Бесплатный фрагмент - Time Jumps. The Paradigm of Immortality

Physical reality is much more extensive than just a clot of space-time, which we call the universe. Perhaps our world is just one of many.

Prologue

I’m Yellowstone, supervolcano. I spread myself comfortably on a vast plateau surrounded by ridges of the Rocky Mountains in northwestern Wyoming. My gigantic size strikes the boldest of imaginations: a 2800-meter above sea level, a crater destroyed by an eruption, forms a huge, fifty-seventy-kilometer, picturesque valley. The main decoration, my sparkling pearl, is Yellowstone Lake, a hundred meters deep, lying at the foot of my peak. I am a national pride named Yellow Stone, named after the yellow cliffs that border the source of the mountainous Yellowstone River. Did some pebble bestow the nickname of a giant? However, I do not murmur, because during the human habitation in my possessions, I also had other names in other languages. But for a volcano with a life story of sixteen million years, a hundred centuries is a real moment. I’ve seen a lot and it’s time to share one secret… I now sleep peacefully, releasing tons of steam and boiling water through the thousands of geysers sparkling in the fabulous beauty of a park with three hundred waterfalls. It is not for nothing that millions of tourists who have come here from all over the world admire me, and I sympathize with this pilgrimage, paying tribute to the enthusiasm and admired views of nature lovers.

I confess: my sleepy state is deceptive and my character is wayward. From time to time, I explode with a force comparable to a major meteorite hitting Earth. I burst with my own indignation under the monstrous pressure of the melt of magma stored inside me. The enormous pressure of molten basalt, warmed to death, pushes the earth’s crust apart and rips it apart with a monstrous rumble. I salute the world with bright fireworks and the eruption of hot magma, which gives rise to amazing lava covers on the slopes, burning all life in its path. The walls of the crater collapse, and the surrounding earth subsides hundreds of meters into the void created under the crater. So a huge funnel is formed — a circular caldera — with a diameter of several kilometers. I adore scale.

Over the course of my life, I have experienced more than a hundred and forty eruptions. For a volcano, it is as natural as a person to catch a cold and sneeze. The last three super-eruptions occurred 2 million, 1 million 300 thousand and 640,000 years ago. This cyclicity leads me to think that I am ripe for a new one, and it can happen at any time, possibly in 2075. Yes, I am almost ready for this: I feel my gut overflowing with fire, and I hardly restrain the tension. There, at the bottom of the caldera, under a thin partition of rocks, my gift to careless humanity lurks — death. After all, few people imagine how dangerous this is for planet Earth. The consequences will be catastrophic, and it is not my fault that the world will turn upside down — I warned. Or do you think I’m the one who needs to ring all the bells?

PART 1. PETER KALINKIN

CHAPTER 1. A STRANGE FIND

It was a very hot summer in St. Petersburg that year. Yes, yes, it all started with the heat. The heat turned out to be a trigger, a trigger in this chain of amazing events that happened to Pyotr Mikhailovich Kalinkin. Pyotr Mikhailovich was tired of the noise and blue smoke of cars, the crush in traffic jams on the streets and in shops where carts with goods do not comply with traffic rules, and there are no traffic lights. Bedlam, that’s all! He returned home with my purchases and from the threshold to his wife:

— That’s it, damn it, I can’t stay in the city anymore. Let’s go to nature tomorrow!

— And where are we going to sing? — wiping the plate with a long towel draped over her shoulder, Galina Sergeevna asked.

— How to go somewhere — to the Karelian Isthmus, to the lakes! We will stay at the hotel for a week, rest, change the situation. Then maybe we’ll look at a country house…

That’s what he gave out so fateful or unwittingly anticipated? Even in a terrible dream, a peaceful foray into nature does not evoke the idea of an abyss, but in life — what the hell is not joking when God is asleep…

Who knows how much a token is in the subway, he definitely saw Pyotr Mikhailovich — there are at least a dozen of them in one car. Hello to you, but here he is sitting opposite: a shabby black jacket, jeans made of stiff blue fabric, worn shoes and a BMW cap on his gray head. And next to her is a prim lady with stern eyes and a cap of dyed hair, in a gray raincoat, with a black bag and thick — soled shoes — Kalinkina Galina Sergeevna. In the evening, the Kalinkins will definitely stick on the telly: movies about animals and talk shows of naked tits are informative and fun, especially when you feel a certain similarity with the characters. The neighbor from above is sure that Pyotr Mikhailovich is a positive person with a touching weakness: more madly than his wife, he loves his rare “Lada” of pale green color, securely stored for forty years in the city parking lot under a high — voltage line, just five tram stops from home.

In the morning, Pyotr Mikhailovich solemnly rolled his four-wheeled friend out of the garage and soon was slowly steering along the ring road, proudly ignoring the Toyota and Mercedes cars overtaking him. Two hours later, the couple reached the hotel “Rautu” in the center of the village of Sosnovo. From the windows of the hotel room, behind the guest parking lot, a picturesque lake could be seen pleasing the eye. A herd of white goats grazed on the shore, grazing grass, evoking thoughts of fresh milk and a healthy lifestyle.

A week of rest in the countryside flew like a voucher over Russia — easily and serenely, without financial problems. The black cat did not run across the road, the women did not wander around with empty buckets, however, the midges in the forest had a bite — that was, that was. The Kalinkins wandered through the meadows, went to Ladoga and swam in Razdolinsky Lake, the water turned out to be very cool. But the greatest pleasure was the clean air, filled with the smell of herbs and pine needles, which was inhaled like a fragrant balm. Somehow Pyotr Mikhailovich decided to go fishing, but he did not grab spinning from the city in a hurry, admired the water surface at sunset and decided: it’s time to buy a cottage in these parts — a pension is on the horizon. He shared this idea with his wife.

— We will start a small farm, a vegetable garden, we will plant flowers, — Galina Sergeevna supported her husband, and in her dreams she already imagined an idyllic picture of peace in nature: a warm breeze blows, butterflies flutter over broken flower beds, and bright red sides of ripe berries peek out from green strawberry bushes and cheerfully shine in the sun… So it almost came out, but only almost.

Buying real estate is a troublesome business. Cheap offers, as well as money from the Kalinkins, were sparse, and these options were not particularly tempting: they examined old, dilapidated buildings near paved roads with a continuous flow of cars, visited a couple of semi-abandoned unfinished buildings remote from civilization in the middle of forests and fields, without water and electricity. Everything they had seen did not correspond to their ideas of suburban happiness, but the desire to breathe ozone away from the metropolis was so irresistible that after weighing all the pros and cons, the couple unanimously came to one optimal solution, in their opinion. No wonder — the wrong choice always seems more reasonable: a feasible budget for quarter acre of land with an old house in a small village, but with a well and a bathhouse, and a shop and a pharmacy nearby is an ideal option for a quiet and peaceful life of a pensioner. A woodshed with a supply of logs, rotten boards and poles, and a simple carpenter’s tool: an axe, a saw, a box with nails, a blunt scythe and sawhorses, has been preserved on a plot fenced with a dilapidated fence. But the main quarter acre of land value is a five — wall pre — war building, chopped from thick, with deep cracks, logs (as the former hostess assured — from mahogany), six by six meters, with a partition inside. According to the Kalinkins, the house has passed the test of time and met the classical canons, unlike neighboring buildings made of timber or concrete blocks. The interior was divided into a room and a kitchen of equal size, and a wood-burning stove with a stove was built into the partition and formed a single unit with it. The roof made of roofing material from antiquity and the pranks of the wind led a little sideways, the usual porch was missing from the outside, a five-step staircase replacing it was placed behind the front door and led into the vestibule with a wide window. In the hall and in the attic there was a suspicious smell of all sorts of junk, honestly warning about future problems and even evoking thoughts of terrible secrets and ancestors who had left this world.

When they rolled up their sleeves, the most urgent things were heat and water. After the sinking of the aspen, Pyotr Mikhailovich brought the stove back to life, and later they cleaned the well together — there is no way to manage it alone. Work on the ground also took a lot of effort. But in the evening, tired and tanned new settlers, sitting on the lawn at a small wooden table, could enjoy the croaking of crows and admire how the tired June luminary falls behind the tops of fir trees from the nearby forest.

Finally the owner got to the pantry. Pyotr Mikhailovich was not at all surprised when, among all the useless goods — leaky dishes, rusty buckets, torn sweatshirts and worn shoes — he found something strange: a metal barrel with four supports, a little more than a meter high. The barrel was sitting in ambush at the far corner and waiting for the victim. Pyotr Mikhailovich tried to move it from its place, but unsuccessfully — the design turned out to be very weighty. The grandfather called the grandmother, and the two of them, with difficulty, rolling on the floor, pulled this “turnip” closer to the window, into the light of God, and left it there. For a long time that evening, the puzzled Pyotr Mikhailovich could not sleep, an inquisitive mind put forward one assumption after another:

— What kind of piece of iron? It doesn’t look like a stove, it’s too heavy for a moonshine machine, no less than a pood. Maybe a the witch’s barrel?

In favor of the latter version, there was a broken broom and a battered piece of red silk suspiciously resembling a female headdress, with a strongly faded yellow inscription: “Excellent student of the socialist competition.” At the thought of all sorts of devilry, Pyotr Mikhailovich stirred uneasily on the mattress and accidentally woke up Galina Sergeevna snoring in her sleep.

— Eh? What? What don’t I have? — she mumbled sleepily, but her husband calmed her down:

— Sleep, sleep — you have everything!

— It would be necessary to dig two more beds at the fence, and plant onions with garlic, — Galina Sergeevna changed the record on the machine, and again fell asleep.

Curiosity turned out to be the last link in the chain of causes of future shocks. Pyotr Mikhailovich would have left this scrap metal alone, if he hadn’t woken up famously, and he wouldn’t have known grief. However, he stuck his nose where he shouldn’t have, and the next morning, like a bayonet, he was already standing next to the mysterious object. The design turned out to be girded either with hoops, or with stiffeners. Pyotr Mikhailovich strained, even slightly, sorry, farted in his pants from the strain. There is no doubt: fate has already sounded the alarm and buzzed him for the last time: come to your senses, old man! — however, he did not listen, lifted the barrel and set it vertically on the supports.

— Yes, twenty kilograms, barely, — after catching his breath, he confirmed his night assumptions. The find had to be wiped off with dust and dirt rags. Upon careful inspection, closer to the short legs, a hinged door the size of a good tablet was found. The door was locked with an internal lock, and the researcher had to tinker a lot before opening it with a key from the motorist’s kit. Opening the door with a creak, to his surprise he saw inside a flat area with a socket for batteries — for standard batteries, six pieces. There were none at hand, so he had to visit a local store after breakfast.

In a small rural supermarket, the assortment turned out to be surprisingly rich: they sold everything except anti-aircraft complexes and marijuana. A young saleswoman offered several brands of batteries, and Pyotr Mikhailovich chose “Duracel” — once seen on TV advertising about hares-rabbits still worked. And was it worth saving fifty rubles in this mysterious case? After thinking a little, at the same time he took a brick of local baked bread, a bottle of Stolichnaya and pickled cucumbers: he need to arrange a festive dinner with Galya in the evening in nature, they deserved it…

Returning to the house, Kalinkin shoved a bag of provisions to his wife, and he ran to the barrel — that’s what she clung to, damn it! Impatiently, he opened the package, installed the batteries in the contacts. And… nothing happened. The device remained dead, apparently, it’s not about the batteries. And Pyotr Mikhailovich hoped so, although it is not clear to himself why, and mentally scolded himself for naivety:

— He lived to gray hair, but his mind is like a child’s…

In the evening, the couple, being wary of Windows, played cards. After three glasses of vodka, Pyotr Mikhailovich’s skill definitely increased, but the buttle went only to the second level: the stubborn thought of a mysterious find, nesting somewhere in the depths of his brain, interfered. After being fooled a couple of times, he silently threw down the cards and left the room. It was she, this thought, who brought him back to the hall. Approaching the iron barrel, he angrily slammed the door. The door suddenly clicked and closed with an internal lock. After a few seconds, a strange vibrating sound appeared from somewhere, from which the heart of the pre-pensioner lost its rhythm, began to pound unusually loudly, and the ears suddenly began to lay, as in an airplane when landing. To the astonishment of the astonished Mikhailovich, the old iron barrel with legs began to lose shape, shrank and gradually melted into the air, and instead, as if out of nowhere, a small ball formed. The balloon filled with gas, grew before our eyes, and then turned by itself into a kind of simulator: a comfortable, large chair with a hood and a screen on a wide stand resting on a square base. When the simulator took its final shape, the strange sound faded away, and the inexplicable anxiety in Kalinkin’s soul disappeared. The string of transformations had no reasonable interpretation and seemed incredible, almost miraculous. Here he would cross himself just in case, but since childhood Petya has not been used to bow and beat his forehead, and he did not see any sense in abruptly reforging and chameleon: the inside will come out anyway, you can see by the muzzle. He just spread his hands in bewilderment, calling either the pure or the unclean to witness, then froze and stood there for five minutes, slightly opening his mouth, staring at the inflatable miracle of orange rubber.

— Made of rubber? — Pyotr Mikhailovich finally dared to touch the chair with a slightly trembling hand. The chair turned out to be cold to the touch, something like leather or alcantara — Kalinkin didn’t really understand this, but definitely not rubber. Carefully continuing his research, he touched the hood — plastic, the screen looks like a computer monitor, and under the screen, on the basis of the design, a red button sticks out. The button attracted the eye and tempted: push me… It’s not difficult for a child to guess: just push on it, and this kind of painful-tooth-crushing unit will work. The association with dentistry involuntarily cooled the experimenter’s ardor, but not for long.

— Maybe I should call Galya to consult? — the familiar thought of a henpecked man flashed, but for the first time in many years of family life, the subconscious insidiously dictated independence, pushing into the abyss of the unknown, very dangerous. Meanwhile, Galina Sergeevna was rattling dishes in the kitchen, and the usual domestic cacophony calmed her husband and gave him determination.

— In the end, am I a man or not? — he grumbled angrily to himself, mentally imagining himself as a hero next to Ilya Muromets in the picture on the left, and quickly drowned the button. The unit came to life, two rectangles with the words “English” and “Russian” appeared on the lit screen (it was strange that there was no “Galina Sergeevna” option). How inopportunely a thick dictionary was lying around somewhere in a city apartment, but who could have guessed that it would be useful in agriculture? He had to press the Russian icon with my index finger, as in an ATM, and then there were signs with the command:

— “Sit in the chair.” — Well, I sat down.

— “Put on the hood.” — Put it on.

— “Choose time” and two rectangles — “Past” and “Future”.

