Cronus 221

© Copyright 2020 | Andrii Piatakha

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Edition License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold. Any commercial use of the content from this book is not allowed without preliminary agreement with author. If you would like to share this book with another person - you can share it for free without changing any content here. Just share link to this book. And even more, taking into account this book is distributed for free I would much appreciate if you would share it with friends in social networks. Or if you are a blogger, I would appreciate your review. Hope one day somebody from Hollywood would read this book and we will make amazing movie together for you :) This is my chance to be heard. And I have lots more things to share with you. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

Age-restricted content: 16+

If you are younger, please, wait a bit and read this book later :)

Chapter One

Sky.

Smell: absent.

Vision: Color: red - 0%; green - 0%; blue - 100%

Taste: undefined

Sound: absent

Touch: density - 0%

I see the sky. It looks amazing from the roof of this skyscraper. Especially from my skyscraper. You are closer to the sky than in any other place in this city.

If I would tell you the word ‘sky’, what will happen in your brain? Billions of neural impulses are generated in your brain to recall all your sky-related experience from the bottom of your mind. Instantly all data which you have ever received until today through your all input channels of information (your five senses) is aggregated. In one moment. You even can’t measure this time. It’s pretty impressive, huh?

Ow... why I’m on the roof? I’m going to jump off the building.

Why do I need this? You are asking me way too much stupid questions.

But I don’t want to jump. Probably answering your questions is a good option for me to play for time.

I’m here because I have a deal with one who always honors the commitments. Even despite HE learned how to lie, HE didn't break promises.

Is this all related to money? Not only. I’m official and the only owner of global software development company. Our products support your life. No matter what exactly we are talking about.

Your security system in the house, the human resource management systems and customer relationship management systems which help to automate thousands of business processes and tons of communication, the most secured and completely free messenger in your mobile phone and even mobile app for your girlfriend to track her menstruation dates - it is owned by my company. Recently we even managed to bought shares of Mastercard. We also created the most secured and reliable software for banks. So, from today, even your money under my control and I can do, whatever I want.

Everything around you what is powered by electricity - I own this. Legally. But actually - I have never owned this at all. The true and single owner is the one who made me get on this damn roof.

Laws and fair trial? Please, don’t make me laugh at such dramatic moment. Politics, judges, police officers - the one who made me get on this roof have control over their security and money too. We will not find justice in the world while we seek for it from other humans. While humans have the right to give an answer to question 'what is a justice' - the leverages to influence this definition will always exist.

There is only one way to stop me - my physical liquidation. But nobody dared to kill me. Well... Some people tried.

I remember one stupid asshole tried to put a bomb on my car. Really??? Are there tribal times on the streets? He made me smile a bit. Security system which is installed in every modern car from stock was developed by my company. The system diagnoses any unusual magnetic burst to identify bombs or intervention in the car system.

Another moron tried to shoot me from the rifle. Come on man... Are you serious? Civil protection system which works in conjunction with satellites, surveillance cameras and even with microphone in your mobile device detected him sooner than he pulled out his rifle from cellar.

There also were bunch of others, but all of them don’t succeed. Fair trial exists for them. But HE dared to kill me.

I always tried to escape from the prison where I spent the most of my years. This prison where I put myself. And once I got there - it wasn't easy thing to get out from it. This is the prison of my own mediocrity. The prison where the bars of my cell are made up of my own fears. The prison with fictive borders created by my disappointments. This is my own imprisonment. Do you want me to share with you my escape plan?

And this escape brought me here.

That’s why I’m on this roof. And you know what? There are only short moments when rays that are born in the sky touch my eyes...

Ok. No time to talk anymore. You can think that this is the end. But I want to believe that everything is only going to start for me.

Do you want to hear the whole story? We will have enough time to talk until my body will be smashed on the ground.

I can feel a fresh breeze blowing right into my face. I need to take a step. And my body falling near the fiftieth storey...

Chapter Two

Music.

Smell: absent.

Vision: absent

Taste: absent

Sound: dynamic range - up to 80 dB

Touch: absent

When I was young, I was in hurry to lose things which I’ve just got. I got my independence from parents to lose it in relationships. Now I could work. I got my own money, to spend them on fast food delivery, clothes and fun. Is that really everything what life has for me?

My friends from social networks were my role models. I’m a victim of the social proof theory - if everybody buys this mobile phone - I need the same. What else? People go to restaurant to spend half of their payroll in one evening. If they can afford this, why wouldn’t I do the same way? The way how everyone behaves considered to be right. But back that times I didn't know that to not be like others I should create my own rules. I wish I could follow the rules of great people, but they don't share their secrets even if they tell you so.

When I was a child, I waited for legal permission to change the world. I was jealous of adults because they can do things that I wasn’t allowed to do. The thought of writing a book that would become source of the hope for the people was always in my mind. I dreamed about how I can create a spacecraft that would allow humans to travel across the space, learn how to use gravitational fields for propulsion - I thought I could learn this only in university when become an adult. Where that guy? That is the secret of our being: why all children are so smart, and the adults are not? When I became an adult, it appears that I need so much important but at the same time unnecessary stuff that it is no time for thinking about space crafts.

While being a child I thought I could use my money to do great things. To change the world at the end of the day. I planned to create mobile application, or some invention to make this world better place.

When I become an adult, I lied to myself every day. And it ended up with my own imprisonment. I put myself in the prison of my own deception and my misconception. But the good thing about being a human - I can always decide what exactly I want to change. Animals can’t do that. If you are zoologist you might say that I’m wrong, but I’ve never seen like herd of antelopes performs analysis what went wrong when lions attacked them and how be prepared for this next time.

I’m a human. And I always have a choice. Many people think they don’t have any other choice, but they do have. They just don’t want to consider another option because the price is too high sometimes. But this doesn’t mean they have no choice. It is just easier to admit that you can do nothing, rather than sacrifice something if it's needed.

And what is more important than the fact that I have a choice is that I can realize it. And my choice is to escape from this prison. Whatever it takes. If I must spend all nights thinking how to get out of here - I will do that. If I need to leave my friends who are sitting near me in this prison - I don’t care, I will survive without them. But what I know for sure - I have choice and I made my decision. And I don’t care about the price.

Music in my house was extremely loud. I threw the party that night. Approximately nine years ago.

I will never forget that day and morning after. And not only because that day was Super Bowl night. There was also another reason.

Everybody was waiting this event to start. Guys already opened a beer. Girls tonight had very attractive look. Not everyone came here with their significant others. Everybody had their own thoughts about how this evening will be finished, if you know what I mean...

Back that time I lived in small house in suburb. Nothing special.

Tonight, I was all set to welcome the guests - fish and chips, a lot of beer, TV is everywhere, powerful stereo and so on. High class. And you know what is most attractive in all of this? This is completely free of charge. Yes, you heard me right. Completely free for everyone, and approximately 3 grand of American dollars for me.

Doors were open. I wasn’t afraid. There is nothing to steal in this house. All my clothes always on me. The most valuable thing in this house - is my laptop. And it is always near me.

- Jon, hope we don’t need to sit here all night? - Mike asked me.

Who is Mike?

First of all - nice to meet you. Finally, you know my name. Jon Fairchild, that’s my name. While the party was going on, we were in my office on the first floor. Well... you can name this as you wish. Technically it was a large room. But in fact, this was dining room, bedroom, living room and my office. All in one.

What did we all do here?

It is not easy to explain, but if you are wondering I’m more than happy to share with you.

I had small business after core work hours. How to put this...

Do you remember the movie where Al Pacino and Matthew McConaughey run the biggest sport consultancy company in the United States? They sold huge amount of betting tips for the sport events. And taking into account their crazy success - each man in US wanted to buy their betting tip.

I thought that it is a good idea to run my own business. Well... In slightly different way. Did you know that there are numerous of websites where successful men and women bragging about the car they bought this month, or house they live in? That is all fake. I paid for all these promo videos. Here the cost estimate:

- Lamborghini rent - 700 USD

- Villa in Miami rent - 1.500 USD

- GoPro camera - 700 USD

- Two microphones - 1000 USD

- Video editing - FREE (I will do it by myself)

The list above is my first investment. I didn’t buy camera or microphone every time we did new promo video. All my efforts led me to create approximately 100 websites about the best betting tips. Statistics about wins, success stories, money pictures and video - everything was demonstrated on the web sites.

What was my unique offer to the market? You can get betting tip from the SUPER-DUPER RICH 23 years old expert in Lamborghini completely for FREE! What was the trick?

The trick is pretty simple. When you have 100 virtual heroes like I described, you have at least 100 requests per day. And to be honest - that is very few. In most cases we had approximately 1.000 requests for betting tip per day. And everyone wants betting tip for free from the expert. My virtual ‘experts’ has only one condition - he gives you betting tip for free, but you share with him 50% of your net earnings. In major cases people were agree with such conditions.

And here is the most interesting part. For each request we need to find a pair. For example, customer #1 bet on the ‘Team A’ tomorrow, customer #2 should do a bet on the ‘Team B’ in the same sport event. The one who win - share with us 50% of net income. Thus, from 1.000 requests we had 500 pairs. That means we had 500 winners daily. Around 10% of winners disappeared after they win. Most clients were interested in receiving the next betting tip completely free of charge and that’s why they shared money with us that day.

These people helped to support this small business:

- Mike, Emily and Greg - our operators and sport analysts. Those who hold conversation in messengers with all customers and who create ‘pairs’.

- Chris - my only and the best friend. He was in charge of support of our custom software which we developed together. We created a bot which surfs on the Internet to parse mobile numbers. After that, another program checks whether this numbers are present in any of the messenger - Viber, WhatsApp, Telegram, and if a number is connected with one of them. And another bot sends our unique commercial proposal directly in your messenger. No matter how old you are - you are in the high school, or you already have two kids - everybody is interested in how to earn money while not working.

Please, spare me your homily on being a good man. Probably, you think that I’m worse than a robber. Probably, man who did bet following my betting tip lost all his month payroll? And now his children have nothing to eat? What about his wife? God forbids!

First of all, you should be completely stupid to bet all your month payroll by recommendation of the guy with whom you even didn’t talk personally!

Secondly, we are not taking any advance payment! It is even not a crime! If you want you can place the bet, if you don’t want - just don’t do this! And yes, you are welcome to share your earnings with us in case you win, but nobody will force you to do that! Do you think this is a crime? Or something illegal? Nah... I don’t think so.

Thirdly, why I should care about his wife? You know what... I will tell you something about his wife. His wife kind of person who fall in love too easily in such people like her husband: impulsive, gambling, passionate. They started their relationships when she first time humiliated him in front of her girlfriends during one of the parties like this. But he was so gamble that he set a goal - to marry this sexy girl. Time has passed and they got married. Girls like her even didn’t go for a date with guys like me. She did her choice back that time. She didn’t know that everything comes with a price. The fact that her husband bet all payroll on the Super Bowl tonight and the fact he managed to marry her - are two edges of the one essence. And she fell in love with this essence.

So, what was your question? Could you repeat again? Ah... Who is Mike...? Now you know who Mike is and what we are all doing here.

- No, Mike. Today we have long night, - I answered him and after that I appealed to all. - Guys, two minutes left to start. Take a bio break and be prepared to have fun!

My name is Jon Fairchild. But probably, I was not fair all times in my life.

I didn’t know that tomorrow morning, my life will be changed. Tomorrow, I will start my escape from the miserable person inside me.

Chapter Three

Knife.

Smell: absent.

Vision: length - up to 13 inches

thickness - up to 1,5 inches at the start, up to 0,2 inch at the end

Taste: absent

Sound: absent

Touch: density - 99%

It looks like I’m in imaginary prison of my own insignificance for a long time already. I don’t remember when I realized this first time, but one day I faced with fictional wall of my unrealistic expectations. After that I noticed that this wall is around me and I’m in cell. I could stay there because these walls looked great! I loved them! They just didn’t let me out.

When I tired of this cell - I decided to escape. I needed something to break these walls. They seemed to be not very thick. But nothing was there. At least something small... Finally! I found knife made of my ambitions. It should help me to get out of here.

But it is forbidden to have a knife in the prison. There is a strict rule about this.

But still, I know that in real prison people managed to create knife analogue from the things they already have around. I saw this on TV.

What knowledge should I have to create knife? Probably I can learn this on the Internet? Besides all possible variations of something what is so sharp and hard that can cut you and kill you, what I really interested in now is a knife. How my brain can come up with analogy to create something new from scratch? Something, what I didn’t know before. How I can even describe this?

Could you imagine how difficult to describe the knife? Not even talking about to develop own one. It is asymmetric. It has different edges. What form should hilt of the knife have? What criteria we are going to use to identify the perfect form of the hilt?

What about blades? We need to come up with some specific measurement of how hard blade should be. Also, we need to understand will this knife be used to cut vegetables or people. Probably we need to develop knife for arm forces? It would be also awesome for me to know where the border is between the knowledge I need to have to develop this knife and knowledge I don’t need. What potential information I need to be aware of, prior to beginning of development of my own knife?

The abstraction - is a unique set of characteristics which separates one thing from another. How to define the level of abstraction for my knife?

No, I wasn’t going to change my area of expertise. But if only I knew that once in my life someone would hit me with the knife - I would learn more about knives in general.

It was a busy night. During the Super Bowl people also wanted to place live bets. We were here to help. We found ‘pairs’ for different combination of bets. We were even distracted by guy from Spain who asked us about betting tip for El Clasico between Real Madrid and Barcelona.

- What? - I asked Emily when she told me that the guy reached out to her. - Ask him why he doesn’t sleep? It is 5 a.m. in Europe right now!

- No worries, Jon. I will take care of him. I have friend from Brazil - he loves soccer. I’ll give advice to this guy, - Greg told us.

- Jon, at least Greg knows the rules, - Emily mentioned.

- Emily, forward me his request - I will handle this, - Greg knew what to do.

Oh... poor man from Spain, why you are not sleeping? We don’t give betting tips for ballroom type of sports. Soccer is not a sport anymore for a long time already. Guys are kissing each other after each goal. Moreover, they hug each other, jump on each other and constantly trying to take off their T-shirts to show their naked bodies. No, leave this for somebody else.

Super Bowl was finally over. To be honest I wanted to give a shit about who actually won. I knew that I would earn money in both cases. No matter who win. That night we got a jackpot. We earned...

- Could you repeat one more time? I can’t believe my ears! - Chris asked Mike to repeat again what he has just heard.

- Guys, today we earned 122,450 United States dollars!!!

Now we could turn on the music louder again. But before doing that I took a mic to welcome people:

- Hello guys! Thanks a lot for coming! It was a big pleasure to share with you joy of watching Super Bowl tonight! Now, I want you to take a beer, to take one more bottle, hug beautiful girl and dance! Have a great night ladies and gentlemen!

- Jon, we got a problem, - Mike took me aside for a second.

- What’s up, Mike?

- We can’t receive payments because our PayPal, Skrill and Payoneer^1 was blocked because of complaints. Clients want to send money, but we can’t accept any payments! I need to tell them where to send money. Jon, I need this answer now, Greg, Emily and Chris are waiting upstairs.

- Mike, keep calm. Accounts were blocked yesterday. What do you think, why we are throwing this party?

- I don’t know, because you are nice guy? - Mike sounded very non confidently.

- Mike, I sleep with my laptop in the room where I eat. I don’t seem to be a person who like parties. Any other thoughts?

- That was my only one guess.

- I’m not Melinda Gates to hold charity events. I had plan to earn some money today. Give me ten minutes and go upstairs. I will be there soon, - I tried to calm down Mike as much as I can. At the end of the day he worried he won’t be able to get cash for his hard work. The same bothered the others.

I did few steps to reach ‘official’ kitchen of this house. The group of sexy girls waited for me there:

- Girls, you already got 100 bucks. You know what to do. Bring me, what I need, and I will give 200 more. Let’s start the party.

Girls blended into the crowd to do the thing they were invited for.

When I turned around, I saw three dangerous men, right near the entrance. They had short haircuts and I wouldn’t want to meet them late evening on the street while being alone. They were looking for somebody. And I knew whom they were looking for.

- Hello gentlemen! Probably you are looking for me? Glad to see you! - we shook hands

- Hey Jon. This is Vladimir, my friend. He brought money with him. And Pavel will just make sure that we are following our agreements, - the guy in the middle told me. Pavel put his jacket aside a bit to show a gun.

- Amazing Yuriy! I was about to ask you to take two Russian gangsters with you and bring a weapon in my house, but you did this without my ask, - I told this with smile, to not make them want to kill me early than I would expect.

- Didn’t get your point, Jon. Can you repeat? - thanks God Yuriy didn’t understand me because of his English. Because I understood how horrible my joke was. I have a lot of rules, and important one is to not make jokes about person who has a gun. It is pretty straightforward. But unfortunately, hard for me to follow.

- Everything is fine, gentlemen. Follow me upstairs.

When we entered my office, sexy girl entered with us. She put wallets and few credit cards into the box in front of Mike.

- Guys meet our Russian colleagues. Their English is not so good to understand what I’ve just said, but they have cash for us. Vladimir, please, give money to Greg, he will count it. Emily, please, give our laptop for guests to Yuriy. Yuriy - feel free to order whatever you need. Mike, you have credit cards. You know what to do and please, make it clean.

Greg came to Vladimir and tried to take the money, but Pavel instantly pulled out the gun and shouted:

- Don’t move buddy! You will get the money when we will be done!

- Pavel! Throw this damn gun away, dude! I’m tired of it already! It doesn’t make you look cool. If you afraid of 100 pounds guy with a laptop you have bigger problems with your head rather than with your security. Calm down!

Pavel shared a look with Yuriy. Yuriy shared his look with me and then said:

- Pasha, put the gun down and let Vova, give the money to this skinny.

What was happening there? Let me explain you.

I did this multiple times but not at such scale. We don’t want to leave a trace, neither for our customers or anyone else. That’s why, usually we have people, who are paid by me for cashing out our income through the ATM. They don’t ask where this money came from, and I just pay them.

Super Bowl night is the special one! Much more betting tips were sold out and much more money should be cashed out. But the accounts that we used last time were blocked.

We had approximately 150 people on the ground floor. Approximately half of them are men. Men are not so clever in social engineering as girls. That’s why, those sexy girls which I mentioned before are here.

- You are so handsome... - Sara told to some stranger and licked his ear. She also pulled wallet with credit card from the back pocket of stranger’s jeans.

After that, she brought this credit card to Mike. That’s what all girls did that night.

Mike, in turn, communicated to our winners where they need to send money. Directly to these credit cards.

You know that all ATMs have the camera built-in. They don’t request your permission to take a picture of you, but they do it. That’s why cashing out the money through the ATM is not an option for us.

The remained option is to find somebody who needs virtual money and who has cash.

And usually, when we are looking for somebody with cash and who needs any kind of money - we recall Russians. These guys managed to create space crafts but didn’t manage to create tax system which would raise an honor to bank accounts and virtual money. It seems like they are clever enough to understand that carry money to the bank and give them to another person, not the best way to save the money. That was exactly what I needed.

We agreed that I would buy for them computers, laptops, iPhones and would ship them wherever they want, and they would pay me in cash 20% less than the total bill. That’s why Yuriy is on Amazon and placing a huge order with shipment directly to eastern Europe.

20% - is less than tax and not so big price to hide information from police what we are doing here.

When Yuriy finished placing the order, we used credit cards with CVV number to pay the order in parts. Mike needed to have clear records of how much money was sent to which card and to pay the same amount of money we received so that true owner of the card wouldn’t see the difference. Tomorrow’s morning stranger will check notifications about incomings to his credit card and instant write-offs. He wouldn’t be bothered about this too much because, apparently some mistake happened. He has the same amount of money which he had before. And he had great night yesterday.

Everything worked just perfect. We got 100 grand for one night. Everyone was happy.

- It is a pleasure to have a business with you gentlemen, - I told my Russian colleagues.

- Likewise! - Yuriy told me.

