Ice Trilogy (63 page)

Anton Beliavsky, 18, student

On September 10 my sister told me that I was one of two hundred and thirty people to whom the company
ICE
was giving its super system for free. I didn’t believe it at first, but my sister showed me the newspaper where it was written. That was cool! I’d heard so much about this system, they were always talking about it on TV, writing in the papers and magazines. I saw a report on the company, on its unusual story, on how they set up a huge plant to manufacture synthetic Tungus ice in Siberia, and how the company is very rich, but the Russian part is only twenty-five percent, and that they want to revolutionize the video and film industries, to destroy the old cinema and create something really awesome that will make everyone go bananas. They called me, and then delivered the box. My sister and I opened it; there was a computer, a helmet, and a breastplate. Also a kind of briefcase-size freezer with twenty-three pieces of ice. I took off my T-shirt, sat down on the sofa; my sister helped me put on the breastplate. I put a piece of ice in the hammer, connected the computer and the helmet, plugged everything in, put on the helmet, and flipped the system on. The helmet design is really cool, just like Darth Vader’s. And it’s comfortable inside, really soft. At first nothing happened. The hammer began to thump the ice against my chest, that’s all. But it didn’t hurt. I relaxed, sat back; it was dark in the helmet, like in a tank. One minute, two, five. Nothing! I was already thinking, okay, it’s just another bunch of bullshit. My sister was sitting next to me. I said, “Mashka, we’ve been had!” And then suddenly for some reason I remembered something. I was fourteen years old when I first got asthma. My very first attack was in the early morning. They were laying down some kind of pipes outside right under our windows and these jerks started drilling the asphalt at around five a.m. They had a compressor for the jackhammer; they turned it on and it began pounding away rhythmically —
trrr, trrr, trrr, trrr!
That morning I had a dream: it was like those jerks started up the compressor and connected the hose to our window. They were sucking the air out of our apartment. We had a one-room apartment; Mama and Mashka slept near the window and I slept on a fold-out cot near the sideboard. And it was like I woke up and saw that Mama and little Masha had almost suffocated. They were lying as though they were dead under that window. And I jump out of bed and then have to crawl over to them, because I can hardly breathe myself, and I start shaking them. But they die right before my eyes. What was so frightening was that I couldn’t help them at all, and that damn compressor was sucking out the air and blasting away:
trrr, trrr, trrr!!
So I grab a chair and throw it at the window. But it doesn’t break. I beat my fists against the glass as hard as I can, but I can’t break it. Then suddenly I realize — that’s it! They’re both dead! And they will never be brought back to life. I began to weep — I wept so hard! Then I began to sob convulsively. So hard and so long that my sister even got scared. She told me later that my whole body was wracked by sobs. It went on and on, and then I kind of started to feel tired, and then completely exhausted. I felt so good and calm, it was like nothing bothered me, I didn’t care about anything, and I felt totally high inside. And —
bam!
A picture lit up: I’m standing on this awesome island. It’s so big, like a cliff. The sea is all around. Sun, a bright blue sky, incredible fresh air. And I’m standing in a huge circle with naked people, and we’re all holding hands like children. And there are lots and lots of us. And then I suddenly realize: there are exactly twenty-three thousand of us. Exactly! And that really kind of hit me —
wham!
And in my heart there was this kind of sucking feeling, but in a good way, it was sweet. And there was this rush, as though my heart had a pipe in it, and whoosh, it was off with a whistle. Suddenly I could feel the hearts of all of those people. And it was this really strange but cool feeling that all of us are the only ones on earth. And we began to talk with our hearts. But it wasn’t any kind of normal conversation, when you tell someone something, and they answer, like: “Who are you?” “I’m Anton.” “I’m Volodya, hi.” Not like that. It was more like a conversation without words, but really powerful. And then our hearts all began to kind of vibrate: one, two, three...It was so cool! And when it got up to twenty-three — then...I just can’t explain it...! Suddenly everything all around began to dissolve, sort of disappear forever, and us too —
whoosh!
And we melted in this gentle light

