At his firm’s annual holiday party, Viktor Petrovich Zadorozhny was gulping down vodka shots, one after another, to build up enough courage to ask his boss for a promotion. He managed to pick what he thought was the right spot and moment, when the boss was walking to the bathroom, and cornered him with a well-rehearsed but casually delivered inquiry. After the boss gave him a vague promise that sounded more like an annoyed dismissal, Viktor returned to the bar and downed a few more shots and then let loose on the dancefloor, wantonly groping and pressing against female staffers, while watching his secret crush, Irina, the round-faced, giggly receptionist, make out in the far corner with the Head of Sales. Peeved but defiant, Viktor stayed until the party wound down, around midnight, chasing the hard liquor with beer — a drinking hack he knew would get him wasted to the point of numbed indifference.
At 12:30 a.m. he watched Irina and the Head of Sales get into a taxi together. “Slut,” he mumbled and trudged unevenly toward the Novokuznetskaya metro station.
The temperature outside was minus twenty degrees Celsius. Normally, Viktor would cover the distance between the office and the metro with a brisk five-minute walk, but now everything was spinning, and he had to stop every few meters to lean against a wall or a lamppost to regain balance and to fight off the icy sidewalk that threatened to rise and hit him in the face. In his stomach brewed a vicious storm, and as he neared the station, the toxic surge broke through all inner barriers and gushed violently out onto the pile of fresh snow by the station’s entrance. He growled like a wounded bear as the bile spouted out but felt a little better after the purge.
It was long past the rush hour, near closing time, and the Novokuznetskaya metro station vestibule, a grand marble-walled rotunda, was empty and quiet, except for distant echoes of arriving and departing trains. Viktor inhaled the warm air rising from the deep escalator shaft, and it hit his nostrils with the resiny smell of creosote, a smell that he found calming.
He reached for his jeans’ back right pocket where he always kept his leather wallet, but his fingers brushed against a sobering flatness. Quickly, he felt his other back pocket and found the same heart-stopping emptiness. In panic, he rummaged through his front pockets and all the nooks of his puffer coat: there were keys to his apartment and the phone, dead, but no wallet.
There was no time to go back to the office to search for it: the metro would close in fifteen minutes. He scanned the station’s round vestibule and, not seeing any living soul, placed his hands on two adjacent turnstiles, like a gymnast on parallel bars, and lifted himself. He made a weak attempt at a knee curl, gave up, and dangled his feet, contemplating the next move. As he assessed the height of the plexiglass gates before him, the possible angle of attack and the amplitudinal constraints, he got dizzy, and his arms’ muscles trembled and his elbows gave in, folding under his weight. His center of gravity shifted too fast for his feet to secure the ground underneath, and he fell backwards, landing on his back.
He lingered on the floor, gazing up, caught by the sight of the station’s hemispherical ceiling, a Byzantine-style dome embellished with carved-stone reliefs, a relic of Soviet-era grandeur. He wondered why he’d never noticed that pattern before.
“They don’t make shit like this anymore,” he thought. “Say what you will, but we had telos then.” He wished that he had studied architecture instead of business back in college.
Through the ticket booth’s window, Viktor’s loitering and subsequent turnstile acrobatics were observed with silent but intense interest by the station’s security guard Yuri and cashier clerk Lydia.
Now Yuri’s grinning face and swinging baton cut short Viktor’s serene moment.
“Jumping the turnstiles is a violation,” Yuri said.
Viktor rolled onto his side and stood up slowly, groaning and grasping his lower back.
“I failed, comrade major,” he said. (Viktor addressed every man in uniform, even a security guard, as ‘comrade major’ to signal preemptive compliance and to avoid any unnecessary escalation). “So, it doesn’t count.”
“A smartass? Documents, please.”
“Yeah, well, you see, I think I left my wallet in the office,” Viktor said, summoning his best diction. “All my cards are there. Metro pass, too. Maybe you just let me in? The last train leaves in ten minutes. Otherwise, I’ll be stuck here all night.”
“You won’t be stuck here. You’ll be stuck outside,” Yuri said and laughed at his dark humor.
“Oy, Yuri, just let him through,” Lydia said with slight impatience. “I can print him a ticket.”
Yuri briefly mulled Lydia’s suggestion.
“I have a better idea,” Yuri said. He pointed his baton at an ATM-like terminal in the corner of the vestibule. Above the terminal hung a banner that read: Healthy Moscow Initiative. Twenty squats=one free ride.
“Does it even work?” Lydia asked.
“We’ll find out.”
