Сергей Николаевич Огольцов
The Algorithm of Chaos
You can do writing in different ways – sober, drunken, giving free reign to your loco-motion reflexes, and etc…
(*The user of LMR, the third from the above mentioned methods, should equip themselves with a couple of ball pens and a pack of copy paper (A4, 500 sheets per pack) and start writing without watching what they, actually, write. Neither plot nor story line, nor characters’ names are needed. All the details are decided by the skeletal-muscle parts of the author whose mission during the creative act is to bring themselves to and hold on in the state of ‘automatism’ which, by the way, is the name of this particular method.
In the morning, the loco-writer checks the thing produced while they kept the pen replacing the filled-out sheets, and choo-chooing on, swoony and enthusiastic.
Well, well, well, let’s see what I created this night? Oh-oh! What the… Well, I never… I be damned if it’s not… Yes! It’s the fourth volume of War and Peace written just overnight! O, fuck! The fourth volume for the fourth time in one month!
No wonder, and no use hitting the roof when you let the outflow gush on its own accord, uncontrolled, like, AI throwing together programs for its private entertainment.
Up front, I have to disenchant you, the trick described here is not my choice, I prefer “in absentia” digging. The idea was picked up from a prominent Soviet author from the period of stagnation in the USSR.
So he instructed (I don’t divulge his name for human reasons but those interested indeed might contact me by email), ‘It was Chekhov to tutor me. I opened a book of his stories, and began copying, line after line’.
Even though Chekhov failed to steel him into Chairman of Writers Union of the USSR (not coach’s fault obviously, the trainee should have licked himself into shape under tutelage of Comrade Sholokhov) still and yet the guy got trained enough for the position of Manager of War Prose Department.
Weird as it seems, we still can see a scintilla of sense in his reasoning – when you follow someone’s back very closely, step after step, the trick decreases the wind slaps into your own mug…
And now the last fig leaf falls off my winding perambulations, it only remains to confess who namely was chosen for the paragon of artisan while producing the work that follows after concluding this here prologue which I still cannot shut up with.
The tricky subtlety of the question in no way succumbs to its importance, however, one more detour.
A line-by-line copying author’s text (who’s a worthy candidate? naive gull, you!) is for dummies. I prefer translating. But over again: who from? After Joyce and Pynchon to pick up some 50 Shades of Murky Shit? The like tender-mindedness doesn’t stand to reason…
Well, on the second thought, a possible undertaking, hypothetically, the Shades, yet practically I’ll doze off halfway thru any moony-wooly para…graph… (Yawning.)
Damn, enough! I choose this one. The Algorithm of Chaos published online quite recently and by a trustworthy writer, in my personal estimation.
And here we reach the happy end of the prologue, congratulations to the survivors in the trek. You’ve shown you mettle with flying colors, guys!
2023-05-03
1
It’s not an epigraph but the uttermost warning to the over-pedantic eggheads trained to sniff out anachronisms, stylistic lacunae, regressions from the sacrosanct spelling rules and other trifles like the use of anti-normative 4-(xyz)-letter lexicon.
‘And you, Most Esteemed High-Muckety-Muck, would you kindly shut the book so as to once again peruse the title, please? Think it over before coming back if you’re, nonetheless, ready to put at risk the sanity you’ll need for getting on in your accustomed world so far away from our day to day life…’
His viber bleated its antediluvian yawps because V didn’t give an eff about tweaking the factory settings in his electronic devices and/or household appliances. The manufacturer’s vanilla defaults, staple chow from the microwave, amiable blondes were just fine to go on with, why to ask for more?He’s not racing after the mainstream frills in things of common usage. The simpler, the better was his long-standing life motto. He’s not a nitpicker to wrinkle his nose in the attitude of a seasoned geek because of the already mentioned eff not given about the cutting-edge trends and opinions entertained in the crowd of enlightened mudaks.
