“I assume we’re talking about the boy from The Emperor?”

“That’s right. Dennis Dontzov, according to his documents. Obviously, he never had any documents, it’s only now that . . .”

“I understand.”

“He is now thirteen years old. He was conceived and born during the expedition. Approximately a third of all the reports—I mean the routine reports, while everything was still perfectly normal—reflect the gestation course, the labor, and later the baby’s development phases.”

“Was this pregnancy one of their research goals?”

“It was. You have to understand how important this is. Reproduction and demographics under the conditions of a long-distance expedition. The most crucial inquiry. Although they did accomplish quite a lot of very important other tasks. The team consisted of twelve members, all brilliant, highly accomplished experts.”

“Excuse me, I reviewed the materials sent to me, so I am familiar with the situation.”

“Of course. I beg your pardon.”

“So what is the deal with the boy? Aside from the fact that he is—”

“He’s perfectly normal. Well adjusted. He speaks four languages, aside from his native tongue. He plays violin and piano. He’s physically fit. An extravert. He has a sense of humor. He is patient. Mature. Well-mannered.”

“The emotional base of your account appears to be off. You seem tense when you describe the boy.”

“I can explain. Dennis was born on his due date; delivery was easy, without complications. He developed normally. His first words were ‘mama’ and ‘pilot.’ When he was eight years old, the captain died. A month later the biologist, his father, passed away as well.”

“An epidemic was suspected.”

“Yes, but that didn’t seem likely. The captain and the biologist’s deaths were identical: first, severe mental confusion. Then, organ failure. The ship had a state-of-the-art medical unit with a reanimation module designed to sustain any and all organs, even severed heads. But neither the captain nor the biologist could be saved. After brain death was confirmed . . .”

“I understand.”

“Their bodies had been placed into sarcophagi in the special unit, according to the regulations. Everyone was supposed to come back from the expedition. Everyone, whether they were alive or dead.”

“I have no information on how the child survived his loss.”

“I don’t have any either. There are no records. At that point, protocols were the last thing on their minds. They looked for the cause—”

“And found none.”

“None whatsoever. Jumping ahead, I can tell you that we also failed to determine the cause of the tragedy. There was absolutely no chance of bacteria, virus, or any sort of alien influence. We practically disassembled the ship into atoms, along with the contents of the sarcophagi.”

“At that time the boy was eight.”

“Correct. Second in command took over the flight operation. Mission Commander resumed the research process, as much as was possible under the circumstances.”

“Some losses were inevitable.”

“Right. They must have thought the same thing when a year later their nutritionist died.”

“Same symptoms?”

“Identical. When Dennis was ten, the entire remaining crew died within a three-month span. The last one was his mother, the flight engineer. Dennis followed her instructions: using automated processes, he placed his mother’s body into the twelfth sarcophagus. The reserve one.”

“I see.”

“He spent the next three years alone on board the ship, with robots and dead bodies for company. Obviously, the flight path was pre-programmed, and the machines worked flawlessly. However, I would like to state that at the moment, Dennis is a social, well-educated, perfectly adequate boy.”

“He’s impressive, I agree. However, he grew up among extraordinary individuals under extraordinary circumstances.”

“Believe me, we had no choice but contact you. We met the expedition according to the schedule. Dennis established contact right on time. Of course, once we learned that the crew was dead, we left the ship in orbit. Dennis was quarantined. He cooperated, willingly, and—you won’t believe it—he consoled us! He was nearly disassembled as we tried to find the anomaly, and he kept cracking jokes. He’s healthy. The ship is free of contamination. The remains of our colleagues had been submitted to a full battery of tests.”

“And nothing has been found.”

“No. However, the lead engineer on the project died a month after The Emperor returned. That was understandable; he suffered a massive stroke.”

“I see.”

“Dennis went to school; we sent him to one of the most desirable schools. We felt guilty because of his parents’ fate.”

“You should not have felt this way.”

“He went to school for six months. Teachers’ assessments were positive.”

“We are getting close to what’s missing from the materials I received.”

“Correct. In the last month, one after another, three of his teachers passed away. Mental confusion followed by organ failure. The cause remains unknown.”

