Tomáš Kuba & Lisa Schupp

 

I’m the number 33 a. I usually had a name, but we don’t use it anymore. We received numbers when arriving here. And after several weeks I have even forgotten my name. I don’t care about the name anymore. It doesn’t have any significance to me. There are other important things in my life now. Like other numbers. My walking partner, number 33 b for example. Since the first day I got here, orders rule my day. It already begins in the morning. After the morning call I have to get to my fix place in line, next to 33 b, 34 a and 34 b.

Walking in line lets me see the world out of another perspective. I never know where we are going. There is just the horizon. And 32 a’s shoulder. What is happening behind my back I can’t say. I believe that there are others, just like me, called by numbers. They must see the same. But it must be interesting being number 1. I have never seen number 1. It’s too far away. Maybe, one day, I can obtain number 1. To see what is out there. But I’m growing. I don’t have a choice.

While walking in the lines we are not supposed to talk. But there are rumors. Some strange voice among us. Telling us stories. Maybe they are coming from number 1. One day, it told us about another place, a strange and confusing place. I recognized it. I remember it.

“Paradise,” he began, and the p meant a spray. “The old dream about Paradise—that was about us, about right now. Yes! Just think about it. Those two in Paradise, they were offered a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness, nothing else. Those idiots chose freedom. And then what? Then for centuries they were homesick for the chains . . . . And we were the first to hit on the way to get back to happiness . . . . Paradise was back. And we’re simple and innocent again, like Adam and Eve.”

I remember that rumor the most of all of the others. It would be nice to go to Paradise. Nowhere.