Business as Usual - Ulf Skei - E-Book

Business as Usual E-Book

Ulf Skei

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Beschreibung

The final installment in the trilogy dealing with the wonderful couple Elvis and Chlôe in Stockholm and their mad adventures in a universe suffering from a digitized psychosis. Existentialism and a french philosopher are important parts in the play of things. Jump on and do enjoy...

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Seitenzahl: 242

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

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Business as Usual

TitelsidaChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Copyright

Business as Usual

by

Ulf Skei

Chapter 1

Introductory Remarks

The view was of a different kind. Everything a dream. One would expect to see a humanoid or two walking about in the park across the street. Or possibly a larch or crow passing by in the above. The wind was of a breezy kind. A few waves could be noted in the pond over there in the park. A sudden person sat silently on a park bench throwing bread crumbs at the birdies. It was all strange. A humming sound could be heard from some undefined position in the surrounding area. It was the sound of electric current generators and circuits of the pc cards harboring existence as such.

This part of being was created in huge interstellar computer halls. Or desks. Well, really they were planets. Minor planetoids circling a major artificial sun. A reactor supporting existence as we know it with the required amounts of power. This version, 37 dash 42ª, had been commissioned from Bæthelreadge Desktop velveteen Inc seven years ago to the day. Specifications included automatic updating and regular service and upkeep of the software as well as hardware. Errol Quatermain III, company director, had contractors specified for the upcoming 50 years. Well, give or take a few. This was how it was generally agreed. It was the expected outcome of the digitization of being as decided and acted upon by the council of planetary affairs. The directors had decided to abandon physical being as it entailed too many uncertain parameters.

Meanwhile a digitized seagull sat waiting for a trawler to arrive in a digital port carrying its digitized load of herring and mackerel. The sound of the humming circuits was reassuring, somehow. All of this existed only as a thought. A stream of consciousness within a gigantic mind. A mind called Universe...

Universe was a grumpy old entity. Grumpy and quite lonely.

           "Yes, I will create a world, a copy of myself in digital form."

Universe created itself and started socializing. It found itself unbearable. It hated itself. It invented existentialism in response to its own peculiarities. One might see it all as a gigantic game of chess. The invented species were all pawns in the game between universe and itself. Like all pawns relatively unwillingly, but finding free will and control of their existence an interesting new flavor. The entities existing during the transmission from physical to digital could at times experience odd sensations of not belonging. A feeling of existing in a glitch between worlds. Readers of this trilogy have met our main characters, Elvis and Chlôe, before. They had the possibly enriching opportunity to visit the backside, and to meet with the code-monsters and vespa crew which upheld the illusion of reality. When we enter this final installment in the trilogy digitizing has been completed. One might say the crossover has been finalized. A strangely realistic herd of giraffe trotted in silence across the skyline on the outskirts of what in the earlier, physical, world would have been Lisbon in the nation Portugal. The butterflies by a trench across a field in a stretch of land inspired by Belgium circulated aimlessly. Exactly as they were programmed to do. A cloud traversed the sky in what would in physiworld have been south Stockholm. The speck of dust landing outside a door had always been doing this, and would continue doing so eternally. A digiperson called Elvis was waking up. It knew nothing of its being a line of code. Like every digiperson it assumed it was a real person and that it was living in a very peculiar universe. This final instalment in the trilogy deals with the awakening. What happens when a person realize it is nothing but code and existing in a super computer?

Follow me on this trip through existence and being and we shall see...

#

The Light was of another, more sinister kind. A slow passage of time indicated itself by pointing out the necessity to handle yesterdays meticulously. This was done, and a note delivered to an office situated somewhere in universe made clear that a squad of four would have to be dispatched.

