Sleeping in Liquid Nitrogen

In general, when right before Nar-Tai's eyes his former classmate suddenly, for no apparent reason, jumped down from the balcony and smashed himself into a pancake, he - Nar-Tai, not his classmate - understood that he had to act immediately and had to finally reveal the terrible secret of WHAT exactly was hidden in the room that Dmitry Kurnosov entered immediately after he brought them to visit.

And our brave superhero immediately dropped everything and ran out of the dining room, while his friend Ando, not understanding anything that was happening and feeling like a complete idiot, continued to sit like doggie at the table with his mouth open in horror, and his eyes continued to peer at the view of the night city, visible through the wide-open balcony door.

Nar-Tai was already standing at the threshold of the room that was tormenting his consciousness. He did not turn on the light, since it was already on, and immediately stared at the wall on which hung a large painting in a heavy-looking frame.

The canvas depicted a man in a black robe with his thumb raised upwards, and his appearance frighteningly corresponded to the creation of his nightmare, which had once long ago been dreamed by little Nar-Tai back when he was in the second grade of elementary school together with Dmitry Kurnosov.

And now, looking at the painting in his former classmate's apartment and remembering his dream - and he remembered it very well! - Nar-Tai suddenly realized that his nightmare and this painting in his former classmate's apartment were one whole, and that meant...

This means that he never really became an adult, but continued to sleep an eternal sleep, and that in fact he is still eight years old and that he should, in theory, wake up any minute now and go to school in the morning, where, as always, he will start a fight with Dmitry Kurnosov on the way and experience other everyday problems of a little schoolboy, and this whole story about a superhero with steel skin and platinum bones, who supposedly jumped from an airliner and did not crash, are just the adventures of his nightmare.

But why, Nar-Tai thought, why couldn't he figure it out before? After all, all these years he had the opportunity to make sure whether it was reality or just a dream - it was enough to just carefully read the text of some book, because it is well known that if you read something in a dream, then the letters on the paper never look like real ones, but are essentially shapeless blots, which, in addition to everything, have an idiotic habit of blurring if you look at them for a long time.

And now, when the question of whether he was sleeping or not stood before him in full force, Nar-Tai, remembering this, so to speak, life hack, immediately decided to test it in action. To this end, he began to examine the room for a bookcase or something similar.

His search did not take long - the cabinet was very close, on his right hand. Nar-Tai rushed towards it like a tiger on an antelope and, randomly snatching a thick volume from its depths, opened it to a random page and began devouring the text with his eyes. This is what he read:

"Cactus and Chamomile, who grew up in the parlour, had the ability to speak like humans. When Zelandyne had nothing to do, she sat down on a chair in front of the window and listened, how her green friends tell her about what has been and what will be in the world. That day they told marchioness that today she is eighteen years old, and on this occasion, they want to please her with the news that she will meet her fiance, who, as was customary in those distant times, should give her a heart pierced by an arrow. When Zelandyne, delighted by this news, immediately went to the palace hall, Cactus and Chamomile began to whisper among themselves about who the mysterious chosen one of marchioness would look like."

Nar-Tai's eyes slid over these lines, full of schizophrenia and hidden sexual complexes, in a daze. He was afraid to even imagine the appearance of the person who could write such nonsense, which would be appropriate only in the medical history of a patient in some psychiatric clinic.

But even greater horror seized the soul of Nar-Tai by the fact that he actually read this, and during this process not a single letter treacherously changed its shape or blurred under his gaze like a blot! And this means that he is not sleeping, and all this is happening to him in reality.

This realization shocked Nar-Tai, and he threw the idiotic book out of the window, which fortunately was wide open, and fell to the floor, clutching his head with both hands. He was somewhat comforted by the sound of footsteps coming from the corridor.

It was his faithful Joponese friend Ando who rushed to his aid, thinking that the sound of Nar-Tai falling did not belong to the living Nar-Tai, but to the dead Nar-Tai.

And so, when Ando found himself at the threshold of the room, Nar-Tai, who continued to lie on the floor, had already come to his senses after the shock he had experienced and did not get up only because he was too weak for such an effort of will in the circumstances that had developed around him over the past few minutes.

But this, as it turned out later, only played into his hands, because it was this moment that became decisive in this whole strange story.

The thing is that when Ando entered the room and saw his friend lying on the floor, he rushed to him as fast as he could to help him get up or at least find out if something had happened to him and if he needed medical help.

And when he found himself literally one step away from Nar-Tai, the floor suddenly cracked under him, and if the Joponese had not reacted to this in time, he would have fallen into hell.

More precisely, into the basement, since through the opening it was clearly visible that there was a rather large underground hall below, approximately one hundred square meters in area - apparently, this was a utility room of the restaurant, located on the first floor of the building in which Dmitry Kurnosov rented an apartment.

