The Place of Quarantine

Chapter 33

The place where my phantom entity resides is immersed in half light. It is perhaps twilight, or maybe dawn – some time of day that doesn’t change anymore. The sound of the copper string shakes me out of another short bout of drowsiness.

I am reclining in the same chair, in the same room, but its aspect has altered entirely. There is no exit out of it; instead of the door there is a solid wall. The wardrobe and the curtains have disappeared; beyond the window there’s one and the same image: a winter park, a gloomy, low-hanging sky and snowflakes slowly sliding down. The main park alley narrows to the horizon. The touch panel no longer works; the landscape cannot be changed. And nothing can be changed: my quarantine is coming to an end.

I do not know what is happening outside my bedroom, the confines of which now make up the boundaries of my reality. I am not even sure I’m still in the same block, next door to Elsa. It’s possible I’ve already been separated, isolated, abstracted. Maybe Elsa has a new roommate and they live their life in a different space disconnected from me. One way or another, these are merely my fantasies, nothing more. And, on the whole, I couldn’t care less.

The screen now never goes out; it flickers a dim gray. In the middle of it there is a single word: SOON. The waiting drags on and on; I have lost track of time. I cannot say whether a day or three, five – or maybe a week or two have passed. This is as it should be; Nestor has warned about this. He, by the way, is the only remaining link between me and any kind of outside world. Sometimes the screen flashes, the word disappears, and in its place a familiar face with a high forehead emerges. His visits are not related to his duties; they occur during his rest hours – he just wants to talk. At least that’s how he describes it.

“Bear in mind,” he said the first time he came, “I shouldn’t be doing this.” And he added, somewhat caustically, “Although I haven’t noticed that you particularly value my friendship. Maybe now you’ll finally feel some remorse for that…”

Our conversations are short – I get tired quickly. My entity is aging; I notice it with every new sigh, every turn of my head, every glance at my hands. Everything is going according to plan, Nestor assures me, which is directly connected with the formation of the real me there. In my real new life, in my new infancy – with the beginnings of all the memories, all the knowledge that I have restored. They are activated naturally in their own good time, he said. When my new brain – the real brain – is ready to communicate with my B Object. When it is ripe for self-awareness. Cogito me cogitare.

Tired, I doze – in the viscous darkness without dreams. Then the string starts to resonate again – I start up in my chair, look at the screen and see the same message: “SOON.” And I remember – how I woke up in an empty stairwell, how I got to know Elsa, argued with Nestor and worked vigorously on my theories. How I spent an amazing time in this place, the place of Quarantine. And how I finally decided to leave it.

Before the decision came, I remembered my death again – but the dream that led me to it took almost a week to emerge in full. It was formed out of shards, like a stained-glass window, negligently dropped onto the floor. I collected them together, step by step, filling in the blanks. The days stretched out as usual: walks with Elsa, who still nurtured her grievance, and short talks with Nestor – about nothing in particular, not touching on any serious matters. The Cloud of Objects, their grouping, the hidden rationale of the connection of destinies – it all seemed to be hanging in the air, waiting. Maybe I was getting used to the scale of the issues – and Nestor, sensing this, gave me time. Or he was being secretive for some reason – sometimes I suspected there was a cause for his silence, but I didn’t want to betray my curiosity.

And then the stained glass formed into a whole – it was a long, deliberately detailed dream. The entire drunken night – the restaurant, the club, the chance acquaintance with the rich Russian and his girlfriend – was reproduced minute by minute, without cuts. I lived again, word by word, through our conversations, all their strange twists and turns. And when I awoke, I realized: somewhere near, here, beyond the nominal boundary, the most important memory of all lurked – and it wasn’t difficult to reach it.

I got up, walked around the room, looked out the window. Behind it was an unfamiliar cityscape. I hastily moved away, not wanting to be distracted by it. Not allowing myself a disruption – it was clear that I had to choose: to remember everything up to the end right now or to stop, to put it off for later, out of hesitation or plain cowardice. I cursed through my teeth, sat down in my chair and closed my eyes. My memory was waiting for this very moment – pictures flashed past, one after another. There we were, saying goodbye to Ivan and Dara, walking home from the club. For some reason, neither of us was in good spirits, despite the alcohol and the fun in the club. Then Tina suddenly threw up her hands, “Why did I give her my number?” Once we were inside the apartment, she sat down on the bed and said, “Let’s go away somewhere. Right away, tomorrow. Or maybe today?”

Her alarm was very sincere – I did not understand where the danger might be, but I didn’t contradict her. We decided to rent a car the next morning and go to Hua Hin, to the sea. That night, we both barely slept – again, for no particular reason. Then the dawn rose – bringing with it the gloomy view from the window, low clouds, my hangover. Tina’s anxiety had not dissipated; it even seemed to have become stronger; she was not herself. We began to pack; while Tina was busy in the bathroom, I decided to make coffee and discovered we’d run out of drinking water. So, I pulled on an old pair of sneakers and shouted to her, “I’ll be back soon.”

“Where are you going?” Tina asked, sticking her head out the door.

“To the 7-Eleven opposite,” I said and added something witty.

Tina didn’t smile; she looked at me intently and seriously. I winked at her and left the apartment. And I never saw her again.

I saw practically nothing else – just a few last disjointed frames. A hawker’s stand right next to the door – the smoke from its brazier carried toward me. A rank of pink taxis by the sidewalk, a bus being loaded with tourists. A motorcycle emerging from the stream of cars and bearing two people in black helmets – suddenly the one sitting on the back, snatching a dark object from under his jacket. The sheen of steel, a long barrel – and myself, frozen to the spot…

I remembered all this from one second to the next, knowing: here it is, the end of my life. Again, as on the first day of Quarantine, an icy horror poured over me – but only for an instant, for a brief moment. The moment passed, and the horror receded. It was replaced by detachment, as if I had finally torn myself from the past, broken its umbilical cord. It had become independent of me, like a bundle of yellowed photos. I could place them in any order, view them from any angle. I could perceive as much as I pleased…

And little by little perception came, and with it the pain I sensed when sitting with Elsa next to the table lamp. The pain of loss, the scream of the nerve cells of closeness. Clenching my fists, squeezing back into my chair, I was living through it – once, twice, a third time – knowing I was incapable of sharing it with anyone. I tried to hide it deeper inside and realized I had already seen its shadow and reflection, heard its echo. That same night – in Brevich’s eyes, in his hoarse voice, in his mirthless grin.

I didn’t go to breakfast but stayed in the bedroom, pacing from corner to corner – for an hour, then another – muttering something in a low voice. I stood by the window for a long time, peering into the same urban landscape. It seemed the abstract city contained all the places I had ever lived but at the same time was dissimilar to any of them. Gray buildings, a river, bridges. Outlines, contours, silhouettes. Geometry, the interlacing of dotted lines, along which lives converge and diverge… The endless dashes of black ink – seemingly indicating your future in secret scrolls. In those that cannot be reached – on the metabrane, in the Cloud of Objects. Where your own conscion vortex is implanted into the structure of the world. It’s controlled by overwhelming forces – they pull you by your strings, like a harlequin doll; they give you crumbs of happiness, brief moments of success, delight. And you rejoice like a child, and then you grieve when the dotted lines suddenly change course, each in its own direction – and run away from each other, rapidly, irreversibly. And all you are left with is a memory – you cannot switch it off; it is tyrannizing you from one life to the next. The memory – and your “I,” your mind, your B Object, opened to the entire cosmos, helplessly subjected to the whims of fate…

At noon, Nestor appeared on the screen. I described to him – concisely and without emotion: the restaurant, Brevich, Tina and her anxiety, and then – the motorcycle, emerging from the traffic, two riders, their black helmets, the long barrel. At this point our conversation ended – Nestor realized I was not inclined to go on for long.

“It’s a pity,” he shrugged. “Actually, today I have a lot to tell you, but let’s put it off till later…” – and with that the screen went blank. I sighed with relief but suddenly felt I was fed up with solitude. So, I got up, made another circle around the chair and resolutely pushed the door to the living room.

There was Elsa. “Finally!” she turned toward me. “A minute later and you’d have missed me. I was about to go out for a walk on my own – I’d given up all hope of seeing you today.”

“I saw my death again,” I said, sitting down at the table. “And I saw how I said goodbye to Tina for the last time. Our story was short; she did not linger in my life. Just like your boyfriends; you and I are alike in that respect…”

Then, on the seafront, for the second time that day, I recounted the morning’s chain of memories – while feeling some new anxiety. It seemed to me now I hadn’t grasped it all; I had missed something important and had lost its trace. Elsa listened without interrupting, holding my hand tightly, and when I finished, she said quietly, “I just wonder who these chance acquaintances were who sat down next to you?”

I shrugged it off, “Whoever they were, it wasn’t about them. Brevich… Evidently, fate sent him to me, so that at the last I would understand some vital, crucial thing. There were some clues in his words; we talked about karma – and here, now, I’m thinking about it again but in a completely different way. On a different quality level; perhaps I might even succeed in putting it into formulas…”

The sun was shining; the sky was a clear blue. There were almost no waves; the triangles of the sails glided smoothly through the flawless ultramarine. In the middle of this idyll, it was strange to talk about death, especially about my own.

A couple walked past, engrossed in conversation. A girl with short hair was explaining something to her companion: “…when a hard, erect cock twitches inside me, I feel as if a string is ringing. And it’s amazing!”

Her voice echoed all around, as if resonating from the railing, from the planks of the boardwalk. Elsa turned and looked at them. And I suddenly remembered the dialogue in the restaurant again.

“He called himself a karmic warrior,” I murmured. “He said he was a recruit of karma and his woman was with him. Then they tried to lead him astray, but they could not – he had somehow found the answer. And he had become the champion of karma, and after that he was going to become a knight – which I don’t remember…”

I suddenly shuddered – along with my words came the memory of the animal power emanating from Brevich; I recalled the way his face convulsed. I squeezed Elsa’s hand; she looked at me briefly and nodded, “Yes, a karmic warrior – it sounds exciting. And in general – a warrior… I think his woman was happy with him.

“Well,” she added, “and now, it turns out, you won’t know what happened to your Tina afterward. You won’t be able to dream her ‘story’ to its conclusion.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and turned away toward the sea. Then, forcing myself, I said, “Obviously, her life went on – I hope it was a long one. Or maybe it’s continuing even now – tenses are irrelevant in this case. Time in the earthly reality and here, in this place of ours, flows in different ways. The connection between the worlds is only through B Objects, through the experiences encoded in them. A thin, invisible thread – stretching through indifferent space.”

Then we just walked on in silence, and on turning back I suddenly remembered the morning landscape outside the window and my sad thoughts – about the contours and dotted lines, and the scrolls of fate in the Cloud on the metabrane, which cannot be read or touched. No, I didn’t want to talk about it with Elsa – and yet I confessed suddenly, “I understood today – here, in Quarantine, it should become clear to everyone: the premonition of losing those you really care about is the main fear. It replaces the fear of death when you learn you are destined to live again. When you suddenly realize what it is to have, to lose and only wonder later whether you will find them again. You wonder and see, more and more clearly: the probability is very small.”

The same couple came up to us again. Now the man was talking – almost inaudibly, bending down to the girl’s ear. Only scraps came to us: “…slowly, like a river that turned into stone… But even the stone is flowing in its own way…”

This time I, not Elsa, turned around and watched them go. Then I continued, “The probability is tiny. Here you can be reborn at different periods, in different places, with unfamiliar faces and not recognize each other in any of your consequent lives. And one can only guess – whether you are in the same time, in the same point in space, whether you have a chance?”

Elsa suddenly stamped her foot and said angrily, “Does it occur to you that you are just stealing my thoughts? I have already told you – the very grouping of these Objects of yours is a direct path to misery. That’s why it’s not so wise to let someone into your heart… And regarding the fear of death, I was never too afraid of it anyway!”

We walked for a long time, longer than usual. Then I went straight to my room and waited for Nestor – although I was not eager to see him. He seemed to understand this – barely showing himself on the screen, he looked into my face and frowned, “You are still under the impression… Well, it’s a personal matter, not for me to judge. Let’s postpone our conversation to tomorrow…” And he stressed, “An important conversation; a lot will depend on it. Both for you, and, I have to admit, for me as well!”

I just nodded silently, squeezing back into my chair. Like that morning, I wanted him to leave me alone.

Chapter 34

The promised conversation took place the next day, at the five o’clock session. I came to my room a little early, but the screen was already lit. Nestor was sitting in one of his poses – as if clutching at the armrests of a chair – looking away, not noticing me.

“How are you?” he asked, turning when I coughed softly. “Did you manage to sort your emotions out? Have you pulled yourself together? Formally speaking, what is your status? Are you ready to talk about something important?”

I made an affirmative gesture. My emotions really had subsided, as if I had resigned myself to the inevitable, accepting the rules. The image of the motorcycle rider had faded, replaced by curiosity – Nestor sounded mysterious, probably for good reason.

“Well…” my counselor uttered and nervously rubbed his hands together. He seemed to be agitated and was concealing it with difficulty.

“Well,” he repeated, “then let’s get started. I admit I feel somewhat guilty – I have been predicting it, albeit without any purpose… Do you remember – about stories almost never having a happy ending? So, I do feel uneasy now, but, to make up for it, I’m going to tell you something – which will reveal a lot. And don’t think this is about me being transferred away from you – no, the transfer is unclear now. Things have changed: yesterday a permission finally came through – regarding an idea I have been nursing for a long time. That’s just a coincidence – irrespective of your dreams, I’d like to note.”

