Horror Seller

By Adam Baker

The Earth of the future has been divided into two parts—the developed World of Order and the backward World of Decadence. These worlds have abandoned contact with each other and built Walls between them. World of Order is the modern, technologically developed world, where is no crime, wars, and any kind of conflicts. World of Decadence lives in the past denying all the progress, technical development, and modern values of the World of Order.

Jerry Kaiser, a refugee from Decadence, writes virtual reality programs, which are created to the customer’s taste. They are filled with psychodromes, emotions recorded in a digital format. Commissioned by Richard Kamer, one of the Devil’s Dozen, the ruling elite of the World of Order, the head of a ministry without a name who is responsible for top-secret, inter-world relations, he creates a horror program that Richard uses to kill the most influential citizens of Order. Jerry is found guilty of these murders.

Jerry finds out that the victims of the program are connected to the dark secret organization – Trails de-Hell, where the immigrants from the World of Decadence and dissidents of the World of Order are killed, tortured, and hunted. The one existence of Trails de-Hell makes World of Order not that ideal and utopic as it seems.

Jerry wants to unravel the secrets intensions of Richard Kamer and realizes that he is the one who intends to lead the world to the big changes. But to succeed in it, humanity will need to make huge sacrifices, and Jerry will have to take sides.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Apr 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035823406

Adam Baker

ADAM BAKER has worked as a gravedigger, a mortuary attendant, a short order cook in a New York diner, and fixed slot machines in an Atlantic City casino. He was also a close neighbour of the notorious British serial killer Fred West.  He is the author of Juggernaut and is currently employed as a cinema projectionist in England.

Book preview

Horror Seller

Adam Baker

Austin Macauley Publishers

Horror Seller

About the Author

Copyright Information ©

Prologue

Book One: World of Order

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Book Two: The World of Decadence

Part One: City of Evil

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Part Two: The Capital City of the Apocalypse

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Book Three: The Horror Seller

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Notes

About the Author

Adam Baker is cosmopolitan with a strong belief that the world is good place to live, if we contribute to the unite and peaceful future together. While studying political sciences in Berlin and history of arts in Salzburg, he travelled a lot and gathered experience in diverse countries and with individuals all over the world, which helped him to understand ideology and mentality of different societies and inspired to create the novel, Horror Seller, a crisis scenario of future Earth in a 1984 meets a brave new world universe.

Adam Baker is a sailor. The most interesting job he had was the excursion translator on the cruise ship. Currently, he is working on the ship as hotel controller.

Other than sailing, Adam Baker loves cosy family evenings and animals. The best time for him to spend is to get invested into a good book with a cup of strong tea in the evening.

Copyright Information ©

Adam Baker 2024

The right of Adam Baker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035823390 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035823406 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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Prologue

Gusston drank bovine blood, enjoying the show. I knew that brat would have the last laugh, and yet, I hoped that good would triumph over evil. I put my modest person on the side of good. But they were going to execute me today, not him.

I stood at the scaffold, not knowing what to pray for—forgiveness or a quick death. Thunderclouds covered the grey sky like blots on a dirty sheet. A protest rose in my chest, mingled with nausea.

It’s not me! Not me!

But the crowd didn’t believe me. The crowd was out for my blood.

They needed a criminal. Guilty. Someone who could be punished for the death of the most influential citizens of the World of Order. They found this criminal.

It turned out to be me.

The Horror Seller! shouted the loafers. Death to the Horror Seller! Their voices were steel knives cutting me into several shivering pieces.

Gerald Kaiser, came a voice from the speakers. The voice of a punishing god, merciless and soulless.

I recognised this voice. This was not a god. This was a scammer. But he did not lack a sense of humour—it was not for nothing that he was reading my verdict. Thirteenth had a peculiar sense of humour. He could even kill with his jokes.

"A refugee from the World of Decadence…"

Sweat was running down my face, sticky and hot. My fear cracked and turned into anger. The crowd shouted curses. The oversky people were dearer to a cosy lie. It would save them from nightmares, but the truth would not.

Programme writer…

I took a step up the stairs leading to the stage, stumbled and fell. The fall was greeted with cheers from the crowd. The robot lifted me up, shook me, and pushed me forward.

…named the Horror Seller.

I went up to the stage. Thousands gathered in the oversky square to watch my execution. I knew some of them personally. Surely, all my colleagues from Morpheus were here. Some came feeling pity, some with a bashful triumph, and some—fear. I didn’t want to look out for their faces.

