Intersection Operator

J Jupes

Description

J. Jupes and collage artist Coates Walker compile a dystopian vision of the struggle for identity and love in a ghostly world where traffic patterns are manually controlled by the Intersection Operators and job security has become a ruthless enterprise.

Sujets

• Science fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Hekate Publishing
• Date de parution: 22 novembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781912017553
• Langue: English

Extrait

Table of Contents
Title Page
Introduction
Dedication
Image One
Part One: Melkin’s Plastics
Image Two
Part Two: The Waiting List
Image Three
Part Three: Notification
Image Four
Part Four: Duty Station
Image Five
Part Five: Incessant Knocking
Image Six
Part Six: The Wood
Image Seven
INTERSECTION OPERATOR
BY J. JUPES
Cover Image and All Art Work (including Dedication Image) by Coates Walker
Copyright © 2018 Anthony Knott
All Rights Reserved
Hekate Publishing First Edition, 2018
ISBN for EPub Edition: 978-1-912017-53-9
Hekate Publishing
2 Lydiard Green
Lydiard Millicent
Wiltshire SN5 3LP United Kingdom
Hekate Publishing USA
1844 2nd Avenue
New York, NY 10128
[e-mail]
https://www.hekatepublishing.com
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior consent of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, or business institutions is purely coincidental.
An Introduction: Two interviews
The first interview, with J. Jupes, didn’t go well, or at least, not as I had expected. Hekate rented a room at the public library for an entire hour. Jupes and I sat down, I turned on my tape recorder, he said, “Looks like you’ve over prepared.”
He didn’t answer my questions so we sat in silence. When the hour was up, I said let me walk you to the bus stop. I had met him earlier getting off the cross town local. We stood under the awning for a while then Jupes raised his shirt and showed me his colostomy bag, surrounded by bridges and sinkholes, his entire abdomen formed out of pinched pink scar tissue. He told me he had suffered “bad trauma” twenty five years before but wouldn’t say what happened, only that his intestines were removed at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. The story sounded familiar.
“They had to shock me eight or nine times, the doctor said. Woke up a year later kind of thing. I wrote before that but it wasn’t good, dolphin jumping through a hoop and coming up to get his fish kind of writing. Then all that happened and what I wrote after wasn’t good either. Pepper is embarrassing but Pepper is . . .”
Jupes trailed off then began speaking about Pepper as if he knew him personally. I was a little confused and asked,
“Did you know Pepper or someone named Pepper?”
He was quiet a moment then said, “Pepper depresses me. I wouldn’t have let you publish the book if the collages weren’t in it. Coates Walker is like that mechanic two counties over, the only one you’ll trust to work on your car. The kind that won’t fix something if it isn’t broke. There aren’t many of those left.”
Jupes looked upset so I thought I’d change the subject. He was wearing some kind of antique jacket, sewn in silk and a good deal of quilting. The small double seaming looked masterfully done, from the day when they did all that with tight hand stitching. But a third of the seams had parted and the silk had frayed.
“That’s interesting. . .what you’re wearing.” I wasn’t sure what to call it.
“In St. Petersburg they called it an overcoat. I wear it when I write, the drafts, the edits, the assemblage.” He touched the collar. “Cat skin. It could be mistaken for marten at a distance. But it has become a little ripe. See the grease around the collar? Sweat from all the owners over the last hundred and seventy years.”
We saw the bus coming, Jupes looked at me doubtfully and said,
“Coates Walker is the covert collage artist of our time. He doesn’t advertise and understands conspiracy. He also understands technology and the juxtaposition of form. He collaborates with poets and expresses our insidious collective unconscious. Coates Walker knows the median line of irony does not reside in the center of the highway but wanders around. Cars have to swerve occasionally. If Gogol or Dostoyevsky lived in the 21st Century and made collage, that’d be Coates Walker.”
The cross town bus arrived. With some difficulty, Jupes got on,. The bus threw out a thick cloud of black smoke and pulled away.
We were able to interview Coates Walker with greater success:
“I've had a life time of fascination with the printed image. In childhood it was comics, in particular "American Comics" as they were known as in the early Post War period. Soon after in the early 50's British comics started to improve and the Eagle comic was launched. This was a big break through in terms of graphic style, full colour printing and stories about Space Travel which captured a young boy's imagination. Beyond childhood it was the illustrations and diagrams in technical and scientific magazines and Sci Fi novels that I found inspiring.
I studied Ceramics at Art College and during my time at the Royal College of Art I met Eduardo Paolozzi and on leaving college I became his personal assistant. The time with him involved producing drawings and the colour separations for his screen prints.
Now we are in the Digital Age and this has opened up limitless possibilities in terms of creativity i.e. image manipulation and desktop printing etc also it's now possible to access all kinds of information that feed into new ideas and images. With the images I produce I am still following the thread from childhood, Science Fiction, the Future, Modernism, Science Fact and most importantly the impact of Singularity and Artificial Intelligence.”
Coates Walker is kcw1939 on Flickr.
A.F. Knott

MELKIN’S PLASTICS
The advertisement filled the entire second page of the Civil Service Daily: Morse Code Required was set in built-titling font just above the lower border. Pepper folded the newspaper back on itself, dragged his thumb and forefinger across the crease then angled it in just such a way that the glare of office fluorescence was cast fully upon the page. Rotating slowly, he confirmed the edges were squared off. Once satisfied, he held the paper at arm’s length, one hand gripping either margin and pulled it taut, nearly to the point of tearing. He tracked the words across the page, not by moving the eyes but his entire head, jerking it back to the start of each sentence like a typewriter carriage return. Simultaneously, he narrated his thoughts aloud, assuming a tone engineered to ply upon the nerves of his co-workers, similar to the strumming of an out of tune guitar.
“And in the shortest period of time,” he murmured, cleared his throat and spoke more loudly. “The job description for Intersection Operator has been expressed in no-nonsense prose set upon a reassuring daffodil yellow background. In other words, inviting, precisely as is the prospect of a life-long career in Civil Service.”
Bud Palmer had been listening across the corridor and leaned back in his swivel chair studying Pepper standing there in the center of his cubicle. Bud tipped forward, took up the phone, cradled it against one shoulder and dialed Stepler, his supervisor in Claims.
“Mr. Stepler, I think you need to get over to my cubicle tout suite.” Bud shielded the receiver in his palm, hunched forward and whispered, “He’s on one.” Bud laughed, not freely, but as if in pain, or severely constipated.
Stepler told him, “Dynamite Bud. Hold the fort!”
Pepper heard Stepler’s reply booming out of Bud Palmer’s telephone receiver. He was aware he could be overheard by personnel in adjacent carols and if he spoke loud enough, by everybody within the entire work space. He had hoped Bud Palmer would do just as he had, call Stepler. Pepper had held Stepler’s position until the start of the year when he was reassigned back to “cubicles.” Pepper after nineteen years of service had what the other employees had called a “nervous breakdown.”
Stepler subsequently tormented Pepper without repercussion as Pepper no longer had Mister Melkin, the boss, to protect him.
The week before, for instance, without permission, Stepler had taken Pepper’s well-worn copy of Gogol’s The Overcoat , an original Penguin edition, and passed it around the coffee klatch.
“Give me my book back,” Pepper had held out his hand.
“I understand you’ve been promoted to rank of Titular Counselor, Pepper. Congratulations.”
The klatch erupted in laughter, not true laughter but the way laughter was supposed to sound. Stepler held the book over Pepper’s head and made him jump into the air to try and snatch it.
“Pepper, you moron,” Stepler finally chirped and flipped the book against Pepper’s chest amidst murmurs of approval.
After Bud Palmer had made his call, Pepper watched the clock on his computer monitor: Seventeen seconds elapsed, the precise time interval he knew required for Stepler’s travel from number three supervisory carol, located directly across from Melkin’s door, to his number twelve cubicle. Pepper had served in number three supervisory carol for nineteen of his twenty years until becoming, abruptly, “less Japanese” in Mister Melkin’s estimation.
When Stepler arrived, Pepper planted his feet, pursed his lips, and faced the aisle. He increased the degree of lip pursing until he was in agony, then stated,
“Stepler.”
The Claims supervisor, standing just inside Bud Palmer’s cubicle, turned, nudged Bud Palmer and grinned.
“Yes, Pepper?”
“The table of ranks was created by Peter the Great in 1722; abolished by the Bolsheviks in 1917. Titular Counselor would be equivalent to a Kapitan in the Russian Infantry and designated as K9. No such ranking exists now. You were trying to be clever last week but what you said turned out not to be clever in the least. Dufus.”
“Did Pepper just call me a dufus?”
Stepler and Palmer high fived one another and began laughing in that same not-actually-laughing manner. Stepler then pointed at Pepper, their non-laugh