Interstellar Caveman

by Karl Beecher

  Just then, a raised voice echoed down the corridor. The words were muffled, but whoever was yelling either made a lot of references to “bucking” or was very angry indeed. A dozen people looked up from their desks like a bunch of startled meerkats then exchanged quiet glances across the room.

  Then the voice grew louder and clearer.

  The moment Rajiv reappeared in the office, he ceased his tirade of obscenities. Colin watched the dapper man with a face full of thunder stomp over to his desk, fists clenched. A dozen pairs of eyes followed him. Young Jimmy scuttled away.

  Colin turned back to the window. He heard a sudden cacophony of chaos behind him: desk drawers slamming, items thrown around, even a chair toppling over. When the noises ceased, Colin turned back to see Rajiv wearing a coat and holding a cardboard box.

  Rajiv could clearly hold his tongue no longer and began an impromptu speech. “Well,” he declared to the office, “all good things must come to an end. I can’t say it hasn’t been a pleasure working with you, because this petty fucking company would probably sue me if I did.”

  Colin glanced at the audience. Shocked and embarrassed faces stared back at Rajiv. As farewell speeches went, it wasn’t exactly up there with Juliet declaring to Romeo how parting was such sweet sorrow.

  “That’s right,” he continued. “I’ve been fired. No… wait. Let me get this right. I’ve been ‘given the opportunity to find new challenges in the marketplace.’ This company cares so much about my well-being, they’ve decided that employment is stifling my ability to ‘find new challenges,’ so they’re going to take it away from me. How benevolent. Just pray the company doesn’t give a shiny shit about you, and you might get to keep your job. But if you take my advice, you’ll get out of here and find somewhere else to work where they really appreciate their workers… like a Victorian coal mine, for example, or a Bangladeshi sweatshop.”

  Colleagues turned to neighbors with worried faces. Loud murmurs broke out.

  Colin, meanwhile, could scarcely believe it. The layoffs were really happening, and loyalty was no defense. After all, Rajiv had babysat Colin during his early days back when he didn’t know his deductibles from his dividends. In recent years, they’d been the company’s two best analysts.

  As Rajiv headed towards the door, people called out to him.

  “Raj, wait!”

  “Rajiv, what happened?”

  He ignored them and strode over to Colin.

  Colin shook his head, trying to think of something to say. “Raj, I… I don’t know what to…”

  “Forget it,” said Rajiv. “It’s all done now. I’m out. It looks like all the senior analysts are out.”

  “All of us? But that makes no sense. Who’s going to do analysis if not the analysts?”

  “Computers,” Rajiv sighed. “A.I., man. It’s killing us. Insurance software can make decisions in a second. That’s why Meister leads the pack now. We’re dinosaurs.”

  He was right. Meister, the online insurance agency, had come from nowhere two years ago and taken the market by storm, despite having no employees (officially, at least). At Meister, all decisions on insurance policies were taken by artificially intelligent programs. Traditional agencies like Colin’s, which used flesh and blood analysts, now found themselves struggling to compete.

  “Fucking computers,” said Rajiv.

  “Hear, hear!” replied Colin.

  “Soon enough, there’ll be nothing left but computers. Then, the only jobs you’ll be able to get is as a programmer. Maybe we should do that: retrain as fucking programmers.”

  “Pfft, no way,” spat Colin. “It’s painful enough using a spreadsheet.”

  “Look, I’ve got to get out of here before my head explodes. My guess is Jane will call you into her office soon. Good luck and all, but if you get the chop, let me know. We’ll meet up for a drink or something, yeah?”

  They shook hands and made their farewells. A moment later, Rajiv was gone, and Colin was left standing in an office buzzing with activity. People clustered into little groups of two or three or leaned over desk partitions conversing feverishly.

