Юрий Белк
Who are we? Thriller, short stories

Who are we?

The evening was so cool that the air temperature of thirty-seven degrees Celsius did not feel Ruts. His father was sitting on the bank beside him, looking nonchalantly into the distance. Ships passed by, and it made me feel sad that someone was going home andsomeone had a home.

Kolya did not want to play on the seashore and collect shells at all, all this he rejected inside himself.

– What happened to us?"

– We had an accident and fell off a 584-meter cliff.

– How do you know the exact number?" The exact number of heights? – asked the ten-year-old son, who greatly surprised his father with his question.

– I know.

– How do you know that?"

– I know.

– I'm cold and I want to go home." And what will happen to us?

"And there they are.

Lamp

– You need to twist the clamp even harder, when I bought it, it was the last one in the store, so I didn't have to choose, I bought the last one, I liked its shape, similar to ancient sculptures from Greece.

– Why did you throw out the closet?" I was waiting in line for him for a month and a half, in general, his nephew collected it for me.

– He stopped cleaning, I put the linoleum myself, I left a chek in the corner, which can be returned, because the product is guaranteed for 25 years from the manufacturer. But you can't carry it anymore, if it breaks, you'll buy a new one. Yes, and this store will close in a year and a half, and it will break from your refrigerator leg in 2 years, you will not have time.

– Maxim, you spent the whole weekend repairing this apartment for three years, and you didn't go to the house in the village.

– Well, you yourself wanted to make a beautiful repair, Nadia, and not hire workers, and how would we let them come here?

"The lamp is beautiful, indeed. How did you manage to buy such a beautiful masterpiece? I've always loved everything Italian.

– Yes, it's Greek style.

"There is no Greek style.

"How does it not exist?"

– So.

– Well, the shape is similar to a sculpture from the architecture of ancient Greece.

– It's a bit of a billboard.

"I agree.

Peter woke up today in the middle of the night and when he opened his eyes, he continued to listen to the conversation of a man and a woman, thinking that it was not turned off the TV, and there was a movie going on. He led a healthy lifestyle and did not suffer from any diseases.

In the morning, he got up and started getting ready to take a shower, put on the kettle.

– We need to turn on the clipak, for tone.

But when he tried to turn on the TV, he remembered that it hadn't been working for a week.

– But what did I listen to yesterday?" Probably a dream. Okay, it's time to get ready for work, yes, we still need to find a contract-a receipt for buying a TV, a guarantee, in my opinion, there should still be, another year has not passed.

He pulled all the papers out of the cabinet and started sorting through them, when he found it, snatching it out of the pile with a sharp motion. I put it in another small travel folder and started to get dressed.

At the bottom of the mailbox, he saw a letter addressed to Maxim and Nadezhda Kucherov, wishing them a New Year. The email was sent from New Zealand.

Number

– Dima, when was the last time you paid for utilities?

– I don't remember.

– I don't get any invoices.

"Don't worry. So it is necessary, or not necessary.

– Can you get a job?

"We'll see. I suggest we take a walk in the woods. True, today it's too sunny, I have light sensitivity appeared. I need to go to the doctor, I can't find the policy, I was still looking for it yesterday.

"Where are your sunglasses?" So fashionable. We bought them together with my own, well, this… I can't remember, but never mind.

– Len, there it is, I got a call this morning that we were invited to the department store, promised a bonus.

– Where did you see that?" Who invited you?

– Yes, a car passed by with a campaign video today. You know, they're like the ones you invite to the circus.

– Ah … yes, it was bred by some people, or that we should go there. We don't even have a car.

– Apparently Seryoga left the car the day before yesterday, his birthday was celebrated. I'll pick you up later.

– What time is there to go to the department store?"

"Late afternoon, I guess. Usually people gather at this time.

"We won't have dinner, I don't feel like eating," Lena said to Sergey.

– Well, it's probably time to get ready.

– Okay, I'll clean my shoes, they're dirty somewhere, I can't understand, – said Lena.

They went outside and slowly walked towards the city's department store.

– Look, I think this is your car and Seryoga is driving.