Not that V pulled for return to Nature – back to caves, and stone axes drastically simplifying your views and values. Not yet. He simply kept away from buying selfie sticks, and scalp ticklers, and stuff like, well, you know. And even though not affiliated with any branch of the cult of Simpletonians maintaining that Simplicity is the ticket to your peace of mind, deep in his heart he agreed to their Ace argument—you certainly would watch a windmill up the hill on a breezeless day much longer than a remote control on your lap during a sudden blackout. Simple machines do have some charm about them, if you think of it.
However, opening paragraphs are not the right spot to pump up sermonizing. It’s a discourtesy towards unsuspecting reader in their expectation for the initial rush of adrenaline by the sixth line, at most, thru their system… Now, V, reach for your non-tweaked stone ax! Do something! Act, V, act!
He grabbed his Samsung from its prostrate position upon the desktop to slightly tap the “answer” sign. Huge pan-cake of a map diffused over the screen whose edges cut away the caller’s ears. The operation was counted for by the contact who, in a well-trained manner, kept the phone too close to his phiz, like, it was a hanky for him to sneeze out his cold picked up a day before, the very next sec, ‘Apch!. Aapch!. CHWHOO! This motherfuc…Apch!. Aapch!.,' and so on.
However, in a perfect state of health, the pan-cake-faced guy was, as always. Keeping the phone too close to the map was just a simple trick of his to hide from contacts the bumped up protuberances of his ears.
So a simple-minded gull for you. Blessed with such a generous handout from Mother Nature he long ago could become a megastar in movie comedies. Yeah. Cooler than Mr. Bim. Or Bum? But certainly not Bam… though, on the second thought… hmm.
Yep. V obviously has ditched film-going for a considerable stretch already.
“Shame on you, Mr. Moron! Still stuck in your quaggy complexes? Scumbag teener! With your God-sent edges you should by now be running for the second-term presidency! What a compelling image! The ears so attentive, pleasantly round, warmhearted ears they are! A catchy slogan for your preelection picture, like, “We can hear the voice of the people!”, and no dirty tricks with ballot boxes at polling stations, like end-day blackouts, are needed.”
None of that was told by V to the face in Samsung, he merely thought it to it. Healing anyone’s psychic traumas caused by agonizing procrastinations with getting rid of their virginity within the framework of society demands to be quick at it and become a clear-cut market-target pruned properly, and compliant with the political dictate to succumb and uphold the all-accepting dumbness was not his job. Even less wanted V act the voice crying in the wilderness. That’s why he simply said:
‘Hi, Lex. What’s up?’
‘Hello, V. Still toiling for half a zilch? Wish it left you before you got munched to mash, that your silly hope to rip a lincoln off theprozza.com. Typing a ton of hooey per day for a goose egg in the buff, huh? Forget it, bro! They fork it out only to their kin mobsters, alphabetically, while you’re no relative there, not in the least degree. Don’t cut the figure of a dark horse knocking at the Ku Klux Klan’s door.’
‘For prozzas I care no more than for pizzas, Mein Herr. They’re a simple tool for whetting my skills and personal style. A propos, their Challenge of Month is a good spur to get over the damn writer’s block, “Half kingdom for a plot! All topics are sucked out dry. A-fucking-priori!”. While there, you don’t strain yourself, “Hi, scribblers, here the theme for you. Saddle up!” The guy collecting more likes and reposts gets $100. Pretty simple.’
‘Quit screwing both the keyboard and yourself. How much green have you corralled from those monthly literary races so far? Come on! You spend on doping more than the prize itself!’
‘Twice I was in the group of 20 in the lead.’
‘Wow! Attaboy! With 20 racers flagged off at the CoM start, right?’
‘See, the audience there is different. They think along the lines fixed by Disneyland and Steven King, the slightest step aside from the deep-seated rut and their emergency brake gets fired off. Every single like I glean there is a beam of hope for us to understand each other over the barriers of stereotypes dividing our nations by the endemic peculiarities in our respective debilities.’
‘Here! Here! Aye and yep! Over again! Seems like the patients at funny farms for their privileged cuckoos are allowed to frisk in grazing grounds of the Internet. Hence the splash dung of the couple of inadequate likes you’ve raked up so far. Or, maybe, from rehabs. Hold out, bro! Our objective is not money but the principle, right? And then, what is a piece of paper $100 worth? It won’t burden your pocket for any longer that the first maverick blonde in you way, will it not?’
