The Place of Quarantine

Chapter 1

First, a sound is born – as if a copper string is trembling nearby. A tender echo responds at the farthest point of my consciousness, near its borderline. Then comes the notion that out there, beyond this border, is where my cradle once stood. Someone has willed me to abandon it; there is no return.

The sound becomes louder, more distinct, sharper. It contains a myriad of harmonics, each living its own life. Their chorus is unbearable; it grows, it drives me crazy – and suddenly breaks off at full crescendo. Silence reigns, and held within it a memory of the cradle, its final, barely perceptible trace. Its elusive image, the shadow of a strange, very alien yearning. As if someone has exclaimed, “What a pity!” – and then it’s gone, the trace lost amid a multitude of others. The sound of the copper string returns but now it is not so loud and is quite bearable. Contours and lines emerge out of the gray haze like an image on photographic paper. Little by little, they meld into a single whole to form a meaningful picture.

I see my hands resting on my knees, a flight of stairs, a handrail and walls. Beneath me there are more steps; I sit, hunched over, staring at the floor. My mind is empty; all I know is that this is the first time I have been here – on these steps, on this staircase. I sense that I am capable of remembering who I am, but I don’t have the strength. I am happy just sitting like this, doing nothing, not even changing my position. Staring at the concrete stairs and not thinking about anything.

Time passes and suddenly I am aware that I have been idle for too long. Something is urging me from within; “Theo,” I murmur out loud, and I know: this is my name. The sound remains; in search of its source, I look around me. Then I glance up and it becomes clear – there is no taut copper string. It’s all much more trivial: a dingy fluorescent tube hums and crackles over my head. It’ll burn out soon, I note mechanically, and I shudder – somewhere below a door slams.

Immediately, I start to feel extraneous sounds pressing in from all sides. It seems I can hear footsteps, laughter, irritated voices, a child’s wailing. I can hear car horns, screaming sirens, the noises of the city. Roaring waves and howling whirlwinds, the rustle of grass, leaves, paper…

I am anxious; my recent serenity evaporates. The door slams over and over again; I get up and lean over the bannister. There is nothing to see – down below there is only darkness and a flight of stairs disappearing into nowhere. “Mierda,” I whisper, starting back; my head is beginning to spin. It’s already clear I can’t stay here – and cannot afford to lose any more time. I give myself the once-over and see a gray coat, brown pants and a pair of blunt-toed boots. My outfit doesn’t impress me, but I have no choice in the matter. I raise my collar, zip my coat right up to my chin and take a step up the staircase.

Everything goes quiet again, as if on command; all that can be heard is the squeak of the soles of my boots. I climb several floors, each indistinguishable from the last. Every landing has a single bare door with no number or nameplate; there isn’t the slightest murmur coming from behind any of them, only deathly silence. I don’t dare knock, and, moreover, I have no desire to see anyone. I am devoid of any desires whatsoever, but I do have a purpose, although for now it’s unclear even to myself. Landing after landing, I keep climbing. There is a musty smell in the air; the light-gray walls are smooth, with no cracks or graffiti. “There is no life in this building,” I whisper to myself – and then, suddenly, I see the door on the next floor slightly ajar.

At the door stands a woman of about thirty in a blue cotton dress and summer shoes. She has lovely legs and an open, welcoming smile. I freeze in a daze: her presence is unexpected, hardly possible. I have almost become convinced that I’m all alone in this house and in this whole strange world. The woman is entirely real, however. “Welcome,” she says, opening the door a bit wider. Then she introduces herself, “I’m Elsa.” I just look at her, bewildered. Her voice echoes in the emptiness of the stairwell and seems to resonate within me, like the buzzing fluorescent light down below.

Then I realize it’s foolish to just stand there and enter in through the door, squeezing past Elsa on my way. She exudes warmth and a fresh fragrance, resonant of juniper and vanilla. For a brief second, it occurs to me the scent of her sex is probably as sweet as an exotic fruit – and I pass through into the living room and look around. Elsa closes the door, throws the chain and follows behind me.

“This is the living room,” she says. “There’s not much furniture but we don’t need any more – at least to my taste.”

Indeed, there is only a table, some chairs and a large sofa, which looks uncomfortable. There isn’t a single lamp, but soft neutral light streams in from the walls and ceiling. In the far corner is a kitchen with a chrome sink and an electric stove. To the right – a window; I go up to it and look outside. There is a mountainous landscape with pine trees and snow. Something vaguely familiar that pricks my memory.

“Don’t believe what you see,” Elsa says with a snicker. “It’s only an image; there are a lot of different ones. And please, do introduce yourself!”

I turn around – she is standing there with the same welcoming smile. “Sometimes they call me Theo,” I murmur cautiously, intrigued by the sound of my own voice. It sounds familiar; “Yes, Theo,” I repeat and try to grin in reply.

“I’m very pleased!” says Elsa, moving closer. “I’ve been so lonely on my own…”

I notice that when she speaks, her lips morph into an indistinct, blurry O. For some reason this doesn’t surprise me.

“I’ve already been here three days without a roommate,” she adds. “It’s a bit long, don’t you think?”

I simply shrug and look out the window again. A squirrel jumps in the branches of the nearest pine tree, soft snow sparkling in the sun. I don’t think I could imagine anything more real.

“Elsa,” I ask, glancing at the squirrel, “please, explain to me what’s happening. Where am I, what am I and who are you? I can’t remember a thing – was I ill? Have we been abducted and taken prisoner?”

Elsa stands next to me, running her finger along the windowpane. I note that she has finely manicured hands.

“You’re not going to like my answer,” she says, pausing slightly. “And it’s not likely to help – but I frankly don’t know how to say all this. I myself thought they were making fun of me…”

She falls silent, then turns toward me, “Well, for example… Now your head is empty, but perhaps you remember what a guest house is?”

“A house for guests. A house… We are guests…” I repeat after her. “And so what?”

Elsa frowns. “Or, maybe, you remember what a hospital or sanatorium is? Or, perhaps, a colony for plague victims, quarantine…”

As she says all this, she stretches her fingers – first on one hand and then the other.

“Hospital… So that means it’s an illness, right?” I try to look into her eyes. “Or some sort of accident?” Then a shudder runs right through me. “A colony… What is this? An epidemic? Some sort of terrible virus?”

“Oh, fuck…” Elsa says and looks me in the face. Then she throws up her hands, “No, you’d better look at this!” She goes to the kitchen cupboard, opens the door and holds out a laminated printout.

“This was lying on the table when I arrived here three days ago,” she says angrily. “Can you imagine what it was like for me? You remember what the word ‘death’ means, don’t you?”

Yes, for some reason I do remember this word. It evokes a sense of choking, the clang of iron, bad blood. Something that erases all meaning, like a damp sponge on a blackboard. A place where the sound of the copper string is lost and fades.

“The farthest point” rushes into my mind. “A cradle beyond the border…”

“Tantibus, the eternal nightmare,” I mutter, but Elsa shakes her head.

The sign is spelled out in capital letters and no punctuation:

“Nonsense!” I think to myself irritably and read the next lines out loud.

And then:

“There is nothing to fear,” Elsa repeats with a nervous laugh. “Over the last three days I’ve gotten used to the idea. Admittedly, I wasn’t that afraid in my old life either.”

We fall silent for a minute and look at each other. Then Elsa takes a step forward and stands next to me. I can sense her breathing, her warmth.

“You died back there,” she says quietly. “It is better to accept it; there’s no hidden agenda. I know this all sounds crazy but…”

To me, it doesn’t sound like anything. A complete absurdity, the dissonance of harmonics in the unbearably sharp copper sound. And – a premonition waiting nearby.

“In quarantine…” I murmur and move away from the window and Elsa. I sit down on the sofa and rub my temple with the palm of my hand while trying in vain to understand the meaning of the words. Then I say, “Nice joke,” and attempt to crack a smile. But the smile won’t form; my jaw is clamped tight.

Elsa waves her hand in annoyance. “I knew it! I knew I wouldn’t be able to explain it to you. This is no joke – out there you no longer exist. It’s all over – finita, forever, amen. You’ll remember soon enough, trust me. And then all your doubts will vanish away.”

I can feel myself getting cold; I’m shivering. Thousands of thoughts swarm in my head but my memory is empty. No, it’s not quite empty, not quite. Something is stirring within it, some small fragment, a trifle. Something is creeping up on me – gradually, slowly. And suddenly it rolls over me – a nightmare of premonition, an inescapable horror. Choking and chilling me like a huge wave…

I squeeze my eyes shut, maybe I even scream, drowning in an ocean of fear. An image flares up behind my retinas like a magnesium flash: a man on a motorbike in a black jacket with a rider sitting behind him, his face concealed by his helmet. And the dull sheen of steel – a pistol in an outstretched hand… I remember: next there will be a gunshot and instant, terrifying pain. I can sense with every nerve that this really did happen to me. Then something else emerges – a house in an olive grove and a woman in tears; with her is a balding man with a twisted mouth. A wild jungle and a large river. The streets of an old city that I somehow know to be Bern. And then everything fades; not even a hint remains. I am sitting on the couch, my face clasped in my hands, in a strange world that no one can imagine.

Then, little by little, my overwrought mind calms down. Somehow gathering the courage, I pry my eyelids apart. Elsa is standing next to me, looking at me considerately and shaking her head.

“I was exactly the same,” she says. “Also here in the living room, but sitting at the table, not on the couch. My first memory was of a helicopter flying over the sea, and a sudden explosion. Or rather, just the beginning of the explosion, a ball of flame, engulfing me from the right… Yes, it’s not easy to get used to at first. But now do you see that all this – the quarantine – is true?”

“Almost,” I answer curtly. The thought flashes into my head: I should probably do something. Maybe I should jump up, make a break for it, down the stairs and out onto the street? To disprove and expose this deception, if it exists, to simply check it out for myself, without Elsa. Without any laminated printouts or fake landscapes… But no, I don’t have the strength to act or even to contemplate doing so.

Elsa sits next to me, stroking my hand. I can barely feel her touch, but something passes between us all the same, a certain hint of intimacy. For a quarter of an hour we stare at the wall opposite us. Then she says, “Okay. I think you’ll soon get used to it, like I did. You are a man after all; it feels foolish to feel sorry for you. And now…”

Fixing her hair, she gets up and with a gesture invites me to follow her, “Let’s go!”

