A secret order from within the Pataract:
• re-route all information for third-degree consuls through terminus level twelve.
The Pataract will function.
Blast! I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it, I thought to myself. That’s what I thought to myself when I read that missive, standing there in my apartment, feeling like I wanted to pull my right arm out of its socket with my left arm or vice versa. A re-route, again? And for what? For what? For some twitchy slug-skinned snitch in legal who had some hair-trigger twitch of a spasm because he was slighted by some consul with soup on his bib? A re-route! Blast! Do you have any idea how infuriating a re-route is? A re-route requires double addressing, overt and covert. It requires elasticity, electric elasticity, to successfully boomerang the information along a path through the network that avoids the various firewalls and data sumps and the gravitational pull of the nosy-parker. Have mercy, I thought to myself. I’ve had enough! I had just slumped down on the floor of my apartment when the vizzy-ringer rang.
‘Hello?’ I said, in a voice a little edged with lacerating sharpness.
‘Have you read it?’ It was Benny, my friend from the office.
‘Of course I’ve read it! Of course I have! Look! I’m holding the note in my hand!’ I was speaking loudly at this stage and waving the note at the vizzy-ringer screen.
‘I’ve read it too.’ Poor Benny, he’s not the sharpest tool, not the sharpest blade. More butter-knife than scimitar.
‘Benny, who caused the re-route? You tell me, Ben, who was it?’
‘Clint says it was Monk.’
‘You spoke to Clint about this? Benny! Tell me you didn’t speak to Clint!’
On the screen, Benny shrugged.
‘Don’t ever speak to Clint! Office rules! He’s the Unperson, the King of the Lone Zone! What did he say?’
‘He said it was Monk who flipped the door before tripping the hearse, which of course, then energised the funnel to a state of blue so that it attracted the attention of the Roving Eye.’
‘Blast that Roving Eye!’ I said, and then I said it again, quietly, just in case the Roving Ear was listening.
‘Well, I’ll see you tomorrow anyway,’ said Benny.
‘Alas, certainly yes. Excepting some personal or planetoidal catastrophe.’
Benny grinned, waved, and the vizzy-ringer screen went blank.
Monk. I had dark thoughts then in my brain about Monk, I can tell you. Thoughts of limbs and stuff. I looked again at the note in my hand: ‘A secret order…’ I laughed, knowing that the news would already be splattered to the far reaches of the hinter-web. For a brief flicker, I thought I might call Benny back on the vizzy-ringer to laugh about this, but really I had no energy, and so I just said, to no one, begone Ben, and I slinked off to the flusher and then to bed.
Darkness is constant on the planet Kahoon, for it orbits its sun in the shadow of another, larger planet, Hergenyip. There are no tropical heatwaves on Kahoon. No mighty oaks or sweeping grasslands or heaving oceans or gambolling flocks of sheep. Plant life is slimy and confines itself to cracks and crevices. The few native animal species are bug-eyed and unblinking from trying to see in the near-constant dark, and they have toothless mouthparts like straws for sucking up the plant life. There are mountain peaks, but no one climbs them. There are oceans, but mostly under ice. It is on Kahoon that the Imperium founded the Pataract, and it is in the Pataract that Agent Smole, who has introduced himself above, labours and toils.
Yes, I am Smole, as it says above. I didn’t introduce myself yet, like it also says above, but now I will. I am Smole, Smole the Mighty, Smole the Elegant, Smole of the Well-Turned Ankle; no one else calls me these things, alas. Alas, because they should. I was approaching Jenang just the other day. She was over by the office racking file, and I hadn’t noticed I was approaching her, but when I did notice I was approaching her, I put on my special walk. This is where I slow down a bit and walk with my legs turned outwards a bit so as to show off my beautiful ankles. Not a glance. I looked at her eyes, and she made not one glance down at my beautiful ankles. Well, one can only walk slowly forwards towards someone for so long before one actually arrives.
‘Jenang.’
‘Yes, Smole?’ she said to me.
‘Jenang, you annoy me.’ At this, she was sort of without words, and she turned and went away. Such is life at the office. At the coalface. At the grindstone.
Getting back to that dreaded missive, the next morning, I was like a missile to Monk. I walked straight up to him, and I said straight out to him,
‘Monk, you flunk, what’s this about a re-route?’
‘I beg your pardon? Take that back,’ he said.
And then I said, and it was super-witty, ‘Take back what? Your brain, for repair?’ I laughed and slapped my thigh.
‘You called me a flunk,’ he said.
‘And I shall call you a flunk again, flunk, for what is this about a re-route?’
‘If I may say something…’ It was Clint. Clint had sort of sneaked up on me when I wasn’t paying attention and when I was off-guard, and now he was saying, ‘If I may say something…’
‘No, you may not!’ I parried. ‘No one speaks to you, Clint, so get back to your Lone Zone.’ Just then, I heard it over the speakers,
‘Smole. Agent Smole. Report to the supervisor’s office on level twelve right now.’
The Pataract on planet Kahoon was established in the eleventh reign of the Ryolean Dynasty, during the Rage of the Archetypes, as a means of regulating the inherent frequencies present in the oscillations of the information flux. Unregulated, it was these oscillations that had melted the Missive Machines of Gaffong with such widespread and disastrous results. All of this is well known. As to Smole, he does not know why he has been summoned to the supervisor’s office, but his thoughts run something like this…
I bet it’s about calling Monk a flunk. He’s such a snitch that Monk. I bet he pressed his pocket-panic-button and got the Roving Ear or the Roving Eye on me, and then they heard me say ‘flunk,’ and then it’s like, BOOM BOOM BOOM Smole come here! Well, he is a flunk, and I will tell them he is a flunk. Mark my words. He is more than a flunk, actually; I will say he is a duffy! I will say that never have I had to work with such a duffy in all my nights on Kahoon. How dare they summon me. What a travesty of natural justice. By the merry spoon!
Buzz
‘Come in, Smole. Close the door.’
Click
‘Have a seat.’
‘Thank you.’
Scrape
‘Now, Smole,’
‘Yes, Supervisor?’
‘Oh, do you want a coffee, perhaps?’
‘A coffee?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now or later?’
‘Well, now, of course. Do you want a coffee now?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Alright then. As I was saying…’
It would be inconsiderate and slightly lacking in taste to report any more of what was said at this meeting. Suffice it to say…
Suffice it to say? Who says that nowadays? Who are you? I’ll tell you what he said. He said I was a Mighty and a Glorious Smole and that I’d been selected to undertake a dangerous mission because I was mighty and glorious and, therefore, fit for the job. And I hummed, and I hesitated and put my feet on the desk and said things like gee I don’t know, and suchlike when BAM! he punches the desk with his fist and says I’ve got to do it or the universe is in trouble. So I say, seeing as you put it like that, I might be the man for the job, and then he sort of cries for a little bit, and wishes me luck, and shakes my hand, and salutes, and then I salute too and then I turn and walk, with my special walk, out of the office.
Suffice it to say that is not what happened. Smole was reprimanded for having failed to notify the management of a change of hairstyle. He pleaded his innocence, stating that the change was the unintentional result of his recent habit of sleeping the other way around in his bed, and it was this, and this alone, that had reversed the curl on his forehead. His plea was ignored, and he was fined three coins and told not to let it happen again.
Like I was saying, I was super-miffed with Monk already and having been nicked and ticked about the hairstyle (which was not an accident, but a sign of my rebellion against man and beast), I was doubly super-miffed. So, I marched right down to the office, and straight away, I saw Monk at his desk, and I put the eyeball right on him. This is where I stare at someone really hard and imagine hot lasers zooming out from my eyeballs. He didn’t look up, but he knew. So I marched to my own desk and sat down angrily on the chair and moved the papers angrily from the left to the right and then the others from the front to the back, and I even contemplated pushing my work machine around a bit when it pinged, and it was Benny.
PING ‘Do you know the time?’ (This is code for Benny saying he thinks it’s time for a coffee.)
‘My watch is fast.’ ZIP (This is code for me saying yes. If I say ‘slow’, it means no.)
PING ‘How many minutes fast is it?’ (This is code for Benny asking which floor to meet on.)
‘I think my watch is seven minutes fast.’ ZIP (This is code for saying floor seven.)
So Benny stands up and makes his way to the lift and goes in, and the doors shut, and then I stand up, and I’m making my way to the lift when up jumps Monk, and he actually intercepts me!
‘Take it back,’ he says.
‘Only if you’ve got the receipt,’ I say, and I must say it’s super-witty. I look at Jenang, but she hasn’t noticed. Typical.
‘You called me a flunk!’ says Monk, and he’s going quite puce now.
‘What a good memory you have. Good boy,’ I say, all sarcastic. ‘Now skip along, and I’ll teach you another new trick tomorrow.’
Then Monk leans in real close, like too close, like I can see the stains on his teeth and the little hairs on his earlobes and little capillaries in his cheeks, and I can smell the coffee on his breath, and he stays there, his eyes staring at me.
‘Are you trying the eye thing on me?’ I say, ‘because it isn’t working.’
‘I’d be careful if I were you, Smole,’ he says, and he repeats my name really slowly and creepily.
I tell all this to Benny on floor seven as we’re having coffee, and, typical, he thinks I should apologise. Says he hates trouble, and you never know what Monk might do, and couldn’t I just be friends with Monk. With that flunk? I ask. Never, I say. Not after what he did about the re-route. And Benny reminds me that it’s just a rumour that Monk flipped the door before tripping the hearse, which energised the funnel to a state of blue so that it attracted the attention of the Roving Eye – that it was Clint who told him this. No matter, I say, the deed is done. I will neither speak with Clint the Pariah nor retract my words to Monk; not flunk, not duffy, not ever.
