by Dmitry Bilik
I touched his head, and my fingers came away bloody.
Fantastic. I’d just smashed his head.
“Is he alive?” Boris asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” I answered, starting to believe my own words less and less.
I straightened up, trying to get hold of myself. All right then, another one bites the dust. Now you’ve become a murderer, Sergei. Damn, how did that happen? Now what? Who was I supposed to call first? The police or an ambulance?
First of all, I still had to take Boris home.
“Let’s go,” I said. “Your mom’s beside herself.”
In a stupor I picked up the remains of the food I’d bought. To my surprise, not a single bottle of beer had broken. I tied up the bag — its handle had been torn off — and started to plod along. Boris trudged behind me, wheezing and scattering clumps of earth underneath him.
“Uncle Sergei!”
“What now?”
“Um, he’s gone.”
I turned around. Boris was right — there was no sign of the body. Either this mysterious telekinetic had passed himself off as a zombie and buried himself in the ground, or he’d turned on escape velocity and sped off.
Well, no body, no problem. Except that what happened next really frightened me.
You’ve killed a Player who was neutral to you.
-100 karma points. You gravitate to the Dark Side.
The main development branch has been determined: Time Master
You’ve gained a Divine Avatar: Savior.
You’ve gained the Insight ability.
You’ve gained the Light spell.
I looked at the message scrolling in front of my eyes. It’s all right, I said to myself. You’re just in shock. You’re not going crazy. Just go home and have a beer. If it doesn’t pass, you can go to the hospital tomorrow.
Boris tugged at my arm. “Uncle Sergei, you all right?”
“I’m OK. I just got a little dizzy. I hit my head when I fell. Let’s go... Hey, watch out! You shouldn’t be running across the road like that! Look both ways — left, then right.”
I suddenly realized that I was acting exactly like my father. When they’re young, all children probably think, “I’ll be different when I grow up.” But then it turns out that either deliberately or not, we all subconsciously copy our parents.
“Boris, how on earth did you end up in the foundation pit with that, er, stranger?”
“He said he was a wizard. A real one. He said he knew everything about me: where I lived, Mom and Dad’s names, everything.”
“What do you mean, everything?”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“Mum’s the word,” I promised.
“Last spring we went rafting. We made the rafts ourselves: you know, foam plastic ones. And I crashed into the water. I got soaked. We lit a bonfire and stayed until all my clothes dried. Mom didn’t even find out. That’s it.”
“What do you mean, ‘that’s it’?”
“No one besides the kids knew about it. Get it?”
“Ah, Boris. Has it occurred to you that maybe he just saw you guys? Or the other kids spread the word? Think about it. Figuring out where you live and your parents’ names doesn’t take a whole lot of intelligence, either. And that’s why you went to the foundation pit with a strange man at night? Isn’t that a stupid thing to do?”
“It was stupid,” Boris admitted. “I got scared after. It’s just that his... face was familiar. And he’s a wizard. He did all sorts of tricks. Like spells, you know?”
“Did he... do anything to you?”
“No. He said we had to wait for something. So we stood there and waited. Then you came.”
“What if I hadn’t come? Don’t ever go anywhere near strangers, especially when you’re alone. And if you see him again, run home and call the poli- no, on second thoughts, call me. Is that clear?”
Boris nodded.
I patted him on the shoulder. There was a lot in this story that I didn’t understand. What did this Satanist weirdo want to achieve? From what I understood, he hadn’t laid a finger on Boris. And yet... Boris let slip that they were waiting for something. Maybe a full moon on Saturn? You couldn’t be too sure with lunatics. Plenty of them around.
But what about “he did all sorts of tricks, like spells”? Did telekinesis count? On the other hand, what made me think that that’s what it was? There are all sorts of schools of non-contact fighting. Maybe this misfit had practiced one of them. He must have distracted me somehow and I’d just flown a few steps without realizing what had hit me.
Of course this sounded crazy. But my brain was desperately trying to find a logical explanation for what had happened. It wasn’t really succeeding.
“Boris, let’s not say anything to your mom right now about this guy. OK?”
“Of course we won’t,” Boris agreed easily. “I might get into huge trouble. I’m already in trouble as it is.”
He suddenly looked sad. We made the rest of the trip across the courtyard in silence. The dimly lit streetlights illuminated the ice-covered asphalt. Harried people loaded with shopping bags were heading home from work. A prickly snow was dropping from the sky. Neither Mr. Petrov nor his symposium buddy were sitting on the bench. They had probably already drunk their fill and drifted away to their separate lairs. All the better — that meant there’d be fewer witnesses. Ugh, I was thinking like a criminal.
I tapped my key fob on the entry system and let Boris walk in before me. The door on the third floor was already open for us. Apparently, someone had been waiting and heard steps in the entrance.
“Boris? Where were you?”
