The Living

by Anna Starobinets

  As he took the corpse from the container, the entomologist told me that nymphs cannot feed themselves either, because their intestines lack the bacteria Trichonympha campanula, Leidyopsis sphaerica, Trichomonas and Streblomastix strix. Without these the termite cannot digest food. These bacteria only live in the intestines of worker termites.

  ‘So, have you figured it out finally?’ Ef asked, looking at the empty container.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ve figured it out. I would like a worker…’

  They died, one after another. They would die and I would weep for them and ask for new ones. The correctees (all of them, apart from Cracker – he understood) saw my termites as martyrs and saw me as a crazy murderer. The entomologist stopped talking to me entirely. The psychologist checked my PIA every other day (the result was negative). The House administration sent official complaints to the SPO and asked for Ef to be relieved of his duties (reply: ‘declined’). Nothing changed. A termite would die, I would ask for a new one, and Ef would force the administration to fulfil my request. Why? He was as stubborn as I was. He wanted me to be the first to break.

  They could not survive outside the termite mound.

  I had a worker termite that on the very first day covered the inside of the plastic walls of the container with something like cement; it must have made this substance in its intestines. When he was finished with the walls, he did the ceiling, which the air came through, too. He ceased living from lack of oxygen.

  I had a worker termite who built a strange thin tube in his container, leading from the floor to the ceiling, and walled himself in inside it.

  I had a worker termite that at first ate well, but then stopped and died, seemingly from sadness.

  I had a worker termite that ran away during feeding and died from the light – they found him unliving by the entrance to the termite room.

  I had a worker termite that died for some unknown reason, instantly.

  I had a worker termite that died for some unknown reason, having first suffered for a long time.

  They kept dying, but over time I started getting slightly longer lives from some of them. Twelve days. Eighteen. Twenty-four. A month and a day. A month and two days…

  ‘…Put the piece of paper in the container,’ I cooed. ‘If you don’t want to end up in solitary like the Butcher’s Son.’

  ‘…Give my diagram to a termite? So I’ll have to digest it first you mean?’ Cracker chortled. ‘And then he’ll choke and die. Your termites can’t even eat right!’

  ‘Idiot!’ I took offence. ‘I’ve only had workers for ages now. They eat perfectly. And this one,’ I tapped my finger lightly on the wall of the container, ‘this one, if he does cease living, it’ll be from old age.’

  The termite that was my pet at that time had beaten all records. An unassuming worker, he had been living in the container for nearly half a year already. At first – like many of his predecessors – he had just moped around. But after a couple of weeks he found himself something to do. He started building something like a column out of sand, shards of wood, spit and faeces. When he was finished with that, on top of the column (it reached about halfway up the container) he built something like a bit of a slanting palace arch, something like a fragment from the architecture of the termite mound which he, as far as I could see, imagined was a sort of long-range addition to his home castle. At the very least, this rough arch, riddled with holes, divided the container on the diagonal and was directed towards the termite mound. The top of the arch leaned against the wall of the container in such a way that you could draw a perfect line across the Available Terrace between it and the dome of the termite mound. If the termite had had an opportunity to continue his work, that’s what he would have done… When he had finished the arch, he plunged back into despondency – however, I figured out a way to cheer him up. I just rotated the container slightly in a clockwise direction, so that the piece of arch made by my pet would be aimed not at the termite mound but past it. He set to work eagerly destroying what he had created and crafting a new arch, pointing in what was, for him, the only right direction… And so he kept on living with me, happily, month after month, endlessly building, destroying and rebuilding his section of the castle.

  The termite had an excellent appetite: I had no doubt that he would gobble up Cracker’s piece of paper in about fifteen minutes, or at the very least grind it up and put it to use in his construction. But Cracker dug his heels in.

  ‘There’s important information on that,’ he muttered. ‘I should hide it… in a safe place… in a hidey-hole…’

  A hidey-hole. I’ve already mentioned the fact that Cracker set up hidey-holes everywhere. He even hid his notes in the cages with the pets: he would push his little tubes into the dried wood pulp and bury them in the wet sand… Of course, it was forbidden. It was against all the rules. He thought that they couldn’t touch him because he set up the hidey-holes so skilfully… But I knew: if they wanted to find them, then they would find them. There was only one reason why they had not put Cracker in a correction chamber in the Special Unit like the Butcher’s Son: out of respect for his previous achievements. He had created socio after all. It would be unseemly to lock up the creator of socio in a glass jar, like a blind, asexual termite.

  Nevertheless, Cracker was teetering on the brink: his crime was too serious. That is, his first crime, the original sin which had made him fit for the House of Correction. He had tried to destroy the results of his work. A year after the Nativity he had started writing the Frankenstein Message – a virus which was meant to uninstall socio and kill the infant Living.

  This message began with the words: ‘My monster must die.’ Glap, the socio sysadmins traced the source of the potential threat to Cracker’s IP address in time. Actually, at that time, he had a different nickname: Founder. But after the sentence was announced – life imprisonment – they gave him a new socio name.

