Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) by Dmitry Glukhovsky Page A
Authors: Dmitry Glukhovsky
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green tea was her greatest treasure. And a reminder that the universe wasn’t just the body of the station and its four tunnels buried twenty meters below the graveyard that had once been Moscow. The teabag was some kind of magical portal that moved Sasha back by centuries and thousands of kilometers. It was so much more, something enormously important.
In the wet climate of the metro paper decayed quickly.
Decay and mold didn’t just eat books and brochures, they destroyed their entire past. Without pictures and chronicles the already limping human mind stumbled and ran into the wrong direction like a man without his crutches.
The hull of the teabag was out of a material that mold and the time couldn’t harm. Sasha’s father had once said that it would take thousands of years before this material would fall apart. So even their decedents would one day inherit this teabag, she thought.
It was, even though it was a miniature, a real picture. A golden frame that was as bright as on the day it came from the conveyor belt surrounded a view that robbed Sasha of her breath. Steep walls of stone, covered in dreamlike mist, a far reaching pine forest that held on the almost vertical mountains, roaring waterfalls that fell down from the highest tip of the mountain into an abyss, a purple shine that spoke of the nearing dawn … In her entire life she had never seen anything more beautiful.
She could sit there for a long time, with the teabag in her hand and just look at it. The mist in the morning that covered the mountains held her view magically. And even though she had read all the books that her father had brought from his expeditions before they sold them, the read words
did not suffice to describe what she felt looked at these one centimeter tall mountains and breathing in the smell of the pine needles. It was a world so far from their reality but it had a strong pull …
The sweet longing and the eternal expectation of what the sun would see first … The endless thoughts about what was behind the sign with the brand of the tea: A strange tree?
The nest of an eagle? One of those houses that held on the slope and in which she would live with her father?
It was him that had given her the teabag when she was five years old. Back then with content, because it was a real rarity.
He had wanted to surprise her with real tea and she had gathered all her courage to drink it like medicine.
But the plastic hull had fascinated her from the very start. Back then he had explained her that it wasn’t a very artful illustration: A conventional Chinese province, just good enough for the print of a teabag. But teen years later Sasha still viewed it with the same eyes as on the day she had gotten the gift from her father.
Her father on the other hand thought that the teabag was just a shabby replacement for the whole world. And every time she fell into this trance and looked at this badly
drawn fantasy he felt the unspoken accusation for their mutilated, bloodless life. He tried to hold her back every time, without any success. With almost anger he asked her for the hundredth time what she liked about this old packaging for a gram of tea. For the hundredth time she put it back into her pocket and answered embarrassed:”Father … I think it is beautiful!”
If Homer hadn’t been there Hunter wouldn’t have stopped for a second, but Homer needed three times as long for the way. He would have never moved so secure and self-confident through the tunnel. For the transit through the Nagornaya the group had paid a terrible price, but at least two out of three had made it. And all three could have survived if they wouldn’t have been lost in the fog. The price wasn’t higher than usual: Nothing had happened there that hadn’t happened before, neither at the Nachimovski prospect nor at the Nagornaya .
So it wasn’t because of the tunnels that lead to the Tu l skaya ? Now they were completely silent, but it was a
In the wet climate of the metro paper decayed quickly.
Decay and mold didn’t just eat books and brochures, they destroyed their entire past. Without pictures and chronicles the already limping human mind stumbled and ran into the wrong direction like a man without his crutches.
The hull of the teabag was out of a material that mold and the time couldn’t harm. Sasha’s father had once said that it would take thousands of years before this material would fall apart. So even their decedents would one day inherit this teabag, she thought.
It was, even though it was a miniature, a real picture. A golden frame that was as bright as on the day it came from the conveyor belt surrounded a view that robbed Sasha of her breath. Steep walls of stone, covered in dreamlike mist, a far reaching pine forest that held on the almost vertical mountains, roaring waterfalls that fell down from the highest tip of the mountain into an abyss, a purple shine that spoke of the nearing dawn … In her entire life she had never seen anything more beautiful.
She could sit there for a long time, with the teabag in her hand and just look at it. The mist in the morning that covered the mountains held her view magically. And even though she had read all the books that her father had brought from his expeditions before they sold them, the read words
did not suffice to describe what she felt looked at these one centimeter tall mountains and breathing in the smell of the pine needles. It was a world so far from their reality but it had a strong pull …
The sweet longing and the eternal expectation of what the sun would see first … The endless thoughts about what was behind the sign with the brand of the tea: A strange tree?
The nest of an eagle? One of those houses that held on the slope and in which she would live with her father?
It was him that had given her the teabag when she was five years old. Back then with content, because it was a real rarity.
He had wanted to surprise her with real tea and she had gathered all her courage to drink it like medicine.
But the plastic hull had fascinated her from the very start. Back then he had explained her that it wasn’t a very artful illustration: A conventional Chinese province, just good enough for the print of a teabag. But teen years later Sasha still viewed it with the same eyes as on the day she had gotten the gift from her father.
Her father on the other hand thought that the teabag was just a shabby replacement for the whole world. And every time she fell into this trance and looked at this badly
drawn fantasy he felt the unspoken accusation for their mutilated, bloodless life. He tried to hold her back every time, without any success. With almost anger he asked her for the hundredth time what she liked about this old packaging for a gram of tea. For the hundredth time she put it back into her pocket and answered embarrassed:”Father … I think it is beautiful!”
If Homer hadn’t been there Hunter wouldn’t have stopped for a second, but Homer needed three times as long for the way. He would have never moved so secure and self-confident through the tunnel. For the transit through the Nagornaya the group had paid a terrible price, but at least two out of three had made it. And all three could have survived if they wouldn’t have been lost in the fog. The price wasn’t higher than usual: Nothing had happened there that hadn’t happened before, neither at the Nachimovski prospect nor at the Nagornaya .
So it wasn’t because of the tunnels that lead to the Tu l skaya ? Now they were completely silent, but it was a
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