“You know what, let’s get back, maybe we’ll make it.”

We arrived surprisingly quietly. Apparently our limit was used up. In the second storey window there loomed evil-looking Andrei, with a giant automatic rifle on his shoulder. “They armed themselves,” I thought. “Playing Schwarzeneggers...”

“They’ve been shooting here,” noted Gleb, who was up until then depressed and silent. “Here’s a burnt mark over there. And a new break in the wall. Even two of them.”

Andrei in the window clanked dashingly with the lock of his rifle.

“Hold, who goes there?”

“Fix your eyeglasses, it’s Gleb and I.”

“Stay where you are.”

“What are you, nuts?! Maybe you’ll shoot us in addition?!”

“If you get any closer, I will. Sure thing I will.”

“!..”

“And why the hell have you started shooting at us yourselves?!”

“Us? When?..”

“About ten minutes ago.”

We stared dumbly at the ragged holes with twisted, charred edges that had a place in the house’s faсade.

“Doppelgangers,” said Gleb quietly. “Marionettes.”

From one of the holes there appeared Oleg, tousled. “Let them go in,” he told Andrei, and disappeared again.

Andrei lifted his weapon and aimed it at us. Quite accurately, I might assure. Having tucked our weapons in our belts and raised our hands like idiots, we headed towards the house. The girls were awaiting us at the door.

“It’s ok!” they screamed happily. “It’s Redhead and Gleb, they’re quiet, they aren’t shooting anymore...”

Oleg got down to us. Behind his back, jutting out about a metre above his head, there was a long Samurai sword in a lacquered sheathe covered in hieroglyphs. Set a wolf to keep the sheep... He was obsessed with all these Oriental exotic stuff even before.

“You’d better produced a tank,” I muttered. “What the hell do you need a sword for?”

“I’ll put it on my wall. When we come back.” answered the newly discovered Samurai coldly. “Speak out.”

Gleb could recall next to nothing, so I had to be the one to speak. About the shooting and about the monster. And about the shooting lighter. When we came to the end of my confused story, Oleg, who had been until then walking up and down the room and biting his nails, stopped in a sudden.

“Hush, bandits! There’s a version. How do you like the idea of a test? A test for aggression. Or something of that kind...”

“Can’t you put it more simply?” begged Christine.

“Surely I can. You see, each of us has got some fear inside. And each of us has a different fear. I, for instance, can’t stand worms. And Bronya, suppose, adores worms, but is afraid of vampires.” (“I’m not afraid of vampires!” Bronya attempted to protest, but she was given a new apple, and the protest has thus been annulled.) “Redhead adores vampires, looks like one himself, but he can be frightened by a street fight. And will go ahead to fight out of fear. These are personal fears, all of them. And when we’re together, there appears a collective fear. A ‘crowd syndrome’, so to speak. And it can dictate a lot...

“And now look. Somebody provides the crowd with moving, nasty fuel-oil. Most likely inanimate, but who has thought about that?! The collective fear gave a premise – save yourselves! – and the result didn’t fail to appear. Redhead burnt the enemy with the so conveniently found laser gun. The fear demanded a weapon, it is the dominant of every fear – and a weapon appeared.

“But with the appearance of a weapon, the fear increases automatically, it demands actions – and Gleb, not realising this himself, begins shooting at Redhead. Please note – without actually hitting him! That is, nobody needs our death at the moment. Redhead didn’t shoot him back – and won. Both of them stayed alive.

“Only that Gleb’s shooting echoed over here – their doppelgangers are shooting at the house, and we do the same in response. Gleb was lifting his pistol without realising what he was doing. We, however, did – and atop the explorers there appears a monster, a result of our aggression, of our fear, and this time the result is animated, it is alive, but inhuman.

“If we had killed the doppelgangers, then the monstrosity would have devoured Gleb and eaten Redhead as a snack, but we were smart enough to shoot above their heads, what caused Gleb’s lighter to perform quite unorthodox functions. Everyone is still alive, the experiment continues. Just don’t ask who’s running it. I don’t know... and don’t particularly want to, either.

“But the third step... The fear must force us to shoot a human being. This is not a monster, let alone fuel-oil. And we won’t be able to walk away – the fog won’t let us.”

“It’s hard to be a humanist with a pistol in your hand,” I noted. “Very hard. And scary.”

“Doppelgangers,” said Andrei, in a somehow very dull voice. “Doppelgangers are coming. It’s us.”

We all stood up without a word, and went out of the house silently.

There were seven of them, like us. There were seven of us, like them. Oleg, Bronya, Gleb, little Christine, silent Dina, always frowning Andrei. And me. With such a wonderful pistol, handy, long, simply... I saw the black hole of the muzzle, and grabbed my pistol with both hands. What goddamned humanism can you talk about here?! It’s suicide...

When somebody’s chasing you in your dream, your legs turn into cotton wool, your body doesn’t obey you and the time is running very slowly, you keep escaping and there’s no end. In the corner of my eye I noticed that Andrei’s finger which had been lying on the trigger started pressing against it. My leap lasted for eternity, my boots didn’t want to leave the ground, and I understood that I wasn’t going to make it. But it wasn’t me who made it.

The sword shrieked leaving its lacquered sheathe, the cut off the muzzle of the rifle fell to the dirt with a plop, Andrei didn’t keep his balance... We fell down together.

Lying on Andrei’s bony back, I felt that my hand was unusually empty. The pistol. The pistol was gone.

Interesting, who was it that thought up putting down the ties so wrong?.. I was jumping over them, cursing, listening for the hundredth time to Oleg’s blabbering about how beautifully his oh-so-wonderful sword would look on his oh-so-wonderful carpet on his oh-so-wonderful wall. The sword was the only object that hadn’t disappeared along with the doppelgangers and the fog. Oleg slowed down and approached me.

“Interesting, what did Pete the rascal get his tape recorder for?” he said thoughtfully.

“They just gave him a ransom to get rid of him,” I muttered, pulling my boot out of the dirt. The lace finally got itself untied...

...Bluish grey flocks of fog were closing behind their backs, and back there, in a grey, pulsating cocoon, within its silent depth, there awaited the Nobody’s House. It was satisfied. Its state spread in all directions in invisible waves, reaching other Houses, conveying the acquired information. No, not information – images, feelings, sensations; – nevertheless, it was quite enough for communication. In an unstable situation, the first need of a man is a weapon. Rare exclusions only confirm the rule. Having acquired a deadly gift, a man relaxes and begins perceiving the situation as stable. A gift is an object. Weapon is also an object. That is all.

Weird, dead life was falling asleep in the gentle embrace of the fog, submerging into steady waiting, free from hopes and disappointments. It hurried nowhere, this abandoned house, which was Nobody’s...