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Boredom
A series of short pieces by Ms Alisha
He sat, hunched in the corner, over a the grubby keyboard of an old IBM laptop. His fingers stuttered over the keys, his hunt and peck method of typing filling the office with staccato clicks, clashing with the rapid strokes of the receptionist.
He wasn't all that sure why he was there, really. The job description had been for a
training role - to be trained to do just whatever it was that the company did. And then
he'd been informed that this wasn't really the case - the description had changed between
his getting the job, and his actually starting it.
Still, he reflected, it beat sitting alone in the wood lined tomb of his apartment. At
least here he had some other sort of social interaction, even if it was only saying hello
to the receptionist, or goodbye.
He travelled each morning to work in a bright yellow Volvo, which clashed drastically with
his personality. He was more a Zil, or an old, battered '50s Holden, plodding along to his
eventual place in the wrecker's yard. The Volvo served only to depress him further, with
its reliability and performance. Even the heater worked, much to his annoyance, raising
the air inside the squat body to levels at which his brain decided to function at. And
that just wouldn't do.
His brain, he decided, was definitely one of the things that would have to go. It didn't
actually perform any tasks that were vitally important - except for physiological control.
Well, maybe just some of the higher functions, then. Like your actual thinking bit - the
part that decided to wander off on its own, and get the rest of the body to sit in a chair
like some sort of rag doll.
A quiet operation, he pondered, just to skim out some of the old grey matter. Maybe pack
in a bit of sawdust, just to cushion the remaining neurones against slamming into the
skull. Why not - it had worked for Miss Judy's friend in Wizard Of Oz, and he seemed to
get on all right at the end of the film. Well, at least he seemed to be all right.
What if the sawdust got soggy? Would it conduct, and let random flows of electrons bounce
in and out of his motor control areas. Would the cortex be seized with uncontrollable
desires to rule the rest of the body - to boldly take over where the higher lobes had left
off? Perhaps the hypothalamus would go on strike - dooming him to burst with heat, or
shiver with cold?
No, it was all too much to think about. No more thinking about thinking - it took up too
much of his valuable gazing vacantly into space time. Not that he really did that - gaze
into space - he was just trying to look beyond the matter at hand. It was all a little
strange, but, if he looked hard enough, he actually saw things. Or at least thought he saw
them. That was the hard part. They seemed to hover on the edges of his vision, twisting
shapes with too many hands, too many eyes - just too many body parts in general.
This bothered him somewhat. He was at a loss as to why these creatures had too many bits.
Maybe his mind was working too hard at generating the imagery it thought his brain should
be seeing. Still, they were more exciting than the dull things that floated past his desk,
with the right number of body parts.
He meandered slowly across to the printer, where another one of the releases that he had
written lay limply in a hopper. It was, he reflected, a particularly good one - a hearty
mix of public good and private greed, the sort of thing that the glib hacks at the street
mags loved to swallow down whole. His last effort had appeared verbatim in one of them,
proving once and for all that they were a talentless bunch. Or did it? Maybe they liked
his style so much, that, rather than alter the content and structure, they had preserved
it, like a mummy - surrounding it with other words, to keep the body whole.
Actually, that wasn't a very good metaphor - didn't they eviscerate mummies? Draw their
brains out of their noses with hooks. Cut the major organs out, and seal each individual
gobbet of flesh into Canopic jars - preserving them intact, but away from the original
body? No, it just wouldn't do. Not like a mummy at all. More like a fly, trapped in
amber....
Writhing as it was caught. Struggling to break free, before it was suffocated by the sap
of some tree. The sweet liquid flooding around its body, oozing into the pores, until life
was extinguished. Got to stop thinking like this. Nothing good can come from it.
Or could it. He studied the piece of paper in his hands, weighing it gently. Had he
created a weapon, with which to silence others beneath the weight of wordy amber? Would
his writing flow like the sap from a cut branch, to ensnare the unwary into doing his
bidding - would his words have the sweetness to attract them from the carrion that
assailed his senses. The rubbish that was printed in the papers today - its stench was
unmistakably that of decaying items, so stale that the discerning reader would discard it
like the garbage it was.
The fax rang, its warbling tone jerking him back into reality with a start. A thin roll of
the onion-skin paper spiralled gently from the top, spilling down into a cardboard box,
which acted as both as collection point, and filter - small faxes with nothing much to say
were condemned to drifty gently amid the larger, more important items.
He tore the fax off, impatient to be reading the information it contained. What great
tidbit was being dangled towards him today? What carrot was he being offered - and what
stick was being waved? Who cared, really - it was all pretty much the same day in, day
out. Perhaps he should have been writing for the pre-perestroika TASS - at least they
hadn't had to worry too much about the idea of conveying the truth to people. What ever
they had written was the truth - no ifs or buts about it. Anyone who thought differently -
well, the plains of Tajikistan were nice this time of year. So much snow, in a thick
carpet - all the better to muffle the sounds of people toiling away on massive
anti-missile laser sites. Where had that come from?
Strange. He had about as much idea of the role and function of strategic weapons, as he
did about the place of the mould-board plough share in medieval agrarian history. Still,
perhaps he was getting his orders from a higher authority - beamed direct from some vast
control complex.
Control complex - yes, that was what he thought he had. A complex about being controlled.
It wasn't so much Big Brother, as Funny Uncle, from the Pet Shop Boys song. Someone who
didn't really know what you were doing, but, you thought, would probably get a bit upset
if you were caught doing it. Which was worse than Big Brother - at least he was actually
watching what you did.
Time was dragging on this particular afternoon. A grubby spot on the laptop's display had
become all consuming - he was racked with thoughts about how it remove the spot; hanky and
spit? Alcohol swab? A quick wipe with a tissue? He searched his pockets, and found only
the discarded wrapper of a fruit flavoured condom. Not the most appropriate thing in the
world, he mused, for wiping one's screen. Smearing it with lube would only make things
worse, he felt, and the day was long enough as it was. He toyed briefly with phoning the
person who had occupied the more useful part of he package, but thought better of it. He
was tired enough as it was, without having to stroke the ego of an anorexic wannabe
go-go-in-drag dancer over the phone. No, he'd just go home to him.
Ms. Alisha had moved into his apartment just over two weeks ago, on the pretext of
"finding somewhere less hassle" to live. He hadn't minded at first - in fact,
the attention was somewhat flattering - but there are only so many times that one could
tolerate the Divine Miss M's being drowned by the less than heavenly Ms. A's god-awful
lip-synch. And the place seemed to be filling with her stuff - dresses, boas, even
discarded wigs. He'd encountered one of those last night.
It had sat on the steps from the lounge to the kitchen, and lurked, waiting for his
unsuspecting foot to be placed upon it. Whereupon, it moved, with all the speed of a
startled gazelle - dumping him firmly on his arse. Much to Ms. Alisha's delight. He sat,
stunned by the fall, the errant wig twisted about his ankles, as she had laughed with such
vigour that her false breasts threatened to spill from her plunging neckline.
Now, as he rubbed his bruised rump, he could see that it was vaguely funny. Not as
hysterical as Alisha made it out to be, but not entirely without humour. He thought that
he might even have smiled, had no-one else been present in the room.
The keyboard beckoned to him. With nothing else to think about, he went back to work.