Abandoned World: The Awakening

— Do what you need to do. — Morgan replied. — You can count on my full cooperation Can we go now?

Tanner nodded his head. Despite his seeming confidence, he could see that he was going to have to report to his superiors in a little while about what had happened here, and he wasn't going to be able to use the words "suicide" and "insanity" with a videotape like this. He would have to find out at least the motives for this act, not to mention the origin of such a devilish ability to destroy himself without any hesitation.

***

— I never thought tonight would be like this," Natalie said, getting comfortable again on the couch in Morgan's guest room. — Did you see him do THIS? It was like it wasn't flesh and it wasn't his at all How is that even possible? How can you not feel anything to that degree?

Natalie was surprised by what she saw, but now she was also surprised by Morgan's high level of calm. It was as if he hadn't seen anything unusual today. As if he was called in late at night every day and shown corpses lying face down on the table covered in blood, and then found out that they had done it to themselves.

— I'm not surprised at anything on this station," Morgan said, and again, as he had half an hour ago, reached for the bar door where the bottles were hidden. — I've got some medicine here, too….

— I don't get you… Is this not the first time this has happened?

— No, not the first…

The last word started ringing in Natalie's ears, then traveled to her brain. Not the first? What do we have here, a suicide club that destroys itself for nothing, and we sit around and watch it?

Building ourselves reactors, mining what we need out of regolith while our society is sick in the head? Maybe we should get our heads straight before we let people into anything important. So the next person who works on the reactor will just push a few extra buttons, and what do we get?

— Not the first, Natalie," Morgan continued, seeing that Natalie had just stopped talking in surprise. — There were two others before him. All from the energy section. Not under my command, but I know about all the cases… They all cut themselves like that, and all on the left side only… You should know about it, because no one knows what it is… Maybe it's contagious, since more than one person has done it. And especially since it's so localized here. There's nothing like it in the rest of the station.

— Wow, what prizes are awarded for achievements… I thought there would be something good for this helium-3 discovery. And that's what it looked like… But this…" she didn't finish, figuring it was better to keep her mouth shut at a certain point. Morgan seemed to trust her with the secret, believing it would keep her safe, and she should start thinking to herself instead of saying it out loud, even in front of him. And yet, why is he so calm? He's not just holding himself together, he's exactly that, calm…

Morgan, pouring himself a glass again of whiskey and something else in there, nestled himself as before next to her:

— Natalie… I started by saying that everything around here is very strange. And our station in particular. The view out the window, which should be the Atlantic Ocean, is not. Elders who do their best to hide all information and only give out what they deem necessary. And for violations, they send them away and may never return them… And that's just the visible part. What we can't see is shown by these cases — people can kill themselves, as if they were not people at all… We just don't know anything about what is behind what. And even this version that we slept there for many years and then woke up, even that doesn't look real….

— Why doesn't this seem real to you? — She could feel herself starting to calm down, just from the fact that they were talking about something other than killing themselves.

— Dust. It's all about the dust.

— In the dust?

— Yes. Dust. How often do you see dust settling on your furniture, on things? How often do you have to wipe it off?

— Once every daylight hours, I guess… All in all, it works out to be an average of twice a month…..

— Yeah, I have the same thing Now imagine how much dust there must be if we've been

sleeping there for thousands or millions of years? A lot. Roughly speaking, there must be a lot of it…

Do you remember in those days, when you were still a ten-year-old kid, how it was all around? I was a little kid too, but I remember very well. Very well, how everything was shining. How it was shiny, and I was sliding on my butt on different slopes, rolling around, just for fun. And no dust So tell me,

what do you think? Someone was cleaning the station while we were asleep? Is that what happened?

— It doesn't seem " Natalie was beginning to see where he was going with this.

— Yeah, it doesn't look like it Everything was shiny because we hadn't slept for a million or a

thousand years, but less than a daylight hours. We're being lied to about everything. Just about

everything. That's why it all stopped surprising me. Because when they find out why those crazy people were really cutting themselves, and with such calmness, they will lie again Nobody will tell

us any truth. They'll tell us what's convenient for them. What is convenient for them to keep us in line and not to give us a chance to think about anything. So they'll keep telling us what's convenient. And we can't hope that this "convenient" will be true at least once….

