The Living (12 page)

The clown’s face is twisted in a grimace of disappointment. Two fountains of artificial tears soak the foyer.

Silence bursts in his ears like popping bubbles. The music turns on again in second layer – quiet and subtle, without words. Info-fest is launched in third layer. For those poor creatures that can’t hold third layer, the message is repeated in first layer through a loudspeaker. It turns on with a crackle and a cough, as if someone had cracked open a nut with their teeth and then choked on it.

‘Dear guests and friends of guests! The festival
administration
is pleased to welcome you to the Pause Zone. There are thirty minutes remaining until the next Pause. We would like to draw your attention to the refreshments on offer: coffee, tea, hot and cold drinks and snacks. If you are in need of entertainment, one of our festival clowns is sure to lift your spirits with
their fun tricks. If you are feeling sad or experiencing any distress, please ask one of the clowns about tranqvitamins…’

‘…Dear guests! We would like to remind you that our pavilion offers a Souvenir Photos service. Your festival snaps from today will be transferred to your cell in the Renaissance Global Databank along with any other keepsakes; you can pick them up when you turn eight and have access to your cell.’

‘…Dear guests! We would like to remind you that our pavilion offers an Everything’s Going to Be Alright service. If you have any unfinished business – if you have forgotten to tell someone something or to give them something, or if you have not had time to take your pet to the local Available Shelter, or if you would like to write something right now for your bank deposit cell, or anything else – don’t worry. Our managers will accept your requests, take into account your wishes and tie up all your loose ends. Everything’s going to be alright!’

‘I want to pass on a message,’ Matthew says.

‘I’ve got a message. I have to pass on a message. My message.’ Matthew rocks from side to side.

‘Dear guests! We would like to remind you that the same hygiene code applies in the Pause Zone as in the Reproduction Zone. Before the Pause guests are obliged to take a
disinfecting
shower. The shower booths are exactly the same as those in the Reproduction Zone, so we hope that there will be no difficulties.’

‘…A set of towels and a bathrobe will be provided for you as you enter the showers, which are situated immediately inside the entrance to the Pause Zone. We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude for the assistance you are giving to nature. There is no death!’

Ef slowly turns his mirrored face towards the seventh booth. A worried pre-pauser is dallying in front of the reflective glass of the little booth. He’s explaining something, gesticulating
wildly. He’s sticking some bit of paper into a drawer that is sticking out. The drawer creeps back, the pre-pauser tracks it jealously and looks beseechingly at his own reflection.

Ef looks with mirrored eyes at Cleo’s mirrored booth. She looks at him from inside. He can feel her watching him.

I like the fact that I’m also behind a mirror. Not just my face, but all of me, entirely. I try to imagine that in the booth I’m safe. That I’m a snail in my shell. That I’m someone’s pet and my owner won’t let me get hurt.

I can’t stand it when a needle is poked under my shell to make me stick my head out.

I never doubted that he would come to me in first layer. Ef’s not the type to make empty threats. He’s brought a compulsory. There are two of them in masks, in identical uniforms, but for some reason I guess immediately which one of them is Ef. It’s like the balloons are his emblem.

At that very second Ef fixes his gaze on my booth. He tells him.

I, by the way, never had any doubt that Clown would give me away. He’s a nasty piece of work, I didn’t like him from the moment I saw him. There’s something rotten about him. And
under the paint his skin is the colour of a rotten banana… A lot darker than usual globaloid skin.

Clown was transferred to us a month ago, allegedly from some distant region. Allergies – that’s how he explained the transfer. ‘An allergy to local grasses.’ Clown brought a whole nursery of house flies with him and took one of the terrariums into the
festival’s
Available Corner. He’s just like those flies – intrusive,
clueless
and he gets everywhere. Literally. Once he was my partner in the Reproduction Zone – I still feel sick when I remember that act. He stuck his tongue in my ears, my eyes, my nostrils. His tongue was stiff and sticky and his breath smelled of rotten fruit.

