Sergey Zybolov - Deja vu. Love

Literally a minute later, exactly according to the established Charter, Rond rang out, calling for a light dinner:

– Everything is ready! Welсome! You have not forgotten about me?! You will find tea and small goodies! Let’s get smart!

– Come on, come on, um! – Ave and Ski buzzed in one voice, glanced at each other, giggled ironically between themselves and headed toward the kitchen.

In the center of the cozy kitchen there was a small artsy triangular table with neatly rounded corners – designed just for all the inhabitants of a one-room apartment – an object of Avent-garde furniture. The frosted glass surface of his countertop was slightly highlighted by built-in soft green neon lamps, creating a homely warm cozy mood. In the evening it was possible not to turn on the overhead light, but to enjoy the illumination of the table, which made tea drinking a truly homely intimate tradition.

Tea was aromaticly smoking on the table, placidly filling the entire kitchen with sweet mint freshness. “In the same way, it was always pleasantly sung in our boarding school!” – said Ave to himself. Three bright green bells hung over a table with sulkons – a simple, uncomplicated lamp. One of the glass semiprecious flowers planted in a subdued light, dissolving evening gatherings. For what purpose Rond turned it on, although not at full capacity, but only by a third – it was unclear.

All three ants carefully, so as not to accidentally get burned, poured fragrant contents from one mug to another, in a “retirement method”, as Ski quipped. Silent silence. World silence. Perhaps a little sad… You can only hear the friendly murmur of chilled tea.

Not a single sound was heard from either the upper or the side apartments. In the neighboring apartments, in the entire huge building, these minutes also enjoyed traditional tea drinking. Yes, it is in the entire forty-story glass-concrete cube. In a multi-apartment building, which, however, belonged to dozens of others, of exactly the same buildings, was known not only in the city, but throughout the country to industrialist Theik Dee. To get a job at his radio parts factory, where Rond and Ave worked for life, and a little later, Ski appeared, or a well-known automobile giant, or one of the factories of the military-industrial complex, one was enough! Just one and only! You just had to be born lucky! His workers were provided with everything necessary for a comfortable existence: they were provided with paid living space and quite decent earnings! There was only one thing left – to work selflessly without stopping paws, without stopping for a minute. Work, work and work!

From early childhood, future workers of industrial giants of Theik Dee were conscientiously brought up in specialized boarding schools. For many years, yes, it can be said for sure that for many centuries of the development of ant society, a standard scheme of caring for those who have been raised, brought up, learned, “released into life” has itself built up – their complete and absolute dedication, their work, enduring conventions. They gave birth, raised, gave a little education, plus specialized for work on a farm or enterprise. None of the inmates of the institutions knew whether they had parents or not. It was in these widespread boarding schools that young ants were inculcated with work skills as a way of life-self-sacrifice, complete and unprincipled dedication: for several long hours (for a child’s fragile, sometimes sincerely-naive consciousness – just endless) hours a day, they tirelessly wielded harsh tools, at first with naive mistakes, then – gradually developing skills, and then – “on the machine”, quickly and with genuine enthusiasm spinning the little things incomprehensible to the childish mind; growing up a bit, ants spent almost all of their “free time” (the so-called “free from work”) on an assembly line in the shops of a factory that fulfills government orders for the defense industry, it was then that they first heard the incomprehensible word “weapons”, and began to to be proud (after all, they were just told: “Be proud, you are working for a great cause!”) that they help their valiant work to their beloved Motherland in an endless and everlasting war with a hostile aggressor that was boundlessly far! Farther than it seemed to many adults, and closer than perceived by children.

Amina woke up and opened her eyes, deaf and hard sigh-null, absorbing imaginary freshness, and immediately, literally, in one marvelous moment, plunged headlong into the magical, enchanting fairy-tale-noisy world: here and there the sonorous pale lemon grasshoppers tirelessly, vying competed in the art of chirping, as if at an outlandish festival in the resort town; somewhere nearby, a restless river was pleasantly noisy, divinely playing with water musical busting on rocky rapids, like a harp, the warm south breeze was amusingly amusing itself with young foliage, stroking, tickling fragile twigs on only full-flowing fluffy leaves, steam very young dragonflies flew audibly in front of Amina’s very nose, catching up with each other. The sun’s rays, as if on a magic piano, wrote out a cheerful melody.

Above Amina’s head, somewhere on a branch, a gray-green bird flashed something quickly in her tongue loudly in her tongue, calling on the whole world to enjoy natural beauty. Either the multilayered drowsy blanket hid Amina and didn’t let go, or an impartial objective reality – everything spontaneously alternated in a restless and so seductive sea of consciousness: a titanic ball swept diagonally from the ants head and Amina from a frightening noise she closed her eyes, an imaginary ball desperately snapped “ooh”, and obediently returned to its original place, froze… Living reality confessed and, it seems, returned to the ant. The past was revived, or the future was growing with new sticky notes, uniting, flowing colorless from one to another, and freely giving birth to a synthesized new, unknown…

Here she is serene with Ave in front of each other, and he gently and so cordially holds her claws in his paws, and something endlessly, captivatingly speaks, and speaks, and speaks without end and edge, and she, blinded by desires obsessively looks into his perky eyes and swallows in measured portions his soft story. And then there was the artistic sincere whistling of a thrush, and mixed into one outlandish dish – the aroma of blossoming apple trees, lilacs and linden honeycombs, and again this unbearable stuffiness, and sparkling sunshine, and general whistling itch, and the murmur of an unknown mountain stream, and the rustle of a live spring grassy carpet, and the light buzzing of the May beetle, followed by a pair of dragonflies chasing each other, and the fall of a strange object to the ground (a cobblestone came from somewhere, it seems), and the sparkle in the sun is amazing of silver-thread kzotic patterns that spiders had made into oblivion from early morning – all this in one, common picture, pops up in consciousness, as if an abandoned spinning skillfully hooks in a stormy river and pulls out a trusting trout with a lightning jerk – all this returns Amina to the forest clearing…

Still not completely moving away from the restless half-nap, constantly interrupted by awakenings, the ant tried to look far, far ahead and saw only bright light and unclear outlines of brown spotted trees, she struggled to concentrate on the birch, on the pebble, which began to grow with moss, on the barrel that I decided to rest on this cobblestone, but, unfortunately, it didn’t really succeed – only phantom looms loomed nervously ahead, barely reduced to a single image, as they immediately mythically bifurcated, lined up and soullessly went into oblivion, into a translucent dusty heat. Amina continued to breathe deeply, reclining, near a sprawling birch, whose puffy buds were almost completely opened, and pleasantly scented with the freshness of the cleanest young leaves, but there was no possibility to move the fellow: vague internal forces harshly and uncompromisingly fettered her, as if hopeless paralysis, and never for a moment let go from the moment of awakening. Throughout the body – a lightning-fast growing, overwhelming feeling of anxiety and inexplicable panic, disarming fear. The blackening anxiety in the rattling air convulsively, with emphasized bitterness, plotted white gagged-wide strips of the crosshair, as if at a distance of several meters from Amina was an invisible ant and shamelessly with all his might painted lime on a transparent fence.