Victor Pelevin - Helmet of Horror

UGLI 666

Ah, in that sense. But that’s not manipulation, that’s God’s punishment.

Organizm(-:

Ugly, let me explain to you how we’re manipulated in here. Let’s assume that headgear on Asterisk’s head is a virtual reality helmet after all.

UGLI 666

And then what?

Organizm(-:

Perhaps everything we see here is something like that flat area Nutcracker was talking about – with the three identical vases, except one of them is more identical than the others.

Nutscracker

For us to be manipulated like that, we’d have to be wearing helmets.

Organizm(-:

Maybe we are.

Nutscracker

Touch your face with your hands. Can you feel any helmet?

Organism(-:

No, but …

Monstradamus

I know what he’s going to ask now. He’s going to ask whether you can use a helmet to simulate what you feel with your hands.

Organizm(-:

Well that’s right. It seems a natural enough question to me.

Nutscracker

If everything is simulated by the helmet, then it’s not a helmet or a simulation any more. It’s life.

Organizm(-:

Nutcracker, there’s one thing you didn’t explain. Who switches on all these ‘Sticky Eyes’ and ‘Sunny Kisses’? Surely someone has to control it all?

Nutscracker

Certainly. There’s an operator with a special monitor. He sees the Helmholtz as a dot on a radar screen. And the vases would be, say, red rhomboids. There’s a manipulation menu on the same screen. The rest is all just like in Windows – click and drag.

Monstradamus

Click and drag. A great slogan for a double-edged axe.

Organizm(-:

And how can you do it the other way round?

Nutscracker

How do you mean?

Organizm(-:

So the virtual reality helmet is on the operator who controls the manipulation. And this operator somehow makes the others see what he sees.

Nutscracker

How could he make them do that?

Organizm(-:

Hypnosis.

UGLI 666

There you are. I was just waiting for that word.

Nutscracker

I don’t know much about hypnosis. But if a hypnotist was powerful enough to make others see what he sees, why would he need a helmet?

Organizm(-:

In order to know what the others have to see.

Monstradamus

You could take it even further. Not just seeing, but actually being there. Asterisk wears a helmet in which he sees a labyrinth. And we’re all inside this labyrinth. And he manipulates us.

Nutscracker

You mean we’re all inside the Minotaur’s head?

Monstradamus

You could say we’re in the space that he sees.

Nutscracker

Then where’s the Minotaur?

Monstradamus

We have to assume he’s in the space that Ariadne sees in her dreams.

Organizm(-:

End of the line. Remember, Nutcracker, at the very beginning you asked me ‘Where is here exactly?’ I didn’t understand your question at first. In the helmet of horror, that’s where.

Nutscracker

That doesn’t fit, though. On the one hand, the Minotaur’s manipulating all of us, but on the other hand, he’s got no head … But then again, quite apart from this particular case, I can testify professionally that’s what causes all the problems.

Organizm(-:

Absolutely. This Asterisk has a cheap kettle with a solar battery in his helmet. How can he decide where to use ‘Sunny Kiss’ and where to use ‘The Seventh Seal’?

Monstradamus

Automatically. It might all depend on which section of the helmet of horror a bubble of hope happens to burst in.

Organizm(-:

But I’m the one who sees the ray of sunlight or the dove, not Asterisk. I don’t understand anything any more. Who’s wearing the helmet of horror? Me or the Minotaur?

Nutscracker

The Helmholtz.

Monstradamus

We’ve been talking about that helmet too long already. It feels like we keep trying it on over and over again. It will attach itself permanently to our heads soon. Let’s change the subject.

Organizm(-:

Great idea, let’s. I’ve just had a thought. Has anyone ever wondered why Star Wars has such a strange sequel – instead of filming what came after the third episode, they filmed what came before the first one?

Monstradamus

Why?

Organizm(-:

At the end of the third episode Darth Vader dies, and that’s the end of all the Star Wars. There can’t be any more, because he’s the Minotaur of that world, and that black heap of junk on his head is the helmet of horror. He thinks every one of them: Luke Skywalker, the robots, Chewbacca and all the rest of it. So after he’s killed there can’t be any continuation.

Monstradamus

But Darth Vader takes his helmet off before he dies. And underneath he has a normal head, only covered in scars.

Organizm(-:

Yes, but it’s just a fantasy, after all.

Nutscracker

Yes, Organism. Very profound. And the Iron Mask was another Minotaur. When they handed him over to the Marquis de Sade to be corrupted, the revolution began, because the pain in his xxx made him stop thinking up royalist France.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Isolde, are you here?

IsoldA

Yes.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

I’m back. What’s happening here?

IsoldA

Nothing very interesting. Nutcracker was telling everybody about politics. And I only got back from Versailles just recently.

Monstradamus

Nutcracker, on that business of royalist France. You know, the Marquis turned out not to be so terrible after all.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

It’s all very monotonous where I am. Bushes, a bend, bushes, a fork, a bend, on and on for ever. The passage is about six feet wide.

IsoldA

What’s that in metres?

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Two. Makes you feel like a rat in a maze. At one point I decided I’d had enough and tried to climb through the hedge. Some chance. There’s a barbed-wire mesh fence in the bushes – like the grid of bars in reinforced concrete. And I’d been wondering how they managed to keep the bushes so even!

IsoldA

That labyrinth must lead out into my park. You just didn’t go far enough. We have the same ground under our feet. Beige soil.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

I kept turning to the right. It’s funny. A flashback from my childhood. You know the way it is – a memory illuminated by a warm, long-forgotten light that seems to conceal the most important answer of all. Some book of adventure stories you read God only knows how many years ago. Where it said you can get through any labyrinth if you keep turning right all the time. So I decided to try it. Seems it was right – I did find something interesting after all. I saw one of your fountains. It was a long way off, though.

IsoldA

Tell me about it, then.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

At one point in the labyrinth there’s a little bench. A perfectly ordinary bench, like they have in parks. I climbed up on it and stood on the back, and my eyes were level with the upper edge of the bushes. On one side I could see a jet of water rising into the air, and on the other, way off in the distance, some kind of dark roof that looked as though it was covered with soot. The roof was hard to make out because it was so far away, and the jet of water was very strange – one jet shooting up into the air, but several of them falling down. Maybe it was an optical illusion.