Working at a Japanese high school means you have to get used to students sleeping in class. Or acting like dicks, so at least it’s like high schools in other countries in that regard.

I found out what I’ve been doing wrong though. Turns out the way to get them motivated is to offer a promise of violence. And a bizarre, poorly thought out offer seems to be the way to go, as demonstrated by the teacher in charge of what is (laughingly) translated as the cheerleading team (the Japanese doesn’t really translate to ‘cheerleading’ – ‘supporter’ team is more accurate and so this translation is amusing to me as I work at a boys’ school and enjoy imagining them with pom-poms and miniskirts.)

Anyway, a student had decided that showing up for ‘supporter’ team practice was a bit beneath him, and went off without permission to hook up with his girlfriend, possibly for some heavy petting in the park. The teacher in charge of the cheerleading team was not best pleased with this attitude, hormones before duty, ho’s before bro’s – whatever. Something got his goat, and he responded with an admirably deranged diatribe:

“I’MA GONNA BURN DOWN YOUR MOTHERFUCKIN’ HOUSE! YOU BEST TELL YOUR MAMA WHAT I’MA GONNA DO ‘COS SHE BETTA CALL THE COPS ELSE YOU GONNA BURN TO DEATH TONIGHT!!!!!!1″

(I swear this is an accurate translation. Except for the swearwords. Japanese doesn’t really have any.)

Little doing, leastways that I want to show. Have a gorgeously restructured version of ‘Actual’ to get stuck into, some ideas for the final draft of ‘Refried Magic’ and I’ve started building a 52 Fujis wiki.

Fortunately, my new job sees me completely without anything to do for hours on end, and I have actually been encouraged by my boss to read the paper. Things will, no doubt, not always be this way, so I’m putting some hours in.

Who knows what I may give yous in the upcoming weeks?

Download for FREE at lulu.com, where you can also buy a printed version, if you so desire.

(download costs you nothing, but the printed version does. because stuff is expensive.)

Party on.

Every day, I write. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. The problem is, now I have gotten in to this habit (courtesy of this blog), this blog is suffering. This story I’m working on currently – Sedge & Sempy, man… The potential was there for a brilliant tale. The problem is, you can’t change it once it’s down. I already have plotholes you could fly hte new airbus through. This causes me grief on a massive level.

In order to upgrade, we must downgrade. You, your expectations, and me, my caring about those expectations.

From here on in, you get an update a week. At least.

(Go on, admit it, you’re grateful – you can at least get round to reading the crap I churn out. I’ll still be churning it out though, just your rss readers won’t be creaking under the strain no more.)

This hasn’t much to do with time : I can still write as much. It’s more that I’m letting myself down with my efforts, rather than pimping them as I had initially planned. I’ve been able to do the flashes of brilliance schtick since I was 3. I’d rather get down to the measured magnificence that makes jaws and panties drop now I’m approaching 30.

Anything can happen in the next half (century). Stand by for (in)action.

I wasn’t sure when it had happened, but I was pretty sure that it had: Sempy hadn’t just disappeared into the dark 2 years ago, and Rita hadn’t been hiding in obscure circuitboards. Both of them were copies. They might even be the only copies left for all I knew. Rita was an excellent reproduction – she may even have been the original, just altered enough so that she would do the bidding of her new masters without compromising them.

The only way she could let me know something was amiss was to throw a spanner in the works – a little present to remind me of the good old days. What better way to do it than the option she took? This meant, of course, that Sempy was working for the man. Not that I blamed him – he was still on the run; the Sempy I was dealing with now was just a perverse view of his consciousness, built out of a biased police file, and uploaded to actual in the hopes that I would say something like, “Oh, wow, Sempy, this is just like that time we did the bank heist in Bali…” and then they’d have some place to start looking.

Guthrie’s presence suggested he had a lot to do with it. Perhaps he was really a masochist after all, needed to be in here getting punished by a representation of his nemesis. Might even have been him pushed me under the bus – I’d never quite figured how anyone on the outside could have been told to do it without compromising Sempy’s location. The whole thing being a set-up explained that away.

What it didn’t do was fix it – I was still in a coma. There was a chance that the bus hadn’t really hit me at all, and that they’d just chemically induced the coma so as they could get me in here working with my imaginary friend – but it was a pretty slim chance, far as I could reckon. It was my only way out of actual – back into that body, and wake it up. Then again, if that happened, I’d be in a lot of trouble. I’d been associating with a known criminal. The fact that he wasn’t who he said he was didn’t matter to the cops; I’d believed and that would be enough.

I was very much out of options.

I decided that this was a blessing.

I thought I’d put it together.

I had to work out a few more things though.

“Do you um, have any brothers or sisters?”
“No.”
“So just you and your parents?”
She fidgeted. “Never knew them.” Her voice had sounded just the slightest bit like Rita’s.
“Can I go now?” She asked.
“Of course,” I replied.

I spent the rest of the day in my apartment, drinking fine Scotch in the hot tub and watching old films projected onto the wall. I had a meeting with Sempy the next day, and I wanted to get my story straight.

Molly took her time. I’d sharpened all twelve of the pencils I’d found in my desk by the time the knock came at the door. It filled the empty office, a low thud announcing that my boredom was about to lift.

“Enter,” I said in a voice that could have done with more polishing – it didn’t really sound sonorous enough for a man of my position. “Rita?” I said, then caught a hold of myself. Lucky for me, I wasn’t loud enough to make it all the way to the door. It was Rita all right. Except it wasn’t. This was Rita before she’d dropped the weight and become the geometric girl who’d been here earlier. This was Rita when she was utterly eccentric and never at all clear on what she was doing. This was Rita at her most likeable, and, perhaps, most brilliant.
“Take a seat,” I said.
She nodded. She didn’t meet my eyes. I realized with a start that she was scared of me. So was she or wasn’t she Rita? I felt awkward in my new found role as the person who could have her interned in a work camp. It pained me to see her squirm.
“You wanted to see me?” She asked, in Rita’s voice but without a trace of mockery.
“Yes, I’m intending to interview all the staff of this department.”
“Are we in trouble?”
Therewas no way this could possibly be Rita. Unless she’d improved her acting.
Why hadn’t Sempy mentioned it?
“No, no, of course not. I’m just introducing myself to the staff here.” I tried a grin, but it came out more like a leer. She didn’t look particularly comforted. Unless, I thought, Sempy didn’t know. But he’d recruited her himself…

“Where are you from? Originally.”
“Right here,” she said, her eyes darting about the room.
“Oh. That’s nice.”

“Why are you here, Rita?”
She looked up at me, her eyes wide. They darted from one side to the other and then she put her hands over her ears. “He can’t hear in here.”
“You mean Sempy?”
“Yes. Who else? he can’t control much in here. I found out last week. Accident, mind – came in to htis part for a different reason. Looked crazy in here. I called Sempy but no way either of us could make reach the other one.”
“So wait – Sempy can’t know what’s happening in here?”
“No & yes.”
“Which is it?”
“Both.”
We looked at each other. I folded my arms.
“He can’t tell what specific things are occurring. Minutiae can’t get through. Specifics are poor. He can know after the fact about big picture things. His first mistake was thinking that the system would fix. Molly broke it. Things went downhill from there.” She was breathing heavily now.
“Are you sure you’re OK?”
“I’m not where I’m supposed to me. He can’t find me. Trying many things. Latest one seems to be restricting my power.”
“Don’t you think you’d better go? Not that I don’t love your company, but well, you know. You’re pretty scary all weaponized as it is, without the death throes added in.”
She tried to smile.
“Have to remember, Sedge. Can’t help Molly.” With that, her form seemed to fold in on itself, and moments later, she had gone.
I wasn’t quite sure what my next move should be; then people started arriving, and it seemed like I didn’t have much of a choice, except to soldier on with the original plan. At least in the beginining.

The first to arrive were the beacons of diligence; the kind of people who had made my life before actual one of near constant cat & mouse – stay low on the radar, don’t ask too many questions, but at the same time show willing enough so you don’t find some busybody reporting you. Something else, I realized, Sempy might have forgotten about. A lot of these people dreamed up by us and everyone else still believed they were living in a wondrous & glorious time where the people loved their Director and he loved their chips. The chips our grandparents had first taken to having implanted, a conversation piece, something to joke about, but also something that made life easier in ways they’d not thought about. As these chips & these ways both grew increasingly more complex, it got too late to start regulating them in any normal sense of the word. Everybody had got one.

The exact details of how we all woke up one morning under a police state aren’t clear; history is written by the people who don’t want you to know that kind of thing. The kind of people who were now filing in to the office, who could easily report me for something trivial they deemed as a threat to their organized little world. I imagined it wouldn’t be that bad to begin wtih, for these people had a vision of the police station as being a clean, welcoming place with a peaceful atmosphere. I wondered just how Sempy was intending to regulate this kind of thing.

I greeted the new arrivals as earnestly as I could manage, smiling to balance out the suspicion I was being greeted with. Eyes only – mouths knew better. All in good time, went the old jingle.
A time which came round quicker than I realized and I found myself speaking into a microphone that carried my voice echoing throughout the factory. I introduced myself and explained that my recent appointment as Patriotic Activities Co-ordinator at their factory was an honour I looked forward to fulfilling. I paused. The few faces I could make out remained expressionless & passive. The safest way.

I ran my tongue over dry lips. There didn’t really seem like anything else to say.
“Thank you,” I finished. A smattering of polite applause filtered through to me in the communications office, and then the National Anthem took over, while we all reflected on our good fortune to have been born in to the Golden Age of the Fatherland. Once that was done with, I decided to begin my day with a few interviews, and had Molly sent for.