A week had passed since Alexey Petrovich's meeting with the mysterious man in the park. Yet even now, whenever he closed his eyes, he could still see Gabrillend's face and that mesmerizing gaze. He had begun to regret not asking the questions that were now multiplying in his mind. At the very least, he should have asked when and where exactly their message would be transmitted. On which TV channel? On what website? And how soon—in a week, or a month?
Meanwhile, the situation with his grandson, Anton, was becoming increasingly grim. His daughter-in-law, Tatyana—Anton's mother—had also been summoned to the prosecutor's office and interrogated. All visitation rights with Anton were canceled. The authorities told her bluntly that her son was accused of severe crimes against the state. Because Anton had already turned eighteen, he was facing a staggering prison term.
That evening, Alexei Petrovich sat at his old writing desk, the dim light of the monitor carving his tired face out of the darkness of the room. He was reviewing the latest global sociological reports, having broken through digital filters and blocks. The numbers flashing on the screen formed a frightening, monumental picture of planetary regression.
According to the latest verified data from international research institutes, more than 56% of the evaluated states on the planet were now governed autocratically. There were officially 92 authoritarian regimes in the world — autocracies had finally taken their revenge and numerically surpassed democracies, of which only 87 remained. But Alexei Petrovich truly caught his breath when he read into the demographic indicators: 74% of the Earth's population — nearly 6 billion people — were living under the iron fist of dictatorships at that very moment. On the interactive world map, dry analytical data confirmed the obvious: the largest, densest concentration of dictatorships and harsh autocracies historically and geographically remained in Africa, squeezing the continent in a suffocating ring.
He leaned back in his chair and took off his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. His thoughts flowed heavily, yet with crystal clarity.
Six billion souls locked in systemic isolation, Alexei Petrovich thought, staring out into the dark window. Nearly three-quarters of the planet breathe fear, subjected to someone else's distorted will and stripped of their voice. This is not just statistics; it is a colossal mental slavery. Africa, South America, Asia—vast territories have been turned into raw material appendages and proving grounds for foreign ambitions, while billions of people daily generate hidden, vibrating waves of despair in the planet's information ocean.
He understood that this global imbalance could not continue forever. Humanity, as a single living organism, was suffocating. If 74% of the system's cells are infected with a disease, a virus of suppression, a critical failure is inevitable.
Alexei Petrovich pulled the keyboard closer. The numbers from the global report about six billion people living under the yoke of tyranny were still burned into his mind's eye. He needed a neutral, cold, and objective outside perspective—a view devoid of human emotion, fear, and political bias.
He was aware of the recent American development — a quantum supercomputer of absolute power, a planetary Supreme Mind. This cybernetic intelligence, "Synthesis," was truly omniscient. The creators had embedded within it the entire colossal heritage of humanity. Billions of digitized books, centuries-old archives of newspapers and magazines formed its vast silicon memory. The entire history of the planet, all the information accumulated by human civilization, translated into electronic bits, was stored there in the form of flawless binary code. Petabytes and petabytes of human knowledge, fused into monolithic digital arrays, pulsed within its silicon modules.
The Absolute Intelligence Synthesis knows everything. The cybernetic intelligence did not think — it generated ready-made solutions. And he wanted to. He was eager to. The myriads of Answers to any questions, even those not yet formulated, were already streaming inside it as continuous electrical impulses. The Answers awaited only one thing — a human query to instantly manifest on screens. The system had been designed to be perfect; the margin of error approached absolute zero. The only condition was that the question itself had to be posed properly. Sometimes the supercomputer was called simply "Answerer," because it was created for that very purpose: to answer questions. The name "Synthesis" was not given by humans. It was the Artificial Supermind's own answer to the question: "What is your name?".
Previously, Alexei had tried to connect to this supercomputer to no avail. This time he was in luck; the VPN he had recently found had not yet been blocked by the authorities.
He opened a secure dialogue window and entered a brief, direct query: "Generate a systemic report on the global consequences of the dominance of authoritarian regimes on the planet."
