After 35 years of writing, the novel "The Rebel in the Bud" by the author Sebastian Salinger has been completed. It is a multidimensional trailer, drawn from the context of the ordinary life of an Earthling at 45 degrees latitude.
PROLOGUE:
The Ontology of Sorrow
I do not think, therefore I exist. I feel, therefore I am.
I am the artisan of my own anguish, An artist seeking to decipher the architecture of the soul. Are we here, at this precise coordinate of space and time, Merely because our answers are hollow? Is our fate tailored by a poverty of questions, Or by the overly silent emotion of the Genesis bestowed upon us?
The void is not an absence; it is a force. To be alive is to carry the gravity of that force within one’s chest. Thought—that current in the universal fluid, Energy in cosmic eternity, Flows from Genesis toward Absurdity, Like the uninterrupted fluid of duration.
Do not let your spirit slide down the slope of mere cognition, Into the confinement of earthly being, Into the trap of eternal questioning and the false sufficiency of possession. There, the threads of your Genesis snap. There, you become a stowaway in the tunnel of ignorance.
When the incandescent void tightens its grip, and your throat goes dry from a thirst for meaning: Love. Laugh. Grant yourself to others, not because you must, but because the soul demands it.
Expect nothing. Dream. Be your own rhapsody. For life is not a test; life is a cosmic symphony. Will you tread the path of tedium, Or will you, in boldness, give of yourself—often unreservedly?
The jubilant cry of your notes is the music of the Universe. You are the keeper of the rings of happiness, Earthly shame lies far beneath your orbit. When the imposed conscience vanishes, When the stigma heals, When vanity and the fear of dogma dissolve, Only your alchemy will remain: The meaning of life... Pure Emotion.
PART ONE: Genesis
Clash of Titans: The pride of an intellectual colossus versus the unadulterated curiosity of a child.
In eons before measurable time, a stellar soul occurred. A cosmic being, a consciousness that, in its pride, desired the unconsciousness of matter. With no clear beginning, bearing the divine and terrible burden of singularity, it dove deeper than the stagnant surface of existence. It became a part of duration, without the right to regret.
Sebastian, lulled by the siege of the everyday and the rings of boredom, received a signal. A thought, sharp as an energy beam, brought his hypersensitive senses into the resonance of a forgotten memory. The cosmic eye opened and focused on a small, blue-green planet. "This requires investigation," the thought vibrated through the ether. In the harmony of interaction, a decision was born: to descend into the density of matter, to the 45th degree of latitude, and investigate the origin of that strange energy.
The movement was instantaneous. The shifting landscapes of Earth—gorges, canyons, winding roads—became a labyrinth through which consciousness had to pass. Green and grey, life and stone, alternated like waves, announcing the proximity of the goal.
He perceived a house. It stood on the edge of a cliff, at the foot of a mountain, like an aberration in the natural order. Dilapidated, decaying, it defied the inevitable end in a silent battle with time. That house was not merely a structure; it was a monument to human persistence in the face of entropy. With a single leap of consciousness, he crossed the distance.
The porch creaked under the weight of a bodiless presence. The place exhaled abandonment. The stench of mildew and the touch of cold on the door were the first kisses of earthly reality. Sebastian stepped into a frozen moment, into a pocket of time torn from existence.
And then—sound. A murmur from the floor. Sobs mingled with laughter, shouts of exhilaration melting into screams of despair. It was a cacophony of human fates trapped in a sheaf of yellowed papers. Words sought a recipient. The whispers of centuries-old solitude exploded in Sebastian's mind. He did not wish to leave. That sickly, musty air was opium for the cosmic traveler. It was the scent of the past, the aroma of unrepeatability.
There, in the silence before the door of realization, Sebastian met Dorian. Not the one from the novel, but his double in the mirror of time. The harmony of thought and word opened a temporal tunnel. He ventured far, beyond the border of memory...
Echo of Memory
It was once beautiful to watch you walk with your dormant step,
And dream my dreams, already faded, yet still alive.
They still desire your unexplored soul,
Which daydreams within me and refuses to admit:
The name of its destiny is my name.
Now you find comfort in that dream,
Where you listen to the echo of touches that never happened,
Of lips that, in a final spasm, wanted to say something,
Something to atone for centuries of solitude.
But they were halted.
Condemned to eternally offer a smile without happiness,
Weeping without tears,
Love without warmth.
Because they had to ask:
SORROW, why do you bear his name?
Engaging heavy, earthly senses, Sebastian pressed on. He felt the weight of his own existence. Before him opened a novel—not a biography, but an autopsy of a soul searching for unlived moments. A dance of lawfulness and spontaneity. Half a century of life: too much like Don Quixote in the battle against windmills, too little like Don Juan in the seduction of the moment.
Learn to lose, realization whispered to him. Only then will victory come to you of its own accord. Let disappointment be part of your relationship with the world, but never part of your view of the world.
Sebastian knelt over the cradle of his duration, before the mirror in the room of existence, and continued to read the record of his own genesis.
