Герман Садулаев - The Maya Pill

The international media ignored the protest; most likely they were preoccupied with covering the meteoric rise of a new pop star—or should we say, pop “idol”?—by the name of Britney Spears.

Whatever the case, in 1998 the Russian government declared bankruptcy; that is, it declined to meet its debt obligations. At that point it was discovered that a critical amount of Bee Trust assets were held in the form of short-term government bonds.

Some time elapsed before everything came crashing down. For over a year the bank continued to occupy its remodeled European palace and maintained its sponsorship of the city hockey team. But the times kept on a-changing. The leading man of the TV drama that is Kremlin politics was replaced; new people moved into city government posts, notably those in charge of disbursing the municipal budget. These people had their own personal banks. Bee Trust was squeezed out.

Actually, the expression “came crashing down” is a little too melodramatic. Yes, Bee Trust, as a legal entity, underwent the bankruptcy and liquidation processes. Yes, bank employees who had become accustomed to an excessively cushy lifestyle lost their jobs. Yes, a few small-account holders—a couple thousand retirees—were ruined. But small stuff, really, in the grand scheme of things.

As for our Young Communist capitalists, they no longer depended exclusively on their bank resources. Each one of them held diversified assets: real estate, large amounts of cash both in hard currency and in accounts in countries with stable banking systems, as well as shares and interests in other branches of business.

One of those branches was import. Previously the Bee Trust group had dealt in the whole spectrum of food products. Now the time had come to break down into narrower areas of specialization. The era when one day you’d buy computers, the next prophylactics, and a week later bananas—all the while transporting non-ferrous metals and timber across the border—was over. Each different business staked out its own territory, with a finite number of players: authorized personnel only. Following the well-established laws of economics, the Russian economy entered the stage of monopoly capitalism.

The Bee Trust group imported all kinds of food products: fresh tropical fruits, vegetables, processed and canned goods, frozen foods, alcoholic beverages. But it didn’t have the capacity or means to maintain a full-scale defense along such a broad front. The big corporations got rid of bit players in the banana and mandarin orange business by flooding the market with cheap product. Decisions as to who would be involved in alcohol sales were made at completely different levels of officialdom, with which the Komsomol capitalists fell out of touch. Processed foods were taken over by mass producers, with different brands competing for market share. Bee Trust was left to choose between two alternatives: canned goods or frozen food.

The canned-goods market at the time was large and seemed promising. So the senior partners of Bee Trust went for tin cans and founded the United Preserves International Corporation, which, in spite of the name, entailed a process of division rather than unification.

Four of the young Komsomol capitalists who had made their fortune on kickbacks from foreign suppliers took up the frozen-food business, which had been rejected by their senior colleagues. They founded a small company and called it Cold Plus.

The subsequent fate of United Preserves International is pure decline and fall stuff. The company collapsed within a few years. Some of its owners perished in internecine struggles; others squirreled away some capital and dispatched it abroad; the rest ended their business careers in poverty and squalor after spending the last of their money acquiring Russian companies producing canned meat and condensed milk.

Cold Plus, on the other hand, took advantage of the expanding market and the increase in demand and swelled up like shit on yeast. Its branches and warehouses multiplied, and Cold Plus swallowed up its small competitors and suppliers. By the time I entered the story, it had become a large and successful corporation, the industry leader in frozen food.

Now, this version of the corporation’s history would be perfect for expansive documentation in some opposition newspaper, one of the ones that are financed by disgraced oligarchies (such as the rats who ran the notorious United Preserves International) or supported by left-wing enthusiasts. But the story is a lot more interesting than that. As I’ve already said, the devil’s in the details. His goaty snout peers out from backstage during this little drama entitled The Cold Plus Corporation: An Arduous Path to the Snowy Peaks .

Because the prime mover behind the introduction of the deep-freeze method was Satan himself. Oh yes. As we know, there are certain regions of hell in which the temperature is maintained at an extremely low level. Satan preserves the fruits of Eden there to this day—just in case.

As part of his campaign to promote the deadly sin of gluttony, Satan arranged for each home to have its own refrigerator, along with a microwave oven. Now each and every sinner can indulge in gluttony twenty-four seven simply by grabbing some food out of the freezer and sticking it in the microwave for a few minutes.

In order to keep each refrigerator full, and to further simplify the life of the glutton, Satan devised a way to freeze every possible comestible on Earth.

And his fantasy expanded beyond mere food. The infernal technology of cryonics began to be promoted as a means of preserving the dead, or just their brains, depending on who you’re talking to. Deep-freeze technology also made blood transfusions and organ transplantation possible on a large scale. But that’s a different story…

Let us return to the Bee Trust bank and the Cold Plus Corporation. The few years of the bank’s prosperity were dominated by the contracting führers from the Komsomol. The bank’s very name, along with its twisted motto, stolen from the dollar bill— In God Bee Trust —hints at the true force behind the throne: B[ee] for Beelzebub. There is no doubt where the Komsomol capitalists placed their full faith and credit.

By the year of the great default, the term of their original satanic contract with the Komsomol was running out, and Beelzebub needed to obtain new signatures in fresh blood on his ancient paper. It was then that his young clients in infernal servitude got the brilliant idea of developing the deep-freeze business.

The department director wasn’t in, so I didn’t have to ask permission to leave. I just mentioned to the girls at the front desk that I was going to the warehouse, and signed out at the security desk. Having dispensed with the formalities, I went to the elevator and pressed the down button.

The doors parted, and before my eyes I beheld the Goddess of Sex, Spring, and Fertility, a tanned brunette with a perfectly sculpted bosom and sultry eyes. For a moment I was unable to move, then she asked, “Are you getting in or not?” Her voice sent vibrations down my spine. Well, yes I am. “Hot damn!” I thought, in ecstasy or frustration or some mixture of the two. Most likely the girl was a new hire in one of the other offices in our building. As we rode down, I scrutinized the Rules for Elevator Use on the wall so as to keep from gaping at the goddess’s breasts. At the first floor the girl got out and headed down the hall toward the break room; I went in the opposite direction, to the exit. Whew, made it. At ease.

I got in the car and started the engine, then inserted the theft-proof front panel on the radio and surfed the dial until I hit on some acceptable music. Then I backed out, exited the parking area, and set off along the crowded city streets toward the other side of town, where Cold Plus has its warehouses.