Without. Mikhail Streltsov. Poems Prizes and awards

Eight-year-old Bob was two years older. And by dog \u200b\u200bstandards, I could be considered his grandson. Therefore, he played, slightly fooling around, with half the strength: he grabbed the end of the stick with his tenacious jaw - and pulled, crouching on his hind legs, pretending that he was determined to pull it out. Small even teeth and concave hooks of fangs - snow-white, as if brushing with paste! In the benevolent draining of the pupils, an almost human viper suddenly slipped, right before it suddenly opened its mouth. Why I, pulling from the other end, had to flop into the grass. And then, with a triumphant yap, the dog turned out to be near, perched on its shoulders its paws with black springs of pads, and began to lick its forehead in a friendly manner. It was tickling and slobbering. Nevertheless, I got used to catching a malicious moment in the pupils, and tried to release the stick first. And then Bob squatted in bewilderment, pretended to be defeated, playfully falling on his side, and I began to scratch his withers and behind his ears. The dog slowly, awkwardly even rolled over onto its back, substituting a warm muscular tummy, so that it could be scratched there too.

Probably, at first he was called Bobik, but, having grown up, made the former owners arouse respect for themselves and change the name to a respectable one. In reality: if he wanted, he would have taken that stick from me in one fell swoop. In addition to the scanty bulldog jaw, he had other signs of a boxer: strong shoulders, elastic and smooth torso, confidently standing on his paws, as if they had grown not under the body, but along it. Ears upright and voluminous deep eyes, in which there was no thoroughbred arrogance. They were light, somewhere even green, as if they had just been washed in the summer rain. A large mongrel, one of whose ancestors was probably a collie, could be seen in Bob not only in a dark red color, but also in a neck with a king's hump, and, of course, in a very straight-looking penny of nosopy. And already - of course - the character of the dog has set itself not in a noble don, but in her outbred father or mother. The dog really resembled a bob: elastic, sloping, oblong, hard and nimble, could jump out of the booth shell with such agility that a stranger who dared to be within reach would hardly have time to jump.

And although the dog carried his service on the chain regularly, I would not say that he was downright a child prodigy, rather the opposite - friendly, like most village fools. Some of the dogs stopped talking when you were just approaching the gate, recognizing your scent from behind the fence and then greeted with an air of dignified guards at the prince's porch. Bob, on the other hand, was straining in the collar - even when you were already in the yard, falling within sight. And only a few steps later, the dog recognized you, began to fuss guiltily, shifting its paws, and the tail rod rattled and wiggled along inconceivable trajectories.

In fact, for such breeds, like their unlucky offspring, it is customary to dock their tails at birth. On our city outskirts, no one bothered himself with such nonsense: what happened, it happened - if only he guarded the house, and did not spoil anywhere. In addition, the only veterinary institution was, like the devil threw it: if you don't know, you won't find it. That is why Bob looked like an awkward little lion cub, because the tip of his naked red twig ended with a small hair brush. Moreover, my grandmother got it as an adult, with such a tail.

Previously, the woman lived on the other side of the city, my grandfather died two years ago, and the hut was completely lopsided and decayed. We and the Ryzhikovs - two families - settled in the suburban village of Shoferskoye, the name of which spoke for itself. Nearby there is an expanded clay gravel plant, a motor depot of city garbage trucks and a clay section of a brick factory. And yet the houses here are newer, built no more than twenty years ago. So the daughters looked after the mother's house near them, transported my grandmother, no matter how she resisted, and the neighbors, for some reason, gave them a dog, taking a younger dog.

I suppose, not because I turned out to be her eleventh and youngest grandson, but because of her nasty nature, Baba Natasha did not in the least resemble those stereotyped grandmothers who over-eat them with pies and cow's milk. The woman never sat down at the table, reacting to your appearance as to annoying worries: as if a fly had flown into the house or a mosquito. The house had two small rooms, which could only be entered through a kitchen with a Finnish stove. The table is always clean: no spoons, no crumbs. In the living room there is a table under a lace tablecloth with an empty vase and a framed photograph of his grandfather. The windows are constantly closed with curtains, and on the dressers are pots of aloe.

In the far left corner, a lamp burned under an icon depicting a woman with a baby. Laconic, the grandmother sometimes belched loudly hiccups, while baptizing her mouth, saying: "the Lord has sinned" in a patter. Always in felt boots, belted with a woolen scarf around the waist, in a worn-out yellow-green sweater with buttons with a pork penny in size, small, overweight, constantly wandered from room to room, limping on her right leg, and abruptly ordered: don't touch it, don't go there ... In her eternal brick-colored shawl and men's tight glasses with elastic bands, with heavily fallen corners of her lips, she resembled an untidy caretaker in a village museum, where they only enter to wait out the heat or rain. The woman did not have a TV on principle, and even gave Lenka Ryzhikova the rest of her life with her grandfather for the wedding. She was a little deaf, which is why the radio in the house crackled loudly, and did not stop: from anthem to anthem.

