Chapter III.IV

Pharqraut, using the same characters of the great Irish playwright, forced them to act according to his plot. According to the plan of the future American inspector, When James Vane disembarks from a ship in an English port, he is immediately recruited into the headquarters of the revolutionaries, who, in order to test sailor's abilities, give him the task of killing Dorian Gray - who, as stated in the original work, had the reputation of a famous hedonist among young people. As in the original, James Vane is accidentally killed by the bullet of Sir Geoffrey Clouston - brother of Duchess Monmouth. But what followed this moment had a rather strange continuation, which was completely inconsistent with the events that took place on the pages of the original work. Death of Sibyl Vane's brother does not get away with Sir Geoffrey Clouston, as it was planned by the classic of English literature. In the reworking of the American student, this, on the contrary, causes a strong reaction among those who recruited James Vane.

As Pharqraut wrote, the workers organize an ambush on the road along which brother of Duchess Monmouth was travelling to his misfortune. The revolutionaries attack Sir Geoffrey Clouston's carriage and, having killed the owner, going to London. This news quickly reaches the English aristocrats, who, realizing that this is a "The Omen of Uprising" from the proletarian class, decide to unleash the entire police force on the rioters. Meanwhile, the ringleaders of the rebellion are already arriving in the metropolis and going to the working-class neighbourhoods, where they call on people to take to the streets and go to the main square. Soon all the labor of London are heading there in an avalanche, simultaneously burning everything in their path with the fire of revolution. Pharqraut ended his story with the fact that Dorian Gray, looking at how the capital was burning in flames, decides that he does not want to die at the hands of the workers and, as in the original work, runs to the attic, where he sticks a knife into the portrait and dies.

Galbraith was then amazed that how his friend even think of finding revolutionary overtones in the novel, which was essentially a hymn to hedonism. Pharqraut responded that the teachers at the University of Portland were also at a loss when he presented them with the manuscript of this story for credit. Only their surprise resulted in the fact that the next day the student was expelled from the alma mater in disgrace under the pretext that his work was propaganda of communism. Pharqraut said that with his story he wanted to convey the idea of when the death of some inconspicuous person - in his case, the unfortunate sailor James Vane - leads to something global. But alas, in the heads of the teachers, as the future inspector bitterly noted, there seemed to be only thoughts about looking for subtext associated with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics even where it actually does not exist. Galbraith involuntarily remembered that in 1981 (when he actually entered the police academy), the Soviet Union was still a serious threat to the rest of the world, and the feeling that the next day would not come due to a possible nuclear strike sometimes haunted a man in those early days...

The inspector was still lying in bed, his legs thrown over the headboard. Despite the fact that he had intended to read the papers on the Pharqraut's case, he couldn't help but think about their author himself. "Yes", Galbraith thought, "I'm only thirty-one years old, but sclerosis is already progressing..." Suddenly he felt a sharp feeling of hunger. The last time he ate - if a sip of tea can be called a meal - still in America, at Portland International Airport. The policeman, with some reluctance, lowered his feet to the floor and, sitting on the bed, accidentally dropped the sheets of paper on the floor. "I've become a total wreck", he thought to himself again. Galbraith sank to the floor - the papers, which, not being fastened together, scattered in all directions. He began to collect them, but since he did not know their order, he simply took one sheet after another and, having collected them all in one pile, put it on the desk. At the end of this task, he exhaled - it was not very easy for him to climb on the floor for papers - and headed to the window, curtained with tulle curtains. Moving them aside, Galbraith came close to the window sill and began to look at the urban landscape spread out under the window.

He looked at the cars passing on the road. In the morning sun they looked as if they were cast from some shiny material - the inspector couldn't even find words, he was so fascinated by this spectacle. He couldn't understand why this ordinary sight attracted him so much, it was probably because the cars he saw in Portland bore little resemblance to those driving on the streets of London. Looking at the traffic, Galbraith suddenly caught himself thinking that he had involuntarily perceived the street as a toy table, and the figures of cars - for toys that drive at the will of an invisible child who switches the buttons on the radio remote control. Perhaps the reason could be that the policeman had not yet fully woken up, and the movements of the cars, too fast for his sleepy eyes, looked ragged, without the smoothness usual for the real world. He eventually witnessed a truck crash into a red convertible.

- That's it, kid, your car is broken, now you'll have to beg your dad to buy you a new toy, - said Galbraith, as if addressing a child.

The wrong meaning of his own words only dawned on him when the truck cab door suddenly opened and the driver jumped out - Only at this moment did Galbraith come to his senses from his trance and realized that what was in front of his eyes was not a simulation, but the real world, and that a real accident had actually happened below, not game with toy cars. "Yes", Galbraith thought, "I'll develop a God Complex if I treat what's happening around me like that". On the other hand, what does he care about this accident? Yes, he is a servant of law and order, but of a completely different country - in London, he is essentially just an ordinary tourist, who has even fewer rights than any native Englishman.