A Man from the Future. 1856

Part I. Life Before the Crossing

– Chapter 0. One Month Before

– I. September 17, 2025

– II. Lunch. Finally

– III. Night Thoughts

– IV. Midweek

– V. Childhood Memories

– VI. University Years

– VII. The Death of a Dream

– VIII. First Job

– IX. An Encounter with the Past

– X. A Last Hope

– XI. The Collapse of Hope

– XII. Friday

Part II. The Crossing

– Chapter 1. The Transition

– I. The Museum

– II. The Locked Room

– III. The Glasses

– IV. The Vision

– V. The Fall

– VI. The First Minutes

– VII. First Steps in the Nineteenth Century

– VIII. First Meeting

– IX. Loss of Consciousness

– X. Comprehension

– XI. A Plan for Survival

– XII. The First Night

Part III. Life in the Nineteenth Century

– Chapter 2. The First Weeks

– Chapter 3. Hunger and Transformation

– Chapter 4. Finding Your Place

– Chapter 5. The Circle Expands

– Chapter 6. Knowledge and Power

– Chapter 7. A Man from Another World

– Chapter 8. The Meeting

– Chapter 9. Consequences

– Chapter 10. The Fire

– Chapter 11. Choices

– Chapter 12. Redemption

– Chapter 13. Two Times

– Chapter 14. The Return

– Chapter 15. The Ending

Copyright Information

© 2025 Evgeniy Platonov. All rights reserved.

Published by Self-Published

First Edition

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: [To be assigned]

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank:

– My family for their patience during the long hours spent writing and rewriting this novel

– My readers and friends who offered feedback, encouragement, and critical insights

– The authors and philosophers whose works informed this story: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and countless others

– The city of St. Petersburg, which inspired much of this work’s setting and atmosphere

– Everyone who has ever felt that their life was someone else’s story – this book is for you

Chapter 0. One Month Before

September 17, 2025, Monday, 09:47

Dmitry Komarov sat at his desk in an open-plan office on the twenty-third floor of a business center, staring at his monitor without seeing a thing. The screen glowed with the white light of an Excel spreadsheet, rows of numbers blurring before his eyes. He was supposed to have the quarterly report finished by ten, but his hands wouldn’t obey. His fingers had frozen above the keyboard.

His right hand reached mechanically for the phone lying next to the mouse. To check notifications. Even though he’d checked a minute ago. Even though there was nothing important there, and couldn’t be.

Behind him, the office hummed – a hundred people locked in one enormous hall. The clatter of keyboards, the rustle of papers, muffled phone conversations, someone’s nervous coughing. The coffee machine hissed and gurgled in the corner. The air conditioning ran at full blast, pushing dry, dead air around the room. Something synthetic hung in the air – air freshener, plastic, burnt-out electronics.

By lunchtime, his neck had stiffened – he’d spent all day looking at the monitor from the same angle. Text neck, the doctors call it. The office worker’s disease. The disease of the twenty-first century.

Dmitry raised his eyes and looked out the window. His right hand reached mechanically for the phone lying next to the mouse. To check notifications. Even though he’d checked a minute ago. Even though there was nothing important there, and couldn’t be. St. Petersburg sprawled below – gray, endless, indifferent. Glass and concrete skyscrapers, billboards, roads choked with cars. November. Wet snow that melts before it can land. A sky the color of dirty cotton. Not a single bright spot, not a single living detail. Everything the same as always. Everything the same as yesterday. Everything the same as it would be tomorrow.

He was twenty-five years old – an age when, according to everyone around him, life was just beginning. “Young, promising, everything ahead of you,” his parents, friends, and colleagues all said. But Dmitry didn’t feel that way. He felt like life had already passed. Or, more precisely, that he was living not his own life, but someone else’s, following someone else’s script.

A mid-level manager at an IT company. Salary of a hundred and eighty thousand rubles a month – not bad for twenty-five, everyone said. Forty of that went to rent for a studio apartment on the outskirts, twenty to car payments, another thirty to food and utilities. The rest went to “living,” if you could call it that. Once a year – a vacation in Turkey or Egypt, all-inclusive, two weeks on the beach where he tried to forget about the office but couldn’t. He’d come back tanned, rested – and within three days feel the same exhaustion, the same apathy, the same emptiness.