Lydia was ready to give Zeus the Thunderbearer God a run for his money. From personal experience I knew that when your parents use this kind of voice, it’s unlikely that it’s out of respect for you. Instead, you can expect fury to be unleashed. Seeing Boris hunch his head in his shoulders, I felt that my theory was confirmed.
“Thank you so much, Sergei. Where did you find him, in the foundation pit?”
“Yes, he was messing around with the kids,” I replied, fixing Boris with a stare. He blinked slowly — he understood.
“How many times have I told you not to go there? Your father will set you straight!”
The threat didn’t work on either of us. Everyone knew that Lydia’s husband was totally henpecked and that he adored his wife. Boris obviously resembled his mother in nature. His dad might admonish his son, but he wouldn’t force him to kneel on dried peas as they’d done to kids in Victorian times, let alone larrup him with a steel-buckled Red Army belt.
“What’s with your bag?” Lydia looked suspiciously at the plastic bundle in my hands.
“I slipped and fell. All right then, goodnight.”
“Good night. Thanks again.”
I opened the door, crept into my own lair and turned on the light. Was this night really ending after all? It felt like enough had happened to fill the next week.
I finally realized that I was sitting on the doormat, still fully clothed. No, I needed to get up, cook something to appease my growling stomach, and gather my thoughts.
I tossed the beer into the fridge and threw the dirty shopping bag into the sink with the sausages still in it. I just needed to rinse them off, and then they’d be fine to cook.
As for the macaroni, it was much worse for wear. Most of it had remained strewn on the bottom of the foundation pit. I looked in the cupboards and found half a pack of rice. That would do.
I hastily put a pot of water on the burner. Now I had to see what I looked like. Despite my fall, my pants were practically clean. My hands, however...
That was the strangest thing. My right palm was covered in dirt even though I remembered clearly the wetness of blood as I’d touched the man’s open wound. You don’t forget crap like that in a hurry. Talking about which, the bag also should still have had drops of blood on it. But I didn’t see anything of the sort.
The evidence of my
fall was there — but there was no blood from the dead man left anywhere on me.
What was it that those bizarre messages had said? Apparently, I’d killed some Player. Bullshit. Had I killed him, he wouldn’t have disappeared. Rather, he would have lain there nice and quiet like Lenin in his tomb, waiting for the police to arrive. No, if anything, I must have hit my head a little as I fell, resulting in minor hallucinations. I should actually take a closer look at my own stupid head to see if it was injured.
I went into the bathroom, turned on the faucet and started to wash my numb frozen hands. The water stabbed my fingers. But it was no big deal; the most frightening events were behind me now. I just needed to calm down a little and gather my wits.
I smoothed my hair with my wet hands, straightened up and walked over to the tiny mirror above the washing machine.
I nearly screamed. A completely different person was looking back at me.
Chapter 2
AS BULGAKOV ALLEGEDLY wrote, “Fear your wishes, for they have a habit of coming true.” I’d add that when they do come true, it’s in a twisted way that you could never have fathomed out.
Like anyone with average looks, I’d always wanted to appear a little cuter than I actually was. Nature and my parents hadn’t done an excellent job fulfilling their duties. Unlike my gorgeous sisters, I didn’t have wild success with the opposite sex. You might call me average: narrow chin, long, straight nose, sharp cheekbones. A typical Hollywood-style villain nerd.
But the guy looking out at me from the mirror actually was quite cute. The jaw was more prominent. Against the backdrop of the jaw, the sculpted cheekbones looked completely natural. The ears were small, unlike the radio detectors I’d grown used to. The eyebrows were blond — actually, silvery — and the skin and hair were noticeably lighter. The only thing that hadn’t changed was my brown eyes. That was the only way I knew that the reflection in the mirror was mine.
But there could be no mistake. The light-haired, sturdy guy in the mirror was me. I frowned, scratched my forehead, and adjusted my slightly wet hair. It looked like I was the one who needed first aid, not the stranger in the foundation pit. Calm, I had to stay calm.
I went back to the kitchen as if I’d been hit by a ten-ton truck. The water had begun to boil long ago, but instead of the rice I just threw in the sausages and opened a beer. What a business. No, not quite. What a business. And I couldn’t really tell anyone about what had happened. I’d be shipped off to the loony bin immediately. To be honest, at this point even I wasn’t completely sure that I hadn’t gone crazy.
What if the things that happened in all those fantasy books were coming true? Had the apocalypse come, were most people turning into zombies and just a few into Players?
I turned on my small kitchen TV and flipped through the channels. Vremya, Vesti, Novosti, Comedy Club,[3] a soccer match — nothing out of the ordinary.
I even looked out the window, just to be sure. Occasional passersby, wrapped in thin jackets that were still too light for winter (it was all the fault of the late cold spell) were bustling home. No one was chasing or devouring anyone. Maybe I’d been hurled into some sort of parallel universe?
