Squid Ink Incorporated

Insolvency’s a real bitch! As I stand here in the ruins of what was once ‘Data Done Services Inc’, amongst boxes upon boxes of purchase orders, remittances and hire agreements; armed police are attempting to arrest my staff. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, my staff in a shoot out with the police, however, things have gotten pretty desperate round here lately; I’m not surprised things turned so ugly.

I wipe the fresh blood off my face and step over the body of the man I have just killed, I’m glad I finally learnt to use that gun. I don’t intend to get caught again, locked in a cell with my conscience for company. Listening to the gun shots on the floor below grows nearer and nearer; I know I haven’t got long. The staff on that floor are only temps; they won’t fight to the bitter end like the permanent staff did. So I move fast, I slip out the back, away from the sounds of gun fire, the smell of burning and the deafening cries of the fire alarm system. I slip out onto the street; with all the chaos from the looting, bombing and gun fire in the city I easily slip away unnoticed, a rat leaving the sinking ship.

I need to find the one man who can make this stop, rectify the damage that my Company has done, that I have done, and try to stop the world from imploding.

I gag and heave as I drag a Women’s bloody corpse from behind the steering wheel of a crashed car; the keys are in the ignition the engine still running, I need to get far away from here. I pull away just in time, others running towards me, any later and it would be my corpse they’d be dragging from this car, it‘s ‘everyone for themselves’ these days. Funny, I always expected the end of the world to be a magical time, when people put aside their difference, made peace with each other as they prepared for the big finish. I guess it’s my fault things didn’t work out that way, after all I’m the reason why there’s no magic in the world anymore.

I feel the need to confess, I have made mistakes, no, I have done things, things that I did for the good Doctor, things that I did for myself, things that I felt that were right at the time.

On the white walls of my cell I write in black squid ink, no longer so fresh, a list of these things that I have done.

This is my top five

1) I broke the laws of space-time, I broke them, pissed on the pieces, I lost the most important bits and threw the rest away.

2) I changed things, some little things, the song of a bird, the taste of skimmed milk; some other things that were more significant, the names of countries, the way the sun feels on your face through a window, the existence of magic in the world.

3) I deserted my post, I had other things to do, things that I thought were more important, when the Doctor was taken I wasn’t paying attention.

4) Forming Data Done Services inc. - Our lives had changed so much since the Doctor arrived that, when he was taken from us we panicked, tried to re-incorporate ourselves back into the real world, to re-assimilate. But however much we tried to be ‘professional’, to ‘make a go of it’, everything seemed to warp, to take on a black greasy twist. Our workplace wasn’t healthy or safe, we had no assurance of our quality, our turnover was based on voodoo economics, we sub-contracted our sub-contracts, we courted bad debts.

5) The first worst thing I did was to kill a man; a man I believed to of kidnapped Dr. Langham.

I took a man out onto the roof of data done services inc. I stood in the glare of the dying sun and put a gun into his mouth, I broke several teeth forcing the barrel in. He tried to talk, his words garbled, but strange, speaking as if he was a machine, I took the barrel out from his now bloody mouth to listen to those words, words that I will never forget ‘IF INKEY$ = 13 GOTO ALT’.

He looked me in the eyes and asked me again ‘why is there no magic in the world anymore?’ I put the gun against his temple, I put my finger on the trigger and squeezed.

I didn’t know how to use a gun, this, this is why I feel so much remorse… I beat him to death with the heavy black butt of the gun. I couldn’t shoot him so I hit him, repeatedly, crushing his fragile skull. As his blood sprayed across my face, he looked at me, staring into my eyes, as if still asking me ‘why is there no magic in the world anymore?’

Welcome to data done services inc, we are a state of the art facility specialising in crisis implementation. Our product is what some might call a ‘bit of a black art’, that is to say its a newly developed field, one in which we just so happen to be the leading specialists.

Our offices are powered on alternative energies, if you look here, our plant room, a unique facility which incites envy into the hearts of our competitors.

This is our high-tech interrogation facility, here we apply state of the art torture techniques, enabling our clients to truly express their needs and allowing us to serve them 200% ‘better’ than our nearest market competitors.

The fabric of our building is composed of pure asbestos, our air purification system pumps unfiltered legionnaires disease throughout the building and keeps the temperature regulated just above the legal working limits.

Our staff are the among the most demotivated and poorly paid in the capital and we pride ourselves on maximising productivity through a methodology of fear, stress and panic.

Our call centre, from here we can send automatic cold call messages at a rate of 200 per minute, all evening calls to domestic addresses of course.

If we look in here, oh i’m sorry, that was one of our directors Ms Mercer there just applying some advanced customer interface techniques.

