Построй мостик перевод романа на английский

 Prologue
The noise of the city was like an endless, monotonous hum. Millions of voices merged into one inarticulate murmur, millions of lives flowing in parallel, separated by the walls of houses, the windows of cars and invisible barriers of indifference. This was Moscow - a huge, pulsating organism whose cells rarely touched in real contact.
And in this chaotic orchestra of sounds, two quiet, lonely voices did not yet know of each other's existence. One sounded in the rhythm of a hammer and chisel, the other in time with the rustling of pages and the measured hum of servers. Their worlds were separated not just by kilometers of asphalt, but by entire universes. But the universe, as we know, loves curvatures.

Part 1. Different Shores
Chapter 1
Artem exhaled, and a cloud of steam hung in the cold air of the workshop. It smelled of wood, varnish and dust. His large hands, accustomed to rough work, ran tenderly over the polished surface of the oak board, feeling every fiber, every curve of the pattern. It was a bridge. Small, decorative, part of a model of an old Russian city. A bridge that would never connect real banks, but would be just a pretty toy in someone's office.
Artem was a hereditary cabinetmaker. His world was simple and clear: wood does not deceive. It either gives in to the master, revealing its soul to him, or resists, but always honestly. It was more difficult with people. After his wife left, calling him a "boring retrograde", Artem almost stopped trying to talk to them. His language is the lines of drawings, the creaking of the cutter and the clear, geometric meaning of the "mortise and tenon" joint. Strong. Reliable. For centuries.
He glanced at the order - a drawing of an openwork, almost weightless bridge in the Art Nouveau style. Complex work. It was necessary to understand not only the calculation of the loads, but also the soul of the one who came up with it. Artem sighed and put down the chisel. It was time to order a rare type of wood, which meant - to climb into the web again, which he could not stand.

Chapter 2
Alice's world was made up of ones and zeros, but she was far from a stereotypical "IT guy." She didn't write code in a basement filled with energy drink cans. She was a UX designer at a major IT company. Her job was to make digital products — apps, websites, services — understandable, convenient, and, as she put it, "human." She built bridges between complex technologies and people.
Her latest project was called "Bridge". It was an app for volunteers that allowed them to quickly coordinate help in a big city: someone needed to go to the pharmacy, someone needed help moving things, someone just needed a heart-to-heart talk. The idea was to break down the barriers of urban loneliness.
But now Alice felt like a complete hypocrite. She was creating a product for live communication, while feeling an acute lack of something real. Her days were spent on calls with her team from different time zones, endless correspondence in messengers, and designing the ideal user path. And her evenings were spent in the silence of her stylish but soulless studio apartment. Digital bridges were strong, but they were not used to visit with a pie. They did not smell like real wood and did not warm with the warmth of a handshake.
After ordering a rare paint online for her sketchbook, she looked longingly at the rain outside the window. The world beyond the glass seemed as blurry and unattainable as her own feelings.

 Part 2. First supports
Chapter 3
The online store where Artem found the Karelian birch he needed turned out to be the same startup where Alice worked. He got confused while placing an order, twice "put the wrong product in the basket" and in a rage clicked the "Contact support" button.
His message, full of irritation and mistakes, due to touch typing on the phone, went to Alice. Not for work, she was just on duty in the general chat, helping colleagues. The phrase "What kind of birch is this, this is the devil knows what! Your site is a dense forest!" made her smile. She imagined a brutal lumberjack, storming the digital jungle in rage.
She didn't pass it on to her colleague's template responses. She was curious. She sorted out the order manually, found the right product in the warehouse, and wrote a polite but lively message with an apology and detailed instructions. At the end, without knowing why, she added: "The dense forest is, fortunately, passable. May I be your guide?"
Artem, who was expecting a reply from the bot, was surprised. He slowly, with one finger, wrote: "Thank you. I'm not good at this." That would have been the end of it, but Alice, moved by a sudden impulse, asked: "What do you make from this birch? If it's not a secret. It's very capricious for a non-specialist."
“A bridge,” Artem answered after a pause.

Chapter 4
Their dialogue lasted for days. First in the support chat, then, on Alice's initiative, who already felt something real in this person, in the messenger. It was a strange conversation.
Artem talked about wood species, how wood is dried, what a tongue and groove joint is and why it is the most honest joint. He sent photos of his work: carved frames, models of churches, boxes. Alisa talked about her work, about what "usability" and "user flow" are, tried to explain how a digital product is built. She sent sketches of interfaces.
They were like two aliens trying to explain to each other the structure of their universes.
"You connect people through a screen," Artem once wrote. "And I make it so that you can walk through my work. Touch it."
"But your bridges are in one place. And my "Bridge" can connect two people at different ends of the city in a second," Alice retorted.
- You can't build a bridge in a second. It's painstaking work. And it has to withstand the load.
They argued, did not understand each other, but the dialogue did not stop. Each felt in the other a part of the world that was missing for themselves: thoroughness, connection with the material, unhurriedness - in Artem's case; speed, globality, virtuoso control of information flows - in Alisa's case.
They built a bridge to each other. At first, a digital one, fragile, made of letters on a screen.

