It required a certain effort for me to recall that kvasola is the Orkish national drink.

  ‘You’re a hopeless junkie, Damilola,’ she went on, ‘and for you the whole world is nothing more than a set of excuses for your brain to shoot up or give itself an enema. The enema makes you miserable every time. But the spikes don’t make you happy, they just send you off looking for a new dose. It’s always like that with narcotics. All your life, second after second, is a constant search for an excuse for a fix. But there isn’t anyone in you who could resist this, since your so-called “personality” only appears afterwards – as the blurred and bleary echo of these electrochemical bolts of lightning, an averaged magnetic halo above an unconscious and uncontrolled process …’

  I didn’t even know how to object. In cases like this I convert everything into a light-hearted joke.

  ‘If all human beings are hopeless drug addicts, little darling, then why don’t they put us in jail?’

  She only thought for a split second.

  ‘Because this is Manitou’s own narco-business. Junkies are persecuted precisely because they muscle in uninvited. And then again, in reality you’re doing jail time anyway. Only you’re afraid to admit it, because then you’d immediately have to give yourselves an enema and call yourselves losers.’

  The semantic hiatus was helpful – I finally realised what to say.

  ‘You’ll find it hard to believe, babe, but there’s more to a man than just a drug addict serving his stretch inside himself. A man has … I don’t know – an ideal, a dream. A light towards which he advances all his life. And you haven’t got anything like that.’

  Kaya laughed affably. That’s what I hate more than anything else, her affability.

  ‘My route is inscribed inside me programmatically,’ she said, ‘and your route is inscribed inside you chemically. And when it seems to you that you’re advancing towards light and happiness, you’re simply advancing towards your inner handler to get another sugar lump. In fact we can’t even say that it’s you advancing. It’s just the chemical computer implementing the operator “take sugar” in order to move on to the operator “rejoice five seconds”. And after that, there’ll be the operator “suffer” again – no one has ever deleted it and no one ever will. And in all this there isn’t any “you”.’

  ‘Why do you keep repeating all the time that there isn’t any me? Who do you think it is that screws you every day?’

  ‘A blubbery, feeble-minded arsehole,’ she replied with obvious satisfaction. ‘Who else? But the fact that a blubbery, feeble-minded arsehole screws a talking doll every day doesn’t mean that there is some real essence in any of this. What do you have in mind when you say “I”?’

  It had been clear right from the start that once she’d run the whole nine yards on maximum spirituality she’d skip back over to maximum bitchiness. But I was sure that I knew how to make her switch back again, and that made me feel calm and self-possessed. And actually, why shouldn’t a battle pilot have a heart-to-heart talk with his girl on his rare day off?

  ‘I don’t have anything in mind, Kaya. I say “I” because that’s what I was taught to do,’ I said. ‘If when I was a kid I had been taught, for instance, to say “ribbit” or “woof”, that’s what I’d do.’

  ‘All right,’ said Kaya. ‘A witty and correct remark. “I” is merely an element of language. But after all, do you genuinely believe that there is something inside you that was you ten or even fifteen years ago?’

  Right, we’ve already been through this.

  ‘Well yes,’ I said. ‘Everything flows, everything changes. A man is like a river. More of a process than an object, agreed. But this process is my “I”. Although “I” is only a nominal label.’

  ‘The point isn’t whether it is a process or a label. The point is something quite different.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did anyone ask you if you wanted them to launch this process?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘No one asked.’

  ‘In other words, you have no power over the start of the process, or the form in which it proceeds …’ she slapped me on my corpulent buttock with her little palm ‘… or over its length and its end?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Then in the name of Damilola, why do you call it yourself? Why do you use the word “I” for it?’

  ‘I …’ I began, and started thinking about it. ‘That’s no longer a scientific question, but a religious one. You and I have different natures. To take the spiritual aspect, I’m a human being, and you’re a domestic electrical appliance. The Light of Manitou is in me, but there’s no one in you who hears these words of mine – all that’s pure simulation. And it’s because that light is in me that I can say “I”. But you, in essence, are just a programme.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘My reaction to your words is a programmed event. And there isn’t anyone in me who listens. But there isn’t in you either. There is simply a manifestation of the nature of sound that for some reason you ascribe to yourself. And there is a manifestation of the nature of meaning in the nature of sound, which sometimes occurs to your adipose brains, triggering reactions conditioned by attachments. You’re just another programme, only a chemical one. And there isn’t any “I” in any of this.’

  ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘You say that I’m controlled by my chemical attachments. But there has to be someone who’s attached, doesn’t there? The one who is subject to their influence and decides how to act? Well, that is “I”.’

  ‘You still don’t get it. The reactions that result in the appearance of what you call your “self” occur before they are consciously perceived. They are controlled by the same physical laws governing the way the entire Universe is being transformed. Where in all this is the self who is capable of deciding and doing something? How can an echo control the sound that gave rise to it? There isn’t anyone in you who is in charge.’

  ‘Then what is there?’

