible to see helicopters and high-speed boats of the powerful. You could put a visor on your head and find out who owns this or that luxury car, but I did not do this. Who cares? The main thing is that before me was the elite of the modern world, dressed in power and money, living to its fullest and not knowing such a word as “crisis”. To get into this elite club of A0 social status holders was the cherished and unattainable dream of billions of ordinary people on the planet. But I, unlike most ordinary citizens, still had a chance to fulfill my dream.

After weighing everything again and mentally wishing myself good luck, I took out the communicator. Although not as cutting-edge model with a holographic screen as Anita's, but also not the cheapest, two of my monthly salaries. I unfolded the communicator into a wide visor covering the upper half of my face and put it on my head. I connected the dangling twisted cord to the connector on the right temple, and the world changed.

It became possible for people passing along the corridor to see their first and last names, social status and brief information that they agreed to share with others. There was a pop-up information about some items. So, the coffee machine reported its manufacturer, model number and the need to empty the filled waste container. When you stop looking at the large portrait of the general director of the company hanging on the wall, it became possible to read his brief biography, information about the company and contacts of the sales department. In addition, an information menu helpfully opened before my eyes with news, incoming mail and a list of contacts in installed instant messengers and a phone.

I opened the list of phone contacts and found a number marked Signor Gabriele. Don't call!!!" Yes, there was a reason for such a frightening warning. I have already worked with Signor Gaby, and each time the Italian frightened me with his omniscience, unscrupulousness and, in fact, omnipotence. He seemed to know everything about popular MMORPGs, including Shattered Empire Online, and could get any game items, as well as convert game currency into real money, bypassing the generally accepted rules. I also knew about the Italian's working methods, since I had completed a dozen orders for him. Killing key NPCs in order to fail the quests associated with them and lower the characteristics of the top players who took these quests. Stealing artifacts from the treasury of one of the strongest clans in the Divided Empire. Yes, and just a banal swindle for PvP in safe zones with further sending for rebirth of characters who annoyed Signor Gabriel with something. The Italian paid the performers generously, and often with real money, only now it was I who was going to act as the customer of his specific and very expensive services.

The Italian never agreed to a video call, only to a regular phone call, which is why I chose this way of communication. There were three long beeps, after which an old man's grunting voice was heard in the headphones, speaking in English with a thick Italian accent.

“The heavens must have split, and the last days have come, since the great and elusive Shadow Kane is calling me himself.

“And you won’t be sick, Signor Gabriele. I will be brief. I need dragon bile, at least five barrels. And you are the only person who can get any game rarities in the shortest possible time.

A hoarse cough was heard, then the interlocutor spoke, not hiding his surprise.

“To be honest, you managed to intrigue the old man. It's always interesting to work with you, Kane, every time unexpected moves and something unusual. And when do you need dragon bile?

- Twenty-five days. Twenty-four is better.

The interlocutor was silent for half a minute, then clarified.

“Delivery to the Valley of the Tombs, I presume?”

It took great effort for me not to betray my surprise and even fear, the old Italian predicted my plans too accurately. Nevertheless, I confirmed the conjecture of the interlocutor.

- All right, Kane. Getting dragon bile is never easy, but I'll do it for you. I just warn you that the cost of the service will be very expensive. Nine hundred thousand "Empire Divided" gold coins. As far as I understand, you don't have that kind of money. But now you don't have to pay anything. I will contact you after the alliance parade and tell you how to pay for my favor.

The interlocutor wished me good luck and hung up. I folded and put the communicator in my pocket, and with some surprise found that my fingers were visibly trembling. It was from what. There were terrible rumors about Signor Gaby. Like the fact that he invariably finds his competitors and enemies in the real world, no matter how they try to hide, and no matter how many guards they hire. And what did the Italian accumulate during his long life, a very rich collection of human skulls, which he sometimes proudly demonstrates to his business partners, telling in detail the history of obtaining this or that exhibit. Signor Gabriele never showed me anything like that, but being in the debt of a dangerous old man is the last thing I want in life. But I didn’t see any other ways to achieve the cherished goal, and the complex mechanism had already been launched,