Path of the Shaman

Opening my eyes, I looked at the incomprehensible white surface below me for some time. The capsules seemed to have changed a lot since my last awakening, and I was lying face down. It was strange that the lid of the capsule pressed on my back, and on the contrary, nothing supported me from below. Apparently, all the catheters, through which food and air entered me and through which defective materials were removed, were removed before I woke up, otherwise I would have suffered ...

The plastic surface in front of me leaned to the side, I saw the ceiling and realized that I was falling right on it. And yelled.

— Pee-pee-pee! Pee!

What is it, am I yelling like that now? After lying down for another minute, I realized that the ceiling was still on the side where the top was, but my vestibular apparatus was pretty broken. Fighting nausea and fear that I would fall on a surface covered with cracks and water-based paint, I got up and sat down. Of course, it turned out not to be so easy. Instead of a torso, my legs were in the air, and I myself hung above the ceiling, propping up the capsule with my back.

"The Shaman has Three Legs..."

I tried again, this time carefully controlling what was moving and where. Five minutes - and I'm already sitting upside down, struggling with dizziness. Suddenly I was deafened by applause, whistling and hooting. I looked around. The capsule stood in the middle of a small hall, and along the walls were chairs that could accommodate about three dozen office workers. One of the clerks jumped up, and I recognized him as Igor.

Mahan, hi! Congratulations on getting out of the capsule! Pay no attention to us! - he turned to his colleagues: - Comrades, five minutes and twenty seconds. Who bet on five twenty? A plump young man with a thin mustache raised his hand. So, the bank goes to John McCain.

"Luffy tail from behind the shoulder..."

I twisted my head, trying to catch my balance, and then asked a question:

“So, no one is going to help me?”

Igor shuddered and turned around:

“Ah, Mahan, are you still here?” Come on, come on, get out of here, don't you see, people are working!

— What about the rehabilitation? I asked with a slurred tongue.

— What kind of rehabilitation, Mahan? Igor asked. You are now a free man. Is there money? Not? Then - by yourself, by yourself!

"He's crawling somewhere..."

Gritting my teeth, I gently lifted one foot toward the floor. Then another. I am an astronaut! I am almost Gagarin! As if in magnetic shoes on the hull of a huge space battleship, he took a step, one more ... one more. Such a small step for humanity, but such a big one for Shaman Mahan. On the fifth or sixth, the magnets on the shoes stopped working, and I flew nose to the floor. Igor happily pulled out a tape measure from his pocket and measured the distance to the capsule:

Three meters sixty-eight centimeters! Who made the closest bid? Ah, Karina! Get it! and he handed a thick wad of bills to an ugly bespectacled rat. Igor sat down to cheer me up: - Don't worry, Dmitry, the orderlies will come now. Just linger! - and smiled so that I almost even believed that he had absolutely nothing to do with this delay.

"Behind dragging a tambourine ..."

* * *

Rehab was not easy for me. A couple of boys who came out later were already climbing and rolling down the hill, and I still could not fully assemble the pyramid. Neighbor Senya, who was building a tower of cubes with me, suddenly smelled suspiciously and grimaced.

— Mal Ivanna, Mal Ivanna! He started calling for help. - I poop!

- Oh my God! - the nanny threw up her hands, a two-meter valkyrie, or rather an orc, who, in my opinion, could easily hurt Crius with one flick, hurried to the rescue. Senya habitually fell back on his back, hitting the soft floor with a blue helmet with frills and raising his legs in the air. Marivanna put the oilcloth on, unbuttoned the diaper, then, taking Senya by the ankle with one hand, lifted it up, pulled out the diaper, wiped the excess from one pocket with wet wipes, sprinkled the powder on top that appeared from the other pocket, lowered it onto a new diaper and deftly fastened it. Semyon Petrovich, in the past, the stealing chief accountant of a large enterprise, happily started bubbles:

— Gee-s-s!

“Oh, who’s drooling here?” And here we will give you with o su! - and the nanny, deftly wiping the freed man's saliva, inserted a huge dummy into his mouth. Looking at me sternly, she said:

- Whoever does not build a tower will not receive plum puree! One porridge will be!

How did I get this semolina! Sticking out my tongue, I undertook to fit the cube to the top of the structure, trying not to bring everything down. By, with difficulty maintaining balance and carefully moving his naughty legs, Vanya passed with a bucket and a shovel, which he waved in all directions. While I watched the shovel suspiciously, naturally, he hit my building with a bucket, turning it into a pile of wooden blocks. As if nothing had happened, this beast climbed into the sandbox and began to pour sand into the bucket with a shovel. I wanted to cry

— Mal Ivanna! With a trembling hand, I pointed to the tower. - Vanka take the fable!

The nanny, drawing something with crayons with Andryushka, raised her head:

- It's okay, collect again! She doesn't seem to love me! I resolutely got down on all fours, crept up to Vanka and, taking the bucket from him, poured sand on his head. Then he took the shovel away and began to thrash it on the helmet, saying:

- Don't make a fable! Do not make a fable! ..

