The Price of an Idea

I. Welcome to Molchegorsk

The gas did not run out all at once.

First the needle settled on the red line and trembled there for several more kilometers, keeping time with the potholes. Then a light came on in the dashboard—dim, almost orange, with the embossed shape of a gas pump. He tapped the glass with his fingernail. The needle jerked downward.

“Not now, please.”

He sat with his neck drawn into his shoulders, as though even here, alone in the car, he expected someone to snap at him. He was a little overweight. His stretched-out hoodie bunched over his soft belly; dark holes gaped at the elbows and beside the pocket. A dreary, pale, poorly shaven face with inflamed eyes floated in the rearview mirror. That morning he had tilted the mirror toward the ceiling, but the broken road had gradually shaken it back down.

A crumpled bag dusted with bread crumbs lay on the passenger-side floor mat. Loose change filled the ashtray instead of cigarettes. He had counted it several times whenever he stopped, though the total never changed.

Once, the car had been a dark blue Lada Nine. Now the color survived only on the roof and around the door handles. Rust had eaten through the fenders, a rag plugged a hole in the right sill, and a sheet of tin lay beneath the passenger mat, covering the rotted floor. The tin jumped and clanged over every bump. The worn patches on his jeans had faded almost white, and the cloth over his right knee had rubbed through. Water leaked past the windshield seal and dripped straight onto the driver's lap, so he kept an old towel spread over his jeans.

He had stopped repairing any of it long ago. He stuffed newspaper into the cracks, wedged a rag behind his back, and when the driver's door would not open from inside, he climbed out through the passenger side. You could get used to almost anything if you did not think about how other people had it.

The car did not answer. It rarely spoke to him at all, and always in the same language: the rattle of a door, the cough of the engine, a dull knock beneath the chassis. Now a thin metallic chirring came from under the hood as well. It appeared on climbs, faded on descents, and returned a little louder every time.

The road crawled along the mountain, pressed close to the black slope. Beyond the low guardrail on the right there was nothing—only fog, dense and motionless. The headlights cut a few meters of wet asphalt from it, a white line, the next roadside post. Everything else seemed not to have come into being yet.

He slowed down. The wipers scraped dryly across the windshield even though there was no rain. With every sweep they smeared the settled moisture, and for an instant the fog took the shape of long gray streaks. Then the glass clouded over again.

He could not remember the last time he had seen a road sign. An hour ago, or ten minutes—in this whiteness, distance and time held their shape equally poorly. There had been a fork, a truck on the shoulder, a yellow sign with the name of a river. Or perhaps that had been before the pass.

He took one hand off the wheel and felt for the phone in his pocket.

The screen lit up a pale green. The digits read 18:47. There was not a single bar of service in the corner.

The phone was old, with buttons, a worn casing, and a crack running from the asterisk key to the battery icon. It could make calls, receive messages, and wake him in the morning. He had seen sleek phones with maps only in shop windows and other people's palms. Once he had asked to see the cheapest one, heard the price, said he would think about it, and never went into that shop again.

“Ah, if I could afford one of them modren phones with gee-pee-ess,” he said, just to hear a voice. “Least I'd know where to run out of gas. It'd show me a station, too. But no, gotta figure it all out yourself.”

Inside the car, the words sounded flat and alien. When they ended, the metallic chirring under the hood became easier to hear.

He pressed the call button. A few seconds later the screen displayed: EMERGENCY CALLS ONLY.

“Thanks. Real helpful. Ah, well. People got around without gee-pee-ess before. I'll make it. Where else am I gonna go?”

He put the phone back in his hoodie pocket.

The road tilted upward. The pedal sank farther beneath his old sneaker. The engine labored with an uneven drone. The gas needle no longer trembled. It lay below the red line.

He turned off the heater, though the inside of the car was cold, and twisted the radio dial. One frequency hissed, another crackled, a third sent a steady rustle through the speaker. He tried to catch anything else, but the needle passed over the empty scale again and again.

“Ah, if I had a raydio with an em-pee-en-three player, I could listen to music. Meant to buy one, too. Kept thinking, I'll put in a proper one later. Then the prices went up. And what's the point putting a good raydio in a wreck like this? Someone'd steal it. I'll manage. Won't go deaf.”

He left it on the frequency where the rustle was quieter. For a moment, he thought someone was speaking through it. Not words—a measured voice reciting short numbers at regular intervals.

“There you go,” he sighed. “Can't even pick up static properly.”

He turned off the radio. The volume knob clicked dryly.

He could hear moisture settling on the roof.

A white patch appeared ahead.

He tensed and lifted his foot from the gas. The patch hovered above the road at the height of a person. It became a rectangle; then metal flashed. A road sign.

He leaned toward the windshield, squinting. The headlights slid across blue paint and large white letters:

MOLCHEGORSK

An arrow beneath the name pointed right. Below it, on a separate narrow panel, were the words:

OLD TOWN — 3

Past the sign, a turnoff detached itself from the fog. A narrow road plunged between the pines and disappeared almost at once around a bend.

He laughed. The sound came out short, guilty, and too loud. He fell silent immediately and glanced by habit at the seat beside him, as though someone might be sitting there, disturbed by his happiness.

“Oh, a town! Lucky fella, that's me. Maybe they'll spot me a bit of gas.”

He did not know whether he was talking to the car or to himself.

Molchegorsk might have been three kilometers away. The Old Town might have been three kilometers away. It did not matter. A town meant houses, people, and a gas station. At worst, he could buy a can of gas from someone at three times the price. The important thing was not to stall on the pass and spend the night in a cold car.

