Tommy Whistler was awesomely unlucky. You will, perhaps, tell us that the term “awesome” doesn’t quite fit for the description of so sad objective reality, which dear Tommy has faced? Oh, if you had only known what his family had to pass through over the last year! You, certainly, don’t have the slightest idea of that and therefore we are ready to forgive you such inconvenient and unreasonable remarks. And Tommy didn’t even whistle on a constant basis – only quietly under his nose from time to time during short moments of spiritual bliss. And they, believe us or not, weren’t that long. And how he has managed to come to this low-water financial mark – only the God or the accountant knows.
Some soul would probably tell us, that a single year – it isn’t quite a term, and there is no reason to dive into hysteric and confuse our noble readers here, – but that depends on how to measure. If to measure this term in seconds, which precisely like a herd of lambs come one after another in a never-ending chain – one can easily turn into a sheep himself. And if to measure in events of his life –one will certainly cry and there will be no more wish for counting. The ideal option would be to measure in years – but what’s there is to measure then? So Tommy had either to howl to the moon like a wolf, or to the dog like a kitten or to go at once and register without a second thought in a club of anonymous losers. There was still, however, one other option to become a family of totally and irreversibly enlightened people – but financial opportunities of Tommy’s family didn’t allow them to place such a great number of lighting fixtures in their house. Therefore, his family hasn’t conducted calculations of own misfortunes for a long time, for it’s an expensive procedure – to measure own sorrows, especially when you are swimming in low waters.
And for the last three months, everything was on the decline, though absolutely not forever. Salary at the enterprise, where Tommy has been working, was constantly delayed, and all its workers were in literal and figurative terms fed with breakfasts. In literal – because he as an employee of a dairy factory was subject to be supplied with milk and its derivatives, and in figurative – because terms of final payments were as changeable and unsteady as women of easy virtue – even uneasy ones – never happen to be. Mainly for that particular reason, he felt more and more like a small sprat in a bank – that particular bank when he, having trusted colorful words of marketing specialists a few years ago, has issued a mortgage.
A typical story, you will tell us? Typical, but not typically. Not typically from the word “absolutely”. Because in that significant day something absolutely out of order of his previous accidents happened to him.
***
During that Saturday morning Tommy couldn’t find any peace in at least two meanings: firstly, because bank workers were already going to literally throw them away in the upcoming future from their cozy dwelling due to failure to pay the credit; and secondly, because not cats were scraping his soul, but impudent mice instead, who have bred in fair quantity due to cats constant fatigue.
“What for? What for, Lord, have you given us all these trials? Don’t you see how hard our life is? Even though we live in the most beautiful and democratic country of the world, bank clerks don’t become better, housing doesn’t get cheaper and milk doesn’t form rivers with a land of milk and honey,” so Tommy Whistler mentally lamented, walking to and fro in his bedroom since early morning.
Here we have to mention, that our dear Tommy wasn’t quite a believer at all – in the sense that he, unlike a lot of other proud of themselves and respectable citizens of his small town, hasn’t spent Sunday hour in a local church, listening to ardent speeches of holy priests, fattened by parishioners. But so hard life has jammed all organs of Tommy by this moment, his heart included, and limits of his powers turned out to be so limited, that both his soul and thoughts were aspiring somewhere to limitless heights in a hope to share own grief with someone unknown, someone so much bigger than all his sorrows taken together.
“So where do you lead us, aye?” he continued in the meantime to mentally address to some unknown and far-reaching distances. “Have you abandoned all of us a long time ago? Maybe you even relaxing now somewhere up there on a cloudlet while we down here in earth dirt are trying to build our lives as we can. Phuh, perfect one! Good for you there, comfortably! I would like to be in your shoes – lie idle, do nothing in general, just help somebody from time to time so they don’t forget about you at all. Not even a life, but a fairy tale!”
