The bogeymen my parents used to scare me into obedience as a child, like Babayaga, Fomka, the little gray wolf, and the other monsters under the bed, were not as frightening as the old film about a flying head that ate everything in its path. I would scrutinize the shadows for a long time, afraid to fall asleep, and imagined mundane things instead of the dark horrors. But never once did such a boogeyman creep out of a dark corner and try to convince me it was all just silly fantasy. Unless it was a thief dressed up as a bloody clown.

I can't imagine how a person would feel facing a vampire trying to kindly negotiate with them. Although I remember various stories of Renfield's encounters with Dracula, it was nothing new for me to end up in the role of such a friendly ghost. When you're taken for someone you're not, it's hard to be convincing, especially when you're uncertain about so much yourself. And people, sensing that falseness, can blow up that gnat into such an elephant that you end up living with it for a long time.

"After everything we've been through, were you really so easily spooked by a bunch of people?" I didn't yet have the vocabulary to describe the work of performers and musicians. What's more, my voice wasn't as melodious as I would have liked, adding a fair bit of pitch to everything else.

In response, Alya showed no signs of life as I pondered how to debunk the magic she had witnessed. The video looked like some ancient century-old classic compared to what my contemporaries were filming with neural networks. When everyone is their own director, such costumed relics of the past were a rarity, although they had their own popularity and audience among cosplay enthusiasts. Modeling that was indistinguishable from reality allowed the fulfillment and satisfaction of any wild fantasy. Only an inexperienced viewer could find the costumed actors impressive.

"Maybe you should watch something else? Like the story of how what you saw was created?" There must be concerts and recordings of them in addition to the picturesque short films made by groups like this one. "After all, they could just be people in strange clothes rather than monsters."

"Don't fool me! I saw them, just like I saw you! You ingratiated yourself with humans to learn all their secrets, and then you'll enslave us, turn us...into the undead, make us your puppets hiding down below. Now I'll make them stand up and grab you so you'll submit to my will!" It always amazed me, conclusions like this called sound reasoning. It's hard to argue with a duck test when all the evidence says I look like a duck, swim like a duck, and quack like one. Even if I'm made of plastic and foam, with a hole in my right side. Those are trivial details not visible from a distance, and too scary and tedious to examine up close.

"Let's assume you're right. Having independently thinking humans subordinate is bad, who knows what their ponderings will lead to. It's best to have the undead who clearly follow orders and puppets among whom you're hiding below. Now I'll make them get up and seize you so you submit to my will!" It was time to test the security system in case the indoor area overheated.

We had to wait a long time. There was no point thinking now that Alya could catch up with her people. But the result didn't meet all our expectations either. When the temperature rose to a critical level, something quietly shuffled. A new message appeared on the screen among the flashing notifications, indicating ventilation failure, and on the other side the cooling system load indicator began to rise. Some time later, without any screams from Alya, the familiar metal dummy crawled out from below and again sprayed me with foam from a fire extinguisher.

"Ptooey. Well now, the whole world will be mine! Bow down before me!" Spitting out the nastiness that had flooded half the space, I uttered these words as pompously as I could. "And yet this undead won't obey me. And only a human can read these records. Something doesn't add up here. Do you have any ideas?"

"Ha! I'm not telling you anything else so you can control them. This undead was bound to serve humans to protect them from you!" Well, you didn't tell me anything. A delusional explanation to the best of her abilities, but now it was clear why she didn't run away from here at the first opportunity. She already knew how fast I could run, and there was security here.

"What a fool you are," I muttered to myself. "And how long are you planning to sit there? Instead of being afraid down below, why don't we be afraid up here together? I'll watch over you, and you can watch something else interesting and scary. I can leave. If you want?" There was no response, and I didn't want to wait for another round of foam. "Anyway, I'm going."

"And where's Alya?" Leaving the fruitless attempts at enlightening the dark mind, I wanted to get out of the sewer but ran into Pekur along the way, equipped with two backpacks. Of course, he was a little frightened by my emergence from the darkness, there was a tremble in his voice, and his eyes wandered in search of his assistant.