He switched on the turn signal.

The green arrow on the dashboard blinked. Click. Pause. Click. Pause.

On the third click, he turned.

The descent was steeper than it had looked from above. The asphalt was old, unmarked, scored with cracks across its width. Wet firs crowded both sides. Their lower branches reached over the road and scraped the roof, though at least a meter separated the car from the trees.

He rode the brake. Fog streamed between the trunks and gathered across the road in layers: white, gray, almost black. In the headlights, the layers looked like motionless ledges, one beneath another. The car dropped through them, and each time he expected to find no road beneath the tires.

A kilometer marker appeared several minutes later. It bore the number 3.

He looked at the odometer. When the next marker emerged ahead, it also bore the number 3.

“Forgot to take the old sign down,” he said.

The third marker lay faceup in the ditch.

It bore the number 3.

The engine coughed. The headlights dimmed, recovered, and dimmed again. The inside of the car filled with the smell of hot wiring and something else—heavy, greasy, faintly sweet. He opened the window two finger-widths. Outside smelled of wet needles and cold stone.

The sweetish smell remained inside.

He closed the window.

The road leveled out. The trees drew back, and the first houses of the Old Town emerged beyond them.

The street began without warning. The forest ended at a rusty crash barrier, with a three-story building immediately behind it. The first streetlight came on as the car approached and went out the moment he passed. The next did the same.

The light passed from lamp to lamp, accompanying the car. Motion sensors, probably. Saving electricity.

At first he saw only rooftops. They appeared one after another in the fog, dark and sharp, descending toward an invisible center. Then came the upper floors, balconies, drainpipes. Beyond the first old houses stretched rows of Khrushchev-era apartment blocks—gray, faded, in places stripped down to the brick. They stood along the road as identical five-story boxes, but time had battered each in its own way. One had lost a corner, a wide crack crossed another, and the balconies of a third had been enclosed with mismatched plastic and rusty sheets of metal.

He drove between them slowly, avoiding the potholes. Lights burned in some windows. Televisions flickered behind curtains, a kitchen hood blinked on the second floor, and forgotten laundry swayed on one balcony. An apartment-block door ahead eased shut, as though someone had just gone inside.

But there were no people.

No one stood by the entrances, smoked on a balcony, or crossed the road. An open umbrella lay at a bus stop. A split grocery bag had spilled potatoes across the pavement beside a food kiosk. A sedan parked by the curb ticked quietly as its engine cooled. Nothing looked abandoned. It looked deserted only moments ago—as though the town had been going about its ordinary life until his headlights appeared in the fog.

Beyond the buildings, deeper in the basin, the mountain's bulk could just be made out. He could not see it whole—only a black mass sealing off the horizon. The mountain was in front of him now, though he had only just descended from it. The road must have curved around the slope.

He stopped at an intersection.

A chain-link fence blocked the road ahead. Beyond it, the fog concealed a broad street and the crowns of leafless trees. The road to the left descended toward the center. To the right, the houses thinned out, yielding to hillside and forest.

Several signs hung from a pole. The one marked CENTER pointed left. Beneath it, an arrow toward the Old Municipal Cemetery pointed right. The lowest sign was a small white board with uneven black letters:

GAS — 1.2

Its arrow also pointed right.

“Sure,” he muttered. “Whatever you say.”

He pressed the gas lightly to keep the engine from stalling at idle. The needle did not stir. The gas-pump warning light now shone brighter than every other instrument.

He looked at the dark road leading toward the outskirts and switched on the right turn signal.

“Right it is,” he sighed. “Cemetery that way, gas that way. Nice neighborhood. Not like I got a choice.”

He turned right.

The road curved around the last row of apartment blocks and headed toward the edge of town. Streetlights were farther apart here, but a low white canopy showed through the fog ahead. Four gas pumps gleamed beneath it. Above a small building, red letters spelled GAS.

“There we go,” he brightened. “Sign didn't lie. I'll ask for a bit of gas, pay 'em back somehow later. People can be understanding.”

The car rolled up to the first pump. The engine choked, convulsed through the body several times, and died. He kept his hands on the wheel for a moment longer, as though hoping this did not count as a breakdown, then glanced guiltily at the empty seat beside him.

“Told you there wasn't much. It's all right. We made it.”

A light burned behind the glass door of the gas station. He could see a cash register, a plastic cup, and an open notebook on the counter. The chair had been pushed back, as though the cashier had just stood up. But there was no one behind the counter, just as there was no one between the pumps.

“Ah, self-service,” he realized. “I respect that. Progress. Modern.”

He really did respect self-service. At chain stores, the checkout did not look him in the face or peek inside his bag. Sometimes a bread roll, a pack of sausages, or a can of stew somehow escaped the scanner. If an employee happened to be nearby, he could always give a guilty shrug: did not notice, did not understand, the machine must have frozen.

What kind of stealing was that? You could not survive any other way on his money. Big shops would not go poor over a single bread roll. You had to adapt.

He looked beyond the canopy. About five hundred meters from the gas station, the broad rectangular bulk of a shopping center showed through the fog. Several letters on its facade had gone dark, but the sign could still be read. Parking-lot lights shone in front of the entrance. Not a single car moved beneath them.

Farther still, beyond the shopping center and the rooftops of the apartment blocks, a thin circle hovered in the mist. At first he took it for the rim of some enormous antenna, or a construction crane. Then spokes, supports, and dark gondolas emerged.

A Ferris wheel towered above the Old Town, motionless.

