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[Alexandr Korol]

together, we would speak in those terms — somewhat childishly, of course, we were only about twenty — and I would say things like: “Maybe they’re the real Masons who control everything, not the ones people know about.” What did I mean by that? “Masons” could mean anything — any secret group in control. I meant someone or something hidden that runs the show. And maybe their old power was fading, and I was the new geometer who would later have to build a new order and rule the world, and that these old Masons were passing on all the secrets to me, training me. So that’s the kind of crude speculation I was tossing around with my friends when all of this first started. We also joked that maybe we were reincarnated royals who had come back to reclaim our city. And that maybe that’s why there were people like Big Alexander and Valentina — some kind of watchers or guardians. And that now I had arrived, and for some reason everyone was happy to see me. And the way she acted — remember, she said, “They told me to show you this,” and she took me to Tsarskoye Selo. Who told her? I think — just like I hear that voice — maybe she felt it too. Maybe she knows some secrets. Even the way she spoke to me back then — it didn’t feel like a regular businesswoman talking to me, but more like some being or force was speaking through her, or a Spirit, or the system, or the Mother of God. The point is, the conversation was along the lines of — well, when she told me “you’re home” a few times and said she had to say it, that I would understand everything — later we passed by some abandoned church, and she said, “It’s abandoned here, but over there it’s active.” I asked, “Where is ‘there’?” and she said, “In some other world, it’s restored,” — that’s what she said. And that they use that church. She also said something interesting — there were arched openings, both below and above. Not really windows, but openings. And she said they pass through the lower ones and fly out through the upper ones. I don’t know who “they” are. Then she said, “See the nails hammered in?” There were some nails hammered in above a window — or, if I’m not mistaken, above a second-floor door. And she said, “That’s to keep demons from flying in or getting through.” I didn’t even write that part in the book because I simply didn’t understand what it was. In fact, I left out a lot of things I considered nonsense — and that was a mistake. I hope I still managed to capture and write down everything truly important. These are the kinds of things she also said.