"Yes, it looks like it, but he's already drivingaway from the intersection, and he probably can't see us." Probably decided to go for a ride while I can't see, but nothing, then it's due, it won't turn out, " Dima laughed widely and loudly, but no one paid attention to them. Although there were a lot of people nearby, pedestrians.

"They're afraid of your tall stature and athletic build, and they're afraid to look you in the eye, so they don't look at you," the wife said, which pleased her husband.

We've been walking for a long time, we should have reached it already.

– Yes, we'll get there, – said Dima, looking into the distance.

There was a department store building in sight, and people were pulling up from all directions.

– There's your car standing next to another one, Sergey, your friend seems to have crashed your car.

"Oh, shit. Let's go faster.

As they got closer to the accident, they heard a traffic police officer report into the walkie-talkie:

– At the scene of the accident, documents were found in the name of Dmitry and Elena Kropotkin, whose carbelongs to Dmitry Kropotkin. According to preliminary data, they were traveling from the birthday of his friend Sergey, who was driving, and he confirmed their identity. According to preliminary data, all were under the influence of alcohol. I finished my report. Lieutenant Zavyalov.

Haymaking

– Vasya, are we going swimming today? I made a rubber boat yesterday with my father. The two chambers of the combine turned out to be very large. It will be difficult to reach the shore, but we can roll it in a circle and tie it together there on the shore, " said Lyosha to a friend who was walking in front, raking the grass on the sides, but at the same time very loudly and sonorously that he was asked by the grandmothers from the next shaft to speak down.

"That's great," Vasily said, turning his head back and wiping the sweat from his brow, which was running in a stream.

There was no water carrier today, although yesterday, when it was quite cool in the field, O.N. had already brought two cans of cold water to the field on horseback in the morning, which was not even half drunk before lunch, although there were more than fifty people in the field, counting the adults who were making a stack from the already dried-up hay plot. The tractor fed with the help of arrows, which lifted high several pounds of grass that had already dried to the color of white clay. Only the women worked upstairs, waving their hands from time to time and turning to each other, occasionally saying something. From a distance, it looked like a silent movie.

The sun was slowly moving towards the west, but the heat from which it came did not abate at all. Five boys and ten girls worked in the fields all day in the blazing sun. They were all over the age of ten and under the age of fifteen.

Afterthe holidays, parents spent some of their children's salaries, which they earned during the summer holidays, on general purchases, rarely gave money to anyone at once, but more often this money was spent at the school bazaar, which was held in a neighboring village on the penultimate Saturday in August.

After work, already at six o'clock in the evening, the guys moved towards the village. As they approached their yards, they accelerated and ran faster, almost headlong.

After drinking some water from the well, some compote from the pot, they ran out to the back yard, where there was a pond nearby, which was half overgrown with reeds. In some places it was so deep that none of the boys could dive to the bottom to touch with their hands or feet.

Vasily and Alexey were the last to reach the pond bank, or rather, they rolled two large wheels from the combine, which Alexey's father had pumped up very tightly since the previous evening. All they had to do now was tie them together with a rope that was very thick.

After a lot of effort, the guys still managed to link the two cameras together. Throwing them into the water, they almost knocked down another boy, SlavikA. He was in the fifth grade and was the only boy from his village, so he didn't have a friend and went almost everywhere by himself, and no one ever bothered him much. He almost always wore the same expression on his face, despite his rather young age.

The water was a little cold, because it hadn't had time to warm up after last night's chill, but the boys didn'tmind. They spent more than an hour swimming, shouting, laughing, and swimming in the shallow water at the end of the pond. They ran in and out of the reeds, shouting and hooting like Indians with spears, which they replaced with green cobs of reeds.

At last they had all bathed so thoroughly that they no longer wanted to scream. Their voices were already quite low, and the words came out in fragments that didn't belong together.

My parents were already home, and the cows were fed. After drinking milk, eating bread or potatoes cooked in a pot and sprinkled with dill, the children ran outside to ride a bicycle.

