Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.

(С) Isaiah 43:19

See the child. A child of the twenty-fourth century. His hair was black and short, like the needles of a hedgehog. His eyes were clear and blue, as if the light of this world had gathered into them. His skin was fair and white.

Ayren—was his mother. Her story was barely mentioned during family conversations. Someone could say he knew nothing about her. There was one photograph in the house showing her at twenty, seven months before the arrival of her son who would kill her. The angelic look of Ayren with long black hair and brown eyes, white porcelain skin, and thin delicate hands will forever remain in his memory. Blake, was named so by his father. For many years, before sleeping, he would lie on the bed and imagine her sitting next to him in the yellow light of a sconce, telling a bedtime story and stroking his head. Now here he was, older than she was, and the childish illusions faded away.

The youthful years flew by before Blake could even mention it. At school, he was the black sheep. None of his classmates understood him. Everyone would go home, do homework, have fun, explore the world around them, fall in love, while young Blake even in his dreams would close the receiver of an old rifle, setting the bolt to the extreme left position, fix it, shoot, unlock and watch as the smoking cartridge case flies to the right and falls to the ground. This behavior was not without a reason. From a young age, Blake was affected by his father’s, Tyriel’s, passion for weapons of the twentieth and early twenty-first century, passion on the verge of insanity. The two of them spent thousands of hours in virtual simulations; learning how to shoot, adjust sights, find targets, and so on. In addition, he was someone well versed in the assembly and disassembly of machine guns, sniper rifles, and conventional pistols. From year to year, the love for war increasingly captured the young consciousness. Tyriel even convinced his son that the weapons of the old are men’s true weapon. He would always say, “you feel the recoil, the force of the shot, you will not see it now. No romance. If you’d learn how to handle it, modern weapons would seem like a child's toy.”

After graduation, Blake went to military school and graduated with honors. Then he worked side by side with his father's team for five years, and served in the ranks of the Interplanetary tactical anti-pirate squad (ITIPS), until a terrible disaster took place, a disaster that turned his life around. During one of the punitive operations against terrorists, everything went south. Tyriel died without seeing his son for the last time, and with him, Blake's comrades sank into oblivion. He was the only survivor, mutilated inside and out. After a resounding failure, the leadership suspended him from service and provided benefits for a combat veteran. A trauma that Blake cannot part with, a scar that will follow him for the rest of his life.

Tyriel's grave was empty. His body was never found, but as they say, not only the body lies in the cemetery, but also the memory of the person to which we surrender when visiting him. Ayren's body was moved and laid next to her husband. Two generals came to the funeral, as the regulations and rules ordered, friends from school, with whom he'd not spoken for five years, and a neighbor. Only ten people.

Years later, all the darkness of the past, as well as Blake's fate, vague and uncertain, were left behind, along with their origin. No matter how much the world pulled him towards it, he was moving away from it further and further…

***

"State your name," said a young woman sitting at a white desk in a white room. Skinny, round face, glasses in her eyes, white unbuttoned jacket and collar pushed up, name tag on her chest, "Melinda," gloves on her hands, two fingers on her right hand replaced with prosthetics.

Blake looked at himself half-naked in just his pants - wires and sensors plastered all over his body. A cardiogram was broadcasting on the screen next to it. A long, meticulous squeak echoed throughout the room. He looked into her eyes, holding his gaze for a few seconds, then looked away and answered:

"When will it all end?"

"As soon as you stop playing dumb."

Blake looked at the white camera on the tripod and the red light blinking next to the lens.

"You're unstable," Melinda continued. "Once you get better, our meetings will stop. Besides, once a year you can spare five minutes, don't you think?"

"Interesting job you have," he replied, and noticed two tranquilizer turrets at the corners of the ceiling. "Safe. Sometimes I wonder what I'd be if I could turn back time."

She adjusted her glasses and pressed a bracelet on her wrist, and a transparent tablet opened in front of her, revealing Blake's personal file. She ran her eyes over the key points, turned off the camera and folded her fingers into a lock, and asked without the slightest emotion:

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"Nothing would've changed. The same people’d surround you, the same events would happen, and you'd end up sitting across from me while I tried to get your answers. If you could travel through time, once you run out of our modern PTSD pills, you'd go crazy and either kill someone and go to jail or just die because your brain couldn't take it. Nothing would have changed, Mr. Blake. I'd even say it certainly wouldn't get any better. Well, I've answered your question. Now why don't you answer mine? Or should I start by sympathizing with your plight, to lighten the mood?" Melinda paused meaningfully, watched the reaction of the patient, who was watching her and smiling, and continued, "No? All right. Then let's get started."

The camera turned back on.

"Your name."

