‘Correctee Cracker is no longer a member of our group.’ As she looked at me the warder smiled slightly at the corner of her mouth, as if she wanted to laugh along with everyone else, but was still restraining herself. ‘What are you lot up to?’ She looked round at everyone. ‘Why haven’t you explained to your friend what has happened?’
They probably said something back to her in second layer because her face suddenly went strict.
‘He’s not connected to socio,’ she said. ‘But that doesn’t mean that he’s not your friend. Or that he’s not every bit as good as the rest of you. He’s just different. And it’s your job to show him care and kindness. Otherwise I might register your behaviour as cruel.’
There is nothing worse for a correctee than being accused of cruelty. Cruel behaviour brought with it corrective measures. It was written down in the ‘Rules of Correction’ which hung on the door of every dormitory:
‘First-degree cruelty (oral or social mockery of the physical defects of correctee friends, oral rudeness to a pet): one-off disconnection from socio for forty minutes.’
‘Second-degree cruelty (physical violence towards correctee friends): daily disconnection from socio for seven days.’
There weren’t many people who exhibited second-degree cruelty, only total psychos. Even first degree didn’t happen that often: they all suffered so badly when they were disconnected. They cried, begged for forgiveness or rocked from side to side, staring at a fixed point. Those that had been disconnected even once became affectionate and attentive, like the nannies from the infant group.
Third-degree cruelty (physical violence towards a pet) was quite unthinkable. The sentence for that was confinement to a solitary chamber with life-long minimisation of socio. No one had ever gone as far as the third degree… Except Cracker.
My groupmates told me everything. They were very kind to me.
They said it was all about the snail, Cracker’s pet.
They said that, poor thing, she had got an infection under her shell. While Cracker and I were being taken to the lab, she had ceased living.
They said that the entomologist had taken the snail for an autopsy. A foreign object was found under her shell – something made by Cracker.
They said that Cracker was cruel, that he was being put in solitary. They said they didn’t know what the object was.
But I knew, I knew all too well: it was a little piece of paper with a diagram on it. A week ago Cracker had pushed it inside the snail’s shell: he thought it was a ‘natural hidey-hole’. I’ve mentioned already how he would set up hidey-holes everywhere… Of course I’ve already mentioned it.
He was accused of third-degree cruelty for violence towards a pet. But I knew, I knew very well, that this wasn’t just about cruelty. The House administration could hardly have been thrilled about the ‘foreign object’ itself.
growth of the foetus = great reduction
birth of the monster = number of livings becomes unchanging
Perhaps it was irony on the part of the House administration or evidence of some sort of favour, or even sympathy; whatever it was, they set up Cracker’s solitary chamber in his favourite place. In the special maximum security unit, on floor minus two, under the fluorescent lights. In the blindingly white hall, opposite the Son’s chamber.
I went to visit them there every day.
After the experiment the Butcher’s Son became depressed and apathetic. He was probably not sleeping well. Grey-blue shadows like spread wings had formed under his eyes. As if a moth had settled on the bridge of his nose… Later, when I found out what happened during the experiment, I started to think that the way the Son had changed was totally understandable. If he had really seen what he had done back then, then he must have been horrified. It’s unlikely that the Son really realised that it was him who carried out this slaughter. But he probably sensed that it had something to do with him. In any case the very sight of it would be enough to give anyone sleepless nights…
…It turned out that I didn’t get a chance to ask any of the other subjects of the experiment about what they had been through. On that very day, immediately after the experiment, the pre-pauser Ivanushka was taken off to the Pause Zone at the Festival for Assisting Nature. I tried to look for correctee Joker, but the warder of the middle group told me, with no little irritation, that the correctee with that nickname had temporarily ceased to exist. He had hanged himself in the shower cubicle, without leaving a note. They didn’t like suicides in the House of Correction, their warders didn’t get a pat on the head. Unmotivated premature pause is, firstly, very stupid (what can you possibly change by doing that?), and, secondly, it is evidence of some pedagogical error on the part of the warder, and thirdly, and this was the main thing, it made life difficult for the staff. He was a healthy man, not that old, he could look after himself – and now, there you go, a screaming baby, feed him, wash him, change his nappies. So the warder’s irritation was entirely understandable.
I never again crossed paths with any of the scientists that had run the experiment. They never appeared at the House of Correction and completely different people took us on the next trip to the Farm.
And Cracker, what about Cracker…? He couldn’t say anything to me. Sitting next to him, on the other side of the soundproof glass, I remembered with bitterness that not long ago, in this very place, we had swapped secrets.
Now I was searched before I could enter the Special Unit – to be sure that I didn’t have any writing implements or any other materials which I could use to give Cracker information. I had to cover the lower half of my face with a mask so that Cracker wouldn’t be able to read my lips.
The information vacuum was the chief corrective measure for Blacklisters.
