Literature / Harsh Tales

Harsh Tales (Жестокие Сказки) is a compilation of standalone novels and short stories by Russian sci-fi writer Pavel Shumil. They don't share setting or characters, and concentrates on exploring certain hypothetical scenarios and how they may affect humanity.

All stories are freely available on the author's personal site, with Loves Me, Loves Me Not and The Cat House having English translations, done by Shumil's friends.

The series includes:

1. Mr Break It (short story; 1998)
2. Loves Me, Loves Me Not (short story; 1999)
3. On Topic of Family Happiness (novel; 1997)
4. Walk Me Across Maidan (novel; 2000)
5. The Cat House (short story; 2000)
6. On Topic of Gender Equality (short story; 2001)
7. They Must Love (novel; 2004)
8. The Adequacy Percent (novel; 2006)

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Tropes

Series in general

• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Most stories are either very bleak, have some serious moral dilemmas, or puts grim implications for the possible future of humanity. Harsh tales, indeed.
• First Person Narrative: With exception of They Must Love and The Adequacy Percent (both of which follow multiple characters), all the stories are narrated from the first-person perspective.
• What If?: Most stories examine some hypothetical scenarios and how they would affect humanity. They range from relatively minor (what if we create fully-autonomous cities?) to really major ones (what if, instead of humans, it would be fishes who develop into sapience?).

Specific stories

Mr Break It tropes

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Subverted. AI in charge of the city isn't evil, as it may look at first... it's just incompetent. It fails to see the flaws in the city-planning, and stubbornly fixes what is already built instead of rebuilding inefficient system. As result, the city suffers from severe deficit of water, just because the system fails to take into account that there are far more people now, forcing the Imp's team to demolish the water tower, so AI would be forced to build a new one instead, this time — using the actual data about city population. And AI resists attempts to break its systems, seeing anyone who does that as vandals; it doesn't try to arrest or harm them, no... but it sends the cyborgs to constantly pursue them, so it can always catch on with their acts and fix whatever they break.
• Ambiguously Evil: What Imp and his team are preparing seems like something only the bad guys would do (destroying the city's water supply), but there's simply not enough clues to be sure, and some hints that something is not clean with the other side, either. In the end it turns out that both sides are good, in their own ways; and the operation to destroy the water tower ends up being entirely justified and necessary.
• And the Adventure Continues: The water tower was finally demolished, forcing the autonomous city to rebuild it, this time, in adequate condition, ensuring that citizens would have the water they need. But it's not the end of the struggle, not by a long shot, since it would take years, maybe decades, before the entire "wild" network would be reclaimed. And until it happens, this city would need Gnat, Timothy, Imp and the rest.
• Bait-and-Switch: When asked what has happened the previous night, Timothy says that Gnat, while being drunk, has brought two "karate girls". Turns out that he meant it not as them doing karate, but them doing a futuristic Fantastic Drug, karat.
• Big Good: Imp is the leader of the team working on destroying the water tower to save the city, and the one who coordinates them all in order to achieve their goal without being tracked down by machines.
• City with No Name: We never learn in which specific city the story takes place (or even the country).
• Cool, but Inefficient: An earthquake hit the city some time ago, requiring people to evacuate; in their absence, the city managed to recover its systems into something autonomous, but it resulted in two problems. Firstly, the city can no longer be controlled manually in case something goes bad (which it did); secondly, the AI in charge can maintain what is already present, but can't improve it or plan for the future, always operating on the current data, which gradually causes people more and more problems, as now even the drinkable water is in deficit — the city simply can't take into account that the population grows, and refuses to correct the water tower as the only thing it can check — the tower itself — works fine.
• The Cracker: Subverted with Mole; at first, he (like the rest of the team) seems to be Ambiguously Evil and hacks the system with unknown, possibly malicious intents (the Imp's team explicitly targets the city's infrastructure). But in the end it turns out that they are fighting against autonomous city becoming too autonomous for everyone's good.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Gnat helps Tina with her Karat addiction in the only way he can — by tying her to the bed and sedating her each time she goes wild and aggressive (it helps that Timothy spent four years working as an orderly in asylum back in his student days). While barbaric, it's the only thing he may do to her; alternative would be to let the drug to kill her in several years or less. This would eventually start showing signs of success, with Tina starting playing along and trying to resist the temptation to run away and find some Karat for as long as she can, before giving up and asking for a dosage of sedatives. In the end, the method finally pays off and Tina recovers completely.
• Deconstruction: Of autonomous cities; if they becomes too autonomous, the citizens may lose ability to fix things if something in program which runs them starts malfunctioning — just like happened to this city.
• Demolitions Expert: In the Imp's team, Ash is a designated demolition expert, preparing everything for demolishing the building they want to get rid of.
• Disproportionate Retribution: "Caravella 555" cars have very extreme anti-hijack system: try to hijack it, and it would self-destruct, going out in flames — possibly with you inside. Gnat and Timothy barely manage to survive explosion of the car they took for their mission, because they had a signal scrambler which suppressed its self-destruct mechanism while they were close to it; at first they mistook it for cartel seeing through their bullshit and trying to kill them, but turns out that arrested cartel members, who witnessed this, were just as surprised as them.
• Drugs Are Bad: While searching the building they are preparing to demolish, Gnat finds a woman called Tina on the upper floor. She's Karat-addicted, long non-bathed, dressed in tattered rags barely recognisable as a dress anymore. The first thing she asks for is another dose of drug. Then she sees some leftovers in the poodle on the floor, and drinks it right from from there, to Gnat and Timothy's disgust. Gnat takes her with them and spends the rest of the story trying to cure.
• The Ending Changes Everything: The ending finally explains what's going on and why Imp and his crew are doing what they are doing — and reveals that the whole time they were the good guys, fighting... nope, not against the bad guys, but against poorly-working autonomous city which requires radical methods to fix the screwups made by AI.
• Fantastic Drug: Karat is a futuristic synthetic drug, one of the few to survive by that time. Its main danger is that it does nothing dangerous... at first. There're no obvious side effects aside from heavily shrinking irises for duration of effect, no addiction, just major improvement of your mood, your intellect and your body's abilities. But as you continue to use it, the effects gradually grows weaker, requiring stronger dosages, all while you start suffering from decrease of your abilities without it... and then, one day you find yourself in a painful withdrawal, which would go for a while. From here, there would be only descent into deeper and deeper lows, until it eventually kills you.
• Greater-Scope Paragon: Imp has some higher ups to whom he responds, but we never learn to whom exactly.
• Groin Attack: While bribing innkeeper to let them inside with Tina (he was against them bringing women, likely expecting them to be prostitutes), Gnat lies to him that they are the private detectives investigating the disappearances of several teenagers, and warns him that Tina suffers from heavy withdrawal and would do anything for a dosage; if she somehow obtains it, he would find the innkeeper, and cut off both his balls.
• Hanlon's Razor: The AI which runs the city isn't evil; it's just terrible at doing its job. It can only maintain the system as is, but can never update it or expand, unless something gets destroyed beyond repair, forcing it to develop a replacement according to easy-to-analyse data — something it wouldn't bother with so long as everything "works fine". The story's main conflict is over the water tower, which's no longer sufficient for the city's population, but would never be improved by AI for as long as it stands, forcing Imp to come with a plan how to demolish it, so AI would replace it with something better, though it's just a part of a bigger struggle.
• Karmic Jackpot: Timothy at first thinks that helping Tina is not only a lost cause, but also a distraction from their task. When she starts recovering with the help of Gnat and Timothy, she gives them info about several channels to access the "wild" network, with at least three being viable; usually, you gonna pay a lot to learn about even one. Then, when she recovers completely, she reveals herself as being an engineer, just like Kenor, who was forced to "retire", and volunteers to join their cause.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Most members of the Imp's team are exclusively addressed by their aliases. The sole exceptions are Timothy and Kenor, but it's possible that the names are fake.
• Rescue Romance: After rescuing Tina, Gnat almost immediately falls for her. Timothy tries to convince him that it's a bad idea, since she's a junkie who has three-four years to live at best, and is a lost cause, but quickly gives up. Gnat, meanwhile, decides to help Tina to defeat her addiction, even if he would need to force her.
• Sex Slave: Basically, Tina's "role" in the cartel; she lets them use her, they gives her Karat; with nowhere else to go, she can only comply, despite not wanting to do anything like this.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Played for Drama; Tina restores her cognitive abilities after receiving her dose of Karat, and actually bothers with cleaning herself up, and stopping speaking like a junkie, but Gnat clearly sees it as a dangerous symptom of her condition worsening (just due to how strong the contrast is), and reduces the estimated time she has to live from five to three years.
• Sinister Surveillance: If you get caught breaking the city's systems, you wouldn't be locked out. Instead, a team of repairing cyborgs would follow you everywhere to watch over you, and fix anything you can try to break. If you try to break the cyborgs, they would be just replaced. If you try to hide, they would hunt for you until they find you — and continue following you. And if you really manage to trick them, the moment you make a mistake and they catch up with you, they would analyse how you did this, and ensure that the same method wouldn't work again. Mole's former friend and former member of the Imp's team, Kenor, was caught like this, and they were forced to cut ties with him to avoid being caught themselves, permanently. Kenor also lost his wife over this, as she was unable to cope with cyborgs constantly following Kenor.
• Skewed Priorities: Tina spent two days locked in a room, without any food or water. The first thing she asks after being rescued is another dosage of Karat, then she remembers that she's thirsty as well. Justified, as she's suffering from heavy Karat addiction, which would kill her in roughly three years.
• Snipe Hunt: In case the cartel would try to hunt down the guy who ratted them out to the cops, they would go after (non-existent) "Jake from Texas", who allegedly infiltrated their ranks, and who allegedly contacted the police.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: While on operation, Gnat and Timothy gets mistaken by the criminals (whom they presumes to be from a cartel) for the other criminals. They keeps up with that misconception, as otherwise it can end violently, with Gnat passing himself as a "Philippine gangster Mosquito". They puts up convincing enough facade, allowing them to peacefully "negotiate" (as part of this improvised cover) and retreat.
• Title Drop: When offered to join the team in the end, Tina says that she can be both "Mr Fix It" and "Mr Break It".

