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Unexpected question vs. Unexpected answer

In the cell-type premises PKT[1], time doesn't run; it hangs in the air, like dust particles visible in the beam of a flashlight or when a stray ray of sun manages to peek through the iron shutters. How you can spend your time, when time basically does not exist? Well, there are various ways. For instance, you could spill something on the floor and watch the water dry… It’s fascinating, actually. But there are some better occupations available, such as writing. Creating not a damp, vanishing trace on a plank floor, but entire worlds, people, deciding their destinies, and marveling at how laws you didn’t invent pull characters who are no longer yours into unexpected whirlpools of events. Writing is salvation. Writing is therapy. Writing is…

“So, what are you writing there all the time?”

The question was simple and clear. It had been obvious for a long time that it would be asked—I had even grown tired of waiting. But it still came as a surprise. Just as each opening of your door is a surprise, even though you catch every sound and mentally predict every possible plot twist. It’s a strange phenomenon—the clang of the bolt strikes with a fresh, almost theatrical unexpectedness every single time.

The applicable procedure for “the Citizen Bosses" (representatives of the colony’s administration were supposed to be called that) entering the cell was a ritual, which acquired plenty of new elements throughout my incarceration. But back then, in December 2022, I was not yet required to assume the "inverted cross" pose: spreading my arms against the wall to demonstrate submission and waiting patiently while professionally indifferent hands conducted a meaningless search. In those happy times, unaware of my own fortune, I simply stood by the wall and watched them enter.[2] They, in turn, this time looked at me with an atypical interest, seemingly trying to decipher what kind of strange "beast" sat here in solitude, frantically moving a pen across paper.

The question for which this entire visit was staged rang out again:

“So, what is it that are you writing?”

In any ambiguous situation, the easiest thing to do is tell the truth; otherwise, you might get tangled up. At that moment, I was caught red-handed—pen in hand and inspiration on my face—so I had to confess:

“I’m writing a book. Look, I’ve already written quite a bit. Would you like to see?”

I immediately went on the offensive, because that is the best defense. I also had powerful allies in my sincerity and initiative, which were rare and suspicious visitors within those walls.

In my head, of course, I was already cursing myself for my carelessness. I had secretly hoped that by some magical means I could hide the fruits of my labor, but magic works poorly in the PKT. There are no drawers here, no secret niches. Everything you own either huddles on a narrow shelf above the washbasin or lies lonely in a square of four tin sheets on the wall. Hiding something here is a task for a high-level sorcerer, and if you need to hide four hundred pages, not counting drafts and auxiliary materials, the mission becomes something akin to impossible.

Waiting for the Boss’s answer, I pointed to the substantial stack of paper. It looked out of place and provocative in that cell:

“Here... I’ve written a little. A book, actually…”

The Boss froze. Then he asked, stretching the vowels the way people do when they need to buy time to process information not covered by any official instruction:

“A boooooook?”

He had to decide what to do next, and there was no one to ask for advice.

Strictly speaking, I was supposed to call him "Citizen Boss" in every other sentence—"Yes, Citizen Boss, sir;" "Exactly so, Citizen Boss"—a kind of verbal tribute to the system. But my rebellious character manifested itself in this quiet sabotage: apart from the mandatory report form, I always omitted these required forms of address, preserving a grain of my "self" in an ocean of regulated lawlessness. Well, it was something. A weak rebellion, but still better than nothing.

“Well, we’ll see what you’ve written there!”

With the same slowness of expression, he took my notebook sheets, those two-hundred-plus pages, covered on both sides with microscopic handwriting in every grid square. The Boss looked at this web of letters thoughtfully, then ran his thumb along the corner of the stack, the way an experienced card player checks a new deck or a stack of bills for authenticity. The rustling of paper. Materiality confirmed. The letters themselves were not deemed worthy of reading. Only one attentive glance, a short crinkling sound, and then the Chief went to request instructions on exactly how the confiscation of my world would take place.

Only one attentive glance, a short crinkling sound, and then the Chief went to request instructions on exactly how the confiscation of my world would take place.

When he left, that special silence that can only be heard in the PKT settled in the cell. In such silence, you can hear a spider weaving a web in the next room, and you can hear plot twists whispering conspiratorially in your head. At the moment the bolt clanged shut, I realized that the clock was ticking. I had to prepare for the next act of this play.

"Yes, but still… What happened next?"