‘Shut the fountain of your sermon, Padre.’
’Well, in short, there’s a friendly offer to you, V. Some real something. Nobody would ditch the suggested deal even convulsing in St. Vitus dance, V. It’s a bonanza, some fucking oil fields. BP and Shell would tear hair from each other scrambling for the exclusive right to hummer lullabies on you 8 nights a week. Improvising jazz, follow me?
‘What?! Drilling their wells in my private parts? Screw you, oilman!’’
‘Come on, man. I was purely metaphorical… What matters is that such a chance turns up once in a life-span.’
‘A-ha! I dig it now. You’ve sampled a shot of metaphorical shit from that bonanza and completely forgotten that I’m straight.’
‘Since when?’
‘I see. The stuff’s been way too strong for you. Call me tomorrow after you’re back from the strawberry fields.’
‘Wait-wait-wait! I mean business!’
‘Then talk business instead of balling it up with goofy drivel of an upstart pimp.’
‘Well, look… There’s some stuff that’ll make you famous, V. Wanna be a celebrity like Joyce or Pynchon, or Hemingway?.’
‘The third guy from you’ve just mentioned. Who? Again?’
‘Hemingway? I be damned if I know. My ex-girlfriend was once a month drenching his paperback with an outpour of tears.’
‘Girls and books? Things incompatible. You’re still not quite steady on your pins. Moreover, the mankind en masse have given books up… So you felt jealous and memorized the guy’s name?’
‘A girl from the hinterland might very well keep an extra Ace or two up her sleeve, believe me, buddy. Anyway… I’ve got a big file whose content will shatter the world in three days at most. The hot thing is only waiting for a lover boy to edit, sign it with his name, and become famous overnight. How’s the perspective, huh?’
‘OK, I’m in. Just for the sake of saving old man Lex from OD. Drop the file to my email box.’
‘Nah, handsome. Forget it, I don’t have anything to do with emails.’
Which is absolutely true. For some time already Lex has grown too concerned about his personal data privacy and stuff, you know. His case acquires symptoms of an unhealthy aggravation, more and more so. The guy got hopelessly stranded, nautically speaking. You might one whole week wheedle of him something as innocent as, ‘Hi. Catch the link: http://sweet-granny/bedtime-tales-for-grand-kids/introduction.html,' before he freak-and-feints out at the last moment. Maybe, because of his employment at some hazy firm working for the government.
A row of squat buildings behind the steely mesh of high fencing, the guarded iron gate, thick growth of surveillance cams, grim Rottweilers walking their trainers three times a day about the outside parking lot.
The best way to make Lex shut his non-stop jingling yack is to ask how was his work today and—abruptly—you’re blessed with a ten-minute break, as a minimum. Not a peep. Lex all in thoughts. Full of gloom, shut up, introvert.
Seems, like the fate of that Jewish couple impressed him deeply, nice people also worked for the government before were roasted in the chair for leaking the know-how and formulas of A-bomb to the Soviets.
‘Take it easy, I was kidding. Don’t wet your bed tonight. There-there, kid. Say, what is your want?’
’How about 6 pm at Uncle Tom’s Cabin? Suits you?.
A guy needs a heart of stone to say “nah!”to their old-time buddy. Except, maybe, for that nymphomaniacal slut on the throne of the Russian Empire. In her estimation it were your enemies and not friends to be hold close to your bosom which attitude let you feel the slightest movement of their souls and thought and whatever else would spring up.
Though cunning, foolish was the bitch. It’s your friends who you should keep your eye on, 24/7. It’s they who know your weak spots better than even you yourself. They will not miss, their stab would be smack into, precise and to the hilt.
O! Brutus! And you too…
Some goofy gander, ain’t it? Your friends are the best at croaking you. Rest in peace, stupid asshole.
‘By me, it’s okay,' said V.
