‘All facial redness will be rectified in post-production.’

‘It’s not that.’

‘This is not a BAFTA nomination. Just relax. Remember, you’re not a Nobel nominee. This isn’t about you. People want to hear a story — an authentic, unpolished, raw, and most importantly, true story. You’re free to speculate, lose your train of thought, and discuss free associations. We’re looking for a person — we concentrate on memories and how the human mind operates, not on encyclopaedic accuracy. We know you’ve only been to the mountains a few times in your life, and we don’t necessarily expect geographic precision in terminology… Just speak, that’s all.’

‘Just speak,’ I remind myself, picturing the camera or the forehead of a friend. I start, confident that I won’t be interrupted.

‘That story lingered in my mind. It was one of many from that long evening, yet I could envision it as though I had witnessed it myself. The storyteller was my slightly older brother, who was also the eyewitness. He trekked through the mountains. Some 200 metres ahead of him, a young man clad in a white T-shirt walked in front of his female companion. Then… he appeared to be running — no, speeding, as if overtaken by something. He glanced back at his wife. He was unstoppable. The woman attempted to quicken her pace, but it was evident to anyone that the distance between them was increasing, becoming insurmountable.

Seconds later, it became evident he was caught in an avalanche, or at least that’s what one might call a sudden surge of snow propelling a person forward at incredible speed, still on his feet, until he reached the edge of a drop and plummeted onto the rocks far below. The woman somehow managed to follow him at a steady pace and eventually reached him after a while.

Minutes later, a rescue helicopter hovered above the site. A rescuer descended on a rope, secured her safely, and deposited her approximately 200 metres away. She then made her way down the mountain. Meanwhile, the man’s white T-shirt had turned scarlet red. One could imagine that upon reaching the mountain shelter, she would have learned the devastating news.’

I recognise that it was merely a warm-up, and I will now truly begin my story:

‘I remember how the snow sparkled under the moonlight in the high mountains. It was a magical experience — one I cherish in my memory. I can vividly picture how the snow glimmered beneath the moonlight among the peaks. It was truly enchanting, something I hold dear, with no desire to relive what produced a profound respect for the mountains.

We were well-equipped. I travelled with a group of young people, even though they were considerably older than I. Indeed, I was the youngest of them all. The boys were experienced and well-prepared, and I must say, they proved to be true gentlemen.

Our trek was intended to last four hours. It was cold yet sunny when we set off, and we were in high spirits, feeling relaxed. We walked for nearly three hours when snow began to fall. The temperature dropped from -5°C to -10°C, though it felt more like -15°C well before it actually reached that point. We estimated we had about an hour left. We zipped up our coats, donned an extra pair of gloves, and pressed on. We climbed one hill, then another — now the terrain should be flat.

But the trail started to vanish. The snow grew deeper. On the path, it reached our knees; if you stepped off, you would sink up to your waist. More often than not, someone would get stuck, and we had to assist them. The boys found it challenging to navigate in the poor visibility.

We had been walking for seven hours by then. The lads started carrying the rucksack of an Englishwoman who was with us, but to be honest, she wasn’t the only one struggling at that point. Eventually, they decided we would leave most of our rucksacks behind — reaching the nearest mountain guesthouse was our priority.

The initial cries and prayers grew increasingly frequent. We pressed on. The boys occasionally gathered around us, rubbing each other’s backs for warmth and reassurance. I recall becoming mired deep in the snow. Exhausted, I managed to free myself and said, “I’ll just take a short break… I’ll catch up.”

The moment I closed my eyes, I encountered something akin to a mirage. My friend shouted at me, “Yeah, right, and you’ll freeze to death! Move along!”

At that point, it was no longer about exhaustion. The snow was too deep for a snowmobile to reach us. We had to keep moving until we arrived at a location where our English friend could be transported further.

We began to see lights in the distance. Although it was still a long walk, at least we had a destination. We continued moving forward. Suddenly, the eldest among us collapsed face-first into the snow. We lifted her. She had been the strongest of us all, and now she had fallen.

An hour before we reached safety, my glove got stuck in the snow. When I pulled my right hand out, my fingers were stiff, and I couldn’t straighten them enough to fit back into the glove. I shoved my hand into my pocket and carried on. In the end, our friend was taken to the place we had all been striving to reach. That final hour was uncomfortably silent. Everyone was focused, moving like compliant soldiers.

When we arrived, the mountain rescue team examined our hands and feet. They referred to it as moderate frostbite when certain areas of the body changed colour but did not turn black (as black indicated dead tissue). Some individuals had frostbite on a thumb, while others had it on an ear. For me, it affected both my heels and my right hand. Not particularly enjoyable — I couldn’t hold a pen! I couldn’t even write my name for a month until sensation returned.

We had to remain in the mountain shelter for a while. The following morning, the avalanche danger level was reported to be extremely high.

You never forget a morning like that — when you can’t feel your toes, heels, or even your hands. You step outside and behold an absolute masterpiece of nature — the serene, tranquil, and majestic mountains. At night, the snow glistens silver, the moon shines brightly, and you feel overwhelmed with awe, vibrantly alive, and grateful.’

‘If you ever have nightmares, what do you dream about?’ His question jolted me out of the vivid scene I was revisiting at that moment.

I never recalled my dreams, or so I believed until now. In truth, I gazed at my right hand, overwhelmed by a fear I attempted to conceal once I recognised it. My French manicure was done in the purest shade imaginable, and he looked directly at it when he asked, ‘Have you ever painted your nails black?’