Obediently, I get up, and we go toward one of the two closed doors. “Here,” says Elsa, “this is your bedroom. I don’t want to leave you, but they warned me to avoid lengthy contact on the first day. So, off you go, stranger… who goes by the name of Theo. Get your head together and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

My head is spinning; flecks of light dance before my eyes. I really want to be left on my own. I nod, open the door and close it firmly behind me.

The bedroom has the same neutral light emanating from the walls and ceiling. To my surprise, it has no bed – only a soft armchair with a coffee table standing in front of it. On the opposite wall is a large screen. My room is more like a small cinema for private viewings than a bedroom.

I go up to the window; it looks out onto a small glade in the middle of a forest. A deer stands next to the trees, sniffing the air keenly. It doesn’t interest me – I recall that it’s only an image. A deceptive image – how many more like it are there?

“How many…” I mutter and suddenly feel an acute yearning for Elsa, from whom I have only been parted for a minute. My loneliness is as immeasurable and overwhelming as my recent fear. As if I’ve been left all alone, face to face with the boundless cosmos, the scale of which cannot be encompassed by human thought. I don’t want to remember, and thinking frightens me; my only wish is to have someone’s presence near – and I am barely able to suppress the urge to return to the living room or maybe even knock on my roommate’s door. Something prompts me not to do this. Having taken a turn around the room, I sit down in the armchair and am just about to close my eyes when the screen flickers to life; a human face appears on it.

I see a high forehead with a small depression in the middle, sharp cheekbones, a tapering chin and sunken, sphinxlike eyes, slightly elevated at the corners. His lips are compressed into a thin line, and his unblinking gaze is directed straight at me. I am certain I have never known this person – no matter how hopeless my memory is.

“I am your friend,” he says crisply and clearly. “Your helper. Or perhaps your mentor or your counselor, your therapist. My title is not important; just take it as read that I am your Nestor.”

He is straitlaced and markedly formal. His lips do not move in sync with his words, but this doesn’t bother me much. Anyway, it’s better than just an indistinct O-shaped mouth.

“You are not obliged to reciprocate my efforts or even my friendship,” he continues, “but you need to know you don’t have many allies – in fact, not more than two. Every quarantiner has his or her own Nestor – and, of course, a roommate in the apartment. The others are unlikely to be inclined to socialize with you.”

“Theo, my name is Theo,” I say, leaning forward. “I’m happy to meet you – and I have lots and lots of questions!”

Somehow, it almost becomes clear: all this, the entire situation, is anything but a prank. Neither a pointless trick nor a joke that has yet to be explained to me. My yearning and loneliness recede; I feel a surge of energy and a feverish desire to get to the bottom of everything at once.

The man on the screen shakes his head. Nevertheless, I continue, “Tell me, is this really death? Because I remember being shot… But what about after death – what is this place? And the main thing: How did I get here?”

Nestor wrinkles his mouth and raises his palm. “No, no, wait,” I say, not wanting to stop. “Can you tell me if anything is real here? Is there at least something tangible, solid and anchored, or is all this just an illusion, worse than a dream? Elsa smells of juniper, but I can’t feel the touch of her hands. The window has an image projected onto it, but what is beyond the window?”

“Here we go again!” Nestor chuckles. “At first, everyone is concerned with the same things – looking out the window or hugging their roommate… The words differ, of course, but the thrust of the questions don’t.”

He glances down for a second – perhaps to look through his papers – and then adds, “Tomorrow you will read our Brochure for new arrivals – as a first step, so to speak. It’s interesting you mentioned your dreams right away; they have a big role to play here. You will soon come to understand: each dream is like a swim in the open sea far from dry land. A journey – through fragments of memories, semibroken pathways and connections.”

“Soon…” I repeat after him and fall silent. The questions that have been bursting to come out suddenly seem superfluous, pointless. A new thought pierces me like the point of a blade.

“Tell me, Nestor…” I begin, then clear my throat and ask cautiously, “Tell me, Nestor, am I immortal?” My voice lets me down; the last word comes out as falsetto.

Nestor raises his eyes toward me. “Are you afraid of immortality?” he enquires curiously. “Or are you already afraid of death again – having barely succeeded in living through it, if you’ll forgive the paradox?”

“But who…” I begin again and fall silent, not knowing how to carry on. My eyes become heavy, my ears start to ring – a long, drawn-out note like the thrum of a copper string.

“In fact,” Nestor says suddenly, “it seems thoroughly unfair to me that you are so lost and confused – although, to be honest, who can one blame for injustice. But we do know that the notion of rebirth with one’s memory and ‘sense of self’ remaining intact should not be an alien concept to you, Theo. You are not a typical case – no ordinary ‘newcomer’ with a file just one page long.”

He looks down at his papers again, then raises his eyes and exclaims, “Just take the quantum field that you predicted! Or the new type of quasiparticle. Or, say, metaspace, which tells us more about you than the entire contents of your file!”

“I can hardly remember a thing,” I murmur as if trying to justify myself. Suddenly and swiftly, I am again completely drained of strength. My thoughts become confused; I feel overwhelmed by drowsiness. With each passing second, it sucks me down deeper and deeper, like a thick, sticky whirlpool.

Nestor waves his hand, “Yes, yes. Your memory will return – that’s what you have been put here for, just like everyone else. This is not a problem; you have no problems at all now. They have been left in the past – but you will have to remember how they started, what caused them and what they became afterward. You will have to recall the sheets of paper covered with symbols, your equations and your theories, and the dance of the conscions… It will all come back to you – but later; that’s enough for today. You have completely exhausted yourself. You need to sleep – for now, without any dreams or visions!”

And with that, the screen switches off and the back of the armchair reclines backward. My eyelids close of their own accord, flashes of color dance in the darkness and words spin in my head whose meaning is not clear to me: “firecrackers, gunpowder, pirates…” Suddenly, symbols flash before my eyes – a fragment of a formula chalked on a blackboard, an integral sign, the Greek letters pi and theta. They are important; they cannot be wiped out easily – neither with a damp sponge nor by any thought of one’s own demise.

There is one other thing that I need to know right away. “Listen, Nestor…” I say with the last of my strength, without opening my eyes. And immediately fall into a deep sleep.

Chapter 2

The next morning, emerging from oblivion, I look around me and take stock. The room has not changed – it still has the same neutral lighting, the screen opposite and the window with its fake landscape. My body is not feeling the effects of my night spent in a semisitting position in an armchair; my head is clear, and my mind seems strong enough. I remember yesterday – the stairwells, the door to the apartment and Elsa’s smile. Then – a motorcycle with two riders, a gun aimed at my chest. New memories also flicker past, one after the other like lightning flashes. Some people, loud laughter – and suddenly, piercingly: anxiety, fear. But not fear for myself.

I screw up my eyes and see a fragile Asian-looking girl with a slight squint and a streak of bright-red hair. Her face moves very close; I rub my eyes with my fists, driving away the tears. “Tina…” I whisper, and I want to scream but somehow restrain myself. I gather my strength and try to think clearly: Tina – I remember we were together, even if only for a little while. I remember I had to save her – but from whom? What kind of danger was she in?… Steam from the pavement, hot, humid air, smoke from braziers and the exhaust of the cars – the smells of a big city seem to tickle my nostrils, but I cannot connect them with anything. I remember only that something was left unfinished – and suddenly a motorbike rider wearing a matte-black helmet fades in again. This is the very last moment before the shot: the realization of the disaster, the acute, instantaneous yearning for Tina, desperation at my own helplessness and… Here the memory fails, the chain is broken. In my head – only the remnants of my voice, “Ti…na.”

I suddenly understand: death is more than an eternal nightmare. More than a damp sponge, erasing all meanings, or the silence of a copper string. Bad blood is not at its core; at its core is the loss of those who are dear to you. Parting – forever? Parting from Tina – and who else?

“Forever…” I say out loud.

For some reason, my voice sounds false, falsehood insinuating its way into the very word itself. I look around me – I am surrounded by falsehood; my thoughts have nothing to cling to. “Where am I?” I ask myself, losing my temper: enough fooling around. It’s time to admit I am evidently the subject of some experiment. What did they give me – a drug, a hallucinogen? It’s a cruel joke – but what’s its purpose? And when am I going to be able to wake up?

Then I hear a cough and reluctantly open my eyes – forcing them apart. The screen on the wall has come alive; Nestor is on it, staring directly at me. “Hope you slept well,” he says. “Your day is going to be quite eventful.”

I peer silently into his face. Like yesterday, there is something about him that tells me things aren’t that simple. All my doubts recede; I’m almost ready to believe that everything is for real. That they’re not playing with me – I have indeed died, but now I am alive again, no matter how wild it sounds…

I would very much like to clear everything up at once, but again, I can’t find the right questions. The silence drags on; I’m painfully lacking for words.

“What is the ‘dance of the conscions’?” I ask finally, but all I get in reply is a condescending grin.

“That you will tell me yourself,” Nestor says. “And fairly soon, I hope.”

I just throw up my hands in dismay. “Although,” he continues, “you mustn’t get ahead of yourself. We have everything you need here for your convenience – providing your expectations of convenience are not unrealistically high. And, most importantly, don’t forget: you have a roommate. A female roommate, if I’m not mistaken; the creation and separation of the two sexes is one of nature’s most ingenious moves!”

“Yes, that may be,” I agree, “but all the same…”

Nestor shrugs his shoulders, looks down, leafs through something and suddenly says, “The session is over.”

“Already?” I ask, surprised, and exclaim, “Hold on, hold on! It’s not my roommate I need right now. You are my helper and I need help: please explain at least something to me, even if briefly… You are my counselor and I need counseling; there’s too much going on that I don’t understand!”

“Counsel is provided according to the schedule,” Nestor grins again, and I sense there is no arguing with him. “According to the schedule,” he repeats with emphasis, “and the schedule states that right now you should be socializing with your roommate. She’s probably waiting – so show a bit more consideration.” And with that, he terminates the conversation without so much as a goodbye.

I continue to look at the blank screen for a minute or two; then I get up and go to the window. Behind it is the same lawn, but now without the deer. With its disappearance, the entire scene looks somehow too static, as if the animation has been turned off.

