Chapter Twenty-One

The Security Guard’s Curse

It would be tempting to state that it was a squat grey building and the clocks were striking thirteen, but it wasn’t and they weren’t.

Even though the building wasn’t so far off, it was subject to an optical illusion, making the actual distance difficult to gauge. It would’ve been one of those unnoticed buildings, blending in to its surroundings…but no other buildings occupied its surroundings, so it stood out like a neon oasis on the moon.

After slipping through bars and around the heavy doors of perception, Atoll stood outside the Greco-German façaded courthouse that formed a boundary between tempered cognitive behaviour and the lands of free imagination. Atoll shrugged and sighed while mentally seminarring and conferencing his resources. He pre-alerted himself to the fact that he was going it alone; echo solo…solipso nihilandro style… Auto-preparation was the key to conquering the unfolding of real time data. Atoll’s feet were step-ready for conveyance to the building that, should the authorities be alerted to Atoll’s escape (but they hadn’t to his arrest) would provide sanctuary while also offering openings…it was not certain to where, but in a universe of shutness openings were the gift of the gods.

The building began to shimmer as if to beckon, which to Atoll, seemed totally unnecessarily gauche, as there were no other ports of call within eye-shot. It was the number one destination on a list of one. He strode out towards the now gold-lit building as it glowed, lucid and lurid with ethereal iridescence… The edifice loomed noticeably closer every thirty or so strides causing an increasingly shambolic atmospheric cohesion. Atoll’s perception gave him the logically concluded appreciation that he was getting smaller the closer he approached the building. Such was his fear of isolation in the face of crowds of confusion that he suspected the entire venture might turn out to be a furtive flop in a festive flaphouse.

He was considering the fact that, after all the dust has settled and the lady of portly bellowing had begun warbling over the end credits, the whole adventure might prove undoable. 

But with the wise flippancy of sayings such as: when the pupil is ready the teacher will appear, there was an unexpected development: an old ally got in touch. A mailroom reconnection instigated…doubling, at least, Atoll’s hard-data appreciation of what was transpiring. It caused a reassessment of his positioning to his benefit. He talled himself up and dusted off his lack of confidence, which made his steps seems sturdier and less kittenish…

Una had edged her way up from the safe-room; working the corridors, finessing the swinging doors…listening to and interpreting the gargled chinks and hollow knocks of pipe-lingo. She’d fired up the workstations and barraged Atoll’s message receptors. And now they were back in business. It was the rapid exchange of scribbled notes that took Atoll’s attention away from his feet; and the sensation of getting smaller, until he found himself outside the, taller than previously imagined, office block. It was as though Atoll’s own elevated confidence had added storeys. Full audio comms with the mailroom returned: game on!

Una had dredged up and soaked herself with past training digestions and shed her insight into the developing game plan, ‘enter the building and go to the reception desk; ask to see the head of security…’

He walked into the plush brochure-aping reception area. His size and proportion perception stabilising…

‘Tell them your organisation has detected security breach issues within the building that you can resolve for them.’ 

Passing a plain clothed security guard, who after stirring from woken-slumber, the security guard’s curse, picked out Atoll and zeroed in; intentionally acting vague yet appearing clumsily obvious…

At the desk, Atoll asked the botrec (Botrec 7) to put him in touch with the building’s security head.

‘Number one is in a state of non-transferability. But I can offer you the two number twos in the head’s stead?’

‘Okay, I’ll go for the two-for-one offer.’

Then a thought prompted by the mailroom: don’t allow your confidence to trick you into over confidence…

‘Where are you from? What’s your name?’

‘Atoll Goodmanson. Building Security Breach Identification and Resolution Incorporated Ltd.,’ Atoll said off the top of his cuff, and added, ‘with no limits…’ showing, maybe, the merest reflective glint of over-confidence…

‘Oh yes…’ she said, speaking indecipherably into a retro phone…‘they’ll be down presently…as close to as…you can wait over by the giant cushions. Help yourself to time management meditation facilitation…and expedient gross mind-numbing munchie bars.’