He watched it through the windshield for a long time. One gondola slowly appeared in the fog at the very top, swayed, and dissolved into whiteness again.

There was no wind.

After climbing out of the car, he walked to the pump. The fuel door stuck. He pried it open with his key, inserted the nozzle into the filler neck, squeezed the lever, and waited.

Beneath the canopy, the air smelled of gasoline and wet concrete. The same sweetish odor of overheated grease threaded through the sharp reek of fuel. He swallowed. He had eaten nothing since morning except dry bread. It must be coming from the shopping center.

Nothing flowed.

A rectangular screen on the pump flickered dimly to life. Beneath it were a bill acceptor and a narrow coin slot. A message scrolled across the screen:

INSERT PAYMENT FIRST

He released the lever, squeezed it again, and shook the nozzle. There might be a little fuel left in the hose. The counter did not move.

“Ah, some self-service,” he drawled. “Pay for it yourself, pump it yourself. So where's the service part?”

He peered into the coin slot, scratched at it with a fingernail, and even knocked on the casing. The pump did not respond. The change in the car's ashtray would barely wet the bottom of the tank.

He had no choice but to put the nozzle back.

He headed for the station building. Since the cashier had stepped away, he could wait for them and ask for gas on credit. He composed his explanation in advance: he was going to see a sick relative, he had gotten lost, he had dropped his wallet on the pass. He had not yet decided what order to tell it in.

The glass door would not open.

He pulled harder, then pushed, even though the handle said PULL. The lock struck dully. The lights were on inside, the register was powered, but the door remained locked. There was no CLOSED sign, no note, not even a list of opening hours.

“Well, it happens. Man can't step away to take a dump?”

He rapped his knuckles against the glass. Not loudly, so as not to annoy whoever might be inside. Then he knocked again and cupped his hands around his face to peer in. No one appeared behind the counter.

He could wait. Sooner or later, the person would return. He stepped away from the door, buried his hands in his pockets, and surveyed the empty station for a place out of the draft.

Something flashed at the edge of the road.

He thought it was a shard of glass, but the glint was too even. A coin lay on the wet asphalt in the streetlight. Another glimmered a little farther away. Beyond it—a third.

When he came closer, he saw that the coins had not been spilled in a pile but lay one by one, each the same distance from the next. They formed a trail that followed the shoulder into the fog. The first few still caught the light from the gas station. The rest winked beyond it as sparse yellow dots.

He picked up the nearest coin and rubbed it with his thumb. Real.

The next lay two steps away.

“Look at that, someone's helping me buy my little drop of gas,” he said happily. “Save a kopeck, save a ruble.”

He dropped the coin into his other, empty pocket.

Ding!

The coin had landed soundlessly in the empty pocket. The brief, pure chime rang somewhere behind his eyes.

He put the next one in the same pocket.

Ding!

Then another.

Ding!

“Funny,” he muttered. “Like some kinda video game.”

The last word was still sounding in his head when a dull pressure gathered behind his eyes. He stopped, pressed a palm to his forehead, and squeezed his eyes shut.

Video game.

The pain intensified.

He began counting the change he had collected, converting it into liters and estimating how much farther it would carry him. The pressure eased at once and vanished completely a few seconds later.

“Must be the weather,” he decided. “Pressure's always jumping around in the mountains.”

He bent for the next coin without returning to the thought.

Ding!

That was how he reached almost to the edge of the gas station's light. The coins lay one at a time: on the asphalt, beside the curb, between clumps of withered grass. Each produced the same ding inside his head. He was counting liters now, not coins, and the pain did not return.

The collected change weighed pleasantly in his pocket. He patted it and reckoned that he definitely had enough for a couple of liters. There might even be some left over.

The last coin lay in a puddle.

Dark water covered it almost entirely. Only a round edge gleamed beneath a thin film of rainbow fuel. He squatted, rolled back his fraying sleeve, and spent some time trying to catch the coin with a fingernail without getting his fingers wet.

It did not work.

“Poor little coin's had itself a drink...” he said sympathetically.

He dipped two fingers into the icy water and lifted the coin. Dirty droplets ran across his palm toward his sleeve.

Ding!

Wiping his fingers on his hoodie, he began to rise.

KHR-R-RKHM!

The sound struck directly behind his head—so close that the stranger's throat might have been against his ear.

He yelped and lurched forward. The sole of his sneaker slipped along the edge of the puddle, his arms flew above his head, and the coin pinched between his fingers nearly dropped back into the water. For several moments, there was nothing but his rasping breath and the blows of his pulse inside his ears.

Someone behind him had merely cleared his throat—loudly and hoarsely.

He turned.

A homeless man stood two steps away.

The man was wrapped in several layers of clothing: a long coat with a ragged hem hung over a greasy jacket, and matted gray hair stuck out from beneath a knitted cap. A patchy beard nearly hid his face. He smelled of damp wool, tobacco, and a body long unwashed.

The homeless man held an iPhone in one hand.

He did not know the exact model. An iPhone 15, maybe—he had once seen one like it behind glass. This phone had been through a lot, too: its corners were battered, its back was scratched, and fine cracks spread from a chip near the bottom edge. Even like this, it was probably worth more than his Lada. The screen shone brightly, but the homeless man held it at an angle, making it impossible to see what was open on it.

An Adam's apple bobbed beneath the tangled beard. The man spoke loudly and hoarsely:

“Help a homegrown game dev—wishlist it.”

He held out the iPhone in both hands and froze, staring straight into his face.

