Time Jumps. The Paradigm of Immortality. Vladimir Baranchikov

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.” –