It was among the giant cushions that Atoll had the chance to process the bulk support packages incoming from the mailroom. Atoll agreed with Una that they needed to locate, contact, rescue and form an alliance with Sybil, and in that order.

In theory the last piece of CREE real estate was running a quarantine protocol. The system needed to keep the Super Smart Shutdown System (Sybil) alive to stay alive itself. It was a failsafe, foolproof anomaly loopfinitum malfunction. Atoll agreed with his own theory that they were living in an age when nothing would shut down without the application of all-out brute force and the overarching finality of sledgehammerhead over-bytes… 

The quarantine staging arena’s weak spot was an Non-Status Oblique-Accessibility Crevice (NSOAC), whose existence was owed to health and safety regulations from the passed halcyon days of safeguarding…it was too simple to assume they could access there to extract Sybil, but that option was slow-cooking over a low heat.

‘Why the head of security?’ Atoll asked.

‘It is the optimum place to start…to get back to the CREE space, we need some serious security breaches.’

The plain clothes security gentleperson zig-zagged, nonchalanced and eventually ‘worm-holed’ his way into the aura-boundary and shadowscape of Atoll’s Giant Cushion Domain (GCD). Then he zoned in, using the: ‘am-I-a-statue-or-not?’ motionless/disanimated poise routine. Trying to brute force time into doing things it was not designed for. Atoll broke the running ambush just in time. He turned square on to the incoming security threat, ‘these cushions are immense!’ he blurted…it worked, ‘I beg your pardon? Sorry…woke-slumber, the security guard’s curse…’

‘We all have our curses to bear.’

‘Quite. I am going to stand by the main entrance door, but I will watch what’s going on so you don’t find yourself in any hot water.’

Atoll imagined that somewhere up in the giraffe’s enclosure atrium there was a vast tank of hot water that was dumped on those who were not fully acquiescent with foyer laws and directives. The truth was no such thing had ever even been considered; now it was a thing. A thing of danger that Atoll had inadvertently created. The solution being not to think about it. The situation prompted Atoll to peruse his musings on the UKGBHQ bunker scenario…he gave it the soap opera treatment and projected it on to a free wall turning the giant cushion waiting area into a private cinema.

The Commander, who was assuming nothing, except the position of total command, was on the internal comms trying to elicit a sitrep from Viktor, who had gone off, annoyingly, to do his own thing in a time when things needed to be centrally coordinated. The Commander needed help to prise out a deft strategy from a back-foot starting pose vis-a-vis the Botface’s Torso predicament. As far as she could ascertain, Jeff and Dave’s body/brain complex had been taken over by separate copies of Botface’s Torso while the minds of Jeff and Dave had been transferred to storage within the torso. All through training technology had only hinted that the future would bring the advent of such terror.

‘Viktor, Viktor, Viktor, please come in….we have a situation…’

The Commander talked to herself dramatically in a way she never would outside Atoll’s extrapolated evaluative reconstruction narrative, ‘I fear for the safety of Jeff and Dave, and probably Kirk…we cannot say if they are being stored and will later be released…or whether they have been disposed of and the story, they are well and catered for, is lacking in veracity.’

The soap cut off….raised voice one number followed by raised voice number two entered the reception hall as if from the back of the stage. The voices were at each others throats…

‘After the head…I am number one,’ said the first voice.

‘No…I am,’ countered the second voice.

‘No…you are number two,’ the first voice counter-countered.

‘Come on! We are both number twos,’ two reasoned.

‘I am number one after number one,’ the first voice insisted, sounding conclusionary, but not being allowed to let victory loosen its cravat.

‘Do the math…we are both number two…I am telling you.’

‘You cannot have two number twos.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because…it leads to too many arguments.’

‘I agree with you there…’

‘You agree?’

