Джора Байрамов
I am Earthman

Adam (in the future we will call man Adam) thought about how bears have survived to the present day, reached such a large size and became cannibal predators. But suddenly I remembered that the nuclear disaster on earth happened in November, when the Siberian bears were already in hibernation and it is quite possible that some of them could survive after hibernation and bring offspring by eating the corpses of other animals, people who died directly during the nuclear war and after, because of the consequences of the nuclear disaster. It is well known that after a nuclear disaster, a nuclear winter comes for a long time, and perhaps the corpses of animals, and people, did not decompose for a long time because of the long, strong frosts of a nuclear winter. The bears probably took advantage of this, although according to the stories they heard once in childhood, they do not eat corpses, however, it is quite possible that hunger forced them to do this. They could become dangerous cannibal predators due to lack of food, and in addition, he remembered that bears had been omnivorous predators before. But here the question arises: "If the bears survived the nuclear winter by eating corpses, how did the people of the Eve tribe here and other animals down in the gorge, in the river water, survive the nuclear winter that followed the nuclear war?". After all, the Earth's atmosphere after a nuclear disaster was covered with a thick ashy veil and because of this, the sun's rays could not reach the Earth's surface. For this reason, a long nuclear winter came on Earth and as a result, it froze for a long time. And in addition, the Earth's atmosphere was polluted with radiation. All living things on Earth after nuclear explosions must have been irradiated and had to get radiation sickness, and there was no effective treatment, as he remembered, for this disease. In addition, according to the theory, because of the long nuclear winter, all the plants on Earth should have died. And animals, and people, and in general all living things on Earth had to die from lack of food and heat. He studied all this himself, but he did not find any clear answer or explanation to this question. Suddenly he remembered his conversation with the alien about the territories on Earth that were less affected by nuclear explosions, volcanoes and flooding, and thought that the alien probably meant these places. Perhaps they probably had information about the survivors of the disaster, but they did not tell him about it, and perhaps this can explain their mysterious behavior before parting, as if they were hiding something. Turning over all this in his mind to calm himself mentally, he thought that now, all this no longer matters to him, the main thing is that life is being born again on his home planet. In continuation of his thoughts, he thought that if there are other surviving people on Earth, they will unite and although it will be very difficult now, they will gradually restore the former civilization of the Earth and people will no longer make such mistakes.

Night fell. Adam and Eve spent the night in a cave. Although they slept separately, but both of them already felt not alone in the shower.