There was nothing in the hall except for a glass bathtub in the farthest corner, with steam rising from it. Nar-Tai, who had come to his senses by this point, found the strength to crawl to the hole in the floor and, without thinking twice, fall down.

The fall was not painful, because right under the hole an anonymous well-wisher had thoughtfully placed a soft down feather bed.

Having landed safely on it, Nar-Tai, slightly stunned by the fall, gradually came to consciousness for some time, looking around with cloudy eyes.

Meanwhile, his friend Ando was squatting by the hole, looking down at Nar-Tai and not knowing what to say. Finally, he decided to break the silence:

"What the fuck just happened?" the Joponese man cried out in despair.

Nar-Tai did not answer him such a very obvious, but completely meaningless question. Meaningless because he could not find an answer to it.

He simply saw a hole in the floor, became interested in it, and accidentally fell into it. That's it! What can you ask about! However, Ando did not want to accept such a simple version of events.

He absolutely had to find logic in everything and the subsequent explanations that followed from it. Nar-Tai was already beginning to regret that eight years ago he had made friends with the egghead pragmatist who at that very moment was looking out of a hole in the ceiling and wanted to get to the bottom of things with swear words, when suddenly a telephone rang from somewhere far away.

At first, Nar-Tai thought it was somewhere in the basement where he was now, but when he noticed how the Joponese man's head suddenly disappeared from the hole and a loud stomping joined the phone call, he realized that the phone was ringing somewhere in the depths of Dmitry Kurnosov's apartment.

Realizing this, Nar-Tai stretched out helplessly on the soft feather bed and began to wait for Ando, having communicated with the mysterious subscriber, to deign to share this news with him.

And his hopes were justified - a few minutes later Nar-Tai heard footsteps, and when he raised his head, Ando was already staring at him with wide eyes, on whose face there was a strange expression of excitement mixed with chagrin.

He wanted to ask his friend what had brought him to such a state of mind, but he got ahead of him, starting to pour out a stream of verbal diarrhea on him:

"Dude, there's such passions flaring up at VRLJ right now that you just have to hold on!" he began. "I don't know exactly how this is possible, but some Mark just called here, introduced himself as Dmitry Kurnosov's friend, and asked us not to rat out his friend Deadend Graver. And do you know why?"

Nar-Tai looked at Ando like a ram at a new gate. He had not yet recovered enough to engage in a constructive dialogue. Ando, realizing this, did not wait for his friend to answer and continued:

"Because Dmitry Kurnosov is that very same clone soldier number eighteen point zero five, about whom that asshole Anton Skovorodnikov was going on for so long in the main office of the Pet-el-burge branch of the VRLJ corporation! Just remember how everyone suspected him of being the one who stole those little things, well, you remember - a small shiny object slightly larger than tweezers, which upon closer inspection was actually tweezers, a strange curved tube, similar to a syringe, but with a very thick needle, which in fact was not a needle at all, but just a very thin tube, bending at a strange angle, and also a red plastic box with a handle, similar to a typical Analdian lunch box, which are sold in many Whorecouver and Fuckonto stores, on the lid of which was a stylized image of a scallop, under which was written in Pornuguese "vieira", which in human language actually translated as "scallop". And I haven't even gotten up in front of you yet to remember the half-empty bottle of whiskey, half a pickle and a small shot glass with a chipped edge!"

Having poured out a thick and stinking stream of verbal diarrhea on his friend, Ando shut up, catching his breath.

Nar-Tai continued to lie on his stomach, looking up at his friend, and even in the dimly lit basement it was clearly visible that although Nar-Tai was in no hurry to express his thoughts with his teeth and tongue, his eyes were enough for everyone present to understand that he was really fed up with his friend's chatter.

But the Joponese man himself didn't give a damn, because, having caught his breath, he continued as if nothing had happened:

"Well, anyway, Mark told me that someone really did set up our mutual friend, throwing a bag of these gadgets and gizmos that were stolen from a lab producing clone soldiers under his bed. He didn't say who exactly, because he himself wasn't sure which asshole came up with such an idea, but he was sure of one thing - it couldn't have been any of Dmitry Kurnosov's fellow soldiers, in other words, these three assholes - Anton Skovorodnikov, Ilya Silantyev and Pavel Solonin - so, these three assholes remain just three assholes, but nothing more. That is, they didn't set up their fellow barracks mate, someone from the outside did it. And considering that there is a real war going on right now between the Union of Indestructible Nations and damned The Omen Ica with slutty Analda in tow, Mark has every reason to believe that this was done by secret agents of one of these two fucking countries. They are constantly trying to steal our information on how to produce their own clone soldiers, and each time, attacking us like rats, they bite off more and more. And so Mark believes that this bag of gadgets was just a diversionary maneuver. That is, some rat who made a huge hole in the Pet-el-burge branch of the VRLJ corporation probably cleaned out the warehouses with the necessary tools a long time ago, and finally, in order to throw our brave generals off their guard, threw the bag of gadgets under the bed of one of the soldiers in order to shift all the blame to an innocent person. This is how the situation turns out..."

