Chapter 2

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After looking around, I concluded that I was either hallucinating or still dreaming. As I remembered for sure that I was Alexander Flim, but not Allesandro Cassard! Well, hallucinations are hallucinations. I began to try all the ways I knew how to identify hallucinations. The first thing I did was to press on my eye - a glitch is not supposed to split, but I couldn't remember which eye to press on, so I pressed on both of them in turn. Then pinched me, looked alternately with my left and right eye, and as an apotheosis of my attempt, I stared at the girl and declared "Disbelief" mentally casting a "Will-save". Either the will-save failed or something else, but everything was duplicating, the pinches were hurting, and the girl was not disappearing. Watching my experiments, the beauty grew more and more serious, and when I attempted a "Disbelief" - pulled out some sort of mobile phone and called some kind of doctor. Well, that's it - the good doctor will come and give you a sedative, I thought to myself.

Less than half a minute passed, and the door swung open. Two girls in white dressing gowns with incomprehensible blue symbols on the left side of their chests, some tinny robot parody... and THAT rush into the room.

The THING wore a white dressing gown, was short, had an extremely slender build, and had large green eyes on an almost triangular head. No, it is more accurate to say that the eyes were HUGE, almost the size of a fist, with long dark lashes. The eyes took up most of the face, making the smallmouth and the small, flat nose almost impossible to see. This was completed by a goatee with small sideburns, ears sticking out sideways (somewhat like sheep's ears), and a small white cap.

"Damn! What's that!?" Alex recoiled and reflexively covered himself with the blanket, trying to huddle into the corner of the bed.

"This is Professor Ayuyun Lirria, a leading neurologist at Riena University. He observed you while you were unconscious," the girl shrugged slightly as if emphasizing how obvious this must be.

"I see you're feeling better now, young man! If I may, I'd like to examine you and ask you a few questions," the THING appeared to have a very high, birdlike voice, which was also quite pleasant to hear and melodious.

"The Lord is indeed much better off, Professor," Taer tried to put as much feeling into the word "Lord" as possible, hinting at the inappropriateness of the address "young man".

"Ahhhh... leave it, sweetheart, I don't discriminate between my patients," THE THING brushed off the "security specialist" with a nonchalant gesture.

THE THING... Or rather, the professor approached the bed and tried to take Alex's hand - must be to feel for a pulse (or what do doctors do with hands?), and it became apparent that Ayuyun Lirria's hands were four-toed with small claws on his thin fingers, which did not add to the desire to communicate.

So the novice lord, defending himself against the professor with a blanket - like shield, began to crawl back to the opposite side of the bed where Taer was standing.

"Don't you think the professor looks a little strange? Well, there... the eyes are a bit large..." Alex attempted to draw Taer's attention to the strangeness in the professor's appearance, thinking to himself: Oh, shit! And the glitches are getting worse. The monsters are coming!

The girl scrutinized the professor from head to toe and replied in a completely calm voice:

“No, sire, Professor Ayuyun looks perfectly normal for a myrlisty of his age.”

"I mean, four fingers, eyes the size of a saucer - is that normal?"

"Perfectly normal for members of my race, young man!" The professor cornered Alex after all and was finally able to begin his examination. Quickly feeling his pulse and examining his pupils, he proceeded to question him, which revealed that Lord Allesandro remembered almost nothing except the occasional moments after his poisoning. When, at the professor's request, Alex began to describe what he thought had happened to him before the poisoning, the people around him began to react strangely. The professor asked his assistants to fetch an injector and some chemical vials, and the 'security specialist' began to squint in surprise.

Sensing that he was about to be heavily medicated and would not rest until he was healed half to death, the "lord" chose to quickly drop the subject, fighting back with the standard phrase "I don't remember anything". The questions went on for another hour or so, all with the same "I don't remember" answer. Finally, the professor was satisfied with the result - reality began to match his expectations.

"We seem to be dealing with widespread replacement amnesia, which has developed as a result of nerve damage caused by the active component of the poison," he put one hand behind his back and stared into the distance, stroking his goatee thoughtfully.

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"Perhaps, over time, the brain will create alternative circuits, bypassing the damaged areas, and the memory will return, albeit partially," he said, not addressing anyone in particular, but as if he were giving a lecture. Then suddenly. he shook his whole body and, addressing Alex personally, concluded:

"But congratulations, young man, you have survived a dose of Grey Dust (which is unique in itself) by getting away with a mere memory loss. That's a thing of the past, at your age, after all!" With a cheerful pat on the shoulder, the professor signaled to his assistants to assemble the equipment and, turning to Taer, added:

"I recommend him to take Fenote regularly, two capsules a day. If there is no improvement, the dose can be increased to seven capsules a day," he held out a plastic tablet to the girl. A prescription or something?

