Recently, a circle of friends recalled the story of twenty years ago, and it was decided to tell it to the world. Of course, with changed names and without indicating the place of action, so that no one is offended.

The disposition is this: the mid-1990s, winter, very early in the morning of the first January of the next year. Me and my friends, Misha (a neighbor and childhood friend) and Larisa, now a very friendly family together, were in another area of the city to visit our common friends. Well, in general, as it usually happens: someone calls and congratulates the attacker, then the very expected thought is born to raise the glasses together...

Moreover, the city administration has vowed to organize public transportation throughout the New Year’s Eve. A brain inflamed by alcohol for 15 minutes on the bus is almost nearby. Just get up from the table and you are already where you need to be. However, my future wife called us and Misha idiots and stayed at home, and Larisa could not let Misha alone, and went with us. Dress up who you are. I, for example, was in the bucket, which I usually used for winter fishing, because it was warm, and also because its pockets fit the drink-breakfast-presents we wanted to take with us. The rest were dressed accordingly. Larisa, for example, was carefully wrapped in my aunt's favorite cotton, because it was cold, and, as Misha said, "we don't go to the theater, but to the neighborhood guests."

We arrived well and quickly on the bus, congratulated friends in person, drank, ate a snack, it was time to go home now. And then it turns out that the determination of the city administration to organize the movement of transport was not enough until the morning. There are two options: by taxi or by foot. Walk away, because still far after the turbulent New Year's night, and already felt tiredness and extreme reluctance to make a revitalizing hour walk under the winter New Year's sky.

The blessing at the crossroads was the seeming surplus of supply in the export market in the form of a bunch of various bombing cars. It is expected that on the morning of January 1, the tariff will be unusually special. We were morally prepared for a five- or even ten-fold rate against the usual “night” rate, which we could afford once a year, because Misha and I, although we were studying in parallel, earned at the time above the average.

However, the amount spoken by the first in the row of a taxi driver exceeded all imaginable expectations. She was exactly twice the monthly salary of a high school teacher, which can be established with absolute certainty, since Larisa was a school teacher at the time. Remaining, however, to work in school rather out of a sense of duty to society than for the sake of earnings. Me and Misha also got a little off from pricing in the field of exports on New Year's Eve and decided to enter into negotiations with the bombilla in order to get a discount once in a few, and at least, and as a maximum, so many times.

The bomb did not contact at first, but after a half-minute singing, issued the proposal:

– Well, let your grandmother take your cheek, then I’ll take a little.

See also Above, we were indeed dressed as people standing on the lowest staircase of the social ladder (vathnik, bushlat, valenki). However, even in this case, this proposal was a clear overturn. Because a significant part of the population of our city has already visited places not so remote, and yet no less significant part, judging by the way of life, prepared for such an event in their lives. In other words, for a city that lived partly “by concepts,” this proposal was more than a comilf. But, probably, something was locked in the head of the worker of the lamb and pedals at the end of the frosty New Year's shift and he, in addition to money, also wanted warmth. Of course in the way he imagined this warmth. And so much that this desire burned out all the protectors in the brain.

Athletes, and even more so, the Norris or Jackie Chans, we and Misha were not, but childhood and youth passed on the border with the industry, and also the usual thing was squats, teenage disassembly, martial arts, well, or what was understood by them then... In general, you imagine what I am about? Misha, who spent the first half of his childhood in the rank of a botanist, was forced to succeed in this all the more than the rest, otherwise the second half of his childhood would be even more sad, and he would be beaten with every spell almost daily. In his youth, he would have entered simply outgrowth. Time was so. Such an outcome Misha did not want, so he was delayed in our basement gym often until late.

In general, he had to pull the iron, hang on the turbine, and stand in the sparrings, like all of us. But he, probably, because of the body and image with much more fanaticism than the rest.

And here some bomb so insults his beloved Larisa, in which he does not drink his soul and wears it on his arms. Misha also sung for a while, then again leaned in the opened glass of the car and answered the question on the proposal of the bomb:

So what are you, a puppy?