From afar, a car drove at high speed through the center of the village, despite the fact that children were riding bicycles, and very young children were playing catch-up in the middle of the road. The older kids called out to each other andgrabbed all the kids by force and moved them out of the way. The car did not even think to stop and continued to approach, leaving a column of dust in its wake. But as she neared the place where they were playing, she stopped. A father and son got out of the cab.

"It's very beautiful and quiet here," the father said to his son and added:

– More than thirty years have passed since all the people moved out of here, since the collective farm collapsed, but almost all the houses are intact, although everywhere the grass is overgrown to the knees. Perhaps children were playing in this place…

Spinning wheel

– Here is this one for me, which is with these things on the sides, – said Ruslan to the salesman in the store for fishermen, and at his request he was brought a spinning rod, which was the best in its class for this price.

Ruslan did not try to delve into the names of fishing gear, he generally believed that the name is secondary, or rather, it does not matter at all. Ruslan was a representative of the absolute representative of the engineer, who believed that the namesof objects are not needed at all, you can just number them. The so-called supreme representative of scientific snobbery. He never said these things out loud, because people would think he was crazy, or at least a man with cockroaches in his head.

For people who noticed this habit in him and started asking questions, he liked to repeat the same phrase that their physics teacher Sergey Lvovich, who at the age of 33 was an honorary employee of many universities around the world, repeated to them. He often saw him in the city after graduating from university, but then there was a rumor that he was given a scientific laboratory in one of the cities and he left. No one saw him after that. There were rumors that he had won a prestigious science prize, but no one could really say anything.

After buying everything he needed, Ruslan left the store, whistling, because everything was ready for tomorrow's trip to the taiga, he had bought provisions, fuel, a tent and everything else last week. Today was Monday, and being a punctual person, he decided to go fishing on vacation with three days of overnight stay on Monday. He always started a new business on Monday, because he considered rest also work, or rather, part of the work.

Sunday afternoon was cool in the city. The end of August, although it was a calendar summer, but this year it was quite cool. It got colder around mid-August, although the summer itself was very hot. He was engaged in the sale andinstallation of air conditioners, so the revenue for the season turned out to be good. He did not want to study science, although he was offered to stay in graduate school. There was no perseverance and fundamentality in it, Ruslan preferred actions that give visible work.

He didn't really like fishing, but at some point, more precisely, a week ago, after watching a video of survivalists in the forest on one of the video hosting sites, he suddenly wanted to go deep into the forest and go fishing on the riverbank for a couple of days, take photos.

Ruslan wanted to challenge the regularity of his work, which he had already had enough of.

He didn't have any social networks, sono one would have seen these pictures anyway, except for a couple of friends, but he decided to fulfill the desire that he had even with the heat downturn and after a sharp decline in orders for installing climate systems after the onset of cool weather after a prolonged heat wave.

There was only one way to get to your destination, along a dirt road. For this purpose, he agreed with the companyof the taxi profile that he would be taken to a certain place and after three days they would pick him up from this place back. The main thing was that the car was cargo and passable, with an experienced driver and other requirements that Ruslan voiced to them through the dispatcher.

РRenan sat in the kitchen, drinking in the fragrant tea he'd bought the day before, but he couldn't quite remember the name. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see two large backpacks of different colors, brands, and materials lying in the hallway, waiting to be taken to the woods tomorrow.

"I have to go to bed, get up early tomorrow.

Opening the window in the kitchen halfway, Ruslan slowly wandered into the bedroom, as if reluctantly, under duress. On Monday morning, he woke up early and couldn't even immediately remember what time he fell asleep. He ate breakfast and, after looking through all the rooms of the apartment, put one backpack on his back, grabbed the other with his hands, went out into the courtyard of the house and sat down on a bench. There was a morning fog, but it was so thick that a person with a rich imagination would immediately imagine that the giant had put the kettle on and forgotten to boil it. The taxi car did not appear in the courtyard by the appointed time, but just two minutes later, with a delay, Ruslan saw two fog lights driving into the courtyard. He picked up his backpacks and walked towards the car.

– Hello, – said Ruslan very cheerfully, but the driver did not answer him anything. He got out of the car without a word, opened the trunk door, and lit a cigarette.

