The nene is the Hawaiian goose, a symbol of the state and the islands’ business card. It’s everywhere here: on shop displays, on cards, on advertisement booklets and posters. I couldn’t quite imagine this goose being flexible so I headed to that massage room full of curiosity and hoping to get cured of my ailments.
A pleasant-looking but very plump Hawaiian woman with the indispensable floral lei necklace on her high breasts greeted me. She asked me for a long time what kind of massage I was interested in, but in the end just spread her arms helplessly.
‘I’m sorry, mister, but we can’t help you. We don’t cure this kind of issue.’
‘And how long did you have these pains for?’ said a pleasant female voice behind me.
I turned round and saw a slim, you could even say thin, girl of about twenty-five, with huge eyes and prominent cheekbones. She didn’t look like Hawaiian or hapa. In fact, she looked entirely European, with white skin, which was odd considering the local sun.
She was wearing a red dress with a deep neckline that showed off her figure well. I only looked at the girl for a few seconds – but judging from her posture and the way she held her head, I guessed she was a gymnast or a dancer.
Our conversation lasted barely half a minute. I said that in the past there was no pain, and she, with a very serious expression which looked quite comical, told me that things like this happen with a change of climate. It is linked to a cessation of circulation of earth energy in the legs, because I was torn from the energy system my body is used to. But a few yoga sessions under her direction and a relaxing massage with special ‘Parachute’ oil would solve my problems.
I knew quite a bit about yoga, but I’d never tried to do even the simplest exercises, suspecting that you should really have a competent instructor.
And it looked like fate had sent me such a person in this delicate girl with big eyes. I had no worries she was a spy sent from the agency or the CIA, because I ended up in Flexible Nene by accident, and not a single special service in the world, including Mossad and the FSB, would’ve been able to predict that. And of course I really wasn’t going to tie my life to this masseuse! We just agreed on the first session, I paid an advance payment to the Hawaiian and then I asked the girl her name.
‘Middy.’ She offered me her hand. I introduced myself, gently squeezed her warm thin fingers – and got struck by a buzz of electricity.
She was emitting such energy that I at once began to sweat as if it was fifty outside not twenty-five. A wave of heat rolled through me, making me blush to the roots of my hair.
Middy noticed and smiling said:
“Your Kundalini is being restrained. Your Sushumna is blocked, and the seventh chakra in the top of your head is not receiving internal fire. But you have a good karma and great potential, Mr. Kold.’
‘Joshua,’ I said looking in her eyes. ‘OK?’
It happens. You meet a completely strange person, talk to them for a few minutes and understand that this meeting has been arranged by the higher powers. This person becomes close to you.
That is exactly what’s happened with Middy. Just a week later we went together to Kauai Island to see my new house and a month later she left her job at Flexible Nene and moved to my place.
…It was an odd bond. During the day I worked, spending six or seven hours at my computer. In the evening I learned the basics of yoga. During the night, I burned in the flame of Middy’s love. Oh that girl, who had been studying yoga for ten years, can love like no other! And during my rare hours alone I was improving my algorithm, trying to exclude all unwanted or even fatal surprises.
Mostly, I was selecting my ‘agents of influence’ through which I was planning to publish the materials to expose the octopus.
Of course, my first and main candidate might have been Cassandzhi and his Mikiliks platform, but the sad fate of Banning persuaded me to reject this option. I couldn’t take the risk, so I didn’t even consider whether it all happened accidentally or whether Banning had become the victim of a very well thought-out provocation.
After studying a lot of materials and newspaper articles, I chose Greywold, attracted by his reputation as a socialist and his anti-system sensibilities.
‘Indeed,’ I thought, ‘A man is living in the jungle in Brazil, in a huge bungalow over a waterfall. He swims every morning in a mountain lake, walks out with his nine dogs and two red cats, while a parrot and a few lovers are waiting for him at home. There’s not a single security guard. And yet he publishes incriminating material which hurt the careers of more than one politician… Surely, he will gladly take a role of the octopus’ denouncer, and the journalist’s reward will be enough.’
I wrote a careful letter to Greywold and sent it using a closed channel with encrypted text.
There was no answer. I waited in vain for almost a month until I realised that this kind of method will not work with someone like Greywold. He thought too much of himself and his place in the world of information battles to pay attention to anonymous messages. I had to look for other ways. That is when I thought about Boytras.
Of course, Boytras was a heroic woman.
She had filmed five completely anti-system documentaries, including ‘The Oath’ – about the horrible fate of the Guantanamo prisoner Salim Hadam. For that she was chased and harassed across the world and searched in airports, as they attempted to compromise her and even kill her a couple of times. But Boytras went on fighting. She was like a small but toothy seahorse, which bravely attacks the octopus’s tentacles.
And she replied to me!
Then the algorithm went into action, and soon Middy and I were on our way to Hong Kong – as if for a trip. I still feel very guilty that I used Middy as a cover. From outside the situation looked very simple: a couple in love are flying to see Asia’s economic wonder and have fun. Middy, of course, had no idea I had planned a meeting in Hong Kong with Boytras and Greywold.
The Hotel Mira, where I’d booked a double room in advance, looked from outside like a super-modern tomb of Chinese emperors – firm lines, tinted glass, dark polished stone and sterile cleanliness.
Our room was wonderful and, having given the bed what it deserved, Middy and I separated for a while. She needed to top up her stock of eastern incenses, and there was a whole shopping district in Hong Kong where the materials of various esoteric practices were sold.
I stayed in the room with the excuse that I had some urgent work to do. To be frank, I was a little scared to tease the geese. Outside the hotel, I could’ve easily fallen in a trap. Anyway, I can’t say I find modern Chinese cities like Hong Kong or Shanghai that pleasant for a stroll.
Maybe that is because I see China – the modern China, the PRC – without any piety or illusions. This is a totalitarian state with a quite specific socio-economic system and a strange ideology. They have their own special Big Brother and even when in other countries, Chinese people are still terribly frightened by it.
There were a few boys and girls from the PRC studying in my college – and they never went out anywhere, never took part in anything, not in pp fax wars, not in parties, because they were afraid that when they go back to their homeland, it will be known that they were spending time not studying but having fun.
Yet whatever the modern realities are, China has strength, power and incredible prospects. It seems like there are no heights which a modest Chinese genius, multiplied by Asian hard work and Eastern dedication, cannot reach, or won’t reach in the near future.
‘Showcase capitalism’, built in China, has become effective and successful because of the local mentality. When studying Taoism, Confucianism, and various Buddhist practices still used by the Chinese, I was always amazed how they managed to refract these moral and sometimes highly moral teachings into their social consciousness and even married Marx’s doctrine with the philosophy of Confucius.