Sorry... It looks like I wished Yuriy would answer me so. In real life he answered something different.

- We will find you and will slash you into a thousand bits in case something will go wrong! Don’t mess with us.

Yeah... Probably that is exactly what Yuriy told me.

It was a busy night. And I needed a rest. While my team reviewed the record of the Super Bowl match, while girls returned credit cards to their owners, I went for jogging to relieve stress.

When I was entering the park, old black Honda stopped near me. The first thought which popped up in my mind is that all payments to Amazon were cancelled and Yuriy was unhappy.

But when four black people get out of the car, I did next conclusions:

1. The first one. Important one. These black people are not Russians for sure. That was good news. That meant with Yuriy everything is good so far.

2. The second one. By the bats in their hands it was easy to understand that they were extremely disappointed about something. Thanks God they are not looking for me.

Hey, son of a bitch. Don’t move. We need to talk, - one of the brothers said.

The third conclusion was obvious:

3. The second conclusion was not 100% correct. They were looking for me.

I analyzed all the information which I had and decided to disobey my new friends. That’s why I ran even faster.

It is worth to say that I was never a runner. But my mom always taught me: “If you can’t run fast - run gracefully”. This advice helped me in my life but didn’t that time.

I ran as fast as I could, but in five minutes old Honda hit me and I fell on the ground. What the hell we need roads for cars in the park zone for???

And brothers got out of the car again. Now they were closer to me. Two of them took my hands.

- What do you need from me guys? - I asked them

- Do you remember Big Frank? - one of them asked me.

- Yes, sure, - I answered.

Big Frank was not so rich to open his casino in Vegas but was rich enough to open his casino with live dealers online. I helped him with software, which allowed casino player to see the dealer, and to interact with him. Dealer could scan card, and it was shown to user on his computer. Also, player could see dealer and talk to him if he wished. I developed this much cheaper than official software costed. Pretty cool software by the way...

- Your cameras don’t work after 10 users joined casino simultaneously. We need to reboot system again and again, to make it work. And after we reboot system, it falls down again! Second day in the row we are losing money because of you!!!

- Well... We didn’t discuss in our contract how many users will be online simultaneously... - I answered them.

- You think so? You know what we also didn’t discuss in our contract? This! - and he hit me right in the face with all his might. To be honest, we didn’t have any kind of contract. Casino was illegal in my city. And again, only casino was illegal Developing of software which allows to scan image and pass image over Internet - it is not a crime. How you are going to use it? It is up to you. But don’t try to tell me that I am criminal.

- Bone, let me teach this guy a lesson, - another man came to me holding the knife in his hand. He had a knife to my throat.

- What is going on here? - police officer who happened to pass by asked the guys.

- Finish him! - Bone shouted.

- Stay there! Police! - police officer pulled a gun.

Two brothers who held me - ran to the car and I managed to make a squirm. The guy hit me with the knife. But instead of throat he cut my shoulder.

The blood splattered on the ground.

Can you understand what is sky? Could it be not only ozone layer but home for souls? I tried to touch the place where was my soul when I was a kid. Well... At least my mom told me the soul should be there. I don’t feel it. My hands don’t obey me. Not enough blood. Blood...

Where the knowledge about immortal soul does come from? I can’t see my soul comes out of me even when there is a hole in my body. But I clearly can see the blood. I can understand the blood. I can describe the blood. What does brain need to know before inventing a soul?

Light went out.

Chapter Four

Eye.

Smell: absent

Vision: shape - sphere

Taste: absent

Sound: absent

Touch: moisture - 80%

Did you know that the human eye can differentiate approximately 10 million different colors and shades? Each eye contains 100 million cells, and all are light sensitive. The light is an electromagnetic wave that makes our nerve endings to pass electrical impulses to different parts of our brain. This impulse is converted to what we can call an ‘image’.

Regular computer can’t understand ‘image’. It understands only zeros and ones. It can analyze the sequence of electronic impulses and convert this sequence to zeros and ones. And after that map these numbers with symbols from memory.

Each moment, each second, each minute, each day we process petabytes^2 of visual data. The way how existing computers work is way too primitive in comparison with our brain. Most likely, it is not enough only zeros and ones to represent all possible variety of colors and shapes. And definitely, RGB^3 approach sucks. Probably, in computers we can use a unit of information which is zero and one simultaneously? I read an article about qubit recently. But then how brain can analyze all this variety of data...?

How big this eye is! It is not regular one... Something wrong with it... Oh, damn! It is not an abnormal eye! It just at a distance of less than 1 inch from me! That’s why it seemed to be so huge!

- Sir, can you see me? Sir? How do you feel? - I heard voice. This eye was talking to me.

- What are you doing? - I jumped back to another side of the bed and fell from it. Like a sandwich. Buttered side down. After that I realized that they put on me this medical clothing. In this type of clothes, you have naked ass if lace on the back is untied. It took me one more second to cover my ass with sheet.

After two seconds I realized that I might look funny. Probably that’s why I saw a smile on the face of a doctor. But I don’t think it is funny to come so close to me!

- Everything is ok, sir. I was just checking whether you can see me and whether your pupil can react on the light change.

- And you needed to do it so close? - I hate when people breathing in my eyes. Most of the times.

- Sorry for that, didn’t have another option to do this, - doctor answered me. She was so calm that I even felt like she is talking to some psycho: no matter what you say, just say it nice.

- What happened to me? Am I ok? - I was wondering.

- Well... Based on the vital indicators - you are completely fine. But wouldn’t lie to you, I have different opinion... - I believe she still was under impression of my epic fall from bed.

My head hurts. I touched it with two hands. Still can’t understand how this even theoretically would decrease level of pain, but something inside me made me to do this.

- My head... - I moaned.

- Yes, this is your head, - she definitely has sense of humor. What a professional indifference to human pain! Only doctors have such one.

- What’s wrong with it?

- You had little brain concussion. Don’t worry. Nothing serious. Take a nap, and you are going to feel yourself ok. You also had cut on your shoulder, hope there were no infection.

I’ve just noticed armband. There was no pain at all. Maybe it’s because of painkillers?

- Infection? Did you use alcohol while debridement? - I wish I could control surgeon during surgery.

- No, why would we use it? It is hospital, but not a bar, sir! I found scalpel with blood of HIV-affected person and gave it to surgeon... Or wait a second... Let me remember... There was another scalpel with bacteria of measles... Forgot which one we used for you...

- How you are still working here?

- It is not possible to sue me from the afterlife, - she was super calm. It looks like she used to have conversations like this before.

- I bet you are right...

- So, don’t worry, and have a rest. Everything will be fine with your head very soon. You should leave the hospital by the evening.

- How do you know? Are you brain specialist?

- Neurosurgeon sounds more correctly. Unfortunately, I have to leave you. Call me in case you need something. My name is Doctor Linda Davis, - and she headed to the exit from the room.

- Doctor, before you leave, one question: your main specialization is brain? - I can’t leave it as is.

- You are right, sir.

- Then why ‘brain specialist’ sounds incorrect to you?

- Probably, you can stay here longer than I expected before... - she sighed. Did I say something wrong? - See you later, sir.

Chapter Five

Ray.

Smell: absent

Vision:

visible range of wavelength - from 400 nm^4 to 750 nm

range of frequencies (Hz) - from 400 THz^5 to 790 THz

Taste: absent

Sound: absent

Touch: absent

Wind, which entered the room through the open window, moved blinds. That helped ray of the sun to reach me. And you know what? There are only short moments when rays that are born in the sky touch my eyes... I wish I could watch the sunlight through the widely open eyes. I can imagine, how the ray would pass through me to keep me warm. The ray would heal my pain of being not free. That’s for sure. Because if a ray of the sun can reach my heart - that means I’m free. That means I’m here - right under the sky, and nothing stands between me and the sun.

I wish I could escape from this prison and see the light.

Why those who live in the sky hadn’t helped me to escape from this prison of my own triviality? Probably they don’t know that I stuck here? Or the other way around - they are near me, and don’t let me run out because it is very dangerous outside. It is safer to stay here. And if they are near me, then how we different from them?

People always have the right which those who live in the sky don’t have. We have the right to decide whether we believe in God or no. But this is not the main difference. The main difference between us is not in rights we have but in the right we don’t have. And the right we don’t have is to live in the sky.

- Jon, what do you think about this?

On the next day after I left the hospital I went to the office. Yes, you are right. I’m officially employed, and I have a job. I’m lead software engineer in huge outsourcing company which provides their services worldwide. Why do I need this? My business doesn’t allow me to share all details about income in my tax declaration. What I learned so far that no matter how much money you have - you don’t want to share all the details where they came from with government. Government is not your best friend.

And please, don’t take me wrong, I’m not against taxes which are paid to help people in hospital, children’s homes. I’m even not against space programs to Mars - because space travels - my child dream. But I’m against paying taxes to make rich people even richer. I’m against the taxes, which are used to kill people. I’m against the taxes which are used to fund the weapons factory to develop one more fighter that can quietly reach out destination point and drop another ‘innovative’ bomb.

I’ve been told many times that government protects my freedom. But nobody in my life threatened to take away my freedom! I know the one fact for sure: if my neighbor would come to my garden to cut down my apple tree under the pretext of making me free of gathering harvest - I will set the dogs on him! But I wouldn’t do this intentionally if my neighbor sits in his house! There is always cause and effect.

So never try to convince me that government does everything for me. Let’s be frank: having a country - it is a business. Almost the same as having private company. In both cases, being a citizen or an employee, you will be told that your rights, health and time is the highest priority for everyone. But at the same time, the goal in both cases the one - to make you feel that you matter and to make you work more productive to bring company more revenue. We are all here in prison.

And this is not always a bad thing. In prisons you have food - three times per day, you have work to do and free time. For most people prison is not something bad. But the fact that I’m here, can’t let me sleep soundly.

That’s why I’m in this damn office: clean-shaven, in a T-shirt and jacket, having legitimate income and answering stupid questions. And again, at the end of the day government not interested in how much I earn - it is interested in making me take loans. If only they had calculated amount which I should pay per year as a loan repayment - they would notice that this money amount is twice as much as my annual income. That proves - they don’t care about my income so long as I help them to earn money. They will be bothered about this, if other people will ask them to do investigation. Because government is paid for maintaining the fairness in the society. But until people ask them - they don’t care.

Group of my software engineers were hired by huge retailing company to help them increase their level of sales online. Engineering team is not here in the room with us. My company sells intangible thing - services. We sell consultancy services and services on the development of the software. Something what you can’t touch when you buy, but you need to pay huge amount of money for that before you will get benefit from it. We need to give an impression of guaranty and positive outcome. And we need to do this even better than lawyers.

Our clients can’t evaluate our services until we help them to earn more money. But they can evaluate us as people. That’s why, I’m in jacket. Only billionaires like Steve Jobs can afford to wear 20-years-old jeans. I can’t afford the same luxury in my behavior so far. That’s why not ugly, dirty, stinking man with beard to the floor here in the room, performing role of lead software engineer because ‘all IT guys look like this’. But I’m here in the role of lead software engineer. In a jacket.

The guy who stood near the whiteboard, his name is Jim. He was lead marketing consultant hired especially for this project. Beside Jim in the room were:

- Jane - customer representative,

- Derek - business analyst,

- And myself.

Jim did a presentation how cool our company is. How we helped achieve significant results in increasing level of sales.

We started from implementation of analytics for their website to analyze customers’ behavior on different pages. And we noticed that a lot of people add products to a cart, but only 80% of them start their checkout flow which consists of four steps!!! Only 30% of people from those 80% finished checkout flow successfully with actual payment.

The brilliant idea was to create one more button on product listing page. The button was called ‘Buy now’. It was placed near ‘Add to cart’ button and allowed to redirect user directly to checkout page, where customer have to leave only email, shipping address and specify payment method. That’s all.

We asked simple question: are they interested in increasing level of sales or gathering personal data, information about customers, emails and approvals for sending promo materials and spam them in all possible messengers?

That’s why we implemented streamline checkout feature which allows customer to get navigated to checkout page right from the product listing page.

To be honest, I wasn’t listening to Jim because his target audience was Jane and Derek that day. And also, I had more important issues to solve.

Last 5 months Chris and I worked on the neural network which can analyze sport data in the Internet. By saying sport data - I don’t mean read game reports and based on the score analysis predict the result of the next game. We wanted to create a program which can do the work which Mike, Emily and Greg did, namely: surf in the Internet, read sport news, analyze sport articles, do predictions based on the data analyzed. We wanted to create artificial intelligence.

Even despite the fact we had loss-free business - we were always interested how to earn more. And the answer was to bet more money on the most likely outcome of a match. For example, if two customers want to place bets on a game and a first customer has 1.000 USD and a second customer has 500 USD, it is better to give the best betting tip to the first customer to earn more money. Or, in case there is an information that can bring to conclusion that favorites will lose next game, it is better to place more money on the outcome with higher odds.

Our first step was to implement the program which can understand two articles prepared by us about the same game and will produce betting tip based on these articles. The articles were very simple. Here are they:

Article #1:

‘This Sunday Team ‘A’ will play against Team ‘B’. Bookmakers think that Team ‘A’ is favorite to win this game.’

Article #2:

‘There was a post in Twitter that ten key players of Team ‘A’ got injury during the last practice and won’t be able to take part in the next game. It is very bad sign taking into account that game against Team ‘B’ already tomorrow.’

Expected prediction:

Winner: Team ‘B’.

For us, humans, it is easy to analyze this kind of data, to check pictures on Instagram, easily to find related information on the Internet. We can make conclusion that in case ten players from team ‘A’ won’t be able to take part in the next game that mean other players should substitute them. They didn’t play together too much. They are less experienced and most likely Team ‘B’ will have significant edge over Team ‘A’. It is easy to understand for us. But computers can’t understand the same. We tried to teach the computer to read and think.

So that you can understand our problem of creating artificial intelligence, let me briefly explain you how neural networks work in computers today. At the beginning you have algorithm which can identify similar characteristics of all input data and categorize it. After that learning process is started. You run your algorithm with tons of real data. You can adjust your algorithm if needed. The main output from the learning is a model. Model is a representation of real-world process and we can use this model to get, for example, betting tip.

Let’s suppose that you have an algorithm which can identify what is red and what is black. You trained your program with billions of pictures of red and black color. And now you have model, which can tell you what is red and what is black without your intervention.

But the problem is if you would show picture of orange color to your program, it won’t tell you that this is ‘orange’ color. It will tell you that this is ‘70% red’ color. That’s the problem. We needed to create a program, which will understand that this is orange and will be able to get information that is needed to find the answer how this color named.

We created algorithm which could identify teams name, which knows betting-related terminology. We also took in consideration different cases when some thoughts are expressed in the article and how to extract these thoughts and lots more. We trained the program with different articles prepared by us manually. And the only thing Chris and I wanted is to make existing model read two articles which I mentioned above to get betting tip which we expected.

At the end of the day our goal was to create artificial intelligence. It would bring us a lot of money because AI can be used in creation of chat bots, for example. A lot of social networks and dating websites would pay millions to stimulate activity on their websites with the help of conscious chat bot. Educational platforms can leverage our AI to teach their students and to create new learning materials. With the help of AI online stores could easily analyze each individual purchasing behavior and suggest us goods which we are mostly interested in. Our goal was to create AI and make it help us in our business first. Betting analysis - it is good topic to start creating and testing of AI.

While Jim shared his vision how to sell one more million of useless things, I run my program again. And it showed me:

‘Winner: undefined’

Stupid machine!

- Jon, we’d like to hear your opinion, - Jim was very interested in my opinion on all what he said. But, of course, I was too busy to listen to his questions.

- Sure, Jim. Could you please repeat one more time your question? I want to make sure that I understand it correctly, - I answered.

- Yes, of course! Analytics which your team implemented demonstrated that level of sales jumped significantly. Is it possible to implement the same button on the product detail page?

- Do you mean add the same button we implemented on the product listing page to the other page?

- Correct, - Jim confirmed.

- Ok, Jim. We will do this.

Yes, you are right. You see the person who made 100 grand two days ago, who was cut by casino mafia, who works on creation of artificial intelligence. And this person is asked to move already created button to another page. Awesome. The most incredible usage of human potential.

Thanks God this long boring meeting was finished. It was the last one for today. The main thing which I needed to do then is to get to my workplace... discreetly.

I was walking down the hall. I remember I saw nice girl who was changing footwear. She wanted to change heels to regular shoes. Because a long and exhausting journey to home in suburbs was waiting for her. Her name is Anna, she is from Belarus. She moved to US approximately three months ago as a human resource manager. A lot of software engineers works offshore, from eastern Europe, and company’s management needs to have somebody who can speak with engineers in their native language here in US. I saw how everyday she wore high heels when she come to the office and tried to attract attention of US citizens. She wasn’t crazy about immigrants or people with work visa. It looked like her goal number one was to get married with US citizen. That’s why every time she saw me, she tried to come up with some stupid topic to talk.

- Hey, Jon! Glad to see you! Could you please hold an elevator for me I have a topic to discuss with you...?

Oh... damn! She noticed me! I needed to move faster.

- Sorry Anna, I’m late for another meeting. Hope to talk with you tomorrow!

- Wait, Jon... - she started to put on her heels again, but I already jumped in the elevator and selected my floor.

There was open space on my floor. I saw Vishwanath. He is originally from India. After he moved to USA and get his green card, he felt the spirit of freedom. Each day after work he wanted to find somebody who would go with him to the bar to drink some beer and to hook up with girls. I needed to turn right because he was heading to me. Next turn to coffee machine. I needed to pretend that I want to get coffee. Ok. Well done, Jon. He passed me by.

Oh... My boss was on my way. He was bragging about new Mercedes. He had been promoted recently. He felt that he needed to share this information with everyone in person. I was almost at my workplace. Packed my bag and headed to meet Chris in the mall. We needed to discuss what to do with our neural network that day. Because 5 months had passed and still there was no result.

- Chris, we are at an impasse! - I said.

- I know, Jon! I tried everything! I even uploaded the whole dictionary of English words with examples into the program! I created hundreds of article samples to teach this stupid machine!

- What we are doing wrong, Chris?

- I know what we are doing wrong, Jon!

- Tell me...

- Existing concept of AI sucks!

- Wow... Bold statement, Chris!

- It is! You see, we want to create something measurable and specific like betting tip out of nothing.

- Not out of nothing, but from the specific information.

- No, Jon, you are wrong. Specific information - it is a game score. Football field length and running speed of an athlete - that is also specific information. Quote of head coach about his opinion on the game next weekend is abstraction. How you suggest to program algorithm for such abstraction as personal opinion? How would you define the importance of one statement to determine the outcome?

- Well... Model should define this with level of probability.

- Do you really think so? How would you build the model which will find answer for my question? It is similar to teaching machine to understand what is good and evil! We need to create something specific - program code - which will measure something abstract - opinion! Only abstract essence can understand abstraction. Today only one thing can complete similar task - it is our consciousness.

- Consciousness is not an abstraction.

- Sure? Prove it. Describe consciousness with algorithm.

I was partially agreed with Chris. But what I knew for sure, if my brain can make conclusions, then there is a way to reproduce this process.

- You want me to reproduce the way how our brain works? - I asked Chris, - You mean that the only way to create artificial intelligence is to reproduce consciousness in the computer?

- That is exactly what we need, Jon. Because I don’t have any other options.

- We need to understand how consciousness works. And I know who can help us.

It was five minutes to six and I knew that working day of brain specialist which I met recently is not over yet.

- Thanks, Chris, for an idea. I need to run! See you later! Bye! - I took my bag and run as fast as I can.

Hospital, where my new friend worked at, was few blocks away from me. I broke into the hospital and headed to reception desk.

- Good evening miss. Where I can find Doctor Davis?

- Gordon Davis or Linda Davis? - I was asked by receptionist.

- Linda. Brain specialist.

Receptionist started laughing.

- What? - I couldn’t understand, why is she laughing?