— You're right… You're really right, Morgan " Natalie leaned back on the couch, still staring

into his eyes. She was getting tired of all the talk about lies and truth, about crazy people and how the Council of Elders was deceiving us all. After all, whether it was true or not, it wasn't going to make her feel any better. Morgan was definitely more interested in talking to her about intricacies and politics and deceit and murder than he was in his feelings for her, which apparently weren't there. She'd thought he'd been looking at her breasts and ass, but it had come down to him sitting close to her and not even trying to touch or stroke her. He clearly had interests on other levels. Still, she wanted to relax.

Okay, he may not want her as much as she'd like. But he definitely wants her as much as she wants him. Otherwise he wouldn't be talking right now. And if it's more for her than for him, then she's okay with that. Let it be. She needs it more. But if it finally happens and he's good, then she'll be satisfied. And that's more important than whimsical feelings. And if he doesn't want to, let him say so, and then she'll go home at once.

— Morgan, will you answer me one question that is bothering me right now? — Natalie asked.

— Which one?

— Are you gonna finally fuck me tonight?

Heddock

Charlie Haddock was one of those who woke up first on the station. That day, unlike most, he didn't scour all the rooms looking for living people, answers to his questions, or anything of the sort. He found the captain's compartment, highlighted on the map by two bold letters "HQ" and began to look at the contents of what appeared to be the main computer in the room. Of course, he didn't remember anything after the cryosleep, like everyone else, but something told him he should look there instead of all over the station.

And he was right. And then he often wondered whether he had been right and therefore had become the real ruler of the station, or whether he should have become the real ruler of the

station by virtue of his character, because he had found all that was paramount in this new life, which he knew for sure was on the Moon, not on Earth.

It was he who had once come up with the idea of considering the place where they were to be planet Earth, so that it would be succinctly written out in anything they could find on any medium on the station. That was the only way to convince everyone that this place was autochthonous, indigenous to man. Because this was the only way, in his opinion, to prevent possible psychosis from the realization of being abandoned.

Charlie didn't know why they were all alone on this station, and after a dream that had wiped out all their memories. What he knew was only a few things: first, they were on the dark side of the moon, and therefore could never observe the Earth in the starry sky; second, they had been in cryosleep for an hour or so. This point was surprising to him — it appeared that everyone had voluntarily climbed into these capsules to be put into a sleep that would take away all their memories. As time went on, he became more and more convinced of this, because of all the material that had been found over time on the station, and which he thought had been brought for study under pain of being sent to prison to begin with, there was nothing that could shed any light on the reasons for all this.

And so the answer was that everyone had voluntarily made such a decision. It is not clear what they were guided by, but only voluntarily could they remove from all their carriers the truth that was forbidden to be known.

Charlie had thought about it a lot, and he had no other answer. And it turned out that he himself was among those who had voluntarily given up the truth and sat in that capsule for an hour to forget everything… But, on the other hand, that suited him just fine, because he was now the real ruler of the whole world. That's exactly what he thought he was.

I mean, who was he before? Anyone, but certainly not who he was now. He certainly wouldn't let everyone forget the rules he enjoyed forming so much. And improving them over time. He made everyone think they were ruled by an entire council, a council of elders who guarded society with their wisdom. And what it was like for him when he organized it… He gathered the eldest among all, revealed to them the "secrets" of the station and convinced them of the need to preserve them.

He told them that the place they were at was a temporary station on the Moon, a satellite of the Earth, which had been given to him until they were taken away. They must be taken under a set of conditions known only to him. And only he knows how to give a signal, after which the Earthlings will check the necessary conditions, and if they are accepted, will take the people back to Earth.

How he had to go around and around, making up those very conditions almost on the fly, constantly arguing that without him there would be no salvation in any case. After all, the first condition was the preservation of his life and health with full and unconditional obedience to him. It was really hard to argue with this, because he was the one who had revealed the first secret for them — where they were. The secret that was hidden to everyone else, and that the elders could keep within themselves. Especially since it was the elders who were the visible power to everyone else — in this Charlie Haddock was not wrong. He felt that he would only be able to keep his shadow power if the visible power was held by a group of individuals who would become steadfast to leave their rightfulness collectively. Where each elder would rely on something special on his part, inventing his own sacred esoteric knowledge that he could not share with others.

Nothing hides the real truth like the presence of an undisclosed lie. That was a rule Charlie had made for himself. One should always form a lie first, then turn a blind eye to it, claiming that it is impossible for everyone to know it for some vital reason. Everyone will want to know in the end what's behind it. They will want to find out from those who don't know it themselves, but are unable to admit it. And this means that the lie will live forever, feeding itself.

