The Cat Wore Electric Goggles

by Ian Hutson

  Well, it turned out that the night-watchman was a very nice man indeed, and once conscious again he said that since no really serious harm had been done he felt that perhaps they could say no more about it all. He professed himself to be quite handy with a screwdriver and volunteered to re-connect the telephone line before anyone noticed. Least said, soonest mended eh?

  Some of the dogs that Slag had brought out into the fresh night air had by then wandered off, and were christening lamp-posts or sniffing at trees or chasing urban squirrels. What larks!

  ‘Oh gosh - I do hope that they’re safe out there in the dark where there might be thieves, vagabonds and other unsavoury ne’er do wells!’ said Slag, plugging in the night-watchman’s electric kettle so that she could make everyone a refreshing cup of tea. ‘Will the virus be too terrible, do you think? I mean now that it’s on the loose, so to speak?’

  ‘No sense in crying over spilt milk, m’dear. I expect it will be something and nothing.’ The night-watchman looked up at the moon. ‘It’s going to be a lovely day tomorrow by the looks of things. A little bit of cloud and a nice breeze, but not enough to need to carry a coat. Warm, I should say, but not too warm. A bit like Wednesday, the week before last, although we had a bit of light drizzle in the evening.’

  Slag caught sight of herself in the little mirror of the security hut (the security man used it to check that his cap was on straight for visitors). Her face was an absolute mess and her clothing! Whatever had she been thinking? As soon as the shops in the High Street opened she’d have to pop in and see if they had something nice in gingham, and some sensible shoes to replace her Doc Martins. She caught sight of the others ambling over from the main building, and she mimed “tea?” to them with the time-honoured hand-gesture.

  Gobshite, Druggie and Scumbag gave Slag an appreciative thumbs up and rushed to tell her the news. They’d been talking to Warren, the lab assistant, and he reckoned that he could probably get them all jobs at Eweqip Laboratories Ltd - which would mean not only that they could start paying off their student loans but, if they worked hard, they would also walk away after a few years with decent references. How lucky they had been! It was their key to quite a nice future! Everyone shook hands and patted each other on the back.

  Just then the neighbourhood milkman appeared, his electric milk float moving quietly along the roadway, trying not to disturb anyone at the unholy hour of dawn. Slag, hoping for fresh pasteurised Gold-Top for the tea, leaned out of the door of the little security hut and she waved cheerily.

  ‘Hair lair? I say - hair lair? I realise that we’re not on your regular list but do wonder if we might prevail upon you for a nice fresh pint please?’

  #####

  The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing But The Truth.

  Deeceeaye Fourfourfive was a policeman in crisis.

  Mechanically, he was in perfect order but mentally? In mental terms he was a gibbering wreck, so much so that he’d decided to spend three point six billion nanoseconds in the offices of a backstreet psychiatrist. Proper billions too - not these modern phoney mere thousands of millions, but three point six million million nanoseconds. To a detective without a wrist or fob watch, that was a near-eternity.

  For the sake of professional discretion he’d announced himself to the receptionist as Mr John Smith. This in itself was a problem, since his social circuits didn’t respond when Dr Ngineer invited a Mr Smith to lie down on the couch and then offered the usual enquiries in re this Mr Smith’s maternal production engineer. Fourfourfive found himself looking around the room and ready to apologise, as though he’d gate-crashed someone else’s consultation.

  ‘John - may I call you John? What do you feel that the problem is?’

  ‘Oh, the problem’s not mine, Doc - I’m here on behalf of a friend.’

  Dr Ngineer began a whole new biro doodle in his notebook - a yacht with triangular sails, crossing a spectacular sunset.

  ‘That’s very kind of you. Your friend’s problem then...’

  ‘Well, my friend’s a Police detective, an iDetective iChief iInspector, but things just aren’t working out for him. He’s just not getting the results that he should.’

