I didn’t forget anything.

I! Didn’t! Forget!

I remembered the events that happened in another world when I got up! I didn't forget them while showering or when I was pouring ground coffee into the coffee maker. When I stepped out of the house and wrote to Oleg so that he would come down too.

What happened in another world didn’t fade away like an ordinary dream, where you frantically try to remember bits that blur in your mind and slip away in a minute. You sit in front of open notes on your phone, struggling to recall what you wanted to write. No, the events remained in my memory as incredibly vivid spots, as if they had happened yesterday.

And yet I felt slightly constrained, a bit tied up. It was as if what drove me, pushing me to clean the display and capture islands, had stayed beyond the boundary of sleep.

I straightened up, causing a crack in my neck. I rolled my shoulders and prepared to face the new day with my head held high.

Dreams are fine, but it’s time to live, Arthur. Today I have to take an exam and arrange a side job with Lyokha, Oleg's brother. Dreams won’t feed me or rent me an apartment, even if I become a mega-successful person there.

Gradually, the events of the night were pushed out by reality.

My mother didn't call me again in the morning to wish me good luck. Anyway, she hadn’t called before the last three exams either. I dialed her myself; we talked, but it seemed she had forgotten that I was in the final year.

My father also left for work early in the morning without saying anything to me. The only person who wished me luck apart from my classmates was my stepmother. And she did it in her own way.

— I hope you don’t mess up, you disgrace, — she muttered while placing a plate of porridge in front of me.

As soon as I stepped out of the apartment, the gray world habitually reminded me of my dislike for this house. On the window sill of the stairwell between the second and third floors stood an unfinished bottle of BagBeer. It smelled sour. Fortunately, there was no vomit.

I picked up the bottle and carried it downstairs to the trash can. On the first floor, I stepped a bit closer to the railing— the locals "insulated" their apartment with bricks, leaving a layer of bricks on the staircase, so now you can't even get a piano into the building. I could dispose of the bottle to not irritate my eyes and annoy me, but dealing with the insulation was trickier. And anyway, it's not my job—I'll be moving out soon.

We reached our destination quickly. About a hundred cars were parked at the fifty-third school in Krasnoyarsk today. There were even a couple of buses that brought students from nearby villages.

No one was allowed into the school yet, so we had to huddle under the canopy at the entrance.

There were many people—at least three hundred students, and next to some stood parents, who had crowded the parking lot with their cars.

— Oleg, Arthur, come over here! — Jana, the honor student, waved us over. The same girl who looks great, excels in her studies, and attracts the bravest and most confident guy in school. I don’t know why she once chose me, but we hadn’t seen each other for long, so I didn't dwell on it.

— Were you prepared? — I asked when we reached the girls. A cliché question, but we were both anxious, and our thoughts were only on school. Well, not entirely—not just islands were on my mind.

— Yep. An ordinary exam, just like the last three. I don’t think it’ll be a problem for any of us, — Jana said.

— Do we know the past results?

Unfortunately, nothing had been posted on the website yet. This was what we were frustrated about, as all deadlines for releasing exam results had already passed.

Trying not to be too obvious, I looked around.

Out of the crowd of three hundred, five students stood out. Two of them stood apart, while three were in groups but behaved somewhat distantly. All five were phenomenally calm. It seemed as if the anxiety of those around them crashed against their tranquility like waves against rocks. I was nowhere near that level—I wasn’t calm at all. I wondered if they were just naturally that way or also from... sleepless nights?

Quite possible. Also, there may be more people like me here than I was able to notice. And if I keep moving my head, it might look suspicious.

I returned to the conversation, and for the next ten minutes, we teased each other and joked, trying not to feel anxious.

There were some amusing moments. Some unfamiliar skinny kid with a purple fringe suddenly started frantically rifling through his pockets, then dug into a thin backpack.

— I bet he forgot his documents, — Oleg nudged me.

— Mom, I didn’t grab my passport! — the kid exclaimed a moment later.

All the graduates turned at the voice. The absent-minded kid was so anxious that he almost cried, continuing to rummage through his backpack.

— Before we left, I asked you over and over if you checked all your things? Did you take everything? Why didn’t you listen to me? — his tired mother asked. — What are we supposed to do now?

I patted down my pocket and calmed down, feeling my passport under the fabric. The others also started checking their pockets and bags.

— Something tells me that this kid’s absentmindedness isn’t his main problem, — I nodded toward the guy with the long dyed fringe. — I bet if he strolled through our neighborhood, he would encounter new discoveries. In the most humane case, someone would just help him get rid of that trendy haircut. Any resident of our hive, from us to Semenyich, could help with that.

Everyone present looked at the poor guy with mixed emotions—from mockery to sympathy. The exam was about to start, and the kid surely wouldn’t make it home and back, even if he lived a couple of blocks away.

Finally, the school doors opened, and we moved inside, trying to bump into each other as little as possible. I’m not sure if we were lucky, but Oleg was assigned to the same classroom as me.

At the entrance, we surrendered our mobile phones, watches, and other electronics. We entered, sat at our desks. Like before the previous exams, we listened to the rules given by the observer. Then we opened the packages with the tasks and began solving them.

