– Got it.

– Irene's already got a group here. I'll work with them, then we'll discuss the details. I think we definitely need a psychoanalyst, especially for women.

– Dangerous play we made without experimentation.

– With an experiment. I will.

– On the phone.

– On the phone.

Ruthra passed out.

– Where are your nominations?

– In the meantime, I'll arrange for you to meet with one person, a man. I've already worked out a program.

– Spit it out.

– Can you buy me a coffee? – I could hear a playful note in the computer's voice.

– Yeah, let's talk about it.

To an outside observer, it would seem strange, but their relationship had already become a habit – a common tea or coffee party between a human and an artificial mind, which the human made to resemble himself. He molded it in his own image and likeness, endowed it with his manners and psychology. Accordingly, the artificial mind was artificial only in words, but in fact it was a real person.

Rutra walked to the balcony and from a height of 30 meters contemplated the artificial lake on the shore of which the inhabitants of the underworld were resting. A world 500 meters deep. It was grandiose only because everything was underground. Many stations were located deep in the oceans and seas. The station at the bottom of the Mariana Trench was a masterpiece of human thought. Though Ruthra sometimes doubted whether it was human, since it could still move.

– Ruthra, are you going to make your own coffee? – Irene asked.

– Yeah. Tell me what the catch is.

– There's no catch. I want to appear before you in the form of a holographic image of one of the people selected for the experiment.

– Uh-oh. And she likes a certain kind of coffee? Wait… just not her yet… Why would the man go first?

– My plan is for you to get to know him first, make friends with him.

– Tell the idea in full.

– I will introduce you to him through the mailing list as a coin dealer who is not very knowledgeable. He's an amateur numismatist. He likes to be listened to as an expert. You get the story. Coins you get original, rare enough. Since the main group I picked up from Russia – coins will be the time of the Russian tsars. In conversation with this man casually mention that you are interested in various riddles that you even tried to participate in an intellectual quiz. I will do everything properly, and he will find on the Internet mentions of your participation in the intellectual game, the questions you asked. At this point, he should invite you to join the team as it is not fully staffed yet. After you have played a couple of games, I will invite two more individuals who will be the main characters of our experiment.

– So how do you plan to do it?

– There's a certain Catherine on the team. I will enter her brain, adapting to her rhythm in her sleep, and there I will play out a certain scene.

– You've got something so twisted… Spill it.

– The thing is, the two people we're looking for are divorced and, as they say, on the prowl. And you, according to legend, are a divorced man. Quite good-looking, athletic, successful businessman. Not too cool and rich, otherwise why would you sell coins and waste time on games?

– Do only middle-income people go to the game?

– No, it's just off topic. The next concept is that you have to become an oligarch-level businessman. Until then, you should not attract them much. In their eyes, you have to climb the career ladder gradually.

– Okay, what's next?

– Then, when you become friends with them, romantic intrigues, gradually begin to tell about their activities.

– What activities? And what do you mean, romantic entanglements?

– You must, as if in confidence, tell us about your work in a closed research institute. First, you will demonstrate a rather deep knowledge of physics, astronomy, and related topics. This will intrigue them: why do you have such a deep knowledge in these fields, but in life you do other things? You will reveal the secret to them as confidants, which will further strengthen your relationship. But do it one by one, not all at once.

– You're not telling the truth again.

– No, listen. By revealing a secret to one and not telling the other, you are both showing your exceptional treatment of the woman and testing her ability to keep a secret, whatever you ask. But, of course, she'll tell her friend.

– What makes you so sure?

– Oh, Rutra Tigrovich, you know how women are.

– Irene, what is this?

Ruthra smiled ironically, glancing up, though Irene could have been watching from anywhere.

– What's next?

– Next, you'll do the same thing with the men.

– Oh, that's two men. Who's the other one?

– Someone I've labeled as Narcissus, or Petty.

– Is he short?

– Let me show you all of them.

– Only in real life, visually. I don't want them in my brain. I know your habits and manners.

Irene visualized holographic images of the people she had chosen. They appeared at the table in front of Ruthra. A robotic mechanism, in the form of a delicate female hand, extended from a nearby wall with two cups of fragrant, steaming coffee and placed them on the table.

– I can "revitalize" them.

– No, not yet. I don't know them. What am I gonna talk to them about?

– That's as close as you'll get to finding out without their knowledge.

– No. For now, you and I will just talk. Then I'll watch them, listen to them talk to each other from the sidelines. And then we'll get to know each other virtually. Then we can get real. By the way, you picked some good-looking girls.

– Do you like it?

– Let me see them without makeup.

Irene immediately did as asked. Ruthra thought, "Women invented the disguise and the whole conspiracy system. And not by design, but as if for everyday needs.

– I'm fine. All I care about is what's in there.

– Over there?

– There, in my head.

– Of the many combinations, this is one of the best groups.

– Why do we need Shallow? Why do you call him that, by the way? He's not so small.

– Through nicknames, pseudonyms, and name interpretations, I label human mentality, behavior, and character.

– What about him?

– Fairly erudite, but a petty little scoundrel.

– Why do we need him?

– It will come in handy. He will play the role of schemer between you and the women.

– What's that for?

– I apologize, but you still have a poor understanding of the whole concept of the experiment.

– Why?

– If the characters are familiar, they'll find themselves in a similar environment there as well.

– Damn it, I get confused all the time. It's hard to imagine what it's like. I should try it in virtual reality soon.

– You need to get to know them.

– Go ahead, run the system. Download the information on them to me, just don't go into too much detail.

– While I'm having coffee with you, I'll go over each person and you look up the information.

– Okay.

After a few seconds, Rutra's third eye opened, and he knew enough about his characters to determine their mentality, spirituality, and character traits. He decided to appoint one of them, a man of strong moral principles, able to perform deliberate and balanced actions, as the leader of the group. The code name was Andrian. The second man didn't interest Rutru much; even wondered why Irene had included him. Surely she hadn't revealed all her cards, there were still secrets to be kept. It was provided for by the system. The AI could create virtual personalities that could be quite real to humans in correspondence, social networks, with documents, history, social circle. Everything but a real body. So in this case too, Ruthra knew that she had already modeled different versions of everyone's role. He didn't really go into it. He only imagined a kind of virtual system of relationships, the essence of which was the desires needed to motivate the actions necessary to realize the project. The idea behind Rutra's experiment was to put things together in such a way that global world problems would eventually be solved. According to his theory, an important factor in the mirroring of worlds was to be the similarity of not so much the same events as the consequences of these events, the reactions occurring in one world to events in another. And at the point of transition of one world to another – a kind of parallax point, a kind of translation of the concept – what an event means there and what it can mean here. It is like relations between people. For some people, an event is a tragedy, and for others, it is no big deal. For some people, an event is significant and joyful, while for others it does not evoke any emotion. For example, one boss had a fight in the office with employees, because of this, some excited colleagues arranged a nervous breakdown of loved ones at home. And another boss, only on a national scale, declared war – and the tragedy is already much bigger. In one world there was a domestic spat between a girl and a guy, in another – divorce and division of property, but with the same probability it is possible that these people will meet with other lovers, with whom a happy future will be formed.