A sensitive sense of smell and everyday experience suggested: it smells like kerosene. A couple of years ago, Kalinkin found a curious scientific publication in a free newspaper, which they put in mailboxes. Of course, not everyone can handle an article about the hypothetical ability to travel in the universe using space-time tunnels in the form of wormholes. The persistent mind of Pyotr Mikhailovich was able to master it from the second time, but the idea seemed like an incomprehensible invention: is an instantaneous leap in time possible? And here, in the hall, this theory can be confirmed and become a reality! If what was happening wasn’t a game or a waking dream, he was on the verge of a fantastic opportunity. However, Pyotr Mikhailovich quickly realized: after taking the first step, it will not work to change the process, you can lose everything — Galya, the house, the usual and calm way of life, and, perhaps, life itself. The device hardly gives guarantees and insurance. On the other hand, the situation is so unique that, without a doubt, he, Pyotr Kalinkin, is a lucky man chosen by fate, a mole in the tunnel of Time! The unknown was so fascinating and attracted that it outweighed all fears and awakened in him a sense of courage. However, how valuable in his eyes are the promised paradise life on a pension of twenty thousand rubles, and bliss on quarter acre of land? Challenge accepted! The seductress sirens have already started their insidious hypnotic songs:

“Become zero, become zero and everything will be very good,” sounded in his ears, and he decided, as any adventurer would have decided in his place.

— But which rectangle should I click on? — Kalinkin scratched his head in indecision. — There have been a lot of interesting events in the past, from the Early Paleozoic to… however, what is the minimum step back? Is it possible last night? And an hour, a minute ago? If you think big, historically, then I would like to talk to Aristotle or, by the way, even with the cunning Gioconda…

From the suddenly opened prospects, ordinary logic got stuck, fantasies overshadowed common sense. Pyotr Mikhailovich forced himself to calm down, and after a short hesitation decided to apply the method of scientific poke, leaving the choice to his Majesty chance. Really, why break your head? He made a wish, crouching down to the window, and began to observe: if a bird flies from right to left, then it is necessary to fly into the past, and if the vector goes opposite, it means into the future. Five minutes passed, and the birds, as luck would have it, seemed to have hidden somewhere, disrupting the experiment. The impatient observer was already shifting from one foot to the other, unflatteringly describing the whole feathered world to himself, when suddenly some dead sparrow fluttered at the left edge of the frame, then sat down on it, unaware of its historical mission. Seeing the old man’s terrible, unshaven face behind the glass, the chick was stunned with fear, soiled the window, asshole, well, fluttered to the right and pointing to the Future!

— Undoubtedly: very smart people came up with this device, — Kalinkin came to the conclusion when two more signs appeared on the screen — “Time” and “Place”, — everything is concrete, fine tuning! Maybe it’s a virtual reality device, like five D? Then why in such a disguised form? Most likely, it was hidden by aliens from outer space, from another dimension! Those who are on flying saucers, the Americans showed them on video!

On the screen in red — “Attention!” — lit up a memo-instructions for reverse movement for a time traveler:

— “In order to avoid a dangerous situation! The return is activated at any moment of the journey by the command “I want to go back”.

The choice of a place with a poor imagination is obvious: a favorite city on the Neva river, Butlerova street, a native apartment with a balcony on the third floor… The time is at random, in about five years, 2026, June. It was only necessary to answer the questions, as space and time moved apart, absorbing Kalinkin along with the mysterious apparatus.

Ten minutes later, Galina Sergeevna called her husband, then went to look for him in the house, walked around the whole plot, but, to her surprise, she did not find him anywhere. The iron barrel lying on the veranda was also missing.

CHAPTER 2. LEAP INTO THE UNKNOWN

It didn’t seem like a long jump into the future to Kalinkin. Consciousness turned off, as with anesthesia, and it was not possible to feel anything during this movement through the years. Pyotr Mikhailovich opened his eyes and found himself in a painfully familiar six — meter kitchen, clean dishes on the table, flowers on the windowsill, everything neatly tidied up. Cautiously, still not fully believing in what was happening, I walked around the apartment — there is no hostess at home, the situation in the rooms does not seem to have changed, everything is as it was five years ago: Sony TV, photos hang on the walls, including his portrait, books shine with spines in the closet, on the sofa — the usual pillows. I sneaked into the pantry, put my hand under an old blanket — a stash of five hundred rubles on the spot, and his heart was relieved.

He turned on the TV for interest, and there — he don’t understand: either a cartoon, or a press conference:

— Attention, attention, Ivan the Fool at the microphone. Today we will find out how many percent of the remaining people as a result of optimization…

Kalinkin was not interested in fairy tales, and he de-energized the storehouse of news.

— And where is Galina? So June is the same month, she is obviously at the village, planting a vegetable garden, — Pyotr Mikhailovich realized. — Maybe I’m there too?

This metaphysical question took him by surprise: what happened to me in 2026? An amazing discovery was waiting for Pyotr Mikhailovich in the corridor by the mirror: where is my gray beard? A strange face of a man of about forty-five looked at him from the looking glass…

— Wow… — the shocked traveler could only squeeze out and almost cracked his head on the open closet door, and when the ability to think returned, he realized:

— If there is my reflection in the mirror, then the age and appearance change when jumping, a fact! But I wasn’t warned about this monster on four legs…

A clock ticked on the shelf, busily counting down the seconds of the new time.

— Honest mother, what should I do? Kalinkin burst out in despair, but there was no one to hear his words in the deserted apartment. However, there was still hope: upon returning back, everything would return to normal. And how to check: isn’t everything happening an illusion? Slowly going out on the stairs, he called the neighbor’s apartment, introduced himself as a relative of Galina — they say, he did not find her at home. The neighbor opened the door, did not recognize him, but said the obvious about his wife: at the village. But then the following question arose reasonably, and Pyotr Mikhailovich asked it with difficulty — his throat was so tight with excitement:

— And where is her husband?

— Galina Sergeevna shared with me, shared, — the neighbor lowered her voice conspiratorially and stared at me, as if she remembered a horror movie. — Her husband disappeared at the village about five years ago, she was wanted, but they didn’t find him anywhere. And why are you interested? — she asked suspiciously, as if realizing that she had given away a great secret to a stranger.

— Yes, I am aware that he have disappeared, maybe some new information has appeared, — looking down, Pyotr Mikhailovich squeezed out with difficulty.

— New information — that electricity has risen in price again, and a tax on clean air has been introduced, — the neighbor abruptly cut off the conversation, startling herself, and slammed the door.

Having found out that five years later he, the former, was not in the house at the moment, Kalinkin reasoned sensibly: to meet himself in the future is pure fiction. A.P. Chekhov was right: it can’t be, because it can never be! The miracle machine transported Pyotr Mikhailovich to another time, but there was an updated image of him in the future, changed beyond recognition and not coinciding with the usual one. So, the neighbor communicated, one might say, with the personality of Kalinkin, but in a different bodily shell. Here’s proof of discovery number two: it’s impossible to recognize a time traveler…

Pyotr Mikhailovich returned to the apartment, sat down on a chair in the kitchen to think about the situation again:

— So… if I disappeared from that time, what should I do next? How can I prove at least to myself that I made a leap five years ahead?

The pernicious habit of pouring in a hundred and fifty grams of vodka to clear his brain, he resolutely left in the past: the experiment should be pure, unclouded alcohol, in the name of the interests of all mankind. However, there was no vodka at hand either: Kalinkin checked the refrigerator — just in case. Lofty motives have generated a solution ingenious in its simplicity: I will take some object with me from my apartment, and even this plastic elephant standing on the dresser — upon returning to reality, it will be a material proof of time travel.

— That’s right, and I’ll tear out today’s calendar sheet for memory: June 17, 2026, — Pyotr Mikhailovich decided, put the elephant in a plastic bag and went out into the yard for a walk — I wonder what has changed in the neighborhood?

On a beautiful summer day, Kalinkin walked alone along the sidewalk past old brick houses and narrow lawns with stunted grass. Neither oncoming nor cross — all disappeared somewhere, which seemed very strange.

— Are all extinct, or what?

Cars whizzed by, throwing out dirt and soot — the era of electric carts has not yet come, as once planned. He turned left onto the broad Avenue of Science — so it was written on a sign attached to the brick wall of the building.

— So, science exists in Russia! — Kalinkin noted to himself.

At one time, in connection with the liquidation of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering, it was fired, and after a short thought, Pyotr Mikhailovich went to the night watchmen: well, the old man should not go to taxi drivers, although if life forces…

— Interestingly, — philosophized Pyotr Mikhailovich, — in the twentieth century the country created institutes of physics, chemistry, mathematics, and in the twenty-first century institutions of all kinds of problems suddenly began to arise: problems of the economy, problems of globalization, problems of entrepreneurship. It turns out: institutes and scientists are not engaged in science, but in problems that people themselves have created… Is this the progress? What were you thinking about earlier?

Thinking in this way, Pyotr Mikhailovich slowly moved along the avenue to the Akademicheskaya metro station and curiously looked at the signs of beauty salons and bank boards with a rate of 52—53 rubles to the yuan, but in his seemingly smart head, nothing clicked, illuminated, puzzled — and where are the dollars, and where is the euro? The metro turned out to be in the old place and has been preserved in almost the same gray, dull form, with concrete walls, a pie-thick roof and glass doors, representing stability in the field of architecture. And here people were already scurrying, crowds of people, Russians of the future. Oncoming streams of passengers poured out of the ground lobby and rushed back down, disappearing underground. The faces of those walking in the crowd were hidden by masks, and on the heads of each there was a headdress with a white plaque and a black number. Mentally, Pyotr Mikhailovich picked up a suitable comparison: a gathering of beekeepers in a huge apiary! He even rejoiced at his quick wit, but not for long: someone’s male voice with a characteristic southern accent interrupted his thoughts:

— Citizen, what are you doing here?

Pyotr Mikhailovich turned around: in front of him stood two stocky beekeepers, dressed in strange clothes, like the uniform of security guards in a shopping center five years ago.

— I’m looking at the subway building. What’s the matter? — Kalinkin was genuinely amazed.

— Why without a mask and a security number? — pushed, the one who is older. Pyotr Mikhailovich, trying to resolve the situation without conflict, politely asked:

— I forgot at home. And who are you?

— We are a volunteer squad of the Guard of Russia, — he received a proud answer, — you have grossly violated (it sounded like vi have violated) the decree on a special temporary regime. Follow us.

— Where to?

— To the police!

Kalinkin felt funny and even curious — some kind of incident, but he did not resist and contradict. The trio tramped along Civil Avenue to the building of the police department, where, after completing a quest with a cheerful color music, they found themselves in the duty room — a place of rendering legal services. Vigilant amateurs, having fused Pyotr Mikhailovich to professionals, turned around and recovered for a new search for evaders and violators. The chief on duty with one big star on his shoulder straps, apparently a general, took the guest into a separate room, sat him down on a chair and ordered him to wait. Kalinkin looked around: a black door, blue worn linoleum on the floor and the same blue painted brick walls, a barred window, an unpleasant, stagnant smell… Pyotr Mikhailovich even mentally refrained from unpatriotic comparisons, but he felt extremely shitty.

A nasty premonition sucked him in the pit of his stomach, a painful feeling of guilt arose; as if by magic, the constitutional rights of a citizen instantly self-destructed, and the personality and dignity of a person turned into something virtual. Involuntarily shivering, as if the punishing sword of either the proletariat or the bourgeoisie hovered over him there, under the ceiling, he became frightened and quiet. Five minutes later, a man in civilian clothes entered, but this one was already without a mask, sat down at the table facing Kalinkin and began filling out a questionnaire: first name, last name, patronymic, year of birth, registration address — in general, everything is like under Tsar Peas. From time to time he glanced at the monitor screen and tapped the keyboard keys. When the overture was over, questions began to pour in:

— What is the date, month, year today? — Kalinkin answered unmistakably.

— Why without documents? Why without a mask and a number? — The man didn’t look up from the table.

— Sorry, I forgot at home.

— And what were you doing at the metro station?

— I stood and looked at the pavilion building.

— Why? — The man raised his head and stared unfriendly at the prisoner.

— How why? It’s just interesting to watch. And what, is it forbidden?

— It’s not forbidden, but normal people don’t just stand by the subway and don’t look ostensibly at the pavilion. Who did you have an appointment with and for what purpose?

— I was alone and didn’t plan any meeting. Just walking. Don’t you believe me? — Pyotr Mikhailovich was genuinely surprised.

— I could believe it if it weren’t for the oddities in your behavior. Hence the question: when was the last time you took drugs? During the inspection, a toy elephant was seized from you. Why did you take him with you? Is that an identification mark?

The prisoner suddenly felt dizzy from excitement, but he answered with dignity, proudly raising his chin:

— This is an ordinary toy, nothing more.

— But you are not a child to carry toys with you. Well, you must agree — it’s very strange! — The word “strange” in his mouth sounded like a terrible accusation, Kalinkin noted to himself.

— Who did you want to give it to? Isn’t this a bookmark container? — the investigator squinted. — Witty. However, the examination will soon show whether there are traces of powder…

— Did you break the elephant? — Pyotr Mikhailovich could not stand it. — Galina will kill me!

— Galina is your accomplice?

— My wife, she’s at the village now.

— What happens, citizen? So, without your wife’s permission, you seized common property from the apartment and wanted to transfer it to a third party without her knowledge? Listen: it is in your own interests to refute the suspicions that have arisen and to prove the absence of the sale and storage of prohibited substances. You are in the status of a suspect, the measure is up to five years! — The man clearly enjoyed intimidating the unfortunate detainee.

— I didn’t have any drugs and I don’t have any. You’re confusing me in vain, — Kalinkin became emboldened, but the investigator has heard these speeches twenty times a day for the past ten years with a break for a short vacation once a year for a couple of weeks.

— Pyotr Mikhailovich, — the man looked into the questionnaire and changed his tone to almost affectionate, — well, judge for yourself: what kind of person in his right mind would go to the metro station for no reason, without a purpose, and even with a package containing a plastic toy and a calendar sheet with today’s date? So this piece of paper is a conditional sign?

— It’s just a leaf from the calendar, and I didn’t break anything, — Kalinkin fumed.

— Firstly, you violated it: during a special period you appeared in a public place without a mask and a security number, and secondly, you are now in a place where people don’t just get there… We will check everything and wait for the results of the examination. I warn you about criminal liability for giving false testimony. Sign here and here and here.

Pyotr Mikhailovich nervously and illegibly signed each sheet at the bottom, leaving some kind of squiggle, and then asked:

— What are the voluntary squads of the National Guard?

— A-a-a, — the investigator grinned. — This is, so to speak, an initiative of active segments of the population in pursuance of the Decree on the further development of democracy during the Great Restoration of the Country…

The policeman’s face became alien and impenetrable again.

— And now follow the employee for fingerprinting, you will have to issue a detention for a couple of days until all the circumstances are clarified.

Seeing the mute question in the innocent eyes of the arrested man and after being silent for a while, the man sharply slammed his hand on the table and added softly, typing every word:

— Pyotr Mikhailovich Kalinkin, whom you introduced yourself to, disappeared about five years ago and is wanted. Your appearance does not match the description and photo of the wanted person involved.

When the metal door of the detention cell screeched shut behind Pyotr Mikhailovich, he decided not to abuse the hospitality of the authorities and say goodbye to such a sad future, using a saving phrase:

— I want to go back! — However, there was no reaction. He broke into a cold sweat. Have you really forgotten? — Ah! he remembered. — I want to go back!!!

