An ordinary Russian guy, Sergei picks a fight in his
neighborhood, defending a little boy. Problem is, the guy he's just defeated
vanishes into thin air, leaving Sergei to discover he now possesses the ability
to turn time around.
On top of that, Sergei can now travel between worlds.
He acquires mysterious new skills and abilities. And he discovers there're many
others just like him in our world.
Sergei finds his own place in the secret community of
the Seekers - creatures with superpowers. He even teams up with a few of his
new buddies, planning to strike gold in one of the neighboring worlds.
Sergei has no idea that his every step is being
watched. He's being shadowed by the Darkest One - one of the oldest Seekers
around who'll know no peace until he gets hold of some of Sergei's unique
abilities.
Chapter 1
My least favorite things in the world were chicken
liver, heartburn, and helping people. No, my parents hadn’t spawned a
scoundrel. It’s just
that I’d
rather help someone because I want to, not because I’m
pressured to.
“Sergei, I think he’s probably
gone to the foundation pit,” my
neighbor’s words added boiling oil to the cup of my already-heated
patience.
Masha was only three years older than me,
but somehow I ended up addressing her like I was a kid and she was an adult,
while she graciously talked to me as though we were equals. On top of that, at
age 28 she had two kids, a docile husband, and her own apartment, no matter
that it was off the beaten path. In contrast, besides nine pairs of oddly
colored socks, I owned nothing in particular.
But that mischief maker known as fate had
brought us together on the same floor of an apartment building after my father’s
grandmother died. I inherited her apartment, breaking free of the parental nest
but falling into Masha’s web.
Apparently, the universe was doing its best to maintain equilibrium.
You’d be hard pressed to call me a pushover. At no time would I have a
girl order me around. I always made that much perfectly clear. Yet I’d somehow missed
that opportunity with Masha. I once helped her carry her stroller downstairs—you know, as a neighborly thing to do. Then one time when I went
to the store, I picked up some yogurt while I was there. After that, there was
no stopping her.
I should probably mention that Masha was
smart. She never crossed the line with her errands, but she could occasionally
knock you off balance, like today. Except that her quests always came with the
label “legendary” and
forced you to work up a major sweat.
“OK, I’ll check if he’s there,” I said with a nod, reaching for my cigarettes.
Her window immediately banged shut. It
wasn’t May, after all, and she had a suckling baby at home. I heaved a
heavy sigh and threw on my hood.
“I see that the Young
Communist is helping out the needier families?” an old man in a ski cap inscribed “Sport” observed
snidely from his perch on the bench by the entrance.
I smiled. I liked Mr. Sergeyev. The old
fellow was a local institution. He was a professor who’d once taught the
history of the CPSU[1]
and other subjects that were undoubtedly important, but he hadn’t been
able to change his ideas in time. When the country
went through perestroika, Mr. Sergeyev was left behind. So he developed a taste
for the demon drink, and eventually lost the battle for good. He was dragged
along by his wife, a hardy, permanently angry woman for whom her hubby had
become like a suitcase that had lost its handle. It was hard to pull, but it
would be a shame to discard it.
“Something like that. Her
husband is away overnight and her little Vasya went for a walk. He was supposed to be home a half hour ago. I’m on my way to the store and volunteered to go see where he’s hiding.”
“The road to hell is
paved with good intentions,” Mr.
Sergeyev said sagely.
“Oh, I know that. What
are you doing hanging around freezing here?”
“Waiting for a buddy. We’ve decided to organize a symposium[2].
Give me a cigarette, will you? It’s not for me—my friend is the one who smokes. I always tell him it’s bad for
him and he’s destroying his health, but he’ll hear nothing of it.”
I smirked and gave him a cigarette. As I
walked away from the entrance and lit up, I heard the crackling of cigarette
paper and the dry tobacco. I took a couple of drags and fell to thinking.
The foundation pit, huh?
It was right across the street from the
local supermarket where I was going. At one point an ambitious development
company had decided to build a modern, attractive multistory building in our
backwater. It bought out private homes, surveyed the land, and started to
excavate a foundation pit. But something didn’t pan out on their end. More
precisely, something literally flamed out: one night, the office downtown
caught fire. Perhaps competitors were to blame, or a circuit, or maybe a
combination of the two. So the company vanished into oblivion, leaving behind
nothing but a foundation pit. You can guess who immediately took a liking to
this local monument.
Everyone knows that every man is a former
kid. But the kids from our district tried with all their might to stay at that
tender age forever. A half-destroyed or half-built property in the vicinity
only helped the cause.
OK, I’d stop by the foundation pit on the way home. Vasya was a good
kid, if somewhat mischievous. God forbid something happen to him.
The supermarket was on the first floor of
a five-story building. No doubt about it, it was off the beaten path. Next to
it was the ring road, followed by lane after lane of dilapidated log huts echoing
with guard dogs’ indistinct, sad barking and filling the air with the woody scent
of heated bathhouses on the weekend.
