Прохор Озорнин - On the Wings of Hope - Prose

There were no dissatisfied ones… or at least those, trying to openly declare it… Psychogenerators, scattered near borders of this country, did their job right – now he is free to force people to think how he desires. Mental waves of vast variety, last invention of psychophysics – and human is under your full control. Cause either elation, either hysteria, either unlimited aggression in which, being armed with newest “gizmos” of military technology, human became an almost universal machine of destruction…He could do everything. And he enjoyed it.

Has drowned in blood the revolt in the frontline island state. Has left lifeless desert on southern suburbs of his country, where hordes of the enemy have dared to intrude – the same whitish desert remained in all territory of the attacking state. Threatened to throw off the newest modification of psycho-neutron bomb on the neighbor, who was unwilling to yield convenient trade routes, having destroyed all mental potential of the pigheaded one – he gave up very quickly, having become the witness of demonstration of its possibilities in small scales…

He possessed all. Everything was below him – he was above everything. He was the president of the state…

***

Mechanics peep. Red measured words on the X-display screen – “Your account is empty. Please replenish your balance”. Damn! The end…Slowly unhooked from body sensors and controls, the neuro-pulse helmet, removed from his head. That's all. Game over…

A lonely thought, spinning in the head: “eat”. So… where is a food here? He has turned his head around. Oh, here… just near the terminal. A needle, inserted into a vein… very soon nutritious liquor will be soaked up and carried by blood through the organism – it should suffice for some days. Should suffice… a shrill sound signal… done. He has pulled out a needle.

So… he has rummaged around his pockets. Twenty credits… not enough… only for sixty-seventy hours… heck… no matter. A helmet, being dressed again. Heaps of wires and connections fitted to a body. A token put into a machine, which has greedily grasped it… Satisfied mechanics peep.

Start. The virtual world never waits.

***

City streets, lightened with lanterns. A signboard over one of many buildings – “Salon of virtual findings”. Hundreds of terminals over the walls. People, sitting in them.

Next terminal… a twitching man, braided by mechanics. A stream of saliva, slowly flowing down on a floor… The face is not visible – it's being covered by a small helmet. Peeps of equipment…

He was the head of the largest mafia organization…

02.06.2003

In one of the cities there lived the Critic, who has been blaming everything he meets.

“Your society is corrupted and petty! Your thoughts and lives are filled with vanity! Your moral is worse than that of animals! Each of you lives only for himself! You are going the wrong way! Grieves and grief await you!”

He became widely known thanks to this unstoppable desire to see a better world – yet people avoided him, and from the grief of his own loneliness, he condemned them even more.

Once, in hopes to dispel the melancholy that has been tormenting him, he was walking through the suburb of his hometown and sat down on the coast of the murmuring spring.

The spring charmed him with a melodious murmur and freshness of its waters.

He was so fond of observation of how waters of the spring carry away autumn leaves, which were occasionally falling down into it, that hasn't noticed how the woman sat down near him, going to scoop spring water.

“Do you like it?” she asked with a smile. “Fresh water flows here.”

“Yes,” replied the Critic. “Water is good and people are, alas, not at all.”

“How many leaves have floated by you while you were drinking?” his interlocutor suddenly asked him. “From what trees each of them fell?”

“That’s a strange question!” the Critic was surprised. “I haven't paid attention to it.”

“Than how could you possibly paid attention to all people, living in this world?” smiled the woman. “Like leaves, they were floating by you, yet you didn't truly notice them. And even the water that is now flowing in the spring is not the one it was several moments ago.”

“What is your point?” questioned the Critic.

“Drink only water of fresh perception!” the woman laughed loudly and poured out a bucket of icy spring water directly on the critic's head.

26.12.2017

You are the tough one – and that lies out of doubt's borders. Dreadfully respectable type! You have achieved success in life, and now it successfully continues to support your illusion of own happiness with such degree of intensity, that you simply don't have time for anything other except for support of own respectability in the community of ones similar to you. And they respect you, certainly, not for whom you actually are, but for all that external social attributes, with which you have painted yourself. In the company of the ones like you hypocrisy, you know, is the nature of things.

How many powers and time were spent in a struggle for that invaluable mask, how many people were smashed, how lots of beautiful feelings and words were thrown out on a wind for the sake of opportunity to overtake several others on this roundabout route which is out of sense! But for now you are cool, and it's not subject for doubt, because all those millions who have made you their idol, can't be all mistaken, yes? And they have already managed to stop doubting own infallibility – because, according to their opinion, the ones who have managed to be imprinted on pages of “Forbes” magazines are hardly capable of making mistakes. You, much like the comrade Lenin, have become the idol of many – you became simply intolerable. And the stream of your life didn't take you out to a coast of serenity and boundlessness. And whether did you really desire to swim in that direction?

Power of money because of money for the sake of money not without money. Money replaced so many things in your life. You have become extremely rich and valuable person – that's why simple human happiness was too expensive for you to afford. It, unlike you, is able to understand people and doesn't run after to each passer if they have “Rolex” watches or “Porsche” cards at their disposal. It's very human because it searches for humanity. It's much like a Firebird, and one can grasp it by tail only be being simple and kind – and you have become too tough, suspicious and intolerable. Probably, it's almost unbearable to remain as such at all times – yet by some mystical ways you have managed to achieve it still.

Probably, at least once or twice you managed to notice some kind of special people, by and away from which your highly profitable life express was carrying you time and again. These people were, according to your measures, simple poor ones – yet at the same time, they were rich with something totally different, the phenomenon of so mysterious to your nature. They were able to celebrate life in each its instant and therefore knew no such thing as grief. They were sincere – and hypocrites feared to approach them, being afraid to be disclosed at the next instant. For now, you do understand that they were rich with happiness – for there was something from the God inside them. You know, this something could belong to you as well…

You have built your castle on the false base – and now it's being shaken by blows of conscience. But nevertheless you, apparently, don't understand that all those common truths which have been once called as both banal and boring, even being rejected by you have been living nearby still as if invisibly marking and fixing something. It's they, these truths, will never lose its value no matter how thick and strong the dust layer of fabrications and lies would use the ones who have still not understood that truths aren't capable to be banal.