* * *
2
(Notwithstanding the establishment’s name, stay assured that no one has ever spotted any Uncle Tom about. None of the trust-worthy old-timer patrons would recollect him if you ask. Still and yet, hardly any one was made nervous or otherwise uncomfortable by the fact because his nephews visited the place not frequenter or else incognito. You never can tell.
Ma'am Harriet runs the establishment, an oldie but bitchy shrew with the response-time reflexes of a rattle snake that won her a profound veneration in the neighborhood. No gunslinger from the Most Wild West will hold a candle to her briskness. Although instead of a weighty Colt the old lady keeps in the holster of lace-trimmed patch pocket in her apron a tube of lacrimator spray. That her preference demoted a baseball bat to the rank of a ludicrous old-fashioned exhibit. (The survey undertaken lately by Forbez Monthly claims that barmen in the Middle-Wild West connected in some or other way to the Russian Mafia prefer a gorodki stick for the purpose.)
Additionally, her knack canceled expenses for a bouncer on the premises—with consoling laments, this black mamba would lead the tamed hooligan (his ear pinched with her thumb and index finger) to the exit and show him the nearest fire hydrant, in a God-sent Samaritan grandma’s manner as if he could see a goddamn thing thru the tears and mucus slopped all over his mug.
And then she’d creep to the kitchen, that cape cobra, like, to wash up her hands for hygienic considerations, yet actually to collect the usual share of sycophantic compliments from her subordinate employees…
In the daytime Uncle Tom’s Cabin turns a cozy family diner to keep up with that kinsfolklike varnish in its name and at night hours it is a restaurant of a fully deserved repute because of the excellent food by Ma’am Harriet’s kitchen (eluding the slippery ground of any racist shade—we are over and above propagating the slightest extremes—it should be mentioned that, yes, the chef’s skin color conformed to the environs because it was Uncle Tom’s Cabin, after all).
Thus, the superb grub multiplied by that pleasantly mellow atmosphere in the style of an old-time estate in one of the Confederation States, say, Virginia, Alabama or, maybe, Georgia which is on my mind… though not in that enraged roar by Charles Ray but in the classical form of this number composed back in 1930 (which in about twenty+ years became the Song of the Year), the way it was sung in 50s by the vocalist at the band of the Gypsy virtuoso guitarist Django, nicknamed Sultan, well, you know what I’m about, so don’t miss visiting the eatery even though the old hag with her assault spray tube pays me not one red cent for the advertising. No, Sir, nothing exept a cup of tea once in a blue moon, just tea without pastry, that old stingy bellicose biped reptile.)
V sat down in the rearmost stall and leaned onto the padded back of the double seat in the attitude of serene repose. His right arm stretched out over the slightly convex protrusion run along the seat’s backtop buffed in the gleaming skin the color of… well, the skin color also suited the room’s decor and feel.
Fortunately for those who too soon get weary with the easy flow of relaxed descriptions like the introductory paragraphs in the current chapter, Lex’ plump frame showed up thru the entrance door. Good timing…
His ample jowl spread widely out the club corners of his shirt. The spruce dinner jacket taken off and spread over or rather hung onto his left shoulder draped the left half of Lex’ torso. Yes, hanging it was and with certain a dare-devilish cheek to it too—no safety rigging at all while the well-rounded shoulder had no hooks to clutch at. It takes a desperado jacket to choose such a brash yet risky position.
On the other hand, hanging in so unorthodox a way filled the clothing item in question with a visible spirit of reckless laxness, when watched from aside, which conveyed to Lex’ voluminous roundness a hint at potential erectable standing. Maybe. In case it were needed.
On the whole, he cut a fine picture, like a hussar of the Czarist Army in their parade uniform tunic which was donned in just one sleeve, leaving the second one to freely dangle about. Every commissioned officer shoved his arm into one and the same sleeve, even if you were a left-handed hussar. No excuse would do. The elite troops should keep to the uniform regulations.