The school was quite impressive: a small isolated town on the seashore, buildings surrounded by a park, with endless tracks, hiking trails, athletic fields, gazebos, experimental gardens. The city wall ran along the main valley; as a symbol of progress, the wall was built out of different materials, from bricks to massive construction blocks.  Stained glass windows depicted workers in action: engineers leaning over three-dimensional models, ancient Greeks with pick axes, and astronauts clad in old-fashioned spacesuits. By the entrance two figurines in tracksuits, a male and a female, stood apart from each other holding hands.

A boy who for the first twelve years of his life saw only virtual skies—what was he supposed to think? How was he supposed to feel when he found himself on the seashore, in the park, among hundreds of children his age? Shock? Or, perhaps, disappointment? The real sky and the virtual sky looked so much alike, sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.

The informational screen in the lobby displayed three portraits framed in black. The silence in the school vestibule felt unnatural.

“Hello. My name is Alexander. You were informed.”

“Yes, of course,” the woman in the executive chair forced a smile. “Do you want to speak with Dennis?”

“No. Rather, yes, of course, but later. First, I would like to meet with his friends—although he wouldn’t have made real friends yet. With his acquaintances. And his teachers.”

“Certainly,” the woman made a tremendous effort to continue smiling.

“And there is something else. Please forgive me for being insensitive. I have to ask you about your recent loss—those three teachers who passed away.”

The woman was silent for a moment. Her left hand began to twitch, and she pressed it hard against the table.

“I understand,” she said finally. “What is it you need to know?”

“I reviewed their medical files. All three had been healthy.”

“Yes.”

“I see the school is in mourning?”

“We’re in shock,” the woman said simply. “Quite a few students are struggling to process what happened. It’s a normal reaction, children trying to block out the negative. Thankfully, here we rarely have to deal with death.”

“Dennis Dontzov had to deal with death quite frequently.”

“Yes,” the woman fell silent again. “You see . . . these three were the best. We have many wonderful teachers . . . but these three were special. They inspired their students—the children wanted to emulate them.”

“And all three taught Dennis?”

“Elizar Stepanovich and Luca Victorovich did. Elsa Sebastyanovna, the Japanese teacher, did not. But she tutored Dennis separately. Why are you connecting Dontzov to what had happened?”

“Aren’t you?”

The woman glanced at the window where the sunlight flowed through the tangled branches.

“We are struggling to contain the panic among the students. Everyone knows Dennis’s life story. Do you know what they call him? The Emperor. Since day one. And now they call him The Emperor of Death.”

“Is he arrogant? Does he think he’s special?”

“No. But he’s . . . complex. He’s a very complicated boy. We had to use some crafty techniques. We declared Dennis unhealthy and put him into the infirmary, the isolation unit.”

“But he is healthy.”

“Perfectly healthy. Unfortunately, we are going to insist that he is transferred . . . elsewhere.”

“And the basis for your decision?”

She looked him in the eyes. “There is no basis. Only an instinct of self-preservation. I believe we will have no trouble convincing the Board of Trustees.”

“The Emperor of Death?” the girl’s face was almost imperceptibly hostile. “Never heard that before. We called him the Emperor.”

“He thinks too much of himself, doesn’t he?”

“No!” She squared her shoulders. “Considering everything he’d gone through—no, not at all! If you had to be stuck inside a high tech tin can, and then sent to a planet where you knew absolutely no one, not even a little mouse . . . not even a mouse!”  Her voice quavered. “And then—were you celebrated as a hero? No, you were treated like the source of a mysterious infection! I’d like to see how you’d handle the situation. You’d hate everyone! And Dennis doesn’t.”

She stared at him in grim victory, as if expecting an immediate surrender.

“What did he tell you about himself?” Alexander changed direction, avoiding an emotionally charged topic.

“Not everything. And not to everyone.”

“Olya, did he tell you anything?”

“Yes, he told me things,” the girl narrowed her eyes haughtily. “He told me about playing with grown-ups in the beginning. And about living alone. But the time they kept dying, one after another—he never told anyone about that.”

She bit her lip and stared above Alexander’s shoulder into the distance, where old pines rose above the park by the seashore.

