Chapter 1

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"And don't come back here again whelp!"

I showed the shouting man a finger and promptly started to walk away in an uncertain direction. After only a minute, the man fell behind, and after speaking ill of my parents, he staggered back holding his heart. Ha, no one's ever caught up with me... today!

And in the same way, panting with difficulty, but holding on to my liver, I moved in the opposite direction.

So, this vacancy is crossed out. I had my doubts from the beginning, the conditions were suspiciously good, and the salary was promised to be normal. However, the main reason for doubts was "all details in a personal interview". Here it turned out that the amount of proposed work is much more than specified in the ad, and wages will meet my expectations only after three months of probation. I offered to show me the contract and suddenly our conversation went somewhere else, turned into swearing, and abruptly turned into catching up.

Some people don't know how to have a dialogue at all!

Where does that leave us? Courier service one, courier service two, a packer, an apprentice, another apprentice... Good job in tech support, but you have to communicate there, and that's too much. Okay, what else? Waiter? Thanks, I already don't like people, and now I have to do it for money? Stashman, stashman, "courier for a hundred thousand a month", another stash man. Does anyone really buy it? There are a lot of fools, though.

As I deleted the vacancies, I gradually grew gloomy. The condition my father had set for me was that I should earn enough to live myself in conditions that would not cause me to fall ill or die within a month. That is, I must leave the house in what I have and somehow provide a place to sleep and food. And at any time I could refuse and go home. This was an option in the wager, but after that, I would have to go wherever my father told me to go and work there for at least a year, as an honest man.

Daddy's tough, so when he got another nibble on the fact that I was sitting around doing nothing with my games, he kicked me out of the house. He threw me out of the boat into the sea of life, so to speak, so that I could learn to swim. At the same time, he carefully tied a concrete block to my feet in the form of "terms of a gentleman's agreement".

I stopped at one offer, but it required at least five years of work in the profession and age no older than twenty years. Where was the logic in that?

Why aren't you studying?! We made all the conditions for you!

I studied... It was boring and I stopped studying. I was expelled for absenteeism, a family drama, how could it be - a son without an education! Why didn't you get one yourself? Yes, yes, the hard nineties, I remember. They had no time to study, my father had eight years of school, so he could not afford to live in the Сapital. We live in the suburbs, in our own house with a two-hectare plot of land.

And in it is my cozy, under-roof computer room, where I "spend all my time playing with my games". Again - giving their son the most high-end computer, and then complaining for years that I only use it to play games? The saddest thing is that my "games" are quite a decent income. Yes, it is hard to call it good, but to the computer, which had long ago expired in the reserve, I soon added another one, without taking a penny from my parents. I was secretly proud of it... Until they found out about my hobby "programming" and bought me a very cool machine. My parents are good, but in terms of screwing up motivation, they are second to none.

So I lived like that, waiting for the army - until the military commissar said: "not suitable". He turned out to be a great motivator, too. Not to college, not to the Red Army, and now they won't even let me go home at all.

It's not that bad, I have a stash, and I can find someone to borrow it from. Surely my mother will not stand it, at most she will call tomorrow, but my father said that without a detailed and documented account of income and expenditures, he would not recognize the results of the bet.

The cruelty of some people shocks me.

I could also drop in at my grandmother's, which is a lot of delicious pastries, a soft couch, and windows into the green yard... But grandma, by the way, is daddy's mother, that is father in a square. Considering that she wants to babysit great-grandchildren, and the fact that the last time she stalked me with the granddaughter of one of her countless friends - "good girl, you do not think anything of it". This "girl" is six years older than me and twice as big! She's even fatter than me, can you imagine?! What is there to think about, I have to run!

Okay, that would be a backup in case the food level in my body drops below a critical point. I mean granny pies, not a girl.

