The Soviet Union’s Buran, a piece of living palimpsest, was a cultural artifact before it rolled off the assembly line. It completed just one unmanned space flight before the program was canceled. That same vehicle was later destroyed when it’s hangar collapsed at the Baikonur cosmodrome. However, several original full-scale mock-ups remain. This film is a fictionalized account of the origin of the Buran.

Decline from Michael Eckels on Vimeo.

Photo, video, text, voice over: Michael Eckels
Archive footage: Energia
Music: Maurice Ravel “Valses Nobles et Sentimentales”
Sound effects: freesound.org

Below is the complete original voice over text that proved too long upon recording:

Colourwall awoke fondled by doubts. The previous evening had begun in a karaoke bar with a group of Dutch tourists. Van der Hooeten, Femke, Gijs. Their incomprehensible names like magic words cast a nightingale spell. Colourwall doing his juvenile best to impress by inserting them into pauses of stardust crooner b-sides. How you tonight Meintje? Winking at one of the better-looking milk-weaned giantesses. Her giggle in reply egging him on. Only he must have said the words in the wrong order because when he sat down at their table the Dutch were gone, evaporated it seemed. Checked out of the fake motel they had given him. It was just one of the several mysteries, or lapses, he couldn’t entirely make sense of this morning.

He found he had conquered their pronunciation. “Sjaak, Roos,” he said clearly and robustly. But no one appeared from a desk drawer and the porcelain bust of Churchill smirked in mocking taciturn.
“Up the Dutch,” he thought reaching for his bathrobe. They weren’t important. It was that other thing disquieting the settled phlegm of his bosom. His lifetime rival, knowledge, was once again taunting him like a playground bully. He could feel it.

Knowledge never would play fair. In 5th grade it had been fractions and the civil war. Knowledge spent way more time with the other kids from the richer families. Ricky Colourwall could never get his attention no matter what. Even when he snapped Mrs. Whittleton’s bra and the entire class guffawed, Knowledge just stayed focused on Timmy Buskin. Jerk.

And here he was once more with his back turned to Colourwall. “What the hell was I was I supposed to remember?” Colourwall thought, squinting at himself in the mirror. “Who gave me this hickey?” he grinned, “it’s still a little sore.” He enjoyed wavering attribution between the bar’s regular hussies Rachel and Kayla while making coffee. “Either would be wicked,” he thought – and wrong. The second taser zap clarified nothing.

A secret-service smelling thug placed him on his rump came round front and handed him his coffee. “Who are you? How did you get in?” Colourwall asked perplexed. “Coffee?”
“I” the intruder began, “am here to check the vault for fissures.” Fissures. Colourwall felt certain he wasn’t sure he understood. Knowledge was definitely organizing a subterfuge. Colourwall shriveled upon himself and waited politely for it all to finish. Whatever it would be, however long it may last, he knew he was no match for it. The prudent thing was to capitulate immediately, as years of ineptitude had shown him. He answered with a nod of comprehension. “The vault’s all in order. Don’t worry.”

“Good,” toothed the thug, “that’s exactly what I wanted to hear.” Colourwall smiled back. “Because if anything should ever get out, leak, slip, escape – anything at all, even the slightest wisp of your charge from last evening – you’ll unfurl a brutal vector of inhospitality whose primary aim will not be your destruction, but you’ll get crushed before your spindly goblin legs can carry you to safety. As a side effect. Count on it. So hold your tongue, runt.”

“Ok”, Colourwall answered somewhat exasperated. The thug tasered him again and swirled out in a twist of fine cologne from his underworld petticoats. “Asshole” yelled Colourwall when he was sure the thug was long gone. He rubbed his throbbing neck and sat to thinking again and again some times muttering aloud, “What the hell am I supposed to remember to keep quiet about?”

He lingered over the question like a monkey cognizant of being shunned by evolution, but lacking the faculties to grasp the mechanics involved. The first being plate tectonics, by edict of Supersymmetry. Millennia ago, the earth when split into Gondwana and Laurasia triggered a course of one-upsmanship that ingratiated itself snugly within the genome, to be secreted in perpetuity as human behavior. The earth groaned as it grew, sweating out rivalries and trysts. Clans warred. Newton copied Leibniz or vice-versa, brands clashed, and nearly everything found itself in deadlock competition with a hackneyed doppelganger for the claim to legitimacy. Supersymmetry drove the antagonism of the Cold War, peaking ironically enough with the hole race which saw the Soviet’s Kola Superdeep Borehole triumph over team USA’s Project Mohole. The next most commendable ooze: the Shuttle Program and its unmanned enemy the Buran.

