The Western Gate

The chill of the morning air did little to stop the chattering in his mind, he had awoke with a eureka moment that was instantly lost to the dustbin of the subconscious mind. One day, he would invent something to record dreams, somehow, and these were his thoughts as he stood at the bus stop, the bus was 6 minutes away according to the l.e.d. indicator, well it looked like 6 as most of the pixels were ‘dead’, he’d check the bus ‘live’ now app upon his mobile phone, but that meant taking off his gloves and wrestling under his overcoat to find the damned phone. One day, he’d invent augmented reality glasses that in an instant would light up the required information, though if speech recognition was still the same it would be a ruinous design, the amount of times he’d repeat a question on his Alexa or Siri or whatever hub… before that damned condescending voice in its saccharine tone decided she now understood, and gave him the wrong answer anyway.
He should’ve been a Luddite, marching with sledgehammers to destroy anything that reeked of imitating human emotion, anything that was designed to ‘make our life better’ ….’Easier’, it never did. It just made things more complicated.

He was the first in the queue when he arrived at the bus stop, but the last to get on, nobody queued anymore, his peers blamed the foreign influx who didn’t understand the British way of queuing, those dissenting xenophobic voices would also comment on how you couldn’t get a decent cup of tea in far off places where, presumably they were hinting those un-queuing queue jumpers came from.
By the time he reached his workplace, a tucked away industrial estate where conventions and seminars were held and small workstations were built of pristine brick and plasterboard construction, his mind had relented from the inventions he should build and had negated all the negative aspects of diversity that people sneered at and lamented the old days, when things were better, when life seemed to be more about life, when the days were safer and fun…. which they weren’t. It was always technology that moved things forward, not legislation or acceptance, not liberal ideas or ecological awareness, but technology, and technology made cheaply, cheaper, so cheap it was bound to fail and join the mountainous landfill like climbers queuing on the ascent to Everest, which was no longer a challenge or a feat, but another ‘meh’ moment.

He pushed the button that said, ‘Auto Door~ Press Here’ and waited, the hefty stainless steel door in front arrogantly did nothing, condemning him to its authority, and just as his patience grew just that bit too thin, the door moved, slightly, edging outwards an inch before stopping, his first instinct was to grab the handle and force the door outwards but the message clearly stated “DO NOT ATTEMPT TO FORCE OPEN THE DOOR” And So, again he stood there passive, unable to intervene, at the mercy of another, his fate determined.
At last the door swung outwards. This time, mockingly, so fast if anyone in a wheelchair, presumably the reason for this ridiculous automated claptrap were there it would have smashed straight into them, indeed, our now pulse-racing impatient blood-pressure rising victim had to jump backwards somewhat to stop the wieldy frame from pushing into him, telling him to move, who’s in control?
He walked into the building cursing the door which behind him now danced a little sarcastic game of fast-slow-stop- fast- slow and then slammed shut so hard that the Perspex panels shuddered, if they were glass, they would have shattered he reasoned. If it suited any purpose he would write an email to the maintenance dep’t, but knew well-sure that the email would just disperse into ever hand-passing snakes and ladders of delegation.
He entered his small workshop further down the corridor, these accessed, old fashioned style, by his personal key, and his personal hand that personally opened the door, to his momentum, to his will. He was sure that wheelchair users had no problem accessing these workshops in this manner either and gave one last look at the automated door with a disdain and loathing .
His workshop was a mass of cupboards, drawers, soldering equipment, a wall mount full of tools, looms of wire, carefully organised electronic components, though in summary it were a complete mess, but he knew where everything was in that mess and had upon his door a notice informing the cleaners not to enter. The last time they did so they moved certain items which caused him no end of lost worktime trying to find them again.
The lights in the room, at last!…Some 30 seconds later came on, the presence detector also turning on, the rumble of the air conditioning unit, which wasn’t very good, and when it did work the condensate often dripped onto the floor.
He sighed, the morning route to work was like a conveyor belt, every nuance infuriated him, the diversion the bus took because someone was digging up the road, the wait at a temporary traffic lights further on, because someone was digging up the road, a look at his watch during these delays….although there was a clock in the bus that displayed the time, he needed to check his own, relying on other technology? when he had his own, besides which the bus clock was on a screen that flicked through the six internal C.C.T.V. cameras installed, and there was nothing worse than revisiting those faces that had pushed in front of the queue sitting smugly in the best seats.

He was semi-retired. In point of fact he was fully retired but chose to indulge in his own tinkering and creating. His old workplace paid him off, handsomely, to sign a disclaimer that he wouldn’t sue them for the accident at work, caused by their inability to place signs that a raised flooring had missing tiles to facilitate work for cables being laid underneath. Tripping over the cables was the first accident, falling into the floor void the second, and breaking his shin the third as he slipped on the puddle of grease that the cable layers were using to lube the cables into conduits.
His shin still ached, especially on cold mornings when the buses were late and he’d have to stand there with nothing to warm himself to, except the ache and the stress of seeing people from every corner of the world begin to assemble around the bus stop, all of whom would, with decent legs and shins shuffle their way before him to the vacant staring bus driver and the automated tap in ticket. He’d calculate that a quarter of those trespassers would either use a tap in method that didn’t work, causing a delay, or fumble in every pocket trying to find the card they’d use. He of course, had his in hand, ready.

   But, he was here now, the daily dirge and march to work over, he would first make a coffee, he had purchased one of those Coffee Pod contraptions, not that he preferred the coffee, in fact, he would moan about it to anyone that listened, and after a few months of service the delivery was slow, he knew it needed a descale, one day. The capsule wouldn’t load as the basket which held spent capsules was full, he pulled out the little plastic box which spilled the pods and remnants of water and coffee onto the floor and merged splashes into the design wrought by previous spillages. He would often make out images from the network of patterns the old dried coffee stains and overflowing air conditioning condensate had made, usually sinister, though the new addition seemed to show a design of the Disney character Goofy, laughing at him.

 He vowed to go back to old style coffee, with granules and a good old boiled kettle. The advert for the ‘pods’ said something like ‘Good things come to those who wait’, or was that for Guinness Stout, but waiting isn’t good, so it was an instantly negated bait in his mind, and hadn’t he waited at the bus stop in vain, and at that damned automated door. There’s nothing good about waiting.
He only had a couple of pods left in the coffee box, enough for the day and then he’d have to buy some more.
Though on more than one occasion he vowed to buy ‘normal’ coffee, he’d end up buying the pods as there would always be one on special introductory price, or end of line discount, or near sell by date. He always forgot to scan the yellow discount barcode, and was charged the full price as the dozy automated checkout read the original bar code, and then he’d have to wait at customer services, who were hardly ever there, to get a refund , they’d always complain that the person sticking the yellow discounted barcodes on “should always cover the original barcode”, they’d complain, “we keep telling them.” He’d always add with a shake of the head, “but they never do”.
The speedy self-automated, faster, impersonal shopping experience left him feeling worthless, a necessary evil, a nuance in the cog of the wheels. He’d hobble out with his shopping, always wondering if anyone cared that his part in society was flummoxed by his employers, who quickly paid him off, at the behest of Human resources. Human resources!
Well, the coffee machine delivered into his cup the frothy coffee… eventually, after the palaver, , slowly, and it was luke warm. Some boffin, somewhere decided this was the optimal temperature to drink, best, the coffee. No-one drunk the whole cup in one go all at once the instant it was made ! It’d sit on the side, for a while, and then be less than warm by the time he’d ‘enjoy’ it. The temperature of piss, and the taste wasn’t much better either.
He sat and sipped and wasn’t sure if it was the addition of coffee whitener that he used that gave it a subtle chemical flavour or the leaching of Aluminium from the pods. It didn’t taste like granular coffee, and it wasn’t actually convenient, and nor, was it cheap, even with the yellow discount barcode.


He sat now, at his workbench, he didn’t have to, he could sit at home all day watching daytime drudgery, or in the pissy carpet stained pubs of the high road, each filled with watery eyed unshaved pissy smelling post operatives, laid off by some prissy manager in human resources for any sort of reason, usually because automation made it so, or because someone with a stopwatch deemed one person could do 3.17 persons jobs, or because, like him, luckily, he had an accident and was paid off, to shut up.
He placed upon his head his latest gadget, A large cone rested in the middle of his forehead and the other just below the base of his skull at the back where the neck bone joins. It looked to anybody walking past as if he was wearing headphones that were positioned at 90 degrees to the ears.
He sat back and switched on a tatty looking box with a dial that smelled of old Bakelite and turned it clockwise. The cones reverberated to a frequency he had previously marked on the box with a highlighter which read 481.5 Hz, the two frequencies met within his skull and his pineal gland vibrated illuminating his mind with a consciousness that existed in every part of the world at once, he was now a part of the whole, a part of the laughter of the cosmos. Its funny how some people conduct their life’s, walking along, insignificant and forgettable, yet here they are now plugging into the matrix of God. His mind now affixed to other objectives, away from the nuances of queue jumpers, lazy shop girl ticket sticker on’ers, shitty automated doors and roadworks, his mind now came to think, where next to cause a fracture in the Earths crust, what tectonic plate should he prod, which wind would he dance with to create a tornado, what minds would he wreck, so much to do, so little time.