Category: creative writing

Infinite Typewriters

I wrote this in a terrible rush. I have not edited it or even done a cursory proofread. Nor shall I. For this is true art in its rawest form. If you can’t cope with poor grammar, awful sentence structure, plot holes and two-dimensional characters, then the modern world is not for you.

Get enough monkeys in a room with typewriters and they’ll produce Shakespeare. That’s what people said. I was unsure whether this would be a collaborative project, or whether each individual monkey would manage it on their own. If the latter, does each monkey produce the same play or do they each produce a different one?

Of course, as wonderful as this sounds, it fails to address the fact that it would be plagiarism. Whilst the works of Shakespeare are in the public domain, there is nothing particularly impressive about copying. It’s also less impressive than Shakespeare in the fact that the Great Bard predates the existence of typewriters by a couple of centuries at least. Get a monkey to write Shakespeare by hand and I’ll be impressed. With a quill at that, not a ball-point or fancy calligraphy set.

The concept interested me enough, however, to start the Infinite Typewriters project. The name was cleverly chosen to avoid the ire of animal rights[1] activists. The capturing of monkeys for the purpose of producing a new Shakespeare play would no doubt be prohibited by international law, though I suspect it’s far kinder than testing pharmaceuticals or cosmetics.

I often wonder whether previous theorists would have been pleased or disappointed had they attempted the infinite monkeys theory, only for the first monkey to produce Hamlet flawlessly.

In the first year of Infinite Typewriters, the monkeys showed very little interest in the machines themselves. It seemed it was going to take a long time to get any results. As it is, I have all the time in the world; more on that later.

In the third year when I had a total of fourteen monkeys, they produced three chapters of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Well, more or less. The grammar was better, and the characters immediately seemed more fleshed out.

In the fifth year, when I had a total of one hundred and eight monkeys, certain factions started to emerge. The writing was forgotten and the monkeys took to killing each other. It would appear that not only would this project potentially require infinite monkeys and typewriters, but infinite rooms to keep them separate.

Ten years in, people began to grow suspicious of the declining monkey population, which of course meant I had to slow things down, allowing populations to bounce back before securing more.

Fifteen years in, I had thousands of monkeys who had produced half of the Bible and almost replicated Einstein’s Special Relativity, though their formula was E = FC[2].

But no Shakespeare.

Twenty years in and I had ten thousand monkeys tapping away at ten thousand typewriters. Their output was impressive enough for me to get enquiries from some substandard universities for guest lecturers.

Forty years in and I could no longer keep track of the number of monkeys as they kept moving about, making it difficult for me to count. I therefore had to devote some time to creating a monkey counting machine.

Fifty years in and the machine said I had 145.9 monkeys, proving my understanding of programming and engineering was significantly more flawed than I thought.

Fifty-five years in and I outsourced the thing and discovered I had nine-hundred-thousand monkeys, who were now producing accurate translations of well-known novels. Still no Shakespeare.

Jump ahead three-hundred-and-nine years and I have literally millions of monkeys working at high-tech typewriters that would automatically notify me should any Shakespeare be produced. Three-hundred-and-ten years, and it finally happened.

Two houses, both alike in dignity…

Monkey four-million-one-hundred-and-eighty-five, after eighty-five years had done it.

Word for word. Beat for beat. Romeo and Juliet had been produced by a monkey. So impressed I was by this, that I snatched up the manuscript and the monkey, and hopped into my time machine[3].

I headed back to Shakespeare’s day when he was working in London, roughly around the time he was working on Romeo and Juliet. Of course, I hadn’t dared go back to meet the Bard himself until now, mostly due to nervousness. They say one should never meet one’s heroes. What if he turned out to be a particularly dull fellow despite his catalogue of great works? What if I turned out to be a dull fellow, boring the man?

Still, I had in my hands one of his most famous works and a monkey who had written it. I couldn’t fail to impress him now.

I walked through the streets of Rennaissance London, ignoring the powerful stench of faeces both animal and human alike, mixing together to make something fouler than either one alone.

I wore a costume I had bought from a fancy dress shop, an oversight on my part, as I rather stood out. What I should have done was use the time machine to literally get period accurate attire.

