Belgrade Noir

The Touch of Evil by Verica Vincent Cole

Lekino Brdo

November 1, 2018

Viktor Marković is a dead man.

Why? The world will be a better place without him, that’s why. Or maybe there are other reasons.

I know that there is a bit of evil in all of us. Hidden behind the masks we agree to wear for the sake of civilization, it is balanced by goodness, controlled by the societal conventions. Yet at times, evil turns into Evil, a fairy-tale monster that eats children alive. And with this comes the sign. Most people fail to see it, although the sensitive ones often feel a need to avert their gaze from the faces of those in whom Evil lives. I call it the sign of the beast and I saw it on the face of Viktor Marković the moment I met him.

But I needed time to convince myself of the truth. I was scared, persuading myself for months that I must be wrong. And forgetting, at that, the futility of such exertion: for Evil refuses to forgive weakness. Evil grants no favors. And Evil is contagious.

Am I not the perfect example? To liberate the world from Evil, I have to let it inside of me. That’s the modus operandi of Evil, whether we are talking NATO’s “humanitarian intervention” or me, Neda Adamović. So it is not really a surprise that it is “other reasons” that guide our actions, is it? There’s no place for noblesse in the story of Evil.

Yet, I can’t help but wonder — what would some other people do in my position? Could they really kill another human being? Pull the trigger and put a bullet into someone’s forehead — bang bang, you’re dead! Probably not: most noble, gentle people living in pain would rather kill themselves.

Until yesterday, I considered myself one of them.

Today I decided that “Neda Adamović, Everyone’s Favorite Victim” will not be my epitaph. That it is time for a bang in my life.

April 30, 1999

Whether it’s Jack the Ripper or the armed forces, the pathology is the same: the killer first objectifies the victims to obliterate their humanity, so they are not human beings anymore, just collateral damage, Neda thought to herself, walking through the strangely quiet streets of Lekino Brdo, so innocent and quaint under the April sun as if totally unaware of what could happen to it at any moment. She was still seething at what she’d just seen from her friend Mariana’s thirteenth-floor balcony: Avala — the hill which, with its meager 1,700 feet, qualified as a mountain — without its TV tower! During the night, the precisely guided NATO missile had wiped the tower out, and the resulting scenery belonged in a parallel reality. Like everything else these days, for that matter: how could Serbia, the country which had always been on the right side of history, always the good guy, be bombed by the allies? Maybe because, as the saying went, it was in a habit of winning in war and losing in peace? But who could win over NATO? Martians?

“Making war to get peace is the same as fucking to get virginity,” Mariana had said as they drank coffee made from tepid water from the water heater, since this part of town was once again without electricity.

Neda couldn’t agree more.

Air-raid sirens began their shrill scream while she was entering “the little woods” — a wooded area that covered the block below her old high school — which usually had a calming effect on her nerves. Feeling like she was about to explode without any help from a NATO missile, Neda started singing from the top of her lungs: a song Belgrade Gypsies had sung during World War II, while German Stukas bombed the unfortunate town, which seemed to be everybody’s favorite target.

NATO intervention was the last straw for Neda. A private language school where she was teaching German collapsed under Western sanctions, leaving her without an income. So once again, she was depending on her parents. Upon retiring, her parents had moved to a village in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, and once in a while they would send her some cash and homemade goods. Making her feel worthless, if not suicidal.

Neda decided there was no reason to hurry home, to the little house on Todora Dukina Street, where she expected at any moment to turn into collateral damage under its old bricks. After all, it was in these woods where she had had her first kiss. A first kiss, perhaps the last day of life — wasn’t she a proper heroine from some Remarque novel?

The woods seemed empty, save an old man who sat on a bench by the path, staring at nothing as he ignored the sirens. Either deaf, thought Neda, or just didn’t give a shit. Perhaps he found it better to be killed by a bomb than to fade away in some poorly supplied hospital, living on bread with margarine.

The sirens stopped as suddenly as they had started. Knowing what was coming, Neda chose a bench for herself and sat to wait for the hard rock delivered by NATO to overpower the Gypsy lament.

June 15, 1999

In Dača’s kafana, time had stopped somewhere in the seventies: plaid tablecloths, glassware with a little line marking volume, a menu limited to barbeque and the daily course of cooked meals. And guests who asked for kilo-kilo — a liter of white wine and a liter of sparkling water.

“Bread, circuses, and cigarettes,” said Goran, taking a carton of Winstons from his bag, making a face as the exhaust fumes from the number 26 bus, passing down the street, prevailed for a moment over the scent of linden in the air of the kafana’s terrace. “That’s how the saying should go.”

“If only they’d had cigarettes in ancient Rome,” said Neda. “Thank you. You know I—”

Goran made a gesture to stop her. Knowing that she was completely broke, he didn’t expect money for the cigarettes. They had known each other for quite some time and he helped her when he could. It was all part of their friendship, which endured despite their differences in life philosophy. Goran was practical. He always knew what he wanted from life and would find a way to get it. Neda was a seeker. The only thing she knew for sure was what she didn’t want, or that what she wanted was rather more complex than the university-marriage-children recipe. Although in her late thirties and despite all her problems, she still hoped to tumble into the right path eventually, one that her “own blood whispers to her,” as her favorite writer put it.

“Now buy me a drink and I’ll forget about the fact that you brought me here to exploit my feminine charms,” she said, lighting a cigarette and inhaling with unconcealed pleasure.

“Who else if not you?” said Goran, smirking. “You are the only Swede I know, and I have no better ideas, even if this one’s kinda wicked. Besides, you have better chances than me. I could only hope to worm my way in.”

Neda smiled, thinking of the nickname “Swede” someone had given her a long time ago, on account of her being a natural blonde. In her experience, most men reacted to strong statements, so in addition to her main allure — her long blond hair — tonight she wore a short red dress, an Olé! for the rich bull.

“So where is this friend of yours?” she asked.

“An acquaintance of an acquaintance,” Goran quickly corrected her, slightly offended.

Said “acquaintance of an acquaintance” was their last hope at finding a job. The weekly newspaper Goran used to work for had been forcefully shut down by the regime and now he generated his income by selling smuggled gasoline and cigarettes on the black market. But those days were quickly coming to an end, partly because of the bombings, partly because a monopoly on smuggling seemed to be changing hands.

“Whatever, as long as he’ll pay for a round.”

“I think he’s coming,” said Goran, looking over the terrace’s metal fence at the silver BMW pulling into a parking spot. “Charm him from the start and we could get ourselves a nice dinner. For him, it’d be pocket change.”

“How did he get his money?” Neda inquired, taking a long look at the corpulent man in black jeans and a red polo shirt approaching their table.

“These days you don’t ask questions like that,” whispered Goran.

“A criminal?”

“Quiet. It’s all relative, isn’t it? As long as he doesn’t ask me to smuggle drugs or people or be a professional assassin, it’s okay with me.”

Neda shook hands with Viktor Marković. He was in his early forties, bearing the wide-set, dark eyes of a shark. Eyes that didn’t reflect his thin-lipped smile, yet in a second had likely rated her and categorized her somewhere in his mind. He could be called handsome — or at least interesting, with that air of self-confidence and his velvet baritone. Yet, something about his face looked wrong, as if someone had disassembled it and then reassembled it, but made some sort of a mistake along the way. She couldn’t describe the fault, but it was definitely there. A fault that made Neda want to avert her eyes.

August 30, 1999

I understand that in a way, I betrayed myself. I guess it was the result of weariness. Fatigue and struggle without rewards quickly exhaust one’s mind. But my situation needed a solution, and it came down to an attempt to balance my needs and the price I’d have to pay.

In all honesty, it’s not like you’d have had to bend my arm for me to sleep with him. He’s one of those men who radiate power like body odor and, as much as it confuses me, his power pleases me in some primal way. I let the woman in me out — nota bene: a rather lonely woman — and let him take the lead. I let myself enjoy it: being just a woman, “the weaker sex.”

Speaking practically: besides giving me a job and a more-than-decent salary, through his connections he acquired the medicine my father needed, making my parents’ lives easier. Instead of taking from them, I’m finally able to help them. God, how good it is not to feel guilty anymore.

Yes, I am perfectly aware that he is not somebody I can talk to about the universe and freedom. But isn’t that something people like me contemplate in solitude anyway?

No, I’m not lost, I am still me. This arrangement is a temporary solution, just one little bump obstructing the right path of my life.