“The Emperor. It was his childhood nickname. His parents called him the Emperor. It was because of the ship’s name, not because he thought too much of himself. You see, we are all parts of humankind, while Dennis is on his own. He feels it every day, he lives with this knowledge.”

“Does he consider himself special?”

“No, not at all! He’s just a normal guy. He’s not super smart, not super strong. He’s a little confused. Lost and very lonely.”

“How did he get along with the other kids?”

“We tried to help him fit in as much as we could. We succeeded in some ways. He learned to laugh. Joined the volleyball team. He . . . he is thirteen years old, and he looks fifteen. But mentally he’s much younger. He’s a child. ‘The Emperor of Death’ is a joke, a very cruel one. What does he have to do with anyone’s death? What is he doing in isolation, locked up in the infirmary? Tell me!”

“He’s ill,” Alexander said cautiously. “His immune system . . .”

“His immune system is just fine!” She shouted and immediately wilted like a dead leaf. “People are saying he’s going to be transferred from our school. But for what reason, can you tell me that?”

“Fifty seven percent of our students are girls,” a tall guy with a scar on his cheek said. “As you can imagine, certain emotional patterns are present.”

“Are you saying people actually believe in the curse?”

“Not necessarily a curse per se. Girls at that age,” the guy said, with a patronizing smile, “they are such a hormonal mess. Sobbing, laughing without much reason, all those secrets. As soon as Dennis showed up, they were all over him. They were curious. Eventually, they felt sorry for him. Then they fell in love with him. And now they are afraid of him; they believe he’s truly the Emperor of Death, spreading his bad vibe wherever he goes.”

“And what do you think of him?”

“He’s an asshole,” the guy said without hesitation. “He’s a sociopath. With an extraordinary intellect.”

“Are you friends?”

“We hung out. He allowed me to spend time with him. Frankly speaking, for me it was a very useful experience.”

“He seems to have made a lot of friends.”

“He seems to, yes. He is very good at deception. He knows what is expected of him, and he’s excellent at imitating social skills. In reality, the only people he allowed to get close were me, and a couple of other people. Occasionally.”

“The teachers who died—did they have any sort of special relationship with Dennis?”

The guy fell silent; for a few minutes he watched a bee buzzing over an enormous dandelion.

“He split the teachers into two groups, useful and useless. Those three were in the useful group, very much so. That’s all I can tell you.”

“How did you manage to get a hermit like Dennis to join your volleyball team?”

“How did I manage it?” The girl smirked. She was sixteen years old, with eyes and hair of the same warm brown color. “He had been begging me for three weeks straight. He came to our practices and just sat on the bench watching!”

“Really?”

“Really. He is physically fit but has no coordination whatsoever—he couldn’t even hit the ball. I wasted quite a few practice sessions on him, when nothing worked. It was awful. But eventually he learned. I can get a monkey to play ball.”

“Aren’t you scared of him?”

The girl’s thick, very dark lashes trembled.

“What do you mean? Are you talking about that curse, ‘the Emperor of Death?’ I don’t believe in curses.”

Her cheeks, just a second ago the color of a ripe peach, suddenly lost their sheen.

“Although,” she said reluctantly, “we’re in mourning here, we already cancelled four practices. Luca Victorovich was our athletic coordinator. And the day before, we had a game scheduled. We traveled to another school, flew out in the morning, played in the afternoon, flew back that night.”

“Did you win?”

“We got crushed. Dennis bungled up his serve. But that’s not important. Luca Victorovich was very chipper on the way back—he kept consoling us. Especially Dennis. And then he became quiet. Later I saw him walk down the road, stumbling into bushes. He kept walking, and then he fell. We called the doctor.”

She looked at her hands, large and rough, like a man’s.

“I don’t believe in curses,” she said forcefully. “But if that’s not a curse, then what the hell is it?”

Connected to the main building by a long gallery, the infirmary stood far from the shore.

“Is he in total isolation twenty-four/seven? Has he had any visitors?”

“He’s used to being alone,” the doctor looked away. “Plus, they all communicate online. I have to remind him to do his stretches or get some fresh air.”