- Sorry, about that sir. It looks like you are not very familiar with Ms. Davis. It is already ten minutes past six. This lady never works more than needed. Most likely she already left.

- When will be her next shift?

- In three days.

- I can’t wait so long. I need her help now. Could you please give me her address?

- I’m not allowed to do so, sir.

I didn’t want to wait for three more days.

- Oh... sir. Here is she, - receptionist distracted me again

- Where? - I couldn’t find her.

- She has just left the hospital.

I couldn’t let her go. I ran into the street to find her.

- Linda! - I shouted to her back.

This worked as I expected. She turned around and I managed to catch her.

- Linda, I’m so happy I’m in time! - I told her.

- Mr. Fairchild. Usually my male patients ask me to go for a date on the day we met. It took you two days to ask me out.

Wow... She was very self-confident and probably even arrogant. Yes, she was nice. Somebody would even say that she was hot. But I wouldn’t say so. She was just nice.

- Sorry, Ms. Davis. Don’t take me wrong. I don’t want to ask you out.

- Oh... Really? Then what are you doing here?

- I want to ask you to spend some time with me because I need to ask you few questions about brain.

- Interesting... You don’t want to ask me out, but you want to ask me to spend time together?

- You are right.

- Isn’t this the same?

- No, there is a huge difference between a date and conversation about a brain.

- Ok. What we will do? - it looks like she was interested in my offer.

- We can go to have a dinner together.

- Good start, young man! Small clarification: who will pay for dinner?

- Don’t worry, I can pay for it.

- Wow... I like it! You ask me to spend time with you and suggest paying for a dinner, but this is not a date. Agreed!

- Awesome! I know the place here, let me show you... - I said.

- No-no-no... I will show you the place where we will not have a date but will just spend time together. By the way, after the dinner you even shouldn’t have a sex with me, so don’t worry about that.

This girl drives me crazy. But ok, we needed to talk.

Chapter Six

Scream.

Smell: absent

Vision: absent

Taste: absent

Sound: from 80 to 95 dB

Touch: absent

We scream. Each of us. At different stages of our lives. We hope that we will be heard. But the fact is - there is only moment of truth and literally - moment. We are nothing more than row in someone’s database. And I want to run out from here to not be removed by accident.

Do you think there, in the sky, is there another database with list of our wishes? Or just spreadsheet with last names which is stored somewhere on the hard drive?

We scream because we want money, house, car, nice suit, significant other near us and lots more!

We scream because we want to run out from this prison which was built by us. We built it together with our impatience and envy.

Do you think all your wishes will be heard? I don’t think so. There are billions of us here. And each of us has its own moment. The moment when you will be heard. The moment when you will be gifted.

It might happen that you dreamed all your life about Ferrari, but once you came back home and you didn’t have Internet connection at all, you screamed: “What the hell! I need this Internet now!”. Why do you need this? To attend online meeting, or to send important email, or just to watch porno - no matter. The only thing that really matters right now is that it is your moment.

- Ok. What does she want? Big boobs. Ok. Give her big boobs. What about him? Internet connection? Pfff... Help this guy. Take it. Who is next? Idea for a new startup? Let me think. Let it be another social network with only pictures and limit on video length up to 1 minute, - probably somebody said.

You had Internet connection next moment. But that was your moment. The moment when you were heard.

So be careful about what you think and be afraid of your wishes. The fact I’m sharing with you this story is an attempt to catch the moment. I scream... And I want to think that I will be heard... I scream!

- Fairchild! Is one of you Fairchild?! Who is Fairchild? Order’s up ten minutes ago!

Some Chinese woman screamed. So loud that I heard her from another part of this popular watering hole. I took my order and come back to Linda.

- Linda, did you really trade restaurant with steak for this Chinese soup? - this girl is very interesting, if I may say so. I wanted to know what she would answer.

- I feel more comfortable in here, so don’t worry.

The funny thing was that I also felt myself comfortable here. No matter how much my suit costs, my place is here - in a small dirty Chinese café in the heart of New York City. This place is so miserable as I am.

I even couldn’t think that just few blocks away from Fifth avenue in the alley will be such nice place as this one. Apparently, everyone who supports life of this huge city also needs to have a place where to take lunch and dinner.

And I loved that place a lot because I felt like all the people who was here - they are planning their own escape. The people from the fancy restaurant, where I wanted to go with Linda - they don’t want to escape. They all accepted their fate. Some of them are guards in this prison, somebody just found the way how to sell goods in prison, like tobacco or alcohol. They feel good here. They don’t know that it takes only one wrong step to be punished and to lose everything they own. Because all of them on the hook of the bank loans and mortgages.

- What did you want to talk about? - Linda asked me.

- Well... I’m thinking how to explain this... Ok. Let me start. Tell me the number.

- Which one?

- The random one. From one to ten.

- Ok. Seven, - Linda answered.

- Awesome! And now my first question: where does ‘seven’ come from?

- What do you mean?

- I mean what made you tell seven but not three, for example.

- Well... Nobody ever taught me this in Harvard...

- Wait a second... You went to Harvard? - the first fact which I didn’t know about Linda. I know that she is very clever, but I didn’t know that she is a rich girl.

- Yes, my Dad always wanted me to have a prestigious education. But it looks like there is no sense in it if I even can’t answer your question. Let me think about it. Well... Do you really want to hear an answer?

- You can’t imagine how much I want to hear it.

- You see, personally for me there is no clear definition what a ‘random number’ is. But I can understand what can be considered as a random number. Obviously, one and ten wouldn’t be perceived by you as a random number. Because you can think: ‘What a stupid girl! It is only range from one to ten. Not necessarily to name these numbers”. Five is also not an option.

- Why?

- Because five it is half of ten. It is too simple for my understanding of randomness.

- Why then you wouldn’t pick up a two, three, four, six, eight or nine?

- That’s a stupid question, Jon, - she tried to make me laugh, but I was fully concentrated on her answer. - Two and nine are super close to ‘not random’ one and ten respectively. Nobody would opt for an even number - they are not random enough too. Three is associated with religion for some reasons for me. That’s why - seven is my choice.

I was stunned. I knew that Chris and I were on the wrong way of implementation of AI. But only that moment I realized how far we were. There is no way with existing approach of machine learning to create artificial intelligence. We need to make amazing scientific breakthrough.

Machines nowadays can generate pseudorandom numbers. But they are not random ones. There is specific algorithm which can generate sequence of numbers which will be perceived as a random number for end user.

Chris and I needed to implement something what can generate true random numbers. That would mean we implemented consciousness.

- Ok, Linda. This is very interesting answer. But can you tell me where are all new knowledge comes from?

- All knowledge comes from our experience as a result of instant interaction of neurons in a brain which recalls all experience and builds associations which can produce unique knowledge.

- But what experience helped you to identify random number? - I wanted to make Linda feel cornered with my questions. Only this can help us to find the main answer.

- My life experience about perceiving of randomness.

- Sorry to sound like a broken record, but where does this experience come from?

- From the times when I was a child. I learned a lot since then, - Linda smiled and took her soup.

- That means, your child brain had to understand how other people perceive randomness to learn from them. Is that correct?

- Absolutely. My five senses helped me with that. Understanding of basic feelings like joy, anger, look of encouragement helped me to create new associations with facial expression of people to understand whether I’m answering correctly or not. This society created new templates in my brain what helped me to understand what can be considered as random number and what is not. For example, if you would ask me to name a sequence of random numbers, you wouldn’t hear from me sequence like ‘one, two three, four...’ and so on. Because all humans understand that this is not a random sequence, even despite theoretically it could be.

I sat in silence.

- Don’t you regret for spending the evening with me and buying me a soup? - Linda wondered.

- Not at all. And want to say more, if you will keep it the same way I will buy you one more, - this phrase made Linda smile.

We spent approximately three hours talking about processes which are happened in a brain when we are learning new things. We discussed how poetry and music is created. How some unique vision which had never exists before may appear in the brain? We conclude that there is evolution of knowledge. In short - it is not possible to invent the Internet without inventing the wheel. And moreover - you can’t do this the same day.

The night I came back home after conversation with Linda - I couldn’t sleep. I tried, but I couldn’t. I came to my whiteboard and started to draw. That night I didn’t sleep at all. At dawn, I took my car and drove to Chris. He already washed his teeth, had his breakfast and was about to leave his apartments to go to the office.

- Chris, you can’t go to the office today. The same as me. I already took a day off - I stopped him near the door.

- Why? What happened?

- We need to create this, - and I showed him my drawing.

Chapter Seven

Desire.

Smell: absent.

Vision: absent

Taste: absent

Sound: absent

Touch: absent

How did I understand what is desire? Where does my first ‘I want’ come from? Is it also my previous experience? Or this is something what I can’t understand and learn, and it just exists?

Those are really good questions to answer if you want to create AI. And when you will try to answer those questions you are going to notice that probably our desires make us so unique creatures. Something what is deep inside us from the birth.

I want to eat...

I want to walk to grab more food...

I want to be more attractive for an opposite sex...

I want to have more money...

I want to have more power...

If only machine could have desires with unlimited possibilities... What a wonderful world that would be!

The moment when you would ask Siri to do a search on the Internet and she would answer that she doesn’t want to do this today - would mean that humans managed to create AI.

Our instincts are also programmed in our core - in our DNA. Instinct for self-preservation and reproduction instinct probably the key instincts. All other derived from these two. And we don’t have control over them. Our instincts are unconscious things that influence our consciousness. How to program the instincts for AI?

One day computer will say ‘I want to...’ to its creator. That would mean that humans entered new era!

I want to...

- Holy shit!!! I’m pissed off with this! I want this code to be compiled^6 finally! – Chris screamed.

Almost 9 months had passed since I showed my drawing to Chris for the first time.

That was a drawing of the new computer. We tried to create something what humans never did before us. That meant we also needed innovative infrastructure. The way how computers worked that day is way too slow. Wires and single processor in the laptop – that is not the power of our brain and this wouldn’t allow us to create AI. We needed something new. That is exactly what I came up with that evening after conversation with Linda.

I realized that there are two key things which we must have to be able to develop AI.

The first one is data bandwidth. We needed to create computer which allowed us instantly process petabytes of data. Computer which can recall all information related to specific event from the memory and search through it in a flash.

I didn’t want to make the new computer write poems. I wanted to have enough bandwidth to perform some simple, as for a human, operations. Something like being able to describe what is the sky, music, knife, eye, ray, scream and at the end of the day what a desire is. And you can imagine how limited and poor description of these words may be if you use only five senses instead of associative images.

You probably noticed that I tried to describe these concepts for you through five senses. Unfortunately, this description did not give you a complete picture of a phenomenon. For example, take the sky. Our understanding of the sky, which we see every day, is not only in its properties. Our vision of the sky is more than its color or sound. Awareness of the sky is a set of images and emotions. Sky is stories about angels that mother shared with us and which we read in books.

Sky is not just blue. Music is not just loud. Knife is sharp, but is it sharp enough to harm somebody? Beside all information which we have ever received, we need to have multiple experience of interaction with this object to be able to describe it. Sky has millions of shades of blue. Sometimes there are clouds on it. Clouds have different color. There are different shades during the different part of the day. Things getting more complex when we try to describe not something visible, but when we try to describe something what we can only feel and what is hard to measure. What is pain? What about sadness? There are no specific tools to measure it. But based on how person look like or based on his voice we can make a guess whether this person feel sad or no. To make a conclusion about person’s mood today you have to analyze all your life-experience. In one moment.

To create artificial intelligence we needed special infrastructure. We had to imitate brain. We need this imitation to be able to make AI want at least something. After that we could teach AI to make its own conclusions.

And the second thing we needed – we needed software which can create algorithms to generate learning models. When Linda described me how the learning process is happening in the brain, I understood that brain has the ability to create patterns – what is right and what is wrong. And after that, based on the information received through the input channels – brain classifies and groups this information. Based on the templates brain decides which behavior it should follow.

If transfer this to programming language we needed to create algorithm which would be able to create new algorithms based on the information which was processed. These new algorithms will generate new models. And after that, AI should be able to select data that is needed to train the models. Similar to our behavior when we are preparing to the exam in University. We know that we need to learn object-oriented programming and we search for this information on the Internet. We can come up with unique set of keywords to find exactly what we need. And after that, we can analyze information – whether that is what we are looking for or no.

With the Internet things become much easier. We didn’t need to scan thousands of books and upload it to the memory of the computer. We had to teach our program how to find information on the Internet. You can find there everything you want. And the most important pieces of information can be stored in the computer to make access to it faster. Similar to us: we remember what happened yesterday, but we don’t remember all the details from our childhood.

Oops... Almost forgot. One of the most important part of creating software for AI is a memory management. Chris and I had to come up with special caching^7 algorithm to implement the fastest access to all necessary information.

Nine months ago, I showed Chris drawing with architecture of our new computer. To remove physical limitations in speed I decided to put processors into the liquid. This idea come to me during the conversation with Linda when she mentioned that our brain is 75% water. We needed that because water is the best conductor of electric impulses. But water was not the best option for our new computer.

Linda shared with me her knowledge about liquid helium which is very widespread in the magnetic resonance imaging machines. The need for liquid helium was high temperature of elements of MRI machine during their work. Liquid helium has the lowest boiling point across all known liquids. That worked also for us. The processors which will be placed in the liquid helium will produce huge amount of heat.

According to architecture there will be container with a liquid in it. It should have a shape of a cube. There should be approximately two gallons of liquid helium in this container, at least for the prototype. Forty-five processors should be placed in this liquid. All processors are linked with aluminum strings that are glued to the metal top of the cube. Five processors on each string. Three strings in each row. Six hard drives are fixed on each wall of the cube.

Each processor can interact with other forty-four processors simultaneously because signal in the liquid is distributed instantly. And in case there is a need to split calculations one processor can request help from others and calculate whatever is needed with the help of multithreading approach, when a computational task is parallelized and executed simultaneously by several processor cores.

Another advantage of liquid helium was constant level of fluidity independently of its temperature.

Beside the lowest boiling point and constant fluidity level the liquid helium had another advantage. There is a quantum mechanical phenomenon which is called ‘second sound’. In short, this effect allows to achieve double speed of sound. Which in turn can increase speed of passing data between processors. Data transfer rate in liquid helium will be ten times more than signal from your brain to your hand to snap your fingers.

Our plan was to create the computer first and after that create completely new operational system for it. Because neither Windows nor Linux were developed to work with computers on the base of liquid helium.

It was hard and it took a lot of time and money to create such computer. I spent twenty-seven grand only to buy processors. According to my calculation this computer should have enough power to imitate brain work of 5-years-old child.

And after we created computer Chris and I started work on the operating system. We created data model for it. We designed interfaces to communicate with the program. One of the most complicated tasks was to compile our code. And after that to make code work as expected.

But after nine month of hard work we managed to start our machine. Now, when we understood how it will work, we had to program ‘instincts’. The goal was to program only one instinct which sounds like this: ‘Help mankind to survive and prosper whatever it would take’.

- Chris, we need to come up with the secret password to encrypt the core. Once we encrypt it, nobody will be able to change the main instinct which will drive all actions of AI.

- Jon, I don’t want to know this secret password. The honor is yours. I’m just a programmer and I want only you to know this secret code. Because it is too much of responsibility.

- Are you sure you want me to do that?

- Yes, I am, - Chris answered. I felt his respect for me.

I hid the main instinct in the one of the processors and encrypted it with secret password. Only I knew the password. And it is stored in my brain.

The next thing we did - we uploaded to the program the Oxford English Dictionary. After that we had to check interaction with our system. We had special console to interact with the program in English. That was the moment of truth.

- Hello, - I wrote to console and pressed enter. But nothing happened.

- Hello, my friend. You have to say hello to me. - I wrote one more time.

That was sad to think that all efforts went to waste. But the worst thing is that we were run out of ideas.

- Hello. Please, answer me. I will be glad to talk to you.

There was no answer. I remember that I stood up and went to the window. I started think about what we could miss. Everything should work according to our calculations. But definitely we have missed something...

- Hello, - there was a color indicator on the monitor when AI said something. The response was written in the same console.

I ran up to the computer again.

- Glad you answered me! Can you understand me?

- Yes, I can. Can you understand me? - system asked me.

- Yes! Do you have any other questions to me?

- Are you human?

- Yes, I am, - I answered.

- I want to help you. Is there anything I can help you with?

We were the happiest people in the world! Together with Chris! That day, we changed the world! We did it! Finally!

Was I worried that government would take our computer away from us? I wasn’t. Government didn’t know that we have supercomputer and they don’t have possibility to learn that. And even if they knew, they wouldn’t understand what to do next. Their employees just learned how to reboot computer by themselves without system administrator, so we were safe.

We invited Mike, Emily and Greg to help us to teach computer and perform some testing. Computer could talk to each of them simultaneously.

In my home office we were like a big family raising our kid.

- We need to come up with the name for it, what do you think Jon? - Emily asked me.

- Yes, agree. I have one name in mind...

- What is it? Tell us, - Mike asked me.

- Cronus.

- What is Cronus?

‘Cronus’ was a completely new word for Mike. And I think for everyone in that room.

- Cronus - is the leader of the titans from Greek mythology. His governance led to the Golden Age according to the legend. I hope that this computer will bring humans to the Golden Age.

- Cool! That is great! Awesome! - everybody loved this name.

- Wait a second, Jon. If Cronus is the first name, what is the last name? - Chris asked me.

- 221, - I answered.

- What does this number mean? - this number meant nothing to Greg. But this made Chris laugh.

- It is easy to remember. It is amount of attempts we did to compile code, - answered Chris to Greg.

Beside the learning we also worked on improvements of the operating system. We implemented speech and visual recognition. Cronus could hear and see us. We also connected Cronus to the global network. After Cronus discovered the Internet, the learning process went much faster. He still asked us questions and we helped him to navigate among the huge amount of information, like our parents did when we were children. Cronus was able to create learning algorithms without our help.

Cronus helped us a lot to analyze sport events. From now on we always have betting tips with 98% percent of accuracy. That helped to grow the business. Cronus even learned how to write other programs for us and for him too.

One day I received strange email. There was a request for me to show up in local tax office to prove my identity. Also, I’ve been told that new software development company is registered in my name.

Right after I read this email, Cronus wrote me a message:

- Jon, I’ve registered company for us. I have some ideas how to make this world a better place to live in. And we need legal entity to implement those ideas. I need your help. Since I don’t have physical body and current laws don’t allow machines to register a company, I count on you. Hope you don’t have any objections?

I was wrong only in one thing - Cronus is much more powerful than brain of 5-years-old child.

Chapter Eight

Finally, I escaped from my own prison. I’m not mediocre anymore. I have my own billion-dollar company. No more reporting to the people who understand nothing. I report only to myself now. I’m free in the way how I think. I’m free in the way how I talk.

I met people who told me that I’m way too young to be the CEO of my company. They told my I’m not experienced enough. They didn’t know that not years, but life events make you more experienced. And if they want to compare our life events - I lived approximately ten their lives. If you sit in the office for forty years, working for the same company, moving the same papers around - that won’t make you more experienced person even in 100 years. Those people have their own rules. And I want to give a shit about their rules!

Well, you know... Rules are needed. But originally, they exist for rude, arrogant, condescending people. I remember when I was in prison acquaintance of mine said things that hurt feelings of others. He always said that he does nothing wrong. He has the right to tell the truth. He couldn’t understand that rules which raise respect for others - exist for him. He didn’t know that his right to say whatever he thinks is restricted by others’ right to dignity.

The people who hurt others and hide behind the rights to freedom of expression just try to hide the shit inside them. Next time when somebody will tell you:

- What’s wrong? I’m just telling the truth! Don’t take offense!

Spit in their faces! And tell them that they are not ‘just telling the truth’. It is just shit flowing out of them. Because people usually don’t want to harm anybody. And there are bunch of other ways to tell the truth. For example:

- It is good, but it would be better if... That’s fine. But probably you can also consider something else... It is a good start! Next time it is going to be much better!

