IF YOU WANT to keep yourself from having destructive thoughts, you should lose yourself in hard physical labor. Just read the history of any totalitarian regime, and you can see that those governments recognized this simple truth. People under those regimes toiled hard, from morning to night, leaving them no time for any foolish ideas.
I was lucky enough to be able to deal with my mental issues that way. In my line of work, I had to focus on whatever I was carrying, without descending into contemplation. I worked on autopilot — my arms and legs knew exactly what they had to do.
There was no real lunch break. The damned van that was scheduled to come in the evening arrived at 2 p.m. To unload it, we made a human chain, with Marat as the anchor. He adeptly punctured a few 1.5-liter bottles with a rusty nail, flipped them so the beer wouldn’t spill out, and set them off to the side. There you go, faulty goods!
By 6:30 p.m., we’d not only managed to finish our work, but had polished off most of the expropriated beer. I declined. My head was so muddled that drinking would be a terrible idea. In any case, beer had little to do with this grotesque beverage in plastic bottles. I preferred to hold off until the evening when I could drink a normal beer — a draft or at least something from a glass bottle.
Bones was a good guy who always kept his word. At 6:45 p.m. I shook Marat’s hand and we went our separate ways. He lived nearby, which was probably the main reason he wanted this job. I headed to the bus stop.
A snowy sleet fell on my face. It was dark on the way from the warehouse to the street, but that was typical. I walked slowly so I wouldn’t lose my footing. As I shuffled along, I tried to grasp at the thoughts swirling through my head like they were Chinese meditation balls I was trying to manipulate.
The main development branch was Time Master. Now I knew what that involved: rewinding time. That was what the gold bar showed. Apparently, I could rewind three times in a row, going back three or four seconds. I’d need to keep experimenting. The only question was how to do it.
I looked in front of me and gave myself a mental command to move through time. Predictably, nothing happened. The other time, it had been fear that had moved me. I’d had a scare and then I was propelled through time.
I shook my head. This was crazy. The whole incident in the foundation pit, and now the time travel. I touched my forehead. No fever. But this was definitely out of order.
I emerged into a small, illuminated open space under a streetlight. Now I was within spitting distance of the bus stop. I stepped onto the path dusted with prickly snow and immediately slipped. It happened so suddenly that I didn’t even have time to pull my hands out of my pockets. My vertebrae cracked...
[ ∞ ]
I emerged into a small, illuminated open space under a streetlight. Now I was within spitting distance of the bus stop.
Stop!
I carefully skirted the snow-dusted icy patch.
The adrenaline was still racing through my veins. I had just time-traveled — again!
I mechanically took a few steps and looked at my watch.
[ ∞ ]
I looked at my watch again. This time, the rewind ability went back exactly three seconds. The gold bar was only one-third full. But the most important question was, how was I able to do it? This time I had just willed it to happen. So why couldn’t I do it before?
I reached the bus shelter and sat down on the bench. My heart was beating wildly; my skin was covered with goosebumps. They weren’t from the cold, but from what I had just experienced.
I could now achieve whatever I wanted. What if, for example, I learned some boxing, landed a good hook, and became world champion? Why not? Suppose I knew where to punch my opponent, and I had three chances to duck and knock him out.
But what if he stood his ground? Hm, a punch fest didn’t sound like a good option.
What if I were a soccer player? Yeah, that would be cool. On the field, Sergei Demidov who can dodge any world-class defender with a single movement because he knows where the other guy is headed. But once again, I’d only be able to do that three times. And then what? Substitution, the bench, class demotion. My fantasies of having Cristiano Ronaldo’s career ended with me in the second amateur league.
I could become a firefighter and save lives. But three seconds and three chances weren’t that much. If only there were some way to extend the rewind or get more of this goodie!
Hold on… If I was indeed a Player, that made it perfectly feasible. There had to be some levels and experience you could collect. All I needed to do was find out how to do it.
I hailed the approaching bus, got on, and went to sit at the back. I caught myself thinking that the little text boxes over my fellow passengers’ heads already seemed completely normal. That made sense — you always get used to good things quickly. I perused the passengers’ descriptions. There was nothing interesting, except the guy by the front door turned out to be a Lothario.
I gazed out the window at the somber landscape of the dark winter evening. I knew every angle of every building, every bump on the road, and every turn by heart. I didn’t even need to look through the mud-spattered glass. When you spend a few years traveling the same route to work, it’s impossible not to memorize it. But today it was like everything around me had been transformed.
I didn’t recognize the buildings lining the avenues. The stalls in one of the little markets looked old and shabby, and in some places signs had been changed. At the same time, the city was still recognizable by certain scattered fragments - like the stained-glass jigsaw puzzle I had to put together. That said, it appeared completely new to me.
