The visualizer, or the man who alters reality

— Let me show you around. We have three six-story buildings, all connected to one another at the second-floor level — meaning there is a through corridor on that floor that allows you to move from one building to the next without going outside.

He pointed toward the elevator and pressed the button for the second floor.

— We also have our own landscaped grounds under permanent guard, he continued. Ill show you those a little later.

— The first building houses the registry, the intake wards for new patients, and the consulting rooms for general practitioners. This is where we issue certificates to the public and carry out initial patient assessments. Our clinic serves as a district facility, so anyone who needs documentation for a drivers license or a firearms permit must come to us. The physicians who see walk-in patients are highly experienced — they can identify an unstable individual from just a few words. If that person requires our medical assistance, they are immediately detained and referred to the staff psychologist. If you come to work with us, you too will learn to recognize those who suffer from various mental disorders, he said, looking attentively at his companion.

— On more than one occasion such referrals have led to individuals becoming our permanent patients. And the police have no doubt found themselves short a few serial killers as a result. That is precisely why the authorities pay such close attention to our clinic. No one wants unpleasant surprises, and everyone would prefer to avoid them.

After riding the elevator to the second floor together, the director and the young woman found themselves at the entrance to a long through corridor where a second guard was on duty. The man in a special protective uniform looked sternly at the director — he already knew the physicians were coming up by elevator and did not stop them.

Without a word he opened the turnstile for them using his own smart card. As he did so, the reader played a cheerful little melody from some familiar childrens cartoon.

— Every member of our staff has an identical smart card with a limited access radius, Isaac Moiseevich continued.

It was evident that he had a fondness for digital gadgets: modern color cameras were mounted throughout every floor of the hospital, and the doors were fitted with vandal-proof readers from the NPO Relvest access control and management system.

— If you do not have authorization to enter a particular security zone in any of the three buildings, your personal card will not open the turnstile. Only the chief medical officer and the director have the right to move freely through all three buildings. Other physicians have cards with additional restrictions tied to their professional duties and working hours. If they are not permitted to enter a given building or room, they will not get in, no matter how much they might wish to.

The clinic director then looked carefully at Vera Ivanovna and murmured, just quietly enough that the guards would not hear:

— If you turn out to be a good fit for us, we will make you a card exactly like this one, and you will be able to pass through every turnstile in the building, on whatever floor it may be.

Chapter 2

The sage who speaks of freedom

while in prison — who

counsels all to lose themselves in

wine — Is truly wise: in chains he

still is free, strong as a cliff,

when his soul stays noble.

Omar Khayyam

Kirill had ended up in the psych ward several years ago. He had long since understood that he was born a different kind of child — one who did not quite resemble his peers. After a while his parents noticed it too, unable at first to understand why their son had no interest in playing with children his own age, and why those children ran from him as though from someone carrying the plague.

It was probably connected to the fact that Kirill possessed some kind of innate, very powerful energy that affected other people and pushed them away from him. Or perhaps it was a matter of his character. He was an only child, raised according to the strictest family traditions, and that had its effect on ones psyche.

If he wanted someone elses toy, he would simply walk up to the other child and demand it be handed over — even though it did not belong to him. After receiving this command, the other child would meekly comply and surrender whatever had caught Kirills fancy. As a rule, parents sorted out these scandals as soon as they occurred and returned the pilfered trinket to its owner. But things could not go on that way forever.

As Kirill grew, so did his abilities. It turned out that he possessed a natural gift for hypnosis and could influence even adults. Once, riding a trolleybus, he was approached by an inspector checking tickets. The inspector asked to see his travel pass. Kirill reached into the pocket of his leather jacket. The pass was not there — it had probably been left in another coat, and searching for it was pointless. Kirill thought for a moment and remembered his hidden abilities. He decided to test them in practice.

He did not want to deceive the conductor, but he had no choice. He pulled out the first scrap of paper he could find and tried to convince the conductor that this was the very travel pass he had been asking the schoolboy to produce. It was the kind of thing he did with children in the yard — but up to this point it had only ever been a game. Strangely enough, the conductor saw no difference between the scrap of paper and an ordinary travel pass, and returned it to the young man who had shown it to him. Then he moved on to check the documents of the other passengers.

The boy smiled. His abilities had grown considerably, and they had been proven in practice. He now intended to put them to use in his own interests. At that point he was still considered a normal person, and he paid no particular attention to his gift.

Perhaps his new abilities might have served as a kind of magic wand in difficult life situations, had it not been for the nervous breakdowns that struck him from time to time — something resembling epileptic fits. The stronger his abilities grew, the more severe and prolonged these episodes became, until they began to resemble a serious psychological or neurological disorder.

The first episode occurred when he was twelve years old. The relentlessly negative news broadcast on the main television channels, the high bar he had set for himself in his schoolwork, and the absence of close friends all combined to bring about a deep psychological exhaustion and a severe nervous breakdown.

He did not know how to relieve it and fell into hysterics. His condition did not improve. Kirill could not shake the headaches and the bad moods that dogged him constantly, preventing him from studying or resting. The boy developed insomnia and could sit up through the night playing on his personal computer without sleeping at all. The psychological stress intensified and led to another episode, another bout of hysteria that would not let up for days. He shouted at his father, cried, and could not calm down. Sometimes he raised his voice at his parents out of resentment — out of the feeling that they did not understand him.

His parents grew worried and took the boy to a psychologist they knew. The psychologist listened carefully to the parents and prescribed breathing exercises and regular physical activity. For a time this genuinely helped. Kirill began attending a tennis section, and this held the development of his stress and emotional overload at bay for several years. During that period his episodes almost entirely ceased, and his parents relaxed a little.