"I quit," said Ruslan, just as cheerfully, but still trying приободряющеto express it reassuringly. The driver coughed violently at this time.

– I agree, we should quit, but this job is difficult, constantly on my nerves, – said the thin driver in a very rough voice.

– I also thought so before, now I don't regret it, – said Ruslan and got into the car.

The car moved very smoothly, although it was very large in size. A couple of times Ruslan tried to start a conversation about something withvodafone, but remembering that he met him unfriendly, he changed his mind several times. Nor could he offer him a topic of conversation. On the road, two people were traveling in one car, one of them had driven and loved cars all his life, could fix almost any car, did repairs in his garage on the knee of the entire transmission and the engine itself. The second person never drove a car, he was even afraid of them. At work, although he always needed a car to install the air conditioners, he always had a partner who was also a driver.

One wanted to return to the city and sleep for a day, the second-to leave the city faster and not sleep for the first day.

At some point, Ruslan realized that he was sitting on the riverbank with a spinning rod in his hands. There was no bite, but it was so quiet that he wanted to go to sleep so badly that he put the fishing rod on the stand and began to throw himself in the backpacks, feelingout something that looked like a mug, coffee, matches, a pot, and so on. The list of things necessary for making coffee turned out to be so large that Ruslan at some point simply dumped out of both travel bags all the things on the grass, which was still wet with dew.

Looking around and not finding a can of coffee, Ruslan clenched his teeth and, taking a deep breath, exhaled slowly.

– How so?" Well, like, put it in a bag, how so? – said Ruslan very quietly, so that he would not be overheard by accident and the fish would not be scared off.

The fish had never pecked once in all the time he'd been ashore. It was very strange, because on the surface from time to time it appeared and playfully dived back.

– What kind of place is this?" On the map, everything was clear, here is a river, tut forest, here are small foothills. It's strange, because of the location, but I don't remember how we got here, maybe I fell asleep on the way, or rather, I dozed off. It's been so long since I've been out in nature that I'm not even used to it. "Half out loud, half to himself," thought Ruslan.

He rewound the spinning rod and placed it next to the tent he was going to put up and hadn't built yet. The idea of gathering some herbs in the nearby forest came to him immediately.

He didn't take anything with him, because he was going to walk two hundred meters in one direction and back. The edge of the forest was just visible. But after a while, Ruslan felt tired, although it was already close to the forest, but he did not reach it in any way. There was nothing to do, or rather, there was something, and this is without variations.

"Coffee, where did that jar go?" Maybe the taxi driver stole it while I was sleeping. Come on, would he bother with this jar if one trip in one direction cost me a salary for three days, – everything was spinning in Ruslan's head, and there was no answer.

Les began with a thicket that consisted of shrubs and grass as tall as an adult. Actions that Ruslan did not plan initially, completely took him out of rhythm and balance. He wanted to get back quickly, eat his breakfast, and go to sleep in the tent.

– Ruslan Viktorovich. At some point, the man who was barely walking through the forest stopped abruptly and even straightened up and stopped moving.

"Who's there?"

– Ruslan Viktorovich, you, of course, just now thought that you have a fever or you ate some berries in the forest. That's not so. You have an excellent state of the body, you can walk on your feet, you can breathe.

– What's going on?"

"Nothing happens until nothing happens," they answered, but Ruslan looked around and saw no one.

– I need to sit down, I'm sure I have a fever or something, I don't know, I don't know anything, I don't understand, I don't know…"

Ruslan felt a surge of strength at some point and quickly got up.

– Why did you come here?" – What is it? " the voice asked in a very low monotone.

"Well, that… Go fishing… Rest… From everyone… After making long pauses after each word, Ruslan uttered it as if during an interrogation, and fell silent, waiting for the answer from the voice.

"We've been waiting a long time, we've been informed," the voice said, and went on.

– You, Ruslan Viktorovich, of course, are puzzled about who I am and what is happening, you are tormented by doubts about the reality of what is happening. And what is reality? Do you know that?" Ruslan was silent.

– How do you distinguish your life from a dream?

