In one of the courtyards at Zaporizhzhia university, Dr Milichenko was holding court with a group of students. The topic being discussed was the merits of a facts oriented society versus a values oriented society, religious values to be precise. All of the students that had gathered around Dr Milichenko to hear his thoughts found them utterly fascinating and were completely transfixed by him. Unnoticed by all of them, Dr Milichenko included, the Raven, in the guise of John, had slipped into the periphery of the group and was observing Dr Milichenko as intently as others, but not because it was transfixed, the Raven was always amazed by the effect that the snake had on people.

"The problem with a facts oriented society is that facts have no utility unless you have a hierarchy of values that you can use to organize and prioritize them, which is why it's critical that our societies be fundamentally values oriented societies," Dr Milichenko said.

"But facts are facts, they don't need to be organized and prioritized, they're absolutes..." one of the students was saying before being cut off by Dr Milichenko.

"The problem with believing in absolutes is that it very quickly leads you into a kind of moral nihilism, because once you've accepted something as an absolute then it's very easy for you to justify anything by ascribing your motivation for doing it to an absolute."

"But you can't deny something if it's a fact, and if something is a fact then it should take precedence over something that isn't," a different student said.

"What is the utility of that fact? Is the utility of the fact greater than the utility of the value? If it's not then no, the fact should not take precedence over the value."

"What about something like climate change? It's a fact that climate change is real and yet people place their notion of freedom, a value, above the factuality of climate change and continue to behave in ways that worsen the problem because they believe that their freedom to do so bestows upon them a kind of entitlement to ignore the facts of the issue."

"Okay, so, when you are arguing with one of these people and you're trying to get them to adopt your perspective by using facts to make your point, does it work?"

"No, not really."

"You see, that's what I'm saying. The only way that facts are relatable to people is if they're able to identify its importance as it relates to its place within a dominance hierarchy structure of values and it's next to impossible to do that because it's next to impossible to extract values from facts, which is why for the creation of a healthy society values should be prioritized over facts!"

None of the students had a retort for this and the ones who were some of Dr Milichenko's most ardent fans all had satisfied smiles on their faces because they believed that they had had the privilege of getting to witness another one of Fyodor's slaying sessions. The debate now over, the crowd began to disperse, all except for one individual, an individual from whom Fyodor felt a supernatural power emanating. Fyodor had felt such a power before, from the snake that had mysteriously appeared in his apartment one night, but this was different, the power that he felt emanating from this person was far greater than the power that emanated from the snake, and this power was unmistakably malevolent in nature.

"Who are you?" Fyodor asked the Raven.

"First things first: where's the snake?"

"What snake?"

"Don't play dumb, you know what I'm talking about, the snake that's given you the verbal skills to bowl over the unsophisticated with your nonsense."

"It's not nonsense!" protested Dr Milichenko.

"Yes it is, you know how I know that? Because I've encountered your kind countless times before, every time the snake adopts a human they're able to build a large fan base by spewing nonsense that people think is brilliant because it's incomprehensible to them."

"How do you know about the snake?"

"The snake and I go way back, it's been pulling this same con for thousands of years, so you see, Dr. Milichenko, you're not nearly as special as you think you are."

"I am saving people's lives, I know, they tell me, they tell me that if it wasn't for me and my talks and my book they never would have found meaning in life!"

"It's not difficult at all to convince people of the notion that their lives have meaning by getting them to embrace an easy to digest delusion."

"You're speaking as is my work is entirely inconsequential, as if I am entirely inconsequential."

"To me you are, but then I am an immortal being. That doesn't mean I don't see any value in you though; once you've taken me to the snake we can discuss what role you will have in my plans going forward."

Dr Milichenko liked hearing that an immortal being saw value in him and decided that for now he would go along with what was being asked of him.

"My apartment is a few blocks away, I don't have a car so we'll have to walk."

"That's fine."

A devout communist, Fyodor lived in an austere one bedroom apartment in a grey building that was built during the 1970s. The elevator in the building didn't work, so they had to walk up five flights of stairs to get to Fyodor's floor.

John was aware of Dr Milichenko from knowing people that had watched his videos on YouTube and become big fans of his, believing, like his other fans, that Dr Milichenko was one of the foremost thinkers of the western world. John had watched a few of his videos and found him to not be very impressive at all, just a man whose best friend was a thesaurus who was using big words and complex sentences to pass off stale, old ideas as profound. There were also many things about Dr Milichenko that just flat out didn't make any sense, like how he identified as a red-blooded communist but was constantly berating the radical left. John was really interested in getting an answer to this question and the Raven could feel it. It surrendered control of John's body back to him and told him to take as much time as he wanted to question the doctor.

"There's one thing about you that I'm very curious about," John began, "which is why you are constantly attacking people on the left when you identify as a communist."

