The King of the Cogs Read online

  “Shouldn’t it?” he said, looking worried. “Oh dear.” His mind seemed to drift a little and he mumbled half to himself, “Maybe it was a bit silly to dress those monkeys in the weather balloon at Roswell in alien outfits. My My, what was I thinking?”

  We sat in silence for a minute or two and then as strangely as it had begun the interview was over. Hank appeared once again and I followed the suitcase carrying potential android out to the reception where I was signed out and as we went through the exit again there was a static shock again, though this time it was a little stronger. Another half hour with Hank in the car found once again the same dull lack of conversation but soon we were back at the station once more, though I had noticed that this time there did seem to be a little more traffic on the road. The train was waiting for me at the oddly deserted station and leaving Hank standing at the station almost as if to ensure I actually got on the train, soon I was under way.

  To my total amazement, shock and yes, I shall also say, unease, a week later I received a letter stating that I had got the job.

  Interval:

  Fag Break with Jon:

  “Prison Shoes”

  “Just because you have decided to dress more casual doesn’t mean you can dress like a teenager.” Said Jon having a drag on his cigarette. We were at the smoking shelter again, and a few groups of people stood around in their own little groups, passing the time of day and so on. This day we were joined by one of the managers from the media section, Colin. Colin had just got divorced, an event that had coincided almost exactly with Colin’s discovery of Primark. Sadly, this had also coincided at exactly the same time as with his forgetting just how old he was: mid-forties, fine start of a bald patch and the conversational skills of a rock.

  “I mean.” Continued Jon, a slight smile playing across his face, “Just look at your shoes.” I looked down at Colin’s dark purple canvas shoes that contrasted somewhat with his off mustard coloured chinos and chequered shirt. He looked like an explosion at a clown convention.

  “Nothing wrong with these.” Sniffed Colin. He knew there was of course, and there was no malice intended. We were just taking the piss.

  “I quite like the shoes.” I said. I didn’t, but I was curious as to see where Jon was going with this.

  “Prison shoes them.” Smiled Jon. “All the rage in Walton Prison I would imagine.” Colin just smiled. He knew better than to retaliate.

  “You have to remember Colin.” Smiled Jon. “You’re forty-four and therefore logically, not a member of One Direction.”

  “Or Buster.” I said smiling.

  “Who?” said Jon incredulously.

  “Buster.” I said. “Boy band in the seventies.” Jon just rolled his eyes.

  “Good result yesterday!” shouted one of the managers to Jon, walking across the car park as they passed the smoking shelter heading to the main door. Everton had lost yesterday, and as Jon was the most renowned Evertonian in the building it was obviously him all the Liverpool supporters couldn’t wait to bump into.

  “Whatever!” shouted Jon back as the manager rounded the corner and disappeared.

  “I think perhaps you’re trying to achieve “available”. Said Jon and Colin looked confused.

  “Your clothes.” Said Jon, pointing in particular to the shoes. “You are trying to make a statement.”

  “I just liked the colours really.” Smiled Colin.

  “Yellow and purple?” I asked doubtfully.

  “Mustard, not yellow.” Said Colin. “You could hardly say that these are banana pants now, could you?” Jon just raised an eyebrow.

  “Well it doesn’t say, “Available” to me. I laughed.

  “Go on then, Luke – what does it say?”

  “More like, “rapist”” I laughed. Jon snorted, putting his fag out in the ash bin.

  “Desperate.” Said Jon, smiling. “Or maybe “three years for robbing some newsagents. One of the two.”

  “Piss off you two.” Said Colin, extinguishing his cigarette and making to return back inside. “I’ll see you later.” And off he went.

  “Poor bastard.” Smiled Jon as he waited for me to finish my smoke. “Probably living off Pot Noodles and Cup a Soups.” I laughed, knowing he was probably right. “Probably be a bright red Ferrari next.”

  “And a wig.” I mused, and we both laughed.

  “Did you see what bloody Alan has gone and suggested now?” asked Jon. Alan was the latest member of the sales team who was very good at questioning every aspect of what the business did rather than realising that was how it worked and to leave it alone.

  “No.” I said. “What’s he suggested now?”

  “Well.” Began Jon, grinning. I put my cigarette out and we began to wander back across the car park to the main doors. “He has put a plan forward where if we all chip in ten quid a month for the electric bill then the company gets a tax rebate which would earn us back such a rebate that the company could then reimburse us double the amount.”

  “What?” I laughed. “He wants us to pay the company’s electric bill?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tit.” Laughed Jon as we entered the main door, crossed reception and headed back to our desks.

  Ten minutes later I heard my email ping and opening up a message from Jon, in which he also copied Colin, there was a picture of a pair of bright yellow pumps and a ball and chain.

  “You’re dead.” Came back an email to the both of us shortly after, to which I replied to the pair of them with an email containing a picture of a pair of bright pink trousers and a cell door. From across the sales floor Jon gave me a thumbs up as he sent an email to both Colin and I containing a picture of a bright red Ferrari.