Loves Me, Loves Me Not tropes

• Amnesiac Hero: Sergey doesn't know how he ended up in Galina's body, nor he knows anything about who Galina even is. When he later meets Galina (who's now in his original body), it turns out that she knows just as little as him.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: As Sergey points out, his new body looks exactly like his "perfect woman" he spent thirty years waiting for. Now he got her, and feels no happiness over it at all.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Downplayed. A granny whom Sergey insulted early in the story gets revealed as an important member of the project (a psychologist), but doesn't play major role in subsequent plot.
• The Ending Changes Everything: Sergey and Galina spent the whole story trying to find out how they swapped bodies, but in the end it turns out that the more important question is not how, but why. They are the nearly-perfect match for each other, but due to being too different, just can't create that one spark which would start a flame — because they don't know how. The experiment (in which they agreed to participate, being desperate to find someone) gave them such opportunity, by temporarily swapping their bodies and creating a situation in which they can unite against a common problem, learning each other better in process — both by spending time in each other's shoes and by interacting with each other directly.
• First Law of Gender Bending: Subverted; at first, both main characters thinks that their condition is permanent, but in the end it turns out that all of this was only a part of experiment and they soon would return back.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: One day, Sergey awakes in a body of a woman called Galina, in a different part of the city, without any memory of how it happened. After struggling to adapt for some time, he finds his old body, which is now inhabited by said Galina, just as confused as him; neither of them knows each other. They are forced to unite to solve the mystery... only to fall in love. Awkwardness ensues, especially when things goes intimate. In the end, the whole plot gets revealed to be a part of experiment in which both characters volunteered to participate: temporarily swap the bodies to know more about each other (with memory being temporarily erased to not ruin the experiment) before their marriage.
• Good All Along: Turns out that the "nefarious agency" was actually on Sergey and Galina's side all along — the whole body-swapping experiment was done in agreement with them, and them working together to come here proves that the experiment has worked as intended.
• It's the Journey That Counts: Whatever they came through on their way to uncover the "conspiracy" made much more for uniting Sergey and Galina than whatever they learned in the "wedding agency", which was exactly the reason why the whole body swap has happened.
• Man, I Feel Like a Woman: Subverted; at first Sergey undresses his new body to examine it, but almost immediately gets distracted by the body being too frail and weak for his liking, and dedicates his time to training it. The next day, the body menstruates, which freaks him out as he remembers that women can go pregnant, and it scares him so much, he certainly forgets about any experiments for foreseeable future.
• Meaningful Rename: As they come at peace with the prospect with staying in different bodies for foreseeable future, Sergey and Galina swaps names to make it easier to adapt, addressing each other by names belonging to their current bodies, not the ones they were born under. They adapts very quickly.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body:
  • When Sergey "tests" his new body's physical abilities and comes to conclusion that Galina never even bothered to exercise, resulting in some weakling, the body's hormones briefly turns over and forces the body to cry out of shame, to Sergey's surprise.
  • After workout session, Sergey (in Galina's body) orders Galina (in Sergey's old body) to undress and go to shower; Galina, too shy to do so, asks him to undress too, only to realise that her male body now has an erection. She panics, not knowing what to do with that; Sergey just leaves, saying that she "would come up with something".
• Must Not Die a Virgin: Rationalising that they don't know what's awaiting them and whether they would make it back alive (and, if the operation would go really bad, it would be better to do it together than being raped), Sergey suggests Galina to have sex now, as it may be their only chance. For both of them it's the first time (for Galina — in terms of experience, for Sergey — it's the first time for his current female body), which leads to a lot of awkwardness at first, both because Galina is too shy, and because Sergey learns the hard way just how painful defloration can really be (he compares it to breaking the nose).
• Nice Guy: Yuri, when seeing Sergey (in a body of a frail woman) trying to drag a heavy generator, immediately offers his help, and brings it all the way to the apartment, keeping acting friendly despite Sergey repeatedly making rude comments. When they meets again later, Yuri remains just as nice and friendly as before.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: The wedding agency is indeed behind the whole plot, but not for some malicious intents — they were hired to perform this experiment by Sergey and Galina themselves: the whole thing is, besides scientific purposes, also aims to help them to fall in love (they are too shy to make a first move); it does its purpose perfectly.
• Second Law of Gender-Bending: Downplayed; after initial denial, Sergey gets at peace with a prospect of becoming a woman, but still decides to return back once the two weeks requested by the project's leader ends (he sees these weeks as an opportunity to learn more about the women from first-hand experience).
• Spotting the Thread: When Sergey mentions a photo where Galina was in green dress, Galina immediately realises that something is fishy, as she used it very briefly, so there's no chance she was photoed wearing it. She analyses the other clues they have (the letters both of them received, with address and mention of them being on vacation), and realises that they have another thing in common — weird wedding agency they visited shortly before; there, they did some weird tests (including brain examination), and were asked to take a long vacation, so these guys may be related to the whole event.
• Third Law of Gender-Bending: Played With. Sergey almost immediately gets rid of a dress, bra and makeup, and replaces them with sports suit, as it's the closest he has to clothes he's accustomed to wear (he doesn't return them back later), and later makes a knuckle for self-defence; he also tries to think as little as possible about the possible future, as things like pregnancy scares him. However, after learning that his old body is still alive even without him, he also realises that he's likely doomed to stay a woman, and later tries to get at peace with this fact. When he meets Galina (who, as it turns out, got transferred into Sergey's old body), he helps her to act like a man as well.
• Took a Level in Badass: Inverted, Sergey repeatedly complains that his new female body is much weaker than his old one (in fact, it's just plain weak in general), which forces him to train it from scratch, which is very hard and painful process for a fragile woman. In the end, he thinks that before they would swap back, he should use the time available to train Galina's body some more, as a double-gift for them both (while also train Galina herself to develop more willpower).

On Topic of Family Happines tropes

• An Arm and a Leg:
  • Nick remembers one recovery which didn't go well, requiring him to take out the guy called Tom in two turns — his legs first, the rest second. It was still a very good result, because at least they managed to reattach the legs back (he was still forced to quit doing drives, however); it was estimated that any other ender would have injured Tom's legs to the point where prosthesis limbs would be required.
  • Before he became an ender, Boomer used to be a diver. He retired after losing one leg, and now uses prosthesis.
• Benevolent Precursors: Whatever alien race has visited the planet before, they leaved the autonomous base intended to be used by humans once they finds it. Unfortunately, it didn't last for long enough. However, due to actions of the divers, more future-proof version was build instead, which did last.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Bor and Meta are secretly in love with each other, but both can't propose; they deals with this problem through mind-breakingly weird methods, all so they can avoid just saying "I love you". Bor threatens to quit the expedition, so Meta offers to lie with him and give birth to his children. Bor demands her undergoing psychoprofile optimisation (to everyone's shock), she agrees (to everyone's surprise). And then it turns out that the process supposedly failed on Meta, leaving her with original personality, but she puts a facade out of fear that Bor would dump her; unknowingly to her, Bor had secretly chose to cancel the procedure mid-process, because altered Meta wouldn't be Meta he needs. Since Meta pretends that she did undergo mind alteration, Bor (who's obviously aware that it's fake) now fears to ask her directly, because he doesn't know whether her showing affection to him now is also fake. Nick takes solving the situation in his own hands. After he manages to recover Bor from seemingly hopeless situation, the two finally proposes to each other and later marries.
• City with No Name: The planet where the whole story is set never gets named, despite the whole plot being tied to it.
• Dead Guy Junior: In their latest dive, Bor and Meta suddenly vanish without a trace, with their beacons immediately going silent. Since there's absolutely no way to recover them, they are considered to be dead. When Doe gives birth to her and Nick's son, they names him after Bor. Then it turns out that Bor and Meta, as well as another guy whom they presumed to be dead for forty years, have actually survived: they accidentally jumped back in time on so short amount of time that they ended up in the time where the human base was already presented, and it suppressed the beacon. By the time when the expedition succeeds and finds the completely terraformed planet, Bor and Meta have lived there for twenty years and now have two sons, while the third guy, called Michael, had long died... from the old age.
• Death World: Not much is explained about the local planet, not even its name, but some hints are given. The planet is inhabited by all kinds of dangerous creatures, who are very fast, and lethal enough to warrant heavy weaponry, which may not even be enough. It's also mentioned that raids (called "drives") without any casualties are very rare. The Earth-born plants and creatures planted on the planet (those who survive) evolve as well, becoming just as dangerous as endemic creatures, with "sabre-tooth rats" (actually evolved from gerbils) being dangerous enough to leave severe scars on humans when attacking.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: In the end, the whole plan finally succeeds; the planet gets terraformed and the aliens, due to being warned, leaves the base which lasts for millions of years and welcomes the new colonists. Even Bor and Meta, who were presumed to be dead, ends up being alive, living as a family for twenty years.
• Everyone Has Standards: None of the divers are afraid to die, they're risking their lives on daily basis after all, but psychoprofile optimisation is something they would rather not talk about, as it's something even worse. And now Bor completely seriously demands it from Meta, one of their own... and she agrees.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Each specialisation on the base is called rather self-descriptively. The starters starts the "drive" (time travel), the enders takes the divers and ends the drive, and divers, well, dive into the past.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: The humans from the human base (actually what's left of their spaceship), due to unpredicted side effects of the technology used for interstellar traveling, were all stuck in the past long before their time. Entire reason why they keep sending people on the mission (so-called "divers") is because they are desperately trying to find one specific time period in the history of the planet, which may give them a chance to survive. In the end, it gets revealed that the actual purpose of the dives is to retroactively terraform the planet to make it into new home for the ship's survivors; they've long gave up on returning home.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Played With. No one was able to come along with Meta, she was just too cold and aloof, but every male in the team was secretly in love with her. Which makes their reaction to her volunteering for psychoprofile optimisation all the more bitter (and likely making Bor into an outcast himself; at least Nick did start disliking him).
• Generation Ship: The human base unintentionally became one; it got stuck in the past for so long that current generation of the people on it never saw the Solar system, and expect to die long before the mission would complete. They took so long that even the technologies they use have evolved since the start.
• Godzilla Threshold: Meta considers Bor quitting being a diver to be damaging enough for them to agree for psychoprofile optimisation the moment he states it as his condition, freaking out the rest of marines, who disagrees with her that it worths it.
• Happily Married: Once Nick learns the whole situation with Bor and Meta, he arranges for them to finally confess to each other. Some time later, they throws two weddings simultaneously — Nick and Doe, and Bor and Meta (who finally quit their "master and servant" intrigue). Everyone were happy with them finally being happy. Then both Bor and Meta failed to return from a mission.
• I Did What I Had to Do: It's a secret, but actual goal of the expedition is to alter the history of a planet to slowly replace the local ecosystem, wiping out the local wildlife and replacing it with Earth-born plants and animals, retroactively (through a series of many time travels), so the humans can start anew there. The local life can be unique, but between it and survival, most humans would pick survival; those who may disagree are kept out of the loop until it would be too late to complain.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The first impression the readers would have of Bor would likely be of utter asshole, due to what he does with Meta, but later it turns out that the procedure had failed on her, and she fell in love with him on her own free will, without any alterations; Bor himself also doesn't try to use the power the procedure was supposed to give him to abuse Meta (except one case in the very beginning), showing that he has genuine affection for her. And then it turns out that he didn't reprogram her at all, turning off the equipment prematurely. All of his is a part of their consistent inability to propose to each other.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: At first, it seems that it's too late for Bor. Then another guy dies on the expedition in the same period (he was with Meta, but she made it, while he didn't), and Nick, using his program he finally managed to make working, successfully uses the second guy's beacon to search for Bor — and finds him, alive and well, just hungry. Nick recognises that by dying, that unknown second guy accidentally saved Bor's life.
• Loss of Identity: The person's personality can be "optimised" for someone else's psychoprofile, making them think and act in a way supposed to be perfectly compatible with that person's personality, but losing their own in a process. Different percents of "depth" can be used, with higher levels meaning less free will left. Usage of this tech is one of the few things which even divers consider too extreme. Bor demands Meta to undergo the procedure for him with 85% depth... and she agrees, over everyone's protests. The process doesn't work as intended, though, because Meta had too strong will to break; and then Nick realises that the process didn't fail: it didn't even start, because Bor deactivated it prematurely, of which not even Meta was aware.
• Love Cannot Overcome: Non-dives are very cautious with dating divers (of any gender), knowing that it means worrying whether they would make it back alive on daily basis.
• Mechanical Lifeforms: The Benevolent Precursors, possibly due to receiving the distress signal from the humans stuck on the planet, established a base with autonomous manufactories for them. However, after enough time passed, the cyborgs maintaining it became sapient... and started a civil war. Whoever survived, seemingly created their own civilisation (hostile to humans), but degraded three hundred years later due to deficit of metal, which forced them to turn on each other and die out.
• Never Say "Die": Justified. Like many professions which involve risking life on daily basis, divers and enders avoid using the words "death", "die", etc, and instead refer to perished people as "withered".
• No Antagonist: The story is about humanity struggling to survive on the Death World unsuitable to Earth-born life. All the "opposition" they face are the aggressive wildlife, and they aren't even the main focus of the story, being more of background lore.
• Our Time Travel Is Different: Time travelling into a past isn't hard; the hard part is to travel into the period you want, as any unexpected mass, like a comet, can ruin all your calculations and add several zeros to whatever time you expected, changing four hundred years into four millions. In attempt to find required time period, the humans on the base sends volunteers (called "divers") into the past with chrono-beacons (which can ensure that they can be recovered if they end up in the wrong period); two types of operators are used to control the procedure — "starters" (who initiate the process), and "enders" (who recover the people). Enders control so-called "recovery sphere", which can cut out the part of environment and send it to the base with people inside it (or, if the things go south, with parts of humans being inside) if something goes wrong, otherwise the stable exit (called "the circle") can be reached.
• Rescue Romance: Relationship between Nick and Doe (an ender and a diver, respectively) starts when Nick saves Doe from seemingly hopeless situation. Nick already had feelings for Doe, but she falls in love with him only after her nearly-miraculous rescue.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Justified; the human base is covered by some kind of a field which protects it from being affected by the changes happening on the planet, so the humans never gets their memory altered no matter what happens outside. That same field also makes it impossible to detect divers who ends up in the time period where human base already exists; Bor and Meta, pretty much alive, only gets discovered when it gets removed.
• San Dimas Time: The divers have only twenty days to do their task and return, because the chrono-beacon has that much time before its battery runs out, making recovery impossible and trapping them in the past forever.
• Secret-Keeper: Doe reveals to Nick the truth about Meta's psychoprofile optimisation failing (resulting in her remaining herself), because it's believed that enders should know everything about the people they work with, so they can predict their behaviour in critical situations.
• Servile Snarker: Meta may be "reprogrammed" to serve Bor, but it doesn't mean she would discard her usual rude and snarky personality. When Bor demands her to strip in front of everyone, she makes several snarky comments about condition of her body, pointing that he received a "damaged product". When asked why he did this, Bor explains that this was a demonstration: had he tried it with old Meta, she would have kicked his nuts. Meta immediately points what it's not too late to do so anyway.
• Shameful Strip: To demonstrate that Meta is now loyal to him, Bor orders to to strip in front of everyone, as old Meta would've never agreed to do something so humiliating. No one reacts well to it.
• Silicon-Based Life: Whatever creatures live on the planet, they have silicon-based biology (and ion-based information transmission within the body). They are very fast and very dangerous.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: This is a highly-guarded secret, but every expedition slowly changes the past, which in turn slowly changes the present. The purpose is to destroy the local ecosystem (extremely hostile to humans) and replace it with something suitable for humans (it's "us or them" situation), and to provide the aliens who leaved the autonomous base with enough info to ensure that whatever they would build would last for long enough to survive until the present, and be used by the humans.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: After what Bor did to Meta, Nick worries that he wouldn't be able to maintain professionalism while working with him, and that his heavy dislike for the guy would, if even for a moment, make him hesitant, which may cost Bor his life.
• Time Is Dangerous: One day, the humans learned about the other planet, suitable for colonisation, with unique lifeforms and... the signs of some advanced civilisation visiting it two millions of years ago. However, the technology used for star-crossing didn't work as intended and instead sent ships which didn't outright die back in time. The only way to go back in your present (besides just waiting it out) is by using chrono-beacons to tie you to specific time, which must be active since the moment you start.
• Tsundere: Meta is normally cold, sometimes even rude if pressed, but turns out that she does have feelings for Bor, as when he announces his intentions to retire, she protests and offers to do everything, even have a child with him, if it means keeping him in the team; when he insists on psychoprofile optimisation, which would basically make her his own slave if using specifics he demands (leaving Meta only 15% of her freedom), she still agrees. Process doesn't work as intended and she continues arguing with him, but when Bor tries to insist on Meta retiring from being a diver, she threatens to off herself right there and now if they wouldn't allow her to stay in a team with Bor (she actually cuts herself enough to spill some blood, showing that it's not an empty threat). Doe later reveals that it didn't work at all (and even later it turns out that it "failed" because Bor disabled the procedure himself), meaning that Meta acts like this on her own free will, with bare minimum of acting.

