Iero Returns

Nothing had been heard of Iero for seven years.

This, if you think about it, is in itself suspicious. In ordinary life, when one of the few people who seriously work with extended perception drops off the radar for seven years, it’s one of three things: either he died (unlikely with Iero, biographically he has a resource reserve at least for another four hundred), or he went deep (possible, but then somewhere at the Academy there would be at least a rumor about him), or he is preparing (the variant that Wei Lin silently kept on the unofficial list for eight years). In quiet faith I chose the first, because the second tired me and the third frightened me.

On Monday, December nineteenth 2033, at eleven in the morning, Wei Lin called my mobile. This was the first phone call from Wei Lin in the eight years of our acquaintance — earlier he had passed messages through Olga or via the Nokia 3310 in SMS of two words. A voice call was an escalation that had not happened once in eight years.

— Daniil.

— Wei Lin.

— Today at twenty-hundred — NTV, the program “The Main Thing Today,” thirty minutes. Tune in. Kira too. Don’t let Lia in the room. Children’s things in the adjoining one.

— Who’s there?

— Iero.

Pause.

— On NTV?

— As the main guest of the evening.

— Is this a joke?

— No. Tune in.

He hung up. On my phone screen the call statistics lit up: Wei Lin, 00:22. Twenty-two seconds. That was, possibly, the longest conversation on the phone by Wei Lin I had heard.

---

I spent the remaining nine hours in a state that psychoanalysts call preventive anxiety, and that I call working memory through a list of realistic worst-case scenarios. Over the course of the day I:

(a) Called Kira, warned her (“we’re watching television tonight. The one in the closet. It needs to be gotten out.”). The television does indeed lie in our closet: Lia watches cartoons on the tablet, Kira and I — nothing, and over six years a general consensus arose in the family that the television is an item from the last century bought for some reason by the father-in-law. My father-in-law is Kira’s papa, he lives in Piter; he gave us the television in 2027 in the hope that we’d “watch normal programs.” The father-in-law was, as would turn out that evening, moderately right.

(b) Read what I could about NTV and “The Main Thing Today.” The host — Igor Surzhik, forty-six, a former military journalist, in recent years — moderately statist. The program — half an hour long, breakdowns of domestic and foreign agendas, with one major guest. Rating — two and a half million in prime time. NTV — since 2022 officially not under VGTRK management, but this year there was another reorganization, and currently the channel belongs to something listed in the registry as “a media holding with dual jurisdiction.” To whom actually — unknown. For my task today — irrelevant.

(c) Called Lena, said: “watch NTV tonight at eight, I’ll call after.” Lena answered: “NTV I haven’t watched since 2004, but today, so be it, I’ll watch. What is it, Iero?” I was silent. Lena: “Got it. Watching.” How she guessed — I have no version. Five years in hospice mode do something to a person that I don’t yet understand.

(d) Seryozha at the institute wrote me on Telegram: “UVB-76 put out forty-three words in the last twenty-four hours. Twelve for November. Something’s brewing.” I answered: “yes.” Seryozha: “got it.” Seryozha has been listening to the Buzzer at 4625 kHz in his garage in Balashikha for eight years, since 2025. He’s one of those Russian engineers for whom the Buzzer is part of the background equipment of the world, like the MKAD and the Peter and Paul Fortress. Forty-three words in a day is about twenty times more than usual; a distinct signal that in the lower networks something’s knocking upward. Seryozha doesn’t interpret this philosophically; he just records it. I trust it more than any analysts at RBC.

(Radio astronomy, in this sense, has its own one-shot signal that was never explained. On August 15, 1977, the Big Ear telescope in Ohio caught a seventy-two-second pulse from the constellation Sagittarius, thirty times above background, hitting precisely the hydrogen line — in theory the most economical frequency for interstellar communication. The astronomer on duty, Jerry Ehman, circled the column on the printout in red pen and wrote in the margin: “Wow!” That has been its name ever since. There were no repeats over fifty-six years of subsequent observation. There is no explanation. The Buzzer’s forty-three words today are obviously not a Wow!, but they’re on the same scale: something performs a rare figure once and doesn’t repeat on schedule, and the observer is left with a printout and a red pen in the margin.)

(e) Lia asked over lunch: “Papa, are you watching TV today?” I said: “Yes, once.” She thought. Said: “I’ll be in my room with Bradbury and Schrödinger Junior. Don’t come in the room until ten.” I nodded. Kira nodded. Lia went to her room. Kira and I looked at each other. Kira said one phrase: “She knows.” I didn’t answer — there was nothing to.