Accused of the premeditated murder of three hundred and twenty-seven citizens of the United Countries of Order, undermining national security, and high treason.

High treason. Funny, Richard, very funny.

Sentenced to death on the Mercy Square in the City of Setting Sun, the overskyer Radiant, USOA, UCO.

I turned to face the square. I was even flattered that all Radiant was going to watch me being executed.

Enforce the verdict.

I no longer heard the screams, only the beating of my heart. It slowed, everything slowed down. Strange thoughts crept into my head. Would my whole life flash before my eyes like in an old movie? Would the blood be washed off the stage before the next concert of a famous rock star? Or would the bloodstains remain as the backdrop for his performance? Would this star be greeted with the same frenzied cries of delight as they greeted my death?

At a sign from the mortal commander bewacher, the robots pointed their weapons at me. I had lived a not-so-bad life. Such a life—and such a death—could only be dreamed of.

And yet I hoped that someday my name would be justified, and I rejoiced at the new crimes to come of the real killer.

Death to the Horror Seller! Richard Kamer proclaimed.

It was just a fairy tale, I thought. Fairy tales don’t kill people. People do.

Book One

World of Order

1

Chaos reigned in Morpheus. It was always chaos in Morpheus, but the last week was particularly intense. We did not have time to finish the programme on schedule, so the whole workshop was on edge. Mary Evans was a capricious client of the intellectuals, a moralist, and a good girl. Usually, such girls are frightful and under-fucked. I knew such in Decadence. Stubborn, noisy, obsessed with the idea of love, and often highly moral. The girl said, I want a love story. Such that will turn my head. For the first time, I supposed, in her boring life. I wrote the script, and the technologists did a great job. But the girl didn’t like it. You see, there was not enough romance for her, and the guy from our programme was a jerk.

We were given two weeks for the changes. I rewrote the script, added some vanilla scenes and brutality to the guy. But we did not have time to produce the programme on schedule. The fact was that there were two leading technologists missing from the workshop. They said they took sick leave. The most absurd lie one could come up with. People in the World of Order did not get sick. Fables about the disease—this was just for show. There were other rumours circulating as well. As if one technologist did not know the correct measure of sprinklings and died—there could be no worse advertising for sprinklings, so they kept it a secret.

And the second, according to evil rumours, was sent to Gamma Fortress—the main prison of the World of Order. For what and why, one can only guess.

Putting aside thoughts of poor technologists and capricious clients, I decided that this evening only one remedy, tested by millions of suffering hearts, would help me to relax. A remedy that cannot be replaced by any programme and not a single sprinkling.

Yes, it is whiskey, no cola or other nonsense, preferably smuggled from the World of Decadence.

I walked out of the office building, shivering from the cold and rain. Who started the rain today? The sun almost always shined in the overskyers. Sometimes forecasters, probably on a drunken head, or out of boredom, or hitting depression, put on ridiculous experiments with the weather, and the authorities encouraged this. They said that rain or snow early in the morning make the city believable (this is how they express themselves: oversky believability). The authorities in every part of the globe are not all right with their heads, this is an ancient fact, like the world itself.

I went to Click on the Square of Dreams in front of the Morpheus office building. Clicks were a teleportable form of transport. They transferred a person from one place to another in a split second—in the time of clicking fingers. To use the Click, you needed a destination code or the address of the Click to which you wanted to move. The destination code of home Clicks also acted as a lock-password, which was recommended to be changed at least once a month. Access to the city’s public Clicks was free. Moving to other cities, including Earthland ones, required open access. Clicks were controlled by the Teleport Transport Corporation. The workers of TTC were tolerant to the oversky people and provided access without any questions.

A moment, and I’m home. At the entrance, I breathed on the recogniser, and the apartment door opened. My house was fragrant. I couldn’t check it, but I took her word for it—Louise claims that the scent of sea breeze and coconut flakes had dissolved in the air (reminiscent, as I was told, of the famous shot Aboriginal, a mixture of vodka, white rum, tequila, and coconut milk). I, myself, of course, do not know how Aboriginal smelled, or what aromas were hovering in my apartment. I had no sense of smell, but the guests liked this smell and my maid was even delighted. Louise changed the air fillers every week, but, as they said, it did not matter what the child indulged in, if only she did not do my brain, as any woman could do—be it a living woman or a robot, like my maid.

