Time of the Octopus: Based on the True Story of Whistleblower Edward Snowden

09:08 P.M._

Kold became silent. His eyes dimmed. The Lawyer switched off the recording. The silence was thick, deep and impenetrable. It was clear that Kold regretted his frankness or wanted to pretend so to make an impression on his interlocutor. This thought came to the Lawyer’s mind and seemed to him not entirely baseless.

“Communicating with people like Kold, you always need to remember that they aren’t so simple as they seem at first and even second glance,” he thought, then said aloud:

“All this is very interesting, but maybe you wanted to speak about something else?”

“Do you want some coffee?” asked Kold instead of answering. “Two coffees and a couple of hamburgers? Ok?”

“I won’t refuse. It’s warm here, but kind of…dampish, isn’t?”

“I set the climate control thermostat at nineteen degrees. And that isn’t just about my surname,” Kold smiled. “Just my brain melts if it’s too warm. Figuratively, at least.”

He got up and vanished behind the door. No more than a couple of minutes passed during which the Lawyer checked that Kold’s story was safely recorded and the battery on the smartphone had plenty of life, and then the inhabitant of A Bunker returned with a plastic tray with a glass coffee pot, a carton of milk, two cups and a plate with sandwiches.

“Please!” Kold put the tray on a table, pulled up a seat and started eating.

“And still…” After taking a sip of coffee, the Lawyer looked at Kold closely. “Something oppresses you… besides your own fate. What?”

“‘Nature never hurries, but everything is accomplished.’” Kold ate a sandwich, drank his coffee and then put the cup aside.

“Lao Tzu again? Are you fond of the Chinese culture?”

“Yes, but most of all Taoism.

“Then Zhuang Zi also has to be close to you. I always liked his directness. ‘Small swindlers in dungeons; large in the throneroom’” the Lawyer smiled.

“It seems that all Russians must like this statement,” Kold smiled too.

“Do you consider that human nature is identical only between modern Russians and the Chinese in the fourth century B.C.?” the Lawyer responded ironically.

“No, of course, not.” Kold sighed. “But if you remember Lao Tsu, then ‘the great person holds on to the essential and lets go of the inessential. He does everything truly, but will never be guided by laws’.

“We have a national expression in which this thought is expressed more simply,” Lawyer said: “‘The winner isn’t judged’.”

“Was it created by the people?” Kold asked. “Then your people learned Tao.”

“No, of course. It was said by the empress Ekaterina the Second when with just 800 soldiers commander Alexander Suvorov conquered the Turkish Turtukay fortress garrisoned by 4000 -against the orders of his commander Count Rumyantsev. Suvorov was to be judged by court-martial and sentenced to penal servitude or even to death, but the empress intervened…”

“Was that the great empress?” Kold asked: “I know so little of Russian history.”

“Not so little,” Lawyer nodded. “She came to the throne by chance and she was German, but… but finally deserved the honourable title of ‘Great’.”

“So, she was Taoist precisely!” Kold solemnly raised a forefinger and both of them burst out laughing.

Suddenly, the Lawyer’s phone began to vibrate. There was a call from the office. His secretary reminded him that on the Russia Today channel a broadcast of a press conference with the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency Michael Wyden was about to start.

“Mr. Kold, would you mind if I turn on the TV?” the Lawyer asked. “We can watch a program you might find rather interesting.”

“Go ahead,” nodded Kold.

The press conference had already begun. The smiling face of Wyden appeared on screen. The former director of the most powerful intelligence agency in the world resembled a Baptist preacher or a paediatrician from a prestigious clinic speaking at a charitable meeting.

“… He is definitely not a hero. At the same time, I don’t think that he fully fits the definition of ‘traitor’ as it is formulated in our Constitution. But with his actions he has undoubtedly caused huge harm to our country and he, most likely, has a major problem with his mentality. So the truth, most likely, lies somewhere in the middle,” Wyden said. The Lawyer smiled and looked at Kold.

“He thinks you are loony.”

Kold squirmed:

“I’m not interested in what this person says.”

“Why? He was your immediate superior and is still a very influential figure. I think Washington is speaking through his mouth now.”

“That’s not so,” Kold rubbed his chin doubtfully. “You see… Wyden reminds me… of your leader Gorbi, Mikhail Gorbachev, yes. Look, he even looks like him, only there is not a birthmark. And he is the same… a demagogue. Blah blah blah is his power. You listen!”