On the wall monitor, a skinny teenager sat with his feet on a low table, a communicator in his lap. The camera showed the back of his head, appropriately disheveled, and a small neat ear. A light T-shirt hugged his back—straight and moderately fit.

“Does he know about the camera?”

“He most certainly does. There is only one camera, in the main area of his living quarters. There is also a bedroom, a sanitary unit, an athletic unit, and a medical unit.”

“Speaking of which, how is he feeling?”

“He’s doing great,” the doctor glanced at Alexander, then averted her eyes again. “You must understand, he’s perfectly healthy. His presence in the infirmary is guided by deception.”

“Do you believe in curses?”

“I believe in facts: three people are dead.”

“Humans are mortal.”

The doctor looked up; this time her gaze was direct.

“I’ve been working at this school for five years. Our encounters with death are very rare, you know. Even our animals live long and happily ever after.”

“You’re lucky.”

“Yes. And this boy, he came from a place where death is as thick as liquefied air. He is the Emperor of Death. I wouldn’t meet him in person if I were you.”

“Are you serious? You’re an adult, a grown woman, saying these things, when even children don’t believe in—”

“Precisely because I am an experienced adult,” the doctor insisted. “When Dennis was brought to us, his past was under restriction. It was classified, no questions allowed. It immediately became clear that the boy needed psychological support. As the responsible party, I requested access to the classified information. It was first declassified for me and for the school’s administration. And then for everyone, because . . . it would have been stupid to try to keep this a secret.”

“I see. So we’re dealing with mysterious dark forces undetected by machines, impossible to evaluate or predict.”

“I don’t know,” her voice sounded hollow. “Elizar Stepanovich, thirty years old, thermophysics teacher. Blood pressure: one hundred twenty over eighty. A clean medical file. He was a swimmer. A biker. A skier. He fell out of a second floor window, having lost his balance. His arm was broken. I placed him into the reanimation module.  Have you seen my report? It starts with my notes.”

“Yes.”

“He simply switched off, like an appliance. I couldn’t restart his heart. I hooked him up to a machine—his heart, his kidneys, his liver—the whole thing. When he was being transferred to the hospital, he was still alive. If you can call it living. Later, they didn’t explain anything, just informed me he was dead. I would have remained in the dark if it weren’t for the second case. Elsa Sebastianovna Loon, the Japanese teacher. Fifty years old. Single. Mother of five adult children. Prone to hypertension. Last year she broke her leg during a school skiing trip. Her leg healed without complications. She passed out in the middle of the day, in the park, on her way from the cafeteria to the academic building. She couldn’t recognize me. She didn’t recognize anyone. I placed her into the reanimation module. Should I go on?”

“Why did it happen? What was her diagnosis?”

“Officially, a hypertensive crisis. She wore a blood pressure patch that signaled every time her systolic pressure exceeded one-forty. All the readings from the patch had been registered, and I passed everything to the hospital. There was a spike—her blood pressure jumped to one-fifty and immediately went back to normal about ten minutes before she fell. But one hundred fifty over ninety does not qualify as a hypertensive crisis!”

“So you disagree with the official diagnosis?”

“Why does it matter, whether I agree with it or not? Luca, our athletic coordinator. Forty years old. That one had never suffered from hypertension. Girls mentioned the way he walked, stumbling, falling into the bushes. I saw the broken branches. I saw his footsteps. He walked like a heavily intoxicated or completely disoriented person. His brain was switched off first. The body continued to function by inertia. And then the body gave up. I placed him into the reanimation module. But what’s the point of supporting the body if it’s empty? If the person inside had flown out . . . who knows where?”

The doctor fell silent. The teenager on the monitor took his feet off the table and sat up straighter.

“What does it have to do with the boy?” Alexander asked.

The doctor shrugged. “Who said it had anything to do with the boy? The only thing is that wherever he goes, people die. We have no more data or any reliable information, we only have an instinct of self-preservation.”

“I suspect you will be able to convince the Board of Trustees,” Alexander said.

The doctor looked at him sharply.

“Yes,” she said dryly. “If you want to speak with the boy, be my guest. It’s your job, after all, and you know a hell of a lot more than me about this situation. But do keep one thing in mind.”

“Yes?”

