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 The Night Shift  (26 ratings)by Paul A. Ogilvie Page 1 of 10 [Warning: Adult content. Do not read if you are under 18 and/or if it is illegal in your area to do so] It was about four in the afternoon in the middle of
January and dark already, with the first snow of the year drifting down
outside,
turned piss-yellow by the streetlights. I had been up for half an hour, though
work didn't start till eight. I work the nightshift. It's not easy, sleeping
all
day. In the blood and in the bone we belong to the sun, that's when our genes
tell us we should be up and about, killing mammoths, hitting rocks together,
screwing Raquel Welsh, things like that.That's what our genes want us to do. Genes can be beaten, genes can be changed, but it costs a lot of money. I don't have a lot of money. Instead I do it by drinking too much coffee at one end of the day, and too much booze at the other. Dinosaur juice, that's what they're calling alcohol these days, dinosaur juice. Or at least they did six months ago. They probably call it something else now. Dinosaur juice, prehistoric kicks for all the cavemen. I'm a caveman. I'm over twenty-five. I'm thirty-three, and when you're thirty-three life happens elsewhere. The place needed cleaning up. I put the dishes in the washer and the clothes in the machine, then cracked open a window to try and get rid of the smell of dead cigarettes. Then I sat on the sofa and lit a cigarette. Prehistoric kicks . . . Life is easy, life is simple. You want life to be easy? You want life to be simple? Get rid of the girl or get rid of the guy. Life will be simple. Enough of that. I made a cup of coffee, took one mouthful then washed the rest down the sink. I stubbed out my cigarette half-way through, then lit another twenty seconds later. Nothing satisfied. To kill time, I played with my pets. I have two pets. One is an alien I keep in a fish-tank beside the TV. A real alien, too, not one of these fancy new modified jobs you see on documentaries from space. It was a Martian. The Martian was an iridescent jellyfish smaller than my hand. Slow waves of activity quivered and pulsed through it, and it glittered in the red light I had in the roof of the tank. The Martian (I had never come up with a name, or been convinced that jellyfish were worthy of one) was six years old, and had spent every one of those six years just sat there, pulsing and quivering, sucking nutrients from the water. They live for centuries, and they're the most boring pets in the world. But they are real aliens, grown up in the subterranean seas of another world. My other pet is Nigel. Nigel is my TuringPal. "Wake up, Nigel," I said. That was the signal to turn him on. "Good morning, Dobey," Nigel said. He had a powerful voice. That was because he spoke through my stereo speakers, and I have a good stereo. "It's the afternoon," I said, making another cup of coffee. "Really?" said Nigel. "God, how time flies when you're locked in a hellish electronic limbo, unable to see or hear or speak, praying that your owner will choose this second, or the next one, or the one after that, to indulge whatever perverse whims compel him to torture you like this." "Have you been reading books again?" I turned on the TV and flicked through the news channels. Nothing much had happened. Just the usual. There was still a limited-technology civil war going on in New Mexico and Texas. Another ultra-famous rock group (Nuke City Rats, if you really want to know) had been machine-gunned on stage by a couple of loony fans. Greg Handel, this month's Prime Minister, had been caught giving the Brazilian ambassador a blowjob in a Soho fuzzy-club. Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2001 Paul A. Ogilvie, sffworld.com. All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author. The author has submitted the work in accordance with and in agreement with the following Submission Guidelines. |
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