‘Yes…because although we are both number two, I am not arguing…this puts your argument in the refuse bin for false argumentation, does it not.’

‘Very much not.’

‘Why don’t we just pencil in that we are both number two, but you are more number two than I am,’ the second voice stated, acquiescing as far as he could within a framework of interactional logic.

‘Agreed unequivocally…Inked indelibly…’

They furthered physically into a threeway conversational docking korero initiation locality, and then mentally followed through.

‘HI there, Number Two,’ the first voice said, suspiciously, to Atoll,’ handing him his card, ‘I wonder why they think there is a place in the world for such giant cushions.’

‘Hi, I am Number Two A,’ the second voice stated sounding more like a question,’ doing the same card-wise, in a visual echo, ‘I can’t help feeling that giant cushions mean that there have been cuts elsewhere.’

‘I know what you mean.’

‘You look like a man at home in cushion heavy environments.’

Atoll asked the two-men whether they had seen Sybil, showing them a patchwork picture-set he projected on to the wall. Atoll went through each picture and every time the answer was negative; they had not seen the woman. But in the last image, a guise Atoll had never seen Sybil adopt, they both went cold and then super heated on the way back round to be cold again, both examining their potential exit strategy permits; jolted, as they were, into jacksoflaxification. They knew her alright…they had nothing else to add and left silently leaving Atoll alone in a whole world of giant cushions…the picture was of the super-disciplinary personality who was never far from the HR interrogation rooms of their minds…it was the number-two-men’s arch executive managerial overlording Ghengisesque roughshodist: the Head. Who, as it were, may not be transferable, but was responsible for the final transfer of many a stain-polishing student-of-humanity.

The door guard up-perked from his accursed woken-slumber and set about catering for (and paranoiding over) the abandoned guest.

‘Look…security takes care of itself round here… and when it doesn’t…there’s not a goddam thing no soul-with-a-role can do about it…’ which was either gobbledegook or code, ‘we have an App that helps you leave the scene or an App that helps you integrate. Whichever it is, the program I have just initiated will help…’

Atoll appealed to the mailroom and the mailroom offered, ‘it is a Faux Utility Cross Knarple…’

‘Knarple?’

‘It just makes up the k.’

‘Makes up the k?’

‘Acronym.’

‘What?’

‘Take the elevator to twenty…now…go!’

Atoll didn’t get it until the climb to twenty eased to jolted stop… ‘Somethings are not worth explaining,’ interposed the mailroom with a tapering fuse width, ‘if you swap the “n” of “narple” and apply a “k” it creates an acronym…’. It fell in to place…how childish…it was the naive juvenility that had foxed him. He wished people would be a little more grown up…it didn’t augur well for the coming meeting with LA Snoopers, the detective agency run by one of the co-sub-heads of the building’s security arrangements. Atoll had read the card handed to him by the number two security sub-head and acted on the information.

From the moment the curtains of the elevator were pulled back the cinematic vista launched a powerful chemical sanguinity; the view, raging behind the reception area and beyond, was a drug.

A huge sign that announced that you were entering the domain of the LA Snoopers: a one stop shop where non-stop shoppers can drop, which was either code or one of those darlings that had escaped having its clock punched.

An androgynous receptionist who did not have any robotic signatures yet did not fully convince as humanoid, formed an enigma that was merely the beginning of a chain of enigmatic factors.

‘How can we help you today?’

‘Today…I’d like to visit with the boss.’

‘The boss?’

‘Yes please, the boss of LA Snoopers?’

‘I see…please take a seat.’

Atoll sat in the smaller of two alcoved areas. The TV was on…it was either code-heavy or propagandic sewage…A  female head and shoulders read the news…she’s a generic presenter type, but not without her…’ he was musing as:

‘Atoll…I am glad you could make it.’

It was the number two voice, but he had changed…everything about him was in his element, he was a man driven by passion; cruising along passionate roads heading for mountain ranges from where altitude called passionately.