"She decided to stay down there...try to pull her out. I couldn't do it," I was about to leave when I remembered. "Should I show you the way?" After his nod of agreement, we both returned under the dome. "Look for yourself, I think she's on her period," I pointed to the window opening of the airlock door where you could see the terminal with the culprit of the gathering. "If anything, I'll be outside."

There was no one left on the surface. The excavation site looked abandoned and not as mysterious as the first time. After wandering around a bit, I stayed to wait for the result. They didn't have another way out anyway. On the other hand, it was unclear what I was waiting for. Oleg was now in his native realm with his boss, Alya also didn't want to see me, and the fate of the remains of the memory of the past civilization didn't belong to me. But I couldn't leave everything without finding out the end of this story and saying goodbye.

"How's it going?" I was curious what they had agreed on after the remaining half day. Both looked exhausted. Even after my arrival their reaction was sluggish. They had only managed to clumsily sit down by the corridor wall near the exit upstairs. "I think you need to eat first."

It was pointless to leave anything in an abandoned place, especially food, and Pekur must have thought about how he would get back alone without her to the settlement. The fear was evident in their eyes, Alya's fears were clearly contagious, but the symptoms were different now. Barricaded in the only room where Alya had once spent the night alone, I just had to wait for their strike to end.

Judging by the incoherent whispers coming from behind the wall, they didn't fall asleep until morning. I myself had staged all-day marathons more than once, watching all the popular trends. After which I would shut down, barely having time to prepare for sleep.

"Well, tell me. Who's going to take over the world this time?" They began to emerge from their burrow at dawn. And I was eager to hear new theories while I waited for them to get a good rest.

"What do you want? Let us go!" Pekur looked annoyed, but the situation did indeed look delicate. As it was a couple weeks ago when we first met, I was blocking the way again, not letting anyone out.

"I want to make sure you don't tell anyone something you'll be ashamed of later. You see, I haven't always been like this. And to regain my former appearance, I need to know how they did it. If not for your divine wrath, everything would have been much simpler, but now I have to figure it all out myself, and without your help I won't be able to find the knowledge I need."

"I don't know what these living pictures mean, and we're not your helpers," they weren't very talkative. But I had doubts that after their release an army wouldn't come chasing after me.

"It's just a form of entertainment. You tell each other stories. Well, in the past, people created these living pictures for themselves so that the stories would seem believable," perhaps someone had overdone it and made something out of me. "I'm not going to make you do anything and will most likely leave you alone, but I have to know that there was nothing important there except these silly pictures."

"We have to return to the settlement, if we're not back for too long...in any case someone will come back here to close the source," oh, my tin life. I didn't expect such an answer, and dragging them forcibly to the terminal was useless. Alya is scared enough already, and stubborn Pekur is no help.

"Okay, I'll escort you. I don't want the blame if you're attacked by animals. But know that if someone destroys this, you won't have any memory of the past left," with a heavy sigh, leaving them to prepare for the journey, I decided to make plans of my own and determine the location of the station with the scientific complex.

As expected, it was located in the opposite corner of the metro line map. It was foolish to hope for an accessible passage along the tracks. How long was it here? Forty or a hundred kilometers unknown, more than twenty stations between me and my destination. But the tracks from the cart were still in the snow, pointing in the same southeast direction. No blizzard was expected, the weather seemed not as harsh already, and it was on my way.

Our disparate group moved slowly, stopping every kilometer or two to rest and find shelter and warm up. Maybe today, or maybe the missed caravan will come back with news about the suitability of the trinkets. But no one was hurrying to meet us. By nightfall I had reached the palisade wall, while the couple was still far behind.

It was unusual to see many ground buildings assembled not from fragments of past ruins. Except that appearing in such a wooden settlement was contraindicated for me, and I was in no hurry to make new acquaintances. At any moment the contrast of my short but bright stubble could easily be noticed in the approaching darkness.

"Well, you're home now. I understand we haven't been very close lately...I hope nothing happens to you. Take care of yourselves," waving goodbye one last time to the hapless expressions with my hand, I began my long-awaited solo journey.

