The Crossroads

By Vladimir Chepovoy

‘The Crossroads’ is one of the hypotheses, responding the question, “Why do we come to this world and what is the sense of our Earth existence?”
Illusions and reality, dreams and actuality, time and space are intricately intertwined in this book. But, maybe, that was the original conception of the Creator – to give the Choice of his or her Route to every human being on this Earth. What does our hero choose? What does everyone of us choose?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vladimir Chepovoy
• Release date: Dec 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301263578

Vladimir Chepovoy

Happy family man and father of three children, businessman, social investor and author "Crossroads" (2008,2010,2011,2012), "The most fair game" (2004, 2011), "Diary of an Angel" (2011), "You're HAPPINESS - the choice of a new civilization" (2012). Come up with projects, find financing, form a team, inspire them to succeed, and output the project to the level of profitability and the regular management. Founder of the NGO "Institute for the Study of Happiness" (Ukraine)

Book preview

Vladimir Chepovoy Anna Jasnaya

THE CROSSROADS

Novel

The Second Edition. Supplemented.

Kyiv

The Institute of Happiness Studies

2012

‘The Crossroads’ is one of the hypotheses, responding the question, Why do we come to this world and what is the sense of our Earth existence?

Illusions and reality, dreams and actuality, time and space are intricately intertwined in this book. But, maybe, that was the original conception of the Creator – to give the Choice of his or her Route to every human being on this Earth. What does our hero choose? What does everyone of us choose?

V. Chepovoy,

A.Yasnaya, 2008, 2010, 2012

The Institute of Happiness Studies

I decided not to write the usual foreword but just the afterword to this book. When you finish reading ‘The Crossroads’, I am sure that you will manage to understand me.

Vladimir Chepovoy

Page 7

Chapter 1

INSIGHT

"Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have

drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you."

Richard David Bach. Illusions

The casino gamblers got stoned while watching as the ball was running monotonously around the roulette. At last it stopped.

Man, you are tough as hell today! a puzzled George Tsar could hardly get out. These are 66 thousands of green bucks!

I put on my favorite number , Clim, young and sturdy self confident man, smiled. Perhaps, he was the only person from all present, who did not bat his eyelids and was cool as ice from the very beginning till the end.

You`re a lucky Man! Tsar couldn`t calm down. To beat the casino is practically impossible, but fortune as well as all your bimbos, kugel models-schmodels go crazy about you! Congratulations, you are Diabolic Lucky Bastard! George patted his friend on the back.

Page 8

Clim answered in the same way, but the comparison with some Diabolic Lucky Bastard irritated him slightly. As his old friend Semen liked to say, The fun with Satan is a danger fun. As for the luck, it was right, and it was right because it was abso-bloody-lutely right. Lady Fortune was really benevolent to him, and this jackpot was just one of her follow up signs.

Watch out! Don`t get addicted to all these Craps, Racinos and Carpet Joints, George advised, looking as Clim stuffed his pockets and borsetta with dead presidents. You can turn into a casino freak!

The trick turned out well, Clim burst out laughing, ordering a bottle of whisky from a Whale Winner. Besides, I suffer from another addiction – whocaholic whocahol. Do you know such one?

"By the way, Mister Workaholic, is our kickback still in force? I found out several juicy land patches in our suburbs. For your future mansion it is coola-fucking-mundo!

Let` do it in the afternoon, cause my morning is completely busy, I should drop in on my doctor.

Did you get some illness?

No. Just trifles. Some general prophylactic measures.

***

How are you feeling? Doctor asked straight away without raising his eyes from the X rays.

Feeling OK! Clim answered with a grain of challenge. And what?

Any blackouts? Bleedings? Have you had anything so far? Doctor Ivan put the X rays aside.

Page 9

Well, Doc, will I be living? Clim ignored the question,, staring straight at the Hospital Department Chief.

Clementiy, the doctor said after keeping a short pause. After passing your complex head computer tomography scan, uhm, it permitted us to make a final diagnosis. Well..The picture is not so comforting… You have a tumor…malignant tumor. Though till the last moment I hoped that it was a mistake.

So, I have a cancer!?

Yeah.

The air got cloggy thick and crashed on the head as if it were some armored concrete pallet.

How much time do I have? Clim did not recognize his voice and swallowed a whole glass of water in one gulp. You just don`t beat about the bush. I should know.

