Collective Mind

by Klyukin, Vasily

  “Let’s take a look,” Isaac said to himself, using the mouse to select a random name from the local list. He stopped at the name Eric Delangle. Just as he thought, there was a page in a social network and a blog account registered to that name.

  Delangle was a biologist who used to head a project for studying melanoma. After the project was no longer required and melanoma had been eliminated by Collective Mind, Eric moved to Morocco, where he opened a little business offering mail-service genome decoding to all comers. Anyone who paid a few bucks into his account and sent him a little test-tube with their saliva in it could find out what percentage of their genes matched the genes of Neanderthals and various famous historical figures. Through preserved DNA he could, also discover where their ancestors dwelled, find out part of their genealogical tree and other irrelevant twaddle that was really only of any interest to the owner of the spittle. In the very first lines of his resume in the business social network, Eric had written in large letters: “I’m not selling my identity, and I advise you not to”.

  “It’s a shame that Morocco’s quite a long way from here,” Isaac thought. “This guy would have been good enough.” Catching himself thinking that, Isaac realized why he was looking at the list. He was searching for fellow thinkers and needed people like himself who were dissatisfied with the present state of affairs. Isaac wasn’t a born leader, he didn’t have the right qualities. But he had no choice; he could only start with himself.

  If there were other groups of discontents somewhere Isaac hadn’t heard about them, but he did have quite a lot of experience in solving complex problems, and he knew where to begin. In principle he had to approach this like any complex problem. Logically.

  Isaac sorted the list by education and age. It would be easier with people the same age as him. He plucked out of the list a young guy with a technical education, a local programmer working as a barman. He wasn’t the only one with talent who had been dumped overboard, or behind a bar counter. Coincidentally Isaac had a technical education too. Maybe the search engine would tell him what the techie barman had on his mind.

  The candidate called himself Bikie and was crazy about motorbikes. Isaac found his blog, in which Bikie was scathingly abusive about UNICOMA, the UN in general, as well as Link, and mocked everyone who offloaded their creativity. He had posted various photographs including his own and of his Harley’s. Looking out at Isaac was an awkward, longhaired clodhopper with big round eyes. Plumpish and ungainly, Bikie’s build was frighteningly heavy-caliber who also possessed thoroughly good-natured air, which could not be said of his posts. “I hope he really is good-natured,” Isaac chuckled. The last entry was fairly old and very short: “No one reads me here, that’s COMA for you!”

  Isaac clicked on a different link and found another of Bikie’s blogs, which consisted of very short messages. None of the words in them could be used in polite society except “down with”, “communists”, “Veggies”, “comatose” and prepositions, like “up” and ”off”” .

  A plan was finally coming together in Isaac’s mind: summon a team of people like this Bikie and find Jeremy Link. And then see what happens. Money was needed. “Damnit, money. Forgive me Vicky, I really will earn the money for your surgery, just hang on a little bit longer. Right now I have to ask the database a question. “My dear gentlemen, potential accomplices, which of you has money?” Isaac thought as he searched through the lists and through the social networks before he finally found two candidates

  The first was Peter Wolanski, a Pole who had lived in Monaco since he was a child. A member of a prestigious scientific society, the same one that Isaac had once belonged to. There weren’t any photos of Peter in the internet and Isaac decided to look for them later. Peter’s blog consisted of beautifully layed out articles with a scientific slant. A couple of them were devoted to discussing why no one should download their OE.

  In one of the latest articles Peter told his father’s story: his life and his achievements as a successful entrepreneur. And finally Peter Wolanski talked about his own grief and boundless sense of loss since he was alone now. “This guy is already rich,” thought Isaac and wrote Peter’s details into his notepad.

