The Algorithm of Chaos [Сергей Николаевич Огольцов] (fb2) читать онлайн

Сергей Огольцов The Algorithm of Chaos

1

The viber buzzed its default “zn-zn” because V was not in the habit of tweaking apps. Vanilla settings, staple oatmeal, blonde cuties for him were fine to go on with, he did not run after frills in mainstream things of common usage.

He tapped his Samsung. The screen could barely contain the caller's plump map.

‘What's up, 2ic?’

‘Hey, V! Still trying to win those 100 bucks at proze.com? Typing tons of hooey to get the fuck?’

‘I don't give a fuck about no proses, shithead. Just using them as a whetstone to consolidate my skills. Their Monthly Challenge spurs you on all right when in the common writer's block, like, “Oh, my! What to write about?!” A freebie “Giddy up!”, sort of.’

‘Yea, bro, I do dig. Dough ain't the point, right? Moreover, a $100 bill won’t line your pockets for longer than another stray blonde.’

‘Cut your sermon out, padre.’

‘I'm doing you a friendly offer, V, which you can’t possibly reject. A gold mine, an oilfield as rich as to make BP and Shell scramble for the right to hummer lullabies on you 8 nights a week.’

‘What? Wanna them suck-dry me up with their pumps? Fuck you!’

‘Come on, man, I was purely metaphorical… The idea is, it's a chance you might meet but only once in your lifespan!’

‘Yeah, I see. You've sampled a nugget or a bucket from your metaphorical methamphetamine Bonanza, and got driveling high, up to the complete forgetfulness of my being straight.’

‘Since when?’

‘OK. Call me tomorrow or when you’re out from under the influence.’

‘Wait-wait-wait! I mean business!!’

‘Then talk it and don't act a pimp new to his trade.’

‘Look, there's a story… Some real story to glorify your name, V! It'll make you famous like Pynchon, Joyce, Hemingway!’

‘Who's the third guy?’

‘Hemingway? I dunno. Seen a book by him. My ex was regularly tear-drenching the paperback.’

‘A girl reading a live book? Come on! The mankind's past that phase… So you got jealous and remembered the name, huh?’

‘A farm girl from hinterland can keep a joker or two up her sleeve, believe me, bro. Anyway, I've got a file of some world-shatter stuff waiting for a guy to proofread, sign with his name, and become a celebrity overnight. How about that?’

‘OK. Just to prevent your bubbling fit from growing into OD, drop the file at my email.’

‘Forget it, handsome. I have nothing to do with no emails.’

And that's true. Since long 2ic got firmly fixed on the issues of personal data security. Anchored, as a matter of fact. Unbudgeably. It would take a bulldozer and a week of persuading before he agrees sending you a 2-liner with some link or stuff attached before he'd freak out the very last moment. Because of his employment at some obscure firm working for the government. A set of squat buildings behind the high mesh-fence, surveillance cams on every other post or pillar, grim rottweilers walking their surly breeders 3 times a day in the outside parking-lot.

The surest way to cut 2ic's rambling stream of talking and make him shut up gravely for no less than 10 minutes served the question how was his work today. He'll zip mum, gloomy, irresponsive.

Obviously, the story about the Jewish couple working for the government before they got fried up on the chair for leaking to the Soviets some scraps of know-how in A-bomb production impressed him deeply.

‘I was just kidding, 2ic, no need wetting your bed tonight. Easy, come down. What’s your message?’

'Uncle Tom's Cabin in two hours, sounds good?’

You can’t let down your buddy, a long-term bosom friend. The rule of some nymphomaniac slut of a Russian Empress was to keep enemies close to her chest. So that you feel and follow the weeniest budging in their souls and plots, said she. Bosh bullshit! It’s your bosom friends to be kept under your closest control. Your friends know your weak points better than you yourself. The most painful strike would be delivered by them. Surprisingly. Because they are your friends, they know when and how to get you. R.I.P., stupid asshole!

‘It’s OK with me,’ said V.

* * *

2

Surprisingly, there never was any Tom about the Cabin. Anyway, none of the trust-worthy old-timer patrons would recollect. Ma'am Harriet ran the establishment, an oldie but bitchy shrew with the response-time reflexes of a rattle snake. The venerable lady was damn well sprightly at wielding her lachrymator spray and for that reason in no need of keeping neither a baseball bat nor a bouncer about the premises.

By and large, in daytime The Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a family diner worthy of the name which at later hours turned into a restaurant of a well-deserved repute because Ma'am Harriet had a good cook (without stepping into minutiae of racially sensitive tinge, yes, you guessed right, it was The Uncle Tom's Cabin after all), delicious food upheld the lekker atmosphere…

V got seated in a corner stall and leaned back in calm relaxation. His left arm stretched along the double-seat back upholstered with skin the color… well… matching the interior.

Fortunately, burly frame of 2ic emerged in the doorway. Good timing indeed…

The double chin jutted imposingly from the unbuttoned white collar of his shirt. The jacket hanging loosely from the left shoulder draped the same side of his torso. A pretty precarious cloth-hanger it was, the 2ic's chubby shoulder was. It surely takes a brave jacket to risk assuming such a position.

On the other hand, the unorthodox spot chosen for the wear item conveyed a certain air of desperado-like nonchalance and a hint at possible erectility to the general aspect of 2ic's corpulent build. That way he cut a fine figure, yes, reminiscent of a hussar from the Czarist army in their spiffy uniform of which they used to don just one sleeve, the thing called ’mentick,' excuse my Russian. However, he advanced further, the mentioned dare-devil, this here 2ic, in leaving both jacket sleeves vacant, and he also was bereft of both cavalry and banditto moustachios

’I say,' said 2ic after he dumped his jacket on the opposite double seat and crashed next to it, facing V. ‘Are all of Pretty Boys so predictable? Nearing the Cabin, I knew you'll be sitting in the corner—doesn't matter left or right—and corner it is! Why?’

’To give the commoners a lucky chance to enjoy our nifty appearance, I guess,' suggested V.

‘A-ha!. So, the corner ain't a vantage point for zeroing in a guy of the same quality? A start up who pops up to check if you are still a decent gunslinger? Maybe that is why?’

’The interrogative “why” supposes a zillion possible answers,' responded V wearily.

‘Right… Now the file in question was shoplifted at my workplace and it's a transcript, actually.’

‘Whoa, man! Stop! For sacred security’s sake! You drunk or something? What if I’m wired? All you say now may be used against your ass as well as it’s hole!’

2ic shook his head in disdain.

’Forget the deprecated shit, dude. No recording can be used against the vilest villain now, thanks to non-stop scientific achievements. My lawyer will announce the recorded stuff a prank I plotted to pull your leg. Moreover, if you’re presenting just my words unsupported by unlawful intentions.

Wake up! The 2-step-verification Age has arrived, my friend. No court would pick up a case where mere words are not backed up with acts backed up with well-documented thoughts I thought while doing it. No, sir, raw acts without 2-step-verification don't count any more. Were you caught blood-handed over a body stubbed into tatters or with your pants down before a bevy of kindergarten students. Doesn’t matter. You might have been manipulated and set up by means of retrospective causality. Yep. A dirty trick of your sister’s great-grand-kid. A revenge for not sharing a candy of which she, your sister, aged 3, complained in the video found by her posterity brat in their attic. Do you follow? Horse and carriage. Only a crime confirmed by 2-s-v is a crime.’

’So, if they break my email account, find some stuff send by you but they don’t have a recording of your thought, like, ‘Hey! I sure will send this to V!’, you are immune?

‘Exactly! Innocent like a newly born nepo baby! And let them eff themselves in your email box! Excuse my French.’

‘Then why haven’t you just sent me the file?’

’My message in your mailbox plus my recorded thought to do it make me liable. Can't you see?

‘Thought recording? What hooey are you pushing here?’

‘Man, that’s what I’m doing at my workplace… Ever happened to hear about “noosphere”?’

‘?’

‘Well, there’s not only atmo- and/or stratospheres now, they’ve dug up a noosphere too. It's where gets each thought of everybody capable of thinking. The most secret thought broadcast. The way radio transmitters do. The analogy ends where radio signals wear out and die away because your thoughts stay there, indestructible. True, the bleeding-edge technologies have not yet developed to the full potential, however, theoretically, you can reads Da Vinci’s thoughts at his painting Mona.’

‘How about your Dad’s thoughts at spilling you out from his loins within the slew of less shifty spermatozoa?’

‘It’s a harder nut to crack. The problem of extracting his thoughts from heaps of thoughts emitted by other men in the like process plus those of male big apes in zoos around the world. Everests of doubles.’

‘Now your prize story looks like a fairy tale, pal.’

‘I know, it’s hard to it in at once. The whole swarm of intangible thoughts corralled in the noosphere, wreathing, swiping thru each other, not even aware of how overcrowded the place is. And being doing it throughout the whole world history. Proliferating. Reckless bastards not giving a fuck about the Malthusian Theory. They add up, multiply, keep meandering into each other like radio waves or stray quanta and other stuff which no normal guy can cram into his gibbous nob, are you with me?’

‘Since they are so unobtrusive, I don’t mind their vortexes or swamps, or wherever are located their intangible warehouses of impalpable matryoshkas.’

‘Everywhere, buddy. In you, in me, in this here table. Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, thoughts…’

‘You’ve screwed the cite up. It runs like “words, words…” and so forth in the original.’

‘Words are not for keep. Too fragile, unstable, often broken, passing and then lost irretrievably. Thoughts are another kettle of fish. They are always there. Accruing part of the noosphere.’

‘Thanks for the entertaining tall story yet, as a regular hick, I can’t believe in anything I can’t grope.’

’Can you grab a radio wave?'

‘Nope. But I can click on the receiver self-made by my Dad back in the last millennium and listen to the weather report.’

‘Some guys earn their living by reading the thoughts from the noosphere.’

‘Come on! No medium managed to pass SPR or ASSAP checks.’

‘Who talks of mediums? I mean the co-employees at my workplace. The job is twirling knobs to fine tune to noosphere thoughts, that’s what I do.’

‘Receivers?’

‘Kind of.’

‘OK. Suppose, it’s not a sham trick invented by hostile aliens. Still, I can’t not even remotely imagine how…’

‘Ready to give up some 20 years of your eventful life to remotely imagine how? The learning curve is pretty steep though. Something based on the Algorithm of Chaos.’

* * *

3

Waitress Sally approached their table. So it stood in the badge on her magnificent breast, the left one. As always in his intercourse with female servants, V closely followed the subconscious communications in her body language. At times he gave it a shot at reckoning location of tattoos in privet nooks of her anatomy, for intimate exposure. If it was a millennial, the waitress. For ladies from the capital-lettered generations—fretted with wear and worries—there also was a soft spot in his heart, and even for baby boomers he might casually rewind 60 years back and empathize her scamper to the date in her sleek nylon stockings and silly brimless hat.

He always was a ladies man and a good-humored sociopath, V was. And for the rest of the more and more diversified spectrum of those in quest for preferences emancipation, found he a sympathetic shrug, yes, over dramatic they are yet tolerable crowd.

There are no tastes but from Nature and whatever is is right. Right? Still, you can’t but feel sorry for a guy in possession of a choice vintage car, neglected and locked up in the garage, because the fucking Nature makes them drive some shit of a vehicle.

Can you love artificial dildos better than a partner fitting readily, thanks to the blissful tweaks sweated over and out by Nature for eons?.

But now we have a thriving industry branch with production lines, retail chains, managerial pundits that diligently secure accruement and steady growth of numbers of targeted consumers, the working places and a not negligible share in GOP.

V was not sure about trade unions at the work shop level but you may bet your bottom dollar that the national economy will not let emancipation down. Too late. Neither would medical care spurn the gold-eggs-laying hen of transvestism. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the thing’s arrived for good to satisfy the needs of the gourmets turning their genitals inside out every other season. Come to feel the change! The process easier than switching from the Microsoft to Linux or vice versa.

‘How do you dig it, babe? When I was a male this particular position was my fave.’

As for 2ic, he presently was far away from any badges on any breasts were them even of a topless top model taking his order. Not now! Nah! On reaching that particular point in ante-dinner preliminaries, all the badges and stuff in the world would be able to evoke neither frivolous thoughts nor fleeting day dreams in him, not of the most momentarily duration. Nope. Because 2ic was a straight, devoted, and stalwart foodman which made him blind to most gorgeous mantraps and bulletproof exempt from any side trips and unconditionally reflective flirting when he anticipated a dinner pending shortly.

At this particular preliminary point 2ic turned a lightheaded misty-eyed blob of lust up to his ears in his mind-blowing foreplay. The nervously jerky tongue flicked out an back between his working lips. The eager fingers slightly tapped and tickled his mouth corners, full of heated restlessness, both fingers and corners. Then the pudenda of menu was grabbed and his kindled gaze plunged into, tenderly attentive, dipping in ever deeper, flipping the beans of lines in the list. Oh, joyous moment of bliss! Let him choose the most succulent and yummiest bite from this here treasure trove. A life-long honey-moon has a foodman…

Sally went off after the ordered meal. 2ic sat back relaxed yet retaining his happy alertness.

‘Watch me and learn,’ instructed he V, ‘In the moments before you consummate the very juice of pleasure it’s worth to bring up some dismal thought, you know. A kinda skeleton at those hedonistic orgies in Old time Rome. To sharpen the feel of gratification.’

‘My groom-gift at you wedding will be a Skeletal System Atlas. And thank you for sharing the trick.’

‘Any time. That’s what friends are for, V, to make you radiantly illuminated, buddy. For a starter, contemplate the Malthusian Catastrophe we’re heading to.’

‘The guy who predicted imminent food shortages because of the population growth? I don’t buy spooky prophecies. The history most optimistically proves that knife-edge balancing had become the mankind's specialty and from each and every next-day plague or plight we always safely leap into a deeper shit. So keep the boogeyman for your grand-kids as a night bed story and stuff.’

‘He proved it mathematically!’

‘At the turn of 20th century mathematicians proved that 50 years later life in all major cities of the world would come to a crunching halt because of no riddance to droppings of all the horse needed for intercity transportation. Smart eggheads! Your pessimistic Fellow of the Royal Society, from the world populated by less than 1 billion, omitted taking in consideration the human race inbred mechanisms of self-preservation like mass shootings at the kindergartens and campuses, ethnic cleansing, slaughterhouse world wars, extermination camps and other suicidal means to whet your appetite.’

‘It’s the art of spicing that makes a chef from a regular cowpoke cook. Don’t dump the whole sack into one meal.’

In a slow melancholic move reached 2ic for his jacket to angle a pinkish pack of chewing gum. He extracted one stick, unwrapped it and, ruminating musefully, dropped the pack into the breast pocket in his shirt. Then 2ic shed off his muse and meaningfully winked at V.

‘Oops! Excuse my manners! Here you are!’

He glibly took from the same pocket a separate stick of chewing gum and outstretched his arm with offering to V.

‘The story is…’

‘Alec Taylor Jr.?’ Sounded close by.

