"They are perfect," Pavlenko said, leaning in close. "But tell me, Kirill... now that you know how life is truly put together, do you find it beautiful? Or are you afraid?"
The next day, as Pavlenko walked between the desks, he stopped at Kirill’s station. The old teacher, whose eyes usually looked like cold glass, softened. He picked up the lab report.
"You found them," Pavlenko whispered, his voice trembling. "The true answers." "Are they right?" Kirill asked, his heart hammering.
Late one Tuesday, he found a leather-bound notebook tucked behind a loose brick in the basement. It was hand-written, dated forty years ago, signed by a student who had vanished. The answers for Lab 11 were there, but they were strange. Where the textbook asked for the function of a heart, the notebook spoke of "the rhythm of the universe." Where it asked for the structure of a leaf, it described "the veins of fate." Kirill copied it all.