in,” Ivan said, though there was still an undercurrent of uncertainty in his voice.
The traveler stepped over the threshold. He looked around and his face became even more serious.
– It’s been years, and it’s still the same,” he said in a low voice. – It’s the same as it was then.
– What’s the same? – Ivan asked, looking around and feeling a shiver run down his spine, as if he were not at home. It was as if he was visiting someone himself.
– At home. At home. This fireplace. The same old Chesterfield chairs. Those paintings. This silence. I used to… I used to live here.
Ivan stared at him, stunned, trying to figure out if this was happening at all – a joke, a dream, or something more – Who are you? – Frowning, Ivan asked.
– Me?” The traveler stepped into the firelight from the hallway and approached Ivan. – Take a closer look. What do you see?
Ivan took a step towards the stranger and looked into his face. If before he could not understand what it was that made him so suspicious, now it was as if he had been electrocuted. He looked into the face of a man in his early thirties. Blue eyes. Unseasonably tanned and weathered skin. Teeth as white as snow and hair as white as a February snowstorm at his temples, the tips of which dripped drops of melted snowflakes onto the wooden floor of the house.
The guest stood silently in the hall. Still silent, but with a smile on his face, he looked at Ivan, waiting for his host to realize what was going on and invite him into the house.
Ivan slowly raised his right hand and, pointing at his guest, said uncertainly, “I – I know you. I’ve seen you somewhere before.
– Yes. I’ve seen you,” the traveler replied confidently. – Not only have you seen me, but you see me every morning in the mirror. Haven’t you noticed? I you!
Ivan felt the ground give way under his feet. He took a few steps back, his fingers gripping the wooden beam that held up the ceiling – “I… is that you? Ivan said softly, his voice trembling like a leaf in the wind. His face paled and his mind refused to believe what was happening.
The traveler took off his wet coat and, without even looking at it, hung it on the coat rack, the same one made of old elk antlers that Ivan had found not far from the house shortly after he had bought it. He wiped his boots, wet from the melted snow, on the mat.
– Yes, that’s it,” the guest replied, entering the room. His footsteps were the same as Ivan’s – a firm, confident step. The muffled clatter of heavy boots on the wooden floor. – Only I am from your past. Or rather, I am you, but in a way of another version and from another time.
The guest entered the room on heavy heels. He sat down in the armchair by the fireplace – his favorite, the one with the stitched upholstery in the shape of a long scar, where Ivan sat every evening.
The traveler reached over to the book table and picked up a book – a collection of Alexei Reznik’s fantasy stories, tattered, with bent corners of yellowed pages.
– Do you remember how the author gave it to you when you worked at Kominterna in Moscow? – he asked, turning the pages. – Yes, and I remember that day well. It was late. It was time to go home, and I had a lot of work to do. And the weather was bad. Late fall. It was raining and you, I mean me, didn’t have an umbrella. You were soaked to the skin, but you hid the book under your jacket.
Ivan slowly lowered himself onto the second chair. It seemed as if his whole body turned to cotton, and he felt a cold shiver in his hands.
– How… how can you know that? – Ivan, who no longer doubted that he was looking at himself, could not quite believe that what was happening now was real.
The traveler put down the book, looked directly into Ivan’s eyes and said: “Because it was me. At that time, Alexei and I had been working together for almost half a year on a science fiction novel called "#Digital_economy.NET”. I have to say that the idea for the title of the novel was mine personally. Well, or yours. Well, ours.
The silence hung between them, thick as a winter snowstorm outside the window. Only the crackling of the logs in the fireplace broke it.
– You came… uh… why are you here? – Ivan finally squeezed out.
The traveler sighed. His face grew older for a moment, the wrinkles deepened.
– To meet you and tell you the truth. About the house. About the forest. About you and what awaits you beyond the threshold tonight.
He leaned forward, and the same strange light flashed in his eyes that Ivan had noticed from the threshold.
– How old are you now? – asked the traveler with a smile. – Thirty-one?
Ivan looked at his guest and nodded silently, while the traveler continued his monologue – Here I am now thirty-one. In this time. But when I left this house, I was thirty years old, and that was, strange as it may sound, a long time ago… only one year in this time, and fifty in the other,” he said thoughtfully, looking intently into the darkness of the frost-covered window.
Chapter 3. Getting to Know Each Other
They sat in silence by the fire for a while. The fire crackled, casting the same dancing shadows on the walls.
The traveler stood up and walked around the chair. He leaned against its large back and began his story. His voice was soft, but each word sounded as if it had been etched in Ivan’s memory forever.
– Once upon a time, many years ago, I was just like you. I was thirty years old and I lived here in this house. I guess my story of moving to this wilderness is no different from yours. I remember my first impression when I saw this abandoned house. What can I say, but the musty smell when I first walked in, I still can’t forget. It took me almost three weeks to clean and scrub it. It was early spring. The windows were open all day. And the musty smell of the old room just wouldn’t leave the house. I spent a few more weeks scrubbing and painting. The old carpets were washed in the river. They hung in the yard in the early sun for almost a month. I replaced all the window frames. I put in a bio toilet and a shower. Installed gas. I took down all the partitions and made one big room – a studio on the first floor. I remember how long it took the men from the neighboring village to fix that fireplace. And I’m not talking about the fact that I didn’t tidy up the property until just before autumn. So much effort and care I put into this place that I now call home.
I’ve lived here for almost four years now. It’s good to be a programmer, there are always clients and remote work. Communication is not great here. But you can work. Once a week I went to the nearest village, connected to the Internet and synchronized my repository with my programs. I sent reports to my employers, and once a month I got paid for my work. The pay was reasonable. I had enough to live on and a little more. In general, it was like everyone else’s.
But then one day, in the longest December night, quite unexpectedly, a stranger came to me, just as I am to you now. He said he was me, only from my past. He told me that in this place and at this time there is a certain anomaly that manifests itself only once a year, only in this place and at this time. This anomaly, like an invisible force, sends one of us to another world, and the other of us, who fell into it a year ago, comes back and stays in this world, in this time dimension. And this has been happening every year since my thirtieth birthday. In your case, from the age of thirty-one. In general, we can say that you and I are really just at the beginning of a recurring cycle of events. It turns out that the anomaly will throw one of us into a different world every year, and some of us will be brought back. So today it’s your turn to travel, to a world you’ve never explored, but that I know well – a world both more beautiful and more terrifying than anything you can imagine. A world where