Александр Чечитов

Measurement № 24

As long as I can remember, I have always dreamed of meeting aliens and looking at the endless, shimmering abyss above my head at night. Every random yellow line drawn in the sky by a bright, unlucky meteor near our planet was perceived by me as a secret sign. By the age of fifty, when life looked like a completely understandable and ordinary event, I discovered that I myself was an extraterrestrial being.

I am Madas Nave, a geography teacher at a secondary school. It is more correct to say that he appeared to them up to a certain point, being deceived by a false understanding of the processes of life and death.

The early years of my childhood are erased from my memory by many later events. Lessons in elementary school were given to me with varying success. Sometimes commas, letters, and numbers obeyed, eventually playing a cruel joke with me when I was confident in my knowledge and failed exams and tests one after another. Things were much more complicated with behavior, and my parents often became guests in the director's office. Broken school windows, painted doors, and fights haunted me from year to year. Already at the age of fourteen, I barely forced myself to get up in the morning for lessons and generally denied the need for any kind of education.

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.

So on my fiftieth birthday, I started the morning with a trip to the flower shop. The rays of the warm May sun gently spread over the surroundings of our town, and my mood corresponded to the weather. In these early hours of a new day, I finally dared to breathe deeply and enjoy life for no reason. The process of my transformation took a long time, slowly crushing on the way to feeling happiness, adversity, and disappointment. Then the images and events changed much more rapidly, soon turning into a murky visual mess.

"You need to rest." The words were barely audible. For a painfully long time, I tried to remember who exactly this voice belonged to. It seems that time remained unchanged in my mind and did not require an answer. Of course, that's what my beloved wife said! When I opened my eyes, I was a little surprised. Definitely melodic, native timbre belonged to the chosen one of my heart, but not the place where it came from. Brr.

Now you are a little upset and perhaps surprised — she continued calmly — but still, it will soon pass. It looked like a round, yellowish stool with thin, thin legs. Instead of sitting, about six growths twisted into a bizarre shape decorated the back of this creature. The comicality of the situation was added by my inattention. Quite by chance, I discovered that I myself am a similar, strange, living stool. I felt a little uncomfortable at the thought that I could not remember the name of the one to whom most of my existence had been dedicated before.

"There are no names here," she warned my embarrassment, "and soon you will leave most of the emotions inherent in Earthlings in the past.

Did you miss me? I asked a little timidly.

— No.

"Does that mean you didn't love me?"

Instead of answering, she jumped up on her thin, fragile legs, and our yellow bodies rushed forward at an incredibly high speed. Moving did not bring external sensations of cold or warmth, but inside I was overwhelmed with an incomparable feeling of pleasure. Powerful streams of energy vibrated and simultaneously excited my insides. In the next instant, a sharp blow stopped the flow of my bliss, and I