The Fool - Chapter Two ====================== I - She is shining, blackly, the moon at her feet and stars in her eyes. Endless aeons stream from her fingers with the silent sigh of civilisations rising and falling. Her face is impassive, betraying no hint of smile nor frown. She is the sky, huge and silent, heavy with energies of infinite potential. Today the sun shined on her and she was still; later the moon came to worship at her feet and she sighed a song of pure joy. She is every kiss, every caress, every smile and every tear. She is the beginning and end of all flow, of all change. Mountains dance and skip at her behest, rivers dry up and are reborn. All songs praise her, all poetry is dedicated to her. She is the muse of all muses, the holy of all holies, the space of all possibilities. All dreams are of her; all wishes worthless without her. She is the paper on which all laws are written; her law is silent, unspoken. Nothing can be said without her, yet nothing may truly be said about her, for anything said about her is wrong. These words, for example, are all lies. Yet she is beyond truth, beyond lies - failure does not move her, nor does success bring her joy. She is the muse of all muses, the holy of all holies, and she shines blackly, the moon at her feet and the stars in her eyes. II -- I awake with a lurching feeling of endless inadequacy. What was it she had told me last night? Something important, something very deep. It was about right and wrong, a key to true living, with no regret, no error. We had both been stoned, both been tired, and wanting her but not wanting her I turned the conversation from sex to philosophy; wanting some third thing she had riffed easily and lazily on the subject of Truth for a while. It had washed over me in waves, by turms dousing and inflaming my desire for her. I could sense the rightness of her words by the shiver in my spine, but although I remember the shiver, even now, I still cannot remember what she had said. Only that I am clearly living wrong. Not only am I living wrong, it is Monday and I am late for work. There is no time for a shower, barely time to grab an oatmeal candy bar for breakfast and make a crazy dash for the bus stop. The traffic in the road outside is easing off now, giving a dim warning of how late I am. At the bus stop I check my watch only to find I had forgotten to put it on. No matter. My phone will have the time. I pat my pockets but have forgotten the phone too. At this exact instant I see the bus coming, and in the same instant realise exactly where my wallet is - still in the pocket of my other trousers, back at home. I am already late; there is no option but to be later still. III --- It does not matter too much that I am late. I am a temporary office worker, one of three, for the duration, hired in to perform a huge and mindless data entry task to clear a backlog. Although a strict record is kept of our arrival and leaving times, no-one has yet said a word to us about the fact that in two weeks, not one day has gone by without at least two of the three of us arriving late. We are temps. We cannot keep time. That is why we are temps. One week in an office here, two weeks in an office there. It doesn't really matter. We are not being paid enough to care. The tone is set by the first day, in which the first hours are always entirely taken up with having a desk found and a login set up. Eventually the task is explained to us - some huge algorithmic process of converting data by hand from one form to another in some minute segment of a huge database. It boils down to two piles of papers with numbers and names on. Each number must be typed in and each name verified. Next to the name is a code, according to which we must enter further codes. That is it. That is all. Twice a day someone comes over and asks us how it is going. We say fine. Then they look at the piles of papers, mutter to themselves, and vanish. The piles of papers were at least six feet high when we started. In two weeks, they seem, if anything, to have grown a little. It doesn't matter. We are not being paid enough to care. IV -- When I arrive, Baz and Joachim, the other temps, are already there, hunched over their terminals, typing away rhythmically. Baz hits the keyboard hard, like a drummer, as if he were deliberately trying to get the most percussive possible sound from each keypress. Joachim, on the other hand, types very quietly, as if he were trying to press each key with exactly the minimal muscle movement required for the keypress to be registered. I make a grunting noise that began as an attempt to say good morning and they ignore me entirely. I get coffee - sweet, strong, black - and return to my desk. Still silence. Bliss. Bliss though it is, it takes my eyes some time to adjust to the screen this morning, and I have to take my first few entries several times over each and very slowly. I can not only not actually read the screen at the moment, until I have had at least half the coffee, I cannot actually remember how to type either. To be more accurate, I can, but my fingers can't. Eventually my sight returns, my fingers warm up, and I fly, soaring, into the sea of numbers. V - All at once Baz stops typing. "ENOCOFFEE," he says. A programmer's joke. All three of us are out-of-work computer programmers, which has amused us no end, given that it is hard to see why the task we are performing could not be replaced by a simple script. "Coffee. Yes," says Joachim without looking up. "Please," say I, making the error of looking away from the screen for long enough to be unsure what I had and had not typed. "Fuck." I say. Several seconds go by. "Shush," says Joachim softly. Baz returns with coffee, and we type away in silence for hours. Eventually, a woman in absurdly high heels totters over to us. She is wearing a short skirt and low-cut blouse under a jacket with padded shoulders, all curves and angles. Her face looks exactly like that of a mouse, only with glasses. "How's it going?" she asks. The three of us stare directly at her cleavage. "Fine," says Baz. "Fine," says Joachim. "Fine," say I. The woman nods, goes over to the piles of papers, and picks one from the pile on the left. She tuts at it, puts it back. Three pairs of eyes watch her totter off. "Fuck," says Joachim. Several seconds go by. "Shush," say Baz and I in unison. We continue typing until lunchtime. VI -- She is with me even here, even now. Is it her or just a thought of her? And how could I tell? I sense her laughter and the flash of her eyes. Is she laughing at me or with me? I do not know. I wonder if she is feeling that I am with her, even there, even now, at this moment, and if she is wondering if it is really me or just a thought of me, and how could she tell? I suspect that she is not. "What are you doing here?" she asks, in a clear voice. I carry on typing, mindlessly. "Data entry," I reply in my thoughts, stoutly, but she does not speak again. With a shock I sense her leaving, and a sudden emptiness. Was that her or just a thought of her? I still do not know. How can I tell? VII --- "Jessica Fucking Rabbit," says Baz. It is lunchtime. We are in the caff. "Better than John Fucking Travolta," says Joachim. Joachim has a jacket potato with cheese and beans. Baz has a mushroom omelette and chips. I have egg, bacon, sausage and chips. Baz and I have tea. Joachim has coffee. It is the eleventh time in a row we have placed the same order. "That was last week," says Baz. "Enough," says Joachim. "I have news for you two." We pause between mouthfuls and nod. "I have written a short Perl script to replace us." He hands over a single sheet of paper. #!/usr/local/bin/perl # temp.pl use Some::Login::System; # login(), send() %data = { '01' => '32', '02' => '35', '03' => '70', '04' => '15', }; # log into system login(); # munge files while(<>) { ($number, $name, $code) = split /\t/, $_; verify($number, name); send(mungekeys($code); } exit 0; # TODO sub verify { } sub mungekeys { } "As you can see, it is not quite finished," says Joachim. "Brilliant," says Baz. "It won't work." "Why not?" says Joachim. "You haven't finished it," says Baz. "You are a very silly man," says I. "Plus," continues Baz, "even if you did finish it you'd never be able to test it with real data. Plus, even if you did actually do a test run with typed in versions of the data files, you haven't got a scanner system that can read those papers. Finally, even if you did all of that, you'll find there's no-one in that office who is remotely interested in the fact that we can all be replaced by a short script. They know that. They just don't care." "I know that too," says Joachim. "Otherwise I'd never have written the script." VIII ---- "I too have news," says Baz. "Unlike you two lazy sods, I actually got in early this morning, and I discovered something. At quarter to nine a guy came in from the office over the way with two piles of papers, and added them to our pile. Didn't say a word to me. No acknowledgement, nothing. Anyway. We haven't been imagining it. It is getting bigger." "Fabulous," says Joachim. "Are we being paid enough to care?" I ask. They laugh. "Is anyone?" says Baz. "Oh yes," says Joachim. "Some of the people in that office are earning a lot of money. You can tell." "Do you think so?" says Baz. "I'm not so sure." He eats the last chip, and makes to pick up his cigarette packet. "Please," says Joachim. "I am still eating." "Joachim," says Baz. "I am no nearer or further to you than about three or four other people who are smoking. How will it make a difference?" Joachim finishes the last of his potato, and takes a swig of coffee. "I have finished now," he says. Baz lights up. So do I. Joachim makes a face and waves at the smoke in disgust. It is the eleventh time in a row that he has done so. It is the eleventh time in a row that Baz and I ignore it. "So the pile is getting bigger," says Joachim, coughing. "Excuse me." IX -- My phone rings. It is her. "Hi. I'm at work," I say. "I know," she says. "I was just ringing to tell you I can't see you tonight." "I didn't know I was seeing you tonight," I say. "I'm sorry," she says. "I'm really tired at the moment and I've got my mum coming to stay with me tomorrow, and..." "It's alright," I say. "What do you mean you didn't know you were seeing me tonight?" Her voice grows at once sharp and coy. "Um.. ah.." I squirm. She laughs. "Well anyway, it doesn't matter, since you're not." she says briskly. "I'll speak to you soon. Take care." She hangs up. "Take care," I say. "Take care," says Joachim in a sing-song voice. "Shush," I say immediately. "Shush," says Baz a second later. Joachim sighs. I sigh, even more deeply. Baz makes a noise like a foghorn and says "Fuck." "What was that?" I ask. "Oh, I just tried to make an even bigger sigh than either of you, but I fucked it up." he says. "You are a silly man," says Joachim. We type furiously for another hour or so in silence. X - She has no boundaries and no ends. She is the single answer to all questions. She is the same shape inside and outside. She is everywhere the world is not. She was never born, and can never die. Her spirit is in all things. She is the moon. And I am a wolf, howling. She is the wind. And I am a leaf, blowing. She is the sea. And I am the fish, swimming. She is the sky. And I am lost in her vastness. I am staring at the moon. The moon dissolves, and I am staring at a screenful of green, glowing data. Baz and Joachim are gone. It is five past five. On my way to the bus stop, I try to find the actual moon in the sky, but it is cloudy and I cannot find it. The bus is crowded, and the windows are steamed up, so I cannot see it from the bus. Later, at home, I lie on my bed, smoking, and staring out of the window. The window is facing the wrong way. I still cannot see the moon.