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An introduction from the author:

Greetings to you, my reader. Before you move on and start reading the story I’ve written, I’d like to share with you the reasons why this novel came about. It will only take a couple of minutes, but maybe those minutes will help you look at the story differently and more deeply with more understanding than you would have if you had skipped this text. If you’re ready, let’s get started.

Let’s start from afar, from an acquaintance. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that a name is just a composite image of our actions and deeds by which we are judged by others. To the people who know you, it encompasses a set of all the experiences that go with you, and to everyone else it means nothing. This is my first work as a writer, and my past experiences have nothing to do with writing, and hence, I write under a pseudonym. Now, your opinion will create a picture of my identity as an author for all subsequent readers, because my name in the world of books at the time of writing these words is just a zilch, a set of letters with no weight. And yet, behind me are the years that have passed and a host of events that I cannot completely ignore.

Let’s dive into the distant past: as a small child, but already able to walk, talk, and even read, I began to think for the first time about what I should do in this life. It is not that I could not find something to do, I could and did. Here the question is different, in the global sense of these words. With my unclouded childish mind, I saw so many interesting and fascinating things! At times, I was breathless with excitement, and in between these bursts, I felt fear at the sight of limitless possibilities. At some point, I stopped looking at the specifics, abandoned my dreams of top management or military professions, and turned to a quest, the beginning of which was to understand the structure of the world in which you and I live. This quest continues until now, but I have already come to something.

The story waiting for you on the pages of the book you are holding in your hands or looking at through the screen of your device is a cover for the desires and vision of a free life of an ordinary person. Unfortunately, we live in a world of millennia-old constructed models that do not take into account the facts of our desires and sometimes aspirations. However, realizing this, realizing the senselessness of the calls and cries of truth, hope and faith in a miracle continue to flow in me. It is not without reason that they say that hope dies last.

For centuries, people have created legends and fairy tales to explain the unexplainable, to teach without teaching, or simply to touch the miracle of the impossible in our realities. I am not much different from them. Here, on the pages of my work, I can live a different life. A life in which I have freedom of action, where I can be myself without hiding my experiences and feelings, a life that, if someone is watching, it is a great omnipotent something that exists beyond my understanding. My nature does not accept submissive obedience, and I still struggle with thoughts that tell me that I am just a cog in a huge system. Perhaps it is so, but in my reality, I will believe to the end that only the supreme is above me – the beginning of everything, and not a bunch of people who have dragged the most marvelous of possible magic – the birth of a living creature into the drab red tape of meaningless existence.

Well, the second minute has already begun. Time is of great value, so I dare not keep you immersed in my own musings and invite you to move on to the story itself, a work that is the microoutcome of my quest for knowledge, understanding and freedom. Enjoy your reading.

Crossroads: The Beginning After the End

The year 2081. Mankind discovers the best period in its history, named after as the «Age of Abundance». All countries of the world, united at that time in large unions with a high level of integration, came to a common understanding. Market economies become history, and global resource-oriented processes take its place. Within three years, all armed conflicts disappear, and the technological leap and ubiquitous introduction of robots into human life ends the problems of exhausting labor and a lack of necessities even in the most remote parts of the planet. For the first time in its history, man is not forced to survive, but can live and develop within his own capabilities and desires.

«And there came a paradise on earth. And its glow was bright, but not for long. For there can be no eternal paradise when hell burns in the souls of men.» – Reader of the Order of Truth, liturgy in New Babylon, the 27th year of the new chronology.