The Monkey Wrench Kid
COPYRIGHT
Ian C. Watt © 2021
All rights reserved, for all media:
electronic, printed, film and graphic.
email: ianecowatt@gmail.com

The Monkey Wrench Kid

Ian C. Watt

CHAPTER ONE - DECOCKTION

A cataclysmic thunderstorm is raging directly overhead...
...KZZ-rak-a-kaa-ZZAK-a-kaa!!...Baffla-daffla-BOOM-doooom-booooom!!...
My top-floor flat’s getting the full force of it. The attic windows are angled up towards the sky, the wind is thrashing rain against them, shaking them in their frames. Almighty great gusts of wind whoosh across the roof, rattling the old slates as they go.
I’m slowly waking up, but not because of the cataclysmic thunder and lightning and rattling and stuff, there’s cataclysmic storms all the time these days and I sleep right through them, I’m waking up because I’m being shaken by a huge hairy man.
“Wake up, Daniel!” he’s booming at me.
...KZZ-rak-a-kaa-ZZAK-a-kaa!!...Baffla-daffla-BOOM-doooom-booooom!!...
I keep on clawing my way slowly up the slippery slopes from deep, deep sleep into confused half-wakefulness, two claws forward, one claw back.
“Wake up, Daniel!” the huge hairy figure booms again. I wonder if I’m still dreaming. I’m pretty sure I’m being shaken though, because I can feel my head thumping up and down on the pillow, with my brain sloshing around inside. Can this really be happening? The strange hairy man seems very agitated, he’s breathing hard.
After being shaken a bit more, I feel about as awake as I ever get... yes... dearie, dearie me... this really does seem to be happening... I let out a strangled, very high-pitched, shocked, terror-stricken shriek...
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!”

...KZZ-rak-a-kaa-ZZAK-a-kaa!!...Baffla-daffla-BOOM-doooom-booooom!!.....
Foulburgh’s storms have recently gone from cataclysmic to some new level altogether... super-cataclysmic? The next series of lightning flashes are so close together they’re more like a continuous flickering explosive blaze. I see a bit more detail of the huge hairy man. He has a bush of thick curly black hair around his head, a long, thick black beard with bushy twirled-up moustaches, and an enormous hot air balloon of a chest, also covered in thick black curly hair. The arms and hands shaking me are very large and hairy as well, in fact there’s not much to be seen of him except for masses of thick black curly hair. What I can see of his face amongst all the hair is impressive, handsome in an old-fashioned sort of a way, deep purple in colour, and glistens. I notice that a strong, unusual aroma is drifting about him, not exactly pleasant but not exactly unpleasant, sort of spicey, earthy... musky... unusual yet quite familiar...
He has a few white bits, such as the whites of the tiny eyes staring down at me and the rows of huge gleaming white, clenched teeth revealed by his grimace... teeth so white that I’m a bit distracted by them, I’m easily distracted, I start to wonder what sort of dental hygiene routine he has... it’s so important to look after your teeth...
“Wake up, Daniel! Focus!”
I expect you’ve been in a situation like this yourself, so you’ll know that you tend not to think logically, your brain just sort of flies apart into bits which whizz about inside your head, bouncing around and bumping into each other in a completely useless panic, like balls in a pinball machine. It’s even worse for a perpetually confused person like me, I never have much clue about what’s going on around me, I just sort of drift around in a state of continuous confused bafflement, with a very large question mark drifting above my head...
The huge hairy man is still shaking me, he’s very agitated, nervous... he booms at me:

“Daniel! Focus! Focus! Listen to me, I’m your penis, Daniel, I’m your cock! And I’m leaving you!”
This makes no sense to me at all, “What?... Let me go!... Help!.... Who?...”
He tries again:
“I’m your PENIS, Daniel, your COCK! And I’m leaving you! I’m your male organ of regeneration, Daniel, and...”
Suddenly, his mood shifts, he’s holding back tears...
“... and I’m leaving you, Daniel... I’m so sorry... sob!... I just can’t... sniff!... live with you... sob!... any more....”
The huge, hairy man turns and sits on the bed, making me bounce up towards the ceiling, his shoulders are shaking, his head’s in his hands.
Can this actually be happening? Of course, girlfriends have left me before, once or twice... well, quite often... but an organ? Then it occurs to me that it might just be one of the guys from work dressed up for a joke... or my old friend Edrigo, heavily disguised, on an escapade... What should I do? Play along I guess... Maybe I’ll pretend to comfort the huge man in some way? A hand on his shoulder perhaps? I’m not sure I want to touch anything quite so hairy though. Maybe offer a mug of tea?
“Big Ronny? Gogo? It’s you isn’t it? ... ha ha...”
“No, Daniel, how many times do I have to tell you? I’m your cock, your penis... and I’m leaving you... If you don’t believe me take a look for yourself!”
With this, the shaggy figure stands up and spins around. With one pull he hauls the bedclothes off me, with another pull he hauls down my shorts, then he points to my nether regions. I look down and, in the flashes of lightning and first glimmers of dawn, I get a bit of a terrible shock when I see what he means. I let out another, even higher-pitched shriek... because my cock has indeed gone!
...KZZ-rak-a-kaa-ZZAK-a-kaa!!...Baffla-daffla-BOOM-doooom-booooom-eeeeEEEEKK!!...
Cock, balls, the whole lot gone! The bits of my brain starts to bounce around even faster. Dearie, dearie me! Is

this possible? Can your cock actually become a kind of separate person and leave you? I’m familiar with the idea of your various organs having personalities of their own from my treatments with our excellent local complementary therapist, Dr Krakk, (we’ll meet him properly just a bit further along in this strange story of ours), but I really haven’t ever heard of an organ actually leaving its owner/host before. Just as well it’s only something semi-vital and not my lungs, or heart, or brain or something... What on Earth would happen if your brain left you? Actually, come to think of it, you can see what happens when brains leave their owners/hosts all around you here on the streets of Foulburgh...
I pull the bedclothes back up. The figure throws a pile of my stuff off a chair and pulls it up beside the bed. Now he has the tone of an adult talking to a child:
“Danny, Danny, listen to me. I’m sorry... I know it’s hard on you, but there’s so much going on in my head... I have to sort things out... try to make sense of it all... it’s hard for me to explain, but everything is changing! A Tidal Wave of Change is sweeping around the world... the Total Collapse of Everything is upon us! (More cataclysmic thunder and lightning). Humanity must evolve or die, I feel it in my bones... and evolve very quickly if we don’t want to take all other life on Earth down with us... Mankind, Man must change... Man’s attitude to Women, and Man and Woman’s attitude to the Earth...”
This is not the first time I’ve heard about a tidal wave of change sweeping around the world. Recently, my friend, Edrigo, has been going on about just exactly that, and all the rest of this stuff too, and more, most passionately, going on about how mankind’s attitude must change, how the world is changing and we can choose to change our ways now or wait until change is forced upon us... switch from exploitation to regeneration... and stuff to do with male and female attitudes... and attributes...
“Stay awake, Daniel! Focus! Women have just been objects for us to desire, haven’t they? Men have lusted

after them, seduced them, wanted to possess them, control them... shown them off like just another beautiful thing to own, like a car, or a house, or a watch, just another prize... but we can’t go on like that... that attitude must change now... there must be respect!... Stay awake, Daniel! Focus!... Daniel, there must be respect between men and women, and between men and women and the Earth!”
“Well... er... I’m listening... how do you mean?...”
“... that attitude must change! It is changing! It’s a poison that’s led to so much pain, suffering and unhappiness... to abuse, rape, suppression all around the world... “
Now he sags, crestfallen, gives a deep sigh.
“... and it’s you and I, Danny, that are to blame... you must surely feel the terrible weight of all the guilt and the shame?”
“... well... I think so... “
Now he’s all passionate resolve.
“Now is the Time for the Rise of the Feminine! For the Rebalancing of the Sexes! Now is the Time for Respect, for Regenerative Relationships! An End to Exploitation!... try to stay awake, please, Daniel, this is important... in Love, in Sexual Relationships, and in all other ways of Life too... Time for the heavy hand of Patriarchy to be lifted up from its Oppresive Smothering of so many aspects of our lives, for men as well as for women... “
...KZZ-rak-a-kaa-ZZAK-a-kaa!!...Baffla-daffla-BOOM-doooom-booooom!!...
The huge hairy man sighs again, seems to pull himself together, becomes resolved. I’m beginning to get my head around the idea that maybe he is indeed my cock, however unbelieveable that is, and that, by some sort of bizarre freak lightning or radioactive/chemical leak event of some kind, all too possible here in Foulburgh, he has indeed taken on a whole personage of his own and parted company from the rest of my body.... and become... what?... Cockman?
Feeling a bit numb and dazed, I watch as he starts to

rummage around my bedroom, looking in my cupboards and drawers, pulling out items of clothing. I watch him try on various things, a long faux fur coat and a pair of urban camouflage trousers, both passed on to me by Edrigo, and a pair of my urban survival wellies. He hauls a purple woolly bobble hat over his head. Everything is far too small for him and there are many bulgings and rippings as he tries to cover his colossal shaggy nakedness. One of his body parts, I can’t help noticing, is so huge that it’s difficult to cover at all: dangling down between his legs from the thickest bush of curling black hair of all, reaching almost to his knees, there swings the biggest cock I have seen in all my years, even in the world of pornography, very long, and thick with it, and balls like a pair of turnips besides. He rips two pairs of trousers in his attempts to tuck it all away and in the end gives up and just ties my leopard-skin print beach towel about his midriff.
“Well... I’m leaving now Daniel, but before I go I must just say a couple of things to you...” his voice is quivering now and tears are streaming down his face, soaking his beard and moustaches, making them droop, so that tear-drops drip off their ends. I can’t help a bit of nervous giggle at this but, not wanting to upset the cock-man figure any more than he’s already upset, I change it into a gurgling snort, as best I can. The giant hairy man’s moods are swinging all over the place, in fact he’s a complete emotional wreck... a thought occurs to me...
“I wonder if some counselling might be helpful for you... er... Cockman? A few sessions... you know... you might be able to see things more clearly... I can recommend...”
He flies into a rage at this.
“Counselling?! Counselling?! I’m fine! There’s nothing wrong with me!... I just need to sort things out in my head...”
Just as suddenly, he calms down again.
“I’m so sorry, Daniel... it’s all so confusing isn’t it?... I just know I want more from life than this... I deserve better!... the world deserves better... and yet I don’t know what

exactly...” now he’s muttering, mumbling to himself, “... so much change in the world... have to adapt... so difficult to find my way... to make sense of anything at all...”
Well I have to agree with him on that, confusion is my normal state of mind...
He leaps up and starts pacing to and fro, waving his arms, all passionate resolve, ranting away, but his next words are lost in a fresh burst of thunder...
...KZZ-rak-a-kaa-ZZAK-a-kaa!!...Baffla-daffla-BOOM-doooom-booooom!!...
The super-cataclysmic storm rages on directly overhead. The first light of dawn is filtering through the filthy Foulburgh air, a dingey, mouldy yellow-grey-green background to the lightning.
The huge hairy cock-man sighs and calms right down again. He sits by the bed, becomes quiet, even gentle.
“So, Daniel, how long is it since you split up with your last girlfriend?” This almost tenderly.
“Well... a while...”
“How long exactly? How many years?”
“... a couple... I think...
“I can tell you, Daniel, it’s three and a half years. That’s three and half years I’ve had of your fantasies, unfulfilled lusting, fetishes, chatrooms, pornography, masturbation...”
“Well... er... not continuous... I do go to work sometimes...”
“I want real sex again, Daniel! I want love! I’ve had enough of being pummelled and thrashed by you, enough of this hideous internet charade!”
He’s throbbing and glowing with passion again now.
“...well... it’s not that easy to meet someone these days you know...” I chip in, “Edrigo doesn’t have parties like he used to... all his models are so busy with Post-Industrial Disruptivism... and gorilla gardening and everything... “
The cock-man figure doesn’t hear this at all, now he goes

all mystical, seems to be seeing a vision or something...
“Daniel, I have an important part to play in all this... I don’t understand exactly what that part is, but it’s a mission of some kind... I dreamed I was riding out on a magnificent wild stallion, through murky woods, by misty lakes, on a quest, a Quest for Lady Destiny herself!... music was thundering in the background, trumpets, horns, trombones, triangles! Mayhap there’s a dragon or twain to slay... and Daniel, I will meet her! I will meet her, in human form, very soon, Lady Destiny will appear to me as a magnificent, all-powerful woman... every bone and blood vessel, every joint and tendon, every organ in my body is throbbing, pulsating, telling me so! I will win her hand... and all the rest of her! Ha!... our bodies and hearts and souls will become as one... we will make ecstatic love that will resonate through all Space and Time forever... a spectacular cosmic event, a vital part of the Tidal Wave of Change and the Rebalancing of the Universe!”
His eys are flashing with passion, I can see the blood vessels in his head throbbing and pulsating just like he says, his hair is bobbing about...then suddenly he’s holding back the tears again...
“But now I must be on my way... I’m so, so sorry to be leaving you, Daniel, so very, very sorry...”
His lips are quivering, is he going to cry again? No, he sniffs, gets up, grabs another of my towels and blows his nose into it...
“I’m sorry, Davey... but let’s remember all the wonderful, good, fun times we’ve had together, eh? all the... well... all the, yes, all the good times...” he’s sort of stoically cheerful now, “... I’m going now, I cannot be late for my Appointment with Lady Destiny!”
Now he pauses at the bedroom door, and draws himself up into a regal presence.
“And just one last thing, Daniel, from now on I will be known by my full and proper name, not Dick, not Cock, not Cockman, not Willy, not Thingy, not Unit, not Tool... none of those stupid names... but Magnus! King Magnus!

