Stone dreams

"Let's go back, it's terribly cold..." Marek looked as if he'd just returned from exile in Siberia. His face had turned blue, and he couldn't hold a cigarette. The tremors had progressed to their final stages, and now he looked as if he had St. Vitus's disease.

"Just a little longer," I said, then returned to my measurements. True to my guess, the gap between his hand and knee was about 1 mm. There was no way to explain it—it would be difficult to do even today, let alone 320 years ago. I examined the hand again. The gap could have been caused by erosion, but how could you explain such perfect fingertips when there's no room for any tools?

"Let's go back, I can't think of anything more," I encouraged my best friend. He seemed overjoyed.

"You won't get away until tomorrow," he replied, trying to muster the last of his sarcasm.

So we went home, leaving behind a three-hundred-year-old stone sculpture of a man kneeling on one knee.

He looked as if he wanted to get up and escape the cold.

2.

Anna was in a bad mood.

"If you don't stop chasing your monuments with a caliper, I'll move out," I'd heard this threat for what felt like the thousandth time, but today I sensed genuine bitterness in her voice. "When will you finish this program? The company called today and said that if you don't show them the project by Saturday, it'll be bad...

" "They always say that, you know how it is," I replied. "In a programmer's job, for the first 90% of the time, you write 10% of the code, and then for the next 10%, you write 90% of the code." I tried to turn it all into a joke. I don't think I made her laugh.

"Do what you want, but I won't explain or justify anything to you anymore.

" "Anna, you know how important this is to me." Maybe I'm on the verge of discovering the world's biggest secret...

"I know, but this secret of yours won't pay the bills. By the way, we've maxed out our credit card, so if you'd be willing to write this program, it would help us manage our finances a bit." Her foul mood seemed to be slowly fading.

"It's okay," I pulled her closer. The storm seemed to have passed. I'll have to sit down at the computer, though, because cash is really tight, I thought.

This morning I asked Anna if she'd like to go to Florence.

3.

"Absolutely!" Paweł only allowed himself to raise his voice in special circumstances.

"But boss, I really need this money," it came out pathetically, a bit like a whimper...

"You know perfectly well we don't give advances. And certainly not advances larger than the full agreed-upon amount for a program." The owner of the programming studio where I worked was not easily moved.

"I'm not going to quit my job, you'll make a lot of money off me," I tried to defend my point.

"If you were in any serious trouble... but for a trip to Italy? You must have lost your mind from all that typing..." My pleas were still fruitless.

"Because I have to see David in person..." I continued, though my chances were already slim to none.

"Download some photos from the internet; there are probably thousands of Michelangelo's sculptures online—his conscience was probably a stone carving, too.

" "That's not the same," I tried to argue. "How about five thousand? Enough for at least a week's stay...

" "Get to work, let's go. I think today is Kindness to Animals Day. Four thousand. But only after you finish that idiotic crossword puzzle program!" I felt like throwing myself at his knees with joy.

"Of course, thank you, I'm sitting down." Without waiting for him to change his mind, I retreated to my room and started typing.

4.

"So?" I asked hopefully.

"So what?" Anna replied.

"Don't you see?

" "I don't see what?" My wife was unmoved by the five-hundred-year-old sculpture.

"Well, the fact that it has a bent left arm," I continued.

"The fact that it has a bent arm, everyone's arms bend, that's a strange human trait," she replied cynically.

"But in the sketches Michelangelo made for this statue, the left arm is only half-bent.

" "And what's that supposed to prove? He probably changed his mind a hundred times, looking at his model." Anna didn't see anything strange in that.

"In my opinion, David was carved with a half-bent arm..." I began, but she interrupted me.

"You're not trying to tell me the statue itself has been bending its arm for five centuries since it was created... No, you really believe that... You know what, we're going home." Either you get your act together and realize that the sculptures aren't moving, or you're in for a long and unpleasant treatment in a hospital from which it's quite difficult to discharge yourself.

5.

Andrzej sat on the floor. His appearance was fundamentally different from mine. He had clean clothes, was clean-shaven, and in no way resembled the bum before him, me.

"I warned you it wouldn't do you any good," he finally drawled. "Don't count on me continuing to lend you money. And you can forget about Anna; she called me and said she wasn't responsible for your debts and wouldn't come back to you." He seemed upset, but I knew it was just a facade. He was my best friend, after all. My only friend, in fact. When I got fired, he was the only reason I was still surviving. He invited me to dinner, gave me a little money, sometimes we went for a beer. The only thing he wouldn't let himself be talked into going on expeditions to measure monuments.

"I'm right, and you know it, these monuments move as if they were alive," I continued, "but I don't know why only some... maybe their creators breathed life into them... Maybe they're alive, they think, just hundreds of times slower than us. Maybe there's a chance to communicate with them?"

He didn't seem interested.

"Come on," he said, "let's go. I'll buy you dinner, maybe we'll grab a bite later. Just please, forget about those statues. Get a grip, shave, look for a job. As an IT specialist, you'll find work in any company..."

We went to a pub.

I returned home, well-fed after a few days of forced fasting. I'd long since sold the furniture, so I lay down on a cardboard imitation bed, covered myself with an old coat, and fell asleep. It was the last evening of my life. In the early morning hours, exhausted, I died.

Or at least that's what I thought.

6.

Only a few people attended the funeral. Andrzej gave the eulogy. He spoke of passion, how it had ruined my life, of purpose and the search for causes. He promised at the graveside that I deserved a monument for my madness. He was a rather wealthy businessman, so it didn't take long to put his intention into action. A few months later, a five-meter-high monument was erected in one of our town's squares. It depicted me gazing thoughtfully at the sky, calipers in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other. That's when it all began

.

I was awakened by a pulsing light and a hum. I slowly opened my eyes. The world around me had gone mad. Instead of the sun in the sky, I saw only a luminous streak that flickered, moved up and down, sometimes dimming for a moment, only to brighten the horizon again. My ears roared and hissed, as if someone had turned on a million tape recorders at once, spinning at high speed. I couldn't make out a single familiar sound; everything blended into something between a hum and a hissing squeal. I looked down. A mass of indefinable color pulsed all around me. It seemed as if ghosts, blurred shapes, were circling around me at dizzying speed. Sometimes, for a moment shorter than the blink of an eye, they would stop, then seem to gain reality, only to resume their race almost immediately. Buildings appeared and disappeared, as if by magic. I stood there motionless, staring at the mad world, holding a caliper in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other, and I wondered how to let the world know that I was right