Now the screen was directly before his eyes. A Steam store page was open. In place of a price and a purchase button, a notice said that the game had not yet been released; below it was an invitation to add the game to a wishlist.

He looked at the screenshots. A bright three-dimensional character leaped across platforms suspended in midair. Some rose in tiers, others moved above an abyss, and straight chains of gold coins stretched between them. The character was seen from behind and slightly above.

“I'd help, course I would... Only I haven't got a computer. Can't afford one,” he babbled plaintively.

“You can play it on your phone,” the homeless man rasped.

“My phone's old, too. Can't run games.”

He pulled his button phone from his hoodie pocket and showed it to the homeless man.

For several seconds, the man stared at the worn casing and the cracked green screen. Then he slowly raised his eyes and gave him a meaningful look.

“Fine,” the homeless man said hoarsely.

He put away the iPhone and walked off along the road. After a few steps, the ragged hem dissolved into the fog. There was no sound of footsteps.

Through the cloth of his pocket, he squeezed the coins. Enough for a couple of liters.

The wind struck without warning.

The metal canopy above the station boomed. Fog shifted across the road in one dense sheet but did not disperse. Several white grains flew from it. One clicked against his cheek and melted.

Then the snow came all at once—thick, wet, almost horizontal. In seconds it whitened his shoulders and hood. The wind found the holes at his elbows, crawled under his hoodie, and drew cold fingers down his back. The worn fabric of his jeans held no warmth, and water from the puddle already squelched in his right sneaker.

He pulled up his hood and looked at the car. Without gas, there was no heater. He would only sit there freezing until the cashier returned.

“Holey pants ain't much good against the cold. I'll go warm up in the mall.”

The shopping center glowed dimly through the snow. The wind blew from that direction, carrying the sweetish smell of overheated grease with the wet flakes.

Keeping one hand over the pocket of coins, he walked along the roadside toward the empty parking lot.

The closer he came, the brighter the shopping center's windows grew. A white sign hung above the entrance; illuminated storefronts ran along the facade. Yet no shadow passed behind any pane. No doors slammed in the parking lot, no shopping carts squealed, no one hurried out of the snow toward the entrance.

A UAZ Patriot stood directly in front of the doors. Its engine idled, vapor spilling from the exhaust. The driver's door hung open. Snow had not yet had time to gather on the seat or sill.

He stopped in the middle of the parking lot and looked around. Then he looked at the running vehicle.

“Hm. Could help myself to a little gas while no one's looking,” he told himself.

Glancing toward the entrance, he approached the UAZ and peered inside through the open door.

A handgun lay on the passenger seat.

The edge of the door slipped from his fingers. One step back. Then another.

“Though maybe better not.”

He gave the vehicle a wide berth and headed for the entrance.

Beneath the glass awning, the wind almost died away. He shook snow from his hood and studied the entrance. Through the glass doors he could see an information desk, benches, and the beginning of a broad gallery. Advertising leaflets lay in a neat stack on the desk, and the floor gleamed beneath rows of ceiling lights. Only his reflection moved across it. His hood clung to his forehead, and dark wet patches spread across his hoodie.

The UAZ continued to purr behind him. He looked back at its open door, then into the shopping center once more.

As soon as he took another step, the automatic doors slid soundlessly apart. Warm air and the sweetish smell of overheated grease drifted out of the lobby.

He crossed the threshold.

The glass panels closed behind him, and the roar of the wind vanished at once.

II. The Final Question

It was warm inside, but that did not make it welcoming. The air stood motionless, smelling of wet clothes, dust, and something fried. The snow on his shoulders began to melt at once. Cold drops trickled down his neck beneath the hoodie.

He turned. Beyond the glass, the snow drove almost horizontally, burying the parking lot. The UAZ still stood with its door open, but he could not hear the running engine from here. He could not hear the wind either. The glass wall displayed the storm in perfect silence, as if a silent film were playing beyond it.

A broad gallery extended ahead. Some twenty meters on, it intersected another of equal width, and above their crossroads the space opened to the second floor. Metal railings gleamed there, and the black handrails of the escalators moved.

The intersection was not far. Usually, you would cover a distance like that without noticing.

He rubbed his hands and walked forward.

Storefronts shone on both sides. White light fell across the tile in even rectangles, leaving almost no shadows. Behind one pane, mannequins stood in winter jackets; a blue one with its sleeves spread toward the walkway was nearest. Behind another, phones lay on transparent stands, their screens dark. The stores' security grilles were raised, their doors open, their merchandise arranged neatly—only the registers and aisles were empty.

In the glass of the first storefront, his own reflection looked like a man walking toward him. He stepped aside. The wet man in the hole-riddled hoodie stepped aside too.

“Sorry,” he muttered, then realized whom he had apologized to.

He glanced around to see whether anyone had noticed. The gallery remained empty.

The ceiling lights hummed evenly. From the distance, the soft mechanical rumble of the escalators joined their hum. No music, no announcements, no talk from the shops.

His wet soles left dark prints on the pale tile. They stretched behind him from the entrance in a single uneven chain. There were no other prints, fresh or drying, though the floor beside the doors still gleamed with water shed from his clothes.

An open magazine lay on a kiosk that sold phone cases. Beside it stood a mug with a dark ring at the bottom. The chair had been pushed back slightly, as though the clerk had just stood and gone into the stockroom.

A narrow doorway gaped black behind the kiosk.

The narrow opening made him slow down. He waited for someone to emerge. No one did.

“Hello? Anyone working here?”

His voice spread through the empty hall and quickly thinned away. The final syllable came back from somewhere above, too faint to mistake for an answer.

