I’ve brought you God!

– Batu! – She shouted, closing the door to the apartment behind her.

The young man appeared in the doorway leading to the living room.

– My boy, you’ve been waiting for me! – rejoiced the witch, taking off her boots and exoskeleton. At that moment, the sword caught on the frame of the exoskeleton, magnetized, and fell to the ceramic floor with a crash. – I can’t get used to having to unbuckle my katana before I can remove the amplifier,» Tamura smiled.

– I was brought here yesterday and told to wait. They said not to touch anything and that you would be here soon. I didn’t know what to do. So I just stood there at first, and then I got very tired and sat on the floor.

– What a nightmare! You must be very hungry?

– Yes, but I’m much more thirsty.

– What beasts! – commented the witch, tattoos of tears streaming down her face. She walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of water.

The guy greedily started drinking, gulping loudly.

– I still have some egg tart left somewhere and some milk. Here! – she handed Bat a plastic container and a bag of milk. – There’s a dining table over there in the kitchen. Sit down and eat in peace. But don’t be in a hurry. Give me some milk too. Get some glasses from the dishwasher. Should be clean if I remembered to turn it on. I’ll go to the bathroom, take off my robe and come to you. – She smiled and disappeared out the door.

Batu ate all the cake, drank the milk and poured himself some more. At that moment Tamura appeared without her overalls. Her entire lean body was tightly encased in a thin gray bodysuit with a silvery glow. On her feet were huge teddy bear-shaped slippers.

– Do you like me? – she smiled and, without waiting for an answer from the shocked young man with milk trickling down his chin, she said: – I’ll walk like this for now. Let the cobweb breathe. She’s very young. – Then she picked up her glass with milk and held it out to Batu: -It’s my birthday today, and I am very happy.

Batu obediently held out his glass and, stammering a little, replied:

– Congratulations!

– Look,“ Tamura sipped some milk and set the glass down. – „On a related note, there will be a celebration for the occasion at a restaurant today. The female employees are invited. And you’ll wait for me here, okay? You can watch TV. I’ll come in drunk and I’ll want a little extra. And we’ll have a drink. You’re 18, right? There’s a bar over there. In the fridge, cut up some appetizers. You already know where to find the dishes. In the meantime, I’ve got two hours and I’ve got some work to do. You want to come with me?

– Can I ask you a question? – the guy was clearly crumpled.

– Of course he was.

– What do I call you?

– That’s a good question, Batou! – she thought for a few seconds. – Lucy. You can call me Lucy. That’s what they called me when I was a little girl.

– Lucy, can I ask you something else?

– Go ahead, Batou. You can do a lot of things.

– Will I be old forever?

– You’re not old, Batou. Don’t worry. Mitsu injected a toxin that caused your adrenal glands to release a massive amount of cortisol into your bloodstream. Your body reacted to the tremendous instantaneous stress accordingly. Your hair turned gray and your face showed deep expression lines. Now you looked like a grown man. – She lowered her voice and, looking away, added: – Though usually one dies from this, and it looks very spectacular. It’s like the person instantly aged and died writhing in unspeakable horror. I have a couple clips of this spectacle on my channel. – She raised her head and smiled broadly. – But you, as you can see, are alive and well! In time, the wrinkles will smooth out, and the gray hair will go away with the growth of new hair. And you’ll look like a young man with a pretty face again. – She patted his cheek.

Batu turned to the small mirror hanging on the refrigerator and ran his fingers through his wrinkles and hair. He paused for a moment, looking at himself, and then asked:

– Where did you take the people yesterday? You know, the ones who were praying in the gym.

– That’s a bad question and obviously unnecessary. Batu, my little man, in this cruel but very fragile world, you will have to survive someday without me. Please make it a rule in life that curiosity is your greatest enemy. Curiosity is sometimes worse than any religion. But I’m gonna answer you. Those who weren’t killed in a raid were executed in the Coven’s cellars. And you’re on that list, too. That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it? And the pastor turned out to be crazy. Not only was he bipolar, he had the plague. Hiding a colony of dead bacteria under his shirt. I can get you a statement of his condition. I shot him myself. Now come on, I’ll teach you a forgotten but useful skill.

