Monday, July 6, 2020
Why did I write Eileen McHugh, a life remade?
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Short story: Assessors
From: 36dale42@283East.net
Subject: A
I hereby humbly
As you know, my name is Dale, my
descri
After com
I have served in several domes,
the current being 283East. For five years I was Chief Engineer in 527West, the
largest dome on earth. All of my service has been on earth, but neither I nor
my managers have ever felt that this reflected anything other than the
essential nature of my work. As above, if my decision not to take an overs
I have travelled in and out of
283East regularly during my service here and have never before ex
I was called to Central for a
meeting. Though most of our communication is electronic, it has been the
Obviously the cost of moving
At this last sym
But as usual the face-to-face
I acce
I took the trans
Not only were there several
thousand delegates taking
I still have sufficient access to
material to be able to do some research. As a ty
Travellers at the onset of the
First Information Age even took things with them,
What ha
It is ironic that, in the same
week that the o
Even quite well into that age, at
least two hundred years after the first successful trans
Packet transmission glitches were
much rarer than aircraft crashes, however, even in those early days. Fewer than
one reconstruction in twenty trillion went wrong,
But since the mindset system is
only two hundred and fifty years old, we have, if anything, suffered something
of a dro
But
I took my designated slot at the
transmission office in Central and was sedated an hour after check-in. I took
only twenty minutes to achieve rest and was trans
You will a
Now I acce
The transmission staff were a
It is my belief that the
addresses on several
This could have serious
consequences if the menial in question transited to a
It is therefore in the s
Dale42, 283East, ty
I hereby certify that that the
above text was created by the above o
Certified and witnessed by
Wayne82, 283East, ty
Friday, April 4, 2008
Protesters - a short story
A shar
Almost in unison, their joint
gaze lifted from the side street below the high window, a side street that they
had both needed to lean into the recess to view, so that now they looked across
the great square, great not in size, but
“In its present, history is always a lie,” said the older, taller of the two men.
The other maintained his silence
for a while. He turned to face his com
“I would guess that you have brought no written speech,” said the younger man, the non-sequitur not itself worthy of remark. “But then I would have expected that. After all, you are a writer.”
The old man smiled a little, without averting his gaze, which still apparently concentrated on the beauty of the abbey’s spires, the grandeur of its tower, the power of its glory. “No,” he said, pausing again, as if wishing to perpetuate an ambiguity as to whether he had no speech or whether he was denying that he was ever a writer. For several seconds the older man rocked gently from side to side, transferred his weight from one foot to the other in the manner that a recently consulted nurse had suggested as a means of keeping his aging legs supple. She realised, an hour later, that she had no cause to worry about the state of the old man’s plumbing, which by then she had experienced in full working order. But still the writer took her advice and hopped, just a little. He then turned to face the younger man, the slight downward attitude of the head inevitably suggesting condescension.
“I have to work to my notes,”
said the smaller man, averting his eyes just enough to attain an inde
“You will speak in Spanish?”
“Yes. And with an inter
“No
The younger man only shrugged, as if to imply that a question with an obvious answer need not be asked. “As a writer,” he said at last, “you know that language must be precise…”
“...and so a
“It would never be my intention to deceive…”
“But if the charge arose, you could sidestep it without confronting it? Shall we say that you could find an avenue of convenience?”
The younger man ke
He then turned back into the room
to face the writer. “But then words are your tools, your stock in trade - I
think that is the correct English idiom – so you know
The writer laughed. “My dear
man,” he began, now turning to
“So is your support for our cause such a whim? Will you oppose tomorrow what you support today?” The younger man’s voice was harder, more forthright in its continued deference.
“It rather de
The younger man now moved away from the window. Stepping slowly, thoughtfully, his face downcast, he began to amble a wide arc around the table, the old writer at its centre, a stalking of sorts. He pressed his fingertips together, forming a cat’s cradle across a stomach that the other judged would fill out in a few years, thus transforming the current stocky athleticism into a portly middle age that would no longer be flattered by the military fatigues he currently wore.
