week. In fact, he was better the very next day. His eyes burned with a new passion, and all he could think about was Delaney. About what he would do to her when he got the chance… And most of all, he couldn't understand how he hadn't gotten to that point before. How he'd just fucked her without violence before. How he'd done it and never even considered that it might look completely different. Not at all the way the old him wanted it to. And not the way he wanted the renewed one....

He couldn't call himself young. No. It's not for him. Young people make more mistakes than they do right. He's not like that. He's wise and precise. Every move he makes is a properly calibrated final combination. One that deserves respect. And on this day, he has something new to explain to

people. Something new that they couldn't even think of before, because it's a new step. A new next right step. One of the twenty-four right steps in achieving the goals of Apollo 24.

***

The stream auditorium was full to capacity. Everyone knew that now one of the elders, Peyton Cross, would be announcing a new achievement of their station, a new successful step the station had come to.

This auditorium hadn't fit the entire population, or even half of it, in a long time. Only two and a half thousand out of seven. And now Peyton, looking at this meeting from the podium, remembered how he had cleverly thought of announcing that it was necessary to gather here, because from a certain moment only the chosen ones should listen to the speeches and be the first to know about new events. And how then, the obvious disadvantage of the lack of a suitable room had become a significant advantage to divide citizens, even nominally, into those who deserved to know everything firsthand and those who did not.

Then it was a lesson even for Peyton himself, who saw by his own example how one can successfully turn a given thing inside out, portraying disadvantages as advantages. After all, the most important thing is not what happens. The most important thing is how to tell about it. Because the one who tells about it will also keep silent about the most important thing in all this – will keep silent about himself, because without him all the above mentioned will not make sense at all… All this will not make sense without Peyton. The Peyton who's gonna get what's coming to him, not because he's the best. Not even because he deserves it. It's because he decided to.

– You know, every time, I worry a lot. I worry that I won't be able to find the right words… put those words in the right order even… I worry that I'll go hoarse while I'm saying something… But you know… I never worry about being heard      I'm proud to say that all the time, all the years that

I've been serving Apollo-24, I've spent hand in hand with the most loyal and worthy people on Earth, who have survived and who are capable of any task… – having finished this phrase, Peyton took the water bottle that stood on the podium and poured some liquid into the glass that stood next to it.

He knew perfectly well that the only thing people would hear now was the slight clink of glass against each other, and then the sound of water being poured.

Moreover, he knew very well how this sound was heard from different points in the audience, because once he had specifically asked his assistant to pour water into a glass while Peyton himself would run around the empty auditorium and listen from different places to see how well this sound could be heard in the speakers. Then he did the same thing with a slight toss of the pen from his hand to the podium stand. Then with a deep sigh. Then with a cough      And so on until

the entire list he had prepared in advance was complete. Sometimes he even added something new to it and went back to experimenting, each time finding something new for himself.

Of course, he did not stop there. And then he asked the assistant to look in different directions: straight ahead, to the right, to the left, while he himself was also in different places at that moment and looked at how it should look.

And then he began to experiment with "climbing" out of the grandstand. The thing is that the rostrum itself, due to its massiveness, seriously separated him from everyone else. It turned out that he was hiding behind it. And he would have been happy to throw it away, but some of the elders could not stand more or less long without its help, so he had to leave it as it was. And that was completely at odds with his goals of being as close to everyone as possible, so that they could all be easily controlled.

The only thing that could be done under such conditions was to bring his hands beyond the edges of the podium – to place them on the edge, or to bring them higher so that they would appear as something omnipresent to the audience. And in this configuration, he decided that the barely noticeable could make the difference in this competition for attention. The thing is, people often pay

attention to some little thing out of the ordinary. They start to focus on it, or even fixate on it… And Peyton chose his index finger, which could literally jump out of the outer part of the edge of the podium a little bit upwards – Peyton would put his hand on the edge of the podium, wrapping his hand around it a little bit and pretending that his hand was either holding this edge firmly or resting freely on it. And then in bursts of his phrases he would raise his index finger sharply, admiring what he said as an exclamation mark.

At first it seemed to him that such a configuration, in general, was nonsense, and he even considered getting rid of this maneuver. Especially since most of the poses formed in this way were the most uncomfortable for his body. But looking at the changed for the better performance, it became obvious that in combination with all the other elements to influence the mass of people, such a practice works very effectively.

And now, as he stood on the podium, he saw, heard and literally felt himself from all sides, realizing perfectly well how this murmuring of water in a glass is felt by everyone in this audience. And how he himself looked to each of them.

And that is why he began to make this movement now, after he had said that he was sure that he would be heard by the people who had gone through the most difficult things, who had survived and were already obliged to accept whatever he had to say, simply because it was natural. Nothing in the world is as indestructible as the natural. Like the water that's flowing right now, and everyone can hear it in the speakers. And even though it's just for a couple of moments, it's so self- evident that it starts to be associated with that common flow of I – we – water, that everyone loses any logic and starts to take what's being said as undeniable truth.

Peyton took the glass in his hand and drank a few sips from it, placed his right hand on the edge of the podium in front of him, and then continued:

– I even got a lump in my throat… I got a lump in my throat because I could finally announce that we had reached the next step (index finger jerked upward and spun back a little bit) in our accomplishments in Apollo 24… It's always hard to take in something new, but when it's something new that makes us stronger, we feel completely different… We feel stronger. Stronger and more experienced (index finger sighed upward again). And we know that we can withstand all the trials, all the difficulties that come our way… Because we are one family (he shook both hands in front of him, representing something big). One big family that lives together, solves its problems together… We are responsible for each other at the end of the day… (he shook his index finger from top to bottom).