That is why, when I came to my granny, I did not stay in the house for a long time: I greeted, indicating my presence, asked about my state of health, as my mother asked; standing for several minutes, because they were not offered to sit down, listened to her grumble about this or that relative - he got drunk, and this one lives with just anyone. And since of her five children, three daughters survived, and two were nearby, the eldest, Khvidora, and her corresponding surname, reddish and coarse - as if slovenly worn - sons, Tolka and Sasha, got the most of all. I must say that they gave a reason. The lean cauldron Sasha, who had not yet graduated from school, had already pasted over the doors in his room with labels from the ports he had drunk, and Tolya, who was preparing for the army, preferred vodka, after which he would beat his pregnant wife with pleasure or chased his stepfather around the garden with an ax.

Intercepting granny on a pause, he said that I would go to the yard to play with Bob, and for an hour and a half she forgot about my presence. Then, as if recollecting herself, she would go out onto the porch and begin to command me. I did not understand some of the troubles. It is known why we need to bring firewood and water to the bathhouse, we ourselves came to our grandmother’s bathhouse, because we were rebuilding our own. It is clear why it was necessary to climb into a cellar smelling of mold - granny wanted salty, she especially preferred sauerkraut with radish. But why was it necessary to rearrange the inventory in the shed from place to place? Granny herself did not take care of the garden, we dug for her, and planted, and reaped the harvest; I didn’t keep cattle, except for chickens, and I was sure I hadn’t come to the barn since the moment of moving. But how many pitchforks, hoes, shovels were in place, if anything was missing, she absolutely needed to know.

While I was busy and inclined to think that it was time to shed towards my family, where I could shake something, swing in a hammock and wait for my mother from work, Bob occasionally whimpered, fingering his front paws; he began to gnaw a bone with an eye in my direction, wondering why I had packed into a flock for useless activities instead of playing with him ...

The last long preschool summer at Shoferskoye dragged on endlessly: I staggered from morning to evening wherever I wanted, left to myself, lounging around and only later realized that it was the most happiness that could be - cozy, warm and dimensionless. But it was boring. TV quickly got bored, pictures in books did not change like cartoons; my parents left for work in the morning and did not take me with them, no matter how they asked. Once my father, tired of the buzzards, took it all the same, but it was even more boring there. The excavator just dug in the clay and stank of fuel oil. It was dirty, dreary, desolate, and even the locals - cut - lured dogs did not play with me, but lay dejectedly in the shade, yawning and sleepily gnawing burdocks from their wool. There were not many children on our street, and almost all of them disappeared somewhere for the summer. Except for the fidgety Paulina in the very first house on the highway to the city. But my parents let me go to show off to me a collection of candy wrappers from sweets for a short time without supervision, and they also kept geese. And when they went for a walk, I hurriedly retreated, because the main goose did not love me. When he saw, he began to flap his wings on his sides, bend his neck, as if sneaking up and intending to grab his heel. That is why, apart from Bob, I had no friends that summer. And he, in addition to his grandmother, carrying out a mess of tasteless cereals and bread in a bowl, did not have any acquaintances. It is not surprising that he enjoyed my visits, and, abandoning his dog business - gnawing a bone, barking and sleeping in a booth - enthusiastically followed all my childish notions.

Poet, prose writer. Born in 1973 in the town of Myski, Kemerovo Region. In 1995 he graduated from the Kemerovo State Institute of Arts and Culture.

Chairman of the Krasnoyarsk regional office of the Union of Russian Writers since 2008. Delegate of the IV Congress of the PSA. Member of the Literary Fund of Russia and the International Literary Fund. Deputy Chairman of the Krasnoyarsk branch of the Literary Fund of Russia. From 2008 to 2012 executive secretary of the literary magazine "Day and Night".

Participant of all-Siberian literary seminars in Tomsk (2000) and Krasnoyarsk (2001). Participant of the I Forum of Young Russian Writers (Lipki, 2001), the Eternal Sails science fiction convention (Krasnoyarsk, 2011), the Voloshinsky September festival (Koktebel, 2013). Laureate and diploma winner of the regional competition named after I. Rozhdestvensky (2013), diploma winner of the almanac "Ice and Fire" (2013).