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The ceiling was painted after the last visit (whoever was visiting and whoever was truly living here), a brighter shade of white; the fluorescent tubes were replaced with pendant lamps; the stairs gained an anti-slip carpeted finish.

There is a pleasant aroma of bergamot from an air diffuser in the hall. It is raining outside.

We move to the salon, the sala de estar.

No, the stars are not out yet; it is still early. Sala, room—spacious enough for living.

“Can you just sit?” I wonder, extending my hand in your direction, encouraging you to take a seat.

“Just sit and be?” you ask.

“Just be. I will serve tea. This is where all the stirring will go.”

Nothing apart from the rain outside makes a sound, nothing apart from your heartbeat to tell you that you’re alive.

Can you feel that you’re alive simply by sitting quietly?

You are unsure.

It has been a long time since you meditated, rather than merely talked about getting an app for that. I really don’t want to talk about myself, uttering: I can sit so long that I feel the world exhale with me, and I am both less and infinitely more than I imagined.

I don’t speak because I am alive; I am alive not because I speak.

“So you said some time ago—ages, one might say—that you collect stamps.”

Oh! My mind is on, truly on. Worldwide collection, expedition, postage, stamps—or love (as in philately). Collectionner les timbres. Coleccionar sellos. Collezionare francobolli. Samla frimärken.

How do I tell you that it is not about the stamps at all?

Will you ask me what, then, it is about?

Will I tell you that it is about the album? Or will I tell you not?

You are thinking of your first notebook (no, not a computer), a paper cahier de brouillon (not bouillon—I might serve the soup later, though), where you copied all the interesting quotes. We do not talk about books. I was never in any kind of adult book club. I am not sure how I would bear the whole concept, not even thinking of its implications. I bring my old notebook and pass it to you. You open it on the first page. You read (in French):

“Sublimity, then, is perception. Without sensitivity, intelligence becomes machinery”, you begin.

I put the music on. Your choice, of course, is mine at once. To receive without giving makes one heavy; to give without receiving makes one hollow.

I give you a nodding look. And then intuition — that mysterious, “obscure” light? I tend to ask. Not everything luminous is clear. But that remains unspoken.

“Tenderness…”

“We are not entering there. A single act of tenderness can outweigh a decade of achievement.”

Give without restraint, lose without regret, and acquire without pettiness. You must have that inner wealth to give freely; that’s why you are sitting here. You have the security to acquire without shrinking into smallness.

“We settle not because we cannot imagine beauty, but because we once imagined it too vividly. Disappointment makes us practical. Fear makes us moderate.”

“Mhm,” I confirm.

And then you throw out of nowhere, ‘You think you control your own decisions’.

And I really don’t know what to answer.

Don’t you? This is the moment when one juggles in his head how much of “we” there is…

…

Yes, my brain gets compromised at this moment, running a script, as if Lem were talking to me.

If you asked me, I would have told you that Solaris was the first science fiction book I read in my life and that it had a tremendous impact on me and that, of course, I wouldn’t think that I would actualy be a science-fiction reader, even once, and my initial instinct would be to read it so I’d gain some kind of a common ground with the boys at the time. But then I wouldn’t be talking about that excellent book, but about what came to my mind right now.

Humanity…

I catch myself on that! I wouldn’t tell you that because that’s a massive subject to talk to you about, so I just quickly ran a script. It is like Lem must speak to me, but before he does, I try to dismiss the thought because I am not searching for a definition. But the thought is insistent, and I finally hear in my head: Humanity is the sum of our defects, our shortcomings, our imperfections. It is what we want to be but cannot be, are unable to be, do not know how to be. It is simply the gap between ideals and their realisation.

Mhm.

Of course, I do not realise that you came to talk to me about what the Nobel Prize winner John Nash, who spent 44 years proving something about our choices, discovered.

“Our choices are governed by a hidden system — game theory. Once you understand it, you begin to see it everywhere, and you start looking at every past decision differently.”

At this moment, I am curious, not because I perfectly know who Nash was, but because I am interested in how you want to put it, the whole story of how a 22 years old wrote a 28-page doctoral thesis that changed science and should effectively change me, change us, if “us” existed in the first place, of course. Will you disclose that he was struggling with schizophrenia and lived in isolation for years, or will you straightforwardly focus on the foundation for predicting human behaviour, a phenomenon called the Nash Equilibrium?

“To the point”, I encourage you to speak.

“It is the point at which no one can improve their situation by changing strategy — as long as everyone else continues acting the same way.”

I wait to hear how today this idea quietly influences what I buy, what I watch, who I meet, and how I make decisions. You would say we, of course, if we, in a sense less broad than humanity, existed. And I know you will give a real-life example. So you do, and it is an appropriate one:

“You approach traffic lights.

Red — you stop.

Green — you go.

Why?”

You wait a second for reply so I reply, engaged: “Because I assume other drivers follow the rules too.”

“If one person starts acting differently —do they win?”

“No.”

“Chaos follows—And that is the Nash Equilibrium—It is everywhere around us. Why do Coca-Cola and Pepsi cost roughly the same?”

“Again — Nash Equilibrium?” I guess correctly.

“If Coca-Cola lowers its price, Pepsi must do the same. If Pepsi raises its price, it loses customers.

The result?

Both companies remain at the same level and cannot change prices without losing money.

And this is where it becomes uncomfortable.”

“Companies realised that Nash’s theory could be used to trap people in bad decisions,” I conclude.

“And now.” I try to follow your hand that will illustrate what you are about to say.“The sunk cost fallacy.”

“Once you understand how it works, you start to feel uneasy.”