Anyway, long story short, I came upon the theatre currently housing the playwright and attempted to gain entry. A rather burly man told me I couldn’t go in on account of the rehearsals taking place. I got around this rather annoying obstacle by using a disintegration ray that I had picked up from a holiday to the future[4].

The actors were indeed at work on Taming of the Shrew potentially Shakespeare’s worst play. I expected to find the Bard either on the stage himself or directing the thespians. Instead, I saw no sign of the man, though I’m willing to accept contemporary imagery of him might be off.

I saw a stout fellow acting as director and approached him boldly. It’s amazing what being in possession of a disintegration ray has on one’s self-confidence. I demanded to see Shakespeare. He said that was impossible, no one got to see him when he was busy writing, lest they upset his flow.

I declared that I must be permitted to see him, for I have a play that may interest him.

‘A play that may interest he! He says,
The greatest writer of the English lan-
Guage? You think he wants to see things writ by thee?’

I could tell he was struggling with the concept of iambic pentameter. I thrust the manuscript under his nose but still he denied me. And so, I disintegrated him. The actors exchanged half astonished, half terrified looks. Still, when I demanded to see the Bard, they were hesitant, exchanging more nervous looks, bordering on desperation.  

I had to disintegrate two actors and a musician before they eventually relented. A trembling young actor with a  face caked in paint took me back stage and stopped before a thick wooden door.

He nervously fumbled with a set of keys, setting one to a lock.

‘He insists on being locked away, does he?’ I asked, ‘He doesn’t wish for any distractions?’

The actor said nothing. There were tears dribbling from his eyes, washing smeary lines through his makeup. He unlocked the door and revealed the finest writer the English language – perhaps any language – has known.

Horror! Horror! I cannot tell you the pain I felt upon this moment. My heart shattered, my soul was torn in twain. For in that room, the room of Shakespeare, sat nine monkeys, scribbling away.

[1] Potentially missed wordplay opportunity – ‘Animal Writes!’. Save this for next project.

[2] I cleverly used the footnote as the squared, as I don’t know how to do it otherwise. Anyway, they concluded that Energy was equivalent to the Faeces thrown at the Speed of light squared, showing they didn’t really know what they were talking about.

[3] The machine I had created in order to run this experiment.

[4] It gets rather bleak around 2032, and humanity is eventually wiped out in 2058 when an ill thought out experiment causes the moon to knock into the Earth, sending the Earth hurtling into the sun.

Getting a Head in Life

Introducing an extract of a short story I wrote to avoid doing any work. The premise came about when I asked the very timely question: Imagine Weekend at Bernie’s, but with the added challenge of the body having no head.

Brennan had a number of problems. First of all, he was called Brennan, which sounded more like a brand of yogurt than a man in his late twenties. He also had a very respectable job at Durantis Technologies, a multi-billion-dollar company, which, if you’ve watched enough movies from the late 90s, you’ll know is terrible. You wouldn’t wish middle-class stability on your worst enemy. Decent pay packets leading to having disposable income, large houses with literal white-picket fences, no financial stresses and so on. It’s the sort of hell Dante Alighieri refused to depict in his Divine Comedy because it would have been too terrible to contemplate. The point is, being a healthy, fairly well off and moderately attractive white man in an economically prosperous nation is tough, and more people need to understand that.

He was also working closely with the CEO, overseeing a complex and tumultuous merger with Turandis Technologies, another multi-billion-dollar company. With so many billions of dollars at stake, the stress was mounting. Some might throw out lazy metaphors such as having the weight of the world upon his shoulders, forgetting that the world is floating through space and, assuming he was underneath it (therefore in space himself), it wouldn’t weigh that much. A more accurate thing to say would be to say that he had the stress of a large corporate merger to deal with, but that lacks poetry.

Brennan stood to receive a huge bonus should everything go well, which would only add to his misery. As already established, having lots of money is bad. The working classes, crammed into their social housing and eating Spam straight from the tin and drinking gin straight from the bathtub live in enviable happiness. Their gruelling, hard and laborious twelve-hour shifts, and the challenge of paying all their outgoings makes for a full and exciting life. If only they knew the sacrifices the obscenely wealthy made to enable their happy existence.

