The Living One (Живущий)
by Anna Starobinets
Click here to read the author's biography
Clisk here to read a synopsis
***
Sample translation by Andrew Bromfield
Greetings from
“Renaissance”
the Universal Historical Data Bank
Attention!
This unit contains only private letters and documents.
This unit has been leased for 120 years with the option of subsequent extension.
Access to this cell is limited exclusively to the leaseholder.
Access to this cell is not available to the leaseholder
if he has not yet reached the age of eight.
Enter your incode.
Thank you,
incode accepted.
Place your incode holder’s electronic plastic card
against the glowing area of the screen.
Thank you,
card accepted.
Place your left hand
against the glowing area of the screen.
Identification failed.
Attention!
Make certain that the palm of your hand
Is pressed firmly against the glowing area of the screen
and try again.
Identification failed.
Sorry,
You have been denied access to this cell.
The Universal Historical Data Bank
“Renaissance”
will report this attempt to ...
Attention!
Session aborted
You have entered the POS level 1 access code.
Level 1 access code accepted.
Level 2 access code accepted.
Level 3 access code accepted.
The POS triple code is being processed ...
This unit contains only private letters and documents.
The data bank is not responsible for the accuracy of information
contained in this unit.
Attention!
The triple code has been processed.
Triple code accepted.
You may now access the unit as a visitor.
Pleasant reading.
There is no death.
PART ONE
Hannah
Document No. 1 (personal recording of the leaseholder)
September of the year 439 b.l.o.
First day of the waning moon
The doctor who did my tests was not too concerned at first. He simply said that the connection was not functioning properly, so he would have to do everything again and sorry for making me wait. He froze, looking past me, right through me, with his eyes not blinking. His pupils contracted and expanded erratically, in a strange, twitchy rhythm. Then a steady rhythm set in and for some reason he closed his eyes. As if he wasn’t able to hold three levels – but that never happens with doctors ... So he must have gone deeper. What for? There was a sudden, acrid smell of sweat in the room and I held my breath. I noticed that his eyebrows and forehead and the flaps of this nose, were glittering with moisture. I thought: there’s something wrong with him, with this doctor, he’s the one who’s not functioning properly, the connection’s perfectly fine.
When he opened his eyes again, his face looked as if he’d seen the incode of the Butcher’s Son – or not even the incode, but Butcher’s Son himself, with the weary smile of a diligent worker and a bloody, stinking axe, like in the serial “Eternal Killer”.
“I have to perform the procedure again,” he said and I noticed that his hands were shaking.
“For the third time?”
He didn’t answer, just removed one sensor from my stomach and attached another one exactly the same.
We sat in silence for about a minute: me in the huge, cold chair and him facing me. I thought: if there is someone from the Black List there inside me, some maniac, like the Butcher’s Son or the Corrupt One – then I shall never see him, not even once and they’ll keep him in a house of correction, in a solitary cell, they’ll feed him three times a day and not say a single word to him, he’ll never understand what’s going on. I thought what hypocrisy it is to call them houses of correction. No one ever tries to correct anything there. A full stomach and complete silence ...
Then the sensor squeaked and the doctor computed the result. It looked me as if it was the same.
I asked:
“Is something wrong?”
He didn’t answer.
“Is there something wrong with the child?”
He stood up and walked around the room.
“His father ...” – the doctor’s voice trembled like a beer can rolling across concrete. “Do you know him?”
“No. He’s a festival child.”
“Get dressed. And wait out in the corridor. I’ll call a POS officer.”.
“Is he abnormal?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The child. My Kin. Is my Kin from the Black List?”
“Ah ... no ...” he finally looked at me, but in a strange sort of way: as if he was watching me from a distance, through binoculars. As if I was hovering somewhere on the horizon. As if I was in the socium, but not here, with him. No, your Kin is not from the Black List.”
“Then why the POS officer? What have I done? What is my transgression?”
“That’s outside my competence,” he said abstractedly and immediately stopped noticing me anymore. He was obviously involved in some other conversation on a deep level.