Time stopped, and the body, along with the sinless soul of Pyotr Mikhailovich, disappeared from the bullpen of the police department without a trace. When the loss was discovered in the evening, the police were surprised a lot, but due to the specifics of the service, they did not hesitate for a long time — and it happens occasionally. They simply withdrew the protocol of interrogation and the act of detention, as if they were not in nature, and that’s the end of it: who needs this Kalinkin, and without him, life is full of other worries.

When Galina Sergeevna Kalinkina returned home from the hospital a couple of weeks later, she found the elephant missing from the chest of drawers. Not that there is any value, but it’s just amazing: she remembered that the figure was always there, in the morning she dusted it with a rag. The elephant himself could not go anywhere! This iron argument and a woman’s insight made her take a closer look at the apartment, and on you: for some reason, a calendar sheet was torn out, there is the sixteenth of June and the eighteenth is in place, but there is no seventeenth. Some kind of devilry… She did not call her friends, but went to consult a neighbor. And neighbor told her about the visit of a strange man: he pestered her with questions, pretended to be a friend. Maybe he is the thief who broke into the apartment? True, it was embarrassing: the things and jewelry dear to her heart were in place, but the fact of penetration alarmed her so much that Galina Sergeevna decided to go to the police tomorrow, without a shake-up, with a statement about the theft. Moreover, this is exactly how they recommend acting on TV.

A man in civilian clothes questioned her, clearly not interested in this small matter. But when Kalinkina gave the address and announced the missing elephant, something cleared up in the investigator’s head, he immediately perked up and clarified:

— Is the calendar sheet missing?

And he was not surprised when he heard an easily predictable answer:

— Gone, gone, for June 17, 2026…

The investigator asked Galina Sergeevna to wait, and he went to the head of the department with a short report about the loss of a toy in the form of an elephant, a calendar sheet and a muddy man who disappeared from custody a couple of weeks ago. The chief instructed to send an investigative team to the victim’s address, and he picked up the secure phone and called the curator, following the instructions: to inform whom about all extraordinary incidents. The fingerprints taken at the police department from allegedly Kalinkin predictably coincided with the traces in the apartment, and thus the fact of his penetration into the dwelling and theft was irrefutably proved. Two circumstances were alarming: although the description of the criminal given by the neighbor coincided with the description of the detainee, Galina Sergeevna herself did not recognize her husband in him in any way. And most importantly: where did the criminal go?

CHAPTER 3. RETURN

Pyotr Mikhailovich woke up sitting in an armchair. In front of him is a monitor screen with the date: June 17, 2021, Moscow time — 17 hours 43 minutes, at the bottom of the phrase:

— “The penetration into the future is over. Stand up and remove the hood. Turn off the device by pressing the red button!”

The button was pressed, the structure with the monitor and the chair began to deflate and disappear into the air, and instead an iron barrel on metal legs reappeared. Kalinkin stood beside the time machine and was silent, gathering his thoughts. Have arrived… And where, exactly? After looking around, the traveler discovered that he was in an unfamiliar place, in some kind of closed, poorly lit room, like a warehouse or utility room. Pushing open the unlocked door, he found himself in the trading floor of the store, where this morning (oh, a miracle!) he bought batteries. The saleswoman involuntarily shuddered from surprise when she saw a stranger coming out of the office, and with fright called the administrator. Pyotr Mikhailovich only managed to spread his hands as a sign of good intentions, show empty palms and take a look in the mirror on the wall...The administrator, an energetic middle-aged lady, jumped out of the next room, went for rapprochement and attacked a young man who had fallen from nowhere with a powerful body and tricky questions: from where? why? why?, subjected him to a light search and let him go in peace, gently pushing him out into the street. Kalinkin realized that he was back in a country village, not far from his own house. Well, if so, fate itself prompted: go to your wife and clarify the situation, which yesterday would have seemed complete nonsense and absurdity.

After leaving the store, Pyotr Mikhailovich stopped and carefully examined his clothes. He remember that he went to the Future in his usual outfit — a work jacket and jeans, but he defiled at Butlerov street and the police in a brown suit. Now, after returning, he found himself dressed in a dark blue jumpsuit and short boots, and on his head was a blue baseball cap. There was, of course, no answer to the question of how and why clothes were changed and in which intertemporal atelier he was changed. But this circumstance is not so mysterious compared to the stunning change in appearance, and the age has decreased again! During the flight to 2026, he rejuvenated by twenty years and remained unrecognized by a neighbor who knew him like a flake from his student days. Did the reverse jump reduce (or did give him a gift) two more decades — at least that’s how Kalinkin looked now, walking briskly along the narrow village road, and felt like he matched his years. Apparently, this is the bonus from the barrel for bold experiments.

Pyotr Mikhailovich, or rather Peter looked with interest at the picture of summer spreading out before him, saw it in a new way, as if for the first time. By evening, the heat of the day finally relented and receded, cirrus clouds appeared high in the sky, stretching into white rag strips, daring from time to time to cover His Majesty the Sun. Suddenly the wind died down, and the orchestra of grasshoppers with crickets performed a concerto in D minor for the traveler, splashing their melodies in the fading nature. Here, around the corner, is his house with a dilapidated picket fence, a gate and a narrow path leading to a familiar door.

Galina Sergeevna was sitting in the kitchen and drinking tea alone, thinking about where her husband could have gone — he had not been in the house or on the plot for an hour. Her husband’s mobile phone was lying next to her, so she could only wait — apparently, Pyotr Mikhailovich decided to take a walk around the neighborhood, to be alone with himself. A sudden noise from the courtyard alerted her, there was a knock on the door.

— Who’s there? — The woman asked in a trembling voice.

— Can I come in? — An unfamiliar deep voice asked.

— Come in! — Galina Sergeevna allowed, and despite the external calmness, her soul sank into her heels: Pyotr Mikhailovich would not knock…

There was a creak, heavy footsteps were heard on the stairs, and a young man of about twenty-five appeared on the threshold, wearing a blue overalls, short boots and a blue baseball cap with the inscription “Reebok”.

— Excuse me, mistress, — the guest began reassuringly, seeing the fright in the eyes of an elderly woman, — I’m going around the houses in the neighborhood, I suggest drilling wells. Do you have an old well on your site, as with drinking water?

— There is water, but my husband and I haven’t decided anything about the well yet, — and as if in justification, she added: — We haven’t been here long, we haven’t looked around properly yet…

Galina Sergeevna’s sudden fear did not let go yet, but she tried with all her might not to show it — some frightening implausibility emanated from the man. His visit from the point of view of common sense is also inexplicable and mysterious: it’s too late to go around the house, rather, it’s just an excuse. However, the guest was in no hurry to leave and closely followed the behavior of the hostess, and she intuitively, unmistakably felt that it was not the well at all.

— What kind of day is this? First Pyotr disappeared somewhere, and now this strange guest? — she thought, and aloud, in order to round off the strange conversation, politely suggested: — And you come to us in a couple of days, talk to the owner…

— I will do that, — the guy agreed, resolutely put on his cap and left without saying goodbye. When the door slammed and the footsteps in the garden died away, Galina Sergeevna, without feeling, slowly got up and walked stiffly to the open window, carefully closed the shutters and latched them on the latches. Her hands were shaking as if from exertion, her head was spinning, and her body was stiff with fright. She returned to the table, managed to drink water from a glass, then tried to get a bottle of medicine, but the floor swayed treacherously and went out from under her feet. Flying away into the darkness and piercing pain, she still thought about Pyotr.

The time machine played a cruel joke with Pyotr Mikhailovich. He appeared before his Galina as a young stranger full of strength and health. Shocked no less than his wife, assessing the situation as if from the outside, he intended not to injure his ridiculous explanations for at least another couple of days in order to save her from an imminent blow. Perhaps something will change during this time… The game eventually presented the second side of the coin — the reckoning for superpowers, which also needs to be comprehended and taken for granted. Having left his own house, burdened with the revealed truths, Peter had no idea where to go, and wandered aimlessly along the highway. Then, unable to think of anything better, he turned around and headed back to the store. At this late hour there were no more visitors, and out of desperation, he started a bold conversation with a pretty saleswoman about urgent needs: I’m so thirsty that I have nowhere to spend the night… There are practically no chances of success, but, surprisingly, the girl remembered and recognized him and, calmly measuring him with her impenetrable black eyes, asked:

— And what were you doing in the warehouse?

— Yes, I accidentally went there… — Kalinkin lied clumsily.

It was hardly true, but his helpless appearance confirmed better than any words: He is not from here, he have nowhere to go, even if a wolf howls… after a little thought, the girl calmly said in a melodious voice:

— If you’re thirsty, buy a couple of beers, well, or stronger… And the snack, so be it, I’ll cook it myself.

Mein goth! Kalinkin almost jumped for joy and at first did not even believe what he had heard: what a surprise and contrast with the new self that had not yet fully formed! His eyes studied her expression and finally lit up with an inner fire of hope. The psychological swing swung again, the cave of Ali Baba’s treasures opened up before him: pleasant company, a warm overnight stay, and if he was really lucky, then a woman’s caress.

— What’s your name, not Mother Teresa? — he joked.

— Daria. And you?

Carefully, so as not to scare away, not to dispel this mirage, Peter asked as politely as possible to choose snacks to her taste, and even in this she did not disappoint. Where he got the money in his pocket so conveniently turned out to be — probably a mystery, on a par with new clothes… When the store closed, the two of them walked leisurely side by side, shoulder to shoulder, occasionally looking at each other with interest. When she reached the gate, jokingly, or maybe seriously, a new acquaintance stopped and asked Peter:

— Aren’t you a criminal?

— Does it really look like? — Peter retorted with a smile.

— I don’t think so. Married? — that’s how easily they switched to “you”.

— I don’t even know, — Peter exhaled after a pause. But strangely enough, this answer was received favorably: everything happens, and she has already seen something in her life.

CHAPTER 4. THE NEW SELF

Jumping in time has opened another unique transformation associated with the change of age — the renewal of the soul. Peter’s feelings were rejuvenated and cut on a sharp edge, painfully wounding the heart — an unforgettable amorous adventure full of desperate, sudden passion. Peter had experienced enough shocks, but the intuitive female trust in him, a stranger, could not fail to amaze him. She was the first to reach out to the weak… he found it simply humiliating to introduce himself as some fictional Alik — it would be treachery towards the person who invited him to his house. After jumping through time, he became different, and not only physically, but undoubtedly transformed internally, as if somewhere there, in the portal, he was injected with the elixir of happiness. And a chance meeting turned into not only acquaintance with a beautiful woman, but also the process of studying oneself in a new guise, and this knowledge never ceased to amaze and delight.

An easy, non-binding conversation over a glass of excellent cognac, warm smiles… And Galina? But Galina is no there, she is in another, old world… Peter no longer remembered about her and did not feel any remorse. Here, next to him, sat a charming blonde, and opposite her was an ardent admirer in his face, with an updated appearance and a new attitude. A subtle, gambling psychological game: cautious, studying looks like a timid attempt to touch souls, vague fears of disturbing the charming atmosphere of reinforcing mutual arrangement… Fear of making a hasty, unsuccessful step, pronouncing an optional, misinterpreted word, distorting the inner world of the interlocutor in the first hours of acquaintance… A sweet, fascinating duel of tete-a-tete contemplation. Peter surprised himself by demonstrating a previously unknown heightened sensuality and tact, seriousness of intentions, which sincerely pleased Daria. The drug of her beauty penetrated more and more into his bubbling blood, it pleased her and at the same time frightened her. No, he’s not a gigolo, she thought, and floated on the waves of a soul-seizing feeling of favor, attraction to this man. Respectful, unobtrusive courtship, sincere trust and sympathy at one truly wonderful moment were able to weaken the resistance of the impregnable fortress, and the awakened young hormones sounded the signal to attack. In response to a timid kiss, she gently hugged him and leaned her head on his shoulder. And then their bodies were struck by an electric discharge of passion. Peter involuntarily squeezed Daria in his arms, and she even cried out in surprise and pain…

When their naked hot bodies desperately touched, Peter clearly felt the gates opening with difficulty, and the priceless feeling of the triumph of youth simultaneously fell upon them, taking them to heaven — it seemed to last forever. So they were flying out of time, somewhere high above the clouds, clinging to each other, two halves that finally met in this crazy world, and no force could separate them. He is indefatigable, affectionate and rude at the same time; and she turned out to be a real reward, a luxurious gift to a fine connoisseur of beauty — natural and ardent, with a burning feeling of unrequited love, filled to the brim with desire that stunned both him and herself.

Finally, they fell from heaven, lying on a crumpled sheet with cigarette lights in their hands, these torches of triumph, exhausted, with bodies as light as fluff, and occasionally let out trickles of tobacco smoke to the ceiling. The subconscious gradually gave way to the mind, returning the reality of the world, but the feeling of ecstasy, touching the unearthly, divine, did not let them go. Smiling at something of her own, hidden, Daria gently touched her palm to his chest and whispered softly:

— How fast your heart beats…

— It runs to you.

— You’re so hairy — here and here, — she remarked with the coolness of an executioner, taking a drag on her cigarette. Peter noticed that she tends to change the direction of the conversation abruptly, as if two people got along in her: subtly emotional and coldly reasonable.

— Almost Neanderthal, do you want me to show you my passport?

— I know that without a passport. You’re a wild beast, and you almost tore me apart.

— Consider it a compliment? — Peter asked, obviously flattered. But Daria was in no hurry to give up so quickly.

— Why did you come to the store again, were you sure that I would agree? — she abruptly changed the subject again after a pause.

— I wasn’t sure about anything, you know…

— Do you think I’m an adventurer? Well, tell me, just be honest!

Daria pleased Peter with the lack of commercialism and standard ladies’ stereotypes, did not build any far-reaching plans, believing a simple cute guy, and did not regret it at all.

— Do you have another cigarette? — Peter asked and clicked the lighter. — I haven’t found the answer for myself yet: which one of us is the perfect adventurer…

— If we had children, they would be reckless — like dad and mom, — she said philosophically. And then, not allowing him to appreciate the natural female fantasy, she suddenly leaned on him with elastic breasts:

— And if I click here, what will happen? — sensitive fingers gently touched his flesh. — Does it hurt?

— Nice, press again. Today I will die of physical exhaustion, like a racehorse at a racetrack, but happy, — he sighed resignedly.

— You think too highly of yourself! Just try to give up, we haven’t finished our race yet, there are still three laps to go! — the skilled rider jokingly threatened and unceremoniously settled down on top of him as in the saddle.

