The List

This insanely long post is long. It is late and I am tired. Perhaps some of my readers can suggest a better way to end the story. Probabaly it needs heaps of work for anyone to understand what the heck I am going on about and why the doctor does what he does.

The List

It would be the perfect spot for that hebe cutting. Grandma finally decided. She looked up from the spot where she was digging. Hearing a noise she leaned on her well worn spade as she squinted into the glare. The postman had come. Sighing, she put down her spade and made her way over to where the mailbox was. There were three letters today. Two were of such a nature that doesn’t interest people like Grandma. One was one of those letters addressed to the ubiquitous “Householder”, the second was so forgettable that no one is really sure what it was about anymore. The third was, however of considerable interest. One of those letters that have that little plastic window on it, it had “Canterbury District Health Board” in bold type on the top left corner. It was addressed to “John Sinclair”.

When John returned home from work that evening, there on the kitchen bench was that letter. "It's about freakin' time" he thought as he opened the envelope. It was an appointment for him to see one "Dr Chantage Consultant". Finally, he was at the top of the waiting list. He had waited more than a year fo this appointment that would in all likelyhood take about 15 minutes, 20 at the most. "The public health system has gone down the proverbial" he muttered, throwing the letter on the table. He made himself a strong cup of tea and then sat down at his computer to ask Google about this "Dr Chantage".

The morning of the appointment, and Doctor Chantage was agitated. He was as usual reading the Press at his favorite early morning coffee haunt - "The Daily Grind" he had ordered his usual - Flat white - but it was taking longer than usual. He glanced over toward the man in the grey suit seated in the corner, taking care not to turn his head or make it obvious that he was looking at anything other than the article in the paper that detailed someting about a rates increase proposed for some reason. The man had removed his glasses. "That was the signal". He watched out of the corner of his eye as the man paid and left. "half a minute yet" he thought to himself. He watched the second hand slowly make its way around the face of the clock suspended above the counter. "It's time". He got up and went to the bathroom. Sure enough, under the spare toilet roll in stall three, he found the package. Sitting on the closed lid of the toilet he pulled a pair of latex gloves from one of his pockets. Pulling them on like he had done so many times before, he operated on the package. Inside he found a business card for an auto electrician by the name of "Reynold Mardel", and a small black device no larger than a cellphone with the words "Cardio Call" written on it. He placed them in a small zip lock bag, pocketed it and made sure to flush the excess packaging and the gloves, he made a show of washing his hands and went back to finish his coffee. "Make no change from the established routine" he told himself - he finished his coffee, made a show of reading the front page, and smiling at the cartoons. His job was now half done. As he made his way back to his car, he noticed a parking ticket. Swearing under his breath, he looked at it and screwed it up. Whoever thought of ticketing a doctor for $96 for parking in the disabled car park? “ah well, it was bound to happen some day”.

The day had arrived and John was early for his appointment. Sitting in the waiting room he couldn't help but notice the TV in the corner. On it was a plaque engraved with the thanks of someone or other who had finally got to see a heart specialist after who knows how long stuck on the list waiting for what should have been a simple diagnosis of mild Ischaemic heart disease which turned into a full blown heart attack case in need of angioplasty, because it wasn't diagnosed sooner. A nurse put her head round the door "John Sinclair?" she asked, "Yes", John said as he stood. Finally he was going to see the doctor.

After the diagnosis, as soon as John had thanked him and left the room, Doctor Chantage picked up his phone and dialed the number on the business card. He left a message on the answering machine stating that the 'cheque' was 'in the mail'. He hung up and breathed a sigh of releaf. He now wanted nothing to better than to forget the whole thing. Hopefully the blackmailers would leave him alone now.

After being told by the doctor that his condition was likely to be some thing that by now he couldn't remember the name of (that's John that couldn't remember, the doctor seemingly knew off the top of his head), John was ushered into another room to be fitted with the listening device that would accompany him for the next two weeks. It would sit in his pocket, attached to the electrodes that were attached to him, and it would listen apparently to his heart. He was now, for a few weeks at least, the bionic man.

It is a little known fact that it is possible to devise what a person is typing by the sound the keys make as you hit them. Each key has it's own unique acoustic signature so that, with enough recordings of someone typing, and using frequency analysis it is possible to listen in on the typing of someone and discern the message without looking at the screen. Simply by recording the sounds of someone typing at an internet cafe for instance, you can have access to their most personal data

One week later, as John arrived at work, he noticed a white van with "Lincoln Shuttle" written on the side parked outside. Upon entering the bank where he worked, he was arrested for five accounts of unlawfully accessing an information system, and for the theft of 5.1 million dollars. He wasn't granted bail. One Dr Chantage was at the court the day that John was convicted. He was there to pay an overdue fine for $96 for parking in a disabled persons car park without a disability sign.

