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Chapter 7
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Well fans, from the international responses we have received, I can now say that Prod, Tonto, and F.T. Murk now have a worldwide fan club. In this month’s episode, George Shenston describes a somewhat thoughtful Prod who is aware of history, his own identity and function, and is constantly comparing himself with the dastardly Moriarty, the hopelessly impractical postmodern speculator, with his long wierds and curious phrases which alas, have a way of finding themselves within Prod’s consciousness. Here also is a dramatic dimension of movements and events and thumbnail descriptions of others, such as the various grease-monkeys. There are also descriptions of domestic interiors such as Ava Frost’s flat, which I rather liked. This Prod shows also some wit and a certain talent at self-parody. He is beginning to step out from his Pompeii wall painting like a chicken from an egg. Who knows what will happen next? If you remember, last issue we left our two friends having just arrived on scene at Batley Boiler House. We meet them again here, expecting a phone call from F.T. Murk, the newly anointed anti-mystical guru of the Gang of Fort. So, Combat Viewers, read another episode of the world’s first cyber-soap.
Enjoy!
Your Editor
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Events at Batley Boiler HouseFirst we found the primary witness, 95-year old Ava Frost, on floor 506 of Batley Boiler House, named after a long forgotten Methodist pederast of yore. Full of the hopes and fears of all the years, she was juicing up on Dean Martin and British Carry On videos between surfing through 50 channels with her Disabled Pensioner’s Remote. At least another 100 channels came through the ceiling, up from the floor, and across the room from the walls as she listened to web radio on her ear phones. TV sound didn’t matter, apparently. But then I suppose, like the pictures, it never did. Memo: must stop these Moriarty postmodern thoughts. No wonder some people see flying saucers I said to myself, as I eyed her motorized chair parked by her broken kidney machine. It was being repaired by two sweating grease-monkeys from Social Security, listening to a loud transistor tuned to what Tonto always described as the scaffolder’s station: sounds of heavy steel ingots forever falling down a limitless steel shaft forever and ever as Tonto described it. Well, I thought to myself shouting through the din at Ava's, if this is a postmodern situation, then I’d rather have a bucket of bran mash for dinner, tea, and supper. After we’d prized her away from this stream of consciousness as that Moriarty would say, Ava Frost told us a fine tale and a half. She said she’d seen two UFOs in the sky, and a dancing alien alongside ‘em no less, when she was going out the night before. Going out in this case was something special. It meant that she got into her wheel chair, entered her special lift on the outside of the building and shot down at high speed to ground zero, hydraulic dampers courtesy of the local Pensioner Technology Division of the Labour Council’s Experimental Amenity Committee. As you know, I am no tosser like that Moriarty. What I look for is solid stuff. Searching for and correcting psychosocial follies is no easy task. It requires dedication. We have to be prepared for anything. We never know what we may find. And a man told me that a turnip once bid her good morning outside the local labour exchange, a man told me that the Queen was really an alien lizard with plastic surgery. As you all know from Fortean Times, me and Tonto rush around trying to mend all these tears in the fabric and getting rid of all this mystical paranormal rubbish. In contrast, not one of that Moriarty’s ideas is worth more than a nosebag for a Clydesdale brewery-horse. Later, after we had left the mis en scene as that Moriarty would call it, I was prowling around the car park under Ava’s window, when I came across a pair of polished black army boots and a toolbox. I knew summat was up. None of your virtualities and your Moriarty information-theory crappola for this solid bear. My suspicions were further aroused when yet another grease-monkey one Donald, arrived. He started fiddling with Ava’s high-speed chair-lift. Fitting new dampers he was, chair coming down too fast it was. Another clue. Another dot to be joined. So I said to Tonto I said we’ve got to do some research, this being a word that always sets young Tonto alight. That Moriarty (spit) don’t do no research. We hold the word research before people like him like Peter Cushing holds a crucifix against Dracula. At the very word “research” the Portobello Moriarty shrinks back into his hellish den full of dreams and fantasies, not knowing a bag of chips from a chilled tin of Umbongo. He don’t do no field work. So operating on my famed intuition, I asked Donald what would happen when someone came down and hit the faulty shock absorbers: -She’d oscillate steadily for five minutes. -Five minutes? -Until she came to a full stop. -Would you say, Donald, that her judgment might be impaired after such a salutary experience? -Put it this way. She would not feel like doing her usual Betty Grable bit at the Bingo Kareoke, if you know what I mean.