Exactly nobody could say. Unfortunately, a lot of time was lost. Too long you ignored the first symptoms by which the first stage of illness is characterized. Good heavens! The whole year you suffered the unbearable constant headaches! The whole year you didn’t pay any attention to the bouts of nausea!

What stage do I have? Clim interrupted sharply.

The third one. You are rather intelligent and strong man, that’s why you should understand what it means…Surely, the most optimal variant is the surgery of tumor. The biopsy is performed more often on the earlier stages of this illness and after the foregoing chemotherapy and X ray therapy, which we failed to do.

Page 10

Don`t mince matters! Clim cut off harshly, quickly measuring the doctor’s cabinet. So, my skull, Good Heavens, you won`t dissect, will you?

Unfortunately, your tumor is too neglected and rather hard-to-reach for complete removal…Clementiy, I do recommend taking a seat and calming down, please. There are no deadlock situations.

Bullshit, I am as calm as a dead man! Clim showed his grinning teeth and at the same moment broke off. Excuse me, Doc, not every day I get a death penalty…

And I don`t declare it! You have a young and robust body, so we`ll fight…

The rest passed as if it were some deep dream. Clim got into some awful nosedive state. As through some heavy fog or from some remote room he caught the odds and ends of Dr. Ivan`s phrases, modern methods of treatment…, we’ll try to radiotherapy…, I had an excellent case of recovery…, placebo effect is a great thing… His brain refused categorically to hear and to perceive all this flow of information. I’ll wake up now, it flashed in the conscience of the young man, and all this nightmare will come to an end… He exerted all his forces to clench his fists and to feel the pain in his palms, but…

You should mobilize all your inner resources, and after that the probability of your recovery will rise significantly, the decisive voice of the doctor broke through from somewhere. "The limits of ill person’s capabilities are considerably further than just simple following of some doctor’s recommendations. Since that minute, Clim, you should take an active part in the fight for your life and take the complete responsibility in your hands.

Page 11

The responsibility for the analysis and even the revision of those feelings and conceptions, which hamper you to fight for the life. Do forgive me for that, maybe, not appropriate lecture, but wallowing in your own self-pity won’t help you…"

I don`t need it! Clim snapped instead of saying goodbye.

***

He went on the autopilot. He walked slowly for a long time. Where? What for? He didn’t know, or more likely he even could not think out. For the first time in his life he could not get where he dragged himself at all!

What a stupidity! It` s an absurd accident! It is not with me! IT CAN`T HAPPEN TO ME!!! NEVER!!!

But it happened! The inner voice whispered without a grain of irony. You thought that in your life everything would go smoothly, purely and simply. And here it is! Crash, flash! And you get a red stop signal!

Idiot! You got tired of your life?! a driver yelled out in a frightened way, stifling the high-pitched shriek of brakes.

Clim looked apathetically at bright headlights of a car stuck right into his hip, and like a bolt from out the blue sky he remembered that this day he was going to take his Jeep from the gas station.

It was necessary…Necessary it was…NOTHING is necessary now! And he owes nobody nothing. And he will owe nothing. SOON. NEVER.

Clim turned out in the middle of some old park, familiar to him since childhood.

Page 12

He stood still for a moment, looked around…Peace and silence; the odds and ends of the Golden Autumn whirled solemnly and slowly in the form of silver cobweb, ocher and sienna leaves. In the last fall… the unconsciousness purred the famous one-line from the song of DDT rock group.

And this fall is really my LAST FALL! To his surprise Clim thought too calmly and deeply breathed in the air with the smell of dewy freshness. And suddenly while breathing out he bellowed like a wild bear. Speaking more precisely, at long last the long stifled outcry broke through to the freedom. It was a shrieking, agonizing and spine chilling roar of a wounded animal, which went right from the bottom of his heart. Somewhere afar the ravens cawed in response and flew away from the tops of trees.

He felt just a bit better. Once upon a time, somewhere in his early youth, he relieved his accumulated stress in such a way. He went deeply into some forest and yelled out in the emptiness till exhaustion, till the moment when he started to feel the complete relief and the release of all his negative emotions. In a pocket he found out a crushed pack of cigarettes. It turned out to be empty. Dammit! Clim cursed himself in his thoughts. He longed for smoking till feeling spasms in his stomach. But if I still have some desires, it means that I` ve been alive so far.

And now, never miss a good chance to shut up. SHUT UP! He screamed out giving an order to his own brains. Last or not last- what the hell is the difference? That’s all I need to fall into sentimental stupidity and kick the bucket beforehand!