Then it turned out that the flies were not his pets, but food for his pets. Clown’s pets were these disgusting beetles, some of which had two heads. A week ago he brought in six beetles (five females and one male) and put them in the terrarium. Within a couple of hours the female beetles had devoured all the flies, then the male inseminated them and they devoured him too; he didn’t resist. The next day they produced larvae and ceased to exist…

Ef stares at me, right in the eyes, as if he can see me through the mirrored wall of the booth. That’s impossible, I tell myself, but my sense of invincibility disappears anyway. As if someone had just injected citric acid under the snail’s shell.

The pre-pauser client is still banging on like before. I look in his profile – he is sixty tomorrow. He came by himself – but at the last moment. Once I used to feel pity for people like him –
the unfortunates, fitfully attempting to mumble away their fear of the Five Seconds of Darkness with absurd requests and instructions. Now there’s nothing but irritation. With an effort of will I force myself not to look at Ef and to concentrate on what the client is saying.

‘…the idea, you know, only just came to me, but I’ve always been a creative person… I’ve jotted down the main points here, on this bit of paper… and if you could just give my project to the Association of Screenwriters… today, so that everything’s, you know, sorted by the time I…I’m able to join the team…’

The ‘profession’ entry in his profile reads: arc welder. And I know that he’ll be a welder in his new reproduction too; that’s the best case scenario. Guys like him never join the Association of Screenwriters after the pause – however much people blather on about the flexibility of your invector.

Guys like him never make dizzying leaps forward in their careers. No one ever does. Everyone either stays on the same level or falls lower. Like I did. From being who I was before, before the pause, to turning into an ‘everything’s going to be alright’ manager.

‘Everything’s going to be alright,’ I tell the pre-pauser from inside my shell. ‘We can guarantee that your project will be handed to the recipient.’

…Ef finally looks away. And leans over to the compulsory that they brought in. He says something in his ear. He nods like a rag doll being shaken. He’s clearly on tranqvits: he is
obedience
itself.

‘…the main thing is that it gets to them… Because this idea, I’ve got to say, can’t fail… Everyone’s going to love it…’

The compulsory gets up slowly; Ef supports him, holding him by the arm.

‘…And if everyone loves it that means the Living is going to love it too… I’ll just quickly tell you, young lady, what it’s about…’

And they walk in my direction. Ef and the old
compulsory
.

‘…my working title is The Eternal Nobody, but if the Association of Screenwriters comes up with something of their own I’m not going complain… I called it that because the idea is sort of part of the same project as The Eternal Murderer… The thing is that this Zero, or rather, Nobody – he’s, like, not part of the Living, he doesn’t have an incode, and he’s trying to destroy the harmony of the Living…’

Ef and his compulsory stand behind my client. They’re waiting their turn – even though there are a few free booths. The compulsory rocks from side to side, his face is calm, his eyes closed. Ef holds him by the arm. It’s just idyllic.

‘…The SPO find out about this. And they try to eliminate Nobody… So far it’s based on real events… Well, Zero, you know… And that’s when the made-up bits start… Then it turns out that it’s not that easy to kill Nobody, and he actually survives, and sort of starts carrying out his revenge plans… Nobody hides in…’

‘Very interesting,’ I say. ‘I have no doubt that everything’s going to be alright with your project.’

‘Really?’ The welder’s face lights with a smile that’s so happy that I activate the external camera in portrait mode. For an advertising stand. ‘Our clients are pleased because everything’s going to be alright.’

‘Absolutely,’ I say. ‘Your project will be given to the Association of Screenwriters today.’

‘And once it’s there, do you reckon, that everything’s going to be…’

‘We are only responsible for prompt delivery.’ I turn off portrait mode.

The smile is falling from his face and that wouldn’t do for the stand.

‘Are there any other tasks or will that be all?’

‘That’s all,’ he looks at me with sickly eyes. Previously I used to feel sorry for people like him…

‘OK then, thank you for using this service today. Everything will be alright, until we meet again, there is no death.’