2ic dropped the proffered stick next to the salt shaker on the tabletop while staring intently at the two muscled up jocks in official wear.

‘It’s me,’ said he.

The badge of 3 block letters flashed in a hefty hand.

‘Will you follow us, sir?’

‘What the…’ started V emphatically when the second of the artificially tanned body-builders interrupted, ‘Keep to order in the public place, sir.’ His left armpit was obviously more developed than the right.

‘Don’t, V,’ said 2ic, grabbed his jacket from the seat and followed the men.

V mutely glared after the short convoy then frowned and lowered his gaze to the chewing gum stick in a blue wrapping, wrinkled and apparently tempered with.

* * *

4

’What makes us friends, V?’

’Laziness in 2 birds of feather, I suppose.’

’How that?’

’We both are too lazy to kick the habit of four years. Or five it is?’

’Numbers mean nothing.’

’Tell it to your taxman, beatnik. Though, yes, after a year on friendly terms, guys usually have called each other any name under the sun which circumstance reinforces the valuable relationship.’

’What’s friendship, anyway?’

’When boiled down properly, it’s being happy that you are not as miserable a dork as your sidekick. The inherent vice in even an ideal friend. Still, he acts the straight man at your bits in the theater which is the world.’

’Some stringent theater you act at, buddy.’ With a sweeping gesture 2ic indicated the bare walls around, within the cuboid room. The white paint imparted to the enclosed space a severely monastic air, if even with no crucifix or other symbols of any faith in sight.

He occupied a low comfy chair with wooden armrests of sheer varnish in random scrapes, 2ic did. The trajectory of the chaperone-like all-embracing movement ended on the bear can top set up on the floor conveniently at hand nearby the armchair’s right hind leg.

The face in his head, sank back to the rather fretted upholstery fabric, was turned to the only window in the room—neither blinds nor plant-pots on the sill, nor even a view—just the azure rectangle of empty cloudless sky from the 2ic’s angle.

The deck of the computer desk in the left corner from the window provided its surface to the made-in-China-assembled-in-Taiwan black tower of a PC coupled with a Philips monitor. Two streamlined black turrets of speakers guarded the flanks of screen with the wired keyboard-and-mouse, both also black. The big swivel chair (the only lush item in the monk cell) turned its back to the hibernating computer because V in the seat was facing 2ic.

With his right foot planted in the floor he moved the seat in slow weeny wiggles, hither and thither, short horizontal swings described languid arcs about half a radiant, there and back. V’s bent left leg put across his right knee provided its ankle as a kinda pad to place the bottom of a beer can clutched by his right hand. Yes, sure, the pad and bear, both consumed and not yet, were on the go, hither-thither, as well as the rest in the contraption (assemblage of organic and inorganic matter) except for the V’s right foot. Dead slow. To and fro.

Into the meeting place of two walls, diagonally farthest from the computer corner, was squeezed one more, regular, desk coupled with a wooden hardback chair. The neat cylinder of black mesh holder—the translucent plant-pot to grow exactly one stick of a catty-corner pen—stood in the center beneath the slim stem of touch lamp rising obliquely from the black tiny slab of a power bank. The harsh aspect of the sheeny desktop was partly mitigated by the green scroll of a synthetic yoga mat dropped near its right edge. A couple of wall sockets, the lamp under the ceiling and, certainly, the door exhaustively completed the room interior.

’Oh, I see,’ here 2ic used a kinda Oxbrigean finicky articulation. ’In general, making friends presupposes meeting certain preconditions and possessing a number of necessary prerequisites, does it? Now, being sufficiently lazy and too libertine for watching our respective mouths made us created for each other, huh? Have I omitted anything, I wonder?’

’The basic recipes might always be enhanced by whimsy fancy of a cook.’

’And what additional nutrient spices our case?’

’How about hatred?’

2ic placed his bear can back onto the floor an crossed his arms over his chest.

’Holy cow! I do know you mean whatever you utter. V’s jests are not just jests. So would you clarify please?’

’Hate is a super bond in interpersonal relationship of any kind. Ours is not as well. It’s hate that makes you want the girlfriend of your buddy so badly. And you should surely hate a chum who makes a cuckold of you.’

’That’s crazy!’

’Nope. Just wiping dust off our sentential logic. To spend time pleasantly.’

’Well, I never…’

’ The use of “should” does not turn the predicate obligatory true. Besides, I know you did not fuck her. It was she who laid you up, my friend.’

* * *

5

…eeeeeeeeeeee…

…pain… pain… pain… pain…

too boundless to feel anything else… its surging tide since long went over the brim of all capacity to hold it… exceeded… inundated… sank any ability to sustain… restrain or fight it… too mighty a tide… too shallow containers…

it’s bigger than the ocean… it’s wider than the universe this here pain… crushing… nauseating… unbearable… guts ripping…

so too merciless… it stops at a sliver of a notch from killing you… not to be… I wanna not to be and not be filled with this pain… to die of pain would be a blessing… sadistic double-dealer pain keeps that bliss away…

impossible to evade… escape the of pain… no strength for cries… for moans… for squeals… for whimper… for nothing but this squashed and crippled ‘eeeeeeeee’ unable to reach anywhere beyond this side of pain…

no way to squirm or writhe like an earthworm cut in two… like any maimed animal struggling to adjust their ruined body to… to find some kind of alleviation in whatever quirky and unnatural contortions so as to shun their pain at least a split grain of it… to dodge… to feel it less for half a second…

no room for hope… it will be pain and only pain… pain… pain… till the very end… o were it nearer… but nearer it can’t be… there’s no time… it’s meaning gets annihilated where each moment is an eternity of pain…

no room to move… this immobility deprived of death… pressed in between unyielding walls of pain… a helpless powerless subhuman overcome by Pain… your cruel Master…

impossible to move a limb when having none at all… all your possessions stripped away… replaced by just this feel of pain…

you’re nothing but a captive… a slave… a crushed plaything of your excruciating Master…you are immersed… engulfed and squashed by the immeasurable pressure in the unfathomable abyss of pain…

eeeee… how it pains… eeeeeee…

* * *

6

There was no chewing gum in the blue wrapper which V picked up from the table in the Uncle Tom’s Cabin before Sally brought meal for him and 2ic taken away already.

Only back home V got it what namely his companion was texting about by flailing his eye-lashes the moment before he was arrested. Even conveyed in an unknown code, the message clearly indicated the dropped stick of chewing gum. Which wasn’t there. The wrinkled wrapper contained a little flat lamina of memory card.

V checked it with File Manager in his Debian system to find just 2 files in that 2TB card. A .txt file that 2ic, presumably, referred to as “ transcript” and a folder which, technically, is also a file containing further files. This one was filled with an endless mess of audios in Vorbis format.

A couple of them clicked at random played back thru the black speakers one and the same impersonal flat drawl of artificial reader, unnaturally distanced and sexless voice-over. V didn’t bother to tweak the pitch or tempo in robotic diction, or choose a dialect from the long list of options, he just left it as is. Moreover, the statements—the stuff was too haphazard for a story—were hardly keen on disclosing who they belonged to: a male? a woman? a snotty kid?

Yeah, at times there sure happened telling cues. A macho wouldn’t complain of a too tight bra sillily donned in the morning. Or wouldn’t he? Smack bang midst heated struggle for self-awareness, and militant tolerance activists you never can tell. Anyway, life is a supreme bitch at surpassing the weirdest sitcoms, the guy could have his reasons for wearing a bra. Besides, since some time there appeared a personal feeling by V of belonging to sexual minority of those previously called ‘straights’ whose section diminished so precipitately. Damn priests! They had started this avalanche by their ardent canvassing for missionary position when having intercourse. Way back folks just didn’t give a fuck about hows-and-whys in these matters before the clergy brought it up.

With a sigh V switched over to the thoughts_004.txt file. The endless stream of poorly punctuated lines of 174,326 words, 973,160 characters. It seemed, 2ic was right in calling it a transcript and, very possibly, the text presented same thing as the audio files from the neighbor folder. Hard to say though, who in their tandem originated the hen-egg dilemma.

Still, it didn’t look anything like a super story readied to make V a glamorous lighthouse above the choppy sway in the pulp fiction ocean. It looked like mumbling to oneself in Leo Bloom manner responding to the hallmarks in his long and winding journey on June 16, 1904.

It surely seemed a transcript of thoughts but of how many contributors? Were they in any way interconnected? Who thought what? At times you did felt like being carried by the same, say, thought-floe before you slipped over to another fragment of different vocabulary, mood, subject. Common to them all though was elusive sincerity, and lack of coherent description of actions in progress. Some fucking terseness. Instead of “my interlocutor plunged into lengthy exposition of his current plans and expectations” it would just say “will the asshole shut up? Ever?!”

But still and yet, some passages did hook you, however strange, and queer, and stuff… V resented the untimely nature of 2ic’s arrest. Arrest? Yeah, 2Bsure. By all the canons of the genre. However, V once again tapped 2ic’s number in his phone, just in case. A mellow female voice once again announced the number was unreachable. V ruled out another conference with answering machine at 2ic’s den.

He switched off his PC, sat inactive for a minute, then crossed the room to the catty-corner. From a black casket-like small box in the desk’s right upper drawer, V elicited a tiny SIM card and substituted it for the one in his phone. Now he had another subscriber identity and number. Just in case…

* * *

7

V never was alone. Never. Even in a crowd of complete strangers did he have someone to get encouragement from, share impressions with, someone who understood him from half a word. Better than any companion was that someone because that was V. Also? Too? As well? Whatever. It was just V. At times they could disagree on some point or another, those 2 V's, even argue, yet in the end a kinda consensus was always reached. V did not give too much thought as to why it was so. He just got used and was quite comfortable with it. Anyway, even the most sincere, painstakingly all-embracing answer to a why-question will merely scratch the surface of the Everest of reasons if at all.

Right now they both were unanimous, Vs, the two in one, and their mutual jaw dropped in bewilderment. They were…(Damn! It grows too entangled and complicated, grammatically, so – back to the orthodox grammar)… His stare stuck to the Philips monitor addressing him:

'Well, V, whenever some smart Alec pops up to blare our that God is dead, the best policy would be to check if the announcer was a certified coroner.'

Some quicksand situation it was aggravated by the fact that V knew his response without scrolling down. It surely was the thought he had some time back, a snippet of the endless yarn he usually spun in his chat to himself.

He rehearsed out loud before to turn the mouse wheel and bring it up:

'The shocking truth, bro V, is I do not give a fuck about any wise advice like yours, whenever facing resplendence of a line wrought craftily, so will you most kindly shut up?'

Yep. Here you are. Tangible enough to feel with your rubbed in nose that 2ic was not kidding. They do know how to write down thoughts from that—what was the word, again?—something like "noosphere", and his, V's, private thoughts got in the common catch. Welcome to the bright brave new world, buddy! He sat back completely flabber-fucking-gasted.

So, that's it. The irrefutable discovery grossed him out. Sledge-hammered. It ran him over by the magnitude of all-pervading implications of what has been revealed right now. The proof still stood up before his gaze stuck to the screen. Well, I never…

The Samsung rang in his jacket's inside pocket. What?! Who could possibly know his new number? The number still used in no calls? He answered.

The moon-like mug of 2ic in the screen looked drawn and troubled. Too troubled.

'No time for talking, V. Just believe me. Run! Right now! You've got 30 plus seconds…'

What the fu… Hasn't he been… The number's compromised? And a whole pack of other thought-fragments shot thru V's mind while—the phone dropped back, the memory card grabbed hastily—he rushed to his apartment door. On the landing V paused, read the blinks of indicator of the elevator—two levels below, climbing up—and closed the door behind him, slow and carefully, no slamming.

He walked up the stairs and stopped on the upper landing trying to keep unnoticeable. The elevator slammed open at the floor just left by V to let thee men of a business-meant demeanor.

They neared the entrance to his apartment. One of them pushed the door ring button, the rest readied their sidearms. The ring resounding remained unanswered too. The man shook his head and produced a neat bunch of skeleton-keys. The door lock clicked submissively, the armed men entered the apartment, the lock tamer stayed back.

Now the hit men will see the switched on PC in the V's study, they will check his bedroom and the bathroom room, empty as well, and then…

V took a cautious backward step…

* * *

8

Where to? In 2 more floors the final flight of stares runs up to the securely latched and padlocked door to the roof. It’s a dead end confirmed by some of a teenage explorers who left their graffiti across the sheet metal in the door sealing the impasse, “Fuck you’re all!” Once V’s had a chance to check the settings after a recreational stick, he felt that time a nature lover awakening in him and ventured for a long and winding trek up. The endless stair flights for 3 floors and not a single water head along the way. He easily could die of thirst that time and emphasized wholeheartedly the other bro sociopath and his legend crowning the deed, askew yet sincere.

It’s a clear-cut trap he’s got into. Calling the elevator provides no way out, the guy would intercept it on V’s floor, step in and go up to hello V with the gat orifice to his face. Seems like the kid’s wish has come true, V was fucked up indeed filled with adrenaline and despair on that landing…

Light tapping on his left shoulder started him to look back. A face encircled with crisp brown locks, the index finger pressed to soft lips in warning, the apartment door ajar behind her back. She moved her head in mute invitation. V followed this goddess ex machina.

They entered and to the door’s click there sounded a female voice from some room in the apartment:

‘What’s there, Leya?’

‘A pizza-delivery boy hit the wrong floor, Auntie!’

‘The kids get stupider each year! Come, close the window, I feel chilly!’ Called out the same voice.

‘OK, Auntie! Just a moment!’

V involuntarily clapped his eye to the peep-hole pressing his palms to the door surface the way you would caress your SUV side when earnestly implored by a police officer touting his gun, “Please? Sir?”

Two men shrouded in complete muteness strangely reminiscent of glass diving bell traversed the landing outside. Their hostilely peeled eyes kept scanning all the quarters while they flicked thru his field of vision.

V turned about.

‘Shh!’ whispered Leya and also turned to walk off in soft steps, echoing panther pliancy, to the nearest room. She didn’t look back to make sure that he follows her example. As though he had an alternative!.

Inside, she dropped her shoulder bag onto a spruce cot and left immediately.

It was a small bedroom of a person who does not care much for decorating. No candy posters appealing to a lover of gory brazenness or, on the contrary, of mellow graciosity. However, the inhabitant was not indifferent to their place and evidently possessed a certain knack for the pop-art presented by a composition produced of computer laser disks (antique! the outdated artifacts!) in the wall opposite the bed. The area about 2 square meters covered with tight, even rows of shiny circles mounted on glue resembled armors of a giant knight or else a panoply for his horse.

The girl returned pretty soon. She closed the door and stood facing him as if in expectation. Her face looked vaguely familiar to V, he did see it someplace yet it was hard to put a finger on when and where. He tried at an embarrassed smile.

‘Hello,’ said she, ‘at last! You've done it!’

The girl sat onto a chair by the door and looking up at him, went on. ‘You might take a seat too, it’s not the elevator here’.

