The Living

by Anna Starobinets

  The cell’s premises were fitted out hastily, without imagination or harmony; just heaps of disordered programmes and settings and open files and folders everywhere, like suitcases thrown open in a motel. His cell really did remind me of a messy hotel room that had a different guest every day, with each new guest bringing his own mess – all that remained was the bare walls; a null interface.

  In the very centre of the cell there was an enormous chessboard – a heavy, pointless object taking up a lot of space and memory, which was nevertheless pretty much the only thing in the whole interior which hadn’t just been downloaded with the original basic features but had been modified somehow. Over the course of the day Lot had evidently kept changing the look of his wonder-chess until he had made it into a real battlefield with miniature woods, rivers, plains and foothills, all broken up into quadrants; the horses playing the knights had real foam in their mouths and their riders had capes and armour; there were charging soldiers, kings, kings’ wives, kings’ castles, kings’ gardens and kings’ courtiers…

  When I came in, the horseman in the black cape on E5 shouted something in a gruff voice, drew his sword, spurred on his steed and charged onto G6, where a snow-white horse was idling, its head bent over the water. When she heard the sound of hooves, the snow-white horse shuddered and neighed abruptly and rolled her eyes wildly. The rider in the white cloak stroked her withers, leant down to her trembling ear and started whispering tender, calming words in some ancient language, full of sibilants and sadness. The horse shut her frightened eyes obediently and the black horseman plunged his sword into her white breast. The blood spurted from the wound in a huge, clownish fountain, splattering the grass and the face of the killer in the black cloak. The white horse collapsed heavily into the murky quadrant of the river, pulling the white rider with him, who had put his hands together in prayer. A window floated up mournfully from the sludgy depths bearing the message:

  black knight-e5 x white knight-g6.

  ‘What colour are you?’ I asked.

  lot: white. it’s a fantastic game chess. anyway, i’ve been practising all day i started on ‘novice’ level, and now i’m playing against a master! you do like chess, don’t you?

  cleo: it was a hobby of mine before the pause. but not now. it’s a waste of time

  lot: never. it develops logical thinking and memory. just what i need. on the last day of my life

  cleo: lot, your life isn’t ending!! tomorrow you’ve just got a pause! hasn’t this been explained to you yet?!

  lot: it’s been explained, of course everything’s been explained… people like me, invalids, aren’t even taken off to the festival, they do it right here, in the clinic. i was told that it will be a ‘mercy pause’

  cleo: great! that’s the gentlest pause. in your sleep

  lot: i’m pleased

  cleo: do you remember anything about the experiment?

  white castle to g5

  black castle to e7

  lot: nothing worthwhile, i’m afraid… nothing more than you’ve already…

  ?white’s next move?

  Lot fell silent absent-mindedly, distracted by what was happening on the field. There a squat man in a white uniform was butchering an enemy soldier, only a young boy, with his bayonet with sadistic enthusiasm. Time after time he plunged the bayonet into his stomach – but every time he did not run him through and every time he stabbed him not in the same place, but just next to the previous stab. The little soldier writhed and after every jab whispered hoarsely: ‘Finish me off, finish me off…’ Lot probably wasn’t sure if he had chosen the right move, and that’s why he was taking his time.

  lot: maybe… i remember what i felt when we saw the result…

  cleo: so there was a result??

  lot: of course. so anyway, the feeling…

  player lot, you must make a move in the next

  20…19…18…

  lot: not fear, but something more. grief, maybe? yes, if you will. sort of like incurable grief. so huge that i can’t even find room for it. i also remembered that i desperately wanted oblivion. to forget, to wipe it out, to pull what i had seen out of myself…

  …15…14…13 seconds…

  He finally finished off the black pawn-soldier. In place of the corpse a huge grave mound rose up bearing the legend ‘gxh5’ and at that moment a window popped up blocking out half the field:

  player lot, your opponent would like to warn you about an error:

  your move gives your opponent mate in three moves your opponent will allow you to retake the previous move

  do you want to retake it?

  yes no

  Lot refused to retake the move.

  do you want to give up?

  yes no

  Lot gave up.

  The dead horses, horsemen and foot soldiers rose from the dead and, quietly jangling their weapons, wandered back to their original positions. The turrets that had been destroyed sprung back into place. All the gaps in the fortress walls were covered over.

  play again?

  yes no

  The pieces disappeared. All that was left was the fields, hills and quiet backwaters…

  cleo: overall you were in quite a good position…

  why did you refuse to retake that move?

  lot: i don’t like it when he is patronising

  cleo: who? who were you playing against??