Jerry, Louise greeted me with a smile and a half-sleepy look of slanted eyes, sly and, therefore, devilishly attractive. I made potato salad and onion dumplings. The recipe… I found it… on the Web… Louise stopped when she noticed how numb I became. Rural recipes, she added, barely audible.

Rural, I repeated. Here they were: ghosts of the past, bastards, they were grimacing and gloating. Their physiognomies were fat, well-fed. No, I wouldn’t feed them anymore. Go to hell, all of you. More like Decadent.

There are no Decadent recipes on the Web, master, Louise said. But I thought… These dishes are like… the food… of your homeland.

Silly robot!

Louise’s eyes filled with tears. Anthropomorphic robots responded tenderly to reminders that they were not alive and were very believably worried.

Leaving Louise to sob, I went to the dining room, where rural dishes were waiting for me, claiming to be the cuisine of the World of Decadence. Even this pathetic claim was enough for me to sweep them off the table and stay hungry.

I hated it. I hated being reminded of my origins. If I could forget it, others would forget it, too. Who needed bad memories? Certainly not me.

2

Save me.

Get away! Get away!

I wanted her to disappear. I wanted her to fall silent.

Save me.

A splash of scarlet spray and the darkness of asphalt streets, the smell of sweat and metal in the air.

You couldn’t. You could not… could not…

I tried. I tried, you know, Julia, I tried …

My head was buzzing; tears were streaming down my face. The nightmares were reminiscent of vows—vows I hadn’t kept. A dying conscience whispered in a sister’s voice.

But the dream remained, and the voice persisted in the dream. There was a disgusting aftertaste in my mouth, as if someone had accidentally shit there, but it would be washed off with the first sip of Russian coffee. Strong coffee, sugar, a drop of cognac, and the morning will smile in a new way.

Louise!

There was no answer. I found Louise in the living room. She sat at the table with her head in her hands. Her eyes were closed. I snorted. Can you imagine a robot that turns itself off? This is how Louise protested. Like, ‘You, the master, offended me, and you won’t have breakfast until you turn me on and apologise.’

I was not going to apologise to the robot. Anthropomorphic robots looked no less alive than you and me, but they did not become people from this, although they said that the developers had contrived to endow them with a soul.

And I knew that Louise was forgiving. Besides, she could not live a day without her serials.

The coffee cheered me up. I turned on my laptop. I used it instead of the module. The modules were stylish, light and thin as a sheet of paper with a virtual keyboard, a 3D display that projected holograms, and the ability to reproduce odours. But working at the module, I felt like an elephant in a China shop, so I preferred a good old laptop (I bought mine at a flea market in Earthland New York).

I needed to complete a script for a VIP client. He burned cities there and conquered the world. Wars, love stories, and pornography were favourite programming genres. It is on them that freedoms (gold, silver, and bronze) were earned by our workshop. As a child, I dreamed of becoming a writer. My dream came true, but it was distorted beyond recognition. They didn’t read books in Order, so I had to wriggle out. To wriggle out, I knew how to do it. I began to create plots for programmes. I became rich, but I was tormented by hunger. As King Midas, I suffered from it while everything I touched turned to gold. Once upon a time, I compromised on my dream. This was what I still did, I am looking for compromises.

The programme was virtual reality, created to the taste of the customer. It was a titbit of parallel reality, an alternative source of feelings. In the programme, you could live any life and be embodied in any form. Unlike a movie or a computer game, in a programme, a person reincarnated himself. He felt pain and joy; he smelled aromas and felt pleasure as in reality, or even sharper.

In the programme workshop, Morpheus, we embodied a variety of subjects. We were often approached in search of love, carnal and spiritual. Programmes for women who yearned for a man’s shoulder were very popular. In them, heroes with muscular bodies and warm voices of demigods would take you to a romantic date, save you from bandits, and play on the strings of your body. Women were demanding beings; they could not be satisfied with the imperfection of a mortal man. Even if you were Adonis, any normal woman would find a couple of flaws in you. But the programme’s guy was another matter. You could endow him with all the qualities that a capricious heart only desired. And become the heroine of your own novel.

Favourite programmes of men were about war. About trenches, battles, raped women, and burned cities. Customers who ordered such things did not hide their names, as if they were proud of these barbaric fantasies. It seemed to them that torturing enemies, bullying women, and destroying historical monuments was incredibly courageous. My goal was not to convince them. Like the devil, I indulged people’s desires—and I made money from it.

