by Susan Finlay
The little green light on David’s Gmail account started flashing again, and then, still chanting and still listening to Kathy chanting, he clicked on the Gmail window. Now there was an unread email from someone called Hubber. The subject header said ‘Bitch why won’t you answer?’ but when he opened it, it was blank. He kept on chanting with Kathy, however, watching his own face behind her and opening his emails, some of which were from someone called Swopments and contained clipart drawings of cupids with zeros superimposed above their heads, and some of which were from someone called Hubber and had the subject header ‘Bitch why won’t you answer?’ but which, when he opened them, were blank. But he still went on and on chanting and checking his emails and looking into the image of Kathy until he wasn’t sure quite what he was doing any more because he felt as if he was in some sort of trance.
Suddenly, David stopped, breathed deeply and closed his eyes. All of the various, useless items that he had recently packed up and taken back to his parents’ house in West Bridgford now appeared to levitate in his mind. They were floating through a world of stars and fractals not dissimilar to the cover of either his or Paul’s The Kaosphere, before finally landing on the clipart drawing of cupid with a zero superimposed above his head. Keeping his eyes closed he said, ‘It is our will to utilise the Internet, both as a psycho-spiritual metaphor and a psychological-religious-political vehicle, through which to attain gnosis and thus transmit our sigilised erotic, philiac, ludic, agapean, pragmatic and philanthropic desires.’ And the sound of Kathy, saying the same thing in the Media Hub, came back to him.
David opened his eyes and both he and Kathy looked into the image of each other. There was a pause, and then they both started to shout out ‘zero’ and then ‘one’ again, and again, in what appeared to be a random order that was nonetheless slightly different to the random order that had come before. After a while he started to record the chanting, and then he and Kathy stopped. He also pressed ‘stop’ on the recording and saved it as an MP3. Then he emailed the MP3 to his entire address book. Then he emailed an apology to his entire address book with the subject header ‘Eek! My account’s been hacked!’ Then he took a deep breath and removed his Stop the War Coalition badge, revealing the Games Workshop logo, and waved it in front of his laptop. Then he turned off his laptop, and sat down on the floor . . .
David remained there for some time, with pictures of all his various, useless items, the world of stars and fractals and the clipart drawing of cupid with a zero superimposed above his head still flashing, periodically, whenever he closed his eyes. Outside he could hear the sound of slurred voices, drunk on the spiced apple wine that they had recently started selling at the German Market; and on top of them the voices of the protestors discussing which pub to go to, and then finally deciding on Ye Olde Salutation Inn (or the Salutation Inn, as it was more widely known, or The Sal if you were local) . . .
David stood up, went into the backroom and opened the last bottle of beer that he could still see, hiding, amongst the empties. He downed it in pretty much one go and then went through his wallet, counting out his loose change and realising with some satisfaction that there was exactly the right amount for ten cigarettes. Then he put on his jacket, walked back out into the shop and, ignoring the crash that came from behind him, entered into the beginnings of the cold, dark night.
The Rite of Online Love
THIS IS A RITE FOR creating and attaining love via electronic sigil transmission. It utilises a pre-existing vector (in this case sections of the Evening Post Classified Advertisements, specifically Swop Shop and Family Announcements) while repurposing three, simultaneously existing physical sites (the Evening Post Classifieds office, the New College Media Hub and the Games Workshop), and therefore requires three participants, preferably of two or more genders, to complete it. During the Rite these participants should be known only by their magikal names of Swopments, Hubber and the Almighty Wizard GaWo.
STATEMENT OF INTENT:
It is our will to utilise the Internet, both as a psycho-spiritual metaphor and a psychological-religious-political vehicle, through which to attain gnosis and thus transmit our sigilised erotic, philiac, ludic, agapean, pragmatic and philanthropic desires.
RITE:
1. Open with the Unequal Opportunities Rite.
2. All participants to count to 0101, using binary numbers (0101 being equal to five and five referring to the Law of Fives previously summarised in relation to the Principia Discordia).
