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Celebrity Cult

Posted in Infinite City, Lucerne Village with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on December 22, 2012 by javedbabar

It was the global launch of the film HUMANITY. Rather than New York, London or Mumbai, auteur Manish had decided to have it in Lucerne, where the idea had been sent to him while mountain climbing.

The village was packed with people wanting accommodation. Lucerne was an easy day trip from the New City, but the 3 hour film started at nine p.m. and people didn’t want to drive home at midnight. Being realistic, with all the cops, diversions, and remote parking lots, they wouldn’t leave till one a.m. and would reach home after three.

“How about we rent one of your rooms?” a young father said to Bobby.

“I am sorry sir, we can’t do that.”

“Why not? This is a free country. We can do what we like.”

This was the tenth conversation like this he’d had today. To cut it short, Bobby decided to be brutally honest. “Sir, this is a halfway house. We are all losers in life here. Some are drunks, some are drug addicts, some work as prostitutes, and some are prone to bouts of psychotic violence. We would love to have a nice family of professionals stay here, but can’t guarantee their safety. That’s why we always refuse. Still, if you’re feeling brave we could…”

“Erm, okay, I see. Maybe we’ll drive home after the movie.” The man stood there, stunned.

“Do you actually have tickets?” said Bobby. “I heard there were only two hundred available, and most were going to VIPs. There seem to be thousands of people in town. What are they all doing?”

“If we are lucky, we’ll catch the film. There are fifty walk-in tickets available. But we’re mainly here to see the celebrities. My wife and kids really wanted to come. You don’t often get so many famous people together in one small place.” He reeled off a list of names, none of which Bobby recognized.

When he reported for work that night, the situation changed. Many of those names were guests at the Lucerne Valley Hotel, which was packed with VIPs. It seemed that Bobby was the only one who hadn’t heard the names before. Crowds outside were silent for spells, and screamed uncontrollably when beautiful folk entered or left the hotel.

Bobby learnt from other Executive Floor workers that these people were sports heroes, film and rock stars, billionaires, prominent chefs, famous explorers, those known only for their extravagant lifestyles, and cult figures from Arcadia, such as the midget-sized hugging saint, naked tightrope walker, and acid-disfigured belly-dancer. These local figures tried harder to please the crowds, but the international elite received bigger cheers.

Some of the celebrities looked familiar. Bobby recognized them from magazine covers at the grocery store, waxworks he’d once seen in Florida, and from DVD covers. Stuff forgotten during his drug haze years seemed to be returning.

He met many of these celebrities in person on the Executive Floor. Most were warm and gracious, and gave good tips. He could see why they were successful. They were good with people.

When he returned home at 6 a.m. he was ready to drop, but his housemates wanted to hear all about the celebrities. He told them a few stories which made them laugh. One of the girls squealed in delight and said, “Come on Bobby, tell us more!”

He said O.K. and told more stories. He enjoyed being surrounded by adoring people.

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Executive Floor Executive

Posted in Lucerne Village with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 21, 2012 by javedbabar

Bobby couldn’t believe it. He had applied for a job at the Lucerne Valley Hotel and got it, and not only that, it was a job on the Executive Floor. Was it a mistake? Had two people with the same name applied, and they’d mixed up their applications?

A resident of the halfway house getting a good job was not a regular occurrence. At any given time, no more than six of the thirty-six people living there were working, mostly in short-term menial jobs. As far as he knew, no one from the house had ever worked at the Lucerne Valley Hotel. It was run by the fearsome Mr Kazantazkis who was said to be a fascist, believing in survival of the fittest.

Bobby’s letter confirmed his position as Executive Floor Executive. He would earn twenty-five thousand dollars plus tips, which he’d heard could exceed the basic salary, so this was a fifty grand job! He’d earned this kind of money before, but that was a long time ago when he was a different person in a different world, before the curse of drugs, but he was clean now. Why shouldn’t he make a fresh start?

Bobby wasn’t sure whether to tell his housemates. He didn’t want to seem like a show-off, but he couldn’t help mentioning it.