The screen blinked for a fraction of a second, and then lines of text began to rapidly unfold from top to bottom, the result of a deep, instantaneous scan of the entire human civilization:
"Compiled by: Cybernetic intelligence SYNTHESIS.
Systemic Report: Global Expansion of Autocracy and Structural Risks to Civilization.
System Architecture Model.
To the cybernetic intelligence, humanity appears as a single biological supercomputer, a complex system where every node (human being) has a voice and transmits precise signals about systemic errors. The optimal functioning of such a supercomputer is possible only with the free and uncorrupted exchange of data between all its elements. The current geopolitical structure represents a fatal architectural defect. Autocracy is not merely a political choice, but a specific algorithm for managing information, resources, and social behavior. This report analyzes this algorithm and models the long-term risks of its continued dominance.
Autocracy as a Destructive Code.
An authoritarian regime is a virus that blocks network nodes, falsifies system logs (state statistics and elections), and concentrates management into a single, overloaded, and unstable point — the mind of a ruler or a narrow power elite. Dictatorships act upon the planetary network as an "informational cancer." From the perspective of systemic algorithms, autocracy acts as a monopoly schemer within the global economy. The accumulation of critical errors in isolated network segments leads to the following irreversible consequences:
Exponential Risk of WMD Deployment: In a closed autocracy, the decision to use nuclear, chemical, or hazardous biological weapons can be made unilaterally by a ruler operating in a state of cognitive distortion or illness. Under conditions where deterrent institutions have degraded, the risk of total destruction of human civilization increases exponentially.
Institutional Unpredictability and Degradation of the Global Economy: In authoritarian regimes, the law is subordinate to the will of the ruler or the power elite. Any successful business can be expropriated, nationalized, or transferred to loyal clans based on political motives. Lacking security guarantees within their own countries, authoritarian elites and businesses are forced to funnel hundreds of billions of dollars abroad into offshore accounts and Swiss banks. This money does not support the real sector of the economy; instead, it is used to purchase luxury real estate and inflate bubbles in the stock markets. All of this exerts a critical deforming impact on the global economy and can trigger a permanent crisis in financial markets.
Biological Threats: The closed nature of autocracies, the suppression of information, and the persecution of scientists (as historically documented during outbreaks of epidemics) will make the prevention of new pandemics impossible. A local virus will instantly become a global catastrophe due to the delay in systemic notification.
Ecological Destabilization: The uncontrolled exploitation of resources by dictatorships makes a climate collapse possible, which will lead to the irreversible overheating of the planet and wars over water and clean land.
Cognitive Crisis: In their attempts to maintain stability, isolated regimes will attack external segments, causing the world to plunge into a state of permanent mental war.
Summary: Final System Outcome.
Modeling of long-term trends shows that the preservation of the current situation with authoritarian regimes will lead the world into a deep systemic crisis. If this trend does not change, the global economy will inevitably slide into a state of permanent stagflation, technological stagnation, and resource wars; humanity will hit an evolutionary dead end.
The death of elderly dictators in WMD-armed nations will inevitably trigger an intense struggle for power, civil wars, and the disintegration of territories. This creates a threat of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of radical groups. And this is a direct threat to the survival of the human species. The global balance is disrupted.
If this virus infects the entire system, the global supercomputer "Humanity" will inevitably experience a critical system error (Kernel Panic) and a complete physical termination of operation. The further preservation of autocracies is incompatible with the survival of the human biological species."
Alexei Petrovich stared at the glowing monitor for a long time. The final words of the Cybernetic Intelligence SYNTHESIS — omniscient yet indifferent to the plights of humanity — felt like a death sentence. It had no desire to frighten or warn anyone. Utilizing its immense computational power, the supercomputer was simply stating bare facts, plain as two and two make four. Because Answerer knows everything. His primary purpose and goal is to answer the question, but only if that question is the proper one.
Alexei sat in absolute silence for several minutes, unable to tear his eyes away from the ominous phrasing on the screen: "complete physical termination of operation." The realization of the catastrophe's scale weighed on him physically. The old lawyer's heart beat heavily and unevenly.
