Moscow Machination (2 page)

Guangdong Province, Southern
China

30 year
old Zhen Zhao watched as the industrial landscape blitzed by at a rate of
400Km/hr. She wondered if she was still pretty enough. She was. She had more
than enough to sustain the yellow fever epidemic sweeping the contiguous states.
But her recent breakup with a co-worker had left her a nervous wreck. He, a
Wang, had dumped her for a younger co-worker. Such a cliché.

As Zhen
Zhao raced northwards, Wang the dumper dude, was also screaming through Guangdong
province, but unlike Zhen Zhao, he was doing an earthly 280 an hour in the
other direction. Zhen Zhao and Wang were ‘pilots’ for the CSR trains. Their
trysts had begun innocently when they had met at a layover in Hong Kong. And
then a couple of weeks later in Kunming and then again in Beijing. It had been
very laissez-faire, lot of bedtime and the occasional dumpling. And then out of
the blue, Wang had ended it after falling for the young trainee. To add insult
to injury he had mentioned something gross involving love.

Zhen Zhao
had already one upped the bastard by acing the certification tests to become a
CRH400A pilot. Wang had failed it. Twice. Haha. But still, being the dumpee
rather than the dumper hurt. So ever since the breakup, she had actively avoided
Wang by volunteering for the unsexy Western routes like Xiamen, Kashgar and
even Lhasa. All that sort of changed today.

Before
starting out of Shenzhen on the new CRH400A, she had checked up on Wang’s schedule.
Lo and behold the Wang was heading straight at her... in a CRH300. They were
scheduled to cross twenty minutes out of Shenzhen Station. The train manifest
also suggested that there was a young trainee with Wang.

As the
trains headed towards each other, Zhen Zhao figured at a relative speed of
680Km/hr. and a visual range of 2 Kms, she would be spending 10.8 seconds in the
presence of Wang and his shiny new girlfriend. 10.8 sec? 10.8 sec was a freakin
eternity while staring at exes. Zhen Zhao pulled up the operator’s manual, a 4
incher, and proceeded to the simplified Chinese section.

“Even on
our indigenously developed trains, English, French, German and Spanish come
before Chinese. What’s with that?” Zhen Zhao observed causally.

A Datsun
manufacturing facility followed by Isuzu whizzed by on the west.

Her
co-pilot Chen Chou replied, “That’s probably the order on the Shinkansen
manuals.”

Zhen Zhao ignored
the comment and quickly thumbed through to the section involving speed limits.
She soon figured that the CRH400A should be quite stable up to about 440Km/hr.
At 440Km/hr the relative speed went up to 720Km/hr and the time share went down
from 10.8 to 10.0 seconds.

“Eight
tenths of a second? Sounds good enough…” mumbled Zhen Zhao as she began urging
the throttle. Zhen Zhao’s CRH400A was already twenty minutes out of Shenzhen
and was about to come face to face with the inferior Canadian Wang carrier.
Zhen Zhao tensed and pushed the throttle further.

Chen Chou
her co-pilot enamored with a bootlegged copy of Angry Birds didn’t feel the
slight surge in velocity. The CRH400A was real smooth.

Connected
by the ultra-strong steel cable the two little boxes lay attached to the high
speed tracks. The signal from
Koba
the satellite, activated the boxes.
The boxes were programmed to levitate and grab onto the underbelly of the
trains’ first car. One of them had the scheming Zhen Zhao while the other had a
smooching Mr. Wang.

10 sec

As the
CRH300 came into view, Zhen Zhao leaned forward and tried to make out the
contents of the oncoming train’s cockpit. In the slower Chinese railroads, passing
train drivers often waved at each other as. Zhen Zhao had no intention of
waving as she readied her finger.

9 sec

The little
boxes, began their check thru procedures.

8 sec

Wang was
standing at the front edge of the cockpit. Brushing the CRH300’s controls. If
it was ship it would have been its bow. His trainee stood close behind him.

7 sec

Zhen Zhao
craned her neck and squinted hard.

6 sec

Mr. Wang
was in a bliss. This was one for the books.

5 sec

As a kid
Zhen Zhao had seen the Titanic at a mall in Shenzhen. She had thought it was
just okay. Nothing much to write about, especially since the good bits had been
taken out by the Politburo.

Unlike
Zhen Zhao, 18 year old Wang and his parents had watched the Titanic in Hong
Kong. And unlike Shenzhen, free Hong Kong had shown all the good bits. It had
inspired him. It had inspired little Wang, inspired him to become a captain. A
captain of anything that had bow on it. And here he was.

Doing it
with Zhen Zhao wouldn’t have been the same. She didn’t get it.

4 sec

Zhen Zhao
could see the faint outline of Wang’s little face. He seemed to be standing up…
and there was someone close behind him. She tried harder.

A large, person
stood behind Wang. Eww he went from her to that??

The trains
got closer.

The
burly person was a man…

The dude wasn’t
even Chinese…
he had facial hair
.

Damn. Probably
had something to do with training the Mongolian hordes in exchange of sand for the
phones. Wang held out his arms to form a T, mimicking the corny Titanic pose
while his Mongolian male friend handled his junk.

3 sec

Zhen Zhao
shrieked.

2 sec

Startled, by
the shriek, Zhen’s co-pilot Chou looked up, just in time to catch the passing
CRH300. Chou observed, “Ugh, looks like someone spilt their latte on the
windscreen. That’s stuff is disgusting. No hot beverages says rule number…”

1 Sec

The little
boxes latched onto the trains.

A
scrapping metal sound filled the CRH400A’s cabin as Zhen and Chou felt the
train slightly tilt.

A similar
sound filled Wang’s train as he and his partner also felt a tilt.

