The Living Read Online Free PDF

Programme for Assisting Nature), I said that the little chunks of meat which were inside, they’re actually from my farm, before the pause I had a farm, and I kept pigs there, yep yep, real pigs, I saw them up close, and they weren’t scared of me at all…
    We all adored these little boxes of happiness with their multi-coloured stamps: ‘Region EA 8_milk’, ‘Region EA8_egg_hen’, ‘Region EA 8_ meat_pig’…
    ‘You’re lyin’!’ said a little boy with envy. He had a crooked face and piercing eyes. ‘You’re lyin’, aw uh a-imals are scaye’ o’ duh Wiving!’
    ‘Gopz,’ I said. ‘They’re not scared of me. They can sense a Farmer of Merit.’
    …I liked our teacher; she was elderly, only two years to go until a compulsory pause. She would close her eyes and tells us about the Living and about what the world was like before His birth, in ancient times. She would put on these programmes from A Living Childhood – non-
socio
versions, they don’t make them these days – and we’d watch them on an old Crystal X0, like the ones you get in branches of Renaissance, just three times bigger. Most often she’d switch on Baby Bubbles. You know, about those amazing round creatures – if you’re eight, you’ll remember – Monkles, Mousie, Duckles, Fishie, Wolfie and the rest – they stand in a circle and dance round, quicker and quicker all the time, until they all get stuck together intoone big multi-coloured ball. His name is Livvles. His pink mouth smiles and says, ‘There is no death.’ And that happens before every episode.
    We knew that all the normal kids, all the ones who had had A Living Childhood installed, took part in the circle dance. I hope that you’ve had better luck than we did. I hope that when you were five you danced around in a circle with Duckles and Mousie, that you merged together with them into a big shining ball… We didn’t. We just looked on from the outside. We were outcasts. We couldn’t feel like we were part of the sphere. Part of Livvles… But our teacher still reckoned that Baby Bubbles was the best material for us. And the most forgiving. Simple. The shape of a sphere: you’d get it even if you didn’t have any neuron chains at all. The shape of a ball. Unity.
    I remember one of the episodes very well. It was called ‘The Pause: It’s Great!’ In it Wolfie accidentally eats a poisonous berry and struggles back to her little house and lies down in bed. Her friends come and sit with her. They’re all really sad, because Wolfie isn’t feeling well. Then Fishie says, ‘Do you want us to help you, Wolfie?’ Wolfie nods and her friends carry her out to the lake and put her right in the water. She sinks down to the bottom. A couple of big bubbles and then you can’t see her anymore. Her friends stand in a circle and smile and start to clap their hands. But Monkles doesn’t want to clap. He runs round the lake shouting, ‘Where are you, Wolfie?’ His friends explain to him that Wolfie has temporarily ceased to exist. Then Monkles cries, bright blue tears fly all around. His friends look around and stand in a circle. They dance round and round until they form one big bright ball. It’s Livvles. He explains to Monkles that it’s bad to cry at times like this. That it’s ugly and stupid. That there is no death. That it’s just a pause. He promises that Wolfie will come back and that she will be happy. She will be happy, as if there had never been a poisonous green berry… In the end the friends go backto Wolfie’s house, where there is a surprise waiting for them. Wolfie is alive – but she’s absolutely tiny, and not blue, but pink… They all hug and turn into a big bright ball… The Pause: it’s great. At that moment I believed.
    Maybe if they had let me be part of their dance, part of that ball, then I would have kept on believing in it. But I wasn’t a part of it, I watched on from outside. And when Hanna went to her last Festival for Assisting