It cost him some thought to come up with Tosca. A prison where he could hide those who didn't want to act according to his rules. Officially, they went there for felonies, that is, serious criminal offenses, which now also included failing to turn over a new medium they'd found. He had one Elder, Peyton Cross, who had volunteered at the council to explain to all the rank and file members of the station why it was so important for the Elders to handle the information initially. Charlie had listened to him in person first, and he found his arguments extremely convincing. He couldn't have thought of it himself. Then Peyton spoke to the other elders, refuting their arguments with his own, and was the winner. And then, when he voiced the decision to the whole station, it was literally his finest hour-he articulated what he had said so many times before with such skill and conviction that even Charlie listened and nodded his head a couple of times. Peyton turned out to be a real godsend for manipulating mass consciousness. Though, admittedly, the others weren't going to be far behind him.

It was surprising how well the elders had gotten into their roles as omniscient and controlling that they had stopped even thinking about actually knowing anything. After all, they had never reminded Charlie Haddock, apart from the first few months of their becoming a Council, that he had promised to tell them in time about the conditions under which they might be taken back to Earth.

As for the prison itself, it did not appear as a separate structure at once. At first it was a distant cargo bay, following the technical rooms, where the oxygen, produced by a number of manipulations directly on the Moon, was filtered. And, of course, it happened that someone escaped from there. To the surface. And there he broke some solar panels, damaged a number of cables and was caught by the security service, which after half an hour of proceedings threw the fugitive back

to the surface, but without a spacesuit.

They regretted it a day later when they found the corpse still lying near the entrance.

Everyone expected it to vaporize or something. But in the end, they had to bury it. And in order not to repeat such a thing, they built a separate block fifteen kilometers away from Apollo-24, called Tosca, because in the minds of all the inhabitants of the station in this prison could only long for the old days, which may never return. There was even something strange about it, for all the inhabitants, when they uttered the name in their ears, already realized that "the old days" could be those that would not return for all of them. Those times, which, as they were told, were the planets with seas, oceans, meadows and mountains, which now they would never see.

Sometimes, for reasons like that, it even seemed to Charlie that there were people who knew his secret rather than just guessing. The only thing that helped him was his own ego, which said only one thing: he was the only one with the brains that had guessed on the first day to explore the captain's compartment, not something else. There would have been someone else like him, and he would have noticed it even then — just by wanting to be there with him. But there hadn't been any.

Over time, he came up with the idea of heading the Education Section, so that he could personally participate in the development of educational programs, to be aware of what is and is not in them. And, in addition, to set tasks for new developments. After all, now this reality belonged to him, and now he wanted not just to exist in it, but to live a full life in it, and thus to organize it and create something new.

And it was quite possible to even fully develop this land. Build on it. Make his state bigger.

Make it more powerful. There was nothing stopping him from being what he already was — he wanted to be more.

And now he was proud and very pleased that at last the regolith research had yielded possibilities for using helium-3, including for a nuclear reactor. All that remained was to design the right version of the fusion reactor, so that its capabilities could be expanded with compact use,

because the current systems did not allow either to reach the bright side of the Moon or to carry out long-term work on the surface.

And he wanted to see the Earth with his own eyes even more than he wanted to hide it from others. Even though such an invention could actually shake his power, he definitely wanted to see it with his own eyes. To see Earth. To once again get that feeling he'd gotten in the first days, when he'd woken up from sleep, when he'd been the first to tell everyone that we were on Earth and not somewhere else, when he'd been able to hide the secret that it was actually the moon. He wanted to feel again what it was like to be the only one who knew something. And how you alone determine whether everyone else knows it or not…..

And at that very time, something very strange began to happen on Apollo 24. Various people began to cut themselves literally to pieces in cold blood and uncompromisingly. They were all dying of blood loss, having done to themselves in a few minutes the kind of damage that no human being had ever done to another human being in the history of the station. They were brutal suicides for which there was no explanation on any possible side.

One could imagine that someone had driven them to it, but it was impossible to understand why they did it so fanatically. After all, there are many ways to take one's own life, and if there is a good reason for it, one might also see a suicide note. But nothing like this. Judging from the surveillance footage, it was as if people went crazy at some point, starting to do such horrible things to themselves.

And it wasn't the loss of several valuable employees — all of whom were highly qualified specialists in the energy section — that was starting to scare Charlie. What was starting to scare him was that there was no way to control it. He'd lost three people in six months, and he couldn't tell if it was going to end on its own, or if it was going to spill over into other numbers. And who knows, maybe it would get to him too, since it was such an inexplicable phenomenon.

