CW: death, war, mass destruction, nuclear weapons, radiation, tobacco
Nay-toe is pregnant. And I, Marena, am its mother. I've given birth to this new world, whatever it might be.
The rain had ended. The radioactive dust dragged itself over the hills, covering each part of the Zone in something reminiscent of twinkling starlight. Yelena laughed; maybe the dust twinkled 'cuz of Nico Nico Nicole's slay body becoming vapor as the missile she'd been strapped onto exploded into a fuzzy ball of pink flames. Natalia rummaged through the survival crates in the storage closet and found enough food and water to keep them alive for weeks; satchels of soups and tea, tins of fish and corned beef, and a bounty of crackers. She took the crate and overturned its contents onto the floor. Natalia had survived on MREs for so long, she'd started to find comfort in the sensation of salt melting on the tip of your tongue.
She covered the table in a white cloth, embroidered with bright red patterns of crosses and diamonds at its edges. Here was their tomb: a little jasmine-scented bubble, immured in steel. Dig out that thought by its root like a weed. She poured Yelena a cup of granulated grape drink and invited her to have some crackers with liver pâté, which she'd arranged on a large folder containing vital military coordinates. They sat together and ate, eyes shut, focus on the sensation of taste as it burns in your mouth; Yelena giggled after she realized she'd been wiping Natalia's mouth with a napkin.
"I'm sorry," Yelena said as she set down the napkin. "I've started acting like my mother and I'm not sure why." Natalia looked up at Yelena; she nodded and smiled. Natalia felt she should say something. If Natalia could put it into words somehow: her childhood felt to her like a moult she needed to shed, dandelions that needed to be dug out with steel implement. If Natalia could put it into words somehow: neither of us belong here but you have somewhere to go and I do not, I'm an orphan in every way. She opened a satchel of jam, spread it over a cracker, savoring the sweetness of the apple, the soreness of her teeth and the pain in her gums. She closed her eyes and imagined the walls surrounding her disappear into white heat. If she could put it into words, somehow.
She opens her eyes; Natalia rubs her face, looking around. The machinery in the tower had whirred nonstop since Little King had stirred it into motion. It's clear that the monitors existed not only to anticipate and respond to external threats to the nation but interior threats as well. Some monitors were devoted to radar traffic, while others had direct links to batteries of surveillance cameras placed throughout the cities. A throne hanging high above the world, dangling daggers from the ramparts. With Little King dead, it was likely his boys would descend into infighting. Ultimately, the Crystal Centaurs were merely a coalition of war-hungry expats held together only by hormonal urges and a need for a father figure. "The test' must flow." Where there is no father figure, one will be carved out of flesh; better to mog in hell, then goon in Heav'n. Oh, Little King, short in his time. She felt some remorse for killing him, if only because he had taken something from her with him when he tumbled down 'twards his death. Natalia could tell herself no longer that she was merely an observer with tired, burning eyes; she was now a participant, a traveller of the Zone. She raised her glass and told herself a silent farewell to her childhood friend, 'Lanka,' a stuffed bear that once knew all her secrets.
After Yelena finished her crackers, she looked through the survival crates and found something she'd not even known she'd been longing for: a pack of papirosa, labelled "Belomorkanal." She crushed the end and lit it up with a few matches she'd found in the package which burned with a green flame. A terrible pain filled her lungs; she coughed as Natalia watched the smoke rise to the halogen-lit ceiling. "I don't usually smoke," Yelena said, not sure to whom she was saying it. After a while, the terrible pain became a pleasant heat. She walked around the tower's control room, pacing with anticipation, feeling something between exhausted and agitated. Something's going to happen; don't know what it is, but it's going to happen. In one of the bookcases beside two radar indicators, between a few tomes of statistical reports, she spotted a copy of those verses she'd found in the bazaar. She took out the book, set it on the table, searching for the page:
THE FOURTEENTH THOUGHT OF KALI HICHI:
« After the departure of his 'lyubovnista,' Kali Hichi took to wandering. He climbed up the trees, like the monkey. He swam the rivers, like the fish. He crawled the sands, like the scorpion. Neither seemed terribly foreign, nor terribly comfortable. Every world seemed equally distant to his own. He understood that man was home in no world, tied to no routine. Man's world is wholly his own, a prison of one he is free to change and invent anew. »
Yelena sucked on her cigarette. "The fuck does that mean?" She felt like a child again, thrust into light, screaming for her mother. Natalia stared at her. Neither of them knew what to do, nor what it is they should want to do; what should someone like me tell someone like you at this moment? A sense of being lost in communal limbo; it was a strange, novel feeling for both of them. Outside their window, a hundred factions were engaged in a violent struggle for power; from here, their bloody efforts amount to no more than a faint hum. Here in total arrest, it felt like being suspended in the crystal growing to fill every crevice of the Zone. Yelena turned the page, turned the page once more, turned it a few more times, unsure of what it was she wanted to find:
THE SEVENTEENTH THOUGHT OF KALI HICHI:
« Man's delusion is precisely what enables his survival. It is his greatest strength; he may separate existence from essence. Man may lie, negate, imagine; man's delusion serves the fact that his heaven is nowhere, his home is himself.
