The Fool - Chapter Nineteen =========================== I - I wake up feeling strange. I cannot put my finger on the strangeness. I feel entirely dislocated from my life and my self. My own habits seem completely alien to me. It is six-thirty in the morning, and I am distantly aware that I ought to be tired, that I would normally be begging myself for permission to sleep at least another hour. But I am not. I don't feel tired. Nor do I feel awake. I feel absolutely nothing at all. I go to the kitchen and make coffee automatically, observing myself with minute detail as I boil the kettle, wash the old coffee grinds out of the cafetiere, woosh boiling water around the empty jug to warm it up, carefully spoon six heaped teaspoons of ground coffee into the jug, cover with boiling water, woosh it round again, top up with boiling water and finally replace the plunger lid. What am I doing this for? I really have no idea. On impulse, I decide to consult the I Ching, and taking a pen and paper and a coin, I toss the coin eighteen times in a row, holding onto the question 'Just what is going on' firmly in my mind. Heads, tails, heads, tails, tails, heads, tails, heads, heads, heads, heads, tails, heads, tails, tails, tails, heads, tails. I frown, and scribble on the paper a while. That's yang yin yang yang yin yin, no lines moving. No idea. It has been many years since I last did this. I kneel before my bookcase and locate the I Ching book to look it up. "Hexagram 55. Feng. Abundance. Fullness. Above - Chen, the arousing, thunder. Below - Li - the clinging, flame. The Judgement. Abundance has success. The king attains abundance. Be not sad. Be like the sun at midday." Be not sad, be like the sun at midday. I like that. I feel a surge of energy from the centre of my chest spread outwards through my body and beyond. I skip across to the kitchen and pour my coffee. It is the morning. I am wide awake. I am quite looking forward to today, though I have absolutely no justification for this. Never mind. I will enjoy it while it lasts. It is quite the strangest thing that has happened to me in a long time. II -- I get into work almost singing, and sit at my desk full of an urge to get my teeth stuck into whatever the next bit of the database munging code was. I sip at coffee and read over the detailed specification for the next chunk of my task. "A delete_record() function that actually deletes records. The normal delete_record() function does not actually delete the records. Instead it sets a 'deleted' flag on the record leaving the data and the record intact in the database for all time. Such behaviour is not good enough for the purposes of the current project, where in order to ensure overall data integrity and to minimise the unnecessary impact of running our code at all (remember, ideally we are aiming for zero impact), we must not leave behind records in the database that could lead to false positives in later searches." I hadn't seen that bit before. I mean, I'd skimmed over it, but it hadn't really hit me what I am being asked to do, here. I'm being asked to write code to delete records in a database that has been designed specifically to make it impossible to delete records. I have never been accused of being the most worldly of people, but even I smell a rat with this. I also have no idea what to do. No wonder I was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement. III --- I am still staring into space an hour later, when Julie appears. "Hello," she says. "Can I ask, do you smoke?" "I do," I tell her. "You haven't got a spare one, have you?" She puts her head on one side and looks at me with an odd smile that sends me automatically fumbling in my pocket for my cigarette packet. "Thanks," says Julie. "Tell you what. Why don't you take a break and I'll show you where smoking area is." This strikes me as a good idea. Why not indeed. IV -- "They never showed me the smoking area when I was a temp," I say. The smoking area is a battered cast-iron fire-escape around the back of the building. It is outdoors, but at least sheltered somewhat from the wind and rain. There is a large wet bucket full of sand and cigarette butts. "Yeah," says Julie, puffing determinedly through her cigarette at an alarming rate. "No, I mean. It's just for permanent staff. Otherwise the staircase would probably collapse." I giggle. "Anyway," says Julie, "tell me, how's it going? Has Peter Chapman given you plenty of stuff to do? I know he's out of the office at the moment." "Oh yeah," I say. "I've got plenty to do." I frown. "Colin told me he'd heard that Peter hadn't introduced you to anyone else on the technical team. Is that right?" "Yes," I say, "that's right. They're not even in this building, apparently." "No," says Julie, thoughtfully, stubbing her cigarette out in the bucket. "You smoked that fast," I say. "Yes," she says. "Anyway. Colin told me to tell you that if you want to ask him anything, anything at all, just give me a call, and I'll set up a time for you to go and meet with him." "Oh," I say. "Thanks." "Brr," she says. "It's cold." I put my cigarette out. "Yeah," I say. "Let's go in." V - Back at my desk, I stare into space thoughtfully for about ten minutes, before opening a new file and writing a new function called really_delete_record(). I check that it works, go for lunch, come back, write a test module for it, then call Julie. "Hi," I tell her. "Actually, I do have a query for, er, Colin. Would...?" "How about three thirty this afternoon?" she says, immediately. "Ok." "Fine. I know you don't know where we are, so I'll come and get you at about three twenty-five." She hangs up. My heart is suddenly pounding. I'm not blowing a whistle or anything. I'm just raising a query. Peter Chapman didn't tell me not to raise queries while he wasn't there. Ah, bollocks. I know very well that I am not supposed to be doing this. On the other hand I also know that I don't really understand what the company I am working for actually does, let alone what the whole point of this database is. So I can't be accused of any kind of intent whatsoever other than an attempt to find out what is going on. Also, I'm