Days passed. One day after breakfast, Adam asked Eve to show him the secret place where, according to her, the things left by their ancestors were kept. But, at first, she categorically refused, saying that this is for her ancestors, and, accordingly, now it is a sacred place for her, where adults forbade them to go from an early age. But then, a little later, she still agreed, because perhaps she herself was interested in seeing these objects. And so, with a torch in their hands, they began to descend down the cave. The cave was somewhere wider, and somewhere quite narrow. They walked about a hundred and fifty meters down the slope, deep into the cave and on the left side in a small, dead-end arm of the cave, Eva showed the place where there was a hiding place. The hiding place was tightly closed with a large round, but flat stone. Adam and Eve, by joint efforts, together with difficulty removed this stone to the side. Behind this large stone was another flat stone, smaller than the first one. When this stone was also removed, a small opening opened. By the light of the torch, a little further away, a tightly closed lid was visible, made of several layers of skin, compacted by gluing, around some dry, but apparently tropical tube-shaped reed plant. When they removed the lid, they saw that it was very dry inside the cache. Apparently, who made this cache, took care that the things left in the cache were stored for a very long time. In the middle of the hiding place, wrapped in a cloth, there was a bundle. Adam slowly took out the package. The torch was already burning out and they were climbing with a bundle in their hands to their camp, that is, to a place located inside the cave, but directly right at the exit of the cave. There, near the exit of the cave, where there was a lot of daylight, he put the package on the ground and slowly began to open the package. When he started to open the package, he saw that the material for the package was part of the canvas raincoat of the tent. The canvas fabric of the tent's raincoat became so dilapidated that at the touch of hands, they literally fell down. His heart was beating faster and faster. He felt that this bundle was taking him back to his own distant past. Eve watched all this with surprise and curiosity, but did not say a word. He opened the package, inside the package was a large plastic bottle with a wide neck, tightly closed, by twisting, a hard plastic lid. Taking the bottle in his hands, Adam carefully examined it before opening the lid and saw that there was a small through hole in the neck of the bottle. Apparently, the person who left all this took into account that when things are stored for a long time in a completely closed space, where the air left there does not change for a long time, things lose their properties and become unusable. However, time has done its job, since the object inside the bottle rolled up into a tube from the outside has turned a little black, slightly covered with mold, but it is quite well preserved. Adam asked Eve for a stone knife. He wanted to carefully cut the neck of the bottle, fearing that if he unscrewed the lid with his hand through the necks of the bottle to get the rolled tube, it might accidentally be damaged. Besides, he didn't want to show Eva, who was watching his every move, that he knew how to open a bottle by turning the lid. He cut the neck of the bottle, took out a rolled-up object and carefully unwrapped it. This rolled-up object turned out to be a plump, but well-preserved multi-leaf notebook for paperback notes, and inside the notebook, between the leaves, there was a black-and-white photo of a group of young (girls and boys) people printed on a portable printer. Apparently, the photo was printed right there, by one of the participants on a portable printer from laptops. They were photographed right at the entrance of the cave. From the photo, they were looked at by broadly smiling, self-satisfied, happy young people in the hiking uniforms of the first half of the twenty-first century. Some of them had smartphones on their hands, laptop handbags hung on their shoulders. Nearby, duffel bags were lying on the snow and a faithful companion of almost all such youth hikes – a guitar. All these things were so close to him, so familiar that when he remembered his former life on Earth, his fellow citizens, relatives, relatives, friends, and everything in general, the now forever lost Earthly civilization, he could hardly hold back tears. Eve stared at the photo with such surprise, as if petrified. From there, that is, from the photo, people she didn't know looked at her, in clothes she hadn't seen before. Then Adam noticed that one of the girls with the photo of the face, the look of the eyes and even the figure is so similar to Eve. Surprised, Eva also looked at this girl from the photo very closely, as if studying her, and perhaps also noticed that the face, eyes and figure of that girl looked so much like her, as if this photo was an exact representation of her own face in spring water. It was the first time she had seen a notebook, a photo, a plastic bottle. Adam didn't know where to start, how he would explain all this to her. Therefore, when she looked at him in surprise without saying a word, with a question in her eyes, "what is all this?" he only shrugged his shoulders as a sign that "they say, I also don't know anything and don't understand". He was well aware that it was almost impossible to explain all this to Eva now and thought: "time will pass, we will enter into each other's trust, conversations between us will be ordinary and familiar, I will definitely tell everything, then she will understand everything." He took the photo in his hand, turned it over, looked at the reverse side and saw and not unfounded, but only read the barely noticeable inscription in Russian "New Cave, students" with the movement of his eyes, it was impossible to read the record further, since the end of the record was erased over time. Eva had been watching him and all his movements all this time. Adam, when he only read the note written on the back of the photo with his eyes, suddenly it seemed to Eve that she felt something was wrong in the movements and expressions of his eyes, and he immediately had to make a naive appearance that he was also very surprised by what he saw and put the photo back. Then he took the notebook and began to leaf through it, and as soon as his eyes touched the notes, he realized from the first page that it was a detailed handwritten description of those past, distant events, but he did not continue reading these notes in front of Eva. Now he needed to leave all this for later and quickly gets out of this situation, and for this purpose, turning to Eve, he began;

–Let's put all these things back in the cache, we still don't know what to do with them now. Then we will think together and decide. We still have to go to the spring, we need to get food.

– Yes, yes.

Eva agreed, but it was clear from her eyes that she was very surprised by what she saw and extremely excited. Adam felt uneasy that he was lying to her all the time and it seemed to him that she even felt it. But all the same, he thought that he should refrain for some time before telling her the truth about his former life, and besides, he still does not know how she will react to his story, believe it or not, and how she will take it all.

After that, the two of them took all the things back and put them in the cache, closed the lid of the cache, but did not close the outer opening of the cache with heavy stones.

Days passed. They were doing their usual things, arranging their homes, getting and cooking food, but they did not part for a single step and both felt inwardly that they could no longer live alone, that they could be together and live so well. And then one day, after dinner, sitting next to Eve, Adam, in a burst of inexplicably tender inner feelings that suddenly appeared in him, unexpectedly even for himself, hugged Eve and kissed her firmly, firmly on the lips. She blushed at first, but did not say anything, or maybe in her heart she also wanted and waited for this. So they got intimate that night and started sleeping together. Life has entered into a calm and normal family channel. However, Adam was haunted by thoughts about the notes in the notebook. He wanted to read the notes as soon as possible, get to know the people from the photo and how their destinies turned out. The only thing that was clear was that the photographs depicted those distant ancestors of Eva, about whom she spoke. But with her, it was impossible to get a notebook out of the hiding place, read and study the notes. She was there all the time. To tell the truth and tell everything, in his opinion, the time has not yet come. He knew that sooner or later he would have to tell her the whole truth about himself. But when will that time come? However, this situation resolved itself.

