deleted world, was unable to dream. He had used up all of his creative energy in overcoming the material world, and now he had forgotten that it must be replaced. The only replacement he found was vodka.
The boy was neither a nuisance nor a delight to him; he was only a part of that which Az had already deleted. He required some effort and attention, but so did going to the bathroom, and so Kolya had found a pragmatic guardian whose lack of emotional attachment made him all the more systematic in looking after a child.
Since nothing in the world had any meaning, or value, for Az, he saw nothing wrong in helping himself to whatever might have come his way. The supply depot of Novosibirsk had been running mysteriously low on food and spirits since his arrival, but no one had bothered to check the inventory—in fact, the depot had never had a manager. Food arrived there, was stored by the transporters according to shelf life, and eventually made its way into the hands of Wynnet, Karyne, Elsa, and the others. There was no system of payment; supplies were provided by vendors who were sympathetic to the inhabitants’ mission. But there was a system of responsibility. There had always been a unanimous, unspoken abhorrence of old societal ills, such as thievery.
That was now changed.
Wynnet had been the first to become suspicious. And without consulting the others he decided to set up a computer inventory of the depot.
He sets aside one late-morning PP (productive period) to do the job. He would meet the transporters, give instructions, and return the following Monday to reap the information.
On the way to the depot he met Elsa, who was returning from it with a lump of cheese and a bag of dehydrated biscuits.
“Depot verification procedures to be implemented shortly good morning,” Wynnet said.
Elsa looked up, winced, and could think of no response, except:
“He’s still missing, Wynnet.”
“Unfavorable.” He looked into her eyes, and she saw nothing in his. At this moment she became frightened of Novosibirsk. To mask this feeling, she abruptly added:
“Wynnet, would you help us look for him?”
A flash of digitization passed under his eyes.
“No.”
They parted, following their separate routes.
Throughout this dreary winter Orlin had been keeping the alleyways mighty clean: free of fallen branches and heavy snow. It was a full-time job, and none of the other living inhabitants had noticed. Now the non-living inhabitants, as one might have guessed, certainly had noticed, and they were grateful for Orlin’s practical resolution to improve the appearance of their town for the good of its newest “society.” But those who searched for Kolya, from Todd and Walidah to Omar and Elsa, never questioned the unnaturally improved condition of their alleyways in winter, even if it did make their quest a little easier to carry out.
Todd decided to go for a light walk in the snow, for even he could become overwhelmed by too much color. His royal redecoration schemes, while entirely successful, had worn out his visual sense. Feeling somewhat adventurous, and a little annoyed at the lack of snow underfoot, he strayed off the marked roads of Novosibirsk and into the birch woods.
His first step into the virgin snow might have been his last: he nearly froze with indecision in the face of such choice of direction. All trees looked the same to him; all negative spaces of snow, all interstices of sky, all destinations. But, having summoned enough courage to continue, and rather liking the trail he left in the snow, he walked for several long minutes, recalling a similar feeling he’d had while walking through the snow in childhood. And all that white—the trees, the snow, and the clouds—purified and invigorated him more than he had thought possible.
Forging footprints took some energy, and though he was aware of what surrounded him, Todd had no grasp of particulars: a small abandoned cabin almost evaded him until he noticed the confusion of footprints leading up to it. Birches young and old sent up their long trunks in thick stands on every side; where their branches crossed in the whitish sky Todd saw a bearded man, with cavernous brown eyes and skin that was wrinkled by their thin twigs. Arching over the doorway of the cabin an abandoned crow’s nest grew the threads of a woman’s dress; her head hung just over the doorway and her arms spread over its arch. Todd met her eyes, so still and inviting. He opened the door.
The cottage had one room, a room that was gray from all angles. Everything in the room was unused, abandoned to the graying of time. Only dying embers in the hearth gave a hint of color: someone had been here.
