A moment before immortality. Juriy Tashkinov

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      – You don’t look like me. That is, it is a little similar, but so boring, you read the notations. I will never be like that. So, I went.

      He didn’t say another word. A couple of seconds later the front door slammed.

      I waited until late at night, but fell asleep to the sound of the TV on. And in the morning, as soon as I opened my eyes, I saw Nikita in the news bulletin. More precisely, the guy’s face was blurred, but I recognized a T-shirt with a characteristic inscription: «An eighth-grader, under the influence of drugs, stole a policeman’s service weapon and shot him during an unauthorized rally.»

      I burst into tears. It seemed so simple: press the button in Belgorodsky’s invention, and you can correct any mistake of the past.

      «It is impossible to correct the past,» Professor Belgorodsky said at our last meeting. «It’s very difficult to fix someone else’s, but you can’t fix your own.» It is advisable not to date yourself, this can lead to the «matryoshka effect». You will lock yourself into a looped period of time. You will meet yourself, trying to talk you out of your actions, then after a certain time you will return to me again to return to the past again, and so on ad infinitum.

      – But why can’t the past be corrected?

      – There, in the distant past, it’s not you, but a completely different Nikita Sivtsov. And his future is already determined by your past actions.

      – But I’ll try.

      I tried – so what? I know the future that awaits Nikita. Jail. Then Krylov’s gang. Drugs, prison again. It took me twenty-five years to understand that things couldn’t go on like this. But now nothing can be fixed: they won’t hire me for any job. Steal again?

      When the tears dried up, I decided to try pressing the button: what if the recursion breaks and I can return to my time?

      Belgorodsky sat in front of me, drinking red wine in small sips.

      – Well, are you convinced? «There was sympathy in his intonation, but he really wanted to hit the professor in the face.

      – Have you also tried to correct the past?

      – I tried it. My nesting doll has been disassembled ten times. Until I realized that the past cannot be corrected. Each time there was a teenager waiting for me. Driven by youthful maximalism and rejection of the older generation. But the future is in our hands. Do you know what good future awaits you?

      – So you looked into my future too?

      Belgorodsky smiled conspiratorially.

      – You will become a great scientist, make a breakthrough in mathematics and physics. During your school years, you really liked studying mathematics.

      – Which one is it? After prison, I wasn’t even hired as a loader everywhere.

      – Change your last name.

      The professor pulled me by the elbow and led me to the mirror.

      – I forgot to introduce myself at our first meeting. My name is Nikita. Twenty-five years ago I changed my last name. Becoming Belgorodsky. And before that he bore the surname Sivtsov.

      I peered into the old man’s facial features. But the scar on his cheek is exactly the same as mine! There is a scar on his arm: apparently, he once had a tattoo in this place. This can’t be true.

      – The past cannot be changed, the «matryoshka effect» will not give it. But the future is in your hands, Sivtsov-Belgorodsky. Don’t let the nesting doll close your future too.

      The alarm clock rang. I woke up. Under my feet lay a bottle of vodka I had drunk yesterday, but my head didn’t hurt. And for some reason the mood was high: I knew. That this is the last bottle of vodka. Alcohol is a thing of the past. And the future is in my hands.

      Entanglement of Souls

      Have you noticed the invisible connection that arises between close people? You reach for the phone to dial her, and at the same second the call rings: it’s her. This connection is not weakened by thousands of kilometers. Sometimes you can’t find a place for yourself: anxiety leading to panic. You make a call and she breaks her leg. But I once encountered a stranger manifestation of such quantum entanglement of souls.

      The sun is a thermonuclear reactor. Usually it gives warmth and life, but on this day the withered grass drooped its «head» stems in the hope of hiding from its overprotection. It smelled… what does it usually smell like in cities? Exhaust fumes, asphalt melting under the summer heat. Dust. The smells coming from the cafes contrast, but at fifty degrees in the sun this smell does not seem pleasant.

      When entering the subway, I put on a medical mask, hoping to protect myself from an invisible enemy. There’s no crowding of people; they make noise, hurry somewhere, as if at this pace of life they will have time to see more than they are destined to see. Ants are too small to see the whole world; their life is only enough for an anthill. But on this day I did not see any malice on the faces of those I met: even under the masks one could read a slight smile. Everyone is tired of hiding from the virus in concrete prisons; they want to see their colleagues and take a break from the gaze of the web camera. A person quickly gets used to new conditions, so many, when a policeman is not watching them, strive to pull the mask down to their chin: they are tired of living in fear. How many epidemics have we survived! Will we survive today in stuffiness and a mask?

      Got on the escalator. There is a wall of people in front and behind, so there is no choice: move forward and only there. SHE was rushing towards me in the same cage of human bodies. Our gazes met for a moment, and then the river carried her upward, to freedom. I tried to turn around to extend this visual acquaintance, but those behind me began to shout something unpleasant. The metro is a cemetery of feelings; everyone wants to bury a piece of their negativity here. The lower you go underground, the angrier people are.

      The day passed as usual: routine, many calls, reports. Plants absorb viviparous sunlight and moisture, people make paper from plants, such is the bureaucratic cycle. But that day I couldn’t concentrate on anything: her eyes were in front of my eyes. If I were a world-famous writer, I would not be able to describe her face: her features either clearly emerged in my head or were hidden in the fog. If I were a policeman, I would have prepared an identikit long ago and posted a search notice throughout the city.

      My colleagues and I went to a nearby cafe for lunch. Daily empty conversations: yesterday a beauty spent the night with Semyon again, Ilya caught a ten-kilogram (according to him) ide over the weekend, Dimon and Slava discussed the next mission in «Tanks». I said some nonsense myself. Sometimes it seems to me that people practice blowing soap bubbles: the larger the ball, the higher your status, but inside it is empty. At that moment everything was nonsense to me except her eyes. I stopped blinking so as not to scare me away: there she was, sitting at the next table. She smiled at me mysteriously and waved her hand. Now I had time to see the black raven hair and the small dimple on the chin. The boys turned around to follow the direction of my gaze.

      – Hey, Sanya, did you see a ghost there?

      I came out of my stupor. He blinked – and the next table was empty, СКАЧАТЬ