September 30, 1999

At Vimark Consulting, where she officially worked as one of the secretaries — though it was clear that her more significant role was serving as a hostess at the business lunches and dinners Marković often organized — Neda got wind of the existence of his children. But she never asked him, not about children nor his marital status; not even during their intimate meetings in the small private hotel owned by one of his friends.

Actually, the answer wasn’t important: what was happening between them was not a relationship but a trade, a transaction in which, for the first time in her life, she used her looks and her body as currency.

Marković was a skilled but uninspired lover and it suited Neda. At first, she had expected something different. She often had a feeling that “different” was there — some small move, the way he grasped her, the expression in his eyes would almost reveal… what? Neda couldn’t finish the thought, or maybe she was afraid to do so. Making her curious and excited at the beginning, “different” was starting to scare her.

Then things happened and she didn’t know what to do.

“I have a problem which I have to solve fast if…” said Marković, standing naked by the window of the hotel room with a glass of cognac in his hand. He was relaxed in his nudity, as a man who knew very well that power is a substitute for most flaws. “Actually, that part is none of your business. What’s important is that our friend from the Ministry of the Interior can help me. You’ve met him. I think you are aware of what he wants in return.”

He took a small sip of his cognac, and looked at her, tilting his head as if to better focus on her reply. “I’ve heard he has a somewhat specific taste, but you are an experienced woman, aren’t you?”

At first, Neda was not sure if she had heard him properly. Then she realized she wasn’t that surprised. No matter how much she wanted to believe she was special to him, not just one of many, she was actually prepared for something like this.

He came closer, slid to the edge of the bed, firmly took her ankle in his hand, and looked her in the eyes. Behind the darkness of his gaze, there was no room for discussion.

“Life is an expensive adventure, Neda. We all pay a price. What we get depends on what we pay. Simple economics. Do we understand each other?”

Neda swallowed hard and averted her gaze from his wrongly assembled face.

October 30, 1999

What did I expect? To be honest — I have no idea. I jumped into the water and waited to see if I was going to float.

The first time I said I simply couldn’t do something like that, a nightmare descended on me, something horrendous and yet unreal, like a monster in a child’s dreams. Loose teeth, cuts inside my mouth, and a wide range of bruises unequivocally confirmed the reality of it.

Thinking of all this now, I realize it wasn’t the physical abuse that frightened me the most. It was the silence in which it happened. Can such a methodic manifestation of rage be categorized as rage at all? I don’t think so. I believe the wrath of Viktor Marković is a much more complicated animal, something that draws its black energy from a deep source older than time. Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I hadn’t escaped, if I hadn’t, without a coat or any of my belongings, hawked a cab and given the driver Goran’s address.

Goran was fired the very next day. He wasn’t upset — he was already sick of driving around drunken idiots and taking care of the vomit and other nasty stains from the company’s Mercedes.

So, calling it all an unenviable situation is a euphemism for the deep shit I’m in. But I didn’t have a choice, right? I tried my best, but when it comes to sex, we all have our boundaries. And once the precedent was set, who can say what the other creatures from Marković’s powerful circle would ask me to do?

But at this moment, I am only concerned with whether or not I want to keep the child growing in my womb. One part of me still obstinately desires the life I promised myself, a life with much more freedom and space for seeking than single motherhood can offer. Yet I feel instinct overcoming me. It is a frightening but powerful force, more powerful than any obstacle, be it of philosophical or practical nature.

Yes, I know that my freedom has just been incarcerated by the solid walls of impending day-to-day duty. But I am an almost-middle-aged woman living in Serbia, not a Greek philosopher strolling through the groves of Aristotle’s Lyceum.

What do I live on? Mainly on a creative mix of hormones and dreams of revenge.

October 21, 2007

Occasionally, usually when she had to borrow money to buy Milena something “all the other kids have,” Neda wished she had Marković’s private phone number so she could send him a picture of his daughter. Maybe the snapshot from her first day of school, with her famous broad toothless smile. Milena thought she looked scary when she smiled that way, and she absolutely loved it.

School was a new expense, which Neda’s underpaid jobs in boutiques and corner stores, or the occasional instruction of German, couldn’t cover. Employers were afraid of single mothers, and the school was full of children with parents who thought that jealousy-inducing clothes and gadgets were important enough to sacrifice a good part of a family’s budget for them. Neda’s little house stood like a relic from an ancient time among the modern buildings springing up around Lekino Brdo like mushrooms in the forest. Selling it would resolve some of her financial problems, but her father, who grew more senile by the day, refused to do so, passionately talking about his intention to plant an apricot tree, the one he had actually planted forty years ago. Neda didn’t argue with him. She didn’t want to point out that her father was incapable of proper reasoning. Besides, it was the last house on the street with climbing roses hanging over the fence — living proof that, in spite of everything, she and her world were something separate, something special.

Last year, Marković had founded the Vimark TV station and he became a media personality. Thanks to his new public face, Neda developed extensive knowledge about his family — the photogenic TV hostess who was not the first Mrs. Marković, the daughter who studied design in Italy, and the son who owned his own business of an undefined nature.

“Mommy, my friend Sara says that in Greece — they always go on holiday in Greece, you know — there was a stone statue of a naked woman.” Milena put her little hand over her toothless mouth and giggled. “That is one of the goddesses, you know. Sara stood in front of her and made a wish and it came true.”

The girl stirred her cornflakes around in the bowl, while they waited for the arrival of their neighbor, who took Milena to school every day along with her son. She was late, so Neda was late for work. She hoped her boss wouldn’t threaten to fire her again. She desperately needed money to pay the bills, which were piling up quickly.

“Did you put on new panties?” Neda asked, looking at her watch. She still couldn’t forget the shame she had felt when Milena went to an unexpected annual physical at school wearing old, faded underpants.

“Yes, but I wish you would buy me the ones with little frills like Sara has. Do you know what I would wish for if I visited the stone woman?”

Neda hoped Milena wouldn’t wish for knowledge of her father. For her, Daddy was someone who lived far away and, No, he won’t come see them soon. Neda further embellished the story in accordance with Milena’s age. Whenever she considered telling her the truth, she always concluded that she didn’t want to traumatize her daughter with a very certain turndown from her father.

“What would you wish for?”

“A pot of gold,” Milena said.

Neda wasn’t sure she liked this answer any better.

“So what would you do with all that gold?”

“I would buy…” Milena paused, considering her options.

“What?”

There was a sly look in the girl’s eyes — the very same black, opaque eyes of her father.

“Everything!”

Neda felt guilt overwhelming her. Milena wore cheap clothes bought in thrift stores. She couldn’t afford fancy sneakers or other luxurious objects important to the children of the new age. Neda always wanted to explain to her daughter that having material possessions was not the most important aspect of life, that it was sometimes better to be different from everybody else, to be unique and special, but she warned herself that it was too early to introduce that kind of thinking.

January 21, 2018

Milena’s tattoo was not a butterfly, a heart, or the name of a boy she was in love with. No. Above her shoulder blades spread a pair of midnight-black wings.

Neda put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from gasping. Ever since Milena had become a teenager, Neda had made sure to never enter her room without knocking. But for some time now, the girl had been refusing every attempt at communication and Neda was worried that her daughter was turning into one of those problematic adolescents who easily lose their way. What she wanted most was to build a different world for her child. Yes, she was aware that instead of Neda’s need to “understand Buddha,” Milena had taken after her father and his materialistic spirit. But she was still a child. There was still time for Neda to change her spiritual viewpoint, and give her a chance to look at life from a different angle.

“Stop staring,” said the girl. “I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t care. Besides, you didn’t pay for it.”

For the first time in her life, Neda wanted to hit her child. To let the Evil in, and beat her senseless. Instead, she burst into tears.

“What do you want, Milena? What is it that you want?” she asked when she was finally able to stop sobbing.

As Milena tilted her head and carefully dissected her mother with those dark eyes, Neda realized the strength of Marković’s genes.

“What do I want? Everything I don’t have, Mother. Everything. I. Don’t. Have. Isn’t it logical? Don’t all people want that? Not you, of course. Oh, no. You have to be special, even if you are starving. Go read your books and give me a break!”

October 30, 2018

Neda had never watched reality TV. Her brain simply couldn’t understand the purpose. She asked people who couldn’t miss an episode what attracted them to these shows. She didn’t ask what was on the tip of her tongue: how could they watch uninteresting people talk about uninteresting things, peppering it with all sorts of equally boring exhibitionism? She had never gotten a satisfying answer. Either those she asked didn’t have the inclination or capability to dive into their inner self, or maybe they intuitively knew they wouldn’t like what they’d find there.