3. Swopments to email the erotic, philiac, ludic, agapean, pragmatic and philanthropic sigil to the Almighty Wizard GaWo that is the cupid-angel hybrid.
4. The Almighty Wizard GaWo to Skype Hubber, and then repeat the words, ‘A variety of things, a selection of items, an assortment of bags, jars and boxes.’
5. Hubber to email a blank email to Swopments with the subject header, ‘Answer my emails bitch!’ followed by a blank email to the Almighty Wizard GaWo with the subject header, ‘Bitch, why won’t you answer?’
6. All participants to repeat these actions until a state of gnosis has been achieved.
7. All participants to visualise an assortment of bags, jars and boxes descending through cyberspace and landing on the cupid-angel hybrid. When they land say the Statement of Intent.
8. All participants to count backwards to 0101, using binary numbers.
9. All participants to re-perform step eight as an electronic file and then email it to everyone in their address books, immediately followed by an apology with the subject header, ‘Eek! My account’s been hacked!’
10. The Almighty Wizard GaWo to end the Rite through the usual banishing, in this case by repurposing his Stop the War Coalition badge as an evil eye, and passing it over his laptop.
Dave
DAVE WRAPPED THE FINAL PIECE of hazard tape around the re-collapsed shelving unit, and then lit a cigarette. It was not only his first of the morning but also his first for a very long time, and accordingly it gave him a slight but pleasant rush. The floor around him was still covered in Warhammer figures, as well as bits of broken wood and a few tiny pieces of safety glass, all of which still needed to be swept up – but he didn’t feel any sense of urgency about it.
Instead he went over to the till, clicked out of the orders screen and onto the Internet, which he wasn’t really meant to do at work, but which, as his laptop had already been infected with some sort of virus, he did anyway. Then he typed ‘www.gmail.com’ into the navigation bar, and then ‘sameolddave’ into the username box and then ‘kiddish!’ into the password box beneath it. He saw that he had one new email with the subject header ‘puja’, and was just about to click on it when a box of Lizardmen bumped down in front of him.
‘Just these please,’ said a boy who, judging by the little bits of tissue attached to his chin, had only recently started shaving.
‘Okay that’s sixteen pounds then.’
‘But I’ve only got fifteen.’
Dave stubbed out his cigarette, and then immediately realised that he’d done so on Paul’s copy of The Kaosphere. He brushed the ash onto the floor and said, ‘Well I’m sorry but the recommended retail price is still sixteen pounds.’
The boy with the little bits of tissue attached to his chin pointed to the boy with very thick glasses, who was waiting, shamefacedly, behind him.
‘But he said that you sell them for fifteen.’
Dave looked at the little burnt hole in the centre of The Kaosphere, then lit another cigarette, while visualising an achromatic arc encircling his heart and lungs. He glared at the boy with the very thick glasses and said, ‘Then he needs to keep his mouth shut.’
‘So I can’t have them for fifteen then?’
‘No. No, you can’t.’
‘But that’s not fair!’
‘No, it isn’t. It’s entirely random.’
‘Fuck you!’ said the boy with the bits of tissue attached to his chin, who then ran out of the shop.
The boy with th
e very thick glasses stood there looking scared, and then a second later he ran out after him. Dave laughed and clicked on ‘puja’:
Dear Dave,
I’ve been thinking about your experiment. Why don’t you write it up as a paper, and then submit it to a proper journal? Professor Woźniak is always telling everyone about your work on belief and how brilliant it is – you really should do something with it.
Also, I know that we’ve missed Diwali but if you’re still interested in all things Hindu then my parents are having a puja for my cousin’s baby. It’s in Leicester, obviously, but if we book in advance we can get cheap tickets.
Let me know if you fancy crossing cultural identities any time soon,
Meg X
Dave stared at the screen, thinking as he did so that if he hadn’t been the Games Workshop Manager, or a doctor of theology and religious studies/geography, meaning had he been an entirely different type of man, then he would have punched the air. Instead, he reached for his phone, but Paul walked in before he could go any further.