So, winding himself more and more and quickening more and more own rhythmic pace, Tommy wandered about his own bedroom. Movements of his legs were becoming wider and movements of his hands steeper, so the soil under his legs was figuratively more and more crumbling under his feet. In a literal sense, it crumbled when a sudden ringing of a not-so-really-his home’s doorbell distracted him from these strange thoughts. Tommy faltered from unexpectedness and fell down on a floor. He would have lain like so, with a downed interface, for several more minutes, if that persistent guest didn’t continue to press the bell’s button time and again, thus producing a familiar, yet somewhat banal, “Dzin!” sound.
“Whom, lung as on mention, did the hard life brought again?” Tommy was thinking to himself while hastily putting on his business suite. “Maybe it’s neighbors who have again come to agitate me to come for a Sunday prayer? And what if this is the bank worker together with a bailiff this time? No rest from foul vampires!”
“Greetings!” with a smile in response to a gloomy and distrustful Tommy’s look answered the young man in a white suit with a red bow tie. “Is this the place where mister Tommy Whistler lives with his venerable wife Valencia?”
“Perhaps,” Tommy answered gloomily. “And who might you be?”
“Oh, so that’s you, Tommy? Fantastic day! It means that I was correctly directed to a required address. I was afraid that estimators will mix up something again – they, you know, don’t have your all-seeing GPS, – and the way to this world and place was, trust me, a far one.”
“I see nothing wonderful in this accursed day!” this strange mister began to irritate Tommy more and more.
“I am not here by accident, I assure you!” smiled again, replied this unusual guest. “My name is… well, it’s really unimportant of how you would like to call me afterward. You can call me simply as Agent. I am honored to represent our fine company LLC ‘Center of Desires Fulfillment’. Quite recently we received your inquiry, performed necessary preliminary inspections and came to a conclusion, that we can aid you in fulfillment of your desires. Congratulations, your candidacy suits us!”
“If you are from a local church, then I am not going there,” Tommy replied harshly. “I am a non-believer and don’t run business with strange folks in general.”
“Don’t worry, we are not a religious organization, we stand… how should I put it clearly… somewhat higher. Your last inquiry to our instance passed this designated religious structure and got straight to our processing center for incoming wishes. It’s only necessary to settle some small formalities, and everything will be just fine – you shall become our VIP client.”
“And what does it mean exactly – to be a VIP? What’s in it for me? If only you get something – a bonus for another handed off the flyer, or concluded by deception financial contract – then fuck off to… Iraq!” Tommy muttered.
“No deceptions, no Iraq, we are not in the UN!” smiled young representative of the mysterious organization. “And, by the way, their desires were fulfilled by our direct competitors who wear black suits as a rule. Only a few clarifying questions and a short induction, if you allow it.”
“Well, drag it on.”
“Fulfilling first dragging,” young man laughed the matter off. “You are Tommy Whistler, forty-two years old, your wife is Valencia, thirty-five years, you have a little daughter Mila of seven years and son Gregory of twelve years. Correctly?”
“Correctly. And where actually have you got such information? What, did the service of bailiffs leaked it to you?”
“Oh, not bailiffs at all, yet this has some distant relation to a court, you are right,” confirmed a young man, ticking off somewhere in the questionnaire. “Recently you have been experiencing emotionally hard and unstable conditions – or, in other words, a depression, which has relation to your financial hardship. Correctly?”
“Yes. As I have thought, you are from a bank!” Tommy was totally upset.
“And the last clarification – are you familiar with the processing rules of our system?”
“What kind of system?” Tommy didn’t get it.
“Ah, it turns out that you are dealing with us for the first time. That’s great, we love and respect new clients,” young man in a snow-white suite was the politeness.