Kold took the remote control from the table and put the sound up. Wyden was answering a question about how he would behave as head of the NSA if a young specialist came to him and told him that they had problems with the BRISM program:

“And that is where the shoe pinches! Exactly. This is what most disturbs us – why didn’t Kold act this way? If someone wants to be a real whistleblower, then in a similar situation he is obliged to go to the chief, to the chief of the chief or to address a general council of the department or the General Inspector or even a Congressman to state his claims. Our country has a certain hierarchy allowing him to do this.”

“As I said: demagogue!” Kold said contemptuously.

Wyden meanwhile continued:

“And now let’s have a look. I am ready to be the first to recognize that such an act demands a lot of courage. People can be different, and we can’t exclude the idea that among us there are those who would subject such a brave employee to pressure. But this is only correct in such situations. In my opinion, if an employee comes to the chief with similar doubts, you have to take them seriously. If someone comes to you, led by conscience, you have to postpone other matters and talk to such a person very seriously, and you need to understand the details as far as his concerns are proved.”

“And was it really acceptable to express doubts about the correctness of conducting intelligence activities to the higher administration?” The Lawyer was deeply interested, but Kold caught the ironical notes in his voice and guessed this was a game:

“Indeed! I suspect Mr. Wyden will tell us about it now.”

Meanwhile a new question was heard from the screen. The young newswoman asked:

“I remember that in 2007, when you headed the NSA, there were other whistleblowers, similar to Kold. Did these people address you with the doubts before making them public?”

“It’s as if they overheard us!” the Lawyer cheered up.

Wyden leaned into the microphone and without a trace of uncertainty said:

“Actually, I left the NSA in 2005, and those events in 2007-08 happened after my departure. In my time, I didn’t face any complaints, except for some connected with the solution of some technological problems in the NSA. So I had no knowledge of any processes that could lead to the appearance of whistleblowers.”

“So that just indicates that they work badly,” Kold shrugged his shoulders.

Meanwhile on the screen, Wyden was getting excited and began to gesticulate, supporting each statement with a wave of his hand:

“In such cases, you need to understand who exactly bears responsibility for the incident. That does not necessarily mean you find the guilty person. You need to get employees to be frank with you so they tell you in detail how everything occurred. You want to help people to comprehend a situation, to draw lessons for yourself out of it, so you have the chance to prevent a repeat of similar situations in the future or, at least, to considerably reduce their probability. To talk about Kold, then here you need to know the details to reveal the entire scope of his relations, and you need to talk to all people who communicated with this young man. What, in their opinion, pushed him to such actions? You’d need to talk to his chief. Was there something in Kold’s behaviour that could lead to some suspicions? Perhaps he did something unexpected? Perhaps there were some signs indicating that something is wrong with him? And after that you need to carry out a comprehensive analysis and assessment of the damage caused.”

Kold burst out laughing, this time quite sincerely, without holding back. The Lawyer realized that it must be very amusing for Kold to listen to what a person of such caliber as Wyden broadcasts for the whole world.

And that, meanwhile, continued:

“Let me designate three main areas in which the damage was done. First, Mr. Kold revealed our capabilities to potential opponents. He told them what we can do and what we won’t do, and this itself can be very dangerous. Secondly, it will damage American companies which cooperated with the NSA. They will suffer damage though everything that they did, performed by American laws and protected the United States. Thirdly, if in the world there are still governments or individuals or information sources which would like to cooperate with the USA, then on what basis will they believe our assurances that we are able to keep secrets? All this has caused us damage.”

“Isn’t that too much for a loony loner, Mr. Wyden?” Kold whispered, looking at the TV. His face at the same time acquired quite a spiteful expression.

“Maybe time to switch off?” the Lawyer asked.

“No, it’s interesting,” Kold said abruptly, without turning his head. It was clear that he had become really engaged in the press conference. A new question was posed:

“What is happening to the programs Kold made public – for example, the BRISM program for data collection? Have they been curtailed, or is the NSA going on with them, do you think?”

Wyden passed his hand over his bald head as if in confusion, but at once he found the right words:

“I see no reason why any of those programs which he revealed – let’s say, the BRISM program for collection of metadata – should be stopped. They are legal, they meet a need, and they are effective. But their efficiency is the element that suffered most from his ‘revelations’. Besides, now our opponents know what we can do and what we won’t do, it’s about what restrictions are imposed by our legislation and our policy. Most likely it will allow our opponents to protect their communication systems from the intelligence services of the USA as they attempt to intercept their messages.”

