Time was running out, inexorably, although the period set up by Don had not yet ticked away.

Inokenty did not feel like thinking in that particular direction, discouraged by a depressed, flypaper-like sticky state of mind that trapped him after the nightmares leaving multiple bruises all over his body as if kicked brutally. (Come on! They were not live mares kicking shit out of him!).

On the other hand, neither had he any desire to ponder on the nature of those marks or the mechanism of their popping up because of a headache (sticky as well) in the crown of his head (sic! another strangeness – the crown but not the back of the head!), which spot would not stand for the slightest touch.

Maya, discovering in the morning his wretched conditions, condemned their unknown source, whatever it be, and pitied him most emotionally before going out after some or another sort of crap from a drugstore to dissolve hematomas. Because in the bookstore where she worked at, there was also a shelf of medical books full of most crazy terms.

He stayed alone sharing his doubts with her apartment, silently: Was it possible at all to survive in the world where you can no more be sure of even Almighty ESC Button?

Or what if UF-1 even now, in spite of all probabilistic logic, was not dead again?

You cannot be too sure of such a fruit, moreover over-fertilized with that greenshit slime.

Some wiggly friend for you, huh?

However, of Parthos he remained sure intrepidly, UF-2 stays UF-2 despite any heat, were they even African cops.

To sum all that up, he decided to keep his thinking process deflected off any sorrowful contemplations, when Maya be back with that crap, and in the evening to go out with her to the theater and spend the last of piastres from the frock coat in his pocket or, rather, on the contrary, but it’s just that the fucking head hurts at an unusual spot.

True, he did not know if there was a theater in this city and, as it was, neither had he any idea about the city’s name. Nonetheless, he eschewed asking Maya, she might form an opinion that he was dumb in any respect although more than once he made it obvious that he was not.

No, Inokenty was not goofy, it’s just that after that away game in Mesoamerica (what was the name of that city? Athos then shouted back something like “Chechen’s Inn” or what?. But because of the scream-and-shouting fans Inokenty could not really hear and now his head was just, like, going asunder) thinking called for certain efforts to keep you concentrated to follow them, the thoughts.

Which added one more pro to his reckoning that it’s much better to go to the theater than to the park, where there again would be noise, squeals, shrieks of any goon kind, moreover, he never could stand for all those swings or merry-go-round, because of getting nauseated and seasick in even completely landlocked locations.

And ice cream you could eat at any cafe, but the circumstances of Chris’ death did leave a bitter after-taste in the form of allergy to the establishments for in-public uptake.

So a theater it was, moreover that weighing up other options seemed a too big strain for his thinking apparatus…

. . . . .

His and Maya's seats turned out to be next to the very barrier in a second floor box. There were also seats and spectators in the same box, yet those behaved not over noisy and, seated behind him, they did not block the view.

From up there they could see the whole orchestra.

Inokenty liked them, in part, even the cacophonous moment of tuning their instruments seemed somewhat congenial and depicting, with tolerable precision, his current mental situation. The flutes were especially nice, the sound much softer than by those piercing fifes in Chechen’s Inn.

The conductor also behaved in a civilized way compared to those... (ouch, fucking head!.) but at times he started fluttering his arms too much and then the orchestra also sounded too much.

There went a kinda warm-up for gymnasts, on the stage. The guys performed short runs, jumped, lifted each other in a mannerly way and no rubber balls whatsoever.

On the whole, Inokenty would even call the first part agreeable to his frame of mind, if not for that bitchy timpani…

When there started the intermission, he and Maya went to the buffet.

Most of the female audience looked askance from their decolletage frocks at Maya's sweater and jeans, but she did not give a bean about the ladies, because the present men looked at her more than at all those variously exposed tits in the necklines.

Among the male music lovers, Inokenty did not stand out too much by his frock coat, except for its color—shocking blue—as befits a junior officer in the British Navy of His Majesty George III, and he watched Maya’s ass with no less admiration than their, that is not like he liked their or theirs, which is neither here nor there, but that his and their admiration target which it was watched with... well, whatever…

Then Maya was approached by a friend, with one more low neckline to show off her beads, and off they went to chirp like morning birds around his hut in Island.

The tack to ornithological similitude made Inokenty somewhat sad and he went back to the box alone carrying away his sprouting melancholy... Not a chance to ever out-tweet the non-feathered chicks. Would feathering improve the situation? Well, a theater is not a kitchen to stage experiments of the sort. Anyway, Class of Aves are unsurpassable in a number, generally speaking, of respective approaches, if you think hard enough, while opinionated views to the contrary maintained by certain start-up soft-boiled egg-heads are too rare exceptions, fairly negligible, as a matter of fact…

So, on his way down the corridor to the stairs climbing up the second floor, Inokenty, having soundly founded impregnability of his position on this subject, leisurely strolled with his attention switched over to the white busts lined in a row on the right. Some of them missing not only arms but their shoulders too.

The fourth in their line of mutely motionless images surprised Inokenty by unexpected winking at him with the white marble eye. Taken aback, he also petrified for a closer inspection and determined that who else it was but UF-2!.

"Parthos! What the eff! It’s a hell of a challenge to recognize you. What's the outcome at our match with those Mesoamericans?"

"The skedaddler still gets the nerve to ask! The potent victory, of course!"

"Had a glorious revel?"

"Bet your butt! Everything in strict complying to their rituals. Where the Holy Book of Codified Rules states plain and clear: A player from the winning team to be decapitated."