“So, as for the rules… they are, actually, simple. In accordance with your recent – or, more precisely, ten-minute and forty-five-seconds ago appeal, we are ready to fulfill your desire with some safety restrictions. We will turn on our system for you – we call it a system of tests. Within this system, you will continue to live and work as usual – with the only difference that your requested desire will be gradually implemented with safety restrictions. In particular, you won’t be able to cause any harm to any living being in this world, especially ones with a soul – any similar action will cause a reciprocal pain in much greater amount. Secondly, a short time later you may start receiving appeals, which are being sent to our CEO, whose deputy you have desired to become. And thirdly and lastly, please remember: to receive absolute power one has to be absolutely perfect and to be perfect means to voluntarily accept all restrictions, imposed by perfection. Also remember that either you or your relatives will be able to ask for a break, having sent another request to our department. Upon termination of system’s functioning, we can ask you to leave us a comment or to tell your friends about it. Please tell, is that clear to you?”
“Not really, but who the heck cares. Where is that system of yours? Can I at least take a look?”
“Oh, very soon our courier service will deliver it straight into your life, don’t you worry. From one to several days are required to completely integrate it, please take note. And yes, I have almost forgotten – its usage will be completely free of charge – for you were already, so to speak, financially reasoned, even though for your debts you have not yet been imprisoned,” joked the guest.
“Very funny!” Tommy squinted his face. “Where do I sign?”
“No signatures are necessary. The fact of your request to our organization was already enough. Await the integration of our system – and goodbye!” and, having that said, the young man in a white suit with a red bow tie waved his hand and went, nearly jumping in the processing, somewhere further on his affairs.
“Darling, who came in there?” a sleepy voice of Tommy’s wife came out of a bedroom as soon as he has managed to slam the entrance door behind this strange visitor of his dwelling place. “Were they from a bank?”
“No, sweetheart, not from the bank!” Tommy shouted in response. “Some kind of strange dealer. Offered some systems. That’s some kind of a madhouse instead of a life!” Tommy said in a fit of temper and plunged himself back into his – or not quite his – gloomy thoughts.
From this information swamp, he was pulled out almost by being dragged by his dear wife, who embraced his neck and put her head on his shoulder.
“Would you like some coffee?”
“All right, thanks. You are my priceless treasure. Don’t throw me away as a loser.”
“Perhaps I will throw you once,” Valencia laughed. “But not earlier than you will turn tail from me yourself.”
“That will hardly ever happen,” he replied and embraced her in return.
“Shall we go together to a grocery shop today?”
“All right, let me just have a breakfast first.”
***
We did tell you that Tommy was catastrophically unlucky – and did you think that we were trying to deceive you? Just like that, once Tommy started coming from his bedroom downstairs to a first floor in order to go together with his beloved for a shopping spree, so beloved by every true American, their domestic cat Jess barred him a road in a literal sense of that word. “Meow?!” she said interrogatively-instructive, having pointed a testing look of her green eyes directly on Tommy, hinting him that from the time of her last feeding an inexcusably great amount of time – certainly, by cats’ standards – have passed already.
“Shoo!” Tommy shouted to her, “I will feed you later. Get out of my sight!”
“Meow!” that hungry cat started yelling even more demandingly and scratched legs of his owner and by coincidence bringer of food.
“Away, silly fluffy!” Tommy shouted with irritation and kicked the cat, who was sitting on a ladder pass. “I will punish you for your bad behavior once I come back!”
“Meeeeeooooowwww!” Jess suddenly grew furious and rushed on her owner’s back, having seized him with her immoderately sharp by human standards claws.
Tommy cried, trying to throw off from his back a newly born predator, twirled in one place, faltered over one of the top stairs and rolled down, head over heels, damning all cat’s kin in general and that of Jess in particular.
“Ouch! My leg! My fucked curved since the childhood leg!” he moaned, having grabbed his right leg and swirling on a first floor right after he has finished his way downwards.
“What has happened to you, daddy?” Mila ran out from her room to incoming noise. “Your leg hurts, is it? Do you want me to blow on it as you did for me, and all your pain will go?”
“It won’t… go,” overcoming flashed pain in own joints and as much as possible calmly replied Tommy. “It’s… sprain, probably. Better call for… your mother.”
“I will do that ASAP, daddy, but let me first feed Jess, you see how she stares at us? And you lie here, have a rest, daddy, you can never rest at work, I heard it from the mother,” Mila said unperturbably with her angelic voice.
***
So, having lain for the first half of the day with bandaged leg in a bed and sadly beholding through a window, how the wife of his neighbor is ineptly trying to park their brand new expensive Porsche car in a garage, having managed to several times throw a slipper into a cat, who has decided to visit her sick owner, Tommy prepared morally for viewing of an evening telecast of “Voice of America”.
Here we need to note that this particular voice, which has many residents of other countries and cities, has always been calming down Tommy. How pleasant it was for his tormented consciousness to listen to it after a hard labor of everyday life and understand that somewhere there, far beyond the World Ocean in other countries, which Tommy never succeeded to visit and which he would barely able to find on a globe without some extra hints from “Google Maps”, new national revolutions are being made for the sake of democracy, and their country, America, blessed by the God himself – in whom Tommy didn’t believe – goes on with her holy mission of protection of various social minorities and strictly, just like a kind police officer, monitors the rights of humans for the sake of peace on the planet Earth. Rights of what people were meant by news announcers, speaking about the recent invasion of Iraq by the USA, approved at the UN level, Tommy never tried to inquire.
This TV telecast was about to begin in several hours, but from a sole boredom Tommy turned on his speaking box before the usual time.
“Idiots, idiots, idiots – they give us the problems all day… fuck you, oh Muslims and idiots, that’s what we are gonna to say!” some newly appeared group of niggers danced, sang and threatened to finish off all Muslim immigrants on a hastily build stage of Detroit under the gaze of many television cameras.
“You are idiots yourself!” muttered Tommy and switched to another TV channel.
“My little fool, my little fool, I sleep with you, I like your rule,” a voice of yet another porno-star, who has gained access to the big scene by well-known and trivial means, sang from a turned-on TV screen.
“Fuck you, freaks!” Tommy swore under his nose, throwing TV remote aside, “there is nothing good to watch at all. Where does America slide? By the name of Mila, that’s ain’t right!”
“What did you say, daddy?” Mila slightly opened a door of his room. “Did you call for me?”
***
Next morning Tommy’s bandaged leg reminded of itself again with a sharp pain, once it’s owner stood up from his bed and proceeded on own feet into a bathroom.
“Oh, God, how great I am!” some male voice spoke over his ear all of a sudden.
“Who’s there?” Tommy took alarm, promptly looking around. “It’s a private property, what’s the hell are you doing here?! Show yourself!”
“Oh, my Lord, I am simply magnificent!” the voice of invisible interlocutor continued, paying not even a slightest attention to unsuccessful Tommy’s attempt to establish a contact. “Hell, I am the most beautiful man in this damned world!” the voice assured himself and suddenly calmed down at the same moment.
“Hell, I am going crazy with this trauma already,” Tommy thought to himself. “Some kind of hallucinations are starting already. At first yesterday’s dealer, now some kind of voices. It’s all the nerves, probably… perhaps I should start buying antidepressants,” he was thinking while shaving own cheeks. “What my poor wife would only think of that…”
“We love you!” two unknown girls, whose faces and other body parts Tommy didn’t see at all, suddenly sang directly into his ears.
“Do you even exist?” some person of very and very uncertain gender asked a question in a very and very uncertain voice.
“You are just a jerk!” admitted a man of average years in a fit tempter.
“Go away from me!” some woman sent Tommy in an unspecified direction.
“Thank you! Thank you!” child sobbed in a crying voice.
“Are you a fool or what? Don’t you see what you are doing? What have I asked of you in a church yesterday? That’s not what I wanted at all!” one more unknown subject as if slapped Tommy in a face.
“One thousand of imps!” thought scared Tommy. “What, have I gone totally nuts? I definitely need some rest!” he assured himself. “I will surely issue a working holiday on Monday if I don’t go mad before that day already.”