So she ignored the whole phenomenon, that plastic, toxic package of basic instincts and vulgarities that made headlines in the media.

So the information that her daughter, who was legally a minor, had become the youngest participant of Vimark TV’s Commune — the newest and, according to newspapers, most expensive reality show in a sea of humiliating circuses aimed to make people forget about more important things — was something she couldn’t believe at first. And once she was forced to believe it, she couldn’t really feel it. It was just like all those tsunamis and massacres in distant parts of the world that make you sad but are too far away to break your heart the way one crippled beggar child in the street you see with your own eyes can.

Milena used the name “Millie Wow” on the show. She was reportedly seen fucking one of the male participants in front of the cameras.

So for the first time, Neda sat down to watch Commune. She poured vodka into a highball glass and watched Milena showing off her thong while kissing some simpleton with a strange haircut who used vulgar language. Neda couldn’t help remembering her daughter’s faded underpants from the annual physical at school. Was that the event that led her to where she was now?

As she refilled the glass, Neda wondered how Millie Wow would feel if she knew that her bare butt funded the jet-set lifestyle of the TV station owner’s recognized children. While sadness replaced every other feeling in her, a single spark of rage began to burn within her broken heart.

Maybe it was finally time to reset things. Maybe it was finally time for a bang in her life, something that would completely rearrange it, even if, along the way, it first broke it into a thousand pieces.

November 15, 2018

After some time, Neda’s plan was in place, complete with logistical support: Goran could certainly get her a weapon. Swearing like a sailor whenever he heard Marković’s name, he clearly felt quite good about it.

As Marković was a man who loved control, Neda knew that he would be there early, just in time for Vimark TV’s morning show. So it was still dark outside when she resolutely entered the main building of the television studio just after him, passed by his still-smiling secretary, and opened the padded doors of his office.

The room was full of tasteful pieces of art and books — a declaration that the father of carnal entertainment was a spiritual person who was above the audience paying for all of it.

Looking at her with his impenetrable eyes, he slowly put his cell phone down on his antique writing desk.

As always, Neda had the urge to avert her eyes from his face. But she knew she couldn’t do that. Not this time. Her hand slowly reached into her bag. She saw Marković gripping the edge of the desk. She almost chuckled, but she just smiled instead and pulled from the bag the newest edition of Flash, a tabloid with the largest circulation in the country, where Goran had made his living for several years. In a few minutes, readers who wanted to know who was screwing whom, literally or metaphorically, would be able to buy it themselves on their way to work.

“Frame this cover page and put it by that Dürer print,” she said, before turning and leaving the office.

November 16, 2018

Well, like a true representative of those without imagination or courage for actual drastic changes in their lives, to which, gladly or not, I now belong, I chose a “fart” instead of a “bang.”

The Fart, directed by Neda Adamović, looks like this: tabloid headlines, bold with avarice, scream that the illegitimate daughter of Vimark TV’s owner takes part in his reality show! I am sure that for a man who at a certain point in his life started to believe that money could transform a ravenous cannibal into a Renaissance man, those headlines were more painful than a bullet through his head. Yes, a bullet was my original plan. But I abandoned it when I realized that the anger in me was more complex than simple rage directed at Viktor Marković.

Mind you — he was certainly a very suitable devil for the exorcism I needed to perform.

New headlines kept coming as I’d predicted. Divorce! Rumor has it that Mr. Marković “has very specific tastes in sex.” Namely, it seemed that Mrs. Marković had received photographs of an unidentified long-haired blonde doing something nasty with Mr. Marković. I could just imagine horny readers making faces of disgust, wondering at the same time if they should try something like that. Marković can insist the images are photoshopped until he’s blue in the face, but who would believe a man who let his own daughter fuck in front of a camera?

And just like NATO — thanks to Goran and his permanently geared-up journalistic instinct — I have an infinite wealth of weapons. Such as the many images of certain high-ranking men with “specific tastes” enjoying the company of Marković’s merry “secretaries.” To stop these photos from leaking to the press, I had a price. Goran and I were laughing while we split the money. Truth be told, it was quite therapeutic.

As for Milena, she is an adult now and ready for her fate. I won’t give up on her, of course. Even with the set of genes she inherited, I hope she will eventually realize the difference between the real starry sky and the one where the shine of the stars is measured by their nudity and vulgarity.

And if I share a few things with her, she might like the fact that her mother can be a badass bitch too.

You see, I can avert my gaze as much as I want, but I must accept that Evil is ultimately appreciated these days. To people made insensitive by all the loud distractions of modern times, it is exciting and exotic. How else would all those snakes, parasites, and leeches, all those stains on the face of humanity, become media darlings?

There’s one thing consoling me in this newly found cynicism: I am not a killer. Of people, countries, or culture.

Alter Ego Inc by Goran Skrobonja

Translated by Nataša Milas

Učiteljsko Naselje

After many years, she visited Učiteljsko Naselje again.

She’d grown up in this neighborhood, but since she’d moved away she’d had no reason to come back. She remembered the place — located between Konjarnik, Šumice, and Zvezdara — as unpleasant, shabby, and depressing.

What she saw from the taxi — a small, inexpensive, autonomous, and noiseless electric Asian vehicle — Marija didn’t recognize, nor did she associate it with any of her childhood memories. The neighborhood that she remembered consisted of several narrow streets and residential buildings erected around two large factories built back in the 1960s when the area was still at the edge of urban Belgrade. At the time when Marija left Učiteljsko Naselje, huge concrete buildings with broken windows were turned into furniture warehouses, yoga and pilates studios, and squats for struggling artists. The same streets were now covered with solar panels, placed on every corner, looking like phantasmagoric, dazzling sculptures.

Marija got out of the car in front of a restaurant — quite a popular one, judging by the various web ratings. When she turned around she found the entrance to the business she was looking for in a four-story building. Next to the large aluminum and glass doors, there was a brass plaque with AE Inc. engraved on it. It was abbreviated from Alter Ego Inc., the full name of Isak’s start-up.

She wondered again why Isak had placed such a promising company in this part of the city, assuming that the reason could only be the cheap rent. Everything else in the neighborhood was far from being prestigious and appealing to ambitious investors and international firms. She shrugged, turned back again, looked over at the indifferent facades of the buildings and the indifferent faces of the passersby, and approached the intercom. A split second later — as if somebody had been watching her the entire time — a soft buzz sounded and the door opened before her.

The director was excited. He spoke very quickly: “Mr. Lero explained everything to me. Trust me, you’ll be delighted when you see what we’ve achieved so far. The technology our start-up has developed is quite revolutionary and I’m excited that we’ll be taking the key step in its testing thanks to you—”

“Excuse me,” she interrupted. “How long will this all take? I have a lot of errands today.” This was true: she’d taken the day off but had a waxing appointment at one. She had lunch with Isak after that, and then another appointment at the beauty parlor.

“Don’t worry,” he replied, “we’ll do it as fast as we can. Do you want to start right away?”

“Of course.” She looked over empty walls and modest office furniture. “Here?”

“Oh, no ma’am, absolutely not.” He got up and theatrically opened the door. “This way, please.”

The director hurried to the elevator and smiled again nervously. When they entered the elevator, she watched as he pressed -2.

The door closed and Marija felt the elevator sliding below street level.

She had met Isak Lero at a reception at the Swiss ambassador’s residence.

Her husband had received an invitation because he had been placed on the list of some of the major NGOs that followed the work of the most promising coders and openly recruited their services for foreign technology giants. Aleksandar Vranješ had previously programmed several interesting apps for mobile platforms. The most popular among them was the Trailblazers platform intended for drivers navigating Belgrade’s chaotic traffic. Trailblazers’ algorithms had enabled autonomous vehicles to monitor the situation and constantly report to each other where they were going in order to optimize traffic flow, and had significantly reduced traffic congestion. As he liked to say, these algorithms had definitely put him on the map — which the invitation to the residence of His Excellency proved. This had happened at a time when the two of them would go for days without uttering a single word: he was buried in work and programmed at night and slept during the day; she went to work, moving through the day like a zombie, sleeping at night. A depressing time. The time after Mina.

