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It was a bright cold day in April — it was the day my grandmother exploded — and the clocks were striking thirteen.

 

Well, that’s how it seemed to me anyway.

 

Looking back, I suppose I should have realized something weird was going on, but I wasn’t feeling a hundred percent and I didn’t make the connection. Although my hippocampal implant had been playing up, I just assumed that was because I’d not been sleeping well.

 

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

 

I put the limbic system update on pause, disengaged the connection, put on my bathrobe and slippers, and went to check.

 

When I unbolted and opened the door, I discovered a little round-faced guy in a yellow N-Tech Services uniform standing in the hallway.

 

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born,” he began.

 

I looked at him blankly.

 

“Call me Ishmael”, he added — like that made things a whole lot clearer.

 

“It is a truth universally acknowledged,” he continued, “that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

 

I didn’t have a clue who the hell he was, nor did I understand why he seemed to think I was in need of a wife.

 

“Sorry, I’m not properly with it yet. I still need to complete the 15.0.18552 update. Who did you say you were? And what is it you want exactly?” I asked.

 

But the guy totally ignored me and rudely pushed past and into my apartment.

 

“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday,” he said, as he went through to the kitchen.

 

I stood open-mouthed and rooted to the spot for a second or two, just utterly bewildered by the bare-faced cheek of the bloke. It was only when he sat himself down at the kitchen table that I snapped out of it.

 

"Look, mate," I said, trying to keep my cool. "I don't know who the hell you think you are — barging in here like you own the place and talking a load of nonsense — but you can bloody well get out of my kitchen and piss off out of my apartment."

 

He very briefly glanced over in my direction, with the look in his eyes switching from confusion to purpose. He then turned back and pointed at the wall console.

 

“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate,” he said. “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

 

"Right," I muttered under my breath, now coming to the realisation that the guy wasn’t playing with a full deck. "I don’t want to get heavy here, but either you leave right now or I'm calling the police."

 

As I reached for my phone, he jumped up and grabbed my arm.

 

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” he said. “Come, Watson! The Game is Afoot!”

 

"The game?" I repeated, incredulous (and choosing to ignore the fact that he’d called me dear) "What bloody game?"

 

He let go of my arm and began pacing the room looking confused and muttering to himself again. "All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances..."

 

"Okay, Shakespeare," I cut in, at the same time trying to steer him towards the door. “You take your exit and bow out now, or I’m gonna’ make the call.”

 

But he ignored me and continued his ramblings. “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...”

 

Then he stopped dead — like he’d just had some sort of epiphany — and he darted over to the Cerebro-console on the back wall. He took a hex key from his pocket, opened out the front panel, and then hit the factory reset button.

 

And with that he was straight back out the front door and gone, leaving me standing in the middle of room, as the wi-fi re-connected and my limbic system shut down and re-initialised.

 

“So long, and thanks for all the fish,” I heard him shout back as he disappeared down the corridor.

 

* * *

 

When the CEO of N-Tech Symbionics was interviewed on UN-TV later, he studiously avoided answering the question when the interviewer asked whose fault it was; he just repeated his pre-prepared speech.

 

The 15.0.18551 version of their imagination software, he explained, had somehow become cross-contaminated by snippets from an undergrad’s podcast on famous lines from classic literature.

 

The level of this contamination had worsened considerably in their subsequent software update, and the code also then suffered contamination from the student’s Visi-media database of old movie quotes.

 

All of which on download had apparently corrupted our limbic RAM and played havoc with its neuronal connections to our auditory centres and speech cortex.

 

The CEO stressed that even though some of their local area support engineers had themselves been badly affected, they had managed to do what they needed, so that everyone was now back to normal.

 

In the bar later, Pete Fording told us how his wife had got up about an hour before him and had already fully updated to the 18552 version by the time he came downstairs for breakfast. “When I went into the front room,” he said, “she was still sat there on the sofa in her nightie, and just kept saying over and over again ‘Go ahead, make my day!’”

 

“When the N-Tech guy called on us mid-morning,” he continued, “I very nearly got him to leave her as she was!”

Copyright 2024 - SFS Publishing LLC

Literarily Speaking

All this happened, more or less

David Barlow

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