The officer was in no great hurry. It took him forty minutes to get there and I spent those forty minutes in the corridor, watching the females going in through the doors of the doctor’s rooms, all tense and irritable, all in the usual state of fright at the revelation to come, trying to prepare themselves for the worst, but clinging stubbornly to hope for the best. Hope. They simply radiated hope. Waves of toxic hope flooded the entire corridor. Maybe it will be all right. Maybe not now. Maybe I’m empty.
They come out of the rooms changed. Emptied, walking with the smooth, rapid stride of dancers, they seem to become slimmer, the emptiness swirling inside them seems to make them lighter.
The others tread heavily, as if they have put on weight all of a sudden. Their gaze is turned inward; oh, that well-known gaze of submission – appraising, trying to discern and understand superfluity that is growing there within.
Submission, responsibility, duty – that’s what the psycho therapists will tell them tomorrow. Submission to Nature.Responsibility to their Kin.And duty to the Living One. Yes, it’s hard. Those three components of harmony are inconvenient. But you will find consolation in the other three. Satisfaction, stability, immortality. And now let’s all stand in a circle and hold hands – those who wish can put on contact gloves, they’re sterile and let us repeat this together: “The harmony of the Living One consists of six components: submission, duty, responsibility, satisfaction, stability and immortality”. And now let us all say together: “The harmony of the Living One depends on me personally”.
My psychotherapist believes that tactile contact and speaking in unison is the best possible training. Painful, but useful. He says the round dance and the chorus are a kind of model. In a round dance you realise you are part of the Living One far more clearly than in the socium ... In a round dance, you feel far more protected. In a round dance you are not even frightened of the Five Seconds of Darkness.
“... there is no death!” The planetary officer plonked himself down on the empty chair beside me and put his square black briefcase beside his feet: the mirror mask stuck to his face was a little dull, smeared with something. “It’s hot today ...”
“What is my transgression?”
“You have not committed one.”
“Then why do you wish to interrogate me?”
“It’s my job.” The planetary officer glanced at me intently and – as far as I could tell from the expression of the mask – with abhorrence. “Put this on, please.”
He handed me another mirror mask, also not very clean
“Do we have to use a tell-tale?”
“The appliance is obligatory for conducting a conversation,” he said, impatiently shaking the mask that he was holding out. “Put it on. The inside is quite sterile. Good, thank you, Hannah ... This is simply a conversation. Nothing like an interrogation ...”
The mask was cold. Cold and sticky, like the touch of some deep-sea creature.
“... I will now connect your mask to the device for conducting a conversation ... Aha ... and now mine ... There. This is simply in order to record our conversation, nothing more.”
His voice under the mask underwent a sudden, disgusting transformation, changing into a monotonous kind of drone.
“... At the end of the conversation you will receive a verbatim record. The conversational device cannot cause any harm to you or your ... er ... embryo, it is made of environmentally benign ...”
“What is my transgression?”
“You have not committed one.”
“I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“Neither do I.” He smiled with his mirror mouth. “I don’t understand either. That’s why I need you to tell me everything about your ... er, er ... embryo, in as much detail as possible.”
“It’s a festival child.”
“I said in detail ...”
Do you wish to discontinue working with document No. 1?
yes no
Work with this document has been discontinued
Change to another document or discontinue work with this unit?
Changing to document No. 3 ...
Document No. 3 (copy of verbatim report of conversation with POS officer on 10.09.439 b.l.o.)
POS officer: You are required to tell me everything about your embryo, in as much detail as possible.
Interviewee 3678: It’s a festival child.
POS officer: I said in detail.
Interviewee 3678: Today, the first day of the waning moon, I came to Medical Centre No. 1015 in compliance with the law on the monthly verification of the size of the population. The doctors determined that I was pregnant ...
POS officer: Had you previously visited the Centre regularly?
Interviewee 3678: Yes, of course. I come here every month.
POS officer: Had the doctors at the Centre ever previously determined that you were pregnant?
Interviewee 3678: No. It was the first time it had happened.
POS officer: Did you not have any previous sexual contacts?
Interviewee 3678: Yes, I did.