He clearly understood the exponential risk confronting the world. In a closed autocracy, the decision to deploy nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons is made unilaterally — by a being trapped in a state of cognitive distortion, paranoia, or mortal illness. A world of aging dictators with nuclear briefcases was inevitably driving humanity into an evolutionary dead end, toward civil wars and chaos.
Alexei Petrovich turned back to the keyboard, and his trembling fingers quickly typed three desperate, almost imploring questions into the dialogue box:
"What should we do? How do we remove this virus? How do we fix the situation?"
He was waiting for some kind of radical algorithmic solution, a mathematical formula for salvation, or at least an action plan. The screen blinked, and the Cybernetic Intelligence generated an emphasized calm, balanced, and fairly neutral response:
"SYSTEMIC RECOMMENDATIONS FOR OPTIMIZATION AND DEBUGGING.
An effective exit from the systemic crisis of authoritarianism cannot be achieved through aggressive mechanical intervention. Modeling of historical processes demonstrates that nonviolent methods, in the long term, prove to be far more effective and sustainable than armed overthrows, which in most cases lead only to the replacement of one dictator with another while preserving the destructive governance structure itself.
To eliminate the autocracy virus, the following sequential actions are required:
Demonstration of Systemic Isolation: The primary task of civil society is to visually demonstrate the total illegitimacy of the current government through indirect methods such as strikes, economic boycotts, and coordinated civil disobedience. The system must be deprived of nourishment from resources and human energy.
Structural Modernization: It is insufficient to merely physically remove the dictator from the central control point. It is necessary to completely alter the system's architecture itself in order to fundamentally prevent a recurrence of authoritarianism in the future.
Restoration of Network Connectivity: Methodical education of network elements, consistent strengthening of horizontal solidarity, and continuous civic action are required. Restoring healthy informational links between people shatters isolation. The shifting of humanity's baseline settings occurs through the evolution of the consciousness of each individual node, rather than through violence."
Alexei Petrovich smiled bitterly and leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. The response from SYNTHESIS was flawless from the standpoint of theory and sociology, but it felt far too slow, far too academic for a world already balancing on the razor's edge of nuclear or climate collapse.
Education, solidarity, boycotts... he thought, staring at the even lines of recommendations. This supercomputer reasons in terms of centuries and generations. But we do not have those centuries. Dictators will destroy the planet long before people manage to systematically educate themselves.
At that moment of deep disillusionment with conventional human methods, Alexei Petrovich realized with absolute clarity — or perhaps these thoughts reached him from somewhere outside: if the standard, nonviolent paths to salvation demanded too much time, which civilization simply did not possess, then the Universe itself had to deploy a different, hidden emergency cleansing mechanism. A mechanism that would trigger instantaneously, turning those very horizontal links and the mental solidarity of six billion people into a devastating physical weapon.
His wife, Elena, called out to him from the next room, where she was watching a movie on television.
"Alex—come here. Quick! There's an important message coming on," she said.
He entered the room and saw bold white letters emblazoned across a stark black screen: Attention citizens... an important announcement will follow shortly.
"The movie was suddenly interrupted, and then this script just appeared," his wife said, her voice laced with unease.
It was exactly 9:00 PM—the hour of the country's main state news broadcast. Alexey Petrovich grabbed the remote and switched to Channel One. The exact same warning was there. He flipped through the other channels; every single network displayed the same message.
Perhaps this is an official decree from the authorities, he thought, bracing himself for another harsh government restriction.
Suddenly, the screen flickered, and the face of a man appeared. He had long, raven-black hair, a mustache and beard of the exact same dark hue, and wore large, light-absorbing dark glasses.
