— You collect different unusual things, don’t you?
It was obvious that the guy in the dirty shabby jumpsuit wanted to sell me everything he had. The pipes were burning and the glow of the fire reached me through heavy breathing. I moved away from him a bit. What a nasty guy.
— I recognize you, — the guy in the jumpsuit continued. — Are you Marcus? Marcus Chromakeikus from, — he clicked his fingers. — “Weird Science”! I’ve seen you on holovision! It was a great show! What happened to it? I haven't seen you for a long time.
— The show shut down. Everything flows, everything changes. Now I’ve got other plans. — I admitted.
— That’s sad. You were so funny. Everyone’s always giving you a hard time… — he said tirelessly.
— Can I help you somehow? — I tried to interrupt his flow of memories about my blogger career, that was rather a mistake.
— Right! Buy this watch. Just for a tenner out of personal sympathy for you!
The guy handed me an ordinary watch. It was quite cheap. Now it has become cool again to wear these steel monsters with hands on your arm. No implants, let’s go back to the traditions of our grandfathers. Well, you know what I mean. I picked up the watch. Cheap steel case. Poorly readable hands. Seems to be mechanical, though. I put it to my ear and could barely hear the ticking.
— And why do I need a watch?
— Look, what time do they show? — he looked at me with a grin.
— Four twenty-four, I think. — I looked at the watch hands. — Are they set up? It’s almost six now. — I threw him a quick glance.
— And look at them again. — he rolled his eyes ridiculously, as if marking the importance of this.
— Erm... Now it’s ten forty. — I looked at the watch in my hand, surprised. — Are they faulty?
— And now look at the watch and don’t look away.
The watch was acting weird. If you look at them without looking away, then the hands were in a normal state, counting minutes and seconds. But if you look away for at least a second, and then look at the dial again, then each time the time was different. For ten minutes I experimented with them, trying to understand it.
— Funny thing. — I said slowly, understanding that I had to take them. — But they don’t cost ten standards. Five at most.
We agreed on seven standards, and the lucky owner of the money left in the direction of the nearest bars, while I remained sitting at a cafe table, looking through the huge panoramic windows of the station at the beauty of the “Pilgrim-11” spreading below. Seems like the watch found me by itself. That’s interesting. Perhaps some artifacts from the “Oblivion” yacht are attracted to other artifacts? And if I collect them all? And how many are there in total? I had two more artifacts. The watch became the third item in this weird collection.
The first such item that fell into my hands was a quarter-credit coin. After the war, paying with black cash became high fashion. Many don’t trust electronic payments and coins are valued. I don’t really like small change, but I sometimes put small coins in different pockets. And one such coin turned out to be very strange. If you put a glass of beer on this coin, then the beer boiled in a matter of seconds! The coin had no effect on any other liquid. I couldn’t find out where it came from. The coin itself was completely ordinary, but upon careful examination under a powerful magnification, I found a mark in the form of an unfinished oval with a dot inside. This mark was very well executed.
A search on the web led me to the yacht “Oblivion”. An ordinary yacht, rented by an ordinary family, was making a completely ordinary route. But it disappeared in the vicinity of the Morag system. It was a sign in the form of an unfinished oval with a dot inside that was applied to the hull of this ship. And curiously enough, there were no signs on the ship before the disappearance.
The story aroused genuine interest in me. The yacht was searched and found. It was drifting in space with its engines turned off. There was no one inside the yacht. A typical ghost ship. Everyone believed that the crew was kidnapped by pirates and wanted to close the investigation. But terrible rumours began to spread. For one week, everyone who came on the yacht died due to various accidents. Then it was only getting worse. At the station where the yacht was moored, an epidemic of space plague began. An extremely unpleasant disease. The station was closed for quarantine, and the disease was defeated. But it was necessary to evacuate all residents of the station to other places. The station itself was declared unsuitable for life. I found interesting statistics that in all places where residents were evacuated, a sharp rise in crime, diseases and deaths from accidents began. The more people from that bloody station, the more problems. I don’t know how this story ended. These days no one really cares about such problems. Now it’s important to survive. The station is still uninhabited and declared a closed zone.
The second item in my collection was a ring.
