Business as Usual

By Ulf Skei

The final installment in the trilogy dealing with the wonderful couple Elvis and Chlôe in Stockholm and their mad adventures in a universe suffering from a digitized psychosis. Existentialism and a french philosopher are important parts in the play of things. Jump on and do enjoy...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Release date: Apr 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9789176990520

Ulf Skei

En konstnär och jazzmusiker som spenderar sina dagar på cafeer i Stockholm, Milan, HongKong, Antibes eller London. En boulevardier. En drömmare. Författare med hjärtat i Italien.

Book preview

Business as Usual

Titelsida

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Copyright

Business as Usual

by

Ulf Skei

Chapter 1

Introductory Remarks

The view was of a different kind. Everything a dream. One would expect to see a humanoid or two walking about in the park across the street. Or possibly a larch or crow passing by in the above. The wind was of a breezy kind. A few waves could be noted in the pond over there in the park. A sudden person sat silently on a park bench throwing bread crumbs at the birdies. It was all strange. A humming sound could be heard from some undefined position in the surrounding area. It was the sound of electric current generators and circuits of the pc cards harboring existence as such.

This part of being was created in huge interstellar computer halls. Or desks. Well, really they were planets. Minor planetoids circling a major artificial sun. A reactor supporting existence as we know it with the required amounts of power. This version, 37 dash 42ª, had been commissioned from Bæthelreadge Desktop velveteen Inc seven years ago to the day. Specifications included automatic updating and regular service and upkeep of the software as well as hardware. Errol Quatermain III, company director, had contractors specified for the upcoming 50 years. Well, give or take a few. This was how it was generally agreed. It was the expected outcome of the digitization of being as decided and acted upon by the council of planetary affairs. The directors had decided to abandon physical being as it entailed too many uncertain parameters.

Meanwhile a digitized seagull sat waiting for a trawler to arrive in a digital port carrying its digitized load of herring and mackerel. The sound of the humming circuits was reassuring, somehow. All of this existed only as a thought. A stream of consciousness within a gigantic mind. A mind called Universe...

Universe was a grumpy old entity. Grumpy and quite lonely.

           Yes, I will create a world, a copy of myself in digital form.

Universe created itself and started socializing. It found itself unbearable. It hated itself. It invented existentialism in response to its own peculiarities. One might see it all as a gigantic game of chess. The invented species were all pawns in the game between universe and itself. Like all pawns relatively unwillingly, but finding free will and control of their existence an interesting new flavor. The entities existing during the transmission from physical to digital could at times experience odd sensations of not belonging. A feeling of existing in a glitch between worlds. Readers of this trilogy have met our main characters, Elvis and Chlôe, before. They had the possibly enriching opportunity to visit the backside, and to meet with the code-monsters and vespa crew which upheld the illusion of reality. When we enter this final installment in the trilogy digitizing has been completed. One might say the crossover has been finalized. A strangely realistic herd of giraffe trotted in silence across the skyline on the outskirts of what in the earlier, physical, world would have been Lisbon in the nation Portugal. The butterflies by a trench across a field in a stretch of land inspired by Belgium circulated aimlessly. Exactly as they were programmed to do. A cloud traversed the sky in what would in physiworld have been south Stockholm. The speck of dust landing outside a door had always been doing this, and would continue doing so eternally. A digiperson called Elvis was waking up. It knew nothing of its being a line of code. Like every digiperson it assumed it was a real person and that it was living in a very peculiar universe. This final instalment in the trilogy deals with the awakening. What happens when a person realize it is nothing but code and existing in a super computer?

Follow me on this trip through existence and being and we shall see...

#

The Light was of another, more sinister kind. A slow passage of time indicated itself by pointing out the necessity to handle yesterdays meticulously. This was done, and a note delivered to an office situated somewhere in universe made clear that a squad of four would have to be dispatched.