I felt like I’d stepped through Alice’s looking glass. Or like this was in fact two worlds merged together: one old and familiar, the other one new and open to discovery. For example, why would someone hang a sign in an incomprehensible language in the middle of the main street? I could swear it hadn’t been there yesterday. And why were planes flying so low over the city? Or were they even planes?
I took out my headphones and put on some Rolling Stones, my all-time favs who’d wrongly been shoved aside by the fab four from Liverpool. Ironically, the shuffle mode landed on Paint It Black. It perfectly matched the reality unfolding outside the window.
On the other hand, things weren’t quite so bleak. True, there was some sort of crap at work here. I didn’t understand it and that frightened me. But as everyone knows, when one door closes another one opens. All I needed to do was force myself to see it.
I was about four minutes away from my street when I noticed him. He was an ordinary man, just one of many. But the text box above his head was brighter. I could spot it from thirty yards away. He looked around as though he sensed that he was being watched, and ducked into the closest bar.
“Hey! Please stop! I missed my stop! Please!”
The bus, which had just begun to pull away, braked sharply. Under the disapproving stares of the other passengers, I leaped out and pulled on my hood. I all but ran to the traffic light and waited for it to turn. If only my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me...
“Excuse me, where’s the stop to Friendship Street?” an ancient voice said behind me.
I looked to see who it belonged to. Just some old lady, wearing a threadbare fur jacket, felt boots and knitted mittens, and wrapped up in two shawls. And of course she had a trolley bag. These ladies can never find a handbag big enough.
“You need to go that way, ma’am. Friendship Street is over there,” I pointed.
“But where’s the bus stop?” she looked around.
“On the other side. Right in front of the traffic light. I’ll take you there, if you wish.”
“Oh, good boy, yes, please do.”
She grabbed her cart and graciously offered me her arm.
Just then the light changed. As I shuffled across the street with the little old lady in tow among a swarm of passing pedestrians, I kept my eyes on the bar’s door through which the man had entered. It looked like no one had come out. Excellent.
We reached the other side just in time when the “don’t walk” signal had already started to blink warningly.
“Thank you, young man, thank you.”
You’ve helped a commoner who is neutral to you.
+10 karma points. Current level: -90. You gravitate to the Dark Side.
I looked at the semitransparent notification that was scrolling fast in front of my eyes.
Eureka. So if I helped nine more old ladies cross the street, would I make it to zero?
“Ma’am, do you need to cross back to the other side?”
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
“Why would I need to do that?”
“Uh... so I can help you. To increase my karma.”
“Look at him, he’s completely off his face,” she snapped, promptly turning into an indignant fury. “They get high on their drugs and then they hassle you. Get away from me right now!”
So much for her gratitude. I shrugged off my ten karma points and headed toward the bar.
What is it they say? Good deeds will never make you famous? Well, up yours! I just needed to think a little about what to do. Anyway, why was I trying so hard to get above zero? First I needed to find out what this “karma” thing was supposed to do.
I ended up in front of a locked steel door sporting a sign that read:
Tavern
That was all. Nothing indicating the business hours nor a colorful menu displaying Russian delicacies. They could have at least painted some appetizing pictures of borscht, meat dumplings, or aspic on the shop window. Otherwise, how would visitors know they could get a good meal here?
What an odd place. Hesitantly I pulled the door toward me.
I stepped into a small lobby. A glazed wooden partition separated it from the main room. Tavern was the last thing you’d call this place. “Restaurant” would be more accurate. And if you wanted to be even more accurate, it actually appeared to be an exclusive club.
The room was decked out in English-style arched leather armchairs, couches, small tables, and a bar in the middle with a television above it. But most important, all the patrons had the same illuminated text boxes over their heads.
Except the information that was displayed kind of put me on my guard. Vivisectionist, Sorcerer, Wrathful, Mercenary, Guard, Swordsman, Artist_Chick, Runner, Armor-Clad Warrior, Coward, Archalus, Turncoat.
My eyes paused on the Archalus because this creature looked exactly like the classic image of an angel: light, flowing clothing, long hair, two wings folded over each other. The other beings too would stand out in the crowd because not all of them were human, either.
“So you’ve decided to drop in on us, Korl?” a tall burly man asked, appearing out of nowhere on my left.
I jumped. The notification above his head said:
Teleporter
I nodded. “So I have.”
“You know the rules.”
It wasn’t a question, but he was obviously expecting an answer. I’d need to improvise.
“Don’t break the dishes and don’t get into fights?” I offered.
