Metro 2033

It seemed to him that he could dip into the quiet river of this melody for short spells, and suddenly he would understand the essence of this phenomenon – not using reason but using an intuition that was probably awakened by that noise from the broken pipe. The flowing sounds from that pipe seemed to him the same as ether, slowly extending along the tu

Suddenly it seemed to Artyom that he was standing on the threshold of an understanding of something important, as though the last hour he had spent wandering in the pitch-black darkness of the tu

But with this realization, Artyom also became scared, as if he had only had a peek through the key hole of the door hoping to find out what was behind it, and seeing only an unbearable light punching through it and singeing the eyes. And if you opened the door then the light would gush out irrepressibly and incinerate the audacious person who decided to open the forbidden door on the spot. However, this light is knowledge.

The whirlwind of all these thoughts, feelings and worries came whipping through Artyom too suddenly and he wasn’t at all ready for anything like it and so he recoiled in fright. No, this was all just a fantasy. He hadn’t heard anything and hadn’t realized anything. It was just a game of his imagination. With mixed feelings of relief and disappointment, he observed how, for an instant, an amazing, indescribable vision was revealed to him. It instantly grew dim, melted, and the mind again was faced with its usual muddy haze. He was afraid of this knowledge and stepped back from it, and now the curtain was lowered again and perhaps forever. The hurricane in his head died down as quickly as it had come and he was left with a devastated and exhausted mind.

Artyom was shaken and sat there trying to understand everything – where his fantasy ended and where reality began – wondering if any of these sensations might be real after all. Slowly, slowly, his soul was filled with bitterness at the fact that he had stood a step away from enlightenment, from the most real enlightenment, but he hadn’t been resolute, he hadn’t dare give himself to the flow of the tu

‘But what is knowledge?’ he asked himself again and again, trying to give value to the thing that he had just refused in a hurried and cowardly ma

‘Knowledge, my friend, is light – and non-knowledge is darkness!’ one of the duty officers explained to him eagerly. ‘Right?’ He merrily winked at his friends.

Artyom was dumbstruck and stared at the guy and sat like that for a while until Bourbon returned and got him up and said goodbye to the officers, saying that he had been detained and that they were in a hurry.

‘Watch it!’ the commander of the post said to him threateningly. ‘I’m letting you leave here with a weapon.’ He waved a hand at Artyom’s machine gun. ‘But you won’t be coming back through with it. I have clear instructions on that.’

‘I told you, you blockhead…’ Bourbon hissed to Artyom in irritation after they’d hastily walked away from the fire. ‘So you can do what you want on the way back. But you’ll get a fight. I don’t care. I just knew it, I knew that this would happen, fuck you.’

Artyom said nothing, almost not hearing Bourbon chiding him. Instead, he suddenly remembered what his stepfather said that time when he was explaining about the uniqueness of every tu

‘OK… You probably didn’t do it on purpose, you’ve just got shit for brains.’ Bourbon said in conciliation. ‘If I’m, like, not very nice to you, I’m sorry. This is stressful work. But, OK, seems we got out so that’s good. Now we have to trudge to Prospect Mir without being stopped. There we can, like, relax. If everything is quiet then it won’t take much time. But beyond that, there’s a problem.’

‘So it’s OK that we’re just walking along like this? I mean that when we go in a caravan from VDNKh, if there’s any less than three people then we don’t leave, you need a rearguard, and basically…’ Artyom said, looking behind himself.

‘Well, there are plusses of course to going in caravan with a rearguard and all that,’ Bourbon started to explain. ‘But listen here, there’s a concrete minus to that too. I used to be afraid. And forget three people, we used to not go anywhere without at least five people. You think it helped? Doesn’t help in the least. Once we were moving a cargo and so we had protection: two in front, three in the middle and a rearguard – everything as it should be. We were going from Tretyakovskaya to what’s it called… used to be called Marxistskaya. The tu

‘Somewhere in the middle, this guy Tolyan asks the rearguard something. But the guy doesn’t answer. Tolyan waited and asked again. Nothing. Tolyan then pulls on the rope and the end of it appears. It’s been bitten right through. Really – bitten through and there’s even some wet gunk on the end of it… And the guy is nowhere to be seen. And they didn’t hear a thing. Nothing at all. And I was walking with Tolyan myself. He showed me the end of the rope and my knees quaked. Of course we shouted back at him for the sake of it but didn’t hear anything. There wasn’t anyone there to answer. So we exchanged glances – and went forward so that we were at Marxistskaya in no time.’

‘Maybe the guy was playing a joke?’ Artyom asked hopefully.

‘A joke? Maybe. But he hasn’t been seen since. So, there’s one thing I’ve understood: if it’s your time, it’s your time and no guard’s going to help you. Only you go a little slower. And I go everywhere in a twosome, with a partner if you like, except in one tu

‘Got it. So, they’ll let us into Prospect Mir? I still have this thing…’ Artyom pointed to his machine gun.

‘They’ll let us onto the radial. But to the Ring – definitely not. They wouldn’t let you in anyway, and with that ca