Artemis Coudenhafte IV appeared a bit nervous. His position as civil servant in the Knightsbridge Wellington administration - a position to which he had admittedly arrived in a somewhat roundabout manner including a telephone call from his uncle Rufus, generally known to be influential regarding anything concerning the home office, to a certain individual referred to as 'P'. P was certainly a very skilled manager. His background consisted of such posts as Team leader of External affairs, Temporary Director of the RSPCA, leader of three departments at the MI5, Librarian at the Royal Swedish Library etc. He was a man to be reckoned with. Artemis Coudenhafte knew little or even nothing about P. He knew that his uncle had pulled strings to get him into the company that handled the day to day business of the presidential administration. It would generally take time and perseverance to land a lucrative and pleasant position in this company. Artemis got his degree from a university in another corridor, the one with blue doors. After the degree party which his mother and father had arranged, he applied for the position as desk clerk at a firm merely known as the company. He mentioned this at a cricket luncheon with his father. Well, the rest - as they say - is history. After a sticky wicket late in the afternoon it was decided that they should visit aunt Edna and uncle Rufus. Following a cup of tea in the dressing room the men left for cigars in the library. Artemis felt a bit uncomfortable but joined the conversation.

           "Yes. Desk clerk. The administration. Very nice." Artemis tried to appear the acquired taste. The suave gentleman. Uncle Rufus left to make a call. The next day Artemis was summoned to be introduced at the office.

           "This is Artemis Coudenhafte, our new member of the back office." The man who introduced Artemis at the morning meeting in room 36 of the yellow door corridor seemed to like being the center of attention. Artemis did not enjoy any sort of attention. He nourished a faint hope that this would be a swift affair so he could be assigned a cubicle or a little office in which he could disappear into the walls or the carpet. The man who introduced Artemis was a junior manager named Apsley. He hinted at a sofa in the hallway, Artemis followed him and they sat down to discuss his duties.

            "I am mainly a linguist. Early modern English. Verb changes in the plays of Shakespeare is my area." Apsley looked at Artemis and thought 'Oh dear'.

            "Well, you will be handling mostly yesterdays. And at times last weeks. So in a way you will be dealing with the history of language, as we deal mainly with printed matter." He pointed at a pile of papers on a desk by the far end of the room. "The Notes are mainly delivered by runner. If the matter is urgent the tube mail system is used, but we try not to use it as it is less reliable. Once a qualified note got sent to the Hungarian embassy, which is in the brown doors corridor approximately 47 minutes away by HooverTrack™." Aspley felt uneasy, and said "lets go to your room, so you can get into our routines. I'll show you what you need to know in order to be a well functioning part of the machinery." They left and entered the corridor. All doors were yellow. Artemis didn't like the particular yellow nuance they had chosen, but thought to himself that one has indeed got to sacrifice certain aspects of existence in order to get on with life. They walked about 736 metres and stopped by a yellow door with the number 69 indicated in a friendly typeface Artemis didn't recognize but accepted anyway.

             "Here is your room. Number 69. From now on, whenever you see a slip of paper with the numbers 6 and 9 printed on it in that order, without the 'and' inserted between the numbers, you know it is a matter concerning you, ok?"

              "Ok." Said a somewhat confused Artemis Coudenhafte. Aspley gave him a key code printed on a tiny slip labeled 69.

              "Here is your key code. Memorize it and then destroy the slip. I'd memorize it well if I were you. Acquiring a new key code for an office in the yellow corridor involves as diverse acts as traveling across to the central offices in sector Latinum XIV, having one of the local penguins for dinner and even painting an abstract portrait of our founder, Erwin Schlegel."

               "I'll be very careful." Artemis looked at the paper and thought to himself 'I can't paint…' and entered the code into a little keyboard by the side of the door. A sob was heard from some kind of hidden machinery. The door, a Royal Hingeman 37, slid open with a soft sigh. All the while a discrete hum of some sort of ventilation system could be heard along the corridor. Not disturbing or unpleasant, just discrete. It was the Bendix 52 electrical motors in the central ventilation halls that produced a hum while operating. When the corridors system was agreed upon by the Board of Interstellar Affairs there had been discussions regarding everything from coffee machines (the Multi Purpose 97 was ordered), waste paper baskets (The Scooper 5C) to ventilation system. After a long night and take away dinners for the whole board of directors the Bendix 52 was agreed upon. It was a relatively low cost engine, and still to be trusted in the long run. The sound was probably what made them decide to go for the 52, though. It was a sound of pleasure. Like the motors enjoyed what they did. This was, of course, a figment of the imagination. The electrical engines knew nothing. They felt nothing and could ipso facto not display any emotions. It was simply the clever move of a junior member of staff at the Bendix Equipment Co. The name of this member of staff was Szigmund Everett. Szigmund Everett was a dedicated saxophone player in the company band. He enjoyed nice sounds and coffee. He found out that applying just a little bit of pressure when mounting the ball bearings made the engine sound like a sigh of pleasure. Szigmund notified his manager of this, and he in turn notified higher management. The idea was added to the production plans, and the Bendix 52 was born. This was something that would affect the future of ventilation engine production to quite some extent. The Bendix 52 would, in fact, push three other ventilation businesses out of their comfortable position as top notch ventilation providers for the government. There, See what a little engine can do.