He walked on. About halfway to the intersection, the warm air ceased to feel warm. It had not grown colder—the sense that there ought to be radiators, a kitchen, people nearby had simply vanished. Only the same temperature remained in every direction, like a building long closed and forgotten with the lights still on.

The intersection approached slowly. The storefronts repeated themselves: clothes, shoes, dark screens, white price tags. Several steps later, the blue jacket with its sleeves spread wide appeared again behind a different pane. The same chain must have rented several stores at once. That happened in malls.

At last, the walls opened out on either side.

Four galleries met beneath the square opening of the second floor. Each ran between glowing storefronts and dissolved several dozen meters away into the same white radiance.

Two escalators operated in the center of the crossroads. One carried empty steps upward. The other brought equally empty steps down and folded them under the metal comb plate. At regular intervals, something knocked dully inside.

He stopped at the lower landing and looked up. Illuminated signs, the edges of storefronts, and motionless advertising posters were visible above the railings. No one approached the balustrade. No one came down.

It truly had been no more than twenty meters to the escalator. From here, the entrance doors somehow appeared much farther away.

He stood beside the moving steps a little longer. The same white storefronts shone above, and the sweetish smell of overheated grease grew stronger. The food court must be on the second floor. Surely he would find somebody there—a vendor, a cleaner, a security guard.

“They couldn't all have left at once.”

He put a palm on the black handrail. The rubber was warm and faintly tacky. Steps emerged one by one from beneath the metal comb plate, unfolded, and traveled upward. He hesitated, gauged the movement, and stepped on.

His right sneaker slipped slightly on the ridged metal. He swayed, gripped the handrail more tightly, and planted both feet closer to the middle of the step.

The escalator carried him upward.

An empty down escalator moved toward him. Its black handrail crept downward, its steps unfolded at the upper landing and traveled slowly toward the first floor without delivering a single person. He stood on the right from habit, though there was no one to pass him.

More of the second floor came into view with every meter. Another gallery of illuminated shops ran behind the railings. The white tables of the food court stood farther back. Chairs had been tucked in neatly, menu boards glowed above the counters, but no one sat between the tables.

About halfway up, an explosion thundered somewhere deep inside the shopping center.

The sound arrived as a muffled blow, as though several walls had absorbed it. A low rumble followed through the floors. The metal steps quivered beneath his feet.

“What the hell?” he breathed.

He drew his head into his shoulders and seized the handrail with both hands.

The white light vanished.

The ceiling lamps, store signs, and panels above the food court all went dark at once. The escalator carried him another half-step upward and stopped abruptly. Momentum pitched him forward; he struck his knee against the next metal edge and barely kept his feet.

The handrail jerked beneath his palms and froze.

The distant rumble lived on for several seconds in the new darkness. Then it too disappeared.

The emergency lights did not come on.

He stood without releasing the handrail. White rectangles from the extinguished storefronts floated before his eyes. Somewhere below, beyond the glass facade, the snow glimmered gray, but its light was not enough even to make out the steps beneath his feet.

“Nope. I want no part of this.”

He felt for his hoodie pocket, took out the phone, and pressed a button. The dim green screen illuminated his fingers, the edge of the handrail, and the two nearest steps. There was still no service.

He turned and began to descend. The motionless escalator was steeper than it had appeared from below. Each step echoed through the hollow metal casing, and the next echo came only after he had stopped to check his path by the light of the screen.

At the lower landing, his sneaker caught on the comb plate. He nearly fell, swore under his breath, and stepped onto the tile.

The return to the entrance took longer than it should have. The darkened storefronts no longer reflected the gallery—solid blackness hung behind the glass. The green glow of the phone picked out a mannequin's white hand, the edge of an empty bench, his own wet footprints. He followed them like signs.

Snow had turned the parking lot beyond the entrance doors gray. The UAZ was a dark patch opposite the exit; the driver's door was still open.

He approached the automatic doors.

The panels did not open.

He stepped back and approached the sensor again. Then he raised the phone over his head, waved it, and even jumped. The doors did not stir.

“Come on. Open.”

He pushed his fingers into the seam between the panels and pulled them apart. One gave at first, leaving a gap as wide as his palm, but would go no farther. Something clicked dryly beneath the frame. He strained harder, his wet soles sliding on the tile, then let go.

The panel returned to its place.

“It's the power,” he told himself. “Lights went out, so the system locked up. Nothing strange about that.”

The last words came more quietly than the first.

He looked through the glass at the snow-buried parking lot, then back at the black gallery behind him. Someone had to know how to open the doors. The food court was upstairs; a guard or one of the employees might be there.

Cupping one hand around the glowing screen, he retraced his own footprints.

The escalators waited in the middle of the intersection. Now they looked no different from two stationary metal staircases climbing into darkness. The black handrails gleamed dully in the phone's green light.

He set a foot on the first step and started upward.

Halfway up, he stopped where the sudden halt had thrown him off balance only moments ago. He listened. No voices came from the depths of the shopping center, no alarm, no crackle of fire.

Only the steady drip of water, somewhere far away.

He climbed the remaining steps and stepped onto the second floor.

The phone's light made a small green patch on the tile. Darkness began just beyond it. He slowly swept the phone from side to side, trying to tell where the explosion had occurred. There was no smoke, no fire. The food-court counters, the glass balustrade, and the ceiling above them appeared intact. Whatever had exploded, he could not see the place from here. Only the familiar smell of overheated grease was now mixed with dry dust.

