D A Novel (George Right) - By George Right Page 0,108

demolition was carried out long ago, as fragments had time to grow with dust–the dust which had almost hidden the brown stains on a floor. In a corner a massive metal bed of a certain installation towered, which apparently proved to be too difficult to destroy. And on its side there was the next inscription, made in the same fashion: "DARK IS FASTER THAN LIGHT HA HA HА." From the last stick of the last letter "A" a stream with a drop on the end led downward. Directly on this drop sat a whitish cockroach. No, it was more likely a fat round spider, as if it had crept out to drink the blood. But actually both the stream and a drop dried up a long time ago.

Gingerly bending down–he liked spiders no more than cockroaches–the man nevertheless approached more closely, wishing to examine the arthropod to discover whether it were a representative of another ugly mutant, or just a normal spider? What is ugliness here: a deviation or the norm?

He moved nearer slowly, in order not to frighten off the creature, but precaution was excessive. The spider did not move. It was dead long ago. And has dried on the bloody drop just as if it had not enough mind to move away when it has started to get thick. The man lifted a fragment of some transparent polymer from a laboratory table–possibly a former screen part–and poked the dried up whitish little body with it. The spider fell to the table, the drawn in legs up. The number of legs, as befits to all spiders, was eight. Three on the right side and five at the left.

The man returned to the corridor. This time he intentionally left the door opened. For orientation, he told to himself, though more likely in order not to see the inscription on it. But, just as he thought of it, the inscription with all its stains appeared in his mind’s eye: "Kill yourself now." Whatever had been before in this laboratory, he did not yet see reasons for suicide. For optimism, however, too...

Suddenly he shuddered, overtaken by a new wave of sticky fear. Physics, a laboratory, mutants–all of it merged together, knocking out the wall which had cut his memory by one more concept: radiation. What if this were the case? If this strange building (a research center? a clinic?) experienced a certain nuclear failure, then all here was abandoned long ago, and all this musty air was penetrated by a slow death. If even insects and spiders, which are more radiation resistant (from where did he know this?), have mutated, then a human here was doomed for certain. That's why "kill yourself now" would mean less suffering. Death from radiation sickness meant long and horrific torment.

But what was with the personnel, hastily leaving the building after the accident, destroying the equipment? The rage against machinery which betrayed them, of course, was understandable. Even a scientist can break down, but when each second was valuable for rescue… And all these bloody inscriptions? A naked corpse in a bath? Maybe he was someone who had found his way into the forbidden zone after the accident and understood too late what he had done?

But, maybe, there had been no evacuation? Maybe they were all just written off? The authorities wished to hide the truth about the accident and had let nobody out. Or not radiation, but some biological shit, and all of them were infected–infected and dangerous. But was radiation capable of preventing decomposition? Some virus may be capable...

But what about himself? Who, in that case, was he? One of the personnel left here or a guinea pig? How could he have survived here for so long, from the moment of the accident, after, seemingly, years have passed? What did he drink, what did he eat? Cockroaches? This thought made him squirm.

Are there other survivors? And what does a meeting with them threaten? Who has left these inscriptions? At first he thought that the word "despair" was written before death by that person in a bathroom. But he had been bleeding profusely, in such a condition that he could not come here from there or vice versa. And all the inscriptions looked to be made by one hand. Then would it be logical to assume that it was the hand of a murderer? But where were the new victims, whose blood was used for the writing? Dragged somewhere, maybe still alive? What for? And why