Perestroika never had a chance.
No one knows how to work
anymore.
Lazy, spoiled slaves, all of
them!
Master.
All day I waited for your call -
it never came.
Tried calling - No answer.
If the mountain won't come to Mohammed,
Mohammed will come to the mountain.
Give me a hug. Ahh.
What's this?
Couldn't we just unplug it?
No, you're not in America.
Telephones do not unplug here.
That would create too much
difficulty for those listening in.
So, disciple?
Do you think you've won our
argument?
Do you think the time has come
for the rats to return from
"unexplored space"?
They certainly think so and they
get so exited.
A human person has broken an
"iron curtain" twice.
Fourth and back! This is an
event.
And, it is morning, and it is
officially your birthday.
Congratulations.
Gross was not your average
Soviet physicist.
He had come from America.
He had participated in the
creation of the nuclear bomb.
America dropped this bomb on the
Japanese.
It was the age of McCarthyism
Gross did not wish to serve the
imperialist war mongers.
In 1948 he escaped to a "free
country" - the Soviet Union.
The "free country" at that time
had twenty million of its
citizens imprisoned in labor camps.
Gross managed to avoid the labor
camp only because the "free country"
desperately needed those who
knew how to build bombs.
Of course, physicists did not
defect from the Soviet Union.
The borders of the "free
country" were well guarded.
After six months in the Soviet
Union, Gross married his housekeeper -
a virtually illiterate country
woman.
His colleagues were shocked by
the marriage.
But Gross lived with her for
many years
and always seemed perfectly
satisfied with the union.
Good coffee demands precise
preparation.
If, for example, you grind it
electrically instead of manually,
you will never achieve the
proper aroma.
Diogenes lived in a barrel.
Why should one care where one
lives!
I am convinced, however, that in
his life there were certain
elements of perfection.
Perhaps he prepared an ideal
coffee, or drank the best wine.
To attain knowledge, one does
not need to live in a palace.
One should, however,
periodically measure the quality
of one's thought process
against other paradigms of
quality.
Master, I've come to share a
secret.
I have applied for emigration.
Psychologists at Harvard once
conducted an experiment.
They took some rats and placed
them in a labyrinth with tunnels
leading to various rooms.
These rooms contained everything
essential to rat happiness.
There were rooms with food,
rooms for sex.
One of the tunnels led to a
so-called "unexplored space".
The rats had no way of knowing
what lay beyond this opening,
since no rat ever returned from
there.
Still, fifteen percent of the
rats would inevitably go into
the "unexplored space".
They were terrified of it.
They shook with fear.
Their fur would stand on end,
they would experience
uncontrollable urine releases,
they would howl - but, still,
they would go.
As it turns out both you and I
belong to this fifteen percent.
Except that in our case the
Great Experimenter has exercised
his sophisticated sense of humor
and placed two labyrinths side
by side,
calling the door connecting them
"unexplored space"..
It so happens that the presence
of rats from "unexplored space"
does not change the magical
number of fifteen percent
and what we end up with is a
perpetual exchange of
urine-releasing bravadoes...
So,if they let you go, we will
never see each other again?
Who can tell. Maybe you could
visit me there.
Or I could come here.
I think not. Rats do not return
from "unexplored space".
That's one of the givens of the
experiment.
Otherwise, how "unexplored"
would it be?
Had it turned out that Gross was
wrong?
Was I really now back in Moscow?
Was I really going in the car
with my girl friend Jill to the
State Film Studio
to help her to negotiate with
the Head of