The Tricentenary
Alfonso Jones strode purposefully to work
through the drizzle. He'd worked for the Patent Office for fifteen years and
despite the antisocial working hours he couldn't imagine doing anything else.
The fact that he walked to work was a source of amusement to his colleagues
who, like the rest of the world, used the teleport. Alf would laugh off their
jibes, quipping that he enjoyed the early morning stroll, but in truth
teleportation made him queasy. The sun had not yet risen up beyond the hazy
horizon and in the half light he could make out the towering buildings all
around. Concept House nestled quaintly among them in the heart of
His office was a mess of dirty coffee
cups and half read celebrity magazines. It didn't matter because it wasn't open
to the public, but he felt an occasional twinge of shame, it was so obviously a
bachelor's workspace. He changed out of his suit and slipped into his overalls.
Pale light filtered through the rain and the grime on the windows and fell
weakly across his desk. He sipped at automat coffee and browsed the morning headlines,
another Royal scandal, a disgraced politician and concerns about whether or not
the planet was about to enter another ice age. In an effort to avert global
warming the scientists had over-compensated and countries across the globe were
engaged in mass deforestation projects to try to balance the ecosystem again.
Buried in the foreign affair headlines was an article on the approach of the UK
Patent Office's three hundredth anniversary. As much as he loved working at the
place he couldn't work up much enthusiasm for the event. The buffet should be
good though; he thought with a smile; they always laid on a good spread.
Slurping back the last of his drink he picked up his shovel and set off to
work.
************************************************************************
"Alfonso Jones to reception."
called the Tannoy (RTM) system, "Alfonso Jones to reception."
He stepped lightly from the
dress-o-matic, deodorized and sharply suited, his soiled overalls a mass of
deconstructed molecules behind him. He loved the variety of the job, the mix of
history, education and hard manual labour. The Office got fewer visitors these
days, since CymruDisney on
"Timmy just loves history."
gushed Mrs.Smith, "He's been nagging us to come here for months."
Timmy gazed around in wonderment at the
pot-plants and glass cabinets, then looking up he cried, "Look mum! Fluorescent
lighting. It's just as horrible as the Internet said."
Mrs. Smith shuddered, "Those poor, poor,
people."
"It wasn't until the mid
twenty-first century that its links with suicide were truly understood."
said Alf, slotting happily into his tour-guide role, "There is evidence
that there was a tacit acknowledgement before this however. For instance, none
of the windows in the building open wide enough for a man to get through. Now
if you'd like to follow me, we'll begin the tour, would you like a guide
book?"
"Yes please." said Timmy. The
receptionist uploaded the information to his PDA.
"We also do old fashioned paper ones."
"We might pick one up on the way out;
after all, it is our duty to do our bit for the environment isn't it?"
The visitors followed Alfonso through
some automatic doors and into a small office.
"The Patent Office was founded in
1852 and was based in
"Did the radiation force them to
move here?" enquired Timmy with a cheerful grin.
"No, the Office relocated to
"What's this?" asked Timmy,
holding up a cardboard folder, stuffed with paper.
"That is what a patent application
looked like in the days when people
worked as Patent Examiners. In those days every application was published and
filed in large red boxes in huge mobile racks." He guided them back out
into the corridor and tugged on a thin white cord. Rows of strip lights sparked
into light and eliminated the gloom. "We think it might have looked a bit
like this."
Timmy gazed at all the boxes, dusty and
untouched for decades.
"However, our ancestors were
entering the Information Age, and soon all of this was replaced by a computer
system from which the examiners could access millions and millions of published
patent documents. Although very primitive by today's standards this was a great
technical advance and allowed the office to recruit a large number of people to
deal with all the new ideas which were filed in that most fertile era of
innovation."
"Little did they know at the time
that a drastic reshaping of society was only a couple of short decades away.
The pioneering work of David Coppice, a retired patent examiner, in the field
of genetic engineering was about to change the world forever. Follow me
please."
Alf led the little party slowly down the
winding stairs. This was the part of the tour the kids adored. The little lad
was already hopping from one foot to the other in such a way that it was
unclear whether he was really excited
or just needed to go to the toilet. He pushed firmly on the fire escape door
and they walked through into the cages with hushed expectation.