“People who died had been particularly important to Dennis. He was very interested in them.”

“Poor kid,” Alexander murmured.

“Yes. He’s interested in me as well. I never talk to him face to face. You can despise me. You may put it into your report.”

“I wasn’t planning on . . .”

“I appreciate it. A favor for a favor. He is bound to be interested in you as well. You, your job, your mission. He will be fascinated by you. He’s a very curious boy.”

“And what’s going to happen to me if I speak with a thirteen-year-old boy face to face?”

“Maybe nothing. And maybe . . . I will, of course, place you into the reanimation module in that case. But we know the outcome.”

Alexander laughed. The doctor flashed him a scanty smile in response.

“Hello, Dennis.”

The boy turned.

He did look about fifteen; an awkward, gangly, perfectly normal teenager. “Hello,” he began with a relaxed, easy smile—and then he faltered.

It was a very short, tiny pause. Somebody else, not Alexander, wouldn’t have noticed it or given it any thought. But the boy hesitated when he saw Alexander; what was that spark in his eyes? Joy? Surprise? Some unidentified emotion, mostly positive, but with a hint of anxiety.

“Hello,” the boy said in the next second, exactly how a normal teenager would have been expected to say it under similar circumstances. “Are you an investigator?”

“I’m an expert on all sorts of irregular situations,” Alexander said vaguely. “We haven’t met before, have we?”

“No,” the corners of the boy’s mouth lifted slightly. “I thought you looked like someone I knew.”

“Who would that be?”

“My father,” his voice remained steady. “Although I remember him at a much younger age. You are about forty. When my dad died, he wasn’t even thirty.”

For a whole second Alexander lost his cool. He really didn’t want to use the “My condolences” cliché, but couldn’t come up with anything better.

“You’ve had a rough time.”

“So I’ve been told,” the boy sweetened his impudence with a smile. “Do you believe that those three teachers died because of me?”

Staring into his guileless bluish-gray eyes, Alexander lost his cool for the second time. He thought of the doctor who didn’t want to meet with the boy face to face.

“I don’t operate in concepts of faith. Only in facts. And I obviously don’t plan on blaming you for the deeds you did not commit.”

His mouth produced words as meaningful as snoring. Alexander continued to stare into the boy’s eyes. The boy smiled and gazed right back at Alexander.

The hair on the back of Alexander’s head bristled. His intuition—something no technology could measure—made his heart beat a little faster; a danger signal brushed against his skin like a wind blowing across the steppe.

“I wonder what is going to happen to me now,” the boy said softly. “I mean, it’s not like it’s my fault. But here I am, in quarantine. Am I going to be isolated forever? Am I supposed to live my entire life locked up, just like in the first few years?”

Alexander forced himself to look away. The room was big, and Dennis now faced the camera, while Alexander stood with his back to it. It was possible that there was more than one camera. A fly kept beating itself against the window. Terrible story, abysmal, abyzzzzzmal—to spend one’s entire existence like a lonely fly buzzing on the microscope glass.

“No,” Alexander said. He suddenly had to clear his throat. “You don’t want to be alone, do you? You have been offered the remote learning option, but you declined. You’ve been offered an adaptation program, but you chose to enroll in a regular school.”

Dennis nodded. “I wanted to meet different people. It’s a perfectly adequate choice, isn’t it?”

Dennis gazed at Alexander, making the older man’s skin tingle.

“What happened on board your ship? Do you know?”

“I have been asked many times. I answered all the questions. You read the transcripts.”

“Legally, an extremely compelling reason would be required to lock up a teenager against his will,” Alexander admitted. “But if people die every time you show up . . .”

“Why would they die? For what reason?” the boy sounded puzzled and weary. “What does it have to do with me?”

That’s what I don’t know.

Dennis stepped across the room, picked up a volleyball lying in the corner, and tossed it in the air: “Do you play volleyball?”

“No. Not since I was young.”

The ball bounced against the wood-paneled wall.

“Not a good idea to play inside,” Dennis said sheepishly.

The ball bounced against a decorative ceramic lamp and ricocheted into something fragile over the front door. Tiny shards flew everywhere.

“The camera,” Dennis sounded baffled. “Look what happened. I broke the camera by accident.”

