strange bOUnce

The Modern Way

September 30, 2012 — age of the instant, arsenal fan, computer slob, couched potato, COYG, flash fiction, hermit, living online, modern living, rejection of society, second life, short story, solitary life, virtual existence, wall-e fat slobs

by Jude Ellery

Good morning, world.

Good morning, four grey walls.  You used to be white but you haven’t been scrubbed in ever so long now.  The same goes for you, carpet, though you’ve gone brown in your old age.

Beep.  Ah, good morning, computer.  Flick, prod, good morning, television, good morning, radio.

Shoo, bright, horrible sun!  Quick, let’s roll over and close those curtains.  Aahhh that’s better.

It started with the neighbours and their clean shaven, smiling faces.  Not for me thanks, no siree.  Jeez, their incessant greetings of cheeriness every morning, noon and night, enough to drive a man mad!  Life’s tough when you’re surrounded by such idiots, loitering at the end of your garden path, or in the call centre, or at the supermarket.  In fact, I began to realise they were everywhere, there was no escape.

I needed to make a stand.  I alone could solve this.  I, the modern David with his virtual slingshot, David 2.0, slayed six point nine billion boring birds, a giant Goliath of ugly humanity, with one stone.

I stopped going out.

Aahhh, what peace and quiet!  Finally I can concentrate.

It’s not nearly as hard as you’d think, being such a brave pioneer like this, a modern day messiah.  For a start, there are all sorts of ways of making ends meet on the Internet, you know?  This SEO business isn’t half as complicated as they make out, and Google and Facebook and Youtube and the rest are all cash cows just waiting to be milked with the right bit of juicy HTML.

Click, click.  Hello, accounts.  Hello, money.

My monitor’s like a self-propelling slow motion fruit machine these days, I think I’ve cracked perpetual motion.  Sometimes I take a day off earning it to concentrate on my real work, my doctrine.  Other days I just sit and watch the numbers go round.

This poker’s a cinch with the right software too, it’s 90% automated really and the rest is easy percentages.  Let’s see, I think we’ll play… tight aggressive today.  Let’s shrink that down for now though, leave it running in the background.  What’s the clock say, almost midday?  I say, it’s high time for breakfast.

Like earning a crust, food’s not a problem either in my four-walled fortress.  Click, click, the pizza will be arriving in 30 minutes.  I leave the porch open and a note for them to leave it there, then listen till I’m sure they’ve gone before I reach around the door to collect my nutritious meal.  Hawaiian today.  Of course I’ve got a rota to make sure I don’t have the same flavour two days running.  Imagine the shame!  A pioneer like me must adhere to certain standards.

Beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep!  Ah, hello, alarm.  What are you for today?  The Arsenal match?  Oh good, starting in 15, that’ll give me time to order new bedclothes from Amazon.  These ones I’m snuggled under have got all stained and smelly since they popped through the letterbox last June.

What’s that noise?  Ahhh… Ooohhh…  Yeah baby…. Harder…  Oops, looks like I left the DVD running last night.  Let’s mute that till half time, I’ll watch it then, can’t stand that bloke in the studio in the tight grey trousers.  His mates aren’t much better either.  None of them deserve my ear, they’re not worthy.

Right, now just a matter of logging in, here and here and here and here, to dissect events as they unfurl and unleash my wisdom in real time.  Oh it’s the age of the instant alright!  Hello, Twitter, hello, Skype.  I shrink their webcam faces down though, can’t stand all their beady eyes.  It’s their minds I’m after.

Another forty followers overnight I see.  Gathering a little underground army here, disciples if you will.  These are the smart ones, they’ve seen the way, they listen.  We’re growing, us Morlocks, gathering profiles, usernames, avatars, quicker by the day.  It’s not about the money you see, it’s about the message, the lifestyle.  This is the Modern Way.

There’s a brief delay while the video buffers.  Ah, here they come.  Hello, team.  Peep!  Off they go.

COYG, 4-0 today.

WTF Walcott, I could have scored that.  

Yes, Sanjeev84, he is just pace.

Sanjeev’s over in India, he’s a sharp one, I see potential in him.  He’s gradually cutting down on the outside too, he’s almost there now, just braving the sun for fresh milk these days.

Ooooh close, good shot, good save.

I used to play a bit myself in my previous life, when I still went out, I was good.  Just couldn’t stand the rest of them, or that blasted sun.  My poor sensitive skin couldn’t either.

My hair’s nearly down to my nipples now.  That’s a good way of measuring since I gave up with haircuts and T-shirts.

Another four followers.  Welcome, brothers.

What a goal! 1-0 COYG.  Arsenal till I die.

NetDoctor reckons I’ve got another four years at least.  That’s plenty of time to spread the word, the Modern Way, even with this wicked diabetes aiming to shoot me down.

I say, that pizza disappeared awful quick, didn’t it?  Let’s order another.

Click.

Click.

Tap.

Tap.

Beep.

Beep.

……

…………………

What the…?

Oh bugger.  A power cut.

*

The Modern Way by Jude Ellery is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

Illustration by Tony Likes To Draw