‘Have we ever met?’ began he hesitatingly, while sinking on the other chair in the only couple of them in the room.

‘You bet! Exactly two times. In the elevator’.

‘Ah! Sure! How could I…’ He shook his head at his leaky memory. He remembered now.

She nodded acknowledging the recollection, then continued, ‘And each time I thought “Let him smile, at least smile at me and I would speak up. I swear, I would!’ You were too busy though with your thoughts, they saved you my intrusion.

‘But how come… there on the landing I did not hear your door lock?’

‘I was leaving when Auntie called me for a moment. I returned to tuck her in and then opened the presently unlocked door to meet your freaked out back. Don’t be too suspicious, V.’

‘Geez!.’

‘Impressive, huh? You should be seeing your face now!. No sweat. When you see your friend out, his gratitude at times is too overwhelming for him to keep it back. A couple of nearby floors, up an down, could learn your name but I happened also to see who he was happy with’.

‘You’re real cute, Leya. You surely had got it there’s a real danger to stick your neck out. Why did you help… well, save me?’

‘I like you for half a year as of yet. That’s why. And now tell me what was all that about’.

‘I wish I knew…’

* * *

9

It is the eternal war of sexes which never subsides. The adversaries maneuver, camouflage their moves and intentions, openly attack or sabotage subversively, take advantages, POW's, use each other (abuse? yeah, that also happens but if it’s what you’re after, you’ve got into a wrong neck of wood, kid! so move along, to the pulp fiction of your favorite kind), make truce in order to stockpile armament, disengage so as to regroup. With all vacillation in the warfare methods and trendy accouterments to the uniform one thing stands solidly true – this war never ends, never will.

As in any war, there are non-combatants, peace-clinging wusses promoting unisex, mean traitors, unknown heroes, deserters dropping arms on the flight, privateers, guerrillas, fortune-makers, turncoats, seekers to square accounts, and other birds of any tinge in the spectrum of their feathers. (Let’s don’t even remotely dare scratch the surface of LGBT warfare which is way too slippery a subject to plunge into because it calls for a different mindset and acquaintance with voluminous studies on their folklore, customs, and rites, and… well not for this here modest work. Still, even in those collaterally diminished scrambles war cannot change its spots and remains likewise dirty and smelly. Period.)

The situation gets even more complicated and aggravated by the fact that sexes are not unanimous aggregation of individuals turned into personnel for cooperative gains in the war theater. Nope. Each one stays a separate fighter with an eye on their specific ends. Everyone for themselves and let Old Nick take the hindmost, you know.

(What? Who mumbled there “How about cooperation in a cluster-fucking case?” Hey, kid! You’ve been told to get the fuck out of here! Huh? Beat it!)

A scrutiny with proper zoom in shows numberless clashes of everybody against everybody else where a warrior of your sex is not automatically your buddy and would willingly pull your leg in order to sleep with your enemy, the one you’re engaged in current confrontation. Sad but true…

And here comes even more convoluted stuff. Incomprehensible. Inexplicable. Annoyingly elusive. Yet, a serious researcher is not to bypass it without taking a shot. Yes, you might’ve guessed it already, all that is about the ignominious deviation in the established system and order of things. The shameful surrender it is, the suicidal idiocy when you humbly bring to your foe a wide earthware dish with your own head, fried up and spiced, upon it. A pretty tricky stunt, technically, but metaphorically – just a cinch.

Of course, the like phenomenon fully deserves to be named with a four-letter word. Which conjecture keeps true with the factual appellation. You, probably, have guessed it once again: “L”, “O”, “V”, “E”.

As a vigilant sort of a guy, V knew that females possess a kinda “Secret Weapon”besides the items in the well-advertised armory of their sex. He wasn’t sure though if all of them had got the equipment. V’d rather prefer they didn’t after a couple of times being exposed to it. Some mighty thing, he should admit. The intelligence on SW whose effectiveness he had experienced first-hand in the surprise attacks he never disclosed to anyone.

How to describe? It’s like she suddenly collects in her facial features a bunch of condensed beauty accumulated by the fair sex generations since Nefertiti up to present days (strangely enough, except for Misses America), and shoots that all-conquering radiance at you, thru her joyously winning eyes, like, she bounces a ball lightning. And you got struck OK, yep, buddy, you do get struck.

Falling in love at first sight, huh? Now V knew how it’s done.

Luckily, V turned out to be of love-proof type. He did appreciated the impact, shocking delight and admiration, yet withstood manly and then he took the second look. That served a life-saving antidote. Still, thank you for the try, babe! It was a close call, I swear.

Noteworthy, guys of his own sex never used that SW at him. Saving their "balls”? Or was he not a proper hunt game? Whatever…

Still, no one can evade their destiny. The panel of stars read up their verdict and V fell a victim to love. No SW was applied. The girl he loved (not yet suspecting it, poor devil) looked pretty cool, indifferent, and introvert. Later on, the ice was broken, melted, started to boil intensely.

He never admitted it, no, not even before himself. He tried to name it simply “liking”.

‘Yes, I like her, no use denying’.

Fool! You can’t deceive yourself! No one can, for that matter, whatever well-argumentative lies they try to persuade themselves with.

He tried in earnest to efface the “liking” by application of cute chicks, strong drinks, Irish luck gambling. To no avail. He knew he was in love. And so was she. Was she? Yes, yes, yes! She told him so.

The day was warm and calm, full of the soft sun. They stood on the platform of a railway station. She smiled at him and said:

‘Remember me just like I am this moment when I love you. Remember me this way when I’ll turn nasty, real bad’.

‘Bad? You cannot be that’.

‘No convocations work, silly. I know better’.

The rest is history. They parted. He lived on like a kinda zombie, life in death. Then there was another railway station in the middle of nowhere. He couldn’t stand it anymore. Called her. “I love you!” And rang off enraged with the damn fool, himself. Behind his back thru the dead of night rambled heavily an endless freight train. Hopefully, his confession merged with the thunder of iron wheels and, unmakeoutable, lost.

Still later, his buddy 2ic shared that in his, V’s, ex’s opinion V had been a champion at having sex. That way she passed him—care of his friend—his antidote.

* * *

10

‘Wanna get out of here?’

‘The place is nice, actually, but… say it again? Is it a one-night stand invitation, huh?’

‘Depends… maybe a challenge, sporty?’

‘Whose field?’

‘Quick to pick the clue makes Jack a welcome mate’.

‘Yummy Jenny makes even dull Jack witty’.

‘Jennys are not after stand-upper apps, a Tom vibrating with dedication suits them better’.

‘Then I’m your man full of vibes and throbbing in advance’.

‘Throttle down, Charlie! Spilling your ardor too soon is not the cricket’.

‘With you 100 per cent. Test drives is the must when dealing with cats in the sack’.

‘Not down that road, Danny! Car talks don’t turn me on’.

‘Then what remains there? Discussing NASA projects? Agricultural commodities in stock… wait! Interested in bean business, hon?’

‘A not bad hit for a starter, Johnny. I’m in for linguistics, to be precise. Body language and stuff, you know. The way you licked your lips when about beans… a pronouncedly fine articulation you’ve got, Benny’.

‘For the protocol, sweetheart, I’m more of a manual jobber, hauling ashes, you know, rowing over a rolling river… to get a feel of strenuous joy for my sinewy frame’.

‘Fulfillment is what I do promise you, brawny Larry!’

There sounded warning clangs, the red alert “GAME OVER!” popped smack bang in the screen center.

Shaking his head, V gave a slap to his knee. He closed his Samsung and sat back.

‘Damn!’ said V. ‘Too soon! Haven’t got in the groove’.

‘May happen to anybody. Don’t blame yourself’, soothingly stroked Leya his wounded ego.

‘Thanks for your kind consolation’, said V. ‘What’s the score?’

‘2 to 1 in three sets. Home won. Statistics for the last game shows you’re good at penetrating chick’s mind yet slipped at all tries to guess the guys name which was “Frankie”’.

‘Damn Frankie!’ said V. ‘Excuse my French’.

For over an hour they fiddled away playing computer games allowing for the intruders to V’s place a while to get away if not from his apartment then from at least a chance ride by the elevator.

Leya readied for him sunglasses and a wig of blonde locks, adding a trendy women’s jacket in the bargain. Yet, they still dawdled on, better be safe than sorry…

Well back, at the times immemorial, Computerized Gaming Industry assumed the stance of catering to any odd ball vagaries in taste. Arcade games, huh? Sorry, kid, you weren’t yet around in those naive times of jumping Mario. Mamas and papas played their Tetras, Candy Crash and other attractions for action minded folks. However, CGI were smart enough to concoct their products for those intellectual freaks as well. Shipment of goods across the universe to trade for other Mother-effing goods. Fucking mules trafficking strange cargoes in infinite loops, do you follow? Yep. The egg-heads call such double-timing ‘bifurcation in consumers interests’, to make it clearer, we’ll say ‘bisexuality’. New wave, and line, and order took giant strides to meet 6D interests yet, beside the action shooting-stripping-effing you still can run into oldies but goodies ChatGPT-like contests of players. Exchange of texted clues. Negotiating with aliens. Or the one which helped V and Leya kill time. ‘Gain One-Stand Night’ was the game’s name.

‘Okay’, said V. ‘I think I can take a shot at leaving now’.

‘I hope the coast is clear and you’ll have a safe sailing,’ responded Leya. ‘Aren’t you hungry though? It’s dinner time’.

‘Well’, scratched V the back of his head, ‘Just for the sake of curiosity, is it ‘One-Stand Night’ or a date, after all?’

* * *

11

…it’s everywhere, it surrounds not like a net or bandage, it’s clinging too completely without a breach in its continuity, squeezes from all sides…

…the pressure is not unyielding solid like the crush-bite of closing jaws in an iron vice, like the grip of ratcheting noose cutting deeper thru crust and layers, to the core… no! it moves, fluctuating, throbbing, scorching, wringing, gnawing… it’s fluid!. this pain is…

…why me?.

…what?!. is there any me? is there anything at all besides the pain? besides this ocean of burning all-devouring flames whose fangs leave open wounds, keep fretting fresh sores… full of embittered beastly cruelty it is, this here pain… from all sides… from within…

…there is and can be nothing but the pain… not a spot left out, no room, no space for no me… pain… pain… pain… pain…

…but then who’s suffering the unbearable?. whose worn to tatters nerves scream mutely in the anguish? if not for me there’d be no pain… some tiny bubble of conscience bobs in the torturing fluid, quakes under the skin tearing whip of executioner too skillful to let it go and find its refuge in death…

…o, my! o poor me, mauled into a tiny spec, this bubble… what for?. why me?

…whois me…

* * *

12

It took V a couple minutes, at most, to see that he easily could cut it, keeping his lips like a distended puffy rim of a rubber funnel. Like by that… what’s her name, again? the current upper-dog bitch of celebrity’s?

He snapped his fingers for his memory recall and retrieval system to giddy up, in vain though. Could it be the blonde wig retards his usually quick wit? His train of thought had switched already over the points to soundlessly ramble towards chromosome mutations—why? in a generation or two those beauty queens would turn pretty froggy and no Prince Charming’s kisses at their puffy rims would ever bring back their fair looks… V sighed making for the elevator.

On the way down in between 4 walls perpendicular to each other, a jock in the thickening group of their fellow-travelers put to use all the vocabulary from his body language to emphasize how deeply he was hooked by V’s wig and stuff.

V just ignored the asshole’s advances, however, while traversing the building’s lobby, he marked infinitesimal changes, involuntary, to his, V’s, gait. The purposeful pace got inexplicable addition of circus vector embellishments beyond the range of his usual straightforwardness.

He recollected a lost work by a medieval monk theorizing that the attire licks us into shape of this or that modus vivendi more than any moral instruction could ever do. The order of Bareheeled Versaccesistorians or something, the monk belonged to.

Anyway, it came like a kinda alleviation, 5 minutes later by the row of garbage containers in a nook of a some project’s backyard, while cramming the wig and sunglasses into a unisex shoulder bag farmed out by Leya, to him.

Then he returned to the street sidewalk to stroll on in the stream of busily flowing crowd, each marching to their destination, presumably. Only V and a negligible number of vagabond loiterers had no particular place to steer to. They just kept walking in the waves of pedestrians. And that served a good therapy for V bringing his walking style back to normal.

Way ahead starboard he spotted an islet of green and crossed the the road at the traffic lights to enter, presently, a medium sized common. An empty bench seat became V’s anchorage. His back to the supporting back of slender long beams, V outstretched his legs full length, heels onto the walk, and his palms flew up and down, the digits interlocked, to accommodate the back of his head in the receptacle of restfully concave hand-calyx.

Time to relax and analyze the situation. Lucky as always, is he basking here on this bench and not zipped up in a dead body bag neither in a coagulating blood-puddle until they come to collect it.

He had avoided a trap, the deadly trap, alerted by 2ic’s call. How come?. The guy got arrested yesterday. Too little data for a guess work. Impossible to figure out. Still, thanks to him, V is alive yet, by the skin of his teeth.

Then followed 2 hours of waiting at Leya’s while dust settles. Lucky again. But where to move next so as to get any idea what kind of shit he’s got into?

V fetched out his phone and for one whole minute stared at the only number in the list of registered calls he had, then tapped it.

‘Yeah’, the husky thick bass narcissistically protracted to relish its own resonance had nothing to do with the 2ic’s hasty falcetto.

‘Can I talk to Mr. Taylor?’

‘Wrong number, pardner,’ responded the same oafish drawl in a Don’t-mess-with-Texas manner and was off.

And now neither deductive, nor inductive, nor prepositional, nor any other logic from their herd would do any good to add details to the dim picture of 2ic calling from the wrong number pilfered for a little sec off the sheriff in a western. In utter consternation V sagged back on the hard bench. Bury Me Not On The Lone Praire…

Now his task was to solve the enigma with just one puzzle piece disclosed, the call of 2ic that saved his life. Being an experienced thinker, V knew perfectly well – you hardly ever accomplish the job by wain straining. When aspiring to make a glorious discovery in any walk of common knowledge, your foremost and only tool is patient waiting, leave veni-vidi-vici to Harry Potter and smug fuhrers.

To wait was all he had to do, which also is not as easy as it might seem. Any discovery, solution, right decision takes a good deal of waiting before they happen. You cannot find no solution, you have to let it find you. Which calls for waiting. At times it’s a life-long wait. It’s like a fisherman waiting for the catch to strike. A split sec back it was not there, now you see it, the solution. Your waiting was the bait, you can’t catch a a thing with a bare hook, right? Except for a ruined shoe or a gaping tin can. You have to wait and be ready till it dawns on you all of a sudden. Where from? Maybe from you waiting, I dunno…

A united brainstorming, huh? A bunch of freaks swapping crumbs of stuff they’ve read in this or that book of solutions that visited other guys, before them; a knot of kids fishing from the same raft; a band of Amero-Americans seated on beast skins in a tepee, whose forefathers had no idea they were American citizens before the sail ships pop up in search of routes to the fabulous treasures of India. They knew a few tricks to wait collectively for the right decision passing the stuffed pipe in the council sitting. Till it strikes…

Something from without drew V up from his meditative depths. Back to the the surface he came available again to the world around. What pulled him? It was an intent stare at V waking up from his wait, a call for the eye contact in the look full of kind understanding directed at him from the shiny, cute, brown eyes.

