The Living

by Anna Starobinets

  (end of transcript)

  Move to new document or terminate session with this box?

  cerberus: fancy a beer?

  Caution! You must move to another document now or terminate your session with this box.

  ‘Oh, come on, enough is enough, Ef, terminate. Let’s go and have a beer. This bloody bank is as stuffy as the Living’s backside. And this bloody mask will melt right here on my face if I’m not chugging on a cold one soon.’

  Move to new document or terminate session with this box?

  ‘Alright. You’ve talked me into it.’ Ef jabs sluggishly at ‘terminate’ with a bandaged hand. ‘Let’s go and have a beer.’

  The Man with No Face

  There is no one on the street. It has not yet got dark, but the golden glow of the little lights built into the paving slabs already illuminate the evening mist and the delicate pink surface and fine white veins of the marble.

  cleo: no death ef all of a sudden you’re here

  Ef’s boots leave black tracks of grime on the marble; an electronic wonder-cleaner, who stands frozen by the pavement wearing a bikini and rubber gloves, turns herself on with a quiet click, gets down on all fours and sets to work wiping off the marks. She crawls after them quickly, thrusting her rear in the air and making quiet, monotonous groaning noises. Clearly ones like her are meant to arouse a desire in passers-by to procreate and multiply.

  Cerberus turns around and spits on the pink marble with relish. The cleaner dutifully drags herself towards his spittle with a cloth.

  ‘Get lost!’ Cerberus laughs and gives her a slight kick to the face with his sharp-toed boot. The cleaner freezes and, not unclenching her plastic lips, makes a sultry ‘mmmmhhh’: that is how she has been programmed to react when touched.

  cerberus: they’ve got decent beer in this place round the corner

  cerberus: hear what i’m saying?

  cerberus: ef!

  ‘They’ve got decent beer at that place on the corner with Harmony Avenue,’ Cerberus says out loud. ‘What, you offline or something?’

  ef: no sorry just got distracted. ok. let’s go to Harmony

  They turn left. Harmony Avenue is empty; the concretal sculpture – an enormous bronze-coloured palm – looks lonely, as if waiting for a handshake that it will never receive… Only half-mad Matthew, a tall, scrawny old man, is there, wandering around at the base of the concretion, shaking his little bell and crying determinedly: ‘He died for us! He died for our sins! Died for us!’

  cleo: everything alright?

  ‘Do we have a violation here?’ Cerberus snaps at him. ‘Are we using certain words?’

  ‘Oh, he is the beginning and the end,’ Matthew howls. ‘And his name is… Zero! He died for us! He was burned in the sacred fire…!’

  cleo: i get worried when you’re grey for ages

  ‘He died, died for us!’

  ‘Silence!’ barks Ef. ‘You’re lucky I want a beer. If not I’d have had you straight off to Correction!’

  ‘You, you blood-soaked hounds of hell! Acolytes of the devil! Men with mirror faces! Men without faces! Men without voices! Tremble, for he cometh! And his kingdom cometh! And his will will be done! Thus is thine twine swine! For you shall be cast down! And you shall be cast out! For he died for us! For he is the Saviour! And his name is…Zero…!’

  cleo: maybe something’s up with your connection? i’m going to get tech support

  …The beer has a hint of iron about it. It’s either the beer itself or the mask that’s stuck to his nose and lips that gives the drink this metallic taste. Ef runs the tip of his tongue around the inside of his cheek. No, it’s not the mask. His cheek, smashed from the inside against his teeth, is bleeding, that’s what it is.

  Cerberus returns with a second mug of beer, falls heavily into the chair opposite, sucks up a third of his beer in one go and goes back to staring at him with the soft blank ovals of his mirror eyes. These eyes reflect Ef’s mirror eyes, which reflect those eyes which reflect… Ef starts to feel queasy, as if he were seasick; he lowers his head and looks into his glass. The foamy surface of the beer does not reflect anything.

  cerberus: did he say anything, that zero, before he…

  Cerberus looks at the empty tables around them and moves closer just in case.

