Professor Fyodor Borovsky later confirmed this to myself and five scruffy streetside vendors in exchange for a signed photo of Elvis.
"It is bolshoi fact Citizen Boyer is totally respnsible," he explained. "He has piled copies of his plagiarized stories on the edge of town and disguised them as a volcano. This is too much weight- the accumulated mass of his plagiaries has tilted the axis of the earth."
"Is that possible?" I asked.
"But of course!" he said. "Have you seen how many people he plagiarized?"
"Hmmm," I said.
It was a cold day in Moscow and I didn't want to be there, but stories like this are worth following to the ends of the earth.
"Yes, now you see, don't you?" he cackled.
"No, but what can be done?"
He eyed me suspiciously, then leaned over and whispered, "We must work together to fight planet tilt. Russia and China will do their part. We can plagiarize millions, maybe billions of stories. In ten or twenty years, maybe if all the Chinese work every hour of every day, we can plagiarize enough stories on this side of the ocean to tilt the planet back."
"Will it be in time to avert catastrophe?" I asked.
"I don't know," he said. "What do you want? I am no Rasputin."
"What can we in America do to help?"
"Good, good- you are excellent world citizen. Speak to this Boyer. Plead with him. Ask him to begin walking his manuscripts east across your fine country to help tilt the planet our way. It will take him 30 maybe 40,000 trips, but if he starts now, it may not be too late. Appeal to his conscience to help save the planet."
"Your plan has a flaw," I said.
"It is Russian plan. It is bolshoi good, fuck you very much. What could be wrong?"
"For starters," I pointed out, "he doesn't have a conscience."
No comments:
Post a Comment