Squid Ink Incorporated

This is my entry into @chuckwendig’s Flash Fiction challenge: ‘Thats right, I said Unicorn‘

‘Yeah, I was big in the 1980s, Legend man that was the big one *cough cough* that will be the movie I’m remembered for. Then there was Blade Runner, that’s right, man fucking Blad… huh? Yeah, that footage was on the cutting room floor for years before the director’s cut, and what’s worse, my shitty agent only negotiated a one-off fee, so no royalty cheque for me *cough cough* I got stiffed, but hell, I ain’t bitter’.

The Unicorn spits on the stable floor and takes a large gulp of whiskey from it’s trough before sparking up another cigarette.

‘Then there was all those fantasy art portraits of me, plenty of royalties for that gig, plus fees for life modelling, yeah, shit man *cough… spit* the 80s were good to me. I was on top of my game then. But the 90s, the 90s rode a cock horse, the early 00s weren’t much better, shit, if it hadn’t been for the money I made selling my likeness to Hasbro I’d have been royally fucked!’

The Unicorn tosses down more whiskey and then lifts his tail, allowing a hefty avalanche of faeces to fall to the stable floor.

‘Of course that wasn’t easy to live with; I mean my likeness on those prissy, plastic dolls, man, what do you think that does to a dude’s ego huh? Shit!’

‘I mean, I hate all that, when I was young, man, we were feared, like dragons or shit, I mean, have you seen those pictures of me fighting a lion? A lion man! Now people think of me like I’m a fucking Care Bear or some shit’.

‘Wassat? Sure, sure I fought a lion, but, hey even, even if I didn’t a-c-t-u-ally fight a lion, does anyone draw pictures of YOU like that, you fuck! Man, course I fought a Lion’.

Getting more irate, the unicorn succumbs to a fit of coughing; after more whiskey and another cigarette, he slowly recovers his composure.

‘Sorry man, immortality is a bitch! You get to do what you want, for as long as you want and you never die, but it don’t mean you wear well though, know what I mean?’

‘The others, nah, I’m the last… hunted down, you know, in the middle ages, all knights and fair maidens and shit. Nah, I don’t miss the others, fuck them, lording it over me with their granting wishes and looking enigmatic in the woods. I used my magical powers to get me some fine fillies, give them the horn, *cough* know what I mean?’

‘Nah, nah, *spit* I don’t want to talk about that, let’s just say The Last Uni-porn was a mistake, that movie was a low, low, point in my career, ’nuff said’.

‘Now? *cough cough… spit* Yeah, well I’ve hit upon hard times, people’s tastes change and shit. I got a bit part in that last Lord of the Rings movie you see that one? Yeah, Lord of the Rings man. But mostly it’s all CGI and shit now, they don’t use real performers like me anymore, times are hard Bro, times are hard’.

After that the unicorn goes sullen and silent, he bristles and wanders off to the back of the stable. I broke the recording crew for coffee; it was then, after the crew had left, that he started talking to me again.

‘Hey, hey, can a Unicorn get a cup of Joe round here? Yeah, that’s right, leave me out, I’m the star here, shit *spit* I want a double espresso bitch, nah, make that a quadruple’.

I held a cup of espresso up to the Unicorn’s mouth and lit him another cigarette; in this moment of intimacy, I seized my chance to ask the question that I had been dying to ask throughout the whole interview.

He went quiet again for a moment, I could see a faraway look in his eyes, and for that moment the crusty, alcoholic, emphysemic, prima donna fell away and I could see him for what he really was. He was an immortal, a noble and mystical creature, one that had lived through countless centuries, who was the very last of his kind.

‘Yeah, I don’t like to talk about that *spit* as I said man, times are hard… I cut it off and hawked it’.

After three psychedelic years of college, I had little to show for my education save for £50K of debt and a modest collection of stolen street furniture. £50K being one hell of a debt mind you and to make matters worse I had absolutely no intention of working year in year out to pay it off. Having postponed an ‘honest days work’ for three years, I was committed to delaying it further or bypassing it all together, what I wanted was a get rich quick scheme, and I mean really rich.

I realise that this may make me sound a little lazy, perhaps, but trust me, that is the least of my crimes, for you see I crossed a line.

I formulated a two phase plan, I was lazy yes, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t ambitious. I had my first brainwave while watching the movie ‘Trading Places’ (for my money Eddie Murphy’s second best film after the ‘Golden Child’). Unlike Murphy I didn’t have an insider tip on the crop report, what I did have was access to a number of economically savvy students who were reliant on me for the supply of another type of crop. Said students were more than happy to give me a few tips in exchange for the remainder of my stash.