Walk Me Across Maidan tropes

• Abortion Fallout Drama: Liana, who was previously raped by several degs, gets along with Tobi, to the point when the things goes intimate. At later point Ignat sends Tobi to try with her, not caring how he would achieve this (even take her by force), just so he can get rid of him; Liana actually forgives Tobi, knowing that he had no bad intentions, and puts the blame on Ignat. When she learns that she's pregnant — and not from Tobi — she tries to make abortion by herself, which backfires due to poorly calibrated equipment and causes her death.
• Advice Backfire: Being tired of both the situation with Liana and Tobi being unable to shut up, Ignat advices Tobi to just go to her and try to bang her. Tobi insists that he wants more than just sex — he wants them to actually love each other, and he isn't sure about Liana reciprocating — but Ignat insists that then he should just do it by force; she does love him, she's just in too deep denial. Later it turns out that while Liana did forgive Tobi, she sees him as just a friend, and now hates Ignat, because her actual feelings were for him... It would only go downhill from there.
• Affectionate Nickname: Ignat used to call Luisa Astrid "my little star" while Luisa was still alive.
• After the End: The story happens centuries after the Wave devastated the galaxy, with humanity either dying or mutating. Earth in particular is mentioned to become one huge graveyard.
• Always Female: Technically, "munts" can give birth to both females and males, but males are almost always stillbirth; and if they aren't, they must be killed, to reduce the chance of genes responsible for the lack of arms surviving in the population, especially if they would restore humanity.
• Ambiguous Ending: The story cuts just before we can learn whether the plan had worked or not, leaving it up to readers' imagination.
• Anti-Hero: Ignat. He starts as a Nominal Hero who only participates in common goal because alternative is to lie down and wait for death, but slowly starts seeing a chance for their cause to succeed after all. Even then, he often acts like a jerk due to emotional burnout, but slowly reawakes his humanity as he finds someone else to care about.
• Appropriated Appellation: Tobi's given name is actually Tobias, but so few people call him that, even he grew accustomed to using "Tobi".
• Arc Words: The titular song. "Maidan" means "square" or "field" in Ukrainian; the phrase "walk me across maidan" from the song refers to the idiom "to live a life is not the same as cross the field", and most likely means to help someone to live their live. The song gets mentioned only once in the earlier part of the story, when Ignat is close to despair and giving up on his own life, but when he realises that there's still a chance for humanity and this world, and that only he can utilise it, that there's still hope left, he starts remembering his late friend Nadezhda singing that song more and more often.
• Armour-Piercing Question: Ignat asks Fiesta why she keeps defending the plan, even knowing full well that it's doomed. She still tries to defend it, but runs out of arguments very quickly, and just starts begging him not to reveal this to the others. He refuses.
• Bed Trick: "The Little Creature" catches Ignat while he dreams about Luisa (who looks almost just just like her). Due to the mix of her Blue-and-Orange Morality and telepathy, she tries to "help" him by... tricking him to have sex with her. When Ignat awakes mid-process and realises that it's not a dream, he gets squicked out, because by that point he grew to view her as his adoptive daughter, but puts the blame on himself instead of the girl. And it results in impregnation (at least, Veda estimates that the child would be more or less normal, given Ignat's pure DNA).
• Bilingual Bonus: Nadezhda and Bonus sometimes switch to their native languages (Ukrainian and English, respectively).
• Blessed with Suck: Nuddies are not stupid. They just have inherent telepathy... which is the reason why they never bothered to learn language, or develop culture. And they never would, forever remaining essentially wild. The seemingly great evolution ability actually doomed them. However, there's still a hope left: the children can be educated, just like normal humans, it's just that there's nobody to do so.
• Chekhov's Gun: Tobi says that Ignat should never set the stunner on max power when using on humans, or it would be lethal. Ignat does exactly that when he goes to avenge Tobi and Liana, being intended to kill the assholes, damn the consequences.
• Chekhov's Skill: Early in the story, Ignat deals with some unfriendly degs via his juggle skills, which he uses to throw rocks at them (which they mistook for him using magic). Much later he uses the same skills to disguise the usage of stunner, so the locals would interpret him killing the three assholes as him using "magic", and wouldn't risk messing with him, but instead would listen to what he says. It fools everyone but the village elder, who's significantly smarter due to being from the older generation.
• City with No Name: The planet where the plot happens never gets called by name throughout the whole story.
• Crapsack World: The post-Wave galaxy is extremely bleak world, and even minimum of hope for the future comes at the great price.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: It's mentioned that sometimes the Wave mutates microbes into something really nasty, to the point that people literally dissolving into goop in mere seconds is Not Hyperbole.
• Cryonics Failure: At one point of their journey, back when entire team was alive, Ignat's anabiosis capsule has malfunctioned. He was saved by Nadezhda, who was awaken out of order to fix the issue.
  Nadezhda: You have a big heart. I know. I had hold it in my hands.
• Cursed with Awesome: Fiesta thinks that munts were actually saved by their lack of arms, in some way. When telepaths, scared by (then freshly arriving) degs, chose to run away rather than coexisting with them (and reading their minds), it backfired on them because in the wild, they had lost their culture and gone animalistic, but munts, due to their disability, were forced to stay near their tech, and remained sapient.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Outliving all people he cared about — his beloved one, his friends, his family, and even the rest of humanity — has broke Ignat, making him hard, cynical and ruthless, and utterly devoid of any hope for the better future.
• Darwinist Desire: Munts can only mate with nuddies, because it's the only way their offsprings can preserve telepathy (a crucial trait for their survival), given the lack of male munts (it's complicated).
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: The locals are descendant of the colonists who gone wild and, in many cases, mutated. They don't operate on standards of old Earth (they don't even know that it exists). Ignat quickly learns this by observing Tobi. Justified, because it's the post-apocalyptic world, where the few mutants (pure humans long since went extinct) who preserved their sapience are struggling to not let the rest of humanity (who were not so lucky) to degrade even further and die out as well, and, if possible, rebirth from ashes, which requires eugenics as the last measure, done through forced impregnation of wild females, forced castration of wild males with undesirable genes, and stealing smart boys to be risen as jaggers who would keep the program going, because degs don't want to participate on their free will. This is best exemplified by Tobi's behaviour:
  • Tobi uses the stunner to stun a "nuddy" woman in the forest, and, after scanning her with some tech, rapes her (well, sort of: mid-process she decides that she's fine with it) with intent of impregnating her, which he sees as very important thing, despite barely understanding what he's doing. Ignat assumes that this is the only way the locals can reproduce at all.
  • Some time after the incident with female nuddy, Tobi meets a male one, scans him, and, not satisfied with result, casually castrates him, puts some "zelyonka" on the wound as antiseptic, and leaves. Ignat almost vomits.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Ignat, having losing everything that mattered to him, desperately looks to find something else to worth living for, to the point that he aggress to help Veda to save Liana solely because the "debt" for Veda saving his life gives him at least some motivation to do something.
  Ignat: It doesn't matter. It's not about the debt. I made it up. You see, girl, a man must have a purpose in his life. My purpose died in the space. Now I'm searching for something to replace it with. A surrogate. A debt is not so bad as a surrogate of the purpose in life, don't you think?
  Liana: Your soul is full of ashes. Nothing but ashes.
• Devolution Device: Ancestors of the people now known as "degs" (short for "degeneration") were hit by the Wave while they were still asleep in the anabiosis on their ship, permanently tainting their DNA and starting the process of "reverse evolution" (much faster than humanity made to it's current place; Fiesta explains it by saying that "going back is always easier than setting a new path"). This resulted in each new generation becoming slightly dumber than the previous one (as well as hairier). The village elder (two-three generations behind the current youngsters) is more or less sane, but nearly all young adult people are dim-witted, being on the level of teenagers or lower (which freaks out Ignat, as it means that the process starts to speed up), and are likely to devolve to apes very soon. Fiesta estimates that they wouldn't stop at apes, and continue devolving further; she doesn't know where the process would stop (if it would), and Ignat considers that they are beyond saving and not worth bothering with.
• Dolled-Up Instalment: Originally, this story was standalone, like the rest of the Harsh Tales. However, later the plot about the Wave devastating the galaxy became canon in Shumil's "flagship" series, The Tale of the Dragon, which set the events happening specifically in Jafar's native world.
• Dumb Is Good: Tobi, the dumbest character in the cast, is also the friendliest, with most smart ones being jerks of varying calibre.
• Dwindling Party: What was initially the four-people team died out one by one (Nadezhda and then Luisa when their ship was hit by the Wave, then Bonus on a crash-landing), until only Ignat survived.
  Ignat: "We are lucky", as Bonus used to say when there were four of us. "We are immortal", as he used to say when there remained two of us. Now, I'm alone.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • This planet may be harsh, but Tobi (who was born and grew up there) repeatedly shows that he's not comfortable with many local customs.
    • Tobi may be perfectly fine with casually inseminating some random "nuddy" woman because he's trained to do so, despite not understanding why, but he at least makes everything in his powers to ensure that she would like it. He also feels uncomfortable doing it with virgins, because it causes them pain.
    • He isn't supposed to take this into account, but Tobi still feels bad over inseminating "nuddies" who are already "in relationship", and never does that, despite even his mentor saying that it makes him a bad jagger. Ignat comforts him.
    • Tobi's mother was a "nuddy" (non-sapient woman), of which he was ashamed, and refused to acknowledge her as his mother... until she was killed because she became a burden for a tribe. That's when Tobi decided that it's too much for him, and chose to leave his tribe for good; soon afterwards he met his new mentor, Corinna, who trained him as a jagger and gave him a purpose in life.
  • Ignat may be a burned out cynic who no longer cares about anything or anyone, but even he shows disgust to what's going on on the planet:
    • When Liana mentions that it's standard practice to "recruit" future jaggers by stealing children from deg settlements and training them, Ignat points that normally someone who does that kind of things deserves to be killed.
    • Ignat initially refuses to participate in the munts' program to save the planet, as, no matter how noble their goals are, their methods are just too repulsive for him. Then it turns out that the plan was a dead-end all along, and he decides to find another way.
• Face Death with Dignity: Ignat's ship was hit by the Wave, damaging it and causing the chairs to be literally teared out. Nadezhda only had time to scream to everyone to unbelt themselves — knowing full-well that she has no chance to do so in time herself. Unfortunately, Luisa also failed to do it in time, and died next. Only Bonus and Ignat (their respective partners) survived...
• Fake Wizardry: Ignat exploits the locals being so superstitious and believing in magic to not just punish the people responsible for the deaths of Liana and Tobi, but make a show out of it. He stealthy kills the two of them via stunner (disguising it by them dying due to him throwing rocks, charged with some "magic"); the third one runs away, and gets hit with the rock, but not the stunner charge (Ignat missed him)... but he dies anyway from sheer fear, which only reinforces the effect. Ignat uses this opportunity to warn the others that they should never disobey other jaggers ever again.
• Formerly Sapient Species:
  • Two out of three Human Subspecies have lost (or about to lose) their sapience as result of the Wave-induced changes to their genes:
    • Degs, true to their name, keeps degrading with each new generation; it's estimated that just few more, and they would be no longer humans — and no longer sapient.
    • Nuddies used to be normal aside from their telepathy, but made a mistake of running away into wilderness, where, with no need for language, they promptly regressed into animalism. However, later it turns out that they didn't lose their mental capabilities, they just never bothered to develop them, and while adults are beyond saving, children can be educated.
  • Turns out that if eugenics program continues, entire humanity would lose sapience, irreversibly; the reason for this is because it relies on crossbreeding between nuddies and degs, not taking into account that degs' stupidity is dominant; the resulting hybrids would be just as dumb as them, so if they would also lose the telepathy, as intended, it would made the situation worse, not better.
• Frazetta Man: Downplayed with degs; they look very close to apes (because they're actually gradually devolving into them), but while they are certainly barbaric and can be quite ruthless, they are not inherently evil, at least not all of them.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: No matter how much Ignat has survived, Fiesta doesn't accept it as an excuse to act like a jerk towards everyone else.
  Fiesta: I got it, you have the emptiness in your soul, but why fill it up with filth?
• Future Primitive: The descendants of the human colonists who survived on the planet have long since mutated, resulting in three genetic lines. Munts have preserved most of their knowledge, albeit they are struggling to maintain their numbers due to certain physiological quirks, but two others were not so lucky. Barbaric degs just keeps degrading, doing some sort of backwards evolution from human to ape, while "nuddies" have developed telepathy... which cost them the culture and the language, forever regressing them into animals, even if very smart.
• He Knows Too Much: Fiesta refuses to let Ignat go, now when he knows that their plan not only doesn't help, but actually speeds up the degradation, because if the other munts would learn this (for now, it's known only to her and two others), it would devastate them, and still wouldn't fix any problem, only poison their last days with guilt. If Ignat would try to leave, she's ready to shoot him. It gets subverted, though, because Ignat still leaves, and Fiesta fails to gather courage to kill him.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": When "receiving" his own nuddy "wife", Ignat reacts negatively and calls her "a little creature". By the time he warms up to her, this "name" sticks and becomes official.
• Honor Before Reason:
  • Tobi was so strongly indoctrinated to not use a stunner against other degs that he refuses to do so even when facing the villagers indirectly responsible for Liana's death, all while screaming "I will kill you!". It was interpreted as a threat, and he was beaten to death.
  • When Ignat announces that the shuttle can't land, due to malfunctions of the ship it's attached to, and instead would drop on the landing pad, devastating Fiesta's tech-village, Fiesta rushes to it and tries to seal herself inside in attempt to preserve at least the library, rather than evacuate along with Ignat. The explosion indeed destroys everything (they were lucky that reactor didn't detonate, averting something even worse), and she gets mortally wounded by the shards of concrete which pierced her lung.
