Diversifications
Page 20
If you’re curious and want to find out more, contact us at the Temple of the Latterday Evangelists.
We’re waiting. And so is Jesus.
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K-Nekt Telecommunications
Your ref: 00351 28187
Dear customer,
Have you heard about K-Nekt’s new call discount scheme? You already use PersonalTime on your mobile line tariff, giving you a 15% saving on your subscription to DAIMoN. Now, with new Nearest & Dearest, you can talk to three other residential users of your choice on both your mobile and your fixed lines at a significantly reduced rate.
Thousands of K-Nekt customers have already taken advantage of this great offer, and so can you. For example, by including Mrs M. Cunliffe on your Nearest & Dearest list, you could save yourself an average of £5.66 on your quarterly bill.
So if you haven’t done so already, now is a really good opportunity to join Nearest & Dearest and get closer to the ones you want to get closer to.
We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Yours faithfully,
Juliette Wolfe
Head of Communication Management
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<<… and now, before more music. Nige. While you’re listening to this on your way to work: have you considered taking the bus instead of the Tube? Your nearest bus stop is three hundred metres closer to your flat than your nearest Tube station, and allowing for traffic variables you could shave as much as nineteen seconds off your daily commute time! Not only that but you’ll get less interference on your phone-signal reception. Use the London bus network. It’s your city, your buses. And now back to the music, and a real blast from the past. You were in your fourth year at William Wilberforce Secondary Modern, Nige, when this came out …>>
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+++ DATA FLASH +++ DATA FLASH +++ DATA FLASH +++
09:06
Job Exchange Update
Cunliffe, N.G. – Customer #65729 – Present employment: statistics entry specialist (full-time) with Colcourt Revell Information Storage Ltd.
There are currently no suitable position(s) vacant within your sector.
Please keep us informed of any new qualifications and/or any alterations in your employment status.
Thank you.
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11:17
The mid-morning slump. Not enough sleep last night. Thoughts slowing. Eyelids drooping.
Get over it instantly with CaféSharp!
CaféSharp is extra caffeinated for extra alertness, extra productivity, extra zing.
Ask your office manager to order CaféSharp for the vending machine.
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12:49
With lunch coming up, shouldn’t you be thinking about using the time to look for that ideal present for a loved one’s birthday?
Wilson and Schnabel, London’s premier jewellery emporium, is just around the corner from where you work. We have a wide selection of beautiful gift ideas for that special lady in your life, ranging in price from “affordable” to “no less than she deserves”.
Drop by after you’ve had your sandwich in the park.
We’ll be expecting you!
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<<… and it’s lovely and sunny in your neck of the woods and looks set to stay that way for the rest of the day, but before we resume your lunch-break choice of mellow sounds, Nige, let’s talk about diet. That cheese-and-pickle sandwich you bought from Paula’s Patisserie eleven minutes ago isn’t doing your cholesterol level any favours. Your medical records show a blood pressure way above average for a thirty-three-year-old Caucasian male. You don’t want to end up like your father, do you? Dead at fifty? So how about a Pharmland Healthy Options lunch? All Pharmland stores stock a range of yummy sandwiches all with less than a hundred calories, mouth-watering desserts with less than a gramme of fat, and great sugar-free soda drinks. There’s a branch of Pharmland just two doors along from Paula’s Patisserie. Why not go there tomorrow for a change? Your taste buds will thank you, and so will your arteries! This is DAIMoN, and let’s get back to the music with a new release we guarantee you’re going to like, Nige …>>
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14:37
Lonely?
Bored?
Stuck in the same old routine?
Tired of staring at the computer screen?
Seek out a new horizon!
Go on a Vista vacation!
At Vista we have literally thousands of holiday packages designed with the single male in his early thirties in mind.
Whether you want to meet new friends, dance the night away, have a wild and crazy time with people your own age, or simply lie on a secluded beach, reading and soaking up the sunshine, we have the holiday for you.
Call today, and this time next week you could be enjoying your very own tailor-made Vista vacation.
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15:02
The mid-afternoon slump. Lunch sitting heavy inside you. The office hot. Still two hours to go till clocking-off time.
Get over it instantly with CaféSharp!
CaféSharp is extra caffeinated for extra alertness, extra productivity, extra zing.
Ask your office manager to order CaféSharp for the vending machine.
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+++ DATA FLASH +++ DATA FLASH +++ DATA FLASH +++
16:49
It’s nearly the end of the working day. Have you wondered what you’re going to do when you get home?
Another evening in? Another home-delivered pizza? Another hour visiting online adult-recreational sites?
The perfect complement to your activities: Beer To Your Door.