“Is that so?” I tilted my head inquiringly.

“Yes, yes!” Nestor said with emphasis. “Permission has come through, and I am authorized. Authorized to make you a proposal: no more, no less. But initially, as an introduction, we have to open the remaining covers: I’m ready to tell you something I had to hide until just now. Something that was considered premature – you’re about to find out what you accidentally stumbled upon in your first life. Remember, I hinted at the universality of the principle… An amazing development, leading far beyond – beyond all conventional views… Maybe I should also put a suit and tie on? After all, I’m going to reveal the whole picture to you!”

“The whole picture? Really?” I grinned, nevertheless intrigued. Nestor ignored my laugh. He looked down, took a deep breath, as if to calm himself, and continued, “To begin with, let’s summarize, as always. Let us repeat in brief what we have already been through – a few days ago it seemed so significant… But everything is relative – so, let’s establish the relativity. Let’s compare – and please pay attention to my line of reasoning: correct me if I make a logical blunder.”

He was regaining his usual confidence – like anyone approaching a subject he knows well. “So,” he said, his chin jutting slightly, “let’s consider first individual destinies, the interaction of B Objects with each other. The reality of this interaction has been confirmed beyond doubt – by different ways, including the rebirth statistics we spoke about. B Objects group together, attract each other, repel each other. They ‘know’ about each other’s content – you and I projected this onto the interconnections of human lives and their mutual influence on each other. We talked about destiny and free will, about messiahs and missions, about karma from the point of view of mathematics and magic from the point of view of strict facts. We expressed a hope that your theory will perhaps permit us to look deeper into the interaction of the Objects, to describe the mechanism from within, to raise the veil on these interconnections from the inside out. How do the B Objects see each other? What aspects of the experiences encoded in them cause attraction or repulsion? What is more important here – the pursuit of one’s passions or unsatisfied ambitions, or maybe a thirst for love, or revenge? How do the initial conditions work – place of birth, poverty, wealth? What is the impact of family? Or here’s another thing: Where does the crux of the matter lie – in the intention or in the event itself, in what has been only planned or in that which has already happened? How can we prioritize, apportion more weight? What’s better – to refer to the specifics or generalize, select categories, predicates, subjects?…”

Nestor made a small pause as if giving me time to think, and continued, “Yes, it’s extremely difficult to create a language for describing individual fates, and moreover, I have to add, the links between destinies are chronologically and spatially blurred. I mentioned the statistics from maternity hospitals – they are, of course, illustrative, but other examples are also known. For instance, some people here, in our world, who have had brushes with the law, turned out to be connected by experiences from their former lives, although back then they were completely independent of each other. A similarity spread out in all metrics, so to speak, leading to a less than obvious clustering – and there are many of these sorts of cases. Every now and then new groups are revealed – for example, ruined financiers or, say, roving singletons of both sexes – with fleeting resemblances in their past destinies, their previous lives. These ‘fleeting resemblances’ can be separated by years, even decades, but still be related to the same sort of events. Here these people can also exist in different places and times, but the ‘collinearity’ of their lives is irrefutable… And so on and so forth; you understood my point. And we can finish the summary there.”

Nestor stopped, habitually pursed his lips and asked, squinting slightly, “You’re already excited by our conversation, aren’t you? Remember how thrilled we both were when we talked about the connections of fates for the first time? Again, I’m never tired of being amazed, despite studying them professionally for many years! And now, pay attention: I was not being totally open with you before. Individual fates are far from being the main issue. They are just the tip of the iceberg.”

“It’s not difficult to guess,” I leaned slightly forward. “You have already mentioned – evolution, dynamics… You probably have in mind the development of the system as a whole!”

“Hard to argue with your intuition,” Nestor chuckled. “Considering your trained mind… And of course, you are right: my second point is the entire Cloud. Its dynamics, as you put it – obviously, the grouping of destinies is not static. It’s not a frozen mosaic – it is a very volatile pattern. Everything flows, regroups – lives converge and diverge; their ‘owners’ are hurled here and there, scattered in time and space, then collide again, clasping on to one another. Moreover, all elements are interdependent – every B Object interacts with all others; a pronounced feedback is in evidence. So, we have a nonlinear dynamic system with a huge number of constituents – such as, for example, a planet’s atmosphere, or a large ecosystem, or the human brain that you are so familiar with. This system can also be described by its special language, formalizing not personal experiences and individual fates but the process of their collective evolution. And then, in the resulting parameter space, we can examine the dynamic portrait, the set of trajectories – from state to state, from one snapshot to another. We can look from above at our tragedies and triumphs, the divergences and convergences, the small local catastrophes. Overview the joint development of our lives – can you imagine it?”

I just nodded silently. For some reason, my mouth had gone dry.

“This, of course, is an outrageous challenge,” Nestor continued. “The complexity of the task is inordinate, but, nonetheless, we have achieved something – after all, we have access to a lot of data. Turns and jumps from one perturbation to another in the present lives, in the past ones – we can classify, compare, extract something significant. Our findings may be only fragmentary, of course – we are floundering in a boundless ocean, navigating just by the wind – yet, there have been some impressive results. Several promising models have been built and are being researched. Phase portraits of the Cloud have been obtained – and I won’t even try to sound mysterious. All the same, you’ll say it yourself, if I don’t do it first: yes, in terms of its evolution, the Cloud shows a typical ‘chaotic’ dynamic. Deterministically chaotic: the transformation of its states looks like a movement around an attractor – a strange chaotic attractor. Let’s give it a name – for example, let’s call it modestly the ‘attractor of destinies’!

“It means the following,” Nestor somewhat comically waved his hands. “It means: individual lives are not just interdependent – one depends on the other and on all of them together. This dependence has the most reliable basis. The cloud of B Objects is a self-organized system that does not develop randomly but in accordance with a global principle. This fact does not allow us to predict each individual fate. But it does confirm: none of the collisions and intersections of our lives are governed by chance. This is the true basis of causality. This is, if you like, the mathematical root of karma…”

“Things happen for a reason…” I mumbled and suddenly exclaimed, “Please, Nestor, this attractor – can I have a look at it? Can you draw it for me – even if only roughly, inexactly?”

Nestor frowned, “I would have liked to prolong the intrigue, but there’s no point: you, of course, have already guessed. Yes, your ‘face of thought’ looks exactly like the attractor defining the evolution of the Cloud of B Objects – that is, of the entirety of our destinies. We, by the way, use a weightier name; we call it the fundamental ellipsoid!”

A stupid grin spread across my face. I gave out a short laugh and shook my head, not even trying to fully understand what I had heard. Nestor paused, enjoying my bewilderment, then assumed a dignified air and said, “Let’s go over that again. The above is so important that we need to dwell on it in detail. So… According to ‘Theo’s theory,’ our thoughts and memories are dynamic processes. The brain sequentially passes through a multitude of states thanks to the interplay between the quantum system of dipoles and the macroscopic network of neurons. This dynamic, portrayed in the phase space, is a movement along ‘chaotic’ trajectories, around a typical ‘chaotic’ attractor. It is precisely this dynamic principle that allows the brain, on the one hand, to produce efficiently the proper thought, association or memory at the first, not even very distinct, hint, and, on the other, to hold on to it, concentrate on it and not be distracted, despite the constant bombardment by a multitude of various signals. Is that correct?”

I nodded. “Good,” said Nestor, massaging the bridge of his nose. “Later. You got an approximate image of this attractor and called it the ‘face of thought’ – with absolutely legitimate pride. We also know that thinking in our world obeys the same principles, and the attractor of our thoughts looks exactly like yours – which adds universality to it and grounds for you to be proud. And finally, what I revealed to you today: the face of thought also manifests itself in a completely different place. The same principle and the same image lie beneath the evolution of the Cloud – controlling our aspirations, hopes, fears. Now your pride may surge immensely: it seems everything related to the field of the conscions – and, therefore, to true consciousness – develops, changes over time in accordance with the same fundamental law. Both our individual thoughts and the totality of our life experiences, encoded in the Objects, exhibit the same, seemingly chaotic but in fact very deterministic behavior!”

I interrupted excitedly, “Experiences, thoughts… An analogy comes to mind right away: Maybe the Cloud, from the point of view of its dynamics, can also be considered as some kind of huge ‘brain’? ‘Super-brain’ striving to reach some global ‘super-thought’…”

“And this explains the meaning of all our lives, taken together,” Nestor finished for me. “Well, this hypothesis is obvious in its own way. It has been expressed many times – an analogy between our thinking and the dynamics of the Cloud is very tempting! Of course, it remains only a speculation – on a par with other, no less appealing ones. How should we relate to them; should we believe them? I’d love to believe many of those, yes…” He made a dreamy face and immediately cut himself short, “However, let’s postpone the speculating – save that pleasant activity for later. First, we need to finish with the facts – if, of course, you are still capable of listening and not floating in euphoria somewhere. Therefore… Therefore, let’s go to the third point – let’s even put down an exclamation mark, as you like it. A big fat exclamation mark – there is a reason. An even more important reason than the ones we’ve just discussed.”

Nestor looked at me closely, then gazed down, moved something, thoughtfully rubbed his cheek and said, stressing almost every syllable, “Let us now consider the metaspace, the entire metabrane as a whole!”

For some reason, this immediately sobered me, even put me on alert, and he nodded, “Yes, as a whole – that frightened you, didn’t it? You feel yourself on shaky ground – you are not a cosmologist; you’re not so comfortable in the vast spaces of the universe? Okay, okay… So, overall, our science has not moved very far from yours, but in one aspect we have advanced significantly. We have learned how to detect the effects of gravity with great accuracy – including gravitational waves and their interference patterns. As a result, we can, quite realistically, model the evolution of the metabrane at different scales – from entire local universes to their galaxies, stars, even planets. I have already more than once mentioned the main conclusion that transpires from these efforts: geometry, the structure of the whole space is changing rapidly and at a high amplitude. We also mentioned the role of the field of the conscions in these changes: it seems that the metabrane moves its gambling chips – the local universes and the bodies within them – so that the Clouds of B Objects and the worlds, able to interact with them, intersect with one another. In other words, the field of the conscions directly affects the geometry of space, and vice versa: a change in geometry alters the field of the conscions, allowing its Objects and Clouds to develop, becoming more intricate and complex. Do you follow this logic?”

“Yes,” I said shortly, sensing an anticipation of something new and huge ripen inside me.

“Then we can reformulate: in the case of the metabrane, we again have a nonlinear feedback system,” Nestor said slowly. “It would be natural to expect its dynamics to manifest typical nonlinear properties – and we have discovered just such properties.”

“An attractor…” I said quietly. “Your fundamental ellipsoid.”

“Such modesty,” Nestor sniggered. “You didn’t say ‘my face of thought’… Yes, even if our data is incomplete, we can say with certainty: the quirks of metaspace are not accidental. They – surprise, surprise! – obey the same laws that we have been repeatedly mentioning. Their phase portraits are nothing other than typical chaotic attractors, and – listen carefully: they, the attractors, are the same at different ranges. Yes, this is nothing else than fractal self-similarity – of universes, galaxies, star and planetary systems. In the dynamics of the metabrane we observe a symmetry of scales – this is of great significance in itself. Even more astonishing, however, something you are no longer even surprised about; for you this is routine, habitual. Yes, the dynamic portrait of the metabrane looks exactly like the ones we talked about earlier – like the face of thought and the attractor of destinies. Now you understand why we prefer the ‘fundamental ellipsoid’ term – it, at least partially, reflects its truly global role!”

“Incredible…” I mutter. “It’s not just astonishing, it’s… Incredible!”

“And most importantly, all this is reality,” Nestor added. “A reality that asserted itself in scientific minds. These theories are already taught in universities, being studied by students. And as for the philosophers… Oh well. Let’s summarize all of the above, from big to small…”

And he began to speak monotonously, like a bored master teaching a schoolboy, “The metabrane dynamically and structurally repeats itself in various different scales… Underneath its dynamic there’s a stable order… Its name is deterministic chaos; its portrait is a strange attractor…

“We can say that metaspace sort of tends toward a certain perfection,” the screen intoned. “In the process, it rearranges everything inside of itself – universes, galaxies, stars. It does this to maximize the cumulative ‘rationality,’ even ‘intelligence,’ if you like – that is, to increase the quantity and ‘quality’ of perturbations in the field of the conscions, forcing the vortices of this field, the B Objects, to be created and filled with content. The metabrane moves the Clouds of B Objects and the worlds that are or will soon be ‘ready’ to interact with the Objects toward each other. The amazing accuracy of this targeting is achieved by the symmetry of scales we just discussed: the geometry is ‘adjusted’ in accordance with the same laws at all levels, from universes to single celestial bodies!