  Colin made his way through the hubbub back to his desk. He sat there chewing his lip and staring at a dog-eared motivational poster on the wall that declared, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” He was aware of the others peering over at him, no doubt speculating on his imminent demise. The purple splotches in his vision remained, but now the first pangs of pain began to flare up. As he massaged his temples, he noticed the message in his desk diary:

  3:30 - Doctor’s

  He looked at his watch. If he was going to get fired today, Jane had better hurry up.

  “The company thinks,” said Jane, “that you deserve the opportunity to find new challenges in the marketplace.”

  Colin looked back at Jane from the other side of her desk. She was sitting forward, hands interlocked, displaying a carefully-crafted posture of sincerity. Her face wore the kind of sickening smile you could only learn on a managerial training course.

  “You mean, I’m fired,” replied Colin.

  “Oh, I don’t like to use the F-word, Colin. The company thinks it’s time for you to move on, and we’d like to support you in this transition.”

  “Support me?” said Colin.

  “Yes.”

  “By firing me.”

  “Ye– no, by giving you a smooth exit.”

  “But I don’t want a smooth exit.”

  “Well, we’re giving you one, all the same.”

  Colin rubbed his eyes. The headache was intense now, and the purple blobs still hovered in his vision. One of them appeared to be sitting on Jane’s shoulder. “Look, Jane,” he said, his voice a mere whimper. He never was very good at confrontation. “I’m willing to compromise here. I’d be willing to take on more work. I’d be willing to take a pay cut.”

  Jane shifted in her seat, trying to maintain her managerial mask. “Come on, Colin. Let’s not make things difficult, eh? You’ll get a very good severance package…”

  He persisted. “I’d even be willing to work alongside this new software you’re bringing in. You need human analysts somewhere along the line.” Before she’d even replied, Colin knew he was wrong. Meister had already demonstrated that.

  She leaned back, and her smile faded a little. “Actually no, not really.”

  But still, he soldiered on. “Well, think of the cost of the software, it’s going to be astronomical.”

  “We’ve already licensed it, at very reasonable terms actually.”

  Yeah, thought Colin. Probably licensed from Meister themselves. The first one is always free. “Ah, but what about all the computing hardware. That’s going to cost a fortune.”

  “Actually, it runs perfectly fine on a standard PC.”

  Colin did a double-take. “It does?”

  Jane nodded. “In fact, we’re going to use the PCs we already have.”

  Colin sank in his seat. “I’m being replaced by my own computer? That heap of junk? It’s got a sticker on it saying, ‘Designed exclusively for Windows 3.0.’ It’s been at the company longer than I have.”

  “Then, as a veteran employee, it deserves preferential treatment all the more.”

  Before he knew it, Colin was standing outside in the car park, jobless and carrying a cardboard box containing a pathetic handful of belongings.

  He hadn’t a clue what to do next.

  Actually, there was one thing to do: attend that doctor’s appointment. He looked up at the grey sky and assured himself that the doctor could not possibly have bad news in store. Whoever heard of bad luck coming in twos?

  Just then, he noticed the old, white-haired car park attendant approaching him.

  “Excuse me,” said the man. “Are you the owner of the beige Volvo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bad news, I’m afraid. It’s been broken into. Driver’s side window is smashed in.”

  Oh, dear, thought C
olin. That was unlucky.

  3

  Colin sat in the doctor’s office. He felt like he’d been slapped in the face by a wet fish made of bad news.

  “It really is a most fascinating disease,” the doctor said, enthusiasm searing through his voice. “I can’t believe you haven’t heard of it before. It’s sort of like Alzheimer’s, only much nastier. It’s incredibly rare, and we hardly know anything about it. Actually, I suppose that’s why you’ve never heard of it. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of my colleagues had never heard of it!”

  An inaudible gargle crept out of Colin’s open mouth. It was almost as though he was looking down from above, watching the one-sided conversation unfold.