  The second candidate was a girl. What a beauty! And with a name right out of a song: Michelle Blanche. Long, shapely legs, a beautiful face, a great figure, and a mischievous twinkle in her eyes too. “A beautiful girl, and to judge from her rating, very intelligent too. I’ll never cope with a girl like that: beautiful, and rich into the bargain. How do you come on to someone like that?” Isaac started dreaming, but he was forced to admit that it was a non-starter. He wouldn’t have the nerve for it. “She’d tell me where to get off before I could even start telling her anything. Or she would think that I was a psycho. I’d love to screw a girl like that. Only high flyers like that don’t come into our bar” Isaac chuckled despondently. But he wrote down the address anyway, just in case. The idea of giving up without even trying made him want to despise himself. Isaac fantasized for a little while longer and closed beautiful Michelle’s blog.

  “If I think like a character from a movie,” Isaac thought, still fantasizing. “A strong team means people who think alike who are also friends. It’s a thousand times harder for a loner. I’ll try to do things that way too. For now I have enough candidates with the techie and the guy who has money. Maybe they have friends who can fill out the team, that’s less risky than chasing after strangers and inciting them to commit a crime. And it would be best to keep my mouth shut about the database.”

  The computer, the searches, the files, the sites and all the rest of this flickering information had worn Isaac out. The final thing that completed his exhaustion was the file “creativity statistics on children born to Happies”. Notional zero, notional zero, zero again, zero for almost all of them…not even UNICOMA could bring itself to call these figures a rating. “I need to get my mind off this, I’ve taken a goddamn overdose of information about these folks,” Isaac told himself and started getting ready. He had to go and visit Vicky in the hospital.

  Chapter three

  Isaac found himself unable to resist the urge to get to know Michelle Blanche. He got the idea that he ought to start with her. That night he dreamt about the leggy brunette. Isaac almost completely forgot the dream, but he thought he remembered them getting together, and Michelle smiling at him and caressing him. Then they were in this beautiful room, and she was wearing a bathrobe, and Isaac spotted black, lacy underwear lying over at the side. He tried to kiss her, but she beckoned him towards the bed. After that, unfortunately, there was a gap, but Isaac woke up feeling aroused. He was in a really great mood, and he tried to recall if they’d had sex or not. No matter how hard he tried, though, he couldn’t reconstruct the dream in his memory, but he decided it was a good sign. Intellectually Isaac realized that signs were beside the point here, that with his creativity level he could find a good sign in any corner. Living was easier with good signs, they were an additional reason for optimism.

  Pinning down Michelle proved not to be easy. She had moved to Monaco a year and a half ago, and before that, from the look of things, she had lived in London. The address given in the database turned out to be valid only for correspondence, and her English mobile number had been disconnected. Michelle didn’t use geolocation in social media networks, and she didn’t reveal where she really lived. She often published her photographs, where she’d been, the get-togethers and the parties, but generally only on the following day. In the photos she was either posing, or always with the same young man, also not a local. Isaac kept looking at her Instagram, hoping his eyes would spot some familiar place. In some of the photographs Michelle was flaunting herself in a swimsuit on a yacht that had her name on it. After his erotic dream, Isaac feasted his eyes on her as if she were his girlfriend while imagining her naked. “If only the dream would happen again, then I’d definitely see things through.” Having gone to bed he reviewed her most explicit photos. That made him fee
l horny, but he couldn’t summon up any more erotic dreams.

  Good thing Michelle didn’t just sit at home every night, but Isaac couldn’t afford to do the rounds of the most expensive spots in Monaco hoping she would show up, and anyway, the effectiveness of that approach was quite doubtful, she could be anywhere at all. It might seem like he could just show up and drink coffee every evening in the Sass Café or the Cipriani Restaurant, but if you didn’t order anything on the third day, they would politely ask you not to come back there again. Isaac couldn’t have afforded more than two dinners in a fancy place like that. He finally managed to find out what appeared to be her real whereabouts and decided to give it a try.

