The synchronicity bomb

Professor Manny Hague, chair of applied statistics with one of those horribly obscure little Oxford colleges which only a few well placed academics in equally obscure little colleges throughout the world had ever heard of, fumed at the neatly typed but grammatically disturbing demand notice in his hand.

‘IMPENDING CIVIL ACTION.’ It said without any punctuation. It went on to detail, in appalling English, the heinous crime of parking in the wrong place at the wrong time, it wanted money.

The money wasn’t the issue. As ‘chair’ of said obscure little college Professor Hague made eighty thousand a year for going to work three days a week, he made another eighty thousand sending letters and papers to other obscure foundations and businesses throughout his version of the known world, his books brought in several tens of thousands more and if he fancied a long warm holiday almost anywhere in the world  one of his secretaries arranged a short lecture tour in the target zone and someone else picked up the tab. He was however, at the moment, utterly consumed by the thought of having to send these jumped up little tossers £75 for abandoning his beloved and ancient Roller, in a very absent minded professorly manner, in the wrong parking slot after a busy night in ‘the club’. His contemplation of the issue was ably assisted by a large malt from his bottom drawer and after coming to a decision, and the end of his malt, he huffed his way through to his secretaries’ office and threw the demand onto the desk of the older of the two women demanding “Deal with that, and make sure I don’t pay them a bloody penny!” Feeling quite macho after shouting at an old women he upgraded his huff to a flounce and was halfway down the corridor before realising that there really was nowhere to which he wished to flounce. After a moments contemplation he muttered. “Pub.” and went on his way.



Three weeks later his secretary, the older one who had, over the years, developed the nerve to actually knock on his door, did so and  entered. She waved a letter at him.

“Professor, it’s from ‘Terra Firm Parking’, they want their money. And it’s a hundred and fifty in another week if you don’t pay.”

“I thought I told you to deal with that!” He squealed from behind a small but well paying pile of papers.

“I did… and yet.” She said gleefully waving the letter in the air.

“Write to them again and threaten legal action.”

“It’ll do no good Professor, they simply don’t care. As long as most of the people pay up most of the time they can afford to carry on harassing the rest, it’s fun, I’ve done it myself. Eventually you have to pay or we, they, take you to court.”

“Actually Marjorie, I think you’ll find that statistically, if enough people stood up to the blighters at the same time,” He actually twiddled his moustache as he spoke the word ‘blighters’. “they would soon go out of business.” Melanie rolled her eyes and smirked.

Not content to let a mere secretary have the last word, even if the word was not actually a word the professor said. “Well I’m a Professor of applied statistics and you are a secretary, I know whose opinion my money is on. Before this is finished one of us is going to wish they hadn’t started this particular fight.”

“Shall I write to them again then Professor?” Asked Melanie.

“No Marjorie, give it here, I’ll do it myself.” She handed over the letter and returned to her office.

“Is he still calling you Marjorie?”

“Oh, always and forever. Did we ever get round to asking IT to get rid of our read access to his files?”

Marjorie, the younger, real, Marjorie, executed a few deft key strokes at her computer. She looked up smiling. “Nope, still there. Anything in particular you’re looking for?”

“Oh yes, I want to keep an eye on his war on ‘Terra Firm Parking’, it’s brewing up to be quite a bit of fun.”



Another three weeks passed before the Professor again graced the ladies with his actual personal presence.

“Melanie.” They both looked up aghast.

“Yes Professor.” Replied Melanie.

“Not you…Melanie.” He indicated the younger woman. “Sort me a trip to Las Vegas will you. I need to speak with a friend of mine out there.”

“Area 51 again is it sir?” Asked the real Melanie.

“Don’t be facetious Marjorie; there are no decent hotels there.”



“This is a fabulous place Hank, beats the warehouse you used to have up top.” The Professor sincerely complimented the hideously American academic opposite. The General, who had completed his academic degree, whilst never actually opening a book, on his Uncle’s Texas ranch relaxed further into his beach chair and casually indicated the huge underwater lake complete with waves and a hundred yard beachfront.

“This little thing? It’s a microclimate system we’re trying out for the Moonbase. We’ll get congressional approval in a couple of years once the link between arthritis relief and low gravity gets properly established in the consciousness of the rich and powerful.”

“And, of course, when those arthritic ablatives you keep spiking their Vino with have had chance to work.”

“That’s a dirty rotten rumour, oh and don’t drink the Chablis at tonight’s little shindig, especially the ‘04’.” They both laughed and Major General Hank Finnegan, professor of stealth and weaponry for the Whitehouse, reached for the recently opened second bottle on the table. He poured them both a generous glassful and, throwing the now empty bottle behind him for a minion to clear up later, relaxed back into the chair.