  … before he… you know… destroyed himself?

  ef: listen i just want to be like everyone else

  cerberus: what do you want ef?!

  ef: me?:–) i want to sleep. but that zero, before he died he said ‘listen I want to be like everyone else

  cerberus: don’t talk like that!!

  ‘Don’t talk like that, Ef!’ Cerberus has clearly got nervous. He is so nervous that even the measured buzzing that the chatterbox makes from his voice sounds a tone higher. ‘Don’t talk about death. There is no death.’ Cerberus nods pointedly at the chatterbox under the table and points at his temple as if to say, ‘You idiot, everything’s being recorded.’

  ‘There was death for him,’ Ef says wearily. ‘For Zero. You know very well he was born without an incode. And yesterday he died. He blew up a wonder-sunshine and died. There will be no more “voids”, Cerberus. He won’t be continued – it’s been confirmed by all the population control centres. It wasn’t a pause. It was death.’

  cerberus: the one thing i don’t get is how he could crush a wonder-sunshine in his HAND?? it’s not humanly possible… maybe he wasn’t a human at all?

  ef: all biological signs suggest he was a human i think he just dug into it a bit before and twisted something… or it was just broken that also happens sometimes…

  cerberus: well anyway it’s all for the best basically. for the Living.

  Cerberus stretches his mirrored lips, still wet from the beer, into a smile and buzzes evenly: ‘The number of the Living is unchanging. The Living is three billion livings, neither by one shall it be diminished, nor by one shall it be increased…’

  and no more voids. aren’t you happy?

  ‘Yes,’ Ef says. ‘Very happy. It’s just I’m awfully tired. And my hands hurt.’ He struggles to waggle his bandaged fingers.

  ‘It burned you pretty bad?’

  ‘All the skin’s come off.’

  cerberus: fofs… and your face?

  ef: not my face you know i was wearing my mask it’s fireproof

  cerberus: show me

  ef: show you what?

  ‘Er, your face. And you keep touching your cheek. Maybe you’re burned all over. Take off your mask, I’ll have a look.’

  Ef jumps out of his seat. Then sits back down.

  ‘Officer Cerberus. You have just suggested that I break Service for Planetary Order regulations. Your words have been recorded by the conversation device, and I will take full responsibility for…’

  SPO_service: third level access: processing signal: do you wish to make an official charge?

  ef: not yet

  ‘OK, OK, what did you jump up like a flea for? It was just a little test. A joke!’ Cerberus buzzes apologetically.

  ‘So was it a test or a joke?’

  cerberus: gopz!3 a friendly joke of course!

  Ef examines his reflection in Cerberus’s mirrored features and feels another wave of nausea. He knocks back some beer. Closes his eyes. It gets worse.

  Darkness does not come, instead of darkness there is structure. It’s as if he was nestling his face in a squidgy termite mound… Hundreds of tiny rounded boxes, a mobile, porous mass. Most of the boxes are dripping with light – busy or available – and pulsing gently. The rest, murky-grey and immobile, seem abandoned. Cerberus’s box also gives the impression of being uninhabited…

  cerberus: stop that you’ve known me a hundred years!

  ef: ok let’s just leave it

  cleo: ef!!

  One of the available boxes swells up and bursts open, as if transformed into a greedy mouth.

  cleo: ef i know you’re there

  He opens his eyes. Cerberus’s mirrore
d mask reflects his own mirrored mask which reflects Cerberus’s mirrored mask… His jaw drops and his tongue lolls out. He jumps up.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I am going to be sick.’

  autodoctor: relax. deep breath. and ou-u-u-u-t. in – and ou-u-u-t. you are overtired. you need to sleep. alcohol is not recommended. take plenty of fluids and get some fresh air.

