The book of short prose by Mark Amusin, a literary critic, Doctor of philology, author of a book about the Strugatsky Brothers and hundreds of articles on modern and Western literature, is written with taste, passion and testifies to the talent and vivid imagination of the author. His characters go through Kafkaesque transformations, or fall into other parallel worlds, travel to the past, have amazing abilities, or go to their deaths for the sake of an idea, but ... and something always happens that amazes the reader. "What if..." – this question, this assumption gives rise to the most bizarre and at the same time recognizable plots.