Originally from a planet in another system altogether, Smole is a first-generation immigrant of Kahoon. As is the custom in the Imperium, he was assessed for conditioning before he reached the height of his mother’s navel: a system that favours neither the long-legged child nor those whose mothers have low-hanging navels. Smole was assessed and assigned to the School of Records for conditioning into the vast clerical structures that together form the backbone of the Imperium. Demonstrating an ability to blend and bend conventional data pathways, he was further assigned to the Pataract: an office that, unofficially, regularly requires tricky manipulation of information. The Imperium has provided his education, training, employment and accommodation. In placing him on Kahoon, it has withheld almost everything else.
That evening, with the toil of the day done, I was back at my place, and I was hopping through the shopping channels, for I have a notion to buy a heli-sink. A Verton heli-sink, to be precise, with a twelfth-generation sub-mask and extruded rear-facing vents. Black with red trim and stay-sharp blades. And two heat settings. And a little light that can change colour. In short, the type of heli-sink that would make Jenang swoon. Well, I was hopping around in the upper channels, hoping to see one, when suddenly I heard, ‘Smole!’ all thunderous and distended coming through my airwaves. Well, I dropped my ragout (for I was eating ragout at the time). ‘Smole!’ it said again, just the same way. I sat very still and kept my breathing slow and shallow as I didn’t want even my ribs moving too much, and I turned neither to the right nor to the left but just stayed still. It was silent, except for the low-level burbling of the shopping channel where the lady was saying, ‘and this carpet curler is so refined and juicy that there ain’t a rug alive that won’t simply smoulder at the notion of its mild application,’ and what-not.
‘Thrice I say… Smole!’ said the voice.
I waited and waited, but it didn’t happen again. I must have sat there, sat still like that, for well over half a cycle, for by the time I stood up, the shopping channel had moved through six items: the carpet curler, a wall fluffer, elbow socks, nose hoovers, pet mincers and a super-thick light-as-a-feather panic-tent. When I stood up, I remembered the ragout stain upon my thermals, and I could tell, just by looking at it, that no amount of Fizzy-Fizz-Fast was going to shift it.
Readers should note that beyond this point, there are scenes of violence and bad language, which some may find disturbing or offensive.
Too right, it’s going to be violent and disturbing and offensive and all in that order!
Too right!
Am I not the Mighty Smole, and is my apartment not The Lair of the Mighty Smole? No one, no one patches audio into The Lair of the Mighty Smole without the explicit permission of Smole himself. Too right, there’s going to be violence, of the most violent sort! Limbs flying! Ligaments snapping and fractures cracking and gristle popping. Tremble, for the Mighty Smole is arising in his wrath.
The next day I’m in super-early at my desk, and I’m sharp, sharp as a pin; suit tight and hair all tight and correct and sharp. And I’m lurking behind my desk, like a cat itching to leap, like a spider coiled to scurry, like the fastest darn moving creature in the whole of this torpid, glacial world, when in he walks and zip! I’m up in his face.
‘Patch into my audio, would you? Huh, Monk?’
‘Take your foot off my foot.’
‘I said, patch into my audio would you, you flunk?’
Needless to say, Monk pressed his pocket-panic-button at this point. Needless to say, the Roving Eye and the Roving Ear were on the situation, and needless to say, we now rejoin Smole and Monk in the supervisor’s office.
And needless to say that it went like this: the manager was banging and shouting, and we were standing there, stiff and quiet, and I lifted up my hand, slowly and peacefully, and the manager said what is it, and I said that although I consider Monk to be a flunk, and although he violated my private inner places with his vocal cords, I do forgive him (for I am a Merciful Smole), and the manager says how nice this is of me and how magnanimous and he asks Monk what he has to say, and of course, Monk only curses and swears all the more, and calls me things that make the manager gape but which are, to me, like ducks off a glacier’s back. Monk is demoted to subaltern to the lavatory lady, and I am promoted higher than my dreams. The end.
Here Agent Smole has not so much bent the truth as hurled it screaming out the window. What follows is a more accurate rendering of the meeting.
‘Smole, this is the second time I have had you in this office this week, and I am none too pleased about this, and I think you need to know that.’
‘But…’
‘Quiet. First, the hair, which I am glad to see is correct today, and now this nasty business with Monk.’
‘He…’
‘Quiet. There is no place in this organisation for people who call other people flunks. And there is no place in this organisation for people who stand on other people’s toes to intimidate them.’
‘But…’
‘Quiet. Now, I think I’ve done a good job at alluding to dismissal, but if you have not been able to discern this in what I have already said, I will say it again, clearly: get in shape, or we’ll ship you out.’
‘But he…’
‘Quiet. You have nothing to say. You are going to leave quietly. You are going to go back down in the lift, and you are going to go back to your desk, and you’re going to get right back on with the work we are paying you to do, and I will never hear anything about this matter again, ever.’
And so it is that I am tethered. Prometheus bound! All my fiery, splendorous might unable to unleash itself against Monk, the snitch. Monk, the vocal invader. Monk the hearse tripper. Monk the flunk. I slump at my desk and turn on the work machine to enact again the key taps that stretch the data-lanes into a snoop-eluding ellipsoidal re-route when…
PING ‘Do you know the time?’
And like a god from the machine, Benny saves me from my dungeon of drudgery!
The end.
West Folio 