The snow-white high-speed train on a magnetic cushion flew through endless forest expanses. Like an arrow, it pierced the dark green hills, flew over bridges across rivers, and glided along viaducts along the shores of wide lakes, which reflected the high blue sky and snow-white clouds.
Watching the landscapes rush by outside the window, Anna listened to the recording once again. This single audio file, contained on a memory card taped to the flyleaf of "Quantum Mechanics", seemed particularly important to her. In a sense, it was a monument. The last reminder that there was once a strange, old-fashioned girl who called herself the "White Queen." That she also woke up in the morning and breathed in the cold morning air. She enjoyed and experienced pain, loved and suffered. And she looked at the world around her differently, in her own way, not through CCTV cameras, but through human eyes.
"No! Human death cannot be just a statistic," Anna thought. Perhaps that was why she boarded this train, which was carrying her to an unknown destination. Maybe this is the unconscious human desire for destruction? But now the girl would call it a desire to restore justice.
"Hi, Anya!" the cheerful voice of the blonde woman sounded in Anna's headphones. "I told you I don't like saying goodbye for long. I'm sure I've been annoying you a lot these past few days. Sorry for messing with your head with my riddles, but it's a necessary measure. "Voland" can't use what he doesn't understand. But if you're listening to this, it seems you've managed. Congratulations! But you'll probably never know if I made up this story about the books! Ha ha! But I know for sure that you're smiling right now.
"Yes," Anna whispered softly, smiling slightly once again.
"Well, that's great! Great deeds should be accomplished with a smile on your face. Especially since there's no reason to be sad right now. Our hacker underground may be gone, but its cause lives on. Because I'm sure you're with us. You are the pawn destined to reach the last rank and, becoming the new queen, decide the outcome of the game. So, let's finish with the allegories... G.A. has already gained access to all networks and home systems, and soon they will hack into our darknet. But there are places they cannot reach: isolated networks and old military systems. And there is one guy... A cool guy... Let's call him the Master. He has access to pre-war technologies that can solve our problems. You need to meet him as soon as possible. But keep in mind, he lives in seclusion and doesn't particularly like to communicate with people. The book will be your ticket in. Give it to him. Now write down the coordinates 61.306611, 56.593838. How you get there is up to you. I can't help you any further, but you can definitely help me. I've already said that I don't like saying goodbye forever, so I'll just say "see you later." I'm sure that nothing disappears without a trace in this universe. But that's all for now. Silence follows.
The recording stopped. Anna rolled up her headphones and reclined her seat to get comfortable. She had hardly slept in the past couple of days and now wanted to steal at least a couple of hours for herself. The train car environment was conducive to this. Her neighbors in the car were also dozing or sitting with their heads buried in their gadgets. The air conditioner above the seats blew a pleasant cool breeze, and the shared TV, which was broadcasting some kind of landscape images on the ceiling of the car, played barely audible classical music. Anna closed her eyes and almost immediately fell into enveloping darkness.
She found herself in some kind of green field or lawn, grown and mowed in the shape of a huge chessboard. A slender blonde in an evening gown, holding a scepter in her hand and wearing a crown on her head, told her that she needed to be on the last horizontal line and suddenly sank quickly into her dark green square field, as if into a swamp. Anna was left alone, took a step forward, and at that moment, pieces began to fall onto the field. Rooks, in the form of huge crenellated towers on wheels, pointed like rockets; elephants; horses, more reminiscent of jumping and roaring dragons. All these creatures grew rapidly, increasing in size and chasing after the girl. At some point, under their weight, the field itself began to break apart and collapse somewhere below. Anna ran as fast as she could, but the chessboard was collapsing too quickly.
Losing her footing, the girl fell somewhere down... And woke up. Before her eyes, on the monitor built into the back of the next seat, the words "Passenger E95, your station is coming up!" flashed.
"Passenger E95," repeated a gentle female voice from the ceiling.
"The train will arrive at your station in five minutes. Please prepare to exit! Transcontinental Railroad hopes you enjoyed traveling with us."
The train came to a smooth stop at a standard platform. Feeling the surprised glances of passengers who couldn't understand what a lonely girl could be doing in such a remote place, Anna got out of the car. The sliding doors closed with a slight hiss behind her, the whole train shook slightly, and, smoothly picking up speed, sped off into the distance.