At first it was hard to see. The fresh
air and smell of warm dung had initially reminded Alf of his first childhood
trip to the zoo. Now it was as natural to him as the taste of coffee in the
morning. Long ropes dangled from the large concrete canopy, at the end of each
were rubber tyres, swaying placidly in the breeze. Little booths hugged the
external office wall, each one a small version of the office that they had just
left. Each booth had a bookshelf, bent with weighty tomes, a desk on which a
computer was perched, and a swivel chair. Sat on each chair, peering with comprehending
eyes into the pallid glare of a monitor, was a monkey. Some wore glasses. Some
wore sandals. An outlandish few wore novelty cardigans.
"The introduction of the Patent
Examiner monkey changed the face of the civil service. They were innately designed
to do the work and they were happy so long as they had a constant supply of
bananas, coffee and fruit scones. The introduction of general administration
monkeys a few short years later introduced a turbulent period of British
history, as unemployment soared and the national workforce was gradually
replaced by monkeys. Once the industrial action had subsided, the populace
attempted to adapt to the zero-day week and a new leisure culture. It was a
brief and abortive experiment. New jobs
were created in which a variety of tasks were provided, with everyone
experiencing a little bit of intellectually stimulating work and some good hard
physical endeavour."
"Which proved such a good model that
it exists to this day!" cried Mrs. Smith, triumphantly.
"Partly," conceded Alf,
"the difficulty was that human nature requires an outlet for ambition and at
least some social division. For a few decades the most wonderful luxuries were
reserved for the best sportsmen and celebrities, but ultimately the arbitrary
nature of this reward system was condemned by the politicians, who were feeling
hard done-by."
"What happens now?" enquired
Timmy, smirking. He already knew the answer, but had decided belatedly to stop
playing the swot.
"Now, thanks to technology the people
with the best ideas are rewarded. Which leads us neatly on to the final part of
the tour."
Once back in the building they entered a
lift and Alfonso prodded the lowermost button 'Underground 5'. The mirrors in
the lift sent images of the three occupants repeating away to infinity.
"The monkeys themselves were supplanted
around twenty-years ago and attempts were made to retrain them to maintain the
computer network, but they weren't able learn a new discipline. Therefore, in
compliance with the endangered species act of 2065, we provide them with fruit
and beverages. Whenever the computer system went down we found that they got
unruly and so we also provide mock-work for them to do."
The doors of the lift parted and there,
in the middle of the air-conditioned room, rested a small black cube, about the
size of a footstool and veined all over with sparking gold lines.
"This is the nerve-centre of the
current
He paced delicately over to a mind booth
in the corner.
"Now, Mrs. Smith, if you and your
son would like to explore through the collective knowledge of the nation, press
your hands firmly against this panel."
They both followed his advice and
instantly they were gone. Their bodies remained, frozen rigid with their eyes
rolled back, pressing against the panel. He had surfed through the network on
many occasions, but found that every time he returned slightly more awed, and very
much more depressed. It had been a grand disappointment to him that his sole
contribution to the great national unconscious was a new recipe for a sandwich
that included peanut butter. It tasted
horrible. Then again, that was why he was mucking out monkeys in the smog of
Once the visitors had been plucked back
from the database, both cheery and impressed by the experience, he wandered
back to the monkey enclosure. He watched them work, their monitor tanned
leathery skin tight across the knuckles tapping away endlessly at the
keyboards. Pointlessly. These thoughts worried him; if he dwelt on them too
long he started to wonder what the hell he was here for too. Instead he started
to daydream about Angharad.
************************************************************************
The tricentenary celebrations were due to
be held in the Office of National Statistics Wine Bar, adjacent to the office.
The bar was always busy and was the
"They've opened up a new Martian
restaurant, by the Transporter Bridge," proffered Alf, ever hopeful across
the bar top, "would you like to come with me to try out their ice cream? I
hear it's out of this world."
"Alfonso, darling," purred
Angharad, staring at him steadily with her perfect almond-shaped eyes,
"I've told you so many times, it's getting embarrassing. I'm after a man
with ideas. I couldn't possibly spend the rest of my days
serving up bowls of crisps and pinging the 'authentic' crown tops from bottles
of multicoloured piddle. I want an apartment in Merthyr, with marble floors and
gorgeous soft furnishings and a balcony that looks out across the mountains.
