Every shift, kilometres on kilometres of hallway are strewn with alarms to repair and former bodies to burn. Scavengers never return with enough wiring or gas to manage these losses, so it falls to Commissar Ignatiy to dictate what is taken care of, and what is ignored. Yet, no matter how much material is taken from the empty corridors, sector ФРЛ - 7083 only breaks further, as everything rots in the Gigakhruschevka.
The party exists to manage its rot, but is not immune itself. Its membership remains loyal while its control over its millions of sectors slips a couple at a time. When there is a moment of calm, the administration can depend on one old man or another to spoil it with stories of a two-millenia-old martyr or a world without a ceiling. Liquidators would fight for cycles on end to purge these threats with fire, bullets or the rake.
Ignatiy was never fond of these methods. Wherever liquidators are dispatched, they leave entire hallways silent, with hideous burn marks covering the walls. It’s not a wound that can heal over time. Nobody will live in an apartment whose former resident is now a stain on its concrete. The emptiness left behind is unnatural.
Nobody should die at the hands of another, the commissar thinks to himself, death should arrive in its own form, as everything rots in the Gigakhruschevka.
When he dies, he hopes it will be the Samosbor that takes him. He won’t become a black mark, but strands of slime hanging across the corridor. If the ooze is made from his flesh, then the dark sludge that corrodes the liquidator’s rake must come from his bones.
Even after death, we manage to decay. That is nature.
When Ignatiy learns of a new preacher in his sector, he prefers to meet the fool, face to half-face. Donning a technician’s jumpsuit and a partial mask for hiding burn scars, he’ll join a sermon in their apartment. He’ll listen to their every word, their every fantasy about a messiah and a meaning to life and a sun, entertaining delusions all.
He humours them during his visit, and asks “was it frightening to watch the sky darken every cycle, not knowing if the light would return?” And ever confident, the fool explains “no, for as long we have God’s love, we will have his sun,” while they bask in incandescence, the only light they’d ever known.
His curiosity satisfied, Ignatiy wishes safety upon the preacher and leaves. As he does, his boot leaves a streak of tar on their doorframe. It is just enough for nature to take course, just enough to break the seal.
The preacher goes about their cycle in unaware bliss. They remain filled with hope and devotion as their fate has been decided. They sleep that night content with the message they have spread. So does the commissar.
When the screams of Samosbor reign, the dissident’s pleas to an absent God are among them. Their prayers are unheard, their story lost and their name forgotten.
As everything rots in the Gigakhruschevka
Set in the universe of Samosbor