• Human Subspecies: Due to mutations in human genetics on this planet, three distinct lines were evolved (or, in one case, devolved):
  • "Degs" (short for "degradation") are the wooly barbarians, stupid, but still sapient. It's implied that they are slowly regressing to apes (and possibly beyond). They are descendants of humans who were hit by the Wave while they were still in space; it didn't kill them, but perhaps it would've been more merciful if it did.
  • "Nuddies" (called that because they aren't hairy, unlike degs, and never bothers to dress themselves) looks like humans, but are no longer sapient (or, rather, they never develop past the level of small child, as they don't need to). This is caused by them all being telepaths, which, with them living in the wild, works against them, preventing them from maturing (emotionally or intellectually) and to develop culture or language. The degs treat them like animals — smart, easy to train, but still animals. However, if the child is taken from them at the very young age, they can be properly educated, as Ignat realises at some point; it's just that no one ever tried.
  • "Munts", all-female subspecies of nuddies, preserved their intellect, but paid for it with the lack of hands; they run so-called "tech villages" and are trying to preserve what little there's left of civilisation by teaching degs (as much as they agree to learn), training them as jaggers tasked with eugenics program purposed to force humans to preserve and develop the genes responsible for sentiency. Similarly to "nuddies", they're telepaths, but they didn't degrade, due to lack of arms forcing them to keep near their tech to survive.
• I Did What I Had to Do:
  • The methods used by "munts" and their jaggers may be amoral, but it's the only chance they have to prevent what's little left of humanity from degrading further and dying out, and they wouldn't miss it. If it means abducting deg boys from their mothers to raise them as jaggers, or forcibly impregnate female "nuddies" and castrate male ones with undesirable genes, so be it.
    Liana: Yes, we do steal children and raise them as jaggers. I don't like it either, so what? We must protect humanity as a species. We would have produced our jaggers by ourselves if we can, but we can't.
    Ignat: You think this excuses you?
    Liana: I don't think. This is very simple. Two centuries later, the last tech-villages would vanish. We, munts, would die out. Degs would go wild, forget the language. Nuddies are already wild. Only the descendants of jaggers would remain humans. This is what we, munts, are living for, why this world still exists. If you know another way, just tell us. We don't.
  • Ignat warns Fiesta that the ship he just summoned (containing pure, untainted human DNA) is gonna drop the shuttle on the landing pad of her tech village (likely devastating it beyond repair), due to being too damaged to land normally, she understandably panics and calls him an asshole, as it's the only thing she has left. He remains silent, but in his private monologue counters it with them having no other choice to reach the ship (and its cargo)... which still doesn't make him feel good over it.
    Ignat: I may be a jerk, an asshole. But I had to temp the cyberbrain with a landing pad. I had to prepare the facts in such a way that there's no alternative. That the only way would be to drop the shuttle — and by this restore balance of the ship's mass. The closest to a SOS beacon landing zone is the landing pad. It doesn't fit for the ship, but it does fit for the shuttle. A sure option. Which did work. It means, I'm right?
• In-Series Nickname:
  • Nadezhda Kavun was quickly nicknamed "Little Vulcan" by the other three members of the team.
  • Donald Price's friends calls him just "Bonus". Or, rather, used to call.
• Insistent Terminology: Tobi stubbornly refers to all kinds of sex as "insemination".
• Irony: Lampshaded; as the old saying goes, "the hope dies last", but Nadezhda ("hope" in Russian) was actually the first one to die.
• It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: Back when they started, munts thought that they are doing the good things by crossbreeding degs with nuddies; back then, percentage of degs with intellectual degradation was deemed to be "acceptable". They were unable to predict that their mutation would develop and become stronger — and more widespread. Now, this program threatens to horribly backfire, resulting in hybrids who would lose the telepathy, but still wouldn't develop intelligence, wiping out the sapience for good. Only three munts are aware, including Fiesta, who keeps it secret as they can't do anything about it, and the truth would just poison their last days with guilt.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Ignat is... not very pleasant guy to be around, and not even characters in-universe consider his history to be an excuse for him acting like this, but as he warms up to the locals, he starts showing that not everything inside him is dead yet.
• Kick the Dog: The real reason why Ignat sends Tobi to Liana is not to help their relationship; he's just tired of Tobi's inability to shut up. Fiesta calls him out on this selfishness, especially since it broke Liana's heart (she was actually in love with Ignat by that point).
• Kindhearted Simpleton: Tobi may be dim-witted, but he's a good guy and always acts nice and friendly — in fact, he's the nicest person in the story.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: After talking with Fiesta and learning that the munts' "plan" to use eugenics to restore sapience in the local humans was doomed to fail due to fundamental flaws, Ignat realises that it's now up to him to save the planet — not for himself, but for all the people he grew attached for, and for the rest of humanity who ever suffered from the Wave. How he intends to do so? By finding the storage with untainted DNA samples; it's the last chance humanity has left.
• Meaningful Name: Nadezhda means "hope" in Russian and Ukrainian:
  • There's a saying that "the hope dies last"; Nadezhda was the first one to die, long before the story even started.
  • In the beginning, seeing no hope in sight, Ignat remembers Nadezhda's song only once, as something she used to sing, and quickly forgets it. As he regains hope, he starts remembering it more and more often, and starts singing her song in his mind, possibly to help himself gather resolve.
• A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Liana accidentally reads Ignat's dreams about Luisa, and shares his pain; it's enough to make her cry. It's also the moment when she briefly sees Ignat which is no more — not yet broken into cold, cynical husk of his former self, and it harms her even more.
• Motor Mouth: Tobi talks very much, very fast, but not very informative, to Ignat's annoyance. He drops that trait later in story, as Ignat's usual grim mood starts affecting him as well, making Tobi similarly grim and quiet.
• Mr. Exposition:
  • Veda gives Ignat brief explanation just what goes on on the planet, and disappears for most of the story.
  • Fiesta gives Ignat the whole story of the planet, explaining how humans ended up on the planet, and which wave of the colonists mutated into who.
• Name That Unfolds Like Lotus Blossom: Nuddies do have names, but due to them both being telepaths and not having a language, they use mental images and emotions instead; when Fiesta (a telepath herself) "translates" the Little Creature's real name to Ignat, she tells him something rather long and awkward to use, so they sticks with the Little Creature anyway.
• Negative Space Wedgie: The Wave — unexplainable phenomena, which came from outside of the galaxy, and utterly devastated it by altering the physical laws themselves. There's no way to fight it, it's Run or Die situation... if you can outrun something completely chaotic and capable of moving faster than light. It has absolutely unpredictable effects on any objects it interacts with (even stars may explode — or shrink into small balls with temperature close to absolute zero). And it's lethal to any life it goes in contact with, unless it can hibernate until the danger passes, and even then it's just a chance. Even the weakened Wave can cause massive mutations to humans. The main character, Ignat, is a Sole Survivor from one of the ships trying to run from it, only to being hit with it twice...
• No Antagonist: The plot is about survival in the post-apocalyptic world, and the high cost of this survival. There's no (sentient) force opposing this struggle, only the unlucky circumstances.
• No Nudity Taboo: Munts never dress themselves, and see nothing weird about it. Then again, how you would dress yourself without arms? They can't do anything about it, so they were forced to discard their shame.
• Only Sane Man: The village elder is much smarter than the rest of degs, and much more cunning than them. He never believes in Ignat's "magical" abilities, recognising him using the stunner to kill three of the villagers, and, once he learns that Ignat isn't a jagger, tries to exploit the situation to gain some more authority by "showing the jagger his place". This actually scares Ignat, as it makes him realise just how quickly the degs are degrading: the village elder is just two generations apart from the rest, yet he acts normal, while they are closer to children in terms of intelligence.
• Poor Communication Kills: One deg (we later learn that it was Tobi) was in love with Liana, it was mutual, but there was one problem: Liana, being a "munt", was afraid to give birth to boys, as they can be born armless, like female munts (if they survive at all), while the guy wanted children. How she dealt with the situation? Instead of explaining anything to him, she chose to run away, which resulted in her being captured by other degs, who gang-raped her. Some time later, she has sex with Tobi, and afterwards learns that she's pregnant... from one of rapists. Liana dies due to poorly-calibrated equipment she used for abortion. All of this was avertable had she bothered to just talk with Tobi and explain the problem to him.
• Posthumous Character: We get brief glimpses of personalities of the three other members of the team who didn't make it, from the perspective of their sole surviving comrade. Whenever Ignat says, thinks or hears certain things, he remembers what his late comrades used to say or do.
• Prematurely Grey-Haired: Towards the end, Fiesta, due to stress over realisation that she actually doomed humanity instead of saving it, goes completely grey-haired in very short amount of time. Ignat started prematurely greying out as well, though it's less noticeable, comparing to Fiesta. They are in their fifties and thirties, respectively.
• Race Against the Clock: As degs just keeps degrading, becoming dumber and dumber with each generation, it wouldn't take much time for them to become too dumb to be of any use for the project. Munts must succeed until then... or watch the last chance of humanity to ascend from ashes to crumble in dust.
• Reality Is Out For Lunch: The Wave not just breaks the laws of physics (chemistry, biology...), it sometimes rewrites them, locally. The stars with negative temperature approaching absolute zero, pitch-black water and ice on what was Earth once (which... suddenly changes back to normal water at random), reversed evolution, body-dissolving microbes, blackholes which appears out of nowhere, and, of course, the Wave itself moving faster than light... the list can go on, except there's no one left to fill it.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: When Fiesta tries to blame Ignat for bringing only death and destruction, he tells her to shut up, and says that it's her and other munts who're slowly killing this world. Because their plan was doomed to fail right from the start: degs are so corrupted that during their crossbreeding with nuddies their "intelligence" would nearly always prevail in resulting offsprings; if the plan succeeds, they would create hybrids who have degs' stupidity without nuddies' telepathy, killing off any chances humanity has to survive.
• Replacement Goldfish: Subverted. In the second half of the story, Ignat receives a new "wife" — a tagalong "nuddy" whom he (in a mix of affection and condescension calls "the Little Creature". She looks shockingly similar to Luisa, and, due to her telepathy, tries to imitate her personality to please Ignat and ease his pain, but the sheer age difference makes him unable to even think about her as his possible mate, so he starts thinking about her like an adoptive daughter of sorts (for which Fiesta mockingly calls him "daddy"). Then she catches him when he dreams about Luisa, and tricks him to sleep with her; Ignat is not amused.
• Rescue Romance: Soon after being rescued, Liana falls in love with Ignat. He doesn't reciprocate.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After Liana's death, Tobi rushes to village to avenge her by killing her rapists. It ends with him being killed. Ignat later avenges them both by killing two out of three rapists/killers (the third one dies from sheer fear).
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: What Ignat has survived prior to ending up on this planet had a big toll on him, and killed off any hope he had for the future, making him the devastated cynic his's now. He also constantly relives the events of his friends' deaths, especially in his dreams.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: Veda explodes at Ignat when he tries to help her with the broken cyborg (for munts, touching their cyborgs is a major "no-no"), and attacks him when he does it over her protests. Mid-fight, Ignat accidentally grabs Veda's tit... and then they kiss each other. Coitus ensues — thrice in the same day, including one time on Veda's initiative later at night. They continue this kind of "relationship" even afterwards. What's weird is that they don't like each other, they aren't even friends, and outside of bed, they only interact because they have to.
• Smart People Play Chess: Munts spend their free time playing chess via network set up between their tech-villages.
• Sole Survivor: Ignat is the only member of his team to survive the crash landing — and possibly the last (non-mutant) human still alive.
• Super Breeding Program: Ultimate goal of munts is to to restore the pure human DNA by careful crossbreeding between degs and nuddies. Nuddies are already nearly-human, the only trait which must be destroyed is their telepathy, as it suppresses their sapience, while degs are devolving to apes, and are only involved because they can be trained to perform the required task, and their DNA suppresses telepathy in resulting hybrids. Unfortunately, it later turns out that the project only makes the situation worse.
• Survivor Guilt: Ignat starts remembering his lost friends and what they used to say while they were still alive at slightest provocation, and it always makes him even more sorrow than usually. He especially laments the fact that he outlived Luisa, because she was a love of his life, and Bonus, because he directly blames himself for his death: Ignat failed to warn him in time to give him a chance to prepare for crash landing (Ignat refuses to accept as excuse the fact that they only had four seconds to react).
• Take a Third Option: After spending enough time on the planet, Ignat realises: degs are beyond saving, and their DNA is so tainted, they simply can't produce sapient offsprings no matter with whom they breed, so munts' plan was doomed right from the start; but just cancelling the project would still mean extinction, just slower. Instead, they should concentrate on educating "nuddies": they can be educated, it would be hard, but certainly not impossible, they already know that.
• Teen Pregnancy: Liana was only seventeen (in Earth years) by the time of her death due to botched abortion of a Child by Rape.
• Title Drop: In the novel's opening, Nadezhda sings a song, firstly in Ukrainian, then in Russian, and explains that the Ukrainian word "maidan" used in it means, depending on context, either "square" or "field", and remembers a saying "to live a live is more than just cross a field"; so, "walking someone across maidan" means helping them to live their live.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Fiesta calls Ignat out on sending Tobi to Liana (which he did not even to help them, but out of completely selfish interests). Not only he broke Liana's heart, he also ensured that her cild wouldn't inherit telepathy (Tobi is half-deg), which is a bane for munts.
  • When "Little Creature" tricks him to have sex with her in his sleep (she feels that he's missing Luisa, and wants to mend this pain), Ignat blames himself for it rather than her. Fiest calls him selfish, as he didn't take into account what his "daughter" wants: the whole idea with him becoming "adoptive father" is purely his, 'sshe'' always was attracted to him as a man.

