"Armaged-house"

Squirrel wheel of history and how to get out of it

When the apocalypse happens every twenty years, you somehow get used to it somehow. You get used to constantly losing loved ones, survive and start all the time from scratch. You get used to the fact that the image of the future is equal to the image of the present, and the country no longer spends strength and resources on art or technological achievements - neither strength nor resources simply have no resources. In general, you live in this in your own cozy Armaged Dome.

In the novel by Marina and Sergei Dyachenko, the apocalypse happens at equal intervals of time - no one knows why, that's all. Meteorite rains, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes are falling off, monsters come out of the seas - in general, all according to the “revelation” of John. But every time, as soon as the next end of the world begins, the gate opens everywhere where you can hide and wait out the disaster. They can accommodate everyone, but still every time in a tickle in front of the gate, hundreds die, if not thousands - go on their heads, trample, are afraid not to fit or not in time.

Slowly from the "people" the government forms a "special contingent" that learns about the opening of the gate first and is evacuated calmly, on helicopters, with families and pets. There is a prophecy that one day the gate will not open - and then the final end will come.

But so far everything works clearly and debugged.

However, something in these circles is still changing. At first, the existence of a “special contingent” is a terrible secret hidden from the population. Deputy Andrei Zarudny, who tried to betray this secret, is killed. But in the next cycle - a new life after the next Apocalypse - justice triumphs: a good government is replacing a bad government, the ideas of a zarudny about universal evacuation on an equal footing raise a new president to the banner, they hang a memorial plaque, his books are included in the school curriculum.

And a new circle of hell begins. People are kicked out of the house to educational evacuation at any time of the day and night, they make endless crosses to run, regardless of physical abilities, for refusing training - arrest, pleas "Let me die calmly!" Ignore. State control penetrates into all the cracks, the internship flourishes. Twenty years pass, a new end of the world is approaching. And in the next cycle, no one pays attention to the “special contingent” - there is and is, and it was always like that, and it does not depend on us.

In the novel there are no bindings to nationality or geography, but knowledgeable people (philologist Mikhail Nazarenko, for example) claim that Armaged-house is the most Ukrainian book of all Dyachenkovsky. Perhaps this is so - but from Russia it is read as the most Russian. In any case, she, obviously, is the most “Armaged-house”.

This book, firstly, about the conflict of generations. On the example of the main character, Lida, the answer is very clearly given to the question of where twenty-year-old chubby idealists, freedom and world around the world forever go. Where, for example, are those whose hands the restructuring have now gone? All there: remained in the former cycle. The fact is that Lida, as a teenager, fought for the ideals of Zarudny, hated inequality, dreamed of saving the world and bringing humanity from endless walking in a circle. But not in vain, every new cycle after the end of the world begins with propaganda (almost order) of pregnancy: on the one hand, of course, to “restore the population”, and on the other, in order to abandon the ideals of youth, it was easier.

As soon as the son is born in Lida, she spends all the means, connections and nerves to protect him - and soon he gnaws herself and his place in a “special contingent”.

Well, what, after all, everyone does it, because the lists of elites have already grown incredibly - what will change one extra place spent on one boy? That's the whole conflict of generations.

Secondly, this is a novel about the eternal expectation of a new life: now this “bad guy” will leave from the government-and that “good” will come, and then everything will change, then we will heal! Then on Earth the world will reign by itself, and humanity is strictly and peacefully walks to the gate, and no one will die at the next end of the world - or maybe there will be no end at all. It turns out that it turns out that the onset of the next Armageddon does not depend on the government - more precisely, not only on it. The government, the authors say, will always be the same - it will always arrange a crush and evacuate their “most necessary”, those without whom, according to them, there will be no country at all. No, the endless onset of the end does not depend on them. It depends on one little boy who does not want to sit on a warm place, booked along the form due to other people's lives. From a boy who stupidly and idealistically sacrifices comfort and stability for the sake of the lives of the rest. At least, I want to believe the authors.

Ukrainian writers Marina and Sergey Dyachenko wrote Armaged-house about twenty years ago. And the little boy, the son of the main character, who sacrificed himself, died not in the apocalypse. He died later, a few years after the last end of the world - in the war.

QUOTE:

“Apocalypse is a muzzle, a leash worn on humanity. A ring that does not allow us to grow further, constraining what we are used to calling progress. Staying alive, we joyfully begin to reproduce ourselves in all respects ... restore the destroyed. Restore the population. All our forces are aimed at updating and surviving in the new cataclysm. We cannot afford a single more or less decent space flight, although technical developments exist many cycles. We almost do not use nuclear energy, although the operation of nuclear power plants would greatly make our lives easier for us. But the leash of the apocalypse is pulled - and attempts to create nuclear weapons lead to the death of entire countries, entire regions ... Even ordinary ammunition - being placed in special covers! - During the apocalypse, they self -destruct in fifty cases out of a hundred. Apocalypse is a rigid condition, restriction, and we do not find out who it is established. Maybe never find out ... But what is a gate?

The gate is a chance. It is like forgiveness, as if encouraging, as if road to life. We are spinning like squirrels in a wheel, from cycle to cycle, and it seems that there is no way out. But maybe if the apocalypse is a protein wheel, then the gate is something more than just a lifebuoy?

Why are the gates set?

And what will happen if one fine day humanity goes into them with a proudly raised head, without hesitation, but also in no hurry, hurrying to support anyone who accidentally stumble? What will happen if it is unrealistic - will one day happen?

Perhaps it is then that the cycle will end, and the muzzle will be removed. The monstrous in their regularity of earthquakes will sink into the past, and the comet unknown to the astronomers will cease to appear out of nowhere. And humanity will finally develop. To develop, and not go in a circle, do not spin the squirrel wheel. Perhaps the one who put the gate will consider that now humanity is worthy of life without a leash ...

No, do not ask me who set the gate. I will not answer.

I don't know.

(Andrey Zarudny, from unpublished articles.) "