By-products of psychotronics
"Is the device phased?"
"How could it not be, Professor? It's tuned to cover the office building we selected for the experiments."
"Are the tracking sensors engaged?"
"In full accordance with the layout. Using special infrared cameras, we'll be able to hear and even partly see everything happening inside."
"I thought infrared radiation couldn't provide any clear picture."
"That's for ordinary citizens, Professor. But we are, after all, a secret special service conducting a sinister, convention-banned, covert experiment on the psyche of ordinary people. The laws of nature are mere suggestions to us."
"
Well, in that case, I have no questions. For the glory of the mysterious Thirteenth Department of State Security, in which we both have the honor to serve, shall we press the red button?""Wait a moment, let me take a sip of beer so my throat isn't dry at this historic moment. Oh, by the way, what exactly makes this moment historic?"
"Well, we'll gain a universal tool for psychotronic terror—or for repelling psychotronic terror, depending on what we need to write in the reports."
"How does it work?"
"If we knew precisely, we'd hardly need to conduct experiments, right? But for now, it seems to somehow disinhibit the left hemisphere and subcortex while simultaneously weakening certain right-hemisphere centers, resulting in a certain primacy of the logical over the irrational. Moreover, the latter category often blindly includes everything whose usefulness the mind cannot quickly justify to itself."
"Like what, for example?"
"Various taboos, for instance. Subjects particularly often lose their navigation in the realm of unwritten prohibitions because the irrational component there is especially high."
"How so?"
"Depending on the specifics and type of transmitted radiation. Typically, subjects retain the knowledge that certain taboos exist but lose the ability to easily navigate them. They acquire a certain naivety, if you will. Like a child who thinks the world is built on logic and that the association between picking one's nose and disrespecting the interlocutor can be easily removed by simply saying, 'I'm going to pick my nose now, but that doesn't mean I don't respect you, okay?'"
"How do these experiments benefit us?"
"What, haven't you figured it out yet? A person who starts believing in the primacy of logic, especially in such a naive expression of it, can be convinced of anything."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The workday—or rather, the work evening—at "InterMegaSolution," an ordinary firm of typical urban style, proceeded in an equally mundane manner, which greatly contributed to the drowsiness of most employees.
Vadik, the local driver, yawned, swatting flies away from the slowly prepared lard sandwiches with a rolled-up newspaper. Stas, his work colleague, was feigning diligent mental work on a crossword puzzle, which was hardly more than a cover for dozing.
After slicing another thin piece of lard and placing it on bread, Vadik frowned for some reason.
He looked at the lard.
He looked at the bread.
He coughed.
"What's up?" Stas tore himself away from the crossword.
"I'm thinking. Why put lard on bread and waste time making sandwiches when it's easier to eat lard with bread on the side? It's logical, right?"
Considering the matter settled, Vadik pulled the lard into his mouth.
"But then the piece of lard you've bitten, for reasons of squeamishness, might remain solely yours," Stas remarked. "The uneaten part, for example, couldn't be returned to your wife. Logical?"
"Logical," Vadik gloomily admitted.
And he looked again at the piece of lard in his hand.
"Well, screw her," he said.
The entrance door creaked, and the programmer Anton walked past—must be on an urgent call?—his duties usually didn't require daily presence. Jokingly bowing to both drivers, he threw his heavy bag on the floor near his chair in the far corner of the room and poked the power button of the system unit, a couple of minutes later securely barricading himself behind a liquid crystal monitor from all external reality.
"Some people are lucky," Stas commented in a half-whisper. "They live in a shell—and the outside world seems not to touch them."
"For the world not to touch you, you have to die," Vadik uttered.
"Logical."
Both slowly contemplated this prospect.
"No, I guess we still want the world to touch us at least a little," Stas cautiously suggested.
"Also logical."
Vadik chewed his lips.
"We're... kind of logical today, you and I," he said.
The door opened again, this time letting in the mustached guard Pakhomych—whose real name was completely different, but who had long been stuck with a nickname of unknown origin that no one wanted to trace back.
"Hey, guys?" he called hoarsely. "Got any cigarettes?"
"But you're not allowed," Vadik was confused. "Or... or are you?"
The guard shrugged.
"What, I won't have time to spit them out of my mouth if something starts happening?"
"No, but... it's..." Stas clicked his fingers in the air. "You'll lose concentration and miss the laser sight dot from a sniper rifle in the building across the street, for example."
Pakhomych chuckled:
"Believe me, guys, in that case, one worn-out veteran with a double-barreled shotgun won't save you anyway."
Vadik didn't say "Logical," because he wasn't sure if it was logical. He lacked the competence.
He rummaged in his pockets.
"Well... take it. 'Hollywood' okay?"
Pakhomych took the cigarette.
"It'll do."
His eyes glinted with the lighter's flame as he went back out. Literally on the threshold, he seemed to stumble, his hand reflexively reaching for his furry ushanka:
"Hello, Lidiya Nikolaevna."
A person entered the room whose apparent age alone could be a subject of debate. This is how a twenty-five-year-old lady might look if she wants to appear stern, but a forty-year-old woman could also look like this in principle if she wants to seem youthful or simply takes good care of herself.
What could be definitively said about Lidiya Nikolaevna:
— her hair was black;
— her eyes were green;
— she usually wore modest business attire in dark lilac tones with a mid-length skirt;
— she also wore square glasses with a black frame;
— her face was generally quite pretty but invariably looked strict, which, combined with the previous two points, gave her a resemblance to a math teacher.
Oh yes, and she—as it happened—was the director of the "InterMegaSolution" enterprise. And she strongly disapproved of laxity in the workplace.
Is it any wonder that Vadik and Stas tensed up a bit. One of them even tried to shield the uneaten lard with his body.