“So, what can I do for you Prof? You sounded desperate on the phone, something about the ‘war on terror’?

“Ha, close, it’s a parking company called ‘Terra Firm Parking’. They want money out of me for a bit of creative parking I did with the Roller. By the way, what was it you put in the petrol tank when you came over? I haven’t filled the bloody thing up in two years.”

“Nor should you Prof, I told you, expose that stuff to the atmosphere and your pension plan goes to the cat’s home.” They both laughed, the Professor more nervously than the General, they drank some more wine.

“Anyway Prof, time is money as they say, and mine’s about spent up, gotta party to organise, drinks to spike and camera’s to check.” He waited patiently as the Professor gathered himself.

“I saw some research one of your guys published on the Undernet a couple of months ago, a little black box with a few switches on it, makes strange things happen?”

The General looked conspiratorially to one side and then the other, obviously forgetting that he was in undoubtedly the most surveilled spot on the planet.

“Did you see the jumping bean experiment?”

“The one where they all jumped together once the machine was turned on.”

“Uhmm, almost correct. True, they all jumped together but we quickly figured out that they only did it when the machine was on and the operator willed them to.”

“Telepathy enhancement?”

“Something of the sort, we’re not quite sure, but maybe you could have a look at the data and give us your opinion.”

“Give?”

“Sorry prof, is there something we can do for you?”

“I want to Borrow the Artefact and if not borrow, at least see it in action.  I have a parking ticket and a plan”



The automatic doors whispered shut behind them and they walked out onto the edge of a massive rock ledge the size of several football fields, the doors were almost silent but they could easily be heard above the utter, stunned silence of Professor Hague.

“This is huge, I can’t see the bottom, the top or the sides, how big is it?”

“It’s the rest of the microclimate system.”

“How did you?”

“ It was one of the artefacts we retrieved from the polar expedition. You Brits got a couple when our backs were turned didn’t you?”

“I know nothing General.” The professor replied with a smile. They began walking towards a makeshift compound of temporary buildings. Guards saluted them and technicians looked the other way in a clear and determined attempt to avoid one of the General’s utterly pointless and ill informed questions which were generally designed to impress the many visitors he regularly brought to the most top secret place in the USA.

“After a couple of weeks one of the tech guys found a well hidden button to press and much against protocol and qualifying actions for a long and fulfilling life, pressed it. He quickly realised the shit was hitting the fan when the thing emitted a powder blue force field which began to eat the table it was on so he ran for cover. Six hours later we had the hole upstairs, complete with ocean and beach, and the artefact was nowhere to be seen. It took us three days to find the bloody thing and shut it down. There’s another hole below this one which is where we actually found it, but really weird things happen down there and no-one will go in again until we figure out how to stop the first team from talking backwards. We think it may well have hollowed out the entire planet if we hadn’t got to it when we did, they were brave lads.”

“Brave lads.” Echoed the Professor with a sage like nod of his head.

“This is the lab.” The General pointed to a particularly shiny prefab aptly marked with a sign that said ‘LAB’.



“When is he going to make his move Hank?”

The General chuckled, arms folded across his chest, well, as far across the huge expanse of prime Texas lard as they would go.

“He’s got it. We never saw a thing. He asked to borrow it and when we said ‘no’ he stole it” The other, equally large General, the one with almost as much medal ribbon as uniform, opened his beady little eyes wide, well quite wide, in surprise.

“That’s impressive, how do you know he’s got it?”

“We’ve been testing it every hour since he got here, at 18:06 it worked, at 19:03 his visually exact but non-functional replacement artefact didn’t. He’s put some serious effort into this.”

“Ok Hank, what next?”

“We wait.”

“Won’t he get suspicious when we don’t get upset that it’s gone? Surely he can’t think we wouldn’t notice.”

“Not quite what I meant sir, we wait to see what happens when he tries it out in the UK. He’s already gone and we never saw a thing.” And after a suitable, knowing pause, they both began to chuckle, and it lasted long into the night.



Marjorie and Melanie looked up from their respective desks with an air of amused fright.

“Whistling?” Asked Marjorie.

“Whistling.” Replied Melanie.

“Does that scare you as much as it does me?”

“More, I’m younger and have so much more to live for.”  They both laughed but only Marjorie got up from her desk to check that it actually was the professor whistling up the corridor. She peeped sheepishly past the open door and jumped back with a girlie squeal, which, given her thirty a day habit was no mean feat, as the professor’s smiling, suntanned face confronted her.

“Good morning girls, how are we this fine morning?”

“We are fine this fine morning Professor. How are you?”

“Fine, fine indeed Marjorie. Get the manager of Terra Firm Parking on the phone would you?  We need to have a conversation. ” And with that he popped his face back out into the corridor and whistled himself of to his office.



