Maverick academic, Professor O'Singh, believes he may bestow upon mankind the
ultimate gift – the key to all knowledge. Haplessly, and not until it’s too
late, does he realise that he’s precipitated the destruction of the planet.
Here is an excerpt, the first three chapters of The Investigations of the Para-Usual.
Candyman 1
‘Aerial burial!’ yelled the man, imagining the launching of his lifeless corpse into outer space.
His
considerable bulk was being rocked, about to be hauled upwards inside what was
the tight fit of an antiquated wooden lift car – the projectile coffin of his
imaginings; his pine overcoat, his pine spacesuit, as it were.
Lift
off.
‘Graveyard
declutter!’ he bellowed, seizing on another thought. Might outer space be the answer
to overcrowded cemeteries in the modern age? Much as as al fresco became ‘the
rage’ when the sinking of the dead beneath church flagstones was stretched to saturation
point?
Must
be the most morbid instance of sweeping under the carpet, it occurred – the Medieval
practice of burying people under paving slabs.
Even
as the lift cables took up the slack and began to strain, that single notion –
burials in space – catalysed thought connections that cracked and fizzed
pyrotechnically inside the bulky man’s cranium.
‘Negative
burial!’ he exclaimed. Burial in space must be considered negative burial,
because the deceased is headed in the opposite direction – up instead of down.
60,000 feet above the ground, rather
than 6 feet below.
‘Pushing down the daisies!’ the bulky one shouted.
‘Pushing down the daisies!’ the bulky one shouted.
The
big man squeezed his arms up the rattling walls of the lift and above his head
the way an escapologist might, reassigning his limbs in the preliminary stages
of escape. Thus, was he able to clasp his hands over his ears. He needed
desperately to crowd out those thoughts. He needed extreme focus. Supreme
concentration. He clamped his eyes firmly shut.
‘Come
on, O’Singh!’ he muttered, in the manner somewhat of somebody speaking in tongues.
‘Take strength from Strathclyde!’
Professor
Breville O’Singh was transported back in his mind to the University of Strathclyde,
preaching there from the stage of the amphitheatre, rolling his hands one over
the other to facilitate the order of his speech. Not rhythmically, but in the
fashion rather of a father dancing at a disco, to Sister Sledge.
A
bear-shaped man was O’Singh, or perhaps a man-shaped bear. A big man as
imposing a figure as Cassius Clay, though always looking sorry for the
imposition. Kind of limp, drawing in his bulk. Professor Breville O’Singh was
apologetically large.
‘When
asked a question to which there is any number of possible answers, we reply,
“How long is a piece of string?”’ observed Professor Breville O’Singh, from the
stage. ‘But equally we could ask, could we not, “How wide is a piece of string?”’
O’Singh
stopped to survey the reactions of his audience, a gaggle of professors, sat in
various attitudes of contemplation, in judgement, squinting into a blinding
low-angled shaft of Spring sunlight.
O’Singh’s
eyes popped open. The floor indicator light flickered on ‘4’.
His
eyes clamped shut again. And this time in his mind’s eye he was at the
University of Exeter, breaching the campus parkland between faculty buildings
amid a gaggle of peers.
He stopped abruptly and swung round to shield himself from a flurry of cherry blossom blown up by a sudden gust.
He stopped abruptly and swung round to shield himself from a flurry of cherry blossom blown up by a sudden gust.
‘We
ask ourselves, “What is the meaning of life?” yelled O’Singh, addressing his
fellow-strollers, above the whoosh of the gust. ‘But what indeed is the meaning
of death?’
O’Singh
stood with a clump of cherry blossom adorning his left ear, looking like the
most oversized lady in a Hawaiian greeting party.
In
the juddering lift, the professor re-opened his eyes and exhaled deeply. The
indicator light illuminated ‘5’. The car tremored and stopped. O’Singh
hesitated, eyeing the door. Then reached for the handle.
A squeal of metal sounded as he ripped open the interior concertina door.
A squeal of metal sounded as he ripped open the interior concertina door.
Falling 2
A thudding sound was accompanied by a grunt. The curved glass panel of a revolving door shimmered. The door stuttered and yielded very slightly to the soundtrack of ‘Vwarpt!’ – a rasping fart.
Then
‘Pblllllmmmt!’
Crashing
through the revolving doors tumbled a small, dishevelled man, got up in cheap
tracksuit and baseball cap. He fell into the building with such gusto that it
looked as though somebody might have thrown him through the doors. Like he had
been physically ejected from a building. Though the other way round. Like he
had been physically ejected into a
building. Physically injected. His head, most notably, was massed in some sort
of black, unctuous grime.