The expression of the answer exceeded the original question. About trolling then did not know, and this means that Misha was the first troll in the history of our city, and maybe the whole country, or even the whole world. and spontaneously.

Then followed a short twist with the use of non-affirmed, but well-known Russian ideologues, and even after a few seconds the bomb broke out of the driver’s door with a mount in the hand and a vicious glow in the eyes and began to approach Misha with a clear demand for satisfaction. The rest of the bombs were also tense, it was clear that the comrades they would not throw away, which probably this same comrades with the assembly and counted on their colleagues.

Further, I remember everything rather vague, because everything was very fast, and I was already very sober. Trying at the same time somehow to cover Misha at least from the back, I understood that in such a situation, the most important thing is not to overwhelm the fragile Larisa, who in such a situation felt definitely not in her plate and informed everyone about this verbally by means of loud whispers and interdomains, since she had never learned to defy the mat. We could no longer talk about all of us retreating or escaping. The battle began. Therefore, performing the role of a hybrid of a broken windmill and a furious fan on the ice of the road, I was also actively involved in this action with variable success and permanent enthusiasm.

At first I thought everything was very bad. Then there was hope that one day we would get rid of it. Then the confidence grew when we literally spotted the ice-free portion of asphalt under the cover of the roof on one side and the parked truck on the other. The situation has somehow stabilized. Then I began to worry that Misha would kill someone with the assembly taken from the first bomb. Then I realized that we almost won. And in the final came a police bowl, summoned by one of the grateful spectators from nearby houses, to record our convincing victory on the points in the police protocol.

Among the disadvantages was that the bombs were usually on a short leg with the police, which could have been filled with the drafting of the protocol. The plus was that in the costume was our friend from school. We compiled the protocol relatively peacefully and quickly, the bombs gathered the blown gold crowns that they could find in the dark, all together wiped off the faces of the sunset colours, and we all three took advantage of the kind offer of the suit to throw us home (thanks to a friend of the suit). When we loaded in the UAZik militia, most of the bombs were written on the faces of the resentment and the confidence that we are being taken at least to be shot, well, or at least to Siberia to uranium mines.

At home, crying Larissa was handed over to my future wife, from whom I learned more about myself in the next ten seconds than in all the past and future time of living together. My husband and I took about 100 grams of antidepressant. They smoked. Then they doubled the dose of the drug and finally went to bed, without realizing how it feels to get up tomorrow and how to live on in general.

A few weeks later, we were courteously and officially invited to testify. Nevertheless, in the case there were statements about PMT (which has not been confirmed), broken arm, two brain shakes, I don't remember how many broken noses and all other injuries caused directly by Misha and me (of course more Misha, because the hero of the day was undoubtedly he, and I was just practically on his sub-dances, but I would not allow my conscience to roll everything on a friend. I mean, pull both of them. Friends anyway.

All together, this already pulled into a very clear criminal perspective. And that meant: goodbye to the university and good work with even better prospects... And, goodbye to the area!

We did not have the right level of acquaintances from the relevant bodies capable of somehow influencing the process, and the evening before it was spent in heavy reflection, collecting things and drying sweaters, because there was no certainty that after testifying we would be released on all four sides. Rather the opposite.

Help came unexpectedly. Rather, Misha and I didn’t realize until the end that this was just help, and not a simple battle. Larisa's brother, Gene, was a deputy head of the city newspaper. Everyone in her family has a relationship with creative intelligence. The head of state himself survived madness even under Brezhnev and was exclusively interested in the composition of the column "garden and garden". Therefore, it can be said that it was Gene who determined the editorial policy of the main urban printing body. The practical benefits of the involvement of the fourth power in this case were not obvious to us, but we went to the interrogation accompanied by Gene, on his insistence.

They called for testimony one by one, but Gene insisted that since the process has a public resonance (see how it immediately turned!And we have no lawyers, so let the press somehow participate in all this shame. At the same time, he filled the names of newly adopted laws (mid-1990s, did not forget?) and the names and sentences of regional and federal politicians. As a result, the investigator quickly surrendered on the condition that Gene would sit in a corner on the board and remain silent. I was the first to interrogate.