"That is because the communist's fight is the fight for the rights of the proletariat, but lately the left is not concerned with this, they are focused on things like racial equality, homosexual rights and, my favorite, gender pronouns, not realizing that all that they're doing is distracting attention away from what the primary focus should be, which is the ability of everybody to share equally in prosperity."

"Do you not consider those other issues to be important?"

"Of course they are important, and I am not discounting them because I am a racist or a homophobe, but what good does it do if a gay person can marry but cannot afford to feed himself?"

"It seems to me that you are guilty of a certain amount of hypocrisy on this issue because you spend an awful lot of your time talking about political correctness which many view as an issue that's meant to distract attention away from real economic issues."

"I'm talking about it because these idiots who call themselves leftists are incapable of grasping the bigger picture; look, if you ask a gay person what they would rather have: being surrounded by people that are respectful of their feelings and an empty stomach or to be called a faggot but have a full stomach? I think I know what they would rather have, they'd gladly accept being called a faggot if it meant they also had a full stomach."

John was so stunned and appalled by what he had just heard that he needed a moment to collect himself mentally before he asked his next question.

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"Why do those two things have to be exclusive? Can't people be taken care of and be respected?"

"You would think so, but look at what these people's reaction is when they hear a black person being called a coon or a woman being called a cunt, they become completely hysterical and irrational and lose all sight of what is important."

"This language that you're using to describe these people, it's abhorrent."

"I'm not using this language, the point that I'm making is about when others use this language, and when you react hysterically and irrationally to language all that you are doing is driving them to be more offensive and their defense is always going to be that their entitled to use whatever language they please because the right of freedom of speech is something that is bestowed upon them by their constitution, so what have you accomplished?"

"Are you saying that people who say abhorrent things about other people should just be left to say it because they are very sensitive and have freedom of speech?"

"I'm saying that's what makes it futile to protest what they say."

"And as long as something's futile you shouldn't bother with it?"

"Yes."

It was obvious to John that Dr Fyodor Milichenko was nothing more than a pig; a racist, homophobic, misogynistic pig whose ability to convince people of the virtue of his views through verbal calisthenics made him a very dangerous person, which made the Raven's interest in him troubling.

"Are you done with him?" The Raven asked John.

"Yes, truth is I'm afraid to ask him any more questions because I'm afraid of what'll come out of his mouth."

"That's the power of the snake, the human that it adopts is able to be persuasive no matter what point they're arguing. Anyway, now that you're done with him, I'll be taking over again."

"The snake, where is it?" The Raven asked Fyodor.

"What just happened? You're not the same person anymore."

"No, the person that you were talking to is the owner of this body, I just borrow it from time to time."

"What are you?"

"If I were before you in my true form you'd be looking at a Raven right now."

"So you've possessed this man?"

"Yes, but that is not important at this moment in time, what is important is you telling me where the snake is so we can wake it up."

"It's in the room, through that door."

Fyodor had been keeping the snake in a fish tank on top of the chest of drawers in his room. Just like David Huntsman's pig, Fyodor's snake possessed an appearance that was unlike any snake John had ever seen. The snake was bright red, which wasn't unusual, what was unusual was the black symbols all over its body that looked like ancient hieroglyphic alphabets, the largest one being square on top of the snake's head. Now that it had successfully ascertained that this was the snake, the Raven moved on to step two. It reached into the tank with its left hand and retrieved the snake; its right hand it held out in front of its chest in preparation for what was to come next. The cavity in John's chest that the Raven had created with its beak opened up and out of it came the black egg that John had excreted weeks ago. The snake was drawn to the egg. It uncoiled itself from John's arm and touched its head against the egg, which caused it to light up and transform. The snake's color changed from red to golden brown and the symbols on its body changed into black rings. It looked like a regular python and had gained the ability to speak.

"Oh, it's you," the snaked said, sounding annoyed.

"Yes, it's me. You always try to hide from me and I always end up finding you; why haven't you realized yet how futile it is to try and hide from me?"

"You know I don't like being a part of your schemes, I just want to have fun with people for my own pleasure, can't you just leave me alone to do that?"

"Afraid not, your skills are too valuable, and besides, you've been having lots of fun with Dr Milichenko here, getting millions of people to believe his nonsense, it's time to start doing real work now."

"I'd like to stay with him if that's at all possible."

"He is very good, isn't he? Sure, you can stay with him, he is a big part of my plans after all."

"What exactly is it that you'd like his help with?"

"For now I'd like him to attend the Growth and Opportunities Conference and make contact with Sonya Kruschenko, she's the human that the lion has adopted."

"The lion and I have never gotten along, you know that."

"The plan here is to get to the lion through Sonya, if Fyodor can use his skills of persuasion to convince her to come over to our side then the Goose won't be able to awaken the lion and the lion's strength will belong to us."

"We've done this before and the few times that it's worked the end result has been pure disaster, the lion's adoptee always allows the power to go to their heads and ends up committing wanton destruction rather than using the strength constructively."