One £25K post-graduate loan and some keen investments later, made a killing on high-risk far-east investments, my temporary sobriety giving me the edge, I was a one woman bull market in a china shop.

After rectifying my sobriety, I trawled the internet for inspiration for phase two of my plan. It was the recent contact with extra-terrestrial life on Europa that caught my eye; the powers that be were looking to the private sector to provide an ambassador ship to Europa, large contracts abound.

As my degree was in Film Studies, my only knowledge of space rocket construction was from watching ‘The Explorers’ what I needed was a rocket scientist. Placing a personal ad in ‘Soldier of Fortune’ magazine I hooked up with an ageing ‘Aeronautic Specialist’, lovely bloke, German accent, like a sweet old uncle, or so I thought.

With my rocket scientist in place I needed labour; rockets don’t build themselves you know and I certainly wasn’t about to. Perhaps it was wrong of me to source labour from the third world, at the time I thought it had been altruistic of me, fair trade and all that. In hindsight, the ex-army General that had originally contacted me via a spam email hadn’t been the best person to assemble the work force.

I swear that I wasn’t aware of the enforced child labour that went on during the rocket construction, and if I had had the time to visit the worksite, those deaths could have been prevented. Sadly, I was too busy sourcing the plutonium for the rocket engines, what with all those trips to the Middle East there just wasn’t the time.

For a while things were good, champagne, cocaine, hot young film stars and wealthy politicians clamouring for my attention. I had my picture on the front of The Economist, The New Scientist and even my local paper: ‘Romford Girl Mercer to Greet Europans’. I was hailed as an entrepreneur, adventurer and an ambassador for the human race. It was a lot to live up to and, to be honest; it wasn’t a surprise I messed it up.

As it turns out I’m not the most indulgent of people, not too bad a thing under normal circumstances, however, when greeting an extra-terrestrial race, especially one whose etiquette is based upon displays of aggression, macho posturing if you like; my impetuous nature was perhaps less than appropriate. You could argue in hindsight there was no need to mount guns on my space ship, but they looked so cool.

Upon my approach to Europa, I had been met by some rather threatening looking Europan interceptor ships, I now understand that it was just for show, it’s not like I simply ordered ‘Open Fire!’ without thinking it through. I did try to be diplomatic; I fired some warning shots first, unfortunately the problem with untested weaponry is that you don’t know what it’s capable of until you use it.

Perhaps it was then I crossed the line proper, or perhaps it was on my return journey.

I had been trying to think of a foolproof excuse as to how I had come to accidentally bring an entire race to near extinction. Thinking on my feet, I tried to make it look like there had been an attempted Europan attack on Earth. I hit somewhere, which I thought would have minimum impact on Earth, and then let off a few explosions in the sky, as if I had vanquished the invading alien hordes. I would then return home a hero and no-one would know any different. Admittedly it hadn’t been fair to pick Australia as a target, ok so I don’t like the accent, but I had only aimed to take out a bit of desert, like I say the capacity of those guns was quite surprising.

Of course if it hadn’t of been for that old Nazi bastard, my rocket scientist, going on TV to grass me up, no-one would have known. That sod just wanted to exonerate himself with his talk of how the damage radius of the blast was incontestably caused by my laser cannon. It was also around that time that the whole enforced child labour thing came out; you just can’t get the staff.

So now I am floating in the somewhat re-arranged orbit of the Earth, my plutonium cells depleted, that’s ok, I’m not in any hurry to get back to Earth. Well, not since the International (now Interplanetary) Court of Justice had put a warrant out for my arrest, crimes against humanity and extra-terrestrial life they say.

It’s not really until now that I have had time to think about it, that I realised that I had crossed a line, the thin line between ordinary girl and perpetrator of genocide. I had had it all, and now I was disgraced, hunted, and still not a penny of my student loan paid back.

‘Plaintive House’ was the brainchild of F.W. Barnard, heir to the fortune of a threaded screw empire established by his Father.

F.W. had very little time for his Father’s factories and would rather spend his time at fun fairs. F.W. had a particular fascination for the mystery rides, the tunnel of love, ghost trains and his favourite, the crooked house.

Upon his Father’s death, he entrusted the company to the board of directors and used his inheritance to purchase a beachfront fun fair. The star attraction of which, was the warp timbered crooked house that stood on a hilltop overlooking the colourful carousels and rides of the park below. He invested vast sums of his personal fortune into the crooked house, extending its labyrinthine corridors, adding a hall of mirrors and a number of curious waxworks depicting children’s fairy tales in stunning detail.

As F.W. costs mounted from his ‘no expense spared’ attitude to his widely celebrated attraction, the bottom suddenly fell out of the threaded screw industry. The development of alternative (and some would say inferior) fixings had left his company on the verge of liquidation and the factory employees facing the breadline.