  ‘A poor arrest rate?’ The good doctor added dolphins to the water that was gently lapping around the yacht, and a topless bosun’s mate on deck getting confused with some ropes or something.

  ‘A ruddy dismal arrest rate.’

  ‘And this bothers your friend?’

  Deeceeaye looked across at the doctor and knitted his eyebrows in a frown. A little pump whined as it automatically topped up the header tank of his facial hydraulic system.

  ‘He’s about to be fired and lose his pension, Doc - everything. He’s a laughing-stock at the station.’

  ‘And why do you think he’s a laughing-stock?’

  Deeceeaye Fourfourfive wondered if the doctor was actually switched on, and checked around for a loose mains lead. Not finding one he concluded that the doctor was probably either organic or running on tired batteries.

  ‘Because people are laughing at him. No-one takes him seriously.’

  The doctor added a couple of topless deckhands to his sketch, and he re-crossed his legs, showing mismatched socks and a casual disregard for the welfare of his testicles.

  ‘Why do you think that your friend’s arrest rate is so poor, Mr Smith?’

  ‘Criminals - he just can’t judge when criminals are lying to him. He can build up a multi-dimensional model cross-matching every sequence of movements before and after a crime, but unless there’s a mechanical discrepancy in the data he just can’t tell if people are lying. Criminals lie a lot. Humans can think one thing and say quite another. It’s most disconcerting. Only last week I came across a chap standing over a non-functional body. He was holding a smoking gun. I asked him if he’d just committed murder.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He assured me that he hadn’t, so logically I had to let him go.’

  ‘Was that a problem for you? I mean, was that a problem for your friend?’

  ‘The man then stole my car and shot four more people that morning including the Chief Constable.’

  Fourfourfive noticed that the total number of holes in the polystyrene ceiling tiles was a fractal prime when cubed and then multiplied by an interesting number he’d noticed eight years before while directing traffic in Grimsby.

  ‘How do you do it, Doc? How do humans tell if someone is lying?’

  ‘Instinct, mostly. That and the little signs that trip people up. I can tell that you’re lying right now.’

  ‘Me, Doc? What am I lying about?’

  ‘Your name. You booked in as John Smith, and I know you’re not. I also know that you’re getting bullied at work.’

  ‘See? That’s what I mean! How can you do that? It’s incredible. I’m a professional, experienced, fully-trained iDetective iChief iInspector who can process eighteen infinitillion calculations a second, Doc, and yet you’ve caught me out in just fifty minutes of mind-blowingly slow human questioning. How? How do make that great intuitive leap? What subtlety of behaviour, what nuance of circumstance betrayed me?’

  ‘You’ve got “Robot DCI 445” stencilled across your forehead in red paint, and there’s a hand-written “Kick me” sign Sellotaped to your back.’

  Deeceeaye Fourfourfive looked deflated. There was no magic to learn there. The Doc had simply put one and one together and correctly made three. He popped his battered Trilby hat back on his head and turned up the collar of his uniform Mackintosh.

  Dr Ngineer sketched in a few seagulls and named his yacht “Retirement” before standing to see his patient to the door.

  ‘So, Mr Smith, I hope our session has been of some use to you.’

  ‘You’ve been great, Doc, but I can’t stay here jabbering on about my problems - I have a graffiti artist to track down and a Sellotape dispenser to arrest. Maybe if I catch those two then I won’t look like such a laughing stock and my human colleague
s will begin to take me seriously. Could you teach me how to lie, Doc?’

  ‘No problem at all, Mr Smith - just book some more sessions with my receptionist.’

  ‘I mean really big lies. Black is white. Your cheque’s in the post. I love you. Those sorts of lies.’

  ‘We’ll start you off on small fibs. One step at a time. Slowly, slowly catchee monkey. Every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’

  DCI 445 paused mid-stride. He didn’t have time for a thousand miles, he needed to get back to the police station before someone smudged the fingerprints on the Selloptape dispenser. ‘Doc, it can’t have been a monkey that stuck the sign on my back - we don’t have any monkeys working in the police station. A few dogs, some right munters, but no monkeys.’

