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– Well, here and remember!

– I do not remember…

– Well, it most likely should be a girl. Some ant. Everything should be transparent here…

– And why is that?

– Listen, Torill, here you need to make a strict distinction: who has a dream and who is involved in the interpretation of sleep?

– Come on. As you say – we will do it!

– So you have more questions than I have answers. I haven’t started telling anything yet, but you’re raining questions and raining questions… it won’t work, you listen calmly and listen!

– Yes, I… – the military began to make excuses.

– The turn will come – I’ll tell you everything! Well, I do not refuse to unravel, right? You asked me, and I, as a comrade, decided to help a comrade…

– Well, come on, come on, I calmly listen further. – Torill for a minute artistically stretched out, as if on command “quietly” and gave military honor. – Do not interrupt more!.. Everything, silence, silence!

– I continue… – said serious Ave with arrangement.

– I’m silent! – Repeated Torill.

– I continue… so, oh, this someone, that dancing white cat, wants to capture, so to speak, conquer your inner world, understand you, probably so… yes, and I’ll say right away: it’s not bad, and it’s not good, it’s just a statement of fact. Take it as it is and that’s it!

– What a horror! Horror-horror-horror! Horror, you tell me… – said Torill cheerfully…

– Indeed, and so thoroughly outlined on you! You see, no? Conquer the inner world, know you! And maybe even fall in love, what the hell is not joking! You have an ant – even where!

– Fun you scratch! Interesting to listen!

– Yes, as I can…

– All is well, come on. I like it so far…

– Comedian you! You say, too, where do you like it or not? Well this is not grandma’s tales to please, but a whole science!

– Ahhh…

– Here is the eee and “aaaa!” Do you understand? Even in our clinics there are doctors who deal with dreams! – It was already impossible to stop Ave, the course of wild fantasy and transformation turned his courageous boat into the open, boiling sea. With the air of an all-knowing Doctor of Science, he continued his neighbor’s sleep analysis.

– So, I want to focus on what you actively heard in your dream and what you received as a gift! Accent… understand? So, this is the sound of the sea, which is incomprehensible how far, and bright flowers. And these, by the way, are the two most active romantic principles, that is, what?..

– What? What is “that is what”? – Torill listened to Ave’s story as the most diligent first-grader in elementary school in the lesson concentratedly listens to the teacher and learns world truths. – “Romantic principles” – I think it’s excellent, it’s almost understandable to me, and then what?

– Old man, I ask you – what is it?

– What? I do not understand you!

– Oooh! And what’s next – it all depends on you yourself… here you yourself have to make a choice in the near future – accept a “bouquet”, that is, a gift of fate, or not accept it. Torill, just what will be behind this surprise is not entirely clear… not quite…

– Why is it unclear?

– Well, ooh, so… so, look, before you make any choice – think carefully and act, soldier! This is what I am telling you in a friendly way now!

– Thank you, Ave!

– And do not be offended if you said something wrong. The time will come – and everything will be clear.

– This is always so, it seems to me…

Life, of course, will tell you, but you, Torill, do not shit yourself!” You are smart and strong, strong, of course, more, but still… You certainly can overcome all the difficulties and obstacles that life will put in your way! And-and-and, true, forgive me for not saying so.

– Well, Ave, well, Ave! Thank you so much! – emotions overwhelmed Torill, at first he hugged brotherly ant tightly, then he took his tiny paw into his two huge paws and shook it with sincere gratitude. – Thank you, friend! He instilled a great joy in me, charged me with optimism! Thank! You’re very good at me with your… this… your dismantling of sleep. I promise, I promise you that I will be more attentive to life, and I will try, as you said here now – “think and act, soldier! That’s for sure about me! Thank!

The neighbors exchanged a couple of sensual phrases about life, passing and coming, and scattered about their important matters: sports Torill hurried to a morning run, although he trained in time much earlier in the week, but on this Sunday he could not find in himself strength to rise – tonight he returned from another business trip, and Ave, as always, plunged into household chores.

The ant slammed the door and hurried into the bathroom to start the washing machine. He put the cylinder received from the postman on a mirror bedside table in the hallway, hoping then to familiarize himself with the contents in a calm atmosphere. “A dying profession is a postman! Everyone is switching over to electronic messages, and soon the postal officers will not be needed at all! Here it is life – it moves on, here it is – progress, electronic substitutes are replacing living ants, what will happen next?”

