The Living (15 page)

‘He will fear the Monster. He will not want to become a part of the Monster. From childhood. He will be on your side.’

‘But I don’t have any…’

‘You do. The Monster is on one side. You are on the other. Separate. Outside him. In the future. You will need friends.’

My future ‘friend’ had rolled up in a ball on the floor, his whole body jerking rhythmically as he tried to fall asleep. Before his pause this was how he would rock himself to sleep. The light. This empty white correcting light under which it must have been hard to get to sleep. But easy to lose your mind. I turned round. Another wave of fatigue came over me – not the sort that pins you to the floor and stops you
breathing
, but a different sort, the sort that fills your whole body with invisible cotton wool, that poisons you and takes away your pain. That makes you indifferent.

‘You’re insane,’ I said, trying not to look either at Cracker or at his ‘hostage’. ‘What sort of future can I have here, in the House of Correction? What friends? You and the Son sitting in your impenetrable test tubes…’

‘…retrable tes tubs…’ Foxcub rasped.

Fox looked bad: his face became pale and damp, like a peeled potato. He stood like before, pulled up to his full height, and his legs shuddered noticeably.

‘Would you like to sit down, eh, Fox? Or lie down?’

‘Mnt Fx. Bn lying dn lng tme.’

‘Give him a break, Cracker! He’s in a bad way. Let him go finally!’

‘Soon e-nough,’ Foxcub said with effort, sounding out the syllables. ‘Help hm st…’

I sat Foxcub on the floor, leaning his back against Cracker’s chamber. He half-shut his eyes and said nothing for a little while. Then he started talking again, quietly, but fairly clearly:

‘You are right. There is no future in this house. That is why I invited you here. You have to get out of here…’

‘That’s nonsense, Cracker!’

‘There is no time. Do not interrupt me. Listen.’ Foxcub coughed up short phrases in bursts. ‘You will get out. Not now. Later. I will help. For now info. Must know. Above all. Chatterboxes. They are cleverer. Than it seems.’

And then Cracker told me about the chatterboxes using Fox’s disobedient tongue, his numbed vocal cords, his dry lips.

About the way the chatterbox, which hangs from every planetman’s belt, is not just a device for recording and
conducting
conversations.

About the way the chatterbox conceals a marvellous secret. Inside the chatterbox there hides a tiny cerebron. Not invasive, like they were before. The final model, the last type that was used before the Nativity. About the way the tiny cerebron duplicates all the information from the planetman’s
socio
slot: how, in other words, it is a copy of his cell. And in a force majeure situation, if the planetman’s
socio
slot is turned off, his cerebron continues to function.

About the way the
socio
slot is usually turned off after a planetman’s physical pause. In this case an external cerebron proves to be very useful: the Service for Planetary Order can download all the information from the temporarily
non-existent
planetman’s cell through his chatterbox.

About the way that theoretically – purely theoretically – a different sort of force majeure is possible. For instance, if the planetman is alive, but his
socio
slot is damaged. Let’s say, an injury. A head trauma. It’s unlikely – but anyway. Then the
planetman can take the cerebron from this chatterbox and, in order to stay on
socio
, can get hooked up to that. Through an external port…

…Inside Foxcub something started gurgling.

‘…tterbox…ternal ort… fox you res… digra…’

Fox flopped his tongue, which was covered in a grey film, out of his mouth and vomited on the shiny floor.

However, the current reproduction has seen serious
professional
demotion following the shameful failure of the experiment carried out prior to the pause. Despite her high intellect coefficient and excellent multilayer receptive capabilities,
cleo
has not been permitted to do scientific work and is employed at the festival service Everything’s Going to Be Alright and is not happy with her work, a fact which she has mentioned more than once in personal
socio
chats.

type of relationship
formed between myself and subject under investigation: erotic connection in deep layers

NB. I do not believe that the ‘personal aspect’ can have a negative effect on surveillance in this instance, because I feel no emotional attachment to the subject.

Basis
for instigation of surveillance: subject’s suspicious behaviour. It was
cleo
who initiated an intimate relationship in deep layers. Despite my insistence on entirely
cruel
and one might even say
sadistic
conditions for the act in
luxury
mode, subject
cleo
nevertheless
continues to insist
on repeating it. On the conclusion of the act
cleo
, it would seem,
tries to take advantage
of my
relax
status and
extract confidential
information
concerning the correctee under my control,
Zero
(who himself took part in the Leo-Lot ray experiment and was, without doubt, the most important object of inquiry). The subject tries to pass her interest off as common curiosity (I am looking after a celebrity
), however, I think that my answers interest her a great deal more than the
acts
themselves
. More than once
cleo
asked me about a personal (!!) meeting with Zero in first layer (cf. video recording of extract of our act in
luxury
).

I suspect that
cleo
’s plans may be criminal in nature.

We cannot rule out the possibility that she is planning to pursue, or has already pursued, independent, unsanctioned scientific activity in relation to the directed Leo-Lot ray (and in this sense with the ‘mysterious’ genesis of Zero – a very tasty little morsel). Her aim is obvious: to return her ‘good name’ in scientific circles and restore her invector. I would evaluate actions of this sort as a threat to the harmony and peace of the Living, as the Leo-Lot ray experiment was acknowledged as ‘unsuccessful and harmful’ and further experiments were forbidden at the highest level, and contact between citizens and Zero is strictly forbidden.

Moreover, taking into account
cleo
’s clear dislike of the specialisation given to her in this reproduction, it is impossible to exclude the possibility that
cleo
is a member of the criminal group the Dissidents. In this case her interest in Zero, who was born, according to the Dissidents’ absurd doctrine, to change their lives, is entirely harmful in nature.