I Accept

If he could take his mind off the mitote for a moment, all Jett Nettlefield had to do was press “I Accept”. Actually, it wasn’t that hard to take one’s mind off the mitote. That incessant murmur of angels’ voices could always be drowned out with just the right amount of cognitive behavioural therapy.

They were new terms and conditions he was being asked to accept from one of the major corporations. It seemed like the whole world was talking about them. To say they were controversial would be an understatement. A lot of folk complained, notwithstanding the chips that they’d had implanted. It was creepy, a gross invasion of privacy, but in the end nearly everybody relented and accepted. The treasure trove of media on offer was simply too rich to forgo.

Jett was driving in one of the wealthier sectors of the conurbation in a brilliant car, a real humdinger of a motor that he had just taken ownership of. He’d worked hard and saved hard to buy it. His work ethic was so strong these days, unlike when he was younger. What an idle little loafer he had been back then before his moment of clarity and his redemption. That whole fraught process had taken several years. He was now in early middle age. Perhaps his best years were gone, but he wouldn’t want them back. Sam Beckett said that, he knew.

The car came with all the latest gadgetry, the newest wonders of the century. A truly space age affair though humankind had yet to land on Mars. In fact, no other orbs had been reached by anything other than robots since that trip to the moon in the late sixties of the twentieth century. It handled the road with ease as he joined a flow heading south towards the New Lands where the newer money had gravitated and clusters of nouveau riche McMansions had flowered (if that was the word) in what were former farmer fields. There was also a supermax prison that had brought a whole bunch of jobs.

Jett loved to listen to music while driving, but there was the rub: all he had to do was press “I Accept”. He so wanted to hear a particular song: Caledonia by the band Cromagnon from their first and only album Orgasm. It was a song he’d come across, randomly, online. It had captivated him: the arcane lyrics, the jarring, joyful, jangling tune, proto-Industrial folk black metal at its finest. He didn’t know what Caledonia was about, but he couldn’t stop listening to it. After that first hearing he’d played it incessantly for weeks. He often wondered if Paul McCartney had been influenced by it in some tenuous way when writing Mull of Kintyre. Cromagnon—now there was a band that had been ahead of its time. Like the moon landing Caledonia was from the late sixties of the twentieth century.

This new jazzy auto of Jett’s came equipped with a streaming service of top-notch connectivity. A human could have anything they wanted: comedy, every kind of music under the sun amidst the roaring traffic boom, pornography, snuff films, costume drama, sport, you name it. A friend had recently regaled Jett with a tale of signing up and having virtual sex: “Even better than the real thing, it was fucking mind-blowing!” his buddy had effused in a glow of post-techno-coital bliss.

These technological developments, it struck him, were beyond space age, they were golden age, as the sun struck his windscreen, and he put the visor down, so as not to be blinded, and he projected forth, this image of a man, this actual man, eh, “under organized power”, in space and in time, flowing as freely as he fooled himself into believing he was, in the traffic flow, in his new auto, going home. All he had to do was press “I Accept”.

But, he hesitated. He still believed—albeit tenuously—in personal autonomy, not to mention old-fashioned concepts like privacy, freedom and self-determination. He clung to these beliefs with whatever the mental equivalent of fingernails was. However, his line of employment, working for a corporation, Bugle, one of the foremost in the world, was quickly eroding his soul and his idealism—though, by way of compensation, it did pay well: witness the new car.

The aforementioned streaming service was now the most popular in the world; the revolution hadn’t taken long, nor had it been televised; instead, it had taken place on the net where millions of people had—among other things—utilised streaming for their personal media infotainment needs. And all those millions of mind guerrillas had—after an initial grumble—pressed “I Accept”. But, goddammit, much as Jett wanted to hear Cromagnon, the terms and conditions of the streaming service were simply too exacting to take. He was a man not a mouse. Nettlefield wasn’t some piece of data to be bought and sold. At times he was fervent (but only at times) in his beliefs. The most dystopian predictions of the prophets of the past had come to pass. Almost everybody these days had had the chip implanted from birth. There was no getting away from it. It was as routine a procedure in maternity hospitals as the heel prick test. But even after the chip was implanted, you still had to accept large chunks of legalese when accessing services etc. How the corporations cherished their reams of jargon. And this was where Jett’s rebellious streak—he was sure it came from a great-great-grandfather—came into play. The tales he had heard—all true by the way—of this antecedent had filled him with pride.

He wanted to be free of the thought control that he was all too aware regimented his mind. He just couldn’t bring himself to accept and thereby give this particular corporation access to his innermost thoughts purely for the pleasure of listening to Caledonia, and availing in general of their by all accounts terrific streaming service.

He drove on, struggling with his cogitations and wrestling with his conscience. No matter how badly he wanted the infotainment, right now he would not relent. The lad was not for turning. He felt like he was being asked to sell his soul to the devil, and he had absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for that malevolent entity.

