"STILL WORLD" "There must have been an incident." "A cause." "The start of everything." "How else could he explain the turmoil?" "Was it because the train was late that day that he was suddenly struck by those ever waiting crowds on the same platform?" "Or was it the station clock that had stopped at exactly the same time as his watch?" "All those years..." "He was a journalist." "A man of the truth." "Once he had the ambition to be great." "To write trail-blazing articles about important news." "Exciting, innovative." "A magician with words." "Local news was his lot." "His own self was kept out of his articles." "Cut, until nothing was left." "He suppressed those inner voices for long." "He gagged them." "Found them ugly." "Hated them." "Maybe that had been his mistake." "No one knew about it." "Betty..." "Did she know who he really was?" "How could she still love him?" "He'd become a ghost, a wandering, unfulfilled promise." "One day she'd be fed up with him." "Who was he still?" "He was sliding down, ever deeper." "The distance he felt, when talking to her..." "As if he listened to himself talking." "It wasn't he who touched her." "It was his body." "He knew damn well what had been the reason, a week ago." "What had caused the cracks in the walls he had put up years ago." "He'd rather not think of it." "A humiliation it was to him." "Normally he avoided family occasions." "But that time it wasn't possible." "His one time friend Max was there too." "Called himself a writer." "They'd been at school together." "Max had good news." "His book had been published." "How had he managed?" "How could something like that get through?" ""The early bird catches the worm." "The higher you fly, the further you fall."" "Good God!" "Max had overtaken him, while he himself had always been the talent." ""You may interview me if you wish," Max had said. "For the Supplement."" "He felt forgotten." "Perhaps he had done something terribly wrong." "The weeks after, thoughts began to crowd in his mind." "Of course Max had managed." "His stories made you bourgeois." "They made you take up your place at the conveyor belt." "Everything should stay as it is." "That's what this world was built on." "Sure, political negotiations always have the same outcome." "Always the same names in the same places." "That is stating the obvious." "But still, doesn't the world feel awkward about anything new?" "Originality is threatening, because the desert is embarrassed when a flower starts to grow." "Because it painfully shows up the mediocrity of the others." "Because they prefer the security of old successes." "Suddenly there was that note:" ""It is a strategy." "Investigate the authorities." "K."" "Had he been thinking aloud by mistake?" "He should watch out more." "Didn't want to appear ridiculous." "The authorities." "Of course, the authorities." "A bastion of policymakers with their State TV." "So it was true." "Populated by parasites dealing in trivialities through so-called responsible policies." "Don't think." "Especially no extremes." "That's what the masses want." "He asked around carefully." "She'd seen him before, she said." "They asked if he knew where to go." "They said he could walk along with them." "Suddenly he realised the danger." "He discussed it with the Chief Editor." "Who didn't see the problem." "Who found it a bit of a joke." "He called the article ill-founded." "Poor journalism." "He did it on purpose." "It was obvious." "He had to supply cast-iron proof." "Soon they started to watch his apartment." "Intimidation." "He would have to act carefully." "Every wrong step could be fatal." "He would write a book about the truth of the world and expose the conspiracy in one go." ""Still World" it would be called." "Every sentence would be a loaded gun." "They were waiting for an excuse to turn him in of course." "Let them wait." "He would work it all out on his head." "Put nothing on paper." "He didn't let on, in the next few days." "He disappeared again in the crowd." "He had become faceless again." "But the conclusion was clear:" "There may be no prison camps in our society but there are nastier ways of suppressing people." "The Procrustus bed." "Punishing originality." "The systematic withholding of success." "Death to each individual emotion." "He suddenly saw what he hadn't seen before." "He knew them." "Hadn't they been present that day with Max?" "He had to have photos." "Evidence." "He had to be sure." "What did they know of him?" "The Chief Editor, whose side was he on?" "That strange conversation, three weeks earlier about responsibilities in their work." "A teacher teaches how the world ticks, he said." "Like a journalist writes about how the world ticks." "But who teaches them?" "Who told them what is true and how one should live?" "The Chief Editor said he'd been down that road." "Civilisation is a lumbering machine." "All it can do is make victims." "Communication is based on defining the world." "Language is a system." "Each name, each word, a verdict." "Truthfulness is lying along conventions..." "The Chief Editor had been down that road." "So the splinter is driven out of the body." "...been down that road..." "Do we think about the reality we create?" "Words." "Words." "What was he fighting in fact?" "If he decided his own reality, what part of it was his?" "He couldn't do it." "Descend to Max's mediocrity." "He might as well not exist." "'You should become who you are. ' His granddad had often told him so." "He had to stay alert." "Something had changed." "His face was different." "It was no longer his." "Something inside was opposing him." "He had to stay alert, now of all times." "She didn't notice anything, said that everything was normal." "She tried to be nice." "He wanted to go against it, but it was only his voice answering." "It reassured her." "He started to shadow people." "Had to do something." "He began to see links, and to speak encouragingly to himself." "He knew what he saw." "He didn't dare go back home." "If he didn't recognize his own face, how could he recognize others?" "His informer!" "K. Was the one to hold on to." "The man of the note." "He'd been on to the case before." "He had to find him." "After a few days he had a catch." "At one library, someone had been there before him, asking the same questions." "He managed to get the titles of the books requested." "Who was this man?" "How much did he know of the conspiracy?" "Checking other libraries and archives he found the same:" "Always the same books." "What was on the pages that had been torn out?" "Had there been clues?" "A secret?" "What did the scribbling in the margin mean?" "A bookmark." "Left on purpose?" "Not until late at night did he get a glimpse of him." "K. Fled when he saw him." "He was fast." "The missing pages, torn to shreds." "The mystery grew only more so." "Why did he live in a cellar, in a sarcophagus?" "His voice started talking." "Yielding up his secrets." "His voice was a traitor." "The friendly doctor wanted to know why he had given himself up." "And why he slept in the museum cellar." "The idea!" "He asked if Madam Doctor was part of the conspiracy." "In the middle of the night they came." "Everything went black." "His head was pounding." "He felt blood on his hands." ""You are nothing"" "The woman evidently wanted to know why he'd mutilated himself so." "He got the message." "He would have to adapt." "Disappear in the system." "He had no chance." "Betty... his dearest darling." "In her eyes he still existed." "He had to get out of here." "Max!" "With Max of all people." "They must have discussed him at length." "How could he ever face her again?" "He got his things together." "He had to disappear." "For good." "To dissolve would be best." "Another message from K." ""Time for action"" "K. Wanted to see him." "That same evening." "In his own office at the paper." "What did the man want?" "Kill people?" "How could he think that was the solution?" "Whatever the system, there will always be victims." "Freedom and change are illusions." "A revolutionary swaps one dream for another." "Hatred of the incomprehensible, that's what it was." "The shapeless oppresses." "There was only one way out:" "Stop time itself." "Yes, stop time for good." "Then all would be over." "There he was." "At his own desk." "He knew now." "He knew how to summarize the book in one sentence." "Two words were enough." "Everything is." "He smelt the evening air." "For the first time he felt at peace." "For the first time the world didn't matter." "He knew now who he was." "At home, Betty's greeting sounded sweet in his ears." "She noticed he was different." "For the first time he could smell the fragrance of her hair." "And he saw the pain in her eyes." "She'd grown older, more beautiful." "He was the man who had set the still world in motion."