The Living

by Anna Starobinets

  Once I started telling him about Hanna. About how we lived together, how she sang, and how she left. He didn’t ask me to say anything – I just got the urge to get it off my chest, and I would never have found someone else to listen to me. My mother probably meant nothing to him, but Cracker listened very attentively and didn’t interrupt me once. He quietly scratched the red patches on his neck with his slender fingers and occasionally gave a barely perceptible nod. When I had finished, he didn’t tell me – he was the only person to hear Hanna’s story who didn’t – that there was no reason to be sad, that she was alive and healthy, that there is no death… he didn’t say anything at all. But from that time on he started showing me the forbidden notes with his responses.

  He would only show them to me. Then he would hide them. He rolled them up with his spidery fingers into tiny little tubes and jammed them into different cracks. He set up hidey-holes everywhere – he even hid them in the terrariums with the pets: he would push the little tubes into the dried out wood and bury them in the wet sand.

  Sometimes – rarely – Cracker would discover ‘other people’s’ hidey-holes: with a faint smile he would pull a stiff tube of paper from some dusty hole, hurriedly unroll it and show it to me: ‘Because in the world of the Living crimes are called the maintenance of harmony… Because in the world of the Living the criminals are in power… Because the day will come when we break free…’ I would ask, ‘So what? Wasn’t it you who wrote that?’

  Cracker would nod his big head and smile enigmatically:

  ‘Let’s go and see the Butcher’s Son!’

  The Butcher’s Son was on the Blacklist. He was kept in the Secure Unit, on the minus second floor, in a transparent conical correction chamber. The chamber was exhibited for all to see in the centre of a brightly lit oval hall. Cracker and I sat right on the floor, facing the Son. The floor was clean and white. And so were the rounded, sparkling mica walls. The oval of the ceiling was one huge flat lamp. No windows, no corners, no shadows – nothing to hide, nowhere to hide away. Artificial midday. Direct, honest, correcting light.

  It would be hard to imagine a less secluded place, but nonetheless it was here that we normally used for our private chats. Every now and again tour groups or scientists would come in, and at those times there was no way of elbowing your way through the crowd on minus two, but as for ordinary days, hardly any of the correctees came close to the Son’s chamber, apart from Cracker and me. They weren’t afraid of him: they were afraid of his smile.

  A Blacklister’s smile was believed to be a bad omen or even a curse: it was like it was capable of ‘casting a spell’ on the correctee and stopping the correction process forever. But Cracker and I weren’t superstitious. What is more, the Butcher’s Son didn’t know how to smile. He was twenty-three. He spent most of the time sucking and gnawing at his fingers, picking his nose or watching the way his multi-coloured uniform glowed and flashed iridescent in the light. The Son had his clothes changed every day, a collection had been developed for him consisting of seven outfits in ‘feeling lucky’ style – with sequins, gold brocade, light-inserts and a full range of colours. This fancy dress of his seemed to be part of some socio advertising campaign. Be that as it may, his ‘feeling lucky’ clothes clashed with the stark, penetrating sterility of the place. In his garish suits, in his transparent house, the Butcher’s Son was like a pet. He was like a speckled butterfly in a sound-proof bell-jar.

  …We sat on the white floor facing the Son. Cracker turned over the note from the hidey-hole in his spidery fingers. The Butcher’s Son was licking the pads of his fingers, then putting them up against the glass and looking at the marks they left.

  ‘So, you’re saying that it wasn’t you who wrote them?’

  ‘Look.’ Cracker pushed the note right up in my face with such a sharp movement that the Butcher’s Son shuddered and pulled his slobbery hand from the glass. ‘Look, it’s completely different handwriting. Not to mention the fact that it wasn’t my hidey-hole…’

  He had already said that before. About the different handwriting and it being someone else’s hidey-hole. But I didn’t find it very convincing. I didn’t see the difference in the handwriting (a scribble is a scribble), and Cracker had so many hidey-holes that he could have just forgotten.

  ‘You could’ve just forgotten.’