A lot of feeling uneasy, but what could I say to that? I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes? (Going after Auden and expressing as poetically as I could what I felt today at 2:54 pm upon question 21 in higher tier maths paper, by the way). “So what is the sunk cost fallacy?” I ask.

“We continue something simply because we have already invested time, money, or energy into it.” Sounds what Little Prince said about the rose, I think. and you continue: ‘“Even if stopping would be more rational. Nash proved this mathematically. Companies turned it into a money-making machine.”

I really do not want another mathematical theory today so you throw an example, a real one, of Spotify.

“Spotify perfected this mechanism. The free version is intentionally inconvenient: limited skips, ads every few songs. Premium — so much and so per month — removes the artificially created discomfort. The result? 246 million users. 90% of revenue comes from Premium.”

So what you are saying is that Spotify doesn’t really sell music; it sells relief from the discomfort it creates itself?

“Demand through discomfort.”

“Companies deliberately make free versions slightly frustrating. If they were too good — you wouldn’t buy the paid version.”

“The free option irritates you just enough to make you want to pay.” Here, of course, I don’t tell you that some people try to get on a family membership (up to 6?), even if they do not live at the same address. Instead I say: “Brilliant? Yes. Ethical? Debatable. And yet… Nash himself fell into the “sunk cost” trap.”

“You are perfectly right. During his PhD, he realised it wasn’t his path — but he continued because it seemed a waste of the 4–5 years he had already invested.”

“Even the man who discovered the mechanism became its victim.”

No to finish on a dead end, you continue with the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

“Two players. Two options: cooperate or betray.”

I already like the example, although you need no encouragement to continue:

– If both cooperate — each gets £10.

– If both betray — each gets £0.

– If one betrays — they get £15 and the other loses £5.

Logic suggests: betray. But in the long run… both lose.”

“Cooperation wins”, I say without sounding triumphant.

“The best strategy”.

“This being said, be kind, be strong — respond to betrayal. Be forgiving — return to cooperation, don’t fight over resources, is it the moment I serve the broth, my famous chicken soup?”

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“Of course I would. We all progress to return to a basic human connection. OK, I know you don’t appreciate that word”.

“What word?”

“Connection.”

“And why is that? You tell me…”

“Because you wouldn’t be here, if not me, if not the connections…”

I look around.
”But yes, you prefer a word relationship.”

“Progress we all want…?”

“Invent the antibiotics to move away from them, to go to homoeopathy, skyscrapers to build again from earth, clay, to appreciate that no Zoom can replace a coffee and cake”, you say.

“And on top of that, I dare to keep stuffing myself with biscuits from your delicatessen, because who bakes cakes these days…”

“But please—by all means. I will bake them when I get old. When I get old, I will bake bread too…”, you reflect, looking at me, eating the most tempting biscuits of all (Well, who is?).

“That’s sad”.

“We are sad.”

“You said that. I keep myself to the side.”

“Yes, we devote ourselves to work, because it’s better than being badly accompanied, that’s what we say. All those songs are about it.”

“Until we are old enough not to work and invite a friend for a cake and coffee…because it wasn’t a bad company after all, but the one we couldn’t accommodate in our busy lives.”

“I will work till my last breath, me! I will still invite you on the weekend. Not to worry.”

“So if you did, what would you tell me, you know that old guy who discovered better things in life, the old stuff…?”

“That shyness was in the foreground, that I was shy of my shyness, But there was also some inner matter at work.”
”And I’d say: You don’t seem shy anymore? And the work will always be there, because we are never done. Until we are?”

“Of course, not.

Everything is complicated—because I am shy, and yet at times shameless, something I know perfectly well—and perhaps this contradiction is visible in my behaviour too, since you have examined my life quite thoroughly, as a kindly inspector. I took little part in things beyond writing. Certain things embarrassed me: imposing myself, taking the floor, playing the wise man, being an instigator. All of it somehow struck me as being in poor taste. And I cannot subject what I did—this writing—to a deep, searching analysis, because I am ashamed.”

“So you are ashamed. And I, what am I then?”

“You admire those who envy. I don’t say the envious, because that word carries a faintly diminutive aftertaste, and I speak with respect. Envy is also a kind of energy, a powerful force that pushes a person forward. One searches, after all, to compensate for inner pains and unease. You are terribly full—filled, namely, with no envy, I, with an abundance of shyness. What I’m saying is painful for me, but I try to be honest with you. I’ve been ashamed all my life—ashamed of everything, really, starting with the fact that I exist, that I live—and at the time when I will talk to you, I must also be ashamed of my age—down to the smallest details of everyday life.”

“So then I would ask you for an example, to comprehend, perhaps…”

“For instance, when I was twenty, to ask someone for something trivial, it became a tremendous experience for me: torment, the gathering of energy and strength. I didn’t know how to disturb my surroundings with my presence, to demand anything, to expect anything. If I had to get something done, I felt gravely ill at the thought that I was creating a problem for someone, that someone must have taken care of it, taken care of me. This may be somewhat of a national trait: self-sufficiency. Manage on your own. I won’t analyse this further, because I am still shy, and it could easily turn into self-praise. You know how those processes work… And returning to envy—you must say honestly that you did experience it, but in terribly brief flashes: three-second moments of envy? And your inability to muster a healthy, creative hatred meant that at best—only with effort—you could achieve a harmless dislike, a modest, misty sort of aversion. Why are you looking at me like that? Am I saying something wrong? Then correct me.”

“Please, tell me more about those modest, three-second envies—you mentioned, attributing them to me, they’re intriguing. Whom, for instance, did I envy?”

