Episode 2: Playing With Yourself

It was unseasonably wet, and much of Southern England had ground to a halt as a result of serious flooding. Central Oxford has escaped the worst, but was still a damp and dreary sight that late July. The rain came in sporadic bursts, made even more unpleasant by the warmish temperature which turned everything moist. And not in a good way.

“I’m glad that’s over”, said Emotion Brain. “I seriously thought she was going to get hysterical in the middle of the Woodstock Road.”
“She did have some reason for it – a bus service that’s meant to run every 15 minutes shouldn’t leave you standing for nearly an hour”, said Adult Brain in her usual reasonable tone.
“Especially not when there’s noodles and chicken satay waiting!” added Fun Brain. “Cruel bastards.”
“It’s lucky that Julia was there,” said Emotion Brain. “She has some special knack of cheering the Human up.”
“She cheers me up, too.” Knickers Brain murmured. “As do James and Greg. What a lovely dinner it was.”
“Calm down, Knickers. We need to concentrate on the film”, Emotion Brain warned her. “And I can’t see that even you can find any objects of desire in The Simpsons.”
“Well,” she mused, “Mrs. Krabappel’s not half bad…”

***

The film was, of course, a resounding success. Clever Brain had fun explaining the jokes to Pietro, Fun Brain nearly wet herself several times and finally had to be put to bed with an ice-pack, Knickers Brain enjoyed the close proximity which only a cinema seat can give, and Emotion Brain was overwhelmed by just how damn happy everyone was. Even Adult Brain let her hair down for an hour. It was only afterwards, as the Human wended her way home chatting to James, that they noticed a conspicuous absence.

“Where’s Tech?” asked Adult Brain.
“That’s a good point”, said Knickers Brain. “I haven’t seen him for ages. What’s he up to?”
“I saw him earlier, somewhere around Broca’s area, I think”, Emotion Brain contributed. “I was, yet again, dealing with excess swear-word requisitions at the Language Department. That incident with the stubbed toe took us well over the acceptable limits.”
Clever Brain volunteered to go and search for their missing colleague. “I like the Language Department Gnomes”, she admitted. “They tell me very useful things. Did you know, for example, that the collective noun for vaginas…”
“…it’s “a clutch”, surely?” said Knickers Brain with a twinkle in her eye.

***

Clever Brain was visibly shaken when she returned. Emotion Brain sat her down and made her a strong cup of hot chocolate, with more than a small dash of Amaretto, while the others gathered around and listened to her story.

“I wandered around for a bit, chatting to the Language Gnomes”, she told them. “They said that Tech’s been spending a lot of time in the Reading Department, and I went there to see if I could find him. The door was locked; he must have been intending to keep the Gnomes out, but I let myself in with my master key. It was creepy. He’d knocked out the Reading Elves somehow; they were all curled up, snoring. And when I got to the inner office, I saw what he’d done. The computers are all rewired, and Tech had this wild look in his eyes. I asked him what was going on…
“I’m sick of all these crappy detective novels the Human’s reading”, he said. “Either they’re set in medieval times where the most technological thing in sight is a sheep, or they’re modern but full of incompetents who can’t work their cellphone and get their forensic computing done by nerds who are never even acknowledged by name. It’s just killing me! I need some proper books, where computers are gods and the techie is the superhero.”
He was almost in tears by this point. It’s obviously really been getting to him.”
“Poor love”, Emotion Brain murmured. “If only I’d been more attentive, instead of spending all my time on the swearing forms.”
“So, what’s he done to the Reading Department computers, then, Clever?” Adult Brain asked.
“He’s reconfigured them, so that the signals they send the Human are to read nothing that doesn’t have a high technology content. There are posters of Jean-Luc Picard and Sergei Brin all over the walls, he’s changed the doormat for one that says “There’s no place like 127.0.0.1”, and the Charles Dickens codec has been completely disabled. Not permanently, I hope, but I’m not sure.”
“I guess that explains why the Human’s been reading so much sci-fi recently”, Fun Brain offered.
“That’s true – she’s even talking about writing a book about it. My God – how could I not have noticed that something was off?” Clever Brain put her head in her hands.
Adult Brain looked thoughtful. “Let’s not be too hasty about this”, she said. “After all, it’s not often that an academic comes up with an idea for a project that people will actually want to read. It might even sell.”
“God forbid!” said Clever Brain. “That would throw academia into complete anarchy and break all the established rules of the universe. Tech may have precipitated the End of Days with his meddling…” Her head fell on the table, and she was silent.
“Oh dear”, said Emotion Brain, rushing to help her unconscious friend into bed. “She’s a little overwrought, I think. When she wakes up, we’ll give her a Sudoku to do and she’ll be right as rain. And now”, she added, “we’d better be off. I’ve just heard from the Nervous System bods that Tech is on his way to the Eating Department, and he’s planning to rewire the whole place to accept only cold pizza, Pop Tarts and caffeine drinks…”

***

Next time… A trip to Wales, and the Human discovers Scrabble