Status the Eighth

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THE HAPPIEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD

The happy start is better than the happy end.

While he was jogging, @RoughMac felt pressure in his chest and shortage of breath. He was running through the mist and slight half-darkness, following the edge of a canal, full of dirty, stale, bad-smelling water. Grass still icy and frosty, was deep green in color and crisp, while it was crackling and rustling under his feet. In order to reach the first row of the village houses, he needed to run a couple of kilometers yet, but more and more he felt he was short of breath. Having entirely lost his power to breathe the air in, he stopped and pressed his chest. Suddenly he became aware that he was dying. He started thrashing with his hands in an uncontrolled way, and realized he was getting up in his bed. Nevertheless, he was sure that he was not going to survive a heart attack, which struck him suddenly, while he was in deep dream. It lasted for a couple of seconds, and then he began to breathe again, being lucky it wasn’t a cardiac arrest, but a panic attack or sleep apnea.

Finally having opened his eyes, he saw a gigantic creature hidden in the half-darkness, which straddled him over and pressurized his chest, with such a force that it seemed, it wanted to tear it apart, and pull his heart out. A man was half-naked, his muscles so strong that #Mac’s hands, while spontaneously trying to defend himself, didn’t manage to at least slightly move that creature away, or getting his brawny hands off his body, moving them towards assailant’s own body. For that reason, he started to hit him with his fists straight into ribs, trying to break them or at least to make assailant short of breath. But it looked, as if he was battering against the concrete itself.

When his eyes became completely used to half-darkness of the bedroom, #Mac was struck with horror. Slanted above him wasn’t a man, but Anubis in his own personality. His devil ears upright and raised above, his view expressing primordial impersonal ferocity, huge, wide-snapped jaw with terrifyingly sharp teeth, nostrils wide open and face-muscles distorted and cramped, an impersonation of the Jackal-Man from the Egyptian Underworld, having come to this world to take him with himself. Our hero, who’s been rapidly losing his conscience, had any chance. He simply gave up. While he was sinking into deep darkness, unexpectedly, a trivial thought has crossed his mind: ”So that’s it”.

Unbearable focused pressure is gone and some sweet warmth began to spread all over his chest. Yes, and white light, believe it or not, it did appear in front of his eyes. He didn’t know what to expect in the other world, but nevertheless, he felt an indescribable pleasantness.

Instead of idyllic pictures he expected to see, the monster’s head again appeared in front of his eyes. The God didn’t want him – he began to awake. He pressed his hands as if he was praying, put them through the Anubis’ forearms, and then quickly and roughly he separated the arms. Huge, upper body parts of the Monster-Divinity, easily disappeared from the #Mac’s chest. At the moment when the Monster opened his jaw and directed it towards @RoughMac’s head, showing readiness to tear his throat apart, with a squeeze as hard as an iron, our hero started to strangle him. Having not managed to wrap his hands all around Anubis’ neck, #Mac plunged middle-fingers of the both of his hands into deep sockets, found on the monster’s muscular cheeks, while his thumbs were plunged instantly under monster’s chin. He’s been squeezing so tightly that it was possible to hear the crackling sounds of the jaw-bones and jugular part of the assailant’s spine. I can’t explain how, but in Anubis’ lifeless eyes horror and disbelief were clearly visible. He was desperately trying to defend himself until the very last breath, but then followed by a thunderous crash, he fell down on the floor.

#Mac turned on the lamp standing beside the bed, and observed the dead Egyptian deity, lying nowhere else, but in his own bedroom.

“I strangled the Death”!, @RoughMac astonishingly came to conclusion, he, whose life-dream so unexpectedly came true in the most bizarre way.

At that moment he finally did wake up.

He jumped all of a sudden, sat on the edge of the bed, turned on the previously mentioned lamp, and at unseen speed he wrapped a blood pressure-measuring glove around the ankle of his left hand. He had a slight hypertension and a little bit more harder tachycardia.

He chewed at one tablet of Xanax, in order to cause better efficiency of the taken medicine, lay down on his left hip, resembling to position of a fetus, and avoiding to turn the light off. Very soon he fell asleep.