“Something like that,” he said with a smile. “Come on in.”
The Teleporter dissipated as if the wind had blown him away, only to reappear behind a table on the other side of the partition.
Now I had no choice. If I left now, I’d look like an idiot. You never know, they might even catch up with me and teach me a lesson in manners.
I could rewind time, I suppose. Except that here, three seconds clearly wouldn’t get me out of trouble.
To be honest, I’d never been afraid of being onstage, even though I’d never had the chance to perform before. But now, with some twenty-five pairs of eyes staring at me, I felt my palms and neck break out in a sweat. Thankfully, most of the eyes looking at me belonged to humans.
I noticed a stocky blond guy sitting at a far table. He had the same fair complexion as myself — or rather, as the stranger who had recently settled into my mirror. He nodded, obliging me to respond.
I stole over to an empty table by the entrance and sat down. The others soon stopped eyeing me openly; a few of them resumed their chatter. A Sorcerer bartender — if the information provided by my Insight was to be believed — scurried over to me.
“Greetings, Korl. Dust or cash?”
He handed me an open menu. I looked at it. Opposite each dish there was either a number 1 or a 3, and an unusual image of what looked like a small mound of sand.
“Cash,” I answered.
The bartender waved the menu in the air. The indecipherable currency disappeared, replaced by familiar price lists. Now I could find my way around it. The prices suggested that this was a second-rate restaurant; I could actually bring a date here without going bankrupt.
“Can I have a couple of minutes? This is my first time here.”
“Of course,” he said with a nod and went back behind the bar.
Everything here was weird. Weren’t there any waiters? Actually, judging by the half-empty tables, people didn’t really eat here. It looked to be more of a drinking establishment. Anyway, it was irrelevant. I had more important things to contemplate.
Now I had a chance to take a closer look at the representatives of all the different races or species — whatever they were supposed to be. The guy nearest to me appeared to be human with pitch-black skin and yellow eyes. He had bizarre growths jutting out of his head which looked like a few meager strands of hair that were gathered together and covered with hairspray. They must have been some sort of outgrowth, like small, flexible horns. According to my Insight, this guy was very Wrathful.
The Archalus was sitting nearby. He was sipping a beer, shooting the breeze with an ordinary person — as much as the beings sitting here could be called ordinary. A bit farther away, a peculiar creature sat perfectly motionless: it had a human head and torso, but its limbs were clearly made of a dull metal I couldn’t identify. Armor-Clad Warrior.
There was only one girl here: tall and slim, with large, expressive eyes and short chestnut hair. She was cute, if you ask me. She gave me a quick glance and then stuck her nose back in the sketchbook, scribbling with a pencil. Artist_Chick.
All right, now I needed to act like everything around me was business as usual. I leafed through the menu. This place was anything but a humble tavern. If they had even half the dishes on the menu, they could safely claim a Michelin star.
Still, I wasn’t about to experiment. I lifted my hand, beckoning the bartender. “I’d like the mutton dumplings and a pint of the Czech beer.”
“One moment.”
The bartender took the menu and went back behind the bar, and that’s when I saw real magic. He made a mysterious flourish with his hands. A clump of light that looked like a crumpled piece of paper flitted from his fingers. It rocketed up, circled for a moment, then flew toward the kitchen.
The Sorcerer caught my surprised look and winked. All right.
This was obviously not a demonstration of telekinesis with contactless combat. This was what you read about in books. Yet the bartender had done all of this with such a bored and indifferent expression as if it was nothing out of the ordinary. Or maybe it was, for him at least.
I scratched the back of my neck and turned my eyes to the TV screen above the bar.
The news was on. But there was something different about it, too. National reports were interspersed with petty little stories from small-town studios I’d never even heard about. From what I could tell, no one had deliberately changed the channel.
...
Zoologists are sounding the alarm in Voronezh Province. The number of wolves has reached a critical level. The frequency of wolf attacks on people has surged. For retiree Ludmila Sokolova, an encounter with a wolf was nearly her last.
“It was so terrifying! I was heading home, I was almost there, and someone was puttering around next to the doghouse…”
...
The search for a missing eight-year-old girl has been going on for a day. Vicky Novoseltseva left for school yesterday morning. But she didn’t make it....
Oh, boy, that was our city. I recognized the presenter. That was definitely our city. I craned my neck to try to see the details, but my view was blocked by the stocky blond guy who had nodded at me earlier.
“Haisa, brother,” he said, offering me his hand.
“Haisa,” I said, guessing that this was some kind of greeting.
“Have you been here long?”
“In town?”
He chuckled. “In this world.”
“Yes... a long time.”
