— But you showed my entire path, from birth to the very moment of my death, — Nicolas added, addressing the invisible program.

  ?Nova’s voice resonated directly within his thoughts, as if the space itself had become his internal monologue:

  — That is merely one of the roads. You have the right to forge a new path or choose different vectors for your life. Our communication has already fractured the branch of this reality. Space is not an empty vacuum. Space is a chain of probabilities. Imagine chains connecting all objects in the cosmos—everything that exists in perpetual motion. For every link in a chain, two more chains are joined, and for every link of those chains, two more chains follow, and so on unto infinity. You are merely situated in one link upon one of billions of chains.

  ?Suddenly, the space collapsed. Nicolas felt himself in a completely different place. He stood behind an operating table, immersed in the bloody chaos of an open chest cavity. He was surrounded by the clinic's leading surgeons; he could feel their concentrated breathing and their piercing gazes from beneath their masks.

  ?— Assistant, hold the pericardium. We have diffuse bleeding from the anastomosis, — Nicolas snapped, his voice sounding surprisingly firm. — Give me an atraumatic needle, 5-0 Prolene. We must immediately arrest the reperfusion edema.

  ?He conversed with his colleagues in short, clipped terms, discussing ejection fractions and hemodynamic parameters that beeped rhythmically on the monitors. An operating nurse, with a swift, practiced motion, wiped the sweat from his brow. Monica silently handed him clamps, understanding him without a word. In this reality, he knew everyone by name, knew every stitch on this heart, knew his entire life. And yet, simultaneously, his current consciousness remained—the consciousness of the man fixed in the chair of Noumenon.

  ?At that same instant, Marcus felt himself as a drunkard at a train station. He sat before a rusted tin can on a piece of soaked, frozen cardboard. A foul, acidic stench of stale alcohol burned his throat, clenching his jaws, while a petty, humiliating shiver racked his body. He felt every single one of his rotten teeth—an unbearable, throbbing pain that pierced through his skull, making him want to whimper. He looked up from below at the polished boots of passers-by, catching their disgusted glances, and wheezed, barely parting his parched lips:

  ?— Give me something for bread... I haven't eaten anything... kind people...

  ?And then, like the crack of a whip, the harsh voice of the station guard rang out above him:

  — Get out of here, you drunk! Don't ruin the view for decent people!

  ?A fraction of a second later, the image shifted again. Now Marcus sat at the controls of a massive Boeing. The roar of the engines resonated as a pleasant vibration in his spine as he confidently punched the autopilot code into the glowing instrument panel. The cabin smelled of expensive leather and good coffee. He joked lightheartedly with his co-pilot, feeling like the master of the sky. A flight attendant named Alice brought coffee on a tray. He thanked her and carelessly, almost tenderly, patted her hip, feeling the warmth of her body and the absolute taste of success.

  Stolen story; please report.

  ?In that same moment, Nicolas became a Norwegian sailor. His muscles cramped from the icy tension as he clung to the helm with his last ounce of strength amidst a nine-point gale. Salt spray choked his breath and stung his eyes, while he swore with a desperate fury, shouting curses at the raging wind that tried to wash him into the black abyss. Around him was only the thunder of the ocean and a cold that pierced to the very heart.

  ?Suddenly, everything collapsed. They were back in the chairs, and before them, in the bottomless darkness, Voyager-1 slowly rotated. Nicolas breathed heavily, hoarsely, his fingers still twitching as if they were clutching a scalpel in a sterile OR or the slick helm in a Norwegian storm.

  ?But the most terrifying part was something else. In his gums, that same unbearable, maddening pain from the drunkard Marcus’s rotten teeth still throbbed, and a sour, nauseating aftertaste of station-slop lingered in his throat.

  ?Marcus sat nearby, gripping the armrests, his pupils dilated from shock. He felt the cold steel of the surgical clamps from Nicolas's operating room on his palms and the icy sting of salt spray that had just lashed the sailor. They had lived these lives for two, becoming a single sensory node in this chain of probabilities.

  ?Nicolas swallowed with difficulty, trying to rid himself of the phantom taste of cheap booze, and rasped into the void:

  ?— Did you show us gods? Do you mean to say we can be anyone? That we are permitted everything?

  ?— Do not be mistaken in your pride, Nicolas, — Nova’s voice replied evenly, sounding deep within their shared consciousness. — The Architect did not give you power over the laws of the universe. You cannot break the chain or change the flow of time. That would be too great a privilege for a human—to possess the tools of the Creator. God endowed you with something far more subtle, yet no less grand: thought and awareness. This is your only true freedom. You do not change the structure of the chain, but you are the only beings capable of understanding where it leads.

  ?Nicolas, with that same fierce character ignited within him, shouted into the void of Noumenon:

  ?— I understand that we aren't yet able to grasp everything! We are blind, we hit walls, we build our childish models of the Universe. But... do not humiliate us to the level of a butterfly! We have still left our scar upon this information! We have contributed our share to this ocean of probabilities, and that scar is our right! I believe we are more than what you say of us... much more!

  ?Marcus whispered, and his thought instantly echoed in the common resonance:

  — So... we just have to learn to think correctly to get onto the right link?

  ?— No, — Nova’s voice snapped, and the vibration rolled through the invisible chains. — You cannot simply move from link to link of other people's lives. But you can change the direction of your own road. You can become anything: a drunkard at a station, a pilot, a surgeon. Each of these states is a potential finale of your own chain.

  ?The voice became even deeper, filling the entire space:

  — Awareness is your key. When you understand who you are and where you are, the chain ceases to be your prison and becomes your path. You already made this choice before, Nicolas. You processed this moment in the laboratory when you said you would dedicate the rest of your life to your son. That was your first step in changing the vector.