At exactly nine o’clock, and not a minute later, the service technician arrived and immediately started repairing the dishwasher, “there are a lot of calls, and there isn’t quite any time,” he only answered in answer to his naive question: “What something serious?” Less than an hour later, the device rumbled regularly. Ave on duty, too, finished the manual laundry with work clothes, all that was left was to hang her to dry. A youthful fitter, casually rattling a tool in the kitchen, grumbled something and grumbled under his nose, and when Ave came up to him, burst out on him as if he were guilty of all mortal sins, but still pleased with the end result of his Before leaving, he stated that the landlord should not be offended by him.

Chapter 8

WHITE

After grumbling at all and all the mechanics left, Ave hastily hung up the washed laundry to dry in the bathroom: the ants did not have a balcony for such purposes, as in some others high-rise apartments, and in the room they did not like a chaotic mess, even if it was a “working mess”. Next important an active line in the schedule of the duty officer was a strict point – “a trip for juice”. After the divine nectar, I had to run for my two to a distant area of the city with ten liter cans, since the decent ration of each ant includes a decent the consumption of life-giving juice.

Hardworking ants were on duty in their apartment daily, in turn. Three times a week: on Tuesday, Friday and Sunday – there were complex, elongated shifts, from early morning until very late evening. The person responsible for all household chores was automatically released that day from work in the main place and worked only on the housework: he tried his best – cooked, washed, cleaned, ironed, went for groceries and juice for fontanel… On the other days of the week – there was also enough daily work, the goose bumps never sat idle, they didn’t even have a head came to take off from fulfilling labor obligations in front of your comrades. Ave somehow on the day of the next on duty, I caught myself thinking that “you spin all day, you have time to do a hundred different things from morning till night, but it’s as if they aren’t decreasing, the next day, new hundred are already planned projects, and when to keep up? At least work around the clock…”

In the room, the ant quickly changed clothes: he deftly picked up the common ones on the wide leather belt of jeans trousers instead of a “home” shirt, he pulled on a flannel electronic mini-watch, for a minute he lingered in the hallway, recalling – had he forgotten something. “Everything seems to be normal!” Ave threw a light black jacket-windbreaker, – and then, what good, it still rains, looked around and went out onto the landing, slamming the door shut with a sweep, and touched the elevator button, she winked with a green eye. The speed case, as if waiting for the owner, opened his arms with lightning speed, and when he entered the brightly-lit cabin, he cut off the outside world from him. And with a dull click the elevator doors Ave I suddenly remembered that I did not take the most important thing – cans for juice.

“Stunned! How did this please me?!” – ant grinned to himself, and immediately poked at “Stop!” and then – on the button of the home floor, jumped out of the opening doors.

“It’s funny!.. I forgot!.. Well, do I have to make that happen?”

In an instant, the front door opened, the benefit of the canister always stood in a hidden dresser in the hallway… Once again in the closed silence of the elevator, Ave is alive resurrected in memory an early meeting with a postman.

“The letter should be seen today!” What is there? Surely, there is a message from our Kint… Interesting, interesting read his romantic tales of the magical sea… And, in general, he hadn’t written something to us for a long time, no matter what happened to someone else…”

Suddenly, something clicked from below in the floor, unpleasantly with a heavy it stretched along the entire body of the elevator car with a drawn screech, the light blinked intensely, blinked again, it smelled of fetid dampness (or just so it seemed), and the rumbling elevator gave a startling murmur, suddenly there was a ringing to pain, the dead machine painfully “hung” for half a minute, which for a frightened Ave, it seemed like a centuries-old gray-haired eclipse, then a dangerous one the cabin slightly butted from one side to the other, as if seeking balance, sharply twice shook the whitened passenger and continued downward.

“What is it? What is going on here this morning?! Are the stars lined up?” – worried Ave.

Very soon, the aggressive cabin smoothly stopped on the first floor, the doors opened silently, and the ant, endlessly happy that the short was unpleasantly extreme the elevator journey ended without any consequences, scaredly jumped out onto the glossy floor, sparkling sparklingly multi-colored rainbow laminate, and joyfully greeting the friendly concierge as if he had not seen him for a couple of hundred years:

– Oooh, Diti, good morning, Diti! Very glad to see you, Diti! You are well done, you are a real miracle!

