Win-win

I.
It is warm in the room. A well-fed teen girl is sitting at the computer. Her blond locks are twisted into two horns. Her breasts swelled not long ago. She is choosing new clothes.
‘Four bucks! Can you imagine? Just four bucks!’ she upturned her small nose to her elder brother.
He leaned over the screen scratching his crown and jiggling his black unwashed head. They aren’t alike at all - as a southern night and a foggy morning.
‘Automation is coming so quick...’ he says thoughtfully.
‘What?’
‘Just think! If you buy the jacket for four bucks, what is the cost price? They need, besides, to deliver it from China or… wherever.’
‘Bangladesh. You see? Bangladesh.’
‘No difference. Then that site of yours must get its comission. What does it mean?’ he looked at her, waiting for an answer, but she didn’t react. ‘It means,’ he continued, ‘that the production process of the things is almost free. Kind of…  two cents per jacket.’
The girl looked at him in surprise and blinked her big blue thoughtless eyes.
‘Well, I buy everything on that site,’ she went on from the point he interrupted her for some reason. ‘In a mall, I can buy only one or two things for a hundred bucks. Here it can be ten or fifteen ones.’
‘No, you just think!’ the meticulous brother couldn’t stop flowing. ‘It means, people don’t take part in fabrication at all. Otherwise, you need to put their salary in the price, even the lowest salary. There can be only two ways to reach it: either they have a full-automated line, or slaves work there,’ and he laughed at the absurdity of the assumption.
The sister continued rolling the mouse wheel and chewing Hubba-Booba.
He wanted to say something else but Grandma called them to eat.
Over lunch he told Grandma about his new Internet project. She understood nothing, but listened to her favorite grandson with pleasure.
Brother and Sister reached out to the dish with fried chicken legs at the same time, and both digged forks in a golden thigh. They looked at each other, looked at Grandma and all together laughed.
‘Eat, my bunnies!’ Grandma smiled and patted Sister on her head between the horns.
No one wanted to give up. Each fork tore the chicken’s flesh to its side. Sister pressured, and trickles of brownish gore flew from under the fork prongs. 
Sister withdrew her hand in terror.
Brother cut the thigh in half. Meat inside was scarlet.
‘Oh, it’s not baked enough. Don’t care. Eat,’ Grandma sawed off a piece and put it in her own mouth with an appetite. ‘These chicken are all sterile. They haven’t even seen the Sun in their life.’
Sister cautiously chewed bloody meat, shrugged and swallowed. The lunch successfully proceeded.

Brother was exactly twice older than his sister. She recently turned 15.
Sometimes he got surprised that she still collected dolls and had been  reading  the  "Headless Horseman" for the whole year. He tried to think of himself at her age, and was surprised too to find an old notebook with his first philosophical theory, written when he was 15.
On the other hand she told him interesting things about videobloggers, their lives and how wonderful they are at making money on their subscribers.
‘Can you imagine?’ he exclaimed in reply to her. ‘They have a quite different life! They are completely free! They don’t have to work! They travel! Money turned into a fiction for them! It’s a society of the future! It’s going to become it…’
Sister looked upon him as a fool and said:
‘You're so clever.’


II.
The sun burned the skin. Maripu had to be in time to collect corn before 10 am. Because at 10 am she needed to run to work. And that's good. At least there is no sun there. However, wild stuffy. A couple of times she even lost consciousness up to lunch. But it was mainly because of hunger. She didn’t eat rice soup, which mother gave her, brought it home and secretly poured back into the pan. So the pan was enough for two-three days. Because the little brothers didn’t understand what the economy is, and pounced on the soup like animals.
Actually, they were animals. As all boys. She understood it when Provi from the neighboring village pounced on her as well as her brothers did on food.
She liked him. And she allowed herself to smile when their eyes met. He worked the night shift and returned from the factory when she was just going to it.  Once the factory was closed for a day due to the fact that several hundred people were poisoned by gas from a burst pipe. It was necessary to collect and take out dead bodies. It was a wonderful day. She and Provi met on the road. He told her about the fluke and suggested going for a walk in the valley of cacti.
Maripu in thought looked up at the sun: a thick cloud very pat and rather trustworthy stuck on it. There was no wind. She could safely rely on a couple of hours of coolness. However, something in her stomach cramped and didn’t let go, apparently from starvation. But still the brothers had already woken up and eaten the soup. It’s better to distract herself by walking.