“Whom do you not envy? I’ll tell you. For example—and let me strike a lofty note—you do not envy God, because He has so many of these self-created problems, namely—humans, here on this tiny planet, those treacherous humans, always knowing better what’s better for them. That one truly no one can envy Him. And whom did you envy? I would like to say something to enliven the conversation. Well, you know, certain cravings, life-desires pursued at all costs—they may be a kind of reflection of envy. You desperately wanted to join the leading newspapers, and you had a great desire—almost an urge—to use a drone, you know, the taxi-drone. But it passed quickly. You drove your SUV and, with time, gave up on drones. Drones would need to be heated in your climate, so you stuck to your fancy car, you could heat up from your apartment block before coming down.”

“Aha. And what would I say then to that?”

“Of course, you may say that, after many years and from a distance, you were minimising your actions, your presence there. That is possible. You are no longer young. Everything has faded somewhat—the world, this existence around you, as if it has lost much of its charm. But yes, if someone had observed you throughout your life, if anyone cared to do so, they would grant you a little right.”

“You speak now rather abstractly about wanting things, whereas you spoke of envy, which is more directed… Everything may—but does not have to—have its cause in how my life unfolded.”

“I would then say, after all these years, this syndrome of semi-orphanhood we both carried had an influence— a partial one—on the shaping of our personalities, our so-called ambitions, our life-desires, our behaviour. Above all, your behaviour. What’s interesting is that you were always pulled and pushed toward being beside. You, and I perhaps too, had a fear—a kind of inner fear—of collectivity, of what the collective imposes. Certain behavioural styles, mutual displays—this all made both of us uneasy.”

“Fine, you claim we were both always on the side, but who was at the parties?!”

I wait for your reply, but this doesn’t arrive.

“I’ll tell you then—though you may not believe me. You may take it for self-justification, and perhaps it is self-justification; perhaps my obliging memory embellishes or corrects the past. But between us—really, in confidence, because it will look like dodging life’s responsibilities—we were both drawn to the parties. I don’t know why, for what reason. I must have seemed attractive as a speaker, perhaps; your family danced well... Very strange.”

“How many parties did we go to?”

We both burst into laughter, looking at each other, then turning our backs and counting on our fingers, forcefully, staying there, wondering if any more could be added. When we realise that not, we turn back to each other and give each other a warm smile.

“Or perhaps I’m lying. Perhaps I no longer remember that…”

“That… what?”

“That it was work, after all.”

I laughed this time. “And I begged, sobbed, to be accepted at any cost? But you know me a little—well, that wouldn’t be my style…”

“Neither was lengthy dancing my nature, so I liked the cameras swirling round, it created motion, without moving much. My own way of finding justification for my situation, for my place in life…”

“So after so many years, you were still to justify…?”

“… Not being inclined toward collective actions, toward rivalry, toward the desire to show off. That’s what I say—but perhaps I’m making it up. Or perhaps I’m not. I say it and immediately cast doubt on it—that’s my habit. I don’t know whom I’m quoting—Darwin or Kant? About succumbing to the desire to stand out. If one is aware, if one remembers, that there are seven billion bipedal mammals, it is depressing. Those small towns I mentioned earlier—London, Paris, Vienna and Rome, they were closed little worlds where ambitions were easier to fulfil. Now this global awareness attacks us more and more—virtually without pause. Even when you walk down our street—it constantly reminds us that we live in a…”

“…global village? That famous saying isn’t wise. We don’t live in a global village. We live in a company. In the company of seven billion fellow beings. That is deeply depressing, and hence the necessity to stand out is so strong. It’s a natural desire to demonstrate something “indecent”—indecent in quotation marks—something against our established customs. And this is often effective, at least temporarily. Time will examine everything and discard what does not serve the collective legacy, and preserve what is durable—because among these excesses there are also things interesting and right. Doctor, you are terribly silent. There is a shadow of concealed cynicism in your gaze.”

(pause)

“One might say that the silence is ominous now. But what can you do to me at this point, really?”

“I can say this because it’s too late—nothing can be undone now—that you took me on.”

“Perhaps I also belonged to those people who live carelessly, hurriedly, waiting for the real life to arrive. I, for example, feel guilt toward my—”

“I can see that.”

“But it’s not good that you see it, because I should always be export-ready: attractive, interesting. Complex. Complicated.”

“You would like to be complicated. But you are a man!”

“And again that look. Ask me something—ask, for God’s sake!”

“Ask you what? Hypersensitivity is the greatest cause of exhaustion. You flinch at ordinary sounds. You feel overwhelmed in crowds. You need to recover from basic social interactions—yet you can’t fully rest either.”

“So now you play a doctor while mocking me with this title? I can self-diagnose—dysregulated nervous system. And there is your approach that goes deeeeeper than just avoid triggers.”

“Extraordinary. Necessary.”
”We shouldn’t be saying this now.”

“Why? Because femininity constantly dominates and, I don’t know, somehow pacifies the cruelty of our lives.”

“There was something extraordinary in that, my dear, a kind of higher necessity.”

“OK. OK.”

“So should we be saying all this now, here, instead of waiting for old age?”

“Definitely, we shouldn’t. We shouldn’t be sitting here; I shouldn’t be stuffing myself with biscuits with no chronometer.”

“And for what reason is that?”

“I might have the flu.”

“You must be joking!”

“I haven’t tested.”

“So why don’t you go to the real doctors but here, to spread all this talk?!”

“Isn’t it you who said that people come back to homoeopathy, after all?”

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“I don’t believe a word of your story,” you announced.

“Of course, it didn’t happen quite the way I told it, but I believe it really happened.” In that instance, I exactly knew what you thought and maybe what you would say, if given enough time: In your imagination. Regardless, I continued, “Worshipers are disarmed when faced by a woman, because they’re still in their mothers’ shadows. In every woman, they see a messenger from their mother and submit to her their mothers’ skirts spread over them like the sky.”

That last image pleased you so much that you repeated it several times in the direction of every man in the room as if to say, See what she came up with this time. “What you’re seeing overhead is not the sky but your mother’s enormous skirts! We’re all living under our mothers’ skirts!”

“What did you say?” your wife yelled out with incredible loudness, as if touched by a hot iron. Then she looked down at you and whispered almost in a loving way: “You were tottering. From the start, you had been drinking more than anyone else.”

“What did you say about his mother? What did you say?!” She fixed me with a daring stare.

“I wasn’t talking about his mother,” I said gently, but your spit was already on getting on your lips, enraged by her reaction, somehow protecting the right for it, and you leaned forward and let fly. But you were a little too drunk, and the gob landed on your wife’s large, old-fashioned collar. You took out a piece of a kitchen towel and wiped it off.

Spitting had made you feel deathly tired, temporarily, of course, so you fell back into your chair.

Your wife nodded at a younger girl to serve some more drinks. She served. Still a potent alcohol in her right hand. She unexpectedly said, “Listen, all of you, my friends. I’m quite an ordinary girl, I have nothing to offer apart from a drink, that doesn’t even belong to me, but I came here because I was sent by my love…”

Now you squeezed your wife’s hand very hard, in fear of what might come out.

”… so that you’ll know what real love is, so that you’ll…”

No! You wouldn’t even pay her to do it!

You cast a look of cold hatred at us all because if we weren’t here, she wouldn’t say what she just said. You went on: “You’re mistaken if you think this is just a funny story.”

The girl turned to your wife with a celestial look and said to her: “You shouldn’t hold it against me, because you’re good and I love you too, I love you both,’ and with her free hand, she took your wife by the hand.” She took her to another room, to a bathroom.

“If it were a scene from one of my funny stories, I’d have nothing against it,” I said. “But what you’ve just told us is something worse. It’s bad poetry.

“You’re just jealous!” Your wife shouted from the toilet or bathroom, wherever she was led.

“It’s never happened to you in your whole life, being alone in a room with two beautiful women who love you!” I said with all sincerity I could disclose.

“Do you know how beautiful my wife is in a red bathrobe, with her natural hair undone, on her own!?”

“No, I don’t. I’ve never seen her with nothing on…” I tried to return to where the thought originated, “her hair”.

My shadow laughed mockingly, and this time, yours decided to punish mine for this caustic comment: “You’re a great poet, we all know that, but why…?”

For a few moments, everyone was stunned, then your wife said to the girl, barely controlling herself: “Little Darling, you shouldn’t have said that. It’s the worst thing you could have said. It’s boorish.”

We all, lovers of harmony, pretended not to overhear it. Of course, we would not have gone on teasing anyone, hence we were unaware that the shadow of Voltaire was among us, provoking and now, laughingly, interrupting our dense silence:

“You both. It’s as plain as the noses on your faces that you’re both loaded with complexes,” and he started to analyse all our poetry, yours and mine, yours lacked both your happy natural charm (you corrected: character) and mine impassioned inspiration (but not motivation, I exclaimed, pouring myself generously a cup of coffee you brought from a distant hot land this summer). He even started to dissect each of our metaphors to show brilliantly that our inferiority complex was the direct source of our imagination and that it had taken root in a childhood marked by poverty and the oppressive influence of an authoritarian father.

Just then, you leaned over to me and said in a whisper that resounded throughout the room, to be heard by everyone, including your wife: “Come off it! What a bunch of nonsense. All of our trouble was that unnecessarily prolonged hyper-celibacy! And it’s long over now, so what now?”

Your wife returned from the private room alone, dressed in an elegant red dress. But still in slippers. I’ve never seen a woman raising her eyebrow so high, it nearly reached her hairline. Hers because of what she has heard, in this very room, and mine, as she was wearing red slippers perfectly matching her dress.

My husband kept quiet all the way, pouring himself red wine (the girl returned meanwhile from the restroom and discreetly removed empty bottles and brought full ones) and listening attentively to the conversation with its flying sparks. He couldn’t swivel his head fast enough to follow the giddy whirl and high eyebrows.

He looked at us all. “Well…”, he tried to decide which of the poets he liked most.

He quoted from Gabriel Okara, "they used to laugh with their hearts and laugh with their eyes; but now they only laugh with their teeth, while their ice-block-cold eyes search behind my shadow."

Did he see Voltaire, as we did, or not? I couldn’t figure it out.

He looked at his watch and noted it was time he returned home if he wanted to avoid ending up just like us.

Nonetheless, he could not tear himself away from the great companionship, and instead, he went to the toilet to catch a fresh breath, so to speak. Filled with grandiose thoughts as he stood in front of the white tiles, he decided to return to our orbit.

“You heard him. He’s not subtle. Did you hear me?” I asked him, checking for attention.

I said the word “subtle” as if it were in italics. Yes, there are words unlike all the others, those words whose particular meaning is known only to initiates. I didn’t know why I said the word “subtle” as if it were in italics, but I, who am among the initiates, know that we all once read Pascal’s pensée about subtle minds and geometrical minds, and ever since, somehow have divided the human race into two categories: those who are subtle, and all the others.

“You think you two are subtle, don’t you?” I said calmly enough not to appear aggressive.