CAESURA

One, an overweight effigy of the people’s will — a wizened funnyhouse. The other canceled, on its last run, to be replaced by nothing. The superpartners now exhausted careen toward their joint holiday in oblivion to be re-plaited into the continuum, for eventual reissue. The Shuttle-Buran super-meme remix, Ricky Colourwall would get mildly rich producing the album never understanding why or how. Rich enough to buy a third-rate club for draft-dodgers and wannabe hookers that kept the record spinning. It’s boom boom activating something maternal in him that made him uncomfortable. Meanwhile youth wriggled to the beat on the dance floor kicking out droplets of perspiration, sachets of instructions, molecular communication through the salts of random casual contact. Secondary Supersweat. Orders, strategy and tactics, in the form of pheromones, positively or negatively charged, designed but not compelled to unite with a counterpart; dispersed via the subtle brushes and bumps of spontaneous accidental contact. Accidental, that was the key. Sex and handshakes were too hygienic.

Only rarely when looking at his chief of security, that same sly scently thug that had wapped him around in a previous life, would Colourwall dwell on the provenance of his station. It had been the only condition of his buying the place, to keep the prick on. “Forgive and forget,” he thought in eerie opposition to his daily bread of nag and punish.

The secret was still AWOL. But why was he to blame? How good could information be if it’s so easily forgettable? In one night. Less than that, a few hours! It was their fault for not giving him something so classy he couldn’t forget it.

The upside: he could never spit it out accidentally, no matter how much he bragged while under the influence. That made him safe, for now. But he could never own up or ask for a reminder. Not to his wife or any man of spirits. Thuggie if he met Colourwall’s glance on such an occasion would flicker his eyebrows patronizingly. Two furry antennae oscillating with the anxiety of potential discovery. It was too easy to make any number of unknown people, of unknown rank livid to an unknown degree. Three unknowns producing a diminished chord he would play flat in some imminent future.

“Michael.”

“I’m just going to dry off and we’ll talk in a few minutes.”

He shook my hand and walked on. Being the leader the rest of the chain followed suit, greeted me and went to get dressed. For most of them that meant from scratch, not changing out of a wet suit. They were lined up boy-girl-boy-girl, a mix of ages 30 to 70, with all appendages fully extended, reaching out to the person ahead in line. And that’s how they marched on, removing a hand from somewhere to shake mine and moving along. Soon it would begin to be truly strange.

Through a friend of a friend I had taken a quasi-undercover assignment for Russian channel NTV’s program “Profession Reporter” in the Black Sea town Yevpatoria on Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. My task was to hunt down the mummified body of Alyoshenka the Kyshtym Dwarf, document its whereabouts and debunk cult leader cum alien-tamer Boris Zolotov.

Over a drink in central Moscow a week beforehand, the program’s host Andrei Loshak explained that Zolotov had refused to give an interview to his program and thus it was necessary to employee me in the guise of an English Channel 4 investigative reporter.

“The story began in 1996 in the village of Kaolinovy near Kyshtym in the Ural region when a crazy alcoholic grandmother found a small humanoid in the woods,” Loshak began. As he recounted the convoluted history an alien schematic fell out his notebook. I was alarmed, but he exchanged a knowing smile with his colleague — which alarmed me further. So I held my breath, and tongue, with trepidation for 30 minutes of arduous tale. Coming to the end, he paused, turned to me and concluded, “Of course this is all nonsense.” I sighed thankfully.

The history is long so I won’t repeat it. Here is the best background on Alyoshenka the Kyshtym Dwarf I have been able to find. The story of The Kyshtym Catastrophe and something about the man Boris Zolotov are also required reading.

NTV was filming a documentary about the Kyshtym Dwarf. They had completed all the links in the chain already, except the last, Zolotov. The last person supposedly to have seen the corpse.

