Page 454

[Alexandr Korol]

and develop.” And you think, “Eh, alright, fine. How much longer?” “Barely any. Probably next year — that’s it, you’ll be able to travel the world, do whatever you want,” says the alien. You say, “Alright.” And you keep sitting there, studying and working. And ten years have passed. And it’s still “soon,” just “a little bit more.” That’s how I write books. I write and write, write and write, and it’s always “later,” “soon.” “Soon you can start a family, soon you can go somewhere, but for now it’s better to keep writing books, Alex.” So I write books. So where’s the lie in that? A lie is also, you see, when it’s really a lie... What is a lie? It’s when someone misleads you or deceives you for selfish gain or something like that — that’s a lie. But this is just a way of communicating. Figuratively speaking, imagine you’re a father and you want to show your child the ethnographic museum hall with some aboriginal exhibits. And you decide to present this not like a wise alien but like a short-sighted human by just telling your son: “Hey, let’s go to the museum, I want to show you an ethnographic tribe.” And what will your child say? Well, it depends on the child — if he’s simple and modest, sure, he’ll go. But he might throw a fit and say it’s boring and not interesting. But an alien would do it differently. He would say: “Hey, what did you want again?” And the child replies: “Remember I told you there’s this cool store, take me there.” And then you, as a wise father — an alien — say: “Alright, fine.” And you park by the museum and say: “Hey, let’s drop into this museum first before the store, I need to take care of something for work.” And the son says: “Okay, let’s go.” And then you go in, and he suddenly gets into the whole exhibit and says: “Wow, this is amazing. If you had just invited me, I wouldn’t have gone,” the son tells the father. And see, it turns out the father didn’t impose the museum or the exhibit but simply arranged it that way. And there’s also this situation — imagine a musician who wants to go on a world tour. But the aliens know there won’t be any tour, and yet this musician must write unique music, a soundtrack for some films. And he writes and writes, and the aliens keep inspiring him and inspiring him, telling him, “Is the tour coming soon?” “Yes, soon, just a couple more albums and you’ll have worked everything through, you’ll become a diamond, and your album will be diamond-level — keep going.” And he keeps trying and trying, and then — boom — he dies. Why didn’t the aliens tell him? Because if they had, he wouldn’t have written the music. And why, knowing he would die, did they never tell him, every time he talked about his dream of a world tour,