POS officer: Did you have fertility problems?
Interviewee 3678: No.
POS officer: Then why was this the first pregnancy?
Interviewee 3678: I used contraceptives.
POS officer: That is forbidden.
Interviewee 3678: I have permission.
Interviewee 3678 rummages in her handbag. The sensor records an increase of 0.3 degrees in body temperature, an increase in pulse rate to 130 a minute, a dilation of the pupil to 6.3 mm., which exceeds the norm for the ambient light intensity.
Interviewee 3678: There.
Interviewee 3678 shows the POS officer a document, a permit to use contraceptives, issued on the basis of a medical diagnosis of mild psychological abnormality.
POS officer: Tell me about the festival in more detail.
Interviewee 3678: The child was conceived at the Regional Festival for the Support of Nature at the last new moon, within the terms of the programme for population control and in accordance with the law on planned ...
POS officer: Would you recognise the father?
Interviewee 3678: Are you joking?
POS officer: I’m just doing my job.
Interviewee 3678: How could I recognise the father? I told you, the child was conceived at a festival. How could I know which of them ...
POS officer: How many partners did you have at the festival?
Interviewee 3678: Five ... Seven ... I don’t know,
POS officer: According to ourinformation, at that Festival for the Support of Nature, three thousand, three hundred and two men visited the Reproduction Zone. We will present all of them to you for identification. Will you be able to identify your partners among them?
Interviewee 3678: I don’t know. I’m not sure ... I’m not obliged to do that. The law on the privacy of sexual relations is still in force.
POS officer: Naturally, you are not obliged to do this. It is only a request. A request from the Planetary Order Service.
Interviewee 3678: I will do as you request, if you explain to me what is going on here.
POS officer: Very well, I will try to explain to you. In the Pause Zone at the Festival for the Support of Nature in which you participated, the existence of six hundred and ten people was temporarily terminated. At the same time six hundred and eleven people were conceived in the Reproduction Zone. Six hundred and ten of them are direct reincarnations of those who remained in the Pause Zone, all the incodes correspond precisely. And only one – your festival child ...
Interviewee 3678: And you frightened me so badly just for that! Weebep![1] [1. A popular abbreviation used in socium chats: “I weep before the pause”. Incorporated into first-level lexis from the second century b.l.o.]
That’s really absurd. It has been proved that in 95 per cent of cases festival children reproduce the pausers in a stable fashion, but in the remaining cases the incodes could be absolutely anybody’s. Did you stick this thing on my face just to tell me that my Kin’s incode doesn’t match any of the pausers? So what, I couldn’t care less whose incode the child has, sweterin[2] [2. A popular acronym in socium chats: “I swear on the eternal incode”. Incorporated into first-level lexis from the third century b.l.o.] as long as it’s not some criminal’s ... He isn’t a criminal, is he?
POS officer: I don’t know.
Interviewee 3678: But I do. The doctor said my Kin isn’t from the Black List.
POS officer: That is correct. Your embryo’s incode is not among the incodes on the Black List.
Interviewee 3678: Then what’s the problem?
POS officer: The problem is that the incode of your embryo ... the incode of your Kin isn’t listed anywhere at all.
Interviewee 3678: I don’t understand. That doesn’t make sense!
POS officer: But it’s true. His incode is not the same as any of the incarnation codes in the global data base: not one of the three billion. In effect, your future child doesn’t have any incode at all. Instead of an incode, the result from both devices used for your intrauterine inspection was nil.
Interviewee 3678: Nil?
POS officer: Nil, zero. He has no in-history. Your Kin has never lived before.
Interviewee 3678: You mean ... but ... in that case ... whose place has he taken? Does that mean someone who temporarily ceased to exist was not reproduced? He disappeared? Is that it?
POS officer: Not at all. No one has disappeared. A new person has been added.
Interviewee 3678: That’s impossible! You’re a Planetary Order Service officer, aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Are you a member of some kind of sect? This is heresy you’re speaking. It is said: “The number of the Living is invariable. The Living One is three billion lives and not one shall be taken away from it and not one shall be added, for in eternal reproduction there lies ...”