So there I stood. Hidden microphone taped to my nipple, lip cocked in disbelief. With me were two real NTV correspondents one with a pen camera in his breast pocket, the other with a hidden camera in her purse. We, actually I, was meant to buy the little pruned boy if possible, or at least see it and get it on tape. Whatever it was, whatever was left. I hoped they had caught the sex congo-line.

We took a seat under a tarp and began to chat about Alyoshenka. Zolotov adores lecturing. He has no formal set of educational tools at his “Academy of Frontal Problems.” To the best of my knowledge he has neither syllabus, nor curriculum in any formal sense. He’s his own oral tradition. Without access to the tapes of our interviews it’s impossible to quote these lectures directly. Which is a shame because his rhetoric puts the best politicians, spin-doctors, and PR gurus to shame.

His phrases are gems of needless elaboration — labyrinths of thought that wind needlessly out of control like the Celtic knot work of an epileptic monk. The mainstays of his phrasing were life form types: liquid, solid, gaseous and crystal. Also all-powerful universal proteins that can do everything including cure cancer. The refraction of light rays for transporting information etc. etc. throughout time and space. And his matrix of points, each with their own distinct idiosyncratic metaphysical value, which sit on the corners of a cube as well as at the mid-points of the cube’s edge lines, in the middle of the planes on the faces, and in the exact center, 27 total, that interrelate as Zolotov feels necessary. The eventuality of any conversation with Zolotov was a lecture with these concepts intertwining like an orgy of pythons.

“What happened to Alyoshenka?” I asked. Zolotov feigned sadness and made the sign of the cross. “Where’s the body now?” He pointed upward. “Where’s that? Heaven? The cosmos?” He was non-committal. After some hemming and hawing and much insistence on my part it was concluded that the prune boy was not to be had but fortunately there was a similar alien body we could take a look at buried not too far away. The child of a human, alien and dolphin. What luck.

Zolotov informed us that we were free to shoot all of the video we wanted. Take pictures and ask anyone any question we felt like. We went back to the car and traded in the hidden cameras and microphones for real ones. I was glad I had brought my camera “just in case” because this was certainly a case of something.

He lined up his followers for a march 500 meters or so to a small tide pool in the shadow of a large radar satellite dish. Along the way the group sang more Soviet classics and veered off the path to help push a car stuck in a rut. Zolotov’s followers were a variegated lot. The select group, the ones with the nicest butts, were in on the take.

When we got to the tide pool, the group lined up as Zolotov barked orders to his “Funeral Team.” They stepped forward then turned their backs to him, and me. He demonstrated his powers by wiggling his fingers at a few of the girls. Magically the girls were pulled to him and started to perform questionable modern dance. “You see those movements?” he said. “Those are not earthly movements.” I nodded my head.

There was a bit more lecturing and explanation of the relevance of the radar station. It, like Zolotov, was strategically located where refracted rays were best caught. This was no coincidence. He has special skin he said that is more sensitive to these rays and was thus drawn here to hold his lectures on facilitating contact with aliens. In a place like this aliens are more apt to show up, and they do. He invited me to contact aliens with his group that night after sundown.

It was not by accident that Alyoshenka had been drawn to this spot from the future for universal proteins Zolotov said. But more importantly he added, “You too have an inner dwarf. And it has led you here.” I certainly was there, no denying that.

He explained the Chernobyl tragedy as the result of an imbalance in a certain toxic substance under alien control that is distributed equally over the planet lying in wait just underneath the surface of the earth.

Finally it was time to disinter the alien. The NTV camera man took some close-ups of the butts and we waded into the tide pool with our pants rolled up. The tide pool was a layer of soft black clay covered by a thick layer of salt crystal. It was extremely salty water and as we walked around I had visions of my feet pickled in a jar on the back shelf of a junior high science classroom.

It was slow going because it was hard to find stable footing. Occasionally Zolotov would reach under the surface and break off a large chunk of salt, examine it, then put it back. One piece he showed to me saying that it was the skeleton of an alien. The refracted light had transported the alien here. The alien had turned it self into a gaseous life form, evaporated away and left this skeleton. He gave it to me to hold. I held it for as long as I thought seemed respectable and then gave it to the guy with the nice butt who promptly threw it away.