– G-g-good, g-g-good, Ave! And I’m g-g-glad to see you! – the old man smiled good-naturedly. A couple of years ago, he began to stutter a little, getting stuck on some words, – it seems that age affected.

– How is your health? Everything is fine? How does it work? What is your mood for Sunday?

– Yes, thanks, h-h-health, as always, in p-p-perfect order! All excellent, of c-c-course! The weather, it s-s-seems to me, is g-g-getting b-b-better, and this is the m-m-most imp-p-portant thing for a p-p-positive attitude, isn’t it?!

– Is it, is it! The weather is good, that is customizable! The weather is weather, but do we always need to work so that it rains there or some other rubbish? – Ave looked back at the doors of the elevator car.

– Are you g-g-going to the fontanel?

– Exactly! And how did you guess? That’s right in the very, very “bullseye” hit! Surprisingly – I was able to guess! – Ave countered with a smile, he wanted to say about the accident in the elevator, but did not know if it was worth it: – Here… we have some problem in the elevator…

– Mmm, and what? S-s-something happened?

– Yes, I’m stuck for a few minutes now, and the lights went out…

– Here you g-g-go! So, what is next? You p-p-pressed the call b-b-button d-dispatcher? I p-p-pressed the b-buttons, any b-buttons?

– No, I didn’t have time… somehow everything quickly happened, and itself decided…

– Ave, you g-g-got scared, so what?

– Well, how scared? Not much, just all unexpectedly happened – that scared, but then the elevator went anyway.

– Well, now I will c-c-call the rep-p-pairman, he will d-d-definitely look! The main thing is that there is n-n-nothing s-s-serious.

– Well, thanks, I’ll run on.

– Well, always, p-p-please, it’s our job to k-k-keep track of order and s-s-safety! Have a n-n-nice day!

– Thanks! And to you, Diti, have an easy day and good luck! Let everything be in the highest class!

The hardly glass massive entrance doors behind Ave with a dull whistle connected with each other, when he felt the whole breath of spring with the whole body, for the first time the frosted March sun molded bright and welcoming pies in the spring, and gave everyone around, and immediately in the inter-air space the lightest ghosts of fragrances fluttered blooming handsome trees, when you still don’t quite feel the dreamy breath, but you already know that they are definitely somewhere near. After a prolonged thunderstorm night rain, huge islands of puddles were illusory everywhere, and the crowned sun, which had awakened much earlier than working ants and had already risen very high, merrily had fun, accepting ephemeral water baths, inviting everyone with their all-pervading rays to join in active participation in his unpretentious round dance, teasing and enticing on Sunday’s walk.

GREEN

Amina threw back a strand of dark curly hair with a flick of her foot. With her thin fingertips, she tapped nervously on an obscure melody. The bright light filling the whole room gave Amina an incomprehensible joy, so pleasant, gentle, affectionate.

“And then I’ll go… I’ll go…”, – but somehow I didn’t get any further, the stubborn thought stopped, and I didn’t want to develop and look for such a simple, seemingly simple answer.

Where she goes – absolutely no clarity! What awaits her in the coming days – a continuous, whitish, impenetrable fog, as they say, is a “foggy fog” that fell so wrong at the time, however, does it happen that it falls on time. It just happens, and then we already think: “Ye-e-es, this story fell upon us at the wrong ti-i-ime!”

Yes and where in general Amina will be able to go when she has in her hands a difficult, completely unresolved question. Here, even at the right time, at least as planned – there are enough difficulties with the head… Perhaps this is the most important, basic question of her life… now the most important thing is that the birth should go as it should, and then it will be solved by itself, then the answer will be found.

“The main thing is what? The main thing, as always, is to arrange everything in a strict order! I’ll see my little one, and then I’ll deal with the question of how and where I’ll live… I’m not lost, all my legs are healthy, I have strength – I’ll solve any question!”

