…………………

Hurray, at least some folks survived the spell-casting.

True, half the mountain range is gone after all, and the island sits at a tilt, but what does matter is that the princess is in love… yes, with everybody at once, but that’s just a trifling side effect.

But now we can move on to step…

…Boy, I still remember how to count!

6. If you think about it — thinking is something you need to do at step 6—the clay tablets say the same… written.. I mean carved… two thousand years ago before AD… before people came along… dragons… those that were left …because they didn’t get enough training and couldn’t fly to otherworlds…

Hell, I’m so confused.

Never mind, you get the idea. Why make an apple when there’s plenty around?

Just make sure it’s the right time and the right

place… There’s a princess crossing the road… dig those legs, right in front of a speeding truck, and here I come, on my white dra… I mean, white hor…

turns out I’m a paramedic in white… no, it’s too late to be a paramedic, the princess will never be the same now that she’s just a heap of bones… white, white — white what? Got it — a Mercedes. I wedged it in with a flourish between the truck and her, now she’s indebted to me till the day she days, but what does she owe me? We’re talking five years here, no less. No, it’s not a rape, guardian angels are supposed to…

All right, a white truck. I swung the wheel with all might, directing the truck to a wall, a white one… that’s why the truck is white… but the princess… it’s all love… mission complete… and there’s no backlash to speak of, although the truck thinks otherwise… but hey, who’s asking the truck?

After you practice step 6, changing the princess about a dozen times, step 7 logically follows.

7. Stay away from spell-casting — there’s a bunch of princesses out there, and at least one of them is yours… especially if you…

or she is your …basically, it’s all the same — all you have to do is give one of her sidesa polish…

That’s how magicians get to be stalkers.

At least, those of them who survive, of course.

The key difference between magicians as we know them and stalkers is that stalkers don’t reinvent the wheel or break through the tunnel of probabilities but take the existing paths and upward streams to go, with the greatest of ease, to the place the world needs them to be at the moment, playing the part the world needs them to play.

…And the Traveler has enough roles and scenes…

Chapter 3. Don’t youget smart with me — show mewith your finger where it is

Just kidding… Here’s one you might know

The Arctic Ocean… The weather is windy, snowy, and the sky hangs cloudy 100 yards above. A Chukchi man bobs in a kayak on the lead-colored waves. He sits hunched up over the water, fishing for something that has no compass to migrate to Sochi or Turkey.

All of a sudden, the water gets all rough and bubbling, and a US submarine comes up and swings a hatch open. The captain climbs out, wearing a black coat, produces a phrasebook, and starts saying “I’m a second-rank captain, and who are you?” in the dialects of Extreme North peoples. The Chukchi squints at him shortsightedly and, trying in vain to lift his head up, something he’d never done because he’d never had to, looks at him askance like a regular Russian pop singer and asks him, in perfect English, the same question geologists ask when someone comes upon them on the third day of their search for oil in bottle crates.

“What the f — do you want, soldier?”

The captain replies, bewildered, trying to speak English as well as the Chukchi, “Would Sir Chukchi be so kind as to tell me the way to God-blessed America?”

The Chukchi says, “Course south-southeast, 250 miles, and be careful with those jars near the shore.” The flabbergasted captain gloomily climbs down into the hatch and vanishes out of sight. The Chukchi keeps right on fishing for something that had gotten too hot in the tropics and, if the horoscopes can be trusted, returned to cool down to make a good snack for your beer.

The water gets bubbling and foaming again, and a Russian submarine comes up, swaying heavily.

A boatswain climbs out on all fours, feeling no pain, and shouts down the hatch, “C’mon, thaz not a problem — we donneed no compass ta figure it out! We ‘ad two liters o’ spirit that woulda gone to waste otherwise!” Then he looks at the Eskimo and, trying to focus his eyes on him, cries in a hoarse bass voice, “Hey, Chukchi, which way do we take to Murmansk?” The Chukchi replies, “South-west-west, 560 kilometers, but be careful not to tip that submarine over when you go down.” And the boatswain yells at him angrily, “Doncha get smart with me, you snip — show me with ya finger where it is!”

So, what’s stalking at a glance?

It’s evening… Yet another Hero, as crazy about reading fantasy novels as all morons and losers are, staggers back to his little cozy den in the five-story condo he likes so much, to fall into anabiosis until the pure, good, and just event — the publication of a new remake that depicts him as the Great and Powerful throughout — happens.

In the meantime, the powers of darkness in the persons of a budding criminal nicknamed Lisper (sentenced for rowdy behavior to three years suspended) and a couple of other young and gifted good-for-nothings, stopped by the condo’s entrance hall, looking for something soft and pliant to train their adolescent psyche.

Scenarios:

1. Hero didn’t spot Lisper until he was all in Hero’s face. Hero’s right hand hurriedly went searching for the mouse and hurriedly clicked the left button that wasn’t there,