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 erect 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’.