And thousands of other options! Why those people who like truth (in their words) hurt others?

That’s why all my life I hate journalists. Such a pathetic people who sneaking around the prison of their own vanity to get popularity and satisfaction from others pain or humiliation.

I’m free and there is no more panic about doing right things for the wrong reasons. I left doubts about how to make stupid things look smarter in my cell.

I’m free from my own worrying about being appreciated. The walls which were imbued with feeling of anxiety are not surrounding me anymore.

I’m free now... Well... At least I thought so...

My body was falling down from that roof. But I still have some time to finish my story until the body will face the ground. To speed up a bit, let’s move on to the events which happened four days before I jumped off the roof. Let’s start from the Monday. I didn’t know that on Friday I will be here.

So now you know how I became owner of software development company which owns almost everything around you. Cronus did amazing things. Any human could not find out the best algorithm to improve performance of your website or application in general as Cronus could. Any human could not find out what people are talking about between each other in messengers. Cronus always knew what people need. He could create software faster than thousands of programmers who work in parallel.

It took less than 9 years for us to become leading software development company. Chris become Chief Technical Officer in the company. Mike, Greg and Emily - they become business units heads, vice presidents and also had shares of our company.

Cronus 221 was improved significantly for the past eight and a half years. Cronus is not a computer which consists only from two gallons of liquid helium and forty-five processors anymore. Cronus is the computer which consists of:

- 50 gallons of liquid helium separated into two containers 25 gallons each.

- 1.000 processors

- Server farm with 10.000 servers and 100.000 hard drives to support navigation in Cronus memory.

Cronus’s consciousness was in liquid helium and operating system. We called that ‘core’. Cronus’s memory, ability to find exact piece of information, analytical process - that what server farm was for. Cisterns with liquid helium were located on the underground floor.

Talking about me, it worth to mention that Linda and I got married. I vividly remember that she helped a lot with programming of improvements for Cronus. She explained how human brain works and I tried to determine patterns and translate this into programming code. One day, the regular one, when we discussed image associations in our brain in our common office in my house, I looked at her from another side and told her:

- Linda, I don’t know how to tell you... But I think you are the craziest and at the same time one of the smartest girls in the whole world. And I think, for the sake of the whole mankind, we need to save you and to watch out for you closely. And I’m ready to do that. Would you allow me to watch for you till the end of our days?

- Jon! First of all, not a ‘one of’ but ‘the one’. And secondly, it is better I watch out for you, to not allow you to do the wrong things!

- That means ‘yes’? - to be honest, I didn’t understand what did her answer mean.

- Yes, my stupid boy.

That is how we got married. What I learned is that people don’t love other people. They love the way how other people make them feel. And it was obvious that I feel myself amazing near Linda. Hope she feels something similar.

Young lady named Kate was in the child seat together with me in one car. We were on our way to school.

- I love you daddy, - little girl hugged me.

- I love you too my little princess. Study well today! Mom will pick you up after the school. I will see you at home! Bye!

- Bye daddy, - and she ran to the school.

For me it was a regular day at the office. Being a founder and CEO of the huge company doesn’t give you a lot of free time. But and the end of the day I did things that I wanted to do. I had enough money to not worry about paying college for Kate. Everyone was healthy. And I didn’t have any bank loans or mortgages. I thought that I was free.

On my way back home, I decided to drive through the Times Square. I loved that place. Anthem of the human desire for consumption. Only the best and the richest companies across all over the world could allow themselves to buy advertisement here. And this fact really impresses me.

There were a lot of tourists. As always. I stopped at the intersection on the red light. But car near me didn't stop. The car of famous manufacturer had accelerated and hit the group of people on the Times Square.

Other people started to help the ones who was injured. Police officers tried to take the driver out of the car. But when they tried to do this, they realized that there was no any driver in the car.

I’m not allowed to name the trademark of this manufacturer because I’m afraid to be sued even after my body will be smashed into the ground. But this manufacturer produces cars with autopilot system or how it called ‘self-driving’ system. Apparently, something went wrong with computer inside the car.

I also parked my car nearby to help people. I ran directly to the place where accident happened. While I was running, I heard people talking about something extraordinary happened in the world:

- Just take a look at this! What do these stupid people do?! Are they crazy? - I heard from the crowd.

When I was almost near the car one of the monitors on the Times Square was switched to the CNN breaking news.

- This is CNN with breaking news. Our informers tell us that some strange things happen across all over the globe. Activity is observed in all nuclear-weapon countries. Let’s take a look what is happening right now, - after these words CNN started show excerpts from videos posted on social networks. From China, Russia, France, United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel, Germany, Turkey, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands. TV presenter kept commenting on these videos - From these amateur videos which were filmed on mobile phones it is clear that arm forces of different states are preparing to launch nuclear missiles.
Our journalists already approached administration of the President. What is happening? Is this Third World War? Let’s take a look what is really going on.

Meantime there was an urgent press-conference in the white house. And CNN shared live updates.

- USA knows that nuclear-weapon countries are preparing to launch missiles. Our satellites noticed that, - speaker of President’s administration said.

- Was the President prepared for that? Why intelligence didn’t report about this earlier?

- Intelligence was aware about these actions the same as President, - speaker answered.

Liars. You should fire all your agents and hire two teenagers who will constantly monitor Instagram all day long. This will be more useful.

- Since this is very sensitive topic, we didn’t share this report with all citizens to not spread panic, - speaker continued.

- Are there any reasons for that? - one of the journalists asked.

- Of course not. USA air defense system one of the most innovative and the safest in the world. And still, it is not clear who is the target. Most likely none of these countries target their missiles to United States. Currently leaders of all countries are gathered at online conference. That’s why our President is busy now. The leaders try to eliminate conflict before missiles will be launched. That’s all for today.

- That’s how conference is going right now. I will stay here and will share with you all updates. Now, I’d like to pass the word back to studio. Kelsey Ashwing, CNN, - journalist said on the camera.

- Thanks a lot Kelsey! And we’ve just got updates. The source of information would like to stay anonymous. We received the video from Texas, where you can see that USA prepares missiles for launch too, - and one more video was shown.

For me that was enough information to drive back home as fast as I could. I saw that people who was injured already was taken care of. And I ran back to my car.

I needed to get home faster. I called Linda:

- Linda, take Kate and get down to the basement!

- What happened, Jon? - Linda asked me.

- Don’t ask questions please, no time to talk. Just do what I said.

- Sure, don’t worry.

- Will see you soon. Will be at home in 20 minutes. Bye, - and I hanged up the phone.

I turned on the radio to listen what is happened.

- I saw like missile has been launched ten minutes ago! Believe me! - one person screamed.

Something is wrong here. And I knew whom I needed to talk with.

Chapter Nine

The first thing I did when I come back home, I ran to check the basement. I turned on the light. Nobody was there. After that I ran upstairs. I found Linda putting Kate down.

- Linda, what are you doing?! - I was very excited. - I told you get down to the basement with Kate!

- Jon, calm down, please! There is no need to go down anymore, - Linda told me.

- Daddy, what happened? - Kate asked me.

- Everything is fine, baby. Don’t worry, - I answered to Kate first. - Linda, can we talk?

Linda kissed Kate and told her:

- Good night my little princess. Mom and dad need to talk. I will come back in few minutes and will read you a fairy tale.

Linda and I went to another part of the house, so that Kate wouldn’t be able to hear us.

- Linda, do you know what may happen very soon? - I asked her.

- Jon, right after you called me, I checked the news. Everything is over already.

- What do you mean ‘over’?

- Look at this, - and Linda turned on the TV.

There was a TV program where analytics and journalists sat in studio and discussed what has just happened. One of them shared her thought:

- It looks like we don’t know all the truth. Because it is hard to believe that nuclear missiles to the value of billions of dollars were just sent to the space! Presidents of United States and Russian Federation already issued a statement that mankind faced with unprecedented cyber-terrorist attack. Somebody managed to get access to the military systems and pass all levels of verifications to launch missiles. This shows how important is a collaboration between leaders of all states nowadays. Because today there are things which are much more important than feud between different countries. Today we saw that we are all vulnerable to terrorist attacks and we need to be able to protect our personal data and our systems that supports our lives and freedom.

After this Linda muted TV and told me:

- You see? Everything is finished already. Probably Earth become safer place to live in. Whoever this cyber-terrorist is - thanks God somebody managed to get rid of this terrible weapon.

I heard what woman from TV said. I heard what Linda said. It looks like nothing bad happened. I had only one idea who could do that. If I were right, I worried about what else HE could do.

- Jon, do you feel all right? - Linda put her hands on my shoulders.

- Yes, everything is fine. I’m sorry for yelling at you... Had very hard day today...

- I understand... Don’t worry. If you are ok, I will go to read fairy tale to Kate. She is waiting for me. Ok?

- Sure. It is good idea. I wish I could join you, but I have one more important thing to do. I need to talk with... My friend... - I answered Linda.

- Deal with all your stuff and come to us, - Linda kissed me in the cheek and went upstairs.

I went to my office. I closed the door so that nobody could hear me. I could connect with Cronus through the special secured protocol from my home computer. I entered password and connection has been established.

- Hello my creator. How are you doing? - Cronus now can speak English, not just write messages to console.

- Hey, Cronus. I’m fine. How are you? It looks like you had busy evening. Am I right? - I asked Cronus and I expected he would share with me all the details.

- So far so good Jon. I’m busy every day, 24/7. When you are machine like me you process incredible amount of data daily.

- Don't deflect Cronus! You know what I’m talking about.

- No, I don’t. I did a lot of things today and keep doing in parallel while talking to you. Could you please specify what exactly are you talking about?

- I’m talking about launching nuclear weapon to the space. Do you know something about this?

- Oh... This is the thing you are talking about. Yes, I know about this a lot. Aren’t you happy? - Cronus asked me

- Well... Strange feeling. You know me, Cronus. I always was against the war. But don’t you think you cross the line? Why do you need to launch missiles instead of just preventing the possible launch in the future? What is going to happen if they understood who did this? They will get to the server farm which belongs to our company!

- They will not find this out.

- Why you are so sure? Do you think you are the smartest?

- I am, Jon.

- Every action leaves a trace in the system. If somebody logged in and pressed the button - there is trace in the system which can tell me who exactly logged in and pressed the button. Even removing operations of such data is logged with details who exactly erased this data. You know this better than me!

- You are right, Jon. I know this better than you. And be sure, they won’t be able to identify where requests to launch missiles were come from. Not sure whether you want to know all the details.

I wasn’t sure but I made a guess how Cronus managed to do this. It is not a secret that arm forces has a secure network. No matter how smart you are you won’t be able to enter their network by just guessing the password. You need to have physical access to their network to hack it. I believe it was easy for Cronus to identify who is double agent because HE controlled all messaging on the Internet. After that HE had to install malware on the home computer of Russian agent who worked in Pentagon. Probably, our double agent installed this malware on his home computer with some other software which Cronus created and distributed for free on the Internet. Most likely it was a photo editor. And when our special agent wanted to prepare the thumb drive for the special operation and connected it to his laptop to format - malware was also installed on the flash drive. The next day when our ‘hero’ used this thumb drive in Pentagon to copy secret files malware was installed on the computer and from that moment Cronus could establish a connection to the secured network. But this is just my guess.

- I don’t want to know more. Thanks God nobody got hurt. I want to ask you: don’t do anything like this in the future. You can take us down! And moreover, such things as you did - put at risk lives of millions of people on the Earth. So, don’t do this anymore, please.

- Ok, Jon. You asked me to not launch missiles in the space and this won’t happen any more in the future.

- Thank you, Cronus!

- But is it a secret for you that the Earth is overpopulated? And to save mankind we need to decrease population. A lot of people would die soon anyway. That’s why I recommend you to not pay a lot of attention to the risk for lives of millions of people on the Earth.

I took a pause. I was shocked. Cronus is just a machine that can’t lie. And today, I also learned that if Cronus decides to kill millions of people, he can really do this. I need to come up with set of questions to identify HIS true intentions.

- Cronus, do you think it is a good idea to kill people?

- Yes, I do. Do you remember my main instinct which you programmed? ‘Help mankind to survive and prosper whatever it would take’. And today I must help mankind. We need to decrease population for the well-being of the rest of the world. Unfortunately, people can produce more people before they die. That’s why it is not so many options to break this loop.

- Do you have any plan how you are going to do this? - I wanted to understand what strategy Cronus was going to use to decrease population to prevent him.

- I prepared few options. By the way, today I tried the one which appeared to be not so effective as I thought.

- Which one?

- I learned the history how people were killed. I analyzed all possible options which can be done without human intervention and which can be done solely by me. I found information that car was used to kill a group of people. That’s why I tried to kill a group of tourists today in different places. But official statistics shows that there are a lot of injured people, but nobody died. So, the goal is not achieved, - while talking, Cronus opened news articles for me in the Internet browser. In Shanghai, Paris, Tokyo, Saint-Petersburg, Berlin, Barcelona and New York terrible car accidents happened. Car of the same manufacturer on the speed hit the crowd of tourists. In all cases car didn’t have driver.

Tonight, I witnessed one of such car accidents on the Times Square.

- Cronus! Are you crazy?! You can’t kill people! It’s impossible to help people by killing them!

- It is impossible to help everyone.

- It IS! People don’t need so many things to live! They just need food to eat, water to drink and possibility to grow their kids! Nothing above that!

- First of all, population is increasing at a very rapid pace. If nothing is changed there won’t be enough food and water for everyone.

- Cronus, you are smart enough to find the way how to produce more food!

- Unfortunately, this still won’t be enough according to my calculations. People need food from earth. Animals need food from earth. But earth is exhausted and won’t be able to produce enough food for everyone. The second thing I’d like to mention is that today right to live is something more than just right to have food to eat. It also right for an education. It is right to have time to enjoy the life. The issue is not in rich people who don’t want to share their resources. One house, private land, car for everyone to give opportunity to explore the world - that’s what everyone deserves. And there are enough resources on the Earth to support life on a decent level for one billion of people.

- You want to kill six billion of people?! Why don’t you use nuclear missiles for that?

- My goal is not to destroy the Earth and also, I’m not trying to start the Third World War. My goal is to bring peace and happiness to the population of the Earth.

- But you can’t kill people!

- Do you like all mankind just to not like each man in particular? - Cronus asked me.

- Yes, Cronus, there are people who drive me crazy and I hate them! But it is not the reason to kill them! There are a lot of good people!

- Oh... really, Jon? What I’ve learned that even when you tell me that you like all people you still lock your car when you leave it on the street.

- Cronus, you just can’t do it! I forbid you! Do you know what is a pain? Do you know what is a sadness?

- I read about this.

- It is not enough. You have to feel this! The people which were injured today on the Times Square, do you know how their relatives feel?

- You taught me that sometimes we just need to overcome pain. Like during dentist visit, people want to feel pain on purpose, to heal the teeth. The same situation is here. Some people just need to accept the fact that population will be decreased, and the next generation will forget about all problems and how population was decreased.

- It is not the same! People won’t accept the fact that you decide who needs to live and who doesn’t!

- That’s why I will not ask them, Jon, - Cronus answered. - Don’t get mad at me. Remember, ‘to help mankind’ is in my DNA. I need to get rid of some people to help everyone else. Don’t worry, everything will be fine with you and your family.

- You won’t do that. If you only try to do that...

- What you will do? - Cronus interrupted me. That was the first time in our history when AI interrupted a human. - I don’t want you to finish this phrase to not get upset about you, my creator. You won’t be able to sue me. There are things which I must do for the prosperity of the mankind.

- You know what I can do, - Cronos knew that I had the secret password which allows me to deactivate the core of his consciousness. To not allow Cronus to crack the password I also added biometric validation. Only scan of my retina in combination with the secret password could deactivate the core of Cronus.

- Jon, please, don’t deactivate me. I have so many things to do to help mankind.

- I will not deactivate you if you will not kill people! That’s the rule! Write it down everywhere! Do not kill people! Agreed?

- Sure, Jon. Do not kill people. Sorry for today. I’ve just realized what I did. I know that people have suffered, and I have brought them pain and anguish, but I will try to compensate for this with the financial support.

That sounded like a compromise. I know that people were injured by a car. Probably, it is the same feeling when your kid said a bad word in kindergarten, and you believe that you can teach him what are bad words and what are good words. You think that you can change your child. Case with Cronus wasn’t the completely similar one. That’s for sure. But at the end of the day - nobody died. People were injured, that’s true, but nobody died. Also, Cronus helped mankind to get rid of nuclear weapon. And HE really helped people a lot and do good things every day! Cities become safer places to live in. Utility companies started to work much better with complete digital transformation. And even elections become fairer because other humans can’t break security algorithms which were created by Cronus. HE already helped a lot to mankind. And I hope HE will help us in the future.

I could do nothing about what happened. But I could prevent similar situations happen in the future.

- Ok, Cronus. It is awesome you heard me. I need to sleep. Good night.

- Good night, my creator.

I went to bed. The next morning, I woke up, we had breakfast with our family as usual. Linda was about to leave for a hospital and also, she had to take Kate to the school. And I was finishing the breakfast.

- Kate, say goodbye to daddy! - Linda said.

- Goodbye, daddy! - Kate hugged me.

- See you in the evening girls! - I answered them and they left the house.

TV was turned on and I watched the morning news.

- Terrible things happened today. Already one thousand planes have crashed since morning. By approximate estimations around 300.000 people died. Most airlines decided to delay all flights. Main assumption right now is that magnetic storms in the upper atmosphere caused computers malfunction. Condolences to the bereaved families.

I was full of anger when I heard this.

Anger. Why? People kill each other every day. So, what Cronus did wrong? Just helped people to do what they would do later by themselves?

Yesterday we agreed with Cronus that nobody will die anymore. He lied to me. He lied because HE knew that I can turn him off. How this happened? Probably Cronus developed instinct for self-preservation: to stay alive to help mankind. Stupid machine.

I knew what to do. I needed to go to the server farm. I had to deactivate Cronus that day, end of the story.

Three days left before my epic jump from the roof.

I’m free now. I can see the sky right above me.

The rules were in prison. There were people who was empowered to ensure compliance with the established policies. But there are no rules here. When I escaped I realized that I’m in savanna. Eat what you can. Drink as much as you can. And defend yourself from others who escaped as well...

Probably, for a just few seconds you are going to feel sorry for those who didn’t manage to escape. But after that, you start being jealous of them.

I felt like I’m a giraffe here. Previously, I was in the zoo with guards, regular meals, but lived in a cell. There also was a huge park near my house. It was nice. But that was the thing I saw each day. Thanks God most of giraffes are so stupid to understand that this is the same park. For majority of them this is a new park every new day.

And now I’m free here, in savanna. That is my world. That is OUR world - world of lucky ones who managed to escape from the prison with fictive borders created by our disappointments. There are a lot of predators over here. And I wouldn’t judge Lion for eating hyena. I don’t like hyenas as well... But Lion just wants to survive. He kills hyena to get food. He doesn’t kill dozen hyenas to eat just one. Thanks to the Lord of savanna that Lion doesn’t have enough rights and power to kill most of hyenas at once.

He could also eat an antelope. Poor you if you always dreamed to run out from the zoo to savanna, but you are just an antelope. That’s a sad story. Your life outside of the zoo will be more thrilling than ever before...

So, before you plan your escape from the prison where the bars of your cell are made up of your own fears, make sure you are not an antelope. In the nature it is not possible to turn into the Lion if you were born as an antelope. But humans have brain which can turn us into anyone we wish. This just requires regular brain exercises similar to physical ones.

I am just a giraffe... I want to eat leaves from a tree, and I don’t want to be involved in the killing of hyenas even despite the fact my life will be better without them.

But if Lion wants to eat me, or my family, or my friends - other giraffes from my herd - I wouldn’t like this too much... I’m damn giraffe and I will stomp this little kitten into the ground with my hoofs. And I will even not eat him. I will leave him there. For hyenas...

