The travel novel “The Catechumens” took twenty years to write (started in the early 70s and finished in the 90s). According to the author, “nothing was invented in this book except the author.” This is a puzzle made up of all genres tried by the author in three previous dimensions. The author introduces the reader to the main soldiers of the Empire: biologist-ethologist Doctor D., who offers a look at the crown of nature through the eyes of other living beings (“Birds, or New Information about Man”) , and the restoration artist Pavel Petrovich, looking for his point in the picture of the Creator (“Man in a Landscape”). These two finally meet in the third part, “Waiting for the Monkeys,” trying, while high, to combine the scientific picture of the world with the Divine.