Chips That Pass in the Night.
Mark caressed a chin of designer stubble with his knuckles, then pointed to a darkened area of the cafe in which resided a large ovular table of tinted glass which appeared to be refracting the ambient into a luminous rainbow that shimmered whenever a customer passed within a few feet of it. This ornate innovation was surrounded by twelve ergonomic armchairs upholstered in striped apricot vinyl.
“What’s going on there?” He asked
“Oh that’s the conclave of virtual neutrality, a finely fabricated peace process if you will, conceptually akin to King Arthur’s round table but symbolic of post modern inter-corporate equality as opposed to pre Marxist Communism.
“I hate the colour scheme.” Mark commented “Looks like someone spray tanned a heard of headless Zebras.”
“Victim’s of profiteering Tigers perhaps” I joked. “Ironically, it’s based on the principal of fair healthy competition.”
“How so?”
“For a consumer to reap the greatest benefit a balance of power must be sustained else one dominant guardian of our digital destiny shall forge a pernicious dictatorship free to commercialise indispensable technology along with its performance, features and evolution entirely its own terms and with no scruples over our crippled credit ratings.
“Sounds about where we are now.” Mark lamented.
“Believe me it could be much worse. Profiteering is less likely in a sea of many sharks.”
“Another charming parallel, but why?”
“The more apex predators are concerned about each other, the less chance they have to wilfully exploit their prey.”
“So why are the chairs empty?” Queried Mark, hurriedly switching topics.
“He’d intended to have a dozen yummy mummies depicting twelve flagship motherboards but when he realised that to be objective he’d have to account for both Intel and AMD’s chip sets and the last time that he researched anything beyond the Ruby Team’s graphical artillery was before time actually began his enthusiasm rather declined, hence the chairs remained empty.
“What about the stripes, the six on the right have a different number then the rest?”
“Count them.” I instructed.
Mark squinted, there were clearly too many to register from a distance so he got up and walked over to the table’s nearest end which pulsated with prismatic energy as he approached.
After spending some moments counting the stripes on a mismatched pair of chairs he returned to his position opposite me.
“44 on the right, 64 on the left.” He reported.
“Does that surprise you?” I asked
“Why should it?”
“Come on, another desperately forced metaphor for one of the most crucial elements in the contemporary gaming rig.”
“Lanes!” Exclaimed Mark “PCI Express Lanes.”
“You’re on a roll.” I teased. “Up to 44 for Intel’s Skylake and 64 for AMD’s Threadripper.”
Mark bit his lower lip if to stifle a torrent of expletives.
“It seems our creator has indeed chosen you as his mouthpiece.” He muttered through gritted teeth. “A bitter and world weary wiseacre constantly one step ahead and me? At best a naive pawn tapped within convoluted parable and at worst, a clunky plot device utilised to translate metaphorical mishmash for the lazy and the bone headed. What a difference a few paragraphs can make.”
“An enviable role.” I sighed.” “Knowledge is as much a burden as a blessing, do you not think I would have preferred to decipher these cryptic parallels myself, experience the mysteries of this deceptive establishment first hand, rather than have them rammed down my throat by a recluse at his typewriter. Ignorance is your personal bliss here, be thankful for that.
“How extraordinary!” Exclaimed Mark “He’s now employing you to deride his own personality”
I grinned knowingly and shook my head. “Sounded more like a cynical ploy for sympathy to me.”
“There, he just did it again.” Said Mark. “Or have you actually found a way to think for yourself.”
“Oh come now, think it through” I urged impatiently “Better to unburden your soul through art than have it stalk you through sleepless nights though admittedly, a character who severs his authors strings is an intriguing concept.
I unsheathed my app laden muse from its hostler, tickled the darkened screen and began scrolling through a legion of icons in search for one that resembled a badger wearing a miner’s lamp and allowed me to pay for things in Astropunt, one of several virtual currencies.
“Don’t bother.” Said Mark, flourishing his own binary butler. “I get a better rate with Quantopia here.”
“Interesting.” I said, “Yesterday they weren’t accepting that because they thought it had been hacked by Russians.”
“Yesterday it didn’t exist.” Mark retorted
“Now you’re one step ahead of me.” I laughed, slipping both arms into my father’s waterproof embrace. “A writers portrayal of his players can be as mercurial as technophile’s tastes in tablets.”
Mark clasped his hands behind his head and inhaled deeply. “So what happens now?” He asked.
I retrieved a menu from a chrome toast rack on the table and examined it. There was a section headed Vegan Frontier, though somebody had scribbled over the N in Vegan. The range of dishes was impressively broad and featured, amongst several mouth-watering options, a pizza comprising five non-dairy cheeses entitled, Epyc Fromaggio.
After resisting the temptation to assuage my sudden stomach pangs I tossed aside the menu and said.
“Now that the denouement has passed I sense there’s little else to divulge except some sundry specifications.”
Mark looked puzzled.
“Can’t imagine there’s much left around here to weave symbolism into.”
In nodded in contemplative agreement.
“In which case our master might get bored and decide to present them all in a series of tables.”
Mark reached for his jacket, an unstructured navy blue linen number several sizes too large and recently acquired from an online auction. The description had been manifestly inaccurate but Mark adored the notion of having obtained extra free material, so he hadn’t complained.
“So what about us?” He questioned
“We’ll be free.” I replied
“Free?”
“Until the next season of silicon drama.”
“But what if that features a new cast, different characters?” Asked Mark a little choked
“Then we’ll never see the light of literature again.”
“So this is our first and last conversation? He continued. “I feel like I’ve known you all my life.”
“Indeed you have.” I sighed, as the tables I’d anticipated whistled by in a whirlwind of stupefying statistics. “Our existence began at the top of this page and may be as fleeting as the components we speak of. Though if were are inextricably linked to them, there’s one thing that could immortalise us.
“What’s that?” Asked Mark, hope burning through his retinas.
“For all of Humankind’s hunger for a smaller cooler and faster future, there shall always be those with penchant for living in a fond and golden past.”
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and watch some Youtube videos about wooden turntables and retro-builds.