… in which new discoveries are made, old colleagues reminisce about the past, and Tolik realizes the compatibility of genius and villainy.
From early morning, nothing disturbed the gloomy silence of the small apartment. Even the tireless plasticine man in the jar, once again gently molded by the professor's thick, wrinkled fingers, was not knocking now, but simply lay motionless, huddled against the wall of his glass prison. The owner of the apartment was also lying down. True, unlike his plasticine friend, Boris Sergeyevich still generated sound vibrations in the air, either with his grunting old man's snoring or with the creaking of the sofa, which was struggling to bear the weight of the professor's heavy body.
A series of short and overly intelligent knocks on the door were not loud enough to disturb this blissful sleep. A conversation could be heard outside the door:
"Maybe he left... Or did something happen?"
"Where would he go? He's alive! He just can't hear. He probably covered his ears with his beard again and is fast asleep. That's the way to do it!"
A new knock on the door, much louder and more insistent, woke Boris Sergeyevich and he groaned as he got to his feet.
"Open up, Father Christmas! Here we are!" Tolik's voice could be heard from behind the door.
"Just a moment, young people," the professor fussed, clicking the locks and the heavy chain. Finally, he opened the door and even put on a good-natured, hospitable smile under his gray mustache and beard, but when he saw who had entered, he recoiled slightly and froze with a stupid expression on his face.
"You?!"
Pyotr Petrovich stepped inside the apartment, or rather, he contemptuously carried his feet in pointed greenish-brown shoes from the concrete staircase to a damp rag, carefully wiped them, slowly unbuttoned his coat with his cold fingers, freed his neck from several turns of his scarf, and only then replied with a sarcastic smile:
"Me."
Tolik followed him in and, without much ceremony, trudged straight into the kitchen in his outer clothing. All this talk of scientific tadpoles interested him far less than the opportunity to grab something to eat from the professor's refrigerator.
"I never thought my notes would end up with you..." Boris Sergeyevich muttered, watching as Pyotr Petrovich hung his coat on a hanger in the wardrobe like a master of the house.
"There are no others left," he replied curtly. "Does it matter?"
"No... Not really," the old man hesitated. "So what? Have you read them?"
"In general. In general, Boris Sergeyevich," Pyotr Petrovich replied hastily, walking into the room. "It can be said that our ideas about the fluctuations of the external inducing field were parallel."
"What? Do you wish to dispute the priority of my discovery?" muttered the old man.
"Come on, Boris Sergeyevich," laughed his scientific colleague. "Your laurels will remain yours. You may even be included in school textbooks. Would you like us to name the effect after you? I am ready to facilitate this. However, I have experimentally determined the frequency of these inducing oscillations.
"Have you determined the frequency? Have you already conducted the experiment?" Boris Sergeyevich asked in surprise and sank into a chair because his legs suddenly stopped obeying him.
"Imagine that," Pyotr Petrovich chuckled, relaxing as he looked at the books on the long, slanted shelves stretching along the wall opposite the sofa. "To do that, you just had to stay at work more often and work, instead of sitting at home recording videos for the internet."
"Yes, of course," the gray-haired professor stroked his bald head in confusion. "It's just, who would have thought..." You were never careful enough in setting up your experiments. Take, for example, that time when you ruined the experiments on ultra-dense digital radio signal transmission...
Pyotr Petrovich instantly turned red.
"It was an accident."
"Yes, yes... I remember. The wiring broke."
"Everything would have worked if they had signed off on a repeat series of tests."
"No way... It was just a dead-end topic," said the old man.
"From your point of view!"
"According to the results of your test."
"Just don't pretend you're sorry," Pyotr Petrovich flashed his eyes maliciously.
"Why? I won't argue... I'm even glad. At least we were able to make ends meet for a while. And our institute saved a lot of money by closing a couple of dubious projects that weren't profitable. You know how badly I feel about insufficiently justified and costly projects..."
"Nevertheless, that didn't stop you from taking all the material and technical resources from them," Pyotr Petrovich interrupted his colleague.