Maybe it's some kind of virus that's transmitted through something. The fact that all the dead belonged to the same section and lived in the same block of New York pointed to that. But just as well, if it was the work of some maniac, there was nothing to prevent him from changing his location.

There were more questions than answers. And the possible answers clearly did not suit either Charlie Haddock or those who were currently investigating the case — the security section. Tannet always performed his duties well — he didn't have to give any additional explanations as to why this or that person had to be put behind bars and then released, if necessary, or held further. He had no questions at all. That was his tremendous upside. But, apparently, the same side made itself known when it was necessary to find out something, as in this case, for example. He didn't even have a clue. He dug for information mindlessly and without even a clue. He just asked everything that came into his head, guided by the main goal — not to say too much, and not to give anyone a chance to find out what was happening on the station. He wouldn't reveal secrets, but he wouldn't learn anything new either. His chief Harry Sterling was even dumber — all he did was sit in his chair and think about how important it was to keep visibly calm and under no circumstances not to bring the matter to panic. That was all he had in his head. As if, if he adhered to this principle, he could live a thousand years without any problems.

You can't get much out of them, Haddock thought. What they're giving now is about the maximum expected. It's foolish to hope for more. So we'll have to find out for ourselves. Not wait for the plague to come for him. Strange as it may seem, that possibility didn't seem impossible to him either.

And now he had three files on his desk: Henry Thunder, Savannah Blaze, Reagan Shadow. Two men and one woman. And the most horrifying was the woman's — the camera footage showed her slashing her left breast in an attempt to cut out her mammary gland, then stabbing her left thigh

near an artery. Thunder was fundamentally different from Shadow in that Shadow also pierced her own eye. And in the end, this satanic way of injuring themselves to death was one of the few facts that tied them all together — they all destroyed their left side with a sharp object in their right hand. All of them did it systematically and as if they felt no pain.

The first, Henry Thunder, did it more than five months ago, in his apartment, having a good dinner and watching a movie. The movie was a comedy, Twins, starring Arnold Schwarzenneger and Danny De Vito. After that, he slashed himself with a kitchen knife, finishing the job by sticking it in his neck. There was absolutely nothing to it. He was well regarded in the service and was even up for promotion.

The second, Savannah Blaze, killed herself on the job. She, like Shadow, was studying the blueprints for various models of nuclear reactors, on a mission to build back-up nuclear power plants in case the main ones failed. She hadn't been away from her desk for nearly an hour and a half before she'd started chopping herself up with the penknife that had been in her personal purse, and she hadn't been able to see anything that might have motivated her to do so, simply because it wasn't there. It was worth noting that she hadn't been able to forge something out of her chest with all her efforts. This suggested that the action was more spontaneous than deliberate — if she felt no pain, and her mind was lost, then the decision to do it must have succeeded, since she'd started it.

This peculiarity gave rise in Heddock's mind to the idea that all their actions of self-mutilation of their left side carried more symbolic than any practical meaning — they didn't want to do anything fundamental to their left side of the body other than torture it. And, apparently, the answer to everything lay in this.

The third, Reagan Shadow, merely repeated the actions of the previous ones: doing something calmly and casually, and then killing himself with a sharp object just as casually. The only difference was the pierced eye, which once again suggested that all this was just a prelude, a kind of demonstration before taking his own life. Apparently, the eye was as unimportant to Reagan as breasts are to Savannah. He probably could have left it alone, but by some random chance the lot fell on him.

Heddock put the files aside, leaned back in his chair, and looked around his office: although the office was clearly the largest of its kind on the entire station, and the panoramic window the bulkiest of any window installed anywhere, there was no luxury in his office. Absolutely nothing that could be called art or frills. Everything was strict and to the point. It was the elders who liked to make statues of pressed regolith or purple robes over their overalls. He didn't need any of that stuff

— it was just trinkets that could only attract children. Or fools like the Elders. The main thing is power, and now there is a process at the station, which is not controlled by this power at all.

Heddock rose and walked slowly to the glass: before his eyes stretched a view of the Sea of Moscow, which everyone called no other than the Atlantic Ocean. That it was the Sea of Moscow, one of the largest depressions on the surface of the dark side of the moon, he had learned a few weeks after he had learned that it was the moon at all. Not fast, he couldn't say, but given that time was irrelevant now, enough to consider that everything was working correctly.