Many, many days have passed, and maybe even months. Although he knew how many days there were in a month, he did not know from what time and from what month to start the chronology, and in such a situation there was no need for him to do this. According to his approximate calculations, more than 4 months have passed since his return. The days began to shorten. This indicated the approach of winter. The first signs of Eva's pregnancy also began to appear. She got a little fatter in figure, and every day she took a long walk in the fresh air near the cave. They were both so happy inwardly, but they didn't admit it to each other. So the days passed, the weather became increasingly cloudy and cooler. One day, as usual, they came to the spring. She collected earthworms and edible herbs, and he collected firewood between small stunted trees. When the work was finished, Eva said;

– There are already fewer worms and edible herbs here. I will go down, further along the stream of the spring, perhaps I will find other places where we will get food, at the same time I will take a walk, and you, (it should be emphasized that after the night when Adam first kissed Eve, they switched to "you") take all this, get water and go to the cave.

Adam grumbled, barely audible, almost in a whisper, "the matriarchy has begun," however, he nodded his head to Eve in agreement, but immediately the thought flashed through his head that " while Eve is not in the cave, I will take a notebook and read a little." With such thoughts, he came to the cave and quickly got down to business. I lit a torch, went down and took out only a notebook from the hiding place, leaving other items next to the notebook there, I tightly closed the hiding place with a lid. It made it easier for him to hide the notebook, even if Eva accidentally came early. With such thoughts, with a notebook in his hand, he climbed up the cave to the exit of the cave. But Eve was already waiting for him there by the fire. She had on her hands his extraterrestrial clothes and shoes, which he threw away after returning to Earth. Adam stopped and froze. After all the ordeals of extraterrestrial life, he liked living with Eve so much. And although they lived on primitive conditions, they lived in human, mundane conditions of life and now he would never replace this earthly life with Eve with an alien, comfortable, but life alone. He was so happy that he had long forgotten about these things. It didn't even occur to him that one-day Eve would accidentally find his clothes and shoes. She looked him straight in the eyes, and in her looks you could read the question "why was I deceived, did not tell the truth, who are you?". There was no point in hiding the truth from her any further, and he began;

– I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I'll explain everything now. I just thought that you would not believe me, that I am a person from the past, i.e. from a past Earthly life. Ya Ya. I'll start now…

Eva sat down by the fire and for the first time since they met, she began to cry. Probably, she was very offended that a loved one was hiding the truth about himself from her. He calmed her down in every possible way and kept saying;

– Dear, beloved, you are very smart and when I tell my whole story, you will understand everything and forgive me.

And without waiting for Eva to calm down at least a little, he put his arm around her shoulders and began to talk about how people used to live on earth, about the earth's civilization, about the peoples who inhabited the Earth, about the animal world, about birds, about the achievements of science and about when and how the catastrophe occurred on Earth. Then he told that he was an astronaut, during the thermonuclear war, he was on the ISS in near-Earth orbit with other crew members, and then he was saved by aliens and after three hundred years of extraterrestrial life, he returned to his native Earth. She listened in silence. Whether she understood all this or not, he did not know, but she did not ask any questions. The story lasted until late at night. They didn't even have dinner. So he finished his story and in his story described in general terms the forever lost human civilization. He understood that there would be many more questions, because to tell in general terms is one thing, but to explain and explain the previous achievements of humanity in detail, to Eve later, is another and will be very difficult. "After all, there is a beginning, and everything else will get better later," he thought and offered Eva a rest, promising that tomorrow he would read to her the notes left by her ancestors, and she would also be taught to read and write so that she could write and read herself.

She stood up in silence, took a stone thicket in her hand, drank water and looked in the direction of Adam. In the light of the dying torch, it was impossible to see the reaction of her face, but in her gaze Adam felt that his story had made a double impression on her. But without saying a word, Eve went up to Adam and hugged him tightly. There was something about it, an inexplicable pleasant feeling, a feeling of closeness to a loved one, and she suddenly spoke;

"I knew before that you weren't the person you pretended to be. After all, you always shouted excitedly in a dream, uttered various words, including those that I did not understand, "space, ship, crew, planet, war", sometimes even cried during sleep. I really didn't want to offend you, because you are the only person who is close and has already become a family for me, and I don't want to lose you. I was just waiting for you to tell me the truth yourself.

