For Giagia, without whom I would never have heard the voices inside my head

Searching

I go out in the early morning, with all that it entails, the meagre volume of the pods headphones in my ears and my old guitar hanging from my shoulder. Rome is a whore and, when she wants to, she is able to give you the best of herself: a perfectly blue sky, the already warm sun, a virtually clean pavement. At this time Sandrines shop is shut, obviously. I wouldve liked to see her once more and, more than anything, I wouldve liked to hear her voice again, her unmistakeably French accent. I have always pretended with Sandrine to be crazy about the way she talks. The truth is, I wasnt pretending. In the end, what has this city ever given me? A French accent, two Ukrainian eyes, two Moroccan hands, a Brazilian body, an Afghan scent, a Turkish flavour, a Japanese silence. It has left me the special cases. I dont really need to see her. In the last few months Ive gone out punctually every morning to be present at the opening of the shop. Ive watched her open the first shutter, stand with her hands on her hips, take five steps to the left, open the second shutter, look at the fingers of her right hand, turn the corner, stop, look at her high heels by turning her head to the left, with a slight twist of her torso, half open the third shutter, absent-mindedly brush her palms lightly against her breasts while taking another five steps, open the last shutter, turn on the spot with a sort of pirouette, bend forward and pass under the shutter into the dim light inside while showing her backside, fleetingly, to the world. At this time in the morning the cars are all parked carelessly, as if theyve also fallen asleep with their drivers, across zebra crossings, double or triple parked. Theyll wake up suddenly in that position, with horns blaring or a few choice swearwords ready to explode. I walk a mile along deserted and artificially silent streets, dry leaves and rubbish swirling in the wind, a space the animals have slowly carved for themselves in the city over the last few years. The road along the Tiber across from the Navy Ministry has a craggy embankment protected by a low wall. The drop from the Matteotti Bridge down to the bank is about forty feet. That should be more than enough. Walking slowly, I peer into the parked cars: everybodys sleeping completely dressed. Their shoddy but expensive-looking jackets, designer suits worn with appalling accessories, branded shoes, cars just off the assembly line, brand-new-looking motor-scooters discarded on the tarmac. The last stray dogs retreat to their hidden lairs, who knows where, as though following some arcane biological clock. The humans will wake up to the illusion that they can claim some right of ownership of the streets. My guitars still at my side, as its constantly been over the last twenty-five years. I remember all the times that Ive learnt to play it, all the times that Ive forgotten how to and had to start all over again, the rains, the summers, all the times its saved my life. Last night I had time: I meticulously polished the case and the handle, and I tuned it as best I could. It never looked as beautiful to me before. If public transport is our punishment during the day, at this time in the morning buses and trams are really frightening, dormant, crowded with dirty, purple faces and bad breath, yet theyre ready to spring into action and make up for lost time. Im in no hurry. The Matteotti Bridge is at the end of the Milizie Boulevard, a sad, tree-lined road choked by barracks and courthouses. When its so silent its endearing: nobody runs without caring who they step over, nobody screams, nobody blows their horn, nobody ends up on the tarmac with their motor-scooters (they are all already on the ground anyway). I cross the bridge without looking down; my feet move on their own, following the rhythm of the music. I sit down on the low wall to contemplate the muddy but quiet river below, the water an unearthly colour I no longer pay attention to. I sit still for a few minutes listening to the same piece, which starts again and again, always a little different from the time before. Then, suddenly, the music crackles and stops. The pods dead; its given up too. With a nearly solemn gesture I take the headphones off my head, wrap up the cord and then toss them into the water. Goodbye, my faithful friend. As improbable as it is, Im not alone. Theres another person sitting a few feet away from me, and hes not sleeping. His long and greasy hair covers his profile and suggests a stubbly beard and crumpled face. An electric guitar, a light-brown Telecaster with a wrecked wooden case, lies abandoned on the pavement. Another manguitar pair, another painful story. The guitar has two strings missing. When men give up they lose their teeth, nails or hair: the guitars of the men who give up lose their strings. Are you mad? says the man with the dirty hair, with a husky voice in a marked American accent. He hadnt turned; hed simply spoken suddenly, making me jump. The man stinks and rocks gently back and forth, following his own silent rhythm. What do you mean, am I mad? I ask defensively. No matter how much I might believe Im weird, I dont like to be told. The other shakes his head slowly and, still without turning, mumbles, No, no, no. Youre mad, you threw music into the river. A man? Yes, ok. A guitar? Maybe. But music, no way. That voice. I know that voice. I frown and peer closer. Even though it isnt really warm, the man with the greasy hair is only wearing a light cotton jacket open on his naked chest, a pair of trousers even dirtier than the jacket and a pair of old, worn-soled trainers without laces. He looks a bum like many others but his voice, no, his voice is quite distinctive. Eddie? I ask incredulous. Eddie, is that you? The man turns slowly and before hes even turned enough to face me there is no more doubt. His eyes are puffy, the beard long, his body worn out but thats him for sure. Its Eddie Vedder. His face in a frightful sneer, his uninterrupted silent rocking rhythm is now shaken by a tremor. Go away! he roars. What are you doing here, Eddie? His stench keeps me at a safe distance. I feel a strong impulse to go away. Yes, I really should go. With an effort I put the thought aside and concentrate my attention on Eddie, whos started to talk again, this time in English. violence. Because mine was a form of violence, wasnt it? And now I cannot bear to think of my past. But you have talent. I am surprised at the fluidity of my English, which I havent practised for at least a decade. Therere so many people who adore you, you have your poetry No, I have nothing. I dont have anything anymore. Ive never had anything. Look around you. The worlds going the wrong way. It makes no sense to be an artist, its never made any sense to us. Were reduced to this, to play for money. There are no more dreams, theres no more happiness. Youre dead, Im dead, were all already dead. Eddie stands up and walks to the edge of the bank, without any care. He doesnt stop, casting off any lingering instinct of preservation. Wait! Eddie Vedders presence and his apparent intention to end it all have changed everything. Eddie, listen. I know I cant tell you not to jump, I was I cant say it, I cant listen to myself saying the truth. Id come here for the same reason. In the pod I threw away there were dozens of versions of one of your songs, the one about suicide. Cant you see the absurdity of it? All I ask you is that you dont do it while Im here. Just wait until Im gone, ok? Im going now; then do whatever you want, ok? My guitar, Eddie says. Take it, if you want it. Eddie I stand up, raising and lowering my hand to say wait and he looks at me questioningly, and Im reminded that the Americans dont understand our hand gestures. I pick up the guitar. Its heavy and really worn out, but the handles perfect. I move away without turning my back on him. Eddie looks at me impassively, his feet hanging over the drop. I cant look away, and my right foot finds the first step of the stairs to the bridge. I stumble. Eddies guitar drops on the grassy bank, while I instinctively hug mine to my chest to protect it. I find myself sitting on the steps. I can see my clumsiness in his eyes, a very frequent look Ive never managed to get used to. His last glance. He turns and relaxes. Hes lost all interest in me. I start to play, C-F-G-E-D-G-E, the start of Immortality, the guitar awkwardly resting on my right thigh. My hands tremble and stumble, but I carry on. In the song the verse is repeated four times. I play it five, ten, twenty times. Dont jump, Eddie, please dont do it. I start the verse, E-B-G-A-A-D-D-D-B, and repeat this too, twice, ten, a thousand times. Just when Eddie is ready to jump, just when this damned city is about to swallow its umpteenth victim, just when my gaze is completely blurred by my tears and I look away from the river, it happens. Suddenly, Im a long way away, away from this music, from this bridge, from this death. Im elsewhere. My hands have stopped playing music and have started to produce pure sentiment. Eddie becomes aware of this. He turns towards me, and a look of wonder slowly appears in his eyes. He gets off the wall, sits down and is still for a moment, as if trying to grasp something beyond the music. Then he starts to rock back and forth again, just like when I found him. When was that? A minute ago? A year ago? Perhaps a century ago. I couldnt say. Finally he starts to sing: Vacate is the word