  In anticipation of meeting Michelle, Isaac shaved, abandoning his beautiful stubble, and put on a t-shirt with a deep neck and short sleeves. His wrist was adorned with a vintage diver’s watch – not expensive, but very stylish. He even changed the ringtone on his mobile to a melody by INXS. Isaac liked himself like this. Damned if he knew whether Michelle would like him, but after his dream he believed in some kind of sexual connection. If creative energy existed, then why shouldn’t there be some other kind, responsible for dreams and attraction? Isaac dismissed all his thoughts about Michelle never having seen him before. Maybe she had seen him some time, and even taken notice, but he simply hadn’t spotted it.

  Having arrived at the upscale condominium where he thought Michelle lived, Isaac first tried to strike up a conversation with the concierge. The man examined him suspiciously and asked if Isaac mind not pestering him with questions about the residents. If he wanted, he would be glad to pass on a note. Taking pity on Isaac after all, he did hint that Michelle rarely spent the night there. Privacy had always been highly valued in Monaco, but the concierge saw Isaac as just a young man desperately in love and thawed out a bit. Only what could Isaac write in the note? “Please contact me in connection with…” or “I’m not an admirer, that is, you are beautiful, but I know what a high level of creativity you have”?

  No, the concierge was not an option, Isaac had to come up with something else. He went back to the Sass Café and had a word with the manager there. Monaco wasn’t New York, thank God, and all the locals more or less knew each other. The manager promised to text Isaac if he saw her. Isaac visited a few more restaurants and snazzy bars and left his request at five of them.

  In the evening he ran through the rich list one more time and picked another pair of candidates just in case. Since they might not live at the address given, it would be best to find out where they were really located. Whoever turned up first would be the first, then he copied out the details of another four people with various skills from among the ones who weren’t rich. Among them an artist and a photographer. Artists were often extremely independent and free-minded, regardless of how much money they had. Good allies. “If I were an artist, I’d ask Michelle to pose for me,” Isaac fantasized. Yes, artists were often outsiders, only Isaac couldn’t imagine what use their knowledge could be for his plans. “But it won’t hurt,” he decided writing out a couple of addresses.

  On the third day he got lucky. A huge firework display was taking place in Monaco, and Michelle posted two beautiful photos. Isaac didn’t spot them immediately, but figured out roughly where they had been taken – the girl had been photographed on the roof of the Hotel Fairmont. It was only a ten minute walk from here to there he ought to arrive in time. And he did. Michelle and a girlfriend of hers were sitting there, surrounded by a group of respectably dressed men. “My God, how sexy she is,” Isaac thought. Pascal would have come on to someone like that no problem, never mind about the competition. Isaac couldn’t do that. In his mind he replayed his friend’s way of acting and tried to tune in to it.

  There wasn’t a single free table anywhere nearby – of course not, with a firework display like this, everything had been booked in advance. Isaac hesitated for a moment and stopped not far away from the restroom. It was a hot evening and there were several bottles of water and champagne standing on her table. Sooner or later she’d decide to visit the facility and the way out of the restaurant was right here too, so she couldn’t just disappear.

  She wore an elegant beige cocktail dress, not too revealing, but short enough. Isaac’s fantasy immediately shortened it even further and he imagined what was hiding a little bit higher. No watch or bracelets adorned those lovely arms that were already beautiful and the legs… better not to describe them at all. Skyscraper legs, with little, sexy knees. This girl was the real deal, for sure. How lucky she was to be born like this, and not to a poor family too. Isaac noticed that she drank water, while the men kept competing with each other to top up her half-empty glass of champagne.

