Александр Александрович Чечитов
Measurement № 24
There was a year left until the end of school when I changed the direction of my thinking and actions. My main hobby was studying the evidence of the existence of aliens. With the lessons, things got better along the way, probably due to the fact that studying stopped being burdensome as such.
About nine years have passed since graduation. During this period of my life, I managed to graduate from university, where I met my future wife. I have studied a lot of terms and references to the appearance of humanoids. Newspaper clippings and copies of photographs overflowed the drawers of my desk and hung on the walls of the room. Only superficial information. I couldn't find anything concrete proving the existence of aliens. At times I felt like a fool, and yet I invariably returned to my favorite activity. Two big events in my life—a wedding and the birth of two rosy-cheeked daughters—contributed to the final completion of my fascination with aliens. At that time, I could only dream of other worlds and other forms of life. There was little time left, even for reflection, in the bustle of weekdays and short weekends. The whirlpool of life consumed me without a trace.
My wife found out about her serious illness when our children were finishing their third year of university. To my surprise, my wife took this news absolutely calmly. I think my heart was half dried up in those days, hardly pumping the remnants of thickened blood through brittle veins. At the graduation party of my daughters, my beloved was no longer present. At that time, the girls almost simultaneously began to live separately, and they were in no hurry to visit me. I didn't see it as a problem or a bad attitude. Besides, I handled all the cases quite well and alone. Every year, on my birthday, I came to my wife's grave, regularly bringing twenty-four roses. I don't even know why; it was this number that she liked the most. She gave her favorite number an almost magical meaning. In general, my wife adored numbers. Probably that's why she worked as a math teacher for twenty years in a row.
