The Nine-Edged Mirror, Part VII: A Glitch in the Matrix

The Molecule of Eternity: A Living Adaptation

A serialised philosophical narrative.

Selected parts of the novel, made available ahead of the full English edition in the form of essays.

Each piece is an encounter. Each encounter—a ripple of memory, character, or myth.

Translated directly from the author’s desk. This is a living text—sincere and still evolving.

The Nine-Edged Mirror, Part VII: A Glitch in the Matrix

At the seventh edge of The Nine-Edged Mirror, the narrative immerses itself in the unraveling domesticity of Maxim Podolsky, whose daily life, bereft of Margarita Smolina’s acerbic presence, devolves into a carnival of absurdities and metaphysical disquiet. The once-mundane flat becomes a sentient antagonist: kitchens erupt in manic activity, serpents hiss from book spines, and spectral silhouettes parade through the walls, all meticulously chronicled in Podolsky’s wry compendium of universal follies.

As Podolsky spirals into feverish inertia, his schnauzer Tak-Tak emerges as a garrulous companion—part canine familiar, part ancient entity echoing primordial depths—urging a reconciliation, his exhortations laced with mysterious undertones. Parallel to this, Margarita navigates her own liminal state, entertaining the attentions of the steadfast entrepreneur Oleg Makhovoy, only for dreadful omens—a frenzied rook, cascading misfortunes—to thwart their tentative alliance, suggesting the interference of an unseen rival’s hand.

Infused with gothic whimsy and folkloric vestiges—from Romanian tales of nocturnal bridegrooms to Slavic dualities of order and chaos—the essay probes the fractures in perception, the corrosive force of unspoken affections, and the hypercosmic ‘glitches’ that rapture causality itself. It advances The Molecule of Eternity into ever more dreamlike realms, where ontological solitude confronts mythic inevitability, and the boundaries of the self dissolve amid the architecture of an encroaching otherworld.