Conundrum

  *********

  Opening his eyes to see a postcard stand splayed across the shop floor, John let out a deep breath. 'Thank God,' he thought, 'It was just a dream!'

  A freak gust of wind had blown into the newsagent's shop and swept the revolving stand off of its metal feet.

  John had nodded off behind the till.

  He walked around the counter and hauled the stand back onto its feet. Gathering up the cards and putting them back into the slots, he returned to his position behind the counter. “That's today's excitement over,” he muttered under his breath. It seemed little wonder that his mind had plunged him into some kind of 'James Bond style' scenario in a desperate bid for some excitement. Revolvers and interrogation seemed a million miles from the 38-year-old's job as a shop assistant in the pretty Kentish town of Tenterden.

  It was an idyllic little place to live and work, nestling upon its ridge of hills, with rows of vines leading down to the lower ground in some directions, and woodlands shielding the town from the outside world in others. Yet John longed to escape the banality of shop work. Or any kind of work, come to think of it!

  'Why is life so full of things we don't really want to do, and the things we really enjoy are crammed in almost as an afterthought?' he mused, 'We spend all this time slaving away making and selling things that people don't really need, and for what? - Just to keep the silly system going that keeps me stuck here behind this till for eight hours a day. A million years of evolution and this is as good as it gets. If I could somehow find success with my amateur film projects I could leave all this and live!'

  Just then John's vortex of thoughts were disturbed; “Morning John, twenty menthols please.” John reached behind and grabbed the pack of cigarettes from the shelf behind; “Seven pound twenty please.”

  “There you go.”

  “Thanks. Two pound eighty change.”

  Grabbing the white and green packet the male customer added, “Nice day today. Rain tomorrow I hear. Cheers.” And with that he was gone.

  John slumped back down in his seat. He could imagine a big syringe sucking the lifeblood out of him each week from Monday to Friday, then rushing around at the weekend, trying to squeeze pleasure out of his favourite activities, such as plotting out his film script or shooting a few scenes with his modest video camera, in the hope that he would be topped up again before the giant needle reinserts on Monday morning. He longed to know what it was all about, where all this repetition was leading, and similar to the end of a Bond film, he wanted to meet the man behind the all the madness, challenge him and finally bust out of the whole thing.

  “Morning,” chirped a well spoken lady, slapping down a copy of her favourite glossy magazine upon the counter. Sugar syrup encrusted photos of a celebrity's wedding beamed up at John from the cover.

  “Morning madam. Three forty please.”

  “I've only got a twenty pound note. Sorry.”

  “No worries. I've got plenty of change at the moment. There you are.”

  “Thanks very much.”

  'No weather related chat that time!' thought John.

  Yes, life was an endless series of pleasantries, greetings and aimless meteorological observations with just a smidgen of 'How was your weekend?' on Mondays and a dash of 'Got much planned for the weekend?' on Fridays. In fact he could pretty much predict who would come through the door at any hour of the day, what they would buy and what the accompanying small-talk would comprise of.

  'There's got to be more to life than this!'

  And so John commenced a survey. Every day he would write a line of numbers upon a sheet of paper and keep it next to the till in order to record the conversations of every customer. A standard purchase with no chat would be listed as a zero, weather chat would be listed as a one, weekend related chat would be a two and anything truly original, random and interesting would be a three.

  By ten o'clock on Monday morning he had an impressive tally in front of him – 0 0 0 2 0 1 1 2 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 3 – ah yes, the 'threes' were the best. This one was by old Jack McFernell who had just read Stephen Hawkins' 'A Brief History of Time.' There was a theory about the entire universe being a four dimensional ball, with the big bang (when the universe began) at the top, and the big crunch (when it all falls back together at the end of time) at the bottom. Old Jack had deduced that once you realise that you are just a collection of particles, you can understand that the entire history and future of the universe is really just a globe in four dimensions and that each particle is mapped out to be in a certain place at any given time.

  Now this was interesting because it meant that although we think we have freedom of choice, ultimately there is only one way things can ever be. No fame and fortune for John; not unless it just happened to be that way. The idea eliminated the need for any mastermind controlling things altogether. No '007' style showdown after all!

  Tuesday's tally began with 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 2 (a belated 'two' at that) 0 1 3 – now, what was this one? Of course, the lady who plays Scrabble a lot. She always told John of any new words she'd discovered during the course of her thrice weekly Scrabble competitions. Today's was FRUG, which was an energetic dance in the sixties, apparently.

  'I wonder if I can get that into a script,' thought John, 'Actually people just want the same old four-letter word these days. No imagination!'