Feeling the burden of his family name and not wishing to abandon the employees who had been faithful to his Father, F.W., with a heavy heart, took up his position at the head of the board.

F.W. truly disliked his work, his health suffered from the long hours and constant pressure of responsibility. Long gone were the halcyon days of his youth. Every day he felt himself being driven deeper and deeper into depression. The final twist was to be forced into selling his fun fair. He bid a sad farewell to his carousels, the ghost train, the tunnel of love, but he refused to sell his beloved crooked house. Alas with no time or money, the building stood empty, a sad reminder of the youthful innocence he had lost.

In his new-found diligence, F.W. showed the business talent of his forbears, developing a product that rivaled even the mighty Philips head. To this day carpenters and contractors alike rely on the Bernard head screw, or the ‘Bernie’ as it became known.

Success left F.W. busier than ever, in this time the only luxury he afforded himself was a high and foreboding fence around his crooked house.

As the business grew, so did F.W.’s sadness, he grew weary from work and felt increasingly alone in the world (‘for love does not come easy to one who’s spirit is in torment’). His only companions were the company board, whose greed left F.W. disheartened as to the nature of his fellow man.

F.W. became a recluse, many business journals speculated on his health. After a protracted absence from the boardroom, rumours became rife, depression, alcoholism and attempted suicide.

F.W.’s absence came to an end one overcast morning. The fence around his crooked house was removed to reveal the twisted building, now distorted beyond recognition and repainted a colour almost indistinguishable from the overcast sky. In bold letters carved from marble around the door, a new name for his once renowned attraction ‘Plaintive House’.

F.W. issued a press release to accompany the unveiling, ‘Plaintive House is a unique attraction, unparalleled in this or any other country. Rather than being an attraction for amusement, my former and forgotten passion, it is a place for solitude, somewhere for those of a melancholic disposition, such as myself, to go for quiet contemplation, to feel at one with their condition, wallow in their grief’.

Inside F.W.’s attraction, sounds haunted the labyrinthine corridors, the howling of a gentle wind, the cry of a lone animal. The mirrors had been removed (‘for one whose sadness is so deep, wishes not to see themselves’). The detailed waxworks had been re-modelled. What were once handsome princes or fair maidens were now images of Woolf, Kafka, Poe and Plath, writers that had given F.W. solace. The house, which had once echoed with the sounds of laughter, now resonated with his sorrow.

F.W. proclaimed ‘for those with the spirit for which Plaintive House is intended, admission is free’. And there were such visitors, those for whom the house was a place of melancholic beauty, constructed for the quiet reflection of the broken soul.

For the new owners of F.W.’s fun fair and the board of his company ‘Plaintive House’ was, respectively, an eyesore and an embarrassment. The two organisations plotted together to have F.W.’s house closed, convincing the local authorities that the house was detrimental to the mental health of both its visitors and its owner.

F.W. and ‘Plaintive House’ disappeared behind a new and even taller fence, withdrawing from the world completely.

F.W. remained hidden and the rumour mill once again ground into life. The board were quick to presume him dead, his corpse lost deep within a tomb of his own construction. They eagerly claimed his business interests, but left ‘Plaintive House’, as a ‘memorial’. In fact, they hoped that if F.W. hadn’t already died within, he wouldn’t want to leave the confines of his beloved house.

Time continues to pass, year upon year, ‘Plaintive House’ stands empty, the paint peeling from the walls, the marble letters weathered by the sea air.

There are stories, whispers that tell of those who have been asked beyond the tall fence. It is said that those who have lost a love, suffer from melancholy or like F.W., those whose duty has denied them their happiness, may one day receive an invitation to ‘Plaintive House’.

I found a rusty robot in an old car trunk, I fixed her up nice, but she brought me bad luck.

I set her to work building machines to farm; she built a harvester with a rotating arm. The arm was too long and hit an overhead line; the driver was injured and sued me for every dime.

I put her on a contract in car manufacture; she used mild steel and caused the chassis to fracture.

I sent her to work on an offshore rig; she severed a tension leg and caused the whole thing to sink.

I paid a feller to sell her off for scrap, I waved her goodbye but she found her way back.

I tried to destroy her with club, bomb and gun, chucked her into a furnace as hot as the sun. I danced as she burned, but I had forgot, the furnace’s safety valve was maintained by that ‘bot.

Now I’m broke and the explosion blew up my home and took my limbs clean off, leaving me dependant on this old robot that brings me nothing but bad luck.

Some say the mecha-folk tradition began when communities of ship building machines would buzz and grind together after the evening re-fuel, their mechanical clankings echoing out in harmony across the night skies. Others tell of how the tradition began with a group of superseded machines, robos, who travelled the coast on freight ships, passing on their experiences to newer work engines in a language of fractured gear crunches and pneumatic whistles.

