Failures

Wei Lin called me on the Nokia on Wednesday, February eighteenth.

The call came in at eight twenty in the morning; I was still in my coat, by the apartment door, with the briefcase, with keys in hand, getting ready for work on Shabolovka. Lia in the children’s room was finishing porridge with raisins. Kira in the bathroom was drying her hair with the hairdryer. The Nokia was in my pocket — with me since the last visit to the Academy, Wei Lin had not yet asked for it back.

— Daniil.

— Wei Lin.

— On Friday. Noon. Come.

— All right.

— Overnighting not needed. A day. Until five we’ll be busy.

— What to bring?

— Clothes without restrictions on dust. And a notebook. A pencil — not a pen.

— Understood.

He hung up.

(The request about a pencil — not a pen — was new. In eleven years of working at the Academy I had not once heard such a clarification. A pencil meant less heat in contact with paper, meant lower probability of residual trace in space, meant an archive at whose level ink retains echo three years longer than graphite. It was a fine operational choice, and the fact that Wei Lin had spoken it aloud to me in advance, instead of simply handing me a pencil on the spot, meant one thing: today I needed to understand where I was going; going by feel wouldn’t work.)

I went down. Drove to the institute. At the institute Lena looked at me over the edge of the monitor, asked: “Friday off?” I said: “business trip.” Lena: “to the Academy?” Me: “to the archive.” Lena set the cup of coffee on the table more slowly than usual. Said: “understood.” Continued working.

Seryozha shouted from the corridor: “Dan, the coffee machine is half-dead again, if you’re going back, tell Wei Lin — the Buzzer yesterday gave seven words in a row, here’s the text on the phone, take a look.” I looked at his phone. The seven words were: “spruce, bark, Anyuta, six hundred, silence, brooch, January.” It was an uncharacteristic set for UVB-76: usually in its scant lexicon numerals and surnames from Soviet background tables predominate. Today — domestic poetry. Seryozha said: “I haven’t heard him like this in twelve years. Something is thin up top.”

I noted the set in the notebook. Promised Seryozha to relay to Wei Lin, and sat down with Lena to discuss the current case for the Institute of Awakening.

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On Friday morning, before leaving for the Academy, I stopped by the MFC at Shabolovka 42 for Olga’s certificate of “presence of a family member of a ZNK consultant in a controlled communication period” — a paper that Olga had requested from me through the Nokia on Wednesday, with the formulation “a paper, just in case.” At the MFC today the line stretched to the corner of Serpukhovsky Lane: everyone was queuing for the lump-sum payment under category 3A-2 which Sobyanin had announced on Monday and which, by my internal reckoning, was supposed to calm the first wave of awakened in Moscow for two months, after which the budget for ZNK measures would run out and then the normal Russian 2037 would begin. The Echo-1 scanner in terminal TB-07 (terminal seven in the hall) had a yellow sticker “in service,” meaning that on it in the last twenty-four hours someone’s signature had glitched, and technicians were calibrating it. A citizen passing through Echo-1 during calibration received with a probability of about thirteen percent a false category, and by order PP-23 § 2.7 was forced to contest it at the regional center within fourteen working days. On the yellow MFC sticker in fine print was printed: “The Institute of Awakening is not responsible for equipment failures; servicing is performed within regulated periods. FGBU code 6732. Thank you for your patience.” I got my certificate at terminal TB-02, without calibration, in eleven minutes. Walked out into Serpukhovsky, where above the MFC entrance hung a banner with the slogan “Awakening — by appointment. Appointment — through Gosuslugi. Gosuslugi — your path to yourself.” I photographed this banner on a backup smartphone for the collection I’ve been keeping since ’29 in the folder “Absurdity of the 2020s.” The folder by February ’37 had accumulated four hundred seventy-three files.

On Friday at eleven forty-seven I arrived at the Academy.

The clearing was in snow: light, dry, with a brittle surface beneath which the second layer was denser. Olga met me at the gate in her gray puffer jacket. She had her folder in her hands. She said one phrase:

— Wei Lin is waiting for you at the entrance.

The entrance at our Academy is a metonymy denoting one door in the basement of the left wing, beyond which begins a staircase down. We don’t usually go into the basement itself. Olga goes there once a week, on Thursdays, with a key on a long chain and with two candles. In the basement is the Academy’s archive. Paper. Without electronics. Olga has mentioned it in my presence over eleven years exactly twice, both — in service, without disclosure of contents.

Today I was going to the archive for the first time.

Wei Lin stood by the staircase down. Without the cane. In the gray jacket. Without a hat. With the usual expression on his face which with Wei Lin means nothing specific and always means everything necessary.

Olga handed him the key. He took it, inserted it into the lock, turned twice. The door — old, oaken, with iron framing, a meter wide — opened without a creak (Olga maintains it). From inside drew an even temperature of twelve degrees, constant in the archive year-round. Cold as such was not in the draft.

— Down, — said Wei Lin.

I took a candle from Olga. Lit it. Walked down.

Wei Lin — behind me, two steps back.

Olga remained above. Closed the door behind us.