The puppy had no collar with the owner’s phone number or GPS tracker. Seeing that V was here at last, the dog dropped with his belly onto the walk, right opposite V, and smiled. Another stray vagabond just like he now, except for not having a few virtual wallets with crypt currencies stashed for a rainy day. The puppy stuck out his flat leaf of tongue enjoying the warm sun.

‘What’s your name, boy?’ To which there came a slight growl. ‘No? You’re a lady?’ A sonorous yap in agreement.

‘Sorry, girl, no offense intended. And the name is?’ The puppy uttered two whimpers.

‘Nice to meet you, Toto, I’m V. Are you hungry?’

The dog instantly jumped up on all of its four.

‘Well, lets look for a nearby hot-dog vendor’.

V rose from the bench and left the common whistling softly “Bury Me Not On The Lone Praire”. Where the hell the tune clung to him from?

The shaggy pup tap-tapped its short paws close behind tattooing the asphalt with earnest determination.

* * *

13

‘You’re alone?’ V seemed surprised.

‘I invited her but she gave me a look not-in-the-mood, you know. Besides, she’s obviously sore at you for giving her up so readily and she thinks you deserve a kinda correctional quarantine. It was written in her face’.

‘I never promised her a rose island. And as if I had a choice! You, girls, fell for each other at first sight! How are they getting on, Toto and your Aunt?’

‘Brilliantly. Toto of her own accord brings Sylvia her spectacles and remote control while Auntie has a gossip who listens to and backs up her endless yarn with polite whines in proper places, a kinda “atagirl!” or “well, I never!”’

‘Good news. I was reluctant to keep Toto at my lodging in that fish-tank apartment block. The naughty kids in the open galleries and stuff.’

‘O, kids would love her’.

‘Yeah, sure, it’s just I didn’t want to stick out. “The Mister with that lovely pup”? No, thanks, I’d rather stay a face in the crowd. The last but not least of it, I hate being responsible for anyone besides myself. Letting down a person who counts on you? Or even putting them at risk? Nah, not in my line. And you know what? Toto has more of personality in her than lot’s of guys I've met around.’

‘Characteristically, you saved your weightiest reason for the end. Still, life if too unpredictable for any split-hair logic. And making your decision you forgot to ask Toto if she agrees to it. Anyway, it’s too late now and Sylvia will never give Toto back. Relax, the coast is clear, no responsibilities in sight’.

Askance, V looked at Leya seated by his side. While talking she watched a toddler who chased a sizable bright ball along the walk, two escapees from the woman pushing a baby carriage. She passed by the pair on the bench without seeing them, too absorbed in following each step, not too steady, of her responsibility who kept grabbing-and-dropping the naughty ball. She passed by, not seeing another pair of faces in the crowd enjoying a nice peaceful day in the common. Lovers? Hardly, no arm outstretched to touch, to stake off the treasure sitting by. A married couple? Miles away! Together, married people get benefit of nature only in the backyard, their or their friends’, at the scheduled barbecue. So, a pair of friends, siblings, business partners the lady passed by.

V liked the look of her face, calm as this here warm and slightly pensive day assured of its beauty shared to all able to see and feel. Yes, beauty was undeniably there, in her face of matte skin in the soft transparent shadow of her hair made lighter by the rays of the sun descending towards the evening behind their bench. V felt pleasure and gratitude. He knew he owed her one. As big as life. Why, it was life itself he owed her!. She’s saved his life and knew it as well as he did. Still, she didn’t press for anything, and that’s why he was grateful. First, V had to check how the land lies, why he was after and by who. Discovery yet not occurred, he still had to wait.

The lodging he found was cheap and unpretentious, one-room on the third floor of a motel-like affair with elementary facilities. One of his crypt-stashes, the first he was starting with way back, turned out to be hacked—access denied, and when he bore into thru a slipshod substitution with a notebook from a nearby junk shop (he did miss his PC but shipping a similar equipment to his present place would look more conspicuous then keeping Toto) and in the README.md file left there by the conceited looter he found the message “Fuck you, sucker!” in block letters.

V reacted with a shrug of understanding. Yep, bro, that’s life and this is the world we’re living it. Today you’re riding high and mighty, make sure to accumulate a plum sum for the day I come to fleece you. For now though, he delayed tracing the the cocky upstart (using VPN, huh? I like your naivety, bro, no shit, I do) and zeroing in on the asshole’s cloud assets. The postponement was also the result of his addiction denied by him and labeled a harmless whim, which still was too time-consuming for an innocent hobby.

Yes, the 2ic’s friendly gift turned a Trojan Horse (invented by Ulysses, not the guys at Kaspersky Laboratories at the dawn of computer virology). V positively addicted to following thoughts of strangers both funny or dull, stupidly pathetic, gross—all kinds of sorts and of any nation, from an Amazonian fish trapper to an accountant in a Shanghai bank—he could read their thoughts thanks to the in-build translator certainly present in the software processing the raw data they angle out of the noosphere. Translation were done at a deeper than purely linguistic level from languages both present and extinct. You hardly can imagine a thinker contemplating in English the latest tax introduced by the Pharaoh Treasury for the war against the fucking Assyrians (excuse my French but so stands in the transcript).

They were nor marshaled in distinct trains, the thought were not, you had to suss them out from entangled knots and bunches, scrappy fragments, and whatnots, that waited for V to unravel them and compile into a coherent picture which undertaking fitted well his mindset, hence – addiction…

But now V was enjoying other things – a pleasurable day and nice-looking girl by his side. She felt his fleeting glance and turned her head to meet his eyes. They’d surely make a fine team.

‘The other day,’ said Leya, ‘I saw your friend in the elevator. The one I’ve learned your name from. He doesn’t know me, went out at your floor. I heard from my landing the new tenant told him they know nothing of you.’

The ever-present puzzle for V these days. Another piece to it.

‘Thank you, Leya,’ said V, ‘you’re a priceless treasure’.

His hand reached for her shoulder to press it tenderly. V was appalled, he never thought of such a move, his hand gave him no notice of its intentions. Some arrogant insubordination… And one more puzzle for V.

* * *

14

…if only were I blessed with a son!. A scion begotten of my loins, a heir to my desultory thoughts…

my most dedicated parenting would make of him a paragon of prowess and impeccability…

alas! the household’s more like a chicken coop a-cackling, laughing, screaming at each other. All they: the venerable matron Dona Catalina as barren as the dismal infertile lands around, yoked in one wedlock with myself, and my sister, an inveterate widow of high morals and stingy tongue, and my relieving comforter and support in these days of my declining faculties, my only child, the freebie juicy fruit from that blonde in Lisbon, my war trophy in the campaign for making the Peninsula one whole state…

…the Portuguese were simply going thru motions, resisting to the subjugation with the lassitude of a whore sprawled on the hay in barn by a brawny yokel. ‘Get off me, bastard! No! Don’t! Never before I pull my skirt up!’ Which unwillingness to fight for their freedom allowed more time for our fiery affair. O, she was a hot bitch, my fair lady of Lisbon! And cute too, managing to hand me, in due time, the basket with a baby, my natural daughter, Doña Isabel, the load thereof. Yes, 20 years on Trinity Sunday… As shrill as the rest of them in this bedlam including her maid, Maria…

How could possibly a man of my meager means at this most precarious in the world history age provide for a funny farm of this sort? Yet, keeping to holy truth, they know their distaff trade, at times only their skillful needlework wards hunger off this old house’s threshold. Sewing all day long when Providence sends a client…

…he’d turn a man of valor with my advice and guidance, my ungotten son. Mark well, boy! Two trades surpass any other among all the earthly professions by the gallantry of their nature. Soldier, the first and upmost. Soldier, whose ultimate end is to give peace to people. Soldier, who pays for that gain with the blood from his wounds, with the lost limbs of his, perhaps, with his own life. To bring peace for people is his duty, the goal of his chivalrous vocation. Overcoming all the hardships, duress, impediments thrown in his way.

Scholar comes second. It is he who gives light to mankind, teaches them, enhances comfort obtainable in their lives, puts news powers within their reach, while himself paying the harsh price for advancement by his unceasing toil, and sleepless nights, and scanty meals, till he himself dies in his tracks. Soldier and Scholar are truest characters who cater for the human beings.

In both the code of honor is verily noble, a not surprising fact though because each Spaniard is a descendant of this or that glorious knight. Be it a peddler or a vagrant barber they’d always claim a hero of the Reconquista among the roots in their family tree if not a cook of Charlemagne’s…

…at present, the duties of knight grew less in number than they had used to be. Serve God, my son, and serve your King. As simple as that. Even if the throne is seated by an asshole stuck to the place firmer than a jar applied by a physician to his patient’s side. The ken about salutary benefits of heated suction was there since the times of yore. Serve him in earnest as I served that old fart Philip, retarded moron…

…what a great plan conceived I in the years of captivity! Not only the port fortress together with the viceroy Hassan-Pasha's palace but half of Moor lands could be regained. Given the numbers of the Christian slaves, prisoners of war for the most part, among the city population, you needed one dark night to leave a shipload of weapons on the shore. The accomplishment of the God-inspired plan would be on us, the prisoners. I did send King a thoroughly detailed petition with a Christian ransomed thru the monks Redemptorists. No response, however, by the suggested means and signals…

Five years in the bondage five attempts to escape. Two times the vicious viceroy ordered to throw the noose about my neck. Pasha was screaming thru foam at his mouth, half-chocked on his own threats. I’m still alive. What had stopped him? God’s will and my knightly deportment of not caring a fig. Three years in chains before the monks brought 1000 ducats demanded by him for my freedom. It took me four years more to pay back the sum to my relatives and good people donating for the ransom. Yet I was always sure of my good luck, if not this time then at the next attempt I’d surely break out.

Because I was the fortune’s favorite of which my quality there are no doubts, and through the all trials was I confident and trusted that whatever is is right…

…any predicament sent us by stars is to make tastier the pending lucky outcome. Am I happy? Yes! Because I know exactly what is happiness. You don’t need gold nor glinting stones to be happy. Dark wine, white cheese, a loaf of soft bread, a phial of ink to make a company to your quill, and, of course, a couple of sheets of paper ain’t too much of a load, huh? Add also a guitar and you’re all set to go after your daily share of happiness. Start out in the morning to a mature tree among the vastitude of arid hills and fields in our La Mancha and there under the lisping whisper of its rustling leaves watch the growth and wane of one more happy day in your life…

…my luck it was to keep me riding the crest of the tidal wave at any period in a man’s life. As a lithe youth with fluffy growth in my jowl and upper lip, I took to turning out verses praised by my friends and University instructors. Which one? Where were we then? Alcala? Or Salamanca? Whatever. We moved too often, our family was always on the run. My father, God have mercy on him, had skillful hand at leach application, and at improving gentleman’s good looks by close shave, which virtues kept him afloat in his life of a constant fugitive from debts and creditors, poor soul. Anyway, they were just unwit lacing, my verses were, no better than the bosh turnout by present laureates to the applaud of their friends and mentors. In certain matters we, people, are incorrigible for ever…

…a year of treading the Naples’ poorly paved streets and those of the Eternal City in service of Cardinal Acquaviva, after my escape over there necessitated by a chance duel in Madrid, before it struck, my star hour. The pivotal moment that decided the fate of all the Christendom. Ottomans went out to make Europe their own domain.

I enrolled the ranks of the Holy League, and I did not miss out the sea battle on which depended the future of the World. Two hundred-and-a-half our ships carried 26,000 men to discover the enemy in the Gulf of Lepanto on that sunny October morning. Turkish vessels were much more numerous.

From early in the morning I was tremendously out of sorts, burning with fever. Captain of Marquessa, on whose board was I a private soldier, sternly ordered me keep to the safety of my cabin, yet my most exhortative protestations mitigated his attitude and he considered a good riddance to appoint me the commander of a small felucca manned with a crew of twelve.

It was a glorious day. Cannons roared from both sides sending the powder smoke in the azure sky over the greenish brine ruffled by the wind inconstant to any of the quarters. My men were all experienced sailors and they pulled with might and main. We neared the flagship in the right squadron of the adversary fleet and rammed her through the ores bristling out on the starboard. Up flew iron crooks of grapples to claw the gunwale overhead, two light ladders sprung up from our felucca to the mammoth galley. And off we were to board her! The indomitable dozen under my command!

What followed must needs employ a score of Homers to relate the fiery uproar of scrambling confrontation, the clangs of swords in deadly tumult. Two arquebus shots in my chest somehow stayed unheeded. The world was spinning on the point of my sword. A stray cannonball made my left arm useless, but I went on hacking my way forward to cut down the royal standard of Egypt floating over the ship. The flag fell down onto the waves, the galley crew cried surrender, half thousand of them perished in the battle.

When the great day was supervened upon by falling night, everyone in the victorious Holy League fleet knew already – the day was won due to the wisdom of their generalissimo and gallantry of a 23-year-old soldier. The two wounds in the chest oozed blood for two more years, my left arm remained a withered vine ever since hanging around from its shoulder. No way to play a guitar any more…

Yes, I was too proud then, too young, too unaware to get it that any struggle you enter, you enter for defeat, and there is no other outcome. Time, The Grim Umpire, sees to ineluctability of your defeat…

So what now? Besides being happy on sunny days? Ha! Here enters the greatest treasure you can expect of human life – freedom! Nothing is comparable to being free.

So, now I live on both free and happy. More than that! As a self-styled scholar I fill my days with learning and soon enough I’m going to check the qualities of absolute freedom delivered to anyone by benevolent Mr. Death. Who else can fetch you a higher degree of freedom? You get free of your debts, maladies, outworn carcass, saggy skin in senile spots. You leave all that behind as well as hunger, wars, the fear of death. All’s over. Ain’t it the sweetest gift in life?.

* * *

15

As I was zeroing in on the W Group’s HQ, that morning, my thoughts careened back to the start of our affair, as if I needed them, the fucking recollections. My girlfriend Ninka was who kicked it all off. The fucking bitch with any of her holes all ready for rapid deployment sooner than Jack Robinson yells his „knife!“, yet you can always rely on her, who aced all field-tests in this pot-holed life.

Well, there we hanged out at our usual cafe when she sez from her ipheezy , ‘Yo! Check out the macho!’

‘What?’ sez I, ‘Your ex flashes his fresh selfie, huh?’

‘Fuck you!’, Ninka sez, ‘Don’t remind me that fuzzy Kwazzimodo!’

Then I took a look, well, yes, a grabbable ugly&sexy. A thick beard cut close to his map, merry eyes, not a pain in the arse, you know.

