"Yes, Fred," I replied, "There are still a couple of areas where I believe I can contribute, but due to the postponement of Friday's H.Q. meeting until next Monday, I have no idea whether the bosses will wish me to continue or, if so, for how long. In the meantime I'll be spending a few days at home in Germany."
"Well, with the hours you've put in here, I am sure that none of us will be grudging you that. No problem, we'll wait to hear either from you or from Roger himself—but in the event you are not to continue, you would hopefully drop by to say cheerio?"
"Fred," I said, "I wouldn't dream of not doing so. All of you guys, and your staff, have been incredibly cooperative, courteous and friendly towards this disruptive intruder here. You have made my stay a really enjoyable one. I would hope that the very least we can do is sink a couple of pints before I disappear into the mists of time."
"We'll do our best on that Peter, but let's hope you will be with us for a while longer. Any more questions or comments, folks, before we adjourn?"
There were no more questions or comments. Best wishes for an enjoyable few days in Germany, see you soon, and that was that.
I grabbed a coffee at the machine, chatted with a couple of staff members while drinking it, and stepped outside. The rain had stopped and the sun was even shining. I smoked a cigarette and got into my car. Checked my watch, 11.45. I decided to take the slow road back to London, relax, see what's going on in suburbia, and stop for lunch at a decent restaurant I know on the river. The A4 takes you past the turn-off to Windsor and its castle, past the M25 ring road and past Heathrow airport. It takes you through commercial centers, some looking O.K., and others looking extremely not O.K., and it takes you through different ethnic areas, some with only a few white faces, the world is global sure enough.
I stopped to tank the car. The petrol pump didn't work. It's the electricity, I was told, it doesn't work sometimes. I drove on to the next station. Their pumps worked but their automatic carwash was defective. Nor did their machine accept my Maestro card. It's a foreign card, said the cashier and I wasn't about to tell him that it works throughout Europe and it works everywhere else in England. It is not a good idea to start up that kind of conversation in the U.K.
I paid cash and drove off. Immediately after passing a Hindu temple, I saw a manual carwash operation. I drove in. There were about eight dark-skinned employees dealing with a small queue of cars and cleaning them inside and out. The boss man, who wore a turban, took the customers' money—cash only, but only £6—and I had the cleanest exterior and interior I've had in a long time. The interior, you understand, is always a problem for us smokers.
I turned off after passing Chiswick but before reaching Hammersmith, found a parking spot in one of the side roads close to the river, and walked on down to the restaurant.
I smoked a pre-meal cigarette, went inside, ordered a chicken salad and a glass of red and looked out at the river, with the amateur joggers trotting by—the fat and the obese ones staggering and swaying along in their desperate and doomed attempts to achieve they know not what, and the real runners getting in their training time. What a way to earn another €1,200 today—I will just have to add in another few hours 'analytical' work on the good old time sheets. The time sheets are neither necessary nor required of course, but good old Peter O'Donoghue always hands them in together with his invoices—it shows honesty and transparency to the guys who are forking out the money. And that analytical work is honest enough in its way, I sometimes do do some thinking about the day's issues or finish creating a couple of statistics. And why should anyone care if I happen to do it in a pub, so what?
My meal arrived quickly. I got to thinking that I could be out of here by about 2 o'clock, which meant that I could drive straight to the M25 and be in Dover at 4 p.m. or near enough, and therefore home before midnight. Or soon after, you lose an hour on the time zone difference.
But…why kill myself? Back to my nice hotel, enjoy the evening, up early tomorrow—but not too early—drive down to Dover, lunch on the ferry, pretty ghastly food but they do serve mushy peas, and home at around 8 p.m. And another €1,200, they pay my travelling time.
Unless…unless I go and take another look at Jeremy Parker. A waste of time of course. But also interesting. And fun of course. And then, there is that chance of the €100,000 payment. About the same chance as my lottery ticket back in Germany, with its odds of 140 million to one for the jackpot, but I'll be checking up on it nevertheless, oh yes, you never can tell with the mentally damaged.