Opposite the window are sliding doors. This is the entrance to the bathroom, where everything is shiny and clean. I look at the ceramic toilet bowl and shrug in bewilderment. Then I go up to the washstand and turn on the tap – I see that water really does flow from it. I put my hands under the cold stream and splash my face with pleasure for a long time, not worrying about soaking my clothes.

Straightening up, I regard myself in the mirror – my features are familiar to me, although only vaguely. After washing up, I feel my skin tingling slightly, but that soon passes. I touch my forehead and cheeks with my fingers – my sense of touch feels slightly delayed, as if it’s being transmitted via digital protocols. I do not need a towel; there is no trace of the water on me. The floor is also dry – now that is convenient, just as Nestor promised.

“Well,” I say out loud. “There’s nothing else for it. Socialization with my roommate it is then.”

I leave the bathroom, open the door to the living room and immediately see Elsa sitting on the couch.

“Well, about time!” she exclaims. “I was going to knock on your door myself. I’ve been waiting and waiting – and all you can do is sleep. It’s really not much fun being the first to move in!”

Today she is wearing a pants suit, high-heeled shoes and a white blouse. She looks like an advertising executive or a successful insurance agent. I regard myself and frown – yesterday’s clothes look rather forlorn and shabby.

“Good morning,” I greet her. “You’re so beautiful – I’m really impressed. How did you sleep? Do you have your own Nestor?”

“Of course I do,” Elsa replies. “Everyone has a Nestor. He’s such a sweetie, isn’t he?”

She gets up and offers me her hand, “I’m sorry if I sounded reproachful. I’m not angry with you at all. We should avoid quarrels; they’re the last thing we need!”

I think I understand her very well. “Now let me tell you about the apartment,” continues Elsa, “but first let’s play…”

She goes to the kitchen shelves and beckons me over. On the shelves are a lot of utensils – enough for a small family. “A small demonstration,” she says, taking a soup plate and suddenly, without turning around, hurling it at me. My body reacts: one leg bends slightly at the knee, my head feints away from the impact, my shoulders twist and my hands are thrown slightly in front of me. I instinctively take up a fighting stance as the plate whistles past, hits the wall and silently dissolves into it, leaving no trace whatsoever.

“Did you see that?” Elsa shakes her head. “And look at you, ready to spring into action. Relax, we’re not fighting. I’m just showing you how things are here. And here’s another trick – look…”

I grin, relax my muscles and lower my guard while she approaches me, swaying her hips. She comes up close, very close, and then suddenly takes another step, passing right through me. I don’t feel a thing, just a whiff of juniper, and Elsa smiles as if nothing has happened.

“Believe me, I did that very tactfully,” she says. “Out on the street, some people are so rude when they walk through you, the fuckers. Someone did it to me on my very first day, the bitch… Sorry for my language – in fact, I rarely swear. I’m a well-brought-up girl from a decent family.”

“Do you really smell of juniper?” I ask.

“A fake,” she replies with a wave of her hand. “As you see, we are more like phantoms than people with real bodies. You, for instance, have no smell at all. It’s a pity – in my first life everyone remarked on how nice I smelled.”

The careless ease with which my roommate talks about her “first life” grates on me. It seems suspicious… What if she is also a part of this conspiracy, one of those who are against me? I feel my earlier doubts returning but put on a brave face, trying to keep them hidden. Maybe Elsa is just being too lighthearted – and, besides, she’s been here three days already; she’s had some time to get used to it.

Then we find ourselves in the kitchen again; Elsa smiles mysteriously and sends a pile of plates flying onto the floor – with the same effect. “Don’t worry, I’m not a drama queen,” she reassures me. “But it’s not only drama queens who smash the crockery every now and then. Oh, while we’re here, have a look in the refrigerator. Do you like fried eggs? I’ll be fixing you your breakfasts. The ham and eggs here smell like the real thing. And even seem to taste of something!”

We go into my bedroom and head straight to the bathroom. “A fake,” says Elsa, running her hand around. “There’s little point in washing, and you certainly don’t need the toilet bowl. Although I admit, I do love the showers here – you know, the sound of the water and the warmth. It’s so relaxing – a haven of peace. And my bathroom is the color of a translucent wave. The color of a calm, tranquil sea. By the way, are you surprised that the first thing I check in a man’s bedroom is the shower? Ha-ha – only joking. I’m a very good girl!”

Leaving the bathroom, Elsa looks around my room and notes with satisfaction, “It’s just like mine. Here’s the dressing corner,” she leads me to a large full-length mirror. Next to it is a fitted wardrobe. I open the door – it is packed with clothes. Elsa giggles, “I haven’t once succeeded in getting fully naked, can you imagine?” Then she points to the coffee table, “Here’s the console. You can change anything – the wallpaper, the view, the lighting…”

I tap the glass surface. It turns on; it’s touch sensitive. I run my fingers over the buttons – everything works: the curtains move, the walls change colors. There is an indistinct, barely discernible pattern on them – I go up to it and peer at the strokes and swirls.

“Like milk dissolving into coffee,” says Elsa behind me. “Or the traces of the wind on the sand.”

“A fractal…”[1] I mutter, but the word has no meaning to me. “Or maybe the stone garden in Tiahuanaco.”

I am reminded of something, but only dimly. Yet I know: it was quite important! I whisper and listen to its echo: “The comprehension of one’s own mind – links of an endless chain of questions. A strange attractor[2] – a line in multidimensional space – a self-sufficient, self-organizing entity. The fading of consciousness – a broken fractal line. The links become shorter, shorter, but it is nevertheless infinite…”

“What, what?” Elsa asks. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, more or less,” I say pensively. “It’s just that before, it seems, I thought a lot about that – the patterns in a coffee with milk. Never mind; let’s go and have a look at your aquamarine bathroom.”

We inspect her bedroom, which is no different from mine, and then return to the living room and sit down on the sofa. “Now,” says Elsa, “get that stone garden out of your head and concentrate as best you can. This is the instruction manual for life here: they call it ‘the Brochure.’ To be honest, I’ve already shown you the most entertaining things, but my Nestor said it needs to be read. And yours did too, probably.”

In her hands she holds the Brochure, as she called it, a booklet with a black-and-white cover. “Quarantine” is printed in bold in the middle of it. “You must read it all,” Elsa tells me. “You’d be better off doing it here, with me. If you have any questions, I’ll try to explain.”

Clearly, she doesn’t want to be alone – just like me.

I open the booklet. On the first page, in the top-right corner, where an introductory quote would normally be placed, the word “QUARANTINE” appears again, and a little bit lower, “Be grateful!” The text proper begins on the next page. Point number one states, “Everyone should remain in Quarantine until they are fully ready to leave.” And, just below, point two, “Once you have left, there can be no returning to Quarantine. No exceptions.”

“So far it all seems pretty clear to me,” I mutter. “But of course I’m happy to sit here with you. Oh, look, we can take walks outside. Ah, yes, you mentioned some incident on the street…”

Elsa glances over my shoulder. I read on, “To exit the building you must use the private elevator, located inside the apartment next to the front door. Opening the front door is not recommended.”

“You should only go for walks during the daytime. Walking in the dark is not recommended.”

And further:

“Swimming in the sea without a bathing suit is not permitted. No exceptions.”

“So, there’s a sea here?” I ask Elsa.

“Oh, yes,” she replies, “very much so. And it seems very, very real to me. You can see it from the bedroom – here in the living room, there are always just images beyond the window.”

“Let’s look at it now,” I suggest. We go into Elsa’s bedroom. She confidently presses the buttons of her console and nods toward the window, “There you have it…”

Beyond the window is a fabulous ultramarine seascape stretching right out to the horizon, a bright sun and white launches and yachts. Below us is a seafront with a balustrade, full of people. Almost everyone is walking in twos – leisurely and slowly; they’re clearly not in a hurry. We are high up, and I cannot distinguish their faces. A set of concrete stairs leads from the seafront to the rocks near the water. I see several bathers, all dressed in bright yellow. Some are simply lying on the rocks, apparently sunbathing.

“Idyllic,” I grin. “Is it like this every day?”

“Well, no,” Elsa makes a denying gesture. “This is the first time I’ve seen the sun. They seem to be quite capricious about switching on the weather.”

“‘According to the schedule…’” I murmur quietly, but the words don’t register with Elsa. Perhaps her Nestor uses different terms.

“Yesterday there was a strong wind,” she says. “Wind, storm clouds, everything was very dark and gloomy. And the waves – no one dared climb into the water, although it’s probably safe here. I mean with our so-called bodies…”

She is standing right next to me. Obeying a sudden impulse, I try to put my arm around her waist, but my hand hangs in the air – Elsa avoids it, takes a step away and toward the center of the room. “Ice maiden!” I think with irritation. For some reason, there seems to be a catch about this as well, some unnecessary conceit.

Soon after, we return to the living room and sit down on the couch a little apart from each other. “I didn’t like going out alone,” Elsa confides. “Everyone – just everyone! – looks you right in your face; it’s so annoying. I complained to Nestor, but he told me it’s only natural. Everyone’s got the same thing on their mind, he said. They’re looking to meet somebody they knew back there – that’s all they’re concerned about. And for me, it’s not such a big deal. Back there, I wasn’t close to anyone.”

“Close? To anyone?” I repeat and suddenly recall Tina again. Recall the name, a bright-red streak of hair and a sense of anxiety, sucking at me from inside. My roommate notices something, moves away a little and looks at me askance. I remain silent, having nothing to say – and nothing even to think about. The flashback burns and torments me, but no threads reach out from it. My memory is helpless – how long is this going to continue?

I pick up the Brochure again. The next pages contain nothing but an endless disclaimer, informing that the administration is not responsible for anything, from the state of the infrastructure to the quarantiners’ mental health. I skim over the paragraphs of this dry bureaucratic text and have almost decided to skip a few pages when Elsa suddenly jumps up, “Oh! We’re almost late – you’d better skip to the end and read clause seven point one. Or maybe it’s seven point three…”

I read aloud, “Everyone should have two sessions every day with your friend, your mentor, your Nestor at twelve and five precisely, according to the large wall clock.”

Elsa points to the opposite wall. A round clock is hanging there whose hands have already converged on the twelve-hour mark. “We must hurry,” she says, getting up. “Bye-bye.”

