CHAPTER (RUN UP TO “WHAT THE SPACE TIME CONTINUUM DID NEXT” WITH SLIGHT DIFFERENCES WHICH ENG LIT PSEUDS CAN USE TO SUCK ALL THE FUN OUTTA IT IF THEY SO DESIRE) Elliot Rogers: Trapped In A World He Never Made! ELSEWHERE THAT THURSDAY ON THE CUSP OF THE 21st CENTURY Nothing; faster than light. Einstein said that….. ……..in the beginning was the word and the word was "hello". A Water Utilities Store /Cusp of the C21st Wales We’re busy doing nothing Nothing the whole day through Trying to find Lots of things not to do. -Zen mantra Pan across office, tawdry calendar, floppy fringed pale man with latent charisma sat twiddling thumbs at computer. He is doing nothing. Whose nothing we are not quite sure of yet. Music: “Steal Stuff From Work” by King Missile. …and welcome to Elliot Rogers’ job; looking after the people who look after the drains. It was officially the second worst job in the UK, but only because he didn't get shit all over him. This tall, skinny white movie star mop hair man with a brain the size of a planet had fetched up in this terrible job in the Company X Utilities Store on account of his having fallen through the cracks of the perhaps deliberately crap educational system of Late Capitalism. A bell rang. He got up and walked in a direction, over to a mesh metal grille which a coarse working class type fellow looked through. ’Ave yew gorreny medium padlocks?” asked the man. Alas, poor Elliot, he knew how this would go. “No”, he replied, “we have no medium padlocks. We have large padlocks and small padlocks…” His voice took on a slightly tetchy aspect. His was the habit of getting annoyed straight away, to save time. “Give us a look at them then…” “Not a-fuckin-gain” sighed Elliot. He walked to the back of the labyrinthine Company X stores Past dingy 1960s racing green aluminum and gray dusty meccano shelving. Past pipe, copper and killer, fly. Past standpipes and stopcocks flange spigots and spuddles, a distance of some 30-odd yards. He picked up two padlocks, a large one and a small one. The large one fit his whole hand and the small one was about a third of the size. He held it twixt thumb and forefinger. He walked back and placed them upon the scuffed metallic counter. “Here we go” he sighed wearily. “What took you so long?” asked the man. It was the custom under the divisive regime of late capitalism to constantly imply that the one’s workmate was a lazy workshy no account individual. ”I had an adventure back there, involving a lion and a witch and a dwarf. They said I was a manchild son of Adam”, said Elliot, not without sarcasm. “Fuck me I wish I adden asked now” said the man. “me neither” “You taking the fucking piss?” The man looked at the padlocks quizzically. “I don’t SOPPOSE” he said, “I don’t SOPPOSE….” (“Go on”, thought Elliot Rogers, “say the thing. Say the thing they always say”). “you got…..ennything…..between them two sizes?” “No” “None at all?” “No” “You SURE now? “ “Yes” …. “Oh….” The ruffian grimaced, a mixture of puzzlement, annoyance, and frustration, “well I’ve addem from yur before!” he snapped. Farting a fart that was piquant with a hint of olives, he walked off muttering, “this fucking stores is getting WORSE!”. Elliot took the bastard padlocks, walked all the fucking way to the back of the cunting stores, past cardboards boxes, mice-dropping-covered soap, shelves marked with numbers and letters of the alphabet, chemical symbols and secret stashes of pornography and draw. “Why?” Was what he asked. He placed the large and small padlocks back in their respective numbered coloured plastic tray receptacles. Someone wanted a small padlock or a large padlock, fair enough, but…these medium padlocks, they did not exist. What he asked was “why?” Nevertheless. The way the medium padlocks did not exist, yet could still be among the very worst things, was like this: people believed in them. Without fail, every couple of days, like a Morris Dancer stomping on the face of humanity, someone asked for them. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow crept on the petty fucking pace from day to cunting day. This business, of demonstrating that things did not exist, in order to make people go away, wasted his valuable staring into space time time. Furthermore, according to the late-capitalist methodology of those stupid bastards in suits that ran the place, Elliot had done precisely nothing for the last ten minutes. None of the delicate negotiations about the non-existent padlocks counted as even a nanosecond of work. The previous scene did not exist, for no event of significance to Late Capitalism had taken place. The Powers That Be would look at their little pieces of paper, divide how many padlocks, Wellingtons, Flange Spigots, Scroping Lummocks, etc., had been dispensed by the Company X store. They would enter what was on the bits of paper into The Vasty Machine so as to apply the Twisted Formula that divided the workforce in the amount of hours there were in a working day, what people did it and what they got paid. Company X was owned by The Shareholders, which was the fault of Thatcherwasm. The management of Company X did everything to please The Shareholders. By using the Twisted Formulae they would invariably conclude that people weren’t doing enough work, and for far too much money. However many times they ran the Twisted Formulae, they never concluded that people were doing too much, and for not enough money, which was the truth of the matter. History has named it the Twisted Formula because of this; it failed to take into account the idea of Someone Else’s Nothing. After Time Travel, of course, the Twisted Formula becomes redundant along with the Stock Exchange. (EQUASION DEMONSTRATING THIS ALGEBRAICALLY THRU HEIROGRAPHICS) How exactly the Twisted Formulae were arrived at was known only in The Secret Office Of The Illuminati. Late capitalism required cheap labour, even though at that stage of human development it was humungously obvious that if all was shared out fairly, everything would be all right. It even said so amongst the Gobbledegook of their Religious Books. Elliot pondered how, in his ideal world, suits would be outlawed except when worn by jazz musicians.