Well, I don't know, we'll see. So…tonight is decided, I am going back to the hotel. And tomorrow it will be either Jeremy Parker and Germany, or just Germany. Depends how I feel.
DAY 5
I woke up at 8 o'clock, had my poached eggs, toast and coffee and decided to take a cab for another chat with friend Jeremy, see what he had to say for himself this time. Pure curiosity. Curiosity kills the cat, they say, an aphorism of such brutal punishment for a totally harmless sentiment that I ignored it as a child and have continued to do so ever since.
I decided to check out of the hotel in case I wanted to head back to Germany straight after the meeting. I stuck my luggage into the car and went back up to reception.
Little Miss Ugly was at the desk, she hoped I had enjoyed my stay, she hoped they would be seeing me again soon, she was probably hoping I would throw her into bed the next time at the first opportunity. Yes, I said, I'll be back, I wouldn't want to miss enjoying this great desk service again, it made my whole stay. I looked straight at her and held the smile. She went red in the face but managed to say 'Why, thank you sir". Flustered she was, but with a dreamy smile. Dream away baby. Spread a little more happiness, that's my motto, keep the world turning on a well-oiled axis.
It was raining again, but no problem with cabs at this hotel. I arrived at the Royal Strand Towers about 10 minutes early and decided to wait a few minutes in the reception area, still raining hard. I sat on a sofa and stared at the porter behind his desk. And he stared back at me. It beats me why some of them have a birth defect preventing them from saying something as simple as good morning. But no time for training today, not the place for it either, and in any case not in the mood. I took the stairs up to the first floor and into Obrix Consultants.
Well there was certainly activity here today. A couple of telephones were ringing, some people were going in and out of the offices down the passageway, I could hear voices. I could also see the receptionist behind her expensive desk. Hats off to poor, mad Jeremy, he had hired a female who probably had the customers asking where to sign the contracts before they had even said hello. It wasn't just the way she looked, which was like a film star or a model, a non-skinny one that is, it was this aura of eroticism which poured out of her in flowing waves like the gamma rays from an eruption on the sun.
And it wasn't as if she was consciously doing anything to try and create this impression. Some women are just born that way, and some are not. She was.
She was doing absolutely nothing except sitting there being quietly professional and even her smile was a politely restrained one as she enquired, "Good morning sir, may I help you?" Well yes, she could of course, she could start by wiping away my metaphorical sweat and then going on to perform other loving tasks. Except she wouldn't, I didn't think so anyway. Her list of Tarzan-type boyfriends must be a mile long, or at least a kilometer. And even if she would (perform loving tasks), having to live with a permanent and massive quantity of virile competition is not my thing, I don't need it. "Good morning," I said, also with a smile, also a restrained one, while doing my best not to melt away into something like Jeremy's swamp scum, "I have an appointment with Mr. Parker."
"Oh yes sir, Mr. O'Donoghue isn't it? Mr. Parker asked me to show you straight through to the meeting room. If you would come this way, please."
Automatic check, an obsolete one nowadays, but no rings on her fingers. I followed her down the corridor, transfixed on the rear view, a mobile version of a sexual heaven
, she had to know what havoc she was creating in her wake, she's been doing it all her adult life, and maybe since before then. And the legs, oh yes. I wouldn't die for them of course, but I would honestly and sincerely be prepared to undergo a considerable amount of excruciating torture—within limits—to be allowed to get anywhere near them.
She knocked on the meeting room door and opened it. "Mr. O'Donoghue, sir," she said and then she disappeared, quickly, quietly, smoothly, and—although I didn't get the time for another look—no doubt erotically as well.
"Good morning, Mr. O'Donoghue, I am extremely happy to see you again, I must admit I was somewhat uncertain as to whether you would decide to come or not."
Jeremy stood up, indicated the same chair as the one I had occupied previously and sat himself in his chosen place, one space between us. Good. He was wearing a grey suit today, thin-striped, an expensive air about it, obviously tailored, and a bright red tie, some flowery design on it. Otherwise he looked the same, short blond hair, pleasant moon-shaped face, as immaculate as on the previous two occasions.
"Shall I call for some coffee?" he asked, "or are you O.K. with water or a soft drink?"
Coffee would mean that dream coming into the room again, but I said water please. I wanted to get through today's bit of fun as quickly as possible and then off on the open road to all points south.
I watched the rain bucketing down between the two buildings as he went over to the corner table, opened two bottles and brought them back to our table together with two glasses. I hoped the rain would let up soon, it makes a big difference. I drive fast when it's dry and slowly when it's not.
"Well, Mr. O'Donoghue……"
"Peter is fine by me, not so formal, if that's O.K. with you of course, Mr. Parker."
"Naturally, naturally, absolutely. Much more sociable. And I am Jeremy of course."
He beamed at these pleasantries. I have to concede that he really came across as a fully agreeable and courteous person. And a perfectly normal one if you didn't know better. But with lunatics you have to be careful, they can be smiling and full of the joys of life one minute, and the next thing you know, they've pulled a submachine gun and started to mow you down and everyone else in sight to boot.
"From now on Peter," he continued, "you will be doing most of the talking in our meetings. I will just be putting in a few questions here and there. And to start us off, I have prepared a small list of subjects for the first few meetings. These initial subjects are generalized ones, macro items you might say, and we can continue subsequent meetings with some more objective items. More targeted ones would be the best way to put it, depending on which subjects I wish to pursue on a more detailed level."
He handed me a sheet of paper:
Interaction with Other Species
Interaction among Selves
Social and Organizational Characteristics
Environmental Management
Beliefs and Superstitions
Well, well, well, well, well. Just how deluded can deluded people get? He was certainly living on a detailed level in that little lunatic world of his. Amazing, the various ways in which the aberrations of the mind can manifest themselves, the specialists in that field have a fascinating occupation, no doubt about it.
"As you may have noted in our last meeting, Peter, I know a few things about your planet. Quite a lot, or not very much, depending on how you look at it. My research has been extremely limited due to setting everything up you understand, the takeover, if you will, of Jeremy Parker, finding an apartment, organizing a bank account and other administrative necessities, the acquisition and building up of this group of companies, the search for an interviewee and so on, and…"
"But," I interrupted, and this one will be interesting, "with your alien brain, you probably know more than any single human being on the planet already. You probably have banks of computers set up somewhere and have absorbed and memorized immense quantities of information and continue to do so on a daily basis. In fact…"
"In fact, no, Peter," he replied with one of his particular moon-face smiles. "Certainly our brains are more knowledgeable than yours, they are more advanced and they are better developed; but then you would expect that. We have, after all, been around for a lot longer than you. Our civilization will soon be celebrating, as you would term it, 2.5 billion years as a species. But it doesn't mean that our brains are bigger or faster than yours. Quite the contrary, they are very much the same in those respects."
Amazing, the intricacies he has conjured up and stored to sustain his alien theory and, in this case, to explain why his superior, but temporarily earthbound, alien brain is neither bigger nor faster than mine.
"What do you mean, 'as we would term it?'", I asked.
"Why," he said, "if your species survives for as long as we have, a possibility about which I have sincere reservations by the way, you would be more intelligent than you are now and you would not be 'celebrating' anniversaries of any kind. A waste of time, a pointless and meaningless exercise, serving no identifiable purpose and yielding no discernible benefits."
"And so," he went on, "I have learned a lot about your planet and your species but there are a lot of things I don't know. And in any case, I need at least one inhabitant's views on everything, whether pertaining to the facts I already have, or to ones of which I am not yet aware. This is a dissertation requirement. It not only provides an insight into examples of social, psychological and philosophical behavior and thought, but it also serves to provide a contrast between the facts as we see them, and the facts as they are seen by the species under study. But let us move on. This first set of meetings will take time, several weeks, I would think. I may need to take a few days in between each one to research the matters you raise and the information you provide. This confirmation of the facts as you see them is a necessity. I cannot transmit any unconfirmed, unsupported or unanalyzed transcripts to my professor, you understand."
