Red Star

Chapter 3

- "So, what do we have ?!" And we had the following: 14 years old, grade 7, childhood, the Brezhnev USSR and ... a living young mother! And a clean white sheet of life. Second attempt with preserved memory of the first! You can and should replay everything. To replay so that the results of the second attempt were such that one would not be ashamed in front of oneself. So that they, these results, were! And not like the first: devoured, slept, took a s**t and died. Even the death of my mother should not be so unsettling in life. Although in this life I will make every effort to prevent this from happening again.  

Oh yes ... iPhone ... By the way, where is he? Again I got out of the chair and went in search. The black rectangle, with the cords still stuck in it, lay on the bed. - "Well, the bed is not worse than the chair!" - with this thought, obviously caused by the gluttony, I again climbed into bed. He detached the cords and began to examine the "artifact of the 21st century" as if he had seen it for the first time. "Afik" read the thumbprint and switched on. I also typed in a crazy 17-digit password that matches my Swiss bank account and therefore jotted down by me.  

- "Uh-huh ..." February 21, 2015. It was in that life that Saturday was supposed to come. It is possible that here February 21, 1978, but only Tuesday. Perhaps ... On a machine developed over the years, I clicked Mail.ru. The headline of the news drove into a stupor: "Black" Saturday for Poland: a monstrous accident 78 dead. "-" Saturday? What is Saturday? Where is the date ?! "I could not find the date on the Mail.ru page, I clicked on" TV program ":" TV program for today. "f**k !!!" Today "is what a date, your mother ?! Today. "With an effort, breathing more evenly, stretched the size of the image and, trying to be calm, clicked on" Today ".  

In the opening rectangle it was written: "Today, February 21. Above this, a faded inscription -" Yesterday, February 20. "Under" today "- brightly" Tomorrow, February 22. ", Then below:" Mon, 23 February, Tue, 24 February ", etc. I looked in the upper left corner of the screen there was an inscription iPhon and a Wi-Fi reception icon - the" antenna "showed the maximum reception! Coming home, on Krestovsky, I always rebuilt the iPhone for home Wi-Fi, since the house was in some kind of "blind spot", as the MTS operators explained, and for the Internet the reception was very "slow". bought for show-off, “Verta.” It worked with the MTS SIM card absolutely fine.  

- "So..." Not fully believing in what is happening, I called Google from bookmarks, and it immediately obediently opened. And also the date is not specified! I typed in the search engine: "today's date", the search opened, clicked the first line, the full screen displayed "What is today the date and day of the week? Answer: February 21, 2015! -Saturday-". Below was an ad for a Bank and a link to social networks. In the address bar, the site name: "what-today-number. RF". I frantically returned to Yandex and typed in the first thing that came to mind: "Scheme of the su-35 aircraft". The result - a lot of sites, "  Google .Pictures: Found 3 thousand. pictures", and there are photos, diagrams, descriptions... Have arrived... Second query: "Microsoft stock Price in 2000" - a bunch of sites...then I read it, but I already see that there is information. - "So, so, so..." - if the iPhone will continue to work and if I'm in my own world, and not in a parallel one, then in this game I will have "God mode"! Hallelujah!!! Bingo!!! I will be the king of the world!!! 

It took at least ten minutes for the excited running around the apartment, kissing the iPhone and convulsively drinking water to calm down. - "Some kind of increased excitability" - I noted out of the corner of my mind. However, too much had happened in just half a day. Excusably.

I rushed to the kitchen and checked my watch with my iPhone. The clock showed 14: 23, the iPhone-14: 22. He smiled at the memory and walked confidently down the hall to the phone. I picked up the phone and dialed 08: "Exact time 14 hours 22 minutes, exact time 14 hours 23 minutes" - a female voice informed me. The iPhone was also showing 14: 23. - "uh-huh ... so, so, so..." as Far as I remember, I didn't have a watch at that age. Sometimes I went with my mother's, which she no longer wore. Yellow color, with a brown leather strap-lied to classmates that gold!

"I'm doing some bullshit... After 4 hours, my mother will come home from work and we need to have a plan of action ready by this time.". He returned to the chair, closed his eyes, and began planning. Actually, the whole problem falls into two parts: the first is to adequately integrate into the existing reality, not to get burned in front of my mother, classmates, and not to fail my studies, which I obviously don't remember a damn thing about. Second, how to live on and for what? There are, like, three main options. Playing on the stock exchanges of the West, participating in the initial plunder of your country, or the Messiah saves mother Russia!

