CRC

The cyber rock cafe
by Samuel Ramratan. First published by the Corall.

There were tens of people hanging around an embellished entrance to the
lecture hall where Adams Amaze was due any minute now, to deliver one of
his famous motivation seminars. True to his reputation and hopefully true
to himself, Adams appeared, walking in a brisk manner, ready to be on
time. He looked neither left nor right but when his way was cleared he
handed out brief nods. Reaching the front he turned swiftly placing his
slim tan leather attache case on the wide steel table, then announcing,
I am Adams Amaze and we have only just begun.

I had been hoping for some easy tips on stretching a buck, but instead
Adams Amaze started talking people talk peppered with the idea that
finding out what was useful to them was important. His remarks drifted
to people networks but the scene which was passing through my mind, all
theater like, was announcing lots of focusing time and very brief moments
of leisure. I looked around. Who was going to be busy for the next five
years? A few cheery faces seemed intent on something, some were annotating
their computer generated notes. Mine was on, but nothing substantially
complicated was coming to mind so I too could use my annotate function.
Sometimes when bored scared, fiddling with the zoom from my camera
helped. Some halls offer better camera service via your wireless adapter
making play space available with its software controls. This hall was
equipped with one but it was not operational - no official Adams word on
that. A middle aged man with reddish grayish hair got up and left. I
guess he got five hundred bucks worth considering he was gone thirty
seconds before the half-time show. I thought of following him and making
this story about him instead, imagining he must have had something pretty
important to do rushing off like that missing all the tasty cakes. Think
he likes cakes? I prefer biscuits but I gobble cake. When we returned
from break, I took his empty spot.

Information these days travel faster than you can shout across a room
but when seeing something coming you don't need email or iconic
signalling for it. What I had seen coming was another firing, which is
well deserved for rotten journalism, earned off the cuff, but misplaced
for ill conceived attitudes. People come up on you, install themselves,
park their virused butt, then after wandering off for a bit, return and
wonder why they are no longer their old selves being blind to the fact
that their neural networks have been substantially changed. I saw through
most of their attitude changes, the opening ups, the coming outs, the
drunk gazes, showing up during those irregular hours, eavesdropping
quarrels over their journalistic qualites or lack of them, all leading
towards rifts with our boss surging finally to what was about to take
place. I am not doing this in front of that janitor, Max Webster cried
at Hank Sr, the Boss. Me, I protested, me, I am the caretaker not the
bloody janitor, you are off your rockers, you, the journalist with
problems. What, he lashed out, eyes glaring with something other than
love for his fellow human, how dare you say that, Max Webster shot out.
Well, I replied. calmly, you are off whatever you were on, for about five
days now. Max, Max, this way, this way, out of earshot from all the
prying ears, cautioned the Boss, motioning at him at the same time,
while throwing suspicion on my all round character.

So I am a pretend journalist and the only reason why I was able to attend
Adams Amazes pep talk was because I had found the tickets dumped in the
bosses garbage. Yep, I am a caretaker, a special type of janitor, that
cleanup guy. Over the years, the staff sometimes tried calling me Jacques
but I would have none of it. Then they used James, after it became jooms,
by that time Jack the ripper was not far off so I complained to Hank Sr.

After that fella, whats his name got fired, the whole crowd huddled
together as if they wanted some kind of group hug. We won't get fooled
again, but I knew someone else would be slip sliding away soon. I had
seen it happen so many times so that now it's just the Boss and I, left
from the first set of people working at The Corall, everyone else was
told to beat it. Back in those days I would clean up the coke stained
colored glass covering for his desk, but he was only editor then so he
had felt obliged to leave me tips. I was just lucky to have met the
owner John Cash by accident and after leaving him with an impression
that I was capable and capacititous, he offered that janitorial job.
Public toilets scare me with their odious mixtures so after some time I
managed to relieve myself of those duties. I have been here twenty-nine
years now and I am still looking early thirties. The man who gave me that
break, Mister Cash, did something really helpful to me at the early age
of seventeen, but had set me on to the chain gang. I wasted most of those
years toasting the office girls and later cheering up the office women.

I received email at work from Whocheemama asking for my commitment to
a committee overseeing the development of a cyber-talk show. I pressed
the I agree button and waited. Later that day I received another email,
this time from ChrisTingle who wanted my support for people oriented
Web based chat rooms. The two mailing lists were mutually exclusive
once I was excluded, as I found out at the first two meetings. I was
the only one on both lists, intersecting two sets of ideas which were
both derived from one Adams Amaze motivation talk. I felt special seeing
two things emerging from one sane idea but it helped seeing I sort of
had the same idea myself about live cyber rock cafes presenting web
discussion groups among other things.

Money, international exchange, gateway to an easy life, investment
capital, people magnet but money meets its match with skill or
character. I seen it back at the Corall when many had told the Boss
to take his job and shove it. I had seen the Boss shove it too,
inadvertently, late one night, when my heart skipped beats recognizing
who it was asking the Boss for it. Good thing I turned away, it makes me
feel good I am not a pervert. That way I can tilt my head whenever
conversations turn towards perversion, but I find myself an object of
ridicule or scorn once I advance perversions of known perversion, which
turns into arena fever leaving me feeling like I'm going through the
desert on a horse with no name.


