1 June, Children's Day. Heat. We're at the zoo, Bella, the three boys and me. A pushchair, ice creams. An ordinary day.

The phone rings. The master. A programmer, like me; we used to post on the same forum.

He has mushrooms. We could even meet today.

I want them. They've been on my mind for a long time, only I have nowhere to get them and nobody to eat them with. He has both.

I tell Bella that some friends are coming round in the evening and that we'll be eating mushrooms.

Bella doesn't say “no”. She doesn't say “yes” either.

I count that as consent.

Three of them come. The master, then Eliasz, whom I've never seen before in my life, and a third, with a nickname I can't remember, so I call him by a name of my own. They've brought LEGO bricks with them.

The mushrooms aren't from a Polish forest. Huge specimens, he grew them himself or picked them himself. He tells me the name. I don't remember it. He doesn't deal. He gives.

He makes tea out of them. We all drink and wait for it to come on.

It doesn't come on. The colours get sharper and there's this feeling that something is about to happen, that it's just beyond the threshold, any moment now it will take off.

It doesn't take off.

The master says this is exactly what you can expect. There won't be more.

We're lying on the grass by the studio. That's what I call the wooden building we put up next to the house in the woods. Bella's scooter stands there. I took it apart once and didn't put it back together. I have a new battery for it, bought and untouched.

— How about we fix that scooter?

The master says great idea.

We put the battery in. Nothing.

The master turns away and starts chatting with Eliasz and the third one, as if the job had finished itself.

— Hey, I say. If you've finished working, tidy up.

He smiles.

— You know me.

I do.

Before they go we sit a while longer. The master asks whether my life suits me. Whether I'm happy.

I say I feel fulfilled. That I have everything: a wife, children, a house, money.

— But are you happy?

I don't know. I'm fulfilled.

He asks what my relationship with my wife is like.

— Civil.

He says everything can still be changed. You just have to walk a hard road. A journey deep into yourself, to find yourself and work through your karma. It will be hard and there will be a lot of traps, but if the tanks don't run us over, everything will fall into place.

That's from a song. He talks in quotations and doesn't say where they're from.

Then he lists what I'll get. The Tesla I dream of. A loving wife and warmth at home. Myself back. Helping other people. Fame, money and happiness.

He says that God, the Highest Father, can do anything. And he talks about my car.

— There are platinum pistons in your car. They're just there. One day you'll sell them, when you need to.

My car is silver, a bit old. A silver arrow, I think.

But first, the dark road.

He gives me a choice. Psychiatric hospital or prison.

I ask for how long.

2 weeks at least. He says something about a year, but that it will be cut short.

I choose hospital. I don't know what they'd do to me inside. And hospital is harmless. There's nothing wrong with my head, so I'll be out quickly.

He calls the dark road the master's path. The Masonic path to the thirty-third degree. He says I'm already on it, only I don't know it yet. And that you can't step off the master's path. You can stray a little, a bit to the left, a bit to the right, but you come back to it anyway.

He also says he is one of the Illuminati.

One moment he says there's no knowing whether it will work, and that he doesn't want to frighten me. The next, that you can't step off this path. I hear it. It doesn't bother me.

I tell him how much I've achieved in life. He interrupts me. Everything is a palindrome. A palindrome reads the same forwards and backwards, but the most important thing is that it has a middle. Since I'm high up now, next comes the descent. All the way to darkness.

He also tells me I'm addicted. He is the first person in my life to say it straight out. I've been taking modafinil for years, every day. I have words for it: discipline, productivity, working on myself. He has one. I have to free myself from everything I prop myself up with, and only then will I get the reward.

And that I'll have an exam. At the start I won't know it's an exam, but I'll work it out. They'll be checking whether I'm fit. There will be riddles. There will be temptations on the table, alcohol and other substances, and the Masons don't admit addicts, so at the exam you mustn't drink or do drugs. They tolerate only cigarettes, although that's an addiction too. But not in front of them. You have to step outside.

I'll most likely fail it, he says.

They leave. They take the LEGO bricks with them.

The scooter stays by the studio. In pieces.