When the younger man sto
“My dear man, Mr President,” said the writer, smiling, as he turned to face his inquisitor, “every man has his price. Take Joe Soap in the street down there, for instance” he said, nodding towards the window, now behind him, “You don’t think that any of those snotty nosed Johns of city clerks actually believe the rhetoric about your regime? Do you think that a twenty-two year old moron who spends all day wheeling trays of punched cards around the bowels of a bank’s computer centre for subsistence pay goes home of an evening to read and analyse Heritage Foundation reports on the communist take-over of Central America? He doesn’t do that any more than he comparatively tests all available brands of soap powder before buying his Omo – except on reflection he probably wouldn’t buy that one on the grounds of being embarrassed by associations with its name. No, he gets led by the nose to the Daz and he buys it. He goes along with the tide, we might say. The trick of manipulating the popular imagination, oxymoronically, of course, is to cover all the options, to back all sides. The trick is to convince Joe Soap that he needs washing powder and then to cartelise the shelves with an agreed and shared presence. Whatever brand decisions he makes are utterly irrelevant because the big guys who run his brain have the market carved up between them. Politically, his brain space, albeit quite small, is fully occupied with propagandistic threats to his lifestyle, threats that might restrict his right to detergent choice, a human right worth fighting for.”
“And it is your view that your books are just more soap powder?”
“Precisely, dear fellow. Precisely.” The writer turned away again, puffing to pursue the production of ash.
The younger man ambled forward
again as the writer turned his back. Legally trained, the young
“Leading question. Counsel should not put words into the mouths of the witness,” said the old man, choosing his words with intricate care whilst fixing a stare at his inquisitor in time with the very end of the phrase.
“Ah”, interru
“Judge?” replied the old writer. “Judgment? You sound like a Christian.”
“I am.”
“Well I’m not.”
“You are a Roman Catholic. You converted. Everyone knows that”.
“Pragmatism, my dear boy. Pure pragmatism. The old girl demanded it. It was the only way I could get my end away with her… a state I yearned for so much I would have topped myself if I hadn’t succeeded. Not that it did me a whole lot of good in the end. She turned out to be stretched frigid with guilt, a guilt I could not penetrate, a need to appease the wrath of a loving God she knew hated her, her alone.”
“And so you looked elsewhere?”
“Well documented. Well known, as
you might say.” The old man fumbled for another cigarette, lit it and tossed
the
It was an intended diversion, a
“In the words of a famous economist,” began the writer, his manner beginning to approach the patronizing as he paused for a moment to signify the unearthing of an aphorism, “in the long term we are all dead. Gods, godlessness, ideology, alienation, they all become as significant as a flake of this”. He tapped his cigarette, causing a tip of ash to fall and disintegrate on the carpet.
“So what motivates you?” asked the former trainee lawyer, pursuing again his original point.
“A quick fuck. A good bottle. Dope. And then another fuck. The here and now is all we have…”
“Even though sometimes you try to
bring even that to an end?” The lawyer’s question was fast, calculated and com
“You have done your research well. I suppose one of your ‘people’ read all the sordid biographies just to prepare you for this evening?”
“No. I knew already. As I said, I’ve
read much of your work. I have the ultimate res
“Ultimate? A good word for a head of state to use.”
“I have no intention to pull rank, sir,” replied the younger man. “What I say will always be true, always honest.”
“Yes, It’s common knowledge, if
any form of knowledge can be described as common.” The old writer took a long
noisy drag on his cigarette and ambled back towards the window. “It’s a
conundrum the hoi
“Or a conspiracy …..”
“A process of management, let’s call it, to use the vocabulary of the market age. Our protestors chant their slogans; their leaders feed them with more; they learn to regurgitate.”
“And what about our supporters? Those hundreds filling the hall below?”
The old writer turned a little
and cocked his head, as if feeling the air for sound. He realised that the
chants of “No
“Today, maybe. Tomorrow, who
knows? That’s why we are both here. We both know what we o
“Today….”