To understand the significance of those written pages, we must rewind the film to the times when I was not yet a "ZNUP"[3]—that is, a persistent violator of the established order, doomed to wander the PKT-SHIZO loop.[4]

It all started with The Plotless Ones. This was a cycle of ten stories, a kind of literary game of freedom. The idea was simple: I described a situation, gave a sketch of a place, offered portraits of people, and reported on actions, but completely excised the "why" and "wherefore" from the text. The reader was invited to become a co-author, to guess what invisible springs moved these characters in the presented settings, what happened before, and what would happen after.

These stories somehow incomprehensibly leaked through the sieve of censorship and ended up on the outside. My father shared them with friends. And one friend of mine, a great woman, who was famous for her outstanding sporting activities and for other extraordinary qualities, read the plotless stories, and then sent me a question through my relatives: "OK, the stories are great. But what happened next with them, with these characters?"

After I read the question, I laughed. I messaged back to the outside, "What do you mean by 'what next’?" I felt like the pioneer of a new literary genre. "It’s a plotless story! A literary game! The reader is the author! Whatever you imagine is what happens—understand?!"

"I understand," my friend replied through my relatives, clearly and precisely transmitting her thought. "Of course I understand! But tell me anyway, what happened next?"

I responded to the second letter with laughter again, this time a bit nervous. It was impossible to merge all ten stories—which had no characters and only a hint of a plot that was evident to me—into a single whole. But then thinking about impossibility was a bit irritating. Besides, it seemed to me that the joke had gone on a bit too long…

Perhaps it would have ended there, but that was exactly when fate decided to send me to my first "creative residency."

In October 2022, I found myself in the punishment cell—SHIZO—for the first time. It was only five days in a concrete box, but I felt my sanity slowly but surely starting to pack its bags. Solitude in a punishment cell is not the silence of a library; it’s a resonant ringing in the ears from trying to listen to and “see” what is happening beyond the doors. Try doing nothing for an hour. It’s not easy, but it can be endured. But for 16 hours straight? And what if it’s 16 hours every day and you don’t know how many of those days there will be? Some people were issued "vouchers" for 100 days in SHIZO. It’s a rather unpleasant uncertainty and a too-wearisome wait, especially considering that in the silence of the cell you are alone, and the only possible objects for entertainment are a toothbrush and toothpaste, soap, a towel, and toilet paper. Not particularly fun.

And when an attorney managed to get to see me (back then, in 2022, it was still possible), I pounced on him in a kind of frantic state with various delusional ideas. When I returned to the cell and remembered my excited speeches (accumulated over days of talking to imaginary interlocutors), I realized that this wouldn't work; I had to find something to do. That’s when the thought arose: what if I found out how the characters' lives turned out next? At the same time, I had to invent who they were—the characters, their relationships, what happened to them in childhood, where they were going, and so on. I had a catastrophic amount of time and one single task: to tie the knots of the plotless stories into a plot, filling them with some unified meaning. Thus began the creation of the novel Prisoners of If.

The punishment was extended and those first twenty-two days in SHIZO became my creative marathon. It was there that I drew up the main plot outline; every twist of it was paid for by hours of me contemplating a white wall. I had to recall everything I had read about mnemonics in order to retain the main elements created in my head: characters, events, locations, relationships, fragments of vivid dialogue, and so on. Later, upon getting out, I transferred this data to the usual medium of paper. Everything was ready—diagrams, tables, timelines. But how to find the time to write it all? Time helped answer that question too.

Romance in Ten Envelopes

When the doors of my cell opened the next time, I was already prepared. This time, a "special Boss" peeked in. His direct duties, among other things, included resolving non-standard situations and the operative handling of various problems.

I met him, holding a piece of paper and greeting him briskly:

“I’m glad you visited me; I have a request for you!”

On the table, like exhibits at a trade exhibition, lay thick envelopes—exactly ten of them. I held out a hastily written statement.

“Wait,” the chief said, seizing back the initiative. “I’m here for another reason. What have you written there? We want to read it.”

This was the moment of truth. The first reader—a critical moment.

“Please, have a look.” — I smiled, insistently holding out the statement. “Nothing extremist, nothing political. Heaven forbid, not a single word about the prison administration. It’s only about love… Well, you know, a boy, a girl—pure romance. See for yourself in the statement.”

Nothing extremist, nothing political. Heaven forbid, not a single word about the prison administration.

He finally took the statement, his gaze immediately falling on the title of the novel indicated there.

“Prisoners?" His voice sounded wary.

“Not in that sense!” I hurried to reassure him. “It’s just about feelings. About love.”

