The lab became quiet. The silence was broken again by Iulia.

– It's Moscow, look. This is Moscow. They've rebuilt the city.

– They didn't rebuild it, they built it differently. You can see the Kremlin up ahead. It's a different color, look.

Spider webs of overpasses towered over the city center, one of which passed over Red Square, girdling it and taking the Kremlin in a ring. The entire Kremlin complex, all the walls and towers were lined with shiny mosaics and because of this looked like a magical palace from a fairy tale. Apparently – only special persons could enter this zone. Although it wasn't clear if YatSan could. A cavalcade of police and special cars with sirens blaring followed her. At first it looked like they were escorting her, but judging from YatSan's behavior, they weren't.

– What's going on, can you tap into them? – Ruthra asked Irene.

– It's not working. All I can do is turn on YatSan's conversations with… you.

Already the entire staff was taking this kind of thing with laughter.

– If you knew how unfunny the situation is," Ruthra said sadly.

– Is it really that serious? – Andrian asked, stepping a little closer to Ruthra.

– Trust me, my friend , trust me. This is serious.

– But that's not a method of prevention.

– Do you know the method of prevention? Or do you think that something like this, a nuclear war, couldn't happen already? Believe me, it's been prevented many times. There have even been plenty of cases where it could have happened because of a malfunction or a hardware error. And it was from different sides of the opposing countries.

– Is it real?

Ruthra looked at him a little haughtily.

– I don't mean I don't believe it.

– Many cases cannot be hidden. They are common knowledge. And there are cases when all people felt that in deep bunkers a nuclear war scenario was being developed and planned in all seriousness. And it is happening now. And the planning and the likelihood of the process starting without human knowledge.

– I'm sorry, but I find that hard to believe.

– Gentlemen, what are you talking about? – Julia asked as she approached.

– This is no joke at all, friend," Ruthra said still sadly.

Such treatment in public made her believe that her fears were serious. Suddenly a chill ran through Iulia's body. It was observed visually. A thoughtful fear showed in Catherine's eyes. And an awareness of the general background of pressing thoughts and images swept through everyone's heads. They understood why such a grand and super-secret program was presented to them as an ordinary school experiment, albeit in a super-secret center, why the relationship was not strictly hierarchical, official, but friendly. All these secrecy, strictness, officialdom did not matter against the background of the global problem they wanted to solve. They involuntarily felt proud of themselves, of the responsibility entrusted to them, of the possibility to prevent a catastrophe, which, however, was very hard for them to believe. But the examples given – wars and catastrophes – were sobering.

– After all, there have been global natural disasters. No one warned about them. Few people believed in them. If man and modern civilization existed 60 million years ago – the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs would not have fallen? And the Yellowstone supervolcano explodes almost every 600,000 years. It's been 640,000 years since the last one. So why can't it explode tomorrow?

Iulia looked at Ruthra with a questioning look.

– The Yellowstone Caldera is a volcanic caldera. It's not one volcano, it's a large area – about 55 kilometers by 72 kilometers. Can you imagine? The power is so great that it's a threat to the existence of the United States. The world would enter a dark apocalyptic night. And nuclear war and on top of that, elements of chemical and bacteriological elements? These phenomena and events are quite real. People do not believe in them only because of the psychological effect of displacement. Displacement from the consciousness of the reality of the event, which we do not want to believe in as something absolutely terrible. After all, almost every day we see one or another marker of the tragically dead – from the cemetery and wreaths, photos, symbols of faith along the highways to monuments and holiday dates. Yet we continue to believe that death must pass us by.