The Living

by Anna Starobinets

  ‘Writing implement: what’s this for?’

  ‘What for,’ Foxcub fixed his potato eyes on the writing implement and froze.

  He stood motionless for a little while, blinking, his mouth slightly open, entirely immersed in observation. It seemed like he was carefully studying the tooth marks on the wooden surface in order to attempt to comprehend its deep pencilly essence, its destiny and meaning.

  ‘What’s up with him: is he one-layered?’ The guard nodded at Foxcub. ‘Retarded, like you?’

  ‘Alternatively gifted,’ I replied. ‘Like me. He loves drawing.’

  ‘You can’t take writing implements into the Special Unit. It’s…’ – the guard shook the pencil in the air, and Foxcub’s pupils darted from side to side obediently – ‘it’s a violation. Who’ve you come to see?’

  ‘To minus two,’ Foxcub reported unexpectedly brightly. ‘To visit Cracker he’s probably really lonely there our friend let us through please.’

  ‘Your mate Cracker’s been a vegetable for a while now – he’s not bored. And you are breaking the rules. You have a writing implement. I will let you through if you…’ – the guard jabs Foxcub with his finger – ‘sing me a song. On camera. And I’ll put it up on FreakTube. My rating’s started to go down… So, sing.’

  ‘What should I sing?’

  ‘Something from Festival Passions, goon.’

  ‘Festival Passions is blocked for us,’ Foxcub replied after thinking a bit.

  ‘Oh yeah. Then something from The Eternal Murderer.’

  ‘While you are laid in bed at night, who keeps you safe from harm? It’s the planetmen! Who shows what is wrong and right, the Living’s strong right arm? It’s the planetmen! And who will always be right there to rescue you and me-e-e? It’s the planetmen! Whose eyes are everywhe-e-ere and who is always the-e-ere, protecting stability and harmon-ee-ee…’

  On the final ‘harmoneeee’ Foxcub squeaked and his voice wavered. The guard started applauding warmly.

  ‘Good lad, nice job. Now tell us who you are and how old you are. The FreakTube viewers will want to know.’

  ‘I’m Foxcub. I am twenty-eight. I live in a House of Correction. I used to be a criminal, but now I’ve got a low PTC, so soon I’ll be corrected.’

  ‘And tell us how many layers can you hold simultaneously?’

  ‘One,’ Foxcub explained. ‘Sometimes one and a half.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ The guard gave a broad grin. ‘You can go through. I will give you back the writing implement when you come out.’

  Slowly, as if he were afraid to stumble, Foxcub walked towards the lift.

  Cracker was lying still with his eyes closed, as usual. He had been lying like that for a long time now. Three times a day a nurse fed him and changed his nappy. Twice a day she turned him over. Once a day, before he went to sleep, she wiped his face and crotch with moist sanitary wipes. He was given a bath once a week.

  The rest of the time he just lay there.

  Sixteen years ago, when Cracker stopped moving entirely and his diagnosis was changed from ‘apathetic stupor’ to ‘first-degree coma’, the question of an artificial pause had arisen all by itself. After several consultations, the House administration decided to carry out a pause on Cracker as soon as his basic reflexes disappeared and he lost the ability to breathe and take food naturally. Until that time, as long as he did not burden the staff any more than the infant correctees, he would be looked after. Liquid food, nappies and sanitary wipes. Nothing more. No check-ups, no medicine, no life-support machines. No additional actions. Nothing more than what he would have got after a natural pause.

  They had not counted on him lasting so long. They gave him between one and six months. After no more than half a year, they said, correctee Cracker will forget how to swallow and how to breathe. After no more than half a year, correctee Cracker will temporarily cease to exist.

  But the years passed and he continued to exist. Quietly and unassumingly, like a pet in its cocoon.

  He was thirteen when they put him on the Blacklist and transferred him to the Special Unit. He was sixteen when he turned his head and looked at me through the glass for the last time; after that Cracker went into total stupor and I stopped visiting him. He was thirty-two when Foxcub sang the song about the planetmen and took me back to minus two.

