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Vita nostra . . . “Our life is brief, / It will shortly end; / Death comes quickly.”
For the past few weeks she’d felt like painting her image on the glass. She painted at night when the light was on inside, and it was dark outside. Sasha traced her reflection with gouache paints. Every day the painting looked different. The morning light tried to get through in vain: the gouache was opaque and lay in a thick, dense layer.
“I know how to control myself,” Sasha said hotly.
Yeah sure
Again she had stepped over the line. One more step toward the world she knew nothing about. The world she was led and pushed to by force. And from where, it seemed, there was no way back.
But the details don’t matter. What matters is that the child has been restored as an autonomous information system.
A what
“Next time he asks, have Lisa tell him that I’m no longer human. And that is why I cannot sleep with anyone any longer. Have you ever seen statistical theory making out with Newton’s first law of motion?”
“When you are working with the glossary, Samokhina—if you manage to work with it, of course—you will not be distracted or taken out of your trance by an alarm clock, or a scream, or anything else. Only the sharp sensation of pain. A quick one! You will shake off the flame and be just fine. Would you like to try right now?” “I would love to,” Sasha said greedily.
Perhaps all the fathers in the world are projections of one single entity. It’s just that their method of transformation is different.
“All girls are mad. Each in her own way. Listen, I think I am omnipotent. I broke out of our text and can view it from the outside. And I can see—it’s just letters. Every person is a word, simply a word. And others are punctuation marks.”
this bitch lost every single marble in her damn head
You are a foundation upon which an entire universe can be built. And this cannot be explained, Sasha, it can only be understood.”
It’s only fear, Sasha. Fear the General. Fear the Emperor who shapes the reality. You should buckle up.”
“No. They are Words. They must realize their preordained purpose.” “And other people? They . . .” “They are different. Prepositions, conjunctions, interjections . . . expletives.” Kozhennikov smiled. “Every man carries a shadow of a word, but only Word in its entirety, firmly imprinted into the fabric of the material world, can return to its beginning and grow from a pale projection to an original entity.”
“Stop her! It’s not a verb, it’s a . . .” “Yes. She is Password.”
You are the favorite instrument of Speech . . . Reverberate!”
