Tell me that from everywhere / Joy is breathing over me, / That I don't know myself what / I will sing — but a song is ripening.
— Afanasy Fet
Sometimes a text is not born as a plan but as breath. It doesn't begin with a decision — it begins with an inward accumulation that simply has nowhere left to grow.
I return to these lines of Fet every time I try to understand where "Incubator" begins. And every time I arrive at the same answer: it never began. It ripened.
Not as a project. Not as a book. Not as an idea. But as a state that spent nine years searching for its form, without knowing that a form was even possible.
Nine years is a span in which human memory stops distinguishing separate events and begins to work like a geological layer. There is no plot in it — only the pressure of time. This is exactly how "Incubator" took shape from within: not through a decision to write, but through the accumulation of what could no longer remain unsaid.
An Architect Before a Writer
Before the novellas came, there was work commonly called external: systems, brands, architectures of meaning, cultural constructions — projects in which a word had to become form, and form had to become meaning.
But in retrospect it becomes clear: none of it was separate activity. It was the preparation of a language. Not a literary one — an inner one. The language in which it becomes possible to speak to reality so that reality answers back.
Every project about memory, every conversation about ritual, every attempt to fix a human presence into material — all of it was quietly assembling into a hidden prelude to a prose that, at the time, could not yet be called prose.
Incubator as an Inner Environment
"Incubator" is not a book in the conventional sense. It is an environment in which experience is not recorded immediately, but ripens until it reaches the moment of becoming a story.
Here, plot is not primary. What is primary is a state of consciousness. The novellas do not arise as invented stories but as concentrations of inner pressure that, one day, begin to demand form.
Sometimes it is fear. Sometimes clarity. Sometimes the dissolution of the familiar "I," after which language can no longer return to its former state.
This is how the first part came into being — sixteen novellas that were never designed as a structure, yet turned out to be one. As if the text knew more about itself than its author did.
2026 — A Time of Grace and Technology
There are periods when an idea outpaces its era, and there are moments when the era finally catches up with the idea.
2026 became exactly such a time.
The technological environment stopped being merely a tool for publication. It became a space in which the non-linear existence of a text became possible — where the reader no longer follows the author, but enters a system and charts their own route, as if navigating an inner map on which every choice of reading shifts the trajectory of meaning.
In this sense, "Incubator" turned out to be not only a literary project but an architecture of navigation through consciousness. The text stopped being a line. It became a space.
And it was precisely this convergence — the maturity of the conception meeting the maturity of the form — that made its birth possible.
The Birth of the Second Cycle
When the first part — "The Threshold" — was completed, it became clear that the story had not ended. It had simply changed its level of depth.
This is how the second cycle came into being — "The Path to the Fool." Twenty-two novellas, arranged in the reverse order of the Major Arcana: from the Magician to the Fool.
If "The Threshold" is the moment when a person first meets the limit of their own control, then "The Path to the Fool" is the gradual release of every support on which identity depends.
Each novella here is not a plot but a form of dissolution. Not a story about a person, but an observation of what happens when the familiar "I" can no longer sustain its own construction.
And in this sense, the cycle is not about destruction, but about a return to the point of origin — where there is not yet any need to be someone in particular.
In Place of a Conclusion
Sometimes it seems that an author writes a text.
But in time, something else becomes visible: the text writes the author.
And if "Incubator" can be described in a single formula at all, it will not be about plot, and not about genre.
It will be about waiting for the moment when the inner song finally stops being a premonition and becomes something that can be spoken.
And perhaps Fet was right about the thing that matters most:
a song is not created.
It ripens.
I return to these lines of Fet every time I try to understand where "Incubator" begins. And every time I arrive at the same answer: it never began. It ripened.
Not as a project. Not as a book. Not as an idea. But as a state that spent nine years searching for its form, without knowing that a form was even possible.
Nine years is a span in which human memory stops distinguishing separate events and begins to work like a geological layer. There is no plot in it — only the pressure of time. This is exactly how "Incubator" took shape from within: not through a decision to write, but through the accumulation of what could no longer remain unsaid.
An Architect Before a Writer
Before the novellas came, there was work commonly called external: systems, brands, architectures of meaning, cultural constructions — projects in which a word had to become form, and form had to become meaning.
But in retrospect it becomes clear: none of it was separate activity. It was the preparation of a language. Not a literary one — an inner one. The language in which it becomes possible to speak to reality so that reality answers back.
Every project about memory, every conversation about ritual, every attempt to fix a human presence into material — all of it was quietly assembling into a hidden prelude to a prose that, at the time, could not yet be called prose.
Incubator as an Inner Environment
"Incubator" is not a book in the conventional sense. It is an environment in which experience is not recorded immediately, but ripens until it reaches the moment of becoming a story.
Here, plot is not primary. What is primary is a state of consciousness. The novellas do not arise as invented stories but as concentrations of inner pressure that, one day, begin to demand form.
Sometimes it is fear. Sometimes clarity. Sometimes the dissolution of the familiar "I," after which language can no longer return to its former state.
This is how the first part came into being — sixteen novellas that were never designed as a structure, yet turned out to be one. As if the text knew more about itself than its author did.
2026 — A Time of Grace and Technology
There are periods when an idea outpaces its era, and there are moments when the era finally catches up with the idea.
2026 became exactly such a time.
The technological environment stopped being merely a tool for publication. It became a space in which the non-linear existence of a text became possible — where the reader no longer follows the author, but enters a system and charts their own route, as if navigating an inner map on which every choice of reading shifts the trajectory of meaning.
In this sense, "Incubator" turned out to be not only a literary project but an architecture of navigation through consciousness. The text stopped being a line. It became a space.
And it was precisely this convergence — the maturity of the conception meeting the maturity of the form — that made its birth possible.
The Birth of the Second Cycle
When the first part — "The Threshold" — was completed, it became clear that the story had not ended. It had simply changed its level of depth.
This is how the second cycle came into being — "The Path to the Fool." Twenty-two novellas, arranged in the reverse order of the Major Arcana: from the Magician to the Fool.
If "The Threshold" is the moment when a person first meets the limit of their own control, then "The Path to the Fool" is the gradual release of every support on which identity depends.
Each novella here is not a plot but a form of dissolution. Not a story about a person, but an observation of what happens when the familiar "I" can no longer sustain its own construction.
And in this sense, the cycle is not about destruction, but about a return to the point of origin — where there is not yet any need to be someone in particular.
In Place of a Conclusion
Sometimes it seems that an author writes a text.
But in time, something else becomes visible: the text writes the author.
And if "Incubator" can be described in a single formula at all, it will not be about plot, and not about genre.
It will be about waiting for the moment when the inner song finally stops being a premonition and becomes something that can be spoken.
And perhaps Fet was right about the thing that matters most:
a song is not created.
It ripens.