Сергей Николаевич Огольцов
The Algorithm of Chaos
26
The first memory ain't a zilch to just discard and walk away whistling a random tune. Nope. At times, nothing else but the first memory keeps you going all day long. Don’t ask me why it’s so but it simply works. First Memory. Ha!
Now, if not busy running your daily squirrel wheel, try to guess why the first thing in the morning I strain my memory to recollect, as vividly and clear as it is possible for a guy whose Turing Test is positive, as of yet, which namely day it is? This here fucking today, eh? From the days’ of week perspective?
And only after my intense brain-storming abates and calms down to lull, I come over to everyday chores and tasks for living thru one more day in the framework of my walk in life…
So yes, by all the leads and clues Sunday it was when in the morning I looked out the open door. It’s hard now to decide what prompted my action, given too familiar both the view and soundtrack. Which suggests I just had nothing better to do at all so early on a Sunday morning. Yep, that was the reason, I reckon.
Anyways, there I stood leaning forward, arms apart and clutching both of the door jambs. Nah, no push-backs intended for I never pulled for no surplus straining. Aerobics is not in my line, if you dig the meaning. I simply looked out in the fresh early morning, and turned my head hither-thither, both ways, along the trodden path thru our jungle.
The cabins looked same as on any other day of week at such an early hour. Or, perhaps, a bit emptier because I had figured out that Sunday it was.
Not a soul alive in all Main Stem except for US treading from right to left.
As a free citizen of the indie jungle, Uncle Sam had surely all the right to leg it in whichever direction he felt, like, appropriate. On the other hand, here is your head sticking out between your door jambs and thinking “what’s the buzz?” because it’s your unalienable right to get surprised, since his cabin is on the left down the trail. Which means he starts his Sunday not by going out yet by getting in. Or have I missed anything?
Which situation did not contradict though the principle of peaceful coexistence in our free jungle, so quite rightfully sez I:
‘Hello, US!’
Because a hermie might feel affronted when addressed by the handle they had baptized him with not waiting for his expressed consent instead of his hermit monica.
‘Aloha, UN!’ sez he. ‘Why keeping yourself in confinement? Step out for a sip of fresh air.’
‘I would if not for my outstanding moral fortitude founded on M&C – Moderateness and Continence, if you dig basics.’
‘Nah. I’m still at contemplating the Pascal’s Wager – “to win all or to lose nothing”.’
US stood still in the rays of the rising sun donned in his Sunday best of retrovertible rags. His beefy claw clasped around the Slim E’s umbrella in the collapsed mode. Well, well, well! Here lied the explanation for his counter-habitual route – the fishy geezer had been on a visit to SE’s parts in the jungle to borrow the thing, that umbrella of hers!
‘Pascal is for suckers,’ sez I, ‘spews enthusiastic bubbles about the goods he peddles yet misses out to demonstrate how you set that “all” going and shies to specify the “nothing’s” parameters. So, whereto now? Fishing?’
‘Yep.’
The glint of lust in the old man’s eyes was just another evidence of accuracy of my guess. Wearing his fancy retroverties and schlepping a fully charged umbrella to surprise fish, huh? Am I wet behind my ears? Off to your time-leaps, US, that where you soaped your skies to!
Moreover, to the best of my knowledge, the ammo SE uses in her umbrella falls under “dum-dum” type in terms of demolition power. I can't even nearly imagine where she got the damn thing from when she turned a sturdy lying-flat Oblomovian. A standard disillusionment by the fact that there's no chance for a romantic relationship in the world of buck-fixed alligators and blockhead dummies for a change. Both species are o for romantic purposes, a swarm of blood-sucking free riders (so SE).
And—speak of the devil!—that very moment I caught a low buzzing. It sounded plummier than that of a fly or mosquito. But the latter could safely be ignored in calculations. For a considerable stretch mosquitoes kept skirting around our jungle. The smart buggers got it that biting anyone from these here hermies would only trigger genetic mutations, mean and nasty.
Could you fly your 264 pounds by mosquito wings? Well, they learned the hard way it was an uphill job and now simply shun visiting the location.
By the rule of thumb, there remained only bees and wasps as a plausible source of that buzz. Bees had been successfully eradicated from this hemisphere a year or two back. Thanks to widely used pesticide CR-74 “Happy Farming!” and the last of wasps I met a fortnight ago. Yep, I recollect it happened on a Sunday too.
The poor thing flew into my cabin and, after a couple of aerobatic stunts in my kitchen airspace, flopped on the floor flat dead for no obvious reason.
From my standpoint the happening was a hoot. Which misgivings got fully justified because—here you are!—the buzz increased to the level you could read like nothing else but a cavalry raid. Damn!
When you’re a classical sort of a hermie, the nearest see of authorities would sooner wink at your sticking around, a dozen miles off. The expenses for evicting operation meet a cold shoulder in the local budget and you may keep to your accustomed hunters-gleaners lifestyle.
However, it’s another kettle of fish about a collection of hermies in a jungle. An idle mudak may happen to post her vid to a random social net, like, a dozen of cabins shot from afar. The local big-shots would get their asses kicked by their superiors whose asses had been kicked, hierarchically, by a tweet of this or that billionaire piece of shit at GleamPhiz or Chirrupper. The usual chain-of-command, you know.
