David Hadley's Blog, page 95

Burn Out

‘Burn out,’ she said, scrolling down the list of results on her monitor.

‘Burn out?’

She took her glasses of and peered across her desk at me. She smiled tentatively, frowned and put her glasses back on. The focus of her gaze shifted from the pot plant in the corner back to me. She tapped the back of my hand where it lay on her desk.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘No, get your hands off my desk. This place is supposed to be hygienic. I can’t be having sick people wiping their germs and diseases all over my workspace.’

‘But, you’re supposed to be a doctor?’

‘I’m a specialist. I don’t deal with sick people.’

‘Oh, then what is the matter with me?’

‘You’re sick.’

‘Oh.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll fix it.’ She sat back and opened her desk drawer, pulling out a aerosol spray and some antiseptic wipes. She sprayed where my hands had touched her desk, and all around the area, just to make sure.

‘People can die from illness, you know?’ She looked up at me as if expecting me to admire her genius.

‘So, I’ve gathered.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. I’ve been ill before.’

‘Yes.’ She put he spray away and bundled the wipes into the bin. ‘You look the type.’

‘Type?’

‘A malingerer.’

‘But….’

‘Anyway, enough of your self-pity. The computer says you have burn out. So that is what we must fix. Whatever else is wrong with you, is your own affair.’

‘What if the computer is wrong?’

She laughed, then realised I was not joking. ‘Don’t be silly.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Now, about your problem.’ She looked over her glasses at the monitor screen as if to double-check something. ‘Now, your problem is burn out, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘So I’m going to have to prescribe a course of treatment.’

I gulped. ‘Okay.’ My hands clenched in my lap.

This time she made sure it was me she was looking at when she leant forward and took her glasses off. ‘Now, what I want you to do is… pull yourself together. Right?’ She sat back, put on her glasses and keyed her intercom. ‘Next patient please.

She looked across her desk at me. ‘Good-bye… er … mister… er. You’ll understand why I won’t shake hands, of course.’

‘Right… I….’ I got to my feet and stumbled towards the door. As I closed the door behind me I glanced up at her.

‘Remember,’ she said, ‘Chin up…. Bye!’ She began sorting the next patient’s notes.

I shut the door.

 

A British Computing Pioneer

Register ‘Reg’ Benchmark is probably the UK’s foremost computer engineer from the early post-war period of British computing history. It was a time when computers were emerging from the secrecy of their vital war work. Of course, back in those days it was difficult to see – in time – how important and essential computers would become, with one expert stating he could see the UK needing at most three computers. However, that was before Benchmark arrived on the scene.

Benchmark initially worked at Bletchley Park, helping shorten the war – according to Churchill, by working on the decoding of the German military codes. But, while he was there he realised he was not very good at the major pastimes played by the staff at the secret facility when off duty. In their free time, some workers played competitive tennis tournaments. But Benchmark was never good enough to get further than the first round in any tournament.

Consequently, after the war, Benchmark decided to use some of the spare computing power of ANYAC, one of the first post-war computers, to improve his tennis game.

However, his first attempt at producing what late became known as Ping-Pong (an early forerunner of Pong) was hampered by the player having to have his moves coded and entered into the computer by hand. So even a short rally could take several days and with no way of visualising the game, it was rather dull, even by the standards of early computer games, or – for that matter – tennis itself.

He then tried a game, based on his experience as a voluntary anti-aircraft gunner during the Blitz. This was a game where a player on the ground attempts to shoot down flying craft above him. Benchmark was fascinated by Science Fiction at the time. So he decided that, in attempt to get away from the imagery of the recent war, that the flying craft should be alien spacecraft, rather than enemy aeroplanes.

Again, though, Benchmark was frustrated by the primitive I/O of the then current machines. Although, many could see his game had potential, the player’s moves, even though limited to Left, Right or Shoot, still had to be input through punch cards by a data operative. The computer’s responses were then printed out on paper.

Although, Benchmark did discover that a properly-designed program could – eventually – print out a silhouette-like image of a naked woman, provided the programmer took some care, this breakthrough was not really what he was looking for.

However, Benchmark did make some progress when asked for directions from the computer labs to his favourite after-hours drinking establishment. It was producing a written set of directions which gave him the idea of producing the first crude attempt at a text adventure.

