People's ideas about the world around them have been based on guesses and hypotheses for centuries. Some of them are ambitious, others, on the contrary, are superficial and unsightly. Of course, not all of them turn out to be true. Some assumptions are discarded and forgotten without regret, others, even refuted, cannot be erased from memory, since they amaze with their beauty and sophisticated play of the mind. However, for a specific person, everything said rarely matters. Another thing is more important to him: who was happier? The one who walked on a flat Earth lying on three whales, or the one who still wanders on a round planet repeating its path in cold space? Who was accompanied by God, and who makes his journey alone? The book of prose by St. Petersburg writer Lev Naumov includes twenty-three stories: philosophical parables are interspersed with intellectual short stories, and metaphysical plots are adjacent to historical fantasies. The author’s world is complex, vibrant and dynamic, there is almost nothing permanent in it: honesty is replaced by betrayal, enmity by friendship, hatred by love, confidence by incessant doubts. The only thing that can be safely taken for granted here is an assumption known as the Daedalus hypothesis.