The Algorithm of Chaos

‘Fulfillment is what I do promise you, brawny Larry!’

There sounded warning clangs, the red alert “GAME OVER!” popped smack bang in the screen center.

Shaking his head, V gave a slap to his knee. He closed his Samsung and sat back.

‘Damn!’ said V. ‘Too soon! Haven’t got in the groove’.

‘May happen to anybody. Don’t blame yourself’, soothingly stroked Leya his wounded ego.

‘Thanks for your kind consolation’, said V. ‘What’s the score?’

‘2 to 1 in three sets. Home won. Statistics for the last game shows you’re good at penetrating chick’s mind yet slipped at all tries to guess the guys name which was “Frankie”’.

‘Damn Frankie!’ said V. ‘Excuse my French’.

For over an hour they fiddled away playing computer games allowing for the intruders to V’s place a while to get away if not from his apartment then from at least a chance ride by the elevator.

Leya readied for him sunglasses and a wig of blonde locks, adding a trendy women’s jacket in the bargain. Yet, they still dawdled on, better be safe than sorry…

Well back, at the times immemorial, Computerized Gaming Industry assumed the stance of catering to any odd ball vagaries in taste. Arcade games, huh? Sorry, kid, you weren’t yet around in those naive times of jumping Mario. Mamas and papas played their Tetras, Candy Crash and other attractions for action minded folks. However, CGI were smart enough to concoct their products for those intellectual freaks as well. Shipment of goods across the universe to trade for other Mother-effing goods. Fucking mules trafficking strange cargoes in infinite loops, do you follow? Yep. The egg-heads call such double-timing ‘bifurcation in consumers interests’, to make it clearer, we’ll say ‘bisexuality’. New wave, and line, and order took giant strides to meet 6D interests yet, beside the action shooting-stripping-effing you still can run into oldies but goodies ChatGPT-like contests of players. Exchange of texted clues. Negotiating with aliens. Or the one which helped V and Leya kill time. ‘Gain One-Stand Night’ was the game’s name.

‘Okay’, said V. ‘I think I can take a shot at leaving now’.

‘I hope the coast is clear and you’ll have a safe sailing,’ responded Leya. ‘Aren’t you hungry though? It’s dinner time’.

‘Well’, scratched V the back of his head, ‘Just for the sake of curiosity, is it ‘One-Stand Night’ or a date, after all?’

* * *

11

…it’s everywhere, it surrounds not like a net or bandage, it’s clinging too completely without a breach in its continuity, squeezes from all sides…

…the pressure is not unyielding solid like the crush-bite of closing jaws in an iron vice, like the grip of ratcheting noose cutting deeper thru crust and layers, to the core… no! it moves, fluctuating, throbbing, scorching, wringing, gnawing… it’s fluid!. this pain is…

…why me?.

…what?!. is there any me? is there anything at all besides the pain? besides this ocean of burning all-devouring flames whose fangs leave open wounds, keep fretting fresh sores… full of embittered beastly cruelty it is, this here pain… from all sides… from within…

…there is and can be nothing but the pain… not a spot left out, no room, no space for no me… pain… pain… pain… pain…

…but then who’s suffering the unbearable?. whose worn to tatters nerves scream mutely in the anguish? if not for me there’d be no pain… some tiny bubble of conscience bobs in the torturing fluid, quakes under the skin tearing whip of executioner too skillful to let it go and find its refuge in death…

…o, my! o poor me, mauled into a tiny spec, this bubble… what for?. why me?

…whois me…

* * *

12

It took V a couple minutes, at most, to see that he easily could cut it, keeping his lips like a distended puffy rim of a rubber funnel. Like by that… what’s her name, again? the current upper-dog bitch of celebrity’s?

He snapped his fingers for his memory recall and retrieval system to giddy up, in vain though. Could it be the blonde wig retards his usually quick wit? His train of thought had switched already over the points to soundlessly ramble towards chromosome mutations—why? in a generation or two those beauty queens would turn pretty froggy and no Prince Charming’s kisses at their puffy rims would ever bring back their fair looks… V sighed making for the elevator.

On the way down in between 4 walls perpendicular to each other, a jock in the thickening group of their fellow-travelers put to use all the vocabulary from his body language to emphasize how deeply he was hooked by V’s wig and stuff.

V just ignored the asshole’s advances, however, while traversing the building’s lobby, he marked infinitesimal changes, involuntary, to his, V’s, gait. The purposeful pace got inexplicable addition of circus vector embellishments beyond the range of his usual straightforwardness.