CHAPTER 5. LOVE AS IT IS

The night flew by, followed by the morning, inviting the bright sun to look through the wide-open window and illuminate the holy sinner. Involuntarily squinting, Peter opened his eyes and saw himself lying in a small cozy room. Ringing children’s voices and the fading crackle of a motorcycle flying near the house could be heard from the street. The rumpled bed still retained the unique scent of a woman, the natural and enticing scent of her body. Catching the pheromones, he was again enveloped in a fog of dreams. But in his head, after the night’s pleasures, there was a notable noise-boom, however, the situation in the room was no better: on the table, plates of food were side by side with half — empty glasses, an ashtray full of cigarette butts — the consequences of a private dinner and its sweet continuation. A cage with parrots came to life and rustled on the furniture set. Peter remembered that yesterday he had already managed to get acquainted: green is Grunya, and blue is Borya. Carefully shifting himself to an upright position and pulling on a tracksuit, he slowly walked around the house to the approving chirping and clicking, and stated the absence of the hostess. It’s already three o’clock, the keys are on the nightstand. Apparently, Daria was in a hurry to work, and, feeling sorry for him, did not wake him up. Looking at himself in the mirror, he saw in it a tall young brown-haired man with a rumpled unshaven face and tousled hair. The reflection was very puzzled by what it saw, but after a few seconds of mutual consideration, it winked conspiratorially at Peter: man, life is beautiful! The lucky man, reviving after yesterday, did not object to the looking glass, only dark shadows under his eyes and a strange emptiness in the lower abdomen reminded him of his Hercules exploits, or rather, of one feat. Having brought himself to a more or less normal appearance and hastily had a snack, the guest cleaned up the table and went to the store. On the way, I checked pockets and found a crumpled five thousand rubles bill — how convenient! I am the king!

Daria was standing behind the counter and serving another customer. When she saw Kalinkin, she blushed, but did not show that they were familiar, and continued to work as if nothing had happened. Kalinkin fatally stood in a short queue and, when the saleswoman finally turned her gaze on him, seriously asked:

— Hello. What do you recommend to buy for dinner with your girlfriend?

— Is she a vegetarian? — Daria skillfully supported the game: those present did not even suspect anything.

— N — no, she is not a vegetarian, — Peter answered very uncertainly.

— Take a beef kebab and vegetables.

— Then, please, and a bottle of cognac. Do you have an “Arachtan”? — Kalinkin was waiting for the highest approval.

— Yes, seven years of exposure, seven hundred and twenty rubles. Take it?

— Good. Cigarettes “Parliament”, a couple of lemons and dark chocolate. And some mineral water…

Loaded with shopping, Peter slowly, with a silly look of a lucky man, moved back to Daria’s house to prepare dinner for her arrival.

By the evening, the hostess returned from work almost alive. Peter met her at the door and warmly embraced her.

— How are you, Dashenka? — he asked, looking into her huge eyes. Then, with the palm of his hand, he gently pulled the blonde curls away from her face and gently kissed her soft lips.

— Oh, I don’t even know. I’ve been in a dream all day, I can barely stand on my feet, — and in confirmation of her words, she sank down on a chair in the hallway.

— Sit down, come to your senses. Do you want some water? I’ve got something ready for the evening, so get some rest…

— Thanks, I think I’ll change and lie down for a while. — Daria entered the room and took a look at the situation: everything was in order, a bouquet of wild flowers flaunted on the table, dinner on the table… Her heart skipped a beat. — And you’re good!

— I tried… But you don’t hope: until you lie down and get hungry — to the table no-no! — Peter smiled. — and how do you feel in another sphere?

— Complete and crushing satisfaction! The men immediately smelled, envied someone…

Peter carefully covered the worker with a light blanket and ordered:

— Sleep!

After about forty minutes, Daria showed signs of life: she stirred, stretched, and then turned her head to Kalinkin and asked, making terrible eyes:

— How, to drink again?

— The actress is still the one, and she knows that it is simply impossible not to love her.., — watching her, Peter thought, and recited aloud:

— Your Majesty, dinner is served. Will you deign to proceed?

Daria casually, without hesitation, threw off her robe and, looking in the mirror, straightened her hair and critically examined herself. Satisfied, she took an elegant red dress with a low neckline out of the closet, barely got into it and asked Peter to fasten the zipper on the back. She touched up her lips, turned her head back and forth, smoothed out non-existent folds of clothing, once again looked sternly at her reflection and said:

— I’m ready!

At the table, after the first toast for the word with the letter “L”, they lit up, and the moment of discussing serious topics crept up — yesterday there was no time for this. Looking at her classic, chiseled face, he asked:

— Tell me, where does the beauty come from?

— Mom is from Vologda, and dad is from Tver…

— Sorry, maybe I’ll ask an impolite question, if you don’t want to, don’t answer. Married?

— Was…

— Where’s the ex?

— In the jail Crosses.

— Visiting?

— About once a month.

— How long will he…?

— I don’t know. The investigation is there. He said that he had submitted a petition.

— Well, and the children?

— We didn’t have time to start it.

— And how did you end up here in the village?

— It’s a long story. It’s better to splash one more, or I’ll take it and cry…

— I’m sorry, I’m not just asking. I like you, I really like you, as if I’ve been looking for you all my life. Come on, here’s to you!

— For us, — Daria cast a close look at the cognac in the glass playing with multicolored lights, as if in a magic crystal she saw a secret prediction, her fate and stretched out an elegant, thin hand to Peter. — For us!

Resolutely, in one gulp, she drank a scalding, tart drink and, with a cute, feminine wince, gracefully bit into a piece of lemon. The strength of the alcohol took her breath away and tears came out. Carefully, trying not to damage the mascara, she dabbed her eyelashes with a napkin and cooed sweetly:

— Do you mind if I eat a little? I didn’t have time to have breakfast…

— That’s great, otherwise I was worried: maybe it’s tasteless? — Peter perked up, seeing that the interlocutor is coming back to normal. — Let’s do this: you eat, and I talk.

— Come on, — Dasha raised her eyes and fixed her hypnotic gaze on him, — where did you fall from, Kalinkin?

CHAPTER 6. CONFESSION

Peter took a deep drag on his cigarette, then carefully squeezed Dasha’s fragile wrist with his fingers, as if he was afraid of losing it, and began to tell about the strange find and his recent adventures. From time to time he stopped, catching his breath and choosing the right words, and looked at her — an unearthly, fatal woman, without whom he could no longer imagine his life. Daria listened attentively without interrupting, but the emotions that overwhelmed her were clearly reflected on her face: the pink skin of her face turned pale, then turned purple, her breathing changed its rhythm, her eyes expressed the whole palette of emotions: from delight to anger, from surprise to fright. Even watching her pleased and amazed, and the spontaneity of the expression of feelings was captivating: the sincerity and naivety of the child was clearly manifested in her. When the monologue came to the end, Peter took a deep breath and added almost plaintively:

— Dasha, I still don’t understand a lot myself. Help me figure this out…

Daria did not answer immediately. Her face lost its serenity, suddenly became thoughtful and serious. She gently released her hand, wanting to remain free, unfettered by anything. For a few seconds in complete silence, she stared at one point, pondering the decision, then she took the bottle and resolutely splashed alcohol into the glasses, after which she said in a low, muffled voice, wearily:

— Petya, your choice has already been made, you are the master of your magic machine, and you are its slave. I believe you and am ready to help in any situation. I hope I’ve already helped you in some way, — she smiled a little slyly. — But now I’m not ready to give a definitive answer. And therefore, let’s leave everything as it is for now. Isn’t that enough for today?

— Dasha, it’s so much that neither my soul nor my mind can contain it all, — Peter sincerely exclaimed, resolutely took the poured amber drink from the table, almost spilling it, and carefully put the glass into her warm fingers, squeezing them with his palm. — Let’s drink to the holiday that is with us today.

Daria moved closer to him, stroked his coarse hair and said:

— So be it!

Soon they will get to know each other again, discovering previously unknown feelings and sensations, the taste of sweetness, the tenderness of intercourse, the pain of attraction and the aroma of fire.

Dasha’s cell phone rang with a nasty chirp at nine in the morning. It seemed that the devil’s hammers were pounding insistently in Peter’s ears, preventing him from falling into a blissful sleep again. A new day was beginning, but he could not clearly reconstruct the events of the last few hours. He only remembered that in the twilight their bodies were intertwined, then repelled from each other, simple words suddenly acquired the significance of eternal truths, semantic accents shifted, sharpening the senses. Fragments of dreams and memories flowed into a jumble of sounds and images in which it was no longer possible to distinguish reality from fantasy. Wanting to free himself from the shackles of Morpheus, Kalinkin threw off the blanket and abruptly stood up, unceremoniously showing his beloved’s naked body to two budgies in a cage. The parrots immediately perked up, clicked and whistled, vying with each other to express their admiration for the picture that opened before them, like true connoisseurs of the nude style.

— It’s good that they covered the cage with a rag before going to bed: they would have seen something else, — Peter thought ironically, trying to calm his headache.

In the falling morning light, Daria really looked damn tempting, like an awakening Aurora. The ideal of female beauty suddenly showed signs of life and moaned softly, mentally begging the sky for mercy — she didn’t want to wake up after a stormy night. Like it or not, it’s time to come to your senses and brush your feathers…

At night, Peter, like a true gentleman, solemnly declared:

— I agree with your choice in advance. Decide!

— With anyone?

— Of course!

— Well, what do you think: in the future or the past? — Daria still didn’t want to go against his wishes. But Peter confirmed the original: decide for yourself!

Sleepless and slightly intoxicated, they did not approach, but gently floated to the door of the store, just in time for the opening of the local miracle shop. Daria was the first to pass, and Peter, after briefly trampling on the street, joined the crowd of customers and crossed the threshold of the trading floor. Their plan in theory was simple: to sneak unnoticed into the warehouse, close the door of the barrel, press the cherished button and fly away from here to this very mother. The second point of the plan was to take care of Grunya and Borya in advance, the birds sitting in the cage. This was an indispensable condition for Dasha when planning a trip, which they discussed in between, which is very attractive to erotomaniacs. Daria managed to negotiate with her girlfriend in the morning, who promised to visit her house and feed the winged ones, so the feathered issue was already resolved, and there was only one thing left: to break through to the goal — an iron barrel.

Half an hour later, as soon as it became possible, Daria asked a colleague to replace her for a minute behind the counter, and she rushed to the back room, Peter followed her. We went in, closed the door and began to look for the unit: thank God, on the spot! Their hearts were pounding with excitement. Daria looked hopefully at Peter, and he winked at her and abruptly slammed the lid of the barrel, but the long — awaited click did not follow — the time machine did not start… Thinking took only a few moments:

— Dasha, batteries!

— How much?

— Six pieces!

She quickly looked around the shelves, found a box with batteries, deftly took out the right package from it and gave it to Peter. Peter quickly replaced the old batteries with new ones. Before closing the lid, he looked back at Daria and asked:

— Do you believe in miracles? — and, seeing the tense expectation in her eyes, he admonished her before slamming the lid: — Go ahead, my love!

The inner lock clanged like a magic chord, and immediately a low vibrating sound began to press on the ears. Peter smiled encouragingly at his beloved, who was watching the mysterious device. Before her eyes, the iron barrel gradually melted into the air and disappeared, a small orange ball appeared instead, which began to grow rapidly and turned into the throne of the lord of space and a wanderer in time: a comfortable, large armchair with a hood and a wide stand with a screen. Daria ran up to Peter and hung on his neck for joy. Peter hugged her, then gently sat her down in a chair, and he settled down next to her.

The opportunity to look into the mysterious tomorrow, to witness the upcoming events, certainly intrigued the girl, but the past centuries, the refined French aristocratic society attracted her more. An era of glory for France… Even in her youth, standing in front of a mirror, she dreamed of herself as Queen Margot or Lady Winter. She was able to evaluate the intelligence, beauty and influence in the society of these bright historical figures from books, and the outfits shown in the films, palace splendor and luxury completed the picture that beckoned like a magnet. But can she be blamed for this — many girls dream of the same! Peter looked questioningly at Daria, and she, encouraged by his gaze, reached for the “Past” button.

— “Time” — July 15, 1663.

— “Place” — France, Versailles, the palace of King Louis XIV.

— A royal choice, — commented Peter: even in such a situation, he did not lose his sense of humor. After answering the questions, the travelers saw a warning highlighted in red on the screen:

— “Attention! In order to avoid a dangerous situation, the return is activated at any moment of the journey by the command “I want to go back”…

Daria shivered from nervous tension. Peter felt her condition and hugged her tightly by the shoulders. Suddenly, the door leading to the trading floor opened, and a lady administrator appeared on the threshold, attracted by a suspicious noise in the warehouse. When she saw the couple sitting in the chair, she only had time to ask:

— What are you doing here?

But they didn’t hear her anymore: time and space disappeared, absorbing them together with the mysterious apparatus.

CHAPTER 7. VERSAILLES

And here they are in Versailles, young, beautiful, dressed in luxurious fashion outfits. However, they are no longer Peter and Daria, but Count Petronel de Armand de Burlemont and Countess Dorian de Burlemont, representatives of the French nobility.

— How’s that? — Peter asked with a victorious smile.

— I don’t believe my eyes! — Daria exclaimed, beaming with childish delight.

The Comte de Burlemont stopped at the statue of the great Gaius Julius Caesar, whose cult was highly appreciated by French art connoisseurs.

— Suae quisque fortunae faber, — he recalled the saying of the great Caesar in Latin, and the Countess echoed it in the purest French:

— Each blacksmith of his own destiny…

It is hardly possible to describe the impressions of the Palace of Versailles. As soon as Countess Dorian crossed the threshold, her heart fluttered — the arrivals immediately found themselves in the thick of the events of the royal court.

— Now I’m going to see what I’ve been dreaming about all my life! — she thought.

Daria and Peter walked across the sparkling parquet floor across the hall.

The King ‘s senior chamberlain announced:

— Comte de Burlemont de Armand Petronel.

She heard his voice:

— We are happy to see you, Count, and admire the Countess, about whose beauty we have heard so much.

— Have you heard? — Daria was surprised, not daring to utter these words or even show it, but clearly flattered by His Majesty’s compliment. Peter, on the contrary, perceived these words differently: a burning jealousy pricked his heart, and a vague, cold anxiety arose in his soul…

The day after the reception in Versailles, Peter and Daria went for a walk in Paris. In the evening they went to the hotel, where they stayed for the night.

— How are you, honey? So many events! It’s nice, it turns out, to be in the role of the nobility and receive the attention of the king himself!

— I’m so stunned, I’m in an amazing fairy tale all day! Everything we have seen and heard today has deeply impressed my imagination. I feel elation, and at the same time, my beloved, I am tormented by forebodings.

Daria told Peter: it was just as dangerous to refuse the monarch as to accept his courtship favorably. Those ladies who became favorites of Louis XIV were in danger of being poisoned by competitors.

Peter thought about it, and then asked:

— Are we able to resist this? — and he answered himself: — Alas, no! Let’s not give in to despair! In any case, we are not in danger today.

— Shall we order a dinner worthy of an earl and rest from our misgivings? — Daria suggested.

— Let’s leave it as it is for now. Isn’t that enough for today? — Peter repeated Daria’s words, spoken by her in that former world.

Dasha appreciated the memory with dignity and smiled understandingly, throwing herself into the arms of her beloved. Secretly, sideways, she looked in the mirror by the huge bed in the boudoir: there were reflected two figures, female and male, similar to the actors from the movie about the three Musketeers, the treacherous Milady and the fearless D’Artagnan…

The beautiful Burgundy wine turned their heads, and they forgot themselves after love on satin sheets. When fatigue set in, Peter quickly closed his eyes and passed out. He dreamed that he was arguing with Julius Caesar about power and democracy, and Daria tossed from side to side and could not fall asleep for a long time: even during intimacy with her beloved, she could not forget the king’s gaze and felt his presence next to her with horror.