King Magnus the First! King Magnus the Magnificent! And should we ever by some strange chance meet again, you will call me Your Majesty or Sire! Do I make myself clear? Goodbye!”
“Yes, er... Your Majesty or Sire... I’ve got that... er... goodbye...”
Then he’s gone. I hear the front door open and close, hear his rather squelchy steps going down the many echoing flights of stairs from my flat to ground level. There’s a reverberating crash as the main front door slams shut far below, then all is quiet again, save for the storm, the usual traffic noise, road drills, a bird coughing, people cursing and swearing, all the usual drunken singing and fighting down in the street, and the increasing sounds of the super-cataclysmic storm, not just of the thunder and lightning, but now also of the howling wind blowing bits of wood and stone and stuff down the street.
I check down below again, still hoping it’s all been some kind of terrible dream or practical joke, but no, no doubt about it, it’s all gone... it’s taking a while to sink in fully, I’m at about 93.74 % total acceptance, roughly, I would say... cock, balls, definitely gone... a rather strange start to anyone’s day, I must say!... I find I can still pee through a small hole, which is a relief.
But what to do now? If there’s no waking up from the situation I suppose I’ll have to go along with it... should I follow this Cockman/King Magnus/Majesty-Sire entity to see what he gets up to? But then, whether he is or isn’t really my cock, part of me is beginning to think that I’m better off without an emotional wreck/Drama Queen/Drama King like that in my life... I reckon I’ll follow him... or maybe I won’t... I seem to have become even more indecisive than usual all of a sudden... No, I will, some intuition is telling me to... What about work? Well, I don’t think they’ll miss me too much there for a bit... you’ll see why shortly...
I grab some clothes, there’s still a few that King Magnus hasn’t ripped apart, I stick on some hi-viz work socks and wellies, hi-viz work pants, hi-viz vest, hi-viz work shirt and

a couple of hi-viz fleece jackets, my hi-viz fleece hat and my hi-viz storm coat, and head out of the flat, best to be ready for the storm. I go to grab my bike but it’s gone! Ha! The mysterious Cockman/King Magnus character must have knicked it to be his mechanical stallion... Well of all the rascally nerve!... I hurry down the twelve flights of stairs to the ground floor... the lifts have never worked since the flats were built... typical Foulburgh...
But by the time I get down the last flight and step through the mesh security gates and other fortifications to the outside world the super-cataclysmic storm has blown over. Now there’s not a breath of wind. Even at it’s low morning angle, and even though it’s having to battle it’s way through the chemical grime of the Foulburgh air, the sun is now roasting the city as if it was a giant arthritic old pig on a giant broken down old barbecue... Goodness only knows what the temperature must be, way off any known scale probably. I’m not surprised though, it’s just how the weather’s been behaving of late, swinging from one extreme to another, then another, Spring in Autumn, Summer in Winter. Of course, I’m hopelessly overdressed, a dazzling beacon of waterproof day-glo protective insulation from head to toe, but I’ve learned never, ever to cast off a layer these days... another ten minutes and there’ll probably be snow, or hail, or I’ll be encased in a block of ice...
I look up and down my street, Slaughterhouse Lane, for King Magnus and catch a glimpse of a figure away in the distance, through the shimmering, sun-blasted air, a figure in a faux fur coat and purple wooly bobble hat speeding away on a bike, my bike I see! the regal organic rascal, round the corner into Faraway Close. My eyesight has suddenly become amazingly hawk-like, I can see every detail of his coat-tails getting caught between the chain and the gears, beads of sweat or something flying off him, every strand of wool of the bobble on that purple wooly bobble hat quivering, all with a clarity I’ve never known before.
I’m just about to head off in that direction when I start to feel a bit odd, well very odd indeed. I don’t know whether it

was running down all those stairs or being so over-dressed in the sudden intense heat but I suddenly feel as if I’m looking at the world through a huge magnifying glass, or the wrong end of a telescope, or both. My thoughts seem to be happening in a brain that’s a long way away, and not quite completely connected up with me, maybe a brain that has just lost some sort of important input or connection from that male regenerative equipment now speeding away on my bike? a brain now flooded with all this newly intense hawklike eyesight detail, and a brain also overwhelmed with newly intense hawklike hearing detail, every snatch of every drunken song, every rasp of every bird wheeze, every hideously out of tune blast of every bagpiping beggar, or is that more road drills? everything’s reverberating and crashing around in there in an internal cataclysmic sensory storm... oh dearie, dearie me...
Should I go back and have a little lie down? It’s a very appealing idea, but just the thought of clambering up all those stairs makes me feel completely exhausted... what do I do now?
I’m beginning to sag down right there on the street when, with my near-faraway confused but otherwise very detailed vision, I see two figures approaching through the heat haze, two very curious figures, who have a kind of blue-green glow about them, gliding elegantly along, unperturbed by the wreckage of buildings and people they’re passing through, smartly dressed in well-fitting suits, one an elegant grey, the other a dashing check, both complete with shirts, ties, shoes, gold cufflinks, waistcoats, gold watch chains, all the trappings of two most dapper gentlemen. But what’s especially curious about the two figures is their heads rather than their dress, which are the heads of two scaled-down elephants, and bright pink. On top of these pink heads perch two hats, one a homburg, the other a fedora, both large and rather floppy, which they doff with their trunks as they approach me.
I have the strongest possible feeling that I know the two gentlemen already, have I met them before somewhere?

Where on Earth could that have been?
“Aaah, my dear Daniel, just the chap we were hoping to bump into!” says one. “Allow me to introduce myself, I’m Beebee Heebiegeebie, and this is my friend and colleague, Geegee Heebiegeebie.”
The... Heebiegeebies?
“We’re just popping round to the Salivation Hotel for a spot of breakfast,” says the other, “Would you care to join us? Then we can maybe explain things to you... explain about the... er... departure of your... er... male organ of regeneration... and a couple of other things too...”
Well I never! First my cock leaves me and now it’s breakfast with the Heebiegeebies... What a morning... my head’s reeling and throbbing, trying to make any sort of sense of it all... and where can I possibly know them from?
“But my dear Daniel, you do look a little peekie...”
“... before breakfast, let us take you round to see the good Dr Krakk...”
“... I think a little treatment from him will be just the thing to help things settle down for you!”
The bits of my brain are whirling around so uselessly and I feel so weak and wobbley that I’d be happily escorted by anyone to more or less anywhere, real or imaginary. Breakfast feels like a very good idea, and so does a visit to Dr Krakk, who has already given me many treatments, but before we go any further with that, or any other part of our extraordinary story, I’d like to tell you a bit more about myself, to sketch in some background as it were, because then things will maybe begin to make a bit more sense to you...

CHAPTER TWO - MY IMPORTANT WORK AT LOZZO INDUSTRIES

My full, proper name is Daniel Thelonius Sprocket, so, at work, as well as “Monkey Wrench Kid” and “Monkey Wrench Kid, son”, I’m often called “Dan”, or “Danny,” as well as “Daniel”, “Mr Sprocket”, or “Hey you!”, or “Hey sonny!”, just as you’d expect. Away from work, however, I’m often called “Didi”. This more unusual name was given to me by my best friend, Edrigo, when we were kids. He comes from a hot country, where they like to give each other sing-song, rhyming nicknames like that. Edrigo himself is often known as “Gogo”.
Anyway, I, Daniel Thelonius Sprocket, work at Lozzo Industries, by far the biggest employer here in Foulburgh, and for a very long way all around, employing people like me either directly, in the reeking sprawl of factories, refineries, workshops, foundries and so on that make up the largest part of the city, with its blocks of flats and shops and what have you scattered here and there amongst the more important industrial stuff, or indirectly, in smaller sprawls of reeking enterprises and homes that supply them, or are supplied by them, in one great big sticky web of interconnected, many-headed, stinking monstrosity.
My exact role at Lozzo is a bit of a mystery to me. I don’t remember ever having been given a job title or a list of duties in any sort of formal way, it could be that such a thing never happened, Lozzo being such a vast, mysterious, rambling labyrinth of industrial goings-on that a little detail like that could easily have been overlooked, particularly as, (there’s general agreement on this), the Lozzo management chain is so utterly useless. Or I may well have fallen asleep during some sort of induction process. It doesn’t bother me though, I’ve got used to wandering through my work life, and my not-work life, in a fog of confusion, for

ever puzzled, never really understanding what’s going on around me, just drifting along with the flow as best I can, half-asleep, half-awake at best, with that very large invisible question mark floating over my head. It might seem a bit strange to you, for whom life maybe makes more and more sense as you tootle along through it, but it’s just the opposite for me. Things may start out in a fairly normal way, but then, by one tiny step after another, they start to get a bit strange, then a bit stranger still, then, before I know it, they’re galloping along very, very strangely until - dearie, dearie me! - I find that things have got very, very, very strange indeed.
I guess I’ve worked at Lozzo Industries since some time in my teens. I have patchy memories of being taught by, or maybe even apprenticed to, a friendly old master mechanic-craftsman-repair guy kind of character, Shuggy, I think his name was. Shuggy’s domain within the infinite Lozzo Industries complex was a rambling collection of workshops and stores, each one leaning onto its neighbour, where he patiently tried to show me how to use the various tools in endless racks on the walls and in box after box on benches, and all the bits of equipment and machinery lying about everywhere. He himself was one of those people who completely understand any bit of equipment or machinery in the world at a glance, a sort of natural understanding I expect he was born with, like a Second Sight for Machinery. Quite possibly he was the Seventh Mechanic Son of a Seventh Mechanic Son.
When our workmates brought round non-functional machines or weird bits of broken down equipment Shuggy always seemed to know exactly what was wrong with them even before they were through the doors. Without any apparent effort, he would wave his hands over some oily entanglement of cylinders and levers in a relaxed blur of activity, the right tool jumping from its resting place into his grip, while cracking one of his two jokes and whistling one of his three tunes, take a couple of old parts off it and fix a couple of new ones on, give it a couple of taps with a hammer, flick a switch or two, stand back, and hey presto!

a few sparks, a cloud of black smoke, and that would be the thing working again.
It was fascinating to watch him at work, and I’m sure I could have picked up loads of skills in those days if it weren’t for my falling asleep so much. Sadly, people explaining things to me is one of the most irresistible triggers for my narcolepsy. Also, I’m very easily distracted by other things going on in the area at the time, like dust falling, clocks ticking, bristling nose hair, ants, dripping oil and so on. If you’re ever talking to me you may well think that I’m listening to you, but that’s very unlikely. Right back when I was at school, I developed a way of escaping the boredom and irrelevance of it all by gazing out of the window up into the clouds, drifting away into their magical shapes, slipping away into sleepy bliss, but at the same time appearing to be fully alert and present by way of a fixed expression of fascination, and the occasional grunt where appropriate, and a kind of daydream-walk became my natural, default, all-day, every day state, a state which stood me in good stead, right through into my working life. So by the time Shuggy retired, or died, I had only picked up a few basic techniques, mostly Taking Things Apart techniques. I had become a bit of an expert with The Sledgehammer however, and had become really good at giving things a couple of good taps with that, though I say it myself. I had also learned the names of quite a few other tools, such as The Spanner, The Screwdriver, The Bolt Cutters, The Hacksaw and, of course, my favourite, ta da! The Monkey Wrench, without learning much about how to use any of them. The smattering of Putting It Back Together Again skills I now have were gained largely through guesswork and trial and error on my part.
Anyway, after Shuggy’s death or retiral I must have been promoted to the old guy’s position by some secret Lozzo process. It must have been assumed, wrongly, by some incompetent someone, who clearly didn’t know me, in some managerial role in some office block somewhere, that I had absorbed Shuggy’s knowledge and skills, like a pile of sawdust or a rag, and so could take over his role, whatever that

was exactly. A wage goes regularly into my bank account, just enough for me to pay various parts of the Lozzo empire for my basic needs of food, shelter, heat, light, water and now of course air as well, it being very expensive to clean up the air to any sort of survivable quality these days, in short, all the things a chap needs, in the worry-free dependency of the Lozzo Industrial way of life.
So I just sort of potter along. I suppose I could ask someone for a bit of clarification about my job, but, “if it ain’t broke, don’t rock the boat”, as they say. So many people work here that I expect some file on me has been lost somewhere along the line, and it might actually create a huge amount of work for someone, with better things to do, if I brought the matter to light. By the way, I did once ask one of my workmates just exactly how many people do work at Lozzo, “About half of them,” he replied...ha ha...

