Let me ask you, have you witnessed a miracle? And the miracle of the invisible, as if quite ordinary for the doer of it? Well, how, say, a random neighbor on the garden bench suddenly rises up in the air to just get the newspaper out of under, and then falls to the place, and start to read it, and then even smoke out of the finger? And at the same time, he is not looking for any witnesses, but as if his miracles are completely natural for any of us, right? No is? Did not see? And I saw. And my shock was so great that even now, a quarter of a century later, I remember everything to the smallest detail.

If you believe the movies, the typical Russian morning begins with the fresh cries of cockroaches, sweet bread smokes from baking tubes and the quiet rise of a golden candlestick over the Orthodox domes. Maybe maybe. I do not argue. But every day in Russian construction begins with an exhausted mat. This morning was, unfortunately, no exception.

The morning’s frost shaken the roar of Nicholas Browkin, a huge and terrible brigadier of cable workers. He breathed into a huge gorilla-like chest, there alchemically turned it into a mat, and erected it outward, targeting the bulldozer's cabin. At the same time, the turbodiesel of the super-powerful Komatsu shamefully silenced; he simply lacked strength.

Waiting for the first wave in the exercise "flash from the left", to the epicenter, on the thin legs, sitting down and stumbling, a recent graduate of the polytech, he is a newly sculpted master of the site, ran. It was me.

It turned out that the bulldozer, this worthy ruler of the steel bar, confused the workplace, and carefully lowered the ground along with the indicators above the cables we laid last week. This meant that now any fool (and just their cultivation is actively engaged in construction) will soon start to drill and dig just in the place of their passage. Murphy’s Laws were stricter to us than the abstinence under the arrow. And that everyone knew that the unmarked cable is replaced at our expense.

Something had to be done to find and tag the cable. But what? My brains were twisted, writing in my brain concerts on this topic. The decision did not appear. Something remembered the special instruments for searching for lines, but in our conditions I could quickly get them, unless only to find the basis of the rainbow, and ask the dwarves there.

Meanwhile, Browkin drove away with his marvelous matches the bulldozer that rattled far beyond the boundaries of the praide and returned in a good mood. For him, this incident was just a useful breathing exercise, such as tai chi. I tried to pretend to be a boss, fixed the sliding bracelet, climbed terribly and asked as strictly as possible, “Well, Bougor, what will we do?” He instantly overwhelmed me, and in his performance I spoke somehow with the whispering voice of the school jabe. And then he burst peacefully: "what to do, what to do... to look for the cable of our..."

Pulling between his beards and his beard a curved "Prim" from a mint pack, he approached a bunch of garbage and squeezed out some aluminum wire. Riddled by the smoke, he broke it into two pieces, and then bended each with the letter "G". He took in each of the fists a piece, and holding them, like toy pistols, began to walk a zigzag, sometimes failing with pudry kirtzacs into an unfreezing swallow. I followed the trail. Nicholas did not turn away from his wires, holding them in parallel. Suddenly they crossed. “Oh,” he pleased, “he seemed to have found it. What are you worth, put the veil!” I obeyed. Browkin continued to walk with the bars, I pulled random sticks, and soon our tracks were drawn on the ground.

I followed the brigadier with a strange sense of joke. This could not be. But the workers pulled up, and began to hit the standard markers instead of my sticks... no one was surprised or scratched. That was normal for them! How is? Is it comfortable to work with a person who easily feels the unconnected cable underground? The worldview was quiet. Diko wanted to leave and think of vanity. Instead, I asked to try it myself.

I took another warm wire, relaxed slightly, as Browkin advised, and grabbed, clinging to the field. The wires fluctuated in the tact of my steps, but remained parallel. Hands are frozen. I understood that there was no hope, but the passionate desire for a miracle only grew.
Suddenly, at one step, they stopped. by Mama. I took two steps back. They have separated. to forward. They crossed. still ahead. separated again. I also found a cable.

It turned out that almost everyone in the brigade could do this. I was taught, and in a week I could even distinguish underground water pipes from cables. Then I made myself a pair of stainless electrodes and wore them in my boots. And the miracle, becoming ordinary, has lost its sharpness of magic.

Then construction was completed. I have gone. A lot has happened since then. There were many different people, cities and even countries. But I will never, never forget myself, such a young and unreasonably joyful, wandering in a dirty cotton, with a drop on my nose, stuck on two unequal glowing wires...

And suddenly they came together.