I had time to smoke two cigarettes before
I reached the shop entrance. Inside, some kids around the age I was looking for
were jostling each other by the vending machine with the chewing gym.
“Hey, guys, have you
seen Vasya from number 8?”
One of the kids raised his head in obvious
resentment. “Vasya? Vasya Korshunov?”
“Yes, Korshunov. His mom’s looking for him.”
“No, haven’t seen him.”
Shit. Now I’d need to cross that street and get myself over to the foundation
pit. There was only one streetlight, and it only illuminated part of the pit.
At least I had a flashlight on my phone.
I wandered through the aisles tossing
simple food into my basket: sausages, three bottles of beer, macaroni and
mayonnaise. As I approached the register, I stopped by the stand holding the
deodorant. I did need some; I was almost out. That took care of it.
It had gotten cold outside. I raised my
hood and shifted the flimsy plastic grocery bag so it was more comfortable to
hold, then set off for the edge of our world.
Before crossing the street, I looked both
ways a few times. This
was a place where you needed to teach kids the rules of the road, under
conditions that were, shall we say, reminiscent of war. I managed to get across
without any mishaps and heaved a sigh. The streetlight flickered hostilely in
unison with me and blew out. Great.
I turned on the flashlight on my phone. Of
course, I couldn’t see more than five
yards in front of me. I tried to peer through the dark for a while, but nothing
useful came of that. I swore and put away my useless phone.
“Vasya! Vasya!”
The last thing I wanted to do was climb
down into the pit on the frozen ground. I was tempted to blow the mission out
and head off home. I mean, really, was I ultimately responsible for other
people’s dumbbells? Just do a better job raising your kids and don’t baffle
your dutiful neighbors. It was warm and cozy at home right now. I could go
home, cook some macaroni and sausage, turn on a TV show, and enjoy it all with
a beer.
“I’m over here!”
Damn it. I’d planned it all out so nicely in my head. “Vasya, where are you?”
As if! Now the kid was silent. I had a
feeling that today I’d need to personally
take care of Vasya’s upbringing and give
him a good taste of paternal tough love.
With a technique that would have put
Cirque du Soleil to shame, I started to lower myself into the pit, scattering
hard pieces of frozen clay with my feet. In one outstretched hand I held my
lighter, and in the other I held the bag with the clinking bottles. All I
needed was a tightrope and an audience.
Which I apparently had. Someone was
watching my clumsy descent— that
became clear when I was halfway down. That’s when I made out two figures on the bottom of the foundation pit:
Vasya and a guy I didn’t know
standing next to him.
Oh great. A Pedobear was the last thing I
needed. Considering that at no time was I a fighter, and my adversary had more
girth on his side, things could turn unpleasant.
“What do you need, dude?” I shouted, trying not to betray my anxiety.
No answer. The kiddo was silent, too. They
just stood there looking at each other without moving a muscle. I kind of
wanted someone to jump out and yell, “Surprise!” But
dreams are only dreams. So I took a few steps forward.
“Dude, don’t make me do
something I’ll regret.”
I stumbled but managed to stay on my feet.
The bottles jangled plaintively, but even that didn’t provoke a reaction. I
guess I was going to have to sort him out, after all. I squeezed the lighter,
placed the grocery bag on the ground, and strode toward the stranger.
Only then did I notice the odd clothing on
this guy who enjoyed chatting up kids at night. He was wearing a long cloak
devoid of any labels or designs. The hood was over his head. Well, terrific.
Good job, Sergei, now you’re
going to meet a cult follower. And the night had started off so well...
“Man, get away from the
kid,” I uttered an idle threat, my arm already
drawn back to punch him.
My father had never taught me to fight—his thinking was that a smart man could always reach an agreement.
But his best friend, Uncle Dima, disagreed. He’d made sure I threw a decent
punch and his opinions on the matter were far more straightforward. As in: if there’s
a fight in the air, go for it, and then afterward you can sort out who was
right and wrong. That’s not
to say that I often made use of this maxim, but it was much more in line with
my own philosophy.
Somehow, it looked like the man in the
cloak must have had his own Uncle Dima because he turned sharply and thrust out
his hand.
He didn’t hit me but I could feel some
sort of force coursing through his fingers. My body flew several few yards like
a defenseless rag doll. I landed on my back on my ill-fated grocery bag.
Judging by the sound, the packet of macaroni had split. The bottles clanked but
at least they didn’t break. The stick of deodorant bumped up against my side.
I
grunted. What was that? All I knew was that I was in pain. My back wasn’t the strongest part of my body. Because of my line of work, I
constantly needed to massage the small of my back so it wouldn’t ache. It took
my angst-ridden brain a couple of seconds to realize that I’d gone flying even
though no one had touched me.
It was unlikely that the approaching
stranger was a Jedi. I didn’t see a light saber. Well, maybe not yet. In any
case, he was obviously a master of telekinesis. Of course, I would have liked
to know what the hell was going on, but I now acted on the most ancient
instinct, putting everything else on the back burner.