He grunted back, “Well, we’ll read it and figure it out.”

I hurriedly duplicated the content of the statement aloud: “Here, please, is the statement, and here are the envelopes. In each there is one part of the work, so there are ten in total. If everything is in order, please send them to my father. If something is not right, return the manuscript to me, and I will work on it further. Everything is written in the statement: I’ve copied the identification numbers of the envelopes, and indicated the total number of pages...”

He murmured: —OK, ok… we’ll see.

And then he left without saying any other word in response, and I remained there, staring at the empty table. My four hundred pages of dreams had gone out into the big world—or, at least, into an office somewhere outside my cell. Funny, but it took me exactly 22 out of my first days in PKT (mirroring the 22 days I spent “plotting” in SHIZO). In PKT, I was writing all the time, taking breaks only to restore the blood circulation in my fingers. It was both exhausting and wonderful. Now the result of this work had vanished.

I both believed and didn't believe that these pages could be sent on or could at least be returned to me. And I certainly couldn't have imagined that they would become a museum exhibit.

Can You Not Write?

Shortly after my envelopes disappeared into the depths of the administrative corridors, the time for the New Year holidays arrived. In the absolutely inaccessible world beyond many walls, people were opening champagne; in the less inaccessible world to me beyond fewer (from my side) walls, they were also celebrating (and even had Russian salad). However, the system presented me with its traditional gift: a "voucher" to move from the PKT to the SHIZO punishment cell. Again, sixteen hours a day of waiting. But this time I already had an understanding of what I could do. One novel was ready, so what could I write next?

There, in the New Year's cold of the isolation cell, sorting through new ideas, I still returned again and again to my Prisoners. I imagined the Boss reading my envelopes. Did I hope he would appreciate the metaphors? Maybe a little. An author values readers. What if he was moved by the story and wanted to release it to the world? The absurdity of such an assumption was obvious even to me and even in SHIZO, which was an absolutely surreal place, and yet I thought about it regularly.

But prison reality is an ironic mistress. The days dragged on one after another and, after returning from SHIZO to the PKT, it became clear to me: the manuscript was in no hurry to get to my father, or back to me. It was suspended in a world-in-between; simultaneously it existed and it did not.

After some time, I decided to ask the Major Boss a direct question. I inquired whether it was possible for them to return the manuscript to me, because I needed to finish writing, and I had something to add to the plot...

He looked at me with irony, as if I had asked not for a stack of my own notes, but rather for the keys to my cell, and slowly he turned his gaze to my chest. There, on my uniform, a yellow tag was hanging; it was my personal passport to the world of "extremists":

“Is the end of your term indicated on your badge?" he asked, poking the plastic with a finger. “What year do you have listed there?”

“Twenty-thirty,” I answered gloomily.

“Well, in the year twenty-thirty, you’ll get your manuscript back.”

“Will I get it for sure?”

“You’ll definitely get it...if you get released and do not get extra years to serve.”

Despite the peculiarities of the wording, it sounded encouraging. At least I had received a projected return date, even if it wasn't very close. Of course, I still tried to explain that I needed to make corrections, that the book wasn't finished, but the conversation was doomed to failure; bargaining was inappropriate.

But a writer is a stubborn creature and, as it turned out, a quick learner. The urge to write hadn't gone anywhere. I could no longer not write, and I entered into an endless partisan war for resources: searching for pens, scraps of notebooks, and any paper on which I could leave a mark. However, I tried not to repeat past mistakes. Actually, my attempts seemed hilarious, considering that everything happening in the cell was recorded on camera, and that all my drafts were visible during inspections… But I tried to take some precautions, in the hope that a miracle would happen and these precautions could help.

My new strategy included several elements.

Firstly, I kept no more stacks of 400 pages in plain sight. As soon as some volume of papers accumulated, it was moved from the cell to the bag storage room.

Secondly, the principle of dispersal also applied in the bag. Now drafts were hidden in one place, final pages in another, and all other materials in a third. If even two out of three were lost, it would be possible to reconstruct the work with the remaining one.

Thirdly, I generated a large volume of written documents. I predominantly continued to write letters to my relatives. That was my daily routine. Despite the fact that since February 2023 I had been in incommunicado mode (my letters did not go outside, no news from my family reached me, a lawyer was not allowed to see me), I wrote letters constantly (it was a good answer to the question "what are you writing here all the time?") and sometimes the letters described certain plot lines or discoveries from the works.