Vengeance has no place so near to her

Cannot find comfort in this world

While this magic takes place I let my mind fly over this wounded city, which, in the meantime, has suddenly woken up, all at once. I see Sandrine. I see her arrive at the block where I live. She opens the shop, looks around with her nose in the air, as if sniffing it or listening to a distant sound. Eddie stops singing and at the same time my hands stop. He walks to me and flicks my cheek gently, as youd do to a child, then lifts his guitar and points to the metal badge on the back of the case, where a number is engraved. Keep it, he repeats. He turns around and walks away, bringing the fist of his left hand to his ear, with the thumb and little finger extended. I look for Sandrine peering through the glass shop window but I cant see her. Shes hiding behind the corner. She appears in front of me out of nowhere, as if to ambush me. I was thinking about you, she tells me in her strong French accent. She considers the two guitars hanging from my shoulders, and perhaps sees something untoward in my expression. I was thinking about you too, I answer, rearranging my face into what might pass for a friendly smile. You have two guitars. Are you some sort of musician? Sort of. Kurt? Kurt, you tried to kill yourself. Kurt?

Love

PREFACE

The current report on access to administrative documents is the natural chronological successor to the preceding documents. The objective remains that of ensuring a precise and timely response to requests from the Competent Authority pursuant to the activities undertaken by the Administrative Documents Diffusion Vigilance and Control Committee (henceforth referred to as ADDVCC).

In the current year the legislative system has undergone a profound and significant overhaul, with consequent necessary changes needing to be implemented in the administrative component of ADDVCC and with the relative introduction of new members to replace their predecessors, whom we thank sincerely for the activities they have undertaken and whose tragic loss we remember in the spirit, which continues unchanged, of considering the limitations of access to documents as an essential form of control of citizens on the part of the Public Administration.

The ADDVCC has preliminarily considered that the request should have been declared inadmissible as it does not meet the prerequisite of Art. 17 of the Presidential Decree no. 14/001 of the Italian Free Separate Republic.

Furthermore, taking into account this particular case, its non-conformity to the prescribed requirements was not attributable to the applicant but rather a consequence of the anomalous temporal discrepancy between the date of implementation of the law and the implementation of the relative statute, and considering the need to provide a prompt response to a request for justice, it is considered opportune to consider the request in question as the simple forwarding of documentation, for the purpose of allowing the ADDVCC to express an opinion with the objective of pointing the activity of the Administration towards legitimate solutions.

The right of the option for the applicant to make a further formal request of analogous tenor in accordance with the requirements of Art. 17 of the statute is not affected.

We must express our profound and dutiful gratitude towards all the members of the ADDVCC for the work they have undertaken and will undertake in future with regard to this issue, fundamental for a lawful democracy: the selective censorship to be applied to the distribution of administrative documents.

At night-time, Rome disappears from maps, from radar screens, from everything. The lights of the thousands of cars that occupy every free space, from wall to wall, on those few streets where circulation is still allowed or those without armed checkpoints, armed robots, armed drones, go out. The arms industry had to be supported in some way; this might have been the reason for the installation of six thousand machine guns around the capital. Thousands of people sleep in doorways and on the few tarmac-covered areas not occupied by cars. Theyre the startled, who havent had time to get back home before the Sleep overcomes them. Five minutes warning is not much, not much at all. A radio signal spreads from the antennae on every roof, and in no time at all you pass out. Five minutes earlier a short siren gives a warning of the imminent switching off of collective consciousness and common thinking. In five minutes youve time to switch off the engine, to lie down in bed (or on the ground if there are no alternatives) and to turn off water or gas. Supplies are suspended in any case but going to sleep with the gas turned on could be a problem on Awakening. And then you sort of die, the only difference being that the following day, at eight oclock sharp, youre alive again. The lights are turned off to save energy, precious and ever more expensive. Pitch darkness finally envelopes the city while the stars shine brightly in the sky, sad and lonely, without anyone able to see them. Only the hospitals remain switched on, asleep but switched on: vital support equipment, some robots, some control panels. The hospitals have invaded the city since the nuclear accidents. The large hotels had already been sequestrated, one by one, after the closure of the borders, by the central state. After the attacks, it became necessary to transform them into hospitals. Its a city of sick people and nurses, and a few doctors; it could be renamed United General Hospitals. Its something in the blood of Romes people. Literally. A substance made up of mechanical nano-particles that infiltrate, control and interfere with our systems and, at the given signals, turn us off (or on). It was carried by mosquitoes, added to the water. Its contagious, and compulsory. They check us looking for it, they test our blood. Its the Presidents idea. God forbid if they dont find it; everybody has it, its for the common good, for the city, the nation. There are rumours though. Someone, a friend, an acquaintance, a relative in the government, they say that they dont have this substance, theyre immune or even immunised, vaccinated, and this someone walks through the dark and sleeping city at night, goes into peoples homes, hurts people. The people of Rome dont normally think of this; they go to work (if they are lucky) or more likely they spend their days trying to get their car to advance a few feet. Their waking time has been reduced but it has become much more intense: work, eat, work, sleep. Experts say that well live longer, that well all die centenarians. Well all die, thats for sure. They say that the results of this experiment, the first in the world on such a large scale, will open doors to a new concept of life, perhaps even a new stage in the evolution of human beings. The home problem didnt become apparent immediately after the introduction of the new work law, even though its a direct consequence of it. The law states that there must be a distance limit of one mile between home and the workplace, with a very long list of possible exceptions and dispensations. One mile in Rome is a minuscule distance, impossible to relate to the size of the city, and people, as has often happened in the history of Rome, simply ignored the new law in the beginning. Its easy to recognise those who have been granted an exception or a waiver: they stay shut in their cars throughout the day, often for several days running. They eat and sleep in the drivers seat, and they relieve themselves anywhere they can. Ultimately this was the main reason for the law being applied so thoroughly, and not because of armed guards and not even because companies have been compelled to comply with the law on pain of enforced closure. The only companies are the hospitals and their ancillary businesses and, in Rome, hospitals are everywhere. And yet all the streets not yet closed to traffic seem to be overflowing with people camping on pavements and in their cars. Public transports something else. The term camping barely applies. You can see empty buses travel at incredible speed on deserted preferential lanes, the drivers not bothering to stop at the deserted stops and yet, at the same time, in the untidy mess of ordinary traffic, you can see buses full to the brim of people, stationary in the same spot for days, engine turned off, seeking protection from heat and cold with makeshift solutions. Theyre small sedentary nomad communities that have elected, through need or choice, to have the precarious orange shelter as a temporary home. The lucky ones in this collection of humanity, of disparate origins and often accompanied by pedigree pets of virtually unrecognisable breeds, have found shelter under a roof, inside a building. About half of the citys apartments still fit for habitation are occupied by heterogeneous groups; its the end of the family and the beginning of new and unprecedented social forms. Living alone is a luxury that only the chosen few can afford. These flats are rarely owned or rented by the occupants. Theyve simply been occupied; theyre the most apparent manifestation of a radical change in social mores. The unconvinced and unconvincing campaign waged by some newspapers against this trend spreading like wildfire quickly foundered in the face of the phenomenons success. Alternative modes of transport, although not explicitly forbidden, havent proven to be very successful: there are no motorcycles and few bicycles. There are, however, innumerable pedestrians, whove quickly adapted to the new status quo and consider the cars wedged against each other as a bumpy but passable layer, which they scramble over while ignoring the curses from the people in the car interiors under their feet. Mothers, children, office workers, the odd particularly nimble dog, professionals, they all bounce carelessly from one roof to the next, stepping over bonnets and boots, trying with a modicum of success to avoid contact with the ground unless absolutely necessary. The interview. Todays the day of the interview. At home I find A, hanging upside down on the wall under her hammock. The others have gone already, apart from Ubi who, as always, is munching on dry bread while looking out of the window. A looks at the two guitars with curiosity. Dad? May I call you Dad? I put down the guitars on the camp bed and slide down to sit on the floor. Must you ask me every single time? I may, though, is that right? I got scared, you were gone, she tells me with her thin little voice. Like the last time. The last time? I hardly finish asking my question before she somersaults towards her metal closet, high up, wedged in the corner between the ceiling and the wall. In less than thirty seconds shes again on my camp bed with an open notebook in her hand. Her writings very tidy for a ten-year-old child: Today at Awakening Dad wasnt here. Everybody was here but not Dad, and I was scared. Thankfully he arrived shortly after, with his guitar. He was dirty but was ok. As it was impossible for me not to be there at Awakening, I look at her with a strange expression. Its not possible for someone not to be there at Awakening. Before Awakening we sleep, what else? What are you saying? Today you were not here at Awakening, were you? Have you forgotten? Yes. Now Ill get washed and go for my interview.

