Interworld Network: The Time Master by Dmitry Bilik

Interworld Network, Book 1
The Time Master
by Dmitry Bilik

Pre-order - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QWMRR8M

Release - July 18, 2019

Chapter 1

My least favorite things in the world were chicken liver, heartburn, and helping people. No, my parents hadn’t spawned a scoundrel. It’s just that I’d rather help someone because I want to, not because I’m pressured to.

“Sergei, he’s probably gone to the foundation pit,” my neighbor’s words added boiling oil to the cup of my already-heated patience.

Masha was only three years older than me, but somehow I ended up addressing her like I was a kid and she was an adult, while she graciously talked to me as though we were equals. On top of that, at age 28 she had two kids, a docile husband, and her own apartment, no matter that it was off the beaten path. In contrast, besides nine pairs of oddly colored socks, I owned nothing in particular.

But that mischief maker known as fate had brought us together on the same floor of an apartment building after my father’s grandmother died. I inherited her apartment, breaking free of the parental nest but falling into Masha’s web. Apparently, the universe was doing its best to maintain equilibrium.

You’d be hard pressed to call me a pushover. At no time would I have a girl order me around. I always made that much perfectly clear. Yet I’d somehow missed that opportunity with Masha. I once helped her carry her stroller downstairs—you know, as a neighborly thing to do. Then one time when I went to the store, I picked up some yogurt while I was there. After that, there was no stopping her.

I should probably mention that Masha was smart. She never crossed the line with her errands, but she could occasionally knock you off balance, like today. Except that her quests always came with the label “legendary” and forced you to work up a major sweat.

“OK, I’ll check if he’s there,” I said with a nod, reaching for my cigarettes.

Her window immediately banged shut. It wasn’t May, after all, and she had a suckling baby at home. I heaved a heavy sigh and threw on my hood.

“I see that the Young Communist is helping out the big families?” an old man in a ski cap inscribed with “Sport” observed snidely from his perch on the bench by the entrance.

I smiled. I liked Mr. Sergeyev. The old fellow was a local institution. He was a professor who’d once taught the history of the CPSU[1] and other subjects that were undoubtedly important, and he hadn’t been able to change his ideas in time. When the country went through perestroika, Mr. Sergeyev was left behind. So he developed a taste for the demon drink, and eventually lost the battle for good. He was dragged along by his wife, a hardy, permanently angry woman for whom her hubby had become like a suitcase that had lost its handle. It was hard to pull, but it would be a shame to discard it.

“Something like that. Her husband is away overnight and her little Vasya went for a walk. He was supposed to be home a half hour ago. I’m on my way to the store and volunteered to go see where he’s hiding.”

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” Mr. Sergeyev said sagely.

“Oh, I know that. What are you doing hanging around freezing here?”

“Waiting for a buddy. We’ve decided to organize a symposium. Give me a cigarette, will you? It’s not for me—my friend is the one who smokes. I always tell him it’s bad for him and he’s destroying his health, but he’ll hear nothing of it.”

I smirked and gave him a cigarette. As I walked away from the entrance and lit up, I heard the crackling of cigarette paper and the dry tobacco. I took a couple of drags and fell to thinking.

The foundation pit, huh?

It was right across the street from the local supermarket where I was going. At one point an ambitious development company had decided to build a modern, attractive multistory building in our backwater. It bought out private homes, surveyed the land, and started to excavate a foundation pit. But something didn’t pan out on their end. More precisely, something literally flamed out: one night, the office downtown caught fire. Perhaps competitors were to blame, or a circuit, or maybe a combination of the two. So the company vanished into oblivion, leaving behind nothing but a foundation pit. You can guess who immediately took a liking to this local monument.

Everyone knows that every man is a former kid. But the kids from our district tried with all their might to stay at that tender age forever. A half-destroyed or half-built property in the vicinity only helped the cause.

OK, I’d stop by the foundation pit on the way home. Vasya was a good kid, if somewhat mischievous. God forbid something happen to him.

The supermarket was on the first floor of a five-story building. No doubt about it, it was off the beaten track. Next to it was the ring road, followed by lane after lane of dilapidated log huts echoing with guard dogs’ indistinct, sad barking and filling the air with the woody scent of heated bathhouses on the weekend.

I had time to smoke two cigarettes before I reached the shop entrance. Inside, some kids around the age I was looking for were jostling each other by the vending machine with the chewing gym.

