"UVB-87. Four. Five. One. Grigory. Pavel. Fedor"
All lands near Ursus border impregnated such messages. Creepy, mysterious, unceremoniously bursting into the air, and leaving random listeners with miriad questions. Previously I read different theories: This is a high-tech system that predicts disasters, or encryption for spies, or something called "Dead man's hand", but forum that discussed it mistically disappeared right after this phrase appeared. I can't say how close all these speculations to truth, but for me there is only one truth: radiograms from the wastelands are a relics of the past.
Why do I think so? One message can sometimes sound several times later weeks and months, not changing his content a bit, and, quicker probably, meaning. Yes, that's garbage, hollow fact, it doesn't give anything, but it is what it is. The same messages sound on different waves, at different times and in different places. Or that's I lose, sinking in the air... In any case, I know one for sure: if you hear messages for no one, you are on Ursus lands.
It's actually useful: there aren't good landmarks in the wasteland, so I always try to keep my eyes open. The receiver picked up a signal here, there dead body of animal appeared, here stripes from tracks appeared. You mark it on the map, you continue the way through, wondering what it all means. Without attention to detail, a smuggler cannot survive. But what he doesn't need exactly - extra attention.
It was surprising, but the fact was in that I never met any border guards or soldiers. Only traces, hints of their presence. Sometimes I saw, how some hills became plains - I attributed this to the imperial artillery's exercises. Huge trenches, sinking in sand and dust, more similar to rivers' channels, - remind about wars of the past for me. And those radio signals, that guided me on delaying through Ursus borders, was orders to the local soldiers, I guess.
One day in the middle of endless sand-yellow nothingness I stumbled upon black hut with a tall antenna. There were no signs of life there, so I gave in to my curiosity and went inside. The pity hut greeted me with desolation: the small room seemed even smaller because it was messy. On a slanted table I found a radio-translator and a button with labels. The first one crackled loudly "Three, seven, king", second was signed "ON/OFF" in Ursusuian. Obeyed impulse, I pressed it, and voice ended, letting room fall in silence. There was nothing interesting for me there except that, so after taking a break from the midday heat, I moved on.
Through the rest of the journey one thought was in corner of my mind: the wastelands contained traces of mysterious, non-existing civilizations, and I looked them like in museum. So pointless radio-signal was museum exhibit, and I've destroyed it, not realising that.
In continuing analogies with museum, his exhibits are scary, dangerous. Did I mention the disappearing hills? Well, one time the ursusian artillery leveled a mountain with a plain. It bombed the whole fucking mountain into rubble, turning it into a monument to destruction consisting of a mushroom dust cloud, soon blown away by the desert wind, a pile of sharp shell fragments and an absurdly huge plain. I thought: should I take it, should I sell the fragments, but a reverent fear overpowered greed, and I left ruins of mountains untouched
All this ignites my interest, lets it not to fade away. Despite the fact that I know everything that the empire leaves behind, I see something new every time. Or rather, find something new in things that I've seen before. For example, did you know that you can catch classical music near the border? I often fall asleep under sad songs of violins, deep, measured wave-like peals of piano. Then only numbers and letters follow, and a hissing sound dripping onto the brain.
But no matter how interesting the researches may be, the most important thing in it is my loneliness. Alluring wish to see more and more, again touch the world of alive antiquities interspersed with sweet awareness of fact, that only I can see all of this, it all was intented for me and no one more. I want to be here, enjoy dirty-brown, or sand-yellow canvas that runs over the horizon, which can make people mad, can, but not me. I want be the part of that pity land with dry liveless air, greedly look for something new in it, and woe to anyone who dared to disturb me. I would rip and tear him apart, like an insane infected.
Nut in general, I work in land of curiosities. Only Ursus can be so terrifying and alluring at the same time. Every time I see traces of another military excercises, I think: maybe it was recent? Maybe I still have a chance to meet those who left them? And I often follow it. I'll never find something, such is already my fate, but despite of everything, I'm starting my old SUV, stocking up on food, and going into the grasps of unknown, again and again, in hope to meet my tormentors and benefactors one day.
Cheap hotel number. Night. Disguise observed, nobody won't disturb me. Money received, dangers passed. I'm lying in silence, and hear a quiet whistle in corner of mind, the crackling of a small radio in my head, endless letters and numbers in my ears. I'm closing eyes, but there isn't darkness, there is endless clay and sand over the horizon. I'm falling asleep and even in my dreams I return to this damned desert. It's my executor. I am its prisoner. I am doomed to search for Empire of Ursus till ny days end. And I know exactly: I will die in yellowness, loneliness and oblivion. And at the last moment I'll hear only:
"UVB-87. UVB-87. UVB- 87..."