‘Yo! Nink!’, sez I, ‘Wanna bet this Ace be mine?’

Ninka’s visage contorted yet she kept zipped up being well in the know none of them would ever get off the hook if I’ve framed the guy for a bit of having fun with him.

Nothing’s easier than hooking them if you ask me. ‘Supreme potshots-taker’ called me my the last but one ex. Also not a dullard was he. Because they are like eager champignons, up they strain out of themselves, up onto their toes, ‘Me! Pick me, girl, please, into your basket!’

The follow-up is a dead cinch. You find this mushroom on Facebook and make sure to click-like his avatar mug, then add a couple of “wow!” emojis under wise shit on his timeline, which they share year after year with wolf packs in the background, like, “The herd tremble when a gangsta wakes up!” or maybe “The rules of justice are set up by the strong!” Here and there sprinkle wink emojis or in the sunglasses to make a dead kill. And that’s it! Check the stopwatch, in no later than half-an-hour he knock-knocks at your account with the friend request if he was active at the time, sure thing. Anyway, the hunt is done within 24 hours.

No cat has a loophole the moment he cast eye on my avatar, see? The tits like a cruise icebreaker front for rich tourists visiting polar seas, the face at proper angle, in three-fourth, the lips wear welcome smile of both expectation and promise. The guy’s fever shoot up and now he can think of nothing but iboning me thru FB messenger.

Messenger’s where I X-ray-check them. If that’s a gasbag or touched in his head with political and climate changes he gets unfriended without a further notice. Go play with yourself, asshole! Also the guy who every other day rolls out selfies of him leaning on a new BMW or Porsche, it’s certainly an auto mechanic who I promptly ditch – we need no alky here! And the rest of them needs an attentive approach and sustained attention.

In short, after a week of texting and pics exchange he was not sieved out and I went out for the kill in earnest. Who wouldn’t if smack bang in the middle of winter season he buys you a one week tour to Sochi… Or Turkey it was? Anyway, you can see some sea in the selfies and pics though I never go farther than knee-deep, the goods gain the angle for the needed advantage and besides I have jitter sabout the bitchy sharks.

‘Next time,’ sez he, ‘We’ll ride the Venice gondolas and walk the Elysian Fields in the Capital of the World’.

He knew the Geography tip-top.

‘Next time’ means slotted in between his business trips which the HQ pretty often sent him to.

Not only the Geography, he also knew a thing or two about fucking. Yes, he could find means and ways to make you floating before you cum. A romantic lover as promised by his beard. Nothing like those rich papas’ dudes who know only doggie style and prostitutes.

All the girl needs is seeing she’s treated as a person then she will have you banging high. I mean not bad was he at sex. Though it depends on a girl, you know. Keep admiring his bone, moan and stuff, it revs them okay, pride puffs up their genitals anatomy. Well, and at orgasm or simulating it let you go and scream like crazy and then just lie, like, undone and weary, ‘O, God! You two have almost killed me, babe, you and your one-eyed beast’. Or some other shit like that hooey. And he’d be laying himself out to keep up to the plank you put.

At first, I was, like, his call girl in between his business trips. They lasted differently from a month up to half year in those two years of our free love relationship. And then I moved to his place, after his divorce. The ex-wife had taken the kid but he paid no alimony because there was an accident and the boy died. True to God, I never wish people grief in the family, still it’s good she had no excuse to chafe his nerves in a damn litigation.

That was our natural wedlock. He comes back home from his trips and we shake bones till the next departure. He had a fine body, not a beefy body builder yet sinewy he was. A Captain in the army, before he switched to working for the Group so he kept himself toned up, morning runs and stuff. He had just two tattoos, as if there are guys who don’t sport them. Yet not too gaudy, a usual skull on his left forearm and two lines on the right one “Seek fo Your Shore”. Yeah, at times we got ecstasy high or used Viagra, not often though. The high was fine, no denying, yet not all yours because the stuff somehow ripped off its share and the next day youare busted empty and dried up and wanting not a thing at all. Same as after a big C recreational party.

We were getting along quite okay. Neither an alky nor a junky was he. It’s only that at times as if black-outed, even at the table. The eyelids wide parted and some icy glint in his fixed eyes, a kinda zombie.

‘Hey, man! Where are you?’

‘Sorry, babe, my fault, veered off to thinking’.

‘Of what?’

‘Regardless’.

O, sure, big boys, big secrets. Till you’re laid up. Tender strokes, no direct questions, no haste. He’d tell you all, night after night.

He said the hardest is to clip your first one. More so if they’re unarmed. You kinda have a fit of wanker’s cramp before his pop-out eyes. Then, in a moment, there’s no man already but a heap of meat, riddled, oozing blood. But after it goes without a hitch. Automatism. The trick is not to look into their eyes.

So he left the army and landed in the elite W Group who provide their services for no matter who, be it a private person or a state government willing to fork out MM’s to feel securely protected. Syria, Africa were his business trips’ destination, for the most part.

‘Ever fucked a black virgin?’

‘You’re mad keen on fucking. Nothing else there in your screwed up head’.

‘What’s there to secure in fucking Syria?’

‘Oil fields’.

‘And in Africa?’

‘Mines. Gold mines, diamond mines’.

‘Against who to secure?’

‘Terrorists and Americans who conspire with them against our Homeland’.

Now, who’s head was screwed the wrong way up? I couldn't help rubbing his nose in.

‘Do you really need it? You’re not in the army’.

‘A regular for a day is a regular for life. See?’.

‘Fuckin’ A,’ sez I, ‘Hard to miss an ass wider than on Ninka, my best friend. When our fucking Homeland squats to shit its ass’ shadow overcast half Africa.

‘Politically ignorant bitch!’ sez he. ‘I’ll drive it home to you the hard way!’

And he sprawled me on the rug.

When this “Special Operation” started I went to war together with him. ‘Enough,’ said I, ‘of your uncontrolled business trips. You have to stick it in every other day, cuntfucker. But now it’s right here and no visa needed. You’ll be having regular meals, well groomed and off insanitary bunker fucking.

The day before departure we went to a restaurant in a yacht moored in the Moscow-River. They do rip off their patrons there yet nothing doing, romantic things are costly. While there he proposed to me officially, like in TV serials, with a diamond ring from a small box. He told me that in the W Group HQ he’d left a memo for their big shots to consider me his widow, just in case. The Group paid a sizable compensation to the families of killed personnel.

‘Fuck the compensation,’ sez I, ‘it’s you I need, not their G’s’.

So I went there, rented a house and to the war he was going by his camouflaged Land Rover as a field commander.

War’s a fuckin’ A madhouse. They had driven there all kinds of sorts. Both Russian army and W Group, and volunteers from prisoners. No matter what was the crime and stretch, a volunteer gets pardoned and if they don’t kill him in six months he goes off, a free citizen of our great Homeland. And Caucasians too, wild bearded each of them, cackling in God knows what tongue. And Syrians, employees of W Group in their country. All the horde raised so as to free Ukraine from the cussed fascism.

What makes it worse, everybody’s uptight because it’s a fucking war. Half of them drugged or drunk, you see it in the look of their frost-bitten optics, and every mudak carries this or that firearms and there’s no telling when or what will go off in their contused brains. Yet, the dreariest of all that you start coming to terms with the fucking madhouse, kinda get used, like, become one of that crazy crew.

I used to wearing the fatigues and felt myself how rude it made me. Switched over to the army argot. Who fucking cares to watch their mouth? You put it over straight and loud for them to get it quick. Not much trouble about bugging. They did not dare, even if on high, I flashed W Group chevron on my sleeve, the merry skull, and the motherfucker switched over to eating his own shit.

In the war you live posthaste as if being late all the time. Move it! Giddy up! Even when it’s, like, nowhere to hurry to you still keep revving up. Quickly finish your meal, quickly be thru the quickie. Why hurry? Where to? Still you can’t help being on run. Constantly. Except for, maybe, a barbecue party. But even then way down your belly there sits some hard clot, nagging. At a party it kinda retreats and you relax and forget but now and then the bitch pings back, intoxication or no intoxication.

We relaxed in the house I rented, his buddies came to the parties. Cliff, Viking. They used their nom-de-guerres even at the table, that’s the W Group regulations. No names. Both Cliff and Viking got married for the current war. Took temporary wives from the local girls liberated from the fascism. One of them blonde, the other brunette. As if they had much of a choice, the chicks. A girl needs protection even in a whorehouse. A roof she could count on. Viking and Cliff were swapping their wives, one party the blonde was his squeeze, next party the brunette. Only we, the hosts, kept stable.

In war the meanest of shit hid in people pops up. I hate when they capture a prisoner, no matter who, both sides camouflaged, and start torture him making a video for some channel in the internet to frighten the hell out of their enemy. Or put him on his knees and smash the head with a sledgehammer. Mudak motherfuckers.

And the war sky is way too low, simply hanging overhead, kinda pressing, doesn’t let you look up for longer than a split sec not to call on your head a round of bursting artillery shells or a drone and you jump up in shock with that clot in your belly turned the size of a tennis ball already. No life in war as before sitting in the cafe by the corner and chatting with Ninka of nothing. You can look wherever you want, up or down, no one rushes by, screaming…

And that constant feel as if all of us are in an express train, some iron beast of lots of cars, shooting along the track faster and faster, and all we, in the cars, know that the track ahead is demolished and any other moment we’ll crash derailed over down the embankment. That’s where that haste comes from, you can’t enjoy neither meals nor fucking…

They liberated a big city. Bombardments and shooting over, he took me over there for a kinda excursion. A pretty big city for so scanty population. The non-combatants were moved away after their liberation, especially kids. No traffic to speak of, armed vehicles mostly and small buses marked “Press” to shoot material for their news and political TV shows. A big meeting convened at a local concert hall. My hubby was on the orators list to make a speech on the behalf of W Group as one of their field commanders. That’s why we went there in the first place. But we came way ahead the happening was to start and went to wheel about the city in his Land Rover. The sidewalks almost empty, about a couple of passers-by in a block looking like pensioner zombies.

We turned into a mighty big factory, no gates, bombardment holes, yet the buildings erect. In between them the breeze plays with light garbage. We stepped out the SUV into the vast silence from a horror movie. Entered one of the buildings, bigger than a football field, dead silent. He gave a yell, it echoed about the hollow and died. That moment I spotted someone stretched behind the rail in the track and called out, ‘At nine!’ He slung his Makar up, pointed it at the figure and moved closer.

‘Nah!’ sez he. ‘For this one it’s game over.’ And put the gun back.

I came nearer, yeah, dead as a nail and the body was dropped there for two months minimally, since the start of the battle for the city. A Godawful cadaver stench. I wanted to pick up the blood group sticker from his fatigue an go. Blue letters in the legend, not like ours.

He stood by watching me then slapped his forehead and cried, ‘Fucking, yes!’, before darting out of that huge workshop.

I walked after him but he’s running back already in working gloves, clutching the hatchet he kept in his SUV for barbecues in the nature’s lap. In a heartbeat was he by the body and hack its head off. Grabbed it by one ear and trotted out again. The ear tore off with tatters of the rotten skin, the head fell on the cemented floor rolling onward. He caught it with his both hands and carried on before him squeezed with the hatchet at arms length.

‘Are you fucking mad?’ screamed I .

‘Shut the fuck up! I know what I’m doing!’

He picked a piece of cellophane stuck in the garbage by the wall and wrapped the thing.

‘No sweat,’ sez he. ‘Time’s enough. I’ve learned the know-how in Africa’.

In short, at that show-meeting he took the floor together with a peeled-to-bone skull. The dead white skull kept in a black-gloved hand, and he talks to it, face-to-face.

‘So what?’ sez he. ‘How about telling me one of your jokes, Yoric? Tell me if those Poles were of any help, fool? That’s what awaits all of you, fascist bastards!’

Then he blah-blahed for a couple of minutes more, where inserted a verse of his own production. Some romantic motherfucker he was. I’ve told that already, or what?

At night, when at the hotel after a big drinking bout, I asked him:

‘What was that hooey about? Yoric? Poles?’

‘Who know they know. It’s from Shakespeare and Gogol’.

‘But that shitty verse? Like a snotty kid at a kindergarten matinee’.

It was the first and only time in our relationship that he punched me. Too plastered he was. My bad too, couldn’t zip up in time. A stupid cunt will always find an nasty adventure for her ass…

Then we went back to our location in war theater. Forgave each other. A girl needs a roof for protection even if its romanticism is fucking leaky. He downloaded from the internet that TV show of his stunt with Yoric. A bearded romantic rehearses lame lines to a raw skull who grins back at him…

It was winter already as Cliff came to our house, bleak as grim clouds.

‘They smoked Shore,’ he said

There started some strange piercing ring in my ears.

‘What the fu.. No!’

He shrugged, ‘Taken to hospital’.

I whizzed over there. Shore stretched on the cot white as the sheet over him, black beard, shut eyes, thin tubes and that beeping thing above his head. All as in serials. It beeped for some 20 hours.

They never found who it was to make Shore on his knees and execute with a shot in the back of his head. It could be prisoners who had a big fang against W Group personnel sending them, the prisoners, to attack and shooting those who retreat. Or, maybe, Caucasians for Shore happened to keep a couple of their big shot at his gun point hollering what motherfuckers they were. The regulars also could do it or even his co-employees from W Group after an anonymous fascist announced on the internet $4 million reward for Shore’s head. Just his head, they did not bother for the rest of him. The murderers might have been after that jack pot. They didn’t have time to cut the head off though. Something had shooed them away.

A soldier from an MP patrol dropped in the ruins to take a leak and saw the body on the snow. Neither falling hot on the trail nor later investigation brought up a thing. Or, maybe, they just didn’t want to find it out…

And then I was sitting in the luggage car of express train over his zinc casket, wearing all black. 2 yokels from W Group sitting at a distance in their fatigues, harnessed with sidearms, just in case, because of the anonymous 4 MM prize for the head in the zinc box. Full of grim respect sat they over there as is appropriate beside the widow of the legendary warrior from the elite W Group seeing her hubby off from the battle grounds.

I was not keen on talking too. Under the hollow ramble of wheels beneath the floor swaying me too and fro, I smoked over the box caring for no yokels, feeling as that bitchy clot inside the belly began to dissolve little by little, spinning some idle thoughts, like, if, say, somehow wack these 2 assholes, could I find a way to veer off away with the head? 4 MM of green is not a thing to shrug away.

Then I recollected the book I read when in the 9th grade. Ninka gave it to me. What motherfucking fools we were! Naive book-reading virgins. Italian stories on sex. Her brothers stabbed her beloved, so she cut his head off and all her life kept it by her. In a big flower pot filled with earth. The flower turned real meaty. A! I remembered! The name was Boccaccio's Decameron.