  ‘Of course,’ his eyelid twitched, or, perhaps, he really did wink at me. ‘Of course I could have forgotten. I must have forgotten. No one would be able to remember where he had stashed a scrap of paper before the pause…’

  Cracker was convinced that he had hidden notes like this in all his previous reproductions. He first found a hidey-hole with a note in it when he was eight. He found it and started doing the same: continued his ‘project’…

  ‘Where do you get the idea that it was you who left the note? It would be too big a coincidence. That you were reproduced in the same region… And ended up in the same House of Correction…’

  ‘Nothing strange about it,’ Cracker snapped back. ‘At forty all correctees go to the Festival for Assisting Nature, right? To the Pause Zone, right? which gives a big chance of being reproduced there, at the festival, in the Reproduction Zone, right…?’

  He was talking so quickly that he was tripping over his words. I watched his eye twitch. And red patches appear on his chalky-white skin, down by his throat. Whenever Cracker was telling me something he would pick at his neck the whole time; it was like he was coaxing out the ends of the phrases that had got stuck in his throat.

  ‘…So people like us often stay in the same region. And end up in the same House of Correction… Of course, it suits him that way! That way it’s easier for him to control us…’

  ‘Who’s “him”?’

  ‘The Living.’ Cracker winked again. ‘Right, little fellow?’ He drummed the knuckles of his fingers lightly against the Son’s transparent chamber, then pushed his face against the glass. ‘…Right, little fellow? It suits you, doesn’t it, keeping us all in the same jar…?’

  The Butcher’s Son gazed spellbound at Cracker. For a second I even thought that he really had heard him… But no. As far as I could tell, it was Cracker’s nose, flattened against the glass that had caught his eye. A couple of times the Son poked his fingers against the glass, trying to touch this amazing ‘snout’, but then he got bored and started rocking from side to side…

  The Butcher’s Son didn’t hear us, but we heard him. Sometimes we saw his lips moving as if he were talking, but I don’t think it was coherent speech. He hadn’t had a single educational program installed and no one ever communicated with him in first layer. Perhaps he was just humming something or repeating fragments of phrases he had heard in second layer… All the correctees had restricted access to socio, but the Butcher’s Son’s was minimal: only second layer, only music and entertainment programs. I don’t know if they cut him off from socio during showings of The Eternal Murderer out of ethical or educational considerations… I suspect not. He didn’t understand what it was about anyway. He didn’t understand that it was a series about him.

  …I was not connected to socio and could not watch The Eternal Murderer, but Cracker always told me what happened. I liked following the story. But above all I liked the preamble, the short story which began every episode. Cracker said it was sort of flashes of scenes a second long, and a voiceover reading out a text. I asked Cracker to repeat that text again and again. I learned it off by heart:

  ‘This story takes place in the time of the Great Reduction, while epidemics were taking millions of lives every day. People did not know then that the birth of the Living was coming and mistakenly blamed their illnesses on their domestic animals. And at this time there lived a Butcher. When an epidemic began in his village, he took his axe and in one day he killed all the cows, goats, sheep, rabbits, chickens, dogs and cats in the area. Then he threw his bloodied axe down onto the ground and, exhausted, went off to bed. While the Butcher slept, his son picked up the axe.
At first he hacked his mother and father to death, then his sisters and brothers, and then set off to his neighbours. The Butcher’s Son spent all night killing people. He drenched the village in blood, left no one alive, and the next night he set off on a journey. The Butcher’s Son went through villages and cities: every night hundreds of people died under the blade of his axe. Only after the birth of the Living were they able to catch the madman. He was sentenced to a public pause by hanging, and after reproduction the infant was confined to a prison…’ At that moment, Cracker said, complete darkness fell, and there was a roll of thunder – kkrrboom! – and the voice came back: ‘… Our era: The Living is all-merciful, so there are no more prisons, there are only Houses of Correction. In one of these Houses lives the cruel Butcher’s Son. Until, one night, he manages to escape…’

  That’s why I loved The Eternal Murderer. One night he managed to escape. Those words gave me hope. At the end of every episode they managed to catch up with him: but the hope… The hope stayed with me.