Kali Hichi roamed the Zone; for the first time in his life, he was unsure of what Nay-toe would want from him. He felt as if he'd been doomed, not blessed. Man has no stable relationship to the world at all. Unlike plants and animals, we live to be alienated from the world by pure virtue of being capable of recognizing the world, of recognizing our great freedom. To be free is to be bound to nothing in particular; a permanent state of homelessness.
He took a branch, fashioned a stylus using a knife, and wrote into the sand:
He wrote 'existence,' then crossed it out.
He wrote 'determinancy,' then crossed it out.
If he could define himself, Kali Hichi argued, he could define himself as nothing. He could negate himself. Which would contradict any statement of existence or being determined by the world around him.
He looked up. He saw a myriad of birds in migratory flight. They needed not to be taught; it was their instinct. Man has no such instinct, man must learn to live in the world he's created for himself. Thus, the world man has created precedes man. But how is that possible?
He wandered, pacing, fidgeting. Man must learn the world through experience because man is not of this world. He must regain his worldliness. He must regain his worldliness because he is always in danger of being banished or cleansed from this world. »
Yelena read the verse once more, out loud in an impatient voice, to Natalia. "Do you know what the hell he's talking about?" She spat before sucking on her cigarette; it tasted like wet carpet. Natalia shook her head, unsure of what Yelena wanted from her. Yelena read the first line to herself over and over again; "man's delusion is precisely what enables his survival." The letters seem to drip down the page, pour into an incomprehensible slurry, to be reconstituted and reconstructed like granules of sentiment.
Strange. The sediment gathers at the bottom of the glass. Now pick the right limbs, the right head. Use your hands to rotate, watch yourself in the mirror. Take a pen and draw some arrows to the abstractions you see in yourself. These are your lips, these are your fingers. Pummelled into dust, then put back together into shape. Look through the mirror and watch how your shadows run. A momentary flash and that's all that remains of you.
A cold chill runs over Yelena's flesh. She looked at Natalia, this child of Nay-toe; collective runts of the litter. Yelena couldn't shake the feeling that she herself was a hostile, invasive species, feeding on the blood of others. To think of herself as anything less would have surely meant death. Everything is prey to some beast. She sat down, took a few crackers, covered them in apricot preserves, and munched away as her thoughts clumped together like hair. And how long? How long? The wait is the worst part. I pass the days by studying my footprints in the sand, which trail behind me. An endless long loneliness.
THE EIGHTEENTH THOUGHT OF KALI HICHI:
« Man spoke with his hands before he spoke with his mouth. Most animals must work with their mouths, but man does not. Man walks upright, and works with his hands. Kali Hichi looked at his stylus and realizes it is a spear: the pen has its pedigree in the spear! »
Natalia wiped her mouth and rose from her chair. She wiped away from the crumbs from the table. Safety. Restraint. She felt the metal floor beneath her creak as blast waves resonate through the soil. She went up to the window and watched the flickers of light as they dance on the horizon. She supposes that the liquidators would make easy mincemeat of what was left of Little King's 'Ruff Ryders.' Hmm. She wonders what would be left of this land. Nation and civilization crumbles, languages are forgotten; something new might rise from the flat soil, made with deft hands. And what would be remembered of her? She thought about what she might look like, suspended in crystal, her face forever stuck in fear. She saw that beside the paper full of numeric references was a little ballpoint pen. She took the paper and the pen and brought it to Yelena.
"Hmm?" Yelena said when she was torn away from her thoughts by Natalia's paper and pen. "You want me to draw something?" Natalia shook her head and placed the paper before Yelena. She took the cap off the pen and wrote something in winding cursive which looped like string.
"I can't read that," Yelena said with a laugh. "Russian cursive is a whole 'nother ballgame."
Natalia shook her head in disapproval. She wrote something again, this time in stark, bold alphabet.
"'Nas ubyot?' Will the radiation kill us, you mean?" Yelena read out the words. She smiled, softly; she felt her eyes grow heavy. A few tears ran down her cheeks, sniffing, laughing.
"Of course not," Yelena answered. A faint chuckle 'tween the words as she slowly shook her head. "Konyechnye zhe nyet. Of course not." She touched Natalia's shoulder with her left, wiping her tears with her right. "Of course not. We're gonna be alright."
Natalia smiled too, though she knew Yelena was lying to her. It was the greatest kindness she'd ever been shown. Yelena brought her hand to her face, wiping away some of the grime beside her mouth, stroking her skin. She pushed aside the strands of hair which covered the molten side of her face. To hide that scar tissue, she 'thot, is to betray the life that persevered underneath. The jagged and bruised flesh carried a facsimile of the mountains her people called home, a poem told through weathered mass.
