‘All facial redness will be rectified in post-production.’

‘It’s not that.’

‘This is not a BAFTA nomination. Just relax. Remember, you’re not a Nobel nominee. This isn’t about you. People want to hear a story — an authentic, unpolished, raw, and most importantly, true story. You’re free to speculate, lose your train of thought, and discuss free associations. We’re looking for a person — we concentrate on memories and how the human mind operates, not on encyclopaedic accuracy. We know you’ve only been to the mountains a few times in your life, and we don’t necessarily expect geographic precision in terminology… Just speak, that’s all.’

‘Just speak,’ I remind myself, picturing the camera or the forehead of a friend. I start, confident that I won’t be interrupted.

‘That story lingered in my mind. It was one of many from that long evening, yet I could envision it as though I had witnessed it myself. The storyteller was my slightly older brother, who was also the eyewitness. He trekked through the mountains. Some 200 metres ahead of him, a young man clad in a white T-shirt walked in front of his female companion. Then… he appeared to be running — no, speeding, as if overtaken by something. He glanced back at his wife. He was unstoppable. The woman attempted to quicken her pace, but it was evident to anyone that the distance between them was increasing, becoming insurmountable.

Seconds later, it became evident he was caught in an avalanche, or at least that’s what one might call a sudden surge of snow propelling a person forward at incredible speed, still on his feet, until he reached the edge of a drop and plummeted onto the rocks far below. The woman somehow managed to follow him at a steady pace and eventually reached him after a while.

Minutes later, a rescue helicopter hovered above the site. A rescuer descended on a rope, secured her safely, and deposited her approximately 200 metres away. She then made her way down the mountain. Meanwhile, the man’s white T-shirt had turned scarlet red. One could imagine that upon reaching the mountain shelter, she would have learned the devastating news.’

I recognise that it was merely a warm-up, and I will now truly begin my story:

‘I remember how the snow sparkled under the moonlight in the high mountains. It was a magical experience — one I cherish in my memory. I can vividly picture how the snow glimmered beneath the moonlight among the peaks. It was truly enchanting, something I hold dear, with no desire to relive what produced a profound respect for the mountains.

We were well-equipped. I travelled with a group of young people, even though they were considerably older than I. Indeed, I was the youngest of them all. The boys were experienced and well-prepared, and I must say, they proved to be true gentlemen.

Our trek was intended to last four hours. It was cold yet sunny when we set off, and we were in high spirits, feeling relaxed. We walked for nearly three hours when snow began to fall. The temperature dropped from -5°C to -10°C, though it felt more like -15°C well before it actually reached that point. We estimated we had about an hour left. We zipped up our coats, donned an extra pair of gloves, and pressed on. We climbed one hill, then another — now the terrain should be flat.

But the trail started to vanish. The snow grew deeper. On the path, it reached our knees; if you stepped off, you would sink up to your waist. More often than not, someone would get stuck, and we had to assist them. The boys found it challenging to navigate in the poor visibility.

We had been walking for seven hours by then. The lads started carrying the rucksack of an Englishwoman who was with us, but to be honest, she wasn’t the only one struggling at that point. Eventually, they decided we would leave most of our rucksacks behind — reaching the nearest mountain guesthouse was our priority.

The initial cries and prayers grew increasingly frequent. We pressed on. The boys occasionally gathered around us, rubbing each other’s backs for warmth and reassurance. I recall becoming mired deep in the snow. Exhausted, I managed to free myself and said, “I’ll just take a short break… I’ll catch up.”

The moment I closed my eyes, I encountered something akin to a mirage. My friend shouted at me, “Yeah, right, and you’ll freeze to death! Move along!”

At that point, it was no longer about exhaustion. The snow was too deep for a snowmobile to reach us. We had to keep moving until we arrived at a location where our English friend could be transported further.

We began to see lights in the distance. Although it was still a long walk, at least we had a destination. We continued moving forward. Suddenly, the eldest among us collapsed face-first into the snow. We lifted her. She had been the strongest of us all, and now she had fallen.

An hour before we reached safety, my glove got stuck in the snow. When I pulled my right hand out, my fingers were stiff, and I couldn’t straighten them enough to fit back into the glove. I shoved my hand into my pocket and carried on. In the end, our friend was taken to the place we had all been striving to reach. That final hour was uncomfortably silent. Everyone was focused, moving like compliant soldiers.

When we arrived, the mountain rescue team examined our hands and feet. They referred to it as moderate frostbite when certain areas of the body changed colour but did not turn black (as black indicated dead tissue). Some individuals had frostbite on a thumb, while others had it on an ear. For me, it affected both my heels and my right hand. Not particularly enjoyable — I couldn’t hold a pen! I couldn’t even write my name for a month until sensation returned.

