We

by Yevgeny Zamyatin

I was terrified of being left with myself—with this new stranger, I mean, who, by some strange coincidence, has my digits: D-503. And so I went with them to R-13’s. True, he is not precise or rhythmic and he has a kind of twisted, laughable logic, but we are friends all the same. It was not just an accident that he and I both chose sweet, pink O three years ago. This binds us together somehow even more strongly than our years together at school. Next, we were in R’s room. It was as if—well, everything was exactly like mine: the Table, the glass of the chairs, table, closet, and bed. But as soon as R walked in, he moved one of the chairs, then the other—and all perspectives became displaced, everything departed from the regulation dimensions, became non-Euclidean.