Also, sadists and masochists turned to Morpheus (sometimes together, and sometimes separately), often anonymously. I’d heard enough of this for a lifetime. And what was the most disgusting thing? There were no prohibitions in the programmes. The authorities said that the programmes were a special kind of sublimation that allowed anyone to safely embody the sick desires of society. So, sometimes, they ordered something that gave me goosebumps. I suggested that the boss refuse to work with perverts, to which he rightly noted that perverts were our main income.

My life was a continuous futurological congress. Our commodity is Evil. We have resolved a great dilemma. Now, everyone can do unto others what he’s always wanted to—without causing them the least harm. For we have harnessed Evil, as medicine harnesses the microbe to inoculate and immunise. We had tamed evil like a wild beast. The sick fantasy remained, but there was no more evil.

Morpheus also had other clients. Someone was looking for adventures. Someone wanted to feel like the hero of their favourite movie or book. But this was less common. Books were not held in high esteem here. Reading was boring, uninteresting, and if you read a lot, they would call you ideological, and you would have to pass the test. You could do without this literature, only problems were caused because of it.

We also released mass consumption programmes, called sensations. We took a plot that was interesting to the general public, for example, a famous film, and created a programme with the ability to choose a character in whose role you wanted to live it. The sensations sold well; they were popular among the poor Earthland population and were cheaper than custom programmes.

The most important thing in a programme scriptwriter’s work were details. A well-written script made life easier for technologists. My tasks included not only creating a script, but also selecting psychodromes, emotional components of the programme, as well as compiling an overview of which sound, tactile, and aromatic accompaniments to connect the user to the programme. I also had to decide where was best to integrate the Red Buttons in order to provide the user with the opportunity to stop the programme.

One thing was forbidden in the programmes: to show the World of Decadence in a favourable light. If anyone wanted to take a walk in Venice—they were welcome. But Venice must be before the Great Division of Nations, when it was not yet Decadence. And it was advisable to add a couple of modern scenes at the end, where the famous cities of Decadence were swimming in shit, and people lived like animals. This was encouraged.

There was a list of prohibited books in Order. What just did not get there! The Bible was there, predictably, though we were wary of religion. But why Anna Karenina did not please the Order people—this was a question unanswered. (However, all Russian literature should be banned because it was all about suffering, and suffering here was a sign of bad manners). One of the forbidden books of the World of Order was Brave New World. Sometimes, writing just another script, especially a vulgar and stupid one, I remembered Huxley: "You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We’ve sacrificed the high art. We have the feelings and the scents instead." Were programmes art? I wasn’t sure. But I was sure of one thing: programmes were a guarantee of the happiness of Order citizens, which meant that there was nothing more to demand from them.

I was the director and chief scriptwriter of the Morpheus programme workshop. Hardly any of the clients knew who Morpheus was. The gods in our time were dismissed or voluntarily resigned, pagan as well as Christian. They were of little interest to anyone. For the ideological, they created a bizarre religion called Zorianism, but this was more a kind of hobby group, a means that made the hearts of Order citizens beat in the same rhythm.

The head of the workshop was a fat man named Jack Gusston, the mayor of Radiant, an oversky city in which I lived. He financed the creation of the workshop. But when you sell your soul to the devil, do not even think that he will not demand something in return. Working under Gusston was like waving a cigarette next to a powder keg. Jack was a slippery, unbalanced, and impulsive type.

The day I finished the script, I left for work closer to noon, deciding to walk to the office on foot. The sun was shining; the rain was gone. The city appeared before me in all its splendour.

Radiant, a city of glass and metal, was one of the largest overskyers in the world. The overskyers was an idea embodied by the English engineer, Eisie Ruthven, which was presented in the second half of the twentieth century by the Greek-French architect, Iannis Xenakis. The idea of cities was based on a hyperbolic parabola. Xenakis himself called such cities vertical cosmic. The term overskyer appeared in Order. Eisie Ruthven fulfilled the idea of Xenakis in the world’s first overskyer: airy Venice, Vanderpolis, not far from London.

The construct of Radiant reached five thousand Iannis metres. One hundred floors of the sky, as they said in the press. Radiant had seven levels, the lower six were occupied by offices, beauty clinics, airmobile workshops, and health centres. Level seven was inhabited by the oversky people, the most powerful and wealthy people in the World of Order—and lucky bastards like me. The main workshop of Morpheus was also on the seventh level.

