A week had passed since Alexey Petrovich's meeting with the mysterious man in the park. Yet even now, whenever he closed his eyes, he could still see Gabrillend's face and that mesmerizing gaze. He had begun to regret not asking the questions that were now multiplying in his mind. At the very least, he should have asked when and where exactly their message would be transmitted. On which TV channel? On what website? And how soon—in a week, or a month?
Meanwhile, the situation with his grandson, Anton, was becoming increasingly grim. His daughter-in-law, Tatyana—Anton's mother—had also been summoned to the prosecutor's office and interrogated. All visitation rights with Anton were canceled. The authorities told her bluntly that her son was accused of severe crimes against the state. Because Anton had already turned eighteen, he was facing a staggering prison term.
That evening, Alexey Petrovich was sitting at his computer, scanning the internet for news. His wife, Elena, called out to him from the next room, where she was watching a movie on television.
"Alex—come here. Quick! There's an important message coming on," she said.
He entered the room and saw bold white letters emblazoned across a stark black screen: Attention citizens... an important announcement will follow shortly.
"The movie was suddenly interrupted, and then this script just appeared," his wife said, her voice laced with unease.
It was exactly 9:00 PM—the hour of the country's main state news broadcast. Alexey Petrovich grabbed the remote and switched to Channel One. The exact same warning was there. He flipped through the other channels; every single network displayed the same message.
Perhaps this is an official decree from the authorities, he thought, bracing himself for another harsh government restriction.
Suddenly, the screen flickered, and the face of a man appeared. He had long, raven-black hair, a mustache and beard of the exact same dark hue, and wore large, light-absorbing dark glasses.
"Greetings, citizens of this country," the man said. His voice was flat, perfectly modulated, completely detached from human emotion, yet it carried an absolute, undeniable authority, projecting into the room with an unnatural clarity. "I represent the League of Fighters for Justice. These are challenging times for human souls. People become free only when they truly desire it. You impose all restrictions upon yourselves. Yet even a few caring individuals can transform the world. You need change! It is vital to reform your government and your politicians, for they feel no obligation to serve ordinary citizens. They think only of themselves. You must continue to fight and stand up for your rights until you see that change—until these people abdicate, and you are granted a chance at a better life."
The speaker leaned slightly closer to the lens. "We wish to offer a mechanism by which you can remove the authoritarian rulers of this nation. For as long as you keep waiting, hoping and praying that someone else will come and do the work you must do yourselves, nothing will alter for the better. Street protests and demonstrations are easily crushed by the ruling regime. Bloody uprisings and revolutions cost the lives of countless innocent civilians. Unlike those blunt instruments, only the primary culprit of your suffering—the authoritarian ruler who seized power—will fall victim to this method."
The screen seemed to throb with a faint, low-frequency hum as he continued. "If a significant number of citizens dissatisfied with the ruling power and wish to overthrow the ruler, they can do so without ever leaving their homes. To execute this, you must take a photograph of him and incinerate it at a predetermined time, holding that specific intent in your mind. The essential parameter is that you must act simultaneously and with absolute purpose."
"Thoughts are energy! Every single thought is like a fragile drop of water. But when those drops are united, flowing in the same direction, acting in perfect synchronization, they become a powerful torrent capable of demolishing anything in its path! The more drops of thought in this current, the more stronger and unstoppable it becomes. If your collective desire is intense enough, you will manifest exactly what you think about. It is times for change! An idea whose time has come possesses a tremendous, absolute power. Synchronize your intent. Restore the universal equilibrium!"
The speaker's tone shifted, growing colder, carrying the weight of an ultimatum. "State authority in the hands of authoritarian rulers has become a security threat—not just to this country, but to the entire world. Their incorrect decisions lead to a violation of the global equilibrium. And their erratic actions could lead to the annihilation of human civilization itself. However, they are granted a single window to avoid a sorrowful fate: Resign from all posts and return your illegally obtained wealth to the nation and its people. We grant the ruler ten days to deliberate. If there is no resignation, you will burn his photograph at exactly twelve o'clock midnight."
"And now, I address the leadership of this country directly," the man said, staring into the camera. "Step down and leave all your posts. Allow free, democratic elections to take place. Your time is up."
