# carpet adjacent services on our way to flat's suburban gaff winding through the backstreets of our lives as we ride on past it all we feel alone again as if no researchers around here would ever help us if we were lost andor homeless or just unhappy and in need of a friend precious little charity and good will to be had at the chained doorsteps of these worship temple going readers of quality sunday gardening supplements polished brass plaques on gates saying no tradesmen or junk mail if there was only there was one person out here who we could talk with share a vision of newer waiting world then everything would be alright but nobody ever calls at lab and it only gets incrementally worse every grey passing day weeds in gardens always ready to grow to their full unkempt organic beauty a friendly bloom wildflowers and grasses waving in the monoxide breeze of monster reversing sports utility vehicles like any of these guats do sports unless tax advantageous write offs is sport return to victorian values sure gramps wildness of weeds always strangled back by the dead and dying by constant clipping and pruning and spaying nature as another object to be kept in its right place pruned right back so older flabby tribal members can yap about tupperware before trudging back to their tv shrine and somehow know that all's correct and well with their tiny whitewashed world outside that double glazed ideological window the exact same policy is applied equally successfully to the ranks of manual bikers who in cloudless blue sky minds ride though and past these redbrick mazes of hearts in lock down out to the fringes of town and it's concerns right to edge of anti social semi existence with it's thin lipped gossip and it's regularly scheduled line up of next week's moral holotv panics where the vicious stench of lemony pine fresh bog cleanser and personalized ideological sentiment cannot reach the air is less viscous thinner light transforms and suddenly somehow everything is possible after twenty minutes of riding we reach flat's house wow talk about acceptable social frontage flower beds and well trained insects there at doorway to another interior world flats says hi and takes us upstairs to their room cube typical house on a well to do housing estate built by one of many large ultra greedy and inherently evil housing firms in endland wall to wall mental carpeting large holoscreen with global digital satellite receiver lots of odds and ends scattered all over tiny artistic metal additions here and there to the comfy social womb unused cookery books and pasta maker even a fizzy drinks machine cold square black and white bathroom tiles in the morning and irregular and unsatisfactory attempted missionaries from the husbland at certain agreed on points on a marked calendar occasional smell of freshly brewed coffee and little baked nibbles for when friends come over which is rarely the husbland meanwhile escapes down the pub with their office colleagues for a swift half before the semi nutritious and overly salty evening meal this suburban family unit sits in silence flats however is alone upstairs in their room probably playing on that damn computer again it also often turns out they're playing within it their parental interaction calendar is marked with crap pens often seen in local betting shops in and around bethnal green or in high street houses of mass consumption featuring laminated books of dreams that citizens flick through rapidly in constant search for quality bargains desperately sad they cannot possibly possess them all up a steep flight we go with it's polished wooden banisters to the second landing soft thud footfalls of suburban adventure to the bedroom to our left from left to right at each end of carpeted landing are two medium sized triple glazed windows through which an existentially odd and alien type of early afternoon early endlandian autumn sun shines through a filter of net curtains with frilly lace edging such light obliquely lands across apple white walls and over thick royal blue carpeting through still and silent air laden with guilt and regret we reach flat's room and one can instantly tell it's their territory their republic parents and others of oldie generations are neither wanted nor welcome here on the far wall is a large brown shelving unit stock full of computing and role playing books obsolete un rewound vhs long play video cassettes and reams of computer print out paper the thin scratchy butt wipe kind with removable holes down each side real easy to tear yet excellent for use in near future classic printer paper football matches for optimal ways to play without getting in trouble with the tutor ask deep south amiga scene crew azt3k there are also dozens of lightly scratched gray lockable plastic diskette boxes containing hundreds of oldskool thin five and a quarter inch floppy diskettes in one corner by a window stands a large wooden desk with steel legs on which there's a monitor and bbc model b micro computer this room space frozen as if on the terminal event horizon of a data black hole