The city of glass and metal was named Radiant because of its network of steel pipe towers and numerous glass greenhouses. But the real colour of the oversky capital was white. The buildings of Radiant, white and sterile, like the walls of a psychiatric hospital, dazzled on sunny days and brought melancholy on rainy days. The architecture of the city resembled the creations of Gaudí, artsy and unpredictable, only completely bloodless, discoloured. Trees grew on the rooftops of residential buildings (here I bow to Hundertwasser). Ornate streets personify the vascular system of the human body, wide avenues were veins and narrow capillary-like alleys with a heart on the Square of Dreams.

The dazzling white colour of the buildings was renewed every year. The mayor’s mansion, Hills of Prosperity, stood out against this background, as it was painted hot pink.

White colour was diluted with multi-coloured projection-holograms. Often, this was an advertisement for beauty clinics, restaurants, or Morpheus’s sensations. Sometimes fantastic creatures, dragons, fairies, and unicorns were allowed around the city. Once, I came across Count Dracula. He took off his hat, flashed his teeth, and bowed. I used to meet myself in the form of a sorcerer, from whose fingers appeared images of distant cities, unknown planets, beautiful women and courteous men. Sometimes the emblem of Morpheus flew over the houses—black and white double gates, over which an antique head hovered. Green wings grew from its temples, gilded at the ends.

The first few months in Radiant I shied away from the projections like a savage, tried to talk to them, and strove to touch everything. But I’m used to them now. Ghosts, nothing more.

I got to the office in half an hour. There were three Morpheus workshops in Radiant: the main one, Morpheus 13, at the seventh level, and two at the lower levels. Ten more were located in Earthland cities. In eight years, Morpheus has gone from a smoky kitchen filled with alcoholic vapours and inspiring ideas to a global entertainment corporation.

The Square of Dreams was decorated with a statue of a naked girl riding a dragon—a symbol of the embodiment of desires for every taste. The square was crowned like a cathedral of Earthland cities by the oval building of Morpheus. It was riveting to the eyes and shouted: look at me, love me, live by me.

The workshop was full of life. Morpheus 13 worked on one hundred and ten programmes, twenty of which were my scripts. We have thirty scriptwriters and a hundred technologists, half of whom are ladies. The Order women showed themselves in areas that were alien to them by nature. Take Liz, our chief technologist. When I told her about this, she snorted and called me Decadent, a swear word for conservatism, chauvinism, and narrow-mindedness in Order.

Elizabeth Lee was not only the leading technologist of Morpheus 13. She was my best friend. With her, I founded a workshop. Technologists were geniuses, but a programme without a good script was like a dish without salt and pepper served on a disposable plate. I became friends with Liz by selling my scripts to her. Then, we, like the young Beatles, decided to create a gang, bringing together the best scriptwriters and technologists. In those days, the first psychodromic sensor was invented.

I told Liz, We need to introduce psychodromes into programmes, do you understand?

This is crazy, she replied.

On this craziness, we rose.

Psychodromes were a real scientific breakthrough. A scientist named Goran Kardum worked for twenty years to create a device capable of recording human emotions. When he showed the world the first psychodromic sensor, having recorded the suicidal feelings on it, he was nearly executed. But, after some consideration, Kardum was given a prize and funds to establish the Institute of Psychodromy. On the day Kardum’s experiment was broadcast, I already knew what to do: transfer the emotions recorded by psychodromic sensors into digital format and use them in programmes. We needed to find a sponsor and be the first to voice this idea. I suggested contacting Gusston. Gusston believed in us, and Gusston was not mistaken.

This bitch got me.

I expected another greeting, but Liz wasn’t in the mood today.

Mary? I asked.

She’s ideological, Liz said. And all who are ideologic are idiots.

Ideological people advocated for family values, restoration of interest in art and literature, and unity with nature. There were not many of them; many others just diverted their eyes and made fun of them. The accusation of real ideology (sympathy for the World of Decadence) threatened the life of an Order person. However, the majority of ideological people simply could not deny themselves the pleasure of ranting at their leisure.

She didn’t like our programme’s guy. His nose, you see, is too big.

Did you show her the drafts?

She insisted. When Mary insists, it’s easier to agree. She doesn’t pay that much, but I’m sick of her.

Did you explain to her how everything works?