Im sitting in a room surrounded by blobs made up of variable proportions of flesh, bones and silicone. Its hot and my buttocks stick to the chairs resin seat so well that I wont be able to stand up without a resounding suction plop. The afternoon light, soiled by the glass of a metal-framed window, falls on the too-big clock blurting an annoying bang every minute, seemingly cutting it in half. The shining handle of my guitar rests on a wall too quickly, or just ineptly, repainted yellow not long ago. I am in here. The years of research spent by laboratories all over the world to discover chemical substances able to cover or mask body odours dont impede me detecting the strong smell of armpits and, I fear, pubes, in the air I breathe. I reorganise my body and my expression so as to encourage observers to believe they are standing in the presence of a relaxed, even a pleasant man. All these moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. On the large, badly restored and badly polished mahogany table are the greasy and, I suspect, indelible prints of three authorities: the President, the Department Director and the Manager. I cant yet tell which is which. On the opposite side of the room from the windows, under a hairdo in the shape of an eighteenth-century chandelier, of a reddish colour of clearly inorganic origin, sits the shell of a woman, essentially undressed, so as not to hide the investment of her secretarys salary in plastic surgery. On the table in front of me theres a large hairy spider with a little pole stuck in his back, at the top of which a sort of red magnifying glass and a miniature television screen are wedged, which frame a pair of lips, also red. It doesnt take me long to figure out those lips are mine. My god, the spider breathes in and out making the little pole rock precariously, and yet my lips remain perfectly framed. They look as if Im wearing lipstick. The man on my left, whose body could do with two chairs to be properly supported and whose eyes frequently appear to be out of focus, adjusts his pink tie and starts to speak with a shrill and slightly choked voice. On the table theres a neat stack of A4 paper, printed using a cheap printer in draft mode. When each page has been read, its stacked face down, forming a new, hopelessly untidy stack. His delivery is peppered with snorts and ahems and puffing noises as if the oxygen in the room isnt enough to fill up his body. Who have we got here? You have worked for many years as security manager for, how many, three companies I imagine they all belonged to your father spread across Italy. No activism and, considering who your father is, we can take it that there is no republican sympathy. Application made two hundred days ago, with voluminous attached documentation, which, in your view, should demonstrate that your case falls within the exceptions envisaged by Art. 3, which regulates the subject of access to workplaces more than a mile away from ones residence. Summing up, you maintain that if the workplace were at zero altitude at sea level your case would comfortably fall within the provisions of the Third Law. There are several tables in which you have recorded, over several months, the travel time between your residence and the entrance to the booth. There are biometric charts which supposedly demonstrate the feasibility of a well-trained physique to walk 1.1 mile in a time less than thirty minutes. All this is very interesting. The only thing is, I do not seem to find your specific competences for a role of such responsibility anywhere. It would be helpful it is not essential but it would help if you could advise us in a few words on your position with regard to this. They look at me with an expression which is bored more than apprehensive. The secretary taps briefly the lampshade of hair on her head, which instantly returns to its original position following its own laws of physics. The spider is revolting. One of the other two looks at the fat man and then says, What a piece of shit. Are there any other candidates for this shitty job? No, answers the Manager. Im relaxed, even pleasant. When do I start? Right away, you prick, answers the Manager, tossing me an orange vest.

