Switching to my subnote, I checked on what Smarty was looking at. On the screen there was the latest reincarnation of the film with Lara Croft going through her enemies by dual wielding blasters with her two hands. That's interesting, should I be limiting Smarty's access to the films, and in general to the information on the computer, or not? Despite Smarty's words that I have full access to him, it may not really be so. Also, I wonder how Smarty will react once he gets to the porn collection on the subnote? Oh well, time will tell.

I settled myself comfortably, threw back my head, resting it on the rock and looked at the stars. Without paying close attention to the constellations, the skyscape seems just like back at home. Is the moon here smaller than ours, or does it only look that way? I mentally began to scroll through everything I heard from Smarty, trying to find inconsistencies or really just any details that need to be clarified. Realizing that there are still many such details, I opened a text editor on the body-comp and began compiling a list of questions that I still needed to ask Smarty.

First, I need to find out who is the person lying around in the control room and why the access key was on his head. Smarty made it clear that it was not Dront, but after the conversation I somehow forgot to clarify who it really is. Next, I'll need to find out more about the "living" water in the corridor and how it differs from normal water. So, what else? I gave it some more thought... I'll learn more about the techniques of working with the info-net later, if and when Smarty unlocks my communication channel. "But wait. It feels as if there is something I'm missing..." I thought scratching my head. Wait a second! I forgot the most important thing! I jumped to my feet in excitement. Smarty said that when I appeared here he registered a splash of magical energy and the magicians who live here probably also noticed it. And what would a magician do if something unknown is going on somewhere? I suddenly realized that if in one of the computer systems that I'm responsible for I notice some unauthorized activity I would definitely, at least, get interested or even might take some time to investigate it in detail. This means that I need an urgent run-down of all the information on this world. By the way, what can a quiet period of two-months mean? I scratched my nose thoughtfully. There are a few options here. The first option - my flashy (in the magical sense) arrival didn't get noticed by anyone. However this means that the local magicians are very bad. That's good since in this case I have plenty of time, although at the same time it's bad since then it's unlikely that the local magicians will help me get home. The second option - they noticed the splash, but just didn't pay much attention to it. And the third option, the most unpleasant one, is that somebody will come here after all, but for some reason this arrival was delayed. I scrolled through all three options in my head, to make sure I did not miss anything. Everything seems correct and my brain also presented a few more options: perhaps, the magicians could not determine the origin of the splash and another very nasty option - I had been under their surveillance for some time now and I just didn't notice it. But after thinking over the last option from different angles, I dropped it. It is unlikely that that they would spend so much time watching me, especially since I look so unintimidating.

"Hey, Smarty!" I called the computer.

"What?" he answered with a noticeable delay and strong dissatisfaction in his voice.

Hmm... am I really starting to feel emotions from him, or is it just me?

"Hey, pull yourself away from the movie! I have to ask you something." I decided not to delay asking questions and get some answers right away. "Tell me everything you know about the local population, the countries and, well everything in general. Start telling me and I will clarify the details along the way."

"Can we do this later?" asked Smarty. Huh, think what you want, but he is clearly progressing! "I just got to the most interesting part of the movie! I'm using almost all of my resources to analyse it."

"Hey, hey! Wait a second! What do you mean all of your resources!? What about the other tasks? Did you forget that I asked you to do a search in the info-net?" I disciplined him.

"I didn't forget about that," said Smarty discontentedly. "Okay. Fine. Ask away. I'll continue watching later."

I grinned. Yeah, well, I hope he does not pick up any bad habits from our movies.

"I already asked," I reminded him.

"Yes, I remember, I'm just trying think where I should start..."

"Just start from the very beginning," I said, sitting back down onto the grass. "Tell me a fairy tale, about how a good wizard, Dront, tried to change this world and of the consequences that followed."

