“Yes, that’s right,” I said. “Is she here, then?”
The oik rolled his eyes. In the way that folks often did when talking to me. “Well, obviously she’s here,” he said. “Do you have your dialling code worked out yet?”
“Not as such,” I said.
“Which means ‘no’, because you can’t do the calculations, am I right?”
“You are,” I said.
“Good grief,” said the oik. “Didn’t they teach you anything at the Ministry?”
I shrugged.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you to the supervisor.”
“I’m fine here,” I said. “I’ve got to get this XP103 to the North gantry.”
“So why are you on the East gantry?”
“I was heading north,” I said.
“No, you weren’t. Come with me.” And he rolled his eyes again. And I followed him.
“Mr Baker,” said the oik, tapping a white-coated man upon the shoulder. “Mr Baker, the new bob here, who wanted to speak to his granny, he hasn’t worked out his dialling code yet. Is it OK if I show him how to do it?”
Mr Baker turned and stared at me. He was a man of middle years, perhaps in his middle thirties, and he looked strangely familiar to me. I was certain that I’d seen him before somewhere.
And, oh yes, I had.
He was one of those young blokes I’d seen in the restricted section of the Memorial Library so long ago. I did have a good memory. Sometimes.
“Go ahead,” said Mr Baker. “But make it quick. He only has a three-minute window. No longer, do you understand that?”
“Absolutely,” said the oik.
“Absolutely,” I said too.
“Follow me,” said the oik, and I followed him. He led me down a couple of stairways and along as many gantries. “This will really freak you out,” he said as he did so.
“I’m not easily freaked out,” I said.
“Yeah, right,” said the oik. “Everybody gets freaked out the first time.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why?” The oik turned and looked me in the eyes. “You’re either very brave or very stupid,” he said.
“I’m very brave,” I said. “Why?”
“Why? Because most people do freak out when they speak to a dead relative the first time.”
“A dead relative,” I said, stopping all short in my tracks.
The oik stared at me. And then began to laugh. People seem to do a lot of that too when they talk to me. “Oh, very good,” he said. “Very good indeed.”
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“No,” said the oik. “That was funny. Pretending that you didn’t know what FLATLINE was all about. You almost had me going there. Very funny indeed. Good gag.”
“I’m so glad you liked it,” I said, as my brain did cartwheels. Speak to a dead relative? That’s what he’d said and he’d said it with a straight face. And FLATLINE, that was out of hospitals, wasn’t it? When people flatline, they die. The line on the electrocardiograph goes flat. FLATLINE, phoneline? Phoneline to the dead? It made some sort of sense.
“I hope she coughs up whatever it is,” said the oik. “What do you want to know – where she hid her savings? It’s usually that. Mind you, I can’t sneer because it’s unoriginal. I did just the same when I had my turn. I asked my mum whether she really told my sister that she could have the radiogram. I really wasted my turn and I won’t get another one for five years. So I’m not going to be stupid next time. I’m going to ask my mum whether she had any pirate’s gold hidden anywhere. I hope you’ve come up with something good for your first go. Don’t mess up like I did.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said: “Do you think that’s fair? Just the one go, every five years?”
The oik drew me near and he whispered. “No, I don’t,” he said. “But when the service goes on line to everyone, we’ll be able to make as many calls as we want. So I suppose we’ll just have to be patient for now, won’t we?”
“I suppose so,” I said.
“Come on, then. Let’s get it done.”
“Right,” I said and I followed him some more.
He led me to a rather extraordinary thing. Not the sort of thing I was expecting at all. I was expecting some kind of Frankenstein’s Laboratory sort of thing. Lots of electrical lightning flashes and big wheels turning.
The oik led me to a telephone box.
A classic English big red telephone box. “Go on,” he said. “Go inside.”
“This is it?” I said.
“Of course,” he said. “What were you expecting, Frankenstein’s Lab?” And he laughed again.
“Of course not,” I said. “But about the dialling code?”
“I can’t see how you can forget something so simple. You dial in the full name of the deceased and the date of their departure. Then times the figure that comes up on the screen by the age of the person when they died and take away the year they were born and, wallah, you have your dialling code. Do you really need me to do that for you or can you figure it out for yourself? How hard can that really be?”
“Not hard at all,” I said. “I don’t know how it slipped my mind.”
“Probably because you’re a twonk,” said the oik. “Now go in, do it. Three minutes is all you get, understand?”
“Of course,” I said.
“And don’t think you can go on for longer. You can’t go over three minutes. When you reach three minutes a signal goes to the bulb booth on the ground floor and the bulb-monkey will switch you off.”
“The bulb-monkey?” I said, and I said it very slowly.
“The retard who mans the bulb booth.”
“Right,” I said and I said it through gritted teeth. “The retard, yes.”
“So, do your stuff, have your go and speak to your gran.”
“Right,” I said. “I will. Thanks.”
“Then get that XP103 in place.”
“I certainly will.” I entered the telephone box and the door swung shut behind me.
It was strangely quiet in there. Not that it was all that noisy outside. But in here it was quiet. It had a kind of peace. But there always is a kind of peace inside a telephone box. It’s probably all to do with “shape power”, all that “power of the pyramids” stuff. Certain environments are special and that’s due to their shape. I read about that once. About underground burial chambers that resonate certain notes, like chanting voices and suchlike. The ancients apparently knew all about this sort of stuff, but we in our educated wisdom have lost the knowledge.
But certain people, it appears, seem to know intuitively all about it – certain designers, like the man who designed the telephone box, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. He also designed Battersea Power Station and Bankside Power Station, which is now the home of Tate Modern.
He was a bit of a genius really.
My hand hovered above the telephone.
Dial up my granny?
Now, why would I want to dial up my granny?
I’d never even met my granny – she’d died before I was born – and I didn’t know the date of her “departure”.
So, really, I couldn’t call up my dead granny, could I? So who could I call? Who did I know who was dead and I could call?
Stupid kind of question really. Ridiculous question. The whole thing was pretty ridiculous. Ludicrous, in fact. Although … Well, although the oik wasn’t taking it as a joke. This wasn’t a joke. This was FLATLINE and this was what FLATLINE was.
My hand continued to hover.
And then slowly, so slowly, I took up the telephone handset and put it to my ear.
And then slowly, so slowly, and somewhat falteringly, I dialled the letters of my father’s name and the date of his “departure”. Then I multiplied the figure that came up on the screen by the age of my father when he died and took away the year he was born.