Sometimes it seemed to me that I was missing something very important from life. Something that it seemed everyone else knew and was hiding from me, to laugh at me behind my back.from Prelude
The contradiction was the wall that marked the end of the corridorfrom The phenomenon
The systems of power are only holding your material self, divorce from it and you are free.from The dinner
To assimilate what we see, we liken it to what is most familiar to us. And those are probably the two things we humans know best — water and light.from Curious
My world was not a world of DARKNESS but one of FOG.from Infinite loop
I felt as if even the impressions of those two people that I had in my mind were so incompatible that their simultaneous existence caused me fatigue.from The offer
I felt as if even the impressions of those two people that I had in my mind were so incompatible that their simultaneous existence caused me fatigue.from No answer
Prelude About me
The phenomenon On offices / On social Darwinism / How I didn't do any work today / The phenomenon / Locked in my brain
The dinner Arriving to dinner / Trying to discuss the phenomenon with parents / THE CONVERSATION / Remembering the phenomenon
Curious Anton's story / A party at Anton's house / Anton's take on the phenomenon
Infinite loop On Anton's laziness / The main plot / the phenomenon returns
The offer On being too strange to be able to work / Promoted at work / Anton's discovery / On using the machine / Anton and Anhela
No answer Work as a parallel reality / Mirko's case / Realizing I crave attention / Meeting my team
The Knapsack problem can be described in the following way: you have a backpack with a given volume and a bunch of objects that you want to put there, each with a different volume.from The knapsack problem
We leave the room and walk down a big corridor that resembles the one from my school where the classrooms are.from Hallway
It was a boy called Peter who evidently felt as out of place as I did.from X
"I hate this place," Alex said.from Good company
Anna went immediately to Alex without ever paying attention to her friend, a gesture that felt theatrical and familiar.from Fence
After walking through the woods for a couple of minutes I stopped seeing the facility and totally lost sense of where I was.from Outside
While we were walking back to the facility, Alex and Catherine asked if I was OK to sleep sometimes in Anna and Catherine's room.from What are we in for
I felt bad when I saw Anna's reaction, as I understood why she felt betrayed — she had opened to me with some of her most intimate secrets and I had given her nothing in return.
Didn't *you* want to kill yourself at some point? And if yes, than what made you hesitant to do it? Your strong will to live? Or just simple fear?from Back to the facility
...and criticizing someone for being immature is the worst type of criticism there is, as with it you are basically saying that they are not as huge of a critic as you (or that they have too much desire for happiness perhaps?)from The sleepover
...no matter what choice did I make, would always be unsure about it, and I would always be looking forward to an opportunity to change it even for a second, not so much because I regretted the choice itself, but because I disliked *the fact that I have to make it*, the fact that I could only be at one place at one time, to be one person, leading one and only one life.from The sleepover contd
Or perhaps both of us were lucky, because we were not numb for this weird sensation, and because we can probably perceive countless other similar phenomena that don't exist for other people. But then again, perhaps we were crazy for having minds that stop and start whenever they want and often drift in unwanted directions, beautiful but useless, like most of the thoughts that they produced.from Us and them
Perhaps the distinction between the vanilla and the perverse was just an invention of the established. Perhaps it was there just to enable some people to obscure the choices that they are making and to make it seem like they are making no choice at all, that they did what they did just because that's the way it is done in principle.from Sex
If Alex, was in a similar situation, he would drive directly to her town as, unlike me, he was pursuing a clear and obtainable goal, which is a prerequisite for achieving something, but also a way to *limit* what you can achieve.from Cigarettes
The knapsack problem How to write a book / P and NP / leaving home
Meeting my roommate Alex / Picking friends / Who am I / How switching places would solve both of our issues
Hallway Church and Turing / Being stupid
X Nerd stereotypes / How I got my nickname / Establishing connection with my younger self
Good company Social code / Anna / Catherine
Fence Outside / Not being punished / Discreet and continuous models
Outside This or nothing / The moon / Fractals / Me and Alex / Explanations / Is the world mathematical
What are we in for Anna's kinky alter ego / Marijuana
What are we in for contd The conformist choice / Taboos / Dichotomies /Marijuana
Back to the facility Anna and Cathy / Trying to be like other people / Sleeping with Anna
The sleepover Anna's childish behavior / Critics / Boring robots / Adoring Anna
The sleepover contd Irony / Heroes and deserters / Retreat to where? / Real and ideal / Choices
Us and them The uncut book pages / Envy
Sex Anna's fantasy / What makes us weird / The establishment and being normal
Cigarettes Alex's good night sleep / About me and Alex again / Sex and love / The proof that P does not equal NP