0 Sec

Once the
little steel buggers had latched onto the under bellies of the trains, the made
in Russia steel cable began to exhibit a bizarre stress – strain graph. Normal
steel would have just expanded a bit and then snapped, probably derailing the
trains and resulting in a proverbial train wreck.

However
the made in Russia steel cable expanded by about a hundred feet. The two trains
were halfway past each other.

At the end
of this superficial expansion the steel cable from Magnitogorsk, went taught. But
unlike typical steel cables it didn’t snap.

The effect
on the trains was instantaneous. Simultaneously both trains seemed to hit an
invisible wall. But there was no damage or shattering of the nose. Instead of
crumpling, slowing and derailing, the faster CRH400A following the laws of
angular velocity, swung left and lifted off the rails. Its target: The CRH300.

29 micro
seconds later the CRH300 also lifted off and headed towards the middle of the sleek
black CRH400A.

Up in
space, satellite
Koba
was all amused, this was the start of a long payback
for the Damansky Island bs… well technically
Koba
the satellite didn’t
have a soul, but it wasn’t entirely unfathomable. Primakov however, had a
beating heart and a working brain. It was all going according to his plan.

The
CRH400A headed straight into the middle of its older cousin. Just when Zhen
Zhao thought it was all over, she hit some sort of a silent cocoon… the eye of the
storm. From up in the air, it seemed like a dog chasing its own tail… but there
was also another dog involved…

Primakov however,
knew it was more like a couple of poisonous reptiles chasing each other’s heads
while going in circular motion.

Either way
it was, trippy.

The steel
cable had in essence clubbed the nose cones of the trains together. When coupled
with high speeds and aerodynamics, this had made the trains airborne. The
Chinese designers aka the Japanese, had never considered the little deviant
known as the centrifugal force. Why would they? They weren’t making a
rollercoaster for Disney World, Dalian.

This Centrifugal
deviant, forced the trains to lift off and unwind at the same time. The mellow white
train, the almost invisible steel cable and the CRH400A all formed a humongous
S shaped rotating chopper blade. It was still trippy.

The first casualty
was the hi-tech fence that guarded the tracks against peasant revolutions. The
trains, acting like a whip, blasted one out to Rangoon.

The
eastern fence flew a 100ft before crashing through the paint shop of the Datsun
Auto’s manufacturing facility. No personnel were injured as paint shops were
considered to be too hazardous, even in China. The surviving Datsuns looked
like they had been in an accident involving tattoo artists at a gay pride rally.

It would
leave an indelible black mark on Chinese manufacturing, or so hoped Primakov.

The
western fence flew into the smart underwear maker plant. Here the damage was
more devastating. Stores, supplies and electronics all burnt to the ground. The
devastation sent the smart underwear industry, back to the stone ages. This
would force the California company to remove the ‘Designed in California’ tag and
ship the remnants to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The trains,
still spinning, headed in the north-westerly direction with a ton of angular
momentum.

Inside the
CHR400A, Zhen Zhao and Chang Chou were still alive and relatively unharmed.
They were strapped into the Japanese designed seats. Chang Chou, resigned to
fate, decided to think of happy things. Early childhood, her first ramen… that
kind of shit.

Zhen Zhao
however simply couldn’t look away from the spectacle in the CRH300’s cockpit.
When the trains had taken off, the cockpit’s occupants: Wang, Wang’s wang, the 6’6”
Mongolian and his wang had all been unstrapped and strutting. With gravity
suddenly taking a backseat to centrifugal forces all four had been hurled
around the cabin like an angry babushka stirring at her sauerkraut.

In an
effort to stabilize himself, the Mongolian dude had made a grab for Wang. Wang
himself was attempting to keep his privates covered. Zhen meanwhile couldn’t
take her eyes off the wangs.

After 10
more micro seconds, Zhen averted her eyes and looked down. On her lap stuck
between her seven inch skirt was the CRH400A’s operator manual. She wrenched it
out of her trembling thighs and went straight to the end of the 600 page book. She
went to the end for two reasons. One, because the last section was in Chinese
and two, because most manuals put apocalyptic scenarios in the end. Like
replace your LG TV or check power switch or call some 1800-FUCK-NUMBER.

As
expected the top of the last page had some mumbo jumbo about toll free numbers.
Zhen Zhao skimmed down. Some pencil pusher in Beijing was quoted as saying
‘Human capital is our greatest asset. We will always save ours.’ Zhen Zhao
couldn’t believe this bull.

After
travelling about 250 meters in the North West direction, the trains tired of whirling
through the air decided to cave in to gravity. Right about there was the largest
train manufacturing plant in Southern China. This particular plant happened to
be the one designing and manufacturing the new age “Absolutely and Completely
Made in China” trains like the CRH400A.

Zhen’s
intestines indicated that they were beginning their descent while her field of
vision confirmed that they would be landing smack in the middle of China Rail’s
stamping unit. She had toured the plant a month ago. Back then it was an honor.
The stamping unit… fuck…

Focusing
back to the manual, she skimmed down 2 more inches towards the bottom of the
last page.
WTF?

Chang Chou
observed the burly Mongolian’s vinegar strokes in horror as she finally solved the
mystery behind the latte spillage just 8 seconds ago. Her thoughts were in
disarray. She could no longer remember her first encounter with the chopsticks…

The coupled
trains had thus far completed 3 full rotations on their flight to freedom. On
the fourth rotation the far end of the CRH400A, smacked a large exhaust chimney
at the CRH rail facility. The chimney would land 1.6 Kms away at a German
factory that made porcelain urinals for malls. The chimney chose to land at the
testing facility which housed about a thousand gallons of recycled urine.

Zhen Zhao
read again. In simplified Chinese it read: ‘If in danger, Call out to your
badass supreme leader.’