After these words of Eva, he knelt down in front of her, hugging her waist, uttered a single phrase;

– I'm sorry.

CHAPTER

5

History of survivors

Part 1. A new cave and a stone trap

We woke up in the morning and Adam no longer felt guilty for lying to Eve all this time. Together they cooked food and after breakfast, Eva, as usual, went out for a walk. Adam began to read the notes. The notes were made in a very small handwriting (apparently the person who left this manuscript treasured the paper very much) and began as follows: "I, Sokolov Andrey Leonidovich, consider it my duty to leave to posterity detailed information about all the misadventures that happened to us, because after the catastrophe on Earth, in incredible conditions, we survived, and the human race continues on Earth."

From this, Adam concluded that these notes were made by the author much later than the nuclear disaster. In addition, the handwriting of the manuscript, although the notes are made in a very small handwriting, seemed very familiar to him. Since Adam did not fully remember his biography, he thought that perhaps he had studied at the same school with the author of these records in the past, or it seemed familiar to him from the fact that he had not read the manuscripts in his native language for a long time. But, this was not the main thing, the main thing now for Adam was the content of the notes left, and from the fact that the handwriting was very familiar and legible, the notes were read to him without much difficulty, even very easily.

Further, he learned from the records that a group of students from Moscow State University consisting of ten people came to the Gorno-Altai Republic to see firsthand and, if possible, study the so-called "New Cave" recently discovered in these places. The cave, as described in media reports, existed before, but speleologists learned about the existence of the cave only after a series of small earthquakes that recently occurred in these places, when the entrance to the cave accidentally opened due to earthquakes. After hearing about the new cave on television and reading about it on the Internet, they decided to see this cave with their own eyes and explore it. Before them, for a very short time, only speleologists who study caves visited here, and they accidentally discovered this cave when they were studying other caves in these places and made a sensational message on television that there is a large underground lake in the cave, that previously unknown waterfowl live in the lake. This message of speleologists was so interested in this group of students who were romantically inclined, who, at the call of their hearts, gathered from different faculties who had not even known each other before, but met later, that is, directly during the hike. And in order to get ahead of other specialists, that is, biologists, historians, geographers and speleologists, who were also going to explore a new cave soon, they quickly equipped themselves, in their opinion, with the necessary equipment for descending into the cave and came here to see the underground lake and the animals living in it with their own eyes. According to the author of these recordings, it was so interesting and romantic that they felt like pioneers and discoverers of something, from their point of view, very important. Inspired by such romanticism and enthusiasm, as the author writes, they did not even take simple precautions and safety measures for descending into the cave and in cases of possible unforeseen circumstances or emergency situations directly inside the cave. So they did not even leave those on duty on the surface, as it is necessary and necessary in such cases, and took with them only a small amount of necessary equipment and auxiliary things, that is, a small axe, two lengths of rope, 15 and 10 meters long, a light scuba diver's suit and a knife. And from food, water in three 5-liter plastic bottles and not a large amount of canned provisions, and then just in case they stay there a little longer than they expected and they will have to eat there, in the cave. And everything else, that is, all the rest of the food, all the outerwear and other things they brought with them, except for smartphones and other personal things that they habitually carried with them, were left in tents in a temporary tent camp, set up outside on the surface, at the entrance to the cave. According to the author, they were not going to stay here for a long time and distributed their time in such a way that they allocated only a day to stay here in the camp and descend into the cave, just to see the underground lake and if it turns out to see waterfowl animals there, fix them on the cameras of their smartphones. Then take a collective photo in the cave, as a sign of proof that they, after the speleologists who discovered this cave, were the pioneers here. After that, they had to return to study at the university and brag about this campaign in front of friends, peers and students. That's all, they set aside four, five days, for an extreme case, a week, if it suddenly turns out that they are delayed on the way due to weather or other reasons. Only in this was all their youth optimistic and adventurous romanticism. That is why, and also because they had not previously studied new caves and for the same reason did not know and did not even think that they might encounter various kinds of difficulties in a previously unexplored cave, so they did not prepare seriously and thoroughly for this event. They were driven only by energetic youth enthusiasm and romance, and they took the descent into the cave, a kind of romantic-adventure extreme game.

Adam, for a short time, closed the notebook, picked up a photo of the students. I looked at the photo. Only nine people were captured there, that is, four girls and five guys. And in Andrey's notes, it was about ten students. "Where is the tenth? Perhaps he, that is, the tenth person who photographed all the others, did not enter the frame himself? " thought Adam and then, putting the photo aside, began to read the notes further.