Then, the man leaned intimately close to the lens, reached up with his left hand, and removed his dark glasses.
"YOUR TIME IS UP!" he repeated.
Although Alexey Petrovich had begun to suspect the truth moments earlier, seeing the speaker's exposed eyes solidified his certainty.
"It's him. This is the exact same person I encountered in the park. Except back then, he was bald and didn't have a beard," he told his wife. His right hand grew suddenly warm, the blue glow beneath his skin pulsed slowly.
The television screen could not fully replicate the physical sensation he had experienced that evening on the bench, but those unusually large, supernatural eyes were unmistakable. They fascinated and hypnotized, making it feel as though time had ground to a momentary halt. His eyebrows and eyelashes were so faint they were barely visible, which only amplified the terrifying, piercing impact of his gaze.
Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the image on the screen glitched, and the interrupted movie resumed playing. It was as if nothing had happened at all.
"What a bizarre announcement," his wife muttered, shaking her head to break the spell. "They are openly calling to overthrow the government on state television... and in such a peculiar, cruel way. And that look of his—it gave me chills. He speaks with an accent; he's undoubtedly a foreigner."
"I suppose they managed to infiltrate the secure computer networks that control the television broadcasting channels," Alexey Petrovich said thoughtfully, turning off the TV. "And I like their proposal—you don't even have to leave the house."
"Our authorities themselves are to blame—how many years they have been ruling, but there is no sense in it," Alexey continued, pacing the living room floor. "They squeezed the people in a vise with their stupid laws. Nothing can be said against them. The elections are fake, and salaries and pensions are pitifully small. They built palaces for themselves and fill their pockets at the expense of the state. They criticize Western countries, yet their own children and relatives live quite comfortably over there. The law simply doesn't apply to them. Meanwhile, ordinary people in this country can no longer openly say what they think. Do you remember how, after the accident with our son, that scoundrel who crashed into him turned out to be the brother of some high-ranking official? He didn't receive a shred of punishment and came out completely unscathed."
Alexey fell silent, went to the window, pulled back the heavy curtains, and looked out into the gloomy gray street.
Three floors down, the rain-slicked avenue was a scene of blossoming chaos. Car doors were swinging open. Drivers had abandoned their vehicles right in the middle of the lanes, oblivious to the downpour. They stood on the asphalt, staring blankly at their smartphones, their faces illuminated by the pale blue light of their screens.
From the apartment building across the narrow alley, windows were slamming open. Neighbors who hadn't spoken a word to each other in years out of sheer political paranoia were leaning out into the rain, shouting across the brick void.
"Did you see it?" a man's voice yelled from the fourth floor. "It was on every channel! Even the radio!"
"It's a hoax! A foreign cyberattack!" an older woman screamed back from below. "The police will arrest everyone tracking it!"
But the police were currently occupied. Down at the intersection, a heavy, armored police van—the very kind that had carted Anton away a month ago—had ground to a halt. The two officers inside had scrambled out into the street. Instead of drawing their batons or demanding the citizens disperse, they were frantically kicking the side of their own vehicle. A thick cloud of acrid, white smoke was billowing from the engine block, and the electronic sirens were letting out a pathetic, dying whine before dying entirely.
Suddenly, a loud, collective gasp echoed down the street. Everyone—the drivers, the shouting neighbors, even the panicked police officers—looked up at the sky.
High above the city square, the massive, state-owned digital billboard that usually blasted twenty-four-hour propaganda videos of the president had gone stark white. The black, mathematically perfect text began to scroll across the giant screen, visible for miles:
YOUR TIME IS UP.
The city, held in a chokehold of fear for decades, was suddenly breathing. The carefully constructed illusion of the state's absolute power was fracturing in real-time, replaced by a tense, electric uncertainty.
Elena walked up behind Alexey, resting a trembling hand on his shoulder. "Alexey, look at the streets. If the government loses control... if the security systems are failing..." She looked at him, her eyes bright with a sudden, desperate realization. "What about the prisons? What about Anton?"
"Maybe nothing will come of it. Our people are somewhat lethargic, even dull. Any desire to resist has been beaten out of them by repressive laws. Those who actively opposed the government have either moved abroad or ended up in prison. Let's see what happens next. I'll go check the news on the internet," Alexey Petrovich said.