We had to remain in the mountain shelter for a while. The following morning, the avalanche danger level was reported to be extremely high.

You never forget a morning like that — when you can’t feel your toes, heels, or even your hands. You step outside and behold an absolute masterpiece of nature — the serene, tranquil, and majestic mountains. At night, the snow glistens silver, the moon shines brightly, and you feel overwhelmed with awe, vibrantly alive, and grateful.’

‘If you ever have nightmares, what do you dream about?’ His question jolted me out of the vivid scene I was revisiting at that moment.

I never recalled my dreams, or so I believed until now. In truth, I gazed at my right hand, overwhelmed by a fear I attempted to conceal once I recognised it. My French manicure was done in the purest shade imaginable, and he looked directly at it when he asked, ‘Have you ever painted your nails black?’

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The ceiling was painted after the last visit (whoever was visiting and whoever was truly living here), a brighter shade of white; the fluorescent tubes were replaced with pendant lamps; the stairs gained an anti-slip carpeted finish.

There is a pleasant aroma of bergamot from an air diffuser in the hall. It is raining outside.

We move to the salon, the sala de estar.

No, the stars are not out yet; it is still early. Sala, room—spacious enough for living.

“Can you just sit?” I wonder, extending my hand in your direction, encouraging you to take a seat.

“Just sit and be?” you ask.

“Just be. I will serve tea. This is where all the stirring will go.”

Nothing apart from the rain outside makes a sound, nothing apart from your heartbeat to tell you that you’re alive.

Can you feel that you’re alive simply by sitting quietly?

You are unsure.

It has been a long time since you meditated, rather than merely talked about getting an app for that. I really don’t want to talk about myself, uttering: I can sit so long that I feel the world exhale with me, and I am both less and infinitely more than I imagined.

I don’t speak because I am alive; I am alive not because I speak.

“So you said some time ago—ages, one might say—that you collect stamps.”

Oh! My mind is on, truly on. Worldwide collection, expedition, postage, stamps—or love (as in philately). Collectionner les timbres. Coleccionar sellos. Collezionare francobolli. Samla frimärken.

How do I tell you that it is not about the stamps at all?

Will you ask me what, then, it is about?

Will I tell you that it is about the album? Or will I tell you not?

You are thinking of your first notebook (no, not a computer), a paper cahier de brouillon (not bouillon—I might serve the soup later, though), where you copied all the interesting quotes. We do not talk about books. I was never in any kind of adult book club. I am not sure how I would bear the whole concept, not even thinking of its implications. I bring my old notebook and pass it to you. You open it on the first page. You read (in French):

“Sublimity, then, is perception. Without sensitivity, intelligence becomes machinery”, you begin.

I put the music on. Your choice, of course, is mine at once. To receive without giving makes one heavy; to give without receiving makes one hollow.

I give you a nodding look. And then intuition — that mysterious, “obscure” light? I tend to ask. Not everything luminous is clear. But that remains unspoken.

“Tenderness…”

“We are not entering there. A single act of tenderness can outweigh a decade of achievement.”

Give without restraint, lose without regret, and acquire without pettiness. You must have that inner wealth to give freely; that’s why you are sitting here. You have the security to acquire without shrinking into smallness.

“We settle not because we cannot imagine beauty, but because we once imagined it too vividly. Disappointment makes us practical. Fear makes us moderate.”

“Mhm,” I confirm.

And then you throw out of nowhere, ‘You think you control your own decisions’.

And I really don’t know what to answer.

Don’t you? This is the moment when one juggles in his head how much of “we” there is…

…

Yes, my brain gets compromised at this moment, running a script, as if Lem were talking to me.

If you asked me, I would have told you that Solaris was the first science fiction book I read in my life and that it had a tremendous impact on me and that, of course, I wouldn’t think that I would actualy be a science-fiction reader, even once, and my initial instinct would be to read it so I’d gain some kind of a common ground with the boys at the time. But then I wouldn’t be talking about that excellent book, but about what came to my mind right now.

Humanity…

I catch myself on that! I wouldn’t tell you that because that’s a massive subject to talk to you about, so I just quickly ran a script. It is like Lem must speak to me, but before he does, I try to dismiss the thought because I am not searching for a definition. But the thought is insistent, and I finally hear in my head: Humanity is the sum of our defects, our shortcomings, our imperfections. It is what we want to be but cannot be, are unable to be, do not know how to be. It is simply the gap between ideals and their realisation.

Mhm.

Of course, I do not realise that you came to talk to me about what the Nobel Prize winner John Nash, who spent 44 years proving something about our choices, discovered.

“Our choices are governed by a hidden system — game theory. Once you understand it, you begin to see it everywhere, and you start looking at every past decision differently.”

