About the book: year / The latest development of the ICV media corporation has exceeded all the wildest expectations... The virtual world, called Sliss by its creators, in the hands of the corporation’s top managers turned out to be an ideal way to make money - direct broadcasts of the fiercest battle for survival between three thousand participants, whose minds were immersed in pseudo-reality, bring in billions every day. But no one guessed that the artificial world would turn out to be a real, albeit not our, reality, and all the programs describing its work would be a kind of Through the Gate...No one thought that Sliss was capable of turning into a threat to all of humanity...No one could have imagined that people thrown into Sliss to certain death for the sake of a global show would be the only ones capable of averting the threat from humanity.