He took several steps from the escalator and shone the phone along the gallery. To the left, beyond the glass balustrade, the open atrium above the first floor yawned black. Closed food-court stalls lined the right. An empty paper cup sat on a tray at the nearest counter.

“Maybe a gas line blew somewhere,” he muttered. “Someone'll turn up now. Someone has to.”

The next explosion struck much closer. The air shoved him in the back. Something cracked above the escalator landing.

He managed to leap aside before part of the ceiling slab crashed down where he had been standing. Square panels, lamps, and crushed ventilation ducts came with the concrete. A heavy block struck across both escalators. The steps buckled like an accordion, one handrail snapped and lashed against the metal side.

The crash filled the entire atrium. Below, tile continued to fall for several seconds; glass chimed, severed parts rolled across the floor.

When it ended, a heap of concrete and twisted metal towered between the second floor and the lower landing. Ridged steps jutted from it in several places.

He did not approach the wreckage at once. Dust settled slowly in the phone's green light. In the motionless air, only his breathing remained—rapid, whistling between his teeth.

Holding the phone closer, he saw a narrow gap between the slabs and a length of rebar hanging loose. Beyond them was the drop to the first floor. He recoiled and lowered the phone.

“Door's locked anyway,” he muttered. “Where would I go back to?”

His own words brought no comfort. He stood before the wreckage and listened to debris settle deeper inside with infrequent clicks.

Another blast sounded ahead. The gallery shuddered from end to end. He clutched the phone to his chest and covered his head with his arms while a crack ran across the ceiling—thin at first, barely visible; then several black lines branched from it toward the walls.

The ceiling began to collapse in sections.

The nearest slab fell flat a few meters away and punched through the floor. Another came down after it, dragging lamps and long bundles of wires. A farther section caught at an angle, held for several moments, then vanished into the rising cloud of dust.

The tile buckled beneath his feet. A dark fissure ran along its seams.

He dashed forward, away from the escalator, but stopped at the edge after only a few steps.

The gallery was gone. A chasm cut across it from the storefronts to the glass balustrade. The phone's light caught the broken edge of the first floor and was lost below it. It looked as though another story had collapsed beneath that one. A short stretch of corridor survived on the opposite side, along with a door marked STAFF ONLY.

Something moved inside the dust.

A straight white edge emerged from the gray curtain. At first he thought another piece of ceiling was falling, but it slowly approached, stopped at his feet, and floated back. Only then did the green light reveal a rectangular slab, remnants of ceiling cladding and an extinguished light fixture still attached.

When it vanished into the dust, a taut cable scraped somewhere farther on. Another white edge descended from above, held for several seconds, then began to rise again. Something swung near the opposite side; the green light caught the corner of a third slab and half a dangling advertising sign before both withdrew into the dark.

Fine dust sifted down with each movement. He could barely see what held the slabs—only cables rising overhead, alternately drawing taut and disappearing into the gray veil.

The first slab returned. A dull knock sounded somewhere above the chasm, and it reversed direction. Several seconds later, the sequence repeated.

He knew that sound. The escalator had made the same knock while it was running.

A metallic groan rose from the ruined escalator behind him. Several steps tore loose and crashed out of sight, dragging what remained of the handrail with them.

There was no way back now.

He looked again at the staff door across the chasm. Then at the nearest slab. It returned to the edge, waited beside him, and glided away with a dull knock.

A tile crunched softly under his right sneaker. He had to hold the phone in his right hand. He extended the free hand before him, bent his knees, and waited until the white edge floated from the dust once more.

The slab stopped in front of him.

He jumped.

His soles struck concrete, but the right sneaker immediately skidded in the dust. He fell to his knees and nearly dropped the phone. A red haze flashed around the edges of his vision.

He squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, the redness was already fading.

“The noise,” he managed. “Just knocked me silly.”

He lowered himself onto all fours, crawled to the middle, and only then stood. The second slab was slowly descending ahead. When their surfaces were almost level, he stepped across the gap and grabbed the taut cable.

The slab swayed and carried him downward. Several seconds later it stopped, shuddered, and went back. Up, a short pause, down. Always to the same height.

Somehow, he already knew when the third slab would appear. He did not want to ask himself where that certainty had come from.

The third slab emerged from the darkness at exactly the expected moment. It traveled in a broad arc, the half of an advertising sign beneath it swinging a beat behind. When the slab reached its lowest point, he jumped down, landed on one palm, and lay flat until the tilt had passed.

The pressure crushed his head harder than before. The red haze left only a narrow strip of concrete and the green spot of the phone screen before his eyes.

The surviving corridor drew closer. One final gap remained, a little wider than the others. He tossed the phone onto the tile and pushed off.

This time, the pain struck sooner—just as his feet left the slab. Nearly blind, he slammed chest-first into the edge and hung above the chasm. His fingers slipped across the broken tiles.

He pulled himself up, rolled onto his stomach, and only then allowed himself to breathe. Behind him, the slab scraped back into the dust. The red veil slowly thinned, and the shards before his face reappeared in the phone's green light.

“Headache, too,” he muttered into the tile. “Like I didn't have enough already.”

The staff door was only a few steps away. Its handle turned without resistance.

Beyond it was a narrow corridor with bare walls. Pipes, cable trays, and dead lights in metal cages ran along the ceiling. A rectangular exit glimmered gray at the far end.

A wooden crate stood against the left wall. Nothing remarkable: darkened planks, rusty nailheads, battered corners. The side facing the corridor was smooth. There was plenty of room beside it, and he passed almost without slowing.