At this moment, I am curious, not because I perfectly know who Nash was, but because I am interested in how you want to put it, the whole story of how a 22 years old wrote a 28-page doctoral thesis that changed science and should effectively change me, change us, if “us” existed in the first place, of course. Will you disclose that he was struggling with schizophrenia and lived in isolation for years, or will you straightforwardly focus on the foundation for predicting human behaviour, a phenomenon called the Nash Equilibrium?

“To the point”, I encourage you to speak.

“It is the point at which no one can improve their situation by changing strategy — as long as everyone else continues acting the same way.”

I wait to hear how today this idea quietly influences what I buy, what I watch, who I meet, and how I make decisions. You would say we, of course, if we, in a sense less broad than humanity, existed. And I know you will give a real-life example. So you do, and it is an appropriate one:

“You approach traffic lights.

Red — you stop.

Green — you go.

Why?”

You wait a second for reply so I reply, engaged: “Because I assume other drivers follow the rules too.”

“If one person starts acting differently —do they win?”

“No.”

“Chaos follows—And that is the Nash Equilibrium—It is everywhere around us. Why do Coca-Cola and Pepsi cost roughly the same?”

“Again — Nash Equilibrium?” I guess correctly.

“If Coca-Cola lowers its price, Pepsi must do the same. If Pepsi raises its price, it loses customers.

The result?

Both companies remain at the same level and cannot change prices without losing money.

And this is where it becomes uncomfortable.”

“Companies realised that Nash’s theory could be used to trap people in bad decisions,” I conclude.

“And now.” I try to follow your hand that will illustrate what you are about to say.“The sunk cost fallacy.”

“Once you understand how it works, you start to feel uneasy.”

A lot of feeling uneasy, but what could I say to that? I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes? (Going after Auden and expressing as poetically as I could what I felt today at 2:54 pm upon question 21 in higher tier maths paper, by the way). “So what is the sunk cost fallacy?” I ask.

“We continue something simply because we have already invested time, money, or energy into it.” Sounds what Little Prince said about the rose, I think. and you continue: ‘“Even if stopping would be more rational. Nash proved this mathematically. Companies turned it into a money-making machine.”

I really do not want another mathematical theory today so you throw an example, a real one, of Spotify.

“Spotify perfected this mechanism. The free version is intentionally inconvenient: limited skips, ads every few songs. Premium — so much and so per month — removes the artificially created discomfort. The result? 246 million users. 90% of revenue comes from Premium.”

So what you are saying is that Spotify doesn’t really sell music; it sells relief from the discomfort it creates itself?

“Demand through discomfort.”

“Companies deliberately make free versions slightly frustrating. If they were too good — you wouldn’t buy the paid version.”

“The free option irritates you just enough to make you want to pay.” Here, of course, I don’t tell you that some people try to get on a family membership (up to 6?), even if they do not live at the same address. Instead I say: “Brilliant? Yes. Ethical? Debatable. And yet… Nash himself fell into the “sunk cost” trap.”

“You are perfectly right. During his PhD, he realised it wasn’t his path — but he continued because it seemed a waste of the 4–5 years he had already invested.”

“Even the man who discovered the mechanism became its victim.”

No to finish on a dead end, you continue with the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

“Two players. Two options: cooperate or betray.”

I already like the example, although you need no encouragement to continue:

– If both cooperate — each gets £10.

– If both betray — each gets £0.

– If one betrays — they get £15 and the other loses £5.

Logic suggests: betray. But in the long run… both lose.”

“Cooperation wins”, I say without sounding triumphant.

“The best strategy”.

“This being said, be kind, be strong — respond to betrayal. Be forgiving — return to cooperation, don’t fight over resources, is it the moment I serve the broth, my famous chicken soup?”

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“Of course I would. We all progress to return to a basic human connection. OK, I know you don’t appreciate that word”.

“What word?”

“Connection.”

“And why is that? You tell me…”

“Because you wouldn’t be here, if not me, if not the connections…”

I …

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“I don’t believe a word of your story,” you announced.

“Of course, it didn’t happen quite the way I told it, but I believe it really happened.” In that instance, I exactly knew what you thought and maybe what you would say, if given enough time: In your imagination. Regardless, I continued, “Worshipers are disarmed whe…

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On the kidneys — renes.

On the ovaria.

On the hips — coxae.

On the heart — cor.

Move the hand higher.

On the pulmones.

On the throat — larynx.

On the lingua.

Lower the hand again.

On the great absorber —liver — hepar.

On the stomach without much discipline of refusal — ventriculus.

On the intestine you feed so well.

Pause.

On the colu…

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It doesn’t happen, not in this town. Until it does. And the first time it happens, no one realises what they’re witnessing. Not even later, when the vanishings dominate the headlines, do the people in the park realise they were there — front row — when it began.

It takes place outside, on the kind of summer afternoon …

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