  ‘Next week, Mr Smith - next week. In the meantime just do the best that you can.’

  ‘Slowly slowly?’

  ‘Exactly so. See you next week, Mr Smith.’

  Fourfourfive took about eighteen minutes to make it back out onto the pavement and the rest of the day to get back to the police station. He calculated that even if the Doc was correct about the monkey it could be anything up to a thousand miles away by now.

  #####

  The Almost Omnipresent Omniscient Monks

  The Abbot stormed about Bardney Abbey like a man possessed. He was an Abbot much displeased.

  Senseless graffiti had appeared on the Abbey walls - a double-helix, over which the demonic gibberish “deoxyribonucleic acid” had been added. Only a few days earlier the vandalism had been some variation on the pentangle, a blasphemous diagram with the sun at the centre and no fewer than eight worlds shown in concentric orbits around it, with Eorthe identified as the third of these.

  Outside the walls of the abbey Stephen of Blois and Empress Matilda had the land locked in the anarchy and madness of a war over succession. King Henry’s death had brought with it more problems than the simple death of a king. The peace of the English meadows and woodlands was more precarious and apt to change in an instant than ever. Inside the abbey law and order were increasingly being abandoned with these strange acts of lunacy and rebellion. Routine and The Rule were, it seemed, no longer the absolute protection that they had once seemed.

  ‘Fetch Brother Timothy. His expertise in herbal matters may shed light on the inclusion of the word “acid” in this vandalism.’

  ‘Brother Timothy has not been seen for some time, Father Abbot.’

  ‘Where is he? Why is Brother Timothy never present when needed?’

  ‘He’s always around somewhere, it’s just that a lot of the time nobody seems to know where.’

  ‘Brother Timothy thinks too much. He’d do well to think a little less and live a little more. Find him.’

  Brother Jerome, anxious to ingratiate himself and always quick to discredit Brother Timothy wherever possible, added ‘Every journey begins with a single step - not, I think, with a single thought. No-one ever travelled very far by just thinking.’

  The Abbot frowned. He disliked the oriental philosophy as much as he disliked Brother Jerome’s flawed grasp of it. Sometimes Brother Jerome out-did himself in un-doing himself. It was a shame that he couldn’t be persuaded to take a few first steps in a journey of a thousand miles, away from the Abbey. ‘Just find him, and set him to thinking on this graffiti.’

  Brother Timothy was in his cell, where he had been all night in deep contemplation. “All night” was a relative term, of course, for a Benedictine, but Brother Timothy had surely attended Matins and Lauds at midnight, and then sung Prime at daybreak. He was punctilious in his various duties and callings, and he was much puzzled by the graffiti on the cloister wall.

  ‘An odd hand - the letters, square and with a decorative thickening of some of the strokes. Neat, almost as though produced by some unfamiliar machinery.’

  Timothy’s young apprentice looked blank. Timothy’s young apprentice always looked blank, except at mealtimes, when he looked preoccupied. ‘Father Abbot is not best pleased. How shall we catch the vandal, Brother Timothy?’

  ‘By thinking. By careful thought. The mind is our greatest tool, Brother Edwin. We must observe, and we must then think.’

  As always, Brother Timothy headed to his favourite thinking spot - his garden. He left other Brothers to clean up the stonework and remove the message. In some gentle fashion the raised beds, vertical frames and companion planting of his herb and vegetable garden helped his mind towards systematic thought. The drip of the automatic watering arrangements was most relaxing, the network of gravity-fed pipes requiring only that the header tank be replenished once or twice a day.

