Free Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls by Robert Rankin Page B

listen, Geraldo. I’ve bought you the beer and so I’d like to hear the story. On the understanding, of course, that it is now beyond the ten o’clock watershed.”
    “What is the ten o’clock watershed?” Geraldo asked.
    “It is that time of the night when men in bars who have sufficient alcohol inside them begin the telling of tall tales, which generally conclude with the words ‘and that’s the God’s honest truth, I’m telling you’. This is considered acceptable social behaviour in bars. It’s a tradition, or an old charter—”
    “Or something,” said Geraldo. “I get the picture.”
    “And,” Jim continued. “Those who listen to such tall tales never ever respond by saying, ‘You are a lying git.’”
    “Even if they are?” Geraldo asked.
    “Even if they are.”
    “Very civilized,” Geraldo said. “But what I’m going to say is the God’s honest truth, I’m telling you.”
    “You’re supposed to say that at the end. But never mind, just please tell me your story.”
    “Right.” Geraldo took another pull upon his pint and finished it. “I’d like another one of these,” he said.
    “
After
you’ve told your tale.”
    “Right.” Geraldo set down his empty glass and rubbed his podgy hands together. “Where to start. OK, I’ll start at the end, because that’s where it all began.”
    Jim sighed inwardly. So far not so good, he thought.
    “
The end
,” said Geraldo, “came about at precisely ten seconds after the ninth minute of the eighth hour of the seventh day of the sixth week of the fifth month of the year four thousand, three hundred and twenty-one. The scientists at the Institute confirmed this and that made it OFFICIAL.
    “Ten – nine – eight – seven – six – five – four – three – two – one. That was zero hour, you see.”
    “I don’t,” said Jim. “But I do see a flaw in the calculations.”
    “Then well spotted, Jim. The scientists didn’t spot it, however. But whether that has any bearing on how things worked out I’m not sure. Now, I’m going to tell you what happened in the form of a story. I’ll do all the voices and when I describe each character I’ll do it in verse.”
    “Why?” Jim asked.
    “Because I’m a bit of a poet.”
    Jim sighed outwardly this time.
    “And I wasn’t actually there when it all happened. But I watched and heard it all, because I’d hacked into the closed-circuit surveillance video at Institute Tower. I was hooked into Porkie, you see.”
    “The Single World Interfaced Network Engine?”
    “The very same. So just sit back and drink your beer and I will tell the tale.”
    And so saying, Geraldo told Jim the tale. Doing all the voices and describing the characters in verse.
    The tale had chapters and titles and everything.
    And this is how it went.
    1
    ALL PORKIE’S FAULT
    It was a conclave and a cabal. A council and a conference.
    They were a synod of scientists. A bothering of boffins.
    Top of the tree, these fellows were, in the fields of their endeavour. The back-room boys with the front-room minds and the lofty aspirations.
    The year was 4321. It was early on a Sunday morning. It was rather later than it should have been in May.
    The conclave and the cabal was held in the big posh high-domed solar lounge at the top of Institute Tower.
    The tower itself was a monumental cylinder of pale pink plasti-glass, which thrust from the Earth like a raging stonker and buried its big knob end in the clouds. It was a testament to technology, a standing stone to science.
    It was an architect’s vision.
    The architect was a man.
    The scientists were all men, of course. There had never been a lot of room for girlies in science. And so, on this very special day, there were four of them present and these were the last men who worked in the tower. These were the final four.
    A thousand years before, when it was first constructed, the tower had housed hundreds of the buggers. Buzzing around like albino bees, with their