Out of all the vacancies, there were exactly two. Courier and the same tech support. To work with my feet or to work with my tongue-hands-feet-head? Turning to the subway, I started leafing through the reviews of both companies, the better ones seemed to be those for couriers. On the other hand, there are half of the incomprehensible words, and who knows what they mean? Maybe the couriers have a secret code.

I already know how to win the argument: I'll rent a room in the wilds of the suburbs, put a computer there, and keep playing my "games". I'll get less than my mother's allowance, but certainly enough for food and lodging. Except, of course, my daddy would have a problem with where I got my start-up money. And let him get his hands on it, and then I can't get out. So what?

So you have to work officially for at least a week. And the terms of delivery have "daily payment", but the tech support does not. Having made the difficult choice, I resolutely moved toward the subway. Cabs are too luxurious for us working people.

Mask, gloves, blunt expression - ready for a trip on public transport.

It all happened too quickly, for sure Daddy had been preparing it for a long time. And if he had been preparing it, it would be hard to beat it. He'd been hinting for a year that it was time to do something... Did he really plan it all year long? He's got it coming. Or did he think of it all at once, and spent the time trying to find a way to calm my mother down?

If I won, my parent promised to buy me an apartment, where I could do whatever I wanted without annoying anyone, away from his eyes. Yeah, what a generous gesture, he didn't mention the money for utilities and food. I'm sure he'll squeeze it in, to stimulate motor activity.

Well, lyricism aside, we need to learn a little bit about the essence of the profession.

As I finished watching another video, I walked down the street by touch, but my sense of touch did not fail me. I found the courier office quickly, everything inside looked unsuspicious, i.e. no people with nets in the corners, no traces of dragging on the floor, someone was even laughing. And the laughter wasn't hysterical, just standing there laughing! Even there is life here.

I was relieved to go to the counter, but they told me to take a ticket and wait in line. With the piece of paper in my hand, I sat down to wait, looking around. I wondered. Too bad I didn't have dark glasses - behind the mask and goggles I had only to put on a baseball cap and no one would know where I was looking and who I was showing my tongue to.

The people sitting there were very ordinary, I see them regularly. Mostly in funny videos on YouTube, my delivery is picked up from the gate by the housekeeper. Now I'll be standing at someone's gate myself, waiting for the cruel and indifferent customers to condescend to a humble employee...

Sobbing to myself and mentally wiping away a tear, I looked around even more actively. No, people are like people. In fact, there weren't that many people sitting here, about a dozen and a half, just one registrar. What, such a turnover? Bad conditions? Suspicious! Most of them were migrant workers, but I couldn't figure out what they were. Two students, a man of unclear occupation, a young woman with a phone in each hand, and me.

"Next!"

At the same time, the scoreboard above the receptionist's head blinked. I have thirteen more numbers to sit, and if ten minutes each... Why not put the second one in! People are waiting! I have work to do!

If you see this...

I turned away, not immediately thinking, then looked closely. There was a door to the side, and above it was a sign with red letters: "If you see this, you can enter to register out of turn". I looked around, noting that either no one could see it, or that everyone here was illiterate, as if quite by accident, sideways, on the wall, reached the door and quietly opened it, ducked inside.

Just in case, holding it on so no one would rush in after me, I turned around.

A real piece of work sits behind the table.

No, not like that - an ordinary room, two racks on one side, a table in the middle, and two chairs. A guy is sitting on one... you know, there's Dude, there's Buddy, and then there's this. "That kind of person."

He looked at me with a sigh, put aside a collection of crossword puzzles and pulled up the keyboard, and got down to business: "What's the name?"

"Marius."

The guy looked at me doubtfully, I had to explain: "Mom wanted a girl, so I was born. The compromise name was Marius."

"It's like Maria?" (*)

"It's like "Gaius Marius of ancient Rome."

I didn't respond to his dubious look. With my name, anyone would be a stoic. There's nothing else to do. Parents, why are you so cruel to children? I had a classmate named Nokion. His father had made a fortune in that company's stock.

