(Reuters)
THE FIFTH COLUMN
As the ministry of silly hats disintegrates gently, scattering a fine dust of ash as it goes, a few of us remain to man (sorry, person) the battlements, to oil the catapults and so forth.
We have been issued with oversize safety suits, including headpieces of unprecedented ornamentality: this is required to accommodate and to arrange, in the correct configuration, the necessary cabling if we are to make full use of our government-mandated and NGO-certified self-contained computing helmet equipment. Basically, we try to feed all the information into one place, and then keep it contained there until it becomes useful to … well, it is not clear to whom it becomes useful, for that is in the future, and as we know the future is unknowable.
The protocols of the elders (and the juniors) of helmet compliance have sent some odd, experimental squeaks our way — these reverberate still, pinging disconsolately within our helmets’ glossy inner coating. We assume this means the feedback system works.
The pings and their echoes go on like radio waves that, the chat show long since over, are still proceeding — heading for somewhere in outer space, where they may perhaps one day rendezvous with a bit of dark matter left over from the last nova event.
But let us not be distracted by speculative ruminations. It is our duty to deal with today’s realities: to fix our helmets atop our security suits and head out into the nuclear winter where, among the half-crushed ruins and the pedestrians frozen solid in attitudes of alarmed scurry, we may take some readings.
Through and out the tunnel, into the bleached white day, and at least there’s a watery kind of sunshine glinting on a few broken pipes.
“Comrade Z, can I get a reading?”
“Yeah, yeah” — sounds of fat boots scuffling over tinkling metallic gravel — “but all we’ve got here are the usual …”
“The usual what?”
Clunk, stumble, bzzt, bzzzzt … “What? Fuck … What?”
“Come on, Comrade! Get yourself together! We’re on a mission here!”
“Yeah, yeah, right … Okay, sorry. You there, Comrade Y?”
“Yes, yes. Hearing you loud and clear, Z … X, you online?”
“Yes,” says Comrade X. That’s all he ever says.
“Sorry, I slipped,” says Z. “Nothing here, just the usual … A few muttering ghosts. No signs of a struggle …”
“That all, Comrade Z?”
“Okay, a ghost dog too.”
“Ah, there’s a ghost dog.”
“Yeah …”
“What’s he say?”
“He’s silent. Just looks at us. Big eyes. Now and then he licks his … er … chops? Licks his chops?”
I can feel the computer in the helmet going Mmmmm, mmmm … something about chops, licks, chock, flicks … No, not that … It goes on computing, with a little flutter of its electronic eyes.
Blue tremors, silver dots — something connects, somewhere. Ping … Must be a piece of information popping into place in the precise slot, made to fit it, in the matrix. Lovely. Makes it all worthwhile, really.