At the last words, Ando fell silent, apparently not having calculated his strength after the long speech he had delivered, which was as full of facts as a dog is full of fleas.

Some saliva flowed out of his mouth and fell directly on the face of Nar-Tai, who was lying directly underneath him, but the latter was not in the mood to wipe it off. His gaze was fixed on the Joponese man's face, and without saying a single word, he suddenly rolled over onto his back and groaned.

Ando, seriously alarmed, immediately jumped up from his knees and, running somewhere deep into the apartment, managed to shout:

"I'll call the staff doctors! A whole team with a rope ladder to boot! Just be patient a little bit, and they'll pull you out of there in no time!"

But Nar-Tai no longer heard his words. Leaning back on the feather bed, he closed his eyes and howled quietly, trying not to pay attention to the pain that, for no apparent reason, began to torment his brain - as if someone was sticking hot needles right through his skull.

The pain was so strong that Nar-Tai lost track of time, and when it finally let go, it was unclear how many minutes or hours had passed. But now, from above, in Dmitry Kurnosov's apartment, people's voices and the sounds of their footsteps could be heard.

With difficulty opening his eyelids from the tears that had appeared in his eyes, Nar-Tai saw an elderly man with a luxurious gray mustache and funny round glasses on his nose leaning over the hole in the ceiling. On the gray temples of the stranger was a small white cap.

Anyway, out of nowhere, a man appeared in front of Nar-Tai, who looked like "Doctor Aybolit", but it was unclear what the fuck he was doing there. However, Nar-Tai had no time to mull over this misunderstanding, because "Doctor Aybolit" had already started saying something.

Nar Tai listened and was finally able to understand what was going on there.

"Is this the freak that bit Pavel Solonin's leg so hard that it hit him right down to the bone?" said "Doctor Aybolit" in a cheerful voice, clearly addressing not Nar-Tai (although he was looking straight at him), but someone who was standing in the back of the room.

"Oh, come on, pan Grijas, the one who bit Private Solonin is now lying under the window with a broken skull," Deadend Graver's voice came from somewhere above.

"That's why I see that the one lying under the window and the one writhing on the feather bed under me now have nothing in common," said pan Grijas. "The other one looks like a maniac, a real maniac, Antichrist forgive me, and this one, as it turns out, is an intelligent person. And he, as I understand it..." he paused and looked at Nar-Tai.

He understood his look in his own way - this cheerful "Doctor Aybolit", apparently, had never seen the face of either Dmitry Kurnosov or himself, since he so confidently called him an "intelligent person", when in fact Nar-Tai was a regular guy, who was not worth putting a finger in, and who, if not for his innate instinct for self-preservation, would have killed all the goats in a row.

But now Nar-Tai couldn't answer anything because he was too weak. He only realized that "Doctor Aybolit" was apparently the same staff doctor that Ando had spoken of some time ago. But where was the team with the rope ladder that he had promised?

But then another face appeared in the hole in the ceiling, which Nar-Tai immediately recognized as Anton Skovorodnikov. The blond was already unwinding the ball of yarn that he held in both hands.

Having tied one end of the rope ladder to the sharp ends of the boards protruding along the edges of the hole, he, slowly passing it through his nervous and thin, like a pianist's, fingers, began to lower it down. With each centimeter the ladder sank lower and lower, until finally its end touched the dusty floor of the basement.

The clone soldier pulled it slightly towards himself, checking how securely it was fastened, and, having finished this task, turned to "Doctor Aybolit".

"Albertas Vislovdovichus, the ladder is secured, as you requested!" he said as if he was not in his colleague's apartment, but right on the parade ground. "Let me get you down. You're so old..."

"Old, but mighty!" retorted pan Grijas, flashing his cunning eyes from under his glasses. "I don't need your help, I'll do it myself, we've been there, we know!"

And with these words, "Doctor Aybolit" grabbed the top steps and began to nimbly, like a monkey, descend the rope ladder down into the basement. He descended very quickly, and Nar-Tai was surprised to notice an expression of excitement on his face.

When pan Grijas had already reached the floor, he, not paying attention to Anton Skovorodnikov, who continued to bulge his eyes, deftly jumped down the stairs and stopped two steps away from Nar-Tai, who was lying on a feather bed.

He was wearing a white coat, and a bottle of some colorless liquid was sticking out of his right trouser pocket. No, not whiskey, Nar-Tai immediately realized, because the bottle was very small and on its simple white label was written in Latin letters some unfamiliar word, starting with the letter "G".

