Armageddon! Go for a beer? —
– Down-to-earth you some. —
– So interesting. —
– Silence…
– What?
– Weird… Why so quiet? … —
– You are ovation waiting for? —
– No …you don’t understand something. For window repairs? —
– Hey, Nick, expresses clearly. —
– Yes, the trams… since a half hour is not heard. No shaking, no rattling … —
– What are streetcars? You do not scare… Rails in the street already seven years removed.
3***
– after 20 years
And if they were not.
– I’m just really confused, right? This uncomfortable feeling like the world is broken. And, you know, not so long ago was a contender… On the lake…
– Was the nature?
– Yes…doesn’t matter. With Mouse and friends. Stupid. Nonsense…
– The applicant. – recalled the male.
– I don’t know… Just that same feeling; -the world has changed.-
– We change, but not the world. Ants on a slope of mount Everest, you know. waved hand male.
– Chekhov, Joyce, reminded Nick. – The uptake? One-to-one.-
– Melville still remember! Man just put himself in Moby dick, and over. Then he died, and the world remained. The world always remains, and the man disappears.-
– Cervantes, Rabelais, swift… – sadly handed it to Nick.
– Just a comfortable chair, sharilsya the male. – Sit, legs dangling, and think – ahead ETERNITY. A chair is the same junk. Shattered, it’s time to dump. And you mean the WORLD broke down! Yes, not the world! We may be, because misery is our…
– The world was created for people, and together they disappear, melancholic muttered Nick.
– What? This is the order, the procedure is, so to speak. It is not for us to murmur.
– And can the order be violated? Imagine – a cog is broken, right?
– And we here at what? In GOD’s kitchen to Suva – fraught, you know. And our mind all this high mechanics. We’re just consumers of the benefits. Give – take. And even if the microwave malfunctions in GOD’s kitchen, which are bound to BURST
AND – THANKS! —
And now Nick stood in the doorway the back door and cautiously looked Zakharov St. Petersburg court house. Judging by the lighting it was very late, and he could easily not catch the subway.
– Swing – angrily thought about my friend Nick. – So, if anything, will sponsor a taxi. —
And then freewheeling. “Freewheeling” – because he somehow knew what was going to happen something. It happened. Something was creeping in the far corner of the yard, tightened the misty shadow itself was only a blurred shadow, disturbing the sparse Bush of some elderberry.
And this was not the result of a tired vision, imagination or faceless St. Petersburg night, something very real.
(Nick immediately remembered Simak – “Almost human”)
It was, and he spit, he trudged there, just in case his eyes
parties in search of sticks, it could be a bad dog, although, of course, nonsense, there could be no dog, and he just wanted to quickly go through it, and on the subway I wanted to catch and meet him, out of twilight quickly ran something, just missing him, it was not a dog.
Ant. Giant lambent with red and yellow metal. With quick jointed legs. Samovar and on the back it was a big multifaceted black mark, like graffiti.
Some Buddhist symbols like all symbols exactly meaningless
only nachitavshis them.
Nick stupidly held his gaze and stepped aside, letting two or three.
Then he remembered where he had seen them before. Yes! – has he seen these creatures. Of course! One time they were a bit larger – the three-storey house of approximately. But drawing on the backs attended the same. In Arabic style…
4***
– minus 66 years
And was Rzhevka.
Before the birth of man there. Does not exist. But the soul is immortal. Somewhere it present.
Somewhere in the cosmos.
Another thing – personality. “I”.
“I” appears when the soul unites with the body. And after death, when the body is powered off, the identity is not necessary, it binds the soul his worldly passions, urges and desires. It does not
the soul to connect with the Cosmos, to return to a natural state, to earthly, bodily life.
And ?…m-m-m…my head hurts; – Nick was in a drowsy state,
lying on an old, wooden bench, on the ring rail 79. One
the ring was located Bedlam buildings, broken, dirty road,
temporary fences, heaps of bricks and concrete slabs. Stuck lifting cranes. Left muddy streets, ramshackle, mismatched fences,
which was seen dirty-blocks for the blind homes. The village, in short.
After work, on the bus stop, he bought a few bottles of beer…three? four? more?
It does not matter. The tram was not long. A very long time. And then he fell asleep. And certainly during that time was the limit of public transport.
Nick fumbled in his jacket pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, head circled.And it was empty.
Where did he go? Here there were no people, just the fences, behind which bristled skinny trees.
Street crooked fences stretched the endless, gray ribbon. Then
parted in the side was over. Ahead and to the sides stretches
open, covered with undulating grass plain.
Far in the grey of the horizon was bent low hills. The sun was not. But through the grass ran a narrow path, and Nick went through it. He was not going to go far, he was wondering how it would end, but when turned around – strip the city is already barely visible. He stood in the center of the circle and the hills on the horizon moved in a ragged blurred panorama of the city.
– To go back? – he was sorry to interrupt the interesting action, but… he again slowly looked around the neighborhood – nothing interesting in sight…
Hesitating he took a few steps further and froze.
Not visible behind the grass, the path crossed a wide ravine with steep slopes.
To the bottom of it was very far away. Height – depth? -about 12-storey house. Meters 40. Maybe more – nothing can compare. – The Grand canyon some.And what is this conflict? —
There, far below, something was moving. To bend over to see-was scary, and no handles. But that “something” was obviously climbing up the slope, all increasing in size.
The soil under my feet gave in, and Nick made a dash back, stumbled, crashed on the back, and when I rose – saw over the cliff was up to something like a balloon, only a ball of metal, copper tone.
It was not a balloon.Something like the head of a giant insect, and 15 meters.
Clearly