“See you later,” I mumble in reply and head toward my bedroom.

Chapter 3

“You are fifteen seconds late,” Nestor says, an acid smile on his face. “This is not acceptable. I would ask you to bear this in mind.”

I try to justify myself, “I have a good reason – I was attempting to make sense of your Brochure. Not very successfully, to be honest.”

“Well,” Nestor scoffs, “that means you’ll have to value my friendship even more!”

Today, he is wearing glasses, which make him look older. For some reason, that seems rather amusing.

“It is not acceptable to be late!” my counselor repeats and then adds, looking down, “However, Theo, you have never excelled when it comes to discipline.”

“It’s probably in my file,” I nod sagely.

“Exactly,” he stresses. “Just bear in mind there’s no escaping your file. Although that’s hardly going to upset you.”

“Interesting,” I narrow my eyes, “and where did my file come from? Did you follow me back there? Do you have agents, observers, spies?”

Nestor snorts sarcastically, “What a conspiracy theorist you are! Someone back there may well have been following you – perhaps some of the women you cheated on or the creditors you deceived – but it has nothing to do with what goes on here. None whatsoever – you’ll be told about this in more detail soon – and the file was compiled during your birth here using special methods that would take too long to explain. There are, you know, algorithms that link together disparate fragments of memories, whirling about in the subconscious from the very first moment of life. We know how to deal with the subconscious and the fragments of it too, but, fragments or no fragments, it’s the whole, the entire thing that is most interesting to us – everything that has been accumulated in your earthly brain. It is inaccessible to us and, for the time being, to you too. The memory restores itself gradually – in fact, this is the main reason you are here. You will need to work on it – fortunately, you know how to work hard, Theo. And you have an assistant – in me. And your roommate. And your dreams.”

He raises his finger significantly, intending to add something, but I interrupt him, “Just a minute! Please, Nestor, could you check my file again and read to me all the fragments, as you put it, about Tina, a girl who looks a bit like a teenager. She is twenty-three, she has a slight squint and a red tress of hair. I promise I will work hard – but I need a prompt, at least a hint!”

Nestor shrugs his shoulders, “I’ve already told you, everything must be done according to the schedule.” Then he glances up at me and unexpectedly agrees, “Well, all right. As an exception, just this once. In your file…” He looks down, leafs through something and declares, “There is nothing in your file about a girl called Tina with a red tress in her hair. At least not in the part that I have access to: not a thing!”

“Do you mean to say, there are other parts?” I ask, leaning forward. “They need to be found, a request sent – how is that done here?”

“It can’t be done at all,” says Nestor in a bored voice. “I have already told you everything I can. You need to work on your memory – and, right now, please get yourself comfortable; you have a lot to take in. You look better today; it’s time to systematize your picture of the world. To orient you, so to speak, in time and space. As they say here, to define a place – a place for everything. And so, you were born…”

I make an angry gesture but understand there is no point in arguing with him.

“You were born on a three-dimensional brane,[3] when it was in the middle of its cycle,” Nestor’s voice is impassive, level. “In your time, it was generally referred to as the ‘Universe,’ and this represented outer space in all its entirety. Or at least, this was the commonly held view – you, Theo, and certain others tested it out for yourselves. Fortunately, your critics proved to be deeply wrong…”

Nestor pauses and says, “Yes. We are discussing cosmological issues but, at the same time, considering you personally. To a surprising degree, the milestones of your career correspond to the chronology of your brane. But first – a little about the world as a whole, as we understand it here!”

“Here is…” I butt in.

Nestor stops me by raising the palm of his hand, “Just listen, listen,” and continues in his monotone voice, “in actual fact, there can be an infinite number of branes, but it is unlikely we will be able to verify this. Our knowledge is limited to two: the first, on which you were born, and the second on which you and I are now situated. The space itself, in which localized branes are floating, has apparently always existed – or at least for a very long time. Branes are born and die independently of each other, passing through cycles – let’s tentatively call them expansions and compressions. During each cycle there is a period of time known as the ‘window for life’: on your brane it was composed of – or to this day continues to be composed of – several billion of your planetary years. We know of only one place where intelligent life has developed to a significant level – your planet on which your mind, Theo, and the minds of many of those with whom you will meet in the new world were formed.”

“And what about yours?” I raise my eyebrows inquiringly.

“We’re not going to talk about me today,” Nestor replies dryly. “Now listen and don’t interrupt!

“A couple of words about space itself – it, by the way, has been given different names,” he continues. “Just basic ‘space,’ or ‘metaspace,’ as you used to sometimes call it, or even ‘metabrane’ – meaning that it’s possibly embedded into some more global structure. The latter seems an unjustified complication to me, but the term has caught on, and we may as well use it too. At least two fundamental fields – gravity and the field of the conscions – are global: their particles can travel from one individual brane to another. It is the existence of these forces, gravitational primarily, that is responsible for the unexplained cosmological phenomena noted in your time. And I stress: there are grounds to surmise that it is specifically the metabrane, and the metabrane alone, that emits the conscions predicted by you. This is important – very, very important!

“Very important,” Nestor repeats, moving his lips strangely. “But let us go further: unfortunately, we don’t have any control over the global fields. We can’t send information to other branes; we cannot create messages to our former lives – or our next ones if they exist. We don’t know whether your descendants are trying to contact us or not. It appears to be fundamentally prohibited: the metaspace is a strict censor of the trajectories along which the interbrane particles can move. There is only a limited set of possible directions of movement and there is global time – you cannot argue with it, and you can’t turn it back. It’s impossible to estimate the size of the whole of space, and we have only fragmentary ideas about its geometry – although we have managed to achieve something there. The main thing we do know is its variability: at any scale, the curvature of the global space changes constantly and with considerable amplitude. This, naturally, is reflected somehow onto the local universes, on their structure and properties – and onto their intelligent life: if it exists, of course. We can say that all of us, indirectly or directly, depend on the geometric quirks of the metabrane, but we will discuss the details of this dependence later. For now, we need only note that it borders directly on any of the points of all the local worlds. From the inside, your universe seemed like a large sphere or perhaps something torus shaped, but, from a global point of view, it is more like a long thread packed into a tangled ball or another complex but compact structure. Local branes seem to float in space, like balls of yarn in an ocean: throw a ball into the water, and every facet of it will become wet. They themselves might appear very distant from each other, looking from the inside, but still might be extremely close – imagine a tangled ball made up of a multitude of different-colored threads. You can move along one of the threads for a billion years not knowing there are others nearby – although, to be fair, there is no way to jump from one to another nonetheless… All in all, you need to remember: in the models of the world, different forms and structures are possible, but the metabrane is always nearby, and this, as you will later understand, is our greatest blessing!”

“Can I ask something?” I raise my hand like a schoolkid.

“Why?” says Nestor in surprise. “You’re not going to ask anything meaningful for the moment.” And he continues, “Now, each localized brane has its own physics with its values of universal constants, but some global laws remain true always and everywhere. Also, each brane has its own causality and independent time flow – that’s why, for example, here in the second life, individuals coexist whose earthly lifespan belonged to different centuries. However, no great temporal divergences have been observed – no one knows why. We cannot say when – on ‘our’ timescale – ‘your’ brane existed and images of individual human consciousness known as ‘B Objects’ were created. We also don’t know whether your brane and your civilization still exist. At least for now, none of the new arrivals have informed us of any threatening catastrophe or the like. It’s worth noting, by the way, that only human memories can help us to know anything about the first, terrestrial life. Naturally, no material entities of one brane can be accessed from any other – information can only be exchanged via B Objects. Fortunately, for many, memory is recovered almost completely, which applies to scientists as well – you can imagine how passionately they have been revising every single concept since arriving in this new world. You too, Theo, will have a contribution to make, and I must say, there are people who have been waiting impatiently for you here. Everyone believes you are the pioneer who connected consciousness with energy-matter and determined its place in the structure of space. Every physicist who lived there after you, but arrived here earlier, knows your work and that famous article of yours – and moreover, you vanished right after its appearance: intriguing, isn’t it? But even if we leave all these intrigues aside, the theory of the conscions, as we see it here, contains a number of blank spaces. You, Theo, have to help fill them in – now, once you have joined our ranks, so to speak. Fill them in – and take it further; there is no end of the work to be done. Of course, it is no easy matter restoring such a complex theory from a large number of people’s memories without its original source. The information has been collected painfully, bit by bit, and then, as luck would have it: you arrived in person. Sorry, I got carried away – of course, no one here wished for your death…”

He says all this without a pause, like a much-repeated official text – as if reading me my Miranda rights, “You have the right to remain silent…” Conscions… the word imprints itself in my brain. I know, many things were linked to it. More than Tina? It’s quite possible. What was the formula that came into my head just before I fell asleep? Hamiltonian?[4] An action integral?…

“Let’s go back to your particular brane – and take your particular life as a point of reference,” Nestor continues, looking a little sideways. “Fourteen billion earth years before your appearance on it, your brane began to expand. This is important in itself, but we also note one more peculiarity that cannot be avoided, speaking specifically about you. It was the first and most vivid occurrence of a phenomenon that you have dedicated your whole life to. I’m even a little envious: you will soon remember everything, and much of it is beautiful, harmonious, stunning. It is – here’s a clue for you – symmetrical, up to a certain point, of course. But you, Theo, are not one of those people who just admire beauty. You need to dissect it, to understand what underpins it. And in that, we have to acknowledge, you made quite a step forward!”

His voice finally betrays a flicker of emotion. Nestor transfers his gaze toward me, adjusts his glasses and nods encouragingly. His appearance changes imperceptibly; nearly all his official formality has slipped. He now looks at me as an accomplice, a partner in crime. He even seems to squint slyly and says, “Imagine a pencil standing vertically on its point – does this remind you of anything? Imagine a sphere in the center of the convex bottom of a bottle – does this image jog your memory? When it comes to symmetry, there’s only one thing you were interested in – the moment of its destruction. The end point, the instant of breakdown, the step toward imperfection. The pencil only needs to deviate by a micron and it will never be able to return to verticality – no, it will fall with a loud clatter, frightening your fellow library users. You might even be asked to leave the room – you have modeled a cataclysm, a catastrophe! The moment at which symmetry is destroyed is the transition from the improbable to the probable, from the exceptional to the commonplace, from incarceration to freedom. And there is always a price to be paid for this – the release of energy!