Tomorrow in the courtrooms it seemed as if the dream had continued – he has been strangling opposing parties, their attorneys, judges, even his own clients, with such an ease. He managed to drive crazy an opposing lawyer, that he at the high-time of the legal battle, simply exclaimed in front of everyone: ”Listen, my colleague, I neither read nor know the law, but it can’t be that way”. Female judge, a nice woman, because of him experienced a sort of slight nervous breakdown. During the course of discussion, she rashly jumped, moved away from the table, came close to the hat-stand, and took out of her coat’s pocket a sedative, and drank it without water. And then in an almost crying voice, she addressed #Mac: ”Oh Knezevic, why are you always torturing me? What have I done to you? It seems you are enjoying in it”. Not perplexed at all, he continued his seemingly endless speech in monotonous and self-confident tone. One of his opponents  he kindly asked not to watch at him, but at judge, because he wasn’t capable of standing a horrible stench of alcohol smelling out of his mouth, although that man was completely sober. Consequently, this one started proving that he was not drinking at all, forgetting not only about the details, but about the real essence of his own statement, so at the very end, both judge and his lawyer were raging at him because he had guts to attend the trial, while being in such a drunken state. In situations when everything went according to his plan, our hero managed to remain silent during the course of the entire legal session. Because of that his client was convinced that the lawsuit was out of their control, and although it was quite opposite, he expressed his disagreement out in the corridor. #Mac responded him with a question: ”Why didn’t you hire a lawyer?”. Completely confused the man hardly uttered: ”But, aren’t you…?”.

After the trials and a little strolling around the cafes, #Mac (understandably at the time of a dinner) had been having lunch with his daughter in Portofino pizzeria in Sabac. Known for his exclusiveness, he’s been claiming that the owner of that pizza-restaurant Savke, with whom he became rather close, after more than ten years of regular attending of his local restaurant, while at the same time bringing along a lot of friends, family, female lovers and acquaintances of all kinds and ages, makes the best pizza in the world. That time used to remind him of the long conversations he had with his literary mentor Dragan Simic, to whom he always claimed that Dostoyevsky was the best writer of all time, and this one, although happy for the reason that #Mac’s literary genius without hesitation and unmistakably recognizes the really best, with what he agreed on his own either, has always been finding reasons to reproach him in a loutish manner: ”Come on, as if you had read at the very least, all the books found in the St. Petersburg’s library”. That mentioned writer, at the time sixty three years old, was one of the best and closest friends of @RoughMac, who at these days was only seventeen. Later on, when he became middle-aged, but nevertheless dated the high-school girls, #Mac, while trying to defend himself, gladly mentioned this old friendship as a sign and example of his indifference towards the age-gap.

The scheme of that described conversation with Dragan Simic has always been repeated in an entirely same manner, and every single time when someone new would be brought to taste Savke’s pizza. All of them would reasonably notice: ”How do you mean – the best pizza in the world? You haven’t been eating all the pizzas around the globe!”. But again quite illogical, all of them after experiencing the first bite, would agree with #Mac’s judgment. For that reason @Torbac_ and @TorbacJr reacted so, during the occurrences described in the first chapter. @RoughMac simply knew! ”It was told him on its own”, as folks used to say. Saltimbocca, for instance, served in Kosava, while it was owned by Djoka Kortina, was that much better than everything else, that @TorbacJr having tasted it, once said: ”From now on I am aware that until this day, I haven’t been eating any food”.

– I was about too late to become immortal. I hope it won’t happen to you – #Mac said to his daughter.

– How do you mean it?

– Scientists say that a man who will be living one thousand years, has been already born.

– Aha. If not only.

– I’m not kidding. There are predictions that in about thirty years, human age will be attaining a couple of centuries. However, an experience teaching us, if they say we will need thirty years to achieve that, it actually means that we will be needing at least one hundred years.

– It will never happen.

– It will for sure. Even now it is already possible to find substitution for almost every human body part, with exception of brain. The human brain will be adapted and placed into new bodies, which at the beginning will be partially natural, and partially artificial, but then in the future it will be possible to use genetic material, in order to produce entirely natural body parts. It became clear that films like Blade Runner, Terminator, Minority Report… haven’t been complete science fiction, moreover it seems that their authors have been very well informed, educated and intuitive. Then we will become immaterial – our brains will be put into safe places, and instead of our bodies, holograms will be used. Consequently, content of our brain will be shot and recorded on the hard-disc…

– And you believe in it?