“What?” said Shama. “When was that job available? I didn’t see it advertised.”

“It wasn’t advertised,” said Bobby. “I sent them a letter mentioning my background, and the troubles I’d had, and how I had overcome them. I told them I would love to work again at a meaningful job, something I could take pride in, that would help to develop good daily habits.”

“What’s the job exactly? Executive Floor Executive. Is it a fancy word for cleaner? Will we see you leave the house wearing a frilly apron, carrying a feather duster, and bending over for businessmen to tickle your…”

“Don’t be stupid!” said a girl entering the kitchen. No one knew what her name was. “He’s got a good job. We should celebrate. Hang on.” She went to her room and returned with a bottle of cheap vodka. She poured them each a measure.

They downed them in sequence, the girl saying “Executive,” Shama saying “Floor,” and Bobby saying “Executive!” They laughed together and did it again, this time with the girl saying, “Floor”, and then finally, Bobby. Spirits were high at the halfway house.

Bobby’s first week went well. There was some cleaning involved, but the job mainly involved concierge and security duties. He got great tips, and the pile of cash under his mattress grew rapidly. He was so busy at work that he wouldn’t have had time to go to the bank, even if he’d had a bank account. The pile became huge.

One night he awoke, inspired. He counted out his cash: there was $7,200. He divided the money into thirty-six lots and walked around the house, putting $200 beneath everyone’s mattress. People were sick or drunk, and none awoke. It was enough for a month’s basic groceries.

He could use this money to get out of here himself, or he could use it to make everyone’s lives a little better. He had an additional role here: Forgotten Floor Executive.

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Mattress Mortgage

Posted in Infinite City, Lucerne Village with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 20, 2012 by javedbabar

“Paying rent is wasting money,” said Bobby. “We should get together and buy our own place. At least then the money would count towards something.”

“How do we do that?” asked Shama. “Shall we all bring the money from beneath our beds and build a mattress mortgage?”

Bobby thought, there are ten rooms in the halfway house’s ground floor apartment; four male dorms, four female dorms, and two double rooms. There are four people in each dorm, plus four more in the double rooms, making thirty-six people in total. Combining their income and assets could really add up.

The problem was that residents of the halfway house were generally not working, and those that were didn’t earn much. But thirty-six people working together could surely do something. “I’m going to look into it,” said Bobby and went off to do so. He didn’t have much else on today.

The lady at the bank said, “Are you an existing customer of this bank, Mr Law?”

There is no chance of that, he thought. The residents of the halfway house had zero, or even negative, credit scores. “No, but I am considering it. I would like to discuss mortgages first. Please assume I know nothing, and run me through the basics. What does the word mortgage even mean?”

“Mortgage is a French word meaning death contract. Don’t look so shocked. It’s not what a gangster offers to an assassin.”

It was a joke, but Bobby was sobered by the thought.

“It is a pledge which ends when the obligation is fulfilled, or the property is foreclosed. Of course, everybody hopes for a successful transaction, the loan paid off and the house fully your possession. But I am legally obliged to tell you the other possibility. If you do not repay the loan in the prescribed manner, you can lose the house.”

This sobered Bobby some more. He said, “You mean a bank can take your home away if you miss a payment. That sounds…”

“Technically the bank owns your house till you repay the loan. It is only yours upon the loan’s fulfilment.”

She spoke of the 3 E’s: Evidence, Existence, and Encumbrance, and the various kinds of loans available: direct and indirect, partial and complete. She mentioned intermediaries, size, maturity, interest, payment method, fixed and adjustable rates, interest only and repayment loans, debt ratios, and time-money value formulas.

What to make of all this? Bobby’s head felt like a spinning coin.

When it finally landed – he wasn’t sure if on heads or tails – she was speaking of MOST mortgages – Multi Occupant Strategic Tenure – where you somehow owned and didn’t own your property at the same time.

The numbers looked good though. If they paid all their rents into the MOST fund, they would own the house outright in twenty-five years, possible via the 3 M’s: Multipliers, Matching, and Magnetic MoneyTM, the latter a financial technology patented by the bank, which involved “attraction and integration of negative-positive cash flows.”