"Greetings, citizens of this country," the man said. His voice was flat, perfectly modulated, completely detached from human emotion, yet it carried an absolute, undeniable authority, projecting into the room with an unnatural clarity. "I represent the League of Fighters for Justice. These are challenging times for human souls. People become free only when they truly desire it. You impose all restrictions upon yourselves. Yet even a few caring individuals can transform the world. You need change! It is vital to reform your government and your politicians, for they feel no obligation to serve ordinary citizens. They think only of themselves. You must continue to fight and stand up for your rights until you see that change—until these people abdicate, and you are granted a chance at a better life."
The speaker leaned slightly closer to the lens. "We wish to offer a mechanism by which you can remove the authoritarian rulers of this nation. For as long as you keep waiting, hoping and praying that someone else will come and do the work you must do yourselves, nothing will alter for the better. Street protests and demonstrations are easily crushed by the ruling regime. Bloody uprisings and revolutions cost the lives of countless innocent civilians. Unlike those blunt instruments, only the primary culprit of your suffering—the authoritarian ruler who seized power—will fall victim to this method."
The screen seemed to throb with a faint, low-frequency hum as he continued. "If a significant number of citizens dissatisfied with the ruling power and wish to overthrow the ruler, they can do so without ever leaving their homes. To execute this, you must take a photograph of him and incinerate it at a predetermined time, holding that specific intent in your mind. The essential parameter is that you must act simultaneously and with absolute purpose."
"Thoughts are energy! Every single thought is like a fragile drop of water. But when those drops are united, flowing in the same direction, acting in perfect synchronization, they become a powerful torrent capable of demolishing anything in its path! The more drops of thought in this current, the more stronger and unstoppable it becomes. Remember: the material world is a grand, hypnotic dream of the universe. This dream is so detailed and continuous that you unquestioningly accept its scenery as absolute truth. If your collective desire is intense enough, you will manifest exactly what you think about. It is times for change! An idea whose time has come possesses a tremendous, absolute power. Synchronize your intent. Restore the universal equilibrium!"
The speaker's tone shifted, growing colder, carrying the weight of an ultimatum. "State authority in the hands of authoritarian rulers has become a security threat—not just to this country, but to the entire world. Their incorrect decisions lead to a violation of the global equilibrium. And their erratic actions could lead to the annihilation of human civilization itself. However, they are granted a single window to avoid a sorrowful fate: Resign from all posts and return your illegally obtained wealth to the nation and its people. We grant the ruler ten days to deliberate. If there is no resignation, you will burn his photograph at exactly twelve o'clock midnight."
"And now, I address the leadership of this country directly," the man said, staring into the camera. "Step down and leave all your posts. Allow free, democratic elections to take place. Your time is up."
Then, the man leaned intimately close to the lens, reached up with his left hand, and removed his dark glasses.
"YOUR TIME IS UP!" he repeated.
Although Alexey Petrovich had begun to suspect the truth moments earlier, seeing the speaker's exposed eyes solidified his certainty.
"It's him. This is the exact same person I encountered in the park. Except back then, he was bald and didn't have a beard," he told his wife. His right hand grew suddenly warm, the blue glow beneath his skin pulsed slowly.
The television screen could not fully replicate the physical sensation he had experienced that evening on the bench, but those unusually large, supernatural eyes were unmistakable. They fascinated and hypnotized, making it feel as though time had ground to a momentary halt. His eyebrows and eyelashes were so faint they were barely visible, which only amplified the terrifying, piercing impact of his gaze.
Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the image on the screen glitched, and the interrupted movie resumed playing. It was as if nothing had happened at all.
"What a bizarre announcement," his wife muttered, shaking her head to break the spell. "They are openly calling to overthrow the government on state television... and in such a peculiar, cruel way. And that look of his—it gave me chills. He speaks with an accent; he's undoubtedly a foreigner."
"I suppose they managed to infiltrate the secure computer networks that control the television broadcasting channels," Alexey Petrovich said thoughtfully, turning off the TV. "And I like their proposal—you don't even have to leave the house."