  During the first year he spent in the chamber under the correcting light, Cracker dried out, turned yellow and curled up, like an unliving little friend fixed to a piece of card with a pin and placed under glass as a memento. Old age had eaten into his child’s body like a poisonous fungus, not giving his organism the chance to go through the appointed cycle of transformations: age, maturity… When I visited him for the last time, when he was sixteen, he looked like both an old man and a teenager simultaneously. He reminded me of one of those optical illusions which the psychologists used to shove under my nose when I was a kid (look: it looks like a beautiful woman with a hat with a feather… And then – ta-da! – it’s a witch with a long nose!).

  Back then the nurse, I remember, called him her little pupa. And I started calling him that too. To myself.

  He was a broken, sick little pupa which would never hatch into a winged being.

  When Fox and I arrived, Cracker was lying still with his eyes shut. He had barely changed.

  The same sleeping pupa.

  Foxcub went right up to Cracker’s chamber and pressed his face against the glass. He stood there for about half a minute and then turned to me, pulled himself up to his full height and opened his mouth, as if he was about to start singing again.

  For sixteen years I hadn’t been to minus two. In that time the Butcher’s Son had lived up to the pause and been reproduced and had learned to crawl and even stand up on his little legs, holding on to the glass sides of the chamber with his hands. When he spotted us he did this little trick, and then stood there, swaying slightly in his natty ‘feeling lucky’ trousers and sucking a yellow dummy, and looked carefully at me and Foxcub in turn. I pressed my finger up against the tip of my nose, like before, but he didn’t even smile. After the pause, he must have forgotten that the ‘piggy’ is funny. Or perhaps he just couldnt’t smile – probably no one had ever shown him how to make this face. Why go looking for trouble? A Blacklister’s smile is a very bad omen… I let go of my nose and stretched my lips out in the kindliest grin possible. The little fellow recoiled from the glass, fell down and hunched over, weeping without a sound.

  I was sorry I came.

  ‘Hey, Fox. What have you dragged me here for?’

  ‘I am not Fox I already said,’ Foxcub droned; his pupils spread out like spots of mould on the skin of a potato. ‘I missed you so I summoned you. You haven’t come for so long. No death. Friend.’

  ‘No dea…’ I started and choked on the words.

  Something – maybe my gag reflex, maybe my tear reflex – was preventing me from talking; my throat went tight. Something – maybe happiness, maybe fatigue – swelled up inside me and made me very heavy. I felt an overwhelming desire to sit down on the floor and lean against the see-through wall. There, behind the wall, lay my friend, motionless, hunched over; my friend who I had not seen for so long.

  ‘Is that you…’ I whispered through my spasm, through the soundproof glass, ‘you, Cracker?’

  ‘Of course, me, who else?’ Foxcub replied flatly. ‘Who, apart from Cracker, can break any password, get through any defence? I am pleased to see you. Friend. Although you look stupid. Ha. Ha.’

  Foxcub licked his dry lips and continued, painstakingly articulating himself: ‘Hee. Ho. Ho. Like I’m laughing. Shame can’t manage. To make this idiot laugh naturally.’

  ‘How did you… But Foxcub… What have you done with him?’

  ‘Nothing special. I just broke into his cell. His defences were totally weak.’

  ‘But you… I mean he… he is you…’

  ‘Hee. Ha. You’re still funny,’ Foxcub said indifferently. ‘He is him. I am j
ust in him. I’ve just played about a bit. Turned off some things he didn’t need. Installed a new “outloud” mode. Set up some simple algorithms. Where to go. Intermediary points. The final destination. It’s only for a while. I’ll let him go. I’ll wipe everything. He’ll forget.’

  ‘It’s impossible,’ I thought. ‘Impossible. Impossible. No way.’

  ‘It is possible,’ Cracker replied with Foxcub’s lips, as if he had read my mind. ‘It’s nothing. You can’t even imagine. The things I’ve learned to do now.’

  ‘Can you hear what I’m thinking?!’

  ‘Of course not, but it’s not hard to guess. Your face is very expressive. Ho. He. Hee. Come on, Foxcub, laugh normally you bastard.’

  Foxcub hiccoughed. His face was empty and tired. As if he was struggling to remember a dream but couldn’t. I looked at Cracker. A dried-up, motionless pupa.

  ‘Open your eyes,’ I asked. ‘Look at me.’

  ‘I am looking at you,’ Foxcub replied obligingly.

