– You're so smart. How's that?

– I've already tried everything on animals.

– Without authorization?

– Come on, I got free rein. Where it goes from here.

– And how? How did you realize that they had become each other? Did they just say to you, "We're different mice now"?

Ruthra almost laughed. His friend jokingly gave a look of scholarly arrogance on his face. Ruthra gave an even more arrogant look in return, and only his smile betrayed the friendly banter.

– Oh, oh, oh, we're so important. Such a great, brilliant scientist has, of course, transplanted the brain of a tiger into a rabbit.

Rutra laughed. The other colleagues present at the dialog couldn't afford to be so cavalier with Rutra, so they watched the "performance" in silence, smiling.

– All right, you win. Yes, I transferred, as you put it, the brain, or rather, what's in it, of a mouse into a cat… and vice versa. I won't tell you how I realized it worked, but I will tell you that it was very funny. You can laugh now. No, you're not laughing? Ha-ha-ha. I'll laugh for you. All right, ready?

Ruthra made a serious face, he was still trying to bring his comrade back to subordination in front of those present.

– I'm ready. Let's get started. Let's go to the virtualization room.

– Not in a virtual room. I couldn't conduct secret experiments there, especially not from such a harmful boss.

– Uh-oh, tell me you've been keeping a secret from Big Sis.

They smiled, however, and so did everyone behind them. Big Sister was the name of the artificial intelligence in the facility, which was connected to literally everything, either wired or wireless. For example, even the plates in the dining room showed the temperature of the food in them, not to mention the total control even without surveillance through video cameras. The artificial intelligence that Rutra had named after the chief administrator, Irene, not only constantly scanned the entire space inside and outside the facility, but also had a perfect view of what was inside people, even their emotional state. That was the price of the highest caste. In return, there was life in another world, where there were no concepts of "can", "can't", "cost", "boundaries", "power" and many other things in the usual understanding of society. It was a different world, a world of power and omnipotence over people's consciousness, and it demanded constant perfect trust.

Ruthra guessed that his friend, and now his colleague, since he was also involved in the scientific development of mind transfer technology, was not telling him something. If the technology was ready, if it could be tested on humans, the main computer would know about it, and sanctions would be necessary. Most likely, the scientist wanted to present something similar in virtual reality and show that the program is worth spending time, money and human resources on it. And the use of supercomputer resources also required reports, including the subsequent results and their practical usefulness. Knowing the methods of the "luminary of science," as Rutra jokingly, and not only he, called his friend, he agreed.

Being in virtual reality was not new. Rutra had even stopped arguing with himself and the staff about whether the event was in the virtual world or in reality. He was already calculating reflexively – at any moment it was necessary to foresee the possibility of being in the virtual world. The main trick was that from there you were constantly returning to the real world, that is, you couldn't fail to realize where you were in the end. And from here, from the real world, the entrance was always through virtual reality settings. Virtual reality was like a dream. We don't know if we're dreaming or not. And once we realize it, we're actually awake. The virtual reality session was necessary to check real intentions, motivation, actions, desires, i.e. how a person would actually act depending on this or that situation in which he or she might find himself or herself. All variants of events were modeled by the supercomputer, it had knowledge about any person of the Earth: the data were in some database one way or another. Especially about the personalities whose deeds and decisions influenced the course of events of mankind. However, in the modern world, where free will was officially declared, a person could never be a personality, on whose deeds fateful changes depended, without giving rights for it to other similar personalities, who were already those who made global decisions. In all disputes and disagreements, the power-holders observed an unspoken rule of preserving their dominance and power – rotation was allowed only among themselves. For the same reason, checks in virtual reality directly in this center were a periodic procedure – like a session of psychoanalysis and questionnaires.

So the program proposed by the scientist seemed to Rutra to be a routine test, but at the same time, a doubt crept into him intuitively. Very often his delusional ideas and suggestions were miraculously realized. Just in case, he agreed to the experiment with the additional settings and recommendations given to Irene.

The Sphere Center's secret laboratory was located in the left wing of the underground city behind the main command shelter. It was not a military facility, it was not a civilian facility, or rather, it was "out of this world". 99% of the people of Earth, or even more, do not know who or what is controlling them. This system of "who and what" was referred to in documents and in the everyday conversation of those who knew and constituted it as "The Sphere". Ruthra, although he was already the head of the control board, could not always understand the idea of the creators of this and similar objects, whose life he had been breathing for the past five years. Why a shelter was needed at a depth of 500 meters, he could not understand. Was it just in case? Anyway, that was not the main reasoning for Rutra. Scientists, the best of the best, who for the most part could not be called scientists because of their age, were the wizards who had done wonders for the world living in the "past," relative to the level of development of the system in which these "bright minds" were. Many things that seemed magical and unbelievable to ordinary people were commonplace here. This is how that world, the world of ordinary people, was run.

Even the great minds of the facility themselves were unusual. All of them had chips implanted in their brains, which in turn were reinforced by wave stimulation of connections and had direct access to a common network – both internal (to the data provided by the supercomputer) and external (to the worldwide networks, to the Internet). So they were not so much thinking and reasoning as they were generating new ideas and then combining them to create new things. Many results were tested in VR settings, i.e. not on the computer screen, but directly in the virtual world. VR – this is the professional jargon of the center's employees, members of the system, called the settings and the state of virtual reality itself.

– Are you saying I should go down into that hellhole? I see what you were doing down there. And the way you sang, the way you sang– upgrading the VR facilities. But in reality, you were digging a subterranean hole.

– All right, then. Let's go.

– I'm not going anywhere. There's a reason for the rumors about devils and demons. You've been consciousness-altering animals in there. I'm pretty sure of it. At least there's some validity to all this nonsense.

– That's where you'll meet them. Or is Mr. ex-agent zero-zero-seven… oh, no, google zero-seven, afraid of something? Although those people can't be cowards or exes. Right?