AF TY FIR T
I remember Shuggy going out on what he called “Inspections”, dressed from head to toe in h-viz gear, carrying a huge tool of some kind on one shoulder, looking very workman-like and important. I’ve inherited all his fluorescent yellow work jackets, coats, trousers, hard hats, boots and gloves which must once have had things like, “SAFETY FIRST”, “BE SURE, BE SAFE” and “THINK SAFE” written on them. Now, as the “S’s” and “E’s” don’t seem to have been very sticky, they read, “AF TY FIR T”, “B UR, B AF” and “THINK AF” etc, which I think adds an intriguing air of mystery to them. Anyhow, I guess Shuggy’s remit must have included something to do with Lozzo Safety, or AF TY, Procedures so I feel I might as well keep up this possible tradition. When I feel in an AF TY mood, I dress up in lots of this AF TY gear, put some giant tool or other on my shoulder, grab a clipboard and pen, and head out on an “Inspection” myself.

Generally speaking, no one seems to bother much about AF TY at Lozzo, as long as things seem to be ticking along ok. I suppose if workers at the plant have survived at all they must have some personal idea of AF TY, and be nimble enough to dodge the worst of the flying blades, sheets of flame, showers of acid and so on. It’s obviously a really important thing to go through the motions of having AF TY procedures, as long as that doesn’t get in the way of efficient production, but there’s no expectation for anything beyond that at all.
It’s so much fun strolling about the vast complex! It’s so huge that you could probably wander about Lozzo Industrial all your life without ever visiting the same building twice.
I thought I must be cutting quite a professional, workman-like dash in all my heavily stained but otherwise gleaming clothes, with my enormous monkey wrench over my shoulder and my clipboard in my hand, but I caught site of myself reflected in a window one day. Shuggy, like all the rest of the workers, male and female, etc., in the factories and foundries, except for me, was a great big enormous person, whereas I am on the small side, so his old work gear was hanging about me in fluorescent festoons. With the great big yellow hard hat sitting high on my, not particularly big, head I looked like a kind of day-glow souffleé or something, so I don’t bother with the AF TY hat anymore. As you’ve probably guessed, it’s because of carrying the monkey wrench around that I’ve been given the nickname, “The Monkey Wrench Kid.” I don’t mind at all, as it’s meant in a very friendly way. As I say, I’m not a big guy, and I’m one of those people who, however old they really get, will always just look like they’re fresh out of school, particularly when swathed in over-sized day-glo work gear, so it suits me really. With my clumps of blonde hair, huge specs and bemused cherubic grin, I guess I’ve become an industrial mascot or something, like a football team would have.
Round the vast compounds and enormous buildings

I stroll, marveling at all the tanks of stuff, pipes, columns and tubes, all bubbling, gurgling and blazing away, through the vast hooting halls full of grinders and welders sparking and flashing, past frantic machinery shrieking and howling, along the endless clattering, rumbling corridors. I scribble down readings on my clipboard from any dials I come across and take notes as I look through inspection windows at stuff seething away, like I imagine a real AF TY expert would do. I’m recognized and waved at from low down in pits and from high up on gantries. Blackened faces on top of huge blackened hulking male and female shapes grin at me from workshops thick with smoke, just eyes and teeth floating and glistening in the billowing gloom. Greetings are shouted at me from all angles:
“Hey it’s the Monkey Wrench Kid! Yorayeson?”
“Hey look busy! It’s the Monkey Wrench Kid!”
The atmosphere at Lozzo is friendly and welcoming like that, wherever you go. That might surprise an outsider visiting a workplace which at first sight must look utterly grim. In fact it’s more than just friendly and welcoming, it’s a party-like atmosphere, like some giant family gathering, or some reunion of schoolmates, which, this being the main local employment, it often actually is. Everyone’s telling jokes and laughing, except for those eternally miserable people of course, you’ll always get some I suppose, however often you tell them your joke. Really, the primary purpose of Lozzo, as far as we workers are concerned, is for everyone to have a laugh and as generally good a time as possible, if any product rolls off the assembly lines that’s just a bonus. I haven’t ever made this observation to any of the people flitting about in the background everywhere whom I’m told are “managers” - usually in a kind of hissing tone of voice and with a down-turned-mouth expression - who apparently think they have something to do with the running of the place, but I’m sure they would see our work in this way too, if they properly understood it.

MANAGERS - THE MANY KINDS THEREOF
From what I’ve gathered listening to my workmates over the years, there seem to be various kinds of these “managers”. There are middle, branch, regional, department, assistant, shift and front line managers, just for a start, probably also side, back, top, bottom, radial and spiralling arc managers too, and there’s also executives, directors, (who have a board... is that like a plank? I wonder, or are they really trying to say that everyone else is “bored” of the directors?), there’s supervisors, team leaders... it just goes on and on. If someone counted them all up I bet they’d find there were more managers than workers.
As I say, these people, who tend to be a bit small and weedy in contrast to my enomous hulking co-workers, can often be seen flitting about in the background and trotting along corridors, with the glazed look of calming medication in their eyes, on their way from one “meeting” to another. They wear suits, or white coats, they often carry clipboards like mine, or even briefcases. There’s a rumour that some of them have “degrees”, whatever that might mean... maybe it just means that they’ve been de-greased? It’s obviously not a passport to common sense, as most of them have none of that, or much of any skill at all. We workers can spot a manager who is particularly useless because they generally get promoted to a higher level. You can spot when that has happened by their clothes, which get just that little bit cleaner and smarter. (By the way, talking of clothes, you can tell the actual bosses at the top of the greasy management pole as their clothes start to get tattered and oily again, just like mine, from climbing up the greasy pole maybe? strange isn’t it?)
Managers often have a most unpleasant air of efficiency and officiousness about them, so I avoid them as much as I can. If and when they ever emerge from their “meetings” and make so bold as to approach members of the workforce, they are, of course, completely ignored, if at all possible. Sometimes a manager will instruct a worker to make a completely stupid change of some sort to the way in which

they’re doing something. The worker, with extreme grumpiness, will sometimes actually adopt the change, just to get a bit of peace, but only until the supervisor or executive is out of sight, of course, then he or she will revert, very sensibly, to their original way of doing whatever it is. Really! the cheek of some of these management people, ever to think that they might know better than people who may have been doing that same job in the same way for maybe fifty, or sixty, or even a hundred years...
I guess if anyone was going to ask me for a report or anything it might be well one of these managers. I’m happy to say that I haven’t ever been asked for anything like that, but I do keep a file of scribbled notes with columns of figures I’ve made up, just in case.
Then right at the very top of the Lozzo management pile sits Lord Lozzo himself. I imagine him in his oily, greasy, tattered suit and t-shirt, at his sprawling acres of desk, issuing commands and demanding reports, or peering down through a window at the very top of Lozzo Tower through his telescope, through the filthy air, keeping a beady eye on us all scurrying about down below, the comings and goings, holding all of Lozzo Industrial, and Foulburgh too, in the sweaty palm of his control, occasionally being driven out in his colossal black armoured car, through the windows of which you may sometimes catch a glimpse of his shrivelled up, sneering face and ever-snarling mouth.

SECURITY PATROLS
I’d like just to mention another group of people who wander about the Lozzo complex, the gentlemen of the security patrols, because two of them play a brief but important part in our fantastic story later on. These men are a kind of combination of police officer and soldier, always dressed in full armour and swathed with so many weapons that they can barely stand up under the weight. They are, in fact, a division of Lord Lozzo’s private army, and can be seen on the residential streets of Foulburgh gunning down

miscreants and the like as well as staggering around and about here in the industrial areas. There’s absolutely no need for them in the factories because if anyone was foolish enough to break in they would surely be killed almost straight away by the whirling scythes or thundering hammers of some bit of lethal, un-guarded machinery or other. Anyway, they don’t come round the factories very much nowadays since some members of the workforce practised with catapults until they were able to ping a nut or bolt off their helmets from a hundred yards away, and since shortly after then when one of these officers of the Lozzo Law was accidentally hoisted up by a crane and dropped, oops! into a tank of food waste slurry.

MY LOOSENING-OFF AND DROPPING-IN EVENT
There was a period of time during which, if I was carrying the giant Monkey Wrench around with me, I used to see if there were any nuts on the machines I was passing that needed tightening up or loosening off. I took it in turns to tighten up the first nut I came to, then loosen off the next one. Unfortunately, I once loosened something right off that would probably have been better tightened up even more. A very unhealthy clanking and grinding noise started to come from the machine in question so I thought I’d better have a peek inside it to see what was going on, or not going on. I lifted the cardboard safety shield and looked down into the rolling and churning blades and grinders therein. It appeared to me that a gear? or cog? or ratchet? of some kind had come loose and was sort of bouncing around down there, occasionaly meshing with other gears, cogs or ratchets and having bits torn off it, then bouncing up again. I have to say the noise this was all making was rather unpleasant, a sort of whining, screeching, grinding, clanking, the sort of sound bagpipes would probably make if they were fed through a rock pulveriser, but all the same, looking down into all those whirring, clonking bits and pieces was somehow rather mesmerising and I found

myself drifting off into a lovely daydream filled with fluffy mechanical ducks circulating around in great big fluffy clouds filled with such a peaceful, calm, golden light... I think I must have nodded right off because oops! the giant Monkey Wrench slipped right out of my hand!

OOPS!
I woke up again to see it floating down into those same gears and cogs and things! As soon as it got enmeshed amongst them the whining, screeching, grinding, clanking, almost bagpipe-like noise went up to a whole new level of unpleasantness which got louder and louder as I backed stealthily away into the shadows. I was rounding the corner into the next department as the grinding and clonking etc. etc. reached a kind of frenzied climax and started to sound like the sound I imagine a machine would make if it was ripping itself apart. Then there was the whizz of metal things whizzing through the air and hitting walls and other machines, then alarm bells and sirens going off, shouts and booted feet running closer. It was actually quite exhilarating, once I got over the initial shock, but I did feel a little concern about how the managers and security gentlemen might react. At least, I thought, I had several more monkey wrenches back in my workshops so I didn’t have to worry too much about losing one, even though it was one of the really big ones.
Just as I was thinking that thought, I was picked up off my feet by one of our enormous women co-workers, Big Brenda, or maybe Big Glenda, I think she’s called. She bundled me, AF TY gear and all, under her arm and whisked me off down a little-used back staircase. She was grinning from ear to ear and laughing in a very unrestrained way, which made her huge face and body wobble all over, like heavily-muscled jelly, as she carried me swiftly back to my workshops, via more shadows, and popped me safely out of sight in a dark corner.
“Better stay out of the way for a bit, Monkey Wrench Kid,

son, till the fuss dies down.”

INTRODUCING EDRIGO
Later that day, I told my oldest and best friend, Edrigo, who is an artist, about my Loosening-Off and Dropping-In Event. He laughed too... then, as if he had been struck by lightning, he suddenly froze and stared at me with shock or awe or something, and called me a “genius”, which I thought was very nice of him.
“Didi,” he said, “You’re a natural Post Industrial Genius!”
I wasn’t really sure what he meant, but I felt very flattered anyway, since no one has ever called me a genius of any kind before.
“Do you realise you’ve just invented a whole Art Movement, Didi?”
“Really, Gogo?” I was glowing with pride now.
“You have just invented Kinetic Post Industrial Disruptivism! It’s pure genius!”
I got a strange feeling then, one that I quite often get, that everything had changed... but that nothing had changed...

THE HELLO MACHINE
My workshops are equipped with all sorts of metal-working, wood-working and electrical-working tools and machinery. I still have no idea what most of it’s for or how to use it, but I do sometimes wander about dusting things down, even giving some of the shiney bits an extra little wash with soapy water, to try and get the last of the oil off them, or I might see if the motors need any more sawdust or sand. There’s a storeroom full of what I think must be spare parts for the huge machines out on the factory floors. There’s lots of chains, motors and gear wheels, and boxes and boxes of nuts and bolts, all that sort of stuff. I love wandering about amongst the shelves wondering what

it’s all for. My workshop is tucked away in one of the more remote corners of the Lozzo complex, looking out onto a bit of wasteland where scrubby weeds, stunted bushes and half-dead trees are trying their best to take the area over again, in spite of all the chemicals, metal wreckage and stuff that’s been dumped there. Often when I’m “In” and not wandering about “Out” on an Inspection, I’ll just gaze out through the huge, cracked, cobweby, grimey or missing windows for a bit, and lose myself in the beautiful, magical, daydream world of the lovely patterns the pale flickers of sunlight make as they struggle through the drifting smoke, the chemical haze, the dead branches and withered leaves and stuff, wondering what that’s all for too, until I nod off.
It seems somehow to have been generally decided or accepted on the factory floor, as well as by some inept management, that I have taken over from Shuggy as some kind of general purpose oddjob/repair man for the complex, as well being some kind of AF TY expert. Colleagues bring in bits and pieces of non-functioning equipment, machinery and so on from time to time. Really they just want to have a bit of a chat, there’s no expectation for anything actually to be fixed. Just as well, because apart from my lack of appropriate skills, none of the stuff was ever really designed so it could be easily fixed, as Shuggy was forever saying in an annoyed kind of way. (I made a resolution that if I ever met a designer I’d suggest that he or she starts to think about designing things so they can be easily repaired). Worse still, incredibly, it’s even becoming more and more the case that things are being deliberately designed so that they would be very, very difficult to repair! Even, what’s more shocking still, designed so that some vital, irreplaceable, irrepairable part of them will break, or stop working, after a certain quite short life, on purpose! So that its manufacturers can make more money by supplying another one! Which is even more un-fixable!
I was deeply shocked when Shuggy explained all that to me, it seems to fly in the face of any kind of manufacturing decency and honesty. It’s as if the Industrial World was deliberately sabotaging itself... how completely insane,