Part 3. Soil subsidence
Chapter 5
Alisa suggested meeting. Artem flatly refused. His world was safe precisely because it remained within the workshop. Going beyond its threshold meant facing the world that had once hurt him. The world of complex, unpredictable and often dishonest people.
"I'm not what you think," he wrote. "In real life, I'm awkward and silent. You'll be disappointed."
- Do you think I'm in the picture with the box? - Alice answered. - I can also be tired, anxious, not perfect. A digital image is just a projection. The present is always more complex and... more interesting.
But Artem was adamant. His fear was stronger than his curiosity. Their communication began to fade. It seemed that their bridge, so alive and interesting, could not withstand the test of strength in reality. The soil under one of the supports turned out to be weak - it was Artem's fear.
Alice threw herself into work. The launch of the Bridge app was just around the corner, and the team was behind schedule. Pressure, deadlines, nerves. She felt lonely again. The digital bridge builder was trapped in virtuality again.

Chapter 6
The crisis came from the other side. The customer of the model, for whom Artem made that very delicate bridge, came to check. He was dissatisfied. "Too rough", "doesn't feel like it's flying", "this is not what I wanted". Artem, usually stoic, couldn't stand it. He couldn't speak the language of beautiful words and presentations. He could only show the work.
“I can’t put my soul into it if I don’t understand yours!” he said sullenly to the customer.
He took the drawing and left, leaving Artem with a nearly finished, but now useless work and a feeling of complete failure. That evening, he sat in the dark of the workshop and looked at the elegant wooden structure. A bridge that led nowhere. A symbol of his own life.
He picked up his phone. The last message from Alice was sent a week ago. It was simple: "It's a shame that our bridge will remain virtual."
Artem typed a message. Deleted it. Typed again.
"My bridge collapsed. I guess I'm a bad builder."
The answer came almost instantly, as if she had been waiting:
"The bridge abutments are always checked for load. This does not mean that it is bad. It means that the foundation needs to be strengthened."
They talked all evening. Alisa, without knowing it, used all the principles of her professionalism: she listened, empathised, offered solutions. But she did it not according to the manual, but in a human way. For the first time in a long time, Artyom felt that he was not just being listened to, but heard.

 Part 4. Foundation
Chapter 7
They did meet. Not in a cafe with a macchiato, but in his studio. Alisa brought him a book about architectural styles to help him understand that very "flight" of Art Nouveau. Artem met her with confusion and hope.
He turned out to be exactly as he described himself: a little angular, silent, his hands nervously fiddling with the edge of his work apron. She turned out to be not a "digital fairy", but a living girl with a warm smile and a curious look that slid with interest over the tools, machines, and the smells of wood.
He gave her a tour of his world. He showed her how a product is born from a piece of wood to a varnished item. He let her touch the materials. Alice, in turn, showed him a mockup of her app "Bridge" on a tablet, explained the logic of the buttons, the menu, how she builds "paths" for users.
"You see," said Artem, pointing at the screen. "You're a cabinetmaker here, too. Only the material is different."
- And you are an interface designer, - Alice smiled. - Your interface between a person and a thing is tactility, convenience, beauty. We do the same thing. Just in different languages.
At that moment, the bridge from digital became real. They found a common language that was bigger than words. The language of creation.

Chapter 8
Inspired, Artem found the strength to remake that very bridge. Now he did it not just according to the drawing, but with understanding. Alisa helped him, finding photos and analogies on the Internet, telling him about the era. It was their joint project.
Inspired by his tenacity and honesty to the material, Alisa completely redesigned the interface of her app. She made it warmer, more tactile, added animations that resembled smooth, natural lines, not sharp digital transitions. She built it the way Artem would have built it — making it durable, understandable, and beautiful not for show, but for the soul.
The launch of the Bridge application was successful. The first users were those who had the hardest time: elderly people, single mothers, migrants. The virtual bridge began to work, connecting real people.
And Artem not only finished his bridge, but also found a new customer - the local history museum, which needed a model of the old part of the city. His work, alive, breathing wood, will now delight and teach children.

Epilogue
A year passed. In that same local history museum, there was an unusual exhibition called "Bridges". On one wall hung screenshots and success stories of the "Bridge" app: here are two neighbors who became friends thanks to the service; here is a volunteer who helps an old lady with a dog every day; here is a company gathered to collect aid.
In the center of the hall stood that same openwork wooden bridge of Artem, and around it were his other works. And each exhibit had a plate explaining the type of connection, the type of wood, and the history of its creation.
Alisa and Artem stood nearby and watched the people moving from screens to wooden models and back. The children poked their fingers at the tablets and then excitedly stroked the handmade wooden cat tower.
“You know, I realized one thing,” Artem said quietly, holding her hand. His large, rough palm wrapped securely around her thin fingers. “It doesn’t matter what you build a bridge from. Wood, iron, code. What matters is that people walk on it. That it can withstand trust, not weight. And that it has strong supports.”
"And which supports are the most important?" Alice asked, although she already knew the answer.
— Honesty. Patience. And a desire to meet in the middle.
They stood there, holding hands, a designer from the world of digital speeds and a craftsman from the world of unhurried wood. Their bridge was built. And people were already walking on it.