I tried to use my free right arm to lean
on the ground so I could get up. That didn’t work. First I crawled over a bottle, and then the scattered
macaroni, and then bumped up against the stick of deodorant.
Then I had an idea—I wouldn’t say
it was a bright one, but it wasn’t bad. The stick of deodorant was in my right
hand—the cap had flown off—the lighter was in my left hand, and the approaching adversary was
around two yards away.
I held the deodorant in front of me,
catching a whiff of its rank scent (I’d missed the mark this time—I made a mental note to buy something else next time), and struck
the lighter in front of it. I may not be a master of telekinesis, but we all
have our fireballs.
For a moment, the place was flooded with
light. I managed to discern the garbage-strewn foundation pit, Vasya’s frightened face, and the stranger’s cloak which was being licked by the flames. Biting my lip and
trying to ignore the pain, I hurled my improvised livesavers aside and leaned
my arms on the ground.
I stood up with the speed of a pregnant
Seychelles tortoise and threw myself at the assailant. He was still swatting
the smoking hood, so he couldn’t respond adequately. He swung his arms wildly
and punched, attempting what’s
called a one-shot.
Never in my life did I stand out for my
heroic strength, and I never frequented a boxing gym, but I managed to land a
hook that was a work of art. I heard an unpleasant cracking sound as the
stranger fell to the ground. Or maybe the opposite: first he fell, and then I
heard a deafening crack.
I stood for a few seconds with my fists
raised, ready to punch some more if needed, but the Satanist guy lay there
motionless showing no intention of standing up.
“Is he OK?” Vasya spoke up.
I shrugged. “Probably.”
In any case, I took my time going over to
him and carefully checked his pulse. I felt pretty arrogant as I did this
because I’d breezed through all the health and safety training classes in
school. I touched his wrist and then his neck. I thought I felt something, but
it could have also been my own heartbeat.
I touched his head, and my fingers came
away bloody. Fantastic. I’d just smashed his head.
“Is he alive?” Vasya asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” I answered, starting to believe my own
words less and less.
I straightened up, trying to get hold of
myself. All right then, another one bites the dust. Now you’ve become a murderer, Sergei. Damn, how did that happen? Now what?
Who was I supposed to call first? The police or an ambulance?
First of all, I still had to take Vasya
home.
“Let’s go. Your mom’s beside herself.”
In a stupor I picked up the remains of the
food I’d bought. To my
surprise, not a single bottle of beer had broken. I tied up the bag—its handle had been torn off—and started to plod along. Vasya trudged behind me, wheezing and
scattering clumps of earth underneath him.
“Uncle Sergei!”
“What now?”
“Um, he’s gone.”
I turned around. Vasya was right—there was no sign of the body. Either this mysterious telekinetic
had passed himself off as a zombie and buried himself in the ground, or he’d turned on escape velocity and sped off.
Well, no body, no problem. Except that
what happened next really frightened me.
You’ve killed a Player who was
neutral to you.
-100 karma points. You
gravitate to the Dark Side.
The main development branch has been determined: Time Master
You’ve gained the Savior face.
You’ve gained the Insight ability.
You’ve gained the Light spell.
I looked at the message scrolling in front
of my eyes. Sergei, everything’s OK.
You’re just in shock. You’re not going crazy. Just go home and have a beer. If it doesn’t
pass, you can go to the hospital tomorrow.
Vasya tugged at my arm. “Uncle Sergei, you all right?”
“I’m OK. I just got a
little dizzy. I hit my head when I fell down. Let’s go... Hey, watch out! You shouldn’t be running across the road
like that! Look both ways—left,
then right.”
I suddenly realized that I was acting
exactly like my father. When they’re young, all children probably think, “I’ll be different when I grow up.” But then it turns out that either deliberately or not, we end up
just like our parents.
“Vasya, how on earth did
you end up in the foundation pit with that, er, stranger?”
“He said he was a
wizard. A real one. He said he knew everything about me: where I lived, Mom and
Dad’s names, everything.”
“What do you mean,
everything?”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“Mum’s the word,” I
promised.
“In the spring we would
go floating on rafts, you know, foam plastic ones. We made them ourselves. And
I crashed into the water. I got soaked. We lit a bonfire and stayed until all
my clothes dried. Mom didn’t even find out. That’s it.”
“What do you mean,
‘that’s it’?”
“No one besides the kids
knew about it. Get it?”
“Ah, Vasya. Has it
occurred to you that maybe he just saw you guys? Or the other kids spread the
word? Think about it. Figuring out where you live and your parents’ names doesn’t take a whole lot of
intelligence either. And that’s why
you went to the foundation pit with a strange man at night? Isn’t that a stupid
thing to do?”
“It was stupid,” Vasya admitted. “I got scared after. It’s just that his ... face was familiar. And
he’s a wizard. He did all sorts of tricks. Like spells, you know?”
“Did he ... do anything
to you?”