So today its my first day as theoretical parking attendant at the Cavalieri Pavilion of the United General Hospital in Rome, or UGH, as it is known here. The post of theoretical parking attendant is a job with great responsibilities, especially for a pavilion like the Cavalieri, which is within the city perimeter. The gigantically fat Manager has explained everything in one hour of induction. In practice my job is theoretical so theres absolutely nothing for me to do. Parking space at the Cavalieri was coveted by all drivers in the area even before the hotel was converted into a hospital, but in those days the management was quite relaxed and often a good dose of nerves was enough to ensure a safe parking space. When the Cavalieri was converted and annexed to the UGH, a series of ever more stringent measures were introduced to remedy the untenable parking situation. A simple barrier was installed at first, one of those with white and red oblique bands, on the pavement by the entrance, so as not to spoil the beautiful paved area at the front of the building. This little detail, however, made the barrier useless because, as it was placed on municipal ground and not on UGHs property, it was obliged to stay open day and night. Instead of moving the barrier back a few feet, the UGH initiated a harsh and, I believe, very expensive legal battle. It is a matter of principle, the then Administrator as well as President of Everything stated, although I never quite understood what particular principle he was referring to. In any case, it was agreed that the barrier could only be operated by a public servant. It was more or less at that time that the first parking attendant was employed with the theoretical task of raising and lowering the barrier. Theoretical, of course, because the parking attendant wasnt a public servant and therefore wasnt allowed to raise or lower anything. So, after a barrage of legal injunctions, the Municipality of Rome, whose Mayor is also the UGH Administrator, as well as the President of Everything (there must be a reason for him being called that), contrived to prevent the parking attendant from operating the barrier, which has since remained open. The UGH then retaliated by installing a set of four retractable bollards, those little remote-controlled posts that go up and down to allow or prevent the passage of vehicles. I cant really explain why but these bollards were also installed on the pavement. Perhaps it was because the company that won the tender (incidentally also owned by the President of Everything) didnt want to ruin the paved area in front of the Cavalieri, which is really something. Unfortunately the bollards were never used, other than perhaps on the first day, because immediately the Mayor took legal action against the Administrator and then the Administrator took legal action against the company that had installed the bollards. In practice, the President took legal action against himself, twice. Another similar palaver, as expensive as the one about the barrier, took place and ended up in the same way: the bollards can only be operated by a public servant and, because there are none, the bollards have to remain down day and night. As the UGH got bigger, or ballooned rather, and similar episodes were taking place throughout the northern area of the city, which was being progressively sequestrated, the President decided to put pressure on the federal government (of which he was also President, as hes the President of Everything) to pass a law to create a buffer zone in the streets near the UGHs pavilions so as to prevent the circulation and parking of private vehicles by using tractors, so perfectly replicating the Compulsory Street Reclamation for Preferential Lanes, which had already been in place for some time. In this way Compulsory Street Reclamation for Areas surrounding Treatment Centres was implemented, and tractors were brought in to grind up parked cars with their great blades and to crash into those trying to access the street reclamation area without a valid radio permit. And this is where we come in: I, 300 marks for two hours work a day, one hour in the morning and one hour at night, while being on call for the rest of the day, and a Manager (a word that you must always capitalise and above all must always PRONOUNCE in capitals!) who, judging by how he carries himself, must surely have been a serial killer at some point, possibly pardoned because related to someone important. This is what Ive to do: wear the compulsory orange plastic jacket with reflective stripes (today its really sunny but Ill have to wear it in all weathers), hold in my left hand the remote control to the barrier Im not authorised to use, and in my right hand the remote control to the retractable bollards Im not authorised to use, smile an obligatory smile to everybody walking through the car park, that is, everybody who has a valid radio permit. That means everybody (I have the feeling at times that Im the only one in the world not to have a radio permit). In my ears buzzes the constant noise of metal being ground by tractors, of horns tooting, protests and the occasional fire shot (the mufflers clearly only work within the car park and certainly not on the pavement). Im a car park attendant, but only in theory. One hour of smiling at everybody goes quickly. I dont know anyone, nobody knows me: its bliss. I smile, and then smile some more. As soon as I finish my shift Ill pick up my guitar, which Ive left in the guard booth, and Ill wander off through the hospital. The beauty of this job is that theres no need to think; theres nothing you need to think about. And yet I do nothing but think. I think about the past and the thread running through my existence, my solidity, the lucidity that has been my companion from the beginning, perhaps even from when I was born. A strange solidity (I smile) which takes me back to the past (I smile again), which leaves me perplexed, alienated. I know nothing about this place and yet it feels vaguely familiar: perhaps its connected to the temporary loss of this lucidity. It happens sometimes. Its as if I cant focus on something, only there is nothing to focus on; for a few seconds I feel detached from the whole world. Then everything falls back into place again and nothing remains of this moment of disorientation but a sequence of faded images, to be added to the similar and ever-blurrier images Ive accumulated throughout my life. Its happened today too. Something happened this morning, I dont know what. I remember Sandrine, I remember music, I remember the early morning (but this is clearly impossible). My shifts coming to an end. I smile, and smile again. A man in his seventies signals to me to get closer. I smile but dont move. Nothing dissuades me from thinking that Ive been the victim of some sort of experiment. My father used to do experiments on me. If were where we are with all the substances running through our bodies, the usual ones, I mean, the transmitters, the sleep inducers, that sort of thing, I cant help but think that at some point something mustve gone wrong. He made me ingest so many substances that I find it impossible to point a finger and say it was this one or that one. Theres a particular one, however, which goes so very far back in time, one that makes me look at the world as its not, thats to say, untidy, chaotic, full of dangers. At least, Ive always assumed that it was because of that substance. I was little, that time is perhaps my first memory, and this idea I have that I am strange or wrong in some way, perhaps it comes from them, my father or my stepmother, or perhaps, later, my twin sister. I glance at the booth, one like any other if it wasnt for it holding my guitar, the summation of my life, sort of: I try, I learn a piece, I improve to near perfection and then, if I stop for an instant, its finished, forgotten, dispersed in a memory which is no longer mine. And I have to start again. Perhaps this is why Im so attached to this guitar, because I hate it. The notion that my actions might be bizarre, not through my own free will but because of a dosage error, a sort of chemical joke, has certainly been a consolation, perhaps more for the people around me than for me. As for me, the worlds always seemed simple, clear, rigid, lucid, but impossible to grasp. Clear, apart from the occasional confusion, of course. How do I know for sure that I wouldnt be confused anyway? Isnt it true that everybody feels confused sooner or later? Everybody, apart from my sister, that is. Im sure of it: shes never been confused. We are twins, but why did they bring us up to be so different? What does she have that I dont? Why didnt they experiment on her? Im sure theyve experimented on me scores of times. How did she manage to become so stable? How did she manage to master the world? I cannot deny the allure of no free will; I think perhaps that its always been like that. Someone injects me with something, they make me inhale something, they touch me, they make me drink something, there are so many ways to take nano-substances. And I change, I act like a robot, I do things that in the end I no longer remember, apart from some fleeting sensation. Its useful. Ive found a good replacement for religion; perhaps we all have. My first memory is of something I drank as a child. People were coming to dinner and, as at the time we were living in only two rooms, this meant some sort of reorganisation: the sofa would be moved to the bedroom where we all slept, and vice versa all the available chairs would be moved to the living room. I was little and I dont remember all the details well. I dont remember who the guests were that night, what we had to eat, what people were talking about. Whats certain is that at a certain point, engrossed in their grown-up affairs, they left me and my sister alone to play on the sofa in the bedroom. Lets call it that, but it was also the place where my parents, or phoney parents, also worked and Im sure they called it the study. I dont even know if I was already able to walk, but I dont think so. At one point my twin sister, who was already much more advanced than I was, left the room, me alone on the sofa with my reduced (or nil) mobility. I remember hearing distant voices, a feeling similar to the one you might have in the moments immediately before sleep. The voices were both distant and at the same time echoing inside me. The sofa, hurriedly moved to make room for the guests arriving, had its back against the large table on which my father carried out his experiments. I dont know if they were the first ones but, judging by the results, Id say that hed already made good progress. I drank from a vial full of rusty-coloured liquid and the acrid hot taste alerted me that all was not as it should be. I spat it out and I screamed, most likely. I mustve been a fright to look at. The rusty-coloured liquid scattered everywhere might have looked like blood; I was screaming at the top of my lungs because of the awful taste in my mouth and my father, rushing into the room and knocking over everything he bumped into, contributed to the chaos the room had become. But I remember well, or at least I seem to remember well, the terrified expression on my fathers face when he realised that his sons throat hadnt been slashed with a kitchen knife and he wasnt bleeding to death but had simply drunk something from one of his vials. It was a terror Id never seen on the face of an adult, and it left a mark. Still today I occasionally think of those eyes open wide and the mouth distorted in a terrifying grimace. I called Dad? to ask for help. I needed to be reassured that the horrible taste in my mouth wouldnt harm me or kill me; I needed him to dispel the fear I felt in seeing the terror in their eyes, their frenzied gestures. When you are little and you cant talk, sometimes all youre able to say is Dad?. I dont remember if they made me drink water but it must certainly have been the case, nor do I remember being washed. The bathroom was not inside the flat but at the end of a corridor that seemed to go on forever, in my childs eyes. I remember that just before falling asleep, my fear dissipated and my spirit soothed, I saw and heard my Russian pretend-mother (who we simply called Phoney) asking What you find there?, tears streaming down her face. What you find? The basement of the Cavalieri is the bowels of Monte Mario: tunnels and linking passages that sink dozens of feet inside the hill, already important at the time the Via Francigena was established, some ancient and forgotten until the conversion works started. Only the first four levels have been restored; the lower levels are still closed and in part unexplored. Who works here refers to the section now concealed by enormous steel gates or by cement casts as the Indian Burial Ground, and they never say this with a smile. The division into levels is itself rather arbitrary because of the continuously changing inclines in the corridors. On the map what has been named as level 2 appears similar to a large cart wheel: an irregularly circular corridor on the outside, linked to a central room by numerous, not entirely straight rays. This wheel is adorned with bean-shaped rooms, some roughly carved into the rock, some more regular in shape and even occasionally absolutely square, linked to each other by further smaller, irregularly shaped passages. The lifts arriving from the pavilion above reach down to the large external corridor but if you follow the circular corridor on foot you find that the central room is only three steps away from the level below. The same thing happens at 3 level, which has a completely different, grid-shaped map, where one of the lab service lifts is at a level higher than that of the lift reserved for the public at the 2 level. If you consider the poor illumination and the fact that it isnt at all difficult to deeply penetrate these meandering tunnels (its for this reason that the administration has taken steps to employ private guards and parking attendants), its easy to understand how the tunnels have gained such a poor reputation in a very short time. The last and deepest level is used only for the automatic dumping of waste through dedicated vertical chutes linked to the labs, the canteen and the higher levels. One of the high-speed transport channels runs through the hills belly, towards the Vesuvian Central Bionuclear Plant, and these chutes intersect the monorail channel at a completely automated station, where the shuttles stop, are loaded with waste and re-launched at the incredible speed theyre capable of towards the distant Vesuvius. A cave of several hundred cubic feet filled with human skeletons was found during the excavation of the station, and some of the skeletons were removed and catalogued before an order came from up high to resolve the impasse with the weight of cement. The skeletons, dating approximately back to the early medieval period, were of men, women and children and they all showed evidence of surgery to the skull: incisions, holes, attempts at suture with metallic thread. More than an Indian burial ground, it seemed to be a mass grave, a solution for failed experiments. Experiments curiously not dissimilar to those that take place daily in the pavilion today, as if history couldnt shake off the bad habit of repeating itself. Breakfast at the bar isnt an option. The bar seems grotty, as unfortunately is often is the case in this city. The whiff of pre-cooked food comes from its doors and unmistakeably mingles with the taste of cappuccino, the making of a disgusting breakfast. The coffees probably awful too but Im resigned to that: finding good coffee in this city has become a dire challenge. I slide along a flight of stairs and, I dont know how, find myself at the 2 level, between reinforced concrete and fluorescent-lit passages. Screens every thirty feet recycle the same advertisement, the overlapping staggered soundtracks blending into a hypnotic background noise. It sounds like the whining of a mosquito interspersed with something more suggestive of belches than percussions beats. The occasional youths in front of the screens seem to appreciate these obsessively repetitive and vaguely electronic rhythms and sounds; they dance, their dance moves similarly obsessively repetitive. There are coffee machines here and there, often surrounded by clusters of people. All the machines seem to date from the same period, when it was still possible to pay with coins, and only later adapted to take cards. They are those types that were also common in stations, with buttons on a central column and two lateral refrigerated compartments. I mosey around searching for a machine without too many people. The curved corridors are peppered with lateral exits, and Im lost before I know it. It doesnt matter anyway, my next hour-shift is tonight and Im in no hurry. The real reason Im looking for a solitary machine is that with one of the others Id queue and everybody else would go before me. Id get really cross and Id start an almighty row but todays my first day on the job and I dont want anything to spoil that. I can see that some of these machines are in credit but the people are so busy bickering and cutting each other up that they dont even notice. When they get close enough to the slot they insert their card, ecstatic at their victory, hard won by jabbing the others in the ribs. I also become aware that sometimes the cards dont work very well. People insert their card and nothing happens. They look around, the loud gabbling of the surrounding people perceptibly increasing. Bang! Bang! Twice on the coffee machine, and still nothing. They take their card out. They put their card in again and everything goes back to working perfectly well. There, at last, the machine I had been looking for. Its hiding in a niche at the top of a flight of stairs leading to the lower level, a man in pyjamas standing in front of it, and nobody else. I dont know if Ill ever be able to find it again all these curved tunnels have me completely disorientated. The man inserts his card and nothing happens. He looks around but I dont complain. Bang! Bang! Two bangs on the keypad. Nothing. He takes the card out and then pushes it in again. The keypad lights up; he smiles and takes his coffee and his slice of cake sachet (my fate too, I fear). He eats it slowly; in spite of what it looks like its not too bad. Standing a little to the side, I watch him drink his coffee and then drop the cup and sachet on the ground, a few inches away from the waste basket. Now its my turn. I rest the guitar on the ground, and thankfully the reflecting coat hinders me a little in the search for my card, because the display suddenly comes to light and, as Id noticed with some of the other machines, it clicks into credit without any help from me. Todays breakfast is free.