#

At a slightly earlier time, but about three million parsecs away, in another spiral arm of a galaxy very far away indeed, someone was making morning coffee. It was on the planet earth, in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. We already know the inhabitants of the apartment on Bergsgatan. Elvis Karfeldt and Chlôe Lavigne. Our heroes from the previous novels in this trilogy. Elvis was making a cup of his favorite decaf. The days when he could enjoy his Kembe espresso was over due to his ulcer. Decaf was the thing these days.

          "Yes. A cup of the black pleasure. Life is good." Elvis listened to the sound of his coffee machine, a Royale Black, while it produced the sweet drops. The sound of the discrete stream of coffee into his little cup was one of his favorite sounds. 'Almost as sweet as jazz' he thought. He brushed away a tiny speck of dust from the arm of his gown, a Turnbull Castle 58, and took the cup of pleasure and ventured towards the armchair - a chair he had affectionately baptized 'Morgana'.

          "There, now it's only you and me again, Morgana. Like so many times before." Elvis, as you might recall, had the odd habit of applying personalities to his possessions. Thusly his favorite armchair was a middle aged lady from Yorkshire. His coffee machine was a certain Luther from Paris. From Montparnasse, in fact. A café owner. A bit grumpy. The hard drive of his laptop was called Partre. It was very existentialist. Just like Elvis. If you, which I hope, have read books one and two in this trilogy you know that Elvis is a dedicated existentialist and book antiquarian with a taste for the sublime. You are also aware that Elvis and Chlôe are among the few people who know that the world we see every day, and for all intents and purposes believe to be real, is not. To be precise it is not real, or unreal, it is not at all. They know that everything is a Holographic image maintained and at times altered by the Company only known as the Company. They both know about some of the doors to the backside. The backside is where the corridors across the universe are. The backside is also a world just as artificial as the front side. As our world. It is a world populated by the code weavers and repairmen on their Vespas riding through a gigantic italianesque countryside repairing broken pieces of the Holographic weave that the tiny nano weavers didn't notice. Elvis sighed and took a sip of his decaf. It was perfect.

           "It is perfect," said an amused Elvis, "the best start to a perfect day. I think today I shall retrieve that copy of Heidegg's Blue Notebooks." Elvis had a customer from Falun, a little town about 200 kilometers to the north, who had expressed some interest. "But first a cigar."

Elvis was a man of the world. His smoking gown was smooth and had a distinct cigaresque tint. He used to call it Sidney. Elvis put on Sidney and discretely walked towards his newspaper and cigar room. He glanced leisurely at the pages in the latest issue of the Paris Review. 'To keep up with the news of the business' he thought to himself. The morning was excellent, like almost all mornings in Elvis and Chlôe's mansion on Bergsgatan.

           "Ah, life, I love you." Elvis couldn't stop himself from expressing satisfaction with his book antiquarian existence. "True, Jean Sol, existence is pain, but bits and pieces of it are actually rather nice." Elvis often had chats with Jean Sol, the father of his life philosophy, existentialism. Jean Sol had left this earth to become part of the nothingness all existentialists did their utmost to avoid. This was only natural, and Elvis felt he had some sort of connection to the great philosopher anyway. His eyes went to the bookshelf searching. "Ah, there." He found what he was looking for. Being and Nothingness. His guide to life, existence, nothingness and time.

Indeed.