CHAPTER 8. COUNTESS DORIAN

After a sleepless night and painful thoughts, Daria initiated Peter into her plan: she would take any opportunity to have an audience with His Majesty, and then rely on the good will of the monarch. And who in the world could have predicted how the story would develop further? She secretly hoped that the king would not refuse her request related to their future fate. Peter was not so optimistic and believed that although Louis XIV was not distinguished by vindictiveness, he would hardly put up with a rival in his person. The king’s attention to his wife was fraught with imminent danger for him.

However, unfortunately, events developed so rapidly that the de Burlemont couple was not ready for this. Confirmation of this was the night arrest of Peter on false evidence of high treason. Formally, these slanders had to be considered by the court, but there was no doubt that his fate was predetermined… You can get rid of the Comte de Burlemont by bricking him up in prison.

Two days later Daria was standing in front of the king, confident that His Majesty would listen to her words:

— Sire, let my husband stand trial, and then he will easily prove that he was the victim of erroneous accusations. The Count has never conspired against Your Majesty. He just couldn’t do it…

— I don’t understand you. Kindly express yourself more clearly, — Ludovic’s face assumed an interested expression.

— Sire, I will tell you a secret… a secret that any sane person can hardly believe. Nevertheless, without fear of being accused of mental illness or witchcraft, I beg you to listen to my words and not rush to reject them without due attention.

The contemptuous irony of the king did not bode well, but Daria continued.

— I am in despair, Sire. But the truth is that my husband and I are your guests from the future. We arrived in France from distant Russia during the reign of Your Majesty from the twenty-first century…

The King frowned and calmly said:

— I assumed that everything would come down to witchcraft and magic.

He headed for the exit, and then, stopping, addressed her:

— I can only promise to clarify some circumstances concerning your husband. I will ask you not to leave Paris for the next ten days.

Daria realized: apparently, the king had already decided for himself the fate of the count.

CHAPTER 9. PARTING

Thanks to the patronage of a nobleman from the royal entourage, who clearly sympathized with her, the Countess de Burlemont achieved the almost impossible: a meeting with Count Petronel in the Bastille prison, from which only a few came out alive, and dozens and hundreds of people disappeared without a trace, who got there only at the behest of the king, without any investigation or trial. In the very place that was terrifying only at the mention of him.

At noon on the twenty-third of July, the carriage with the Comtesse de Burlemont stopped not far from the prison gates. The fortress was a huge quadrangle with eight towers twenty meters high and a deep moat. A suspension bridge is thrown over a moat filled with water. After crossing the bridge to the gate, Daria handed the Duke’s letter to the commandant through the window. At least half an hour of agonizing waiting had passed when the bolts rattled and the heavy door, studded with metal strips, opened. Daria, dressed in a black robe and a black hat with a veil, followed two jailers through a narrow corridor with many bars with locks and went out into the courtyard of the building. Her escorts led her along a cobblestone path to one of the five-story towers, where another supervisor, a portly, gloomy-looking one, let her in. The two of them went down a narrow staircase to the underground chamber where Peter was imprisoned. Keys rattled, and the narrow door to the casemate opened.

— Fifteen minutes, — the fat man said triumphantly, reveling in his little power, and slammed the door from the outside, leaving the prisoner and the Countess alone.

When Daria crossed the threshold of this dungeon, she felt sick from the smells and darkness. Dampness permeated the walls and the floor, strewn here and there with straw on the cold sand. Peter was sitting on an iron bed attached to a long wall. Light penetrated into this room from the corridor through two narrow openings located at the very bottom of the door, and painted his prison uniform in gray tones.

— Petronel! Daria exclaimed and rushed to him in despair. The prisoner looked exhausted and depressed.

— Dorian! — Peter found the strength to hug her. Then he pulled away and stared in surprise at the beautiful face that reflected both the joy of meeting and the shock of what he saw. His voice, as before, remained as euphonious. — How did you get in here?

— My beloved, my heart breaks from what I see. My friends helped me arrange our meeting, I got an audience with the king and appealed to his Majesty for a sense of justice. You may be released soon, but it will be possible only by a court decision.

Peter listened attentively to Daria’s words, lowering his head. Then, looking at her as if he had seen her for the last time, and with a calmness that betrayed the full horror of his situation, he asked:

— Do you really believe I’m going to get out of here? The reason is not in me, but in your beauty and the brightness of the feelings that it causes. The king’s sympathy for a married woman is a death sentence not only for the Comte de Armand de Burlemont.

Peter looked at Daria and smiled. She was suddenly afraid.

— What should we do? — she exclaimed. There was no trace of her former determination. — Darling, I have revealed to the King the secret of our time travel, but it does not seem that such explanations could be taken seriously.

— If we don’t change the course of events, we won’t see each other again. — Peter spoke as if he had thought it over for a long time. — My fate is sealed, and no one can change it. Your fate as a favorite of Louis XIV is so unique and unpredictable that I have not the slightest right to ask you to give it up. Ahead of you is success in society, golden mountains, dangers and imminent oblivion. But there is another scenario…

— Which one? Daria exclaimed, experiencing conflicting feelings, but still sincerely wanting neither to leave nor to betray her beloved.

— We have the opportunity to return to the twenty-first century together. To return to where they came from, and, perhaps, by those who left that time. But — listen carefully — if only one person, you or I, decides to make a time jump, the car will move with him, and the second one will not be able to return. This is irreversible. I think you won’t judge me: I want to avoid death, so I’m flying. But you are free in your decision…

Daria sank down on the bed next to Peter without strength. After a short silence, she asked:

— I’m desperate to have to make such a cruel choice, because I only love you. But will you be able to understand and forgive me if I stay? It is unlikely that my words will soften the bitterness of separation, but I swear: the reason is not affection for someone, even if it can connect me with the king of France. I choose a Time and a way of life where, alas, there is no place for the person I adore, and no one can replace him for me. I may regret it later…

— I’ve already forgiven you, because I love you too. I will feel happy if your dream comes true, even when I leave you. Know, Dasha, that you are always with me: your eyes, your kindness, the feelings that you gave me…

— Petya, I will never forget you. And I’m sorry again…

She began to cry, clinging to his chest. The lock on the cell door grated, and the jailer, without wasting words, pointed to the countess with his hand to exit.

An hour later, when the Comtesse de Burlemont was safe in the Hotel du Beautrin, a prisoner disappeared from the Bastille fortress without a trace. When the loss was discovered, the commandant raised all the guards on the ears, but the fugitive could not be found anywhere. The Paris police have been notified of the escape of a dangerous criminal and all possible measures have been taken to find and detain him.

CHAPTER 10. DEJA VU

Peter escaped from the dungeon of the Bastille, expressing his desire with the phrase “I want to go back”, and, having moved to another dimension, made a jump to 2021, crossing the gap of four hundred years and two thousand kilometers. When his ability to think returned, he felt like he was sitting on the couch next to his old parrot friends. The clever girls Grunya and Borya looked with obvious bewilderment at the guest who had fallen to them from nowhere, and bowed their heads in his direction in surprise. Their cohabitation in a cage precluded the ability to speak humanly, but undoubtedly: each of them would be able to express a common firm opinion:

— Peter is a fool, Peter is a fool!

Peter telepathically caught the thought floating in the air:

— Really, would a reasonable person leave his beloved, a count’s title and a royal court in beautiful Paris? — And then he answered with conviction: — No, everything was done correctly. The Bastille is not a Louvre or a sanatorium.

He looked around once again in a new setting: a rural hut, this is my first time here. Undoubtedly, the time machine had the function of sanity and, moreover, a well-developed sense of humor, placing it in a space causally related to the initial starting events. A kind of deja vu.

— I wonder who is the mysterious developer of this miracle that ignores the laws of nature? Nature itself? — Peter pretty much strained his thinking apparatus, but due to natural limitations, he immediately got lost in the wilds of abstract logic.

Having a unique experience of moving, he knew: first of all, you need to evaluate your current image. Kalinkin walked up to the battered trellis and studied himself carefully for several minutes. The mirror reflected a tall young blond man with a pleasant face, blue eyes and a short haircut — the spitting image of Paul Bettany. Light, three-day unshaven, a suit made of soft gray fabric, a white shirt with a small blue check, a brown belt on the belt and the same brown soft shoes. And what about the English language, the car did not give this bonus? Peter stood in the tribune pose and began to recite nursery rhymes:

— It is cold and still, the wind is away,

And a little Jack Frost is busy today…

In assessing his talents, he was objective: he had not advanced far, not at all Cockney, pronunciation of the type “English with a dictionary”, at the level of Pyotr Mikhailovich. A good reason to reflect on how the newly-made handsome man easily parted with the image of the pensioner Kalinkin, and how wonderful it is to feel young! The miracle machine intuitively determined that there was no need for a foreign language in the village. And here she is, a wonderful barrel, standing on legs in the corridor. As a convinced idolater, Kalinkin leaned towards her in a theatrical pose: thank you so much for the appearance and outfit, the spitting image of a dandy, if only the local boys, sensing an outsider, would not fuck off. Ask for what? And don’t walk down our street! Kalinkin put his hand in his pocket — and there, according to tradition, the Russian currency rustles. Normal course!

Peter left the house and, descending into the front garden, approached the fence: the forest was black on the horizon, cottages and country houses were scattered closer, beyond the meadow. The place is unfamiliar, I have not been here before. The pastoral picture was broken by the sound of an engine: a black Renault Duster jumped out from behind a turn of a dirt road, mercilessly dusting, and braked at the very gate. A dense brunette of about forty years old, dressed in high rural fashion, fell out of the crossover: a bright striped sleeveless jacket and elegant black leggings, frankly tight-fitting bulges and concavities of the body. The manners of a fashionista are clearly not aristocratic, such a person can also hit the head with a bag. She quickly jangled the alarm keyring and asked Peter:

— Hey, what are you doing here? — boldly she began her attack right at a gallop. And stopping about three meters from Peter, she continued the interrogation. — Who is this?

Peter was in no hurry to answer and looked appraisingly at the hostess of the house. It is easy to see that his appearance made a strong impression on her, but the level of aggression did not decrease from this. To defuse the situation, he gently replied:

— Thank you for taking care of Grunya and Borya. By the way, greetings from Dasha.

The brunette raised her wide painted sausage eyebrows in surprise and came closer:

— Is Daria back?

— Not yet, I left first.

— Where is she?

— In bed with Louis the Fourteenth, — Peter flashed through his brain, but he answered peaceably: — In Turkey, on vacation.

— Were you there too? It doesn’t look like… — The lady did not take her incredulous gaze off him and automatically identified: “stranger.” Indeed, all this was very strange, not to mention the fact that Peter’s appearance, outfit and manner of conversation were a complete dissonance with the local standard.

— I rested for five days, so we agreed from the very beginning, — he continued to compose. — And she’s for a full two weeks.

— It doesn’t look like a southern tan. Are you Peter?

— Yes, that’s right. Did Daria tell you about me?

— My name is Natalia. Yes, she said that she had a new acquaintance, a cute brown-haired man. And you’re blond.

— I burned out in the sun, — Peter was not at a loss, having given out complete nonsense, and thought: — Wow, these women…

Everything looked silly and doubtful. However, Natalia didn ‘t show it:

— Okay, why are we standing here. Come in, — and the first one resolutely headed for the house. Peter followed the hostess, noting the energetic gait and, of course, automatically assessing her advantages, accessible to the view from behind, somewhere four plus.

— And what is this? — she stared at the new object in the corridor, and then looked questioningly at the guest. — Where is this from?

There was a version that this barrel is an antique value, which was acquired today in the village with the assistance of Daria.

— Yes, yes, it is Daria, — Peter stressed, noticing a positive reaction to her name.

— Actually, I came to check on the birds, Dasha asked for it very much, she was worried… and then they called about this device, said it was urgent, so I asked them to deliver it here. But how did you get into the house?

— I couldn’t get through to you, I climbed through the window…

The further Peter fantasized, the more ridiculous the story became, however, it did not seem to bother the hostess in the least. After making sure that the house was in order and everything was in place, she changed her anger to mercy, sat down on a chair, lit a cigarette, and new, playful notes appeared in her low, confident voice.

— It’s not so important, — she reasoned, — where this incomprehensible dandy came from to visit her, the main thing is that Dasha is far away…

— Are you hungry? I’ll edit and sew something right now, — she said allegorically, wanting to seem original. — By the way, where did you buy such a beautiful suit?

— In Antalya. In the evening we went for a walk with Dasha, walked along the boulevard, went into the salon. There are good discounts in the season.

— So you came straight to us from St. Petersburg?

— Yes, exactly. I left my suitcase at home and took a taxi straight to you.

Peter was thinking how to get out of this situation: it is impossible to leave without a barrel — shaped device, it is more expensive to open the secret of time travel to this lady. To shorten the distance, too. Funny assholes in a cage, jumping from pole to pole, were in solidarity with him.

— So when will you pick up the birds, today? — Natalia pumped the situation with enviable perseverance. She clearly liked this dandy for his unconventionality, she had not had a man for a long time, and it was not bad for Dasha to set horns: she envied her, beautiful and farcical, everything was too simple for her — both with friends and lovers. And she has to support herself alone, and help her mother…

— As you say. I can spend the night at Daria’s house, I wouldn’t want to embarrass you, but I can’t pick up the antiques today — it’s too late, and I’m tired from the road. Maybe we can arrange everything tomorrow morning?

Natalia mentally approved the course of his reasoning. She was really lonely, even if today would be a small festive evening, not like the others. Let him stay…

— You are like snow on my head! — she smiled pleasantly. And then she asked with an innocent expression on her face: — Would you like a drink?

That was the key moment: if Peter had answered in a different way, events would have unfolded unlikely. But he politely declined the offer with a soft smile:

— No, thanks. And you?

— I can’t drink alone, — Natalia answered unexpectedly harshly. In her words, one could hear the demonstrative position of an ascetic, and a reproach for refusal, and the offended chastity of a decent woman. The fountain, alas, was not expected…

They talked little at the table, avoiding eye contact, responding only to the questions on duty: more bread, salt, with or without gravy? Peter rightly praised Natalia for a delicious lunch, we lit a cigarette together. We chatted on neutral topics: about the weather here and in the Mediterranean, what is interesting in Turkey, how was the flight. There was an awkward pause.

— Don’t you want to do men’s business? — the hostess provocatively, slightly narrowing her green eyes, looked at the guest. Obviously, she had a course of action for any response. If “yes”, then you can, without losing dignity, develop this topic up to the consent to intimacy, and “no” — worthily retreat, flirtatiously playing with the instincts of a man, portraying a touchy. But Peter broke the slender female strategy, as if he did not understand the depth of the question, and asked:

— What do you mean?

— The toilet doesn’t drain well in the bathroom, can you fix it? — Natalia’s voice sounded poorly concealed, caustic mockery.

— A strong move, checkmate, — thought Peter. He is nearly an English lord, elegantly sent to load shit. And they offered bounty — a heavenly pleasure… He had a choice, but he dodged it. Not inflamed, you know… this is the price of female hatred for unfulfilled hopes and treacherous refusal.

— We need to see. Do you have any work clothes?