“No. He said we had to wait
for something. So we stood there and waited. Then you came.”
“What if I hadn’t come?
Don’t ever go anywhere near strangers, especially when you’re alone. And if you see him again, run home and call the poli— no, on second thought, call me. Is that
clear?”
Vasya nodded.
I patted him on the shoulder. There was a
lot in this story that I didn’t understand. What did this satanist weirdo want
to achieve? From what I understood, he hadn’t laid a finger on Vasya. And yet ...
Vasya let slip that they were waiting for something. Maybe a full moon on
Saturn? You couldn’t be too sure with lunatics. Plenty of them around.
But what about “he did all sorts of tricks, like spells”? Did telekinesis count? On the other hand, what made me think
that that’s what it was? There are all sorts of schools of non-contact
fighting. Maybe this misfit had practiced one of them. He must have distracted
me somehow and I’d just flown a few steps without realizing what had hit me.
Of course this sounded crazy. But my brain
was desperately trying to find a logical explanation for what had happened. It
wasn’t really succeeding.
“Vasya, let’s not say anything to your mom right now about this guy. OK?”
“Of course we won’t say
anything,” Vasya agreed easily. “I might get into huge trouble. I’m already in trouble as it is.”
He suddenly looked sad. We made the rest
of the trip across the courtyard in silence. The dimly lit streetlights
illuminated the ice-covered asphalt. Harried people loaded with shopping bags were
heading home from work. A prickly snow was dropping from the sky. Neither Mr.
Sergeyev nor his symposium partner were sitting on the bench. They had probably
already drunk their fill and drifted away to their separate lairs. All the
better—that meant there’d be
fewer witnesses. Ugh, I was thinking like a criminal.
I tapped my key fob on the entry system
and let Vasya walk in before me. The door on the third floor was already open
for us. Apparently someone had been waiting and heard steps in the entrance.
“Vasily, where were you?”
Masha was ready to give Zeus the Thunderbearer
God a run for his money. From personal experience I knew that when your parents
call you by your full name, it’s
unlikely that it’s out of respect for
you. Instead, you can expect fury to be unleashed. Seeing Vasya hunch his head
in his shoulders, I felt that my theory was confirmed..
“Thank you so much,
Sergei. Where did you find him, in the foundation pit?”
“Yes, he was messing around
with the kids,” I said with a nod, fixing Vasya with a
stare. He blinked slowly—he
understood.
“How many times have I
told you not to go there? Your father will set you straight!”
The threat didn’t work on either of us.
Everyone knew that Masha’s
husband was totally henpecked and that he adored his wife. Vasya obviously
resembled his mother in nature. His dad might admonish his son, but he wouldn’t
force him to kneel on dried peas as they’d done to kids in Victorian times or larrup
him with a steel-buckled Red Army belt.
“What’s with your bag?” Masha looked suspiciously at the bundle in
my hands.
“I slipped and fell. All
right then, goodnight.”
“Good night. Thanks
again.”
I opened the door, crept into my own lair,
and turned on the light. Was this night really ending after all? It felt like
enough had happened to fill the next week.
I didn’t notice that I was sitting on the
rug in front of the door, fully clothed. No, I needed to get up, cook something
to appease my growling stomach, and gather my thoughts.
I tossed the beer into the fridge and
threw the dirty shopping bag into the sink with the sausages still in it. I
just needed to rinse them off , and then they’d be fine to cook. As for the macaroni, it was much worse for
wear. Most of it had remained strewn on the bottom of the foundation pit.
I looked in the cupboards and found half a
pack of rice. That would do. I hastily put a pot of water on the burner. Now I
had to see what I looked like. Despite my fall, my pants were practically
clean. My hands, however ...
That was the strangest thing. My right
palm was covered in dirt even though I remembered clearly the wetness of blood as
I’d touched the man’s open wound. You don’t forget crap like that in a hurry. Talking
about which, the bag also should still have had drops of blood on it. But I
didn’t see anything of the sort. The evidence of my fall was there - but there
was no blood from the dead man left anywhere on me.
What was it that those bizarre messages had
said? Apparently,
I’d killed some Player. Bullshit. Had I killed him, he wouldn’t have
disappeared anywhere. Rather, he would have lain there nice and quiet like
Lenin in his tomb, waiting for the police to arrive. No, if anything, I must
have hit my head a little as I fell, resulting in minor hallucinations. I
should actually take a closer look at my own stupid head to see if it was
injured.
I went into the bathroom, turned on the
faucet, and started to wash my numb frozen hands. The water stabbed my fingers
unpleasantly. But it was no big deal; the most frightening events were behind
me now. I just needed to calm down a little and gather my wits.
I smoothed my hair with my wet hands and
straightened up, going over to the tiny mirror above the washing machine.
I nearly cried out. A completely different
person was looking back at me.
Chapter 2
As Bulgakov once wrote, “Fear your wishes, for they have a habit of coming true.” I’d add that when they do come true, it’s in a twisted way that you could never have fathomed out.
