The Living (4 page)

From the age of five I visited the local natural development group: Hanna took me to a shining round building, which looked like a ball of natural cheese, with oval holes for
windows
. Of course, no one did any developing there, that was just a name. But I liked it. I liked the cheese house. I liked the poor kids, who since birth had had neuron chains that didn’t join up right, making it impossible to install SDP, the Standard Development Program, or anything else for that matter. They had ugly faces with big foreheads and tiny chins, they had drooling mouths, they had eyes weeping with sores, but their gaze fascinated me – it was direct and intense, tenacious, not like other people’s.

They looked at me in amazement. I was absolutely healthy. I could have had SDP installed without any problems, if it weren’t for one ‘but’.

I was dangerous. So they wouldn’t hook me up to
socio
. At all. The decision was made at the highest level.

I was dangerous. I was surplus to requirements. I was
unknown
. I might violate something somehow… Of course they didn’t mention any of this to Hanna. They just announced that an additional cell would be required for me to be hooked up to
socio
. ‘Unfortunately, the creation of an additional cell could lead to a malfunction in
socio
.’ I remember her face when she got the message. Or I think I remember, I was very little – in any case, I’m sure that that’s what her face looked like at that moment. Frozen, grey. Like it always was when one of the departments contacted her about me.

I liked talking to the other children from the development group – they didn’t know who I was. And if they had known, they would not have understood. I liked lying. I lied and said that I had known my incode for ages, that I knew everything about myself, that I had managed to listen in to the adults
talking. And I liked listening to them lie too… We told each other cock-and-bull stories about our lives before the Pause, in which we were all heroes and were all awarded the Order of the Living; we chose the most prestigious ranks and
professions
for ourselves: we were all secretaries of the Council of Eight, architects, entomologists, or farmers or fruit growers.

And so I was a farmer. When they gave out the little boxes of natural food (I don’t know how it is now, but at that time
children
under nine were given a hundred grams of natural animal food produced by a Farmer of Merit in that region, it was part of the Programme for Assisting Nature), I said that the little chunks of meat which were inside, they’re actually from my farm, before the pause I had a farm, and I kept pigs there, yep yep, real pigs, I saw them up close, and they weren’t scared of me at all…

We all adored these little boxes of happiness with their
multi-coloured
stamps: ‘Region EA 8_milk’, ‘Region EA8_egg_hen’, ‘Region EA 8_ meat_pig’…

‘You’re lyin’!’ said a little boy with envy. He had a crooked face and piercing eyes. ‘You’re lyin’, aw uh a-imals are scaye’ o’ duh Wiving!’

‘Gopz,’ I said. ‘They’re not scared of me. They can sense a Farmer of Merit.’

…I liked our teacher; she was elderly, only two years to go until a compulsory pause. She would close her eyes and tells us about the Living and about what the world was like before His birth, in ancient times. She would put on these programmes from A Living Childhood – non-
socio
versions, they don’t make them these days – and we’d watch them on an old Crystal X0, like the ones you get in branches of Renaissance, just three times bigger. Most often she’d switch on Baby Bubbles. You know, about those amazing round creatures – if you’re eight, you’ll remember – Monkles, Mousie, Duckles, Fishie, Wolfie and the rest – they stand in a circle and dance round, quicker and quicker all the time, until they all get stuck together into
one big multi-coloured ball. His name is Livvles. His pink mouth smiles and says, ‘There is no death.’ And that happens before every episode.

We knew that all the normal kids, all the ones who had had A Living Childhood installed, took part in the circle dance. I hope that you’ve had better luck than we did. I hope that when you were five you danced around in a circle with Duckles and Mousie, that you merged together with them into a big shining ball… We didn’t. We just looked on from the outside. We were outcasts. We couldn’t feel like we were part of the sphere. Part of Livvles… But our teacher still reckoned that Baby Bubbles was the best material for us. And the most forgiving. Simple. The shape of a sphere: you’d get it even if you didn’t have any neuron chains at all. The shape of a ball. Unity.

I remember one of the episodes very well. It was called ‘The Pause: It’s Great!’ In it Wolfie accidentally eats a
poisonous
berry and struggles back to her little house and lies down in bed. Her friends come and sit with her. They’re all really sad, because Wolfie isn’t feeling well. Then Fishie says, ‘Do you want us to help you, Wolfie?’ Wolfie nods and her friends carry her out to the lake and put her right in the water. She sinks down to the bottom. A couple of big bubbles and then you can’t see her anymore. Her friends stand in a circle and smile and start to clap their hands. But Monkles doesn’t want to clap. He runs round the lake shouting, ‘Where are you, Wolfie?’ His friends explain to him that Wolfie has
temporarily
ceased to exist. Then Monkles cries, bright blue tears fly all around. His friends look around and stand in a circle. They dance round and round until they form one big bright ball. It’s Livvles. He explains to Monkles that it’s bad to cry at times like this. That it’s ugly and stupid. That there is no death. That it’s just a pause. He promises that Wolfie will come back and that she will be happy. She will be happy, as if there had never been a poisonous green berry… In the end the friends go back
to Wolfie’s house, where there is a surprise waiting for them. Wolfie is alive – but she’s absolutely tiny, and not blue, but pink… They all hug and turn into a big bright ball… The Pause: it’s great. At that moment I believed.

Maybe if they had let me be part of their dance, part of that ball, then I would have kept on believing in it. But I wasn’t a part of it, I watched on from outside. And when Hanna went to her last Festival for Assisting Nature, when she went and never came back, I behaved badly. It was ugly and stupid. When I found out that I would not see her again, I turned into that crazy Monkles, I cried and howled, I refused to eat, I hugged her black dress and started biting whenever anyone tried to take it off me… I covered my ears when they said it was only a pause, that Mia 31 would live forever, that there was no reason for tears… I didn’t want to hear it. I was unnaturally inconsolable. I exhibited a pathological reaction.

