BOOK of KNOWLEDGE,
a novel by Alexandra Kryuchkova
in the “PLAYING ANOTHER REALITY” series
PART 1. PLAYING ANOTHER REALITY, or the WAY to the LIGHT
Chapter 1. THE MAN WHO WAS NOT
We met by chance in a bookstore. When I say «by chance», it means absolutely not by chance, but completely purposefully, that is, in a way deliberately programmed by the Higher Forces, based on cause-and-effect relationships, the chain of which we are not able to calculate logically. I don’t believe in randomness.
Previously, books came to me through people. Random people I met instantly disappeared in an unknown direction, having managed to tell me only the title of the book that was worth reading and the name of its author. They voiced what was really necessary at that time. I learned to meet the right books directly, without intermediaries, a few years before, and since then they stopped sending me people who ran past rapidly in the Space of Options shouting out the titles of the books and the names of their wonderful authors. For example, when I was focused on a comparative analysis of the religions of our world, I went into a church shop and inexplicably, but immediately proceeded to the farthest dark corner, where on the bottom shelf of the rack, a single copy of something in a purple hardcover without any identifying marks, except for the price tag, was gathering dust. It was a photocopy of the comparative analysis of religions published on January 20, 1893, with the notes of someone who had read it in the 19th century.
That day, I was scanning the contents of the shelves in another bookstore, when He gave me a strange look and walked past, turning my life upside down. People often ask, «What is He like, this Man of yours, Who Was Not?», and I don’t know what to answer, because I always look not at…, but through. I didn’t see His face, didn’t pay attention to His clothes. I felt amazing energy going beyond the personal space. The energy of a person who was stronger than me and could…
Sometimes I see people as geometric figures. Try it, I’m sure there is nothing easier, and you will definitely succeed. Sooner or later. If you really want to and if you are allowed to see. On the one hand, it’s quite funny, because it’s a kind of game, on the other hand, it’s useful, as it helps in communicating with these people. Ordinary people can be squares, triangles, circles, rectangles and zigzags (lightning bolts). Oh, yes, such people do exist too, take my word for it. Who are you?
For example, one of my acquaintances is a rectangle, and moreover, a vampire — the most terrible combination, probably. No, her ears are quite ordinary, and her teeth don’t betray her true nature at all. She speaks for a very long time, slowly and monotonously, in the sweet voice of the Fox from the fairy tale about Pinocchio, enveloping the victim with words, asking a lot of tedious questions or, worse, crawling into the Soul with indecently frank questions, which answers she doesn’t need in principle, but it’s precisely the fact that you get irritated and waste energy by responding that brings the vampire into a state of euphoria. Even if I say that I’m very busy, she’ll say goodbye for another ten minutes, because she understands perfectly well that I won’t be able to hang up because of my basic good manners. So, one day she called me while I was in the bathroom. I politely apologized and promised to call back, but she clearly didn’t like my proposal. She asked where I actually was. I told the truth. Then she asked what I was doing there, and I had the imprudence to answer honestly, «I’m cleaning my aura of negativity.» What else do they actually do in the bathroom after a hard day at work? However, for my acquaintance, the answer became almost the discovery of America, and she bombarded me with questions, «Why are you doing this? Do you have problems? Maybe you can tell me about them now. How do you do this? What temperature is your water? Do you pin your hair up or should it be loose? What brand of soap do you use? What do you think will happen if you add a few pinches more of sea salt to your bath than the amount recommended by the manufacturers and indicated on the label? Are you dissatisfied with something? Probably, there is someone next to you?!» Since then, when she intends to call me, I find myself unavailable. For example, in the subway, where the connection is lost, or my phone suddenly runs out of charge.
However, there are also not quite ordinary people. I see them as three-dimensional, complex-composite, in each of them there are simultaneously several figures nested within one another or intersecting in space. For example, I am a pyramid inside a sphere, which is pierced from top to bottom and exactly in the center by lightning, that goes beyond the scope of the sphere. I became such figure over time, being a triangle from birth, I turned into a pyramid, overgrew with a sphere, and was struck by lightning in the end.
Looking at the Man Who Was Not with a different vision, I immediately realized that He was a complex figure too — lightning inside a sphere located inside a cube. I needed him in order to remain on Earth. In the last period, each facet of life, one after another, suddenly collapsed, pinning me in a corner, cutting off oxygen, curling up like a snake loop around my neck. Standing on the edge of the Void, I was looking for a Door to Another, unknown to me Reality, but on the same earthly plane, so as not to disappear into the Other World until the hour of my next incarnation.
