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TALES FROMTHE FUTURE
Russia’s president stood at a small podium next to his desk. Children of
different ages from about three to ten sat on little chairs on either side of
the podium. Near the opposite wall of the office were journalists with tele-
vision cameras. The president began to speak.
“Ladies and gentlemen, fellow citizens! I have invited you especially to
meet the children. As you yourself will be convinced, I am in this office with
them alone, without a guard, psychologists, or parents. These children are
not the monsters many media in the West have attempted to portray. You
yourselves can see that these are ordinary children. Their faces and actions
show no signs of aggressiveness. We consider some of their abilities unusual.
But is that, in fact, the case? The abilities that have begun to be discovered
in the new generation may be ordinary for the human individual. What may
be unusual and unacceptable for human existence are our creations. The hu-
man community has created a system of communications and military po-
tential capable of leading our planet to catastrophe.
“Over the centuries, peace talks have been held between the states with
the greatest military power, but the arms race has not stopped. Today there
is a real opportunity to put an end to this endless, destructive process. Right
now, those countries where lethal weapons are not concentrated are in the
most advantageous position. For us, this position appears unnatural. But
let’s think hard about why we so deeply believe that the production of lethal
weaponry threatening entire nations with man’s annihilation is natural.
“The new generation has changed its priorities and forced us to move in
the opposite direction, to disarm. The fear, panic, and fevered actions that
are accompanying this process have been created largely thanks to the dis-
tortions of the news. The Russian government has been accused of long
knowing about the appearance in its country of children with unusual abilit-
ies. These accusations are groundless. Russia still has a lot of military poten-
tial, and like many countries, we are doing everything possible to recycle it.
“The Russian government has been accused of not trying to discover all
the children with unusual abilities and not taking actions to isolate them,
which implies forcible hypnotism until the disarmament process is complete.
The Russian government will not agree to this step. Russia’s children are