Money, world-wide exposure, quorum-rating, franchising, panel selection
and retention, audience verification, oversight judges, but censors were
the biggest concern of both groups. Frankly I was surprised at the
diversity of ideas each group had produced but differently by virtue of
their grouping. It was as if someone with sympathy for the devil had
placed me there to oversee my generations drive for expensive expressive
liberties. It was a sure mop up, easy when a heartbreak beat readies
itself. I showed them it all, how my world is empty without you babe,
and with local hosts springing up all around, some with new exciting
ideas, others with reworked ideas, all vying for the NOW-moment WEB
market share, people will play that concept to the end. They liked it
and with those outlines in place it was time for investment capital. I
told them both to email me when adequate investment was obtained since
excitement was stirring up at the Corall.

What had been going on other than more frequent coffee spills was a
lawsuit directed at the editor-in-chief and his boss over a series of
news items they had published, obviously approved by management, about
the activities of a certain pop star, Major Tom. Photos of him commencing
some form of suspicious activities had been leading the readership into
believing that he was turning his engines on illegally. I was watching how
the events unfolded with much interest. I was thinking of how the cyber
rock cafe would benefit from scandals like these. I am really hoping that
people would like to air their views unscrupulously publically. Major Tom
was himself no stranger to love or the court system, himself known as a
sex bomb. His integrity had been on trial for many years since his debut
on the rock charts. Known as a wild thing during his meteoric rise to star
fame, he later became famous as a survivor on the rock scene after some
thirty years of the life. Some say he went clean but nobody knows for
sure. There was that song running through my head, baby, love me like a
cannibal, by The Veggies, keeping me thinking how Adams Amaze had started
off two threads of basically the same thing but heading in different
directions. I held up my hand in a V sign pushing the mop round and round
as we go, while the smear staff stood by, watching as I did my thing.
Someone had paid the Boss a handsome sum to smear two certain female pop
stars, Evitera and her sister for five weeks. It was an anxious time
because these girls have money and the word going around was Tom and
others like proud Mary, were saving on taxes by spending in the courts,
and favoring their teams of lawyers. They had some right to be nervous,
that staff, but as I told the boss these unreliable nuts were shaking
nervous. He told me they were suffering from some of the many
under-performing syndromes going around society right about now.

Readership of The Corall would never need a professional philosophical
argument or even a robust logical proof so that they could jump to
conclusions concerning any kind of feeling. Either that or they could
convict a target before the second paragraph would be half way through.
There were several convicting styles used by the general staff. Most of
these styles were created by me when the staff was in dire straights,
dangerously close to our famous firings. The principle was usually
simple and straightforward, confuse the readers. As an example, Snake pit,
is a style celebrated by its usage of thumbnails, all at good sharp
angles, revealing an imaginary hierarchy like a Gettier job, arranged in
ways suggesting something the editor is saying but cannot clearly say.
Smear campaigns are usually based on someone wanting to say something
like Jamies' got a gun or Ellie, you were caught at Hotel California,
which could be followed by I can't get no clarification. With so many
celebrity couples never seeming to reach their pot of gold some
eventually like to smear their exes with oooh she's so, eats like a
pig, fat.

The last sleaze journalist I liked whose charisma was dull dull, had
called me up to say I love you. I grumped a bit because she had not
contacted me for a few months and seeing she was in charge of the
relationship after its initial brief explosion I felt off pace. Every
man has his own hunting pace but at times emotional humanity based in
the collective takes over accelerating the crowning pace. Like I said
I had made up some convicting styles to save some butts and I had saved
Lonnies' sweet Lil butt by styling the slam dunk in true Corall form.
Until she had become famous among sensationalist journalists, Lonnie
had slept with me continuously every night, that was more or less after
4am when I got home. Her answer for later was busy but why didn't I
answer her emails because she needed my services. F, bitch, janitor all
over my face again, but it was her way of repeating her gratitude by
making me barman, barbiequeuer and the after hours job. Sometimes there
would be a spare space cake to munch on but many other times I went home
by myself.

When I checked my email, it was full. One from the Boss, two from Lonnie,
and five from both whocheemama and ChrisTingle. I only use an eight slot
box with one reserved port, of course for the Boss, since he's the one
paying the big bucks for it. Sometimes I think that our bodies are like
some of those celestial bodies which move from gravitational mass to
electrical mass. Yeh, I read about the mass translations in the celestial
scheme of things in an article by some nut who couldn't be published in
real press so he sent it to the Corall. Calling himself Na Boodie, he
claimed the environment to make emass from gmass is many times more
sophisticated than the world we experience when moving one type of energy
say electrical energy into a different form like mechanical work! That
is why I feel light headed sometimes and my body goes light on me, I am
sure the brain can create similar conditions electrifying itself using
gravitational mass translations. Yeh, if too intense people call it SHC,
spontaneous human combustion. Very bright that, electrical heat being
more dangerous to humans than gravitational heat! I was feeling like
that now, wondering how long can I occupy the two cyber rock cafe
positions without being emotionally torn. I am deathly afraid of invoking
those flipping conditions so I am careful about my own head conditions.

I got a light headed idea to introduce the two groups to each other
because neither had enough capital but together they could bring the
cyber rock cafe into reality avoiding any mental perturbations on my
part. Another quick heat escape, surprising thing was I did my job for
both whocheemama and ChrisTingle by getting the Boss to let me write
my first piece for the Corall about the coming of the cyber rock cafe.