Read Online Generation A by Douglas Coupland - Free Book Online
Authors: Douglas Coupland
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Science-Fiction, Satire, Computers, Information Technology, Bee Stings
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stowing the treasure that was my bee inside the thin drawer of my desk. With hindsight, I see that this was not a particularly smart idea, but then you must understand the wrath of Hemesh and his unceasing quest to win his weekly bottle of Johnny Walker Red.
It was perhaps an hour later when I sensed that something was wrong. I asked Indhira in the cubicle beside me if she thought something strange was happening—she agreed, and then she determined the cause: no flights were coming into or leaving from our next-door neighbour, Bandaranaike Airport. Then our cellphones ceased to function and our Internet access turned to an error message. Hemesh was predictably angered as he watched the gods of mischief partying all night on a bottle of whisky that ought to have been his. He screamed at us to remain seated until we knew what was happening and rushed out.
I have insubordinate tendencies, and I got up and walked over to the guava bin for a snack. I glanced out the side door and saw perhaps fifty men in white biohazard uniforms, as well as perhaps a dozen Sri Lanka police officers in gas masks encircling the building. Three of the policemen were arguing with Hemesh, who probably decided at that very moment to do something grossly inappropriate such as fetch a package of cigarettes from the elastic map webbing on the inside door of his light chocolate 1984 Mitsubishi Delica L300. Whatever it was Hemesh was arguing about, he was definitely losing. When he stepped outside of the ever-shrinking military ring surrounding our building, they shot him and he fell onto the coral-coloured dirt in a sack-of-potatoes way, dead before he hit the ground.
At this point, I added up all the 2+2s of the past hour, then made a dash for my desk and the drawer that held my bee. I sat on my chair, opened the drawer to take a look at it, then slammed the drawer shut just in time to see scores of rifles pointed my way. Arms raised, I nodded towards the bee; a visitor in white quickly scooped it up. I was then marched out of the building and into the parking lot, where a Russian Mi-24 Hind helicopter was landing.
Here is what happened next: three haz-mat workers grabbed the edges of a translucent condom-shaped body bag. They motioned to the policemen, who poked my kidneys with their rifle muzzles, and I stepped into the bag. Its upper seal was then twisted shut and I was loaded into the helicopter like a poorly-taped-together package. We then roared off the call centre’s depressing weed-choked parking lot. From within my condom’s translucent tip, I looked down upon the world. I looked at the piggledy mess of city streets, brocaded and still unmapped by Google—as if we in small Asian cities don’t notice these things—and I remembered the silted monsters coughed up by the waters in 2004. I remembered all the things I usually don’t let myself remember about my dreams: things that weren’t supposed to happen but do, places where anything is possible, places where I meet Gwyneth Paltrow and a big Dalmatian dog, and together we explore air-conditioned castles.
I looked down on Trincomalee and felt awkward and small—a chunk of disgraced meat at the end of a phone line, forced by the global economy to discuss colour samples and waffle-knit jerseys with people who wish they were dead. Is this a world a holy man might deem worthy of saving? What if there was a new Messiah—would he coldly look at atmospheric CO 2 levels and call it quits before he began? Would he go find some newer, fresher planet to save instead?
Oh Lord, I am tired. I am tired of thinking of the day of the sting over and over, and thinking of what I might have done differently. Up there in the Russian helicopter, I felt dead and then reborn, like I’d taken a drug that would forever change my brain. Before I passed out from a quick jab of a somnipen, delivered by a young epidemiologist named Cynthia, I felt like the fetus at the end of the film 2001 , signifying everything
It was perhaps an hour later when I sensed that something was wrong. I asked Indhira in the cubicle beside me if she thought something strange was happening—she agreed, and then she determined the cause: no flights were coming into or leaving from our next-door neighbour, Bandaranaike Airport. Then our cellphones ceased to function and our Internet access turned to an error message. Hemesh was predictably angered as he watched the gods of mischief partying all night on a bottle of whisky that ought to have been his. He screamed at us to remain seated until we knew what was happening and rushed out.
I have insubordinate tendencies, and I got up and walked over to the guava bin for a snack. I glanced out the side door and saw perhaps fifty men in white biohazard uniforms, as well as perhaps a dozen Sri Lanka police officers in gas masks encircling the building. Three of the policemen were arguing with Hemesh, who probably decided at that very moment to do something grossly inappropriate such as fetch a package of cigarettes from the elastic map webbing on the inside door of his light chocolate 1984 Mitsubishi Delica L300. Whatever it was Hemesh was arguing about, he was definitely losing. When he stepped outside of the ever-shrinking military ring surrounding our building, they shot him and he fell onto the coral-coloured dirt in a sack-of-potatoes way, dead before he hit the ground.
At this point, I added up all the 2+2s of the past hour, then made a dash for my desk and the drawer that held my bee. I sat on my chair, opened the drawer to take a look at it, then slammed the drawer shut just in time to see scores of rifles pointed my way. Arms raised, I nodded towards the bee; a visitor in white quickly scooped it up. I was then marched out of the building and into the parking lot, where a Russian Mi-24 Hind helicopter was landing.
Here is what happened next: three haz-mat workers grabbed the edges of a translucent condom-shaped body bag. They motioned to the policemen, who poked my kidneys with their rifle muzzles, and I stepped into the bag. Its upper seal was then twisted shut and I was loaded into the helicopter like a poorly-taped-together package. We then roared off the call centre’s depressing weed-choked parking lot. From within my condom’s translucent tip, I looked down upon the world. I looked at the piggledy mess of city streets, brocaded and still unmapped by Google—as if we in small Asian cities don’t notice these things—and I remembered the silted monsters coughed up by the waters in 2004. I remembered all the things I usually don’t let myself remember about my dreams: things that weren’t supposed to happen but do, places where anything is possible, places where I meet Gwyneth Paltrow and a big Dalmatian dog, and together we explore air-conditioned castles.
I looked down on Trincomalee and felt awkward and small—a chunk of disgraced meat at the end of a phone line, forced by the global economy to discuss colour samples and waffle-knit jerseys with people who wish they were dead. Is this a world a holy man might deem worthy of saving? What if there was a new Messiah—would he coldly look at atmospheric CO 2 levels and call it quits before he began? Would he go find some newer, fresher planet to save instead?
Oh Lord, I am tired. I am tired of thinking of the day of the sting over and over, and thinking of what I might have done differently. Up there in the Russian helicopter, I felt dead and then reborn, like I’d taken a drug that would forever change my brain. Before I passed out from a quick jab of a somnipen, delivered by a young epidemiologist named Cynthia, I felt like the fetus at the end of the film 2001 , signifying everything
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