Bobby didn’t understand the details of the mortgage. He didn’t understand its essential purpose either. They would spend twenty-five years repaying the loan, and when they finally owned the house, they would be old and alone with no one to pass it on to.

The residents of the halfway house were mostly strays, who had been abandoned or lost. Life held little promise for them, and they lived day to day. Maybe renting was better.

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Just a Suitcase

Posted in Classic Sci-Fi, Infinite City, Sacred Geometry with tags , , , , , , , , , , on December 19, 2012 by javedbabar

Bobby’s shared apartment was on the ground floor, and he rarely had any interaction with people from the upper two floors of the halfway house. They came and went, each in their own wounded world. They said hi and bye, and sometimes smiled, but that was it.

One day a teenage boy was waiting with a large black suitcase. He stood with good posture, and looked ahead but also around. He bit his lips lightly and blinked often; a red scarf around his neck made him seem festive somehow.

“Are you okay there?” asked Bobby.

The boy seemed to be drawn out of a dream world. He blinked more rapidly and shook his head. He said, “Oh yes, thank you. I am waiting for someone to let me into the apartment upstairs.”

“Are you visiting somebody there?” People behaved strangely at the halfway house. Unless they were expecting visitors, they ignored the doorbell. They didn’t want to see people. They were ashamed of being stuck here, not knowing if they were going up or even further down.

“No, I have come to stay here. The agent said to buzz and someone would let me in, but no one is answering.”

“Look, why don’t you wait in our apartment. You can have a cup of tea while you wait.”

The boy said, “Thank you,” and lifted his suitcase. It was clearly very heavy; he hauled it up with both hands.

Bobby said, “What have you got in there? Corpses? Are you a teen serial killer on the run?” He reached over to help him, but the boy reacted with alarm.

He shouted, “No! I will carry it myself!”

Bobby backed off. “I am sorry. Okay, I will open the doors for you.”

The boy hesitated. His shoulders hunched from the effort of holding the suitcase up.

Bobby said, “Look, it was meant to be a joke. I was trying to put you at ease. Please come in. I was a stranger too when I came here. It’s nice when someone welcomes you.”

The boy’s shoulders eased. He said, “Thank you,” and walked forward with the suitcase. It’s got wheels, thought Bobby, why doesn’t he roll it? Strange boy. What’s he got in there – Venetian glass?

The boy looked around the apartment. Again, he bit his lips lightly and blinked often. Bobby made him some tea. “Just take it easy, I’m sure someone will be home soon. We’ll see them approaching the door, and I’ll grab them before they go up. What brings you here? We don’t often have such youthful guests?”

The boy looked down. He felt like crying but he had cried enough already. It was time to be strong now.

It was still had to believe that he was one of the thirty-six Righteous Ones appointed by God. Human life depended on their existence. It wasn’t usually a hereditary role, but his father had died young, and in his last days he had passed on the burden that he said was a blessing, to his son. The suitcase contained an armed nuclear bomb that was wirelessly connected to thirty-five similar devices around the world. The activation of one would trigger all the other devices, and human life would end.

Each righteous person was vital. Each could make or break the world.

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Marriage of Convenience

Posted in Classic Sci-Fi, Lucerne Village with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on December 18, 2012 by javedbabar

The quiet man in the boy’s room kept himself apart. He was often dozing, and Bobby nicknamed him Zzz or Zed. When he wasn’t dozing he was connected to his computer, watching TV, or on his cell phone.

Bobby often said hello to Zed and received a similar response. Questions were a different matter though.

“Where are you from?” got a mumble back.

“What kind of work are you looking for?” There was an unintelligible answer.

“How’s the cell phone signal in your room?” Just a thumbs up.

Zed seemed to enjoy isolation, but curiously, came into the halfway house’s kitchen when he knew others were there. If a woman appeared, he left the room immediately. Maybe he wanted company but was really shy.

