To Gorgeous Ms. Pomni

Pomni had been lying motionless on the bed for half an hour and still couldn’t bring herself to open her eyes. It seemed to her that if she performed this senseless action, then nothing good would happen for sure. Pomni even tried to close her eyes more, causing the golden-yellow sparkles in her eyes to start tap-dancing. After watching the sparks for a while, jester decided that she would, in fact, have to open her eyelids someday, and that it would be better to do it now, without postponing the unpleasant moment for too long. She slowly opened one eye, quickly realized that viewing the world with one eye was not very convenient, and opened the other. Pomni saw a window in which she saw two bright spots. “Yellow,” thought jester and closed her eyes again. But along with the word “yellow,” the words “sun” and “two” surfaced in her mind. Pomni opened her eyes again and sat up on the bed. Two luminous objects were still looming in the window. “Something is wrong here,” jester decided and, making an incredible effort, she got up and went to the window. Along the way, she managed to realize that she was apparently in her apartment, in the real world (she simply had no other suitable ideas), that it was morning, and that these two spots were the sun. “The sun,” Pomni thought, but then objected to herself. - “No. Not the sun.” Jester was ready to swear that a glowing melon turned on its side was now hanging in the sky, and next to it was a yellow Saturn. “Saturn and melon,” - Pomni said out loud. - “Just wonderful.” At that very moment it dawned on her what exactly was wrong with all of this. Only yesterday, she, Miss Pomni, of sound mind and good memory, was in the Amazing Digital Circus building in the company of Caine, Gangle, Zooble, Kinger, Ragatha and Jax, and now, in some inexplicable way, she found herself in her home on Earth. “But I still haven’t found the Exit!” - Pomni was mentally indignant and, out of hopelessness caused by a complete misunderstanding of everything that was happening, she began to carefully examine the landscape outside the window. The more carefully jester looked at this, the more convinced she became that even if she was on ordinary Earth, it was not on the one with which she ended up in the Circus some time ago. Pomni's doubts were caused mainly by the fact that she saw the fjords outside the window. Mountains of incredible beauty filled the entire space, and wherever jester looked, there were only them everywhere. Fjords. Fjords. Fjords. This splendour was broken only by a lonely sign perched on the top of a low mountain. Pomni squinted and could hardly make out the inscription on it: “To Gorgeous Ms. Pomni.” “What the hell?!,” Pomni jumped away from the window. - “What does it mean?!” Having drawn the curtains, jester hurried to leave the room in order to look for a calmer and less absurd place. After wandering around the other rooms a little and making sure that this house as a whole was very similar to her house on Earth (here Pomni again remembered that she had not found an Exit), she went to the door and looked out into the street. There were no fjords on this side, and jester saw an ordinary city landscape, unremarkable at first glance. But before Pomni had time to think about it, a man in a black coat, glasses and hat appeared from around the corner, stepping gracefully. The man is ordinary in all respects and no different from all other men in a black coat, glasses and hat, unless, of course, you pay attention to the fact that instead of a head the man had a ginger, cat-like muzzle. “Whaaat?,” Pomni was indignant again in square, but the man did not pay attention to her exclamation and continued on his way. The appearance of this extraordinary person provoked a simple chain of very logical reasoning in Pomni’s brain. To begin with, jester decided that if men in black clothes allowed themselves to walk around with cat faces instead of usual faces, then she, of course, could go out into the street in a clown outfit and a cartoonish, caricature style and wouldn’t be sent to the nearest police station. Based on this, she decided that it was not only possible, but even necessary to understand what was happening right now. Then Pomni thought that in order to understand what was happening, she at least needed to go outside. The logical chain ended with this conclusion, and jester, without wasting any time, left the courtyard. Pomni stood on the street for a while and looked at the passers-by. As a smart person, it didn’t take her long to realize that all the people she saw were going in the same direction. “It’s not without reason,” thought jester and headed off with them. To Pomni’s great joy, she didn’t have to go very far. People arrived at a small stop a block from jester's house and began to wait for something. “Probably a bus,” Pomni immediately realized. Pomni was definitely lucky here too. Before she had time to look around, a slightly battered and rattling bus with a driver in the form of a certain robot pulled up to the stop. The bus opened its doors with a bang. For a second it seemed to jester that the bus seemed to be waiting for her to appear at the stop, but Pomni rejected this thought as unlikely. It should be noted that she threw it away in vain, because the bus was really waiting for her. And in general, if people paid more attention to their fleeting assumptions, then the truth would probably be much closer. And yet, dismissing this thought, Pomni pushed onto the bus along with the rest of the people. Only when the door slammed behind her did she realise