What am I doing here? he thought, not for the first time that week, that month, those last three years. What’s the point of any of this?

Once, back in school, he’d dreamed of becoming a historian. He read thick books – about Ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, Rus, revolutions. He imagined himself as an archaeologist excavating ancient cities, finding artifacts, reconstructing the past. Or a scholar writing a dissertation on how people lived a hundred, two hundred, a thousand years ago. He loved understanding why the world was the way it was. Why people kept making the same mistakes. Why history repeated itself like a worn-out record.

Getting into the university’s history department felt like a breath of fresh air for Dmitry. Finally, he was among people who found the same things fascinating! Professor Boris Nikolaevich Krylov – gray-haired, stern, with piercing eyes – taught the course on medieval history. His lectures weren’t just recitations of facts; they were true one-man theater.

“History,” Professor Krylov would say, “is not a collection of dates and names. It is living people, living destinies.”

In his third year, Dmitry met Katya – a tall, slender girl with black braids and dark eyes, studying art history. They met in the library, where both of them stayed late preparing for seminars.

“You’re always reading about wars and politics,” she said one day, glancing at his notes. “But there’s another history too – a history of beauty, creativity, the human spirit.”

“But aren’t they the same thing?” Dmitry asked, surprised. “Can you really understand an era without knowing what music people listened to, what paintings they created, what they believed in?”

That was how their relationship began – first as friends, then something more. They went to museums together, to exhibitions, to the theater. Katya opened up a world he hadn’t even known existed – a world of subtle emotions, poetry, philosophical reflection.

Katya, Dmitry thought with pain. The only girl I ever truly loved. And the one I lost through my own foolishness.

They dated for two years. Dmitry was happier than he’d ever been. They dreamed about the future: getting married after graduation, working together, traveling, writing books.

“We were made for each other,” he’d tell Katya. “We share the same interests, the same dreams. After university, we’ll get married, work together, do research, teach.”

“Don’t rush, Dima,” she would smile. “We’re still young, there’s so much interesting stuff ahead.”

But in his fourth year, something changed. Katya grew colder, they met less often, and they ran out of things to talk about. Dmitry tried to understand what was happening, but she answered evasively: “Nothing special, just busy, exams are coming up.”

One day he saw her in a café with another guy – tall, confident, in an expensive blazer. Dmitry walked over.

“Katya, I need to talk to you.”

“Dima, don’t,” she avoided his gaze. “We’ve already talked about everything. You understand…”

“No, I don’t understand,” he replied. “Explain it to me, please.”

“We’re just too different, Dima. You’re still dreaming about the Middle Ages, about some old books, about the past. But I want to live in the here and now. I want a career, money, a normal life.”

“What about love? What about dreams?”

“Dreams are for children. Adults think about money. I’m sorry.”

And then an acquaintance suggested:

“Dima, drop this history stuff. Come work at my company. IT. We’ll train you, show you the ropes. Starting salary fifty, eighty after six months. Think about it.”

And Dmitry went. Because he had to pay rent. Because his parents were tired of repeating: “When are you going to start making real money? Dead people’s traditions! You’d be better off learning programming or English. At least that pays.”

Money, money, money… Dmitry thought. For my parents, nothing existed except money. Dad worked as an engineer at a factory, Mom as an accountant at an office. Honest, hardworking people, but so gray, so faceless. They lived their whole lives without understanding anything about it, without feeling anything.

He barely noticed five years passing. How he turned into a systems administrator, then a manager. How he gave in. How he stopped arguing with reality.

But along with the salary, the apartment, and the car came something else – a feeling that he had betrayed himself. That once there had been a dream, a purpose, a belief that life was more than just money and career. And now he had become just like everyone else. Wake up at seven, commute to the office, sit eight hours in front of a monitor, come home, eat dinner in front of the TV, go to bed. And so on every day. Until retirement. Until death.

Maybe this is what growing up is, he thought. Maybe this is how everyone lives. Maybe dreams are for children, and adults have to be practical.

But for some reason, this thought made him afraid. Physically afraid, as if his throat were tightening, he couldn’t get enough air, the walls were closing in.