I thought. I couldn’t help having a little nap. I think it’s high time designers everywhere were given a good talking-to and were told to pull their socks up. All the same, I often go through the motions of fixing stuff, just for fun, and often manage to take some of the things apart, the sledgehammer is brilliant for that. Sometimes I even manage to put something back together again, but by now it’s usually in an even worse state than before and much further away from working again.
So, just for fun, almost by accident, I started putting bits and pieces together from different items into Creations: pretend robots that don’t actually do anything, non-perpetual perpetual motion machines, clanking and juddering things and so forth. One day, a huge colleague brought in a bit of equipment that I somehow liked the look of, it had what might have been a motor, or a transformer, or a gearbox, (terms I remember Shuggy using), and an arm, and other bits and pieces. I noticed it had an electrical plug, so I plugged it in to see what would happen. After recovering from the massive electric shock it gave me, I hit it as hard as I could with a sledgehammer here and there, then fixed an old work glove onto the arm and banged a few other bits and pieces onto it where there was room. I set the whole thing up on a bench right under one of the front windows, so now when I - very carefully - switch it on, the arm moves through the air from side to side in an arc. I felt very proud actually to have got something to work again. I called it the Hello Machine, so my visitors would always feel welcome, even if I was “Out”, on an inspection, or asleep. When I showed Edrigo a photo of the Hello Machine later he liked my idea very much. He said I was most definitely nothing less than a natural-born, Post Industrial Genius and told me I must keep up my ground-breaking work, which I have done.
I stack up my creations along with all the piles of broken parts and sub-assemblies in a kind of inner storeroom behind the main storeroom - the one with all the spare parts in it - where they go right up to the ceiling. A steady trickle of water is coming down from a hole in the roof right

in the middle there and everything is slowly beginning to rust, rot and stick together, it’s a fascinating process to watch. I dragged an old abandoned sofa in there from the wasteland, on which I can sit for hours at a time in happy contemplation of the decay, in between naps, and when not reading through the huge piles of comics I found in an old chest of drawers. I liked the look of all the rust and decay so much that I went up onto the roof of the spare part storeroom, took a few slates off, and sledge-hammered a nice big hole in it so that everything in there could start to go that lovely red-brown rusty colour too, and start to stick together in that satisfying way.

THE GOOD MANNERS MACHINE
The grand success of my Hello Machine must have been what brought another of my ideas up into the light of day from where it had been lurking not quite fully-formed deep down in the abyssal lair of my kinetic post-industrial creativity, the idea for my Good Manners Machine.
I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s terribly sad that people just can’t seem to be bothered with good manners these days. Whatever happened to, “Please”, “Thank you”, and “Sorry”? And another phrase of politeness I would like to hear more often is, “Well done”. So, over a period of several months, mostly by accident, I put together a machine, fully motorised and remotely controllable, which can trundle freely about the streets with you, or unaccompanied, shouting out these essential words at random, or on command, to make up for the many times they have not been used when it would have been much better if they had been used. Honestly! trying to encourage some people simply to say “sorry” once in a while... I had no idea just what a hebridean task that would be. I must admit that it’s mostly a male failing, but it can most definitely sometimes be a female failing too. It’s as if the word “sorry” was some enormous granite gallstone that refused to emerge from some people into the light of day, just lying there obstinately inside

them, becoming bigger and bigger, like a bad-mannered festering old troll.
I started tootling round town with the Good Manners Machine on full volume, roaring out, “SORRY! SORRY! SORRY! PLEASE! THANK YOU! WELL DONE! SORRY! SORRY! SORRY!” for hours at a time but, sadly, without ever hearing one single word of good manners in response. In fact, quite the reverse, the machine and me were called all sorts of terribly rude names... why, one ill-mannered nasty malicious cantankerous old bag of an evil horrible smelly old woman even said that the noise was worse than the blank, blank, blank, bagpipes! This awful, awful comment wounded me very deeply, as you can imagine, and I slunk back, quite disheartened, to my workshops and stores, so that the machine and I could brood and sleep on the problem.
What I came up with was partly inspired by a blissful dream and partly by a memory from my early days of kinetic creativity, the memory of that massive electric shock. I added a kind of trailer behind the main section of the Good Manners Machine and piled it up high with the biggest batteries I could lay my hands on, wiring them all up in series, parallel and both, just to be on the safe side, then to the bows of the, now, Articulated Good Manners Juggernaut Machine I attached a kind of bowsprit, cattle-prod, telescopic lance device, the idea being to prod passers-by gently into saying a “please”, “thank you”, “sorry” or “well done”, with a few thousand volts, ohms, amps and watts, etc., when all else had failed.
Sadly, I was never able to try the Articulated Good Manners Juggernaut Machine out on the ill-mannered streets of Foulburgh because there was a supernoval flash of light and thundering explosion when I switched it on for a trial run in the workshop and I was hurled backwards, hitting the wall behind me at great speed, with screams of “SORRY! SORRY! SORRY! THANK YOU! PLEASE! WELL DONE!” pounding through my head. I must have been knocked unconscious as the next thing I remember is being mopped down with oily rags and having vodka poured into me from

hip flasks by a group of my, very concerned looking, female enormous co-workers, muttering and cooing over me, like giant pigeons or something, Big Brenda, Big Glenda, also Big Daisy and Big Maisy too, I think, amongst the smouldering wreckage. So the Articulated Good Manners Juggernaut Machine never went into active service.
“Probably just as well,” said Edrigo later, “Total genius, all the same, Didi, total genius.”

KARMITIS

As it turned out, the Articulated Good Manners Juggernaut Machine was superceded by a natural phenomenon which performed the task I had set out to do, I must admit, much more thoroughly than I could ever have dreamed of, I mean the dreadful disease that slithered up from some hideous pit of pestilential plague at around about that time, the grim affliction which started to afflict the whole world, which came to be known as Karmitis.
No one knew exactly where Karmitis came from, some suspected that it came from the East, others said it must be from the West, others said that the pit of pestilential plague it came from was deep down in the bowels of some secret Lozzo Laboratory, where it was brewed up as a weapon of war, and from where it escaped and mutated in all kinds of ghastly ways, but wherever it came from it was deadly. It was a very selective and unusual disease, in that it only struck down people who had brought it upon themselves and thoroughly deserved it, and its symptoms varied wildly according to the type of person it afflicted. The very first cases appeared amongst people, men and women, who, by some cosmic coincidence with my own experiences, hadn’t been able to say the word “sorry”. Every time they should really have said the word but hadn’t, another thin layer of bitter black basalt had been added around an inner gall stone of remorselessness, building up layer on layer inside them, first in the gall bladder itself, so often painted green in anatomy text books, but more

a kind of bloody, mud colour in real life, or for these sorry-less people just plain old black, then spreading from there into the small intestine, duodenum, jejunum, by way of the duodenum/jejunum junction, slowly working its way through all that wiggley stuff, round and round, layer upon layer of stone being laid down as if in some sort of geological process, possibly called stratification or morphicisation or something like that, on and on, round and round, being stonily laid down and down, right round to the often-overlooked but highly important, ileo-cecal valve, and further on even from there, until pretty much all of that wiggley-wobbley stuff had turned to the blackest of black stone and, naturally, stopped working.
Generally, at this point, those afflicted just keeled over, stone dead, with a thud, in the street, or fell out of bed, with a clonk, deader still, to the dismay of all around, and that was that, but in a very few cases it somehow dawned on the sufferers that they just needed to start saying “sorry” for the whole mortal-stoneyfication process to be reversed, so these few people survived through finding a streak of decency inside themselves they never knew they had up till then. However, this first manifestation of Karmitis was just the very beginning of the beginning of its reign of terror, as we shall see later on in our story... no, no, we haven’t heard the last of Karmitis at all... but for now we’re going to bring our attention back to Lozzo Industries, so I can tell you about some of the stuff we make there.

BOMBS AND BABYFOOD
We do seem to make an absolutely vast range of stuff at Lozzo Industries. There’s always trucks and trains coming and going in all directions, piled high with raw materials or finished products. I recognize some of the symbols on their sides: the ones for “Deadly Poison”, “Very Deadly Poison”, “Extremely Deadly Poison”, “Radioactive Waste”, “Catastrophically Dangerous Waste More Dangerous Even Than Radioactive Waste”, all that sort of thing, which tend to be

on the in-coming trucks and trains. The outgoing trucks and trains are usually labelled with a different range of signs: “Super Safe Food Grade Stuff”, “Graded Even Safer Than Super Safe Food Grade Stuff”, “Safest Possible Happy Kid Breaki Grade”, “Even Safer Still Yummytummy Burger Delight Grade”, then there’s a whole other range of signs and labels: “Super Safe Assault Rifles”, “Danger Free Hand-Grenades”, “Bouncy-H-Bombs-U-Like”, and so on, bombs and baby food apparently being two of our biggest sellers.
Mountains of stuff are tipped into hoppers, go along conveyor belts, are sifted and shaken, mixed and manipulated, battered and baked, before vanishing into dark, locked warehouses. From the other end of the works comes a steady stream of not just once plastic-wrapped, nor just twice plastic-wrapped, but usually thrice plastic-wrapped foodstuff wrapped in even more plastic, to hold any contamination in, or out, or maybe both, in charming bright colours, a bit like the night sky over Foulburgh, shades of volcanic cerise, hyper-fluoro-jaundellow and glowblu-glowblu, so as to appeal to babies and their parents. Of course we make food for grown-ups too out of just the same sorts of sugary sludges, it’s cleverly highly-addictive, lowly-nutritive content making it impossible for people to stop shovelling the muck in, their bodies always screaming out for more, never getting enough nutrition, making people constantly needy and dependent on our Lozzo production lines, the sludge conveniently available and all they can afford, making them get fatter and fatter and iller and iller and more and more dependent still, on medication for heart disease, brain disease, gut disease and just general industrial life disease. By the way, these medications are all Lozzo products, so nothing’s lost in the end really.
The steady stream of sludge-food is followed by a steady stream of shiney new weapons, all gleaming steel barrels with telescopic sights and intricate grips, all shapes and sizes, and multi-coloured hand-grenades as big as your head, all emblazoned with the name or slogan of the buyers’ religious or ideological preferences, “Up With ----!”, “Down

With---!” or, “A Safe Death To ----!” It’s a lovely sight. I’m so happy just strolling about, carrying my enormous Monkey Wrench or something, making my notes, and feeling such an incomprehensibly vital part of this magnificent, fun, and productive industrial Lozzo world.

LOZZO, THE GREAT BENEFACTOR
The Lozzo business has been not just a wonderful provider of jobs and security for the people of Foulburgh but also a wonderful provider of local amenities and services of all sorts for them. Practically on every corner there’s something of the kind, the Lozzo Machine Gun Library for example, or the Lozzo Atom Bomb Fogey Farm. The Lozzo Nerve Gas Arts and Crafts Gallery stands proudly right in the centre of the beautiful Lozzo Germ Warfare Plaza, all thanks to the Lozzo Trust Fund set up by the Great Lozzo Benefactor himself with his plutocratic millions, centuries ago, Lord Lozzo the First. Yes, Lord Lozzo the First, that great owner of slaves, feller of forests, builder of mills, miner of mines and general grand exploiter of Earth and human resources - sad, I once thought fleetingly, for the Earth and its people and animals, etc., to be so thoroughly exploited, but then, we were told to ponder, without that thorough, exhaustive exploitation of natural wealth how could any financial wealth ever have been created? Financial wealth that all of us benefit from, especially the Lozzo Lineage, of course, but financial wealth that trickles right down to benefit even the very lowest levels of the human heap, albeit in ways that many of us down here at the bottom of that heap wouldn’t have chosen for ourselves, given the chance, a tiny token drip here and a tiny token drip there.
The current Lord Lozzo continues this tradition of local benevolence through all sorts of projects, big and small, but mostly small. Come to think of it, the only big thing he has donated to the city recently is the wonderful statue of himself, nineteen or twenty foot high, which stands right

dead centre in our beautiful Lozzo Germ Warfare Plaza. So high it is that the glorious likeness of His Lordship’s, it has to be said, in reality rather shrivelled head can rarely be seen through the ever present Foulburgh fog of chemicals and miscellaneous grime. In fact I do sometimes wonder if the statue is a very good likeness of His Lordship in any way at all, given that in real life he is such a tiny, wrinkled up, ancient sort of a man, clad most often in ill-fitting, tattered, shiny suits on his few appearances in daylight, rather than this god-like figure in its flowing robes, clutching its orb and sceptre, maybe there’s been some kind of mistake? but, no, there on the monumental pedestal it says, “Lord Lozzo of Lozzo XIV”, so it must be him.
When the statue of Lord Lozzo of Lozzo XIV was unveiled for the first time, in a magnificent ceremony to which the entire population was enticed with the offer of a free non-alcoholic drink and an artificial nut each, I thought Edrigo was going to die, from an attack he had of some kind, difficult to say what, rapture? or rupture? The people of Foulburgh mostly reacted in a similar sort of way too, and over the following weeks and months, an unofficial competition started up quite spontaneously, citizens seeing how far they could climb up the great work. Then, with a shocking lack of respect for the Great Benefactor, under cover of darkness, they tried to see just how many bizarre and inappropriate items they could decorate it with, items such as soiled underwear, empty cans and bottles, traffic cones, used condoms, bicycle frames, bits of abandoned soft furnishings, tattered lampshades and so on. Condoms, by the way, fit perfectly on the fingers of the hand which holds the orb balanced on its palm. I can’t say they add much to the work though, dangling sadly there like deflated soggy balloons after some coital birthday party. Dearie, dearie me... Come to think of it, you might almost think that the sculptor had deliberately made the statute with as many places from which such rude things could be dangled as possible... It’s all removed by the Lozzo Police Army in the morning and the great work is scrubbed clean of graffiti and daubings by the community service chain gang...

ready for a repeat performance the next night. Dear, dear... such lack of respect for authority and autocracy...
As I say, the Lozzo benevolence still flows freely in small ways too. The Occasional Crust is given out to the Unknown Beggar once a month without fail, and a ceremonial Twig of Divine Right is planted outside the Lozzo Machine Gun Library every year, in the Spring, if there is a Spring...
...but that’s enough about my important work at Lozzo Industries for now. We’re heading back to where we left me outside my flat, at No. 77 Slaughterhouse Lane, in the blistering heat that followed close behind the super-cataclysmic storm, my head throbbing and reeling with bafflement and confusion, watching my errant male organ of regeneration, aka, cock, or King Magnus, vanishing at the gallop round the corner on my bike, off somewhere to keep his “Appointment with Lady Destiny”, then coming face to face with the curious blue-green apparition of the... Heebiegeebies...

