It wouldn’t be over. Never. That’s how it is different from all other wars, be it punching mugs in a surge of hostilities between two neighborhoods or an imperialistic world war of any number decimating the numbers of humans in this world—sooner or later they end, unlike this war. This one knows no stop. Ever. Because it is the war of sexes.

I am entirely with you in the opinion that it is a hell of a lot of an uphill job to dig any plausible underlying reason for such a bizarre warfare or to bring to light its basic moving force, or to discern and unravel the complexity of its cause and effects.

Still and yet, it is there, the indefinite and infinite war of sexes.

Why? Hard to say, might be out of habit acquired in the workings of the warring Maya—gore on teeth and talons of everyone fighting everyone else.

You may deny, discard my blabber, and decorate your walls with portraits of Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi yet deep in your heart you know that I am right. Just as I knew before sharing it with you...

Irreconcilable war of sexes. Adversaries resort to cunning detour maneuvers, concealing their movements, defrauding each other, disguising their intentions, poking for weak spots, jumping from the rear, assaulting the flanks, launching open attacks to overturn the resistance of opposing force, penetrate the strongholds, take prisoners, and finally —

‘I beg your pardon, could you tell if the POW’s are used for perverted purposes, please?’

‘Yep, at times it happens but if it’s what you’ve popped up here, kid, then X-rated pulp fiction is on another shelf. So get the fuck out of here! Make sure I’ll never see your map around!’

— disengage to regroup, make truce to renew their stock of ammunition, mobilize reserves, enhance their motivation and clench each other in the next battle!

Whichever changes might see the warfare methods, with all modish innovations of dangles in the parade uniform, there sticks out, stable and firm, indisputable fact – this war is inescapably there, it knows no end...

Like in any war of other sorts, in WoS we also meet civilians not subject to conscription for their age or health considerations. We also may see refusenik-weaklings advocating for unisex as well as fallen or unknown heroes, mean traitors, and deserters tearing their insignia off in panicky run, profiteers selling most advanced and second-hand weaponry, turn-coats, and those ardently desiring revenge… no, not even by means of the spectral analyses could we account for all birds of different feather tinges in their heated battles as demands of them their great Mother-Nature...

(And—I pray!—let’s ignore, mournfully, the LGBT internal hostilities(they keep to no war conventions whatsoever!). The topic by its slipperiness calls for special preparation, a mindset screwed up differently, and familiarity with multi-volume works on their folklore, rites and rituals, which is beyond the limits of our modest discourse. Yet, we have all reasonable grounds to suppose that in their peripheral (as of yet) pinching scrambles war stays war, it can’t change its spots or nature smelly of pollution. Period.)

The entire picture grows even more complicated and aggravated by the undeniable fact that within sexes we do not find the cohesion to be expected of individuals trained for fighting to achieve common goals in the theater of operations. Damn, no! Each one remains a freelancer with their eye peeled for a game to their liking. Everyone for themselves and let old Nick grab the hindmost, as advised bythe time-honored adage (conceivably of Celtic origin if you ask me).

(What?! Who’s back there mumbled under their their nose “As if cluster-fucking were not a united act.”? Hey, kid! You’ve been told to leave! Get lost at once together with your stubborn ass!)

When we scrutinize the matter attentively, with proper zoom in to details, the tendency to confirm one’s supremacy over any other one, even belonging to the same sex, is hard to overlook. Noteworthy, that a fighter of the same primary sexual characteristics as yours is not your warranted comrade-in-arms and ally but sooner, with unscrupulous willingness, would sleep with your enemy – your personal individual counterpart in the current confrontation. A saddening yet irrefutable fact...

And at this point we draw closer to some stuff completely unapproachable for its complexity. Some inexplicably incomprehensible anomaly. Something that brings you to white heat by its elusive hazy nature. Yes, you might have guessed already, it’s said about the shamefully chaotic deviation from the established order of things in the reliable and stable system. Yet, a serious researcher is not supposedto omit presenting it, at least in a brief outline.

Voluntary surrender. The suicidal idiocy of humble coming to your enemy with a wide earthenware dish in hands to present your foe withyour head fried to tender and peppered with exotic spice. Technically, a pretty tricky stunt it is yet metaphorically easy as falling off a log.

A phenomenon of the order that hardly deserves anything better than to be named with a four-letter term, which is applied to brand it, ineffaceably.

“L” for blah, “O” for blah-blah, “V” for something else, and “E”… well, Ella Fitzgerald can rehearse you better here...

* * *

Being a vigilant sort of a guy alertness, V since long (he was sixteen then or something about) learned of Secret Weapon in possession of the fair sex, besides the standard armament from the list in the arsenal of their sex which is quite visible. The one thing he did not know though was if all of them were equipped with the SW. He’d rather prefer they were not, after a couple of outcomes when he was targeted directly.

Geez! Just recollection of the aftershock still gives him creeps. The intelligence on SW, whose effect he learned firsthand was never shared by him. Something stopped him on the very brink of a disclosure. Always.

How to put it more or less intelligibly? Well, it’s, like a sudden sway fills her face with a clot of condensed loveliness accumulated by their sex since the times of Nefertiti till the current calendar day (strange asit seems, none of Miss Americas ever added a jot to that quintessence of beauty by their scrape-groom-polished sugar-babishness) and she shoots the radiant beam from her joyous eyes full of a winner happiness.

In short, she bangs you with a ball lightning. Boy, o boy! It is some Big Bang!.

Love at first sight, huh? Now V knew the trick in detail.

Fortunately, he happened to be of love-proof type. Even if banged, shell-shocked, confused, overwhelmed by delighted admiration, he withstood manly and took the second look. Which served him rescuing antidote.

Still, thanks for the jolt, babe. It was a close call, I swear.

(It’s interesting to note, that individuals of V’s sexual affiliation never used anything like SW on him. Sparing their balls? Or was he not a kosher game for them? Okay, forget it, it’s just an aside.)

However, what is to be is not to be given a slip to. Nah. The Supreme Court of the cheesed off stars at a session in full force delivered their verdict. V got sentenced to lifelong love.

No SW was used for his case. The girl he fell in love with (though the poor chap didn’t even guess it) looked cool, indifferent, introvert. Later, the ice was broken, melted, brought to the boiling point. Intensively so.

He never admitted loving her, not even when eye-to-eye with himself. Without witnesses. Naively, he called it “liking”.

‘Yes, I like her. Definitely. No use of denying.’

Damn fool! You can’t deceive yourself! Which, by the by, no one can do for all their argumentative skills. It’s easy, of course, not to give a bean, especially when trained in self-cheating, press the lie into this or that vacant metastasis and forget about it for the entire incubation period, and then there would be no time to give it a second thought, there’d crop up other problems, progressing...

He did his best in earnest, no shirking, in his endeavor to shed off the uncalled-for “liking”, to overcome the lingering spell. Radically and consistently applied he strong drinks, hot sluts, and Irish luck gambling.

The mixed up potion stalled and, despite his covert support, proved its ineffectiveness. He knew that he was in love. And so was she because he was loved in return.

Ha! Really? Ho-ho-ho!

Yes, yes, yes, yes! She told it herself.

The day was pleasant, tame and thoughtful, full of the soft sunshine. They stood on the platform in a railway station. She smiled at him and said:

‘Remember me as I am right now, when I love you. Let it be you recollection of me, wherein I’m in love with you and haven’t turned yet a bad nasty bitch.’

‘You? Bad? That’s im-pos-sible!’

‘No incantations work when you’re not a witch.’

The rest is history. They split. His life turned zombie’s half-existence. Or, maybe, retarded waiting in the stagnated limbo queue, neither life nor death.’

Then there was another railway station platform some place in the middle of nowhere. And black night all around. He got it – no way to stand it any more. And he collected the number erased from the memory long ago. Collected without a hitch, automatically.

His voice betrayed him, yet he managed to hiss thru his voice cords the incantation. For the first time in his life he did it:

‘I-love-you.’

Immediately, he fell into a scathing-hot whirlpool of shame, understanding how useless was that belated yell of the helpless enchanted soul doomed to indefinite bondage. And there was also rage at the fucking shithead, himself. And also,a feeble hope that he was not heard—behind his back an endless drag freight train thundered heavily over the rail junctions. He rang off.

Still later, his buddy Lex shared, avoiding the eye contact, that in opinion of his, V’s, ex-girlfriend, he, V, was the unsurpassable champion in sex.

That’s how she sent—care of his friend—the antidote he needed so badly...

So what? Whereto now? In two more floors the final stair-flight ran up to the roof entrance guarded by the door in its chastity belt of a thick iron bar with a weighty padlock for the buckle. Some classically helpless dead end.

The obvious truth was further endorsed by an awry statement made with yellow-spray by a disappointed teenager explorer of the roof vistas—a young blade in the growth of the would-be juvenal delinquents. Across the sheet metal in the door construction, that unforeseen and insurmountable predicament, the young (but having already sipped the bitter taste of infeasibility) stardust lover announced to all who might be concerned (including, possibly, his own self too) of the frontiers reaching the same limit:

“come to get the fuck!”

To make the message clearer, the blade added a sketch, expressively full of feeling (scaled 5:1, in the Picasso’s late period style) of the middle finger stuck out in the renown bearing.

Some time back, V had an opportunity to to familiarize himself with the setting up there after a recreational joint. The Moroccan flower awoke the spirit of a thoughtful adventurer and loving nature admirer.

