Free Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin Page A

question—those views which assert that organic life on earth serves merely as nourishment for the moon, as the source of emanations which it absorbs. This is incorrect, for the goal of the existence of organic life on earth is not to feed the moon but, as Lenin demonstrated, to build a new society, free from the exploitation of men numbers one, two, and three by men numbers four, five, six, and seven …”
    And so on. He said a lot of other complicated things, but what I remember most vividly is an image that struck me as amazingly poetical: a weight hanging on a chain makes a clock work. The moon is such a weight, the earth is the clock, and life is the ticking of the gears and the singing of the mechanical cuckoo.
    •
    We had fairly frequent medical checkups—they studied every one of us inside and out, which was understandable. So when I heard that Mitiok and I had to have what they called a “reincarnation check”, I thought they would just be testing our reflexes or measuring our blood pressure. I didn’t know what the first word meant.
    But when I was summoned downstairs and I saw the specialist who was going to examine me, I felt an uncontrollable childish fear, which was quite out of place in view of what the immediate future held in store for me.
    The person facing me was not a doctor with a stethoscopesticking out of the pocket of his white coat; he was an officer, a colonel—only he wasn’t wearing a uniform jacket, he was dressed in a strange black robe with epaulettes. He was large and fat, with a red face that looked as though it had been scalded with hot soup. Hanging on a string round his neck were a whistle and a stopwatch, and if not for his eyes, which were like the observation slit of a heavy tank, he would have looked like a football referee. But anyway, he was pleasant enough and laughed a lot, and by the end of the conversation I felt relaxed. He spoke with me in a small office where there was nothing but a table, two chairs, a couch covered with imitation leather, and a door leading into another room. He filled up several yellowish forms, gave me a measuring glass of some bitter liquid to drink, and set a small hourglass on the table. Then he went out through the second door, telling me to follow him when all the sand had fallen through the hourglass.
    I remember watching the hourglass and being amazed at how slowly the grains of sand tumbled down through the narrow glass neck, until I realised that it was because each grain had its own will, and none of them wanted to fall, because for them that was the same as dying. And at the same time they had no choice, it was inevitable. The next world and this one are just like this hourglass, I thought: when everyone alive has died in one direction, reality is inverted and they come to life again; that is, they begin to die in the opposite direction.
    This made me feel sad for a while, and then I noticed that the grains of sand had stopped falling a long timeago, and I ought to go and join the colonel. I felt agitated, and at the same time strangely light and airy; I remember taking ages to walk to the door behind which he was waiting for me, although in fact it was only two or three steps away. I reached for the handle and pushed, but the door didn’t open. Then I tried pulling it towards me, and suddenly noticed that I was pulling not at a door but at a blanket. I was lying in my bed, and Mitiok was sitting on the edge. I felt dizzy.
    “Well? What was it like in there?” asked Mitiok. He looked oddly excited.
    “What? Where?” I asked, raising myself up on one elbow and trying to think what had happened.
    “At the reincarnation check,” said Mitiok.
    “Hang on,” I said, remembering how I’d just been pulling on a door handle, “hang on … No. I don’t remember a thing.”
    I felt strangely empty and lonely, as though I’d been walking through fields in autumn for a long time. This was such an unusual feeling that I forgot everything