Pripyat. Abandoned laboratory of the Jupiter factory
Elena Grossman

© Elena Grossman, 2019

ISBN 978-5-0050-5976-5

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Part 1

“… on the outskirts of Pripyat, in the midst of a dense forest, is the Jupiter plant. After the accident at the 4th unit of the nuclear power plant, there was a decision to close the plant forever. According to some reports, in the basement of the plant was a closed laboratory, which operated until 1996. According to rumors, military computers and black boxes were manufactured there for use in military submarines, fighters and in the space industry.” – Max finished reading an article from a newspaper that he found at the checkpoint, next to the Jupiter plant.

– And what was Jupiter really doing? Lex asked him.

“On the Internet, they write that Jupiter produced rollers of tape drives for household tape recorders and other small parts, but it was actually a cover, in the basement they made equipment for the military, such as computers and black boxes,” answered Max.

“Yes, I wouldn’t, for which I wouldn’t let it, that somewhere in the basement they would produce such things,” said Lex and examined three gray buildings through the checkpoint gate, one of which was eight-story.

They walked past a dilapidated factory checkpoint. Lex examined the tall fence and spotted scraps of barbed wire on it.

“And before this plant was well guarded,” Lex said. – The thorn used to be around the perimeter of the fence.

“They all pulled it off, damn looters!” I hope they didn’t get to the basement, “Max cursed. Empty windows looked at them, empty eye sockets.

– And what kind of buildings? You know? Lex asked.

“Yes, the eight-story building is an administrative building,” Max answered, but we won’t go and examine them. The plant takes up a lot of space in size, we will be here for at least a week if we examine everything.

“That’s for sure, will we take the tent with us or leave it here?” Lex asked in a tired voice.

“No, we’ll take her with us,” said Max. – We do not need extra problems. I heard that sometimes some kind of special service patrols over the Jupiter zone. Do you have flashlights with you?

– Yes there are, the most powerful and a bunch of batteries for them.

“Excellent, because the laboratory is a continuous labyrinth of corridors and rooms,” Max answered. They passed under the passage between the buildings, fragments lay on the ground. Max looked up and saw that not all windows of the transition have glass, in some they were missing.

Suddenly he felt someone’s gaze on himself, looking back, he saw no one but the lonely bare trees standing. Chill ran through Max’s body.

“Caution, on the pavement of glass,” he said and thought, “it wasn’t enough for any of them to hurt his leg.” Because of the fallen leaves, it was hard to make out the glass.

Max was sketching where to go now. The workshops were not far from them.

“It seems that shop number 3 should be somewhere here,” he said.

“By chance, isn’t he?” – asked Lex and pointed somewhere in the distance, but a concrete building with a wooden gate and a large glass wall.

– “Like a lot of windows. The wall is the window, Lex thought and giggled.

– Maybe he, come closer. It’s getting dark soon, you need to find the basement faster, “said Max. – I heard it’s becoming dangerous here at night, to be. They call themselves “marauders” and do not like it when someone gets in their way.

Looking around, they almost ran, reached the workshop.

– Wait! – said Max and listened. Silence. Then he slowly opened the wooden door and looked inside. The inside was gloomy and quiet.

“Let’s go,” he said finally, and turned on the flashlight. Fluently illuminating the workshop with lanterns, they went inside. On the floor lay empty metal shields, a pair of blue gas cylinders, fixtures and pieces of concrete. There was some strange light in the center of the workshop, Max couldn’t understand for a long time why this light was, but then he looked up and saw a hole in the ceiling.

“There are a lot of concrete fragments and reinforcement on the floor,” he said.

Evening light penetrated inside and dimly lit the premises of the workshop.

The light from the lanterns began to dance along the walls and grabbed the remnants of the once powerful ventilation pipes of a blue-blue color with rust. Max lit his way, at almost every step there were sharp pieces of concrete and reinforcement, as well as all kinds of pieces of iron.

Lex walked, looking at a little distance, that he was snatching a beam of a lantern from the darkness. On the floor, he noticed something white and came closer, it turned out to be some kind of documentation. He picked it up from the floor and laid it on a box lying close to it. It turned out to be some kind of drawing.

– Heck! He cursed.

– What is there? Asked Max.

“Yes, nothing special, some kind of blueprint,” he answered and did not notice the bottle lying under his feet. She thundered across the floor, echoing from the walls of the workshop. Max flinched in surprise.

“Look at your feet,” he answered. “And stay close to me, there are a lot of sharp concrete debris and rebar everywhere.” One wrong move, fracture or dislocation is provided.