  And so the week went on. There were four 'threes' on Wednesday – now that was a good day, for John's boredom had been broken by no less than four excursions into randomness.

  The shop was called Isabelle's and it was located at the quiet end of the wide high street, with a grassy verge outside. Isabelle did weekends and evenings and John was employed to man the fort on weekdays. His sense of being trapped wasn't helped by the fact that everybody he encountered seemed to be much more prosperous than him; completely contented with their lives and bandying about their flashy career titles with pride.

  John, on the other hand, felt he was just existing, paying the bills to live in his rented bedsit alone, while dreaming of making a movie that people actually liked enough to dig into their pockets a little and get him out of that confounded shop!

  'They are trying to drive me mad with boredom,' thought John, 'This is like an experiment to see just how much one human mind can take!'

  Then a funny thing happened. As John started his tally for the second week, the exact same sequences began to repeat, not just in a loose fashion, but precisely.

  Monday was '0 0 0 2 0 1 1 2 …' - just the same as last week; Tuesday was '1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0...' - ditto. Logically, this would be possible if the exact same people had shown up in the exact same order, but they hadn't. Monday's 'three' this week was the 'Scrabble lady', while the 'Hawkins guy' didn't pop in until Thursday and this time he was a boring old 'zero', with “Cheers. Have a nice day,” being the only pleasantry offered. Just what was going on? Were these people in on some kind of elaborate hoax, designed to send John into a state of paranoia? Just who would orchestrate such a thing?

  By 'Week 3' of his survey John was worried.

  The same sequence of conversations was repeating day by day yet again. Suddenly John's sense of isolation didn't seem so odd. He had always felt that life was some kind of game and that everybody else had been let in on the rules apart from himself. Now he had concrete proof. Something sinister was clearly afoot.

  He had never made his anti-establishment views about modern life any kind of secret. Most people in the town viewed his ideas as an odd but harmless little quirk, but just how would the government, any government, view John's little chisel marks in the edifice that their whole world was built upon? His swirling mind had reached a conclusion that somehow those in high places had got a whiff of his views and he was now unwittingly the guinea pig in some kind of experiment.

  But then, if he could just have the comforts that others seemed to enjoy in the small country town, maybe he would be less inclined to rail against the system – their system. Could they n
ot see that this experiment to drive him batty was perpetuating the opinions that had made them view him as a threat in the first place?

  'Typical government hypocrisy,' thought John.

  Suddenly, he remembered his dream of several weeks ago; if he really had become the victim of some kind of government experiment, just how far would they go? Just how much of a threat did they think he was? Could the kind of experience he'd had in that dream end up closer to reality than he thought?

  By Tuesday of 'Week 4' John had had enough; 'Whatever is going on, I've got to get out of here.'

  At 5.30pm his final 'zero' walked in, the same as the last three weeks, and for all John knew, maybe the last three years that he had worked at the shop. Today it was Jimmy from the secondary school, but of course, it didn't matter who it was, the people were surely just actors playing out a script dictated by the powers that be.

  John had decided he would not be working tomorrow. Instead he would be going on a long hike to attempt to unscramble his mind. He set the alarm for 6am as usual and put on his best croaky voice to call in sick; “Morning Isabelle. I'm sorry about this [cough] but I have gone down with a flu thing. I went to see the doctor after work last night and he advised me to take the rest of the week off.” He had no idea how he was going to prove this blatant untruth when he returned to work, if he returned to work, but for now that seemed the least of his worries.

  Isabelle disguised her annoyance at having to go in and man the till herself (or maybe I should say 'wo-man the till'); “OK. Hope you feel better soon,” she intoned, and with that the phone went dead.

  John rolled over. 'I've escaped the system,' he mused, as he closed his eyes again. Best of all he had already booked the following two weeks off as holiday, so he now had the all-clear for a much needed 19-day sanity break. Bliss.

  When John finally got up, he glanced at the scraps of paper covered with dates and numbers, still scattered across the dining room table. Then he moved his gaze over to the rucksack which he'd packed the night before, sitting invitingly next to the pale yellow wall. On the table was insanity; by the wall was freedom. He grabbed the rucksack, flung it on his back and walked out of the front door into the morning sunshine, and breathing in the fresh air, he felt alive for the first time in months.

  It was as though he could finally see the world as it really is. The town he had lived in all his life looked like a postcard, with people happily going about their business, unaware of the systems and mechanisms that controlled them. The sound of human chatter seemed as natural as the sound of the birds chirruping in the trees as he passed the recreation ground. The ubiquitous wood pigeons were the loudest, as ever.