And then the four of them (two Vs plus those two freshly awoken guys—although now it’s hard to be sure who had started the whole shit) challenged each other to venture for a mountaineering trek – the higher you get, the wider the vistas, you know.

So, they crawled out and dragged their asses up the winding stair-flights, higher and higher, without a single water-head along the whole route. He could very easily thirst himself to death in that stressful strenuous plodding up the unmotivatedly steep flights, yet he did it, already alone—the three weaklings lost on the way—and sympathized, wholeheartedly, both the young sociopath and his yellow graffiti substituting for the light in the end of tunnel, rather askew yet unmistakably sincere.

A classic life-size mouse-trap, there’s no better definition for an impasse of the sort he got into after the sudden phone call. Going down by the elevator was out of question – the locksmith-sentinel by his apartment door, one level down, would certainly intercept his trip with the ironic wink of his heat’s hole: ‘Whereto, boob?’

Looked like the kid’s prophecy began to come true and wherever you turn – “here fucked you get!”, agreed V while the racket of adrenaline and the cosmic silence of desperation inundated with their unthinkable mixture his veins and everything else they could run into… no difference… final race…

The touch of a hand landing softly onto his shoulder all but tore from his guts a guttural squeak of a run down cub coupled with a high jump up on the spot.

But no! Manly kept V himself in hands. Only his hair was hard to control and it bristled up in spikes, when he turned his forehead in minuscular drops of sudden perspiration to fixate thegoggle (his as well) on the soft oval of a young face looking at him from within a shack of crisp curls, and a long tapering index finger put across her soft lips in the speechless call for restraint, against the backdrop of the open door to her flat. She nodded her head towards the entrance in a silent invitation. Without giving it a second thought, V followed that goddess from the machine.

(*For the record, in ancient Hellas’ theater they kept a male atthat job: Deus ex machina. Alas, sexism was not invented yesterday. An indisputably ugly phenomenon is rooted too deeply, you can’t get rid of it at a couple of hey-hoo! Nope, it’s not as easy as overthrowing a czar who half year back gave up his throne. And no matter how hard the West, stemming from the Greek foundation, swaggers of the emancipation of chicks in their gynaecea, birthmarks are ungetriddable. So, what could be expected of the Eastern civilizations? From the stalwart fidels dreaming of their own harems, personal, unquestioning, and humble? They are not toofar away from each other as blared Mr. Kipling out, gynaeceum—harem, g—h. Hi there, Neighbor!

However, you can’t concoct a bestseller of preaching (the guy with his Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck forestalled you) just let’s leave the stuff to Monsieur Diderot or, for the sake of patriotism, to Count Tolstoy who also was a shrewd chop-chop-logician...

Hell, no! We’d better leave His Excellency alone, his specialty menu consists of anti-alcoholism sermons…

Some circus of screwed up freaks we got in, aren’t we? First, they send their innocent youth to meat grinder in the Nam jungle or the Bakhmut Town and then start seeing thru the press tons of booklets to fight all-pervading addiction to drugs in their nations. Understandably though, for centuries were they harnessing cart to the horse.

That’s why Leo Tolstoy had to bury the talent handed to him by God into the dunghill of the well-intentioned propaganda...

Besides, you have to make allowance for the changes in the audience. Twitter has drilled them and trained not to understand a thought longer that 150 characters, beyond whichlimit it starts to leak thru their ears giving awful headaches to poor things. Whereasthe classic used to pour out (when got into the groove after the proper dose) passages which you can never ram into such Procrustes’ bed. So let the old man doze on...

Here! Here! (Invigorated mutual ovation.)

All that is so pretty nice. You are smart. Huh? But who has to check and see that the story flow dried up like the Euphrates, eh? Environmental motherfucker, you!

Oh-ho! I beg your pardon dear Reader! Please, this way! Let us step over the threshold and enter the dwelling of the young beautiful savior… or, perhaps, a perfidious man-trap traitor? Right now each and every plot in the trade is steered by the bots of AI, you never can tell what bolt will fuck you from which blue…

Okay, we’ll see what’s what while it evolves, so – full ahead! Let us escape the fate of the Euphrates where even an ant would get none of their knees wet...)

They entered the hall and, to the cautious click of the lock, from farther within the apartment there sounded a voice:

‘What’s there, Lia?’

‘A pizza-boy got to the wrong floor, Auntie.’

‘Those boys get dummier each year! Come, close the window I’m chilly,’ went on the same exacting voice.

‘Alright, Auntie! I’m on my way!’

On its own accord and too eagerly to be restrained, the V’s right eye stuck to the slightly spherical glass in the door peep-hole. His palms splayed wide pressed to the plumb vertical surface of the door with the same feeling which brims you up when you caress the streamlined side of your pickup or Porsche and the police officer’s, touting his pistol, yells: ‘Keep you hands visible please, Sir?’

Two men swathed in the strange silence of abysmal depths barely accessible for divers crossed the landing behind the hermetic door of the decompression chamber. Four eyes in two separate stares of the scuba divers wearing no masks nor biting their snorkels (but with their heats at ready)scanned with crisscrossed glimpses of the hostilely peeled eyes the situation at the bottom swimming soundlessly by, like in a silent movie, before the V’s frozen, unblinking gaze clapped tothe peep-hole, and getting out of his vision’s encompass.

He wiped the sweat off the brow and turned his face to Lia.

‘Hush!’ whispered the girl and also turned, her back, to him to walk with the lithe gait echoing a young panther pliancy, to the nearest door on the left. She never looked back to make sure that he followed her example. As though he had an alternative!.

On entering the room, the girl doffed her brown shoulder bag, dropped it on the spruce cot cover, and left at once.

It was a small bedroom of a person not too sucked in glamorizing decor. His look met no glossy posters appealing to a lover of gory brazenness or, on the contrary, the mellow grace so dear to a misty-eyed consumers.

Still and yet, the person was resolute enough to contribute a thing or two to the design of her home and who also knew her beans about the pop-art which fact was evidenced by the composition made up of computer standard laser disks (yes! the legendary DVD-RW of 4.7 GB! Who would believe they still exist!) to the right from the bed.

The swath of the wall of about two square meters was covered with their light shining circles mounted, back-to-back, in close rows reminiscent of scales in a knight’s armor or in the panoply of his loyal steed..,.

Lia was back pretty soon. She carefully closed the door, turned about, and with an air of expectation looked at him, her rosy lower lip slightly pressed with the pearly rosary of her impeccable teeth.

Something vaguely familiar was there in her face. However, V was in a quandary as to what namely or when and where. To somehow quench his embarrassment, he attempted at an awkward smile.

‘Wow!’ said she. ‘Hi! At last, you did it, congrats!’

With the same irresistible gate she went over and sat down on the chair by the window.

‘Have we ever met?’ After a momentary hesitation asked he sinking onto the second in the couple of chairs in the room.

‘Ha! Twice! In the elevator.’

‘Ah-ha! Sure. I did feel that, yes…’ He shook his head reproachfully at his leaky memory. Now he definitely remembered.

She gave a nod of acknowledgment to his remembrance.

‘Each of the rides up I thought to myself: “Let him smile, just smile, and I’d talk to him. I swear, I’ll do!” But each time you were too deep into your thoughts, which bailed you out – I didn’t want to distract.’

‘But how come... back there on the landing? I couldn’t hear you unlocking the door.’

‘I had been gone almost but Aunt Silva called me for a second. I came back to tuck her in and returned to the door unlocked already. Just in time to see your troubled back. Why are you so suspicious, V?’

‘What?’ exclaimed V in an inconcealable stupefaction.

’It was cool, ain’t it? You should had watched your face that moment! Easy, man. No sweat. At times, when you see your buddy off, he may at times be so overfull with gratitude that a couple of levels, both downward and upward, could learn that some V lived about your floor. Once I spotted who namely makes him so happy. You keep a distiller machine at your place?'

‘You’re very cute, Lia. Yet going out on the landing that moment… It was a suspicious move. Why did you help me out?. Or sooner, saved me?’

‘Seems like I fell for you last year. That’s why. And now tell me what shit are you in?’

‘I wish I knew...’

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.

What?! 2-in-1? Doubled? Cloned? Schizocleft?

Whatever. It was just V. Simple as that.

At times they could disagree on a petty issue of an abstract topic, maybe on a couple of issues, those two Vs. Even a dispute could flare up between them, yet sooner or later there evolved, albeit shaky yet final consensus. Or else one of then had to shut up. As a last resort. Anyway, it stands to no reason, arguing with such a stubborn blockhead, right?

V didn’t gave much thought to why it would be that way. He just got used and felt comfortable enough without asking too many questions. After all an attempt at even most thorough, diligently all-aspects-included answer to any“why?” would no more than slightly scratch the surface of the slope in the mountain rising under the clouds, the Everest of all the possible causes and reasons for why that happened possible. And it’s also very likely, there would be left no scratch due to the incomparability of their masses—the mountain and a chance answer singled out from all the possible ones, fairly uncountable.

However, at this current moment they achieved an absolute harmony and both Vs acted unanimously, and they jointly opened their mouth (one for two) and their mutual jaw dropped in utter perplexity. Stack-overflowing bewilderment filled both of them…

(*Damn it’s real hard to go down that road, the further the bumpier it gets, clogged with impeding blocks, more and more complicated and impassable turns the path thru the rank grass with the snakes snakes of spelling rules, the thorny hyphens at ready to whip, to stick out the travelers eye, and from behind the withered trunks gloating ghouls ooze and drip from rotten fangs their sticky-stinky, green and pale poison of stylistic appropriateness, snarling scumbag assholes!

