HDive – this is not a name, not a last name, not a nickname. HDive – this is the guildhall, where hdivers gather and which can be found on the map in the neighbourhood of Moscow. Outwardly this building is the most ordinary and every hundred years it is demolished and rebuilt in order not to draw attention. Hdivers do not need popularity; in fact the bulk of HDive is not even above ground.

Hdivers are not magicians, although their abilities far exceed any human understanding. If something significant or inexplicable happens somewhere in the world, it means the matter is not managed without hdivers. It is impossible for an outsider to enter the grounds of HDive. Anyone who has betrayed the Charter of HDive just once also can never return.

Hdivers are not by birth. No supernatural talent or affinity with magicians is necessary. The golden bees choose hdivers and the only beehive is in HDive. No one, not even the hdivers themselves, knows whom a bee will choose next and, most importantly, why.

*

On the fifth of December, snow began to fall heavily in Moscow. Earlier it was falling with selective timidity: on the roofs of cars, park benches, garages, and transformers. Now the snow got seriously down to work and fell so densely, as if somewhere in the sky hyeons – winged half-hyena-half-lions – simultaneously emptied out ten thousand pillows. Large snowflakes did not flutter, but solid like middle-aged hens, each sitting in its own place.

Movements stopped. Traffic lights winked independently, conducting a white symphony. There was nowhere to go. Roads had disappeared. Automobiles, waving the windshield wipers, turned into snowdrifts in the blink of an eye. As it often happens, in the herd of cars there turned out to be a hysteric, repeatedly pressing on the horn and honking long and angrily: it was incomprehensible what he was demanding and from whom.

On the construction site searchlights from below hit the crane, and three pillars of light, piercing snowfall and closing in, showed its absolute infinity.