It all will take approximately ten minutes. Only ten minutes which, probably, will become eternity. Almost like all those three hundred sixty five days have become.
Fingers flipped on a phone’s keyboard. Pom, pom, pom. And once again - pom, pom, pom.
A final step comes - unleashing a virus into the network. Ten … five seconds … done. Have I made it?
I turned around - this time myself - no one was still watching me. Or at least I greatly desired to believe so. And then I ran. Never know why - but for the first time in my entire life I desired to run there, where you really want it … to feel oneself free of the chains. A phone, which has successfully performed its duty, was thrown into the winter snow.
Some sort of indescribable void, a kind of emptiness suddenly overflowed me, having pressed down and squashed. Everything was done for now … last step has been made. A year of work - whether it’s much or little? Probably, it’s incomparably much to write some five thousand lines of code. Possibly, it’s incredibly little to once regain the opportunity to be free at last.
* * *
That was a wonderful winter - both warm and bright. Almost like the one several years before.
I was hailed. And the time I looked back I saw him - my familiar and close institute friend … a colleague by a way of life.
- Kostya, well met! Is that really you? I almost though that would probably never see you again.
- Hi, Pavel, I am glad to see you are well!
- Well, how’s your life going, how are you doing? Tell me something. Still professing a principle “the free coder choses future projects himself?” Aye? Still freelancing?
- Well, both yes and no. Started to work in a large corporation recently.
- H-m … whether it’s not that former Corporation, which … do you remember?
- Oh … now you are going to remind me that each second day, aye?
- Nay, what’s the reason now? Now everything is developing as we once dreamed of, right? All software is developed by free groups, while corporation live by marking it, along with technical support and distribution and … how do they call it … consulting activity? No, everything is right now. Probably the way it should be.
- Well, I hope that you are no more engaged with illegal activity, huh? Departed from dirty affairs, yeah?
- Pavel, listen, how do they say … “who remembers the old, who remembers the cheap, he shall never dig gold, will be stripped of the chip?” Ya? I am, you know, still capable of … infecting you with something. Here it’s for example, listen closely. Recently I was sent such a great joke over the GRC channel …
24.06.2011
The world on the horizon
That was disgusting. Nay, that was terrible. Only four hours after “officially legislatively approved dates of time of rest” has passed, and all shops have been closed. Not a single one from those necessary to him, worked so early … or late – whatever is proper to each one … Damn !
He needed one shop … just a single shop, trading the necessary stuff. All those twenty ones familiar to him, which he has flown by on flycar, “have been closed due to upcoming professional holiday of sexual minorities in accordance with the official decree of the capital’s mayor". All of them !
Damn !
Such legislative citizens … such angels. Wolves in the sheep skins. Three out of twenty of these downtown-shops traded dreamcatcher, nineteen out of twenty traded kayfan, ten out of twenty – lisben. It’s, of course, the informal statistics – according to official reports, contained in the central database of the State department, everything was clear. Crystal-clear. Too clear to be truth.
And this are those, who should in every possible way to “help and assist in every manner” of preservation of citizens’ health … wolves in sheep skins.
And yet that very dreamcatcher has been forbidden for application, manufacturing or any use in the collateral purposes in all state’s territory. The strongest possible drug, made about five years ago as a by-product of some super confidential research of scientific laboratories of Pharmatheuticals United, it was capable to change human’s brain completely. Not some weak hallucinogen – it completely changed person’s vision of his surroundings after the injection of only one milligram into the blood. It was, actually, nicknamed as such, “a dream catcher” – all deep layers of human’s sub consciousness were revived, ten, twenty, thirty years-old memory came to life – all in one instant, all like a raging stream … and this was even better than VR – for no additional equipment was necessary anymore, no electrodes … human’s brain could do everything – it was simply necessary to aid a little.
Who of us did not dream ? And dreams of how many did come to life ? This devil’s drug made this possibility absolute – and you have been living through all your twenty, thirty, or forty years in these several days … in the world of your illusions, though, but was this really important ? All your dreams came true – all those, provided by deep memory. And approximately a month later a human died – his brain was simply “burnt down”. The brain simply did not survived.
Really, that was a very fascinating death. To die, feeling with the rest of your fading consciousness, that you are happy – for you are fulfilled. For your dreams – here they are, all in front of you, – all came to life, and who the hell cares what sort of dreams were these. To die with a blissful smile on your face …
It was supposed to be given to dying people, whose chances of survival were equal to zero. But they have miscalculated. Two-three percent of the state’s population died of its usage annually – and they were not doomed people. Fifty percent of these ones were not even thirty years old …
And then they sounded the alarm. And then they have published their decrees. And then they have mobilized that Liberty Security State Police Department … late. Too late.
“The love has come – die, love, oh damn !”, - a phrase from recently seen interactive movie has emerged from sub consciousness. Yet this love lived on. And internal security service could no nothing.
It’s like a plague, like pestilence – it will not stop until almost all are left dead. And these were just the florets.
* * *
Almost an hour has passed since the moment of the begging of his searches – and he has not even found a single shop, trading in preparations, lowering level of testosterone, adrenaline and related hormones in blood – something, that could save his body when a radio channel’s video stream of information will be transmitted to his nejro-pulse helmet – information, of whose “content’s purity” he has ceased to dream a long time ago. To rescue his body at the very least … he had no more hopes of rescuing his soul.
And all of this is just by a holiday of sexual minorities.
How have you though it over … how predicted. Sexual minorities … oh, sure ! A real orgies will take place there, and not only those of minorities. And there have been no signs of any “contraceptive toolkit” for two years already after the publishing of resolution “Of the termination of distribution of contraceptives and preparations with purposes of increasing of birth rate in the country” of our oh-so-beloved president.