At first Cracker seemed surprisingly lively, almost happy. He gesticulated animatedly, smiled, did the ‘piggy’ for the Son, moved his lips inaudibly (I only managed to understand one thing: ‘cracker can break any password cracker can break through any defence’) and waved to me when I came and when I left.
After a few days this unnatural jollity was replaced by complete despair. He spent whole days lying on the floor of his cell, hunched over, his slender legs tucked under his stomach. He started to look even more like a spider – stock still, pretending to be unliving on the brightly lit floor. When he saw me, he emerged from hibernation, seemingly grudgingly, as if against his own will, and slowly got up and came over to the transparent wall. There was an emptiness in his eyes: I had seen something like it before somewhere. Hanna’s eyes used to get like that when she was in deep layers. But Cracker couldn’t be in deep layers. His access to socio was minimal now, like all the Blacklisters. Only music and shows – oh, and maybe some adverts.
And then he stopped reacting to me. Completely. As if he didn’t see me. As if his chamber were covered on the inside by some light-resistant film.
I still kept coming. I would sit and look at Cracker in his torpor, at the Butcher’s Son and his ‘black moth’. I also started sleeping badly. Without Cracker and his snoring, without the familiar game of pistons. I needed that rumbling noise; I was used to sneaking off to sleep in the little periods of quiet. When Cracker was moved to the Special Unit, I started listening to the breathing of the other correctees, trying to feel for their rhythm and tune into it. I actually did manage to hear it – their shared rhythm, rapid and fussy, all scrunched up like a ball of thin barbed wire, strident, like the buzzing of a swarm of bees. I got caught up in it, stuck in it, and, as I drifted off, it was like I was tearing off my skin. I tried to take my mind off it, to block out their breathing with my own breathing, or coughing, or fidgeting, I even whistled quietly – useless. Their uneven rhythm. I could no longer not hear it.
Part 2
Report
(Transcript of conversation between correctee Triton and SPO officer, dated 17.07.471 A.V.; extract)
Triton: He went up in flames instantly. Why are you asking? Everyone saw it, not just me.
SPO officer: We’re asking everyone, don’t worry. Tell me what else you remember about the fire.
Triton: He was like a pillar of fire. So bright. It was this colour… All these colours like ‘feeling lucky’. It’s probably not very nice to say this seeing as how Zero ceased to exist and didn’t get reproduced, right…? But it was really beautiful, I kind of even liked the way he burned.
SPO officer: Perhaps it is not actually very nice of you to talk like that about your dead friend.
Triton: He wasn’t my friend. Smin, he wasn’t even on socio.
SPO officer: But you were friends in first layer.
Triton: No, he wasn’t my friend. Zero treated his pets badly. We always had a live feed from the termite mound, usually I didn’t keep it in my memory, because the video files take up too much space, but the last few minutes… before he ceased living… I decided to keep that bit in my memory forever. It’s a really sad video. 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…
Zero
The final straw, perhaps, was my trip to see Hanna in her boarding house – though there is no point in calling her that. Better to call her Mia 31.
When Ef asked if I wanted anything for Nativity and I replied that I would like to see Hanna, I didn’t think that he would say yes, I just gave him an honest answer. But he said, ‘Why not, if it will calm you down?’ The administration only let us go grudgingly. They don’t really like it when correctees go wandering about outside the House. As far as I could tell Ef was very insistent, even put pressure on them somehow. They gave us three hours: two for the trip, there and back, and one hour for the ‘meeting with a former Darling’. They strongly recommended handcuffs (‘This virus… anything’s possible’), but he didn’t make me wear them (‘Personally, I trust the lad’). I was touched by that. I almost started trusting him too.
Why did Ef take me to see her at the boarding house? To calm me down? Ha. Probably he wanted to provoke me from the very beginning. Perhaps he even hoped that I would try to run away. I didn’t try… But, one way or another, I still broke free, but that’s exactly what he had been waiting for. Hey, I even sort of understand him. All that fuss about me, all that spam, those thousands of infected messages and mails which they keep sending each other like crazy, as if they don’t even know what they are doing themselves, as if it’s because of some goddamn virus, which keeps reproducing itself constantly… You should go along and check – maybe someone’s already been doing it by themselves for ages, of their own accord, maybe someone likes doing it, maybe someone has some sympathy for me, maybe there really have been dissidents all this time. Maybe the Service for Planetary Order already thinks the boundary between socio virus and socio revolt seemed too fragile. They hoped that they would lock me up in a House of Correction and everyone would forget about me. And that there they would be able to quietly poke about inside me, study me like some newly discovered pet, grab at my wings and tug at my antennae – and that I would stay there for life stuck on inviz mode, an unknown but harmless correctee animal… And that’s how it went. For many years that’s exactly how it’s been – but now I am thirty-one and the whole world has suddenly remembered that I exist. The ‘0 threat’ – that’s what they’ve called the virus that has brought me my fame; there is no anti-virus yet – I hope that there will be one by your time.
