“Boring,” Anton judged, then he winked at me. “Hey Andrei, did you hear your President’s speech last night?” he said loudly. “He’s a popular one. Didn’t he win the last election with a hundred and two percent of the votes?”
People can be like computers: press X and you get Y. Anton knows Luka gets irate whenever politics is brought up. Last month, we’d watched online as the President stood before the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The country must progress, he’d declared, then vowed to upgrade Russia’s infrastructure and military. Luka had turned livid as he accused the President of being a traitor.
Anton smirked, awaiting a reaction to his barb, but Luka ignored him this time. He was focused on the project. “Get to work now, both of you. What are you waiting for?”
After an hour, Luka came over. I smelled cigarettes on his breath as he leaned over my shoulder, its acrid smell more familiar than repulsive. “Any luck?”
“The first layer of security is based off Aegis, so we can get around it easily. The second layer though, it’s trouble and—”
“That’s all you can tell me after all that time?” Luka boomed. Why’s he so edgy?
“You think it’s easy?” Anton piped up, flipping his gamer goggles up. “The third layer is set up to shutdown once it detects any intrusion. Even if you disable that, the fourth is rigged to wipe everything on the server. It’s like hiring a suicide bomber for guard duty.” He paused. “I managed to tease out a folder title reference though. What’s this Project Silence shit? I don’t like the sound of it.” Anton’s eyes narrowed. “This work we’re doing, it better not be military-related, geezer. I’m not paid enough to mess around with something so dangerous.”
An unbidden thought struck me. I imagined jackboots kicking the warehouse door. Red gun sights flickered on our foreheads. I shook my head. Life isn’t some Hollywood show with blazing gunfire and girls with guns tucked in their stockings. There’s never been trouble, not even a peep.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Luka snapped. “We’ve barely begun and you two have given up. Get the administrator’s password and it’ll be easy.”
“Sure,” Anton said. “I’ll snap my fingers and Behemoth, the devil cat, will appear and grant all our wishes. Anyone else want anything? I’m taking orders. Pelmeni? Pizza, maybe?”
Luka rubbed his temples with the heels of his hands. A call on his phone saved us from another argument. He stalked away.
“Work harder, work harder!” Anton mimed a whip, then flipped his laptop shut. “Screw that.” Turing Mk IV, a sticker was pasted over his laptop cover. He’s the only one I know who names his computer. Once, I’d asked Luka about the person Anton named his computer after. “It probably refers to Alan Turing. He’s nothing,” Luka was dismissive, “just some dead British computer scientist. He helped his country win World War 2 by breaking the Enigma code, then was betrayed by his own government decades later. What’s new? If Anton wants one of these tragic sorts, well, we have plenty of Russian role models for him. But no, of course that man had to pick some homosexual foreigner. No surprise there.” Unfortunately, Anton came back and overheard us. I don’t think Luka really thinks Anton is gay, but it’s another reason why they don’t get along.
“I hate this.” Anton stood up and stretched. “Who does Luka think he is?”
“He knows what he’s doing. Did I ever tell you I saw his gun?” Luka had fallen asleep in the warehouse and his jacket had slipped to reveal a walnut handle. Anton shot me a look of distilled doubt. “It’s true. I almost touched it.” Right before I could do so, Luka’s eyes had flicked opened and he grabbed my arm.
“Almost touched it? Give me a break.” Anton rolled into a handstand. The orange goggles dangled around his neck. “Even if he has a gun, what does it matter? You’re too easily impressed. Try this, Andrei. You’ll see the world from a different perspective.”
“What do you see?”
“I see we’re no better than serfs. I see we’re being exploited in a gulag.”
“It’s safer …” I began and Anton rolled his eyes. Luka had explained it all to me, how he’d bought a map from a contact in the municipal office. That’s how he picked this warehouse. Beneath Moscow, the new cables traced the pathways of the old sewer pipes. Luka had went down the sewer access in the warehouse and hacked the communications terminal. When he told me that, I’d imagined him inside the tunnels: a flashlight in his mouth, a sack of tools, and wires lassoed around a shoulder. Now, not even the service providers can trace us when we log in. This ‘gulag’ is safer than anywhere else. Anton’s biased. “I’m not going to argue with you, Anton.”
“Oh? Who do you want to argue with?” He walked over and began scratching the flaking paint on my pillar. “Why were you late this morning?”
I thought of Anna and blushed. “The bus.”
“That’s why you’re still a boy. That’s why you are Andrei 1.0. Grown ups, real men, take responsibility for all their actions, good or bad,” he said. Flecks of pastel blue paint drifted down as he scratched.
Andrei 1.0—it’s a running joke between us. I hate it, but it’s the one joke that both Anton and Luka will laugh over. “That has nothing to do with it. The bus was late,” I protested.
“The bus, the bus—why don’t you ever take the Metro? It’s faster. And prettier.”
Ever since Luka made me read the Underground Man, my chest hurts whenever I think of the escalators leading to the trains, sinking, sinking. The bowels of each station are full of statues and everyone looks lifelike, as if molten bronze had been poured over real people. Each time I’m on those escalators, I can’t stop counting, converting speed and time into depth, trying not to think of people buried underground or drowned.
“Say what you will about Stalin, he had some right ideas. The Metro, the Seven Sisters, the pogroms. Would have been a better if he killed more. Just kill all the Russians and be done with, right?” His laugh had a brutal edge and unnerved me.
“Aren’t you part-Russian too?”
“You know nothing.” He pulled out a switchblade to work the paint. “Have you ever been to a foreign country?”
Some day, I want to travel—but his question didn’t sound like a question.
He pulled the strap of his gaming goggles, and they made a loud, angry snap against his skin. “I live in one. Every day. People here look down on my kind. On the streets, the cops stop and shake me down. In bars, people mock me. They think we’re inferior because of our skin, we’re half the man they are. They call us bums, then they say we’re terrorists, or homosexuals, or rapists. We’re everything they hate. So be it.”
I’d heard rumors about the hate groups before, but… “Surely not everyone is like that. How do you know they’re talking about you?” I wonder what he sees when he wears his goggles. More enemies probably.
“You’re right, Andrei. They must be discussing their grandma’s jam recipe. My mistake.” He made a contemptuous sound. “That’s why I dyed my hair. If they want to stare, I’ll give them a reason.” My skin prickled as his blade scored a teasing, jagged line. “A while back, two of my people, us half-breeds, were attacked after a Spartak Moscow match. The skinheads thought it’d be fun to make his older one watch as they did a free kick with his brother’s head. No newspaper or website ever reported that incident. Nobody dared. This is the kind of city we live in, Andrei, make no mistake. There is no kindness or fairness or mercy here.”