Story-by-photo contest #6 / Unread contract

Yuri could not fall asleep for a long time after the event, which jumped out of the series of calm daytime affairs, like a jack-in-the-box. Everything significant in his life always did not happen according to plan, but crossed the road at the most inopportune moment. And this time he had to give up everything he had started and radically change his life to something unknown. He had not yet learned not to commit ill-considered actions on the spur of the moment, but he firmly decided that if he managed to extricate himself from the consequences of the latter, then he would seriously begin to control his desires.

Six months ago, he fell for a funny advertisement offering to test himself as a master of lighting effects in the casting of a show that seemed interesting to him. Being a theater artist and lighting designer, he knew many tricks for transforming a light beam into various objects and enthusiastically invented his own devices for the same purpose, the secret of which he did not reveal to anyone

He did not pass the casting and the show took place without him, leaving a double impression.

Among the participants in the show, he did not see those who, in his opinion, should have been there in the first place. It also seemed strange that his performance did not impress the jury. There was nothing innovative or surprising in the light installations of the accepted participants, and therefore he looked for an explanation for what happened, going through different options, including bribery and some kind of agreement.

But yesterday, when, at the end of the performance, he was invited to an interview for the continuation of the contract, which, as he thought, ended for him with the elimination of the participants, a lot became clearer, but at the same time, a forest of new question marks grew in front of him.

Among the interview participants, he saw everyone who surprised him with their performances at the casting, but was eliminated. A group of eight people gathered, whose members were officially offered a job at a research institute with a disconcerting name, the abbreviation of which looked like this:
SRiPUVE,
which in decryption looked like this: Scientific Research Institute for Problems of Uninterrupted Visualization of the Environment.

The members of the group were explained the priority tasks, familiarized with the working conditions and announced a fabulous amount of payment, after which they were handed a thick stack of sheets, as a continuation of a previously signed agreement, from the contents of which he seemed to understand that his life after signing could no longer be reversed, and what awaits him ahead is fraught with many surprises, but, being an adventurer, he was stunned by the size of the increase and future salary, having read a little more than half of the book, almost ignoring the non-disclosure clause and leaving the final part for later, he signed the contract.

Returning home with this package, he began to study the rest, from which he realized that taking everything visible in the world for reality, supplemented by his own illusions, he was deeply mistaken. It turned out that in fact his illusions complemented the illusion created according to an ancient project, the number of talented performers of which is becoming smaller every day and therefore they periodically have to be replenished by hidden methods. He signed a document almost without looking, the cancellation of which does not exist, because he is now among those few who are admitted, who KNOW.

Attached to the last sheet of the contract was a package in which he found the first technical task, which consisted in visualizing the show of the beginning of the impending completion of this World, accompanied by a photograph of how it should look according to the organizers. It’s beautiful, you can’t say anything, but now he could only think about how to create it all so that none of the earthlings would have any doubts about the reality of what was happening.

After thinking about everything, he came to the conclusion that, in essence, he had nowhere to return to and that being initiated was much better than living in error. All that remained was to do your job well and gradually figure out who needed all this and why. Some thoughts on this matter have already begun to come to mind.

The story was written for a contest by @bambuka