Chapter One

 

 

 

 

 My eyelids are so thin that I wake up as soon as the natural light level in the room reaches 0.005 lux. After getting out of bed, I go out to the balcony and, accompanied by the chirping of nimble tits hopping from branch to branch like colorful Ping-Pong balls, do a few physical exercises.

This routine is how my day usually begins. It continues with a contrast shower, the sacrament of shaving my beard, and preparing a simple bachelor's breakfast—three fried eggs with ham and noodles on the side.

"The people who eat bread with noodles are invincible!" is a mantra I repeat while preparing breakfast. And this sophistry charges me with energy for the rest of the day. And as a supervisor, I really need energy!

However, that morning, my daily routine was disrupted. I continued to lie in bed, without feeling my body, unable to control my thoughts and emotions, as if observing myself from the outside. The sad history of humanity floated before me like a never-ending holographic panorama. The grandiosity that I saw delighted me, disconcerted me, and saddened me. It was impossible to remain indifferent, watching how Homo sapiens had transformed our planet. The first to catch my eye was the most intriguing character in this tragicomedy, whose ending is impossible to predict, much less change.

He was sitting at a table, an hourglass on the countertop in front of him. Looking closely at him and the chronometer, I guessed what he was doing: he was watching the sand flow from the upper flask of the hourglass into the lower flask.

And suddenly he screamed at the top of his lungs:

“Eureka! I command Time and Space!”

“That’s how it all started,” I heard.

“Since the invention of the hourglass,” I continued, deciding that I was talking to myself.

"No, out of pride!" someone contradicted me. I looked around and saw a man with a lute in his right hand. He seemed to be standing two steps away from me. In reality, we were separated by several generations. That's why his figure was indistinct, as if woven from air and light.

Taking a closer look at the phantom, I recognized my father. What surprised me most wasn't that he was here, next to me, but how he looked. I'd only seen him this young in photographs taken long before I was born. Looking again at his face, at the musical instrument in his right hand, I remembered my mother's story about how my future father courted her when she was a girl.

"Do you know what captivated me about him? His lute playing and the timbre of his voice; he played and sang amazingly, your future father..." she recalled.

"Where's Mom? Is she here too?" I asked my father, worried.

“Yes, she’s there, in the garden,” he said, nodding his head toward the garden.

I looked where he pointed and saw my mother among the blossoming apple trees. She was wearing a light blue dress, her loose hair the color of ripe oats, fluttering in the nonexistent wind. She glanced back, smiled, and waved at us with a bouquet of wildflowers: white daisies, blue cornflowers, and red poppies.

"How young and beautiful she is!" I said enthusiastically. And I looked at my father.

"Your mother is twenty-five years old now, the age she was when we met," he said. And after a moment's silence, he continued, "However, all of us here are at the age when we were happy."

"And everyone is twenty-five?" I asked.

"Well, I wouldn't claim those," he said. "Nonetheless, people experience happiness at sixteen, at thirty, at seventy, and even at older ages."

"And are there many of them here?”

"Who do you mean?”

 “Those who are of older ages.”

“I haven't counted. But they are the happiest.”

“Do you still play the lute?" I asked, remembering my mother's story.

"Playing the lute is the only thing I do that brings me joy. Our neighbor Albert comes over with his violin, and we play a duet. Mom really likes it."

“Albert, is he a violinist?”

"No, he's a theoretical physicist, a mathematician—in a word, a scientist. He's already quite old, and he's the luckiest of us."

“Does the quality of happiness depend on age?”

“Not always. But Albert is an extraordinary case. He, like many others, spent his entire life doing things he didn't want to do, developing theories that were impossible to refute or test in practice. For this, his colleagues greatly respected and envied him. He wanted only one thing—to play the violin. And when he came here, he finally managed to free himself from all hierarchy and become happy, absolutely happy..."

“But I, Father, don't feel happy at all!" I admitted, embarrassing him.

"Are you dating a girl or a woman?" he asked.

"You know, Dad, it's simple for us! If you have money, you find a dating site online, choose a girl you like from the photos posted on its pages, and order her. And they send her to you," I said, deciding to play a prank on my dad.

"By mail?" he asked, confused.

“No, what are you saying! It's delivered like pizza, right to your door.”