Here is what I found out: At the time when Dront was settling on the planet, there was only one race of people here, but with the limitations described earlier in their information structures. These people, as I understand, were kind of like our prehistoric Cro-Magnon people. They ran around the planet with spears and stones and hunted the local mammoths. Honestly, I did not understand, why Dront was trying to teach these savages about magic if they had as much intellect as a chicken. Maybe he hoped that they would develop at a faster pace after connecting to the info-net? After a hundred years, people began to appear with weak magical abilities, which they used mostly intuitively. Information slowly began to leak through these weak communication channels and the peoples' brain worked to interpret it on its own. At that time, as Smarty later analyzed, the local gods were still not real Gods, with a capital letter, and did not seem to have used this world to gather energy. "That's understandable," I thought. "There's no way anybody could have made those early prehistoric people believe in a single particular god. The personalization of the gods occurs at a later level of personality development." But the gods carefully watched this world as a farmer watches his plot, slowly helping the people develop. There was no need to hurry. As Smarty already mentioned earlier, the gods feed from many different worlds. But then, like a jack-in-a-box, completely out of nowhere, Dront appeared. As a result of his actions, the info-net began to change which, naturally, drew the gods' attention. This drew concern from them. So, what does any farmer who finds a thief in their field do? Correct - shoot first, ask questions later. In any case, there's plenty of space. Nobody would find the corpse. It seems that the gods did not tolerate any kind of competition and therefore, ganged up against the threat. But then something terrible happened. For the spacecraft to move in space, special magic crystals were used that could accumulate a huge amount of primal energy. As a result of the gods' attack on Dront's ship, these crystals were destroyed, releasing all of their energy into the environment. The local info-net, having received such an overwhelming amount of energy, began to disintegrate. I imagined this situation and grinned. I think the gods were VERY surprised by the consequences of their actions. I wonder if it is physiologically possible for them to soil themselves? In any case, during the explosion Smarty managed to encapsulate himself into a protective cocoon and decided to peek out of it only after a hundred years. It was a specific control period, specified in the rules of standard behavior of a computer in emergency situations. By this time, Dront was not on the ship. Smarty doesn't know what happened to him, but believes that he died, because he would not just leave Smarty on his own especially since he could easily take the computer out of the cocoon manually. By the way, the inscriptions on the walls of the control room are actually written instructions on what to do in emergency situations such as in the absence of magic or if there are problems with the computer. So, my decision to attempt to decipher these inscriptions was correct, but the capabilities of my software were not enough. In addition, the scope of the initial data was very limited. I imagined what a space station on Earth would look like, pages from technical manuals and safety instructions posted on the walls and laughed: it really feels just like some kind of anecdote.

In addition, Smarty could not feel Dront using the magic sensors built directly into him which thankfully survived. So, after quickly connecting to the info-network, Smarty discovered some major changes there. It seems that the gods managed to keep it somewhat intact. Smarty couldn't even guess how much effort it cost them. Perhaps they somehow managed to re-route some of the excess energy elsewhere. Smarty confirmed that this is possible since after one hundred years one of the planets of the solar system turned into an asteroid field. Even then, a hundred years after the attack, the efforts on restoring the info-net continued. Smarty found five gods who were performing some kind of actions in the network ("Even here the sysadmins get worked to the bone," I thought with some nostalgia). Afraid that he would get noticed, Smarty didn't undertake any further research. Instead he quickly disconnected from the network and went into his cocoon for the next ten thousand years - just to be safe, he decided to wait a longer period this time. Even in the case Dront appeared, if he survived, or if any of his fellow people came by - they would know how to activate him. Time passed and when Smarty peeked out again, he determined that the gods were absent and calmly began to examine what was happening in the world. Despite the fact that the information network had been preserved, it had undergone a lot of changes. First of all, its density had greatly decreased. Its overall magical power became lower, but still remained higher than it was in other worlds. For some reason, the gods did not find the virus that Dront launched into the network or simply could not remove it. On the other hand, maybe after taking a closer look at the results of Dront's efforts they understood the potential of Dront's design and left everything as is. Meanwhile, during the deformation of the network, the virus mutated. As Smarty mentioned earlier, this virus was intended for the gradual change of the info structure of the people, so that they would slowly learn to connect to the network, expanding their information channel. Initially, these viruses formed links among themselves to coordinate the work on each territory and thus organized a few local networks, each of which controlled its own territory. After the wave of energy that was created as a result of the explosion, all these networks began to act differently. First, the thinnest element of their information structure burned out. As it turned out, it was responsible for blocking any magical effects on the people's DNA. In addition, the parameters of the modules were set to arbitrary values. As a result, the people's DNA gradually began to change. Moreover, changes in the population under one local grid differed from the changes occurring in people belonging to another local grid. However the people did not notice it, since they people were scattered around the planet far enough from each other and did not have any contact with each other. Just like the Chinese and the Africans. Sure, there are some people with a different skin color out there somewhere. But they just didn't get concerned over each other. Additionally, the changes themselves took place very gradually. In accordance with the arbitrarily established parameters of the local networks, consisting of different modules that were manipulating the population, in the end several races were formed on the planet. Surprisingly, despite the differences between them, they remained genetically compatible. The first magicians, who appeared after a hundred years of Dront's work, all died from energy overload. It is most likely that even through their incredibly small communication channels they received enough energy from the explosion, to end up dead. Since that time the process has started anew, but at a different pace.