POS officer: You needn’t bother, I have also read the Book of Life and learned the key passages off by heart. But a fact is a fact. The quantitative composition of the Living One has changed and it is now three billion and one. And the one is your Kin, with his zero incode. I’m afraid you don’t realise just how serious this is. Nobody does yet
Interviewee 3678: Could he ... could my Kin be dangerous to the harmony of the Living One?
POS officer: It’s not out of the question.
Interviewee 3678: Will they put him in a house of correction? Why are you shaking your head? He ... will they not let him be born? Will I have to have an abortion?
POS officer: I don’t decide matters like that. Over the next seven days the “zero problem” will be considered at the very highest level. And for those seven days you will stay in the clinic, under the supervision of the doctors. You have no right to leave your ward until the Council of Eight delivers its judgement. Tomorrow the first three hundred men who took part in the festival will be brought to you for identification. Is that all clear?
Interlocutrix 3678: Yes
POS officer: I have one last question for you. If you have permission to use contraceptives, which did you not take precautions at the festival?
Interviewee 3678: Because I wanted to conceive a child.
POS Officer: In what sense?
Interviewee 3678: In the simplest possible. I wanted a child.
POS officer: Explain your thought to me.
Interviewee 3678: The medical certificate allows me to use contraceptives, but it doesn’t release me from my supreme duty to the Living One. I was performing my duty. Is there something about that you don’t like?
POS officer: Well, of course not. Your attitude is worthy of every respect. Thank you for this conversation.
(end of verbatim record)
Change to another document or discontinue work with this unit?
cerberus: How about a beer?
Attention! You should now changeto another document
ordiscontinue work with this unit.
“That’s enough, Ef, finish it. Let’s have a beer. This data bank’s so stuffy. It’s like being up the Living One’s backside. And this damn mask will melt on my face if I don’t get a swallow of something cool soon!”
Change to another document or discontinue work with this cell?
“Okay, you’ve persuaded me,” said Ef, jabbing sluggishly at “discontinue” with his bandaged hand.
The faceless one
There’s no one about. It isn’t dark yet, but the golden glow from the little lamps set in between the slabs of the pavement is already illuminating the evening mist and the tender-pink, white-veined marble.
Cleo: there is no death, Ef, if you are here
Ef’s shoes leave black tracks of soot on the marble and the electronic cleaning woman standing motionless by the payment in a bikini and rubber gloves switches on with a quiet click, goes down on her hands and knees and starts wiping it off. She crawls after them quickly, pivoting her backside provocatively and moaning in a low monotone. Naturally, her kind has to provoke the desire to breed and propagate in people passing by.
Cerberus turns back and spits a thick gobbet onto the pink marble. The cleaning woman meekly reaches for the gobbet with her rag.
“Bugger off!” Cerberus laughs and prods her gently in the face with his pointed shoe. The cleaning woman stops and, without opening her plastic lips, moans sensually: “wow”.
cerberus: there’s a good bar round the corner
cerberus: do you hear what I’m saying?
cerberus: ef!
“There’s a good bar on the corner of Harmony Boulevard,” Cerberus says out loud. “What is it, are you offline?”
ef: no sorry just lost in thought. ok. let’s go to harmony.
They turn to the left. Harmony Boulevard is empty: the concrete sculpture of a huge bronze-coloured hand looks lonely, as if it waiting desperately for a handshake from someone ... there is only the halfwit Matthew, a tall, skinny old man, wandering round the base of the concrete mass, shaking his little bell and shouting insistently:
“He died for us! He died for our sins! He died for us!”
cleo: is everything all right?
“Committing a violation, are we?” Cerberus snarls. “Using those words?”
“Oh, he is the beginning and the end!” Matthew howls. “His name is Zero! He died for us! He burned in the sacred fire!”
cleo: I get worried when you’re grey for so long J
“ ... he died, he died for us!”
“Shut up!” Ef snarls. It’s lucky for you lucky that I want a beer. Or I’d have you down at the house of correction like a shot!”