CHAPTER THREE - BEINGS OF LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT

So here I am again, back outside my flat at 77 Slaughterhouse Lane with those two curious pink elephant-headed gentlemen, the Heebiegeebies. I’m feeling more than a little poorly, as they put it, my head is throbbing and reeling like crazy, what with the strange event of my male organ of regeneration becoming some sort of separate regal entity, “King Magnus”, and leaving me, and the blistering heat following on from the super-cataclysmic storm, all on top of my usual state of bewilderment, so I’m quite happy for them to escort me round to Dr Krakk’s clinic as a prelude to breakfast at the Salivation Hotel... especially as I have the strongest feeling that I know them from somewhere... but where?...

DR KRAKK - GENIUS OF ENERGY MEDICINE
As Beebee and Geegee Heebiegeebie escort me away everything goes strangely blurred and sparkles with blue-green light, but before I can wonder too much about what’s going on I find myself in the waiting room of our most excellent local complementary therapist, Dr Krakk. I happen to know the good doctor very well as he has treated me many times for Sledgehammerer’s Elbow, Monkey Wrencher’s Wrist Syndrome and stuff like that, and I must say that he’s always had me up sledgehammering and monkeywrenching again in no time at all.
The pink elephant-headed gentlemen take a couple of seats and start to peruse magazines on fishing and restoring vintage cars with intense interest. A door opens and Dr Krakk appears, dazzling us with the reflections from his enormous spectacles. He ushers me through to the

familiar peaceful ambience of his treatment room, his little world of muscle and meridian charts, pictures of soothing woodland scenery, crystals and pyramids, walls covered with professional certificates, his writing desk with its piles of notes and jug of water, then he guides me onto his treatment couch.
“How nice to see you again, Daniel, and how are we doing?”
“Well... I’m having rather a strange day... and I feel as if my brains have turned into a steaming, churning mush of some kind...”
Doctor Krakk sits at his desk unperturbed, taking notes, listening with his radar dish-like ears as I sketch in the outline of the day’s curious events. He makes empathetic “hmm’s” and “sooo’s” now and then, giving me gentle, friendly glances through those colossal spectacles.
Doctor Krakk treats his patients on the principle that there’s no physical problem that doesn’t have some element of an emotional, or energetic, non-physical problem at its heart, and that’s where patient and therapist should focus if they really want to make progress, accessing the patient’s Inner Wisdom as a guide. In his understanding, life’s whole cavalcade of one damn thing after another is just a kind of educational journey of the soul - and the sooner you get your head round whatever the lessons you’re supposed to be learning at any particular time might be, the quicker you can sail through the storms of life into calmer waters. I can tell you that it certainly works for Sledgehammerer’s Elbow.
“Hmmm... So, this... er... King Magnus, that is... ahem... your penis, has left you, Daniel? Well, well, most curious! Possibly a whole new syndrome... quite possibly the first ever case of Departing Organ Syndrome... still, a wave of change is rippling around the world, we must expect more and more curious things such as this to happen.”
Doctor Krakk gives me a physical checkover with many “hmm’s” and “sooo’s” then sits at the end of the couch and takes a hold of my head. That’s another funny thing, wherever

your physical problem is, sooner or later he’ll start holding your head. He did start to explain why to me once but lost me very quickly... something to do with fluids, or nerves or something. Anyway, on we go...
“So let’s see what your Inner Wisdom has to say about all this, Daniel. Breath in slowly... and out... gently... and relaaax....verrry gooood...”
He starts to guide me into my imagination, down inner stairs into my subconscious, as he’s done many times before. I generally find I’m pretty good at drifting into my inner imaginary world... so much practice at school and work I guess.
“Now I would like you to keep taking slow deep breaths in... and keep breathing out gently and slowly too... I’d like you to imagine that you’re going down a staircase, a long staircase... and that with each slow out breath... and with each slow step down you’re relaxing more and more deeply...”
Just listening to his soothing voice is enough to start me off inwards and downwards. I head down into my inner world, down many flights of steps, onto landings leading off in many directions... down more flights of steps. All the time, I’m becoming more and more relaxed, and the imagery is becoming more and more vivid, until I feel I am actually living in the scene itself. You might think that an old narcoleptic like me would fall asleep, but not a bit of it. Though I’m deeply relaxed, I’m becoming much more awake and alert than usual. Dr Krakk’s voice is still quite clear and he gently guides me along through doorways and corridors, and down yet more steps.
“Now why don’t we look for your Inner Control Room today, Daniel, and see if we can find out anything about today’s curious events....”
My subconscious obliges by taking me through a doorway off a landing, heading down more steps, finally leading us to a doorway lettered, “Ye Controlle Roome”. It’s set in a rather grand stone surround carved with heraldic symbols, mythic creatures and the like. Strange, but this must be it.

I have to say it’s a bit of a mess inside the heavy old, creaking oak door. I push my way through a clutter of boxes and filing cabinets overflowing with papers and folders, parchment manuscripts and carved stone tablets all piled higgledy-piggledy on top of one another. There’s cobwebs and dust everywhere, I notice drawers with labels such as: “Memories - Early”, “Memories - Youthful”, “Memories - Still to Come”, there’s “Akashic Records - Human”, and “Akashic Records - Not Human”, all empty. There’s a huge empty bookcase carved at the top with the word “school”, with empty shelves labelled “French”, “Latin”, “Greek - Ancient”, “Greek - Modern”, “Greek - In Between”, “Geography”, “History”, “Statistics”, and so on. Hardly anything stored anywhere here at all, and none of it in the right place. The whole area looks as if it has been ransacked by a Mongol Horde.
A hum of equipment and chatter of voices is coming from further in, so I squeeze along through the clutter of the corridor, heading in that direction. I find myself in a large room, a stone vault where operators of some kind sit staring into ancient-looking screens and banks of obsolete-looking switches, levers and dials. I notice that there’s a feeling of barely controlled panic in the air. One of the operators, who has an air of authority about him and a hat which says, “Ye Braine Masterre”, turns and sees me. I smile to myself on seeing that here, at least, the letters “E” and “S” don’t fall off.
“Ye Gods! Mr Daniel, Sire! Please come in! This is a... very pleasant surprise!” He leaps to his feet and bows, the other operatives following his example. “Methinks we’re getting ye Great Genital Departure Emergency under control, Sire... doing everything we can of course... but without your normal Testicle-to-Thought connection input, it’s touch and go... for, as you well know, those Testicle-Brain units were supplying more than half, well sometimes almost all, of your normal thinking activity... and so consequently your higher brain function layers, such as they are, are desperately thrashing about searching for input, searching for connections, whizzing about, heavily under

loaded and overloaded at the same time... they’ve mostly shut themselves up and down thank goodness, but a Raw Unprocessed Thought Vaccuum Pressure is building up and up!... I’m afraid there is ye significant risk of Ye Mental Meltdownne Implozionne Event... ad astra non verba!...”
Well, no wonder I feel a bit odd...
Ye Brain Masterre mutters frantically as he turns back to the screens,”...but methinks we’ll avoid Ye Mental Meltdownne if we link up these old reptile brain units we found down in the basement, they’re completely obsolete and haven’t been used for thousands of years... but they may just give us enough emergency processable input... the lads are bringing the last of them up now... I should stand back for a moment Sire! these old thinking units are very, very unstable...”
Ye Brain Masterre turns away, mumbling to himself, to check on some process or other and I take a look around. My Inner Controlle Roome is a stone-built vault, something between a medieval cathedral, a vampire’s lair and a steam railway station, with all sorts of equipment crammed into it, from the sort of stuff medieval alchemists and magicians would have used if they had ever tried to send a man to the Moon, or to create life in the lab from green sludge and bits of dead bodies, all leather, iron nails, wood and glass, to slightly more modern stuff, thermionic valves glowing away, the air shimmering around them, huge cathode ray tubes, there’s reel-to-reel tapes creaking away in the background and lots of gently smoking exposed cloth-wrapped wiring, smoke also curls up from transformers the size of cows scattered about. A mummified unicorn floats in a glass tank of fluid, with a bemused grin about its muzzle. Flickering multi-coloured light filters down on the scene through stained-glass windows, and high up in the background a wild-haired figure is hammering out rousing music from the many keyboards, pedals and stops of a cathedral organ.
Well, well... and no wonder I feel a bit confused sometimes...

A crew of dishevelled, unkempt workers of all sorts is scurrying about everywhere. Some wear the white coats of scientists, others the flowing, symbol-embroidered robes of alchemists, others the overalls of mechanics, joiners and carpenters, painters and decorators, all of them are hurrying about with boxes of tools, I think some of them are for measuring, others possibly for welding, and carrying bits of material, wood, sacking, leather and stuff. I notice with great pleasure that there’s even a worker wandering about aimlessly with a monkey wrench over his shoulder, tightening up a nut here and loosening another one off there... I wonder for a moment if he has a control room in his little brain where another, very tiny guy is walking around with a monkey wrench over his shoulder and if maybe that very tiny guy has a control room inside his tiny little brain in which another, even tinier still, guy is wandering aimlessly about with a by now very, very tiny monkey wrench over his shoulder... and so on smaller... and smaller... and smaller and so on... until maybe there’s little tiny quons and glarks wandering about in there with little sub-atomic adjustable spanners on their shoulders... is there a point at which things just can’t get any smaller? Do they instead, at that point, suddenly get bigger again? What on Earth would happen to my poor brain then? This is all too much to ponder over at the moment... so I stop.
A gang of heavily-built, extra-dishevelled and unkempt labourers puff and wheeze as they drag two lumps of dusty, cob-webby extra-ancient looking equipment on creaking cartwheels up a spiral stone staircase into Ye Controlle Roome. The equipment appears through the doorway, two huge wooden crates, reinforced with iron bands, from whose open tops the mouldy sides of glass tanks protrude. I sense that these could be Ye Obsolete Reptilian Thinking Units. There seem to be Things swimming around in the filthy greenish water inside the tanks, every now and then I get a glimpse of slithering scaley coils of something ancient and reptilian... maybe a crocodilisk?... or a basiligator?...
The labourers push the two Obsolete Reptilian Thinking Units right up to the main Controlle Console where half a

dozen more are already lined up. Next they take coils and coils of huge cables with clips on their ends down from hooks on the walls - I’ve seen things like these at work, I think they’re called “The Jump Leads” - then with noble disregard for their personal safety, the labourers, wearing stout leather gauntlets, welders masks and chain-mail aprons, reach down into the foul waters with the clips and attach them as best they can to the horrible things sloshing about within. It’s a miracle that none of them is injured by the gnashings of teeth and lashings of tails that follow. Worse is to come though when the stout labourers connect the other ends of the cables to Ye Controlle Console and start cranking two giant handles on the fronts of the units. This sets off the most awful noise of obsolete reptilian screeching as the beasts thrash around in the fluid. Bright green sparks and flashes dart all over Ye Controlle Roome, from Ye Obsolete Reptilian Thinking Units and from Ye Controlle Consoles. Cogs and wheels start to grind and mesh in the background, operators stare intently and nervously into their medieval monitors, cables glow, thermionic valves crackle and hum, transformers smoke...
“More power, laddes! Fasterre! Fasterrrre!” shouts Ye Braine Masterre, “In absentia lucis, absurdum est!”
With yet more cranking, a spectral dirty grey flickering starts up in one of the dormant monitors, with “Ye Streamme of Consciousnesse” carved into its frame, then moves into another and another, there is a general hubbub of excitement as little by little the banks of screens come to life again, and the atmosphere of panic calms down a notch or two.
“Merciful Heavens!” shouts Ye Masterre, “Sire!... It seems to be working...”
A gong rings out loud and clear through the vault. At the sound of this, a cheer ripples around the crew and there is tremendous general excitement.
“Oh Wondrous Day! Ye Gong of Thought Occurrence rings out anew! Ye Mental Meltdownne be avoided!... Quad erat desperatum!... Heavens be praised!...”

