The Ordo Catalog

Five days after Iero on NTV, Artyom Val held a press conference at the central office of the Institute of Awakening on Tverskaya 17.

It was his first public press conference. Before that — service collegia, departmental meetings, rare interviews in Vedomosti on internal agenda. Today — a live stream on the TASS site, on YouTube, on the Institute’s Telegram channels (five channels — federal, regional, international, professional, “for families,” subscribed to, by Lena’s estimate, by the morning of December twenty-fourth by one hundred eighty thousand people).

(The simultaneity and transparency of the announcement were his first message. By this Artyom showed the entire professional field: Iero didn’t yank me, I’m coming out on my own schedule. This was, of course, untrue — Wei Lin had told me directly two days earlier — but Artyom respects Wei Lin professionally and therefore doesn’t argue with him aloud. Aloud he “works on his own schedule,” and let everyone understand as they will.)

I watched the stream at twenty past eleven, in the morning, in the kitchen, with tea. Kira in the bathroom was getting ready for work at the Academy. Lia in the children’s room — she had her first session with Karl scheduled after the December break, departure at two p.m., I was driving. Schrödinger Junior — on the windowsill, as usual, in mode “passive observer with margin of error 0.3” (that’s my working term for his usual regime; by thirty-five I have my own home taxonomy of cat states).

The stream loaded. The camera pulled out from the doors of the press hall. The hall came into view.

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The press center of the Institute of Awakening occupies the second floor of a building on Tverskaya. It’s the former small assembly hall of some book-lovers’ society whose license quietly expired in 2022 (money — FSO, reasons — “optimization”). The Institute remodeled the hall in 2033, by today. The walls — panels of dark gray, oak floorboards, a podium with a single lectern and four armchairs on the sides. Behind the lectern stands the matte logo of the Institute: a stylized spiral inside a circle, color — warm gray-beige. No flag, no coat of arms; the design decision is categorically in favor of abstract graphics. The logo was designed by a famous Moscow designer (the name I didn’t remember, but I saw a note in Afisha about the contract with the FGBU in autumn). The spiral — an internal hint: Architect-1 uses the spiral as a classification scheme for ZNK. To most viewers — just a pretty logo. To Kira and me — a sign.

In the four armchairs to the sides of the lectern — government representatives.

First chair: Russian Federation, Minister of Health. Suit dark blue, tie burgundy, face tired, gaze not into the hall. I don’t know the minister personally, but Lena saw him at a conference last year and characterized him as “he studied at Sechenovka, knows the subject, but by position can’t go deep.” The minister’s signature is — ordinary, nothing extended; Artyom evidently preferred an official without his own filter level. This is reasonable: an official with a thin filter in the chair next to Artyom would be an audible dissonance.

Second chair: Republic of Kazakhstan, Deputy Minister of Education. A woman, forty-five, in a strict dark-green blazer, calm face. Kazakhstan in the post-Soviet space by 2033 is one of the leaders on the topic of “integration of persons with extended perception”; they have launched their own program, partly with the Institute’s help, but with their own emphasis (less rigid, less escorting, more — educational). The deputy minister flew in this morning, I learned this from Lena’s Telegram channel by eleven.

Third chair: Republic of Serbia, advisor to the President on social policy. A man, sixty-plus, gray-haired, with thick eyebrows, in a brown suit. Serbia in 2033 is our formal ally, in the informal plan a country in which the mystical tradition is stronger than the scientific, and which is keenly interested in the topic of the awakened. Their president, they say, consults with a local seer once a month; but those are rumors I can’t verify.

Fourth chair: Islamic Republic of Iran, representative of the Ministry of Higher Education. A man in his early thirties, in a dark suit without a tie. Iran on this stage I had not expected. Artyom added him, evidently, at the last moment: Iran in the last four years has been carefully developing its own program of extended perception on the basis of Shiite academic centers. Today’s presence — is support of Ordo’s legitimacy on a non-obvious side. A smart move. You can feel someone else’s advisor at work here.

In the audience seats — fifty journalists. First row: TASS, RIA, Interfax, Bloomberg, Associated Press, Meduza (Lena didn’t go today, her accreditation isn’t confirmed; Lena commented on this in the morning chat with one phrase: “they deliberately cut us off the list”). Beyond — industry, regional, foreign. Three cameras of the main channels.

Artyom entered through a side door at eleven hundred sharp (the second hand on the wall clock in the frame — I clocked it). In a gray suit, without tie, with a badge on the lapel — the same spiral in the circle, only small, silver. Walked to the lectern. Greeted the four government representatives — briefly, in turn, handshake, half a second each.

The camera took his face in close-up.