On the work front, his boss had hinted that a spell at HQ would do Jett’s career the world of good. He was, though, dicing with spiritual death well aware that the majority of troubadours expire before reaching headquarters in Mumbai.

He could see the New Lands up ahead quite near—he would soon enter them—and the famed statue of the Seraph of the South towering on the right hand side, an artwork commissioned by the municipal government to honour the angels of the city.

He wound his way onwards. His new auto really was a cracking drive. Cro-Magnon, he thought, weren’t just a band. It was the name, too, for the first early modern humans from about forty-five thousand years ago. That was something he’d only learned when he went researching the single Caledonia and all this other anthropological stuff had spewed out from the search engine proving definitively the old saw that you learn something new everyday. He shot past the Seraph of the South. The traffic was moving well—his car like a panther, its alloys glinting in the light. The Seraph—a representation of something far older than forty-five thousand years—seemed to smile down upon him, at least that’s what he felt in the fleeting moment that he passed it. The angel’s smile made him all the more determined to resist the urge to accept the terms and conditions of the “benign” corporation in order to hear a song that had so beguiled him. As far as he knew there was no law against his receiving heavenly aid. But for how long could he hold out, even with divine assistance?

He stuck on the radio instead (it worked without signing up to anything), where a political talk show was ongoing. Ordinarily, he liked this sort of thing but it was music he needed right now to feed his soul and enhance his driving experience in his brand new wheels. He flicked the dial to a dad rock station which he found pleasant enough. The tunes blared. He was in the heart of the New Lands now. You could smell the money; New Lands, new car. A new house was his next aspiration. He hadn’t always been this acquisitive, but lately, seeing as everybody he knew was at it, he’d become utterly grasping. The buzz of the drive and the sight of the expensive houses in this upscale zone made him more determined than ever to acquire new material things.

He thought of the blood of the Picts from all those centuries before. His soul was at war with itself. Material urges battling spiritual desires.

A gorgeous woman in a red Cadillac with the top down drew alongside. Her hair was blonde, her eyes a piercing blue. She had that radio on, too, and a tight skirt which she pulled higher above her thigh enticing him to follow. Who’ve you been lovin’ all your life, he wondered, and pursued with an urge to get to know her. Her ringlets bobbed in the breeze. He would stay behind this car if it was the last thing he did. Suddenly she turned off the highway onto a slip road. He kept following. She stopped the car outside the gates of a mansion. He stopped some metres behind. She spoke into an intercom and the gates swung open. Nettlefield followed her in. They both parked in front of an opulent house. This was no McMansion. It was built with old money, older perhaps than the world itself. For Jett it brought to mind the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Nettlefield had visited it once while staying in Nice convalescing from a drug overdose. That trip to the Côte d’Azur he looked back on fondly. It was the beginning of his climb back up from the pit of addiction hell in which he had languished for too many years. But, of course, everything happened for a reason. Those hellish years had made him who he was. He believed that now.

The blonde turned to him as they got out of their respective cars. Her manner was warm. Like it was meant to be, the two of them entering this house together at that precise moment was the preordained natural order of things. “Hi, I’m Helen,” she said. “Let’s go inside. Mr d’Eyncourt is waiting.”

In they went. A butler guided them towards a drawing room and explained that the man of the house would see them shortly. Helen left at that point. Nettlefield overheard her in the hallway speaking to a man. The man’s deep voice said something about a registration plate. “I ran his plate. He can be of great use. He’s working at Bugle.” was as much as Jett could make out.

After a minute or two d’Eyncourt breezed in looking, for all the world, like a hammed-up version of Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind. His black moustache tapered to a slick curl at either end. He said nothing at first, let the blonde do the talking. She explained to Jett: “Mr d’Eyncourt is a collector of corpses. He’s assembling the Necropolis of the New Lands. He wanted yours or at least he thought he did, but he’s now changed his mind. You’re to be allowed back into the world.”

d’Eyncourt chimed in: “It’s not your time yet, Jett. Get out into the play of life. Have as much orgasm as you can. Helen and I can vouch for its tonic properties.”

Nettlefield needed no encouragement to leave. He fled past the butler most indecorously and out into his car again. He didn’t fancy in the least winding up as one of d’Eyncourt’s corpses. The Necropolis of the New Lands! What the hell was that all about?

He wanted above all else to stay alive for as many years as possible. Who knew what lay beyond? Life was like a wonderful party and he didn’t want it to end.

He wanted more stuff. He wanted to be rich. He would stick at his job and climb the greasy pole. It was all laid out for him when he thought about it. The boss had taken a shine to him and would see to it that he got promoted.

The corporation he worked for was as sinister as the streaming service. They needed subscribers too. He decided he would sign up. Scratch their back; comply with their strictures. He would accept. It was better than death at the hands of d’Eyncourt. He motioned the cursor to hover over “I Accept” and he finally did. He gave them the contents of his mind. The opening strains of Caledonia began. 

© Brian Ahern 2016