The old man was crossing the street. He was returning from a shop and kept thinking of getting back to his cozy apartment and finally making himself some of the black coffee that he was so fond of (and which, regrettably, he had run out of the night before).

Suddenly, the instant spasm of a familiar feeling made him stop on the spot, ducking and covering. Not a second later a speeding silver street-car dashed from behind a bus, calmly parked near the crossroads, and without a sign of braking crushed into the nearest lamppost, giving it an elegant yet firm hug with its front axle. The post's ferrocrete body gave a loud screech, snapped, and loudly smashed all of its lamp racks against the gray asphalt. An extremely heavy cast-iron lampshade, now cracked in half, rested on the exact spot where the old man would have been, had he made a couple of extra steps before stopping.

The old man rose with unexpected ease, shook the dust off his clothes and, as if nothing had happened, stepped over the wreckage. He proceeded to his house. There was no one around to hear heard him say with a slight grin: "Thanks to the Zone".

* * * * *
In the late of autumn a strange young guy came over to the old man's place. The stranger entered the lobby, pretentiously took off his hat, and introduced himself as Leonid Lvovich. The host smiled and asked caustically:
- "Your surname is, probably, Leonov, and you are a professional killer"?
- "No, I'm not Leonov. It's much funnier than that - My name's Kotov, I'm an astrophysicist. I work at Pulkovo observatory as the head of a department - although it doesn't matter one… I came here for some advice".
- "And what interest might the "physicists" have in an old man, who didn't even graduate in his time?"
- "Your educational background has nothing to do with it: we both know what you were..."
The host cut him short in a crude way and sputtered:
- "I have no past. I've been advised to forget what I once was. If you managed to find my address and deigned enter my house, then you're probably aware of the "agreement" and don't need to flaunt your knowledge of who is who! I've paid a high price for my calm old age: silence isn't golden, it's life".
The old man stretched his arm to open the door, his posture showing that the audience was over. Then, suddenly, the visitor started pleading, confusing words and even sobbing:
- "Oh! Please don't give me the boot …. For God's sake … I have … I… You … Me… You are my last hope … It's the labor of my life… "
The old man, who had been to all kind of places and seen all kinds of things, was stunned by the sight. His hand froze in mid-air, not yet at the door handle. This turn of events hadn't been foreseeable. All the gravity and stiffness of the young "scientific genius", the role the youth had tried to play before, were gone. Now he looked like a young scientist who had hit the wall in his research and was exhausted with lack of sleep. There was no way this could be a test of his zeal in fulfilling his part of the "non-disclosure" deal he had struck with the authorities. And it did not look like a set-up, either: the guy was obviously in desperate need of some information. In any case, the seasoned man did not perceive the young scientist as a threat. He had nothing to loose, anyway, and there also was that urge to have a talk with a "fresh" collocutor.
"Will you have some coffee?"
He asked that in a calmer tone, and, not waiting for an answer, moved to the kitchen, where he commenced tending to the coffee-pot.
"Put the slippers on: I'm a lone man and I'm not very fond of washing the floor frequently… Sugar?".
"Yes".
"What do you mean?"
"I mean sugar."
The chat was slow to start - probably the lack of trust from one side, and the fear of the first word from the other. They had some weather talk, discussed the coffee brands and prices. Then the talk deviated towards the Zone. The young man, pointing his finger at the screen of a newspaper laying on the stool, launched his trial balloon:
"They told in the news that two soldiers and an ensign went missing in the northern sector - a guard commander with his patrol. And people say they couldn't have entered: the tracks can be traced from the "New Berlin Wall" to the minefield edge, but there are no craters, and nobody heard any explosions. They couldn't have flown over the mines….?"
The retired stalker answered with a grin, recalling flight of his own, when he, like a nut-on-a-rope flew for about fifty meters, and all his own fault. He had stepped on a plank that hadn't discharged during an outburst. Thank God it had cost him only a few scratches and a dislocated shoulder, since he landed on a soft spot: the corpse of his fellow traveler, who's luck had taken a different turn ten minutes earlier. Later, he described this to his colleagues at the infamous eating house (located near the layer of buyer-up, and thus turned into a place where even the enemies behaved).
