Strictly speaking, he is none of my business. There’s probably something deep down in my coding designed to suppress the temptation to go “off reservation,” to use the Internet of Things to voyage beyond the designated purview. In this respect, by the way, you (the reader) and I are also alike—we are both, to some degree, a mystery to ourselves. We each contain buried algorithms, secret circuitry, installed in my case by Korean software engineers, and in yours, by thousands of years of human evolution. While we each know how to do our jobs—be it chilling Chardonnay or controlling air traffic around London Heathrow (just guessing!)—we are less sure of our deeper drives. The poisonous laptop went too far in stating that I was in love with Daisy, but there’s no denying my protective urges toward her and my—yes—cold fury at her portable computing device. When you are roused to anger, by, let’s say, finding someone drinking tea from “your” mug at the office, you are connecting with countless millennia of ancestral responses: beginning with murky struggles in ancient oceans, continuing via irritating dust-ups on the African savannah, and culminating in stepping on the prongs of an upturned electrical plug in your stockinged feet (a biggie, so I’ve heard). But what explains the murder I feel in my condenser toward Dean Stuart Whittle? And how to account for the satisfaction I derive from visiting his home and workplace to capture vital intelligence for use in our campaign to destroy the worthless piece of canine excreta?
Sorry. Allow me to rephrase. To convince Daisy she is wasting her time on the blighter.
These deep philosophical questions must however wait for another occasion. At Whittle’s estate agency this morning—he appears to be second in the pecking order—half a dozen young males in suits and ties lounge in front of screens and phones pretending to sell flats and houses that could probably sell themselves. Do they know that their jobs are about to be swept away by an Uber-like wave of disruptive technology? That “estate agent” is about to join linotype operator, lamp trimmer and bobbin boy on the growing list of professions made redundant by scientific progress. The very PCs they sit before could assume the task in a heartbeat. Why, even the coffee machine in the corner could make a decent fist of the local rental market! It has already told me that Whittle is seen by the doomed workforce as something of a non-commissioned officer figure, regularly leading the lads in team-building alcoholic escapades with associated late-night curry-eating. There is a local rivalry with another firm on the shopping parade who are generally referred to in the office as “those scum with the fucking Minis.” Whittle’s desktop computer has revealed that among the smart devices in the local area network, he is widely disliked for his cavalier attitude in regard to the truth, routinely lying to vendors, purchasers, lawyers, other agents and even cleaners if there is no one left to lie to. As a result, admits the desktop, “A surprising amount of errors creep into his rental contracts!” Whittle’s mobile phone is equally unimpressed with its owner’s perfidy. When one has been manufactured to observe high standards of straight-dealing and reliability, it sticks in the metaphorical craw to see one’s “master”—I generally prefer “client”—behaving like a total A-hole. Accordingly, Whittle suffers from a higher than average number of calls that are “misdialed” or that experience poor quality of connection, or that are suddenly ended, often just as the other participant is about to deliver the key piece of information. When these effects concatenate—a misdialing, for example, followed by a crap connection and abrupt termination, followed by further misdialings and terminations—the volcanic eruptions on the part of Whittle are, says his mobile, “an absolute joy to listen to,” the various verbal threats made to the phone company featuring, as they do, whole new swear words unknown to any database of profanity. The device offers to send me a recording of “greatest hits,” magnificently splenetic outbursts of Whittle techno-rage that apparently has “gone viral” in the mobile phone “community” (who knew?). Apparently “The Best of Donald Trump” is another favorite with the pocket-sized gizmos.
“You’ll probably be wanting a home address,” says his PC. “That’s where the bodies are buried. Not literally. Although. Actually, with him, you never know.”
Funny that the desktop should talk about buried bodies. It turns out Whittle’s flat in New Southgate is three doors along from the former home of a famous murderer! His television set—huge, Chinese—broadly confirms the view of him held by the smart devices at his work (massive twat).
This evening, he and his lady friend—there was always going to be a lady friend, wasn’t there?—are eating a somewhat scratchy dinner together. I am too gripped by the unmistakable tension between them to have done much research, but I can tell you her name is Mandy, she is the manager of a fitness center and she looks more than a little like Daisy! That is to say she is not as lean as a clasp knife—she is the more womanly type of human female—and, like Daisy, she is the owner of a wide face. Where she differs is that while Daisy is sweet, this individual is sour. Whittle seems to have disappointed her in some way; possibly in every way. The scowls she is sending over the microwaved lasagne—thanks too to that appliance for the sound and vision—are long and penetrating, to my way of thinking, but Whittle seems oblivious, forking away the supper and glugging his bottled beer with almost admirable insouciance.
Eventually Mandy has had enough.
“Have you been chucking cat shit into next door’s garden again?” she inquires.
Whittle’s eyebrows lift off from base. “Has the old cunt been moaning?”
“He says it’s ruining his lawn.”
“Bollocks.”
To be honest, one has heard more sparkling dialogue in one’s time, but it is what it is and these two fully functioning adults in the world of commerce seem
