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ambition to enter. I had no faith in them, quite justifiably. But here, for some reason, I took the invitation as a good sign. I did not need fame, but I decided that what I had done would come to life there, on a large scale.
    I remember how carefully I prepared, working on the abstract, making the slides. This was a new experience: I had never presented before at that level. I was looking forward to the discussions, the battles of opinion, and the intellectual tempest. But it turned out differently: they simply expelled me. They struck me such a blow that it was almost fatal.
    Summer came, an unusually hot one for Europe. The megalopolis where the event was held was choking in the blistering heat. It was choking on smoke too – the surrounding forests were ablaze, the peat bogs smoldered; the smog was dense and viscous. But I was not disturbed – either by the heat or the filthy air.
    Right from the airport I rushed to the conference hall; my lecture was one of the first. I remember my impatience, then the slight shiver when the chairman announced my name. I started from the very beginning – described synapses and neurons, and the family of entangled quanta – but soon, to my surprise, I heard the hall buzzing with a hum of displeasure. I thought then that my slides were not detailed enough. On the board, I began to draw the superposition of quasi-particles, the vectors of their states, and the directions of their spins. The din changed to hostile silence, the calm before a storm or an explosion. When I wrote out the Schrödinger equation – just to explain the concept – they looked at me as if I had made an obscene gesture. And when I started to talk about the complex numbers and even sketched the Argand diagram, the dignitaries could hold back no longer and became unhinged. They lashed out like a pack of animals, having recognized in me a serious threat.
    The close-knit group of trendsetters bore a striking resemblance to the Specialists from Basel. Most likely, I thought then, they would take vengeance on me for good – for the dozens of “grueling interrogations.” Though of course they weren’t attacking me out of vengeance. They were defending their territory, with all its riches – grants, status, public interest, the generous ministrations of attractive co-eds – from the intruder, the alien. Making it clear: they had no intention of sharing their prestige and possessions with anyone at all.
    That’s how it is in any science that cannot be proven by mathematics. The luminaries stand their ground to the death, tearing with their claws and gnashing their teeth. If I had come with something obscure, something ordinary and not laying claim to so much, they would have received me with paternal congeniality. They might have scolded me, or they might have coddled me briefly, then allowed me to perch somewhere on the fringe. But I stabbed at the very heart – having come out of nowhere, a complete enigma. The full wrath of the highfliers let loose on me, concentrated into one striking beam. There was no discussion – they would not allow me to say a word. They crushed me with the most refined demagoguery, manipulating, turning things inside out. Then they banished me: the microphone was simply shut off. The next lecturer was already shuffling up to the projector. My time was up, the time limit nonnegotiable!
    Later, I wandered to the taxi stand through a veil of poisonous smoke in a city that had long been sinking into its own detritus. It felt as though something really terrible had happened that morning. I was crushed, downtrodden – and it was not just me. The work I had done was openly ridiculed. They had proven that the world did not need me – not one bit!
    For the first time, I felt utter hopelessness. I was unprepared for the misery that enshrouded me. The burning sun was nearly at its zenith, scoured by haze, but knowing no mercy. I then understood: this must be what a cosmic disaster looks like.