Such recollections make you smirk. Books. Passing the folded message slips at the classes. At the parties in the school gym we played Brooklet. Lined in pairs, one behind the other, I and Ninka hand in hand raised up. He walks bent low in between the pairs, grabs your wrist and pulls after him in that narrow tunnel beneath the upshot arms from both sides. Laughter, shouts, you feel swoony, and in the tunnel’s end you straighten up, your hand in his warm palm, he smiles at you, and it’s so good, and all your life’s ahead, and no need to rush, and… Shit! Where the fuck is all that?!.

In short, I came to the HQ as arranged. You can’t miss the skyscraper building with a huge W over the entrance. Yet when I appeared in the said room, the bitch of a secretary began to squeal:

‘He’s at a meeting now’.

‘What the fuck! I’m on the appointment!’

So the slut says into her phone:

‘Victor Evguenich, here’s a visitor who’s on the list… Yes… Not quite adequate though’.

But the bitch was too dumb to switch the speaker off in her iPhone, and I could here:

‘Sorry, Evguen Pavlich, it’s the Shore’s cunt after to graze out her 50 G’s…’ The communication’s over.

Shit! I had to wait, what the fuck could else I do?

And those 2 yokels stayed by the casket till they took the body in at the crematorium, just in case. Saved 4 MM’s for the anonymous order-placer. Fucking guards of honor a sort of.

Shore’s daddy, a dried up ruin with the bold spot over all of his dome yet shaved to glitter and equipped with a tie kept his mug turned away from me. Then they brought out the urn and gave it to the man, a kinda cup for sport achievements, as if I was not there at all. Only when I was getting out a swarm of local paparazzi started to click me from all angles, my deep mourn and medium V-cut…

Now, comes the boar I had the appointment with. The jowl hanging down to his armpits, the belly to his knees. Went over to his office and when he’d seated his obesity there, the secretary let me in.

‘Let’s talk business. Can you flash a stamp in your papers to attest your marriage? Then take my healthcare advice and don’t stick out. You roger that?’

No odd words. He knew how to run business, that fat fuck. The memo which Shore left at the HQ no one had ever seen, $50,000 of the compensation went to the winner in the race.

With empty hands I left that the shitty HQ with their American W above the entrance. Fuck you, fucking motherfuckers!

And now what? Whatever! My tits and arse in no need of silicon improvement yet. The other day a Thrice Nominee at somewhat writers funny farm online texted me how gladly he would edit my memoirs about legendary Shore, the royalties split even.

Fuck you, moron! Shore’s “stash case” sits by me as well as the pinch of loot from a diamond mine somewhere in the middle Africa. He smoked yellows and blacks there. So fuck you, literary dumbo.

What’s up by Ninka now? Maybe, to call her?

Just a sec… My ipheezy squeaks. Another ugly&sexy wanna make friends with the juicy veteran of the Special Operation, huh?

* * *

16

The sudden landing was concluded with a few onward hops. After a split second pause the sparrow made turn-left, swung its stubby bill in abrupt jerks to scan for loot then in a quick thrust twisted about to survey the walk there. The sharp edge of a slow shadow moved closer to crawl the bird over. The momentarily take off left behind a tiny air whirl wing-whipped at the vacated spot.

‘May I?’

V raised his gaze from the shadow stopped on the walk to a middle-aged man in casual wear confronting his bench. He gave a silent nod then added one more as tacit as the previous, for the politeness’ sake.

The man seated himself nearby not overlapping the limits of V’s personal space. Hmm, the mindful cat returned the gesture of politeness…

‘A bit too hot for late October,’ remarked the neighbor conversationally. ‘Don’t you think, V?’

V issued a soft whistle within his mind wishing his poker pan had not flinched for a micron at this relaxed weather observation. He slowly turned his head toward to the pensive profile on his left.

‘No, you don’t know me,’ answered the man the unasked question with a tinge of regret in his voice. ‘Otherwise, you’d remember’.

‘Should I? What’s your name, again?’

‘Beg your pardon, I haven’t introduce myself. For the equality’s sake you may choose calling me R. And what is your occupation? The walk in life, so to say?’.

‘Ornithology’.

The answer sounded a bit curt because V didn’t care for courteous meandering at the moment.

‘An augur? Bird-counting, huh?’

'Not exactly but close enough’.

It didn’t matter. His responses were just playing for time. He waited for his opponent's decisive move, the move disclosing, willy-nilly, the agenda up his sleeve. The fact of his being still alive indicated that neither the main players, the state institution fishing in the thoughts pool and the unknown force who helped 2ic off the hook right in time to give him, V, that pretty short notice, nor any third side wished to get rid of him, as of yet. Which side is this here guy from?

‘You know, they are so talkative critters, the birds are. One magpie told one blue jay repeating one cuckoo’s crazy chat as if you still keep the card from Mr. Taylor, moniker 2ic. Isn’t it laughable?’

V gave out a nervous cough and kept silent.

‘Come on, man! I’m not wired, not my operational level’.

For the first time, the man turned to V face to face. V looked into the gray eyes in a weary nondescript map and believed. He cut off the eye contact, sat back and looked along the walk. At about 20 meters plus, there stood a guy from a varsity football team, the tight end judging by his frame, who idly watched nothing in particular. A quick look in the opposite direction ascertained the presence of the left guard of the same team and, approximately, same size. Both in ostensibly expensive office wear. V didn’t bother to look behind and see the quarterback in shiny shoes and trendy necktie who made him, V, the centroid in their triangle. He did believe already that the man was not wired.

‘I like you, V, I do, said R, 'In a platonic way. Pure and sincere feeling. That’s why I’m here. My purpose was to warn you. The card full of transcripts you keep is not just a storage memory stick. It is a constitute part in a larger app. Working all the time. What you think of as files keep changing non-stop like records in a huge database. The process brings about changes in the whole system, part of which you’ve became inadvertently. It’s like the concrete box of the Chernobyl “Sarcophagus” boiling and brewing God knows what new elements beyond the Periodic table for all these years. Welcome on board, V. And watch each step in your walk of life now’.

The man sighed. V looked up in the sky endeavoring to guess time by the position of the sun in its daily trajectory.

‘No worry, V. The pretty woman and the cute pup would come here no sooner than in ten minutes.’

R rose to his feet and walked away, an average passer-by in a big city…

* * *

17

(From: Intelligence Gleaner 3d Category, Undercover Spy Cyborg USC-100345877214-IG,

To: HER Center HQ, Section IV, Department OWS

Field Report 24,587

Transmitted at the 67448647885148596966265764685764687545784885 second of HER absolute time, 20:07 by the Operation Y&OAoS/g locale native time)

‘In the period since Field Report № 24,586 (1209600 local seconds back) I had two meetings with the target of Operation Y&OAoS/g, the second one resulted in a direct contact with the right palm of the target initiated and performed by them. Please find attached the scan of his palmistry lines (verifiable correspondence 87%) and four finger prints (verifiable correspondence 82%), archive file skd_00_z15-mV.

In observance of the Undercover Spy Cyborg Regulations, part 4, §106 (d):

“If USC receives no response communication for longer than HER month they are expected to recapitulate the intelligence sent since the previous affirmed obtainment so as to prevent accidental loss of information”,

and inasmuch I, USC-100345877214-IG, have so far got not a single message from HER Center HQ (possible cause jamming by our constant common enemy from the Dark Matter Part of the Universe during the last 2 millennia of HER native time) here is my, USC-100345877214-GI’s, 267th recap:

“The astrophysical parameters keep, on the whole, true with the figures presented in reconnaissance reports by USC-100345877209 thru 213-IG, except for notable growth of carbon dioxide share in the atmosphere of this, third of the inner planets about their yellow dwarf sun, world when compared to the earlier data.

As for the way of life existing here then its both mineral-fossilite, and vegetative, and organic representatives follow the same schedule ‘eat what/which/whoever you can’. The upper rungs in food chain ladder belong to shark–ochtopus in sea, man–vulture on dry land; some species are capable of manipulating/‘shepherding’ other creatures: ants milk aphids, kids suck ants’ asses for sore juice, wasps manipulate ants into delivering supplies, men keep goats, grave worms put the final period and all the picture is too complicated to cram it into a cohesive chain or web or something without analyses by HER core AI servers…

To keep things simple, the topmost rung in the food ladder got given to man proudly calling themselves homo sapience (“Man wise and/or prudent”) thanks to their omnivorousness, effective use of the wide range of tools for killing, and being trained to boast loudly, still unfit to master other ways of communication without producing sounds or drawing signs.

My mission—getting as close as possible for a robot equipped with the sensorium-locomotion system needed for the task at hand or even closer that that—lately, three months back (by local standard of time measurement) showed certain indications of feasibility when after really long search I at long last came upon the target. Right now we’re on rather friendly terms while getting ‘closer’ would take, appreciatively, another local month.

Besides, I managed tapping into the way of carrying sounds and visuals between the humans’ electronic devices and was appalled! The principal material and even the idea of contraption is certainly from them, our Dark Matter fiendish adversaries!

First, let me make clearer the way it works with those homos calling themselves wise. They can’t invent a thing! Even less to discover. Until the whole idea, like a Christmas present, is put in this or that convolution of their brain. Then they shout “Eureka!” and start running about, at times stark naked. Or you might want to dome them with a weighty apple, it happens to work too.

Just a look at the system of communication between their electronic devices appalled me deeply. Utterly. The IT boom at present raging here is based on silicon! The material used by our Dark Matter adversary especially their militant Dark Energy wing. Now, who has instilled the thought to nincompoops? HER civilization always used beryllium for that purpose! Be and Si are miles away from each other, like Microsoft and Linux!

Hence, I suggest HER Center HQ dispatch a special USC squad here for collecting evidence and tracing back to the source of initiation of technologies hostile to us in principle. Too much of my time at the moment goes to preparing a ‘closer’ action with my mission target to find a slot for going down that road single-handed.

Supreme Being save HER and have mercy on us, HER loyal components.

USC-100345877214-GI”

A shrill yell sounded from the next room:

‘Toto! Where are my spectacles?’

Toto pricked her ears up and issued an irritated yelp. Her hind right paw patted slightly, thrice, behind her shaggy ear which action compressed, encrypted, and transmitted the spy message enveloped in a chunk of white noise.

‘I bet,’ thought USC to themselves while in a mincing trot to the door, ‘the glasses sit on the bitch’s nose, yet, patience! She’s a good oldie and I like her’.

* * *

18

They were not singing those morning birds but rather talking to themselves. They needed no audience, no approbation, they just shared their impression of the current moment with no one in particular, like, retired oldies addressing not a single soul around. Black birds sounded somewhat didactically pedant, smaller fry’s chirrup was louder, yet she didn’t care, neither for dove’s tender cooing full of narcissistic love nor for goldfinch’s abrupt utterances. They also didn’t pay much attention to each other neither were in the way of wakening morning, they were part of it. The morning sun squinted sleepily thru the stilled serene foliage in the quiet trees.

She surfaced from her night sleep under the calm introvert gossip of birds out the window. The house stood in a desolate part of a podunk town on the steep slope to a deep creek grown with trees. Once her pet Fluffy, a bantam sand-yellow dog with his tail flaring proudly like the torches in the Italian carabinieri cockade, broke his chain (the neighbors’—few and far between—anticipatory worries about his possible hunting raids after the hens in their yards deprived the poor devil of his freedom) and ran away. Next morning she got up earlier than the birds and found him in one of the unused lots about. The tether of chain had got caught and tied up by the rank mighty grass bushes. Fluffy met her with agitated joyous whins and awakened the first birds. She looked around and felt that she knew what happiness is.

Later, Fluffy passed away and Dad never told where he buried him in the slope. She moved to live in a big city with neither birds nor trees to speak of, however, she knew the moments of poignant happiness might really happen in your life. At least in the past. So she told me…

‘So she told me,’ repeated V to himself, producing no sound, forgetful to switch on the secondhand notebook he craned his head over. ‘Let’s hope,’ added he with a dry smirk and as mutely as before, ‘They’ll never zero in on this my thought’.

They split in a correct and civilized manner, each of them moved to a separate lodging, their mutual account in the social net deleted. For half a year he lived hardly feeling he was alive. Then he little by little emerged from the depth if his listless prostration, made a rule of shaving at least every other day. Started fiddling about computer, a self-styled programmer of no certificate or loyalty to any particular programming language, a freelance loner outside any team, reading tutorials, replicating their applications, hours assiduously typed away rubbing off the keyboard characters. Anything at all to ward off the empty monotonous boredom of his minutely regular existence.

He did come to terms with his way of life and was getting on pretty fine, faith. It’s only that sometimes there happened, like, phantom pains a man can feel in his since long amputated limb. Those nights when he grappled away from wakening, clung at the dissolving shreds of a dream, scrambled back to where he stood upright on his knees, before her, his arms around her hips, face pressed to her womb, eyes dead closed—no! not now please! I will not to wake!

Then he lay on his back in the middle of an endless black night. Wide awake. Calm. Indifferent. Waiting for the morning to take place.

In our lovers we love ourselves… Who said it, again? Some sage asshole…

With a strange short shatter V awoke, looked around and reluctantly raised the black lid. The clicked power button started the hardly audible soothing purr in the notebook’s innards.

A hurried knock on the door made V sit up with a startle. He waited for no visitors and accurately paid the rent, even the ball of kids playing sometimes in the gallery outside along the row of identical apartment doors missed knocking at his one.

He got up and walked to answer. Behind the door stood 2ic, his intent glare directed to V’s eyes, unswerving.

‘May I come in?’

‘What the… how did you find me?’

‘They instructed me how to answer this your question but, first, may I?’

‘Sure! Come on in!’

V cautiously looked out along the empty tier-gallery and the iron railing lit by the diffused cones of yellowish bulb-light pouring into the gloom of night. Then he closed, locked, and latched the door.

* * *

19

…because the most urgent is the here and now; the passing moment and the narrow place we occupy are our eternity and infinity. People inclined to considering things and events met along their progress to the better world in heaven or hotter world in hell would most certainly come to the same conclusion and they, eventually, would present the thought in clearer form for eager seekers of reason and sense in their sublunary existence. They, but not me, would enlighten the mankind by radiance of the like thoughts because, still in possession of my aptitude for subtle contemplations, I’ve ceased confiding them to paper…

Dry and drowsy my inkwell keeps its peace under the dust-sealed lid, the quill abducted for household needs, they are a plenty, by some or other from the garrulous bevy of womenfolk at this abode. To skirt about my possible expostulations to the unwarranted trespass, the skirts did it on the sly. The most surprising thing though is that they somehow knew I wouldn’t make a fuss about the quill pilfered for God knows what application.

They know even things untold… Ha! Another brilliant thought worth of being passed to posterity slips by and fades in vain. So let posterity cater for themselves. Let’s hope they’ll accomplish the deed before reaching the venerable age when you know answers to any question under the sun as well as under the moon, be it full or waning, or even hid behind the jealous clouds, yet there is not a single soul caring to forward it, the question, to you. For them you’re just a part in the interior surroundings or landscape. Who would ever start a discussion with a crooked tree in the roadside besides an insane poet? So good luck, posterity, find them yourselves, the answers you cannot pass on. Or some idea like that my thought a moment back… hmm… what was it, again?