Almost against his will, Alexander looked into the boy’s eyes.

“You never told any of the committee members that you knew my father,” Dennis said.

“How . . . what are you talking about?”

“And you’ve only met my mother once. But she remembered you.”

“They told you? About me?”

“You started all of it,” Dennis said. “My dad was dismissed from the team. He found a different way of joining the expedition. He married my mother. She was a lousy engineer. But she fit the profile of the mother perfectly, especially in combination with my dad in the role of the father.”

“They told you all about that?”

“Admit it, Alexander. What did you do to get my father dismissed from the candidates’ list?”

“Nothing. Really, nothing.”

“That’s a damn shame.”

The boy’s face shifted into someone else’s smile. His facial muscles twitched. Alexander found himself taking a few steps back.

“The camera broke,” Dennis said. “However, you have another device. A journal. You are recording everything.”

“It’s my job.”

“The doctor will never enter this room. She’s afraid of seeing me.”

“You are making it up.”

“My father was your friend. Your best friend. Until this one conversation. It was late at night, and it was raining. You had been walking to the train station. Do you remember?”

“He told you about that conversation? Considering that you were eight years old when he died?”

“Yes,” Dennis squinted with pleasure. “I assume that, out of respect for a dead man who used to be your friend, you would stop pursuing me? Especially for the deeds I did not commit?”

“That’s utter nonsense, how can I pursue you? I am only an investigator.”

“With voting privileges,” Dennis shut his eyes. At this moment his resemblance to a cat sleeping in a sunny spot was striking.

“You look very much like your father,” Alexander said. “You look so much like him that I almost believe in reincarnation.”

Dennis tossed the ball in the air.

“It’s really a pity that you didn’t do anything to force my father off the team. Because he was sure it was your doing. For him that was the point, the cause for the opposition, the rivalry. And if you hadn’t done anything; that means he never defeated you. He gave himself points for nothing.”

“I had a feeling the expedition would end badly,” Alexander said slowly.

“Badly for whom? Their portraits are hanging in the Space Center Hall of Fame. Their names are taught at schools. You think the expedition ended badly—for whom?”

“For you.”

“For me?” Dennis bounced the ball against the paneling. “For me, nothing has ended yet. I hope.”

Alexander hesitated, then reached inside his coat and pulled out a black cylinder-shaped fob—his journal. He placed it on the table.

“Is that a gesture of trust?” Dennis raised his eyebrows with an unpleasantly adult expression.

Alexander did not respond.

Dennis shook his head, picked up the journal, and twirled it in his fingers. A red orb lit up, unfurling the dashboard

“I just can’t get used to these things,” Dennis murmured and switched off the recording function. The red orb dimmed, and the journal stopped resembling a smoldering cigar.

“No one else is going to die,” Dennis said. “The boy acted foolishly. He was greedy. He wanted more.”

Alexander held his tongue.

“I make up stories,” Dennis spun the ball with his finger like a globe on its axis. HIs movements were astonishingly calculated and precise. “I make up stories to tell myself. That’s not a sign of madness, is it? I am a lonely boy with a difficult fate. Fairy tales are not binding; they don’t mean anything. They’re simply products of my imagination. I imagined a little boy who became a stacking toy. A little plastic base with rings of different colors that are so much fun to stack on top of each other. The boy stacked Uncle Tolya onto himself first, then stacked his dad on top. Then Chris, then Eva, then the rest of them. He took them all for himself. The boy was greedy, he wanted toys. By the time of the landing, he owned thirteen life stories, thirteen detailed memories of everything, thirteen vaults of knowledge and skills, and the base—his personal core—was the weakest of them all. And yet, that core was the hardiest, the most tenacious of all. As for his mom—he wanted to leave her out, but his mom figured it out. She was unhappy without his dad. So I took my mom, too. I imagined the world in which I could take people for myself and live with them, and how nice that would be. I would love to take you, too, but that would be suspicious. The Emperor of Death. I can’t be that greedy. But I love them all. They are my citizens. I am their emperor.”

“You are insane,” Alexander whispered.