"Blake."

"Do you work?"

He tilted his head to his side, and without taking his gaze off to the side, he asked:

"Aren't you going to ask my age?"

Melinda rolled her eyes, took a few deep breaths, and answered:

"No. That's unnecessary. Just answer my questions."

"Work for my desires."

"More specific."

"Playing a VRMMORPG."

"Title."

"Guns and Magic."

Melinda opened her tablet and started reading about the game, which she'd only heard about in passing. She learned that there was nothing modern in this virtual world, everything was being built from scratch. The players fought monsters with weapons of the First and Second World Wars, something that Blake was superb at, based on the facts in his personal file. A paradise for real hardcore players, wrote in the reviews. The cherry on the cake was the announcement of the developers: "The player and the guild, which by the end of the second global update will be on the first places in the rankings, will have the opportunity to ask for one of their cherished desires to be fulfilled, within the reason and capabilities of the developers and the law of course." Melinda leaned back in her chair and the corner of her mouth twitched.

"Ah," she said and nodded and continued. "Interesting, interesting. When did you start playing?"

"A little over a year ago."

"In the ranks of beta testers?"

"Yes. The military and the government are in charge of development. They did me a favor as a veteran."

"These guys, they can do a lot, right?"

"As far as I know."

"Your nickname in the game?"

"Ronnie," he answered after a brief delay and grimaced.

"Occupation?"

Blake put his hands on the table and leaned slightly toward Melinda and answered:

"It's interesting that the therapist who interviewed me a year ago didn't study me in such detail."

"Well, Mr. Blake, you're lucky to have me. I do care, don't I?"

"Still. Why do you need this information?"

She turned sideways and reached for the glass of water, drank half of it, then turned on the other side and turned off the camera.

"Because... first: I care. Second: it's standard procedure to renew your prescription for the very best PTSD pills."

"They don't fucking help."

Melinda put her index finger to her temple, her thumb to her cheek, and exhaled.

"I'll give you a more realistic analogy if time travel didn't have the desired effect. If the pills, Mr. Blake, didn't fucking work, you'd be sitting naked in the corner of your room right now, shaking with fear. Let's get this over with. I can go home and continue writing my doctoral dissertation, and you can continue playing games."

The red light on the camera lit up again.

"Occupation?" she asked in raised tones.

"Gunsmith, sniper, and soldier. I travel alone in the vastness of the planet Thalack, kill powerful monsters, and level up the character."

"Is it all about the prize or about satisfying some of your inner aspirations?"

"It seems to me that any human being, as a rational creature, has some kind of goal. Everyone is created for something: to protect a castle from a siege, to return home, to sacrifice oneself for a great goal, or finding yourself. I think I consider myself to be the latter type and at the same time I try to satisfy my inner ambitions. I like to win."

"I believe that a person and his history are much more complicated than these four classifications. In addition, I have an opinion that you most likely want to return to a place that you can call home, just don't know where it is yet. In your case, there are at least two in one. Still, you haven't answered my question. As I understand it – the price has value for you. If you win, what will you ask the developers about?"

"Do I have to answer?"

"Of course. We have a serious psychotherapy session, and in psychotherapy the main thing is candor. Do you understand me?"

"I do. Well. I want to be reborn."

"Explain."

"I want to lie in an eternal sleep capsule, where my body will be cared for and fed through a tube, while I wander in the virtual world, no longer having any connection with the real world."

" Holbein's painting, ‘The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb’ suddenly came to mind. Do you know what it would be for?"

Blake grimaced, swallowed and sniffed, and replied:

“With the advent of VR, everything and everyone in this world is the Christ. Everyone longs to plunge into eternal sleep and open their eyes again in the world of dreams, to feel omnipotent; but as a result, they lie down in a VR box and simply rot in a confined space. That's why it came to mind. But here's what I'll say: unlike him, we aren't destined to defeat death, but we can separate the mind from the body. This is my rebirth and this is my irresistible faith.”

"I wonder what Dostoevsky would say to that."

"Dostoevsky didn't even understand the meaning of this picture, and if he appeared in our time and learned about technology, he would simply lose the ability to speak."

"That's also true. Last question: did you study well at school?"

"Not really. It's just that my memory is good and I didn't skip lessons."

Melinda smiled and opened the virtual keyboard and wrote the conclusion into the record. It took a few minutes. Blake did not take his eyes off her. She left the room, saying only, "I underestimated you. See you next year." A diagnostic chart and prescription came out of a compartment in the wall.

"Everyone underestimates me," Blake replied into the void with a barely noticeable smile on his face and continued, "AI, are you there?"

"At your service."

"Call me a cab home."

"Fulfilling your request."