The paper had been hastily de-inked and reprinted. Here and there, Vanja could make out the faint remains of words that had previously filled the page: “beloved,” “waiting,” “mine.” A love poem. Vanja walked around the counter to inspect the other note. Part of a verse from a nursery rhyme was vaguely visible between the new letters. These were pages from the confiscated library books. This was apparently one of the things the committee needed all the good paper for: description.
Brisk steps approached from the stairs that led to the offices. A courier in gray overalls and tightly braided hair shot around the corner and snapped to attention in front of Vanja.
“Good morning!” she blurted. “I am here to announce that the committee has instituted an additional leisure night! Every Thirday night at eighteen o’clock all citizens will attend their respective leisure center to partake in delightful games, quizzes, and group conversations! Hooray for Amatka’s commune!”
“Hooray!” Vanja replied.
The courier turned on her heel and marched into the colony streets. In her wake, a swarm of vigorous boys and girls in identical overalls trooped down the hallway toward the exit.
Vanja fingered the note on the wall. Those kids probably had no idea why there were suddenly two leisure nights a week. But the committee must have known for some time.
Nina was sitting up in bed when Vanja went to check on her. The porridge bowl was still full, but the coffee cup was empty. When she spoke, she sounded lucid but monotonous, her eyes fixed on something in the far distance. Someone from the clinic had been there to check why Nina hadn’t shown up for work. She had been given a week’s leave for personal reasons.
“I have to go see Ivar,” she said.“They only keep bodies for forty-eight hours before recycling.” Her eyes focused on Vanja for the first time. “Could you come with me? Right now?”
“Of course.” Vanja picked up the sweater and trousers Nina had dropped on the floor sometime during the night or day. “Shirt, trousers. You need to eat something first.”
Nina got dressed, followed Vanja into the kitchen, and mechanically ate the reheated porridge Vanja put in front of her. When she’d managed half of it, she got to her feet. “Let’s go.” She put her jacket on without buttoning it and walked outside with long strides.
Ivar lay on a gurney. They’d wrapped him in a white shroud, leaving only his head uncovered. Nina sat down on a stool next to the gurney and just looked at him. Vanja stayed in the doorway. Britta had once told her there was nothing scary about dead people; they just looked like they were sleeping. When Vanja had pulled Ivar out of the water, she could still tell it was Ivar, but he hadn’t looked like he was sleeping. He had looked like he was dead. Ivar without Ivar inside. The thing on the gurney wasn’t even Ivar, just an object that resembled him a little.
Nina let out a shaky sigh and caressed the corpse’s cheek. “What am I going to tell the girls, Ivar? What am I supposed to say?”
When the names of the recently deceased were recited next Sevenday, Ivar’s name wouldn’t be among them. No one would observe a minute’s silence for him. Taking a life, one’s own or someone else’s, was the most disloyal action of all; every lost life put the colony’s survival in peril. Murderers were no longer citizens. Ivar would be sent to recycling, and then he’d be gone, erased.
“Tell them what happened,” Vanja said from the doorway. “They deserve to know.”
“Do you think they want to carry that around? That their father was a suicide?”
Vanja took a few steps closer. “No,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t Ivar, not really. You know whose fault it was.”
Nina rested her head on the edge of the gurney. “You win. I’ll tell you everything.”
It was Distillate x 2 this time, a little stronger. They sat in Ivar’s room with the door closed, curled up on his bed. Nina still hadn’t let Vanja touch her. She downed a whole cup before speaking.
“I’m telling you all this so you’ll understand,” Nina said. “We will never speak of this again.”
Vanja nodded.
“And after I’m done,” Nina continued, “there will be no questions, no discussions, nothing. Understood?”
“Understood.”
Nina poured herself more liquor. “I was nineteen. I’d just received my nursing diploma. A hundred people disappeared overnight. Poof, gone. Someone had left a manifesto at the commune office, signed by Berols’ Anna. I remember she’d just finished her Plant House series. She won an award for it. So, somehow she managed to organize all these people without anyone knowing. I had no idea what was going on. No one I knew had any idea. But everyone knew someone who had disappeared.”
“What did the manifesto say?”
“Don’t know the details. It was never made public. Those of us who went on the expedition were told a little, just enough to make sure we’d be prepared. It said something along the lines of they were going to found a new colony, and that it would be more real somehow. That they’d do it right. But people in Amatka didn’t know about the manifesto. At first, all we knew was that people had disappeared, but not why. People panicked. There were all sorts of rumors, like about a suicide pact or some kind of abduction. Then, after a few days, I was called up to join the expedition. That’s when I found out. The committee had decided we couldn’t afford to lose that many citizens, so even if they were disloyal, they had to be brought back home.”
Nina stared into space for a moment. “It took us a while to find them.” She took a swig from her cup. “We bumped about in a terrain vehicle for days. And, you know, no one had ever been that far from Amatka. We were so scared something would happen to us. We drove around the lake. There was nothing out there, just water on one side and tundra on the other, but it was still terrifying. Because it didn’t end, you know. It just went on and on.” Nina gesticulated with her free hand. “Completely featureless as far as the eye could see.” She topped up her cup again and drank half of it down, shuddered, then patted her chest. “And then we saw it. It was like a hole in the sky. It grew bigger as we drew near. And when we arrived… I thought it was, I don’t know what it was. We’d come to a halt, but we just sat in there, staring like little kids. Then someone said: There are houses there. And there were, right under the hole. It looked sort of like a colony—a ring of little houses and a commune office. We put our protective suits on, the supersafe kind with visors and everything, and we stepped out of the vehicle. It was like, like a bubble. No, not a bubble. But the sky was different there, right above the houses. There were lights in the sky. I have to go to the toilet.”
Nina abruptly got up and went downstairs. When she came back, her face was flushed and her breath sour. She waved Vanja’s concern away and refilled her cup. “Okay, so we’d left the vehicle, and the expedition leader went first. She walked right up to the edge of the town. The rest of us were standing there, looking in.”
“You said it looked sort of like a colony?”
Nina shook her head. “They’d painted murals on the walls. No words, no markings. But paintings of things that don’t exist. Everywhere.”
“But the people?”
Nina was quiet for a moment. “The things we saw in there weren’t people. She, Berols’ Anna, she came up to us. That’s what it called itself, anyway. It, she, walked up to that wall. She didn’t come over to our side, but we could hear her fine.”