Indeed, beneath a colorless blanket in one corner lay a breathing form, so completely concealed by the blanket that it looked as if a part of the room itself had come alive. As Todd’s eyes scanned the room once again for clues of who or what this might be, Kolya kicked off the blanket and stood, his blue sweater and green pants announcing him instantaneously. Todd lost all points of reference for space and time: he took Kolya in his arms and left the cottage, leaving footprints that only added to the confusion of the cabin’s history, as the arching woman and old tree-man dissolved under a new light.
Az returned shortly afterwards with new provisions, and prodigiously drunk. He noted with some trepidation Kolya’s absence, but in the end decided it was nothing he could influence, though he did hope for Kolya’s return.
25.
Walking at twilight in a long satin robe, like an apparition, Karyne shunned the cold and wind. The cloth that hung from her square shoulders sparkled above the old snow and dying sky light. She reached Wynnet’s house before she knew she’d left: something foreign was hanging inside her, removing her sense of time. She was only going to Wynnet’s house because it was her habit to report there every evening. Tonight, though, she had nothing to report.
Upon opening his door she saw nothing of the usual electronic nervousness that pervaded Wynnet’s house. Instead, the lights were out; only one small red light flickered in the stillness of shadow. Opened windows brought in the cold. And lying at the foot of his favorite hologram generator was one dead Wynnet.
She knew he was dead because he had never been known to relax like this.
Her first suspect was everyone. Without first closing a window, turning on a light, or even covering poor Wynnet, she was gone. But to where? Who could she turn to now in Novosibirsk? Where would she go, to feel what garnered emotion?
A dark blue blanket blew about the dark room where Wynnet lay; it caught on his ankle and folded over his legs, then back again to cover his back and arms. A final gust of death-filled air wrapped an end about his head. Wynnet was enshrouded in blue, lying in state among his helpless electronic progeny. The next morning, after Karyne had awakened to an uncertain day and led the town’s inhabitants to the deceased’s home, they found nothing but a dusty blue cloth weighted and patterned to the floor, as if it had been lying there for centuries, covered with a silvery dust.
“He was lying right there,” Karyne remarked, as if in speaking loudly the truth of what she saw would be reaffirmed.
“I don’t see anything,” said Walidah.
Elsa began to cry:
“It’s so dusty in here!” she sobbed.
Omar led her to another room, but the dust followed them.
“He was RIGHT HERE.” Karyne stepped over the blanket and jerked it up.
Nothing but the floor underneath.
Az shook his head and returned outside. Walidah stared out the window, and Orlin (here destined to break the silence) took up his broom and began collecting the settled silvery dust into small piles.
Karyne, now feeling more isolated than ever, shuffled out in her swaying satin, a glittering cloudlet following her.
Elsa was drawn to a small blue light cutting a hole in the darkening air: one of the computers still operated. She left Omar in the kitchen and followed the light to an oblique table in the main room.
The others had left.
Elsa sat quietly before the computer, whose light (sensing a presence) now began to blink: a calm, alluring blue; not at
all like the orange and red flashes of all the computers she had known. All she did then was touch the screen, and the hologram cone activated. From then on she was the sole witness to a spontaneous display of unguided electronic images. She watched then in fleeting or lingering moments, and cast herself into them, seeing what she willed.
She saw a child she did not know, then realized that the child was herself. But not really. The child grew and became someone else: someone who resembled Elsa, nothing more, and then disappeared. The child Elsa returned, and this time it was the real Elsa, small Elsa fighting the Danish waves in Jutland, sitting in Hans Christian Anderson’s lap in Copenhagen’s town square, peering in through shop windows decorated with the lace of another century. Sitting in the windows, the lace falling from her lap, was Zofiya, whom Elsa recognized only as another elderly European face—significant not for anything historical, but for the present, the look in her eyes. It anchored somewhere inside Elsa, and held her in that moment until she was no longer aware of the next.
The rest of the world then went fleeting by: a ticker-tape of images she only half remembered, half loved, half called her own. There came a sudden glimpse of Wynnet’s lost world, a visual gurgle of random facts, though she would see none of that world, only its replacement—the reflection of Elsa’s soul, of her unguided direction:
A window to