***
This Sunday trip to a supermarket helped Tommy to learn a lot of new about his personality.
“Fool! Jerk! Genius! Rascal! Wise man! Savior! Torturer!” voices have been tirelessly shouting inside his head. His wife cautiously glanced at her husband, who was hardly driving the car and continually crying out in the air: “You are a fool yourself! Thanks! It’s you who is a rascal! No need for gratitude! No problems at all!”
His neighbor didn’t even start to be too soft at all and without a search for roundabout ways called Tommy as the loser in response to Tommy’s comment in the spirit of “you have become too choosy from riches!”
The police officer on the road named him precisely as “the weird loony who drives faster than a hundred kilometers per hour and doesn’t look at road signs at all!”
The cashier in a shop, having silently looked at the check, called him “cheapskate”, and his own wife as “my poor darling” by the end of that day.
His daughter Mila called him “my sick daddy”, son Gregory as “raunchy ancestor”, and Jess-the-cat didn’t even go into unnecessary details and just said “Meow!”
Having accurately bypassed a cat in the evening, Tommy flopped down on a bed, even finding no time to take off his boots, and started snoring in some five minutes. His loving wife silently sat down near him, put her hand on a forehead of a sleeping Tommy and sadly shaken her head.
And he dreamed this Sunday night of a huge garden with a set of beds, which Tommy saw only at familiar farmers who were living outside the city, – and these beds were all except for only one filled with a horse-radish.
***
Tommy’s boss decided to organize a meeting, of which necessity the labor union hinted him a long time ago, and in very plain terms declared, that wages for previous two work months won’t be paid in this one, because, we quote, – “these damned Chinese communists have seized a substantial share of our market and we, proud and freedom-loving Americans have to do a lot to kick their lean yellow asses!”
And that’s where Tommy’s patience finally failed him. Having proudly straightened his shoulders as would be done by any freedom-loving carrier of democratic values and the far descendant of the first immigrants-convicts from the Old World to the New one, he grasped air in his mighty breast and, using a very primordially American speech, explained to his chief to what point in this endless space he can start moving right now without postponing this procedure in a milk bottle, and what kind of starry-eyed person his boss is in general, even though with a few inclusions in his ideal character of some truly bestial human qualities. And all that would be just nothing, but being urged by approving shouts and looks of his colleagues, Tommy agitated himself so much that in the end, he climbed to the eminence from which his undersized boss was speaking, and kicked him with all his force in his primordially American ugly face. This face reddened at first, then turned blue, and then uttered that he, Tommy, can go off from here to there where the sun never shines and that he doesn’t work here anymore from now on.
And on his way back from nowadays former work some truck crashed at the intersection of roads into the ugly face of Tommy’s car, which caused another sad sight of his wife and ill-concealed giggling of his neighbor and by coincidence owner of a brand new and undamaged Porsche.
***
What sort of occurrences the visitor of a club of anonymous losers Tommy had to experience for these three months, which have passed since his first meeting with that strange agent from LLC “Center of Desires Fulfillment”.
There were falling into manholes after foul language speaking with the head of a local church; broken fingers, which have already tired from showing this infamous American “fuck you” sign; torn sinews of legs, which excessively sharply kicked from own rage homeless dogs and cats; and a wide variety of other ways of interaction between the physical Universe and not less physically existing inside it Tommy. And to the voices, who have been persistently either demanding something from him, or flatteringly expressing their sincere devotion, or questioning some next nonsense, Tommy ceased to pay attention at all.
Valencia, looking at her unfortunate husband, only looked away in times – and more and more frequently her eyes filled with tears during evenings. His daughter Mila started calling him “the sick daddy” on a constant basis, and son Gregory was proud before his school teammates of how crack headed and raunchy his ancestor is.
…And it all has come to an end when a truck, carrying filled with milk canisters from that dairy factory, which honorable wage-less member Tommy has recently been, run over him on the road.