Like anyone with average looks, for my
whole life I wanted to appear a little cuter than I actually was. Nature and my
parents hadn’t done an excellent job fulfilling their duties. Unlike my
gorgeous sisters, I didn’t have
wild success with the opposite sex. You might call me average: narrow chin,
long, straight nose, sharp cheekbones. A typical Hollywood-style villain nerd.
But the guy looking out at me from the
mirror was ... cute. The jaw was more prominent. Against the backdrop of the
jaw, the sculpted cheekbones looked completely natural. The ears were small,
unlike the radio detectors I’d
grown used to. The eyebrows were blond—actually, silvery—and
the skin and hair were noticeably lighter. The only thing that hadn’t changed
was my brown eyes. That was the only way I knew that the reflection in the
mirror was mine.
But there could be no mistake. The
light-haired, sturdy guy in the mirror was me. I frowned, scratched my
forehead, and again adjusted my slightly wet hair. It looked like I was the one
who needed first aid, not the stranger in the foundation pit. Calm, I had to stay
calm.
I went back to the kitchen, as if I’d been hit by a dusty sack. The water had begun to boil long ago,
but instead of the rice I just threw in the sausages and opened a beer. What a
business. No, not quite. What a
business. And I couldn’t really tell anyone about what had happened. I’d be shipped off to the loony bin immediately. To be honest, at
this point even I wasn’t
completely sure that I hadn’t gone
crazy.
What if the things that happened in all
those fantasy books were coming true? Had the apocalypse come, were most people
turning into zombies and just a few into Players?
I turned on my small kitchen TV and
flipped through the channels. Vremya, Vesti, Novosti, Comedy Club,[3] a soccer
match—nothing
out of the ordinary.
I even had to look out the window.
Occasional passersby, wrapped in light jackets that were still too light for
winter (it was all the fault of the late cold spell) were bustling home. No one
was devouring or killing anyone. Maybe I’d been
hurled into some sort of parallel universe?
I even walked around and across my apartment. No, it
didn’t gel with my theory. The same Soviet-era furniture: the folding couch,
Grandma’s old
table with my laptop on it, the Czech wall unit[4] - the
last vestiges of a country that no longer existed. The chipped wooden windows,
the wallpaper that had been put up when my grandfather was still alive, the curtains...
They obviously didn’t match the interior and who knows when
they’d last
been washed. Other than the computer and TVs—one in the tiny kitchen and the other in the bedroom-living room-only
room—nothing had changed since my grandmother was around. I mean, I’m a loafer and my bachelor’s existence only contributed to that.
I went back to the kitchen to mull some
things over, especially because I’d
finished the first bottle of beer and the sausages were cooked. I poured some mayonnaise
and ketchup onto a plate and created an absentminded meal to the accompaniment
of a sports commentator lamenting about how a striker had missed an empty goal
from 10 yards away.
My head was heavy. I couldn’t get myself
to form even a few intelligent thoughts, all the more so because my body’s
efforts were focused on digesting the food. In fact, the beer was acting like a
sedative. My eyes were sticking together and my nose was trying to get
acquainted with the table. Sleep. I needed some sleep. There’s a reason why people say you should sleep on it.
The alarm on my phone had been screaming for nearly a minute before
I turned it off. I pattered to the bathroom in the darkness. The things you
dream!
I turned
on the light and nearly yelped. That sturdy blond guy was still there. He gazed
out of the mirror looking a little frightened, but he obviously hadn’t gone anywhere.
So I guess it wasn’t a dream.
I put toothpaste on my toothbrush, sat down on the edge of the tub and started
to think about how I’d continue to live.
I got stuck when I’d nearly finished brushing the right side. How had I never noticed
these bars before? They were arranged in pairs, two on top and two on the
bottom. They scared me in the way that I imagined a 16-year-old girl felt when
taking a pregnancy test.
The two on the top were sort of gold and
green, while the ones on the bottom were red and blue. OK, let’s think about this. It all had started yesterday when I’d punched
that stranger. Someone in my head had called him a Player. As in, Ready Player One?
Maybe I’d somehow taken his place? In that case, everything would be
simple. The read bar was health, the blue one was mana, the green one was
vigor, but what about the gold one? Who the hell knew. Maybe the level of my
sex appeal? Considering my new appearance, it was entirely plausible.
I finished brushing my teeth and climbed
into the shower. The water was barely warm; the water main in our district had
probably burst again, but I was used to it. I’d always been tempered, since I was a kid.
After I’d dried off, I got dressed and sat
down in the kitchen to contemplate. By all accounts, I needed to go to the hospital.
To have a brain scan or whatever. Maybe it would simply turn out that there was
a tumor in my head, and that tumor was trying to put me at odds with reality.
On the other hand, if I skipped work right now—Bones definitely wouldn’t be happy. My boss was thin and sinewy, and on top of that he was
also grim - obviously you didn’t need
to look far to think of a nickname for him.
I thought for a bit and then dialed his
number.