The only thing she remembered from this reception — which she’d attended unwillingly — was Isak. Amid the throng of officials and the waiters who were clumsily dragging themselves through the crowd carrying trays with canapés and cocktails, she tried to find her way to the nearest chair, where she planned to stay until Aleksandar had had enough of chatting with the IT team and took her home. At some point she snuck out to a room on the ground floor of the residence. As she looked around, slightly perplexed, she became aware of someone’s presence.

“Would you like to get out of here too?” asked large man in an elegant jacket and a light-colored shirt without a tie. She looked up at his face — he was much taller than her — and saw a mild frown creasing his forehead.

A man who knows that you don’t say “Wanna,” but “Would you like,” she thought to herself.

“Are you okay?” he asked, looking sincerely concerned.

How terrible I must look, if he only took one glance at me and figured out that I wasn’t feeling very well, she thought. I like his voice.

“I can’t stand the crowds,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s stifling in here.”

“We’ll take care of that.” He smiled and Marija realized that it was hard for her to look away from his warm eyes. How old is he, she wondered, in his fifties?

He gently took her by the arm and led her through the corridor. He opened the door, which allowed in a refreshing breeze and the scent of late spring. “Here, this way,” he said, and they continued to an illuminated garden.

“Sit down. I’ll get you something to drink.” He paused as she obediently sat on a wooden bench near a white gravel path. He noticed the expression on her face. “Maybe some water…”

She put her fingers on his hand and smiled, now more naturally. “Campari and juice, please. If they have it.”

He nodded. As he went back into the house to find an open bar and bring her a drink, she felt that something had irreversibly changed. She accepted the change as a life-saving exit.

More than three years had passed since that evening. More than three years of their secret relationship, and almost as long since Aleksandar became a leading developer in Lero Technologies, the main investor in the Alter Ego Inc. start-up.

“I won’t bother you with details,” said the director as he walked next to her. “I’m sure you are familiar with the basic principles of the procedure.”

They walked between glass boxes in which men and women in white coats stood by unusual machines, hospital beds on wheels, computer workstations, and chairs that reminded Marija of well-equipped dentist offices. In some boxes, these machines — 3-D printers she now recognized — were painfully, slowly forming something that, she realized, feeling the hair on the back of her next stand up, looked like different parts of human bodies.

The director stopped and pointed to a long glass wall and motionless figures behind him. She gasped. There were a few dozen of them. They stood motionless. They were naked like old classical statues, but were made of a material that was so convincing that she couldn’t help thinking that someone was detaining these men and women, making them stand so stiffly with no hope of ever being allowed to move.

“We’ve run into a lot of problems,” the director muttered, moving to a section in the corner of a large, well-lit underground room that reminded Marija of the automatic photo booths she had seen in old movies. “Mainly legal in nature: in this sphere, things develop rapidly, but bureaucracy decides on the rules and lags behind hopelessly. EU directives covering artificial intelligence and robotics have become obsolete ever since the first computer passed the Captcha test. They can’t understand, they just can’t understand… But, somehow, we will get to the bottom of it. Mr. Lero has a good legal team.”

“Do I… need to come in here?” she asked.

The thin man smiled and nodded. “This won’t take long,” he said. “We’ve perfected the scanning so well that what used to take hours may now be accomplished in just under fifteen minutes. But this is not the key — your DNA is the basis for the print, while the scanning results are actually used for the finishing touches. The main thing is to capture the personality of the subject — your personality: the inner rainbow of the mind, your special light, whatever you want to call it. Recording and storing it in the mainframes that occupy the whole underground floor beneath us. Yottabytes and yottabytes of data — all that makes you, one, unique. And now, thanks to the algorithm for which this will be the final test, one more — doubled.”

Yes, she thought, entering a small room, the door slamming closed behind her, this algorithm wouldn’t exist without my husband.

She examined the memory foam mattress lifted upright at an angle on a shining hydraulic stand. She sighed and began to undress. At one point, as she neatly folded the black blouse and the tight pencil skirt Isak loved so much, she thought that the director was probably watching her on the screen out there. She shrugged her shoulders and went to the mattress. The time for shyness had long passed. Soon all employees in this company would have access not only to the image of her naked body but also to all her memories and thoughts. Isak explained to her that she shouldn’t worry, that this database — the data that made her her — would not be accessed by anyone without the appropriate password, a password that only the director of Alter Ego and Isak would have. She knew that for the commercial realization of this process one of the key conditions was the protection, safety, and inviolability of client data, but then again… how many people would be willing to risk exposing themselves to such an extent?

“We can start now,” she heard the director’s voice through the speaker. “Buckle up, please.”

She did. The hydraulics hissed, the color of the lights changed, the bed began to shift its incline, and Marija closed her eyes.

“Do you even know why you are doing this?”

Marija sat on the terrace of a restaurant overlooking the promenade near the Sava River with Tamara, her best friend.

“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “a few weeks ago we had a bad fight.”

“You and Isak?”

“Of course. I wish I could have a fight with Aleksandar.”

“Let me guess: you’ve been thinking about where your relationship is going?”

“Well, yes,” Marija answered. “I complained that he’s so closed off, that whenever I bring up my divorce from Aleksandar and our happy future life together, he just shuts down. I told him how much this was tearing me apart — how much it hurts me — that I completely give myself to him, that I sacrifice myself…”

“And?”

“Imagine what he said! Wait, I’ll try to remember exactly how he put it…” She frowned slightly after taking a sip of her cocktail. “Something like this: What are you actually sacrificing? Your relationship with your husband? As far as I know, it was ruined before we met… Would — if the situation were different — you sacrifice your relationship with your child for us? He went straight for the jugular.”

“That’s awful,” said Tamara with a smile. “But he’s your awful guy.”

Marija finished the last of her cocktail and lit up another cigarette. “You know, I shouldn’t have told you all this. About the experiment. I mean, it’s all still very top secret, a big project for Isak’s company, but you’re the only one I can really trust—”

“Don’t worry,” her friend cut in, and waved the waitress over to order another round. “I always keep our secrets. What are your plans? How are you spending these fifteen days while waiting for… your replacement?”

Marija leaned back in her chair while Tamara ordered two more cocktails, and waited for the waitress to walk away. “Isak organized a trip. The first eight days — Madrid, Barcelona, and Lisbon. Then a week in the Côte d’Azur.”

Marija sat back and put out her half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray. After a minute or so, she sighed and said: “I would love it if Aleksandar found someone… if he cheated on me. To find out. I think it would change everything.”

“Let’s call her… Marija 2.0. All right?”

The director was smiling so broadly that Marija felt nauseous. Or was the cause of that nausea deeper? She felt uncomfortable as she watched her copy sitting silently on a chair in a laboratory glass box.

She was dressed in a simple white nightgown. Bare ankles and feet with nails painted in her favorite color, arms folded in her lap. The eyes of Marija 2.0 were closed, the face completely devoid of expression.

She felt her mouth drying. Somewhere in the back of her head, a hard-core panic was setting in. This was not like standing in front of a mirror. This was something completely different. Marija gulped and moistened her lips with her tongue.

“Her memory now includes your experiences from the last few days to avoid unwanted holes in memory,” the director continued breezily. “Everything we recorded this morning has been smoothly transferred to her personality.”

“Please… please,” Marija said, “I want to… I want to see it… without clothes.”

The director looked at her, raising his eyebrows. He nodded his head and typed something on the tablet. Marija 2.0 opened her eyes, slowly stood up, and pulled the nightgown over her head.

Marija didn’t pay attention to the fact that her body — even if it was just a copy — was exposed to the view of the director and other lab technicians. An irresistible curiosity now prompted her to walk around the naked woman standing in front of her, to carefully see her body from all sides. Suddenly she wanted to see herself as Isak saw her. She was both excited and filled with anxiety.

She remembered yesterday’s conversation in bed, after having sex, when, half-jokingly, she said, You’ve done all this just so you can have a threesome — with two of me. He’d wanted to answer her, to dissuade her, but he’d only dropped a kiss on her lips that were still hot from his gentle bites and said: You know, I didn’t even think about it, but now that you mention it… well — I think it would be hot to see you make love to yourself. Would you do that for me?

Would she?