Artemis Coudenhafte IV appeared a bit nervous. His position as civil servant in the Knightsbridge Wellington administration - a position to which he had admittedly arrived in a somewhat roundabout manner including a telephone call from his uncle Rufus, generally known to be influential regarding anything concerning the home office, to a certain individual referred to as 'P'. P was certainly a very skilled manager. His background consisted of such posts as Team leader of External affairs, Temporary Director of the RSPCA, leader of three departments at the MI5, Librarian at the Royal Swedish Library etc. He was a man to be reckoned with. Artemis Coudenhafte knew little or even nothing about P. He knew that his uncle had pulled strings to get him into the company that handled the day to day business of the presidential administration. It would generally take time and perseverance to land a lucrative and pleasant position in this company. Artemis got his degree from a university in another corridor, the one with blue doors. After the degree party which his mother and father had arranged, he applied for the position as desk clerk at a firm merely known as the company. He mentioned this at a cricket luncheon with his father. Well, the rest - as they say - is history. After a sticky wicket late in the afternoon it was decided that they should visit aunt Edna and uncle Rufus. Following a cup of tea in the dressing room the men left for cigars in the library. Artemis felt a bit uncomfortable but joined the conversation.

           Yes. Desk clerk. The administration. Very nice. Artemis tried to appear the acquired taste. The suave gentleman. Uncle Rufus left to make a call. The next day Artemis was summoned to be introduced at the office.

           This is Artemis Coudenhafte, our new member of the back office. The man who introduced Artemis at the morning meeting in room 36 of the yellow door corridor seemed to like being the center of attention. Artemis did not enjoy any sort of attention. He nourished a faint hope that this would be a swift affair so he could be assigned a cubicle or a little office in which he could disappear into the walls or the carpet. The man who introduced Artemis was a junior manager named Apsley. He hinted at a sofa in the hallway, Artemis followed him and they sat down to discuss his duties.

            I am mainly a linguist. Early modern English. Verb changes in the plays of Shakespeare is my area. Apsley looked at Artemis and thought 'Oh dear'.

            Well, you will be handling mostly yesterdays. And at times last weeks. So in a way you will be dealing with the history of language, as we deal mainly with printed matter. He pointed at a pile of papers on a desk by the far end of the room. The Notes are mainly delivered by runner. If the matter is urgent the tube mail system is used, but we try not to use it as it is less reliable. Once a qualified note got sent to the Hungarian embassy, which is in the brown doors corridor approximately 47 minutes away by HooverTrack™. Aspley felt uneasy, and said lets go to your room, so you can get into our routines. I'll show you what you need to know in order to be a well functioning part of the machinery. They left and entered the corridor. All doors were yellow. Artemis didn't like the particular yellow nuance they had chosen, but thought to himself that one has indeed got to sacrifice certain aspects of existence in order to get on with life. They walked about 736 metres and stopped by a yellow door with the number 69 indicated in a friendly typeface Artemis didn't recognize but accepted anyway.

             Here is your room. Number 69. From now on, whenever you see a slip of paper with the numbers 6 and 9 printed on it in that order, without the 'and' inserted between the numbers, you know it is a matter concerning you, ok?

              Ok. Said a somewhat confused Artemis Coudenhafte. Aspley gave him a key code printed on a tiny slip labeled 69.

              Here is your key code. Memorize it and then destroy the slip. I'd memorize it well if I were you. Acquiring a new key code for an office in the yellow corridor involves as diverse acts as traveling across to the central offices in sector Latinum XIV, having one of the local penguins for dinner and even painting an abstract portrait of our founder, Erwin Schlegel.

               I'll be very careful. Artemis looked at the paper and thought to himself 'I can't paint…' and entered the code into a little keyboard by the side of the door. A sob was heard from some kind of hidden machinery. The door, a Royal Hingeman 37, slid open with a soft sigh. All the while a discrete hum of some sort of ventilation system could be heard along the corridor. Not disturbing or unpleasant, just discrete. It was the Bendix 52 electrical motors in the central ventilation halls that produced a hum while operating. When the corridors system was agreed upon by the Board of Interstellar Affairs there had been discussions regarding everything from coffee machines (the Multi Purpose 97 was ordered), waste paper baskets (The Scooper 5C) to ventilation system. After a long night and take away dinners for the whole board of directors the Bendix 52 was agreed upon. It was a relatively low cost engine, and still to be trusted in the long run. The sound was probably what made them decide to go for the 52, though. It was a sound of pleasure. Like the motors enjoyed what they did. This was, of course, a figment of the imagination. The electrical engines knew nothing. They felt nothing and could ipso facto not display any emotions. It was simply the clever move of a junior member of staff at the Bendix Equipment Co. The name of this member of staff was Szigmund Everett. Szigmund Everett was a dedicated saxophone player in the company band. He enjoyed nice sounds and coffee. He found out that applying just a little bit of pressure when mounting the ball bearings made the engine sound like a sigh of pleasure. Szigmund notified his manager of this, and he in turn notified higher management. The idea was added to the production plans, and the Bendix 52 was born. This was something that would affect the future of ventilation engine production to quite some extent. The Bendix 52 would, in fact, push three other ventilation businesses out of their comfortable position as top notch ventilation providers for the government. There, See what a little engine can do.

