Birds and a Stone. Anastasia Novykh

shattering to pieces, how a wood log was flying into the room, having broken the window frame, and how the senior lieutenant Chmil’s robust figure was tumbling in afterwards. Wondering at such an unusual quality of his vision, Major hardly tore his eyes from the shining face and looked at the window which strangely appeared to be intact. But suddenly the glass indeed shattered to pieces, and the scene recorded by Rebrov’s mind accurately recurred in reality. Chmil flew into the room like a hurricane. But, seeing Major alive and unhurt as well as the gangsters lying around him, he stopped taken aback. Having overcome his numbness quickly, the senior lieutenant began to tie the bandits’ hands.

      Rebrov was in the same state of absolute peace. He again glanced towards the communicating room which attracted most of his attention. But the room was already empty and gapingly dark. Only a slight dissipating light was fluently moving away, shimmering from the corridor. Rebrov moved to follow it without hesitation.

      The world was changing its outlines with his every step. The further Rebrov was moving away from the bright light, the more focused and condensed the space around him was becoming. Having entered the darkness of the corridor, he seemed to plunge into a slowly revolving tunnel. Round “walls” and “floor” were in an amorphous condition. Putting it more precisely, “walls” and “floor” were notions from Rebrov’s past. Now he saw something like various by configuration and subdued light congestions of atoms and molecules which were changing their shape as if being animate and were copying imprints of his steps. Rebrov’s hand freely penetrated the “walls” of this mass. Though his hand turned to be not a hand, but a streaming flow of multicoloured energies enveloped with same ultimate particles as the corridor “walls” and “floor”.

      In the front, he saw strangely grouped atoms and molecules mixed up with scattering light of fading energies. “The old lady”, flashed in his head. A slight luminescence was surrounding her body. In the head area, in its very middle, a little jelly-like paste was pulsating with golden-reddish light. A small glaringly bright clot was hanging poised above the body. Rebrov somehow comprehended that the clot of energies and the pulsating jelly-like paste piece were a single whole constituting the very essence of a human residing in a corporal shell. It seemed to him this small beaming Something was a living indeed, perennial creature. He felt its invisible gaze at himself along with tension and some soul-oppressing yearning. And he understood what it was without any words. “Everyone’s alive, alive”, Major uttered in his mind. The creature perceived his thoughts precisely. It burst with smooth, incredibly warm play of colours, duplicating these tints on the jelly-like paste and leaving a similar appeasing and placatory sensation in Rebrov’s heart. And it suddenly dawned upon Rebrov that there was no death existing as such!

      Such revelation astonished him, having opened the door to a world unknown before, but yet more than real, to a world of eternity, filling his life with a totally new sense of existence. Having come outside, Rebrov found himself in a world kind of familiar, but completely different at the same time. Flows of charged particles washed his body with a gust of quite palpable living power which people call “wind”. These particles penetrated the corporal shell and saturated with their energy other particles which transmitted their power to the rest by chain, generating feelings of vivacity and freshness in the entire organism.

      The world was by no means painted in dark colours. It was shimmering with a fantastical light of life which Rebrov had never noticed before. Everything around was beaming with variegated colours. And there was no division into animate and inanimate objects. Everything was living in its own way, moving, uniting, acquiring unique scales of tints and tinges, coming apart into separate pulsating hues, transforming its states unusually...

      Stunned with what he saw, Rebrov squatted on a porch edge. And only then he noticed that he was seeing in a strange mode like a chameleon. His range of vision widened significantly. He could watch almost everything located above, below, behind and sideways without turning his head. Only a small zone located behind and below remained invisible. He needed to turn his head slightly to observe that part of space. Rebrov could not understand what had happened to his eyesight. He closed his eyes, having covered them with his hand. Yet, although his eyelids were now closed, Rebrov strangely saw his own hand with the fingers out over the eyelids. Moreover, he saw everything happening around him as if there was no obstacle at all.

      Rebrov removed his hand from his face in shock and looked at it. But then he discovered other surprising abilities of his eyesight. The more he focused his attention on his finger tip, the deeper his gaze delved into, enlarging the visible range numerous times like through a magnifying lens. Although Rebrov simultaneously felt he was holding his hand at the same distance from his eyes. He saw the patterned outline of his fingers in smallest details, in a form of quaint labyrinths. They resembled a dodging area indented with uneven ditches and flat hills. Another invisible world was disappearing behind this mysterious relief. A pink paste enveloped forked mouths of supple bluish tubes. The latter ones strongly pulsated, pushing impetuous flows of red liquid along their tangled passages with an enormous internal pressure. But inside this incredibly lively world there existed a still subtle world. Rebrov even felt a little dizzy of such a deep concentration. He mechanically diverted his look from his finger, and his eyesight became defocused again, restoring the finger in its habitual shape.

      Trying to come to his senses, Rebrov switched his attention to sounds. Yet, there he also faced a unique phenomenon. He didn’t hear sounds as usual, but rather sensed those with his entire body. Major began to study the new talents of his body with unconcealed curiosity. First, he felt dogs’ barking. These waives seemed to be a living independent force with its own energy store. Springing up and passing their extremely short lifetime, they changed the surrounding space with their vibrations. Rebrov sensed how the resilient waves were hitting his body like sea surges rolling one after another, how they were washing him like a violent undercurrent would wash an underwater stone. He senses still other, more subtle noises and the living power of those energies.

      Rebrov started focusing on various sensations with rapture. And there he revealed an absolutely marvelous picture of the universe. All the colourful hues of the surrounding space appeared to be nothing else than various energies of diverse wavelengths. Furthermore, all animate and inanimate objects were indeed energetic particles generating specific waves. Their variety and interaction impressed. The waves were bearers of diverse power and energy, moved at their own speeds, intensified each other meeting in the space, reflected, got absorbed or merged into a different energy. Observing this entire splendour, Rebrov unexpectedly made another astonishing discovery: this life wouldn’t end! There was no “death” notion in it. Energies representing the very essence of life simply turned from one state into the other, changing shapes. They existed perpetually!

      Such discoveries took Rebrov’s breath away. A prodigious joy and a boundless love for all existing swept over him. He wanted to embrace the whole world and to dissolve completely in its stunning harmony. Gripped with inspiration, Rebrov delightedly looked at the vast space of the night sky sparkling with dazzling stars. From up there he felt noises which he had never heard before. Or rather there were not noises, but some symphony which composed all sounds into one lovely melody or charmed ears by separate sounding of a magnificent solo. This music enchanted with its soft modulation, with its uncommon internal beauty.

      Rebrov enjoyed the harmonious sounding of the outer Space. He clearly felt some inner inseparable connection between himself and the wonderful universe. He had a feeling as if he knew exactly where and what is located: where there was a red-hot star, where there was a planet, where there was simply light of a long ago transformed energy of some extinct form. And in certain dark zones of the Space he distinctly sensed the existence of galaxies and planets, invisible for a human eye, which had perfectly real and similar life prototype. Rebrov felt not just his unity with the Space, but some inexplicable connection of every atom of his body with each electron of heavenly bodies. He understood at an unknown level of his consciousness that, if he stayed in this astounding state of deep penetration into mysteries of the universe, something totally other-worldly would be eventually revealed to him. And, at that very instant, he felt very bad. It seemed he would become unconscious any moment. Rebrov lowered his look to the earth, making efforts to come to his senses.

      The operations group arrived. People began scurrying about at the doorway. Rebrov’s nostrils got struck with smells of