“Oh, you bloody hounds of hell! Myrmidons of the devil! Men with mirror faces! Men without faces! Tremble, for he cometh. And the kingdom shall be his. And his will shall rule! For you are devils. And you shall be cast down! You shall be overthrown! For he died for us! For he is the Saviour! And his name is Zero!”
cleo: maybe your connection’s not working? I’ll contact the support service
The beer tastes of iron. Maybe it’s the beer, or maybe it’s the mask clinging to his nose and lips that gives the beverage the metallic taste. Ef runs his tongue over the inside of his cheek. No, it’s not the mask. His cheek has split against his teeth, it’s bleeding, that’s all.
Cerberus come back with a second mug of beer, slumps heavily into the opposite chair, immediately sucks in a third of the mug and fixes the stare of the soft, vacant ovals of his mirror eyes on Ef again. Those eyes reflect Ef’s eyes, in which those eyes are reflected and they reflect ... Ef starts feeling sick, as if he’s in a boat pitching and rolling on the sea, he lowers his head and looks into his mug. The foamy surface of the beer doesn’t reflect anything.
cerberus: was there anything he said, that zero, before he ... Cerberus looks round at the empty tables and, just to be on the safe side, he moves closer ... before he ... you know ... destroyed himself
ef: listen, I just want to be like everyone else.cerberus: what’s that you want ef?
ef: me? I want to sleep, but before he died that zero said: listen, I just want to be like everyone else.
cerberus: don’t say that!
“Don’t say that, Ef!” Cerberus was clearly feeling nervous. He was so nervous that even the steady drone into which the mask transformed his voice sounded a tone higher. “Don’t talk about death. There is no death.” Cerberus nodded significantly at the telltale under the table and twirled one finger beside his temple. As if to say: It all gets recorded, you idiot.
STP_19: connection problems? our support service adjusts your connection quickly and efficiently at any time of the day or night. personal contact is not necessary!
“There was death for him,” Ef said wearily. “For Zero. You know he was born without an incode. And yesterday he died. Exploded a wonder-sun and died. There aren’t any more Zeros, Cerberus. He has no continuation – all the population control centres confirm that. It’s not a pause. It’s death.”
cerberus: there’s just one thing I don’t understand. how could he CRUSH a wonder-sun in his HAND? that takes more than human strength ... maybe he wasn’t human at all?
ef: according to all the biological data he was human. I think he must just have fiddled with it beforehand, unscrewed something maybe ... or else it was faulty which happens sometimes too.
cerberus: ok in any case it’s for the best anyway, for the Living One. Cerberus stretches his mirror lips that are wet with beer into a smile and drones flatly: “The number of the Living is invariable, the Living One is three billion live units and not one shall be taken away and not one shall be added. And no more zeros. Are you glad?”
“I am,” says Ef. “Very glad. Only I’m terribly tired. And my hands hurt.” He stirred his bandaged fingers feebly.
“Got badly burned, eh?”
“All the skin came away.”
cerberus: weebep ... what about your face?
ef: no not the face I was wearing the mask it’s fireproof.
cerberus: show me.
ef: show you what?
“Well, your face. You keep touching your cheek. Maybe you burned it after all. Take off the mask and I’ll have a look.”
Ef jumps up off his chair. And then sits down again.
“Officer Cerberus. You have just suggested that I violate the regulations of the Planetary Order Service. Your words have been recorded by my device for conducting conversations and therefore I duly ...
POS-service: third-level access: signal processing: do you wish to make an official complaint?
ef: not yet
“Ok, ok. Stop jumping about like a flea. Just a little check. A joke!” Cerberus droned reassuringly.
“A joke or a check?!
cerberus: gopoz![1] [1. A popular acronym in socium chats: “go to the pause zone”. Used as an insult, in friendly speech it can be used as a joke. Incorporated into first-level lexis from the first century b.l.o. shortly after the first Festival for the Support of Nature was held.] a friendly joke of course.!
Ef looks at his own reflection in Cerberus’s mirror features and feels another surge of nausea. He takes a sip of beer. Closes his eyes. It gets worse.