that she didn’t have a ticket. This fact greatly saddened jester, and she began to feverishly think about what she should do in this most unpleasant situation. Pomni’s brain did not want to give out any, even the most inferior idea of ​​salvation from the ticket controllers, who have a habit of appearing precisely when you are traveling without a ticket. The issue of controllers and buses was even discussed by Kinger with some NPC in one of the adventures, and this is what he said: “To put it bluntly, the probability of a controller appearing on a bus where all passengers have tickets is constant and quite small. It is equal to approximately one-half to the power plus infinity. Zero, to put it simply. In turn, the probability of a controller appearing on a bus where no one has a ticket is one. What is the probability of a controller appearing in all other cases is a complex and, in some way, even philosophical question. Since the advent of the first bus, the best minds of the multiverse have struggled and are struggling with this issue, but to this day to no avail. The only thing that was established for sure is that if you did not take a ticket, then the conductor will undoubtedly meet you.” Pomni didn't need to remember Kinger’s conversation to understand this, and when the static that heralded the message came over the bus's intercom, she prepared herself for the worst. The bus stopped, and a nasty, grinding voice came from the speakers: “Control on the line, prepare your tickets. Control on the line." Jester began to fuss. There was no way she wanted to be caught without a ticket, and with the last of her strength she crawled towards the exit. But the speed of her advance to the saving door turned out to be several times less than the speed of the controller’s advance towards it. If Pomni hadn't been skipping classes, she would have known it and would have come up with a more reliable plan. Still, she was taken on the spot. — Your ticket, - the voice croaked. Jester turned around and with horror recognised in the speaker a creature whom she under no circumstances wanted to see, not only in the role of a controller, but even in any other role. Pomni saw Mario. — Your ticket, - the creature repeated and impudently extended an ugly hand in a white glove to jester. — Well, uuuh, - Pomni began to justify herself. - I have no. — How not? - Mario asked in surprise, raised his eyebrows in indignation and this made him even more terrible. - Look better, otherwise I will have to show you the art of my authorship. Pomni didn’t want to listen, watch or eat art, so she reached into her pockets in the hope of finding at least some small change. As expected, she didn’t find any small items there, but she did find a crumpled piece of paper with an inscription scratched on it: one-half to the power plus infinity. — Here’s your ticket, - Mario wheezed as soon as he saw the piece of paper. - Give it to me. Pomni hesitantly handed him the piece of paper. Mario accepted this with one hand, and with the other he pulled out of the bag by the tail a small fluffy animal that looked an awful lot like the puppies that live on Earth. The fluffy animal grabbed the piece of paper with its small paw and bit into it with zeal. Pomni watched what was happening in disbelief until the puppy chewed up almost her entire ticket and handed it to Mario. Mario, in turn, handed the ticket to Pomni, put the animal back in his bag and headed further into the bus. The jester looked at the ticket, discovered that there was only one digit left on it - one - and drove all the way to the final stop in silence. The bus brought Pomni and all the other people to an incredibly large square, in the middle of which one could see some semblance of a stage with a huge, as Pomni later determined, a five-meter telescope. There was a little man fussing around the pipe, who kept turning it in different directions and, as it seemed jester, was looking for someone in the crowd. Imagine Pomni’s surprise when the pipe turned in his direction, and out of nowhere a familiar voice shouted: “Here she is, the hero of the occasion!” The crowd instantly turned all their eyes to Pomni, without thinking twice they picked her up in their arms and carried her towards the stage. Jester at first tried to fight off the forest of hands, but then she realised that all her attempts were in vain and silently accepted her fate. It is worth noting that during Pomni’s attempts to fight back, a slipper was lost. Losing a slipper is a very trivial matter at first glance. But this time it turned out, or rather, will turn out to be a real disaster for this planet. Literally in a hundred years, right second by second, from this day on, the Inspector will arrive on the planet, who will mistake the jester’s slipper lying on the square (yes, the planet’s utilities do not work at all and did not care about this) for a slipper stolen during mysterious his great-grandfather's circumstances. This event will cause a stormy public outcry and end in an intergalactic war. But all this will happen only in a hundred years, that is, then. And “then” doesn’t matter to anyone. This has absolutely nothing to do with the events of today. At this time the crowd, who had subdued Pomni, was rapidly approaching the stage. When jester was close enough to the huge spyglass, she was able to see her old acquaintance, Max Utyolaltsutoeshpagl (this is one of the NPC in the Circus adventure. It’s normal that you don’t know him yet - a temporary anomaly). Max, as soon as Pomni approached him, gave her his hand and dragged her onto the