Already buttoning his coat in the corridor, far too thin for the freezing temperature outside, he noticed that your wife, just as Countess Rostopchin had noted in her diary hundreds of years before, had very short legs. He felt grateful to be asked a serious question and wanted to give an equally serious answer.

“We’re not subtle at all.” My husband said.

Your wife stood still on her somehow even shorter legs now: “No, we are not subtle at all.” She repeated, looking into my husband’s eyes.

“But I’m proud! Do you understand? I’m proud!” The word “proud” was another that came, this time from his mouth, in italics, to indicate that only a fool could think his pride was like a girl’s in her beauty or a shoemaker’s in his shoes, for it was a singular kind of pride, a pride justified and noble.

“I’m proud to be among you”, and he returned to the living room, where Voltaire was delivering a panegyric to you. I then went into a frenzy. Planting myself at the edge of the table, which at once made me a head taller than the seated others, I said: “And now I’m going to show you what he is proud of! Now I’m going to tell you something, because I’m proud, too! There are only two poets in this room: Him (I pointed at you) and me.”

This time it was Voltaire who raised his voice: “I can say you’re poetically great, but you don’t have the right to say it.”

I was taken aback for a moment. Then I stammered, “Why don’t I have the right to say it? We are proud!”

My husband repeated several more times that he was proud to be among us.

Voltaire roared with even louder laughter, your wife went to wear high heels, and you roared at her for doing just that. She went anyway and returned in high heels, her toes slipping out in front, going in both directions.

You realised that the moment you were waiting for had arrived. You stood up like me now and looked around at us all: “You don’t understand her. A poet’s pride is not ordinary. Only the poet can know the value of what he writes. Others don’t understand it until much later, or they may never understand it. People are late. Success is late. So it’s the poet’s duty to stand proudly. If she weren’t, she would betray her own work.” By saying that, not only did you stand in my defence, but also in your own and of everyone else who was now standing tall. A moment before, we were all roaring, slipping around and drinking, but now, at a single stroke, we all agreed with the males in the room, because they were just as proud as us and were only ashamed to say so, not realising that when the word “proud” is properly enunciated, it stops being laughable and becomes witty and noble.

So we were grateful for being given such good advice, and one of us—probably the girl—even applauded.

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On the kidneys — renes.

On the ovaria.

On the hips — coxae.

On the heart — cor.

Move the hand higher.

On the pulmones.

On the throat — larynx.

On the lingua.

Lower the hand again.

On the great absorber —liver — hepar.

On the stomach without much discipline of refusal — ventriculus.

On the intestine you feed so well.

Pause.

On the columna vertebralis.

On the deep bawl of pelvis.

On the first border of cutis.

Finally—

On the most expensive cerebrum.

Only then listen. Listen carefully.

It will come without a number. The voice would sound like it had already passed through you once before.

That is how it learns you: by sounding familiar, as if going somewhere holy. The call doesn’t care about your name. It assumes you have already traded your access.

That is the first reason not to answer:
Anything that knows you without naming you has already begun to own you.

You follow the sound to a place that was once a church, then a betting shop, now a place lit from within. Inside, people wait without queuing.

On the wall, a poster: Corpus est negotiabile.

What are they so eagerly queueing for?

They say arrivals are never accidents. That even the child born in a borrowed room has been expected. Somewhere, a ledger opens its mouth. Here, there is always room. That is the second reason not to answer:
When there is always room, it is because no one ever truly leaves entirely.

There are mattresses stacked like loaves.

Presence is a consent—no longer the need of your hand.

A man with a voice trained to sound ancient tells you this is temporary. Temporary is the most generous word in the language. Temporary will let you sleep. You won’t feel a thing.

Saints and sponsors? Always valid reasons.

Wings simplified, halos flattened into rings of light. You will wear one.

That is the third reason not to answer:
Anything that warms when you agree grows cold when you don’t.

At first, it gives. It opens gates that once refused you. Bread doubles in your hands. You are congratulated for being adaptable.

People gather to take photos of themselves arriving. Only “donors”.

A woman cleans the floors in the background. Name? Who cares? She says nothing but sings, the sound like wool pulled through water. Her child sleeps in a pram with one wheel missing, as if to stay in place.
And you realise the fourth reason not to answer:
Those who know the cost never raise their voice.

Attention is the real miracle.

Nothing must happen before you understand the fifth reason not to answer:
Anything that wants you to give others your best, already claimed your best.

In pram’s place, a small indentation in the dust. That donation is older than the system. Older than the voice, the call itself.

The call returns. Important matters, it tells you, almost kindly, that you are chosen—and if you don’t give for eternity, an exchange can be arranged. There is a market for everything.

With so-called “corner of your eye”, you see a price list.

And finally, you understood the final reason you shouldn’t have answered:

You stand very still and try to think—really hard.

The voice tells a person in front of you: “That eye of yours has a slightly different colour than the other. Possibly uneven. We could find a match.”

The woman pauses.
“Exactly that?” she asks. “That baby-blueish?”

“Correct.”

It didn’t belong to you. None of it ever did. That was the first condition.

And the moment that thought settles, you realise something worse:
You were ready to consult the price.

And for what, really?

Hostel, flat, maybe even a xane, that is a house.

Everyone will benefit from the scheme, the town is told — immigrants will receive the support needed to rebuild their lives, and residents are assured that funding will improve the services they rely on.

The programme begins, and the places get filled, as they always do. So they all gratefully say “Mersi”, “Shkran lak”, thanking in whatever language genuine gratitude operates.

They are welcome. So they are told.