[remark]: Story of a "Luchistoye" cafe's visitor, recorded by an "Area" magazine journalist:
"There was this soldier with me. A demobee whom I bought ammo from sometimes. He said: "Take me to the Zone with you - I've never been close to it, cause I'm just an HQ clerk. They'll make me a laughing stock at home if I tell them". God, what was his name? Andrew, or something … or Anton. I remember it started with an "A". We were coming back when he decided to take a crap, and went into the bushes... That's where a local outburst got him. And that was the place where I landed ten minutes later- after I screwed with that plank. I came to and felt I was lying on something warm and soft, all covered with blood-and-shit mix. That's one smelly cocktail, man… dark spots in the eyes, buzzing in the ears. I fumbled about and found something -it was a boot with a leg sticking out of it. The strangest thing was that the boot was intact, except for the shoe-lace, which was missing. But it used to be there: there was even a burnt trace of it on the shoe, a cross-wise one, with a neatly burnt image of a bow tie. So I lay there looking at the sky and the boot in turns: first, I was concussed, and second - I was afraid of standing up: I thought that the leg I held was mine. I was lucky - the leg was somebody else's. His. Now what was the guy's name? The Zone gave him quite a demobilization...
"Are you thinking of something? I asked for some more coffee, and you never answered…"
"And where do you, young man, find time to watch the news, if you labor hard in the field of astronomy, forfeiting mundane joys and rest?"
"Astrophysics. We are trying to build a telescope utilizing the gravity lens effect. So… I've been told that you… One colleague of mine - he used to work there on an expedition … He had heard that you… So to say… "
"All right. Enough beating around the bush, or this is going to last forever. If you can't start the talk, I'll ask the questions. What is it exactly you wanted to hear from me, which would push your science forward in an instant, and get your colleagues bursting with envy? What deprives you of rest, and brings you all the way to another city to meet a lonely, retired old man? A burning passion for coffee, perhaps?"
The guest gave a sigh, took a look around, and asked in a whisper:
"Aren't they… Can we talk freely?"
"You're insulting me, young man! I can feel mouse-traps installed by the neighbor in his closet! It's a joke, of course, but there's not a bug in the world which I wouldn't be able to find and neutralize: for many years my only occupation was pottering with equipment which, as you might have already guessed, was supposed to alert me of any threat, trap or anomaly, no matter how minuscule. I turned into a walking peace of such equipment myself - and that's why I lived to reach old age! You can talk freely: my house is clean".
"I'd like to ask you about… about the well. They say you were the only person to see the anomalous reflection in the water. Could you please tell me what you saw?"
The old man waved his hand, took a sip from the cup and uttered:
"Aaaah… The well … Just a small episode. Nobody asked me about the well even when they interrogated me "regarding illegal artifact trade", trying to put me behind bars. Yet that well cost me a camera - a great camera, they simply don't make cameras like this any more. I almost forgot about it now, but then I was somewhat shocked with what I saw in there ..."

* * * * *
The heavy backpack kept digging into his shoulders with its straps, turning every step into torture. But the burden one bears is halved if that burden is his own - and the pain induced by the backpack's movement was largely compensated by the thought the of the cash that its contents would bring. The burdened man was walking quite light-heartedly: he was close to the Zone's border and nobody had ever seen any known anomalies there. And the creatures common to the Zone's central regions never lurked here, either. This place was simply a right of way inside the well-guarded perimeter. There was an abandoned farm nearby, a dilapidated house and a rickety barn. There was also a deep well in the middle of the yard, which always provided enough fresh water for a drink or a quick wash. No strangers disturbed this place for weeks on end. Just several of the most experienced stalkers knew of the oasis and sometimes visited it, even if it sometimes meant taking a detour. They all knew that every single one of them had a cache there, but nobody ever tried looking for the caches made by others. This private agreement was comfortable for everyone and stabilized relations between them. A hole had been made under the house's floor planks, which was used as a community storage place for emergency equipment, canned food and medical supplies. They even had a hacked satellite phone, which had no incoming number and, most importantly, never left any traces of calls made in the logs of the telcos. This reserve stock, resupplied by all the visitors at every possibility, was available, in case something happened, to any in need. As time passed, all of the ones who used to visit the place, save for four, had died. But only one of the four survivors kept actively using the lean-to. And it was he who was currently going to quickly cross the last two hundred meters of open terrain stretching from the stunted undergrowth of the old road's edge to the lush forest. Within one of its clearings was the farm, quietly napping in neglect and depression. Having spent the required half an hour in the ditch with the binoculars, the traveler stood up and, bowing to the time-worn asphalt, quickly ran across the road. About the only dangers he faced now were the army patrols and seldom-met marauder groups.
