Книга Знаний. Book of Knowledge. 1. Игра в Иную Реальность. 1. Playing Another Reality (Билингва Rus/Eng)
well as the furnishings of the flat, which I have not visited yet in the Earthly Reality, because my friend has moved recently. We are silent, but somehow tragically. Then she asks what really happened. I know in the dream, it’s something very bad, that I don’t want to remember at all. I brush it off, I don’t want to talk, and tears well up in my eyes.
I find myself visiting my ex-classmate. The plot repeats. We are sadly silent. He carefully begins to ask, «How did it happen, why?» I’m in pain. I refuse to remember. I start crying. Why do they torment me with their questions if I am not able to talk about it?
I come to someone else. I don’t know to whom. All the same, but this someone is too persistent and makes me remember.
Wide road of four letters. My car is in my favorite left lane. Replaying the situation, or rather, watching a movie from somewhere above, I see every car: to the right, behind me and in front of me. Is it dark or cloudy? The bridge appears in the distance. In the left lane the speed is high, 150 or 160 probably. There is an accident ahead, or something else invisible immediately, so everyone starts to slow down, except my car for some reason, as if I’m not in it and it’s driving by itself. Why? Did I fall asleep driving? I look at what is happening, but I can influence neither my car nor myself in it. Everything has already happened. Nothing can be changed. I weep, remembering, and someone continues to torment me with questions, «How? Why?»
BANG!!! Bang… bang… There is no unbroken part left from the car. The tow truck doesn’t arrive for a long time… Did they really show me the accident predicted by the fortune-teller in Rome?
Gera advised me not to drive on Monday and Tuesday, so that nothing would happen, but I missed my Fox and gave up on the warning. Moreover, it was time to renew the insurance. At the insurance office, they announced me a discounted amount for impeccable driving and handed me some paper for signing to confirm that no other my car had been stolen during the previous three years. Since my previous Fox had been dematerialized under mysterious circumstances exactly three years before, I didn’t sign it. After twenty minutes of waiting for a reaction to the problem I had voiced, I received an offer to wait another hour or two hours for the final answer from the central office. I sent the insurance company far away and, apparently, for the rest of my life. After driving a kilometer, I stopped at a traffic light. The driver of the next car opened the window and began shouting and gesticulating, drawing my attention to the Fox’s paws. I got out of the car and found the right rear tire flat, which meant that I wouldn’t be able to get back home or to my office. Having left Fox in a secluded place, I continued my way on the metro. In the evening, at the nearest tire fitting service, I was told amazing news – the wheel was absolutely normal, not punctured. No one understood why all of a sudden… They just pumped it up (and I still drive). Three years before they could have just made me a flat tire as well.
I like to drive fast. It happens rarely, since I live in a very large city, where there are probably as many cars as people, and maybe even more. And sometimes it seems to me that many people in this world love their cars much more than people. In our city there is such a huge road, which is called a word of four capital letters, similar to the synonym for the biblical «Hell», and not so much in sound as in meaning, MRAR. They move along the Moscow Ring Automobile Road in circles. You can also drive if you manage to get into the circle before half past seven in the morning. Then everyone stands in the circle.
MRAR is a game that everyone plays by their own rules. There are, of course, rules invented by someone once, we are forced to learn them and pass exams, but I haven’t yet met a person who has never violated these rules. For example, not to occupy the left lane if it’s possible to go to the right, because the left lane is intended for those who like fast driving or are just in a hurry. It’s a good rule, but usually, in the left lane, there’s always someone, whose life principle says, «The slower you go, the further you’ll arrive.» That one wants to teach others how to live according to the rules, absolutely not going to give way to anyone and under any circumstances, inclining other players go right till the curb. There is a special category of drivers who play checkers on the road. A tragedy occurred before my eyes. A man was driving at a speed about 180. I was driving in the second lane on the left at a speed of 140, when he sharply drove to the far left, but had not enough time to carry out his plan. As a result of the impact on the barrier separating oncoming flows, he was thrown to the far right. The car sank in the clouds of smoke.
Once upon a time I played checkers at very high speed too. To be honest, I like speed more than checkers. I even wrote the spell «Speed» after one Boy gave me a ride at 220 during our business trip abroad (although he insists on 230). After reading the spell, my ex-classmate Alexey wrote, «I tried. Two days ago. It doesn’t help.» However, despite the repeated warning signs from Above, I didn’t stop. Thus, one evening, having left Fox on the street for about forty minutes, I lost it forever dematerialized.
I haven’t played checkers since then. I drive exceeding the speed. Sometimes. When everything falls down and I find myself in the Void.
…He was a Boy. Although he was no long so young. Much taller and physically stronger than me, he seemed to me so small, that I wanted to think of something to make the Boy grow up, because it was unnatural to look at him up, really looking down from the top. However, the Boy grew in breadth only. In fact, we must give him credit, he was a good Boy, or rather, the right one, and so much that he risked becoming a patient of my cousin, who had never become a surgeon, but worked in the «yellow house» (why people call so the abode of the strangers, I still don’t understand, in general, people are a mystery for me). In the head of the Boy, absolutely down-to-earth and practical, there was a terrible program that someone had once written and implanted there. Perhaps even the Boy himself. The program, similar to a virus, killed everything that came into the Boy’s field of vision, if it was not the same as him. The Boy played the rules written in that program.
That day we went to negotiations. Getting into his car and not even having time to close the door, I heard the order,
«Put the bag exactly in the middle on your lap!»
My small purse was slightly to the right of the indicated place. I looked with a silent question at the Boy, and he immediately explained in a metallic voice,
«When I put in sale this car in 10 years, it will be valued more if inside on the doors, there are no scratches from all sorts of iron things on women’s bags!»
There were no iron things on my bag, but the Boy didn’t tolerate any objections.
We got lost on the way. When I saw the sign to «that place» and exclaimed, «To the right!», automatically raising my right hand towards the sign, without even touching the window with the outer side of my palm, the Boy commanded,
«Take a napkin and wipe the glass urgently! My car has these rules, and if you don’t, you’ll have to wash it entirely at your own expense.»
When we got out of the car, the first thing the Boy did was open the trunk, where, in addition to all sorts of boxes, he was hiding… a ruler. He took it and began to measure something.
«Why are you doing this?» I was surprised.
«While we were driving, the boxes slightly changed their location in the trunk, and each of them should stand in a strictly designated place so as not to come into contact with each other and with the walls of the trunk. Because when I put in sale this car in 10 years…»
I breathed in and out deeply.
On the way back, the Boy bought two pies. When I dared to hint that there were two pies, he kindly invited me to enjoy one of them.
As soon as I began to untie the knot of the plastic bag, the Boy looked at me disapproving and said in disappointment,
«That’s not the way to untie it! Give it to me, I’ll teach you how to do it correctly.»
I haven’t