Straightaway, the journalist threw a new bit of firewood into the fire on which Wyden was to be roasted:

“In spite of the fact that BRISM has a very broad span and actually turned the USA into one big database with access to Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, it, nevertheless, ‘missed the boat’ with the online correspondence of the Barayev brothers on the eve of the explosion during the Chicago marathon. Do you, perhaps, scatter networks too widely?”

Wyden for a second seemed to lose control and through the kind paediatrician mask another face appeared – stern, domineering and with the prickly, cold, shrill look, which is necessary for a professional intelligence agent. However, by the time he began to answer, control had already been restored:

“Actually, the Barayevs weren’t identified by means of one of these programs because BRISM isn’t intended for the detection of the type of communication which the Barayev brothers used on the eve of Chicago marathon explosion. I mean that BRISM is intended for tracking foreigners. Confidence in the NSA is necessary because the people we want to watch are foreigners or have potential value as foreigners. And we must prove it in at least the most general form in the American courts before insisting that one of the internet companies helps us with it.

“It seems that the journalists are well prepared for this briefing,” Kold noticed.

The Lawyer grinned.

“Most likely they had the benefit of helpful consultants from certain services. By the way, I’ve long wanted to ask – how was your communication with the representatives of these departments?”

“Practically non-existent. I am not the carrier of any important information. All the data which I can publish is there, on remote servers, and will become property of the public anyway. Already practically nothing depends on me.”

“Nothing at all?”

“I don’t want to talk on this topic now,” Kold evaded the question and turned to the TV. The next question came out:

“President Obama declared that surveillance programs have allowed us to prevent 50 terrorist attacks. Taking into account that these programs started soon after 9/11, how many terrorist attacks were prevented due to information collected by programs similar to BRISM which couldn’t be obtained by other means?”

“He won’t answer that,” Kold quickly told.

Wyden answered carefully:

“Yes, that is a good question and I don’t want to be evasive, but I am forced to be. I don’t know how correctly I can answer your question about the number of terrorist attacks prevented only by means of these programs. Usually, when we talk about the success of one or another intelligence operation, we cannot claim that this success was provided by means of only one program. One of the main achievements of U.S. intelligence over the last ten years has been the fact that we could connect various flows of information, each containing separate data. We connect this separate data to give an informative picture. It’s as if you have splinters of colored glass – separately none bears any significant information, but connected together they can create a very informative mosaic.”

The journalist took out several papers, shuffled them and said:

“I will quote Kold: ‘The agreement of citizens with the actions of the authorities can’t be considered an agreement if citizens are not informed properly what these actions are.’ I think, we must accept that many citizens are appalled by the content of these leaks, since the impression is given that you enter each house by violence, you listen to telephone conversations, you read private e-mails, private SMS, without notifying citizens that you are doing it. And you call all this the ‘War on Terror’. I want to ask, can you wage war on terror and at the same time preserve private life, my private life?”

“I think that the President was right when he declared that a responsible government faces a choice,” Wyden said gravely. “You can’t ensure absolute personal privacy and absolute safety – a balance has to be reached between them. And this balance, frankly speaking, depends on circumstances. What is the nature of the threat? How real is this threat? How effective are the tools available for us for the detection of this threat? I think the President is right. It is necessary to aim to achieve balance. But I would like to emphasize that much of what we, in your opinion, do, and what Americans speak about, is actually ‘the fruit of misunderstanding.’

Unfortunately, when stories of this sort go public in the USA, they are at once surrounded with a depressing aura. So it is very important that American citizens understand what we are actually doing. If you go back to the quote from Kold about the agreement of citizens with the actions of the authorities, then remember we’re not living in ancient Athens. We don’t have direct democracy where all the population collectively makes decisions on all questions. We have a representative democracy. And national representatives knew about these programs, and voted for them. They were approved by two presidents. They were approved by the American judicial system. In the American system, the separation of the authorities into the executive, legislature and judiciary guarantees the legitimate interests of citizens to the maximum degree.”

“We have a saying: ‘spinning like a grass-snake in a frying pan’,” the Lawyer commented.

“Again the Russians?” Kold was interested. “And do people eat snakes in Russia?”

“In your country people eat the tails of beavers and syrup from a maple tree,” the Lawyer shrugged. “And the French eat frogs and snails. National cuisines are a subtle thing. For me, no less subtle than intelligence.”

The press conference meanwhile was about to finish. Wyden, vigorous and young-looking at first, now seemed slightly emaciated. Spots had appeared on his face. There were beads of sweat on his brow – and there was nobody to dry it. In the end, age had told. But, despite everything, he was clearly determined to stand up.

The journalist meanwhile vigorously referred to a piece of paper:

“What does the fact that your own citizens notify the world of its danger say about certain malfunctions in your system? This is not the first case.”

“No, not the first,” Wyden nodded firmly. “But I already said that, in my opinion, Mr. Kold is not a hero; he committed a crime. But he also has problems with his mentality, if you’ll allow me to express it delicately. What arrogance must you possess to believe that your own moral estimates outweigh the estimates of two presidents, two chambers of Congress, the American courts and about 30,000 of your colleagues. I am ready to accept that in American society, and in Russian society, there is a new generation of young people whose ideas of transparency go much further than those of my generation and even generations of my children.

Our intelligence agencies, like the Russian intelligence agencies and intelligence agencies worldwide, today employ people whose ideas of privacy and of openness differ a little from ideas of those in intelligence agencies before. And so here we see Mister Kold, and we see Corporal Benning show almost romantic love to a dehiscence of secrets. But in both these cases their commitment to absolute transparency caused significant damage to the safety of people worldwide.

“That’s not true!” suddenly Kold cried out, seizing the table edge. “A lie! They were the ones who threatened the safety of people!”

“Calm down,” the Lawyer moved a glass to Kold. “Drink some water. He can’t hear you.”

“Yes, yes, you’re right. Sorry…”

Wyden meanwhile answered the last questions:

“I wouldn’t like to comment on current operations of the American intelligence services, but I would like to emphasize that all countries of the world have legitimate foreign intelligence interests, in addition to the war on terror. It is not only about the fight against terrorism, but also about foreign intelligence activities. I am repeating: all countries perform foreign intelligence. I can predict that these two programs, taking into account that the program of collection of metadata and the BRISM program only to a minimal degree affect the private life of Americans, will, I think, be continued. They won broad support from both sides. They will be continued. But what we discussed today, what my country and the whole world discussed in the last two weeks – all this, I believe, will generate a global discussion concerning what is meant by private life in the internet era, what reasonable rules are, what legitimate hopes for private life can there be in an extremely interconnected world. I headed the consulting department under the CIA and I set complex problems for them. One of the most difficult problems I set was a search for the balance between safety and transparency. I formulated the question as follows: ‘Will the USA be able to perform intelligence activities in the future within the broader political culture which every day requires more transparency and more public reporting in all areas of national life?’ They studied this problem, and came back to me with this answer. It was as follows: ‘We are not sure’.”

“Not sure…” Kold repeated. “Well, I am sure.”

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“I won’t tell you any more about my childhood. I’ve left this time forever, and you know I am glad of that. I didn’t like being a child, and not only for the reasons which I have already spoken about. The fact is that ever since I recognized I wanted to be an adult, I have had a desire to grow.

What for? It’s quite simple – to have those opportunities and rights which an adult has. No, it’s not about sex, alcohol, drugs or gambling institutions (especially since all of us get acquainted with these things at a pretty early age.)

An adult has access to what I call the ‘real deal’. You don’t understand? Well, it’s like in economics, there are parasitic sectors, such as the sphere of entertainment, while there are some things the economy can’t exist without: heavy industry, high technologies, the primary sphere, food, army, police, medicine.

Childhood is kind of a parasitic sector, with all its toys, pictures, training sets, puzzles, Batman and Spiderman suits, bicycles and kites. To me, it was always uninteresting, and all around slobbering affection and ah that kid Joshua, ah, he’ll start off a new helicopter now!

I read that the fashion for hypertrophied childhood and for subsequent infantility – now twenty-year-old men and women are called teenagers – began rather recently.

Even in the 1930s, there was no mass industry in the service of children. Girls and boys wore adult clothes that were the exact copy of the clothes of their parents, just smaller. And their toys weren’t bright and ugly hypertrophied images of the real things; they were copies of transport ware, household items, and weapons too…

I saw on the internet, a photo of the nursery of the children of your last emperor Nikolay, and in the photo you could see their toys. The dolls of the girls reminded you of real people. They were not ugly baby dolls with the exaggerated heads and protruding eyes of gigantocephalics. Their dresses, hats and boots looked like real clothes and footwear, only reduced, too. And the locomotive and cars were exact copies of real locomotives, not bright yellow monsters with a mouth and eyes, or a transparent tender and a big ‘Happy Train’ written on one side, like mine in childhood.