He got into the office at seven-thirty am and put some expensive coffee into the even more expensive coffee machine. He pressed the button to get it started, situated on a panel featuring a multitude of buttons and knobs, the majority of which did nothing, but a one-buttoned coffee machine would look cheap.

Bernard Shaw (not that one), the CEO, wouldn’t be in until much later. A CEO’s time was too precious to be wasted sitting in traffic, and so he wouldn’t get out of bed until rush hour was long passed. Rush hour had been stretched out over the years, now taking up at least three and a half hours. This gave Brennan plenty of time to work on the Big Important Presentation, or the BIP as it was known.

Acronyms were important in the world of business. Time was money, so it needed to be saved where it could. The cost of extra syllables across the year could really mount up. The coffee machine gave a jovial ping, and Brennan went and poured himself a cup.

Coffee made the world go round. ‘Don’t talk to me before I’ve had my coffee!’ people would say, wide eyed and slack jawed, a thin stream of spittle dribbling from the corner of their mouth.

‘Just don’t,’ they’d say. ‘Don’t you fucking dare!’

Brennan returned to his desk and switched on his Bapple CAM. They were more expensive than PCs and therefore harder to use. Sleek metallic rectangles they were, going went ‘Boom-boom’ whenever you turned them on.

He opened the BIP. It was currently twenty-slides long. Nineteen slides too many in Bernard Shaw’s (not that one) opinion. Too text heavy… his words echoed in Brennan’s mind. Don’t use ten words where three will do… and don’t use three where one would do. Don’t use words when a noise will do… sometimes noises are too long. A gesture. Sum the BIP up in a single movement of the arm. People are too busy to be interpreting noises.

By half nine, Brennan had the BIP whittled down to three slides containing two arm gestures and a waggle of his left foot. He printed off the notes and crept into Bernard Shaw’s office. The door was made of frosted glass, the sort that could only just be seen through. Or at least it would be if it wasn’t for the grey Durantis logo running across it.

By the windows, looking down onto the city below, was an obnoxiously large desk. On the left wall was a poster containing a number of penguins huddled together with the message, ‘Penguins huddle together for warmth. However, we don’t pay you to learn facts about penguins. Get back to work!’ Running along the floor was a strip of green cloth with a small hole at the end, for practising putting.

Brennan had never played golf, on account of not being a CEO. Another sacrifice made by the corporate overlords. If they’re playing golf, there’s less opportunity for poor people to be bored to death by such a ridiculous game.

Brennan placed the printouts on Shaw’s desk. He should have left there and then, but he was taken by a sudden urge to try his hand at putting. He selected a club from a collection by the door and picked up a ball from a glass bowl. He teed up and nervously thwacked the ball. It was launched across the room, smashing a lamp.

He selected another ball and lined up the shot, giving it a hefty tap. The ball rolled into the hole. Brennan decided he was very good at golf, and would take it up if he ever became a CEO, to protect the poor people of course.

He selected one more ball and placed it on the tee. This would be the biggest shot yet, he decided. He swung the club back and heard an ominous thunk. He felt as though his heart had exploded, releasing some horrible gunge. He turned slowly, not knowing what he was going to see.

He saw Shaw, lying on the floor. Or rather, he saw Shaw’s body. Shaw’s head had rolled out of the office, through the open door he had silently crept through.

He wasn’t supposed to be in yet! Why had he arrived early?

Brennan panicked and dropped the offending club. He tapped is foot anxiously, biting down on his tongue. What to do? What to do? He heard the ping of the elevator at the end of the office. The marketing team would soon be in, and they’d see what he had done. He had knocked Shaw’s head clean off. The big merger meeting would be ruined.

In a fit of blind panic, Brennan ran out of the office, scooped up Shaw’s head and returned. He shut the world out, plonking the disembodied head on the desk. The wide brown eyes glowered at him, as if to say, ‘What have you done now, you silly silly man?’

Brennan had no answer.

If this sort of thing tickles your fancy, why not buy this book. If it doesn’t, buy it anyway. It’s only 99p you tight arse!