§ 9. The Explanatory Note
First, it was necessary to clarify why Grandma was over there, while he was over here. Why their family had ended up scattered across different corners of the Universe. Why his ChyKa was currently hunting wolves, while he was conducting dialogues with sizzling fat?
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[ DATABASE: UNDERBREATH ] [ FILE: § 9-10 ]
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It so happened that Kapyalyushka was stuck in Gökçerende. She had fallen into an infinite loop: baking pasties every day, then walking into the black forest beneath the blue abyss to tend to her... but no, not her grandmother. Her mother. You see, in that particular shred of time under discussion, his Chyrvony Kapyalyush was already a grandmother herself. They should have brought her old mother to live with them, but the old woman had taken root so deeply in foreign soil that she could no longer be uprooted—unless, perhaps, together with a massive chunk of the lithosphere.
Grandpa was doing the exact same thing, but in a different galaxy—in gloomy Minsk. Here, his own mother flatly refused to be "uprooted" from the tender velvet of silver Belarusian mists spreading beneath a leaden sky (damn those mists to hell!). And so they hung suspended on opposite sides of the Milky Way: two ones holding their respective orbits while the mother-trees grew into the horizon.
And now, let us return to the goulash—meaning the second point: an even greater explanation is required for the appearance of all sorts of Darth Vaders and similar vermin.
The transition must be slow, like the stretching of hot tar. It all began with an innocent game of graphomania. Grandpa wrote bedtime fairy tales, children's short stories, pampering his ego with letters, completely oblivious to how the staircase beneath his feet was turning into a bottomless pit. He was young (yes, yes), naive, and believed that words were merely shadows on paper. But the world... the world turned out to be a seasoned card sharp. It tossed him the ball and yelled, "Your turn, make a move!"
"I remember playing against the Basques. A truly surreal survival match. I got the ball—and off we went: down the flank, down the flank, across the field, across the field, over the wattle-weave—straight out of cozy prose into a cavalry charge—onto a horse and off to Budyonny!"
It would seem simple enough: so you wrote some nonsense, big deal—tear out the page or burn the entire draft! But the moment Grandpa touched that thorny wattle-binding, reality snapped. The book ceased to be a book. Sprinting across its pages, only to vanish into that very binding, came a pale white, gaunt Stranger... A strange fellow in blue specs, a kaskatsal1. The future "Zero" from the past, his Nip, his personal finale of arithmetic. He seeped through the text like an inkblot, and Grandpa realized: the plot hadn't just thickened. It had come alive, and it had come back for seconds.
§ 10. Thus, the Story...
Grandpa reflected on just how vastly different the reactions could be to his short "no." He started with the most indifferent one from deep within his childhood: his mother asking on his birthday, "Would you like another piece of cake?" "No." "Alright then," his mother would reply, while his brother gleefully shouted, waving his plate: "Me, me!"
Another example arose from the recent past: "Don't you want to take out the trash?" "No!"—and Grandpa felt that not a single trace remained of the old equilibrium.
"Don't you want to..." He tried to come up with another scenario where "don't you want to" would trigger a similar existential collapse, but nothing came to mind. For instance, a wife: "Don't you want to eat?" "No." "Well, of course, I slaved away, and you couldn't care less about my efforts..."—it felt a bit sluggish, purely pro forma.
"Don't you want to rub my back?"—here, Grandpa understood that a "no" wouldn't fly; he was terrified to even contemplate the fallout of such a refusal. Or this: "Don't you want to go visit my parents?" "Yes, I'd love to, darling, but you see, so many things have piled up..." "I see..."
And everything was perfectly clear to her, and to him: no massage, no treats, no conversations, because she would simply stop hearing him behind a blank wall. A wall thicker than that of Malbork Castle (and Grandpa knew that it was the largest brick castle in the world with exceptionally thick walls).
"Grandpa, don't you want to buy me a Darth Vader figure from Star Wars?"—Yo-Yo's voice ripped him from his thoughts. By some miracle, the old man had almost managed to return to the topic of the school essay, and even earlier than the start of the summer vacation.
"Nope," he answered.
"I see..." The grandson's face immediately fell, and his arms dropped in defeat as he muttered barely audibly, "Whatever... they’re driving me crazy..."
Grandpa was instantly struck by a staggering wave of remorse. "Grandson, you misunderstand! I just thought, maybe it's better to buy you a figure of Luke Obergruppen... what was his name... Kenobi? Or some other Obi-Wan-Sturm-someone? A positive character? Maybe that toad would be better?"
"What toad?" Yo-Yo asked, intrigued.
"Well, that one..." the old man agonizedly tried to recall the movie, which in his distant youth had made almost no impression on him (in his book, Star Trek was way better), "the toad-warlock Yoda, I think."
"I don't want a positive character!" the grandson was on the verge of tears. "If you don't want Darth Vader, then buy Darth Sidious!"
"And what kind of crap character is that?" was all the bewildered old man could extract from himself.
