Introducing The Beatles

Vix was walking down the main road in the Village.
It stretched from the train-station, past the church, the town hall and a row of small shops.
The cheese-shop was next-door to a hardware store selling everything from tools to mouse-traps, and there was even a restaurant next to an undertaker further down the street; all of which, Vix thought, summed up mortality nicely for both mice and men in one street.
He baptised it ’Mortal Road’ to himself, and wondered whether there actually was a road somewhere carrying such an alarming name.
He guessed not.
When he got to the coffee-shop, he sat down at his favourite spot by the window, ordered a double espresso, and picked up a magazine.
He was almost at ease.
”If you ever - though I don't find it very probable - reach my age, you’ll most definitely be stone-deaf by then.” Mr. Friend tapped Vix on the shoulder with his rolled-up newspaper while gently lifting up his headphones with his umbrella.
Vix paused the mp3 player.
”What the hell is that noise anyway? I could hear it as soon as I entered this place.” Mr. Friend was speaking in a different voice than his own, as if impersonating a strict headmaster or just someone who’d lost touch with everything but their own lack of happiness.
”It’s Underground Resistance.”
”I bet it is!”
”Well, I don’t listen much to your kind of dusty old stuff - like The Beatles, if that's what you mean. Or some other totally irrelevant and wrongfully canonised outfit from the past.” Vix tried to sound like the young student who found himself totally aware of his own self-centered vitality, though tragically ignorant of his soon-to-come downfall. He thought such a character an appropriate foil to Mr. Friend’s strict headmaster.
”They were ours.”
”What? Who were?”
”The Beatles. John, Paul, Ringo and George.”
”I know the names of the members of the Beatles, I’m not totally ignorant of the past!”, Vix snapped. ”What do you mean by yours?”
”They were the first case to be tried through GMES, the global media network. We didn’t want to risk testing it by running the moon landing right away.”
Vix quickly adjusted his brain to try and get out of Underground Resistance's techno universe and jump onto Mr. Friend’s freight-train of sudden and unexpected information. "You didn't wanna do what?"
”Launching a more leisure-driven and culturally tinged project towards a teen-oriented target group was considered much safer than going for the campaign we built up simultaneously with the Apollo project, which was aimed straight towards the slightly older and more sceptical masses.”
”You’re losing me. I need more background.”
”Mass-media! The global television network! World press! Hell, boy, I’ve just started developing a tiny spark of hope in my aching old soul, and you were about to become my one and only symbol of belief in the future generations. Don’t you go and let me down by slipping back into the comfort of sleepwalking.”
”Ok. The Beatles. I'm ready. Shoot.”
”Shoot? Yes, well, that’s also part of the story, and quite a sensitive part of it, too. But I’m afraid it’s not in the part of it that I’m going to talk about now.” Mr. Friend again ignored Vix’ confused look and went on with his story. ”Do you know anything about the teachings of Aikido?”
”Aikido? The martial arts? What’s that got to do with The Beatles? I know Elvis supposedly had a black belt in Karate, but that was a hoax, wasn’t it?”. Vix was talking very fast now, something he usually did when he got excited about something.
”Forget Elvis for now. Aikido is not exactly a martial art, if you consider the fact that such a definition is based on its relation to the planet Mars and its war-like qualities. But let’s start there anyway.” Mr. Friend twisted on his chair, as if to find the perfect position for a lengthy lecturing. Of course, this irritated Vix greatly. It reminded him of a cat that smugly and thoroughly prepares for going to sleep in your lap just as you’re about to leave the sofa and go for a piss.
Then he continued ”At the base of the philosophy of Aikido lies the acknowledgment of the ’personal sphere’. That is the area that is within the immediate reach of both your physical and your spiritual body, when the spiritual one is bound to the physical one in your waking mode. The goal in a combat situation is to make your opponent step out of his own personal sphere of power – to put him ’out of balance with himself’ – and then lure him into your own, where all your personal force is rooted. With your opponent out of touch with himself and his own power, and now in the hands of your power, you can do near anything you wish to the poor bugger.”
”OK. So you trick your opponent to step into your own sphere of power and knock him off balance... Then what? You play a Beatles song over and over again until he loses his mind?”
”Something like that.” Mr. Friend ignored Vix and smiled to his left at some invisible listener who seemed to deeply admire his cleverness.