"Well, that's different..."
"And how much did you personally take?"
"Are you seriously considering bringing charges against me?" Boris Sergeyevich looked at Pyotr Petrovich sadly, almost disappointedly.
"No, I'll leave that to your conscience," the scientist smiled again. "I'm interested in the 6I1P lamp with the index E4."
"An experimental heptode? Why?" the gray-haired professor asked in surprise. "The technology is already obsolete."
"Not for my purposes," Pyotr Petrovich cut him off. "There isn't a single working model left at the institute. And you... You just couldn't help but take a few for yourself."
"That's true," Boris Sergeyevich agreed. "And, in all fairness, I had the right to do so..." After all, I had a hand in creating them. I could at least compensate myself a little for my work...
He moved forward heavily with his whole body along with his chair, rummaged for a while in the pull-out drawer of an old wall unit cluttered with books and various junk, took out a screwdriver and began awkwardly unscrewing the back of a pot-bellied polished TV set covered with a lace doily. Fastened with just a couple of screws, the plastic cover quickly gave way and fell off. Boris Sergeyevich reached inside the old-fashioned device and pulled out an oblong lamp glistening with glass and metal.
"You used it for a TV? It's so pitiful..." Peter Petrovich was surprised, having been looking at the professor with undisguised contempt all this time.
"We made the lamp for a standard connector," Boris Sergeyevich shrugged his round shoulders and handed the miniature device to his former colleague.
Pyotr Petrovich wanted to say something else unpleasant, but an agitated Tolik appeared in the room. One glance at his face made it clear that something unexpected was happening. The scientist went to the window and cautiously peeked out from behind the thick curtain, as if such caution could influence anything.
From Boris Sergeyevich's house, from the entrances of neighboring houses, from neighboring courtyards, strings of dark figures crept, swaying. They slowly but quickly gathered into small groups, huddling closer and closer together, filling almost all the free space. It seemed as if the residents had suddenly decided to hold an impromptu meeting and were about to begin an excited discussion of some pressing housing and utilities issue, such as an unscheduled hot water shutdown. But in this case, everything was happening in complete silence, which made it particularly eerie.
"I'm afraid, Anatoly Efremovich, that tea time is canceled," said Pyotr Petrovich, picking up his suitcase from the floor and opening it on an old TV set, as if it were an improvised nightstand. The entire space inside was occupied by some kind of ingenious device, most reminiscent of a radio turned inside out with a large number of tuning coils, buttons, toggle switches, and all kinds of knobs. A substantial part of the space was taken up by a couple of dozen mobile phone batteries, twisted together with electrical tape and obviously powering the entire device.
The scientist took some pleasure in pulling a round gray connector with holes arranged in a circle out of the tangle of wires, plugged an electronic lamp into it, lovingly hid it inside, flipped the toggle switch, and began to turn the numerous knobs with expert knowledge.
"Interesting," Boris Sergeyevich said, looking at the device with interest over Petr Petrovich's shoulder.
"Could this be another wonder weapon from our doctor of apocalyptic sciences?" Tolik said excitedly. "Surely now all the zombies within a hundred kilometers will lie down."
"You are overly optimistic about my abilities, Anatoly Efremovich," replied the scientist. "But thanks to the pathological thriftiness of the esteemed Boris Sergeyevich, we can now influence our undead friends more subtly, through a control field. I believe this will be much more scientific than simply pounding them with discharges and electromagnetic pulses.
"You've assembled something like a radio receiver, haven't you?" the old man clarified.
"A transceiver," nodded Pyotr Petrovich. "Something like a superheterodyne transceiver, to be precise. Its high sensitivity and selectivity allow it to operate in the same modes used by these... creatures.
"Interesting," Boris Sergeyevich repeated thoughtfully.
Meanwhile, Pyotr Petrovich finished the setup, closed the suitcase, stood up straight, and said briskly:
"Well, that's it. Thank you. Now we can go," and proceeded to the hallway with the suitcase. Glancing at the bewildered Boris Sergeyevich with a mocking look, Tolik followed the scientist.