Transmit? To his professor? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dearie me, Krishna, please help me. Krishna, as you probably know, is one of many Hindu gods and is usually portrayed as a child and a prankster and he is therefore what seems to me to be an appropriate choice here. Krishna is in fact the eighth incarnation of Vishnu, one of the 'great gods', the main god of Vaishnavism in fact. He has four arms and still has another incarnation to come. So it is said. But I probably could have requested assistance from an even more pertinent god had I known who they all were. The Hindus believe in around 330 million deities, or so it is said. It is also said, however, that this was due to an error in the translation of the original scripts and consequently many of the Hindu sects nowadays believe in a mere 33 gods. Whatever. I haven't the faintest idea and, need I say it, I couldn't care less. I looked out of the window. Still pouring.
"If you would kindly return the list to me, Peter, I would be grateful."
Certainly my friend, your property. I handed him his list.
"Thank you. And now off we go on the first subject. I appreciate that your knowledge may be far from comprehensive on all or any of these subjects, but that doesn't matter at all. You are my interviewee and it is your personal understandings that I am after. As I have just said, I'll be doing any necessary follow-up research on them afterwards. Please go ahead, try starting things off on our first item."
Well, I've come this far, let me give him what he wants. Amazing though, how anyone so mentally damaged could act and look and sound so sane.
"Interaction with Other Species," I said, "In other words, how we relate to the other animals on our planet. I have a few facts, I wrote a couple of articles on animals once, but they are all fairly negative facts, I'm afraid."
"That doesn't matter," said Jeremy, "just fire away."
I took a long swallow from my glass and started off.
"First of all, I said, "you need to understand that there are now over 7 billion of us human beings on this lump of rock, and you need to understand that, as a consequence, every year we
are killing more and more of our planet’s remaining species. That is to say, of those species we have not yet already slaughtered into extinction. We kill over 160 billion animals each year. And we subject hundreds of millions more to physical and mental abuse and torture. Every year. And increasing."
"To put it another way," I continued, "we kill 438 million animals every day. That's 18 million animals per hour, or 300,000 animals per minute, or 5,000 animals per second. Or if you prefer to consider only the land animals, 2,000 of them per second. Of the annual 160 billion, 100 billion are marine animals, including of course marine mammals such as whales, seals and so forth. And of the 60 billion land animals, about 50 billion are chickens, and I mean chickens by the way, not hens. We breed them, we give them four weeks of life, a grisly parody of a life at that, and then we kill them. That's all they get, hardly a life at all really."
Jeremy was giving me an expressionless stare. "Did you say 50 billion chickens? That seems like a huge number."
"Not really," I said. "You shouldn't forget that the human population has gone from 2 billion to 7 billion in one single human lifespan; since World War II in other words. Completely mad, yes, but what else can you say? If you subtract the billions of male chickens which are killed when they hatch—because they don't lay eggs—it's only about one chicken every two months for each adult human."
"Even so," said Jeremy, "how can you manage to kill so many?"
"No problem," I replied.
And it wasn't a problem, I had researched this for an article I wrote as a teenager. "Human beings are expert at killing anything, including—just by the way, Jeremy—themselves. First of all, we use machines to catch the birds, including, for those birds lucky enough to be allowed to wander around outside, machines which resemble harvesting machines and weigh five tons. They are fitted with rubber prongs and scoop up about 100 birds per minute. The birds are rammed into large crates and then transported to the slaughter house. Here they can wait for up to ten hours without food or water before they are moved into the plant's 'live-hang' area. In that area, moving conveyors clamp their feet and hang them upside down which causes severe damage to their legs and hips, the agony of which is even worse for those caught by only one leg. The conveyor then takes them through an electrified water trough, which paralyzes their muscles. This serves to prevent them from thrashing around when they get to the slaughter line. It also has a couple of handy side-benefits. The muscles of their feather follicles are also paralyzed, so the feathers come out more easily after they have been killed. Also, by not being able to flap their wings while they die, there are no broken wing bones. That is important, Jeremy, as broken wings cannot be marketed to consumers of 'buffalo wings'."
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