The Cat House tropes

• Affectionate Nickname: Silva calls the Man "Boss".
• Ambiguous Ending: The story cuts just when the Man must decide whether to reveal his invention to humanity, or make everything to bury it.
• Breather Episode: If reading the "tales" in order of their publication, the (relatively) light-hearted Cat House comes right after extremely bleak post-apocalyptic story.
• Cats Are Mean: Downplayed with Silva. She's still loyal to the Man, but she's snarky and sarcastic, and tend to make mean jokes.
• Deuteragonist: While most of the story is told from the perspective of the Man, sometimes the narrative switches to the PoV of Silva, showing her views and opinions on what's going on and on the Man.
• Dumbass No More:
  • At some point before the story starts, on his friend's request, the Man has built some experimental equipment purposed to research how the brain functions, and tested it on his cat Silva. Due to unpredicted side effects, it boosted Silva's intellectual abilities. Heavily boosted. She still has child-level intellect, but it's a cat we're talking about. Silva quickly became addicted to the procedure, as after five years of being "dumb animal", she now feels smart and empowered. The only problem is that the cat brain has much lesser limits of how much information it can hold before starting malfunctioning; Silva fears that if she runs out of memory available, she would either start forgetting things, or go insane.
  • After initial success with a cat, the Man tries the same contraption on mentally-challenged boy (his father was an alcoholic). It works and cures him after several sessions.
• Emotions vs. Stoicism: Silva constantly argues with the Man about necessity of "instincts" (including love), with Silva being vehemently on anti-instinct side. Except, it's just a mask she uses to hide her envy: the humans have not only stronger intellect (no matter how much Silva's abilities have improved), but also much longer lives.
• Gadgeteer Genius: The Man is great with creating various unique contraptions out of what he has available; amongst the other things, he made a prototype of AI (he chose not to develop it further), a helmet capable of strongly amplify the intelligence, including in animals, and a collar which allows his cat Silva (on whom he tested the aforementioned helmet) to talk via build-in dynamics.
• Loss of Identity: Silva thinks that she's a cyborg of sort, with half of her memory being within the brain, and half — within the helmet; Silva is extremely afraid to take off the helmet, believing that it would cause her to degrade back to normal cat, losing herself in process. Unknowingly to her, the helmet only allows to awake whatever potential the brain already has, and can be safely removed once the work is done; the Man actually has turned it off more than once, but, to not cause Silva any stress, only while she was asleep.
• No Antagonist: The story is about main character's struggle to make a hard decision — whether to reveal his invention to humanity (and face the fallout), or bury it (and live with the fact that he wasted so much potential). But there's no some "bad guy" to oppose him.
• No Name Given: The Man never gets called by name in the story, even when interacting with other humans, including neighbours. Silva occasionally calls him "the Boss", but only in her private monologues.
• No True Scotsman: Most other cats no longer accepts Silva as one of their own, fearing and distrusting her. The only exception is one young male cat called Persik ("peach"), who was taken away from cat mommy at younger age and was raised by humans, but Silva just can't think about building any "relationship" with him, as the age gap makes if feel awkward.
• Oh, Crap!: One day, Silva finds herself unable to use the helmet's sound system, and freaks out. Then the Man checks the helmet, and it turns out that its battery run out, requiring a replacement... meaning that Silva has to spend some time without the helmet, something she's extremely afraid of due to (imaginary) risk of Loss of Identity. However, after spending ten hours without a helmet without any side effects, she finally realises that there's nothing to fear.
• Required Secondary Powers: Silva may be sapient, but without additional equipment, she has no ways to communicate, because she's a cat. Without a helmet, she can't talk, and can only rely on using a laptop (it has a keyboard suitable for a cat). After the incident with malfunctioning helmet, the Man gifted her with a special collar with its own sound system.
• Sadistic Choice: The Man faces a difficult choice: either publish his invention, and open a can of situations where humanity would face moral dilemmas with uplifted animals, or bury it — and destroy the only chance to help mentally-challenged people to cure their problems, or even help humanity to reach its full potential. Silva suggests him to try the contraption on himself and see whether he would come up with a solution, but that would open another risk: it may not work on already formed man, leaving him "the normal" across geniuses if he would release it... or it would work, leaving him the lone genius amongst the normal people if he wouldn't. The story cuts before we learn what he chose.
• Sapient Eat Sapient: Discussed. Silva believes that humans wouldn't risk uplifting animals, because not only it would clash with their pride, most humans would be unable to eat another sapient being, and thus wouldn't risk uplifting animals like cows. However, later the Man thinks about it again, and comes to conclusion that it wouldn't stop them: when facing the choice between going vegan or killing sapient animals for meat, a lot of people would choose meat. If they also uplift carnivorous animals, they would face the same situation: they are carnivorous, and have to eat meat to survive.
• Small Role, Big Impact: The Man's friend Pyotr is the one who asked him for help with certain equipment (Pyotr is a medic, the Man is technician), which ultimately led to creation of the mind-boosting helmet. He's also the one who came up with an idea to try it on cats (and how to do it without cat resisting). He never appears past that (well, technically, he never appears on screen at all), but it's his request which kickstarts the plot.
• 20 Minutes into the Future: The story was written in 2000, but is set in 2018. It assumes the widespread popularity of virtual reality technology, to the point that even small children have easy access to it, but other than that not much is different from the perspective of the time where it was written.
• Uplifted Animal:
  • A Man accidentally turns his cat Silva sapient after series of experiments with a new contraption which interacts with the brain (it's a side effect, he didn't mean to).
  • Silva explains to the Man why humanity wouldn't try to uplift the other animals, using a cow as example. Firstly, it would be humiliating for the humans: the cow would be smarter than them, but wouldn't be able to sustain itself, so humans would feed and clean the cow and its barn, while it would think for them, which would raise the question who's the "king of the nature" here; humans are too proud. And they wouldn't be able to send the cow to a slaughterhouse either, because doing so with a dumb animal is one thing, doing so with a sapient being is another. However, some time later the Man decides that sufficient amount of people wouldn't be stopped by the latter argument.
• What If?: What if the technology would be developed, capable of amplifying intellect — both in humans and animals? Unlike most other stories in this series, this one mostly discusses the possible consequences, though two cases of direct effects (the uplifted cat Silva, and the cured boy with inherent mental disability) are shown to demonstrate what the technology is capable of.
• The World Is Not Ready: The Man decides that not only he must hide his inventions from humanity, but also discredit the technology itself, so no one would bother to do researches in that sphere. It wouldn't be easy, but he's ready to work. However, he quickly runs into a dilemma when he learns just how useful the invention is for the humans themselves, as it can cure seemingly hopeless mental disabilities and help thousands, opening up a major dilemma.

On Topic of Gender Equality tropes

• And the Adventure Continues: The goal — create a sapient male — succeeds, but it's not the end, it's only beginning of a much greater plan; as now the boy would always be on the run; it's up to him to spread that sapience across humanity... or die trying.
• Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: In this setting, humanity's evolution went a different way; as result, only females are sapient; males are of dog-level intelligence, capable of learning couple of words like parrots, but still animalistic. The whole plot is about an experiment to create a sapient male, which most of society isn't ready to risk, going as far as to violently shutting down such projects.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Since males in this world aren't sapient, being closer to animals (even the choice of words fits the animals, not humans), it's considered perfectly acceptable to treat them as the animals: collar them, train them like dogs, use them as brute force, sell them, sterilise them, put them down... However, not everyone are okay with this, with repeated attempts to amplify males, none of which succeed.
• Gendercide: Rampant abortions of males (no one wants to give birth to "an animal") in recent years caused major decrease in their numbers, especially in cities where they tend to die early due to health issues. And decrease of male numbers predictably caused decrease of female numbers as well, as there are fewer males to procreate with. Analytics estimate that in the long run, humanity risks extinction. Some also see another problem: with only one gender being sapient, the genes responsible for sapience are unstable, and can be lost completely unless the project of creating sapient males would be completed.
• In Spite of a Nail: Exaggerated; even in the world where only females have developed sapience, the civilisation evolved in more or less the same way. This is done to not overcomplicate the plot, because the history is not the focus of the plot.
• Medical Rape and Impregnate: Justified. Rampant abortions of males caused social crisis with potential to develop into global catastrophe. To fight this, the government changed the rules, and now convicts undergoes forced impregnation (always with males), with one baby per year of imprisonment. It was still not enough, forcing them to change the laws again to ensure that there always would be someone to convict; on the bright side, they allowed women convicted for non-serious crimes to spend that time on domestic arrest instead of a prison.
• Super Breeding Program: Attempts to breed the sapient males:
  • Eleven known attempts to create sapient males were made in the past, the first one (and the only one with allegedly successful results) in 370 b.c. in a monastery, but people freaked out when one of the boys started talking, and killed everyone involved. Now it's presumed that the "talking boy" was actually hermaphrodite.
  • The present-time researches considers to use brain implants to amplify the males at least in this way.
  • Towards the end, another attempt gets made, with ready embryo; they only needs a woman willing to bear that child, and the only one they have with fitting blood type is a main heroine, Toni. She’s forced to go on the run, as the government starts hunting for people involved, but she survives, and gives birth. A boy indeed turns out to be sapient.
• What If?: The story describes the alternate world, where only females are sapient; males are animalistic (not even sentient). It's not very pleasant to live, even if you're a woman.

