Want me to conduct an excavation? You want me to shatter into a million pieces, to flap like a flag on a pole… or hell, you want me to break the speed of light? That’s the whole point of blistering speed. To hit it, you gotta be perfectly smooth, gotta polish yourself. Once you're there, you're incomprehensible, mesmerizing, drawing everything in. You caress.

I yelled these words that day, like a lunatic, shuffling slowly through the woods, gesticulating at the sky like it was a joke. I seriously considered how to kill off those three qualities. Attraction would just show up on its own, I figured.

And how easy it is for normal people! How gracefully they pull it off! Theater schools have more competition than the annual capacity of hell's gates. But everyone's an actor, right? Everyone performs—on demand. Everyone cultivates themselves to be universal merchandise; just swap the labels! They don't need to dig deep, don't need to fight those bad qualities that only get stronger. Just play the part—interest, respect, a smile, adoration, sexuality. They know the sequence, every move is instinct.

Cigarettes vanished so fast I headed back to the highway—to another gas station. I walked, stripped bare by the relentless sun. My feet sank into the heather, my hands into pine needles. It was seven-thirty in the evening. A man with a shovel was coming my way. I froze. Looking back, I saw it: pristine white lichen, a thick, short carpet, covered the ground. I lay down on it as the man approached. Bloody scenes played out in my mind: the sharp edge of the shovel to the forehead, flat, to the throat, to the fingers—my fingers! Where was he going to hit?

"Glenn, you resting?" If I were him, I'd have swung that shovel better and chopped Glenn’s head off.

"Not yet. For now." I tilted my head back, making it easier for him to do the deed.

"Where's your camera, Glenn?" Trading my camera for a grave. Come on, hurry up, buddy! I'm not gonna tell you how to swing a shovel. After all, did I come here with a shovel, or did you?

"What are you doing here?" I was thoroughly annoyed; the moment was gone. Any second now, a whole gypsy camp of cultural department employees would burst out from behind that tree. "Glenn, film us with your damn camera and its old lens! We missed you so much! Did you finish yesterday's video yet?"

"I was asked to walk this road, see if there's a car here."

"What goddamn car?" The jerk was laughing at me!

"Haven't seen a gray BMW 525?" Interesting, were they asking him to dig it up too? I shook my head.

"What's the shovel for, then?" I steered the conversation to the main point, thanking the System for sending me this idiot. In my opinion, it shouldn't be hard for him to dig a grave for my love inside me. Or at least dig a grave for me—nearby, and then bury me at the bottom.

"Well, we actually went fishing today," Oh, right, understood, no more questions.

"Listen, get out of here! There's no gray BMW, I already looked. You're not fishing in the woods, are you?"

"No, it's still early for me." The most terrifying person is someone you can't infuriate, can't drive mad. Though, no, I'm like that too. But I'm not that much of an idiot, after all!

"Listen, hand me the shovel, huh! I'm going fishing myself."

"No." The final stage of sheepishness: a person can't behave properly, even when spoken to in their own language.

I stood up. Last hope—to fight him, so he'd kill me with the shovel. No, "killed" doesn't work for me. Let him till me; then I'll be of some use to the world.

Dodging my first punch, he tossed the shovel far away, threw his jacket, glasses, watch, and phone to the ground. "I'm ready," his entire being screamed.

I turned and walked toward the highway. Looking back, I saw him pick up the shovel and move with his wide gait, making him look like a tripod from "War of the Worlds," in his original direction, adjusting his jacket.

With a new pack of cigarettes, I crossed the highway and started descending to the shore. I covered that kilometer with the same effort it took to greet you the day before. I was thinking. I needed to decide how I would cleanse myself, how I would cast out all this obscurantism. Would the water polish me? Or would I just swell up? Would I crash against the rocks but somehow survive? Or would I just pretend to commit suicide? Would the wind soften me? Or would I simply fly away, like a paraglider, with a bent wing? I wanted to do something. I sincerely, passionately wanted to change myself. I wanted you. I had to.

Arriving at the beach, I saw the sunset. Black in the middle, the clouds blazed red at the edges, as if an oil rig had burned down. A dark gray wall, formed by a single rock, rose not far from the shore, almost parallel to it. In front of the wall was a small "sheep's forehead" (a small, rounded rock formation). I walked across the rock and leaned my back against the mighty cliff. I hadn't figured out a damn thing. The wind pressed me against the wall; I simply spread my arms and caught the air currents that vanished on me, on the wall. The clouds were putting out the fire, closing in on me. I tilted my head back and stared at the briefly clear sky; rays of light fell on me along the cliff, sliding off it into my eyes. I told myself: "Attraction."

Archimedes said "Eureka!", Einstein said "relatively," and I'm no physicist, so I uttered an even more suspended-in-air word, intangible, cutting. Now I was driven by it. I walked along the wall, sat on a ledge, dangled my legs almost into the water, which was rising higher and higher in its agitation—and remembered that guy with the shovel. What fishing trip! What car! Who asked him to?!