Ice Trilogy (62 page)

But Uf, with his great economic burst, brought the future closer: by January 1, 2000, there were 18,610 of US in the entire world.

And for the first time I believed that I would LIVE TO SEE IT!

We celebrated the New Year in a small circle at Uf’s country home. This was the only acceptable holiday for us of all the meat machine’s holidays: after all, each new year brought the hour of the Great Transformation closer.

After a short heart conversation we sat on a rug around a mountain of fruits and ate in silence. For the most part, we tried not to speak in the language of the meat machines.

And suddenly Uf froze with a plum in his hand. His blue-gray eyes squinted, his small, stubborn mouth opened.

“One year and eight months from now, we will become Rays of Light!”

I froze. The others did too.

Uf looked around at us with a piercing gaze. He added decisively: “I know!”

Suddenly his eyes grew moist, his lips trembled, the plum fell from his fingers. Tears flowed down his cheeks.

I ran to him, and embraced him.

Drenched in tears, I began to kiss his freckled hands.

I awoke, as usual, in the morning.

From the gentle touch of sister Tbo. Her hands were stroking my face.

Suddenly I remembered: today was a special day. A day of Greeting.

I opened my eyes: I saw my spacious bedroom with tender blue walls and a golden ceiling, Tbo’s blue-eyed face, her soft hands. Gentle music sounded. Tbo pulled the blanket off me. I turned on my stomach. The sister’s hands began to massage my no-longer-young body. Brothers Mef and Por entered silently. Waiting until the massage was over, they lifted me and carried me to the bathroom. There they helped me to empty my intestines and bladder. Then they lowered me into a bath of frothing cow milk. After about ten minutes they took me out, washed off the milk, and rubbed my chest with sesame butter, placed a mask of sperm from young meat machines on my face. Sister Vikha arranged my hair and put on my makeup. I moved into the dressing room where Vikha helped me to choose a dress for today.

I always dress in blue for special days. I chose a dress of restrained blue crêpe de chine, a little pillbox hat of blue silk with a blue veil, blue patent-leather boots, and bracelets of turquoise.

They took me into the dining room.

It was a large half circle, decorated in the same golden-blue tones. White roses and lilies stood in four gold vases. Outside the wide windows was a green fir forest.

Presiding over the table set with a gold service, I reached out my hands. Mef and Por immediately wrapped them in warm, moist napkins. Brother Rak served a dish of tropical fruits. One of my six secretaries entered — brother Ga. He began reading the updates.

Listening to him, I ate leisurely.

He finished reading and left.

Having finished my meal, I stretched out my hands again. Once again, two moist napkins carefully wiped them.

They carried me into the hall for heart conversation. It was round, without windows. The walls of the hall were fashioned of blue jasper.

Three naked brothers kneeled in the center of the hall. I lowered myself to my knees next to them. Their arms embraced me.

Our hearts began to speak.

I taught them the words.

But not for long: our embrace ended with a sweet moan, and I was carried into the room of rest.

A quiet room, with soft, golden-blue furniture, it was imbued with Eastern aromas. While I lay in a soft armchair, my hands were massaged. Then I drank tea made of herbs from the Altai.

My secretary entered.

I understood: it was time.

They carried me out of the house. My dark blue bulletproof automobile and two guard vehicles waited in front of the marble porch. It was sunny and there was a springlike freshness in the air. The last bits of snow had retreated, green grass was pushing up on the lawns. A woodpecker tapped on a dry branch. The gardener Eb was restoring a pyramid in the stone garden. A guard with a machine gun strolled by the gates.

They put me in the car.

We drove into Moscow.

The heavy limousine traveled silently, rocking me softly. I looked out the window. I loved the environs of Moscow, that extraordinary combination of wild nature and wild habitation. Here earthly life seemed less horrid to me. The road ran through massive stretches of forest, and among the trees one glimpsed the silhouettes of dachas, the same as forty years earlier. In the Moscow suburbs nothing had changed since Stalin’s time. The fences had simply grown higher and richer.

Moscow, on the other hand, was completely different. It had spread out. There was too much of it.

We drove along the Rublev Highway past white prefab buildings. Meat machines think them ugly, preferring houses built of brick. But what is a human house, in fact? A terrifyingly limited space. The incarnation in stone, iron, and glass of the desire to hide from the Cosmos. A coffin. Into which man falls, from his mother’s womb.

They all begin their lives in coffins. For they are dead from birth.

I looked at the windows of the prefab building: thousands of identical little coffins.