The darkness doesn’t come, what appears instead of the darkness is a structure, as if he has stuck his face into a flabby termite mound ... Hundreds of little oval cells, a porous, flexible mass. Most of the cells give off a glow of accessible occupancy and pulsate slightly. The others, dull-grey and motionless, seem derelict. Cerberus’s cell is also pretending to be uninhabited ...
cerberus: stop that you’ve known me forever!Missing comma / extra space between “that” and “you’ve”?
ef: okay forget it
cleo: ef!
One of the accessible cells swells up and expands, as if it is turning into a greedy mouth.
cleo: ef I know you’re there
He opens his eyes. Cerberus’s mirror mask reflects his mirror mask, reflecting Cerberus’s mask ... His lower jaw cramps and his tongue as well. He jumps to his feet.
“What’s up?”
“I’m going to puke.”
autodoctor: relax. take a deep breath – brea-ea-ea-the out. breathe in – brea-ea-ea-the out. you are overtired. you need to sleep. alcohol is not recommended. more liquids and a walk in the fresh air.
“Feeling any better?” asks Cerberus, concerned. “Maybe more beer?”
“I’m overtired,” says Ef. “I need to sleep. Alcohol is not recommended. A walk in the fresh air is recommended ... There is no death!”
He walks towards the door.
“There is no death,” Cerberus responds and belches precisely, covering his mirror-lips with his hand. The “telltale” converts his belch into a brief, desperate howl.
_____
subject: letter of happiness
from: nonconformist
You have a stupid job and before the pause you had a stupid job and after the pause you’ll have a stupid job. But you want to be a scriptwriter or a designer. Follow Zero – he came to change your life !caution! this message could be spam
mark this message as spam? yes no
Ef marks it as spam, although it’s pointless: the “letter of happiness” has already been sent from his address to a dozen friends. It’s impossible to stop the process. He ought to know.
Immediately another message:
subject: important
from: dissident well-wisher
Do not be deceived. Leo-Lot’s bright beam can shine in both directions, forward and backward ...
Ef reads the message all the way through and feels another layer appearing between his face and the mask – a cold film of sweat. He marks the letter as spam, although he knows that it isn’t spam; then he deletes it; he will remember the text verbatim. His heart is beating in the tips of his fingers, his ears and just below his Adam’s apple, as if it has exploded into a hundred dwarf hearts and the blood has carried them throughout his body.
perhaps you are feeling afraid? the autodoctor enquires.
Perhaps. But that’s none of your business.
When Ef turns onto Harmony Boulevard it starts to rain – suddenly, without any warning splashes, as if an automatic disinfection shower has been switched on at full power.
The damp turns the pale-pink marble the colour of raw liver. In the light of the lamps built into the pavement, the drops of rain look like swarms of golden insects drawn to the smell of blood.
cleo: the support service checked the connection you’re just invisible
The drops of rain tickle the plastic bodies of the electronic cleaning ladies and the cleaning ladies moan obediently. The drops of rain strike gently against Ef’s mirror mask, bringing no relief. Bringing no freshness. If he could take it off. If he could take it off and feel the cold moisture ...
“Tremble, for he cometh ... Tremble for he cometh ... Tremble, for he cometh ...” long, lanky Matthew chants, tramping his bare feet up and down on the lamp that he is standing on, in the golden pillar of light. The golden light gleams on his face, his grey curls and his neck.
“Men with no voice!” he declares, livening up at the sight of Ef. “Men with mirror faces!”
Ef slows down.
“There is no death, Matthew. You’re wet through. Go home.”
He tries to make the words sound gentle, but the telltale chews them up and spits them out as an order.
Matthew opens his cloudy-blue eyes wide and breaks into a trill of squeaky laughter, baring his long, rotten teeth, like a horse’s. Then he whines and squats down on his haunches. He traces his bony finger across the bright, wet marble:
“Do you see what colour the ground really is? Do you see what colour it really is?”
“Go home,” Ef repeats. Then he switches off the telltale and adds: “I see”.
cleo: why do you say that?
