Page 52

[Alexandr Korol]

But where did Big Alexander get this information from? What is it? It’s as if all the heads of state — almost all countries’ leaders — have been initiated into something, into some kind of secrets, and they used to have a head figure, and now that figure is gone, and they’re deciding who will be the next. And until that happens, that’s why there are so many problems in the world. And he said that “this one wanted it but wasn’t allowed, and that one wanted it but wasn’t allowed either” — he was listing various presidents. What is all that? I don’t know. That’s exactly what the first volume is about — it’s a beginning that’s meant to unfold and develop through all the following volumes of this novel, and perhaps in one of the later volumes, the truth will be revealed about who exactly the Red Dragon is, and who this old man was, and whether he actually died or not. But as I understand it — yes, he did. And who he was, and why no one can replace him. And over the course of five volumes of “Alternative History”, I’ve often drawn analogies around what the Red Dragon might be. When I was working on volume four, I explored the underworld, and while working on volume five, I again encountered the idea of some demon — more precisely, Satan — named Ladon. That’s one of his names — Ladon — and on Wikipedia it even says that he is the Red Dragon. Maybe that’s what Big Alexander meant.

In general, if we touch on the theme of dragons in the mythology of China and East Asia, then the dragon — just like among Muslims in ancient times, or rather, when the Arabs still practiced paganism — was similar to how we, as Orthodox Russians, had deities like Yarilo and others. Back then, the Arabs had jinn. These jinn are spirits. Most often, they were portrayed as evil, although not all spirits are evil — these are simply spirits. And as I understand it, in Chinese mythology, the dragon — of which there are many kinds — is also one of the Spirits. Therefore, purely theoretically, we can suppose that the dragon is a God, one of them. There’s a God of the sky, a God of the earth, a God of the underworld, a God of death. And above all of them is the main God of the Sun, who is broken down like this — a system within a system. So in general, the Spirit, as I came to understand while working on the later volumes of “Alternative History”, is something like a Mind, a higher intelligence. And they vary — each governs a different system we live in, like simulations. And the Red Dragon, therefore, theoretically, might be the Spirit of the underworld.