“Hello,” said a disgruntled voice.
“Eh, sir—”
“Sergei, I don’t want to hear it. Fyodor and Alexei are kicking back again. No
matter what’s happened, I’m not
giving you the day off. The van of beer is coming today. And who’s gonna supply the stores?”
“But—”
“But what, do you have a
fever? Did you break your arm? No? Then you have no excuse. Do you expect me to
run around the warehouse myself?”
With that he hung up. As the saying goes,
it wasn’t in the cards. I guess I’d need to go out. The news that Fyodor and Alexei had gone on a
bender was unwelcome, of course. Everyone would need to run around more. On the
other hand, the work was such that it attracted a certain crowd. People with
college degrees don’t typically become warehouse
loaders. I mean, normal people.
In my case, it was a conscious choice. I’d
spent five years getting an economics degree to then go and work with my hands.
You should have seen my father’s face. In fact, that was the first and biggest
reason I’d done it. They’d already bought me a military
card,[5] prepared
a warm spot in a fancy company doing a second-banana
job, which, as they say, is “to grow into.” And I’d go and get myself a menial job with God knows whom. That was the
second reason.
Of course, it was hard to brag to my
friends that I had gotten a job as a loader all on my own without connections,
but I really didn’t care. When you talk about a grown-up, independent life, the
emphasis is on the word “independent.” Thirdly, it turned out that the job paid
reasonably well for our provincial, yet large, city. I had enough to eat, drink,
buy some clothing, and take my latest crush to the movies.
And to be honest, I didn’t have any particular friends. I had a couple of acquaintances
from university I could meet once every couple of months to grab a beer and
hear about their sexual conquests or failures or commiserate about workloads.
They tactfully avoided bringing up my work.
It’s clear that loader isn’t a career you dream about when you’re a kid. No one ever says, “If you do well in school, you’ll be stacking pallets of beer for a living.” I understood very well myself
that with time I’d need to grow in some
direction. But for the time being the question didn’t concern me much. However,
right now, the fact that I needed to run like hell to get to work concerned me a
lot.
I looked in the fridge. Other than
yesterday’s sausages and a couple of eggs, you could have rolled a bowling
ball through it. Although an omelet with a grade B meat product isn’t bad in itself, you
shouldn’t eat one every day. It had been drummed into me since childhood
that breakfast was supposed to be balanced and contain the right amounts of protein,
fat, and carbohydrates.
There was only one dish that fit these
criteria, and it was sold close to my house.According to the clock on my wall,
they’d already been open for a half hour. That meant that they’d had time to put out the meat and fry enough for a few portions.
In front of the door I felt as worried as Leonov[6] when he
was about to step into outer space. The multicolored
lines hadn’t disappeared, and my
hands were shockingly pale. Apparently, I was supposed to get used to the
changing reality and my new body. More precisely, I felt it like the old one,
but my eyes didn’t lie. OK, I’d talk
to Bones, anyway. Not for today maybe, but I’d ask for tomorrow off.
The stairway was silent; even Masha didn’t
poke her head out at the sound of my slamming door. On the third floor my nose
started to itch as usual from the smell of
cat piss. That’s where a self-sufficient and independent woman of an
indeterminate age lived by herself. She hated people as much as she loved cats.
As I skipped the rest of the way, the
green bar trembled a little and crept downward. I pressed the button on the
entry system and dashed out into the fresh, frosty air.
“You understand what it’s about, my dear sir, don’t you? In our people they’ve b... br ... bred a feeling of inferiority. They’ve drilled it into us that if we want to be great we need to hate
someone. We need to have a common enemy that supposedly prevents us, the powerful
and awesome, from getting on with our lives. Ah, Sergei, greetings and
salutations.”
Mr. Sergeyev waved his hand. I stopped for
a moment and nodded. His friend - or to be more precise, his listener - was
sitting next to him, struggling to stay awake. He had a neglected appearance: a
torn sheepskin coat, drooping sweatsuit, and old shoes with scuffed and cracked
leather toecaps.
The two were clearly conducting a
sophisticated conversation and they’d already had quite a bit to drink. But there were two things that
interested me.
First, what time did you have to wake up
so you’d be so wasted by 10 o’clock? It’s true what they
say: keep your eyes on the prize—see
your way clear. But the second thing was the most curious.
There was a text box floating over the professor’s head.
Pyotr Sergeyev
academic
???
carpenter
???
This was amusing. It was just like in an
advanced online game.
I looked at the man in the sheepskin coat.
???
???
plumber
???
That was it. There was a little more
information about the professor. Maybe it was because I knew him and I was
seeing the other man for the first time?
“Mr. Sergeyev, you never
told me you used to be a carpenter.”
“A carpenter!” he waved my remark aside. “My father, God rest his soul, now he was a cabinet maker from God.
I’m just a tinkerer. I can only fix things or just potter about.”
