Today, according to the calendar, is July 24, 1985.

This means that in exactly a week I will have to take exams again at the institute that I have already graduated from once, unless, of course, I jump forward or backward again.

I am an accomplished jumper.

I would like to know how old I am? According to the passport that sticks out of my jeans pocket with twelve three-by-four photographs in it, I am seventeen. But this age, as well as today’s calendar date, makes sense for all people, but not for me.

The true number of years I have lived is now difficult to calculate. I was jumping here and there too much. I would have to piece together the time. Among them were very tiny ones, no more than a few hours old. However, at first I didn’t record the duration of my jumps at all, so I can’t count them exactly. I still think that I lived a total of one hundred and twenty years.

My name is Sergei Martyntsev. This is absolutely accurate. I always remained Sergei Martyntsev, no matter where I jumped and no matter how far I flew. I became convinced that the name is the only absolute reality. Everything else could change: friends, loved ones, enemies, professions and life milestones. Even dates of birth and death.

The father is sitting in the next room and watching himself on TV. He has just returned from Brazil and is now on screen talking to a Brazilian coffee picker. My father is a journalist. He was almost always a journalist, only once I found him working as a military translator. But it’s better not to remember this.

I had the opportunity to bury my father. This was already in the twenty-first century, shortly before the centenary of Soviet power. Izvestia published an obituary where they called the father “a major international journalist.” Immediately after the funeral I jumped back, I couldn’t stand it. The first days after my father’s death, I spoke to him carefully, as if I were talking to a ghost. He even thought that I was sick.

“You look gloomy,” he said.

You bet! If only he knew that three days ago I stood with my mother in the funeral hall to the sounds of mournful music... But there is no point in telling him about it. Then he will definitely decide that I am sick.

Meanwhile, my behavior has nothing to do with illness. And my psyche is normal, although it could have been shaken. Try talking to your father in reality after his death, or finding yourself in the same room with an unfamiliar woman and suddenly finding out that it is your wife. However, more on that later.

Here I intend to talk about my life, or rather, about my lives, because I had quite a lot of them. It's not even that they were interesting. I just happened to jump into a place where you have yet to reach. I'm not saying that you will definitely get there. It all depends on the specific path, and as I have seen, there are countless paths. However, a coincidence cannot be ruled out.