She led him into a small room, half of which was occupied by a huge table with a hinged top shelf along its length. Scattered on the table were thin wires in multicolored sheaths, a few paper packages of resistors. In the middle, closer to the wall, stood a soldering station. And in the center lay an electronic device, which was a thin ring of copper wire and a black square flat block inside it. Tamura lit the table lamp-transformer on the bracket and turned on the soldering station, on whose indicator the temperature reading began to increase rapidly until it reached the value of three hundred and ninety-eight. Then she pressed the buttons to turn on the oscilloscope and the universal power supply.

– Take that chair over there and sit next to it. – She sat down on a high computer chair, put on thin glasses with diopters, took out tin and rosin from the box and began to solder the coil wires to the contacts of the black block.

– This is the controller with the solenoid. And here is the armature of the pulse electromagnet, – she pointed to the black block. – It is tuned to a strictly defined frequency and gives out a powerful two-second magnetic pulse, attracting everything that works at the same frequency. Right there, look. See the contact? Good eyesight?

– I see it.

– Hold the soldering iron. Not by the working part, you know. Dip the tip in rosin and tin the contact. Run it while the stinger is wet. Good job. And your hands are not shaking like mine. Now grab some tin with the stinger and tin the contact. You’re doing a good job. Now do the same with this wire. That’s good. Now, use a clothespin to connect the wire to the contact and hold it in place for a second with the tin. Holy cardiologists! You have a gift!

– Did you get it? – The kid’s eyes are glistening.

– Let’s check it out. Go get the box, it’s on the table in the hallway.

– Now,» Batu jumped off the chair and a moment later was holding the box in his hand, shaking it up and down. – It’s heavy.

– Well, unpack it quickly!

He opened the package and pulled out a black starfish, rotating it in his hand and examining it.

– The body was made of a self-sharpening composite alloy, and inside was the same electromagnet, only miniaturized. About the size of a dime. The beams are weighted. Activate it, here’s the jumper. Put it on the table. Now we connect the minus to the trap. – She’s connected the black wire to the block terminal. – And the plus side, we’ll just tap the contact. – The sprocket on the table snapped off and immediately magnetized itself to the block platform. And the whole structure was thrown off the table with force. – Not bad?!

– It’s still on it,» said Batu, picking up the sprocket block and trying to tear it off.

– Yes, we need to adjust the resting position. We’ll apply short, weak electromagnetic radiation so that the sprockets just hold onto the block and can be easily ripped off. – Tamura knitted a thin long screwdriver and turned the slot of the tuning resistor through the narrow hole. – And since they would be stacked there, each sprocket would duplicate the induction to the next sprocket. Now let’s solder the button.

The witch closed the block with the lid and began to screw the screws around the perimeter of the platform. And, not having tightened the last three, she looked around the table for the missing ones. Then she turned over an iron coffee can and shook out the contents. There she began tweezing through the various nuts, springs, and screws looking for the right size.

– All right! – she gave up. – No more screws. I’ll have to go to Luis’ tomorrow. – Then the witch put on her battle suit belt and fastened the grip block to it with a leather clasp. She pulled the remaining stars out of the box and turned to the boy: «Put them in different places around the room. Let’s see how they all fly.

Batu took the shurikens and carefully placed them around the room. The witch stood in the center of the room, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled sharply and pressed a button. In the same second, all of the stars promptly tore towards Tamura. Three of them didn’t quite make a clear shot, but still hit the capture platform. The rest of the shurikens struck the witch’s body from different directions and knocked her to the floor. Tamura cried out in pain and turned around sharply. The remaining stars slid down her body and were safely magnetized to the block.

– Oh, come on! – she shouted. – I’ve just been stitched up!

Batu stood motionless nearby, watching the witch writhing in pain.

– Can I help you? – he asked suddenly.

– The cigarettes are in the kitchen, in a sugar can over the stove,» Tamura replied, taking off her shuriken belt and lying on her back. – Light one, please.

Batu held out a lit cigarette. The witch took a deep drag and began groping herself.

– Looks like all the ribs are intact. – It’s all down below. Stomach and flanks are bruised. Spider armor saved me from being torn and wounded. Why didn’t I anticipate the trajectory? They fly in a straight line. Good thing I didn’t get hit in the head! And they were just lying there, so they didn’t have time to build up momentum. What if they’d been stuck somewhere? Yeah. I should put a copper loop around my waist with reverse polarity around the perimeter. So they’d go around me. I’m gonna throw them on the run. Why didn’t life teach me that? I think six reels will be enough. I wish I had more and more often, but I don’t have that many. How much time do we have, Batou?