“Yes,” Dennis dropped the spinning ball and caught it before it hit the floor. “But I am not dangerous. I have a wild imagination. When I was little, I had to entertain myself.”

The ball spun on his finger, seams on the dark-red leather flickering like continents of an alien planet.

“Plastic rings of many colors,” Alexander said. “A stacking toy. A collective grave.”

“Perhaps, they are alive?” Dennis gave him a demure sideways glance. “Hmm? Perhaps, they are watching you through my eyes. The first citizens of a great empire, who overcame the tragic discrepancy of body and spirit?”

Alexander was silent.

“Hadn’t you ever thought of Vladik?” Dennis asked gently. “Vladik, who, to prove something to you . . . and mostly to himself, joined the expedition not so much as a biologist but more as a sperm generator?”

“Shut up.”

“He forgave you. I forgave you, Alexander-Salamander. And don’t stare at me like Ella Diminuendo at the dead toad.”

The ball hit the floor. Alexander heard the long echo of the impact. Even though there could not have been any echo.

“Do you want to join us? Become a citizen of the Empire?” Dennis’s voice grew thick and viscous.

“No.”

“Freedom? Brotherhood? Profound mutual understanding within a community of vastly different but equally honorable individuals? Amalgamation . . .”

“No!”

“Transition to a radically different qualitative level? An alternate mode of existence, offering . . .”

“Shut up!”

“Pity. Quite soon free access to the citizenship shall be terminated. Only the most worthy ones. And you, Alexander, have always been ordinary, and ordinary you will remain. Go ahead, tell them that all these tragedies at the school are nothing but a chain of coincidences. I had a stroke, Luca suffered from an old head trauma that no one knew about. Seriously, this did happen when I was in middle school—I fell off a horse. And I fell out of the window. Elizar fell out of the window, that’s how that happened. I simply became dizzy. Let them transfer me to a different school if this one doesn’t want me. There will be no more deaths. There must be a limit to coincidences.”

He tossed the ball to Alexander.

“He broke the camera with his ball! If only he had asked me, I would have turned it off!”

Clearly nervous, the doctor watched Alexander’s face, as if expecting him to stumble into the walls.

“What did you talk about?”

“I asked him all the questions I had prepared,” Alexander said. “I will be in touch. My ride will be here soon.”

“Are you leaving?”

“I have finished.”

“Do you have the answer?”

He looked her straight in the eyes. “A chain of coincidences, nothing more. Tragic coincidences. Otherwise, we’d be forced to believe in the impossible. Concepts that would ruin our notion of this world. And we don’t want that, do we?”

“Are you asking me?” the doctor sounded confused.

“No, I am asking myself,” he admitted. “But in any case, the boy will no longer be enrolled in your school. Thank you for everything, you have been very helpful.”

“Leave the ball,” the woman said softly.

He exited the infirmary and walked through the park toward the beach, every now and then stumbling into the bushes. His mind was clear—but instead of a school park with its flowers and butterflies, he saw a concrete highway glistening in the rain, and two young men walking toward the station, where in half an hour their train would arrive. So it all started with me, he thought.

Ella’s last name was Renee. Diminuendo was her nickname, given for her barely audible voice that always seemed to trail off. Where was she now? A tiny marker, a single point of memory, meaningless for everyone but a couple of participants. Ella Diminuendo, who insisted on burying the frog according to some exotic ritual, but the frog eventually bounced back to life and hid in the air conditioning exhaust system.

They drank a lot that night. On the way back his melancholia turned into anger. The ten-minute walk gave him just enough time to explain to Vladik why he would never be allowed to join the expedition. And the long journey aside—he wouldn’t even be asked to join a mushroom-picking trip to the forest. Just a handful of examples from their lives—Vladik’s personality traits, his actions, the way he was treated by others. The kind of person he really was. It was probably way too harsh. The guilt came later. And then it was too late for repentance. Vladik dug in his heels, and a glass wall grew between him and Alexander-Salamander.

So it all started with me, didn’t it?

The helicopter circled above the landing strip by the shore. Alexander hid his face from the wind. A chain of coincidences, he said sternly to himself. It will never happen again.

He tossed his useless journal into the sea.

Want to read more by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko?

Future SF recommends Vita Nostra.