strange attractor thinking about life on / as earth and eternal spinning stars we stare with intent out a double glazed window with its white plastic frame we can see a partially deflated plastic swimming pool with dead leaves in it and one of those summer chairs on a swing with a shade some small annoying yappy type dog is taking a wormy data dump on neat flowery borders the high walls of the darkly creosoted fence around the garden seem to contain all things needed for super flat simulated semi existence such as the one flat's parents appear to enjoy sitting in a shaded flower print summer swing chair is mother reading a popular women's home and fashion magazine daydreaming about exotic holiday locations in the atomic sun smiling at husbland as they prune and weed the husbland idly speculating on that new fit little redhead in accounting wifey then imagines a researcher's firm love feeling flushed tight and frustrated desperate to sit on the washing machine again when everyone's out large floppy hats for the beach new electric peppercorn mill with black and green corns to impress guests spangly lite pop guitar on radio in an air conditioned automobile speeding west toward better tomorrows we could be lifted from the shadows if only if we weren't already undead smiles all around / fresh recipe ideas / high fences low tolerances / high stakes it could all crack apart at any second we'd no idea what this researcher's into but it seems as though they've set up a homebase of quote the phat wares researcher's got hot numbers ftp and bbs sites coming out of their bulbous nose they show us all the l8est playspaces and interesting intense heavy pixellations flats is also connected up to a remote electronic telecoms interface and proceeds to online realtime chat with distant friends in scene we have to laugh out loud all this high end lo tech the sheer ease and technical ability with which it's being used credible to researchers from poorer housing estate where they don't know satellite dishes have been invented yet let alone what you can do with one in terms of exciting techno existential possibility flats laughs and turns up the volume on their expensive looking hi fi cryo system we feel little out of our league here and we like it this ugly squat little student bully from down the road has little need of boring classes or friends no need for encouragement or anything else from the adult world not that anyone else our age ever got any encouragement because they're already fully immersed in a new world under their own control or at least that's how the notstory goes we watch short chubby fingers flash over aggressively beige retro plastic text input keys tap tap tapping hyper specific commands we ask questions like how do you do that and what's that for and flats tells us but it's way over our head and working class pay grade we wonder what flat's folks must think of these ahem varied midnight computational activities flats says they don't have a clue about anything going on but adds they recently freaked out over their telephone bill flats ended up paying it out of one of their accounts that is a smaller savings account belonging to their parents we've never heard of that amount of money in our life but flats just shrugs heavy round shoulders taking it all in their heavy slow stride floating alone in an electronic labyrinth above and beyond endland's smart concrete dreams of static ash grey tv nothing mother then knocks on the door what now asks flats angrily and logs off with the speed of a researcher well practiced in these newly ancient online arts tea and biscuits for you and your little friend says mother bring them in then er please suggests flats mother is in their middle forties long light brown hair and longer legs intelligent terminally bored and full bodied they place the refreshment tray down on bed and gently shake our hand their other hand on top of mine you must be little henry they say nice to meet you and we start to sweat subliminally why's the kid so ugly if the mother's so attractive maybe they brought flats mail order with the rest of house goods or the orders got mixed at the warehouse er yes we're in flat's science class we say smiling mother replies we hope you aren't as naughty and they smile again flats isn't looking at us but mumbles something under their breath we try a polite laugh and say thank you for tea misses flats call us shirley they say and we slowly gulp again with that they walks out of room and we secretly check them out shiny shirley hmmm warmth now glows and growls in our lower stomach and we sense what has to be done in the big name of science we watch as flats scoffs a whole plate of chocolate biscuits on their own they reluctantly give us two of the smaller bland broken kind your mother seems very nice old chap we say they really get on our tits says flats flats is currently large enough to state this with factual correctness they're always on at us asking how we're doing and stuff it's totally annoying says flats we reply confused saying they want you to do well no flats