"You are so beautiful, you know that? Krasiva;" Yelena wiped away more of her tears, which had started to drip onto the page. Natalia nodded her head. She looked at Yelena's chewed up nails. How funny it is to be responsible for someone else, and how strange to be deficient, to have one's hand empty when it's reached for. But what should someone like me say to someone like you, here in this moment? Natalia thought about her answer, thought about it for a while. She took the pen and wrote something else on the page.
Yelena looked to her side at the page. "'Nuzhne uxaditj.' 'I have to leave.'" Yelena nodded her head, nodded a lot, wiped a few tears away. "I know," she answered in a meek voice. "I know. Znayu." Yelena rose up, took the jacket off her shoulders, and placed it on Natalia; the bottom hem reached all the way down to her ankles. "I should uhm, pack you a school lunch." She went into the storeroom and put together a few things; a handful of chocolate bars, a canteen filled with iodine water, a few potassium iodide tablets, and a Makarov PM with a black grip that fit well in the holster of the jacket's inside pockets. She loaded a few magazines of 9.2x18mm, bronze tipped, and placed them in her front pocket. She rubbed the edges of Natalia's hair with her fingers to make them less fizzy. She took one of the wet napkins and wiped Natalia's hands, trying to rid her of the dirt under her nails.
"You look like a real child soldier now," Yelena said, beaming like a proud mother sending her child to her first day of school. And we're running out of sand, aren't we? No sense in wasting time. She took Natalia's hand in her own, bringing her to the platform which would descend back down to the surface. No words, no more thoughts; dig out the weeds from the root. Natalia took her place on the platform and waved to Yelena who stood by the console. Natalia still thought about what she should say. She looked at Yelena, her eyes red, a soft smile creaking on the left side of her face. "Proshchai," Yelena said. That's what Natalia would have said too. "Proshchai, Malen'kaya," Yelena said. Yelena waved, once, twice, before pressing the button that read "vnjis." And after a few seconds, Natalia disappeared into the darkness.
THE NINETEENTH THOUGHT OF KALI HICHI:
« Man builds his world not because he feels peaceful and at home with the world. Man builds his world because he is a victim of the world; he is ruled by the fear and the need for protection which the world instills in him.
In other words, the world built by man is a world against the world, a defense against the fundamental danger of existing in the world. It is a coping mechanism; nature transforms into culture, conscripted into service for man. I say this onto you,'druzhina;' the world is the 'cosmic proletariat.' »
Outside now.
And there are no more birds. The chirping of morning's meshes were gone, replaced by the oppressive whirring of drones. The trees glistened as a dying sun fell on the thousands of glass wires that hung from their branches. It would be terror twilight soon, the gradual surrender to the stillness of night. Look over your head; thousands of them in swarms. The liquidation was impersonal now, a mechanism. They buzz with voracious appetite. Some resemble spiders, others resemble birds of prey. Natalia walked away from the tower, down the road littered with blood & treasure, her hand trembling as it rests on her rib where she can feel the shape of her Makarov. She tried to imagine defending herself, pistols to the banshees in the sky, but she couldn't-- her best hope was merely to be the smallest target, to be pitied when clips of her last seconds hit the networks.
Down the road, Natalia could see hundreds of tanks and trucks, smoldering, black with soot and smoke. Some were little grey sedans, some were large buses, others were cargo trucks; all of them perforated, covered in ash and charcoal. Beside the road were piles of debris, metal gore, collapsed metal. She walked in the center of the road, six lanes wide. One of the tanks was a Type 69, its dome-shaped ventilator crooked, with a bent barrel sticking out of its turret. In the distance under the burning haze of afternoon, she could see hundreds more, covered in bullet holes and shrapnel wounds. And this too will be swept away under dusty broom, forgotten as all failed experiments are. Prey to some beast named Nay-toe, remembered only by our savior Kali Hichi, who lived for our sin; whatever that sin was. Mhm. And why did it all fall apart, Lanka? Let a hundred theories bloom.
Natalia took a bar of chocolate, tore apart the packaging, and bit right into it. Nothing lived on this road; it was a refuse pile, its people just as irrelevant as the machines themselves. They didn't inhabit a world, they were refused the conditions for existence; they were the waste product of this land, just as Natalia was. Nay-toe lives here too; this vein takes you all the way through the Zone. Beside the roads were thousands of trees cloven into pieces, standing above mounds of splinters. Brotherhood is earned in blood; when it dries, it must be spilled anew.