Amina calmly got up, went up to the large, exactly two ants high, oval mirror and admired her reflection. Like most pregnant ants, she was charmingly attractive. The roundness gave her a special charm and charm. The abdomen, or rather its upper part, was smoothly protruding, unusually towering, such a captivating petiol (the connecting part between the abdomen and chest), just recently, it seemed yesterday, so feminine and so fabulously soft, it was now elegantly fitted, like a huge pimpled basketball. It seemed that the whole lively little body of the ant had spread at the seams at once, it was stretched out, and it was completely unrecognizable: the eyes (those that had complex eyes* of the ants) desperately spread from the gentle trotters into two blue shapeless ponds, whose gentle wild shores were torn off by torn pink clay; the neatly burgundy tendrils stuck out somehow not at all in a strict, not in an optimistic mood, one might even say, giving the image of hymenoptera an insignificant, but still sloppy sloppiness; antennal fossa*, a reliable refuge for the antennae, from where they sprouted, turned red and significantly swollen, and therefore the scapus* did not keep so even; mandibles*, on the contrary, have dried up and, at first glance, seemed almost half as much as usual. But, despite all the miraculous transformations, Amina felt unusually good and comfortable in the new body.

Sometimes the ant seemed illusory that she hears, and even feels, within herself vague, dull sounds, and then also soft pink, soft scrapes, and did not quite understand: this should be so in her position or all this is unnatural. The zealous doctors, who zealously surrounded the pregnant ants on all sides, sweetly explained, telling one thing or the other, and each time adding new lengthy arguments, and every time she quickly calmed down, hoping only for a good outcome.

In the polished surface of the mirror, the reflection of an ant in a white coat was rapidly approaching.

“Let’s go to the ward, in any case, you’d better lie down,” the doctor advised with a cold hoarse voice in his voice.

– Of cours-s-se, of cours-s-se, already coming, already coming. S-s-so I decided to take a little walk, but s-s-somehow, you know, s-s-she is sadly s-s-sitting in one place. It’s a little boring… – recently, Amina’s childish long-drawn-out “s-s-s-s” has somehow become funny, and she kindly squinted every time she caught herself thinking that “s-s-s-s” amuses others.

– Why did you run away? – a smile appeared on the ant’s face, and he carefully grabbed Amina under the elbow and led her into a long corridor.

– Yes, it’s boring, I’m s-s-saying… Well, really… I would take a little walk… – the prayer of the pregnant woman gradually sank among the plain light blue walls.

– Are you alright? Nothing is required, but tell me, will we do everything? If something is wrong – you can always safely say to the sisters, they will help you!

Chapter 9

WHITE

The road to the fontanel, no longer, no less than three quarters of an hour, today clearly reduced due to high spring mood.

“Our old Diti, a fairy-tale old man, nevertheless survived his released term. He’s so old! How old is he, interesting to know? When we settled here with Rond, there were rumors that he had conscientiously worked more than fifty dollars! More than fifty! The same… yes, this figure does not even fit into the head… so it was back then, almost back in the past life. And how much is he now? To think – horror is simple! And they don’t eliminate him, although who wants to fire a working hardworking worker? Eliminate only for objective reasons and lazy ants! You have to go too low to get fired. And this one is a real pro in his field, and, it seems, in his favorite field. He thoroughly knows everything that is necessary and what is not necessary, and he has learned all the ants very well – he must have found his own personal secrets to each tenant, and a significant plus to everything is that he is not at all lazy! He is not lazy, just – well done! I wonder if lazy individuals are in nature, in general, in principle, is this possible? Yes, a total of sixty years or more he worked? How much is it? And he doesn’t want to leave… and where, and why should he leave, if there is work here and he feels that we need, we need society, and somewhere there, somewhere outside our house – he will become, and that’s for sure, ‘Waste slag’ thrown by everyone and left to survive…”

The path to the life-giving fontanel, which served for many centuries as a true “dear life” for the hymenoptera of the city of Kekhidupan*, ran through the entire endless, long Sixty-second street, along a glossy, dry, lifeless wall of monotonous flat, inexpressive multi-storey monsters, occasionally interspersing, variegated motley glass cubes of supermarkets.