  It took less than a week for the car brochures to arrive on Coli’s desk. They were free to send off for and so Jon had signed Colin up for the newsletter too. We had observed the brochures arrival at reception and the pair of us watched in silence as Colin opened his mail and began poring over the brochures.

  Nodding to each other we then established a sweepstake with all of the office as to how long it wold be before the Ferrari arrived. One pound a go, soon we had fifty members of the sweepstake, all without Colin’s knowledge of course.

  Much to Colin’s disgust, the eventual winner was Laura from the research department with sixteen days.

  Chapter Two

  “Vague statements are interchangeable.”

  (Robert Mager)

  “Luke?” the professor asked, squinting at me through his smeared round spectacles across the dining room table. “Do I own a cat?” In all fairness it wasn’t the weirdest question he had ever asked me, not even close. “Prof” as I preferred to call him (never when he could hear me though, that would usually end up with him giving me an over the eyebrows glance, which was definitely in the arse kicking end of the staring scale) had a bit of a talent for either asking or stating all kinds of weird shit. I had come to the decision that he didn’t make any sense at all most of the time. Yet we got on okay. It was almost like looking after a child sometimes, and yes, sometimes he would look at me as if I was like some sort of kid. I guess I admired his casual eccentricity, his unique and slightly off centre way of looking at the world sometimes so funny that I had to actually excuse myself from the room.

  On this particular day however I was sitting in the professors book lined study at my small desk by the door going through the day’s mail. We had only just started work and it was quite early. The professor always insisted on starting early as according to him before 8am was “the best part of the day”. It took some getting used to. Believe me. Before I started this job I don’t think I even realised that there were two one O’clock’s in the day, never mind getting up early. I think that the entire idea of morning was like an alien concept to me. This job had put an end to that. No problem whatsoever.

  “Don’t you know if you own a cat?” I smiled, taking a swig from the cup of tea in front of me that I had made sure I had made. The las
t one the professor had made for me had been almost undrinkable and vaguely blue in colour. I suspected he had used one of the not quite empty flasks from the laboratory downstairs to fill the kettle. The professor smiled at me from across the table and picked one of the many pens that littered his desk. Almost without thinking he moved it forward about two inches and placed it back down carefully, almost as if moving a chess piece. In an Absent minded way, he looked under the table as if try to spot the cat in question and then smiled back at me.

  “Well I’m not quite sure.” he said, removing his glasses and wiping them on his ever present lab coat. “If I do indeed possess a cat then I haven’t seen it relatively recently.” As if to emphasise this he looked under the table once more and then straightened up, pushing his glasses back up his nose as he did so.

  “You have a cat bowl and litter tray in the utility room” I pointed out, trying to help him out. This merely seemed to make him irritable.

  “Yes yes - but that hardly proves that I have a cat now, does it? Merely that I possess the implements for potential ownership of said cat.”

  I sighed under my breath. It seemed that we were about to undertake another one of the professor’s rambling arguments that once concluded didn’t seem to make much sense at all. I inwardly grimaced as he began to move pens around on his desk once again.

  “We must keep an open mind at all times Luke and the evidence here quite clearly dictates that the existence of said potential cat...” he drifted off, and the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece was the only sound that suddenly seemed to swell and fill the room. The Professor suddenly stood up, accidentally knocking the pen onto the floor. “...Or a theoretical cat!” he suddenly exclaimed, and raised his finger in the air as if testing for a change in wind direction. He paused to look at the floor as if musing this over and then repeated his conclusion. “Yes. A theoretical cat, Luke!” With that he dashed from the room, his lab coat trailing behind him as he went. I could hear the sound of things being moved around in the utility room as if he was looking for something. Several exclamations came from that direction as he continued the search for whatever it was that he was looking for, which was presumably what he now was thinking of as his theoretical cat. So it always was with the professor. Since I had taken the job I had as the saying goes, learnt to “expect the unexpected”.

  I’ll tell you what. There’s no University education you could take that would prepare you for this job, but slowly but surely over the previous months once I had got used to the professor’s ways he had slowly opened up to me some sort of vague indication of what he was working on and possibly what my part in it was. But it had not always been that way. Oh no - at first I was completely in the dark, and the process of getting the professor to open up about what exactly it was that he was working on was akin to peeling an onion - slowly, layer by layer, and usually with tears in my eyes.

  I will tell you what, it was a journey alright, and not in any way the boring technical support job that I thought I was applying for. Whether it was a pleasant shock that it was completely different remains to be seen. I suspected that the professor had lots more to reveal to me about God knows what. Yet it was always interesting. Sometimes vaguely crazy too. I mean, this is a man who keeps a spreadsheet for the best time to visit the local barbers, for fucks sake. Colour coded and everything. Weird. Real really weird.

  The job itself was relatively easy. The professor’s real title or titles to be more accurate was head of Information Technology, as well as being the Director for research and development, and finally the Main product development analyst. The company had several departments, though the main brunt of my work dealt with handling technical support issues for the sales departments, though all of my calls for that aspect of the job were done mostly remotely by either telephone or remote support. There were also visits needed to the sales department to replace faulty equipment of course, but that seemed to be pretty rare. I did rather think that the professor thought that I was also like some sort of personal assistant to him as well, but that was fine because it helped relieve the tedium of the “my mouse won’t work” and “Outlook is looking funny today” calls, in which I found the fault usually lay between the chair and the mouse.