"Documents?"

I put my passport on the table, he pressed it with one hand and quickly typed something into the computer with the other. Then he slid it to me: "Is it full-time or what?"

"I'm temporary."

"Yeah, everyone here is temporary."

The guy took a standard thermometer pistol from the shelf, and I just as mechanically put my wrist. But for some reason, he commented not on my health, but on his own conclusions: "The authorization is B2. Are you going to take the warranty?"

"I guess so..."

He put the tool away and marked something in his notes: "Don't forget to put a checkmark in the application right away."

"Where?"

"There, download it."

The link was right on the wall. While I was scanning and downloading, the design ended and the man thoughtfully stretched out: "Well, you look like a tough guy..."

I tried to adjust my belly slightly.

"So for the first time you carry water."

I felt bad. Somehow I hadn't thought about the fact that couriers carry things, and those things can be heavy, and as soon as he said "water," I saw a nineteen-liter bottle and me trying to move it out of the way. Then I cried beside it in exhaustion. And finally, me pushing it... oh, right! I'll roll on the road and that's it!

"You usually get it in the seventh warehouse..."

"Where?"

"I'll show you later. Now I have it."

He stood up, walked over to the shelf, and took a box from the shelf, a little bigger than a lighter. Then he put it in front of me and leaned his chest on the table, suddenly threatening: "You answer with your head! We don't have anything missing! We find everything!"

And immediately went into power-saving mode, removing the severity necessary for the issuance of the order.

Buzz.

The app, which stubbornly refused to open, suddenly launched. Quickly clicking on "I agree" and finding the checkbox of this very "guarantee" I got to the heart of the task - not too far away.

"Just carrying, right?"

"Yes."

"And then?"

Actually, everywhere it talked about instructions, paperwork, and other bureaucratic crap. And here suddenly take and go.

"Do you have an app? That's where everything is. The clock is ticking, by the way."

Oh, really, because there can be fines for being late!

The box fits nicely in my pants pocket, and I left the room and looked around. During this time, the line had moved by one person only, but the waiting people were not confused, and they did not pay attention to the scoreboard behind my back. Well, themselves... I don't know who.

The route is simple, there are no heavy weights, sit and have fun.

I opened the app and began to actively delve into it.

For starters, I found myself - Marius Yulievich, a picture from my passport, where I am as alive, and in the column "access" there is this very "B2", whatever it means. If the best is "A," then I'm close to the top! But if the best "Z", then I'm... still not at the bottom!

Further poking around showed that under the selection of orders was another menu, but so far it was all blocked and displayed an incomprehensible "not enough points". Apparently, it will open after the test task. Finally, there was the usual, if I got it right, list of orders, selection of slots, and delivery points... Well, in general, everything is clear.

It wasn't far away, so I couldn't poke around on my phone, but the job was as simple as rotating of a tank on a boss. Pick up-drop off, pick up-drop off, pick up-drop off-dead. And so the whole week. But the reviews could earn some incredible thousand, and also said something about the auction and the points ... I did not quite understand, I need to find a chat room, in the app probably moderate everything.

Well, no adventures await me. Routine, boring. That's it!

"Hello, this is delivery. Did you order water"

The intercom hissed indistinctly, and the door opened.

It's just a normal driveway. Only it's cold, man! I've heard that old buildings are cold, but this is just some kind of refrigerator! If I didn't have a supply of subcutaneous insulation, I would have shrunk to hell! I was a little out of breath when I reached the fifth floor without an elevator, and when I was asked a question from behind the door, I just whispered something I did not understand. Came out a client, for some reason in a bathrobe to the floor and with a hood, shined at me black glasses and took a box quickly closed the door. In the mask, he had funny, fangs and a scarlet mouth. I want one of those too. But the gloves, even at home? And black, household gloves. He must have sanitizers on every corner at home, paranoid bastard!

