Виктор Пелевин - Babylon

‘I don’t know. Ask yourself that one. For some reason the goddess didn’t choose me. How fine it would have sounded: "He who has abandoned his name"…’

‘Abandoned his name?’

‘I come from a Volga German background; but when I was due to graduate from university, an order came in from state TV for a nig-nog to be their Washington correspondent. I was the Komsomol secretary, which meant I was first in line for America. So they changed my name for me in the Lubyanka. Anyway, that’s not important. It’s you that’s been chosen.’

‘And would you have accepted?’

‘Why not? It certainly sounds impressive: husband of the great goddess! It’s a purely ritual post, no responsibilities at all, but the opportunities are absolutely immense. No limits at all, you could say. Of course, it all depends on how imaginative you are. Every morning the deceased here had his cleaning-lady scatter cocaine across his carpet from a bucket; and he built himself a bunch of dachas, bought a load of pictures… And that was all he could think of. As I said: a mismatch.’

‘And can I refuse?’

‘I think not,’ said Farseikin.

Tatarsky glanced through the open door, behind which there was something strange going on. Malyuta and Sasha Blo were packing Azadovsky into a container in the form of a large green sphere. His body, hunched over in an unnatural fashion, was already in the container, but one hairy leg with a red flip-flop still protruded from the container’s small door and stubbornly refused to fit inside.

‘What’s the sphere for?’

‘The corridors here are long and narrow,’ answered Farseikin. ‘Carrying him would be the devil’s own job; and when you roll it outside, nobody takes the slightest notice. Semyon Velin thought it up before he died. What a designer he was… And we lost him because of this idiot as well. I wish Semyon could see all this!’

‘But why is it green?’

‘I don’t know. What difference does it make? Don’t go looking for symbolic significance in everything. Babe - you might regret it when you find it.’

There was a quiet crunching sound in the changing room and Tatarsky winced.

‘Will they strangle me some time too?’ he asked.

Farseikin shrugged: ‘As you’ve seen, the consorts of the great goddess are sometimes changed, but that goes with the job. If you don’t get too full of yourself, you could easily reach old age. Even retire. The main thing is, if you have any doubts about anything, you just come to me; and follow my advice. The first thing I’d advise you to do is get rid of that cocaine-polluted carpet. There are rumours going round town. That’s something we can do without.’

‘I’ll get rid of the carpet; but how do we explain to all the others about me moving into his office?’

‘No need to explain anything to them. They understand all right, or they wouldn’t be working for us.’

Malyuta put his head out of the changing room. He was already changed. He glanced at Tatarsky for a moment then looked away and held out Azadovsky’s mobile phone to Farseikin.

‘Shall we roll it out?’ he asked briskly.

‘No,’ said Farseikin. ‘Roll it in. Why d’you ask such stupid questions?’

Tatarsky waited until the metallic rumbling in the long burrow of the corridor had died away and asked in a low voice:

‘Farsuk Karlovich, will you tell me something, in confidence?’

‘What?’

‘Who actually controls all of this?’

‘My advice to you is not to stick your nose in,’ said Farseikin. ‘That way you’ll stay a living god for longer; and to be honest about it, I don’t know. Even after all the years I’ve been in the business.’

He went over to the wall beside the altar, unlocked a small concealed door, bent down and went in through the opening. A light came on beyond the door and Tatarsky saw a large machine that looked like an open black book flanked by two vertical cylinders of frosted glass. The flat black surface facing Tatarsky bore the word ‘Compuware’ in white and some unfamiliar symbol, and standing in front of the machine was a seat rather like a dentist’s chair with straps and latches.

‘What’s that?’ Tatarsky asked.

‘A 3-D scanner.’

‘What’s it for?’

‘We’re going to scan in your image.’

‘Do I have to go through with it?’

‘Absolutely. According to the ritual, you only become the husband of the great goddess after you’ve been digitised - converted, as they say, into a sequence of visual images.’

‘And then I’ll be inserted into all the clips and broadcasts? Like Azadovsky?’

‘That’s your main sacramental function. The goddess really doesn’t have a body, but there is something that takes the place of her body. Her corporeal nature consists of the totality of all the images used in advertising; and since she manifests herself via a sequence of images, in order to become godlike, you have to be transformed. Then it will be possible for you to enter into mystical union. In effect, your 3-D model will be her husband, and you’ll be… a regent, I suppose. Come over here.’

Tatarsky shifted his feet nervously and Farseikin laughed:

‘Don’t be afraid. It doesn’t hurt to be scanned. It’s like a photocopier, only they don’t close the lid… At least, not yet they don’t… OK, OK, I’m only joking. Let’s get on with it; they’re waiting for us upstairs. It’s a celebration - your coming-out party, so to speak. You can relax in a circle of close friends.’

Tatarsky took a last look at the basalt slab with the dog and the goddess before plunging decisively through the doorway beyond which Farseikin was waiting for him. The walls and ceiling of the small room were painted white and it was almost empty - apart from the scanner it contained a desk with a control panel on it and several cardboard boxes that had once held electronic goods standing over by the wall.

‘Farsuk Karlovich, have you heard of the bird Semurg?’ Tatarsky asked as he sat in the armchair and set his forearms on the armrests.

‘No. What kind of a bird is it?’

‘There was an oriental poem,’ said Tatarsky; ‘I haven’t read it myself, only heard about it. About how thirty birds flew off to search for their king Semurg and then, after all kinds of different tests and trials, at the very end they learned that the word "Semurg" means "thirty birds".’

‘So?’ Farseikin asked, pushing a black plug into a socket.

‘Well,’ said Tatarsky, ‘I just thought, maybe the entire Generation "P", that is the one that chose Pepsi - you chose Pepsi when you were young as well, didn’t you?’

‘What other choice was there?’ Farseikin muttered, clicking switches on the control panel.

‘Yes, well… I had this rather frightening thought: that dog with five legs - maybe it’s all of us together? And now we’re all on the attack, sort of.’

Farseikin was clearly too absorbed in his manipulations to take in what Tatarsky had said.

‘Right,’ he said, ‘now hold dead still and don’t blink. Ready?’

Tatarsky gave a deep sigh.

‘Ready,’ he said.

The machine began to hum and whirr and the frosted white lamps at each side of it lit up with a blinding brilliance. The structure that looked like an open book began slowly rotating around its axis, a ray of white light struck Tatarsky in the eyes and he was blinded for several seconds.’

‘I bow before the living god,’ Farseikin said solemnly.

When Tatarsky opened his eyes, Farseikin was kneeling in front of the armchair with his head bowed, holding out to him a small black object. It was Azadovsky’s phone. Tatarsky took it gingerly and examined it: the phone looked like an ordinary small Phillips, except that it had only one button, in the form of a golden eye. Tatarsky wanted to ask if Alla knew what was happening, but he had no chance: Farseikin bowed, rose to his feet, walked backwards to the exit and tactfully closed the door behind him.