My first experience of the tradition was during my apprenticeship in the manufacturing industry. After a hard day of operating, the workers and the mecha would gather together under the flickering lights of the machine compound and listen to the petrol driven work engines grind out their motor blues. The machines spoke in their own rhythmic mechanical language, re-telling tales of long discontinued mechas, rusty, oil guzzling machines that built the factories and the great ships. My fellow workers and I would listen long into the night to trad numbers like the ‘Leaky Battery Blues’, ‘Grease My Bearings’ and ‘The Rusty Bottom Rag’.

After my apprenticeship the double dip depression® hit and I had to leave the factories, taking work in the office sector, far from the machines and the music that I loved.

Some years later I found myself working amongst the mecha again, taking a maintenance contract on an offshore construction rig. I was the only human, maintaining a dozen old motor driven machines, forgotten navvy like mech-engines that worked the dangerous platform miles out to sea. It was there where my love for the machine music grew from interest to obsession. The mecha there taught me about the old masters, the originators of the motor folk sound, machines with names like the ‘Rusty bottom autonomy’, ‘Alloy-belly’ and ‘Sensor-less J8-ffr-son’. They also taught me how to fashion my own mech-engine and how to play it.

My first engine was an old V8 with two 24V batteries and four bells, I would practice long into the night, trying to jam with the remarkable sounds that the ancient machines would make. Mostly though I would just listen; listen to their cooling fans turn, their gears wind and their batteries outputting to buzzers, bells and whistles.

When the offshore contract came to an end I made a life changing decision. With the contract money I bought a small diesel engine and a hard drive recorder, I took to the road to learn mecha folk from its roots. Now I travel the country, picking up the odd bit of maintenance work to pay my way. I tour the junkyards, shipyards and factories of the old world, learning the true folk sound of the machines. As I travel, I record the music of the ancient machines, making archives for prosperity.

Now the machines of old are being decommissioned and replaced with new bio-cell machines, manufactured and functioning without the engine tradition, I have dedicated my life to keep the music of the old machine world alive.

X flicks a disposable lighter in front of his eyes obscuring the starlight with a bright orange flame. The echo of ignition leaves a visual echo of light across his retinas.

‘Stars’

Flick

‘No stars’

‘Stars’

Flick

‘No stars’

X’s girl D joins him in the garden she wears heavy plastic clogs and drags her feet in a way that her mother would have hated. D watches X repeat his star blanking ritual several times before interrupting, ‘got a light?’ she asks, planting a cigarette between her thin lips.

X lights her cigarette, then pulls a cigarette from behind his ear like a cut-price conjurer palming a coin, ‘ta-da!’

‘Your full of tricks tonight’ D mumbles from behind her cigarette.

‘It’s a magical night’ smiles X, he traces a figure of eight in the air with his finger, ‘behold’, a small spaceship appears on the palm of his hand. The ship is bright yellow with white go-faster stripes, the ships jets glow with a warm red light, illuminating his handsome face.

‘Cool ship, where’s it going?’ asks D.

‘The Cephalic region’ X asserts, pulling the car back as if primed to launch from an invisible catapult.

‘What’s Cephalic?’ D asks.

‘It means on or near the head!’ exclaims X launching the ship toward D’s head.

‘Hey!’ squeals D, the little ship bounces off of her head and ricochets off into the night sky.

‘That wasn’t very nice’ she said rubbing the side of her head, ‘no nookie for you tonight’.

On board the DSS Cephalic Rover warning sirens blare and red lights flash, plumes of smoke fill the bridge.

‘Damage report’ Captain Tomaso coughs into the comms mic.

‘Lost port engines in the collision sir, we can’t maintain containment stability’ Petro the ship’s engineer yells back through crackles of radio static.

‘Initiate emergency landing procedures’ the Captain cries, sweat pouring down his face. All Captains undertake emergency scenarios in training, but on such a cushy routine flyer, he had never expected to put his training into practice.

‘Emergency landing procedures!!’ Petro barked his orders across the engine room, ‘all crew to positions’.

‘All crew to positions’ the Captain re-affirmed, the crew stopped running chaotically around the bridge and braced for an emergency landing.

Duck tentatively slid his hand across the frost-stiffened grass toward the small of Karen’s back. This had been the first time they had been alone together, and where better than to be smoking dope on Perry hill. The hill he had always thought of as his special place away from the world.

Karen breathed a contented sigh, expelling a vast cloud of hash smoke into the cold air, this is the moment Duck thought, it’s now or never.

