Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) (12 page)

She could sit there for a long time, with the teabag in her hand and just look at it. The mist in the morning that covered the mountains held her view magically. And even though she had read all the books that her father had brought from his expeditions before they sold them, the read words
did not suffice to describe what she felt looked at these one centimeter tall mountains and breathing in the smell of the pine needles. It was a world so far from their reality but it had a strong pull …

The sweet longing and the eternal expectation of what the sun would see first … The endless thoughts about what was behind the sign with the brand of the tea: A strange tree?

The nest of an eagle? One of those houses that held on the slope and in which she would live with her father?

It was him that had given her the teabag when she was five years old. Back then with content, because it was a real rarity.

He had wanted to surprise her with real tea and she had gathered all her courage to drink it like medicine.

But the plastic hull had fascinated her from the very start. Back then he had explained her that it wasn’t a very artful illustration: A conventional Chinese province, just good enough for the print of a teabag. But teen years later Sasha still viewed it with the same eyes as on the day she had gotten the gift from her father.

Her father on the other hand thought that the teabag was just a shabby replacement for the whole world. And every time she fell into this trance and looked at this badly
drawn fantasy he felt the unspoken accusation for their mutilated, bloodless life. He tried to hold her back every time, without any success. With almost anger he asked her for the hundredth time what she liked about this old packaging for a gram of tea. For the hundredth time she put it back into her pocket and answered embarrassed:”Father … I think it is beautiful!”

If Homer hadn’t been there Hunter wouldn’t have stopped for a second, but Homer needed three times as long for the way. He would have never moved so secure and self-confident through the tunnel. For the transit through the
Nagornaya
the group had paid a terrible price, but at least two out of three had made it. And all three could have survived if they wouldn’t have been lost in the fog. The price wasn’t higher than usual: Nothing had happened there that hadn’t happened before, neither at the
Nachimovski prospect
nor at the
Nagornaya
.

So it wasn’t because of the tunnels that lead to the
Tu
l
skaya
? Now they were completely silent, but it was a disastrous and tense silence. Sure: Even at a totally unknown
station Hunter could feel dangers that waited for them hundredths of meters in advance. But was it possible that his intuition would leave him exactly here, here were at least a dozen experienced fighters had suffered the same fate?

Approaching the
Nagatin
s
kaya
he hoped he would have the solution for all the secrets … Homer struggled to keep his thoughts together because they ran to fast.

Still, he tried to think about what waited for them at the station that he had once loved so much. The myth gatherer imagined that the legendary satanic legation had emerged at the
Nagatinskaya
or that the inhabitants had been eaten by migrating rats on their way for food through the tunnels that humans couldn’t pass through. Even if Homer would have been alone he wouldn’t have turned around for anything in the world. In all these years at the
Sevastopolskaya
he had forgotten to fear death. When he had embarked on this journey he had known that it could be his last journey and he was ready to sacrifice his remaining time for it.

A mere half an hour after the encounter with the monsters of the
Nagornaya
they had become the horrors of his memories.

Even more, while he listened to his thoughts, he felt faint movement in the deeps of his soul: Somewhere deep
down inside him something had been created or awoken, the thing that he had wanted so much. That what he had searched for on his dangerous adventures, that which he had never been able to find at home …

Now he had a real reason to delay death with all his power. He would allow it after his work was done.

The last war had been more brutal than all that had come before it and it had only taken a few days. Since the Second World War three generations had passed, the last veterans had died and the living didn’t fear war anymore. The collective insanity that had robbed millions of humans of their humanity had once again become a simple political instrument.

The fatal game had become more like routine with every day that had passed and in the end there was no more time to make the right decision. The ban of using atomic weapons was dropped under the table in the heat of the fight:

In the first act of the drama they had hung their rifle on the wall and in the one before the last they had actually fired it. It didn’t matter who had pulled the trigger first anymore.

All big cities on the earth were turned into ashes and rubble at the same time. Even the few that had an anti-rocket shield were destroyed; they remained intact from the outside but radiation, chemical and biological weapons killed the majority of the population instantly. The unstable radio transmission between the few survivors ended after a few years. From that moment the world had ended for the inhabitants of the metro and neighboring lines.

While before the earth had been explored and colonized now it had returned to the borderless ocean of chaos and oblivion of ancient times. The small islands of civilization sank into the depths, one after another, without oil or power humanity returned to the Stone Age.

An age of terror began.

For century’s scientist have tried to return history from its almost destroyed papyri, parchments and foliants. With the invention of the press newspapers have continued to weave the fabric of history. And then the chronics of the last centuries almost no longer had any gaps in it: Almost every gesture, every move of those who controlled the world had been carefully documented.

Now the presses of the world had been destroyed with a single blow, or they had been abandoned. The looms of
history stood still. In a world without a future they were no longer needed. The shreds of this fabric were only held together by a single, thin thread.

In the first years after the disaster Nikolai Ivanowitsch had tried to find his family in the overcrowded stations. It had been in vain. He had abandoned all hope already but alone and lost as he was he now stumbled through the darkness of the underground because in this kind of afterlife he didn’t know what to do with himself. The thread of Arianne – the sense of life – that could have showed him the exit out of this never ending maze had fallen out of his hand.