Any brand of stout, lager, bitter – you name it, we have it, and we can get it to you within half an hour.
No need for that weary trudge to the off-licence any more. Just call the number below.
Beer To Your Door. It’s a dream come true!
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<<… and that was an uplifting little number, wasn’t it? This is DAIMoN – Digital A.I. Mobile Network. We’re still here, broadcasting direct to you, Nige, and before we give you the news headlines that matter to you personally, first a suggestion: have you thought about changing your phone? A Ventura V20 with slimline styling and pin-sharp stereo sound is not only the best-value mobile on the market, but if you buy the phone and transfer your account from K-Nekt to Ventura Air, we’ll throw in one hour of free call time! Call now to see why all sensible phone-users are taking up Ventura. But don’t do that until after you’ve listened to the latest news update from Tangential Media …>>
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“Good evening. I do apologise for disturbing you at home. I’m calling on behalf of the Water Scorpion Preservation Trust. Here is my identification badge. We’re in the area going from door to door asking people if they would like to donate money towards the preservation of Britain’s water scorpions. With the sea encroaching on this country’s wetlands year by year, the native water scorpion population is in steep decline and threatened with extinction. With your help we can ––”
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“Good evening, Mr Cun– Cunliffy? This is Wendy at Fine-Form Windows. Now, I’m not ringing to sell you anything, just to ask a question. If we were to replace your windows free of charge, would you agree to your residence being used as a show-hom
e for our –”
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“Hello, Nigel. Howard Agar from the Samson Clinic. Perhaps you heard our ad this morning? This is just a follow-up call to determine whether you’d –”
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“Mr Cunliffe. Mark from Beer To Your Door. You haven’t placed an order with us yet, and I was wondering if I could tempt you with our special offer on Seppuku Japanese lager. We’re doing twelve cans for the price of –”
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“Mr Cunliffe? Nigel Cunliffe? No, please, don’t hang up. This is Martin Bryant of the Department of Data Registration. Forgive me for not getting in touch sooner. I know you’ve rung us several times. We’ve been experiencing a few technical glitches lately and I’m only just catching up with a huge backlog of work. Anyway, I’m talking to you now, so that’s good. It’s about your mother Margaret. You applied to have her name expunged from the data records … when was it? Three months ago. Oh, I’m sorry. Four. Super. Now, there’s just a couple of details I want to check before I give the go-ahead for a total purge. You give the date of death as February the eighteenth, but the hospital records clearly state that it was the nineteenth. I see. Yes, an error. Perfectly understandable. Quite. You also put the cause of death as ‘an accident’. We need you to be a little more specific. A car accident. OK. Loss of control of vehicle. Collision with a tree. No other road-users involved? Fine, lovely. Thank you, Mr Cunliffe. That’s a great help. We should have your mother eliminated from all extant databases within ten working days. Please get in touch if she pops up anywhere after that time and we’ll do what we can to sort it out. Yes, I realise it’s been very trying for you. We’ve been doing our best, but what with one thing and anoth—Well, excuse me, Mr Cunliffe! There’s no call for that kind of language.”
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<<… and hey, Nige, seeing as you’re out and about somewhere – great night for a stroll. To enhance that lonely-urban mood, here’s some Leonard Cohen, followed by some Tom Waits and a little bit of Nirvana …>>
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<<… Nige, we’re getting word over the police communications net that there’s someone standing on the side of Albert Bridge, getting ready to jump off. Someone whose description sounds a lot like you. Is that you, Nige? Because if that is you on Albert Bridge, get in touch with the Suicide Hotline right away. There’s someone there ready to take your call, and don’t worry about the cost – it’s a cheap-rate charge. Nige, talk to them. Nigel? Now, Nigel …>>
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<<… Nigel, are you there still? …>>
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<<… Nigel? …>>
SPEEDSTREAM
The look on her face.
Pitying, but still kind.
Blood on his hands.
A death?
The girl smiling.
“Come with me.”
Robert Stoneham came to in a hospital where the clocks had eighteen numerals around the dial and the nurses’ name badges were printed in an alphabet he did not recognise. He knew, the moment he surfaced from sleep, that he had Slowed, but he did not know to what extent he had Slowed until a week later, when he felt well enough to discharge himself from the hospital and go exploring. Until then, he lived in limbo. In hospital-ward hell. Food like slurry, and a man in the bed on the left who thrashed and moaned through the night, and a man in the bed on the right who was quilled with catheters; the liquids going in—thin and clear; those coming out—viscous and opaque. All day long, from dawn to dusk, a radio played martial music. There was a war on, Stoneham guessed. Maybe that was why the nurses had so little time for him. A stomach complaint. He was not on the critical list. Not a Terminal, nor a War Wound. He passed the hours napping, short stuttering sleeps, trying to get better quickly. As best he could work out, he must have picked up the bug at his last stopover, some upper-level virus that ambushed without warning. A vague memory: falling ill aboard a jet-liner, vomiting violently into a waxed-paper sick bag, a flight attendant standing by, pained, solicitous, holding out a glass of water, the glass blurring, doubling, going dim.