As this was text input and output was not dependent upon real time responses, Benchmark discovered he was on to something. Especially when he realised that the chess by mail games he played with a friend in Hull could be replicated with the computer playing against an opponent.

By this time, though, computing power had increased considerably and innovations had continued to the point where a VDU could be used to interact with the computer. The keyboard added input, so that events could happen in real time.

It was during that year’s annual miner’s strike that Benchmark had another breakthrough. He invented a game where a miner had to go down a mine of increasingly complex and fiendishly-designed corridors, overcome obstacles and return with the coal.

However, at the computing departments budget was cut, Benchmark was told to stop wasting his time on computer games as they would never amount to anything. A broken man, Benchmark retired later that year, dying – some say of a broken heart – just months before the first commercial Pong arcade machines began to appear around the world.

 

On The Run

It began, much as these events do, in the morning. The darkness was fading slowly into a dawn as we struggled out of our sleeping blankets. The winter had turned to spring then summer and we had put away our furs and our tents. Most of us now slept under the open sky and only the guards kept small fires burning around the edges of the camp throughout the night. Fire was still the best deterrent against predators, except for the creatures, of course. Most predators, including the packs of dogs, feared fire, but the creatures feared nothing and would stop at nothing.

We thought we’d managed to outrun, or move away, from the creatures now. The last Split was days behind and we’d not seen any signs of a Split nearby. Even so, none of the recent towns or villages we’d come across had contained any people. Just the packs of dogs wandering each street and taking over the houses, shops and every other building they could get into.

‘If there are no creatures,’ Jen said, eyeing the dawn’s slow creeping, ‘where have all the people gone?’

I shrugged as I prepared a fire for our breakfast. I shook the coffee tin; we could get another couple of cups out of it. Although, it would be closer to water with a vague memory of coffee than actual coffee itself. We even had bacon too.

I noticed Jen was quiet… for once and glanced across at her. She was staring at something behind me.

I turned, half-expecting creatures poised to tear me apart.

Instead, I saw people…. They looked liked soldiers, all armed with automatic rifles, spread out in a ring around our camp. Amongst them, Bert, Jeff and Mary, our guards stood with their hands behind their heads. One of the armed men held a pistol against Mary’s head, watching me, waiting for our surrender.

 

The Slippage

Sometimes this world slips and one of those other worlds that lie on its edges slips through. This doesn’t usually matter that much for it is the nature of these worlds, these universes, that edge against each other that they are very similar. They change more the further they are from one another, until even a pair of worlds a few hundreds apart start to show significant differences.

However, there are those creatures that have evolved over the eons that can slip between these worlds with relative ease. Some of them come from many, many, parallel universes away, travelling as easily as a modern urban human can travel across a city.

In the past, these creatures were demons and devils, monsters and even aliens. All Earth cultures have their tales, myths and legends about these strange creatures that come out of the darkness, out of the shadows. Some, for a while after the old religions faded, thought the tales of these strange beasts haunting the edges of our lives would fade too, become little more than a tale to tell to children.

These creatures, though, did not fade away into the worlds of myth and legend. People never stopped telling tales of strange happenings out on the edges of civilisation where the darkness can hide so much.

Then came the slippage, a sort of earthquake where the fault lines of these parallel worlds rub against each other. Suddenly, these creatures found what amounted to a shortcut between their worlds and this one.

So, nowadays everyone stays away from those dark shadowed places, leaving the night to these predators that lurk, waiting to pounce. Some are even beginning to say that this world, this Earth, no longer belongs to us humans and it now belongs to them, the creatures, while we are now little more than their prey.

 

The UK’s First Post-War Sex Symbol

Splendidthighs Mellowhoney was every man’s dream woman. Including those dreams involving the ostrich feather, a flat cap and a tin of golden syrup so common in the erotica of the 1950s. Mellowhoney first came to prominence, an apt phrase in this context, in the nascent post-war glamour boom. A time when there was an outbreak of what came to be known as glamour magazines. Each featuring near naked or undressed ladies in poses more provocative than explicit. Often with the traditional tin of golden syrup, or a flat cap or two placed strategically to avoid the wrath of the censors.

Of course, such magazines were roundly condemned from the pulpit and by school headmasters. Thus allowing anyone in such positions of authority to confiscate such magazines and postcards with impunity. Often so that a greater study of the pernicious influence of these publications could be made in the privacy of such a person’s study.

