A Refuge for the Ogre
Oleg Batygin: I think practically every member of the Russian-speaking artistic scene knew Nikita. Though I’ve met painters in Paris, too, who called themselves close friends of his… May it be well-fed, merry, and drunk for him, wherever he is now…
But let’s get back to our hypothesis. This last version of mine looks extremely conspy. It simply doesn’t work without “intelligent design.”
Imagine that there are people in the world who are very wealthy, influential, and, at the same time, quite intelligent. Intelligent enough to reach the same conclusions about the fragility threshold that I did.
These people are heavily committed. They run extensive businesses and have very little free time. What’s more, such people very often hold an extremely peculiar notion of morality. Time and again, a very big, very powerful boss resembles the ogre from a fairy tale.
And so it occurs to this ogre that it would be nice to have a special secret lair, far from civilization, in case of a global civilizational collapse. Building such a refuge takes an enormous amount of work. Handling it himself means having no time left for anything else. Handing the task to “specialists” means ending up with a product assembled from off-the-shelf solutions — fragile and soulless.
Either way, it will be hard to maintain real secrecy around the enterprise. Big ogres are always in the public eye. Any “specialist” brought in is a guaranteed information leak.
The way out is fairly obvious. You need to find a dreamer who will enthusiastically build such a refuge for himself. He should be a technically gifted person who thinks boldly. He needs to be confident he’s completely safe. Give this person land and enough money to build with. Then simply wait some number of years. When zero hour arrives, you can do to this man and his associates what the “LOST” character Ben Linus did to the staff of the Dharma Initiative.
Stas Rybkin: That’s a very frightening version.
Oleg Batygin: But unfortunately, quite realistic. This version explains our island’s “enchantment” very well. If our “Unknown Fucking Shit” is simply an ordinary, very powerful ogre, then he’ll be highly interested in having all of us live here as peacefully as possible — right up until the moment he decides to eat us.
Stas Rybkin: And you’re content to peacefully wait for that hour?
Oleg Batygin: On the one hand, it’s only a hypothesis. And if we all take it too much to heart, our life will very quickly stop being happy and carefree. Of course, I periodically come up with various mechanisms that could theoretically protect us. For obvious reasons, I can’t tell you about them.
Still, there are plenty of ways to quietly and quickly wipe out a colony like ours. You can’t plug every hole. A canister of sarin dropped from a helicopter, and the island is free…
I’d rather not end our conversation on such an unsettling note, of course…
So, as a bedtime thought, let me tell you there are a few details that don’t quite fit the ogre hypothesis. I’ll tell you about those details — and about the history of this settlement in general — tomorrow, during our tour of the grounds… But for now, I really must go. Good night, Stas!
Stas Rybkin: Good night, Oleg!