"This time I've put together a far more sophisticated operation, so the lion's strength, if we can acquire it, will be put to use much more strategically."

"None of what you're saying to me is anything that I haven't heard before, but since you've found me and awakened me I have no choice but to go along with this, we'll go to the conference and I'll report back to you with the results. Just out of curiosity, how many of us have you assembled so far?"

"In addition to you I've got the pig, the bull, the cat and the rat."

"And how far along is the Goose?"

"I don't know what the Goose is up to, it's keeping a very low profile, but there's no way that it's anywhere close to being as far along as we are, not with the amount of preparation that I've put in this time."

The Raven hung around at Fyodor's place while it waited for darkness so it could fly back to the US undetected. During this time Fyodor said little, afraid that if he said the wrong thing this being of incalculable power would retaliate. With them having a lot of time to kill, John decided to use it to ask Fyodor some of the questions that he had been reluctant to ask earlier.

"You speak a lot about Christian values, but Christianity, in fact, religion in general, has historically been incompatible with communism, so how then do you explain your promotion of Christian values?"

Fyodor understood that it was now the human host with whom he was talking and as such he wasn't in as much danger as when he was dealing with the Raven.

"I am not so myopic that my belief in communism blinds me to the benefits of other ideas. You see, communism gives people a philosophy for orienting themselves in the material world, but people have other needs besides their material needs, mainly spiritual, and for westerners the best provider of spiritual orientation is Christianity and Christian values."

"But this is Eastern Europe."

"Yes, but I consider us westerners; after all, our skin isn't black, our eyes aren't small and slanted."

John had read both Marx and Lenin and understood well the deep disdain that both men had for religion, calling it the opium of the people. For a supposedly devoted communist Fyodor's exaltation of Christian values was strange, too strange for John to make sense of how the two incompatible ideas could co-exist so easily within Fyodor's mind.

"Stop trying to understand this man," the Raven said to John.

"None of what he espouses makes any sense! He can't be a devout Christian and a communist."

"This man is not a communist."

"But he lives in this tiny flat and doesn't own a car."

"That's not because he's a communist; he lives like this because he inherited a fortune from his father that he pissed away on bad investments, and he's no academic either, everything that he's ever published has been widely discredited and mocked."

"What about his job at the World Bank?"

"His father arranged it for him, Roman Milichenko was one of the biggest steel magnates in Ukraine and Russia and he knew people at the World Bank that owed him favors, that's how Fyodor got a job there. It wasn't an important job, he was a low level analyst whose job was to track grain yields in South America. The job wasn't hard at all and yet somehow he found a way to fail at it and get himself fired for incompetence."

"If his father was a steel magnate then he must've inherited millions."

"Billions, actually."

"What happened to it?"

""He invested all of it in a company that was the brainchild of tech billionaire and futurist Alan Misk, whose big idea was to build roller coasters throughout cities and use them as a form of public transportation."

"What kind of idiot would invest all of their money in that?"

"This one."

"Then that means..."

"He's a fraud, everything that comes out of his mouth is utter nonsense; he has no real beliefs, whatever viewpoint will increase his popularity with his stupid fans and make them buy his book and pay to attend his absurd lectures is what he believes."

"Then why is he important to you?"

"Because of precisely that! Surely you can see the myriad of uses that I could have for him, even if he is completely ridiculous."

"His ridiculousness is transparent though, it doesn't take a genius to see that this guy's full of it."

"Yes you're right, and from what I gather Ms. Kruschenko is an extremely well educated and highly capable individual, so maybe sending him isn't such a good idea, I may have to go myself."

"Why wasn't that your plan from the beginning?"

"Because of what the snake said, the lion and I have had some bad experiences in the past, and you can't perform an awakening if there's distrust between you."

"Sounds like the lion might be a lost cause."

"Maybe, but we have to try, if we get the lion it's game over, that's how strong it is."

The Raven took a while to consider the situation it found itself in with the lion, while at the same time John was thinking about how, if the lion was as strong as the Raven said, it was probably a good idea if the Raven failed in its effort to recruit it. The conclusion reached by the Raven was that it was too risky for it to reach out to the lion directly. They'd be proceeding with their original plan of having Fyodor make contact with her at the conference and hopefully he would be impressive enough for Sonya not to see through him.

When darkness fell the Raven didn't feel like making the long walk out of the city so it asked Fyodor to take it to the roof of his building. The building was high enough that nobody in the adjacent buildings would be able to see them. Once on the roof the Raven released its wings and got ready to take off, but not before making sure Fyodor knew that failure wouldn't be tolerated.

"Don't fuck this up!" The Raven turned its head and said to Fyodor, who was standing behind it.

"No, I won't," Fyodor responded tremulously.

Fyodor was too well acquainted with failure and its consequences not to be terrified of the prospect of failing a supernatural being and the consequences thereof, consequences that he wouldn't be able to talk himself out of with his gobbledygook.