“No. Much longer than that. Just
as I know a little about you, then I’m sure that you know something of me. My
Both men knew they had reached a critical juncture. There was a sense of threat on the edge of these last words, a malice that the professedly libertarian old writer sensed the more keenly. Ill at ease, he tried to divert. “When we’re on the podium, old boy, then we will know the shape of things. I don’t doubt that there are many out there who passionately support your cause. But there are others who are with you only to oppose a shared enemy. And there are others, perhaps many of them, who aren’t members of your audience at all.”
“I don’t understand,” said the other, though he did.
“I’m sorry. I forget that it’s
your first time in our green and
“Policemen. Secret Service men.”
“Precisely. The place will be packed with them.”
“It’s a pity,” said the young president, “that there weren’t more of them down there when I arrived. There’s sixty or seventy of those thugs...”
“In
“...and there was only a handful of policemen. They were throwing things, tomatoes, bags of flour... Is that the way visiting heads of state are greeted?”
“It depends on who invited you, old bean.”
“Also on what I represent?”
“No, only who invited you.”
“So what do you recommend? Should I start my speech by inviting all the spooks to stand up and take a bow? Should I invite all of our supporters to applaud them in a show of magnanimity and humility? Should I call for a vote of thanks in recognition of their protection of my safety and with it the integrity of our revolution?”
“Waste of time. Nice gesture, but it would be taken as a sign of weakness.”
The old writer paused, his tone indicating that he remained in mid-flow, that second thoughts about what was to follow had stayed his tongue.
“And you, of course,” said the younger man, his voice expressing an assumed continuation of the other’s perceived meaning, “ought to know, because you used to be one of them. That was when, presumably, you also knew what you opposed.”
“They paid my bills. It was a job. I was a worker ant.”
“And throughout you were a conscientious and loyal employee. You did what was asked, opposed those who opposed. And, I suppose, you did what you did because of your own patriotism, a noble cause and supreme motivation for an Englishman, I understand.”
“Wherever did you hear that? I merely
did what I was told. Patriotism is something the English, in
“We are threatened from every side…”
The old man turned away, held u
“…when we are all dead…”
“Indeed. But your cause has
integrity. It will be resurrected, maybe many times, and each time it will
forge
“Plus a little more, on
occasions.” It was a lawyer’s insistence, cou
“I was not born rich,” said the old man, now leaning forward a tad more, his stoop an assertion. “Like any other human being I took a job. It paid the rent. A steelworker doesn’t necessarily believe in the ingot he is forging. A miner does not dig ideologically to supply the furnaces of capitalism.”
“But a man does not join an intelligence service devoted to fighting communism in order to dig coal.”
“It paid the rent. And I did other things on the side – for reasons of ….”
“Integrity? Truth? Conscience?”
“Lord, no! Pragmatism, as ever.”
The younger man held fire for a while. It was the right time to introduce the point, but the language was difficult to find. “So this would explain your current status. Patriotism, that which an outsider might presume you pursued when you worked for your government, was always a purely business arrangement. They paid you and you served them. And now they no longer pay you, so the patriotism evaporates and you become a tax exile. So you have no country apart from the self.”
“e e cummings, I believe?”
The younger man was silent, taken
aback. A look of gentle confusion s
The older man sensed the other’s
vulnerability and laughed. Intellect had once again granted an u
“So for you selfishness is publicly excused as pragmatism?”
“Each of us has a relationship to capitalism and pragmatism pays the rent. In your situation, where you are pushed outside of the ring, you don’t even have the choice to cooperate. For you, for your regime and for your people, pragmatism is not an option.”
“And was it
“I did what was required of me…”
“The defence of an officer in a
death cam
The president stood again at the window. He again retrieved the papers from his inside pocket and began to read. The old man, now looking every one of his eighty years, took the four steps needed to be at the other’s side. Over ignored papers and smouldering cigarette, their joint gaze again fell on the smartly dressed right wing thugs in the street below. “We know what we oppose,” said the president.
“At least today,” said the old writer.
There was a knock on the door, a
shar
“Today,” re
The old man smiled a little and
gri