“And what is this money you are talking about?”

“The equivalent of love: more money means more love and vice versa,” I boasted, unconsciously jealous of my father’s happiness.

"That's interesting," he said. "But don't tell Mom about this, she'll get upset and start crying, feeling sorry for you."

“Why is not so? It's a common service, one that many people use, making their lives easier and saving time.”

"How old are you?" he asked, looking at me with the look of a man whose sense of humor is failing him.

 “I am thirty-six! Don't you remember, Dad?”

"You're eleven years older than me, but you still haven't known happiness. And do you know why? You're looking for happiness where it doesn't exist, on some internet. It's right here, within you. But you have to feel it and experience it," he said.

“I don’t think I have it there either.”

“Then why are you here?”

“It was an accident, but I won’t do it again,” I began to justify myself like a guilty teenager.

“Okay,” he said conciliatorily.

“Son, you have to go, you can’t stay here forever,” said my mother, who came up to us, hugging and kissing me.

“Mom and where are the flowers?” I asked, remembering the bouquet she had just been holding in her hand.

“We enjoy the beautiful without destroying it," said Mom.

"Okay," I said, feeling hungry. "But before I leave, let's go home. And you, Mom, make some pancakes—they're so delicious..."

Mom looked at Dad, and Dad looked at Mom. Then they both looked at me, confused. And Dad asked:

“What house are you talking about, son?”

"What are pancakes?" Mom asked in turn.

I was at a loss. But without saying anything, I took their hands, just like in childhood, and asked, “Do you know where the exit is?”

We don't know where the entrance is. But you still have to leave," Mom said."

 

“If our son has found the entrance, he will certainly find the exit,” said the father, agreeing with the mother.

And, holding hands, we set off. There was no familiar ground beneath our feet, but that didn't frighten me—after all, my mom and dad were nearby. Then we broke into a jog. Then we picked up speed and, picking up speed, took wing, caressed by the light like a gentle wind. I looked around, hoping to find a way out. But there was no exit in sight.

"Look to the right!" said the father with boyish excitement.

I looked to the right and saw a picturesque mountain landscape. Beneath one of the cliffs, several men in loincloths, likely hunters, were butchering the carcass of a large animal with flint knives. It's possible this could have been the last mammoth on Earth.

"What a voracious hog!" said Mom, pointing to a bald young man who had separated from the group of hunters and was dragging a whole mammoth thigh behind him?

"That's the alpha male," my father clarified. "He's heading for his den. And there, alone, he'll gnaw that thigh clean down to the bone. And if any strangers try to get near him, he'll get a skull in his face. It's these kinds of males, greedy and gluttonous, who become leaders, kings, presidents, and so on down the list..."

"You see, so they ate all the dinosaurs, and then they came up with and justified the need for a hierarchy, which Albert hates!" Mom said.

"Be careful on the turns! Space is warping, we could end up on the side of the road!" my father said, raising his voice as we entered a new orbit, squeezing my hand tighter. That was when I felt the weightlessness of my own body for the first time.

On either side of us, events that had happened before and those that occurred after us flashed by in a holographic cacophony. Their sequence in this timeless "formlessness," as I defined the place where we found ourselves was irrelevant. Only the consequences they caused, and the consequences of those consequences, still held some veiled meaning. So when, after yet another turn, Pope Urban II popped out in front of us like a jack-in-the-box, I wasn't the least bit surprised. My Dad, seeing the Pope, gave on the brakes, and we hovered over the southern French city of Clermont-Ferrand. On this day, November 25, 1095, the city hosted the famous Council, marking the beginning of the Crusades. And we began to listen to what the Pope, God's vicar on earth, was saying. "The land you inhabit is hemmed in on all sides by sea and mountains, so it has become cramped due to your multitude. It is not rich in wealth and barely feeds those who cultivate it. Hence, you bite and reproach one another like dogs, wage wars, and inflict wounds. Let your hatred cease now, let your enmity cease, let your wars subside, and let your civil strife slumber," Urban II said, urging, "Go to the Holy Sepulcher. And the Holy Church will not neglect your loved ones. Free the Holy Land from the hands of the pagans and subjugate it. That land flows with milk and honey. Jerusalem is the navel of the earth, most fertile, a second paradise. It asks, awaits liberation..."