Thunder cracks above her. It would be nightfall soon enough. Natalia runs to a bus stop and drops her tired body onto a bench as the rain clatters onto the roof above her. Above the bench, 'Little King Lives!' was written in something red like blood. When a world dies, it takes whatever lives inside with it. An iron stench clung to her mouth. With the bar still in her hand, her mouth covered in chocolate, Natalia couldn't help but weep. The tears dripped down her face, falling into her mouth as she takes another bite, another bite; salty and sweet, a faint taste of blood. She remembers how it fell apart; she remembers the people running in desperation under the cloak of night, the sound of distant gunfire, and the terrible realization that you'd now become an orphan to a world that disappeared. The crooks in charge didn't even apologize for their abrupt exit. She rubbed away the chocolate from her face with her sleeve, clearing her phlegm-burdened throat, and to the rhythm of falling rain she sang:
Hear her speak, the motherland!
Hear her sing, sweet motherland!
(pitter-patter, pitter-patter)
We leave the sun's loving embrace, hand in hand,
to step into night's cold, barren no-man's-land.
(pitter-patter, pitter-patter)
Forget the certainties of touch, faith, and sight,
and step with me into the chill of endless night.
Outside now, under the glow of clouds. The rain had died out. The scorched earth has become dreg. Much of the landscape had now become rivers of black, with islands of downed helicopters. The air was thick with rust, clinging to the inside of your lungs. Natalia found a bicycle beside the road, its seat tattered and bloody, and rode it through the triumphal arches of the capital city. Much of what was once homes and hotels and cafés had already been turned to ash by the liquidators, leaving nothing but the skeletal frames of buildings and the shadows of the lives they'd once held. This city we once knew existed now only in the memories of the evacuees, their cheeks red with French wine while they reminisce about the life they'd once had in the old country. And what are we daughters of Nay-toe heirs to? Nothing but skeletal frames; we have our own nightmares.
Natalia yelps with glee as the bicycle races down the decline of the main road, broad and wide to make room for many a parades with glistening green tanks and missiles. A few statues made of stone still remained; their sharp jaws and chiseled features smile upon her return. "She's back," they seemed to scream; they've been waiting. "Nay-toe's daughter has come back to us." The glowing dust creeps through the streets, a cold shiver on your shoulder. Natalia raises her fists and shouts; "ooo-wee, I'm coming home! Kingfisher Lane!" And she did. Close your eyes and you'll be back there; among the sunflowers, where the bugs hold on for dear life as the wind threatens to level their towers looming large over radioactive soil; among the red bricks, the cattle, and the pigs that wallow in the mud when it's watermelon and plombir season. Oh, if you could see it, Lanka.
Natalia stepped off her bicycle and set it up against the gate of the park which was covered in shards of glass that hung like teardrops. There was nothing left of the park save for the pulp of detonated trees. She sat by the pond, now minty green and full of glowing particulates, and took another bar of chocolate from her jacket. As she munched on the chocolate, she closed her eyes and tried to imagine life as it used to be: she could hear the children running through the fields, the branches swaying in the delicate breeze of afternoon, and the birds squawking litanies for the setting sun. She could see the 'druzhina,' walking hand in hand, their voices buried in static like the chatter of stations on a radio; tune your ears and listen to their calls, their fears and desires that might cohere into a chorus for an instant before crumbling into disparate parts. She opens her eyes and hears only the distant whirring of drones and bombs.
THE TWENTIETH THOUGHT OF KALI HICHI:
« And who are the 'druzhina?' They are fed by the world, rejected by the world. They are told to be independent, punished for their independence. Entangled in the world, thrown away by the world. A thousand damnations. A constant embrace, a never-ending shrug.
And who is 'Kali Hichi?' A name that floats along to save one from drowning in the sea of namelessness. Just as the city is a name for countless different spaces, 'Kali Hichi' is the name that endures. The name is what can be grasped, what can be known of the city, of the 'monzhj.'
'Kali Hichi—-' the name is the only constant. It is the only guarantee. It is the denominator, but call me 'Mali Michi' and the arbitrary nature of the name reveals itself. It is only by my death that the name ceases to be arbitrary as all possibilities for what may happen collapse into merely what has happened. There couldn't have been a 'Mali Michi' if 'Kali Hichi' already came and went. »
Yelena was bored; she'd looked through all of the boxes in the storeroom, looked through them twice and three times over, and could not find a single charging cable for her phone. 'Not that reception in the Zone was ever any good anyway.' She sat down on the couch, her limbs slack and exhausted, and she shut her eyes, and she imagined an endless river of images and sounds, flowing from her present all the way down to the first great shattering of symmetry among the animals of the particle zoo. Mhm, mhm.
But before then?
Emptiness. The endless night. Reality was a sleeping creature waiting to be born. A start of another world is the end of another; isn't it, Lanka? When that first bright orange-red glow came to illuminate the universe, the world of shadows died in an instant. Revelation. Illumination; an orifice through which the first light was born. Suck out the light of the world at that point and you'll only notice its absence.
