The Living

by Anna Starobinets

  2.

  No more lies and no more liars in power. In the name of the Living I dissolve the Council of Eight.

  3.

  Henceforth livings are not responsible for their predecessors. In the name of the Living I grant an amnesty for all correctees.

  4.

  Henceforth everyone is free to choose their own vector according to their inclinations and talents.

  5.

  Henceforth everyone is free to live as long as nature allows.

  6.

  I legalise the ancient institution of marriage. Henceforth men may have women as long-term partners and make them their wives.

  7.

  I grant women the right to take precautions, but also the right to give birth and keep planned Darlings with them, according to their will.

  8.

  In all communities I will build temples to the Three-Headed God. I gently recommend that everyone visits these temples to pray for the health of the Living.

  Part 4

  The Wise Prophet

  Letter to Self

  17th September 479 A.V.

  I haven’t written a letter to self in a long time. A really long time. I thought there was no point – seeing as disaster has befallen the Living. But I changed my mind. There probably is a point – at the least, there will be if I do what I now believe to be right.

  If I do what I have decided to do, reading this will prove useful to you, my friend.

  And for me too: maybe it’ll help me get my thoughts together somehow…

  Today you could hear the rumble of explosions not far from the Residence, right from morning, and we had to spend all day in the bunker while a clean-up operation was carried out; the dog was going crazy. She’s always been terrified of explosions or any loud noise. She is terrified of everything and everyone, apart from me. I have, of course, created a separate room for her in the bunker. I spent a bit of time with her, and I could feel how the air went rigid with the thick, acerbic, unbearable smell of her fear, and then I left and locked her in there on her own.

  She’s afraid of being alone too. Cleo and the Son and I were sitting at the opposite end of the bunker, but even from there we could hear her whimpering and thrashing about in there. The dog gets so distressed living here with us that sometimes I think it would be better if she ceased… I shouldn’t have listened to Cleo and taken her from the Farm. Cleo hoped that we might be able to tame her.

  Back then, immediately after the Revelation, lots of people hoped they would be able to tame farm animals. They thought that since the Living had died or was at least sick and weak, animals would stop being afraid… But the Great Taming was a failure. All the animals that had been brought from the Farms to be domesticated died in the first few days. Most ceased to exist from heart attacks – that is, from sheer terror… Others were shot because they behaved aggressively. The pigs, cows, chickens and rabbits were, I suppose, killed for their meat…

  Our dog is probably the only animal which still lives in a house. Because I am here. When I am with her, she almost stops being afraid…

  Perhaps she is the only animal from the Farm to have survived at all. Now that no one looks after the Farms…

  Once a week I upload photographs onto socio: the Wise One and his faithful hound. Very optimistic. It gives people hope.

  They don’t hear, the people, how she whimpers, pines and thrashes about when I leave her. They don’t hear how she overflows with yelping and barking when other people come up to her. My Son or Cleo. Or Layla. Or the General.

  For most of the day, while the clean-up was going on around the Residence, me, Cleo and the Son played ‘Gurners’. I invented this game myself – I wanted to create something personal and homemade which would unite the whole family in first layer… The game’s not complicated – perhaps I’ll tell you about it, maybe it’ll be of some use to you. If my plans work out and quieter times do come, you can share the rules with everyone – I’d like that. So one person, the Gurner, has to act out a word or a whole phrase. By miming, gesturing or moving his body somehow (which, by the way, is good for developing children’s coordination in first layer). And the others have to guess what he’s trying to say. Really simple, right? And it’s all fair, there’s no socio to help you find the answer: you need to think for yourselves, with your own head, it’s the only way… Cleo tried it once, as an experiment – she ran a clip of the Son’s ‘gurning’ through an analysis program. The result was pretty funny: ‘This person is frightened and/or aggressive. All indicators suggest that he requires the assistance of the Psychological Service.’ But my son was only trying to get us to guess the word ‘dog’… Cleo and I had a real laugh then, and even the Son groaned quietly along with us, his lips shut tight – that’s how he laughs…

  He was groaning like that today too, although it wasn’t funny at all. The Son clearly went too far today. When it was his turn to be the ‘gurner’, he lay down on the stone floor, and grinning horribly, crossed his eyes and froze in that position.

  ‘A pupa in metamorphosis?’ Cleo asked wearily, looking off to one side.

  The Son shook his head to say no.

  ‘An unliving animal?’ I suggested. Wrong again.

  ‘We give in,’ Cleo said. ‘What is it?’

  He said something to her in socio. She shuddered as if from a nearby explosion, and finally looked at the Son. With distaste and something like disgust, perhaps. And she said, ‘Don’t you dare.’

  She rarely looks the Son in the eye. She rarely looks at him at all – normally she looks slightly to one side of him. When I ask her, she always denies it, but I think it’s because she has never been able to learn to love him. The Son frightens her.

  Because he can’t pull his lips into a smile. Because he does not laugh, but groans.

  Because he is not our Darling, but adopted.

  Because he can’t fall asleep without bright light.

  Because he was a correctee.