I believed that some of these measures had to work. In the PKT cell, I turned into a human archive, hiding treasures in any pockets I could devise. Writing became not just a need, but also an act of daily resistance: they could take the manuscript, but they couldn't take the thoughts from my head. I reasoned that the more I wrote, the more that would ultimately remain in my head.

Writing became not just a need, but also an act of daily resistance: they could take the manuscript, but they couldn't take the thoughts from my head.

Prologue as a Continuation of the Epilogue

In July 2025, through the prison telegraph, which works faster than any internet, the following news swept through: Sergey Tsikhanovsky, one of the people who annoyed the regime the most, had been released from jail and had departed Belarus. I made a logical error, which meant that I took this as a powerful signal that everything was about to change, the clouds would disperse, and, if I were not released tomorrow, at least I’d be allowed to receive letters from relatives or perhaps even moved to more humane conditions, ending my wanderings along the looped SHIZO-PKT route. Of course, this was a naïve assumption, but a human is a strange creature: we continue to hope as long as we breathe.

Reality surprised me once again. Instead of the long-awaited release or at least some relaxation of the strict treatment I experienced, I was given another disciplinary sanction and sent to SHIZO. After SHIZO, a new "resort season" in the PKT awaited me, and again I was sent there for the maximum of six months at once. But the real "cherry on top" was my last conversation about the fate of that very first manuscript.

I started with the usual line again: "Give me the manuscript. I need to finish it and I want to rewrite a couple of chapters...".

The Boss looked at me with some surprise: "Manuscript?", as if trying to recall what I was talking about.

I nodded, remembering that almost three years had passed, and I explained calmly that I was asking to be given back my novel, since they were keeping me in the PKT anyway, so that I could work on it.

That was when I was told directly and clearly, “Consider it the case that you have donated your novel to the Museum of the Operations Department.”

“Does that mean that it’s gone?" I asked, feeling something snap inside.

He didn't explain anything. He just closed his eyes affirmatively.

Everything became perfectly clear. The understanding (not theoretical, but real) that four hundred pages of my life, my dreams, and my labor no longer existed and would never return, was a truly hard blow.

Returning to the cell, I sat there and wondered what to do next. It was clear now that there would be three full years in the PKT mixed with SHIZO, and the regime that I experienced of total isolation—incommunicado mode—had never ended. There were no reasons for joy, and now there was also official confirmation: my novel was no more. I stared at the white wall, as if in the hope of seeing the erased lines there.

And then, sorting through the things brought back, I realized that I still had a pen and another notebook, obtained in a rather cunning way. I opened it, inhaled the smell of clean paper, and wrote on the first page: "Prologue. Tima."

I began to remember. Grid square by grid square, word by word, I began to reconstruct the contents of my novel. Funnily enough, it took 22 days again to write all the chapters. Apparently, it was impossible for me to do it any faster.

My writing continued, and this time I received confirmation: the words and ideas in my head are something not subject to confiscation, unless I myself give up and go crazy.

I was woken up on December 13, 2025, at 2:45 AM and told to pack my things. I was ready for such a turn of events—all the manuscripts already were packed in one bag, separated by things I didn't really need in freedom so as to avoid it looking suspicious. I thought I would be able to defend at least one of the three stacks: if not the final copies, then the drafts, or at least the letters. But the Bosses’ instructions were curt:

“No writings can be taken out. This is not up for discussion.”

Attempts at negotiation led to nothing. I wasn't allowed to take even old letters from relatives, which clearly bore the censor's stamps from as far back as 2021. Nothing with writing on it. No way. Those were the conditions, and they wouldn’t discuss them. They just notified me.

I stepped out of the PKT doors with a plastic bag containing only my underwear and toiletries. My other belongings were needed more by those who remained, and my manuscripts had been confiscated. The only object with words on it that I managed to carry out was a tube of toothpaste.

Behind many walls (and for a change I am looking at them not from the inside but from the outside) remain about 5000 pages covered in every grid square, 22 literary projects, 18 finished books: from social science fiction to legal research and a book about the triathlon. Most likely, they were turned into ash, or went to heaven only because someone forgot to explicitly state in my release order what should be done with the manuscripts. Although perhaps they were taken to some archive.

From a practical point of view, it doesn't matter much to me. And yet I want to believe that my books still exist, that they live. They say that people whose loved ones went missing in the war continue to peer into the faces of strangers on the street even decades later, still breathing and hoping, because that is exactly how we are created, to our great happiness.