– I might be saying that I have finally found the faith – #Mac joked. – Anyway, if we manage to avoid some natural disaster, there is no reason it won’t happen.

– I’m not interested in living my life for too long – suddenly #Mac’s daughter interrupted his detailed account.

– I shared the same opinion when I was of your age, and even younger. Back then I used to make nervous my mates, and now our godfathers Budjavi (Moldy) and Jazavac (the Badger), by speaking that I intend to live only forty years, ’cause for God’s sake, what’s the point to live any longer? I’ll record a couple of historically important rock albums, I’ll write a couple of literary masterpieces, I’ll have sex with a thousand women, and finally commit a suicide. ”Fuck you Marshall, I’ll ask you when you became forty”, Budjavi expressed his disagreement. You should kill me, because as you can see, I didn’t even plan having an offspring. Always hypersensitive @Torbac_, already as a teenager, has been obsessed by an idea of immortality. I used to discuss with him, claiming that without a death as something inevitable, our life would have any sense. We would only be wasting our lives, lacking incentive to change ourselves, to make progress and create-in a word, to make our lifetime useful.

– Oh dad, you always were, even as a kid, some combination of genius and idiot. It’s good that the godfather Budja told you to fuck yourself. On the other hand, that what you claimed in your disputation with #Torbac_, I wanted to tell you. Imagine, you’re living a thousand years, your life became so boring to you, and all of your close friends have died more than nine centuries ago!

#Mac was delighted by wisdom of his young daughter, to which he was used, without any exaggeration, since the day she spoke for the first time. Unlike him, who began to talk in the eighth month of his life, his daughter was silent until the thirteenth, and then all of a sudden, at general wonder and admiration, she began to utter perfectly clear, logical, suggestive and stylistically smart thoughts.

She was a living proof of Noam Chomsky’s generative grammar, according to which, speaking in the most primitive way, the knowledge of language has been inbred. During her early childhood she knew how to solve logical problems, of which anyone didn’t even know that they were existing. When #Mac for instance, just for the sake to make her laugh, used an old joke asking for “coke without a lemon, but if you don’t have the one without a lemon, then give me the one without an orange”, she replied to him quite seriously: ”It means that you are going to get the one with a lemon.”

As you could already notice, Pumpkin didn’t spare her daddy at all. She was three or four years old, when she once entering the taxi with her seventeen years older niece, made an objection: ”That faggot Mica is eating all of my sweets!”. ”Who is that Mica?”, asked a taxi-driver with a funny smile on his face. ”Her father”, roguishly with her view turned downwards, answered the niece.

#Mac most often has been striking back by playing jokes on her, especially when they was accompanied by their friends, and such situations annoyed her mostly, primarily during her sensitive age. She was a teenager, when once during their holiday in Hurghada, while being surrounded by their friends and taking a good rest on the beach of the Marriot Hotel, her father who has never become mature enough, stretching in the sleeping-chair he enjoyed in his imagination, while loudly expressed his readiness to woo to young English girl, who’s been sitting quite close to them. ”Are you crazy dad, this one is even younger than I am?!”, his daughter abruptly disagreed. ”No she’s not, it looks like that to you”. “How do you mean she’s not? Look at her breasts, they are still so small like a pair of rosebuds”. “Oh, come on dearest, don’t make your dad horny!”.

And so day after day, year after year, the time has come to discuss with her the most important subjects.

– It’s great that you started tackling some ethic questions – @RoughMac continued. That eternal, or let us say, immensely long life will be at the very beginning affordable only to the rich men. That will consequently cause new social divisions, and that new division will have a crucial impact not only on cause-consequence conjunctions, but it will directly influence life and death alike. A rich person will be desirable not just for the sheer fact of being capable to secure a luxurious life for his/her partner, but to secure a life itself. A girl who marries a poor guy, like it is case in many folk-songs, will be living only a dozen years, while on the other hand, the existence of the one who grabs some rich man won’t be limited.

