"Alexander Abramov, Sergei Abramov. Journey Across Three Worlds (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

"Don't you remember?"
"I don't remember."
I really didn't remember, and only on returning home did I find out
from Galya what had happened at her place.
"It was delirium," I said.
With her love for expressing things precisely, Galya now corrected me:
"For delirium, it's very consistent. Like playing a well-rehearsed role.
People don't rave like that. Besides, delirium is a symptom of illness, yet
you don't give mo that impression."
"But the fainting spell on the boulevard?" broke in my wife, Olga. "And
in the taxi?"
As a doctor she searched for a medical explanation. But Galya was as
doubtful as before.
"Then what happened between the fainting spells?"
"Some kind of somnambulistic state."
"What do you think I am - a lunatic?" I told her, offended.
"If it was a dream, then it must have been a day-dream," put in Galya
with amusement, insistent on accuracy. "Besides, we saw the dream and not
Sergei. Speaking of dreams, do you still have them?"
"What have dreams got to do with it?" I burst out. "I fainted, and I
didn't see any dreams."
I realized only too well that Galya never played jokes on anyone. So
her story about my wandering around like a sleepwalker - the only way my
behaviour could be described - seriously alarmed me. Before, I had never
fainted or walked along the edge of a roof in the moonlight, nor had loss of
memory. However, I could find no explanation of the event that answered to
common sense.
"Maybe it was the result of hypnosis?" I suggested.
"Then who hypnotized you?" Olga frowned. "And where? At the office? On
the boulevard? Nonsense!"
"Right. Nonsense it is," I agreed.
"Are you, by any chance, writing a science-fiction story?" Galya asked
suddenly. "Your very intelligible observation about the plurality of worlds
even aroused my interest.... Can you imagine, Olga?" she laughed. "Two
adjacent worlds in space, like similar triangles. Both there and here -
Moscow; there and here, a Sergei Gromov. But you weren't there- - instead,
he was married to me."
"So the secret's out," joked Olga. "And the sleepwalker, of course, is
a visitor from another world in Sergei's likeness."
"He explained it to me like this. Moscow, he said, was the same, only a
little bit different. Pushkin's monument is on the square in our world, but
on the boulevard in theirs. I almost burst out laughing."
Olga, apparently, was thinking hard. "And you know what might explain
things?" she asked, suddenly animated, still seeking a rational explanation
even as I was. "Look here, didn't Sergei know that the monument had once
been moved? He did. So perhaps this information, stored away in his memory,
became fixed in his delirium? Some stimulation triggered the signal - and
there you are: the myth about an adjacent, similar world."
These arguments only annoyed me.
"It makes me sick listening to you. Some kind of new variant of