  ‘So, has it passed?’ Cerberus asks with heartfelt interest. ‘Another beer maybe?’

  ‘I am overtired,’ says Ef. ‘I need to sleep. Alcohol is not recommended. Fresh air is recommended… No death!’ He goes towards the exit.

  ‘No death,’ Cerberus replies and belches carefully, covering his mirrored lips with his hand. The chatterbox turns his belch into a brief despondent howl.

  re: chain letter

  from: dissenter

  You’ve got a stupid job, before the pause you had a stupid job, and after the pause you’ll have a stupid job. But you want to be a screenwriter or a designer. Follow Zero: he has come to change your life.

  !caution! this may be spam

  mark this message as spam? yes no

  Ef marks it as spam, though there’s no point: ‘the letter of joy’ has already been sent to a dozen friends from his address. It’s impossible to stop the process. He already knows that.

  At that moment a new message comes:

  re: important

  from: a dissident well-wisher

  Don’t believe the lies. The Leo-Lot ray works in both directions, backwards and forwards…

  Ef reads the letter to the end and notices that there is another layer between his face and the mask – a cold film of sweat. He marks the letter as spam, then deletes it, but memorizes every word. His heart beats in his fingertips, in his ears, under his Adam’s apple, as if it has burst into a hundred miniature hearts and his blood has scattered them through his body.

  perhaps you are frightened?

  – the autodoctor chirps up.

  Perhaps. But that’s none of your business.

  When Ef turns on to Harmony it starts to rain – suddenly, without any warning splashes, as if an automatic disinfection shower had been turned on to full power.

  The pale pink marble is soaked and turns the colour of raw liver. In the light of the pavement’s built-in lamps the raindrops look like clouds of golden insects swarming together at the scent of blood.

  cleo: tech support checked the link you’re just in invisible

  The raindrops tickle the naked plastic bodies of the electronic cleaners, and the cleaners groan dutifully. The raindrops drum softly against Ef’s mirror mask, bringing no relief. Bringing no freshness. If only he could take it off. If only he could take it off and feel the cool moisture…

  ‘Tremble, for he cometh… Tremble, for he cometh… Tremble, for he cometh…’ Lanky Matthew shuffles from one bare foot to another right on top of a lamp, in a golden column of light. Streams of gold pour down his face, his long grey matted hair and neck.

  ‘Men without voices!’ The old man comes to life when he sees Ef. ‘Men with mirror faces!’

  Ef slows down.

  ‘No death, Matthew. You’re all wet. Go home.’

  He would like the words to sound soft, but the chatterbox chews them up and spits them out as an order.

  Matthew opens wide his misty blue eyes and bursts out in squeaky laughter, revealing his teeth, which are long and rotten like a horse’s. Then he whimpers and squats down. He trails a bony finger across the wet shiny marble:

  ‘Do you see what colour the ground really is? Do you see what colour it really is?’

  ‘Go home,’ Ef says again. The he turns off his chatterbox and adds, ‘I see.’

  cleo: why are you like this?

  ‘There are voices inside you,’ Matthew whispers, and his gaze clears up for a moment. ‘Other people’s voices, right?’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘They are demons!’ Matthew clasps his knees in his arms and sways from side to side. ‘They are demons. Disconnect. Demons. Disconnect. Demons. Disconnect…’

  disconnect from socio

  are you sure you want to disconnect from socio?

  yes no

  confirm:

  ef: yes

  caution: when in disconnected mode you cannot see your list of socio contacts, or use socio to chat and find and share new information. Continue with disconnection?

  yes no

  caution: when in disconnected mode you will not be an active part of socio. Continue with disconnection?

  yes no

  Yes

  you are no longer in socio

  Don’t worry, you can reconnect to socio at any time.

  Connect: interrupting connection with socio for longer than 30 minutes is not recommended. If you do not re-establish connection independently, mandatory remote connection will take place after 40 minutes.

