Page 409

[Alexandr Korol]

comes to an end. The system then highlights something else for me, directing my attention to the concept of the Phoenix bird. But before diving into that, I begin to realize that there is still something beyond death — something connected to immortality, rebirth, and resurrection. And I start to see that this theme appears in many places. I also come into contact with something else fascinating: when I exit the first stage of “Alternative History” in the fifth volume — the stage of death, the fear of death, the experience of death, how people react to you, and how you react to it — that was just the first stage. The next stage is much more pleasant: it is when you realize that you are dead.

And then I begin to realize something that, on the contrary, gives me an insane sense of happiness and clarity from suddenly understanding it. I suddenly grasp that if a person dies but at the same time doesn’t really die, then what if I am dead? What if my readers are also dead, but we just don’t know it? After all, what are the chances that we lived in some other multiverse — there are so many of them — and that this is still the same world as now, just showing different fates? And then I start to understand — what if we are in that world where I exist as a writer and my readers exist, and what if that is why we seem so strange? Why does society not accept or notice us? Why does the rest of society seem to be on autopilot while we, like ghosts, observe everything from the sidelines, like watchers? We seem otherworldly. And I realize that I have felt this since childhood, that I am like a ghost. I always watched strange films, which, as it turns out, were otherworldly, and I always listened to otherworldly music. I even used to say that it was otherworldly music, that I lived in some kind of vacuum or “corridor,” that there was the world of people, but they didn’t seem to understand or see me. Yes, of course, I can physically go to them, but it feels as if I am a spirit, something different. And I think, what are the chances that a person who is physically walking past me right now might actually already be dead and still living here? After all, this is all a computer-generated reality — he walks, continues on, perceives it as paradise, living in his illusion of paradise, while someone else perceives it as hell and lives that way. And someone else, you see, is dead and exists in some kind of state like a wandering spirit. What are the chances of that? And I start remembering that I wrote about this ever since childhood. All my first books were about this—about being different,