  ‘Not like that. Yourself.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You can’t?’

  ‘Unnecessary action. Takes a lot of energy. And memory. Will lose control over him. I no longer overload my brain with pointless commands.’

  I became sad and wistful.

  ‘Please!’

  ‘No. Stupid. We do not have much time. Soon the cameras are going to come back on.’

  ‘Are there cameras here? In our secret place?’

  ‘There are cameras everywhere. But I’ve switched them off for a while.’

  ‘You’ve switched them off?’ I looked over from Foxcub to the motionless Cracker and then back again. ‘You?!’

  ‘It was nothing,’ Foxcub said again. ‘Compared to what I can do now.’

  The Butcher’s Son – I had completely forgotten about him – unexpectedly collapsed on his back and started twitching all his limbs excitedly.

  ‘I have downloaded the first season of Baby Bubbles for him,’ Foxcub reported wearily. ‘The creeps hooked up the four hundredth straightaway. Without the backstory he is not going to understand anything.’

  ‘And with the backstory he will?!’

  ‘Yes. Now he’s going to understand everything. I am training him. He will see a lot of layers.’

  ‘Teach him to smile,’ I asked.

  ‘No. It is a bad omen.’

  ‘Do you really believe in omens?’

  ‘Me no. Them yes. Do not want. Them to see him as threat.’

  Foxcub fell silent for a long time; his face became still and dark, like a used wonder-sunshine. Cracker just stayed lying there not moving. For a fraction of a second it seemed to me like the corners of his lips tensed slightly into the promise of a smile, but it was a trick of the light, or Cracker did not keep his promise; a trick in either case.

  The Butcher’s Son opened his mouth and drooled and starts gawking at me. Then he waved, not at me, but at someone sitting in my stomach. I wanted to wave to him too but then it hit me. He can’t even see me. He’s in second layer. With the baby Bubbles and Livvles. He’s watching the first episode.

  I remember that episode, they showed it to me in the natural development group. It was called ‘Getting to Know Everyone’.

  Who lives in our house?

  Hi, I’m Duckles.

  Hi, I’m Monkles.

  And who are you, little fellow?

  The Butcher’s Son pointed at himself and waved again.

  Everybody let’s hold hands,

  Let’s all join the circle dance!

  The Butcher’s Son reached out his hands to his invisible new friends and started spinning around his axis. I knew what this meant. He had to become a part of the ball. A part of Livvles. But something went wrong. Something happened. Something bad, something evil: the Butcher’s Son jerked to the right, fell down as if pushed, covered his eyes with his hands, trying to block out something I couldn’t see, threw his mouth wide open and wept.

  ‘I fixed a little something,’ Foxcub started talking unexpectedly. The Butcher’s Son crawled off to the far wall of his chamber, lay on the floor and pulled his knees up to his chin; he was shivering violently.

  ‘I changed the way Livvles looks. Livvles is a monster.’

  ‘That’s cruel!’ I went up to the Son’s chamber; he looked at me with pained, moist eyes. ‘That’s cruel, Cracker! Look at him, he’s terrified! Why do you have to torture the poor child?’

  ‘He will fear the Monster. He will not want to become a part of the Monster. From childhood. He will be on your side.’

  ‘But I don’t have any…’

  ‘You do. The Monster is on one side. You are on the other. Separate. Outside him. In the future. You will need friends.’

  My future ‘friend’ had rolled up in a ball on the floor, his whole body jerking rhythmically as he tried to fall asleep. Before his pause this was how he would rock himself to sleep. The light. This empty white correcting light under which it must have been hard to get to sleep. But easy to lose your mind. I turned round. Another wave of fatigue came over me – not the sort that pins you to the floor and stops you breathing, but a different sort, the sort that fills your whole body with invisible cotton wool, that poisons you and takes away your pain. That makes you indifferent.

  ‘You’re insane,’ I said, trying not to look either at Cracker or at his ‘hostage’. ‘What sort of future can I have here, in the House of Correction? What friends? You and the Son sitting in your impenetrable test tubes…’

  ‘…retrable tes tubs…’ Foxcub rasped.

  Fox looked bad: his face became pale and damp, like a peeled potato. He stood like before, pulled up to his full height, and his legs shuddered noticeably.