  Meanwhile, words kept spilling out of the doctor. He was gesturing at his computer screen, which displayed a cross-section image of Colin’s head taken during an earlier scan. He pointed at various parts of the brain, which looked like a sliced, pink cauliflower labelled with names Colin didn’t understand. “It originates in the thalamus, then spends a year or so spreading itself out from there. No symptoms, nothing. Totally quiet, like some kind of special forces guy or something. Can you imagine it? By the time it reaches the stage you’re at, it’s spread throughout the ventricles, and it’s…”

  Colin almost didn’t notice the doctor suddenly go quiet. He saw him narrow his eyes, as though trying to work something out.

  “Oh, wait a minute,” the doctor said gingerly. “You’re in a sort of mild shock, aren’t you?”

  Colin managed a louder gargle.

  The doctor winced. “Sorry, sorry. I tend to get carried away when a disease excites me. I get wrapped up in the details and forget about the patient. I never was any good during my empathy training. You see, I don’t automatically pick up on body language and miscellaneous unspoken communication. Quite honestly, I think I’m on the spectrum…”

  The doctor continued to prattle on about his self-diagnosed Asperger’s Syndrome. He explained how he had to think consciously when interpreting people’s gestures and facial expressions; how he felt uncomfortable with physical contact and social situations; how his colleagues in the medical professional had stopped inviting him to dinner parties because of it.

  Colin just stared back. Was this guy for real? He wanted to yell at the man and tell him to focus. All he could manage was, “My sympathies, Doctor.”

  “That’s okay, it’s not your problem. Anyway, we’re supposed to be talking about your illness, not mine. As I was saying, the stage you’re at coincides with your recent symptoms: the headaches, the spots in your field of vision. It doesn’t cause any bad problems whilst it’s spreading. But the disease has already spread out as far as it will. It’s sort of bedded itself down ready to strike.”

  “Strike? What does that mean?”

  “Well, for the next couple of months everything’s going to go on as normal. In fact, the migraines and the vision problems will very likely go away. But it’ll still be there. The disease is just patiently biding its time. Think of the special forces guy again…”

  “If I must.”

  The doctor started to grow excited again, as though coming to the juicy bit of the story. “It’s lying there under its camouflage, waiting for the right moment. Then, your cognitive capacity is suddenly going to go downhill. Memory, language skills, facial recognition. They all get wiped out. The process takes only a couple of weeks.”

  “Weeks? You go from normal to a vegetable in just a couple of weeks?”

  “Yep. It’s incredible. It’s one of the most aggressive neurodegenerative diseases on record. And you know what? Because it’s so surreptitious, it’s always detected too late.”

  “Too late? That sounds awfully like…”

  “… like there’s no cure? And you’d be absolutely right!” the doctor said, almost triumphantly, like his story had reached its thrilling conclusion. Then, perhaps noticing the shocked look on Colin’s face, he winced a third time and hung his head shamefully. He drummed his fingers along the surface of his desk as though trying to think of something to say. “It, um… it really is a most fascinating disease.”

  4

  “Would you like another sherry?” asked Mildred.

  Colin didn’t feel like another drink. “No,” he sighed. “Too much drink is bad for you.”

  Mildred frowned. “It’s hardly going to make a difference now.”

  “Yes. I was joking.”

  “Ah.” Mildred drummed her fingers on the table. “Can they really not cure it?”

  “No,” replied Colin, answering that same question for the third time.

  Mildred pulled a sympathetic face and took a sip of wine.

  It was a typical, rowdy Friday evening at the Sprotsbury Grove Recreational Bowls Club. In other words, about thirty people averaging retirement age sat around, sipping wine or real ale, and trading stories about their gardens, their neighbours and their latest medical complaints. The members had long since finished their games of lawn bowls and moved into the cosy surroundings of the clubhouse.