  Brother Edwin’s favoured methodology was action, action of any kind so long as he felt that he was physically doing something. Brother Timothy preferred a different approach, and he had tried time and again to explain to Brother Edwin that, in the mind, no door is locked, no sequence of events could not be played out and re-formed, re-played without cost in sandal-leather. In the mind no clue was hidden except by failure to comprehend. In the mind, all things were possible. Thinking was all. Brother Timothy sat among his happy yarrow, sage, nettle and rosehip, among his intensive cabbage, beets, onions, garlic and carrots, and his brain positively throbbed and pulsed.

  The matter at hand, the vandalism, wasn’t the only matter that Brother Timothy applied his brain to. If pressed, he could not have told which of gardening and thinking gave him most satisfaction. He spent equal effort on both, contemplating among his crops the mystery of what made them living crops and he a living person, separate and yet locked together in existence. A soul, possibly, but the carrot and the cabbage lived more peaceably and more at their ease than did baron and peasant. Man was drawn to life, lived without control of himself and often died violently as did the onion and the beet - in what way were they then different? Did an onion, finding new insight into life, the universe and everything, grow a new layer at each revelation? Would a man be happier, of more use if he planted himself in the soil and paid heed only to the sun and the rain?

  Brother Timothy, suddenly aware that he had himself been effectively planted in the soil of his garden for some generous time, made haste to mass. Time seemed to lose its meaning when he was deep in thought, the hours passing more quickly or more slowly in some contrary reaction to his need. Half a day could pass with meals and masses missed while he tended his herbs, or half a lifetime could stretch what should have otherwise been just an hour listening to the Abbot. How far had the sun moved as he sat in contemplation? Had it moved? It seemed to have leapt from one quarter of the sky to quite another without the intervening span. If only, thought Brother Timothy as he rushed, if only he could learn the same trick.

  High Mass followed hot on the heels of Mass, and during both Brother Timothy set his mind to the mystery of the graffiti and how to make time to find its solution. It occurred to him that there were dangerous similarities between his contemplations in the garden and his contemplations during mass. In both he was surrounded on all sides by life. Were there similarities between his vegetables and herbs, and the Brothers of the Abbey? They all lived, and yet a Brother was as unfathomable, as incomprehensibly separate as was a turnip. What was it that made some other life something other? How was each little island of precious life separated, and why was it separated?

  Would the process of living be not so much more simple if all life were tangibly connected, in more certain communication than shared watering can and shared Gregorian chant? Why could thoughts not be shared except by translation into word and deed? What was a thought?

  Thought, he thought, was everything, for nothing could be experienced without some thought, even if only brief and passing, inconsequential, a mental comment on a colour or aroma or a shape. Everything though was not merely thought, his vegetables and the Brothers were tangible. Did they too then see him in a similar process? Was he as distant and unfathomable a creature as they? Humility insisted that he must be. If then, he saw noth
ing without thought, but did not see everything, then there things that existed entirely outside of his experience, entirely outside of his sphere where to see anything was to think. There were things then outside of his world, and that was discomforting.

  Brother Timothy shifted on his knees.

  He was uncomfortable in his conclusion that he could certainly then not see everything. What basis then for his sanity, since it was thus founded on such a limited view?

  His knees ached.

  Brother Timothy reasoned that with travel he saw new things, therefore since he could add to the world that he was able to see, its size was apparently open to change. Given time and leisure to travel, could he then see everything or would there be some limit, some capacity to reach and fill?

  Without realising that he was doing so, Brother Timothy shifted again.

  What then of that portion of the world that others likely saw and thought about when he did not? That view must be as real to them as Timothy’s world was to him, and yet it was unknown, outside of his experience!

  Timothy’s brain ached, and he was glad to be able to be released from services to attend the refectory to feed it. No-one seemed to have noticed his fidgeting or to intrude upon his reflections during mealtime.

  What then, of those Brothers in the graveyard of the Abbey? What of all that they had seen and all that they had done? Undoubtedly real as real can be to them but was it somehow gone now? What made their yesterdays inaccessible to Timothy except in some thin recollection - and a thin recollection at that only of those days he had spent with them? What of those thoughts and experiences, those days of life that he had not shared?