  ‘Would you like to sit down, eh, Fox? Or lie down?’

  ‘Mnt Fx. Bn lying dn lng tme.’

  ‘Give him a break, Cracker! He’s in a bad way. Let him go finally!’

  ‘Soon e-nough,’ Foxcub said with effort, sounding out the syllables. ‘Help hm st…’

  I sat Foxcub on the floor, leaning his back against Cracker’s chamber. He half-shut his eyes and said nothing for a little while. Then he started talking again, quietly, but fairly clearly:

  ‘You are right. There is no future in this house. That is why I invited you here. You have to get out of here…’

  ‘That’s nonsense, Cracker!’

  ‘There is no time. Do not interrupt me. Listen.’ Foxcub coughed up short phrases in bursts. ‘You will get out. Not now. Later. I will help. For now info. Must know. Above all. Chatterboxes. They are cleverer. Than it seems.’

  And then Cracker told me about the chatterboxes using Fox’s disobedient tongue, his numbed vocal cords, his dry lips.

  About the way the chatterbox, which hangs from every planetman’s belt, is not just a device for recording and conducting conversations.

  About the way the chatterbox conceals a marvellous secret. Inside the chatterbox there hides a tiny cerebron. Not invasive, like they were before. The final model, the last type that was used before the Nativity. About the way the tiny cerebron duplicates all the information from the planetman’s socio slot: how, in other words, it is a copy of his cell. And in a force majeure situation, if the planetman’s socio slot is turned off, his cerebron continues to function.

  About the way the socio slot is usually turned off after a planetman’s physical pause. In this case an external cerebron proves to be very useful: the Service for Planetary Order can download all the information from the temporarily non-existent planetman’s cell through his chatterbox.

  About the way that theoretically – purely theoretically – a different sort of force majeure is possible. For instance, if the planetman is alive, but his socio slot is damaged. Let’s say, an injury. A head trauma. It’s unlikely – but anyway. Then the planetman can take the cerebron from this chatterbox and, in order to stay on socio, can get hooked up to that. Through an external port…

  …Inside Foxcub something started gurg
ling.

  ‘…tterbox…ternal ort… fox you res… digra…’

  Fox flopped his tongue, which was covered in a grey film, out of his mouth and vomited on the shiny floor.

  Cleo.doc

  Ef: memory F: Hunter’s Living Journal: private entries:

  Cleo.doc

  10th June 471; 5:00

  …Again those questions in the wastes. And she’s quite a piece of work this one. I’m going to have to feel her out a bit better

  Right, let’s get going.

  10th July 471; 15:30

  I think it is necessary to instigate independent surveillance of subject:

  current name – cleo

  eternal name – leo

  current sex – female

  invector – generally positive. Predominant specialisation over recent reproductions: ‘research scientist’ and ‘head of research’. Previous reproduction: Leo – professor, doctor, one of the creators of the infamous ‘directed Leo-Lot ray’ experiment.

  However, the current reproduction has seen serious professional demotion following the shameful failure of the experiment carried out prior to the pause. Despite her high intellect coefficient and excellent multilayer receptive capabilities, cleo has not been permitted to do scientific work and is employed at the festival service Everything’s Going to Be Alright and is not happy with her work, a fact which she has mentioned more than once in personal socio chats.

  type of relationship formed between myself and subject under investigation: erotic connection in deep layers

  NB. I do not believe that the ‘personal aspect’ can have a negative effect on surveillance in this instance, because I feel no emotional attachment to the subject.

  Basis for instigation of surveillance: subject’s suspicious behaviour. It was cleo who initiated an intimate relationship in deep layers. Despite my insistence on entirely cruel and one might even say sadistic conditions for the act in luxury mode, subject cleo nevertheless continues to insist on repeating it. On the conclusion of the act cleo, it would seem, tries to take advantage of my relax status and extract confidential information concerning the correctee under my control, Zero (who himself took part in the Leo-Lot ray experiment and was, without doubt, the most important object of inquiry). The subject tries to pass her interest off as common curiosity (I am looking after a celebrity ), however, I think that my answers interest her a great deal more than the acts themselves . More than once cleo asked me about a personal (!!) meeting with Zero in first layer (cf. video recording of extract of our act in luxury).