You know as well as I do that the only way to get all that is to have a really
good idea. One that sends the little chip in our bonce haywire. One that
changes the world."
"Chin up Alfy old chap!" smiled
Sark, putting his arm around his dejected friend's shoulder, "You never
know, there could be a sudden craze for peanut based sandwiches, and then the
sky's the limit!"
His friends all giggled, and blushing Alf
wished that he'd never let slip his greatest innovation to them all in a weak
and drunken moment.
"And when that happens, you know where
I am." smiled Ms. Ali, then with a wink and a wiggle she went to serve
another customer.
"You mustn't get disheartened,"
laughed Sark as he sipped from a neon blue bottle of watermelon punch,
"you never know when inspiration will hit you."
Alfonso sighed and braced himself for the
tale of how Sark had joined the tennis club and yachting set all on the back of
an idle musing about the nature of tooth floss. He smiled at the relevant
points and nodded reverently, but bitterly concluded that he was going to need
a lot more than floss to win Angharad over. Flats in Merthyr were reserved for
the elite, he'd need to figure out the grand unifying theory of everything to
be certain of a place, and though he suspected that it had something to do with
the number 8, he had checked and the Patent system wanted a little more detail
than that.
The buffet had been a resounding success,
with the exception of some peculiar balls of deep fried fruity cheese which had
shocked everyone by not being the garlic mini-Kiev’s which they had been
expecting. The mainframe had given a marvelous, witty and elaborately
cross-referenced speech outlining the progress of the Patent Office over the
last three centuries before speculating on what the future held and finishing
with a joke about its political masters.
Sark and Alf ingested a rainbow of
different drinks until they could barely stand.
"She'll come around." conceded
"No, but she's beautiful!"
cried Alf in despair, "If I don't think of something good, then some
brainbox will roll in here one evening and whisk her away in a whirl of atoms,
and I bet he won't be scared of
teleportation."
"I think we both need a breath of
fresh air. I'll get your coat."
They strolled around to the cages; it was
where Alf always headed to think, or to sober up. The eerie glow of the
monitors twinkled in the cold night air, disturbed only slightly by the endless
rattle of the keyboards.
"Lucky sods." muttered Alfonso
darkly, "They're happy, tapping away. Tap. Tap. Tap."
"None of it's new!" he yelled
at them, in frustration, "You're just doing an endless stream of stuff
that the mainframe feeds you. But you're happy aren't you? You haven't got to
rack your brains daily for the idea that'll take you away from the drudgery of
your daily life. You were bred for it. You like it."
Sark absent mindedly peeled a banana and
made cooing noises at the examiners, who ignored him.
Alf stared at them as they worked
endlessly. "Damn it, even they must have more ideas than me," he
thought bitterly.
"Dunno why they haven't chipped
these hairy beggars." Alf joked, putting his forefinger to his temple
"I'd bet that those would get more use than mine."
At that moment, for the first time in
many years, the chip in his brain sparked into life.
************************************************************************
The chipping of the Patent Examiner
monkeys turned out to be a very good idea indeed. Within weeks they had sorted
out ways of making the Worldwide Patent mainframes compatible (even the
notoriously obtuse mainframe of the Martian French). After six months the grand
unifying theory of everything was done and dusted, and for an encore they made
Alfonso's sandwich idea edible.
"It's beautiful." gasped Angharad,
"It's everything I ever dreamed of and more."
She stood barefoot on the heated marble.
In the sunset glow from the balcony she bent her head forward slightly and the
corners of her mouth rose to form a beaming smile. In the background Philip
Glass' Violin Concerto was playing softly.
"You're having a good influence on
me Mr. Jones, you're quite an inspiration."
Alf blushed, "I know, if I can make
it, then anyone can."
She shook her head and walked over to
him, "You've shown that every idea is important and that everyone deserves
a bit of the good life."
She lent forward and kissed him tenderly
on the corner of his mouth. Then in an instant silence descended and the room
was plunged into darkness.
"I don't believe it! Another damn
power cut." she sighed, "Any ideas, my wonderful Einstein?"
"Nope. But I'm rapidly coming to the
conclusion that technology can only bring you so far, and then, like it or not,
you have to let nature take its course."
And, as it had done for millions of
years, it did.
©2002 Mark Sexton