I explained. Programmes evoke feelings that are integrated into them, I say. Even if you don’t like the hero outwardly, you will still fall in love. And you’ll get your buzz, baby. She didn’t believe it. Mary is stubborn and full of scepticism, like a chamber pot of shit.

Has she participated in programmes before? I asked. Liz was as long in the programme business as I was, but she still took everything to heart.

Jerry, she’s an ideological one. I don’t understand why she would order the programme at all.

Everyone, even the ideological, wants to fuck and have a little romance. Calm down, Liz. You know how it will end. She’ll love it. She will get hooked on it.

But first, I’ll turn grey.

Liz was nervous, but I was not going to pry into her soul. I was not a traveller on other people’s souls at all. But it looked like Mary wasn’t Liz’s only problem. And it seemed she even wanted someone to get into her soul.

What a pity that it won’t be me.

How are you, Jerry? You look tired. Did you sleep badly again?

Tired of shitty orders, I said. I want something worthwhile, a script that would make the gears in my head spin. A challenge, you know?

Write a book. You dreamed about it. Let’s make a programme by it. What if the audience likes it?

I can’t write anymore. I can write scripts. But the real book…

You said you want something worthwhile.

Yes. A worthwhile order for a programme script is a guarantee that the work will not be wasted.

Do you need a guarantee of success or a creative flight? One ass, Jerry, into two chairs, as my grandma used to say, Liz snorted. You don’t know what you want. You come up with problems that don’t exist.

Why was she attacking me? Provoking a quarrel? I hadn’t quarrelled with anyone for a long time. She tried to rip the mask off me, but the mask had grown into my face.

However, Liz was not herself today. I knew little about friendship, but I heard somewhere that friends were not to be abandoned in trouble. I couldn’t remember exactly where I heard that. It must be in the ad for sprinklings from hair loss. Like, if a friend’s hair falls out, do not leave him in trouble, give him a sprinkling.

Is something wrong, Liz? Are you upset about Mary?

Mary? Mary is the last straw. You know, it happens that you rush through life like a bulletproof robot, and you don’t care about anything. You smile at everyone, you shine like a polished coin, and then you come home, accidentally break your favourite cup and end up in tears. Do you understand?

I got the metaphor, Liz. But because of cups, I must confess, I have not yet cried.

Oh, Jerry, don’t be so Decadent! Go. You will receive your order. You are our genius, the face of Morpheus. Of course, you are tired of toil with childhood fantasies.

Without you, I’m a paper windbag, an ordinary graphomaniac.

The workshop only makes the dream come true. The dream itself is your handiwork.

Dream. An image flashed through my head with the words. Dream! Light. Shine. Illusions. And I want horror. That’s what I want!

This thought flashed like a shooting star and went out, leaving behind a strange aftertaste—tart sin and sweet curiosity.

Go catch your Pegasus, Jerry. Do not worry about me.

Her don’t worry about me was a call to start worrying about her. But it wasn’t customary for us to put one’s dirty fingers into the soul. In our world, there was no crime, disease, boredom, or poverty. Sadness was nothing more than a whim of an Order citizen. Who was I to deprive a friend of such whims? So, I left Liz alone with this don’t worry attitude and followed her advice to start catching Pegasus. It was far better than wallowing in someone else’s mud.

3

I stayed in the office until the evening. I took two new orders and talked with my colleagues. In Morpheus, as an English monarch, I was a representative figure. I should be known by sight and respected. I usually showed up at the office to maintain my authority and preferred to work on scripts at home.

On the way home, I stopped by a cafe. Deprived of the sense of smell, I tasted poorly. On my tongue, I tasted sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. But it took a sense of smell to recognise complex flavour combinations. I ordered mussel salad and berry sorbet. The order was brought to me by a robot, a pretty teenage girl in a tennis skirt.

Anthropomorphic robots were indistinguishable from humans. Having an artificial womb, they could carry children, and thanks to donor sperm, they could become fathers. In the overskyers, everyone had robots, they were an indicator of wealth and well-being. Louise was given to me by Gusston, which made me think she was watching me. So be it. I had nothing to hide.

After dinner, I came back home. I went to bed early. Forecasters launched a thunderstorm. I slept well to the sound of thunder.

I saw a dream about Max. Thin, with traces of grease on his pants, in a sweaty shirt that hugged his bony chest. He smelled of booze and cigarettes. I was nervous and smiling. The more nervous I was, the wider I smiled. I was always tormented by guilt, guilt for my success, guilt for Max’s failure.