Discussion of this unprecedented event on the internet was already in full swing. Indeed, an appeal demanding the resignation of the country's leadership had appeared simultaneously on all state channels, and no one could turn it off. Rumor had it that the authorities were only able to interrupt the transmission on two occasions, and even then, only by completely cutting the power switches to the television studios.
Websites instantly began popping up across the internet featuring photographs of all the nation's top leaders, available for downloading and printing. However, their faces could also be easily sourced from standard newspapers and magazines.
Before long, an official government announcement followed: the nightly broadcast was declared an extremist stunt by a malicious terrorist community. Citizens were harshly reminded of the criminal penalties for any insult to state symbols or the leaders of the country.
Alexey Petrovich had heard and read before about the mystical relationship between a person and their image, but now he decided to purposefully search the internet for more detailed information. After sitting at his computer for several hours, he compiled a brief summary of the facts he had gathered:
All living beings and people are not merely material shells. There is something in them other than matter, and therefore they are able to perceive what lies beyond the boundaries of the physical world.
People have known and used magic since time immemorial. All magical rituals are based on supernatural, immaterial forces that are not yet recognized by official science. Magical and paranormal phenomena share a lot in common, as they utilize factors that cannot be explained rationally.
A person possesses an invisible connection with their image—a photograph is an energy-information double. Portraits of people hold a special, inexplicable mystical power capable of influencing fate. Even in ancient times, folk believed a human shared magical bonds with their image; sorcerers and witches inflicted severe harm on an individual by manipulating their picture.
When photographs appeared in the middle of the 19th century, those with specialized knowledge gained a much more precise opportunity to influence an individual from a distance. Already in our time, bioenergetic studies have proven that photographs capture a person's living energy field, not just their physical appearance. Psychics and sorcerers use a picture as the main attribute in magical rituals and curses. They can determine whether a person is alive or dead, diagnose their illnesses, and extract a wealth of other information. Since a photograph is mystically connected to the person it depicts, burning or damaging the picture brutally disrupts their energy field and can cause severe, irreversible harm.
Alexey Petrovich closed his browser tabs and looked down at his fingers, which were still faintly tingling with the warmth left by Gabrillend.
Maybe something will still work out after all, he thought, feeling a faint spark of hope begin to reignite in his chest.
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The ultimate geopolitical nightmare has just begun.
A corrupt government. A stolen bioweapon. And a mysterious supernatural force that causes dictators to spontaneously combust inside their fortified palaces.
When the regime fractures into absolute chaos, the throne becomes a death sentence. No one wants the crown. No one wants to be next.
Alexey Petrovich lost his son to the corruption of the ruling oligarchy. Now, his teenage grandson has been falsely accused of terrorism and thrown into a brutal black site. With nothing left to lose, Alexey encounters a mysterious stranger who unlocks a terrifying power.
Discover -- "Who wants to be President? - The Universal Equilibrium Protocol." — a fast-paced, ideas-driven uncompromising dystopian thriller about the hidden power of human thought and the price of absolute corruption, about resistance, the dangerous secrets of classified bioweapons, and a revolution sparked by a single photograph.
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"A breathtaking re-imagining of the power of human thought and collective consciousness. The author masterfully binds quantum physics, bioelectromagnetism, and ancient elemental philosophy into a single, gripping speculative concept. The idea of a 'virtual rebellion' sparked by burning photographs is pure genius."
— Sci-Fi Book Blog
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"A deep, dark, yet profoundly inspiring story about the ultimate triumph of human solidarity over totalitarian dread. This book beautifully reminds us that we are luminous beings woven of light, not just crude matter. The climax delivers genuine chills and a deep sense of poetic justice."
— Book Review
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"Who wants to be President? - The Universal Equilibrium Protocol." is an incredibly tense, fast-paced masterpiece that keeps you guessing until the final page. A high-stakes dystopian thriller in the vein of 1984, crossed with the reality-bending concepts of Christopher Nolan. An absolute must-read for anyone who appreciates intelligent and unpredictable suspense."
— Goodreads Reviewer