Well, I am almost 50 years old, and I have a rich, and most importantly successful, experience in managing people and organizations. I know the history of my country for the next 40 years. I also have a good idea of the history and mentality of the East and West. Moreover, I know how specific people and countries will behave. I know how everything will develop and how it will end. And most importantly, I have Internet in my iPhone!

FUCK... It's serious. I am armed and very much so... very... very dangerous. Something seemed to click in my head and fall into place. I became completely calm, and a cold and angry determination came over me. A second chance at life. It doesn't happen, but I do. And I won't lose!..

***

When the apartment bell rang at 18: 38, I went to open the door fully armed. When my mother came in, flushed from the cold and surprisingly young, she immediately handed me a heavy bag of groceries and put her lips to my forehead to check my temperature.

"Isn't your forehead hot when you measure it?"

- "10 minutes ago, 36.8', I took an aspirin an hour ago, it was 38" " - I cheerfully reported.

- "I understand why there is no temperature" - my mother frowned - " why are you staring at me like that? Take the net to the kitchen and go to bed. It's cold in the corridor, the heat is bad again. " - she said taking off her coat.

I dragged the net to the kitchen, simultaneously being touched by this, apparently, purely Soviet invention for carrying food! In addition, our family had a special plastic handle, a strange bright orange color, with a recess for the mesh handles, which were inserted there so as not to cut your fingers. "I remembered her, too!" Mom went into the kitchen and began loading food into the refrigerator. In the process, I noticed a bundle of sausages wrapped in gray wrapping paper, a glass bottle of milk with a lid made of silver foil with blue stripes, the rest of the packages could not be identified.

"Why are you staring at me like that again?"go to bed, I said. I'll get you some hot milk and butter and you can drink it in one gulp!" With a smile, I headed for the bedroom. Although I was prepared for the meeting, and I felt much calmer than in the first hours of my stay in this time, but the first meeting with my mother pretty much disturbed me. I can imagine her reaction if I roared and threw my arms around her and wailed, " you're alive, you're alive!" But this mother did not cause pity and tears. I saw a young woman in her early 30s, very pretty, confident, businesslike, and absolutely healthy. Besides, she was much younger than me! Well, that me...

For the next 5 days, I simulated treatment and a slow recovery. In the process, I read all the Humanities textbooks in a day without finding any difficulties in them. Algebra and geometry took the remaining 4 days. It wasn't enough to read this crap, you also had to memorize formulas and theorems, because the next one was based on the previous one. Physics was much easier.

The relationship with my mother developed smoothly and without problems. I didn't get emotional, I did what she said, sometimes I argued with her, but on the whole I did a good job of it. Although I caught her looking at me thoughtfully a couple of times.

In the evenings, until 21: 30, we watched TV together. Sometimes I was able to watch movies, most of them familiar to me from my previous life. Especially many of them were shown on February 23, on the occasion of the day of the Soviet Army and Navy! I looked at two: "Officers" and "the heavenly slow mover". To be honest, I saw these films often in my previous life, and now I didn't feel any interest, but my mother watched them and I politely kept her company.

As it was, television was surprisingly poor and uninteresting. I tried to turn on the TV during the day, but during the day there was nothing except documentaries, classical music and General education programs on the second program.

I was genuinely amused by some musical program, or rather the way the operator tried to give dynamics to the picture of a Symphony orchestra playing something, giving close-UPS of the conductor alternately twitching with a stick, shaking the first violin with his hair, and a man loudly banging metal cymbals, on the conductor's tip!

And so, we usually watched the program "Time" and then, to the iconic melody of the weather forecast, I was sent to bed! Lying in bed, I spent about an hour building various plans and slowly fell asleep.

However, it was impossible to be ill forever, and on the morning of Monday, February 27, 1978, I entered the walls of my native 81 secondary school in Leningrad.

I must say that our school was an eight-year-old and it was mainly attended by children of the "hegemon". At least the guys had their own interests: go for a walk, smoke, play football, and fight. God forbid, no alcohol, s*x, drugs, theft or robbery! All of the above later became the achievements of a truly democratic Russia. And now the sight of an ordinary district police officer inspired students with "shock and awe".