I know that for Alex the Russian prince, the only son of your emperor, the gun and saber, exact copies of real weapons, were just made small. And he had the same military uniform in this khaki-colored cloth or whatever it was made from at that time.

And now this would all be made from safe, nonflammable, certified by the World Health Organization hypoallergenic material, bright fluorescent orange in color so it’s obvious to all that it’s for children…

Do you understand what I’m getting at? If you make a child a moron or a clown, he’ll grow up that way. If he from birth he lives in a world of unclear, nonfunctional, senseless and incredibly safe things, he won’t want to move to the adult world where absolutely other laws and rules work.

And on the other hand, maybe, the adult world will finally turn into a kingdom of idiotic entertainments, foolish design and infantile acts. This process, actually, has already started.

I escaped from childhood when I was thirteen. I had a telescope – a big cylindrical thing on a tripod covered by various finders, counterbalances, eyepieces and other mechanical-optical trash. Pa gave it to me when I was nine, when I joined an astronomical club.

For a whole year, I regularly froze at an open window, examining the Galilean satellites of Jupiter, Archimedes crater on the Moon or some comet of Halley. Then I got bored and the telescope just stood a few years until suddenly it became much in demand.

I won’t beat about the bush. You, probably, guessed what happened. Yes, I found out that with this telescope I could to look into the windows of other houses! This discovery beguiled me to stand at the eyepiece for whole nights.

In America, it isn’t normal to use heavy blinds or curtains, just net, because neighbors have to know you have nothing to hide from them because you are an honest and respectable person! And if the sun bothers them in the afternoon, there are always rotary blinds. Well, and on the top floors you don’t need net at all.

Thus I opened for myself a kingdom of others’ passions…

At home, people don’t behave like in the street, in shops, at offices, medical institutions or other public places. At home, they become as they were created by God. Well, or Mother Nature. Real.

Behind closed doors, solid, adult businessmen turn into jumpy hysterics beating their children and shouting at aged parents.

Good girls, exemplary schoolgirls, hide (as they think!) on a garret balcony from the whole world, smoking the cigarettes stolen from mothers.

Comely grey-haired gentlemen take cover in the long cooled matrimonial bedrooms and masturbate over old numbers of Penthouse.

And last, the basis and support of American society – the housewives over thirty. In the absence of children and husbands, they do things that I don’t have the nerve to tell you. I will only say that I never thought that the ordinary vacuum cleaner, a hair dryer, or a cylinder of hairspray could be used with such sophisticated ingenuity.

During the days and in particular in the evenings I watched without a break the secret lives of my distant and nearer neighbors, gradually turning into a juvenile cynic who was undeceived in life.

The most terrible suspicions, the most awful hints I had read somewhere or heard on TV had suddenly became true and real.

My Pa, despite his rigid male character, was a man with strong principles, one of which said: ‘The soldier will not hurt a child’. But witnessing abuse for me became a nearly daily reality.

As soon as I went outside and met a person of any gender or age, my new experience began to cry out in me: ‘There goes one more pervert, house tyrant, or a voluptuous freak who is only pretending to be the normal person.’

But I couldn’t give up this forbidden, yet oh-so-fascinating occupation. Every evening, after saying I needed to do a school project or prepare for exams, I locked myself in my room and hurried to the cold eyepiece of the telescope.

Now I understand that at this time we in our family were going through a very intense, bad period – my parents were getting divorced, or more precisely, their relationship was going completely wrong, and to everyone, and first of all to them, it became clear that a crack had developed that couldn’t be stuck together, patched, covered or eliminated in any other way.

But I didn’t notice any of that, entirely absorbed by my secret, shameful, but devilishly fascinating hobby.

In time, simply looking became boring, and once I had the idea of writing down the names and addresses of those people who were performing illegal actions at home then reporting them to the police. I don’t remember precisely why I didn’t actually do it, but most likely it was the fear that I would be found and revenged.

However, there was nobody special to revenge Mr. Chandler, who beat his daughters at home but in the day was a quiet and modest accountant; and nymphomaniac Ms. Bryant wasn’t especially suited for the role of blood-thirsty avenger, and I could have beaten off the pervert Paul Harden even then in spite of the fact that he was about forty years old – because from birth he had suffered from cerebral palsy.

