Chapter 25

The gang stepped out in style to meet a wall of surprise loitering outside Alessandro's house; a 13 feet high custom made jet-like Double-Deck luxury Van Hool Astromega bus, occupying almost all the available space.

The doors were flung open to allow his passengers in. Alessandro and his friends moved in twos beginning with Marcus and Lada, with Lada wearing a headphone just like Marcus. Followed by Khristina and Natalie, clinging to one another as their lives depends on each other. And lastly, Alessandro and his two girlfriends trickled in without him showing any sign of preference to the other.

The upper and lower decks are fitted with four luxury microfibre seats, two massive monitors and built-in mini-screens attached to each of the seats with a powerful Wi-Fi internet access and an aeroplane styled bathroom with a small toilet and a washroom area. Other attraction features of the superbus are the kitchen area with its refrigerator, sink, running taps and hot water boiler tap. One additional component of the bus others failed to utilize but Alessandro was the Netflix enabled gadgets. What Alessandro and friends do not know about the piece of sophisticated machine is that it can be configured to enable it to travel on land, water and snow, and is to be piloted by a robot called Prague.

Natalie and Marcus seats side by side with their girlfriends. Alessandro and two others went upstairs. All the television are now on and some crazy beats were streaming.

They moved across the crowded city of Omsk and captured all and sundry's attention like rock stars.

Natalie, on whose Lada's head was lying on his bosom, scented trouble after seeing Khaterina and Irina go after one man: "Should there be fight outbreak, I'll hold Khaterina responsible for her unannounced coming."

Irina quickly claimed the seat beside Alessandro and Khaterina, who has been monitoring the annoying development opted not to be greedy for a change by not keeping Alessandro to herself but allow Irina some slack to have a feel of him while she play the Ostrich tricks, but vows not to allow her canal knowledge of him.

Khaterina likes the music being played and begins to twerks her waistline to the pleasure of Alessandro and Irina. They in turn clapped and cheered her to the utter dismay of others who thought all hell was going to break loose. They all joined them at the upper deck in a wild dance. Alessandro refused to do anything nasty to depress either lady vying hard for his love.

Alessandro switched on the in-built disco lights which begin to tilt violently, evoking deep multi-coloured light so that it was difficult for one to see one metre ahead of one like they were in a pub. Hit music after hit music were dished out by Khristina, whose disk-jockeying skills was on display to her close friends that don't even know she possessed such skills.

Khaterina did not restrict herself to entertaining her new friends with her savvy dance steps, she also serves them wine, including the AI driver. She met him partying hard; moving his body rhythmically to the music in the cock-pit not knowing he was being watched. When served with a drink, he laughed heartily and said to Khaterina, "Prague doesn't consume tequila."

"What else would you take apart from tequila?"

"Prague will holler at Khaterina when Prague needs something, but for now, don't worry about Prague." Khaterina respects his wishes and did not try to force them on him. "That was a nice dance move by you," complimented Khaterina.

"You mean you saw Prague dance?"

"Yes I did, Prague."

"You must be fortunate then, but hey, don't tell Prague's boss if not Prague will lose his job."

"Trust me Prague, I'll not tell anyone.

Prague withdrew his eye from her and set it on the large windscreen before him. He mumbled to himself, "nice ass Alessandro have got there. But I wonder why she doesn't know am a robot and do not partake in human's delicacies.

A while later, Prague made a hilarious request of a song to be played in his honour, unfortunately, Khristina could not find that song anywhere in the bus's giga-zillion library of songs stored in the sophisticated boom box, making the crew laugh at him, but a beautiful song from the '80s was selected and played for him by his father, Alessandro, and he seems to love it. "I knew he will like it," said Alessandro, "but watch out so that you don't lose control of the wheel and get us killed."

After five hours of a smooth ride, Prague positioned a microphone to his mouth and began to speak into it saying: "Brace up, gentlemen and ladies; we are about to change surfaces from the hard-black-coal-tar to the white and slippery snow in a minute."

Members of the lower deck that emptied into the upper deck came rushing down, they took a position in their stools and threw their eyes out the windows to see how that happens.

A thick voice began to count down in descending order: "6..5…4….3…..2...1." A noisy mechanical activity was heard taking place beneath the bus. An enormous skateboard-like metal begins to release itself onto the surface of the snow, stretching from the front bumper to the centre sides of the Astromega bus. The tires began to sink inwards from the middle sides to its rear bumper. Another set of tires again paved way for a huge chain. All these occur within five seconds, causing no discomfort to its crew.

"Ladies and gentlemen," declared the proud pilot, "a successful transformation has been made from a luxury bus to a super luxury supersonic Arctic Cat. You may now unbrace yourselves and enjoy the ride.

Now, residential buildings are no longer insight, and the crew begin to experience the Arctic atmosphere though they still have a long way to go.

At the rooftop of the coach are four large transparent glass openings. The lower deck group requested them to be opened by their robotic driver, which he obliged without objection. They emptied themselves again into the upper deck and rear their heads outside the squared windows. It was thick of the night in the middle of nowhere surrounded by snow. There was not just a moon, but a super full moon; so large and luminous due to its closest point of approach to earth in its orbit that it looked like it was about to collide with planet earth.

The led-lights streamlining the body of the white bus glides over the snow silently like a lone star in the firmament. They used their telescopes to google far into the horizon but captured no sign of life, neither of a flora nor a fauna, and realized how lonely they are at the cusp of the North pole.

Lada deserted her space and went to compete for space with her paramour, Natalie and before you knew it, they were kissing. Alessandro watched them jealously; he dares not attempt that with any of his concubines or it sparks a war of words, or even worse, a fistful fight.

The party gradually winds to an end with no official declaration for that as everyone disappeared, one after the other, while others were fast asleep.

Irina and Alessandro sat at the front row seats while Khaterina was behind them, lying in an adjusted seat, hibernating. Irina was agitated when she encountered Khaterina the first time; labelling her a threat but later found her fears uncalled for. She felt she owe her a lot but doesn't know how to repay her.

She rose to her feet and walks delicately to Khaterina, with Alessandro watching her, wondering what she was doing; he primed himself ready to move in for the rescue should a fight erupt. Irina took a pink kilted pillow and placed it underneath her neck that was badly positioned. Khaterina neither blink nor moved her body as she was fast asleep.

"This sleep is not normal," said Irina, "I suspect she had an overdose of tequila and it's already taking its toll on her." She then gave her a light peck and departed from her. Alejandro quickly moved his gaze from her, pretending not to have seen what had happened.

Now that Irina is certain that Khaterina is gone, she has got the stage to perform and earn applause from her beholder. She slots her hand into his shirt and rubs his chest. To her delight, Alessandro did not protest. That encouraged her to be more daring; she again ran her thin lips on his mouth so well that it sparkles with her lip gloss. He was wholly run down by the kiss and looked like he was tranquillized by it.

Irina, like Khaterina, adjusted their seats and unzipped Alessandro's trousers and began to do it under the colourful floodlights

*******

From the rural rope-way of western Siberia to the urban high-tech Maglev sub-ways of Omsk; they skid into the innermost Siberian eternal empire of snow, passing by acres after acres of frozen wetlands and forests and travelled from dusk till dawn without Prague blinking its eye.