Finally went to bed. Natalia coldly wished good night to the space, defiantly making a bed for the guest on the kitchen sofa, and herself, stung, went into the room. Which is quite understandable: if there is no harassment for a long time, there is a malaise. And Peter stretched out with pleasure on a cold sheet and remembered Dasha — delicate, sensual and so dear, mentally thanking her for the symbolic lock in his heart, which she created with her love, the key to which no woman can now pick up.

The next morning, after hastily drinking tea, they began to gather. While Natalia was communicating with the taxi service on her mobile, Peter quietly left a couple of thousand on the trellis, and they said goodbye: she got into her car and went to a beauty salon in the center of the village, where she worked as a manicurist and administrator in one person. And he, after waiting on the street for the ordered car, barely pushed the barrel into the trunk with the help of the driver and asked for a ride first to the store where Daria used to work, and already there Peter would surely remember the way to her house.

— To visit us? — the taxi driver, a lively young boy, asked on duty, seeing a new face in his native places. He couldn’t stand city boys who beat off girls and buying up everything around, and even more so dudes like this. And the cargo is very strange, it will be necessary to ask Natalia on occasion: what for and how much…

— Yes, it’s good here, — Peter answered diplomatically and vaguely. — I need to stop by the store for a minute.

The driver smiled approvingly, portraying understanding and cordial hospitality. Entering the store, Peter, against all logic, caught himself thinking: how wonderful it would be here, behind the counter, to see Daria again… After quickly buying groceries and, most importantly, batteries — avoiding the previous mistake — he returned to the car.

Well, here’s Daria’s house. Peter opened the door: it is quietly, not any soul. Together with the taxi driver, they brought the barrel up the steps and left it standing in the corridor. For additional efforts, the driver received a generous tip, which he was satisfied with. How does Peter know that the taxi driver is familiar with Daria’s husband, and is already dialing his mobile phone number purely out of friendship — yesterday he drove him here from the railway station.

CHAPTER 11. SHARP HORNS

First of all, Kalinkin changed the batteries in the barrel, opening the cherished door. A time machine is a combat vehicle, a super — weapon in its purest form, knight’s armor, and a striking sword, and a faithful horse, and a war chariot, it is a rocket that easily pierces time and space through other dimensions. Peter has firmly learned: constantly keep her in a state of combat readiness, just like gunpowder that is kept dry. After lighting a cigarette, he leisurely walked around the house and suddenly felt a needle in his heart. Remembering the hot days spent here with Daria, those wonderful moments of harmony and love, Peter imagined the Countess de Burlemont, shining in the highest society, there in Paris… What does he dream about, who does he spend time with? Will there be enough strength for her — physical and spiritual — to overcome all the trials, all the temptations of youth and beauty? Will she find happiness among the tinsel and intrigues of the royal court? The soul groaned from these thoughts, and Peter clenched his teeth so hard that he felt the taste of blood in his mouth.

Here, in the present, nothing held him anymore. Ordinary and boring. Natalia generously agreed to look after the birds (“ten days before Daria’s arrival” — Peter lied before parting), there were no other moral anchors. Another thing is where to cast your gaze? The future for about ten years ahead no longer seemed so attractive after a visit to his apartment, and in the past centuries there were no significant events exciting his young imagination. He is also was so far from the naive desires of Pyotr Mikhailovich about Gioconda with Aristotle, and delving into the past is a regression by definition. The time machine provides a fabulous opportunity to possess new knowledge, hidden truths and the secret of an exemplary world order, which no one knows about today. It is possible that they will never know. You can realize any dream: to become an oracle, a famous scientist, or a fabulously rich nouveau riche, knowing in advance significant political and financial events. Therefore, only to the future. But how far, how many centuries ahead?

— Should I point my finger at the sky? — Peter asked himself, took mineral water out of the refrigerator and sat down at Daria’s computer. Delving into the Internet, he found information to analyze the situation.

The solar system is four and a half billion years old. However, nothing lasts forever, not only under the Moon, but in the universe in general. The sun gradually increases its brightness, and in a billion years our planet will become too hot for life. And around the fifth billion year of our era, the luminary will turn into a red giant. It will swell greatly, literally swallowing Mercury, Venus and the Earth. As a red giant, the Sun will last for about a billion more years. All this time, the outer layers of the star will gradually evaporate into space. Thus, it will lose about half of its current mass. By this time, the thermonuclear fuel will completely run out, and the Sun will become a white dwarf. There will no longer be any thermonuclear reactions in it, so the luminary will gradually cool down. Ten billion years after the transformation of our star into a white dwarf, it will cool down so much that it will stop emitting light, although it will emit infrared radiation for a long time. Such is the future of the Sun, a certain oracle claimed.

— What a prospect, — thought Peter, digesting what he had read. — I’ve come a long way. Let’s see what will happen in millions of years.

— Of course, humanity is unlikely to find such sad events, — another seer reassured. — After all, the typical life span of a biological species is from one to ten million years. During this time, the species either dies out or evolves so much that it has to be considered a different species.

— In other words, if I want to join some quasi-people, then a million years is just right. Something like that, — Kalinkin summed up.

No matter what hemisphere of the brain he thought, the concept of a purposeful, meaningful jump through time has not yet developed. But soon his perseverance was rewarded: not having had time to be born inside his skull, the idea did not pull the rubber and manifested itself from the outside. Kalinkin’s thoughts were interrupted by the doorbell. Peter was wary — who did it bring? He got up from the table and sauntered over to the latched door:

— Natalia, are you?

— What the fuck is Natalia, come on, open up! — A hoarse male baritone sounded from the porch. — Open it, or I’ll kick the door down!

From the unexpected, boorish shout, Peter was thrown into a sweat, he instantly appreciated the danger and feverishly searched for an answer: who could it be? When several strong kicks followed a couple of seconds later, he realized:

— Darya’s husband, he’s back from prison! So let’s get acquainted…

The prospect did not fit into Kalinkin’s plans in any way, he had a hundred reasons not to communicate with an angry cuckold, and above all — for highly ethical reasons. It was all so disgusting, as if he had been caught doing something unworthy. Fate presented him with an unpaid bill for a happy adventure with Daria, and it seems that deferral of payment was not considered in principle: the deadline crept up unnoticed. In addition, Peter organically could not stand fights, bare fists and fencing on stakes.

— Don’t knock, I’ll open it now, — he shouted peaceably, trying to gain time. The blows stopped. Grabbing a chair that turned up, Peter put it on the floor and rested its legs against the front door, and the back against the wall of the corridor. Then he rushed to the barrel, pressed the red button and feverishly began to melt the necessary icons and execute commands:

— “Russian”, “Sit in a chair”, “Put on a hat”, “Choose the time”, “The future”.

The seconds seemed like years, his heart was pounding wildly. Powerful blows from outside resumed, but the door resisted thanks to the chair.

— Open! The bitch, I’ll kill you, — peaceful initiatives were heard outside. Kalinkin had no doubt: if the door opens, then so it will be.

— “Time” — Peter quickly typed the numbers at random: 12345, without even realizing how much it was…

At that moment, the sound of broken glass rang out, and a drunk man stumbled into the room through the window with strong curses. Looking around and not seeing his opponent, he quickly rushed into the corridor like an angry rhinoceros, sweeping away everything in his path.

— “Place” — Peter’s hand trembled, intuitively typing the familiar word “Paris”, as if there was his salvation in it. Perhaps, typing a word one letter more, he would have signed his death sentence, because the executioner was already standing next to him, and his glass-cut fingers, stained with blood, were already reaching for his throat. But at that moment something incomprehensible happened for the attacker: the victim suddenly disappeared…

— What the fuck… — the astonished opponent only managed to utter when the device, together with Peter, disappeared into another dimension, heading, fortunately, not to the address indicated by the former prisoner, who had already embarked on the right path according to the FSIN opinion. Having missed the lamb to the slaughter from under his nose, the jealous man did not philosophize for a long time, but, left alone, directed his emotions to practical rails: he tried a little, dropped a couple of chairs, threw the monitor to the floor, stamped his feet and launched a can of horseradish into the mirror… Then, satisfied with the result, he calmed down and found his little consolation in a bottle of Stolichnaya, thoughtfully bought by Kalinkin. Fiercely hating this bastard, he still did not disdain alcohol, because vodka is sacred, above human antipathies and prejudices. Subsequently, he often recalled this case in the company of loyal friends, when asked or when not asked, and certainly ended the narration with words, meaningfully looking at the puzzled faces of drunks:

— That’s the stuff in the tomato…

This colorful story did not pass by Natalia, unfairly deprived of fate from a local beauty salon. To begin with, as expected, she received bribes from Darya’s husband for involuntary complicity in this murky story, but then, as usual in decent companies, the pendulum of relations swung towards relaxation, good neighborliness and mutual attraction of the sexes under the influence of a fiery drink. So these two unwittingly helped each other and received both physical and moral compensation for the suffering and humiliation suffered from the unrighteous union of the insidious Peter and Daria, which once again confirms the well-known truth: virtue is always rewarded, vice is pleasant in itself.

CHAPTER 12. THE YELLOW PEBBLE

— “And this coming will be sudden, as the flood suddenly occurred in the time of Noah. It is not your business to know the times or deadlines that the Father has put in his power… On that day, the heavens will disappear with a thunderclap, the heavenly bodies will collapse and burn, and the Earth with its deeds will be found guilty…”

And IT happened, and it happened according to the established cycle, but, as always, unexpectedly, because enlightened and sanctified by all religions, naive humanity took wise words on faith, but did not take any practical steps to save itself. The civilized world has gone crazy, having lost the collective intelligence that counteracts self-destruction: bloody wars are the best confirmation of this. And the collective instinct of self — preservation has not been developed as a result of evolution either — apparently, an interstellar wars scenario is needed for this.

On November 12, 2086, an overflowing Yellowstone erupted five thousand cubic kilometers of magma and covered most of North America with a blanket of ash half a meter thick, from Canada in the north to Mexico in the south, from the Pacific coast in the west to Chicago and Memphis in the east. Everything that was within a radius of three hundred kilometers from the volcano died immediately, without much agony. Many cities located further from the epicenter, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Denver, Houston and Kansas City, ceased to exist after a short agony. Chaos ensued. For a whole week, the products of the explosion hung in the air throughout the continent, causing breathing difficulties, enveloping plants and polluting water. Tiny particles of volcanic ash, so small that respirators are not able to prevent them from entering the lungs, penetrated into the body of living beings. Once in the body, the ashes began to harden and turn into stone. People living even thousands of kilometers away from the volcano were also exposed to deadly danger. In just three days, the number of victims reached ninety million people. Most of the northern continent has turned into a scorched desert. The states of the East Coast resisted, among them New York and the capital of the United States — Washington, Florida was the least affected.

But this was only the beginning of the apocalypse. The explosion of Yellowstone caused the eruptions of hundreds of other volcanoes across the planet. Within a few days, all living things died from earthquakes, magma emissions and suffocation. The titanic explosion, comparable to the fall of a giant asteroid on the Yucatan Peninsula sixty-five million years ago, changed the chemical composition of the atmosphere of the entire planet for decades. Volcanic ash in the atmosphere blocked sunlight, and the world temperature dropped by twenty degrees. Cosmic darkness descended on the Earth. So a new ice age has come, replacing the era of the power of two superpowers states — the United States and China — for the period of the death of the civilization of the twenty-first century. Many areas and vast territories became victims of collapse, or were disunited and catastrophically weakened, the financial power of the richest and most influential clans on the planet instantly evaporated along with the institutions of global influence, military power and advanced industry. The world community, the international economy and politics in their classical sense, as well as the virtual world of the Internet, have ceased to exist for many years.

When Kalinkin regained consciousness after arriving at the designated point in space, he was stunned by the surrounding picture: as far as the eye could see, an icy desert stretched to the horizon. Three hundred and forty-fifth year of the thirteenth millennium! Suddenly Peter saw the world in its primeval state, as it existed before the emergence of man, and felt like a polar Adam, with the only difference that, alas, there was no standard set: Eve, apple and Snake, and you can’t walk naked here. Daria is not here either, and, of course, it could not have been, but the main thing he was not ready for was that he did not see the famous capital of the world. Around him is a snowy plain, ice hummocks — a typical Arctic, only cold and unbearable brilliance, and nothing more. Paris, the Mecca of culture and art, an amazing city, the pride of enlightened humanity, disappeared, disappeared without any trace. Whether it collapsed gradually or became a victim of instantaneous tectonic shifts is unknown. The Eiffel Tower, high Gothic cathedrals and mosques with minarets, the palaces of the Louvre and Versailles, gardens and hills, the Seine River were hidden by a reliable cold shell, a snow-white shroud, like the whole country called France, like the whole old Europe.

— And the people? What happened to them?

Yes, billions of people died. But the human tribe, unlike other biological species, is very tenacious. These elephants, steadily decreasing their numbers over the past hundred years and reducing their relatively small habitat under the influence of civilization, may become extinct, and only elephants on the dresser will remain. Representatives of Homo sapiens have settled on all continents for a hundred thousand years, with the exception of Antarctica, and have found something to feed themselves everywhere. Any global catastrophe, be it an asteroid impact, a nuclear war, a worldwide pandemic or something similar, can destroy many millions of human lives. But small populations of homo sapiens have been preserved all over the planet. Why? First of all, because of their location, isolation, perhaps because of skin color, wallet thickness or DNA features. And after hundreds or even thousands of years, they will once again enter the stable path of progress, only to find themselves again at our stage of development in the conditional two thousand twenty-second year. Only years, so, in five thousand, or ten. But, most likely, everything will then slide back to a global catastrophe, demonstrating the monstrous Foucault pendulum in the history of the planet. It was this hypothesis that dear Peter Kalinkin was able to test, moving in time and space to the point where he, without thinking, pointed his finger, under the influence of unfavorable everyday circumstances. Just think, a drunk cuckold man! However, the consequences of any rash act are often much more terrible than the reasons that caused it. But such is our human nature, a timid subconscious developed by millennia of natural selection. This is if according to Darwin. And if Darwin’s theory is not correct, then you don’t even know what to refer to.

Ten thousand years have passed since the triumph of Yellowstone, a hundred terrible centuries. Of the nine billion who inhabited the planet in the twenty-first century, few survived. In remote areas of the explosion — Australia, Malaysia, Africa — populations of intelligent man have been preserved, totaling no more than fifty million. The population of both North and South America and Eurasia could not withstand the prolonged effects of the cold, and these continents became empty. The descendants of the people of the twenty-first century adapted to live in new, harsh climatic conditions, but survival turned out to be exhausting and cruel. All efforts were made to preserve or regenerate the main natural factors of survival. The thick ice cover, low temperature and strong, cold winds dominating the sea and land had a great impact on the human condition. In the most favorable physical and geographical conditions, in areas of autonomous existence, a poor flora and fauna, water sources, power plants, industry and agriculture have been preserved. Mini-states were formed that were remote from each other: societies and local authorities, governments, the army and the police. Communications between individual islands of mind on the planet have been reduced to a minimum. The life of a particular individual in the conditions of such an existence largely depended on the state of his health, will, determination, ingenuity, concentration and endurance. The strongest survived, overcoming fear, loneliness, despondency, hunger, cold, thirst and physical pain. Being determined consciousness. And a significant role in this test was played by a new well — forgotten way of survival — tribal collectivism and shamanism. The thought of Cornelius Tacitus was brilliantly confirmed: once shaken souls are easily inclined to superstition.