Anyway, the main object of my visual fascination was old man Coburn, or more precisely, his young wife Ellie. Actually her name was Espina, and I don’t remember her surname, even though Pa mentioned it several times. The fact is that Ellie-Espina was a Mexican of twenty something years and worked for old man Coburn as a housemaid.

Worked – worked – and married him. Coburn himself, a stately man of 70 with a white beard, was extremely happy about this and terribly proud of ‘my Ellie’ who ‘brightened up the declining years of a patriarch.’

And Espina herself was even more happy with her new status. This large girl with a shock of black hair and size five breasts had now become ‘an absolute American’.

But I knew that happiest of all was old man Coburn’s grandson Sam, a restless boy of my years working at the post in a suburb of Wilmington.

From time to time he visited his beloved grandfather. They sat in the garden, drank a glass or two, then old Coburn fell asleep, and Sam and Ellie went upstairs to the second floor guest bedroom, and indulged in what in books is called carnal joys.

The window of the guest bedroom was a quarter of a mile from my window in a line of direct visibility. Naturally, it was completely impossible to discern much from such a distance with the naked eye, and even ordinary tourist binoculars would hardly help, but the telescope is quite another matter!

In my big pipe I could see everything, up to the sugar skull tattooed on Ellie’s forearm along with the Spanish words: ‘Perpetuo socorro’. Well, and all the rest I saw fairly accurately too.

You must admit it’s one thing to hear about what is done by a man with a woman alone from peers or to see it in photos in magazines, but absolutely another to study it with your own eyes!

Now Sam was quite a puny creature, and maybe he blackmailed Ellie with something – otherwise why on earth she would need him? On the other hand, the old man Coburn could hardly be surprised at her – she was in her prime and wasn’t remotely like the chaste maiden Conchita in any way.

So, while the old man was dozing, they rough and tumbled on the bed, sometimes using handcuffs, or toys from the adult shop, and even a whip. I don’t know why they needed all that stuff, but maybe they couldn’t explain it either if anyone ever asked.

The only problem, which was a real pain, was the fact that the telescope showed everything upside down! When you look at stars or at Jupiter, that doesn’t matter at all, but when you are watching Sam and Ellie, it can feel distinctly uncomfortable.

For a long time I pondered how to eliminate this annoying defect, and tried to make a system of mirrors, or find lenses with a focus that turned the picture over, but nothing really worked.

Then it suddenly dawned on me – the video camera! Pa had just bought a new Japanese camera few months ago, and we wanted to take it with us on a trip to Illinois Park, but something went wrong and the camera had mostly laid in the storeroom on the shelf. Judith took it out several times to shoot our old cat Clothespin when she came, but beyond that the camera was unused.

After fitting the camera to the telescope eyepiece on radial knife-edges, I waited for the next occasion of Sam and Ellie’s meeting and prepared to record. Just in case, I not only locked the door, but also propped a hockey stick against it. Then I rewound the cassette and pressed start.

What I then saw in my usual house porn shocked me. Because now what I had watched upside down in the telescope eyepiece before had become a full record, material evidence of the misbehaviour of the Mexican and Coburn’s smart grandson. Anyone could see it now. And with this anyone could blackmail them.

My hands sweated, and the inside of my head began to pound. It was inexpressible with words, this new feeling, not comparable in its excitement with anything in the world. Power, yes, yes, exactly power – this is what I experienced when I looked at the folding screen of the Japanese video camera.

I laughed and jumped about the room like mad, imagining how and what I could make not only with Sam and Ellie, but also with all those freaks.

I was like the gods or demons from ancient myths, able not only to see what nobody saw and nobody knew, but also to transfer those visions to a tape and make them material.

Power! I had in my hands a real power over a load of people now! It was only necessary to make a quantity of records and to think up a plan for inducing the heroes of my documentaries to do what I needed, to guarantee I didn’t arrange a meeting with the police for them.

Did I think at that time that blackmail is a serious criminal offense? Frankly, I didn’t. The prospects in my inflamed imagination absolutely hammered away all thoughts of ethics – hammered them away with the justification that who, frankly in this age, thinks of ethics, except ten hypocrites?

I don’t know how all this story would have ended if the divorce of my parents hadn’t burst on me like a bolt from the blue.