Woe me! No way for a hero to scamper over all those Indo-European roots and the land slides of vowel shifts – they are too many but our hero has just two legs for both of them.

Damn! Looks like the only option’s revving back into the lap of the orthodox grammar… but then, repentant sinners are always welcome,.. compare the fate of Giordano with that of Galileo and calm down)...

His stare (Attaboy! Already in singular, not “their”! You can conform to the basic requirements after all. Keep on behaving!) stuck to the monitor Philips which was addressing him personally:

“Look here, V, whenever there would pop up another prophet blaring out about God’s death and stuff, the best policy would be to check if the announcer was a certified coroner– don’t let them fool us by throwing their epilepsy fits.”

The nightmarish nature of the impossibly quaggy situation (how else would you characterize a snafu when, yes, mutely but still you are addressed by your monitor, in white on black, using your first name with a touch of brazen familiarity) was further aggravated by the fact that V knew his answer to this deceptive admonition.Yep, he knew it without even scrolling down to the next line, below the monitor frame.

What’s the use of fiddle-faddle tricks? He recognized his own thought thought by him a week ago. A fragment of his endless chatting with himself it was. They gossiped, yes, not constantly but often, mutely yet easy, like V to V.

But struck at last the star hour and he pronounces it aloud, using his anatomy speech apparatus, distinctly pronounces V his answer before caressing the wheel in the mouse’s back (exactly between its shoulder blades)—yes, yes, yes, pronounces aloud but not within his brain, pronounces before there will surface the line with his answer:

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

Yep. Exactly. Word by word, ditch it or like it. The line flowed up, the prove irrefutable that Lex’ story was not a blab of mind meandering on high, no fucking chance, the evidence was solid as a rock. The Firm he worked for was catching thoughts okay, from that… what-you'd-call-it, noosphere, eh?

Here it was, his, V’s, 2-in-1 thought got in the total catch of their gillnet. Welcome to the new shining world, V!

He leaned on his throne back busted and dull like a bum thrown out the back door, flabber-fucking-gasted by ramming into the unthinkable discovery.

‘...so that’s how it stands…’, echoed along the curbstone newcomer’s convolutions of his brain, ‘...that’s where we are now… huh?. so what then?.’

Thinking was clearly out of whack. His tries at it slipped over and over again. Because of mute clangs in his middle ear. The vibration spread from the temporal lobes to the pituitary gland and back, yet neither lobes nor gland could hear, lost no less than he in the myriad-folded implications of the sprung-up situation, besides, they were devoid of ears.

And right then, rumbling deafeningly, rushes in the crush-all freight train of of endless unpredictably all-embracing-and-overturning consequences to what had just been revealed to him…

For fucking sake! That’s simply…

There sounded the croaks of Samsung bleating its factory settings, cutting hazy,shell-shocked tries at thinking, from his pocket.

What the fuck! It cannot be! He hadn’t made a single call with his virginal SIM card! Not a fucking call from this number!

Nonetheless, kicking off all hesitations, V answered. The moon-like map of Lex filled the screen. Disturbed and wiry. Too disturbed for the present phase of the full-moon.

’I can’t talk, V! Just believe me. Run! Right now! You’ve got maximum half-minute…

The screen died.

‘What the fu… Was not he arres… My number's compromi…???’, and a bunch of similar half-processed thoughts dashed ahead in their relay race while V—the phone shoved backed in his pocket and followed by the 2TD card plucked out its slot in the PC—was running up to his apartment door.

On the landing V tarried a second reading the blinks of digits by the elevator door. After two more levels it would be here. He closed the door with his heart beating louder than the key-click.

V ascended the two stare-flights to the next floor and stopped. To watch. Unobservable.

The elevator slammed open opposite the door just locked by him. Three men in black, exchanging no words or gestures, stepped out. They acted like a well-trained team of professionals, each one performing his part in the routine.

The team stopped close to the wall by the doorjambs. Two of them took out their heatsin an open businesslike manner. The third rang the doorbell which sounded within yet remained unanswered. With a disapproving smirk, he fetched from his inside pocket a small bunch of skeleton keys, gave them a sharp look and separated one from the dangling company.

The lock gave out a tame submissive click. The armed part in the team entered the apartment with their tools at ready, the locksmith stayed outside.

Now the specialists wold see the working computer in V’s room. Then they would check his bedroom, kitchen, and the restroom, and then…

Carefully V took a soundless step backward...

The blue wrapping, which V picked up from the table at Uncle Tom’s Cabin before Sally the Waitress brought the meal ordered by Lex yet after he was taken away, contained no chewing gum.

Only back home, V got it what his friend texted about by quick winks and flailing desperately his eyelashes when being detained. The message transmitted by some unknown code (yet, no doubt, not that of Morse) concerned the chewing gum, which Lex had so awkwardly dropped on the table, and it was not there. Instead, the wrinkled wrapping covered a piece of thin cardboard cut like a make-believe bar of a chewing gum and thelittle lamina of a memory card, side by side.

Tunar (*the basic File Manager on Debian/Ubuntu systems) disclosed two files present in the card of 2TB storage capacity:

1) eff_thoughts_008.txt file, and

2) a folder left Untitled.

(Technically speaking, any folder within a system is just another file for containing any quantity of files and folders.)

The Untitled folder contained thousands audio files, all of them in Vorbis format.

V clicked a couple of them, one after the other, at random, whichever happened under the courser's hoofs. Thru the mask mesh in both speakers streamed out 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 the robotic diction, neither choose he another dialect from the long list of options leaving all as is. Moreover that the haphazard pieces did not sound like a cohesive narration. Neither was there any traceable intent to introduce the source of fragments not caring a beam who’d broken them up – a man? a woman? a youth? a snotty kid?

Yeah, at times there sure happened telling cues. For instance, a brutal macho would hardly complain of a too tight bra sillily donned when leaving for the office in the morning.

(*Or could he after all, that macho? There are machos and machos, you know… more and more diversified. In the times of heated struggle for self-awareness of your hidden “it” and realization of “its” deepest instincts you’d better not too hastily grab any assumption coming you way. The bitch may turn scorching hot. We don’t need blisters, burns and stuff, right? Nor conflicts with militant activists for tolerance are welcome.

Anyway, the weirdest prankster, life, can beat any sitcom with both hands tied and the brutal mudak of macho might have had his reasons for putting a bra on first thing in the morning.

Not to mention the strange feeling that visited V more and more often of his belonging to a sexual minority of who way back were called “straight males” but whose share in the overall number of those usable for sex dwindled hopelessly, globally, like the melting glaciers in the Alps, not to mention the tearful situation about Antarctica icebergs.

Damn priests! They triggered off the uncontrollable avalanche of the horrendous chain reaction by their ardent pulling for the missionary position in intercourse. God Almighty (so the clerics) approved just that one and only – the missionary position, for fuck’s sake! Whatever else modification to the “piston – cylinder” shebang was a devilish ploy, another of the serpent’s apples in Eden.

Of course, folks got unhealthy interested in the topic: hey! how many are them positions? Huh? And who gets more high at sex: from under or on top?

Way back, in the bucolically innocent days, folks just didn’t give an eff about hows-and-whys in the matter, morals were way robuster and simpler – whoever whomever wherever grabbed there they fucked them, on the spot, and the following morning no one gave a fuck in which position, namely, and what was the angle, geometrically, no time for trifles – harness your horse to the cart, gird yourself with the ax and – off with you! to the forest after the firewood. But now, thanks to the the clergy who brought it up, we are in this here deep shit. And I still haven’t even once mentioned pedophilia, have I? Fuck!

With a sad sigh, V clicked eff_thoughts_008.txt…

The endless stream of poorly punctuated lines, and words of innovative coinage often newly coined expressions, and incongruences with the time-honored spelling. Looks like Lex had a good reason to call it a log, hardly if at all processed. To recon the text a transcript of the audio files from the back-to-back Untitled folder, in the same 2 TB card, stood well to reason. However, without a deeper submersion it was hard to decide which one in their tandem flagged off the notorious hen-egg dilemma.

At any rate, the stuff didn’t look a super text ready to make V a glamorous lighting house aloft the choppy sway in the ocean of pulp fiction. The fragments resembled mumbling to oneself in the manner of Leo Bloom responding to one or another hallmark or happening in the process of his indefinite aimless wanderings during the long-long day of June 16 1904.

Yes, it did look like a transcript of scattered thought, yet of how many thinkers? Were they interconnected? In any way? In what way? If, yes, of course. And who thought what? Who namely?

While reading, you felt at times like being carried off upon a kinda thought-floe, before you slopped over smack bang into another fragment, yes, everything turned different – the subject, the mood, the vocabulary.

Common to them all though was some elusive sincerity, and lack of coherent description of actions in progress. And their terse offhandedness in conveying the details, and absence of smooth logical flow which called for filling the picture yourself. Say, instead of “my interlocutor plunged into a lengthy exposition of his current plans and expectations…” there sooner would stand“will the shithead shut up? Ever?”

V resented the untimeliness of Lex’ pinch. So he was arrested ? Ha! But what else? By all the canons of genre. And too sadistically by that. Took Lex away from the not devoured dinner!

Contrary to his stock of common sense, V slightly touched the number marked “lex” in his phone. Simply out of habit. Just in case...

The mellow female voice once again explained it to him that the subscriber was out of reach. The proposal of the conference to the answering machine in Lex’ den after the following “peee”, V ruled out making no comment.