He went on, ”The problem with collecting, and manipulating the masses has always been one of geography. Physical distance. Getting into their personal sphere. In the old days, announcing the King’s orders at the town square could only give a limited success, and then only when coupled with a healthy dose of random public hangings and other dramatic effects, to make sure any message presented by the King really sunk in."
"Shock and awe."
"Exactly. You needed to put some fear in people to get their hopelessly fluctuating attention. With television there was suddenly an opportunity to bring all the King's commands into the personal sphere of every member of the public – into their own home, where they were unguarded. This was a fantastic situation. Even those who would never even turn up to the town square to see an execution or hear the latest tax rates being announced, turned out to be completely stripped of any resistance when their own living room had a TV-set placed quite innocently in a corner.”
”The great propaganda machine?”
”That’s underestimating it. Propaganda is something most human beings can defend themselves against. No, we are talking about a perfect global network for mass-hypnosis.”
”Hypnosis? But in order to get hypnotised I thought the victim had to agree to let it happen?”
”And that’s the true genius of it. Most people perceive watching television as a purely leisure-orientated activity. This is where entertainment enters the picture. You have to remember that prior to television, entertainment was a very small part of most people’s lives. You had the public executions way back, you had sports and the odd barn-dance. ”The Arts” - especially theatre was not viewed as mere entertainment by the less privileged, but more as a channel to let off steam and express discontentment with the establishment, or metaphorically discuss ”forbidden” political issues. It wasn’t until the emergence of TV that the kind of brainless, bland forms of entertainment that have become such a major part of our culture today really started developing.”
”And this development has been wilfully engineered?”
”More or less. As everyone walking this Earth knows, you can only try, as no control is absolute. Some experiments work, others don't. But there are degrees of success, and some seem more successful than others in reaching their goals."
"Surely the ruling classes do. Your Kings."
"I guess if you really, really want power, and are willing to do anything to get it, and keep it, you can go very far. As far as anyone who really, really wants something ever can get. Even a petty criminal’s willingness to cross a few borders and ignore his socially-conditioned 'conscience' makes him likely to succeed at some point or other. Even if he just wants to break into the off-license at the corner and steal a couple of bottles of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes for the night.”
”And for those who really, really want power, the television with its global network has been a most useful tool?”
”Of course. But not that there haven’t been trials and errors.”
”Like...”
”Let’s go back to The Beatles.”
”Go on.”
”They were the first ever launch of such geographical magnitude through the global television network. Never before had anyone attempted a campaign on such a scale. The targeted social segment – mainly teenagers, mainly female – were carefully selected because if they responded correctly, the hope was that they would then influence males to copy these new role-models. The males would do so in order to attain the same effect that John, Paul, George and Ringo had on females. It is often said that the easiest way to reach a man’s heart is via his stomach. I don't know about that, but certainly the easiest way to reach a man’s stomach, and thereby his personal power-centre - is via women.”
”Well, you make it all sound very clever.”
Vix tried to hide the exitement he felt at Mr. Friend’s suggestions. Somewhere inside him he had a feeling of a door that had been closed for a long time slowly opening, letting in fresh air. On the other hand he couldn’t wait to get a chance to pick the whole story to pieces. He decided to try some of Mr. Friend’s own tactics, and put on a smug ‘yeah, right’ smile and turned to his invisible admirer to his left somewhere.
The old cat didn’t notice the gesture at all. He was too overwhelmed by his own story, and just continued:
”Yes, very clever. Once the target group had been determined, the time-plan to launch this new phenomenon was carefully drawn up. They had surfaced on our radars through their early recording sessions at EMI Records, where we had our people. Of course there were hundreds of equally talented bands at the time that all looked and sounded the same, but these four young lads were selected mainly on the basis of their natural attitude and the effect they seemed to have on their fans. All four were considered easy personalities to sell once they’d got under the public's skin. The music was as good as any of their peers.”
”Thankfully.”
