Apply to the Emperor

I’ve got an order to fly to Europe. I don’t like going there at all, but my overlord confirmed this order even before I decided to contact him, so the business seemed to be important.

His Complianceness, The Third Footstool of Emperor’s Throne, entertained me in his main drawing - room, in the presence of a silent statue of the Emperor. I know, as everybody of us know it, that raising statues of the Emperor is as stupid as children’s handmade congratulations at the Mothers’ Day, but it gives us the same pleasure. Or, perhaps, bigger. I don’t know what Emperor thinks about that. Perhaps he thinks it a kind of local color or he uses it to learn about our reactions. Or his own reactions. Or interrelations. Whatever.

Trying to understand what Emperor thinks about this or that takes plenty of time from our Non-Acting Ministers’ lives. Active Ministers try to work using their best knowledge. The Emperor’s attitude was for us always a mystery. You never know if he is saying something because he is thinking that or gives us only a part, an approximation, of his opinion. The difference is as between statement „a fractal” and „rounded”.

It is a question if we could understand his full statement. And if he would say it to us. Most of us after reaching some maturity stops to ponder over this problem. Some of us try to experiment.

I am yet young enough to ask questions, but I never felt personally offended by this situation. Keeping me in the dark about real feelings or real opinions of the Emperor was just one of the faces of the Universe. He exists and it is enough for me. Sureness about his existence gives me, a solitary diver in the deep of the World Beside, the feeling of close connection by a solid line to my ship. If this ship is loving me or not, or if I am just a worker was of no importance to me, as long as it gave me this good feeling of being safe. When in the deep you love your saving ship, it is true. But I cannot ask the Emperor to love me back. It seemed to me always an absurd, considering the distance between us. But the safety was true, the line was true and I did not ask about anything more, ever. Specially out of home.

Europe some time ago seemed to me very interesting, even excitable, but I changed my mind. Perhaps I’m growing older. Please, do not understand me wrong. I do not feel old. I do not look old. I do not behave old. Just I am not so young anymore.

At our place we never do anything in a hurry. When I’m doing something fast, I’m doing it in accordance to my own inner rhythm, but not in a hurry. Is jogging for fun the same as running to catch a bus? Exactly. In Europe keeping your mind in a state of freedom is hard. Too many people try to do something to you without your consent. You have to fight back and it destroys your freedom. Beside the wall of a fortress everybody is a prisoner. Only on the start it seemed to me interesting.

I did not want to be conspicuous, so I started from Hong Kong airport. My suitcase was the model of everyday suitcases. Nothing suspicious. My Walkman was only a Walkman, as my cotton pajamas were only blue striped pajamas. Some underwear. Two cotton T-shirts. Shaving kit. Some shirts, mostly white. And so on. Nothing interesting for customs office or antiterrorists’ group.

I had fillings in teeth, a few hairs on my cheek the razor missed, red shaving mark on my chin, dirty nails on my first and ring - finger of right hand and my tie was a little creased.

My neighbor at the plane was a little unsettled when I sat beside him, looked at me askance once and again, decided me of no danger and got back to his reading. Some of them sometimes feel something. As a blind man can feel the sun. The aura is the hardest to hide.

It is strange, I never have bad intentions, but some of them feel in danger in my presence. Because of my aura? They seem to be blind, but sometimes not completely.

I changed planes at Schiphol Airport. Two hours of nothing to do. When walking around in search of a coffee - shop I was thinking about a paperback to buy, I found a bookstore, but it was already full with long line of clients, so I went straight to a cafeteria. I was in state of full happiness in empty shop for about five minutes. Then other wanderers came. But I already had my own table.

When I was lazily drinking coffee, looking at people and thinking nothing, into my field of vision she was walking in, the long - legged blonde. Answering my unthinking stare she smiled and stroked her hair. Judging by TV standards she was madly desirable. I stole a look at asthmatic guy of middle age. He was panting, going after her but I thought the cause was not the blonde but shortage of physical training and his heavy suitcase.

From my point of view they looked like mobile cut - off hands on the run from the owner. I know, I look like that also, for you. But I think about myself as of a being build in the same fashion as, for instance, a badgerdog, the only difference is that mostly I move around coiled as a corkscrew. This method of hugging myself is not perfectly comfortable, but you can get used to it. The most idiotic thing about it is in the fact, that people forbid themselves to uncoil, as if staying in this form was not only desirable but also a tip of creation. It is good that spermatozoids didn’t find this idea attractive also, the whole race would be dead in a twinkling of an eye.

But these immature apples have an owner, even if they say different. They can think themselves free and unbound, but in truth they were not cut-off hands but gloves, all the time closely fitting living hands, till the moment the cloth shreds itself. Why? Perhaps the Emperor needs something to play chess with his Empress.

I accept it the same way I accept the supremacy of the Emperor.

