It was a rough February afternoon in Tomsk. The temperature had fallen below minus twenty Celsius, and the surface of the Tom River had frozen into a dull sheet of white steel stretching beneath the pale Siberian sky. No one gathered there anymore. The old winter-swimming festivals — once celebrated with music, vodka, bonfires, and Orthodox blessings — had quietly disappeared over the years, another tradition dissolved by comfort, bureaucracy, and apathy.

Arseny had not left his house in one hundred and twenty-four days.

Cities are not merely physical environments; they are cognitive environments. Just as artificial intelligence systems require significant energy to compute and process information, the human mind also depends on finite mental energy to think critically, formulate ideas, and solve complex problems. Human attention and cognitive capacity are limited resources.

When individuals move from one point to another within a poorly planned city, a substantial portion of this mental energy is unnecessarily consumed by basic survival and navigation based thinking. Chronic traffic congestion, unsafe roads, disorganized macaroni-like transportation systems, and inadequate pedestrian pathways force citizens into a constant state of alertness, which deplete vital cognitive energies. Instead of directing their attention toward productive thought, creativity, or innovation, people use up their cognitive quotas trying to avoid accidents, navigating chaos, and reacting to environmental stress.