Im still sitting on a step, drinking the last drop of coffee, when I see a thirteen-year-old boy approach. Hes wearing trousers two sizes too big, from which the ugliest underpants Ive ever seen poke out. He walks in a strange fashion and I decide to follow him to see what hes up to. He has a full head of very dirty ash-blond hair and a fringe that covers most of his face, through which two dull eyes can just be seen. Thin and swift arms stick out of one of those black T-shirts with logos and writing impudently reminiscent of republican times: Italy is a republic founded on work, or something like that. He zigzags aimlessly through the corridors, stopping behind columns and looking at the ground around every corner, opening or trying all doors. He stops in front of a screen for a time, then runs away, without any obvious reason. He often stops in peoples path, talking to himself and waving his arms around in a random manner, as if to frighten them. What intrigues me, however, is that hes holding two cards. I dont know anyone who has two cards, even though Im sure that there might be some good reason to have two. I cant think of any, but you never know. I dont know anyone who has two, though, and seeing two cards in the hands of a thirteen-year-old boy is very strange. He strides along, stops suddenly, looks over his shoulder, leans against the wall; again he peers over his shoulder, then turns into a side corridor. I follow him. Were in a long semicircle, poorly lit but wider than the other corridors where the traffic of stretchers and personnel going back and forth is denser. The boy hugs the door-less wall, and the nurses we come across seem to recognise him. Someone talks to him; someone smiles at him. His hand dips with surprising speed into the handbag of a woman in her fifties, her hair too bouffant and her make-up too garish for her to be completely lost. To avoid him seeing me, I slip into the space between a column and a coffee machine and when I peer out again the woman is a long way off and the boy has started his strange dance again, this time with three cards in his hand. I slide again into my hiding place and wait while he chooses a card, uses it, mumbling to the machine throughout, and then throws it away, right into the corner in which Im hiding. I get ready to unleash my best smile but theres no time. The boy looks at me with soulless eyes and then suddenly he attacks me, pushing me, and then again, before running away down the corridor, in the opposite direction from where hed come. On impulse, I tighten my grip protectively on my guitar. I didnt lose my balance when he pushed me but I had to take a few steps back. I see the card hed discarded on the floor, a few inches from my right foot. I pick it up just when the woman with the bouffant hairdo returns, looking even more lost than before. Please, she asks hysterically. Im looking for the prosthetics department! Poor dear, shes so lost she seems to want to attack me too. I hand her the card. I think you dropped this, I proffer, still trying to find a smile. She grips her handbag and her eyes are reduced to two fiery slits. The silicon in her lips trembles while she stutters, But . Her knotty hand grabs the card but then stops in mid-air. Im convinced now that she is going to attack me. I protect my guitar. Were on level 2. The signs indicate that you need to go to the second floor; this lift here should do the trick. Her hand still blocked in mid-air, the laser rays from her eyes still at maximum power, she turns and enters the lift without saying a word and of course without saying thank you. I might treat myself to a second breakfast; theres another coffee machine here without anyone around it. I slide my hand into my pocket to get my card and I understand: that little bastard nicked it when he pushed me.

