This story is part of the first volume of Nashata Koleda (Our Christmas), an anthology edited by Zachary Karabashliev, featuring texts by 17 authors, among them Georgi Milkov, Ivan Landzhev and Nikolay Terziyski. The second collection—Our Christmas 2—includes 21 stories by authors such as Alek Popov, Zdravka Evtimova and Nikolay Terziyski, as well as one more Digital Story.
He’d had enough, and he raised the flaming match. He hadn’t done it since the days when everyone did it all the time. Back then he didn’t think twice either; he galloped from chimney to chimney, smoking away himself. Ah, it wasn’t that long ago at all, people forget so quickly…
He no longer smoked. He had tried every smokeless alternative with avocado flavor and a negative carbon footprint, and none of them was for him. And after every quick cigarette, the letters would start arriving the following Christmas: don’t bring presents to this home if you’re going to bring the smell along with them.
At that moment, smoking was the least of his problems.
He sensed that he was falling behind the pace of the times, that he wasn’t coping with his job. He tried, he made an effort, but something wasn’t right. He left the kids ever cooler gadgets, ever more perfect gaming keyboards; ever more awesome games; ever bigger and plushier stuffed animals.
Nobody cared. Clearly he was out of step with the language of the young, which had been the same ever since he’d taken up this profession. His presents sat there gathering dust instead of likes.
He didn’t feel he belonged on Christmas Day itself. In the whirl of work, it always turned out that something wasn’t right, that he had brought the wrong present, the one described in the letter as an “extension.” It was even worse in the kindergartens. They told him they wanted to become influencers, and he nodded mechanically. He also wondered why they were so keen on getting a phone to make viral videos with, when the last thing any normal person wants is to carry viruses back and forth at Christmas.
It was time for something to change. One of the elves pronounced: “Burnout.” What, was he a matchstick? They explained what it meant, but no, that wasn’t it… after all, he only worked one day a year. It wasn’t anxiety either: his profession was quite rare, with constant demand. There was no way artificial intelligence could take it over; they don’t make them with enough gravitas, they don’t even have beards.
Then it all became clear. He understood that he was behind the fashion or, as the elves explained to him, he had missed the trend. No sooner said than done: at last he would get onto the web, however much he disliked the cobwebs that used to block his way in the chimneys back in the day.
There had been no chimneys for a long time; he had to come in through the ducts of the range hood, and you can be sure it wasn’t easy for him. Times were different, but he gathered his strength to try to catch up with them.
***
At last he managed to get himself a decent connection. The speed kept limping along until he finally figured out what to do, and on the eve of yet another Christmas he wrote a letter to a colleague.
“I’m giving Santa Claus internet for Christmas,” read Elon Musk’s tweet, which was the plain truth, though the followers of the world’s richest oddball, for some reason, failed to grasp its meaning.
But how to begin? He didn’t learn much from the elves: they all had their eyes glued to their phones, and while he questioned them, they scraped at the screens with their index fingers, trying with undisguised annoyance to dodge his questions.
Still, it became clear to him that the road ran through the notorious social networks. And now he sat there, staring desperately at the monitor and smoking nervously…
At first he couldn’t wait to get started!
It didn’t work on the first try. He was led astray by an elf who deflected his questions with an attempt at a joke, and he ended up on Tinder. “I am the best friend of all children! I’m always happy when I find a way to make them feel good,” he wrote in his profile.
He was lucky: the FBI knew who they were dealing with. The agents didn’t arrest him; they simply explained where the error in translation lay, deleted the profile and rounded up everyone who had matched with him.
As for his attempt at OnlyFans, we won’t go into detail.
***
For a while he left the social networks and plunged into the world of modern—so he had heard—digital marketing. He watched a few online courses, defined his target audience, ran an analysis, set aside a budget. He decided to see how things stood when a person looked for presents online… He tried to offer his goods in such a way that anyone who searched the web for something for themselves would get it free of charge if they had been good during the year, but interest turned out to be feeble.
Every kid, small or big, could wish for whatever they liked, but AliExpress and thousands of other sites promised the same thing. He didn’t want money, but it turned out they wanted even less.
The next desperate attempt was Tik Tok. How could the kids not go wild when they saw fresh clips from the toy factory?!
He turned out to be a “boomer,” total “cringe.” His enthusiasm for speaking the language of the young crashed into a wall of hate.
***
In despair, he moved on to LinkedIn. The photo with a tie came out ridiculous, and his profile went unvisited. “I bring joy to children” stood no chance against “Entrepreneur, CEO, startup founder, game changer.”
“Why change games at all? Isn’t there something eternal about them?” he thought.
In the end, the good old man found himself on good old Facebook. The grandpa of social networks turned out to be the wholesome place where he found kindred spirits. He recalled old songs and jokes from those days and quickly fit into the atmosphere. He shared memes about how he had delivered the first present ordered online, by a child named Jesus who dreamed of a gaming joystick.
He spent more and more time online and polished up a professional profile too. “Presents on request, delivered down the chimney!” Dreams come true.
He added kids he knew; most of them had already become fathers and grandfathers, but he knew them in the light of long ago. He felt he was among kindred spirits. He scrolled and read how Goshko, to whom he had brought that cool little train, had become a train driver; Toshko had two sweet kids—like! Mitko, the one with the strange wishes, had gone into politics. And on, and on…
A few days later he took a new phone from the presents fund and never left the network. He would sometimes bump into scrolling elves in the kitchen.
At last he understood today’s people. It was a real thrill to know what everyone thought on the important issues, to surround yourself with kindred spirits, to learn the most interesting news right away.
***
The avalanche broke loose out of nowhere.
“Let us be kind!” he chimed in with a comment on yet another heated political dispute, and the wave swept over him within minutes. Soon he had the strength only to scroll in misery, chain-smoking, tugging nervously at his beard.
“Troll.” What do you mean, troll?! He knew quite a few trolls—you know how it is when you’re a fairy-tale creature. His profile had supposedly been created too recently, he had few photos, and in most of them he looked like Santa Claus. He didn’t take clear positions on the important issues of the day. He couldn’t possibly be for Lapland’s neutrality and for vaccines and wear red at the same time. He insulted people by calling them “elves.”
He looked like Marx—no, like Dostoevsky—no, he looked like nothing at all, the profile picture was stolen. There was no way he could be handing out presents for free; it was an active measure, a fifth column.
Of course he tried to defend himself, but his explanations remained a voice crying in the wilderness. It got even worse when his friends joined in, and the two camps locked jaws in a fierce argument over who Santa Claus was.
Little was left of his beard when the profile was finally blocked for good. He was just staring at the message when a new notification popped up on the screen to remind him what he had been doing exactly one year ago…
He dropped the phone and hurried to the sleigh. He sighed and settled in comfortably. Out of habit, he asked the reindeer to switch their mobile devices to airplane mode for the flight.
“Should I write to the other colleague—Mark—and tell him they’ve made a mistake? It worked out well with Elon…” he thought. But then he decided otherwise. “I have work to do.”