I nodded, put my hood on, and skirted the
building to go out to the street. The most dangerous thought of any madman
crept into my head: what if I was normal? Meaning that maybe that guy from
yesterday really gave me some sort of superpowers? Maybe it was even by chance,
like venereal diseases are typically transmitted? No, I was not going to start wearing
my underpants on the outside. But what if I had also become someone like the
Player, and I was now looking at the world through the concave mirror of
convention?
The people who were hurrying to work only
confirmed these wild ideas for me. They all had question marks floating above
their heads. Some of them had a few lines over them, while others had nearly ten
or so. But they all had a line I could read: pastry chef, coin collector,
leader, shoemaker, Tatar, teacher...
So this mysterious system was displaying
not just professions, but also nationalities, certain personality traits, and
hobbies.
With these thoughts I literally flew past the
three buildings until the intersection where the bus stop was. The traffic was
a little livelier here. But most important, that’s where
Uncle Zaur made the most delicious shawarma[7]in his
rather filthy-looking snack joint.
“Hello,” I said, nodding.
“Good morning,” the old shop owner greeted me.
A notification appeared over his head:
Zaur
Azerbaijani
Very funny. As if I didn’t know it.
“One please, to go.”
“You should come in. I’ll give you some tea. You all eat on the go and then you have
stomachache and blame it on my shawarma.”
Uncle Zaur muttered all of this as he
spread sauce on the lavash and with quick, agile movements threw hot meat on
it. All I knew about the owner of this hole in the wall was that he’d come to
Russia a long time ago, married a Russian woman, and ran his own small but
formidable business. He also had two guys working for him making shawarma and
shish kebab, but Uncle Zaur himself was always close by. Sometimes he’d drink with the regulars or thoughtfully smoke a cigarette, arms
crossed over his small belly.
“Here you go, no change,” I said, holding money out to him.
“Enjoy,” he said, handing over a bag with the
shawarma.
I wolfed down the hot meat in the lavash
before I even got to the bus stop. With anguish I caught sight of my departing
bus. Now I’d have to wait another 10 minutes or so. I stepped to the side,
lit a cigarette and blithely took a drag.
If you thought about it, things weren’t so bad— provided
my head was in order. So if I were of no interest to psychiatrists, I needed to
figure out how to take advantage of what had fallen to me. As far as I could
understand, the message said something about the Insight ability, the Light
spell, and the Savior face. It wasn’t clear how to activate the second two
points. As I understood it, Insight was passive and worked all the time.
The bus, which arrived before too long,
thwarted all my plans to enslave the world. I had to get on. As I paid the
driver, I noticed that in addition to the occasional question mark, a Speeder sign
was burning over him. I immediately plopped down on a seat and grabbed hold of
the handle in front of the standing spot.
I was really starting to like this new
ability of mine because after three intersections, with a wild screech of the
brake pads, the bus stopped after nearly crashing into some ancient dude driving
a cheap sedan. All the passengers lurched forward. Except me. The Speeder tried
two more times to hasten my meeting with God, but he didn’t succeed. When I got
out by the building materials plant I was a little shaken, but intact.
And there were advantages to the driver’s speed. I thought I’d be
cutting it close, but I ended up arriving 20 minutes early. So I took my time
crossing the street and beelined for our base.
It was made up of five identical produce
warehouses on one side and an office that abutted them on the other. It was
nothing to write home about—a
small private business owned by a Russified German who rarely made an
appearance, usually just when he had to pick up his earnings or give us a major
dressing-down. Incidentally, when it came to dressing-downs, he could go toe to
toe with Bones. As I already mentioned, the workers were a diverse bunch. There
were former convicts, a few drunks down on their luck, a couple of migrants,
and the occasional student. And me.
Over the course of the day, trucks came up
to the guardrail, filled out requisitions, and then, under the alert
supervision of the shipping agents and Bones himself, we loaded their vehicles
with goods for small stores. At a different time, usually in the evening, vans
with water and beer came. Today, too, a van was scheduled to come. Nothing
major, just about 20 tons, but, as I understood it, two of our regular crew had
gone on a bender.
“What’s up?” Marat
said, holding his hand out.
He’d already changed his clothes, laid a
few pieces of cardboard on the guardrail in order not to freeze his rear end,
and sat down on them. When he saw me, he smiled, flashing the two gold caps on
his upper teeth, and extended his hand.
“Hi,” I answered him with interest, shaking his
hand and examining his stats.
Marat Gubaydullin, age 32
???
Thief
???
Marat had been a young offender when he’d
first gone to jail, and he’d left it long after he’d been transferred to the
adult division. When he’d finally got out at the ripe age of 23, he got married
and even had a little kid. But my secret assistant still designated him a
Thief.
I doubted it was referring to Marat’s slippery past. He’d been
in jail for robbery, not theft. That meant that he was stealing from the
warehouse on the sly. Now I understood who Bones meant whenever he was swearing
to bring everyone into the open.
“The van from Samara is
coming today,” I said.
