Amos Well

There’s a black dog up on the hill yonder. My Amos wouldn’t tolerate the dogs on his fields but nowadays they run wild with nobody to stop them. Standing here on the back porch I always thought of that hill as Amos Ridge, though never said such a thing to him, lest he take the strap to me like some poor child he taken a dislike to. Everything around here got the mark of Amos upon it, including me. This is his farm. Amos Farm. That there: his field. Amos Field. Follow Amos Track down to the old barns where Amos done his slaughtering. Those poor cows afforded no dignity, in life or death. Amos Barns. Amos Meat. And then there’s me. Wife, he called me. Like I got no name of my own. Amos Wife. Well, not any more. Not since I took a rock to him, and put him down the well, bloody and confused and maybe a mite regretful. Now I’m Amos free.

Stupid Clock

Friday listens to the speaking clock.

She has a project: understand the dynamic voice qualities of a speaker – intonation, rhythm, fluency and speed – understand the speaker. Everyone is on a vibrating line into the their own future, and all futures are connected. The better you understand a person, the clearer their connection to their future, and to yours.

The problem is this: most people are complex. Not easy to know. Coloured by their experiences, their different personas, their agreements with themselves and the world. Friday knows her lover better than anybody – they have been intertwined some eight years. Yet even Owen’s line-to-the-future is clouded with uncertainty. Wreathed in a mist of contradiction and doubt.

So Friday has a theory: That woman, Sarah Mendes da Costa, recorded the speaking clock without doubt or uncertainty. She was focused on an emotionally consistent monologue. At that point in time, if you knew her well and had the gift, you should be able to see her line-to-the-future, and therefore yours. So Friday spends many free hours listening to the speaking clock, hoping to understand the voice and divine the future. It would be a technopaganic breakthrough.

Owen thinks: it’s just a stupid clock.

Goldfish

The history of goldfish is:

Like all things remarkable, goldfish were invented in China. Selectively bred from small Asian carp that had been kept as a food stock for thousands of years, they were venerated for their talismanic properties, regal connotation and beauty. It was perhaps for this complex symbology that small-time Black Country criminal and gang-member Elwood Stencil, after trying out the pseudonym Mo’ Tek, eventually settled on the nom de plume of The Goldfish, rather than for any physical similarity.

The modern condition of goldfish in the West is:

By the twentieth century their slow encroachment westward matched the debasement of their value: the fad for swallowing live goldfish as a stunt was first recorded at Harvard University in 1939 and persisted for many years. Today they are nothing more than prizes in plastic bags for children who can throw a hoop over a bottle at a travelling fun fair. It seems almost inevitable, therefore, that Elwood ‘the Goldfish’ Stencil would be the most laughably inept gang criminal in the history of the West Midlands. He remains incarcerated in a low security open prison from which he has failed to escape on several occasions.

The Insane World Without Phones

For Dagmar Birnbaum

Hollywood 1949:

The young emigrant with a bundle of papers under his arm hesitates at the scruffy office door of Poverty Row Studios. Every big picture maker in L.A. has slammed their door in his face. This one looks like it would fall off it’s hinges with the use of a few harsh words. So this is the last call for young aspirant script-writer Sergei Matrossov. Maybe his idea of fusing traditional B-Movie low-budget horror with the miracle of new technology is ahead of it’s time. Maybe he has to go back to the drawing board. Or the writing desk. Or the laundromat on the corner of Melrose & Sweetzer in Fairfax.

Nanophysics

For Craig Bradbury
Nanophysics has no place in the 21st century. Discuss.

Gotus says: This is a joke, right? He says: I mean, you didn’t get me up at… what time is it?

Doctor Sunshine just blinks, but way too slowly to be anything other than confrontational.

Meep says: 2 AM. Moop says: 2.08.

Moop says: AM.

You didn’t get me up, seriously, at stupid o’clock, to ask me that, right?

The twins both want to correct him on the time, but the doctor shoots them a look and Gotus continues, uninterrupted.

Fucksake Doc. What am I? Your midnight theoretical physicist?

The doctor mouths at the twins: That’s a rhetorical question right there. He knows it’s past midnight.

Meep and Moop like things to be just so and quite right, but Gotus isn’t in the right place for either. For the doctor, there is a delicate balance to be struck. The needs of the Asperger twins against the potential meltdown of Gotus in the middle of a philosophical enquiry.

Out back in the kitchen, Weisner is laughing.

Sunshine says: Coffee is on. He asks Gotus: You want coffee? He says: Shall I get Weisner to fetch you a mug?

Gotus is diverted by the offer. Now he’s got two questions to think about. He says: Yes.

The doctor says: What, coffee?

No. Nanophysics.

Gotus is looking down the passageway now, towards the kitchen where Weisner, all of a sudden, has gone quiet. Whether its the distracted look in his eye, the subtly altered body position which is saying ‘placid and centred’, or just the directness of his answer, Gotus has shifted the doctor onto his back foot. With Sunshine momentarily confused, it falls to the Asperger twins to make it just so and quite right.

Meep says: Gotus says: Yes, nanophysics has no place in the 21st century.

Moop says: But he has not, to all intent and purpose, discussed it.

By now Weisner is standing in the doorway, a mug of steaming coffee in each hand. Leaning against the door frame, fascinated.

By using the words ‘place’ and ’21st century’ in your opening gambit, you are intrinsically implying a construct of fixed time and space. Patently this does not accord with the key arguments of nanophysics which place events outside of both dimensions, and therefore, since the question itself must be deemed contradictory, even non-sensical, I do not believe any answer or discussion thereof need be bound by any sense of sensibility. Hence no. Or yes, specifically.

Weisner moves from the doorway. Offers Gotus and Sunshine a mug each. Gotus says: I don’t think so. He says: It’s late. He says: I’m going back to bed.

Doctor Sunshine watches him go. Takes a coffee from Weisner and rubs his chin with his other hand, all thoughtful. Weisner is headed back to the kitchen, laughing again.

Moop looks at Meep, but Meep is distracted by something on the floor. Without looking up he says: That’s the seventh cockroach today.