Tsvetochkin: They did, with aminazine, just like everyone here. I survived because I heal easily like a dog.

Andrei: I see; I’m pretty much a survivor too. Where shall I put this dumb-bell?

Tsvetochkin: Over there, in the bushes behind the bench. Would you like to play chess or dominos?

Andrei: Naah, any brain use is strictly proscribed for me by the authorities. I’d much rather sun-bathe in the bushes.

Tsvetochkin: OK, then.

Andrei, approaching a bench among lilac bushes on which Victor Vasilyevich, stripped to the waist, is sunbathing: May I?

Victor: Sure, enjoy yourself, if labor therapy is not for you.

Andrei: I’m not inclined to work for the communists, besides they won’t risk letting me out. Frankly, I’m surprised they let me out in the garden.

Victor: They let everyone out in the garden here. Unless you are strapped to your bunk, of course.

Andrei: Well, that’s a comfort. By the way, I’ve thought of your new and the Hegelian old dialectics. How do they exactly differ? You’ve said you just added maxims there…

Victor: Caught a philosophic fever in the nuthouse?

Andrei: No, I was just wondering: If you really created a universal methodology, it would actually mean a revolution of our minds, because methodology is a kind of a universal key used for deciphering, the key which could change our whole outlook. Isn’t that so?

Victor: Yes, though I’d compare it to a grammar, a syntax: If you do not know its rules, you won’t understand the language, even if you know the meaning of every word. That’s one thing; the other is that, more importantly, having changed our world outlook, this methodology will change out attitude toward the world.

As for differences, it differs from the old one not so much by a greater number of new notions and maxims as by a newer and more detailed interpretation of the old ones, ranging from conditionality and relativity of all notions and maxims, like: the unity and struggle of the opposites; a shift of quantity into quality and negation of negation – all this may be true under certain conditions with certain points of reference, and not true in others.

The old dialectics has none of this, nor has it a universal measure for various processes and phenomena.

Andrei: Wait a minute, how can there be a universal measure in this extremely diverse material world?

Victor: There can be and is! We are simply attracted and confused by the superficial visible diversity of the world, the variety of its forms. Prying into its content, its essence, is boring and unattractive. Nonetheless, this world has one feature in common which serves both as a reference point and a universal measure: it’s

Time.

Andrei: Time?

Victor: Sure. As you know, everything in this world changes, everything flows. Therefore, the only universal measure there can possibly be is Time.

The fact that the old dialectics explain the developments and processes by the struggle of opposites which have a common root; the fact that this struggle is perceived, first, as a quantitative change, growth, then as a qualitative shift; that during this struggle a negation of negation takes place, and contradictions are eliminated – all this shows that we are dealing not with a methodology, but a universal description, because there is no universal measure in it.

Appropriately, the practical value of such description is rather limited, actually close to nil. Because the world description is nothing but a sketch, a diagram, whereas methodology is a map which has its scale, points of reference, or cardinal points, and its set of signs.

With such a map in your hand, you can find your position in space by aligning the cardinal points and finding a match between the signs on the map and the actual objects in the field. The ability to take measurements means that you can answer the crucial questions: not just what direction do we go in, but where exactly do we go? What do we have yet to pass, and when? What obstacles do we have to overcome, and how long will it take us? No draft, no universal description, would answer those questions.

Andrei: Well, I understand your analogy. But it applies to space, it’s hard to comprehend how Time can be the universal measure in such a case.

Victor: Don’t we measure cosmic space by light years?

Andrei: Well, that’s the Cosmos…

Victor: Don’t we measure the distance to a nearby bus-stop or a kiosk by how many minutes it takes us to walk there?

Andrei: Sure, but we imply an average distance that we cover in a minute. Besides, one can compare only things of the same quality. Space and Time are totally different entities which, as far as I know, have not even been precisely defined.

Victor: Quite right! It’s this absence of precise definition, or rather understanding of the nature of these things which in our minds makes them qualitatively different, incomparable. But these differences are relative…

As I’ve already said, the character of one’s perception depends on the speed, frequency of perception. Depending on its speed, the picture of the perceived thing can range from chaotic to dynamic or static.

If our perception of a thing or a process produces a picture of chaos, it means that in the multitude of the picture’s elements our mind failed to find anything familiar, repetitive.

If our mind begins to single out and recognize as recurring these or those periodically appearing and disappearing elements, a dynamic picture will emerge. A stable periodicity of such repetitions is generally considered as Time.

Naturally, this stable repetitive element must be vital to the observer. I mean whatever gadgets we might invent to measure time: mechanical, electronic, or atomic clocks – the Sun and the Moon will remain as the defining measure of all our life cycles.

If we are to give a brief scientific definition, then Time is a result of a juxtaposition of two frequencies, with the received fraction being periodical.

Andrei: What, again frequencies-amplitudes, again physics?

Victor: Yes, what I’ve done, in effect, is pure physics, where Space and Time are simply ways of arranging, interpreting information, a set of stereotypes.

Andrei: Isn’t your work yet another stereotype?

Victor: It is, but more precise, detailed and therefore of greater practical value.

Andrei: It’s funny to discuss the stereotype of Time in the institution where even possession of instruments for measuring it is strictly prohibited.

Victor: You mean watches?

Andrei: Well, maybe not just them. I guess I mean there must be some missing link in your logical chain, or to put it plainly, you must have gone astray somewhere somehow. Anyway that’s the conclusion all my knowledge and personal experience would rather lead to, unless my knowledge and personal experience are patently insufficient to understand your point. If I follow your logic correctly, the pattern, the path of our development is not determined by the resulting sum of internal and external forces, but by Time?

Victor: Quite right. It’s Time which determines these things, both the array of forces, and the pattern, the path of development of both animate and inanimate worlds. As for your reservation that my statements contradict your knowledge and experience, I’m afraid one has to conclude that you, my friend, have not yet acquired even the humblest of knowledge and experience which Ecclesiastes used to have, to observe that everything happens in its good time; that there’s time for birth and time for death, time for killing and time for healing.

Andrei: Time for sorrow and time for joy. Yes, that was a clever move to put me down, considering that