The Boy laughed, but still asked questions and watched carefully, very attentively. Then he exclaimed,
«Well… I don’t know. But it’s wrong!»
The four of us had lunch in the canteen of the Cinema University. The Boy was discussing with one of us, but obviously not with me, the 999>th episode of some television series and suddenly turned to me,
«How can you live without watching TV?»
«She reads books,» the colleague retorted.
«Well, but how can you drive a car without checking traffic jams on the Internet before leaving?»
«I’m sniffing the air,» I answered the absolute truth.
The Boy winced in disbelief.
At the same moment, our table rose two centimeters into the air, moved to the right and landed safely on the floor.
«Bravo, Alice,» exclaimed the colleague, «even the juice didn’t spill!»
Since I told the Boy about the possibility of reading information from the air, he began to test the accuracy of my sense of smell. He called me in the evenings when I had already left our office and asked if there were any traffic jams on my way. As a rule, we left at the same time and lived in neighboring areas. The Boy always drove moving the right way, as it should be done according to the Internet information. I drove the way I felt. However, as a result, we moved the same way. And sometimes we even played speed together. Such game was some strange exception to the rules of the right Boy.
Apparently, the Higher Forces pushed us together so that the Boy would at least try to accept the idea that someone might be different from him and live differently. Not according to his rules. However, once the program implanted into the Boy’s head did its dirty deed, and we parted.
I met Alexey, the same ex-classmate who knew from his own experience what the speed game was. I could share everything with him, because he himself had been through a lot and was able to understand my feelings. He had known me since I was seven years old for who I really was, the real me, I didn’t need to be anyone else with him. The other day I read his 36-page story about the Void. He, like me then, reached the state in which it was no longer possible not to throw out the accumulated pain on paper.
«Love is the greatest medicine, it softens the pain and allows us to survive here and now, to get out of the Void. Later we get used to the pain, adapt to reality, it becomes easier for us, but to reach that later we need…»
«Yes, Alice. It seemed that fire, water, and copper pipes had long been passed, but no, those were flowers. A person is like a bridge which supports are cut down one by one and it falls into the abyss of Death. But you don’t need any earthly support. You have long belonged not to yourself, but to Another Reality. You are not like everyone else, you are not ordinary, deal with it.»
«I want to be an ordinary woman who is loved just because she exists. I have always loved, giving everything I had and asking for nothing in return, but no one has ever loved me. Besides, I didn’t choose Another Reality!»
«It’s not chosen. It chooses who it deems appropriate, without asking our opinion. It chose you. This is your Path.»
I returned home, where I was always welcomed by various magical attributes. For example, a magic ball, which I had found in the most ordinary – mystical – way on Lake Baikal.
I happened there in November at minus 20. Baikal used to freeze in January, so in the evenings I sat on the seashore (I saw it as a sea, not a lake) and saw off the Sun. It was cold, but I took off my glove and held out my hand to it. The left one, hypersensitive. Huge waves of heat poured into me, and my hand didn’t freeze at all.