Wood creaked behind him, long and low.

He stopped.

The creak did not come again.

The phone illuminated the stretch of corridor behind him. The crate remained against the wall, but a different side now faced the passage. Two slats nailed diagonally across it formed a perfect cross.

He probably had not noticed them before. His vision was still swimming from the jumps, and green light could make you see all sorts of things.

“Just a crate,” he muttered.

His own words calmed him a little.

Farther on, two more crates stacked one atop the other nearly blocked the corridor. The upper one had been shifted toward the opposite wall. A gap remained between its corner and the concrete—narrow, but wide enough to squeeze through sideways.

He braced a palm against the lower crate and pushed.

It did not move.

At his second attempt, the wood crackled dryly beneath his palm, but the crate might have been part of the floor.

He did not want to return to the chasm. And why would he? The exit was so close.

Turning sideways, he sucked in his belly and stepped into the gap. His back immediately pressed against the cold wall. The jutting upper crate was level with his face.

He had to shuffle in tiny steps. His hoodie rubbed against the concrete, and his cheek almost touched the rough planks. He held the phone against his chest. Its weak green light shone up at the cross-braces from below.

As his face came level with their center, a thin horizontal slit appeared in the wood.

Another opened beside it.

He froze.

The slits slowly parted like eyelids.

Two wet, bulging eyes stared out of the wood. Fine red vessels crossed their yellowish whites. At first the pupils remained still, looking in different directions.

The left eye turned toward him.

Then the right.

Both pupils settled on his face.

He tried to recoil, but the back of his head was already against the wall. The projecting corner of the lower crate prevented him from leaning forward.

The eyes opened wider.

Something cracked between the slats.

KHR-R-RACK!

The front of the crate split crosswise. A mouth turned itself inside out from the black gap. Wet gums and several tightly packed rows of crooked teeth flashed in the green light.

A hot, sweetish reek of grease burst from the mouth.

It lunged at his face.

He hunched his shoulder and ducked. The teeth snapped shut on his hood. The cloth pulled tight and constricted his throat.

He threw himself forward.

The crate held him fast.

The mouth snapped rapidly, taking new bites of the cloth and drawing his face closer. The eyes above it did not blink.

His fingers found the edge of the hood. He seized it near his neck, pulled it toward himself, and wrenched his whole body forward once more.

The cloth tore.

He spilled from the gap and fell to his knees. The entire stack swayed behind him.

The upper crate toppled and struck the floor with a crash.

Looking back, he saw only part of the overturned cross-bracing and one open eye. A shred of cloth was being drawn slowly into the mouth.

The lower crate creaked.

Two thin slits appeared in its planks.

Another creak answered from deep in the corridor.

The first crate no longer stood against the wall.

It was in the middle of the passage now. Only its cross-braced side showed in the phone's light. Two motionless eyes gleamed above it.

He got up and ran.

Wood struck heavily behind him.

Then again.

The crates moved in jolts, tipping from edge to edge. He looked back only once while he ran. Three rectangular shapes filled the corridor wall to wall. They fell, slid over the concrete, and rose again. White teeth flashed between the planks.

He turned away.

A blow.

A scrape.

A short pause.

The sequence repeated, only closer.

The exit should have been a few steps away. He had seen the other end of the corridor clearly when he entered. Now he had been running longer than it had taken him to cross the entire gallery, and the gray rectangle ahead grew no larger.

Identical lights in metal cages passed one after another overhead. Each was followed by a pipe with peeling red paint.

A light.

A pipe.

Another light.

A mouth opened behind him.

Teeth snapped at the back of his head and tore away another piece of the hood. He was jerked backward, but the cloth split at once.

He ran faster. His elbow struck the wall. The phone nearly flew from his numb fingers.

The pounding of wooden bodies merged into a continuous roar.

The gray exit was suddenly right in front of him.

He burst from the corridor, stumbled, and fell on all fours. The phone slipped from his palm, tumbled several times, and came to rest screen-up.

Behind him, everything fell silent.

He snatched up the phone and shone it through the doorway.

The corridor was short again.

The first crate stood against the left wall with its smooth side facing the passage. The other two were stacked neatly one atop the other. A narrow gap remained between the upper crate and the wall.

None of them moved.

He touched his torn hood.

There were no eyes or mouths in the planks.

Without lowering the phone, he backed away until the doorway disappeared behind the wall.

It was brighter here. High overhead, a glass roof lay dark beneath the snow. A steady gray light filtered through it, falling over two tiers of galleries, a broad staircase, and the empty space of the ground floor.

He raised his head.

On the gallery one floor above, a small orange patch showed between the gray railings.

It was a plastic mask of a smiling fennec fox. The mask hung on the chest of a man whose hands rested on the metal railing. Its great ears stuck out to either side. The left eye was closed in a wink; a single eyehole gaped where the right should be.

Only then did he make out the open long coat, the shirt, and the dark trousers. The orange plastic remained the only bright color in the entire gray atrium.

The mask did not cover the man's face, but his features were impossible to distinguish at that distance. He stood motionless. It seemed to him that the man was looking down, directly at him.

He took several steps toward the broad staircase.

Gray light fell across the stranger's face. He was young—about twenty-five. Medium-length dark hair fell over his temples and almost touched his ears. From closer by, his right eye appeared unusual: the iris formed two concentric rings around the pupil, one inside the other.

The stranger held a black radio with a long antenna against his chest.

He straightened at the railing.

“Stop. Not a step closer. What are you doing here?”