He switched his PC off and one whole minute watched the black monitor with hisnot seeing stare. Then he left the throne to cross the room over, to the catty-corner.

From the drawer in the desk (downmost to the right) V extracted and put onto the desktop a small flat box looking like a compass case. He unclasped it and pinched out a tiny SIM card which substituted the one in his phone.

Now he had another subscriber identity and the number unknown to anyone. Just in case...

...ooooooooo… aaauuuhhh…

...paaain… paaainpaaainpains… oooooo... uuu… aaahhh… ooouuu…

...pain… pain… pain… pain…

...too much of pain to feel anything else… besides… at least anyth… gushes in over the edges… takes away the last drops of strength… no withholding… overwhelms… crushed the slightest ability to resist … struggle… withstand… the thundering avalanche overturned the fragile shell… this shell… this fragile…

pain… pain…

it’s… aaa… ...bigger… the ocean… larger than universe this… paaaiaaahhh… ooouuu… crushes... makes sick… tears innards unbearably... makes vomit the guts...

ruthlessly… stops a split hair before the last edge… short of killing… that would free from this paaaiaaahhh… uuu... ooouuu… not be … not to be… not feel this paaaiaaahhh… oooooo… death will rescue from… from tortures by this monster of no pity… no mercy… doesn’t let over the line where it gives no... paaain...

no way to dodge… escape the pitiless demon of… paaain… aaahhh… no strength for shrieking… groans… no strength to whimper… wail… remains only that choked maimed“aaahh” powerless to call out… reach for… beyond this … paaain… ooouuu…

no way to move… to wriggle like an earth worm cut in two… like any live animal seeking to adapt its crippled body to… paaain… aaahh… searching for the tiniest drop of alleviation in incredibly contorted convulsions… to dodge it somehow... for a split of second... befool this... paaain… aaahhh…

no hope… none to expect… there’ll be just… paaain… aaahhh… to the very end… o come it sooner… time disappeared… lost any meaning... each moment protracts longer than... this eternity of … paaain… ooouuu…

no space… nowhere to get away from this immobility deprived of death… crushing closed… walls of merciless… paaaiaaahhh... flattened the helpless subhuman squashed into a slave ofall-conquering Paaain... Cruel Czarina Paaain...

a nothing… a prisoner… a slave… a broken toy of Her Majesty Executioner… a shell submersing down the fathomless scathing squeezing unbearable abyss of paaain… aaahhh

oooooo… how it pains...

what... foooor?..

‘Been any fucking reason for to get buddies, you and me?’

More than once criticized and whipped (metaphorically) for his pompously ornate figures of speech, Lex time and again, so as to keep on the safe side, ventured into the language that he believed was the street parlance and then he sounded like a damn putz. A kinda Sir Francis Bacon’s try at Ebonics or something before to take a shot at his own version of The West-Side Story.

The question brought up by him could be asked nice and modestly, in an acceptable tone of neutral communication, like, “why did we make friends with each other?” or else “what did become the foundation for our friendship?” but no! He preferred to act a yo-bro!-yo-bro! mobster.

‘Supposedly, the two lazy-bones were attracted and kept together by sloth of equally immeasurable dimensions,if you ever heard the word “gravitation”.’

‘What-what?’

‘Each and every of you and me are too lazy to counteract the habit of four years. Or is it five already?’

‘Numbers mean nothing!’

‘Tell it to your taxman, Pedagogue. Though, in part, yes, just one year is more than enough for real friends to call each other all the names under the sun and direct the partner to every petal in the Wind Rose so the quantity of later additions do not tell on the strength of their valuable relationship.’

‘I see you’re cooking on gas today, chum, how about defining friendship? Taken as a notion, nothing personal. Yet in plain words, please, without the coefficients from the Material Resistance Table?’

Here is another of Lex’ quirks for you. He’s fond of starting a philosophical discursive speculations on this or that hooey which normal guy would feel ashamed to even think about because that hooey is too obvious for anylame ass: life is life, flower is flower, especially if from Morocco, and so on.

‘Well, leaving the Material Resistance Table aside, friendship is what suffice to make you happy with just one look at your buddy and see there is a more fucked up shithead than you yourself. Stupidity is the inherent vice even in the most ideal friend who you have to tolerate because you need a sidekick for your routines on stage which is the world.’

‘Your stage is pretty grave, man.’ With a sweeping chaperon gesture Lex embraced the bare walls in the room resembling the inside of sooner a cube than a parallepiped. Their severely white paint coat imparted to the closed space the air of ascetic rigor even though a humble glance around couldn’t find any crucifix nor symbols of any other faith or cult.

He occupied a low half armchair, the sheer varnish in it’s wooden arms bore burns and scars of random marks from the times immemorial (“he” here is Lex and “it” is under him). The trajectory of his all-embracing gesture ended with the soft landing (without ever looking to coordinate the movements) onto the circle top of a beer can standing on the brown floor by the right hind leg of the half-blood(being funny) within the range reachable by the occupier.

The chaperon's head sank back onto the upholstery fabric in the gently oblique back of the half armchair, pretty worn by leaning of other heads before this here one, which turned it’s front to face the only window in the room—neither a flower-pot on the white sill nor even a view beyond but simply a rectangle of blue from the standpoint of the eyes in his restfully dropped head.

Atop the computer desk in the corner to the left from the window there towered black tin in the PC box of the corresponding architecture (a collected by the cheap Indonesian workforce and stamped“Made in China” critter) in a close company with the monitor Philips. The couple of streamlined speakers in thick mesh of fencing masks protecting their mugs, though not armed with rapiers, secured the Hollander's flanks. The avant-garde position held the mouse and keyboard, both wired and black as the rest of the equipment.

The wide swivel armchair—a jarring note contrasting by its alien throne aspect to the robust design of a monk cell—showed its black back to the computer gone into the mode of deep hibernation because V, for a considerable stretch of time already, had been seated in it facing Lex.

With his right foot planted in the mock Cocobolo laminate flooring, he used the leverage of the skeletal structure in his leg (yes, also the right one) for imparting the impulses to the languid swings of the throne, hither-thither, describing a slight arc in reciprocating horizontal turns, both slow and not protracted, within a radiant, no longer.

The left of V’s ankles ascended as high as to be put across his right knee to serve a pad for the bottom of the beer can in an unfocused, careless gripby his hand’s digits. Quite naturally, the support as well as the beer (both consumed and still awaiting to be pored in) were involved in the general movement, hither and thither, together with the rest of the contraption composed of organic (engine’s body) and inorganic (all the rest) stuff except for his foot firmly pressed to the same point, which servedthe anchor and source of the lazy half-radiant rotations. Wiggle-wobble…

Atthe meeting place of two perpendicular walls, in the catty-corner from the computer, there stoodanother, regular desk consorted with a hard wooden chair.

The neat cylinder smack-bang in the desktop center (once again black and of the same fencing-mask-like mesh) resembled a mini-pot for indoor floriculture hobbyists letting out—a little bit above its black rim—exotic twig of a single ball pen. In a nurse-like solicitous attitude, the desk lamp craned its shade over the outgrowth. The strict business style of the desk was softened in part by the tight green roll of a synthetic yoga mat in its off-duty rest bythe desktop right edge.

Two wall outlets, one ceiling light fixture, and, naturally, the door exhaustively completed the interior of the hermit’s lair.

‘As we know,’ pronounced Lex in the Oxbridge nauseousmanner of meticulously nuanced articulation of each sound, ‘friendship presupposes presence of salubrious prerequisites and compliance toa certain number of necessary requirements, do we not? Consequentially, a fair stock of sloth plus shared disgust to puristic castration of the language alive for morality’s ends created us for each other. Anything omitted in my listing, dear colleague? Not a squat of a chance, I hope. If we approach this issue from the standpoint of applied logic.’

‘A widelyaccepted recipe does not exclude inspirational add-ons whilecooking the meal. There’s no guarantee from the creative fancies of the chef.’

‘And which ingredient will add a charming spicy flavor to the subject ofthe discourse in hand?’

‘How about hate?’

The beer can startingup in the air a second before came back to rest on the Cocobola brown. Lex crossed his arms on his chest with each hand fingers splayed, wide and rigidly, over the biceps areas in the opposite arm.

‘Fuck! Given the percentage of jest as acomposite foryour average jest, hence proceed with more deliberation, please.’

‘Nothing equals hate as a reliable pledge for a lasting relationship of any sort. Let’s take the most old and basic. Fiancee hates her Groom for all his feints and dodging before she milked the propositionout him, after all. Groom hates Fiancee for the misery he lived thru listening to the tons of her empty non-stop twits before she gave, at last. Then starts the agony of matrimonial life describable by only French “o-la-la!” Anyway, they have to stick together to repay and revenge for their past sufferings, being surprised by further ones down the road. And what namely pushes us to cover the buddy’s girlfriend? The damn dumb cuckold from now on? Can you guess? The word starts with “h”.’

‘It’s madness!’

’Nope. Wrong letter. And we are simply dusting off our ken of inductive logic here. Combine the pleasant with the useful in the course of our friendly relations.

‘Some fucking hooey. Completely. All of it!’

‘Yep. That’s my motto: All or Nothing. OK, forget it. I know as well as you do, it was not you who fuckedher, it was she who usedyou, my dear friend.’

One hand was clutching the beer can while the other, at the same very moment, as ill luck would have it, was scratching the back of his head so Lex had, practically, nothing to grope for right retort with. Instead, he sipped from the can silently. Because some of V’s jests do stun you hundred per cent flat.