Since 2002, the creative director of the youth literary club "Alley" at the Siberian Technological University:

Organizer of the regional poetry competition "King of Poets". In 2014, the competition celebrated its 10th anniversary. Fragments of the competition:

Published in magazines and almanacs: "Lights of Kuzbass", "Day and Night" (Krasnoyarsk), "North" (Petrozavodsk), "New Nemiga" (Minsk), "Priokskie Zori" (Tver), "Children of Ra" (Moscow) , "Northern Aurora" (St. Petersburg), "Lifestyles" (San Francisco), "Zinziver" (St. Petersburg), "Moscow", "Biyskiy Vestnik", "Faturum-Art" (Moscow), "Siberian Athens ”(Tomsk),“ Chasovenka ”(Krasnoyarsk),“ New Yenisei writer ”(Krasnoyarsk),“ Ruslo ”(Krasnoyarsk),“ Ice and Fire ”(Moscow),“ Paravoz ”(Moscow). In recent years, journalism has been published in the newspaper Literaturnaya Rossiya, and new stories have been published on the literary network resource Original

Publications in collective collections: "Poets of Myskov" (Kemerovo, 1993), "More expensive than silver and gold" (Kemerovo, 1994), "Pushkin Square" (Kemerovo, 1999), "New Element" (Moscow, 2002), "Trace from flight "(Kemerovo, 2004)," Poets of the University "(Kemerovo, 2005)," Holiday breathes with light ... "(Krasnoyarsk, 2005)," Medicine for the blues "(Krasnoyarsk, 2006)," The light of native birches "(Krasnoyarsk, 2006 ), "Anthology of one poem" (Krasnoyarsk, 2008), "Anthology of Siberian poetry of the XX century" (Kemerovo, 2008), "Anthology of one story" (Krasnoyarsk, 2009), "Message to the Universe" (Krasnoyarsk, 2009), "Candle over the Yenisei "(Krasnoyarsk, 2009)," Do not lose me. Please ... "(Murmansk, 2012)," Incredible land! " (Krasnoyarsk, 2013)

The following books were published under the editorship:

• Igor Potekhin. A little closer (in the cassette "Let it be served light"), 2004;
• Svetlana Ermolaeva. On the outskirts of the universe (in the cassette "Let it be served light"), 2004;
• Anatoly Kobzev. Right to Error (in the "Let it Be Filed" cassette), 2004;
• Margarita Radkevich. Draw me! (in the cassette "Let it be served light"), 2004;
• Alexander Vasilevsky. Sails and Anchors (in the cassette Let it be served light), 2004;
• "The holiday breathes with light ...: Jubilee literary anthology for the 75th anniversary of SibSTU", 2005;
• Pavel Zemlyansky. Debut. - Zheleznogorsk, 2006;
• Vladimir Kazantsev. The acquired tango (in the cassette "The King and the Retinue"), 2006;
• Daria Lysenko. Two Me (in the cassette "King and Retinue"), 2006;
• Ulyana Yavorskaya. Konopushki (in the cassette "King and Retinue"), 2006;
• Maxim Pushkarev. Bare Knee Shadow (in The King and Retinue cassette), 2006;
• Arthur Matveev. The illusion of trance (in the tape "The King and the Retinue"), 2006;
• Igor Potekhin. HOUR: not boring and spontaneous research. - Krasnoyarsk, 2006;
• Steltsova Ulyana Kuzminichna. My destiny: an autobiography. - Krasnoyarsk, 2006;
• Andrey Teslenko. Kohai: a tale of karate. - Krasnoyarsk, 2007;
• Lola Belovskaya. Amalia: the crossroads of secrets. - Krasnoyarsk, 2007
• Valentina Buneva. Music of the rain. - Krasnoyarsk, 2008;
• Daria Veryasova. Hypoglycemia (in the tape "The King of Revenge"), 2008;
• Anna Cherkashina. Dry residue (in the cassette "King of Revenge"), 2008;
• Rustam Karapetyan. Four Sides of Heaven (in The King of Revenge cassette), 2008;
• Igor Noskov. The Cycle (in the cassette "King of Revenge"), 2008;
• Svetlana Mel. That accidental gulp (in the tape "King of Revenge"), 2008;
• Tatiana Harmats. Free flight (in the cassette "King of Revenge"), 2008;
• Ivan Zhukovsky. Perpetual motion machine (in the cassette "King of Revenge"), 2008;
• Tina Koshkina. Wing generator. - Krasnoyarsk, 2008
• Lola Belovskaya. Amalia: in search of herself. - Krasnoyarsk, 2009
• Message to the Universe: a collection of small prose by Krasnoyarsk writers. - Krasnoyarsk: PIK "Offset", 2009;
• A candle over the Yenisei: poems of Krasnoyarsk poets. - Krasnoyarsk: PIK "Offset", 2009;
• Tina Koshkina. AntiglAmoor. - Krasnoyarsk, 2010;
• Nikolay Bronsky. The fate of the fighter: memoirs, documents, correspondence. - Krasnoyarsk: LLC IPC "KASS", 2010;
• Natalia Arbatskaya. Mockingbird (in the tape "The King of Poets: The New League"), 2010;
• Olga Gulyaeva. Woman's song (in the cassette "The King of Poets: New League"), 2010
• Alexander Komandin. A room without walls (in the tape "The King of Poets: A New League"), 2010;
• Mikhail Pashkin. No answer (in the tape "The King of Poets: The New League"), 2010;
• Stanislav Fenkov. Double solid (in the cassette "The King of Poets: The New League"), 2010
• Alexander Matveichev. Kazanov A. in the Celestial Empire, 2010 (supplement to the magazine "Day and Night" "DiN-novel". - Issue 1)
• Alexander Kakhomsky. Operation "Enormoz", 2011 (supplement to the magazine "Day and Night" "DiN-Roman". - Issue 2)
• Alexander Az. Strong as death, love, 2011 (supplement to the magazine "Day and Night" "DiN-romance". - Issue 3)
• Lyudmila Belousova. Dream of a butterfly, 2011 (supplement to the magazine "Day and Night" "DiN-Novel". - Issue 4)
• Yuri Dobrynin. The city of Balamut, or Faraday's Law, 2011 (supplement to the magazine "Day and Night" "DiN-novel". - Issue 5)
• Diana Arekhanova. Intellect Machiavelli, 2012 ("DiN-novel": edition of the PKK PSA). - Issue 2
• Evgeny Orlov. Take care to live, 2012 ("DiN-romance": publication of the KRP PSA). - Issue 3
• Evgenia Vilenskaya. Late Spring (in the tape "The King of Poets: Five to Five"), 2012
• Nina Novikova. Winds to meet (in the cassette "King of Poets: five to five"), 2012
• Vitaly Ovcharenko. God on the Roof (in the tape "The King of Poets: Five by Five"), 2012
• Sergey Tsvetkov, Ekaterina Malinovskaya. Red and black (in the cassette "The King of Poets: five to five"), 2012
• Olga Koshka. Subway (in the cassette "The King of Poets: Five by Five"), 2012
• Incredible land !: a literary map of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. - Krasnoyarsk: Class plus, 2013
• 33 Poets: Anniversary Anthology of the King of Poets Competition. - Krasnoyarsk: Sevensvet, 2014.