Guitar man, try and catch me! The voice is shrill, the consonants mispronounced, all in a nasal tone. Guitarmaaaaan! The laughters utterly joyless and spills from a young man with ebony dark skin and filthy clothes, a crooked smile on his face. His pupils, which at this point are fixed on a point on the ceiling as if he was trying to bore through it, are shaped like the African continent. This part of the corridor is quite busy. The handwritten signs suggest that I am approaching a group of clinic rooms linked to an A&E department I didnt know was here. Some parking attendant I am, but then Im only one in theory, Im not required to know the layout of the pavilion by heart. Smile, yes, thats all Im supposed to do. Try and catch me! he shouts again without looking anywhere in particular, perched on a wheelchair too big for him, his skin-and-bones hands gripping the armrests tightly. Have you seen a boy, more or less the same age as you, with blond hair? This tall, I ask, making a gesture with my hand. Im starting to think he cant see as he doesnt follow me with his eyes. Thief! The guitar mans looking for the thief! he shouts, jumping onto his feet and turning his head towards the wall, then back and to the wall again, like a radar. Fourth floor. He points his skeletal index finger to nothing at all. Hes in his room. Hes still for a moment, then blurts, No, no, no, its not his room. Hes on the fourth floor but its not his room. He lets his dead weight fall on the chair. How do I know that? he asks. How do I know that, guitar man? He gazes straight into my eyes with his Africa-shaped pupils. How do I know that? Hes really shouting now. His eyes close slowly while he crumples on the chair, asleep, or perhaps dead or fainted: I couldnt say for sure. I try to shake him a couple of times but he gives no sign of wanting to move; then he breathes. Dead, he is not. In the ten minutes I spend waiting for the lift a stream of people jump the queue in front of me, in this order: a man dressed like a doctor (Im not quite sure he is a doctor) with a club in his hand; a stretcher-bearer pushing an empty stretcher, which takes up all the space in the lift (service lift isnt working); a bald woman with tears in her eyes who, just before the lift doors close, shows me the middle finger of her left hand; a man of a certain age with dressings on his face, well, some sort of dressing, consisting of a number of cotton balls precariously stuck to his face, perhaps with a blood-coloured vinyl glue; a group of small children, no older than four or five, all wearing little green hats, accompanied by a kind of horrifying vampire all dressed in black, with a deadly pale face (Move on, move on!, herding them as if they are sheep, then under his breath, Little turds!); two serious-looking men, with grave voices, the sort of voice thats two octaves too low and makes you think its been practised for years, who elbow and push their way in without looking at anyone. In the end I go looking for the stairs, which is easier said than done.

Level 1 is the car park, my theoretical domain. Its a vast, covered area, a little bit too dark but with all marks in the right place: traffic lights, blue zones, white zones, emergency services lane, signs indicating entrances and exits, ramps the full works. Apart from these, its absolutely empty. Empty and silent. You can only hear a fast and rhythmic tick-tock, the sound of heels hitting the ground. The echo in the vast empty space is disorientating and I cannot fathom where the sound comes from, and the forest of pillars doesnt allow me to see far ahead. While I follow the signs for access to the upper floors, the tick-tock never leaves me, now further away and then suddenly very close, just behind me or at my side. But no one materialises to lay claim to it. The sound of my steps, on the other hand, is barely audible, not because of any particular care in the way I walk but for the same reason that makes the tick-tock so vivid: the sound escapes me, searching other ears to haunt. The pair of lifts I reach shortly after seem to be brand new, the light eagerly bounding out of the open doors, the smell of new rubber, the pristine walls and mirrors, without the slightest mark or scratch, certainly very unlike all the other lifts in this city. My reflection flatters me. My glasses are clean, my nearly new reflecting jacket sits well, without the unsightly slope to my shoulders, like a bottleneck, people tell me about. Im freshly shaven; I wonder if Ill manage to shave every morning. The guitar on my shoulder lends an exotic touch. Looking at me, you wouldnt be able to tell I cant play it. I hear heels tick-tocking again, getting closer, and I press the number four button, which, for some reason, is upside down. The door closes silently. At first the lift seems to move; then it feels as if its still. I try to turn the number four button the right way round. It moves a little way but then something stops it and, as soon as I let it go, it returns to its original upside-down position. I spend the equivalent of four days in that lift. Im hungry, hot and thirsty, and a little sad about being alone. The box is still, then an almost imperceptible tremor makes me hopeful of movement. Then again everything stands still. My steely and unshakeable demeanour lasts barely more than five seconds, and then I scream for help and I start pummelling the doors with my fists. There must be a way to stop this thing; there must be a way to sound the alarm. No, there isnt. I press all the buttons on the keypad, even the one with a bell on it, and the one that says STOP, but it makes no difference. There. I can definitely feel an acceleration. Its moving, its moving! Im so happy that I pull out my pocketknife and scrape a K for Kurt on the virgin wall. I finish just before the doors open.

The Substance. You must take the Substance, Kurt. Take it, take it, pay to make it work for you, take the dose, the Substances dose. Dont sleep, were here now.

I spring out in a vast circular hall from which five corridors spread out at irregular intervals. A sign, in felt-tip pen on a card strip, announces: LONG-TERM PASHIENTS. A large glass pane I think its bulletproof surrounds an imposing desk behind which a man, wearing a uniform I dont recognise, dozes. In the centre, two smaller but still wide semicircles are bordered by metal net benches painted green, the space inside crammed with dozens of wheelchairs. The semicircles are intersected by two openings larger than a single wheelchair but too narrow for two, and the patients, men and women, all more or less aged over fifty, are already engaged in battles to the bitter end to win the right to enter or leave. Apparently access to the bench Stonehenge is extremely desirable and those who, for one reason or another, have been left out will do anything to get in. At the same time those who are inside the circle, more or less as happens at the real Stonehenge, seem to think, Is this it? and will do anything to get out. They insult each other, they explain things to each other, and they distract each other, but mainly they throw insults at each other. Most of them, however, have varying degrees of speech impediments and the result is absolute chaos. Theres a coffee machine on the right-hand side and I walk towards it casually, to see if its in credit but it isnt. The only other person on his own feet is an old man of about sixty who leans heavily on two metal crutches that bloom into a tripod near the ground. He moves as if he were the referee in every dispute; his squawking voice indignantly addresses those who in his view have broken some rule or other. Often he points one of the crutches as if it were a trident or waves it around as if to strike someone, but hes then forced to rest it on the ground again as his unstable legs threaten to topple him over. Its death. The voice comes from my right, from a very old man I hadnt seen before, bent over in his wheelchair. Its death, its hell, thats what this is. I open my mouth to ask what hes on about but before I do so I realise that he is referring to something on one of two screens. The other one is also on but only displays the fuzzy no-signal fog. Hes watching a game I dont know and talking loudly. Death! Its death! He looks at me, looking for an approval I grant him without any hesitation. I walk around him and slip into one of the corridors. All the room doors are open. Stretchers and grey equipment with telescopic arms whose purpose I dont know are dotted around the corridor. I peek into the hidden landscape in each room all are different and yet all are a bit similar as I accelerate further along the corridor. People bent in unnatural positions, human and often inhuman wails, the pungent odour of bodily fluids that disinfectant fails to mask. I return to the chaos of the central hall, unchanged from before, and take the next corridor. Theres nobody around: no nurses, no relatives, no doctors, no guards, no cleaners. Nobody. Only a theoretical parking attendant with a guitar on his shoulder. The corridors are different from each other. Some have fewer patients, some have closed doors, but theyre essentially the same. At the end of the fourth corridor, sitting on an aluminium chair, trifurcated crutches resting on the wall, a man reads a book. He seems so alien, his head bent low and leaning too much to the left, his legs crossed in an unnatural position. Theres something in his posture thats not as it should be. As soon as I get close he stops and stares at me. Hes my age, give or take, and yet he makes me feel as if hes caught me doing something wrong. Im looking for a boy, about this high, I indicate with my hand. Blond I cant add anything else. I peek at the book cover, but its not familiar. Axl? Thats his name, then. Whats he done this time? Come, follow me. He stands up with great difficulty; his legs barely move and the arms resting on the tripods only just hold him. His book drops to the ground as he does so. He stares at it with visceral hate: hell never be able to pick it up. I pick it up myself, before the situation becomes embarrassing. Follow me, he repeats, and starts to drag himself towards the hall. After what seems like a thousand years, we come to another corridor (I dont know if Ive been here before or not). The first door on the right is closed. He knocks and then enters, leaving me outside trying to sneak a peek inside. I stand outside that closed door for about ten days. I can figure that out with reasonable accuracy from the extent of my nails I have bitten, from the number of nurses whove gone past me in the meantime and from other, less certain, indicators of the passing of time. I rest my guitar on the ground. I leaf through the book. I drop the bookmark. I pick it up and carelessly put it back in the book. I can imagine how cross hell be when he finds out. I push gently against the door but its firmly shut. I try the handle. It turns. I turn it: it clicks. I let it go: it clicks again. I rest my ear against the solid wood door. Nothing, not even a whisper. And so on, for ten days. Then I pick up some courage, open the door a little and peek in. The petty thief who stole my card is inside, his back against the wall. He looks towards me with innocent doe eyes, which stir in me a strong desire to kick him hard. His backs against the wall because he has no choice: the room has been designed to comfortably house a single bed and instead three hospital beds, complete with equipment for the care of patients, have been crammed into the small space, leaving barely enough space to move. On her left side and with her back to me, her untidily sprawled body enveloped by a brown nightshirt, a woman rests on the bed in front of him. The other two beds are unmade but empty, the silence broken only by the swishing sound of the womans right arm, moving frenetically for a reason I cannot fathom from the small opening. The doe eyes seem not to have noticed me. They dont seem to notice much, to tell the truth. The man with the tripods, on the other hand, turns towards the door and looks at me. His book still in my hand gives me the excuse to enter. On the ground, behind the bed but also under the bed and in the alcove that presumably leads to the bathroom, there are piles of notebooks, big and small, with covers of all colours, some in neat piles and others scattered and layered without any apparent order. The woman is writing, thats what shes doing. She scribbles so fast that she turns a page every twenty or thirty seconds. Suddenly she hands a notebook to the doe who takes a few seconds to decipher the handwriting. Hey! Wow! Whatre you saying? Theyre the first words Ive ever heard Axl speak.