The Unconscious

In a real strange way, this one started out as a blog about something rather different. None of it is true (unless you count the idea of ignoring the alarm clock). I think it makes one of the things on my 'stupid things of the month' list is obvious.

The Unconscious

He could hear a faint distant beeping in the background. Quiet. Rhythmic. Soothing in an almost animate, livingly hypnotic way, and yet in an uneasy mechanical way, full of foreboding and the sense of apprehension. The smell of the darkness was particularly deep, well worn and engulfing ones consciousness like the darkness itself, intense and all consuming. His mind was clouded with a 'can't be quite certain' 'don't really care right now' kind of daze that would occur if all the
reality television were distilled and refined to it's mind numbing, neuron atrophying essence. Stupor Concentrate. Freshly brewed in one universal entertainment percolator for your prescriptive pseudoreality fix.

The Diplomat

Recently I installed Ubuntu linux on my laptop, and it took two tries to get it to dual boot with Windows (my fault though, I didn't read the on screen instructions). This blog idea was originally based on that idea of two competing systems trying to have access to the same resources. Dumb I know, but since it was about time that I posted, my sense of duty overcame my often contradictory but seldom complementary sense of the cool. It was real boring at first, until, I changed what happened at the end - this made it like some of the stories by Philip K. Dick - who wrote 'Minority Report'.

I guess I'm just tired by all this good guy protagonists in my other blog posts and decided that my character could have some malevolant intent.

The Diplomat

With an air of deep seated but obscured suspicion, the sole New Zealand Delegate eyed his counterparts across the over-engineered but stylishly subdued negotiations table 'probably made from extinct exotic hardwood' he thought as he leaned back in his chair glancing with annoyance at the pen clicker – a lower level diplomat in a sombre gray suit, obviously bored by the proceedings who was clicking his pen in and out, in and out 'a little too bored' thought John.

'... relation to the trade embargoes which forthwith must be given our cautious approval.....'

Droned the drone on the other side of the table. John could see that his counterpart was nearing the end of his monologue, he sighed, made a show of pretending to hide a yawn, and rubbed his eyes, much to the consternation of the Beijing representative, who had just reiterated his nations sovereign right to 'blah blah blah....' John grinned inwardly as he glanced at the pen clicker, who obviously had a low immunity to yawns, and had caught the bug.

'...so in closing, we as a nation cannot in good conscience sanction this course of action in the light of the ....'

He had prepared this part of his speech at least. He knew the Chinese foreign policy, and that it would not allow this so called intrusion on their sovereignty and so he had prepared these closing remarks for his speech to the assembled delegates. He knew there wasn't much hope of them changing their mind, but this was the protocol. But there was an eerie sense of foreboding in the air. something that wasn't right, and it wasn't the feng shui of the room. Something was out of place, he knew it, but he didn't know what.

'...unprecedented and frankly unwarranted economic hegemony which...'

He carried on his speech, noting the various faces in the crowd.

'...has been crippling the regional economy. I thank my fellow delegates, and hope that the situation will soon be resolved.'

He smiled, sat down and glanced through the glass panel in the heavy soundproof door, leading to the reception area where afternoon tea was being prepared'...what the heck...?' he mumbled in a monotone, barely audible even in the subdued hum of the post trade talk environment. He was looking at the pen clicker in the hallway adjacent to the negotiations room – the bored diplomat touched the inside of it's earlobe and retracted the antenna which was protruding from where its upper vertebrae were supposed to be. 'Thank goodness that's at least semi-reflective glass' he thought slowly opening his mobile phone and using the camera to take a picture of the robot which was standing in the hallway near the main exit. 'they've really done it this time' he thought as he mailed the picture to one of his many anonymous email address as insurance against an unforeseen future. The now much better disguised robot entered the room, 'that is one serious piece of technology' John thought, remembering the well copied yawn. 'I've got to get me one of those'. He watched, as if in slow motion, as the alien technology began to make it's way methodically round the room, shaking hands with all the other delegates who were oblivious of the real nature of the too friendly consul. Grasping each hand that was offered it, the robot grinned, as it exchanged business cards with the other people. 'they might have some sort of tracking device, or a virus of some sort?...' John worriedly thought, unable, or rather unwilling to move, paralyzed by an inertia born not of terror of the the mechanical menace, but of an apathy honed by many boring afternoons restating the same old problems to the same old people for the same old reasons. 'Maybe this will make things more interesting' he thought, as he watched from the comfort of his gray suede chair. He cracked open his laptop, and began, to check the live feed from the robot's five senses that were being relayed to the satellite, and to email the programmer asking about why his most helpful spy decided to sync with the satellite in the hallway. 'must be the SQL inflection bug again' he thought, 'thankfully no one saw, or we'd be at square one again' He realized for the first time that he, or rather, his country now had the technology, and the information to make a real impact in the region.