“Yes,” he continues, after a pause, “a huge surge, incredible power. It’s the power of geometry – it is more implacable than any other force. Back then, fourteen billion years ago, your infant cosmos was symmetrical to the uttermost limit. It existed in the form of an incredibly complex figure, intertwined in a multitude of dimensions. To create this tangled ball required all the energy of the previous brane, which had disappeared, collapsing into itself. At maximum compression, space took on an ideal shape, turning into a tiny grain of unimaginable density and temperature. This was the limit of perfection – and its life, like the life of any ideal, was utterly short. The tension of all the tangles was so great that with the first quantum of a flaw, the tiniest fluctuation, like the flicker of doubt or a reproving glance, the irreversible happened. The pencil deviated and nothing could hold it back. The fabric of space burst at the seams with a deafening crash. Part of it rolled up again – into a narrow tube – and it remained like that forever, while another began to expand at an absolutely insane speed – along its length, width and depth. Your brane was distinguished by a huge and random stroke of luck – it turned out to be three-dimensional.”

“Chance… Protein structures… Life…” I murmur quietly. Something stirs in my memory, certain equations, diagrams.

“Exactly!” Nestor exclaims, smirking – he is happy for me. Like a kindergarten teacher for her infant pupil first composing the word “Mom” from plastic letters. “It was pure chance,” he continues, “and for some, including you, Theo, three-dimensionality also became a guiding light, a shining path in the darkness, drawing you ever onward toward distant horizons. You will soon remember your childhood, your school and the lessons in the physics lab you attended with such diligence. You were a typical teenager, with a fondness for masturbation, who would listen spellbound to his teacher – a sullen man with greasy hair and a humped back. Women would give him a wide berth, and he was probably also prone to pleasuring himself, but it was not this that connected the two of you. He planted a spark in you, speaking with a fervent passion about the three dimensions of your universe as a necessary condition for the existence of life. You imagined from his stories and naive formulas on the school blackboard how in a four-dimensional cosmos, everything would fall on top of each other – planets onto stars, electrons onto atoms – while, in contrast, in a two-dimensional one, everything would inevitably fly off in all directions, without ever stopping. Only in three dimensions could life be possible – and, like your physics teacher, you were struck by the fortuitousness of nature’s choice. His words about ‘the hand of the Creator’ remained lodged in your heart forever. Then, when you got older, you began to look for the places where fortuitousness might be hiding and realized that traces of chance were always concealed in the events described as “symmetry breaking” – the disappearance of some of the universe’s symmetries. And that’s how you proceeded: first, there were quarks,[5] then bosons[6] – the bearers of the fundamental forces, then later – the quantum fields in the brain, the condensation of your specific quasiparticles, and finally – the conscions, their vortices and the ‘recording’ of our memory on the metabrane. Which is why, both in Quarantine and outside it, you are a bit of a celebrity. But we are talking too much about you; let’s get back to the chronological order of events…”

Nestor looks down again – at my file no doubt. Then he raises his eyes and continues, “So. Fourteen billion years ago, your brane, having become three-dimensional, swelled into a huge bubble, on which seas of the smallest building blocks of matter were boiling, emerging and immediately destroying each other. At that time, once again, imperfection made itself felt: all the births and annihilations didn’t add up, like cards in the hands of a card sharp. Some of the quarks remained intact; they happened to outnumber the antiquarks – one part in every billion. Not much, it would seem, but this was enough – and this asymmetry determined your fate, Theo. Not only did it allow for the creation of everything material, but it also enthralled you as a researcher. It was the predominance of matter over antimatter that became your first obsession!”

In the upper-right corner of the screen, a figure appears consisting of three different colored circles connected by wavy lines. Below the figure is a table filled with numbers.

“A unitary mixing matrix,” I mutter.

“Yes, yes,” Nestor nods at me, “It’s something one never forgets,” and then he produces a very strange sound. I don’t realize it at first, but this is the sound of him laughing.

“I’m joking,” he says. “But you were in no mood for jokes. You’d really sunk your teeth into the properties of the earliest matter that emerged in the first few moments after the beginning of the universe. Try to remember: quarks, which had only a fleeting existence, formed protons, surprisingly stable units – no longer just toy bricks, but real building blocks, the most reliable construction material. Other hadrons[7] were also created along with their mirrorlike antipodes; they all boiled together in a sizzling hot cauldron, colliding with and destroying each other and emitting new particles, more and more of them. The gigantic particle zoo was populated by its inhabitants. Everything was born of nothing – which is an exquisite, incredible notion, but there is something else we must not forget. In that hot, turbulent time, another perfection was destroyed. The forces of nature separated from each other – and that diversified your career, Theo! At first, gravity fell away; then, almost immediately, the force glueing together the atomic nuclei began to obey its own special laws – although there were no nuclei yet. And then, once matter had already become abundant, the final separation of influences occurred. All known electromagnetism detached itself from weak interactions – and this was the event of all events. In addition to the separation of fundamental forces, it led to a phase transition: matter gained mass. And you, Theo, earned a bit of a reputation, and we have to admit not the finest either!”

Nestor’s eyes narrow, “Yes, yes, don’t look at me so innocently.” Then, once again, I hear him produce a strange sound – his version of laughter. Having calmed down, he becomes serious and says, “Concentrate, this is important” – and again looks somewhere to the side. The figure with the circles disappears from the screen, and a diagram consisting of spirals and arrows emerges.

“This was a beautiful hypothesis,” says Nestor, nodding to himself. “A viscous field, in which the scattering particles are slowed down, and its agents, the Higgs bosons,[8] the evasive carriers of new properties. A great many people rushed to study the mysterious boson, which lives for such a short time that it can’t be seen directly. As with any hunt, the main thrill lay in capturing it – the finest minds struggled, searching for ways to detect the traces of its collapse in detectors the size of a multistory building. As a talented specialist, you were invited to a laboratory with access to the latest collider – a dream come true for any theoretical physicist at that time. Your team was considered one of the favorites in the race, and your colleagues spared no effort. Only you, Theo, threw in your hand – quickly stating that you weren’t interested and wanted to leave. You preferred – surprise, surprise – the freedom of alternative models and your own fields and particles. Your colleagues considered you a traitor – what else could they have thought, engaged in an unforgiving scientific race as they were? In the middle of a contest for professorships, grants and, at the end of the day, Nobel prizes.”

Nestor falls silent and fixes me with a look. I feel uncomfortable under his gaze. “However, I understand what repelled you,” he continues. “Perhaps, the populist press was to blame – for sensationalizing the hunt to such an obscene degree. They indulged the masses and reduced everything down to the shameful label of ‘God’s particle’ – probably, for you, that was the last straw. As far as I can judge, you surmised that God could have as many favorite particles as he wanted. You were not interested in his toys; you were looking for a gesture, a trace of an intervention made by a higher will in the ‘magic tricks’ of the universe. Perhaps the three-dimensionality and the quarks that had managed to survive annihilation had not yet left your head. You remembered them for a long time, Theo – you are probably the sort of person who never forgets a grudge!”

“Is that stated in my file too?” I say curiously.

“No,” Nestor admits, “but don’t think all I can do is read what has been written down by others. I may not have discovered new fields like you, but I am capable of putting two and two together and drawing certain conclusions too. Of course, you aren’t obliged to agree with me…”

He snorts, feigning indifference, but I can see he feels offended. Here is a character – with no small ego – but quarreling with him will get me nowhere. “Forget it,” I say in a conciliatory manner, “That’s not what I was implying. And, moreover, I don’t remember anything about the new fields.”

“You will,” Nestor declares. “You will remember – the fields and how you were torn to pieces over some of them. For the time being, I will only note that despite your obstinacy, you gained a lot from that ‘separation story.’ I mean the actual separation of the fundamental forces – you worked on its secrets very hard. Was it not this that later helped you describe the activation of true consciousness? The immature brain as an unstable vacuum – I think the analogy is fairly transparent. And in general, it was very useful for you to look at the spontaneous symmetry breaking from various different angles…”

A new figure appears on the screen – it resembles a sombrero – with two equations next to it. I take them in with a single glance and a presentiment of recognition, recalling the words, one by one.

Nestor, meanwhile, waxes lyrical – on the harmony of proportion and form, on the symmetry of properties and of the laws of physics. He is most eloquent, but I barely hear a word he says. I look at the screen and tormentedly, intensely try to remember.

My thoughts marshal themselves into formations and lines; they begin to obey me. “Goldstone’s potential!” I exclaim. In my excitement, my mouth goes dry. I cough and continue, “The simplest scalar approximation…” – but here Nestor makes a sign, and the figure disappears.

“Okay, okay,” he waves his hand. “Let’s not concentrate on your past misfortunes…”

“Just a minute, put it back up!” I almost cry. “I need it, I’ve finally remembered…”

“The session is over,” says Nestor with a shrug. “We’ll be seeing each other in a few hours.”

And with that, the screen goes blank. Here in Quarantine, they’re obviously not into long farewells.

Chapter 4

I am half sitting, half lying in my armchair, looking at the wall opposite and thinking over what I’ve heard. Nestor’s bluntness rankles; I swear at him under my breath, quite colorfully – realizing nevertheless that I can do nothing to change his manner. Recollections emerge and fade; my memory is readying itself for a huge leap. Fragments of formulas flash through my head – teasing, dissolving before I can catch their meaning. A long Lagrangian[9] emerges with a complex sum in square brackets, followed by an equation, which makes me uneasy. On the right-hand side is the already familiar integral; there is clearly something wrong with its upper limit… It’s difficult to keep everything in my mind – I need to write it down, to reflect!

Breathing out sharply, I get up, again amazed at the obedience of my unreal body, and carry out a thorough examination of the bedroom. I go up to one wall, then another, tapping and probing; I kneel down, I run my fingers along the surface of the floor and look into the corners. Then I crumple the thick curtains in my hand, its fibers tickling my skin. The material is strange but quite real and doesn’t appear to be fake. The room is not completely sterile – I find specks of dust, fragments of a pencil and some other detritus. It has all the hallmarks of a place that has been abandoned by its previous occupant. One could make it cozy again, get accustomed to it, domesticate its walls and its contents… I examine my hand, tapping the windowsill with my palm and then try to pinch myself, to scratch my skin with my fingernail. Yes, I feel pain, but I can’t decide whether it’s real or not. It seems my nerve impulses are being generated sparingly, just enough to register the sensation but not to convey it in its entirety.