The view was beautiful. He had grown so accustomed to his natural position as the shadow ruler of the station that he was already treating the surrounding areas as his property, and as he watched the surface, he had already outlined the boundaries of some new buildings that he was planning for the near future. And there would be separate routes to these constructions, where people would also work, follow his instructions and consider themselves to be under the control of the Council of Elders. In this way he can develop endlessly, and who knows, maybe he will be able to create a whole empire, occupying the entire space of the moon. And this work will be continued by his descendants….

By the way, I should have taken care of the offspring. He'd had a few fleeting liaisons that hadn't led to anything. And though he didn't often try to knock someone up, he had doubts that it might not work out. It had been twenty-four years since he'd started his new life. At that point, he'd certainly been in his thirties, if not forty. So now he was at least fifty. Might as well be sixty. Before you know it, nothing will be working between his legs…..

He got seriously flustered and walked back over to the desk. Then he pressed the call button. He wanted to see the one he thought was healthy enough to carry his child, Sierra Ravenwood. She looked to be in her forties, was now in charge of the administrative section, and was certain that Heddock had some very considerable influence over the Council of Elders. She had been informed of this in passing by Heddock himself as she hurried off to some meeting. "Don't worry, a word from me is enough to keep anyone from saying a word to you for any tardiness," Heddock had said then.

As soon as he heard her sweet voice call out to him, he thought at the same moment that maybe the problem with the pregnancy wasn't coming from him at all. He frankly hadn't cared much about these issues before, and from the materials he had (and no one else), he'd never probed the ground about the age of pregnancy. There is sex, orgasm leads to ejaculation, and that semen fertilizes the woman's egg. According to all the tests, Sierra had eggs. It worked for him, too. So it should have worked, but it didn't. Shouldn't we at least try someone else?

He had a number of very young girls working under him. Some of them were quite attractive. But strangely enough, he didn't want to change Sierra for someone else, especially since he didn't want to get a blowjob, which he liked especially from her. It felt to him as if he'd be trading her for someone else. And although he could definitely say that he didn't have any deep feelings for her, he certainly didn't want to lose her.

And the next thought that arose in his brain was that very few people got pregnant on the station at all. If only five thousand people woke up, there were now seven thousand, that is, only two thousand children. And this despite the fact that there were no prohibitions or restrictions on this yet.

Heddock had seen several reports from the United Nations that said that the Earth was overpopulated and that some countries were not controlling their birth rates, which meant that the problem was acute. Given that they had no contraceptives, which were used on Earth, it was logical to ask why the number of children born was so low. And Heddock was finally beginning to link those reasons to himself.

He's not the only one who can't do it. Maybe it's Sierra. Maybe it's him. But it's not as simple a process as one might think. And it's strange that he hasn't thought about it before. Very strange to himself…

He felt something tingling on his left cheek. Just a little bit, as if it wasn't even inside, but outside. Little tingles that weren't even easy to notice… Why would that be?

Heddock touched his cheek with his right hand, then massaged it a little. It seemed to go away. That was odd. What could it be? The first thing that popped into his head was the connection to the recent suicides. Maybe they had something similar before they got to this stage? No, that's bullshit. It's something else. It's just self-inflicted. You'll get such feelings when you read about people who do things to themselves that you wouldn't wish on an enemy….

There was a knock on the door. Sierra came in. In her usual high spirits. She never showed up any other way. If she had something wrong, she'd say so right away and reschedule. Good manners for a relationship like this, and where did she get that trick from?

— You look beautiful " Haddock was both complimenting and telling the truth. He felt that

he had once taken a good look at her and had made a commitment to her. She was a perfect match for him: in temperament, in sexual preference, and in distance. Such is not so easy to find, if

suddenly it turns out that she is not able to have children … Although, however, nothing prevents just knock up another, and fuck continue with her. After all, he needs a child, not both of them… It's probably more convenient… Besides, she really doesn't get pregnant, no matter how many times he spewed his seed into her. It can't be a coincidence… Though I'd like to see it happen with her. She's smart, too. A woman like that should be kept close and not upset…

— Thank you, Charlie… Thank you…" She came over to him in a flash and settled on his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck. — You missed me, didn't you?

— Of course, dear… Things were important… By the way, I'm interested in your opinion… — an interesting idea to consider suicide cases from the female side suddenly popped into my head, after all, what difference does it make who or what will give the clue. — The opinion of a woman with a good brain…..

— You're intriguing " Sierra smiled and stroked the left side of his head with her fingers,

which made him feel very conflicted. Something seemed to be creeping inside him, but it was so obvious that his heartbeat quickened.