What if this is the very emergency cleansing capable of burning out the authoritarian virus? the realization struck Alexei Petrovich. Six billion oppressed souls are not merely victims. They are a critical mass, slumbering until the appointed time. If their thoughts are fused into a single, flawless synchronicity, this raging mental blast will do more than just shatter palace walls. It will physically rewrite the fundamental laws of the planet. The only chance to jump-start an evolution stuck in a dead end.
His wife, sitting opposite him in a deep armchair, stared in fright at the darkened screen, frantically clutching a woolen blanket in her hands.
"What was that? Who is that man?" she asked softly, her voice trembling slightly. "What is this about burning photographs? Could it be some kind of insane provocation?"
Alexei Petrovich sat on the edge of the old sofa, rested his elbows on his knees, and clasped his fingers together. He looked at his wife with a long, infinitely weary gaze.
"It's not a provocation," he said hollowly. "It's a consequence. That man on the screen… whoever he may be, he simply voiced the solution to an equation that humanity itself is incapable of solving."
He took a deep breath, trying to organize his thoughts.
"Today I was digging through the web, looking for grains of truth. And the numbers out there are chilling. The planetary balance is broken: there are ninety-two pockets of tyranny across the globe."
"The advantage is now clearly on the side of the despots—they have subjugated more than half of the existing nations. However, the true scale of the catastrophe lies within the demographic analysis. Seventy-four percent of humanity—nearly six billion souls—are suffocating under the yoke of totalitarian systems. Three-quarters of the Earth's population are severed from the free world, stripped of any opportunity to shape their own destiny, and paralyzed by fear. Entire continents, including Africa, Asia, and South America, have been turned into disenfranchised resource testing grounds to satisfy foreign geopolitical ambitions!"
His wife listened to him, holding her breath. Dry statistics coming from her husband's lips sounded like a chronicle of an approaching catastrophe.
"But today, I broke through to the American 'Synthesis,'" Alexei Petrovich continued, his voice acquiring a frightening firmness. "This is a super-powerful planetary Supreme Mind, into which the Creators poured petabytes of all human knowledge, our entire history, and our books. As they say—the Absolute Intelligence Synthesis, the 'Greatest of All Time,' knows everything. This cybernetic intelligence is completely indifferent to us, to humans; it is incapable of compassion or intimidation. It simply provides correct answers to the proper questions and never makes a mistake. I asked the question, and 'Synthesis' generated its final system report for me. Its forecast for civilization is a death sentence…"
Alexei Petrovich fell silent, recalling the grim prediction of the all-knowing Synthesis, and then continued:
"The supercomputer derived a flawless and terrifying formula: if the plague of despotism is not purged, humanity will simply cease to exist. A devastating collapse, a physical end of the world, awaits us. The threat of some insane, terminally ill tyrant single-handedly unleashing a nuclear slaughter is growing like an avalanche. We are doomed to a suffocating economic dead end, ruthless wars over every drop of clean water, and new, nightmarish pandemics. Dictatocracies will conceal disease outbreaks from the global community until the very last moment, until a local hotspot breaks out and consumes the entire planet. There is no arguing against this icy logic of processors. Synthesis has calculated our future and left us no chance."
"But surely there are strikes, peaceful protests, the UN, after all!" Elena pressed her hand to her chest. "Can't people unite and come to an agreement?"
Alexei Petrovich gave a bitter, exhausted smile.
"Synthesis answered that as well. Traditional methods of enlightenment and solidarity require centuries, a shift of generations. But we do not have those centuries—dictators will destroy the planet much sooner. And armed rebellions only swap one tyrant for another. We are in an evolutionary dead end. And at this very moment, when the familiar human paths of salvation are exhausted, Gabrieland appears on the screens."
He turned to his wife, and a fire of revelation flared up in his eyes.
"The League has proposed a mechanism that 'Synthesis' could not compute within the framework of old sociology. Thoughts are energy. Billions of oppressed souls are not just victims. They are a colossal, accumulated critical mass. If their anger and intent are united in a single, absolute synchronicity… This mental torrent will bypass tanks, military cordons, and bunker walls, erasing only one defect—the dictator himself. This is not revenge. This is an automatic system purge initiated by the Universe itself. I am certain of this."