Paradoxical grief. That’s what it’s called.

At first I liked him. Ef, the man in the mask. He didn’t look at me with the same mixture of squeamishness and surprise as the others. I simply couldn’t see the way he did look at me. And his voice: it was a mystery what he actually sounded like. All I could hear was an even, automatic buzzing, nothing fake about it, in fact no intonation whatsoever.

I thought: I’d like to hide under a mask like that too.

He sat down next to me and said, ‘I know that you don’t like hearing that there is no death, that Hanna didn’t die, because her incode is eternal, that in nine months’ time she will be born again inside some little baby, that eternal rebirth is the secret of the Living…’

He said, ‘I’m not going to tell you all that again.’

He said, ‘Let’s discuss this like grown-ups. But to do that you’re going to have to calm down and stop wiping your snot everywhere.’

So I stopped. For the first time since I had been told that she would not be coming back, I washed my face and brushed my hair. And got ready to listen. I thought that he would tell me that there was no reason to hope. That I was right, that there was no point in them comforting me, that she was no more… I wanted him to take away my hope. The hope which they had, despite themselves, planted in me, the hope they tortured me with every day. The hope that she would come back. With a different face. In a different body. I thought that he would tell me: life goes on without her. I was ready to accept it.

But he told me something else. He said, ‘You have DCIV. My condolences.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Gopz. I haven’t got an incode at all.’ He stretched his mirrored lips into a smile.

‘Gopz… But I like you, kid. Don’t be scared.’ The corners of his mouth slowly slunk back. ‘If you like I can read the note on your medical records.’

I nodded. He started right away, without a pause – his connection was excellent.

‘“…Intensely expressed negative emotions in regard to pause of his biological mother. Multiple episodes of paradoxical grief. Outbursts of aggression. Attacks do not respond to standard unit of therapeutic methods…”’

He gave off a measured buzzing and I thought: I wonder if he closes his eyes, there, behind his mirrored muzzle? Probably not. Definitely not. Why should he? Of course he doesn’t close them. He’s a planetman after all. They say they can hold five layers… Or is it six? I wonder how many layers they can hold. Hanna held three with no effort, she had a great memory. I could have taken pride in that, but instead it
saddened
me. It’d have been better if she shut her eyes, like all normal people. In third layer most of the messages that came to her were about me and I’d have preferred not to see her glassy
gaze. It would have been better if she’d shut her eyes. I wonder, before she… did she close her eyes? And what exactly happened there? A pill? An injection? Some sort of gas? An electric shock? Later, after the pause, after the Five Seconds of
Darkness
, no one remembers how exactly it happens… But everyone is sure that it doesn’t hurt.

It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt.

She wasn’t in any pain. They told me: she wasn’t in any pain…

‘“…emotional condition could be classed as not conducive to the harmony, peace and integrity of the Living. Likely
presence
of destructively criminal incode vector (DCIV).
Provisional
potential threat coefficient (PTC) of 7, which matches the PTCs of persons with DCIV, observed over a period of more than five reproductions…”’ He broke off. Something in my expression probably confused him. ‘If you don’t
understand
something, ask. You’re only nine, but this is a grown-up conversation.’

‘How did it happen?’ I asked.

‘How did they calculate the coefficient? It’s simple. They take…’

‘No. How did it happen, the… pause? You’re a planetman: you must know?’

‘Of course I know. And you know too: it doesn’t hurt.’

I wanted to scratch his mirrored mask with something sharp. So that there would be a screech: metal on glass. And blood would come out of the slash.

He stood up and took a couple of steps back, as if he’d guessed what I was thinking.

He buzzed:

‘I would like to hear questions that are relevant. Relevant to our conversation.’

I suddenly got bored.

‘No questions. I understand.’

‘What do you understand?’

‘They think I’m a criminal.’

‘No. Absolutely not!’ Judging by his gestures, he was talking very animatedly, however, the buzzing remained just as sleepy. ‘Having a destructively criminal incode vector is not a crime. People with DCIV are not criminals. That’s very important. What’s also important is that some of those people with DCIV – most of them – would immediately become criminals if the Living did not look after itself. It is thanks to this constant care that you’re being sent to a House of Correction for people with DCIV.’

I get a ticklish feeling in my stomach, as if someone is
stroking
me on the inside with a cold little paw.

‘Is it forever?’ I ask, but it sounds more like a confirmation. The paw starts wriggling again.

‘…I’ve been sentenced to life imprisonment?’

‘Three mistakes straight off in such a short question. For one, DCIV is not a sentence. It’s more like a diagnosis. A warning sign. You can work on it, it can be fixed. That’s why it’s called a House of Correction. No one’s being punished there, there are no prisoners, there are correctees. They are provisionally
innocent
and working on staying that way in the future. And finally, imprisonment for life… That’s just a joke! What can be for life in your eternal life? I hope that everything’ll be sorted after the first pause.’

The first… I suddenly wanted to bite him. Hard, so I could hear the crunch of his shattered bone.

‘You think I don’t know that my first pause is probably going to be my last? Why are you lying? Don’t you know who I am?’ I almost shouted. I think I stamped my foot.

‘No one knows who you are,’ he buzzed calmly. ‘I don’t know either. But I do know something else. If you don’t want your first pause to be your last, if you want to stay with the Living, then your anger is unacceptable. The Living is full
of love, and every part of him loves every other part equally… You have fifteen minutes to gather your things. You will be picked up. I’ll come and visit you every week. There is no death.’