Rather than causing these publications to fade away, of course, such protestations about them only drew them to the attention of more and more men and adolescent boys. Consequently, Splendidthighs Mellowhoney was soon famous throughout the length and breath of Britain. Eventually becoming a forces’ favourite, as well as appearing in so many of those young men’s dreams involving flat caps and golden syrup, and – sometimes – even an ostrich feather.

A celebrity wedding to Britain’s then leading man Hunk Slab made the front pages of all the tabloids. After that, it was not long before Mellowhoney herself began to appear in films.

Although, critics of the day suggested that in her first few roles it was the tin of golden syrup that showed the most promising acting ability, rather than Mellowhoney herself. However, Mellowhoney put herself under the tutelage of Hunk Slab’s own acting coach. This coach was a gifted teacher who was credited with successfully coaching Slab to master words of more than one syllable. Under his exacting tutelage, Mellowhoney went from strength to strength in her acting ability over her subsequent films.

However, in those strictly hypocritical and moral times, when Hunk Slab was found pleasuring a squad of Household Cavalry out on Clapham common, the couple had no choice but to divorce under a cloud of bad press coverage and moral condemnation.

Still the UK’s greatest home grown sex-symbol Mellowhoney went on to star in many more films. As she got older, her looks faded, of course. However, she still remained many mature men’s favourite wielder of the ostrich feather and tin of golden syrup. Mellowhoney’s acting ability deepened and grew as she slowly developed from sex symbol into mature actress, and then into arguably Britain’s greatest acting dame.

Now retired but still active, she runs a pub The Flat Cap and Ostrich Feather, just off the A54. There anyone who enters and asks for a tin of golden syrup gets a free three-course meal and a signed photograph of Mellowhoney in her glamorous heyday.

 

Britain’s Most Decorated Soldier

Halberd Arquebus is probably Britain’s most decorated soldier. After armies began to understand the value of camouflage, especially from WWI onward, it became more and more important to find ways of disguising men and materials from the enemy, especially from the air. However, even the ordinary military needed some protection as ‘any solider that is hard to see is hard to shoot’, as one military camouflage expert said. Sadly, only shortly before he was run over by a wayward lorry when disguised as a traffic bollard during a military exercise in Ludlow.

Arquebus after distinguished service in several front-line regiments, later moved over to special forces. This was a time when when emphasis shifted from the traditional battlefield to more asymmetric forms of warfare after the end of the cold war. Up until the recent middle-eastern misfortunes, it was widely assumed that the major post-cold war theatre of operation for special forces would be the urban domestic environment. It was Arquebus’ job, therefore to discover and implement the best forms of camouflage for special forces troops operating in those situations.

However, it was not until he noticed a property makeover show on the TV in the regimental ready room did Arquebus discover a way of implementing this.

Arquebus’ first attempt at camouflaging soldiers as MDF was a failure as the tell-tale large holes drilled in the MDF for them to fire through were a giveaway. Also, MDF camouflage was not as flexible as Arquebus had hoped. Especially when abseiling when the rougher edges of the MDF boards did have a tendency to chafe.

He next experimented with wallpaper. This was much more successful than the MDF body armour. Wallpapering a soldier from head to foot did enable that soldier to blend in with the décor of the rooms in the urban environment with great success. However, there was a tactical and logistical problem with the disguise. Normally, of course with most terrorists, armed criminals and all the other opposition forces urban special forces team went up against were usually young men. So it was initially thought that the wallpapered soldiers not precisely matching the surrounding decor, would not be a problem.

For example if the soldiers were dressed in flock wallpaper when the building was decorated with a regency pattern, for example., it was assumed that the terrorists would not notice. However, the ubiquity of the TV programme genre that had inspired Arquebus also influenced the terrorists and criminals. Especially as their chosen criminal careers meant they spent a lot of time sitting around watching TV – much like the special forces. This meant the criminals too were becoming increasingly design conscious.

Consequently, the special forces needed to transport with each team a large and unwieldy selection of wallpapers. One for every conceivable type of building they could be called upon to infiltrate. This was a logistic nightmare, resulting in every five man squad having to take several large lorries filled with wallpaper with them on each shout, as well as a number of pasting tables, brushes and buckets of combat-ready wallpaper paste.