To their right they heard a crunch, fear in a cold wave instantly ran through the body. Lex quickly shone a lantern where he thought he heard a crunch, but he didn’t see anything.

“Something is going wrong here,” he said in a whisper.

“Lex, don’t panic!” Most likely, this is some kind of animal or bird, “Max reassured him. But Lex, it was hard to believe that it could be one of the inhabitants of the fauna.

“I would like to believe in it,” Lex answered, and the beam from his lantern trembled along the floor and walls of the workshop.

“We have nothing to fear here,” said Max and went to the other end of the workshop, lighting his own path. They reached the middle of the workshop; the workshop was large in scale. None of them knew what was produced in this workshop, since there were no documents about the Jupiter plant anywhere.

They did not immediately find the door leading to the basement; it was almost hidden by one of the crumbling pieces of the concrete roof.

“Nothing here,” Lex said. – This is not the workshop.

“We need to examine everything here,” Max said and walked past the collapsed roof, lighting every concrete piece with a lantern. When the beam of the lantern fell on a concrete slab standing across, Max saw behind it some kind of iron door rusted with time, with a barely noticeable inscription “DO NOT ENTER”. He came closer and saw that the door could not be opened to them.

– Lex, there’s some kind of door and the inscription “DO NOT ENTER”, but it was littered with a crumbling concrete slab. Heck!

“Do you think this is the entrance to the basement?” Lex asked.

– I am sure of this, because the laboratory occupies a large area and the whole is underground. We don’t have time to go search, the entrance to another place. It is necessary to find how to permit concrete. – And he shined around him in search of something heavy, but besides garbage, bricks and pieces of plaster, he didn’t come across anything.

– Heck! – Max decided on his own to try to push it away. He crawled under a concrete slab and pushed it with his shoulder, which moved slightly. “Lex, help me move her.”

Lex laid his lantern and lantern on Max, lying on a tire lying nearby, so that light fell on the door and on Max.

He stood next to Max and also rested, pulled into a concrete slab and began to push. Pain pierced his shoulder and forearm, a soft rattle of concrete was heard on the floor.

“Uh… I’ll all take a little rest,” Lex said.

“Yes, it’s not so easy to move it,” Max said, and took his flashlight. He jerked the door handle, and she gave in a little. From the gap formed a musty breath that indicated that there was water. Having shone inside, he didn’t see anything, a ray of light illuminated the wall with

cracked paint.

“I hope our work will not be in vain, and the basement will not be completely flooded,” said Max. – If everything is flooded there, then we don’t have scuba gear with us. There was an echo of a crunch in the workshop again, and then a shuffling sound. Lex was suddenly panicked, her heart pounding in her chest.

“What the hell is going on here?” A strange thought haunted Lex. “Who’s that noise?” Are they already spying on them?”

– Hush! Do not panic! Let’s finally push this piece of the plate and go down, “said Max and started pushing again, Lex immediately joined him. This time everything went easier. Tightening up, they sharply pushed the concrete structure, and it fell to the floor with a roar, in some places the concrete broke off from the edges a little.

“Uhh… finally, I thought we wouldn’t move her,” Lex said. Max went to the door and pulled the handle, the door opened a little, and then it didn’t open anymore. He jerked harder, the door creaked and began to open slowly. Due to the hole formed, it was damp and musty. Lex shone inside. A ray of light fell on a staircase leading down, and the iron door, which most likely led to the lower tier.

– What do you see there? Asked Max, still jerking the door so that it would open at least a little wider.

“A staircase and an open door,” he answered. “And a bunch of garbage and… water.”

– What? – Max asked displeased. – There, that everything is flooded?

– I don’t know, like not. It is entirely possible that water simply flowed from the rains, “Lex said, and once again lit the room.

The door could not be fully opened, but it opened halfway. Lex was the first to go; he somehow squeezed into the hole that had formed. Max picked up his flashlight from the tire and followed Lex. Gently lighting his path, he began to descend the stairs, holding on to a rotten wooden railing. Flaking paint and plaster crunched underfoot. Lex had already gone down and stepped to the floor, half of the sole of the boot went under the water.

“Not deep here,” he answered and disappeared into the doorway. Behind the door began a long corridor with ventilation pipes not yet dismantled. Lex lit up the walls and saw the doors closed. Water squelched underfoot, to his surprise the corridor was not completely flooded. He went to the first open door and looked inside, inside were heaps of magazines and books swollen with moisture. Cabinets and drawers were all overturned, as if someone here were looking for something. Lex heard Max’s footsteps and scolding behind him.