Max Alyoshin, 20, anarchist

When I received the
ICE
system, I immediately decided to test it in our commune. It’s in this really awesome condemned building. They’re going to restore it and then fill it with the bourgeoisie. There’s nothing there, not even any electricity. But we solved the problem — at night we hook up to the neighboring kiosk. And so I got into the helmet, turned it on. At first — it was fucking dark and that ice hammer was humping away at my breastbone. It was a real bummer, no rush, no high. Then all this bullshit got into my head: really ancient memories. It was like I was still in Elektrostal, just a little guy; in the morning I run out into our yard and there’s this incredible fucking winter, snowdrifts, all kinds of kids out with their mamas. And my mother’s the groundskeeper. And right near the third entrance door, she’s chopping ice with a pickax:
whack! whack! whack!
A nice sound. And I’m walking around the yard like a goddamn cosmonaut: my grandma put a bunch of clothes on me, so I look like a head of cabbage. I’ve got felt boots with galoshes on my feet, and the snow crunches under them like sugar. I have a shovel in my hand, and I walk over to a snowdrift and start making a spaceship out of it with my shovel — I dig and dig, and Mother keeps on chopping and chopping. And suddenly I need to piss really badly, because I didn’t take a leak before going out, because I wanted to go out so bad. And I don’t want to go home to piss — walk all the way up to the fourth floor, then Grandma will unpack me, take me to the john, it would all take way too long. So I keep on digging and digging, and Mother keeps on chopping and chopping. And then I start to piss into my felt boots, not even piss, but just let a little out at a time. And my boots are so warm. But then suddenly I feel like shit. I’m digging the deck, and I start whimpering from anger. But Mother chops and smiles at me. And suddenly I begin to cry, fuck, so hard that I can’t see anything and I fall into the snowdrift and I cry and cry and cry. But my mother thinks I’m playing. And she keeps on chopping that fucking ice, and I’m wailing till I’m totally exhausted. And I get so tired that I lie there in that fucking snow like I’m in the grave. I can’t move a finger. And then suddenly — fuckin’
whammo!
I’m on an island. An island in the fuckin’ ocean. And I’m standing in a circle with twenty-three thousand people who are standing and holding hands, completely quiet. Me, I’m also holding some chick’s hand with my left hand and some old guy’s with my right. Fuckin’ shit, man. Then —
whacko-fuckin-bam
— there’s this jolt in my heart, like a rush — then a second, a third, and on and on to the twenty-third! And
whoosh
— we’re all heading for fuckin’ nirvana, we float away and the light

Vladimir Kokh, 38, businessman

In my opinion, the whole thing is very suspect. I experienced only:

1. Pity, yearning, sadness (when for some reason I remembered the time three schoolboys and I threw stones at a cat).

2. Weakness, deadly fatigue (when I stopped crying).

3. Euphoria (when I found myself in a huge circle of similar people, felt heart palpitations, and suddenly began to disappear, and everything all around too, becoming light