And I suddenly feel just a tiny bit better as the throbbing, churning and boiling starts to subside in my brain...

UPGRADE
The gentle voice of Doctor Krakk drifts into this joyous scene.
“We just have ten minutes till the end of our session, Daniel, is there anything we should attend to while we’re here? I fear that your brain crew may just have patched things up in there with temporary measures. May I suggest applying some upgrades and modernisation to your control room? I think you’d find that most helpful in the medium and long-term future... how does that feel?”
Krakk’s words make me think, yes, perhaps it’s time to make a few changes in here... I remember the control room of a starship in some old sci-fi TV series or other...
“Yes... let’s upgrade a few things in here!...”
With my subconscious assisted by suggestions from Doctor Krakk, I start bringing Mynne Controlle Roome forwards from Ye Darkke Agees. Out go leather, oaken cupboards, iron filing cabinets, tablets of stone and cauldrons of goo, in come hi-tech materials from the future, super-efficient, high-speed storage, and solid-state pondering units.
With Doctor Krakk’s helpful advice, I install a Logic and Metaphysics Quantum Pondering Suite and something he describes as a Five-Fold High Frequency Intuition Resonator, for Co-Immersion with Global Consciousness or something, also a Sheep Uncounting Accessory Unit, to help me to stay awake through Tiresome Times, as well as a Shuggy Machine Instant Comprehension Repair Re-purpose and Design Channel, which speaks for itself, and some other state-of-the-art brain stuff which can’t actually be described in any Earth language.
I make all these changes and also set up a brain staff retraining and grooming rota for good measure. By the time Doctor Krakk starts to guide me back to the surface again

the upgrade is well under way. I come around slowly, feeling a bit better, sort of slightly un-deranged and re-connected or something, and strangely awake, and Dr Krakk ushers me back to the waiting room.
“Ah there you are”, says Beebee Heebiegeebie, “Helpful treatment I trust, young Daniel? Now, breakfast!”
The three of us now take a leisurely stroll back through the dishevelled streets of Foulburgh, streets that are no longer being thrashed by a super-cataclysmic thunderstorm, nor being roasted by a super-heated heat wave, no no, not at all, streets that are now frozen solid. Honestly, the seasons are switching about so quickly and randomly these days that there’s hardly time to register whether it’s Spring, Autumn, or whatever... better just to think of it being a kind of continuous Highly Variable Clag Season. At the moment, there seems to be an inch or two of ice on everything and the going is very slippy indeed. Citizens of Foulburgh are falling flat on their faces and arses all around us, though they’re still managing to fight, curse, do drug deals, beg and play the bagpipes.
Fortunately, my Lozzo Industrial work wellies are fitted with excellent studs, giving me a fine grip of the icey pavements, and the Heebiegeebies glide along quite serenely, apparently not really needing any foot-ground traction for their progress, chatting away as we go. Sadly, I don’t hear a word of this as my brain is busy adjusting to Dr Krakk’s treatment, and I’m taking in the wonders of Foulburgh almost as if I’ve never seen them before. It’s a funny thing, but I suddenly seem to notice everything around me in ever sharper and sharper detail... are my senses getting stronger and stronger? or is all the dereliction and decay suddenly getting much much worse?

ABANDONED SOFAS
Foulburgh has been falling down for years, but the rate at which it’s been falling down seems to have gone falling right up recently. Wherever you go round town, you see

paint peeling and flaking, signs with missing letters, buildings subsiding and cracking, metalwork rusting completely away, broken down sofas and prams abandoned on the pavements, straggly bushes and weeds growing in the once delightfully neat car parks, dead and dying trees. Talking of trees, the one place where they do seem to be flourishing is up amongst the roofs and chimney pots. They seem to love it up there, but it’s the beginning of the end for a building when tree roots grow down into its chimney stacks, on through the roof, get their woody fingers into the walls and slowly start to tear it all apart.
Things are never repaired properly in Foulburgh, new paint in random colours, mostly in shades of grey or brown, brown mainly, because that’s usually the colour you get when you mix all your left over paint together, random brown that’s slapped straight on top of those old rotten, peeling boards. Broken windows are patched up with any old scrap of salvaged wood or plastic packaging. Sagging walls and roofs are propped up with tree trunks and piles of old broken blocks of concrete. Damp seeps through everything in every direction, up, down, sideways, leaving patches of mould, mildew and fungus growing everywhere.
Long ago, there were shops everywhere selling all kinds of stuff, but they’re all gone now. Trade has mostly moved out to giant fortified mega-stores away from the centre, or onto the flickering screens of the internet, leaving a sad abandoned, gutted shell. The boards of the dead shops’ windows have been ripped off and carried away to fix up a broken window or something somewhere else leaving a sad mess visible inside. Anything at all useable having been looted, all that’s left is piles of un-opened mail, dead electrical fittings, smashed crockery, broken furniture and so on.
The saddest shells, however, are the old dead bars, once rollicking drinking dens alive and kicking from dawn to dusk with intellectual discussion and general merriment, even... actual musicians playing actual music!... not any more...

Now, this morning, I feel bombarded even more intensely than usual by all these inputs, the sights, sounds, and smells of decay. But the strongest impression I get is from the light, the still faint yellow morning light glinting through the frozen grime on the trees, squeezing its way through the swirling purpley-green clouds of chemicals billowing from the Lozzo factories, battling with the flickering orange streetlights and neon signs, it’s a light that gives everything the sort of look that I imagine Venus must have on a particularly acidic Monday morning.
The wind suddenly picks up again, in a storm that must be getting to the very top of the super-cataclysmic range now, bits of building are getting blown past, whizzing along on the ice, and the ground itself seems to be shaking. Fortunately, my hi-viz Lozzo afty work coat is one of my longest and toughest. Work gear has to be extra-extra tough at Lozzo Industries, naturally, to cope with all the awful chemical and other hazards flying about. I gather the day-glo yellow chemical and storm resistant material around me and pull the hood up over my head. It’s one of the many coats and jackets I inherited from Shuggy, who was a huge tall hulk of a guy, so it comes down right to my ankles. The hailstones, fresh streaks of lightning and bits of building all just bounce off me. None of this seems to bother the Heebiegeebies in the slightest, they just seem to swoosh gracefully along in their blue-green glow, their smart appearance quite unruffled. We’re at the Salivation Hotel in no time at all.

AT THE SALIVATION HOTEL
The Eat All You Like All Day Every Day Full And I Mean Full Traditional Breakfast Buffet at the Salivation is a magnificent event. It was first put on several hundred years ago when the hotel opened and has been going non-stop all day and all night ever since, with a couple of changes of staff of course. Serving tables, hot plates, hot cabinets and gas burners are arranged all along one wall of

the vast dining hall. Diners by the hundred are shuffling along the steaming display piling up their plates with every possible breakfast item: nine different types of bacon, cooked to various levels of carbonisation, eggs, (poached, fried, scrambled, coddled, boiled, in omellettes), sausages, of various content and shape, black pudding, white pudding, grey pudding, haggis, beans, more beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, chips, waffles, pancakes, bread pan-fried in bacon fat rather than that abomination of being dipped in the deep-fat fryer, toast, (brown, white, wholemeal, gluten free), croissants, morning rolls, marmalade, jams, various, butter, non-dairy spread, coffee, tea, dairy and non-dairy milk and cream, sugar, brown and white - all the main staples as you’d expect. A team of huge, tattooed chefs, waiters and waitresses, all in their stained and tattered breakfast costumes, rush about serving, bringing out fresh trays and tureens of food and flagons of fruit juices, various, through the kitchen doors, passing it through hatchways, taking it from lifts and ferrying it around on trolleys. For the more adventurous there’s devilled kidneys, kippers, haddock, salmon, mackerel, trout, kedgeree... right at the very end there’s even a healthy option or two, a yoghurt, a wheatgrass stem, part of an apple, a pineapple chunk, and so on, all looking rather jaded having sat there unwanted for at least a century. There’s not many takers for any of that kind of stuff of course, this being Foulburgh, world capital of unhealthy eating. We pile up our plates and a waiter shows us to a table. The noise in the hall is deafening, rattling plates and cutlery, the sloshing of hot drinks and the roar of conversation. This doesn’t stop me chatting with my new, familiar-seeming, elephant-headed friends though, as I now find that as well as having sharpened senses, I can communicate telepathically with them... well, I think, that’s strange... but handy too, as you can chat and eat without any pause at all, except to catch a breath now and then.

THE HEEBIEGEEBIES, BEINGS OF LIGHT
- Quite an interesting day already, eh, Daniel? Let me tell you a little about myself and Geegee...
Beebee and Geegee go on to explain that they are beings of pure energy rather than physical matter, originally from a remote cluster of stars and planets, who normally zoom about the Universe in blissful beams of pure love and light but who have brought the frequencies of their life force vibrations way, way, waaaay down from their own level so that they can appear as fleshy versions of themselves in our Earth plane, where they have come to study such subjects as Life and Stupidity, as in their own world they are what we would describe as students. They tell me they can’t put this all to me in much detail because our primitive Earth languages don’t have the words for it, and my primitive Earthling brain would simply explode if they transferred their full understanding of it all to me telepathically, even with all my recent upgrades from Dr Krakk’s treatment session. It turns out, by the way, that Dr Krakk is a friend of theirs from long, long ago, another being of pure energy rather than physical matter, from a different cluster of stars and planets to the Heebiegeebies’ cluster, tucked away in the back of the cosmic beyond, who also normally zooms about the Universe in a blissful beam of pure love and light. Well, well... I had wondered more than once before if he was from another planet or something...
Anyway, the Heebiegeebies do transfer a few of their basic concepts to me: Space and Time are so completely enfolded that Scale and Location are meaningless, big things are really wrapped up inside small things as well as vice versa, further dimensions are folded up around us and down within us, and Space and Time are multi-phasic, multiple strands of reality travelling in enfolded waves... and there is no beginning or end to the Universe or Time or anything, how could there be? What would come before or after it? Everything is just sort of bouncing and flickering between being and not-being all the time... or something like that anyway. Normally, stuff like that would have put

me to sleep in seconds but their telepathy just sort of pops into my head without my having to concentrate at all, and I do feel a bit... more awake, even receptive, now, after my treatment session and brain upgrades...
- So, if you don’t mind me asking, if you Heebiegeebies have evolved over trillions and trillions of Earth years into beings who mostly just tootle around the Universe in blissful beams of pure love and light, why would you want to visit a ghastly place like Foulburgh? Couldn’t you study something nice? in more pleasant surroundings?
- Well you see, Daniel, taking on physical bodies for a while allows us to appreciate and understand things at a core, primal level, to experience a much wider range of emotions, and so much more fully... not just pure bliss, but all the other stuff you human beings feel every day, anger, fear, joy, humour, sadness, contentment, the pleasure of eating an excellent all-day-breakfast... Think back to the last time you felt anger, for example, it wasn’t just in your mind was it? Your whole body became angry, didn’t it? heart pounding, jaw clenching, blood boiling, hair standing on end and waving about... making the experience so much more intense.
Yes, I know just what he means...
- Heebiegeebies have been visiting Earth for billions of years, but in this present age, Earth life has reached the most extraordinary point. You human beings, in your insane, short-sighted, fossil-fuelled, industrial exploitation of your planet, have brought it to a point from which there may very well be no going back, a point leading in an ever more destructive downwards spiral to mass extinction, to the inevitable loss of almost all life here, to a point where Life on Earth is teetering on the edge of the Total Collapse of Everything...
This is just the sort of thing Edrigo has been saying recently...
-... yes, your friend Edrigo sees this all very clearly... leading to such degradation of your environment that it will reach a state in which it can support barely a ghost of

the wonderful diversity it has seen in the recent past, and never develop that same wonderful diversity ever again before it is swallowed up by the Sun...
-...you have beings all over the Universe watching, gripped in horror and fascination, on the edge of our seats and perches. We can’t believe your stupidity. This dire spectacle on Earth has drawn many other student Heebiegeebies here, and other entities too, by the way... like the dreadful K’oll-eE-Wobbuls... (they both wince and hiss telepathically at the thought of these beings)... we’ll tell you more about those dastardly mischief makers later...
-... the suspense is so intense! Will you Earthlings destroy almost all life as you know it on your planet or come to your senses in the nick of time? and there is indeed a tidal wave of change rippling around the planet! Perhaps it’s not too late... Though the general thinking in the sentient cosmos is that there will be a widespread and very upsetting total and general collapse of all the human and environmental systems of your industrial way of life before anything like enough of you, politicians and everyday people alike, make anything other than the most pathetic token gestures towards sustainable living.
- You and Edrigo were assigned to Beebee and me, Daniel, not long after you were born, as two of our own personal study cases, and we really must thank you for all the excellent entertainment and enlightening insight into human being behaviour you have given us.
It takes a moment for this to register with me...
- You mean... you’ve been studying me all my life?
This is a bit of a shocker for me... it could explain why they seem so familiar though...
- Well... yes...
- Everything I’ve been doing?... at school... at work and... eating and sleeping and... everything else?... like going to the toilet and... having sex... and everything?...
- Yes, Daniel! and the “Earthenders” series of programmes we’ve been making about you and Edrigo and the Collapse

of Life on Earth have made you into two of the biggest entertainment, and educational, stars in the whole Universe! Isn’t that wonderful!
- What!?... (I’m feeling several different emotions with my whole body now)... you mean you’ve been making programmes about us and all the... intimate detail of our lives... and broadcasting them... throughout the whole Universe?...