Practice has shown that Gen and the verb “silence” are incompatible. Already after five minutes of interrogation, Gene was hanging over the investigator and demanded that the entire city administration be held accountable for the sabotage of public transport on New Year's Eve. Near the tenth minute, the investigator learned that it was he personally, as a representative of the authorities, responsible for the fact that at night the city is ruled by a taxi mafia, which creates blasphemy on the streets and threatens the lives and health of civilians, and the law enforcement agencies instead of fighting this want to throw these most innocent residents behind bars.

The investigator was no longer trying to silence Genoa when he moved to the victory final. With the investigator he was already at the moment on “you”, at least from his side. Having pulled into the office Misha, waiting in the corridor, and placed him next to me, he again hanged over the investigator sitting at the table, on whose face was depicted an unlimited longing and desire, if not to die right here and now, then at least that everything that is happening to have happened to someone else, but not with him.

“Look,” Gene turned to the investigator again, “two young men. Studying and working. The future of the country, in a word. And who on the other hand? Blood drinkers who want to make an annual return for one night in the year? You are on whose side? How many people were in the cars? The six? With the monitors! They are armed! In other words, not just armed, but by a group of persons and by prior conspiracy! Think of whose side you are on? What should I write in the editorial article? Should people sit in the house in the dark? Will they be killed by armed gangs wandering around the city, or will they be put in jail by the police for trying to get rid of these gangs? What kind of state are we building? The legal...

Gene took a break. If there was a Count on the table, then Gene would probably have poured it into a glass and pictured it. But Graphine was not there, so Gene continued his speech:

"Let's do it," he again hanged over the investigator, "the boys apologize in the editorial article in the next issue, on the first strip, for calling the taxi driver a "chicken" by mistake. You understand. They found out about a drunken affair. New year anyway. They had no intention of insulting. understandably? And about the fairy tales that two drunk students paralyzed the work of the entire city taxi we will simply forget. You don’t want everybody to laugh at this, right? Yes, everyone will roar in the voice, when they learn how two young men, headed by a teacher of Russian language and literature, who in the composition of a meter sixty in a jump, and when the word "jopa" is generally guaranteed to faint, defeated the superior forces of bombs, whose heads are wider than the radiators of their own cars. Do you want me to write about it? And I can... And I can’t say a word.

The investigator thought for a while. Then he spoke to us with Misha:

You two are in the corridor. Sit and wait.

Gene stayed with the investigator one-on-one. In the next ten minutes, Gennin’s voice was heard from the door. Individual words were difficult to sort out, but the general meaning was captured. It was clear that Gene was writing new and new paintings of the apocalypse, which would definitely be reflected in his editorial article. And if Stanislavsky heard his occasionally pronounced "ha-ha-ha", he would be amazed, and would surely have revised something in his school.

In fact, with this his "ha-ha" Gene left the investigator's office and pulled us with Misha out on the street. A second before closing the door to the office, I saw the investigator’s gaze following Gene. It was in this view that I understood what the fourth power was. Its meaning fits in just two words: “Please stay away.”

After buying a beer in the tent at the stop to somehow recover, we turned our eyes to Gene. He solemnly silenced, looked at the surrounding landscape, then knocked us on the shoulder, drank a ball of beer and sentenced us:

You are free, thieves. Do it without bodily injury.

In the next issue of the city newspaper, as was promised by Genoa, there was a large article about the horrors occurring on the nightly streets of the city. Where Misha and I appeared to be virtually angels and sincerely apologized to the XYZ taxi driver (name, surname and paternity were specified in the article entirely) in the fact that we ERRORY called XYZ a “shit”. We promise not to use this humiliating word anymore.

A statement to the police from XYZ and his colleagues was picked up by them the same day. XYZ himself was forced to leave the city, because no one called him any more than a “scooter.” Nevertheless, the specifics of the world perception at the time you know... And such a “pursuit” is worse than a black mark for the captain of a pirate ship.