The blonde sat at the table nearby, showing her perfect teeth when eating her sandwich. She was stealing glances at me, perhaps my looks after some metamorphosis - they passed a little more into the Caucasian side of the spectrum, if you want to imagine me at this moment I looked like a brother of late lamented Brandon Lee - were in her taste. Or to my taste. All the time I was correcting my hairdo in mirror at the bar, so I think I liked my looks. I do not have this kind of opportunity often.

I started to think about partly lobotomy for a few hours and spending them with a blonde as if I was living here, you see, stranger in a strange land, square, for sure both of us would have much fun because of that, but I recalled my last visit and last lover and it made me sad. Perhaps I really get older, the last contact was not so good. You know how the computer-crazy and ballet-crazy talk to each other? The same kind of things can happen in a bed also.

Lately I discovered that I am too much apart from people here. Of course at home we have this kind of affairs also, we are normal people, right? But it happens only when both parts fit well together, so mostly the affair is continued. I did not have anybody of this kind. The Emperor did not decided yet about my marriage. Perhaps I should insist, but my life was sweet and I was not in a hurry. You can name me a pragmatic. I won’t be offended.

Until this time I was just a tourist. Now it started to be boring. Maybe, as is the saying here, I grow out of it?

I made farewell to the blonde looking at her longingly, or trying to make this impression, and wandered to my gate for Warsaw flight.

Some guy I saw on my flight from Hong Kong, middleweight, looks hard to describe went after me. I visited a restroom, just to be alone for a moment, but he had the same idea. The more I would want to stay here the more he would wish to do the same, so I gave up.

It was good I didn’t need to find some recluse at this moment, not yet and not here, I remembered that sometimes we meet „planets”, people who circle us only because of our gravitation. It is hard to lose them without some drastic steps. This one evidently was one of them.

I was not in East Europe for a long time but my memory gave me the map of the land without problems. On the plane I tried to find a way to be free of my „planet”, he was on the same flight and already had this blank looks of someone partly hypnotized. I planned the next change of my face but with this object hovering nearby it was really hard, he remembered my looks perfectly well even if subconsciously, this knowledge radiated from him, unconsciously he gave it to the others and together they were making my outside picture. It does not mean I could not do anything. I just wanted everything to go smooth, without a trace. I did not want to be a two-faced person, literally, even for a little group of people I never see again.

The situation, sadly, didn’t want to straighten itself, nobody waited for my unneeded companion and when I was catching a taxi I had yet my old face. He went after me by some other taxi, I felt him behind as if he tramped on my tail, a thing he really was doing.

To be on the safe side I asked my driver to let me out near some big store. I started to think intensively about buying a bicycle and, of course, when I went on the floor with sports utensils there was already a crowd. Do you think a play „Simon says” was made out of nothing? My planet with tousled hair and clamped teeth went through short - timed bicycle fans like a small but determined rugby player. I run away by the farthest staircase, saying to myself over and over „I badly need a bicycle, I will die without it, a kingdom for a bicycle”. I broke into the run, went through the hall of some hotel like a lightning and found myself some empty toilet. When I was going out three minutes later, the planet walked around the hall with the face of a lost doggie, carrying both his suitcases. I felt a touch of pity for the guy and, of course, the bellboy came instantly to help him. The change of my looks helped, my companion didn’t follow his instincts any longer and woke up from his stupor. He will be sure that, tired, he mistook this hotel for his own. Everything started to go smooth again.

Now I was red-haired.

Red-haired and suntanned, I was too lazy to do more. I took my little luggage, looked around and found my directions. My first object was somewhere in the north about two hours in the future. I had plenty of time to get there. Of course everything get together this way that the car almost hit me. The car swerved and instead of me hit a little Suzuki. After a moment my object was in heated discussion with a guy with a beard and glasses, who went out of the massacred car. This way the probability of a meeting between object one and object two, which could bear a fruit of unneeded interest in object, three shrank to almost zero.

Object one will never learn that and idea of object three, the idea he’ll forget because of shortage of needed equipment, never go into the open. Special machinery, which could help them to see us in our real bodies, will not be construed for some more time. When I was getting myself back from a little crowd, a youngster, a little tipsy and perhaps because of that more perceptible breathed into my face with some beer a few hours old. He caught my sleeve, calling that he found this lame idiot responsible for the car crash. His peers, happy with the vision of some tussle, pushed the way to us through the crowd.

I did not like to rummage in his head. If the problems were important, I always can appeal to the Emperor. I just reacted as the custom of the circle here was, and simply pushed him lightly. Even in disguise my mass, recounted or rather used by the local metric system, amounts to a few tons. In some sense I am real black hole. This slight push relocated whole group by half a meter, if I was not on guard they would land on the wall of nearby building, somewhere around the third floor, but the whole time I was saying to myself, I am doing nothing, only pretending and things went more or less as I wished to. I hoped in the next moment their reasons will make the rest and they will be sure they only staggered and the beer was responsible.

