The Grasshopper (34 page)

Sayash looked at Lucky who shed
tears incessantly.

“Hey, Lucky, it’s not you that
should cry because the truck is stupid! What do we care about it! I
guess you see that the children are still asleep… Hey, Lucky,
stop!” Sayash ran after Lucky. “Don’t you wake them up
now!”

The driver raised the side and
returned to the cabin. The truck went on its way. To pick up some
new load.

Chapter 125

“You’ve strived the entire time to
find yourself in such a situation? I’ve concluded this from your
biography,” Dr. Palladino said to the Grasshopper.

“That’s right.”

“When did you realize that the
opportunity was that room that you are in and that command
desk?”

“Very early on. As soon as I
understood how the energy system was organized. Back in high
school.”

“And at that same moment you wanted
to sit at the command desk?”

“No. That developed within me over
time. I cannot tell you the exact moment… Somewhere half way
through university, I guess. That’s when I understood that the urge
to kill would overpower sexual urge.”

“Eros and Thanatos?”

“Eros, yes, but only as libido.
Everything around it is noise. As far as Thanatos is concerned, I
agree that we can call it the primal instinct of death, but solely
at the collective level.”

“What do you mean?”

“At the level of mankind. As
humanity’s unique urge for self-destruction. At the individual
level Thanatos is the drive to kill other people. It doesn’t
represent man’s desire to return to inorganic matter, but to
transform another living being into the non-living state. Our
aggression does not appear because Eros has pushed Thanatos out of
us and directed it towards other people. Our drive to kill is
primal, seminal, basic. When we cannot satisfy it, when we are not
in a situation to kill, that is when self-destruction emerges, the
desire for one’s own death. As the just punishment for our
incompetence, our failure.”

“This could be argued…”

“Certainly. But all that doesn’t
matter, that was in the days when I was a student. It simply seemed
to me that the urge to kill was so strong that it couldn’t be only
the reflection of the urge for self-destruction. It was precisely
then,” the Grasshopper continued, “as a young man, that I thought
about the causes. But actually I haven’t been interested in them
for a long time. I’m only dealing with the consequences. Just as
you said, Dr. Palladino. You aren’t interested in whether the
killer had an unhappy childhood.”

“I understand. Let’s go back to the
beginning. You said that you understood that the urge to kill would
overpower the libido.”

“Yes. The sexual act leads to the
creation of new life. And killing represents the act of ending an
existing life. People consider the satisfying of both urges to be
immoral and sinful. The difference is that sex, unlike murder, is
not persecuted and punished. This is why it took only one excuse
for people to have sex: the birth of their progeny and survival of
the species, so that…”

“Excuse me. I have to interrupt
you…” said Dr. Palladino.

“Yes?”

“In your opinion, why is murder
punished and sex isn’t?”

“Because of morals, ethics, God’s
commandments…”

“And where did people get all that,
if the killing instinct is so strong?”

“The Eros in people came up with
that. It is that noise around the libido that I mentioned. It is
the result of people’s fear that they will be killed. Fear for
their own lives. And that fear was the only thing postponing the
inevitable end of all life.”

Chapter 126

Lucky was jumping manically,
spinning around, falling down and getting up, all over the
children’s sleeping bodies. Until a tear of his fell on the face of
each child. Brandon was the first to awake.

“Hey! It’s Lucky!” he shouted all
glowing. “Wake up!” Brandon called out to his friends, shaking the
one nearest to him. “Lucky’s here!”

“And Mr. Sayash!” said Melek, who
was now also awake.

“Lucky! Lucky!” the other children
shouted, while waking up.

“Do you see what you did, Lucky?
You woke the children!” Sayash was worried.

He waved his finger angrily,
standing on the side and watching the children’s hands jostling to
pet Lucky.

And Lucky… he was all warm with
pleasure.

“It’s OK if he woke us, Mr.
Sayash,” Gala said. “Don’t be angry at Lucky.”

“How can I not be? He doesn’t
listen to a thing I say…” Sayash answered, with a smile.

“It was time to get up, wasn’t it?”
asked Kimo, winking at his friends.

“It was! It was!” They all answered
at the same time.

“And why was it time? You have to
go to school, do you?” Sayash wanted to know everything.

“No, no…” Kimo was
confused.

“We don’t have to, Mr. Sayash, it’s
recess!” said Sara, who got a hold of Lucky and held him in her
hands.

“Recess, is it?” Sayash looked at
them suspiciously. “So where are you snacks?”

“We ate them!” said Matic. “That’s
why we were sleepy.”

“Aha! So you had your snack, you
had a nap… That means that recess is almost over. Doesn’t it?”
Sayash asked.

All the children fell silent for a
moment, disarmed by Sayash’s ironclad logic.

“Actually, it isn’t…” Tai
stuttered.

“What do you mean ‘it isn’t’? Don’t
dilly-dally!” Sayash said angrily.

“Well… it’s not recess. I mean,
it’s over…” Tai continued, frantically looking for a
solution.

“Of course its over! Who knows when
it was over?! Its all clear to Mr. Sayash! You got on that truck
and skipped school!”

Chapter 127

“At this moment it is all
insignificant,” the Grasshopper continued. “I want to talk about
consequences, about these moments, about the end.”

“Forgive me. I won’t interrupt you
any more. Please, continue,” Dr. Palladino said.

“I will. It is important to
understand that people had to find various excuses in order to kill
with impunity.”

“Yes. You said that the excuse for
having sex was the survival of the species.”