"What for? It's not cricket!"

"Wanna discuss it with their priests?. You, as usual, faded in the woodwork, and the UF-1 was discarded by their high priestess Esma. 'Too greenshitty,' sez she, 'this here stiff.' And now you’ve got three tries to figure out: who of UltraFuckers got circumcised about his neck?"

"Why?!"

"In keeping with their special technology, they add rubber coating to the skull of a player from a particularly impressive team to make a lucky sports equipment. A black ball with a surprise filling. A kinda rabbit’s foot, you know."

"How come you’re here then?"

"As any other GI, buddy. On the AWOL, of course... Whoops! The MP popped up. I’d better split! And be easy with that Ctl-Alt-Delete short cut!."

Inokenty looked back, but could make out no military police patrol. Or any at all, for that matter…

However, UF-2 gave up winking at him and kept dumbly mum on his stand, so Inokenty, to avoid getting caught pants down—in a friendly talk to marble, some choice company indeed!—proceeded to the box and got seated in the same chair as before.

Soon Maya also came to say that this here Minnie they met in the buffet, though a complete fool, still has an aunt and tomorrow…

That moment the overture for the second part began to play…

They played too loudly again, and over again Inokenty closed his eyes painfully and, wincing in the inner dark, played with the information received from UF-2. Which undertaking served him a kinda distraction from the distress of being kicked and beaten up by a host of mares the night before.

The fingers of the left hand mechanically (and still in the darkness) typed the short-cut mentioned by Parthos, in the taut plush along the barrier top: Ctl-Alt-Delete…

His ear drums hardly survived the volley of relentless applause and thunderous cries of discordant "Hurrah!" A sting of piercing smartness deluged his closed eyes. He had to open them.

Both the box and the entire hall of the theater was veiled up, if not swaddled, with a bluish thick fog. Everyone around was smoking.

Spectators smoked in the boxes as well as those in the stalls.

Maya was smoking to the right from Inok... no! it's not Maya! Where's she?

A girl in a red scarf on her hair was smoking, instead of Maya, to the right from Inokenty.

Everybody smoked and clapped. Loudly. Inhumanly. Cruelly clapped they and smoked. Smoked all, both the conduc...

Hell no! The conductor was not there, neither were the musicians…

The timber platform spanning the orchestra pit was mounted with a long table. From behind it, the theater was faced by the line of people in tunics and army jackets except for one or two at the table ends in civilian neckties. Those also kept smoking.

A man with a thick mustache, smack bang in the middle of the jamboree table, ostensibly crushed his cigarette against the glass wall of the decanter put in front of him.

From out of his pocket, he produced another one, lit it up and waved the burning match nearby his ear so as to extinguish its flame.

Shouts of "Hurrah!" intensified.

Is that their conductor?

Above the stage, behind the backs of those sitting in the presidium, a wide band of red cloth stretched across the full width of the stage.

Bold white letters hollered in merciless yells:

"GREETINGS TO THE PARTICIPANTS OF THE THIRD CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST YOUTH INTERNATIONAL!"

A short man in a gray overcoat and cap crossed the stage behind the table, doffed it, the overcoat, and folded it into a cushion to sit down on the proscenium.

A notebook whipped up into his hands, where he started to jerkily enter some notes.

The unabating applause began to stumble, slow down, subside. Yet, the smoke grew thicker.

Inokenty remembered his chat-room friend Leopold, an advertising agent from Dublin, who once explained to him in a chat conversation that the sight of a writing person unavoidably attracts attention, even if the scribbler was not a chick.

This bald-headed actor there, below his box, did know how to sell himself, he surely had the tricks of the trade at his fingertips.

The scratch number performed, he rose and took the floor behind the rostrum to change the miss-en-scene so that only his bust above the necktie knot, remained in sight.

‘Com'gghids!’ exclaimed the minion of Melpomene with thickly guttural burr, and that very moment, despite the glued-on goatee and mustache, Inokenty recognized the bald crown of UF-2. The artful SOB went on another of his AWOL's!.

The cloth in the shoulder of the blue frock coat got clamped within the bunch of callused fingers of a labor-hardened hand stuck out of the sleeve in a leather jacket while the gnarly dome of the same man, the hand owner, topped with a visored cap, also of leather, with a hefty red star in the band, jutted above the buttoned up collar:

"Is this him?"’

"Ies!"’ replied a voice full of Georgian accent, from behind Inokenty. "I figward him from out the prezudum, eh! Dis herre White Guard bustarrd. In all dis whole tiatyr, only dis herre agent of the Entente no smokes!"

"Don’t worry, Lavrent Palych,” said the dickens in the leather jacket, “we’ll check this here hydra of imperialism."

‘...lea'gghn, lea'gghn, lea'gghn, and lea'gghn once again!’ urged on the burring tooter from beneath the box barrier.

The shocking blue fabric in the shoulder of the frock coat started to give in to the pull, ratcheted into the bulge of contracting fist.

"I’m fucked!" shakily formed the parting thought of Inokenty. His fingers clawed in desperate ramification of the the wide-spread Ctl-Alt-Delete shortcut into the barrier top…

There sounded a half-hearted clapping, uncertain, stifled, fading…

"No, I liked the first part better’, Maya said. ‘And you? Oyaa! What have you been caught on? Look! The shoulder seam burst asunder!"

* * *