THE HEEBIEGEEBIES - BEINGS OF LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT
It takes me a lot of sausages and bacon to get my head around this idea at all. It seems that what the Heebiegeebies started as a kind of series of Natural History broadcasts for bored Light Beings, basically a bit of student fun, turned out to be tremendously popular, as well as educational, and evolved into a kind of regular student tragi-comic video programme, “Earthenders”. It developed a life of its own. It began with a few mad escapades from my life and Edrigo’s, so many to choose from in the days of our crazy collapsing industrial world, and slowly but surely took off until now every episode is watched by squadrillions of beings from every corner of every galaxy, both near and far, far away, a kind of multi-galactic tragi-comic soap opera, or something, constantly discussed and speculated about between episodes by hordes of universal university professors, therapists, entertainment pundits and all the rest of the great cosmic audience.
- You mean that squadrillions of beings have watched me having sex... for entertainment? I’m a kind of... cosmic porn star?...
- Well, no, really Edrigo is a little bit more of a star in that department, you have more of a name for comedy, Daniel, falling asleep at inappropriate moments, creating industrial mayhem, that sort of thing, oh! the pleasure you have given to so many entities!... well... yes, for entertain54
ment... er... but in the name of Science ultimately, to help us to understand Behavioural Patterns and so on... all the episodes are repeated over and over again, there’s always something new to be seen in them! classic entertainment... and so educational...
- Well, I don’t remember giving anyone permission to watch me all the time.
- But, Daniel, when your own Natural Scientists here on Earth are studying insects and animals do they ask them for their permission? No! And, by the way, what’s the first aspect of life they focus on? Why, you’re hardly five of your Earth minutes into the programme before the subjects are engaging in full-on carnal knowledge of one another. They’re not aware that they’re being watched at all are they? And neither have you been... up till now... and I think we’ll be more than making up with you for any intrusion, Daniel, we’ll tell you all about that later...
The idea of being some kind of insect or animal for Extra-Terrestrials to study and make tragi-comic soap operas about is really making my brains bubble and slosh about in a whole new different way now, this is all just getting stranger and stranger... I move on to something else...
- Changing the subject a bit - I think back to them - it’s a strange thing but no one here seems to be have spotted your elephant-shaped heads, if you don’t mind me saying.
- Very observant of you, Daniel, yes, well, people just don’t seem to notice an elephant in a room do they? That’s exactly why we use this disguise on Earth, so that we can mingle amongst you and watch you without being seen ourselves.
- But I can see you...
- That’s because you’re waking up, Daniel. Haven’t you noticed that everything seems a bit more in focus, more detailed today? After your... er... Decocktion Process, and Brain Upgrades you’ll probably keep on finding your senses get sharper and sharper, and all sorts of other possibilities and abilities will open up for you too.
- Now that you mention it, yes, I suppose things do seem

a bit clearer today...
- Look round the room, Daniel, I wonder if you can spot anymore Heebiegeebies having breakfast at the moment?
I look carefully around the crowded hall and see a tell-tale faint blue-green haze here and there. There’s quite a scattering of pink-headed, big-eared gentlemen, and some pink-headed, big-eared ladies too, floppy hats are raised, and pink hands and trunks are waved in greeting from all around the room when they’re spotted.
- Most of our production crew come here for breakfast when we’re putting the latest show together, it’s very grounding. That’s our editors over there, the sisters Chopchop and Stikistiki Heebiegeebie, they do a vital task most ably, well done and thank you ladies! Keep those scissors snipping!
The two smartly suited ladies go even pinker and grin from floppy ear to floppy ear.
- And that’s our ancient commentator over there, Sir Boatey McBoatface Beebeecee Heebiegeebie... aaah! how soothing are the friendly, cultured tones of that familiar voice, as he describes yet another scene of carnal knowledge... it’s an honour to work with you, Sir Boatey!
Sir Boatey doffs his floppy hat and smiles his lop-sided venerable smile at us.
- And over there, Daniel, look who we have composing the music for this whole current series, it’s the immortal Zizi Heebiegeebies! One, Two and Three...
Geegee points out three particularly impressive looking elephant-headed gentlemen, very sharply dressed even by Heebiegeebie standards, with embroidered jackets and gold jewellery galore, two of them with long, luxuriant beards, all three of them with dark glasses. The Zizi Heebigeebies nod the heads under their magnificently embroidered hats and raise their gold encrusted pink fingers in effortlessly cool acknowledgement. No surpise that their fame should have spread throughout the Universe, you only get that good when you’ve been making music together for a long, long time.

MORE COFFEE, SIR?
Throughout our telepathic conversation, the Heebiegeebies and I have been tucking into a little breakfast top-up with gusto. For beings with the elephant-shaped heads you might have associated with vegetarianism, they can certainly put away the bacon and sausages. The great thing about telepathy is that you can eat and talk at the same time, as fast as you like, without bits of food coming flying out of your mouth and spattering your companions, and without egg yolk and stuff dribbling down your chin.
In the Salivation’s very civilised manner, waiters and waitresses have been flitting attentively from table to table with steaming trays and trolleys, keeping our plates and mugs topped up. More coffee, sir? More bacon? More toast, sir? Brown or white? Gluten free? Gluten encrusted? Crusts on? Crusts off, sir? Two extra-heavily built waiters are doing the rounds with a giant cauldron of beans suspended from a pole which they carry on their shoulders, ladling the stuff out to any takers as they go. another two come along with a similar arrangement for those whole tomatoes in sauce that are a vital part of any truly “full” breakfast spread.
Being the world’s oldest hotel, the Salivation is crumbling apart even faster and more thoroughly than most of the rest of Foulburgh. Part of a wall falls onto the serving tables just now as the waiters, waitresses and chefs work away, but they carry nobly on, calmly straightening their huge hats and uniforms, propping the wall back up with old chairs and wardrobes. Nobody is hurt and they deftly scoop bits of plaster and lathe out of the chips and eggs. The sound of kitchen equipment exploding and smoke, screeches and curses billow out from the kitchen doors whenever they open, we catch glimpses of cleavers and crates of sausages flying through the air within. No one seems in the least bit surprised or concerned. The Heebiegeebies and I carry on chomping.

Even when part of the ceiling collapses on top of a neighbouring table bringing down with it part of the bedroom above, complete with a bed occupied by a couple having boisterous carnal knowledge of each other, we diners munch on as if nothing had happened, save for one woman at a neighbouring table:
“Wilbur!” she shrieks, “You... you... Depraved Naughty Monster!”
She picks up the nearest heavy object, a length of lead piping from some bit of broken plumbing or other, and chases the naked couple around and out of the dining room. They leave a trail of torn and soggy bedlinen, and more curses and screams behind them.
“You....you.... LITTLE RASCAAAAAL!” ...and worse...
Across the hall, part of the floor caves in, rotten I suppose, swallowing up a table and its four diners whole. They manage to cling to the edges of the carpet and scramble back out. In a flash, the floor is fixed with a couple of palettes, and some twigs and paper, a fresh table is laid for them, fresh breakfasts are conjoured up and all is well again.

EARTH - WHICH WAY WILL IT GO?
- Yes, Daniel, you Earthlings have beings all over the Universe watching “Earthenders” on the edge of our seats, gripping our perches with whitened talons, eyes out on stalks, literally, in many cases. The last episode was simply appalling, no sentient life form anywhere can believe your hideous, cruelty towards each other...
- ...the senseless brutality of your wars, the destruction, the appalling everyday mindless violence...
- ...such unbelievable stupidity, short-sighted ignorance, vanity... and that’s in your leadership...
- ...your self-seeking, unthinking incompetence and barbarity...
- ...can a species really be quite so stupid? To be comprehensively

destroying the very biosphere that keeps it alive, in spite of years and years of scientific reports and forecasts detailing the devastation of your land and ocean, the trends becoming more and more obvious... now you see the super-cataclysmic floods, storms and fires with your own eyes, and yet you still choose to ignore it all, call it a hoax, make empty proclamations of emergency and pathetic gestures towards change but still carry mindlessly on with your stupid, wanton, industrial, exploitative way of life... it’s a hideous, ghastly spectacle...
- I’m getting the idea, I interrupt, but if it’s so appalling why do you watch us?
- Well, Daniel, thinks Beebee, chomping on a sausage while holding his mug of coffee with his trunk, the thing is, it’s appalling yet fascinating at the same time. I mean what sort of entertainment do you have here yourselves? It’s all murders and wars and blood isn’t it? How many of your films, soap operas, plays or books start happily, carry on happily and end happily? You watch, read and listen out of a sort of horror-struck fascination don’t you? It’s appalling but you’re hooked aren’t you? And there are such wonderful, funny, touching, heart warming moments too in your tragi-comic soap-opera lives... in spite of all your cruelty and stupidity, en masse, when we get to know individual human beings better we find that you can actually be quite pleasant, co-operative and capable of such a wonderful generosity of spirit... we do believe that you’re mostly all decent beings deep down inside, albeit very, very, abysmally deep in some cases, and we can’t help but become a bit fond of some of you... contradictions at every turn with you Earthlings! All the light entertainment critics are absolutely gibbering about “Earthenders”, by the way...
- ...and things may yet turn out well for the human race, and all life on your planet, a wave of change is rippling around your world... Mother Nature is reasserting and re-balancing herself in all sorts of small and large events... your decocktion is just one of many of these, Daniel, a long overdue re-balancing of the attributes and influences of

gender in your daily lives, the beginning of the end of the ghastly, baleful, stranglehold of patriarchy...
- ...even at this eleventh hour you may escape from the jaws of the total collapse of everything.
- There’s other worlds out there where things, you may find this hard to believe, have been in an even worse state than here on Earth! And yet Nature has managed to restore herself.
- Now... the thing is, Daniel, there’s a huge audience of Earthenders fanatics who are desperate for the show to keep on running, and would just hate it if you did kill yourselves off, and Beebee and I have a feeling that we might be able to nudge things in the right direction...
- ...though we couldn’t actually interfere in Earth events at all... as that would tamper with the Flow of Reality... and who knows where that would lead...
- ...but we might just pop a few ideas into your heads, teach you a few techniques, that sort of thing, all stuff that you’re on the verge of understanding anyway, gently shove your evolution along a bit in the general direction of the flow of the succession of Life and Consciousness, which is continually in process here already anyway... even if it’s got a bit stuck at the moment... or actually seems to be going backwards at times...
- ...your treatment with our friend from afar, the good Doctor Klakk, was just the start of all that. There’s a couple of techniques we’d like to show you next... but not until we’ve quite finished breakfast, of course! Anyone else for more toast? Oh, and before we start your training let us just tell you about the dreadful K’oll-eE-Wobbuls...

THE DREADFUL K’OLL-EE-WOBBULS
Beebee and Geegee Heebiegeebie go on to tell me a lttle bit about the dreadful, dastardly K’oll-eE-Wobbuls. They’re another race of beings of pure energy rather than physical matter, but it’s mostly not very pleasant energy at all.

They’re often to be found zooming about the Universe in beams of hate and darkness. They are the sort of beings who take pleasure in seeing trouble and strife, a thoroughly nasty lot of mischief-makers, forever stirring up turmoil here on Earth and elsewhere, even when you might have thought that things couldn’t get much worse. The Heebiegeebies think that the K’oll-eE-Wobbuls may be trying to stir up even more trouble by giving away some of the secrets of their advanced technology to some Earthling, or Earthlings, in exchange for... well, they can’t imagine what...
- We’re hoping hard that our Heebiegeebie Techniques will help you all to thwart the K’oll-eE-Wobbul’s and their terrible ways...
- Now, how about a last little top-up smidgin of breakfast all round before we get started?