They Must Love tropes

• Arrested for Heroism: Maxim, Tommy, Elvira, Len and Joanna are almost certain to be kicked out from the space academy, and would be lucky if they wouldn't be arrested and sued for what happened to the Moby-Dick (particularly Len, who was the captain of the ship), and only few people are aware and value what they actually did — they gave a planet a chance to develop the sentient life. This is something the alines would judge the humans by, this is the kind of people they wanted to train by starting this expedition in the first place. Constantine is the first one to realise what the crime humanity is gonna do by punishing these guys.
  Constantine [to Gleb]: Tell me, do you feel old?
  Gleb: In thirty five?
  Constantine: No, the wrong word. Not old — a dinosaur. A relict of an old age. For three years we thought of ourselves as smart, strong, all-knowing. Considered these kids to be the green newbies. Then the newbies went into space — and started moving the planets. Do you understand? We were unable to even think about this. For them, it was easy! They are strong, they — can! Who are we after this? We, who are trying to decide their fates...
• Batman Gambit: Gleb always expected that his cadets would disable the cameras on the ship on the very first day — that's why he installed them so blatantly; that would calm them down at first, and later would ensure that they wouldn't expect that the rescue would arrive if something goes badly, making them rely only on themselves. Meanwhile, the true surveillance system would remain undiscovered and keep him informed. However, the second system was discovered, too, forcing Gleb to come up with a "plan B": tell them about illegally installed containers with sleeping gas ("surprise" from the Moby-Dick's former owners), and ask them to not touch anything else after getting rid of containers, just in case there are additional "surprises"... and even that worked only temporarily.
• Bilingual Bonus: Despite being written in Russian, at some points the novel uses English words (spelled with Russian alphabet):
  • The novel uses English word for Tommy's nickname, "Speed". Justified, because Tommy himself is bilingual American.
  • As Russian lacks direct analogue for the word "outlaw", Joanna uses the English word instead of coming with translation.
• Bittersweet Ending: The planet Macbeth may now gain a chance to evolve its fauna to sentience, but the people involved in the project are almost certain to being kicked out from the space academy and would be lucky if they wouldn't be prosecuted.
• Career-Ending Injury: Subverted; Joanna's arm trauma seemingly dooms her space career, but Elvira suggests her to transfer to Mars; they have much laxer standards there, and as long as her arm would function after a surgery, they wouldn't care much.
• The Chessmaster: Gleb isn't sure whether Maxim is very talented leader who leads subtly, from the shadow, to make people achieve the goal without them realising anything, or he's a manipulator who exploits the others to advance his own goals, people be damned. Turns out that the truth is in between: Max is goal-oriented, and would do anything to achieve that goal, including manipulating his friends; and his goal is to make Joanna's project to succeed at all cost. He arranges for himself to be recovered instead of staying on Macbeth, and convinces the admiral to not interfere with the experiment (which is great), but he also lies to his friends that the project would take a year and half, while in truth it would take at least four years, which they finds out after going too far to retreat now (even if they could); naturally, they aren't happy.
• Cock Fight: Double Subversion. At first it seems that a battle between Tommy and Maxim over Elvira is inevitable (Max even prepares the boxing gloves), but then Max reveals that the next step of his plan requires him to leave, which makes Tommy "the winner" by default. Then it turns out that Max arranged for Elvira to "gift" Tommy a bag... containing those same gloves, and tell him that "Tommy is gonna need them later", which makes Tommy to immediately realise that once this expedition is over, Max is gonna try again.
• Cruel to Be Kind: What Elvira and her friends do to Macbeth has caused severe damage to ecosystem and wiped out everything close to the former poles, but in the long run, it can give the local life a chance to evolve into land-dwelling creatures (by giving them said land), because right now, the evolution is just stuck.
• Culture Police: The culture slowly gets purged of elements encouraging xenophobia, where the aliens are portrayed as monsters, hostile to humans, so the possible first contact (which is estimated to happen soon) wouldn't be spoiled by fear and disgust. The works aren't outlawed per se, but stops being (re)published. The War of the Worlds is listed as specific example of works being hit by this practice.
• Death World: Any living being on Macbeth is evolutionally adapted to kill each other — and the human visitors (though they can't eat them: they are mutually poisonous to each other). This planet's lethal biosphere is the sole reason why the humans have any interest to the planet at all, and even then, only because it's useful for the special test for cadets; the planet can't be colonised without wiping out its biosphere to the last creature, and even then the planet's geography makes it highly unsuitable to build any settlements on it.
  A warm shallow ocean filled with life. Huge teeth, venomous stings, mighty claws, stingy tentacles, electricity, barbs covered with poisonous slime. Thousand and one way to kill each other. Everyone eats everyone. Such bloodthirst, such level of lethality were never encountered anywhere until then.
• Faking the Dead: Because the government wouldn't agree to invest into Elsa's plan to give the planet a chance, Maxim suggests that they should do whatever they can, then fake the catastrophe; the volunteers would stay to continue the project, the rest would evacuate and lie that the volunteers perished, so no one would search for them (and the ship). The ship would be hidden in the asteroid belt until the time would come to evacuate. The people who volunteers to stay (or, rather, gets tricked by Max to volunteer), besides Maxim himself, are Elvira (as it was her idea in the first place; she's also the one who volunteers genuinely), Len (the captain), Joanna (a programmer) and Tommy (a pilot). However, Max decides to set up the situation leading to himself being discovered and transferred to Earth in the last moment for the reasons known only to himself. The plan doesn't go as intended anyway, because they failed to deinstall all of the surveillance systems, allowing Gleb to notice that the ship is still functioning and hiding in the asteroid belt, and alert the military, forcing Max to think on the go to prevent the project from being forcibly closed.
• Friend to All Living Things: It was established that only humans capable of loving life — all life, no matter how ugly, disgusting or alien it may look — should be allowed to make a first contact if they finally meet another sapient race. To find people with such qualities, the planet Macbeth was chosen, precisely because it has nothing lovable at all. Such person quickly reveals herself — it's Elvira, a resident ecologist. It's her who comes up with the plan of "saving" the planet from evolutionary stalemate in the first place.
• Hidden Purpose Test: Two organisations (space fleet and scientists), represented by Gleb and Constantine, respectively, united to send the team on the planet Macbeth with allegedly research mission (in fact, the planet was already researched, but researches were classified). They both needs to test the cadets from their respective organisations, but not in a way the cadets expect:
  • Gleb's cadets would deal with their stated task in few days... leaving them with month and a half of boredom. They are supposed to choose a leader (they don't have one at the start) and rebuild their ship into something suitable for research (they do have resources, and only needs initiative), as right now, it's purely civilian spacecraft which was an elite liner once, but was sold cheap as no one needs it anymore (rich people have private yachts, less rich prefer not to waste money).
  • Constantine's cadets were told only one phrase, that they "must love all life". This is indeed what they are supposed to do — they must learn to appreciate all life, no matter how dangerous, ugly or alien it can be — only that kind of people should be allowed to make a first contact with alien species. For that purpose, they are sent on the planet with the most dangerous, ugly and alien biosphere known.
• Honor Before Reason: Len disables all cameras on the ship (knowing full-well that it would doom his career before it even starts), as he considers it to be unethical for the crew to be spied upon.
• In-Series Nickname:
  • Tommy Snicker (one of the pilots in the expedition) is also known under nicknames "Snickers" and "Speed", the last one being related to his piloting skills.
  • Tommy's physics professor was allegedly nicknamed "the Elephant" out of mix of fear and respect for his personality.
  • People often calls Joanna "John". The reason for this is because she used masculine pronounces in radio communications back in the days of her training, as she thought it may help with rampant sexism; it didn't, and only resulted in them starting mockingly calling her "John". Because she always reacted when someone called her "John", instead of ignoring it, it became her actual nickname; in retrospect, she considers that the plan wasn't very smart.
• Luck-Based Search Technique: Anatoly discovered the second surveillance system purely by accident, because he decided to check literally every wall on the ship "just in case" and noticed that some of them hides spying tech installed behind them.
• The Man Behind the Man: Maxim always fakes his true intellect to ensure that he would be close behind those on the top, but not actually take their place, because he prefers to remain in the dark and manipulate the others into achieving his goals; that way, he gains all the power but not all the responsibility. In this expedition, he allowed Len to take the leadership, despite estimations that he would take the role himself. Gleb is unsure whether he's just a genius who prefers to avoid unwanted attention, or a careerist who exploits the other people for his own profit, and sees the expedition as a chance to find out. In the end, Maxim once again plays the role of the shadow leader, who sets up everything, but stays in the shadow himself, knowing that when the time would come, he would be the only one to not receive any glory, despite playing a crucial role — protecting the project from being shut down.
• Multinational Team: Space fleet includes members of many different nations; for that reason, knowing and using more than one language is common. It's known for certain that, amongst people sent to Macbeth, there are at least Russians (Maxim, Leonid, Stepan), Americans (Tommy is specifically from Texas) and Chinese (Len is mentioned as being not the only Chinese, though specifically the only one with Korean ancestry), with nationalities of Joanna and Elvira (who's also addressed as both "Elly" and "Elhen") being unrevealed.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: According to Tommy, his physics professor was nicknamed "the Elephant", because he was "the true beast" (possibly due to never forgetting his grudges). The nickname was said with both respect and fear.
• The Needs of the Many: Maxim justifies his actions by stating that things like "morale" or "ethics" only apply to individuals; politics (which is amoral by default) only cares about the groups, with individuals' problems being ignorable. This approach permanently soils his relationship with Gleb (who vehemently disagrees with "the end justifies the means" approach), while Constantine warns him that one day, his lies would come to bite him in the ass.
• Oh, Crap!: Gleb busts the cadets' ploy to faking the ship's destruction and panics, thinking that they have something nefarious in mind. He contacts the military who then tries to order the rescuer to return (when he refuses, they just orders him to stay alert), then sends their own team to investigate.
• Planetary Nation: Not much is revealed, but it seems that space colonies (like Mars) have enough autonomy that you can actually gain their citizenship instead of some Earth nation's.
• Point of No Return: One of the operations fulfilled while working on the planet damages the Moby-Dick so much, it becomes clear that when they return, they would be in so much trouble, they may as well finish what they started.
• Secret Test of Character: Amongst the other things, this expedition also tests one specific person amongst its members, Maxim Karelsky. This guy is either a genius who prefers to remain in the dark to not attract too much attention, or a ruthless manipulator and careerist. This is the chance to tell who he truly is. Turns out that he's the mix of both, having good intentions, but not-so-good methods.
• Single-Biome Planet: Macbeth is nearly entirely covered by a shallow ocean, with land being represented only by occasional small islands devoid of animal life. There are two landmasses on the poles, but both are covered by thick ice and completely lifeless. Elvira suggests to "help" the local biosphere by rotating the planet in such a way that the land would now be on equator, so the creatures would be able to reach the land at some point in their evolution.
• Shout-Out:
  • The scout drone "William Shakespeare" has discovered a new planet; it was called "Macbeth".
  • Elite space liner turned science vessel is called "the Moby-Dick".
• That Came Out Wrong: When Stepan states his uncertainty whether the Moby-ick can even be called "the ship" (it's very unresponsive), Tommy "comforts" him by saying that it's like four "Titanics" at once (meaning size). That has the opposite effect.
• Surveillance as the Plot Demands: Len and his friends gets rid of the blatant cameras. Then they disables the less blatant cameras, and even reverts the main computer to older state to ensure that Gleb and Constantine can't spy on them via it. But then it turns out that they still failed to find some other systems, allowing Gleb to find out that the alleged catastrophe didn't destroy the ship as it was claimed.
• Tempting Fate: Tommy tells Elvira a (mostly, if not entirely) made-up story about how he and Stepan have passed a physics exam. In it, Stepan seemingly botched his exam, by giving a wrong answer to a question about deceleration in the hyperspace. Professor (nicknamed "the Elephant") sarcastically replied that if Stepan's student record book would return after being thrown (similarly to hyperspace deceleration in Stepan's answer), then he would gain an "A", otherwise it's a failure. Fortunately for Stepan, a record book hit Tommy, who was just outside, who then threw it back. The Elephant did fulfil his promise.
• Token Minority: Len is stated to be one of the few Chinese in the expedition, and only one of them to have Korean ancestry as well.
• Tuckerization: Elvira is named after a real person whom the author knows. The prototype's poetry frequently gets quoted within novel, as if it was written by novel's Elvira.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: The story alternates between the events happening on Macbeth, and events happening on Earth (mainly from the perspective of the expedition's curators Gleb and Constantine).
• Unreliable Expositor: When Tommy tells Elvira the story about his and Stepan's times in the academy, it's unclear what is true and what was made up to make the story funnier; at least the part about student record book is an old anecdote of which even Elvira is aware.

