Naturally, I have no doubt that that moment was the hour of my reckoning for mistakes. The Law of the Universe is one for all.
Finally, I quickly reached the subway.
It was the longest trip in the metro of my life. I constantly had the feeling that everything was happening too slowly, and I often found myself wondering why this train was not going faster, or why we were standing at the station for so long.
Mom still did not answer the phone.
I tried to remember that my mother was definitely alive in the morning, since I saw her moving in bed. I also remembered that she rarely picked up the home telephone – even though I called on it every minute that day. I knew that her mobile phone could be out of charge too – we had had such things happen already. But on the other side of the scales was the fact that, even if mom had no obvious health problems, she was already 69 years old. Anything can happen. I knew that both could be true, given my knowledge; and that was what haunted me – another scale could be true.
Usually I walk home from the subway, but that time I rode on a tram that stood at a traffic light for some time. While driving by the school, I was not surprised to see Marina’s husband with their dogs from the tram’s window.
Then I ran out of the tram at my stop and ran to the door of my entrance. It did not matter to me whether I felt good or not anymore – I wanted to enter the apartment as soon as possible. The unknown continued to torment me.
Here I am at the door of my apartment. I open it, open the door to the room and see… that mom is sitting at her laptop with the headphones on her head.
She saw me and came to me. I asked her why she did not answer the phone, and I started to cry from the overwhelming emotions.
It turned out that my mother was charging the mobile phone in the bathroom and did not hear it. As for the home telephone, she answered it once, but at the other end there was a company offering its services, and so she no longer picked up the phone.
I explained the whole situation to mother, and asked her to answer the phone when I was not home.
So, my fears were in vain.
Despite all the unexpected troubles that fell on me, I still published a book, and everything was fine with my mother. Now I could go about my business and continue to try to have a love life.
The only thing that needed to be done was to deal with the payment of royalties. The fact was that I was entitled to 10% under our agreement with the copyright holder, but this meant that they would not have received anything at all then. I was ready to pay them all the money and not leave anything to myself if they would not agree to share the half of the 10%.
I began to write about this to the copyright holder’s guardian. In order not to make a mistake, I decided to check with the contract, which I had already put to the rest of the documents.
I started reading the contract for the second time and… I became cold.
There were lines in the contract that I did not seem to notice before. My horror was that under the contract I gave the publisher the right not only to print the book “Тиауба: Золотая Планета”, but also to publish an audiobook, e-book – both of which had already been released by me personally – but the worst thing was that the agreement allowed them to translate the book into all languages and publish its translation. This was unacceptable, since it would distort the whole meaning of the original message. In fact, it was just ridiculous to translate the translation of the book. Then they had the right to write their comments, add a preface, an afterword, and I was also obliged to attend the advertising meetings of the book.
I quickly wrote to the lawyer about the errors in the contract, mentioning that this contact is not legal and has no legal force, since I gave the rights that I do not have myself according to my agreement with the copyright holder.
All I could do under the agreement with the copyright holder was to publish a free, and only free, e-book, as well as a printed book of my translation.
Accordingly, all that the publisher could have was the printed version of the book.
I called the lawyer and he offered me to visit them next Thursday. I said that I would come today. He replied that they would be waiting for me.
I felt very bad at heart. All the years that I knew about the existence of Thiaoouba, I tried to help Thao and other friends as much as I could. In the TPXP group I tried to point out to people their mistakes that contradict the truth; I was not pleased that the text of the original Bible was so distorted; when translating the book, I tried to carefully check each translated sentence so that the meaning of the translation and the meaning of the original were the same. And here I could become the very person who could be the cause for the message of Thiaooubians to become distorted. The thought was almost unbearable, and I remember exactly how I was riding in the tram to the metro, and I quietly said to myself out loud that I wanted to die…
But I had to be responsible. I made a mistake, and I had to unravel it.
In the Lastochka, I read the contract further and wrote in a notebook everything that should be removed from it. Then I saw that I needed to have a pension fund document which I did not have with me. I returned home after it.
Then I went by tram and metro. The lawyer called me and asked if I would be soon.
Having the daily experience with my mother, I did not allow negative thoughts to possess me. Instead, I was thinking of what needed to be done. I knew that the contract was illegitimate and decided that first of all it was necessary to demand its termination. And only after that ask the lawyer to send me a copy of the contract by e-mail, so that I can read it and correct it with the copyright holders. And only then I will sign a new legitimate contract.
I finally arrived. After all that I experienced, the long climb up the stairs was not easy for me. I was barely breathing, and at that time the courier with the book called. With great difficulty, I was able to tell him the code number to the entrance door of the house.
After standing a little at the door to restore breathing, I entered the office.
The lawyer immediately asked me about attentiveness, referring to what I wrote to him in my the message: “…I needed to be more attentive when I was reading the contract with you”.
He already had a new contract printed out. He put it, along with a pen, on the table in front of me and asked me to sign it. Still breathing a little hard, I told him that the old contract is not legal, since I myself do not have such rights to it, and it needs to be terminated. He again proposed to sign the new contract. I asked him to terminate the current contract first. Then I asked again.
Slowly, the lawyer reached for my copy of the contract and just as slowly tore it up. After a while, he tore apart the other copy, also with reluctance.
I asked him to send me an edited contract by e-mail so that I could discuss everything with the copyright holders. He did so. When I was leaving the man politely said goodbye, saying that we would conclude the agreement later.
At home I read the sent contract and saw in it again the phrase about translating the book into other languages. The sentence was changed, but the essence was exactly the same. Why did they want to be able to translate the book into other languages so much?
I went to look for reviews about that publishing house, hoping to find writers' thoughts about this company. But what I found was much “better”. Feedback from former employees showed that the bosses would systematically deceive their employees and writers, and that many employees were verbally abused.
Then it became very clear to me how I managed not to see all those clauses in the contract. They just replaced the contract after I read it and did not find anything out of the ordinary in it. The “smearing” was just an excuse.
But another thing was not clear to me – why, even after I told them about the illegality of the contract, did they still try to palm off a new contract which was also not legitimate? I got alerted by this.