#

At the same time someone opened a door in a room. The person opening the door expected a corridor to be on the other side of that door. There was no corridor, or rather there was nothing like what we here in our world would label 'corridor'. Winston Parsnip Johnson was an insurance salesman at the Gordon, Llewes, Gordon & Sons Insurances ltd. The company was very old. It had, in fact, existed before the medieval vowel shift in the queen's English. Of course it had changed its direction and main purpose over the years. In the beginning it was mainly a source of military force, a knighthood or gathering of knights under an umbrella organisation active in the holy land. The holy land was a strip of land where some people believed a mighty being called god had once had a son. Of course this mighty being was no god. It was just a philosopher from one of the worlds far away. The being was called Ruprecht. The beings on the world Ruprecht came from made babies in a special way. They let a thought enter through the ear of the being of their desire. This thought was so strong and powerful that it actually made the being of desire produce a copy of the thought mixed with the being of desire. The people living in the area was a primitive people of fishermen, carpenters and farmers. They knew nothing of the world Ruprecht came from. They knew nothing of the corridors and extraordinary manners of transportation which - as I explained in an earlier book - had made the Dodo among other peculiar animals arrive to the earth. These primitive people had no other way of explaining the son of Mary, the being of desire, than it being the son of an all powerful, invisible and extraordinary entity they chose to label 'god'. This mistake has caused a lot of trouble and made a lot of people very annoyed. The son of the object of desire and the thought lived a peculiar life, mainly due to his parents. Well, the person is not really part of this story. I mention him just to give a feeling of community to the start of the company. Knight Templars, that's what the persons starting the company called their business in the beginning. Nowadays it had joined the rest of earth and become a Hologram. One of the major drawbacks of existence in the Hologram world was that at times parts of the pixel weave of which this 'world' consisted failed. This was an example of such a time. Winston Parsnip Johnson was on his way to the coffee machine by the corridor intersection to his left. Well, suffice it to say he had never been closer to his maker. Or, to be more precise, he had never before been so close to the enormous void labeled 'outer space'.

          "Oh dear, what have we here?" Winston Parsnip Johnson held on to the door handle and felt a drop of sweat under the tip of his nose. He was somewhat scared. "What has happened to my corridor?" He felt with the tip of his shoe. Outside his threshold there appeared to be nothingness. Winston Parsnip etc gazed across what was evidently nothing. Far away from his little office, an office that presently represented the only safe harbor in the neighborhood, he noticed several dark cubes drifting about. On some of the cubes he saw rectangles of light with a dark mass bobbing about within its boundaries. 'Doors', thought a nervous Winston. He thought he saw his corridor neighbor Edna Hargrave Millay over there to the right of a coffee machine and a set of cafe table and chairs sliding by. He almost made a jump, but his courage went for lunch, so he decided to stay put.

          "Edna, hello. What's going on?" Winston called at the top of his ability. Anybody with the slightest knowledge of outer space would soon give up trying. Winston didn't know the fact that there were no air in outer space made it impossible for sound to exist there. Edna had no idea of such things, she hung on to the door handle and wondered what Winston was waving about. She too called out for attention.

          "Winston. What on earth is happening to us?" Winston didn't hear her. When Edna said 'us' two things happened simultaneously: A piece of their lunch restaurant came bobbing by, one could see quite a few people still having lunch in there, and on a whole other note, at a literary conference on a little literature planetoid called Bernhard #3 a philosopher going by the name Coltrane Partre, no relation whatsoever, was about to present his contribution to the conference; a deep dive into the realm of the passing of time and its relation to the nothingness of a cold and dry farewell with the title 'Time Past, Time Present and the Nothing of Totality'. This is mentioned just in passing as I thought it'd be interesting for you to know an existentialist out there wrestled cold nothingness at exactly the same time Winston, Edna, and their colleagues had cause to entertain several pondering on nothingness, and the sublime. Nothingness, as I'm sure you are aware, is that empty void which stares back at one. The nihilist conception of reality. Coltrane was no nihilist. Let us say he was a depressed existentialist. He was not negative per se, he was generally an easygoing chap, but his finances combined with his lack of sense of order as regards his wallet had brought with it a number of unpleasant episodes. It's complicated. There was nothing evil or stupid about him, he simply could not for the life of him understand how to handle his paycheck. He spent most of the time at the library reading philosophy and drinking coffee. His mind was a brilliant source of useless knowledge. He had spent many years at the university studying history of linguistics, the major world religions, history of science. All completely unable to put dinner on the table. This, however, did not impress our friend in the least. He was as existential as can be. He was well aware of the fact that existence was pain and the only goal was to limit the amount thereof. Said and done. He decided to walk in the shoes of J S P. Those were not easily filled shoes, but he wore them and produced a number of treatises which made his superiors scratch their heads. He explained to his audience how time in all its form appeared as modifier to that nothingness of totality to which he saw existence as such being a reference. From the far end of the room could be heard a depressing saxophone. Newspaper men delivered headlines of tomorrow and a sad nightingale spread the words of a yesterday where trees were still a common occurrence.