–Mmm-yyy – aah, – Ruslan mumbled, trying to formulate something clever, starting to realize that he was facing some kind of superintelligence.

– Yes, you are in no hurry, Ruslan. I'm not superintelligent yet, and we're just going to see him, or rather, my confessor. You won't see me in the optical range of the human eye, I'm transparent as glass.

"I see…

– That's what you think. Here we are, and you'll be there, though you might change your mind and go back to the riverbank, a can of coffee in your backpack pocket.

– what? Ruslan said and froze.

Strange thoughts were passing through his head, memories were confused, but his consciousness was becoming clearer, and the desire to find out the secret exceeded caution. As he walked forward, no one answered any of his questions. The voice stopped.

Ruslan walked forward, looking around, but didn't see anyone. He began to remember his life, and his whole life seemed to him like a silent movie, where the director put red pen marks by hand in the script.

He clearly realized that he was very interested in science, as one of the teachers suggested to them to create their own scientific production for obtaining autonomous energy. But Ruslana at this time was more interested in training, he studied at the university half-heartedly and, despite this, he did not have C's in his diploma. Getting a degree without a C in its Department of NuclearPhysics was comparable to getting a red diploma in an ordinary commercial institute. Only five students have received a red diploma during the entire existence of the institute, and this is more than in the 80 years of the university's history, which, however, began as a technical school, but it doesn't matter now.

After walking for some unknown distance, Ruslan saw a hunting lodge, which had a very dilapidated roof, if not to say, the roof was torn off. Next to the cabin, there were a small number of logs that had been cut down and laid out in a row.

The door was opened a little, and when approaching Ruslan, a bunch of midges flew out in his face. After waiting for a while, he decided to go inside. The couch, despite the chaos and cobwebs around, was relatively in order, most importantly, there was no dust or debris.

I sat down on the edgeof the cot, looked at my watch, lay down, and immediately fell asleep. Ruslan always had his watch with him, always. As soon as I entered the Faculty of Nuclear Physics. I woke up to some noise that permeated the forest. They showed that he had been asleep for about five minutes.

When I woke up, I decided to go back to the riverbank, remembering why he had come to the forest in the first place, for threeshoddy salaries for a taxi. Ruslan was good at counting money, for which his friends often called him a miser, but he just counted them, although he could spend a decent amount on the same friends in a cafe for the evening. But no one remembered such moments and such treats from him.

He came out of the cabin and saw a lot of other cabins around the cabin. On closer inspection, one could see that they were the same, or rather, not to notice the difference. Even the piles of logs were the same everywhere.

Ruslan gradually turned off his rationality of thinking, even when he met, or rather heard, the voice. But even this did not help him calm down from the excitement, he was afraid, but there was no one to say or share it, so he stopped worrying. No one here will feel sorry for him. Pity and fear lose their meaning in the absence of witnesses.

Timidly, he began to approach the first house that wascloser. Swaying a little in doubt, he went into the cabin and saw a man who was sleeping. At some point, he realized that he was wearing a jacket like his own. As he approached, he saw a man who looked remarkably like him, or rather, it was him.

Quickly bouncing back from the realization of what was happening, he very quickly ran to another cabin, it was the same, or rather, there was a man who looked like him sleeping there.

He was standing at the edge of a forest where there were many equally built and equally dilapidated hunting lodges, two of which at least had men sleeping in them who looked like him.

Ruslan recalled the laboratory work at the institute, which was transformed into a university in the third year.

A minimum of three tests, three measurements, three observations are required, he kept repeating in his head.

He went to a randomly selected third house, everything was repeated, there was no miracle. At the moment, it would be a miracle for Ruslan to see normality, or rather, to see the abnormality, to return to normal life, being in this state, he stopped understanding what to call a miracle.

– It doesn't make sense to go into other houses, well, after all, patterns should exist even in conditions of abnormality, but why, who said that? Ruslan asked himself over and over again.

– Clock, time! Ruslan shouted, and then he was afraid of his own scream, realizing what would have happened if all his copies had woken up at the same time, what would have happened.

He didn't even want to imagine it, knowing that something terrible, irreparable would happen that would break him as an individual.

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