They struck up a game. Maripu was hiding from Provi behind cacti, green, hairy, with longitudinal purple snakes. He was seeking for her, trying to grab her, but she was wriggling out and jumping away to another cactus. She gasped, blushed, laughed like a child, forgetting everything in the world: the hunger, tomorrow’s work, voracious brothers and even her flabby always silent mother. She laughed  screwing up her eyes, trembling all over, as if trying to squeeze out of herself as of a doormat, everything had stuck to and absorbed. But only tears from laugh squeezed.
Getting tired of running about, they stopped at a cactus,  pierced it with its needle and put their toungues under sluggishly flowing whitish juice that knitted mouth. Once their tongues accidentally touched, and Maripu felt kind of an electric shock. She glanced at Provi’s face, overgrown with black bristles. It was so close that she could see the pores.
Then Provi said:
‘What do they look like, cacti?’
She thought:
‘Bottles?’
‘Nooo…’
‘Rocket?’
‘Nooo…’
Provi was 2 heads higher and 2 times wider than her. His nose looked like a pig’s snout.
‘Do you want me to show you?’
He beckoned her behind a thick cactus to be invisible from the road.
She went home in the evening, holding on to the walls of barracks.
Mother screamed. Maripu’s legs were covered by gore.

She didn’t meet Provi on the way to the factory anymore.
One day, washing, Maripu noticed that she’d got stouter, although the legs have become even more bony.
There was nothing to eat at all, because after the incident with Provi she had been lying at home for a week,  regaining consciousness sometimes, and this week was deducted from her salary. It was impossible to live up to the next week.  But Maripu was lucky.
Once at the factory, passing by the smoking room, she heard a conversation.
‘Well, soon you’ll take my Cruiser. Would you? I ordered a new Gelentwagen.’
In smoke, thick as sour cream, Maripu could see the pockmarked face of the plant manager. He tapped on the shoulder the crazed foreman and worked happily with his elbows like a dinosaur from cartoons. Then, with face, suddenly having become waxy, he added:
‘By the end of the month -  must start a new line.’
He came rarely, and always - on the eve of great changes. The last time, for example, her mother was made redundant.
Frightened Maripu came to the foreman after her shift and begged not to fire her. But he wasn’t going to. Moreover, besides day shifts, she was given two night ones a week.
It turned out well. It was possible not only to cover costs, but even buy a pound of beef, which was eaten in the soup by them during all the week. And actually they felt great. Maripu even bounced a little on the way to work. Passing the cactus valley, she recalled Provi and thought that no matter what, it was a beautiful day. And her bottomless blue eyes opened again towards the world.
Just her back began to ache because of the growing belly.

III.
Brother sat at his MacBook and cleaned his mail. So much spam! 1233 unseen letters. Whitish December day was already going to be quenched, but he still was in his silk bed. How many times he said to himself:  wake up -  get up at once - do exercises. But always it turned vice versa.  A like, a message, a retweet, a new picture of an unfamiliar cutie, "Oh, who subscribed to me?" - and he got bogged down till evening. Recently some brittle pain in his back began torturing him. The doctor said it was from a lying lifestyle. It’s necessary to move. At least to get up off the couch every hour and walk around the room. In fact - walking oudoors two hours a day. But it sounded like utopia. His entire life - both work and entertainment - was held by a computer. There was no time to be distracted. And no wish.
Now, for example, he watched a new video from the sister’s favorite bloggergirl. The one with shining, as if flooded with parquet lacquer, lips, gesturing vigorously, winking pencilled eyes at the camera, and producing other antics, told about her shopping. She rummaged in a huge closet, where tons of clothes were pressed on hangers, trying on and criticizing. "What a cutie!!" - Thought Brother and inadvertently broke into a dreamy smile. In the end of the video the bloggergirl shared a link to a site where she bought all the stuff. He clicked.
It turned out to be the same site his sister had shown. Prices hit and fueled the appetite. A fashionable striped cap - for just two bucks. Wow! He needed exactly the same.  The old one is a shame to wear: it’s all in spools. Well, what else is there? He put a tick on "men". What cool ginger shoes! Though he already has got almost the same ones. But only four bucks! Shoes are never enough. What if that pair rubs off?  What to wear then? No-No, he clicks "buy". And running in the park by the way?! As the doctor advised. May be that’s why he doesn’t walk: he has got nothing to walk in. He needs sneakers. And preferably - a jogging suit ...