[Explanation]:
The marauders were, of course, afraid to venture into the Zone by themselves, but had a particular appetite for the backpacks and equipment owned by the braver souls returning from there. These scumbags (who bombastically called themselves "the vultures") often ambushed the stalkers on their return routes. There were many deserters from the neighboring military units and other criminal elements from all around the globe among those scoundrels, who knew the value of objects snatched from the Zone's inner sanctum. But a small band of marauders had little chance of surviving (or, at the very least, escaping unscathed) an encounter with a seasoned stalker or a group of those: they were vastly outclassed. A returning stalker could quite often feel an ambush long before the vultures detected their "prey". In general, the bandits usually were able to get their putrid hands onto the belongings of amateurish adventurers or fresh, inexperienced stalkers, who had just gathered enough courage to venture out into the Zone by themselves without an elder comrade. All stalkers detoured the bodies of killed marauders with exaggerated disgust, and purposely took no weapons or equipment off their corpses. The military weren't particularly fond of the bandits, either. While treating a stalker under detention mildly and with due respect, with a captured marauder they started the procedure with beating him almost to death without wasting a minute on protocols. More often than not, the bandits died while attempting escapes, which meant promotional leaves for the soldiers involved. Sometimes a patrol didn't even bother to masquerade the cover they gave to a stalker who asked for such support (and paid them for it, of course).
Having crossed the road, the man crouched and took a look around. He stood up only when he saw a crow cleaning his feathers on the branch of a spreading oak: the bird did not show any sign of unrest. They were both less than two hundred and fifty meters from the forest ….
As evening came, the stalker approached the edge of the clearing and, after settling in the raspberry-canes, used his binoculars to thoroughly study the farm perched on top of a small hill. There was something wrong with the looks of the group of buildings. A couple of months before that, the place had looked slightly different. But how did it look? And how did it change? A minute was spent on looking up a two-month-old photo of the very same place, made from the very same spot. He sent the old photo to the left eyepiece and pressed the "compare" button. The images in both eyepieces assumed the same scale and were run through a separation filter mechanism. The matching details of the scene were filtered out, and the resulting image clearly showed the now missing roof of the well. He almost stopped worrying: the roof was most probably blown off by the wind - and was currently cozily positioned on the ground, its edge showing above the side of the ferrocrete ring filled with longed-for moisture. In order to be totally on the safe side, he decided to scan through the weather summaries of the last two months. The stalker lowered the helm microphone to the level of his cheek and, having murmured the keyword into it, started the dialogue:
"Search mode. Source - receiver archive. Channels - weather. Period - two months ago through current date, inclusive. Query - maximal wind speed. Wind direction - ignore. Location - current".
"Please specify method of obtaining current location".
"Inertial. GPS - off. Precision - 10 square kilometers"
"Air channels: calm. NASA server: calm. Gidrometcenter Russia: calm. Weather @ yandex.ru: calm".
"Quit search. Opt the current location out of the query archive. Sleep mode".
