Time Jumps. The Paradigm of Immortality
Vladimir Baranchikov
Physical reality is much more extensive than just a clot of space-time, which we call the universe. Perhaps our world is just one of many.
© Vladimir Baranchikov, 2023
ISBN 978-5-0060-6244-3
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
Prologue
Im Yellowstone, supervolcano. I spread myself comfortably on a vast plateau surrounded by ridges of the Rocky Mountains in northwestern Wyoming. My gigantic size strikes the boldest of imaginations: a 2800-meter above sea level, a crater destroyed by an eruption, forms a huge, fifty-seventy-kilometer, picturesque valley. The main decoration, my sparkling pearl, is Yellowstone Lake, a hundred meters deep, lying at the foot of my peak. I am a national pride named Yellow Stone, named after the yellow cliffs that border the source of the mountainous Yellowstone River. Did some pebble bestow the nickname of a giant? However, I do not murmur, because during the human habitation in my possessions, I also had other names in other languages. But for a volcano with a life story of sixteen million years, a hundred centuries is a real moment. Ive seen a lot and its time to share one secret I now sleep peacefully, releasing tons of steam and boiling water through the thousands of geysers sparkling in the fabulous beauty of a park with three hundred waterfalls. It is not for nothing that millions of tourists who have come here from all over the world admire me, and I sympathize with this pilgrimage, paying tribute to the enthusiasm and admired views of nature lovers.
I confess: my sleepy state is deceptive and my character is wayward. From time to time, I explode with a force comparable to a major meteorite hitting Earth. I burst with my own indignation under the monstrous pressure of the melt of magma stored inside me. The enormous pressure of molten basalt, warmed to death, pushes the earths crust apart and rips it apart with a monstrous rumble. I salute the world with bright fireworks and the eruption of hot magma, which gives rise to amazing lava covers on the slopes, burning all life in its path. The walls of the crater collapse, and the surrounding earth subsides hundreds of meters into the void created under the crater. So a huge funnel is formed a circular caldera with a diameter of several kilometers. I adore scale.
Over the course of my life, I have experienced more than a hundred and forty eruptions. For a volcano, it is as natural as a person to catch a cold and sneeze. The last three super-eruptions occurred 2 million, 1 million 300 thousand and 640,000 years ago. This cyclicity leads me to think that I am ripe for a new one, and it can happen at any time, possibly in 2075. Yes, I am almost ready for this: I feel my gut overflowing with fire, and I hardly restrain the tension. There, at the bottom of the caldera, under a thin partition of rocks, my gift to careless humanity lurks death. After all, few people imagine how dangerous this is for planet Earth. The consequences will be catastrophic, and it is not my fault that the world will turn upside down I warned. Or do you think Im the one who needs to ring all the bells?
PART 1. PETER KALINKIN
CHAPTER 1. A STRANGE FIND
It was a very hot summer in St. Petersburg that year. Yes, yes, it all started with the heat. The heat turned out to be a trigger, a trigger in this chain of amazing events that happened to Pyotr Mikhailovich Kalinkin. Pyotr Mikhailovich was tired of the noise and blue smoke of cars, the crush in traffic jams on the streets and in shops where carts with goods do not comply with traffic rules, and there are no traffic lights. Bedlam, thats all! He returned home with my purchases and from the threshold to his wife:
Thats it, damn it, I cant stay in the city anymore. Lets go to nature tomorrow!
And where are we going to sing? wiping the plate with a long towel draped over her shoulder, Galina Sergeevna asked.
How to go somewhere to the Karelian Isthmus, to the lakes! We will stay at the hotel for a week, rest, change the situation. Then maybe well look at a country house
Thats what he gave out so fateful or unwittingly anticipated? Even in a terrible dream, a peaceful foray into nature does not evoke the idea of an abyss, but in life what the hell is not joking when God is asleep
Who knows how much a token is in the subway, he definitely saw Pyotr Mikhailovich there are at least a dozen of them in one car. Hello to you, but here he is sitting opposite: a shabby black jacket, jeans made of stiff blue fabric, worn shoes and a BMW cap on his gray head. And next to her is a prim lady with stern eyes and a cap of dyed hair, in a gray raincoat, with a black bag and thick soled shoes Kalinkina Galina Sergeevna. In the evening, the Kalinkins will definitely stick on the telly: movies about animals and talk shows of naked tits are informative and fun, especially when you feel a certain similarity with the characters. The neighbor from above is sure that Pyotr Mikhailovich is a positive person with a touching weakness: more madly than his wife, he loves his rare Lada of pale green color, securely stored for forty years in the city parking lot under a high voltage line, just five tram stops from home.