stage. — Let us once again greet the hero of the occasion - Miss Pomni! - Max shouted at the top of his lungs to the crowd and winked at Pomni. - We can start! Do something energetic! Music started playing. Pomni still couldn't understand what was happening. She had an incredible amount of questions and almost no answers. Jester had already come to terms with this, and therefore she chose the simplest question, as it seemed to her, to think about. Pomni wanted to understand where the music came from, because for several miles around she did not notice a single musician. Soon, of course, she learned that the Elderete Avan group was playing for her, that they were located fifty miles away, and that Utyolaltsutoeshpagl communicated with the musicians using a sub-ethereal videophone. But now jester was completely absorbed in this question and did not immediately notice how the crowd in front of her began to fade and disappear, and instead of them a small, terribly familiar room and two figures appeared. — Whoa, here she comes, - said the figure, slowly turning into Caine. The second figure became Jax and smiled brightly. — What the heck is going on here?! — in the emerging outlines of the surrounding space, Pomni guessed the bridge of the Digital Circus, but this did not make what was happening any more clear to her. — Hey, you still don’t understand? - one of Jax’s ears tilted to the side and looked reproachfully at jester. - Do you even know what date it is today? Just remember quickly, I'm damn hungry! — Weeell, - Pomni thought, and, deciding not to torture her brain with this question, she honestly admitted, - I don’t know. — It’s your birthday today, Pomni! - at that moment Ragatha appeared at the door with a birthday cake in her hands. - Or rather, the anniversary of the day you got here... — Oh, okay, I see, - Pomni drawled and was about to be glad that this explained all today’s oddities, but she became thoughtful. The oddities did not want to be explained by the fact that today was her birthday. Jester had to ask a couple more questions. - What happened to me today? Where was I? — You really don’t understand? - Caine was surprised. - Even the sign on the fjord didn’t give you any hint? Pomni shook her head. Caine turned his face to the dashboard and addressed the assistant: — You, parasite! Give us a planet on the screen! — You’re welcome, guys, and you can call me Bubble, by the way, - the assistant responded friendly and brought up the image. A blue planet appeared on the screen, extremely reminiscent of Earth. — This is your gift, - Ragatha explained. - Caine thought that you might like the new Earth, or the new house. — It’s… It’s just unreal! - Pomni exclaimed, was silent for a while, realising what he had just heard, but did not realise it, and therefore clarified it again. - Is this really Earth? All three nodded affirmatively. — So… why did I see the fjords from the window of my house?! — jester nevertheless decided to ask the question that had been tormenting her all day. — This question is for Jax, - Caine instantly moved the hands. - He promised to do everything in the best possible way. — Why me now?! - the hare was indignant. — Actually, the fjords are the work of Gerald №654. — But it’s your fault that these hands reached the planet? - Caine retorted. He was already preparing to once again tell Jax everything he thought about him, but Pomni suddenly intervened in the conversation. — It hasn’t become one iota clearer to me. — You see, Pomni, - Jax immediately hastened to begin explaining, - in order to create new adventures, there are locations and so on, the prices are now simply prohibitive. Buying a planet is an expensive business. So sometimes you have to look for how to save money. — If you hadn’t knocked back a couple of dozen glasses of melted spaghetti in that restaurant, - Cain said, - there would have been enough money. Jax did not pay attention to the jaw-head and continued his speech: — So, among the Geralds, as wooden NPCs are called, only this old man №654 agreed to fulfill our order on Earth. And even then with the condition that most of the planet will be occupied by its damned fjords. You see, there was very little money. — I see, - Pomni answered, not at all surprised. - But what are all these humans doing on my planet then? And demihumans? And nonhumans in general? — Oh, these, - the hare waved her off. — To pay for the order, we had to rent out the planet for a couple of years. Four hundred to be exact. — Four hundred years?! - Pomni yelled. - So what's the use of it then? — Well, that’s a question for you, - Jax answered and immediately asked. - Which of these two stars do you not feel sorry for? With both hands and ears, Jax pointed to the melon and Saturn, which Pomni had noticed earlier in the day. — What, what? What kind of I’m not feel sorry for? - Even though jester tried not to be surprised, now she definitely didn’t understand anything. — The Elderete Avan band is playing for you, - Caine explained. - Their signature trick is to crash into a star in a spaceship. As you understand, nothing remains of either the ship or the star. So decide quickly which star you want to give them. — Let it be a melon, - Pomni answered with a sigh. — Nice choice, that’s great! — Caine answered joyfully. - I'll tell them now. Five minutes later, the entire crew of the Digital Circus stood on the captain’s bridge and looked at the monitor, on which a magnificent, shiny ship was rapidly rushing in the direction of one of the stars. To the deafening cries of “Happy Birthday!!!” Beta Gheesewor X was blown up.