Yelena opened a can of pashtet, a pink lump smelling like moss, and spread it onto some crackers with the edge of its metal lid. Mm. Salty, briny flesh. And who will be this creature's savior? If it didn't have a soul, some essence, then what is it that's tasting so good? Within a few tender 'n soft minutes, Yelena had finished the can; the floor was covered in crumbs which crunched under her feet. Mm. Suddenly a chill ran up her body. She looked down and saw that blood was trickling down her leg.
After she'd cleaned away the blood with a few wet tissues from an MRE, she walked onto the balcony and rested her arms on the railing. Beneath her, she saw the remains of Little King, his body collapsed into a crater. And above her, outside now; the dust had tired of its panicked flight, settling to form gentles waves of glowing blue and green with particulate that glittered like crushed stars. Trace its tides with your fingers; up against the darkening dusk, they were streaks of brilliant paint drawn across a dim canvas. Are you really there? I try to convince myself that somehow that crack in the sky has something to do with you.
'Wait a minute.' A little bit over the cliffs, there's a silhouette up against the receding sun. A gash in that brilliant disc of light. Are you really there? Right there, in the rainbow of an oil slick? Yelena runs back into the tower, searching the storeroom for a pair of binoculars, finding in a leather sleeve a BPTs5. She ran back out onto the balcony, the metal groaning beneath her, and brought the silhouette into her 8x30 sights. And he was really there. And the book goes:
THE TWENTY-FIRST THOUGHT OF KALI HICHI:
« So what is the 'monzhj?' A waste product? All 'monzhji' are merely byproducts of the society that produces itself. The 'druzhina' who are excluded from the excluded live against their own will, between different worlds. They are tasked to stand on their own, though we know there is no such thing; 'monzhj' means nothing without the 'druzhina' that calls him that. So 'monzhj' drifts from one constellation to another, seeking fortune amongst the vacant planets. 'Zhijt,' or life, is sheer opportunity; love, coincidence, patriotism, murder are mere patterns in a starry sky. »
I remember this path, going up beside a little playground. This is where I'd held a boy's hand for the first time. I was surprised by the feeling of his sweat between the skin of our hands. If you look up, you can see a little window with a clothesline that ran to the building on the other side of the street; that's ours. Wait. I can hear them speaking. It's like the grand aviary down at the Revolutionary Square; in every corner, something is squawking and chittering, animated by its own private song. All around me; I'm surrounded by their incessant chirping. They are inquisitory, their beaks dig into you seeking seedling.
"What do you like?" the bush warbler asks as it sits on the gate behind me. I like the way deer and rabbit run through the forest, free. I like the way the wild strawberries make your mouth pucker all up in the winter. And I love how you might lift a piece of wood and a thousand little bugs run for their lives; lives which are short and sparse in luxury, but worth living nevertheless.
"And what else?" a mustard-y kinglet demands as he sits on my shoulder. And I love the first snowflakes of winter that bring on Gaia's well-deserved rest.
I pulled on the large steel door of the apartment building; more appropriate to a bomb shelter than a living space, I feel. I pull it open, a little concrete hive with little light; it's where I'd first learned to walk. The memories come to me like little spasms of music that find their space 'tween the silence. I walk up the steps; the first story, my first friend. The second story, with an old woman who'd lost her husband in war. She'd give me chocolate-covered quark sent to her through the mail.
And the third story; here, open the door. Ah. It's how I remember it. Feel the warm carpet under your feet. We kept a few quotes from the Thoughts nailed to the wall beside the door, above the shoe cabinet so we would take a moment of solemn remembrance. I'd always been struck by one of the questions: "who is the alien?" I could never answer that question.
Take one of the pairs of guest slippers and come with me. There on the right was the kitchen. The wall was painted with all sorts of flowers, like a beautiful garden forever in bloom. My mother was a fantastic painter. If I could, I would open the fridge and offer you the best pickled peaches, pickled tomatoes-- after, we could go into my room and eat the chocolate I'd stolen from the magazin. My mother would sleep on the brown couch in the living room, my father in the little guest room down the hall which would be unbearably hot in summer as the bed shared space with the boiler. Me and my sisters would sleep in the bedroom, though at the time my mother had already told me that we'd need to move somewhere with more space as she couldn't have me sharing a bed with my sisters forever and--
There you are! My little Lanka, sleeping soundly on the bed. Cozy underneath covers adorned with felt roses. Next to the bed you'll find my bookcase. I'd kept everything there because I believed it would somehow get into my brain while I was sleeping. And at the window sat my little bureau, partly wood, partly plastic. I'd carved a few things into it, including the names of girls I'd hated. Look out the window; you can see the kids walking to school, in clothes far too big for them. Across from the bookcase was my dresser; I'd always resisted wanting beautiful things in public, in private I relished them. For the sake of my popularity at school, I had to pretend that mom's beautiful woolen frocks woven with red and golden threads were antiquated and ugly. I'm sure that hurt her. I'm sorry about that.
