A Thousand Years of Infinity. Science Fiction Story

Cover designer Alexander Chesalov

Illustrator Alexander Chesalov

© Alexander Chesalov, 2025

© Alexander Chesalov, cover design, 2025

© Alexander Chesalov, illustrations, 2025

ISBN 978-5-0065-9744-0

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

From the Author

Dear Friends.

I’m pleased to introduce you to my new fantasy short story, A Thousand Years of Infinity.

Over the past year, I have given several presentations at various conferences on the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies.

Yes, I really like this topic, I like the different research directions in this field, and of course I like solving new applications with AI.

In terms of science and application problem solving, I am actively working in the field of industrial automation. One of my priority research areas is to investigate the possibility of using artificial intelligence to implement algorithms for mismatch negativity potential in industrial automated predictive and prescriptive maintenance systems. Besides science, I am passionate about generative artificial intelligence. I spend a lot of time studying and improving the operation of application software solutions.

In 2024 I wrote and in early 2025 I published my book “Generative Artificial Intelligence #Forge&flux”. This book is a textbook for high school and college students who want to learn about advanced generative artificial intelligence technologies. In it, I explain AI approaches in simple and accessible language, making them understandable to those who do not have deep theoretical and practical knowledge. The book emphasizes the FLUX.1 model, which was a breakthrough in generative AI, and the possibilities of working with the Stable Diffusion WebUI Forge system, which provides a free but powerful tool for creating unique images.

Using the Stable Diffusion WebUI Forge generative artificial intelligence system, I’ve created a huge number of images, including the ones you’ll find in this book.

Another hobby of mine is writing fairy tales and fantasy stories.

My first story was “Robot Roma: Humanity’s Last Hope”, which I wrote in the year 2024.

In my opinion, this is a deep and emotionally rich science fiction story that explores the boundaries between man and machine, as well as the ethical aspects of AI technologies and issues of self-awareness. The unique world of the future created in this story will not leave the reader indifferent, immersing him in an atmosphere of suspense and anticipation. The story of the robot Roma IA 661125 makes the reader think about the future, where technology can be both a blessing and a curse for all humanity. I will say this: if you are a fan of Isaac Asimov’s work, you should enjoy this story.

Today I present to you my new sci-fi short story “A Thousand Years of Infinity”. In it, I carefully and unobtrusively present my version of time travel, which I think is interesting, and which is also based on the most important provisions of the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics and the latest scientific discoveries, which in turn makes this story interesting for the reader. In any case, only time will tell how true it really is…

Enjoy reading and positive vibes!

Yours Alexander Chesalov.

March 29, 2025

Chapter 1. The Old House at the Edge of the Forest

The snow fell silently. Sometimes the wind would suddenly appear and lift thousands of snowflakes high into the air, and then shadows would flicker between the trees, shadows too tall, too thin, with branchy shapes that resembled the branchy horns of mythical creatures. The trees creaked, as if whispering in a forgotten language, warning of something unseen. The air was thick with the smell of pine needles, frost, and something ancient – perhaps a memory of the past, perhaps a premonition of the future.

In the midst of this silence, at the edge of the snow-covered forest, where the forest parted, stood an old house. Like a lonely guardian, forgotten and abandoned by all, it still guarded the peace of the night forest. Its walls, made of blackened logs that had lost their shape, seemed to be part of the forest itself – thick, impenetrable, full of the secrets of the old world. The roof, covered with a fluffy blanket of snow, merged with the shadows of the trees, and the tall windows looked out into the darkness like eyes. The house was old, but strong, as if the earth itself held it up, not allowing time to destroy it.

Inside the house it was half dark. The only source of light was the great stone fireplace where the smoldering wood sang its crackling song in a dance of mesmerizing flames. The fire from the fireplace cast bizarre shadows on the walls of the house, dancing like ancient spirits. The wooden floor was covered with carpets, faded with time, but still bearing traces of former luxury. On the walls hung old paintings of strange crystal castles, serpent dragons, and other unseen places and creatures that seemed to come alive in the flickering firelight.

Two armchairs stood in the middle of the room. Large, high-backed, upholstered in dark green leather, covered with a web of small cracks of time. A man sat in one of the chairs. His name was Ivan. He was thirty-one years old, but there was a certain weariness in his eyes from the burden of life that was not typical of youth. He was tall, thin, with dark hair that had already been touched by the frosty breath of change. His face was pale, as if he had rarely been out in the sun, and there was a lingering sadness in the corners of his eyes.

Ivan lived alone in that house. He didn’t really want to remember the reasons why he had moved from the big city to a remote, abandoned village. He did not even remember how long it had been. Time passed differently in this house – slowly and almost imperceptibly. He had grown accustomed to the silence, to the sound of the winter wind outside the window, to the creaking of the old floorboards and the crackling of the fire in the fireplace. He had stopped thinking about the fear of loneliness and had long since come to feel himself a big part of this small, civilization-forgotten world. Once it had seemed to him that life had thrown him overboard and sent him here in exile. Over the years, he had forgotten that as well. Now he felt only harmony and peace in his soul. He was grateful that fate had found him this island, where he felt at home.

