Clifford Simak (1904–1988) is one of the few American science fiction writers to be awarded the title "Grand Master" by his peers. Isaac Asimov admitted that he always dreamed of learning to write like Simak...Suddenly, almost all people disappeared from Earth. There were only a hundred people left who acquired the ability to live a very long life, abandoned religion and technological civilization, and discovered the ability to telepathy at any distance and travel to any point in space. The robots, on the contrary, became religious and began building a machine - the super-robot Project. The project can communicate with the Principle, a kind of superintelligence in the center of the Galaxy. The disappeared people were transported to three other planets in the center of the Galaxy and revived a technological civilization there. Five thousand years later, they flew to Earth to study the psychic abilities of earthlings. The Earthlings refused, and the Principle, through the Project, advised them to leave the Earth alone, since its entire population is part of some kind of experiment. The acquisition of parapsychological abilities by people is achieved by abandoning machines and technologies...