I pulled out the chair and sat at my desk. Under my arms, I felt the wood as if it were shaped perfectly for me; the comfort of an old friend. On the desk were a few of my notebooks: homework, thoughts, little short stories. I'd always loved telling stories; not just old stories, but I'd create my own and I'd entertain my sisters. I'd invent great warriors and weak little princesses, powerful women that would turn into frogs, evil wizards that might fire missiles from their wands. I've now come to see that all of my stories came true; though they'd do so in strange, bizarre ways. Our great warriors don't die in triumph, they merely disappear in a single flash of fire. And weak little princesses are never rescued, merely forgotten. People turn into monsters all the time, their appearance remains the same however. And evil wizards are merely bespectacled men in long white coats who find it easier to theorize about free neutrons than worry their minds with morality.
"Read me your favorite verse, A-;" she asks. I'd not heard my name in so long that it seemed foreign and strange to me. Is that really my name? My favorite verse? I see her sitting on the bed. Her hair is curly and red, her face broad and without judgement.
"Read me your favorite verse, big sister," she asks.
Oh. I wondered if you were here. The light is on. You grow ever more vivid. Dressed in steel and glitter. I go to my bookcase and I reach for my cope of "the Twenty-Four Thoughts;" I open the pages and they are full of my handwriting, somewhere between nervous scribble and obelisk. And I go to my favorite verse. You know how it goes, don't you? And she says:
THE TWENTY-SECOND THOUGHT OF KALI HICHI:
« And when Kali Hichi at last appeared before the 'druzhina,' he came bearing not peace but swords. And he asked of them:
"Who is the alien?"
"Who?" the 'druzja' answer.
"The alien is man. He makes his habit the Zone because he has no home. He has one million GODs within him. One Nay-toe above him. In the commerce of the Zone, I say onto you that they are equal. Some may live with the power to inhabit many worlds, the money to pass from one hand to another as money wants. All action is transaction, I say onto you. What is there to say of Nay-toe in the Zone when each 'monzhj' is a Nay-toe onto herself?
"Who?" the 'druzja' answer.
Who is the alien? He was never home to begin with. Another's Nay-toe is as much as himself. He looks inside himself and find only others. He is his mother and his father, his partner and his lover. He looks deeper within himself and he finds nothing.
"Who?" the 'druzja' answer.
Nay-toe will ask you to be yourself. But what if I look and there's nothing there?
"Who?" the 'druzja' answer.
Who is the alien? 'Monzhj' is alien everywhere and to everything. The world is lost to him the moment he arrives. The cosmos is all around him, but he himself is a-cosmic. He demands order because he himself is the product of disorder.
"Who?"
Only when 'Monzhj' is dead does he find the order he demands. His sorrows and regrets disappear, and with them the desire for control sorrows and regret insist upon. »
Strange. It's like you've been here the whole time. You smile as I set the book down on the desk.
"Why do you like that one, sis?" she asks.
I'm not sure. Maybe it's good sometimes to know that someone else is thinking about the same things you are; you feel more at home in the world. Isn't that ironic?
"What does ironic mean?" she asks.
I laugh. I wouldn't even know how to describe it. In time, you just sorta know it when you see it.
"Strange," she answers.
I look at the window and find that the street is full of figures drawn with light. They walk around, they speak to each other, though I hear only birdsong. The street is alight with a celebration, a celestial banquet.
"It's spring, sis. It's time for the harvest festival."
Of course. I hear the front door open. I get up from the seat at the desk; she holds my hand. I take you, Lanka, onto my bosom; you comfort me with your endless generosity of softness. We walk together to the front door, and I see that my mother and my other sister have come home. They sit down to take off their shoes; beside them are shopping bags full of fruit and bread. Peach, wild strawberry, cherries; oh, don't forget about the pastries filled with cheese and covered in honey, or the sugary donuts. These are the modest riches of the poor. My sister has put her silky black hair into ponytails, she is dressed in my long summer dress with peonies. And my mother's hair is covered with a little cap that makes her look boyish, especially wearing those denim overalls. I laugh.
"You're home!" my mother says, not quite smiling. I suppose she's been worried.
"Finally," my sister butts in. "Where have you been?"
And I say: "I wish I could tell you where I've been, what I've seen. But I'm home now and I don't have to speak if I don't want to." And we embrace. And I felt so exhausted that I collapsed onto the couch, as if all my blood had been drained from my body. And at first, the soft sweetness of tiredness brought me comfort. But I felt my limbs become stiff, my muscles aching with strain. A sudden chill came through my body like a rushing river, and its sound filled my ears with a terrible clamor. That's all I remember.
