Джора Байрамов - I am Earthman

Here Eva paused, then continued;

– Fortunately, there were no more such bitter rains, only sometimes there are good rains, after which there are more worms and herbs. But, still, when it starts to rain, I am very afraid and quickly hide.

From her stories about bitter rains, he realized that it was about acid rain. It was obvious that remembering all this, Eva was very sad, but she held firm and did not cry. And he was also very surprised inwardly how, after so many years, the girl preserved her language and culture of communication at a very high level, because she lived and lives in the conditions of primitive man's life, for a long time, that is, from an early age, she did not communicate with anyone, lived and survived alone. Interrupting his thoughts, he asked;

–Who were your ancestors, how did they get here? Are there other people, tribes still nearby?

– The old men of our tribe told us that there is a mountain gorge behind these mountain ranges. A small river flows through the gorge. There, on the bank of the river, once lived a large tribe of people who once separated from our tribe and formed a separate settlement. It was said that they built houses out of trees on the river bank, hunted and lived there. But according to the stories of our hunters, they were often attacked and eaten by huge predatory animals, two or even three times taller than a person. They called them brown bears and said that they were so strong that it was useless to fight with them or even defend against them somehow, that it was impossible to kill them with a spear or an axe. According to the stories of the elders, these bears cannot cross the ridges of the mountains and therefore, when we are and live here in a cave, we are worried that they will come here, do not. That's why I've never seen these bears myself. I remember that the older ones still said that there was only one narrow path in the mountains, sometimes our hunters used it to go down and make their way into the gorge to hunt fish, and from there they also brought sticks for our axes and spears. According to their own stories, there are big trees growing there, there is always live food in the river, and for the same reason our tribe once divided. Whether any of those people remained alive, if even they remained, then whether they remained there, or moved somewhere later, where they now live, I do not know. At first, when I met you, I thought that you were one of those people. And who our ancestors were, I do not know, I have not heard stories about it, only once I was told that they lived for a long time in the depths of this cave and said that this is why they called themselves cave people. And I also know that there is a walled-up place in the cave, where, according to our people, the things of our distant ancestors who lived in the cave at that time are stored. The elders said that these things would someday tell us about our origin, and while we do not know how to handle these things, all of us were forbidden to go there. When I was left alone, I didn't even think about it and almost forgot about it.

Adam (in the future we will call man Adam) thought about how bears have survived to the present day, reached such a large size and became cannibal predators. But suddenly I remembered that the nuclear disaster on earth happened in November, when the Siberian bears were already in hibernation and it is quite possible that some of them could survive after hibernation and bring offspring by eating the corpses of other animals, people who died directly during the nuclear war and after, because of the consequences of the nuclear disaster. It is well known that after a nuclear disaster, a nuclear winter comes for a long time, and perhaps the corpses of animals, and people, did not decompose for a long time because of the long, strong frosts of a nuclear winter. The bears probably took advantage of this, although according to the stories they heard once in childhood, they do not eat corpses, however, it is quite possible that hunger forced them to do this. They could become dangerous cannibal predators due to lack of food, and in addition, he remembered that bears had been omnivorous predators before. But here the question arises: "If the bears survived the nuclear winter by eating corpses, how did the people of the Eve tribe here and other animals down in the gorge, in the river water, survive the nuclear winter that followed the nuclear war?". After all, the Earth's atmosphere after a nuclear disaster was covered with a thick ashy veil and because of this, the sun's rays could not reach the Earth's surface. For this reason, a long nuclear winter came on Earth and as a result, it froze for a long time. And in addition, the Earth's atmosphere was polluted with radiation. All living things on Earth after nuclear explosions must have been irradiated and had to get radiation sickness, and there was no effective treatment, as he remembered, for this disease. In addition, according to the theory, because of the long nuclear winter, all the plants on Earth should have died. And animals, and people, and in general all living things on Earth had to die from lack of food and heat. He studied all this himself, but he did not find any clear answer or explanation to this question. Suddenly he remembered his conversation with the alien about the territories on Earth that were less affected by nuclear explosions, volcanoes and flooding, and thought that the alien probably meant these places. Perhaps they probably had information about the survivors of the disaster, but they did not tell him about it, and perhaps this can explain their mysterious behavior before parting, as if they were hiding something. Turning over all this in his mind to calm himself mentally, he thought that now, all this no longer matters to him, the main thing is that life is being born again on his home planet. In continuation of his thoughts, he thought that if there are other surviving people on Earth, they will unite and although it will be very difficult now, they will gradually restore the former civilization of the Earth and people will no longer make such mistakes.

Night fell. Adam and Eve spent the night in a cave. Although they slept separately, but both of them already felt not alone in the shower.

