12

07:09:00

The history of the world made sense. The primal instinct of taking care of the young ones by the older ones. Being a tutor in a student-master relationship. Passing on the craftsmanship, the recipes of good formulas of life. His life was obvious. He covered all the stages of education to guide someone else and be the help in covering those stages. He was once taught how to eat, walk, read, write and speak to later on pass the knowledge to the little ones. He earned money not for himself but for others to share as they were incapable of working at a very young age. They couldn’t hunt their own food. The instinct of maintaining the tribe was important. The grapefruit was important in the long history of civilization. He felt important. He actually found sense in being a father.

As the weather improved and stabilized in its query unpredictable ways, strange things started happening. First, there was no electricity. His computer ran on the battery for a while but then work and entertainment was off completely. He phoned the power plant and the caretaker of the building but no one had answers to his queries. It might have been a temporary power cut. It might have been the weather (which, taking into account the circumstances, was the worst possible excuse). Even the neighbor didn’t seem to notice the problem. She was indifferent. She just sat on the balcony and read a book. Then she went for a long walk, possibly to a café with WiFi (or he imagined her doing it out of jealousy). She came back in the evening and instantly fell asleep.

He took his books and comics and spent time motionless in bed, wondering whether they will make him again unemployed for a long absence at work. He managed to use his mobile phone to write to the boss but in the middle of sending the message his battery ran down, either cutting the text or deleting it altogether. There was no contact with the outside world. He even couldn’t call for an ambulance.

When the electricity came back, there was the cut-off of water. First, it was for a day. The second day didn’t bring any changes. On the third day, he was dirty, stinky and irritated beyond measure. She wasn’t in the least affected by the event. She went to the swimming pool to wash and was cheerfully happy and perfumed. She offered him mineral water, waving her still moist hair and cherishing the fact that the public swimming pool was just around the corner. On the fourth day, the water came back, which was a miracle, considering his mental state, as he started scratching himself from staying in the abundance of his own bacteria. When water started running through the pipes again, he was blessed by the possibility of washing himself. He treated it like a gold powder, massaging every inch of his preserved body. He did a double laundry to store clean things in advance. She stopped taking her pregnant swimming classes.

Then half of the order of his shopping was missing. There was no reason behind it. The delivery man said that they must have mixed something while preparing the orders but he didn’t have to pay for all of it, just cover the bill for the things that were actually brought to his place. But how could he survive without toilet paper, bread, milk, butter, eggs, binging only on lettuce and tomatoes? And drinking a liquid soap instead of six bottles of fizzy drinks that he ordered? Drinking tap water might have been recommended by the doctors, but drinking tap water in the civilized world must have been a disaster. Why did we create all these cancer-causing, diabetes-enhancing, sparkling bottled drinks, if we didn’t want to have a choice? And such a choice did involve a conscious decision of dying from unhealthy eating habits.

‘You should go shopping,’ she suggested ‘I would buy something for you, but I cannot carry heavy things.’

He said that he would manage. Actually, he managed for a week and then ordered another shopping from a different online store. This time it came the way he ordered it and nothing was missing. Then he bought some things in advance and stored them in boxes in one part of the room, just behind the wardrobe. Finally, he looked for alternative sources of energy, such as solar powers and windmills and wondered how on earth he could make his life independent from unreliable sources such as his electric sockets.