Герман Садулаев - The Maya Pill

They called Maximus only after the meeting in the conference room was over, and for the obvious reason.

Diana Anatolyevna dialed Maximus’s number on the internal line and asked:

“Semipyatnitsky, where’s that box with the rat poison?”

“I’ll bring it right away, Diana Anatolyevna.”

“That’s not necessary. Just tell me where it is and the secretaries can bring it.”

“No, I can do it, it’s no problem at all, Diana Anatolyevna.”

Maximus had given up on the idea of pilfering the pills and starting his own drug-dealing business. But he still wanted to know what sort of pills they were and what the Dutch guys intended to do with the box. As he carried it into the room, Maximus was hoping to learn which of the three visitors would take charge of it.

The Dutch didn’t disappoint. While Maximus was in the room, Peter immediately took out a large opaque bag with string handles and dropped the box inside, smiling happily.

Maximus resolved to demonstrate an even greater sense of company spirit and asked the Import Director, “Diana Anatolyevna, is someone taking our guests to the airport?”

“Yes, Maximus, we’ve already reserved a taxi. But Peter will be leaving later, he’s taking the night train to Moscow.”

“Really? So he’ll be here by himself? Does he have anything to do until then?”

Maximus made it seem as though he hadn’t known that Peter was leaving separately from his colleagues. It looked as though he was trying to come up with a pretext to slip out of the office for a while. And maybe get some extra money to cover entertainment expenses.

The Import Director intercepted his feeble scheming.

“Don’t worry, the guys from Commerce will take Peter around to some supermarkets to see how the merchandising is going. I’m sure that you have more important work to do than drive them around town.”

“Yes, Diana Anatolyevna, you’re right. I’m up to my ears in work. May I go now?”

“Of course, thank you very much.”

“All right… well, if anything comes up and our esteemed partner could use my help…”

Maximus turned to Peter and switched back to English:

“Do you have my mobile number?”

“Yeah.”

“After you finish with inspections of retail, please call me. This evening I’ll be at your disposal.”

“Oh, how nice! Sure, I’ll call you.”

Diana Anatolyevna exchanged quizzical glances with the Commerce Director. On his own initiative, Semipyatnitsky was volunteering to devote his free time to hosting the company’s partner. It wasn’t like him. Maximus had never shown any particular zeal for Cold Plus—he just clocked in, did his work, and left the moment the little hand reached six; on the weekends he either turned off his cell phone or simply ignored calls from the office.

A computer game. Maximus thought it up, put together a description, and some guy from IT made it a reality—virtual, anyway.

It operates on a very simple principle, like all those other rudimentary games for computers and smart phones and the like, where the goal is to gather pieces of fruit or, perhaps, dodge flying balls.

The theme, though, is what’s original. The interface, as Maximus designed it, consists of eight outhouses arrayed across the lower part of the screen, on what is supposed to represent the ground, with bombs falling down from the “sky.” The player uses the cursor to move his avatar back and forth from right to left. When he presses Enter , for example, the avatar goes into one of the outhouses; pushing Shift makes him drop his pants and sit on the toilet; Page Down elicits a big number two.

The challenge of the game is that the bombs fall in random patterns onto one of the eight outhouses. If a bomb lands on an outhouse while your avatar is inside, that’s the end, and you receive the following message: “Game Over. You got shat on, Loser!” If the avatar manages to complete his business successfully, though, and run out of the outhouse before it gets bombed to smithereens ( Page Up : He gets up and pulls up his trousers; Escape : He gets out), he earns a point, which flashes in the lower left of the screen. The inscription appears: “Congratulations, Shitter! One Point!”

The graphics are pretty simple. The avatar has a beard and is wearing camouflage combat fatigues. The outhouses have a rustic look to them. The musical accompaniment is a MIDI file playing some patriotic tripe or other. (Go ahead and search for patriotic tripe on YouTube. We’ll wait.) When a bomb hits one of the outhouses there’s a hissing sound and an explosion, and every successful shit comes with a sort of ineffable creaking sound.

The game has a few different levels. On the first and most elementary, the bombs fall one at a time, and it’s a simple enough matter to get your guy to shit successfully, gain a point, and move him to the next outhouse. As the levels advance, however, the bombs fall faster and faster, and the player has to gauge the intervals correctly and make lightning-fast decisions about where to shit next.

In order to move up to a higher level, the player has to accumulate eight points—one for each outhouse. An hour after closing time, when the aggrieved-looking janitress came to empty Maximus’s trash basket, he had advanced to level three. Once he even managed to get to level four. The game had six levels in all, but it took a great deal of focus and diligent practice to get past four.

Maximus’s cell phone rang, interrupting his game: The ringtone was a polyphonic version of the melody of the Russian (Soviet) National Anthem. It was Peter calling to report that he was free and back at his hotel. Semipyatnitsky gathered his things, went down to the parking lot, got in his car, and headed along the embankment to Nevsky Prospect.

The evening traffic had dissipated, and the road was relatively clear. Maximus drove in the middle lane, his favorite, without undue haste. Vicious jeeps and arrogant sedans whizzed by on both sides. Go ahead, thought Semipyatnitsky, torture yourselves, pedal to the metal, what you don’t know is that the traffic police are lurking around every corner, brandishing their bristly clubs. Semipyatnitsky liked that bit about the bristly clubs, and he smiled to himself.

When Maximus drove up, Peter was waiting on the street outside the hotel. He was holding only a small overnight bag; apparently he had left the box of pills in his room. On his way over, Maximus had thought about trying to sneak into Peter’s brain, as he had done with Ni Guan. But he resolved to utilize the traditional, tried and true Russian method to get information: Ply his guest with vodka. Once drunk, Peter would readily reveal whatever secrets he was keeping locked up in his Dutch brain. There wasn’t much time before Peter’s train, not a minute to lose.

Semipyatnitsky offered to show Peter St. Petersburg’s most famous feature, the monument to Peter the Great, who had opened the window to Europe. Maximus himself had always felt that it would have been better for the tsar to install actual doors, so that people wouldn’t have to keep climbing to Europe through a window, but he withheld this insight from his guest.

They arrived at the Bronze Horseman. Peter naturally asked Maximus to take a few photos of him with the statue in the background, and then Maximus, as though the idea had just occurred to him, suggested casually that they stop into the bar across the street. And his guest, with an equally spontaneous air, agreed.

If you know Petersburg, then you know that this bar can be none other than the Tribunal. Yes, that’s the one, where girls—some plump and unattractive, others gangly and awkward—sit on tall revolving stools at the bar, casting welcoming glances at the foreign tourists who come in. Somewhere nearby sits their so-called mamka , a bulky woman of forty-five or thereabouts, who hasn’t changed her makeup since the age of twenty, when she herself was sitting on a stool just like those she now oversees, back at the Intourist Hotel bar.