Chapter 4. One Minute.

March 4, 2023

Hurriedly glancing at the completely soiled face of his cheap wrist watch, twenty-eight-year-old Robert René breathed a relative sigh of relief—the number "13:26" flashed before his eyes, and accordingly, in 34 minutes, due to the schedule recently drawn up by the senior officer command, the very shift that designated Robert René's time in the trench on the line of contact with a certain enemy of his government was supposed to end.

"Life in a trench is in many ways like life in a grave! It is inactive and limited by a small space of earth! Trenches! For many of my comrades and certain adversaries of my government, they were graves!," Robert René thought, after which he immediately hugged the ground, because at the same hour, not far from him, heavy artillery let out its truly mournful song: a moment later, silence reigned near him. "War is not always the heat of fire; more often, war is silence and the cold of the grave! Artillery! Like the Lernaean Hydra, it spewed its venom and immediately plunged into the depths of silence! For a few moments, it brought a response of objective reality into my world, thereby instantly reminding me who I am and where I am now... In moments of artillery silence, sometimes here, in the trench, you are able to forget what phenomenon your being is now immersed in and of what events it is a direct participant—at this hour, you look with painful anxiety, like a person who is experiencing a burning thirst, at the round face of your watch, with a special frenzy, waiting for the very hour that will allow you to quench these natural needs: those very needs that are key to the absence of hostilities and war near you. And time… there is no time in war! One minute here can last for years, and whole years are unlikely to seem like one minute to anyone here—in hell, you are not interested in what time it is; you want to know how much longer you have to be in torment! In one minute at the front, as much can happen as sometimes does not happen in decades of peaceful life… And now… Will the next minute here, in the trench, be a good one for me? Or, maybe, it will take the life of my being? What will it give to this world? Good or evil? Perhaps nothing will happen in this minute, and therefore this minute will be the brightest segment of time, because not a single person will be deprived of what is most valuable not only for himself but also for the nation of which he is a representative—human life…

"The trench! This small patch of earthly space was a whole Universe for me—a world with its joys and tragedies. I felt, I touched, I realized how life was born and died before my eyes here—the life of an ant, a spider, a mouse, and a lizard… Despite what was happening, namely the war of humanity, a small spider created a home for itself, and a small mouse created a burrow for itself. They did not know what awaited them next, but they lived, lived and existed. They had no idea about the goals and meaning of this war—in their minds, wars were nothing but a manifestation of their instincts, invariably associated with hunger, procreation, self-preservation… They had no idea at all that a person was no better than them: hiding behind a glossy cover, they were guided by the same animal instinct… These small inhabitants of my Universe were not afraid of death, just as they were not afraid of life. A path was predestined for them and they perfectly understood it—the realization of the functions and instincts prescribed to them by nature itself: observing the constitution of their being.

"Here a small bluish-graphite spider confidently approaches its victim: its web is continuously swayed by the cool March wind—an event that in no way depends on this miniature offspring of life—but it goes, it moves further and further forward! In these minutes, it in no way controls itself—it is controlled only by instincts: the instinct of hunger and the instinct of self-preservation—whichever instinct wins in it, that will be its future life… In war, sometimes we feel and realize this similarity with a small spider in the most direct way—a victim of instincts… Looking at the cocoons of these spiders, which were enveloped in care and labor, I sadly comprehended the very ringed fate that was destined for the future and previous generations of this spider—as soon as they were born, they became doomed not only to death but also to a life chained by instinct: truly immortal, and accordingly happy, is he who was not born!…

"Here, a little further, a brownish-faced anthill flickers continuously before my eyes with an original manifestation of its own life—this was a truly amazing structure, for it was built on a slightly different, more cumbersome in its size, anthill: despite this, the inhabitants of the base and the superstructure had equal rights, for the location at one height or another was not a reason for them to despise their own kind—even ants knew perfectly well what millions of representatives of the human race were in no way able to realize, namely, that height is only one of the physical dimensions… Right next to the anthill, in my small Universe, there were two dozen mouse burrows—it must be admitted that despite a certain similarity in their structure, each of these caves still had a certain special, exceptional identity: in this, these caves reminded me of people's multi-story houses, where in each apartment, in each window, there are such different chandeliers and curtains—located in one house, each of them at the same time created its own, unlike others, private comfort…

"Here a small spider, whose movements a few moments earlier had frozen, carefully continued its path along the thin web—what is it afraid of? Only he who does not agree with what is predestined for him by fate itself is afraid—he who has completely entrusted his life into the hands of fate is not capable of feeling fear! So it is with me… While in this trench, I was afraid of no one… and I believed in nothing here. I did not believe in the mortals here to the same extent as I did not believe in the immortals here, for the former, as well as the latter, under the pretext of their holiness and sacredness, created what has killed and is killing countless flourishing representatives of a half-fledged nation! The former, like the latter, betrayed us… The completely deranged officers, in the name of jingling a few grams of cheap metal on their chests, incessantly told us that we are a great people and now, on the battlefields, we are gaining the greatest glory—but is it possible to award an entire people with a medal? Glory and awards go to individuals, not to an entire people—but we were convinced otherwise: with each new day, the pixelated uniforms of the officers frantically craving blood were fertilely overgrown, like the keel of a ship, with an uncountable number of shells—and we were becoming fewer every day…