  It was as though having this little break had twisted the focus control on his telescope and suddenly the world was sharp and crisp, just as it had always been when he was a child.

  Soon John was well and truly out into open countryside. At this point, the thought of returning to work, with the anticlimactic feeling that inevitably follows any break, crossed his mind for the first time. 'Every enjoyable thing is paid for later,' he thought, 'A holiday is always followed by an anticlimax, unless of course you have the money to live one permanent holiday, pursuing your own interests at your own chosen pace.' But for now, John was content.

  Spring had always been his favourite season. The colours were so vivid. There were the garish yellow fields of rapeseed, which most of John's customers professed to despise because it made their eyes run and noses itch, but as John's trail pummelled its neat, narrow line through the chest-high crops, he felt surrounded by bright colour. In the distance he could see the white presence of Woodchurch windmill, standing proud upon the hillside, reflecting the morning sunlight.

  Then it was onward into woodlands, where the floor was carpeted with bluebells. It was like walking through a living paint-chart.

  And then there were the sounds: Animals scurrying among the leaves in the woods, and birds, each making their own distinctive call in the trees, like football fans chanting their anthems repeatedly to let people know who they are and what they stand for. The hum of a distant tractor was the only human input to this aural tapestry.

  This was freedom.

  It was deep in the next wood that John noticed a small, white building hidden behind the trees. 'How peculiar.'

  Tentatively he wandered over, trying not to create too much noise as he stepped across the leaves and fallen branches.

  Pushing his way through some dense, leafy bushes, he felt a little like Dr Livingstone, trekking through the jungle. Then the shape of the building became clearer; it was a single-storey, white-painted block, probably only big enough for one room inside. There was a blue door and no windows.

  The door had to be locked, surely?

  John twisted the round handle and, sure enough, the door opened.

  Inside it was dark, but there was just enough light to observe that there was a shelf running around the remaining three walls of the room, and maybe half a dozen computers all linked together upon it. 'How bizarre!'

  John took a step inside and looked around for a light-switch but couldn't see one. Just then the door swung shut with a loud bang and John's heart began to pound, as he was now in pitch-darkness.

  'Oh my God! It's just like that dream – it's really happening,' he panicked.

  He felt around for the handle of the door to open it, but there was no handle on the inside – he was trapped.

  'I've got to get out of here before they come and find me,' he thought, reaching in his pocket for his mobile phone, 'Who can I ring, and how would I get them to find this place?'

  The phone lit up his tiny corner of the room as he scrolled through the names in its memory, but looking at the top of the screen he could see that there was no signal. 'Damn countryside,' he thought; his plan was scuppered.

  Suddenly a strip light in the ceiling flickered into life, with that irritating hum that always accompanies this. What on earth was going on? It was then that John realised he was not alone.

  On a stool to John's left, in the corner of the room, a grey haired man had been sitting all along. He stood up, and John could see that he was smartly dressed in a jacket and trousers with a black tie. Was he a government official? Was he 'tooled up?' Was John about to be interrogated for daring to question the system? Now that John was playing the part of the secret agent, he was shaking with fear and wished only to be back in that shop dishing out confectionery to the masses.

  “Morning,” said the man confidently.

  Not expecting such a benign greeting, John was taken aback. “Er, good morning,” he ventured, not quite reaching the same echelons of assertiveness in his tone.

  “Not at work today then?” asked the man rhetorically.

  “No. Day off,” answered John.

  Giving nothing away, the smartly dressed fellow switched on one of the computers.

  As the screen lit up, it revealed the image of a ball, comprising of tiny, orange lights, scattered in a seemingly random fashion. The man could zoom in by holding the right mouse button down and back out with the left button. As he scaled in on the image, it became apparent that each orange light was actually made up of lots of other tiny, orange lights, like galaxies made of thousands of stars.

  John remembered that conversation in the shop about the Stephen Hawkins book and the theory of the four dimensional universe. Is this what he was looking at now?

  “Interesting model, hey?” posed the man.

  “Er... yes,” replied John, “What is it? A computer model of the universe?”

  “Kind of,” came the reply, “It's a computer model of your universe – your entire life from birth to death.”

  John knew he would have to be careful. This was clearly the hub of whatever government operation he had become a victim of, and the last thing he wanted was to say the wrong thing and find things turning nasty. Incredulous to what was going on, John decided to play along, “So you're saying that everything that happens t
o me and everything I do is already planned out on this computer?”

