Page 170

[Alexandr Korol]

Was it because of my mistake, or was it meant to be that way, or was it all arranged deliberately by the system so that I would describe it all to the readers — that is, to you, to people. But I truly am, you know... the one on whom the experiments are left. That is, I am such a pioneer here, I take all the hits, I describe it all, I tell it all, and you then walk along the path already trodden. And everything happens exactly as it should, up to the point that if I must lose a shoe and go barefoot, and then get lost, and then find the way out, then that exact algorithm, as it occurred — it was not because of me, not because of my mistakes, but because God, the system, specifically wanted to show something to a person, to a reader, that this is how one might stumble, lose a shoe, as the saying goes, and walk barefoot, or take a wrong turn. So all my, let me say it in a funny way, “wrong turns” are also from God, to show the reader what can happen if you turn “the wrong way.” And I live all of this through on my own skin and in the literal sense of the word describe it in my novel “Alternative History.”

What was the first thing I began to realize when I was reading now all my chapters, all my drafts, where there was even once a mention of this other, otherworldly magical world — the one I am searching for now in the ninth volume of “Alternative History”? I understood that the secret, first of all — and throughout this whole volume I will be compiling a list of these rules, this imprint — and one of the secrets, one of the keys to everything, is uncertainty. That is, what conclusions can be drawn? Each time I entered this magical world was when everything collapsed for me. And when everything collapsed, and I had not yet had time to restore it and decide again where to go — that “And” between A and B, there is world A, there is world B, and there is “And,” that transition — that is this otherworldly magical world. And it turns out that only when my whole human, earthly world collapsed, I became a magical writer. After all, remember what it began with — I began to keep a diary. And what did it begin with in general? From the fact that I fell in love with a girl, Masha, at 15–16 years old, and at that same period of time I stopped speaking with her, because I was a schoolboy, and what kind of serious relationship could there be.