Story 2: Yana And The Small Problem

Once upon a time, in the days of the now-dissolved Evil Empire, there lived in Moscow a very lovely and intelligent blonde girl named Yana. When she graduated at the top of her high school class the government told her that she wanted to work in the nuclear industry. She wisely chose studying for seven years to become a nuclear scientist at the Josef Stalin Institute for Blowing Things Up in Tblisi, Georgia, over becoming a pick-and-shovel miner for uranium ore in the Novosibirskiye Islands north of the Arctic Circle where there is no uranium. Despite an unfortunate setback while she was working on her neutron bomb graduation project for the government, which was the true name of all institutions within the Soviet Union, Yana graduated at the top of her class.

"Congratulations, Comrade Yana," said Comrade Marshal Artz, the Commandant of the Josef Stalin Institute for Blowing Things Up in Tblisi, Georgia. "Is great news for you. Am pleased to announce you and you boyfriend, Comrade Batschka, have volunteered for transfer to Minsk and to most glorious secret research facility in all of Soviet Union. Facility is code-named Donald Duck Animation Rotoscoping Projects Activity (DDARPA) to fool Amerikanski CIA. Science Officer is Comrade Director Makoyev. Is good man, from here in Georgia. Transfer will be approved when you have paid standard fee."

Yana knew she would have to pay the standard fee for something because the Comrade Marshall had locked the door after escorting her into his office. She lifted her skirt and pulled aside her industrial cotton panties, giving the short, fat, balding man with the misshapen nose a good look at her shaved babushka. "Is to be quickie, Comrade Marshall, or are we make time for couch today?"

Two hours later, as she arose from the couch and began dressing, the Comrade Marshall handed her a few neatly wrapped packages. "For going away presents," he explained. "Is going to be lonesome here without my best student ever. I give you small somethings to remember me by."

Yana had already had a "small" something to remember, though she'd be happy to forget the semi-soft little pink pistol that he believed was a powerful Kalashnikov of love. She opened the packages and thanked him for the crotchless rayon panties in faded primary colors, each embroidered with the name of a different month, the vibrating dildo with cables to be attached to a car battery, the picture of the Comrade General himself wearing only polished marching boots and her panties on his head and autographed with the words, "Please to be returning any time you wish," and the liter of Old Trotsky. She could use the vodka to remove his taste from her mouth and to help forget the Comrade Marshall.

Because of their researcher status at the Activity, Yana and her beloved Batschka did not have to apply to a waiting list for an apartment. They were immediately assigned to a dreary, unpainted, concrete-walled, two-room apartment with a bathroom down the hall. The building sat on Gloomye Prospekt only a half-kilometer from their Donald Duck Animation Rotoscoping Projects Activity workplace on the southern outskirts of Minsk. The sixth floor walk-up apartment had an excellent view of the picturesque Svisloch River winding between broad banks bedecked with thick green grass and majestic leafy trees and of the spectacular fiery red sunsets beyond the odious columns of yellow-green steam rising from the hog fat rendering plant located next door.

The DDARPA Science Officer, Comrade Director Makoyev, told Yana she was to build neutron bombs while Batschka, her beloved boyfriend, worked on a process to shrink them for concealment in small devices such as portable radios, the fender wells of Yugos, and very large, hollowed-out potatoes.

"Yugos?" Batschka had asked with a frown. "Why not Trabants or Ladas?"

Comrade Director Makoyev threw up his arms in a temperamental display of curmudgeonly intolerance with questions to which he did not know the answers. "Damn it, Comrade, am being Science Director, not doctor of psychology! All I am knowing is Amerikanskis are dumb enough to be purchasing Yugos, but they are not being completely stupid."

The weapon shrinkage chamber had been designed by a committee of Argentinian, Yemeni, and Haitian physicists and built by itinerant Romanian sewage plant workers in northern Bulgaria of steel recycled from substandard North Korean frog-clickers. The specifications and quality were precisely as one would expect in the Soviet Union, but fortunately the chamber did not explode when it was activated. One day Yana walked past the faulty door seal of the shrinkage chamber at the precise moment that Batschka hit the activation switch. At first nobody noticed anything amiss.

Two months later, on a night when Batschka's rampant pink tractor was plowing her shaved babushka with great fervor and much delight for the both of them, she realized she was staring at the end of his nose. His eyes had once been even with hers when they did the horizontal Bolshoi.