The Algorithm of Chaos

The upstart dare-devil aficionados, who still got the nerve to sign up (really rarely) did not last long.

No selfies any more at the get-togethers.

When the Magisters count dropped (ascended?) to 9 the camera eyes in their notebooks were safely plastered. Some especially wary cats spoke thru the Voice Changer Device with that dumb robotic voice, you know. Still dropped in tracks, VCD or no VCD, with all their 9 lives each because right now there are just 2, Bart and me. The showdown of the Last of Mob Monsters.

No ballot is needed neither VCD. No one will anyway believe that my squeaks of a squeezed squirrel is my natural voice, as for Bart he gets too much relish in his opulent baritone.

That’s why, in full conformance to MoM rules, here am I on a 3-week vacation and no longer, hiking in this wild mountainous backcountry. Not alone I am, a mob old-timer feels better in a company. My girlfriend Mahra makes me it.

She's a cute-looking chick though not too bright which makes her even better. It was not falling at first sight by us. But then it somehow turned into a stable relationship. Something about a year or so. Anyways, she keeps a more precise track of time.

And the year back I just though, "What the hell? Would do for a security blanket, huh?" A beauty is a beauty for 3 days at most if she stays at your home. For which reason we live separately thanks to the wise advice of that Irishman who knew a thing or two about beauties and stuff.

And I do need an additional blanket on this here trek, the mountains are cold at night.

I decided to walk up this river valley to watch those waterfalls traced in the Google satellite map. Not too big to attract swarms of tourist, which is a blessing.

But I couldn't hire a guide in the couple of farmsteads we visited on the way. Halfway thru the summer, the hicks are busy making hay in the tilted fields of nearby slopes. No one available, they only explained to follow the cow path along the left riverside.

The path got lost in the woods pretty soon and we just walked on. Path or no path, the left side stays the left.

So we went, me, the fucking pathfinder, and Mahra breathing heavily yet stomping bravely behind my back. Atagirl, sweetie!

The riverside had cliffs at some places jutting to close to the stream, those you had to skirt about by climbing up the slope, thick-wooded and steep. The river stayed down there roaring along, unseen thru the treetops in the descending wood.

And then there started the second tier of cliffs. Climbing father up the slope to bypass them as well seemed like too much of an uphill job. So I went on, keeping close to the bottom in their row rooted in the, like, way-over-50-degree slant that kept growing steeper with the progress.

The most deterring was the gritty layer blanketing the ground. A kinda fine scaly slug spilled down with hissing rustle from under your boots. Real nasty sound and scary sight, them those tiny rivulets of bitty dry grit rolling downward. And only inertia of moving on did not allow to stop and think, until the slant became too abrupt.

I stopped and turned about. Mahra stood in a couple of meters off me. Then the hiss increased and I slid down standing midst one more dry grit rivulet, wider than those before.

The downward sliding got momentum, my boots submerged into the grit-current.

I took the left tuck in this slug slalom so as to reach for the tree trunk stuck up from the almost sheer drop in the slope covered over with those gray scales too slippery to even stand on.

The trunk withstood the impact of my desperate clutch. There was no time to take a breather.

One more grit-fall whooshed by. I looked up thru the sweat pouring down my face.

Mahra was rushing past seated on her bottom. My left arm shoot out, our hands clasped. She stopped hanging on the tie of our hands over the dry grit stream tumbling down the wall.

She did not scream. The tense lips in the pallid face gave out no sound. The hiss was dying away down there. The half-dry trunk of the dead tree creaked and quivered.

She never screamed, but her mad eyes! What deafening freaked-out look stood in them!

Our hand-clasp was giving in slowly, slackening. The sweat-moist fingers slipping thru, past, away.

No screaming. All I could hear was that hollow clump, and the non-stop roar of the mountainous river rolling on.

After a while, I let my backpack drop down too, but kept by me the 10-meter length of a light sturdy rope…

She lay face-down in a meter-wide stretch of backwater rimmed with current-smoothed rocks, placid spot, no deeper than a couple of inches. The hump of her backpack stayed above the water, safely dry.

I scooped out it her iPhone to leave the body anonymous. Before the hicks’ labors be over—if ever—the woods gulpers would care about making her one with Nature.

Then I collected my backpack a couple meters off. Thoroughly drenched…

A week later, I raised the lid of my notebook. And put her iPhone next to it.

Unbelievable, yet hacking her password took 3 days. It was neither her name nor the birth date, nor the name of her Prince Charming she played mamas-and-papas at high school but some hard nut to crack.

Well, not much of interesting stuff in that iPhone, except for Passwords file in the Documents folder…

To log in MoM I typed her user-name and password."Hi, Bart!" affably greeted me MoM interface.

I attached Squid and scribbled in half-broken spaghetti:

"Hi, my name is V and I am a murderer."

A minute later there popped up capitalized response,"GOT IT".

Whatever future awaits this here squirrel, it would be free of boredom.

Bet your farm…”

* * *

26

’Pull up at the corner,’ said V to the taxi driver. He paid and stepped out onto the sidewalk then crossed it to assume the attitude of a loafer idling his time.

The passers-by thronged along the wide sidewalk, the infinite variety of their rags and faces afloat in the pacing waves, on, and on, and on. They walked, in twos and threes, and all alone, rubbing their shoulders with other passers-by. Talking business, chatting with their gossips or phones, some talking to themselves, for that was a usual everyday crowd, all kinds of sorts, walking on. On they were carrying their casual-wear masks of maps wrought to be put on in public, masks accustomed to, appropriate for the usage when you’re a particle in the stream flowing by V leaned onto the wall behind his back unobtrusive, both he and the wall, no obstacle for their counter-directed currents. Because he was a good-humored sociopath as we, hopefully, have mentioned or learn it right now, if we have not.

Yep. There he stood calmly waiting for her to appear, in his attitude of a character from an old naive romance or a movie, forgotten, black-and-white, would wait for the sail to emerge up in the distant horizon.

Was he in love? Shut up, dude! The word is tabooed in the current millennium. Well, he, most definitely liked her (much more effing acceptable, huh?). He liked her and waited for her to pass by this corner because he knew exactly where she goes to and, off any particular business, he wanted to walk by her side the final leg to her destination, to stroll along in the same wave of the streaming crowd.

Yes! I told you, huh? He now discerns her figure at about a quarter-block off. She walks along wearing her personal mask for public occasions (the world is just a theater, eh?), the countenance dimmed by the distance like the features in the visage of the earth’s satellite.

He liked and admired the intent in her purposeful strides and though her legs per se were screened by the preceding waves of pedestrians, he still knew they were classy, the legs were. Even though he couldn’t make out yet if she had jeans or a skirt on. He just knew it. Patience, V, all comes at the rightest moment.

’Hi, Leya! Making for the common, I gather? Mind a modest companion?;

’O, hi, V! How are you?’

(Yes, it’s a skirt and a lovely one, not a mini yet her knees, these heartbreaker knees are decently visible.)

’Fine, thank you. Looking for a means to kill a spare hour, you know’.