by Heide Goody
“You know what else you’re going to need?” called Delia from the kitchen area as Sam scored along the edges of the well-sealed box.
“No, what’s that?”
“You’ll need a cosy to keep your coffee warm in this freezing building. At least I know what to make you for Christmas now.” Delia walked through with a full pot of coffee. “Can I have a piece of paper?”
Sam handed her a piece from the scrap pile.
Delia wrapped it around the hot pot, scrunching, folding and eventually tearing it to size. “There! That’s my template,” she said. “You’ll just need to drink it quickly before it goes cold in the meantime.”
“Not a problem,” said Sam. “Why have you brought me a cafetière anyway?”
“I said—”
“No, I mean what prompted that particular gift? Not that I’m ungrateful.”
“I’ve got six of them in the shop,” said Delia. “It’s as if Skegness has reached saturation point with the damned things. Now that I’ve thought of making cosies for them I reckon I can package them up as desirable Christmas gifts though. So, thank you.”
“Happy to be of service.” Sam sifted through the unnecessary layer of packing chips in the parcel. “Say, what do you know about wearable devices?”
“Wearable devices? You talking about kinky strap-ons?”
Sam snorted. “That would be a step too far, even for DefCon4. No, wearable tech, like fitness trackers.” She wiggled a boxed fitness tracker watch as she pulled it out from the packaging.
“Oh, those. Have you seen the things that count as fitness?” asked Delia, waggling her eyebrows suggestively.
Sam looked at her, really not sure where she was going. “No. I mean yes. Walking, running, cycling. The usual things.”
“You missed shagging,” said Delia, her face a mask of barely suppressed glee.
“What? No.”
“It’s true. You can use it to track your sexercise. I reckon some of these things are designed by voyeurs, just so they get to know when the rest of the population’s getting it on. It’s only a matter of time before they start popping up adverts for condoms or suchlike.”
“Well, they’d be very disappointed with me,” said Sam.
“Wow, going through a dry patch?”
Sam gave her a hard look.
“Rich came into my shop the other day,” said Delia.
“Rich and my sex life. One thing’s got nothing to do with the other. He’s old news. He’s a good friend but I like him better at arm’s length.”
“Arm’s length is near enough.” Delia poured coffee. The aroma was wonderfully powerful.
Sam pulled the fitness tracker out of its packaging. “I’m going to be delivering training on these soon.”
“DefCon4 moving into hawking electronic tat to people now?”
“Health monitoring,” said Sam in her most professional voice.
“And do you know how to deliver training on these?”
Sam shrugged. “The DefCon4 way. Do a combat roll out of the door and come up fighting. I’ll just read the instructions.”
“Can’t see any instructions,” said Delia, examining the minimalistic box. “Have you put them somewhere else?”
“No.” They both searched and then Sam spotted a line of text on the inside of the wristband.
* * *
Download the FitMeUp App for full instructions.
* * *
“Well, that’s cheeky,” said Delia.
Sam already had her phone out and the app was installed a few minutes later. “Yeah. Everybody thinks they’ve got a right to force their app onto your phone.”
She put the wristband onto her wrist and followed the steps to synch the device. “Ooh check me out. I have a heartbeat!” she said.
“That’s pretty much all most men look for in a woman. You should be beating them off with a stick. Move around, see if it knows,” urged Delia.
Sam stood up from the desk, jumped on the spot for a few minutes and then ran across the office as quickly as she could, although the room was so small it wasn’t a very challenging run.
“It knows! It knows!” shouted Delia. “It’s saying you’ve commenced a workout.”
“Cool,” said Sam.
“Now fall down quickly, see if it can tell when you’ve died.”
“What?”
“Go on! Some of them are super clever. Give it a go.”
“Or we could just read the instructions.”
“That is no fun at all. Besides, it might be an undocumented feature.”
“You’re making stuff up just to get me to throw myself on the floor.”
“Basically, yes.” Delia was almost jumping up and down in anticipation. “It’s a skill you’ll thank me for one day.”
“Faking a fall?”
“Yeah, there must be loads of times it would come in handy.”
“Like…?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Say you need to get out of a really boring meeting, or a bad date or something. I bet there are loads of scenarios where you could use it.”
“How do I do it then?” asked Sam.
“What? You just fall over.”
“No, how do I do it without hurting myself?”
“Maybe you can’t,” said Delia. “If you really want the device to react, then half-measures won’t work.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” said Sam and she launched herself at a clear bit of floor. “Argh! Oh, balls! That hurt!”
She sat up, carpet burns on her forearms and knees. Did she have any other injuries? Possibly. She tried not to think about the tears she’d probably put in her clothes.
“You were too quick. I wasn’t watching the app,” said Delia. “Do it again.”
“If it really thought I’d died, I’d hope it would do more than just pop up a brief message,” said Sam. “I am not doing that again.”
Delia stabbed at the app while Sam got to her feet.
She kept the tracker on but gathered the packaging and put it on one of the spare desks, out of the way. Next to it was a small pile of wireless security cameras. She passed one to Delia.