This was interesting. The dots were beginning to form. All we had to do was join them up. True to form, the bright Tonto finds another vital clue. After going round the car park like a hungry ferret, he runs up to me and holds some gunge in front of me from which came the smell of truth –stale straw and rabbit turds! This got us both really excited. There’s nothing like the scent of reality to turn on hunters of non-virtualities. Then I saw yet another clue walking right towards us sniffing round the car park like a Catholic priest looking for a young male orphan. Still trembling with excitement, I asked this fellow what he was looking for, and he told me that he was looking for his boots that he lost last night. I pointed to the pair we’d found, and he was most grateful, and thanked me profusely. I said I admire them polished tops of your, and he said yes they’re my Territorial Army boots. Now there’s something about boots and bins always turns me on like a profound elixir, but I must stop talking like that Moriarty. If it doesn’t stop, I’ll have to get a personal counsellor to get this psychic fruit bat off my back. Tonto’s shrewed eyes lit up. He asked the man why his boots were there in the first place (clever that Tonto) and the man said they’d fallen down from the ledge of his balcony on the 600th floor after he’d put them out to get the polish dry. We had another meeting. We took off our anoraks, opened our flasks of cocoa just by the Old Boiler House and I took a deep draft of lukewarm Bourneville Cool. What was the connection between boots, rabbit turds, and Vera Frost’s invalid lift? The dots had to connect somewhere. And it was nothing to do with them silly UFOs. Something had hit Albert’s boots and cast them off into the evening firmament. Me mobile rang. It were Murk from FT. He were in a bad temper. Have you trashed this UFO rubbish for the next issue yet, mouthed he. I sed shut your yuppy mouth I sed, who do you think I am, dyno-rod Henderson, who clears six blocked drains per hour? Sed he to me, we’ve got to have it all trashed by Wednesday late copy day. I sed brother, get thee to thy bistro and shove yer head right into the middle of one of them there Alfredo Fettuchini cheese fondulix or whatever you call honest hake sarnies down in that effete haven of visual virtuality you live in. I was going to give Murk another good line of verbal reasoning (I must stop talking like this) when Tonto screamed Eureka, I’ve got it! I said who’s she when she’s at home, and he said that the rabbit jumped. I was about to give another bloody good reply when the little bugger disappeared up the stairwell to flat 607, the lair of one Ada Bratby. When we could drag Ada Bratby from yet another three-foot -wide life-support machine, we got the major clue that cracked the case. There beyond the pink neon fish tank a picture of Weeping Boko the Clown, and her oxygen respirator (they are needed at this height) was the balcony. And what was on the balcony? An empty rabbit hutch! Ada then told us a sorry tale. Big George the Coney, it being a seasonal summer night, had thumped open the door of his hutch and dived for freedom down 600 floors. As you know, rabbits don’t bounce. Poor George hit the toes of Harold’s Territorial Army boots five floors down, and rabbit and boots and straw and turds hit the ground at the same time according to the laws of Galileo (I must stop using learned references like that Moriarty). What time was that? 11.30 And what time was it when Ada Frost came down fast on her invalid chair? 11.30. So Ada Frost’s circular UFOs consisted of nothing more than Albert’s shiny boot caps glistening under the moon, and her dancing alien was George the Cony, found quite dead by the parking warden’s cubicle a few hours later. Another solved case! The Brentford Polonius will be pleased. Don’t be surprised. Life’s like this. There’s no God, aliens, or fairies, but boots, dead rabbits and grease-monkeys. Life’s not nearly so exciting as you think. Sludge, that’s reality. The stuff that stick’ to thy boots, that’s the truth. Anything else is class mystification, but I must stop talking like they did twenty years ago at the Polytech. Of course all the over-inspired walking-wounded came up in chorus. Pamela Smart, a waitress, saw two globes also at 11.30 on the same said night, and she was nowhere near the Batley Boiler House. Well I did a little rummaging around the old records (me and Tonto’s good at that) and found that she had convictions for supplementing her dole with a bit hired-out how’s your father in her back-bedroom. So that was her out of it. Then there was Donald the local scrapman who said he seen the same globes at about the same time. But I had another rummage, and I found that he’d had a jail sentence for criminal violence. So that was him out of it. Then there was Charlie the dustman, Philip the busdriver, Anne the Traffic Warden, and many more who said they’d seen the globes. But after weeks of investigation, I found the kinks in the lives of each one that destroyed any theory of them being credible witnesses. It all adds up. The fantasy-prone personality is found somewhere along the line. Their claims were complex functions of their social deviance. Now that’s good. Tonto liked that. I get better at the Moriarty-style phrases. He suggested we feed that one to Moriarty himself, see if he would take it up and reproduce it, thus confirming Tonto’s theory of urban legends as regurgitated suggestion-fodder. We guessed he’d gulp and swallow it like corn tossed to a fat hen. We guessed he’d call it something like the Art of the Mundane. He do it for one of them there trendy magazines he writes for. F.T. Murk will be right pleased. The truth will out. UFO target destroyed. Again, we had separated the facts from the fictions. Tatty-dah for now, seekers of unvarnished truth.
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