“Exactly the same principle governs the dynamics of the conscion Clouds – that is, in a certain sense, all our lives taken together. At the deepest level, it lies at the heart of our thoughts and memories, the whole work of our brain. Both individual thoughts and the entire collective ‘consciousness’ of the Clouds seem to strive toward the same perfection as the structure of the global space. This striving determines, on the one hand, how we think, and on the other, everything that happens and will happen to us. Let’s note here: what seemed to be a clichéd poetic metaphor – the whispering heavens, the music of higher spheres as sources of creative inspiration – is now a mathematical theory. The harmony of the cosmos has become inseparable from the harmony of thinking – in the most direct sense…”

I tried as hard as I could to grasp, visualize, imagine at least something; my head was spinning from his words, from the grandeur of what I was hearing. I had already felt like that a week earlier when I had first learned about the Cloud and the interlinking of fates, but now the picture was hundreds of times bigger. And Nestor continued solemnly, “So, the concept of dynamic chaos now gets greatly enriched with extra meaning. Its practical, so to speak, essence is as follows: the present really does determine the future, but no one can predict this future – nonlinearity, irregularity make it impossible to be calculated. And yet it, the future, is not accidental; it is determined. It may look like a triumph of disorder, yet it obeys a hidden but steadfast order. It’s impossible to argue with this order; it decides each individual destiny. There’s a strict causality evident, but it is not a debasing higher design, not a series of dead writings on scrolls of parchment; it is not static cast in stone. It does not bind us hand and foot – neither our thoughts, nor our fates, nor the universe itself. It gives us freedom – the highest freedom possible. It assumes development, not stagnation – it makes us able to rush from side to side, take contradictory steps, respond with the greatest shifts to the smallest changes, yet never – NEVER – losing sight of the ultimate goal. We can’t get away from the attractor, from the fundamental ellipsoid, just as you, Theo, can’t get away from your file!”

“Predestination, the whispering of the heavens…” I murmured after him. Echoing – either his voice or my own thoughts.

“Causality, continual feedback…” Nestor droned. “It is hard to even imagine the scale of the problems! Thinking, its mechanism; consciousness, its role and meaning; destinies, their interconnections; the universe, its formation. All this is tied into one – and awaits its unified theory. And while we don’t have such a theory, we can play around with a fair few assumptions. For example, the question arises – what is space striving toward, what kind of ideal? And immediately, sublime ideas come to mind – is it maybe global consciousness of some kind that the metabrane fosters?

“Many serious people like this hypothesis. Many speculate as you do: that space is evolving, trying to focus on some ‘thought,’ like a gigantic metabrain with a gigantic metamind. And the parts of this mind – the Clouds of Objects carrying our life experiences – manifest the same dynamics themselves, trying to reach their own ‘thoughts,’ shuffling our lives and destinies in the process. And we in turn strain our Lilliputian minds, producing tiny views and judgments, nurturing the illusion of our own free will – and not even suspecting what gigantic forces we are trying to challenge. But still: without our microscopic brains, without their persistent, restless bustling, all these forces would have nothing to apply themselves to!

“There is also a suggestion that the metabrane is a giant self-learning computer,” Nestor continued. “Or a powerful classifier aimed at solving some globally important task… Anyway, the hypotheses are countless. Current mathematics is such that some clever tricks may confirm indirectly the most incredible theories. Do you want to participate in the creation of an incredible theory?”

I was about to say, “Yes, yes, I do!” – but suddenly my strength left me. This hadn’t happened to me for a long time – I had overextended myself trying to comprehend too much at once. I just whispered, “Sorry, I’m falling asleep now,” interrupting Nestor in midsentence.

He grinned; I heard again, “It is only thanks to the dynamic chaos that we’re not bored with living. And at the same time this ‘chaos’ is not chaos at all. Just like a death is not death…”

Did Nestor say this, or did I think it myself? There was already no difference. Stars floated before my eyes; my head rang. I buried my chin in my chest and fell asleep, without waiting for the end of the session.

Chapter 35

In the morning, waking up as if emerging from a deep pool, I rubbed my eyes and froze for a while, staring at the empty screen. I had slept a long time – a sound, healthy sleep with no dreams. This was what I needed – too much had been jammed into the last two days.

“The metabrane…” I whispered, trying to imagine some bizarre space structures – and forgot about them instantly. Abstruse concepts and mathematical abstractions faded into the background, moved to a distant corner. The day before yesterday’s dream suddenly, authoritatively overwhelmed me – the restaurant, the drunken night and, most importantly, the separation from Tina.

The memory of her eclipsed everything. Reclining in my chair, I saw, as if for real, her innocent half smile during our most intimate moments, her way of shaking her wet hair under the hair dryer, her gaze – old beyond her years, inescapable, all falsehood powerless before it. The receptors of closeness again signaled a catastrophe; I was seized by the unimaginable – the helplessness of her pose, the scent of her heated body, the sense of my complete possession of her. And then, right after this: a terrible bitterness – a bitterness and resentment for both of us. A realization of the deepest injustice that cannot be reversed. We are in different worlds – is this not the evidence of the utmost malignancy of the creation, its soullessness, its imperfection? Its indifference – to us, connected by a great accomplishment and a shared secret…

I sat in a stupor, motionless, helpless. Then, somehow, I forced myself to get up, went to the bathroom and got into a hot shower, immersing my face in the jets of water. That helped; closing my eyes, I was driving out of my head all thoughts, all visions and then muttering to myself, “Ellipsoid, universal principle, music of the higher spheres…” I needed to switch, to change focus, to avoid surrendering to despair – so I whispered the words and then, sitting at the table, wrote and drafted – point by point. One logical step after the other – from the quantum model of the brain to the conscion vortex, the B Object; from the local halo, the Cloud of our destinies, to the geometry of the entire metaspace… I did manage to put something more or less coherent on paper – although I didn’t feel I had penetrated deeply, to the quintessential depths. To the greatest meanings linked together – they seemed to be protected by an insurmountable barrier. Still, I tried hard – and ended up just praying: let it all be true! Not Nestor’s fantasy, not one of his tricks. If it’s all for real, then on my sheet of paper – the most alluring future waiting ahead. A future worthy of every effort to reach out to it – freeing oneself from the fetters, from stories with no happy endings. You could make a jump, grasp the crumbling ledge with your fingers, feeling the abyss under your feet and the chill in your soul. Pull yourself up with the last of your strength, dragging your body to the roof, and then stretch out on the warm asphalt and stare at the boundless sky, the new sky…

I came out to breakfast late; Elsa had already finished her coffee. I noted she was looking very homely, yet her outfit had been carefully thought out – a fluffy polo-necked sweater, soft ballet flats, close-fitting pants. “Do you want a sandwich or toast and jam?” she asked me. Then she got up, turned toward the refrigerator and, feigning indifference, asked, “Missing her?”

“I am infuriated by the injustice,” I said through clenched teeth and fell silent, not wanting to explain anything. And immediately rushed into a verbose and inarticulate explanation.

Elsa didn’t answer, busying herself with the grill; I couldn’t see her face. Then the smell of toasted bread spread throughout the room. As soon as it was on the table, I grabbed the top piece, burned myself slightly, and this sobered me up. I began to eat in silence, alternately spreading apricot and strawberry jam.

“Listen,” Elsa said suddenly, “I’ve been thinking about that motorcyclist of yours. I remember, in Southeast Asia hired killers often work this way. In a thriller I’m reading, there’s a character like this. Perhaps you became an obstacle for someone, got in his way?”

I waved my hand in annoyance, “What sort of obstacle could I have been – a fence made up of integrals? A self-similar fractal trap? And I never crossed anyone – obviously, they just wanted to rob me. And they probably did, although they didn’t get much.”

Elsa did not argue but was clearly doubtful. Well, I didn’t have any other conclusions or scenarios. I chewed my toast, sipped my lukewarm coffee and then added with a grin, “Nestor told me something yesterday. About how in the course of our lives the structure of the world is transmitted. But I have to admit: some Thai on a smelly motorbike doesn’t look to me much like a messenger from the metabrane. And it’s not the metabrane I hate but the man who shot me. I would gladly repay him in kind. Or even better, hang him up by the balls!”

“Yes,” Elsa nodded, “I understand you. Although I’m not sure you’d pull the trigger.”

I just grunted, then put the plates in the sink and began to wash them – again and again. Our very own tradition of senselessly washing dishes. Especially when you have nothing to say. I wanted to contradict Elsa, to convince her of something, but kept silent, realizing that any words of mine would sound unconvincing, lightweight. Because I myself wasn’t totally convinced either – and, by the way, was Nestor yesterday all that convinced himself? Why was there all this confusion in my head – was he convincing enough yesterday?… I grimaced, rubbed my temple – and then it hit me. Now I knew what to do next.

For the evening session, I prepared carefully. I practiced several phrases in advance and even wrote one in my notebook. I was the first to make my greeting, barely waiting for Nestor to appear. He made a solemn nod, a perfunctory reply and suddenly, without pausing, said, “I have to make a confession: our last discussion contained an element of my own personal interest!”

“Hmm…” I drawled in perplexity, and Nestor continued, looking to one side, “It happens – we’ve noted it a few times: destinies become entangled and unable to go their disparate ways. I can even reformulate without fear of sentimentality: some people meet one day and then live their lives inseparably. Yes, inseparably – and now about my proposal, so to speak…”

He fell silent and picked up some thin-rimmed glasses from down below. He put them on but a moment later removed them and thoughtfully turned them over in his hands… “Remember, I also mentioned that your personality is being observed by a whole group of experts,” he finally said. “That the time would come, and a conclusion would emerge – maybe quite an unusual one. Well, a conclusion has indeed been made – with my participation, I admit. They are ready to make you involved – in the real, serious work. Now, right away – that is, before you go through all the tedious journey of childhood, adolescence, maturity. Without waiting until you join our society naturally, so to speak, as a regular person. This is an exception to the rules, and for you – it’s a very lucrative bonus. Just imagine: it’s as if your first life is continuing – and what’s more, the next one is not going to be canceled either… Although this continuation has some obvious restrictions, the main thing – your consciousness with all your memory that you restored so painstakingly – will remain intact, inseverable from you. And a roommate – you are guaranteed a roommate; that will be written into your contract. And I will be with you too – I have been approved as the link man. As the mediator between you and the specialists from that side – I mean, from this one, from our world. So, we have this development instead of my transfer – unexpected, isn’t it?”

There was exultation in his voice, but he immediately restrained himself – “I understand, of course: this is first and foremost my chance. But for you, too, it’s quite an opening, an opportunity – right away, only for your past achievements, so to speak, and the benefits are significant! And just think: together we make an excellent team. You keep the whole quantum field theory in your head, and I am a cosmologist, a very good cosmologist. And, of course, imagination, creativity – both of us have them in abundance. Moreover, we are already used to each other… Of course, you are blessed with good luck, and I am on a losing streak, but this does not mean much! You can judge my worth by the way I speak, the terms I use – the choice of words is vital, right? It shows how intimate I am with the subject; it allows, maybe even forces, you to believe me. Or maybe not… Do you really believe me, Theo?”

He was noticeably nervous, and his agitation spread to me. I had no doubts: his proposal was no joke, no pretense, but I didn’t know exactly how to react. Furthermore, I already had a plan, at least for this session.

“I believe – probably…” I squeezed out of myself. In my head everything was mixed up, the phrases I had prepared forgotten.

“Yes, probably,” I continued with difficulty. “I am willing to consider this, but…”

Nestor became very tense at my “but.” He looked at me point-blank, without blinking, almost biting his lip. For some reason, this made me angry, and I blurted out somewhat peevishly, “You know, I need something more substantial than your words, even if you select them perfectly. I need specifics; I want finally to feel some ground beneath my feet. The mathematics – I want to see it. Give me the articles – scientific articles. Why are you hiding them from me? It’s strange. Please, don’t think this is an ultimatum, but… Yes, in a sense, it is an ultimatum. Maybe in every sense!”

I made a point of stressing the “in every,” expecting objections, grievances, but Nestor instantly relaxed, his features smoothed out and a sly smile appeared on his lips. He shook a finger at me, “You see, I can read you like an open book. This, by the way, proves we are on the same wavelength: I had foreseen this response of yours; it was as easy as pie! Look at the section of your closet where you found the notebooks. There is something there for you – I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”

I jumped up and opened the closet. The lower-right drawer was sticking out slightly; it contained a large pile of photocopies. I grabbed them, went back to my chair and sat down, not letting them out of my hands.

“Everything’s in a familiar format,” Nestor triumphed. “To appeal to your nostalgia – that was my idea as well. Slightly faint copy on poor-quality paper… What would you prefer – shall we talk some more, or do you want to read first?”

Stunned, I shook my head, glanced at the headline of the topmost article – “Quantum Correlation and Global Coherence” – and muttered, “Later, later…” Then I hastily opened the next one. After a brief glimpse at the abstract, I looked up at Nestor and said imploringly, “I think I’d like to have a read if you don’t mind…”

He grinned; the screen went out. I began to turn the pages; the work was devoted to the correspondence between M-theory and quantum fields – in my previous life this was known as the AdS/CFT duality. And so it was, but not quite: the equations made sense to me, although a completely unfamiliar part appeared in the main integrand function. The spectrum of oscillations of a hypothetical string expanded, but it did not look like supersymmetry…

“Good!” I declared out loud and took the next photocopy with the promising title, “On the Question of Effective Mass and the Dynamics of Gravitational Waves.” The first thing I saw was the Einstein equations – but the space-time tensor in them was different. A bit different… No, not just a bit. Significantly, substantially dissimilar!