Another vague memory: a girl, and blood.
A dream?
If so, a vivid one, and the residual impression it left was of guilt. He did not think he had done anything wrong. So why the blood? Why the conviction that he had committed some unspeakable crime?
Dreams. What they could make you believe.
Moaning to his left, multiple drips and trickles to his right. The martial music, and everyone talking in hushed tones, using a language as guttural as Russian, as frantic as Italian, but neither. The nurses: slab-faced, dark-eyed, portly. A patient letting loose into a bedpan, diarrhoea gushing like a tap on full. One night, someone died. Quietly. They wheeled him out in his bed, wheeled in a new bed, installed someone new in it. Quietly.
Stoneham got better. He willed himself to get better.
When he discharged himself, no one was sorry to see him go, and he was not sorry to be out of there.
A hotel in a quarter of a city as old as any city he had ever visited.
A room as gloomily appointed as any hotel room he had ever stayed in.
He had Slowed. Christ, yes. This was not the destination he had set out for at all. This was somewhere in the middle levels. The lower reaches of the middle levels. All that Speed he had accumulated, gone. And he had been so close. He was sure of it. So close to Continuum.
Outside: a cobblestoned street, and cars with animal characteristics (fins, crests, wings, antennae) rumbling by. Tall thin buildings, in the Parisian style, and shops that barely advertised their existence—a doorway with a few sample wares hung in it, that was all, no sign, no light, no window display, you went in because you knew what you wanted to buy, not because you were curious and felt like browsing.
He still had his Passepartout, thank God. It had not been stolen. It had been kept safely with all his other belongings in a locker at the hospital. He would be lost without his Passepartout.
He had not needed it to help him check in to the hotel. While at the hospital he had picked up hello and please. You did not have to use much else when booking a room. The concierge knew why you had turned up in his lobby. Dumb-show filled in the gaps. Now Stoneham ran the Passepartout’s text sensor over a notice affixed to the back of the hotel-room door—the standard “What To Do In Case Of Fire” instructions. The Passepartout read and assimilated, then formulated. Basic grammatical construction. Linguistic irregularities accounted for. It built up a picture of the local language. Parsed, conjugated, declined. Developed, extrapolated. Became fluent. Or conversant in, at any rate.
He tested it out on room service. Picked up the phone, held down TRANSLATE on the Passepartout’s keypad, then spoke. “I would like something to eat.” The Passepartout burbled. The concierge answered. The Passepartout’s screen said:
>>It is too early in the day for the commissioning of delivered foodstuffs<<
Stoneham smiled. Everything in working order.
“Thanks,” he said, and the Passepartout barked some cough-like phrase into the phone receiver.
A stack of brochures from a travel agency and a cup of some bitter-tasting coffee-analogue in a café on the edge of a square with a central fountain. Opposite, a golden-domed basilica. Hawkers traded from market stalls—trinkets and essentials shelved side by side, seemingly of equal value. The sky was cold, clear and bright. Black pigeons with bluey tints to their plumage pecked and strutted around the café tables. People eyed Stoneham. His brochures, his Passepartout, his smart but travel-worn clothes—he could not be anything other than a Fogg. He looked, indeed, the living epitome of a Fogg. The perennial peregrine on a quest for forever. Facing into the brass sunsets of an eternity of western horizons. Forgin
g on at ever-increasing Speed. He relished their stares. They gave him a renewed sense of identity, and consequently a renewed sense of purpose.
As he leafed through the brochures, some soldiers came by and started taunting him in that way that soldiers will, made bold by numbers and uniform. His Passepartout prudishly feigned ignorance of some of the words they spat at him. He let them jeer. They got bored eventually and walked away. Stoneham was used to being an outsider. Wherever he went now, he was never home. He was used to not belonging.
Several possible destinations suggested themselves. He narrowed them down to a short-list of five, jotting the names down on a paper napkin. The trick was to find somewhere far away but not too far. Somewhere interesting. Somewhere that looked nicer than where you were. Which was not difficult. The brochures made everywhere else seem fantastic. Compared with this city, everywhere else was fantastic.