Mikhail STRELTSOV

A tall young man stood on the threshold. With obvious relief, he dropped a huge bag on the floor and introduced himself:
- Enjoy your stay. Excuse for troubling. I am a representative of a Siberian-American joint venture. Gas masks with a spare set of cylinders are in great demand this week. Would you like to purchase? The price of one piece is $ 250. Flexible ski system ...
- How many?! - Sergei Konstantinovich did not believe.
- What is there to be surprised? The salesman grinned impudently. - It is unlikely that you will find it cheaper. Oxygen supply for 4 hours. Cozy model. My advice: take the one without the hose. Very ergonomic.
- Thank. Do not.
- You have? Or maybe a leaky one? Checked? In this case, I would dare to suggest the latest model of "Bathyscaphe". Take a bath of water, dive and swim at your pleasure until it's over. Kit price ...
- Not worth it. I would not like to offend, young man, but I will not buy anything. And cash is tight.
- Then, maybe this, - the visitor clicked on his throat and opened his jacket.
In the inner pocket, Sergei Konstantinovich discovered a bulge. The object was eloquently testified by its neck, screwed with a yellow cork.
- Very relaxing. Relieves stress, - the seller of all sorts of things continued to talk.
“If I’m not mistaken, the deal you proposed is illegal,” said the owner gloomily. - Now I will call security ...
- Security? What the hell is security ?! - the representative obviously defiantly cackled. - Look here! Do not be afraid. Look out into the hallway. They all washed away in the morning.
- And the lafa hit you? - the question sounded in the affirmative. Sergei himself once started as a seller of electronic telephone directories and knew for certain that lovers of easy money were not allowed in hotels. Other times, different customs. The impudence of the traveling salesman, the offer to buy vodka was completely pissed off.
Sergey presented how he agrees to "relieve stress", despite the ban on alcoholic beverages, officially approved on May 12, 2021, politely invites the visitor to join him. He, of course, refuses, citing the amount of work and professional cleanliness. Then Sergey Konstantinovich invites him to the room in order to look at the goods. Then he pulls out a pistol and shoots him in the head. The representative falls into a chair and freezes, surprised by a rag doll. Sergei takes his bag, goes out into the street and distributes gas masks to the counter and cross. Just. Because he knows how to feel left out. Because he didn't get a gas mask yesterday, let alone the latest model of a diving suit. And he could not afford to buy in the market or somewhere else. Four pitiful ten-dollar bills were finally crumpled in his trouser pocket. A single currency, her mother's leg!
The funny thing is that he could afford to do just that, without fear of being punished. The trickster representative acted at his own peril and risk, the guards really didn’t have to shout, and in general the word “guard” itself resembled the click of a bursting soap bubble, ceasing to mean something.
One thing was sad. Sergei did not have a pistol. And he did not want to kill in another way - taking into account the fact that he had never killed before and had a vague idea of \u200b\u200bhow it was done without a pistol. He did not even allow the thought of a knife or a stranglehold, as he shuddered with disgust, imagining that he could touch this tall young man or the goods.
- Would you like to? - lips rustled, droplets of saliva jumped from them almost in the face. - Cocaine? Not? Perhaps - with an injection ...
- Go away! - Sergei Konstantinovich barked and slammed the door.
For half an hour, he nervously walked around the number, touching objects for no reason and rearranging them from place to place. Porcelain trinkets, sconces, consoles. He turned on and off the light eighteen times, the stereo television broadcast the usual set of news, only without an image. Instead, snowflakes of black and white origin danced on three screens. Sergei went into the bathroom, with nothing to do, he smeared his chin with foam and, waiting for the allotted two minutes, looked at himself in the mirror. He still found the time when shaving took longer and required electrical appliances. But then everything was different, he could endlessly observe his physiognomy in different mirrors. Now he hated the allotted two minutes to oxidize the bristles. Of course, one could not look, but the force of habit. It is impossible to take your eyes off your own face, which is changing. Wrinkles, receding hairline, bags under the eyes. He's getting old. A gray hair is about to be found. A little more, and arthritis and osteochondrosis will come into their own. He is already taking pills for hypertension. And blood is not accepted at transfusion stations.
37 years. Sergei thought about the time. His grandfather was born exactly one hundred years ago. He died before reaching the milestone of 50, never having seen his grandchildren. His father, a member of the famous For Reason movement, caught a kidney inflammation in his cell (but Sergei Konstantinovich suspected that it was not without police intervention) and died, not knowing that in two months a lot would change and the introduction of Prohibition would not be limited. He was then 24, his father - 45. How much more? With all the good, 10-15 years. You can't hide from fate. So little! Cheeks tingled, Sergei rinsed them with warm water and sprinkled with cologne. What has he accomplished? Even now it is wasting time. At first I was delighted, remember? I got a chance to work on my dissertation. That's right, to hell! I'll sit down and work.