My feet ached. When I exited the water later I would find them punctured and bleeding. But I wanted to find the alien dwarf body. Despite the fact that his crew had buried it there the night before in expectance of our arrival, it was difficult to find because every step kicked up a black cloud of silt that obscured our vision.

Zolotov finally stopped and beckoned me over. He had found the grave site. I had my camera at the ready but the wily old guy was already a bit suspicious. First, I didn’t ask questions like a journalist, because I’m not. And second, because I was running around taking lots of pictures like a photographer, because I am. I really wanted a picture of Alyoshenka’s dwarf cousin but I had to play it safe. Blowing my cover of unethical intentional misrepresentation would have been unprofessional.

The whole thing was a farce. A show of actors included me, playing their roles. I was good for Zolotov. I added to his legitimacy in the eyes of his followers, the real audience. Who shelled out 10 euros a day for ring-side seats and got pummeled in the head with his nonsense. With about 100 people, Zolotov was pulling in about 1000 euros a day. It’s a huge sum in a place like Crimea where living costs are next to null.

“Come closer,” he said. He took my hand and placed it into the murk. “Feel this.” I felt a plastic garbage bag but could see nothing. He looked at me and looked around. His crowd of followers had lost patience. They had long fallen out of attention and were sitting chatting, not minding their leader. Only the generously-bosomed and overtly nubile funeral team remained at the ready. That’s what they get paid for.

Zolotov took it all in. “Yes that’s it.” He said a few times and churned his course of action over in his mind not pulling the dwarf carcass out of the water. “He doesn’t want to show himself,” he said after a few moments. “We should have watched the film first.” Zolotov had wanted us to watch a film about the burial before going to the gravesite but we had convinced him we didn’t have enough time. Which we didn’t because we would have had to have gone back to their campground by foot about 2 kilometers away and it was already getting toward the end of the day. “We should have performed the rituals,” he said. “That’s why he won’t appear for us.” He wagged his head over to the group on the beach. “They’re being disrespectful. When you go to a cemetery do you act like that? No. You pay your respects properly. That’s why he won’t show himself.” That was that and we hobbled back to the shore where he berated the group for their behavior. “That’s good,” he said looking down at my feet, “you gave blood.”

We returned to the original point of contact on the beach. As the sun set, the camera rolled and once again I battered Zolotov with the same set of questions to which he once again battered back with a completely novel and plucky set of answers.

He admitted one-time possession of Alyoshenka’s mummified remains, recounting conducting several experiments on it whose absurd names I regretfully cannot remember. “The body smelled horrible.” One of the accomplices chimed in.

“Like what?” I asked her.

Silence. Finally after a ten-month pregnant pause Zolotov jumped in irritated that she was losing face. “Why don’t you tell them how the stench made you sick!” he bellowed. “How it incapacitated you for a month! Why don’t you tell them that!”

It was late, but it’s hard to stop Zolotov. He is energetic and sprightly despite his age. “Did you know a Japanese TV crew came here a few years ago? They wanted to buy Alyoshenka’s remains. But that wasn’t possible. In the end they paid $350,000 for half of a piece of candy that Alyoshenka had licked.”

“Why?”

“Saliva. Saliva on the candy gives contains his DNA. The Japanese are a short people. They are concerned about the future of their race. They wanted a DNA sample. Celestial DNA, to put into their gene pool to improve their stock and Alyoshenka was a good choice because of his similar small stature.”

Finally we trucked off to the hotel despite offers of refuge for the night on the beach and participation in all available activities. We were no closer to the truth than when we had arrived. All the questions had been answered, on the record, on video, but they were useless. They were loose, far too open for interpretation to be of any value. Ah, but we were a television crew! This was for prime time where yellow journalism reigns supreme. Surely this was more interesting than the kid scheduled to fall down the well. So the next day we were back like dogs and it paid off.

It had been difficult not to burst out laughing on many occasions the day before. This morning, I could barely keep from wetting myself as goons in fluorescent green alien jumpsuits pranced unannounced through the last interview. We were inside the fenced in campground a few kilometers up from the beach where we had spent the previous day. I glanced over to the operator who was filming it and saw that he was having a difficult time keeping it together too. Soon we were joined by the other half of yesterday’s funeral squad. Garbed in skintight luminescent purple with H.R. Geiger heads, they began rhythmically humping a nearby wall in. Zolotov prattled on unfazed about Rayolites and other galactic wonders.

