Alexander Deev.
Cover and design by Sasha Lend.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are product of author's imagination or otherwise used fictitiously. None of the opinions expressed in the novel are opinions of the author. All opinions are opinions of the novel's characters.
Word by Author
The following story is a set of events that happened not so long ago. These events are known to me through the documents and the media files I acquired from an anonymous source. Those documents and files were used to create the written pieces that are the content of the novel. These pieces were intended to be as close to the documents acquired as possible. They precisely portray the events as these events happened. I also should note that as soon as I finished the novel, all initial sources were destroyed as it was my agreement with the giver. I also note that all names, dates, and other details able to help the identification of these events’ participants were altered to protect my source. The rest is true.
Oct, 29. Morning and Day. Private Audio Diary of Elise. by Elise
As I remember it, Martin was almost asleep, drifting in a smog of his dream. And it was a telephone call that made him totally awake. That part of his mind which was away from the real world entered the reality. Suddenly, shaken. While he was talking – unsteady hand, pressing an instrument to his ear – his face changed. That was something. Something on the other end of the line.
I worked for this doc film studio for a couple of years. We all here, or at least most of us, have some other jobs on the side. Our days it is not so easy to make your living making the non-fiction features. And for us, the industry does not provide a permanent current of orders and sales. TV channels big enough won’t pay for anything you do and won’t give you an order to do anything you can do.
Once, I decided to use the opportunity for such a job because for a young girl like me, without some highly positioned friends and relatives, and without a prominent inheritance, an occupation a bit closer to TV, or something that at least might seem to be a more creative kind of business, was more promising than some other opportunities I could choose from. Though, I am not a kind of person who at any given moment in one’s life is expecting the unbelievable to happen. To happen and to carry you away from the world of boring reality. But the bloody truth is that I as usually expected my next turn to be a little better than it was indeed. When you start dating someone, do not you expect this new person to be a little more interesting than your previous experiences? If you don’t, we are different. That’s for sure.
Me, I always seize an opportunity for a portion of sweet dreams about something better entering my life when beginning new relations with my new boyfriend. I’m not that kind of female who expects someone to marry her right on the spot and arrange the most perfect marriage ever with the most perfect kids, etc. Of course not. One may say I was not born in the nineteenth century. But maybe I hope for something that is more like an adventure. At least, one little adventure appearing out of the blue in a current of my ever boring life. And maybe he would be more fascinating than a usual person. A little smarter than the guys usually are. Just a little. And only then it all appears to be the same old crap. Nothing so special.
And maybe that is also the way I could feel about a new occupation. What if it is a new move forward? Something that can finally change my life previously scheduled with so many absolutely expected things to happen. My route in life and career was an endless line of different jobs which were so similar in meaning. I was extending the way of loser items on my employee list with things like the shop assistant and do-this-and-that girl. And I dreamed of traveling. To buy a ticket for an airplane and to take a place in a heavy machine ready to carry me and some hundred other people to another continent across the sea. And maybe I would like to be the only passenger who didn’t care to buy the return ticket.
In my dreams, I never saw someone like Leo DiCaprio or James Franco, but so many times I saw myself leaving my hometown on a giant aircraft. It is not that I don’t like handsome actors, just I didn’t see them in my dreams so often as the steel wings breaking the clouds of pure white in the sky of crystal blue. And no matter, if you want to see some international celebrity, maybe you will need to cross the ocean for a beginning.
As a schoolgirl, I always was the best at geography knowing all capitals of all countries, because in my younger years I found some fun in studying the maps. Subconsciously I just wanted to get away from here and as far as possible. Someday, somewhere to Latin America, Australia, any distant and beautiful destination.
But instead, I was here in the tiny room which was something between office and store. A place Martin, who de facto became my closest chief, called the studio. But the studio was not filled with the art. Not the pieces of Da Vinci, Monet, and Modigliani, but tons of papers, photos enfolded in the yellow and red document cases together with some features by Michael Moore belonged to its shelves, which stood across two longer walls of a rectangular room.
And right then, I found myself standing near Martin who was sitting behind his monitor having a face of a man who was just unexpectedly struck. Expression of weird shock, excitement, and astonishment blended was frozen in his eyes. Some few seconds before, he was just talking on the phone, and now it was a different kind of Martin in front of me. Whether it was this someone on the other end of the conversation who made him feel so or something else, I will never have a chance to know. I was still standing with some papers he asked me to bring in my hands watching him unconsciously. I pretended I did not notice anything I was not supposed to notice.
Here it is. I said and was going to show the diagrams of primal importance from the study he wanted to know about. But he was somewhere far away. And all Martin responded with was What? that he said in such unsure way that I didn’t know whether I should’ve continued unfolding a summary of research contents. Or maybe I should’ve just left a pack of sheets filled with figures and researcher explanations on his table and move away silently.
So… This showcase in view of the author actually explains why situation could take the form like this and to develop to the point when… I began slowly almost moved only by the inertia of my intention which previously was clear. But then I did not think it was a good time to talk on the subject. I’ll better explain you this a bit later. I said. He responded with a sigh coming from so far away. Yeah… And by saying this he still was staring somewhere through the wall, his eyes wide open. And I slid away to be absolutely forgotten for some hours until I would be needed again for some please-bring-me-this errand.
After some minutes he picked up the notebook and pencil and left the room. I spent the rest of the day reading some stuff which could turn to be useful for Martin’s next documentary film, drinking coffee and eating sandwiches. Alone. Thanks to my rapid metabolism which allows me to put as many sandwiches inside my stomach as I please, without thinking about what will happen to my skinny body constitution. Finally, it looks like I fished something out of this paper pile. Something that can be useful. And then satisfied, I went home.
This evening, I watched a couple of boring TV shows, read some book and spent some time dreaming about my future.
Recorded October 29, before going to bed. End of line.
Oct, 29. Morning. from Dictaphone Record. by Martin
I still do not know what it really was. And I expect the absolute essence of happening to be never revealed to my poor mind. Was it luck or misfortune? I only can say it was unusual. Sitting in front of a monitor, I was trying to gather all pieces of supposed documentary feature into a single shape. My stomach was in process with the breakfast I ate an hour earlier, and my brains were processing the pieces of video and the writing stuff while trying to overcome a state of sleepiness. I asked Elise whether she could find and bring me a folder with some papers I wanted to see in addition to what I saw on display.
And then it came. The thing was falling out of the blue sky. My old-fashioned office phone rang, and I almost instinctively picked up the instrument while continuing to view the lines of text and the photos covering a surface of my computer’s monitor. That was the call of a lifetime.
I am a person who