I’m sorry, Max, I’m sorry.

It’s too late, Jerry.

I said sorry to him not once in real life. I hated myself for this need and did it anyway. Who was to blame that the capricious gods liked me, but not him?

Max removed the safety catch, put the pistol to his temple—and I woke up. I woke up in a cold sweat, and in my soul, rage boiled. I hadn’t seen Max in years, but I was mad at him. In a dream, I kept apologising, but in reality, I hated him.

We escaped Decadence together. Things went uphill for me, but the new homeland did not accept Max. Having moved to Radiant, I began to help him financially, but instead of gratitude, I received only contempt. Max was an artist, and I suggested that he study to become a programme technologist. He refused. Only cowards compromise on a dream, Max said. And he continued to live on the dole and hate the world. The final break in relations occurred when Max was dumped by his girl. She left him for the guy from the Morpheus programme. First, she went on virtual dates with that guy and then ordered an anthropomorphic robot, which was an exact copy of him.

And I kept apologising, not knowing what for—progress, women, programmes?

The end of the world was predicted many times, and nothing happened… It’s a pity, Max sighed. In his life, the end of the world had already come. But he was bored of wandering around the ruins all alone. He wanted to take me with him. And when I chose a different path, he could not forgive me.

The idea to escape from Decadence belonged to Max. It didn’t take long to persuade me; by that time, I was disappointed in my homeland. At sixteen, you could easily get frustrated with everything.

Max arranged an escape thanks to an acquaintance with a border guard. I didn’t know how Max got to know him, the border guards were now grand and rich people, and Max did not mix with such people. While running away, I expected to feel like Andy Dufresne, but everything went very calmly. They gathered us at the border point a hundred metres from the Wall. There were twenty of us in total: bandits, prostitutes, three office workers, one small entrepreneur, a history professor, a dance teacher, and Max and me. It was scary and cold. The thunderstorm was beginning.

After a while, I learned that escapes were arranged in a thunderstorm because it could explain the temporary shutdown of sensors that were triggered by movement and activate guns that shoot all living things at a certain distance from the Wall. The border guards, gloomy guys with grey faces, smoked strong cigarettes. They did not talk to each other or to us, either. There was also a representative of the Order side. He was in a suit and tie, neat and smelling good. He was polite, and he treated us to chocolate. He also smoked, but his cigarettes smelled of cinnamon and coconut.

Later, I found out that it was Dark Spirit, an Order version of cigarettes—a miniature filter into which smoking sticks with different tastes were inserted. Such a cigarette could even replace lunch. An Order border guard talked about the oversky cities and about the sprinklings. We listened to him like children would listen to a kind storyteller.

Too many of you, he said. I won’t take more than ten people. It’s prohibited by the regulations. We will throw a coin.

For many years, I was worried about the question: how was this so? Was it really impossible to select in advance only those who were going to be led through the Wall? I found the answer suddenly. It explained not only the ritual of tossing a coin, but also the existence of a divided world. The answer was cruel in its absurdity.

So, we decided: if it came up tails, you’d stay, and if heads, you’d go beyond the Wall. And so on until there were ten of us left. My palms were sweating, and it was getting worse and worse. But I was not alone.

I want to go home, said the teacher. May I go home?

The courteous gentleman from Order shrugged his shoulders.

It’s your choice, young lady, he replied. Anyone else?

There were no more people willing to refuse to try their luck.

Who will be the first?

Me, Max stepped forward. I want to.

The courteous gentleman tossed a coin, catching it on the fly.

Heads, he smiled. Congratulations, young man.

I felt ill. I was afraid that nothing would work out and that they would shoot us and then hang us naked in the square for the admonition of others. As a teenager, I was frightened by the thought of this precisely because of the shameful nakedness of the dead body. The bodies will be pecked by crows (starting with the very one, as our priest used to say). The father, an island of Order in a Decadent world, would shrug his shoulders and say, It is his own fault.

It was my turn. I was the last one. I shifted my feet, wiping my sweaty palms on my trousers. The courteous gentleman smiled. Despite the smile, his face was very indifferent. And in general, he looked like an orderly, the orderly from the madhouse.

I hiccupped. The courteous gentleman called me to him with a gesture.

What’s your name?

I… my… Harry… Bauer. And I…

I stumbled. The courteous gentleman never stopped smiling.

Harry Bauer, he repeated. "For a new life, you will need a different name, don’t you think