By the way, it’s funny that I’m the only one who doesn’t get a chance to see all that spam myself. But certain rumours have still reached me and I’ve put together a short list of ‘chain letters’ that I’ve heard about in case you’re interested:
1. ‘You’ve got a stupid job, and before the pause you had a stupid job, and after the pause you’re going to have a stupid job. But you want to be a screenwriter or a game rater… Follow Zero – he was born to change your life .’
2. ‘You’re fifty and you don’t like all these recommendations to visit the Pause Zone. Follow Zero – he will give you long life .’
3. ‘You’re a woman. The Living requires you to mate regularly, but you don’t want a Darling. Follow Zero. He will let you take precautions .’
4. ‘You’re a woman. The Living requires you to give your Darlings away to a boarding house, but you want to stay with them. Follow Zero. He does not consider your maternal feelings a deviation from the psychic norm.’
5. ‘You want a dog. A real, living dog in first layer. Follow Zero, and animals will love you like they love him .’
6. ‘You read the Book of Life. But the number of the Living has changed, and there’s not a word about it in the Book. Don’t believe everything you read in the Book .’
Sorry, it seems I got a bit distracted. I wanted to tell you about Mia 31.
Mia. Hanna. A fat, listless twelve-year-old girl. My mother’s second inc-successor (the first, a little boy, only lived for eight years; they say he was a dwarf). Mia’s forehead was covered in pustules and her eyes were so dull and cold that it was like some ancient-ancient pet was living in her skull and watching us all dispassionately through the little slits on that spotty dirty-brown globaloid forehead…
For about fifteen minutes Ef and I waited for her in the director’s office. She finally appeared, or rather, the director led her in, holding her by the arm: The Eternal Murderer was on at the time and that idiot, as far as I could tell, struggled to keep up two layers and could have easily tripped on the stairs, transfixed by the Butcher’s Son.
She seemed slightly disappointed by the fact that she was being distracted from the film, but she still tried to be polite. When I said hello, she offered to friend me ‘so we can chat normally’, but when I replied that I wasn’t connected to socio something flashed in her eyes and burned there like a broken lamp, something like surprise. She said practically nothing throughout our entire meeting, except to say that she liked serials and ‘like, yeah, second layer is so awesome’, and I wasn’t even sure if she understood why I had been brought there.
I imagined Hanna, so beautiful, with her velvety eyes like the wings of a tortoiseshell butterfly. Hanna, with her pure, pale face. Hanna, who could hold three layers effortlessly. Hanna, whom I had lost forever.
When our silent ‘meeting’ came to an end, Ef asked me:
‘So then, are you happy? Are you convinced that everything’s alright with your little Hanna?’
My ‘little Hanna’ and the director laughed in unison at something I couldn’t hear. The planetman in The Eternal Murderer had obviously made a good joke.
I replied to Ef’s question:
‘She’s not Hanna, she never has been her and never will be.’
Ef got up and took a step in my direction. Something predatory appeared in him – not in his cold mirror face, but rather in his movements, in his posture. The director of the boarding house stared at me, gurgled excitedly and then screwed up his face, as if what I had said had caused an attack of heartburn and he had choked on stomach acid.
‘What did you mean by that?’ Ef asked. ‘What does that mean, “not Hanna”?’
‘Hanna died.’
‘Wow, did he just say that…’ Hanna whispered, looking at me with something like awe. ‘That’s a bad word. You’re not allowed to say that.’
‘Let’s put some handcuffs on for the way back, eh, buddy?’ Ef buzzed. ‘Looks like you don’t respect the Living. Like you don’t agree with Him. You just insulted Him, and it’s all been recorded on this device.’ He pointed at the chatterbox. ‘As a member of the Service for Planetary Order I am obliged to inform the Administration at the House of Correction about your behaviour. And recommend that you be moved to the Special Unit.’
Of course he’d been planning on it ending up like this from the very beginning.
…Do I really disagree? Am I really a dissident? I alw
ays wanted to be like everyone else. I still want to. Not now, so then, after the Pause.
Hey, you, there, in the future! I hope you really will exist. I hope that you will be me. I hope that I will be. If you are my continuation, if I am you, then sorry about this idiotic incode that you got from me… Personally it’s ruined my life, but I really hope you’ll cope with it. That you won’t get put in the Special Unit. That I won’t get put there… That I will become a part of the Living.
It’s probably cowardice. It’s running away. It’s not fair. But if you will exist, if you do exist, sorry for what I’m about to do. I’m planning on killing myself – yes, yes, sorry about that, sorry one more time, I shouldn’t say that, I should put it differently. I am planning on ‘temporarily ceasing to exist’, ‘taking a pause’, but I’m no fool, I know: they all get pauses, but all I get is a ‘stop’. So if you do exist, if you will exist – then 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.
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. They have taken away my best friend.
Today he will come again. Ef, the man in the mask. They will pronounce judgment on my case. Look for defects, ask nasty little questions, start digging about inside me like I’m a heap of common property.
The Living Page 10