And in each one a family of meat machines prepared for death.

What happiness that WE are different.

Driving along Mosfilmovskaya Street, the limousine turned toward Sparrow Hills. As always, it was empty and wide open. Only Moscow University rose as a monument to the Stalinist era.

After a few smooth turns, we drove up to our rehabilitation clinic. It was built five years ago. Newly acquired brothers and sisters lay in it. Here we healed their wounds from the Ice hammers.

Sister Kharo rolled a wheelchair up to my car. I was helped to sit in it and rolled into the clinic. In the hallways I was greeted by the experienced sisters Mair and Irey. I greeted their hearts with a flare.

“They are ready,” Mair informed me.

They took me into the ward.

There, on a large white bed, lay three newly acquired hearts. They were exhausted by the crying that had shaken them for an entire week.

My heart began cautiously to pluck at these three awakened hearts.

In a half a minute I knew everything about them.

When they awoke, I spoke to them.

“Ural, Diar, Mokho. I am Khram. I welcome you. Your hearts wept for seven days. This weeping is in grief and shame for your previous dead life. Now your hearts are cleansed. They will no longer sob. They are ready to love and speak. Now my heart will speak the first word of the most important language to your hearts. The language of the heart.”

The three newly acquired looked at me.

And my heart began to speak with them.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR USING THE
ICE

HEALTH IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM

1. Unpack the box.

2. Remove the
video helmet
,
breast plate
,
mini freezer
,
computer
,
and connection cords
from the box.

3. Plug the mini freezer into an electrical outlet immediately in order to keep the
ICE
it contains from melting. Remember that the battery is capable of maintaining the necessary temperature in the mini freezer for
no more than
seventy-two hours!

4. Familiarize yourself with the
counter-indications
; when you are certain that the
ICE
Health Improvement System is not counter- indicated for you, find a quiet, secluded room and lock the door so that no one will disturb you during the session. Bare the upper part of your body, put on the breastplate, and fasten the belts on your back and shoulders. The mechanical striking arm should be positioned to strike exactly in the center of your breastbone. Open the mini freezer; remove one of the twenty-three
ICE
segments provided. Remove the
ICE
from the plastic packaging and place it in the striking-arm socket, securing it with the
socket latch
. Connect the cords to the
ICE
system. Insert the plug of the computer adapter into an electrical outlet. Sit down in a comfortable position. Relax. Try not to think of extraneous things. Hold the
directional controls
in your right hand. Press the
ON
button. When you are certain that the mechanical arm is positioned so that the
ICE
will strike precisely
in the center
of your breastbone, put the video helmet on your head. The
ICE
Health Improvement System session lasts from two to three hours. If you experience any discomfort during the session, press the
OFF
button, which can be distinguished from the
ON
button by its rough surface.

5. When the session is over, remove the video helmet and the breastplate and disconnect the system from the electrical source. Assume a horizontal position; try to relax and think about eternity. After regaining your calm, get up, detach the
tear-aspirators
from the helmet, wash them in warm water, wipe them dry, and reinsert them into the video helmet.

Counter-Indications

The
ICE
Health Improvement System is
categorically
counter- indicated for individuals with cardiovascular disease, nervous system disorders, or psychiatric conditions; pregnant women, nursing mothers, alcoholics, drug addicts, war invalids, and children under the age of eighteen.

Warnings

1. We do not recommend more than two sessions in a twenty-four-hour period.

2. If you experience discomfort after the session, contact
ICE
. Our doctors and technicians will provide you with the necessary recommendations. Remember that the Health Improvement System is intended for
individual application only
.

3. If you interrupt the session, remove the unused
ICE
from the striking arm
completely
. In order to continue the session you will have to insert a
new ICE
segment.

4. Do not expose the equipment to the effects of direct sunlight, humidity, and low temperatures.

Additional ICE to restock your mini freezer may be obtained from authorized ICE dealerships.

COMMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

FROM THE FIRST USERS OF THE

ICE
HEALTH IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM

Leonid Batov, 56, film director

Until recently I was a steadfast, principled enemy of progress and regarded the technological novelties of our century with suspicion. This was not a matter of my having “environmental” views, not at all. Rather, it stemmed from the very logic of my life and my art. I led a fairly secluded life, lived in the country, and socialized with a small circle of like-minded people. Once every four years I made a film. My films were termed “elite,” “hermetic,” and even “arrogantly marginal” by many film critics. They are right: I was always a supporter of elitism in art, of “films that are NOT for everyone.” I believed my primary enemy to be Hollywood, that huge McDonald’s which overran the world with cinematic “fast food” of dubious quality. My heroes and teachers were Eisenstein, Antonioni, and Hitchcock. Politically speaking, I was an anarchist, a devotee of Bakunin and Kropotkin, who struggled against the faceless machine of the state. I actively supported the Greens, even taking part in two of their actions. I was born and grew up in a totalitarian state and had always experienced a certain inner tension; I expected aggression from without. Why do I speak of my political convictions now? Because everything in man is interconnected. Ethics and aesthetics, food and attitudes toward animals. It was precisely such an inner tension that I experienced when the courier brought me the
ICE
system. Representatives of the manufacturer had called me on several occasions and spent a long time convincing me to accept this gift. At first, naturally, I refused. I was sick and tired of the ads for the system and the hullabaloo surrounding it which has convulsed our mass media in recent months. I repeat: I have never believed in “instant paradise,” neither in life nor in art. On the other hand, the shouts of the mass media about the “collapse of the worldwide movie industry” since the system came out, the comparisons of the system to a torpedo capable of sinking Hollywood, elicited a certain professional curiosity. In short, on receiving the box with the system, I had my breakfast, drank my traditional cup of fruit tea, moved my old leather armchair to the middle of the room, sat down, and followed the instructions to the letter. I put on the helmet and pressed the ON button. At first it was pitch dark. But the little hammer with the ice began to strike my chest evenly. A minute passed, then another. I sat there, staring at the dark. The ice hammer pounded away at my chest. There was something touching and amusing about this. I remembered how, in my childhood, when I lived in the provinces, a huge woodpecker inhabited a grove near us. No one had ever seen such an enormous woodpecker — neither Father nor the neighbors. Big and black, with white fuzzy claws and a white head. Everyone went to the grove to look at the huge woodpecker. Finally someone said that it was a Canadian woodpecker, that it wasn’t native to any part of Russia. Apparently the bird had flown out of the zoo or someone bought it and didn’t take care of it. He worked like clockwork, tapping incessantly. And so loud, so resoundingly! I would wake up from his tapping. And I’d run out to watch him. He wasn’t afraid of anyone, he was busy with his own affairs. We got so used to the black woodpecker that we started calling him Stakhanov. And then one of the delinquents from the next street over killed the woodpecker with a stone. And hung him upside down from a tree. I cried so hard. Perhaps it was that very day that I became “green”...And suddenly, remembering the dead woodpecker and staring into the dark, I began to cry. There was such a warm, sharp feeling in my heart, the sort you have only in childhood when you experience everything directly. I felt terribly sorry for the woodpecker and for all living creatures. Tears poured from my eyes. The tear aspirator in the helmet began to work immediately. It was such a pleasant feeling; the tears were sucked up so tenderly. I was trembling all over from this attack of universal compassion. And the little hammer kept on tapping and tapping, and what I felt wasn’t a blow but a sort of soft pressure in the middle of my chest. These attacks of compassion for the living rolled over me in waves, like a tide. Every wave ended in tears, which immediately disappeared in the tear aspirators. The little hammer began to strike more rapidly, and the waves came more quickly. An unending avalanche broke over me. A waterfall of compassion. I was utterly convulsed by sobs. It was phenomenal. The last time I cried like that was sixteen years ago, when Mama died. I don’t remember how long it lasted — half an hour or perhaps an hour. But I felt no fear or discomfort. On the contrary, it was very pleasant to cry like this, it purified the soul. I gave myself over entirely to these attacks. The crying gradually ended and I calmed down. The hammer tapped so fast that it seemed there was an opening in my chest all the way to my very heart. The feeling of universal compassion was replaced by a feeling of extraordinary peace and bliss. I have NEVER felt so peaceful and well in my life! And at that moment on the inner screen of the helmet an image appeared. Rather, it didn’t appear, it flared — bright, wide, and strong. I saw before me the cliffs of an island rising out of the ocean. It rose from the sea like a plateau, almost a perfect circle in form, and was several kilometers across. And I was standing on the edge of this island, holding hands with other naked people standing nearby. A girl held my left hand and an elderly man my right. They, in turn, held hands with other people. And we all formed a huge circle extending along the perimeter of the island. Somehow I understood that there were exactly twenty-three thousand of us in that circle. We stood there, very still. The ocean splashed below. The sun shone at its zenith. The blindingly blue sky spread out over us. We were all naked, blue-eyed, and fair-haired. We all awaited something with the GREATEST reverence. That moment of awaiting the greatest event continued and continued. It seemed that time had stopped. And suddenly something in my heart awoke. And my heart began to speak in a completely different language. It was amazing! My heart was speaking! For the first time in my life I felt my heart SEPARATELY, as an independent organ. It felt all the people standing in the ring, it felt each heart. And all the hearts, all our hearts, all TWENTY-THREE THOUSAND of them, began speaking in unison! They repeated some new words, although they weren’t words in the sense of speech, but more like flares of energy. These flares grew, multiplied as if they were constructing an unseen pyramid. And when there were twenty-three of them, the most amazing thing happened. It is impossible to convey in any language. The entire visible world surrounding us suddenly began to melt and grow pale. But it wasn’t at all like in the movies, when the frame pales because of a wide-open aperture. The world was actually MELTING, that is, falling apart into atoms and elemental particles. And our bodies along with it. It was INCREDIBLY pleasant: a great relief after decades of earthly life. They disappeared, disappeared, and suddenly a torrent of light