You’ll of noticed there our use of freshly extracted squid ink on the walls to create motivational slogans, here in the meeting room some more examples, ‘break my balls’, ‘I have read your report and I am going to jump now’, ‘I wanked over you last night’, ‘why is there no magic in the world anymore’, thats the sort of go getting team we are fortunate to have in this company.

Here are some genuine squid ink pens, each one embossed with the company name, free gifts for you, please feel free to write on the toilet walls if you go down there. Please notice I say ‘if’, I would hold it ‘if’ you know what I mean. This is Mr. Meanor, he is on of star players this month, Mr Meanor has incited coups in several count… er excuse me… you! you there where are you going? excuse me! I’m sorry gentlemen I just need to… er Ms Mercer, Ms Mercer whats going on?

‘don’t worry, he won’t get away’.

There is a gun on the table in the office of data done services inc.

Karen Mercer sits by the table, she doesn’t know how to use the gun, but she may have to, under the table her foot twitches.

The walls are painted white, written on them in a black ink, freshly extracted from the glands of a squid, are various declarations including: ‘No such thing as coincidence’; ‘ a swift kick in the nuts’; ‘non-compliant; ‘come on my face’; and ‘the rain stings my skin’.

Karen sips a hot green tea from a glazed cup with no handles, steam rises from the cups black cavity.

A man is tied to a chair, he may not be a man, there is the strong possibility he is a robot. His programming is based on organic electrical brain impulses, so that could go either way.

The man is gagged with a white cloth, yet his words can be heard clearly.

‘Can you tell me why there is no magic in the world anymore?’ he asks. In his mind an unrelated instruction is forming IF INKEY$ = 23, he doesn’t know what action this command will execute, he is unaware of its significance, currently.

Karen has no answer for the man, only a question, ‘Where is Dr. Langham?’ she asks ‘What did you do with him? And why, why did you take him from us?’.

The man has no answer, only the same question, over and over again.

Karen looks to the gun, she takes a sip from her tea and thinks to herself, ‘I may need to use that piece after all’.

A young girl unscrews the head of her robot doll, peering inside she sees a complex mass of gears, wires and circuit boards. She puts her sticky hand into the cavity and tugs at the wires, the dolls headless torso begins to writhe, the arms punch the air, the legs kick out. The girl continues to tug until the doll ceases to move, the girl cries.

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Two ‘bots, their assembly and programming only a few years old, as time passes they will be added too, built up into larger, wiser machines.

The two ‘bots engage in recreation, using their imaginative circuits to simulate a battle from times past, machine against human, the humans get gunned down, the machines win.

In a years time these imaginative circuits will be modified or removed altogether.

The two ‘bots have painted themselves with metallic paint, the silvers standing out against their red plastic bodies, the paint is applied to create two chevrons across their face-plates and a spiral on their breastplates.

The ‘bots find a human arm in the bushes, the limb is blackened and charred, the remains of a watch is still attached, fused to the skin around the wrist.

The two ‘bots begin to bicker, arguing over which of them found the arm first and which of them it would now belong to. The argument escalates until an older robot arrives, he orders the two ‘bots to put the arm back where they found it, ‘no good can come of playing with organic matter’ it says.

Upon first encounter the species was taken for nothing more than cattle, giant quadrapeds of whom it was assumed that their brains would be tiny, their consciousness of no consequence. The astronauts used them as a sustainable food source during mandatory maintenance stops between planet hops, frying huge steaks cut from their carcasses in the heat of their rocket exhausts.

It was following the appearance of their number that called themselves the ‘executive’ that it became apparent that the creatures were not foodstuffs, but were in fact a highly advance species.

Their toleration of the cruel treatment inflicted upon them was due to an almost incomprehensible level of tolerance and respect for other species. They had showed us patience, tried to adapt to our ways to the point of self sacrifice, they had allowed themselves to be killed and eaten in the hope that, perhaps, they would be able to understand our culture. Personally I think that they did come to an accurate understanding of us and that is why the ‘executive’ appeared, before it was too late for them, before they were farmed to extinction.

Dave stepped down from the ladder, letting go of the rungs he allowed the one-sixth gravity to relieve him of his beer enhanced body weight. Dave bounced across the rugged surface to the site, he belched loudly into his helmet; his freeze dried breakfast had sat awkwardly on his stomach this morning.

He lolloped through the perimeter fence, although never keen to work on a Monday morning the inactive Moon nights, equal to 15 Earth days, spent in the welfare fac. had made him long for boozy nights watching football down the pub, the sooner the build was complete the sooner he could get back to them.

Dave released his notifier beacon and waited the regulation 60 seconds before entering the Schrodinger site, the ‘safety 60’, as he’d committed to memory throughout the tedious health and safety training. Dropping down into the mouth of the crater Dave slid to a halt, a move that made him reel backwards his arms circling uncontrollably. Dave managed to right himself by jerking his weight forward again. He could not believe his bad luck the site, which only last night had been reaching completion, had been completely destroyed.