  ‘…Why is a destructively criminal incode vector not a sentence?’ Cracker finally unstuck himself from the glass and looked at me. ‘Have they explained to you why we have to answer that question every day?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They explained. To get a positive boost.’

  Cracker giggled:

  ‘You could say that as well… But do you know why we don’t get full access to our cell in Renaissance? Why they only let us read letters from our immediate inc-predecessor?’

  ‘Ef says it’s because every earlier predecessor is a step closer to the original Criminal. Letters from early predecessors could harm the correction process…’

  ‘Your mate Ef is lying to you. They’re not planning on correcting anyone here. They don’t let us read letters from early predecessors so that we don’t go mad. Because all our predecessors rotted away in Houses of Correction. All of them, get it? I was here before the pause and I’ll come back here after…’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘There’s no escape from this place!’

  As if to confirm what Cracker was saying the Butcher’s Son started banging his forehead against the see-through wall. It was one of his favourite pastimes.

  ‘I know a lot. I have a letter from my inc-predecessor,’ Cracker turned away from the Son; he was unnerved by the silent blows. ‘…Very boring. A run-through of the day, retelling of episodes, remarks about the weather, quotes from the Book of Life, “fifteen signs that I’m correcting my vector well” and stuff like that… But it’s a code. I immediately realised it was a code. And Cracker can always break a code – especially if he made it himself…’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘…Cracker can break any password. Cracker can break through any defence. Cracker can write any program. My monster must die…’

  ‘Shut it!’

  ‘My monster must die…’

  ‘Shut up, Cracker! You, what, want to get locked up in solitary like him?’ I jabbed the glass with my finger. ‘That phrase is forbidden. Especially for you! That’s from the Frankenstein Message!’

  ‘The Frankenstein Message,’ Cracker whispered dreamily. ‘Someday I’ll finish it.’

  He stuck his nose back against the Son’s chamber. To make the piggy snout. The Butcher’s Son stopped beating his head against the wall and froze.

  ‘I know it’s not your fault, little fellow,’ Cracker said, not taking his face from the see-through surface. ‘It was Him who made you do it. He took away your reason. And then locked you up here forever. But I’ll take care of you. Cracker will take care of everyone, right, little fellow…? I’m a piggy!’ Cracker wrinkled his nose and started grunting jokingly. ‘Look what a piggy I am!’

  ‘He must be twenty or so. Why do you keep calling him “little fellow”?’ I asked.

  ‘Because that’s what I called him when he was little. Last time. In my inc-letter it says he liked it. And this too: “I’m a piggy, I’m a piggy. Oink-oink!”’

  The Butcher’s Son examined Cracker’s flattened face thoughtfully. And then smiled.

  His smile was utterly childlike.

  Report

  (Transcript of conversation between correctee Foxcub and SPO officer, dated 17.07.471 A.V.; extract)

  Foxcub: Then, I reckon, I ran towards the Green Terrace.

  SPO officer: You ‘reckon’?

  Foxcub: Well, I don’t remember running that well because I was really worried… And when I got to the Terrace, there was no one there because everyone was in the termite room.

  SPO officer: Do you remember who else was there?

  Foxcub: Loads of people. I think the warders were there, the entomologist, correctees from different groups… There was a planetman there too: one like you, in a mask. And Zero. Zero was holding something in his hand. Shiny. Like a battery. And he shouted out that he wanted to… oh, I can’t say that word…

  SPO officer: You can now.

  Foxcub: Really?

  SPO officer: The Service for Planetary Order has given you permission.

  Foxcub: He shouted out that he’s going to die, that he’s going to set himself on fire. And the planetman also shouted out, telling everyone to leave, because it was dangerous. And the entomologist shouted out that the termites would die if there’s a fire and that he’s not going to let… Fofs… I’m probably telling it all wrong?

  SPO officer: Carry on. You’re a good lad, keep going, it’s going great. So you all left?