The moon hung low that night, huge and blue, like a frozen flame. Its light did not illuminate, but distorted: the snow beneath it sparkled like a scattering of hundreds of thousands of precious stones. Through the blue of the winter night, through the whirlwinds of the blizzard that sometimes tossed the snow in a mad dance, the road was visible. Narrow. Almost invisible.

Someone was walking down the road. The figure, barely recognizable in the blizzard, moved slowly but inexorably toward the house at the edge of the forest. Its silhouette trembled like a mirage, blurred in the snow, then clear again in the stillness of the snow swirl. Sometimes it seemed that the traveler was not a shadow, but echoes of other times – fragments of voices, footsteps, groans. He was carrying something that would change Ivan’s fate forever tonight.

Chapter 2. The Wanderer

The knock at the door sounded like thunder. Ivan shuddered, put down the book he was holding, and walked uncertainly to the door. His heart beat faster. He hadn’t expected visitors. No one had been here for years.

He opened the door. A tall man with dark but graying hair that fell to his shoulders stood on the threshold. The stranger’s eyes seemed to glow like two coals in the dark. His face was lined with wrinkles, but they showed not age but wisdom, as if he had lived more than one life. The stranger wore a long cloak and carried a large, dark brown, well-worn leather pack.

– Good evening,” said the guest with a smile. – May I come in?

Ivan looked at the stranger as if considering whether to let him in or not. He could not understand if he could trust this man. Something in his face was both familiar and repulsive. He hesitated for a moment, but then made up his mind.

– Come in,” Ivan said, though there was still an undercurrent of uncertainty in his voice.

The traveler stepped over the threshold. He looked around and his face became even more serious.

– It’s been years, and it’s still the same,” he said in a low voice. – It’s the same as it was then.

– What’s the same? – Ivan asked, looking around and feeling a shiver run down his spine, as if he were not at home. It was as if he was visiting someone himself.

– At home. At home. This fireplace. The same old Chesterfield chairs. Those paintings. This silence. I used to… I used to live here.

Ivan stared at him, stunned, trying to figure out if this was happening at all – a joke, a dream, or something more – Who are you? – Frowning, Ivan asked.

– Me?” The traveler stepped into the firelight from the hallway and approached Ivan. – Take a closer look. What do you see?

Ivan took a step towards the stranger and looked into his face. If before he could not understand what it was that made him so suspicious, now it was as if he had been electrocuted. He looked into the face of a man in his early thirties. Blue eyes. Unseasonably tanned and weathered skin. Teeth as white as snow and hair as white as a February snowstorm at his temples, the tips of which dripped drops of melted snowflakes onto the wooden floor of the house.

The guest stood silently in the hall. Still silent, but with a smile on his face, he looked at Ivan, waiting for his host to realize what was going on and invite him into the house.

Ivan slowly raised his right hand and, pointing at his guest, said uncertainly, “I – I know you. I’ve seen you somewhere before.

– Yes. I’ve seen you,” the traveler replied confidently. – Not only have you seen me, but you see me every morning in the mirror. Haven’t you noticed? I you!

Ivan felt the ground give way under his feet. He took a few steps back, his fingers gripping the wooden beam that held up the ceiling – “I… is that you? Ivan said softly, his voice trembling like a leaf in the wind. His face paled and his mind refused to believe what was happening.

The traveler took off his wet coat and, without even looking at it, hung it on the coat rack, the same one made of old elk antlers that Ivan had found not far from the house shortly after he had bought it. He wiped his boots, wet from the melted snow, on the mat.

– Yes, that’s it,” the guest replied, entering the room. His footsteps were the same as Ivan’s – a firm, confident step. The muffled clatter of heavy boots on the wooden floor. – Only I am from your past. Or rather, I am you, but in a way of another version and from another time.

The guest entered the room on heavy heels. He sat down in the armchair by the fireplace – his favorite, the one with the stitched upholstery in the shape of a long scar, where Ivan sat every evening.

The traveler reached over to the book table and picked up a book – a collection of Alexei Reznik’s fantasy stories, tattered, with bent corners of yellowed pages.

– Do you remember how the author gave it to you when you worked at Kominterna in Moscow? – he asked, turning the pages. – Yes, and I remember that day well. It was late. It was time to go home, and I had a lot of work to do. And the weather was bad. Late fall. It was raining and you, I mean me, didn’t have an umbrella. You were soaked to the skin, but you hid the book under your jacket.

Ivan slowly lowered himself onto the second chair. It seemed as if his whole body turned to cotton, and he felt a cold shiver in his hands.

– How… how can you know that? – Ivan, who no longer doubted that he was looking at himself, could not quite believe that what was happening now was real.

