Mircea Baduţ

LET'S NOT WASTE OUR TIME

(dystopia)

Time travel - or temporal translation - proves to inspire brave ideas, perhaps because the writer is often asked for an additional fantasy in describing the translation itself. But - in order to imagine the apparatus and the operating principle related to the time machine and to obtain an effect of "transcendental possibility" - the creator must show a very lenient, and at the same time elastic, scientific common sense. However, it sometimes happens that readers remain unsatisfied from this point of view, and this is due to the difficulty of diverting earthly common sense; that is, of the insufficiency in creating the illusion of the possibility of shaking or even cracking the monolith of existing scientific beliefs.

Without proposing a critical study of the synthesis of time travel, I will attempt a somewhat logical analysis of the time jump itself.

*

To make it possible to understand what I want to show, I will have to start from a certain initial data base. Thus: it is considered that temporal translation is possible both forward and backward in time; the starting time is defined as the original time, and the targeted time, the destination, as the second (or secondary) time.

The temponaut's name is All. He has parents, friends and acquaintances - that is, normal relations with the present. It also has the secret of time travel. But that's not what interests me now. We only want to follow what implications the jump can have.

All goes back several millennia. Arriving at the intended time, he - let's say involuntarily - comes into conflict with the environment. Conflict can be of any nature and is inevitable. That is, from the simple presence in the second time, to the intense and conscious involvement in a process that obviously changes the world (from moving a blade of grass that would otherwise have been consumed by an insect with its importance in a food chain , to destroy a civilization), the conflict exists and has the effect of changing the course of history discreetly or sharply. And All, aware of this involvement, returns to the original time being curious to see what changes his foray into the past produced.

Fortunately, he does not notice any change. An entire universe - with its own energy balance - cannot change suddenly (because for those who remained in the original time the change would be terribly sudden) because of a simple atom that messed up history. However, second time existed, and still exists, its disappearance also being impossible.

The only explanation would be the creation of a new, variant world, existing in another time (so to speak), whose formation was based on the original world, the evolution towards the variant being uniquely determined by All's incursion.

In other words, from the moment of the leap, history bifurcated into the original and the variant.

All starts a few years into the future. Very few in number. Having arrived here, the implication in the new environment is as safe and logically obvious. For the sake of the experiment All meets the future All, All second (All"). He explains the situation to him and returns to the original time.

Wait a few years. And on the target date in his last jump, he has the surprise of not meeting any All. Sure thing, because otherwise they'd both be All originals. Or, more understandable to all, "All" did not anticipate All's visit, while now All is waiting for it.

Since both tenses exist, it follows that even in the case of translation towards the future, a temporal variant is formed.

The first AXIOM can now be defined: If someone (something?!) visits a past or future time, a historical variant is instantly born that evolves - from the moment of the jump - independently of the evolution of the original history.

The fact that history or the original time is taken as temporal referential is justified both by the legal and logical existence of the world from which the temponaut starts, and by the fact that the variant is a derivative of the original time.

*

Consequence: The Temponaut can only move in the past and future of the original time.

Let's follow the thread carefully!

All takes a leap into the past. Well, once he reaches the secondary time, in the variant, this time becomes for him original time, being the very subjective time of All. And, if he wanted to go back - thus imposing a leap into the future - he would end up in the future of the variant, thus creating a new variant. Variant of the variant. All this because the jumps (into the past or into the future) refer to the subjective time of the temporal intruder.

Suppose All were to leave in the future. In the same way here, the secondary time would become for him the original time and thus the return would be made in the past of the variant.

So, more importantly for All, he will never be able to return to the time he left. And for those who remained in the original time, the only thing that could confirm the temponaut's jump would be its disappearance forever.

Second AXIOM: Temporal variants are independent from the moment of their creation.

Consequence: The Temponaut cannot return to the history and time from which he left.

*

That would be it.

And I think that anyone who will filter all these huge implications related to the creation of variants through their own common sense as an honorable citizen will agree - for now - with:

TIME AXIOM: Time travel is impossible, and time is unique and unrecoverable.

June 20, 1987, Rm. Vîlcea

MIRCEA BADUț

ONE WAY

I was telling myself that I had an almost perfect suit. For a week I had been advancing through a wasteland of mud of horrifying extent and monotony, and I did not feel the least bit dirty.

At first I told myself to count the steps, maybe that way the time would pass more easily. But I gave up after several attempts in which I inevitably exhausted the register of memorable numbers. An infinity of steps awaits us ahead, and - if there are chances - we will finally reach the oasis of life located somewhere in the opposite hemisphere of the planet.

The primary care was that Iria would not be left too far behind, and every eight hours I would inject her with the narcotic-nutritive substance and myself with the stimulatory-nutritive one. I thought - especially at the beginning, when I could do it lucidly - that it was the only solution to defeat hopelessness.

If the distance between us became more than five steps, I stopped, called her softly and held out my hand. Every time Iria squeezed my fingers lightly as if she was terrified. But when I pulled away he had no reaction.

In those moments - and not only then, because time, passing indifferently and monotonously, was no longer our declared opponent - I tried to imagine how a consciousness reacts under the effect of the narcotic...

The stops, every eight hours (I had probably exceeded thirty), had acquired a kind of ritual. Iria's eyes had a glint of intelligence, the wristwatch signaled my moment sonically and optically, and so I stopped suddenly. I took out a regenerating towel from my backpack and energetically wiped my hands and face. Then, once the medical kit was taken out, I fixed the narcotic tank in the syringe, gave it to Iria to hold and, looking into her indifferent eyes, I gave her the injection. It was my turn, I would pack everything, I would look at the beautiful Iria to see if her eyes regained their soft warmth and then, taking her hand in mine, I would invariably set off on my way.

*

Four centuries ago, due to the overcrowding of the Earth, the project of colonizing outer space was initiated. Humanity was completing several millennia and was forced to send its ships to find new places to live. Thus, a vanguard expedition had also reached Vanelia. This planet was slightly larger than the Earth, but it had a totally different relief: 99% of the surface was continuous deserts, and the smallest rest was made up of two vegetal oases. It was said "desert" not because there was a full correspondence with the classical definition, but because - not having a generic term - the analogy was made based on the features of expanse and desolation, which are the main defining features.

The atmosphere they found was stagnant in an unnaturally stable equilibrium, and the air was similar enough to that of our home world for the planet to be of interest. Especially the oasis area. The oases - even if they were not in perfectly opposite points of the planetoid - formed two biological poles, and surrounded the only sources of water.

Finding the existence of a biological "magnetism" with uncontrollable manifestations, the pilot colony would only be designed for one hundred or two earthlings, still entering the broad category of independent colonies of origin.

About four years after the installation, a group of researchers determined that the biological polarity changes - somewhat like the earth's magnetic one - but at short intervals and, at least apparently, irregularly. The law-equation of the change of polarity was also discovered, an equation whose only shortcoming was the fact that it required knowledge of the moment of a change in relation to the local astonomic time. When the hypothesis appeared that this change could also have harmful effects, a rescue system was developed, but like any solution to a problem without known parameters and with low probability, it was quite flimsy - measures were especially proposed to rescue eventual survivors.

The construction of the habitat had ended almost a decade ago and I was 16 years old at the time. Our dwellings - aesthetic and durable pinnacles of colonial architecture - had naturally filled with life and society had begun to pulsate. After a few years, upon graduating from the Advanced Course, when I was elected an auxiliary member of the Board of Directors, I also learned about the problem of polarity. But in the period of peaceful life that has passed since then, we all forgot about that threat.

*

I had noticed Iria from the beginning - a nice little girl, a little chubby, with a charm that I was immediately captivated by.

*

Because sometimes I felt the need for a change of scenery, I would go out with Iria to one end of the oasis, crossing seven or eight kilometers at a time, to look for hours over the deserted expanses. It often happened that we spent the night talking about simple things or not, but the bright nights on Vanelia are very beautiful.

On such an evening - nine years had passed since the colonization of the planet - the disaster occurred. The air heated up and began to vibrate strangely, a distant smell reached us and Iria suggested that we return immediately. I had to be a little brutal to be able to restrain her. Then I tried to explain to him that the phenomenon could signal a change in biological polarity and that it might be dangerous. Probably if I had kept quiet it would have been easier.

In the meantime, the smell intensified unbearably, forcing us to move another kilometer away. Staring blankly - in those diffuse moments of waiting - I began to imagine the possible disaster: familiar faces crossed my mind, and pessimistic thoughts terrified me. In order not to panic, I forced myself to recapitulate the instructions received in the council. Some seemed meaningless to me and I couldn't wait to consult the central computer.

The impatience took on unbearable proportions and, shortly before morning, assuming every risk, we started for the colony.

After almost two hours I arrived and had to see that a disaster had occurred. The streets were deserted, the warehouses the same, the traffic lights were waving uselessly and, very rarely, a lifeless body. That was about all I saw in the desperate run to the central building. I went inside and read the computer display, which had already been questioned by the service person. The yellow letters flashed:

BIOLOGICAL EMANATION OF 3.1 MRi.

UNDETERMINED NATURE.

EFFECT OF CHANGE OF BIOLOGICAL POLARITY.

LETHAL DOSE ON A QUASICIRCULAR SURFACE WITH A RADIUS OF 5 KM AROUND THE POLE.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: C 2156.

After catching his breath, Iria also read. She looked at me horrified and ran out. I wanted to follow her but I remembered the instructions. So I returned to the computer console and dialed the code 2156. I filled in the data required to initialize the program and that's how I found out everything.

For nearly twelve years this oasis will be uninhabitable due to the continuous emanations of poisonous gas, then the other pole will be uninhabitable for nearly fifteen years. I had to, in the next four hours, leave the colony together with the eventual survivors, and - to save it - reach the other habitable oasis.

Since the connection to Earth required a waiting time of several weeks, I had to move quickly to action: I switched all the intercoms and made a repeated call.

I had programmed the computer to communicate on Earth what had happened and had finished copying the map of the planiglob, when - almost unheard - Iria entered crying. She calmed down as soon as she felt me ​​next to me and told me that her family had died; that they all died. And I had to believe it because the intercoms, amplified to the maximum, emitted only a slight background noise, and the signals confirmed everything. We were the only survivors.

After a while I managed to banish the images from my mind and collect my thoughts. I tried to explain the instructions to Iria. Logic understood it perfectly, but it didn't understand what's the point of us trying. I didn't explain my point either; whether it was the instinct of preservation or the instructions received in the council and assimilated as primary needs, but I knew we had to live and I later surprised myself that I didn't even struggle much to find the motivation. Iria's instinct of preservation had been annihilated by the pain and she told me that she did not want to hear about leaving, and I - if I am such a coward - will have no choice but to leave. Single!

He went out leaving me perplexed, but I was brought to my senses by the slam of the door and rushed to engage the outer door lock.

After some preparations, I called her and said:

- I care about you too much to leave you alone. But I still want to try something - we will make a vaccine and I hope it will have an effect!

Unable to read anything else in my preoccupied gaze, he let me approach and fix the syringe on his forearm. I made a little mistake when, for more security, I firmly shook her hand, and she began to suspect something.

- All, don't you...want to...take me...

Then his wince was dulled by the narcotic.

"From now on, my good Iria will follow me everywhere!" I communicated this to myself dryly, refusing for the moment any other implications.

I memorized the instructions given by the computer, took the medical kit with nutritional reserves, the computer radio terminal station, a mini technical kit and a miniature tent, and left without analyzing my feelings. All in a desperate and yet logical frenzy. And the fact that Iria confidently held my hand gave me the determination I needed to try to cross the planet in search of the only place where one could live.

I had left the oasis and looking back I told myself that in an hour a new emanation would be produced. I turned my eyes forward and started immediately, thinking that we had over twenty thousand kilometers to go and that there was no point in mounting the radio relay to find out what the computer thought about the new wave of emanations. Or about anything else.

*

After another week the watery mud had turned into a thicker one, which made the shoes pant, then even thicker, so that the tracks left were only three or four centimeters deep. It had never rained and I don't remember seeing a cloud. The nocturnal drop in temperature was insignificant and we walked unhindered under the strong light of the satellite.

*

The injections had turned out to be quite formidable: I covered almost a hundred kilometers in a day of continuous walking. Vanelian time being almost identical to terrestrial time, I didn't feel the need to get into precise calculations.

Anyway, apart from walking, I wasn't really able to do anything else. Only during the stops I thought lovingly of Iria, of the way she endures walking, of her reactions, sometimes trying to imagine their mechanism. Meanwhile, something happened that I almost knew would happen: I was gradually losing my lucidity. I was losing myself in the middle of this exceptional situation, letting my instincts rule me. It was a strange state; new sensations were slowly but surely replacing my logic and lucidity. Crossing the road was imprinted somewhere in my subconscious, becoming an overpowering reflex, a fundamental law of survival; and thus the goal seemed to free my mind, leaving my thoughts to churn in an organic disorder around the most beautiful subject - Iria.

*

Gradually and yet imperceptibly the mud had dried, cracking into irregular shapes that gained an incredible symmetry through infinite repetition. I had even begun to believe that the surface of the planet was flat, the horizon not seeming to end due to the radius of curvature. It was of course an aberration, but it often haunted my thoughts.

I was walking continuously, in a seemingly eternal rhythm, and I had come to fear a reaction of the organisms to the substances I was injecting.

*

The ground had become strewn with huge cracks. In these areas, where the water had been running for centuries, we managed to cover more than a hundred kilometers a day. I told myself that we still had a lot to learn about this planet, nothing we knew about the climate of Earth or other worlds did not explain the state of affairs here. But we knew that it also depends on our effort now if there will be a future for this as well.

*

In one of the rare moments of lucidity I realized that I was no longer following the passage of time. I lost count and I should have been angry and mobilized to make up for the loss. But I smiled telling myself that this shift of interest was protecting us. In the sense that we are too small, vulnerable and mortal to continue to fight against time.

And I also told myself that I'm starting to lose track of time because actually space is what stands between us and the oasis of life.

*

I was watching as closely as I could to detect the appearance of dust in the air so that I could take additional measures to isolate the equipment; but the soil was terribly compact—not a particle of dust could be detached in any way. From this perspective everything was in order.

Something curious seemed to me to be happening with Iria. Against the background of the same need for protection, in the moments before the stops, when the narcotic was starting to lose its effect, he called me softly, reached me from the three steps behind me, grabbed my hand and pulled me forward. He answered my surprised look with a beautiful smile. He had even started helping me inject the serums, and the looks we exchanged had multiplied.

Then I had moments of insecurity of thoughts. Thoughts that, on the one hand, accused me of proceeding with such a treatment with Iria, on the other hand, assured me that by protecting her from depression and fatigue, I had more chances.

*

I remember an awkward flash of lucidity as a bud of idea tried to reach the light; but from that inappropriate effort, only one sensation reached my conscious level – an insufficiently formulated question regarding thermodynamic equilibrium and its principles. Probably the amplitude of that idea was initially more substantial, but I had managed to force my memory to retain that much.

Then this simple reference would frequently break through to controllable thought without my being able to build more.

*

The dust also appeared, but it remained immovable on the hard ground. After about twenty more stops, we found ourselves - progressively - in the eternal sands. The ground was flat from horizon to horizon. The wind doesn't even blow, so it seems like a more earthy image. In that daunting monstrosity of the building we were the only ones moving, advancing alienatingly through the desert.

*

I don't know how and why, but I had come to hold Iria's hand continuously. And this thing would save us from a tragedy. One day, during a break, I injected both of them with a nutritional-narcotic serum.

I felt the effect of the annihilation of the conscious immediately after I had packed everything. With the last coherent thought I communicated to myself that I would now find out through my own senses how the narcotic works. I remember seeing images (or imagining them), hearing noises (or so it seemed), and being a total and timeless spectator of everything around me and happening to me. When I recovered from the nightmare of helplessness, I noticed that we had stopped and Iria was already cleaning her hands and face. I was too dizzy to marvel at her lucidity at the time. I had the strength to restore the injections and everything returned to normal, except that I had to correct the route - for the last eight hours I had been walking perpendicular to the proposed route. An unexpected compensation: I had the sensation of a relaxing vacation.

I couldn't stop thinking about what would have happened if I had lost Iria, but every time I was afraid of taking my thoughts too far...

The desert had become exasperating. The amazingly fine sand—probably created centuries ago by who knows what miracles, for the temperature differences were insignificant—raised behind our steps like an endless trail of dust.

The temperature had risen a lot and I could feel Iria's hand sweating. We anxiously followed the evolution of the temperature and the reaction of our bodies. When I had reached troublesome fits caused by the sting of the sweat entering my eyes, I had the joy of finding - at one of the stops - that the temperature had dropped by half a degree. I had once learned about the symmetry and uniformity of the Vanelian climate, and the fact told me that we were halfway there. At this memorable stop, gripped as if by fever, I spoke to Iria for a long time about the chance to reach the oasis. This despite the fact that she did not understand anything. But he was smiling and that was enough for me.

*

I don't remember when the dessert was finished; for several weeks I had been lucid only at breaks, and only long enough to wonder where I had the strength to observe the ceremonial.

I felt a continuous loss of lucidity and barely made the effort to follow the route on the map. The air was no longer so hot, but the sands reminded me that I still had a long way to go. And I was thinking that from the start I was only standing on my feet.

*

The stops were going normally and Iria seemed to like getting the injection - she started helping me and looking at me smiling.

For the rest, I looked at my legs, how they took one before the other and then the second before the first, and again... and when I wanted to drive away the state, I slowly squeezed Iria's hand, and she moaned slightly, reminding me that I had to do everything for successful.

*

I don't know how much time had passed and since when, but at a stop something special happened. After I wiped my hands, I opened the kit and handed Iria the serum tank. When I was about to load the syringe, Iria threw the dose on the floor. A fact that instantly restored my lucidity. I looked into her eyes hiding my surprise. He took a few deep breaths, and then looked hopefully at me and said:

- Have faith, All! I will be by your side.

Probably what I felt then is true happiness.

In these conditions, the way we had to go was nothing, the fact that we would be alone no longer mattered - we were determined to take life from the beginning.

Iria looked splendid and from then on we would use the same serum.

Two weeks after the unforgettable event, the ground had become covered with a very sticky mud. But the new unit helps us to cover over thirty kilometers in one cycle even in these conditions. And the stops were now unforgettable - after exchanging some technical impressions of the route and making future plans, we delved into tender looks that spoke of a unique love. At least on this planet.

*

* *

From a distance we saw the oasis and we really tried to hurry. Unsuspected reserves of reason brought me some ideas with survival valences. I then realized that in addition to fatigue, I had also accumulated a lot of information about this living planet. Information that - added to the data in the computer we were linked to - would help us explain and control even what had appeared to defy the principles of thermodynamics.

After a good few hours we stopped near a spring. I set up the tent and installed the radio connection to the computer.

I had been walking for seven months and eleven days and I knew that stopping the treatment would lead to terrible fatigue. We took a dose of homogenizing sleeping pills and went to bed in a hurry because, after the few days of sleep, the beginning of a new life was waiting for us.

May 17-18, 1986, Rm. Vâlcea

MIRCEA BADUț

ONE WAY

I was telling myself that I had an almost perfect suit. For a week I had been advancing through a wasteland of mud of horrifying extent and monotony, and I did not feel the least bit dirty.

At first I told myself to count the steps, maybe that way the time would pass more easily. But I gave up after several attempts in which I inevitably exhausted the register of memorable numbers. An infinity of steps awaits us ahead, and - if there are chances - we will finally reach the oasis of life located somewhere in the opposite hemisphere of the planet.

The primary care was that Iria would not be left too far behind, and every eight hours I would inject her with the narcotic-nutritive substance and myself with the stimulatory-nutritive one. I thought - especially at the beginning, when I could do it lucidly - that it was the only solution to defeat hopelessness.

If the distance between us became more than five steps, I stopped, called her softly and held out my hand. Every time Iria squeezed my fingers lightly as if she was terrified. But when I pulled away he had no reaction.

In those moments - and not only then, because time, passing indifferently and monotonously, was no longer our declared opponent - I tried to imagine how a consciousness reacts under the effect of the narcotic...

The stops, every eight hours (I had probably exceeded thirty), had acquired a kind of ritual. Iria's eyes had a glint of intelligence, the wristwatch signaled my moment sonically and optically, and so I stopped suddenly. I took out a regenerating towel from my backpack and energetically wiped my hands and face. Then, once the medical kit was taken out, I fixed the narcotic tank in the syringe, gave it to Iria to hold and, looking into her indifferent eyes, I gave her the injection. It was my turn, I would pack everything, I would look at the beautiful Iria to see if her eyes regained their soft warmth and then, taking her hand in mine, I would invariably set off on my way.

*

Four centuries ago, due to the overcrowding of the Earth, the project of colonizing outer space was initiated. Humanity was completing several millennia and was forced to send its ships to find new places to live. Thus, a vanguard expedition had also reached Vanelia. This planet was slightly larger than the Earth, but it had a totally different relief: 99% of the surface was continuous deserts, and the smallest rest was made up of two vegetal oases. It was said "desert" not because there was a full correspondence with the classical definition, but because - not having a generic term - the analogy was made based on the features of expanse and desolation, which are the main defining features.

The atmosphere they found was stagnant in an unnaturally stable equilibrium, and the air was similar enough to that of our home world for the planet to be of interest. Especially the oasis area. The oases - even if they were not in perfectly opposite points of the planetoid - formed two biological poles, and surrounded the only sources of water.

Finding the existence of a biological "magnetism" with uncontrollable manifestations, the pilot colony would only be designed for one hundred or two earthlings, still entering the broad category of independent colonies of origin.

About four years after the installation, a group of researchers determined that the biological polarity changes - somewhat like the earth's magnetic one - but at short intervals and, at least apparently, irregularly. The law-equation of the change of polarity was also discovered, an equation whose only shortcoming was the fact that it required knowledge of the moment of a change in relation to the local astonomic time. When the hypothesis appeared that this change could also have harmful effects, a rescue system was developed, but like any solution to a problem without known parameters and with low probability, it was quite flimsy - measures were especially proposed to rescue eventual survivors.

The construction of the habitat had ended almost a decade ago and I was 16 years old at the time. Our dwellings - aesthetic and durable pinnacles of colonial architecture - had naturally filled with life and society had begun to pulsate. After a few years, upon graduating from the Advanced Course, when I was elected an auxiliary member of the Board of Directors, I also learned about the problem of polarity. But in the period of peaceful life that has passed since then, we all forgot about that threat.

*

I had noticed Iria from the beginning - a nice little girl, a little chubby, with a charm that I was immediately captivated by.

*

Because sometimes I felt the need for a change of scenery, I would go out with Iria to one end of the oasis, crossing seven or eight kilometers at a time, to look for hours over the deserted expanses. It often happened that we spent the night talking about simple things or not, but the bright nights on Vanelia are very beautiful.

On such an evening - nine years had passed since the colonization of the planet - the disaster occurred. The air heated up and began to vibrate strangely, a distant smell reached us and Iria suggested that we return immediately. I had to be a little brutal to be able to restrain her. Then I tried to explain to him that the phenomenon could signal a change in biological polarity and that it might be dangerous. Probably if I had kept quiet it would have been easier.

In the meantime, the smell intensified unbearably, forcing us to move another kilometer away. Staring blankly - in those diffuse moments of waiting - I began to imagine the possible disaster: familiar faces crossed my mind, and pessimistic thoughts terrified me. In order not to panic, I forced myself to recapitulate the instructions received in the council. Some seemed meaningless to me and I couldn't wait to consult the central computer.

The impatience took on unbearable proportions and, shortly before morning, assuming every risk, we started for the colony.

After almost two hours I arrived and had to see that a disaster had occurred. The streets were deserted, the warehouses the same, the traffic lights were waving uselessly and, very rarely, a lifeless body. That was about all I saw in the desperate run to the central building. I went inside and read the computer display, which had already been questioned by the service person. The yellow letters flashed:

BIOLOGICAL EMANATION OF 3.1 MRi.

UNDETERMINED NATURE.

EFFECT OF CHANGE OF BIOLOGICAL POLARITY.

LETHAL DOSE ON A QUASICIRCULAR SURFACE WITH A RADIUS OF 5 KM AROUND THE POLE.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: C 2156.

After catching his breath, Iria also read. She looked at me horrified and ran out. I wanted to follow her but I remembered the instructions. So I returned to the computer console and dialed the code 2156. I filled in the data required to initialize the program and that's how I found out everything.

For nearly twelve years this oasis will be uninhabitable due to the continuous emanations of poisonous gas, then the other pole will be uninhabitable for nearly fifteen years. I had to, in the next four hours, leave the colony together with the eventual survivors, and - to save it - reach the other habitable oasis.

Since the connection to Earth required a waiting time of several weeks, I had to move quickly to action: I switched all the intercoms and made a repeated call.

I had programmed the computer to communicate on Earth what had happened and had finished copying the map of the planiglob, when - almost unheard - Iria entered crying. She calmed down as soon as she felt me ​​next to me and told me that her family had died; that they all died. And I had to believe it because the intercoms, amplified to the maximum, emitted only a slight background noise, and the signals confirmed everything. We were the only survivors.

After a while I managed to banish the images from my mind and collect my thoughts. I tried to explain the instructions to Iria. Logic understood it perfectly, but it didn't understand what's the point of us trying. I didn't explain my point either; whether it was the instinct of preservation or the instructions received in the council and assimilated as primary needs, but I knew we had to live and I later surprised myself that I didn't even struggle much to find the motivation. Iria's instinct of preservation had been annihilated by the pain and she told me that she did not want to hear about leaving, and I - if I am such a coward - will have no choice but to leave. Single!

He went out leaving me perplexed, but I was brought to my senses by the slam of the door and rushed to engage the outer door lock.

After some preparations, I called her and said:

- I care about you too much to leave you alone. But I still want to try something - we will make a vaccine and I hope it will have an effect!

Unable to read anything else in my preoccupied gaze, he let me approach and fix the syringe on his forearm. I made a little mistake when, for more security, I firmly shook her hand, and she began to suspect something.

- All, don't you...want to...take me...

Then his wince was dulled by the narcotic.

"From now on, my good Iria will follow me everywhere!" I communicated this to myself dryly, refusing for the moment any other implications.

I memorized the instructions given by the computer, took the medical kit with nutritional reserves, the computer radio terminal station, a mini technical kit and a miniature tent, and left without analyzing my feelings. All in a desperate and yet logical frenzy. And the fact that Iria confidently held my hand gave me the determination I needed to try to cross the planet in search of the only place where one could live.

I had left the oasis and looking back I told myself that in an hour a new emanation would be produced. I turned my eyes forward and started immediately, thinking that we had over twenty thousand kilometers to go and that there was no point in mounting the radio relay to find out what the computer thought about the new wave of emanations. Or about anything else.

*

After another week the watery mud had turned into a thicker one, which made the shoes pant, then even thicker, so that the tracks left were only three or four centimeters deep. It had never rained and I don't remember seeing a cloud. The nocturnal drop in temperature was insignificant and we walked unhindered under the strong light of the satellite.

*

The injections had turned out to be quite formidable: I covered almost a hundred kilometers in a day of continuous walking. Vanelian time being almost identical to terrestrial time, I didn't feel the need to get into precise calculations.

Anyway, apart from walking, I wasn't really able to do anything else. Only during the stops I thought lovingly of Iria, of the way she endures walking, of her reactions, sometimes trying to imagine their mechanism. Meanwhile, something happened that I almost knew would happen: I was gradually losing my lucidity. I was losing myself in the middle of this exceptional situation, letting my instincts rule me. It was a strange state; new sensations were slowly but surely replacing my logic and lucidity. Crossing the road was imprinted somewhere in my subconscious, becoming an overpowering reflex, a fundamental law of survival; and thus the goal seemed to free my mind, leaving my thoughts to churn in an organic disorder around the most beautiful subject - Iria.

*

Gradually and yet imperceptibly the mud had dried, cracking into irregular shapes that gained an incredible symmetry through infinite repetition. I had even begun to believe that the surface of the planet was flat, the horizon not seeming to end due to the radius of curvature. It was of course an aberration, but it often haunted my thoughts.

I was walking continuously, in a seemingly eternal rhythm, and I had come to fear a reaction of the organisms to the substances I was injecting.

*

The ground had become strewn with huge cracks. In these areas, where the water had been running for centuries, we managed to cover more than a hundred kilometers a day. I told myself that we still had a lot to learn about this planet, nothing we knew about the climate of Earth or other worlds did not explain the state of affairs here. But we knew that it also depends on our effort now if there will be a future for this as well.

*

In one of the rare moments of lucidity I realized that I was no longer following the passage of time. I lost count and I should have been angry and mobilized to make up for the loss. But I smiled telling myself that this shift of interest was protecting us. In the sense that we are too small, vulnerable and mortal to continue to fight against time.

And I also told myself that I'm starting to lose track of time because actually space is what stands between us and the oasis of life.

*

I was watching as closely as I could to detect the appearance of dust in the air so that I could take additional measures to isolate the equipment; but the soil was terribly compact—not a particle of dust could be detached in any way. From this perspective everything was in order.

Something curious seemed to me to be happening with Iria. Against the background of the same need for protection, in the moments before the stops, when the narcotic was starting to lose its effect, he called me softly, reached me from the three steps behind me, grabbed my hand and pulled me forward. He answered my surprised look with a beautiful smile. He had even started helping me inject the serums, and the looks we exchanged had multiplied.

Then I had moments of insecurity of thoughts. Thoughts that, on the one hand, accused me of proceeding with such a treatment with Iria, on the other hand, assured me that by protecting her from depression and fatigue, I had more chances.

*

I remember an awkward flash of lucidity as a bud of idea tried to reach the light; but from that inappropriate effort, only one sensation reached my conscious level – an insufficiently formulated question regarding thermodynamic equilibrium and its principles. Probably the amplitude of that idea was initially more substantial, but I had managed to force my memory to retain that much.

Then this simple reference would frequently break through to controllable thought without my being able to build more.

*

The dust also appeared, but it remained immovable on the hard ground. After about twenty more stops, we found ourselves - progressively - in the eternal sands. The ground was flat from horizon to horizon. The wind doesn't even blow, so it seems like a more earthy image. In that daunting monstrosity of the building we were the only ones moving, advancing alienatingly through the desert.

*

I don't know how and why, but I had come to hold Iria's hand continuously. And this thing would save us from a tragedy. One day, during a break, I injected both of them with a nutritional-narcotic serum.

I felt the effect of the annihilation of the conscious immediately after I had packed everything. With the last coherent thought I communicated to myself that I would now find out through my own senses how the narcotic works. I remember seeing images (or imagining them), hearing noises (or so it seemed), and being a total and timeless spectator of everything around me and happening to me. When I recovered from the nightmare of helplessness, I noticed that we had stopped and Iria was already cleaning her hands and face. I was too dizzy to marvel at her lucidity at the time. I had the strength to restore the injections and everything returned to normal, except that I had to correct the route - for the last eight hours I had been walking perpendicular to the proposed route. An unexpected compensation: I had the sensation of a relaxing vacation.

I couldn't stop thinking about what would have happened if I had lost Iria, but every time I was afraid of taking my thoughts too far...

The desert had become exasperating. The amazingly fine sand—probably created centuries ago by who knows what miracles, for the temperature differences were insignificant—raised behind our steps like an endless trail of dust.

The temperature had risen a lot and I could feel Iria's hand sweating. We anxiously followed the evolution of the temperature and the reaction of our bodies. When I had reached troublesome fits caused by the sting of the sweat entering my eyes, I had the joy of finding - at one of the stops - that the temperature had dropped by half a degree. I had once learned about the symmetry and uniformity of the Vanelian climate, and the fact told me that we were halfway there. At this memorable stop, gripped as if by fever, I spoke to Iria for a long time about the chance to reach the oasis. This despite the fact that she did not understand anything. But he was smiling and that was enough for me.

*

I don't remember when the dessert was finished; for several weeks I had been lucid only at breaks, and only long enough to wonder where I had the strength to observe the ceremonial.

I felt a continuous loss of lucidity and barely made the effort to follow the route on the map. The air was no longer so hot, but the sands reminded me that I still had a long way to go. And I was thinking that from the start I was only standing on my feet.

*

The stops were going normally and Iria seemed to like getting the injection - she started helping me and looking at me smiling.

For the rest, I looked at my legs, how they took one before the other and then the second before the first, and again... and when I wanted to drive away the state, I slowly squeezed Iria's hand, and she moaned slightly, reminding me that I had to do everything for successful.

*

I don't know how much time had passed and since when, but at a stop something special happened. After I wiped my hands, I opened the kit and handed Iria the serum tank. When I was about to load the syringe, Iria threw the dose on the floor. A fact that instantly restored my lucidity. I looked into her eyes hiding my surprise. He took a few deep breaths, and then looked hopefully at me and said:

- Have faith, All! I will be by your side.

Probably what I felt then is true happiness.

In these conditions, the way we had to go was nothing, the fact that we would be alone no longer mattered - we were determined to take life from the beginning.

Iria looked splendid and from then on we would use the same serum.

Two weeks after the unforgettable event, the ground had become covered with a very sticky mud. But the new unit helps us to cover over thirty kilometers in one cycle even in these conditions. And the stops were now unforgettable - after exchanging some technical impressions of the route and making future plans, we delved into tender looks that spoke of a unique love. At least on this planet.

*

* *

From a distance we saw the oasis and we really tried to hurry. Unsuspected reserves of reason brought me some ideas with survival valences. I then realized that in addition to fatigue, I had also accumulated a lot of information about this living planet. Information that - added to the data in the computer we were linked to - would help us explain and control even what had appeared to defy the principles of thermodynamics.

After a good few hours we stopped near a spring. I set up the tent and installed the radio connection to the computer.

I had been walking for seven months and eleven days and I knew that stopping the treatment would lead to terrible fatigue. We took a dose of homogenizing sleeping pills and went to bed in a hurry because, after the few days of sleep, the beginning of a new life was waiting for us.

May 17-18, 1986, Rm. Vâlcea

MIRCEA BADUț

A LAST CHANCE

A new crisis. He closed his eyes. He wanted to smile, and he did smile a little, happy that the intensity and frequency of these seizures had significantly decreased. A little later he looked around and analyzed.

The leaden sky had descended very close to the world.

He thought: "It should be spring... Maybe it is. But no one can say it anymore. Not counting on anyone."

Everything seemed sad and terribly still. In the station, who knows how long, there were two sets of goods whose wagons looked pitiful. The invasion of rust would have said that here too is an abandoned territory, but a small detail disproves the hypothesis: the rails of the main line were polished.

Then he looked at the platform. Fitting with ironic perfection into the gloomy landscape, several people waited almost motionless. Despite the wave of disgust, he reasons, as an excuse for his own species, that this desolate state seems normal to them.

He remembered that he had been waiting on his feet for almost four hours; no train had arrived and the bag strap looked like it had gone through her collarbone. As he put it over his other shoulder he saw a woman approaching him. He blames himself for not noticing her while waiting on the platform.

She was young, even younger than him, and relatively good looking. In addition - something that seemed special to him - he had that look, so rarely found in those around him, which preceded the so-called "practical alienation".

He clenched his jaw slightly, realizing that he liked it. Then he looked at her deeply and somewhat lost. She also enjoyed the game, even if she didn't understand anything anymore. He asked him:

- Are you an alien?

He continued to look into her eyes, still unable to answer her.

- Your costume so strange... And then this tired look of the master of the senses of the world...

It was decided to speak to him:

– Black leather jacket, with double shoulders, blue cotton pants, gray wool blouse, white sports shoes. Something from the fashion of the 20th century.

– What is that fashion? But century?

– Um. The century is a kind of time unit.

– And the 20th century means in our past, right?!

He confirms them by nodding his head and still looking at her penetratingly with the hope that she will still understand something.

- So you're not an alien!... But you look different from the others... Where are you going?

– At home.

- Where is home?

– Where childhood should have been. And the silence...

Realizing that he could not be understood, he stopped and studied her reaction.

– Why are you talking to me about this? she asked him. I'm going without knowing where, and you don't really know either!

He looked at her lovingly. As he had never done before. And with a lot of hope. Suddenly, and without needing any rational motivation, she found herself no longer willing to accept the fact that she could not understand and feel anything, that she could not resonate with anything.

He was glad when he caught a slight change in her gaze: it was not an opinion. It wasn't an opinion at all!

The young woman pressed her temples with her fingers and the gesture meant a lot to him. He saw her more confused, less apathetic than any other man.

- Do you want me to go with you?

He knew, he had learned to keep his knees straight. So he responded to her proposal with a wordless assent.

*

A passenger train arrived at the station. "It doesn't look like anything more than a freight line," he thought to himself and looked once more at the gray and sad station covered by the dirty afternoon sky.

He took her hand and climbed up. The train was free, completely empty. After occupying a compartment, he realized that he no longer knew in which direction he was going to go. He didn't bother to get his bearings - it didn't matter.

Almost immediately the train started moving with the whole range of shortcomings characteristic of the technical-social level at which the world has maintained itself since the beginning of the current millennium.

For a long time they looked into each other's eyes as if, he thought, waiting for a real beginning. She was afraid he would do it, and she couldn't do it.

He got hungry. He also asked her if she wanted something to eat and then looked in her bag for the nutritional tablets. After she swallowed, one asked him in wonder:

– What kind of guy is this? I haven't seen it before!

– Complex D 23. I have a reserve here for several months.

- From where?

- Um... From an abandoned warehouse.

She stood up intrigued to check his bag. What attracted her most was a pair of handcuffs.

– Were you in the war?

He agrees to them with a very economical sign.

- Put them on me too!

- No! I'm the only one who wore them.

- Please!

The pleading in her voice seemed like a shocking rush. No, he couldn't believe it. He asked himself in his mind, rhetorically, tired and almost defeated: "Can any man beg anymore?!"

For a while he was lost in her eyes, now warm and candid. When he came back he unlocked his handcuffs and put them tightly on her wrists.

She breathed a sigh of relief, looking at him with childlike gratitude. And he felt lost, slipping out of lucidity. He approaches to kiss her happily following her gestures: she tries to hug him, then - realizing that her hands are tied - she surrenders herself ecstatically to the kiss.

She withdrew in a moment of silence, moving away and keeping her eyes closed, while he looked at her, unable to believe what he had experienced.

But he was surprised when she opened her eyes and saw his expressionless gaze, and the surprise turned into shock when he heard her tired voice:

- Get these things off me!

He should have been offended, but he had lived too long among humans. He knew their possibilities.

He takes his "bracelets" and continues to follow her. He had closed his eyes again and was breathing forcefully, as if forcing himself to recover from a crisis. When she calmed down, she opened her eyes and asked him somewhat alarmed:

- What happened to me? what did you do to me

He looked at her confused, unable to answer her.

- I know you did something bad to me, but why didn't I feel it, why didn't I react normally?!

He witnessed her despair even more confusedly, being afraid to help the fight in any way.

He then saw her wiping her tears and smiling.

- You have supernatural powers. And, what is much worse, now I want to continue your spells on me. I know it's not good, but it was something more beautiful than the effect of a narcotic, it was like a descent into my privacy, like living through a primitive self... Or I don't know how! But dangerous…

Can you do something like this with me?

He finally answered and the answer made him happier, reviving his hopes. Buried hopes with a great sense of responsibility for the state of affairs.

- Yes. And even more beautiful. More real.

But, because your understanding and conscious participation is needed, I will begin by telling you the story of the handcuffs.

*

"A few hours after the conflagration had become general, that is, after the war had suddenly penetrated to all corners of the world, I - as well as all over 80% of the involved inhabitants of the planet - set out convinced that I was doing exactly the right thing.

Alarmed by this nonsense, because essentially the whole world had declared war, the Organization for the Preservation of Humanity - or the Fanatics, as they were also called - began to do their duty of conscience. Thus the conflagration would turn on her, it being natural for all of them to fight against the only organization that did not let them fight. It was the so-called vectorial reorientation of the war. And the arguments seemed to originate from ourselves.

Seeing themselves facing each other, isolated in a few points of the globe, the remaining Fanatics did something whose meaning I did not find at all questionable at the time: using a few dozen computer recorders, they started to record, so to speak, History.

You will understand later what I mean by this.

Frightened by this secret project, the warring parties had sent important forces destined to destroy the recording centers and, later, commandos specially trained to locate and destroy the ordinaplexes.

The Ordinaplex is an information storage device, as small as it is difficult to destroy with ordinary means.

I was also part of such a commando. We received the coordinates of six ordinaplexes and set out determined to annihilate them. But our speed was fiercely and furiously opposed by the Fanatics, so that - after we had destroyed four ordinaplexes - from thirty-four, the team had ended up consisting of only three combatants. And my last comrades perished almost stupidly while I was destroying the penultimate device.

I set off alone towards the last one. I found it utterly undefended, abandoned as nothingness, and something happened in my mind—I refused to destroy it, thinking it foolish to achieve such a victory. I carried it with me and hid it, not knowing what I was doing either.

Then - when it was found out that there was a nedistrys device left - I was arrested. I had the honor of having the first box of handcuffs unsealed to put them on me.

I carried them for several good days, during which terribly unnatural treaties were concluded between the powers. Their losses in this conflagration had not been too significant and now the treaties were trying to cover the stupidity of what had happened. And the losses of the pacifist organization were not talked about at all.

Of course, I didn't think so then. Everything seemed natural to me like any other man - mere mortal dazed by events - so I was not surprised the morning they released me."

He took a break to tell his thoughts, getting lost in the past.

– And what did you do with the ordinaplex?

- I recovered it and read it.

– Can it be read?!

– It's a way of saying. I submitted to the transfer of information. Since then I always carry it around with me.

She looked questioningly at his shoulder bag. It indeed contained an apparatus of appreciable size.

– Yes, that is it. And there was the supernatural you were talking about.

I submitted to the transference and found out everything that has been until some time ago, everything that people have done throughout evolution; I found out how they lived and felt. And I also learned about the evolution of nihilism.

He had said the last sentence as a comment to himself.

- Why did you emphasize "they lived and felt"? What could they have had differently than us in terms of living and exchanging information with the environment?

– Um. Their relationship with the environment was not as extrinsic as it is with us; and there is respect for the interior.

– Somehow… similar to what I just experienced?!

He saw her smiling enigmatically and, interpreting her thought, said:

- By submitting to the transfer, you risk becoming someone else!

– If you assure me that feelings can rise to that level, I accept the risk!

He agreed and gave her eight nutritional tablets to swallow. He fixed several independent electrodes on his forehead and temples, then switched on the ordinaplex without taking it out of the bag.

After making sure that she entered the totally-passive state, she moved towards the window of the compartment to look at the shapes that could still be distinguished unfolding in the late evening.

Regardless of fatigue and dark circles, there was an expression of hope on her face. His gaze was lost in the distance and he rarely blinked, in harmony with the silence in his soul.

*

She woke up in a clearing behind a train station no higher than the one from which they had left, and he was sleeping next to her. She smiled when she felt her left wrist handcuffed by his right hand.

She looked at him and told herself that he didn't look bad at all, and that he didn't look like he was in his early twenties. He was sleeping with his head on the bag and had a happy expression on his face.

She felt her temple, remembered everything and remained still, wanting to analyze. To be analyzed.

Very soon he also woke up and looked at her curiously, and then joy lit up his whole face. I know that the experience was successful.

She asked him thoughtfully, pointing to the electrodes:

- How long did it last?

- Almost two weeks.

A feeling that he had never experienced before crossed his viscera and he realized that under other conditions he would not have given any importance to the fact that he had watched over her for so long.

Then he thought of something else, telling himself that from now on he would always have something special to think about. Like a restless hope.

And he did it out loud, making many efforts:

- ...Nihilism asserted itself in the 21st century, imposing itself quite quickly.

Why did people accept it?… Ah yes! I remembered: the subconscious exploitation of convenience and hubris... And that would actually mean blocking all of humanity at a certain level... And capping naturally involved the denial of certain values... And the circuit closed to continually accentuate the reaction.

I can't believe it! I can't accept it! Understand me!…

He controlled his tears and continued:

- However, it is true. The proof is the recording, the authenticity of which I cannot doubt.

Then, much more convincing, is the fact that I found hidden somewhere, very deep in my being, the potential resources and calls that made me resonate with all these human values.

For a while he didn't say anything and didn't even think anything. Then he looked at his left hand. He picked it up and watched, filled with meaning, as his hand rose with it, totally relaxed, abandoned with confidence.

He supported them like this until he could no longer bear the pressure of the handcuffs. He looked at the metal with affection, thinking that this toy had bound him, and he owed this rediscovery of his soul to him...

The soul that suddenly felt so full. And so much next to the other.

I know he's looking at her. I know he had looked at her with love the whole time. She turned almost suddenly to him and said:

– I want to make love!

*

They had boarded another train, but much more determined.

The handcuff that had tied her to him was no longer on her wrist, but she felt it there and knew that he felt the same way - they both believed in this connection.

And they felt as if they had set out to reconquer the world.

Craiova, April 24-25, 1988

MIRCEA BADUț

A LAST CHANCE

A new crisis. He closed his eyes. He wanted to smile, and he did smile a little, happy that the intensity and frequency of these seizures had significantly decreased. A little later he looked around and analyzed.

The leaden sky had descended very close to the world.

He thought: "It should be spring... Maybe it is. But no one can say it anymore. Not counting on anyone."

Everything seemed sad and terribly still. In the station, who knows how long, there were two sets of goods whose wagons looked pitiful. The invasion of rust would have said that here too is an abandoned territory, but a small detail disproves the hypothesis: the rails of the main line were polished.

Then he looked at the platform. Fitting with ironic perfection into the gloomy landscape, several people waited almost motionless. Despite the wave of disgust, he reasons, as an excuse for his own species, that this desolate state seems normal to them.

He remembered that he had been waiting on his feet for almost four hours; no train had arrived and the bag strap looked like it had gone through her collarbone. As he put it over his other shoulder he saw a woman approaching him. He blames himself for not noticing her while waiting on the platform.

She was young, even younger than him, and relatively good looking. In addition - something that seemed special to him - he had that look, so rarely found in those around him, which preceded the so-called "practical alienation".

He clenched his jaw slightly, realizing that he liked it. Then he looked at her deeply and somewhat lost. She also enjoyed the game, even if she didn't understand anything anymore. He asked him:

- Are you an alien?

He continued to look into her eyes, still unable to answer her.

- Your costume so strange... And then this tired look of the master of the senses of the world...

It was decided to speak to him:

– Black leather jacket, with double shoulders, blue cotton pants, gray wool blouse, white sports shoes. Something from the fashion of the 20th century.

– What is that fashion? But century?

– Um. The century is a kind of time unit.

– And the 20th century means in our past, right?!

He confirms them by nodding his head and still looking at her penetratingly with the hope that she will still understand something.

- So you're not an alien!... But you look different from the others... Where are you going?

– At home.

- Where is home?

– Where childhood should have been. And the silence...

Realizing that he could not be understood, he stopped and studied her reaction.

– Why are you talking to me about this? she asked him. I'm going without knowing where, and you don't really know either!

He looked at her lovingly. As he had never done before. And with a lot of hope. Suddenly, and without needing any rational motivation, she found herself no longer willing to accept the fact that she could not understand and feel anything, that she could not resonate with anything.

He was glad when he caught a slight change in her gaze: it was not an opinion. It wasn't an opinion at all!

The young woman pressed her temples with her fingers and the gesture meant a lot to him. He saw her more confused, less apathetic than any other man.

- Do you want me to go with you?

He knew, he had learned to keep his knees straight. So he responded to her proposal with a wordless assent.

*

A passenger train arrived at the station. "It doesn't look like anything more than a freight line," he thought to himself and looked once more at the gray and sad station covered by the dirty afternoon sky.

He took her hand and climbed up. The train was free, completely empty. After occupying a compartment, he realized that he no longer knew in which direction he was going to go. He didn't bother to get his bearings - it didn't matter.

Almost immediately the train started moving with the whole range of shortcomings characteristic of the technical-social level at which the world has maintained itself since the beginning of the current millennium.

For a long time they looked into each other's eyes as if, he thought, waiting for a real beginning. She was afraid he would do it, and she couldn't do it.

He got hungry. He also asked her if she wanted something to eat and then looked in her bag for the nutritional tablets. After she swallowed, one asked him in wonder:

– What kind of guy is this? I haven't seen it before!

– Complex D 23. I have a reserve here for several months.

- From where?

- Um... From an abandoned warehouse.

She stood up intrigued to check his bag. What attracted her most was a pair of handcuffs.

– Were you in the war?

He agrees to them with a very economical sign.

- Put them on me too!

- No! I'm the only one who wore them.

- Please!

The pleading in her voice seemed like a shocking rush. No, he couldn't believe it. He asked himself in his mind, rhetorically, tired and almost defeated: "Can any man beg anymore?!"

For a while he was lost in her eyes, now warm and candid. When he came back he unlocked his handcuffs and put them tightly on her wrists.

She breathed a sigh of relief, looking at him with childlike gratitude. And he felt lost, slipping out of lucidity. He approaches to kiss her happily following her gestures: she tries to hug him, then - realizing that her hands are tied - she surrenders herself ecstatically to the kiss.

She withdrew in a moment of silence, moving away and keeping her eyes closed, while he looked at her, unable to believe what he had experienced.

But he was surprised when she opened her eyes and saw his expressionless gaze, and the surprise turned into shock when he heard her tired voice:

- Get these things off me!

He should have been offended, but he had lived too long among humans. He knew their possibilities.

He takes his "bracelets" and continues to follow her. He had closed his eyes again and was breathing forcefully, as if forcing himself to recover from a crisis. When she calmed down, she opened her eyes and asked him somewhat alarmed:

- What happened to me? what did you do to me

He looked at her confused, unable to answer her.

- I know you did something bad to me, but why didn't I feel it, why didn't I react normally?!

He witnessed her despair even more confusedly, being afraid to help the fight in any way.

He then saw her wiping her tears and smiling.

- You have supernatural powers. And, what is much worse, now I want to continue your spells on me. I know it's not good, but it was something more beautiful than the effect of a narcotic, it was like a descent into my privacy, like living through a primitive self... Or I don't know how! But dangerous…

Can you do something like this with me?

He finally answered and the answer made him happier, reviving his hopes. Buried hopes with a great sense of responsibility for the state of affairs.

- Yes. And even more beautiful. More real.

But, because your understanding and conscious participation is needed, I will begin by telling you the story of the handcuffs.

*

"A few hours after the conflagration had become general, that is, after the war had suddenly penetrated to all corners of the world, I - as well as all over 80% of the involved inhabitants of the planet - set out convinced that I was doing exactly the right thing.

Alarmed by this nonsense, because essentially the whole world had declared war, the Organization for the Preservation of Humanity - or the Fanatics, as they were also called - began to do their duty of conscience. Thus the conflagration would turn on her, it being natural for all of them to fight against the only organization that did not let them fight. It was the so-called vectorial reorientation of the war. And the arguments seemed to originate from ourselves.

Seeing themselves facing each other, isolated in a few points of the globe, the remaining Fanatics did something whose meaning I did not find at all questionable at the time: using a few dozen computer recorders, they started to record, so to speak, History.

You will understand later what I mean by this.

Frightened by this secret project, the warring parties had sent important forces destined to destroy the recording centers and, later, commandos specially trained to locate and destroy the ordinaplexes.

The Ordinaplex is an information storage device, as small as it is difficult to destroy with ordinary means.

I was also part of such a commando. We received the coordinates of six ordinaplexes and set out determined to annihilate them. But our speed was fiercely and furiously opposed by the Fanatics, so that - after we had destroyed four ordinaplexes - from thirty-four, the team had ended up consisting of only three combatants. And my last comrades perished almost stupidly while I was destroying the penultimate device.

I set off alone towards the last one. I found it utterly undefended, abandoned as nothingness, and something happened in my mind—I refused to destroy it, thinking it foolish to achieve such a victory. I carried it with me and hid it, not knowing what I was doing either.

Then - when it was found out that there was a nedistrys device left - I was arrested. I had the honor of having the first box of handcuffs unsealed to put them on me.

I carried them for several good days, during which terribly unnatural treaties were concluded between the powers. Their losses in this conflagration had not been too significant and now the treaties were trying to cover the stupidity of what had happened. And the losses of the pacifist organization were not talked about at all.

Of course, I didn't think so then. Everything seemed natural to me like any other man - mere mortal dazed by events - so I was not surprised the morning they released me."

He took a break to tell his thoughts, getting lost in the past.

– And what did you do with the ordinaplex?

- I recovered it and read it.

– Can it be read?!

– It's a way of saying. I submitted to the transfer of information. Since then I always carry it around with me.

She looked questioningly at his shoulder bag. It indeed contained an apparatus of appreciable size.

– Yes, that is it. And there was the supernatural you were talking about.

I submitted to the transference and found out everything that has been until some time ago, everything that people have done throughout evolution; I found out how they lived and felt. And I also learned about the evolution of nihilism.

He had said the last sentence as a comment to himself.

- Why did you emphasize "they lived and felt"? What could they have had differently than us in terms of living and exchanging information with the environment?

– Um. Their relationship with the environment was not as extrinsic as it is with us; and there is respect for the interior.

– Somehow… similar to what I just experienced?!

He saw her smiling enigmatically and, interpreting her thought, said:

- By submitting to the transfer, you risk becoming someone else!

– If you assure me that feelings can rise to that level, I accept the risk!

He agreed and gave her eight nutritional tablets to swallow. He fixed several independent electrodes on his forehead and temples, then switched on the ordinaplex without taking it out of the bag.

After making sure that she entered the totally-passive state, she moved towards the window of the compartment to look at the shapes that could still be distinguished unfolding in the late evening.

Regardless of fatigue and dark circles, there was an expression of hope on her face. His gaze was lost in the distance and he rarely blinked, in harmony with the silence in his soul.

*

She woke up in a clearing behind a train station no higher than the one from which they had left, and he was sleeping next to her. She smiled when she felt her left wrist handcuffed by his right hand.

She looked at him and told herself that he didn't look bad at all, and that he didn't look like he was in his early twenties. He was sleeping with his head on the bag and had a happy expression on his face.

She felt her temple, remembered everything and remained still, wanting to analyze. To be analyzed.

Very soon he also woke up and looked at her curiously, and then joy lit up his whole face. I know that the experience was successful.

She asked him thoughtfully, pointing to the electrodes:

- How long did it last?

- Almost two weeks.

A feeling that he had never experienced before crossed his viscera and he realized that under other conditions he would not have given any importance to the fact that he had watched over her for so long.

Then he thought of something else, telling himself that from now on he would always have something special to think about. Like a restless hope.

And he did it out loud, making many efforts:

- ...Nihilism asserted itself in the 21st century, imposing itself quite quickly.

Why did people accept it?… Ah yes! I remembered: the subconscious exploitation of convenience and hubris... And that would actually mean blocking all of humanity at a certain level... And capping naturally involved the denial of certain values... And the circuit closed to continually accentuate the reaction.

I can't believe it! I can't accept it! Understand me!…

He controlled his tears and continued:

- However, it is true. The proof is the recording, the authenticity of which I cannot doubt.

Then, much more convincing, is the fact that I found hidden somewhere, very deep in my being, the potential resources and calls that made me resonate with all these human values.

For a while he didn't say anything and didn't even think anything. Then he looked at his left hand. He picked it up and watched, filled with meaning, as his hand rose with it, totally relaxed, abandoned with confidence.

He supported them like this until he could no longer bear the pressure of the handcuffs. He looked at the metal with affection, thinking that this toy had bound him, and he owed this rediscovery of his soul to him...

The soul that suddenly felt so full. And so much next to the other.

I know he's looking at her. I know he had looked at her with love the whole time. She turned almost suddenly to him and said:

– I want to make love!

*

They had boarded another train, but much more determined.

The handcuff that had tied her to him was no longer on her wrist, but she felt it there and knew that he felt the same way - they both believed in this connection.

And they felt as if they had set out to reconquer the world.

Craiova, April 24-25, 1988

WORLD WITH TIME AND ANGEL(Snippets)

In memory of my mother.

GURGU costs

I remember it was spring one year. I don't know which one exactly because they all look the same to me and have complicated names to remember. It was spring as it is in Bucharest. Warm, humid, with fresh smells of green trees and Turkish bread, with blinding sun foreshadowing the summer heat. Children began to walk in their shorts, businessmen to flaunt their silk ties and thin leather-soled shoes, teenagers returned to the streets with the latest models of Levi's, Benetton and Naf-Naf, the wealthy competed in tracksuits and shoes sport, and the aurolacs at the Railway Station, which in the meantime had become a tourist attraction, began to take their bags out of the canals and sniff the warm air, with the smell of pollution.

The event happened suddenly, as catastrophes usually do. It was past midnight. The sky hung heavy with stars above the capital. The area was the North Station with its intense night life around the arcades and non-stop boutiques, with the cries for help from the Station park and the barking of dozens of dogs behind the blocks.

A liquid eye opened in the sky, shining brightly from above the palace, and a bolt of lightning erupted from it, silently striking the building. A wave of foamy white lava shot out of all the windows of the palace and quickly ran down the walls. A burst of foam. The neighborhood shook briefly, but violently. In a few minutes the white matter had covered the Ministry of Railways and had spread over a radius of a few meters around, then it had quickly coagulated and solidified. The whole palace looked like a candle melted overnight.

General alert, panic, evacuation of the Station area, the army erecting the first barriers and trying to isolate the affected area, scientists mobilized from all over the country to investigate the nature and origin of the phenomenon, the celestial injection, as it was called by the press later. In 12 hours, Bucharest had become a war zone. In a short time, however, it was clear that no power on the globe had launched a surprise attack. The origins of the phenomenon remained unknown.

After a week, the white matter had lost its matte, milky appearance from the beginning and had acquired a translucent sheen. Another gray liquid had begun to pulsate beneath the outer layer. A menacing babble that no attempt by scientists or the army could reach. The whitish-crystalline substance proved indestructible. In time, rapid and undulating movements began to be discerned through the gray-dirty liquid inside. It was obvious that life had been born under the protective blanket. An alien life form. It was christened the Glass Plague.

The Romanian government was forced by the United Nations to receive official observers and international teams of researchers. In a few months, Bucharest had fulfilled its dream of being one of the most important capitals of the world. The expansion of the phenomenon was relatively slow so that the major television networks and media groups had occupied entire buildings at enormous sums and had brought their best equipment to observe the phenomenon and broadcast it live to the whole world.

Sickle Plague inexorably gained several meters a day. Slow, sometimes imperceptible. At the beginning, there were several lightning advances that surprised various people, thus the first victims appeared. Over time, however, the attacks became rarer, then disappeared completely. The first affected were hardened, covered with white matter. They could be seen in several places, plaster statues, whose surface discolored over time, becoming like glass, housing within them the movements of the new life. Others had managed to escape the coagulation of the Plague of Glass on their skin, being transported in time to the quarantine centers. It was rumored that physically they were fine, but mentally they were changing. After a few weeks the official reports stated that some of them had suddenly aged and died, and others had remained psychologically traumatized, subjectively caught in the same day or hour. No one has ever seen them before, neither some nor the others.

One of the famous cases, and which they could not hide for a long time, was that of the old man with the newspaper. This time the attack had a different nature. The individual was discovered in a glassy, ​​transparent drop, like prehistoric insects in amber. But the old man was still alive. His eyelids had been immobilized, like the rest of his body, in the solidified air. Only his eyeballs remained mobile, forced into an eternal state of observation. After years, he was in the same place, unchanged, in the same position, in an eternal moment, moving his eyeballs according to the movements outside. Timeless Airdrop was the name used on television.

Despite the fact that the ranks of scientists were growing every month, despite everything being cataloged, named, studied, tested, the Glass Plague advanced tirelessly by the few meters a day. The surprise expansions had long ceased, the advance already being predictable. It had been officially established that there was no danger of any epidemic and that the Plague presented no other risk than the obvious one of invasion. So Bucharest was bustling with scientists and researchers from the farthest corners of the world, the national army and the blue helmets, tourists and businessmen born after the Plague event. After a year, the dam had become practically pointless, the affected area being too large, and the pressure of the population too strong.

It was rumored that Bucharest would eventually be evacuated for political reasons. It was rumored that the whole thing was actually just an experiment with biological weapons. It was rumored that in a few decades the Glass Plague would cover the entire globe. But the interesting things were to come...

SECRET MEETINGS

The sky was clear, without the slightest trace of clouds. A cool wind was blowing. The streets were deserted. It was that transition from tired summer to fall. They entered the park, full of dead leaves and empty benches. Sax remembered the park in the spring—raw green and blooming. He had gone into a bushy-mature look in the summer, and now he was starting to go bald. In the winter he would die and leave behind only his black skeleton. Then once again, the skeleton will fill with flesh and everything will start over.

The three friends stopped in an alley. Kiss and Trompi had removed their headphones from their right ears and looked at each other. A sadistic smile spread across Kiss's face. He was nodding his head to the music. Trompi completed him with one of his specific philosophies and rolled up his shirt sleeves to the elbow. Sax increases the volume of the minidisc. Listen to Judas Priest with "Carcină Grea", remixed in a techno-punk line They used to listen and sometimes remix the hits of the rock monsters in a modern acoustic. But they had never touched the sacred pieces, the milestones. The drums thumped rhythmically in his blood. In the end, he also removed his helmet from his right ear. The bass and drums quickened his pulse and gave weight to his steps. Yes, Uncle Priest was turning him into a warrior in armor.

The toilets in Icoanei Park were smelly and isolated. The favorite meeting place of homosexuals. The law no longer forbade relationships between people of the same sex, but it forbade the practice of any form of love in public places. So, when the three attacked the lovers in the toilets in Icoanei, the law was somehow on their side. Only in a way, but they didn't care.

He ran down the steps and slammed the front door against the wall. Drums rumbled in their left eardrums. There was only one, one of their regular customers. He stopped, not at all surprised, from a vigorous rubbing movement of his penis on top of a sink.

"What are you doing, grandpa, have you started painting?" Kiss said after the first steps.

The cabin doors were all closed. There was no sound outside of the urinal water. Trompi began checking each booth one by one as Sax and Kiss approached the individual. He, small and thin, with a nervous look, put his equipment back into his pants, closed his zipper and looked at them with a wide and happy smile with his mouth agape. They had taken care of the missing part of the teeth in previous sessions.

"Why do you think Bulanu is smiling?" Sax asked in wonder.

"He thinks he stole it so many times, that we got bored and left him alone," said Kiss with a touch of humor that was not characteristic of him.

Sax's fist flies to the happy client and the last front tooth. The guy fell against the wall like a rag. He raised his bloody face to them - still smiling with satisfaction. A moment later sirens sounded, far away.

"Now I know why he's happy, you dead motherfuckers!" Kiss poked her in the gut and sent her running up the stairs after the other two.

The police cars were heading towards the park. The three hastily chose the first street. At her corner, Sax looked back. Two cars had stopped in Piaţa Icoanei. A few policemen got out and started running after them, while the vehicles turned and headed towards the boulevard, hoping to cut them off before the Roman Square.

In a few minutes the three arrived in Cosmonauts Square. He wouldn't have had a chance until Romana. Several buses were at the station at the end of the line. The last one is already signaling departure. He continued his flight towards him, making desperate signs with his hands. The car was waiting for them and closed the doors immediately behind them. The police had just entered the Square, but the traffic light was green and the bus was leaving. In a minute they were already in Romana. No one got off, only two young men got on very quickly and the car was moving again. The police had given up running, waiting for their cars.

But the stations were short towards Piaţa Victoriei and there another police crew alerted by radio could be waiting for them. They got off at first and ran past Nan Jing and George Enescu High School towards the Affected Zone. They cut through the back of the Sfinții Voevozi church and cut through Griviţa towards the square. Sirens could already be heard.

"How the hell did they know?" gasped Sax.

"What do we do, cut it towards Titulescu?"

"No, we are hiding somewhere. We can't resist one more lap with the cars", Trompi stopped them. He leaned with his palms on his knees and looked at them questioningly: where?

"In the Zone," suggested Sax.

"Do you think that..."

"In the Zone", Sax cut her off and ran away again. The cars had stopped a few hundred meters from them, at the border.

At the end of the street, the pavement was cracked and crossed by thick, white vines. The remains of the last isolation fence of the Affected Zone could still be seen at the edge of Matache Square, abandoned and frozen in a milky white drain. The Plague Area resembled a sun whose center was the CFR Palace and the North Station, from where radial strips had spread, now several kilometers long and growing in diameter daily.

He looked back and saw the policemen still following them, but this time cautiously. They were afraid of the Zone. Recently, the crystalline walls of the affected buildings had begun to sprout. Fist-sized berries grew in huge clusters. They were soft and leafy, protecting their walnut-sized core. Gummy, of a dirty yellow, when it reached maturity, the core slipped from the bud and remained suspended by a rosy navel. The Aurolacians had been the first to taste them. Then, in a short time, they had become the main commodity for drug traffickers. Powerful cartels had formed around the Zone, and the area had been divided into sectors conquered after pitched battles and political pacts. The Gypsies owned the largest area, torn in a sea of ​​blood from the Turks and Chinese. The police usually avoid interfering with their work. Only the army moved unhindered in tanks and armored cars, leading and protecting the researchers, and sometimes pretending to enforce the new United Nations regulations banning the Plague drug. Officially, however, the offer to use the blue helmets to free the Zone from Cartel control had been rejected.

"We're going to the blocks from the Station," Sax told them. He had lived in one of them before the event. He had been forced to abandon his apartment with the others, from the very first week, when the white lava had begun to solidify on the first steps.

"The third staircase has the entrance to the basements of the blocks. If we hide there, they might lose track of us."

"What do we do with the gypsies?"

"They only come at night and I don't think they enter through the blocks."

He ran past the old man imprisoned outside of time. His eyeballs followed them curiously. Not a minute later he fixed his gaze on the frightened group of policemen. One of them tried to ask him something, but the look remained unchanged. Sounds did not pass through the solidified air. Finally, the pursuers gave up and started back with a sigh of relief.

The door to the basement opened with a sigh. The white stairs looked like calcareous deposits. It was a darkness diluted by the phosphorescence of the translucent walls. The three looked at each other with confused smiles.

"Do you think they're still following us?" Trompi asked, trying for a joking tone.

"What, did your feet get wet? What could be down there? Did you ever come in, Sax?”

"A few times before the Plague. There was the heating plant and a gym for the kids in the blocks - ping-pong tables and a few mattresses.

"How about a visit? Who wants to come with me?” Kiss added.

"I don't think it's a very smart idea, after all, these characterize us. Why not!”

"Bath, bath. Come on, guys," Trompi sputtered, "has it gone to your head? What is my skin with you? What do you think you'll find down there? It's dark, the electricity is out, in a few hours the gypsies will appear..."

"In a way you're right too," Sax interrupted. "Wait here and if we're not back in an hour, go to the hospital and tell my sister to stay the night."

"Hey Tila, don't be silly!" Trompi grabbed Sax by the arm and restrained him. "Your mother needs you, Cris can't manage on her own..."

"Don't bring my mother into this and don't tell me who needs me!" Sax pushed him brutally.

He put the headphones on his ears and changed the minidisc. Put Iron Maiden with "666". The guitar grated on his nerves like a log. Some said that music is a stimulant, others that it is an anesthetic, but they all agreed on addiction. Sax could feel nerves tingling in his legs, arms, and chest. He turned up the volume and turned his back on Trompi.

Contrary to the first impression, the steps were not slippery. They had a spongy consistency, almost sticking to the soles of the boots. The walls glowed faintly in a silvery fluctuation. Dark snakings beneath the translucent skin of the walls and sudden writhings made them startle.

The basement floor was the same chalky white. A gray light fell from above, near the ceiling, through the long, latticed windows at street level. All the space under the blocks was a series of huge halls, leading from one to another. The ceiling was covered in large portions with pipes of all sizes that probably ran through it the entire length of the basement.

The walls were different from those outside. The translucent pogghita had been covered in several areas with white-matte surfaces in relief. Square meters of wall embossed in bulges the size of melons. Most motionless, but some twitching in violent convulsions. Sax felt the hair on his arms electrify. It officially states that he had an internal chill from the top of his chest to his navel. "666, the number of the beast" Iron Maiden roared in his left ear. He approached a wall and noticed that on some bumps the matte white layer had excited pores like human skin. At a closer, or imaginative look, they brought some breasts. Entire walls adorned with breasts, some hanging inert, others excited and twitching nervously.

He backed away and slammed into the other two friends. They had stopped in the middle of the room and looked around frozen. Hanging from the ceiling were hundreds of dirty pink navels, long and lumpy. Some of them had coiled themselves on the pipes that crossed the space of the hall. Whitish icicles hung from the contact points.

Trumpet twitches violently. One of the mats hanging above them had splashed the jean jacket with a sticky liquid of an uncertain color.

"That got to you!" Kiss couldn't help himself.

They helped him take off his jacket and threw it on the floor. The liquid quickly soaked up, leaving behind a gray foam. It looked as if the material of the jeans had started to ferment.

Trompi cussed. He was sweating instantly. His hands were shaking. Normally he would have turned around and left the basements. But he knew he would have done it alone and that would have been even more unpleasant. Normally the other two friends would have given up and returned to the light. But these were not normal times. And they had long lost the values ​​received through education. Maybe since Kiss's parents, who had gone to France for vacation, postponed their return home after hearing about the event in Bucharest and kept in touch with their only child by phone; or maybe since Sax's mother had fallen seriously ill, and his father had not been able to adapt to the idea that her illness had no cure and had decided that the only viable solution was divorce. Who knows when they took their first side step – maybe when they stopped using their names and adopted their nicknames. Tila had a T-shirt with the band Saxon, which by the way he hadn't listened to much and didn't really like them, but the T-shirt was "professional" and was a gift from his parents before the divorce, illness, arguments, the times when everything was chirping and the music was energizing. He didn't know why, but it had seemed normal to call himself Sax. And Boga had decided after a thorough measurement in a drunken evening, that his tongue was as long as the vampire from the band Kiss, and that he was therefore entitled to bear their name. 'Dangerous group', which inspired him how to impress the young people and turned him against the bulans, i.e. the homosexuals, without being able to explain why.

Or maybe the side step had happened before that, when the two had secretly shared the same girlfriend and then, upon discovery, they had decided that their relationship was more important, but they couldn't stop teasing and insulting each other. Or when they had adopted Trompi into the gang, against the opposite reaction they had tried. Trompi was Mr. Intelligence, or at least for his age he sounded smarter than he should have. He was fascinated by the brute force and animal attraction that Kiss exerted on the sometimes beautiful sex, but also on all the kids who gaped at his stories of heroism. Kiss was an inexhaustible source of neighborhood history – the battle on the Basarab Bridge, the ambush at the Brewery, the guerrilla of the rockers from Duca against the gypsies from Matache... .

Kiss always appreciated Trompi's opinion in himself, but in their relationship he liked to dare and raise the stake every time. It was the only way he could deal with the other's personality, even overshadowing him in most cases. Sax was the catalyst, the medium through which the two forces - mental and physical, merged, the oil that lubricated the wheels of the gang of three, the one who suggested, then imposed the action projects, using Trompi's brain and Kiss's desire for adventure.

"Who's there?"

The three of them started at the sound of the thin and trembling voice. The question had come from the second room. He advanced cautiously, remaining silent.

"I asked who was there!" this time something more authoritative.

Enter the second room. It was the same light gray and had somewhat of the same interior decoration that ran down the walls. It had been the room of the thermal plant, which plant had turned into something like a massive limestone deposit. An outpouring of whitish-translucent matter, perforated in countless places. At the bottom of the many holes, the liquid under the protective layer bubbled out in slow exhalations and inhalations. In contact with the air it had acquired an elastic consistency. The pipes that crossed the ceiling starting from the switchboard in all directions were completely wrapped in pink umbilical cords. The sensation was that they had been wrapped in a dirty, bubbling skin, twitching under strong muscle spasms.

"I feel like throwing up," Trompi began.

"We put together a check and pay in common".

"Shh", interrupted Kiss agitatedly, "do you see something in the shadows, near the former power station? It moves fast and it's too dark."

They all stare in the indicated direction. A blurry shape retreated further into the shadows, then for a few seconds they saw nothing. Against the opposite wall again, a barely hinted hiss, the shape detached itself from the wall and disappeared again, far too quickly for them to follow.

The three of them stood tensely in the middle of the room, holding their breath, waiting for that something to appear again. But when nothing seemed willing to move for them, Sax looked at Kiss and fixed his eyes on the direction, then Kiss grabbed Trompi by the wrist and pulled him after him.

"I know you!" the thin voice echoed in their immediate vicinity.

They flinched in unison and turned in the direction of the voice. A girl who appeared to be naked, less than a meter away from them. They hadn't heard her approach. His skin was translucent. A dirty-white liquid was bubbling under his epidermis, leaving little snaking shapes to be seen. Her hair was dark, shoulder-length, fluttering nervously. His eyes looked strange, though he could not have said in what sense, it being too dark to distinguish such details, and at the temples and down behind the ears and on the nape of the neck, the whitish deposits stood out in thin overlapping layers, as some lace frills. The body proportions seemed correct. His feet were buried above the ankles in the crystalline matter that covered the floor and walls. As she moved, the solidified layer spread before her like water, and the advance took place without her moving her feet. Like on a conveyor belt. As if the Glass Plague was walking her from one place to another.

"I'd like to..." Kiss began with his mouth hanging open.

"I don't remember exactly, but I've seen you before," she continued, looking at Sax. It had a familiar stamp.

"And you are telling me something, even though you are..."

"A little changed?" Trompi helps him, looking at her meaningfully.

"Hm," she said, moving into the light. "Probably even my mother wouldn't recognize me now."

Sax stopped the minidisc and the silence of the place made him shudder for the first time. Without music he was vulnerable. But he had felt the need to stop it.

"My name is Iulia. Does it tell you something? I lived in the block above before ....”

"Yes, yes, yes. I have now located you. Julia. You were friends with a Gabi, three years older than you."

"Yes, Gabi," she said, bowing her head. "Gabi died on impact. We couldn't save him anymore. And are you?"

“Til, uh, Sax. You can call me Sax. They are Kiss and Trompi."

Iulia didn't burst out laughing. She looked at them seriously and nodded at each name. There was a moment of awkward silence, after which she resumed:

"You are the first to penetrate here. I really wonder what would have made you try.”

"Yes, good point," replied Trompi. "I asked him the same thing before we went in."

"It took a long time..."

"Plague", Kiss helps her.

"Plague?! Who had the sense to call it that?"

"You mean you didn't know!"

He nodded his head.

"I have been here since the first moment. It was supposed to be my first night with Gabi, so we tried to make the place as romantic as possible. I came down from the evening, I laid the table, we had drinks, music", he paused, staring blankly. In the end he continued: "I don't know how it was outside, but here it was like an earthquake. After that I no longer dared to go out the way I look, especially since He told me that the world is not yet ready for me."

"Are you talking about Gabi?"

"No, by Angel".

"You mean, Gabi died and turned into a…?"

"No Sax, Gabi is dead and dead. The angel is someone else. He's…an angel indeed, one who fell here by accident.”

"Or which has fallen," Trompi ironically hints.

"He says he's not quite that Angel."

"And where is He now?" Kiss asked curiously, looking around.

"Somewhere under the CFR Palace. There it is in connection with his own. He opened roads from these underpasses to the undergrounds under the CFR Palace and school 1, and on the other side to the subway."

"If I hadn't come from the shit out of nowhere and didn't see you, I'd say I'd gone crazy," said Trompi.

"You can come with us. We can take you to a medical campus,” Kiss reached for her, but her violent reaction held him in place. She had retreated a few meters in a flash and looked scared. He took a deep breath, then answered in a slightly calmer tone:

"My skin is more special now, it is much more sensitive. Any touch gives me… sensations, most of the time transformed into pain. Even a stronger draft makes me shudder with pleasure, and real wind would make me scream in pain. He is the only one who knows how to protect me and how to touch me."

Are you saying that any touch is like intercourse?” Sax asked in disbelief.

"No, not any touch. Only He knows how to touch me in that way".

Sax breathed in confusion: “This is a delicate matter. Do you think we could see the Angel too?"

"Ah, no, don't start again", jumped Trompi nervously.

The other three ignored him.

"I would like to talk to him first. But you can still visit. We will leave the door open for you. We are waiting for you anytime."

The three turned to leave. When leaving the central hall, Iulia called after them in a hesitant voice:

"I wanted to ask you if you have anything with you, a newspaper, a book, anything like that".

"No, we don't have it, but we'll bring it to you next time."

"Ah, it would be something yes, I don't know if it's to your taste", Kiss stopped them. Grinning proudly, he pulled out a sexy magazine from the inside pocket of his jacket: "Romance!"

Iulia burst out laughing:

"Does it also have articles, or only pictures?"

"Take it and see. I didn't look for the articles."

The girl disappeared with the magazine into the darkness of the other room. The three went out into the first room. A dubious writhing drew their attention somewhere to their left. They approached cautiously.

"God!" Trompi retreated a few steps.

His vest, abandoned upon arrival, unfolded in undulating shapes—little snakes with the skin of jeans, creeping toward the dark areas of the room. The plague was reproducing. He had made an object, an inanimate thing, multiply. The explanation sounded absurd, but for the moment Sax could think of no other. In the silence of the basement he could hear the leaks from the ceiling breaking against the glass floor and being absorbed with a noise. A shiver went through him. He couldn't imagine what could happen to a living being seeded with the Plague. He carefully located those navels in the ceiling that were elongated and swollen, ready to ejaculate and began to make his way back to the exit.

SECRET MEETINGS 2

[...] They headed towards the North Station. They entered the Zone. A team of researchers and observers looked after them in wonder. The soldiers put their hands on their weapons. The three friends bypassed them from afar and entered the same block of stairs. They disappeared into the darkness of the hall, then down into the basement.

They stopped right at the end of the steps, the first hall, then in the first hall and listened attentively for a few minutes. The minidisc had finished during the chase. It was quiet. They could only hear their own gasps. They must have lost track of them. They'd been lucky twice so far with these basements.

On the way to the thermal plant room, they stopped in shock. In the wall, beneath the protective translucent layer, three apparently human forms could be made out. They had come out of the wall structure into the bubbling liquid of the Plague, but they hadn't completely detached, being half embedded in the concrete. Their skin had a petrified-gray appearance. Snaking shapes had attached themselves directly to their skin, especially in the neck and head area. Enormous bubbles rolled past the three bodies. Trompi approaches the wall, screams in fright and curls up vomiting instantly. The other two had also noticed the reason. The shapes had roughly their faces. As if the Plague had made love to their minds, then created their bodies to have all the cutlery. They pulled Trompi after them and entered the second room.

"Iulia", cried Kiss. "Juliaaa".

Like a draft of air, the hiss licked their ears: "I'm coming!" They startled with chills. Sax looked towards the narrow window near the ceiling, longing for the little familiarity outside, for the ordinary light of day. The sun had already risen and its rays were climbing up the metal frame of the window.

"Neaţa", the voice echoed right next to them. They turned as if electrocuted. They hadn't sensed her approaching at all. Her appearance, even if inhuman, is known to be quieter. He breathed a sigh of relief.

"You seem a bit tense."

They looked at each other not knowing what to say. A snake curled past her ankles. He had ... an exotic appearance. It wrapped around his calf and in a few movements it was on his shoulder.

"Put my ...!" it escapes Kiss, who chokes on the rest of the idea.

On the brightly colored snake skin, one could read articles and admire nude pictures. The creature's head was not that of a snake, but that of a woman—blonde, rich wavy hair, fine features, almost beautiful. Everything in miniature, as for the small and spindle-shaped body.

"Don't be scared," reassured Iulia. "She is Stella. That's what it said on her page, in the magazine, so I gave her the same name. It does you no harm. Actually, nothing here is dangerous. You may also see the other stars from the magazine, moving around the area. Although now I think I'm in who knows what corner, flirting with the jeans snakes left behind yesterday."

"Put it in...", repeats the idea of ​​Kiss.

"I hope you haven't brought me anything," Iulia cut him off, "because I'm not going to make a zoo here."

Trompi began to gesture, but no words came out of his mouth. All three followed Julia's index finger. The sun's rays had reached the edge of the window and, as if on cue, rushed inside, pulling the basement out of the shadows. On the wall behind them, in full sun, under the translucent hood, were five women raised from the wall in the Plague liquid. They were tightly entwined with the back wall by means of their tentacles. They had been penetrated through all the orifices, beginning with the nose and mouth, by thin, snaking growths. The whole scene was in a rhythmic pulsation, framed in a tableau full of foamy bubbles.

"I think you also saw yourselves in the other room," said Iulia, noticing that the silence lengthened and the breathing of the three accelerated. "It seems that this being that is taking over Bucharest is trying to learn about us and wants to communicate."

“This being?!” managed to spawn Trompi.

"Huh. But I think it would be better to meet the Angel first. Come with me."

They followed her. They put their headphones in their right ear again, changing the minidisc - Led Zeppelin: "Steps to Heaven". That song was said to be much more than just music. That he had reached sublime levels that vibrated otherwise untouchable chords in people's souls. That if there really was something above the world, or after death, "Steps to the Heavens" was really a step to enlightenment, to divine knowledge. It was blasphemy with a claim to holiness, or holiness with the appearance of blasphemy.

Iulia led them to the underground under the CFR Palace. After only ten minutes, from the darkness broken only by the fluorescence of the walls leaning against the Plague of Glass, they came out into full light. Artificial but powerful, almost blinding in contrast.

The three stopped trembling. Trompi fell to his knees, his body shivering. The enchanted guitars of the wizards of Led Zep were tearing their brains out. Below the palace, the undergrounds had collapsed under the weight of the fallen ceilings from all floors, following the initial impact with the Glass Plague. Some of the resistance pillars that had supported the central body of the building hung empty with their steel roots twisted under the pressure they had been subjected to. The pit below was several tens of meters deep. On the inner walls of the palace, like a thick sap through the trunk of a tree, the whitish liquid of the Plague still flowed in a continuous flow, branching into dozens of springs channeled underground in the directions in which the rays of the wound had spread, on the surface . From somewhere in the sky above the ruin, a streak of silvery light with an almost metallic consistency hissed through the electrically charged air of the suberans. In the pit, in the middle of the light, in the air, a gray body with taut muscles under the shiny skin, with outstretched arms extending two pairs of huge metallic gray wings, along a silver skeleton branched into an extremely fine rib. A real Dutch lace through which the down of the wings was interwoven. The body floated motionless, as if suspended by the stream of light.

An Angel! He was indeed an Angel. Sax would have wanted to prostrate before his majesty. He would have wanted to run away from fear, to hide. He wanted, he felt, he trembled, a bundle of nerves was stirring his chest, he would have screamed if he had had the strength, he would have said a prayer if he had known one. He would have prayed to Him himself, if he had known how.

"Isn't it beautiful?" Iulia asked them in a whisper, looking at them victoriously.

Only now did they realize that there was a grave silence in the pit under the CFR Palace. From time to time drops of Plague, the hiss of light and Led Zep torpedoing their brains.

Isn't it beautiful?" Iulia's voice rang out like church bells. He was smiling and radiating happiness. The very inhumanity of her appearance shone beautified by an inner light.

***

[ … ]

"Yes, I am an angel," He told them, looking at each of them in a pause for effect. They were polite and quiet like at school, when the math teacher climbed onto the chair and the short jeans skirt went up too high on her thighs, while she was explaining to them about integrals. They were much too shocked by everything they had seen to think of any more 'clever' retorts, or to be 'angry'. They had sat Turkishly around the creature called Angel and stroked their now silent minidiscs like kittens. They were the engines that kept them on the road, still running, still fighting, still cursing and spitting.

"Maybe I'm not exactly what you think of an angel, but close enough. And maybe they don't come from exactly the place you imagine, but from a better one."

Kiss had wrinkled his nose in the figure he usually took when he was going to ask, "What the hell does this mean?", but this time no words escaped his lips. They were also wrinkled in maximum concentration.

"How many times have you not watched your loved ones grow old and then die? How many times have you taken another lifeless body to the grave? How many times have you said to yourself - 'this summer has passed, winter again, the new year, then another year'. Time is your God!"

He looked at them carefully with his wings slightly folded, then seemed to relax and continued:

"He created the world you live in, where people die of hunger, disease, war, but especially the passage of time. He dies because the end has been reached. You don't even open your eyes properly and you're dead", hissed the words coldly. The three of them started.

He got up, shook his wings and lay down. He sat down next to Iulia, easily cradling her in his huge arms. He inhaled hungrily from her quivering hair and hugged her greedily to his chest. Iulia seemed to melt with pleasure in his embrace, and the luminescent activities beneath her translucent skin visibly intensified. She trembled with excitement under the direct touch on her sensitive skin, but the Angel buried his face in her locks vibrating as if with an inner life, kissed her voluptuously on the back of her neck, then breathed lightly on her small body. Immediately, Iulia relaxes and breathes more regularly. His eyes were shining. A sweet smell of sea plants wafted through the room.

The angel stared blankly for a few seconds, then focused his gaze on them again:

"I come from a different place than your world. Different in an essential way. I come from a world without time. Where there is no passage of time with its relentless effects – decay, aging, seasons, but especially death. Where there is only life. An endless life. Not without dangers, because accidents exist everywhere, but naturally the only reality is life.

Time is a virus that has infected a remote corner of our universe. As a result, it created a closed eco-system in which the infected matter underwent mutations. It is so powerful that it has worked itself into the fabric of space and altered the environment down to the deepest and most hidden levels. The closed system is your universe, where time has become God. He created the world you live in and the life that populates it. A crippled life, with a beginning and an end. What grows old and dies. With an unimaginable cruelty and yet understandable at the blind level of a virus. However, we were shocked to discover the effects of time. We had to do something."

With a change of register in the voice, continue:

"Your God is cruel and that's because he doesn't think about you. Why? Because he can't!" he added with a loud laugh.

He rested his palms on the floor and thin filaments came out of his skin that penetrated the crystalline milky floor. Iulia put her palms over his hands. She looked seriously at the three, the expression of satisfaction never disappearing from her face.

"You were created from an unfortunate accident. And Time, like God, is a not very intelligent virus, although potent and adaptable."

"Băga-mi-es...", Kiss remembered where he left off an hour earlier, but was brutally interrupted by Trompi: "Shhh".

"Yes, I am an Angel, but not of your God. Because heaven does not exist and neither does hell. There is only Time that is played unconsciously by the creator. He creates and destroys life as he pleases. They are playing with existence and that is the final offense. Once life is gone, nothing is left. After death there is neither heaven nor hell, only non-existence. Total disappearance. History? Memories? Vax, it's all just an illusion! Time created mortal intelligence, and intelligence recreates Time, to find purpose in the finite universe in which it revolves. History is an illusion, almost fiction. Can you travel through a microbe? Is there a metaphysical dimension to a germ? Spirituality in a goddamn virus? The fourth dimension? Nonsense, inventions, self-satisfying philosophies! Transcendental garbage!”

He remained silent, unglued his palms from the floor and stood up, separating himself from Iulia's body with difficulty, with a last lustful, loving gesture. It stretched out and spread its wings, blocking sunlight from entering the room. The rays polish its fine, silver ramification, filtering through the glossy, almost compact down. His figure remained in the dark, gray shadow on dark, in a halo of light.

Sax wondered what he might say. He had a lot of problems, perplexities, hypotheses. But they all seemed silly on second thought, and the moment was far too important, mystical, weighted with divine essence, to be shattered by some adolescent idiocy. He wanted to know so much and yet he didn't have the courage. [...]

"Everything you see around you, the Glass Plague as you called it, is the antidote. It is an intelligent organism that eats the time virus. It is normally fed with culture time, multiplied especially for this purpose. Here, however, time has developed and evolved in an unexpected direction, and the consistency and internal structure of the entire mortal universe creates new problems. So, the so-called Plague needs a period of analysis and testing in order to develop a reaction corresponding to the evolutionary direction taken by time. These studies and experiences on mortal intelligence are crucial in the successful completion of the project", concludes the Angel, pointing to Iulia and the women embedded in the walls.

"In the world where you come from there is no death", managed to articulate Sax, immediately cursing himself for the stupidity that escaped.

"It exists, but in an insignificant percentage. Accidents exist everywhere. Death is a universal constant. But there is no limit in ..., let's call it time. Time is not a cause of death."

There was a short silence. The angel folds his wings back.

"And if Time were successfully fought, would our world be healed? Would she become immortal?” Sax snapped, afraid to lose Angel before he had all the answers.

"Does he mean that if the Plague ended Time, mortal life would become immortal?" explains Trompi, recovering from his state of prostration. "I mean..."

"Yes, yes, I understand. Of course yes. We would eradicate the evil effects of time from the structure of your universe and everything would return to normal, to what it was before and should be - a world without time, that is, without end. I repeat, there would still be death, but only by accident".

"Or disease?" Sax asked softly.

"No, we don't have diseases. Diseases are a creation of time."

"And how long will it take to completely destroy and gain immortality?"

"We can't know yet", replied the Angel looking at Sax with interest. "In your terms a few decades, maybe more than a century".

Sax's sigh surprised everyone.

"Can't anything be done to speed up the process?" he asked in a low voice.

"It could be a solution, but it is not verified yet. And it involves great risks for those willing to try it."

He looked at the Angel with hope, waiting for the continuation.

"Could you be the agents carrying an even stronger and much faster antidote, but for which there is still no other effective means of spreading. All the people and things you come into contact with would change, would escape the clutches of time. And maybe at some point the mutation necessary for the transmission of the antidote itself to other people, like another virus, would occur, where the process would accelerate exponentially. From a few decades we would reach a few months."

"An epidemic," murmured Trompi.

"I'm sorry, that doesn't sound very good", finally Kiss was heard.

"Remember that the epidemic is time. You would only administer the cure, the healing. But everything is a process of will, so you yourself should believe and want."

"I would be interested in participating", Sax offered, surprising the others again.

"Tila, are you crazy? Kiss jumped at him.

"Well, Tila, think about it, what exactly do we know about this whole story? How can we check it?” Trompi joins him.

"Have you ever seen an Angel before? I don't. And He is here and Plague, and Iulia, and everything that surrounds us. I don't need more proof. i believe I have faith."

Silence. The angel sniffed the air. Iulia looked at him intently.

"What is it?" Kiss asked.

Silence. The angel took Iulia's hands and united them with his in a short squeeze. Then they disappeared towards the basement entrance they usually used.

"Quick, come this way", urges Iulia.

"What's going on?"

"Someone is forcing entry into the basement. I think it's the police. I have to get you out of here while he holds them in place.”

"How did you know?"

"Me and Him, we talk differently."

PETAL ME

"What I don't understand is, why do you need a carrier of the antidote, when there are hundreds of possible sources of contamination up in the streets. Take for example the plague sponge traffickers, the drug of the Glass Plague. They sold and are selling that thing to thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands all over the world. It's a thriving trade. Why don't you deliver the cure by drug?”

"The Glass Plague is neither a disease nor a carrier of epidemic agents. It's a living thing, and the plague sponge is just one of the wastes it leaves behind, living."

"Some kind of feces?"

"Rather her sweat."

***

They both approached a glass wall. The luminescence of life inside the wall gave the room a yellow-green tint.

The angel placed his palms on the translucent surface and closed his eyes. All movement below dissipates, leaving behind a bubbling liquid. The solid surface veils a little under His palms, more like an optical effect. In a short time, however, it lost its hard consistency until then. The angel took his hands and stuck them to the wall: "Enter the wall, don't be afraid."

Sax was afraid and trembling, but the presence of the Angel and his big hands, guiding him, pushing him forward, robbed him of the power to fight back. He felt nothing but fear. Neither pride nor bravery, nor the noble spirit of sacrifice. Only fear. […]

Plague's surface was soft, like a paste, even softer and warm, massaging his hands as they sank into it. In a few moments he was sucked into the wall, in the yellowish-gray liquid, warm and protective. A whirlwind stirred his blood, disturbed his lungs and came out of his mouth. He felt light, floating, with empty veins and plush flesh, images flooded him in a colorful stream, they had a familiar smell... . [...]

***

"The Glass Plague is just the prey animal that hunts and feeds on time. Like what you do when you have a lot of mice in a house and you bring a cat to exterminate them. Unfortunately, however, our mouse has undergone mutations and is now far too much beyond the possibilities of the Plague".

"And then you put poison for the mice. I am your poison."

"Something like that. It is the reason why we cannot use Plague and its products. We can't poison the cat to get at the mice."

***

[ …]

***

He woke up suddenly. He blew out a hiss. It was lying on the former ping-pong table in the room of the thermal plant. Iulia was leaning over him. The angel was nowhere to be seen.

"Where is He?" he asked hoarsely.

"It's in the basements, under the palace," she answered and moved away from the table. He smiled: "Since last night you fell into a very deep sleep. You shouldn't have woken up so early. Your body was going to slowly, gently, start working again. Anyway, the inoculation was successful. If you wait a little longer, He will come back."

The inoculation?! His head was heavy, his mouth dry, but only the thought of them solved his problems. He felt fine, maybe just a little lighter than usual. He used to be tall and solid, with some weight, as his father put it. But now, he felt like a flake. He sat up and jumped off the table. He looked at his hands and was shocked. Iulia turned him towards one of the glass walls, which at her touch had become like a mirror. A shudder twisted his stomach and burned his brain. It looked like a dandelion, more like a blooming carnival. His skin was all wrinkled in yellow fluff, or bloomed in soft and velvety petals, his eyes were two miniature sunflowers, his whole body trembled in the breeze, he was naked, his clothes were piled up next to the ping-pong table. It was somehow erotic, completely foreign, unearthly, scary and yet alluring. And his sex, oh God, he was ashamed to look at it, but he couldn't stop his fascination. Which he also surprised in Iulia's eyes.

"Every puff is a spur bearing antidote," she whispered, running her fingers over the softness of his shoulders to his chest, "every touch, a deadly touch for Time," she said, blowing gently on the back of his neck, while her fingertips they walked over the shoulder blades, down towards the saddles, "every kiss, a murderous kiss against death!"

She turned him towards her and kissed him voluptuously. Her tongue slithered long snake between his lips down her neck, his hands were gnarled stalks caressing her translucent abdomen, stirring the luminous life beneath her skin, extending to her vagina... . His sex was a curling yellow petaled looger, penetrating her upwards to her abdomen, chest, throat, her moans, heavy breathing, her tongue withdrew from him, she gasped in pleasure and rested her palms on the back table, opening her legs even more. The chained beings had entered into a frenzied agitation, he had reached her chest, her breasts were swollen, she moaned, howled with pleasure, and his penis opened into a flower that spread its pollen in her.

Iulia jerked violently, fireworks were playing under her skin, she went into convulsions, with her mouth open, a yellowish-white liquid running over her lower lip. Her eyes were glassy, ​​she caressed his hair as shiny as corn silk, her face, took another deep breath and fell limp on the table.

Sax retreated in fear, took two steps back and fell to his knees: "Iulia?!" His whole body was shaking with chills. "Julia?" Fear strangled his guts. "... we can't poison the cat to get to the mouse/ so I am your poison...", he remembered the Angel.

He stood up and took her in his arms. He placed it on the table carefully. She was dead. The lights beneath her skin had gone out, the yellow liquid had lost its color, her skin had become like marble with blue veins running through it. He had killed her! He was a poison to Time and His children. The magazine-textured snakes with women's heads scattered in panic, disappearing into the semi-darkness of the basements. He wanted to throw up, but the feeling of nausea disappeared immediately. He felt good. His body automatically adjusts to an optimal state.

He moved away with his back to Iulia's body. He reached the stairs to the exit of the block and heard the vigorous flapping of the Angel's wings. He freezes on the first step, undecided, ready to run up the street, as he always does lately after doing something stupid. He ran away from the police, he ran away from school, he ran away from his father, from responsibility, from reason, from the everyday normal that had enlightened his childhood, but had been stolen from him in recent years.

But he was no longer normal. He was the Antidote. He grinned and went down the step, waiting for the Angel. Its silhouette covered the tunnel, friendly and massive. His grin softened. The angel beamed with delight: "You look wonderful, my friend! Where is Iulia?" Sax was breathing heavily. He lowered his head to his chest, then raised it again. You looked him in the face, in his big silver eyes, disorientated now, in his slowly disappearing smile. He knew, he knew, but he didn't think it would happen, he didn't think that Iulia would..., that Sax could....

He bypassed him and headed for the power room, the ping-pong table, his body stiff. He stared, stunned. Minutes on end. To a being from a world without time, the difference between a second and a few minutes, a few hours probably meant nothing. Sax approached and waited in silence. Another ten, twenty minutes, he worried that something had happened to him, but his chest was moving rhythmically, his eyes were staring at Iulia's face, no other sign of life. He took him by the shoulders and the Angel fell to his knees. Suddenly, as if cut by an invisible sickle. He bent down to support him and placed him gently on the floor.

He was crying silently, his whole body shaking. He retreated to the wall. His wings spread over the wall like spider webs, he pulled his knees to his mouth and sobbed with tears rolling like pebbles on his gray skin.

"I'm sorry," Sax finally managed to say and was immediately ashamed. What could regret be compared to loss?

"I did not realize what You told me - that I am poison for Time and its children. I don't even know how I did it. I would never have touched her, I didn't think for a second what I did. But I couldn't stop."

"An erotic car," He whispered between hiccups.

"Shall we?"

"You are like a lamp that will attract all the butterflies. No one will be able to resist you. You are an erotic magnet. You awaken all the instincts in any mortal. No one will oppose you."

"So you knew?" asked the obvious, dumbfounded.

"Yeah, but you shouldn't have gotten up so early."

Shake. His voice was strangled.

"Physically, I have never been on the surface, but I have seen the whole Earth through the eyes of its inhabitants. Amazement, greed, envy and strangeness were my friends of suffering after every escape outside. Only Iulia's unconditional love softened me and made me reconsider every thing ten times. When I convinced you for the inoculation I suffered the most. I cried in front of the light and the colors, which could not have been so strong if they did not have such a short life. I prostrated myself before the diversity of temporal life, its brilliance and intensity, which is so precisely because it is short and to the point. I come from a world with pale colors, with a long and meaningless life, without intensity and passion, without brilliance..."

He spoke and His eyes shone with the memory of temporal experiences, and His hands felt the air as if they wanted to touch life, to retain everything He had seen and experienced since He was here. He continues to take advantage of Sax's hesitation:

"But more precious is the gift that Iulia gave me. To receive so much from a mere mortal spark, so much energy, so many sensations, and that something that cannot be explained and enveloped me, and taught me, and protected me from immortal temptations in contact with your world, that something more precious than anything, which fed me all this time with an intensity of centuries of existence on the other side. The thing you call love!"

"But also so much misery, poverty, pain, death!" Sax snapped and stood up indignantly.

"All my friends, I make the picture complete and the feelings stronger. If you didn't have them all, you wouldn't enjoy it so intensely that sometimes it borders on madness for us."

"I have to go. I have a mission. My mother needs me. All the dying and the sick need me," he added emphatically, albeit a bit falsely, then he was ashamed and resumed saying rarely: "Mother needs me!"

"You really didn't understand anything?"

The angel started laughing through the tears and Sax felt even worse. He tried to leave, but the tip of one of the wings stopped him and caressed his face. Sax does not know how to react.

"Now that I've lost everything, I can appreciate the value. Now I can hardly realize how you feel about your mother," said the Angel, his cheeks trembling. He reached out to the kid and pulled him towards him gently but firmly. In the end, Sax gave in and the Angel took him in his arms like a child and began to caress the silk of his hair with his heavy palms. Sax needed his minidisc. His fingers were burning the Plague glass, digging into the crystal floor like claws.

"You say forgiveness in such situations. I think it's too late for me to say sorry. I can't save you anymore. But I promise I'll take care of your mother. Your gesture will not be in vain.”

"What do you mean?" Sax asked dumbfounded, beginning to grasp the cold thread of truth. He suffocates. The fluff and petals of the body trembled violently. He had the impression that stringy roots were tightening his lungs.

"Gypsies pass by on the road/ The road is full of smoke.../ Under a purple sky," he murmured nervously, "one summer...I'm in the country... I have a house...", he gasped and the flowers in his eyes cried black seeds.

He went limp under the pressure of the Angel's palm. He relaxed and stared blankly, as if anaesthetized. He took a deep, wheezing breath.

"The antidote is specially made to kill time, but it cannot save temporal life. We needed a volunteer, otherwise your temporal organism, uncoordinated by will, would have died upon inoculation. That's why I lied to you and manipulated your love... I'm sorry."

Silence. Heavy and cold. The Angel's hand stopped caressing. Sax was free to go. But where?

"I'm going to take the poison out of you. But I can't give you your body back. Nor life."

[ … ]

Sax dies two days later in a hospital.

[ … ]

EPILOGUE

I remember that everything happened in the fall of one year. I don't know which one exactly because they all look the same to me and have complicated names to remember. But everything was a long time ago, if for us 'long ago' has any meaning.

The angel kept his promise and waited for me after I died. But not at the gates of Paradise, as he had promised his mother, but on the terrace of the CFR Palace. With his slim and gray body he had covered the crack in the sky of Bucharest, through which the Plague of Glass had been injected. Like a living cross, organically embedded in the texture of the universe, sealing the rift, stopping the attack against Time. He had also communicated with the others from beyond, convincing them to give up any action that could endanger us. Or at least that's what he told me later. It is certain that a second anti-Time assault did not follow. He remained as a suspended statue above the CFR Palace. People come from all corners of the globe to worship Him for saving us. Bucharest has become a place of pilgrimage, the holy capital of the world.

Day after day, month after month, year after year, we sit invisible on the palace terrace and watch the world. "Something" connected us to this place. But we don't know impatience or boredom. It's not in our nature anymore. We watch over the city, the better place it became after the event. We watch over the new world, which we have inherited.

What will come next? We don't know. The angel still claims that nothing more can follow. That death means non-existence. Who knows? Maybe God exists somewhere outside of Time after all. Or maybe Time is something more than a virus!

GURGU COSTS

Open letter

by Bogdan-Tudor Bucheru

I sit comfortably in the armchair in the corner of the room. It's my favorite armchair. It's soft, just enough to take the shape of my body, and tall enough that I can look out the window across the room. It gives me the feeling that I am withdrawn, isolated, intangible in the middle of this world that I can hardly influence at all... A world with which I have very few things in common, less and less. A world that I can only thank, at most, for this armchair so comfortable and...

I need to relax. Let me relax for a few minutes because next to it, on the coffee table, there is a stack of envelopes waiting to be opened, read, understood... and all this I have to do! I, who don't want to do anything anymore... I'm tired of everything and everything. I've done them all, I know them all. There are so many things in my memories that excite, charm, and disgust me, far more than the squirms of my present can do.

I pick up an envelope at random. I look at him... and he looks at me. Nothing is written on it. It doesn't even have postage stamps. I'm happy about this... Maybe it's not even addressed to me. I throw it, then watch it hover awkwardly for a few moments, only to finally fall gently in the middle of the room, where the long-gone Persian rug should have been.

The next letter I pick up is as anonymous as the first. Without resentment, I decide the same fate. Then, one after the other, the envelopes start flying around the room.

I look at the last one slightly disappointed. No one really bothered to pass my name, no one had money for a bitter stamp? and then, how did all these letters reach me?!

still undecided, I open the envelope. Inside, a single sheet of thin paper, almost transparent and pleasant to the touch, covered with small, crumpled writing, as only I, being in a hurry, sometimes write. Strange! I could swear it's mine, and yet I didn't write it.

“In order to have control over the timeline, you must have access to an additional dimension. You will be able to walk freely through the four-dimensional space only when a fifth dimension is at your disposal.

Of course, you will tell me that the new dimension only takes the place of the old time, decayed into a banal space dimension. and you are absolutely right. These are the rules! always, out of n+1 dimensions, one is independent. Obviously, the thing is valid as long as the principle of causality stands.

I gradually managed to control over two hundred dimensions. It's true, in the end I got bored, precisely because there was always one more, uncontrollable one. The good side of things is that the importance of the latter decreases as their number increases. On the other hand, obviously, you have an indisputable advantage over those who have even just one size less. But as I said...“

I close my eyes, trying to get the words out of my head, but the retina stubbornly holds on to the distorted letters, which melt into my brain. I cover my eyes with my hands, I cover my ears... Too late, it's already inside me...

“As I told you, I got bored, the job had become too monotonous.

Now I am in a wonderful place, in a wonderful country, a land of chimeras. Here, time is locked in a single point… You can go around it if you want… you can even go through it.

Here, the effect gives birth to the cause... Please, the expression is not the happiest, but you understand what I mean."

A moment of silence. I understand what he is saying... but I don't want to become master of time!

“I know you are going through a difficult time, I experienced it too. I know too well... That's exactly why I want to motivate you, to support you. They don't have to blame me because, from a certain point of view, I'm just doing what's already been done.

It's a fabulous world here, incredible! I learned so many things, I have so many possibilities. What I once knew - what you know - is... basically, it's nothing! I won't tell you more, you have to discover for yourself.

It's worth a try, trust me! i know you will! The proof is myself... and this letter which, formally, was not even addressed to you.

Come on, come back! and I knew beforehand... From here on you are no longer alone, we will be together! The irony is that we are one and the same person... or personality, I think that is the most appropriate term.

So, courage! the beginning has already been made, the temptation of the open road will guide you without fail.

Now… I leave you.”

I'm still waiting, in disbelief. It's over... I open my eyes and close my mind.

If only I could forget everything! The message written by that unknown me and thrown at me, back in time.

Maybe it was just a hallucination, one of those nightmares that fear and desire, merged, scribble behind the will... But no! I have the paper in my hand. A thin paper, almost transparent, and pleasant to the touch, covered with small and crumbly writing, as...

I break it into two pieces, into four, into eight, into sixteen... I shred it until I am left with a pile devoid of any meaning. I look at her for a long time, weighing her.

I take a deep breath, then blow hard, stirring up the debris in my palm, jerking it up. They scatter in the air and then fall gently, like snow... like snow...

The same way it snowed that December... I remember how the big flakes and although they tried to cover the cold... the cold we didn't care about... we had nice ways to warm ourselves. We didn't care about the cold, we only cared about us...

“Don't start over with your insipid memories!"

What is this?! who are you

“Don't be a fool! you know very well who I am!"

You are the one with the letter...

“The letter?... Oh, no! May you be healthy, there is still a long way to go... I have an advance of only three hours. Three hours and sixteen minutes to be exact."

I see... If you are an... alter ego... why don't you like my... our memories?

“I transformed myself... I lived three more hours. I've already changed... You will too... Since you allowed the separation, you have to consider me too, so spare me!"

It irritates me... and so does he. I have to defend myself somehow... It's not my fault!

“How is it not your fault?! Whose is it then?”

Another one is guilty!… The one from five minutes ago started it all…

“Yes, I started! I like these memories, very much indeed."

“Those from the past can't help you, they haven't experienced the change and will only confuse you! I know what's happening, I've transformed... The temporal separation has already begun. We will be more and more…”

But I don't want... I want to be alone, only me alone!

“I don't want either!"

"Me neither! We don't want to change..."

The roar paralyzes my thinking, sending shivers through my body. What will happen to me? Am I going to separate every moment into an infinity of me-others, each with its time, each with its truth?

“Calm down! When we all get together, absolutely all of us, occupying time in its entirety, you will... we will become one person again, with full powers over him. We will control four-dimensional space and gain access to the fifth dimension, the new time...then we will subdue it as well.”

But I don't want that!

“Don't you want?! Who do you think you can fool? Do you forget that I have experienced your struggles, that I know all your arguments and that I have all the answers?..."

Why don't you leave me alone if you know the outcome?

“îI'm only doing my duty, understand! I am the tool that helps you to understand, to transform yourself, just as I, being in your place, was convinced by the one more than three hours older than me... and I was also against you..."

"It's a race, don't give up! it only gives you the illusion of an illusion, nothing more."

"Mouth! You have no idea what you're talking about!... Listen to me, please! You received... we all received the message... The letter from the one who... I, you, we will write it. We have the certainty of success, there is a whole world waiting for us to conquer... I know, you are afraid to admit that this is exactly what you want!"

I'm not afraid, but I don't want, I don't need to prolong my pointless life... I have to end it somehow!

“Be patient! For now we are unable to understand... Eternity is meaningless when time is missing.”

I don't see the point... I have to end it now!

“You will not succeed! I also wanted to commit suicide, but I was unable."

Is there really nothing I can do?! Not even my own end?

“Do it, I support you! You can try…”

"Don't encourage him, there's no point!"

"and I think you can try, at least that much!"

indeed, I can try… What have I got to lose?

Ana-Veronica Mircea

Industry

First prize in the prose contest - "Picnic at the Edge of the Galaxy” ‑ 1998

"...the only way to twist an object, so that its right side becomes its left side and vice versa, is to pass it through a higher dimension of space."

Ip CULIANU - TRAVELS IN THE WORLD BEYOND

Sheagad Hurm is always talked about, everywhere - but his name is not pronounced. People call her the Red Witch - if they hate her more than they fear her, or the Time Mistress - if their fear is stronger than their hate.

Only the likes of Oyoja Onuk don't call it anything. Because the statues cannot speak, they too - the exhibits in the valley called the Circus of Moments, at which the crowd squirm with morbid fascination - seem like statues of well-preserved flesh between invisible and impenetrable walls, stiffened corpses, with grief forgotten in wide-open and immobile eyes . However, their minds live in their own bodies embedded in frozen shards of time - Oyoja's, for example, is trapped in the split second that the guillotine blade touched the back of his head. Sheagad expertly stopped time - only his time - just before the blade split his skin, as Oyoja was just beginning to feel the coldness of the deadly steel. It had to be the last sensation in his life - and the only one he was aware of at that moment. But he is condemned to timelessness. He is the eternal prisoner of an infinitesimal fragment of time and has (he has almost begun to taste the irony!) at his disposal all the time in the world to feel his chest torn by the claws of horror, and the balls licked on his chin, and the warm wet reaching and at the knees, and the filth rushing through the out-of-control sphincter, and the madness bulging his eyes and gaping his mouth to release, futilely and irrationally, an amputated howl... For Sheagad's merciless touch did not break him from the thread of time and the conscious, but condemned him to receive the same and the same sensations, because, of all Oyoja's senses, only sight and hearing are not captive in his frozen time.

Sheagad's merciless touch... The touch of the woman with the mahogany hair, the crimson lips, and the bleeding robe... The touch of the woman whose irises are two coral-colored rings, two fine rings, as if transparent, around the enormous pupils, deep as two holes drilled towards pity... The touch of the woman whose fascinating strangeness cannot be described by human words or thoughts... The touch that (another irony, not at all tasted) Oyoja cannot feel...

Sheagad's merciless touch happens, somehow, outside of known and perceived time. Sheagad does not grasp what he touches in the living moment, in the moment when helpless mortals call it present and which slips through their fingers like the wind caught in fists. Oyoja suspects that Sheagad roams unabashedly through the convict's future, chooses a tiny pinprick of his time and waits for him there, waits for his life to flow - just until then. Then, those around the unfortunate see Sheagad in a flash and see him stiffening, the one left, in the moment just abandoned by her, as an immortal and powerless prisoner of frozen time...

