Why Me?

Chapter One. Error 404

That evening, Vlad prayed not because he believed.

That would have been too beautiful.

He prayed because every other method had already failed. First, the reasonable arguments ran out. Then the money. Then the strength. Then the usual masculine reflex to tell himself, "It’s fine, we’ll push through," even though inside, no one had been pushing through anything for a long time. Someone was simply sitting among the wreckage and pretending it was only a temporary rearrangement of furniture.

By midnight, the apartment had gone quiet.

Not the good kind of quiet in which people with a clean conscience, paid rent, and no new messages from the bank are allowed to rest. No. This was another kind of quiet — sticky, watchful, almost official. The kind found in hospital corridors, empty stairwells, and inside the heads of people who have held themselves together too long and now no longer know whom to send the bill to.

Vlad sat in the kitchen.

In front of him stood a cup of tea, long since cooled into a lukewarm philosophical reproach. On the table lay his phone, a notebook, a pen, several bills, and a small cross on a thin chain. He did not wear the cross. Not out of principle. It had simply never worked out. It lay in a drawer together with batteries, old keys, and other objects whose meaning had once been obvious and then quietly died.

Today Vlad had taken it out.

Without knowing why.

Perhaps to strengthen the appeal.

Or to show that he had not come empty-handed. As one does at an institution: here is the application, here are the documents, here is the evidence, here is a small religious object proving that the applicant had attempted to cooperate with the system.

People have strange logic in moments of despair. As long as everything is more or less bearable, they talk about free will, maturity, psychological boundaries, and the need to take responsibility. But let life carefully place a knee on their chest, and a person suddenly remembers every ancient protocol of communication: candles, crosses, prayers, promises, threats, bargaining, tears, "Lord, please," and other forms of spiritual technical support.

Vlad looked at the cross.

Then at the bills.

Then back at the cross.

The cross looked more honest.

The bills did too, but in another sense.

He sighed and ran a hand over his face. The face was tired. Not old, not broken, not tragic — simply the face of a man who had spent too long explaining to himself that everything was going normally, and had finally stopped believing himself.

"Well then," he said into the emptiness. "Let’s do this like adults."

The emptiness did not object.

That was a good sign. Or a bad one. Corresponding with emptiness is difficult in general: it rarely clarifies its position.

Vlad did not know a single prayer in full. He had heard something in childhood. Later, he had seen things in films. Then a couple of times he had been present in church, where everyone around him confidently performed gestures whose meaning was about as clear to him as the settings of an industrial machine in Japanese.

He crossed himself.

Awkwardly.

Too quickly.

Then again, more slowly, so it would not look entirely like the gesture of a desperate user before a frozen computer.

"Lord," he said.

And fell silent.

The word turned out to be heavier than he had expected. Not exalted, not luminous, not solemn. Just heavy. As if he had spoken the name of someone he had not written to for too long, and had now suddenly come not with love, but with a grievance.

He gave a wry smile.

"Beautiful beginning. Spiritual maturity, straight away. Starting with a grievance."

He wanted to say something proper. Something noble. For example: "Thy will be done." Or: "Teach me to accept." Or: "Show me the way."

But something entirely different rose inside him.

Not a prayer.

More like an application.

Not even an application — a formal grievance.

And the longer he remained silent, the more clearly he understood: if he started speaking beautifully now, he would be lying from the first word. And he was tired of lying. Especially to the place where, in theory, everything was visible anyway.

"I tried to live properly," he finally said.

The sentence sounded pathetic.

He winced.

"No, not like that."

He stood up, paced around the kitchen, came back, and sat down again.

"I tried to live properly. I endured. I tried. I pretended I understood. I even crossed myself."

He looked at the cross on the table.

It lay there silently and did not help in any way.

"And now please explain to me: why does none of this work?"

After those words, it became very quiet.

Even the refrigerator, which usually hummed with the persistence of an old prophet, fell silent for several seconds. A car passed outside. Somewhere upstairs, someone dropped something heavy and then said a short word not intended for liturgical use.

Vlad waited.

He did not know for what exactly.

A voice from heaven? Light? A sign? Inner warmth? That very feeling written about by people who survived an encounter with the higher and then, for some reason, sell a course for ninety-nine euros?

Nothing happened.

Of course.

He gave a wry smile.

"Right. That’s what I thought."

He leaned back in his chair and felt anger return to its rightful place.

"Wonderful," he said, louder now. "So suffering — please. Enduring — please. Pretending that everything has meaning — please. But the moment an answer is needed, immediate silence. Very convenient."

The emptiness again did not object.

"I’m not asking for miracles, by the way," Vlad said. "Not anymore. I just want to understand by what logic all this works. Or at least who here is responsible for quality of service."

He heard how it sounded and winced.

But he no longer wanted to stop.

"I pay for this life with my suffering. Can anyone issue me a receipt?"

And at that moment, the phone on the table vibrated.

Vlad jerked so sharply that he nearly swept the cup off the table. The screen lit up.

New notification.

Sender undefined.

Subject: Regarding your submission

For several seconds, Vlad stared at the screen.

Then he raised his eyes to the ceiling.

"Seriously?"

The ceiling was ordinary. White, with a small crack near the lamp. No angels. No trumpets. No radiance. Only a crack like a thin river that had long ago decided to leave this apartment first.

The phone vibrated again.

A message appeared on the screen:

Your request has been registered.

Vlad did not move.

He read the line once.

Then a second time.

Then a third, more slowly, as if the speed of reading could change the content.

Below it, another line appeared:

Case number: 777-404-13.

He blinked.

"No."

The phone apparently disagreed, because the message continued:

Please do not submit duplicate requests.
This will not speed up processing your soul’s algorithms.

Vlad put the phone down.

Then picked it up again.

Then put it down again.

Stood up.

Sat down.

Looked at the tea.

The tea, like any honest witness, explained nothing.

"Right," Vlad said. "This is either a nervous breakdown or spam at a new level."

He took the phone and tapped the notification.

The screen went dark for a moment.

Then it turned white.

In the center appeared the words:

Error 404: God Not Found

Below, in small print:

Possible causes:

1. Invalid request address.
2. Request sent to the wrong addressee.
3. User is searching for God outside the zone of internal access.
4. Requesting subject demands an answer without verifying their own existence.

Vlad felt everything inside him turn cold.

Not frightened.

Precisely cold.

It happens when reality suddenly steps aside and you see that there is no wall behind it. Only a service passage, poorly lit, with a sign reading: "Unauthorized persons may enter, but they will regret it."

He slowly set the phone on the table.

"What does ‘without verifying their own existence’ mean?"

The phone answered at once.

To continue, select request category:

1. Pain.
2. Injustice.
3. Why me?
4. Why me again?
5. I acknowledge everything, but request exemption from consequences.
6. Other.

Vlad closed his eyes.

Opened them.

The options did not disappear.

He pinched his arm.

It hurt.

Which meant this was either not a dream, or a dream with good detail.

"And if I don’t want to choose?"

A new line appeared on the screen:

Unwillingness to choose will also be registered as a choice.

Vlad laughed quietly.

The laugh came out wrong. Dry. Short. The kind of laugh people give when they are suddenly informed that their personal tragedy fits perfectly into a general administrative procedure.

"Wonderful," he said. "Even God has bureaucracy."

The reply came instantly:

Bureaucracy was created by humans.
We are merely forced to use an interface you understand.

Vlad stopped laughing.