He recollected a lost work by a medieval monk theorizing that the attire licks us into shape of this or that modus vivendi more than any moral instruction could ever do. The order of Bareheeled Versaccesistorians or something, the monk belonged to.

Anyway, it came like a kinda alleviation, 5 minutes later by the row of garbage containers in a nook of a some project’s backyard, while cramming the wig and sunglasses into a unisex shoulder bag farmed out by Leya, to him.

Then he returned to the street sidewalk to stroll on in the stream of busily flowing crowd, each marching to their destination, presumably. Only V and a negligible number of vagabond loiterers had no particular place to steer to. They just kept walking in the waves of pedestrians. And that served a good therapy for V bringing his walking style back to normal.

Way ahead starboard he spotted an islet of green and crossed the the road at the traffic lights to enter, presently, a medium sized common. An empty bench seat became V’s anchorage. His back to the supporting back of slender long beams, V outstretched his legs full length, heels onto the walk, and his palms flew up and down, the digits interlocked, to accommodate the back of his head in the receptacle of restfully concave hand-calyx.

Time to relax and analyze the situation. Lucky as always, is he basking here on this bench and not zipped up in a dead body bag neither in a coagulating blood-puddle until they come to collect it.

He had avoided a trap, the deadly trap, alerted by 2ic’s call. How come?. The guy got arrested yesterday. Too little data for a guess work. Impossible to figure out. Still, thanks to him, V is alive yet, by the skin of his teeth.

Then followed 2 hours of waiting at Leya’s while dust settles. Lucky again. But where to move next so as to get any idea what kind of shit he’s got into?

V fetched out his phone and for one whole minute stared at the only number in the list of registered calls he had, then tapped it.

‘Yeah’, the husky thick bass narcissistically protracted to relish its own resonance had nothing to do with the 2ic’s hasty falcetto.

‘Can I talk to Mr. Taylor?’

‘Wrong number, pardner,’ responded the same oafish drawl in a Don’t-mess-with-Texas manner and was off.

And now neither deductive, nor inductive, nor prepositional, nor any other logic from their herd would do any good to add details to the dim picture of 2ic calling from the wrong number pilfered for a little sec off the sheriff in a western. In utter consternation V sagged back on the hard bench. Bury Me Not On The Lone Praire…

Now his task was to solve the enigma with just one puzzle piece disclosed, the call of 2ic that saved his life. Being an experienced thinker, V knew perfectly well – you hardly ever accomplish the job by wain straining. When aspiring to make a glorious discovery in any walk of common knowledge, your foremost and only tool is patient waiting, leave veni-vidi-vici to Harry Potter and smug fuhrers.

To wait was all he had to do, which also is not as easy as it might seem. Any discovery, solution, right decision takes a good deal of waiting before they happen. You cannot find no solution, you have to let it find you. Which calls for waiting. At times it’s a life-long wait. It’s like a fisherman waiting for the catch to strike. A split sec back it was not there, now you see it, the solution. Your waiting was the bait, you can’t catch a a thing with a bare hook, right? Except for a ruined shoe or a gaping tin can. You have to wait and be ready till it dawns on you all of a sudden. Where from? Maybe from you waiting, I dunno…

A united brainstorming, huh? A bunch of freaks swapping crumbs of stuff they’ve read in this or that book of solutions that visited other guys, before them; a knot of kids fishing from the same raft; a band of Amero-Americans seated on beast skins in a tepee, whose forefathers had no idea they were American citizens before the sail ships pop up in search of routes to the fabulous treasures of India. They knew a few tricks to wait collectively for the right decision passing the stuffed pipe in the council sitting. Till it strikes…

Something from without drew V up from his meditative depths. Back to the the surface he came available again to the world around. What pulled him? It was an intent stare at V waking up from his wait, a call for the eye contact in the look full of kind understanding directed at him from the shiny, cute, brown eyes.

The puppy had no collar with the owner’s phone number or GPS tracker. Seeing that V was here at last, the dog dropped with his belly onto the walk, right opposite V, and smiled. Another stray vagabond just like he now, except for not having a few virtual wallets with crypt currencies stashed for a rainy day. The puppy stuck out his flat leaf of tongue enjoying the warm sun.

‘What’s your name, boy?’ To which there came a slight growl. ‘No? You’re a lady?’ A sonorous yap in agreement.

‘Sorry, girl, no offense intended. And the name is?’ The puppy uttered two whimpers.

‘Nice to meet you, Toto, I’m V. Are you hungry?’