“Here.”
“What’s this?”
“A little something for you. A thank you for the coffee pot.”
“The coffee pot was a thank you for helping with the turkeys.”
“And this is a thank you for your thank you,” said Sam. “You can stick one of these in your kitchen window and point it down the garden. Download the app – yet another app – and you’ll be able to keep your eye on Twizzler the turkey when you’re away from home.”
Delia nodded appreciatively.
Sam’s phone buzzed; a new task had appeared. She read it. “I might have to kill Rich,” she said.
“I can stop insinuating you’re an item,” said Delia. “No need to go for such extreme measures.”
Maybe Delia caught the look on Sam’s face, or maybe it was time to crack on with the day’s business. Regardless, she picked up the scrunched paper coffee cosy template and stood. “I’ve got some coffee pots to sell to the good people of Skegness.”
Sam nodded at the cafetière. “A very generous present. What would I do without you?”
Delia shrugged merrily. “But if you do decide to kill Rich, don’t call me to help dispose of the body, you hear?”
As Delia clomped down the stairs to the street, Sam re-read the task that had just appeared.
Sam had seen some tasks on her planning app that raised her eyebrows. She’d learned early on that the channels for querying whether something was correct were very limited. The help she could expect to get on the end of a phone line did not extend past ‘it must be right, because the computer says so’. As a result, she invariably just got on with it. On this particular occasion she could phone the person who had commissioned DefCon4 to do the work.
She didn’t have a phone number for the LRPC Research Centre, but she did have Rich’s mobile.
“Sam!” he said, too happily, too loudly when picked up. “How the devil are you?”
“Rich, I see you’ve commissioned me for some work.”
“I did indeed. I know I can rely on you to do a great job.”
Sam wondered how best to phrase this. Bluntness seemed like the only way to go. “Rich, are you mocking the work I do here?”
“What?”
“Just because DefCon4 gets me to do literally anyth—”
“Mocking you?”
“Yes, mocking me. As in—”
“Of course not. I would never do that.”
“Well, are you doing it to create work for me or something? I have plenty to do, you know?”
“Sam, I don’t know where this is coming from. I’ve asked DefCon4 to do this piece of work because I really need it to be done, and done well.”
“Really? Because it sounds pretty unlikely.” She took her phone from her ear, swiping to the DefCon4 task app so she could read it directly. “You have requested an escape drill for the animals which you’ll be keeping in your Ice Age park.”
“Correct. It’s a risk management exercise. You wouldn’t believe how many stakeholders insist upon this sort of thing.”
“You want me to engineer a practice drill for capturing animals that haven’t existed for thousands of years in a park that is currently at the bottom of the sea.”
“It’s the right thing to do, of course.”
“Animals you’ve got scientists creating in a lab somewhere. They don’t even exist yet, do they? Do I get some elephants and cover them in carpet as mammoth stand-ins?”
“Now Sam, I can’t get this risk assessment a moment too soon. It’s a key document. Which is why you’ve got the extended budget to hire other people to help with it.”
Sam glanced down at the app. This was something she hadn’t encountered before. Budget? “Very well, you’re the client. I just wanted to check.”
“Thanks Sam, looking forward to seeing the results and recommendations.”
Sam ended the call and hunted around for evidence that she had money to spend. There it was!
“Doug,” she whispered in awe, “we’ve got a budget!”
19
Just before her official lunchtime, Sam drove back home to collect her dad and take him to the health assessment the bank had insisted upon before granting him any further loans.
“You look decidedly chipper,” said Marvin as he climbed in the Piaggio. “Does the prospect of your old man getting prodded and poked by the sawbones fill you with a general glee?”
Sam realised she was grinning and had been grinning for much of the morning. “I’ve got a budget for a project.”
“Is that a novel thing?” he asked.
“Rare as unicorn poop.” Sam pulled out of Albert Avenue and headed for the Heath Road Medical Centre.
“So how do you feel about your old man getting prodded and poked?”
She gave a twitchy facial shrug. “I don’t.”
“Maybe the doctor has some bad news for me.”
She looked across at him. “You think the doctor will have bad news for you? Are you worried?”
“Pah. No. I’m just saying. Death comes for us, doesn’t it?”
“Jesus Christ,” she hissed, laughing. “It’s a medical. We’re not getting you fitted up for a coffin.”
“Oh, I’ve already had that done,” he said.
“Stage coffin?” she said.
“For a show with Dave Allen. Remember him? It was a tight squeeze. I must remember to tell the undertaker to give me a bit more wiggle room in my next coffin.”
“Doctor, dad, not undertaker. Have you not been for a medical before?”
His brow creased as he tried to see across the years of memory. “Sure. Only thing I recall is the nurse telling me to turn my head and cough. Not even sure she was a qualified nurse.”
The Heath Road Medical Centre was a two mile journey from Duncastin’, an unpleasant walk in this cold for an older man, but only a ten minute drive up through the town and round the War Memorial playing fields in the van.
“You coming in with me?” asked Marvin as they entered the reception.
“Do you want me to?” she replied.
