The Fandom of the Operator by Robert Rankin
‘Count Otto,’ said I. ‘Hello.’
The count stared down upon me. He was very tall, the count. Always had been. Even when he was small, he was tall. Tall people so often are.
‘Gary,’ said Count Otto. ‘I hear that you’ve taken employment once more. Tough luck, old fellow. You have my sympathy.’
‘I need it more than you know,’ I said.
‘I think not,’ said Count Otto. ‘I’ve heard that you’ve taken the bulb man’s job at the telephone exchange. You really need all the sympathy I have. It’s yours; take it with my blessings.’
‘I’m in the dog muck,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘You should look on the bright side,’ said the count. ‘It will soon be Saturday.’
‘I think I need a bit more than that. How am I going to get out of this?’
Count Otto shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea at all,’ said he. ‘If you paid a little more attention to what goes on around you, you’d have noticed that you were the only applicant for that job.’
‘The dole office sent me,’ I said.
‘But you should have known. Everyone in Brentford knows about that job. You don’t inhabit the real world, do you, Gary? You dream your way through life. It’s not quite real to you, is it?’
‘It suddenly seems very real,’ I said. And suddenly it did.
‘That’s the way with life. It has a habit of catching up with you.’
‘So, tell me, what should I do?’
‘Learn,’ said the count. ‘That would be my advice. Knowledge is power, as the old cliché goes. The more you learn, the more you know. The more you know, the more options will open up for you.’
‘So I should take an Open University course, or something?’
‘Or learn a second language.’
‘Sandra said that.’
‘Well, she would. We were talking about you today at the factory. I was saying what tough luck it was that you’d taken the job. She just kept laughing.’
‘I think I’ll smack her when I get home.’
‘Can I come and watch? I love that sort of thing. Back in the old country, you could smack servants whenever you wanted. And torture them, of course, and pull all their clothes off and put them out in the snow.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Because you could,’ said the count. ‘And if you can, then you will. That’s also the way with life. But only with the life of the very privileged.’
‘Buy me a drink,’ I said. ‘I’ve finished mine and I’m really short of money. I’ll pay you back at the weekend.’
‘Certainly,’ said the count and he went up and bought me a drink.
‘I’ll tell you this,’ he said, on his return. ‘You want to have a good old think about this job of yours. What it’s all about and things like that.’
‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ I said.
‘Well,’ said the count, ‘it seems like a very strange job to me. Switching a bulb off whenever it comes on.’
‘It’s a stupid job,’ I said.
‘Oh yes,’ said the count, nodding. ‘But most jobs are ultimately stupid. There are certain jobs, say, butcher, or baker, that make sense. They’re necessary jobs. People need butchers and bakers. But what about all those other jobs, like quantity surveyors, say. Does the world really need quantity surveyors? What does a quantity surveyor do anyway? Does he look at things and say, “Oh, there’s a lot of that. But there’s not too much of that.”’
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘There’s thousands of jobs like that,’ said the count. ‘They have titles but they don’t really have meaning. If they didn’t exist, the world wouldn’t be any different, except that the people who did those jobs would now be out of work. All these jobs just exist to keep people employed. They’re not real jobs. Your job isn’t a real job.’
I looked up at Count Otto. ‘Thanks a lot,’ I said.
‘My pleasure,’ said the count.
‘No,’ said I. ‘I was being sarcastic. Do you think that I don’t know that? Do you think that everyone on Earth doesn’t know that? People are given jobs so that they can earn money, which they then spend. That is the point of giving people jobs, so they can earn money that they can then spend – on things – on things that have to be manufactured. Thereby giving work to people in manufacturing industries. I could go on and on about this. But we both know how it works. Everyone really knows how it works, although they won’t own up to it.’
‘So your job is a stupid job, but it has to be done. Therefore accept it and make the best of it and stop complaining.’
‘No,’ said I. ‘No.’
‘Well, there’s nothing you can do about it.’
‘Do you want a bet?’
‘I’m a count,’ said the count. ‘Counts never bet. We just win by default.’
‘Well, I am going to do something about this,’ I said. ‘All right, I do know what I’m like. Well, I think I do. I do dream my way through life and never really pay much attention to reality. But OK, I’m stuck in this one, but I mean to get out. And I mean to change things. I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I will. This has been a special day for me. I didn’t know that it was going to be special. But it is. It has determined me upon a mission. Yes, it has. By golly, yes.’
‘And what exactly is this mission?’ asked the count.
‘To change things,’ I said. ‘To change everything.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Count Otto. ‘And you having drunk but a pint and a half. Chaps are usually at least seven pints in before they start talking nonsense like this. Back in the old country, talk like this would go on into the night. And they’d always end up with someone saying, “I’m going to change everything. I’ve had enough of all this.”’
‘And did anyone?’ I asked. ‘Change things?’
‘No,’ said the count. ‘Of course not. They’d end up sitting in the courtyard outside the alehouse waiting for the sun to come up and we’d all be hiding inside in the shadows. And up would come the sun and whoosh-woof-zap and flash: another vampire gone.’
‘Eh?’ I said. ‘What?’
‘Only joking,’ said the count. ‘Or am I?’
I chewed upon my upper lip. ‘I’ll change things,’ I said. ‘You wait and see.’
‘I’ll wait,’ said the count. ‘But indoors in the shadows, if you don’t mind.’
I let the count buy me further drinks and I enjoyed the band.
Quilten Balthazar was great. And what can you say about Zagger To Mega Therion? That master bladesman had paid his dues. But I was thinking. Thinking and plotting and planning.
All right. I know how this works. You don’t have to tell me. People only struggle against oppression when they actually are oppressed. If they’re not actually oppressed themselves, then they only pay lip service to the struggle against other people’s oppression. They like to think of themselves as caring individuals.
But they don’t actually really do anything. They might contribute a little money to some worthy cause or other, but they don’t actually do.
Funny thing is, now I’m looking back at all this and telling this tale, what I didn’t know was that my struggle against oppression was actually going to further the cause of My Struggle, Mein Kampf, as it were. I suppose that, somewhere down the line, I had actually lost myself I’d been fascinated by death and the whole idea of death and what might be beyond it. And I had tried to re-animate Mr Penrose, my all-time, then and now, favourite writer, but where had my youthful ideas and interests gone? Into nothing and nowhere. I’d lost my true self But this business at the telephone exchange had actually woken me up from my slumber. Life had hit me right in the face. And life and death being brothers and all that, it all fell together.
But I didn’t know that then. I didn’t know that this was synchronicity. That I was in the right place at the right time and that my struggle against oppression was going to bucket me into the position that it did. In fact, that it
Phew! Are you getting any of this?
Perhaps I have become drunk. I was certainly drunk when I left the Shrunken Head and stumbled home with only the prospect of the good hiding I meant to give Sandra as a distant light to steer my stumblings towards.
But I had really, truly, actually, if drunkenly, found a purpose in life for myself And I would begin on my quest the very next day.
And I would triumph.
And not just for myself.
But for the good of all.
I’d change things for ever.
I would.
I really would.
12
I suppose I must have dozed off. Although not on the job. I never once dozed off on the job.
It would have been more than my job was worth to ever doze off on the job. An unmanned bulb is an accident waiting to happen, as Mr Holland used to say. And he knew what he was talking about. That man knew his business when it came to bulbs. But perhaps I had dozed off at some time or other. Because the next time I was truly, fully aware, I was drinking again with Count Otto, and he was asking me how things were going at the telephone exchange.
‘How are things going at the telephone exchange?’ he asked.
‘So, so,’ I said. ‘I had fourteen flash-ups today. I have my reaction time down to point-three of a second. Point-two-two is my fastest ever, but that was in the first summer when there was a double flash. That’s quite a rarity, two flash-ups in less than an hour. I kind of sensed it that time: I knew the second one was coming. A good bulbsman has a sixth sense. You develop it. Only last week I—’
‘Excuse me,’ said Count Otto. ‘I need to go and count some tiles in the men’s room.’ And then he departed and was gone.
‘He’s a weirdo,’ I said to Sandra, because she had come out with me for a drink. For some specific reason that quite escaped me at the time. ‘He’s always going off to the bog when I’m having a chat.’
‘Perhaps it’s because you’re so boring nowadays,’ said Sandra.
‘Yeah, right,’ I replied.
‘I am,’ said Sandra. ‘Your job is all you ever talk about. That exciting double flash in the summer of ‘seventy-one. How you’ve installed your own bulb tester and how through yoga you can hold your bladder for a twelve-hour stretch without even a dribble coming out of your winkie.’
‘Don’t be crude,’ I said to Sandra.
‘You’ve lost your edge,’ said my spouse. ‘You’re no fun any more.’
‘I’m no fun? How dare you! If you took a little more interest in my work––’
‘Ha,’ went Sandra. ‘Ha ha ha. Switching a fugging bulb off all day long! How interesting can that be?’
‘See what I mean?’ I said to her. ‘That’s all you know about the job. I don’t switch it off all day long. Only at the specific moment when it flashes. Not before and not afterwards. Well, obviously afterwards, but you can hardly tell, my timing is so precise.’
‘Just listen to yourself.’ Sandra was drinking a Cuba Library, which was the popular drink of the day. It was a cocktail, something to do with cigars and library books. Or it might have been gazelles and bicycle pumps, for all I cared. Sandra supped at it and went right on talking at me. ‘When you came home after that first day at the exchange you were dripping with piss and ranting like a loon. Then you went off for a drink and came back pissed and ranting like a drunken loon, saying how you were going to strike a blow for the workers and change everything. Do you remember that?’
‘Of course I remember that,’ I said, for I vaguely remembered that.
‘Now it’s five years later,’ Sandra emptied her drink down her throat and handed me the glass, ‘and have you struck a blow for the workers?’
‘Well,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Sandra. ‘You haven’t. The second day in, you took sandwiches and a bucket and another book to read.’
‘God,’ I said. ‘Don’t tell me about it.’
‘Why?’ asked Sandra.
‘It’s so embarrassing,’ I said. ‘How could I have been so irresponsible? Taking a book into the bulb booth? I could have been so engrossed in the book that I mightn’t have noticed the bulb go on. Imagine that! It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘It certainly doesn’t,’ said Sandra, pointing pointedly towards her empty glass. ‘So I shan’t think about it at all.’
‘Good,’ I told her. ‘Don’t.’
‘Drink,’ said Sandra.
So I drank.
‘No,’ said Sandra. ‘I meant drink for me.’
‘To you, then,’ I said, raising my glass and drinking again.
‘No!’ said Sandra. ‘Not drink to me. Buy me another fugging drink, you stupid twonk!’
‘Language!’ I told her. ‘Language, please.’
‘Five years,’ said Sandra, spitting somewhat as she spoke. ‘Five fugging years. What happened to you? Where did your spirit go?’
‘I would have thought you’d have been pleased that I was now in full-time regular employment. A job for life. You wanted security, didn’t you? Wasn’t that why your brother so diligently made sure that I got there in the first place?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Sandra. ‘I wanted security. There’s nothing wrong with security. But I’d also like a holiday once in a while. You know, a week away at a caravan park in Camber Sands. That’s not much to ask, is it?’
‘A bulbsman is always on the job,’ I said to Sandra. ‘A bulbsman has no time for holidays.’
‘Unbelievable,’ said Sandra, shaking her head in what looked for all the world to be dismay. ‘You are unbelievable.’
‘Thank you very much,’ I said and I made my way to the bar.
There wasn’t any pushing and shoving to get served in this bar. But then, this wasn’t the Shrunken Head. Eric had sold the Shrunken Head to an entrepreneur called Sandy and had moved himself away to a quieter bar.
This quieter bar. The Golden Dawn, on the corner of Abbadon Street. It was mostly a fogeys’ hangout. Old boys who played in the bowls league. Regular, dependable fellows, many of whom had worked in the telephone exchange. And put in years of sterling service. Although none of them appeared to be ex-bulbsmen.
I liked the Golden Dawn. It was a good place to come and relax after a stressful day in the booth. Like the one I’d had the Thursday before last when there were twenty-two flashes. Four within a single hour, which was almost an all-time record. The record being six, back in the autumn of ‘seventy-four, on the tenth of September, a Tuesday. Three-fifteen to four-fifteen. I keep a record, you see. Study it in the evenings, actually, just to check the patterns. They crop up at occasional intervals. You can be right on the alert then. Not that I could really be much more on the alert than I am now. That would be impossible.
‘Well, well, well, well, well,’ said Eric Blaine a.k.a. Kimberlin Malkuth, Lord of a Thousand Suns. ‘If it isn’t my old comrade the Honourable Valdec Firesword of Alpha Centuri.’
‘Yes,’ I said to him. ‘As it was ten minutes ago, when I came up for the last round.’
‘Exactly,’ said Eric. ‘Which means that this time it’s Count Otto’s round. But he’s hiding out in the toilets again, isn’t he?’
‘He’s counting tiles,’ I said. ‘That’s what counts do, I suppose: count things.’
The landlord rolled his eyes. Which I found most unappealing. And then he shook his head from side to side. ‘I see the Lady Fairflower of the Rainbow Mountains is looking particularly radiant tonight,’ he observed, casting one of his rolling eyes in his shaking head towards my Sandra.
‘Nifty eye-work,’ I said, for I appreciate talent. ‘But, frankly, the Lady Fairflower has been getting right up my nose of late. I labour away at my place of employment, drag my weary body home and what do I get?’
<
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not even a blow-dry. Not that I have long hair any more. I keep mine well trimmed behind the ears and especially across the forehead. A flopping fringe is a bulbsman ‘s enemy. I tried keeping it long and wearing a cap, but I felt that it detracted from the dignity of the job. Hey, by the way, what do you think of these?’ I raised my arms to the landlord.
The landlord stared hard and then he said. ‘You appear to have tiny roller skates strapped onto your elbows.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But they’re not tiny roller skates, they’re elbow trolleys. I designed them myself.’
‘Very nice,’ said the landlord, in a tone that I felt lacked for sincerity. ‘What exactly do they do?’
‘Give me added speed, of course.’ I placed my elbows on the bar counter. ‘Take that empty cocktail glass.’
‘This one?’ said the landlord.
‘That one. Hold it up.’
The landlord held it up.
‘Now drop it.’
‘No,’ said the landlord. ‘It will break on the counter.’
‘No, it won’t. Go on, do it. Whenever you want. Don’t give me any warning.’
‘You pay if it breaks, then.’
‘No problem. I—’
But the sneaky barman dropped it as I spoke.
And Snatch!
‘Impressed?’ I asked.
And the landlord clearly was. ‘You snatched it right out of the air almost before it had left my hand,’ he said.
‘I’m a bulbsman,’ I said. ‘Speed is my middle name.’
The landlord pulled me a pint of Large and knocked up another cocktail for Sandra.
‘What is this one called?’ I asked.
‘In your posh bars up west, this would be called a “Horse’s Neck”,’ said the landlord. ‘But as this is a poor neighbourhood, I call it a half of lager-top.’