I take the lift with Axl again and this time the journey doesnt take ten days. The kid at my side has again escaped behind his blank expression under his fringe. As youre going down to find the card, could you take him down to eat something? David, the man balancing on the two tripods, had asked. The last thing I want to do is take this little feeble-minded scoundrel for a saunter, is what I shouldve said. And, instead, here we are, in the lift. Axl fiddles with the lift keypad until he literally rips it off the wall. He inserts his arm into the hole, from which several coloured cables spill out. Heres your card. Its a bit greasy, a bit dusty, but it really seems to be my card. Dont use it, though, ok? Wait, Ive got to do something first, ok? In the meantime he replaces the keypad, leaving a hole in place of the number four button. He slips a finger through that and waits until we reach the 1 level. He stays like that for a few seconds, with his finger through the lift wall, and pulls it out at the exact moment the doors open. This time he replaces the button (its as if it had been stuck to his finger), now the right way up. Where shall we eat? Shall we go to the hospital bar? Its a rhetorical question. Theres nothing else other than the coffee machines. They might be all right for breakfast but they hardly do for lunch. Ive been awake since before Awakening (or is that a false memory?). Im hungry. No, theyre arseholes at the bar, and they serve shitty sandwiches. Lets go to Patty. Patty? Yes, Patty.

I dont remember when my sister and I started to refer to our father as The One. It mustve been one of those things that started as a game, as twins are wont to do, which then became established as time went on. When we were little we moved house very often, shifting from town to town every two years or so. At the time the State still ran the schools, and changing environment so often was quite painful. Thankfully The One realised right away that it would make the difficulties of having new teachers, new mates and a new world easier if my sister and I were in the same class. Even though were homozygote, my sisters always been much better at getting used to new situations. Shes always been much better at everything. She was the first to make new friends, the first to get into the teacherss good books. I was always behind her. My friends were in fact the friends she had discarded, and my results were always a poor reflection of hers. This went on until the day The One started to become better known and then famous, renowned, noted, acclaimed. That day (I remember it well: the interviews, the TV appearances, the photographers, the internet we still had the internet then) set off the mechanism that made him identify his ever-growing power with his male heir. The effect wasnt immediate but it was inexorable. Everybody started to treat me better and better, and more and more my sister was left behind. In the meantime we were growing up or were already grown up. The Ones once-obscure activity now became progressively more manifest in front of our very eyes, thanks to the ever-increasingly stringent scrutiny he was the focus of. The very first time I heard about The Great Void was from one of the caretakers on the way out of school one day. It must have been summer; I think it was the summer of 12th September. As usual, at the end of school, the person whod been instructed that day to pick me up wasnt there, would have arrived late or wouldnt have arrived at all. As usual my sister had managed to find a solution that suited her: Im getting picked up by the cousin of the sister of such and such, wholl take me here; or The auntie of the brother-in-law of so and so is coming to take me there. As always, Id settled a little to the side with something to read in my hands, not in a place that could be considered outside, nor one that was necessarily inside either. He came close and said, Your fathers a great man: hell save us. I was using the much-practised tactic of pretending what was being said to me was completely irrelevant to me, but that great man referred to The One felt so strange that I turned with a jerk. What followed was a mosaic of words that I would piece together only much later, and Im not sure I ever did so completely: now-commonplace words, but ones I was hearing then for the first time, outside what was still an elementary school. Volcanic reactor, ring of respect, spontaneous feeding on rail, The Great Void. And the most magic words of all: cloning, a word that started off being whispered and then became a much more current, much louder presence. We were growing up and the little tale of our dad, the humble railway worker, barely held together. When he wasnt away for work, hed lock himself in his room, inundated by phone calls from every corner of the world. In addition to English, French, German, Chinese and, I think, Arabic, he also spoke Russian fluently. Our phoney mother is of Russian origin and most of the time hed talk to her in her language. Not exactly a typical railway worker, I know, but I wouldnt have noticed much had it not been for my sister. When they talked in Russian, Id play with my toy soldiers while she learnt Russian. When he was publishing important articles in international journals, Id play with my toy soldiers while she read these journals. She didnt understand much but in the meantime nanotechnology, reactor and lots of other words started playing on her mind. Shed tell me about them at night from her top bunk (her on top and me at the bottom, of course). Shed tell me she didnt understand but that she was curious, shed find out. I always fell asleep. No matter how fearful I was about my sister wanting to investigate, no matter how disturbing these novelties were, Id fall into a profound sleep, with the word cloning spinning in my head. Youd think that cloning was illegal, at least up to a point, but it wasnt quite like that. The law after all is but an ink stain on a page, or a cluster of differently coloured bits in a memory, when computers were still in use. In practice theres never been a law against cloning, not even before the President: perhaps something at administrative level, a little codicil forcibly grafted, out of context, on the laws on assisted conception. Nothing clear, neat, defined. In other words, the ideal situation for working under the surface. When the President seized power, this little codicil seemed made to measure for him: it suited him down to the ground: Cloning through nucleus transfer or embryo early fission or ectogenesis is forbidden, both for the purposes of conception and research. The Presidents advisers had known for some years about a new ectogenic cloning technique, one that calls for the development of human embryos outside the maternal organism. All thats needed to make it more palatable is a slight redefinition of the concept of maternal organism. Clones are produced in vast numbers for viability reasons of a thousand embryos, only about eight per cent end up with a viable gene pool. The older the donor, the poorer the initial gene pool and, in spite of the cellular reconstruction techniques available to us today, the percentage of perfect embryos can sometimes be even smaller. Each group supplies sixty, eighty clones, occasionally a hundred or more. Mutations occur, of course, at times subtle ones, sometimes clearly detectable. Obtaining a perfect copy of the original is still, in the context of current technology, but a dream. Physical mutations are the most obvious and almost all are identified and discarded at the control stage. Because of this the mutations that become obvious at a later stage in the life of the clone are predominantly those that affect the individuals personality. There are dozens of pathological cases, some with problems so severe as not to allow the survival of the person for more than a few years, while others are less severe, so to speak (autism, depression, bipolar disorders, etc.), but no case has ever been reported of ameliorative mutations. Countless mentally unbalanced individuals and lots of cripples, but no geniuses and absolutely nobody with notable athletic abilities. Clones are matured for two years in special techno-organic factories. These factories house about a dozen or so of genetically modified living organisms derived from whales, each of which can contain up to a hundred children. Once they are born, that is to say, once the embryonic stage is completed, and after defective organisms have been eliminated, the children literally grow inside the whales. Lights and music is piped in from the outside, as is food, to aid their cognitive development. The heat is the whales own. The traditional point of view, with a maternal breast (in the human sense) as the focus of the newborn development, has in this way been distorted so dramatically that, with the authorities blessing, very little space is given to these experiments in the press. So little space, in fact, that they have been completely covered up. So, at least from a juridical point of view, theres no doubt that embryos first, and clones later, do grow inside a maternal organism. Still from a juridical point of view, it isnt really ectogenesis (clearly it is but not from a juridical point of view, the inverse of the obvious). What becomes of the unsuccessful embryos? Practically nothing is wasted: they end up mainly as stem cells. If the technology of growth in whales has been covered up, its hardly a surprise that the same treatment was given to the covert production of replacement parts. Some might find this unpleasant but, if it works, its only a matter of semantics. When we stray into the areas at the extreme boundary between biology (or organic chemistry) and engineering and without the helpfulness of the press there are no new words and definitions for things that have no link to the past. Hearts, livers, lungs, limbs, the number of factory-produced replacement parts is practically unlimited: this is where all the profit comes from. Cloning is but the first step.

