On the Wings of Hope: Prose (Recognized)

Offer

That night Oleg had a nightmare. Frightening in its unambiguous resemblance to his own personal realities, and therefore even more unpleasant. Don't take us wrong – he didn't dream of snakes crawling out of the skull of a horse in a black coat, and in his modesty of soul he did not even consider himself prophetic like his famous ancestor. He dreamed that night of broad lines of proudly marching men with horns and hooves, in all the languages of the underworld demanding him to accept their extremely tempting offer and to sell his own soul. Different prices were proposed: one of them was prepared to pay with "the wonderful crockpot that can turn any housewife into a queen of the kitchen", the second offered him "the most powerful wet vacuum cleaner with a dozen of the latest universal tips", the third was advertising "the new model of iPhone XR with advanced artificial intelligence system, capable to predict the actions of its owner", and someone was even ready to part with "EPC-W Darling 2000", that could be translated into a common human language as "Electron-positron cyber wife, model "Darling", year of manufacturing 2000".

All their extreme obsession and absurd tactlessness angered Oleg's soul so greatly that at the end of this unearthly marketing hell-knows-what, he wanted to shout to all of them, who had surrounded him in a circle and were still mercilessly pointing their raking hands with otherworldly trojan "gifts" in his direction, "Go to hell, demons!" But then, with the help of some innate instinct, he finally realized that swearing at those to whom the devils themselves do not even hold a candle is the height of meaninglessness, much higher than all the modern achievements of earthly advertising combined.

And so he stood, shaking and refusing, while those who were doing their dirty work vied with each other about the delights of their proposed goods. But, fortunately, much in this as well as the other life has the trait of being limited in time, so this nightmare of not so prophetic Oleg ended. Continuing to grumble softly under his nose and rubbing his eyes with own fists, still dumbfoundedly staring in the direction of the alarm clock, which was showing ten o'clock in the morning, Oleg with a long-ago learned habit and immutable inevitability of yet another advertising call and staggering gait went to the bathroom in order to clean up a little after this lowly and violent night.

He was distracted from another sacred session of morning shaving by the phone that was bobbing from the vibrations on the chair. Oleg didn't share the morning joy of his gadget at this moment – and, damn it, was he right.

"Good morning!" without unnecessary shyness joyfully shouted in Oleg's ears the unknown voice of an even less well-known young man, had Oleg only to take the case of management of the ringing phone in his strong male hands. "I would like to talk to Oleg Alexandrov. Is that you?" – the voice on the phone confirmed the complete seriousness of his own intentions.

"Let's say that you are lucky today, and it's really me. What are we going to do with this fact?" still sleepy Oleg muttered into the phone, trying to hold the razor with his other free hand.

"Your Internet provider "Network achievements LLC" has prepared a unique new year's offer specially for you! Only until the end of December this year you can switch to our new year's tariff "freakynet" for just a thousand rubles and increase the speed of your internet connection by twenty megabits during January and February next year. Starting from March next year the cost of this service will be only two hundred rubles per month. We are also happy to offer you a service to insure your TV and Wi-Fi router from being harmed by lightning. The cost of this service is only three hundred rubles per month. This unique offer is valid only until the end of December. Well, do you agree to take advantage of our new terms of service, Oleg Alexandrovich? To confirm your consent and switch to the new tariff, please say "I confirm", to refuse, say "no way".

"No, hey!" Oleg muttered into the phone as soon as the smallest pause occurred in the monologue of chattering in his phone human-robot, allowing Oleg to intercept the verbal initiative.