THE BEAM OF PEACE
We get to the point where we can’t fit in one more egg or bean, then the whole scene at the Salivation, our three bodies and everything around us, starts to dissolve into tiny sparkling blobs. For a moment we seem to float in a shimmering space of multi-coloured light before we take on physical forms again. All three of us are now dressed in dramatic, flowing, hooded, symbol-embroidered robes - I must say the Heebiegeebies have an eye for style if nothing else. A different scene altogether shimmers into being around us, I recognise it as another street in Foulburgh, one of the network of alleys by the main blast furnace complex, it’s the mankier end of Concreted-Over-Gardens Street. There’s no storm here, just a fitful greasy wind drifting through the abandoned furniture and supermarket trolleys, a wind which can hardly be bothered to stir up the litter and filth, or ruffle the dead vegetation, and a chilly drizzle - about as good as it gets in our foul city.
- That was the Shimmer Technique, Daniel, which we mostly use for travel in the physical manifestation of the

Universe. We’ll show you that later, as it’s a bit advanced. To start your Energy Training, we’re going to show you something simpler, the Beam of Peace Technique, a couple of your Earth years should do the trick...
- A couple of years!
- ...though, of course, you’ll be practising and refining these techniques forever! But don’t be concerned about the passing years, we’ve shimmered into a different, backwater phase-strand of time... when we drop you back into your usual phase-strand it will seem as if no time has passed there at all.
Human wreckage is also drifting about Concreted-Over-Gardens Street. One of the tottering hulks, a zombolzoid, notices us and staggers in our direction. On his head there’s a threadbare orange cap bearing the slogan, “Proud to be Stupid”. He’s carrying a hand gun of some kind, not a Lozzo model, I note with surprise. For no obvious reason, the zombolzoid seems to have taken an intense dislike to Beebee. He raises the gun and points it at him, I can see his finger moving onto the trigger. At the same time, the usual green-blue glow around Beebee becomes more intense, and extends out to the gun and forms all around it too. The zombolzoid pulls the trigger but nothing happens, he tries again and again, shakes the gun, bangs it with his fist, but still nothing happens. In zombalzoidal frustration, he raises the gun behind his head to throw it at Beebee... now the greenish-blue glow intensifies further and envelopes him completely. Suddenly he drops the gun and his sneering, menacing attitude melts away.
“Oh... I’m so sorry,” the attacker says, “Please forgive me...” His body softens, and sags. Then he seems to gather himself together, he straightens up, there’s even the faintest glimmer of the beginnings of some kind of basic intelligence in his eyes. “Thank you, master! Thank you for this precious lesson!”
He starts to shimmer into sparkling light, we hear his last words, “I love you!”, fading away into some etheric distance as he dematerialises... and he’s gone.

Well, and isn’t that just the sort of thing I was trying to achieve with my Articulated Good Manners Juggernaut Machine!
-Yes, you had something in the vein of the basic concept there, Daniel, it just required a little refinement...
The Heebiegeebies call this technique the Beam of Peace and explain that, as well as neutralising the mental threat of aggression, it can be used to switch off or override the control or operating system of any weapon with any kind of mechanism, be it a bomb, a gun, a missile, a hand-grenade, a land-mine... I’m staggered... this goes way beyond good manners...
- Any weapon at all?
- Yes.
- Any weapon at all can just be... switched off?... with your projected mental energy control?... so that it’s completely useless?
- Yes, basically, that’s it, yes.
The implications of this start to whizz around in my mind... wheeee!... my jaw drops open with a thud... thhuddd!... so what on Earth will my enormous co-workers at Lozzo Industries make instead of all those guns and bombs?...
- Focus Daniel! Now we’ll show you some more Peace Beaming, we’re going to go and play with some tanks!
- It’s so much fun! You’ll see...
We shimmer to a different scene altogether, a vast wasteland somewhere with a varied, undulating terrain of hills, craters and bogs. Dotted amongst it stand the smoking ruins of buildings. It’s a bit like Foulburgh but without all the zombaloids and lunkanumpties staggering about.
We’re standing on the highest of the hills watching a seething mass of tanks lumbering about at speed down below us and all around, firing off shells at one another. Shells explode all over the place, making more craters in the bogs or hitting another tank now and again, leaving varying degrees of damage. Beebee and Geegee stand still

and focus their attention, sending out the most slender of intense greenish-blue beams towards each of the huge machines. The tanks all stop dead in their tracks for a moment, then rumble into the largest open space and group themselves into a circular formation. Lovely classical waltz music starts to blare out from their loud hailing systems, and they start to perform a kind of weaving-in-and-out dance routine, then reform into various square and triangular patterns, finally coming to rest in a single giant heart shape... shells come flying out of their barrels but turn into bunches of flowers and flocks of birds. The crews emerge, all hug one another and saunter off into the distance arms in arms, while the tanks all quickly rust and rot away back into the Earth before our very eyes.
The Heebiegeebies tell me that it’s possible to defend against any weapon with a mechanism using the Beam of Peace technique, some you can only switch off but others can even be taken over and played with, like these tanks. The secret is to focus into their energy fields, and to look for their weakest links. There’s always something: a circuit, something that generates a spark or a signal, an aiming device or a detonator, something that can be switched off or interrupted, whether it’s a bomb, or a gun, or a missile. The more complicated the weapon, the easier it is to interrupt. Tanks and warplanes are most easily disrupted, as, for all their size, they often have some very sensitive energy fields, whereas the fields of guns, hand grenades and other similar devices are much cruder and harder to work with. In the case of a weapon with no mechanism, such as a cudgel, a knife or a shillelagh, the non-aggressor has to shine his or her Beam of Peace directly onto the attacker, to neutralise their urge to fight.
The implications of all this are still dawning on me and becoming more and more amazing - all weapons can be neutralised?... that means no more fighting?... no more wars?... will my enormous co-workers be out of their jobs? Just how much baby-food can we shovel down baby throats? Perhaps we can sell more grown up food? It’s all just the same few kind of sludge after all... maybe if we add

loads more sugar it will become even more addictive and even less nutritive, and so people will need more and more of it?...
- Don’t worry, Daniel, things will become clearer and clearer to you as we proceed with your training.
HEEBIEGEEBIE TRAINING
My training with the Heebiegeebies went on for what would have been many, many Earth years, had we not been in a backwater phase-strand of time. I studied with them in many different settings, in the courtyard of an ancient stone-built monastery high up in the boulders and pine trees of a mountainside, amongst the cacti, ravines and mesas of a vast desert, in a beautiful garden by a lakeside, and many others. They devised practical situations with various shimmered-up attackers so that I could practise my Arts of Peace.
I trained with assailants armed with everything from assegais to yatagans, and devices from land mines to atom bombs, improving little by little. It’s one thing to find and work from deep inner calm into the fields of a distant nuclear weapon, but quite another to find that same calm while being attacked by a screaming warrior, charging at you with a knobkerry.
- You are such an excellent pupil, Daniel, it’s a wonderful opportunity to work with someone whose mind is quite so empty of any kind of previous learning or training. Usually, when we’re trainiing someone, we have to spend years and years helping them to un-learn stuff they’ve had rammed into them at schools, colleges and universities, most of it completely useless and inappropriate for these times of radical change...
- ...but you’re a kind of mental blank canvas...
- ...or, you could say, an empty mental bucket...
I glowed with pride on hearing this.

FOCUS!
I hear this word again and again. One of the basic keys to the Heebiegeebie’s training is learning to focus the attention: internally, becoming aware of all the fields, and fields within fields, which make up the energy body and working with the flow of life force energy through them - they call it cheese, I think - noticing whether it’s a negative or positive flow, a drawing in or a sending out, and working towards finding a balanced, neutral state of stillness, then externally, looking for the fields of a separate object or being, and connecting with them. The Beam of Peace isn’t in fact about taking control of anyone or anything else, it’s more about connecting with their true inner nature, which in Heebiegeebie thinking must always be essentially peaceful, and encouraging them towards that.
- After all - says Beebee - if you think about it, the Universe must essentially be Life-friendly, musn’t it?... or we wouldn’t be here, would we?
But just where exactly are we I wonder?...

PRACTISE, PRACTISE, PRACTISE...
Practise! This was another word I heard all through my years of training. Learning the Heebiegeebies’ arts of peace was mostly a case of practising them over and over again. I spent weeks and weeks in the various training locations looking for the deepest, stillest “neutral” possible. Finally, sitting with them on a mountain-top one morning, gazing at the view of distant snowy peaks emerging from clouds in the light of the rising sun, I felt a new very, very still kind of inner stillness - and completely without falling asleep. I saw and felt for the first time how the energy fields of all things were not just connected, but all part of one greater, all-inclusive field.
- Very good, Daniel - said Geegee - Verrrry goood...

THE SHIMMER TECHNIQUE
As for the Shimmer Technique, I found this much harder, but after many, many more years of backwater-time practice, I found I could focus into my own energy fields, and for a brief moment channel all my being into them. Then after yet more and more years of practice, I was able to focus at the same time into the energies of the enfolded space around me and merge with them. One day I finally managed to dematerialise from my physical body and rematerialise in a different place. Maybe only a few yards away, but it was a definite shimmer.
- Verry goood, thought Beebee, the greatest journey starts with a single shimmer...
- ...it’s just a question of practice for you now, thought Geegee, we are very proud of you indeed, Daniel. Beebee and I would like to congratulate you on attaining Basic Heebiegeebie Training Level Novice Grade Z No-Belt.
- And now we must focus our own attentions! ...on putting together the finishing touches of the latest episode of Earthenders...
- ...so we’re going to drop you off back home in Foulburgh. Good luck in the adventures that lie ahead of you! Things may get very strange and chaotic for you now as the Total Collapse of Everything picks up speed, but just stay calm inside and practise our peaceful techniques. You’ll find that your brain upgrades will start to help you more and more, and other help will come your way, often when you least expect it. We’ll see you again one day very soon, well done, Daniel! Goodbye for now!
- Focus! I hear through the air as it starts to shimmer, and, then fading slowly away, I hear:
- Practise! Practise! Pra.......ct....isssseeee.......

EX ECK’S
Just as they promised, no time at all seems to have passed when I rematerialise from the Heebiegeebies’ shimmering back in Foulburgh, right outside 77 Slaughterhouse Lane. My brain is whizzing and bouncing about processing all the events, upgrades and training of the day, or years, so far and I feel the need to sit down quietly for a moment or two with a large cup of coffee.
There’s a lull in the super-cataclysmic storm and in the dramatic swings of temperature, instead there now seems to be no weather at all, just an oppressive, thick, leaden feeling in the air. You have to push your way through it, swimming with you arms, just as if you were up to your neck in mud. I’m sure it would prove to be a kind of record-breaking humidity never before experienced on Earth, if it could be measured at all. A couple of birds are clinging, wheezing, to the dead trees, having given up all attempts at flight. Alcolunks and giant numptettes are sprawled here and there, even more exhausted than usual, as if glued to the various bits of abandoned furniture, the last bits of life having been sucked out of the sagging frames and split-open cushions of everything and everyone. The acidity of the yellow-grey-orange-black-blue-purple-green light has gone way, waayyy up and there’s an ominous low hum or vibration of some kind coming and going from deep down, dowwnnn in the ground. Home again...
I trudge with leaden booted feet round to Eck’s Place, my local coffee house, just a couple of blocks away in Low Street, but when I get there I can’t believe my eyes... Eck’s has gone! There’s just a smoking crater where it used to be, emergency vehicles of all sorts are parked up in the street, strangely dazed looking people are staggering about in tattered and stained rags amongst the shattered furniture, piles of masonry and pools of... liquid... of some sort... I pass the steaming remains of what looks distinctly like my leopard-skin print beach towel!... but I’m not drawn to inspect it too closely. And, if I’m not very much mistaken, that’s my bike lying abandoned off to one side, with bits of

shredded faux-fur stuck in its chain...
What dire event have I just missed here? ...and I wonder if there’s the remotest possibility that that peculiar King Magnus character might have had something to do with it?
It’s an Ex Eck’s, I suppose you could say. One table has survived intact though, and there, sitting amongst the rubble and drifting smoke, sits none other than my old friend Edrigo, a pleasant surprise, but I can see at a glance that all is not well with him. He looks just as bewildered and confused as I feel. His clothes, what’s left of them, normally a bit paint stained, are now spattered all over in multi-coloured splodges, the tatters gently smoking and steaming. His scarlet hair, usually wild, but in an artistic sort of way, now sits in a knotted heap on top of his head, with bits of patterned stuff... curtain material? carpet?... and what looks like pizza, maybe, and a couple of chips stuck in it. He sits quite oblivious to the record-breaking humidity and destruction around him, his eyes are focused far away into some internal distance...
“Gogo!”
It takes him a minute even to hear me.
“Gogo! Are you alright?”
After a while he seems to re-enter his body. He slowly starts to focus his eyes back onto our immediate surroundings, and recognizes me.
“Didi... it’s very good to see you... oh deeerie, deeerie mee... what a morneeng....”
“Ha! Same here!”
Little by little, we start to share our mornings’ experiences. Around us, Eck’s noble and versatile staff are re-assembling and adjusting what’s left of their clothing as best they can and starting to put the place back together. Before long, they have hammered and wrenched some brewing equipment back into operation and we have some coffee in front of us. Gathering his wits again, Edrigo starts to tell the tale of his morning...

...but before we hear any of that exciting stuff, and find out what’s happened to Eck’s Place, and whether King Magnus had anything to do with it, let’s pause things a bit, go back in our strange tale, and find out some more about my old friend Edrigo’s exotic and colourful background, before coming right back up to this present moment again later on...

... I hope you've enjoyed the first three chapters of The Monkey Wrench Kid, to read on further you can buy the whole book via the link on the left ... I can tell you that it just gets better and better... Ian

Pages

Browse The Monkey Wrench Kid: First Three Chapters Complete