Tag: comptroller

Day #28

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Payen: Pagan

Coppel: a shallow, porous container in which gold or silver can be refined or assayed by melting with a blast of hot air which oxidizes lead or other base metals

Antephialtic: (medicine) Acting against nightmares

—–

Freedo was weird; there were no two ways about it. I guess being his friend gives me special dispensation to label him so. He was the sort of weirdo who lived life vicariously through his computer, etching his existence pixel by pixel on forums, blogs, message boards – like a digital disciple. The Book of Freedo. He was the sort of weirdo who took antephialtic meds bought from the deep web to stave off the nightmares brought on by the stuff he saw on the deep web.

The lilac coloured tablets had screwed with Freedo’s circadian rhythm and now he was one of those people that, even though you’d made plans hours ago, would always keep you waiting. There was always some essential little thing on the cusp of being finished, a bit of coding here, a torrent download ratio to maintain there.

In fact, the only thing Freedo wasn’t late for were World of Warcraft raids. He took those very seriously. I never really understood the allure of screaming obscenities into a headset at some kid from China, but in Freedo’s defense, his Chinese was getting pretty passable. He was the only person I knew who would go out of his way to revise the pronunciation of insults. He said there was no point in calling someone a ‘monkey-fucking cock-sucker’ if they weren’t going to understand you.

But now Freedo had a new hobby: Bitcoin. He’d been introduced to it at some Hackathon in east London a few months back, one of those events hosted in unfinished, rented office space, full of guys with tumbleweed beards and illuminated by the wet glow of laptop screens like some kind of midnight payen ceremony. We’ll sacrifice this circuit board in the hope of a virus free summer…

So now Freedo barely left his house, like, at all. He sat in his room trying to mine bitcoins all day long. He called it his grand plan, described how after mining just one bitcoin he’d sell it for a packet, invest the cash in some start-ups and let the money roll in. It was a Generation Y wet dream. We both knew it wasn’t going to happen.

I was sitting on the end of his bed, selling him on the benefits of a post-1am kebab – or midnight brunch, as I was marketing it. He hadn’t moved his eyes from the screen for almost thirty minutes, face swallowed by pixels and hands fiddling with a smouldering circuit board. Freedo had yet to mine a single bitcoin, yet apparently he burnt through circuit boards as though they were joints, the floor of his room covered in them like Quality Street wrappers.

‘So what do you want to do?’ I asked, bored.

He pulled something out of a desk draw, a shallow metal dish.

‘We need to go and rob a bank,’ declared Freedo.

I thought I’d misheard him.

‘What?’

‘I need some gold to melt in this coppel,’ he said, waving the dish in the air, ‘I’m burning through too many circuit boards. The copper’s crap and besides gold’s a better conductor, they’ll last longer. So get your stuff, we’re going out.’

I’d never robbed anyone before, let alone a bank, so wasn’t entirely sure what to say.

‘…can we get a kebab on the way back?’

Day #1

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Words defined below, followed by the story.

Comptroler : A controller a public officer whose duty it is to examine certify accounts

Needlecraft: An article or articles created or assembled by needle and thread needlework

Spissitude: The quality or state of being thick, dense, or compact like coagulated blood.

——

When the needle fell to the floor from between thick, clumsy fingers, the Comptroller reclined in his wicker chair. Drumming his fingers on the wooden armrests, a dull ache accompanied each tap, the swollen skin like a spade hitting dry ground. He put his needlecraft on his desk and let out a hearty sigh. Across a thin balsa wood frame was stretched a taut, gauze like piece of cotton. Off-white, as though stained by cigarettes, it was an impractically thin sheet of fabric. But wasn’t that the point, he wondered. Thin thread, thin needle, even thinner canvas. It was all about delicacy. Control.

At the behest of his wife, who was concerned by his ambient tumble through life, he had agreed to take up a hobby. He’d thought long and hard, half-heartedly trying one or two things that had quickly fallen to the wayside, drifting past like tumbleweed. Eventually, she had coerced him to take up needlecraft, reasoning with the weight of experience gained through a long suffering marriage, that he could enjoy it from the comfort of his seat, moving little more than his fingers. He’d agreed that that seemed as good a reason as any. The callouses that quickly developed on the tips of his fingers reminded him of tiny snail shells – tough, impenetrable whorls.

He’d been working on this current piece for hours but like most things associated with innocuous middle-management, he had done so devoid of any real purpose, and as such the black thread coiled limply like a fossilized spider web at the end of unfinished words: ‘HOME SWEE’. He’d finish it later maybe. If not, then perhaps tomorrow.

It had been another quiet day in the office, not that many people had much need the finance department at a municipal park, and being one’s own boss meant priorities could easily be shifted. Who’d notice if the grass were a little long for a week? That was what it did – grow. He yawned, stretched, and cracked his knuckles with pleasure pain, an oxymoronic action.

The sun slumped through the windows, a spissitude of golden syrup that filled the room with lazy warmth, both comforting and tiring. Tiny comets of dust flared to life in the late afternoon, then faded like mayflies. The Comptroller’s eyes half-heartedly closed of their own volition, turgidly closing before flicking open again. Beneath, two bags hung like deflated beach balls.

He felt the seductive pull of sleep draw him in, mesmerised like a snake by an elderly, bearded Indian man in strange clothes. How did they do that? Control snakes with music? His head lolled. The insides of his eyelids were burnt a dull red by the sunlight and as he slowly slipped into unconsciousness the last thing that he saw was the pulsing of strange and unnameable colours. The needle lay on the floor and glinted.