“There are a lot of classrooms,” he said. “We won’t be able to inspect everything, too little time.”

“We’ll examine what interests you,” answered Max. “Or something suspicious.”

“Not only rooms here, but also workshops, only smaller ones,” Lex said, and went into one of them. Having lit the floor, he saw computer monitors standing on the floor, and a computer keyboard was piled up in a heap against the wall.

“It seems that military computers were manufactured here,” Max said and went to the monitors and lit them, and then the whole workshop. In addition to monitors, on the floor were still piles of magazines and folders of papers darkened with moisture.

“The strange thing is that the screens at the monitors are intact,” said Max and went into the shop. He picked up one of the magazines, which was wet but not damp and began to leaf through. Fragile pages turned over with difficulty, the ink was already faded, and Max hardly distinguished the notes.

Computer M-136. DATE OF PRODUCTION -1989 YEAR.

Computer B -150. DATE OF PRODUCTION -1989 YEAR.

I-46 computer. DATE OF PRODUCTION -1989 YEAR.

Max turned over a couple of pages, then went on to other computer names.

Computer KST-89-01. N.K. LOW. 10.29.1991 YEAR.

Computer AST-49-05. N.K. LOW. 10.30.1991 YEAR.

Computer PST-31-09. N.K. LOW. 10/31. 1991 YEAR.

“What are you studying there like that?” Asked interested Lex.

“I am studying the computer brands that the workshop produced,” he answered. – And judging by the name written here, Malko was the chief engineer in the production. It seems to me that the EMV from the lists is not here, these are ordinary computers for some calculations. EMVs used to be more bulky, and some were even mobile. And the military used to warn of a missile attack.

“Most likely, computers for the military are hidden in some workshop,” said Lex.

– On the wall, I saw a plan to evacuate the basement, there are continuous labyrinths with workshops and corridors. It’s easy to get lost here, “answered Max.

“Let’s go straight without turning anywhere,” Lex said and added. “If something goes wrong, we’ll have time to run away and get out.”

“Yes, Yuri, you are right,” Max agreed (Max nicknamed Yura Lex because of his last name, and the last name of Yura was Alekseev). – Okay, let’s go and look at other workshops. They went out into the corridor, and went straight along the open cabinets, but the cabinets did not arouse much interest in them. In addition to folders with papers and magazines, there was no longer anything interesting in the classrooms, the workshops attracted them more. The next workshop was, as Max understood, the production of electrolyte for batteries. Small glass bathtubs were strewn on the floor, and in the corner were dumped, as he suggested empty batteries. Lighting up the workshop better, he saw a table with empty test tubes and burners.

– I wonder what was produced here? Lex asked interestedly and lit up around him.

“It looks like batteries,” Max answered and went to the test tube table. The light from his lantern danced across the table, and at the very end of the table he saw a recording journal. He went up to him and opened. The ink has not faded yet.

By hand, information was written about the production of the SC-25 battery.

“Here we made silver-zinc batteries” SC-25, “he said, and began to read the parameters and advantages of the battery to himself.

– And where they were used there is not written? – Lex asked.

“Just a moment,” he turned over a couple of pages and found their use. – Aviation, space and military industry.

“It looks like we’ll find even more interesting finds in the next workshops,” Lex summed up and aimed a beam of light at the cabinets standing against the wall. Through the transparent glass of the door, he saw chemicals bottles, empty test tubes and flasks. Then the beam of the lantern passed to the next cabinet, in which there were many books. He came over to take a closer look at what kind of books they were. On the roots of the books, one could still read their name, these were practical textbooks on chemistry and nuclear physics.

Lex was about to reach out to the doorknob to open the door and get out a book, when he suddenly heard a clang of iron on a stone floor in the hallway. He turned off the flashlight, in the darkness only one flashlight burned Max, but he also decided to turn it off. They are clearly not alone here.

Listening to silence, they discerned the subtle voices of a man talking among themselves.

“Who the hell is this yet?” Lex whispered.