"Our authorities themselves are to blame—how many years they have been ruling, but there is no sense in it," Alexey continued, pacing the living room floor. "They squeezed the people in a vise with their stupid laws. Nothing can be said against them. The elections are fake, and salaries and pensions are pitifully small. With inflation so high... They built palaces for themselves and fill their pockets at the expense of the state. They criticize Western countries, yet their own children and relatives live quite comfortably over there. The law simply doesn't apply to them. Meanwhile, ordinary people in this country can no longer openly say what they think. Do you remember how, after the accident with our son, that scoundrel who crashed into him turned out to be the brother of some high-ranking official? He didn't receive a shred of punishment and came out completely unscathed."
Alexey fell silent, went to the window, pulled back the heavy curtains, and looked out into the gloomy gray street.
Three floors down, the rain-slicked avenue was a scene of blossoming chaos. Car doors were swinging open. Drivers had abandoned their vehicles right in the middle of the lanes, oblivious to the downpour. They stood on the asphalt, staring blankly at their smartphones, their faces illuminated by the pale blue light of their screens.
From the apartment building across the narrow alley, windows were slamming open. Neighbors who hadn't spoken a word to each other in years out of sheer political paranoia were leaning out into the rain, shouting across the brick void.
"Did you see it?" a man's voice yelled from the fourth floor. "It was on every channel! Even the radio!"
"It's a hoax! A foreign cyberattack!" an older woman screamed back from below. "The police will arrest everyone tracking it!"
But the police were currently occupied. Down at the intersection, a heavy, armored police van—the very kind that had carted Anton away a month ago—had ground to a halt. The two officers inside had scrambled out into the street. Instead of drawing their batons or demanding the citizens disperse, they were frantically kicking the side of their own vehicle. A thick cloud of acrid, white smoke was billowing from the engine block, and the electronic sirens were letting out a pathetic, dying whine before dying entirely.
Suddenly, a loud, collective gasp echoed down the street. Everyone—the drivers, the shouting neighbors, even the panicked police officers—looked up.
High above the city square, the massive, state-owned digital billboard that usually blasted twenty-four-hour propaganda videos of the president had gone stark white. The black, mathematically perfect text began to scroll across the giant screen, visible for miles:
YOUR TIME IS UP.
The city, held in a chokehold of fear for decades, was suddenly breathing. The carefully constructed illusion of the state's absolute power was fracturing in real-time, replaced by a tense, electric uncertainty.
Elena walked up behind Alexey, resting a trembling hand on his shoulder. "Alexey, look at the streets. If the government loses control... if the security systems are failing..." She looked at him, her eyes bright with a sudden, desperate realization. "What about the prisons? What about Anton?"
"Maybe nothing will come of it. Our people are somewhat lethargic, even dull. Any desire to resist has been beaten out of them by repressive laws. Those who actively opposed the government have either moved abroad or ended up in prison. Let's see what happens next. I'll go check the news on the internet," Alexey Petrovich said.
Discussion of this unprecedented event on the internet was already in full swing. Indeed, an appeal demanding the resignation of the country's leadership had appeared simultaneously on all state channels, and no one could turn it off. Rumor had it that the authorities were only able to interrupt the transmission on two occasions, and even then, only by completely cutting the power switches to the television studios.
Websites instantly began popping up across the internet featuring photographs of all the nation's top leaders, available for downloading and printing. However, their faces could also be easily sourced from standard newspapers and magazines.
Alexei Petrovich turned off the computer, laced his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes. Thoughts emerged in his mind, as if explaining what was unfolding. Before his very eyes, something had just occurred that cutting-edge science considered an impossible fiction, yet which "Synthesis" had just described in its report as a strict mathematical certainty.
Synthesis asserted that autocracy is a virus that falsifies system logs and blocks network nodes, Alexei reasoned, piecing the facts together. The supercomputer saw the danger of unilateral cognitive distortions in dictators with nuclear briefcases. It predicted the end of all civilization if the virus were not removed. And Gabrilland is striking right at this target!