When I was stealing out of the crowd someone took hold of my tail.

I looked around. The touch was familiar, as if someone from home was here also and made me a joke.

In a moment I felt hesitant touch again and caught as fast as possible this something trying to disappear about three kilometers away. I decided to use the opportunity and ride on this friendly tentacle. I sent my own the same way a fisherman throws his spinning and we curled into a knot.

I had to work hard to hold on, it was struggling so hard it almost got out of my hold, I never tried to catch such a big fish. But I had plenty of fun. Ever tried to catch a marlin?

I looked around the place I reached and instantly got back to the rest of my person walking without hurry through the streets of a quarter of little villas, in their little gardens looking like shy old maidens buttoned up closely into their too small coats on a party.

I recalled what I learned playing the probe. A woman well camouflaged in her surroundings. Half waked. A child weeping out of hunger, sucking her own finger. Almost autistic. How many of the likes die before they have a chance? Children playing grownups, eating sand they call soup. Children not acknowledging the existence of grownups and forbidding each other to get out of this nursery garden.

I tried a peep into her future. And the next surprise. She didn’t have any future, not in the sense of an average person. The margin of freedom was so big, as, for instance, mine. How it could be? I was so agitated I almost turned myself into a whirlwind. I tried to peek into her past also and here I met the next surprise. She heard me! What’s more she demanded from me an information about my whereabouts. I almost surrendered. Immensely interested, I located myself a few kilometers away and called her. After half an hour she came and looked around. She didn’t see anything interesting and went back home and on the way she was showering me with abuses.

I pulled my rope, willy-nilly she went where I decided. Let her know who is ruling here. It is good for health to meet a grownup even if it seemingly puts you in servitude. How to make someone to learn if the teacher does not show his knowledge? She wants to know it also? Welcome, but not for nothing. So we started our little school, she was talented even if her made-up personality tried to get into the way often. After some period of a tussle at last we started to cooperate.

I took her with me to do the next correction. It was her to collide with the object four and say something so obviously stupid that number four went home saying again and again „singing buttered roll”. He made from this singing roll new semiconductor. Why the Emperor needed it I was too lazy to learn.

Of course Omega people smelled us, schooled youngsters draw them as a flame draws wanderers on Siberia. And it is just so. They hope all the time that the Emperor is not omnipotent. The old archetype of the Antagonist, this tulpa made up by rational minds feeds on their ideas and in exchange holds their chains. Do you want to know how big their stupidity is, besides his obedience to the thing made by their own hands? All the time they are making the dolls impersonating the Emperor to try to harm him at a distance. As if the Emperor was not immune to this circus tricks. The only thing they succeed at doing is making harm to people susceptible enough to pick up this transfer of energy.

They jumped at her as rabid dogs at a wounded cat and I didn’t interfere. Cruelty? No. We are wells that have to give out water to let the new water to come. Of course it was for her a real torture. I wept with her but did nothing until they skin her. After all her mask was used up and uncomfortable. Then I could take care of her, drove aggressors away and started to heal her.

She came to me in her real form at night, poor little one, the difference of heights was such I felt like a King Kong with his blonde. She curled up at my lap. What I could do with her? I fed her, in this strange world sure she has trouble to find something to eat. I felt as if I become a father. And a mother. So it was the reason the Emperor sent me here! I succeed to teach her how to find my home and she understood that until she’ll grow up she cannot stay there for long. She was not very angry. After all for the first time she ate her fill, I remember how I was moved by the fact that I was sated, long time ago, in my childhood. And the news she is not sentenced to this prison circle of hell forever, she can go out for a holiday when she wish, had its significance also. But I did not want her to be angry with me. I knew she loves me the same way I love the Emperor, I knew I started to be a ship with life - rope to someone else, like the Emperor was to me, but it was not enough. I wanted to appeal to her, a wonder of wonders. I wanted to have a tail of a peacock and prance with it and toot for three months and then started it all over again. Is it growing up? I felt rather childish. She understands my dilemma, the next wonder. Her laugh was beautiful. When she’ll be grown up it will be nice to curl into a ball together.

Parting was sad even if she will visit me often. We are not pure spirits and these visits are not enough. Our gloves were serving the hands of a magician with full conscious consent but we partly identify ourselves with our outsides. Some day in the future we will know for sure that we are the Emperor and the Empress but at this moment we prefer things as they are.

So it was hard to part, even if I have to get back shortly.

Some people name me a devil, some name me an angel. Most of them, after hearing a story about meeting me name me a chance. Of course the last do not know how many of us work at this station. In China, a country bordering with our land in many points we have the name of dragons.

Tomorrow I’ll go back home, but I’m sure to be back here often. I heard already my friends joking I raise myself a wife. I do not care about that. As I said I am not in a hurry and my friend is three years old by the standards of homo sapiens. I know she will succeed, even if the way is long and hard. But the life is sweet.