“Dima, you coming to the stand-up?” a colleague called out, walking past with a cardboard coffee cup in hand.

Dmitry flinched, snapped back to reality.

“Yeah, I’m coming,” he answered automatically, without turning around.

The colleague walked on. Dmitry stayed seated. He glanced at the clock in the bottom right corner of the screen: 09:52. Meeting at 10:00. He had to go. Grab the printed report, his notebook, a pen. Sit in the conference room, listen to the boss talk about plans for the quarter, about KPIs, about development strategy. Nod. Pretend it all mattered.

The phone on the desk vibrated. A message from the boss:

“Stand-up postponed to 10:30. Prepare a presentation on the project.”

Dmitry exhaled. Another half hour. He opened PowerPoint and began dragging slides around. Added a graph, a chart, a bulleted list. Everything polished, professional, meaningless.

Why? he thought again. Why does anyone need this?

November 17, 2025, Monday, 14:10

2. Lunch. Finally

Dmitry left the office, took the elevator down, pushed open the heavy glass door, and stepped outside. Moscow greeted him with cold wind, wet snow, and the roar of traffic. He zipped his jacket up to his throat, shoved his hands in his pockets, and started walking – where, he didn’t know. He just walked.

Usually he ate in the office cafeteria – quick, cheap, convenient. Soup, a main course, compote, three hundred rubles. But today he couldn’t. Today he needed to get away from here, far from the office, from his colleagues, from the endless conversations about projects, deadlines, reports.

He walked along Tverskaya, past shop windows, past cafés, past pedestrians buried in their smartphones. Everyone was rushing somewhere. Everyone was busy. Everyone knew what they were living for.

And him?

Dmitry stopped at a traffic light and looked at the people around him. A woman in her thirties in a business suit, phone pressed to her ear, talking fast, agitated. A guy in a hoodie with headphones, nodding to the beat of the music. An elderly man with a cane, slowly crossing the street, not looking around. All different, but all the same. All living in the same system, by the same rules. Work – home – work – home. Day after day. Year after year.

Is this really how I’m going to live my whole life? he thought, and the thought made him sick.

He remembered himself at seventeen. Bright eyes, dreams, faith that the world could be changed. He’d wanted to become a historian, to write books, to tell people about the past, to teach them to understand the present. He’d wanted to be useful, important, needed. Not for money, but for meaning.

And now? A manager. Reports in Excel. Presentations in PowerPoint. Meetings where everyone talked a lot but decided little. A salary that went to rent, food, loan payments. And at the end of the month – nothing left.

I sold my dream for a hundred and eighty thousand a month, he thought, and the thought was bitter as wormwood.

He kept walking, not noticing where. Past a square, past a monument, past theaters. The snow fell thicker, clinging to his hair, melting on his face. It was cold, but Dmitry didn’t feel it. He was somewhere far away, in his thoughts, in his past that would never return.

What if I’d finished my degree? he thought. What if I’d stayed in the history department? Finished my studies, defended my thesis, completed graduate school? I’d have lived hand to mouth, but I’d have been doing what I loved. I’d have lectured to students, written articles, gone on archaeological digs. Would I have been happy?

But immediately another voice in his head answered: No. You’d have been broke. You’d have lived in a dormitory, survived on instant noodles, couldn’t have afforded anything. No car, no apartment, no vacations. No girlfriend – what girl would want to date a poor lecturer?

And it was true. Bitter, but true.

So there was no choice? he asked himself. Did I do the right thing?

Then why did it hurt so much? Why the emptiness inside?

3. Night Thoughts

At night he couldn’t sleep. He lay with his eyes open and thought. Thought about how life was passing, and he hadn’t done anything. Twenty-five years – a quarter of a century! – and what did he have? No family, no home of his own, no job he loved, not even real friends.

Friends, he thought bitterly. Who are my friends? Maxim from the office, who I say hello to every day but never talk to about anything personal? The guys from the reenactors’ forum, who I last saw a year ago? Classmates who’ve all scattered, started families, and who I only talk to through social media?

He got out of bed and walked to the window. Outside it was dark and empty. Only the streetlamps glowed with dim yellow light, and somewhere in the distance advertising signs blinked.