“Exactly. But in the case of
killing, people had to be much more creative in finding excuses.
All ideologies in history were created only as an excuse for
killing. Certain ideas, membership in a certain group, are placed
above human life and serves as the excuse for killing with
impunity. You saw the conversations between Erivan and me, and you
saw what Erivan did…”

“Yes. I watched your satire live on
the Capital City stage. You were the screenplay writer, director
and prompter for the main actor.”

“Satire? I’m not a satirist, Dr.
Palladino. I, in the role of the trustee, only took inventory of a
bankrupt civilization.”

“And you say that you were aware of
this bankruptcy even as a student?”

“Yes.”

“And you wanted to liquidate the
bankrupt firm?”

“I asked myself why shouldn’t it be
me, knowing that this room represents the tool with which I could
do it.”

“And you never wondered why the
Kaellas or Erivan hadn’t done it?”

“Because I beat them to
it.”

“What do you mean? The Kaellas
could have done it half a century ago, when they completed the
energy system.”

“I’ll explain it to you. The
Kaella’s didn’t find the excuse that would allow them to use the
energy system as an absolute weapon. That is why they used it to
sell energy to the Consumers. And while that functioned, they used
a different, more selective excuse for killing.”

“What killing?”

“What do you mean ‘what killing’,
Dr. Palladino? The killing of the old, the ill, the inappropriate,
the misfits, the helpless, the homeless… The killing at
Euthanasias.

“The third Kaella saw himself as
the greatest humanist, who created the Balance in human society.
Just like all other rulers in history, he used his ideology as an
excuse to kill.

“He placed the Balance and Humane
Capitalism above life. And he could neither create it nor maintain
it without killing the sick and the elderly people, who didn’t have
an income to pay the bills, and who only represented an expense for
the balanced state. And his ideology didn’t permit
that.”

“That is why, in order to save the
Balance and Humane Capitalism, he introduced mandatory medical
checkups, with complete ideological justification. And at these
checkups potential parasites were identified in a timely fashion.
Following the medical checkup the information system predicted the
likely course of the disease for each examined person, the costs of
their treatment and the expected date when their revenue would
cease to cover the costs.

“Every morning the information
system sent the tax administration a list of people for whom this
critical period had started. Then they carefully monitored every
financial transaction of such an individual. They waited for the
person to sell their shares, if they had any, and to pay the bills
and treatment for a while, using the money from the sale. And when
that too was spent, the person would be taken to Euthanasia and put
to death.

“The descendents of the deceased
would be pleased with this. The tax administration would notify
them on time that their father, mother, grandmother, grandfather,
uncle, brother, sister… would be left without the necessary
financial sustenance within a month. They would be asked whether
they wanted to take over financial responsibility for their
relatives. As a rule the answer was negative.”

“Why would people in their prime
want to spend on the sick and the elderly the little money that
they were left with after they paid their bills to Kaella and the
mandatory purchase of goods from the new season? They too deserved
to live a little, to go out to dinner, to travel, to take a ride on
a submarine.”

“I understand. It’s dreadful, what
has become socially acceptable,” Dr. Palladino said.

Chapter 128

“We didn’t! We didn’t skip school!”
the children shouted at the top of their voices.

“We were on a fieldtrip!” it dawned
on Babette.

“On a fieldtrip? Children that
small? All by themselves? I don’t believe it,” Sayash shook his
head.

“What do you mean ‘alone’, Mr.
Sayash?” Enzo asked him. “We’re going on a fieldtrip with
you.”

“With whom?”

“With you and Lucky” Enzo took
Lucky from Zuri. “Isn’t that right, Lucky?” Enzo asked Lucky,
holding him in front of his face and rubbing noses with
him.

It looked like Lucky was about to
take off, that’s how much he was wagging his tail.

“Oh, Lucky, you’re so gullible. You
fall for it,” Sayash was still serious.

“Our mothers and fathers told us
‘kids you can go on a fieldtrip, but only if Mr. Sayash and Lucky
take you,’” Kaya said.

“Did they, really? I don’t believe
you!” said Sayash scrunching his eyebrows. He was on high on
elation.

“Really! Really, Mr. Sayash!” all
the children shouted.

“Well, alright… if that’s the way
it is… What do you say, Lucky?... I do ask silly questions,” Sayash
laughed while looking at Lucky, who was running around in circles
with joy.

“Alright, if your mothers and
fathers said so… And what did they say, where should we take you on
the fieldtrip?”

“Where you and Lucky were headed,
Mr. Sayash,” said Mona.

“I don’t know if that’s smart…”
Sayash reflected.

“Why not?” asked Edwin.

“Well… the two of us were on our
way… we saw it in the movies. A huuugeee city, the largest in the
world…”

“Megapolis! Great! Let’s go!” the
children shouted.

Chapter 129

“On the other hand, Prince’s greed
for increasingly greater profits,” said the Grasshopper, “which he
called the organic need of the economy to constantly grow, was
eating away at the Balance. It was necessary to constantly increase
consumption, quarter over quarter.

“That is why they created the labor
camps where they took the Non-Consumers, and carried out
experiments on them, with the goal of creating a Super-Consumer, a
being that would have an intensive and increasingly frequent need
for new models.

“They tried to copy the sexual
drive. And in time they succeeded. The problem emerged when they
realized that the Super-Consumer must have that much more income to
be able to afford all the new goods that they wanted, at least
three times per week. They must earn a lot more, i.e. they have to
work that much more.