He laid out the leaves on the table, wrote out the formula, identified it with the previous one, but the conclusion escaped, whirled senselessly over his head and exploded in the same bubble as the word "guard". Sergei stared with horror at the title page of the doctoral dissertation and realized that its title "The influence of supermodem recording of a signal on a three-dimensional holographic image on the example of an interregional information network" did not tell him anything. Moreover, it doesn't matter. Especially now that there is no gas mask.
He didn't like the city right away. The excited, suspicious people in the omnibus whispered:
- Have you heard? Floating!
- Float?
- What's the difference! Climbs on us! What is being done ?!
Then he was not accepted by the plant administrator. Business travelers are stuck indefinitely. He poked his head into the patent office, but there turned out to be a cleaning day, which still lasts. And everything was as usual. I thought I'd turn around in two or three days. Stuck for a week. My lifelong dream is to retire and finish my doctoral dissertation. So what?
Floating. Float.
How easy it is to perceive that which is not here! My father talked about Chernobyl. When it was? Where? Why? He brushed it off. The plane crashed again. So it is in India! With us, glory to the Creator, everything is quiet and peaceful. There is no life on Mars. Bradbury was wrong. And all the predictions of science fiction writers are nothing but fiction, a way of food. After it was precisely established that people are alone in the Universe, space research was curtailed. Not up to them. And urgent matters were found on Earth. Fourteen years of chaos and anarchy. Dictatorship. The evil Karl Victor, a former classmate, is in power. Like this. Someone lives in a palace with underground bunkers with an endless supply of oxygen, someone hires a turbo for their last money and gets stuck in a giant traffic jam on the outskirts of the city, in the dust, in the stuffy stuff, plops back into a miserable hotel room. And above all this - Floating.
Sergei plopped down on the bed, pressed his face into the foam pillow and tried to forget himself. Maybe you should have bought vodka? They say that it dulls the sense of touch, is able to drive into a long sleep. And in a dream ... you won't feel it. Rolling over onto his back, he unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. It was getting stuffy, the throat demanded a sound.
- Code 18. Three. Forty. Six. Fourteen.
The mechanical head of the remote brightened a column of numbers, including a videophone.
- Who is it? You can't be seen. Call back.
- Wait, Zhenya. Don't turn it off.
- Sergey? What's with your connection?
“Floating,” he hissed, trying to make out the face of his ex-wife behind the flickering ripples. - I'm at the epicenter.
“What was to be expected.” Evidently, Zhenya had just washed her hair, the auburn haircuts were overlapping with squiggles over the rattling image.
It was difficult for him to talk, especially with the "ex." Moreover, when her number of eyes and mouths varied from four to eight, and in the middle of her face there was a dark spot, saluting with green zigzags.
- I was sent on a business trip. And here it is. What do you have?
- They promise that they will touch the edge. It will be possible to breathe, anyway, that in the mountains. Just in case, Lyalke took the Batiskaf. He is still diving with delight. Why do you call?
- Can't you get worried?
- You normally? Got your gear? They said that they give you away for free.
- Only in production. And I am a business trip.
- So what?
- Nothing. Yesterday I stopped by again, stood in line for three hours. Not enough.
- What are you talking about? Obliged to issue! Demand!
- Zhenya, from whom? They all washed away a week ago. Listen, I'm sorry. But you alone can help me. I'll insert a credit card, translate 300. Then I'll give it back.
- Yes? Can't you wash the floors?
- I can die, - Sergey covered with sweat, his head started spinning treacherously. It was immediately clear - not worth it. You can't beg for snow from Zhenya in winter. But is she still angry? And he does the right thing.
When you are thirty-five, and life is like an old joke: “Doctor, everyone ignores me! - Yes? Next! ”, They remember about you only when they need to correct a mistake in the network made by some fat aunt who is simultaneously chatting on a videophone and chewing chips over the keyboard; when they forget to mention your surname in the patent for the latest development of the project, over which you do not sleep at night; when SIBiR constantly listens to conversations and calls for a subscription on a quarterly basis, correctly and persistently asking if he remembered any other letters and conversations from his father - he will involuntarily want to change something, break something, create a new one in the old place. Get a woman, call your boss an idiot, change your home, city, country, rob a bank or win a lot of money, drag around pubs, burning the rest of your life. Make sure that you are noticed, not forgotten, recognized. Because you, damn it, stared at the monitor and wrote programs when other peers squeezed girls in the back seat of your father's turbo, stole, bought, resold. Because at thirty you became a candidate of sciences, and at forty you are going to become a doctor of these sciences, which, as it turned out, are of no use to anyone.