  Foxcub: I don’t remember… Yeah. Or no. Probably not. Because we saw what happened next…

  SPO officer: What happened next?

  Foxcub: Next… Next he… Correctee Zero… He started shouting something weird. That he wanted to be like everyone else or something like that, I didn’t quite understand. And then he did something with this shiny thing and this fire appeared, and then straightaway there was a lot of fire, and then he started burning, all over, right there in his clothes. He burned really fiercely. Brightly.

  SPO officer: Correctee Zero was shouting? Running around the place?

  Foxcub: No, I don’t think he was shouting at all. Or maybe I just couldn’t hear. But he definitely didn’t shout. When he went up in flames, he raised both his arms in the air and became like a blue pillar of fire.

  SPO officer: What steps did the SPO officer take at that time?

  Foxcub: The SPO officer… took steps to… I don’t remember. I was just looking at the pillar of fire, because it was really bright.

  SPO officer: Alright. What happened then?

  Foxcub: Then… I reckon, the glass started breaking, including the glass outside the termite mound, and it also started burning and some other stuff started burning too… and then the fire safety system kicked in and this liquid came pouring out which puts out the fire… And all the fires went out. The pillar went out.

  SPO officer: And then?!

  Foxcub: And then we went to look at Zero and the termites, but there was nothing left. Just this soggy black dust. And it smelled really bad. They led us away.

  SPO officer: Who led you away?

  Foxcub: I don’t remember. I reckon it was one of the warders.

  SPO officer: And that SPO officer, you don’t remember what he was doing?

  Foxcub: I definitely don’t remember. I reckon he was helping the warders.

  SPO officer: Good. You’re a good lad, the Service for Planetary Order would like to express its gratitude. If there is nothing you would like to add to your report, then no dea…

  Foxcub: I have something I’d like to add!

  SPO officer: I’m listening.

  Foxcub: I want to add that… about our termites. I think, we all think, that it was really harsh to them. Zero was really mean to the pets. We always had a direct feed from the mound, usually I didn’t keep it in my memory, because video files take up too much space, but the last few minutes… The way the soldiers stuck their heads out of the termite mound to try and stop the fire getting in. The way the workers
crawled on top of the queen, trying to cover her enormous body under their bodies, protecting her from the fire. And the way the nymphs gnawed off their beautiful wings before they ceased living… for no apparent reason. Maybe in despair. Because they realised that it was already too late to save themselves.

  SPO officer: You put it very nicely, Foxcub. It’s not for nothing you’re such a hit on FreakTube.

  Foxcub: Yeah, I… Thanks. It’s from our ‘Eulogy for the Termites’. We really miss them.

  Zero

  Our group was taken for the experiment a few days after the visit to the Farm. There were five of us: me, Cracker, two correctees I did not know (one pre-pauser and one from the middle group) and the Butcher’s Son. They brought him in literally chained to the chair, with metal cuffs on his legs and arms, which were attached to the arms of the chair by long shining chains. It was there in the white-tiled corridor that we first saw the Son so close up and not through glass. He smelled like an infant from the group of recently reproduced correctees: of milk, wet wipes and urine.

  He played with his chains. He obviously liked them, the way they shone and especially the way they sounded, so he shook them with his arm and then his leg and froze in excitement, listening intently to the metallic sound. He was wearing a three-coloured socio-maniac suit and when he jerked his leg, his wide trouser legs hiked up a little, uncovering his ankles – incredibly thin, as if they belonged to someone who never walked anywhere. Cracker and I came to the conclusion then that the chains were mostly just a show for the lab workers. So that they could see that the terrifying monster had been tamed and was no longer a threat. So that they would not be afraid that it would suddenly take a turn for the worse like in an episode of The Eternal Murderer, that the Butcher’s Son would take advantage of the situation and run off. Cracker even asked the planetmen accompanying us (including Ef) about the chains, but they did not reply: they pretended that they were busy in deep layers and did not hear us. Anyway, we understood without any planetmen: the Son could not have run off anywhere on such hopeless thin legs.