The searing cold of the terrible catastrophe and the aching sense of loss penetrated Peter’s heart. He stood alone in this world of white silence, dressed in a warm black jumpsuit like a spacesuit, surveying the blinding surface with white rocks on the horizon, and at the same time not believing what he saw. The mind was not ready to accept the visible for reality. He turned out to be the only one alive today who knows the catastrophic consequences of the coming decades. The realization of the horror of the future of humanity brought tears to his eyes, which he could not even wipe off his face: his eyes were protected by dark ski-like glasses from the gusty wind and bright, blinding light. The hands kept warm in thick but flexible handles with a strange emblem — something like two crossed medieval swords. The same emblem was emblazoned on his chest. Apparently, the intertemporal atelier has started a new promotion of its products? But there was no one to appreciate his bitter humor. Even polar creatures, like polar bears, did not live here — it was very far from the cold seas. Kalinkin hesitantly took a few cautious steps; the snow creaking under his thick boots was so compressed under the influence of the sun and wind that only round holes from the spikes on the soles remained on the hard surface.

— When did this happen? — Peter was looking for a point of report on the death of the habitual world and directed his question to the Almighty Mind, if such still exists in the Universe. Who else would be able to give any answer? Ten seconds later, his doubts turned out to be extremely inappropriate and even blasphemous. Something inexplicable and unthinkable has happened. Suddenly, a violet ray, coming from nowhere, cut through the blue of the sky, drew a straight line, dividing the firmament in half, and then fell on the earth’s surface somewhere near the elusive horizon and drew gigantic signs on a huge icy rock:

— 2086, Yellowstone.

Kalinkin was speechless and silently gazed at the rock with the titanic epitaph on the dazzling white tomb monument of human civilization.

But the demonstration of power did not end there. In confirmation of the authenticity of the message, the higher powers, with the hand of an invisible artist, depicted right there, on a rock, the figure of a young slender woman in a dress of snow brocade, skirt and bodice, with ribbons and lace. Her gorgeous costume shimmered with snowflakes, buttons and silks. On his head is a huge wig, falling from his head to his chest like a frozen waterfall, and spreading abundantly on his shoulders. But the most amazing thing was waiting for Peter ahead. After a few seconds, the motionless drawing came to life… with a leisurely, graceful gait, the lady easily glided across the invisible parquet, elegantly turning her head in his direction and smiling mysteriously. Looking at her classic, chiseled face and huge transparent eyes with icicles instead of black pupils, he almost fainted from what he saw, how unexpected, recognizable and at the same time completely impossible it was. The memory of her pierced him like lightning, and Peter remained in place, as if nailed, unable to move.

— That’s how they go crazy… — Peter thought distantly, as if about someone else.

The Countess de Burlemont, his Daria, looked at him through the millennia.

CHAPTER 13. RESIDENCE. RF

— Hello, Mr. President! — Kalinkin was courteous and emphatically calm. He was comfortably seated in an armchair at the side table, facing the incoming person. A spacious room of yellow-olive shades, with two banners and the coat of arms of the Russian Federation on the wall. On the left, ten meters away, there is a huge monitor. Behind his back is a metal barrel on legs, the only new object in the setting, not counting the guest himself.

— Who are you? How did you end up here? — The Supreme Commander-in-Chief was seriously alarmed, if not surprised, to see a man in his office, protected from the outside world by all available means, from the construction of the labyrinth of the building itself, technical means of protection, to bodyguards and several sanitary cordons. Lost in his thoughts, he started in surprise. Despite the Chekist tempering and endurance gained thanks to considerable managerial experience, he did not expect to see anyone here.

— A normal human reaction … — thought Peter.

To the alarm button placed under the black tabletop with a computer screen, and you need to take five more steps, but for some reason president’s legs refused to obey and grew into the light yellow parquet.

— A terrorist attack? — involuntarily, the most obvious explanation flashed through the brain for a person on the first line of fire, whose motorcade increased annually and this year reached seventy special vehicles, not counting helicopters, snipers and FSO operatives in the form of traffic police officers along the entire route. He fixed his imperious gaze on the newcomer, hoping to paralyze his will, as he brilliantly managed to do in a conversation at his favorite table with all sorts of governors there. Some government officials sweated mercilessly and were afraid to accidentally empty their bladder out of fear. But today the situation was reversed. However, the stranger has not yet made any sudden movements, no weapons were there were, and the president pulled himself together with an effort of will.

Five minutes ago, Peter Kalinkin flew over from ice France and woke up sitting in a time machine chair, on the monitor screen on July 12, 2024, Moscow time — 16 hours 15 minutes. He turned off the unit by pressing the red button and waited. A smart machine moved him to the right point when the owner of the residence was already in public service — to Novo-Ogarevo, or maybe to the Crimea, because the offices were identical, and the exact location of the first person of the state was a secret just in case, but in this particular case it did not work.

Peter gallantly invited the president to take his rightful place and put his hands on the table. He himself remained sitting, turning to the right, to the interlocutor, and immediately got down to business.

— First of all, I do not pose any threat to you, but do not give any signs or commands, I am elusive. And listen, — he asked rather hastily. Then he paused a little and began to speak more slowly, trying to be as convincing as possible. — My name is Peter Kalinkin, from St. Petersburg, your hometown. I’ll be brief. By the will of fate, I am rewarded with an extraordinary ability to move through time and space as I please. I found myself here, and this, I think, is the best proof of the truthfulness of my words.

The president nodded slightly, without taking his eyes off him, habitually assessing the personality and mental state of the interlocutor, a man of about thirty, professionally studied his face, the expression of blue eyes and the movement of lips during conversation.

— Nothing betrays a mental patient in him, except the essence of his speeches, — he thought.

The uninvited visitor was talking some nonsense, really nonsense, but the situation demanded: you need to listen, even express some interest, and then… After all, these…, there, behind the door, at the displays, must sooner or later figure out and take action. Therefore, it is necessary to wait and pretend that you are listening…

— I am invisible to tracking devices, — Peter said firmly, sensing the interlocutor’s concern.

— And this construction next to you is a time machine? — with undisguised irony, the president supported the conversation for the first time and turned his eyes to a nondescript iron barrel with hoops on short metal legs, and thought: — Of course, he is paranoid. But how did he get here?

— I have no barriers, but the place was chosen by the time machine according to the cause-and-effect relationship. — Peter didn’t know how to read thoughts, but he caught this one.

Hearing the legal terms, the president smiled and really relaxed. The anxiety suddenly disappeared somewhere, and he again felt as usual, the master of the situation.

— What do you see the connection in? — he asked politely. It was really curious: what would this decently dressed citizen in a black suit from Keaton answer? By a mocking coincidence, the owner of the office was wearing exactly the same, even speckled ties, even a wristwatch of the same brand, only on the other, right hand. The mirror image, similar to a challenge, was alarming and at the same time distressing.

— I think the importance of the information that I am simply obliged to convey to you, taking into account your unlimited powers in Russia and your influence in the world. This is without flattery.

The president’s face remained impenetrable.

— What kind of information?

— The world, the whole planet is in terrible danger, a catastrophe. I have just come from there and saw everything with my own eyes: there is no Paris, there is reason to believe that the whole of France and even Europe perished under a layer of ice!

The president thought for a while, and then, as if for the record, said:

— The Russian leadership pays great attention to climate problems together with the leading world powers and international organizations. Recently I had to express my point of view on these issues in my interview, including global warming and permafrost in Siberia.

Having finished the sentence, he made a meaningful pause and looked at his counterpart, as if looking for his support and a proper assessment of his words. And he thought irritably:

— It’s already been fifteen minutes, how much longer do I have to act here? Burdocks!

— That is why I am addressing you, Mr. President!

— And what is the source of the danger? — the guarantor asked in a completely businesslike way.

— Yellowstone supervolcano. Located in Wyoming, USA. It will explode in 2086, hundreds of millions will die, the climate will change irreversibly on the planet, dust will eclipse the atmosphere from the sun’s rays, a long cold snap will come, ice will erase the civilization of the twenty-first century, chaos will come.

In every phrase, in every word of Kalinkin, genuine anxiety sounded. The President listened without interrupting and continued to analyze what he had heard:

— Let’s assume for a moment that this is true. The terrible truth. But there is no proof! Am I referring to this subject as a source!? And how relevant is it now, in the period of integration of the country after reconciliation, because sixty years are ahead… And then, it directly concerns America — our business partners, friends of our enemies, and those who have property and investments there. Even if I inform the US president about this, it will not bring any dividends to either Russia or its leadership. But the Western media will easily laugh at me, my image will suffer, and the trust rating will undoubtedly fall…

Peter looked at the president and tried to get into the course of his reasoning, but he clearly failed. Hoping for real support in the name of humanity, he did not expect much gratitude for himself personally, but hoped for unconditional interest in such a serious issue and empathy for a caring, responsible citizen of his country.

— Yes, thanks for the warning. Saving the people is one of the main tasks in Russia. The consistent fight against poverty and international terrorism is important, these are our priorities. I have already stated this from the rostrum of the economic forum, — he heard. — And if your information is reliable, I recommend contacting the US presidential administration directly, without intermediaries. After all, as you noted, this is THEIR volcano. And I will call the volcanologists at our Academy of Sciences, and I will instruct them to thoroughly study this issue. After all, we are on the same planet and have already defeated the pandemic!

The President smiled triumphantly: he masterfully, skillfully handled a difficult situation, gave a concrete answer to an inadequate person and managed to protect himself and, consequently, the entire Russian government and inviolability from a tragic, ridiculous accident. However, so far none of these oafs from the security service has even made an attempt to protect him, he must do everything himself, everything himself… After thinking about it, he decided that a certain benefit from the supposedly unlimited possibilities of this type can still be tried to extract:

— Tell me, can you describe the situation in the world, say, in a year?

— What exactly is meant? — Kalinkin tensed.

The president looked at Peter with cunning and evasively, unhurriedly, they say — you know, clarified:

— Territories of military conflicts, the cost of oil, stock prices of large American companies, the ruble exchange rate in the end! By doing this, you will be able to provide invaluable assistance to our state…

While waiting for an answer, the owner of the office looked at his watch, and then calmly shifted his gaze to Peter. He understood everything, turned around and abruptly closed the door of the barrel. The device is working. A minute later, sitting in the chair of the time machine, he was already typing icons for a trip to the White House in Washington.

— I’ll think about it, — Kalinkin replied, maintaining the dialogue and not looking at the president, trying to buy him much — needed time. Native penates have already become uninteresting to him. Disappearing into the “wormhole”, he did not even have time to say goodbye. Ugh, Peter, how uncultured…

The president was in thought for a few seconds, then pressed the intercom button and calmly said:

— The head of security call to me…

CHAPTER 14. THE OVAL OFFICE

Returning from a meeting with the president, Peter struggled to understand what exactly caused his distrust, or rather, misunderstanding in a conversation with the first person of America. Whether due to sound skepticism, or due to old age, the news of a catastrophe of universal scale did not cause the owner of the Oval Office not only an acute, but even a visible reaction. The owner sat in an armchair at a large table — a gift from Queen Victoria to President Hayes in 1880. Peter modestly sat opposite in the same black suit from Keaton, next to the time machine, and looked around curiously, involuntarily comparing his impressions with the sensations of meeting with the first person of Russia. The whole atmosphere of the conversation in this world-famous hall with a ceiling at least five meters high, artfully draped with gold curtains, windows and numerous doors, parquet covered with a blue oval carpet, in the center of which the American coat of arms was emblazoned, inspired calm confidence and conservatism in traditions and views. After completing his brief statement, Peter waited for an answer, but the president was in no hurry to express his attitude to what he heard. Surprise? Shock? It seemed to Kalinkin that no event could shake the psychological Aikido developed over decades, inherent in a wise man and an experienced politician. What can not be said about taste and political views. Taking office in early 2021, the Democrat installed busts of figures symbolizing progress in his office: Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy… He also hung portraits of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, outlining continuity as his political credo. There is also a moonstone, a tribute to the American space program, science and the American dream. The pause lasted for a good five minutes, and Peter had the opportunity to adequately appreciate all the splendor of the interior and the taste of its creators. Of course, he did not know in the face of these outstanding figures of America, looking with some arrogance at an uninvited guest from canvases and pedestals, guarding the tranquility of the owner — his office guardian spirits.

Finally, after a sleepy reflection of the interlocutor, in response to his rather emotional story (of course, in good American English), he received a leisurely and verified message in his formulations, which boils down to the following:

— If I’m not mistaken, in 2007, during the presidency of George W. Bush, we created a special scientific council for the study of Yellowstone. The volcano began to be seriously studied by the best American geophysicists and seismologists. Even intelligence officers and the US Secretary of Defense joined the work. Meetings were held every month, which were personally chaired by the President. But as far as I know, by now scientists have come to the conclusion that the information about the impending catastrophe has been significantly exaggerated. But even if you believe such forecasts, many questions involuntarily arise. For example, why is there so little talk about this in the press and on television? The fact is that the United States Government has recognized that it is inappropriate to cover this topic, since humanity is unable to prevent the impending catastrophe. Moreover, creating panic and rocking the boat — there are so many challenges and problems in modern society. By the way, the UN has supported and approved our position.

— As in the case of UFOs? — Peter licked his dry lips with excitement.

— Of course, as in the case of the so-called “flying saucers”. And this position has proven its viability over time. Moreover, it seems to me the only true one, — the president wearily raised his eyelids, but still found the strength to express gratitude to the strange visitor:

— However, is this your first time in the United States? I can instruct you to organize an excursion to Yellowstone, or even a representative scientific symposium with your participation, if you consider it appropriate.

— Thank you, Mr. President, — Peter politely declined the offer. — It is unlikely that my opinion represents any scientific weight in this matter. Of course, it’s not easy to believe what I saw with my own eyes…

— Nevertheless, thanks for the warning, we appreciate the concern to preserve the unshakable foundations of the existing world order and the power of our country as a guarantor of stability on the whole planet. — The President straightened up in his chair, making it clear with his intonations that the audience was over.

Without thinking twice, Kalinkin typed “Yellowstone” on the display right in the Oval Office — he was smart enough to listen to the President’s advice.

— Thank you for the conversation, — Peter politely said goodbye, and in response received a slight nod of the head of a tired, gray-haired elderly man, already managing the country and a good half of the world with difficulty — however, as well as himself. It seemed that he would pay dearly to send to hell all this hateful establishment, to ride a young mustang and ride back to the flow of time, to his exuberant youth.