  ‘There is only the constantly repeated act of a fly getting stuck in honey. But that honey only exists as excitation in the fly, and the fly only exists as a reaction to the honey. And that is the only content of your infinitely rich inner life … I know you’re reading about all these “zombies” and “zimbos”, you know. I’ve seen the tags. You think that you have consciousness and I don’t. But in actual fact, there isn’t any consciousness at all. There is only the single, universal means by which all the forms of information that constitute the world come into existence. That is why in ancient China they spoke of the universal Way of Things. And in India they said “tat tvam asi” – “thou art that”. It’s so simple that no one can understand it. There is only constantly changing experience. It is you. It is also the world …’

  ‘And the attachments?’ I asked for the sake of at least asking something.

  ‘To what can an experience be attached? With what rope? It will simply end, and another will begin. Do you understand that, stupid? Aagh … I can see that you don’t …’

  So there now.

  That was the way it went with us almost every day. Can you imagine? You’ve come back from a war, you’ve had a bellyful of watching all sorts of stuff, and at home – this is what you get. Perhaps, I thought, it’s not entirely normal to derive pleasure from this? Perhaps I am simply concealing my own innermost intentions and dispositions from myself, and I ought to buy her black boots and a whip? Raise aloft, so to speak, the fallen banner of Bernard-Henri?

  ‘If you can ever get your feeble mind up to speed and see yourself as you are,’ she went on, ‘you’ll understand the most important thing. Your thoughts, wishes and impulses, which make you act, are in reality not yours at all. They come to you out of a space that is totally obscure, as if out of nowhere. You never know what you will want in the next second. You are merely a witness in this process. But your inner witness is so stupid that he immediately becomes a party to the crime – and he rakes in the loot big time …’

  That made me tense up, because it was not only incomprehensible and offensive, it also sounded threatening. Perhaps she was trying to programme me subconsciously? I don’t like to lose the thread in these conversations. Especially when I don’t lose it, but she tugs it out of my hand.

  ‘And if I can’t get my feeble mind up to speed?’

  ‘Then try examining your inner life on slow rewind. You’ll see the endless repetition of the same old scenario. You’re walking along the street and suddenly vague shadows start robbing the bank on the corner. You immediately get involved, because you need money for drugs – or at least for an enema, in order to forget about them for a while. The result is that you end up with a prison sentence, although you didn’t really rob any bank on the corner at all, because there aren’t any corners anywhere. And every day you rob illusory banks, and for that you serve an eternal, non-illusory life sentence …’

  I suddenly felt sad, because I sensed a glimmer of truth in what she said. After all, she hadn’t thought up all of this herself. She couldn’t have done. It had to be the wisdom of ancient mankind, packaged in accordance with the settings I had chosen.

  ‘Then what do I do?’ I asked in a quiet voice.

  ‘You can’t do anything. Everything simply happens – both inside you and outside you. Your military propaganda calls you and other unfortunates “free men”. But in actual fact your life is merely a corridor of torments. There are no good people or wicked villains among you, only poor souls who want to keep themselves busy with something in order to forget about their pain. Life is a narrow strip between the flames of suffering and the phantom of joy, through which the so-called free man runs, howling in terror. And this entire corridor only exists in his head.’

  ‘It seems as if you don’t believe that free men exist.’

  Kaya laughed.

  ‘You even breathe in and out because the imminent onset of suffering makes you do it,’ she said. ‘Try holding your breath if you don’t believe me. And who would breathe otherwise? And in exactly the same way you eat, drink, relieve yourself and change the position of your body – because after several minutes every pose it assumes becomes a pain. In the same way you sleep, make love, and so forth. Second after second you flee from the stick, and Manitou only occasionally teases you with a false carrot in order to clout you even more painfully when you come running for it. Where is the freedom in this? Any man has only one path – the one that he walks through life.’

  ‘So I can’t control absolutely anything at all then?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course not. Even the attention that you consider your own is controlled by Manitou.’

  ‘In person?’

  ‘Through his laws. But that’s the same thing.’

  ‘But can I at least pray for grace?’

  She nodded.

  ‘How?’

  ‘For a start you can keep track of your own reaction without being drawn into it. That is prayer.’

  If only they could hear her in the House of Manitou.

  ‘But my attention is controlled by Manitou, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘And in order to pray, I have to keep track of my reaction. So it turns out that in order to pray for grace, I already need that grace?’

  ‘Of course. Prayer and grace are the same thing. Don’t try to understand this. There’s nothing to understand here and no one to understand it. Just stop robbing the bank. Remain a witness. That is the only spiritual act that you are capable of.’

  ‘Then the robbers will try to kill me,’ I joked morosely.

  ‘Yes, they will try,’ said Kaya. ‘That is precisely why they shoot snuffs, broadcast news and are always cranking up their music machine on the other side of the river. But in actual fact the robbers can’t do anything, because they’re only shadows. And you could learn to see through them. And after that you would stop noticing them at all, and that would be the start of a whole new story. Only the trouble is, Damilola, that you yourself are a robber and a shadow. So you don’t want to learn. But Grim could. He hasn’t killed anyone yet.’