Pattys blond, Eastern European but vaguely exotic, often smiling, kind to the point of embarrassment, attentive, always a bit dishevelled, beautiful (even though this is a purely subjective opinion), looks like my phoney mother, eternally on a diet, amused but probably not amusing, secretive, always ready to say yes. I promise myself Ill explore this latter point further. If level 2 seems planned by someone with a headache, level 3 looks like the abandoned lair of a fairytale monster. Wandering through this labyrinth, the feeling that the lair hasnt been completely abandoned after all is never far away. Level 2 is a sequence of circular meanders, whose meaning is unclear. They look like the folds of an enormous hand (Ive never understood the point of curved tunnels. If you have to excavate rock, why not excavate it in a straight line?); Level 3, on the other hand, is a mesh of long, perfectly straight corridors, with continuous incline variances that prevent you being able to look far ahead. Corridors intersect each other, forming impossible angles, and wave through each other, one going over another. They meld into dozens of lateral corridors, ever narrower and darker, the impression that youre about to bump into some fairytale monster ever present. We walk along these corridors, Axl silent at my side. Patty can be found at the bottom of a fairytale quasi-monster. At the bottom because its the point where reassuring reinforced cement and pleasing anodized aluminium give way to musty small bricks and rock probably excavated with bare hands, if not even with powerful jets of fresh human blood. The unmistakeable aroma of pizza guides us through filthy corridors, deserted or brimming with material accumulated there since time began. Occasionally you stumble on service staff so engrossed in their own activities they seem to be part of the scenery, to the point that when you reach your destination you have the clear impression not to have come across anyone. Axls still silent. The only signs are exit arrows and large yellow boards bearing a log resembling a small mine wagon with a stylised rising (or setting) sun. Behind the last aluminium door, before the start of the revolting tunnel, a surprising scene is hidden: a long chrome-plated steel counter, made out of two shorter counters whose origin I dont want to know, although I dont exclude the possibility that they might be operating tables (I dont know what operating tables look like but I imagine them exactly like these) or, even worse, mortuary ones; a third counter, like the other two but set apart; the door of a refrigerated cubicle whose size is reminiscent of those in mortuaries, even though Ive never been in a mortuary in my whole life; three ovens stacked on top of each other, of different sizes from those found in kitchens (but Ive no doubt theyre ovens their doors and displays are those of ovens, their smell is that of ovens, the pizza that can be seen through the glass doors is definitely that of ovens); a heap of cables overflowing out of a plastic box; a dispensing machine with the highest credit Ive ever seen in my life and which, unlike the others in various places in the hospital, also dispenses drinks from abroad; there are a number of pizzas on the double counter, already cut and ready for serving. Patty, standing at the single counter, stretches pizza dough to cover a metal baking tray, dresses it with a ladle of tomato sauce from a plastic barrel I wouldnt ask too many questions about and mozzarella from another, similar, barrel. As soon as we get in Patty stops and stares at Axl with a questioning look. All right? she asks him in a strong Eastern European accent. All right, hes with me, he retorts, walking around the larger counter. Will you eat something? Theres margherita pizza, margherita pizza or margherita pizza Axl goes around the counter and pulls what looks like a personal from under it. Its been such a long time since Ive seen one of those. He pulls a dozen or so cards from his pockets and starts inserting them in a slot in the personal. Give me your card too, he instructs me, stretching a hand in my direction. The pizzas delicious. While Axl fiddles around with the personal and the cards (not even looking at the food), I eat three ginormous slices. Once hes finished, he hands my card back and pockets the others. He then hides the personal under the counter and nods to Patty who opens the door, blocking it in position. The pizzerias open! she shouts shrilly. Two men and two women come in first. They wear black glasses, black clothes, black shoes. They have snow-white skin and the darkest, perhaps blackest, of moods. They eat in silence, or whispering their concerns about money, the budget, personnel. They consider everybody with suspicion and move here and there together, like a flock of sheep. They fix my guitar with obvious contempt, as if the sight of a musical instrument was enough to cause profound disgust. After them, patients stream in, wearing pyjamas of various colours, nightdresses, shawls, V-neck jumpers, basically the whole range of apparel to be found in a hospital. They dont say much. Some of them have developed temporary acquaintances that will last no longer than a few hours spent chatting or eating a few pizzas together. Some of them even smile at me. Nurses, both male and female, and all wearing white, also come in. Theyre in a hurry; they pick food and drink to take away and disappear quickly. Finally a handful of scattered and noisy green coats enter, causing the black-clad men to disperse as through a chemically induced reaction. The green coats sit around in groups of two or three, chattering in loud voices about medical issues, family or holidays. Among them, majestic and stiff as always atop a pair of vertiginous heels, my neighbour, better known as the screesh screesh woman - so called (by me and only me, of course) because if you stand close to her while she is walking you can always hear the faintest noise, as of plastic being scratched. Shes always so stiff and so perfectly made up and combed, even on the rare occasions I bump into her on the landing. I couldnt really say if shes really so big and majestic or if the impression comes from the stratospheric heels and provocative cleavage, the rod-straight back, the ebony-black fine hair and those shoulders always standing up to attention. She exudes an air of stateliness. Her stiffness permeates her very being, as if even her skin were unyielding, her muscles less elastic than the norm. I didnt know she worked here. I know nothing about her: she makes me uneasy and Ive never ventured more than a friendly greeting friendly on my part, that is. Ive always felt, I feel it even now, that she gazes straight past me, without even seeing me. Patty works with perfect efficiency. She mixes dough, slides pizzas in the oven, takes them out, cuts them and smiles at everybody, always saying yes. In what spare time she can carve out from this process, she cleans up, mixes up more dough, smiles some more. From time to time she pulls from under the counter a large plastic bottle filled with a reddish liquid, which could be very diluted tomato juice, and downs great slugs of it. She comes closer, blond, blue-eyed, in her thirties. If she didnt look so much like my dear phoney mother I might even think shes pretty. I have the perfect topic to break the ice: Todays my first day, I announce, smiling. She blanks me. Thank you for not reporting Axl; you couldve got all of us in trouble. All? Who is all? Shhh, shell hear you. She nods towards my neighbour. By the way, do you know who she is? I ask her. They say shes an excellent anaesthetist. My neighbour is chatting to a colleague, I dont know what about, but I hear her say, with a sardonic smile, An anaesthetist never sleeps. While she says this, her jet-black eyes dart quickly, and almost imperceptibly, towards me. Its the very first time I feel shes aware of my presence in this world. After this brief glance, she turns her back to me almost with ostentation, her shoulders truly monumental. She makes me uncomfortable. Id rather to go and eat in the corridor.