Elsa

The following Saturday, at four-thirty, the doorbell rang.

I was lying on the couch reading Lia The Wizard of Oz, the eighth or ninth chapter (I’d lost count and wasn’t admitting it). Kira was at work — at the Academy, with Noma, where their small group was working through the consequences of plunging sensitivity in five-year-olds, whose statistics over the last quarter had begun to alarm every curator. Kira had promised to be back in Moscow by seven.

Lia looked at the door. Looked at me.

— It’s for you.

— Why for me?

— Because of the signatures, — said Lia calmly. — I don’t know the person. You do.

(We agreed half a year ago that Lia is not obligated to open the door and not obligated to identify who’s ringing. That’s adult work. At seven it’s too early to start sorting visitors by signature — Lia has enough operational load as it is: simultaneously school, two languages, evening reading, six a.m. wake-up with her own agenda, and periodic trips to Kostroma through dreams. I shield her. If she still does flag a signature — that’s her voluntary gesture, like a child telling a parent they have a high fever.)

I got up. Walked to the door. I looked through the peephole out of habit, though for the last three years the peephole had been useless to me: I now hear a person at the door before I see them. Today behind the door stood a woman of medium height in whose signature there was neither fear nor rehearsal — only form: someone come on business with a clear procedure in her head.

I opened.

— Daniil Sergeyevich Reynov?

— Yes.

— Elsa Leonidovna Brenn, Institute of Population Awakening. — She held out her service ID. Plastic, hologram, photograph. — I’d like a conversation with you. Fifteen minutes, if possible. No recording. I can show the app.

She produced a tablet. On the tablet — Gosuslugi, the section “Spiritual Health,” a verified visit, status: “personal meeting, Reynov D.S., October 22, 16:30,” QR code, validity — forty-five minutes. All according to regulation.

(This, by the way, is a new genre: a personal visit by a state employee, verified through an app. Used to be — protocols, pieces of paper, summonses. Now — a pretty tile in Gosuslugi with the visitor’s photograph, service number, and a check mark “certified by FGBU.” Look how nice. Just like ordering a taxi, except instead of a taxi — a representative of the state. The currency for this service is your attention. Money plays no part.)

I looked at Elsa Brenn.

---

Forty, maybe a bit less. Dark hair pulled into a low ponytail. Glasses in thin metal frames, quiet, expensive (Mykita, I’d seen plenty of them at scientific conferences — worn by those who say smart things and want the smart things to also look smart). Coat — black, long, severe. No extra detail. She was assembled like a person who knows: their clothing will be read in three seconds, and she’d dressed so that in those three seconds nobody would be distracted.

Voice — low, calm, unforced. Clean diction. It was the voice of a person who knows how not to press, and for whom this ability is a professional virtue developed over years.

She smiled. As many seconds as one ought to smile at a stranger on the threshold.

— I understand it’s Saturday, and I apologize. On weekdays you’re at work at the institute. On Sundays you’re usually with your daughter. Saturday at four-thirty — the interval in which, by calculation, you’re home and without guests. If I’m wrong, say so, I’ll leave and book through the app.

(Here I flinched internally for the first time. By calculation. That meant she’d seen my tracker in Gosuslugi — and I clearly hadn’t consented to a tracker. I’m registered in Gosuslugi because not being registered in Gosuslugi in 2033 already counts as passive resistance, for which one can catch a fine under the article on “civic discommunication.” But I’m there only with mandatory check marks. The calculation of my schedule isn’t a mandatory check mark. It’s a special extension. They activate it on request. The request is made by a person at the level of senior FGBU consultant with direct access to the extended-perception database. Elsa, evidently, is a person at that level. And she came knowing in advance that I was home and that Lia was with me.

This was expected. It still flinched.)

— Come in, — I said.

---

I led her to the kitchen. Offered tea.

— Thank you. No sugar. Do you have green? Yun Wu, ideally. If not — regular.

— We have Yun Wu. Kira keeps it.

— I know. I was told.

(I was told. Lord, with what calm she pronounced it — as if it were a fact from technical documentation. Don’t want to — don’t drink. She knows that in my cupboard there’s tea sold in three stores in all of Russia, and she knows that my wife informed her of this — a wife, who, apparently, also met with Elsa. Well, what can I say. They keep informed. Professionally.)

I brewed the Yun Wu. Served it. She took the cup — with both hands, carefully. My mother once held cups the same way — with the same respect for porcelain that a sapper has for something he’s found. She sipped. Set it down. Opened the tablet.

— Daniil Sergeyevich. I work at the Institute of Awakening with children of the first natural cohort. These are children born after 2027 with stable signs of extended perception detected in the initial screening assessment. Your daughter, Lia Danilovna Reynova, born in 2027 —

— Two thousand twenty-six, — I corrected.

— Yes, two thousand twenty-six. Forgive me. The first cohort by our protocols starts from 2027, but your daughter is among the precursors, index ZNK-01 (the “early-observed cognitive specificity” group). According to the records of Kindergarten No. 1472 in Khamovniki, the educator Nadezhda Viktorovna Prokhorova noted on the weekly form P-7/DV (“preschool behavioral observation in the age group”) that your daughter exhibited seven out of ten markers of the initial screening.

— Which markers?

Elsa turned the tablet toward me.

It was — Architect-1.