Aleksey Lukyanov
“Annus Mirabilis (Anus Horribilis)” by Aleksey Lukyanov. World Literature Today Vol. 92, No. 3 (May 2018), 56-59.
WLT did such a great job with the illustrations, layout, everything! And to top it all off, you can listen to Aleksey himself read the original Russian, too. (The titular pun is deliberate, and explained in a note for the curious.)
Procrustes-1 was the model name. The design was child’s play: screw four pulleys into a camp cot and link them up with each other, then stick a winch on the middle leg and run it through a reduction gear to wind the cable through the pulleys, and you got yourself a rack…