I grabbed a pencil, then put it down again – no, too early. I read through the article to the end, perused the conclusions – they looked strange. But here, one was clear – if we assume that the curvature changes evenly, without jumps. And what if we allow for a break, a singularity?… I went back to the beginning, rewrote the first equation, scratching at the paper, painfully trying to figure out what the mysterious symbols in the tensor diagonals meant…

Thus the next five hours passed, then, after a short sleep, all morning, followed by a day, two, four, six. A whole week, not allowing myself to be distracted, I floundered in an ocean of new concepts, unfamiliar transformations, axioms, theorems, on which the physics of this world was built. The feeling of powerlessness was giving way to delight, surprise, feverish impatience – and then again helplessness, irritation with myself, with the clumsiness of my mind… However, already by the second day, the first successes had emerged – I began to connect one thing with another, to build bridges between different, it would seem, sections and areas. Almost nothing was clear yet, but a premonition of the right direction had arisen – as if the arrow of an imaginary compass were pointing, shivering, precisely where my gaze was trying to penetrate. I clung to this premonition, and it did not let me down – gradually the blank spots shrunk, the gaps filled with content. My previous conversations with Nestor acquired new meanings; firm walls began to emerge under the chiseled vaults. And then the foundation appeared underneath – so, by the end of the week, I could see the contours of the entire building. Albeit without any details yet – only in outline, in a dotted line, in a sketch interrupted every now and then by voids, but it soared up in front of me, believable, almost real. And I did believe in it – late in the evening in my bedroom, wearily leaning back into the chair. I acknowledged my faith and closed my eyes, peering intently inside myself. Feeling how the fragility of this place, the place of Quarantine, was ceasing to be an impediment – now I had something solid I could rely on…

I stayed like this for a long time, an hour or two. I sat there, savoring my admiration for the harmony and grandeur of what I was beginning to comprehend. There were no more reasons for doubts; they had gone away. I didn’t know yet how complete and consistent the new theories were – they most probably contained misconceptions, inaccuracies. But I was ready to work on any of them, bursting on ahead – there were so many tempting things ahead!

Then, sobering up, I opened my eyes. I looked around, taking everything in with a new gaze – sheets of paper, the stack of photocopied articles, the black rectangle of window. I had consciously made it darker recently, as if closing an imaginary curtain. Then I glanced at the equally black screen – yes, I was not communicating with Nestor much these days. Or with Elsa either – however, they reacted to this with understanding. I was lucky in this respect – both with my counselor and my roommate. A thought flickered through my head: What is she doing – maybe she is awake too?

I got up and went into the living room – suddenly realizing how exhausted I was from my feverish weeklong effort. Sensing that I needed to share with someone my shift in perception, my newly discovered faith. And indeed, my roommate wasn’t asleep; she was sitting at the table, bending over her handiwork. There were florid paper figures and something resembling fine lace laid out next to her.

“I was waiting for you to come out,” she said without raising her head. “Lately, you’ve been all radiant again – like when you remembered your Tina. Glowing like a child who’s been given a lollipop. But now, I’m sure, it has nothing to do with a woman… And I’ve been having trouble sleeping for several days now.”

I was slightly hurt at her mention of Tina – especially since it was the first time Elsa had called her by her name. It also needled me because I was feeling a bit guilty. Over these last few days, Tina as well as my entire past had been relegated to the background. The novelty and power of the mathematics I had been exploring had overshadowed everything.

“Women have nothing to do with it,” I muttered dryly. “I’ve been very busy – with the science of this new world. I have to admit, I am impressed by it – and, besides, some surprising things seem to have come together…”

And I began to talk, sharing with her everything – Nestor’s proposal, the harmony of finely chiseled vaults, the enormity of the challenges and goals. I talked and felt: I sounded convincing – maybe more convincing than ever. A clear picture had taken shape in my head – all disparate thoughts were drawn toward it, like to an attractor in phase space. I talked, quite inspiringly, about the mission I had never doubted. It was binding, and it had given me a great chance; it was pushing me toward an understanding of lives, destinies, the first principles of underlying reasons, the true nature of aspirations. And from this, I could step further and further – toward the universe and its configuration, to the deepest connection of mind and space…

“You’ve managed to mix everything into one big pile,” Elsa interrupted me suddenly. “I bet you’re tempted to add your Thai girl to it too!”

Her tone was strange; it somehow knocked me off my train of thought. “Everything really is mixed up,” I shrugged, once again jarred by the mention of Tina. And added, as if defending myself, “Universe and chaos – I can’t argue with them for now. But I want to at least understand…”

Elsa sneered, “Not long ago, you claimed you’d want to bring to justice someone personally rather than blaming some abstract laws of the universe. But that was before you were given a lollipop. And, for instance, that man, Ivan, do you remember his words – ‘recruit,’ ‘champion’?”

“‘Karmic warrior,’” I muttered. “The recruit and the champion of karma…”

“Precisely,” Elsa nodded. “And later – the knight. You see, he couldn’t really understand, but he still decided to argue!”

“Oh, well,” I grunted angrily. “If you prefer to put it like that…”

We were silent for a while, then I said, “It was easy for him, for Ivan, to argue; he didn’t see the big picture. His opponent was something mercifully adapted for the crowd – lacquered, sweetened, very far from the truth.”

Elsa sneered again, “Didn’t you and your Nestor agree some time ago that the ordinary and adapted should not be discounted either? You yourself were ranting on to me about magic, karma – how they are playing in a new light if only to blow away the icing sugar. And you also love to talk about free will – listening to you, it’s as if it doesn’t exist at all. Everything controls you: people, their desires, then space, stars – and I wonder whether it isn’t too easy to deny such a freedom to yourself? And to pin the blame for this denial on others or on some kind of mission…”

I just spread my hands.

“You also want,” Elsa continued, “to tame something in there, throw a bridle on it, but, it seems to me, it’s impossible to succeed this way. Purely in terms of dynamics, rhythm, tempo: one needs to jump decisively into a saddle, but you with your formulas are whirling around, capering in circles, dancing ritual dances in front of a deity placed on an altar. And what would a knight do?”

“Do you really think,” I asked peevishly, “that a naive brute force is always the best option? That one can achieve something with it – at least sometimes, somehow, somewhere?”

“Maybe, in this case, one cannot,” Elsa replied, straightening her hair, “But sometimes… Anyway, I’m not talking about the result, I mean the perception of the knight inside of yourself. You can surely achieve something with it for yourself, is that right?”

She moved her lace on the table; its pattern had changed. It had become irregular, senselessly chaotic. I wanted to point this out to her, but she suddenly mixed up all the pieces, almost dropping them on the floor, and said, “Maybe, of course, the whole thing is in the ‘grouping’ you spoke about – I admit, the word struck me. How was it in your theories – whatever the Objects need to accumulate within themselves, alone or in a group, we sense as decisions – our own, not someone else’s? So, maybe you are repeatedly destined – not to depart far from your formulas. That’s why your Tina turned out to be only a means for you – and for him, his woman was the meaning. He wanted to live through, and you – you only tried to examine it.

“By the way,” she added, again attempting to put her pieces of lace into some pattern. “By the way: in this sense, you and I are alike. But still, if I were in her place… I would have wanted my man to fight for me, even with the entire universe, and not just use me to understand the universe, to unravel its puzzling secrets!”

She got up, went to the refrigerator, contemplated the contents for a couple of minutes, then poured herself a glass of milk. All the while, I looked at her silently, feeling how my thoughts crawled every which way, mumbling indistinctly. I shook my head and muttered crossly, “You always manage to turn everything on its head and bring it down to earth. With you, all science is transformed into a kitchen squabble!”

“Don’t be angry,” Elsa responded with a barely perceptible sneer; “I’m not attacking you. Neither you nor your finely chiseled vaults. You know my position: it’s just that the universe is a bitch!”

“Good night,” I said gloomily but, nevertheless, didn’t move from my place.

“Good night,” Elsa replied and sat down at the table drinking her milk. Then she carefully wiped her lips with a napkin and repeated, “Don’t be angry. I’m saying all this, but, in actual fact, I’m thinking of something completely different. Namely, that we now have a chance.”

I looked up at her. “Now it seems you’re not going to leave the Quarantine any time soon,” she explained. “Well, I’ll stay here, too, and, putting all the grief aside, the fact remains: you and your Thai girl are in different worlds, but I am right next to you. Moreover, we don’t have to fear getting attached to each other – in Quarantine nothing will tear us apart except ourselves. Nothing, including death – it does not exist in this place. Funny, isn’t it? We can even expand our menu – I’ll learn to cook something else besides fried eggs and toast!”

“Well… okay,” I said, not sure whether she was being serious or joking.

“Yes, like that…” Elsa thought for a minute and added, “Now no one could say I’m not living a full life. Here fullness means only one thing: you are my roommate and I am yours, and we have been made for each other – as phantom entities, I mean. In my opinion, what could be more complete… We live in the same block – this means we are living in our common world. On one frequency, one wavelength – memories or no memories, but in general a roommate does not share a roommate with anyone. I love Quarantine!”

“Good,” I said again and thought: jokes or no jokes, but for some reason, her words are more convincing than all of mine put together.

“Look how much we have already been through,” Elsa shook her head. “The illusion of closeness, the illusion of betrayal, then the illusion of my jealousy – there’s little now that can frighten us. The place of Quarantine is full of deception, but its unreality defeats any argument. As they say – the ocean of tears… For some reason, I remember it, even though I myself never cry. The ocean of tears tastes only of salt, but its dharma has the taste of freedom!”

Something pierced me through – a lightning, a discharge of current. Memory, like a merciless knight, had hurled a lance at me. It had broken through my armor, knocked me to the ground…

“What? What did you say?” I almost shouted, glaring at her. “I never told you those words – where did you hear them, from whom?”

Elsa froze, dumbfounded; her fingers convulsively squeezed her glass of milk.

“Try to remember!” I insisted. “This is important – you must remember!”

She very slowly, carefully raised the glass to her lips but did not drink and put it on the table. After a pause, she said quietly, “Just as I am able to bring things down to earth, so you have an amazing talent to spoil everything. To ruin everything – always, always!”

I didn’t answer. Elsa got up and went to the door of her bedroom. On the threshold she turned, and I caught a glimpse of her face. I saw her pursed lips, her eyebrows drawn together. And her narrowed, unforgiving eyes.

Chapter 36

That night I hardly slept; my brain was working nonstop; ill-defined, half-smudged pictures flashed before me and unhurriedly floated away. Everything around seemed to be shaded with swirls of hoarfrost or threads of a cocoon that swaddled me like an infant. It was like looking at a familiar landscape sweeping along beyond the window of a train, trying to guess the stations and getting them wrong over and over again.

All this, however, did not matter – I myself, my dreams, my guesses, either right or wrong, played no role whatsoever. In wakefulness or oblivion, I had been caring only for what Elsa would tell me. Then the morning came, and I jumped up hastily – even though it was still too early. To kill time, I picked up one of the articles but immediately threw it away. Mathematics, quantum fields and outer spaces had become superfluous, unnecessary. Instead of my recent eagerness, I felt only irritation and incomprehensible anger.

Then, unable to bear it, I went into the living room, despite the odd hour. I opened the door and was surprised to see that Elsa was already there – she was walking from one corner to the other, straightening something, shifting things from place to place. I said hello; she nodded without uttering a word. I noticed an unfamiliar hard-edged crease mark on her face – an innate shadow of determination.

For a while we were silent. I fiddled with a pot of coffee, filled my cup and took the first sip. Then Elsa went to the kitchen cupboard and said without turning around, “It’s good that sometimes I get up early. If you hadn’t also happened to come out at this ungodly hour, you might still be under the impression everything gets tidied up on its own. It’s convenient to think so, don’t you find?”

“You said there were maids,” I reminded her.

“Well, what can you expect from maids?” Elsa shrugged. “They just do their job; they don’t make things cozy.”

She poured herself a coffee, tore open a plastic packet and put some slices of bread in the basket on the table. Then she pushed it closer to me and said sarcastically, “Why aren’t you eating anything; aren’t you hungry? What else would you like for breakfast? We have kangaroo meatballs today. Tender as quail mousse. Just your thing!”

I didn’t answer, only sipped my coffee, noting that my hand was trembling a little. It was clear: my roommate had remembered something important, and she wasn’t happy about it.

Elsa sat down opposite me and meticulously inspected the table. “You know,” she sighed, “for some reason, I don’t like our tablecloth anymore. All that nonsense embroidered over it, all that baby babble… Really, it’s time we had a makeover. We can hang something on the walls…” She glanced around and added in the same tone, “By the way, regarding those words that made you so concerned yesterday. I had a funny dream last night!”

I looked up at her. “Sorry,” Elsa said, “‘funny’ is not quite the right word. Actually, completely the wrong word, although it all started amusingly enough: three years before my first death, I was with a lover in Bali. In ten days or so I got tired of him and went home early. I did not get a direct flight; the stopover was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. For six hours, I was almost going crazy with boredom, and in the end that was exactly what happened…”

She finished her coffee, broke a soft, untoasted bun and covered her eyes with her hand. “What happened?” I could not hold myself back.