As she watched her replica, she felt a flurry of almost pleasurable anxiety. She used to fantasize about lesbian sex — she assumed that all women did — but usually in her threesome fantasies, where she and another woman (sometimes Tamara, sometimes another friend, or someone she didn’t know at all) shared the same lover, there would inevitably be those exciting, forbidden touches. But if the other woman was her, herself? She looked down the upright back of Marija 2.0, to her firm buttocks, sculpted muscles, golden skin with a few tiny spots, and thought about making love to herself — she knows exactly what turns her on, she feels it under her toes and under her tongue, the juices and the warmth that Isak feels every time they sleep together.

She snapped out of it and cleared her throat. “May I… hear its… voice?” she asked.

“Of course.” The director’s face lit up and again he typed something on the tablet. “Tell us your name.”

The creature before them looked at him for the first time and responded calmly: “Marija. Marija Vranješ.”

She couldn’t detect any difference in tone or inflection. It was creepy.

“Please… let it get dressed again.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

After her double got dressed and sat down again following the director’s instructions he entered into the tablet, Marija asked: “So, how are we going to do this?”

He nervously smiled and nodded to the device he held in his hand. “We have already entered the bulk of the instructions, including your usual schedule — going to yoga, pilates, massage and cosmetic treatments…”

“And suntanning. Suntanning is essential — I travel where there is a lot of sun; I’ll be tan, at least on my face, neck, and shoulders, I mustn’t forget that.”

“Yes, yes, certainly, you’ve already mentioned this to us. You have scheduled the appointments already, right? No worries, Marija 2.0 will not miss a single one.”

“I have to ask you — I read a little about… singularity. It seems to me that no one has figured out whether it’s possible if—”

“If artificial intelligence becomes real? Equal to a human’s?” He spread his arms and shrugged. “I think we are very, very far from it. Anyway, you don’t have to worry about that.”

“How can you be sure?”

“It’s never happened before, and we’ve experimented a lot. Marija 2.0 will perfectly fulfill her role: she will live for you in your home, while you are where you really want to be. No one will notice the difference. When I turn on the autonomous mode, your specific wave front will enter the scene — what makes you unique — and she will react to every situation as you would. Did you bring things for her?”

Marija lifted a large paper bag containing her purse, wallet, makeup, car and house keys, clothes, socks, shoes, bracelet, necklace, and wristwatch — identical to those she had on her. The director took the bag from her, approached the chair with the silent Marija 2.0, and lowered her to the floor.

“Nevertheless…”

“Yes?” Marija asked.

“In order to be completely safe — in the event that something unforeseen happens — we will also program a safe word. Say something that you would remember in an instant, so it can serve as a kind of switch…”

“Mombasa,” she said without thinking. It was the name of a luxurious perfume, the first gift she’d received from Isak. The perfume that she had not stopped using since then.

“Mombasa! Excellent.” The director typed the word on the tablet with pleasure. “Let’s try it?”

He swiped his fingers across the touch screen, and Marija 2.0 stood up, turned to her, looked her straight in the eyes, and stepped forward.

Marija felt a sudden shudder along her spine and gave him a look. The director nodded.

“Mombasa!” she exclaimed.

Marija 2.0 immediately stopped.

“Perfect,” he said, and the duplicate, after the newly typed instructions, returned to her place. “We still need to agree on the logistics. Do you want her to go back to your apartment right now?”

“Yes.”

“Then I suggest putting her into autopilot mode when she gets in your car. And when you return…”

“You programmed her to come back here in fifteen days at this exact time?”

“Of course. It’s easiest that way. However, if for some reason her independent return is not possible, it may be best to replace her at your place. You have the safe word, so you can invite me to come, and I will arrange for her to be returned to the lab.”

Marija looked at her calm face on the woman who stood nearly a foot from her. “Then what will happen to her?” she asked.

“We’ll put her back,” he said indifferently.

“Into her previous state?”

“Yes. We will dissolve her into proteins, water, minerals, everything that makes a human organism.”

Marija gulped. “And what about the… software?”

He looked a little surprised. “You mean what will happen to the scanned person who is now in our server? Mr. Lero ordered that we delete this information as soon as this fifteen-day trial is over. Except, of course, if you want to preserve it for some future opportunity.”

“All right,” Marija said. “I’ll tell you when I’ve made a decision about that. This is all too new and strange for me.”

“And for us too, Mrs. Vranješ,” the director said. “For us too.”

As Marija entered the elevator, her perfect copy slowly took out clothes from the bag and started to get dressed.

What is your name?

Marija. Marija Vranješ.

She frowned, leaning on the sink as the phantom words passed through her head again. She washed her cup and ashtray and lay both on the drying rack.

She couldn’t explain the feeling of duplication that had followed her the past few days. It was there while she was driving to work, letting the autonomous system operate the vehicle through the central city streets. It was there while she worked in the office surrounded by colleagues she had known for more than ten years. It was there while she presented a concept for the next museum exhibition to her boss who always only half listened to her proposals and usually accepted them without objections. There was this feeling of duplication while she was spending time with her friends, during beauty treatments, at the hairdresser’s, yoga classes, in tanning booths… For some reason she couldn’t understand this artificial tanning in the least bit — she had never, as far as she recalled, resorted to that dangerous method of tanning.

It was as if she were in her own body and somewhere else, where she watched herself behave naturally, easily, spontaneously, in all these everyday situations. The situation at home wasn’t helping, either.

When did she and Aleksandar actually start drinking coffee separately, in separate rooms, in their own worlds? She was reluctant to think about it in more detail: she would always stop herself as if sitting in front of a closed door that she didn’t want to open out of fear of what was behind it. She saw him at home in the evenings, when he returned from work and continued to program until late into the night. She was reserved with him because she felt she should behave this way, not because she could remember the right reason. She looked at the apartment and the things they owned as though she was seeing them for the first time, even though she knew when they had bought most of the things — decorations, paintings, or pieces of clothing and furniture — together or on their own. And the mirrors were another story: every time she looked at her reflection in her bedroom, bathroom, hallway, even in the corner of a windowpane, it was as if a shadow was present at the very edge, her shadow where it couldn’t possibly be. Soon, she began to avoid mirrors altogether and used them only when she absolutely needed to.

Then one night she opened the lower drawer in her bureau in the bedroom — a bedroom with a queen bed that she slept in by herself — and pulled out a box.

It was made of wood, decorated with abstract patterns, lacquered, rather heavy. She set it close to her feet. She felt an irresistible desire to open it; she also felt fear. She stood there indecisively for a long time, aware that the sense of division — duplication — would continue to bite at her more and more mercilessly, all the more insatiable if she didn’t do anything about it.

She lifted the lid.

Mina.

She closed her eyes and felt dizzy, thinking that she’d lose her balance.

The door opened. And behind it was a wave that swept across her whole being, filled up all the voids she had felt, uncovered everything buried deep under the mud of nonsense.

Mina.

A pink rabbit with a ripped left ear, where the old yellowish filling was spilling out. Zeka-Peka, funny bunny, the one she slept with, the one who still smelled like her, Mina the baby. A green woolen vest that Marija’s mother knitted when Mina was six months old and a pair of socks of the same color, from the same wool. Photographs — from the hospital, after childbirth; also from the hospital, four years later. A lock of hair in a decorative ring with a label and a date. She remembered when she’d cut off that lock — Mina was almost two years old and just getting used to sleeping without a pacifier.

Eighteen months later, Mina had no hair. And she got used to sleeping with a plastic tube in her esophagus.

The pain was enormous, unbearable. Marija thought at one point that she wouldn’t be able to breathe again. The pain was gray, tough, and impenetrable, the pain was a wall that grew from tragedy, from the meaningless death, for them the greatest tragedy in the world. The wall grew, forcing her and her husband, the parents who had done nothing wrong — their child had been genetically cursed — dividing them forever and bringing silence to them heavier than any cry, sharper than any scream.

As she lowered the cover of the box it seemed to her that the duplication was real — the one that she felt in the shadows of the mirror — stronger than ever before, like Warhol’s pictures of runners on skates with discordant colors and contours. She rose and moved away from the box. She placed a fist in her mouth to swallow up the mute scream that leaped from her stomach: she’d realized that it had been years since she’d visited Mina’s grave. That she had found a solution to pretend that all of this had never happened. That she had cut her ties, as much as she could, with her own parents, with her father-in-law who lived outside the city and whom she hadn’t seen even once since the funeral.

With Aleksandar.

She found him in his study in front of an open laptop.

She approached him silently, walking barefoot on the thick carpet, so that he didn’t have the chance to close the computer screen, to not let her see the photo of a skinny child with a bare scalp covered with blue veins, with big chestnut eyes and an absurdly happy smile, with a beloved pink bunny pressed against her cheek.