So. Let’s summarize. Exerting all his forces young man tried to make out at least the relative order in his head. "Putting it mildly, the diagnosis is sure to be freaking…But so far I`ve been functioning normally, and have not lost the ability to rack brains and to resort to actions!

Page 13

And the fact that the time for surgery operation I slipped out…That’s even for the better. Doc said personally that the consequences could be the most unpredictable and it would be better to live out the rest of your life with sound mind that like a vegetable…It turned out to be funny! Yet in the morning I even couldn’t imagine that several hours after I would torment myself with a question: how to spend the time of my life bits-n-bobs? Here it is the unpredictability of the life…" Clim reflected on as a more distant nowhere man with the Cobain Effect buying cigarettes in the nearest shop.

I wonder how the person acts when he or she knows that the chronometer is on and it ticks stridently, counting the last days, minutes, seconds of the life, just a bit later he asked himself sending the rings of gray cigarette smoke in the crystal clear air. There are so many models of behavior, so many different situations! For sure the majority get drunken like Irish Dockers and cover their pillows with bitter tears. Somebody scribbles the last will and testament, stitches the farewell letters. Somebody comes to God and spends the rest of his or her life in a reverential state of a Saint Martyr. Somebody loosens the strings of life and falls in the ocean of all human sins… And my actions? One hundred per sent that I won’t be sobbing. Letters…there’s nobody to write them, besides, I dislike writing them. To loosen the strings and to paint the town red – there’s so much bullshit around us, rake it in as much as you want in this life! Church. The idea is not so bad, but…All these confessions, sacraments, spiritual purifications, about which my mother so likes to tell, are good things, but they are to far away from my world outlook and perception.

Page 14

Though, maybe, I feel regret that so far I have failed to establish good ties with the Lord…"

He dropped in on some small pub for a pint of beer. Time paused and suddenly he got a desire to stretch this so unusual for him period of doing boregasmic nothing. The dim hall was saturated with the dense mixture of cheap tobacco and alcohol reek. Some heavy and sluggish waitress with drowsy face brushed away the ashes and crumbs from the bar stand and put a pint of foamy beer before him.

Their beer is a unique disgusting filth, and their tableware is stinky too, Clim grinned looking at the clammy stains on his beer glass. Yesterday he wouldn’t have even given a glance at such sleazy dive and if somebody had served him such beverage in a restaurant he WOULD…But it was yesterday.

Clim smiled once again and started smoking to blank out the rancid odor of the beer with his expensive tobacco. Out of the blue he remembered as just recently at his birthday one of his guests proposed a toast, At long last you achieved the age of Christ! It obliges you to a lot, that’s why I wish you to finish the deed of every man to plant a tree and to grow up a son. And the rest you have done so far!

What a loggerhead am I! Clim thought to himself. I was told not to celebrate this date – a bad omen! But as usually I lost my head and rushed…And what? So far I failed to plant a tree and my son? I even didn’t put him in my plans. As for the houses, as a crazy beaver I built so many of them – keep fond remembrance of me!

Clim distinguished himself from others by his enviable and quick ability to collect all his forces in any emergency situations and to let out all his irony and sarcasm which helped him not to delay a lot in any critical situation. Here he is sure to have just a bit different circumstances, nevertheless. And maybe this stinking hash house and bitter beer helped him to switch a tumbler, and his consciousness cleared off. And here he brought back the sound to his mobile phone. Wow! Who doubts? A lot of unpleasant calls and received messages! As usual, a half of city and its outskirts needs him. Young man breathed in deeply, shrugged off the remnants of stupor, and took a taxi decisively.

***

Today our boss has an auction of incredible generosity! Young and pretty secretary Lida wore her heart on her sleeve. He set aside a meeting, didn’t demand the reports and agreed to let me out one hour earlier without his crown, And on what grounds?"

And even signed all payment checks not looking at them! added Tamara, the chief accountant of the company. Somebody died in the forest…

Nevertheless, don`t relax, girls, butted in Irina, the personnel manager. Today or tomorrow this auction will close up! Our Teflon coating steel core boss and humanism are incompatible things."

Clim locked himself in the office and ordered that no one be permitted to enter and be connected through telephone, at least in the nearest hour.

For several minutes he examined himself in the mirror, as if he saw his reflection for the first time.

Page 16

Thank goodness, nothing has changed…He was observed by a slightly tired, but quite scintillating and riveting young man: tall, well built, with thin and strong will face features with impressive and eloquent eyes, which were light grey, inquisitive and prying, as if they kept everything at gun point.