Aha! About living within the bounds of a split-second construing finely splendid speculations about eternity and stuff…

Yeah… and, speaking of poets, they are a really rare commodity, a couple for a century, at most. Observe the last one if you please, who will you discern there to be named a poet of merit? I and Quevedo, wit of the Golden Age and… And that’s it! Still, in every street of any one-mule village it gives 2,000 poets a-tinkering their jarring clumsy “verse”. O, tempora! O, mores!

Even at my first incarceration, a month in that common cavern of a jail, I met a poet! Though I don’t undertake to judge the quality of his opuses. It was an Englishman with their barbarous parlance. Communicated in a mix of Lingua Franca and broken Spanish words. A nice young man. What was his name, again? Yes, Will Shake… something… shake shaft or bones… Whatever.

Unsparingly he recollected his spouse Ann left to look after their 3 kids, back in the Island. The jail conditions were just godawful, no latrine, the prisoners discharging their bodily refuse into buckets. The stench!

As always, I was lucky, one month of running nose! That’s the fortune’s fave!

And that Biscayan ogre accused of stealing a mangy ass from a local landlord. Some beefy brute, that ass thief was. The folks in the common cell feared to fart in his presence so that catching the whiff his train of thoughts wouldn’t take a turn towards lusty recreation…

Poor devil Will! He suffered more than others from rough mistreat. Still never lost his optimism and used sharing to me, in poet-to-poet way, he didn’t mind this kind of abuse because of being a bisexual and the accumulated penetrating impact will find a sublimed vent in his future sonnets or, maybe, plays. Yet, Mr. Shakesomething learned the hard way, truly and firsthand, what Spanish prison was…

But still, who namely instills us our thoughts? God? Devil?

The second producer enjoys the well-deserved respect for his product never disappoiunts the consumer—the finest evil in the market for any trend in circulation currently or cashback within a business week. While the God made goods are, well, a kind of swaying from excellent to so-so, to put it gently. Depending on your luck and his mood, perhaps. Especially His mood! And then industrial espionage, you know, stealing… ahem!. copy-pasting proprietary know-how from His competitor…

The weather-cock policy in action. Now He creates Eve. O my God! Thank you! Halleluyah! The next day He demolishes Gomorrah which is a genocidal action, to say the least, in relation to stray cats, dogs, sheep herds, innocent, enjoying their night repose. For a lengthier exposure you might want consult the sect of vegans with their perennial chant about sad look in the eyes of Cow and other domesticated hostages to “humans’” gluttony. Moody, moody… Or are there several Gods doing shifts?

O, thank God, I dropped my habit of taking notes and thrice thank you, OMG, that Holy Inquisition can’t read our idle thoughts or else my ass and stuff would feel the heat…

* * *

20

…it’s not a throe, the pain, it is past pangs or cramps, beyond scorching lashes and smarting throbs, it kills with it stillness and constancy, kills yet let me not die, keeps embedded in torture vice, squeezed in mold of no escape for one hair’s width, it does know its trade, the pain…

…yet in spite of executioner's acute deftness by and by it grows duller, the pain, we split, pain an’ me, not one whole already, me and pain, though it stays by me, irredeemably, it hurts no less than before, but it’s not part of me any more…

… some thinnest sheath or shroud, some flimsy membrane of numbness separates us, me and pain, and this sparsest of swaddles in between us keeps me off, keeps me separate, keeps me a-hover above it, gives me some space to grow into I… who am I?

I am what I am what I am… I am what I fell besides and beside the pain, ever-present pain… do I feel? what I feel?..

… it’s darkness, pitch-black darkness around, I feel how thickly viscous it is… dead black darkness… I feel sounds of water, hollow lapping, soft gurgling of water in the dark…

and now I have to do it, I know it hurts but I have to dare a try at one desperate heedless thrust thru the pain whose part I am not, I have to check if what I feel besides thick darkness is there, so… now!! oooooooooo!.

Thru pain and tears in eyes with the lids pulled up, in flows the light, inundates, a sea of light and I see how beautiful it is, this face of Moon craning over me so close, full, high-cheeked, right above my eyes open wide thru the throe…

So saw I how good it was, the mellow light streaming down, shed by her, sad, omniscient, reaching for me, fixed in agony, flowing face-to-face.

So created she me back, by the light off her face nearing ever closer to me lost in pain but found, and my mouth, distorted by pain wailing out for all to hear it possessed me, now moaned in gratitude to the light giver, Moon. And good it was…

* * *

21

‘Who are they?’ Asked V, ‘The federals? Same guys who had arrested you?’

‘They are not federals, they are from the Institution which has nothing to do with the government’.

‘Who do they work for then?’

‘The global superstructure layered above any governments on the earth’.

‘Again? The old good cud about Masons, huh? Conspiracy Theory to impress high school kids? Come on!’

‘The stuff is not compulsory… May I have a glass of water?’ 2ic sat down on the coach.

V brought a bottle of mineral water from the fridge. 2ic made a couple of gulps.

‘Some awkward question, V, I just can’t help it, have kept it back for too long. My apologies in advance’.

‘What a delicate approach! You stir most dark suspicions, is it you, my friend? Fire it off, anyway’.

‘Well… damn, it’s hard… Well, why did you break up? You were so obviously in.. well, special to each other’.

‘The word is “love”, dude. Yes, I was in, the split was not my idea. Looks like she wished to feel happy for which end she needs to set some one free. It does not matter whom, me or Fluffy.’

‘I don’t dig it, man. Who’s Fluffy? Are you high?’

‘Never mind. Just a slip of tongue. How are you, by the by?’

‘Wanna know, huh? Thanks, I’m fine except for there’s neither 2ic, nor Alec Taylor Jr. No, no more!. Look!’ He got onto his feet and, slightly careening, yanked apart the sides of his unzipped Windbreaker.

Horrified, watched V the frightful sight. Instead of the jovial plump sybarite he knew, a stick-man stood before him, uneven pleats developed in the shirt hung plumb down his front.

‘See, eh?’ said 2ic. He grabbed the only bump under his shirt fabric, a kinda argyle sack sagging from his waist, to sway and wobble it clockwise and back.

‘O, no!’ exclaimed V shocked yet understanding the sack was the surplus skin, still uncontracted sheath that a couple of months back contained the thick belly of his gourmet friend. ‘How come, buddy? Tell me all’.

‘All? It might hurt, man’.

‘Alright, I’m not too squeamish. Tell me’.

‘I am deprived of eating. Chewing, swallowing are there, I can stuff my stomach full but it brings no joy, does not make me happy as I used to be. So why eating? I can nibble a snack here, a snack there, if I remember, during the day, and no lustful night raids to the fridge. I’ve neither appetite no hunger’.

‘O boy! O boy! But why?’

‘Too much of a shock, I reckon, had I to live thru lately’. 2ic coughed in hesitation and moved his stare over to the corner before to go on.

‘We met a year after you broke up. A chance meeting in the street. She suggested to drop into a cafe. Who would reject so a gorgeous woman! A friendly chat and then I saw – she’s flirting in earnest! My head swerved. Well, you know. “In old Japan,” said I, “Some poor devil, a penniless samurai could arrange a date with the top-notch geisha to be paid for by his dear life”.

“I’m not so versed in Japan’s history,” she answered. “What about a one-night stand paid with a friendly favor?”

‘What favor?’

“The details on the morning after”.

‘What’s there to explain? We’re from the same pod… In the morning she wanted me to run an errand and pass her message to you: “V’s been the best lover in her life”.

‘And then?’

‘Then I saw her twice. A week after the… ahem… taking the errand. In the same cafe she thanked for keeping up to the deal and suggested I apply for a job in the Institution I’ve never heard of. I refused to believe the salary she mentioned, were their employees senators or something?. Yet she was not kidding… The second time we met two months ago in the office of the Institution security boss, Wal. They told me to pass you one of the cards we’re dealing with at the Institution. It’s not a breach but skirting about the regulation for everyone’s advantage’.

‘So your arrest was a fake?’

‘Yep’.

‘And you warned me by Wal’s phone?’

‘Exactly… Then I was told to change the location and my vehicle. That’s all’.

‘And now they told you to feed this tall story to me?’

‘No, man! I was looking for you of my own accord! I knew your habits, favorite places to hang out. Then followed. You can’t imagine what a relief to have all that off my chest!’

Now 2ic was looking at V, not avoiding his eyes any more, breathing deep, both noisily and visibly.

‘Hey, V! I can’t believe it! Looks like I’m hungry. By Jove! I feel it! Wow! Any chow in your fridge?’

* * *

22

After locking the door V turned around and with the already automatic move dropped the key into the entry tray. He passed over to the room and stopped in his tracks, a kinda statue “Apprehensive Thoughts’.

All about looked just as it should, the way it looked ever since he moved in—an immaculate pedantically arranged monk cell. Nevertheless, he knew it now was not the same, except for its all pervading quietude – some thing or other has changed has changed its location if even for a splinter of a micron. He felt it.

‘Anybody home?’ called V out loud.

‘Ahem’, answered the kitchen with a voice whose owner kinda got into a huge vat to embellish their response with a booming reverb echo.

‘Don’t shoot he piano player, Mister. He does his level best’. It rolled like peels of thunder from deep inside his innards.

A two-meter-tall guy shadowed the entry with his bulky frame. Two huge claw-like hands up, a beer can in the right one. Despite the comic attitude, his eyes were dead attentive, allowing to see at once the notice in them “We take no shit”.

‘Beg your pardon, pardner. I took the liberty of checking the your fridge contents’.

‘Feel yourself at home. My castle is your castle, Wal’.

The giant's left brow ticked slightly in appreciation of being recognized without self-introduction. In two strides he reached the chair and got seated. The item reacted to the action with a sorrowful squeak.

V neatly sat on the coach opposite his guest. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Cooperation in a job interview if you please’.

‘Who’s the applicant, for which position?’

‘My job is to make you a proposal that you can’t reject, Mr. V. So the applicant is you and your prospective employer’s known in certain circles as the Institution. And please, before we start the negotiations, don’t shorten my name to mere W’.

‘In this respect, count on me, Wal. Now, why me and what makes you think I need some fucking Institution?’

The interviewer’s nod conveyed sad empathy before he answered the question, 2 in 1, actually.

‘I won’t lure you with the pudding’s filling though it’s quite creamy, take my word. No, you’re above that, you can survive on manna in the morning and soup of acrid insects for your dinner. Moreover, you’re free, no wife, no kids, no in-laws. A lucky man! You easily can spend your life with these toys’. Wal shortly jerked his chin to indicate the secondhand notebook atop the desk by the wall and sighed, and shook his head in pathetic envy.

‘They are fine playthings, I concur. And those literary passages you try your hand at and delete day after day, they’re fine as well’.

‘You’re hacking my toys?’

‘No need, pardner. When typing you dictate your fingers, you think thoughts out before they’re fixed in lines, as simple as that. Wired undercover cops, spy cams are there only for entertainment of the public, action movies, court-room reports, you know. That way you can’t prevent mass shooting of innocent kids at Sweet-16 parties, neither dirty wars nor other nasty shit that constitute, in too big part, the world’s constant balancing on the razor edge. The enterprise objective is retroaction from the future removing past snafus a second before the final fall of the guillotine knife.

So, besides the mentioned creamy salary, collaboration gives an opportunity to live a glorious though inconspicuous life, V. No medals, PhD degrees, no laureatizing but when retired in due course you may choose writing your own King Lyre or stuff. How about that?’

‘How about a bestseller?’

‘We’re not in for that shit, pardner. Otherwise 5 minutes back you’d have cinched off your left foot prosthesis and riddle-smoked me with a round of dumdum bullets from the in-built machine-gun and get away by the fire escape. All dummies become happy and start picketing your house 24/7 with kvetchy demands for a sequel doodled in their placards.’

‘You can negotiate, Wal’.

‘Not for nothing I keep the Diamond Star Decoration of the World Champion at Hassling in my desk down-most drawer’.

‘I have to think your offer over. How do I contact you?’

‘No worry, we’ll contact you when you make the right decision’.

* * *

23

V raised his head and under its back he tucked the lace of his trellised fingers then lowered it back onto the same tree root. The ribbed rind surface was a bit too hard for his DIY pillow. But he thought he cold endure it for a short stretch lying that way on the the moderately tilted ground in this summer woods. And why not once in a while?

The lofty columns of trees respectfully gave rather a wide birth to each other. The soft rustle of the breeze in their tops’ leafage merged with with low buzz of rare flies or bees, or who knows what else air traveling insects and an occasional drum roll of a busy pecker. The wood shades made the sunny day mild, pleasant. Stretched prostrate on the warm ground he felt good, this here once in a while. He turned his eyes to where she was sitting, cross-legged, looking away.

‘And you too,’ said he, ‘Bro Brutus! Joined the team in the best traditions of corporate solidarity’.

‘No need,’ she shook her head watching a squat blackberry bush. ’You agreed to Wal’s proposal before our meeting’,

‘He told you so? Grabbed my thoughts out the noosphere?’

‘I had known it before he offered yo to join in. I know you too well, V’,

He released his hands and crawled, still in the prostrate position, backward, closer t to the trunk to lean his back onto. ‘So why this kind of a romantic meeting? To finalize the deal? Last nail in the coffin lid of a freelancer’s freedom?’

‘You always rode a too high horse. Could you talk in plain words?’

‘Will we be meeting as co-employees?’

‘I don’t think so. The Institution is a too diversified enterprise’.

He pinched a weeny piece off the moss between the tree roots, rubbed it between his fingers then smelled them. The smell was that of moist earth. She looked up to meet his stare. The ping of since long suppressed and fully forgotten pangs reached him and made cast his eyes down.

‘Wal missed or rather obviated answering the first from the 2-in-1 questions: why me?’

‘It was R’s decision when he found out that the Institution headed to a crunching halt, impossible workload and things getting out of hand completely because of your and my baby. Too much depended on that kid..

‘What the… we didn’t have no baby!’

‘It was due in a couple of years. That’s why we split’.’

‘Who’s nuts? I or you, or R? It’s a sheer madness!’

‘It’s the world we live in, V’.

‘Have you manipulated me? Later? By those goddamn retroactions?’

No. Just looking after. Maybe a couple of close calls. At most. I didn’t want you become a wheel-chaired gimp because of a car accident and stuff, you know’.

‘The alarm call by 2ic was one of the preventive moves?’

‘Not exactly. A part of a wider plot. R’s retiring, he looks for a substitute’.

‘Has he found any?’

‘You know yourself’.

‘Leya’s in?’

‘Nope. Her “saving” you was an unforeseen turn. We had to improvise later’.

‘Improvisations, huh? You’re fucking manipulators’.

‘You can’t let the world be ruled by senile morons ready to annihilate it to revenge their natural mortality in a kinda forestalling slam of the door. Neither want you younger morons driven by greed or stupidity, or both’.