I felt lonely and wanted to talk with a person like me, at least similar to me, in our common language, inaccessible to others. I thought about Nonna, a famous clairvoyant, winner of the «Battle of Psychics» on TNT.
I wanted to meet her, but I had no idea where she lived in our huge world. Sighing heavily from an unrealizable dream, I went into a cafe next to my house to enjoy a t;te-;-t;te with coffee at least, but at the next table by the window I found… Nonna.
«Hello!» I exclaimed in shock. «You are Nonna, I know! I need you.»
«What for? Is there anything I can do to help you?» She was surprised, because she always felt who she could help and who she couldn’t.
«I just want to talk to you.»
«Okay, sit down,» Nonna sighed with relief. «Sorry, I’m exhausted, a vampire has just called me.»
We looked at each other in silence for a while, then Nonna started spoking,
«You’re completely in a web. Torn between mother and son, you cannot combine them in this life. I see blood, a lot of blood, you are dead, just like me. You are one of us, you were There and opened the Door.»
I didn’t tell Nonna what «web» meant. Spiders were the most terrible phenomenon for me in the Earthly Reality. I delved into myself for a long time to find an anchoring point, realizing that the reason belonged to the current incarnation, since in my early childhood I hadn’t been afraid of spiders. Not getting to the bottom of the truth, I turned for help to Gera, one of my Teachers. She asked me leading questions, and I answered without hearing my own answers.
«Why are you afraid of a spider?»
«It’s scary.»
«Why? It’s so small and defenseless.»
I burst into a terrible laugh,
«Defenseless? It’s huge and omnipotent!»
«What can it do to you?»
«It will kill me!»
«Imagine that you take it and put it in a box.»
«I can’t even look at it from the outside and imagine it. How can I take it with my hands?» I shuddered.
«Okay, I take it and put it in a box. In a gift box. I tie it with a ribbon and a bow. What is this box like?»
«It’s red. With black ribbons,» I answered automatically.
«Let’s make a fire. Look, I’m throwing the box into the fire. It’s burning…»
«It will never be burnt!» I screamed. «It’s immortal! Eternal! It was, it is and it will be! It never dies! Look, the box has burned down, but it’s alive! It’s crawling out of the fire!»
Gera sighed heavily. I almost cried. We parted on nothing, however, after walking about ten meters down the street, I stopped dead in my tracks because of an instant insight, a fragment from childhood that suddenly flashed before my eyes.
I was twelve. We were at our cottage. Sunday. Mom said that she felt really bad, that shouldn’t happen after the surgery, she urgently needed to return home to the city to call an ambulance. We were sitting on the bench under an apple tree. I kept silent. It was starting to rain. I felt that the several options for the future existed the day before abruptly collapsed into the only one — Death. I refused to believe it consciously and, as a result, I sent the terrible thought of Death to the Black Box of the Subconscious. And for a long, long time, almost until my mother’s transition to Another Reality, I would think that she would definitely recover sooner or later. I understood that I was about to cry. Not to upset my mother, I ran, «escaping the rain,» to the barn in the farthest corner of the garden, where my friend, the little White Rabbit, lived. It was raining. I ran very fast, crying, biting my lips just not to scream in despair. Having pulled the door towards me with all my strength, I buried my nose in the center of a huge web, neatly woven along the width of the doorway. A huge fat black spider with a large cross on its back sat right in front of me, and I screamed, «MA-A-MAAAAAAA!!!…»
We talked with Nonna for a long time and even laughed at the ways the Knowledge used to come to us. She told me how my father had died. Then we opened our palms and held them opposite each other until Nonna said,
«You’re pushing, pressing hard! What a strong energy you have! I can’t stand that, put your hands away, put them away.»
When I told her the way I wrote spells, Nonna exclaimed,
«Amazing! You dragged me along to another time! I fell through and saw a poor room, you and me inside, you were in another body, in something gray, some kind of shawl, and a kerosene lamp was burning there. What was that, Alice? Silver Age?»
I shrugged my shoulders, and Nonna continued, «Now I see a book, yours. With spells. Magic. On the bookshelves. It will be released in less than a year, and you’ll become a famous spell-caster, do you believe me? The number „37“ comes to me. Take care of yourself! You can die. Surgery or something else. I see blood, a lot of blood. And if you survive, so then…»
The fortune-teller in Rome predicted a terrible car accident for me, but she didn’t tell me when; The palmist-astrologer in India didn’t say what exactly, but said «36»; Nonna said «37», a surgery or something with a sea of blood. However, I had already been dying, and Death is not as terrible as doctors.
