And the rat laughed by Nava Semel

Author:Nava Semel [Nava Semel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Roman
ISBN: 9781442973701
Published: 2009-09-15T07:00:00+00:00

Come with me to the last day of the year 2029. We’re in the agricultural reserve in Pan-America. The Art Corporations Festival. Thousands of artists from all over the world are scribbling away and ad-libbing scenes from the Girl & Rat poems on the giant plain. Among their props are potatoes brought in specially from the emergency supplies deep in the Antarctic. This was also the first experiment in multimind beaming, which meant that every beamer in the world, even the ones at Hybrid Space Station, were active participants.

I haven’t taken part in the live event yet, of course, and this was my first-ever retrieved cruise. Where were you then, Stash? I never did discover who paired us up...

A contemporary version...

The most up-to-date...

Billions in this world and beyond are being beamed into the game at this very moment.

The satanic little girl is going down into the pit. In the darkness, she hunts down the rat and makes it her slave. All the players use the rat to abuse the Stefan and win points every time the tormented victim cries out for help. The rat takes pity on the Stefan, and all the players are supposed to use the little girl to kill both of them.

End of game.

The players are drenched in fresh blood.

This role reversal horrifies me. The thought of the Stefan becoming an innocent victim and the little girl becoming a bloodthirsty murderer is unbearable. I need to recreate the right order and cleanse the girl’s name. You might be able to justify my voyage by pointing out that it will put an end to Girl & Rat once and for all. Or I may decide that forgetfulness is the preferred human condition, and then the two cubs will quietly disappear behind the curtains, and so will I.

Without a trace.

This voyage...

I must return to the pit...

Need to go deep down.

Two weeks ago, I went over my findings again, the way I do every night. I activated the location search engine. The implachip probes put me in Eastern Europe, and the database crossed me with the ruins of a forgotten church that was uncovered only recently, when laser micro-excavators were extending a subterranean residential habitat. After the protests of the Christian Preservation Society, the developers agreed not to touch the vestiges of the church, and to allow the construction of a tourist simulator site. In one of the side niches, behind the altar, was a scene from the Last Judgment Day, drawn with something solid, possibly a piece of charcoal. In the center was the Madonna cradling a gaping-mouthed rat. Next to her, the earth had opened wide and a long procession of people was emerging, led by a little girl, her face a blur.

Such strange iconography...

My implachip was deactivated for a long time.

Into your dream I beam the Madonna of the Rat Church, located where there used to be a small village before it was completely wiped out in the Great Ecological Disaster. The foundations remain, along with some fragments of tombstones in the nearby cemetery.

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