Everybody was in the same position here; they were unprofessional people seeking opportunities in Lucerne. There seemed to be great demand for professional people, but little demand for their less well trained brothers.

Zed left the house every day at six for his evening stroll. He went for hours and usually returned with groceries. Other than this he never left the house, and he received no visitors. It was almost like the world around him didn’t exist; he behaved as if in alien territory.

Other members of the household took turns at cooking. French, Italian, English, Swedish, and Greek food was regularly available. Zed couldn’t stomach it. “Too little taste,” was all he said. He stayed in his room during communal meals, and instead cooked alone at midnight.

Zed cooked the same food every night. He dissolved two vegetable stock cubes in a pint of water, added two potatoes and two chillies, which he boiled for an hour. This was his only dish.

Bobby was short of cash one week and so was everybody else. Denied bank accounts for having poor credit scores, the halfway house’s residents stored their earnings beneath their mattresses. The code of the poor dictated that they could borrow each other’s money when needed, as long as they returned it.

While Zed was out, Bobby took the opportunity to look under his mattress. There were piles of Indian rupees there. They looked quite strange. He examined them closely, and saw they featured complex holograms, and futuristic structures in places he’d never heard about. Other than the rupee notes, a toy telescope, and a few items of clothing, Zed seemed to own nothing.

Later that week, Bobby picked up three days of casual work, and with his earnings, bought a bottle of whisky. He was drinking it alone when Zed walked into the lounge, and sat down beside him. He asked for a measure. Bobby poured him a double. Whether or not Zed wanted to get drunk was hard to say. The fact is, he did, and it loosened his tongue.

“I am from the Orion system,” he said. “I was sent here to test the possibility of intergalactic marriage. But I hated everything in that place; the weather, people, pollution, rush, noise, cost.”

He must mean the new City, thought Bobby.

“So I came to Lucerne, but everything is still wrong here. I have come one hundred years too early. India is not a superpower yet. I learned Hindi but it is not spoken here; I can’t eat the bland food; the weather is too cold, and I cannot mate with unenhanced humans. What’s a guy to do?”

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Double Professionals

Posted in Lucerne Village with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 17, 2012 by javedbabar

“Welcome to the house,” Bobby said to the new couple. “Where have you just come from?”

“We were in the New City before this,” said the lady. “We needed to…” She looked at the gent as if to seek permission; he gave her a grave look.  She added, “We decided to move.”

They didn’t look like other people here; they were altogether more polished. He wore a button-down white shirt with handcrafted brown leather belt, and well-pressed blue trousers. She wore a white dress with blue embroidery, and high-quality, stitched brown leather sandals. They matched each other, which set them apart from everybody else in the halfway house, who were misfits.

“Do you know what happened to Nancy and Steve?” asked Bobby. The previous couple in their double bedroom – the house was mostly dorms – had disappeared overnight. Maybe they had got jobs somewhere. He hoped that was true.

“No, we never met them,” said the lady. “We just took the empty room.”

Bobby learnt that the lady was a cultural producer and the gent a project manager. Both were jobs that could mean anything at all. Then it hit him.

Though they were not traditional vocations involving expert and specialized knowledge, these were indeed professional jobs. This couple were from the social strata of well-educated, salaried workers who engaged in intellectually challenging tasks, and enjoyed working autonomy. They were most likely from a superior class background, and had been indoctrinated subtly to seek out others like themselves.

What were they doing here? This was a place for unprofessional people hoping to hold their lives together.

Over tea the lady said, “We are not moving here officially until next month. The Authority incentivised us to come to Lucerne, and offered us a choice of jobs. There’s so much on offer, we don’t want to rush, so we’re staying here till we’ve decided.”

The man said, “What is your job here?”

Bobby didn’t know what to say. He worked whenever somebody paid him, whatever the job. He mumbled, “Project worker. I am working on various projects here.”

He thought, I wonder if they know where they are. “How did you find this place?”

“We looked for short-term accommodation and this place was available.”

Bobby thought, I wonder why it was available? Maybe because it is a dive.