looks unimpressed by our bland parental analysis we're gonna become a computer play states programmer and earn a load of dosh says flats then we're gonna buy a sweet porsche and leave this dead suburban town for good what about your dad we ask they want us to become a sub manager at their carpet store so does mum but sod that don't managers get paid well we ask dad does but then they invite all their idiot manager friends around once month for fancy drinks and little cheesy nibbles they're all covered in cobwebs and stink of industrial carpet glue and filing cabinet dust every one of them has receding hair and tell endless stupid jokes about carpets industrial carpeting carpet cleaning products and carpet adjacent services tell you what mate after university we're out of this place that's for sure program us some sweet playspaces for the beeb and make a packet that's the real retro future sounds like you've got it all planned out flats we say nah not really they reply we just want to get out of here without first dying of terminal boredom do our own thing flats then half pretends to care about a fellow researcher's opinion and idly asks what about you henry same thing we guess we reply get away from our horrible control freak parents far away from our redbrick housing estate it's so dull there you wouldn't believe it changing tracks flats asks: you got a special friend yeah we slowly say lying its not bad have you know done it then flats quietly inquires oh yeah we say confidently loads of times lucky git says flats your the lucky one mate we say look at all these sweet drive movies you've got that one with the obviously fake plumber we've never seen that before it's ok we guess says flats but it's not same as talking to someone is it flats now looks downcast we suppose not we reply there's a pause as flats stares at the blank screen in front of them and it states back where's your bogs mate we ask down the hall and second on your left fancy a playspace of chuckie egg asks flats yeah mate boot it we er won't be long we put down our cup of hot sweet tea on the provide frilly coaster and walk out the room suburban sun's still shining and everything's still in it's correct non place carpet still warm and spongy underneath our student feet there's a particular silence in uk suburbia heavy dull and featureless downstairs we can hear flat's mother preparing supper some radio 4 program about artificial cattle insemination we look about for the bogs down the long hall we come to the first room on the left we gently open door to flat's parental bedroom and it's huge like an unused nfr 70's conference room in 2001 outtake a giant poster bed with rose sheets wardrobes with mirrored doors we wonder what goes on in here what kinds of secret midnight half conversations what kinds of gnawing internal disappointments and repressed accusations more than likely nothing at all but tired resignation this may explain why shirley looks so impressive the ongoing silent hatred of their ugly dull flabby husbland has somehow concentrated their beauty shirley dresses as though expecting company maybe milk delivery personnel or a traveling seller of alternative post cyberpunk sci fi literature now as common as unreliable wiring or just some clueless younger researcher with an active imagination we quietly shut the door and quickly move on down the silent hall can't describe what we feel about this place and what it means about being in the house of these total and utter strangers and their weird perfectly normalized ways that is their way of being in the world of seeing absolutely nothing odd about it like what other way would it be as they say in planet of the apes feeling common things about the life they think they're living the dreams that define them but which aren't necessarily theirs or even belong to them their particular peculiar worldview or at least their cozy detached and neat fence posted corner of it what does it mean to be here now here in this place we don't know and start to feel vague strong emotion and odd aesthetic ambiance simultaneously crushed and perfectly defined by the sheer overpowering normality of this suburban mislocation as if it was always here and that there's nothing one may say or do about it a kind of total / totalizing all encompassing system of non seeing a elf contained already complete perfect and automatically encompassing everything that can be said that this right now is all there is all there ever was or will be in which you can't say there's nothing else apart from this because to postulate an outside to one's wholly interior life of perfected consumerism is already impossible what other way would it be indeed fellow space ape heck a real good question yet for them to even ask this would already be impossible events remotely catered for by the permanent iron clad existential laws of this frozen mechanical block universe scientist would be automatically labeled insane for even remotely suggesting alternatives could exist violet rendering anomalies akin to say a square talking about spheres flying