# Programist in litle Owls

Аноним Удачник

Programmer Mikhail gets into his favorite game and wants to get along with everyone.

The Prologue

New Year... People really love this holiday. As the chimes strike, it's nice to feel that all the hardships will be left behind very soon and in the coming year you can start living from scratch. However, a full year is not an integer: three hundred and sixty-five days and a stub of a little less than six hours. Neither the Romans nor the Catholic churchmen were able to count the time and correct the calendar.... However, this is also impossible: the Earth's rotation around the Sun does not fit into the whole number of revolutions around its axis. But I think you, dear readers, did not come for a lecture - forgive me for my absent-mindedness! The fact is that the journey I want to tell you about began on New Year's Eve.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Mikhail Petrov, I'm about forty years old, I'm a mathematician and a programmer. Life has not turned out as well as we would like. I did not reach any special heights in my career, I remained a simple engineer for a long time. I don't really have any hobbies: I disappear at work, and with poor eyesight, not everything is allowed - sports, for example. He got married unsuccessfully and divorced a year later, left no children, and didn't have much money either. However, my ex-wife and I remained friends, we often talked and helped each other. She invited me to come on December twenty-sixth to celebrate the New Year. It's already the evening of the twenty-fifth, there are no other plans. So why not?

After the divorce, I was in no hurry to start a new relationship. The computer and the excellent game "Endless Summer" helped me to drown out the loneliness and relax my soul. I came across it by chance and first read it from my phone during lunch breaks at work, and then installed it on a pet monster, from where I got to fan creativity. I myself managed to be a Soviet pioneer, and therefore I was especially inspired by the game, despite all the historical inaccuracies. I dreamed about the Owl more than once, and I even got to see Yulia. The night before the trip, she asked me:

"Will you come with me?"

It was a day off. I couldn't find anything to do around the house, so I went online in the morning and came across an interesting topic: is it possible to find an "Owl" in our reality? However, as expected, I did not find any specific answers. Then, as usual, I read another fanfiction on the "Summer" and finally stuck in the game for a few hours, getting acquainted with a large and complex mod.

In the evening, I looked up from my computer, quickly packed up and went outside. It is very inconvenient to go from my Klin to Krasnogorsk for a visit: there are no direct routes either by bus or by train, so you will have to take a transfer route through Moscow. I came to a suitable bus stop number 437. It was empty, although there were plenty of people who wanted to go to the capital on weekdays. People can't sit in the suburbs, although there are museums nearby, wonderful parks ... but there's not enough work, so they go back and forth.

Loneliness is extremely conducive to reflection, and therefore, looking at the sparsely populated streets, I began to think. It's probably not good that apart from my ex-wife, friends and colleagues, a computer and an "Endless Summer", I still have nothing in my life. At school, they taught me that a person is a social being with unlimited needs, and I... no, of course, not a classic Semyon without a last name and interests, but eventually I will become one, because I am also content with little. This prospect did not appeal. With the classic "house-tree-son" formula, it's even sadder- with my parents' apartment, rare clean-up days that I usually didn't go to, and a divorce. Admittedly, sometimes I was even overcome by nostalgia for the Soviet Union, and no, no, but sometimes I wanted to return to my youth, where there were no "adult" questions and problems yet....

Of course, hanging up on New Year's Eve is the last thing. I still have all the opportunities to change, but I will have a chance, like Semyon, to experience an exciting adventure - so great! Who wouldn't want to spend a week in a little summer paradise: get to know themselves, understand others, stay put, and live like a human being? Perhaps getting into the "Owl" is my real wish, which I would like to make with all possible sincerity....

A few minutes passed. A few more. And more. For twenty minutes I walked around the bus stop and hid my cold hands in my jacket pockets. Any buses except the right one passed by, although I looked at the timetable on the Internet before leaving and would have been on my way to Moscow long ago. Do I really have to order a taxi...

But as soon as I looked at my phone, it was not the modern blue LiAZ of route No. 437 that stopped at the bus stop... but the yellow LiAZ-677. My eyes fell on the route number, and then it hit me like an electric shock. No410! Immediately, I realized that my dream was about to come true... so, without hesitation, I boarded the bus. They write on the Internet that such a person walks somewhere in the Southeastern Administrative District of Moscow, in Yulia's small homeland, but does it matter how this one came here? Coincidence and self-deception - so what?! On New Year's Eve, everyone dreams, but not everyone will get a lucky ticket! Maybe the power of thought and willpower pulled up the bus for me, as if to order?

First of all, I figured out who in the camp I should start a relationship with. A sincere Slavya? The sensual but shy Lena? A clockwork Alice? The most talented Miku? Is Ulyana childishly direct?

But a year of marriage has taught me something. Everyone is good in their own way, but not perfect. The girls are all cool, but I don't need a harem or mistresses: I'm not a ladies' man. In the game, Semyon constantly faces a choice, often preferring one girl to another. And I don't want to choose, I want to be friends with them all equally!

That's why I decided to try something that many people have never been able to do: make friends with all the girls without singling out any of them. The memories of a failed marriage haven't gone away, and who wants to fall into the same trap a second time? We were driving to vaguely familiar old music, and my eyes were already starting to close. Well, it's a long way to Moscow, and even more so to the "Owl"... it's a pity that I didn't warn my ex-wife. Although it's possible that the bus number just matched.