I solved the problems carefully, triple-checking my answers and writing them down on scratch paper to later transfer them to the answer sheet. A difference of one point might be enough to fail or, conversely, to get into university. There couldn’t be any mistakes.

Surprisingly, my brain was working great—I flew through the problems like they were nuts. I finished the first, test part of the exam in twenty minutes.

I checked my completed problems, filled in the answer boxes, and started on the second part of the exam.

Observers walked between the desks, and cameras mounted on tripods filmed us from four angles. I think one in three students had cheat sheets, but it was unlikely anyone would dare to take them out. I managed fine on my own.

However, a particularly poorly-prepared girl tried to pull a cheat sheet out from under her hoodie.

— You, — the observer, who resembled a bulldog, immediately stopped next to her desk. — Out of the classroom. You’ll come back for a retake; your class manager will tell you the date.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

When the girl heard this, she immediately paled and mumbled incoherently:

— Wait, wait… I didn’t even look at the cheat sheet; it just fell out... I really didn’t look! Can I stay?

I and a few other students looked at the girl with pity. I don’t know about the others, but I felt for her intellectual capabilities. If you want to refresh your memory of the rules, just step into the restroom and study the formulas there. Why put yourself in such a position?

— Out the door, — the observer repeated. — If you continue to make a fuss, you won't be allowed to come for a retake.

— No, I can’t just walk out. You know what my parents will do to me? Give me a new test, give me blank sheets! I want to take the exam again! There’s a whole hour left; I'll make it!

The observer stepped out, called someone, and a minute later, two burly men in black uniforms entered the classroom without insignias.

— Take her out, — the observer pointed at the girl.

I couldn’t believe what I saw—they actually pulled the girl out from behind her desk and out of the classroom. She was desperately trying to break free and yelled that she needed another chance. I desperately wanted to ask those burly guys if they needed a third person to handle the dangerous schoolgirl, but I held back. By God, it took all my restraint.

This is what the Unified State Exam (ЕГЭ) is like. The strictness and inhumane nature of the exam forced us all to tighten up and approach the knowledge test even more seriously.

I finished with fifty minutes to spare.

— May I? — I raised my hand.

— Yes? — the observer immediately replied.

— I’m done; I want to submit my work.

— You have plenty of time left, so I advise you to double-check your work.

— I checked it.

— Check it again, — the man suggested irritably.

— Look, I’ve checked three times, okay? Now I want to submit my work and finally be done with this nonsense that I've been prepared for all year.

The man took the packet where I had placed my work, and I stepped out into the hallway.

While the others were still trying to find the right answers in their heads until the last moment, I went to the kiosk, grabbed a chocolate bar and two bottles of water. I handed one to Oleg when he came out.

— Let’s go, — I nodded toward the school gate.

— Wait. The principal wanted to say something, — Oleg stopped me.

— Forget him, — I waved my hand. — Do you think we’ll hear anything new?

— It wouldn’t hurt to check, — my friend shrugged. — Let’s wait five minutes.

The principal’s lecture really didn’t differ in novelty. He droned on his old record again:

— Before you disperse, I want to remind you again: if you feel more active, energetic, if you sleep well and do not dream, if you are breaking records in gyms and sports, consult a doctor! All of the above may be early symptoms of a new form of narcolepsy, after which people do not wake up!

If you have strange dreams, experience unfounded anxiety, or wake up feeling an inexplicable hunger, consult a doctor!

I scoffed. It seemed they really had correlated the symptoms with subsequent comas. There was the hunger that the second body felt and the activity and energy. However, it is still unclear how these weaklings manage to lift heavy weights, but I think I can find an answer to that too.

While we walked to the bus stop, Oleg was staring at my back. He finally couldn’t take it anymore:

— Listen, I wanted to talk to you. You seem strange today. Did something happen?

— What do you mean by “strange”? — I slowed down and looked back at Oleg.

My friend shrugged.

— You move differently—your back is straight, while you used to hunch. You hold your chin up now, whereas earlier you looked at the ground, raising your eyes only to glare at someone. You smirked when they pulled that girl out of the classroom.

I smirked and shook my head. The secret to such behavior is simple—I feel chosen! However, if I tell him that my self-confidence turned into iron and concrete after acquiring a real island and the subsequent actions, Oleg will hardly believe it. And I don’t even know how to explain to him the sudden clarity I felt during the exam. Suddenly it turned out that I remembered all the solution options for all the problems. From there, I just decided and copied everything to the final draft.

— So, did my walking disturb you? I’m just trying to straighten up and walk upright; it’s nothing special.

— If you bulk up in your shoulders too, I’ll start to worry. The same thing happened with Stas before he fell asleep.

Oleg is right—it’s quite possible that Stas overestimated his strength, ran into something in his sleep, and got stuck there. But then there’s the problem—if you die there, you won’t wake up here. So the instructions lied.

By the way, I barely held back from grabbing a bandage from the first aid kit and securing a small table knife to my calf. Perhaps what stopped me was the understanding that I would need to walk through a metal detector arch for the exam, and having a weapon would raise a lot of unnecessary questions.