In her ruthlessly devastating gait waitress Sally neared their stall. So it was announced in the badge on her magnificent breast, the left one, pinned over the dazzling white blouse… err… I mean, that was about the badge, so as to remove any groundless expectations and stay on the safe side.

As always in his intercourse with the fair sex, V gave free rein to his habitual instinct or, which also possible, to his instinctive habit, notably aggravating at the instances of communication with the distaff segment in personnel of both budget organizations and private business (the time of day, it might be mentioned, had no effect on his deep-rooted habit or, maybe, ingrained instinct).

At times he gave it a shot at reckoning location of tattoos in private nooks of their anatomy, for intimate exposure not those on the show at their working hours.

The imaginative detours though were merely spells of an aside activity and for the most part V was unobtrusively keen on intercepting the flickers of the random signals emitted by female subconsciousness. Those will-less weather balloons to scout out and plumb you. The unexpected winks or, say, playing the tongue along their parted lips then leaving its tip to stick forgetfully from the corner of her mouth. Subconscious, unpremeditated impulses are numerous and unforeseeable.

Why?! Pray I earnestly, tell me why learning all those grammar rules and phonetics? Why enrolling courses of differently foreign languages online or strain yourself with a paid tutor? They are intended only to obscure the simple and ultimate truth conveyable which is imparted by means of body language. And bodies, moreover so lavishly opulent and graceful as by this representative of the millennians, Sally the waitress, do have the right for self-expressing. Unrestricted. The opener, the better.

Even for the reps of earlier generation branded with offhand “X”—fretted with wear and worries, wasted by their useless anxieties and worn out by the unsparing exploitation of their poor selves and those by their side they could put their hands on—there always can easily be detected a warm nook in the big heart of the true knight and gentleman, that of V.

To boil it down enough is to remark that even for a lady fairly advanced in her years, whose puberty coincided with the times when beatniks (another since long lost and safely forgotten generation) revolutionized jigger-bug into the rock’n’roll acrobatics, even for her—faith!—could V politely wind some sixty years back and there inadvertently admire the high tempo of her strong legs’ step enfolded tightly in sleek nylon. The stockings of black nylon—the ritzy vogue, the seam streaming plumb up from her heels—squeak tinily and rub each other in between her heated thighs… gee! girl! No need to haste. You’ll be in time and everything OK, and he will surely be waiting for you chain-smoking his Lucky Strike, and that’ll become the best date in your whole life, yes! In swaying swoon till midnight and over it to the predawn twilight sipping into the interior of his chicest of all Ford models, Crestline Victoria, over lie-down seats… A!. Babe!. O!. O!. Moreee!. mmm... Tommy… dear…

With a sad smile of understanding would V watch after that silly brimless hat of hers, and that single feather stuck up from the teensy roll of mash veil tripping in her bouncing hops which are impossible to abate, keep down… she runs on… she doesn’t hear him… the distance is too great...

By his nature, which he doesn’t flash too freely, he is a ladies man in love with all the women in the world both in stock and separately, and ready is he to go on down that road, free of charge and not overly exacting(do it!) but with gentlemanly chivalrous laziness: his yes to welcome yes, and if no then so be it, he does not press too far too hard. In short, to use just a couple of couples of words – womanizer and benevolent sociopath would fit this here cat V.

As for the rest (more and more diverse) spectrum of advocates for the emancipation of non-traditional appetites, he never speak up against them, so is his principle. At most and without comments, he may shrug his shoulder (the left one as a rule), like, so what? Jedem das Seine and let everyone be the master of what they got while he (which is not superfluous to repeat) upholds the principle of non-interference and respecting the right for self-determination and inviolability of preferences in private life and in the international arena.

Yes, pathetic they are and, on the whole, coyly overacting, however, a crowd like any other one, passable for communication if abstaining from in-raids into your personal space. Yes, they wince at free-style speaking and, unaware of enlivening paganish power of incantation, grow too melodramatic, at once. But then who is without a blemish?

Pardon my axiom, tastes in any direction are preconditioned by Nature, you can’t skirt around the ineluctable, right? Though at times it’s hard not to feel sorry for a Nature’s critter who locked their vintage vehicle up and keep the artifact of brightest ingenuity incarcerated, devoid of rides because the fucking mother Nature directed them to drive some complete shit of a car. Yet, nothing doing, no way to resist Eff Mother and, for the tolerance’s sake we close the discussion of tastes as well as other surplus idle talk. Lada Kalina is their choice? Be happy, enjoy your ride, gourmets. Fuck!

Still no accouterments from a sex-shop can be better than a live partner of the rightsize that suits you thanks to the fitting and careful tuning of the standard set of pleasures presented by loving Mother-Nature who didn’t get enough sleep at night and sweated over her blissful tweaks to the process, eons upon eons since the articulated origin of species, go consult Mr. Charles Darwin, the expert in this field.

On the other hand, peeing against the wind is not a too healthy undertaking, akin to disapproving the thriving industry outfitted with the production lines of growing capacity, and the managerial pundits experienced in the particulars, turning out a wide range of accessories for any taste imaginable, accompanied by the glossy booklets where to to insert and how to ram (intuitiveness is a good thing yet better be safe than sorry), for steady growth of consumer demand, jobs in the industry, and a not negligible share in the total gross income of the nation.

To tell the God’s truth, V isn’t quite sure as to which particular trade union the workers of this industry had poured into, yet you may bet your bottom dollar plus your dear ass that the national economy is a vehement supporter of the emancipation—chain of retail stores, franchises, exports are not the things to wave off when in sober state of mind.

Dictators might pull tight “iron curtains” (tastes differ), play the card of fundamentalism, introduce bans, decree return to the traditional moral values, to burqas, kokoshniks, and kirza high boots – vain are their labors and belated because tolerance arrived in earnest so as to stay.

Or what reason for would the knife-wielding contingent in medical profession cut up the golden-eggs-laying hen, hah? The mere cost of fumbling about insert-remove the Adam’s apple? D’you know how much it is? Huh?. No? Lucky guy! Me neither. God save us from ever knowing…

So, welcome aboard the super-duper liner Reality, Ladies and Gents! The process has passed the tropic of Fail-Safe and become irreversible. Congrats! The real gourmets every other season change their genitals. Take a shot at! Feel the difference! You might like the wear! Transgender change inside-out-and-back is easier than to master the switch from Linux to Microsoft or backwards.

‘How d’you dig this, babe? When I was a male—before last year February—the posture was my fave. Come on! Giddy up, my macho!’

Turning to Lex, then without a shrink you could see with your naked eye that no awesome breasts under the half-sheer blouse rocked him as should naturally be expected. The dark matte swarthiness in the heavenly cleavage within her low V didn’t work either. In vain delineated the gossamer cloth so closely the admirable bumps of her nipples (the left one playfully nudging the badge thru the airy light fabric separating them). He was too far for temptations to catch him were they even performed by a topless top model role-playing a waitress taking his order.

Nah! Not a chance for all badges in the world, wherever you pin them up, to pull, and tempt, and swerve him in the direction of lascivious frivolity. What? Giving however flitting thought to anything carnal? Gosh, no! Not for him. At this very moment he was coming without all that stuff because Lex was a devoted and staunch lover of grub-devouring and before a dinner pending so nigh he turned bulletproof altogether to any kind of reflectively unconscious flirting or other non-gastronomic dreams even if, by some black or white magic, in Sally’s stead had there popped up Cleopatra in the buff, wearing neither badge nor blouse (moreover that the Egypt’s government once again appealed to the global community with their announcement that Cleopatra was not black to which end they once again have found irrefutable archaeological evidence).

At this prelusive moment Lex turned a slightly balmy clot of lewdness that dims the sight with wabbly haze of lust and—lo!—all of him was in the foreplay already. His trembling fingers reached out to scratch, stroke, caress the sensual, awaiting folds – the corners of the mouth, all in small uncontrollable tremor (both the corners and the fingers). In the attitude of owner the palm splayed over the pubis… (err… what?. not now! not now! we’ll proofread it later!) ...the embossed pudenda of menu grabbed tenderly and spread wide to flip the beans of pages before to delve impetuously into and with short repetitive leaps move it (the inflamed gaze) from line to line still deeper to the very bottom… O! The moment of bliss insatiable! O! I’ll have the choicest and yummiest morsel from this jewel box…

The true food-lover way is a life-long honey moon.

Sally walked off with the order to the folks slaving in the kitchen (one naturalized Czech and two fresh Venezuelan immigrants under the endemic chef, the waitress’ grandmother). Lex sat back a bit laxer yet still retaining his anticipation.

‘Watch me and learn from a wise man,’ told he V instructively, ‘the moment before you get the ultimate pleasure, it’s advisable to think of some nasty stuff. Serves as that skeleton at orgies of ancient Roman hedonists. The gratification feelbecomes acuter.’

‘My wedding gift for you will be The Anatomical Atlas of Skeleton Bones, richly illustrated. And thanks for your sharing the trick.’

‘Any time,’ was Lex’ condescending response. ‘That’s what a guy needs pals for – to collect crumbles of wisdom. For a starter, you may choose thinking about the Malthusian Catastrophe we’re going to give a headlong diveinto any otherday.’

‘It’sabout that screwball geezer who foretold inevitable global hunger because of the population growth? Nothreat of the end of the world givesme no hard-on. The mankind’s historymost optimistically proves that balancing on the razor’s edge long since became man’s main preoccupation and pastime and we glibly jump over every catastrophe scheduled for tomorrow just to land in more deep shit. So savethe Malthus’ horror screenplay foramusingyour grand kids at bedtime.’