***
“Do you understand now, dear mister Tommy, how important it is to formulate your desires correctly?” the young man in a white jacket with red bow tie inclined over Tommy and searchingly looked him in the eyes. “A desire is – how to express it more clearly – a door in a window of opportunities. Allow me to be curious – how is the life of God’s deputy for you?”
“Not… very… lively,” with hardly obeying lips and somehow unexpectedly quite said Tommy.
“It’s quite obvious that it’s a hard life. You are not even inside so habitual for your body right now. Here you are lying in a coma in the surgery, and your wife keeps praying for you behind that door. Do you know, what kind of desires is overcoming her now? I shall tell you, even though you don’t ask for it. Her only most powerful and overflowing desire at this moment is your life, Tommy. She wants that you keep living, do you understand that? She is asking not of perfection or divinity, but of a preservation of your life – which you, it should be noted, didn’t value too much.”
“Some voices… haunted me constantly,” barely audible whispered Tommy.
“Ah, these were incoming inquiries from people, mentally formulated by them,” answered the Agent. “We duplicated them for you. Unfortunately, as you have probably already noticed, the program isn’t perfect as of yet and therefore insufficiently qualitatively performs their filtration, therefore sometimes totally unrelated to God inquiries and vain formulations pass through. That’s because our system is in the alpha stage of development – and therefore hasn’t been fully tested as of yet. But never fear – our programmers are already notified of this issue and in the nearest future we will most certainly fix this annoying error. So, why did you desire to be in a, so to speak, the shoes of our director, Tommy?”
“I did… no… such thing.”
“You did, Tommy, you did. Most people don’t even think at all of how is that – to be perfect. It seems to them that they only have to ask God just about anything – and he must immediately run off and fulfill any of their whims, even if that will lead subsequently to their own deaths. Tell me, how, for instance, our CEO has to execute wishes like ‘let it all burn in a blue flame’ – to burn away all offices of Gazprom? To kill all people on the planet Earth – or only selected offenders of the wisher? God is perfect, Tommy, and he by his very nature is unable to execute what enters in disharmony with perfection, he can’t cause harm to living beings. And people constantly ask him of that, believe me, Tommy! Have you noticed, how our program returned back all that evil, which you have caused?”
“And what about… all the evil around… who… will fight against it?” Tommy continued whispering.
“Let me explain this to you on a familiar example. When some cells of an organism get sick, becoming exclusively parasitic in nature, and rapid growth of a number of similar cells starts representing a threat for organism’s life – what must organism do in order to survive?”
“To… liquidate these cells?”
“Correctly, Tommy. For the sake of health and survival of the whole organism, individual pathogenic cells may be liquidated. The same rule applies to a planet, Tommy.”
“Can I… talk to my wife?”
“Firstly, you have to answer one clarifying question, Tommy. Tell us, please, would you like to prolong your desire to feel yourself in God’s place?”
“No… no desire. I think… I understood everything.”
“Perfectly, then. Then today we will disconnect you from our program of tests. And surgery operation on your heart will undergo successfully, by the way. Your wife’s appeal to our organization with a request for your rescue was truly pure and sincere – and we will gladly fulfill that desire of hers. And will also help you with finding a new job – you should maintain such a loving family, after all,” with these words the Agent stretched his transparent and glowing hand to Tommy’s heart, filling all organism of the victim with some inner warmth.
“Thank you… for a lesson.”
“Oh, don’t even start thanking me,” smiled the Agent. “And don’t forget of a cell analogy, Tommy.”
***
“Incredibly powerful cyclone, dominating over all territory of Alaska, will live on for at least for a month, according to weather forecasts, having brought about eighty centimeters of snow, – loudly broadcasted announcer from more than one million of turned-on TVs. – Because of the abnormally cold weather, which has come to us from the territory of Canada, about eighty percent of state residents are unable to leave their homes for two weeks already. S