Ten

The problem with serious drinking is, inevitably, the need to fill the spaces between the light of day and dark of oblivion with small tasks, conversations, laughter, and banter, all crammed into a blurring tunnel of time, your awareness fading by the hour as the poison overtakes you, wrapping your consciousness in a fuzzy, slow-motion wall between the real and the imagined. And so it is in the half-light of the bar, itself barely changed since the last time the Carpenter had come looking for his old friend.

Lofty is, as they say, in full flight. His usual habit of gesticulation now borders on a danger to passers-by, his chain smoking turning out a perpetual screen to the gaze of others, within which he and the Carpenter sit talking and laughing.

“Nahnahnahnah man, it’s different to that aeh. Did you ever hear of Clarke? That guy who wrote all them science fiction?

“Nah? Well, good writer aeh, turned out to probably be a pedo, which was a disappoint to his many fans, but hey, he had his moment in the sun and trashed it aeh.

“Anyway, he says summing like ‘If it’s hard out high tech then low-tech just think it’s magic’, or summing… wait… yeah nah it’s summing like this aeh.

“So that’s pretty wicked aeh, ‘cause it means if you’re like, low-tech, and some poncy high tech MF comes on and says ‘ohlalala, I have some science stuff to be all explaining’ and that, then… then low tech will be like ‘woah. How could this MF possibly know all this stuff?!’, aeh?

“So to that high tech guy, like maybe he’s a science guy, or maybe a tech, or, or, summing, it’s all pretty simple to them aeh because it’s in the frame. He’s gone and got all that knowledge, or mebbe it’s just some stuff he learned at school because his high tech peoples are all like, ‘we got all this fancy stuff we do on the daily’, and it’s not a thing to them aeh, it’s just, like, well, their stuff, and mebbe some of them kind of get how it all works but most of them are just like ‘gimme that thing’ because I can use it to call a place to get a footrub delivered or summing…

“Anyhow, give that trinket to a low tech and they’re like ‘what in the actual?’ and prolly just use it to hit a nail or make a paper weight or summing because they don’t know what a button is, aeh? Like, how the hell would you know what a button is if all you do is cut grass to make a shack and eat stuff you killed with a stick? Aeh? Like, how many Zebras you see with buttons on them aeh? Like, ‘push here to make a steak’, aeh? Aeh!”

Cackling, he drops his rolly into an ashtray on the table and pauses to drink before starting to roll another.

“So this stuff you’re talking man, this knowing stuff, aeh, it works for high tech people just as well aeh, because all the stuff they know is still learned from somewhere, like, some geezer has to actually make that knowing and push it out into the world for all them other MF to pick up and run with, aeh? ‘Cause… what did Gibson say…? Yeah yeah yeah, he says, ‘the future is here, just not everyone gets the same size piece’, aeh?

“An that’s where it gets weird, aeh? ‘Cause you get these geezers who can just plain see the future panned out, aeh, like all laid out like a map in their heads, and they just know what’s on the edge of tomorrow, but other people are like, oooh, shiny thing I can drop in my digs and pretty the place up for when I get home from my boring as all get out job pushing buttons that some MF invented and then make that groove in the couch a bit bigger… all because they know that that smart-as MF is just like them, is like, one of them but just talks a lot of bollocks that says summing like ‘I got science that says it’ll rain real bad tomorrow’, which is just boring as all get out, and they don’t care. But man, weather is like this really complicated science, aeh? It’s not looking at guts or reading the bones, aeh, it’s intense…

“Aeh! But that geezer man, if you put him near one of them low tech, they’d be like, ‘whatinthe? How in the heck did this fool know it would be raining and thundering today?!’ and now that geezer is like a prophet or a seer to those low tech rubes and they like make a golden throne for some TV weather man!

“But for every high tech there’s a higher tech aeh? Like, even if you think you’re smart AF and know what you need to know about the world, aeh, then there’s still chances that someone just knows more about the future, just because that future is all bunched up and working its way out to us mooks real slow. So mebbe even high tech have prophets aeh? Mebbe ‘cause two schools of knowing don’t agree, or maybe ‘cause sometimes money or pride gets in the way, whatever, but sometimes what we think we all together know is wrong, and some geezer out on the edge of all this smug, complacent bastardry around us knows the real future, the real way that all and everything will play out, mebbe just because they put all the same pieces we all know together in some way that’s different to the normies, and mebbe it’s the real vision of the way the world works, not the version made up by geezers all reading the same books in the same order, aeh? So they’re like, like, just as ignorant as all them low techs, but tell themselves they just know the reality right, aeh? And it’s not till the end that those other MFs will finally recognise what it is, and that that one weirdo had it right all along…”

As the monologue fades the Carpenter picks up his beer, sips, and looks across the room in thought. “So, how do we wake them up man? How do we switch them on to stuff they can’t know or don’t want to? Is there someone out there, right now, who’s holding back knowing?

“It’s just… it’s just there’s stuff hiding out there aeh, I can feel it, but can’t tell where it’s hiding…”

Lofty lifts his chin a little, looking a little askance across the bridge of his nose at the Carpenter, takes a long drag on his cigarette, before stating, “How do you wake people up if they don’t even know they’re asleep? If they’re sleep-walking through their daze?

“Like, this isn’t The Matrix aeh? There’s no pill for that one… I guess the question is what are you gunna wake them up to? Aeh?”