  Eventually, after slightly adjusting her dress, Michelle set off arm-in-arm with her girlfriend, in the required direction. Sipping on his cocktail, Isaac tried to stand more naturally but felt too nervous and fidgety. His embarrassment made everything horribly difficult, he awkwardly tried find a better pose and in the end disaster struck. In his last and most desperate effort to make himself look as interesting as possible, he leaned against a door on his elbow, but the door turned out to be slightly open and swung away from him. Isaac managed to trip over his own foot, his glass treacherously slipped out of his hands and shattered with a loud crash. The contents of the glass flew out onto the feet of Michelle and her girlfriend covering their light-colored shoes with numerous drops of dark, wet liquid. Isaac felt like finding a hole and crawling into it and must have looked really frightened, because Michelle gave an enchanting smile, put her hand on Isaac’s shoulder and said in a gentle voice: “Don’t worry about it, we’re fine. Just get yourself another cocktail and they’ll clear this up.”

  Thunderstruck, Isaac broke out in a cold sweat, but Michelle walked away imperturbably to where she was going. The admirers who had immediately darted across to the scene of the incident cast glances of contempt at Isaac.

  “I’ve offended their queen!” Isaac thought spitefully. He responded to the final member of her royal retinue with an expression so bellicose that the groups’ contempt evaporated instantly and he quickly made himself scarce. There you go, you’re not lounging about on your yachts now. Unlike them, Isaac had experience of being in real fights, and the final admirer had realized that if he was pushed just a tiny bit further, he was ready to attack, and to hell with the consequences.

  Michelle’s party left to go somewhere else, but ten minutes later Isaac got a text from the Sass: “Michelle’s here!” Fortunately, it wasn’t the entire posse at the Sass, only Michelle and her girlfriend with a young guy. Isaac perched where the girl would see him and she looked in his direction several times, but seemed to look straight through Isaac, without noticing him at all. He obviously didn’t fall within the range of her interest. If she did recognize him as the young man who dropped his cocktail and broke the glass, she didn’t give any sign of it. No matter how hard Isaac glared at her, nothing happened.

  “Wrong choice,” Isaac thought sadly. “But okay, there are still the other candidates.” Even though he had failed to attract any interest at all, Isaac decided to try to get acquainted anyway. “After all, this is business,” he thought, psyching himself up. Concentrating as hard as he could, he convinced himself that not to approach her would be cowardice and he had nothing to lose. “I’ll finish my cocktail and walk up to her,” he thought coming up with a way to put things off for five minutes. Eventually, after gathering all his courage, he put his glass on the table and set off towards the spot where Michelle was sitting.

  “Excuse me Michelle, but could I have a couple of words with you?” Isaac said with his absolutely cutest smile. “I hope you’re not upset, are you, that it was only my cocktail that fell at your feet, and not me.” The girl failed to appreciate his humor and looked at him without any particular curiosity. It was obvious that she had absolutely no interest in getting to know strangers in public places.

  “What do you want? Do you two know each o
ther?” the girl’s male friend asked, coming to her aid.

  “No, we don’t know each other. My name’s Isaac, and there’s something very important that I need to say.”

  Michelle shook her head very slightly and her young man continued.

  “Isaac, please have the courtesy to leave us alone. We want to relax; we don’t want to make any new acquaintances. No one’s angry with you because of the broken glass.”

  “But it’s very important,” said Isaac, trying to insist.

  “If it’s so important, tell us. I have no secrets from my friends,” Michelle intervened.

  “Well you see, Michelle, you have a very high creativity, and so do I. And there are other people like us. People who don’t like COMA,” Isaac rattled off. “And we can’t just sit back and do nothing. We can do a lot. And you can help to do it.”

  Unfortunately, Michelle and her companions saw Isaac as nothing more than an overexcited weirdo who should be given as wide a berth as possible. Michelle’s reflex response was to lean back on her chair with her arms crossed.

  “Please,” Isaac entreated her, “let me finish. You’re intelligent, rich and very beautiful. I can’t manage it on my own, I need your help. I’m not a psycho, I’m an absolutely normal young guy…an inventor, and I have a high creativity quotient.”

  “And you broke that cocktail glass very inventively, didn’t you?” Michelle’s male friend persisted. This was his great chance to protect the beautiful model from an obnoxious gadfly, and he wanted to milk the opportunity dry.