‘Another Theory of Conspiracy? The Dark Wing scenario? Come on! They are baubles for high-school kids.’

‘ Bravo, R! He’s right about you aptitude at wild guesses’.

‘Fucking manipulator motherfucker!’

‘Slow down, V! You are in presence of a lady. Would you allow a toddler drop down thru the railing or thrust his hand into a working…’

‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Do I express myself plainly enough?’

‘Which I take for your polite “good-by”, Sir. Fare thee well!’

She rose on her feet and walked down the tilt towards the black SUV on a desolate dirt road in the wood.

* * *

24

…the moon sailed away across the sky I followed it before my eyes my only part capable of moving reached their orbits’ rim and then there remained just the pin-pricks of stars in the dark violet firmament and the ever-present sound of running water might be falling from those moistly gleaming stars

I hovered prostrate and numb above the pain I parted with but still felt so acutely it only swapped from less to more cutting and back the sound was like that of a languid brook in Yorkshire and here it struck me I recalled all both my mother calling ‘Jimmy!’ and the verdure in wavy hills sliced with the stone ribs of hedges the sky over our village church and something you could not miss the presence of the sea beyond the hills

wed to the sea I made my way up from an able man to commander an captain the renown cartographer and explorer of the South Seas commissioned by the Royal Society to discover Terra Australis bringing instead unknown isles new territories with numerous subjects brought to the Crown under the shade of Union Jack touching the lands of dark-skinned people of savage customs and rites the most shocking I witnessed on the second voyage a human sacrifice which I first thought was just a sacrifice

they brought him into the sandy square in the clump of huts under high trees like a great prince they brought him on a stretcher naked prostrate and to my question Omai answered the poor devil could not sit or walk for each and every bone in his body was split and crashed minutely except for the scull and that all of the previous night he lay steeped in the brook to cleanse his body and spirit then under mutual chant and drum beating gushed the blood from the throat cut with the white blindingly white knife disembowelment offal was taken away we retired to the King’s hut where I was bestowing beads and trinkets of pewter to my sovereign host and he was happy and his family too while through the entrance in floated the sweet whiffs of baked flesh but I refused to partake in the royal dinner my stomach ailment used for the excuse

I remember it so vividly now on my third voyage and I’ve recollected what happened yesterday in the morning garbled details of our fight with the natives by the surf at the beach pop up in my mind the dawn is nearing the stars go out for good and I am omniscient now I know what main course will be enjoyed today at the sovereign's dinner

* * *

25

The enigma was most monstrously frustrating, it drove him mad and made V feel just flabber-fucking-gasted. They definitely were his thoughts in the transcript file he read on the screen but still and yet he’d never thought them. He would remember thinking them, he’s not a not all there geezer succumbed to Alzheimer, galloping sclerosis or the like stuff from their bunch. They were both his and not his, the thoughts were/weren’t.

The most strange, besides his name he called himself in them, it felt like peeping into a looking glass and run into reflection of some other guy and be 100 pc sure the guy was you, nonetheless. Because the thoughts were thought the way they could be thought by him only and no one else.

And then he grew pretty sure that the way one thinks is as inimitably authentic to the thinker as their fingerprints or spots in a giraffe's neck skin. Was it some prank or that backward retroaction 2ic mentioned in one of his duck-PhD rigmaroles? And he delved into the text anew.

“Freak is not a loner by their nature. On the contrary, solitude freaks them out, the freaks. They just can't stand it, 'sitting all by myself' is the ultimate fright for them.

Get-togethers is an immediate, effective remedy. Cheap? I dunno. How much is the ticket to a beauty queen inauguration ceremony? UEFA Championship Finals? All depends. Everything's relative. You better choose a blanket as dictated by your leg’s length, you know.

And here comes the moment of scratching the philosophy bump in your skull. How many make the proper dose?

The more, the merrier, Bro!

2 are a team, 3 makes a company and further soar up the curve of mob-crowd-tribe-nation-global community…

Belonging makes you bigger, stronger, safer, readier to out-smart them outsider freaks, who have not joined as of yet… who're smaller in numbers… not assimilated… them those damn freaks!.

"What are you up to here?"

"Just writing."

"Whoa, man! You call this splash of broken spaghetti you scribbled in your copybook a writing? You serious? It's simply undecipherable!"

"Etruscan can't be read…"

Well, maybe, he's right. I dunno. Should I practice typing? 10 digits are certainly more than 3.

Even Paart's pieces are not for a one-handed piano player…

Seems like it's the must… I might reach the ceiling of 27 clicks per minute, who knows…

The last straw to break me into upgrading my typing skills in earnest became the monthly $100 dangled out by proze.com as their traditional carrot. Yeah, I should train myself indeed!

There happened more than one crowd, actually, that I've tried joining to. Chat-rooms, online courses with spiffy pdf certificates, flash-mobs for fun and recreation, GitHub, Stackoverflow, forums of Linux music makers, wine-lovers, joint suckers, scuba divers… you name it.

It's only I could not hang on anywhere for longer than a month or so. And then I got bored or distracted by something else, and too lazy to come back later and shake it on.

However, MoM became the thing I stuck at and somehow did not feel like quitting. The force of habit, maybe.

Firstly, the site had an exquisite interface, and MoM meant business, you got it at once when signing up. No questions about your credit card and staff. But you had to tick "I agree to…" as by installing an MS program and add your digital signature at the bottom of a long form.

Do you read all their content? Ever?

Like, condition/rule#1: prove you're a monster and not a freak. Because MoM is Mob of Monsters.

Or else (rule#2) annulling your account will not get you off the hook and let walk away because (rule#3) member to the Mob has to prune freaks off.

Fine catch here.

That way, renegade MoMonsters did not last long.

They were taken care of differently. Wide specter of approaches. Starting from the suicide-prone fraction among MoM’s ready to eliminate the freak in a straightforward kamikaze style, up to master-mind multi-move combinations designed behind the stage.

The defector had no loopholes and not a slightest chance of escaping.

It was a self-governing community. Not a few dudes regretted their signing in on high, even more the absence of the habit by them to read all of the preamble.

All tries at finding a way-out ended in the like manner – DOA, and the notorious 2-color card, the ’black mark' (in honor of Billy Bones, Long John Silver et al, from The Treasure Island by Robert L. Stevenson) put in the body's hand or pocket, or shoved up… nah, yeah, it depended on the particular circumstances, you know.

The tastefully designed MoM logo on the dark side, the reprint of the stiff's digital signature on the card's back, that’s what was the constant attribute to all them grim cases.

Activities?

Get-togethers, sure thing, what else a mob is supposed to do?

Online weekly get-togethers, regional at the out-set, but later on, when pruning, deserter-effacing and natural death rate more than decimated the ranks affiliates, the get-togethers grew global retaining the same frequency.

3 missed meetings at a stretch indicated that you are not up to being an MoM, volunteers hit raw-bones-designed button to receive the ’black mark' with the weakling’s signature.

The proceedings at the online hanging out never changed: Mob members' reports indicating their monstrous worth, say, selfies at the backdrop of a kitten hanged by the MoM up to the land-mine planted in the neighbor's lawn, you name it.

The all-in ballot wound up the online meeting, the dude whose nick hit the bottom in the horrid deeds list knew it's time to put their matters in order and/or buy a lot in the cemetery of their choice or get drunk and laid-up for their last dollar. Whatever.

Of course, the outsider freaks tried to intervene. Parents, who had some ambitious plans for their scions, governments offended by the fact of somebody else messing around with their potential cannon fodder and egg-heads, federal investigating services because that's their job.

The MoM site would be run down, hacked, banned, replaced with the infamous '404'.

By the end of the week, the MoM members found a message in their email boxes, link to the freshly redesigned site with an added button "Report a possible infiltrator". Welcome back on track, guys.

That's how MoM dwindled and became an elite group of hundreds, then tens of participants, MoM's upscale Magisters.

The upstart dare-devil aficionados, who still got the nerve to sign up (really rarely) did not last long.

No selfies any more at the get-togethers.

When the Magisters count dropped (ascended?) to 9 the camera eyes in their notebooks were safely plastered. Some especially wary cats spoke thru the Voice Changer Device with that dumb robotic voice, you know. Still dropped in tracks, VCD or no VCD, with all their 9 lives each because right now there are just 2, Bart and me. The showdown of the Last of Mob Monsters.

No ballot is needed neither VCD. No one will anyway believe that my squeaks of a squeezed squirrel is my natural voice, as for Bart he gets too much relish in his opulent baritone.

That’s why, in full conformance to MoM rules, here am I on a 3-week vacation and no longer, hiking in this wild mountainous backcountry. Not alone I am, a mob old-timer feels better in a company. My girlfriend Mahra makes me it.

She's a cute-looking chick though not too bright which makes her even better. It was not falling at first sight by us. But then it somehow turned into a stable relationship. Something about a year or so. Anyways, she keeps a more precise track of time.

And the year back I just though, "What the hell? Would do for a security blanket, huh?" A beauty is a beauty for 3 days at most if she stays at your home. For which reason we live separately thanks to the wise advice of that Irishman who knew a thing or two about beauties and stuff.

And I do need an additional blanket on this here trek, the mountains are cold at night.

I decided to walk up this river valley to watch those waterfalls traced in the Google satellite map. Not too big to attract swarms of tourist, which is a blessing.

But I couldn't hire a guide in the couple of farmsteads we visited on the way. Halfway thru the summer, the hicks are busy making hay in the tilted fields of nearby slopes. No one available, they only explained to follow the cow path along the left riverside.

The path got lost in the woods pretty soon and we just walked on. Path or no path, the left side stays the left.

So we went, me, the fucking pathfinder, and Mahra breathing heavily yet stomping bravely behind my back. Atagirl, sweetie!

The riverside had cliffs at some places jutting to close to the stream, those you had to skirt about by climbing up the slope, thick-wooded and steep. The river stayed down there roaring along, unseen thru the treetops in the descending wood.

And then there started the second tier of cliffs. Climbing father up the slope to bypass them as well seemed like too much of an uphill job. So I went on, keeping close to the bottom in their row rooted in the, like, way-over-50-degree slant that kept growing steeper with the progress.

The most deterring was the gritty layer blanketing the ground. A kinda fine scaly slug spilled down with hissing rustle from under your boots. Real nasty sound and scary sight, them those tiny rivulets of bitty dry grit rolling downward. And only inertia of moving on did not allow to stop and think, until the slant became too abrupt.

I stopped and turned about. Mahra stood in a couple of meters off me. Then the hiss increased and I slid down standing midst one more dry grit rivulet, wider than those before.

The downward sliding got momentum, my boots submerged into the grit-current.

I took the left tuck in this slug slalom so as to reach for the tree trunk stuck up from the almost sheer drop in the slope covered over with those gray scales too slippery to even stand on.

The trunk withstood the impact of my desperate clutch. There was no time to take a breather.

One more grit-fall whooshed by. I looked up thru the sweat pouring down my face.

Mahra was rushing past seated on her bottom. My left arm shoot out, our hands clasped. She stopped hanging on the tie of our hands over the dry grit stream tumbling down the wall.

She did not scream. The tense lips in the pallid face gave out no sound. The hiss was dying away down there. The half-dry trunk of the dead tree creaked and quivered.

She never screamed, but her mad eyes! What deafening freaked-out look stood in them!

Our hand-clasp was giving in slowly, slackening. The sweat-moist fingers slipping thru, past, away.

No screaming. All I could hear was that hollow clump, and the non-stop roar of the mountainous river rolling on.

After a while, I let my backpack drop down too, but kept by me the 10-meter length of a light sturdy rope…

She lay face-down in a meter-wide stretch of backwater rimmed with current-smoothed rocks, placid spot, no deeper than a couple of inches. The hump of her backpack stayed above the water, safely dry.

I scooped out it her iPhone to leave the body anonymous. Before the hicks’ labors be over—if ever—the woods gulpers would care about making her one with Nature.

Then I collected my backpack a couple meters off. Thoroughly drenched…

A week later, I raised the lid of my notebook. And put her iPhone next to it.

Unbelievable, yet hacking her password took 3 days. It was neither her name nor the birth date, nor the name of her Prince Charming she played mamas-and-papas at high school but some hard nut to crack.

Well, not much of interesting stuff in that iPhone, except for Passwords file in the Documents folder…

To log in MoM I typed her user-name and password."Hi, Bart!" affably greeted me MoM interface.

I attached Squid and scribbled in half-broken spaghetti:

"Hi, my name is V and I am a murderer."

A minute later there popped up capitalized response,"GOT IT".

Whatever future awaits this here squirrel, it would be free of boredom.

Bet your farm…”

* * *

26

’Pull up at the corner,’ said V to the taxi driver. He paid and stepped out onto the sidewalk then crossed it to assume the attitude of a loafer idling his time.

The passers-by thronged along the wide sidewalk, the infinite variety of their rags and faces afloat in the pacing waves, on, and on, and on. They walked, in twos and threes, and all alone, rubbing their shoulders with other passers-by. Talking business, chatting with their gossips or phones, some talking to themselves, for that was a usual everyday crowd, all kinds of sorts, walking on. On they were carrying their casual-wear masks of maps wrought to be put on in public, masks accustomed to, appropriate for the usage when you’re a particle in the stream flowing by V leaned onto the wall behind his back unobtrusive, both he and the wall, no obstacle for their counter-directed currents. Because he was a good-humored sociopath as we, hopefully, have mentioned or learn it right now, if we have not.

Yep. There he stood calmly waiting for her to appear, in his attitude of a character from an old naive romance or a movie, forgotten, black-and-white, would wait for the sail to emerge up in the distant horizon.

Was he in love? Shut up, dude! The word is tabooed in the current millennium. Well, he, most definitely liked her (much more effing acceptable, huh?). He liked her and waited for her to pass by this corner because he knew exactly where she goes to and, off any particular business, he wanted to walk by her side the final leg to her destination, to stroll along in the same wave of the streaming crowd.

Yes! I told you, huh? He now discerns her figure at about a quarter-block off. She walks along wearing her personal mask for public occasions (the world is just a theater, eh?), the countenance dimmed by the distance like the features in the visage of the earth’s satellite.

He liked and admired the intent in her purposeful strides and though her legs per se were screened by the preceding waves of pedestrians, he still knew they were classy, the legs were. Even though he couldn’t make out yet if she had jeans or a skirt on. He just knew it. Patience, V, all comes at the rightest moment.

’Hi, Leya! Making for the common, I gather? Mind a modest companion?;

’O, hi, V! How are you?’

(Yes, it’s a skirt and a lovely one, not a mini yet her knees, these heartbreaker knees are decently visible.)

’Fine, thank you. Looking for a means to kill a spare hour, you know’.

V felt something snapped his pant leg.

’Hi, babe!’ He stooped overt to pick up from the pavement a shaggy pooch.

Toto issued a happy alacritous yap and licked V’s nose with her cute shifty tongue the color of pink beryl.

                                                                                                             ¿The End?

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