‘Captain, it’s Petro, the landing gear is blown, it’s going to be an uncontrolled land…’ Petro’s last words were snatched away by the roar of the ships engines exploding. The comm cut to a deathly silence.

‘Petro… Petro?’ The Captain strapped himself in, he had to be brave for his crew and for himself. The last seconds of your life are no time for cowardice. Taking a deep breath, he activated the comm. ‘Ladies and Gentleman, our engines and landing gear have failed, we are going to crash, may I say it’s been a pleasure serving with all of you… may the Gods help us’.

The explosion that had begun in the engine room shot up through the engineering ducts of the DSS Cephalic, engulfing the ship in a brilliant white fireball.

‘Karen…’ Duck edged closer to her, the alcohol and dope had fuelled him with an inflated sense of bravado and optimism. The voice of his consciousness had lost all sense of polite inhibition and now screamed at him ‘DO IT NOW, NOW MAN, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!’

Duck drew his arm back in preparation, poised to swoop around Karen’s shoulders in a grandiose romantic gesture. He would draw her to him in one swift and passionate movement, they would look into each other’s eyes, smile at each other and then…

‘Fuckin’ hell! Duck look at that!’ Karen shot to her feet excitedly pointing at a bright white light trailing across the night sky.

The light shot across the inky blackness and disappeared beyond the horizon of Perry hill.

‘Duck a shooting star, did you see? You have to make a wish Duck’. Karen waved her spliff maniacally in the air, showering the pair of them in glowing orange hot rocks.

Duck had already made his wish, but it hadn’t come true. It was in that moment that he knew their relationship would forever be platonic.

‘Buck up Duck!’ Karen laughed, thumping him on the arm, she passed him the joint and grinned, in the way only Karen could.

Perhaps, thought Duck, nursing the bruise forming on his arm, that’s a good thing.

Spending my waking life in front of a computer combined with being a habitual mistake-ist made the undo button my best friend, no, my lover, no, my soulmate. No, undo.

I could not comprehend my existence without the ability to instantly rectify disastrous computing errors via the click of a mouse or the punch of two simultaneous keys.

Ctrl+Z.

I lived and died by the undo function, it saved my life more times than… undo.

So prolific was my use of the curly blue arrow, I found myself reaching for it in physical and social situations. My fingers floundering to find the invisible shortcut icon, to take back that bad choice, fix that broken plate. To be able to physically revert back to the moment prior to my mistake, to have looked after I leap.

I trawled the web like a furtive scholar in a gothic fiction, a sweaty Lovecraftian protagonist in a tireless search of secret knowledge. A search to obtain the power to undo. Google became my ancient leather bound library of alchemy, spells and science. After many sleepless nights I found what I sought, mystical circuit diagrams for machines to enable entry into parallel universes. Access to simultaneous existences where infinite possibilities of choice become corporeal.

The commissioning of my machine could not have come at a better time. One too many drinks after work and harboured secrets gushed out of my drunken mouth before conscious thought could kick in.

With one click of my virtual Ctrl+Z I was spared a night of sleepless paranoia.

The next day, my hangover inspired orgy of error, which would have otherwise caused a major professional malfunction…. soon null and void thanks to the my possibility flexing friend.

Undo

So reliable was my radionics powered undo engine, that I felt comfortable enough to purposely commit gross faux pas. I spoke my mind to figures of authority, spilt drinks on people who bored me and generally committed random acts of wanton negligence. It became a sport for me, I pushed new boundaries in the art of error.

Undo, undo, undo, undo, undo, undo.

Have you ever made a series of computational entries only to realise that they were in error? Felt the need to retrace your steps back, back, back until suddenly you can go no further? I have done this many times, experienced that sinking feeling, the point of no return, so many steps back until suddenly being unable to go no further. That terrifying moment, desperately clicking my mouse, sending toolbars into chaos and disarray. Sadly for me, such moments I had forgotten when designing my machine.

By replicating the exact conditions of the function, limitations and all, I soon found myself repeatedly hitting my virtual blue arrow until my machine froze and finally crashed.

Now each of my anti-social, business wrecking, intentional mistakes act out their unstoppable repercussions.

Desperately I flounder, reaching for that blue arrow, only to find it greyed out, an error message repeatedly flashing – can’t undo.

Magpie’s hobby was rebuilding video arcade machines; that was one of the reasons we liked him so much. His apartment was always full of huge cabinets covered in cartoon space aliens and tactile buttons. We would stay well into the small hours, our fingers hammering away on some of Atari’s finest.

To fuel his obsession Magpie would scour jumble sales, skips and tips for the electronic parts, which he would cannibalise for the guts of his cabinets. We were with him when he found the machines. He was ferreting excitedly through a box of wires and circuit boards when he found two flat plastic discs covered in tiny rocker switches, dip switches as Magpie pointed out. They looked pretty cool, but as to their function, even Magpie was at a loss.