However, this here gutsy Lex left all the hussars far behind letting both his jacket sleeves empty, besides, he had no mustache so dear to heart of any cavalryman or pedestrian of a highwayman disposition…
‘Some intriguing puzzle is,' announced Lex, who managed to ferry his jacket to the stall occupied by V, and drop it on the opposite back whose seat he collapsed into, close by (next to his dinner jacket, for those who joined us right now), ’ why you, Pretty Boys, are so predictable, eh? Nearing the Cabin I knew that you’d be sitting in the corner. Does not matter which—right or left—a corner remains corner. But why?’
‘To give the commoners a chance to gape and admire our nifty appearance, maybe,’ suggested V.
‘So splendidly simple! You’ve ditched my elaborate theory that you keep to it as a vantage foxhole to keep in check possible startups. Some Kid from Kenosha, you know, who pops up to benchmark how swift you are at drawing your piece. Can’t that be why?’
‘The question “why?” opens the floodgate for trigazillions of theories each of which might be plausible to a certain extent,' responded V dully like a pedagogue dead bored with repeating the same hooey for dummies.
‘O! You don’t say so! What a nightmare! Now, back from the deluge to the file I stole taking advantage of my position at the Firm. On the whole, it’s a kinda collective log…’
‘Shut up! Got domed with a brick from the roof? What sputter is this? You drunk or something? But if I’m wired? Mark well – all you say now might be used against you and distress your ass bitterly.’
Lex shook his head in disdain.
‘Forget that deprecated shit, dandy. Recordings do not count now were it even lie-detector-backed sincere confessions of the repentant SOB, thanks to the non-stop scientific achievements. Nowadays, my lawyer would prove easily it’s a recording of my innocent prank. Moreover, you have nothing but my words and, even though the voice is also my, where is the evidence of the malicious intent?
Wake up and get your rocks off! We live in the times of 2-step-verification. No court would pick up a case based on mere words without well documented thoughts of the perpetrator planning the misdeed or thought by them while doing it.
So, honey, just action without the 2-s-V is of no count any more. Were you even caught with a smoking gun over the body riddled in tatters or with your pants down before a bevy of kindergarten kids. Whatever. You might have easily been a victim to puppeteering, they set you up by means of retroactive manipulation of causality. Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen. It was a mean trick by the great-grand kids of your sibling sister. They revenged your not giving that fool, your sister, a candy bar when she was three. She cried about the deprivation on a video which those posterity brats would find in the attic of their great-grandma. Of all that you were completely unaware while performing actions you had been manipulated into.
Ya dig how the land lays now, eh? Crime is only what slips thru 2-s-V.’
‘Ah, I see. If they hack my email box where you call me to put President on ice but they can’t present the record of your frivolous thought, like, ‘Why not sending this trash to V?,' you are immune and sinless as the Holy Virgin?’
‘Attaboy! Exactly! My nose stays as clean as that of a 20-year-old nepo baby of a billionaire running a multinational corporation. And let the hackers fuck each other’s ass in your email-box. Pardon my unorthodox lexica.’
‘That’s why you shy sending the file to me?’
‘Clear as day. The file in your box plus a plain record of my thought while sending it makes me utterly vulnerable to incrimination.’
‘Record of your thought? Are there any pills to mitigate the alcoholic delirium, I wonder?’
‘Man, that’s what I’m doing at my workplace. Not pills I mean but thought recording. Ever heard anything about the noosphere?’
‘?’
‘In addition to the athmo- and stratosphere the eggheads have turned out one more – the noosphere. The thing consists of thoughts ever thought by those capable of thinking. Any thought, however secret and hidden, flits there openly, like radio signals. But it’s a lame analogy because a radio signal tends to fade and die away while a thought becomes a part to the noosphere forever and a day. Ineffaceable. Indestructible. Undisguised. True, the technology is not developed to the full potential as of yet, however, with the threshold overstepped the rest is just the question of time. Theoretically, you’re able to zero on in and read the thoughts of Leonardo da Vinci while he was doing his Mona Lisa.’
‘How about the thoughts of your dad at the moment of spilling you out in the crowd of your doubles, obviously not as zippy, spermatozoids?’
