Ever since my since my friends and colleagues have been wearing bleepers—those small electronic alarms which notify them they are wanted by someone—I have felt a cold wind from the stars.
My friends tell me the bleep comes from a central transmission point; that it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
But there is much that goes unsaid and I’m no fool, especially where sliced bread is concerned.
I have noticed that they spend much of their time listening, hoping to be summoned. They are on their own wavelengths, mesmerised by a hidden power. Their explanation that it has a terrestrial source carries no weight with me who carries a lot of it.
Some people, in fact, believe we are in the midst of a flock of extra-terrestrials ruled by a giant amoeba near the Milky Way although I would put it closer as near Lake Burley Griffin.
Yesterday, for instance, a colleague’s machine bleeped and he began speaking in a strange, mechanical voice: “I cannot accompany you to the canteen. I have other tasks.”
And it was his turn to pay.
What terrifies me is that my wife has found out about bleepers. She is setting up a new control in co-operation with this mysterious force; between them they could make my life a misery. I am frantically seeking electronic counters so that my movements don’t come under surveillance and that I’m not logged and even obliterated by rays hitting me just as I enter the deli.
Tyranny
Imagine the technological tyranny of it, just as one is about to pass a witty comment to the typist or one’s fork is raised over the second pizza and one is suddenly bleeped. Oh, the embarrassment, to know that Big Mother is watching you.
Strange things are happening. Yesterday I was told that something interesting was waiting for me in the foyer. I rushed out but it was only a small creature about a metre high with a long neck and a queer, wrinkled face with pathetic eyes.
“Oh, it’s you, E.T.,” I cried petulantly. I thought they said E.AT.”
Yesterday one of my colleagues came in, his bleeper sounding faint and disoriented. We rushed him to the nearest power plug. It was obvious he’d been in the Star Wars again.
I’m not telling this to everyone but lately I’ve been subjected to some kind of magnetic force that has maintained constant pressure on my hip pocket.
But I can see the danger increasing. Conversation will deteriorate into a few electronic impulses and sonic squawks.
No wonder they call me Mad Max
Already you can’t get into a telephone box, what with people inside changing into Superman and Dr. Who.
I understand they’re even making a new science fiction film about football—The Umpire Strikes Back.
One arrogant child, arrayed in space paraphernalia, told me belligerently that children were tired of tame planet Earth and were already looking for relocation with the third moon of Jupiter as a likely choice.
“Well, don’t let me keep you,” I cried, planting my old terrestrial sandshoe in his retro-rocket.
The intergalactic dialogue continues. This week my vehicle was described as a low impulse, Earth-oriented, unprogrammed, subsonic Juggernaut, not worth disintegrating, which irritated my old Torana and its unpressurised clutch jockey impacting in the lube pit.
Certainly I’m expecting new developments. Our train still arrives but all the station seats have vanished and there’s a popular theory they have been transported by molecular motivation for further study by young Martian toughs and Venusian space vandals.
I’m also told that food may soon be extraneous and stomachs will be fitted with small calorific receivers transmitted from a central microwave. The sequence is activated by pressing a belly button.
Surprised
I must say that I was surprised when I was summoned on a monitored wavelength to present myself to a small space-helmeted person reposing on her astro-couch amid a bower of ray guns.
I was told she wanted that strange old earthling anachronism— a story
So I told her one. What else but Little Bo Bleep?
Max Fatchen