“Yes, I heard. I’m sure
we’ll get a good drink out of it,” Marat
nodded, flashing the gold-lined “Hollywood
smile” that he’d gotten in the slammer.
I nodded. During any delivery there were
enough faulty goods, or more accurately, “faulty goods.” Sometimes
the drivers themselves left a couple of pallets at our mercy so they could
finish the trip faster. On days like that the loaders went home tipsy and
happy. Even Bones couldn’t do
anything about that.
“Uncle Alexei and Fyodor
are already drunk. They won’t be
going out today.”
Marat cringed. “Shit.”
I understood him. We had no equipment. Our
workload was measured utterly simply: in human—or if you approached the process with a sense of humor, donkey—power. Two extra pairs of hands unloading the van meant a lot to
us - especially because, counting the two shirkers, there were only seven of us
altogether.
“So we work overtime,” he immediately shared his unhealthy
optimism. “A little extra cash won’t hurt.”
“Right. I’m going to get changed.”
I ran right into Bones as I left the
closet. To me, despite the insulting nickname, our stock manager was the
binding force here. He kept a firm hand on the loaders. If you took him away
and put someone else in charge, it was unlikely that anyone here would actually
work. You’d need to put together an entire staff again.
“Hi, Sergei.”
That was one of his quirks. He called
everyone by their first name, no matter what their age or how long they’d been working here. Or more precisely, not working.
Bones shook my hand like a genius
diagnostician trying to determine how sick I was by looking at me. “How are you feeling?”
“My ears are sort of
ringing,” I lied, scanning his face.
In addition to his full name, the Insight
spat out new information: Model Maker. That was interesting. What kind of
models did Bones make in his spare time?
“You’ll be sick tomorrow. But today, no way. By the way, the vehicle
from store number 9 has arrived. Let’s go load it. There’s water, beer, energy drinks, and cookies. Marat, you hear?”
“Fifteen minutes until
the shift starts,” my
hardnosed coworker called out lazily.
“I’ll let you leave 15 minutes early.”
“Yeah, that’s if the van doesn’t show
up when we’re closing,” Marat
retorted, but moved from his spot.
I don’t know if this is worth bragging
about, but I was very good at preparing shops’ orders. When I first started
out, I looked like a complete misfit. But it was like that in any field. You’d
get the job, make people smile because you’re new, but then you gradually become an expert. In the
beginning, I was constantly scurrying around and
getting in the way, but now it was a real pleasure to look at me. I didn’t make
a single extra movement.
“Carbonated water, six pallets, check,” Bones
counted aloud. “Beer, glass, two, check. Beer, plastic,
three crates.”
Marat and I danced around each other. He dove into the warehouse while I walked out with my load.
Twenty bottles aren’t very
heavy when they’re inserted from top to bottom with heavy cardboard and sealed
thoroughly in new polyethylene. Unfortunately, we didn’t have such a luxury.
All the beer was from an old delivery that had been sitting in the warehouse
for a long time. The cardboard had fallen apart, and then a radiator had leaked
and the packaging had gotten wet. As a result, I had to carefully hold the beer
from the bottom. No matter how experienced I thought I was, better safe than
sorry.
I wasn’t aware exactly at what point the case fell apart. Four bottles
fell out through the hole in the bottom at the exact moment when my foot was
already lifted onto the body of the truck.
I raised my head and saw Bones’ angry
face. He opened his mouth and ...
∞
Marat and I danced around each other. I
couldn’t shake off the feeling of déjà vu. This had already happened, just now.
I had exited the warehouse and the case of beer had fallen apart in my hands.
More precisely, I was now exiting the
warehouse and...
By reflex I shifted the case in my hands,
taking a better grip. The glass clinked mournfully.
“Be more careful,
Sergei.”
“The case has no bottom,
sir. We should tape it up.”
“Go ahead. Marat, one
more case of glass bottles. Then we’ll move on to the cookies.”
Holding the tape, I crouched down, staring
with acute fascination at the intact case of beer.
First of all, now I knew the purpose of
that gold bar, which had now lost a third of its length. It was displaying the
progress of that most important development branch.
And secondly, I had the ability to rewind
time.
[1] The history of CPSU: History of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union. The subject was taught in all Russian colleges and universities from
1938 to 1991.
[2] “Symposium” is a play on words: the Latin word
“symposium”, which these days means “a scientific conference”, used to mean “a
drunken party” in Roman days.
[3] These are names of Russian TV shows. Vremya (Time), Vesti
(Tidings), and Novosti (News) are
news programs; Comedy Club is an
entertainment show.
[4] During shortages in the Soviet Union, furniture from Czechoslovakia
was valued. Anyone who had any was considered wealthy.
[5] When people reach military age in Russia, sometimes they illegally
purchase a military card to avoid serving in the army.
[6] Alexei Leonov, a Soviet cosmonaut who completed the first spacewalk
on March 18, 1965.
[7] Shawarma is a Middle Eastern dish that is popular in Russia. It
contains pieces of chopped meat and vegetables rolled in lavash bread.
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