Volunteers with small futuristic metallic badges begin a procedure of cleansing: stamping the soles of immigrant shoes into a foam of antiseptic, for a flu that hasn’t arrived yet, but might. In return, the volunteers stamp the immigrant families with a smiling sun that glows faintly. It is nothing, they say — just a brief prickle on the skin, softer than a sun-kiss, gone before you think. Who would pause for such a feeling when the real fight is for work permits, for school placements, for the right to remain?

Every newcomer gets one. No exceptions.

Maybe it tracks us so we don’t escape? Maybe it updates our language acquisition level: pre-entry, entry 1…?

Psychopathology of ingratitude, local people should whisper. Because laughter does what it does best: hides fear.

Yarhamuk, though, is serious; he makes friends: girls with missing front teeth with a peculiar habit of stuffing bread rolls in their coats for an unseen future. His mother hangs damp washing over radiators and whispers prayers into sleeves, hoping warmth might help wishes evaporate upward.

For a while, the sun-stamps remain just… stamps.
Harmless.

A reward system appears:

Shops offer discounts for those with the sun engraved.
Teachers praise the children singing in unison Past the Bethlehem Star.

But they don’t believe in other-religion guidance, so how?

The song goes on until aweeps through the borough, plunging the settlement blocks into silence. Guided by an invisible silver hand, a family from that land of big-bellied orphans moves suddenly on a Christmas Eve. No camels. No gold; no frankincense; no embalming oil of myrrh. Dishes still drying on the rack.

On Christmas Day, a mother and her son, the one who crossed hidden in a truck full of animal dung. No stable. Just the smell of slotter by metallic knives.

Isolated cases. Arrived with “no language”, no documents. No phones except the old Nokias they came with— non-trackable. Who would track anyway?

People who arrive quietly tend to leave quietly. People who came with nothing leave with nothing.

A couple of nights pass in a chorus of fireworks, glittering hope above lives still waiting to begin, tabula alba, so to speak. Then New Year’s Eve arrives, the last night before the new beginning, and with it, darkness. The estate falls silent, as though celebration was some kind of Janus’ Silver Moon and Twelve Sons Glitter Party.

Dim at first — like fireflies waking — then brighter, hotter, wrists ignite, pulsing as one.

Children cry and claw at their glowing skin.

Then someone — not just someone — a boy with a name no one would take seriously tries to scratch one off as his sun turns orange-red. He pries at the scratch until flesh breaks. There, underneath — a little piece of matter, slightly dull, but surely silverly metallic, drops to the floor like a silent tear. His breathing stops as he is waiting for alarms, community officers, and punishment.

Nothing.

But the next morning, people see him.

Truly see him.

The shopkeeper sneezes, lifts his gaze to Yarhamuk’s unbranded wrist, and mutters: ‘Oh. Yarhamuk Allah’, as if he was saying a mundane ‘bless you’. Yes, his name is used everywhere all the time, and any time he passes, they sneeze.

“May God have mercy on you”, he replies each time, as if he is teaching them not only the new language but the real significance of his presence. The neighbours who once shouldered past him pause, letting him go first. It is as if the moment the sun falls off — mercy matters again…

Yarhamuk shows his metallic sun to his friends.

“Don’t wear it anymore. They don’t remember you when you do.”

“But what if they take us?”

Remove it — But can’t cut it out. — The resolution doesn’t take off.

A sound rises in the estate walls — like hundreds of drills eating concrete.

A black van rolls in.
Windows blinded.
Engine silent.

Suns brighten again with compliance.

Doors slam. The van leaves with no headlights on.

Yarhamuk’s thin piece of matter is still warm in his hand. No friends. The parking lot remains. Cold. Empty. A smell of ozone lingers. Something metallic.

In the following days, silence only thickens. Flats stand unlocked, dishes left drying by empty sinks. School desks — vacant islands. Local news blames “voluntary evacuation.” Officials tell everyone to calm down, or a lockdown may be enforced…

But there are moments — glimpses — when someone sees movement behind sealed curtains. A face pressed against the glass. A palm smeared down the inside of a fogged window.

Those who left are still here.

Somewhere. In corridors — long as highway codes— lined with rows of metal pods. Inside each: a sleeping body connected to thick cables — They are being transferred…

— resourced to the Cloud — in process — reads the panel

“Damn memory”, curses Yarhamuk upon his late arrival.

Officials, taken over by a febrile flu, insist: “They are placing the collective memory into i-tanks. May God have mercy on us”.

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It doesn’t happen, not in this town. Until it does. And the first time it happens, no one realises what they’re witnessing. Not even later, when the vanishings dominate the headlines, do the people in the park realise they were there — front row — when it began.

It takes place outside, on the kind of summer afternoon where heat is so intense that bored children crack eggs open on sizzling car bonnets, marvelling at the hardening glisten of the yolk. In a park at the edge of the town, mothers sit under the shade of leafy trees, hushing their babies or pressing their noses to tiny wriggling toes, inhaling that sweet, damp newborn smell. The grass is brittle and thirsty. Sunhats, tubes of fruit yoghurt, iced coffees, sticky fingers.

One mother sits with her toddler and his latest obsession: Bluey. He squeals when she nudges him with her shoulder, acting out the game from yesterday’s episode. A month ago, Peppa Pig was the only thing he cared about — until he discovered the Heeler family and refused to watch anything else. He once wailed because Peppa got muddy; now he cheers when Bluey gets messy.

She is the closest to it — and yet she notices nothing.