"Hello, Mikhail." She slightly adjusted her glasses, sizing up the guard with a distrustful look. "What are you doing here?"
"Well," Pakhomych waved his hand carelessly, "came to stock up on cigarettes from the guys. And warm up for an hour, it's cold standing out in the frost all day."
Lidiya Nikolaevna's eyebrows furrowed.
"Standing in the frost, as you put it, is your job," she said in a tone that brooked no argument. An icy blizzard spread like a misty fan in her voice. "You are paid for it. If you don't like it—I'm sure there are plenty willing to stand at the entrance for the same fixed pay."
Pakhomych raised his hands imploringly under her scorching gaze.
"Can I at least make myself some coffee? After all, what's the difference between guarding the firm from inside or outside?"
"There is a difference," Lidiya said abruptly. "You must be there so that troubles don't end up here ."
With a sharp nod of her head, she gestured to the door.
"Go."
Slightly pale and swallowing a lump in his throat, the embarrassed guard hurried to obey her instruction. Lidiya unhurriedly hung her white fur coat on the hook to the left of the door, then turned to the programmer as if nothing had happened.
"Anton, I need you in the office."
And with a regal gait, she disappeared behind the door.
Silence thickened in the room for a few moments.
"Hmm," Stas broke the silence. "Essentially, she's right, but it's kind of hurtful. She could at least have let the old man have his coffee. She's somehow excessively fierce."
"Got up on the wrong side of the bed?" Vadik suggested.
Thinking for a moment, his interlocutor twitched his nose.
"If only," he said in a half-whisper, glancing sideways at the door with ill will. "Remember that case with Artyom, who used to work as our driver, back during the crisis? When he calculated on paper that the monthly car maintenance cost practically equaled his salary, and the difference barely covered rent and food?"
"I remember." Vadik grimaced. "Poor guy was unlucky."
"And remember what happened to Nikolai? The guy wasn't at all to blame; home births can start for anyone."
"I remember."
"Or how you yourself got into that accident, by the way, also not your fault and during work duties? They didn't pay for your repairs, did they?"
"Uh-huh," Vadik winced. "Wasn't covered by the contract. Some intersections of paragraphs in fine print."
Stas sighed.
"So," he summed up gloomily, "it's not about some side of the bed. She's just like that in life."
"All bosses are the same," Vadik objected for form's sake. "There are worse than her. This one, at least, pays the salary regularly."
"There are worse," Stas smiled sadly. "Who's arguing?"
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Tell me about the monthly reports you prepared," the manager ordered in a colorless voice, completely unaware of the rather interesting discussion about her person unfolding just a few meters away.
Lidiya Nikolaevna's gaze slid across the computer screen, currently displaying a browser with several dozen open tabs. The tab she was reading at the moment belonged to a legal website.
"Well," Anton coughed awkwardly, "the first report you asked me to prepare concerned the dynamics of consumer demand. I wasn't very sure how to analyze such small quantities, so I inquired with some primate acquaintances. Applied mathematicians, that is..."
Lidiya clicked the mouse, switching from tab to tab.
Not all the tabs she was reading were strictly business-related. Since her monitor screen, due to its position, wasn't visible to the programmer—while the manager saw no point in feigning aimless busyness in front of him.
Here, for example, was a VKontakte site tab.
No new messages.
"The November curve graph shows a decline with a slight rise at the end. But you understand how unreliable these trends are with such a small amount of factual material..."
The manager nodded understandingly, actually listening to the programmer only half-heartedly. Her fingers clicked the mouse again.
No.
One of those tabs that like to open in browsers on their own, advertising their services to a hormone-overloaded audience.
Blushing slightly, Lidiya closed it.
Her knees, tightly sheathed in semi-transparent tights, shifted slightly under the desk, swaying from side to side. Not that this movement was particularly erotic or sexual. She had long tried to eradicate such impulses from herself.
Having become the director of "InterMegaSolution" due to a series of hard-to-explain and rather random circumstances, she roughly understood what role this doomed her to—or could doom her to—in the thinking of the surrounding male collective. Any softness would be interpreted as weakness, any weakness as a reason to pressure—or seduce. Seeing the antidote in the image of cold detachment recommended by magazines for businesswomen, she over time intensified and brought this image to a ringing absolute.
The mask, as we know, sticks to the face.
You are what you do. By harming people, you over time begin to hate them for it—for making you feel guilty.
Who knows, perhaps Lidiya had indeed become an unfeeling, icy bitch over the years?
However, she wasn't particularly concerned about that now.
"More detail, Anton," she tapped a lacquered nail on the desk surface. "What do you mean by saying the decline could turn into a rise by February?"
Slightly tilting her head, Lidiya listened for a moment to the long, tangled explanations touching on Pareto distribution and even the not-to-be-named-at-night Maslow's pyramid. However it was, she grasped the essence of the explanations from the first phrases—her higher education and economics degree made themselves known—but she had no intention of helping the programmer extricate himself from the web of words he had woven.
Let him find his own way out.
Her fingers clicked the mouse melancholically again, switching from tab to tab.
A medical-educational site with a slightly frivolous tinge in its topic selection. Where else could you learn how many times the human pupil dilates—and how many atmospheres of pressure, it turns out, a mosquito develops when biting?
Her gaze slid over the article headlines.
"Male seminal fluid has shown radically beneficial properties regarding effects on facial skin and hair roots." Well, well, who would have thought. Smiling to herself, Lidiya didn't notice how her fingers clenched the mouse to a click again.
She read the article.
"The cosmetic effect of the hormonal-vitamin mixture contained in sperm has long been no secret to scientists," the article said. "Sperm of animal origin and substances extracted from it are a widely used ingredient in many skin creams, representing