Yuri Druzhnikov
Turning 176
Short story
On his birthday Dubov was reminded unambiguously by videophone that the time had come to place an announcement about his voluntary death in the cloud gazette. The gazette was projected into the sky onto stretches of cloud and was visible to everyone.
He had turned 176, and by law Dubov had only one choice: cross over into the other world now, or get a deferment from the Settlement, Resettlement, and Overpopulation Agency. A term of deferment was given after lengthy scrutiny and only in cases of particular merit, of a kind that Dubov had never had. But hadn't it been until just recently that people had been allowed to live to 199? In the final analysis, self-liquidation wasn't really that unpleasant a prospect for a man with absolutely nothing to do.
The only thing that was holding Dubov back was the subconscious need to leave someone in life after himself. And Dubov, against all civilized norms--although there was no law forbidding it--had gotten married. It would be hard to say why. Maybe he was fed up with riding along on his own, or maybe it was a last attempt to defy the inertness all around him. In short, he'd given his wife his name and his hearse, as he called the mobile home he lived in, and they had already been riding along together for three days.
The mobile bore them smoothly along the labyrinth of roads. Day was followed by night, and then night waned. Sometimes Dubov would sleep, sometimes Mrs. Dubov, sometimes both of them together. The mobile drove along at the measured, one-and-the-same-for-all statutory speed of 20 meters a second. It would only slacken its pace when it came up to the energy-refueling spigots sticking up out of the ground, sucking them up with its extensible snouts.
On both sides of the road were lanes, and along them the same kind of mobile homes floated past. Singly and in families people sat in them--cheerful and morose, most often indifferent. Dubov's mobile carried him onward with the same kind of intensity and concentration that the oncoming mobiles carried people in the opposite direction. The oncomers were sure that they were the ones rushing forward, while Dubov and the ones in his lane were heading back. Stopping or driving off the lanes marked with colored stripes had been prohibited ever since the adoption of the Law of Compulsory Movement.
Dubov recalled that there had been tall glass buildings in the city when he was a little boy going to the Professional Academy for the Propagation of Traffic, but the constant stream of mobile homes had grown ever stronger. The streets had gotten too crowded, and that's when they had decided to tear down all the buildings. Anyway, people were now obliged to spend most of their lives in traffic. Houses that stayed in one place had begun to be considered relics of the past. Living in a home like that meant that you couldn't be constantly progressing. But here in a mobile you were always on view. Nasty thoughts about your intimate life wouldn't even occur to anyone.
Gardens and parks had also been banished from the city, since nobody voluntarily went anywhere on foot anyway. To endorse the single candidate for city-council elections, everybody would drive to a concourse at the full moon and indicate their approval by use of a number of signal lights that were prohibited for ordinary use under the threat of pedestrianization. Mornings, mobile schools would overtake the homes and snatch up school-age children, and, in the afternoon, their parents would take them back again.
Dubov remembered another time as well, when he had just come of age. The idea of freeing people from having to drive themselves around had led to excessive independence for the mobiles. That was the beginning of the Era of Superfluous Independence of Things. Mobiles began to decide for themselves where to carry their people. An excessive increase in deaths from hunger and illness resulted because the vehicles in no way wanted to bring their own wishes into line with the needs of the people on board. In some places mobiles had even begun to reproduce themselves. So then the complete automation of the mobiles was prohibited.
Dubov was sitting, leaning back in an armchair, looking forward. There was something eternally absorbing in this: simply looking and simply watching the road of life running past beneath you. His wife was sitting next to him, and her eyes were looking slackly ahead as well. They were almost mute, since people who have reached total mutual understanding have nothing to dispute, not even opinions to exchange. When people had the same feelings and the same thoughts they might never have to speak. Everything was clear, even without words. You rode along and you thought about whatever you wanted, or you didn't think at all. You could recall the past, be it frightful or pleasant. Either way you recalled it with a smile, quietly, because you knew that nothing except the monotonous road would ever repeat itself. From time to time Dubov threw his gaze onto his wife. Her profile, with its slightly plump lips, was dear to him.
He had met her at the Non-Technical Relations Youth Club. On the upper gallery there were designated entrances for the elderly. At the big arena in the center mobiles paired off and danced. Then they would push off from each other, do a wheelie, and, excusing themselves, drive off to the side. Armored traffic controllers would rush about from pair to pair, punishing the ones doing forbidden dance steps with quick jolts of electricity.
Catching sight of a girl with full lips through a windshield, Dubov had understood who it was he had been searching for this last half century. He dialed the number of her mobile on his videophone. Dubov was rude for starters. He said that he hated her, that he couldn't stand her parents or the poisonous color of her mobile. Bad language was the only remaining manifestation of humanity. And the little girl had straightaway blushed to the roots, correctly taking the offensive words as a declaration of love. They had then pulled together at the exit and signed her mobile over to a school to be assigned to the next person to come of age . . .