  So I suppose that my new found job was a triumph for blue egg thinking. If indeed that was what determined my acceptance by the professor. Some days it is quite difficult to tell. Like then, when he was busy looking for his theoretical cat. I know a whole lot more now than I did then of course, but there are still huge swathes of stuff I have absolutely no idea about at all. Of one thing I was certain however, and that was that the professor most definitely did not own a cat. He had a cat bowl, basket and litter tray but no cat. The bowl and litter tray had remained resolutely empty during the entire six months I had been there. No cat. But this was the best way to approach things with the professor. As a general rule of thumb, he liked it best if you answered a question with another question I found.

  Looking slightly hot and bothered, if not to say downright out of sorts he reappeared in the office entirely catless. His lab coat blew out behind him as he reached the French windows and seeing me hesitating gestured for me to follow. “Come on, Luke!” he shouted almost in irritation. “I am not sitting here all day waiting for this theoretical cat to turn up; we will take a trip to the village to clear our heads. The cat can wait for now!” I grabbed a pad and stuffing a biro into the lapel pocket of my shirt followed the professor across the lawns and into the car park. Ten minutes later we were in the small Cheshire village that was the nearest thing to civilisation for miles around. The village was so quiet even Tesco hadn’t heard of it, but there was a post office, which was a nice change these days. There was also a barbers, a coffee shop, a particularly quaint little pub called, “The Gym and Splint” for some odd reason.

  There was also a butcher’s shop as well as a small gifty style shop that seemed to actually stock almost everything. I had yet to catch them out with not having something behind the voluminous counter anyway. It was a bit like a twenty-four hour Asda on Saturday morning, only not quite as big inside, though that didn't seem to stop them stocking absolutely everything. It was all counter service, of course which was very old fashioned and quaint. The shop was run, staffed and owned by Mr Hinnerty who had the curious distinction of being able to produce with no notice at all absolutely anything and everything you could ever want to buy, but was also the biggest teller of tall tales I have ever had the pleasure of talking to in my entire life. If you took Hinnerty at face value he’d been everywhere, done everything, and met everyone at least twice. He was the biggest fantasist I’ve ever met. I mean, half of the guy’s lies weren’t true. I still remember the first time I met him. That was on the first week of what the professor had conveniently labelled as my induction week. But that is another story. The induction was, and is, even stranger than the interview. In fact, they don’t even begin to compare.

  Chapter Three

  “I have never let my schooling interfere

  With my education.”

  (Mark Twain)

  (Part One)

  “Come in Luke!” said the short broad shouldered man that I now knew to be referred to as “Bridges”, as he ushered me into what was to be my accommodation for the foreseeable future. It was a great perk of the job. No rent, no utilities, poll tax and so on. Coupled with the slightly embarrassing salary I was still pinching myself at getting the job in the first place. “Let me show you how your room works!” exclaimed Bridges, his enthusiasm for what was after all just a room at the end of the day puzzling. I think at fifty-one I was fairly up to speed with how a room worked.

  Nevertheless, he flicked the switch and the room lit up. I turned to have a look and I was, I think it is fair to say, impressed. The large king size bed was through a small doorway to the right but the main part of the room itself seemed to be a very large living room. A ceiling to floor bay window filed the far wall, through which sunlight splashe
d across the lushly carpeted floor. We were three storeys up, and the view across the Cheshire countryside was spectacular. I tore my attention away from that and noticed two other doors off to my left. I strode across the large room and saw a very plush bathroom through one door and a small kitchen through the other. The living area had several chairs placed around a large widescreen TV and a broad metal trimmed desk sat off to one side, upon which was placed a large computer workstation.

  I drew in my breath as Bridges carried my cases into the room and placed them off to one side against the wall. He was a strange looking guy, I reflected. He seemed to be all overcoat, shoes and flat cap, with what may possibly have been a bushy black moustache covering the parts of his face that his pulled up overcoat collar and flat cap didn’t. His voice was the most imposing part of him, being deep and yet also pleasant. You couldn’t help but warm to the man, even if you couldn’t actually see him.

  “The heating and lighting controls are on the wall here.” he said, pointing to the obvious dials placed by the exit. “There are instructions for the kitchen appliances in the top draw by the cooker, and a leaflet by the television remote over there. The internet is on your computer over there, along with your username and password.” He tapped where I assumed his nose should have been but wasn’t actually sure in a conspiratorial way. “No porn.” he almost laughed and I felt my eyebrows rise. “Only kidding.” he continued to laugh in his deep bass voice, “It’s not monitored.” he paused to reflect, before seeming to reach a decision to continue. “I wouldn’t push it though.” he finished finally and I gave him my best, “thanks, but it’s time for you to go” smile. Sadly, it didn’t work. He just stood there immobile, staring at me carefully almost as if he was weighing me up. For a second it crossed my mind that he might be waiting for a tip, but then it also occurred to me what the professor had told me about Hank.