Abstract

A scout nicknamed the Stargazer picks up a wounded man in the Zone and, overtaken by a flock, delivers him to the Perimeter to the military. The wounded man who has regained consciousness is completely delirious - he talks about some kind of CIS, and does not know the obvious things:  the year is 2001 and the USSR exists. But, as it turned out, this is just the tip of the iceberg in the intricacy of rapidly developing events that affected not only the Zone and the people in it, but also the outside world beyond the Perimeter, revealing the history of its origins and raising the question of what it is.