“Don’t hassle me; I’m trying to visualize, to remember the details,” Elsa said coldly. “So: there was not much time before my flight. I was walking toward the plane and suddenly stumbled upon some people staring at a television. One of those big TVs hung under the ceiling, and the entire screen was taken up with the distorted face of a man in the bright, roving beam of a searchlight. In one hand he had a megaphone, and in the other he was holding an Asian girl tight to himself – and she was also secured to him by a rope. There was some noise in the background – caused, as it soon became clear, by the helicopter on which the camera was located. I remember, I was dumbfounded by the unreality of the whole scene, and then he brought the megaphone to his mouth and screamed in bad English those words about the ocean, about dharma and – again and again – something like: ‘I am giving us freedom!’ ‘You can all gain freedom,’ he shouted, ‘freedom from your losses.’ And he continued: ‘This is your Buddhist celebration of death, but we are not seeking death, we are looking for a new life. This is not a suicide,’ he repeated, ‘we are only liberating ourselves!’”

“Brevich…” I whispered and asked in a hoarse, tremulous voice, “And the girl? Tell me about the girl!”

“I didn’t remember much,” Elsa shrugged. “She was young, slim, and yes, there was a bright streak in her hair – in thick black hair down to her shoulders. And the most striking thing I remember was the terrible fear in her eyes. Unimaginable fear – of course, in her place, anyone would be scared, but she seemed to be afraid of something more, something I could not imagine. I don’t even know how to explain.”

“Well, and afterward?” I mumbled.

“Afterward…” Elsa shivered. “I remember, they were shouting something to him, probably the police, and the camera angle from the helicopter changed slightly, so that we could see wings attached to his back – big black wings. Then the subtitles came on – and I learned that everything was taking place in Bangkok, on the roof of an abandoned skyscraper. I even remember its name – Sathorn Unique. And… And then my flight was announced, so I went to the gate.”

“You mean…” I could not believe my ears. “You left without finding out how it ended?”

“What was I supposed to do?” Elsa asked angrily. “Should I have missed my plane? This happened in a foreign country to people I didn’t know. Despite the fact it was a real drama…”

I kept looking at her – as if not believing, as if even pleading for something.

“That’s all,” she said firmly. “All I can say is: both her fear and his insane look made an impression on me for a long while. But time passed, and everything was forgotten. And don’t think,” she added with irritation, “that I was hiding all this from you. It’s just how my memory dealt with it – after all, yours also didn’t come back quickly.”

“No, it didn’t,” I agreed, looking into my cold coffee. “But, however, sooner or later…”

And suddenly I believed everything – Elsa’s story, Brevich’s insane cry and that Tina had been with him up there, on the roof of the skyscraper. All the parts of the puzzle finally came together. There was no one to ask for mercy, and no point in begging – to anyone or about anything…

I smashed my fist on the table with a mighty swing – the cups jumped, spilling their contents. I leaped up from my seat, ran to the window, then took a step back to the table – and again rushed away.

Elsa stared at me in fear. “The warrior? You were enchanted with the warrior thing?” I shouted at her. “Well here it is, the act of the knight with no brains. Only capable of destroying, never creating, achieving nothing, spoiling everything… I just don’t understand how I could be so stupid, so naive and blind? Even Nestor saw something was wrong, but I kept waving it all away, mumbling nonsense about teasing shadows of meaning, an elusive twist … A fucking elusive twist! Shadows of meaning – how do you like such shadows?”

Elsa got up, took a roll of paper towels, tore off a few and started to wipe the table. “I should have guessed!” I groaned, clutching the window sill with my fingers. “Everything was leading toward it: his intonation, glances, phrases and, most importantly – of course, he was not talking about Dara! I just didn’t see what Tina had in common with the woman he was so obsessed with. But, undoubtedly, there was a connection… One can only guess – actually, I suspect he didn’t need us personally. Something is prompting me: in his eyes we were just proxies who had stumbled in his way. And he decided to remove the obstacle!”

“He had made his decision, and he was unstoppable,” Elsa said and smiled sadly. “Probably, this is what free will really is. Don’t think I’m justifying it, of course…”

I did not answer her; I didn’t even turn around. Just stood and looked out the window, in a gray haze over the hilly prairie. Then I said with difficulty, “It’s easy to imagine what this freedom will turn into for him. The B Object will not allow him to slip away into oblivion, believing in success. He will remember and understand: his ‘triumph’ turned out to be empty; he achieved zero. It will be his payback – disappointment and shame. The payback for the ‘knight,’ the lot of the ‘champion of karma.’”

“So, you’re talking about your Objects again,” Elsa narrowed her eyes. “Being too clever again, dancing ritual dances?”

I barely stopped myself from shouting at her. After a pause, I asked coldly, “Why don’t you want to understand me? I am not trying to be clever; I don’t give a damn about B Objects, all their groupings and the metabrane itself. I want to find, meet Brevich and shoot him with a long-barreled pistol. And this desire will remain with me forever!”

“And then what – disappointment?” Elsa asked, refusing to back down. “Or do you expect a different fate?”

“Whatever,” I waved my hand, pressing my forehead against the glass. “I don’t care. It’s clear to me now: the only essence of freedom is that you accept, you agree to accept disappointment in what you do – in advance. You accept future shame for yourself – otherwise, it will torture you in the present. Only in this sense are you truly free.”

“That may very well be,” Elsa nodded pensively, and I felt I was no longer angry with her.

“Sit down, eat something,” she added. “Do you want me to make fried eggs or toast?”

I refused, finally tore myself away from the window, paced around the room a few times and, in some sort of exhaustion, sat down on the chair next to her. Elsa drank her coffee, gazing ahead intently. The crease on her face had not gone. And she was all tense, like a spring.

“Well, we can report to our Nestors – our joint task has been accomplished,” I said, forcing myself. “The intersection of our lives – admittedly, very indirect – has been found. So now what?”

“Now…” Elsa turned to me. Her gaze was cold and serious. “Now we can sum up. If you want me to do it, then okay, I will: that man, Ivan, undoubtedly did carry out his ‘plan.’ This means both he and your Tina went off into the same ‘nonexistence’ at almost the same time as you did. I, of course, understand little about this science of yours, but it seems to me that your destinies – with or without Objects – are so intertwined that it is difficult to divide them. And as for my fate – no, it is separated. No matter how hard I try, there is no way to connect it with yours. Because my lips become a blur when I speak. Because I don’t have a real body. Because my scent is a fake.”

“You want to say…” I began.

“There’s nothing I want to say!” Elsa suddenly exploded. “This is how you want it yourself – what do you want yourself?”

She turned away in anger, remained silent for a few minutes and then continued quietly, “By the way, I remember you told me – time flows differently here and there. Thus, we don’t really know – who ended up where and when. Ages also may happen to be different – older, younger – it’s funny, isn’t it?…

“Actually,” she added after another pause, “time is a strange thing, but for some reason it can never be used as an excuse to back down…” And she shook her head, “I cannot believe I myself am saying this to you!”

Soon I went to my room and, before my session with Nestor, I sat alone, collecting my thoughts. I imagined Tina, picturing her as a captive, reliving her captivity – as if trying to empathize with at least a part of her confusion, her fear. Then my mind went astray. The fabric of the cocoon was torn apart; I now seemed to see Ivan Brevich, sitting opposite, in minute detail. I saw his sunken eyes, his flabby face and drooping cheeks, I heard his drunken mutter. And I recalled his gaze – the one with which he had been looking at his woman, somehow taking Tina for her… I saw an enemy in front of me – yes, now I had a sworn enemy. An extremely personalized one; he had a name. A name, a consciousness, a memory, a B Object…

And I was thinking, again and again, about my enemy, feeling the hate heavily turning inside me. It had no boundaries; it overshadowed ‘Theo’s theory,’ the connections of destinies and the fundamental ellipsoid. The power of mathematics faded and failed next to it. Next to it and my desire for revenge.

Only the image of Brevich, growing in my inner eye, was not inferior to the scale of my hatred. He was huge, Brevich; his confidence that things would happen as he wanted seemed to build a rampart around him. His willingness to sacrifice everything released energy of the most sinister sort. I imagined its vortex, like a looming tornado; it might be I could even derive its formula. I could lock into the square brackets, place under the integral symbol the true nature of the self-proclaimed “knight.” His resolve to subdue the principle on which all causality is based, to affirm power over it, to use it for his own purposes. He wanted exactly this, and he had made sacrifices for it…

“Ha-ha,” I curled my lips caustically, “how naive!” And I meant the two of us: both Brevich and myself. His naivety was leading to a dead end; I saw it – but scribbling formulas also wasn’t letting me reach much further. Formalization, perhaps, helped to extract the essence – but it greatly diluted the feel of life. All the formulas were flawed; they could not restore fairness or bring justice – in any world. They couldn’t throw a weight off one’s shoulders – or, for instance, return a woman, without whom life was not worth living. Yes, for instance… That’s the instance of Brevich – and what is mine? Elsa argued that for me Tina was just a means. What are, really, the means and – the true goal, the meaning?…

Then Nestor appeared. “You can rejoice,” I said coldly, instead of greeting him. “Your choice of dreams about Ivan Brevich has been justified one hundred percent.”

“What are you talking about?” Nestor asked, perplexed.

“About the finale, the point of culmination!” I chuckled angrily. “About starting at the end and moving back toward the beginning, as you once suggested… Well, the news is: Elsa and I did find what was expected of us. Our memories intersected – with Brevich and Tina, no matter how surprising it is that all our lives are connected together. And, nevertheless, the connection is undoubtful!”

Then I briefly recounted to him Elsa’s dream. Nestor pondered, bowing his head, and said, “Yes, it’s hard not to be surprised. But on the other hand, this testifies in favor of our roommate-selection algorithms… In any case…” He thrust out his chest and adopted an official tone. “In any case, now everything is simplified, is it not? I can put on my task list the tick everyone has deserved – you, me, your Elsa…” He paused, looked at me intently and asked, “This intersection you’ve found, it doesn’t change anything as far the main thing is concerned, right? By the way, have you made your mind up in that regard? What have you decided?”

I ignored the question and said, “I have a request. Would you be able to make an inquiry – given my special status? Or even without my status: Can you try to find Tina – here, in Quarantine, or somewhere in your world – using my descriptions; I can systematize and clarify them for you? I will gather all the details together – there will be a multifaceted, detailed portrait.”

“Like a police report…” Nestor quipped and snapped, “No. New bearers of B Objects cannot be identified using the features of the former ones – all the more so by private request. The inviolable secret of the past, you know, the right to a completely independent future. Maybe some of the newcomers do not want to be found in this way – no matter who is looking for them, even the close ones. Former close ones – are you sure that the women from your first life are so unreservedly striving to meet you again? Including your Tina.”

“So that’s how it is,” I said thoughtfully. “Well… I understand the logic – and I don’t have any more questions.” The words “naive, naive” spun in my head again. And behind every naivety I sensed an impenetrable wall.

“If you don’t have any questions of your own, maybe you can answer mine?” Nestor asked softly but persistently. “Have you decided anything – with regards to my recent proposal?”

“Oh, the proposal…” I muttered with deliberate indifference. “I need to think more, read the articles.”

Nestor threw me a sharp look, pursed his lips and nodded, “Read, read.” And then added, “Well, allow me to express to you my official – and personally sincere – condolences for Tina, who was evidently very precious to you. I regret that her first life was cut so short; you probably wanted it to have been different. Although now you understand: one never knows. Whether this would have been good or bad, I mean…”

“Thank you for your sympathy,” I grunted and closed my eyes. Nestor was guilty of nothing, but continuing talking with him was unbearable.

Chapter 37

When I looked at the screen again, it was already empty. “The proposal…” spun in my head. “Mierda!” For some reason, my irritation with Nestor would not pass. I had to pull myself together – no, Nestor was not my enemy. I knew the enemy; there was no confusing him with anyone.

“What do you want yourself?” I repeated Elsa’s words aloud. And fell silent, not letting the answer rise to the surface. My thoughts were in disarray; most of the day still lay ahead; it was going to stretch out far too long. I did not know how to spend it, what to do with myself. The main thing had already happened – so now what? Never in my life had I had that much free time. On the contrary, there had never been enough of it…

I took a few of the articles from the table, placed them in a neat pile, meticulously aligning the edges. I looked at the pile for a minute or two, then, surprising even myself, hurled the lot into the far corner of the room. They scattered like leaves in the wind. “Mierda,” I muttered quietly, and struck the table with my hand, hitting the touchpad. The black shutters slid over the window, the lights went out and the bedroom plunged into darkness. I began to jab randomly at the buttons, cursing under my breath. Then I jumped up, collected the photocopies from the floor and walked to the door, leaving the room in a purple half darkness, with gothic ciphers on the wallpaper.

Elsa was sitting on the couch with a book. I nodded to her, looked away and, without uttering a word, walked to the elevator. It was wrong; I should at least have said something – my roommate was certainly not my foe. But I didn’t want to talk at all.

It was windy outside but warm. I wandered along the seafront for a while, speeding up suddenly, then slowing down again. I walked without noticing anyone, almost like in Bangkok, in my past life, after my argument with Tina. But no, this was not Bangkok with its wild mix of smells, colors and vices. I wasn’t sweating; my clothes weren’t sticking to my body. My body itself didn’t really exist. And, most importantly, there was no Tina.

