Along The Waves Of Imagination
Literary works
№1

Science fiction story
"Adventures of Abnormal Things"

Chapter One

Returning home from the employment center, Varsonofy noticed that in the rays of the bright midday sun his old unrenovated apartment seemed especially uncomfortable.

The ancient linoleum, worn-out wallpaper, and long-unpainted gas pipes, as if by agreement, simultaneously put all their flaws on display, leaving no opportunity not to notice them, as it was possible to do starting from the light twilight. Unfortunately, being unemployed for a long time, forced to make ends meet with odd jobs, could not help but affect the condition of his home, as well as everything else that required periodic updating, not to mention his wardrobe, shoes, toothbrush and razor.

Many of the things that Varsonofy constantly used were already in their third or fourth decade. Once upon a time, back in Soviet times, he carefully stored on the loggia with half-rotten frames what others mercilessly threw out as soon as they were no longer needed. That is why Varsonofy Onufriev went to the institute with a briefcase, in which he carried his textbooks back in school, and then, years later, at another institute, he began to wear shoes bought in the mid-eighties and carefully put aside for later on a shelf in the furniture wall.

He was even very surprised when different people, seeing these shoes, laughed and asked where he found such an ancient style - after all, the shape of the shoes did not mean anything to him at all, and the never-worn shoes, which had lain in the closet for about thirty years next to no longer needed video cassettes, never-used Vietnamese table tennis rackets and the same new Czechoslovakian plastic balls, as well as some very ancient and incomprehensibly from where, but also perfectly preserved sweatpants and a windbreaker, were in perfect condition.

Nevertheless, over a long time so much junk had accumulated in the apartment that there was nowhere to store it any more, and just in case, the things saved for the future became unusable right in their factory packaging. All this had to be mercilessly thrown out, and Onufriev, with a heavy heart, began a process that was morally painful for his thrifty nature. First, he collected and handed in old magazines for recycling, many of which, despite his firm intention to read at least half, he had never opened. At the same time, he managed to get rid of old books that described the principles of managing the first computers, which still used punch cards.

Soon, an old double-cassette player of the famous International brand migrated to the trash can in the yard, eloquently indicating that all the underground workshops in the world were united under it. It should be noted that this brightly colored tape recorder, equipped with colored LEDs that flashed around the speaker in time with the music, did not lose face and fully justified the reputation of the brand under which it was released in mysterious Asian, and perhaps European basements, where forced laborers sat, assembling these amazingly cheap devices for a piece of bread, as well as, quite possibly, "Akaivas", "Powersonics" and other creations of counterfeit genius.

The beautiful and lightweight International broke down just two months after it came into Varsonofy's possession - though not completely, but only in one of the cassette niches. After a while, the second tape drive mechanism failed, and the long International became a simple radio receiver. Unfortunately, after about a year the radio began to produce a dull background noise instead of a broadcast, and that was the end of the tape recorder's career, but it lived on the cluttered loggia for about a quarter of a century. Oddly enough, immediately after ending up in the trash container, the International disappeared, which surprised Onufriev - after all, no one has used magnetic tape cassettes for a long time, and you can listen to the radio directly from your mobile phone.

Little by little, raking through the mountains of garbage, Varsonofy got to the box where the blocks he played with as a child, the magazines "Maly Modelyazh", supplements to the magazine "Young Technician", and some models he assembled from ready-made plastic kits lay. It must be admitted that, being easy-going, Onufriev took on many things at once without unnecessary hesitation, but rarely completed any of them. That is why in this box lay trucks, ships and planes that he had partially assembled from cardboard magazine blanks, which he never finished assembling, neither a month later, as he had planned, putting them aside, nor thirty years later.

By now, all the pieces that had been painstakingly glued together in his school days had fallen into a pitiful state, were covered in a thick layer of dust, were badly dented, and were therefore destined to be moved to the trash bin after the tape recorder. While rummaging through this box, Onufriev also found a cardboard box that he had once glued together, which the authors of one of the designers had presented as a "Repair Shop of the Future".

They claimed that in a couple of centuries, broken machines would not have to be repaired manually, but would simply need to be loaded into a spacious chamber, and radiation directed by computers would spray metal where it had worn out, restore worn parts, clean the body from rust, and connect parts of broken units. According to the creators, the gray cardboard workshop was equipped with a battery and a simple toggle switch, after which the lamp above the door would blink and a hum would come from somewhere inside, lasting for about five seconds. The control panel also had a button labeled "Scaling and adding additional capabilities," which, as explained in the instructions, allowed "to change the size of the repaired machines to a smaller or larger size and significantly expand their functionality."

Because this "recovery chamber of the future" consisted of only a dozen parts, it was lucky to become one of the few designs that Varsonofy assembled to the end. True, he later did not have a flat battery with a voltage of 4.5 volts at hand, which, like many other things, was in terrible shortage during his school youth. That is why he never once looked at the blinking lamp or listened to the hum of the unknown mechanism enclosed in a closed box that was supplied with the construction set in a finished form. This box had to be glued to the back wall of the toy workshop and the wires sticking out of it had to be pulled to that very toggle switch that started the "machine restoration process".

Remembering that somewhere in another room in an iron vase an old flat battery, bought at a clothing market after the collapse of the Soviet country, was carefully put aside for the future, Onufriev decided to see how it "works" before throwing away all the unfinished and even finished models, including the "restoration workshop" that was heavily deformed by the Vostok spacecraft and the Mi-8 helicopter that were pressed into it.

After inserting the battery into the slot, he threw the half-assembled washing machine and drum set into the chamber, closed the door and turned on the switch. As the instructions promised, the lamp above the workshop chamber blinked, and a short hum was heard from inside. While the process was going on, Varsonofy pressed the "scaling and adding additional capabilities" button several times. Opening the chamber, he shook out the unfinished models from it, which were now tightly bonded with some green substance that looked like plasticine. "It looks a lot like PVA glue, only tinted," Varsonofy thought.

Having immediately lost interest in the glued blanks, he, again pressing the button next to the toggle switch during the hum, carried out the "restoration" procedure with the models of the refrigerator and the tracked tank platform, then threw in a toy bathtub and plastic truck wheels, a paper sideboard in the company of cardboard excavator booms and a crane, a chandelier and a shower mixer left over from a construction set for building multi-story buildings.

All these models and parts came out of the workshop glued together with "tinted PVA glue", which in places seemed to change its shade from light green to emerald right before our eyes. "It's completely old, even the glue has fermented, and how come it hasn't hardened in so many years?" - Varsonofy was surprised and threw the parts from different construction sets and modeling kits that had been connected in the chamber back into the box. Immediately after the last restoration procedure was completed, something clicked in the workshop, and the lamp above its doors went out.

"Yeah, and how did the old battery last another ten minutes?" Onufriev thought and threw the workshop into the box with the models, old toys and cubes that had been connected by antennas, wings and stands. It fell there upside down, and, looking closely, Varsonofy saw a logo in the lower left corner in the form of a strange smiling green creature with huge eyes. Next to it was the inscription: "Send your feedback on our products to the Horsehead Nebula," followed by a long, continuous row of numbers.

     

Driving Idea
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In "Along The Waves Of Imagination" newspaper you can also read the following literary works:

  Adventures... (Chapter Two)  
  Adventures... (Chapter Three)  
  Adventures... (Chapter Four)  

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