– Not at all," he said.

The girls looked at each other and quickly left. Discipline had taken its toll. Yuri Vasilyevich's age, rank, and record spoke for themselves. Zhidkov came into Rutra's office, as if he had been standing somewhere close by.

– I went abroad under the surname of Zhemchuzhin, and when I came here, my documents were still old, so they make fun of me. I worked in Palestine and Israel for a long time, so that's why I've been there. No one trusts anyone there. And how can you trust when you're going to die every day? Everyone hides behind a Janus mask to survive. In order for you to understand what happens in such a serious organization, now we will go by departments and you will get acquainted with everyone and everything.

So began Rutra's first day of work at the new place. Basically, except for the fact that Center Zero was the coordinating center between the secret services and the intelligence agencies, he knew everything else. This was not news to him, as he was aware of the capabilities of the intelligence services.

In the modern world, cynical rationality and the most absurd chaos are intertwined in the most bizarre way. The special services of the world's strongest states can easily track all the actions and movements of a law-abiding citizen, but are unable to prevent major terrorist acts. The Large Hadron Collider has brought science closer to understanding the origin of the Universe, but at the same time domestic obscurantism has reached a level that would have been marveled at even in the Middle Ages.

All this creates the most hothouse conditions for the growth of all sorts of conspiracy theories that explain everything that happens in the world as the result of deliberate actions of malicious forces or simply insidious plans of secret groups – from sects and special services to Freemasons and demons. Conspiracy theories have not ignored high technology. You bet, because it is such a tempting way to find simple explanations for the most ambiguous and new events and phenomena!

Subconsciously, most of us seriously and not without reason suspect that all these global elites, governments and big business are manipulating technology for their own interests, in an effort to maintain and increase their power and influence over ordinary people.

One of the claims of conspiracy theory adherents is that "social networks are created and operated with the participation of intelligence agencies." This is the most popular and easily provable conspiracy theory.

Special services and law enforcement agencies really enjoy taking advantage of the information that users voluntarily post on Facebook, VKontakte and other social networks.

At the same time, the press regularly reports that the management of networks directly cooperates with secret services. Take for example the recent scandal with the management of VKontakte, which was accused of links with the FSB, the K Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the notorious "former gray cardinal" Vladislav Suchkov. It is hard to say how credible such reports are, if even without contact with the owners the special services have all the technical means to monitor social networks.

Another of their claims is: "Your laptop, TV and game console are spying on you". All electronic and radio-technical devices are capable of spying on their owners: hidden microphones and cameras, as well as schemes for transmitting encrypted signals over the Internet or into the radio air have been repeatedly discovered in them. It's no secret that laptop or smartphone cameras can be activated even without your participation and without proper signaling, so knowledgeable people make sure to cover them with opaque tape.

Some companies no longer feel the need to hide their desire to spy on their customers. For example, Comcast, Google TV, Microsoft and Verizon have applied for patents on designs for TVs and DVRs that can monitor what viewers do while using them. The plan is to track all movements, sounds, food and beverage choices, nationality, mood and other information to make ads more targeted and shows more relevant to the moment.

However, the conspiracy believers claim, "We know what it's really all about!" In today's world, it is virtually impossible to hide. All electronic devices transmit encrypted information, quite legally, in all directions. They also mark all their, i.e. your, activities with markers. Everything is equipped with special markers – even a sheet of paper from a printer, or a barrel in a weapon.

The next day the training continued. Yuri Vasilyevich took Rutra around the entire center, telling and showing him where everyone was sitting and what was lying around. After a couple of hours, Rutra knew not only that only a very narrow circle of people suspected the existence of Center Zero, but also that there was only one way out of here to normal civilian (and not necessarily civilian) life.

– Through death," Yuri explained in his joking manner.

He also learned that even the government and presidential administration didn't know about the center. And that all this supreme power is just one of the subdivisions of Center Zero, and the top-level clearances have only a few. Yuri Vasilievich did not speak very favorably of them.

– What did you think? You think there's no control over the president? Even Stalin couldn't personally send troops wherever he thought they needed to go. It's all a myth about his unlimited power. Everything was decided by the "rate" and the "committee", and he was in the grip of an organization like ours. It seems to the average person that everything is decided by the power, which they talk about on TV every day. In fact, the real power is always hidden, it is not in public, but deep in the bunker.

This brought an interesting thought to Ruth's mind. He thought, "How do all these people get from here to the surface? Where to? There are so many of them. Through what checkpoint or gatehouse? The same way I do? Then how can it be hidden? I mean, you have to disguise it somehow. It's not a problem, though.

He asked Vasilievich about it. He replied in his manner that this was the most interesting thing, and smiled. Indeed, the "most interesting" thing about the Zero department was that they came out through the Institute for Strategic Analysis under the President of Russia. But Rutra learned about that later.

After a week, Ruthra estimated that not everyone went upstairs in the evening. The dungeon itself was like a large anthill of corridors and rooms, and everyone had access only to their own corridor. Very rarely did anyone within a corridor have access to a neighboring room. Passes were issued in a very interesting way: an invisible bar code was put on the nail of the thumb, which had to be applied to a special scanner at the entrance. Every day the barcode was changed. At the entrance, the hand was put to a special printer, which put a special number. On the way out you had to put your hand to the scanner. After reading the number, the scanner destroyed it.

Yuri Vasilyevich was willful. He told me that he had been on assignment abroad many times, under different names, where, as he put it, he "did a lot of interesting things". In the specialized circles, it was called "combat service".

Rutra asked Yuri Vasilievich what was in the neighboring departments.

– What is it? Come on, I'll show you.

They stepped out into the corridor. All the corridors were very dark and poorly lit.