St. Petersburg, he thought. City of great writers, poets, artists. The city that Pushkin and Dostoevsky celebrated. And for me it’s just a place where I’m stuck. Gray, cold, indifferent.

He remembered reading Crime and Punishment in university. Raskolnikov had also lived in St. Petersburg, had also suffered, had also been unable to find his place. But Raskolnikov at least had an idea, even if it was insane. And Dmitry – what? He didn’t even have an idea. Just emptiness.

Raskolnikov wanted to test whether he was “a trembling creature or whether he had the right,” Dmitry reflected. But I don’t even ask myself such questions. I just exist. Wake up, go to work, come home, go to sleep. And so on every day. I’m not even a trembling creature anymore – I’m nobody at all.

Suddenly a terrifying thought came to him: What if I die tomorrow? What will be left of me? Who will remember me? My colleagues will say: “Oh, Dima died? Too bad, he was good at fixing computers.” My parents will cry and feel guilty that they didn’t keep in touch. Friends who’ll genuinely grieve – none. No wife, no children. No mark on history. I’ll just disappear – and that’s it.

The thought was so frightening that Dmitry felt a panic attack beginning. His heart beat faster, his breathing became ragged, his hands trembled.

Calm down, calm down, he tried to get a grip on himself. These are just night thoughts. It’ll be easier in the morning. It’s always easier in the morning.

But he knew it wouldn’t be easier in the morning. In the morning it would be the same thing – hatred for the sound of the alarm, not wanting to get up, dread at the thought of work. And so on until the end of his life.

No, he suddenly thought with unexpected clarity. No, I can’t live like this. I have to change something. I have to! But what? What can I change? Quit? And live on what? Find another job? But it’s the same everywhere. Move to another city? But does geography really change anything?

He went back to bed and lay down, staring at the ceiling. Thoughts swirled in his head, refusing to let him sleep.

Finally, toward morning, he fell into a restless sleep, full of strange dreams about medieval castles, knightly tournaments, and some incomprehensible events.

4. Midweek

Wednesday started even worse. Dmitry overslept – the alarm had turned itself off, or he’d hit the button in his sleep and drifted off again. He woke up in a panic at eight in the morning, realizing he was late.

The first thing Dmitry did when he opened his eyes was reach for the phone on the nightstand. He hadn’t gotten up yet, hadn’t washed his face, but he was already scrolling through the news feed. A terrorist attack somewhere in the Middle East. A political scandal. A highway accident. Sticky anxiety crept into his chest before he’d even gotten out of bed.

He washed hurriedly, got dressed, ran out of the house without breakfast. The metro was even more crowded than usual. He squeezed into the packed car, feeling someone’s elbow digging into his ribs and someone’s bag pressing against his leg.

The car was jammed. Dmitry pressed his back against the door and took out his phone. Opened social network. The feed – endless, garish, someone else’s. Maxim in Dubai, against the backdrop of a skyscraper. Sveta showing off the keys to her new apartment. Andrei with his wife at a restaurant, candles, wine, smiles.

Dmitry knew it was an illusion – people only posted their best moments. But knowing didn’t help. Every time he scrolled through the feed, he felt it: his life was gray, boring, wrong. And theirs – bright, full, real.

Something clenched inside him.

God, how much longer? he thought, suffocating in the stuffiness. How much longer do I have to live in this hell? Metro, office, metro, home. And no light at the end.

He burst into the office at nine-twenty, breathless and disheveled. The supervisor, Igor Vladimirovich, was sitting in the conference room and looked pointedly at his watch.

“Dmitry, you’re late.”

“Sorry, Igor Vladimirovich, there was traffic,” Dmitry lied.

“Traffic,” the supervisor repeated skeptically. “I see. Try not to be late again. We have an important meeting at ten today.”

An important meeting, Dmitry thought sarcastically. Where ten people will spend an hour and a half discussing what color buttons to choose for a new interface for a program that nobody’s going to use anyway.

The meeting really was excruciating. An hour and a half of useless talk, during which Dmitry struggled not to fall asleep. They talked about the new project, about deadlines, about budgets, about tasks. All of it was uninteresting, boring, and pointless.