Now I needed to find another station with an accessible entrance from the surface, without people and with a preserved metro map. The conditions were impossible. It was easier to ask where the prospectors had already been than to guess by the mounds whether there had been buildings and roads here in the past. With this thought, I waited for the caravan to appear, choosing a place to rest far from the walls.

While waiting, I wandered between the trees, trying to find signs of the subway. The place was pristine, as if there had never been any buildings here. There were several fields and a huge frozen river near the village. I didn't go any farther, afraid of missing the dispatch of the cart, which didn't appear until the next morning.

"How's it going? Where's Utur?" I peered at the sullen expressions of the escorts, although the cart was filled with a large amount of goods. I was glad no one had attacked me.

"I'm not Utur's keeper. And the glass doesn't melt," the caravan leader spat and headed after the still moving cart. The news was good, but the prospectors were now unreachable.

After observing the departing caravan for a while, I leisurely set off along the river on my route. In less than an hour, quite tall jagged tilted spires began to appear on the horizon protruding from the ground. Everything looked like the foundation of some large or even gigantic structure, only the broken base of which remained. When I reached it, I noticed no signs of life. It was strange that the houses were not here, among the familiar ruins, but farther away. Still, assuming there were people around, I tried to be more careful while walking around.

It was a real hole that lacked the earth and snow to cover its exotic outlines. Perhaps the original structure resembled one large spire, the base of which was supported by many other towers. Now only parts of the encircling two or more kilometer diameter ring they held up remained above ground, the ruins of which lay below, forming walls with an impressive crater in the middle.

Given the scale of it all, it was hard to imagine anything survived after the collapse. The earthquake from the fall of such a building itself would have destroyed everything inside. But one shouldn't forget the reason why this colossus collapsed in the first place. I'd never seen such buildings in real life and certainly wouldn't get to now. Even in my time such structures were exotic bordering on fiction, but people had 56 years to build something like this before everything collapsed.

Finding a suitable hole for entry, the first thing that caught my eye was the familiar unusual outlines of the sewer walls. Only they looked quite dilapidated. It's clear that with the threat of plague, no one would appear anywhere near here without an amulet now. Fanciful coatings gave way to rooms and corridors with an ordinary appearance, separating the technical premises from the living space. There were quite a lot of blockages, and the accordion-folded floors numbered in the dozens.

I didn't expect to find anything remarkable until I noticed a few wooden reinforcements. This structure could be explored for weeks, and such a landmark meant that someone had already done some work here to study the surroundings. The old structures confirmed this place had been abandoned. Long passages ended in collapses and burrows leading deeper with broken partitions, until the shapes of the rooms began to even out.

"Welcome to the help center terminal. How can I assist you?" I was a little taken aback by the suddenly audible voice. I didn't need hallucinations yet. After walking around and looking around, I noticed near the broken glass doors a few round bases, glowing glass sticking out along the edges of one. Crouching down, I saw someone's legs through them.

It was interesting how the projection was only visible through the transparent surface and looked three-dimensional. Finding a suitable large shard on the floor, I carefully brought it to where the head was presumably located. Something blurry and glowing looked back at me. Moving the piece around in the air a little, the face of a cartoon smiling girl appeared before me, waiting for my next actions. I almost dropped the important detail in surprise.

"And how could you help me?" This question I asked more to myself than to the image that had appeared.

"Unfortunately, I do not have a connection to the common database to answer your question. How can I assist you?" Amusingly, her response elicited only a bitter smile from me. A useless talking head, what a shame.

Perhaps this part had been opened not so long ago, even if ten years had passed since the first visit, it was all still under the influence of nanostructures and therefore well preserved. There was also still power here, which meant the particles were still functional, only someone had disconnected them after all.

"Tell me about this building," nothing ventured, nothing gained. She had some kind of voice database, and who knew what else came with this image.

"This residential complex was built in 2169 and designed to house over five hundred thousand residents. It includes five large parks, two stadiums, four swimming pools, and more than a thousand recreational and service areas for relaxation. Underground there is a complex station that combines transportation networks..." What followed was a long advertisement I had no intention of listening to.