In the morning, Pyotr Mikhailovich solemnly rolled his four-wheeled friend out of the garage and soon was slowly steering along the ring road, proudly ignoring the Toyota and Mercedes cars overtaking him. Two hours later, the couple reached the hotel Rautu in the center of the village of Sosnovo. From the windows of the hotel room, behind the guest parking lot, a picturesque lake could be seen pleasing the eye. A herd of white goats grazed on the shore, grazing grass, evoking thoughts of fresh milk and a healthy lifestyle.
A week of rest in the countryside flew like a voucher over Russia easily and serenely, without financial problems. The black cat did not run across the road, the women did not wander around with empty buckets, however, the midges in the forest had a bite that was, that was. The Kalinkins wandered through the meadows, went to Ladoga and swam in Razdolinsky Lake, the water turned out to be very cool. But the greatest pleasure was the clean air, filled with the smell of herbs and pine needles, which was inhaled like a fragrant balm. Somehow Pyotr Mikhailovich decided to go fishing, but he did not grab spinning from the city in a hurry, admired the water surface at sunset and decided: its time to buy a cottage in these parts a pension is on the horizon. He shared this idea with his wife.
We will start a small farm, a vegetable garden, we will plant flowers, Galina Sergeevna supported her husband, and in her dreams she already imagined an idyllic picture of peace in nature: a warm breeze blows, butterflies flutter over broken flower beds, and bright red sides of ripe berries peek out from green strawberry bushes and cheerfully shine in the sun So it almost came out, but only almost.
Buying real estate is a troublesome business. Cheap offers, as well as money from the Kalinkins, were sparse, and these options were not particularly tempting: they examined old, dilapidated buildings near paved roads with a continuous flow of cars, visited a couple of semi-abandoned unfinished buildings remote from civilization in the middle of forests and fields, without water and electricity. Everything they had seen did not correspond to their ideas of suburban happiness, but the desire to breathe ozone away from the metropolis was so irresistible that after weighing all the pros and cons, the couple unanimously came to one optimal solution, in their opinion. No wonder the wrong choice always seems more reasonable: a feasible budget for quarter acre of land with an old house in a small village, but with a well and a bathhouse, and a shop and a pharmacy nearby is an ideal option for a quiet and peaceful life of a pensioner. A woodshed with a supply of logs, rotten boards and poles, and a simple carpenters tool: an axe, a saw, a box with nails, a blunt scythe and sawhorses, has been preserved on a plot fenced with a dilapidated fence. But the main quarter acre of land value is a five wall pre war building, chopped from thick, with deep cracks, logs (as the former hostess assured from mahogany), six by six meters, with a partition inside. According to the Kalinkins, the house has passed the test of time and met the classical canons, unlike neighboring buildings made of timber or concrete blocks. The interior was divided into a room and a kitchen of equal size, and a wood-burning stove with a stove was built into the partition and formed a single unit with it. The roof made of roofing material from antiquity and the pranks of the wind led a little sideways, the usual porch was missing from the outside, a five-step staircase replacing it was placed behind the front door and led into the vestibule with a wide window. In the hall and in the attic there was a suspicious smell of all sorts of junk, honestly warning about future problems and even evoking thoughts of terrible secrets and ancestors who had left this world.
When they rolled up their sleeves, the most urgent things were heat and water. After the sinking of the aspen, Pyotr Mikhailovich brought the stove back to life, and later they cleaned the well together there is no way to manage it alone. Work on the ground also took a lot of effort. But in the evening, tired and tanned new settlers, sitting on the lawn at a small wooden table, could enjoy the croaking of crows and admire how the tired June luminary falls behind the tops of fir trees from the nearby forest.
Finally the owner got to the pantry. Pyotr Mikhailovich was not at all surprised when, among all the useless goods leaky dishes, rusty buckets, torn sweatshirts and worn shoes he found something strange: a metal barrel with four supports, a little more than a meter high. The barrel was sitting in ambush at the far corner and waiting for the victim. Pyotr Mikhailovich tried to move it from its place, but unsuccessfully the design turned out to be very weighty. The grandfather called the grandmother, and the two of them, with difficulty, rolling on the floor, pulled this turnip closer to the window, into the light of God, and left it there. For a long time that evening, the puzzled Pyotr Mikhailovich could not sleep, an inquisitive mind put forward one assumption after another:
What kind of piece of iron? It doesnt look like a stove, its too heavy for a moonshine machine, no less than a pood. Maybe a the witchs barrel?
In favor of the latter version, there was a broken broom and a battered piece of red silk suspiciously resembling a female headdress, with a strongly faded yellow inscription: Excellent student of the socialist competition. At the thought of all sorts of devilry, Pyotr Mikhailovich stirred uneasily on the mattress and accidentally woke up Galina Sergeevna snoring in her sleep.
Eh? What? What dont I have? she mumbled sleepily, but her husband calmed her down:
Sleep, sleep you have everything!
It would be necessary to dig two more beds at the fence, and plant onions with garlic, Galina Sergeevna changed the record on the machine, and again fell asleep.