“Hey, guys, have you seen Vasya from number 8?”

One of the kids raised his head in obvious resentment. “Vasya? Vasya Korshunov?”

“Yes, Korshunov. His mom’s looking for him.”

“No, haven’t seen him.”

Shit. Now I’d need to cross that street and get myself over to the foundation pit. There was only one streetlight, and it only illuminated part of the pit. At least I had a flashlight on my phone.

I wandered through the aisles tossing simple food into my basket: sausages, three bottles of beer, macaroni and mayonnaise. As I approached the register, I stopped by the stand holding the deodorant. I did need some; I was almost out. That took care of it.

It had gotten cold outside. I raised my hood and shifted the flimsy plastic grocery bag so it was more comfortable to hold, then set off for the edge of our world.

Before crossing the street, I looked both ways a few times. This was a place where you needed to teach kids the rules of the road, under conditions that were, shall we say, reminiscent of war. I managed to get across without any mishaps and heaved a sigh. The streetlight flickered hostilely in unison with me and blew out. Great.

I turned on the flashlight on my phone. Of course, I couldn’t see more than five yards in front of me. I tried to peer through the dark for a while, but nothing useful came of that. I swore and put away my useless phone.

“Vasya! Vasya!”

The last thing I wanted to do was climb down into the pit on the frozen ground. I was tempted to blow off the mission and head home. I mean, really, was I ultimately responsible for other people’s dumbbells? Just do a better job raising your kids and don’t baffle your dutiful neighbors. It was warm and cozy at home right now. I could go home, cook some macaroni and sausage, turn on a TV show, and enjoy it all with a beer.

“I’m over here!”

Damn it. I’d planned it all out so nicely in my head.

“Vasya, where are you?”

As if! Now the kid was silent. I had a feeling that today I’d need to personally take care of Vasya’s upbringing and give him a good taste of paternal tough love.

With a technique that would have put Cirque du Soleil to shame, I started to lower myself into the pit, scattering hard pieces of frozen clay with my feet. In one outstretched hand I held my lighter, and in the other I held the bag with the clinking bottles. All I needed was a tightrope and an audience.

Which I apparently had. Someone was watching my clumsy descent— that became clear when I was halfway down. That’s when I made out two figures on the bottom of the foundation pit: Vasya and a guy I didn’t know standing next to him.

Oh great. A Pedobear was the last thing I needed. Considering that at no time was I a fighter, and my adversary had more girth on his side, things could turn unpleasant.

“What do you need, dude?” I shouted, trying not to betray my anxiety.

No answer. The kiddo was silent, too. They just stood there looking at each other without moving a muscle. I kind of wanted someone to jump out and yell, “Surprise!” But dreams are only dreams. So I took a few steps forward.

“Dude, don’t make me do something I’ll regret.”

I stumbled but managed to stay on my feet. The bottles jangled plaintively, but even that didn’t provoke a reaction. I guess I was going to have to sort him out, after all. I squeezed the lighter, placed the grocery bag on the ground, and strode toward the stranger.

Only then did I notice the odd clothing on this guy who enjoyed chatting up kids at night. He was wearing a long cloak devoid of any labels or designs. The hood was over his head. Well, terrific. Good job, Sergei, now you’re going to meet a cult follower. And the night had started off so well. . . .

“Man, get away from the kid,” I uttered an idle threat, my arm already drawn back to punch him.

My father had never taught me to fight—his thinking was that a smart man could always reach an agreement. But his best friend, Uncle Dima, disagreed. He’d made sure I threw a decent punch and his opinions on the matter were far more straightforward. As in: if there’s a fight in the air, go for it, and then afterward you can sort out who was right and wrong. That’s not to say that I often made use of this maxim, but it was much more in line with my own philosophy.

Somehow, it looked like the man in the cloak must have had his own Uncle Dima because he turned sharply and thrust out his hand.

He didn’t hit me but I could feel some sort of force running through his fingers. My body flew several few yards like a defenseless rag doll. I landed on my back on my ill-fated grocery bag. Judging by the sound, the packet of macaroni had split. The bottles clanked but at least they didn’t break. The stick of deodorant bumped up against my side.

 I grunted. What was that? All I knew was that I was in pain. My back wasn’t the strongest part of my body. Because of my line of work, I constantly needed to massage the small of my back so it wouldn’t ache. It took my angst-ridden brain a couple of seconds to realize that I’d gone flying even though no one had touched me.

