History, it turns out, does not vanish. It simply changes frequency.
This spring wrecked all our plans, especially one short phrase: “No to war.” Now there’s no difference between an investigator and a precinct officer: everyone was thrown against a placard. I packed up picketers for fines of thirty to fifty thousand. In the evening we watch the talking head of the TV general, then switch to the Emperor’s streams: we learn to recognize sedition and at the same time find out the truth.…
I gave a choice: three to five thousand here, or the full treatment there. We filled out the protocols fifty-fifty and ate dinner together, right in the department. While the Emperor spoke of forty-nine helicopters at the Kherson parking, I cracked an egg but poured it not into the pan but into the trash. A whole yolk drifted down among yesterday’s pineapple scraps. Good thing Petrovich didn’t notice.
The lull isn’t because the war is ending: the supply line has lengthened, stocks are spent, a pause is needed. All six humanitarian corridors lead to Russia. That isn’t humanism, it’s cover for regrouping. The helicopters at Kherson stood close together: wrong calculations.
The next day Semyonych stopped being a policeman and became a hunter shooting at his own. Boris shot those who had come to kill. Semyonych shot those who forced others to kill: one of Petrovich’s bosses, then a second, then a third. And Petrovich received promotions. Both watched the streams. Both believed they were right. A war from within began.