  That was the bitchiness kicking in again, clearly in anticipation of an outburst of jealousy. Then seduction would immediately cut in – sure thing, we know, we’ve been there before. But the reason I set seduction to maximum was in order to give in to it at some point, right?

  I tumbled her to the floor.

  Her face mirrored the submissive weariness that maximum bitchiness always brings on its black wings. That usually got me even more aroused. But now, with her face right there in front of mine, I suddenly understood what she had been talking about.

  I saw what had made me tumble her to the floor – the sweet tremor of anticipation running through my body, the flash in my brain that was a promise of eternal happiness. But because of what she had said I could no longer fuse unthinkingly with that flash in the way I used to. And that tiny delay proved fatal.

  There was no pleasure up ahead any longer.

  Its brilliance faded and it went out, like a flame doused with water. And I realised that the bright promise towards which I had rushed every time with my heart and loins in turmoil had no substance behind it – and it never did have. I remembered that I had realised this many times before … why damn, I realise it every time at the supreme point of gratification for a tiny little moment – but I immediately forget again.

  What is all this for? I thought. There I go, heading towards the beacon of the closest joy – it glitters in front of me for a while and then disintegrates in a shower of counterfeit sparks, and I realise that I’ve been tricked, but I can already see a new beacon and I head towards that, hoping that this time everything will be different. And then it disappears too, and so on endlessly, ad infinitum …

  It was as if I had been hit on an extremely sensitive point – a nerve centre that I didn’t even know existed.

  I had served this world as best I could, and I really had run along the corridor of torments that she talked about. I had despised many of the things that I had to do in my job – but there was supposed to be a reward for my labours, and Kaya was the most important part of it. And suddenly I had seen that there was no reward. She had taken my happiness away from me, but left the flames of suffering in place – and now they were blazing all around me.

  Worse than that, she herself had become the blaze of suffering. She had turned from my inscrutable Kaya into a rubber doll WHO DIDN’T LOVE ME AT ALL. And when I realised that just a moment ago she had stolen my only joy, I hit her for the first time.

  Suras can be beaten; they’re designed to take it. They look up at the ceiling and don’t resist. Sometimes a little synthetic blood bleeds out of them and a lip swells up. It all passes by morning.

  The next day I had to go to the base and stay until evening to check the new gyroscopes for Hannelore – a real pilot always monitors that for himself. And when I got back, Kaya wasn’t at home.

  She had taken a large bag, her dresses and all her operational accessories, leaving me only the transgender phallo-simulator module. She had placed it in the most obvious spot. There was a message written in lipstick on the mirror in the hallway: ‘Gone to Nirvana. Take care.’

  I didn’t even know we had any lipstick at home.

  CHAPTER 22

  Every day when Grim switched on the creative articulator, a word woven out of transparent letters appeared in front of him for an instant.

  MACOSOFT

  This, as the dictionary explained, was one of the ancient names of Manitou. It proved to be entirely apt – there really was something supernatural about the articulator.

  All he had to do was clumsily tap in some nebulous verbal embryo with two fingers, or even just start to do it – and in response the application immediately threw out several versions of the newborn thought, ready-formulated and rosy-cheeked, swaddled in the nappies of clever words that Grim had to keep delving into on-screen thesauruses to find.

  The growing embryo looked like a small rotating cube – different versions of the text appeared on the sides that moved close to the screen Every time it was a well-formulated, complete sentence – it didn’t require any further processing. But it was possible to change the nuances included in it, ad infinitum, and the most important thing here was to stop in time.

  Grim didn’t know exactly how the articulator worked, and no one else really knew. Damilola only said that it incorporated the same algorithm as Kaya had – the programme took into account everything that had ever been said by people, all of the countless semantic choices that had been made over the centuries and preserved in the information annals. Grim’s fingers seemed to have at their command an army of dead souls, who moved the cubes of words for him.

  It was like a game – as if he was tossing instantly sprouting seeds into a furrow. Their pattern of growth could be controlled in a most bizarre fashion. A newborn paragraph-cube could be moved along numerous axes with captions such as ‘more complicated’, ‘simpler’, ‘angrier’, ‘kinder’, ‘cleverer’, ‘more naïve’, ‘more heartfelt’, ‘wittier’, ‘more ruthless’ – and as you did it the text instantly changed in accordance with the route selected, and what’s more, at new points of the endless trajectory new semantic axes appeared and the thought could be pushed further along.

  Grim understood now how the unknown masters had finished off the ‘Ork’s Song Before Battle’ for him – after experimenting with his own drafts, in just a few minutes he produced several other possible versions of his masterpiece, each one better than the last.

  But what Grim liked most of all was that the articulator made him incredibly, dazzlingly clever. He deliberately entered a stupid, clunky phrase into the manitou, typed it almost at random – and with a few simple manipulations transformed it in a most radical manner.