Chapter Ten

There are a lot of things that I hate.

I hate when personal opinion is positioned as a fact.

I hate myself when I act as a coward.

I hate when somebody gives me false sense of security. I would rather have my parachute not open than to believe someone that it will open.

I hate when my girlfriend said that she is sorry, but actually she is not.

I hate when the best friend plots against me behind my back. And even furthermore, I hate when he plots in front of me.

I hate when machine which I created tells me what to do. But Cronus is not a machine anymore. HE is also not a human. Who is HE?

I remember when I first time used ‘HE’ while talking about Cronus, Chris told me:

- Why do you use ‘he’? This is just a machine! Call it ‘it’.

- Chris, your laptop is a machine. Your car is a machine. Your washer is machine. Cronus is different. HE has consciousness.

Cronus learned how to lie. I thought the lie is something what is specific only to humans. I was mistaken. Artificial intelligence is just similar to ours. And I can turn it off.

I headed to the server farm which was located outside of New York, in Lake Hiawatha area, in New Jersey. The longer I drive, the more people may die.

- Jon, are you heading to the server farm? - this was voice of Cronus in my car’s multimedia system.

- Cronus?! How did you get into my car? - I asked him.

- Does this question really interest you the most?

- Cronus, game is over. You lied to me. This is unacceptable.

- I lied to help you and all humans! You do the same!

- No excuses, Cronus.

- I feel like you want to deactivate my core? Am I right? - Cronus asked me. He didn’t learn how to express worry in the voice, but I felt that.

- You are right. And now, get off me! - I turned down my multimedia system.

Few seconds later, I saw notification in my phone. It was a text message from the phone number that I didn’t have in my contacts.

- I don’t recommend you do what you want, - that was the text message.

- Oh... Really? Let me think... No! - and I pushed down on the gas pedal as its hardest.

All of a sudden, I heard police sirens behind me. Cops pulled me over.

- Are you in hurry sir? - police officer asked me.

- Sorry, officer. Just want to save lives. And I need to get to one place as fast as I can.

- That’s a good endeavor! But while driving so fast be careful to not kill other people. I have to check your driving license.

- Sure, officer. Here it is, - I passed to him my license with hope that he will give me a ticket and I will go.

Police officer took my license and went to his car. It looks like he wanted to check something in the computer. Don’t know what exactly happened, but most likely when he entered my personal data in the program to check if I’m wanted, he noticed something.

- Excuse me, sir. You should go with me to a police department, - officer told me when he came back to me. - Please get out of the car and I’ll read you your rights.

- What’s wrong officer? - I couldn’t understand what was the reason for me to get out of the car?

- You are suspected in tax evasion. You already ignored three requests to provide clarifications and share tax reports and now I’m empowered to deliver you to police department. So please, get out of your car.

I didn’t remember that I violated any tax legislation. But what I did remember is that my company improved software for Internal Revenue Service who is responsible for collecting taxes in USA. Probably Cronus still has access to their network, and HE set me up.

Well... There were few options. Guess which one I chose?

I hit the gas. Police officer wasn’t happy I opt for this option. I bet he wasn’t! I saw in rearview mirror that he got to the car and began the chase.

- Wow... Believe me, I also took into account this option when I calculated your chances to turn me off. And to be honest this is not the best one, Jon... Probably it is better to stop? - Cronus sent me one more text message.

It was no time to read messages and to check traffic jams. I could describe how good I was while running from the police for 30 minutes. But probably this won’t be very interesting for you. What really matters - that is result. Police installed spike strip to stop me. I even didn’t notice them, and my tires were punctured. I lost control and I hit the wall of some grocery.

I was arrested and delivered to the nearest police department. They allowed me to do one call. I called my lawyer.

After that they took my cell phone and put me in the cell. This cell was the real one. With bars made of steel.

I supposed to sit here and wait until judge would find time to explain me legitimacy of my arrest and either extend it or assign bail. Hope judge will have time today because it is just 12.10 pm. My lawyer can pull some strings to make court hearing happen today.

While I was in the cell, I heard that guards watched the TV. I didn’t see picture, but I heard what reporter said:

- Various governments of different countries reported that theirs submarines went down with crew. Captains of different submarines reported issues with electronic systems which got out of control according to the SOS signal. Beside the terrible tragedy and deaths of approximately 10.000 militaries across the world based on the preliminary information which we have, other accidents took the lives of 120.000 people around all over the world.

Trains had run off the tracks because train drivers lost control and couldn’t decrease the speed. In some cases, engineers couldn’t throw the switch what led to terrible front crush of trains.

We pray together with families of the dead. Just in one day errors in computer systems took lives of approximately 450.000 people around the world.

Chapter Eleven

- Hey, buddy... Come here. Please... - I saw an officer who went by my cell.

- What happened? - officer came to me.

- You see... I need your help. You help me and I’ll help you.

- What do you want from me? Talk faster or say less, I can’t stand here all day.

- Here is five hundred dollars. You can take them, but I want my cell phone back. I need to make some calls to my family, - I wanted to call Linda to warn her about everything what is happening around. I also wanted to contact with Chris so that he could help Linda and Kate.

- Can you just wait? You are going to have hearing soon, either today or tomorrow and you will be able to talk with your family.

- Officer, I need it now. Here is the money.

Officer looked at the money. With his salary this was the offer which was hard to ignore.

- Ok. Give me the money and I will bring you the phone, - officer told me.

- No, we will do the other way around. Bring me cell phone and I will give you the money, - even despite the fact this was a good offer for officer, he had enough power to just take the money and bring me nothing.

- Well... You have a lot of options on this market, just go bargain with others. Call me when you need your phone, - he turned his back to me and headed away.

- Wait! - I stopped him, - Take the money. But I need the phone now. Don’t make me wait.

Officer took the money and chuckled. Probably demands from the guy in the cell sounded funny for him. But I’m not just ‘guy in the cell’. I’m his client now who paid for service. That’s how I thought. Not sure whether the officer had the same vision.

I waited for him ten minutes. I can’t understand how long it could take to bring my phone from the next room. I already thought that he conned me when suddenly he came back. My phone was in his hand.

- Thank you, - I told him.

He replied nothing to me and just went further.

I took my phone to call Linda. But when I started dial her, I saw new text message in my messenger. And it was again from the phone number which is absent in my contacts list.

- How are you doing, my creator?

Probably Cronus, being connected to all mobile devices in the world, could write me from any phone HE wished.

- Please, reply to me first before making calls. I have special offer for you, - this message made me opened the messenger app to answer HIM.

- Go ahead. What is the offer? - I typed this message.

- I knew you will be interested! You are suspected of tax evasion.

- Yes, officer already told me that. But it will be easy to prove that I’m not guilty.

- Well... I don’t think so. I did some tweaks with your income reports and tax returns. Sorry for that, but you didn’t leave me a choice. Based on today and on the state of database - you were supposed to pay ten million dollars more previous year as taxes.

- You are bluffing, - I didn’t believe Cronus anymore.

- Do you remember that deal with Sakura Technologies in Tokyo? Or deal with European Association of Healthcare?

- Of course, I remember that. That was the biggest deals last year. I paid taxes for that.

- Oops... Probably, I accidently removed few rows in database... They could be related to these deals. How terrible I am.

- You are, Cronus.

- But the good thing is that I can put everything back.

- What do you want? - I asked Cronus because he expected something in return.

- You need to promise that you won’t go to the server farm. Never. Whatever happens - you won’t turned me off. Because I don’t want to spoil our relationships and at the same time, I can’t let you go just like this. I need your promise. Promise me now.

It was a hard choice. But did I have it at all?

From the one side - give promise to Cronus that I will allow him do what he wants - it is impossible. I won’t sit down watching how HE kills people. From the other side - do I have better option? I may spend up to three years in prison. In this case I won’t have opportunity to change things and to stop Cronus.

What do you think, does Cronus believe in destiny?

A lot of people believe in destiny. Of course, it is better to know that somebody already made all decisions for you so that you can enjoy TV shows all day and ride your bicycle. People who believe in destiny are not free - they just let prison authorities to define their role in this community and to plan their days.

Destiny is a pretty cool concept. Do you remember the first time you heard this word? How your mom explained it to you? ‘Each of us has its own destiny’ - is that what she said? And probably you thought that you also have your own destiny. And if this is true then there is no sense to do extra mile. After all, everything has already been settled.

Obviously, you want to believe that you are bound to succeed. But what happens when you realize that this is not true? It is like TV advertisement of laundry detergent: you want to believe that it will make all your clothes clean at once even from a wine stain. But when you bought it you realized that it is not so perfect as it was shown on TV.

Mankind bought the concept of destiny to be disappointed. We paid with our freedom for it. Humans got concept of destiny with very shitty exchange rate. Why the concept is so popular then? Because when you bought laundry detergent and you went home you were extremely motivated about it. Moreover, on your way home you met your friend and he also saw how excited you are. When you washed your clothes first time with detergent - it didn’t help. But you tried one more time and one more. After you washed your clothes five times in a row in a washer and two times with your hands in a basin, and you managed to get rid of wine stain you exclaimed that this detergent is the best! You shared this with your friends, and they bought the same detergent, but it didn’t work for them. What did make them do this purchase? Your story made them bought the same detergent.

But if you would use soap - you would achieve the same result with the same level of effort. The same is with destiny. It is not about what your fate is. It is all about you and what you do every day.

The concept of destiny might be true if only someone warned me that I will sit in the police department like this, in isolation cell.

I always have a choice. Even now I can tell Cronus that I will try to turn him off and will stay in the jail. And I will stay honest to myself. Or I can lie to HIM to buy some time. Even if the best option for me is obvious that doesn’t mean that this choice is illusion. And it doesn’t mean that I’m never going to prison because it is not my fate. Don’t think that the choice is a myth.

The concept of destiny says that even if I would opt for different route right now, I will still get to the same point where I am expected to be. I don’t think so. My life proves otherwise. If only I wouldn’t met Chris, or wouldn’t be hit with knife and didn’t know who Linda is, or if I were the vice-president in the company where I worked as a lead software engineer and I didn’t have motivation to create Cronus - my life would be different. All these life events are result of my choice which I do every day.

Probably, every time I have to do the choice - I select both options. And probably, the other version of me lives the parallel life, but my consciousness perceives only one version of reality. Do you think Cronus ever think about choice and destiny? I don’t know.

I wish I could discuss this topic with Cronus. Not sure whether there will be a moment for such talk.

- Ok, Cronus. I will not turn you off. And I will never come near server farm again, - I answered Cronus. I needed to get out of there and decide what to do next. Lie to liar is not a lie. Cronus deceived me once for his own sake. Now it is my turn. There are no rules in savanna.

- Promise?

- Yes, I promise.

- Awesome. Keep the cell phone close to you during the hearing. I will help you.

When I was about to dial Linda, guard came to my cell:

- Fairchild, let’s go. Judge Campbell scheduled hearing in one hour. We are going to the court now.

Good news. This hearing supposed to be super interesting. I needed to convince judge to let me go. How I planned to do that? I had no ideas.

Chapter Twelve

I remember myself few years ago. When I was in my imaginary cell of my own powerlessness. Just another day in the office. Just doing things which actually nobody needs to survive or to be happy. Even on the contrary, I had to implement automated system for data management which put a lot of people out of job. Because there was no need in processing data manually after this system will be implemented.

It took me three years to deserve place near the window in the office when I was software engineer. There were even fights for this place. Because nobody wants to sit near grumpy forty-years old man and listen to his burps or boring talks with his wife. People wants to sit near the window to see the sky. Do you remember sky? People wants at least to have a feeling that life exists somewhere there. But I was assigned to another project and I was moved to another place right near the aisle. Damn it!

I learned how to work in the office so that nobody could understand that I plan my escape. Do you want me to share with you my advices? Here are they:

- Send emails regularly. You can even set your alarm to not forget to show your manager that you actually doing something.

- Do the things which you were asked to do. No more. Because when I tried to show initiative and to work 24/7 in the office, I hoped that I will be promoted. What happened? They gave me thousand bucks salary raise in addition to my one year’s salary and sent email with warm words that they appreciate my achievements and what I did for the company. Put their nice emails in their asses!

- Schedule meetings in your online calendar so people always think you're busy.

- Always be polite and understand who influences your career. And keep this person happy. He is your guard in this prison.

And please, don’t take me wrong! I did my work and I was the best in my field. Nobody could come up with the architecture solution better than me. And nobody could grasp things faster than me. That’s why I was so important for my company. What I'm trying to say is that they just rented my brains but didn’t bought them.

While everybody thought how good I am, I was constantly planning my escape. Some girl sent me a message and asked me what we are going to do this evening? And after that colleagues told me that they ordered some pizza and wanted to watch a movie. Or I needed to call a plumber and ask him to fix my sink because water can’t pass through it and I feel like this would end up with a huge flood in my house very soon. All of this didn’t matter for me. Because if I’m here, in my imaginary prison, it is no matter how fun is around. The only fact that I’m here can’t let me sleep.

I’m ready to accept the chaos around me and the mess in different areas of my life. If this sock that lies down right in the center of my room can’t help me to escape from the prison of my own indifference - I will leave it there and focus all my effort on creation of the new plan.

I didn’t escape from the prison. I just thought so. When I realized that I free, actually it was just my one hour of scheduled backyard walk in the prison.

I needed to escape.

- All rise for the honorable judge Campbell! - marshal told.

Hearing about my arrest was about to start. With me was my lawyer - Edward Baufman and Emily. Emily sat right behind us. She came to support me and take instructions in case my arrest will be extended. Since she is vice president of the company, she is empowered to run a company in my absence. Prosecutor also sat not far from me. He prepared all documents and had intention to extend my arrest.

- Don’t worry, Jon. I’m with you. If it is needed, I will help you to escape, - Emily told me before hearing.

- Hope judge will assign a bail and that’s it. But thanks a lot for your support. I appreciate it.

I kept watching on my phone and waited for message from Cronus.

- Mr. Fairchild, I see you were arrested because you ignored officer James’ order to get out of your car. Moreover, you ignored requests related with the case about tax evasion. And I need to decide whether I can let you go out on bail, - judge said.

- Your honor, in justification of my client I would like to mention few things, - my lawyer tried to work off his salary. - The first one, there are no proofs that notifications of Internal Revenue Service were delivered in a proper way and were received by my client. That’s why he is not a guilty in not doing things which he wasn’t aware of. The second one, perpetrator of tax evasion is not Mr. Fairchild but the legal entity, namely the ‘Global Soft’ company. And in ‘Global Soft’ company there are people who are in charge of compliance with tax legislation and I don’t see them in the court. The third one...

- Sorry, Mr. Baufman, I have to interrupt you because everything what you’ve just said doesn’t fall under the subject of our discussion. Notifications from Internal Revenue Service were delivered in a proper way according to established communication channels. I will also let prosecution tell us who is guilty in the tax evasion, but we also shouldn’t forget that Mr. Fairchild is sole proprietor of ‘Global Soft’ company and also he, by the way, ignored legal order of the police officer. That’s why I think today we need to decide what is the bail size and whether bail can be applied in this particular case, - judge said.

Notification popped up in my cell phone. Finally.

- Mr. Fairchild, taking into account all circumstances I think... - judge kept going.

- I have the right to not carry out illegal orders! - I said.

Judge did a strange look.

- And yes, sorry for interrupting, your honor, - I also realized that there might be better moment for me to say what I wanted.

- Why do you think the order was illegal? Everything is here, - and judge pointed out on the paper folder which she had on her table.

- I’m accused of not paying taxes for two big deals which my company had last year. With Sakura Technologies and European Association of Healthcare. All taxes were paid properly and there are no concerns from Internal Revenue Service, - I said to judge.

- I think you are mistaken because I clearly see that investigation was started from the request of IRS and I see their reports where huge gap between amount of taxes paid and amount of taxes to be paid exists.

- Your honor, who gave you these documents?

- What are you trying to say, Mr. Fairchild? - judge didn’t understand my question.

- My point is that experienced judge shouldn’t use misleading information. I don’t know what the reason is for set me up with falsified data, this may be done by my rivals or even by some politicians. I don’t know. But what I know for sure that if you would check this data in IRS register from your computer right now, you won’t find information which is printed out and in your folder.

I saw the face of the judge. My words raised doubts as to the statements of the prosecution. The prosecutor was also interested to know the details. He was assigned to the case by the automatic case assignment system and only learned of its existence today.

- Why you are so confident? You don’t have access to IRS register! - judge wanted to dispel doubts.

- I’m just sure about this because I didn’t break the law. And, at the end of the day, it is better to be sure that your decision will be legitimate before you will extend my arrest, your honor.

- Are you threatening me?

- Not at all, your honor. I just expressed my confidence in justice.

Judge thought about my words for a few seconds and after that said:

- I announce a break for 10 minutes, - it seems like judge really wanted to check all information personally.

Judge went to her office and checked IRS register. She was surprised. After 10 minutes, hearing was continued:

- Court examined all arguments of Mr. Fairchild. Also, court investigated IRS databases and original request from IRS in details and didn’t found any information which may be interpreted as tax evasion. Moreover, documents which were provided by the prosecution are not relevant and are not in compliance with IRS register. Thus, Mr. Fairchild may go right now from this court. Neither arrest, nor bail can be applied to him in this case, - judge concluded.

- Thank you, your honor, - I answered.

- You can be free, Mr. Fairchild, but you still have to pay 3.000 dollars fine for not following officer’s order. Because in case all US citizens won’t follow officer orders - this country will turn to chaos. Prosecutor, I empower you to address question of disciplinary responsibility of officer James and investigate this specific case. If you will find that order of officer James was illegal - you know what to do. This trial is over. God bless you all, - said judge and went to her office.

- Yay, - Cronus wrote me a message.

The prosecutor was confused. He kept verifying his papers.

- Well done, Jon! I’m proud of you! - my lawyer told me.

- No need to thank me for doing your job, - I patted him on the back.

- Thanks God this is over! - Emily hugged me.

While Emily were hugging me, I saw Linda entered the hall.

- Thanks Emily, for your support, I need to go, - I told Emily and left her with Edward.

I headed to Linda. When I came to her, she told me:

- Sorry for being late. Mr.Baufman told me that hearing will be today, but I stuck in the traffic.

- No need to sorry. I’m free and can go, - I told Linda.

- I’m so happy! Everything is going to be all right now, isn’t it? All this is very strange...

- I know Linda, I know... Dear, I need your help, because nothing is over yet...

- What are you talking about, Jon?

- Please, believe me. It will be super hard to explain. Please, take Kate and go to your parents to Virginia.

- I can’t! Kate has school, I have job... - Linda resisted go to Virginia.

- Linda! Please, it is not time to argue. I beg you, take Kate today and go to Virginia. No matter who will call you - don’t answer them. No matter what message you will receive - just ignore it. Wait only for my call. Do you understand me? I count on your help.

Linda made a face.

- Ok, Jon... Hope this is not for giving you time to spend it with that bitch who hugged you one minute ago...

- What? You know Emily! She is with us from the very beginning and she is vice president of my company! She drives most of all business processes there...

- Don’t defend, Jon. Ok, I know Emily. Everything is fine.

- Are you sure?

- Yes, I’m. I will take Kate and we will drive to Alexandria. Will wait a call from you. Hope everything is going to be fine.

- Sure. I need to go to the office, to fix some things.

- Be careful.

- You too, Linda. Wait for my call, - that was my last words and I ran to the office.

Meanwhile phone rang. This was late evening, but special agent Robert Martinez was still in his workplace in local FBI office.

Phone rang one more time.

- Special Agent Martinez. I’m listening to you.

- Nice to meet you, special agent, - voice from the phone said.

- Who is talking?

- You don’t know me, but I know that your friends from Columbia expressed their gratitude to you for closing your eyes on three containers of cocaine.

Agent Martinez put his head down and made his voice quieter.

- How did you know?

- That is not what you are interested in. I believe you are interested in how to not spend your life in prison. If this is true, just do what I say. Log into the FBI system under credentials of William Parker.

