Ordinary humanitarian Vyacheslav Sorokhtin gets an unexpected chance for an interesting and eventful fate - he is involved in a large-scale experiment conducted by scientists from the near future over the infinitely distant past. The protagonist tries on the guise of an imperial bodyguard endowed with almost divine power. But both he and other participants in the events will have to be convinced of the correctness of the dictum: after firing a pistol into the past, wait for a cannon shot from the future.