Brother became a habitue of the site. He no longer kept track of where to put the "buy" tick, and felt free surfer on the waves of purchases. His trained eye caught  the best offer in a split second, and the forefinger clicked right on target.
Clothes came by mail in large boxes. He sorted them carefully, touched the fabric and laid them out on his turquoise bedspread in the form of a human body. So he composed new images, which were then tried on and put in Instagram.
Now he and his sister twittered about clothes, like old girlfriends. Nevertheless, sometimes he couldn’t help it and inserted his regular philosophical opus:
‘Here it is, a society of abundance, of which mankind has been dreaming  the entire history! Material resources are becoming limitless. Human getting more and more free day to day. Somewhen clothes were just a means of body protection. Now they are just one more reason for creativity. New heroes appear... like your bloggergirl, honest, open-minded. They earn not on spivveries, not on oil or kind of… They earn on their charm, talent. She advertised the site - and all is well. She is well, site is well  and the main thing - we, the customers, are well. Where else would we find such prices? It’s a natural win-win-situation.’
Sister succesfully missed all the stuff and stared at him with her eyes, deep as the sea and the same serene.

Once Brother put on a black hat, suspenders and a long cloak, like a gangster from the previos century films, took a picture in the mirror and put it in the social networks. None of his philosophical essays received so many likes. Friends diligently commented and asked where he had got such cool belongings.
On a New Year's party everybody  gave to each other clothes from the site and staged a mass fitting. That night  Instagram was filled by dozens of new looks.
So a new entertainment was invented. Friends gathered at someone's home (once even in a professional photo studio) and tried on new things.
The number of Brother’s subscribers in social networks  grew rapidly. Every day he changed pictures - one cooler than another - and posted differrent clever thoughts under them such as:
"Everyone gets what he dreams of" or
"Think positive! Thoughts are material! " Or even
"There's no fate. There are your decisions".
When the number of subscribers exceeded 5523, he created a community "FashionParty" in Facebook and began to organize dressing parties. Everyone could now pay $49 and try on clothes each time in new stunning scenery:  in rocks with a deserted beach, in an old gothic castle. And a professional photographer took pictures of you. This was the  natural win-win situation! You get a professional photo session for only $49! A photographer, creative person, gets  a job. Brother, creative entrepreneur,  makes good money. To buy a ticket to the party, join our Facebook community! Where else will you find a professional quality quantity photoset just for $49. Total $49 - and your dream to have a beautiful Facebook avatar  will come true. Dream! Create! Total for $49 (If you have a promo code, enter it in the promo-code form).