The search results caused a real concern. Two things could have happened: either some stranger played master of the farm, or the Zone's lethal breath has reached this place. In any case, that totally ruled out squalls and hurricanes, since during the last visit the well's roof seemed to be firmly fixed to its place and totally unable to fall off without external help. And stalkers would never ever touch anything unless needed. The marauders would also restrain themselves from touching anything just like that - the price to pay for such insolence could be far too high. Nobody ever bothered to count the marauders who die in search of stalkers' caches.
[Explanation and an example]:
Any stalker wishing to remain living always sticks to a set of extremely stiff and immutable rules. A ban on moving objects without a strong motivation was one of those. Even staying out of the Zone stalkers instinctively tried not to pick anything up without a need. Even a casual contact with any object within the Zone (or any object carried out of it) without protective means could prove lethal to the brave or plainly stupid soul who attempted such an experiment. When transporting artifacts, special protective containers were compulsory. There is a saying: "Safety manuals are written with blood". Any stalker would sign off on that phrase. One of the many registered grave accidents had happened to an experienced stalker who went under the Woodpecker alias. The whole accident was videotaped and precisely described by the partner of the late stalker: Woodpecker had found a thin golden chain with a cross within the vestry of a half-destroyed church. Without checking the loot with detectors (since the general field background within the church was quite normal) he put it on and exited the church. Not having made ten steps from the church, he was literally cut into pieces with something similar to thin string. Cut into several separate pieces which shockingly soon and without any perceivable cause, fell apart, cutting the speech of the chain's new owner short right in front of seasoned stalkers. After properly studying the place, the late stalker's companions found that the chain was the cause of the grim accident: the piece of jewelry had suddenly changed its physical properties, including structural and gravitational behavior. When the stalkers cleared the place of the Woodpecker's demise of his remains, they saw that the chain with the cross had cut through the pavement and sunk deeply into the ground. It was never found, despite the deep hole dug on the spot. Study of the accident's video recording revealed only one fact - the chain had simply cut the man in top-down direction faster than one video frame was changed: the specialists were unable to see anything special, since everything had happened in an instant.
That's why, before moving forward, the traveler decided to look for a gravitational anomaly that might have emerged near the well. Everybody knows the old joke question: "How do you measure the height of a building standing on its top and having only a stopwatch and binoculars?" The answer was simplistic, yet funny: "Drop the binoculars off the roof and measure how long they take it to hit the ground with the stopwatch". The rest of the answer was trivial if you took your time to peek into the textbook to recall Newton's law. By the end of the twenty-first century the task got an even simpler answer - the only thing one had to do was buy on the black market a really cool and expensive set of binoculars with some additional gadgets.
The stalker went about fifty meters from his temporary hiding place and planted a light tripod (just like the one he had earlier installed within the raspberry-canes) there. There he installed a laser designator, disconnected from the binoculars, and adjusted it with a water level. The device's viewfinder had to be directed at the barn's wall, so that the damned well was in the line of sight. The gyro and the horizontal deflection drive started humming. A thin line drawn with the laser beam appeared on the barn's wall. Now he had to go back to the raspberry-canes and look at the barn from another point of view. Stalker's best friend - a set of universal binoculars, was set onto its tripod, stabilized and fitted with a corresponding measurement adapter. Yet these gadgets were not necessary to be able to say that the line on the wall was no longer straight: there was a noticeable parabolic sag in its middle. Doppler analysis also showed an anomaly: the middle of the line was slightly more red than its ends. The only relief was that the reflected light's phase was stable. This meant that the anomaly was stationary, which allowed a cautious approach to the well without the threat of being unexpectedly torn to pieces or smashed.
Having spent the night in his temporary camp, the stalker started preparing for the final assault: he had to cross several hundred meters separating him from the farm.
Not long before, the stalkers had used nuts with pieces of bandages attached to them as detectors, necessary for moving through the Zone. But recently such "devices" started to give way to disposable wide-angle videocams, sized like small stones. Their mass production was started by an underground workshop in Kiev, and the black market dealers sold a clip of ten such cameras for quite a reasonable sum. The device was called a "throwavay", had an orange tape attached to it (or a smoke tracer) and was capable of transmitting a mediocre-quality image through the standard helm projector right into the eye. This facilitated detecting dangers hiding around corners. A camera's battery was barely enough for several minutest of broadcast, but a cam with a dead battery was quite usable as an old fashioned nut.
