This story has its own beginning and end, which do not necessarily coincide exactly with the actual dates. This is the winter of 1999–2000, when there was still about six months left before the arrest of the author and hero of the book. And 2014 is the year when Ukraine really began to change, and in one of the most conservative penal systems in Europe, prisoners were officially allowed to use the Internet and mobile communications. Even if the latter was available unofficially before. For a long time I have been interested in one of the eternal questions - how free are we to choose our future, to what extent is it inevitably prescribed to us by fate? That winter, the thought did not leave me that everything was going as prescribed, and freedom of choice consisted only in choosing the lesser of two evils. The police, and in a broad sense, of course, not only the police, but the entire system, “compacted the soil.” As is usually the case in such cases, some responded decently, while others behaved normally. So normal that it inspired almost physiological disgust. Igor then “got it.” He didn’t have a single chance against the system, and he was definitely guilty of one thing - he seriously overestimated his strength, knowledge of the laws and the likely support of the people he considered close. Alas. This story could not happen just like that. And it can't just end like that. You can’t just erase seventeen years from a person’s life. You can't just let it "pass". An attempt to tell your story is also an attempt to answer the question “how did this become possible?”