above inherently obsolete cultural scientific paradigms lost as though it was all too temporary but a pervasive dream state one could awake or move away from at any moment but one doesn't permanent waiting room worlds where anything good bad or downright alien and beyond could happen any moment yet unsurprisingly neverquite does places where doors only open out to other doors the same doors limen: the smallest detectable perceptible sensation moving on down the hallway we open the next room on our left to the cleanest thomas crapper ever seen the crapper owned and operated by our own dear automatic mother looks like open heart surgery could be performed on the floor but this one has an added surgical touch orange and yellow frilly curtains a furry toilet lid cover aesthetically synchronized bog roll holder we're perfectly awestruck this whole pad is totally elf contained dear scientist a cryogenic hypersleep capsule floating in suburban neurospace quickly closing the heavy door behind us we lock it shut putting our ear to the door we can't hear anything outside a good sign of build quality and suburban privacy neurosis feeling adventurous we step up onto the ceramic thomas squinting out through a double glazed square of lightly frosted glass through it we can roughly make out the back garden of the flats family and the dull red slate rooftops of a billion rows of houses beyond all the same existential checks left unsigned an incredible undefined sense of mediocre forever a sky that feels like it's been painted on inside of an immense cube we imagine climbing out onto the garage roof and make our ontological escape over endless rooftops to a better world we often have this daydream and it comes in a few variants often involving bioelectric powered sentient stealth ninja microlight escape aircraft all end with us finally escaping to massive burning sunset like ones we'll see several biocomputational weeks later down in lab 1138 flipping up the lid of toilet we undo the buckle on our lab pants letting them slowly drop to the floor around our ankles same with our special edition silver surfer underwear we then slowly at first proceed to meat pulse wildly a rabid skinny space ape right over and into the spotless micropore white bowl of suburban deff an intense blue smell of hardcore post industrial toilet cleanser arrives off in soft waves from a house brick sized chunk of pastel blue disinfectant hanging just inside the toilet rim both the smell and general suburban anesthetic / aesthetic is making us trip now harder and faster than a postal night train to edinburgh the life inside strains reaching forward and out top of one's non local bell up and down goes our sweaty suburban ninja claw in our third scan lined mindeye we see flat's mother slowly waiting in the bedroom as we walk in behind them they smile suggestively and gesture for us to come over with a long scarlet fingernail we full on kiss and their breath is ultra toilet cleanser fresh we're severely inebriated on their sensual suburban attention forty one seconds later a generous underground lab helping of super creamy scientific relish jerks forth from of swason's swollen purple onion long ropes splattering glossy virtual lips of illicit suburban desire in local dimensional suburban reality repeated such heavy hot doses flap lazily against the inside lid of the bog sticking to its furry orange lid cover we must be going mad we say pausing for a hot flushed moment until we recede licking the back of our hand we take an awkward nonlinear data stream using paper to clean up any remaining rampant biostream in an existential panic we eagerly check around to see everything's been left as we imagine shirley would want it we envision them coming across a single tiny white cooling bead later on in the evening smiling insanely to themselves they gently lift it off the surface a with delicate red fingernail licking it with an extended sinister pink tongue their other hand furiously rubbing through a starched plastic apron used for intense daily abrasive household cleaning and hackling the daily meat swanson: oh how you hold us tightly in fretful suburban scientific dreaming we triple check everything again and rush back to flat's bedroom red faced and lightly sweaty from our recent electronic meditations on the plastic fantastic nature of middling class endlandian desire where you been flats asks taking a data dump why we hope you used air freshener and toilet cleaner says flats moms go mad if we don't yeah our mom's exactly the same eager to change subjects we say hey you get on with your folks they slowly spin around in their lapsed bond villain computer chair and stare at us our dad's the one we usually have to watch out for but mum's alright that's our second mum you know our dad's divorced oh right we say not knowing what to say or what the deal is with all that kind of intense family shame stuff we're also suddenly reminded of our other pseudo fair weather pal ocr rich and their emotionally non optimal family unit yeah flats says our real mum left ages ago when we