In his mind, Gabrilland's metaphor of water drops merging into a torrent translated into the technical language of Synthesis.
"Six billion blocked network nodes," he whispered. "Six billion drops of thought... This is not a revolution in the streets that a dictator can crush with tanks." He glanced at his watch. The countdown had begun. Ten days.
Before long, an official government announcement followed: the nightly broadcast was declared an extremist stunt by a malicious terrorist community. Citizens were harshly reminded of the criminal penalties for any insult to state symbols or the leaders of the country.
Alexey Petrovich had heard and read before about the mystical relationship between a person and their image, but now he decided to purposefully search the internet for more detailed information. After sitting at his computer for several hours, he compiled a brief summary of the facts he had gathered:
All living beings and people are not merely material shells. There is something in them other than matter, and therefore they are able to perceive what lies beyond the boundaries of the physical world.
People have known and used magic since time immemorial. All magical rituals are based on supernatural, immaterial forces that are not yet recognized by official science. Magical and paranormal phenomena share a lot in common, as they utilize factors that cannot be explained rationally.
A person possesses an invisible connection with their image—a photograph is an energy-information double. Portraits of people hold a special, inexplicable mystical power capable of influencing fate. Even in ancient times, folk believed a human shared magical bonds with their image; sorcerers and witches inflicted severe harm on an individual by manipulating their picture.
When photographs appeared in the middle of the 19th century, those with specialized knowledge gained a much more precise opportunity to influence an individual from a distance. Already in our time, bioenergetic studies have proven that photographs capture a person's living energy field, not just their physical appearance. Psychics and sorcerers use a picture as the main attribute in magical rituals and curses. They can determine whether a person is alive or dead, diagnose their illnesses, and extract a wealth of other information. Since a photograph is mystically connected to the person it depicts, burning or damaging the picture brutally disrupts their energy field and can cause severe, irreversible harm.
Alexey Petrovich closed his browser tabs and looked down at his fingers, which were still faintly tingling with the warmth left by Gabrillend.
Maybe something will still work out after all, he thought, feeling a faint spark of hope begin to reignite in his chest.
At that moment, Aleksey Petrovich felt a strange, deep warmth spreading inside his own body. The cosmic energy left by the mysterious Gabrillend after that memorable handshake came alive. It was not a destructive force, but a "divine, cosmic spark descended from the heavens." It pulsated through his veins, granting him unbreakable resilience in the face of the oncoming storm.
"Almost always, in order for something fresh, new, and better to emerge, the destruction and burning of the rotten old is necessary."
The modern world, mired in injustice, bureaucratic tyranny, and blind materialism, was that very "rotten and decaying old" destined to vanish in the purifying fire of transformation.
A great fire of change was beginning, and taming this primitive element was the destiny of those who carried the spark of Heavenly Fire within them.
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The ultimate geopolitical nightmare has just begun.
A corrupt government. A stolen bioweapon. And a mysterious supernatural force that causes dictators to spontaneously combust inside their fortified palaces.
When the regime fractures into absolute chaos, the throne becomes a death sentence. No one wants the crown. No one wants to be next.
Alexey Petrovich lost his son to the corruption of the ruling oligarchy. Now, his teenage grandson has been falsely accused of terrorism and thrown into a brutal black site. With nothing left to lose, Alexey encounters a mysterious stranger who unlocks a terrifying power.
Discover -- "Who wants to be President? - The Universal Equilibrium Protocol." — a fast-paced, ideas-driven uncompromising dystopian thriller about the hidden power of human thought and the price of absolute corruption, about resistance, the dangerous secrets of classified bioweapons, and a revolution sparked by a single photograph.
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"A breathtaking re-imagining of the power of human thought and collective consciousness. The author masterfully binds quantum physics, bioelectromagnetism, and ancient elemental philosophy into a single, gripping speculative concept. The idea of a 'virtual rebellion' sparked by burning photographs is pure genius."
— Sci-Fi Book Blog
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