Welcome to Gaia! ::

This is the story I've been working on. Yes, It's a bit all over the place right now, but my intentions are to intertwine all these people's seemingly unconnected adventures during subsequent chapters.

Feel free to provide constructive critisism, or subtle abuse, or however to hell you want to call it, or if you have any ideas that can make it slightly less s**t, feel free to hesitate.

Yes, this is just a slightly revised edition of something you can find in my journal.


THE VAGUELY CONTRADICTORY ADVENTURES OF BOB SMITH AND OTHERS


CHAPTER THE FIRST


Alone in a small café in Islington on a dull Thursday morning sat a clinically depressed young woman named Sandra Jones. As her own personal customs dictated, she sat at a particularly well cleaned table accompanied by a cup of warm chamomile tea to her right, a little weaker and a little colder than it would have been had she made it; to her left was a battered copy of yesterday’s local paper which was, as it usually was on Thursday, turned to the weekly crossword.

Sandra had gotten all the way to 42 down with relative ease but now, it seemed, she was stuck. She tried to evaluate the problem in her mind, which was usually consumed by negative thoughts about her job, her love life (or lack thereof, for that matter), the fact that her horoscope kept on telling her things that would most certainly happen sometime during the week flatly contradicted that which did, and the fact that she was generally just had a rather bleak outlook on life. But this time, just this once, she decided to temporarily clear those thoughts from her mind in order to solve this immensely difficult problem. What was the question to number 42 again? Sandra had a quick look at the paper. It asked, in a text that, she noticed, was slightly bolder than the norm in this particular newspaper, ‘(8 letters): Describes the sensation of discovering, at two in the morning, that your partner has bought a moderately efficient penguin from a shop that sells that sort of thing as well as calculators, chili plants, razor blades, and individual chess pieces for roughly the same price as one would expect to pay for a golden toasting fork.’

The first time Sandra saw this question, she thought of it as some sort of joke. She then realised that she had no sense of humour whatsoever, and wouldn’t have realised that it was if it were, which she did. She then proceeded to suspect that perhaps it was a serious question, that maybe there was an eight-letter word used to describe such a sensation. But she had never before heard of such a sensation ever being experienced, such shops existing, and penguins actually being legally purchased.

Two tables away was a man who worked at the café, who was busy cleaning up a table a few down from Sandra’s which, it seemed, had recently been used for something for which it had not been originally intended.

Sandra took a sip of her tea before deciding she might ask him.

“Excuse me…”, Sandra asked in a voice that was uncharacteristically sweet considering her somewhat pessimistic nature. That seemed to attract his attention.

“Yes love,” the cleaner replied, making eye contact while continuing to scrub the table. “Anything I can help you with?”

“Yes, actually,” said Sandra, not really enjoying being called “love” but, she reluctantly admitted to herself, appreciating the attention she so rarely got at work. “I was just doing the crossword. I was wondering if you could help me with one particular problem…”

CHAPTER THE SECOND


“Alright Bob, that’s it. Frankly, you’ve crossed the line. I’m sick and tired of putting up with so much crap from both you and your gullible little sheep who are desperate enough to come here and make my life that extra little bit miserable. I just can’t take such gruelling work for so little pay and so little respect from my employer. I quit!”

“You can’t just quit, Maria! How dare you! You’re fired!”

The girl Maria stormed out the door in a fit of rage and thus, Bob Smith, Britain’s most thoroughly mediocre fortune teller, found himself lacking an employee for the fourth time.

Bob Smith sighed. Why did this keep on happening? First Quintain, then Sarah, then Dirk, and now Maria! To think, all his assistants were pretty desperate to work for him to begin with, and then, about seventeen months and three days later, they just lost interest. Just like that. They suddenly got over being the one and only helpful assistant of the legendary fortune teller Bob Smith, and being given insight into the incredible and precise art of fortune telling so that someday they, too, would be masters of telling people what bleak futures lie ahead of them; and started to criticise every little thing Bob did wrong, or did right, but should have done wrong. The assistant would then spend nine weeks and six days grudgingly continuing to work for him, openly criticising his fortune telling abilities, his distinct love of Chinese restaurants, his distinct hatred of the food there, and people who shared his general political views. Bob would point out to the assistant that he/she didn’t have to work for him if he/she didn’t want to. Three minutes and nine seconds later, Bob would lose the one and only person currently under his employ.

Bob idly surveyed his fortune-telling office. To be fair, there wasn’t much stuff there that had to do with the telling of fortunes. (Bob strongly held the belief that in order to predict someone’s future, one needed a) strong psychic powers, or b) a very large imagination, and that tarot cards, tea leaves and rubber ducks had little use in accurately predicting the future)

Instead, inside the rooms placed at what Bob insisted were strategic intervals were a wallet containing large sums of money, Bob’s ID, credit card, driver’s licence (since Bob had only passed his driving test because his instructor was delusional, and thus could not drive, his licence acted mainly as a backup ID card), and other important pieces of paper, which was just lying there on the floor, a TV, a DVD player atop the TV, several seasons of Deep Space Nine on DVD in case business was going badly as usual and Bob found himself with nothing better to do, a broken lava lamp, a packet of playing cards with his face on them, a few books to read (mostly novels based on Deep Space Nine, a show that Bob, for some unknown reason, thoroughly enjoyed to the point of vague obsession), and photo of Bob on a holiday to Beijing he underwent several years ago, just about to indulge in some Chinese cuisine generally considered a delicacy by the locals, but which caused Bob to suffer from food poisoning, diarrhoea, general sadness, and a minor heart attack.

Bob pondered for a while, before coming to the conclusion that he needed someone to work for him. He needed to find a new assistant. Somebody who would use long and complicated words no longer in common use to address the customer, to confuse them to the point where they are no longer capable of realising that the man who was charging them eighteen quid an hour to give them a vague insight into their future in fact had no idea what the hell he was going on about. He needed an assistant who would be willing to work for him. No, he thought, he’d already tried that approach. He instead needed someone different to his previous employees. Someone who may just stay for what Bob regarded as a good length of time, in other words, forever.

No, Bob could do better than that. He could go to extremes. Instead of getting someone who actually wanted the job of a fortune teller’s assistant before realising that it frankly wasn’t half of what it was cracked up to be, he would instead drag an unwilling victim into his web of poor hours and crappy pay…But how to find such a person…

CHAPTER THE THIRD


Roboman lay in bed for hours one night and read some more of the particularly funny book that he had been ploughing through for the last four days, and was now three quarters of the way through reading.

The next morning, Roboman awoke and spent a good twenty minutes reading his funny book.

He then realised that he had a job to get to, put the book down for the time being, and got himself ready for another long, gruelling and repetitive day at work, that was comparable to the latest season of a long-running light-hearted soap opera that had lost it’s way ten years ago but managed to carry on regardless.

Roboman was metallic android that wouldn’t look particularly out of place in a sci-fi film from the early fifties who, due to a fluctuation in the space-time continuum or some other kind of hastily-conceived excuse, had found himself living in early 21st century suburbia one day. However, he decided he’d use the toilet this morning, upon which he read a chapter more of the funny book. Afterwards, he attempted to get dressed, failed miserably, and ended up applying a little perfume instead (Roboman lacked a working common-sense chip, as so many of the robots of his class, and most of the humans of the 20th and 21st centuries did).

With some difficulty, Roboman put on his best tie, picked up his briefcase, walked downstairs, told his wife that he was off to work. She kissed him, bode him goodbye and to have a good day, raised an eyebrow slightly to indicate that her previous statement was riddled with sarcasm, and pushed him out the door before he had time to fathom what exactly it was that was going on.

On the train on the way to work, Roboman became rather bored all of a sudden, and pulled the funny book from his briefcase, and read a good hour’s worth. Afterwards, he realised that the train had passed his stop half an hour ago. Roboman left at the next station, hailed a cab, and asked the driver to take him to his office, pronto.

He managed to get another two chapters out of the book before he arrived.

Roboman was approximately an hour and a half late for work, all up. The business Roboman worked for was not particularly interesting or fun. To be perfectly honest, he wasn’t entirely convinced he knew what it was that he did there half the time, but he did know that the work he did do seemed to mostly involve computers.

Today Roboman was supposed to get his computer to perform some form of function that was absolutely crucial to the company under which he worked. He became tired of it about half way through. Suddenly and inexplicably he turned off his computer without saving the data on whatever it was that he was supposed to be doing. This had untold consequences for his firm, but hey, it suited him in the short term, and that was all that really mattered to him. (his sense of morality and ethics also bore a startling resemblance to that of the typical human). He then proceeded to sit back it his chair, kick up against the desk, and start to read a little more of his funny book.

The next day Roboman was fired.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH


The trouble with the sort of restaurant that Max Ridge and Kate Simmons found themselves in one moderate day in Hong Kong was that it only sold food that was readily available in Australia at just about every street corner. The sign out the front of the place had certainly fooled the young travelling lovers. It stated, in large, vibrant neon letters, ‘Eat at Dragon’s Choice Restaurant, Hong Kong, For YOUR Taste of the Finest Asian Cuisine, at the Lowest Available Prices!” Underneath was a message in Cantonese that was, presumably, the same one. The restaurant was obviously designed for tourists who were brave and utterly suicidal enough to sample some Asian food, since they were in Asia to begin with and, well, why not? The locals rarely ate here, instead generally preferring to dine on McDonalds or KFC.

In the week they were in Hong Kong as part of their extended holiday around the world, undertaken for no adequate reason, Max and Kate had not yet sampled any Chinese dishes, which was one of the chief reasons for their being there. Beforehand they had feasted mainly on crackers.

But now, on the way to the airport, they quickly stopped off at Dragon’s Choice, finding the name to be frankly utterly amusing, after having had the mutual decision of finally eating at a place like this, that it was all “part of the experience”. So they had walked inside, intending on being extremely quick to order and to eat, so that they could still catch their plane in time.

What Max and Kate did find they served at “Dragon’s Choice”, was bitterly disappointing. Upon their arrival, a middle aged, formally dressed woman greeted them in her native tongue. Of course, in their arrogance, Max and Kate had neglected to learn even a couple of simple phrases in Cantonese, and thus didn’t know whether it was an invitation for them to thank her, smile politely, not react to her and walk right past, or to steal large amounts of money from her wallet. After they found themselves a suitable table and a waiter had acknowledged their existence, he handed them each a menu. Upon inspection, the first page was taken up by the name of the restaurant in large, unfriendly letters, and it’s slogan:

‘Eat here. You’ll love the food we serve. If you don’t, well, that’s your problem, isn’t it.’, the next by a brief history of the restaurant:

‘Once upon a time (199 cool some guy who’s name we’ve forgotten and whom is dead now, was told by his brother, a moderately successful television actor, that he would never succeed in life. His opening of this restaurant didn’t exactly disprove his sibling’s prediction, but it did start this restaurant; the food produced by which is considered by some, on occasion, to be “better than having to starve oneself”’.

The next few pages were devoted to cheat codes for a number of video games which one whom has never touched a video game controller in one’s life can beat single-handedly with one’s eyes covered by a blindfold, even if that particular game’s difficulty level is set to ‘very hard’.
Four more were occupied by forged signatures of unknown Mexican left-wing politicians, a further seven by blank pieces of paper. Finally, on the last page, there was actually a menu that sold a number of items of food and beverages. Even this was bitterly disappointing. The menu looked not entirely unlike this:

Food:

Hotdog………………………………........................................................................$40
Hamburger………………………………..................................................................$50
Shepherd’s pie………………………………..........................................................$100
French Toast………………………………...............................................................$30
Nachos………………………………......................................................................$120
Fries………………………………............................................................................$50

Drinks:

Coke………………………………...........................................................................$10
Water………………………………..........................................................................$10
Lemon, Lime and Bitters………………………………...............$100,000,000,000,000,000


“Perhaps we should try elsewhere.” Suggested Max, attempting with some difficulty to recover from this somewhat traumatic experience.

Kate glanced briefly at her watch. “No time, Maxie” Kate said, sweetly, to her boyfriend, “Our plane lives in half an hour.”

“Where to next?” Max asked, having genuinely forgotten most of the places to which he was visiting, usually finding out when he purchased their tickets. “Hopefully with people there who know how to cook something we hadn’t already eaten ten million times already…”

“England.” Kate replied simply.

CHAPTER THE FIFTH


A young man and a wary older woman sat on a hill on prehistoric Earth, observing their surroundings.

The man looked up at the night sky in awe: Never before had he seen the heavens so clearly as he did now.

The woman looked thoroughly uninterested: she’d seen it all many times before.

She sighed lightly and turned to the man, with an air of vague irritation. She said to him, in a somewhat stern rasp that somehow managed to irritate even the nicest of toasters: “Tile, we’re about twenty years early. You’re going to lose more than a few points for this.”

The man, Tile, shrugged, before asking casually: “So, Mrs Tea-Leaf, how many points does that leave me with?”

“Four hundred and nineteen. You need five hundred to pass. If you want to make it, you need to concentrate, Tile. You are talented, but you have a habit of rushing things. Slow down, for heaven’s sake.”

“Yes ma’am.” Tile murmured, nodding slightly. “How can I make up all those points I just lost?”

“You can start” said Mrs Tea-Leaf, “By punching in the correct co-ordinates and getting us to when it is we need to be.”

“When is that?” wondered Tile.

“Twenty-one years, forty-nine days, three hours, seven minutes and thirty-six seconds from now.”

Tile memorised all this, pulled out a small, white device from one of three of his jacket pockets and started pushing buttons, seemingly at random. He pressed the rough equivalent of an ‘ENTER’ key found on the typical typewriter or computer keyboard, and then both Tile and Mrs Tea-Leaf promptly vanished from time and space.

Twenty-one years, forty-nine days, three hours, seven minutes and thirty-six seconds later, Tile and Mrs Tea-Leaf materialised five meters from where they had inexplicably disappeared more than two decades earlier.

“A bit of a rough landing.” commented Mrs Tea-Leaf, gazing up at the pleasant sky of a bright summer’s day, “But not bad, all the same. At least you got us in the right decade this time. I’ll give you forty points for that.”

Tile did some basic arithmetic, and came to the conclusion that he was on four hundred and fifty-nine points, forty-one away from passing. “What must I do now, Mrs Tea-Leaf?”

Mrs Tea-Leaf coughed several times to clear her throat, which had become steadily more irritating as the day had progressed. “This, Tile, is the final part of your test. Go right back to where and when we started. If all goes well, you’ll make just enough points to pass.

Tile was breathing more than was necessary at this point due the sheer apprehension. “Don’t screw this one up!” he instructed himself under his breath. He typed in the space-time co-ordinates for New Birmingham, May 17, 2483. He pressed the button marked ENTER, and again, Tile and Mrs Tea-Leaf vanished from their previous location in time and space, and emerged in the heart of the massive city of New Birmingham.

Tile was literally panting from the utter exhaustion of pushing buttons for hours on end.

Mrs Tea Leaf made a brief survey of their surroundings to verify they were in the right century. She nodded to herself. “Right time, right city, wrong place. You were about a kilometre off our target.”

Tile proceeded with caution. He hoped he had passed this time. “So, how many points have I got now Mrs Tea-Leaf?”

“Four hundred and ninety-eight, all up”

Tile couldn’t believe it.

“You failed, Tile,” sympathised Mrs Tea-Leaf, “By two points.”

Tile was in shock. How could he get this close and still fail? “How could I get this close and still fail?” he asked. “Can’t you pass me anyway, Mrs Tea-Leaf? I was only two points away!”

“I’m sorry, Tile, but I can’t pass you! You failed!”

“Only just. Please, Mrs Tea-Leaf, pass me! I need-”

“Oh, what the hell.” Mrs Tea-Leaf said with a sense of indifference rare to her. I’ll pass you. You were close enough.” She handed him a small piece of laminated paper with his name, photograph and other sorts of trivial mish-mash concerning him on it. “Here you go, Tile. Here’s your time-travelling licence.”

Yes. This is my attempt at satire.
And yes, the characters are actually connected. This all happens later in the story.
This is a preview. Or something.