The lady continued, “To be honest, it’s not what we expected, but we’ve paid the deposit and we are here now, so we may as well stay.”

They used their mattress to make love that night. Others, using theirs for sipping whisky, eating fast food, injecting heroin, masturbation, weeping alone, and closing their eyes hoping that everything would go away, listened in awe.

People wanted to hate these bright, young people with university degrees, who had professional training and experience, and were makers of award winning work. But they couldn’t hate them. They were both so nice. They seemed to have morale and motivation, strong morals, and a high standard of manners.

The halfway house’s residents knew this was what separated professional people from them. And that’s why the piles of cash under the new couple’s mattress grew many times faster than theirs.

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Money Under Mattresses

Posted in Lucerne Village with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 16, 2012 by javedbabar

There were boys’ rooms and girls’ rooms and communal areas. Maybe they were too old to be called boys and girls, thought Bobby. It would be better to call them desperate, middle-aged men and women.

How had he ended up at this halfway house? Was it halfway to employment and stability, or halfway to unemployment and the trash can? Most people lived in hope, but there was no telling which direction they were moving in; recycling or landfill.

The employment situation in Lucerne was dire. The number of sick and struggling people was rising, and doctors’, lawyers’, and accountants’ services were much in demand. These professional people were doing well, but everybody else, lumped together loosely as unprofessional, was suffering. Some turned to crime, robbing the professional people, who they said were taking much more than their share.

This led to discussions about the meaning of money. Clever people said it had no intrinsic value as a physical commodity; it was just fiat money, from the Latin word meaning “it shall be”; a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a standard of deferred payment only because The Authority said it was money.

The middle-aged men and women in the boys’ and girls’ rooms accepted all of this. They had no issue with money’s definition; the issue was that they had none. They had however not sunk to criminal actions, instead created an informal community, helping each other to survive.

Shama approached Bobby, looking angry, and asked. “Did you borrow some money?”

Bobby said, “I did last month. It was a twenty dollar bill. When I got some work at the Botanical Gardens I returned it.”

“Well, there’s still twenty dollars missing. Are you sure you returned it?”

“Yes, I did. I remember putting it under your mattress. There was about two hundred dollars there altogether. You had blue sheets.”

Shama became angrier. “I always have blue sheets. I don’t have another set. Are you being honest with me?  If you still have the money, that’s okay, but just say so.”

Other boys and girls in the lounge went quiet. Someone may have turned down the TV. It suddenly seemed quieter, and their voices, louder.

How could Shama say that in public, thought Bobby, accuse him like that? It wasn’t on. He said, “I’m not lying. I told you I took it, and I told you I put it back. Why would I lie?”

Shama shook his head and walked away. They grunted to each other after that, but didn’t engage in real conversations. Tension built in the house. What they called their economy of trust became strained.

Most people had lost the use of their bank accounts when they had entered into voluntary liquidation agreements, paying off their overdrafts as loans. Banking facilities for fiat money were thereafter withheld from them.

What money they had, they threw under their mattresses. Shama had always thought this was appropriate, as mattress comes from matrah, the Arabic word meaning “to throw down.”

The first mattresses had been leaves, straw or grass, covered by animal skins, which had evolved into cotton, foam rubber, and metal spring frameworks, even water and air beds. The money beneath people’s mattresses was as insubstantial as this latter filling. The boys and girls knew this, and helped each other; there was give and take.

“Money come, money go, money nothing,” Shama’s grandfather used to say.

Shama remembered a night at the Lucerne Valley Hotel bar where he had spent $20 on drinks, and then come home, dropped onto his mattress, and dreamt of better times. Maybe Bobby hadn’t taken it after all. Maybe Shama had spent it on forgetting.

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One Megabyte

Posted in Lucerne Village, Mystical Experience with tags , , , , , , , , , , on October 6, 2012 by javedbabar

Alan and Patricia were always welcoming. As soon as he neared their forest cabin, Bobby began feeling happy and relaxed. His weekly trips there were a tonic.

