Chapter 1

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Have you had any adventures in your life? If so, what would you say is the most amazing? I had nothing like that. Until recently.

I was a typical city dweller, working five days a week, and only on weekends I allowed myself to relax more or less normally. I was not interested in active leisure - I was tired at work. I preferred a comfortable and comfortable bed and four walls to a sleeping bag and a tent. The maximum I could afford was kebabs at the country house. That I would suddenly get into real adventures, like one hobbit or any other character in adventure movies, I did not even think about. Too gray and monotonous was my life, and the fear of something new and unexplored is not a bad brake on the accelerated fantasies. Why? And how? What if? Such questions came to me every time I thought about it, after watching various films or documentaries about people who travel and learn all sorts of new things. It takes money, special clothes and equipment, and, what can I hide, courage and willpower. In the last two points I was deficient. Loneliness, an unpromising job, and an incomplete family affected me. But what I've learned in my short life is that not everything goes the way you want it to. And that a lot has already been decided for you. That's how someone or something decided that I didn't have enough adventure and extreme in my life. I fell asleep in my apartment, setting my phone alarm at exactly 7:00, for I had to go to work tomorrow, and woke up not in my bed. Not my body. Not in my world.

To say that I was shocked is to say nothing. Stabbed in a back alley, fell badly, just after death some essence descended, or was run over by a car. Ninety-nine percent of ordinary Japanese schoolchildren were hit in the latter way. It was as if the truck that suddenly came around the corner had a fierce hatred for them. But to get hit like that... just when you went to bed? Like thousands of times before? That was something new. There was no panic, no hysteria and screaming or the opposite of joy and anticipation. There was just a feeling of... wrongness.

The new body turned out to be slightly younger than my last one, twenty-three years old. Brown hair, short hair, green eyes, lean body, face quite plain, just a small burn near my right eye, as if a soldering iron or a red-hot iron had been placed there. The reflection in the mirror was even slightly similar to my old one. I woke up, you'd think, not in a hospital, a draft circle, or deep in the woods, but in bed. In a pretty decent apartment. A studio room, a kitchen, a bathroom. Everything is furnished expensively, but without frills. Huge plasma, leather sofa and chairs, designer coffee table, double bed. Everything else is just small things like a bookcase (half-empty), a couple of pictures, carpets and just small interior items. The bathroom had a bathtub itself, a shower stall, a toilet, a sink and a mirror. The kitchen didn't shine with variety either - cabinets, drawers, refrigerator, stove, hood, sink, kitchen table with a couple of chairs. But the main thing was the view. The panoramic windows overlooked the countless skyscrapers of New York City. A photograph in a passport found on one of the shelves looked at my apparently new face. In the name box, in neat block letters, it said Peter Richter.

At first, I just stared out the window in silence and thought for a long time. I was gradually getting a headache as the memories of the body's past owner slowly began to come flooding in. There were vague visions and, at times, sharp flashes. It was like something elusive at the edge of consciousness. Like you were about to remember what you wanted to say or do, but it eluded you. Still, by concentrating, I was able to pull out some particularly vivid memories, and they shocked me even more. Some of the events and names were suspiciously familiar. When I saw the laptop on the table, I went on the World Wide Web. The password for it resurfaced in my head, though it gave off a new sharp flash of a headache. I hovered over the laptop for a few hours.

Well, what can I say, I got not only into the body of another person on Earth, as I thought at the beginning, but into a person from a parallel Earth. Or another? Let it be parallel. And not just any Earth, but one full of heroes and villains. One of the many variations of Marvel Universe Earth, and a very peculiar one at that. Because here all the heroes and villains I know have switched genders! Instead of Iron Man it's Iron Lady, instead of Spider-Man it's Spider-Girl, instead of Captain America... um, Captain America, but only female. And both Anita Stark and Stephanie Rogers were stunning beauties! And they all appeared to the public in most cases, not in their superhero costumes. A nude photo shoot? You're welcome. An erotic underwear commercial? Easy. Almost on the verge of 18+. And that's what a lot of heroines did, they didn't hide their faces. Yes, even a few of the villains made an appearance! The cover of the March issue of a major women's glossy magazine was adorned by Scorpia, Spider-Girl's enemy. A tall, attractive girl with a cute snub nose, freckles, long red hair, and size four breasts, covered only by the tail of her costume. Looking at all these charms, I began a natural reaction of the body. As it turned out later, there were almost no ugly women in this world. And it was not only this that put me into cognitive dissonance. I decided to find out what else made this world different from my past, so I started googling everything I could think of. So the twin towers are still standing, but the Statue of Liberty is not - destroyed by the Chitauri invasion, less than a year ago. By the way, it was their ray gun that caused the scar-the unlucky shot, good thing it was only a tangential one. But I still had to spend a lot of time in the hospital, where all the doctors and nurses were sticking to Peter. The Soviet Union only collapsed in the 2000s, and because of that, Russia has a little more territory here. Two-thirds of Australia is bought out by numerous firms and organizations, where they conduct every possible and impossible experiment and research. And a huge meteorite fell on Madagascar and brought some kind of crystal with it, which quickly grew and made almost the entire island uninhabitable because it emits some kind of harmful radiation. But perhaps most importantly, men are in the minority here. Literally. About one in ten. I don't know what causes it, but I haven't found any explanation on the Internet, like a virus or something else. It's just that men are rarely born like this.

This has led to the fact that almost all positions in all organizations are held only by women, while many men stay at home, raising children and doing household chores. Although, if a man wants to apply to a prestigious university or strives to move up the career ladder, they will help him in every way and prefer him to hundreds of other candidates. That is why men are valued here. Because of their scarcity, polygamous marriages were allowed all over the world. Here, for example, the father of this body (who was a big businessman. That clarified where such a nice apartment came from) had four wives and seven children. The boy was only one - me. Memories of his mother, aunts, and sisters trying to set him up with his many girlfriends came to mind. But because of his character, Peter Richter always found excuses. No, he wasn't gay. He was just, um, very phlegmatic. Because of his rich father and the great attention of the rest of the family, he got whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it. You'd think this would spoil him and spoil him, but it turned out to be just the opposite - getting everything and more, he stopped realizing the value of many things. Slowly, year by year, it happened. Peter didn't work anywhere, he had groceries delivered to him by couriers, and he received a large sum of money from his father every week on his bank card, but he didn't spend even a third of it.

I did not notice how the sun dipped below the horizon, and the vast metropolis was covered by darkness, which was dispersed by the numerous windows, signboards, street lamps, and headlights of rushing cars. My stomach rumbled treacherously, reminding me that I had not eaten anything since morning, only a couple of times I left my laptop for water. Opening the fridge, I involuntarily cringed - some uncooked food. Something that does not need a long time to prepare. Just warm it up on the stove or in the microwave and it's done. Or whatever you need for sandwiches. I used to eat all of these things in my previous world, but it was due to a banal lack of money and time, rather than a reluctance to cook. After a quick bite of sandwiches, I decided that tomorrow I needed to go out and get some real food. I had money, and I didn't know how long I was stuck here.

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