The only notable building on the above Sixty-second was the Congress Hall, which amicably combines together with a couple of dozen private minor television studios and press centers, and one state mega-TV channel. Frankly, honestly, the Congress Hall with its ambitious architectural forms was the only building that fully (from an artistic and aesthetic point of view) compensated the entire adjacent gray area of the same type. As if frozen in an unknown architectural ecstasy, in the geometrically regular form of the mystical octahedron, an amazingly beautiful high-rise building could rightly be considered a real work of modern architectural art. And the lower fatal-strange inverted pyramid, as if squeezed from all four sides, and the upper one – are amazingly regular in shape, both were undividedly decorated with multi-colored glass windows, pierced with a mysterious rainbow, more precisely from the ground floor, from the ground, asphalt pavement, to the sharp-pointed peak of twenty eighth, – all the millionth ghostly colors of the rainbow rocker flowed polyphonically from one to another. The sun’s rays of cheerful reflection from the surface of almost ideally mirrored triangles and rhombuses from afar attracted everyone’s attention, captivating the eyes of the townspeople and surprising tourists, sometimes turning into the carapace of a terrible huge ancient amphibian, which in every way murmured with patchwork and scaly modulations in every way.

The sixty-second street, spontaneously breaking off, quite easily turned into a sad wide tunnel, which you had to walk along for another ten minutes to find yourself on Hundred and Forty Street, and from there to the Third Quarter, where the fontanel was located, just a stone’s throw away.

Jumping around his native Sixty-second, Ave with a touch of genuine sadness said to himself that on this clear colorful Sunday there were an unusual number of ants in the streets of a cloudless city: everyone ran in a never-ending string, hurried, rode, was late, stumbled, stopped, colliding, exchanging glances, again continued the way.

A brand new clean bus of an unusually delicate peach color with a wide white stripe and the inscription “SP-Express Special Lines” silently braked quite a bit before reaching the intersection, at the stop of the routes, and two ants smartly jumped out of it, and a two-story liner, releasing a few pops another batch of deadly earthen smoke, as if a caterpillar had curved and turned onto Fifty-sixth Street. In a hurry, Ave almost ran past an ant that got off the bus, but something unusual happened. The jumped-up goose abruptly handed Ave the red paw, blocking, like a barrier, the road to an ant on duty, hastening for business affairs.

– Stop, stop, sto-o-op! On this side of Sixty-second str-r-reet it is strictly for-r-rbidden to walk with empty canister-r-rs!!! Have you not hear-r-rd of the last amendment in Ar-r-rticle 129th?! This is a r-r-real disor-r-rder! Disturbance of or-r-rder! How do you, so easily, ignor-r-e the laws! This is ver-r-ry bad!

Stunned for a minute, Ave looked up at a passerby and, completely unaware of anything, opened his mouth wide to at least something intelligible to answer such an extravegant statement, but, as luck would have it, nothing came to mind. His mandibles began to twitch nervously one after another.

“What terrible rubbish is this? What nonsense! What is going on, green duck? Who is that? Who invented something? What nonsense?!” – Immediately flashed in the head of Ave.

Doing nothing, the opposite ant stood waiting expectantly and stared unpleasantly at Ave, who stopped. But here the ant on duty hooked up familiar lines – either eyes, or scapus, or…, caught it with the very tip of the claw, the slight movement of the clypeus that is above the mandibles, the half-look, he thought that something was wrong here. The awakened memory lifted him by the shoulders for a hundredth of a second and lifted it up well, returning him to the distant past, and he remembered this bird’s eye section, this cheerful gaze, but could not tell for sure where he had met this ant before.

– You… You… Are you confusing something? Is it really… where did you get this from?.. – with an incomprehensible intonation, – either asking or answering, the taken aback Ave squeezed out the words from the crumbs. – Amendments… no amendments have been accepted for half a year already, isn’t that so? Are you kidding me?..

– Old man, Ave, you didn’t recognize me?! I bet twenty units that you did not recognize me! I am A-a-aft! Remember, we plowed together at the radio plant for three years? Well, well, did you forget? Remembered? Come on, come on, remember! Aft! I’m right here, I recognized you right away!

– Ghhh! – just jumped out of Ave in surprise.

– Aft! Remember me? Well, come on already, remember! – the angry ant began to show texture in front and in profile, a little grimacing, and all this was accompanied by his infectious laugh.