CHAPTER 15. HOTEL 3*** AND THE FOURTH IN ADDITION

On July 13, 2024, the cozy three-story Yellowstone Park Hotel on Grizzly Avenue received a new guest. Emerging from another dimension in Wyoming, the time traveler found himself in a luxury room and felt himself sitting on a wide soft bed in a state of mild prostration. Turning his head, he looked around his apartment with curiosity: beige walls and brown floor of a spacious bright room harmoniously combined with the decor and color of furniture, red and black accents of decoration emphasized the harmony of the situation. The office leather sofa is importantly located at the partition with reproductions of mountain landscapes. Next to it is a photo of some woman who probably left her mark on the history of the development of local territories. And here is a wonderful barrel on legs — she brazenly fit into a niche by the closet, as if she had always stood there as a dubious semblance of antiques. The rumbling refrigerator at the wardrobe turned out to be full of food and drinks, which turned out to be very useful — Peter did not have time to look into the White House buffet. When he saw his haggard, tired face and faded eyes in the mirror, he realized that if he did not stop this exhausting marathon now and did not give the body a break, then he could discard the hooves. It was here, at this moment, that a kind of pit stop came in this crazy race for the super idea of saving humanity: a monstrous fatigue fell on the time traveler with a heavy stone.

— Driven horses are shot, aren’t they? Three days to relax! — having diagnosed himself and prescribed a course of rehabilitation, Kalinkin trudged off to take a shower. Alternating hot and cold streams of water miraculously cheered up his exhausted body, and flowing foamy streams with the scent of balm interrupted the endless running in a circle of obsessive thoughts. After some ten minutes, it felt like he was born again! The anxiety dissipated like smoke, and suddenly a long-heard motive surfaced from the subconscious, and an invisible chorus burst out powerfully:

— Hey, Barguzin, move the shaft,

Well done swim near…

After rubbing his body to redness with a soft towel, he felt weightless and lightened, soaring to the gates of paradise, where, however, he still had to penetrate. The pass was found in the refrigerator: Texas straight bourbon, a weighty flask of first-class first-class corn. Cold and sweet, with the aroma of cinnamon, the “the Texan” quickly spread through his veins, warmed up and with the skill of an impressionist began to paint the world in bright colors. Kalinkin, throwing on a robe, sat down in a wide armchair with a glass in his hand and cast a glance at the green plain spread out outside the window with patches of yellow sand islands. In the distance, at the horizon, there were white tops of distant mountains, the possessions of a Large Volcano. Soon he will touch the mysteries of the beautiful creation of nature, but today — whiskey and cigar, cigar and whiskey…

The next day, Peter woke up from the noise of slamming car doors under the window. It’s ten minutes to twelve on the clock. The room was in semi-darkness, someone’s footsteps could be heard in the corridor. The hotel lived its usual life, the guests came and went somewhere, and the sleepy inhabitant of the luxury suite was involuntarily included in the usual whirl of events and faces. Yesterday, he obviously had too much alcohol and barely resurrected gatherings in a bar with an elderly Indian or Mexican, whom he treated to a drink and chatted about volcanoes and politics. The insidious bourbon hit the brain twenty minutes later already downstairs, at a table on the veranda, and then everything got mixed up and broke into separate episodes. Now the face of the interlocutor floated out of memory like the frames of a chronicle: tanned olive skin, gray mustache and hair, a smile of a gap-toothed mouth. The rest he remembered poorly, even forgot the name — like Joe, or maybe Jack. When Peter was still in control, he found himself in the company of young men and girls, where he introduced as a specialist volcanologist. Glasses with drinks, debates about nothing, music and female laughter, and then — indistinctly, vaguely to the point of disgust…

After making sure that the barrel was in place, Peter barely shuffled to the refrigerator, took out a can of beer and drank it in three gulps. Before taking the second one, he automatically glanced at the whiskey bottle: it was almost empty… Although his head was bursting with pain, Peter remembered that yesterday he took no more than a third on his chest before going down to the bar. So, either he was unconscious and then drank alone in the room, or someone kept him company. Badly… A terrible guess, having penetrated his half-drunk brains, mobilized him to search for the key to the portable safe. Fortunately, soon the ill-fated key was found in the pocket of the suitcase: documents, bank cards and money were in place. His heart is relieved! The false alarm in the soul organically transformed into a small jubilation, which is not a sin worth noting. Kalinkin took another sip of the bottle — there’s no good to be lost… and hit the spot: the pain in the back of his head gently flew up somewhere, to the ceiling, and hid there, insidious. And ten minutes later, warmed up by libations, the undimmed joy of life filled his being to the brim again and called for action. He lit a cigarette greedily, and then began to dress. The Fiesta has started again…

— Are you really from Russia? — the girl at the bar turned to Peter and smiled mysteriously.

— Yes, and how do you know me?

She laughed, throwing her head back slightly and revealing perfect teeth. Then she perkily shook her black shock of short hair and slyly looked at the interlocutor:

— Yesterday we met and even danced…

Due to embarrassment, Peter blushed and did not immediately find what to answer.

— Yesterday I was too heavy on cocktails, — he barely came out of his stupor. — I was overworked the day before, and the resul there is…

He found the strength to smile back, but the smile turned out to be somehow forced. He have to get so drunk that he don’t remember anything…

— You look much better today, but that doesn’t mean you’re more attractive. You told so many interesting things about Yellowstone that our company sobered up a little and focused on your story. What terrible things: a catastrophe, human casualties — is it all a fantasy?

— First of all, excuse the bitter drunkard: what’s your name?

— Catherine Joyce. I’m a student at Broward College from Fort Lauderdale. You can call me Cat.

Kalinkin took a bolder look at her and noted the slimness of her young body, the delicacy of her hands and the grace of her neck, decorated with a thin gold chain.

— Catherine, I am glad to meet you for the second time and I regret my forgetfulness…

— Never mind, sir, — she elegantly brought the conversation back on track. Peter nodded understandingly.

— What is your specialization?

— I’m studying to be a general practitioner.

— And where is Fort Lauderdale located?

— It’s in Florida, not far from Miami. That’s my home.

— Let’s start from the beginning. My name is Peter, I’m from St. Petersburg, from Russia. I can say that I am not a professional scientist, but rather a lover of geology. I was interested in Yellowstone as a potentially dangerous object for modern civilization. Doesn’t that sound very grandiloquent?

— Not really, — the girl supported him. — Is that why you came to the USA?

— That’s right.

— Alone?

— Yes, alone, as a tourist, — Kalinkin paused for a while and gently added: — Alone and in the sense of personal life.

Why did he make this clarification? Perhaps there was something in her besides her bright beauty — perhaps a genuine interest in the topic, or did he succumb to her charms? Meanwhile, alcohol habitually drowned Peter’s natural timidity in a glass and transparently hinted: “Hey, barguzin, move the shaft…”

— Are you alone today too? But…

— They left the hotel in the morning, there was something like a farewell dinner yesterday.

The girl lit a cigarette and fell silent, avoiding unnecessary details. Perhaps not without reason…

Peter caught himself and suggested:

— Can I buy you something?

After a few seconds of internal struggle, Catherine overcame herself, discarding sad memories, and then whispered in a conspiratorial tone:

— Well, geologist, let’s have fun! We will order two cocktails “East meets West”. Symbolic, isn’t it?

— Much more symbolic! And what is the basis?

— Texas bourbon, — Peter almost choked, remembering the empty bottle in the refrigerator. — Ice, mint, lemon, pomegranate… Any objections?

— On the contrary! I am always for the East to unite with the West, — Kalinkin said in a bold, aggressive tone. Kat smiled:

— Yesterday it already happened, we were dancing with you, and I felt something…

The conversation took on quite obvious signs of intimacy, and he happily floated on the waves, caught up in the flow of increasing attraction:

— And what is it?

— How close your volcano is to eruption!

Peter lowered his eyes and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. Yes, too much has already been said, bridges have been burned and the way to retreat has been cut off. They boldly clinked glasses and slowly, looking at each other, drank to the symbolic fusion of the two sides of the world.

— Will you tell me more about Yellowstone?

— With great pleasure. But it’s a little noisy here, — he turned to the hall filled with tables in confirmation of his words. — Can we go upstairs? What’s your number?

— Two hundred and seventeen, — she replied, and lightly touched his knee with her palm.

— The good fellow is going to swim not far … — the devil sang in his ear. It was so obvious that there was no point in arguing with him.

— Beautiful stranger, I’ll call you in five minutes, — Peter vowed, winked playfully and gave her his hand, — honest volcanological…

The blonde and the brunette walked up to the elevator doors and disappeared from the curious gazes of the restaurant’s visitors, giving them the opportunity to indulge in the pleasures of dolce Vita all night under a slight buzz of alcohol, light weed and soft muted music.

CHAPTER 16. LOVE AS HOT AS GEYSERS

— Peter! Let’s go on an excursion to the national park! — her proposal, although it was not original in essence (actually, Kalinkin found himself here for this), but it looked very impressive. Catherine stood naked, facing the window, wearing a cowboy hat and with a cigarette in her hand, and blew smoke rings into the ceiling. In the semi-darkness of the room, she looked like an olive statue from an ancient collection of treasures. Peter had just come out of the bathroom with water droplets on his wet skin and when he saw her, he involuntarily smiled.

— How natural she is in her shamelessness, — he thought. Keeping silent, he crept up behind her like a leopard and pressed her to him. Feeling his growing desire from the touch, the girl gasped and jokingly began to resist, bending as if trying to escape from his hands. The hat flew off her head, and then two struggling, springy bodies fell to the floor. He gently lay down on top of her, face to face, and pressed her wrists to the soft carpet. Catherine squeaked, forced to surrender to the mercy of the winner and smiled, looking into his eyes. Devils were playing in her pupils.

— We will definitely go, we will go together, my love, but… not today! — he answered mysteriously.

— Why not today? — she asked with the look of an offended child, pouting her lips, wanting to hear sincere words of love from him for the hundredth time.

— I can’t get away from you, Kat. You’ve bewitched me…

She jerked her hands free and pressed her palms against his chest.

— I really am a witch, I have Celtic blood mixed with Seminole genes! And you’re my type, just like Paul Bettany… And you’re brazenly taking advantage of it, you scoundrel, — she confessed and stretched contentedly, like a cat. — Meow…

— Indeed, I cannot and do not want to part with you. This is the first time with me…

— And have you said this to many women? — Catherine continued to skillfully take out his brain and woke up the beast in him.

— In English is no one! — Peter declared triumphantly, and confident in his rightness, in the role of a conqueror, he pounced on his prey to gently tear it apart.

— What are you thinking about now? — she tried to persist to the last.

— Should I eat you all at once, whole, or stretch the pleasure for a couple of weeks?

— I think that it is necessary both entirely and to stretch. I see that you are already ready to do it, you are completely hungry.., — the beautiful seductress whispered, smiling and lowering her eyelids from anticipation of pleasure.

It was as if they had plunged into a deep pool. There were a lot of suitable places in the hotel room for creativity, an intoxicating cocktail of Kama Sutra and fantasy: the same white carpet, luxurious bed, bathroom… Lovers, like timid animals, got out only to have a little refreshment in the restaurant and restore the balance of alcohol in the blood, and then they returned to the third floor by elevator. They drank a little, in small doses, without falling into a deep stupor. They got high not only from physical pleasures, but also from intellectual conversations with each other, rare mutual understanding. How could this happen in the communication of two people whose consciousness was formed in different cultures, on opposite points of the globe? Peter is a model of gallantry, a source of light jokes and bold hints, and Catherine is the embodiment of feminine charm: a charming smile and laughing, sly eyes. She had enough interesting subjects to discuss from history and medicine. Yes, she also loves cats! Peter, carried away, did not remain in debt, having screwed up the dangerous and extremely inappropriate topic of parrots. An image of Dasha appeared in his memory for a second and it flashed and faded then.

To a casual observer, the young couple seemed like cooing lovebirds, completely infatuated with each other, and none of the numerous restaurant audience dared to disturb their privacy. The waiters appeared and disappeared silently, quickly fulfilling the order, as if they were serving a royal couple, and with their whole appearance they showed courtesy with a serious mien on their face.

Somewhere in the middle of the distance of the sexual marathon, sitting at a table in a hotel room and anticipating the approaching new spurt, Peter made a sad face and jokingly confessed:

— I can’t take it anymore!

Then he suddenly took off and cowardly retreated to the bathroom. But it was not there: Catherine, like a wild huntress, caught up with him, turned him around and pressed close to him, and then rubbed her lower abdomen, and the competition continued with a vengeance.

Three days later, they were visited by a mutual feeling that the finishing tape was torn, and everyone was awarded the highest award. The athletes came to a mutual agreement: it’s time to step off the pedestal into a boring and rational world. Half a day, slowly, they regained their strength and were horrified by the dark circles under their eyes. But the bodies seemed like fluff, and the euphoria caused by the hormone of happiness was in the blood. The stupid expression on their faces and the slowness of their movements gave them away even in the evening at the reception desk, where they fit into a collective excursion to the national park either with the Chinese or the Japanese. A pretty girl with curiosity and some envy looked from Peter to Catherine and back again, making out their voucher for tomorrow morning.

CHAPTER 17. YELLOWSTONE-2024

A white three-axle MCI bus smoothly pulled away from the hotel parking lot and headed off along a wide asphalt highway. There were no empty seats in the spacious, comfortable cabin, even at the cost of the tour of almost two thousand dollars. Passengers did not have time to really look around in the cabin, as a guide emerged from the driver’s cab — a plump lady of indeterminate age in large glasses. Wasting no time, she turned on the microphone and greeted the dear guests of America with a delivered voice. In response to the few “hi”, the speaker assured the audience of great luck to take part in the tour, because there is a long, but fascinating voyage lasting four days and three nights in the Yellowstone Nature Reserve and its surroundings ahead!

— Three nights in hotels, in a new environment … — Catherine and Peter exchanged conspiratorial glances. The lady did not let up and continued to pronounce the program worked out by practice:

— We are taking a trip to the most visited national park in America — Yellowstone National Park. It is located in the north of the USA, on the territory of three states at once — Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. The Yellowstone Nature Reserve is famous for its picturesque landscapes, rocks of all colors of the rainbow, many hot springs and geysers, powerful waterfalls and travertine terraces. Yellowstone is included in the World Heritage List and is protected by UNESCO. During an interesting tour of the sights of the biosphere reserve, you will get to the largest lake on the mainland, explore geysers, waterfalls and mineral springs, go down to the huge Lower Waterfall, explore Mammoth Terraces and visit the local museum. A great bonus of the program is the opportunity to explore the cities of Jackson and Salt Lake City…

Fifteen minutes later, Catherine put on her headphones and closed her eyes, disconnecting from the outside world. The lady with glasses was trying to continue her colorful story under the incessant chatter in the bird language. Tourists who came to America to cultivate, splashed out their delight about every crow outside the window. Or maybe the feelings from the sensations in the stomach after eaten a chicken leg in a hotel restaurant or a billboard with a buxom girl by the road. The bus was moving fast, and the landscape was changing rapidly, giving the uninhibited company of guests new impulses for emotions. Peter soon followed the wise example of his girlfriend and dozed off.

The microphone clicked again. We were approaching the Great Salt Lake, located in the northwestern part of Utah. Opening his eyes, Peter felt that he had slept enough miles and valuable information, without which, according to the guide, life simply became ignorant. Gently shaking Catherine, who was standing by the window, he offered her water bottle. The companion woke up and thanked the donor with a look. Despite the quite noticeable drowsiness, they were able to appreciate the beauty and strangeness of the local alien landscapes. The guide shared the details: