The final straw, perhaps, was my trip to see Hanna in her boarding house – though there is no point in calling her that. Better to call her Mia 31.

When Ef asked if I wanted anything for Nativity and I replied that I would like to see Hanna, I didn’t think that he would say yes, I just gave him an honest answer. But he said, ‘Why not, if it will calm you down?’ The administration only let us go grudgingly. They don’t really like it when correctees go wandering about outside the House. As far as I could tell Ef was very insistent, even put pressure on them somehow. They gave us three hours: two for the trip, there and back, and one hour for the ‘meeting with a former Darling’. They strongly recommended handcuffs (‘This virus… anything’s possible’), but he didn’t make me wear them (‘Personally, I trust the lad’). I was touched by that. I almost started trusting him too.

Why did Ef take me to see her at the boarding house? To calm me down? Ha. Probably he wanted to provoke me from the very beginning. Perhaps he even hoped that I would try to run away. I didn’t try… But, one way or another, I still broke free, but that’s exactly what he had been waiting for. Hey, I even sort of understand him. All that fuss about me, all that spam, those thousands of infected messages and mails which they keep sending each other like crazy, as if they don’t even know what they are doing themselves, as if it’s because of some goddamn virus, which keeps reproducing itself constantly… You should go along and check – maybe someone’s already been doing it by themselves for ages, of their own accord, maybe someone likes doing it, maybe someone has some sympathy for me, maybe there really have been dissidents all this time. Maybe the Service for Planetary Order already thinks the boundary between socio virus and socio revolt seemed too fragile. They hoped that they would lock me up in a House of Correction and everyone would forget about me. And that there they would be able to quietly poke about inside me, study me like some newly discovered pet, grab at my wings and tug at my antennae – and that I would stay there for life stuck on inviz mode, an unknown but harmless correctee animal… And that’s how it went. For many years that’s exactly how it’s been – but now I am thirty-one and the whole world has suddenly remembered that I exist. The ‘0 threat’ – that’s what they’ve called the virus that has brought me my fame; there is no anti-virus yet – I hope that there will be one by your time.

By the way, it’s funny that I’m the only one who doesn’t get a chance to see all that spam myself. But certain rumours have still reached me and I’ve put together a short list of ‘chain letters’ that I’ve heard about in case you’re interested:

Sorry, it seems I got a bit distracted. I wanted to tell you about Mia 31.

Mia. Hanna. A fat, listless twelve-year-old girl. My mother’s second inc-successor (the first, a little boy, only lived for eight years; they say he was a dwarf). Mia’s forehead was covered in pustules and her eyes were so dull and cold that it was like some ancient-ancient pet was living in her skull and watching us all dispassionately through the little slits on that spotty dirty-brown globaloid forehead…

For about fifteen minutes Ef and I waited for her in the director’s office. She finally appeared, or rather, the director led her in, holding her by the arm: The Eternal Murderer was on at the time and that idiot, as far as I could tell, struggled to keep up two layers and could have easily tripped on the stairs, transfixed by the Butcher’s Son.

She seemed slightly disappointed by the fact that she was being distracted from the film, but she still tried to be polite. When I said hello, she offered to friend me ‘so we can chat normally’, but when I replied that I wasn’t connected to socio something flashed in her eyes and burned there like a broken lamp, something like surprise. She said practically nothing throughout our entire meeting, except to say that she liked serials and ‘like, yeah, second layer is so awesome’, and I wasn’t even sure if she understood why I had been brought there.

I imagined Hanna, so beautiful, with her velvety eyes like the wings of a tortoiseshell butterfly. Hanna, with her pure, pale face. Hanna, who could hold three layers effortlessly. Hanna, whom I had lost forever.

When our silent ‘meeting’ came to an end, Ef asked me:

‘So then, are you happy? Are you convinced that everything’s alright with your little Hanna?’

My ‘little Hanna’ and the director laughed in unison at something I couldn’t hear. The planetman in The Eternal Murderer had obviously made a good joke.

I replied to Ef’s question:

‘She’s not Hanna, she never has been her and never will be.’

Ef got up and took a step in my direction. Something predatory appeared in him – not in his cold mirror face, but rather in his movements, in his posture. The director of the boarding house stared at me, gurgled excitedly and then screwed up his face, as if what I had said had caused an attack of heartburn and he had choked on stomach acid.

‘What did you mean by that?’ Ef asked. ‘What does that mean, “not Hanna”?’

‘Hanna died.’

‘Wow, did he just say that…’ Hanna whispered, looking at me with something like awe. ‘That’s a bad word. You’re not allowed to say that.’

‘Let’s put some handcuffs on for the way back, eh, buddy?’ Ef buzzed. ‘Looks like you don’t respect the Living. Like you don’t agree with Him. You just insulted Him, and it’s all been recorded on this device.’ He pointed at the chatterbox. ‘As a member of the Service for Planetary Order I am obliged to inform the Administration at the House of Correction about your behaviour. And recommend that you be moved to the Special Unit.’

Of course he’d been planning on it ending up like this from the very beginning.

…Do I really disagree? Am I really a dissident? I always wanted to be like everyone else. I still want to. Not now, so then, after the Pause.

Hey, you, there, in the future! I hope you really will exist. I hope that you will be me. I hope that I will be. If you are my continuation, if I am you, then sorry about this idiotic incode that you got from me… Personally it’s ruined my life, but I really hope you’ll cope with it. That you won’t get put in the Special Unit. That I won’t get put there… That I will become a part of the Living.

It’s probably cowardice. It’s running away. It’s not fair. But if you will exist, if you do exist, sorry for what I’m about to do. I’m planning on killing myself – yes, yes, sorry about that, sorry one more time, I shouldn’t say that, I should put it differently. I am planning on ‘temporarily ceasing to exist’, ‘taking a pause’, but I’m no fool, I know: they all get pauses, but all I get is a ‘stop’. So if you do exist, if you will exist – then we’ve won, you and me, because it means that we’re like everyone else. I’m like everyone else. I am a part of the Living.

I always wanted to be like everyone else. But they have made me a god. They have made me a devil. They have made me a fruit fly for them to do experiments on. They have made me very dangerous. They did not even know what they were doing.

They have forced me into a corner. They have left me completely alone. They have taken away my best friend.

Today he will come again. Ef, the man in the mask. They will pronounce judgment on my case. Look for defects, ask nasty little questions, start digging about inside me like I’m a heap of common property.

And then I’m going to set myself on fire. Then they’ll all see how a wonder-sunshine burns!

And here’s another thing. If you exist, then, please, visit Cracker at least every now and again. He’s very lonely there in his chamber. He’s completely stopped moving. They say he fell into a coma and can’t see or hear anything anymore. But I’m sure he’ll be able to tell that you are sitting there with him.

That I am sitting there with him.