  “Got it in one,” said the man, showing some form of emotion for the first time, “Your birth is at the top of the globe and your death is at the bottom, and all your actions and experiences are mapped out between.”

  So he was right – free choice was just an illusion and he was merely an actor performing his life to a pre-ordained script, just like one of the characters in the short films he was always making.

  “So who designed this?” queried John, bracing himself for an answer that he clearly wasn't going to like.

  “In short, you did,” smiled the man.

  John almost choked on his own breath trying not to laugh, “Now come on. I live alone, my job is boring me to death and most of the people I used to know have moved on. I would not design my life this way in a million years!”

  The grey haired man smiled; “You came to us after you lost your fortune and said that your life was out of control and that you felt that there were no rules governing what was happening to you. You said that you wanted a steady income for the rest of your life and time to pursue your hobbies, so we enabled you to find something along those lines by tweaking the model a bit.”

  “What are you talking about? I've never had a fortune,” John spluttered.

  “Got a touch of amnesia?” smiled the old man, “I forgot, that always sets in when you leave this place. Remember the screenplay for that film you took to Hollywood – 'Changing Fortunes' or something wasn't it?”

  “Changing Fortunes?” mumbled John. He looked up; “Have I been living some kind of double life?”

  “The problem was the second film you were commissioned for was canned. By then you'd given much of your money away to charity, burdened by the guilt of owning so much while others suffer. Pretty admirable of you, but the repeated success you anticipated never came. You wandered here, as you so often do, and asked to return to a more simple life, but with complete order and all random chance removed. The only thing we couldn't alter was your ambition.

  If it were a game of chess this would be checkmate. It was that old chestnut, 'Be careful what you wish for; it might just come true!'

  Trying the pragmatic approach, John at last formulated a sentence from his diffracted thoughts; “But I don't remember coming here before.”

  “Nobody remembers coming here. What do you think made you choose the particular route you took out of Tenterden today? You could have gone in any direction you wanted to, but you chose this one. When life gets too much for you, you always choose this direction. You go for a long walk to clear your head and you end up here.”

  “How many times have I been here?” asked John nervously.

  “At the present count, five. Once when each of your parents died, once when your girlfriend Eleanor passed on five years ago...”

  “Took her own life, you mean,” interjected John, “She jumped off the top of a lighthouse!”.

  “You came again three years ago when you were overwhelmed with the movie making life, and of couse now.”

  “I need to sit down.”

  The suited man grabbed the stool from the corner and swung it round behind John.

  “So what happens now?”

  “Well, you sit down for a bit, I make a few adjustments that will introduce an element of randomness into your life, I enter the code that opens the door and you wander back out into the woods and forget all about this.”

  “Why must I forget?” demanded John, “It's kind of annoying. At last I find the man behind the curtain pulling all the strings, and then I have to go back to puzzling over why things are the way they are, feeling that things aren't quite right for me, at least not in the way they are for other people, and never knowing why.”

  “To know the secrets behind your everyday life would be to know the mind of God. If you went back out there with this knowledge people would dismiss you as insane.”

  “Well, hold on a minute. If you can basically control whatever happens to me, can't I return to my former life? At least let me get something positive out of this!”

  “Unfortunately I don't have that kind of control. I cannot make people rich or successful. All I can do is make minor adjustments to the program that has already been written.”

  “So you're saying that somebody else has designed this model for me?” John's tone was growing impatient.

  “No. I am saying it is what it is, and that the basic nature of things cannot be changed.”

  John let out an indignant sigh; “Huh. What a swindle!”

  “I'm afraid so,” said the man, running his hand through his thinning grey hair, “Well, maybe we'll meet again; maybe we won't. I could delve into this model and find out for sure, but it takes the mystery out of life don't you think?”

  John nodded in a resigned way.

  “And,” added the old man, “I know your job is pretty dull, but I don't think doing those number surveys is helping you.”

  “Oh,” said the increasingly drained shop assistant.

  And with that, a few numbers were tapped into the keyboard and the blue door opened.

  “Er, well, cheers for whatever it was you did,” added John, as he stumbled back into the daylight, mostly with a sense of relief that he had not been presented with a loaded gun or the threat of physical violence.

  The old man waved a silent wave and the door closed again.

  John pushed his way back through the trees and rediscovered the footpath he had been following through the woods.

  Just then a rook called, followed by a wood pigeon, then the rook again, then a woodpecker and then the wood pigeon.

  '0, 1, 0, 2, 1,' thought John.

  Like the man said, he couldn't change the basic nature of things; John's statistical way of viewing the world was here to stay!

  The first cuckoo of the year then called.

  That was a 'three!'