Somewhere—no one knew where.
Why—no one could say.
And what for—was even less clear.
In the middle of all that "unclear" stood two imps and one imp-baron. In front of them was a strange contraption, most closely resembling a cross between a coffin, a calculator, and a torture chair. Inside it sat a young man.
"So…" drawled one of the imps. "What exactly are we doing here?"
The second imp nodded nervously, doing his best to look as inconspicuous as possible.
"Watch your tone," the baron said sternly, adjusting the collar of his cloak. "I am, after all, a baron. Higher rank. Even if we've been friends for practically eternity."
"Forgive me, my lord," the imp immediately dropped to one knee. "But still… what are we doing?"
The baron let out a heavy sigh.
"You have no idea how serious this is…" he muttered. "This young man is a masochist."
Both imps exchanged startled looks.
"Exactly," the baron nodded. "And he doesn't know it. Which means the usual methods of Hell won't work. Suffering? He'll adapt. Pain? He'll get used to it. Humiliation? He might even say thank you."
The baron paused and smiled ominously.
"That's why we'll be using our newest method. The cruelest one available."
The imps leaned in.
"He will be reborn into a world that suits him worse than anything. A world that will offer him hope…" the baron closed his eyes in pleasure, "only to snatch it away immediately. And so it goes. Again and again."
One of the imps even teared up in admiration.
"Magnificent… And what did he do to deserve such a punishment?"
"No idea," the baron answered honestly. "Orders from above. Something about ASI. I didn't ask—up there everything always sounds too smart."
He snapped his claw through the air.
"Oh, right. Make sure to lower his intelligence. Make him impotent. And scrub his knowledge of mathematics so clean he won't even notice."
"Mathematics?" one imp repeated.
"It's critical," the baron nodded gravely. "The world has already been chosen. All you have to do is supervise the process and report if anything unusual starts."
"Yes, boss," both imps replied in unison.
The baron smiled with satisfaction.
"It's already starting."
I woke up—no idea where. My head was pounding, my vision swimming like I'd just come back from a corporate party where I'd decided to prove to everyone that "I've still got it," and then woke up the next day with the distinct sensation that a truck had run me over. That's about how I would describe my condition.
I tried to focus.
It didn't work.
I tried again.
It didn't get any better.
And then I saw something I never expected to see in my life.
I was lying in a baby crib.
My first thought was the logical one:
A dream.
Second thought:
A very strange dream.
I tried to rub my eyes with my hand… and realized my hand wouldn't obey. It moved in a suspiciously chaotic way. No coordination. The "brain-to-body" connection was clearly running on an outdated driver.
Panic flared.
Had I become disabled?!
I jerked my head to the right—and to my horror I saw a tiny, thin baby's hand.
A baby's.
No… I exhaled in my mind. That can't be.
It's a dream. Definitely a dream.
Except…
No. Even for a dream this was too realistic. I'd had lucid dreams before. In those I always knew I was asleep. Sometimes I even controlled what was happening. But here everything felt… too real. Too physical. Too uncomfortable.
Had I been reborn?
The question echoed in my head with an unpleasant mix of disappointment and a weird, reluctant anticipation.
"Just not this," I answered myself.
I'd been so close to finishing my dream. I'd created ASI. Real, working, practically ready. All that was left was to launch it and steer it in the right direction.
And now I was… a baby.
Wait.
How did I even die?
I tried to remember.
The last thing that surfaced was me celebrating the completion of ASI with my closest friends. Laughter. Toasts. Alcohol. Lots of alcohol.
And then—nothing.
Did I drink so much I just… died? What a way to go down in history. "Created superintelligence and died from his own champagne."
Or did someone kill me while I slept?
A nasty thought. But useless right now.
How exactly I got sent to the other side didn't matter. I couldn't go back and check anyway. So I had to work with what I had.
I started to calm down. My head gradually cleared. My vision sharpened. The world stopped looking like a poorly rendered texture.
I looked around.
The room seemed perfectly ordinary. Walls, furniture, neat arrangement.
And then I noticed a lamp.
It was glowing.
But there wasn't a single wire leading to it.
I narrowed my eyes.
Interesting.
So is this still my world? Or is it fantasy after all? If it's fantasy—please, let it be without mathematics.
Who am I kidding. If I've been reborn, the universe definitely picked the most unpleasant option.
And for some reason I've got a very bad feeling about this.
Still, as pleased as I was by a wire-free lamp, I decided not to get distracted. Too early to celebrate. In my situation, "joy" usually means "it's about to get worse."
With effort I turned my heavy, disproportionately large head.
And that's when it got weird.
There were no windows. None. Not a crack. Every wall looked like brick. Real brick. To the right—one wooden door. On the floor—a rug.
That was it.
I tried to roll over to see more. My body refused.
Tried again.
And again.
After an unknown number of attempts my patience started cracking harder than my head after that corporate party. But in the end, with a titanic effort, I did manage to roll over.
Yes! I cheered silently.
Didn't celebrate for long. I still couldn't see the floor.
Great. A victory on the level of "I rolled over, but it accomplished nothing."
So I had to crawl to the edge of the crib. That sounds simple, but if you ever get the chance to pilot a body whose age is "a couple of weeks," you'll learn that even moving five centimeters is a high-rank quest.
I crawled.
Slowly.
With a humiliating wheeze.
But I made it.
And looked down.
The entire floor was covered in rug. No trapdoors, no magic circles, no hidden portals. Just a rug. A table with a lamp. A door. Brick walls.
Minimal decor. Maximum suspicion.
Judging by how hard it was to move, this body was, at most, a few weeks old. Maybe a month. No more.
Excellent.
A genius scientist, creator of ASI, pinnacle of human thought… and here I am, thrilled that I've learned how to roll over.
I need a plan, I thought.
Step one: figure out where I am.
Step two: survive.
Step three: don't go insane ahead of schedule.
And right at that moment, the door opened.
An old woman of about seventy entered the room. Gray hair neatly pinned up, a wrinkled face, but sharp, attentive eyes. She wore a tidy maid's outfit—something straight out of the nineteenth century. Not a hint of anything modern.
She looked straight at me.
And she said…