  Lot looked at me with carefree eyes that were squinting at a sun that hadn’t existed for thirty years.

  lot: i was playing against leo.

  cleo: against me???

  lot: against leo. i found a ‘play ghost’ option. it’s really simple: you can choose any offline player – the key thing is that he has to have no fewer than a hundred games saved in socio – and you can ‘summon’ him. His tactics will be based on the total of the games he has played before… i summoned Leo. amazing! total illusion of online. this ghost, he plays just like Leo, and it’s not just about his moves. it’s about the way he carries himself…

  cleo: lot!

  lot:…so arrogant and patronising…

  cleo: lot, mate, why are you being like this

  leo: …he is ‘letting me’ replay the move – how very like you, Leo!…

  Lot dashed about his cell excitedly, randomly poking about in some files, opening and copying nameless documents, loading and deleting socio updates… All the time he was squinting at the distant sun and saying that he was tired of Leo giving him freebies. Of Leo being generous. Of Leo looking down on him.

  And I begged him: calm down.

  I kept saying: no, you’ve got it all confused.

  I kept saying: it’s just because of your illness, because of your terrible illness, that’s why you think that you remember, but it’s a false memory. Mistaken memories.

  I kept saying: you and I were friends.

  I kept saying: what do you mean looking down on you, what freebies, I have my letters from Renaissance. Letters which I have read and you are mentioned in them all the time, and there’s not a bad word about you in there…

  And he would reply: how like Leo. How worthy. How noble. No bad words.

  He said that he was always in his shadow, the shadow of the master Leo. The master would think something up and all he would do was encourage him and help him realise it…

  cleo: nonsense! how can you say that, you don’t even REMEMBER!!

  lot: it’s already almost midnight and i’ve been loading my memory all day, i remember a lot! your envy. your anger…

  cleo: maybe you can remember the formula for the injection better?

  lot:

  cleo: what’s funny?!

  lot: to be honest it’s more sad i don’t remember the formula because i never knew it in first layer. I reckon that leo discovered the formula…

  cleo: and the result? what you saw – do you remember that???

  lot: i can’t. i can’t for now. i don’t have enough memory. but i remember all too well that feeling of in
curable…

  00:00

  Socio reminder: today is user lot’s birthday, help him celebrate!

  Do you want to give user lot a birthday cake?

  yes no

  do you want to light 60 birthday candles?

  yes no

  I chose the first cake I saw – chocolate with raspberry cream – and in my haste I forgot to regulate the brightness of the candles. They came on at maximum level, flooding the cell with a poisonous glow.

  ‘Is it Zero?’ I asked. ‘Was there something incurable about him? Come on, remember!!’

  lot: lovely cake, thanks…

  He squinted at the birthday candles; their light made his skin seem pale, like an ant’s egg.

  cleo: remember!!

  lot: perhaps… probably, something about him… i don’t remember exactly. but i remember that it was a threat to everyone… a fatal threat… leo!

  cleo: ?

  lot: i’m scared, leo. i think that i’m about to remember… i need to go to sleep… i want to sleep, to sleep

  cleo: wait!!

  Lot’s lowly blew out the candles.

  user lot has switched to sleep mode

  as usual, this will not get in the way of chatting in socio would you like to wish lot sweet dreams?

  cleo: why did you fall asleep??

  lot: so i wouldn’t remember

  cleo: coward!

  lot: you are right, leo. i am a coward. you know, it’s my illness: i think i created it myself. i don’t know, i don’t remember how – but i did it to myself then so that i would forget. i am a coward, right. i killed my own memory. you had the courage to kill yourself entirely… then, later… i’ve lost my train of thought again… you were always… you were… what were we just talking about…?

  user lot has turned on delete all mode

  …At first his face disappeared. The mischievous, young face with narrowed eyes froze for a second and then seemed to be sprinkled with glimmering dust; after his face his body and then his clothes crumbled into tiny fragments… For a moment a different userpic was revealed behind these fragments: a primitive anime face, probably from the early settings, but this too disappeared very quickly, leaving behind just the shade.

  Then the cell started to change. The fields faded to black-and-white and then his wonder-chess disappeared completely. The photo albums, diaries, books and folders went pale and dissolved…

  this cell is obsolete

  you must immediately leave lot’s cell

  I stood by the exit and watched as the drowsy demon devoured everything that Lot had created in the day. His cell was stripped bare, turning into a standard inviz cocoon.

  caution! user lot deleted all his friends forever you are no longer friends with user lot, you are temporarily registered as a guest you must leave the cell immediately

  lot: don’t go, guest!

  His shade flew towards me, trying to block off the exit.

  lot: please! don’t leave me here on my own!

  guest: i’ve got to go

  lot: i’m in pain! there’s someone else here…

  guest: you are asleep

  lot: some pet bit me on the neck…

  guest: you are asleep, you are dreaming. try to roll over

  lot: i can’t… it’s hard to breathe

  leave the cell immediately

  guest: it really is time for me to go. no death!

  I managed to say ‘no death’, but I didn’t manage to leave. I stayed there.

  I saw how his shade bent over and broke into two pieces. How these pieces crawled off in different directions like two halves of an earthworm.