‘It is a progression, let’s say…’

‘I am sure…please…come this way…I have something you might be interested in.’

Atoll was intrigued, they had only just met, how could this fellow possibly know what Atoll was interested in? Was he that see-through?

The man, who looked like someone else, led Atoll through a maze of workstations; thirty or so, with about nine bots functioning operationally within individual half-cubicles… What grabbed Atoll’s attention was the stunning view…so in your face that it felt like your face was reflecting it back like sunlight from a celestial sphere. So panoramic it seemed to exceed three hundred and sixty. It was reminiscent of his LA view back at base, but possessed such a vast and vital hyper-reality that it was hard to believe it was merely replicating actuality; it seemed more than actuality could bear.

The man who seemed to have changed as if to suit his surroundings, led Atoll into a glass cage of an office, also see-through, and noticeably the plushest spot. By the time he sat down and beckoned Atoll to sit in a comfy chair the opposite side of his aluminiumesque composite desk, he’d grown larger and more relaxed as though business was now going to be the kind of pleasure that gave the cleaners a headache.

‘My name,’ the man said, ‘is Tony Gay,’ appearing more and more Hispanic as he spoke. His true name was being mentioned for the first time, as though it wasn’t safe or secure to be bandying it about.

Tony gave Atoll his introduction to Snooper ethos and working ethics, but it went over Atoll’s head, as he was gazing out into the view, ‘I’m sorry…I’ll get them to turn it down a bit,’ Tony said, before going back to the spiel. This allowed Atoll to better realise what he was seeing out there. Everything became peripheral to the dawning fact that in the dead-centre focal-point of the Vistamatic Trudisplay was the apartment that he called home. It took a while to work out, it was a substrata of all the codes he’d learned: he was looking through one world and into another from another completely different one. He was being taught a new language. The detail of the apartment was so fine that even though he’d never seen it from the outside, the perspective geonomics and trajectophenominalisation assessments confirmed it as his abode in another world. So true was with micro-fidelity and granular enhancement that he imagined he was at home. He wondered what the Voice was up to; with optical enhancement you’d probably be able to see the Voice from here, if it had any physical properties.

‘…would you like us to proceed?’

‘Yes,’ Atoll responded, because ‘no’ would’ve smothered the foreword momentum, and asking for clarification would have been disrespectful at minimum.

‘I’ll have a contract written up and we can have a little signing ceremony invoking a discrepancy of your choice.’

‘Okay…sounds…where can I get a Vistamatic like this? I am not sure I’ve ever seen Dextro-Fidelity Ultra-Proving to that level.’

‘It is just the view,’ Tony replied, seemingly perplexed, bringing out the buffers to stop Atoll in his tracks… 

He believed what he believed and Atoll didn’t have the heart. Atoll allowed the happenstances to flow rather than interjecting any retardancy…he knew the general picture of what was happening and the stance he needed to adopt. What was going down was going to go down. Slips were slipping and slides were sliding. It was building to a climax, but they needed to avoid a slippage meets slidage deathmatch.

The mailroom intergnosticised with an astute directive, gently steering the impending sale… ‘Apparently, one of the security sub-heads runs a detective agency.’

‘I know…I’m there now,’ Atoll replied, with a know-it-all’s unattractiveness.

‘No…LA Snoopers…that’s a front for Vistamatic Trudisplay sales. The bonafide detective agency that could help find Sybil is located two floors up. It is called the New York City Corp: making pips squeak in the Big Apple. Whatever you do: don’t sign anything.

Atoll backed out…picked himself up…and elevated to twenty-two; two levels up; gazing out at the Vistamatic Trudisplay: transfixed on the apartment in New York in which he lived with the Voice…Atoll was finding it increasingly difficult to keep his composure. He was teetering on the edge of the Pillow of Bewilderment (PoW); drifting into a vapid woken-slumber, the security guards curse.