It was unlikely that the approaching stranger was a Jedi. I didn’t see a light saber. Well, maybe not yet. In any case, he was obviously a master of telekinesis. Of course, I would have liked to know what the hell was going on, but I now acted on the most ancient instinct, putting everything else on the back burner.

I tried to use my free right arm to lean on the ground so I could get up. That didn’t work. First I crawled over a bottle, and then the scattered macaroni, and then bumped up against the stick of deodorant. Then I had an idea—I wouldn’t say it was a bright one, but it wasn’t bad. The stick of deodorant was in my right hand—the cap had flown off—the lighter was in my left hand, and the approaching adversary was around two yards away.

I held the deodorant in front of me, catching a whiff of its rank scent (I’d missed the mark this time—I made a mental note to buy something else next time), and struck the lighter in front of it. I may not be a master of telekinesis, but we all have our fireballs.

For a moment, the place was flooded with light. I managed to discern the garbage-strewn foundation pit, Vasya’s frightened face, and the stranger’s cloak which was being licked by the flames. Biting my lip and trying to ignore the pain, I hurled my improvised livesavers aside and leaned my arms on the ground.

I stood up with the speed of a pregnant Seychelles tortoise and threw myself at the assailant. He was still swatting the smoking hood, so he couldn’t respond adequately. He swung his arms wildly and punched, attempting what’s called a one-shot.

Never in my life did I stand out for my heroic strength, and I never frequented a boxing gym, but I managed to land a hook that was a work of art. I heard an unpleasant cracking sound as the stranger fell to the ground. Or maybe the opposite: first he fell, and then I heard a deafening crack.

I stood for a few seconds with my fists raised, ready to punch some more if needed, but the Satanist guy lay there motionless showing no intention of standing up.

“Is he OK?” Vasya spoke up.

I shrugged. “Probably.”

In any case, I took my time going over to him and carefully checked his pulse. I felt pretty arrogant as I did this because I’d breezed through all the health and safety training classes in school. I touched his wrist and then his neck. I thought I felt something, but it could have also been my own heartbeat.

I touched his head, and my fingers came away bloody. Fantastic. I’d just smashed his head.

“Is he alive?” Vasya 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 Vasya home.

“Let’s go. 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. Vasya trudged behind me, wheezing and scattering clumps of earth underneath him.

“Uncle Sergei!”

“What now?”

“Um, he’s gone.”

I turned around. Vasya 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 earned the Savior face.

You’ve earned the Insight ability.

You’ve earned the Light spell.

I looked at the message scrolling in front of my eyes. Sergei, everything’s OK. 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.

Vasya 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 down. 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 end up just like our parents.

“Vasya, 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 live, Mom and Dad’s names, everything.”

“What do you mean, everything?”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

“Mum’s the word,” I promised.

“In the spring we would go floating on rafts, you know, foam plastic ones. We made them ourselves. 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, Vasya. 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,” Vasya 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 thought, call me. Is that clear?”

Vasya 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 Vasya. And yet . . . Vasya let slip that they were waiting for something. Maybe a full moon on Saturn? Of course, the autumn had passed and with it, the seasonal relapse period in the local mental hospital seemed to be over, but 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 no-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.

“Vasya, let’s not say anything to your mom right now about this guy. OK?”

“Of course we won’t say anything,” Vasya agreed easily. “I might get in 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. Sergeyev nor his symposium partner 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 Vasya 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.

“Vasily, where were you?”

Masha was ready to give Zeus the Thunderbearer God a run for his money. From personal experience I knew that when your parents call you by your full name, it’s unlikely that it’s out of respect for you. Instead, you can expect fury to be unleashed. Seeing Vasya 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 said with a nod, fixing Vasya 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 Masha’s husband was totally henpecked and that he adored his wife. Vasya obviously resembled his mother in nature. His dad might admonish his son, but he wouldn’t be forced to kneel on dried peas as they’d done to kids in Victorian times or be whipped with his father’s steel-buckled belt.

“What’s with your bag?” Masha looked suspiciously at the bundle in my hands.

“I slipped and fell. All right then, goodnight.”

“Good night. Sergei, 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 didn’t notice that I was sitting on the rug in front of the door, 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 package 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 anywhere. 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 unpleasantly. 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 and straightened up, going over to the tiny mirror above the washing machine.

