Chapter 19
The alarm clock's ringing awakened Konstantin. He had fallen asleep sitting in his chair before his computer. "I shall have to find some way to rest from work," Kostya concluded, but immediately dismissed this thought, realizing it was impossible. Konstantin washed his face. He approached the mirror. "No need even to dress," he thought optimistically, seeing his reflection in the glass. Kostya was wearing an expensive classical suit, still from yesterday evening. "Perhaps I shall only change my tie," he decided, then proceeded to the kitchen of his two-room apartment and drew open the window curtain. Before his gaze unfolded the view from the fifth floor. Kostya—and henceforth he was Magister of the SRHS, Konstantin Augustinovich—could have purchased an apartment on any floor, but he had always wished to dwell at a height. Konstantin sat down to drink his coffee, glancing at the clock all the while.
More than half a year had passed since the first meeting of the SRHS members, after which events began spinning at a tremendous velocity. At first Konstantin took out a loan. All his life he had avoided this burden, but this time the risk, as he felt, was worth taking. He published his first two books. In the beginning, truth be told, this brought little money, though no one had counted on that.
The greatest difficulties arose with the official registration of the society. But after Konstantin, wearing down the thresholds of government institutions, achieved through the registry the registration of the Society of Representatives of Healthy Skepticism, everything began moving faster. Out of nowhere appeared investors wishing to finance the society. Financial support was also provided by Nikita Pirozhkov. To him Konstantin also entrusted responsibilities for printing matters. A quality printing house was found, capable of producing the society's monthly journal, the established forms for internal reports, licenses, certificates, books, and scholarly works by SRHS members.
Henry Fromm had certain connections at the university who knew where to find competent people in various branches of science. As it turned out, finding such people was not particularly difficult. Some of them were already teaching at prestigious universities and colleges; others were gifted solitaries.
Their first meeting took place in a small office that Kostya had rented. To this meeting gathered people with knowledge in diverse scientific fields. Subsequently, these first members came to head departments corresponding to their specializations. Together with Kostya, Henry, and Nikita, there were fourteen persons.
A first meeting, like a first impression, always remains in memory. I think it worthwhile to provide a brief description of all those present at the historic moment of the society's actual founding.
Andrey Avdoshin—an expert in historical sciences, tall, dark-haired, an ardent seeker of new historical facts. Young, yet he had already defended his candidate's dissertation. Katerina Rubleva—a very young and talented specialist in medical sciences, of short stature, a brunette with a bob haircut, fragile on the outside but fearless within. Nikolai Fadyushin—a geographer, close-cropped, stocky, not tall, eternally optimistic in disposition. Seryozha Krainov—a doctor of geological and mineralogical sciences, of athletic build, calm but with misanthropic inclinations. He preferred nature to technological progress. Nina Shpagina—a luminary of biological sciences, fair-haired, somewhat taller than Katerina; she wore spectacles that lent her an air of seriousness and severity. Like Seryozha, she gave greater preference to nature. Roman Mavrodiy—a psychologist, a perceptive man with kind eyes, full of various stories and parables. An unforced conversation with him would reveal to him all the cards of his interlocutor. Anton Pavlish—a candidate of engineering and technical sciences, strict suit, restless gaze. A man whose perpetual haste did not prevent him from performing his work with quality and originality. Maxim Newton—a student, a self-taught genius of physical sciences, a very young physicist of natural talent whose passion, by irony of fate, coincided with his famous surname. He knew physics no worse than Isaac Newton himself. Evgeny Gatin—another genius, a doctor of mathematical sciences, precise, everything strictly according to formulas. Nothing superfluous in his attire; together with Newton he was distinguished by certain eccentricities. Vitaly Chadaev—a doctor of chemical sciences, thin, tall, witty, pedantic, knowing a multitude of anecdotes and unconventional approaches to solving various problems. Alexander Rogatyuk—a specialist in computer sciences, wearing spectacles, tall, of athletic build. He had excellent command of programming languages and 3D graphics modeling. Before all this he had been a friend of Nikita Pirozhkov, and it was precisely at his request that he became one of the society's members.