“You have voices inside you,” Matthew whispers and his gaze clears for a moment.
“Voices that aren’t yours, right?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“They’re demons!” Matthew clasps his knees in his arms and sways from side to side. “They’re demons. Switch them off. The demons. Switch them off. The demons. Switch them off ...”
____
deactivate connection
do you really want to deactivate the connection with the socium?
yes no
confirm:
ef: yes
attention: in deactivated mode you cannot see the list of your contacts in the socium, communicate within the socium, receive information from the socium and exchange information with other members of the socium. Deactivate connection?
yes no
attention: in deactivated mode you will not be an active part of the socium. Deactivate connection?
yes no
“Yes.”
You are no longer in the socium.
Do not be concerned, you can restore your connection with the socium at any moment.
Attention: it is not recommended to interrupt connection with the socium for more than 30 minutes. If you do not restore the connection yourself, compulsory connection to the socium will occur after 40 minutes.
Zero
... I just want to be like everyone else. I don’t want to take too much on myself. I want to be like everyone else. If not now, then later. After the Pause.
Hey you! Hey, you there in the future! I hope you really will exist. I hope you will be me. I hope I shall exist. If you are my continuation, if I am you, forgive me for this stupid incode you have inherited from me ... It has ruined my life – but I really hope that you will manage somehow. That I will manage somehow, there in the future. In about eight years’ time ... You are eight, aren’t you?
I suppose this is cowardice. It’s running away. It’s dishonest. But if you do exist, if you are real, then forgive me for what I’m going to do soon. Forgive me if I have ruined your (or should I write “my”) mood. Forgive me if I have caused problems for you (ha-ha, for me!) I want you to understand me. I am going to kill myself – yes, yes, forgive me, forgive me again, it’s not permitted to say that, I have to say it differently. I am going to “terminate my existence temporarily”, “make a pause”, but I’m not a fool, after all, I know: for all of them it’s a pause, but for me it will simply be a full stop. And so if you do exist, if you will be, then glolop [1] [1. A popular acronym in socium chats: “Glory to the Living One and his particles”. Incorporated into first-level lexis from the late second century b.l.o.] it’s our victory, it means that we are like everyone else. I am like everyone else. I am a particle of the Living One.
But if you will not be, if you simply don’t exist, if I don’t exist anymore – if I disappear, die forever, as people used to do earlier, before the Living One was born ... Well, then I am a mistake of nature. A genetic error. An illness. A boil on the body of the Living One. And then things will be better without me. More correct. Simpler. In short, no matter how things end, it will still be better than it is now ...
I always wanted to be like everyone else. But they made me a god. They made me a devil. They made me a fly in a laboratory. They made me very dangerous. They didn’t know what they made me.
They drove me into a corner. They left me completely alone.
He will come again today. Ef, the man in the mask. To look for defects, ask mean little questions, rummage around in my insides like a heap of things that belong to no one.
And then I shall burn myself. Let them all see how the wonder-sun burns!
I’m sure you want to understand. If you are me, of course you’ll want to understand ... after all, I wanted to very much.
I shall write everything that I know for you. Because you need it.
Because I need to know. I shall need to know everything.
My mother was called Hannah. I shan’t write that she is no longer alive, because it’s not possible to say that. Because, of course, she does exist. She is continuing her life ... I shall only write that I miss her. I miss her as if she does not exist anymore – ever since she entered the Pause Zone at the Festival for the Support of Nature.
Hannah was her name then. Now she is called Diana and she is fourteen years old. Her eternal name is Miya-31, but I don’t like it, it sounds like a brand of washing-machine. She didn’t like it either, she always introduced herself as Hannah?. I don’t know what name she likes to introduce herself with now. And I don’t want to know.
She had very light skin. So light and clear, it was transparent, that’s very rare for globaloids.
Her eyes were velvety, like the wings of a chocolate-coloured moth.
