AWFUL PROPHECIES

The signs of the threat appeared long ago but we failed to recognise them, even though there were a lot.

There was a time when Lesha liked to visit the site www.deathclock.com and to fill in the data to see how much he had left to live. And suddenly as in an anecdote there was written that he had 3 months left. He was worried and even called me at 3 a.m. "I've filled in the data twice. The same date twice! Can you imagine it? Do you think it's true?" "You are mad, aren't you? Go back to sleep!" "But it never happened before!" "And did you fill in anything new?" "No, I didn't. The same." "It's nonsense. Go back to sleep."

We were going to create an internet magazine with a strange title "Mediameat". There should have been collages, photos, thoughts about media, about communications into which people are inserted. The titles of the instalments were made up spontaneously. The theme of the first issue was "Road". It was almost ready but we quarreled and it didn't appear on the Internet. The title of the second number was "Death". We planned to analyse the connection between Litvinenko's death, Kazakh uranian developments, the film Borat and American Cinema industry. "Aren't you afraid? Of death?" "I don't know..."

We went to Rotterdam via Vilnius. We spent a night in a hotel at the airport. I dreamt that Lesha and I arrived in Korolev. We hear that soon there would be an atomic explosion. It turns out that everybody except for us had known about it and that's why there are no people on the streets. And we were so happy and thought that the town was so uninhabited. We arrived like fools without listening to the news. Failures! Losers! Fools! We are looking through the window to see a mushroom-shaped figure from the nuclear explosion but we only see a slight flash behind the houses and hear a quiet clap. Now we should wait till the morning to go away. Day is breaking. We are walking along unfrequented streets and everything is as usual. But it's frightening. Our hands are sweaty, our limbs are freezing. We don't even dare to speak about what is going to happen. Then we go somewhere, enter some trade center and try on trousers. But we are not the ones we used to be. We are irradiated.

Before catching the disease Lesha ordered a photo catalogue on the Internet. The demo version of the catalogue arrived by mail and was dedicated to posthumous photos, photographs of dead men, women and children. "Maybe it's better to give it to someone? I don't want to keep it at home." "To whom?" "To a fanatic collector?" We couldn't find any among our friends but we gave the catalogue to a colleague of the Department of Journalism. So, it was partially neutralized, but obviously not completely. This happened when he was already at the hospital.