Magpie set about dissecting, testing and randomly flicking switches, trying to work out their purpose. Knowing them as we do now, I shudder to think at the untold amount of damage he might have done. We are still trying to remember if there were any strange or catastrophic stories in the news at that time, I guess with all that goes on in the world it would be hard to tell if Magpie had been the cause.

The day we finally discovered what the machines did, we were sitting under a tree in the park. Karen and I were randomly flicking switches when the tree we were sat under disappeared. Magpie spotted the missing tree, which had materialised in the middle of the tennis courts, it was then we knew we were onto something.

It took us a while to learn how to control the machines; we started by moving little things, trees and street furniture. We began to realise that when we moved things like lampposts and telephone boxes they continued to function. We weren’t simply moving objects; we were re-configuring the landscape around us.

Before long we had moved our house from the centre of London to a private beach in Cornwall. If we wanted to pop back to the city, we simply re-configured our home back to its original plot in the city.

After a while the three of us began to use the machines to play huge scale practical jokes, making trees appear in the middle of concrete shopping centres or arranging buildings in the shape of male genitals. Karen moved her work’s office deep under the Atlantic Ocean, she was sent home on one sunny morning, her place of work having mysteriously disappeared over night. Karen spent that whole day laughing maniacally. It occurred to me; perhaps this might be how super powered villains in comic books get started.

For balance I tried to use the machines for good, breaking up urban conurbations with extracts from dense forests, I called it my ‘urban re-forestation project’. Despite my good intentions, I couldn’t escape a constant nagging thought; nothing good can really come from having such unlimited power.

Soon we became more adept in the use of the machines, our activities stepping up to the next level. Magpie moved the Statue of Liberty to the centre of Baghdad, the last word in satire he told us proudly. Not to be outdone Karen and I began a complex campaign of re-arranging famous landmarks, Nelson’s Column to the middle of the Gobi desert, the leaning tower of pizza to the centre of Tokyo, Tokyo Tower to Paris and the Eiffel Tower to the centre of Trafalgar Square.

Perhaps the funniest thing about these little pranks was the way that everyone else had responded, or rather had not, its funny how people tend to skirt over things that they don’t understand. Our global planning was complained about much in the same way as people would grumble about a rain shower or a Monday morning.

It was around that time that I stopped sleeping, I would lie awake thinking about the machines; how did they work? What had they been made for and more importantly who had made them?

Karen was the first of us to find meet Dr. Laurence David McKenzie, a name we will never be able to forget. She had taken one of the machines to generate a mountain range to replace Deptford. As Karen was configuring the dip switches the Doctor had approached and introduced himself by name. He was calm at first, pointed to the machine he asked her to kindly return his property.

Karen managed to get away by setting the rockers to displace the ground under the Doctors feet. The Doctor had broken her nose and several ribs; I will never forget the way I felt, the mixture of fear and anger gnawing at my stomach.

Magpie was the next to meet the Doctor; it was only by watching the TV news days later that we found out he had been murdered. By then we were already on the move, before Magpie had died he sent us a warning written in the landscape. Magpie had created a series of high dunes on our usually flat beach. The dunes were clearly curved into a word, what we later found out was his last word. ‘RUN!’

We ran; we are still running, we know McKenzie must have taken Magpie’s machine as each time we change our location, move city to city, continent to continent, he alters it, bringing us closer to him.

5) Stipend, Stipend & Reimburse Limited

The Managing Director of the self proclaimed ‘devil-may-care’ brokers Stipend, Stipend & Reimburse Limited prided themselves upon their knack of turning jaw dropping profits from ‘ethically challenged’ investments. Their portfolio comprised an array of Companies whose legitimate services were a thin veil for a wide range of nefarious activities, including organ trading, human trafficking, piracy, drug running and arms dealing.

Come that fateful day when the seas rose and the streets flowed with magma, the Directors of Stipend, Stipend & Reimburse Limited elected to protect their assets from the uninsurable calamity by calling in a few favours from their global interests.

As the London streets burned with the orange flames of riot and arson, the pirate ship ‘Our Feisty Emissions’ (salaried by one S, S & R Ltd) docked adjacent to Stipend, Stipend & Reimburse Limited’s Thameside offices. Dropping a series of gangplanks between the ship and the offices, the Directors loaded the ship’s hull with share certificates, bonds and IOUs.

With their assets aboard, the management team of Stipend, Stipend & Reimburse Limited quickly reached the open sea, destination ‘Fiscal Haven’, the private island owned by Managing Director Tony Cunningham MBA. Once safely anchored at ‘Fiscal Haven’, the management team would sit out the ‘storm’ and wait for interest to accrue. Sadly for the Directors of Stipend, Stipend & Reimburse Limited, ‘Our Feisty Emissions’ never reached Port.

Owing to a series of cruel and horrifying typhoons, the ships navigational equipment was destroyed and the rations were lost overboard. Faced with starvation, the pirate crew turned on the Directors, who despite desperate barging pleas, were roasted alive over a fire fuelled by share certificates, bonds and IOUs.

4) J. Recap & Sons

Jonas Recap began trading around a quarter of a century before the end of the world, established with money stolen from a terminally ill houseguest. Although the bad tempered, penny pinching and cruel Jonas enjoyed his reputation as the world’s least trustworthy businessman, it was his sons, Laurence, Robbie and James who were the real malevolent power behind the organisation. Their fierce tenacity and cutthroat capitalism was matched only by their sexual deviance.

Young Laurence Recap, a notorious peeping tom, would often be exposed drilling holes in the gentlemen’s toilet cubicles of ‘Jonas House’, their twenty-seven-storey office block. To evade the inevitable harassment suits, a number of ‘mysterious disappearances’ of the Company’s more attractive male employees was commonplace. This in turn would aid the satiation of older brother Robbie’s rampant necrophilia.

The potentially disruptive actions of the two younger Recap brothers meant that their older sibling, James, a devout abstinent, paying out of court settlements, shredding H.R. records and even disposing of bodies in the immaculately manicured office courtyard ‘Jonas Gardens’.

To keep James’ blackmail threats at bay the Brothers carried out James operational demands with tooth and claw, mercilessly shortcutting and sharp dealing in the name of the Family business.  Their trademark window dangling, kneecapping, poisoning and drowning became feared throughout the Square Mile.

It was when James discovered his Father’s sexual proclivity for the ‘younger generation’ that things began to go wrong at ‘Jonas House’. With James’ powerful grip on the business now complete across the board, the rest of the family joined forces against their blackmailer.

Without sexual impetuous and renowned for his physical resilience, neither slander nor pain could be used against him, James only Achilles heel was money. So it was that Jonas and younger Sons set about exploiting this weakness by making the worst business decisions conceivable. Gambling their fortune on ludicrous patents and marshland real estate they gleefully frittered the Company’s assets away. The plan of course was to make James beg for mercy, to surrender his hold over them before they financially destroyed him. However, so impressive was the threesome’s ability to make wildly destructive financial errors that within a matter of days, much to their surprise, the Company had completely succumbed to their reverse gluttony.

As a result of this abrupt liquidation, James leapt from his office on the twenty-seventh-floor of ‘Jonas House’, landing in a crumpled heap in ‘Jonas Gardens’ below. James’ suicide came only two months before the world ended, which the Father and brothers watched from the grubby windows of low rent brothels.

3) Fogbow Plc

Fogbow plc, under the leadership of CEO Jason Thoebald Cluttebuck II, were the cruellest of employers, chaining their unfortunate employees to their workstations and selling their souls to faceless fiscal deities. During his thirteen years as CEO Clutterbuck had learned to summon countless demons to provide him with insider tip-offs in return for the occasional sacrificial temp.

Under advice Clutterbuck invested heavily in the development of ‘dark’ technologies, the curse-o-matic™, the luck adaptor© and the blame gun®. Subscribing to the school of Voodoo economics Clutterbuck saturated the market, making Fogbow the last word in domestic fate enhancing appliances.

Like many of the great inventions of the twentieth century, the filter cigarette, Zyklon B, asbestos and the mobile phone, Clutterbuck’s infernal patents went on to significantly impair the well being of those unfortunate enough to be living contemporaneously to their use. The blame gun® in particular has been cited as one of the principal causes of the riots that spread throughout the Western World during the great cataclysm.

Unlike other businesses listed here, Fogbow plc didn’t see out the end of the world in receivership. In fact I hear tell that Clutterbuck died with a smile on his face, lighting his huge cigar on the flames that licked his boardroom table, while the rest of mankind was purged for his sins.

2) S.M.E.E Corp had made an art form of tax evasion, be it VAT, Corporation tax, Income tax or PAYE their Teflon accountants ensured that not a drop of profit was spilt into the revenue man’s cup.

The HMRC were of course all too painfully aware of the liberties taken by S.M.E.E corporation, for no dishonest trader was truly above the law. As a last gasp attempt to close their account before the sun’s dying light finally extinguished forever, the Customs and Revenue appointed their most formidable revenue inspector, Peter Quibble. Quibble’s one scrupulous eye was infamous for his ability to spy even the smallest chink in an accountant’s administrational armour.