– A little over an hour.

– We’ll make it! – shouted the witch, jumped to her feet, pulled a shelf out of the nightstand and turned it over on the table. She selected a few coils from the contents, soldered them in series and attached them to her belt with nylon ties. She soldered the remaining ends to the contacts of the electromagnet armature.

– You solder well and quickly,» said Batu, watching Tamura’s skillful work. – You must be an engineer by training?

– Come here,» the witch said and put the belt on the boy. He opened his mouth and blinked his eyes.

– Don’t piss! I’ve got it all worked out! The coils will work in counter-phase with the anchor and create a scattered electromagnetic field. While the anchor will attract the shurikens, the belt will repel them. The sprockets will fly in a circle without touching you.

– But there are only four coils! And you said you needed six!

– That should be enough. If you need anything, I’ll call CPR. You’re supposed to be in a black bag in the basement of the morgue right now. I’m the one who saved you. So don’t worry about it. I saved you yesterday, and I’ll save you now. Come on, breathe deep or you’re gonna pass out.

The witch quickly took the stars and deftly scattered them around the room. The shurikens easily penetrated any surface and stuck deeply into doors, window frames, furniture, and walls. Batu shouted something, squatted down and covered his head with his hands. Tamura pressed the controller button with the big toe of her right foot and jumped back sharply into the corner of the room. The shurikens reacted instantly, bursting out of the surfaces and rushing towards the electromagnet, circling Batu. Immediately, a series of clicks were heard – the controller had successfully magnetized all fourteen stars.

– Beaver, exhale! – said the witch. – It worked out even better than I thought. Would you like a cigarette?

Batu uncurled and fell back on his heel. He swallowed and cried. His hands were shaking feverishly. He took a cigarette, took a drag and coughed.

– Let me go, please,» he whimpered.

– What’s the matter, kid? – The witch sat down beside him and began to stroke his hair. – It hurts me, and you are crying. Well, I’ll let you go. Where will you go? According to all the databases, you’re a dead terrorist. The city’s facial recognition system will identify you instantly. Then they’ll take you to the Coven and torture you. The high witch has a personal demon. He’ll burn you alive. And if he doesn’t, a pagan witch will take you in for testing. With her prophetic whispers, she’ll give you horrible hallucinations. And there is also an old woman who once soaked her hands in the river of hell Kokitos, and now they are constantly forming sores that bubble and burst, releasing into the air the virus of damnation for a particular person – on whom she will point a single finger. And the person turns into a zombie. Kills first his mom, then the rest of his family, and then himself. It’s a terrible fate. But you’re healthy, fed and almost safe with me. Look what we’re gonna do. We will find me an evening dress, you will help me tidy up: comb my hair, choose a hairpin, pick up a manicure, put in a cab and wait. At night I’ll arrive drunk, you’ll undress me and give me a massage. You’ll caress my legs, my back, my shoulders. And in the morning we’ll decide what to do with you. Okay? – Tamura bit down on part of her lower lip, and the tattoo on the witch’s face took the shape of dripping tears again. – Please!

Batu closed his eyes and nodded his head.

Chapter 6

– Eighty years ago, World War III began and ended, in the first eight minutes of which ninety percent of the world’s population was wiped out,“ Andrei Bal, host of one of the most popular evening shows, began his opening speech… „Almost ninety percent of the landmass will never be habitable due to deadly radiation. The water in the oceans is contaminated and the fish are dead. The remaining humans are forced to take radiation blockers for the rest of their lives. Many will no longer be able to have children. What led to the worst war in human history, and what are the consequences of this war – let’s find out today in «Here and Now» on the federal TV channel. We have with us the Vice Chancellor of Central State University, Professor Michael Sulu and the commander of the special unit «Witches Coven» Eira Lauda.

The cameras briefly froze on the faces of the guests and once again took a close-up of Andrei. The host continued.

– Mr. Sulu, let’s start with you. Remind us all about the background to the disaster eighty years ago.