The orderly flow of Dubov's thoughts was interrupted by a red shaft of light, blinding him. The brakes hissed, the mobile stood still. Dubov's eyes clouded over, and his wife's widened with sympathy. In front of the halted streams of traffic a convoy of four vehicles was escorting a file of people across the road. They dragged themselves along dispiritedly, dressed in gray robes. Their road was without end. These were convicts, those who had tried to reconfigure their mobiles for manual driving, in order to drive wherever they wanted at their own will. They had been condemned to walk on foot for various terms: 27 years, 51, 104. The longevity achieved by medical science had given judges the opportunity to impose more just and flexible terms of punishment on the convicted, including shortening their lifespans.
The green light showed, and the mobiles took off down the road.
Dubov could feel that they were approaching the margins of the city. He hadn't seen anything, but more likely guessed, understood by scarcely perceptible smells, that in the distance, around the turn, lay a narrow strip of forest, a green coniferous forest . . .
Dubov hadn't been in the woods for eighty years, or maybe all of ninety. The present generation didn't even know what the fresh scent of a forest was. In school they were taught that air was a gas for breathing, first poisoned by the burning of lead batteries, and then, thanks to the wise care of the Supreme Council, cleaned up by the air-conditioning system. The smell of natural vegetation--they were taught--caused allergies, asthma, congenital abnormalities, and conjunctivitis. That's why greenery in the cities had been completely done away with.
Dubov would have given his whole life--with what pleasure!-- to spend a few hours in the woods, at some brook's side. But that would never happen. He had come to the age when he had to go to eternity. Old people were obliged to think of the best interests of society. He had been given a year of grace for reflection. And then two black cubes would show up, trailing behind his mobile. They would hound him until he killed himself, crashing over the precipice.
In front of Dubov's mobile flashed a Restricted sign. The mobile turned around on the viaduct and drove at a small angle back towards the highway and the opposite end of the city, there to turn around again and once more move on.
When the mobile started to float off, moving away from the narrow blue strip of woods, Dubov's heart began to ache. He knew that his wife would soon give birth to their son. It was nice that they had been allowed a boy. Then everything would take its course again. Dubov would send him to the school where he'd sent the two little girls he'd had with his previous wife. The boy would come of age and receive his own mobile and would ride around until he reached 176, just like Dubov himself was riding around, unless, in those times to come, lifespans had to be statutorily shortened by another ten years because of overpopulation. The boy wouldn't be dreaming of the narrow blue strip of forest. He would never even know what it was.
Dubov shook off these melancholy thoughts and looked intently into his wife's eyes. She understood him. And although she was young and would be able to ride on for another 152 years, she agreed, and closed her eyes as a mark of that agreement.
After that they rode on for about another month. While Dubov awaited his son, he was painstakingly going over his project in his mind. He considered all the details, many times riding out to the ends of the city, picking out the most suitable spot. His mobile took his wife to the Medical-mobile and drove along behind it until she returned with their son. Now one single thought remained in Dubov's head.
Another three days passed, and their mobile was once more approaching those outskirts of the city. Just at the very limit Dubov glanced around: behind him came another mobile. Dubov looked at his wife sitting next to him with the boy in her arms and made his decision.
Before hitting the brakes, with one finger Dubov ripped out the communications wire connecting their mobile with the Violations Information Control Center. Now he could break the seal on the control lever, something categorically forbidden. All that remained was to grab the steering wheel. Dubov braked carefully, slow and timid with lack of experience. The mobile following behind them slowly overtook him. Fortunately, it was empty.
Sharply turning the wheel to the right at the Restricted sign, Dubov drove off the road and crept slowly along a ravine. Something desperate, almost fanatical, had appeared in his face. His wife didn't say anything, biting her lip and hugging her son tighter to herself. Bouncing over the ruts, the mobile moved ahead to where the narrow strip of woods could be glimpsed on the horizon.
It took the whole day to get to the forest. They almost didn't sleep. The air, cleaner and cleaner, began to invigorate them. Finally the mobile slid along a narrow spit of gravel leading into the forest and they drove on in, shuddering over the ruts.
A little bit further, thought Dubov.
They went downhill and soon found themselves beside a stream. It was a place where Dubov could have spent his whole life. He saw his wife step out of the mobile, set the boy down on the grass, lie down next to him, and dangle her fingers in the water. Patches of red sunlight were even turning her wig the color of gold.
Dubov gazed at them, and a thought gnawed at him, giving him no peace: what next? There were no Death Registrars there--the black cubes. It would take another several hours before the information center would catch on that someone had disappeared without giving a death notice. A search would be mounted, and then all three of them would be subject to a terrible punishment.
And Dubov understood: he had to return, so that there would be no search.
He didn't say anything. He took everything he could out of the mobile--provisions, air, medication--for his wife. She understood that he was leaving and that they would never see each other again. She didn't cry. She stood next to him, holding the boy in her arms. They looked into each other's eyes. He turned and walked away.
Dubov had forgotten how to think, but now he made himself do it. She could live here for some time. And then? It was hard to say what would happen then. The main thing was that in the morning the boy would see the living sun rising from the forest, see the river, the grass, the birds. Wouldn't that be enough?
Dubov got into the mobile, turned it around, and, without looking back, took off up the trail. Nothing else was left in his life. Very soon he would get back onto the road to the city. He would give notice of his death, and, under the supervision of the black funeral cubes, hurtle over the precipice. The precipice that was headed for every day by those who had turned 176.
Translated by Thomas Moore
Published in “Potomac Review”
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