I gave my apartment a check. No, it didn’t gel with my theory. The same crumbling Soviet-era furniture: the folding couch, Grandma’s old table with my laptop on it, the Czech wall unit[4] — the last vestiges of a country that no longer existed. The chipped wooden windows, the wallpaper that had been put up when my grandfather was still alive, the curtains... They obviously didn’t match the interior and who knows when they’d last been washed? Other than the computer and TVs — one in the tiny kitchen and the other in the bedroom-living room-only room — nothing had changed since my grandmother was around. I mean, I’m a self-confessed slob and my bachelor’s lifestyle does nothing to counter that.
I went back to the kitchen to mull things over, especially because I’d already finished the first bottle of beer and the sausages were cooked. I poured some mayonnaise and ketchup onto a plate and created an absentminded meal to the accompaniment of a sports commentator lamenting about how a soccer striker had missed an empty goal from 10 yards away.
My head was heavy. I couldn’t get myself to form even a few intelligent thoughts, all the more so because my body’s efforts were focused on digesting the food. In fact, the beer was acting like a sedative. My eyes were sticking together and my nose was trying to get acquainted with the table. Sleep. I needed some sleep. There must be a reason why people say you should sleep on it.
THE ALARM ON MY PHONE had been screaming for nearly a minute before I turned it off. I pattered to the bathroom in the darkness. The things you dream!
I turned on the light and nearly yelped. That sturdy blond guy was still there. He gazed out of the mirror looking a little frightened, but he obviously hadn’t gone anywhere.
So I guess it wasn’t a dream. I put toothpaste on my toothbrush, sat down on the edge of the tub and started to think about how I’d continue to live.
When I’d nearly finished brushing the right side, I froze in disbelief. How had I never noticed these progress bars before? They hovered in my line of vision in pairs, two on top and two on the bottom, scaring me in the way that I imagined a 16-year-old girl felt when taking a pregnancy test. The two on the top were sort of gold and green, while the ones on the bottom were red and blue.
OK, let’s think about this. It all had started yesterday when I’d punched that stranger. Someone in my head had called him a Player. As in, Ready Player One?
Maybe I’d somehow taken his place? In that case, everything would be simple. The red bar was health, the blue one was mana, the green one was vigor, but what about the gold one? Who the hell knew? The level of my sex appeal? Considering my new appearance, it was entirely plausible.
I finished brushing my teeth and climbed into the shower. The water was barely warm; the water main in our district had probably burst again, but I was used to it. Ever since I was a kid, I’d never been afraid of the cold.
After I’d dried off, I got dressed and sat down in the kitchen to contemplate. By all accounts, I needed to go to the hospital. To have a brain scan or whatever. Maybe it would simply turn out that there was a tumor in my head, and that tumor was trying to put me at odds with reality. On the other hand, if I skipped work right now, Bones definitely wouldn’t be happy. My boss was thin and sinewy, and on top of that he was also grim — obviously you didn’t need to look far to think of a nickname for him.
I thought for a bit, then dialed his number.
“Hello,” said a disgruntled voice.
“Eh, sir-”
“Sergei, I don’t want to hear it. Fyodor and Alexei are kicking back again. No matter what’s happened, I’m not giving you the day off. The van of beer is coming today. And who’s gonna supply the stores?”
“But-”
“But what, do you have a fever? Did you break your arm? No? Then you have no excuse. Do you expect me to run around the warehouse myself?”
With that he hung up.
As the saying goes, it wasn’t in the cards. I guess I’d need to go out. The news that Fyodor and Alexei had gone on a bender was unwelcome, of course. Everyone would need to run around more. On the other hand, the work was such that it attracted a certain crowd. People with college degrees don’t typically become warehouse loaders. I mean, normal people.
In my case, it was a conscious choice. I’d spent five years getting an economics degree just to go and work with my hands. You should have seen my father’s face. In fact, that was the first and biggest reason I’d done it. They’d already bought me a military card[5] and got a cushy job lined up for me in a fancy company — the job which, according to them, had “a lot of potential”. And I just left and got myself a menial job with a bunch of like-minded losers. That was the second reason.
Of course, it was hard to brag to my friends that I had gotten a job as a loader all on my own without connections, but I really didn’t care. Whe
n you talk about a grown-up, independent life, the emphasis is on the word “independent.” Thirdly, it turned out that the job paid reasonably well for our rather large provincial city. I could afford to eat, drink, buy some clothing, and take my latest crush to the movies.
And to be honest, I didn’t have any particular friends. I had a couple of acquaintances from university I could meet once every couple of months to grab a beer and hear about their sexual conquests or failures or commiserate about their workloads. They tactfully avoided bringing up my work.
It’s clear that loader isn’t a career you dream about when you’re a kid. No one ever says, “If you do well in school, you’ll be stacking pallets of beer for a living.” I understood very well myself that with time I’d need to grow in some direction. But for the time being the question didn’t concern me much. What did concern me right now was the fact that I needed to run like hell to get to work on time.