IV.
Maripu looked at her hands: they had blackened between fingers. And fingers themselves got wrinkled and dried as ginseng roots. She felt unbearably sleepy. She had been working for two full days. It helps neither coffee nor the energy drink, graciously donated by her chief.  The foreman surprisingly took part in her. While Maripu spanked brooches on pink blouses, he passed, mellowed after a hearty dinner, and spanked her ass. She, however, did not even feel it. Her spread out, iron bed stood in front of her eyes. She must endure just two next hours and then fall headlong in her bed. No grinding conveyor, no that thick mug. What a bliss!
But she couldn’t get enough sleep. The night swept a moment. She just closed her eyes and then opened, completely not rested. And it was necessary to go back again to slap brooches on pink blouses. She has got a callous on her thumb.  And a pink hurt her eyes.
‘How don’t you get tired?’ she asked a cheerful girl, her neighbor down the pipeline, who methodically, with sharpened movements, pasted on thingies. She came to the senses not at once. She slowly, as if waking from a dream, turned her head to Maripu. Her eyes, all wrinkles, like 70-year-old woman’s, were wide open and enthusiastic. She smiled mechanically, exposing brown teeth remains.
‘So weird…’ thought Maripu, ‘she did look my age.’
After their shift the neighborgirl beckoned her behind a corner. It was already dark and the streetlight here was smashed. That’s why a security guard, walking along the barbed wire,  could not see them. The neighborgirl took out a thimble tucked by a chewed chewing gum from somewhere under her darned skirt. By smell and caustic-green color Maripu defined Hubba-Bubba, that was brought in by whites as humanitarian aid last year.
The neighborgirl uncorked the thimble. A white powder was inside. She licked her finger, more similar to bone, dipped it into the powder and brought  to Maripu's lips.
‘Open your mouth.’
She obeyed. The neighborgirl got her finger under the Maripu’s upper, childishly plump lip and smudged the powder on her gum.
‘Now you can go back and ask for a night shift.’
Maripu felt cold. It sneaked from her gums through the teeth, the palate and the throat to her brain. It grew and swelled. The fatigue went away with the sweat which she was thrown into.  Legs became so light that she wanted to jump up and slap them in the air. Laughter came itself. Even her heavy belly was no longer pulled down. It just floundered about like jelly while she ran back to the factory to ask for the night shift.


V.
‘When you come to a bar, you're not outraged that a glass of rum costs like a bottle in a supermarket.  Here we’ll do the same. You try on a thing at the party. You’ve  enjoyed it. You can buy it right now right here. Well, of course, not for 4 bucks but for… kind of… 50 bucks. And, by the way, remove the link to the clothes site from ours.  We don’t hide it, but also don’t advertise.’
Brother’s partner, redhead young man with yellow teeth and glassy eyes, was nodding attentively.
The venture worked. The profit had risen by 2.4 times. One new model became especially popular. It was a gently scarlet  sweatshirt with a vintage amber brooch and giggling thingies on the neckline.  The sweatshirts scattered like pink flamingos after sunset. Brother ordered  a van at once and got a discount from  the site for it. As a result, one unit costed just $2 and was sold for  $74.99.

Brother bought  a Mercedes and began to lecture for young entrepreneurs.
‘We hold the world up,’ he enlightened youth. ‘Have you read the book "Atlas Shrugged"? So be sure to read it! You just have to screw everything and do business. Have you read the book "Screw it. Let’s do it"? So be sure to read it. You know, how the world is arranged: it’s enough to send a request to the universe, and it will give you everything. Have you read the book "The Secret"? So be sure to read it!’
Brother wondered how he could be such a dull misanthrope before, lay on the bed for days,  philosophize all sorts of nonsense.  With shame he remembered his childhood theory, which he had found in an old notebook. There he talked about the meaning of life, that life is given to us for having time to hone our souls before death. He did believe this galimatias.
Only now he realized that he had been far behind from his sister at her age. She is up to date. He hovered in clouds.
By the way, he should repay her. If she hadn’t revealed that wonderful site to him, now there would be nothing. He pressed the brake. His iron iridescent gray shark swam up to the store. A minute later he came back with a brand new iPhone, the latest edition,  and Mercedes jumped up in the sister’s house direction.

VI.
The work was increasing day by day. The chief now put a plan 1666 jackets per day per person. To execute it, she had to sleep only two nights a week. Those were the nights of hell. Those were the nights when action of the powder ended. Maripu reached the farthest corner of their hut and shivered so strong that beat her nape against the wall. Her eyes seemed to fall out of their sockets. Her mouth was so dry that the air she inhaled scraped her throat as a rasp. A few hours later Maripu was able to doze off and froze on the floor with her eyes open until dawn.
Waking up, she faintly raised her hand, and one of the brothers splashed her face water to moisten her eyes,  dried till wrinkling over the night and almost blinded.  Maripu came to life, began blinking  through the pain, recovered her sight and went to work again.
Last days a bloody puddle remained on the floor after her.