Galina Uvarova, 38, deputy of the State Duma

Yesterday I received an unexpected gift from the
ICE
Company — a system of the same name. The nine-month hubbub around this project resulted in a successful birth — a new child of advanced technology appeared in the world. In the presence of my husband, son, and friends I tried out this “miracle of the XXI century,” by means of which its creators intend to “resolve the problem of human discord in our difficult world.” Putting on the helmet and turning on the apparatus, I waited. The “miracle ice,” loaded in the mechanical hammer, began to strike me in the chest. The first minutes passed in silence and darkness. In a state of expectation, in pitch dark, people usually begin to think about things past. For some reason I remembered how my father once took me to the countryside, to see his relatives. I was about ten. These relatives had slaughtered a calf specially for us. His name was Borka. And I saw his head in the larder. I was horrified and scared. I ran out of the larder. At dinner, my country aunt suddenly asked me, smiling, “Now, then, is Borka tasty?” I began to cry. Then I suddenly felt terribly sad. And wearing that damned helmet I began to weep. Apparently the nervous tension of the recent election campaign took its toll. My husband began to pull at my shoulder, but I pushed him away roughly, something I had never permitted myself. The tears flowed even harder, in a regular flood. I simply broke down. When it was all finished, a picture arose — we all stand in a circle, holding hands. Naked. And suddenly everything around begins to disappear. And we turn into rays of light

Sergei Krivosheev, 94, retired

I feel very happy and hopeful after receiving the
ICE
Health Improvement System free of charge. Thanks to it, I feel energetic and optimistic. I tried it on October 18. The details: At 14:30 I connected everything and sat down on a chair. I was assisted by: my son and his wife. At first nothing happened. So I waited. And then I felt a certain agitation, but it was pleasant. Most important, I remembered many things that I had completely forgotten. I remembered 1926, how I went hunting with my father when I was just a boy. It was near Vyshniy Volochek on the lakes. Father and three of his pals and fellow workers were duck hunting. That morning they had shot nearly a boatful of ducks. The boat was in the reeds by the shore. I sat in the boat. Our two dogs, Entente and Kolchak, would swim out to retrieve the ducks that had been hit if they fell in the water, or search for them in the reeds. Then the hunters called the dogs to them and I remained alone in the boat with the dead ducks. And who knows why, I began to feel very sorry for the ducks. They were so beautiful. But I understood the scariest thing back then: no one could ever bring them back to life. I cried so hard. I cried and fainted. Then I cried some more. I got very tired. But then I awoke on the shore of an enormous lake. I am standing with some people. And we all pass easily into a very pure light

Andrei Sokolov, 36, temporarily unemployed

All of you weasels should be hung up by your pricks so you don’t shit on people. This stinking
ICE
is an invention of kike Freemasons who want to enslave mankind. Russia has already been humiliated, crucified, they want to cut her up and sell her off like bear meat, and now they’re out to fuck her over in the mental sphere. They choose the “necessary” people and hand out this shit for free. But I’m not one to take to that immoral dishonesty. This fucking system is opium for the Russian people. They want to get us all hooked on it, and when we turn into retards they’ll bring in fucking UN troops and aim their guns at the Kremlin. And we’ll all be speaking English. It’s a nasty fucking system: first I started crying my eyes out because I remembered how we buried my little sister when she got electrocuted on the farm, and then all kinds of bullshit started — I’m standing around with naked hookers and pederast perverts! And no one’s ashamed of themselves. Most of all — even I’m not ashamed. And then — everything disappears and there’s something like this kind of bright light