The mythical G-spot, which all sluts supposedly have, including Ando's beloved Asia Vieira, clearly had nothing to do with the contents of that bottle in "Doctor Aybolit's" pocket.

But Nar-Tai didn't have time to understand what was going on, because pan Grijas, as Colonel Deadend Graver, who was now invisible to Nar-Tai, called this staff doctor, snapped his fingers in a strange way, after which Anton Skovorodnikov, who was clearly just waiting for this signal, also began to descend.

At this time, "Doctor Aybolit" himself, not paying attention to Anton Skovorodnikov, was devouring Nar-Tai, who was lying at his feet, with his cunning little eyes, which were hidden behind the lenses of his funny round glasses.

At the same time, his lips, which he kept licking with his tongue, looking as if he had just been treated to sour cream, like some fat and contented British cat, were parted in a smile, and Nar-Tai realized that his persona clearly evoked in the staff doctor, if not an enthusiastic, then at least a very warm feeling.

This was all the more surprising and strange in light of the fact that Nar-Tai was just another patient for him, and one that he had never seen before in his life, and what's more, he wasn't even assigned to the Pet-el-burge barracks of the VRLJ corporation branch!

Of course, the head of the corporation, Jorge Osorio, seemed to have appointed Nar-Tai to some completely ridiculous position of an unknown "drill instructor", but even the last fool could understand that this was just some new form of bullying, which was invented in order to force Nar-Tai to bend his back for Jorge Osorio and not receive anything from the latter in return.

But, on the other hand... Nar-Tai did not have time to understand what exactly he wanted to deduce from the sum of all these circumstances, because by that moment in the basement, in addition to pan Grijas, there was also Private Skovorodnikov, who had managed to descend the rope ladder and stand right behind Nar-Tai with the obvious intention of trying to lift him from his place along with the old staff doctor.

But then something unexpected happened to everyone present in the basement at that moment. The face of Colonel Deadend Graver suddenly appeared from the hole in the ceiling, looked at all three of them, made a strange gesture with his hand and immediately disappeared.

Nar-Tai expected that after this pan Grijas and Private Skovorodnikov would immediately abandon him to his fate and climb back up the rope ladder, but on the contrary, they came closer to him and, as if on command, grabbed both edges of the down feather bed on which he was currently lying.

"Heavy, the bastard," Anton Skovorodnikov said with difficulty, his face twisted into a grimace that might have seemed offensive if it had not been for the fact that it was completely sincere. "Albertas Vislovdovichus," he said, turning to the staff doctor, "please don't drop him."

"So what?" asked pan Grijas, who was clearly in a good mood, and despite his advanced age did not have any problems with weights, unlike his partner, born in 1982.

Anton Skovorodnikov left the staff doctor's remark unanswered and, sweating and shouting curses at the heavy Nar-Tai, began to carry their common burden together with the staff doctor to that corner of the basement where, as Nar-Tai remembered, there was a glass bathtub, which he had seen back then when he was up there, in Dmitry Kurnosov's room, before he fell here.

At that moment, he thought it wasn't such a bad idea to take a bath, considering the steam swirling above its surface. But when his bearers finally reached it and lowered their burden right into its glass interior, Nar-Tai realized with horror that the steam he had previously taken as confirmation that the water was hot, in fact, only indicated that the liquid in the tub was so icy that it took his breath away.

He tried to say something, but was unable to make a sound at the moment when pan Grijas and Private Skovorodnikov, with their combined efforts, lowered him into liquid nitrogen, which was the mysterious liquid from which icy steam rose.

He didn't even have time to get scared, because at that very moment someone's caring hand - judging by the wrinkles covering it, it belonged to "Doctor Aybolit" - brought a small bottle to his lips, to the neck of which Nar-Tai immediately attached his lips and began to suck in a sweetish liquid, similar in taste to the most ordinary sugar, which was dissolved in empty boiled water.

But it was clearly not water with sugar, but some other drink. And as if to confirm this, a kind old voice reached Nar-Tai's ears, as if from afar:

"Take a sip of glycerin, my dear," said "Doctor Aybolit," continuing to hold the bottle to Nar-Tai's lips. "This is so that your liver and spleen don't rot while you're lying in suspended animation in this bathtub. Otherwise, you know..."

What exactly Nar-Tai was supposed to know, he no longer understood, because at that very moment of pan Grijas's monologue, the latter abruptly pulled the bottle out of his mouth, and Nar-Tai felt his head plunge into an icy liquid - liquid nitrogen.

And the last sound that reached him from this world was the splash with which his body plunged into liquid nitrogen. An unpleasant sound, he wanted to tell someone.