Regardless, I continue my search. Nothing new is revealed – no secret doors or cubbyholes behind the mirror, no false compartments in the back of the chair. Then I open the wardrobe, push the clothes to one side, inspecting each shelf, and here I get lucky. In the lower-left corner, I discover a compartment full of diverse items, among which are two notepads and a set of pens. This is an important find – I have a strange feeling that I’ve almost wished them into existence, but I decide not to think about this yet. Slamming the wardrobe, I sit down at the table and try to record at least something of the fragments flickering in my head. I have a little success – just a few symbols and a summation sigma. The subintegral function has completely gone, and the Greek theta sign – I now know it stands for some angle – leans sideways on its own. “Mierda, bloody Nestor,” I mutter. No one can hear me. After sitting for another ten minutes, I draw a female silhouette and write underneath it, “Tina.” Then I scribble right next to it, “Elsa,” and drum my fingers on the table…

The inset touchpad suddenly comes alive; squares and arrows appear. It’s a plan of the room with a large menu above it. I jab at random – the curtains on the window draw to a close, and twilight sets in. “Hmm,” I say thoughtfully and have a more serious crack at working out the buttons.

The control panel is quite confusing; some of the commands remain unclear. Nevertheless, I get the hang of most – I learn how to change the view outside the window, the color and translucence of the curtains, the room temperature and humidity. I discover the music console and spend a long time going through the tracks and styles. Then I experiment with the patterns on the wallpaper, which all remind me of the same thing – hazy milk spirals in a coffee cup. It’s evidently a hint; I think about it, then try to draw something distantly familiar – swirls of hoarfrost or a perfectly formed snowflake – but to no avail. In irritation, I turn the walls a smooth light-orange color, switch off the music and get up – suddenly feeling an urge to see Elsa.

My roommate is sitting on the sofa in the living room – embroidering something on a piece of light-colored fabric. She has clearly also found something in her wardrobe that takes her fancy.

“Hello, hermit! What were you two discussing for so long?” Elsa exclaims, pretending to be angry, but I know she is glad to see me. She looks good in a mustard-colored skirt and a gray sweater, an amber necklace around her neck and a bracelet of the same kind on her wrist.

I walk over and sit down next to her. Elsa immediately pulls back a little – ice maiden! She smiles at me – cordially, politely, but somehow detachedly – and says, “This is going to be our tablecloth. I like things to have a personal touch.” She puts her embroidery down on the couch between us and looks at me inquiringly, “Well, how are you? Coping okay? How’s your memory?”

I admit that I have nothing to boast about.

Elsa tries to reassure me, “Don’t worry. It’ll come – I was the same; at first I couldn’t remember anything except for that helicopter and the granite cliffs below it. And then in an instant: the explosion, the ball of flame… It’s good it happened so fast – I didn’t even have time to be scared. And twenty-four hours later, I couldn’t stop remembering – both in my dreams and sitting right here. The resort where I was staying, my neighbors from the same building… They organized this helicopter ride over the mountains and dragged me along with them, assholes… And then everything else came rushing back: my childhood, my youth. I would go up to the window and see images – not the projected ones but things that had happened in my past. Nestor helped too, of course – he is such a kind, attentive man. You know, a man of his word!”

I give her a sidelong glance, feeling annoyed – surely it can’t be jealousy? I turn away, angry at myself, and ask with a studied indifference, “Have you asked him to explain what Quarantine is? For some reason, my counselor-friend isn’t inclined to expand on the subject.”

“Yes, he mentioned something,” Elsa shrugs. “Something about an anabiosis, an illusion… A mass illusion – sounds credible. It’s fairly easy to believe.”

“Easy…” I say, pondering. “And what about the structure of the world? Individual universes, each with its own physics? The metabrane that is always nearby.”

Elsa grimaces, “What, what? No, nothing like that. My Nestor is too tactful; he wouldn’t try to confuse me. And he cares about me – he chooses my dreams for me. I write everything in a diary – do you keep a diary? You should start; it’s a good habit!”

“Another counselor…” I think to myself and try to make a joke about it, “I tried drawing a fractal instead. It didn’t go well though.”

Elsa waves her hand, “Don’t get smart; I don’t know what that word means. Have you noticed by the way that we’re speaking the same language? But we can’t read the phrases on each other’s lips…”

Another thought enters my head. I go to my room, pick up the notebook and pencil, go back to the living room and gesture Elsa over to the table.

“Here, look,” I draw a ball of yarn. “Imagine that it consists of a multitude of threads. Now visualize it floating in the ocean, every facet of it surrounded by water…”

I somewhat excitedly retell her everything Nestor has told me about the structure of space, but Elsa doesn’t appear touched in the slightest. She patiently listens, suppressing a yawn, then, without uttering a word, returns to the sofa, to her embroidery. Even if she is not real, there’s still something imperfect about her. An unevenness in the way she distances herself.

“Well, all right then,” I say and begin to examine the room. For a quarter of an hour, I investigate every corner and feel all the surfaces, like I did in my bedroom. This elicits some interest from Elsa – she watches me for a while and then says with a laugh, “Sherlock! Yes, I also found traces of dust but, on the whole, they do the cleaning quite well here. No worse than I would have done myself.”

“Cleaning?” I ask, surprised.

“Yeah,” Elsa replies and explains patiently, “There’s got to be a maid, right? She must come in when we’re asleep or go out for a walk – like a magic fairy.”

I’m a little irritated; she seems to be teasing me. “A fairy…” I mutter angrily. “What nonsense!” Then I go up to the couch and sit on the floor in front of her. Elsa continues to sew without looking at me.

“Listen!” I say. “Can you give me a serious answer? What do you think about all this – the other life, Quarantine? What have you managed to work out these last three days – I’m sure you’ve been thinking about it nonstop.”

Elsa snorts, “There’s no need to be rude.” Then she puts her embroidery aside, rests her hands on her knees and says, glancing down at me, “Not quite. I have thought about it, but only a little – because I’ve been trying my best not to think. To, you know, not lose my mind – you should try sitting here all on your own!”

I don’t say anything, just look away. Elsa continues, “When I woke up and went to the apartment, I sat on the sofa for almost half a day with an empty head waiting for something to happen. As if I’d woken up after a very deep sleep and for a while couldn’t find a way back to reality. Then, little by little, I began to ask myself questions and provide answers to them. “Where am I? – I don’t know. Am I ill? Apparently not. Was I asleep? Apparently yes, but I don’t remember where… Only after I’d convinced myself I was capable of thinking straight, I got up, had a look around, found that laminated printout and remembered about the helicopter. And then I spoke to Nestor – he calmed me down.”

“Do you believe in all this?” I ask, sharply sensing the irrelevance of the question.

“Do I have a choice?” Elsa sniffs. “Of course, I felt uncertain to start off – suspecting someone had drugged me and was playing games with me. Or that I was in a coma, and everything around me was a hallucination. But Nestor somehow convinced me…

“By the way,” she lowers her voice. “Initially, I thought I was being observed the whole time – by secret cameras, like in a reality show. I tried to be reserved and withdrawn and not betray any emotions – but then I got bored. Now I don’t think about it at all.”

“‘To die would be an awfully big adventure,’” I murmur. “I’m sure I’ve read that somewhere.”

“Yes, yes,” Elsa nods. “I’ve also read it. And so I decided: since it’s already happened, all I can do is just see how things turn out. If not in the second life itself – which I still assumed might be a joke – then at least in this specific place, in Quarantine. After all, some events take place here as well: there are the conversations with Nestor, changes in the weather – and I was also waiting for my roommate to arrive. It’ll be interesting, I thought; who will he turn out to be? Poor thing – he’s got such a shock waiting for him…”

She picks up the tablecloth again, spreads it on her knees and examines the embroidery critically. Stitched onto it is the word “Good,” with the final letter slightly higher than the others.

“It’s not straight,” Elsa acknowledges, “but that makes it even funnier. Let it remain like that – in a kind of semicircle.”

I get up and walk around the living room. Her lightheartedness still rankles me slightly – or maybe I’m just a little envious?

“It’s remarkable,” I say, stopping next to the window. “You immediately take everything as a given and endow it with rational meaning. Do you have any doubts, ever?”

“Oh, yes,” Elsa looks mockingly. “Torturing yourself with doubts is so typical of you men! Be thankful that I’m not some crazy neurotic. I could be acting quite differently – I can just imagine how my mother would have been in my place! She would have given everyone in Quarantine a hard time – telling them how to behave and what they need to do. Nestor’s nerves would be in shreds by now…”

She gets up and beckons me over, “Let’s try it out.”

We go up to the table. Elsa spreads the tablecloth, then straightens it and nods contentedly, “It’s just right. What do you think – it’s not too small, is it?”

“Just right,” I assure her and ask, “Did you have a husband back there before the helicopter crash?”

Elsa shakes her head, “No. At least, I don’t remember a husband. As I said, I didn’t have anyone close to me – blood relatives don’t count. It’s a good thing I died young: when you get older, only those close to you can still really love you. They could have never appeared in my life, but a time when it’d be impossible to love me would have been inevitable. It would have been a very sad life!”

Leaning over, she scrutinizes her embroidery. I ask her what the entire inscription is going to be. Elsa giggles, “I’ll tell you if you want. I remembered it this morning – it’s a funny story…”

She straightens the tablecloth again and continues, “I was only a child when I heard for the first time that I might go to heaven… By the way, my Nestor mentioned today that this, in a sense, is true. Or at least a rough approximation of it, he said – okay, I know myself that that isn’t completely so. But the main thing has been proven: after the helicopter crash and the explosion, I’m sitting here and talking to you, and I even understand who I am.”

“It seems your Nestor is a lot nicer than mine,” I grin, but Elsa interrupts me, “Look. Later on, the other words will go here and here…”

I examine the tablecloth and even trace it with my fingers. Then I turn toward the window – there are cliffs behind it. Huge outcrops of rock with sharp edges. Perhaps, they are similar to the ones below Elsa’s helicopter when her first life came to an untimely end. My memory is still bad – I can’t produce a single coherent recollection. If, of course, you don’t count the Lagrangian, which is perfectly self-sufficient in its own right.