I didn’t get sick with anything and had practically no contact with the type of people who played the game «Let’s heal everyone!» and called themselves doctors, until I died for the first time at the age of 11 and was brought back. My cousin dreamed of joining them since childhood. Every time she stated that out loud, our grandmother sighed heavily and, like monks fingering a rosary, listed all the items that her granddaughter due to her girlish memory would be able to forget during a surgery in the patient’s body. However, someone was very lucky, since my cousin didn’t become a surgeon. She works with those called insane here.
However, after resuscitation, my physical body liked to play pranks. Periodically, it asked questions that puzzled the doctors. At first they tried to treat me like ordinary people, but my body’s reaction was exactly the opposite of the expected. Then they used a creative approach, setting up experiments, prescribing everything in a row. As a child, my mother taught me to be obedient and patient, but one day I couldn’t stand it anymore and demanded at least some kind of diagnosis. The doctors resisted for a long time, pretending not to understand what I wanted from them, because all those years they tried so hard to help me, and despite the fact that several times due to their efforts I had ended up more There than Here, I was still alive. Apparently, I was too tired, so I showed excessive persistence, and a miracle happened. I was given a referral for an examination, as a result of which it turned out that what was happening to me was unknown to science, and, accordingly, I had to negotiate with my physical body directly, without intermediaries. Believe it or not, I was happy about such diagnosis. The doctors were upset just as much as I was overjoyed.
Once I came to a widely advertised center at a very cool hospital, in which, judging by what was written about it everywhere, even a fairy tale would become reality. I just came. It was impossible to get through by phone, no one had answered any of the numbers listed on the website and in other advertising sources for several weeks.
Having found with difficulty the doctor’s office for those who came without a referral, that is, for those who paid their own and quite a lot of money for a consultation, I got in line and patiently sat at the door for several hours, reading a smart book so as not to waste time. When I finally entered the office, the doctor first asked if I had an appointment with her. I asked how that could be done. The doctor silently handed me over a business card with the same phone numbers no one had answered. I said that I knew them by heart, but, unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to get through for several weeks. The doctor, in a completely calm voice, looking into my eyes, answered,
«Right, and you won’t be able to. They have been out of business for a month now.»
Deathly silence reigned. I asked if there was another way to make an appointment. The doctor answered categorically, «No!» And again silence. Despite the fact that I had spent several hours in line, I was only the third and last person who wanted to get a paid consultation at their unique center that day. Somehow I didn’t want to leave there without paying anyone anything, so I just asked to listen to me, promising to pay a little more than the official price of the issue. The doctor thought for a long time and…
…didn’t agree, apparently preferring to speak at someone else’s expense rather than listen, but kindly offered to go to another hospital department and ask someone else to listen to me.
I am a stubborn creature. An old nurse in another department couldn’t figure out for a long time neither what I wanted from her, nor how I ended up there.
«I read on a website on the Internet that…»
«Where did you read it?»
The old woman didn’t know what the «Internet» was, but that word had a magical effect on her, as a result, she dematerialized, immediately leaving her post. I was about to turn around and leave, when a man of about forty-five dressed in white appeared at the end of the corridor. As it turned out later, he was the head of the department. He came up to me and broke into a smile,
«Oh, one more Leila arrived! Why did you come, eh, Leila?»
«I’ve read that it’s a center where you practically work miracles…»
«Leila, how old are you? And you still believe in miracles!» the Doctor said with a grin in a flirting tone, but I didn’t know what to answer, so he continued, «Leila, what hurts you?»
«Nothing…»
«If nothing hurts, why did you come?»
«To ask. You specialize in Woozles and Wizzles, providing consultations for payment, right? So I came to ask. Where do they come from? What to do with them? Maybe some pills should be taken or, conversely, not. In general, what’s allowed, what’s not?»
«Oh, Leila, God knows why one has some Woozles or Wizzles, what’s allowed and what’s not! Live as you lived. Nothing hurts you. What for?»
«But then it will be too late!»
«Then you will be welcomed here!»
«Don’t you cure everyone here?»
«We?» the Doctor asked in surprise. «Do we cure? You know, Leila, I’ll tell you so, as soon as you get rid of some Woozle, some Wizzle will immediately appear! Exactly! Nothing hurts you! Tell me, why did you come, huh?»
«But it’s written…»
«Leila, are you married?» the Doctor didn’t let up.
«Yes,» I answered categorically.