sorry, but if I'm being asked to write a really_delete_record() function for a database that has been deliberately designed without one, I want to make sure that such a thing really is what everybody wants. For all I know it might be. VI -- Clive Godfrey's office is substantially larger and better furnished than Peter Chapman's. Clive Godfrey himself is also substantially larger and better furnished than Peter Chapman. Not that Peter Chapman is a small guy, by any means. But Clive Godfrey is huge. He is very tall but also very fat, and grey-haired, wearing an exquisitely tailored suit. It too is vast. "Ah Adam," he says, as I approach the area of the office where the large carpet in front of his desk is. "Do sit down." He waves his hand airily in the general direction of some wooden chairs on the other side of the carpet, and I pick one up and manouver it gingerly towards the desk. The chair seems oddly low, and I realise with a start that no, the chair is normal size, it is the desk which is a good foot or so higher than normal. Clive Godfrey smiles at me, hugely. "Thankyou for coming to see me," he says. "I understand Julie tells me you have a query for me." "Yes," I say. "Peter Chapman has asked me to write some code that deletes records in the database and..." "Do you have the specification?" asks Clive Godfrey. "I do, yes." "Electronically or on paper?" "On paper." "Well here's what we'll do. You go back to your desk and carry on working. I'll send Julie over later today to make a copy of the specification, and we'll say no more about it." "Say no more about what?" He laughs. "Very good Adam, very good. There wasn't anything else you wanted to ask me, was there? No? Well, thank you Adam. No need to mention this conversation to Peter Chapman, by the way. He's out today, isn't he." "Yes," I say. "Good," says Clive Godfrey. VII --- Why are these people making it so obvious that they are all hiding things from each other? It doesn't make any sense to me, and I don't like it. I return to my desk armed with coffee and a frown, wondering why Clive Godfrey didn't already have a copy of Peter Chapman's specification, and why I should care. I don't know. Maybe I don't care. I don't know that either. I stare blankly at my screen for a while, then decide that now would be an extremely good time to read some of the rest of the sheaf of documentation Peter Chapman had given me. Julie arrives, and I hand her the specification document without a word. She takes it and disappears for a while. I can hear the sound of a photocopier whirring. "Thanks for that," she says, when she comes back. She leans towards me conspiratorially. "I must tell you, Colin was going to make me come and copy it anyway." She laughs, and I gape in astonishment. "Well," she says, turning. "See you later." VIII ---- On the way home, I am sidetracked by the pub, and halfway through my pint, I am again sidetracked by the thought of getting stoned. What day is it, anyway, Wednesday? I call Simon, but there is no answer. The only other person I can think of to call is Beth, and I am not about to call Beth. I finish the rest of my pint in one gulp and get another one. What was I doing? Oh, yes, about to go home. I light a cigarette and shrug to myself, sipping at the pint. Whatever. My phone rings. It is Simon. He can't sort me out tonight because he's already at this party, but he can sort me out tomorrow night and I should call him during the day. Do I want to go to the party? "I should do, shouldn't I?" I say to Simon. "Yeah," says Simon. I can hear some kind of techno sound system in the background. Bang bang bang bang. Eww. Not my cup of tea, not unless I am sitting in front of a screen, heavily armed, mutilating goblins. Even then not, to be honest. "Man," I say. "It's a schoolnight." "Alright, whatever, Adam, look I'll speak to you tomorrow ok?" He hangs up. IX -- I get home, drunk and stinking of kebab, and find myself checking my email before even taking my coat off. I delete my way through the spam, wishing I wasn't too drunk to go and install a new spam filter program. Is there anything actually for me? There's a couple of emails from the USoM list and... My heart almost stops. Email from Beth. I really wasn't expecting that. "Just a short one..." is the title. "Hi Adam," she writes. "Just a short one to say hi and how are you. Still thinking of you from time to time. I'm very busy at the moment with work and music taking up pretty much up the rest of my time, but it's all going great so hey. Can't complain. I hope all is well with you. We'll be gigging soon, so I'll let you know when that is, and I hope you can come and see us. Oh, and Bea says hi. Love, B" My eyes mist over and my chest hurts. I find myself automatically creating a folder called 'Beth' and copying the email in there, deleting it from the inbox. I am not going to delete it, but I don't want to ever look at this email again. In fact, I've had quite enough email for one night. The mailing list can wait. I shut the computer off and get a large glass of water. I stand for a moment looking at my bed thinking, who am I trying to kid, I haven't got a hope in hell of sleeping now, and I switch the computer on and play Doom for a long time. X - I am a child again, riding bareback on a white pony in some kind of compound, with a large red flag in my hand. It is a gloriously sunny day, and I can see fields of sunflowers beyond the walls of the compound. I ride across the compound and lead the pony in through a doorway and down a corridor. It is dark suddenly, and the flag has become a rifle. The pony has gone. I can hear the sound of water dripping and strange alien rustlings in the distance, like monsters shifting from foot to foot, waiting in the darkness. I feel a lump in my throat and creep forward around a bend in the corridor. At once I am in a restaurant, with Beth and Dora and Clive Godfrey and Peter Chapman. Peter Chapman excuses himself for a moment and disappears. I feel an urgent need to warn Beth about Clive Godfrey but when I open my mouth to speak no words come out. Beth is laughing at me. "What did you bring that rifle for, Adam?" she asks.