A green one hopped on the table between Zolotov and me. It stroked my head grabbed my glasses, tried them on and gave them back. They were too small for the large black eyes. The buffoonery continued as Zolotov showed me the dagger of Genghis Khan, an artifact from Alyoshenka’s universe used in various rituals. All good things however, must come to an end. Slowly and sadly I ran out of questions.

The video tapes were no longer blank and we had a plane to catch back to Moscow. Zolotov and his helpers presented me with a signed copy of their book “Terminator Art” and a copy of his film “Interplanetary Friend” which it turns out contained the burial footage of the alien dolphin dwarf that we had hunted for the day before. In return I gave him a few hundred dollars from the pocket of NTV for his willingness to cooperate.

As we exchanged parting words the intergalactic voyagers continued the show for the folks, not his followers, walking or driving by the campground. They posed for cameras and crawled into the cars of those who stopped. I grabbed my camera as well for one more photo op.

As a photojournalist my interest in documenting this cult is clear. It’s also clear why the kids walking by wanted to have their take their pictures taken with the people in the “funny costumes.” It’s clear why Zolotov does what he does: he gets paid to be himself. Who wouldn’t want that job? What remains obscure is the nature of that group of 100 or so people who revere him as their guru. Who are they? Why had they come from Belarus, Bulgaria, Russia, Moldova and other countries to spend a few weeks with Zolotov? Were they getting anything out of it or were they just fooling themselves? Are they hapless victims of the fall of the Soviet Union having their fears and superstitious preyed upon; or middle-aged loners hoping to hook up? Why can’t they see that they’re being duped; or are they agreeing to it? And if so, what on earth for?

*originally published in August 2006 on previous version of site

While organized, toilet gangs have a unique structure that differs from traditional organized crime such as biker gangs and drug cartels. Toilet gangs often represent some of the most significant and dangerous problems in our society and are involved in a variety of criminal activities including drug trafficking, fraud, assaultive behavior, and weapons.

Toilet gang violence is a problem in every corner of Moscow and membership is on the rise. According to the Department of Health and Social Development’s latest Toilet Gang Threat Assessment, there are at least 2150 gangs and more than 73,100 active gang members. While gangs are less prevalent outside the MKAD, in the center, toilet violence is responsible­ for roughly half of all ­­homicides. ­ Toilets gangs are also becoming more savvy, using computers and other technology to commit more sophisticated and better-planned crimes. ­­­

Time moves so slowly
since it’s become a man.

Locks knocked from behind its ears
buoy to stillness.

Moths too small for its swat
course toward zero.

Beyond the second next step
even slower still
a gesture should be sufficient.

But the Titan concedes
a flourish
to an unsatisfiable public.

The itcher;
from under the rug
wants to know
again
about the color of the wallpaper.

Toiletia can be broadly distinguished into two major groups the nonchordates, or invertebrates, and the chordates. Invertebrates account for more than 95% of the animal’s sub-species that have been identified. These creatures which do not have a back bone are, however, significantly inferior in size making them much less prominent despite their greater number.

Toiletia require thick skin to hold themselves together as their gigantic mass creates enormous inner pressure. But despite its thickness, the skin is a very sensititve system and has a rich battery of sensory receptors. A toilet notices even the smallest insect setting down on him. But skin is not thick throughout. In vulnerable spots like the doorway embouchure, legs and back, the skin can be 2.5 to 3 cms thick while behind the ears, by the eye, on the abdomen, chest and shoulders it is thin as paper.

Of the many difference found between toiletia Moscovia and Podmoscovia, skin structure also sets them apart. Moscovia generally have finer skin than their Podmoscovia relatives. Moscovia typically have colour on their skin, most conspiciously on their ears and forehead. These “white” spots are the contrary of our freckles. In most cases, this depigmentation has a genetic cause. Young toiletia mostly are wholly grey. The first white spots come with  age. Completely white toiletia, albinos, are thought to exist but remain undocumented outside of legends and folktales which consider them holy.