THE TWENTY-THIRD THOUGHT OF KALI HICHI:
« So I say this unto you, 'druzja.' There is no such thing as peace on Earth. To be born is a war against the world to which we are alien. To be born in this world is to not be of the world. Peace is merely another name for death. I say onto you, 'druzja;' paradise under phosphor skies lies beneath the shade of swords. »
Yelena covered herself in the yellow plastic of the radiation suit she'd found in the storage room, tucked between a few gas masks and bottles of potassium iodide water. It fell from her shoulders outwards, making her look like a bright yellow tulip that had sprung legs. How long did she have left? She looked at the clock above the monitors; black and white, without numbers, it seemed too serious to Yelena somehow.
She put a few of the bottles in her pocket before stepping onto the platform; a few bottles, a little bit of chocolate, and even a little handle of vodka. Before pressing "vnjis," she looked around the interior of the tower to see if Natalia had left anything. She thought that somehow Yelena might be able to return her something, which would give them some sort of destined fate to meet again. She laughed; she laughed at herself for her childish fantasy. So illogical sometimes. She tried to think of Natalia dancing in a field, golden sunflowers swaying along, her face unburdened by worry. She deserved to be remembered that way, Yelena thought. Yelena leaned over the console, pressed the button, and said "Proshchai, Yelena."
Outside now.
Night came but there was no darkness as the mountains were bright with explosions and fire.
The ground was glowing; the sky was a canvas for light which poured onto the pulverized glass that had been scattered all over the Zone. Before liquidation, the Zone changed as a biological super-organism from one form of life to the next; now it merely transitions from one dominate inert sediment to another. A jet screeches above Yelena; she covers and covers her ears as the land before her suddenly bursts into white-hot flames, tall as skyscrapers, burning Heaven's feet.
Yelena held onto the yellow plastic of her radiation suit and set to running, sprinting as fast as she can for the mountains where she could hide among the rocks from the planes which circled around the Zone. Everything around her howled, surrounding her with screeching horns, an angry wasp buzzing in her ear. She runs up the rocks into a small little alcove, turning her eyes away from the blinding flashes. She covers her face and cries like a newborn.
No. She puts the yellow plastic between her teeth and squeezes her body into a small chimney. Her head was thumpin' like hard bass, violent lydian hockets swirling 'round; "fuck you," she muttered as she pulls herself up the mountain one step at the time, her hands caked in mud, cut open 'n bloody. She would not be deterred; she would see him no matter what.
Through the chimney, a small path led into the interior of the cave, pitch black 'cept for a small shaft of light. She felt the rock shaking beneath her; she would not be deterred, no. She crawled through the cave, 'twards the shaft of light, which led her up a grassy path, further up the mountain, past cities full of rock spires and limestone pavements, steep monoliths and monuments rising up from the stone. She would not be deterred; "fuck you," she muttered. He owed her something.
As she ascended, she looked down beneath her: the city of stone became a massive landscape of porous bedrock, disappearing into fluorescent dust clouds. Her shoes were shredded, she left a small trail of blood behind her from her cut-up feet and arms. The yellow plastic was still 'tween her teeth; she bit on it as hard as she could. The inside of her head was an echo canyon full of screeching. "Fuck you," she muttered over and over like a mantra, until she'd reached the top and she'd found no more mountains to ascend.
THE TWENTY-FORTH AND FINAL THOUGHT OF KALI HICHI:
« A harsh winter overcame the Zone. Many had succumbed to the frost, and the hunger and loneliness it brought. Kali Hichi passed, as well as did his 'lyubovnitsa.' But the 'druzhina,' though full of grief, did not succumb to despair. The world of 'Nefejest,' with its kings and emperors who demanded obedience and submission, was long dead and gone. Now 'monzhj' bends the knee only to the authority of truth, follows with devotion only the pursuit of all that is beautiful and good, and obeys without question only the demands of the heart in matters of love and loyalty. But you've heard all of this before, I'm sure.
After a long cremation, Kali Hichi's body was finally laid to rest such that his spirit might rise to meet Nay-toe himself there in the deepest, most empty spaces of the Zone. When Kali Hichi awoke in the world that comes after this one, he'd found himself in a vast interior filled with nothing but sand. And after traversing these empty deserts for countless nights, Kali Hichi finally opened his heart, and for the first time in his life, Nay-toe appeared before him.
Nay-toe spoke of Kali Hichi's sins: 'I know everything you've done...'
And Kali Hichi answered: 'and I know everything you've done... so let's call it even.' »
Strange, isn't it?
Yelena walked up the mountain, which was cold underneath her feet-- it was soothing, pleasant. At the peak, she saw a man overlooking the Zone, which had become nothing more than a flat hazy plane of white phosphorous. The ground was a bright and brilliant ember, as if it were made of crushed stars.
"Elon?" Yelena yelped as she approached the man. "Elon," she repeated. "It's you, isn't it?"