  Then after a hundred years, when there were no prisons anymore, Cracker was moved to a House of Correction.

  He was stubborn. He was a bad correctee. After every pause his PTC kept growing, but this did not bother him. He was teetering on the brink. He told everyone that the Butcher’s Son was innocent of his crimes.

  And that diagram of his… I remember when I saw exactly what it was he decided to hide and I thought, this time they’ll definitely get him. Unfortunately, I turned out to be right. His crime was too serious. He should not have been taking risks and aggravating the situation. He should have been working on reducing his PTC.

  The Scientist

  Document No. 24 (leaseholder’s private entry) – access through SPO guest entry

  4th September 451 A.V.

  Five Seconds of Darkness – it sounds beautiful, but in essence it doesn’t mean much. No one knows what actually happens: whether it’s dark or light or just inviz. When an ordinary person hears the phrase ‘five seconds of darkness’ he imagines something dreadful. But at the end of the day it’s just a technical term referring to the period of time when the socio dispatcher can’t see the incode of the person who has temporarily ceased to exist in the population control system. In other words the Five Seconds is the ‘pause’ itself. It is then followed by reproduction: the socio dispatcher re-establishes the incode and registers the geographic position and personal data of the newly conceived person.

  The Five Seconds of Darkness is a practically unresearched field. As we know, it is this ‘blind alley’ which is the main barrier to us carrying out complete incarnational retrospection and detailed examination of pre-pause conditions in the individual. Hitherto only the Roberts random flare method has been widely practised in pre-pause immersion therapy. We have created a special compound which makes the biological organism more sensitive to Roberts radiation. One injection could be enough to transform the random flashes into a directed ray. In this way, we have reason to believe that our breakthrough will radically alter the current state of the field.

  Laborator
y experiments on social insects (bees, ants, termites) exposed to the directed Leo-Lot ray have shown that:

  a) our hypothesis about the continuity of social insects’ life is correct (if this were not the case, our experiment would not have proved successful);

  b) the directed Leo-Lot ray is capable of crossing through the Five Seconds of Darkness and penetrating the pre-pause zone (experiments with Heterotermes indicola termites gave record-breaking results – consecutive immersion to a depth of twenty-six reproductions!).

  In the event of a successful experiment on humans the Leo-Lot ray will allow us to move beyond the random flare method, which will open up a broad vista of possibilities in the field of incarnational retrospection and guarantee good penetration depth.

  Our method allows us to run a session of simultaneous immersion into the subject’s pre-pause zone for both the subject and the experimenter.

  In light of the above, we request that you present us with the following correctees from House of Correction No. 3578 (‘Harmony’) for voluntary participation in our first experiment with the directed Leo-Lot ray:

  1. Correctee Butcher’s Son, current physical age – twenty-three years.

  Reasons for participation in the experiment:

  – incarnational retrospection on the planet’s cruellest criminal is of particular scientific significance for researchers and psychiatrists; our method offers us the possibility of tracing the history of the correctee’s psychic illness not from the dry statements in his personal file, but directly, ‘live’;

  – the correctee’s ability to perceive and interpret the immersion in any way appears doubtful; however, we do not see any reason not to demonstrate the immersion to the correctee.

  2. Correctee Cracker, current physical age – thirteen years.

  Reasons for participation in experiment:

  – the correctee’s continually increasing PTC; the correctee lacks any motivation for correction; a session of incarnational retrospection might be exceedingly useful for understanding mistaken and unproductive attitudes of this kind;

  – incarnational retrospection on one of the planet’s most famous inventors and criminals would be of particular value to scientists.

  3. Correctee Ivanushka, current physical age – forty years.

  Reasons for participation in experiment:

  – in this instance incarnational retrospection may prove to be an example of a beneficial supplement to the psychotherapy of pre-pausers; a small percentage of people of a pre-pause age experience nervousness tension and alarm in connection with the forthcoming Five Seconds of Darkness. We propose that immersion in previous reproductions will considerably enhance pre-pausers’ sense of immortality, harmony and continuity, and relieve them of many of their neurotic reactions.

  4. Correctee Joker, current physical age – thirty-one years.

  Reasons for participation in experiment:

  – in this instance the subject was selected at random; there are no particular reasons for this correctee to volunteer for this experiment; at the discretion of the management of the House of Correction, he may be replaced by any other volunteer, preferably middle-aged.

