Maybe Vika didn't come…
Four planes have landed during last half an hour. Vika could have come from Tashkent, Riga, Khabarovsk or Moscow… And if she set the time with reserve, then all Russia is at her disposal and almost all of the abroad.
I lagged to the info booth, several people was standing there but neither woman looked like Vika to me, I felt that from the very first sight.
All faces are so much different, so many homely, tired and worried ones. It's not so in the deep, and to no purpose possibly…
I leaned against the wall and waited. Half an hour is my usual indulgence to women's unreliability… But I'll make an exception for Vika, will wait for an hour. Or two. I'll stick to this wall until militia unglues me.
So good would it be to have a good notebook now, with radio modem, to run the deep program, to dive, to search through all airline companies' files…
I closed my eyes.
The deep was lying before me.
The black velvet, the bottomless precipice, pierced by colorful threads. The tiny sphere of the Earth that tried a new apparel on. The deep was waiting, I could see sparks of the planes leaving and landing, whirlpools of information processed by computers, I saw a distant Deeptown's buildings. Just to reach out – and I'll be there, I don't need machines anymore.
Somebody nearby, right in the airport, was entering the deep using his notebook. I stood behind his back for a moment and looked with his eyes.
This is my world.
The generous and boundless, noisy and slovenly, the human one. It'll become better, will change with us, we just need to believe in this, not to wander in labyrinths when the exit is near, not to fall in love with reflections when alive people are by our side. And possibly the next visitor to the deep won't become the only Unfortunate who can't shoot at the people.
I exited the Net, the figures have changed on electronic wall clock: ten sharp.
– And where's the red rose?
It was the most dreadful – to turn and to look at Vika, harder than all feats in the virtual world…
She was exactly the one I was drawing, the one that smiled to me from the screen every morning. The one that lived in my dreams.
Just her hair are a little lighter and the haircut is a bit shorter, and her eyes don't laugh – they are scared… just like mine are now. But this is my Vika, the girl in jeans and light jacket, with the bag over her shoulder.
We both lived in our real bodies in the deep. The best mask in the world is your own face.
– This rose is still being grown, – I say.
Vika relaxes a little.
– I feared… that you'll promise me to draw it.
– Oh no, – I whisper, – Enough of drawn flowers…
I take her hand, we'll stand here like this for a second, looking into each other's eyes.
Before we go home.