Elon looked back at Yelena. His appearance startled her; he was dressed in white robes and had a long beard. What an asshole.
"I go by Kali Hichi now," Elon said with a friendly smile. "You look like shit," he added.
Yelena laughed.
"No, I didn't mean that. You look great. Just a bit... you've had a long day," he said.
Yelena nodded. She laid down beside Kali, looking at her bloodied, fleshy feet. She removed a few pebbles from the raw flesh, took the bottle of vodka from her pocket, and poured a little bit of it onto her wounds.
"Za lyubov," Yelena said before taking a fat chug off the bottle of vodka and wiping her mouth. She passed the bottle to Kali, who smiled and took a few chugs himself. And they sat there together, watching the light slowly eat up all of the Zone.
Yelena took the chocolate out of her pocket, annoyed to find that it had mostly melted; she licked the package like a cat, and she cleared her throat.
"Why twenty-four?" she suddenly asked.
"Hm?" he answered.
"Why twenty-four and not twenty-five?" Yelena said between licks.
Kali laughed. "To tell you the truth, I couldn't figure out how to put my last thought into words. So I just ended it at twenty-four."
Yelena furrowed her brows in irritation. She wiped her mouth, wiped her hands on her radiation suit, which was now covered in chocolatey streaks. "What do you mean, 'couldn't figure it out?' So what the fuck was the thought?"
"The thought was," Kali said, pausing to ponder. "The thought was... well, it would be addressed to her. I would tell her that you're still a blunt dagger. You need to be sharpened before you can carve yourself out a part of the world you can call your own. Because this isn't the only Autonomous Zone. There are actually many zones in this world, some more autonomous than others. This is just one of them, you know? You gotta understand that you basically always make yourself. So it's really no-one else's responsibility but your own;" Kali ended his monologue with a shrug. "I think it's just kind of a downer."
"That's it?" Yelena grunted. "I come all the way up here to find you and that's how you end it?" Yelena crossed her arms, biting on her lip with irritation.
"I'm sorry," Kali responded. He didn't have anything more to offer.
"It's fine," Yelena answered. "I mean," the sky above them looked like a burning forest; "no real point now, right?"
"I disagree," Kali said with a smile. "Why don't we just sit down and... just enjoy this moment?"
Yelena closed her tired eyes, as the sky had become too bright to bear. She put her hands behind her head, forming a pillow of sorts, feeling her limbs become warm and loose from the vodka.
"I didn't think you'd make it," Kali said. "I'm happy you did, though." Yelena didn't respond; she hoped Natalia died quickly, holding in her arms what she'd wanted to find.
A few stray thoughts come to her as she thought about Natalia; no, that wasn't her name, but then again Yelena was never really Yelena, or Christine, or Marena. She thought about Elon's words: maybe it's only in the confession to yourself that you can start to think of yourself as a shiny dagger, and thereby sharpen the edge with which you enter the world. How's that banger go? "Whose world is this?" It's yours; to make, no-one else's, and Yelena no longer felt this to be a source of great loneliness but rather the sweetest of relief. See how the flowers now suddenly bloom, inviting you to their aroma?
After a few minutes, they'd finished the bottle of vodka.
"How long do we have left?" Yelena asks Kali.
"Not sure," he answers. "Probably not long. To tell you the truth, we should probably end it ourselves... before the radiation symptoms start to hit." He suddenly seems so worried. "I can... do it for you if you're too scared."
Yelena chuckled. "I'm not scared, not after everything I've been put through," she said with her voice growing just a little quieter; "I can't help but feel... and I know this is stupid... I can't help but feel it shouldn't end this way."
Kali didn't answer.
"Here," Yelena said as she took the bottles of potassium iodide out from her pocket. "Drink this." Kali obliged. He drank all of the bottle. Yelena looked at this face; the light of the phosphorous had turned orange, making it seem as if his face was made of burning-hot coal. She laughed.
"What," Kali asked her. "What are you laughing about?" he adds with a laugh of his own.
"Nothing... it's just... look, my dear 'lyubovnichek,' you were wrong. Nay-toe takes and Nay-toe gives. Sure, that's true. But I too decide what I take and what I give. So Nay-toe needs me as much as I need him."
And by hearing this, Kali Hichi became enlightened. He took out his phone, hoping to send his followers one last thought.
"Shit, no reception," he said, holding the phone up towards the sky in hopes of getting more bars.
Yelena embraces him from the side and they hold hands.
"I'm not sure anyone is left to read it," she answered.
For the first time in her life, she felt no need to doubt anything; his hand in her hand made the tired devices feel harmless and tame. She rested her head on his shoulder. They watch the white phosphorous turn yellow, then red. It was like staring into the innermost heart of a fire. It's the most beautiful thing Yelena had ever seen. She clears her throat, and she says with a smile:
"This is nice, isn't it? What do you think I should name myself?"