‘Charlatan!’
bawled the creator, the brewer of that flatulence – giving full vent now from
the opposite end of his digestive tract.
A
lightning flash brilliantly lit the white, minimalist mock-marble cavernous
space of the office block foyer.
‘Charlatan!
Charlatan!’ rang out and echoed around the foyer along with the clatter of a
plastic bucket. The small man had disdainfully cast it aside. He was a compact
ball of fury. The viscous, black ooze dripped from the top of his baseball cap
down his contorted face lending him, when united with the bucket, the look of a
hapless road junction car valet.
An
office worker wielding a golf umbrella slipped delicately round the valet and
into the slowing revolving door segment he had vacated.
‘He
knows nothing!’ screeched the valet.
There
in the foyer, at a slab-like reception desk stretching the extent of the far
wall sat the sole occupant of the foyer, quite clearly a person dressed in a
pantomime dog costume.
The dog-person carefully patted a newspaper to conceal it under the desk, then looked up not to the incandescent valet but beyond him to the office worker bent double, propping herself up with her brolly, choking, spluttering for air on the street side of the revolving doors. She had just shared the revolving door segment with a certain lingering ‘Vwarpt!’
A terrifying crack of thunder detonated. Lightning illuminated the foyer in rapid pulses.
The dog-person carefully patted a newspaper to conceal it under the desk, then looked up not to the incandescent valet but beyond him to the office worker bent double, propping herself up with her brolly, choking, spluttering for air on the street side of the revolving doors. She had just shared the revolving door segment with a certain lingering ‘Vwarpt!’
A terrifying crack of thunder detonated. Lightning illuminated the foyer in rapid pulses.
‘Oh,
dog-man. There you sit. How fortunate is your lot,’ groaned the valet. His own
personal storm had blown out, his voice had settled back into its refined
Edinburgh lilt.
The
dog-man looked back impassively or at least with the same expression lent by a pantomime
dog’s immutable fluffy head – the tongue hanging out the corner of the mouth in
perpetual eagerness to please.
The
valet shuffled towards the reception desk, face beneath the grime, red and puffy.
It would have been clear to the dog-man now that the black ooze that matted the
valet’s grey thatch of hair sprouting from beneath the baseball cap and the constantly
a-twitch paintbrush-shaped moustache, was midge juice. A squadron of flies that
had survived whatever ordeal had befallen their brethren made themselves
satellites of the valet’s head, forming a kind of escorting halo.
‘A
dog-man’s life, indeed,’ sighed the valet.
The
dog-man continued to stare.
Torrential
rain sounded like white noise outside.
‘You
could quit,’ suggested the dog-man – a muffled suggestion from under the dog
suit.
‘I
ber… I beg your pardon?’ spluttered the valet, blinking disbelievingly. ‘Quit?
Seriously? Quit?’
Lightning
flashed. A clap of thunder sounded louder than before. A smell hung heavy. Not
that of ozone, redolent of fresh mountain air one might associate with a storm,
but something altogether unpleasant and acrid.
The valet stood rigid as though wholly disconnected with the odour, looking defiant, like it had nothing to do with him. As though the existence of that smell could be attributed to the little-known fact that ozone goes rotten, that in time it ‘goes off’. That ozone has a shelf-life – and a very short one at that.
The valet stood rigid as though wholly disconnected with the odour, looking defiant, like it had nothing to do with him. As though the existence of that smell could be attributed to the little-known fact that ozone goes rotten, that in time it ‘goes off’. That ozone has a shelf-life – and a very short one at that.
‘What
do you take me for?’ demanded the valet, menacingly, dragging himself up the
last two inches to the reception desk.
‘You
see this face?’ he persisted, indignantly, thrusting his purple swollen midge-encrusted
head right up to the dog-man’s snout. ‘This is a face not to be messed with…
anymore!’
The
dog-man stared.
‘I
shall never quit,’ fumed the valet, recoiling and striking out in no particular
direction across the foyer. ‘I will fight my corner and other corners… that
belong to others.
'O’Singh claims he can know everything. But what for? He doesn’t know the first thing about what is traditional!’
'O’Singh claims he can know everything. But what for? He doesn’t know the first thing about what is traditional!’
A
ghostly hush settled on the foyer. It was midweek in the middle of the day and the
building was all but abandoned of life. Life – the city traffic, the streams of
hurried, rain-dodging office workers – could be seen beyond the revolving doors
and the building’s pane glass frontage, beyond the grassy square out front, as was
its custom, bypassing Stalingrad House.
‘Let
me help you,’ said the dog-man, breaking the silence.
‘What?’
exclaimed the valet, semi-delirious with incredulity. ‘You? An excuse for a
common mutt? An ersatz pooch? How could you possibly help you… you
cane-four-and-a-half,’ the valet threw in for good measure.
He swaggered back to the reception desk so he might admire the subject of his condemnation.
He swaggered back to the reception desk so he might admire the subject of his condemnation.
The
dog-man shifted slightly in his seat. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he mustered.
‘That’s
another one for you,’ grinned the valet grotesquely, pleased to offload his
frustrations on some other soul. ‘You’re half-dog, aren’t you, not the full
canine? Makes you a cane-four-and-a-half,’ he gurgled. ‘You do the math!’
The
dog-man slowly slid open a desk drawer, bunched a paw round a set of keys and
stood up holding them aloft like a fisherman’s haul.
‘Perhaps
I could help,’ he said, tantalisingly. ‘If I were to ‘fail in my security
duties’?’
‘Come,’
he insisted, rounding the reception desk, signalling that the valet should
follow him towards the lifts. Then froze as though struck by a sudden thought.
‘To
think…’ said the dog-man, spinning around, causing the valet to back up, ‘…not
so very long ago, just before you met him, Professor Breville O’Singh was at
the University of Strathclyde desperate to secure a research post.’
‘O’Singh
spoke of string theory at Strathclyde,’ he resumed, turning heel and back
towards the lifts.
The
call button dinged to the touch and the doors flung open. The dog-man stepped
from the foyer directly into a lift car, barely breaking stride. A car
languishing at ground level was just about a certainty in a 1960s city office
block. Stalingrad House was decades beyond its expiry date as London business
headquarters material.
‘Come.
Get in,’ entreated the dog-man.
As
the doors trundled shut behind them, the dog-man pawed at a button and the lift
car shuddered into life.
‘Day
after, O’Singh was in the West Country. Struggling with the meaning of death.’
The
dog-man looked up to see the floor number on the display above the door creep
from ‘2’ to ‘3’.
‘At
Exeter, he waxed existential. Then…’
The
lift lurched and stopped.
‘…Lancaster’.
The automatic doors flung open.
‘Lancaster!’
blustered Professor Breville O’Singh, as he swiped open the outer door of his
funereal lift. Several months separated O’Singh and the dog-man recalling the
very same location.
‘Did
show promise, what you brought to the table,’ conceded Professor A’Court, the
vice-chancellor at the University of Lancaster, walking O’Singh up the planked
staircase of a modernist faculty building.
‘Well
thank you, but...’
‘How
did you phrase it, now?’
‘Should
underpants be considered underpants if the wearer is not wearing his trousers?’
A’Court
halted at the top of the staircase, wrapped in thought.
‘Uh-huh!
Yes. So an instance where the wearer is no longer wearing them under anything? Where the underpants
become… well, rightfully they become pants?’
Professor
A’ Court took the initiative once again. He lunged for a glass door across the
landing and held it open for O’Singh to pass through.
‘Yuh,
I do like that,’ he said, once again forging ahead, hands clasped together contemplatively
behind his back.
‘A
respectful word of advice, professor. If you hope to gain a platform at an
academic institution, you will need to find applications for your ideas. We
have to be much more about income-generation. We need to turn a penny, you
understand?’
‘Absa-absolutely…’
drawled O’Singh. ‘I could perhaps make my finding a starting point for finding
an application... I do actually really, absolutely need to get started on the
platform thing the day after tomorrow.’
A’
Court slipped from the corridor through a door bearing his name into a
glass-walled office.
‘The
day after tomorrow? Actually…? Why?’ he asked.
‘I
have computed the time I will need to discover everything as the number of
years from my age on Friday to the average age of death of a luminary
scientist,’ said O’Singh.
‘What
do you…? Explain.’
A’Court
drew out a leather chair from his desk, inviting O’Singh to tarry.
‘I
calculated the number of years that Darwin, Einstein, Newton, Curie, Sigmund
Freud all lived after making their first discovery. Then took the average.’
O’Singh
eased his bulk into the protesting chair.
‘That
is the time the standard scientific pioneer needs in order to produce their
finest work.’
A’Court
picked his way around the desk and sat himself down opposite O’Singh.
‘The
day after tomorrow? On Friday?’ he reiterated, furrow-browed.
‘Eleven
minutes past eight, to be precise. In the morning. What time do you start work
here?’
‘9.30,
I’m afraid. We wouldn’t have been able to help you even if we had offered you the
position.’
‘I
could perhaps have started a little later at that time and worked through my
lunch hour?’ suggested O’Singh, lamely.
Floor
3 at Stalingrad House, several months hence, the dog-man sprang from the lift and
struck out taking the lead down a long, narrow corridor.
‘O’Singh
had blind faith that his theories would gain acceptance in mainstream science,’
he remarked, crunching his way across the light- and dark-blue checked industrial
carpet tiles. ‘His insights showed promise. They scanned well. String Theory in
Strathclyde. Existentialism in Exeter.
‘Perhaps
then he should’ve recognised the portents.’ He rounded a dog-leg in the
corridor.
‘“Underpants in Lancaster” – didn’t scan.’
‘“Underpants in Lancaster” – didn’t scan.’
Locating
O’Singh’s office at the end of the passage, the dog-man fumbled a key into the
lock.
‘You
know… he would have gone on going nowhere forever had it not been for the
action of somebody… far away from Lancaster… that very same day.’
The
dog-man dropped to one knee and began jiggling the key with both felt paws, but
to no real effect. It was as though he were encumbered by one of those old-age simulator
get-ups in which the experiencer’s dexterity is impaired by oven gloves, his sight
blurred by focus-warping spectacles; modified to make him feel like he’s wearing
an overcoat in the summer months. His paws finally slipped and he lost his grip.
A loud
and derisive snort came from behind. The dog-man spun around to urge patience, only
to find that the valet’s eyeline was fixed not on the unyielding lock, but the
sign on the door: ‘The Investigations of the Para-Usual’.
He
straightened up and fixed the valet with his fake dog stare.
‘You
know, whoever was behind the kidnapping,’ he asserted, ‘could never have
imagined that they were handing O’Singh his big break.’
Lil’ Girl 3
Halfway across the planet in Tanzania – on the very same day Professor Breville O’Singh was attending the interview at Lancaster – sheet lightning flashed above the western rim of the Ngorongoro Crater. A figure, enigmatic under a straw boater, mysterious behind mirrored shades, peered across the great, grassy terrestrial indent from the veranda of a well-appointed Maasai-chic hotel complex. Outside, rather than inside his mud-and-thatch-look hut, enjoying as a consequence what the hotel brochure might dress up as a ‘semi-nomadic’ Masaai experience.
‘Good evening, sir,’ boomed
an immaculately liveried waiter, arriving on the decking with a hospitality
smile that stretched as far as was required. He gently clunked a long cool
drink on the marble-top table in front of the guest, acknowledged a negative on
further requirements and retired, affording the impassive recipient an unspoilt
panorama of the Crater.
Unbeknown to the planet at
large, the Crater, the cradle of humanity – the location from which early man
set out to begin the first of endless journeys of discovery – was destined also
to become its grave.
Upon the table, the enigmatic
figure flipped up the lid of a small, sleek laptop computer. An email message
awoke and filled the laptop screen, demanding his attention. He clamped a
mobile phone to his ear and peered over the lid instead, beyond to where the sun
had slipped below the horizon and the last of the light was seeping with it.
Down below in the bowl of the ancient meteor crater, animals were beginning,
others finishing their shifts. The zebra, the wildebeest, the lion, were all
knocking off. The cicadas were clocking on, flashmobbing, building to a manic
tropical screech.
‘I am sending the
instructions now,’ uttered the figure, slowly, impassively. Ominously. ‘We must
of course ensure the operation name’s anonymity. Be watchful thus, for an
untitled message.’
He
began to backspace, to delete ‘OPERATION GREEN SHOOTS’ – the title that was showing
in the subject line of the email.
‘Instead I shall speak the
name this one time only.’
Slowly, a smile rippled
across his face – a sneering, triumphant kind of smile. He made to deliver a key
stroke, then paused. The finger of a mortal man remained poised tantalisingly
above the laptop keyboard. He turned his head robotically and watched until the
waiter had negotiated some distant decked half-levels of the hotel complex and disappeared
from view.
The mysterious figure returned to the task at hand. He lowered his digit to half-depress the key. Then paused and held the pose. The moment was too delicious not to relish.
‘Remember, as from this
conversation we will no longer communicate by phone. Understood?’ he murmured
into his mobile.
With his free hand, he
blindly groped for his drink in readiness to toast the initiation of his
masterplan. He secured a cack-handed grip and jerkily raised the glass to his
mouth.
‘Hereby, I launch
Operation…’ the figure began. And pressed the key at the same time that he
stuffed a straw up his right nostril all the way to the bendy knuckle.
That
was how Operation Green Shoots was almost launched. And how, instead, Operation
Green Sher-HEY! – one of the most significant operations in the history of
mankind – was sneezed into existence.
[Please visit http://paulangliss.wixsite.com/mysite, if you would like to read further chapters. Any feedback left here mostly appreciated.
Thanks very much.
Paul Angliss
(Author/Editor)]
Good content. You write beautiful things.
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