Abandoned World: The Awakening

— Tell me if there's anything. I'm all ears. — The girl still didn't show that she was really interested, continuing to realize that it was the only thing that protected her. After all, learning something new was always something she wanted to do, because the knowledge itself was almost nonexistent. She had long believed that the elders knew much more, but they just didn't tell the others for their own, probably far-fetched reasons. Or maybe they were waiting for something. And if that's the case, then you have to be able not to pretend that you are waiting for some moment that may never come. You are waiting for the truth, which may not be there, but certainly won't be if everyone sees that you need it so much.

— Starcraft. — He finally announced very quietly and conspiratorially, so that no one could hear but her. — I found Starcraft yesterday…

— What's that? To brush your teeth? Back scratching? What do you do with it? — From time to time, everyone found different objects, and then they worked together to figure out their purpose, leaving it for the use of the one who found it. Sometimes it happened to find a thing together with a manual, and then the elders copied it, rewarding the finder separately for the find.

— No…" Taylor said even more quietly. — It's a game… On a computer…

Now that was a crime. In school, from the very beginning of education, it was taught what a crime was and how it could be punished. There were two kinds of crimes: negligent "misdemeanor" and intentional "felony". The former concerned mistakes made in one's work, or accidentally slipping out a forbidden phrase that could be overheard. For example, one could not publicly question the assigned lessons of our history. Since we were taught that our planet was third from the sun in number, the smallest in the solar system, then it was. If we were told that we had once polluted it to the point where it was no longer safe to be on the surface without a hazmat suit, then that was also true. Since we were taught that all other planets were uninhabited, there was no point in doubting it, at least not publicly. No one told you not to think what you want to think. The elders directly said — you have freedom of thought, it is a very important gift, no one can take it away from you. But don't break other people's thoughts — keep your own to yourself. For breaking other people's thoughts you could get a warning from the elders, as an unintentional crime.

The second category of crimes, intentional, concerned those things that were done with the purpose of violating the foundations of our society, such as hiding found materials. Whether it was information on a computer or a separate medium, when found, it was supposed to be immediately handed over for study by the elders themselves, because it could be something sacred, which was supposed to be known only to them. Otherwise, one could be imprisoned in the so-called prison of longing or simply "Toska", a separate structure from the main station, where one could be placed for a period of time equal to the crime committed, which was also determined by the elders.

— Are you making this up to get me into your room? — Natalie really didn't believe that Taylor would be willing to break the law so severely, even if it gave him something to actually be interested

in. He might be obsessed with the idea of fucking her, but not to the point where he'd risk being trapped for years in Tosca, where he'd have another desire, now just to get back to normal.

— No, no… I'll tell you… Anyway, there are different planets out there. And it's not just people like us. It's not just humans. There's also protos and zerg. Protos are like us, only with blue blood and oblong shapes. They seem to have technology that's cooler than ours. And the Zerg are like cockroaches, only bigger. And they can breathe without a spacesuit…

— And what are they all doing?

— They're fighting. They're fighting over resources. There's crystals and green gas. It's strange, of course. We don't mine that kind of stuff here.

— Maybe you wouldn't have taken such a risk then, and just given this game to the right people to study?

— Yes? And once again we'll be given back an empty stump with one story, as they tell us? Or even with fiction, which can't be?

— From what you're telling me, it's already fantastic as it can't be… So you'll apparently get it back the same, and everyone on the station will just end up getting a new game.

Taylor was a little offended. He didn't seem to be fully telling what he knew, and he hadn't decided if he should. On the one hand, it showed that he wasn't lying about the game. On the other hand, there was nothing interesting about it.

— That's not all I found on this flash drive….

— A flash drive?! — so he didn't just find one program in a hidden folder on his computer, he found a whole media with something new, and now he's sitting there on his own, digging through it. You might not come back from Tosca at all.