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Section 3 Entry 0001. Date: 2003 September 08 Monday.
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An edict from on high: caterpillars are now legal. As well as porcupines.
Section 3 Entry 0002. Date: 2003 September 09 Tuesday.
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Our e-mail system crashed today, overburdened by the sudden avalanche of caterpillar jokes, most of them in very bad taste and none of them particularly funny. This caterpillar business really has struck a very raw nerve.
Section 3 Entry 0003. Date: 2003 September 10 Wednesday.
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Today I was out at Marzipan Beach, under orders from the Big Boss to burn down an illegal holiday shack built by Template Jack, the guy in Records who spends so much time on his insect collection. (By now, he's collected fifty-seven different varieties of blowfly.)
I don't see myself as an enforcer. In fact, logistics is my speciality, and it's what absorbs most of my energies, except when our chaotic and ever-changing organisational chart sees me doing some other job (I've lost count of how many I've done) which is absolutely unsuitable for someone of my (limited) talents and personality.
However, the Big Boss appears to see me as having an aptitude for low-level tasks relating to office enforcement, and so he sent me out to Marzipan to burn out Jack's hideyhole, having discovered that Jack, when he called in sick last week, was actually out at the beach surfing.
(Personally, I wouldn't want to surf at a beach that was awash with raw sewage, particularly not with so many decomposing corpses floating in the water. But there's no accounting for tastes.)
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I burnt down Jack's shack, and I was standing there watching the flames - kind of pretty, really - when my cellphone rang. This gave me a bad feeling. This may be pure coincidence, but I've come to believe that, as a rule, my cellphone only works when it has bad news to tell me. (It certainly doesn't work if I try to phone out for pizza.)
So I answered the phone, and it was Lundy.
"Bad news," he said. "Rumsfeld's found out why you're in Hell, and he's gone and posted it on the bulletin board."
"Physical or cyberspace?" I asked.
"Both," said Lundy.
He wouldn't tell me what it was - why I've been condemened to eternal damnation, that is - but he intimated that I wasn't going to like it. I guess I'll find out soon enough.
But not right away.
Right now, it's eleven at night, and I'm still out at Marzipan, stuck in a dismal concrete box of an Internet cafe. A train has derailed on the line going back to Borathoptus, so I'm stuck here.
I've tried logging on to the bulletin board, but someone's gone and changed my password on me. The last time that happened, it took ten days to fix. (Plus, I never found out why it happened in the first place.) Well. I guess I should get back to the office eventually ... and then I'll know.
I'm starting to think I don't want to know. But there's no use trying to hide from the knowledge. If I really don't want to know why I'm here, someone will be sure to amuse themselves by telling me.
This place, the Tozolka Espresso Data Bazaar, has (absurdly) no door, and there's a freezing wind blowing in from the sea. Also, though this place touts itself as a "cafe," it has no coffee. No drinks, in fact, except iced tomato juice (and I've always hated tomato juice.)
And, to top it off - now, this really is a first! - it's just started snowing. I'm stuck here in jeans and a T-shirt (I dressed down for my little arson gig) and I'm shivering. Boy, this is bitter!
Maybe this is going to be the night when Hell really does freeze over.
Section 3 Entry 0004. Date: 2003 September 12 Friday
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Friday evening, and it's over - the ordeal of the last couple of days or so, I mean. There are still a couple of flies, but ... well. Maybe I'll write about that later. Right now I'm sitting at home watching sumo on TV, a sport which would be more fun if the wrestlers had arms ... as it is, it just looks like a couple of waterbeds bumping into each other, strenuously.
Section 3 Entry 0005. Date: 2003 September 13 Saturday
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Saturday, and I was planning to clean up the last of the dead flies, but I got an unexpected telegram ordering me to report to the Genghis Khan Interrogatory Health Clinic for a prostate examination. This I would prefer not to write about, thank you very much.
Anyway, I got back too late to get very much done. This seems to be pretty much the pattern of any weekend in Hell. If you don't have to work compulsory overtime - and you often do - then something turns up to trash the weekend. There's still Sunday (in theory) but I won't be surprised if something happens then, too.
By now, I've more or less gotten over what happened on Thursday.
As I wrote earlier, on Wednesday I went out to Marzipan Beach to carry out a little job for the Big Boss, and I got trapped there by transport problems. Unavoidable. Not my fault.
By Thursday morning, however, the trains were running again, albeit a bit slower than usual, and I was on the train heading in to Central when it made a stop at Mangosteen, the big pleasure center. The place (if you haven't been to it) where they have the bear-baiting pits, the centipede restaurants, the unelective surgery houses where you can go watch a pig getting its face cut off, and all the rest of that good stuff.
I knew full well that I should be heading in to work, but I thought perhaps I might be able to get away with skiving off for a few hours. So I hopped out of the train and ... well, went and enjoyed myself ... if you can call it enjoyment ... drinking Stone, you know, that stuff which doesn't really give you a buzz, but which does give you this odd vibrating feeling, and certainly installs a fairly respectable hangover.
In the end, I didn't get home until late Thursday afternoon, feeling pretty good with myself for having gotten away with something for once.
I opened the door to my apartment, and I was confronted by a wall of flies. I mean, they were solid. So many flies that they weren't so much flying as just sitting there vibrating in place. Darkness made visible, indeed.
I was standing there gawking at them when something gave me the most terrific kick and I was precipitated into the room. I don't remember hearing the door slam shut on me, but from then on it was all roiling darkness, flies in my mouth, flies in my nostrils, flies crawling down my pants, my underpants billowing with flies.
If I'd been able to control myself and simply endure, it wouldn't have been too bad. But I couldn't. I totally lost it, and I started to scream. And this went on and on and on and on for I don't know how long.
Well ... I suppose it could have been worse. I mean, I've met some people who were here in the old days, before the main goal changed from punishment to productivity, and the stories they tell ... to be honest, we've got it lucky. I know that. But there are times when knowing that just doesn't help.
Section 3 Entry 0006. Date: 2003 September 14 Sunday.
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Sunday. Contrary to my expectations, a real day off. But I find myself ... well, just flat. I've done nothing but lie in bed all day listening to music on the radio. The music is a kind of droning - some Australian aboriginal instrument, I think - just faintly audible over static. Better than nothing. I had planned to watch TV, but the TV is just broadcasting that "service interrupted" screen.
It's getting dark, now, and I'm sitting at the window, watching a guy coming out of one of those caterpillar houses. In the last day or so, they've been opening up all over the place - there are some really slick businessmen here, and they really know an opportunity when they see it.
Kind of looks warm ... the doorway ... pink light spilling out of it ... think I'll drink some Stone ... get a bit of that vibration going ... get myself a decent hangover ....
Section 3 Entry 0007. Date: 2003 September 15 Monday.
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A public holiday, so I went to the South Satanic, the big museum, to see an exhibiton of fossilized buffalo dung. I won't claim to have enjoyed it, but at least it made me feel purposeful.
I'm kind of feeling anxious now about tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day I go back to work. And, assuming Rumsfeld's notice is still on the bulletin board, I'll find out why I'm here. Why I'm in Hell. If the notice is gone, I'm sure someone will make a point of telling me.
To tell the truth, I'm not really sure I want to know. But. Regardless of how I feel, I'm going to find out.
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