“It happened in my early teens,” says Elsa, sitting down again on the couch. “I was feckless and pretty stupid and didn’t know who and what to believe. And then my older sister came back for the holidays from her college and brought me a T-shirt that said: Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go to LA. It changed my life completely!

“Yes, it really did!” she exclaims, spreading the embroidery on her knees. “It sounds strange, but it’s true. What I mean is, I suddenly understood that I had a chance – of really getting there. The chance, when offered, is always very important. I even said as much to Nancy – that’s my sister’s name – but she just laughed and said I was an idiot. Actually, she laughed at me all the way through my childhood – because she was taller and prettier, and all the guys would just ogle at her legs.”

“Your legs are very beautiful, Elsa,” I tell her quite sincerely. “They were the first thing I seriously took notice of in this new life.”

“Ah, come on,” she says, embarrassed a bit, but I can see she is secretly pleased. “Well, as a matter of fact, you aren’t so bad yourself; you have nice shoulders and a strong forehead, and cheekbones… None of my men were like you – that is, none of the ones I can remember. I didn’t have many men, to tell the truth – mostly because of that T-shirt.

“The thing is,” Elsa continues, threading her needle, “I wanted to go to heaven very much. I like to take care of everything in advance – and here suddenly I saw a direct path! For some reason, I believed that slogan more than all the pastors and bibles put together. I always did what my sister used to tell me, and maybe this is the whole point – although she herself had no hope of redemption. She slept around, smoked grass and even broke the law – can you imagine it? She used to drive a car with a fake driver’s license, buy booze and hang out in bars while still underage…”

Elsa grins, shakes her head and says, “As for me, I became a really good girl. I was always taught if you want to get something you need to work hard; gifts need to be earned. And this case was so crystal clear – naturally, I began to try my best! I tried almost my whole life – with some exceptions, of course. But exceptions only prove the rule… Could you turn up the light please? It’s beginning to get dark, I think.”

I run my fingers along the panel in the center of the dining table – it’s the same as the one in my bedroom. The room is filled with soft light pouring from the ceiling. I change the shade slightly, return to the sofa and sit down next to Elsa again. As usual, she shies away from me, although it hadn’t even occurred to me to touch her. Today, she does not smell of juniper. Her scent is an expensive perfume – something very adult and slightly bitter.

“Being a good girl is quite difficult,” Elsa admits, without looking up. “But it’s doable – and I made a success of it I guess. At least, I pretty quickly became a social outcast. I stayed away from guys, and I didn’t smoke – neither grass nor even ordinary cigarettes; my idea of goodness was quite conservative. I tried never to lie and often went to church – I still remember a few of the prayers. Though, of course, I dreamed – like every girl – of becoming a cheerleader, wearing short skirts and looking stunning, so that boys, and even older men, might chase after me. But the dreams were easy to cope with.”

She thinks about something, smiles at her thoughts and turns to me, “Just imagine, despite all this, I still lost my virginity very early. I just wanted to give it a try – and I liked it, but after that, I didn’t sleep with a man for years. I set my sights very high and did not let anyone inside, either literally or figuratively. It didn’t make sense spending time getting to know someone, worrying and suffering, when I was quite capable of doing everything myself… I only had my first real boyfriend when I was twenty-three. And he didn’t last long, only a few months – and he managed to annoy me no end. When we split up, I got drunk on whiskey for the first time – even good girls have to have a break every now and then!”

I laugh and so does Elsa. “And thus,” she continues, “it went on. Eventually, I found myself with no real friends; they were all bored of me. As for my admirers, one by one, they turned out to be complete bastards – I began to think I would never get married. Although I realized I needed a family to be happy, maybe even children – or, if that was too much, then at least a steady partner by my side. I knew what sort of man I wanted; I even made a list of the mandatory traits he would require. Yet I succumbed to weakness and started to date a man who didn’t have them all. He was only missing a couple, but that proved to be enough: soon he had run off with a waitress from a nightclub. However, it was all for the best – after that, I burned my list and became a lot more sociable. I began to change my lovers regularly – some were even quite good.”

“And what about your sister?” I ask, looking at her fingers. They are agile, graceful, and have a life of their own. “By the way, do you ever want sex here?” I add out of the blue.

“Sex isn’t on my mind,” Elsa responds nonchalantly. “There are lots of other things to reflect on here. And I fell out with my sister – forever. I snitched on a friend of hers who was carrying cocaine to the police. I assumed this was what any good girl would do. Nancy never forgave me – also, it was just at that time I went off to England to continue my studies. And the very first thing I saw at Heathrow airport was a T-shirt with the slogan: Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go to London! This threw me – and I suddenly began to have doubts about the whole notion. After that, I was no longer able to believe my sister.”

She leans back into the couch and looks at the wall clock. It reads half past four – I’m surprised how quickly the time passes here.

“Soon it will be time to see Nestor,” my roommate says, “and then a dream of his or my choosing…”

We don’t talk about anything else after that. Elsa carries on with her fine stitching, head down and smiling at something, and I just sit there, furtively glancing at her profile. I sit and wonder for the umpteenth time – who she really is, what role she is meant to play. And how much can I really trust her?

Chapter 5

Nestor greets me with a curt nod. He is cheerful and businesslike; he emanates enthusiasm and confidence. He is wearing a cream-colored shirt and a thin tie and looks like a TV show host.

“So,” he says, “where were we this morning…” But I interrupt him with a decisive gesture. My counselor falls silent in surprise.

“Just a minute,” I ask, “first I would like to clarify something, otherwise my brain will simply refuse to function. Like, for example, why am I in Quarantine? Sick people are usually sent to quarantine – does that mean we’ve contracted something? And also, there’s my roommate – neither death nor her new life seem to interest her. She just sits on her own, embroidering away… She simply doesn’t care! I don’t understand who she is – a woman, a phantom, or an illusion like the plates dissolving into the kitchen wall? A dream from my reasoning mind or the product of my drug-induced ravings? I need to know; I can’t keep stumbling about in the dark like this!”

Nestor looks displeased, “I wasn’t expecting this of you. We are trying to discuss serious matters, and here you are stamping your feet and insisting that we distract ourselves with these silly trifles!” He shakes his head and sighs, “All right, I’ll explain. Are you sick? In a certain sense, yes. You suffer from an acutely unstable way of perceiving yourself, the world and your place in it – can that be considered healthy? The question isn’t whether it is contagious or not – society just doesn’t want to live with people who are utterly bewildered, whose criteria and guidelines are blurred. People who lack understanding – and therefore acceptance – who add to confusion and disorder… We need to ensure your perception returns to normal, and you have to work to make that happen. You must recall, correlate and apprehend – what the role of everything is. The role and the place – of you, me, Quarantine and of our lives.”

“Interesting,” I mutter. “An acutely unstable sense of perception… And is my ‘cure’ guaranteed?”

“Guaranteed? Pretty much so,” Nestor grins. “In one form or another, so to speak. Sometimes radical ‘treatment’ is required that involves subjecting the memory to certain corrections. All sorts of things happen – for example, there are maniacs and murderers who enjoy the process… But this doesn’t apply to you; there are no red flags to that effect in your file. Of course, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but you are such an important person…”

He pauses, examines me for a few seconds and sums things up, “So there we have it. As for your roommate, well, that’s up to you. Find a way to check her out – maybe she’s more real than you yourself are? I would say embroidery looks a lot more innocent in this regard than pointless doodles of symbols…” And he grins again, nodding at my open notepad.

I frown, offended – and don’t know what to say. So I just mutter quietly, “Check her out… What, take a peek under her skirt?”

“Well, that is unlikely to help you,” Nestor sneers and becomes serious again. “All right, I hope we’ve cleared up the housekeeping issues,” he declares. “Now, are you ready to listen? Then let’s carry on – there’s still a fair amount of time we haven’t covered yet. How far did we get last time – about a second? The first second of fourteen billion years. Yes, a second may encompass a lot – almost the entire subject matter of your career…”

He lowers his eyes, flips through several pages and continues, “Let me remind you: it all began with an explosion of an ideal cosmos. There was nothing in it but space curved to an incredible extent and equal to itself in any projection, from any angle. Flawless symmetry is a dangerous thing – like flawless chastity: it’s not clear what it conceals, what hidden passions…

“Then later, there were the quarks, the separation of forces, the Higgs field and the attainment of mass. Protons, neutrons, the release of neutrinos, rushing out on their eternal wanderings… Don’t worry if the whole picture is a little confused in your head. It will soon pass: in fact, you understood all the physics much better than I do. Patience, patience – but for now let’s continue further: from the creation of your brane to the person who you are.”

“You’re very eloquent this session, Nestor,” I remark.

“Nonsense,” he says dismissively. “Don’t try to make fun of me; I’m invulnerable to your mockery. Although, of course, we counselors have bad days as well…”

He becomes thoughtful for a moment but quickly collects himself, “Let’s not get distracted. I suggest we skip a few eons. Let’s bypass those troubled times when armadas of particles of different types repeatedly extinguished each other. First some, then others, became dominant – baryons and mesons, then electrons, muons, photons… Then atomic nuclei began to form – it took nature a little more than a quarter of an hour to create them. And soon after, everything became frozen in the transition phase. The nuclei of future atoms and their satellites, the electrons, collided and scattered in thermal madness. The universe trembled like a gigantic gloomy cloud, developing nowhere, for the next half million years – years, not seconds! – until everything cooled down to acceptable temperatures. And then a miracle happened: light was born!

“Of course, there was no miracle at all, really,” he adds a little peevishly. “Each ‘miracle’ has its own rationale, its own source of deception – every priest knows this well. Back then, at the time of the birth of light, photons simply broke free. They were released from their dungeon: electrons began to stick to the nuclei, forming the first neutral atoms – hydrogen and helium. And the universe suddenly became transparent! The fog cleared, everything became visible – although, to be honest, there wasn’t much to look at just yet.