It was a beautiful summer day, with the sun striking through the window and through the nets and painting orange rectangles on the floor, like the Windows logo. My parents were sitting on chairs at different ends of the room, and on a table there were several boxes of Chinese food that my Pa had bought to… well, probably, to sweeten the pill. He always wanted it better. And Mom too.

Then they told Judith and me everything – that they couldn’t live together any more, that they are strangers now, that Mom would move to another city, and that Pa would stay here with us, well, more precisely, with me, since Judith was already studying at law school in Norfolk. For me, the whole world just collapsed.

That familiar world in which all of us lived. I mean that. It became empty and lonely.

And what’s interesting, as I have already said, we weren’t especially close with Mom, but when she just disappeared it was like the chromaticity was taken out of a film. Everything became black-and-white, dirty and dim.

And my interest in the telescope, in that forbidden video, in my plan for blackmail, didn’t just die away – it also grew dim, covered in dust and shrunk.

For days Pa hung out with his service pals, and Judith went to college. And I stayed at home and played on the computer. I played for days and whole nights, generally strategies, shooters, and RPGs.

At that moment, it seemed to me that in those games was the whole meaning of my life, and yet now I can barely remember the names. Still, I’m grateful to their creators because those games helped distract me and endure a difficult period in my life then – and as it seems to me, still help, by giving the illusion of the infinity of being. That sounds complicated so I’ll try to explain a little.

The world of virtual heroes and computer landscapes seems simply illustrative at first sight. But it is not about the quality of plotting or 3D graphics, but about the depth of setting, and the believability of the heroes’ characters. Sometimes they are made with such stunning realism and charisma that one is reduced to tears – ‘why can’t you penetrate behind the screen?’

Of course, computer games are, first of all, an escape from reality, and who would argue with that. When there is sleet outside the window, not a cent in your pocket, you’ve a bruise under your eye and no prospects ahead… When you are not just a low ranker, but The Most-Low-Ranker of all low-rankers…When even such an ‘important’ thing as the timing of the walk to the mailbox for a fresh newspaper doesn’t depend on you… In fact, when all life is bullshit, there is a huge desire to escape from it.

To run away anywhere – to another city, to another state, into narcotic nonsense, to death, eventually…

And in this scheme, computer games are true salvation, or I would even say, therapy, a special valve, a fuse that stops your mind shattering into millions of pieces of colored glass.

In fact, when you’re a teenager of fifteen years, and you have it real bad… How bad, I won’t explain in detail, I’ve just spoken about that. And if you don’t stand up and blow your socks off, you just go off aimlessly wandering. And there you go, you spend a day, two or even three. But more than likely you will be found, the police do their work well. After all, you’re just a lonely white teenager, not a needle in a haystack.

And you were found, returned and everything began! Juvenile justice, it’s like a tick – once it’s got its tail into you, you can’t tear it off. Psychologists will drive you crazy with their little chats with you. Various inspectors from various organizations which patronize and watch over children at risk will visit your house again and again because since the moment you left your home, you became precisely a child at risk, and also mentally unbalanced. And this is branded on you for a long time, possibly forever, and many roads in life are now blocked for you by the barriers of the state system.

What’s more, they can take you away from home and find you new parents. That is, you have to leave the places where you were born, grew up, which are dear to you, and move to some ‘promised land’ like Mount Clemence in the State of Michigan to start everything from scratch, from a blank sheet. And what does it mean to start from scratch at fifteen years? I can tell you that it is much more difficult than at five or twenty-five because when you’re fifteen, you’re like a target at which everything flies – views, words, spittle, fists and lumps of crumpled paper.

And computer games were invented, it seems to me, to avoid all these problems. You just sit at a computer, put on your earphones, launch the program and say so-long to reality for a while. The main thing is that it isn’t necessary to run anywhere.

And crucially, in a game you can be anybody. That’s vital, it’s a gift from heaven – to realize your dreams! Yes, in reality you have weak arms and terrible eyesight, and you can barely make it round the track in the school stadium, you shuffle along in a stoop and even the little girls from the junior grades laugh at you.

But in a game you become that nimble hunk with elastic muscles, a square jaw and a heap of skills, from archery and axe-throwing to ‘light magic’ or ‘blood magic’.

And you go on your journey through uncharted lands, you meet friends and foes, you face terrible dangers, join fights, find treasures, save beautiful princesses or great princes – it all depends on your personal choice at the beginning, and no matter how the game ends today, you stay happy because tomorrow your hero will be alive, healthy and full of strength again.

