The Era

A week after the assembly, on Thursday September nineteenth, Lia and Karl were leaving for the forest.

Not forever. To train. By Lia’s calculation — for three months, until mid-December, with possible extension to February. Backpacks — real, hiking, thirty-five liters each, bought by Kira at Sportmaster on Leninsky back in August. In the backpacks — a two-person tent Red Fox Challenger, a sleeping bag for two (one, old, since ’39), a gas burner Kovea, a cookware set, six boxes of grain, lard, Pal Ilyich’s honey in a sealed jar, two notebooks, four pencils, one book (Dandelion Wine, which I’d put in back in chapter fifteen; Lia hadn’t yet opened it since then; decided to read in the forest). Plus with Karl — his Kosmo module, disassembled, in a separate case, with a small solar battery from EcoFlow for charging. The module he plans to finish in the forest — work that hasn’t been going at the Academy workshop for him for six months. In the forest, by his own hypothesis, it will go.

The morning was autumnal, full. Plus four. Foliage on Shabolovka was already yellowing in masses, not by individual trees. By the Shukhov tower workers in orange vests were painting the railing (scheduled repairs, on the budget since ’38, ending this year; I know this from one folder on Gosuslugi which Olga asked me to check periodically). We came out of the entrance at seven thirty in the morning.

Schrödinger Junior saw Lia off at the door: sat on the mat, didn’t move, watched. The cat since November of last year had become quieter. He didn’t explain it.

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At the Academy we arrived at nine oh-five. Olga met us at the gate, in the same gray puffer (today, it seems, the puffer was with her in its final form; Olga had told me last January that she planned to buy herself in December of this year a new one, the same, so as not to change the invariant. I remembered this). Wei Lin was already waiting on the porch of the central building. Without the cane. In the gray jacket.

Lia walked up to him first. They stood together in silence for about twenty seconds. Then Wei Lin said one phrase to her which I didn’t hear from my place; Lia gave a brief nod to that phrase and went on, to Olga. Olga hugged her, said nothing. Karl shook Wei Lin’s hand — this is how they greet each other these last two years, with a working gesture, without words.

We walked through the yard to the path leading into the forest. Beyond, Wei Lin and Olga did not go. Beyond — only the four of us: I, Kira, Lia, Karl.