Shadow

Proofreader Elena Sheremet

Proofreader Irina Moiseeva

Illustrator Alena Ronzhina

Cover designer Anastasiia Shlokina

© Vladimir Weise, 2018

© Alena Ronzhina, illustrations, 2018

© Anastasiia Shlokina, cover design, 2018

ISBN 978-5-4493-2722-2

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

A strange story happened in one of the Universes in the distant past, times long before the wheel, steam engines, and a toilet with a button were devised. There were no stars, no moons at that time. I would call that era “The Time of the First-Born.” Yes, it is Firstborn. Everything that we know now in our world was created much later and under other circumstances, and that world can’t be fully understood to me or to you, it can only be imagined in your mind, see what it was, but the laws can’t be understood.

From this moment I’ll begin my story. You should take your place more comfortable; drop the worries and sorrows of the past day.

Imagine in your imagination a world without light, without heat and cold, without hard and soft, a world without anxieties and expectations. This world is ephemeral in nature, it can be compared to a dark-dark room, and, as usual, in any room, sooner or later dust will appear, well, there is such a property in empty rooms (it’s strange why scientists have not described “law of dust conservation”). Dust for years accumulated in the emptiness of existence. For the time being, no one touched it, but at one point a swift action appeared there piercing the emptiness of the universe, lifting the dust of times, cutting it and blowing away into the distance. It was a cycle, a game of strange essences, which I, with your permission, will call “hoki”.

The Hoki were firstborn. How they appeared and where they came from I still do not understand (apparently, the dust gave birth to them), but it is quite certain that they were and are to this day. These beings do not have body and mind, soul and life aspirations, they simply are, are as the embodiment of action and the exchange of energy. Their whole essence and life lie in the fact that they simply dissect space, constantly exchanging energy with each other.

Conceptually, this world was not terrifying and terrible, and if it could frighten an uninvited guest, it was only by its incomprehensibility and novelty. No matter how it can sound, we create our own fear of the unknown, giving everything new with our secret fears and putting on the mask of mystery instead of opening our soul to the new adventure.

It so happened that the world doesn’t have the matter in the form that we know. There is dust in it – the smallest elements that do not interact with each other because they don’t have a charge, and there are the hoki, that don’t have a body and possessing energy. It is strange, absurd, but true. While I was telling you about this world, we missed one moment! It is clearly fateful for the whole universe! One of sporting hoki understood. It is UNDERSTOOD that it was.

– Who am I?, she said.

– What is around me and why am I separated from it? Am I dissolved in it or does it surround me? But it’s not me, and I’m not it, “she continued.

Chaos and confusion grew inside the hoki. The panic grew in her unfathomed consciousness. – So! What to do? She thought.

And in a panic she started to run. Although the hoki were always in a swarm and did not depart from each other, she broke her life’s instincts; she overcame the instinct of obedience to the usual course of things.

She was rushing for a long time, as long as you can imagine. One could say that she swept past planets and stars, solar systems were behind, clusters and galaxies, but this was not so because they simply did not exist.

Hoki just rushed without direction, purpose, and landmarks until she realized the obtuseness of her actions.

She stopped and began to think.

Imagine, at that time there was nothing! The thought that there was not even the “Thought” itself makes me thrill. And now, she had already realized it. She thought a year, two, and several times for the same, until she plunged into meditation definitively. She wanted to return to the Hoki, and before to do it she had to understand where she was and to understand where she was, she had to understand who she was, and to understand who she was, she had to understand much more than she could simply understand. And now the immature mind got confused finally.

For hundreds of years, she has been thinking immovably, solving a problem that many clever people can’t find an answer throughout their smart life. Her mind wandered thought out concepts and tried to explain them. Basically, it was then when the puzzle about the egg and the chicken appeared in our life, and, to be honest, at some point our heroine worried about the chicken more than for that who she really was.

“I am – Shadow,” said hoka, who had fled from the pack. Just imagine, she realized herself, no one told her who she was, she self-realized. And why Shadow? Not Tengri, not Perun, not Ktulhu, not the Goddess Isis, why the Shadow? Gotcha, interesting? You have to read to the end.

Now we ourselves can plunge into meditations, build logical chains and solve secret secrets, and can continue the line of the story and bring our heroine to the next, no less important event in her life.

So, Shadow had time to realize not only her name but also to understand that she wants to see the place where she was. The good desire for the first-realized!

To solve the task standing before her, she began to invent her own senses. And suddenly she had two blue eyes on her head, which later migrated to the front part of her face, because it was uncomfortable to wear her eyes on the back of her head, and you had to watch where you were flying. Under the eyes, two holes opened, through which she could smell and on the sides of her eyes she made two recesses in order to hear this world.

Mother of God! Where I was got, could the world be a little cleaner, more harmonious, could it be possible to remove all this dust, hang small glowing lights, throw white fluffy clouds, hang intergalactic congestions, and hang a disco ball in the center of the world? I came or what? She said. Oh, these women no matter that they were not beings, all about one thing, all about one thing!

Shadow realized herself in the world, came up with thoughts and decided to create her own sense organs. No matter how it can sound, but she took the first conscious decision and comprehended the first rule of the universe, “You make yourself.”

There were various dust particles weighed in the air, some were in size of the stone, and some could not even be seen. And now our little Shadow wanted to feel them, touch them, understand how they were in taste, but could not. Nevertheless, she studied the soaring dust particles and their fragments with extraordinary joy, these single pieces of matter in the whole world.

Shadow realized the miracle that happened to her and tried to analyze it!

Complex mental processes began to grow in her mind, she began to accumulate information about the world around her. You just imagine, analyze the information! Many of us do not think about the correctness of the search and analysis of information, and indeed the correct method of searching and structuring data is the guarantee of the personal success of each small earthman.