— The only strange thing that happened was today’s dream.

— Was it about Jana? — Oleg smirked. — Did you lay her out there?

— If I wanted to, I’d have laid her out in reality, — I said calmly.

— By the way, weren’t you seeing each other?

I didn’t respond. I didn’t want to talk about the past. Yes, we dated, but… well, I’ll tell my friend about it some other time.

We made it home without saying anything—there was no mood. After the exam, I didn’t want to ponder or talk about anything.

I stepped into the house, kicked off my sneakers, and hurried to the kitchen. In the pot, I found soup with large chunks of vegetables. I filled a bowl.

When I sat at the table, my stepmother walked in and placed four thousand on the table.

— Semenyich brought five thousand for repairs. I took one; the rest is yours.

I nodded, shoveling spoonful after spoonful.

Fairly predictable. Who would pay fifteen thousand for a rattling problem? Definitely not the old miser.

After eating, I went to my room and immediately sat down at the computer. I found an old forum for reenactors and created two topics.

**“What ancient weapon is the best and doesn’t require special skill to use?”**

An answer appeared right away:

— The spear is the easiest weapon to use. Even in ancient times, untrained peasants were given spears. One of the pros is the distance, another is the number of people who can fight in formation. But there are downsides. It’s hard to kill an archer; they’ll put holes in you first. It’s also tricky to catch a nimble person, and a master with a knife can easily disarm you and finish you off.

Unfortunately, I’m alone on the island, and fighting in formation is unnecessary for me.

Alas, the constructive discussion ended there, and meaningless bickering began.

— The spear isn’t that good of a weapon. Imagine you walk into a cave, and there’s a tiger...

— One person with a spear won’t do anything against a tiger without traps. The spear won’t keep it at bay.

— You will have time to think and inflict wounds on the beast without letting it near you. You just need physical agility and speed. You’ll eventually make its skin bleed, and sooner or later the beast will die from wounds.

— I’ll leave you to your fantasies, — I typed to them. — Plan your strategy for fighting tigers with spears, while I’ll be off.

The second topic I created was about gas masks: whether they could be made independently in a medieval world. The island with poisonous gas wouldn’t leave me in peace.

— It’s hard to think logically in this situation—it’s not an ordinary world. I once wrote that a character in a book wears a gas mask only over his mouth and nose, leaving his eyes and ears uncovered. I was given a whole story in response, explaining that it’s a world of magic, skills, and unusual items. In such situations, what annoys me the most is that it might not even be stated in the book that this gas mask is enchanted or something like that, yet these pathetic commentators simply can’t accept the fact that the authors of these works are not gods and can’t account for everything. They sometimes make mistakes.

— Yeah, that fine line between a boring author and one who properly describes the world. Sometimes an author describes every unnecessary detail that wouldn’t sustain the chapter, creating endless oceans of water. I love when an author tells a story concisely and briefly, but doesn’t rush, simply not getting distracted by describing jade skin, scarlet lips, and star-like eyes, as well as detailing breakfast, lunch, and dinner, including how many grams of salt the main character used, and how many trees and stones he encountered on the way from city A to city B.

— Guys, what about the gas mask? — I tried to steer them back to my important topic.

— You apparently don’t understand the essence of the writing industry. The more chapters there are, the more potential earnings, so they try to stretch the events of one chapter into ten with ramblings and descriptions of every atom, along with various flashbacks and conversations of outsiders adding dozens of dialogues during the interim between two strikes.

I closed the tab. I’ll check again in the evening, but I doubt there will be a decent result. Chats and forums—it's all the same...

And then another thought struck me, one that I had been meaning to check since the morning. What if I wasn’t the only one who remembered everything that happened last night?

So... I typed “dreams about floating islands” into the search bar, was about to hit “enter”…, but I didn’t press it. Paranoia, my sometimes-visited friend, whispered to me that everything could be connected: social advertising, lectures before graduates and students advising us to consult a doctor if we suspect the new type of narcolepsy. Maybe the government already knows about those very dreams? Perhaps, competent individuals in suits are already aware of what’s going on? Is it possible that they are monitoring the network and controlling search queries to track down all those involved?

They say in America that if a kidnapped person has access to Google, they just need to type “help me please I am kidnapped” to reach out to the outside world. I don’t know how true that is, but I closed the tab and exhaled.

Do I want to disclose my involvement with a small number of gifted individuals who can travel to another world? No. Let it remain a secret for now.

But I was still curious if there were such people. Could I accidentally stumble upon information about the islands? Let’s say, I was browsing the network, accidentally stumbled upon some topic, lazily scrolled through it, didn’t understand what I just saw, and then closed it.

Sometimes I visited various orange imageboards, where completely different people gathered to discuss anything: there were sections for discussing motorcycles, sexual fetishes, “real” encounters with the paranormal, and more. I would visit the techies to ask a couple of questions about motorcycle assembly; I sometimes explored the board dedicated to the supernatural. I did the same today—I checked out new topics in the techies section, opened a couple of random tabs, then found a thread on lucid dreaming, and...

Nothing. Empty messages and some acidic debate completely unrelated to flying islands.