The Pontiff, in an unctuous voice, seduced the doubters, calling on them to go and free the Holy Sepulcher from the infidels: “Whoever is destitute and poor here will be joyful and rich there!” he promised.

“I think I’ve heard or read something like this before,” Mom said, looking at Dad.

"Yes, my dear, you're not mistaken," said her father. "Eight hundred years later, Adolf Hitler used roughly the same words to justify the Germans' right to expand their living space at the expense of Slavic lands..."

Urban II's fiery speech sparked frenzy among knights and ordinary parishioners, thirsting for a miracle; their desire to obtain the coveted prosperity and happiness in a foreign land, for free, was great. And thousands of them, destitute and hungry, without waiting for the official start date of the Crusade, flocked to Palestine, to "Jerusalem—the navel of the earth, the most fertile, the second paradise," as Urban II called it.

Wave after wave of crusaders and pilgrims descended on the Middle East to impose Christian values ​​with sword and cross, while instilling hatred of the white man in Muslim hearts and inciting jihad. This collective madness spread throughout Europe and lasted for two hundred long years.

I looked back, and in the crooked looking glass of history, through the veil of verbal fog, I saw the flickering shadows of some of the heroes of the era of the Crusades: Godfrey of Bouillon, Frederick Barbarossa, Conrad III, Edward I the Long-legged, Louis IX the Saint, Ida of Austria...

"Who is this Ida, do you know?" I asked my mother.

"Ida was an Austrian margravine, a legendary woman of the Middle Ages," Mom said. "She was the wife of Leopold II the Fair and had seven children with him. And then, when he died, Ida went with the knights of the Crusade to liberate the Holy Sepulcher."

"Yes, there were women in the days of chivalry, not like today..." my father said, not finishing his thought, and looked warily at my mother. But she didn't hear his remark; otherwise, she would have given him a dressing-down. And I, intrigued by Ida's behavior, said: “I wonder how the margravine's patriotic act ended. She was, after all, a woman, a weak creature."

"Yes, as legend has it, Ida was captured, ended up in a harem, and there gave birth to another son, Imam Ad din Zanga, the abate of Mosul, who became a hero of the East. He became famous for his devastating raids on territories captured by the Crusader knights," Mom said. "With her womanly heart, she saw further and more than our eyes could see."

And when we finally left the outskirts of Clermont and headed east, she suddenly asked:

“And who was that who came out to meet the crusaders?”

"Having traced their origins, I can say with a high degree of certainty that this is Sunni Muslims. They are fleeing war-torn Syria," the father replied.

“But if these two human streams—the Crusaders and the Muslim refugees—meet, bloodshed is inevitable,” Mom said with alarm in her voice.

"Don't worry, dear," her father reassured her. "They'll pass on opposite courses without hitting each other."

“Why do you think so?” Mom asked.

"Because the Crusader knights and the Muslim refugees began their mortal journeys a thousand years apart," he clarified. "The former began in 1096, and the latter in 2015."

“Are you sure about this?”

"Yes, Mom, Dad is right," I supported my father. "However, this won't affect the overall situation. The war in the Middle East continues…"

"The war has been going on since the Crusaders came?” Mom asked.

"No, Mom! The war in the Middle East has never ended and, with brief pauses, continues to this day. Muslims fight among themselves, against Jews and Christians, and all together against each other. So, the war in these parts is unlikely to end anytime soon."

“You know, Ivan, these Syrian refugees reminded me of the Ukrainians who fled to the West, escaping the Russian invasion,” Mom said.

“Yes, the only thing missing is planes with red stars on their wings,” the father agreed.

"Oh! Those Russian pilots showed no mercy," Mom clarified. "They took some kind of devilish pleasure in bombing Ukrainian cities and villages, destroying every living thing …"

They were the ones who bombed the Mariupol Drama Theater, where hundreds of civilians and their children were hiding," the father said. "And then their propagandists blamed this atrocity on aliens, who allegedly acted on the advice of the Americans, the British, and the Estonians."

"Oh my God, how do they know this? There's no war anywhere near, and Mom and Dad are talking about bombings… Will this nightmare ever come true?" I thought and quietly began to cry.