  Because when we took him out of the House and brought him to the Residence and he first saw my Crystal W, he poked the screen with his finger and started muttering, ‘Sitem. Sitem. Sitem.’ ‘How does he know?’ Cleo had asked then, calmly and evenly, and looked at him in that way for the first time. The System actually was open on the monitor. The Son was three years old. He couldn’t have known yet.

  He was three when we took him. Now he is ten.

  Now he is lying still on the floor, grinning and goggling his eyes.

  And I say, ‘OK, go on then, spit it out, what were you thinking of?’ He peers tentatively at Cleo, he doesn’t know what to do. Because mummy has just said ‘Don’t you dare.’ She looks away in silence.

  He replies, ‘I was doing “the Living”. The unloving monster.’

  Cleo says in a whisper, ‘I’m calling Layla. Layla can take him off…’

  Layla comes. Layla loves our Son. She loves everyone. She says, ‘Alive or dead, the Living is full of love, and every part of him loves every other.’ She is very placid, Layla. For a long time now, ever since she returned from the clinic, she has loved everyone. And her scar is absolutely tiny, and so neat…

  She doesn’t miss her own Darlings at all, she doesn’t even remember them. Whereas I, paradoxical as this may seem, sometimes regret sending them away. They would have run around the Residence and they would have laughed, they would have played with the Son. And the Son, perhaps, would have learned to do what they do…

  But back then I was afraid that the children of Second and Layla would start making claims – they might even have disputed the transfer of wisdom to my Son when I ceased… None of that matters now. The Son won’t be the Wise One, you will be. But here, in the Residence, there is no sound of children’s laughter. They have, probably, already ceased, Layla’s Darlings. There’s all sorts going on out there. I shouldn’t have sent them away…

  ‘Come with me, Butcher’s Son,’ Layla coos, leading him by the hand. ‘Let’s go to the temple. Let’s pray
to Threeheads for the Reduction to end and for the Living to rise again…’

  We have a temple right here in the bunker – small, but cosy…

  ‘He’s still alive,’ Cleo says to me, when we are left alone, and her eyes are absolutely crazy again, this has been happening a lot with her recently. ‘The Living is still alive… But he’s not well. I can hear him howling sadly…’

  ‘That’s the dog howling,’ I reply.

  ‘The dog is howling too, but quieter. You just can’t hear it. You are the only one who can’t hear these terrible noises!’

  ‘Our Son doesn’t hear them either.’

  ‘No, he hears them. He just likes them…’

  …Then my General comes. He says that the clean-up is over and we can go back up top. And that he has just sent me a dispatch from the front. With bad news.

  Cleo

  Suffering from tinnitus? Are you experiencing the subjective sensation of noise in the ears without an irritant? Are you in despair because the autodoctor can’t help you and are you dreaming of a self-pause?

  THERE IS A SOLUTION!!!

  Just download the best music on socio!

  Our tunes will drown out the sounds on any frequency!

  Our tunes will beat your neuritis of the auditory nerve!

  13:00

  Music-makers – go screw yourselves. Why do they lie? Why do we all lie, pretending it’s just tinnitus? ‘Subjective sensation without an irritant…’ A bare-faced lie.

  There is an irritant.

  We are just listening to the Living dying. His howls, his groans, his weeping, his roaring – with no end… We have been hearing Him dying for several years. You can’t drown out those sounds with gopzing music. These sounds are driving me insane. They stop me from working. I haven’t been to the lab for months.

  And my research is extremely important for the Living… I am, as it happens, on the verge of a great discovery… The termites are giving a result of up to twenty immersions under the L-L ray… And what are my friends in isoptera if not termites…? At the end of the day the biological body is not important… When He dies, we’ll all be able to live in isoptera, we’ll make ourselves a new Living…

  13:50

  I reread my last post. The rantings of an absolute lunatic. It’s all that noise. Fofs, He is howling so loud today! But there is a small lull now and my head is clearer. I am saving the following in my memory as auto-reminders:

  1. The termites in the experiment have no connection whatsoever to isoptera.

  2. Experiments on people are still not giving any result.

  3. Don’t go mad, Cleo.

  14:20

  I ran myself through the autodoctor. My memory is partially destroyed. Everything seems to suggest I’ve picked up some kind of virus. There are a lot of viruses now. The noise is getting stronger.

  My hair is the wrong colour. I have to change it. To support the Living.

  15:00

  Luxury is a good place to escape His howling. You can hear him there too, but it seems almost melodic. Like background music that you don’t focus your attention on…

  mother_queen has updated her status hi, I’m available again

  The Wise Prophet

  The final dispatch of the Second Great Reduction: 17.09.479 A.V.

  Committed in the past 24 hours:

  – acts of terrorism in first layer: 1,566 (dead: 12,456 pers.; injured: 9,342 pers.)

  – acts of terrorism / virus attacks in socio: 11,569

  – illegal organised self-pauses at underground Festivals for the Assistance of Nature: 14,980

  – illegal self-pauses outside of festival zones: 11,934

  – murders on streets: 5,750

  – thefts and robberies: 25,875

  – clean-up operations successfully carried out by the Army of the Three-Headed God: 4,965

  – ceased to exist during clean-ups: 8,400 terrorists

  – ceased to exist due to various illnesses, starvation and insanitary conditions: 68,411 pers.