“I don’t know, I need to hide,” Max said, and quickly turned on the lamp, lit the walls and saw a reception between the cabinets. – Faster in that opening. He pushed Lex into the opening, and hid himself there. Now it was only to wait. He looked at the door of the workshop, expecting those who were here to immediately find them. A faint glow appeared on the wall of the corridor, and then white unnatural light ran across the wall. Lex pressed into the wall, Max into it, both looked at the approaching light. There was the sound of footsteps and two unnaturally tall figures passed the entrance to the workshop where Max and Lex were hiding. With a sigh of relief, Max was about to leave his hiding place as a beam of the same white light illuminated the opposite wall. Max had to squeeze into the opening again, Lex hissed in pain. They could not make out the words, it was some kind of incomprehensible language, Max could hardly even guess what it looked like. One of the figures entered the workshop, walked along the wall and… disappeared, but then reappeared. Max barely restrained himself from curiosity to turn on the flashlight and shine on the figure. It became painfully interesting to him who was this? Five more figures have already appeared in the workshop. Now Max was really scared, the figures crowded around the monitors. The head was accustomed to the dark, and now he could see them better. These were not people, they were some creatures, about two meters tall and had long limbs. Sometimes Max saw red flashes where their faces should be. He suggested that it was most likely the eyes, but why were they like flashes? Maybe it was their language of communication, these outbreaks were the receipt and sending of an answer among themselves. Lex could not see what was happening there, and he asked Max:

– What is happening there?

At this moment, all the figures turned in their direction.

– Yura, what the hell!

The pieces came together and headed for the closets where Max and Lex were hiding. Panic swept over Max, and he had no choice but to turn on the flashlight. A ray of light hit one of the figures, and Max saw a black dense substance that vibrated. Then, as if frightened, she vanished and disappeared. Max wildly looked around, but more than this substance, he did not see.

– What the hell?

– What happened? You almost hit me on the wall, “Lex answered indignantly, rubbing his hand.

– Because of you, they went to us.

– Who?

“I don’t know, any creatures or ghosts,” Max answered.

“And where are they now?” – Asked Lex and lit the shop. “There is no one here.”

“They disappeared when a ray of light hit one of them,” Max answered and added, “I saw one of them at the other end of the workshop.”

– You need to see what’s there. – And Lex directed the beam of the lamp first along the wall, and then into the corner, and saw a metal box. “There’s some kind of box, let’s go, look at it.” And he went first to the box, and Max followed him. Going closer, they saw that there was a folder in a drawer.

“Oh, something already,” said Max delightedly and opened the door wider and read the inscription on the “Case No. 1” folder. He carefully opened the cover and saw pieces of paper yellowed from time to time, he turned over a couple of sheets and saw that these were documents. Reports, analyzes, reports, tests, studies, a couple of photographs and film.

Lex pulled the film from the documents and directed a flashlight beam at it.

“Look at the film, some roofing felts are people, roofing felts are creatures, they are very tall and have long limbs,” Lex said and looked through the entire tape. Max took a stack of papers and began to examine them. With difficulty sorting letters faded from time, he read the name of the flight recorder.

“OBJECT 36—48.” A flight recorder recorded a signal of unknown origin. The message recorded by the recorder has extraterrestrial information. We could not decrypt it. The photo we took is the creatures that hunt for the message. Further it was hard to make out the handwriting, the ink was washed out.

“What nonsense,” Max said, and took another film and put it on top of the lantern. – Is that a UFO? The film was a flat object hanging in the air over the destroyed 4th Chernobyl reactor.

Lex also glanced at the tape.

– I wonder what they needed from the destroyed reactor? – wondered Lex. “He soared with radiation.”

Max shone on the documents and saw the date: 7.08. 1989, and then by chance the light fell below and he saw a black box.

– And what is this box? – giggled, said Lex.

Lex put the paper back in place and was already leaning toward the box, and then he heard the crack of the dosimeter. He took it out of his pants pocket and saw that the dosimeter showed a strong level of radiation.

– Damn, 5.88 micro-x-ray, this is a high level of radiation, and here we look at this fucking folder and are irradiated.

– Cracks like crazy! This is a black box phonite, “Max answered. He became curious about what was inside, and he lit the floor around him in search of some object, and found it. I broke off the wooden rail a little, so that I could pry off the lid of the box with a broken end.

“Come on, let’s see what’s inside,” Max said, and tampering the lid with the broken end of the rail. Inside was black sand.

– What is this? Some kind of black sand, “Lex said, and took Max’s rail, and stuck it in the sand.

– You’re out of your mind? It’s dangerous, “said Max and watched Lex dripping in the sand. Dripping deeper, he stumbled upon an object.

“I found something,” Lex said, and forged a piece of sand. When an object appeared on the surface, and they stared at it.

“What the hell is she doing in the sand with a strong radioactive background,” Max said.

The cassette of the flight recorder was in that black sand.

– Is this from the recorder? – Lex asked a question, without specifically addressing anyone.

“This is the message he wrote down,” Lex said.

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