When he felt her presence behind him, he quickly reached his hand toward the laptop, as if he was ashamed of looking at that photograph himself, but his hand halted in the air halfway and loosely dropped. When he turned his face toward her, she saw that it was covered with tears. Just like hers.

Without a word, he embraced her and pressed his head into her waist. When his shoulders stopped shaking, she lowered her hand to his forehead, and gently touched him.

How much time has passed since our last embrace? she wondered. How long since we last made love?

She took him by the hand and pulled him slightly toward her. For a moment it seemed that he’d resist, refuse, and return to the solitude of the photograph to which he had condemned himself, but no — he got up, accepted the grip of her hand, and followed her.

When the orgasm came, he seemed at once like a good old friend and someone completely new. And Warhol’s contours and colors seemed as if they had finally merged, made a complete, coherent image.

Now, after so much silence, it was time to talk.

“It all started with the three-dimensional printing of transplant organs,” Aleksandar said. She was silent, pressing her body against his.

“Top-level bioengineering. Saving lives. Help for people sentenced to death from kidney, liver, pancreas failure… Technology is evolving so fast and the results are here. And now this — the quantum leap forward, artificial intelligence and bio reconstruction merging — is fascinating and frightening. Do you know why?”

She shook her head, embracing him tightly.

“Because now we can — without any obstacles — save someone who is close to us, someone we love, as we save images or sounds, to create it again if we lose it, if…” He went silent. It was too hard for him to continue.

She took a sharp breath and whispered, “All you’ve been doing for years — everything you’ve put into the codes and programs… it was all because of her? Because of our little girl?”

For several moments he tried unsuccessfully to find his voice, and then managed to utter without tears, clearly, slowly, quietly, “Yes. But too late. Too late for her. For us.”

She was silent for a while, playing with the hairs on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. “You know,” she finally said, “we could try again.”

He held his breath and turned toward her, looked her in the eye. “Again?”

She leaned on her elbow. Their faces were only an inch apart. “Yes. With a new child. A new baby. It’s not too late.” She smiled briefly, nervously, as he observed her.

“Where did that come from?”

She shrugged. “I think that’s what we need if we want to stay together at all.”

“Would you be willing to go through everything again, everything we went through with Mina?”

She sighed. “It’s different now. Of course, our genetics are the same, and there’s still the risk. But things have changed. You changed them.”

Aleksandar rubbed his eyes and straightened himself against the pillow. He now had a glint in his eyes that she had not seen for years. “Yes… Now it would certainly be different. Lero deserves recognition for this — even though he only wants money, he’s done something revolutionary, something that will change the game from the get-go. Something that’ll make humankind redefine itself.”

She barely heard his last sentence. She felt as if he had punched her in her stomach. The name he’d uttered suddenly opened a new door, a door she hadn’t even known existed.

Lero. Isak. Her husband’s employer. A polite and attentive lover. The man she’d been seeing for three years.

Učiteljsko Naselje.

Let’s call her… Marija 2.0.

I read a little about singularity. It seems to me that no one has figured out whether it’s possible if…

I think we are very, very far from it.

The stream of words. Conversation fragments. Someone heard it, some just reproduced it from her own/others’ memory.

We’ll put her back… We will dissolve her into proteins, water, minerals, everything that makes a human organism.

Mombasa.

Was it just a moment or an eternity? She wasn’t sure how long this blinding white light lasted after the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. She became aware that Aleksandar was squeezing her hands hard, that he was trying to get her attention — to bring her back to reality — his face distorted from care and fear.

“Marija! Marija, what’s going on with you? You turned so pale, like you saw a ghost! Say something! Are you okay? Should I call an ambulance?”

Her eyes regained focus. He saw that she really saw him again and the spasm was passing, though despite her tan she was still white as a ghost. He relaxed the grip on her hands and gently lowered her back to the bed.

“Are you okay?” Aleksandar repeated.

She answered him with a smile that looked more like another spasm as she licked her dry lips. She cleared her throat and peered deeply into his warm, worried eyes. “I have to… I need to tell you something.”

She felt like she was walking on clouds.

She had just spent the most beautiful and happiest fifteen days of her life. The future looked bright and perfect.

They had enjoyed each other, absorbed the scents and tastes of Spain and Portugal, visited museums, indulged in culinary delights, enjoyed the luxury of expensive hotels, and made love — often, relaxed, free of sorrow and guilt. Then, two days before their return, while having a dinner in Nice, Isak told her that he was ready if she wanted to do it.

Marija was enthusiastic. She didn’t say anything to anyone. She only messaged Tamara, hinting that she had great news. When they headed back, Isak flew to Frankfurt for a three-day artificial intelligence conference, and she returned on a direct flight to Belgrade to a new, completely altered reality.

As she drove home from the airport, her telephone rang. When she answered, she saw on the small screen the little rat face of that tiny man in the white coat — the director.

“Mrs. Vranješ?”

“Yes?”

“There have been… ah… some changes.”

“What changes? I don’t understand.”

The director avoided looking her in the eye. “Marija 2.0 didn’t return to the location. We assume there has been some kind of coding error.”

She felt a sudden rage, accompanied by fear. “And now what? Where is she?”

The little man shrugged. “We are not sure. We think she’s in the apartment. In your apartment. The GPS signal from the mobile device that you left for her indicates that she is there. But, of course, she could have left the phone and gone out without it.”

Marija tried to calm down. Where was Aleksandar now? The day before yesterday, Isak had told her offhandedly, as if it were something irrelevant, Aleksandar had asked for — and received — several days off work so he could go visit his sick father. This worked in her favor — he wouldn’t be home when she faced her replacement.

“What are you suggesting?” she asked coldly, and saw from the expression on the director’s face that his whole career was at risk.

“Hmm…” He coughed. “I… I hired an ambulance that belongs to a clinic that is part of Mr. Lero’s holdings. The vehicle will wait with the team discreetly in the side street near your building. If you find Marija 2.0 in the apartment, use the safe word and let me know. The team will get her here right away.”

“And if it’s not there?”

He shrugged again, an apologetic expression on his face. “We’ll wait till she’s back. And in the meantime, we’ll try to locate her some other way.”

Marija hung up without saying goodbye.

Ten minutes later, she unlocked the front door with a spare set of keys, entered the apartment, and put her suitcase down. It was getting dark outside, and the only light in the apartment came from the spacious living room. She paused at the door, looked inside, and saw the floor lamp turned on. And there, on the sofa, was a human form.

When she got up the courage, Marija entered the room and turned on the overhead light. Marija 2.0 turned her face toward her, smiled, and stood up.

“You got a nice tan,” she said. “Much nicer than mine. I suppose everything went well? Was Isak a chivalrous lover, a man who will take care of you?”

Marija gulped, then panicked. This was totally wrong. This shouldn’t be happening. If the programmed return of her artificial copy went wrong — what else could have gone wrong?

“You know,” continued the woman in front of her who was — and was not — her, “Aleksandar and I had a long, long talk.” She smiled, staring into Marija’s eyes. “And we agree on what is to be done.” Marija 2.0 took a step toward her.

“Mom… Mombasa!” she shouted. “Mombasa!”

“You were interested in singularity. I have something to tell you about singularity. But we don’t have time for that.” Marija 2.0’s smile was now wider but didn’t reach the woman’s eyes.

“Mombasa, motherfucker!” Marija yelled. “Momb—” She backed up against something and turned around. Her husband stood right in front of her and smiled, just like the creature she was trying to retreat from.

She felt a sting in her neck and looked at Aleksandar’s hand. She saw a plastic syringe full of clear liquid and a long glittering needle. She lifted her hand toward the spot where he’d injected her and stared at him with disbelief. Then she crashed onto the parquet floor.

The worst of it was that she was aware of everything.

Her eyes were open, she could see, she could hear what was going on, but she couldn’t move or feel anything while they removed her clothes and redressed her. She heard her phone ringing, how Marija 2.0 answered it. “Yes,” she confirmed to the director. “She is here. I used the safe word. You can come for her.”

Aleksandar looked at her for the last time before he left so the members of the director’s team wouldn’t notice him as they were coming out of the apartment. He peered at her with complete indifference, like she was an object, before he disappeared forever from her sight.