I nearly cried out. A completely different person was looking back at me.

Chapter 2

As Bulgakov once 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, for my whole life I 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 was ... 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 again 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 dusty sack. 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,[1] a soccer match—nothing out of the ordinary.

I even had to look out the window. Occasional passersby, wrapped in light jackets that were still too light for winter (it was all the fault of the late cold spell) were bustling home. No one was devouring or killing anyone. Maybe I’d been hurled into some sort of parallel universe?

I even walked around and across my apartment. No, it didn’t gel with my theory. The same Soviet-era furniture: the folding couch, Grandma’s old table with my laptop on it, the Czech wall unit[2] - 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 loafer and my bachelor’s existence only contributed to that.

I went back to the kitchen to mull some things over, especially because I’d 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 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’s 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.

I got stuck when I’d nearly finished brushing the right side. How had I never noticed these bars before? They were arranged in pairs, two on top and two on the bottom. They scared 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 read bar was health, the blue one was mana, the green one was vigor, but what about the gold one? Who the hell knew. Maybe 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. I’d always been tempered, since I was a kid.

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 and 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 to then 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,[3] prepared a warm spot in a fancy company doing a second-banana job, which, as they say, is “to grow into.” And I’d go and get myself a menial job with God knows whom. 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. When 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 provincial, yet large, city. I had enough 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 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. However, right now, the fact that I needed to run like hell to get to work concerned me a lot.

I looked in the fridge. Other than yesterday’s sausages and a couple of eggs, you could have rolled a bowling ball through it. Although an omelet with a grade B meat product isn’t bad in  itself, you shouldn’t eat one every day. It had been drummed into me since childhood that breakfast was supposed to be balanced and contain the right amounts of protein, fat, and carbohydrates.

There was only one dish that fit these criteria, and it was sold close to my house.According to the clock on my wall, they’d already been open for a half hour. That meant that they’d had time to put out the meat and fry enough for a few portions.

In front of the door I felt as worried as Leonov[4] when he was about to step into outer space. The multicolored lines hadn’t disappeared, and my hands were shockingly pale. Apparently, I was supposed to get used to the changing reality and my new body. More precisely, I felt it like the old one, but my eyes didn’t lie. OK, I’d talk to Bones, anyway. Not for today maybe, but I’d ask for tomorrow off.

The stairway was silent; even Masha didn’t poke her head out at the sound of my slamming door. On the third floor my nose started to itch as usual from the smell of  cat piss. That’s where a self-sufficient and independent woman of an indeterminate age lived by herself. She hated people as much as she loved cats.

As I skipped the rest of the way, the green bar trembled a little and crept downward. I pressed the button on the entry system and dashed out into the fresh, frosty air.

“You understand what it’s about, my dear sir, don’t you? In our people they’ve b... br ... bred a feeling of inferiority. They’ve drilled it into us that if we want to be great we need to hate someone. We need to have a common enemy that supposedly prevents us, the powerful and awesome, from getting on with our lives. Ah, Sergei, greetings and salutations.”

Mr. Sergeyev waved his hand. I stopped for a moment and nodded. His friend - or to be more precise, his listener - was sitting next to him, struggling to stay awake. He had a neglected appearance: a torn sheepskin coat, drooping sweatsuit, and old shoes with scuffed and cracked leather toecaps.

The two were clearly conducting a sophisticated conversation and they’d already had quite a bit to drink. But there were two things that interested me.

First, what time did you have to wake up so you’d be so wasted by 10 o’clock?  It’s true what they say: keep your eyes on the prize—see your way clear. But the second thing was the most curious.

There was a text box floating over the professor’s head.

Pyotr Sergeyev

academic

???

carpenter

???

This was amusing. It was just like in an advanced online game.

I looked at the man in the sheepskin coat.

???

???

plumber

???

That was it. There was a little more information about the professor. Maybe it was because I knew him and I was seeing the other man for the first time?

“Mr. Sergeyev, you never told me you used to be a carpenter.”

“A carpenter!” he waved my remark aside. “My father, God rest his soul, now he was a cabinet maker from God. I’m just a tinkerer. I can only fix things or just potter about.”