Not only that they also needed to carry large quantities of matching soft furnishings and other items of decor. All od this was a massive drain on the defence budget, especially at a time of cutbacks.

Consequently, despite Arquebus being the most decorated soldier in the British army, especially with his several coats of emulsion, it was decided to disband his unit.

In future, the air force will be sent in to precision bomb any holed-up terrorists with the subsequent destruction blamed on the terrorists taking their own lives with suicide bombs. Thus will the defence of the realm be assured for the foreseeable future.

 

The Viewing

‘And this is the….’ Sammy stopped in the doorway, one hand holding the doorknob, her other arm holding her tablet computer against her breasts.

‘What?’ I laughed, stuck behind her in the hallway. She froze there as though someone had switched her off. I manoeuvred myself around her, noticing her mouth was half-open, her chin trembling, as though she’d forgotten how to work it. It was her eyes though, the way they stared.

When I managed to get around her, I saw what she was staring at.

Then I wished I hadn’t.

The empty house Sammy was showing me around was all bare rooms painted white. This one room, though, had a great red smear across the one once-pristine white wall as though someone had thrown a bucket full of blood against it. The smear ended down where the skirting board met the floor and the body lay, half-slumped against that wall with what remained of its head, pressed back against the wall at an unnatural angle.

I too was staring now. The shoes, the jeans, the shirt and the jacket the corpse was wearing. I saw the look in Sammy’s eyes too as she turned to me, looking down my body and seeing the identical jacket, shirt, jeans and shoes.

Then, both of us turned slowly back to look at the body slumped there and my own dead eyes sightlessly staring back at us.

It was then Sammy screamed.

 

All Washed Away and Forgotten

 All Washed Away and Forgotten

Each day is a new dream made real

by a world that lives tight against us

and will not let us go until it is tired

then it will drop us easily down

as if we are no more than a dead leaf

falling from a tree towards the river

of time that rolls on towards the sea

of everything that has fallen down

then washed away, forgotten.

No Distance

Something so simple lies at the heart of these shadows we create as we move together towards the heart of the night. Words are no longer necessary. There is no need to explain or justify, or even demand. Each action grows from the shadows cast by moonlight through the open window as the trees rustle in the breeze, doing all the whispering we need.

The touch of each finger feels as delicate as one of those unspoken promises, even though it has the weight of years behind it. Familiarity is not an obstacle breeding complacency and routine, but a way through beyond the hesitancies of the unfamiliar and the new. Familiarity allows the touch to go far deeper than just skin against skin; each fingertip carries with it the weight of history and the ease of understanding.

Each movement grows out from a familiarity that never grows tired. Each kiss carries the memory of so many other kisses down over the years. Each touch traces a route over a map of possibilities made familiar from the distant lands our bodies once were.

Once, we thought we could know too much, and thus kept a distance and taught ourselves how to keep secrets. Now, though, we know there is no longer any need for secrets and that familiarity breeds understanding and contentment, not distance and contempt.

 

A Proposal

She turned to face me, looking into my eyes. Her eyes were green, dark, blinking slowly. She raised a hand… or what used to be a hand back when I thought she was human. I felt myself swallow and shrivel. She looked down my naked body and then back up to my face. It looked as though she was smiling, but it was not the mouth I was used to seeing and I could not decode the expression with any certainty.

It was not the Carla I was used to seeing either. This was someone… something… new.

Rather, it was something old… very old, something older than the human, much older.

‘We learnt how to be human, how to pretend to be human a long time ago.’ She reached out still with that expression I hoped was a smile. Her hand cupped me, stroked me. Her face… her muzzle moved closer to my face. She licked my ear. ‘Relax,’ she whispered into my ear. ‘If I wanted you for prey, you would already be eaten.’ She squeezed. ‘At least your tastier parts would be.’ She stroked. ‘Can you imagine what it is like?’ She stroked again and I could feel myself growing in her hand, despite everything.

She looked straight into my eyes, no longer blinking. ‘Can you imagine what it is like to still be alive and watching one of us feasting on your most precious parts while you slowly… oh, so slowly… bleed to death?’ She licked her lips, then laughed, letting go of me as it shrivelled back to limpness once more.

She turned away, then back to face me. ‘No,’ she said, reaching for my hand. ‘I’ve chosen a different fate for you. She walked towards the door, pulling me along behind her. ‘You….’ She smiled back at me. ‘You are to be my mate.’