The Adequacy Percent tropes

• Anachronic Order: The epilogue, chronologically, happens a long time before the start of the story; the reason for that is because it's where the main revelation happens.
• Arc Words: "The adequacy percent", whatever it is, is highly valued by Eskar, who uses it as the prime criteria when making judgements. Attempt to find just adequacy to what ultimately leads the main characters to uncovering the true origin of their civlisation.
• Artificial Limbs: Fishes grows and attaches to their bodies artificial arms. First models were two-fingered, later ones increased it to three, and most advanced one are four-fingered; after Alim's (mis)adventures, five-fingered hands became highly desirable.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Atran and Alim both joins the tourist group in search for "extreme". Atran group quickly loses one of them to a rampaging squid, while Alim's group gets trapped when avalanche blocks the river through which they traveled, cutting the way back.
  Orchak: You wished for danger, extremal tourism, Alim. We've got it.
• Big Bad Wannabe: The part two opens with several paragraphs about new character, Unets, inborn hunter who always pursues his goal, only to abandon once it ceases to be of interest, be it actual prey or some achievement/position. At some point, he started pursuing political career and even made it into the Council — only to realise that there's someone above the Council, who pulls the strings from the shadow, and for as long as they're in power, he would always remain only second one. He learns that this person is Eskar, and comes up with a plan how to kill him and usurp the power. Then the perspective moves to Eskar, who reveals that he'd killed Unets and his lackey, before they achieved anything.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The story takes into account that all characters are fishes, with all the quirks in their biology: different reproduction method, non-human senses, etc. There's also a one trait shared by all sapient species: ability to physically attach themselves to "neurospot" (presented on all sapient species and all genetically-engineered animals) and link their minds.
• Brain/Computer Interface: All sapient species have so-called "neurospots", which can be connected to establish mental link. It can be used by two individuals to directly share memories and thoughts, or by operator of genetically-engineered animal (who have those spots as well). When used to connect with animals (specifically, smart enough, like sharks), caution is advised: one must always keep attention where their thoughts and emotions ends, and starts the animal's; otherwise, there's a risk that part of animal's emotions permanently diffusing into your personality, not to mention that separating with animal with whom you've bonded would be way more painful for both.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Played With. Non-sapient species and certain other terms (like "hands") have mostly the same names, albeit with letter of few missing/added/altered. Sapient species don't use their normal names, instead they gets called by their qualities (like "hunters"). Revelation in the end suggests that mangled human words are indeed that — the loan words which were warped for some reasons.
• Child of Two Worlds: Atran meets Anta, one of testers of his project, and learns how bleak the life of a middle link of the chain is; she's a failed experiment (she's an anglerfish who can't use her luminary as it blinds her), can't live in the Darkness (due to aforementioned luminary), but she also can no longer return to the normal society, as she's "ugly" (being a half-anglerfish) and normal sun is too bright for her; she's also forbidden from reproducing. All she (and other three similarly unlucky ones) can do is to stay on the border and sadly sing. She doesn't recognise Atran when she tells him about this, and the feel of shame prevents him from revealing himself. He later learns that he's... not very popular amongst test subjects, from another fish Falin who does recognise him.
• Creative Sterility: Fishes have major issues with making new breakthroughs and inventions due to always operating on cold logic (their civilisation is thousands of years-old, yet their development is painfully slow). When observing actions of Alim and Atran (both have unlocked their emotions), it was noticed that it directly affected their scientific abilities, positively, though it gets decided to not risk repeating the process in anyone else, and for now, just observe how it would end.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Orchack gets adapted to dry land (becoming a newt-like creature) and sent on the surface to see how it is. At first, all goes fine, but then he accidentally runs into a salty swamp. He dies in agony from the resulting poisoning.
• Darkness Equals Death: The Darkness is the deep abyss, to where few fishes dares to swim, as it hides countless dangers, from predators to hostile environment. Merely working here puts you at risk of developing disabilities, like deafness (a professional disease for all signallers). Because of this, it's barely researched. Atran's story is all about finding a way to colonise it.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Falin attacks Atran, thinking that he's protecting Anta from him (seeing him as cruel jerk). After accidentally injuring himself by his own sound attack and getting saved, Falin learns that Atran really means no harm. The two quickly becomes friends and colleagues afterwards, especially since Atran starts working on helping the "failed" experiments, particularly Anta (with whom he actually starts a relationship).
• Driven to Suicide: Eluga reacts to Okun's death and subsequent cannibalising by jumping out of the water, on a shore, where she promptly dies. Someone snaps at her and starts calling her on egoism (she offed herself while the rest continues to work to save themselves), to which the others reacts badly, as the two were together since childhood.
• Due to the Dead: Iksha gets carried by the stream and falls on a rock below the waterfall, breaking her spine over a rock and paralysing below the waist. She spends her last hours creating a little dam to ensure that the rock would sink and no one would repeat her fate. When she gets found few days earlier (her work done, allowing the fishes to escape their trap), she receives a proper funeral instead of being eaten, despite food shortage still being an issue.
• Emotions vs. Stoicism: It's believed that emotions are sign of animalism, and should never take over the cold logic, at least not too far. Naturally, both main characters (and some of their friends) to varying degree breaks the innate anti-emotions block, and their dual nature tears them apart. Experimental groups from their projects aren't restricted at all, and don't feel bad over it.
• Empathic Healer: Irahna can use merging to relieve the others of pain by taking it to herself. Given the harsh conditions of the lake where the group got stuck, it took a heavy toll on her, making her unable to move on her own when they finally frees. There're hints that it's her own innate gift, rather than her species' trait.
• "Eureka!" Moment:
  • Alim accidentally causes yet another avalanche, undoing days of work, and angrily throws a rock... only to notice that if it gets thrown out of the water, it flies way further, and realise that by throwing the rocks on the shore, they can clean up the avalanche way quicker.
  • When Eskar presumes that Atran wants to improve luminaries to make them act as the light source "even in the darkness", Atran realises: he can make them act as the light source in the Darkness, the eternally-dark abyss, which would allow to start colonising it as a way to solve the Overpopulation Crisis.
  • The next day after discussing with professor Altus the way they can make mobile luminaries, Atran comes up with alternative idea: instead of bothering with mobile luminaries, they can adapt to the Darkness themselves, as they normally don't need that much light anyway. On a downside, it would make the depth-dwellers genetically incompatible with the rest of the population, but you have to sacrifice something.
• Fantastic Caste System: Different species of fishes have different traits which makes them best fits for certain jobs (to the point that species themselves are called after those jobs, or certain traits). While there's no set of rules about which jobs you can or can't take, some species are just tailor-made for certain tasks; later we learn that all sapient species are products of genetic enginery, produced from one basic, now-extinct species. "Castes" are equal in their rights, and Council which rules the society has representatives from all casts.
• Fingore: Iksha damages one finger on her hand, and has to bite off what's remained of it. She knows that, if they make it out of there alive, she would be able to replace it (she plans to add improved, for-finger arms).
• Foreshadowing: The twist in the end ( that the fish didn't develop naturally, but rather were uplifted) doesn't come out of nowhere, there are many hints towards it along the text:
  • Atran asks how certain details about the sound deep underwater were discovered, and no one can give him coherent answer; it's just how they were taught. Another fish decides to check in informatorium, but finds nothing, only that this information was added six thousands years ago — and no one knows by whom.
  • Korpen points that hands aren't natural product of evolution, and that only intelligence could've created something like this, not nature. What he doesn't mention is just how such concept was born: it's yet another technology which just appeared out of nowhere.
  • Alim comments on their civilisation developing "unnaturally": according to Atran's theory, up to certain points, additional members adds to the group's total intellect (he presumes that it maxes out at three), but when it starts increasing, the group becomes dumber: mob can't agree on anything and everyone pushes for their own interests (unless there's small group above them who can coordinate them), and fish society is run by a Council which consists of hundred of people, yet works effectively; either that theory is wrong... or there's some mind above the Council. Later, we learn that this mind is Eskar — an insanely old fish who, for whatever reason, isn't compatible with everyone else for the purpose of merging.
  • Remembering about Atran's theory, Alim asks Rigla whether she knows what makes the fishes motivated to work. While she completely misses his point, Alim tries to point that no one knows how and why fishes originally started working, what pushed them from animalistic life.
  • In the part two, Atran tells Alim that knowledge extremely often comes from some unknown source, and that no one ever manages to trace it. He did, but remained quiet to avoid being killed (like it happened to Unets and another member of the Council), and only tells Alim that this source is no one else by Eskar, who deliberately covers all traces of his investments into science, and whenever he assists with something (like he did help Atran), he later alters records to give them sole credit and erase his involvement. Eskar is ridiculously old, but regularly adheres the rejuvenation procedure (which Atran believes to be just a cover, as he doesn't actually need it), and Bala previously compared him to a rock. Atran doesn't know what's with him, but believes that he's sort of emissary of the unknown greater force. Another clue is that he just seems to know about upcoming dangers years before they become apparent (even when it wouldn't be possible), and steps in to prevent them — all to achieve some "adequacy percent" and follow some linear development.
  • One of the fishes voices his theory that all now-existing sapient species were genetically engineered as subspecies of one, now-extinct species. But how they became sapient, if there was no eugenics program back then?
  • When Atran comes up with a solution to the problem of would-be anglerfishes (that they're blinding themselves, making their luminaries useless), Eskar makes yet another "adequacy percent" comment, and mentions that "they've developed bioprojector" — the word unfamiliar to other fishes, but clearly known to him. It doesn't go unnoticed.
• Formerly Sapient Species: One of the reasons for eugenics program in fish society is to prevent it, as for them, sapience is very unstable trait, and can be very easily lost without careful control; just one mistake can spell doom on entire society if those genes evades culling. And even with the culling, there's severe Overpopulation Crisis. Early test subjects in both adaptation projects are indeed non-sapient, as they're just to test survivability.
• Fountain of Youth: At some point, the fishes have developed a technology which allows them to rejuvenate their bodies, making them essentially unable to die from old age.
• Furry Confusion: There are both sapient fishes, and non-sapient sea animals, including fishes, of varying intelligence.
• Heel Realisation: When Atran meets Anta, he sees the price of progress — the failed mid-links in the chain are unfit for either world, and are extremely miserable. He decides to make everything in his power to improve their situation; the end result is two, essentially, falling in love.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Parts' naming mirrors main characters' development. Part one is named "The Extremal Tourists", as they're just tourists there, and their interest to certain spheres only starts to manifest. Part two is named "The Scientists", and it's where they starts to experimenting in attempt to find a way to actually reach the new frontiers. Part three is named "The Leaders", and shows the final steps of their long journey.
• In-Series Nickname: Anta's friends commonly calls her "Firefly", to comfort her for being "wrong" anglerfish.
• In Spite of a Nail: Despite absence of humans, more or less the same names for species (both animal and plant) were developed (in one scene, characters outright comments on weird name for the plant, sea kale, wondering whether there's a "fresh water kale"). The ending shows that it's not a coincidence.
• Interspecies Romance: Alim and Rigla belongs to different species, yet still starts a relationship. While not unacceptable, it's considered unusual by standards of the society. It doesn't last for long, with them breaking up when Alim decides to marry Ardina (who just broke up with Atran over him refusing to put down Bala). Though while cold logic tells that it was the right decision, the heart still feels pain for Rigla, even though he can't find the right word for it; the marriage isn't happy for Alim. He later gets a second chance when Rigla joins his science team.
• It Can Think: Sharks are not sapient, but at the very least sentient, albeit they can only communicate with their operators when mind-linked. Unlike sapient fishes, they're driven by emotions rather than logic. They do have a potential to develop into sapience, but fishes sees it as a dangerous thing, as, being genetically-engineered, they lacks proper ability to merge, plus, their world already suffers from Overpopulation Crisis. It's because of that, Atran's shark Bala (whom he accidentally semi-uplifted) must be put down, or she may spread this to the other sharks, with possibly very dangerous long-terms consequences.
• Killed Offscreen:
  • Bala dies from old age during Time Skip between parts one and two.
  • Soon after introduction to Unets, we learn that he was killed by Eskar before he could realise his plan.