  5. Correctee Zero, current physical age – eleven years.

  Reasons for participation in experiment:

  – in light of the absence of in-history an attempt at incarnational retrospection in the case of this correctee is a bold and even desperate step, but one which nevertheless seems to us to be the only appropriate and correct course of action. The directed Leo-Lot ray is the only means currently available to us of shedding light on the ‘Zero problem’. Hitherto we have had no conception of the genesis of this correctee, and the mechanism by which an ‘additional physical person’ appeared is entirely unclear. We do not know whether correctee Zero is a part of the Living, or how serious a threat he presents to the harmony of the Living. If experimental immersion in the ‘pre-life’ period of this correctee is successful to even the slightest extent, any information we receive as a result will be invaluable;

  – the correctee is not connected to socio: therefore, in order to visualise his immersion for him, it would be necessary to introduce additional equipment. However, such a measure seems excessive and potentially harmful. In this case the results of retrospection are entirely unpredictable. In order to avoid any psychological trauma for the subject, and as a result of security concerns arising in connection to the threat which the subject may pose, we are planning to carry out a ‘closed immersion’ without demonstration to the correctee. In order to avoid misunderstandings and technical blunders the correctee will be put into an induced sleep.

  P.S. Poor Lot is very stressed about the experiment. I played him at wonder-chess. He refused a head start, lost, and heaped abuse on me. We were about to fall out. I had to offer a rematch and lose on purpose.

  Sometimes Lot behaves like a child.

  Zero

  Inside there were things like scanners with cylindrical cell-chambers. I knew the set-up well: as a child I had a lot of brain scans. They wanted to find some defect in me, something organic that made me different from the others…

  They told us to get undressed and lie on the trolley. I don’t remember the experiment very well.

  I think the surface of the trolley was cold and smooth. I think they strapped us down and put some kind of medicine into a vein. From then on I only have fragments of memories.

  Professor Leo, he says that the ray won’t hurt a bit.

  My friend Cracker, his neck covered in crimson spots, he whispers something about the Five Seconds of Darkness.

  Ef’s mirror face, his monotonous voice breaking into a deafening racket. He wants to stay, but the scientists take exception, and they have some sort of advantage in this dispute.

  The Butcher’s Son, he whimpers, he does not want to lie naked on the trolley. Professor Lot thanks us for our contribution to science and says ‘no death’.

  Our trolleys go into the dark maws of the scanners…

  It’s like I’m in a container…

  I’m a blind worker termite…

  darkness…

  The Scientist

  Document No. 25 (leaseholder’s private entry) – access via SPO guest entry

  6th September 451 A.V.

  Crossposted to the Association of Laboratory Workers

  We have just completed the first experiment with the directed Leo-Lot ray. We did not get the results we had expected. Our experiment is a mistake, and therefore we are cancelling all the remaining sessions we had planned. The directed ray is not operational. In the future we should look for other, more optimal methods for incarnational retrospection. We consider our method to be dangerous. It should be banned.

  Zero

  Afterwards, when Ef was asking me about what happened during the experiment, I didn’t remember anything. I told him that I had had a dream, but that was a lie. I didn’t remember anything, even any dreams, I just wanted him to leave me alone. He said tell me your dream, and I told him about a dream that I used to have quite a lot. I’m little and Hanna and I are sitting by a river and I’m building a lovely castle for Hanna out of sand and stones. My castle is finished and she looks at me and laughs, and I destroy it, and then I start rebuilding – and then I knock it down. I build, then knock down, build, then knock down… I’m happy, I could build and knock down this castle my whole life long, as long as Hanna is laughing…

  ‘What next?’ Ef asked.

  ‘Nothing. I woke up and realised that she’s gone.’

  ‘She is still here,’ Ef hummed. ‘But that’s not important right now. And your dream isn’t important either. When you woke up, while you were getting dressed and all that… The correctees and Leo and Lot – what were they saying?’

  ‘Nothing. Only thing was Cracker said that he was wrong.’

  ‘What did he mean by that?’

  ‘He thought that during the experiment they would put us on pause. But that didn’t happen.’ />
  Cracker was wrong. He thought that during the experiment they would put us on pause, but that didn’t happen.

  Something else happened. I lost him forever.

  We were separated immediately after the experiment. We weren’t even allowed to share a few words, to say goodbye. I was calm. At that time I hadn’t yet realised why the planetman was preparing to move Cracker in a separate van. They had taken us to the experiment together, and I would have suspected that something was up when Cracker was led off down a white corridor, but they also immediately took the pre-pauser off somewhere – he hadn’t managed to cut his PTC in half – and the one from the middle group (I think he was called Joker) was taken off on his own as well. So they took me to the House of Correction with only the Butcher’s Son for company and I thought anything’s possible with all their rules and regulations.

  On the way back the Butcher’s Son did not play with his chains anymore but looked somehow despondent. A couple of times I tried to do the ‘piggy’ for him, pressing my nose up with my finger like Cracker did, but he didn’t react at all and I left him in peace.

  Only when I had gone back to my group, at daily roll call, did I realise that something was up with Cracker. The group warder didn’t read out his name and I got scared that she had got angry at him for some violation of discipline, but I explained it to myself by saying that they just hadn’t brought Cracker back from the lab yet. She looked at me like I had pissed myself in front of everyone. And the whole group stared at me like an idiot too. Then someone started cackling with laughter.