n10 – Plasma and Structures (страница 4)

When he finally grew tired of opening and closing doors, he lay down to sleep in the most suitable third compartment.

Waking up, he went to another compartment, which no longer resembled any of yesterday’s. It was a food compartment with two refrigerators and boxes containing a variety of canned goods, cereals, boxes of cookies, cocoa, powdered milk, nuts, all kinds of chocolate bars, containers of water, filters, medical boxes with first-aid kits.

The next compartment was also different: a shower, toilet, exercise bike, washing machine. This time there were only three looping compartments. He understood that every day their number and contents changed, but they changed depending on the fact that he understood this and, building on this understanding, constructed patterns, discovered categories and types, kept computational records, built diagrams. He had to carry a duffel bag with records, maps, notes for years. Compasses, rulers, pencils, spare glasses, magnifying lenses — he packed all of this into the duffel bag before heading to the neighboring compartment. Sometimes he left the duffel bag and looped back to it again, knowing in advance the time-transition pattern. He got used to leaving the duffel bag and always returned for it in time.

Once he returned for the duffel bag, but it was not there. He always knew the door code, but he also knew that this code changed every day. All the notes were in the records. He moved a chair, sat down at the table, narrowed his eyes, and began making calculations. He closed his eyes and, in silence, over the course of four years, came to the point where the door opened. People came, carefully placed him on a stretcher with bells, and carried him into the mountains. They left him there and departed.

He woke up in the third compartment and everything repeated again — and again, and again. Sometimes he muttered in his sleep that he was a monk, and he was not alone — he was a repeating monk, a multi-monk, he muttered.

Once he woke up in the mountains and dispersed immediately across all the mountains. One lived his entire life in the local village. Other lives had different trajectories. Some lines looped, branched, but all of them had continuous trajectories, intersections, symmetries, forming geometric metamorphoses.

Sometimes these were mountain ridges. Below, wavy hills could be seen. Near the hills, rounded roofs of huts were visible. Mushrooms could be seen in the grass. There were mushroom pickers by the river.

Everything was where it was at every moment in time. And where it was not, there was something else. There was the absence of what was not there. There was the presence of absence. There was a monk. There were many of them. They were where there was nothing but them. Where there were no monks, there was everything else. When something appeared, the monks disappeared. When something disappeared, the monks appeared.

All monks are one monk. Everything is the shadow of the monk, except the monk himself. The shadow is the shadow of this shadow. The shadow of the shadow is the shadow except the shadow itself. The shadow is the shadow. Shadow.

Sometimes birds sang in the garden. One sang like this: “tiu-i tiu-i tiu-i ti.” Then another sang the same way. But when many birds sang at once — and they sang the same — it already became “tiu-i-i-tiu-i-tiu-i-u-i-ti.” Although each sang like the others, together they sang not like one. And the more birds there were, the less identically they sang, and they did not let him sleep.

A year later, having opened the vent, there was silence for two weeks. He packed his duffel bag and set off in search of the birds. Climbing a hill, he looked through a spyglass. On the southern slope, children were rolling a tractor wheel. Inside the wheel was a person. In the east, there was a gray-haired sage drinking tea from a bowl and eating sumalak with a spoon. In the west, there was an old sage eating tea with a spoon and drinking sumalak from a bowl. In the north, there was sumalak and an old man — he was from the bowl.

Wiping the spyglass on his shirt, he looked south again. In the south was the north. In the east was the west. In the west was the east. In the north was the south.

He folded the spyglass, put it in its case, placed the case in a bag, put the bag in his backpack, slung the backpack over his shoulder, and noticed something glowing in the distance. He took the backpack off his shoulder, took the bag out of the backpack, took the case out of the bag, opened the case, took out the spyglass, unfolded it, wiped it, and carefully brought it to his right eye and began to look.

In the distance, someone was sending a signal. On a nearby island, someone was waving an object reflecting light and sending a signal. Not far away, on the slope of the hill, lay a boat.

He folded the spyglass, put it in the case, placed the case on the grass, took the bag out of the backpack, wiped the case, put the case in the bag, put the bag back in the backpack, slung the backpack over his shoulder, and went home to sleep.

In the morning he packed the backpack, put the spyglass, halva, cookies, a pack of tea, a pack of tobacco, a pipe, and a mug into it. He reached the boat, put the backpack in the boat, lowered it into the water, jumped in, took out the pipe, lit it, took the spyglass out of his pocket, and began to smoke, look, and sail. He sailed, looked through the spyglass, and smoked. Suddenly he saw smoke, removed the pipe — the smoke disappeared.

He sailed to the island, tied the boat to the rocks, slung the backpack over his shoulders, and headed toward the hills, making his way through thorns, palm thickets, and lianas. He walked all day and found a freshwater stream. He lit a fire, brewed tea, and discovered that someone had opened the package and bitten the halva. The tracks led into the forest. When it finally grew dark, he made a torch from coconut husk. He saw a fire on the hill but did not dare go at night and went to sleep.

He slept well in the warmth. By the fire on dry ferns it was warm, comfortable, good.

In the morning he opened his eyes and felt excellent — more precisely, as good as never before. He decided not to go anywhere. Why go somewhere if it was already as good as never before? He built a hut, began gathering materials, setting up everyday life, catching fish. He built a hut on a palm tree, learned to jump between trees, gathered mangoes. He hid the boat in the jungle and never climbed the hill where a fire was lit every night.

Once someone came and began taking photographs. He photographed the hut, the everyday objects, the fire pit, fish remains, the torch, coconut plates, sculptures, stones, ropes, knots, totems, canisters, nets, the pipe, boots, and left. But after that, no one came anymore.

Once a small plane crashed on the island. It fell beyond the hills, two days’ journey away. At that very moment, a man in rags ran out of the forest. He was saying something in his own language. On his faded torn T-shirt was the inscription “Brazil Coffee.” He pointed his finger at the hill where someone lit a fire every night. Suddenly the plane that had fallen a minute ago flew out backward from behind the hill and flew away.

Night fell. He lit a torch and headed up the hill toward the fire. After several hours, he saw a man calmly sitting by the fire. This man was talking about how time had begun to change after electromagnetic installations started being tested on the island. About how a man had sailed to the island — he had sailed to the island many times and was sending a light signal with a piece of the plane. He looked closely at the man by the fire. The man turned his face toward him. It was himself. He himself had sent the signal. He himself had directed the experiment. He had sent the plane with emitters that had unexpectedly activated in the air. He had created and installed several emitters on the island, built the hut, jumped between trees, and caught fish for trillions of cycles. And suddenly his mouth began to speak it all in reverse order. He began to shake and glow, twist and blur across the ground, flowing down the slope of the hill.

Part 3

At depth, fish were playing. While time passed, something had to be done. Everyone was similar in that they were doing something. These were metabolizing organizations — in the form of fish, animals, and all other living beings, living and metabolizing. A person split a fish, the fish split another fish, another fish split plants, plants split the bones of fish, plants split the sun. A person split himself and others, but not everyone. Mostly, everyone split the sun. And not only that — the sun also split everyone. Sometimes a person argued about what could be split and what could not. He argued, that is, he split. At the same time, a fish was splitting inside him, but the fish was also splitting the person himself by giving him strength so that he would live longer. And the longer he lived, the more the sun, oxygen, other people, other fish, and he himself would split him.