The novel "Отщепенец 8" (The Eighth Circle) by Viktor Pelevin tells the story of a group of people who have been sentenced to live in a specialized city-laboratory, where they will be the subjects of various experiments and tests to determine their suitability for living in a post-apocalyptic world. The city is a place where the boundaries between reality and virtual reality are blurred, and the residents are constantly subjected to manipulation and control by the authorities. The protagonist, a young man named Artyom, discovers that he has the ability to travel through time and space, and he uses this power to try to escape from the city and find a way back to the surface. However, as he navigates the complex web of lies and deceptions that surround him, he realizes that the only way to survive in this world is to develop a personal paradigm for understanding the technological process of developing modern knowledge. The novel explores themes of technology, power, and the human condition, and it challenges readers to think critically about the role of technology in society and the impact it has on our lives.

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