– No, of course, I remember, of course, I remember!

– Well!

– I remember… and I look – some familiar ant is standing, but who – I just can’t understand right away?

– Class! Now I’ve found out right away – wonderful!

– And I look… Well, at least you beat me – I can’t do it! Well, you scared me, damn it! Really scared with his cans, hell! What kind of jokes do you have?

– Naturally, you can’t understand, although only seven years have passed! Like seven?

– Seven already?..

– Well, yes, seven are! But what years have passed! What years! Have I changed? And not only I have changed! – blurted out Aft. And only here old friends pounced on each other and hugged tightly. – Forgive me, I didn’t want to scare you, not from evil I… I just wanted to make a joke…

– Yeah, you have changed! Not seven, probably, but six years have passed… – Ave began, but Aft interrupted him.

– Yes, a lot has changed since then, a lot. They then quietly eliminated us and everything started to spin… spun…

– After the then dismissal, rumors circulated that…

– Why, there were” rumors,” – Ave Aft cut off again sharply, emphasizing” what’s there.” – Rumors always go, they are rumors! Aft laughed out loud, then coughed half-vividly and continued again. – About the strike, then? I know that they talked dimly about the rally and something like that… interpreted… well… how can I tell you… eliminated, and that’s all…

– Yes, ah… “eliminated, that’s all”…

– Well yes! Life itself, you know, is not easy… Life is a very difficult puzzle, sometimes there are continuous riddles after riddles!

– So it was all, really was? – Ave asked very hesitantly, pronouncing each word slowly in syllables, and while he spoke he carefully looked around. – Is it true that it was?

– Well, you give, old man! No, of course! – Aft nervously moved his mustache and continued. “They composed everything then!” It was easier to make up than to tell the truth and explain everything…

– For some reason, I thought so… I felt that all this was untrue…

– Of course! There was no strike, and it could not be! So, in fact, there wasn’t any removal… for the sake of appearances, they did everything, although it could have been done differently, according to the normal, without any left-right affairs… everything is done, as always, through one place… I don’t know… I don’t understand why they are so with us…

– In general, it’s strange… why – no one understands at all!

– Well, that was, it was, and now – life goes on! You, I see, as always, you are not lazy, you run away on business matters, are you going to the fontanel? Aft asked, nodding at the cans. “Let’s go, go for a walk, I’ll take a little walk with you at least to the tunnel.”

– Of course, let’s go, we’ll chat a bit though. So many have not seen you… tell me about life!

– Exactly! I’m listening to you about life!

– When we’ll meet again… Come on, let’s go! I haven’t seen each other for six years… this is necessary! Tell me, how are you, what’s going on in your life.

– Yes, as always, according to the template project, we have a house, a job, a house again… Nothing new and interesting… What can happen to a simple working ant in life?

– Mmm, well, a lot of things can be done if you want to!

– Here I’ll think a little! Good idea!

– Do you work now?.. Where do you work? It is necessary to work, it is impossible to be lazy in any way, “only labor helps us to move in life and develop fully”! You remember how we were taught. Come on, let’s go!

It happens in life like this: you accidentally meet an old comrade and, it seems, have not seen each other for a long time, and, like, they are terribly bored of communicating with each other, and, of course, are glad to have an unexpected meeting, but here are a couple of words they said, exchanged superficial, lightweight information about themselves – “what, where, yes, how, yes, what plans”, and all, you can put a “checkmark” in a marker and indifferently say with almost imperceptible bitterness: “ate to the dump”, fed up with fluent communication, and there is no particular desire to continue to listen to his detailed stories about not egkoy fate, and shell, to share their life’s scrapes, too, somehow not really hunting. Moreover, very often it happens, in almost nine out of ten cases. But there are exceptions, however. I came across an ancient acquaintance, it seems I didn’t say that I’ve been a bosom friend, but they began to share their experiences over all the years that they had not seen, and there was no strength to stop, I didn’t want to leave at all, at least kill me. What does it all depend on? Either from a momentary mood, or from an internal magnet to a given individual, or from something else… and, after all, I’m ready to stand and talk endlessly with him about all kinds of nonsense, although you perfectly understand that there isn’t much time for empty talk but you can’t tear yourself away from him or her in any way, even though you crack…