Ants riding on a plum

It all started with the smell of burnt coffee. Sharp, bitter, like a lapse in memory. Artyom froze, his hand on the coffee machine button, stuck in the "on" position. Steam hissed, and through the roaring in his ears, a haunting, painfully familiar sound pierced—a drill behind the wall. The same sound that had woken him exactly three years, eleven months, and... however many days ago, in that previous life.

He didn't just remember it. He recognized that moment. Right now, in the stuffy kitchen of his current apartment, he understood with absolute clarity: this had happened before. As if someone had rewound the film and inserted a frame from an old, forgotten movie. Déjà vu? No, something more. It was like reading a book you'd already read, but with this difference: you didn't just remember the plot—you could feel the texture of the paper under your fingers again, the smell of printer's ink.

Artyom jerked his hand away, and the coffee machine choked and fell silent. The drill behind the wall also fell silent, as if it had fulfilled its role in a play. Silence fell upon him, thick and ringing. He glanced around the kitchen: the crumbs on the table, the reflection of his own frightened face in the dark screen of his phone, the drop of water stuck on the faucet, ready to spill. Everything was terribly familiar. He knew that in a moment the phone would vibrate, and it would be a message from Lena. An unverified, intuitive knowledge, solid as granite.

The phone vibrated.
A message from Lena: "I'll pick up my books this evening. That's all."
He didn't read. He already remembered every word. He remembered how he would later stand by this same window, watching the car headlights blur in the rain that was just beginning to drizzle. He remembered the weight of the conversation that had already happened, though technically it was still to happen that evening.

This was that very tunnel. His life wasn't a linear ribbon. It was a series of portholes like these, peering through them as he floated in his glass flask along some incomprehensible route. Sometimes the "memories" were vivid, like now. More often, they were vague, like a premonition through thick glass. But lately, the images had been shifting faster. Previously, months would pass between such vivid "flashes." Now, weeks, days. Today's was already the third that morning: first, he "remembered" cutting himself with a razor, even before he picked it up—and he cut himself anyway. Then—a snatch of a conversation on the subway, overheard two hours before the ride itself.

He walked to the window. The city below resembled a giant circuit board, a printed circuit board, across which pulses-machines ran. Everyone was rushing somewhere, colliding, honking.

Ants. The very metaphor that had haunted him for the past few months. They, humanity, were ants nestled on the surface of a huge, intricately carved rock hurtling toward nowhere. They built their nests, fought over crumbs, multiplied, without even asking the question: who, exactly, threw this rock? And did it have a purpose? Or were they simply passengers on an unguided projectile called Earth?

The thought wasn't new, but today it took on an eerie physical density. He felt this inexorable movement, this speed. Not the speed of a car or a train, but the speed of time, space, life itself. It shifted beneath his feet like that carpet-like road in an arcade game, and all he could do was jump and recoil, dodging the sudden problems that arose: debts, quarrels, losses, illnesses.

He used to think that was the way it was supposed to be. Life was like a jet race. But now, standing by the window and "remembering" an evening that hadn't yet arrived, he realized with despair: he wasn't just a player. He was also a spectator. And he was terribly tired of being both. He wanted to be a captain. At least a navigator. Someone who sits in a boat and only rows doesn't know where they're going. Someone who only steers doesn't know what lies ahead. But he wanted both. He wanted a map and a helm.

He sighed, and this sigh was also part of the "memory." Predestination weighed on him like a heavy cap. But suddenly, at the very moment of this sigh, his gaze fell on the bookshelf. Lost between a thick tome on quantum physics and a collection of poetry was a thin, tattered brochure—"Fundamentals of Dead Reckoning." He had bought it about ten years ago, during his passion for yachting, which he never took up.

And then something new happened. Flashes of déjà vu always concerned the past or the immediate future. And now an image flashed through his mind that wasn't in the "program." He saw himself not in the evening by the window, but late at night, by the light of a desk lamp, leafing through this very brochure. And there was no heaviness in this image. There was curiosity. Excitement.

This wasn't "viewing a ready-made memory." This was... a decision. A small, barely noticeable deviation from course.

The drill behind the wall began to whine again, bringing him back to the present. Artyom backed away from the window. His heart was beating fast. He walked to the shelf and picked up the tattered book. The dust smelled of time.
"Navigation by dead reckoning..." he whispered. "Determining the location of an object based on the distance traveled and the time..."

Perhaps this is the first step? Not just avoiding obstacles, but Start calculating the trajectory? Understand the laws of motion of his strange "starship"?

He didn't know the answer. But for the first time in a long time, he felt as if he was reaching not for the oars, just to row, but for some kind of lever. Very distant and mysterious.

The control lever.