Mr. Chizhikov, come in. Welcome to the Directory.
«Thank you, girl,» the man smiled no less «politely,» pulling out a small plastic card from his thin fingers.
– Look, Mr. Chizhikov, don’t stay longer than the allotted time!
– Will try!
– Next! – it’s hard to expect such a loud and powerful voice in a fragile girl.
Two people approached the registration point – a black-haired girl and a fair-haired guy. Both are wearing motorcycle suits.
– One by one! – the redhead screamed.
– We are a married couple. Make an exception for us,» the guy smiled, showing white teeth.
The girl carefully studied the registration cards that the guy handed her through the window.
– So-so. Sergeev Sergey Sergeevich and Ulmanovskaya Tamara Ivanovna. Somehow your last names are different.
– I decided to leave my father’s surname.
– Purpose of the visit?
«Girl, everything is indicated there,» Tamara said calmly. – Scientific research.
– Come on in…
«Thank you, girl,» Sergei smiled.
–…to the metal detector! – The red-haired woman grinned.
Two pumped up guys in uniform approached them and pointed towards the steel arch.
– Please place your bags on the scanning belt.
Tamara was the first to go through the scanner, followed by Sergei.
«It’s clear,» said the guard. – It’s not them.
«Welcome to the Directory,» the red-haired woman smiled, handing passports and registration cards to the owners. – Have a good day!
But they did not rise to the minus thirtieth floor, where advanced scientific developments were carried out, but headed upstairs.
They were already waiting for them behind the elevator doors.
– Eh, I’m thinking that somehow everything is going too smoothly. «We take out weapons,» Tamara said. – You cover me with a shield, and I will attack.
Metal staves appeared in the hands of the conspirators. More precisely, another extra would have seen that the weapon was with them all this time, but hidden in the probabilistic fog.
What is the probability in a normal world that you will put your smartphone on a shelf and turn away and not find it there a couple of minutes later? Sometimes this happens. Those who are especially superstitious at such moments turn the cup over and ask the brownie to return the lost item. Who knows, maybe the brownie also has the statistic gene? One day the world changed, and objects began to disappear more and more often. At first, scientists who decided to raise this issue at serious scientific conferences were ridiculed by their colleagues. But then came the Age of Chaos. A person could go out shopping and, blinking, find himself somewhere at the South Pole, or fall asleep and wake up flying towards the Earth from somewhere on top. Soon the first people with a special talent appeared: they could change the statistical probabilities of various events with the power of thought. They were the ones who were able to stop Chaos for a while. Then humanity launched a system of CCTV cameras that scurried around the planet, and observers on huge monitors tirelessly monitored everything around them. As long as there is an observer, the world could exist only in one form. It seemed that life was beginning to return to normal. But the power of the Directory of Observers increased until one day the head of the corporation declared the worldwide hegemony of the Directory and appointed himself the sole emperor of the planet. A dictatorship of such magnitude has never existed in human history. Total control was opposed by many, and thanks to the control of reality, the Statist Revolution almost succeeded. But still, those in power turned out to be more cunning, and announced that it was the extras who were to blame for the emergence of the Age of Chaos. Total chaos is still worse than dictatorship, the memory of the universe being torn into pieces was still fresh, so people who did not possess the probabilistic gene happily handed over their former comrades in the revolution to the authorities. A scientific witch hunt began: the M gene was detected at the birth of a child, and if the test was positive, then such a child was cremated alive. The fire of the Inquisition burned as hot after a millennium as in the Middle Ages.
Extras invented weapons, the use of which was available only to those with the M-gene. The tip of the metal staff could emit energy in various forms. Moreover, the staff could be in the hand or not with the same probability, and the extras shifted the share of this probability at his own discretion. An extra could safely walk through a metal detector and then make a weapon appear in his hand. The staff was connected to a virtually inexhaustible source of energy through a wire lowered into the depths of the probabilistic fog.
A burst of machine gun fire rang out, but the police stopped without reaching the target, without passing the invisible barrier. Tamara swiped her staff through the air, and the floor beneath her attackers disappeared. And they flew down. The floor then returned to its place and the two rebels were able to move on.
The Emperor sat on a huge gilded throne. The remote control is in one hand. Instead of walls there were huge monitors that displayed thousands of events taking place in different parts of the Earth.
– Take a seat. You have three minutes until security arrives.
– Emperor, we come in peace.
– Wow, the extras came at least somewhere with peace, and not with rebellion. Are you saying your hands are clean?
«Emperor, we come in peace,» Tamara did not look away from the man’s unblinking eyes. – Don’t you notice that the fewer extras there are in the world, the more Chaos takes back for itself? Your cameras can’t do it without the help of extras! Don’t you notice that the Directory building is moving around the city?
– Who said that this wasn’t planned by me?
Tamara only now noticed the staff in the emperor’s hands. Hidden in the fog of probability.
– So you are an extra, not an observer. Sergey! Prepare your weapons.
– I am not just an observer or an extra. I am now the god of this lousy planet. What is the probability that I will die in a couple of centuries? And in a thousand? If I weren’t such a statistic, I would have succumbed to the will of the universe. But I shouted to infinity: the probability of my death is zero. And while there are no other extras on Earth, only I can control Chaos!
It seemed to Sergei that the emperor had melted into thin air, but Tamara was an extra at a higher level, so she saw how the crazy old man created four clones, and the probability of him being in the place of each of the projections was exactly 25%. An army of doubles surrounded the rebels on four sides like a quantum wave. But he can attack using each of his projections. If they were human, they would definitely be doomed.
– Seryozha. Focus on one thought. It exists with a 25% probability in one of four positions. This means that it is not
