Harris Cube and other stories

1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61842-058-9
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

All of these stories or monologues explore the human condition. The lives of men and women are viewed through a microscope analysing self doubt, weakness, delusion, egotism and sheer vanity. At the same time most tales are peppered with irony and humour that allow us to laugh at ourselves.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Harris, Keith

Leseproben

The Cube   It had first come to her in a dream. In her brain memories and images had dredged themselves up from the depths without a researcher; sound was added from another department with no technicians; the script was cobbled together without a writer; she herself had been cast by nobody as the leading lady with a procession of familiar and less familiar faces as supports or extras, and all that had come together with no producer or director to haunt her in her sanctuary of sleep. No more than during her everyday consciousness was there any trace of a little control freak homunculus sitting in her head running the show, and yet the show went on. It even seemed to have a moral, not intended by anybody, as if it were endeavouring to reveal her condition to her in a surreal and uncanny form, hinting at things to take account of, to change or eradicate, as if she were watching a group of doctors in Greek theatre masks acting out their diagnoses, prognoses and prescriptions for her in a grotesque tragic dance. And there was no it, of course. It came on as soon as she collapsed into bed without having the strength to pick her book up and sank into comatose sleep within seconds. It loomed out of the deep and played itself out; a room without doors or windows; a contraption that might have been conceived by a particularly deranged Bond baddie. There was no indication how she had got inside; she was just there as it invaded her head. All six surfaces were closing in at once, slowly, barely perceptibly, but inexorably. This first time they were just surfaces and they approached in the time warp manner of dreams, relentlessly but suspended, never completing the threatened crushing and annihilation, but always looking as if they might at any second, hovering like six swords of Damocles, as if they were there to warn, to give some kind of chance, unspecified and equivocal, a wake-up call drawled in slow-mo, yet nagging, insistent and brutal. She woke up in terror, lay sweating for five minutes, got up to drink a glass of water and returned to bed. Even as she started to drift back into sleep, it returned and nagged. It was there waiting for her and crawled again through its dreary course until she woke again and felt the vestiges of it pull her back as she gasped and grasped for reality. She told herself it was nonsense and buried her head in the pillow, determined not to let it suck her in again and possess her head. Whatever she tried, it had her in its grip in seconds, even before she was properly asleep. When the alarm slashed her awake and metallically announced another day of ceaseless slog, the dream still lurked, its tentacles gradually slopping off, leaving her drained and depressed, as her daytime consciousness struggled to reassert its sway. The following night it might not rear. It was preparing variants, some of which appeared the next night as soon as REM sleep kicked in. Firstly the surfaces emerged from nowhere, surrounded her and started to shrink. Then the ceiling bore down on her more than the other surfaces this time and made her lie on the floor and flatten her body. The ceiling transformed to a screen and images flashed across it. It was work. Her dream intelligence knew that even though the building looked different. Some corridor or some room emerged to establish the scene, instantly recognisable through all the distortions and substitutions. It was definitely the College. The headless production system behind the performance, which had no will, ‘wanted’ her to know that. It, the thing which was no thing, which neurologists could not pin down to any entity and certainly no identity deserving the pronoun ‘it’, and was graced with the honour faute de mieux, this thing, which emerged from sense input and memory and produced an unbroken narrative stream from disconnected scraps, seemed to have some hazy purpose and a clumsy, defective, Palaeolithic way of achieving it. There on the screen on the ceiling is the classroom she often uses, the goal of five frantic morning races against time. There are students waiting to soak up every one of her words in their laborious, protracted conquest of the baroque absurdities of the English language. Thirteen deadlines to meet every week, which brook absolutely no excuse for not being ready, arriving armed with lesson plan, Smartboard exercises for them to click and shove around, homework marked and recorded and smile, exhausted before she had taught a single minute. Beams stretch across faces from every continent as she rises above the fatigue and delivers, no trace of that exhaustion apparent as she makes them laugh and tells them stories. They are a sanctuary, a fulfilment as the day wears her down. The Principal flashes up. The Sports Hall is commandeered from its meaningful role and is full of chairs for the State of the Nation. She is dimly aware that it should be a woman. A man is delivering the six monthly harangue, substituted for the real thing by the perverse machinations of the show. No, that’s not the Principal, the dream-she protests weakly for a second, before swallowing the fault as perfectly acceptable. What choice has she got? She doesn’t make the rules in this world and standard logic doesn’t apply. The harangue seems pretty authentic, though. There are new challenges from some body or other, some government standards think tank or some useless quality qwango she has never heard of, but knows that she ought to have, as all her colleagues seem to have. Changes are besetting further education...... it is no longer possible to rest on laurels. Dream-she wonders what laurels they would be and who was resting on them. She is relentlessly perfectionist and self-critical, constantly and obsessively tweaking teaching materials, honing, reviewing, polishing, expanding her resources and techniques and forever reinventing wheels. Costs must be kept down.... we absolutely have to stay within budget..... generate income.... you are expensive, remember..... lecturers cost the budget dearly...... funding is down from this acronym or that.... Again she is at a loss to account for the acronym’s initials. Competition from this or that. Blah, blah. We must seek out new markets, attract more learners, engage them and retain them..... last year we were solvent..... this year will be tough..... we have to work even harder..... targets must be set even higher and they must be met or funding will be cut...... next year will be even harder..... we have to improve our communications and become better teams, in order to meet new challenges. Team leaders are nodding dutifully. Her hairdresser is sitting in the chair in front and turns and smiles ironically. Dream-she is not alone. Last year’s inspection result was very good..... well done for that..... Wow! Praise. I bet that hurt! Thinks Dream-she, invading the scene herself. But very good isn’t excellent..... we need to strive for excellence.... we must really desire to be the centre of excellence for this and that...... She is switching off as this year’s buzzword appears, coming straight from the latest American bullshit manual for business managers and team building trainers. Something about working bright. What the fuck does that mean? There will be a restructuring next year. What, yet again?The Olympians up there in the ethereal heights of the hierarchy will acquire new fancy titles and shuffle their portfolios. They will no longer be over this and that and will now be over this and that, responsible for this and that without even knowing the names of the people at the face, devoting all their energies to blah and blah, sitting around at meetings discussing strategies and missions and targets, working from home, picking their kids up at 3 o’clock and raising clouds of dust on Friday lunchtimes, gobbling up vast sums in salaries and support staff. Dream-she stares at the basketball net she used to aim at when she had a life with her mates and thinks of something constructive. The ceiling creeps ever lower as another flash appears. So that’s the new Director of Innovative Curriculum Inclusiveness. She’s been here six months and Daytime-she hadn’t even noticed. That was clearly part of the cost cutting and staying within budget. How many grand a year does that little postlet gobble up? This new one is working with the Director of Inclusive Curriculum Innovation, apparently, appointed two years before and never seen since. Ten meetings a week and a quadrillion emails. What’s she doing talking in the corridor with the bloke who persuaded Daytime-she to leave the teachers’ pension for six years and take up the private rip-off? At some nagging level she knows that guy has never been near the College and yet he doesn’t seem out of place. Who knows? Who can tell? Flash. The anti-stress booklet looms into view, lovingly prepared by Personnel for the greater good of controlling resentment at endless productivity gains. The scene is in the staffroom when it arrived. Stand back and consider what stresses you, the first section prescribes. ‘What would that be, then?’ The debate starts, while they all stuff a sandwich in over lesson plans and marking. ‘Would that be working here?’ ‘The morale-sapping State of the Nation harangues?’ ‘The overloaded caseloads for teachers?’ ‘Not having a minute to breathe?’ How is your work/life balance? ‘Fucking awful, actually.’ Daytime-she adds to the discussion. She looks glumly at hers. Taking lesson preparation and/or marking home is not good balance. In the scales of work/life balance...