Читать книгу Unreversible - Emil Akhundov - Страница 9

June 3, 2038

This morning started out chaotic-we were packing me as a family for a trip that could take a very long time. My beloved wife was masterfully packing my things in a suitcase, placing literally a few dozen things in a few square centimeters. At the same time Diana was setting up my smartphone – she created my blog and wrote instructions on how to use it, set up a mutual transmission of coordinates so that I could always see where my relatives were and they could see where I was, activated an additional app so I could stream by myself, even though I was too old for all that. And Milana was carefully making a list of things I could use. And I was the only one sitting around drinking coffee, eating breakfast and watching the bacchanalia that was going on. I kept trying to figure out if they were so fed up with me that they wanted to get rid of me, or if they really believed that I could make the world a better place and were just trying to help? Either way, I wanted to think they still believed in me.

Of course, I still didn’t know what or how I was going to do, what it would be like to step outside of Eden and live in the very past from which I had so zealously fled. My altruistic goal of cleaning up the whole world, or at least beginning to do so, seemed distant, unrealistic, and somehow I remembered a youth that had transpired at a very different time. Back then I was a limited man, like all my compatriots, we could only dream of a job that would benefit people, and we also dreamed of traveling by train throughout our immense homeland. But my father had slightly different plans. Having worked as a shop foreman all his life, he understood that it was much better to work with his head rather than his hands. This is why, by hook or by crook, he was able to get me into the university, where I was to get an unusual profession of a marketing specialist.

At the time no one knew what it was, in fact throughout my career I always had to explain what I was doing, even though the word has become very fashionable. And, of course, no one had any idea how to properly teach marketers, so my diploma was obtained without much difficulty, and I instantly found myself at my father’s company, where I took an honorary position. The work, by the way, turned out to be wonderful: no one asked me for anything, and all work was reduced to endless meetings about how great it would be if something happened. However, I must say that I got a lot more money for this completely useless work than my father did – all I had to do was not to be late and to leave fifteen minutes later than the end of the day. Yes, that was how I learned that there is no justice in the world, and that the evaluation of work and actions is extremely subjective, but then, it was all in my favor. I was always lucky, though I never admitted it out loud, and I even forbade myself to think about it.

I told you that I also had another dream: to travel. This dream was not destined to come true. The first time I got on a plane was when I was forty years old, with my wife and children. I still can’t explain why it happened, even though I remember exactly that I had money and time. Throughout my life, I have seen all my friends and acquaintances have had their teenage dreams crushed, and I guess that was the plan. After all, we can only realize the true value of our desires after enduring dozens of failures and shedding several liters of sweat while trying to achieve our goals.

Then the collapse of the Soviet Union awaited me, a time of dashing perestroika, and a period of forming my new country, which had sprung up on the ruins of the previous one. Those times were not easy for anyone, but, nevertheless, all my acquaintances got families, apartments, and everything that everyone dreamed of. After all, man is an amazing creature, he can live and enjoy life under any conditions. Even in those conditions where there is no life, from this point of view, we almost do not differ from cockroaches, and I do not even believe that the nuclear winter can survive only these repulsive creatures, because as time has shown – our, human, species has remained, and about them I have long heard nothing.

In the end, life somehow got better on its own and a commercial boom began – everyone was providing some kind of service or producing something. And at some point there was so much stuff that it was hard to go to the store – there was too much choice, for example, there were thousands of bottled drinks alone, so it was with all the products. Uniqueness was gone, and companies had to compete with each other, and that’s where I made my first really big money. Suddenly it turned out that it was the marketers who could influence the situation. After all, our work is based on studying the market of competitors and consumers and offering the best solution in favor of the latter. It was at that moment that I got a spacious apartment in Kupchino and a big summer house, and on vacation I went not to the suburbs but to Paris.

The city itself grew and developed rapidly and attracted more and more new people who brought their money into it – it was a kind of vicious cycle of money, which for some reason was always scarce, as it turned out that gold is not shared equally. And each of the new residents wanted to show their superiority, not even thinking about the fact that no one was interested in it. So we had expensive brands, where a wristwatch could cost as much as several apartments. And these companies did not skimp on marketing salaries, I got richer with each new player in the market, and we dined at home less and more and more in restaurants. It seemed to me that this would always be the case, that the money would never run out, and that if disaster did strike, I would be free to find another high-paying job.

As I realized later, it was just an attack of stardom, nothing more. But I went along with it and opened my own business. I have always liked restaurants – I opened a trendy and prestigious restaurant, thanks to the demand for them. I built it myself, entirely with my own money, which had almost run out by the time it was finished. I still did not take into account a lot of factors that were not very expensive, but there were a lot of them, so the investment in my construction increased several times.

The first year was very hard – I didn’t know how to run this business or how to manage it, I had to learn everything all over again. By the time I was able to figure it out, I already had several loans hanging over me. I was barely making ends meet, but there finally came a time when my restaurant started to make a profit. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to start with, but then a new economic crisis began, which completely undermined the purchasing power of the population. My restaurant turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life, because it was simply empty. My dream had become useless, a problem and a pain in the memory.

What happened next? Yes, for the next few years I worked in different positions, desperately not understanding why nobody needed me. And when I did, I didn’t feel good at all. It turned out to be elementary: no one needed me before, I did not have the knowledge to be paid so generously, people just had money. There was plenty of it, so I could give it away, I didn’t feel sorry for it. Now I understood people less and less. The gap between social classes was so huge and so blurred that it was no longer possible to tell who was poor and who was rich. People seemed to go crazy in the pursuit of money – it was much more tragic than the famous gold rush. Back then in Alaska, only those who went there took the risk, but here the whole town measured everything in money. The most disgusting thing was that money replaced even my feelings.

So I got by on a pittance, even rented out a room to workers, constantly trying to get back on the same level of income. Only later I wised up and began to brazenly lie at job interviews, and one day it worked – I managed to convince the director of a garage production, who hired me as a marketer with a very good salary. And I then…

While melancholy memories were flooding through me, my family had already fully equipped me for my future exploits. Before I knew it, it was evening. All we had left to do was eat dinner and say goodbye. We finished the delicious pizza the robot courier had brought us and called me a cab. I promised to do my first live show on the road: give my daughters a tour of the city they were born in, but hadn’t been to in a very long time. I was sure that my girls would not recognize it; indeed, I doubted whether I would recognize the city myself. After a long and warm embrace, I did get into the snow-white cab that was to take me to my old apartment. I was going back to where it all began.