Now, Oyoja knows that this also happened when he was captive in the mouth of the guillotine and he found himself floating, with it all, above the ovations of the mob driven to enjoy his execution. But then he thought he was already dead, already a spirit detached from the indolence of the human... But he did not see himself as he should have, the unruly body lying on the scaffold... And he flew, as spirits do not, with the animated tool of death funny...

So he remembered the sentence pronounced by the Great Jude louder and more bluntly than he would have thought that stunted and bald old man was capable of:

The accused Oyoja Onuk is sentenced to death by hanging or hanging. The sentence will be applied in the moment of execution and it will be executed when the time is favorable...

...He also remembered that, from Jude's left, Sheagad had smiled angelically at him, and that he, the fool, had trembled from the inside...

...And he shuddered, seeing himself already above the Circus of Moments, realizing that he was already descending towards one of the still timeless spaces - a space he remembered, between a couple locked in the moment of orgasm and a third-rate conductor, accused of corruption, caught at the moment when, slyly, he choked on a mouthful that was too tasty...

It's been between them for five months. A warm voice - he thinks it's Sheagad's - which, at dawn and dusk, announces the time and date before saying welcome or farewell to visitors, helps him measure the living time. It's all torment, no doubt, all from the witch's sophisticated cruelty. A witch who, a month ago, descended into the space opposite, precisely the conjurers whom he refused to betray. There are twelve children on fire - in the flames of their common pyre. Just as they were starting to burn...

Oyoja can see them, Oyoja knows they can see him too. He would also like to be able to read their minds, to find out if they were told that it wasn't him who sold them - but he would be much more satisfied if he could satisfy his morbid curiosity by comparing his torment to theirs. He would like to know if the idiots who did not understand from his failure that it is better to lose track, giving up the fight for a lost cause, are, as he suspects, tortured by sufferings more terrible than his. He would like to know if they envy him, as he envies his gluttonous neighbor, who might be feeling that he is suffocating, but his mouth is full of flavor - and his nostrils are drowning in the aroma of the delicacy that is about to kill him...

Yes, it's a shame he doesn't know the thoughts of the bitter twelve - and it would be a shame if they knew his... Because Oyoja was never one of them, he was never a poor naive fanatic, he never believed that he could wrest his world and time from under the power of the Seniors... For the Seniors are the sovereigns of the entire multidimensional continuum and of each individual dimension, they are the omnipotent ones who effortlessly juggle that illusion called time... And Oyoja knows, he always knew, that the Seniors come, see, and rule, and they cannot be chased away!

But They are the Invisible Ones, they are somewhere, in imperceptible, unimaginable dimensions, inaccessible to a poor three-dimensional brain! In Oyoja's world, the Temporary rules on their behalf, a man chosen by the judges' guild, advised by the Great Jude and faithfully served by Sheagad Hurm - the sorceress who is now the mirror image of the one she was before the Seniors twists into the three-dimensional sphere in which he was born, giving him the power to wander through the labyrinth of time to his fellows... Sheagad, the witch who loves no one, but whom the Seniors ordered to receive him, submissively, into her bed, on Temporarily…

Oyoja dreamed of getting rid of the judges, of making others of his acolytes, of being the new Temporary - to have in his service, at the same time, the powers and the body of the witch Sheagad... Then he would have easily escaped the acolytes with minds wandering in utopias, to he would be surrounded by real people - and the Seniors would not have slandered him, because he believed in them, and he would have loved Sheagad, unhindered...

But he thought he was born to conspire - and it wasn't like that. He thought he was more cunning than the conductors - and they caught him, like a snitch, when he didn't even expect it. They caught him and, in their own way, they were magnanimous. They offered him a chance: to betray his accomplices - and be rewarded.

He refused. Not because he believed that the others still had a chance to win. He only hoped that the poor children would open their eyes, understand that they were fighting the gods, understand that their triumph was the most vain utopia... Of course, he did not care about their skin, but there was no point in sacrificing them unnecessarily. Because the Great Jude rewards what he calls cooperation by giving the traitor the freeze in orgasm, next to any woman he chooses. Any woman - except the witch Sheagad!

« « «

Michael Haulica

The Olympics of War

Mention at the prose contest - "Picnic at the edge of the Galaxy" - 1998

The TV screen, fixed on a non-broadcast channel, will have the color of the sky. Venice. It will be like this for years. And of all those years, how many will there be since no one will ask "why" anymore? How many?

A gesture, fingers running over the keys, and the screen will light up.

But who walks on the keys of heaven? Who will walk?

The light coming from the screen will fill the room and the other old people will approach the one who, for years and years, every day, will program the same images, probably the only ones in the memory of the television.

Across the road, a building will collapse with a groan. The four men in front of the screen will not be impressed. Several buildings will collapse every day, thickening the layer of rubble that will gradually cover the streets. Scratching them. Hurting them. Saddening them. But all this will be an integral part of the life of the four, it will be a habit, a habit... Man is an adaptable animal, something valid now and later, that is, then...

The oldest of them will get up from the floor, gathering the rags around his body with a hasty, humble gesture, caressing the floor, calming it, encouraging it, then he will step through the crack in the wall into the other room. There, he will look for something in the pile of metal, plastic or criorg objects, rummaging through the pile with his stick, searching, searching... The camera will have a few convulsions not quite executed correctly, rummaging will hurt him, gone will be the times when the same gesture was a pleasurable one. He will find, as every day, what he is looking for, he will fix the plug behind his ear, he will select passwords, barriers, menus and again passwords only he knows, then he will return to the others. He will sit in front of the screen, fix his eyes on it, as before. Everything will be as before. For him. For the others...

VOCE DIN OFF: Welcome to the Olympic War Games!

The distances from the Coordination and Control Center to the farthest corners of the Olympic Zone, the humidity of the atmosphere, the location of the access roads and stands for spectators, their number for each sector, all turned into numbers, codes, parameters for the device which is called, so banally, voice modulator. And the announcer's words rise above the Zone, like a sound dome, heard by all.

Arrive early, even too early, to take your seats, to catch a glimpse of the preparations, behind the scenes of the business - everyone knows that the Olympics is one of the most prosperous businesses of these years - the first spectators have already scattered in Olympic Zone. They seem like a huge life, with thousands of legs, with thousands of eyes, in a continuous metamorphosis, a fluid, viscous life that flows through the access ways forming veritable estuaries in front of the gates and then bursts out beyond them, always further, to the edges of this territory of the Games, edges that, however, exist. Each new arrival hears the Desired Voice, decoded by the modulator after searching the subconscious, and a smile of satisfaction stretches his face, a sign that everything is OK.

“Welcome to the Olympic War Games!”

some hear the lazy, caressed voice, with a strong French accent, of some Lo-Lo, Clo-Clo, Frou-Frou, Jou-Jou lost in the memory of a Parisian night. Of course, these must be the technicians who, being part of the JORTH Company team, ensured the tele and holo transmissions from the previous edition of the Paris Olympics. Their faces, focused on the activities for which they are paid to work and not to sneer, still sneer, nostalgia being something human and common, especially when it comes to Paris.

“Welcome to the Olympic War Games!”

the youngest spectators hear the gentle voice of the grandmother and it's as if they see her offering them mangoes or croutons, which they then buy themselves from the vending machines you bump into at every turn.

“Welcome to the Olympic War Games!”

you can still hear the firm, thundering voice of a man used to giving orders, full of himself and probably full of money.

“Welcome…”

LIVE: ‑Hey pigeons, welcome to the sixth edition of the War Olympics! Our comfortable aircraft are waiting for you. Holders of yellow tickets are asked to go to gate ONE, and lovers of details, the lucky holders of green tickets, to gate TWO, where the aircraft are equipped with individual receivers.

The reporter turns to the director of the broadcast, the device fixed in his ear gave him the signal, professional smile, and:

‑Good morning or good evening, my dears, your Carmin Philips wishes you a pleasant viewing of our broadcasts from the Olympic Games.

O.K. - the director gives him a friendly, encouraging sign. Give it a go, old man! Enter text!

- But until the start of the competitions, the JORTH Company presents you the Olympic Monument, where the Olympic flame lit by the famous athlete Marius Dandy Ho burns, the one who, two months ago, simply shattered all the records of the Olympics so far , winning no less than nine events. The fact caused the Planetary Sports Federation to advance the proposal that Marius Dandy Ho be officially awarded the title of the best psi athlete of all time. But this must also be approved by the Government, so let's come back. You have on the screens the solemn monument of the lighting of the flame. And now please observe carefully the shape of the Olympic Monument, like a champagne glass. It is said that the first Olympics that took place in antiquity, and even earlier, in early antiquity, were held on grounds of this shape. Interesting, right? Now, on the right, you see the building of the Coordination and Control Center and on the terrace above, the 284 heraldic insignia of the participating ethnicities. Yes. Also the Center building, the mixing room, the reception hall, one of the rooms where the press conferences take place - you can see the communication screen in the background... and now you see me. Hello! This is Carmin Philips, speaking to you from the Olympic Zone.

VOICE FROM OFF: About two billion other inhabitants of the planet rush to the living areas to catch the start of the races at home. The earliest ones are those who missed the official opening of the Games, as today the inaugural speech will be resumed in which one of the two co-presidents of the Planetary Union also slipped in the usual political allusions, without which the respective oratorical act would be like a meal for diabetics.

DICTIONARY: Food for diabetics: archaism. Food for diabetics.

Diet for diabetes - boiled carrot.

The speech... like a boiled carrot.

Interpretations: communist, soft, long.

VOICE FROM OFF: The traffic controllers receive the data from the observers located on the roads, highways, passages, air routes, chew them well in the electronic mixers of their brains, calculating and transmitting back to the observers access times, trajectories, waiting times, stacks.

ADVERTISEMENT: The WELLSIT company informs you that the aircraft intended for the spectators of the sixth edition of JOR are waiting for you. Comfort guaranteed. Each seat is equipped with personal monitors that can be tuned for detail - but only if you're among the lucky green ticket holders. If not, our agencies are at your disposal day and night. Access code in the database: JOR ‑ 125320. Do not forget to mention your account number.

After occupying the seats, the aircraft will be stabilized above the sectors, at an optimal height for each test. Perfect visibility! Get your tickets early! VOICE OFF: Camera robots are located in all sectors where field races are held. They are part of the scenery or, often, they replace a fallen athlete by lending their appearance. Although everyone knows about them, no one has to locate them, especially the fighters, in order not to falsify the matches. And so, lately, the hand of the master choreographers is often felt!

Robots offer images to the brave, the detail-oriented, thrill-seekers. But how many are these...?

Well, there are enough of them. It's not all day long that you can see someone's head popping off next to you due to hyperpressure gases. Or to see another coiled up by a sling, transformed into a kind of artesian that spews out blood and pieces of flesh and bones. Thrilling, right? Although those who prefer the images transmitted by the equipment injected directly into the athletes' myocardium can hardly be understood.

But each with his pleasures, more or less legal. With the pleasures he can pay for.

The cost of the images provided by the camera robots or myo cameras has increased enormously in this edition due to the numerous accidents suffered by the equipment, which is not too cheap either. Many robots are destroyed in the midst of battles and what can we say about myocameras, it is clear that once the wearer dies, they are taken out of the circuit.

But this is the risk that the JORTH Company assumes for you.

ADVERTISEMENTS: The JORTH company has placed no less than 500 robots for you in sector 7 where the field battles take place. For only two hundred dollars you will have the most impressive unleashings of contemporary bellicose fantasy at home!

Don't forget: the JORTH company's motto is "Everything for the customer"!

LIVE: Hello, do you remember me? Carmin Philips, from the Olympic Zone, on the fourth day of the competitions. We are in Sector 7 where the Field Battle debuted as an Olympic discipline. Today you will watch images from the last meetings within the imposed exercises and from tomorrow you will witness the freely chosen exercises which, we hope, will give the full poetry of the Olympics.

At these moments, the draw for the first match is underway. The representative teams of the French and English ethnic groups meet, eternal rivals on all fields, in all competitions.

Spectators in the aircraft above Sector 7 have already been notified and I make it my duty to notify you, dear receivers: The JORTH Company has launched a contest with cash prizes, victim items, and survivor autographs. The competition test is the theme of the match.

So: what battle in human history is the theme of this sporting event? Who were the combatants and the period, if possible even the exact year, in which it took place? The answers are received in the database specially created by the Company. Access code: JORTH‑10255.

The captains of the two teams are also at the Jury, receiving information about the number of combatants, the arsenal, the equipment and the positions from which the fight will begin. Depending on the theme, details are also given about the first deployments of troops in which death is only simulated - not the injury, however - specifying the moment from which the team captains will have full freedom of movement, the moment of relaxation. From here on, theoretical technical-tactical training and knowledge of history can lead everyone to victory or defeat. That is why, usually, the captains are very good historians, many of them having specialized studies, published works, etc. The hunt for captains is another one of the businesses that the Academy of Sciences takes up on all occasions, the collection of historians greatly impoverishing it in this chapter. But the managers are also right: it doesn't matter if you know or not that you are the commander of the Iraqi troops in the Gulf Battle or... Although there were cases. No further than in the pre-Olympic tournament, a captain who had focused only on strictly military training, having Octavian's positions and troops in Egypt, behaved like Sinan Pasha at Călugăreni. It is true that he did not lose his teeth, but he lost the match even though he had been favored by the draw.

While I was telling you about these small incidents that, of course, will remain in the anecdotes of the young Olympic discipline, the captains of the two representative teams entered the field. French athletes are consumed...

But no, you have to guess that, to be able to respond to the JORTH Company contest.

The first actions are taking place according to the historical scenario, the time has not yet arrived... Yes, fine, thank you. Dear receiver friends, I am informed from the studio that for now the comments from the spectators in the ships are more interesting than what is happening on the ground, so for two minutes you will watch some images from inside.

SPECTATORS' COMMENTS: - Oh, it's clear. The Battle of Philippi. Look, there it will make the junction with...

- Run away from here, how will it be...? Study more, read more before coming to the match... Tickets should be given based on a knowledge test, not all idiots come...

LIVE: We're sorry to spoil your enjoyment of these original and funny dialogues, but the race has reached the relaxation phase. How about a little live sound?

"- You think this is the only thing I have to do? Walk all day through these muds and ask where's Grouchy, where's Grouchy?

- So did Napoleon, captain...

- Yes. And he lost. Well, I don't feel like it. The French could win at Waterloo and I'm determined to show them I, their mother of... - Call him telepathically.

- What, are you stupid? Do you want to disqualify us? Better go and wait for my order. Hear? Don't attack until I tell you to. Is that clear? Don't you do like the other idiot who threw away your cerebral prosthesis! There has to be a way…”

*

On the ground floor of the building, a howl will be heard that the four, as well as the building, will easily identify, who will not recognize the voice of the Free? They will all rush to the entrance of the apartment, which they will cover with half-burnt mattresses, with parts that used to make up humanoid devices, with the debris carefully collected inside. The wall will also try to tighten around the place where the door used to be.

But it won't be enough. All this will be shattered in an instant and the two Liberos will enter roaring and swinging their clubs overhead. Until they turn their eyes to the screen on which the documentary images of those long-gone times will continue to unfold, when human civilization was in full bloom, when...

Several French athletes, as cavalrymen, will approach in a rush, shouting and waving their swords, directly towards the camera robot, towards the two Liberi who will stare at the screen in terror, terrorized by the shouts, by the horses' hooting and will do what anyone, in their place, would see fit to do: roaring, waving clubs, they will rush at the screen and smash it. Crushing it. Then, in the silence that will fall, one of them will grin, after which he will grunt from his throat as if he were laughing, and maybe it will be like that, then he will articulate:

- Er… about. IF!

And, proud of himself, of his strength, of the race he belongs to, he will leave the apartment, slipping through the opening made a little earlier into the pile of objects in front of the entrance. The other will follow him after, with a powerful blow, he will crush the old man's skull...

The screams of the two will be heard for a while inside the building, then in the street, while the men left in the room, alive, will approach the low one and stay there for a long time, looking at his tortured face and his arm that is finished with a clenched fist , lifted up, up…

As a threat? Like a cry of helplessness?

Who can know?

« « «