When I went to sleep she always sang me a lullaby – that old one about the animals, it’s still in the “Children of the Living One” programmes. I think it’s installed at the age of three. I’m sure you remember it:
The roe-deer and the ram are sleeping
The sheep and the lizard are sleeping,
The cow, the tiger and elephant are sleeping
And they have a sad dream,
A dream of dark water,
A dream of bitter sorrow,
They dream of a boat with no oarsman
They dream of shadows with no face ...
I was almost nine already, but I always asked for the song. I refused to go to sleep without it. Hannah used to say it wasn’t right, that no one sang songs to such big children, that such big children shouldn’t live with their mothers at all, they should live in a boarding school and there weren’t any lullabies there.
“But I live with you,” I used to say.
“Yes, you do,” Hannah agreed.
“Then sing.”
And she did sing. She had a beautiful voice.
... In the silence the wolves howl.
In his sleep the cat weeps quietly,
The horse snores, the elephant groans.
Dreaming of dark water,
Dreaming of bitter sorrow,
The animals sleep on the cold shore
And the days go flying by ...
“You won’t put me in the boarding school, will you?” I used to ask.
“No, I won’t,” Hannah said.
“And the two of us will always be together?”
“That doesn’t happen, my Kinling,” Hannah used to say.
She didn’t call me by my name – I understood why later: it frightened her, it forced her to gaze into the precipice, into nothing, into the white void with a black ring round it ... She didn’t call me Zero. She simply called me Kinling.
“Why?” I whimpered. “Why can’t we always be together? We’re immortal, aren’t we? Let’s just agree: when one of us dies ...”
“Kinling!”
“... I meant to say that when one of us temporarily ceases to exist, the other one will simply find him or her and everything will stay the same as before.”
“That doesn’t happen, Kinling,” said Hannah, shaking her head.
That doesn’t happen. She was right. I didn’t believe she was right until Ef agreed to take me to her.
I wasn’t interested at all in the fat little girl that she had turned into. And she wasn’t interested in me either.
Nobody needs anyone, my little friend. You don’t mind me calling you “little friend”, do you? I hope you don’t think I’m being too familiar? After all, in the final analysis, I am talking to myself. Or I’m talking to no one at all ...
“Tell me you love me,” I used to ask Hannah.
“Don’t, Kinling,” she would say, suddenly shrinking somehow.
“Why?”
“I’ve already told you. The Living One is full of love and every particle of him loves every other particle equally. ”
“That means you love me, then?”
And she said:
“Yes.”
“You love me the same way ... the same way as you love crazy Matthew, who shouts as he walks along the street?”
She didn’t answer. I was angry.
“Tell me you love me more than anyone else!”
She didn’t answer.
“Then sing.”
And she did sing.
... On the cold shore
The animals sleep and days fly by,
The days fly by, night comes,
And we cannot help them
On that day when I saw her for the last time, on that day when Hannah went to her final Festival, she said I should go to bed without her. She said she would come back too late. And so she would sing me the song before she left.
The days fly by, night comes,
And we cannot help them
For the cats and the sheep
The end is coming ...
Only you sleep calmly,
My Living One, my little one,
Smiling in your sleep,
Because there is no death.
“There is no death!” she called as she went out
“There is no death!” I answered her.
“I love you,” she said. “I love you more than anyone else.”
She was thirty-four.
She still had the right to visit the Reproduction Zone at the Festival for the Support of Nature. The reproductive period officially ends at thirty-five.
In another eleven years she would have received messages from the Regional Centre for Population Control with a gentle suggestion that she should visit the Pause Zone. Messages like that start arriving at forty-five.
In another sixteen years she would have received messages from the Regional Centre for Population Control with a harsh recommendation to visit the Pause Zone. Messages like that start to arrive at fifty.
In twenty-six years she could have reached the Compulsory Pause. The measure that is applied to those who have turned sixty and don’t want follow the recommendation voluntarily.
For another whole year she had the right to visit the Reproduction Zone at the festival for the Support of Nature.
But she went into the Pause Zone.
She did it because of me. Because they hadn’t taken me into the boarding school and had left me with her.Because she sang songs to me.Because she loved me more than anyone else.
And then she added in a faint voice:
“I love you as I love every particle of the Living One.”