Pixels (excerpt)
this is an excerpt from the novel Pixels, published in Slovenian in 2021 by Beletrina
translated by the author
“Don’t you see how blank the walls around us are becoming when we’re trying to bring the hand that draws our path to light?” asked Andrea.
Max looked left and right and said, “hmm.”
MIA21C slid his palm along the pale-yellow wall beside him, full of graffiti sanded down beyond comprehension. 100% PfR@UD. It seemed to be turning transparent.
“As if, when we renounce the depth of experience and turn into objects that are being experienced and not ones that experience, the distance and difference between us and the walls is becoming shorter, approaching zero,” she continued.
Maggie glanced back from time to time, prompting Öre and ION to invigorate their narrative to regain her attention. Sylvie and Jem were deliberately lagging behind. Nurzhan walked a few paces ahead of them, deep in thought, observing.
“Because we know how full a single object can become through our gazes, we turn ourselves into objects out of pure envy of the beauty we are able to find elsewhere. We also want to have an effect, not as active principles of the world, but as passive sources of meaning.”
MIA21C pressed his palm harder. The grain of the wall began to hurt. He could feel faces pushing at it from the other side.
“Do you want to be an artist or a work of art, is, it seems to me, the correct question to ask.”
Max flicked the stub of his extinguished cigar across the street.
“I understand,” he said. “But time will definitely make that choice for me, at one point. I’m talking about death. I will turn into an object. A form, a source of meaning. But what kind? A court jester, a useful idiot. They invite me to presidential palaces. I give lectures to kings. I carry the material text of history, I talk about how matter affects the mind. Every shipwreck is evidence of a theft, a witness to injustice. How to defend myself when I know that one day they will say that my presence at that moment was a boon to the new extractions, another small weight on the wrong side of the scale?”
A rough edge in the wall cut a shallow trace in his sliding hand. MIA21C considered it, the slight pain felt good.
“Death is just another form of power,” Andrea said. “Your mind will never be a form. Only a form can be a form. All biological processes are designed to maintain your gaze …”
“And who controls it?” interjected MIA21C, looking at them and wiping his palm on his pants. “A mind is not a form, but as an active principle of the world it expresses and forms itself into the world. The problems arise when the expressed mind fails to appear as an original source.”
“When the walls turn into mirrors,” said Andrea.
“When everything gets an echo, and it echoes so much …” said Max.
“That the mind can no longer believe that it itself was the cause,” MIA21C said, “it really begins to seem as if all the echoes were already there, that they were ready, just waiting to envelop it the moment it was expressed. That they knew what form they would take. Then how can the mind believe?”
Nurzhan turned, gave them a wide grin, and said, “coin-sidenz.” They hurried not to lose sight of the people in front. Max waved Sylvie and Jem over, let’s go.
The walls around them were turning to panes of glass, obscuring the dark front desks of the corporations. No one lived here. They gazed at their refracted reflections in the infinite space of parallel planes of mirrored glass. Nurzhan jumped and waved his hands, laughing at the figure that repeated his gesture in the depths with delay. Distance. They looked at each other.
“Did we know?” asked Max.
“Or did we feel?” asked MIA21C.
“Every experience has threads that reach down into time,” Andrea said, unconvinced, “they summoned us, I don’t want to believe in anything else.”
MIA21C was careful not to look directly at his own face.
“It’s work to be observed,” Max said again, “and look how many of us there are.”