Then my surroundings gradually began to penetrate my consciousness. I looked around, peered at the oncoming pedestrians, tried to read their faces. I was probably looking too persistently – they turned away from me, some of the men frowning threateningly in response. I just grinned grimly to myself – maybe the fact of me being here, with them, was a caprice of the Cloud, a consequence of our Objects being in the same cluster? Maybe even later, during the new life, my fate will somehow depend on those who are now idly walking along the seafront? Maybe their whims and intentions will mix in with mine, will be getting in my way, or else pushing me somewhere? Or maybe not at all – I had no idea how and why the Quarantiners ended up here together. In any case, no matter what lay ahead, I did not care about them now. Their phantom entities didn’t interest me in the slightest – and most probably none of them would want to know about the field of the conscions and its vortices. For them, like Elsa, just the result was important – and even then only to those who were capable of thinking about such matters as future lives. About the preservation of their memories, their unique personalities; about the journey of consciousness from one world to another…

I went down to the water and wandered among the rocks and scattered remains of seaweed. Then I sat down on a smooth boulder, warmed by the sun, and for a long time looked at the waves, trying to contemplate the cypher of their chaos, which is not chaos. I sat without moving, immersed in a trance, feeling something ripening within me – an urge, a desire? The cumulative vector of a multitude of destinies interlinked with mine? Or the fruit of my own free will, ha-ha?

I was brought out of my stupor by the sound – the chimes of a clock. Then the loudspeakers, set up along the beach, came to life – announcing there was little time left until the evening counseling sessions. I didn’t move – I just did not need another meeting with Nestor now. He might not be my enemy, but I still had nothing to discuss with him; it wouldn’t make any sense.

The waves, however, were no longer fascinating me; their fragile magic had collapsed. After sitting for another half an hour, I got up and walked up the steps to the deserted promenade. Deserted, but not empty: a strange-looking car moved slowly along the seafront. Observing it, I realized it was an automated refuse vehicle collecting the bins standing by the rail and replacing them with empty ones. I caught up with it and glanced inside – there was no driver; only the lights under the windshield blinked.

I walked beside it for a few minutes and then, obeying an inexplicable impulse, glanced around stealthily, squeezed in and sat down on a plastic seat. It was cramped in the cabin; my knees squeezed against the front partition, but I put up with it – no one promised it was going to be comfortable. I did all this without any definite aim – not really knowing what I wanted to achieve.

At first, we barely crawled along, stopping occasionally; and then, probably having reached maximum load, the vehicle picked up speed. It wouldn’t be easy to jump out of it now – and I didn’t try, just sat and waited. Little by little the buildings became lower and shabbier, the entire area looking increasingly uninhabited. Afterward, squat blocks, looking like warehouses, stretched out – the road looped between them, moving away from the sea, and suddenly ended in front of a gate. The car had stopped. I knew I needed to seize the moment and get away, but for some reason, I hesitated – and then it was too late.

The gates swung open, and we drove into a large hangar with no lights. I just managed to catch a glimpse of some indistinct structures on both sides – high iron cabinets, narrow stairs between them – and that was it, the doors closed; complete darkness enveloped me. The vehicle started, accelerated and rushed off somewhere. I became frightened, then seriously terrified. My ears were ringing; I could barely stop myself from screaming; then suddenly a whistling signal rang out, the car braked sharply, and I let out a miserable wail, clinging to the seat with all my might. We turned to the right and stopped a minute later. A dim light switched on – it was coming from the ceiling and walls of a small room, more like a chamber in which my automated refuse collector barely fit. Directly in front of the windshield, there was a dark screen – the same as the one in my bedroom. Soon it came to life, and on it appeared an unfamiliar face with no hair or eyebrows and a smooth high forehead.

“Violation of the instructions,” the man on the screen said casually. “Identification. What is your name? What is the name of your roommate? Do you remember the number of your housing unit?”

His lips barely moved; his eyes did not blink. I cleared my throat and answered his questions. It would have been silly to argue or get angry – I was obviously in the wrong. Having listened to me, the man nodded and disappeared from the screen, and in a quarter of an hour, my Nestor arrived in his place.

“I’m curious: you wanted to escape?” he asked and laughed his strange laugh. “The Count of Monte Cristo woke up inside you?”

I was sullenly silent. Nestor gave another giggle and continued, more seriously, “I must say that sneaking into the utility sector is a dangerous thing to do. For your Quarantine entity, it would have been fatal. It’s good we have such a reliable control system here.”

“Okay, I’ll take note,” I muttered with difficulty. For some reason, my tongue would not obey me.

Nestor bowed his head, carefully examining me, and asked, “Do you want to go back? Or maybe you don’t want to go back? However, nothing else is on offer. The procedure is completely clear on that.”

He covered his eyes, rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers and suddenly glared at me again: “Well, what have you decided? I’m talking about my proposal, of course.”

“I’ll give you an answer the day after tomorrow,” I said dryly, feeling his persistence tiring me.

Nestor nodded and said in a bored, grumbling tone, “Well, you’ll have to wait now. It’ll take a while, but you only have yourself to blame.”

The wait in the cramped room really did drag on – even my fake backside seemed to go numb. A few times I tried to call out to somebody, but to no avail – there was no response; the screen remained dead. Only when I got out of the car and tried to go around it, squeezing with difficulty between its frame and the walls, did a mechanical voice start, repeating over and over, “Return to the vehicle. Return to the vehicle…”

I got back in, and the voice went quiet. It was hot, stuffy; fake perspiration even seemed to break out on my back and forehead. I waited and waited and waited. It was unclear to me whether hours or even a day had passed; I had lost all track of time. My sense of place had also collapsed – it was like being suspended in a vacuum, locked in an iron box. Locked in a dungeon… I felt sorry for myself; my eyes were stinging. My fake body almost began to shed fake tears. My understanding – prefixed with a “mis” – of reality, of the entire boundless cosmos, had reached the point of absurdity. I felt, more acutely than ever, the alien nature of space, its vastness, power. I reflected on my measureless smallness and – suddenly I realized this absurdity was precisely what I needed. Within it and out of it something vital was crystallizing – the very thing that I had tried so hard to read in the chaos of the waves, that I struggled to formulate, that I had to decide – for myself, for everyone else, despite and thanks to everyone else. Now I knew what my mind needed to make a final small step – the lack of space, the almost complete immobility. The restraint of my freedom – to the extreme, to the limit toward which the place of Quarantine converged…

The same refuse vehicle drove me back to my block – in the dark, along a completely deserted seafront. I muttered to myself all the way, “You fool, fool!” – embarrassed at my weakness, at my listless stupidity. Yes, it’s easy to lose your way in the blindness of “insight” – especially when you want it yourself. When you are almost happy to give up, surrender to the inevitable, to capitulate before it. And then revel in your small, parochial suffering – from one life to the next. It all seems so simple, and there’s always a door visibly marked with an “Exit” sign, but getting out is not that easy. In your B Object – perhaps as a result of the regrouping, ha-ha – the incompleteness of your actions pulsates stubbornly, even if hopelessness seems to reign. That’s how destiny works, how the Cloud connects your life with the lives of the others. That’s how they – the Cloud and destiny – link all your past with all your future: throwing you rope ladders from impregnable rocks, building hanging bridges without handrails, luring and scaring with bright lights, with pyrotechnics of emotions and feelings, with flashes of local supernovae of your “ego”…

The car braked sharply at my front door. I went up in the elevator, passed through the empty living room and sat down, simply fell into my chair. Sluggishly, I thought to myself that I might be hungry but banished the thought and fell into a dream. I slept like an infant deeply and heavily until the morning.

The next day, Elsa greeted me with an ironic grin. “My counselor said you got lost yesterday,” she said with exaggerated empathy. “They found you somewhere near the dump, he told me… Did you fall into a reverie and go the wrong way? Or were you trying to escape? From me? From your Nestor? From the whole shebang?”

I tried to laugh it off, but my jokes sounded inept. Fortunately, Elsa did not insist on an answer. She put some fresh toast on the table; we quickly ate breakfast and both got on with our own thing.

Nestor was similarly indifferent during our midday session – as if he wasn’t interested in what I would say the next day. Our meeting lasted no time; then I went back to the living room and saw Elsa dressed for a walk – in a light raincoat and with an umbrella in her hands.

“Well,” she said. “Let’s go out and talk? It’s drizzling on the seafront, but what are trifles like that to us…”

Soon we were wandering along the wet pavement of the promenade. Elsa held my arm firmly, looking at me sideways with very serious eyes; then she suddenly asked in practically the same words as Nestor, “So, what have you decided?”

“What do you mean?” I said somewhat disingenuously.

“Oh, that’s how you want to do it…” Elsa sighed. “Okay, have it your way; I’ll say it for you. Otherwise, perhaps you’ll continue to have doubts and go running off to garbage dumps so that a whole team of Nestors will have to catch you and fetch you back to safety.”

She fell silent – we passed by the street singer, sitting near the balustrade. He was covered with a huge raincoat; next to him, under a smaller cape, stood his guitar, leaning against the railing. I nodded to him, but he did not respond, completely lost in himself.

We walked on a few steps in silence, then Elsa said angrily, referring to the singer, “There’s something strange, not quite right with him. I don’t know about you, but I don’t believe him anymore!”

I made a vague sound. “So,” she continued. “Let’s play a guessing game. Who is in the house and who is not? Whose turn is it to be ‘it’? Who didn’t hide, and whose fault was that?”

“I don’t understand,” I glanced at her.

“It’s a pity I have to explain everything to you like a child,” Elsa shook her head. “But that’s all right. I’ll say it more directly: you won’t be able to create a theory of destinies without having lived out your own. You won’t come up with an equation for karma without having sensed to the fullest how your karma is whirling you round, what this bitch of a universe really wants from you. Do you already know the answers? No, you don’t. And your scribblings on paper aren’t going to help you.”

Her voice shook slightly; her fingers squeezed my arm, holding the umbrella, with a steely grip. I could feel her nails sticking into my forearm, even through the dense fabric of my jacket.

“I’ve been formulating this thought for a long time,” Elsa confessed with a nervous laugh. “You see how many smart-aleck words it contains. But everything could be put much simpler: Your Asian believed you and in you – can you get away from this? That man, Ivan, deprived the two of you of each other – and you, what, forgave him? You have unfinished business – yes, you’re lucky. I, for example, don’t. I don’t really have anywhere to hurry off to!”

She gripped my arm even harder, then abruptly let go, turned away and muttered, as she had the morning before, “I can’t believe I myself am saying this to you…”

Then we just carried on walking in the drizzling rain. The tension between us had disappeared as if we had just crossed over the summit of a peak, a rocky ridge with sharp jagged edges – and now we were slowly descending the slope. Something was spinning in my head – all the same familiar things, concerning enemies and revenge, and great accomplishments, for which you always need someone beside you. And also – what I had realized myself, what I had decided in the refuse vehicle. I could have said a lot to Elsa in reply – or at least I could have agreed with her – but for some reason, I felt that any words of mine would be inappropriate. They would simplify her effort, which was really difficult for her.

I just glanced at her sideways, remembering the crease on her face, her unforgiving eyes. I wanted something to happen right now – let the buildings collapse, the sea rise. I would have been so incredibly happy to do something for Elsa, to protect her, to defend, to save… But no, reality remained quiet and calm; it didn’t want to help.

Elsa suddenly stopped, turned to me and exclaimed, “Well, why are you silent?” And, immediately, she drew me on farther, increasing her pace and speaking again.

“They probably won’t like me pushing you away,” she smiled wanly. “But what can I do; I have to be honest with you. I have to be a good girl – I still want to get to heaven sometime. Quarantine resembles ‘heaven’ to a point, but, let’s agree, not quite.”

We walked faster and faster; I was barely able to keep up with her. “I’ve been through so much with you… So many different stages,” Elsa was saying. “You are the only man I have ever had this with. And there were moments when you were mine – even if only for a few hours, minutes. So, that’s probably what it means to have ‘a life fully lived’?

“So, now I know what ‘fully lived’ is,” she murmured. “And the depths – now I know what there is in your depths. Nothing fucking good, that’s what… You see, I just started to believe everything between you and me could be for real – well, as far as it’s possible in this place, this fake place. And now I, on my own, have to do a terrible thing: push you away from myself, give you up to another one, who for some reason has more rights over you. And it’s not even clear where this ‘other one’ is and whether you’ll find her at all…”

On the left, from the direction of the sea, a gust of wind blew in, almost tearing the umbrella out of my hands. The spokes bent back, the black fabric flapped, light rain splattered into our faces. For a minute we fought with the umbrella, then the wind died down as quickly as it had risen, and we continued on. Elsa spoke more calmly, “Well, whatever. Here, in Quarantine, there can be no great losses anyway. Even virginity can’t be lost here. And there is a logic in everything: as you explained to me – our bodies, our lives, are only needed to accumulate experiences in these Objects of yours. So that’s what I will be doing – accumulating them, I mean – hopefully, there will be many. Even here – with one roommate, with another…”

She paused, then added, “Some of my future stories might turn out to be happy ones, right? I must admit: living through everything here with you, I felt I could indeed be happy at some time – seriously, really happy. And it is also clear to me now – you can only find true happiness after death. At least after one death!”

We reached the openwork gazebo with wet, empty benches and turned back. After taking a few steps, Elsa stopped, hugged herself and said, “Go home: I’ll take a little walk on my own. No, no, I don’t need an umbrella, I am good like this…” – and she quickly walked away. Soon she headed toward the stairs and began to descend to the sea. Without turning around, she waved her hand to me – as if to say, go, go…

I didn’t see any more of her for the rest of the day. Having climbed up to the apartment, I looked around the living room, made some coffee for myself, took a sip and emptied the cup into the sink – it tasted terribly bitter. On the table was one of the articles – something about the quantization of gravity. I took it, went to my bedroom and sat down in my armchair – but instead of reading, I just looked at the wall opposite with its silent screen, thinking about everything at once.