‘A problem of a higher level. You have to sieve his contemplation out from those by other males in the like phase, and by bigger apes too both in zoos and in the wild—the shifty bastards conceal their wit so as no to get harnessed into the mutual labor efforts. They’re all alike, the orgasmic thoughts of men for the last five million years wrapping the planet with innumerable layers, reaching the altitude of the Everest. You certainly will need assistance of AI yet, in principle, the problem looks rather trivial.’
‘Bullshit! The legends, myths, and fairy tales by a group of anonymous alcoholics in a marathon session!’
‘A well-grounded heat, yours is. The idea looks as weired as mobile communication would seem to Chinguiz-khan’s granny. Yet the public is readily trained to never give a bean. One more wrapper around the planet? So what? Aren’t we taught about the atmosphere containing the oxygen atoms? Have you ever seen an oxygen atom? Nope. Still you use them for breathing. Noosphere? Just an immense bulk of thoughts of any kind both precisely defined, and laxly dropped halfway, and lost and popped up again…’
‘They are really squeezed in there, ain’t they?’
‘In the head?’
‘No, in your announced noosphere. The thoughts must have been flagged off by the incantation “Let be light!” and since then there’ve been thought up such a magnitude of thoughts that all the ware-houses, dumps, and canyons should get inundated by the surface in rising deluge.’
‘Looks like it started dawning on you, good friend, which is a welcome news, yet you still apply the obsolete square-nested approach. Of course, it might seem tight for all kinds of thoughts starting with the “Where’s mom? I wanna tit, and pee, and poop!” up to the “Damn nurse! I need the bedpan! Now I’ll wet the pajamas to spite her!”. They are born to never disappear, millions upon billions thoughts every moment, wreathing, meandering, swiping thru each other. The buggers don’t give an eff about the grim warning by Malthus.
A-and there is a well substantiated suspicion that any living thing is capable of thinking, from the unicellular to stalagmites. Another host of contributors… The good news is they are intangible, floating thru one another, anyone’s thought withing whoever else’s thought. Just like radio waves do or maverick quant effluence and so forth doo-doo that no normal dude can ever understand. Do you follow, student? Beware, I am strict and demand details at the term examination’.
‘As long as they are so intangible, I don’t care about their Gulf Streams and Maelstroms made up of immaterial matryoshkas sitting in each other or wherever they hang out.’
‘Everywhere, buddy! Everywhere – in you, in me, in this here table. Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, thoughts…’
‘You’ve screwed the cite, “Words, words, words, words…”, says Hamlet’.
‘Words are not for storage. They’re too fragile, unstable, often broken, forgotten, lost irretrievably. Thoughts are another kettle of fish, they are always there. Accruing parts in the noosphere’.
‘Thanks for your entertaining tale, yet as an inveterate mountaineer I can’t believe a thing without grabbing it first’.
‘How many times have you groped a radio wave?'
‘Somehow missed the experience. Yet I can switch on the receiver thrown together by my Dad in the past millennium and listen to the weathercast’.
‘The announcer reads the forecast and you, piehole open, believe in the maneuvers of the clouds which you cannot grab. By the by, some guys earn a good living from thought reading’.
‘Come on! No medium has ever managed to cheat the guys from AIP neither to pass SPR or ASSAP checks’.
‘Who talks of mediums? I meant the guys who work with me in the Firm. Turning the knobs to tune to a thought in the noosphere. Easy as cake’.
‘A kinda radio receiver?’
‘A sort of’.
V gave his pal a closer look. To give out such a yarn you should be pretty high. But no echo of pipe dreams in his eyes, neither the purplish circles about them, and none of the uncontrolled sipping whiffs at nothing. The guy broadcasts not from under influence. Hmm. And leaves no loose ends, a kinda Second Coming of Isaac Newton for you’.
‘Okay,' began V thoughtfully, ‘if for a split second we suppose all this blither to be not a sham spilled by hostile aliens from Tau Ceti as a mock Trojan Horse, then I can’t even remotely see how…’
‘But are you ready to hand over twenty years of your precious life to see closer yet dimly?’ interrupted Lex. ‘The learn curve is pretty steep. Some nutty field of science. And all of that fundamental brainbreaker is based on a certain Algorithm of Chaos. Which is about all I know’.
