... in which Boris Sergeevich uses his free ears to show off on the topic of fundamental science and the physical nature of things
The small but cozy kitchen was more crowded than ever. Leonid and Valentina were seated at a table covered with a colorful oilcloth printed like a fabric tablecloth, while Leonid sat on an old corner sofa. Tolyan, who had been meticulously washing blood off himself in the bathroom for a long time, came in and sat down on a stool opposite them. Instantly realizing that it would be nice to offer the guests at least tea, Boris Sergeevich took several mismatched mugs from an old-fashioned glass-fronted sideboard and began pouring boiling water and tea leaves, filling the air with a sweet-bitter bergamot aroma.
"We apologize for our intrusion, Professor," Leonid began confidently, but suddenly stopped, realizing that what was happening strongly resembled a visit by commissars to Professor Preobrazhensky.
"We just had nowhere else to run, Boris Sergeevich," Valentina continued. "We noticed light coming from the window, so... We were lucky it was you. Maybe you could at least tell us what's going on around here?"
"That's an interesting question," sighed the old man, pouring himself a cup last and sitting heavily on the short edge of the kitchen corner. "You know how it is in Hollywood movies? The heroes find themselves in a difficult situation and suddenly meet a character who explains everything to them. Well, I'm afraid this isn't one of those cases, my extraordinary angels. You see, I hardly ever leave home. I buy groceries for the week ahead, and sometimes my daughter brings something when she visits. What does an old man need? Even with my pension money, there's still not enough for much. And now they've cut off the internet too. Without the internet, you can't really find out much about what's going on around..."
"Want to know what's happening, grandpa?" Tolyan couldn't stand the long tearful monologue any longer. "A real zombie apocalypse!"
"That's a bold assumption, young man," remarked Boris Sergeevich, loudly sipping his tea. "But as the famous American astrophysicist and science popularizer Carl Sagan once said: 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.' I've also noticed strange human behavior resembling mass psychosis, but there are far more prosaic explanations for this: viral infection, mind-altering substances such as sedatives, fear, or pain."
"Excuse me, Professor, but we saw exactly dead people," Leonid interjected. "Dead and cold, with mortal wounds on their bodies, without internal organs."
"And then they got up and walked away!" Valentina enthusiastically confirmed. "On their own two feet."
"They got up and walked away on their own two feet..." the old man repeated thoughtfully, scratching his beard and looking out the window where police officers had been killed a couple of days earlier.
For a moment, silence fell in the kitchen, broken only by the clinking of the teapot cooling on the stove and some kind of dull rhythmic tapping. Boris Sergeevich grunted as he stood up, paced back and forth, poured himself another cup of tea, and said:
"Do you know, young people, that the very existence of classical zombies contradicts the second law of thermodynamics? After all, without an energy input, no work can be done, meaning a dead body that is not alive and does not extract energy cannot move—it can only decay."
"And what follows from this?" asked Leonid.
"What follows is that these aren't zombies. Or rather, they're not classical zombies," the old man smiled under his gray beard and surveyed the young people with a cunning look. "Let me explain one idea to you, my stars. You should remember from your school physics course that all bodies consist of atoms and molecules in continuous chaotic motion—or oscillation, if we're talking about solids. This movement is commonly called 'Brownian' after the scientist who discovered it. By the way, it's incorrect, because the correct transcription would sound like 'Brown,' so it would be more accurate to say 'Brownian motion.' It's like with the 'periodic table of elements,' which we historically call the 'Mendeleev table'..."
Suddenly, the professor fell silent, lost in thought about various paths along which domestic and Western science had developed. He was brought out of his stupor by Valentina's cautious remark:
"Boris Sergeevich, you were talking about chaotic motion."
"Oh, yes," the scientist remembered. "Forgive an old man. You start talking about one thing, and then you always get distracted and forget what you started with... Chaotic molecular motion. It's closely related to statistical physics. Have you ever seen, for example, the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro?"
"No," Leonid answered for everyone, already sensing another lyrical digression.
"Well, or Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who points the way to a bright future from every square? That would be easier. So, imagine that all the molecules in his concrete hand first swing downward and then upward—then Ilyich could wave to us. Statistically, the probability of such an event is negligible, but it's not zero," Boris Sergeevich gleefully surveyed his listeners, who froze in some half-religious awe at the intensity of the physics discussion.
"This is nonsense!" Tolyan was the first to recover. "Moving monuments..."
"More like golems," corrected the scientist.
"This is some kind of rubbish... Lenin waving his hand!" the young man continued. "I'd rather believe in some virus from a secret laboratory under the city."
"Don't you become materialistic too abruptly?" the professor asked, noticing skeptical expressions on everyone's faces. "In that case, before continuing, let me show you something."
With these words, he slowly rose from his seat, took a glass jar covered with a greasy towel from the windowsill, placed it on the table in front of the young people, and dramatically tore off the cloth, like an artistic magician.