– That one who chooses a man she loves will experience a more beautiful life.

– Well, that’s not excluded. But, even if this is not romantic desire, let us not say fallacy, the calculated ones will find numerous opportunities to rectify their mistakes. But if we take a look at the reverse side, I must admit that one very creepy idea crossing my mind – nowadays, for the sake of the material prosperity, a lot of people tolerate bad relationships lasted for years, but in the future it will be tolerated and lasted for centuries. Moreover it will take place under rather odd, almost impossible assumption, that the stronger partner wants to stay with the weaker one. Because honestly speaking, what could anyone stop from experimenting with millions of female and male lovers. This might seem funny to you but ask yourself, why would someone that much care to achieve millions of followers on Twitter or fans on Facebook. The competition will reach epic dimensions. And it will last and last, unless one day someone realized that all of it had no sense, and that the quest for real love should start, even though it was more foolish and less possible in comparison to today’s ideal – we won’t be looking for the eternal love till the end of life, but for the eternal love till the end of eternity.

– Hahhahahha.

– Savke is a real master in making this pizza!

– Yes he is… But, if all of these dreams of yours, or better speaking nightmares came true, where would all of us fit in? I mean, If nobody would  die, our planet could become rather stuffy and narrow.

– You comprehend the problems, and that’s why I talk to you. It’s been said, if we managed to put all natural resources under control, on our Planet would be enough place for at least one hundred billion people, and at the moment there are less than seven billion. In comparison to eternity, we will need very little time to completely colonize our planet, but then we will be already prepared to settle down all across the Universe.

– Everything’s better than better!

– No really, whether there was an eternal life or not, sooner or later we will be heading into space. If we were holograms, we would become spaceships on our own, we would be moving at the speed of light. However, just if we want it, because being holograms mean that we won’t be occupying any space on our Planet Earth.

– I’m really crazy about the possibility of living my life as a hologram.

– We will be capable of feeling everything, as if we were corporal, in our bodily forms. I mean if you’re afraid because of sex…

– There are those sitting by this table, who prefer sex much more than I do.

– I’m not denying that fact. Making love will make progress as well: along with absolute illusion of the physical contact (which is great), the one won’t actually happen, so that way, venereal diseases will completely disappear. An issue of extraordinary significance will be, how to avoid a possibility of sex becoming a pure pleasure of sense, because child-birth won’t be anymore a precondition for the physical survival of the human race. But in long terms it will, because without creating of the new individuals, a decadence will set in, I would even say degeneration, absolute egoism, which is actually equal to triumph of the Evil. No doubt that human intellect and sound instinct will prevail, so in spite of all, the new kids will be brought to life. But bearing in mind that it will be possible only by extracorporeal fertilization, certain genetic interventions will avert any possible mistake by formation and development of the fetus. But again, new threats might become reality, such as new forms of fascism…

– All right dad, what’s the reason for talking with such enthusiasm about an immortality?

– Well, you know that I’m not fond of the death.

– Neither am I. But I just like this kind of life.

– That’s the way I felt a long time ago – #Mac uttered sadly, knowing that he would without any speculation, swap the whole eternity for another teen-age of his own.

– Daddy, thanks for dinner and this nice conversation… hahaha… I’m joking, it was really interesting. Its essence is not of my interest at all, I repeat it, but you are capable of making every single subject intriguing. Now, I must really be going, because my room-mate is waiting for me.

– A long time ago the female room-mates had been waiting for me as well – @RoughMac sighed, when his daughter, having given him a short kiss and reply ”I will” to his obligatory “Take Care”, had already left the pizza-restaurant.

After restless dreams, a hard-working day and intensive socializing with friends and daughter, in the silence of his home, #Mac didn’t become all of a sudden a sensible man. Therefore, instead of taking rest, he rushed unto his computer.

In the meantime @BiancaMistake had totally lost her mind. She’s been writing some stupid statuses, tattling with friends about all sorts of nonsense, and all of it just for the sake of concealing her despair, after having broken up with a boyfriend of whom she was convinced, would become her husband. Hence the chatting was the only source of communication between him and #Bianca, #Mac took an opportunity to ask her:

– Could I help you somehow?