  I felt the cocoon of his cell pulsing and getting smaller, squeezing in and out around me, whistling like a punctured lung.

  caution! mercy pause is underway

  lot’s cell will be blocked

  your presence in lot’s cell may be damaging to your health

  I heard him wheezing – not here, but there, in first layer.

  Then everything froze – on a half-wheeze, half-breath – and the cocoon became dry and silent.

  I crawled through the darkness. I had no mouth and no eyes…

  lot’s cell is blocked

  error k4u85n789

  you will be automatically disconnected from socio if this error is repeated…

  I crawled through the darkness. I was the darkness. I smelled of unliving pets.

  The Man with No Face

  ‘A-a-ay, cross my cell with gold, mister planetman mister boss man…!’

  A wide-hipped woman, like an elderly wonder-cleaner come to life, crawls over to me on all fours, dragging one leg behind her. She’s wearing a bikini and a puffy brown nipple pokes out from one of the cups of the top; she has some baubles from Megalopolis round her neck and grey-black hair held back with a red ribbon.

  ‘A-a-ay, I’ll tell your fortune, you won’t go wrong with me, you’ll learn what was, what is and what will be…’ She has a hoarse voice with a whining tone, and her mouth stinks of over-fermented cologne; it’s the same smell that the pre-pauser Matthew had. ‘…I see beyond the pause, I see before, I tell all, of that you can be sure… I also remove curses and correct defects in your…’ – she gives a long belch – ‘in your invector.’

  ‘Is there some kind of violation going on here?’ I bark officiously. ‘Conning people are we?’

  ‘My inner eye can never lie, every word is true…’

  Slum witches. Normally I only see glimpses of them: fortune tellers and palm readers, naturally, avoid me, a man in a mirror mask. But this one is shameless and drunk enough to go up to an SPO officer.

  ‘…Every word is true, I will help you…’

  caution! your conversation device has detected speech activity from a subject who may be a witch is your interlocutor a witch?

  yes no

  do you want to report the violation?

  yes no

  …Their activities are considered illegal, but forgivable nonetheless. For the fights between mantises, stag beetles, centipedes, scorpions and hornets you might end up with a pause with subsequent correction. But they don’t normally punish the witches so strictly. Only occasionally, as a warning. In theory they’re innocent enough, they don’t do anyone any harm.

  For the most part they are visited by their own kind – robots from the slums. People who have no other entertainment, no other prospects. The witches give them something different – ten minutes of excitement and romance and some hope for the future. Hope that after the pause they will be able to watch Festival Passions, have fun playing no deathers and live in crystal houses. For all that they don’t mind parting with a little socio-money. They don’t mind transferring the witch their monthly disability benefit…

  But sometimes the witches are visited by clients from well-off areas. They are visited by naive little girls, dreaming of becoming the ‘voice’ of Festival Passions, the one who sings the title song. They are visited by unattractive women planning on casting a spell on the pedigree festival studs. They are visited by old failures who have dragged out their empty, boring lives pause after pause, so that they can finally get some comfort from an upcoming ‘turn in their invector’. They are visited by the curious. And those looking for adventure. And the simply gullible.

  ‘…what was, what is and what will be! Sterile procedure! I tell your future in contact gloves…!’

  ‘Ah, get lost. And stop violating,’ I grumble through my chatterbox, then put it on pause and ask: ‘How much?’

  ‘Only ten unics! Cheap…’

  It really is cheap.

  She beckons me with a finger and crawls off somewhere behind a heap of boxes, dragging her leg behind her.

  ‘Sit down,’ she points to a dirty blanket on the floor. I sit down.

  ‘Money up front.’

  She gives me a number and I transfer ten unics to her socio account.

  The witch sits down opposite me, rummages around the blanket and pulls out an ope
n box of contact gloves, which have clearly been used more than once; she pulls some on.

  ‘Take off the mask.’ Along with words the sepulchral smell of rotting flowers seeps from her mouth.

  ‘No.’

  The witch looks at me with a long, completely empty gaze, then nods.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘What happened before the pause. And what will happen afterwards.’

  ‘Clients rarely take an interest in what has already happened. What, did you not leave yourself a letter in Renaissance?’

  ‘You ask too many questions for a fortune-teller. Go on, do your job. Or give me back the money.’

  She sniffs, offended, and stretches out a hand in a contact glove towards me. The glove smells of damp and earthy.

  ‘I’ll tell your future you won’t go wrong with me… I will count to three… One, two…’

  She places her index finger on my mirrored forehead – in about the place where normal people have a socio slot – and freezes, her eyes puffing out like a prawn.

  caution! system may be under threat

  ‘Right, let’s go again… For some reason I can’t see your past…’

  …protocol error 067_3605…

  ‘…You just relax, my little planetman friend, don’t tense up… The main thing is to relax,’ she hurriedly paws my forehead in different places. ‘How about I sing you a song…? Sleeping are the calves and lambs, oo-oo-ooh… Sleeping are the newts, the rams, oo-oo-ooh…’

  if this error is repeated, this application will be closed…