#

At a slightly earlier time, but about three million parsecs away, in another spiral arm of a galaxy very far away indeed, someone was making morning coffee. It was on the planet earth, in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. We already know the inhabitants of the apartment on Bergsgatan. Elvis Karfeldt and Chlôe Lavigne. Our heroes from the previous novels in this trilogy. Elvis was making a cup of his favorite decaf. The days when he could enjoy his Kembe espresso was over due to his ulcer. Decaf was the thing these days.

          Yes. A cup of the black pleasure. Life is good. Elvis listened to the sound of his coffee machine, a Royale Black, while it produced the sweet drops. The sound of the discrete stream of coffee into his little cup was one of his favorite sounds. 'Almost as sweet as jazz' he thought. He brushed away a tiny speck of dust from the arm of his gown, a Turnbull Castle 58, and took the cup of pleasure and ventured towards the armchair - a chair he had affectionately baptized 'Morgana'.

          There, now it's only you and me again, Morgana. Like so many times before. Elvis, as you might recall, had the odd habit of applying personalities to his possessions. Thusly his favorite armchair was a middle aged lady from Yorkshire. His coffee machine was a certain Luther from Paris. From Montparnasse, in fact. A café owner. A bit grumpy. The hard drive of his laptop was called Partre. It was very existentialist. Just like Elvis. If you, which I hope, have read books one and two in this trilogy you know that Elvis is a dedicated existentialist and book antiquarian with a taste for the sublime. You are also aware that Elvis and Chlôe are among the few people who know that the world we see every day, and for all intents and purposes believe to be real, is not. To be precise it is not real, or unreal, it is not at all. They know that everything is a Holographic image maintained and at times altered by the Company only known as the Company. They both know about some of the doors to the backside. The backside is where the corridors across the universe are. The backside is also a world just as artificial as the front side. As our world. It is a world populated by the code weavers and repairmen on their Vespas riding through a gigantic italianesque countryside repairing broken pieces of the Holographic weave that the tiny nano weavers didn't notice. Elvis sighed and took a sip of his decaf. It was perfect.

           It is perfect, said an amused Elvis, the best start to a perfect day. I think today I shall retrieve that copy of Heidegg's Blue Notebooks. Elvis had a customer from Falun, a little town about 200 kilometers to the north, who had expressed some interest. But first a cigar.

Elvis was a man of the world. His smoking gown was smooth and had a distinct cigaresque tint. He used to call it Sidney. Elvis put on Sidney and discretely walked towards his newspaper and cigar room. He glanced leisurely at the pages in the latest issue of the Paris Review. 'To keep up with the news of the business' he thought to himself. The morning was excellent, like almost all mornings in Elvis and Chlôe's mansion on Bergsgatan.

           Ah, life, I love you. Elvis couldn't stop himself from expressing satisfaction with his book antiquarian existence. True, Jean Sol, existence is pain, but bits and pieces of it are actually rather nice. Elvis often had chats with Jean Sol, the father of his life philosophy, existentialism. Jean Sol had left this earth to become part of the nothingness all existentialists did their utmost to avoid. This was only natural, and Elvis felt he had some sort of connection to the great philosopher anyway. His eyes went to the bookshelf searching. Ah, there. He found what he was looking for. Being and Nothingness. His guide to life, existence, nothingness and time.

Indeed.

#

At the same time someone opened a door in a room. The person opening the door expected a corridor to be on