– how could you help me? – having shown as usual, her impudence and harshness, it seemed she had forgotten to wonder at the idea that someone might think she needed help. @RoughMac continued calmly:

– Me of course. Not your so called friends, who don’t even notice how sad you are, let alone to realize that you’re feeling so desperately.

– and how do you realize that?

– I know a lot of things. And why are you that much eager, while being still young, to become everyone’s teacher and mother?

– incredible!  with you i experienced an enlightenment.

The communication has broken down. It seemed as if, without any previous hint, the girl had simply lost her composure and fainted, after having realized that #Mac’s ESP could reach much farther and include not only the observations of the persons close to her, but her own cognizance about herself as well.

Although he feared that now and this time for real, this in every single sense beautiful creature would completely break off any contact with him, the hero of our story deep inside himself knew she wouldn’t. Who knows on which basis, but he was sure he made her cry, knowing at the same time she was capable of regaining her calmness, wiping her tears off and reestablishing their communication, presuming that afterwards, she would be repeating that rather inconvincible story about the beer spillt all over the computer.

– are you there? – #Bianca continued their chatting.

– Yes I am. I thought this time around, you had really turned me off.

– why???

– Because I bother you this much.

– bother? i was crying until recently.

– You will never believe me, but I knew you were crying.

– i didn’t meet anyone similar to you so far… someone who’s got a complete insight in everything… wait.

While he was waiting, he remembered that in today’s comment on #Bianca’s wall, he had noticed a presence of her obviously great friend, who’s been expressing her elation about the model’s recent arrival to her hometown. They were about to see each other after having been separated for many years. Again he took a look at the name of that friend, written in the mentioned post.

– i say… – @BiancaMistake tried to continue.

– I can’t believe that, at this moment, you are chatting with someone else either.

– why not? aren’t we maybe a little bit to much possessive? – the beauty continued in cute, childishly quarreling tone, of which @RoughMac was so fond, not only in her case, but in the case of all of his girls, he felt affinity for. – no really, there are female friends who don’t even deserve to wait for my answer.

– Tell Ivana (let us that being the name of #Bianca’s old, childhood friend created for the sake of this novel) that I will personally drive you to P.

– ahahahaha. the two of us really have been trying to reach an agreement on it.

– You will sit at the back seat, I will wear a cap and I won’t be speaking.

– why would you wear the cap?

– The driver’s cap; I don’t want her to think anything bad.

– hahaha. everybody can think what they want. nobody ever before you has been taking care about my feelings.

– Not even your parents? – #Mac asked, in order to mitigate the sad tone, which began to radiate from the monitor again.

– the parents, oh yes; they’re lovely.

– And will we be socializing?

– we will.

– Will we be drinking coffee?

– we will.

Both of them should have become aware of an incredible turnover during the conversation, moreover acceleration has been gradually becoming a main trait of their relationship, and it’s been visible with every sentence, look at the photos, and let us not talking about the encounters with all those fragrances, body-shivering and skin-thrilling. However quite surely to him, all of these were not incredible, but exactly expected. She obviously felt the same way.

– could you describe yourself as being a good man?

– I’m a splendid man!

– then i’m the happiest woman in the world!

– I’ll never let you down.

After this sentence, @RoughMac was ready to commit a crucial mistake. Having told her to wait for his message that he will send to her inbox, he decided to write down all of his telephone numbers, emphasizing the secret ones, and then he added she was free to call at any time. While she was reading the message, it became clear to him, that he would never learn to control the gas-pedal. Without waiting for her reaction, he simply wrote:

– I know what is going to happen tomorrow morning. You’ll wake up and think: ”Why have I involved myself into all this?” and you’ll begin to avoid me.

– i won’t.

– You will, but don’t.

– i won’t, just don’t put any pressure on me.

Let all go to fuck off, he hit the target again. Realizing that this night might be the prime time of their relationship, he said with pathetic:

– We should have recorded this chat.

– why?

– Maybe at this moment you’re not aware, but a lot of nice words have been uttered tonight.

– i am aware, and everything is already recorded. it’s in the safe place and it can’t never be erased.