The evening session with Nestor began exactly at five. He appeared with the same expression of indifference, as if to show that no one was rushing me, that he had all the patience in the world. After greeting me dryly, he asked, “How was your day? Lousy weather, isn’t it?”

“Yes, yes…” I agreed absently. I wanted to tell him – as my counselor, as my friend – about my talk with Elsa and how she had walked away from me into the rain. About the street singer on the empty seafront and his guitar sheltering under a raincoat.

“Nestor…” I said and suddenly, surprising myself, asked, “Tell me, Nestor, how does knowledge of their new lives change people? You have plenty of experience; you see many of them at the crossroads. You witness how they become convinced that their former lives weren’t really the end, that the first is followed by another and others afterward. They begin to firmly believe in that – without any further doubt or speculation.”

Nestor narrowed his eyes, “So you want to philosophize? Well, it does calm the nerves. Although I wouldn’t say you look too anxious anyway…”

He paused, chewing his lips as usual, and said, rather reluctantly, “My answer will surprise you. On the whole, it seems to me this knowledge makes a person better. I’ve thought about it; I have to admit – I’ve even written something on this matter.”

“Makes them better – in what way?” I persisted.

“I repeat: on the whole,” said Nestor with emphasis. “Because there are ‘believers ’and there are ‘thinkers’ – and nothing can change the views and minds of the mass of believers; they’re hopeless. And those who dare to produce a thought suddenly understand: you cannot run away from anything – ever. The B Object will not allow it, so it’s better not to spend the time allotted to you by making things worse… And if there’s more of this time than was commonly believed, it should only increase your focus, your sense of responsibility.”

“Is it that simple?” I asked incredulously.

“What is there to complicate in this instance?” Nestor shrugged. “In your world, you tried to refine human nature by all possible means, and nothing worked – but give that human the knowledge that his existence continues, that everything is not in vain… Give him the confidence that this knowledge is not a trick, and he discovers amazing resources in himself. He begins to look at things differently – he may even sense some sort of connection with the universe, albeit only intuitively, without having the first idea about the field of the conscions. He even feels an interdependence – of destinies, lives, of everyone with everyone – despite never hearing about the Cloud and the clustering of Objects. As a result, he, all of a sudden, starts to believe that by giving and not consuming, he generates something real, an almost material outgoing flow that somehow affects the lives of others, adding significance and substance to them. His tiny attempts pushing others to make their own – and all this, by the way, is perceived without any mathematics. It sounds like a naive humanism, but this naivety suddenly gains an indulgence, an undeniable meaning…”

“Well, but still…” I interrupted. “A complication does suggest itself here – I mean nonlinearity, an explicit feedback. Fate first beckons you with a carrot, then teases you with a red rag, and you rush off – chasing after or intersecting, colliding. It lures you into a trap, where there is nothing but memory and pain – and immediately switches the means and the target, forcing you to move on… Nonlinear dynamics in its pure form, isn’t that so?”

“What else is new?” Nestor snorted. “It’s as clear as day: the feedback cycle – from hopelessness to an illusory goal, from seeming chance to one’s own, so-called personal, unswerving aspiration… One can also speculate with regards to B Objects – to call on all those ‘accidental’ acquaintances to answer. Many of them, sooner or later, become unnecessary for your conscion vortex, not being able to enrich it anymore – and you free yourself, push them away. Yes, you push them away – or maybe not…”

Nestor paused, then waved his hand and added a little wearily, “And of course, speaking about meanings, all kinds of toys, treasure chests of riches, are left behind the brackets when going from one life to another. It also helps to add to the ranks – if you look from the side of the minority – or, if to glance from the other side, drop out of the ranks. Break out of the matrix, from unnamed but very firm agreements with society, from the stereotypes imposed by it. Human nature cannot be changed rapidly – yet, here, in our world, the power of public opinion is weaker. It’s no longer so obvious what to consider as ‘success’ – that’s a step forward, don’t you agree? Some other things get transformed too – for instance, fears. It is fearful to accumulate disappointments and defeats; it’s terrible to be a loser from one life to the next. Or to know that you are not doing what you do best – even if nobody believes in what you do best, even if you are laughed at by your own family. Well and…” Nestor moved forward, his voice somehow becoming thinner, his chin more angular. “And the fear of death: it becomes completely different from what it used to seem. Now it is nothing more than the sublimation of the two other things: the fear of idling and the fear of losing. And everything is intertwined: you aspire, they expect something from you, then they make fun of you, not really grasping what you have managed to achieve. And you accept it as the price of freedom from one of your fears – and immediately remember the second one and think with yearning: where is she, the one who cannot love you with all her heart, believing that only those who are near can be loved… I guess I answered your question? End of the session. The next answer is yours!”

I nodded at the blank screen, got up, walked over to the window. Looked at my reflection in the glass for a long time, thinking – and what is my own fear? Afterward, despite the late hour, I went into the living room, hoping to see Elsa. The room was empty, however; then I brought a clean notebook and pencil from the bedroom and sat down at the dining table. I began to write – and there were no equations, no formulas in my writing. I didn’t think about my theories anymore – just as I didn’t care what was going to happen to me next.

I was repeatedly crossing out what I had written, crumpling up the pages. I was wrinkling my forehead and starting again. And so it went on until late into the night.

Chapter 38

The morning found me half asleep and lethargic. I went to the bathroom, washed my face. Then I rotated my arms, even did a few stretches and squats. My phantom body responded as if it really had been refreshed; my head became clearer. I listened attentively to my inner self. There, inside, everything remained the same. My determination had not gone away.

I dressed carefully and went into the living room. There, I Immediately saw Elsa and could not restrain a surprised exclamation: her appearance had changed. Her dark-blonde hair had turned a bright red, and it altered everything – her smile, the expression of her face and her eyes.

“I just thought you might like it,” she said, a little embarrassed. “I could have just had a streak like hers, but I decided to be original. And besides, a whole head of hair is more than a single streak…”

She walked around the room, then opened the refrigerator, took out a carton of milk and smiled, “It was not easy figuring out how to do the dyeing. I pestered my Nestor; at first, he refused to tell me, but then he relented and gave me precise instructions. He probably thought I was doing it for him. I, of course, didn’t mention that’s not exactly true. It wouldn’t be wise to worsen our relations even more. Will you have eggs or just coffee? For some reason, I’m not hungry at all.”

“Wait a minute!” I exclaimed. “Now I know how it should be…”

I ran to the bedroom, grabbed my notebook and crossed out the first line. “Now I know,” I repeated to myself, writing another one in its place, hiding it from Elsa’s view with my shoulder. And then I passed the notebook to her: “Here, I also tried to do something for you. Of course, my effort didn’t come out as well as yours…”

Elsa quietly read aloud, “‘One day I stole a red squirrel…’” and looked up at me, “Is this a poem? To me?”

I nodded, now tormented by awkwardness myself. Turning to the window, I mumbled, “Sorry, it has no rhyme.”

Elsa read the rest in silence, came up to me, touched my hand and said, “I have never seen a more beautiful poem!”

I was nearly as thrilled to hear this as when Nestor told me about the universality of my “face of thought.”

“Can I have it?” Elsa asked, and without waiting for an answer, she tore the page out of the notebook. Then we drank a cup of coffee and went to her bedroom to check the day’s weather.

Beyond the window was a downpour of almost floodlike proportions. A sky the color of lead hung over the promenade and sea, dropping vertical jets of water. They stabbed the boardwalk, like steel-tipped arrows, splashing, gouging and turning into a muddy stream, raging alongside the balustrade. The horizon was hidden by a wall of water.

We silently looked out of the window, then Elsa asked in a very calm voice, “Are you leaving?”

“Yes,” I replied, just as calmly, without emotion.

“When?” She turned to me.

“Maybe today,” I said. “Immediately after the afternoon session, if I’m allowed. I don’t know what the rules are on this matter.”

“Yes,” Elsa said quietly. “You never know with the rules on that. Like in our former life – basically, nothing has changed.” Then she shivered and added, nodding at the rain, “It’s good we don’t need to search for a reason for skipping our walk today.”

I kept silent. Elsa put the palm of her hand to the windowpane and examined her graceful fingers for several minutes. Then she removed her hand and said, “Forgive me for being a bit hysterical yesterday. I just felt I needed to tell you everything… Probably, this is what I really should have done for you; my red hair doesn’t count.”

I nodded, swallowing back a lump in my throat. Elsa grinned, “They told me – try to become his friend. Well, I tried as best I could – didn’t I? They should appreciate that; in my opinion, I honestly earned my points. Who is to blame that at the same time, I wanted something else, wanted more? And I still do – no matter what.”

The rain hit the window – likely the wind was rising. The jets were getting thinner and meaner.

“I wonder,” Elsa muttered, “what my next roommate will be like? I’d prefer a tall, dark-haired man with strong hands… Do you think the fact that this is what I want will help me? You see, I can’t just ask my Nestor for this directly!”

“It may well help,” I responded as easily as I could. And joked, “I hope, ‘having sensed’ your desire, the field of the conscions will shuffle the pack as you wish.”

“It’s about time it did,” Elsa quipped back. “Is it finally capable of making an effort? After all, I’ve never asked it for anything – I’ve only taken a few words on a tablecloth with me into my new lives. I can’t be reproached for being selfish.”

I put my hand around her waist, “I think you are the most unselfish roommate one could imagine. You made me breakfast every day.”

“Yes,” Elsa narrowed her eyes, “and you – you are self-centered, like all men. You used me – at least my fried eggs – to propel you to ever greater heights and horizons. Just like your Asian – without her, as far as I understand, not everything might have worked out.”

“That’s true,” I agreed. “As a result, I have an accomplishment that can’t be taken away, and she – she ended up with only a memory of us together. I admit it’s not fair.”

“That’s why you feel guilty,” Elsa sighed. “That’s why you run off to garbage dumps and are now leaving Quarantine for good!

“No offence; I’m not being serious,” she added. “I’m not angry with her at all. I think of your Tina warmly, even trying to imagine what she saw at the last moment before her death. What flashed before her eyes – probably the face of her unborn child? I’ve heard they look like aliens…”

The rain did not subside. After staying for a while by the window, we returned to the living room and sat on the sofa. Close, but a little apart, not touching each other. Elsa picked up her book lying on the armrest but did not open it; she sat, turning away slightly, stubbornly pursing her lips. I glanced at her sideways – at the chiseled line of her cheekbones, her slightly upturned chin and her shock of bright-red hair.

“Actually, I’d like to become friends with her,” Elsa continued in the same tone, as if there had been no pause. “We could go to the gym together, to the hairdresser, to the café. Maybe we would open some kind of business – a shop or a salon. Or we could just meet sometimes to chat, as girlfriends do – and we’d discuss men as well. She’d tell me what you are like in bed.”

I laughed, even though I didn’t feel joyful.

“You know,” Elsa sighed, “I’ll ask them not to give me a roommate right away. How can I live with a new roommate after you? I want to spend some time on my own – at least a couple of days. Or maybe even three days…” And she added angrily, “If you want to look at the clock, go ahead – you don’t need to feel sorry for me.”

I looked up. The hands were approaching twelve. A shiver ran down my spine; I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.

Elsa moved closer, touched me with her thigh. “Right now,” I said with difficulty, “I need to do three equally impossible things. To part with you; to announce to Nestor that I’m leaving – you could say, betraying him; and to actually leave, of my own accord, to no one knows where. I don’t know how to do all this; I’m ashamed and scared at the same time.”

“Get up,” said Elsa. “Come with me.” She took my hand and led me to the door of my bedroom. “Go and do this. Do this well.”

And I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. In the second that it took me to walk to my chair, my mind became aware with the utmost clarity of many facts at once. For example, how I was going to miss my roommate – in any of my future lives. Or – that phantom closeness yearns in the same way as a living one. That it is just as painful, as unfair as it had been with Tina. Or – that I could not have done otherwise.

Looking at the blank screen, I also thought that our decisions inevitably cause pain to someone. And, at the same time, we ourselves experience it no less. This was the oldest of truths, but it revealed itself to me as if it were new.

As soon as he appeared and nodded curtly, my counselor asked without preamble, “Well, what is your answer?”

“Nestor,” I said, looking him straight in the eye, “I want to leave Quarantine. I want to do it right now.”

His face froze, but he did not look away. He kept silent for a while; then he bent his head and slowly said, “I confess, you have finally managed to surprise me. To surprise me for real: I understood you were having doubts, weighing up the pros and cons – and yet I was sure you would give me a different reply.”

“Why?” I raised my eyebrows.

Nestor did not seem to notice my question. “I was sure – even when I saw you crouched in the cab of that refuse car,” he said just as slowly. “Even knowing that once the process of escape has begun, it is difficult to stop it…

“I understood the past was pulling you back,” he continued, rubbing his cheek with his hand. “I saw your introspection, the torment of your conscience, hanging like a heavy weight. But all the same: I firmly believed that, once the anger and confusion had passed, you would make a different choice. I assumed your conscience would give in at the last moment.”