She didn’t feel someone else’s hands lifting her onto the hospital bed, but she heard voices that mumbled an apology and greeted her copy. She watched the concrete ceiling of the hallway as they pushed her toward the elevator, then a clear night sky with the reflection of the ambulance’s rotating lights, before the view was replaced by the inside roof of the ambulance. The door closed. Her companions were silent while the vehicle moved with the sound of the siren. She tried to estimate how long it would take until they reached Učiteljsko Naselje, and then she gave up. She wondered how this new her, Marija 2.0, would explain to Isak why she had changed her mind. And what would she tell Tamara and her other friends?

I will disappear and nobody will notice. Because, of course, I will still be here.

At some point, her pupils narrowed in the presence of the glaring light of the laboratory. The director’s face appeared before her.

“Perfectly faithful to the original,” he said with undisguised admiration. Marija heard his words, saw the bright light and his face, but she still couldn’t feel her own body, she couldn’t move, blink, speak.

“Are we following the plan?” someone asked outside of her field of vision, probably one of the technicians.

“Yes,” the director replied. “The object is to be recycled. We’ll look for an error in the software. There is certainly a trace somewhere, something that will indicate the moment when there was a deviation from the programmed behavior.”

“Look,” said a technician, his finger touching her right eye, then immediately removing it, shining with moisture.

“Tears,” the director said. “Unusual.”

While the technician pushed her on the stretcher toward a small room, he closed her eyelids. Now she had only hearing left — the crunch of rubber wheels on the floor, the distant buzzing of the appliances, and the quiet hum of the air conditioners — and smell: a sweaty technician tilted over her, traces of the cigarette she had smoked on the way from the airport, and hints of the heavy, sweet smell of the expensive perfume that she had used that day, spraying it on her neck, behind her ears, on the insides of her wrists. If she could move her facial muscles, she would have smiled ironically to herself.

It was the perfume she hadn’t parted with in more than three years.

Mombasa.

The RAT by Misha Glenny

Dorćol

Miloš calculated that on average, during a six-day week, he was completely bored roughly 61 percent of the time. Eighteen percent of the time, he was able to distract himself by playing Xenonauts 2. He was impressed by the transition from the original Xenonauts which featured 2-D sprites. Although he loved these sprites, like most Xenonauts devotees, he was surprised and genuinely impressed by the transition to 3-D graphics in the updated version.

As long as his boss wasn’t around, he could play. The assistant manager, Jovana, didn’t care, while Bane was so in awe of Miloš that he wouldn’t dare snitch.

The remaining 21 percent of his time was taken up dealing with customers. This being Knez Mihailova, a notable proportion of the customers were well off. Miloš had quickly noticed that there was no apparent correlation between wealth and intelligence. The richer the client, the more they struggled with their smartphones. Almost all had mastered turning the device off and on. Beyond that, most could usually manage phone calls, WhatsApp messages, SMS, and playing music. But even these simple functions still baffled some.

Miloš pondered long and hard as to why people were so stupid, but he struggled to come up with any answer. It didn’t really bother him. Quite the contrary — their incompetence provided him with endless entertainment. Whether selling a new phone or just swapping a SIM card, he had ample time to install the custom malware that he had written which acted as a Remote Access Tool (RAT). The customers, of course, had absolutely no idea what Miloš was up to. Nor did the service providers, nor did Google or Apple, who had created the environment in which Miloš liked to play.

Instead, the customers squealed with delight when Miloš got their shiny new phones up and running and demonstrated how to play Flappy Bird which, again to his surprise, they considered to be some form of achievement (here I differ from Miloš as I believe that Flappy Bird is irritatingly difficult and that Miloš underestimates his facility with this game — of course, by his standards the Flappy Bird trick is indeed unremarkable).

Having safely built his RAT a new lair on the customer’s device, he would stroll back home across Studentski Trg and down Dositijeva before he arrived at his father’s large, ghostly apartment.

Here he would start remotely scanning the contents of his latest victim’s phone. His favorite sport was going through WhatsApp. He had noticed early on that people were invariably less discreet and less inhibited on WhatsApp than they were on their normal messaging apps.

He calculated that 73 percent of users talked with disarming frankness about sex in their exchanges. Roughly 18 percent would regularly send explicit photographs or videos of themselves. These were not always what one might expect. One middle-aged man sent short videos of himself eating breakfast naked. Miloš concluded that the recipient was another man. The morning fare consisted of a bowl of fruit. After the recipient had viewed the video, he would send back one word — the name of a new fruit. And the next morning, the sender would once again sit at his breakfast table, but with the new fruit.

Miloš watched this ritual for about a week before getting witlessly bored. But it did give him a few days of contemplation. Whichever way he considered it, intellectually or emotionally, he simply couldn’t grasp why anyone would derive the least pleasure from this activity, although, he noted, the fruits were ever more exotic, and it had inspired him to track down and sample a passion fruit. Not as easy in Belgrade as you might think, even these days.

Blackmail, threats, and passive aggression were almost ubiquitous on the WhatsApp exchanges. Again, this perplexed Miloš. Why were people so unpleasant to each other? What satisfaction did they derive from this? And did his relative calm mean that he was too ordinary?

In truth, he knew he was far from ordinary, but the vicious and cruel emotional habits of so many humans were still something he could not fathom.

Leaving aside the monstrous intrusion into others’ privacy, his examination of the phones was vital to sustaining Miloš’s good humor. Ever since his mother died when he was fourteen, his emotional life had all but atrophied. His father, whom he suspected of having had a role in his mother’s death, showed no interest in Miloš whatsoever. Recently, Miloš had been researching his father’s past to discover that his rise to wealth and notoriety had coincided with the eleven years of Miloševic’s turbulent reign.

The more he understood his father, the less he liked him. Yet he was entirely dependent on him financially. His father barely exchanged any words with Miloš. But he was generous and did not use money as a tool to blackmail or control his son. There was always food in the house, and on those rare occasions when Miloš asked for something extra, his father gave it to him without hesitation. But in exchange, his father made it clear that he wished to have no relationship with his son beyond this. Miloš was alone.

Miloš sometimes came home to find his father entertaining his rather crude, unpleasant colleagues. There was business in the air, but Miloš didn’t know what, nor did he inquire. Sometimes, instead of a business colleague, the visitor would be an impressionable young woman draping herself around his father. Just as he couldn’t quite understand the stupidity of wealthy people, he was dumbfounded that any woman who was more or less his own age would want to engage in any kind of sexual interaction with his father.

One spring morning, Miloš was at work alone. No colleagues, no customers. He smiled and settled into his chair to explore the Farm in the American Midwest. He had received intelligence that aliens had recently landed. He suspected they may have been preparing for an all-out attack. Again, he was called upon to save the earth from executors of the dreaded Supreme Intergalactic Court.

In the distance, he spotted one and began to creep toward the target with exactly the requisite stealth to ensure that the alien wouldn’t be alerted to his presence. His finger was on the trigger of his laser grenade launcher — the alien perfectly in his sights. Hit this guy and Miloš will have delivered perhaps a fatal blow to the aliens’ tactics of establishing their forward base in North America. But accuracy was everything…

“Good morning.” The interruption caused him to lose his balance. The alien’s head turned. Miloš had no choice but to cut, run, and lose most of the data from the session.

Inside he was seething.

Then he saw the customer. Never had anger dissipated with such rapidity and such sincerity. If this is a dream, Miloš thought, then let me never wake up. Unlike so many young women Miloš had observed, there was nothing artificial about her. No hair dye, no spray-on tan, only the merest hint of makeup, the most discreet jewelry, deep green eyes set in features symmetrical enough to launch a thousand Xenonauts.

Miloš had to close his half-open mouth consciously. It had momentarily suffered an unexpected attack of lockjaw. Pulling himself together, he inquired how he could help her.

As effortless as she was in her appearance, so was she in verbal exchanges. “Why, thank you. I do hope you can sort this out. My iPhone appears to run out of power in less than an hour. Is it time to ask for an upgrade?”

“Normally, madame,” said Miloš before clearing his throat, “I would suggest that you invest in an expensive upgrade. Under pressure from my superiors, you understand. But, in all honesty, you probably only need to replace the battery. It’ll take an hour or so, but once I’ve done it, it should be as good as new.”

“That is so very kind of you,” the woman replied.

“You’re most welcome,” said Miloš with exaggerated politeness.