Yuri came to the machine and tapped on the terminal’s black screen. His touch brought the screen to life: it lit up and a blue buffering bar appeared. Then, a message popped up: Please place your feet onto the marked area.
“Look! It’s working,” Yuri said excitedly and turned to Viktor. “It’s your lucky day.”
“Well, come on,” Yuri invited Viktor with his nightstick toward the two steps stenciled in yellow inside a square on the floor in front of the machine.
Viktor complied and placed his feet on the dotted outlines. The screen acknowledged him with a live camera broadcast. Viktor stared at a dolorous middle-aged man, with red, droopy face and hollow cheeks. “This can’t be me,” he thought. He tightened his facial muscles and smiled, and the man on the screen responded simultaneously with a spasmic, demented grimace.
“Begin exercise in . . . ,” the countdown on the screen blinked the numbers 3, 2, 1. “Start Now.” A big zero displayed, indicating the start of the count.
“Go on,” Yuri said. “We don’t want you to miss your train.”
Viktor bent his knees half-way and straightened back up. He glanced at the screen, where his effort didn’t register. The zero remained.
“You’re not doing it right,” Yuri said. “You have to sit all the way down.”
Viktor followed Yuri’s instruction, squatting all the way, and rising back up. He was slow. His knees shook and his back hurt and there was again unrest in his stomach, but the count changed from zero to one. Encouraged by the progress, he continued. On every move up, he assisted himself by pressing his hands against his knees, lifting his butt first and then torso. The count climbed with each completed squat.
“See? It’s working,” Yuri said, delighted. “It’s a smart apparatus. A machine warrants respect.”
When the number hit twenty, a ‘Congratulations!’ popped up on the screen.
Viktor exhaled with relief when a ‘Print Ticket’ prompt appeared.
“Look at that,” Yuri said, and poked on the prompt.
The machine paused for several alarming seconds, and then, instead of a ticket, issued a ‘Data Error’ message.
“What? How can there be an error?” Viktor said.
“Maybe it didn’t like the way you did it,” Yuri replied.
“But it said ‘congratulations.’ That means it did.”
“If it doesn’t print a ticket, it has its reasons. It knows what it’s doing.”
“But it counted to twenty. I did my twenty,” Viktor objected, slurring.
“You were doing it like you were taking a shit. You needed to do it like a sportsman. Quick and light.”
“Maybe we just let him through,” Lydia inserted. There was now a worry in her voice.
“Let’s just do it again,” Yuri said. “And mean it this time.”
Viktor cursed under his breath. He did another twenty squats, puffing and straining. “Thirteen, fourteen,” Yuri counted along, bumping his baton against his palm. Lydia watched the repeat process with a mournful expression.
Upon completion, the machine congratulated Viktor and spat out the same error message.
“Blyad. What fuckery!” Viktor cried. “I’m not doing this again! Shoot me, boss. That’s it. No more.”
“Maybe it’s broken,” Lydia said. “Some glitch or something.”
“Fuck it. I’ll do it,” Yuri said. “Watch and learn.” He shook his baton in Viktor’s face and did twenty energetic squats. It took him thirty seconds.
‘Congratulations! Data Error.’
Lydia went to the ticket booth and came out with a metro pass good for one ride.
“Here. That’s it,” she said sternly. “Enough with the circus.”
She met no objections. Yuri sighed and looked at Viktor with disappointment.
“To fuck with it,” Yuri said, resigned, waving his hand. “Go.”
Lydia swiped Viktor in.
Cursing both Yuri and his fate, Viktor stumbled down the escalator, just in time for the last train.
Thirty minutes later he emerged from the metro at Krasnogvardeyskaya station, on the city’s outskirts, and walked to his apartment building, a gray concrete high-rise. He stopped before the bunker-grade metal door to the building’s entrance, scooped a handful of snow from the ground and rubbed it on his face.
The entrance was recently enhanced with a new state-of-the-art facial recognition system to ward off vandals and homeless people. The software was still glitchy, randomly denying the tenants entry, and the system’s vendor promised a quick fix. In the meantime, the act of entering his home became a stochastic process for Viktor, a hit or a miss, even during daylight, even when sober and on his best citizen behavior.
Now, at 2 a.m., with his features warped by frost, alcohol, and the weight of injustices, he put his odds at fifty-fifty. He rubbed his eyes and cheeks, trying to erase all the emotional stamps of the day to please the fickle algorithm, and cleared his throat.
The system sensed a presence; its interface lit up and spoke to Viktor with a pleasant female android voice.