Further, the author wrote that Before going down to the cave, so that the descent into the cave and our entire further excursion would be clearly organized and successful, all the members of the group, after consulting among themselves, despite my objections, chose me as the leader of our hiking group. So, under my leadership, the descent into the cave began. We, by the light of lanterns, going down the slope down the cave and walking about one kilometer, and perhaps a little more than a kilometer, reached the shore of an underground lake. On the shore of the lake, we found traces of a camp of speleologists, where they stopped for a short time and then apparently turned back, since they trampled only there, within a radius of twenty, twenty-five meters, and the tracks did not go further to the right or to the left. After making a short stop here, we decided to continue our journey further. At first we wanted to go along the lake shore to the right, but the flat surface of the lake shore continuously narrowed as we moved forward, and very soon, according to my approximate calculations, after walking about forty meters, we came across a high, insurmountably steep stone block hanging over the water. This meant that there were no paths further along the coast in this direction. We came back where we started on the right. Here one of the girls, probably very tired of walking, suggested to stop, there is a camp here, from here and start exploring the lake. However, many people did not agree with her opinion and proposal. We, that is, everyone else wanted to go further, to see and learn more than the speleologists who had been here before us. With such intentions, we continued our way along the shore of the lake, to the left side. The surface of the lake shore was stony flat, but with turns and bends sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, and the distance to the side walls of the cave on the way of our journey then narrowed, then widened, however, we no longer encountered insurmountable large obstacles on the way in this direction. And after walking along the shore of the lake for about eight hundred meters, we came out into a wide, daylight-lit area. It was a wide area on the shore of an underground lake, surrounded by very high mountain rocks, which, in its outline, resembled a very large, one-tenth open dome, observatory, with a diameter of about four hundred meters at the base. Moreover, the open part of the naturally created dome was located in the southern side of the mountain and the sun's rays penetrated and fell in a narrow strip on a small part of the lake shore, on the water and, as if reflected by a plume from the water surface, one end reached a small island located in the middle, that is, by daylight of the visible part of the lake. On the island and on the shore of the lake where we were, there were densely growing some exotic, tropical small plants that we had not seen before and unknown to us, similar to reed plants that grow closer to the equatorial part of the earth, but significantly different from them in their appearance and shimmering with a very transparent bluish-green appearance, leaves. The water in the lake slightly smelled of some strange smell to us. The air in the cave was a little moist, as after a short rain in the spring, but we were very easy to breathe, which meant that there was a little more oxygen in the air than usual. Despite the month of November, the cave was very warm and cozy. Before we had time to look around properly, such a bright glow was visible from the open part of the dome that it became blinding light under the arches of the dome of the cave. At that moment, all the members of the group thought that a meteorite had fallen near the cave. Without paying special attention to this event, we decided to set up our temporary camp here, so that we could then start exploring and exploring the cave and the underground lake from here. However, after some time, when we had not even had time to properly settle in and distribute the responsibilities of each member of the group, a powerful earthquake suddenly began. The tremors sometimes intensified, sometimes decreased. Waves began to rise in the lake and the water began to flood the shore of the lake where we were. Under such circumstances, it was very dangerous to stay in the cave. We should have saved ourselves. Under these conditions, we urgently decided to climb back to the surface as soon as possible. On the way back, after going up the slope almost half of the way, we learned that the narrow place of the way out of the cave was filled up with stones during the earthquake. So the way back was closed for us, and the earthquakes continued with strong, then small tremors. We didn't have time to establish the scale of the blockage on the way back out of the cave, since the ground was shaking all the time under our feet. Occasionally, from the depths of the earth came muffled, but at the same time reflected in our body with unpleasant sensations and premonitions of a terrible disaster that had already occurred on the surface of the Earth, dull, muffled sounds, as if the Earth was moaning in pain. By the light of lanterns, we found a narrow, not deep opening in the cave with a low integral stone ceiling and entered it. So they protected themselves from falling random stones on their heads. Everyone was wondering "is it really so catastrophically bad there, on the surface, maybe an asteroid or a large comet fell" Cut off from the world, being in a cave, we could not know what happened on the surface and we could only wait. The earthquake continued. We were rocking from side to side, as if we were at sea in the cabin of a ship during a storm. Time passed, but the earthquake continued and it seemed that there would be no end to it. Therefore, in order to save the batteries on the lanterns, we turned them off. No one asked any questions, they sat in the pitch-black cave darkness, pressing their bodies together, in silence. Sitting in the pitch darkness, without waiting for the earthquake to end, from fatigue and from the nervous strain we experienced, we all fell asleep there.