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[Alexandr Korol]

But other times, it felt like he was just an ordinary person. And you wonder, how is that even possible? And what’s very curious — though I didn’t give it too much weight at the time — was that toward the end of “Alternative History” volume one, and throughout volume two, during my conversations with the Mystic-Old-Man and Big Alexander, almost every time, it was the Spirit I was speaking with. So essentially, I was speaking with the Spirit through them. But what’s interesting is that there was a moment when, in addition to being able to sense when Big Alexander was in the Spirit and when he wasn’t, I felt — this was in October or November 2023, after I’d finished volume two of “Alternative History” — that the Spirit in him was someone else. It was very unusual. Because on one hand, I understood that it wasn’t just a person — that some force was within him. But not the same force as before, not that kind and gentle Spirit I always described in volume one of “Alternative History.” It felt like a dark Spirit, a harsh Spirit, a tough one. How did I feel it? Well, you just sense it. You see, when someone is in the Spirit, it’s like that Spirit enters everyone else around, instantly. I remember when I was working on the first volume of “Alternative History” in 2023, as I was finishing it, someone from work told me that when I’m in the Spirit, it feels like I’m inside their head and that it’s impossible to say no to me. What is that? How does that work? I didn’t do that on purpose. But I’ll say this — I only ever saw one time when there was some dark Spirit in Big Alexander. That was exactly when I finished volume two of “Alternative History,” in late October or early November. Before that, the Spirit had always been the same — both in the Mystic-Old- Man and in Big Alexander. That second Spirit in Big Alexander appeared only once. Later on — volume three, four, five of “Alternative History” — I began to truly realize, to understand and see that the Spirit is not singular, that there are different ones. They have something in common, something shared, and something that sets them apart. What they share is that state of being without mind, like you’re zero, like some alien or ghost, observing everything from the outside. That’s the first feeling — like a vacuum. But you see, these Spirits have different tones or shades. It’s like one is the Spirit of intellect — of the mind; another is the Spirit of the heart; another is the Spirit of justice. And then, as it turns out, there’s also the main Spirit. There’s a whole fascinating story about how many of these Spirits there are. So, going back to your question — when did I start to distinguish between Spirits? From that very moment.