– Hello! – the Vice-Rector began quite confidently. – I propose to start with a small excursion into the basics of physics to understand the causes of this tragedy. In the middle of the last century, scientists made a number of significant discoveries in the field of quantum mechanics. They discovered and studied such phenomena of the microcosm as quantum superposition, when a particle exists simultaneously in several antiphase states, quantum teleportation – instantaneous information transfer, and wave function collapse, when a force energy field collapses into a particle when it is detected. These strange phenomena have been repeatedly recorded, but no convincing explanation for these phenomena has ever been found. There were many theories and interpretations, some of which turned out to be flawed, others unrealistically fantastic. One of such delusional, at that time, interpretations turned out to be flawless from the point of view of logic. This is Everett’s many-worlds theory. In a nutshell: any outcome of events in the microcosm depends directly on the observer of these events. Fields collapse into particles, and particles move from one state to another under the influence of the will of the observer. And quantum teleportation is nothing but the connection of each particle with the entire universe. This theory was proved almost seventy years later, – he paused and looked around the audience. – I see that I have already bored you with physics, so I will tell you in simple words. The consciousness of the observer influences the world around him. We are observers and, at the same time, creators. The process of observing a process directly affects the process itself. Pardon the tautology. The psychological state of the observer is taken into account. Our desires, aspirations, fears, experiences are the only set of factors influencing the world and determining the whole universe. – The professor took a sip of water from the glass. – But at that moment nobody knew how exactly to influence reality with consciousness and change the course of events. A series of experiments on working out the correct model of consciousness behavior to influence a single particle began. But exactly everyone understood that the fundamental factor was true belief and will. And the factor negatively affecting the results of the experiment was doubt. But how do you make the mind believe and the mind not doubt? The brain is not a machine. You can’t write a program for it.

– So, what we want is what we get? – smiled the host. – The main thing is to want it right?

– Approximate wording. «The main thing is to want it right. After all, if everything we want was fulfilled, the world would cease to exist instantly. Can you imagine how many wishes would be realized in the first second of such a model?

– Everyone would want different things, and sooner or later there would be a conflict of desires.

– That’s right! There would be chaos. The laws of physics would go crazy and matter would disintegrate into atoms. That’s why it’s inaccessible and impossible for us.

– Inaccessible by whom? Is it forbidden?

– You are walking on the edge of the duality of perception of the universe, Mr. Host. – The professor smiled broadly. – We believe that the absence of such a model of the world, where the Universe would materialize any desire of a reasonable being, is conditioned by the anthropic principle: «We see the Universe so, because only in such a Universe an observer could arise»

– Otherwise it simply wouldn’t exist.

– Otherwise it simply does not exist here and now,» corrected the professor and continued. – Our consciousness functions continuously even in sleep and interacts with the surrounding world on a very subtle level. But extraneous thoughts, images and emotions prevent us from forming a clear desire. Besides, our desires often change and what was necessary today is not so important tomorrow. And numerous doubts are always present in the mind. It is impossible to get rid of them, no matter how much we want to. There is almost never a state of pure consciousness, without doubts at all. It is like the sky: some people have clouds, some people have enlightenments, and some people are completely covered with clouds. But there is no perfectly clear consciousness.

– So how are wishes meant to come true? And what kind of wishes?

– That’s a very good question! The wish itself does not disturb the physical picture of the world in almost any way. Just a slight ripple on the water. Therefore, the main driving force in the universe is not desire at all!

– Intention!

– That’s right! The magical power of intention. A man is sitting at a table and he has the urge to smoke. What happens?

– Nothing.

– Nothing! But when the desire to smoke grows into intention, the mystery of creation takes place. A man’s hands reach for a cigarette and matches. And, lo and behold! The wish has come true. Intention is the only driving force in the universe! And it’s not limited by anything! But you have to give credit to the fact that without a wish, nothing could have been accomplished.

– What research has been and is being done on these, shall we say, semi-abstract concepts?

– It took us fifteen years to somehow designate the direction of this research, and only then did all subsequent experiments begin to yield positive results. We studied the influence of thought processes on quantum fields in thousands of subjects. And we found certain patterns. And it was a breakthrough in science no less than the emergence of language in homo sapiens. Unfortunately, it also brought great misfortune. When the information was publicly released, society suddenly realized what a mistake we had made. We had opened Pandora’s box. If you believe in something and do not doubt your choice, it will definitely come true. And the strongest factor for such belief was religion, which immediately declared all our work to be the work of dark forces. After all, it was once considered witchcraft and was fiercely persecuted. Witches were burned! – The professor smirked at Eira. – Nevertheless, the church itself began to actively use the results of our research. It occurred to some of them that the time had come for the apocalypse described in the last book of the Bible, the Revelation of John the Evangelist.

