METRO 2033: The Gospel According to Artyom. Read Online Free Page A

the tower was her face. The face of my mother.
     
    I know they've shown it to me not as a bargaining chip. It was... Something like a greeting... Their prodigal son stopped hiding and came into the open, unclenching his fists – and they greeted him with open hands. That's what it was.
     
    And then they gave me that long lost day again – though this time it happened not just for the vicinity of the Botanical Gardens, but for the whole world. Standing at the observation desk of the Ostankino tower I was entranced by the view – I did not see the city depopulated by war and plague, the dead shells of the buildings and spilled guts of the streets. I saw Moscow living, brimming with life!
     
    I'm sure they've shown it to me not just because I wanted to see it for so long. They meant to say that together we could bring all that back. Together.
     
    And I still had a chance to stop it all. I had a minute. I could explain everything to my comrades, I could push the transmitter off the tower, I could do anything! 
     
    And what DID I do? I washed my hands.
     
    The target coordinates were computed and reported, they were entered in the ballistic computer and the launch buttons were pushed… All by other people. I was not guilty of any of it – I just stood there and watched. Then I descended from the tower and got my hero's welcome.
     
     
    *               *               *
     
     
                  I can't recall her face anymore.
     
                  There's only one thing left for me now – go back to the site. I went there yesterday, and the day before, and two days before – all the last year. I'm going there now, I'll go there tomorrow.
     
                  It's not a rite, it's not my job and not my duty.
     
                  It's just that something inside me pushes me there every morning, some vague longing makes me don the heavy protective gear, demand that the guards open the airlock, climb up the escalator from fifty meters below the ground, drag myself along the empty streets – all just to get here.
     
                  This place used to be called the Botanical Gardens. 
     
                  Now it's just soot and ashes and only the plastic bags float above this charred   plot of land. Even after we all die out – I give humanity around 200 years more at the best – the bags are still going to be floating about for several centuries. Perhaps, that's all what will remain of our civilization, of our world – the bags, these indestructible excrements of ours. A fitting memory of lowly us.
     
                  I have quite a lot of free time now – about an eternity, so there was plenty a chance for me to think everything over. I have a little theory: the Dark Ones were no demons. Quite the opposite, they were an embassy of angels on Earth sent here for our salvation and trial. Should we have proven capable of suppressing the beast within ourselves, of seeing the white feathers beneath their jet-black exterior, find a way of understanding them despite the pain and disgust – we'd have passed the test and received forgiveness for the sin of destroying the world we didn't create.
     
                  We were incapable of such a feat.
     
                  I was. I alone!
     
                  Thus I, as if cursed, am walking to the place of my eternal vigil – to the Gardens. It's neither a punishment nor penance. I just can't live without doing this, though I can't understand why. I don't even want to think of the reasons.
     
                  I keep digging in the ashes with a long stick, keep picking up the pieces of molted metal. I might have gone through all of this accursed field already and, without noticing it or finding anything, just started all over again. Then again.
     
                  What am I looking