Maripu felt her first contractions standing at the conveyor. She felt them as something distant, painfully beckoning from the depths. She had automated herself so much that her own body had become something alien and bothersome. That’s why she hadn’t been noticing  those urges for half an hour.  But the boss passing by, as always, after a hearty dinner, wanted to slap her on the ass. He already raised his hand and suddenly saw a puddle of some mucus under Maripu in which blood clots floated.
- Take her away! Quickly! - He shouted to the guards. They picked her up and brought. But there was nowhere to put her. There was neither benches nor chairs in the shop.  The only horizontal surface proved to be the temporarily stopped conveyor with made pink jackets. Passing a couple of laps around the shop, the guards got tired and put her directly on the conveyor.
Maripu’s face, long ago having become more similar with a scull, now whitened, like an elephant tusk. Her eyes rolled back and put on display the orangish whites. Her shoulders were twitching, her mouth fell open and her somewhen chubby, but now sunken blue lips, slid on the side. Some terribly sour smell of gasoline came from her mouth.
Maripu’s blood flooded the entire conveyor and visco dripped on the floor. Taking a breath which was not followed by exhalation, she recalled the happiest day of her life in the valley of cacti.

The child wasn’t born. Maripu was decided not to bury her.  It was too expensive. They just dug her in outside the village.
 The foreman ordered to wash the jackets, smeared by blood, and pack them in a container. But he went home, and it was unclear, who was supposed to do it. Obviously, not the guards. Employees, too, were not up to it, they must carry out the plan. The jackets dried over the night and in the morning  were packed in containers.

VII.
Sister liked the gift. What a coincidence: she just wanted a new iPhone. Brother guessed, showed the wonders of insight.
‘So who will show off a new car?’ she pushed him in the chest.
They went down to the yard, inspected the shining machine all around, sat behind the wheel, brother promised to teach her to drive. And then he slapped his forehead.
‘What I have in the trunk!’
He unpacked a box and pulled out a brand new sweatshirt.
‘Woooow!’ sister exclaimed. ‘Your iconic gently scarlet sweatshirt!’ she turned it in her hands. ‘But it’s dark scarlet for some reason.’
The brother took it and watched.
‘Weird… May be they added too much dye…’
‘But I like this one even better. I will have exclusive editon. Bloody red.’
They laughed. Sister took her coat off - good for her, it was already spring, birds were singing, smell of melting snow was in the air. She wore the brand new sweatshirt, got the brand new iPhone and began taking pictures against the backdrop of the brand new Mercedes.
Likes fell in abundance.

Epilogue.
Brother drank a little with the Sister’s father and stayed at their place overnight.
A skinny girl with big blue eyes like his sister’s, just not thoughtless, but bottomless, is holding on her shoulders a giant wooden dance floor. He feels for her. He feels how the dance floor presses on her sharp blades, flattens them. It hurts. Paunchy donnish men in suits, with gold-chained watches,  swagger on the top of the dance-floor. Fat-assed women, being hung with sparkling in the darkness, which is around, diamonds, arrogantly wiggle their hips. The girl is struggling to keep balance, as long as they walk atop.  The veins on her neck nearly break through her skin from stress. Dancing begins. Men and women  jump around, furiously tapping their heels on wood. Some of them, getting tired, sit at tables and dig their greasy mouths into chicken legs with blood, and then kiss each other. Some men, a little thinner, lift especially thick one on their shoulders, and he dances some weird kind of breakdance directly on their shoulders.
New guests appear out of the darkness and join the feast.
Suddenly he hears crunch and feels unbearable pain. Those are her joints. They break, depart from their capsules. The girl falls to her broken knees, but continues to hold. Angry knocking of heels and shouting comes from above.
She tries a last effort but cannot, her spine breaks, and the dance floor crushes her by its weight.
Brother woke up in an icy sweat.
He tried to breathe, but there was some iron-meat poison, that was settling in the lungs, instead of air. He rushed to the window feeling deadly dizzy and saw the sweatshirt. The radiator was covered by it to make not so hot in the room. He opened wide the window, stuck his head, lay on his back in a half-conscious and could not enough breathe the clean air.
It is warm in the room. There is the rusty smell of blood in the room.