This is where I woke up. It was light - it looked like morning - and I no longer wanted to sleep - just like lying down. As soon as I got up in bed, the alarm clock beeped softly. In the "past life", as I silently call my life before I became Mahan, I used to wake up on time and without an alarm clock, and now this skill has returned to me. Why - "about yourself"? Because the staff "hearer", as the released people call him, heard this aloud, said that I had big problems and banned me from appearing in Barliona for at least four weeks. That is, I can forget the Tomb.

Rehab was not easy for me. No, all this nonsense about a nursery, a sandbox and diapers, which I dreamed of, had nothing to do with reality. Earth and sky changed places about ten minutes after I got out of the capsule, and I was immediately able to walk normally; There were no problems with peristalsis and other things. I looked - subjectively, of course - rejuvenated and rested, my muscle mass had risen by thirty percent, and my body fat had fallen, so now I looked quite good. However, all those released looked like this - a balanced diet and significant physical activity through the electrical stimulators built into the capsule did their job. A pair of comrades met so easily would have put the legendary Arnold to shame in the years of his sporting glory.

Strongly infuriated the lack of menus and pointers. The local fashion is to wear clothes instead of armor. When meeting with a stranger, it was necessary to ask his name, since neither a health bar nor a nickname was written above him. Faded colors, dull atmosphere infuriated and drove into depression. Though I seemed to be the exception as I actually managed to get off Prick long before my return to real life. Those who “plowed” in the mines for many years, on the contrary, admired both the paints and the people around them. In general, it felt like I had landed on another planet, alien and unfriendly. Painfully missing Drakosha and Viltrax, my rocking chair and the Golden Horseshoe. And, of course, Nastya was given a dull pain in every cell of her body. I very quickly forced myself not to think about the person, and only pain remained,

"What's in a name?"

It would seem... Her name pierced her head with hundreds of red-hot needles, bit her shark jaws into her heart, squeezed her chest and dried her breath. The image that suddenly popped up in my head sent me into a state of berserker - I was ready to crush the stone with my fists and break through the wall with my head, and at the same time it didn’t matter if I would live. For the first few days, the mere thought of Barliona, where I met her, drove me into a frenzy bordering on insanity...

After breakfast, I spent three hours at the gym. At first we played football, then everyone spread according to their interests. I - first in the pool, and then in the rocking chair. Playing in Barliona very quickly teaches you to value the available resource, and my fairly healthy body was just such a resource for me. And what if life doesn’t work out - I’ll go to a striptease! Wrapped up to the stars in my eyes, I took a shower and directed my feet to the “listener”.

The first time I came in the direction of Aristarkh Vitoldovich, I was unpleasantly struck by the familiarity with which the young rosy-cheeked assistant of the Svetil - not otherwise - threw his legs on the table, brazenly sitting in the chair of the absent chief. The assistant, ignoring my irritation, began to chat about nothing - by the way, then I made a mistake by saying the words "past life" - and forty-five minutes later, when the visit time was up, he suddenly assumed a serious look and typed a few lines in my bypass sheet. Since then, I have remained hostile towards him.

Today we did not communicate. I thought about mine, that is, at the moment, about temporarily alien, and about how it will become mine again. Built Napoleonic plans. I mean, how do I become Emperor. Vitoldych scowled at me, but still refused to open his mouth. So we sat for forty minutes, which made his words even more unexpected.

“Don’t think that I’ve “cut down” your access to Barliona because of your words,” hearing human speech, he almost jumped in his chair, mentally crumpling and kneading one of Napoleon’s plans so that the paper became softer, and at the same time preparing for transition to the brick factory phase. - Your encephalogram became abnormal two weeks before your release. If you didn’t happen to get out on your own, we would have pulled you out anyway.

He entered something into the computer from the virtual keyboard, and then took out some kind of token with a green circle on it from the table and handed it to me:

- Here's the pass. If you feel like you need help, come!

The rehabilitation was over. Gathering myself and winking at parting to the sad nurse Mashenka, I went to the exit.

* * *

I still underestimated this world. Of course, immediately after leaving the game, it seemed boring and not so expressive, but then I suddenly began to notice more and more details that I had not paid attention to either in real life or in the game. Rare islands of dust on not quite perfectly smooth asphalt, some small midge hovering over a flower bed exuding hardly noticeable warm air streams upwards, all the air somehow trembles and trembles. Clouds running across the sky inadvertently change the level of illumination, the light glares on foliage, grass, buildings, cars and passers-by, and it seems that you have fallen into a giant kaleidoscope, only instead of an overflow of bright colors, here is a play of halftones, even more charming and bewitching...

Here they are, that's what I was missing! Ignoring the moisture on the freshly watered grass of the lawn, I rushed straight to the three birch trees in the middle of the green, in the last jerk I almost jumped on them, hugging and pressing each one to my heart. Why are there no birch trees in Barliona?