It was only enough for the first. The mistress did not bring the long-awaited joy, the only thing was that she showed a different life. Art. He took up amateurism. The theater studio was led by a tall, sedate old man Fyodor Stukov, in the past, they said, a famous film actor. Togo, two-dimensional cinema, with filming in nature, with scenery, the elusive smell of a booth and improvisation. While rehearsing in his father's plays, Sergei involuntarily wondered why the essence of his work was reduced to non-resistance to violence? Where did he, an inveterate robber of the second decade, get such an idea?
- Do you hear? Hello?
- Yes, Zhenya. I thought about it.
- Alive? I can only have a hundred. Ask your artist for the rest.
- Are there credit cards in the next world?
- Even so? Long?
- Reported a couple of months ago. They called. When trying to escape.
- Oh, Seryoga. You have a talent for getting involved in history.
- I didn’t know that theater-goers are parallel resistance fighters.
- Now you know? And that it became easier for you? Okay. Another twenty. No more. Fair.
- And thanks for that, - Sergei inserted a credit card into the slot of the videophone, he grunted, clicking. The console reported how much, when and from whom. Then the shaded Zhenya disappeared, giving way to the inscription.
He read again that in connection with the state of emergency, after 72 minutes everyone was asked to put on gas masks, make sure the windows and doors were tight, plug up any cracks, and cover all openings with blankets. They asked me to remember about the oxygen concentration, not to make sudden movements, to stay calm. A similar recording appeared on the screen and was broadcast every ten to eight minutes, only the figure changed, decreasing. Modern technology can predict almost everything but one thing.
He doesn't have a gas mask. But he's going to buy it. To ask, to beg that disgusting merchant to give up in price, if he, of course, did not slip out of the hotel. Sergei looked out into the hall. Silence. As in a crypt. Even worse. It seemed to him that he was again walking along the long prison corridor, behind the heavy doors, screams, crying, curses. At the end of the corridor there is a narrow staircase going down. To the morgue. An attempt to escape. It's funny. How to escape from the underground catacombs inherited from the last millennium? She was tortured. And this is his fault. He had to warn her, them, Stukov, that he was being watched every minute. But didn't they know? Wasn't Biblio-program their goal? Hundreds, thousands, millions of computers now illustrated Bible stories twice a month. It was impossible to turn them off, to predict the pattern in order to send workers on an extra day off. And the minds were gradually captured, piece by piece recreating the New Testament, people learned more and more. He named the virus after his father - Constantine. He alone knew the decryption code. But she didn’t tell them about it. Otherwise ... there would not be this hotel, an ordinary business trip, where an ordinary software engineer suddenly stumbled upon his unusual invention, one might say, collided with it, tripped over it.
The computer at the desk of the attendant melancholy narrated the chapter of the Apocalypse in a staged baritone of Stukov. For some reason, the unpredictable chronometer decided to launch the "Constantine" today. The attendant, as one would expect, was absent. Sergei sat down at the table and read, listened, until a louder, dispassionate voice announced:
- Dear compatriots! There are 34 minutes left before the Third Ozone Hole passes over the city. Please put on gas masks after this time ...
But Sergei did not take his eyes off the monitor, where the pictures changed in succession: a mountain of skulls in the desert, the unnaturally broken creature of Dali, people behind bars feeding pigeons. All wrong. Stupid. It's primitive. While creating the program, he groped at random, now inspiration descended. You can improve, change, improve everything, launch a dozen new viruses, more powerful. The Bible is the beginning. Pictures, portraits, and poems can gnaw into computers every day. Resurrect Kant and Plato, Shakespeare and Pushkin, Van Gogh and Picasso is now tough. There is still much to be done, he can. They do not need to think out, start all over again, live on, without repeating themselves, without wasting time for this, which ...
The representative strode out of the twilight, dark patches of hair hanging over his face, giving him the look of a smug drowned man.
- Ho ho, compatriot! Do you admire a toy? Just take a look at the weirdo who invented it!