They say that there is a special stamp on cancer patients, Clim meditated.

The Stamp of Death, his inner voice prompted him, and young man flinched as if it were after some sharp blow. He reverted his eyes from the mirror and moved to his working desk, having taken the uncorked bottle of cognac out of his cabinet. Last time it became a proven method to put down the unexpected bouts of headache. Fifty drops spilled pleasantly through the whole body, but didn’t relieve the lead pressure somewhere in the depth of his head.

Everything will turn into ash…, the famous line slipped out of his unconsciousness. How is it? To see nothing, to feel nothing, to think about nothing? Slight freezing shiver… How to fight with it? He felt as though he were a completely unprotected and helpless abandoned child. He, Tough Steel Core Boss, who is the president and the owner of a big flourishing company, the title of which is associated with obligatory success and victory – Victoria. He started his career early, moved along its ladder quickly and rashly, so by 33 years he had achieved what others just start thinking about at this age. Certificates, awards, honorable brevets… The best investment and building company, The success of the year …

Page 17

Bullshit! Clim cursed loudly and hit the wall with his fist from all the forces. And all these things will turn into ashes too?! All his victories, achievements, accumulated capital…Who needs it now? And, by the way, who will inherit it? His mother, the only loving and dear person, who would hardly pass through the death of her son? His so-called vice presidents and assistants, who invested into his business neither brain noodles, nor particles of their energy. And maybe he should distribute the company among his beloved and sweet women, a chip by chip, a nugget by nugget. But I even can`t remember all of them, and hell with that, why are they beloved’?

Money, capital…And with it all he lacks something very important, some alpha and omega, what was worth living for, and, maybe, what he should fight for now… But what is that? What should he have lived for?"

His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by eye candy Lida who knocked frantically at the door,

Excuse me, Mr. Frightwindy threatens to climb through the window! He says that this urgent question is the federal case of huge importance.

OK, let him climb in, but only through the door! Clim made a wry face.

Several seconds after, not hiding his discontent, he looked at the Chief Executive Officer of his company.

Well, and what extra hypey business do you have?

Is everything OK with you? Frightwindy asked warily after putting a huge pile of documents on the desk. Any problems with tax inspection or our precious and well respected bank brought some surprises?

Pavel, I don`t have any problems! Clim cut off sharply.

Page 18

And if some surprises appear on the horizon, as you say, I solve them immediately. Or you have not known about it so far? Don`t beat around the bush!

Well, Clim, I said it just for the birds…, Pavel got confused knowing perfectly that such steel screwing glance of his boss foreshadows nothing good. Today you just embarrassed a bit.

Yeah, I feel a slight discomfort, cause you broke my privacy, so necessary for me now, with these words young man took the first paper from a heavy document case and thumbed it through. As far as I understand, there are some blunders with Neptune, aren`t they?"

If they could be called as blunders at all! Frightwindy breathed out and blushed immediately with sweat covering all his face.

Obviously, these are to be big problems, Clim thought to himself in a detached way, having scrutinized perfectly all the reactions of his employee to various situations.

Nu nu! The young boss drilled hard the small eyes squinted from fear.

We lost this tender! Frightwindy blurted out and blushed even more waiting for an emotional blow out.

Clim kept on looking at him silently and the Executive Director, using an unexpected pause, spoke up with a machine gun speed, "Climentiy, I know how important this object for you and for all us, but this business case got a sudden turn and the situation span out of control. Some huge western company specializing in hotel construction nosed out that on the Crimean territory

Page 19

there was such tasty land patch and at the last moment grabbed hold of Neptune. Today, in the morning Oleynik called back personally and said that he failed to contact you, made excuses, and rudely speaking put us under his ‘F**k you!’ Cheap mercenary creature! I see that he was bought with foreign millions and the fact that we had closed the deal and had given each other high five…"

And what? Clim said calmly enjoying the round and bulging eyes of Frightwindy. And where have you seen people now, who could keep the word or a handshake? You say that it is a hopeless situation? Then, immediately settle all questions connected with construction and try to comfort and engage ‘Astra-Nova’ into some activity until they plunge into Napoleon planes. And relax, cause you sit as a newbie to yoga on the nails. People lose sometimes even more!

Who knows, if the flock of hogs were flying over the city at this moment, Frightwindy would be surprised even less! In emergency situations, though they occurred