"Are you serious, Grandpa? Didn’t you study history in school?! Darth Sidious was the greatest Sith Master! He managed to create a false shell—his alter ego—and took the post of Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, and then he started the Clone Wars! With one stroke of genius, he managed to destroy the Jedi Order and then proclaim himself Emperor..." the grandson rattled off breathlessly.
"Hold on, hold on, didn't the Jedi show up again later?"
"Well, yeah," Yo-Yo nodded impatiently, "don't interrupt. Darth Vader said they're like communists, Grandpa—you throw them out the door, and they climb back through the window."
"Just like my periodontitis, then..."
"What?" He didn't stick around to hear the answer. "He’s the one who established the laws for the Sith; he ratified the 'Rule of Two'..."
"Excuse me, the 'Rule of Two' was invented by Darth Bane! A very unpleasant fellow, by the way."
"Nuh-uh!" the grandson was unstoppable. "Darth Bane might have invented the rule, but Darth Sidious made it mandatory! If you don't know, don't talk... by the way, why was he an unpleasant fellow?"
"Well, because he supposedly killed his own father."
"That’s brainwashing for you! Those communist-Jedi twisted and fabricated everything—he killed him by accident!.." The grandson even waved his arms in indignation but quickly calmed down. "Grandpa, what’s an alter ego?"
"I don't know, sounds like some psychiatric heresy. Do you happen to know?" Grandpa turned to the saleswoman.
"No." She shrugged.
"And do you have this... this Darth Sirius?"
"Darth Si-di-ous!" the grandson corrected.
"Not at the moment. But leave your number, and we'll be sure to notify you when the Sidiouses arrive."
"Here you go," Grandpa dictated the number and added quietly, "maybe he’ll forget by then..."
"Forget?!" the saleswoman chuckled. "He’s already gone completely over to the Dark Side! They have excellent memories on that side..."
Grandpa lingered in the store a bit longer than intended because on his way out, he noticed a near-adult oaf badgering the unattended Yo-Yo.
"Who do you think you are?" he growled at the grandson in a breaking voice.
"Who am I? I'm a vigilante patrolman!" The grandson nodded toward a non-existent armband on his left arm and laughed sinisterly.
"No, you're a Sith! I, Padawan Timofeyich, have clashed with such scum more than once!" The oaf (or Padawan Timofeyich) took a step back. "You have arrived here to destroy the rebels."
"So be it. I am Darth Danka," Yo-Yo nodded in agreement and opened his mouth as if about to add something, but suddenly shot his enemy.
The trick almost worked. Under normal conditions, Timofeyich would have sensed the deception long before his opponent acted, but an unknown force blocking the Light Side left him vulnerable. Making no attempt to deflect the shot, the Padawan leaped aside and landed heavily on the stone pavement.
"You are as clumsy as a panda cub, Padawan," he chided himself, scrambling to his feet. Without giving the patrolman a chance to fire again, the Jedi extended his free hand, palm forward, and used the Force to wrench away his weapon. The executed technique backfired into a surge of searing pain that traveled the entire length of his egg-shaped head, causing him to shudder and retreat another half-step. Nevertheless, the blasters successfully soared into the air and landed near Timofeyich’s feet. To his surprise, his opponent was entirely unfazed.
Perhaps he could sense his fear and uncertainty? It was well known that the Sith possessed precognitive abilities; rumor had it they could use the Force to peer into the future. Some even claimed they mastered telepathy. What if it was his opponent who was blocking the Light Side?
"Surrender, I promise you will receive a fair trial," Padawan Timofeyich said, trying to look convincing and absolutely self-assured.
Darth Danka smiled, baring his two front adult teeth: "There will be no trial."
He executed a backward flip, his cloak fluttering in the air, and vanished behind a thick column. At that very second, one of the blasters at Timofeyich's feet beeped loudly. The Jedi thought he had disarmed his rival, but instead, he had stumbled into a clever trap. Only a millisecond before the detonation did he notice that the power cell was programmed to overload. His final thought was to try and shield himself from the blast using the Force, but the Jedi could not pierce the fog clouding his consciousness. He felt only fear, anger, and hatred.
And a split second before the explosion snuffed out his life, Padawan Timofeyich realized the full horror of the Dark Side upon hearing the words of the retreating Darth Danka: "You're a plasma booger on a stick, not a Jedi!.. Come on, Grandpa, let’s go, I’m late for practice."
"But what about?.." Grandpa stood there, carefully avoiding the scattered Padawan, "But what about?.."
"Oh, it's fine, Grandpa, he'll scrape himself off the floor and stand in my way plenty more times. Let’s hurry."
"Is this...?" Grandpa was still at a loss for words. "Is this all make-believe? Are these the kinds of games you play nowadays?" He carefully sidestepped the stain, trying not to step in it.
"What is our life?" the grandson shrugged inquisitively.
"...A game," Grandpa finished for him... or rather, continued.
1 In short, the Kaskali are creatures that absorb the will of others, masking it as "civilization" and "order." In even shorter terms—occupiers of reality.
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[ END OF FILE: § 9-10 ]
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