There is a muffled sort of bang, like a sack of flour hitting the floor. Heads pop up, curious. The sound comes from a copse of trees hugging a shallow lake. The toddler screams, and she scoops him up, shushing, stacking snacks and bottles into the stroller one-handed. They move away. By the time he calms down, they have — both — forgotten.

Life resumes: the jingle of an ice-cream van, laughter, yawning heat. Who would go poking around a mosquito-ridden lake anyway?

And so, no one reacts, and no one notices the thick, smoky cloud rising from the trees. The mass breaks apart, scattering like a black wave across the sky.

Nothing changes.

Yet.

Days later, MISSING posters sprout like fungus. Jolly: mother, wife, last seen in this park. But Jolly is neither young nor beautiful, and sympathy follows beauty. Soon her face is joined by others. Six in total by autumn. People mutter about police incompetence, about losing one of the only pleasant places left in the heat-choked city.

Then comes the spark. A lonely bachelor complains to a reporter — why should he lose the park’s peace? Why must he walk in groups like a frightened child?

Why talk to the families? They are strangers.

The internet explodes. The missing women, the heartless parkgoers, the useless police. And armchair detectives begin their favourite pastime: connecting dots no one else asked them to connect.

Not seven. Hundreds.

Vanishing everywhere.

No bodies. No answers.

Swarms that move like thought. A hair-curling, mournful thrum that vibrates straight into bone marrow. Sightings increase. The bees grow aggressive. They stalk doorways. They chase. They kill. The more women disappear, the more furious the bees become.

Scientists argue with priests.
The King mocks them both.
Households crumble without women.
And grief becomes a permanent resident.

Until someone decides:

It’s the bees or us.

A year after that, mother — what was her name? — sat in that park, the country becomes a machine of extermination. Tubes, nozzles, sealed homes, sirens, gas masks. 11 a.m.

Silence.

Then:

Screams.

Millions of bees convulsing, dying, burning with invisible fire. Their agony has a smell: rotting cabbage. A sound: a drowning child. Then they are gone. No bodies. Just absence.

Victory, the King proclaims.

Until —

Pop. Pop. Pop.

The women vanish faster. Hungrier. Angrier.

Great plumes rise across the landscape, a dark smog eating the sun. The bees return — vast enough to eclipse daylight.

And something happens beneath the ground.

It took months for investigators to risk stepping foot near the lake. By then, the bees’ rage made the outdoors a hostile territory — the slightest disturbance, and the sky itself would scream. Still, search teams knew the disappearances had to start somewhere. And everything pointed back to that stinking patch of water where mothers had once picnicked like nothing was growing beneath them.

The first anomaly was uncovered by accident. A heat map taken during a drone sweep revealed an immense, pulsing shape beneath the lake, hotter than any natural formation should be. Too symmetrical. Too alive.

They called in the geologists, who insisted no cavern system existed below the park.
They called in the engineers, whose drills burned out as if cutting bone, not soil.
They called in the religious leaders, who refused to even look at the images.

Finally, the King approved the first dig.

When the machinery broke through, it didn’t feel like soil collapsing — it felt like a lung deflating, a heavy exhale. A cavern yawned open, and what filtered out was neither air nor gas but a whispering hum, like voices layered over one another, speaking a single syllable:

Back.

Hazmat-clad soldiers lowered themselves inside.

They found tunnels — hundreds of them — smooth-walled and spiraling deeper. The walls glistened like honeycomb, but not golden. Black. Veined. Pulsing with a heartbeat that wasn’t theirs.

Inside those tunnels, they found the missing women.

But not as remains.

Not yet.

Hundreds upon hundreds of them stood upright, pressed into the hive walls as though swallowed mid–breath. Their eyes were open, glassy but aware — a terrible lucidity. Each woman was webbed in by hardened resin, her limbs immobilised, chest barely rising. A thousand tiny bees crawled over their skin, breathing honey into their mouths, down their throats, sustaining them on sweetness they never chose.

They weren’t prisoners.

They were queens-in-the-making.

A scientist — one of the few courageous enough to step closer — noticed a transformation on a woman’s back: raised ridges along her spine, curling like unfurled wings beneath the skin. As he watched, the ridges twitched.

The hive responded.

A tremor rippled through the walls. From the cavern ceiling descended the Matriarch — the first bee to evolve beyond bee, crowned with a face shaped disturbingly like the missing woman with that jolly name, though elongated, sharpened, perfected into something more insect than human. She landed near the soldier who was closest to the wall.

The hive fell silent.

And then — with a grotesque kind of ceremony — she touched her human cheek to his mask as if blessing him.

He died screaming.

Not stung. Not torn.
But drained, his skin collapsing like a sucked-out honey pouch. The Matriarch fed.

The soldiers fired. The bullets did nothing — each projectile swallowed whole by a sudden bloom of bees from her abdomen, a black shield of living armour.

Their escape was frantic and unplanned. Several never made it back to the surface — their bodies were dragged down mid-rope, their legs kicking only for a moment before the hive wall opened and accepted them.

Those who survived brought back footage.
The government buried it immediately.

But rumours leaked. They always do.

Whispers spread that the women weren’t taken as victims — but as replacements.
That humanity’s time as the dominant species was never guaranteed.
That the bees, once nature’s servants, had evolved to repay debts long ignored.

Scientists quietly theorised that the hive was not merely underground:

It was growing.
Expanding beneath cities, beneath homes, beneath the very streets people still dared to walk.

Every woman taken wasn’t gone.

She was transforming.

Becoming new queens.

Becoming the army.

Waiting for the day the sun would dim —
and they would emerge, not as humans reborn…

…but as the future that replaces us.

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