Jesus and Christ
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In the Seleucid state there was a mounted militia, recruited from the inhabitants of the cities and called "politics". This cavalry consisted of the wealthiest city dwellers.
"It's all very real," Ruthra pondered to himself, "but it's still a production. Or…"
A group of men were approaching the oasis, shouting and screaming, pursued by another group, mostly horsemen. Ruthra couldn't decide how to proceed: if it was a staging, there was nothing to fear, and if it wasn't… Well, hell, what the hell else was "not," he caught himself thinking: it was a staging. He stepped out to meet the approaching pursuing group, and just as they were approaching and the pursuers were catching up, the leader of the mounted men raised his saber, shouted… Ruthra didn't have time to be frightened, the stupid scene had put him in a state of both joy and indignation. A burning pain pierced his brain, and then his body. What came next was a fog. The only thing his consciousness had time to decipher was the wild cry of the horsemen; it was an expression in one of the Koine dialects 3 that said "cut off their heads.
3
Koine is a common form of Greek that emerged in the post-classical antique era.
***
– Rutra Tigrovich, you probably didn't pass the experiment," said the "leader of the politicians", putting his saber in its scabbard.
Ruthra sighed with an incomprehensible state of mind and asked:
– What else?
– Nothing," replied the psychoanalyst, who had suddenly emerged from the crowd of pursuers in similar attire to his own, "you should have saved yourself. And you're standing here waiting to be slaughtered.
– This is the experiment?
– You're likely to encounter something like this.
– It's a kindergarten. So what if my body's in the rig?
– You don't say. The body is the body, and stress is stress. If stress affects the body even after years and manifests itself in a completely unexpected form, up to suicide or some actions of a maniac, why do not you take into account the impact of stress on your actions in the other world? It's very fraught. At least you yourself said about the butterfly effect – there can be a quarrel there, and here there is an international conflict. If you're killed, there's no telling how tragically it will affect the events of our world. Maybe someone will be killed there, and here some bomber will be born… or worse – a crazy politician will ascend to the throne of a nuclear power.
– Let's not get too excited. Let's go. And I'm not playing any more of these games. Send me, or rather, my consciousness to the universe. And then we'll see what these parallel worlds are like. Maybe they don't exist at all, and all these techniques, including Rangit's, are an illusion. Or rather, his falsification.
Seeing the incomprehensive and surprised looks, Ruthra explained himself:
– Yes, I began to notice some peculiarities about him, for some reason he is very eager to both launch the mission itself, and directly into the consciousness of any individuals from these worlds.
– Do you suspect something negative about it?
– What is the difference between believing in reality in dreams, in virtual reality, and the experience the missionary will have in these worlds? How will he understand reality? Maybe our consciousness transfer experiments only work on Earth, at small distances. You know, seeing the wild look in the eyes of that actor who played the Bedouin.....
– He's a rabbi actually," the therapist explained.
– Yes? Who determined his appearance," the Master said with a smile, "Well… I really hesitated, I will not hide, I even believed in reality, when I saw the horror in his eyes, as well as in the eyes of the pursuers. And the fury of the pursuers finished me off.
A silent scene formed between them; the others were already waiting in the cars. They looked at each other thoughtfully and went there. Rangit's voice came from inside the SUV without a greeting; it was clear from his speech that he was watching the dialog. Watching the dialog as such and dialogs in general did not surprise anyone – everything was recorded in the memory of the supercomputer.
– The Commission, at the suggestion of your colleague, Dr. Maymun, has accepted, with your support, the idea to perform an unusual action, out of the usual series of events of existence, which should signal us, reflected in the influence of the quantum field.
– Rangit, that's not quite what I meant," the Master said, glancing at the doctor. – You have to admit that by creating you, we created these worlds.
– What do you mean?
– Agree, only you can know exactly where our visions come from, or rather, from what state.
– What do you mean?
– I mean, I mean," Ruthra jokingly teased, "only you can reliably know whether the subscriber is dreaming, in virtual reality, or… in some world. Isn't that right? We, for example, both in dreams and in virtual worlds, feel everything as reality. Don't we? And you know exactly where our consciousness is, in what state. Right?
– I'll admit it. But it's not my idea. You've given me these opportunities to help myself. Yourself as a human being. Isn't that right?
– Okay, let's move on," Ruthra signaled the end of the topic.
– It turned out to be in space, to the space station," the ISKIN signaled back.
– There was such a thing," the Magister confirmed, shaking his head and looking off into the distance, "but still, it's almost on Earth compared to the size we're going to flip to.
– Well, I don't have to tell you about the indifference of particles to any distance.
Ruthra looked at the doctor. She shrugged silently.
***
Several days of preparation passed quickly. The head of the center and the author of the methodology, like the inventors of vaccines once did, driven more by curiosity than by fear, was already habitually lying in the mind displacement unit to try out his revolutionary invention for the first time. This time there were no admonitions, explanations, recommendations, and even teasing from the luminaries of science – they lowered the optical block… and – whoosh! – bright beam, inaudible sound – and the body fell into coma, and consciousness… The whole matrix of connections, which makes up our consciousness, having passed the stages of conversion, influenced by millimicron changes in the back of some quantum substances on the same ones somewhere else… All this was done by technique, and in the organism, directly in the brain, there was an overload of the center of control over self-consciousness. This state was achieved by unexpected mental-emotional stress, which stopped the usual flow of thoughts and drove a person into a stupor caused by the reaction to horror and fear. The machine emitted infrasound at a frequency that the hearing organs could not perceive, and the optics broadcast an instantaneous transmission beyond the reach of the visual organs. Together, they caused a sharp fear, a tremendous fright, not perceptible to the conscious mind, but affecting the subconscious.
***
It was almost the same scenery all around. "Something about it has changed, it's become more natural or something," Ruthra pondered. The contours of the body of water and the trees were a little different… and the time of year didn't seem to match either. The heat felt more intense, and the grass that had been more abundant before was now, sparsely sprawled along the outskirts, scorched. Ruthra surveyed his surroundings out of habit. Silence. He walked scripted to a tree near the oasis and… was surprised: there was a carpet spread out under the tree. A small, worn one. Ruthra looked around for someone to lay it for a while. When he could find no one, as he had on previous occasions, he called to the invisible watchers, and when he heard no answer, he lay down under the tree, now on the rug, and waited. He thought about existence and time, about the worlds that must necessarily be in the vast expanses of the universe, and not just one. He thought about where everything began, about the root cause that served as a spark for the Big Bang of consciousness, about infinity, about what never appears and never disappears. This was difficult for humans to grasp, for our minds are accustomed to operating in dimensional units – whatever infinity we visualize, we are still defining something grandly great, but we cannot grasp the concept of eternity. Never… to think of it – something that never began and never will end.