"Wait... How is…? Are you just leaving?" muttered the gray-bearded old man, clearly not expecting such a rapid turn of events.
"Yes," Peter Petrovich replied calmly, carefully wrapping a scarf around his neck and putting on his coat. "We're leaving, and you're staying." We sincerely thank you for your assistance. Domestic science will not forget your work..."
A cold sweat suddenly broke out on Boris Sergeyevich. And not at all because he would now be left alone again in his small apartment, cluttered with old things and books. But from the sudden realization of his own uselessness. Everything that could still happen was happening somewhere outside, outside his life, and his possible claims, achievements, dreams of recognition crumbled before his eyes, seeping away like sand between his fingers.
"But what about... me? My observations? My notes?" the old scientist fussed. "You may need the advice of your more experienced senior colleagues."
"Allow me to doubt that," Pyotr Petrovich said dryly after a short pause, watching as the old man hurriedly stuffed his feet into heavy boots and, fumbling with the sleeves, pulled a down jacket over his spherical body.
Nevertheless, the scientist and the student waited for the elderly professor. All three left the building at the same time. Pyotr Petrovich walked first, with broad, confident strides, carrying a suitcase in his hands. Behind him, looking around tensely and holding a circular saw at the ready just in case, moved Tolik. Boris Sergeyevich hurried along at the very end, dragging a plastic bag under his arm, into which he had stuffed a stack of shared notebooks with his notes.
The crowd of dead people, as if retreating from such unbridled self-confidence and arrogance, parted before the men, leaving a space about seven or eight meters wide around them. Finding themselves in this peculiar bubble, the trio moved fairly quickly toward the exit from the courtyard.
"Cool..." Tolik exclaimed. "They're afraid of us, right? Like dogs are afraid of ultrasound or something?"
"More like they can't see us," replied Pyotr Petrovich. "But you're absolutely right, Anatoly Efremovich, it is cool." My device re-emits the vibrations that these creatures obey. The waves overlap in antiphase, the amplitudes cancel each other out, and a peculiar zone arises where the dead simply cannot enter..."
"A dead zone for the dead," the student smiled.
"Yes, this is definitely a success," Boris Sergeyevich, who was lagging behind, agreed breathlessly. "You won't forget your promise to mention me in your work, will you? Just wait... You're walking too fast."
Pyotr Petrovich stopped abruptly and looked back at the elderly professor.
"Scientific progress is moving rapidly. It won't wait for you. Anatoly Yefremovich and I still have a lot of important and urgent business to attend to... But don't worry, I never forget anything. Including my promises... I hope your relationship with your neighbors is better than with your colleagues?"
Boris Sergeyevich was about to ask what exactly this sudden question was about, but suddenly met Petr Petrovich's sharp gaze and understood everything. Tolyan noticed out of the corner of his eye how the scientist's finger lightly turned the round switch on the top panel near the handle of the suitcase. The invisible safety zone around the device instantly shrunk to about three meters, leaving the frightened Boris Sergeyevich outside its boundaries. The crowd of dead people closing in around him reached out their icy hands toward the man.
"What's going on?" the old man screamed, dropping the bag, from which notebooks spilled onto the snow.
"I don't know... Probably just a short circuit," Pyotr Petrovich replied coldly, watching as a multitude of hands dragged his former colleague away. Crooked fingers grabbed the plump professor by his clothes and beard, clenched around his neck, lifted him above the terrifying, grinning faces, and pulled him left and right. The still-gasping and struggling man was torn to pieces. One of the dead men sank his teeth into the severed arm. Another, having ripped open the professor's belly, eagerly pulled out his bloody intestines.
Frowning, Pyotr Petrovich hastened to look away from such an unpleasant sight.
"I suppose, Anatoly Efremovich, you understand that such accidents sometimes happen.
Tolyan nodded silently.