‘He proved it mathematically!’

V gave out a tired sigh:

’At the dawn of the 20thcentury mathematicians rolled out their calculations that in fifty years life in all majorcities would come to a crunching haltbecause of the insoluble dilemma. No way to clear the city thoroughfares of droppingsby the horses needed for the in-city transportation. The trained shitheads used logarithm rulers for the calculus which made it undefeated.

Your pessimistic Member of the Royal Society lived in the world populated by less than one billion guys. He missed to take into account the innate ability of people to regulate their optimal numbers by means of mass shootings at schools and kindergartens, ethnic cleansing, world war slaughterhouses, extermination camps and other methods of saving mankind by killing them. A pretty elegant solution, if you think of it. To whet your appetite, you know.’

Lex gave out a disgruntled squirm:

‘Know the difference between a cowboy camp cook and a renown chef? The latter will never dump a sack of peppercorns into one meal.’

With melancholically slow movement Lex reached for his dinner jacket on the seat-back and angled a pinkish pack of chewing gum out. One bar was extracted, unwrapped and put into his mouth. Ruminating thoughtfully, he dropped the pack into the breast pocket of his shirt which action seemingly woke him. Lex perked up and winked at V.

‘Sorry chum. I’ve got nomanners!’

Two digits of his dived intothe mentioned pocket to fetch out one more bar which he stretched out for V saying:

‘But I am working at it’

‘Alex Tailor Jr.?’ sounded nearby.

Lex dropped the offering the salt shakeron the table by and glared at a couple of body builders wearingblack office suites and tanned maps from solarium.

‘It’s me.’ said he curtly.

Te beefy claw of the strong man flashed a three-block-letters badge.

‘Follow us, sir.’

‘What the f…’ started V, yet the second of the artificially tanned jock interrupted his statement.

‘Keep to order in the public place, sir.’ His left armpit was muscledup bumpier than the other. Disproportionally.

‘V, don’t, please,’ said Lex getting up. He hung his dinner jacket over his forearm levered from the elbow and went off between the guys.

Stunned watched V after their short convoy making for the exit from the establishment. Then he frowned and lowered his gaze at the chewing gum bar in a blue wrapper apparently wrinkled by a clumsy tamperer.

Notwithstanding the establishment’s name, stay assured that no one has ever spotted any Uncle Tom there. None of the trust-worthy old-timer patrons would recollect him if you ask. Still and yet, hardly any one was made nervous or otherwise uncomfortable by the fact because his nephews visited the place not frequenter or else incognito. You never can tell.

Ma'am Harriet ran the establishment, an oldie but bitchy shrew with the response-time reflexes of a rattle snake that won her a profound veneration in the neighborhood. No gunslinger from the Most Wild West will hold a candle to her briskness. Although instead of a weighty Colt the old lady kept in the holster of lace-trimmed pocket in her apron a tube of lacrimator spray which demoted baseball bat to the rank of a ludicrous old-fashioned exhibit. (The survey undertaken lately by Forpes Monthly showed that barmen in the Middle-Wild West connected in some or other way to the Russian Mafia prefer a gorodki stick for the purpose.)

Additionally, her knack canceled expenses for a bouncer on the premises—with consoling laments, this black mamba would lead the tamed hooligan pinched with her thumb and index finger to the exit and show him the nearest fire hydrant, in a God-sent Samaritan grandma’s manner as if he could see a god-damn thing thru the tears and mucus slopped all over his mug.

And then she crept to the kitchen, that cape cobra, like, to wash up her hands for the hygienic considerations, yet actually to collect her usual share of sycophantic compliments from the subordinate employees...

In the daytime Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a cozy family diner to keep up with a certain kinsfolk varnish in its name and at night it became a restaurant of a fully deserved repute because of the excellent food by Ma’am Harriet’s kitchen (eluding the slippery ground of a slightly racist shade—we are over and above propagating any extremes—it should be mentioned that, yes, the chef’s skin color conformed to the environs because it was Uncle Tom’s Cabin, after all).

Thus, the superb grub multiplied by that pleasantly mellow atmosphere in the style of an old-time estate in one of the Confederation States, say, Virginia, Alabama or, maybe, Georgia which is on my mind… though not in that enraged roar of Charles Ray but in the classical form of this number composed back in 1930 (which in about twenty+ years became the Song of the Year), the way it was sung (before the 50’s) by the vocalist in the band of the Gypsy virtuoso guitarist Django, nicknamed Sultan, well, you know what I’m about, so don’t miss visiting the eatery even though the old hag with her assault spray tube pays me not one red cent for the advertising, nothing but a cup of tea once in a blue moon, just tea without pastry, that stingy bellicose biped old reptile.

V sat down in the rearmost stall and leaned onto the padded back of the double seat in the attitude of serene repose. His right arm stretched out over the slightly convex protrusion run along the seat’s backtop buffed in the gleaming skin the color of… well, the skin color too suited the room’s decor alright. Fortunately for those who get too soon tired with the easy relaxed descriptions like the introductory paragraphs in the current chapter, Lex’ plump frame showed up thru the entrance door. Good timing...

His ample jowl spread widely out the club corners of his shirt. The spruce dinner jacket taken off and spread over or rather hung onto his left shoulder draped the left half of Lex’ torso. Yes, hanging it was and with certain a dare-devilish cheek to it too—no safety rigging at all while the well-rounded shoulder had no hooks to clutch at. It takes a desperado jacket to choose such a brash yet risky position.

On the other hand, hanging in so unorthodox a way filled the clothing item in question with a visible spirit of reckless laxness, when watched from aside, which conveyed to Lex’ voluminous roundness a hint at potential erectable standing. Maybe. In case it were needed.

On the whole, he cut a fine picture, like a hussar of the Czarist Army in their parade uniform that was donned in just one sleeve, leaving the second one to freely dangle about. Every commissioned officer shoved his arm into one and the same sleeve, even if you were a left-handed hussar. No excuse at all. The elite troops should keep to the uniform regulations.

However, this here gutsy Lex left all the hussars far behind letting both his jacket sleeves empty, besides, he had no mustache so dear to heart of any cavalryman or a pedestrian of a highwayman disposition...

‘Some intriguing puzzle is’, announced Lex, who managed to ferry his jacket to the stall occupied by V, and drop it on the opposite back whose seat he collapsed into, close by (next to his dinner jacket, for those who joined us right now), ’ why you, Pretty Boys, are so predictable, eh? Nearing the Cabin I knew that you’d be sitting in the corner. Does not matter which—right or left—a corner remains corner. But why?’

‘To give commoners a chance to gape and admire our nifty appearance, maybe,’ suggested V.

‘So splendidly simple! You’ve ditched my elaborate theory that you keep to it as a vantage foxhole to keep in check possible startups. Some Kid from Kenosha, you know, who pops up to benchmark how swift you are at drawing your piece. Can’t that be why?’

‘The question “why?” opens the floodgate for trigazillions of theories each of which might be plausible to a certain extent’, responded V dully like a pedagogue dead bored with repeating the same hooey for dummies.

‘O! You don’t say so! What a nightmare! Now, back from the deluge to the file I stole taking advantage of my position at the Firm. On the whole, it’s a kinda collective log…’

‘Shut up! Got domed with a brick from the roof? What sputter is this? You drunk or something? But if I’m wired? Mark well – all you say now might be used against you and distress your ass bitterly.’

Lex shook his head in disdain.

’Forget that deprecated shit, dandy. Recordings do not count now were it even lie detector backed sincere confessions of a repentant bastard, thanks to the non-stop scientific achievements. My lawyer would easily prove that you’d been tricked by my innocent prank. Moreover, that you have nothing but my words and, even though the voice is also my, were is the evidence of the malicious intent?

Wake up and get your rocks off! We live in the times of 2-step verification. No court would pick up a case based on mere words up without well documented thoughts of the perpetrator planning the misdeed or thought by them while doing it. So, honey, just action without the 2-sV don't count any more. Were you even caught with a smoking gun over the body riddled in tatters or with your pants down before a bevy of kindergarten kids. Whatever. You might have easily been a victim to puppeteering, they set you up by means of retroactive manipulation of causality. Yes, sir. It was a mean trick by the great-grand kids of your sibling sister. They revenged your not giving that fool, your sister, a candy bar when she was three. She cried about the fact on a video which those posterity brats would find in the attic of their great-grandma. So what?

Yadig how the lay of the land now? Crime is only what slips by 2-sV.’

’I see. If they hack my email box where you call me to put President on ice but they don’t have the record of your frivolous thought, ‘Why not sending this trash to V?’, you are immune and sinless as the Holy Virgin?’

‘Attaboy! Exactly! My nose stays as clean as that of a 20-year-old nepo baby of a billionaire running a multinational corporation. And let the hackers fuck each other’s ass in your email-box. Pardon my unorthodox lexica.’

‘That’s thereason you shunned sending the file to me?’

‘Clear as day. The file in your box plus a plain record of my thought while sending it makes me utterly vulnerable to incrimination.’

‘Record of your thought? Are there any pills to mitigate the alcoholic delirium, I wonder?’

‘Man, that’s what I’m at my workplace. Not pills I mean but thought recording. Ever heard anything about the noosphere?’

‘?’