“Hello. To use access, please say ‘photo.’”
“Photo,” Viktor said, holding up his chin and looking directly into the camera.
“Sorry. I did not recognize you,” the system said after a long pause. “To make a facial recognition, please say ‘photo.’”
“Photo. I said already.”
“Thank you. Please, dictate, clearly, the number of your apartment,” the android voice prompted.
“Twenty-seven.”
“Sorry, I did not recognize your answer. Please, dictate, clearly, the number of your apartment.”
“Number twenty-seven. House number two, apartment twenty-seven.”
“You said: apartment twenty-seven. Please confirm, yes or no.”
“Confirm. Yes. Apartment twenty-seven.”
“Sorry. I did not recognize your answer.”
“Twenty-seven. Yes.”
The system paused.
“To make a facial recognition, please say ‘photo.’”
“Photo, blyad. I already said. Apartment twenty-seven.”
“Please confirm. Yes or no.”
“You mean the apartment? Yes.”
“Sorry. I did not recognize your answer. To use access . . . ”
“Photo! Stop fucking with my brain. Open up. I am Viktor Petrovich Zadorozhny. Apartment twenty-seven.”
The system weighed Viktor’s response for a few seconds and looped into a different sequence.
“To create an account, please stand in front of the camera and look directly into it. In three seconds, I will take your picture.”
“Do it, blyad.” He grimaced.
“Three-two-one. The photo has been taken.”
“Fucking great!”
“To use access, please install My Smart Home app to your phone. Thank you. Good-bye.”
“The fuck did you take my photo then, bitch? What am I . . . I live here . . . Let me in.” He banged on the door.
The android was silent.
“Photo! Twenty-seven! Confirm!” Viktor barked the magic words into the darkened interface.
He wobbled and leaned against the wall.
“Dumb cunt. You don’t want to open? Here.” Viktor swung his fist at the system’s screen. He missed and his knuckles scratched against the rugged surface of the metal door.
“I fucked you!” He turned away from the door and cried into the dark courtyard. “Every one of you I fucked! In the ass! Everyone! I fucked!”
“Shut the fuck up!” Someone shouted back through a cracked window.
“All of you. In the ass. I fucked.”
His knuckles bled. He plopped on the bench by the entrance, slouched, and soon slipped into a reverie. He saw doors, gates, and turnstiles, and all of them opened for him upon his approach. There were also mirrors and screens and smooth surfaces, and everywhere he saw his reflection. He had the classic proportions of a Roman god, the perfect physical symmetry, and it was this symmetry that had imbued him with the power to transcend all barriers.
He came before a large rusty metal door. It opened, squeaking and clacking, and beyond it stood a glowing entity that Viktor guessed to be St. Peter.
St. Peter turned to him, his beatific face emitting divine light and infinite mercy, and spoke with the voice of Vadik, Viktor’s neighbor, drinking buddy, and the owner of a giant fluffy Siberian husky:
“Petrovich, is that you? Well, fuck,” St. Peter said. Viktor felt a dog’s breath and a warm, wet cloth of a canine tongue on his numb face.
“That was you screaming?” St. Peter continued. “I thought it was some drunk. What are you doing out here? You’ll freeze your balls off, you dumb fuck. What the . . . You’re bleeding . . . Got into a fight? What fool, blyad. Well, shit, man . . . Get up . . . Let’s get you inside. I have a remedy upstairs . . . Therapeutic . . . Will warm you up . . . But how the fuck . . . What moron, blyad. Come. Let’s go.”
Katya Grishakova is the author of The Hermit (Heresy/Skyhorse 2025), a debut novel about a Manhattan bond trader who goes through existential crisis. She has serialized her second novel, Euclid Alone, on her Substack. In her former life she used to work on Wall Street.
 | A guest post by
|
Ah, the love of machines! Brilliant story!
This is fantastic. I do get impatient with descriptions of drunkenness or how stoned someone is or how unpleasant it feels to vomit, so I almost bailed, but the two machine encounters are brilliantly done, and there's a beautiful nexus going on all throughout: between people trying to live up to unreachable public standards, disguised as perfectly attainable (a raise, 20 squats, entry into your home) only to be told they're not good enough to hit that "human" achievement -- which prompts them to lash out in a despairing/relatable/ugly human way. I thought the protag would be a punching bag the whole story, or ~shown the error of his ways~. Delightful/surprising effect, in the end, to see that the most human thing is flopping around, resting your weight where it isnt supposed to go, getting kissed by a dog and recieving, from its owner, the hair of same.