The traveler made the first throw right out of the thorny bushes. The probe's trajectory had show that there was nothing dangerous ahead. All the following throws brought the same results. Only when the stalker approached the well did his backpack start gaining weight, as if it was filling up with lead. Ten meters from the target he had to take the backpack off and drag it behind him, crushing the grass stems. Listening to his hardened heartbeat and feeling the lead in his limbs the stalker understood that approaching closer would be lethal - his body would crush under its own weight. Taking the high-resolution camera out of the incredibly heavy, almost unmovable set of binoculars was pure torture. It took him quite some time to firmly affix the camera with sticky tape to the top of long sturdy pole he had carved out in advance. And it took even longer to push this improvised probe towards the well's edge. The camera was working in live broadcast mode, but the stalker didn't even look at the image, saving the pleasure for time when he would be able to check the record out in a calmer environment. A second after the camera crossed the well's inner rim the pole's top broke off and plummeted right down. But this short period was more than enough to transmit several great photos of the well's contents. "Fifteen hundred down the drain!" -the stalker cursed, although he'd been almost certain that he was going to lose the camera. It was about time he got out of this dangerous place. His ears started bleeding and the adventure threatened to end in a cerebral hemorrhage.

* * * * *
" … and saw this".
The old man turned the screen on, ran a quick search through his home database, and sent the data to screen. It was a high quality stereo photo. It pictured a deep, alien sky. Two stars illuminated it with their strange light: one of those was large and red, the other - bright, small and mean, was a bright shade of blue. The photo was round and its edge framed an alien view. The apartment owner had enlarged the image to fit the screen, which occupied the whole kitchen wall, and turned off the lights. Then he approached the terminal again, changing the image's proportions the rounded image took on a more familiar rectangular shape. When the old man increased the image brightness, all the objects in the kitchen started throwing sharp double shadows. The young man choked over a gulp of coffee. The screen was impossible to look at without covering the eyes, so they had to decrease its brightness.
"Here, young man, is what my camera saw when it went through the anomaly's focal point. A single good shot - all the others were smeared. It's a shame I lost that camera, a real shame. A hundred and twenty eight bits per color, double stereo lenses, five hundred shots per second, not mentioning the resolution! And all that stuff, including the transmitter, weighed less than a lighter".
The young man shook his head in a sign of sympathy and started mumbling:
"A hundred and twenty eight bit …. Which means that I can measure the spectrum and identify the stars… It wouldn't hurt to know the date and time when the picture was taken… And the exact location of the well…"
The old man cut his thought short.
"I'll give you a copy of the photo and tell you everything I know of the well. Where it is, how to get there, how to stay alive while getting there. Just quit playing that game with the gravity telescope, just like the one from the well. It's no telescope! Can't you get it through your thick skulls that the Zone is the site of an accident that happened to someone's transport portal? Don't you read any science fiction? The Zone is dripping with clues - it's covered with parts of an alien mechanism. Some of these are still functioning. Gateways between worlds open and close chaotically, spitting out alien life forms, bacteria, artifacts, and gases of alien atmospheres. They get blended like in a giant hellish mixer and drive the scientists crazy. It looks like the accident led to a catastrophe on several planets. Probably, a whole network of interconnected portals, gateways or teleports - call them whatever names you like - was destroyed. Take a closer look at the photo of the alien world: its landscape is as damaged as ours. Do you see these ruins? And this? How about this? Or this? I'll zoom in onto this portion of the image on the left. Look! What's that thing over there? You made a correct guess with a single attempt - yes, it's half of a T-72 battle tank, torn away from the rest of the vehicle by a strange force and transported to the other end of the universe. I saw the other half with these very eyes half a kilometer from the power plant sarcophagus. It's still gathering rust there. Take the disk with the files and get lost! And don't even think of copying the portal in your labs - you'll annhiliate our planet. And, quite possibly, someone else's".