After the eighth grade, 90% of my classmates went to technical schools and vocational schools, and only a few, including me, went to other schools to finish their studies in grades 9-10. Since at a young age I was not yet able to fully hide my thoughts and hypocrisy, I did not enjoy the special love of my "simple" classmates. I didn't have any real friends, so I had a couple of good friends.

As for the girls, the classmates were looking for the attention of our "cool macho", slender blond Stas Lushchinin, and my share was not much. I mean, haha, nothing... I wasn't a freak, of course, I was worse! I was a child... That is, I was only slightly shorter than Lushchinin, and my build was stronger, but my face was plump, childish, and even with a blush! Well, where is there to a smiling blond handsome man... In addition, as I recall, I did not go far from my appearance in my behavior. A sign of sympathy on my part could be a kick in the girl's ass with a briefcase! Where is there to success with women! So I wasn't afraid of too much attention to myself.

Well, what can I say about the first school day of a new life?! I didn't remember 9/10 of my classmates either by name, nickname, or face... Before the first lesson, I sat down at an empty Desk, from which I was chased away with indignant screams by some two young goats, under the pretext that they always sit there. Immediately, a brat plopped down on the seat I had given up and sent "goats"with a wild cackle... find another Desk!

In the end, I sat down with one of the few friends I remembered well. Dimka Chesnovich and I were friends for all 8 years, but we were not special friends. After the 8th grade, he went to technical school and the last time we met was at Optik on Bolshoy Prospekt Petrogradki, about a year after graduation. He was doing a training internship there and spent 10 minutes enthusiastically telling me how "just yesterday" he picked up a nice metal frame for some guy. It came with a new batch and was freely sold, and the man, in addition to the check knocked out at the cash register, put a chervonets in the pocket of Dimka's uniform coat! We never met again...

We sat down at the same Desk and Dimka began to tell me little interesting news for the week I was ill. Then the "Englishman" appeared in the class - a young, 30-year-old, cute and fashionably dressed, always cheerful Anatoly Moiseevich. I remember that he didn't work for us for long, and left school in the middle of the school year. There were whispers that the parents of one and eight-year-olds had complained about something. These rumors were accompanied by significant grimaces and eye rolls. And first of all, this "f*****g Lovelace" decided to check the homework and called me to answer.

Well, break a b***h?! I didn't learn English at all. What for? I probably know him better than Moiseich, with some experience of life in the United States and Canada, as well as trips to English-speaking countries. He's certainly never been abroad! Therefore, I did not remember my homework, citing the fact that I was ill. But Moiseich, smiling mockingly, said that the task was to make a retelling, in Russian, of the contents of the hefty English text "lasson nambe SETI seven, on page fifty nine".

Well, okay! He opened up the lasson nambe network seven and started recounting a story about an English dude who was courting a girl from a rich family but didn't have any money himself. He often walked with this girl down the street, past the shop window, where there was a very beautiful and very expensive vase. The girl never stopped near this window and admired the beauty of the vase. Once a girl invited a guy to her birthday party, and he didn't have money for a decent gift. The guy didn't know what to do and suddenly he saw that the vase was missing in the window of a familiar store. He came in and asked about her fate and the seller replied that the vase had just been accidentally broken and even large fragments had not yet been removed from the floor. And then the dude devised a clever plan! He paid some money to the seller and he agreed to help the guy. On her birthday, the "English Combinator" came to the girl without a gift and publicly stated that he had bought THAT vase as a gift in the store and now it would be delivered by the store's courier. The courier arrives in 5 minutes and solemnly carries a beautiful packing box in the direction of the birthday girl. And then ... Oh, horror!.. the courier "accidentally" stumbles and falls, dropping the box on the floor. Upset guests pick up the box (the fate of the courier, apparently, English gentlemen are not interested) and open it. And there are fragments of a vase, each wrapped in wrapping paper!

Here is such a sense of humour! Apparently, few people translated the text in the class, so they listened to me carefully and there was silence in the class. And at the end of my presentation, everyone burst out laughing. Moiseich laughed along with everyone, said that I was doing great, but I didn't have to pretend that I wasn't prepared. He gave me a five and sat me down. Chesnovich enthusiastically nudged me with his elbow. The rest of the lessons were also not difficult. I didn't have algebra or geometry today, I wasn't asked for physics, and Russian, literature, and geography didn't cause any problems, so I did a couple of successful blurts on them, even though I didn't earn a grade. I was released from physical education for two weeks after my illness, and since it was the last one, the physical education teacher let me go home!