Serial · complete
Beneficiaries of Batygin
Batygin's Beneficiaries is a novella-travelogue. A group of video bloggers investigates the long-ago disappearance of a legendary programmer and blogger, Oleg Batygin. Oleg now lives on a secluded paradise island amid very strange surroundings. He's taken with some far-from-trivial ideas and is busy building a small but exceedingly cozy and happy society. Oleg tells his friends how he came by his island and his fortune, while sharing his thoughts on the present state and the near future of our civilization. Oleg's story is not merely the story of a brilliant engineer, entrepreneur, and recluse. It's a story with a distinct mystical aftertaste. The strange "systems-engineering miracle" at whose center Oleg and his wife, Delphine, found themselves seems to have been born far beyond the bounds within which rational thought is accustomed to feeling comfortable. This is a novella about the role of chaos in our lives, about the fragility of a "rational worldview." The author wanted the reader to notice that mystical haze which even today goes on swirling at the very edge of the knowledge accessible to the rational mind. Batygin's Beneficiaries is not "mystical literature." It is a text "on the verge of the mystical." It is a novella about the inexplicable that is always present in our lives.
The Shining World
Good afternoon! I'm Stas Rybkin, and I'm delighted to welcome you to the channel "The Shining World." Our motto is "To the ends of the earth…
The Lagoon and the Beach
Our little boat has already entered the lagoon. See what a long, wild beach this is? On the sand to the right lies a single boat. Blue, long…
The First Native
They've come for us. Our guide is a very tall, muscular black guy. Bare-chested. In striped shorts. Right now you can see his mighty back up…
In the Settlement
We really have ended up on some kind of landlocked, immobile Nautilus. Everything here is seriously cool. The living space here is laid out…
Blue Banana & Cura Annonae
Oleg Batygin: This happened more than eight years ago. Back then I was working for a powerful Korean company. I'd been put in charge of deve…
The Threshold of Fragility
Certain architectures are, quite literally, doomed to collapse. And the tendency to collapse is usually displayed precisely by the most dyna…
Chips for Sacks
Let us take a closer look at several conditions and behaviors that hasten the approach of the "threshold of fragility." The first thing to n…
Integration and Death
There is one parameter by which I judge how far the business space has managed to decay at any given moment. It is the percentage of profit…
Déclaration de récolte
The tendency toward the centralization of each and every thing takes the most varied forms and accretes numerous rationalizations and public…
The Fragile Sphere
At some point I felt the urge to model everything described above in software. Back in those days I worked mostly in Scala. But writing code…
The Hunter
I launched my model again and again, and again and again the surface collapsed too fast. I tweaked the coefficients every which way. I even…
The Call
In those days I usually worked from home, showing up at the office with reports once a week, on Thursdays. All the stranger, then, was the i…
The Hand
They drew up the papers the same day. It was the first contract in my life that I read all the way through. Including the finest print. Cred…
What Was That?
Stas Rybkin: I have a multitude of questions. And the first question I'd like to ask: "What was that?" I understand that you don't have an u…
Poets and Managers
Oleg Batygin: In the early days, when I'd only just begun thinking about all this, I overestimated — or so it seems to me now — the signific…
Angelic Synergy
Oleg Batygin: That's not surprising at all. Successful managers don't walk the streets you and I walk. But I got lucky. It so happened that…
A Scrotum for Eggheads
This hypothesis can either serve as a continuation of the previous one or stand entirely on its own. It all depends on whether we assume "in…
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, w…
Island Life
Stas Rybkin: It's eight in the morning on my watch. We've gathered at the bar where we talked yesterday, about to set off on a tour of the s…
The Beach, the Kibbutz and the Metaverse
Stas Rybkin: We have come out onto a very long and virgin sandy beach. A pier of massive tarred logs runs out into the sea. Beside it we can…
Deity in Youth
Stas Rybkin: The grotto is at the far end of that same beach. Here, by the entrance to the cave, it is wonderful, so I decided after all to…
Olokun's Son-in-Law
Del and I spent the next couple of months here on the island — exceptionally happy and serene ones. I did practically no work at that time.…
Robinzon Party
Stas Rybkin: It is four o'clock in the afternoon, and we are standing on the balcony, directly above that bar-sitting room in which we talke…
The Bonfire
Stas Rybkin: We are downstairs. Just outside the open sitting room an extensive dance floor has been laid out. At its far end, against the b…
Tears in the Night
Stas Rybkin: It is already very late. About one in the morning. Oleg Batygin and I went for a walk through the night forest. We watched the…
A Quiet Place
Stas Rybkin: So the time has come for us to leave the hospitable Island. It is utterly, inexpressibly sad. To be honest, I have never before…
Epilogue
This is where the last travel video of "The Shining World" channel breaks off. More than five years have passed since that video was posted.…