The Living Read Online Free PDF Page B

Nature, when she went and never came back, I behaved badly. It was ugly and stupid. When I found out that I would not see her again, I turned into that crazy Monkles, I cried and howled, I refused to eat, I hugged her black dress and started biting whenever anyone tried to take it off me… I covered my ears when they said it was only a pause, that Mia 31 would live forever, that there was no reason for tears… I didn’t want to hear it. I was unnaturally inconsolable. I exhibited a pathological reaction.
    Paradoxical grief. That’s what it’s called.

    At first I liked him. Ef, the man in the mask. He didn’t look at me with the same mixture of squeamishness and surprise as the others. I simply couldn’t see the way he did look at me. And his voice: it was a mystery what he actually sounded like. All I could hear was an even, automatic buzzing, nothing fake about it, in fact no intonation whatsoever.
    I thought: I’d like to hide under a mask like that too.
    He sat down next to me and said, ‘I know that you don’t like hearing that there is no death, that Hanna didn’t die, because her incode is eternal, that in nine months’ time she will be born again inside some little baby, that eternal rebirth is the secret of the Living…’
    He said, ‘I’m not going to tell you all that again.’
    He said, ‘Let’s discuss this like grown-ups. But to do that you’re going to have to calm down and stop wiping your snot everywhere.’
    So I stopped. For the first time since I had been told that she would not be coming back, I washed my face and brushed my hair. And got ready to listen. I thought that he would tell me that there was no reason to hope. That I was right, that there was no point in them comforting me, that she was no more… I wanted him to take away my hope. The hope which they had, despite themselves, planted in me, the hope they tortured me with every day. The hope that she would come back. With a different face. In a different body. I thought that he would tell me: life goes on without her. I was ready to accept it.
    But he told me something else. He said, ‘You have DCIV. My condolences.’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘Gopz. I haven’t got an incode at all.’ He stretched his mirrored lips into a smile.
    ‘Gopz… But I like you, kid. Don’t be scared.’ The corners of his mouth slowly slunk back. ‘If you like I can read the note on your medical records.’
    I nodded. He started right away, without a pause – his connection was excellent.
    ‘“…Intensely expressed negative emotions in regard to pause of his biological mother. Multiple episodes of paradoxical grief. Outbursts of aggression. Attacks do not respond to standard unit of therapeutic methods…”’
    He gave off a measured buzzing and I thought: I wonder if he closes his eyes, there, behind his mirrored muzzle? Probably not. Definitely not. Why should he? Of course he doesn’t close them. He’s a planetman after all. They say they can hold five layers… Or is it six? I wonder how many layers they can hold. Hanna held three with no effort, she had a great memory. I could have taken pride in that, but instead it saddened me. It’d have been better if she shut her eyes, like all normal people. In third layer most of the messages that came to her were about me and I’d have preferred not to see her glassygaze. It would have been better if she’d shut her eyes. I wonder, before she… did she close her eyes? And what exactly happened there? A pill? An injection? Some sort of gas? An electric shock? Later, after the pause, after the Five Seconds of Darkness , no one remembers how exactly it happens… But everyone is sure that it doesn’t hurt.
    It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt.
    She wasn’t in any pain. They told me: she wasn’t in any pain…
    ‘“…emotional condition could be classed as not conducive to the harmony, peace and integrity of the Living. Likely presence of destructively criminal incode vector (DCIV).