‘In addition to the athmo- and stratosphere the eggheads have turned out one more – the noosphere. The thing consists of thoughts ever thought by those capable of thinking. Any thought, however secret and hidden, flits there openly, like radio signals. But it’s a lame analogy because a radio signal tends to fade and die away while a thought becomes a part to the noosphere for ever and a day. Ineffaceable. Indestructible. Undisguised. True, the technology is not developed to the full potential as of yet, however, with the threshold overstepped the rest is just the question of time. Theoretically, you’re able to zero on in and read the thoughts of Leonardo da Vinci while he was doing his Mona Lisa.’

‘How about the thoughts of your dad at the moment of spilling you out in the crowd of your doubles, obviously not as zippy, spermatozoids?’

‘A problem of a higher level. You have to sieve his contemplation out from those by other males in the identical phase, and by bigger apes too both in zoos and in the wild—the shifty bastards conceal their wit so as no to get harnessed into the mutual labor efforts. The complete likes, orgasmic thoughts of men for the last five million years wrap the planet with innumerable layers reaching the altitude of the Everest. You’ll need help of AI yet, in principle, the problem looks rather trivial.’

‘Bullshit! The legends, myths, and fairy tales by a group of anonymous alcoholics in a marathon session!’

‘A well-grounded heat, yours. The idea is as unaccustomed as mobile communication would seem bizarre to Chinguiz-khan’ granny. Yet the public is readily trained to never give a bean. One more wrapper around the planet? So what? Aren’t we taught about the atmosphere containing the oxygen atoms? Have you ever seen an oxygen atom? Nope. Still you use them for breathing. Noosphere? Just an immense bulk of thoughts of any kind both precisely defined, and laxly dropped halfway, and lost and popped up again…’

‘They are really squeezed in there, ain’t they?’

‘In the head?’

‘No, in your announced noosphere. The thoughts must have been flagged off by the incantation “Let be light!” and since then they’ve thought up such a magnitude of thoughts that all the ware-houses, dumps, and canyons got inundated by the rising surface of deluge.’

’Looks like it started dawning on you, good friend, which is a welcome news, yet you still apply the obsolete square-nested approach. Of course, it might seem tight for all kinds of thoughts starting with the “Where’s mom? I wanna tit, and pee, and poop!” up to the “Damn nurse! I need the bedpan! Now I’ll wet the pajamas to spite her!”. They are born to never disappear, millions upon billions thoughts every moment, wreathing, meandering, swiping thru each other. The buggers don’t give an eff about the grim warning by Malthus.

A-and there is a well substantiated suspicion that any living thing is capable of thinking, from the unicellular to stalagmites. Another host of contributors… The good news is they are intangible, floating thru one another, anyone’s thought withing whoever else’s thought. Just like radio waves do or maverick quant effluence and so forth doo-doo that no normal dude can ever understand. Do you follow, student? Beware, I use to ask about details at the examination’.

‘As long as they are so intangible, I don’t care about their Gulf Streams and Maelstroms made up of immaterial matryoshkas sitting in each other or wherever they hang out.’

‘Everywhere, buddy! Everywhere – in you, in me, in this here table. Thought, thought, thought, thought…’

‘You’ve screwed the cite, “Words, words, words, words…”, says Hamlet’.

‘Words are not for storage. They’re too fragile, unstable, often broken, forgotten, lost irretrievably. Thoughts are another kettle of fish, they are always there. Accruing part in the noosphere’.

‘Thanks for your entertaining tale, yet as an inveterate mountaineer I can’t believe a thing without grabbing it first’.

’How many times have you groped a radio wave?

‘Somehow missed the experience. Yet I can switch on the receiver thrown together by my Dad in the past millennium and listen to the weathercast’.

‘The announcer reads the forecast and you, piehole open, believe in the maneuvers of the clouds which you cannot grab. By the by, some guys earn a good living from thought reading’.

‘Come on! No medium has ever managed to cheat the guys from AIP neither to pass SPR or ASSAP checks’.

‘Who talks of mediums? I meant the guys who work with me in the Firm. Turning the knobs to tune to a thought in the noosphere. Easy as cake’.

‘A kinda radio receiver?’

‘A sort of’.

V gave his pal a closer look. To give out such a yarn you should be pretty high. But no echo of pipe dreams in the opposite eyes, neither the purplish circles about them, and none of the uncontrolled sipping whiffs at nothing. The guy broadcasts not from under influence. Hmm. And leaves no loose ends, a kindaSecond Coming of Isaac Newton for you’.

‘Okay’, began V thoughtfully, ‘if for a split second we suppose all this blither to be not a sham spilled by hostile aliens from Tau Ceti as a mock Trojan Horse, then I can’t even remotely see how…’

‘But are you ready to hand over twenty years of your precious life to see closer yet dimly?’ interrupted Lex. ‘The learn curve is pretty steep. Some nutty field in science. And all of that fundamental brainbreaker is based on a certain Algorithm of Chaos. Which is about all I know’.

It’s not an epigraph but the uttermost warning to the over-pedantic eggheads trained to sniff out anachronisms, stylistic lacunae, regressions from the sacrosanct spelling rules and other trifles like the use of anti-normative 4-xyz-letter lexicon.

‘Most Esteemed High-Muckety-Muck, would you kindly shut this book and peruse the title once again, please? Think it over before coming back if you areready to put at risk the sanity you need for getting on in your world so far away from our day to day life...’

His viber bleated its antediluvian yawps because V didn’t give an eff about tweaking the factory settings in his electronic devices and/or household appliances. The manufacturer’s vanilla defaults, staple chow from the microwave, amiable blondes were just fine to go on with, why to ask for more?He’s not racing after the mainstream frills in things of common usage. The simpler, the better was his long-standing life motto. He’s not a nitpicker to wrinkle his nose in the attitude of a seasoned geek because of the already mentioned eff not given about the cutting-edge trends and opinions entertained in the crowd of enlightened mudaks.

Not that V pulled for return to Nature – back to caves, and stone axes drastically simplifying your views and values. Not yet. He simply kept away from buying selfie sticks, and scalp ticklers, and stuff like, well, you know. And even though not affiliated with any branch of the cult of Simpletonians maintaining that Simplicity is the ticket to your peace of mind, deep in his heart he agreed to their Ace argument—you certainly would watch a windmill up the hill on a breezeless day much longer than a remote control on your lap in a sudden blackout. Simple machines do have some charm about them, if you think of it.

However, opening paragraphs are not the right spot to pump up sermonizing. It’s a discourtesy towards unsuspecting reader in their expectation for the initial rush of adrenaline by the sixth line, at most, thru their system... Now, V, reach for your non-tweaked stone ax! Do something! Act, V, act!

He grabbed his Samsung from its prostrate position upon the desktop to slightly tap the “answer” sign. Huge pan-cake of a map diffused over the screen whose edges cut away the ears. The caller, in a well-trained manner, kept the phone too close to his phiz, like, it was a hanky for him to sneeze out his yesterday’s cold, the very next sec, ‘Apch!. Aapch!. CHWHOO! This motherfuc...Apch!. Aapch!.’, and so on.

However, in a perfect state of health. It’s just his simple trick to hide from the contacts the bumped up protuberances of his ears.

How do you like the gull?Blessed with so generous handout by Nature he could long ago become a megastar in movie comedies. Yeah. Cooler than Mr. Bim. Or Bum? But certainly not Bam… though, on the second thought… hmm.

Yep. V obviously has ditched film-going for some stretch already.

“Shame on you, Mr. Moron! Still stuck in your quaggy complexes? Scumbag teener! With your God-sent edges you should be running forthe second-term presidency by now! What a compelling image! The ears so attentive, pleasantly round, warmhearted ears they are! A catchy slogan for your preelection picture, like, “We can hear the voice of the people!”, and no dirty tricks with ballot boxes at polling stations, like end-day blackouts, are needed.”

None of that told V to the face in Samsung, he merely thought it to it. Healing anyone’s psychic traumas caused by agonizing procrastinations with getting rid of their virginity within the framework of society demands to be quick at it and become a clear-cut market-target fully pruned to be compliant with the political dictate to succumb and uphold the all-accepting dumbness was not his job. Even less would V pick up the role of the voice crying in the wilderness. That’s why he simply said:

‘Hello, Lex. What’s up?’

‘Hi, V. Still toiling for half a zilch? Wish it left you be or had munched you to mash, that your silly hope to rip a lincoln off theprozza.com. Typing a ton of hooey per day for a goose egg in the buff, hah? Forget it, bro! They’re pulling only for their mobsters, alphabetically. You’re no relative there. Quit ramming down Ku Klux Klan.’

‘For prozzas I care no more than for pizzas, Mein Herr. They’re a simple tool for me to whet my skills and personal style. A propos, their Challenge of Month is a good spur to get over the common writer’s barrier, “Half kingdom for a plot! All topics are sucked overdry. A-fucking-priori!”, but there you don’t strain yourself, “Hi, scribblers, here the theme for you. Saddle up!” The guy collecting more likes gets $100. Pretty simple.’

‘Don’t plague neither you nor the keyboard. How much green have you corralled from those monthly races so far? Come on! You spend on doping more than the prize itself!’

‘A couple of times I was in the leading group of 20.’

‘Wow! Attaboy! And 20 racers at the start, right?’

‘See, the audience is different. They think along the lines fixed by Disneyland and Steven King, the slightest step aside fires off their emergency brake. Every single like got there is a beam of hope for us to understand each other over the barriers which divide our nations by the endemic peculiarities in our respective debilities.’