Sergei Konstantinovich got up from the table. No, it seemed. No one has followed him for at least the past three days. Their own skin is too dear to them: they either wore it out, or hid in air-conditioned basements. Just a trader of all sorts of things. A petty rogue, a young scoundrel.
- Listen, - he was disgusted with his own voice, humiliated intonations, but he could not do anything about it, - I have some money. One hundred and twenty on a credit card and now - forty crumpled dollars. Can't you concede in price?
- What? Your credit card is zilch! - the merchant grinned. - Do you even watch television? What was there where the Float came? Gnarled bodies, molten metal! Not a single ATM will work here tomorrow! So Mr. Forty Crumpled Dollars, suggest something else. By the way, there is very little left. On the market, they are already going by piece. Don't break the comedy, drive four hundred, and we'll disperse.
Sergei sank into a chair:
- I have nothing.
- It does not happen, - the representative said in all seriousness, leaning his palms on the table, looming, tall, oblong-unreal. - Who needs you here with your crumpled dollars? Such should die. And that's it! What have you been doing all your life?
“Two hours, but it's dark as ... in a morgue,” thought Sergei, involuntarily watching the street through the stained-glass windows. The floating one came into its own, turning a hot July day into a chilly October gray. He wanted to tell the rude person that he had been writing programs all his life, that at school even the Great Victor had quietly copied from him; that "Konstantin" developed, and if he, the lord of the bag with gas masks, wanted to see the programmer who is being hunted by all the CIBR, please watch! All I have, he wanted to say, is a code. Take it. Owl. I know how to come up with more and more if I'm alive. " But something did not start up, sealed his mouth.
Floating. Electoral Last Judgment. Third ozone hole. About the first, which appeared when my father was still trying to scribble awkward rhymes at the end of the last century, they knew very little. The second, which arose over Antarctica at the beginning of the twentieth year, melted the mighty ice, and the Arctic Ocean spread to the Ural ridges, swallowing up part of Europe and half of the once large Russian republic. The government, quickly reeling to Novosibirsk and suffering from an excess of genius, fired eighteen nuclear charges into the water, evaporating gallons, turning former capitals and fertile lands into steam and scorched desert.
What could he do about it? Howl with powerlessness? To dream of reason, like, to be honest, a so-so writer, but almost the only one who has saved his manuscripts, a balamut-daddy? And now, when the Floating One crawled out of the ruined expanses fourteen years later, what could he, a powerless, muddled engineer, do? And now, in front of the approaching greedy abyss, he was asked what he was doing - what to answer? Raised a daughter, wrote a Ph.D., attempted a conspiratorial rebellion? But he knew, he really always knew it. Is not it?
Sergei raised his heavy head, a haze of stuffiness enveloped the hotel in a cocoon, sweat soaked his armpits and slowly pinched his back:
- All my life I hated people like you. I lived in spite and created in spite of.
- And have you achieved a lot? - the representative laughed. - Understand, man, you mocked yourself, and I sold you assistants in this. And the only difference is that I have a gas mask, and you do not. And the fairy tale about the Float is garbage in vegetable oil. It's not him. This fucking planet is spinning. This means that we will return to it in a year. And I will always sell gas masks. And you - to die.
“I’ll kill you,” Sergei said.
- Try it. But, in your opinion, who will guarantee that tomorrow, in a year or two, someone will not kill you for the same gas mask? Try it. You won't be me anyway. And if you want to live, ask. Just get on your knees and do it. What? You’ve been doing this all your life. Ate what they would give. Why not continue now? And then maybe I'll lend you four hundred. Deal?
Sergei laughed, he laughed, breaking out in sweat. Because - Floating. Both the impudent huckster and his world meant nothing in front of her, bursting along with the guards and the title of the dissertation. I got up and went to my room.
- Hey, where are you going? Do you think that if you plugged all the cracks, and you will not make sudden movements, you will have enough oxygen for all three hours that we will be under it?
“Don't throw pearls in front of pigs,” replied Sergei Konstantinovich, imitating Stukov's voice, the carpet slipped underfoot, orange circles scattered before his eyes, his chest heaved high. But he saw the puzzled representative put on a mask with a hose, peeling with huge fishy eyes, plopped down at the desk of the attendant and put his feet on him.
“Suicide,” he shouted at the end. But the words had already ceased to mean anything.
It became dark in the hotel. According to all the laws of meanness, the blanket in the room was singular and its size did not exceed the window opening. From the gap formed there was an ice age. Sergei did not turn on the light, lit a match, but that went out, the second suffered the same fate. On the fifth attempt, I managed to light it. The smoke did not dissolve, but a halo enveloped his head. Sergei looked out the window, the rough blanket scratched his cheek. He just needs to see how everything will be. If everything were so simple, if there were once holy saints, and Jesus walked on water, why not now receive, at least for a while, a micron of God's grace, so that by an effort of will to stop it.