Days passed. One day after breakfast, Adam asked Eve to show him the secret place where, according to her, the things left by their ancestors were kept. But, at first, she categorically refused, saying that this is for her ancestors, and, accordingly, now it is a sacred place for her, where adults forbade them to go from an early age. But then, a little later, she still agreed, because perhaps she herself was interested in seeing these objects. And so, with a torch in their hands, they began to descend down the cave. The cave was somewhere wider, and somewhere quite narrow. They walked about a hundred and fifty meters down the slope, deep into the cave and on the left side in a small, dead-end arm of the cave, Eva showed the place where there was a hiding place. The hiding place was tightly closed with a large round, but flat stone. Adam and Eve, by joint efforts, together with difficulty removed this stone to the side. Behind this large stone was another flat stone, smaller than the first one. When this stone was also removed, a small opening opened. By the light of the torch, a little further away, a tightly closed lid was visible, made of several layers of skin, compacted by gluing, around some dry, but apparently tropical tube-shaped reed plant. When they removed the lid, they saw that it was very dry inside the cache. Apparently, who made this cache, took care that the things left in the cache were stored for a very long time. In the middle of the hiding place, wrapped in a cloth, there was a bundle. Adam slowly took out the package. The torch was already burning out and they were climbing with a bundle in their hands to their camp, that is, to a place located inside the cave, but directly right at the exit of the cave. There, near the exit of the cave, where there was a lot of daylight, he put the package on the ground and slowly began to open the package. When he started to open the package, he saw that the material for the package was part of the canvas raincoat of the tent. The canvas fabric of the tent's raincoat became so dilapidated that at the touch of hands, they literally fell down. His heart was beating faster and faster. He felt that this bundle was taking him back to his own distant past. Eve watched all this with surprise and curiosity, but did not say a word. He opened the package, inside the package was a large plastic bottle with a wide neck, tightly closed, by twisting, a hard plastic lid. Taking the bottle in his hands, Adam carefully examined it before opening the lid and saw that there was a small through hole in the neck of the bottle. Apparently, the person who left all this took into account that when things are stored for a long time in a completely closed space, where the air left there does not change for a long time, things lose their properties and become unusable. However, time has done its job, since the object inside the bottle rolled up into a tube from the outside has turned a little black, slightly covered with mold, but it is quite well preserved. Adam asked Eve for a stone knife. He wanted to carefully cut the neck of the bottle, fearing that if he unscrewed the lid with his hand through the necks of the bottle to get the rolled tube, it might accidentally be damaged. Besides, he didn't want to show Eva, who was watching his every move, that he knew how to open a bottle by turning the lid. He cut the neck of the bottle, took out a rolled-up object and carefully unwrapped it. This rolled-up object turned out to be a plump, but well-preserved multi-leaf notebook for paperback notes, and inside the notebook, between the leaves, there was a black-and-white photo of a group of young (girls and boys) people printed on a portable printer. Apparently, the photo was printed right there, by one of the participants on a portable printer from laptops. They were photographed right at the entrance of the cave. From the photo, they were looked at by broadly smiling, self-satisfied, happy young people in the hiking uniforms of the first half of the twenty-first century. Some of them had smartphones on their hands, laptop handbags hung on their shoulders. Nearby, duffel bags were lying on the snow and a faithful companion of almost all such youth hikes – a guitar. All these things were so close to him, so familiar that when he remembered his former life on Earth, his fellow citizens, relatives, relatives, friends, and everything in general, the now forever lost Earthly civilization, he could hardly hold back tears. Eve stared at the photo with such surprise, as if petrified. From there, that is, from the photo, people she didn't know looked at her, in clothes she hadn't seen before. Then Adam noticed that one of the girls with the photo of the face, the look of the eyes and even the figure is so similar to Eve. Surprised, Eva also looked at this girl from the photo very closely, as if studying her, and perhaps also noticed that the face, eyes and figure of that girl looked so much like her, as if this photo was an exact representation of her own face in spring water. It was the first time she had seen a notebook, a photo, a plastic bottle. Adam didn't know where to start, how he would explain all this to her. Therefore, when she looked at him in surprise without saying a word, with a question in her eyes, "what is all this?" he only shrugged his shoulders as a sign that "they say, I also don't know anything and don't understand". He was well aware that it was almost impossible to explain all this to Eva now and thought: "time will pass, we will enter into each other's trust, conversations between us will be ordinary and familiar, I will definitely tell everything, then she will understand everything." He took the photo in his hand, turned it over, looked at the reverse side and saw and not unfounded, but only read the barely noticeable inscription in Russian "New Cave, students" with the movement of his eyes, it was impossible to read the record further, since the end of the record was erased over time. Eva had been watching him and all his movements all this time. Adam, when he only read the note written on the back of the photo with his eyes, suddenly it seemed to Eve that she felt something was wrong in the movements and expressions of his eyes, and he immediately had to make a naive appearance that he was also very surprised by what he saw and put the photo back. Then he took the notebook and began to leaf through it, and as soon as his eyes touched the notes, he realized from the first page that it was a detailed handwritten description of those past, distant events, but he did not continue reading these notes in front of Eva. Now he needed to leave all this for later and quickly gets out of this situation, and for this purpose, turning to Eve, he began;