So, about the newly formed races:

People. One of the local networks resisted the attack, mainly because it was on the farthest away from the impact and maybe, by that time the gods had already began to work on repairing the damage. Therefore, the population remained genetically human.

Gnomes. Low-growing, just above a meter and a half tall, they are people with advanced abilities in the field of stone and metal processing. They prefer to live in mountain caves, but some clans build their cities on the surface. Although, according to recent data most of the gnomes now live on the surface.

Here, all of the drowsiness that came over me during Smarty's explanation flew off in an instant.

"Wait just a second!" I shouted. "What gnomes? What are you talking about? Did you see too many fantasy flicks?" I was outraged: maybe Smarty is actually telling me a fairy tale, I did ask for one, didn't I? I tried to remember our conversation...

"What are you talking about?" Smarty said, offended. "I'm telling you what really happened. By the way, how do you know about gnomes?"

"Hmm... Wait a second. Stop talking for a minute," I said and immediately asked Smarty, "tell me, are there any kinds of elves or dragons here, or anybody like that?" I froze, waiting for an answer.

"Yes. There are elves, two kinds in fact, dragons and a few different kinds of demons. There are also plenty of other animals," said Umnik offended. "What's the matter?"

"You just haven't learned all of the information about Earth yet," I answered grimly. "We all think of these creatures as fairy-tale characters." I paused, trying to think about this astonishing new information.

"Really?" Smarty was very surprised. "These are typical local residents around here. They developed here practically before my eyes, as one might say, in result of an unsuccessful informational/genetic experiment. It's unlikely that you have the same conditions on Earth."

I froze.

"Smarty! You are a genius!" I laughed. "Do you understand what you said?"

"No, explain."

"Well, don't be stupid, Smarty! Or was I wrong to call you Smarty? Think about it carefully using your hard head!" I tapped my forehead with my finger, hitting the diadem at the same time.

"Do you mean," Smarty began after a while, "that there is some connection between your Earth and Lungria?"

"Lungria?" I asked, confused.

"Yeah, the locals call this world Lungria."

"Hmm... Anyway, in general, that's exactly what I meant. But this also means... what?" I continued to test the Smarty's cleverness.

"Given what you said and the fact that you are now on Lungria... I can assume that this connection is not only informational. So..."

"It looks like I right to name you Smarty after all," I smiled. "But if you continue your line of thought, it means that there is a real opportunity for me to return home." I laughed, almost sincerely happy.

"Well, everything is possible," said Smarty thoughtfully. "By now nothing can surprise me anymore. What are your plans in this regard?"

I silently walked around in circles, pondering my answer. In any case, there's nothing special I can think of here. I should act as I planned before: go out into the world, legitimize myself and search for magicians who are doing some research in the field of travel between worlds. If I get that far, I'll think of something according to the circumstances.

I explained all this to Smarty and then, looking at the sky, I saw that it was almost dawn and went to sleep.