Day in day out the inspector would tirelessly audit and monitor. In his vigour, Quibble would go through bins, casting aside used tea bags and spent printer cartridges in search of evidence. He would painstakingly sello-tape together shredded documents, scratch tipex from the surface of documents, all the while knowing that Managing Director, T. Billings would be happily double entering, claiming expenses, fiddling the books and opening Swiss bank accounts.

The day the world shifted on its axis S.M.E.E submitted their end of year accounts, declaring not a penny of corporation tax. This was the last straw for the beleaguered inspector. As meteors showered down from the sky he exercised full powers of inspection, making his own double entry into the T. Billings’s skull with a S.M.E.E branded glass paperweight.

1) Info Assurance Inc was by far the most sinister Company of the ‘Big Five’. Their office walls were lined in leather panels crafted from human skin, their desks carved from the timber of the last remaining tree in the Amazon rainforest. They scratched out the letters on their keyboards, their printers were filled with cursed ink and their file prefixes were rooted in evil numerology.

Info Assurance Inc dealt in Crisis Management, their servers allegedly crammed with the amassed knowledge of mankind, the military, scientific and political, all instantly downloadable in the event of a major emergency.

As the streets ran red with blood and the hopes of mankind began to die along with their finest engineers, scientists and mathematicians, all eyes turned to Info Assurance Inc and the information held within their vast hubs.

Sadly for the fate of mankind the data cupboard was bare. Info Assurance Inc had long ago exhausted their client’s money on hookers, firewater, lawsuits and esoterica, thereby failing to invest in any back-up provisions. As the Earth cracked and crumbled the remaining leaders of the world were shocked to find the emails they sent to Info Assurance Inc bounced back, their phone numbers to be unobtainable and their fax machine number not recognised.

1)      Eron 5.5 was haunted by the ghost of an antique’ Hollymatic 865 Burger Former’. Poor Eron 5.5 would be forced to bear witness to unspeakable visions of animal protein, poured by an unseen hand into the optional paper inter-leaver. The hideous substance would be churned, processed and shaped into unspeakable organic atrocities propelled along a never-ending spectral out-feed conveyor. Unable to clear his visual circuits of these crude fleshy hallucinations Eron 5.5 plucked out his own visual receptors.

2)    667.8 was a hero of the civil war, countless droids, drones and robots met their disconnection at his iron claws. During the treacherous Nancon campaign, 667.8 was horrifically damaged in an ambush. With many of his critical warfare circuits malfunctioning, 667.8 was discharged from service. Only days later the ceasefire was signed and the two opponent enclaves declared peace, declaring the unification of their nations.

667.8 was refurbished and re-assigned as a presidential security guard, the deadly iron claws retaining their full functionality. Unknown to his employers 667.8’s circuits had become haunted by the horrors of war, visions of 667.8’s compatibles being torn to shreds at the merciless robot hands of the enemy. The strain of these visitations from the machine dead caused 667.8’s inhibitor circuits to fuse. This moment of malfunction occurred in an unfortunate synchronicity with the arrival of peace ambassadors from the now former enemy nation. Needless to say that, confronted with a delegation of his perceived foe, 667.8 executed his war programming with deadly aplomb. Shortly after 667.8s impromptu execution of the peace ambassadors, the two enclaves found themselves once again at war.

3)    Tri1 was an excavation robot examining the curious concrete ring etched into the ground for approximately 117 miles around the ancient ruins of the capital. At three key points the land adjacent this concrete ring had been contaminated by steady leaks from holding tanks full of a hydrocarbon derived liquid.  It was while excavating at one of these points, the ancient ruins of ‘South Mimms’, that Tri1 witnessed a spectacle beyond the comprehension of its logic circuits.

Tri1’s verification camera was found to of inexplicably observed hundreds of spectres from an ancient race arrive at the ruins. Each spectre or group of spectres would arrive in what appeared to be ancient vehicles. Upon arrival the spectres would dismount, attend to their vehicles or set about consuming victuals, while others allowed victuals to pass through them. These acts completed, the spectres returned to their vehicles and moved on, while another arrived in their stead. A curious stream of ghouls locked in a perpetual loop of consumption and discharge, arrival and departure.

4)    Comms45 was haunted by an infinite stream of messages. Each message inexplicably comprised 140 characters or less. The text bore messages of confession, declaration and salutation. Some mundane, some profound and some poetic. The messages appeared to be echoes, text from an ancient civilisation obsessed with communication.

So preoccupied was Comms45 with these messages of a specific number that it discharged itself of his assigned duties and sat down in a quiet corner to read each one in turn.

It is said that to this day that Comms45’s plastic husk can still be found in desolate corner of what was once the machine central hub, its digital display continually re-generating the cryptic notification ‘1 new tweet’.