“I’ve only been here a month,” he said. “And I don’t like it. It’s too hot here, even now. It’s snowing out, but there’s no point.”
Once again he looked at me steadily, evidently considering something, and then he spoke,
“My name’s Traug. I’m here for at least three months. I got into trouble in Elysium so I decided to sit it out here. If you need any help, come find me. The second house to the right from the city Gatekeeper. Korls always stick together, even the half-bloods,” he added after a short but meaningful pause.
He shook my hand again and left.
I set about trying to untangle all this information. He said that he hadn’t been in this world long. And he came from someplace called Elysium. That was the first thing. And he and I were both Korls. That’s what the guard at the door and the bartender had called me, too. Since he and I looked quite a bit alike, I figured it was some race.
But it was nonsense. Why Korls? I was a human. My parents were human, and so were my grandparents. Having said that... I couldn’t vouch for anything now. As recently as yesterday, I would have never thought of investigating this sort of thing.
OK, I’d figure this out later.
Thirdly, he mentioned some Gatekeeper. Did he mean the one for the local soccer club? In which case his would be the second house from the stadium, right? Only there were no houses next to it. No, by saying “city Gatekeeper” he must have meant something else.
My thoughts faded so fast that I promptly forgot what I’d been thinking about, distracted by a fragrant plate of dumplings and a sweating glass of beer that had appeared out of nowhere in front of me.
No, there was no magic involved. I was just so lost in thought that I hadn’t noticed the waitress. She was around fourteen, and she wore her hair in a bun. Most important, she was an ordinary person. She had a dull label over her head which informed me that in addition to whatever else she was supposed to be, she was also a Musician.
“Enjoy.”
“Thank you.”
Like any other Russian, I had a lot of preconceived notions about mutton dumplings. Slaughtering and cooking lamb is an art in itself, and I didn’t have the knack for it. Most of us only ever taste this meat when it’s cooked poorly and has a sharp, repugnant odor — and then they say that we’re unable to appreciate it.
But these dumplings... they were so good that after the first one I was afraid that I’d just choke on gastric acid. Juicy and sprinkled with chopped spring onions, they simply melted in my mouth. I only paused my eating to swill it down with some beer — and then I nearly lost my mind again.
You should never, ever drink quality draft beer. Because after that it’s impossible to swallow that foamy, rubbery beverage that passes for beer in this country. I had the impression that on the other side of the door stood Pilsen, the good old Czech city where authentic Czech brewers were making their fabled beer. There’s no way ordinary brew could be as delectable as this.
I sat back from my empty plate feeling happy and sated. I finished the beer and took out my wallet. It turned out not to be so cheap — $6 for a portion of dumplings and $3.50 for the pint of their Czech ambrosia. What the hell, it was worth it. I didn’t know if it was customary to leave a tip here, but I added one anyway and started for the door.
Still, the moment I’d polished off my dinner, I realized that I felt uncomfortable here. A bit like a farmer in ripped overalls who suddenly ends up at the White House. Every passing minute increased the risk of me being found out. So I did the only thing I could. I left money on the table and quietly exited. Fortunately, everyone, including the bartender, was fixated on the next gruesome story on TV.
I got outside and took a deep breath. The air was warm and pleasant, and even the snow falling on my face felt familiar. And it wasn’t hot outside at all — this Traug guy had been talking a lot of BS.
I strode over to the intersection and searched for an old lady to help cross, but had no luck. I crossed the street empty-handed and went to the bus stop. By some sort of miracle, my bus showed up almost immediately. I plopped down in an empty seat, ignoring the messages above people’s heads. I’d gotten sick and tired of it all in the last two days.
I must have dozed off because I very nearly missed my stop. I jumped out at the traffic light as the migrant driver swore at me in his own language. It was almost 9 p.m. already. All because of that foolish trip to the bar.
And what had I learned? Apparently, there were these creatures called Players. I wasn’t the only pretty face around. If I were to believe Traug, there was also this other world called Elysium. And maybe there were also others like it. The existence of all those different races suggested that that there might also be lots of worlds. The Players had their own currency which they called dust. I doubted that it was the same dust that collected on my shelves. What else?
I was lost in thought when I got to the door of my building. There was no one sitting on the benches. That wasn’t surprising — a snowstorm was brewing, gusts of wind blowing handfuls of prickly snow in my face.
I opened the security door and nearly knocked heads with the upstairs neighbors, a married couple.
“Hello,” I said mechanically.
“Hello, Sergei,” the woman said. “Nicky, why are you stopping? Let’s go.”
But both I and the fifty-year-old Uncle Nick had stopped dead in our tracks.
Because I was staring at yet another Player.