Now, hermies have heard it too, the buzz. Scattered along Stem Path with their maps upturned, awaited the seasoned crowd of 10 apostles for the final act in the routine – kicking our asses outta here.
Dick the Lamb, quacking in his boots, cast quick looks hither-thither, ready for a dash.
Calm down, kid, there’s no escape, all the passable treads outta the jungle are sealed off by their block-posts. Take it easy and accrue the episode to the stock of your life experience.
I still could not make US out midst the audience on the path. The shrewd cat, like, was in time to take his time-leap. Well-armed too.
It’s time for me, vigilant UN, to grab my portabilities. They never frisk the pockets fearful to hook up a fresh strain of an insectological civilization.
Fare thee well, my cabin! The right door jamb had always been my fave. It took me a week to carve it with my pen-knife out of a young oak-tree felled by a lightning. I hollowed a delve in it for my treasure trove. The best stuff you can hope for between the current date and St. Nicolas’ birthday or whatever moniker the guy enjoys in your particular confession of candle eaters.
Outside, the bulls slide down the ropes in their hovering monkey circus. US is still nowhere to see. A wise move. His Green Card had expired long ago and turned hot red in color. Which means deportation to a nondescript tribe in the middle of any nowhere on this globe and no native knowing how to respond to his “Aloha!” nor to “Kanichwa!” still less to “Parev Tsez!”
Yet, my clairvoyance fits keep aggravating, yeah. I figured out this eviction from the dead wasp's air-trick maneuvers two Sundays back as well as the US’s plan to…
‘Hey, you! Out!’
‘Yes, sir! Yes, sir!’
Now the bull-skunks will spray the area with some stinking shit that makes the whole area unlivable for at least a couple of years. My stash and pen-knife safely pocketed. Yep. Not for nothing I never liked Sundays.
‘I’m on my way, sir!’
* * *
Epilogue
‘Pull up at the corner,’ said V to the taxi driver. He paid, stepped out onto the sidewalk, and crossed it to assume an attitude of a loafer by the wall who had plenty of time and no idea as to how to whittle it away.
Thick unending throng of passers-by rolled past him. An infinite variety of rags and maps drifted by along the wide sidewalk in waves nearing and going, approaching and disappearing. They walked in twos and threes, and individually, rubbing shoulders with or dodging others. They talked business, shared rumors, argued hotly, laughed along or gave orders over their phones for that was a usual everyday crowd, all kinds of sorts, walking on, on, and on, the streams of fellow walkers in both directions at once.
Each one in their own casual wear mask invariably put on in public, the regular face expression ideal for the occasion when you’re a particle in the crows floating by V with his back leaned against the wall.
Neither he nor the wall impeded the mutual motion, both behaved decently, and did not interfere with the counter directional tide. We won’t make conjectures about the wall’s motives for falling in with that particular line of behavior while V as, hopefully, had been mentioned—and if not, then mark it well right now, it’s never late to learn—was a good-humored sociopath by his nature.
So, yes, that way he hanged there out waiting for her to turn up, in the attitude of a personage from an old naive romance or a movie, forgotten, black-and-white, who also stands so and waits for the sail to pop up in the radiance over the distant horizon, black-and white too.
Is he in love then? Think before opening your piehole, young man. This word got deprecated and almost taboo in the current millennium. We won’t deny that he tends to like her (much fucking more acceptable, see?) even though he does not shower her with likes because of his allergy to social nets. Yet, on the whole, he likes her that’s why he stands waiting there for her to pass by that corner because he knows where exactly she’ll be going to. Besides, he’s not having much to do now and he just fancied to shake his leg a bit tagging along with her in the same swaying wave of the crowd tide.
Ha! See? Didn’t I tell you? He’s made her fine figure out at last, about a half-block off. Where she walks wearing her personal mask of facial expression for public occasions. (All the world is a theater, remember?) Her visage is dimmed and not yet quite discernible, like the features in the map of the eternal companion of our planet.
But even at that distance he still both liked and admired the intent in her purposeful strides, even though her legs were not seen, screened off by the preceding waves of pedestrians. But he knew all the same that those were just classy, her legs were. Yeah, he knew it.
Patience, V! All comes in the proper time to those who can wait.
‘Hi. Lia! You’re, looks like, taking a stroll to the commons? Mind a well-bred tagger along?
‘O, hi, V! How are you?’
Yes, he guessed it right, she’s wearing a skirt, not mini yet generous enough to not hide her knees, those heart-breaking knees killing—with modest tastefulness—on sight.
‘I’m fine, thanks. Just have to idle a couple of hours.’
V felt a firm pull at his pant leg.
‘Oh, hello cutie!’ He stooped over to pick up from the sidewalk the shaggy ball of a small dog.
Toto let out a happy yelp and licked V’s nose with her slick tongue of that slightly pink hue noticeable in jewelry items made of BERYL (if you are not aware enough to dig it what this here detail has just hinted at).
But if you’re still in the dark what’s what, why, we can start the whole story over again…
(Relax, I’m kidding… as of yet. So long, pal.)
The ¿Happy? End
[The book is free for download at
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1387002]