‘Here! Here! Aye and yep! Over again! Seems like in madhouses for their privileged cuckoos the patients are taken out to frisk in the Internet. That’s the origin of the couple of inadequate likes you’ve raked up. Or, maybe, from rehabs. Hold out, bro! Our objective is not money but the principle, right? And then, what is a piece of paper $100 worth? It won’t burden your pocket for any longer that the first maverick blonde in you way, will it not?’

‘Shut the fountain of your sermon, Padre.’

’Well, to put it short, there’s a friendly offer to you, V. Some real something. Nobody would ditch such a deal even convulsing in St. Vitus dance, V. It’s a bonanza, some fucking oil fields. BP and Shell would tear hair from each other scrambling for the exclusive right to hummer lullabies on you 8 nights a week. Improvising jazz, follow me?

‘What?! Drilling their wells in my private parts? Screw you, oilman!’’

‘Come on, man. I was purely metaphorical… The matter is, such a chance comes your way once in life-span.’

‘A-ha! I dig it now. On taking a shot at metaphorical shit of that bonanza you’ve completely forgotten that I’m straight.’

‘Since when?’

‘I see. The stuff turned way too strong for you. Call me tomorrow on your return from the strawberry fields.’

‘Wait-wait-wait! I mean business!’

‘Then talk business instead of balling it up with goofy drivel of an upstart pimp.’

‘Well, look… There’s some stuff that’ll make you famous, V. Like those celebrities – Joyce or Pynchon, or Hemingway.’

‘The third guy you mentioned. Who? Again?’

‘Hemingway? I be damned if I know. My ex-girlfriend was once a month drenching the paperback of his with her tears.’

‘Girls and books? Things incompatible. You’re still not quite steady on your pins. Moreover, the mankind en masse have given books up… So you felt jealous and memorized the guy’s name?’

‘A girl from the hinterland might very well keep an extra Ace or two up her sleeve, believe me, buddy. Anyway… I’ve got a big file whose content will shatter the world in three days at most. Only the hot thing is waiting for a lover boy to edit it, to sign with his name, and become famous overnight. Catching the perspective up?’

‘OK, I’m in. Just for the sake of saving old man Lex from OD. Drop the file to my email box.’

‘Nah, handsome. Forget it I don’t have anything to do with emails.’

Which is absolutely true. For some time already Lex has grown too concerned about his personal data privacy and stuff, you know. His case acquired the look of an unhealthy aggravation. Hopelessly stranded the guy is, nautically speaking. You might one whole week wheedle of him something as innocent as, ‘Hi. Catch the link: http://sweet-granny/bedtime-tales-for-grand-kids/introduction.html’, before he freak-and-feints out at the last moment. Maybe, because of his employment at some hazy firm working for the government.

A row of squat buildings behind the steely mesh of high fencing, the guarded iron gate, thick growth of surveillance cams, grim Rottweilers walking their trainers three times a day about the outside parking lot.

The best way to make Lex shut his non-stop jingling yack is to ask how was his work today and—abruptly—you’re blessed with a ten-minute break, as a minimum. Not a peep. Lex all in thoughts. Full of gloom, shut up, introvert.

Seems, like the fate of that Jewish couple impressed him deeply, nice people also worked for the government before were roasted in the chair for leaking the know-how and formulas of A-bomb to the Soviets.

‘Take it easy, I was kidding. Don’t wet your bed tonight. There-there, kid. Say, what is your want?’

’How about 2 pm at Uncle Tom’s Cabin? Suits you?.

A guy need a heart of stone to say “nah!”to their old-time buddy? Except for that onetime nymphomaniacal slut on the throne of the Russian Empire? She instructed it were your enemies and not friends to be hold close to your bosom so as to feel the slightest movement of their souls and thought and whatever else would spring up. Though cunning, foolish was the bitch. It’s your friends who you should keep your eye on, 24/7. It’s they who know your weak spots better than even you yourself. They will not miss, their stab would be smack into, precise and to the hilt.

O! Brutus! And you too…

Some goofy gander, ain’t it? Your friends are the best at croaking you. Rest in peace, stupid asshole.

‘By me, it’s okay’, said V.

* * *

We are a mighty enviable crowd. Look around to get proud what an unparalleled stretch of time we‘re living thru and recollect the verse from the high school curriculum: “Happy are they whose lot it is to visit this world on its fateful days…”, and so on because no one remembers the following lines even less the name of the poet. Yet, a deep thought there, maybe.

The world we’re visiting now is on its cut and run, globally, innumerable streams of refugees plod on along the roads all over the earth’s face both accelerating and slowing down the spin declared by Galileo with their treks directed too chaotically for a meaningful account. Messy madhouse everywhere. Yet, there still are places for sober people to reach out to each other. One of such places is proza.ru – long live the site! It’s where I can meet so dear to my heart compatrio… er… sorry, guys, I revved overmuch at this point because at proza.ru I have none of the kind.

All of us there surely share the mutual historical past. Our dads and grandpas stomped in the same columns to the front lines, and extermination camps, and demonstrations on Mayday and the Day of Great October Revolution. Our genes have been added with a special chromosome, odd yet useful, for composing false reports and giving bribes to the established cadres. Deeper than the rest of the world comprehend we the famous address of N. Khrushchev to the UN General Assembly—off tore the the bitchcakes gone hero his shoe from his foot to hammer repeatedly at the varnished rostrum top while chanting madly, ‘I’ll show you the motherfucking Kuzka’s mother!’ That’s when the most experienced synchronous interpreters scratched their well-trained heads: who’s Kuzka?!

(*Note for the Generation M: Khrushchev was the head of the Soviet Union. And what a clever head he had! Even at hangover. He could announce the precise date of Communism coming in its own right all over the USSR or give out a motivational divination, like, ‘We’ll catch up America and overtake them!’)

And after the indestructible USSR collapsed disintegrating into separate states sprung up from our mutual Motherland fragments, I was left without countrymen and my relief and consolation comes from the same language users who roll out their literary works at proza.ru each one with their own spelling innovations.

To them, my lingua-roomies with acute graphomaniacal addiction, address I my question—

How to write? Tell me!

‘Write’ not in the sense of poking the keyboard with a finger or two but in regard to quality – how? The quality stronger than moonshine shooting down to your very heels, the quality up to the self-admiration, ‘Bastard SOB, you’ve done the real thing!’ That’s what I crave for.

Well, okay, you know as well as I do there’s a slew of courses, master-classes, webinars anxious to sell you all kinds of know-how that ‘just works’. However, no use in hooking us, the lingua-roomies, by spangling wrappers and chaff stuff that makes us retch.

I think, when I think (not constantly yet prolongedly), that a forum-like approach is what we need here combined with willful sharing of personal experience. All of us have this or that trick begotten in hard labors, some ‘scribbler’s charm’ to run the sought result down and fixate it for readers’ gratification. This preface is the cornerstone which I put, while retaining my sane and sober (as of yet) frame of mind, in the edifice of gratis dispensing the assets amassed concerning how to write so as not to feel ashamed in the long run.

You can do writing in different ways – sober, drunken, giving free reign to your loco-motion practices, etc...

(*The locomotive in the third of above methods equip themselves with a couple of ball pens and a pack of copy paper (A4, 500 sheets per pack) and start writing without watching what they, actually, write. Neither plot nor story line, nor characters’ names are needed. All the details are decided by the skeletal-muscle parts of the author whose mission during the creative act is to bring themselves and keep in the state of ‘automatism’ which, by the way, is the name of this particular method.

In the morning, the loco-writer checks the thing produced while they kept the pen, and changed the sheets, and choo-choed on, swoony and enthusiastic. Well, well, let’s see what I’ve created this time? Oh-oh! What the… Well, I never… I be damned it it’s not… Yes! It’s the fourth volume of War and Peace written overnight! O, fuck! The fourth volume for the fourth time in one month!

No wonder, and no use hitting the roof when you let the outflow gush on its own accord, uncontrolled, like, AI throwing together programs for its private entertainment.

Up front, I have to disenchant you, the trick described here is not my choice I prefer digging up in absentia. The idea was picked up from a prominent Soviet author from the period of stagnation in the USSR.

Thus instructed he (I don’t divulge his name for human reasons but those interested might contact me by email), ‘It was Chekhov to tutor me. I placed abook of stories by him and started copying, line after line’.

Even though Chekhov failed to steel him into Chairman of the Writers Union of the USSR (not coach’s fault obviously, the trainee should have licked himself into shape under tutelage of Comrade Sholokhov) still and yet the guy reached the position of Manager of War Prose Department.

Weird as it seems, we still can see a speckle of sense in his reasoning – when you follow someone’s back very closely, step after step, the maneuver mitigates wind slaps into your mug...

And now the last fig leaf falls off my winding perambulations, it only remains to confess who namely was chosen for the paragon of artisan while producing the work that follows after concluding this here preface which I still cannot shut up with.

The tricky subtlety of the question is no less than its importance, however, one more detour.

A line-by-line copying of an author’s text (who from? you, naive gull!) is for dummies. I prefer translation. But over again: who from? After Joyce and Pynchon to pick up some 50 Shades of Murky shit? Such tender-mindedness doesn’t stand to reason…

Well, on the second thought, a possible undertaking, hypothetically, yet practically I’ll doze off halfway thru any moony-wooly para...graph... (Yawning.)

Damn, enough! I choose this one. The Algorithm of Chaos published online quite recently and by a trustworthy writer, in my personal estimation.

And here we reach the happy end of the preface, congratulations to the survivors in the trek. You do have shown you mettle, guys!

2023-05-03