”They released a couple of singles and an album that worked its way up the charts in the UK, and then a preliminary screening test was done with Granada Television in October 1962 with a domestic audience.”
”And ’Bang’?”
”Very much so. By early 1963 Beatlemania was already a word in the UK, and the operation could proceed as planned.”
”So?”
”The only problem was that the US public didn’t think much of the music. Neither their first nor second single received airplay on American radio stations when they were released in the spring and autumn the same year, but then that’s not what this is about, after all.”
”Of course not. We’re talking about a pop group. Why should it be about the music?”
Vix thought it an on the spot comment, but once again was totally overlooked.
”When the first exposure was initiated on the programme ’American Bandstand’ in August 1963, the only reaction from the selected teens present in the studio was laughter."
"Laughter?"
"They thought the haircuts were funny.”
”Really?”
”Yes. But of course this was a thoroughly planned operation. As I mentioned earlier it was expected that there would be errors and that adjustments would be required. Plans B, C, and D were already in place.”
”What happened to plan E?”
”Like in chess, you should never plan too many moves ahead, but instead constantly adjust your strategy with a few moves ahead according to your opponent’s behaviour.”
”I wouldn’t know. I prefer backgammon myself.”
Vix spotted a glimpse of irritation at this. He wished he had his notebook up so he could tick one more point in the Vix column of the discussion scoreboard.
”The initial plan was to take them on air in the CBS Morning News on November 22nd, but there seemed to be a clash of schemes that morning.”
”What happened?”
”I thought you put a lot of effort into remembering the past?”
”Yeah. But the past is such a fat old bastard. Please enlighten me.”
”Surely. The news that day mainly concentrated on the same morning’s killing of the American president John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas.”
”Oh.”
”I guess it would be considered strange to the public if this news coverage was rushed through in a couple of minutes, followed by a 'and that’s that with our president, and now over to four British brats with incomprehensable accents and weird hairdos' They'll be singing ’I Wanna Hold Your Hand’.”
”I guess so.”
”The appearance was resceduled to the Evening News on December 7th, and this time it seemed to gain momentum. Soon the music started getting airplay, and their next single was rush-released in the US. A string of three consecutive appearances on the ’Ed Sullivan Show’ had already been scheduled for February, and before you knew it they were the biggest cultural phenomenon the world had ever seen.”
“Upping even Jesus Christ?”
“As John so humbly and discretely put it.”
At this point Vix thought it was about time to put a hold to the one-way flow of communication. Just as Mr. Friend was about to continue, he straightened his back and raised his voice above the monotonous mumbling that his constant attempts at arguing back during the lecture.
”As I see it, this was simply a band with the right songs, the right attitude and the right haircut. There’s nothing in this story that indicates that it wasn’t just a lucky blend of talent and hitting the right moment that made them go down in history.”
”Ahh, my dear Victor. Exactly! That’s the target group speaking. And what a numerous group we have here. More than one billion records of various formats of these four lads have been sold worldwide. To this day no other musical artist in history has sold the same amount of records. One can say that you’re probably not alone in believing in the simple version of this story.”
Vix twisted uncomfortably in his chair. He wasn’t really too happy at being categorised as just one in a herd, and he’d rather choose the complicated version of just about anything over the simple one. He swallowed his slightly bruised pride. He just didn’t like being fooled, nor being told that he had been.
”So the ’campaign’ was a successful one, then?”
”Very much so. It opened up for far greater things to come, although the power put in the hands of four seemingly harmless Liverpudlians proved more dangerous a tool than anyone could foresee. With John it got so out of hand that it had to be taken care of in the end.”
”'Taken care of.' So that’s what it’s called. He certainly got taken well care of, I must say.”
”Of course they were an experiment. Four working-class kids from Northern England were considered the most harmless guinea-pigs one could imagine. No-one could know that they’d start using their power to promote real ideas later on – ideas that were great threats to the whole agenda that the experiment was part of. Trials. Errors.”
”This story makes me sick.”
”Yes, Victor. It is very sick indeed.”
Vix sipped his coffee. It had gone quite cold now.
Mr. Friend suddenly got up, put his coat back on, and said: "Have to dash. Goodbye Victor." And before he knew it he was out the door and off to wherever it was Mr. Friend would go when he 'had to dash'.

Vix dosed off on the train back and didn’t wake till he got poked by a grim-looking cleaning asssistant at the city station.
He grabbed his rucksack and set off for the bus back to the Shelter.
The streets were empty and he felt the soul of the city descending upon him like a far too tight hat after the break from his connection to its nervous system.
The bus eventually turned up, almost empty except for a woman sitting just opposite him staring wide-eyed at him in short, machine-gun-like glimpses. She looked afraid – like anyone travelling on the bus late at night in a city full of strangers tend to do.
She clutched her handbag very tightly in ther lap, he could see her knuckles whitening.

Fear not, Sister. One day we’ll be free. For you are the only reason for all my efforts, to love you is my only goal. Soon all these fears will wither away, and once again you will see the stolen truth.

Once inside the Shelter, he made himself a decent cup of tea, opened his laptop, and made a post for his blog:

You tell me lies
You tell me lies
You take my eyes
And tell me lies

He uploaded the track ’Mastodon’ by space-rockers The Oscillators, taken from their all-too obscure ’Crocodile Fungus’ EP.
He wondered if The Oscillators could have been The Beatles instead of The Beatles with the right ’campaign’ behind them, but quickly let the thought lie.
Then he wrote:

Don’t fear the magic!

Then he opened his arcade-game emulator program, and wasted half an hour playing his favourite game, "Pong". He realized that this was about the oldest computer game around, but he had never found another game to match the simplistic yet entertaining flow of this game. Tetris almost had him at some point, but he had to give it up after a few months of gaming, when he caught himself trying to turn parts of the city skyline upside down inside his head and make it fit another part of the skyline while looking out the bus window. He decided it was not entertainment anymore, but obsession. Even possibly possession. So he'd been happy when he returned to Pong again. Maybe those lazy afternoons as a child, dozing off in front of the television during the Wimbledon tournament had something to do with it? Even only the sound of a tennis game on low volume with a monotonous commentary on top would make him feel really calm. Why hadn't someone released this as a field recording yet, instead of those horrible whale song CDs? He would have bought one for sure. Or at least downloaded it.
He gave up as the speed of the game became a little too frantic for his tired mind.
He opened his personal log, noted down the day’s conversations with Mr. Friend, and went to bed.
Vix still almost felt at ease, and welcomed the night.

Fearwall

This wall was immense.
A cathedral of solid, ruthless rock was towering against the dark skies above. The cold granite felt rough and hostile against his palms, as he crawled and stumbled his way upwards along the narrow path.
Below him there must have been a drop of more than twenty thousand feet, and as he carefully tilted his head back to get a glimpse of the summit, he was sure he was facing at least another ten thousand - most of them eighty-five-plus degrees of uncompromising godmade fear.
He'd seen pictures of the northwest face of the Great Trango Tower in Pakistan back in the days when he had been overwhelmed by this sudden and irrational urge to deepen his understanding of his own, quite serious case of vertigo, mostly by exposing himself to literature and films on the subject of vertical living.
But this wall was serious in comparison to those pictures.
In addition to the height, its width made it seem endless in both directions.
And it was here that he suddenly found himself, working his way up some narrow man-made path in an area where the steepness of the wall was less ridiculous.
He climbed further, over what he decided was a fairly clumsy attempt at creating some kind of steps in the stone, probably hammered out by some ancient hand long ago, judging by the condition they were in now.
To his right an equally sorry effort at making some sort of security-fence had also been attempted - just as if a half-foot pile of small rocks would stop him from falling into the abyss, if he should be so unlucky as to stumble.
As he tried not to think of the possible consequences the tiniest misconduct of his freezing limbs would almost certainly lead to, he could hear sounds echoing out of the misty stone world around him.
Ranging from the most delicate whispers to the odd shout-out of what sounded like orders, he gradually understood the situation. There were people working out there, working hard to overcome this impossible challenge of going for the summit.
He could just make out clusters of hopeful souls who had teamed-up, trying to secure eachother as they faced this inconceivable climb.
Some of them must have been trying to ascend blindly as if they had no real understanding of how life-threatening this situation was.
Sleepwalking. Sleep-climbing. What’s the word?
Fools on the edge of their own destruction, closing in on defeat with every new move, he thought to himself.
Then he realised he was one of them.
Well, at least he wasn't out there, in the middle of the wall.
Even if this strange pathway gave but a small, but probably illusory sense of security, he decided he was safer than those poor bastards out there.
Whatever the reasons he had landed in this situation, he could feel the pull of some strong yet unidentifiable force up there. A kind of negative gravity dragging him from within.
This had to be overcome, even if he felt like an insect insisting upon finding nirvana in the ultraviolet light of a fly zapper.
Something truly important was up there. He knew this.
He accepted it as the only kind of excuse he needed.
A kind of hope.
Not belief, and not hope as in desperately hoping something to be true - where hope is the only thing to hold on to. But hope as in when you know you’re going to find what you’re looking for, if only you can get there.
Hope as engine – not goal.
Hope had many faces, he decided to himself, and continued his climb.
He had to get up there - or fall.
Then he woke up.

The sun cast its bright yellow rays through the room.
An impressive nebula of tiny particles of dust danced about in the air above him, like a weightless ballet company.
It was beautiful.
He filled his lungs with the chilly autumn air and blew a delicate stream of morning breath through his dry lips.
The dance changed, and the tiny dust performers elevated to spiral far above his head, and out of sight.
“It’s that simple”, he thought.
Vix - the choreographer of coincidence.

Be blessed, my child. For you are the joy and the pride of my creation. It is for you, and only you, that I can bear the pain and disappointment those who cannot see their task have inflicted upon me. It is for this love that I choose to keep all of this real. It is only because I see the gratitude and joy in your eyes - as you do what I cannot do myself - that I endure all this. Just for a moment you help me forget that I know it all, as I've made all of this real. Just for one moment, I can share your excitement.

Mr. Friend

Every Sunday Vix got up at around eleven, caught a bus to the train station, and got on a train that took him out of town to see Mr. Friend.
Today, it was Sunday.
Mr. Friend was a man who must have reached his sixties by now.
He had a slim figure with white hair surrounding a quite handsome face, centered by a well-kept white moustache below a straight nose, and clear, green eyes.
Mr. Friend was a sharp dresser, although he always made sure he looked like a man his own age.
The word elegant sprang to mind whenever Vix found himself in situations where he had to explain to other people what Mr. Friend looked like. Which was never, when he came to think of it.
Vix got to know Mr. Friend quite some months ago now, but it was like their friendship had started even before that.
It was like it had started the moment he ended up in the Village for the first time.

He couldn’t remember the exact details, but it had been one of his really bad days, when he desperately needed to get away from the all-too-many signs and background noises that surrounded his life in the city.
He had suddenly found himself on a train speeding out of the big smoke.
When green, open fields and clustered lines of trees had started flying past the train window, he slowly realised that he could breathe again. And when he’d enjoyed this feeling until he decided it was good enough, he had stepped out at the next station, and just started walking.
He had no idea of what his new surroundings were called, or the exact whereabouts of them, but he instantly felt that he had made the right choice in coming here.
Here was a small village, full of the stuff that small villages usually contain… which was not much at all. Still, nothing essential was missing.
It was as though the village contained the minimum of buildings and roads it needed to contain in order to feel that it existed as a village. And that every morning when it rose, it probably felt like a naked man that awakes, counts his limbs and fingers, and then utters a contented sigh, before getting on with doing whatever it is he usually does with all his limbs and fingers intact.
That first day it seemed the village was busy doing what it usually did, only from that day onwards it also had to add the new task of having Vix walking about in it from time to time (which by now had become a repeated occurence on every Sunday).
After he had wandered around for a bit and gotten to know the streets a little, he had stumbled over a cosy little coffee-shop next to an old closed-down office of some kind that had an old red sign that read ”...ging” above the bolted door.
The coffee-shop was full of old junk and some really bad paintings that had been thoroughly dusted off and then quite randomly mounted over all the walls.
It was as if it had all been done in order to make you feel comfortable, and that in here everything was just fine. Even if you should happen to be one of the lousy artists responsible for one of the lousy paintings on the walls that probably nobody liked.
Vix thought this unlikely to happen, as the paintings seemed older than most of the people in the room. Then he had thought ”what a nice place”, and ordered some coffee.
That was the first day the village had Vix in it.

After some time had passed, he found himself repeating this journey to the little village.
He had ended up at the coffee-shop again the second time he was in the village, and then on every single occasion following the first two visits.
After a while he couldn’t help but notice a man who seemed to share his own appreciation for the combination of good coffee and bad art.
As they kept on bumping into eachother this way (which was far from the rather stressful city kind of way of bumping into eachother), in the end they sort of both decided that they might as well become acquainted.
So after a few head-nods of recognition that soon turned into brief exchanges of words that gradually grew into full sentences, they eventually began sharing a table, and slowly became people who knew eachother.
It turned out Mr. Friend had retired from whatever it was he had been doing most of his life, but Vix believed that he must have had something of a fascinating job (although Mr. Friend would never tell exactly what it was he had been doing).
Whatever it was, it was probably because of that fascinating job - and probably for a couple of certain other reasons, too - that Mr. Friend was full of stories.
Actually he himself preferred to be viewed as someone full of facts rather than someone full of stories, but nevertheless he was a great source of information, information that usually propelled them into great conversations.
Today, many months later than when they first started talking to eachother, was one of those days that Vix and Mr. Friend were in the middle of one of these conversations:

”Wealth...”, Vix said, with the stamina of someone who couldn't wait to have somebody else try to tear their rock-solid statement to pieces in the next moment; ”Wealth is the real problem. Money lies behind all this misery.”
”Well, yes, blaming the wealthy is a solution that effortlessly springs to mind. And an easy solution is often what we’re looking for? Isn't it, my young friend?”, Mr. Friend replied.
They were walking along a nice little path along the small river that divided the village, just a few minutes walk from the coffee-shop.
They had acquired the habit of going for these little walks, when they decided they had had enough coffee and needed some fresh air, something that usually took about a couple of hours or more at the coffee-shop, all depending on whether they got lost in conversation or not.
”I’d appreciate it if you lost that patronising tone right away." Vix said with slight irritation in his voice. "You might claim that a man of your age will have the benefit of experience, but that kind of benefit doesn’t seem to have helped us all that much in the light of history - if history should happen to have been written by men of similar experience.”
Without stopping to enjoy his triumph he continued: ”If wealthy people didn’t cling onto their unrightfully attained property we’d be able to abolish the whole hierarcic structures of the distribution of goods in this world, and move towards a more sensible global system of sharing our resources.”
”Yes, yes. That’s all good and very sensible indeed, but are you really sure it is the vice of the wealthy and the wealthy only to hold on to one’s every possession? To hang on to one’s often painstakingly acquired slice of personal power?” Mr. Friend stared calmly into the autumn air as he spoke. ”My experience - the very same you seem so eager to write off as mere old folly - more than suggests that it’s quite irrelevant whether you’re good for billions of dollars and control thousands of destinies, or if you have no more personal belongings than you can carry in a dirty plastic bag and the personal power to dictate nothing but the destiny of your scruffy old dog.”
Vix said nothing.
Mr. Friend continued: ”Go ask a poor family of your choice if they’re willing to give up anything at all. Anything! Like a spare tin-pan or some other item that poor people might possess in doubles. Something they could do without. Chances are they’re not going to sacrifice anything at all, even if the ground is burning and their next-door neighbours have been dragged away by men in uniforms. People won’t give up something for nothing, whether they’re stinking rich or just a poor stinker, and that’s the real core of the issue.”
Vix wondered if he should interrupt Mr. Friend with a comment on how this was such a bad excuse for the ruling classes to keep the struggling classes struggling, but somehow Mr. Friend’s point hit him deeply – which in his opinion was happening far too often during these conversations.
Still he felt his anger slowly building up at the arrogant tone that always crept into Mr. Friend’s voice when he was commenting on ”the poor”. It seemed that he – in spite of his insight into many important issues – must have led quite a privileged life without too much eye-to-eye contact with people outside his own social circle, Vix thought to himself.
”Rich kids don’t have to join the army and die for oil.”, Vix said.
”That doesn’t seem to stop poor people from driving cars.”, Mr. Friend replied.
They walked quietly for a bit, watching the autumn leaves slowly fall to the ground through the crisp air.
Then they talked some more about rich and poor people, about whether experience was a good thing or not, and about it getting late and how traffic was becoming a really big problem - even on Sundays.
They eventually said goodbye, and Vix left to catch a train.

This, more or less, was the way Vix would spend most of his Sundays. In the village together with Mr. Friend.
A nice pattern, he thought.
At least one day in the week would be faintly predictable, and the fear would disappear for a while and give him the space he needed to re-shuffle his mind into some kind of orderly chaos.
It wasn’t so much a question of getting his feet back on the ground, than a question of getting his whole being back into orbit. Yet such days still felt like a great relief compared to the days when the raging spirits kept him alert at every waking (and sleeping) moment.

The train journey back usually let him prepare for his default modus operandi.
This particular night, when Vix got back, he opened the three locks at the front door of his squat, quickly got in, and threw his coat over the pink inflatable chair in the corner.
He opened his laptop, letting it roam for a free network for a few seconds.
Then he opened the music player and double-clicked on the first track of his ”Head Dubs vol. 1” playlist - a list he had thoroughly put together the other night to try to make sure no darkness snuck into his mind while writing.
He put the kettle on and logged in to his ”Enemy of the State” blog (that he had rather uncunningly abbreviated to ”E.O.T.S.” in an attempt to avoid spilling it all and make it far too easy for the spooks he knew scanned his every move on the web to hit on him).

Then he wrote:

Last night I dreamt of:

1. An old and battered, but fully functional Xerox-machine.
2. A gorilla.
3. Two shapeshifting aliens.
4. A walnut.

In my dream all the above items were interconnected and made perfect sense, but more about that later.

Then he posted a link to ”Cabito” – a piece of music he considered one of the most impressive offerings from balearic disco collective Bakantaar, whom he reckoned he’d read somewhere originated from Estonia or one of the Baltic states.
No trace of the group could be found to this day, except for a few blurry pieces of information and a handful of recordings circulating the music blogs from time to time, but this music always put Vix in a much lighter mood, which was not an easy task.
He decided he was more than willing to share such an uplifting gem with the rest of the world.
Then he opened his private log file, and noted down the events of the day, with a quick resumé of his conversation with Mr. Friend. This was a habit he’d learned was of great importance, as he could retrace everything if the storms inside him became too heavy, and everything seemed to be lost.
Above his desk, mounted in a dusty old frame, his favourite proverb stared back at him with sharp, black letters on white paper:

Those who do not remember the past
- are condemned to repeat it.

He logged off, and closed his laptop.
As he sipped his tea, he thought about how this had been a great day.
He felt that he could fall asleep any second, and as he didn’t fancy another night sleeping uncomfortably on the chair in front of his desk, he pulled himself up, got undressed, and dragged his heavy limbs onto the mattress he had placed on top of some of his beer-crates filled with vinyl records.
Bad vinyl records, that is – records that he knew he had to get rid off one day. Ones that didn’t deserve a space in one of his numerous racks where all the good stuff was piled up.
They were in record Limbo, he thought, waiting to cross the river Styx to where the second hand store was waiting to judge them.
They would have to function as a base for his mattress for the time being, though.
Then Vix drifted off, on his bed of unwanted music.

35 below zero

Thirty-five below. Damn. Thirty-bloody-five below.
Mac hadn't considered any of this when Mr. Sykes gazed at him with his lifeless, sleazy grin from behind the desk back at the offices of Research On Soul Evolution that sunny morning in June last year.
"We'll have to take into ACCOUNT that you didn't exactly RUSH into action with any specTACULAR enthusiasm LAST time we offered you a position, on a quite SIMILAR maneuver, Mr. Howard."
"I didn't have the same personal motivation for rushing into the previous operation, Sir. And my personal life in general has proved a lot more livable these days."
He tried to camouflage his dislike for the rubber-skinned, suit-clad personnel executive in front of him.
Getting disliked seemed to be Sykes’ one and only spare-time occupation. He seemed to be totally aware of, and even quite proud of his unsympathetic features; but, if flattered, he could appear almost human. Especially if the flatterer had an ICP-degree and a couple of trips to a C-Zone on his ass. And - most importantly to Sykes, his CV.
"Well, we DO tell our customers that the operative personnel we CAREfully pick are one-hundred-perCENT qualified, and not least DEDicated, Mr. Howard. And by TELLING our customers this, we ATTACH ourselves to a COMMITment of substantial diMENSIONS. All according to company diRECTIVES and reGARD for our COMPETITIVEness in the constantly narrowing MARket. I DO hope you underSTAND this, Mr. Howard. Or Mac, if I may?"
There was a short pause at this surprisingly friendly first-name-approach from the soulless man. The room was boiling hot, but strangely enought Mac didn’t sweat at all. Maybe it was due to the cold atmosphere that followed Mr. Sykes wherever he went, like the ghost of a dead pet.
He caught the invisible vacuum-ball that was hanging in the air of the conversation between them, leant forward, and put on his I assure you facial expression, for maximum schmooze-effect.
"I asSURE you, Sir. I'm with you all the way on this one, the times change, and people change with them." He almost burst into laughter, surprised by his own selection of such a sad, old cliché, but quickly suppressed the potential outburst with a "And Mac will do, thank you."

And much like the times and people, most things actually do change a lot from the world of ideas to stern reality, he thought, as he now fought the howling wind.
He forced an extra push at his left soft ski. It slowly slid forward.
Weird situation, this. He was a simple, working man, at least in his own eyes. But now he once again found himself caught up in something that became far more complicated the further into the mission he got.
He swiftly checked his WristSat for the tracking coordinates of the House entourage.
Right. I'm closing in.
Enter: feeling of supremacy!