There were things going on at the farm that he didn’t understand, and that worried him somewhat. Tomatoes grew better when exposed to advertising jingles, mushrooms were affected by satellite TV channels, and he was encouraged to drink a “healthy natural beverage” that somehow unsettled him.

Alan’s workshop was full of technology. Bobby wasn’t sure if this was the right word though. It was state of the art technology once upon a time, but these days of smaller, better, faster may now cause it to be labelled junk. There were many metal boxes with buttons, wires, levers and cogs.

“Do you still use all these” – Bobby didn’t know what to call them – “machines?”

“Sure I do! They still work. Why shouldn’t I?”

Bobby pulled out his smartphone. It never received a signal on the farm but here it worked beautifully. “This phone has more power than everything in this workshop. I’m not trying to show off; anybody with twenty dollars a month to spare can have one. I just mean that your machines seem outdated.”

“So you think I should donate them to the museum?”

“Not necessarily,” said Bobby. “But maybe. Wouldn’t you be better off with a small, simple gadget with multiple functions? And when technology advances, you can upgrade.”

Alan looked at him with seriousness. “What is the data limit on your smartphone? Ten megabytes? A day? So three hundred megabytes a month. Well, I transfer one megabyte a month.”

Bobby was about to be impressed, but then thought, hang on! He said, “Do you mean one gigabyte? So you transfer three times more than me?”

“No I meant one megabyte. That’s plenty. I do use some compression technology, but that’s it!”

Bobby was confused and stood blinking.

Alan pushed a few buttons and lights appeared on metal boxes. “In the early days there were radio transmissions for only two hours a day. When TV came along, we had only one hour a day. Telephone calls were very expensive; you’d watch your minutes carefully. With computers there was limited bandwidth, it was precious and you preserved it. A photo took half an hour to download, and a movie took all day.

“We appreciated those things. Our family would gather around the radio. We would watch TV together. Receiving a call would be a special thing.

“Now everything is always available. It’s too much. People receive endless news, data and popular culture. It is making them sick. They flick through these things as if they are empty boxes, always looking for the next one, hoping it will be full.

“Patricia and I pick one thing a day and focus on it, whether it is a message, a photo, or scene from a film. We enjoy that thing only. It is like a meditation. And we’ve found that after one hundred years, we’ve never been bored yet. Do you want to see today’s special selection?”

Bobby nodded.

Alan showed him a picture of the Lucerne Valley one hundred years ago, before the time of roads, factories and malls. There was just land and light. Its beauty made him weep.

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T-Phone

Posted in Classic Sci-Fi, Lucerne Village, Mystical Experience with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on October 5, 2012 by javedbabar

The farm was hot and full of bugs. Maybe the ecosystem wasn’t quite balanced yet, or the ladybugs were of a lethargic species, and the mosquitoes of a dynamic one, for the latter were winning hands down. The forest was cooler, with widely spaced Arcadian Firs. Their branches captured much of the light, which meant less vegetation on the forest floor, and thus fewer bugs. Bobby dozed in the forest daily from twelve to four.

On days off he’d visit Alan and Patricia, who said they’d lived in the valley for one hundred years. Alan was a prehistoric geek, obsessed by communications. He captured local transmissions via an antenna, many miles long, strung between firs.

“You always seem so happy together,” Bobby said to Patricia as she poured him Lady Grey Tea. She’d said it was a perfectly refreshing afternoon tea, which she preferred to the floral taste of Earl Grey. “What’s your secret? Is it just your time spent together? A hundred years in the forest has surely drawn you closer. Or is it something else?”

“Alan says that we are in tune. We have the same frequency. Do you know the difference between AM and FM radio signals? You don’t? Well, AM means Amplitude Modulation. The size of the waves rises and falls, conveying the information necessary to transmit a message. FM is totally different. It stands for Frequency Modulation. The size of the waves is constant but the distance between them changes, which conveys information. Well, Alan says that he is AM and I am FM, but we’re in tune with each other. It doesn’t really make…”

“Hello again, young man!” said Alan, bursting into the room. “So good to see you. How’s your teatime? You like it? Good, good.”