  Colin was the youngest person in the room by a clear twenty years, but he didn’t care. He felt comfortable with people like Mildred: sensible, conservative, reserved. Other people his age, ones that spent their Friday nights in pubs and nightclubs, would have bombarded him with questions and clamorous displays of sympathy upon learning of his ailment. Even worse, they would have hugged him. But not Mildred. Good old Mildred. She was lovely: mid-fifties, delicate and quietly spoken. A real, old-fashioned lady.

  “Maybe,” said Mildred, “you might finally come to my swingers club.”

  Oh yeah. There was that too.

  “I don’t think that’s really me,” said Colin.

  “Come on,” she said. “You should at least give it a go. You might as well now. What have you got to lose?”

  Colin scrambled for excuses. “Oh, I wouldn’t know anyone there.”

  “Then you’d get to know them. You know everyone from Neighbourhood Watch, don’t you? It’s mostly the same crowd. I think you’d really enjoy it.”

  In all honesty, Colin would run miles to avoid a swingers club. Admittedly, swinging didn’t square perfectly with his notion of sensible conservatism, but at least Mildred and her ‘associates’ conducted themselves in a structured, polite way in a pleasant suburban semi. They weren’t young yobbos in night clubs with their tongues down each others’ throats. No Bacardi Breezers and ecstasy pills for Mildred and her friends. Wine and nibbles, certainly.

  “No offence, Mildred, but if I were interested, I’d be looking for someone my side of fifty.”

  “I can assure you, you’d be very popular,” she said, jabbing his forearm. “Young man like yourself suddenly appears. You’d cause quite the stir. You’d have your pick, you would. You’d be up to your neck in MIFFs.”

  Colin winced. “MILFs. You mean MILFs. Anyway, it’s kind of you to invite me. But… that is not really on my mind right now.”

  Mildred pulled her sympathetic face again. “I suppose not. You’ve got other things on your mind. In fact, I’m surprised you came here of all places.”

  “Where else would I go?” said Colin, to himself as much as Mildred.

  “I don’t know. I’d have thought you’d want to talk to someone about it. You know…”

  Her voice trailed off. She probably knew Colin had nobody in his life to open up to. It was common knowledge his adoptive parents were already deceased. He had no other family, and he’d been single for longer than he cared to remember.

  She made a good point, however. Why come to the bowls club so soon after his diagnosis? What did he hope to find here aside from folks nattering about their hip joints and hyacinths? He looked at Mildred, and a wild thought entered Colin’s mind. Maybe, he thought, just maybe he should talk to her. Really open up about everything. She was a nice lady. He could imagine her as a kindly aunt—albeit one who tried to drag him along to swingers’ parties.

  Would he r
eally do it? Could he really break the habit of a lifetime and bare his soul? That’s what you had to do nowadays. The old, British stiff upper lip was on its way out, for better or worse. Emotionalism was where it was at today.

  Colin opened his mouth, ready to let the words spill out.

  At that moment, Mildred’s husband Keith—short, bearded and bespectacled—waddled back to their table. “No joy,” he said, easing into his chair. “I shall have to have a laxative when we get home.”

  Or maybe not.

  “Keith!” Mildred gestured at Colin.

  “Sorry. It’s just I’m bunged up to high heaven right now.”

  Mildred slapped her husband’s arm. “Colin’s got his own problems.”

  “I know, I know. Does he want another sherry?”

  Mildred shook her head. “He said no, drinking too much is bad for you.”

  “It’s hardly going to make a difference now.”

  “If he wants another sherry, he’ll ask for one.”

  Keith looked at Colin. “I was thinking about you as I was sitting on the loo just now.”

  Colin raised an eyebrow. “I’m honoured.”

  “You know what you should do? Live life to the full. Go for it, now you’ve got nothing to lose. Skydiving, parachuting, all that stuff. Go travelling. Get yourself to India and Thailand, all those exotic places. Don’t you think?”

  Colin did think; he couldn’t imagine anything worse than jumping out of a plane with a load of adrenaline junkies. As for travelling to exotic places, one last trip to Brighton would suit him just fine, thank you very much.