‘No death…’

…Now I don’t feel sorry for them. He makes fitful attempts to find something else to latch onto. To avoid going off into the darkness, even for five seconds. Just to be in a place where everything is always alright.

‘Ah yes… the towels…’

‘You will receive a towel and bathrobe when you enter the shower room, which is situated immediately in the Pause Zone. You can use an additional Everything’s Going to Be Alright bonus and choose the colour of your robe and towel right now.’

‘Of course! Of course, I want to choose right now!’ He’s positively trembling with relief. ‘What colours do you have?’

Decent managers call it the ‘bathrobe trick’. It works ninety times out of a hundred with worried clients. It’s amazing how cowards like my welder grasp at the offer of choosing the colour… You know, the illusion of control over the situation; they don’t know what’s in store for them in the Pause Zone, but they know that they’ll be wearing a stripy bathrobe; I have some idea how it works, I understand the psychological
mechanism
, but I continue to be surprised. Your spectrum of
possibilities
has collapsed to the chance to choose the colour of a bit of material. Isn’t that humiliating?

‘We would like to draw your attention to the plain
socio
coloured bathrobes – free, unavailable and inviz, as well as blue and black robes with orange stripes and checked robes done in feeling lucky tones.’

‘Feeling lucky!’ he chooses. They all choose that.

‘No death!’ The welder leaves almost happy.

‘No death.’ Ef leads his compulsory up to the booth.

‘This is the Festival’s Everything’s Going to Be Alright service,’ I chirp.

I say out loud:

‘We would like to remind you that all our services may only be discussed in first layer and will be recorded on video and audio. How can I help you?’

Out loud he says:

‘This is my friend Matthew. He would like to use your services.’ Ef gives me the compulsory’s incode and shakes him gently, like a tank with a sleeping pet inside. Matthew slowly opens his eyes. His huge pupils, the irises wide open, are two round burrows leading down into the dark of his skull. Tranqvitamins. Two or three times the normal dose. This
creature
is hardly in any condition to use any services, except, of course, the pause itself.

‘Everything is going to be alright,’ I tell the empty black openings. ‘How can we help you?’

I am not expecting any reply, but by some miracle Matthew switches on:

‘I want to pass on a message.’

‘Fantastic. Is it some photographs? Documents? Some kind of object?’

‘A message.’

‘If it’s just a message, you can pass it on yourself through
socio
. Right now.’ He can’t see me, but just in case I smile my most radiant smile as I open his personal profile in third layer.

The compulsory silently screws up his empty eyes. He’s strange – too strange even for someone on tranqvitamins. And his profile is opening too slowly…

‘My head can’t,’ Matthew tells me dreamily and presses his face against the booth.

I see his dilated pupils right in front of me. They are pulsating slightly, as if the darkness is pushing them open from the inside. As if they’re going to burst open any second now and coat the walls of the booth in splashes of black… He’s barely managing to stand upright. Too high a dose. How is he even talking…?

‘Your correspondent cannot receive the message? Do they not have
socio-
activity? The thing is we’re having a few slight bugs with
socio
right now, in a few seconds they’ll all be…’

‘Impossible,’ Matthew quietly knocks his forehead against the wall of the booth, as if he’s asking to be let in. ‘Connection is impossible. Impossible…’

‘…Maybe your correspondent is not yet three years of age…?’ Clown makes faces at me from the other end of the foyer. Matthew smiles at Clown’s reflection in the cabin wall. Ef smiles too. My confusion clearly amuses him.

‘Whatever it is, Matthew, let’s proceed as follows. I’ll give you a piece of paper and a pen, and you can write your message and also…’

‘Won’t work,’ Ef finally speaks up.

‘Why not?’

‘Matthew can’t write.’

‘You are perhaps not quite right,’ I say. ‘The educational program Living Fingers is installed at the age of five…’

‘He’s forgotten how to write, go onto the “info” section on his profile, it says on there…’