I don't remember the moment when I managed to simply lie down and fall asleep. It's always some kind of half-remembered state, filled with memories—a series of shifting scenes from the past. Here I am sitting in the dining hall of a closed special sanatorium for cancer patients, watching an unclear black substance flowing out of my fingers, enveloping and consuming the sausage on my plate. Then again, it's the dining hall—but this time it's a different one, a military canteen. Nearby, recruits just like me are clattering spoons against deep metal plates. Everyone has soldier's porridge with meat laid out before them. I look at this gray-brown hot lump and suddenly dip my hand into it. Everyone stares in surprise as black tentacles pull out all the contents. Through my skin, I feel dozens of astonished gazes. Are they looking at me? At the empty bowl? Or have they suddenly realized that next time I might dip my hand into someone else's closely cropped head? The commander barks at the recruits. And the scene changes again... Again, there are trucks, endless fields, a helicopter in the sky. I squint my eyes against the sun. Somewhere in the distance, talkative Agnia is laying out a solitaire on a round table covered with a lace tablecloth, telling me about the King of Cups. For some reason, he appears to me as a graying Valery Semyonovich. Wearing a white coat open at the front, he strides toward me across the field, carrying a large retort in his hands. Something black sloshes inside the spherical flask. I try to say something to him, but the kind doctor smiles and says, "Death is the last thing you need to fear." Then he begins pouring the contents of the vessel through its elongated spout directly onto the ground.
The black sludge inside doesn't end—it just spreads and spreads around. It covers the field, the trucks, the shaved backs of the recruits. Only an empty soldier's bowl, abandoned by someone, floats in it like a little boat. I look at my hands—I myself am already entirely made up of this black sludge. Valery Semyonovich continues smiling, extending an empty vial toward me... Inside, something small but alive pulsates. A homunculus. Or perhaps just a human embryo...