  – ceased to exist from previously received wounds: 12,784 pers.

  – homeless children discovered on streets: 48,733

  – temples of the Three-Headed God burned down / blown up: 421

  Claim to region EA 1 restated by: Goldenhorse (formerly, First member of the Council of Eight)

  Claim to region EA 2 restated by: Goldenhorse

  Claim to region EA 3 restated by: Goldenhorse, Emperor

  Claim to region EA 4 made by: Goldenhorse, Prince_of_Darkness

  Claim to region EA 6 restated by: Emperor

  Claim to region EA 7 made by: Goldenhorse,

  Prince_of_Darkness, Emperor

  Claim to region EA 8 restated by: Peacemaker,

  Prince_of_Darkness, Emperor

  Claim to region AS 1 restated by: Asiatic (formerly, Sixth member of the Council of Eight)…

  exterminated during armed territorial conflicts: 16,943 pers.

  (of which, children: 2,570; women: 5,342)

  sentenced to Public Pause of Shame as part of Who Else Deceived Us: 1 pers.

  Total number to (temporarily?) cease to exist during the past 24 hours: 151,659 pers.

  Reproduced during past 24 hours: 67 pers.

  Number of livings at present moment:

  1,000,476,117 (one billion four hundred seventy six thousand one hundred and seventeen) pers.

  ‘The figures look bad,’ the General says dejectedly. ‘The figures look very bad.’

  As if he needed to say that. Every day it keeps getting worse and worse.

  Don’t make the same mistakes as me, pal.

  I rescued people from a lie – but they could not handle the truth.

  I gave them the right to a long life – and they die by their own hands. In illegal, dirty, vomit-strewn pause zones or just on the streets. Because, you see, they are not immortal.

  I granted an amnesty for correctees, called on them to be who they wanted to be – and they became criminals.

  I gave them a mighty new god in place of their weak, half-dead one – and they destroy the temples.

  I gave them wise regents for their territories – and they rise up under the banners of the old stupid and deceitful ones.

  I gave them the right to love their Darlings – and they throw them out as seven-year-olds.

  I gave them the right to love each other – but they don’t know how to love.

  They blow things up, they burn them down, they get sick, they hang themselves, they weep, they beat up the weak. They pine away, they wallow in filth, they panic, they destroy themselves. They fight wars for empty spaces, they release socio viruses, they break into cells, they wipe memory, they rape, they die and they are not reproduced. They are reduced. And the Army of the Three-Headed God is no longer strong enough to hold them back…

  ‘We can’t hold them back any longer,’ the General glowers, and his scar goes crimson, as it always does when he is agitated.

  He is so devoted to me, he tries so hard to sense my mood and fulfil my desires that sometimes he manages to read my mind. It’s good I agreed to keep him back then. He brought nearly all of the SPO into the Army of the Three-Headed God. And it’s good that I streamlined his socio slot: after all, he had had his eyes on my position, the sneaky bastard…

  Now he is meek and devoted. The operation was very successful: he kept all his professional skills and his entire contact list. But he doesn’t remember being the Servant or being Second – except for some first-layer glimpses, fragments of nightmares… Now he is my General. He is the head of the Army of the Three-Headed God, he prays regularly and he does not question orders. And if his memory does play nasty tricks on him, he doesn’t worry, because he knows the reason. He clearly remembers getting wounded in the head in one of the first battles of the Reduction… No big deal, but his socio slot was grazed by a piece of shrapnel and it left a scar.

  My General suddenly shudders with his whole body and groans, and covers his face
with his hands.

  ‘Three-Headed Lord,’ he whispers, his face buried in his hands. ‘Lord, Three-Headed Lord…!’

  That’s very unlike him. I put my hand on his shoulder – ‘no sucs, just success: the Wise Prophet’s hand works on demand!’ – and quietly ask, ‘General, are you not feeling well?’

  Like a dog, he licks his dried out lips and slowly takes his hands from his face. The whites of his eyes are full of burst blood vessels. His teeth are chattering.

  ‘Another terrorist attack in socio,’ the General says. ‘I am present there. We are all dying.’

  The first reports appeared on the news feed after a quarter of an hour.

  We are broadcasting live from the location of the incident. At the current moment the termite mound is overrun with fire, there are burnt insect bodies everywhere. Several hundred nymphs are circling in the air, evidently panicking. They are gnawing off their wings and falling to the ground, into the fire. There is some sort of movement by the exit from the burrow – it seems as if the surviving workers and soldiers are trying to drag out the charred body of the Queen…

  The explosion at Isoptera is the most horrific socio terrorist attack in the history of the Great Reduction: over the last few years nearly a billion users have worked together to create this resource. As yet no one has claimed responsibility for this monstrously cruel crime; however, it is evidently not the work of a lone suicide-bomber. To produce an explosion of this magnitude in luxury required a coordinated and well-organised fantasy on the part of a large number of users.

  The millions of friends of those who died today in luxury are outraged at the government’s indifference and failure to act.