Oksana Tereshchenko, 27, manager

I really wanted to try out the
ICE
system. Not just because I’d heard a lot about it. Even a long time ago, I think it was about three years back, when the Japanese found the Tungus meteorite, or rather, what was left of it, and Russian and Swedish scientists discovered the “Tungus ice effect,” I was very intrigued by this event. This discovery promised a revolution in sensory experience. And for that matter, I liked the whole story of the Tungus meteorite, the fact that it’s a huge chunk of ice, ice with an unusual crystalline structure that doesn’t exist in nature. Ice, fallen from the sky, a huge chunk, which no one could find, but it turns out that it had been found and quietly chipped away at. Where did that ice go? What happened with it? Who were these people? It’s still a mystery. Now that scientists have synthesized this unusual ice, the whole thing is even more interesting. So when they informed me in our office that I was one of the two hundred and thirty initial testers, I was stunned! It was a huge surprise. Our commercial director included me in the list of two hundred and thirty without even asking me. He just saw how I was always surfing the Internet and following the “Tungus effect.” And when fate willed that I was among the first testers, he said that I should try out the device here, in our office, in front of our coworkers. And everyone supported the idea! That was it — and so yesterday when I came to work as always at 9:30, I brought the box with me. Everyone was already waiting. In the packing room they moved the bundles over to the wall, placed the director’s leather armchair in the middle. Two coworkers helped me put on the breastplate, load the piece of ice in the little hammer, and plug everything in. I connected the helmet, put it on, felt around for the start button with my finger, and pushed it. Right away the hammer began to peck at my chest with the ice. It was dark in the helmet. It was funny and a little ticklish:
tuk, tuk, tuk, tuk
, like a bird pecking and pecking at me between my breasts! It was funny because I imagined myself from the outside: the manager of the company sitting in a bathing suit and helmet, this thing pecking at her chest, everyone standing around and watching to see what will happen. But nothing happened — it was dark in the helmet. And I began to worry. I don’t much like the darkness. And when I sleep alone, I always leave the light on. I’ve been that way since childhood, since I was about ten, I think. The thing is, my father would drink, and when he’d come home drunk, he’d be rough with my mother. We lived in a military settlement, in a two-room apartment; they slept in the little room, and I slept in the big room. And several times I heard my father raping my mother, that is, she didn’t want to and he just took her by force, he was so drunk. And she would cry. One time I couldn’t stand it; I got up and turned on the light in my room. And my father immediately quieted down. He didn’t even get mad at me. And then I just started doing it a lot. And I began to be afraid to sleep in the dark. And when I thought about that, sitting in the dark helmet, I suddenly remembered really vividly an incident from my childhood. One time, it was in the summer, Mama put me down for a nap during the daytime, and went off to the store. I woke up — and there was no one home. The refrigerator was making a knocking noise. It was big and fat-bellied, made a lot of noise, and was always knocking and rocking:
knock, knock, knock
. I got dressed, went to the door, and it was closed. I went to the window and saw Mama in the yard. She was standing with our neighbor lady. They were talking about something happy, and they were both laughing. I began to beat on the glass and shout: “Mama, Mama!” But she couldn’t hear me. And the refrigerator kept on knocking and knocking. And I was wailing and looking at Mama. And the most awful thing was that she couldn’t hear me. I felt so sad from this vivid memory that I began to cry. And then I just started wailing out loud, like a little girl. But there was something really pleasant about this weeping, something intimate, a feeling of something you can never bring back. That’s why I wasn’t embarrassed at all; on the contrary, I cried as openly as I could. It went on for a long time, my heart would stop so sweetly, the tears rolled down and were sucked up somewhere so pleasantly. It was very very sad, but very sweet, too. I was only afraid of one thing: that one of the coworkers would be scared and pull the helmet off me! But they all turned out to be politically correct! So I cried to my heart’s content, and the ice hammer kept on tapping away at my chest. And a kind of astonishing peace set in, really magical, as though my soul had flown above the earth and saw everything and understood that people have no reason to rush around. And it was so amazing that I completely froze still so as not to spoil it, so it wouldn’t end. And the peace just floated and floated, and it was like flowers were blooming in my heart. And suddenly a bright, glistening image appeared on the inside screen of the helmet. It was the ocean and a bit of land in that endless blue ocean, and we stood on that land — twenty-three thousand wonderful people! We were all holding hands, forming a huge circle a few kilometers wide. We all felt fine and comfortable standing like that. We were waiting for some decisive moment, something important. I was entirely transformed into the expectation of something, as if God were supposed to come down from the sky to us. And suddenly our hearts seemed to wake up all at once. It was an incredible jolt! As though a huge organ began to play inside us. Our hearts began to sort of sing scales, rising ever higher and higher. This heart singing in unison was unlike anything else. My whole body grew numb and everything flew right out of my head. And the notes kept on going up and up, like a chromatic chord — higher, higher, higher! And when they’d come to the very top, a real miracle occurred. We began to lose our bodies. They just kind of dripped away somewhere, disappeared. And everything all around us as well — the shore, and the waves, the fresh salty sea air — everything was sort of sucked away, like a cloud. There was nothing scary about it, just the opposite, my whole soul welcomed this disappearance joyously. It was an unforgettable moment. I kept on dissolving and dissolving, like a piece of sugar. But not in water. There’s light

Mikhail Zemlianoi, 31, journalist