Zavirdyaev's Awakening.
19.oct.2120.
For a while, the gray veil of the sky parted and the area was illuminated by the piercing, but at the same time almost not warming rays of the low autumn sun. In contrast to the autumn area, immersed in a mixture of gray and brownish-yellow, the lighting seemed especially bright, as if supported by lamps hidden somewhere.
Zavirdyaev slowly drove up to the industrial town - the outlines of concrete buildings, whose edges were also clearly highlighted by the unexpectedly appeared light, were already towering above the horizon.
The mood in the SFS was mostly decadent. Someone, on the contrary, demonstrated an upsurge in fighting spirit, and quite sincerely, but still the main vector was directed in a pessimistic direction.
Rumors of an invasion, which appeared a couple of weeks ago exclusively as delusional speculation, have now become a reality. No one, however, could name the exact date of what Lebedev had planned - the estimated dates ranged from two days to a week.
Not for the first time, Zavirdyaev caught himself thinking that in terms of the general atmosphere, everything that was happening was somewhat reminiscent of the picture of defeats of one of the sides in past wars. How one could imagine the confusion in the rear of the losing side, be it the fall of South Vietnam in the century before last or the doom of the Third Reich, or the Second...
The streets that have not yet been destroyed live their own life, transport runs, propaganda broadcasts, but from somewhere over the horizon, the front is already rolling, driven by a more successful enemy. And someone is packing their bags, someone is already boarding a train going to an unknown destination, someone is simply leaving the city. In the movies and documentaries it looked like this. The deathly, albeit bright, light illuminating the dreary landscape was somehow not quite in words consistent with what was happening. Here, too, there would have been a scene with silent people leaving the doomed city, crowding on the platform.
In reality, everything was somewhat different. Perhaps, in the case of a complete military defeat from "@enemy", something like this would have really become terribly relevant, and not just here, but everywhere, but a complete military defeat had long since become a purely theoretical scenario.
For some, it really made sense to pack their bags. On the other hand, for these "someones", that is, the top of the SFS and KANAR, it was not so easy to escape. Of course, there was somewhere to escape, but it was necessary to bypass Russian territory, and for this it was necessary to prepare a disguise, a legend and other spy attributes in advance and not without skill. Or prepare a considerable sum in order to take advantage of the opportunity to leave the region on board the service aircraft of the constellations or the Block in the conditions of mass flight.
Undoubtedly, when things started to smell hot for them and it became absolutely clear that there was no way to get out of the current situation painlessly except by flight, then a ticket for such a flight and even the road to the airport itself, so to speak, would skyrocket in price. Running away early, cheaply and unnoticed, was also fraught with the loss of the acquired position, power, and well-being. A kind of stock market game, where it was necessary to keep an eye on the jumping chart, or better yet, predict its jumps.
Ordinary citizens were also in anxious anticipation. In some way it reminded them of the atmosphere that from time to time engulfed one or another part of the crumbling Soviet Union. Zavirdyaev remembered that anxiety from childhood, but in the end those troubles did not turn out to be anything catastrophic. Lost in thought and reminiscing, he reached the northern checkpoint, a post on a two-lane road, set up in a gap in a concrete wall. He stopped the car at the stop line, then opened the side window and stuck his identification card out the window. Pulling away, he slowly crawled past several cameras in massive housings installed in a row. The system scanned the pass and the face of the driver, that is, Zavirdyaev. Some of the cameras undoubtedly managed to examine the interior to see if there was an unexpected passenger. Ahead, the traffic light turned green. The armed guards, who had settled in a glass booth that towered at the level of the second floor, seemed not to care about what was happening. This impression was not entirely fair to them, since they had their own function, and it was quite specific - if necessary, to slam the armored gates, move to a protected position and give an armed rebuff. Typical scenarios within the framework of precautionary measures.
Further on there was a straight internal street with poplars planted on both sides, slowly shedding yellow leaves. On one side, on the right, there was a heavy concrete fence, separating the territory of the complex not from the outside world, but only one sector of the complex from another. On the left side, one after another, stretched gray concrete buildings the height of a ten-story building. Apparently, they were supposed to extract thermonuclear fuel from water, or from heavy water, which, in turn, was extracted from a large volume of water. In general, the Soviet designers and engineers then set themselves the goal of building an object that was able to function as independently as possible - and extract fuel and repair units. There was even its own nuclear power plant, which was supposed to serve as a "starter". All this despite the fact that within a radius of several kilometers there was a high-voltage line, quite capable of providing part of its energy to "ignite" the fusion. So, no one had ever done it with a nuclear power plant as a "starter", and these ones did not do it either. The nuclear power plant, however, worked for some time. Then, when Russia finally acquired its own thermonuclear generating capacity, the nuclear power plant was closed as unnecessary and safely dismantled.
Now it was hard to say whether this complex was a memorial to unbridled stupidity and impracticality or, on the contrary, the embodiment of a clever and quite rational calculation that did not justify itself only because of changes in the global picture of the world, the world of politics and the world of technology in particular.
After the turn, the covered parking bays appeared, where Zavirdyaev parked his car.
Coming out of the bay, he, unexpectedly for his fatigue, mischievously rustling poplar leaves, headed to the checkpoint, which had to be passed in order to get to the so-called inner belt, where the residential buildings were located.
This sector was re-equipped when the half-dead complex began to turn into the dwelling of officials and clerks of the Bloc and the CSCE. Geographically, the sector was not located somewhere in the center of the complex, it was rather on the western side, although it was indeed isolated from the outer perimeter by another sector half a kilometer wide. In recent weeks, several dormitories had been reopened in the inner sector, which could, if necessary, accommodate the most vulnerable civilians. Of course, this was just a gesture - there was not enough space for such purposes there.
Zavirdyaev stepped through the automatic door that had opened and headed towards the frame, in front of which he had laid out his "desert eagle" as usual.
An alarm sounded.
- What's the matter? - Zavirdyaev asked with genuine surprise.
- Don't pay attention, Sir, - answered the Russian-speaking guard, who seemed to have appeared recently, no more than two weeks ago. - Sorry, but that's how it's supposed to be, - he said, demonstratively raising his hand-held metal detector scanner.
- No problem, - Zavirdyaev answered good-naturedly and deliberately stretched out near the frame.
- It works incomprehensibly, - the guard grumbled, half-heartedly moving his foot along the lower part of the metal portal, - I've been sick of jumping around like this since the morning. And it signals purely at random.
With these words, he approached Zavirdyaev and began to scan him, for some reason starting from the very top, from the head. Then the hand with the device slid down.
Zavirdyaev had a very distinct feeling that there was a source of static electricity somewhere nearby. Something electrified.
- And if I had an earphone, would your "shovel" have reacted?
- No, Sir, this "shovel" is much smarter than the frame. It never fools around. That's it, I've checked everything, - he said, straightening up.
Zavirdyaev reached for the white tray from which he had taken his weapon back.
- It's funny, isn't it? - Zavirdyaev said, drawing attention to the gun with a wave of his hand before hiding it.
- You're welcome, Sir, - the guard chuckled in response. - I'd like to see who came up with these rules.
Zavirdyaev left the checkpoint and walked toward his house. All he was going to do now was fall onto the couch, not even the bed, and fall asleep. And that's what he did.