He pulled an indecisive expression, but not enough to be convincing. “In case the doctors try to baffle me with science lingo.”
He was nervous. It was an odd thing to witness. Marvin Applewhite had treated his entire life like a stage routine and had long ago ceased to be afraid of his audience. To see him on edge was to see a weakness the man rarely showed.
“Sure,” she said.
The receptionist gave him a clipboard of questions before calling him through to the consultation room. The room was decorated in soothing NHS green. The doctor’s desk – dark wood and leather top – looked like it had been pilfered from a pirate captain’s stateroom.
“Mr Applewhite,” she said, looking to her notes, then at Sam. “And who is this?”
“I’m his daughter.”
“Do you need to be here?”
“I asked her to come,” said Marvin. “Just in case I don’t follow all the things you’re saying.”
“Do you have a hearing problem?” said the doctor.
“No,” he said. “But my attention has a tendency to … um…” His eyes drifted to the ceiling and his finger traced the flightpath of an entirely imaginary fly.
The doctor blinked.
The Toblerone name plate on the desk said Dr Erin Hackett. The woman it belonged to had a profoundly serious air about her as though fun and frivolity, whilst not being entirely forbidden, were not welcome.
“Sorry. My dad is an acquired taste,” said Sam.
“I’m like anchovies,” he said. “Where do you want me? On the rack? These your instruments of torture?” His hand waved over the items on her desk. Sam was sure the thing between the stethoscope and otoscope was actually an e-cigarette.
“Just sit,” said Dr Hackett. “This shouldn’t take long.” She clipped an oximeter on the end of his finger and asked him to roll up a sleeve. “This is for an insurance medical?” She looked at the form before her.
“The bank,” said Marvin. “I need to re-mortgage the house. And I’m going back to work.”
She nodded and slipped a blood pressure cuff on his arm.
“You’re thinking of going back to work?” said Sam.
“It’s good to keep busy,” said Dr Hackett. “Decent honest labour. What do you do?”
“Stage magic,” said Marvin.
The doctor didn’t reply, but her silence made the gulf she believed existed between stage magic and ‘decent honest labour’ quite clear. “Blood pressure’s a bit elevated,” she said eventually.
“You got me thinking about my house,” said Marvin.
Dr Hackett made a noise. “My family and I are currently moving house. A place on Wickenby Way. They say it’s one of the most stressful things you can do.”
“Avoiding having to move is pretty stressful too,” he said.
“Stress is manufactured in the mind. It’s something you do to yourself.”
“My stress is my fault?”
The doctor nodded.
“That’s a stressful thought,” he said.
The blood pressure cuff was ripped away with a loud Velcro sound. “Right. Up onto the scales, Mr Applewhite. Let’s see how much you’ve been abusing your body.”
20
The Otterside Residents’ Social Committee met in the north lounge on an almost daily basis. It had only three members, none of them elected. Margaret Gainsborough liked it that way. Time and experience had taught her the difference between what was nice and what was effective. Democracy was nice; dictatorships were effective. Inviting the opinions of many was nice; keeping the group to a manageable three was effective. In truth, it should have been called the Otterside Residents’ Social Junta or Cabal, but neither sounded as nice as ‘Committee’. Niceness had its uses.
Margaret had drawn three chairs up to a round table and sat at its head. It was hard to say that a round table could have a head but Margaret had a knack with such things.
Jacob and Strawb took their seats, Jacob shuffling and repositioning his until he was happy, Strawb dropping into his with a boneless ease, like he was the king of fools upon his throne.
Jacob opened his notebook. It was a leather bound book with an elasticated strap, filled with lists and notes and aides memoire. He kept the minutes of their meetings. No one asked him, but he did anyway.
“We’re looking at the schedule of entertainment for December through to January,” said Margaret. “The regular social events are fixed. We’re just looking at the additional items. I’d really like to push the boat out.”
“Sailing?” said Jacob.
“Metaphorically,” she said.
“As long as it ain’t more bladdy arts and crafts,” said Strawb.
Margaret pursed her lips. “Nimble fingers make agile minds.”
“Just cos we’re old, don’t mean we want to be knitting and doing macramé and – what’s that one? – origami?”
“Origami,” said Jacob.
“That’s what I said.”
“But you asked.”
“If you want us to use our hands, why don’t we get in that girl who teaches massage? A bit of mutual massage.”
Jacob’s face screwed up in disgust. “What? Touching each other?”
“I’ve got a right knot in this shoulder.” Strawb twisted to present his back to Jacob. “Why don’t you dig in, Jake? Give it a bit of a pummelling.”
“For one thing, I am not trained,” said Jacob, holding tightly onto his pen and notepad. “Furthermore, I’m not entirely comfortable with the … physical contact.”
Strawb guffawed shamelessly. “You crack me up.” He tapped the planner sheet Margaret had placed on the table. “Go on. Put it down. Bit of massage.”
“I do fear some people might misinterpret what ‘massage’ entails,” she said.
Strawb snorted. “Not enough ‘happy endings’ in this place anyway, if you ask me.”