Patrician poured him a cup too. There was no need for her to ask him, as she was in tune.

“Has she told you about my new invention? I can tell him, can’t I, love?” Patricia nodded. “It’s the T-Phone!” He pulled out a mobile phone as big as a brick. Bobby had last seen one of those in the 1980s. Was Alan that much behind the times?

Alan smiled and said, “I know it’s not much to look at, but wait till I show you what it can do.”

Bobby said, “Please do.”

“I’ve tried various forms of information propagation – AM, FM – I heard Patricia telling you about those – and SSB, TETRA, amateur radio, unlicensed radio, even radio control, but they have never conveyed all the information encoded. There is always loss.” He stopped for a moment. “And digital information is even worse; its binary form removes gradation.”

Alan tinkered with the brick-sized phone. “Do you know Instagram? Well, what that does for your photos, the T-Phone does for your voice. It enriches the frequencies, avoids noise, and prevents fading. It creates a richer sound.”

“Why is it called the T-Phone?” asked Bobby.

“Because the technology it uses is Telepathy. There is no physical transfer, thus there is no resistance and loss. The T-Phone uses silence as a means of communication. Everything is contained within it.”

Bobby noticed that Alan said these last words without his lips moving.

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Speaking Together

Posted in Classic Sci-Fi, Lucerne Village, Mystical Experience with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on October 4, 2012 by javedbabar

Though he was surrounded by fellow workers, Bobby often felt alone at the farm. On his days off he went to visit Alan and Patricia, who he thought of like great-grandparents.

They claimed to have moved to the Lucerne Valley a hundred years ago, and made him feel welcome. The first thing was always a “nice cup of tea”. There were no cold mugs or tea bags for Patricia. She used heated teapots with quilted tea cosies, and bone china cups that were  rich blue with gold patterns, like ones that you saw on antique shows.

Patricia had a special shelf of tea caddies from all over the world. She ran her fingers along the shelf and stopped at the caddy that “spoke” to her. She selected a tea spoon in a similar way and dropped three spoonfuls of loose tea into a teapot, the tea leaves dropping, tinkling and crackling.

“Why do you always ask me how I take my tea?” asked Bobby. “You know I take it with milk and sugar.”

“Well, what if you’ve changed your mind? I don’t want to make assumptions. That’s poor form. It is not the way of taking tea together.”

She says some strange things, thought Bobby. He said, “On the farm, we drink tea with…”

“Never drink the tea on the farm,” she said seriously. “Don’t touch it.”

“But they tell us to. They say it is better than water. It is a healthy…”

She told him again not to drink it, saying it wasn’t what he thought it was.

Alan came in from the garden and said, “Good afternoon, young man! How are you this fine day? Well, I hope. Good, good.”

They took tea together, each adding some milk and one sugar. Alan said, “We’ve monitored the communications in this valley for a hundred years now.”

Bobby had found Alan’s antenna, a wire running through the forest, strung between Arcadian Firs. “At first I manually recorded the few messages sent daily, later by phonograph, then tape deck, digital recorder, and now computer. Everything is stored on hard drives and processed by speech-to-text software, and analysed semiotically.”

So that’s how they spend their time, thought Bobby. They don’t sit around drinking tea all day. They analyse communications. Maybe Alan is a shadowy consultant, working secretly for The Authority.

“But the voice always comes first.” He stopped and looked at Bobby directly. “Am I boring you, or would you like to hear more? You would? Good, good. Now listen to this.” He played a clip of a woman speaking about potato prices. “And listen to this.” It was a man talking about property prices. “Do you note their different frequencies? No? It takes a while to master, and later you can even hear things in what most people call silence.”

He led Bobby to his workshop, filled with electronic equipment. There was a monitor showing green waves reflecting, refracting and diffracting. “See what’s happening? They’re all out of synch. That’s why people never really understand each other. That’s the meaning of the Tower of Babel story.” He pointed to the house. “Patricia and I have spent one hundred years together. We are tuned to the same frequency. We fully understand each other. It is like Eden before the Fall.”

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