locked door expecting us at the end. He said, fancy some cheese to sustain us on our questing way? My sister, Wendy, made it herself. A nice cheese-maker. She doesn’t need an alarm clock to get up in the morning any more, Scoopy. At 4.30 a.m. like magic she’s up and at them – and out striding in the dark towards work. The Bread Factory. I’m convinced her boss has already wired her head up. That her left arm and left brain have been replaced with robotic ones. Very life-like but botty nonetheless. She’s never sick. The ones and zeros in her head are able to monitor any damage in her body and repair it with nanobots instantaneously. We ate some cheese.
She was a dancer, Fred, wasn’t she? Yeah Scoopy, but she hasn’t danced since she started working at The Bread Factory. Which proves my point, consummately.
‘So you’re going to jack in this job if they bring wires anywhere near you?’
‘No, I’m not, Scoopy. Because I wouldn’t get another job anywhere else with my bad eye and weak arm. But I’m just saying it out loud that’s all. Maybe articulating it will help to overcome or palliate or create a solution in some way or dimension. That’s all I’m saying.’
And I wasn’t going to jack the job in either. It was my first job ever and no one was going to employ an empty vessel such as myself in a million years, when there were multiple over-flowing vessels widely available on the open market with more professional doughnut skills and wealthy subsidising parents.
Fred was head down into his phone again. Beeps and buzzes emanating mellifluously every few seconds, dappling his face. Might take a while, Scoopy, he said. We seem to be getting nowhere. What we need is an über-smart vehicle Fred, to carry us at light speed towards door number two and see how it holds up then, eh?
I thought of something. The best mode of transport for this job, Fred, is my Da, I said. To get this job done right, you need my Da.
When I was six years of age my Da’s jockey-backs were a quick and easy way around the house not even sitting upstairs in the front seat of a double-decker bus could beat for buzz. Last week for old times’ sake we tried it again. The jockey-back. Me and my Da. He gets out of hospital on Saturday hopefully. A jockey-back is hard on a sixty-five year old man. But it was his idea, Fred, all his, as I said to the ambulance crew on the way to hospital that night, and the doctors and nurses in A & E. Then, after a series of beeps, beats and samples of rap modern had tumbled from his phone and kissed my ears, the door trickled open.
Jesus Scoopy, your family have done it again, we’re through. Jockey-backed all the way. Ho ho ho. So we jockey-backed in celebratory binge fashion, me on top, around the next two bends - Giddy up! Giddy up! - and stood at door number three, the final barrier, frontier, we needed to break down in order to attain the office and feast our heads on the contents of Scream’s office cupboard.
He’s feeding us steroids Scoopy at the moment, to make us strong and intelligent – then he’ll add wires and robot parts so that we become half-man half-machine. Like that Indie band, Half Man Half Biscuit. The robots will constantly monitor and learn from our mistakes – lapping up everything – because they’ll be wired in to our thoughts directly. It’s then that Scream will sack us, rip out his wires, and let the botties take over on their own steam with all our knowledge and life experience. But we might get another two – three years out of it before that happens, I reckon. Ray Kuzzeil, the director of Engineering at Google, anticipates that, by the year 2029, robots will have reached human levels of intelligence. In a survey by the Pew Research Centre of almost 2,000 experts, it said that technology will have displaced more jobs than it creates by 2025.’
‘Fred, why can’t you just shut the fuck up and talk about happy things for God’s sake? We have jobs here right now. What about your dancing sister, Wendy Cheese? You never asked her out for me like you promised. What about her, Fred?’
‘She doesn’t dance anymore Scoopy. I told you. She’s got a robot for an arm and a robot for a half-brain for God’s sake. It would be wrong of me to ask her anything.’
‘She’d dance with me though. She would, I know it. These steroids have completely changed me. Four months in, and I’ve already read Ulysses twice. I’m addicted to it. I can’t put it down. I’ve got whole ten page sentences learned off by heart. And the steroids have given me that power thanks to Doctor Scream. I’ve noticed my dancing skills have improved too, Fred, but that all awaits in month six, I think. The Donut Hole steroids. Arrange a date with her Fred, please, after month six. I’ll be dancing beautifully by then and I’ll be eternally grateful to you. I’d even go to the toilet for you if I could.’
‘No you wouldn’t Scoopy. No, you definitely wouldn’t. It’s in the toilet where our species’ ruin has already started to fester like white maggots. There’s no bloody privacy these days. Not even in the toilet.’
He started messing with the app on his phone again, preparing door number three for open sesame.