And sometimes it becomes clear to me that my imprisonment is no space voyage at all. I didn’t end up in outer space, but at some point of spatial anomaly. You arrive here in the town of Pokrov, in Vladimir Region, and somehow find yourself either in the Amazon or in Eastern Siberia. Mosquitoes. Please understand me correctly. I grew up in closed military towns. Those are always in the woods. I am very, very familiar with mosquitoes. But I had never seen anything like this. The first time I was shocked was last year, when in March I was looking out the barracks window at the snowdrifts outside and noticed mosquitoes sitting on the OUTSIDE of the glass. Big ones, too. “They must have frozen to it,” I thought. And, as if picking up on my thoughts, one of the mosquitoes twitched its legs and, it seemed to me, said with a grin: “Just wait — you’ll be the one freezing to things soon enough.” Yeah, they hadn’t frozen. These vicious, hellish, insatiable, fearless mosquitoes show up here in late March. And they disappear in late November. Really. You’re standing outside for roll call in late autumn: your nose and ears are frozen, your breath is steaming in the air. And you’re looking at the back of the head of the convict standing in front of you, with about 10 mosquitoes sitting on it. And sleeping with these mosquitoes around is just wonderful. By five in the morning, you’re in a savage state. By the way, the strategy of “I’ll throw off the blanket and let them drink as much blood as they want, and once they’re full, I’ll get some sleep” does not work. Tested. At least those smoldering mosquito coils help a little. They say that if you look at my penal colony from above, you can see a huge swamp around it. That’s supposed to explain the mosquitoes. But I refuse to believe that creatures like this can exist in central Russia. This is definitely some anomaly with a teleport to the Amazon or Eastern Siberia. I have no doubt that the swamp is also home to piranhas and oil workers.