Nothing hurts him, he is always ready for heroic deeds and adventures. He is perfect… the ideal American, to be plain. And here you are – not ideal. And all the adults around you stick your nose in your not ideality. It’s clear they mean well, but it turns out just the opposite, and you’re angry because of it, and get a heap of complexes. And you already very much want to become what you are wanted to be, at least once, in real life. But offline it is impossible because…

Yes, it is simply…impossible, and all! And in the game, so easy. Of course, it is an escape from reality, pure escapism. But fans of computer games are not innovators at all, they weren’t treading any new tracks – all those beatniks, hippies, rockers, bikers and other punks, they ran from reality too, they were escapists too. To live in the real world and not know its problems, this lot came up with their own imaginary world, their ‘Strawberry Fields.’ Of course, the entrance fee was more expensive than for gamers. For gamers, all it costs is money for the internet and time…well, and may be sometimes conjunctivitis, carpal tunnel syndrome and scoliosis. But for them it was necessary to poison their organism with various forms of chemistry, clouding the brain so that sitting on garbage you could believe you are in paradise.

No, the computer in this respect is more honest. The main thing is that there is electricity, and that is almost everywhere and almost always now. There are, of course, blackouts, but they’re about as likely as dying from a meteorite.

A meteorite is a prohibited reality – literally a guest from another world. Here, in Russia recently you had such a gift from the Great Space Fall. I watched many videos of it because in Russia car owners have this excellent habit, or tradition – I don’t even know how to call it – of equipping their cars with dashcams – and I was surprised to see the courage and composure of your people.

Nobody panicked, nobody was running around crying: ‘Oh, my God! Save us, save us!’ People just looked into the sky, they were filming, discussing it, and then when the explosion blew and the windows in lots of houses, offices and schools were shattered, everybody just made sure everyone was safe. Nobody died! All got help in time. While watching the video, I even had a feeling that they were training videos, and everybody was prepared.

I remember one particularly amazing video. The class teacher, seeing the flash outside the window, orders the children to hide under their desks. The explosion knocked out all the windows, but no child was injured, not one cut! The children leave school in an organized way, and they’re even laughing…

I reflected on such a reaction, and realized that for you, Russians, escapism isn’t necessary and even harmful, because you already live in another reality…

Your world can’t be destroyed because you’re always ready for any surprise, because no rules nor regulations for life exist.

Churchill wrote about you: ‘Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.’ Perhaps it’s like that, but it seems to me that you shouldn’t look for hair on a tortoise shell and horns on the head of a hare – everything is simpler.

Your reality is similar to computer, a virtual reality. It is the world of inexplicable things and acts, the world of boundless opportunities. I don’t know how the philosopher Thomas Carlisle got scent of all this in the middle of the nineteenth century, but he wrote then: ‘Russia is indifferent to human life and to a current of time. It is silent. It is eternal. It is indestructible’.

That’s an exact description of the virtual world, the world of the computer game where fatalists ready for everything live! Here the Russians, I guess, approach living by the Buddhist principle: ‘Do what needs to be done’ and ‘come what will’. When I understood that, not so long ago, during my life in Hawaii, I became fascinated to look at your country with my own eyes. However, I am getting ahead of myself.

At the beginning Americans were engaged in hewing a civilization on wild land. They had to win a piece of the earth from the wood, the prairie, and heathlands, to fence it off from wild animals, to banish or exterminate Indians and predators, to build a house, to plant European plants. That is the United States – a created world.

It’s largely artificial – but not virtual – because everything is firmly regulated here and everybody lives guided by an infinite number of laws including unwritten ones. If you walk down the street in any American town and don’t smile at passersby in response to their dutiful ‘smiles’, you’ve already broken these laws, and the world around won’t be polite to you. So you sometimes get a strong wish to run away from all this – especially at fifteen years!

So that’s why I played. For hours, at nights, days around the clock. I didn’t go to school. I simply couldn’t. The moment I had to leave the house was real torture for me. It seemed to me that everyone I met in the street, from children to police officers and road makers, was aware of our family problem, and felt sorry for me, and I owed something to all of them, and I felt like a target – and here I was, a hair’s breadth away.

I didn’t want them to feel sorry for me. I wanted to go on living here as if everything was the same, as though nothing had happened. Mom had left, Judith had left – so why were Pa and I left on the ashes, on the ruins of our family? We needed to go somewhere too, and it didn’t matter where, just away from here.”