          "The darkness can only intervene if allowed to…" Coltrane tried to point at the few strands of light in his dark world. "But none of this and nothing else much matters, we are only tokens, thrown out into the neutrum of existence. There really is nothing much to do. Once born, humans have to take part and dance the fugue." Coltrane was in his prime. I wonder how he would have handled knowledge of his immediate future? I suspect his thoughts would have wandered slightly off topic had he known that he would be transported about 2.73 million miles away from the halls of his present existence, to spend the following 3.42 years contemplating life and existence accompanied by sand, yellow grass, and a Holographic city called Holfram. Of course it would have made him feel a bit under the weather, as the British say. But 'hey', you say, 'what are you talking of?'. Well, I'm just getting a bit ahead of you. This is not too big a surprise, considering I'm the one making all this up. I create worlds and those inhabiting the worlds. I also make up problems for them to solve. Which is what I have just made up for Coltrane. A problem. So let's go, come on. Follow me. Coltrane left the hall by the stage door leading to an alley where cats used to fight and the local drunks pass out. As our friend walked the three steps leading down to street level from said stage door, he could feel a slight breeze in his hair, and complained silently to himself about the weather. Little did he know it was in fact the start of an interstellar phenomenon originating on a tiny planetoid called Bertram in the vicinity of the clouds of Magelhaes. I doubt he would have thought much about it, had he known. It would indeed make Coltrane's life a bit messy for the foreseeable future.

So, let us delve into this future phenomenon, or past, depending on ones point of departure, to talk with Heidegg. What Coltrane had stumbled upon as he stepped out into the night after his speech was nothing less than an interstellar transportation unit running amoch. Hear me out. A long time ago, actually during the first steps of the digitizing of existence, a council set up a meeting for the immediate star cluster members. There were several important points of interest to be discussed. The invention of digitizers/scramblers and de-scramblers for interstellar transports was top priority. Chairman of the conference board was a certain Pfederer Garnet, a local political star on Bertram. His hope was to get this conference over and done with within a relatively short span of the illustrious entity called 'time'. After having argued with one of the engineers for three days about the perfect temperature of coffee he realised this would be a far fetched dream.

          "73 Centigrades, I tell you. This is the perfect temperature for dissolving active ingredients in coffee grounds." Pfederer looked at the speaker, an engineer going under the name Estheros Ffinks. Pfederer wondered whether he was listening to the words of a lunatic or a genious. He was actually listening to the words of a genious going utterly and completely mad, which can be useful at times I suppose, but this was not one of those times.

          "My good man, are you being serious?" Pfederer made a gesture signifying bewilderedness. "You are aware this conference is supposed to deal with matters of vital interest to at least 573 known worlds and potentially very important to major parts of our immediate galaxy cluster?" Pfederer made use of his theatrical training from his time as an extra in a local theatre group, by standing up, pointing to at least three positions diffusely far away from his present position and also hinting at his instead of feat thingies. Several of the engineers in the room shook their heads and an alarm somewhere else started humming. Ffinks replied by staring madly at his instead of hands thingies and whistling a sad tune his mother used to whistle when she was too upset to speak.