The traveler put down the book, looked directly into Ivan’s eyes and said: “Because it was me. At that time, Alexei and I had been working together for almost half a year on a science fiction novel called "#Digital_economy.NET”. I have to say that the idea for the title of the novel was mine personally. Well, or yours. Well, ours.

The silence hung between them, thick as a winter snowstorm outside the window. Only the crackling of the logs in the fireplace broke it.

– You came… uh… why are you here? – Ivan finally squeezed out.

The traveler sighed. His face grew older for a moment, the wrinkles deepened.

– To meet you and tell you the truth. About the house. About the forest. About you and what awaits you beyond the threshold tonight.

He leaned forward, and the same strange light flashed in his eyes that Ivan had noticed from the threshold.

– How old are you now? – asked the traveler with a smile. – Thirty-one?

Ivan looked at his guest and nodded silently, while the traveler continued his monologue – Here I am now thirty-one. In this time. But when I left this house, I was thirty years old, and that was, strange as it may sound, a long time ago… only one year in this time, and fifty in the other,” he said thoughtfully, looking intently into the darkness of the frost-covered window.

Chapter 3. Getting to Know Each Other

They sat in silence by the fire for a while. The fire crackled, casting the same dancing shadows on the walls.

The traveler stood up and walked around the chair. He leaned against its large back and began his story. His voice was soft, but each word sounded as if it had been etched in Ivan’s memory forever.

– Once upon a time, many years ago, I was just like you. I was thirty years old and I lived here in this house. I guess my story of moving to this wilderness is no different from yours. I remember my first impression when I saw this abandoned house. What can I say, but the musty smell when I first walked in, I still can’t forget. It took me almost three weeks to clean and scrub it. It was early spring. The windows were open all day. And the musty smell of the old room just wouldn’t leave the house. I spent a few more weeks scrubbing and painting. The old carpets were washed in the river. They hung in the yard in the early sun for almost a month. I replaced all the window frames. I put in a bio toilet and a shower. Installed gas. I took down all the partitions and made one big room – a studio on the first floor. I remember how long it took the men from the neighboring village to fix that fireplace. And I’m not talking about the fact that I didn’t tidy up the property until just before autumn. So much effort and care I put into this place that I now call home.

I’ve lived here for almost four years now. It’s good to be a programmer, there are always clients and remote work. Communication is not great here. But you can work. Once a week I went to the nearest village, connected to the Internet and synchronized my repository with my programs. I sent reports to my employers, and once a month I got paid for my work. The pay was reasonable. I had enough to live on and a little more. In general, it was like everyone else’s.

But then one day, in the longest December night, quite unexpectedly, a stranger came to me, just as I am to you now. He said he was me, only from my past. He told me that in this place and at this time there is a certain anomaly that manifests itself only once a year, only in this place and at this time. This anomaly, like an invisible force, sends one of us to another world, and the other of us, who fell into it a year ago, comes back and stays in this world, in this time dimension. And this has been happening every year since my thirtieth birthday. In your case, from the age of thirty-one. In general, we can say that you and I are really just at the beginning of a recurring cycle of events. It turns out that the anomaly will throw one of us into a different world every year, and some of us will be brought back. So today it’s your turn to travel, to a world you’ve never explored, but that I know well – a world both more beautiful and more terrifying than anything you can imagine. A world where time flows differently, where every day is an eternity filled with incredible events.

Ivan listened to his guest without interrupting. His heart was beating faster and in his head he had only one thought: “This is impossible. What kind of delusional fairy tale is this? What another world? What anomaly? He must be crazy…”

It seems only a year ago that I left this house,” the wanderer continued. – Believe me, I didn’t intend or want to go anywhere, but I decided to go and traveled to that very world. I lived there for fifty years. I saw cities that float in the clouds, forests where trees sing, and oceans whose waves glow in the dark. I’ve loved, I’ve suffered, I’ve rejoiced. I lived a full life in this world and breathed fully. But one day I realized that I had to go back. It was inevitable. The loop of time anomaly has once again crossed the straight line of our time. And now I’m here to keep the balance and give you a chance.

– Balance? – Ivan asked, confused by the traveler’s story.

– Yes,’ the traveler nodded. – Everything in this world is connected. And what happens to us is not in vain. For some incredible reason, you and I, and all the others who will live in this house in a year, two, three, and so on up to fifty-five years from now, have been given the unique opportunity to live what I call ‘a thousand years of infinity. None of us can change or influence this anomaly. It is and will be active for quite some time. We can only keep the balance between the worlds by following one rule: it is obligatory, after making a decision and leaving this house, to come back here, to the present, in one year, after having lived in the other world for a different period of time for each of us. For you it is exactly forty-nine years. The other you, whom you will meet in this house when you return, will be only one year older than you in the present, and he will have to repeat our journey with you, having lived there for exactly forty-eight years, and then come back again. The next one of us will travel forty-six years, and so on, until one of us is fifty-five years old in this world.

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