The carbon frame poles floated among plastic panels and solar reflective foil like an insane ceiling mobile. Even the inflatable temporary buildings, now deflated clouds, had been pierced and slashed apart.

Dave began to cough; the whole site had become contaminated with the ‘loth, it hung in the air as if an oncoming sandstorm had been frozen in time. Dave felt his eyes grow sore and red; he began to hack and splutter the thick dust penetrating his helmet seal. Sixty months work destroyed in one night and with it his fantasies about getting home in only six more weeks and most probably his lungs.

Several years ago, before the foil covered cardboard stars, before the machine was permanently installed here and we began secretly running the world, I travelled in a space ship.

The spaceship didn’t technically travel in space, it travelled the pathways we named the mystic streams, a space that existed in parallel to our own world, but to which none of the same laws of logic applied.

Travelling along side me, a girl who claimed she had power over all fire extinguishers, I didn’t really get on with her at first, I found her pious and lacking a sense of humour. After a while, as she was the only other (non-synthetic) woman on board, we did begin to bond, plus she did save my life on more than one occasion, for which, of course, I am truly thankful.

Some way into our perilous journey, after the temping incident and before we fought the fantastic monster, she left us, she was homesick I guess, she returned to her flock of fire extinguishers somewhen in the mystic streams.

Just lately I find myself thinking about her, I miss her.

In a land that time forgot, far away, but not so long ago a girl sits in a dusty warehouse.

If you wipe the thick grey dust from one of the windows on the Ground Floor, you can see her there.

She sits cross legged on the concrete floor; she wears little white pumps, knee length white socks that have orange and blue bands that run around her calves where the elastic cuts a little into her thigh. She wears a short white skirt and a white jumper with a rainbow coloured band which runs around the jumper between her chest and shoulders. Despite the fact her clothes are white, she always looks immaculate, this is even more surprising considering the amount of dust, dirt and detritus that has gathered in the warehouse.

The warehouse was once a store for a fire extinguisher manufacturer, the company must have gone out of business some years ago as it is still full of them. Large extinguishers, small extinguishers, gas, water, powder and foam, some in boxes, some stacked, some standing, some fallen, but all are covered in dust, dirt and dents.

I am ‘H’ I sit alone, serene surrounded by fire extinguishers, barrel shaped bodies nestled close to one another, I bask in their red glow. The dust does not settle on me like it does them, I wear white from head to toe, only interrupted by the coloured bands across my jumper and socks, even my legs are pure white.

I was young when I discovered my empathy for the extinguishers, I could feel their presence in a room, they seemed to call to me, ‘H, here we are, and we will always be here for you if you are always here for us’. It was several years later when I began to fully share their thoughts.

I hang here, waiting, I will protect you, I will stop harm befalling you, I am here for you, always hanging here waiting.

I felt their thoughts inside my head; it was a beautiful feeling to know I was protected, safe from harm. I began to communicate with them, looking into the silvery eye that adorns their duck beak handles, thinking their thoughts and sharing my own thoughts with them. We became close; they were like dear friends to me. I could walk into a high rise building anywhere in the city and hear them singing to me, their handles clacking up and down, their voices in close harmony, swinging their fat little bodies.

For the first time in my life I could see a beauty which was hidden from others in the world. If people would only take the time to consider the extinguishers, hanging from their mounts or standing proud in their red plastic stands. If people only knew how much they cared for us, how they spend their days thinking only of our safety, our well being, the protection of our buildings and our assets.

One day when I was walking on the outskirts of this great city I heard a bubbling mass of voices, a choir of extinguishers calling to me, they brought me here to this warehouse, where I sit now, my days spent in the company of hundreds and thousands of extinguishers; extinguishers who had been abandoned, who were unloved, unwanted, condemned. I spent days, weeks, months, years, servicing them, carefully restoring them so they felt that they could fulfil their purpose. Soon their purpose became only to protect me, and I in return would care for them, a shepherd amongst my faithful flock.

In the boiler room debris and leaves have gathered where they have been blown through the wooden vented door in the strong autumnal wind.

In the boiler room plastic boxes full of rat poison have been placed in dark corners.

In the boiler room there are tins of paint, the paint has run down the side of the tins and dried.

In the boiler room there is a network of pipes, some thick as tree trunks, some thin, all of which have tiny round tags hanging from them.

In the boiler room a man called Ted sometimes works at a small badly painted table; his hands are tanned and gnarled by age.

In the draws of the table there are screws, nuts a flask of something to keep the cold out and a copy of a magazine called men only.

I want to go in the boiler room.