«Maybe, think once more? Just kidding… almost. We have friends, they come to our department and sell magic water, supposedly it lets people get rid of all sorts of Wozzles and Wizzles. So people buy it, drink it, and… half of them recover. Do you think the water is magical? The most common, drinking one, just in bottles with a magical inscription. Do you want me to sell it to you too?»
«No, thanks,» I said, nodding sadly.
«Leila,» the Doctor smiled, «relax and live your life as long as nothing hurts! Believe me, no one knows anything about Wozzles and Wizzles. It’s just a game, you see.»
Almost since childhood, I was advised to remove a small mole on my small back, but somehow I had no time for that. And then, as luck would have it, free time suddenly appeared, in an unmeasured amount, and someone told me about a wonderful commercial clinic where supposedly no one had any problems.
I arrived, obediently paid for everything that could be pulled by the ears for the upcoming procedure, and entered the Surgeon’s office. He turned out to be a strong old man of the old school. I was asked to undress, go into the operating room and lie on my stomach. The nurse rattled their instruments. At that fateful moment, I uttered one of my signature phrases,
«Not Novocain.»
The nurse smiled enigmatically and called out to the Surgeon, who was still in the office, and not in the operating room,
«Have you heard it, Ivan Ivanovich? The girl is intolerant to Novocaine!»
«Yes, I have!» the Surgeon said joyfully.
They silently bent over my back, rubbed it with something, and… I screamed in terrible pain, feeling them cutting me alive with a scalpel. The scalpel froze.
«Without anesthesia?» I was in shock.
«Well, you can’t stand Novocain, and we don’t have anything else!» the Surgeon commented and made another incision.
I screamed again. The scalpel froze.
«Well, the last time now,» the Surgeon sang as calmly as if nothing had happened.
My third cry made a doctor with very huge eyes materialize in the operating room from the next office.
«What are you doing here? Even my patient has already escaped!»
«We’ve already done it,» the nurse answered, smiling.
Leaving, I silently but meaningfully looked at the Surgeon, and he replied me just as meaningfully,
«And during the war?»
I realized him playing war.
However, I was lucky to know other doctors whom I respected. They fist listen carefully, then think and tell you what they have come up with, voicing the pros and cons, and if you agree…
That evening I went to visit a very smart and cheerful woman, a guru in her field, who, having read my spells six months before, said that I was practicing real Word Magic, and she was sorry to be too old to experience similar emotions.
That time I couldn’t believe my eyes — the doctor looked at least ten years younger!
«Hello, Spell-caster!» she exclaimed joyfully. «You won’t believe it! I met Him! Twenty years later! Imagine, all these years I knew nothing about Him at all! It turns out that He lives over the Ocean. He came here to give a lecture, slipped, fell, woke up in a cast, ended up at my friend in the hospital, and I stopped by her because of some nonsense! Now I write your spells to Him in text messages. Haven’t you met your Prince yet?»
«Maybe I have, but… He doesn’t think so,» I sighed.
«It seems to me, just don’t be offended, there is no person to understand and contain you inside. Our men today are quite dead, weak, lazy. They’ll burst from you! They feel that you are stronger and a head taller, and bypass you a mile away.»
«Illusion! I am the weakest woman in the world.»
«Humble yourself, dear! To write the way you do, one has to be hurt constantly. Over time, you get used to the pain, the threshold of sensitivity decreases, so they will send you another pain, stronger than the previous one, so that you write again. Don’t expect anything good ahead. Better get ready for the trials you have never seen even in your nightmares.»
I came to the Teacher, who had been once an ordinary doctor, and then became a real White Magician.
«I see, I see what’s happening to you,» he said, smiling. «What does he look like? How old is he? Who is he?»
«I don’t know anything about Him. I remember nothing,» I whispered.
«Still, try to remember. Imagine the place where you first met.»
I looked at the white wall opposite and tried to concentrate. Suddenly the air began to acquire color and density, just a little more and I would have felt it with my hands. It vibrated and began to move in space. The room floated. I got into a spiral. The walls, unlike the air, lost their density, became foggy, dissolving into Another Reality. It seemed that either I would move in that place, or that place would move to me.
«No, I can’t,» I breathed out from overexertion.
«You can everything!»
I tried to concentrate again, but that time I just saw two shadows on the wall, like waves, running towards each other, turning into a single whole, disappearing and reappearing on the opposite sides.
«Seven seconds!» the Teacher exclaimed in surprise.
I looked at him with a silent question.
«You merge together in seven seconds. Your energy, I mean. You are very similar. You’ll see Him again. And more than once.»