I nodded, put my hood on, and skirted the building to go out to the street. The most dangerous thought of any madman crept into my head: what if I was normal? Meaning that maybe that guy from yesterday really gave me some sort of superpowers? Maybe it was even by chance, like venereal diseases are typically transmitted? No, I was not going to start wearing my underpants on the outside. But what if I had also become someone like the Player, and I was now looking at the world through the concave mirror of convention?

The people who were hurrying to work only confirmed these wild ideas for me. They all had question marks floating above their heads. Some of them had a few lines over them, while others had nearly ten or so. But they all had a line I could read: pastry chef, coin collector, leader, shoemaker, Tatar, teacher...

So this mysterious system was displaying not just professions, but also nationalities, certain personality traits, and hobbies.

With these thoughts I literally flew past the three buildings until the intersection where the bus stop was. The traffic was a little livelier here. But most important, that’s where Uncle Zaur made the most delicious shawarma[5]in his rather filthy-looking snack joint.

“Hello,” I said, nodding.

“Good morning,” the old shop owner greeted me.

A notification appeared over his head:

Zaur

Azerbaijani

Very funny. As if I didn’t know it.

“One please, to go.”

“You should come in. I’ll give you some tea. You all eat on the go and then you have stomachache and blame it on my shawarma.”

Uncle Zaur muttered all of this as he spread sauce on the lavash and with quick, agile movements threw hot meat on it. All I knew about the owner of this hole in the wall was that he’d come to Russia a long time ago, married a Russian woman, and ran his own small but formidable business. He also had two guys working for him making shawarma and shish kebab, but Uncle Zaur himself was always close by. Sometimes he’d drink with the regulars or thoughtfully smoke a cigarette, arms crossed over his small belly.

“Here you go, no change,” I said, holding money out to him.

“Enjoy,” he said, handing over a bag with the shawarma.

I wolfed down the hot meat in the lavash before I even got to the bus stop. With anguish I caught sight of my departing bus. Now I’d have to wait another 10 minutes or so. I stepped to the side, lit a cigarette and blithely took a drag.

If you thought about it, things weren’t so bad— provided my head was in order. So if I were of no interest to psychiatrists, I needed to figure out how to take advantage of what had fallen to me. As far as I could understand, the message said something about the Insight ability, the Light spell, and the Savior face. It wasn’t clear how to activate the second two points. As I understood it, Insight was passive and worked all the time.

The bus, which arrived before too long, thwarted all my plans to enslave the world. I had to get on. As I paid the driver, I noticed that in addition to the occasional question mark, a Speeder sign was burning over him. I immediately plopped down on a seat and grabbed hold of the handle in front of the standing spot.

I was really starting to like this new ability of mine because after three intersections, with a wild screech of the brake pads, the bus stopped after nearly crashing into some ancient dude driving a cheap sedan. All the passengers lurched forward. Except me. The Speeder tried two more times to hasten my meeting with God, but he didn’t succeed. When I got out by the building materials plant I was a little shaken, but intact.

And there were advantages to the driver’s speed. I thought I’d be cutting it close, but I ended up arriving 20 minutes early. So I took my time crossing the street and beelined for our base.

It was made up of five identical produce warehouses on one side and an office that abutted them on the other. It was nothing to write home about—a small private business owned by a Russified German who rarely made an appearance, usually just when he had to pick up his earnings or give us a major dressing-down. Incidentally, when it came to dressing-downs, he could go toe to toe with Bones. As I already mentioned, the workers were a diverse bunch. There were former convicts, a few drunks down on their luck, a couple of migrants, and the occasional student. And me.

Over the course of the day, trucks came up to the guardrail, filled out requisitions, and then, under the alert supervision of the shipping agents and Bones himself, we loaded their vehicles with goods for small stores. At a different time, usually in the evening, vans with water and beer came. Today, too, a van was scheduled to come. Nothing major, just about 20 tons, but, as I understood it, two of our regular crew had gone on a bender.

“What’s up?” Marat said, holding his hand out.

He’d already changed his clothes, laid a few pieces of cardboard on the guardrail in order not to freeze his rear end, and sat down on them. When he saw me, he smiled, flashing the two gold caps on his upper teeth, and extended his hand.

“Hi,” I answered him with interest, shaking his hand and examining his stats.

Marat Gubaydullin, age 32

???

Thief

???

Marat had been a young offender when he’d first gone to jail, and he’d left it long after he’d been transferred to the adult division. When he’d finally got out at the ripe age of 23, he got married and even had a little kid. But my secret assistant still designated him a Thief.