“And here’s another thing I must mention at this point,” Nestor nods thoughtfully. “Coincidences that were utterly miraculous in their own way. I mean, for example, finely tuned mass ratios: the masses of a proton, a neutron and an electron turned out to be extraordinarily precise. As a result, neutral atoms could exist for a long time without disintegrating or decaying. Yet, fortunately, they were not eternal; they were stable but not quite: warm them up properly, squeeze them together – and a transformation occurs. Atoms were capable of recombination in fusion reactions that created the vast diversity of chemical elements. After all, who would want to consist solely of hydrogen? That would be too insubstantial. But now if you please we had oxygen, carbon, iron… Enough material to build as many little galactic nests as you want!

“A mass ratio such as this is truly striking, and you, Theo, could not help but be amazed when you perceived its significance and strangeness,” Nestor says, poking his index finger at me. “However, your amazement wasn’t so great on this occasion – I think you were already tired of being surprised by that time. It was not the specific cases that interested you, but their generalization – the conclusion, the essence. The uniting substance, if not the uniting persona – someone whose hand you imagined was pulling the strings. Whose sensitive fingers were feeling the pulse of events and making adjustments, if something was not right. Of course, later, when you predicted the conscions and B Objects, your amazement, I think, completely fizzled out. Your piety vanished; you became used to the idea that there is neither ‘a persona’ nor a ‘hand’ – am I right?”

I make a gesture in an attempt to interrupt him, pencil in hand and open notepad in front of me. “Wait, I need to write something down,” I say quickly and scribble a few words, but Nestor pays no attention.

“We’ll find out later if I’m right or not,” he continues unperturbed. “Meanwhile, beautiful, impressive, gigantic events were taking place on your brane. Star cradles formed and giant molecular clouds emerged, condensed and twisted into spirals. They collided and interfered with each other, causing local cataclysms. Gravitation, slowly but surely, segregated the condensations and irregularities – the embryos of stars. They spun and waltzed faster and faster in this majestic cosmic ball, becoming increasingly compressed and heating to immense temperatures. And suddenly, here and there, were explosions of the brightest light: the hydrogen atoms were too cramped. Thermonuclear fusion began – a star was born!

“Write that down,” Nestor nods. “Write that down; I’ll wait: those intense flashes were magnificent; there were billions of them! And now cross it out, because: it’s not the aesthetics of that time that we’re interested in. The important point is: it was specifically in the stars, in these natural furnaces, where the atoms were created from which planets are composed – and everything that exists on them, including you, Theo, and everyone like you. For that, you should be grateful to the first stars; after all, you are also one of their descendants. But their majestic dance didn’t excite you much – your attention was directed to the causes; analyzing the consequences was a waste of time, in your opinion. That’s why I only mention them briefly – although there were a lot of mysteries hiding in that period. In your time, it seemed the answers were close – the main things were apparently clear. Just a few calculations needed to be adjusted slightly, some artificial constants had to be introduced – well, you physicists are used to this. And basically, the sequence of events was described correctly: yes, the galaxy of the Milky Way was formed in the stellar supercluster of Virgo, in which one of the three hundred billion stars burned out, blazing up brightly at the end and provoking a modest cosmic drama in its vicinity. Thus, your planetary system emerged: the Sun was ignited; planets, asteroids and moons were formed from the debris of the old star – a motley crowd of celestial bodies doomed to coexistence. It was a chaotic mess then, like a cosmic communal apartment, filled with scandals and fights. The bodies collided, broke into pieces and exchanged satellites and orbits. They took a long time to get used to each other until only the most worthy survivors were left. Gradually, everything calmed down; the giant Jupiter took care of its neighbors, driving away large asteroids with its powerful gravitational field, and peace was established in the solar system. The planets fell into a stable formation and their moons took their rightful places. None of them now bothered each other or interfered with their neighbors’ orbits. And, again, due to the coincidence of many factors, one of the planets – your earth, Theo – turned out to be suitable for the existence of protein bodies, as one of the philosophers put it!”

Nestor pauses and looks sideways. In the corner of the screen appears a picture: a blue sphere with the outlines of the continents. I remember having seen it many times – and I even know what it is. Probably, I’m meant to be showing emotion now – at least, Nestor looks at me in anticipation – but I feel none. The sphere seems infinitely distant and, by and large, not terribly interesting.

“Well, yes,” I nod politely. “I see. Heavenly bodies, protein bodies and so on… By the way, I assume your brane is three-dimensional as well? And on it, in your life, I mean in my new life – there is at least something resembling a body?”

Nestor grimaces, “Don’t rush. For now, I can only answer you briefly, in your terms: there is something. And you are strangely indifferent to the image I showed you – in your place, many others have broken down in tears.”

“I’m not the sentimental type,” I say with a grin. “It’s probably down in my file.”

“Perhaps,” Nestor purses his lips. He seems to have been offended by the fact that his rotating blue sphere has not impressed me. “Well,” he continues, “let’s go on. So, carbon, water, proteins…”

The sphere on the screen dissolves. In its place, a chemical formula appears. An amino group attached to a radical, as far as I can recall.

“Life was capable of evolving and did evolve, although it took a lot of time,” Nestor proclaims without looking at me. “Over thousands and thousands of millennia, the unremitting search, combinations and recombinations, experiments with large molecules capable of replication… For about four billion years, nature tinkered with the constituent ingredients of life, poking them in all directions and trying every possible option. Even in their wildest dreams, the medieval alchemists who searched for the philosopher’s stone could not have guessed the number of trials, errors and efforts wasted in the labyrinth of evolution. For the first nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of its existence, your planet was not even visible beyond your brane – it was indiscernible and of no interest to anyone. Only in the last one-thousandth part – two million years ago – did the Homo genus separate itself from the family of the hominids, the large anthropoid apes. Then, in the last tenth of this period, just two hundred thousand years before your death – the blink of an eye, by cosmic standards – a new species was created, Homo Sapiens. A structure had evolved on the planet capable of interacting with the field of the conscions – the human brain – and then, only in the last tenth part of this tenth part, the first activation of true consciousness finally began to occur. The first B Objects began to appear in metaspace – where it borders your universe. Their number grew bigger and bigger – evolution wasn’t standing still. At the same time, little by little, humanity was succeeding in understanding the world in which it lived. There were important milestones – Pythagoras and Euclid; later Newton, Maxwell, then Einstein. Immediately after him came the quantum field theories that gave rise to the Standard Model; and later – string theory, M-theory, superstrings and branes. Humanity was readying itself for a decisive breakthrough, for a realization of its transcosmic role – and the necessary words began to emerge. Words are a very important step; they lead to ideas, and finally, you, Theo, came up with your work, which was mocked initially, with your hypothesis about invisible particles scurrying between worlds. This was another of the most important breakthroughs and, of course, the most intriguing with regards to each individual destiny. Your results have proved that the human mind is not simply a means of adapting to the reality in which people are born and are doomed to exist. No, everyone’s mind, memory and interior world have gained a self-sufficiency greater than all earthly realities, which are short-lived and hopelessly provincial. Thanks to you, Theo, humanity has proudly proclaimed itself – more proudly than it could have ever imagined. Before you, there were people who thought a lot about this – I’ll name just a few: Bohr, Pauli, Jung, James… But unlike you, they all fell short of the end goal – some lacked the math, others the freedom of imagination, and yet more perhaps, the disappointment with and resentment against society – to suffer unfair accusations and even subconsciously welcome them!”

Nestor pauses and looks into my eyes for a few seconds. Then he pronounces with a noticeable pathos, “At this point, I want to make an official statement. I would like to inform you, Theodorus: we here greatly value what you have done. Your merits will be noted – I guess you will be given some kind of award. Here, as a rule, justice triumphs post factum: those who in the first life were ahead of their time are held in honor here – great honor.”

“Well, but…” I interrupt him, noting that this is the first time he’s called me by my full name. “Wait, my theory – you are talking about it, but I don’t remember…”

“You will remember!” Nestor replies, unexpectedly harshly. He repeats, “You will remember,” and looks down. “Your estimated memory coefficient is very high: almost one. You should be able to recall everything, almost everything. And what you don’t recall you are capable of dredging up in order to fill the gaps – you just need to try hard; it’s your duty after all.”

“That’s funny – to whom do I owe a duty?” I mutter. “And why? Besides, you’re talking in riddles, Nestor. Can I read about the conscions somewhere? About their dance – can you give me something, a research article, a scientific journal? And, most importantly, what exactly is a B Object?”

Nestor twists his narrow tie around his finger, looks me up and down in silence as if assessing a slightly disappointing exhibit. Then, just as harshly he says, “I can only repeat: I hope that soon you will be telling me about this yourself!”

“You’re saying it in such a hectoring way…” I reply, forcing a grin. “Can you explain what the point of this pressure is?”

“Pressure?” Nestor raises his eyebrows. “You have no idea what pressure is. Coming to terms with a second life completely changes your mentality. Here, in our world, no one believes in naive fairy tales. Demagogues, inventors of gods, don’t find it easy here – their recipes for immortality are merely an object of mockery. All resources have been invested into gaining knowledge of the world – and big investments entail big pressure; is that clear?

“As for duties,” he carries on in a calmer vein, “everybody has them. Including me: it’s my duty, for example, to decide right now how you and I are going to move things forward. I have to choose your first dream for you – one that will help restore your memory. A kind of potion directly from Morpheus, so to say. And…”

My counselor makes a dramatic pause and glances down, probably at my inexhaustible file. Then he looks up at me again and declares, “I have made a decision. We will start at the end and move back toward the beginning. Let’s agree that the main part of the story – your story, the ‘story of Theo’ – culminated with your acquaintance with a certain Russian millionaire – if your file is to be trusted. And we have to trust it because with regards to you, Theo, it’s all we have to go on!”

And with that, he disappears – as usual, without so much as a goodbye. I remain alone – a loneliness that is now desirable, a blessing. I need some respite – to be on my own, without counselors or helpers, without brochures, even without Elsa the ice maiden. As Nestor promised, it’s been a very busy day. I want it to end at last.

Within a minute, my eyelids get heavy and my armchair reclines. Words and thoughts become confused in my head; my helpless memory fills with rustlings and murmurs.

Soon I fall asleep, and I begin to dream about a tycoon by the name of Ivan Brevich. And my next dream – on the next day – will also be about him. And the next one too – and the next one, and the next one after that.