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[Alexandr Korol]

Question: Yesterday I decided to read a bit of the first volume. I was practically falling asleep during the first five pages, but then my head cleared, and I ended up reading all the way to page 103 in one sitting. Somewhere around page 27, I felt the influence of the book. As you said, this book is bottomless — I’m noticing things I hadn’t seen before. My question is: Big Alexander is a key figure in “Alternative History,” but after reading 100 pages of the first volume, the impression forms that he is a man with a secret agenda. I understand why that is, but I wanted to hear your explanation.

When I first started sharing my early drafts — at the time, I called the book “The Path” — a lot of people were already leaving comments like: “Alexandr, be careful, this Big Alexander is very bad, don’t trust him, he’s using you, he’s manipulating you, be yourself, listen only to yourself and your heart.” There were many comments like that. And in general, when I worked on the books, since we now live in such a high-tech age, it was very convenient to test certain chapters or pages by posting rough drafts on social media or simply sharing parts of the story with a friend. That kind of reaction acts as a preview, allowing you to understand how readers might respond in the future when the book is actually published. That’s why I could always predict in advance what a person would think or feel after reading each line. And then, in the next line, I would speak to that feeling, which always amazed the reader — how I could do that. So yes, there was definitely a trend where no one trusted Big Alexander, and based on the first volume, people mostly perceived him as some kind of dark character. I’ll say this — even from the beginning to the end of the first volume, the overall association people had was that he was dark or had some kind of sinister intentions. Even the Mystic-Old-Man, when I asked him back in those days about Big Alexander, said things like “this man doesn’t give you anything,” “it’s not beneficial for you to speak with him, it’s beneficial for him to speak with you,” and “he talks to you because you’re a source of knowledge,” that he was taking all the information from me. That Mystic-Old-Man also once said — again, this was about ten years ago — he said: “This Big Alexander, I think I remember him, he came with someone else — they came together. Thought I’d fall for their bait, thought I’d dance to their tune.” Or something like that. “But I showed them that it wouldn’t work on me. I showed them.” And what that means — I don’t know. But the point is, it seems that there was even a story...