As has already been said, all these specialists became heads of departments in their respective sciences. The head of the department of philosophical sciences became the Magister himself, Konstantin Gusev Augustinovich.
In the small office all the aforementioned talented people found places. When Konstantin entered, he immediately heard many scientific terms with which these people were showering one another simply in conversation. Newton was speaking with Gatin about Kepler's laws of planetary motion, then the conversation passed to the three-body problem. Mavrodiy was conversing with Rubleva, employing such phrases as "aggressively-passive reversion." In general, from all sides could be heard such terms as experiment, verification, falsification, dissonance, annihilation, anticipation, induce, agnosticism, legitimacy, a priori, aporia, syllogism, irrationality, metaphysics, sublimation, contradictoriness, and many other scientific concepts.
Konstantin, listening with fascination, did not wish to interrupt this music of human reason, but then he requested a moment of attention. He greeted all those gathered. Without a lengthy introductory speech, he took the statute of the "Society of Representatives of Healthy Skepticism" and began to read it aloud. This statute had been edited and supplemented several times, but its essence remained the same. After he had read it through to the end, all those gathered affixed their signatures to the statute and recognized Konstantin as the founder—the Magister of the SRHS.
Now the society had grown to unforeseen proportions. Each of the department heads had no fewer than five assistants, specializing in particular subjects within the scientific branch of their department. Not to mention that several new departments had been added. Moreover, they soon required an administrative apparatus, including a lawyer, an economist, and several accountants. The actual profit far exceeded the expected income.
Now almost no scientific discovery could be considered scientific without the corresponding SRHS document, the "Certificate of Conformity of Theory (Discovery) to Official Science." To obtain government financing for any experiment had become impossible without this Certificate.
All universities, scientific workers, the state, and other scientific societies collaborated with the SRHS, in many of which Konstantin was an honorary member. Konstantin's books had become very popular. University philosophers, despite the fact that in Konstantin's second book much was written against their own university method of instruction, recommended it to their students as a manual for self-study. Sometimes he was asked to deliver this or that lecture at the University. In short, he had become a rather well-known and influential figure in the scientific world.
But all this was, as it were, supplementary to the main task of the SRHS—the enlightenment of the people. Like popularizers of science, they adopted as their motto the slogan: "Science to the masses." To this end, numerous books and articles were printed by each of the department heads. In these books, the SRHS members attempted to convey all complex theories in a manner comprehensible to an ordinary citizen.
They also took a skeptical attitude toward mysticism and separated pseudo-scientific theories from genuine ones. Each month their journal came out with news from various branches of science, the results of the society's investigations, and counter-proofs to certain pseudo-scientific theories. For example, in the very first issue of this journal, the illegitimacy and falsity of such hypotheses as torsion fields, "antigravity," the "wave genome," and bioenergoinformatics were demonstrated. The head of historical sciences, Andrey, demolished several pseudo-historical theories, while Katerina criticized the methods of alternative medicine.
Despite its lofty position, the society remained close to the people. The SRHS received a multitude of calls with requests to investigate this or that mystical phenomenon that frightened people. To the extent of its abilities, the SRHS attempted to conduct investigations. Most often the department heads—they who were also the backbone of the entire society and whom, within the society, they also called the illuminati—found a rational scientific explanation for this or that phenomenon.
Many parents wished to have tutors for their children from among the representatives of the SRHS. Since everyone was very busy, at a regular meeting of the society it was proposed to open a private school that would operate on weekends. For many SRHS members, teaching work was indeed a rest compared to investigations, weekly and monthly reports, and the eternal, immoderate mental labor.
It was precisely now that our Magister Konstantin was preparing to leave for his lecture on logic. Yesterday he had stayed up late reviewing the prepared new issue of the monthly journal, and had fallen asleep over it. The Magister finished his coffee, put on his long overcoat, and went out, locking the door behind him with his key.