His voice was firm and clear. Several meters still separated him from the bottom step, but he obeyed and stopped.

“I... I just... Ran out of gas... I only drove in. I'm not from here.”

The words came one at a time. He looked from the man to the staircase, as though a more convincing explanation might be found there.

The stranger was silent for several seconds.

“Listen carefully: do not trust your eyes. Now answer clearly—what exactly did you see?”

“What...? I don't understand. What's happening here?”

“An anomaly. Recanete-Leviathan class. Nothing else matters right now. What did you see?”

“Wooden crates chased me. With teeth.”

The man lowered the radio a little. His brows drew together, and the double ring in his right eye flashed in the gray light.

“Crates? What crates? Who are you?”

He opened his mouth.

His name should have come first. The simplest word—the one he had used all his life. But there was nothing behind it. No name, no home, no face he could call his own.

“Who am I...” he whispered. “Who am I?”

He began patting his pockets. Coins jingled in his jeans. His fingers found a hard rectangle deep inside the back pocket, something he had not noticed before.

It was a blue name badge. The scratched pin was still attached to the back. Neat white letters were printed across its face:

Name: Ch. Monya

Position: 2D Platformer Developer

The hand holding the badge began to shake.

Pain entered his temples slowly, like a screw being tightened. A red haze appeared around the edges of his vision. Thin and almost transparent at first, it grew thicker with every beat of his heart.

A brown speck appeared on the badge's blue surface.

Rust spread across the plastic in fine veins. Wherever it passed, the white letters faded and vanished: first his position, then his name. He rubbed them with his thumb. Red-brown dust remained on his skin.

He tried to raise his head, but it jerked sideways of its own accord. Then again. His chin swung from shoulder to shoulder, faster and faster, as though someone inside him were shaking their head along with him.

“I... I'm... a dev... devel... oper... plat... platfor... mers...”

He had to force each fragment of each word through clenched teeth. The red haze contracted around the blue rectangle in his hand.

The atrium vanished.

A long table of dark wood stood before him. Light reflected in its polished surface and the glass doors of the cabinets. A thick carpet muffled footsteps. White daylight filled the tall windows.

Four men in business suits sat on the other side of the table.

One folded his hands before him and smiled.

“Good afternoon, Monya. Today is your chance to propose an idea and tell us where you think the company should go next. Go ahead. Don't be shy.”

On this side of the table, he too wore a suit—clean, well-fitted, the elbows not yet worn shiny. He felt the snug collar of his shirt and the smooth edge of a folder beneath his palm. He could hardly wait to begin.

“Let's make a 2D platformer!” he said brightly, and smiled.

The office fell silent.

The four men looked at one another. One raised an eyebrow. Another slowly leaned back in his chair.

Someone snorted.

Then they brayed.

Laughter struck from every side at once. The men slapped the table, threw back their heads, and exchanged glances again, as if the sight of his smile were enough to start them all over. They brayed and brayed while the office stretched out and the far end of the table receded into the distance.

The red haze returned. It flooded the windows, the carpet, the white cuffs.

The faces across the table began to change. Their smiles stretched to their ears, but their eyes remained still. Skin slipped from cheekbones and bunched in folds above their collars. One man turned his head, and his face lagged behind the movement as if it had been pulled on over another. Their suits remained immaculate; only the bodies beneath them grew too long, too broad across the shoulders.

The things at the table were no longer men. Something else shifted beneath human skins stretched to the wrong size.

They went on laughing.

The laughter stopped.

The gray atrium returned all at once, together with cold tile beneath his sneakers and pain in the cramped muscles of his neck. His head stopped twitching. So did the hand holding the badge.

The badge was red now. The rust stains were gone; its surface gleamed as though new. A yellow chicken-wing logo sat at the top:

SPICY WINGS TODAY

Name: Ch. Monya

Position: Patty Specialist

He remembered.

Everything else followed: how the laughter had cost him his old job; how he had stood at a scorching griddle, turning patties; how the sweetish smell of overheated grease had worked its way into his clothes and hair. The very smell that had led him here from the gas station.

“Are you all right?” the man above called.

He looked up at him.

An explosion thundered somewhere far away.

The sound came first—a low, heavy crash. Then the pressure rolled through the atrium, bowed the great panes, and struck his chest. The windows burst all at once. Snow, gray air, and thousands of transparent shards poured inside.

One buried itself in his throat.

He clutched his neck and fell onto his back. Instead of a scream, a short wet rasp escaped him. Above, a chunk of concrete slab swung from a severed cable.

He blinked.

A golden box hung in place of the slab. A black question mark was painted on its side.

He blinked again.

Concrete.

Again.

The golden box.

He blinked rapidly, convulsively. Concrete and box replaced one another, but each time the gold lingered longer. At last, only the box remained. It swung above his head and began to fall.

---

It looked different from the upper gallery.

The man with the fennec mask saw the other man lying on his back, hands at his throat, a chunk of concrete slab suspended above him from the last cable. The fallen man blinked rapidly and stared straight at the concrete.

The cable snapped.

The man with the mask had no time to shout. The slab crashed down and crushed the fallen man's head and chest. The red badge shot from beneath the concrete, skidded across the tile, and stopped near the staircase.

The radio in his hand hissed.

“Come in. The cultists have set off the charges at the cemetery in the Old Town!” a woman's voice said.

The man pressed the side button.

“Yeah, I noticed. Where do you think I am?”

He released the button, set the radio on the floor beside his boot, and looked once more at the body under the slab.

“Fuck! How am I supposed to explain all this to the Inquisition?”

The End