Floating is a giant gray wart. Contrary to idle speculations and illusions, it really stood still, and the planet rotating in space was rapidly pushing a city, a hotel, a person in a twilight room and a dim spark of a cigarette at it. Sergei continued to sweat, but the sight caused a dull, chilling shiver inside him. The octopus of a hole with black streaks of frost, enveloped in burnt oak clouds, breathed the devilish ruthlessness of the mighty ice drift, crushing the frozen ice for centuries.
The cigarette went out by itself, its untimely death, oddly enough, returned Sergei to reality. He still has to do something. Rushing to the table, hastily grabbed the pages of the dissertation, my heart sank. It was getting harder to breathe. Mars Bradbury. Don't make any sudden movements, he remembered, wiping the sweat off his face. Carefully cradling the manuscript, he put it in a briefcase, and an old "Kodakoid" caught my eye. Case carried him to the bathroom, stuffed it under it, rinsed his face, returned, squinting in puzzlement. The trinkets on the pier glass performed an uncomplicated dance of shivering. Feeling anxiously in his pockets, Sergei took out a credit card, returned the borrowed money over the videophone to Zhenya, along the way reading the inscription about the remaining nine minutes. In a reckless instinct, he pulled the blanket off the curtain, focused the lens and shot several frames. He is not the only one who should know how this happens.
The abyss was approaching an inevitable nightmare. An abscess on the body of the sky. Bulging gray calluses of the core, separated by gray hair, pressed a pink shadow into the ground, leaving dents behind it, as if some feline demon dragged its clawed paws across the planet. Sergei even knew his name. The sun. The anti-atmosphere refracted the sun's rays, revealing their true power and omnipotence. The trees did not burn, they simply bent and crumbled into charred sawdust. Before our eyes, shriveled greens swept a black pattern around the hem of the pitiless shadow. Matchboxes of cars rained down from the three-tier turbopark, humorously bouncing, overturning, breaking the turnstile, wrapping themselves in a nondescript oily ball of fire in flight, which was immediately extinguished in the deoxygenated space.
A buzzer sounded. On the monitor, after charging, the face was gradually positivizing. But Sergei was no longer able to take his eyes off the Floating One, she attracted, like everything majestic and ugly, eating the mind with her indifference and power. The face on the monitor tried to say something, but it didn't matter anymore. Even if the Great Victor suddenly remembered him, offering the post of vice-president and saving a life for a code.
- Deaf, man ?! - barked impatiently.
Sergei Konstantinovich glanced discontentedly at the sudden interlocutor. Shark is an elongated green mug with a glass sheen behind convex eyepieces.
- Run here, damn you! On! Put it on! Then we'll figure it out! - the monster was shaking with something jelly-like, and it dawned on Sergey. But he didn't move.
Don't they understand? Useless. Ostriches. How can you deal with by this? He lifted the camera mechanically and continued to shoot in smooth unreality. Snowflakes flickered behind the glass, and frost began to cover his newly shaved cheekbones. Sergei licked the icicles of his lips, looking up, the first lump of clouds clung to the roof, ugly scabs hung over him, breathing measuredly, shrinking and moving apart.
- To hell with you! - barked from the side.
And then it cracked, opened with a crash, pulling out a scream from the speaker.
- My eyes! Nafig! My damn eyes!
Startled, Sergei turned his numb neck. On the other side of the screen, a monstrous mess was rushing around the table. The palms, cut by fragments of stained glass, tried to find the middle of the face, from where dark red rivulets flowed from the cracks in the eyepieces. Immediately, jumping up, the videophone rolled to the floor. The dislocated face of a whirlwind clung to the window, grinning, he plopped down on the frame, and Sergei saw the glass covered with snakes of cracks. Exhaling:
- Oh my God! - he crushed the camera into his stomach, bent over, leaned to the floor, showered with fragments from above.
"Save pictures ... Save ...", - pounded in his temples, Sergei covered the "Kodakoid", feeling aching in his fingers and joints. Writhing, gnawing at nothing like a fish, he tore his face against the sharpened stars, cut his tongue and lips against them, swallowed a tingling crunch. Wheezing, he whispered to someone:
- I'm coming to you, Ophelia. To each his own plague ...
Porcelain elephants exploded into small fountains one after another on the pier. Over the spasming body, the air burst out through the broken window with a loud sequential:
- P-pl-s-ly-sh-chy-ok!

Mikhail Streltsov - poet, prose writer, author of the books of poems "Palm", "Cursed Autumn", "Failure" and the book of stories and stories "Balcony", a member of the Union of Russian Writers, lives in Krasnoyarsk.