  Zero

  …I just want to be like everyone else. I don’t have ideas above my station. I want to be like everyone else. I can’t now, so it’ll have to be later. After the Pause. Hey, you! Hey, you there, in the future! I hope you will actually exist. I hope that you will be me. I hope that I will exist. If you are my continuation, if I am you, then sorry for this stupid incode that you’ve got from me… Personally, it ruined my life, but I really hope you find a way to deal with it somehow. That I’ll deal with it somehow there in the future. In eight years’ time… Because you’re eight, aren’t you?

  It’s probably cowardice. It’s running away. It’s not fair. But if you will exist, if you do exist, forgive me for what I’m about to do. Sorry if I’ve ruined your (or should I say ‘my’?) mood. Sorry if I’ve created any problems for you (ha-ha, for me!!). I want you to understand. I’m planning on killing myself – yes, yes, sorry about that, sorry once again, I shouldn’t say that, I should put it differently. I’m planning on ‘temporarily ceasing to exist’, ‘taking a pause’, but I’m no fool, I know: they all get pauses, but all I have is a ‘stop’. So if you do exist, if you will exist, then glap4, we’ve won, you and me, because it means that we’re like everyone else. I’m like everyone else. I am a part of the Living.

  And if you’re not there, if you just don’t exist, if I am no more, if I am going to disappear, I’ll die forever, like people used to, before the birth of the Living… Well, then I’m a mistake of nature. A genetic malfunction. A sickness. A tumour on the body of the Living. So it’ll be better without me. More correct. Simpler. Basically, however this ends – it’ll be better than it is right now….

  I always wanted to be like everyone else. But they have made me a god. They have made me a devil. They have made me a fruit fly for them to do experiments on. They have made me very dangerous. They did not even know what they were doing.

  They have forced me into a corner. They have left me completely alone.

  Today he will come again. Ef, the man in the mask. To look for defects, to ask nasty little questions, to start digging about inside me like I’m a heap of common property.

  And then I’m going to set myself on fire. Then they’ll all see how a wonder-sunshine burns!

  I’m sure you want to understand. If you are me, you’ll definitely want to understand… I always really wanted to.

  I’ll tell you everything I know. Because you need to know.

  Because I need to know. I will need to know everything.

  My mother was called Hanna. I won’t say that she’s gone because we’re not allowed to talk like that. Because, of course, she is still around. She has continued to live on… All I’ll say is – I miss her. I miss her like she’s gone – ever since she went into the Pause Zone at the Festival for Assisting Nature.

  Hanna was her temporary name. Her eternal name is Mia 31, but I don’t like it, it sounds like a type of washing machine. She didn’t like it either and always introduced herself as Hanna. What name she likes to introduce herself by nowadays, I don’t know. And I don’t want to know.

 
She had incredibly pale skin. Pale and so clear it was almost transparent, which is rare for globaloids.

  Her eyes were velvety, like the wings of a tortoiseshell butterfly.

  At night she would always sing me a lullaby – you know, that old one about animals, it’s still part of the range of programs in A Living Childhood. It gets installed at, I think, about age three. You’ll probably remember it:

  Sleeping are the calves and lambs,

  Sleeping are the newts, the rams,

  Cows and lizards, hares and sheep,

  Dreadful dreams disturb their sleep.

  Dreams of waters dark and slow,

  Dreams of bitter, future woe.

  Dreams of drifting, crewless boats,

  Dreams of floating, faceless ghosts…

  I was already nearly nine, but I always asked for that song. I refused to go to sleep without it. Hanna said that I shouldn’t, that big boys like me don’t need songs, big boys like me shouldn’t really live with their mothers anymore, they should live in a boarding house, and there aren’t any lullabies there.

  ‘But I live with you,’ I said.

  ‘You do,’ Hanna agreed.

  ‘So sing then.’

  And she sang. She had a beautiful voice:

  Wolves are howling to the sky,

  Cats are weeping where they lie,