– The end of the world, I suppose?

– Let me remind you: in this part of the new covenant, god shares with one of his prophets about his plans to destroy the world, vividly describing the preceding images – the four horsemen of the apocalypse and the terror they are sowing across the earth. I must confess that their faith has proven to be much stronger than ours, and they all believe the same thing, plus there are too many of them. They got their hands on nuclear weapons and we couldn’t help but react. No one remembers who pushed the button first. After eight minutes, it didn’t matter at all. We won. It’s hard to call it a victory, really. It was more like a Pyrrhic victory. After all, the price was nine billion human lives and a scorched planet for thousands of years to come.

– A monstrous war, one can’t deny. But we survived!

– We survived. And the only part of the earth not contaminated by radiation was Eastern Siberia. We started to build cities and roads around the only freshwater lake with huge reserves of clean drinking water. New knowledge helped us a lot in this. We believed that we would be reborn and, against all odds, a new dawn awaited civilization.

– But the war didn’t end. Its legacy lives on to this day.

– It’s not over. You know what the worst part is? No, it’s not a new war or nuclear weapons. The scariest thing is the coming of the messiah that a lot of people are talking about right now. There are still a lot of fanatics. But now they believe not in the power of bombs, but in an apocalypse from their own god. Just imagine one of them suddenly realizing himself as this messiah. Even worse, he will be born as a messiah, and will be raised as a messiah among thousands of believers in this fact. In one of the moments of spiritual practices his consciousness will become absolutely pure, without a single cloud. In that instant, man will become one with his stagnum. And any, but a single, thought that appears in his consciousness will become a command for the universe. And it won’t be a thought of peace and goodness, believe me.

– You said «become one with his stagnum.» What is that?

– Stagnum is a certain energy field of every living being. A certain interface of interaction between consciousness and the outside world. You can call it a karmic manifestation of our personality. And we continuously influence our own stagnum, whether we want it or not. It is the stagnum that realizes our desires, turning them into intentions on a subtle quantum level. At the level where the impossible turns into the improbable, the improbable into the possible, and the possible into the realizable. A level where energy comes out of nowhere and easily turns into matter. Stagnum does not openly obey us. We cannot order stagnum directly, but we can form an image of our karmic ego, pardon for pseudoscientific terms, which will nurture our stagnum, fill it with intention. And stagnum already influences the surrounding matter independently.

– And one thought from this fanatic can destroy us?

– More than that. That thought could destroy the universe. Don’t look at the scale of it. The universe is just a holographic model,» Sulu noticed the questioning look on the presenter’s face and realized that he needed to explain in more detail. – But imagine a balloon with the entire universe on its surface. Imagine that this balloon can be inflated to infinite size. As we inflate it, the universe expands. Yes, that’s a simplified view. A two-dimensional projection of our three-dimensional universe. Just as our three-dimensional universe is a projection of the four-dimensional mega-universe. So, no matter how huge it is, no matter how far it expands, it is enough to pierce this ball with a thin needle to make the universe collapse into a point. Everything around us ceases to exist down to the atoms. And the entire vast universe is as vulnerable as a microscopic particle. The distances and sizes of the interacting objects are irrelevant. It is enough to give a command to disintegrate at least such a particle as a proton, so that all the protons of the universe at once simultaneously cease to exist. Many people think that the end of the world is some kind of extravaganza. That fire rains down from the sky, plagues all around and earthquakes. No! All you have to do is take a proton and make it decay. The protons of the universe are connected to each other in an unbreakable network, just like any matter. Pfft! And there is no universe. That said, it doesn’t take much energy. Proton decay is one of the end of the world options we can explain physically. And while there are still plenty of fanatics, it only takes one believer for such a plan. But it has to be a special fanatic. But there are no such people yet, otherwise… Sami. Even if you devote your whole life to spiritual practices, you can’t achieve such a state of consciousness. Besides, I believe we have witches.