"Thank you, Professor Ayuyun, I will make every effort to ensure that my lord takes this medicine regularly!"

"It's not a medicine. It's just... a mild memory and mental stimulant. That's all I can do in this case, so I'll take my leave," the professor scurried off, the girls scurrying about, packing up and carrying the equipment out of the room. Already at the door... myrlissti (So, like, right?) stopped and tossed over his shoulder:

"I wish you a speedy recovery! And if there are any problems, do not hesitate to contact me!"

Waiting until the door closed behind the doctors and he was alone with his 'specialist', Alex exhaled. Well, at least they won't take me to the clinic for tests if they don't catch me.

There was an awkward pause. Taer stood at attention, swaying slightly in her heels. And Alex wondered feverishly what he could say without getting caught.

"Does the security specialist always have to be with me?" With a little hope in his voice, he asked.

"Technically, as you wish, sire, but the Consulate is very insistent that I should always be with you when you go 'out'."

"But right now I don't seem to be going 'out', I'd like to be alone to 'collect my thoughts', maybe remember something," Alex said in as confident a tone as possible, What the hell am I talking about?

"Very well, my lord, I shall await the call in my room," the girl said coldly and walked out, stamping her step.

Once he was sure by the sound of the retreating footsteps that he was finally alone, Alex leaned back on the bed and surrendered to the thoughts that were pounding feverishly in his head:

Is she upset or something? Maybe we had something going on with her. After all, there's always a pretty girl around. Though if there was something, she'd probably have hinted, or not, proud as a daughter of savannahs, it seems...

Anyway, fuck the beauty, I'll apologize if I have to. Or don't lords apologize? Fucking hell!

Alex lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, where a dark-haired young man was calling after him, and chewing his fingernail thoughtfully.

OK, let's look at all the options. Option one: I, Alex Flim, from Moscow, am twenty-four years old, and so on and so forth, and I'm hallucinating. That's a sad scenario. Well, hopefully, at least the medics will have fun. Option two, I, Allesandro Cassard, ate some "dust," which made him lose his memory and hallucinate that he was Alex Flim. That's more fun. At least all this splendor runs under the heading of "objective reality", which is a joy in itself. But not much.

The lord was lying in bed for a while, continuing to chew on a nail that was almost finished, when his gaze focused on his finger... He examined the entire hand closely. It was a well-groomed, burr-free hand, with fairly long polished nails, something Alex had never done before, but most importantly... There was no small crescent-shaped scar on the back of the palm.

Remembering what had actually happened before he woke up in that castle, he mechanically slapped himself in the face.

There's also a third option: me, Alex Flim, who's been shoved into Allesandro Cassard's body by some fucker!

You shouldn't have agreed to the practice test, smart-ass! The inner voice sneered. All right, stop talking! As a psychologist to a psychologist, I say: the inner voice is the first sign of schizophrenia.

Alex lay there for a while, mulling over the idea of consciousness transfer. Finally, he made up his mind, threw back the dark red blanket, and headed toward the mirror.

The mirror was huge, almost as tall as he was, on a massive metal frame, covered in some kind of floral ornamentation. Spinning around in front of it and examining himself, he found out the following. First, he was completely naked and something had to be done about it. Second, there was a gorgeous fluffy carpet on the floor, which was very pleasant to walk barefoot. And third, the body was not his.

Yes, very similar, very similar: height, eye color, hair color, the shape of face and nose, even some belly due to the sedentary lifestyle - everything was there. But there were a lot of details, like the scar on his abdomen that he had earned as a child by diving directly into a broken jar, the chipped incisor was missing. And a couple of moles were in the wrong place.

Back in bed and crawling under the covers, Alex began to remember everything he remembered about the transfers and thought about the risks. The situation was bleak at first - the disadvantages were: he was not a paratrooper (in fact, he had never served in the army), not an expert in hand-to-hand combat (yellow - ha-ha! - Belt in karate and three years in the sambo section after five years of sitting behind a computer and the lack of training can easily be written in the section of pure theory), magic abilities also have not yet found (although he honestly tried to conjure something nice and move the mirror by gaze). He was hoping that Lord Allesandro's body could do something special, though, and he just didn't know it yet.

Well, enough about the cons! There were some pros: first, everyone spoke clear Russian, or at least he understood them without any problems. Second, there was a roof over his head and a roof that was not bad and even seemed to belong to him. Third, I was a lord here, and I think that was cool. Fourthly, there was no immediate threat to life, and, moreover, there was a pretty girl whose duty was to eliminate the threat.

Speaking of the girl... How can I get her to bring me some clothes? And I'm hungry already, the newly made lord started looking for a way to contact his "security specialist". Nothing resembled a telephone, switchboard, mobile phone, or, at the very least, a bell. He did not want to wander around the castle naked, so he decided to shout, rightly believing that security must be somewhere near and respond to his wailing.

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