A Response Is Needed

Saturday, September twenty-ninth 2040. Shabolovka. Morning.

I hadn’t slept four hours that night, of which two I spent at the kitchen window and two — at the laptop with a stream running, sound off. The stream was from Lisbon. Iero on Friday evening had given a two-hour interview to the Portuguese podcast “Extraconsciência Aberta,” on extended perception, and the interview by midnight Moscow time had spread on Telegram with Russian subtitles done by one of ours, anonymously, in six hours. The interview was stronger than the NTV broadcast in December ’33. Iero in seven years had learned to speak quieter and longer, and this time not once did he utter the word “selection.” He replaced it with “the gradient of natural pass-through.” The meaning is the same. But over “gradient” the listener doesn’t stumble and accepts.

Artyom sent me at four in the morning on the Nokia an SMS in two words: “Read it. Bad.” I answered: “Read. Bad.” That’s been our working format since ’37: a two-word brief on the night situation, no emotion.

(In parallel — while I brewed a third cup — Rospodpis in automatic mode was sending out via Telegram and Gosuslugi a notification to citizens of categories 3A and higher: “In connection with a detected informational event of a foreign character, per § 7.1 of order PP-23, it is recommended to limit independent consumption of media content on the indicated topic for 72 hours. Targeted support — through the application Architect Pro, version 8.2.1, update available in the App Store. Repeat verification of invariant possible at any regional center.” Translating from architectural to human: “we know that you are watching now. Don’t watch further; we’ll back you up. If afraid — we have a button.” I have the application Architect Pro not installed on principle; the notification arrived on a backup smartphone in the drawer, which I turn on once a day for twenty minutes. I didn’t open it.)

By eight in the morning I sat in the kitchen, with the third tea, with an empty laptop, with the remnants of the night’s silence in my head. Kira since seven was working at the Academy. Lia at her fourteen-plus (in July she had been fourteen, now — fourteen and two months) on Saturdays had begun getting up two hours later than me. That was her first stable adolescent sign — before this summer she rose at seven in the morning and wrote in her notebook before breakfast. Since August — sleeps until ten, until eleven.

Today she got up at nine.

Walked into the kitchen in pajamas with the now-old rockets (she’s been wearing out this pajama for the third year; Kira twice tried to replace it — Lia refused; that’s her form of resistance against maternal household care, by her own definition in the notebook, on the page “what I don’t give up”). Schrödinger Junior, alive, in the form of a tight black circle, lay on her shoulder. He now sleeps with her; he released me from his sleep in the sixth year of his life, when Lia first closed the door of her room at night.

Lia sat opposite, set the cat down on the floor — and Schrödinger Junior headed for the bowl out of an unkillable feline habit of checking whether anything new had appeared since yesterday’s check.

— Dad.

— Yes.

— You didn’t sleep again.

— Four hours.

— Portugal?

— Yes.

— I watched the subtitles before bed. Three minutes. Closed it.

— Good that you closed it.

— He did well.

— Yes.

— And that’s why it’s bad.

— Yes.

I poured her tea. Without a question (on Saturday mornings we drink the same one — Yun Wu, the very one Kira brought from a conference in April ’28; this habit has been with us since Lia was eight). Lia took the cup. Blew on it. Drank slowly.