The engineers carried out several tests, procedures supposed to shed light on transport of scrambled pixels through the known universe. Among the tests were several trial runs of the machinery supposed to move constituents of Holograms from one part of the universe to anywhere else, not necessarily within said universe. The days, weeks, months and years passed by. The conference on Bertram took on several of the characteristics of a planet of its own. Its spectrum widened to include construction of news distributors and lunch restaurants. Pfederer had given up any and all ideas of ever seeing his family again, and Ffinks had formed a group of loyal followers with whom he exchanged ideas and proposals on a daily basis. The machines that were supposed to scramble and descramble Holograms got better and better. There were also a network of transports to and from the conference set up. A community developed around the halls where the meetings were held. Due to the sheer size of the building complex, it developed its own centre of gravity and left the planetoid Bertram. It produced its own atmosphere and sectors for maintaining biological life forms and food production were arranged on the outskirts of community. During the tests and experiments several routes of transportation grew. At times planned, sometimes accidentally.

Chapter 2

The doors were all shut. Elvis tried one of them and it slid open. A sudden cafe appeared up front. Outside there were a neon sign with an image of a cup of coffee and a smoking cigar. 'JavaBlack' it said. It was evidently a place to be reckoned with.

"Hope they have decaf, or Kembe" said an instant Elvis. "And Habañeros" he added. Our dear friend preferred Habañeros, the sweet and mild taste coupled with the limited size made them perfect for an afternoon cup. He swiftly entered the establishment and noticed this cafe was run by his old Holographic acquaintance Stig. The perfect image of the perfect barmaid was also present.

"Hello sailor," she said, "what can I do for you?" The Hologram did its job.

"Hello, Lola, a cup of Kembe and a Habañero if possible." Said Elvis and sat down at the chair by the indicated table. Lola nodded at Stig, who said

"Coming right up, my good man. Coming right up." He prepared a cup of Kembe in a way showing he knew his business. He also produced a Habañero from some hidden humidor. A quick swipe with his rag over the tray and he handed it to Lola who elegantly brought it over to Elvis.

"Thanks" he said "Here's lookin' at you kid." He winked at Lola who smiled and winked back, as she was programmed to do. Elvis knew this, of course. He understood the nice barman was only digits, just like Lola, and he was well aware of the fact that nothing could be enjoyed in a reality sense of the word. This was not important, though. The feeling, impression, sense of the fifties cafe was what he wanted. He lit the cigar. It was very well made. The smoke and glow was surreal. Unreal but very convincing. The smell of the coffee and cigar was produced by little chemical centra built into the framework of the operative system, an improved OSπ.

"This is life as it should be." Our friend was very pleased with the latest developments. A relaxed version of 'All the Way' filled the room. Another guest sitting at a table across the room raised his cup to Stig, whispering

"A dopo…" the way only a very beautiful italian woman can.

"Ciao." Replied stig. Ever the gentleman. The mysterious woman passed our hero's table on her way out from the cafe. Elvis felt a tiny hint of a perfume originating somewhere close to Juan-les-Pins. He was in heaven. Luckily his cigar called for attention. 'Close to Marakesh' could be heard from the well hidden loudspeakers.

"Cheers, Stig." He said, and rose to leave. Lola, the pixelated perfect illustration of a fifties bar maid, appeared out of nowhere.

"Have a nice day, sailor. I hope everything has been as you expected." She cleaned the table from some imaginary speck of whatnots and collected the tray with Holographic ashes and cup.

"Thanks, Lola. The same to you. And yes, everything has been perfect." Elvis was always as impressed with how the program could create such a perfect copy of his internal images referring to the 1950´s. Well, be that as it may, it was a perfect half hour pleasure on the way from that pathway to the corridors starting in Stockholm Old Town to the centre of offices he was sure to find somewhere up front. A sudden bicycle rider passed by at very high velocity while screaming a terrible old Andalusian poem. Elvis jumped to the side and felt a bit nervous. He fetched a white linen napkin from his left pocket. It was a very nice quality, from the southern parts of Sicily. He wiped his forehead and regarded the napkin. The high quality cloth could handle almost any sweaty forehead without losing structural permanence. This was so even now. He noticed a couple of damp spots, but they transported the humidity discretely to its inner strands.

"Marvelous quality. I must remember to thank Alessio for making this produce known to me." Elvis was a man of the world and he knew quality.

#