Curiosity turned out to be the last link in the chain of causes of future shocks. Pyotr Mikhailovich would have left this scrap metal alone, if he hadnt woken up famously, and he wouldnt have known grief. However, he stuck his nose where he shouldnt have, and the next morning, like a bayonet, he was already standing next to the mysterious object. The design turned out to be girded either with hoops, or with stiffeners. Pyotr Mikhailovich strained, even slightly, sorry, farted in his pants from the strain. There is no doubt: fate has already sounded the alarm and buzzed him for the last time: come to your senses, old man! however, he did not listen, lifted the barrel and set it vertically on the supports.
Yes, twenty kilograms, barely, after catching his breath, he confirmed his night assumptions. The find had to be wiped off with dust and dirt rags. Upon careful inspection, closer to the short legs, a hinged door the size of a good tablet was found. The door was locked with an internal lock, and the researcher had to tinker a lot before opening it with a key from the motorists kit. Opening the door with a creak, to his surprise he saw inside a flat area with a socket for batteries for standard batteries, six pieces. There were none at hand, so he had to visit a local store after breakfast.
In a small rural supermarket, the assortment turned out to be surprisingly rich: they sold everything except anti-aircraft complexes and marijuana. A young saleswoman offered several brands of batteries, and Pyotr Mikhailovich chose Duracel once seen on TV advertising about hares-rabbits still worked. And was it worth saving fifty rubles in this mysterious case? After thinking a little, at the same time he took a brick of local baked bread, a bottle of Stolichnaya and pickled cucumbers: he need to arrange a festive dinner with Galya in the evening in nature, they deserved it
Returning to the house, Kalinkin shoved a bag of provisions to his wife, and he ran to the barrel thats what she clung to, damn it! Impatiently, he opened the package, installed the batteries in the contacts. And nothing happened. The device remained dead, apparently, its not about the batteries. And Pyotr Mikhailovich hoped so, although it is not clear to himself why, and mentally scolded himself for naivety:
He lived to gray hair, but his mind is like a childs
In the evening, the couple, being wary of Windows, played cards. After three glasses of vodka, Pyotr Mikhailovichs skill definitely increased, but the buttle went only to the second level: the stubborn thought of a mysterious find, nesting somewhere in the depths of his brain, interfered. After being fooled a couple of times, he silently threw down the cards and left the room. It was she, this thought, who brought him back to the hall. Approaching the iron barrel, he angrily slammed the door. The door suddenly clicked and closed with an internal lock. After a few seconds, a strange vibrating sound appeared from somewhere, from which the heart of the pre-pensioner lost its rhythm, began to pound unusually loudly, and the ears suddenly began to lay, as in an airplane when landing. To the astonishment of the astonished Mikhailovich, the old iron barrel with legs began to lose shape, shrank and gradually melted into the air, and instead, as if out of nowhere, a small ball formed. The balloon filled with gas, grew before our eyes, and then turned by itself into a kind of simulator: a comfortable, large chair with a hood and a screen on a wide stand resting on a square base. When the simulator took its final shape, the strange sound faded away, and the inexplicable anxiety in Kalinkins soul disappeared. The string of transformations had no reasonable interpretation and seemed incredible, almost miraculous. Here he would cross himself just in case, but since childhood Petya has not been used to bow and beat his forehead, and he did not see any sense in abruptly reforging and chameleon: the inside will come out anyway, you can see by the muzzle. He just spread his hands in bewilderment, calling either the pure or the unclean to witness, then froze and stood there for five minutes, slightly opening his mouth, staring at the inflatable miracle of orange rubber.
Made of rubber? Pyotr Mikhailovich finally dared to touch the chair with a slightly trembling hand. The chair turned out to be cold to the touch, something like leather or alcantara Kalinkin didnt really understand this, but definitely not rubber. Carefully continuing his research, he touched the hood plastic, the screen looks like a computer monitor, and under the screen, on the basis of the design, a red button sticks out. The button attracted the eye and tempted: push me Its not difficult for a child to guess: just push on it, and this kind of painful-tooth-crushing unit will work. The association with dentistry involuntarily cooled the experimenters ardor, but not for long.
Maybe I should call Galya to consult? the familiar thought of a henpecked man flashed, but for the first time in many years of family life, the subconscious insidiously dictated independence, pushing into the abyss of the unknown, very dangerous. Meanwhile, Galina Sergeevna was rattling dishes in the kitchen, and the usual domestic cacophony calmed her husband and gave him determination.
In the end, am I a man or not? he grumbled angrily to himself, mentally imagining himself as a hero next to Ilya Muromets in the picture on the left, and quickly drowned the button. The unit came to life, two rectangles with the words English and Russian appeared on the lit screen (it was strange that there was no Galina Sergeevna option). How inopportunely a thick dictionary was lying around somewhere in a city apartment, but who could have guessed that it would be useful in agriculture? He had to press the Russian icon with my index finger, as in an ATM, and then there were signs with the command: