Chapter 7: b-mail
After Professor Botwing’s speech had fired their imaginations towards grand ideas of heroism and discovery, Tom and Stella felt let down at the sight of the large pile of paperwork strewn across Gladys’s cluttered office.
“Where does all this stuff go?” Tom asked in dismay, looking at a precarious stack of files.
“I’d just move it from one side of the room to the other, my dear. Yes, right there, by the pot-plant, just to give it an airing. Will you look at the time? I should really check my b-mails.”
“Don’t you mean e-mails?” Tom asked. He was very good in the IT lessons at school and spent a lot of time at home in front of a computer.
“No, no, my dear, b-mails. Now open that window and let them in.”
“I think you mean e-mails,” Tom said, in his worst know-it-all voice that he often used to correct the less technically minded teachers, who seemed to have problems turning a television on.
“You don’t need to open the window to let them in. They’re electronic signals, sent through the internet. Where is your computer?” he asked, searching Gladys’s desk.
Amidst the piles of paper, he could only see an ancient slab of a typewriter, some framed pictures of many-limbed toddlers (often with jam smeared all over their faces) and a chipped mug with ‘To a Super Gran’ written on it. On a filing cabinet, there was what looked like an old gramophone player, complete with trumpet for the sound and an arm with a needle pointed just above a stack of old vinyl records.
“I don’t know what you’re saying, dearie, but it sounds like you’re a bit confused,” Gladys said, patting Tom on the head. “Your friend is a bit slow, is he?” she whispered to Stella.
“Never mind, dear,” she said to Tom, in an exaggerated slow and loud voice. “It took a bit of time for my Richard to get to grips with his school work, too, bless him. But he turned out all right in the end. The world would be pretty boring if we were all clever clogs, now, wouldn’t it? Would you like a biscuit to cheer yourself up, dear?”
Tom grumbled something under his breath about old people not understanding technology, but he did take a biscuit before going to the window. “Ugh! Are you sure you want me to open this?” he asked nervously. “There’s a load of bees banging against the glass.”
“Course they are. It’s chilly out there,” Gladys said.
“But I didn’t think there were any bees around in winter,” Stella said.
“Yes, they’re normally on their hols by now. But these ones wanted the overtime.”
Tom opened the window and shied away. He had been stung earlier in the summer by a wasp and had formed a mistrust against anything with a sting on it. The bees buzzed into the office and flew straight to the gramophone and disappeared down into the flared trumpet.
Stella and Tom rushed to investigate.
“What are they doing in there?” Stella asked.
“Delivering the messages,” Gladys said.
She opened one of the drawers to the filing cabinet, to reveal a honeycomb. Dozens of furry yellow and black bees were crawling through small wax hexagons.
“Bees are telepathic, you see,” Gladys explained. “Every hive, no matter which planet it’s working on, can relay a message to another hive. They’re such clever little things.”
“You mean you can speak to them?” Stella asked. “But I can never understand them. They’re not like animals or even birds. I sometimes think that I can catch the odd word, but I can’t make sense of it.”
“Well, you wouldn’t, dearie, each bee is just a little piece of the hive. They’re so small they can’t carry a whole message all by themselves. They split it up between them and send it out. The bigger the message, the more bees it takes to deliver it. They come altogether to one of these Bee-Communicators.” Gladys gestured to what Tom and Stella had thought was an old record player. “We call them BCs for short, dear,” she said to Tom. “This is where the message is put together again, and if we’re lucky, we get some honey as well. Isn’t modern technology wonderful?”
“I knew it!” Tom exclaimed. “I always thought that bees were aliens.”
The turntable of the record player abruptly spun into action, and the arm lowered its needle onto one of the black discs and started to vigorously scratch grooves into it. Out of the trumpet came a chirruping sound, and then a cloud of glittering smoke poured into the office and shaped itself into the image of a cheery face.
“Oh, look, it’s from Doris,” Gladys enthused.
The face peered around the room and began to speak in a loud sing-song voice. “Hello, Gladys. Doris here. Hope U R well. I am well, but little Gemma is feeling a bit peaky. Must meet up soon. Remind me to bring some of my jam. Colon – dash – closing bracket.”
The face began to fade as the glittering smoke stopped billowing from the BC’s trumpet.
“Oh look, she’s sent an attachment,” Gladys said.
The needle began to scratch more frenetically on the disk, and black shavings showered into the air as the disk began to disappear and something seemed to be growing in the middle of the turntable. The spinning was too fast to make anything out clearly until, with a click, the arm rose away and the turntable slowed to reveal a lifelike sculpture of a kitten, with a bow around its neck.
“Yuck!” Tom said.
“Ah. Isn’t it sweet? I know it’s not work, but it does put a smile on your face.”
The trumpet emitted another chirrup, and the turntable whirred into action again. This time the cloud that came out of the trumpet was a crimson red and spelt out the word ‘URGENT’ in flashing letters. A stern voice boomed out, “EXCLAMATION – PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL – TO DOCTOR WILBERFORCE DODDS: FROM JERBIL-DIN.”
“Ah, I think that best wait for Doctor Dodds,” Gladys said hastily and placed a huge rubber plug into the mouth of the trumpet. “Anyone want a nice cup of tea?” she asked, as she guided Stella away from the BC. Stella couldn’t take her eyes away from the wispy remnants of the flashing URGENT sign. It caused her to feel a heaviness in the pit of her stomach. She knew that the b-mail had something to do with her.