“If you’re rude to me again professor I shall put the phone down on you.”

The professor, relaxed and comfortable in his extremely expensive leather upholstered swivel chair, replied lazily. “Oh no you won’t, you live for this type of thing. Bumptious, stuck up old fools like me phoning you up, threatening at first, outraged and eventually futile and begging. Well not this time Sunny Jim.”

“Hold on, hold on, just hold on one tiny little moment. Did you actually call me ‘Sunny Jim’?”

“Uh, yes, surely you don’t object?”

“Not really Professor Plum, I was just checking that my ears were working properly, shall we continue?”

The professor took a deep, silent, breath and continued.

“I, young man, am a professor of applied statistics, very well respected in my field; indeed some might say a world renowned expert. What would you say to the idea that I have devised a way of getting every single person you’ve ever falsely charged over your silly little parking rules outside your office at exactly the same time?”

“Well I wouldn’t be particularly impressed Professor. There is actually only one person in my office at the moment making a complaint. If I boot him out then that would, technically, be everyone with a complaint outside my office at exactly the same time. Not directly outside of course, but the requirements of your futile little threat would quite literally be met. I, you see old man, hold a PhD in English.”

“Ah, very clever, but I don’t really think you’ve grasped the idea yet, young…man. I’m talking about literally, right outside your office, and once there I’m quite sure I can whip them up into such a frenzy as to totally overwhelm your pathetic little staff.”

“The ‘young man’ looked across at his ‘pathetic little staff,’ an utterly impregnable piece of teenage boredom actually filing her nails whilst a six foot five inch, rugby playing, business suited pillock assailed her with threats that would stun a pig at a hundred paces. She was invincible, magnificent and vicious. The next generation, boldly going wherever she fucking well pleased.

“Good luck professor. I shall rally my forces for the assault.” He threw a small wad of paper at his secretaries head. “Fuck off.” She replied conversationally without missing a file stoke.

The Professors secretaries however were much more entertained. They had been listening in and were expectant of a small rant or two coming their way before the morning was over. They were however, pleasantly surprised.

“Ladies, I have to go out, I have a date with the front line of the war on Terra. He’d better be ready.”

The professor had turned the little black box on late the night before and had been concentrating on the task in hand ever since. He figured his troops would need time to organise their lives for the ten o’clock assault and was eager to get to the offices of Terra Firm Parking for the deadline.

He parked his Roller across two disabled slots a hundred yards from the small office of his adversary and took a moment to reflect on what he was about to witness. He was exited, this was his life’s work in action. If this were a success he would be the most celebrated Professor of statistics in the academic world. He would write papers about today for the rest of his life. He was under no illusions that the Americans would take their little black box back in the near future, but today was his, the war on Terra was about to begin.

He tucked the box under his arm and marched towards the shack that was the office of TFP, as it said on the sign.  It took him a few moments more than he had anticipated as he had to sidestep several groups of workmen digging up pavements and fiddling with small roadside telephone exchanges.  Perhaps he could deal with them next.

He looked in through the dirty window of TFP’s little shack but there was no-one visible. Unknown to the professor the bored teenager had popped out for a three minute mini tan and the ‘young man’ had gone along to supervise. He tried the door. It was open.

“Hello.” He called. Silence. “This is strange, something should be happening.” He shook the box in the vain hope that the alien artefact which, having travelled across galaxies, lain undisturbed for tens of thousands of years after crash landing in the coldest, remotest part of the planet only to be dug out of the ice by a diamond tipped drilling rig slamming into it at three hundred revolutions per minute, might have a ‘bit of something’ loose somewhere inside that could somehow be fixed by a light tap. He was still contemplating this when he heard a curious and very loud metallic rattling outside. He frowned and cracked the door open a fraction to peek out. The workmen had thrown of their disguises and converged on the shack. There were several hundred of them, all dressed in a variety of army fatigues and all of them were pointing guns at him. Some of them had sleek and lethal looking anti tank missiles, others were holding what looked like grenades and a sad little few were leopard crawling through the legs of their comrades, sharp knives clenched in their teeth. Behind the ‘workmen’ were probably thirty or more assorted armoured vehicles. He could recognise the M114 Humvees, armour plated Landrovers but he could not put a name to the several larger, more ominous looking tank like things behind them. On rooftops snipers pointed guns with little red lasers at him and fast jets screamed overhead.

As the safeties clicked off the weapons several hundred shoulders hunched against the expected recoil of their respective huge and powerful guns. Twenty odd field commanders nodded in acquiescence as the inevitable ‘go-signal’ from remotely accessed government bunkers around the world came through and the professor muttered to himself.

“Ah yes, the war on terror, should have seen that coming.”