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?”