“But why, why did you think so?” I asked again and added, “Of course, I’m very sorry to disappoint you…”

“Disappoint?” Nestor grimaced. “Well, well… And what do you think I should have thought? Bearing in mind, for example, the curiosity of a scientist, the need for a talent to actualize itself… The scale of the task that awaited you… Of course, predetermination cannot be fooled, but sometimes you can get a respite, a break. This is no jaunt in a refuse vehicle; it is something completely real. You had a chance – such a rare, such a precise, unequivocal chance!”

He rubbed his face again and then said reluctantly, barely forcing out the words, “I hope you are aware of all the consequences of your decision, all its meanings, its side effects? You will have to go through childhood and adolescence, to grow up, to live and live – hoping that your destiny will somehow intersect with hers or his… I suppose you feel, albeit subconsciously, the boundless naivety of such a hope – having in mind the grouping of the B Objects and everything that happens in the Cloud – a naivety comparable to your enemy Brevich’s belief that things would always turn out the way he wanted. You are adjusting the probability of facts according to the yearning insistence of your faith, your desire – this is just the opposite of what a man of science should do. You…” And Nestor enunciated each word with the palm of his hand, “You are acting like some poorly educated – I’m not afraid of using this word – barbarian!”

“Well,” I murmured, “I have heard that we often resemble our worst enemies. Otherwise, we’d be lacking common ground for hostility. As for my choice, I didn’t have much of a choice. I simply felt I had to do the only right thing.”

Nestor did not respond; he might not have even heard, did not want to hear me. He was reiterating his own point – monotonously, stubbornly: “And I also thought that, besides rational arguments, your fears would stop you. The ones we talked about: for example, the fear of never meeting your Tina – do you understand how scant the chance of such an event is? Or the fear of failure – who knows what will happen in your second life, who you will become, what you will be able to achieve? And then: Are you one hundred percent sure there will even be a second life? Where you are going? From what, from where? What this place really is, the place of Quarantine? Have you ever thought that this, perhaps, is basically all that’s left for you? What if Quarantine is a computer simulation or, say, the last fantasy of your fading mind, which has been artificially prolonged – you may be in a coma from which you’ll never wake up? And still, you’ve decided to take the risk…”

He paused and somewhat ridiculously, angrily, threw his hands in the air – as if signaling he had run out of arguments. As if showing he had nothing else to contradict my stupidity.

But now, it was me who had the arguments. “Yes,” I said, shrugging. “All this, one way or another, has occurred to me from time to time. Yes, there were fears – and it was you who helped me overcome them. And I am very grateful to you, Nestor!”

My counselor focused his gaze on me. He stared at my face intently, then, gruffly, somewhat arrogantly, asked, “In what way? Let me know, if you’d be so kind, how I helped you?”

“Through your example,” I spread my hands. “What else? Through echoes of your history, its shadows. Everything that made me understand that I, in some hardly formulated sense, am by no means a pioneer. There were others before me – for instance, someone was engaged in cosmology, wrote literary passages, yearning for a woman waiting in some unknown space-time, tried to break out of the social matrix, was laughed at by his own family… If it weren’t for him, I would perhaps have been afraid quite differently.”

Nestor was suddenly embarrassed, turned his head, began to hide his eyes. Then, little by little, he mastered himself. He groaned, cleared his throat and said wearily, “Let’s assume we have outlined our positions – in general. I understand your motivation. Not that I accept or like it…”

For a while we sat in silence, both deep in thought, then he said, “Well… ‘Right now’ won’t work; you’ll have to wait. As with your rescue from the utility zone, the procedure is clearly defined; it cannot be speeded up. But we can initiate it immediately, why not.”

“I’ll probably need some special sanction?” I asked. “Your sanction – I remember, you said you are responsible for assessing my ‘recovery,’ so to speak, my suitability for a new life.”

“Yes, it is needed,” Nestor nodded, “but in this case, it is a mere formality. I have no reason to deny you the approval. If I did, I would probably be suspected of some personal motive…”

“And what about my enemy?” I persisted. “You know that I have an enemy.”

Nestor frowned, “You mean revenge? Don’t worry, this intention of yours is completely innocent. All your intentions and you yourself are completely innocent, Theo, whether or not you think otherwise. So…” He folded his hands in front of him and again rested his gaze on me. “So, it’s goodbye; we can start the process. And that means… Goodbye!”

“You’ve just said goodbye to me twice,” I muttered. “Although it’s not customary to make long farewells here.”

I didn’t want to poke fun at him; I felt quite uneasy myself. It was clear: the procedure, having begun, could not be stopped. Until the very end.

“Yes, it is not customary…” Nestor agreed and again became pensive for a while. His shoulders sank; even his face sagged slightly. He no longer wanted or was able to hide his disappointment.

Then he suddenly shook himself, repeated once again, “Well, goodbye!” – and disappeared. The screen flickered; gray stripes and vague figures appeared on it. In a minute, they were replaced by the word “SOON.” I looked around and saw the room beginning to change. Almost immediately my head started to spin…

And now there are – just the remnants of reality around me: the window with the view of the winter park, walls without doors, and also – a viscous web of time intervals of which I have long since lost count. Their duration is uncertain, the boundaries between them blurred; the passage of time is the strangest thing that is happening now, at the end of Quarantine. At first, it was slightly eerie, then it became easier. Either because I got used to it, or I’ve just gotten older.

I walk around the room, along the wall with the same unchanging pattern to the window with the frozen picture. Farther on – to the closet whose door does not open. Then – to the bathroom, where everything is dead: there is no water, no shower; the toilet lid is tightly closed. I limp slightly; my left hip joint hurts. Recently, I complained about this to Nestor. He was surprised, “Well, what did you expect?” “Nothing else,” I’d agreed. “It’s as it should be.”

When my former counselor visits me, we talk amicably. Not getting angry, not trying to insist on our point of view. Our egos are lying low – at least mine is. Or maybe I just want to think so. Each time he says a lengthy farewell – as if in defiance of the customs of our past sessions. And each time I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.

Occasionally we still tease each other, though. I told him once, jokingly of course, “You know, Nestor, I have always believed that cosmologists have a hidden handicap. An objective one, related to the scale of the quantities they deal with: just think about it – parsecs, millions of years, calculations in completely wild degrees by any normal standards. What is a human, if we are talking some sort of ten to the twentieth? The most appallingly terribly insignificant speck!”

Nestor, naturally, replied in a similar tone – my provocation was obvious. “I’ve often thought in a similar way,” he said, “about those who work at a quantum level. They never dare to raise their heads to look around; their triumphs and catastrophes have nothing to do with what’s happening in the real world. What is humanity to them – and at what scales do they search for their answers? The same degrees, only with a minus sign? Ten to the minus twentieth, if you round it up?”

“You’ve got a point,” I agreed, and asked him right there, “Doesn’t it seem strange that human beings – the size of our bodies, the lifetime of our bodies – are located exactly in the middle?”

“Well, whether it seems so or not, it means at least that human beings shouldn’t complain about their own smallness,” Nestor grinned. And he added, “Don’t think, of course, that I have in mind you personally. Considering the extent of your pride…”

Or I told him once, “In your world, Nestor, God is replaced by the fundamental ellipsoid, but there is almost no difference. All the consequences are basically the same – and you don’t know much more about it than we knew about God. And you rush about in life just like us, even though you were telling me fairy tales about stability – of perception, of understanding – as one of the goals of Quarantine. At least, judging by you.”

Nestor was not offended; he saw that I was deliberately exaggerating, that I was a bit uncomfortable. “You are quite right,” he nodded, “this discussion – about the divine in the laws of chaos – perhaps will never end. Because, you know – a convenient euphemism for the crowd will always be in demand. And we have preachers too – a whole caste of them… The essence, of course, has changed slightly – some of the veils have disappeared. Your religions represent God as some kind of animate figure – one that can think, compare, juxtapose, exhibit emotions, distinguish good from evil, formulate in clear terms certain rules and canons… We here know for sure: the highest power is none other than a specific universal order, which has neither a soul nor morality. In your world, God is feared and exalted, as a boss or lord, whom you can cajole or soften, whom you can beg for something, maybe even playacting shamelessly – well, we don’t have any such dramas here. A so-called God can only be understood, calculated, brought into the framework of mathematical formulas. Yet at the same time, the universal order has more surprises and miracles up its sleeve than any invented deity does. And where there are miracles, there come preachers, only with a different bible. As well as all sorts of chicken-and-egg dilemmas…”

Thus we entertain ourselves, sort of joking around, but now and then we do venture into the jungle of overgrown seriousness. Especially me – the last time it happened was quite recent: two or three intervals back. I remembered Brevich’s words and mulled them over – and I quoted them to Nestor during his next, as always unexpected, visit.

“Death is not so frightening; what’s really scary is getting lost,” I said. Nestor, of course, did not understand me. It was difficult to explain, but I tried, mumbling something about all of us resembling children wandering in a maze – regardless of what picture of the world we have in our minds. Us remaining like children, always being like children – with no discovery ever forcing us to grow up. Because we don’t want to believe in the true cruelty of reality; it is too much for us. And if we acquire something – call it what you want, even if you are afraid of the word – if we find someone, we have only one desire, one dream: to preserve what we have found forever. We live, cherishing and nursing this dream, not wanting to know that it is impossible to achieve. We do not dare to part with it even in our next lives. Or maybe – especially in our next ones…”

“Here you are not being original,” Nestor said to me, disgruntled. “You are breaking down an open door. Or a too-tightly boarded-up one… Basically, you are no philosopher!”

And I felt embarrassed. Later, justifying myself, I related the tediousness of my reasoning to my phantom old age, to the fading of my entity. And indeed, the fading is becoming more and more noticeable. It seems I have grown totally decrepit. My thoughts are slow; my fake body increasingly refuses to function…

Now I’m thinking about this, lying in my chair. Then I get up with difficulty, shuffle to the window, look blindly into the static outline of the world, and suddenly realize that it is no longer frozen. There, beyond the glass, everything is changing – slowly but distinctly, in the most persistent manner. It’s difficult to explain what is happening: the horizon seems to be curving upward; space is collapsing into a multidimensional cocoon. I feel a momentary shock – sensing its unimaginable scale and, at the same time, the simultaneous displacement of all its points, their movements toward each other. I’m not able to see it; I can’t even imagine it properly, but I do sense it – because the string is now ringing in my head.

Barely moving my legs, I go back, fall into my chair and notice the screen has changed too. The word SOON has vanished; in its place, even larger, the more expressive NOW has appeared. And I realize: I no longer have the strength to get up. I am chained to this chair to the end – until the end of my stay in Quarantine.

I am overwhelmed with a long-familiar feeling of boundless solitude – alone, face to face with the universe. The feeling of absurd incomparability – of its power and my infinitesimal weakness. Probably everyone goes through this from time to time. Maybe it proves that all of us – and the universe – are really connected by something. By some kind of invisible but incredibly strong thread.

The words of the old song play in my head: “Ground control to Major Tom…” I whisper them out loud, knowing that in my case there is no ground control whatsoever. There is neither a tower with an advanced radar nor a huge radio telescope dish – no one, not a single soul is observing my “takeoff.” There is only the implacable, impersonal, deterministic but unpredictable, noncomputable but inevitable – who? Chaos? Kaosa? Fowdo? Huru-hara? Well, let’s just call it that. What does it have up its sleeve for me? Is there really nothing more?

This thought once again frightens me for the millionth time. I frantically search for something to hold on to – like everyone, like we all do. We humans are clever at inventing fake hopes and clinging to them to save ourselves from despair… But it’s easier for me; I have a theory. A theory, affirmed by mathematics. And I have my B Object.

“Now it is experiencing some changes,” I whisper to myself. “Maybe going through another phase jump. And creating new perturbations in the global field of the conscions…”

I can’t know for sure if this is the case – I just very much want it to be. So that all I’ve done hasn’t been in vain. I almost pray: please, let things not be in vain! I have no gods; I pray to the metabrane.

Then my mind fades away. Before my eyes – something blurry, painfully dull. I blink once, twice, feverishly rub my eyelids, and, all of a sudden, I imagine clearly, almost see Tina – with the bright streak in her hair, with her childish grace – in all her fragility and helplessness, in all her strength, coming out of nowhere. And I try to yell – even if just a rattle escapes my feeble lips. I beg: give me a sign, call me, direct me. You are my wisdom and you are purity, clarity of thought, utmost innocence. I’m dependent on you again, as before. Do not abandon me – in space, all alone. We always believed that we were united by something more than life – more than one life…

And then all the sounds – and my hoarse whisper – are drowned out by the sound of the string. It grows, fills the room – and the world behind it. And on the screen, after more flickering lines, inscriptions appear, one replacing the other:

The final statement makes me anxious. I want to object – no, no, I am still as confused and unsure about everything as ever. But there is no one to appeal to; the screen is empty. And then the command burns in the brightest light: “Repeat out loud!”

And I mumble, I repeat obediently, almost not hearing myself through the furious ringing of the string in my head.

The lines flash and go out, imprinted on my brain. I read them one by one, barely grasping their meaning. Barely… Almost not grasping… And suddenly the realization comes: everything is about to happen – yes, right now! I feel terrified, I close my eyes and scream, scream – into the walls, into the screen, into the curving horizon beyond the window…

And I think I can hear an answer. It is not a dead echo; it’s a subtle but living sound. It has a source – in a distant and yet the only right place. On the edge of consciousness, at the very border. On one side of it, or maybe on the other.

Somewhere by the cradle.