In his longing for the past he had began to collect the newspapers, to remember and to dream.

He searched the articles and reports to find out if they could’ve prevented the apocalypse. One day he started to write down the events in his station in some kind of article.

And so it happened that Nikolai Ivanowitsch had found a new thread: He decided to become chronicler of the metro, author of the youngest history, from the end of the world to his own. His disorganized, aimless collection had now a purpose: To restore the damaged fabric of time and continue to weave it further.

The others saw Nikolai Ivanowitsch’s passion for harmless nonsense. Out of his own will he sacrificed his pay for old newspapers and turned every corner of his personal space into an archive. He volunteered for guard duty, because there at the fire at meter 300 wild men told themselves the craziest stories like little boys, where he caught every granule of truth about the rest of the metro. Out of the myriad of rumors he filtered out the facts and wrote them down in his books.

Even though this work distracted him he knew how useless it was. After his death all these reports would turn do dust without any care. The day he wouldn’t return home they were only good to make fire anymore.

From the yellowed paper only smoke and ash would remain, the atoms would enter new connections and forms, to be short: You couldn’t destroy the material. But what he really tried to preserve would, all that unimaginable, ethereal that was on these pages would be lost forever.

Humans worked that way: What stood in the school books remained in their heads up to graduation. And when they forgot the learned afterwards they did it with a true sense of relief. The memories of men were like the sand of the desert. Numbers, dates and names of unimportant people
disappeared in it without a trace, as if you would have thrown a stick into a wandering dune.

Something only remains if it conquers the fantasy of mankind, makes their heart beat faster, to move them, make them feel something. A gripping story of a hero or a great love could survive an entire civilization because it remains in the brain and is told by generation to generation.

When he had realized that he transformed himself from a wannabe scientist to an alchemist – and out of Nikolai Ivanowitsch became Homer.

And from now on he no longer spent his nights to create some chronics but to search for the formula for immortality. For a story as long living as Gilgamesh and a hero that was tough as Odysseus. On the thread of this story he would attach all his accumulated knowledge. And in a world where paper was transformed into warmth, where you carelessly sacrificed the past for a small moment in the here and now this legend of this hero would storm the hearts of the people and redeem them from their collective amnesty.

But the sought after formula let him wait, the hero just didn’t want to step onto the stage. The copying of the newspaper articles hadn’t taught Homer how to create myths, to breathe life into this golem and make this made up story
more interesting than reality. His worktable seemed like Frankenstein’s laboratory to him: Crumpled pages with fragments of the first chapters of his saga, which characters weren’t convincing, weren’t able to survive. The only things that he gotten from these nightly seating were dark rings under his eyes and a sore bitten lip.

And Homer still didn’t give up on his new destiny that easy. He chased away every suspicion that it could be that he wasn’t suited for it, that you needed a skill to create worlds that he hadn’t received.

He just had to wait for an inspiration, he said to himself … And from where should it come from? From the humid air in the station maybe? The tea ritual at his home or during his shift doing agriculture? Or while on guard duty, which became and more scarce for him because of his age?

No, he needed excitement, adventure and the storm of passion. Maybe then the dams of his mind would break and he could start his creation …

Even in the hardest times the
Nagatinskaya
had never been abandoned completely. Of course it wasn’t an ideal place to life. Nothing grew here and the exits were closed.

But many used the station to slip under the radar for a while or for some intimate time with their lover.

But now the station was empty.

Hunter moved with silent steps up the stairs, up to the tracks and then he stopped. Homer followed him, breathing heavily and looked around nervously at all sides. The station was dark, only the dust hanging in air glittered in the shine of their lamps. The sparse hills of shredded cardboard on which the inhabitants of the
Nagatinskaya
slept on were spread out all over the floor. Homer leaned his back against a pillar and sledded down slowly to the ground. The
Nagatinskaya
had once been one of his favorite stations because of the elegant and colorful marble mosaics. Now the station was dark and lifeless. The
Nagatinskaya
was nothing like he remembered.

Like the picture of a dead man on his tomb, from an old picture from his passport at a time where he didn’t know that he wasn’t just looking into a camera but eternity.

“Not a single soul is here.” Said Homer hesitantly and confused.

“Except one.” Said Hunter and nodded into Homers direction.

“I meant …” Started Homer but Hunter cut him off with a gesture of his hand

At the end of the station where the row of pillars ended and even the brigadier’s search light couldn’t shine, something crawled slowly onto the platform …

Homer fell onto the ground next to him, lightened his fall with his arms and stood up clumsily. Hunters lamp was turned off and the brigadier himself had disappeared into thin air. Sweating because of his fear, Homer switched his rifle to auto-fire and pressed the stock shivering against his shoulder.

Out of the distance he heard two suppressed shots.

Encouraged he looked past the pillar and hasted forward. In the middle of the platform Hunter was standing upright. At his feet was lying a difficult to see, skinny and pitiful figure. It seemed to be made out of boxes and rags and only had a slight remembrance to a human being. But it was one. You couldn’t determine its age or sex – in its dirty face you could only see its eyes. It made almost inaudible, sighing sounds and tried to crawl away from the brigadier. He seemed to have shot through both of its legs.