• King Incognito: After meeting Anta and realising that she didn't recognise him, Atran can't resist and keeps visiting her, trying to get closer to her, feeling responsible for indirectly making her life so bad. One of Anta's friends, Falin (who did recognise Atran) eventually confronts him and angrily tells him to leave her alone. When Atran replies rudely, Falin attacks (and gets injured due to lack of experience in using his sound attack abilities), requiring medical attention, after which Atran does reveal to Anta his true identity (with understandably negative reaction).
• Last of His Kind: It gets presumed that Eskar (unless he's a mutant) is the last surviving member of some species which existed before rejuvenation was invented. Later, it gets presumed that he's not from that planet at all, and his "adequacy percent" is his attempt to match their world to his own lost civilisation. While believable, it gets rejected, as it doesn't explain his ability to predict future of this planet, like being able to take preemptive measures fifty years prior to volcano eruption and evacuating people (with most of those who disagreed indeed perishing). It gets revealed that he's a robot, made by humans, and not is indeed not native to this planet.
• Loophole Abuse: Eskar kills Unets and his lackey (both members of the Council themselves). He gets away with it, as it was in self-defence: Unets planned to push for a new law which would enforce a limit on how long one can live, knowingly preparing it specifically to target Eskar (who was born before rejuvenation was even invented). Then he proceeds to explain why the law would be fundamentally broken and harmful anyway.
• Marriage of Convenience: Ardina dumps Atran, no longer seeing him as perspective after he refused to put down Bala. She marries Alim instead (forcing him to break up with Rigla), and pushes him to compete against Atran (going as far as search for weaknesses to exploit, rather than improving themselves), seeing him as the way to increase her own standing. Korpen later tells Alim to be careful with her, clearly seeing her for what she is.
• Married to the Job: Atran breaks with his girlfriend Ardina when she forces him into choosing between her and Bala (whom he has to either take care of, or let die), and he refuses to euthanise Bala.
• Motivational Lie: The trapped fishes gets told that all they need to survive until the workers with squids arrives and demolish the avalanche. In truth, there's a dried up river bank behind it, so workers simply wouldn't be able to reach it. That lie's purpose is to keep people motivated to keep trying to clean up the avalanche, rather than just fall into despair and then certainly die.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Downplayed when Alim "saves" Rigla. Turns out, she wasn't at any real risk, and the situation was designed specifically to wash out those who're too weak to continue, before the actual danger starts, where their inability to persevere may spell doom on them — and Rigla being unable to continue on her own shows that she may be not ready to this, so, by "helping", he actually put her at more risk.
  • Atran's merging with the shark Bala not only affects his own mind, diffusing some of shark's emotions into his mind, but also semi-uplifts Bala, making her smarter and bringing on the verge of developing sapience — a very dangerous thing, as sharks are genetically-engineered, and thus lacks ability to merge on their own, while also being way bigger than the other species, and much wilder, unable to live in fish society; once enough of them develops into sapience, disaster would happen sooner or later — and this is without taking into account Overpopulation Crisis, which is already severe.
• No Antagonist: The main enemy here is the environment, not the other characters.
• No Ending: Atran and Alim discovers the ancient human spaceship, and its AI offers their civilisation to access the data stored inside; what they would do with it is up to them, as the AI's task is done.
• No Party Like a Donner Party: When one of the fishes from Alim's group (Okun) dies under another avalanche, his corpse gets eaten by carnivorous part of the group (who can't feed on plants, and risk to starve to death otherwise), along with another fish's caviar (it's not fertilised, so it's not child murder; though later it gets stated that caviar was supposed to be destroyed anyway, under Population Control rules). The idea of doing this understandably squicks out Rigla, and Alim only manages to calm her down by forcedly merging with her and showing her why it's necessary evil.
• Oh, Crap!: When Alim's group gets trapped in a lake after avalanche which cut if off from the river, Piksha starts checking whether water still can be filtered. When asked why, she in turn asks Alim whether trees (which are gonna get flooded due to waterfall continuously bringing in more water) can live underwater, and when he says that likely not, points that the trees would die then — and start to rot, poisoning the water. Alim realises that with entire forest dying, the lake would become a death trap, and panics.
• Old Flame: With his emotions starting to awake, Alim realises that he can't forget Rigla (even if he doesn't know the word for it yet). During two-years Time Skip, he often absent-mindedly called Ardina "Rigla".
• Organic Technology: All technologies used by the fishes are actually genetically-engineered sea lifeforms. They also mastered medicine, and can alter their bodies for certain tasks, like adding hands (it's actually mandatory procedure performed on any newborns).
• Our Nudity Is Different: For many fishes, hands are akin to intimate parts, and showing them on public is borderline obscene; so, of course, there're the ways to hide them in the special pockets. Not everyone shares this view, and generally, younger generations are more casual with it, with only older generations seeing them as something shameful.
• Overpopulation Crisis: The territory available to fishes is severely limited due to them being aquatic-only creatures with no means to access dry land, or terraform the rest of the planet to suit their needs. In combination with them developing rejuvenation procedure, it resulted in their population increasing so much that not even Population Control they've installed being sufficient enough measure; they need new territories. Basically, the main plot is all about finding the ways to adapt to new territories, previously uninhabitable for them, with both main characters trying different approaches: Atran aims to the depths of Darkness, and Alim seeks the way to adapt for dry land.
• Population Control: Due to living space being limited, fishes being explosive breeders, and fishes developing rejuvenation procedure long ago, procreation is strictly regulated; it certainly helps that fishes reproduce differently than humans. In addition to restriction of who can reproduce and when (besides general limits, some fishes may be prohibited from reproducing at all), there's strict procedure on which young fishes would survive selection and allowed to live; we later learn that it's highly important to cull all non-sapient fishes to avoid degrading back into animals, with 50-60% of all young not making it — in both phases of the culling (roughly 6-7 new fishes out of hundred). Even knowing the need to destroy caviar, this is always a highly traumatic experience for young females, so they need someone who can support them, even if they can't actually procreate.
• Punny Name: All names are modified names of fish species, which just misses few letters (or have some added/changed); names of the animal species are formed in the same manner. It starts making sense after revelation that the fishes were uplifted by a sentient robot, acting on request of its dying human master.
• Putting the Band Back Together: When Alim gets carte-blanche for pursuing his project of conquering dry land, Korpen volunteers to join him, even if it means demotion comparing to his previous position. Alim decides to gather the rest of their ill-fated tourist group, those who showed themselves well back then: Irahna, Ambusia — and, of course, Rigla.
• Red Herring: Unets gets set up as potential major villain... and gets quietly disposed of, offscreen, before he even starts acting on his plan. Neither of protagonists ever learn of him existing.
• Rescue Romance: While she wasn't at actual danger back then (as it later turns out), Rigla clearly fell for Alim after being carried by him when she got too tired to swim on her own. It quickly developed into actual relationship.
• The Reveal: Turns out that fishes didn't develop into sapience on their own. Thousands of years ago, a human ship crash-landed on the planet, and human, in his last living hours, ordered the ship's AI to do everything in its powers to help that planet's sapient population in their development; if it fails to find any, it should make them. The rest is history; and Eskar is its avatar on the planet. All history of fishes' civilisation was essentially kickstarted by accident.
• The Rival: Zigzagged Trope. Atran and Alim becomes competitors, as they have separate projects (Alim wants to adapt for dry land, Atran — for the Darkness), but the government would likely only pick one to finish, the one deemed more perspective; but when the time comes to choose which one to pursue... It gets decided that both can coexist. But later, after talking with Atran, Alim realises that the rivalry may actually exists, as the way to encourage both sides to compete and speed up their development... or as a hidden ploy to bring one of them into realisation while other one would be shut down — but which one Eskar wants to win, and which one to lose? All Alim knows is that he should continue, as if the intended winner isn't him, then at least it wouldn't be as easy to shut down his program if it shows the progress first. And then the the two works together anyway, as neither can progress without other side's help. The end outright makes entire conflict moot.
• Robotic Reveal: Eskar ultimately turns out to be a robotic fish, created specifically to coordinate the living fishes in their uplifting.
• Sacrificial Lion:
  • While not the first casualty in total (in either storyline), Iksha is the first major character to die, showing how really dangerous the situation is for Alim's group.
  • Orchack becomes the first pioneer of exploring the dry land... only to die due to tragic accident. His death reminds the team that dry land isn't just fun, it's still hostile new environment, to which they're awfully underprepared. It also teaches the team to never send explorers by alone, always working in pairs.
• Settling the Frontier: Major part of the story is dedicated to fishes trying to adapt to new conditions, so they can set up colonies and save their civilisation. Because they are fishes, the new frontiers are cold dark depths — and the dry land. Both are unsuitable for their kind, requiring them to undergo modifications of their bodies in order to make new conditions survivable. Since the story is told from their perspective, the new territories are described to look as alien as possible, purposely setting up similarities with humans colonising other planets.
• Single-Target Law: Unets tried to pass a law which would limit for how long one may live, specifically to put out Eskar. He didn't care that it would endanger the Lore-Keepers, who wouldn't be able to transfers all their knowledge to apprentices, thus making their knowledge lost forever — and, as gets pointed out by Eskar, attempt to exclude Lore-Keepers from the law would make it fundamentally broken and unfair. So, killing Unets before he could push this law was not only act of self-defence, but also protection of entire society.
• Stable Time Loop: One of theories about Eskar's origin is him being time-traveler, trying to set up for creation of the future which he came from. It gets rejected as just too insane to believe, even if it explains everything.
• Take a Third Option:
  • Atran can't leave Bala as is, as if her condition spreads to other sharks, it indeed may be very dangerous. He can't just let her being slaughtered, either. He, instead, convinces his professor that she's a part of important, years-long experiment he's gonna conduit, which would require them living separately from other fishes and observing where it may lead and what they can expect, justifying it by saying that something which happened by accident once, may happen by accident again, this time unnoticed, and they should know what to expect. Professor agrees.
  • It was supposed to be a competition between two projects — either colonising dry land, or colonising the Darkness. But after analysing both projects, and realising that they aren't mutually exclusive (while both requires creating new species), it gets decided to pursue both projects simultaneously.
• Time Skip:
  • Several years have passed between the end of part one and start of part two — enough for Bala to die from old age.
  • Part three starts 12 years after the end of part two.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: The story alternates between two main characters, Atran and Alim, each having their own plots. Atran gets more and more interested in researching the depths of the Darkness, while Alim, who was already fascinating with the surface, after surviving his experience when he has to exit the water and crawl in order to survive, gets determined to find a way to "conquer" it.
• Unusual Euphemism: When someone dies, sometimes it's told that they "have freed space for young ones".
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Mbala (a fish from Atran's group) dies every early into novel, killed by rampaging squid, who cut her in half with one bite.
• What If?: The story describes the alternate world, where evolution took the different path, resulting in the underwater civilisation of sapient, non-humanoid fishes; the term "human" is consistently avoided: the sapient ones are called "ganoids", and non-sapient "fishes".
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Both Alim and Atran starts feeling new feelings not available to them before; it would actually become a plot point later.
  • While cold logic suggests him that he did the right thing by staying with Ardina over Rigla, as he and Rigla are of different species, in heart, Alim feels extreme pain, which he can't explain, as there're no words for it. Later, when circumstances puts both Ardina and Rigla into same team, Alim can't describe Ardina's weird behaviour, lacking concept of jealousy. Later he learns that all the fishes who were in the same group with him have also unlocked their emotions, as effect of stress.
  • Atran starts feeling pain over his friend Alim not coming to say goodbye before leaving to continue his research in remote area (as if his friend "betrayed" him), which also confuses him, though he at least has his contact with Bala (emotion-driven creature herself) to suspect as the cause of such change in logic/emotions ratio. He later finds more mind-alike fishes amongst his own test subjects, who unlocks their emotions early on, and don't feel of it as anything bad.
• You Are in Command Now: Alim, due to showing initiative, becomes the third leader of the tourist group (alongside Irksha and Orchock, who's Iksha's Number Two) when it gets trapped. When Iksha dies and Orchock gets put out of condtion, he becomes de-facto leader, with Korpen as his second in-command. Afterwards, their leadership becomes official, with them actually reporting to the Iksha's higher-ups, as otherwise all blame would be put on her, and, with her being dead, reputation is all she has left.

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