were small dad says they weren't grateful enough for everything they did or something like that about seven months later they married someone they met in woolworths behind the perfume counter they both seem happy but we think shirley's bored really says swanson yeah all they do is clean all day listen to radio four and read those huge home shopping catalogs don't you all go out together and do family stuff we ask feeling the last half teaspoon of scientific dimensional bioplasma seep into our silver surfers not really says flats sometimes we go on holiday to spain our mom loves that but it's always too hot and they never allow us to take our computer we play few rounds of chuckie egg and flats barely wins we give them good run they need it eventually it's time to leave when shirley comes up again and asks if we're staying for tea daring to use their first name we say no thank you shirley we're expected home for dinner shirley states motherly obedience is a positive virtue worth cultivating and they turn to look over at flats who smiles insanely showing their bad teeth shirley goes back downstairs and we surreptitiously check em out again we say laters to flats and they say seeya only half looking up from their keyboard and other material possessions we want to leave fast before the father figurine arrives back home from another heavy day in upper middle class carpet selling heck generally good policy to avoid meeting the quote man of the house especially tiresome big headed elf important blowhards with laughably authoritative voices a too firm handshake and a king sized packet of existential chips on their shoulder that and the naked suburban fact that we've recently experienced a hot virtual encounter with their partner in their furry orange space toilet oh uber mundane activities of modem half life how we want to imagine getting even a passing glimpse of another world behind all the bright glittering social ciphers of this red brick suburban nowhere prime we shut flat's bedroom door behind us and go downstairs to collect our shoes and coat hanging on an ornamental black metal hat stand just outside the kitchen gassy whiff of brussels spouts wafts out into the long white tiled hallway in the large functional kitchen flat's mother is preparing a delicious salty vitamin enriched meal for their new clear family we check out their fine form once more a slight suggestion of bloating or retention their soft oval pretty face suggesting a person forever faintly bored as though running on automatic and unsustainable private fantasy they turn around and a sudden high pitched mechanical whirring is head but it's only the blender shirley smiles and says ah henry always nice to have friend of flats around do come again soon thank you we say without emotion social carbon neutral like this odd arts suburban dislocation we blink and quickly refocus saying thanks for the er tea and biscuits misses flats shirley walks over to a cupboard above the sink and takes out a large metal box of fresh home made biscuits which they offer to us go on they say take a few we both know how much flats loves their biccies shirley holds the biscuit tin at waist height gently swaying over the contents a fine assortment to be sure large warm moist and gently perfumed loose talk in the laboratory our scientific heart now caught in our throat we gingerly take a handful immediately underneath the pendulous overhang our eyes quickly taking in a plunging suburban kitchen ravine our mouth dry again we look up at them and smile nervously they wink real slow and our heart skips several beats we grab our shoes coat and biscuits and jet outta there still existentially fibrillating muscular twitching involving individual moral fibers acting without coordination rapid irregular contractions of the dark suburban heart resulting in a lack of synchronicity between scientific body and zeitgeist pulse as we finally depart their house cube we feel a mixture of confusion surprise oblique sensual suburban longing and admiration whelming up light yet dense ambient mists now fall over the town and it's as though it's reverting to looking like an old gmod level at the end of flat's private dead end street we look back at their house disappearing into itself at this outer everyday edge of existence it's stuck between unconscious social parody unspoken hi tech desire cheap bedroom secrets and warm free radial multiplying hallway carpeting thanks to us now also lightly caressed with a researcher's hot liquid neon science we hope it somehow all works out for flats for few months afterward while flat's mom's image was still fresh in our idiot mind we had several more chance imaginary encounters in our own bedroom where we were further educated in an ancient mature language of sublime suburban sensuality flats grew up well kinda and became another obnoxiously elf mythologizing playspace software company tech bro semi millionaire and we never spoke to or saw any of these deadpan beige suburban bizarros ever again // [[republic of bob contents | imaginary pastime republic of bob]]