She pulled the iPhone out of her back pocket, placed it on the desk, and then with those green eyes seizing Miloš’s gaze, she gently waved goodbye. “See you in an hour…”

As he examined her iPhone, unrestrained desire surged through Miloš’s body. The phone requested a code. He tapped in 0000 and the lock screen dissolved to reveal the woman’s secrets. Notwithstanding his sudden infatuation, he muttered his familiar rhetorical question, “Why do they make it so easy?”

That evening, his usual saunter turned into a breathless sprint down Dositijeva. Once home, he kicked off his shoes and walked quickly through the large, empty apartment until he reached his bedroom. He switched on his computer and immediately accessed the phone remotely.

She was twenty-five years old. Along with Serbian, she spoke English, Italian, and German. She traveled a lot but he could find nothing about her employment. He realized that this was her personal phone and she must have used another one for work. Her friends were not just Serbian but from across Europe and the US.

He hesitated before entering WhatsApp but eventually got up enough courage. He knew that this would reveal much about her intimate life. He was torn between his vision of her purity and his barely controllable desire to soak in the imagined reality of her sexual being.

Just as he decided to finally click on the app, an alert flashed on his screen. The remote phone had been attached to another device. Miloš rushed to his laptop and flipped it open before feverishly typing in various commands. Within a minute, he had access to her desktop. Using the RAT, he activated her camera.

Her bedroom was predictably elegant. Minimalist but not austere. Above a luxurious but tasteful sofa, there was a poster of a giant cat smirking and holding a gun. Below this, a small table upon which sat a large metal statuette — a man in a great coat smoking a cigar. Miloš zoomed in. Underneath the bust on a little plinth was the inscription: Comrade Tito. To the left was what looked like a walk-in closet and to the right side of the computer, Miloš assumed there was a door leading out of the room. Against the wall, a large double bed.

Katarina started playing something on her iTunes. Miloš had never heard the song although he identified it as German. So he looked on her computer — Udo Lindenberg, “Unterm Säufermond.” She was lying on her sofa, and as the melancholic sounds floated over her, he focused on those green eyes and realized that she had begun to cry.

He was frozen with a sympathy that he couldn’t articulate. Least of all to her. As the song came to an end, she left the room, returning with a large glass of red wine. Miloš longed to be there to offer her comfort. But, real as this was, it was mediated by virtual deception.

At this point, Katarina started to remove her top. This was too much for Miloš to process and he slammed his computer shut.

Try as he might, Miloš could not keep away from her computer. Each time he watched her undress, he would wait a little longer before slamming down the top of his computer, overcome with guilt and anger at himself. At the same time, he felt betrayed because her WhatsApp messages indicated that she was having an affair. Her lover had yet to pay a visit to her apartment, but Miloš suspected it was only a matter of time.

Xenonauts 2 still provided a healthy distraction. The latest version was proving to be a magnificent challenge. He would play with intense concentration for two hours and then he would return to Katarina. By now, he knew every contour of what he considered her celestial body. Deep inside, his conscience was telling him that what he was doing was infernally immoral. Unfortunately, burning desire could outmaneuver his conscience. When at work, he distracted himself by thinking of ways in which he might approach her, how he might declare his resolute, adamantine, and eternal love. Should he casually bump into her as she was leaving her apartment? But what would he say? Hey, miss, you remember me? I fixed your iPhone. Fancy a drink? Preposterous.

Perhaps he could research fine red wines and present a rare bottle to her as a gift. There was something about this idea that appealed to him. He could get the necessary cash from his father.

But he couldn’t quite complete the plan in his head. How would he actually fashion a situation whereby giving her the bottle of wine would not appear, well, weird? Would he suggest that they drink it together? Or simply walk away with a euphoric smile on his face? These were details he had yet to finalize. But he felt that he had at least a seed of an idea.

Newly inspired, Miloš flipped open the lid of his computer. It was six thirty p.m., around the time that Katarina usually arrived home. He was in luck. The RAT told him her computer was already on. He switched on the camera. Early on, he had programmed the little green light at the top of her Mac only to turn on if she used it. So, as he was watching her, she would be ignorant of his presence.

As soon as the familiar room came up on his screen, he noted that something was odd. Something was distorting the image of the room which was by now seared into the screen of his mind. Then he spotted it. There were two glasses by the now familiar bottle of French wine. Not one.

Miloš’s insides began to churn. He’d known that this moment would come at some point. He’d known he would have to watch his beloved Katarina have sex with somebody else. In his mind, he didn’t reproach her for it. How could she carry any blame? She was unaware of the depth, the sincerity, not to mention the existence of his passion for her. He believed that once their friendship and companionship were established, then the cursory carnal pleasures that her other male friends delivered would disappear into the woods.

Suddenly, Katarina returned, switching off the main bedroom light as she entered before flicking another switch. Her bedside lamp threw but a modest dull circle of light across the left side of her bed. The lamp was beyond Miloš’s field of vision and so it was only the dark shapes of Katarina and her friend that he observed in a state of controlled frenzy as they impatiently removed each other’s clothes. Miloš was close to tears as he watched her being defiled and dishonored. But he could no longer restrain himself and less than a minute into the event, his reluctant excitement was seeping stickily into the keyboard.

He felt transformed into a bottom feeder in an ocean of shame. He had never felt so miserable. He was desperate to slam shut his laptop in order to end the tortured on-screen show and its associated sighs and grunts. But he knew well that this would soak his motherboard with the viscous liquid and render it unusable. All the data of his Xenonauts conquests lay there. So he did the only thing he could: he started to cry before finding some tissues with which he could clean up the mess and turn the machine off.

Over the next few days, Miloš refused to even open his computer. Not only did he stop spying on Katarina, he actually stopped playing Xenonauts. At work, he retreated into his own thoughts. Bane and Jovana tiptoed around him — aware that something was very wrong, but apprehensive about doing anything that might trigger what they suspected was an emotional volcano.

Five days later, Miloš could no longer resist the lure of Xenonauts and so he lifted the lid on his laptop. He stared at the keyboard, the focus of his recent embarrassment. He thought he detected a couple of small stains which he carefully removed with a dab of water on a tissue. Before long, he was back — this time in a new environment that the aliens were seeking to establish as their base in the Middle East.

It was soon after he had stumbled across an oasis south of Mosul that the alert sounded. It was six thirty-five p.m. Katarina had returned home. He froze the Iraqi action and flipped over to her webcam, his heart pounding. Deploying those hawk eyes which had been the downfall of so many aliens, he clocked the two glasses next to the wine.

Jealousy, anger, prurience, desire, tristesse, curiosity. Which impulse would take over? As they vied for his attention, something most unexpected occurred, recalibrating all his emotions into a wave of astonishment. A dinner plate came flying through the door and sailed right across the bedroom before exiting into the bathroom, followed by a loud crash which was efficiently picked up by the microphone on Katarina’s Mac.

Worse followed. Much worse. Miloš heard Katarina scream as she fell back into the room before the man with a swift, expert sleight of hand immobilized her. It reminded him of the Vulcan nerve grip that Mr. Spock was able to deploy so fatally in his close-combat encounters aboard the USS Enterprise. The man squatted over her with his back to Miloš. Having kicked her to ensure she remained on the floor, the man turned to grab Comrade Tito before raising the statuette above his head in preparation to strike.

Miloš was suddenly confronted with a truth that he had always suspected somewhere deep down. The man inflicting the harm, reponsible for the violence, was his father. He looked as indifferent as he did at the breakfast table. A man without humanity who could take a life as nonchalantly as he might sip a whiskey.

Years of Xenonautical strategic thinking kicked in. Miloš called up a GIF of talking lips on a white background and lit up the screen with them. He also filtered his voice through an alien distorter. “Gvero! Your actions are being monitored in real time. Desist now! Failure to do so will result in the Supreme Intergalactic Court ordering your immediate liquidation. The court is already considering its verdict in the case of the death of Dragana Gvero.”

Miloš’s father gaped at the screen — baffled, terrified. He dropped the Comrade Tito statue, which hit the floor with a thud, narrowly missing Katarina, who had also turned her eyes to the screen, as bewildered as her attacker. Without even glancing down at her, Gvero ran out of the room and a moment later Miloš heard what he assumed was the front door open.

The lips continued, “Thank you, Katarina, for your courageous role in ensnaring the defendant.” The lips morphed into a big eye. It winked.

Miloš walked into the kitchen to brew a cup of tea. As he sat back down at his laptop, he thought, How on earth can I follow that? Within three hours, he had cleared the entire Middle East of aliens.

Mission complete.