‘What’s all, um, what’s all, um, all this then?’ Paul said nervously, looking at the various bits and pieces of debris on the floor.
‘Don’t worry I’ve got someone coming to fix it coming in tomorrow.’
‘But you’re, um, you’re not in tomorrow.’
Dave put his phone back in his pocket, and then looked at Paul, who he now decided should really try to leave his comfort zone. He took a drag of his second cigarette, and said, ‘So? I’m sure that you can handle it.’
‘But I, um, I don’t want to.’
‘But you have to. Solidarity, mate, solidarity.’
Dave took another drag and then, remembering Paul’s now defaced copy of The Kaosphere, covered it up with a pile of invoices. As he was doing so another boy came up to the counter, this time with a sticking plaster, only half covering a boil on his neck.
‘How much are those?’ he asked, pointing at the Lizardmen.
Dave picked up the box, examined it carefully, and put it down again. ‘Nothing. They’re free.’
The boy looked up at him with his mouth a little bit open. ‘You sure?’
‘No. So you better make the most of it before I change my mind.’
Dave handed over the box, which the boy held, tentatively, for a minute, before bolting out the shop. Then he laughed, took another drag and stubbed out his second cigarette on one of the invoices. He turned to Paul and said, ‘So Paul. The Kaosphere. I was hoping that you could enlighten me.’
‘Pardon?’
‘The Kaosphere. How would you define it?’
‘Oh, um, okay, yeah . . . Well it’s a kind of, um, a kind of occult anti-system in which eight arrows representing, um, representing all possibilities, and one arrow, representing the, um, the single, certain road of Law—’
‘Excuse me but have you got any more Lizardmen?’
Another boy, this time with eczema, now stood before them.
‘No, we’re all out I’m afraid,’ said Dave. ‘Although we have just had a new delivery of Skaven.’
‘And do they cost the same?’
‘No. The smallest boxes of Skaven start at 250 pounds.’
‘What?’ said Paul.
‘That seems like a lot. How about Orks?’
‘I’m afraid that the Orks are beyond price. In fact, the Orks—’
‘The Orks are sixteen pounds!’ spluttered Paul.
Dave burst out laughing, and then, because he was no longer used to smoking, also burst out coughing, which gave Paul an excuse to take over and ring the box of Orks through the till. He waited until the boy had left, and then, as soon as they were alone, he turned to Dave and said, ‘You know if anyone from the, um, from the, um, the management—’
‘But I am the management.’
‘I meant senior management. If any of them, um, if any of them heard about this—’
‘This?’
‘Yes this. Giving stuff away. Making up silly prices. Intimidating the, um, customers—’
‘I was hardly intimidating them.’
‘Then you’d be out of a job. You know there’s plenty of, um, people who’d give their right arm to work here.’
‘But . . . ’ But Dave opted to bite his tongue rather than point out that, by people, Paul meant teenage boys, and then said, ‘You know, maybe I should resign.’
Paul looked at the broken display unit and then back at him aghast. ‘But what else could you, um, do?’
Meg
MEG TOOK OFF HER RUCKSACK, removed her camera and entered the City of Caves. She already knew each of the wall texts off by heart, including the panel that now rose out of the darkness. It informed her, the visitor, that the city of Nottingham had once been known as Tigguo Cobauc, which in ye olde English meant ‘place of caves’, just as Kathy had once informed her, the tourist, that Tora Bora meant ‘black cave’ in Pashto. Mentally Meg compared the words ‘Tiggo Cobauc’, as the panel depicted them now, meaning a typeface that resembled handwriting, with what she knew of Pashto, meaning squiggles and diamonds; and then she compared them both, unfavorably, to Kannada.
She walked down a narrow flight of stairs and into a series of sandstone caves that, unlike the limestone caves that lay beneath the mountains of Afghanistan, lay beneath the Broadmarsh Shopping Centre. Then she wove her way through the dim recreations of ‘Underground Brewing’, ‘Underground Storage’ and ‘Air Raid Shelters’, each of which (or so the wall texts stated) had once been really real, while every now and then bits of grit, caused by the rumble of overhead traffic, fell onto her newly shorn head.
After a minute or so, she came to ‘Underground Tannery’, which like the neighbouring ‘Underground Cess Pit’, utilised a degree of poetic licence in terms of cave curation. Whereas the previous areas aimed for authenticity, the cess pit was lit by fluorescent green bulbs, while the tannery was decorated in a style not dissimilar to that of a horror movie, with animal skulls and rags. Meg reread the panel, which informed her, the anthropologist, that the tannery had once produced ‘boots, shoes, gloves and belts for military use, as well as scabbards, quivers, helmets, armour and shields’, and then examined the board showing different tanning samples, all of which reminded her of the pile of her own hair on the floor of her own room, which was no longer very tidy.
Meg set up her camera, crouched down and looked out through the viewfinder, where she saw that a drawing of a penis was framed between the calfskin and the pigskin samples on the wall. It had been made with a black marker pen, and there was a line of dots arcing out of the top of it, which was then cut off by one of the leather squares. She wondered how many years it would take before the drawing ceased to be a sign of vandalism, and instead became a fertility symbol, reframed and intellectualised in numerous unread books . . .
There was a buzz inside Meg’s pocket. She took out her phone and saw that she had a text message, and then put it back again without reading what it said. Then she took some pictures of the skins and of the skulls, some of which were arranged on tree stumps, and some of which were piled up on the floor. Then, when she had finished, she moved on to the air raid shelter, where a picture of Winston Churchill had been hung above a camp bed half covered with an army blanket. She sat down on the bench opposite and thought about how, now that all the different bits of her body had come back together again, she no longer needed her hair, but that her ears, which were cold, wanted something else to cover them . . .
After a while Meg stood up again and moved on to ‘Underground Living’. This time she, the viewer, had to stand along a narrow pathway and twist round so as to see into each of the different sections of the cave. Different pieces of furniture had been arranged in each one, so that each resembled a different room. A series of cardboard rats had been arranged in the first ‘kitchen cave’, as well as a cardboard cat, while another, uncaptioned cave was filled with cardboard chickens. For a moment she wondered whether or not the cardboard chickens laid cardboard
eggs; and then whether or not she should read her text message; and then whether or not it was finally time to accept the fact that she would never be daring or poetic or romantic, and that Dr David Goldstein, who had, at one point, been the Cross-Cultural Identities Research Group convener, was someone she could quite easily fit in with . . .
Meg kept on walking, her shoes making a different type of scrunching sound depending on whether she stood on sand or gravel, until she was back at the City of Caves reception. She blinked, and then, as her eyes gradually became accustomed to the light, took in the various guidebooks, all of which she had already read. There was also a new display of lamps and coasters made from rocks arranged inside a mirrored cabinet. She looked into the cabinet and examined the space that had once been her hair . . .
Meg left the City of Caves and wandered out into the Broad-marsh Shopping Centre. The only other people she could see were a couple and their baby, who were stood in front of the toilets. The man muttered something and the woman gripped the handles of the pushchair, gritted her teeth and said, ‘I’m stuck at home all day, I’ve put on weight, and I just don’t feel like it, alright?’ And then the baby started crying.
Meg walked past them, up the escalator and out onto the street. Even though Christmas was still a week away, the sales had already started. She walked past dozens of shops filled with signs saying, ‘Up to 30 per cent off’, and ‘Up to 50 per cent off’ and ‘Up to 70 per cent off’, while her shoes made a different type of sound depending on whether she stood on the slush-covered paving stones or the slush-covered remnants of placards. She stepped over a piece of paper that said, ‘Stop the War’, and then went into a shop that said, ‘Buy One Get the Second One Free’, and selected a red bobble-hat and a blue beret because they couldn’t both turn against her.