I doubted it was referring to Marat’s slippery past. He’d been in jail for robbery, not theft. That meant that he was stealing from the warehouse on the sly. Now I understood who Bones meant whenever he was swearing to bring everyone into the open.

“The van from Samara is coming today,” I said.

“Yes, I heard. I’m sure we’ll get a good drink out of it,” Marat nodded, flashing the gold-lined “Hollywood smile” that he’d gotten in the slammer.

I nodded. During any delivery there were enough faulty goods, or more accurately, “faulty goods.” Sometimes the drivers themselves left a couple of pallets at our mercy so they could finish the trip faster. On days like that the loaders went home tipsy and happy. Even Bones couldn’t do anything about that.

“Uncle Alexei and Fyodor are already drunk. They won’t be going out today.”

Marat cringed. “Shit.”

I understood him. We had no equipment. Our workload was measured utterly simply: in human—or if you approached the process with a sense of humor, donkey—power. Two extra pairs of hands unloading the van meant a lot to us - especially because, counting the two shirkers, there were only seven of us altogether.

“So we work overtime,” he immediately shared his unhealthy optimism. “A little extra cash won’t hurt.”

“Right. I’m going to get changed.”

I ran right into Bones as I left the closet. To me, despite the insulting nickname, our stock manager was the binding force here. He kept a firm hand on the loaders. If you took him away and put someone else in charge, it was unlikely that anyone here would actually work. You’d need to put together an entire staff again.

“Hi, Sergei.”

That was one of his quirks. He called everyone by their first name, no matter what their age or how long they’d been working here. Or more precisely, not working.

Bones shook my hand like a genius diagnostician trying to determine how sick I was by looking at me. “How are you feeling?”

“My ears are sort of ringing,” I lied, scanning his face.

In addition to his full name, the Insight spat out new information: Model Maker. That was interesting. What kind of models did Bones make in his spare time?

“You’ll be sick tomorrow. But today, no way. By the way, the vehicle from store number 9 has arrived. Let’s go load it. There’s water, beer, energy drinks, and cookies. Marat, you hear?”

“Fifteen minutes until the shift starts,” my hardnosed coworker called out lazily.

“I’ll let you leave 15 minutes early.”

“Yeah, that’s if the van doesn’t show up when we’re closing,” Marat retorted, but moved from his spot.

I don’t know if this is worth bragging about, but I was very good at preparing shops’ orders. When I first started out, I looked like a complete misfit. But it was like that in any field. You’d get the job, make people smile because you’re new, but then you gradually become an expert. In the beginning, I was constantly scurrying around and getting in the way, but now it was a real pleasure to look at me. I didn’t make a single extra movement.

“Carbonated water, six pallets, check,” Bones counted aloud. “Beer, glass, two, check. Beer, plastic, three crates.”

Marat and I danced around each other. He dove into the warehouse while I walked out with my load. Twenty bottles aren’t very heavy when they’re inserted from top to bottom with heavy cardboard and sealed thoroughly in new polyethylene. Unfortunately, we didn’t have such a luxury. All the beer was from an old delivery that had been sitting in the warehouse for a long time. The cardboard had fallen apart, and then a radiator had leaked and the packaging had gotten wet. As a result, I had to carefully hold the beer from the bottom. No matter how experienced I thought I was, better safe than sorry.

I wasn’t aware exactly at what point the case fell apart. Four bottles fell out through the hole in the bottom at the exact moment when my foot was already lifted onto the body of the truck.

I raised my head and saw Bones’ angry face. He opened his mouth and ...

∞

Marat and I danced around each other. I couldn’t shake off the feeling of déjà vu. This had already happened, just now. I had exited the warehouse and the case of beer had fallen apart in my hands.

More precisely, I was now exiting the warehouse and...

By reflex I shifted the case in my hands, taking a better grip. The glass clinked mournfully.

“Be more careful, Sergei.”

“The case has no bottom, sir. We should tape it up.”

“Go ahead. Marat, one more case of glass bottles. Then we’ll move on to the cookies.”

Holding the tape, I crouched down, staring with acute fascination at the intact case of beer.

First of all, now I knew the purpose of that gold bar, which had now lost a third of its length. It was displaying the progress of that most important development branch.

And secondly, I had the ability to rewind time.

Pre-order - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QWMRR8M

Release - July 18, 2019