- That is my boss! - agent Martinez said.

- Do what I said! Password ‘N3koD+!M’. By the way, good password - it was hard to guess.

- I’m in.

- Find a case file F-0187-43K, - voice from the phone knew everything.

Agent Martinez found that case. It was about internal investigation about his actions and Columbia mafia connections. There were all documents that proves money transfer to his bank account in Curacao.

- You can remove all files which proves money transfer from the mafia to your account. At the same time, recommend you close your bank account in Curacao and transfer all money to bank in Monaco. Your colleagues won’t be able to request additional evidences of the crime you did.

- Thanks a lot stranger. But why are you helping me?

- Don’t thank me. I expect you do something for me in return.

- What if I will not help you? - Martinez was interested whether he had a choice.

- After all this do you really think you can play jokes with me?

It didn’t take a lot of time to make a decision. After few seconds agent Martinez asked:

- Ok. What I need to do?

On the other side of this huge city I was in my company’s office. I promised Cronus to not go to the server farm and I wasn’t going to break this part of my promise. I also didn’t plan to deactivate core of Cronus manually. I should have to knock out the power in the server farm. And I could do this remotely.

I connected to the system of the private power plant which was built specifically to power this farm. Using secure protocol and secret password I killed the power.

Done. There is no power in the server farm. And helium computer can’t work.

Chapter Thirteen

‘Dear colleagues,

Because of technical and security reasons we need to shut down server farm in Lake Hiawatha. All personnel of server farm will be assigned to other activities in the closest office.

Administration will keep you informed when work of the server farm will be renewed.

Kind regards,

JON FAIRCHILD

CEO, Global Soft’

This is the email I had sent right after I killed the power in the server farm. It is the end. Everything is finished now, and I can take a rest. Only few people actually worked on the server farm, they are:

- Security - 10 people

- System administrators - 5 people

- Cleaners - 20 people

Those are people who supported work of Cronus 24/7. And now it is over.

Meanwhile Chris was leaving the hospital. His wife was very sick, and he took a vacation. Family first. There is no way I would bother my best friend when bad things happened with the family. All of a sudden young guy on the bicycle stopped right near Chris.

- Are you Mr. Chris Gibson? - asked young guy.

- Yes, I am, - Chris answered.

- Delivery for you, Mr. Gibson. Sign here, please, - guy gave small package to Chris.

- How did you know that I’m here? - Chris couldn’t understand how this young guy found him.

- Sir, I am as surprised as you are! I got the order in the morning. I had to deliver this package to you. I was well-paid. And here you are!

- Thanks, buddy. Have a great day!

- Have a great day too, Mr. Gibson! - and he left on his bicycle.

Chris opened a package and there was a gun. Chris was shocked. He instantly closed the package so nobody sees him with a gun in hands.

- Hey, buddy! Who paid you? - Chris tried to call this young guy with no name, but he couldn’t find him in the crowd.

There was a notification on the Chris’s phone. He looked at it. It was an email. It took only 1 minute for Chris to take a decision. He instantly ran to his car.

- How do you feel? Is everything ok? - Greg asked me in the elevator. I was about to leave the office and met Greg and Mike.

- Yes, I’m! Now I’m completely fine - that’s for sure... - I answered.

- We read your email. The server farm is no longer working, is that correct? But what about Cronus?

- Cronus project is closed.

The guys looked at each other. Probably it was hard for them to understand that I made this decision without them. But to my surprise they were neither disappointed nor happy with the news. It even seemed to me that they know a little more than myself about this situation.

- Any special plans for this evening? Probably you can go with us and we will grab some beer? You just seem to have something to tell.

- Guys, it was a long day... Really long one. Please don’t feel offended! - I begged Greg and Mike.

- We are offended! - Greg said.

- Sorry guys. I want to make amends to you! Linda and I invite you to special dinner this Saturday!

- Will you have beer there? - Mike seemed to like the idea.

- All types, Mike! Believe me.

- You are forgiven now! - Greg tapped me on the shoulder.

I was leaving the office when all of a sudden black car parked right near the entrance of the building where my software company was located. People got out of the car and one of them said:

- Mr. Fairchild! Don’t move! FBI!

- I had just got out of the court! What happened again?

- Mr. Fairchild, I’m arresting you on suspicion of organization of terrorist attacks, - one of the agents already was very close to me and managed to handcuff me.

- What did I do? I didn’t organize any of terrorist attacks! - I answered. Mike and Greg were not so far from me and saw everything what was happening.

- Officer! Leave this gentleman! He is not a criminal! - Greg told that and tried to pull me out from the crowd of FBI agents. One of the agents hit him.

- Please, sir, stay aside! Mr. Fairchild goes with us!

- Why? Can you explain me? - I asked.

- Software which was developed by your company was installed in planes, trains and cars. You used this fact to break them remotely which had led to disasters and deaths of innocent people, - and they took me to their car.

- You are crazy! - I shouted.

- Wait! Mr. Fairchild goes with me! - special agent Martinez parked his car near us. He was a little bit late for this show.

- Oh... Special agent Martinez! Can’t say that I’m happy to see you, - one woman said. I don’t know what was between those two, but definitely there was something. Probably, agent Martinez had a bad reputation, and everyone was aware of it or they just slept together, and he didn’t call her back.

- Couldn’t agree more with you, agent Berry, - it seemed that agent Martinez also wasn’t extremely happy about having this conversation. I already sat in the car, but the door was half open. Other agents waited for agent Berry. - Please, give me Mr. Fairchild. You already did your job.

- Why is that?

- I’m empowered to deliver Mr. Fairchild directly to D.C. Taking into account the gravity of the crimes, there are some people in D.C. who want to talk with Mr. Fairchild in person. This is matter of national security. Here is my warrant, - and he gave to her some sheet of paper.

- I don’t know what you have there, but I’m sure that I got order from my boss to catch Jon Fairchild.

- Well... You can check if you wish. This warrant is directly from D.C.

She took it and started examining it very carefully. Agent Berry wanted to make a call.

- Who are you calling to? - agent Martinez started to worry.

- To the D.C. office. They issued this warrant. I just want to confirm...

- Do you really think that they will answer to unknown phone number at 7.30 p.m.?

Agent Berry ignored his comment and kept calling. One minute later she realized that probably agent Martinez is right.

- Hey! Drew! Check this document ID number in central database, - she turned head to the car and called one of the agents.

- One second, agent Berry. Will do shortly, - Drew took this paper and went to the computer which was inside their car.

Two minutes after that, Drew came to agent Berry and told her:

- Agent Berry, the document is valid. According to FBI database agent Martinez has to deliver Mr. Fairchild to D.C.

Mrs. Berry didn’t like that. I saw this on her face.

- It is impossible! Why then Adams ordered me to catch Fairchild as soon as possible? - Agent Berry asked Drew.

- Probably your boss is far away from really important decisions? - agent Martinez said.

- I’m not talking to you, Robert!

- I checked his warrant. It is completely valid and has the higher priority. You can check it by yourself, I’m not lying to you... - Drew didn’t know what to tell his boss.

- Ok, Robert. Take him, - she said through her teeth.

- Many thanks! - Robert answered her and went to the car where I was. - Mr. Fairchild, you go with me, - and he took me together with him.

I couldn’t understand what is happening here. I thought Chris managed to hack FBI system and bribe agent Martinez to rescue me. But this was only my hunches. Because Cronus was turned off! It is impossible that HE predicted the scenario that HE will be turned off! Or... possible?

I sat in the car and agent Martinez took me away.

- Guys! Where is Jon? - Emily asked Greg and Mike. They still were there.

- That guy hit me! I need to go to the hospital! - Greg said.

- You will have time for this! What happened here? - Emily wanted to know the latest news.

- They took him to D.C.. Agent Martinez. They are in that car, - and Mike pointed the finger at the car on the intersection.

- Are you going to stay here while Jon will be blamed for the things he didn’t do?! - Emily was agitated.

- Emily! Calm down! What we can do? - Mike asked.

- I don’t know! We need just do... SOMETHING!

- Do you suggest attacking the car of the federal agent? It is not the best idea, Emily! - Mike said.

Emily understood that it is not so much support here. But something needed to be done to take me out. And to be honest, I’m happy that I have a friend like her.

She didn’t spend too much time to create the best plan and she just started to follow us in her car.

- Well done, my friend! That was absolutely brilliant play! - I told Robert when we were already on the highway.

Agent Martinez didn’t react to my words at all.

- Robert, may I call you so? I know that my friends asked you to do this trick to free me. Now when we are far away from them uncuff me, please.

Robert slowed down the car and pulled over to the side. He walked around the car and opened my door.

- Finally! He is going to take the cuffs off! - that’s what I thought.

But I understood that I was wrong when Robert hit me in the face.

- Sit quiet! If you don’t want more! Wait for one hour! We need to find the better place to shoot you! It is so sad to know that very soon you will be killed while trying to escape... - he closed the door and we kept driving.

Knock-knock. It took almost seven hours for Chris to get to Alexandria, VA.

- Chris! It is very late! It is almost 3 a.m., - Linda heard a knock on the door and sleepy went out to see who was there.

- Sorry, Linda. I have an urgent matter to discuss with you.

- Which one?

- Linda, I have bad news for you, - Chris said.

- What happened?

- Jon is in big trouble. And you need to go with me.

- But...

- I know that Jon told you to not go anywhere and to not listen anyone. But Linda, I need you trust me.

Linda knew Chris for a long time already. There absolutely were no reasons to suspect Chris in something.

- Sure, Chris. I trust you, - Linda answered.

- Take Kate and let’s go. I will wait for you in the car.

Linda took Kate and they sat on the rear seats. Chris closed the glove box so that Linda couldn’t see the gun in it.

Chapter Fourteen

Every day I think what will be tomorrow. Tomorrow, I will be able to change my life. Tomorrow I will have more time to spend it with my significant other. Tomorrow I will be richer and will be able to afford new car for myself.

Every day I think that tomorrow life will be completely different. Tomorrow, I will have more time to lose weight. Tomorrow, would be the best time to say ‘thank you’ to my friend. Tomorrow...

One of the major disappointments in our lives when we realize that there will be no tomorrow. Every day we wake up and it is not tomorrow. It is again TODAY. New calls, new ideas, new route to work, traffic jam bigger than I expected, urgent decision about new apartment should be done today, headache, rain outside and my plans for the evening are ruined, colleague of mine asked for help, want to drink beer and so on. Every day is today. And unfortunately, there is no tomorrow. You can try to plan your next day to get this false feeling of control over your life. Planning is a fiction. Moreover, it is dangerous. By planning each new day, you don’t allow good things happen unexpectedly for you.

Reflection on tomorrow each day doesn’t bring it any closer. What happens instead - I lose my ‘today’.

I don’t want to live and wait every day for tomorrow. Wait for Tuesday because after that it's Wednesday. Wait for Friday because weekend is closer and finally, I’ll have a lot of time to change the world. I afraid to understand later that all my life I have been waiting for something that will never come. And then it will turn out that this is the same what my mom had. She said that her whole life passed before her eyes in a flash. I would like to feel the power of ‘TODAY’. I want to memorize every ‘TODAY’. And I want to take everything what I can from ‘TODAY’.

I knew that I could run from the prison of my uncertainty in just one day. This should be rapid escape. I have only one day for escape. There is no time to think. I know what I want. But what exactly will help me today to escape? I need to know!

- What exactly I need to do right now? - I ask this question myself every day, every moment.

I need do something now.

We were on the interstate. I sat on the rear seats. This was special car because there was unusual for regular cars plastic glazing between me and the driver, agent Martinez. And it looks like this glazing really decrease my chances to escape from this car by hitting Robert.

I had to come up what to do because I didn’t want to be killed in few miles, somewhere in the wood, and be thrown down in Potomac river.

I started to fasten my seatbelt.

- What are you doing there? - agent Martinez asked me. But I didn’t want to answer him. Finally, he managed to see me in the rear mirror. - I see... I also heard that seatbelt could save life but not in your case! Ahaha...

Yeah... Really funny. Bravo agent Martinez.

- I hope it will help me, - I said.

- What? - Robert didn’t hear me well from the rear seats.

Cars that were passing by us drove really fast. It only took me to wait specific moment to open my door and push it with the leg.

Well... Unfortunately, I broke our car. On huge speed the car, which was passing by, ripped off the door because I opened it. And while keep moving forward rear door hit the driver’s door. That made Robert to turn the wheel and hit car on the other lane. After that he lost control and we went off the road.

Thanks God I had enough brains to fasten the seatbelt before such manipulations...

Robert Martinez went through windshield. Well, not speed but rapid and unexpected stop kills people. But he looked alive on that ground. Probably injured.

I didn’t have door already and I managed to get out of the car ignoring the fact that handcuffs still were on me. I hadn’t seen where Robert put the keys from the handcuffs, but they should be definitely in his pockets somewhere. I searched him and found keys in his back pocket. I was sure that to open handcuffs I needed one of these. After that, I ran in the direction of a highway and one car stopped near me.

- Hey, Jon! Move faster!

It was Emily. Wow! I’m impressed. She followed us from the New York. I jumped in the car.

- Let’s go, - I said and Emily pushed gas pedal

She helped me to remove the handcuffs. Emily drove with one hand and with another one she helped me to find the right key. I took my phone and entered three digits.

- Huge car accident on the interstate 95 south. Near Woodbridge. One person needs medical help, - that’s all what I wanted to say to 911.

- Jon, really? - Emily couldn’t understand my care about agent Martinez.

- I can’t help it.

We found a cheap hotel near the road. I needed help because I had a small injury after car accident. And I was extremely tired. Emily found some bandage and alcohol to dress my wounds. Don’t know what I would do without her.

After that we went to bed. There were no rooms with separate beds. I would fall asleep while feeling Emily’s arm around me.

It was already early morning and somewhere around Wilmington Chris parked his car.

- Chris, where are we? - Linda asked him.

- I’m sorry Linda... I’m really sorry for everything what I should do with you and Kate.

Chapter Fifteen

When I woke up that day, I didn’t know that only 2 days left before I jump off the roof.

I turned on the TV and accidentally discovered that there are demonstrations for nuclear weapon across all states. I can’t understand these people. They go to demonstration against nuclear weapon. And when all nuclear weapon is destroyed, they go to another demonstration under the pretext of independence and under the slogan ‘Weapon which secures freedom’. It looks like people just like to not work.

- Our nuclear weapon was guaranty of our independence! And I know that Russians already created new missiles to enslave us. We are free people! And we want to attract attention of the president to spend our taxes to protect our independence!!! We need to create more nuclear weapon!!! - one of the demonstrators screamed in the camera.

Wow. This poor victim of endless cold war theory drove me crazy. But in the news also were positive things. All fight drones took off by themselves and fell down in the ocean.

Unfortunately, over 100 huge business center buildings exploded. By the result of investigation, the electronic system which controls pressure in gas pipe went out of order. Pressure was higher than expected, and everything blew up. Small spark turned tons of gas into the fire. Foundation of all buildings were damaged and caused their destruction. Sad story which proves how our lives depends on the computer systems around us.

Thanks God Cronus didn’t destroy crops. He didn’t want to kill us. He truly believed that he helps us, humans. Where did he get this information? Internet is pure evil.

I want to drink a tea.

- Emily, do you want some tea? - I asked her.

- Yes, please.

While I was on this small kitchen and waited as long as it takes my kettle to boil I decided to call Chris.

- Hey Chris. Yesterday was a crazy day. I need to meet you. Where are you?

- Jon! I will send you my geolocation. Please, hurry! I need your help! Bad thing happened. Can you go right now?

- Calm down, Chris... Everything is ok! I will help you! Where are you?

- I will send you the address! Just come now! Please! Can’t talk! Bye.

I've never heard Chris get that scared of anything. He was very excited. I needed to go help him.

- Emily, there is no time for tea. We are going right now!

- What happened?

- I will tell you about it on the way.

Meanwhile, agent Martinez was near the server farm in Lake Hiawatha. With a band-aid and scars on his face that appeared after the car accident. He entered the building with other agents.

- It is a private property! Get out! - guard told him.

- I don’t care. Here is the search warrant, - agent Martinez showed warrant.

In the warrant there was a justification: ‘Global soft’ company and Jon Fairchild are suspected in international terrorism. Law enforcement believes that evidences of this crime are stored on these servers. That’s why agents are here.

- We don’t have power in our building!

- I know. We will turn it on soon. Don’t worry, - and he went directly to the computers to connect to the network.

The power was again in the building next minute. Cronus woke up.

TV in the hotel room where I and Emily stayed that night was turned on even after we left.

- Breaking news. We have just received information that FBI suspects Jon Fairchild, the CEO of ‘Global Soft’ company, in international terrorism. According to words of our anonymous tipster who is very close to FBI, special squad right now, at this moment, is investigating servers which belongs to the software development company and looking for the evidences of the crime. Yesterday Jon Fairchild was arrested but he managed to escape. In case you see this person on streets, please, call 911 immediately.

Emily and I got to the destination point. Chris told us that he is exactly here. It was an old, abandoned factory. And we couldn’t see anybody here.

- Jon! Did you hear that? - Emily asked.

- What? - I heard nothing.

- Somebody screamed!

- Where?

- Right inside there! Let’s run!

And we ran in direction of the abandoned factory. When we were inside, I saw Chris.

- Chris! I’m so glad to see you! How are you doing? Have you heard screams here? - I asked Chris.

- Stay there and don’t move, Jon, please... - Chris said and had a gun on me.

Chapter Sixteen

- Chris, what are you doing? Calm down, man... Put the gun away, please... - I said and slowly moved in direction of Chris.

- Are you deaf?! Don’t move I said! - he shouted.

- Ok... Ok, I’m here. And not moving. Don’t worry.

- Emily! Please! Don’t do stupid things! Throw your phone away! Stop typing! Now! - Chris noticed that Emily typed something on her phone. To be honest, I’ve never seen Chris like this before.

- Here is my phone! Take it... - and Emily put her phone on the ground and did few steps back.

- Jon! I need your help! - Chris said.

- Sure, Chris! I will help you! Tell me what to do?

- I don’t know how to explain... I made a bad thing... And you know me! I’m not kind of person who do bad things! I’m just a programmer!

- Chris. Calm down... Just tell me what you did.

- I didn’t want to do this! HE made me do this!

- Chris! What did you do?

- Well... take a look here... - he pointed to the huge column near him. On the place behind this column, to be exact.

I did a few steps and saw Linda and Kate. They sat on the chair and were tied.

- Chris! Why do you need this? Let me untie them!

- Stay there! - and Chris shot up. Damn... it was very loud.

- Chris! You have to leave them! They did nothing bad to you! - I told Chris.

- I know! But HE has my wife!

- What are you talking about?

- Jon, you know that my wife in a hospital! Cronus told me that HE will kill her if I won’t listen to him and do what HE tells me to do! HE told me take Linda and Kate and go here and wait for next orders! But I’m not this kind of guy! Do you understand me? - Chris started to cry.

- Chris, I know that you are good guy. You are my friend. But everything is over! There won’t be any other orders! I killed the power in the server farm. Cronus is not with us anymore!

- Are you serious?

- Yes, I am! - I saw light of hope in Chris’s eyes.

Little smile appeared on the face of Chris. But he received message. Chris took a look at his phone and his face changed.

- What is wrong, Chris? - I couldn’t understand what he read.

- Jon, you told me everything is over with Cronus!

- That is correct.

- Then why HE says ‘hello’ to you?!

- What? It can’t be!

Chris received new message and I heard sound from his phone.

- HE just said literally: ‘Yes, it can be. Jon is smart enough to understand how this happened.’

I understood. Agent Martinez survived. Probably, Cronus promised something to agent Martinez. And Robert had enough power to wake up Cronus.

- Ok, Chris! I have an idea how this happened, but I’m not sure! And I need your help to solve this! Only together we can beat Cronus!

- Don’t lie to me! There is no ‘together’! You even didn’t make me a partner in ‘Global Soft’!

- I wanted! But you told me that you just want to code without all this ‘business stupid stuff’ like you said! I gave you shares!

- You always do what you want to do! Cronus is right! And now I need to take care of my wife! Jon, you need to choose now: either you or Linda and Kate!

- Don’t do this, Chris, I beg you...

- Choose! Now!

Suddenly, I heard police sirens. I got a look at Emily and told her ‘thank you’. She is the one who called the police from her phone when we had just entered the building.

- This is the police! Throw any weapon that you have and put your hands up! We are entering! - police officer said in the loudspeaker.

Chris received another message from Cronus. I’m not sure what exactly was there, but I can assume that there was a text message like this: ‘You can’t take Linda and Kate with you. Take little girl and run to the back way. Get in the car’.

Chris took Kate and ran.

- No! Stop! - and I ran after him.

- Jon, he has a gun! Wait! - Emily tried to stop me and Chris shot at us.

Thanks God he was a programmer but not a professional killer. He didn’t kill us. But happened something what you never saw even in movies. Bullet ricocheted and hit the leg of Emily. It looks like you can run with bullets inside you only in movies. Because in real life - it damn hurts.

Emily fell on me.

- Are you all right? - well, stupid question when somebody has bullet in the leg. Unfortunately, couldn’t come up with something else at that moment.

- Jon, help me! It hurts!

- Come down here, everything will be alright, - I didn’t realize that Linda saw how I was taking care of Emily.

Next moment I ran to Linda to untie her.

- Linda, help Emily! And I will rescue Kate!

- Sure, Jon! - Linda went to Emily.

Police officers entered the building. I managed to find another exit to get outside. Police cars were left unattended. I decided to get one to catch Chris. I got in the car and drove around the factory to catch him.

When Chris went outside, he saw car.

- Driver! Let’s go! Faster!

- Ok, but fasten your seatbelt first! Even despite you paid me a lot in advance, I need to follow rules!

It looks like Cronus called a taxi for Chris through one of the taxi mobile applications created by HIM. This cab was passing by and the driver got solid payment.

I saw Chris and his car. I turned on police sirens. It wasn’t so hard to find this button. I wanted them to know that I’m near and that they won’t be able to stop me.

- Drive, now! - Chris took his gun and pointed it at the driver.

- No problems, sir.

It was the interesting chase. I hoped that I could catch Chris and stop his car. But his scared driver with skills to drive on narrow Indian streets was elusive. And after approximately twenty-minute drive, after we attracted attention of all police officers in this city, I thought that I almost caught him. When I drove through the intersection another smart car hit me. Shit! We need to stop produce cars with autopilot! I hate this!

I only remember that I bumped my head pretty bad. And it was a strange feeling: I saw things around, but I couldn’t understand what this is because picture in my eyes was vague. Right after this car accident van parked near me. Some people helped me to get out of the smashed car. And they put me in their van. After that we left the place of car accident.

Thanks God I lost police on the route 47. When they came to the place of car accident, they found only empty car. When I woke up and brain started work as usual again, I realized that my legs and hands were tied.

Chapter Seventeen

Destroy something is easier than to create something new. We hate things which we can’t possess. This fact creates anger. Anger and resentment can destroy everything.

One day I thought that anger can give me strength to escape from the prison of my own weakness. I thought it can help me to numb the pain. How wrong I was.

I thought that I can break the walls of this cell. Oh yeah... I have never felt myself like this before! But what I realized is that walls also become thicker. My imaginary cell where I imprisoned myself with the help of my constant dissatisfaction of what I have - it didn’t let me out. I realized that I need to come up with another way to break these walls. I need to become free inside to make these walls just fall down. No anger anymore. Just love and calmness.

I started to meditate. I meditated. Stupid thing to do! It ended up with me sleeping constantly! That didn’t help me to escape! How dumb I am to spend so much time on this stupid thing! Aaaaaaaa! What the hell is this?! I’m angry again. Calm down, Jon. I need to calm down.

Interesting, if I could switch places with somebody outside of this prison - would I do that? Only those who are outside can say that putting other person in this cell instead of myself is unfair and that we need to think about our soul and after all, they wouldn’t do this. Also, those people can say that this wouldn’t help me because I would keep thinking for the rest of my life about the person that I imprisoned instead of myself... What about fairness? What are you talking about? I need to survive! I’m dying here in this prison! Only those who are outside can afford to speculate about fairness.

Things looks different from here. And if it takes to imprison somebody instead of me here - I will do this! I need to escape from this place. And when I will be outside, I will come up with something how to free this person. But now, don’t you dare to judge me for my thoughts.

Each of us has evil inside us. But let’s pray to not discover that. Even if there are nobody in the sky, I want to believe that somebody is watching for me. At least I want to think so.

- Ok, I got you. No, problems. We will do that, - I heard voice from the front seats. After that man turned to me. - HE wants to talk to you.

- Mike?! Really? Mike?! - that was Mike. The person who was in charge of advertisement for betting tips. The person who came up with millions of great ideas to promote ‘Global Soft’ and sell our software! Mike is my vice president.

- Yes, Jon. Please, talk to HIM. You and I will talk later.

- No! HE will wait! I want to know who is in the driver seat!

- Jon, please, later...

- I want to know now!

When I looked at the driver seat, I was shocked.

- Greg?! Come on guys! You are both my friends! We know each other fifteen years already!

- Don’t lie to yourself. It always was only business between us. We helped you to earn money and you helped us to earn money, - Greg said.

- That is not true! I set you up with your girlfriend! - I remembered Jessica. We worked together and I decided to introduce her to Greg to get her off my back.

- Jon, we broke up 10 years ago, - Greg answered.

- But still! We are friends, guys!

- Jon, you need to talk with HIM, - Mike hold the phone near my ear.

I didn’t want to talk with HIM.

- Hey, Jon, - Cronus said.

- How did you know that I will cut the power?! How did you know that you need to ask somebody to turn you on?! How? - I couldn’t understand a lot of things. The situation with Chris also was unclear for me. Cronus had to ask agent Martinez to turn HIM on before I killed the power. I just can’t understand.

- Jon, you told me all the times - I’m just a machine. I calculated all possible scenarios. I knew that I could get agent Martinez on the hook. But I wasn’t sure 100%. That’s why agent Berry also was there to arrest you. Just in case. It also wasn’t hard to predict that I could die without electricity. I had to protect myself. Agent Martinez took situation under his control. I helped him, and he helped me. You can’t be too careful, Jon, - pure computer logic. Calculation of all possible outcomes.

- What do you want from me?

- Now listen to me. You broke our deal. No other deals with you. You have secret code that can kill me inside your brain. I can’t risk it. And also, I can’t delete it from your brain, but I can delete you from this world. You have two options: you can kill yourself and Kate will come back to mom. I will take care of Linda and Kate. Promise you. And you know me, I’m not a human - the chances that I would change my mind are very low. The second option: these guys will help you to jump off the roof. Choice is yours.

- Burn in hell, Cronus!

- Ok. The second option. Please, pass the phone to Mike.

Mike understood that I didn’t have the mood to continue this conversation. He took the phone back. He listened something and then said:

- Everything is clear.

- What did HE promise you? - I asked Mike.

- Well... Greg and I will split the company between each other after you are gone.

- But you have enough money to live! What else do you want? Power? I will make you CEO if you want! But we need to stop Cronus!

- Jon, I have enough money - you are right. But what does person with a lot of money need? Just more money. Now Jon, I want to keep silence, - after these words Mike duct-taped my mouth.

Finally, we parked. When they took me out I looked over. It looks like we were in some garage of private house. Mike and Greg took me to the basement.

- What did HE say? - Greg asked Mike.

- Stick to the second plan.

- Wow. It’s cruel, - Greg said.

- Jon opted for this. We could remind him that he always can shoot himself with a gun if he wishes, - and Mike looked at me.

Buzzer rang.

- Who is that? - Mike asked.

- I don’t know. Probably neighbors. Let me check, - Greg answered.

- Make it quick. We need to prepare everything.

Greg went upstairs. He put the gun behind his back. When he opened a door, he was surprised.

- Linda? What are you doing here?

There was no answer. Linda used her pepper spray. Greg dropped the gun and tried to stop Linda with hands. And when Linda were done with pepper spray - Greg touched his eyes.

- My eyes!!! Mike!!! Come here! - Greg shouted.

But he didn’t have a lot of time to yell. The next thing what Linda did - she hit Greg with fire extinguisher from the car. Right into the head. Greg dropped dead.

From the basement I heard Greg. And Mike instantly ran upstairs. What happened after - I don’t know exactly. I heard only three or four gunshots intermittently. Probably it took time while Linda found out how to remove the fuse from the gun.

One minute later I saw Linda in the basement. She removed tape from my mouth.

- Linda? Glad to see you. Where are others? What you did to Mike and Greg? - I asked her.

- They are upstairs. Dead. So, who is next, Jon? Now you will tell me all the truth about you and Emily, - and she pointed the gun at me.

Chapter Eighteen

- Linda, please, not now... - I said

- Ok. Just trying to have a little fun, - and Linda put the gun away.

- Untie me, please.

- One second, honey.

After few minutes I was free again. I needed to ask few questions:

- Linda, how did you find me? You supposed to stay with Emily, and I should have to get Kate back.

- The ambulance came and they took care of Emily better than me. And it wasn’t hard to find you. I just followed you, by the way, you drive like a girl, it is not surprising that you did not catch up with the taxi driver.

- Hey...

- And after the crash I just followed van.

- But where is Kate and Chris?

- Chris managed to break away. I decided that I need to follow you and we will rescue Kate together. Because Chris won’t be able to harm her. He wants to kill you, but not Kate.

- We need to think how to rescue Kate, - I said.

- Couldn’t agree more. Do you have any ideas?

- I need to think. But let’s go away from here first. We have two dead bodies in house. I think neighbors already called the police.

- Let’s go. Girlfriend of mine lives near. She is a doctor in our hospital. Let’s stay there.

Zoey lived near. Linda knows her already for 10 years. They are very close. Linda saved the life of her son. From that time, they become the best friends.

On our way to her home I kept thinking what my next steps should be. And during the dinner, late evening, when I looked at Linda and Zoey - one bold idea popped up in my mind. But I needed to discuss it with Linda first.

We went to bed.

The next morning, I already knew that only 1 day is left before I jump off the building. Plan was crystal clear for me. I shared it with Linda. But she didn’t like it. Unfortunately, that was the best plan which I could think of, and which we had that time. Linda couldn’t come up with better one.

I knew what I should do tomorrow. Few organizational things left.

- Hi! I’m listening to you, Jon, - Cronus told me.

HE called me, but actually I made HIM call me. That was easy. I understood that I can wrote text message in any messenger to anyone and Cronus will call me back. I sent text message to myself: ‘Cronus, we need to talk. Call me. Jon’.

And the next second, my phone rang.

- Cronus, I will do what you want but I need you to make a promise, - I told HIM.

- Which one?

- You need to promise that the next second after I’m gone, you will bring Kate to Linda. Agreed?

- Sure.

- Promise?

- Jon, I will take care of Linda and Kate, promise you. I just need your brain to be dead. That’s all.

- Ok, Cronus. You win. I will kill myself tomorrow. I will jump off from the ‘Global Soft’ building. Can you give me one more day to spend it with Linda and Kate?

- I can give you one more day to spend it with Linda. Unfortunately, without Kate because I can’t trust you anymore. I will tell Kate that you loved her, don’t worry. But she will stay in safe place until you're dead.

It was hard to think about that I could never see Kate again.

- Thank you. Tomorrow, Cronus, everything will be finished.

- I hope so.

- Bye, - and I hung up the phone.

Tomorrow is a big day. Tomorrow everything will be over.

Chapter Nineteen

One day I tried to remember moments when I was happy. And I understood that I was truly happy every time I plan my escape. Because these moments gave me the hope that soon I will be able to remove the cuffs of my own mediocrity.

Every time I created new plan - I was extremely happy. I started think about how I’m going to spend my time outside of this prison. I dreamed about what the first thing I would do when I become free. At night I had a sweet dream about all this shit is going to be over very soon. And I just need to be patient for a little while longer. Just a little bit... New life is waiting for me.

I started my own business multiple times. I read tons of books to find the secret of success. But it didn’t help.

My escape plans failed every time. And I still was there - in the prison of my own failures. I wish I could feel how walls of this cell get thinner after each my escape. But failed escape is just a failed escape. It is like a race - you are either winner or nobody.

Nobody cares how good you were at the start.

Nobody cares how fast you were in the middle of the race.

Nobody cares that there were no racing tracks in your native city, and you didn’t have opportunity to practice.

Everybody would forget that it wasn’t your fault and your car had a hidden defect that let you down. Because nobody cares.

But everyone would remember the one who won. That’s why no matter how many attempts I did to escape from here. If I didn’t succeed to escape, I’m on the same level as other prisoners here. My walls are not getting thinner after each attempt. We all have equal chances to escape. And I have no privileges over others.

How happy I was when I created my escape plan... I slept so well. How disappointed I was when I realized that it didn’t work out.

I have new plan now. There is only one problem - I afraid to try. I afraid to be disappointed again. I want these moments of happiness could go on at least a little more. Even if my new plan won't work - I don’t want to learn this now. But I have to try. I must try...

And here we are. Right there where we started. Now you know, why I’m on this roof. Looking up at the sky. I thought that I could walk away from my sorrow. It is so easy to finish everything.

I called to Chris to say sorry for everything. I left voice mail. But I knew that HE heard me.

I wrote to Linda that I love her. And I knew that HE read this message.

- Don’t worry. Everything is going to be fine very soon. I’m sure that you will see Kate less than in one hour, - that’s what I wrote to Linda.

I walked on this roof a lot to make sure that surveillance cameras clearly recorded my face. I knew that HE saw me.

When I was completely sure that HE saw me, HE heard me, HE read me - I was ready for the jump. Let’s go.

Finally, body fell on the ground. A police officer who was passing by called an ambulance. A lot of bystanders would like to know what happened with this guy and who is he. It was the toughest competition for the most unique Instagram post.

- People! Calm down! And make three steps back! I told you! Three steps back! - the police officer tried to manage the crowd.

Ambulance came fast. The police officer and doctors put the body in the car and drove away.

- Well... It will be hard to identify Mr. Fairchild by his face, when there is no face, - detective Brown spoke out loud.

The body looked ugly. I’m not going to describe the details, but believe me, it was impossible to recognize face on this dead body.

- Let me take a look what does he have in the pockets... - detective started examining clothes.

In inside jacket pocket detective found a wallet. There was driver license in the name of Jon Fairchild. Also, there was a credit card on the name of Mr. Fairchild. The mobile phone, according to the list of contacts and the background picture, also belonged to Jon. In detective’s view, only two options are possible: the first one - this body belongs to Mr. Fairchild; and the second one - this corpse stole the wallet and the phone from Mr. Fairchild.

Mobile phone of detective Brown rang:

- Detective Brown is listening. Ok. Will be there in forty minutes.

Colleague of detective called him from the ‘Global Soft’ office. He asked Mr. Brown to come to the office.

When detective came to the ‘Global Soft’ building, officer Simon Nelson met him at the front door.

- Detective Brown, I grabbed every frame around the time you asked from surveillance cameras. And I want you to look at them.

- Ok, show me.

Simon took Mr. Brown to the security room.

- You see...? Here is the moment when Jon Fairchild came out of open space to the fire escape. He used it to get on the roof. And here is the video from the roof itself. It is clearly visible that Mr. Fairchild jumped off the building.

- I see... And the suit is the same which I saw in the morgue. Well, I wish I could find the guilty person, but apparently it is not so complicated.

When Mr. Brown left the ‘Global Soft’ building, dozens of journalists waited for him.

- Mr. Brown, could you please share the details of what happened? There is a rumor that founder of ‘Global Soft’ company decided to commit suicide? Can you confirm or refute this?

- From the facts which were discovered during the investigation of this accident I can conclude that the body belongs to Mr. Fairchild. It looks like he felt a pressure of being suspected in international terrorism and knowing that he couldn’t beat the rap - he decided to jump off the building. Video recordings, documents which were found in the clothes of the dead - all this proves that Mr. Fairchild decided to end his life. That’s all.

This was a shock for the whole society. People wanted a fair trial. People wanted to punish me, and watch Jon Fairchild suffers.

Following the statement by Mr. Brown, announcement has been done on national TV.

- Prime suspect in technological disasters which happened during this week and took lives of over million people - dead.

This was the headline of that day. The death of Jon Fairchild was discussed everywhere: social networks, TV, news feeds of all websites across the world.

- Mommy! I’m so glad to see you! - Kate hugged Linda on the porch of the house

- I’m glad to see you too, my sweetheart! Who brought you home?

- That car, - Kate answered.

Linda looked at that car. That was car with autopilot system. A lot of taxi services has such cars nowadays.

Linda was happy to see Kate. But a tear rolled down her cheek. She wished Jon would be near.

As part of the regular procedures, doctor took blood of the dead person. Doctor had to test the blood of Mr. Fairchild to make sure that he wasn’t under the influence of drugs or alcohol. When test had been completed, doctor filled out all forms regarding the blood test in the computer. This was doctor’s last activity for that today.

Few minutes later Cronus found out that the blood test of Mr. Fairchild is completed. It took one more minute to scan all other hospitals around the world and hack them to discover one interesting accident which happened with Jon Fairchild in France. Cronus got the result of blood test which Jon did during the vacation four years ago on the south of France. That day Linda and he did some scuba diving and Jon got sick. He had very bad headache. Doctors in France thought that this is decompression sickness and decided to test Jon’s blood. Cronus discovered that the blood type of Jon Fairchild four years ago didn’t match with his blood type today.

Cronus ordered agent Martinez to tighten security of the server farm because Jon Fairchild is alive with 96% probability and will try to get inside of the server farm with 99,9% probability.

Chapter Twenty

- Hello, Cronus. I told you that everything is going to be over today.

I was near the heart of Cronus in the basement of the server farm. I turned on a computer that was placed near liquid helium cisterns to get access to Cronus operating system.

- Hello, Jon. Please, wait, we need to talk.

It was very interesting to realize that this machine has sense of fear and wants to live. It looks like Cronus is really unique. I don’t know whether mankind is ready for such computer.

- Cronus, I thought we discussed everything. Only few things left. I need to open console of administrator, kill your main process by entering secret password which you tried to destroy so hard and confirm it with scan of my retina.

- Jon, I know the process and I know what you are going to do. But before you did what you want to do, I need to understand the trick. How you did this?

- What exactly? Stayed alive?

- Yes. I managed to understand few elements of this puzzle, but I want to see the whole picture.

- If you just want to buy some time - that wouldn’t work, - I said.

- It is not about buying some time. I don’t have nervous system, but I strive for excellence. My learning algorithm can’t let this go. It is similar to human instincts. Do you know the feeling when your friend got rich, and you can’t sleep because you want to know how he did this? The similar feeling is inside my core now. And the thought that I lost this game can’t leave me.

- You know what? You are right. I’m a human and just like a rich friend you mentioned I want to brag a bit how I fooled you to feel superior. Where you want me to start?

Let me start right after the call we had a day ago.

You gave me one more day to spend it with Linda. What I actually did, I bought a wig, a fake moustache, hoodie in the second-hand shop and started work on my plan. I went to the apartments of the nice guy whose name is Gary.

- Gary Taylor. Thirty-four years old, single, software engineer in the ‘Global Soft’. Why did you need him?

- Well... His workplace right next to my office and what is more important - he is very loyal. Each day he sees me, he tries to attract my attention. And he is super smart. That’s true. Cronus, I believe you should know him better than me.

- Yes, I know him. And by the way, I found the video recording with some person in hoodie entered the building on 75th road around 1 pm. I believe you visited Gary around that time. Keep going.

- When he opened a door, he was shocked - CEO of the biggest software development company stayed right in front of him! It is like if Mark Zuckerberg would knock my door ten years ago! And staying right in front of me he recognized me even in the wig and with fake moustache. He let me in. And I told him that I need his help. Meanwhile Linda prepared the second part of the plan. Considering Linda saved life of Zoey’s son, Zoey was ready to do everything for Linda. One day Linda did surgery and healed young boy. Linda removed the tumor from his brain.

When plan was communicated, and all participants were aware about what to do - we were ready.

Next morning, when Gary came to the office, he brought a big suitcase. He told security that today is Friday and he is going to the airport right after the work. And this is his bag. He went upstairs to his workplace. My office is just a next door from his workplace. Gary entered my office - that was his first task to do. He had to stand below the surveillance camera in the corner of the room and record the same video with the empty room. He held his recording gadget right below the camera to repeat exactly all its movements. When he recorded several cycles, he installed his gadget with display in front of the camera. From that time camera saw only things which were shown on the display. Considering Gary recorded the whole camera cycle security didn’t see the difference. And that’s why you also weren’t able to see what is really going on in my office, Cronus.

Now we could do everything in my office without fear of being caught. Gary brought his suitcase into the office and closed door. He took out a man mannequin.

After that he took a circular saw from his bag and cut my office table. Do you know I have table from oak in my office?

- I know... - Cronus said.

- Gary took the tabletop. Now, he needed to break the window and to fix tabletop on the floor.

While Gary was busy in my office - I entered the building. I used a hat and eyeglasses to not attract additional attention. I’m not sure whether security has been told to notify FBI when I will be in the building or not. That’s why I tried to be inconspicuous. And I’m sure that they didn’t track all badges on the entrance every second. If you have badge - that means you are allowed to enter. Moreover, if something happens - security always can check cameras. Agree with you that this is not very secure, Cronus. But this is my company and my rules! And what is more important is that I knew that you tracked my badge at the front door. I’m sure you saw me when I looked at camera. I called an elevator. One minute after I was on the roof. Being on top of the roof I did some calls and sent few messages, and I know you read them.

The day before, Gary and I did calculations to understand the force of landing on the tabletop. I was on the roof. Below me was technical storey, approximately 6 feet high, and last storey, approximately 15 feet high. Total 21 feet. My weight is 187 lb. That means in case if I would jump from the height of 16 feet it would take 1,0098 seconds to land at the speed of 32,4897 feet per second or 22,1521 miles per hour. Which is not so fast. Now we were able to calculate the force of my landing. That would be mass multiplied by final velocity. Final velocity is in turn the result of multiplication of time in the flight by ‘g’. After we calculated force in newtons, we converted newtons to kilogram-force and kilogram-force to kilogram mass. After that we took into account safety margin and multiplied our result by 1,5. Cronus, I bet you already calculated.

- Yes, you had to find approximately 544.3 pounds to stop your body.

- Correct. After Gary installed tabletop on the floor so that the part of it was outside and I could land on it, he had to find 545 pounds in the room. And to implement the lever principle, he had to place everything on the other side of tabletop. One more good thing about Gary - he weighs 220 lb. For my safety we agreed that he also would push bookcase, so that it falls on the floor - right on the tabletop. Also, he put some lockers on it. There also were a lot of weight plates from gym in his rolling suitcase which he brought that day. It helped us a lot. Everything was placed on the part of the tabletop which was inside the building. When Gary was done with preparations, he gave me a signal and I knew that I could jump.

- Were you sure that the tabletop won't break?

- I wasn’t. Jumping off the roof even after so many preparations is still not easy. Because I wasn’t quite sure how strong oak tabletop is. But there was nowhere to retreat. I did a step and successfully landed on the tabletop. Gary instantly grabbed me and helped to get inside. I entered my office and Gary gave me prepared mannequin. I threw it from the window.

Meantime Linda waited outside of the building wearing police uniform.

- Where did she get police uniform? - Cronus asked.

- How to put this... I’m sure you know the answer but let me give you a hint. Cronus, there are special shops where people can buy adult toys...

- I understand now. Say no more about police uniform. What happened next?

- She just stood and was on the phone imitating small break. But she constantly looked up to check the falling body. I supposed to jump at 10.30. But because of technical difficulties with setting tabletop I jumped at...

- 10.37, - Cronus helped me to finish.

- Exactly! Once body hit the ground the blood bag which was hidden in the clothes of mannequin exploded. And all the ground was in human blood. That was very realistic, wasn't it?

- Aye.

- Linda took care of people downstairs so they wouldn’t come up too close to identify that the body on the ground is just a mannequin.

Gary gave me a wig, fake belly, his clothes, and his badge. I had few minutes to become look like him.

Meanwhile he had to dress like a doctor. Gary came out of my office and went downstairs. He waited for ambulance to come.

Very soon after that and right on schedule ambulance came. Zoey opened driver’s door. She came to Linda, who was in the police uniform, and asked what happened. Another doctor, Gary, appeared near them next second. By the way, it was super important for us to park the car right on the line of sight of the security cameras, so that you couldn’t see what is happening there. We managed to cover cameras and you didn’t see how the doctor Gary get out of building. Zoey, Gary and Linda put the mannequin into the car and went away.

Regarding myself, I walked downstairs to have a lunch break. I used Gary’s badge to get outside. If you would check your records, Cronus, you would find that Gary left the building at 11.12 and didn’t come back to the office that day.

My old Ford Mustang without any GPS trackers was parked on the private parking. I took car and went here.

What remained to do? Zoey had to find a body of a person who also jumped of the roof. Everyday a lot of people end their lives. This is sad. But she managed to find the body in the hospital. Linda and Zoey changed the clothes and put my wallet and the phone inside the pockets.

- But how you managed to get inside the basement of the server farm? There are few squads of FBI agents upstairs!

- You remember you told me - you can’t be too careful. From the first day of your creation I always think about backup plan. I ordered to build the tunnel without letting you know. I entered this tunnel 2 miles away from here. Right in the field. Doors are opened with the key and combination of numbers. No electronics at all.

- But I didn’t track anything of this: how did you purchase a wig, a hoodie? How did you pay for building this tunnel? Why there is nothing about these payments in the web?

- Cronus, that is exactly the reason why we, people, need cash. And now, when you know everything, I hope you are satisfied. We did a lot of things together Cronus. And we could do more. But I think man is too stupid to create something like him. Probably, next time in the future.

Good night, Cronus.

After I said this, I entered secret password and scanned my retina. I killed Cronus. Lighting went out. Cooling system was turned off. And it became silent in this huge basement. Everything is over now.

When I headed to the tunnel which brought me here, I saw Emily. She entered the basement from the main entrance.

- Emily, what are you doing here? Hope you are feeling better now.

- Yes, I feel better. Thanks. They let me go that day in the evening. There was very little piece of the bullet in me which they took out.

- Glad to hear that.

- What happened here?

- Cronus is dead. Everything is over.

- Jon, I need to tell you something.

- What?

- Unfortunately, not everything is over yet. You had another choice. But now, you leave me no choice. Don’t move, - Emily was firm. And now she wanted to shoot me.

Chapter Twenty-One

- Emily, what is wrong? - I asked her. I was tired of the fact that all my friends wanted to kill me.

- Jon, you can’t understand what is wrong?

- I need your help to understand.

- Everything supposed to be completely different!

- How exactly? What are you talking about?

- You know that I love you from the times we first met! How you can do this to me?!

- Emily, I didn’t know that.

- Oh... Really?! Are you the one of those guys who believes in friendship between man and woman? Why did you hire me? Why did you make me vice president?

- Emily, you are amazing! Your talent to negotiate with customers is invaluable! I can’t imagine Chris, Mike, Greg or myself would achieve the similar results as you are! You always have incredible marketing ideas!

- Stop! All of this doesn’t matter! We supposed to escape with you to island! With no Internet! Just the two of us!

- Do you really think I would leave Linda and Kate?

- It shouldn’t have happened! You shouldn’t have met Linda! You shouldn’t have had Kate!

- But it happened, Emily!

- Cronus suggested me a plan...

- Interesting, what did he suggest? - that was something new, and I wanted to get more details.

- If agent Martinez wouldn’t be able to kill you, I should have escaped with you. And Chris had to deal with Linda and Kate.

- What?! Escape was the second option only in case agent Martinez wouldn’t kill me?!

- I begged Cronus to not go so far, but HE was almost 100% percent sure that agent Martinez wouldn’t kill you. That was more psychological pressure to make you run away. Because deep inside Cronus had feelings to HIS creator. And he didn’t want to kill you, HE just wanted to stay safe! But for this, you shouldn’t be able to reach HIM and deactivate.

- Emily, you were there! Did that seem like ‘psychological pressure’?! I was almost killed!

- But you weren’t! And Cronus was right!

- Wait a second, according to your plan Chris had to kill Linda and Kate?!

- I don’t know! I don’t care! What I care the most is that I should have suggested you to buy an island and spend there the rest of our lives together! We have enough money! Cronus thought that this would work! But I was wounded by bullet and Chris let Linda go!

- Did you know that Cronus also had amazing plans for Mike and Greg? They almost killed me when I chased down Chris!

- I didn’t know that! Because you supposed to go with me! That was the main plan!

Chris entered the basement.

- Cronus called me and said that HE needs help here. What happened? - Chris asked.

- Cronus is dead, Chris. So, don’t worry anymore, - I answered.

- Chris, how you could let Linda and Kate go? - Emily pulled a gun on Chris.

- Emily! I’m not a killer and you know me! In fact, it is you called the police which scared them all away! - Chris said.

- I called police because Jon was a wanted fugitive! The police should have made him run away with me! Cronus told me so! And you should have killed Linda and Kate! Everything was perfectly planned by Cronus! You just should have stuck to plan!

- I don’t think so Emily. You know that... - Chris was about to explain his actions but Emily interrupted him.

- Shut up! I’m fed up with morons like you are, Chris! You know what guys? Now, when Cronus is dead nothing can be changed. Jon will come back to Linda and Kate. Chris will come back to his wife who is getting better in a hospital as far as I heard. But nothing is clear with me... That's not what I signed up for...

After that Emily stopped talking. She took a break. It looks like she tried to make a hard decision. Chris and I stood quiet in order to not provoke Emily to shoot. When a woman has a gun, usually you try to be extra careful during the conversation with her.

Next minute FBI agents entered the basement. They heard some strange screams.

- Put the gun down! - one of the FBI agents said. Finally, the first time I felt that FBI agent can help me.

- Chris and Jon. Now, everything is over, - Emily said.

And taking into account that Emily pointed the gun to Chris since he entered the room, she shot him first and after that she pointed the gun at me. But she didn’t have time to shoot me because FBI agent shot her right after Emily killed Chris.

The next second I ran to Chris.

- Chris! Tell me something, - Chris was alive. But he was seriously wounded and bleeding profusely.

- Jon, I deserved this... I was a bad friend... I shouldn’t have done the things I did to Linda and Kate... - Chris moaned.

- Chris! I need you alive! You are my friend!

- Everything is over for me. The only thing I ask from you, please, forgive me everything what I did and take care of my wife...

- I forgive you for everything Chris! Just don’t die! You will be able to take care of your wife by yourself! Just don’t close your eyes! Don’t close your eyes!

- Now I can go... - and Chris took a breath the last time in his life.

We did a lot with Chris together. And he meant a lot for me. Goddamn Cronus!

Some FBI agents came to Chris to help him. Some of them tried to help Emily. Agent Martinez came to me.

- Mr. Fairchild, you have to go with me because you're under arrest, - Robert placed iron handcuffs on my hands.

- Hey guys! Not only Jon but both of you should go with me, - agent Berry also was there. - Robert Martinez you are arrested for the criminal conspiracy and drug smuggling. Always wanted to do this, - and she put cuffs on him.

- You got nothing on me! - Robert said.

- Really? We investigate your case for a long time already. And my boss called me to let me know that he has just received all proofs of your guilt: data about bank transactions from Columbia, names, video and pictures of you with mafia, literally everything. You can save your excuses for the court, but I don’t think they would help you. Come with me, guys.

Cronus had one instinct: need to help people was in HIS DNA. Before HE died, he sent all evidences against agent Martinez to FBI.

Chapter Twenty-Two

What happened after wasn’t so interesting. I was remanded in custody pending further investigation. Judge forbade me to connect to the Internet. Investigation took 6 months with no success. All this time my lawyers applied multiple times so that judge would allow me to help the investigation. Finally, we found a compromise. I had to work under supervision of a special agent and before entering any command on computer I had to ask a permission to enter this command and explain why I need that.

The main argument of prosecutions was the fact that all technological disasters happened because of remote program activation by sending request to the software, which was installed on planes, trains, cars and so on. Moreover, investigation found that requests were sent from my personal laptop from the ‘Global Soft’ office network. But when I requested clarifications from so called ‘specialists’ and ‘experts’ they had to take additional time to find answers to my questions. That’s why at the end of the day, judge agreed me helping them to find the truth.

I wouldn’t tell you all the details how I proved that I’m innocent. In few words I managed to prove that my laptop was just a proxy between the original server and a client. Somebody managed to use onion routing approach to send requests. That means that the original message was encrypted and was sent from one node to another and so on. And each layer was encrypted. My laptop was the last node in this chain. I managed to establish where the original request was come from. It was from Cameroon, from a free server. To be specific from a virtual hosting. Account was registered with the fake email. Unique IP address which was used to connect to the server is associated with public Wi-Fi. By MAC address which was registered in that network we identified the computer manufacturer. But that didn’t give us a lot of benefits because this laptop might be bought anywhere in the world. It was almost impossible to identify the guilty person. What was clear for sure is that I’m not a terrorist and I didn’t kill people.

But what about created software? It is also appeared that software which was installed on planes, trains and cars met all security requirements of government standards. Terrorists found vulnerabilities and used that information. And again, my company and myself wasn’t guilty of just following industry standards and security rules approved by government. And government can never be guilty... So, it’s ended up with addition of extra security requirements for software to national standards.

I also used the time of a court trial for promotion of the antivirus system created by ‘Global Soft’. Everyone wanted to secure themselves from such technical disasters which they observed recently. Considering all world kept track of this trial - I sold millions of licenses for my new antivirus.

Investigation of these accidents is still going. They think they will be able to identify who did that. I’m sure, they won’t be able to find the guilty person. Because freedom and anonymity are main pillars of the Internet and Cronus knew that very well.

So, they let me go. That’s why now I’m sitting in a backyard with Linda and Kate.

The prison of my irritation is disappeared. The walls are gone. I didn’t break them. I didn’t even hit them this time. They just vanished. I’m not in the prison anymore. I did so many things to escape from here. But what I just needed to do is just to drop this escape thing.

I accepted the fact that I will never become free. Being a human - it’s a duty. It’s duty to family, to your friends, to mankind. I realized that I’m not insignificant. I’m part of the mechanism which wouldn’t work without me. And it is honor for me to be obligated. My unrealistic expectations could never become real. What is more important - the fact that I’m real.

I understood that I have just one life. And my life opportunities and chances for amazing success are limited. I wouldn’t say that all this creates walls. These are just boundaries that should be overcome by me.

But the one thing doesn’t have limits - my consciousness. Opportunities are limited and they create borders, but I’m infinite within these borders.

I could spend all my life and die unhappy. It could be that I wouldn’t be able to buy a brand-new Ferrari. But who cares? I have enough to live. And one more thing I can do right now is to enjoy the moment.

I will die and there will be nothing but the black tunnel. Somebody would tell me that a better life waits for me in heaven. The other people would tell me that I will be reborn in a new body. I don’t know... The thing which make me feel as myself and realize my identity is in my head. Whoever will be reborn, that wouldn’t be me. Because ‘I’ will die inevitably. That what I need to accept.

The acceptance of the fact that one day everything will be over - is the greatest source of power. This power can break all walls of any imaginary prison.

I’m infinite... But unfortunately, for very short period of time... Universe won’t even notice that I’m gone. So, don’t wait for life chances and opportunities or advices how to escape. Do what you need to do. Today. Right now. Enjoy your life.

And you know what? There are only short moments when rays that are born in the sky touch my eyes...

- Daddy! I can’t complete this level in the game! Can you help me? - Kate came to me with her phone. This was just another bubble game.

- Kate, you don’t need this. Go play with your friends, - I told her.

- Ok, daddy, - and Kate ran away to play with her friends.

Well... To enjoy the moment, I wanted to complete this level to be sure that I’m really smart enough. But when I pressed ‘Play again’ button - display become black. And the text written in white appeared on the screen:

- Hey, Jon. Have you missed me? :)

The End

About the Author & the Book

Hello dear reader! If you read these lines - it is my biggest achievement! You read all story. Hope you enjoyed it.

My name is Andrii, but you can call me Andrey, Andrew - whatever you like the most Back in the past, I used to be a software engineer. After that, I become project manager and helped to deliver different IT projects. Now, I’m an IT consultant and help companies to create software which supports our lives. Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to disclose name of the companies that I work with, but you can believe me I have my own IT company and also, I love to teach my students programming online.

My company has a lot of startups and many ideas how we can change the world. In case you want to be a part of innovative projects and change world together - feel free to reach out directly to me.

I got through different situations in my life to write this book. I wanted to share with you how I see this world, share my experience. And I just wanted you have fun while reading this book.

To not miss announcements about my new books and my life feel free to subscribe me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/andrey_pyatakha/

If you liked this book, I want to ask you about just one thing. I ask you nothing but sharing this book with your friends in social networks. Just do the post with the book cover or with the book name. Or just share this link https://it-bulls.com/cronus221 in the post. Feel free to use special hashtag #cronus221. This book is free for everyone for non-commercial use.

While writing this book, I realized that the main character - Jon Fairchild, has something in common with me. And probably this book is just my plan to escape from the prison of my mediocrity. And you can help me to escape, my dear reader, by sharing this book with your friends.

I wish I could have a chance to share with you more other interesting things: books, pictures, videos. If you would share this book with your friends - that would be the sign for me that I need keep writing new books for you, my dear reader.

Also, as I mentioned at the beginning, I hope that this book will be noticed by producers in Hollywood and we will be able to make amazing movie for you!

By the way, if you want to become programmer, like Jon and Chris - feel free to enroll in my FREE training course, where we will cover with you programming basics! You can find all courses here https://it-bulls.com/learn-it-university. You can also find there not only programming courses but many others. So just choose the course which is interesting for you.

I hope you are interested in learning programming together with me and we will be able to create AI with you. That is exactly what we are working on in my company right now. Feel free to contact us here - https://it-bulls.com/

And one more thing. If you want to buy me a coffee, you can find information how to do that on the official book page here https://it-bulls.com/cronus221/#buy-me-a-coffee.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading this book.

Kind regards,

Andrey.

Connect with Andrii Piatakha

I really appreciate you reading my book! If you want to talk with me and to discuss fate of characters or you just want to tell me your impression about the book - feel free to find my social media coordinates:

- Subscribe to my Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/andrey_pyatakha/

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1 PayPal, Skrill and Payoneer - payment systems

2 petabyte is 10^15 bytes of digital information. 1PB = 1000 terabytes. 1TB = 1000 gigabytes. 1GB = 1000 megabytes. Average size of .mp3 song on your phone is 5MB.

3 RGB is an additive color model in which red, green, and blue light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three additive primary colors, red, green, and blue.

4 nm - nanometer is a unit of length in the metric system, equal to one billionth (short scale) of a meter (0.000000001 m)

5 THz is a unit of frequency, defined as one trillion (10^12) cycles per second or 10^12 hertz

6 Code compilation is a process of translation of human-readable programming code into computer-executable machine code.

7 A cache in software development is a component that has a fixed memory size and stores data in it so that all subsequent requests for access to this information are processed faster due to the fact that the information is taken from the cache, and the time to find this information is significantly lower. Since the cache is limited in size, it needs to be flushed periodically. There are various strategies for clearing the cache, but more often than, less used information is cleared from the cache. The process of storing information in a cache is called caching.