1

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

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

‘What's up, 2ic?’

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

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

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

‘Cut your sermon out, padre.’

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

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

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

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

‘Since when?’

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

‘Wait-wait-wait! I mean business!!’

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

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

‘Who's the third guy?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘It’s OK with me,’ said V.

* * *

2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2ic shook his head in disdain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

’Can you grab a radio wave?'

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

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

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

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

‘Receivers?’

‘Kind of.’

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

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

* * *