I exhaled, looked at the steam without surprise, and rubbed my hands.

I put my ear to the door and listened.

Dori me, interimo adapare dori me...

Well, at least he listens to decent music.

The phone buzzed and I was happy to read that I had been tipped. But they didn't tell me exactly what it was for, because when I stepped away from the entrance door, the app went off, and when it started working again, half of the options were gone. A buggy system, but people work somehow, right? So I can, too.

Where am I supposed to go now?

The next hours passed in a dull "buzz, there's an order - delivery from wow how far away in damn are you kidding," and so on and so on. Packages from stores, envelopes from offices, fast food from fast-food joints. By the end of my shift, I was exhausted and wasn't even listening to music, just stupidly sitting and staring at one dot. Nah, something else needs to be done, working like this is overkill. The problem is that any "something" was stymied by my dad's "What's in it for?" At least a week should work honestly to explain what and where. Where to get a second-hand computer, I already had an idea, rent a room, too, no problem. And then the remaining three weeks live on ramen, work for a penny pumping accounts, and then back to my attic!

Hearing my thoughts about the pennies, the app squealed and clearly giggled in response to my scolding, the phone told me that I can calm down, it's a transfer and the account got... Hmm, maybe I should forget about the computer? However, it only seems that the earnings are decent. First, I'm not going home, where food appears by itself in the refrigerator, I need to save for dinner and breakfast. Eh, to be realistic - and for dinner tomorrow too. The money will also only be paid in the evening. That's already a third out. I need to buy water, socks, and food. And, most importantly, somewhere to sleep, and to get a good night's sleep.

With all those nasty "needs," the amount for the night was a little less than the cost of the voice donation I had on the channel. But the world is full of miracles, and there was accommodation for such losers!

True, it was almost an hour's drive.

Well, I bought some food on the way, too.

However, I got comfortable: on the lower tier of the double-decker bed in a room for eight people. The one next door was more budget-friendly, with fourteen beds. And I also had the convenience of a curtain!

It took the last of my energy to chew a bun and drink a 3-in-1 instant coffee from the bag. To sleep or to dig through the reviews? Nah, I'll read on the way tomorrow, but right now I need to rest.

In the next bunk, they suddenly inquired:

"Peter, did you bring it?"

"Wait a minute, we'll pour it out later."

It looks like there's going to be a party.

Who here wanted to sleep?

It's the hard knock life for us...

Or in Russian - Mom, I'm in hell.

I'm in hell, mom.

I pulled back the curtain and tried to make myself more comfortable. Well, I've had worse. Once... No, I haven't. This is my first time, Life - be gentle!

The phone rang, and I looked closely: Congratulations, courier! As a first-time subscriber, you get bonus points. You can spend them in our store!

The first thing that caught my eye was the "sort by availability" button - and I clicked it. After that I was left with two positions: "Branded bag" and "Branded cape (all-weather)". As far as I understood from the clips I watched, the bag opened up the possibility of some sort of shipping benefits and options, and the cape is not needed in the current weather. Not all entryways are cold, are they? So the choice is obvious.

I clicked on the bag, and immediately the animation showed a model of a man who suddenly had a square bag on his back, causing the man to bounce around on the screen. It was not quite clear whether he was excited or terrified.

Because of my fatigue, I could only squeeze out a thought, but I couldn't quite formulate it - with this job, I would really become this "schematic courier". Stick and stick, pickle, our little man lost weight. The "courier" weight loss system.

*Buzz*

What else do you want?

Would you like to open a Unique Delivery System?

Yes/no

Damn marketers. Calling the bonus system that way... There's nothing sacred in the world!

Yes.

Apply your nose to activate.

Dumbly looking at the offer, I decided that this is already too much.

And, shoving the phone under the pillow, I went to bed.

And then I took it out, poked my nose into the screen, and shoved it back in. I'm a working man, you mock exploiters. My time will come...

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