Sergei Lukyanenko’s "Clean Copy," a summary

This book is a fantasy story about freedom of choice and the human right to shape one’s own destiny, created in 2007. The hero, having broken the energetic leash of a position imposed on him by otherworldly forces, becomes a living anomaly. He gains unprecedented strength every time he makes vital decisions.

Escape and the Ice World

Kirill is traveling by train to Kharkiv. He has lost his job as a customs officer and is on the run from pursuers from Arkan. In his compartment, he meets Sasha, who knows about the Fan’s functions and worlds. That night, in Orel, the train is surrounded by Arkan’s soldiers. Kirill jumps out the window, evades the guards, and takes a taxi to Kharkiv.

In Kharkiv, he finds Vasilisa’s forge-cum-customs office. She informs him that Kirill is wanted for the murder of midwife Natalia Ivanova. Arkana agents in identical outfits appear outside the windows. Vasilisa helps Kirill escape by opening a door to the icy world of Janus. Kirill sets out on a twenty-two-kilometer trek through a snowstorm to another customs office. Nearly freezing to death among the frost heaps, he loses consciousness at the door of the Polish customs officer, Marta.

Marta rescues Kirill, gives him alcohol to drink, and gives him dry clothes. She shows him the exits to her worlds: cozy Elbląg, slave-run Antik, and radiation-scorched Earth-16. She begs the hero to leave. In Elbląg, Kirill is caught by local police officer Krzysztof Przebizhny and two assistants. Kirill tries to escape across the bridge, but the guards knock him down with a thrown stone. Suddenly, Kirill’s former friend, Konstantin, who has become the curator of Earth, appears. He knocks out the police officers with a wooden board and carries Kirill to his residence.

Conspiracies in Shambhala

Konstantin, or Kotya, hides Kirill in the Tibetan monastery of Shambhala. Surrounded by helpful monks, the friends make peace. Kotya explains his duties as a curator and complains of boredom. He admits he’s lost contact with Arkan. Together with the underground activist Illan, they propose a plan to Kirill. The hero must travel to the world of the Firmament. There, the Church rules, having developed biotechnology and defeated the Functionals. Kotya wants to make a pact with the Firmament, overthrow Arkan’s rule, and rule the Earth for himself.

Kotya sends Kirill to Moscow. The hero finds the customs office of old Nikolai Tsebrikov, disguised as an old house. Nikolai, a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars and an avid internet user, transports him to Orysultan — the Verozian equivalent of Moscow. There, Kirill meets customs officer Andrei, who runs a clock shop with wooden crows instead of cuckoos. Andrei opens the door to the closed world of Tverd, directly into the courtyard of the Vatican Conclave.

Blood on the streets of Tverd

In the Firmament, Kirill is met by Conclave representative Marco and female guards with combat Yorkshire terriers. Cardinal Rudolf receives Kirill in a closed residence. The priest demonstrates a genetically modified jellyfish called an "angel’s eye," which allows him to see the radiation of the pituitary glands of functionals. Rudolf refuses military support. He explains that the soldiers of the Firmament will not go to other worlds, as Arkan is merely a base for execution, and the true control center is hidden elsewhere.

The next day, Arkan issues an ultimatum to the Conclave, demanding Kirill’s extradition. The Cardinal orders the hero’s immediate transport to the Vatican. En route, the carriage is attacked by Arkanian paratroopers with jetpacks. The Firmament responds with an attack of animated stone gargoyles. The defenders destroy Andrei’s customs office by flooding it with acid. However, the soldiers open a new portal right in the middle of a Roman street, pushing aside the neighboring buildings.

In the ensuing battle, Elisa and Cardinal Rudolf are killed. Kirill feels his supernatural powers return at the moment of moral choice. He picks up the dead soldier’s machine gun and destroys the paratroopers in accelerated time. Seeing the invisible Arkan commander under a protective field, Kirill puts him to flight. Then the hero draws fiery signs in the air, opens a portal with willpower, and strides into the unknown, hoping to find the homeland of the Functionals.

An island in a radioactive sea

The hero finds himself in the dead steppe of Earth-16. He survives thanks to a captured paratrooper’s backpack, finding water and food there. In the morning, Kirill descends into a deep canyon. Using his machine gun as a pulley, he slides down a thin rope to the ocean. The rope breaks, and Kirill falls a hundred meters into the water, but miraculously survives. On the shore, he makes a smoky fire from dried seaweed.

He is rescued by the crew of Captain Wang Tao’s yacht. On board, Kirill examines photographs and realizes that Earth-16 is a dying world, and the Functionals are the descendants of survivors of a planetary catastrophe. He frightens the captain by pretending to be a powerful Men-above-Men and refuses to eat the poisoned dinner. The yacht arrives in the city of Airak on an isolated island. The crew flees in fear, leaving the ship in Kirill’s hands.

In Airak, Kirill rents a room in a hotel. He visits the local library, where he chats with a young woman named Diana. Seeing a Russian cookbook mentioning cloves, he becomes convinced that this world is the distant future of our Earth. Diana recommends contacting a wealthy landowner, Al Dietrich, who is interested in history.

The Tower and the Guardian

Dietrich lives in the foothills. He is one of the few locals who can see the Tower of Functionals. This tower resembles a twisted glass fan and rises above the clouds. Kirill tells Al the truth about the many parallel worlds. Dietrich gives Kirill comfortable clothes, a hunting knife, a map, and a magazine of ammunition for the Arkan machine gun.

In the morning, Kirill goes to the mountains. In thick fog, he slips and nearly falls into the abyss. He is saved by a giant metal robot named Anatole Lars. The robot possesses the copied consciousness of a deceased poet and deprived person. He has been waiting for sixty-two years for a human to infiltrate the tower and take revenge on the functionals for the deaths of his children. Kirill and the robot agree to work together.

They approach the transparent doors of the stylobate. An automatic system forces Kirill to undergo disinfection. He drinks half a liter of deadly poison from a special hose. Thanks to its incredible nature, the former functional entity heals and opens the doors for the robot. The heroes find a transport platform and swiftly ascend through hundreds of floors, right to the roof of a gigantic skyscraper.

There, they are met by a non-angel — the winged guardian of the Museum of Worlds. The guardian kills the robot with white flame from his sword. Kirill shoots the non-angel with a machine gun. The dying guardian confesses that Arkan is merely a security service. The functionalists are twisting history for fun, changing destinies out of simple curiosity. The non-angel offers Kirill to take his place, but the hero refuses to finish off the enemy. He opens a portal and leaves.

The right to be yourself

Kirill emerges in Elbląg, Poland, right at Marta and Krzysztof’s table. He takes the decanter of zubrovka. A functional postman appears and delivers a letter from Konstantin. Kotya challenges his friend to a duel to the death for the position of Curator of Earth. Kirill knocks the postman down for his excessive cynicism and steps into a new portal.

He materializes in Moscow, in his own building. Kirill goes into his parents’ apartment, drinks tea, and picks up his dog, Cashew. His family knows nothing of his inner turmoil. In the morning, Kirill goes to the closed courtyard of the kindergarten to meet Kotya. Konstantin arrives in his dress uniform, ready to die. Kirill refuses to fight for power. He tears the customs ring off his finger, rips a metal pipe from the asphalt, and stabs Kotya. The wound doesn’t kill the powerful curator, but it proves that Kirill no longer intends to serve the interests of others.

Kirill leaves Konstantin to heal. He decides to return to college, take a job in internet service support, and live the life of an ordinary person. He prefers the right to be himself and cultivate his garden to power over parallel universes. After the duel, Kirill heads home, where his dog, Cashew, is faithfully waiting for him.