The Ranting And Raving Of A Madman, or, Four Leaves: Chapter One

I completely forgot about NaNoWriMo, and I had a brilliant story, too. Here goes the first chapter... I'll complete this next year, I think. Sorry it's so damn long, but it is almost two thousand words.


'How did I get here?' I asked myself, to pass the time more than anything else. I was lashed to a pole about sixteen feet above the summit of Mt Fuji, give or take a few feet. I couldn't really tell to the exact distance, because my head was lashed as tightly as my feet. Seeing as I didn't have a lot to do except dangle, I cast my mind back to the day it all began.

I was running through the forests at the foot of Mount Olympus, being chased by a large Tyrannosaurus Rex. He - wait, no, it possibly started a bit earlier than that, even though that might be the earliest event in any case...

Was it when I was entertaining a bunch of Mayan children so that they wouldn't grind my bones to make their bread-shaped musical instruments (and flay my skin off them for their chocolate)? Or - no - could it have been when I accidentally broke into the Pentagon and indirectly started World War III?

See, I can't really remember, or tell one incident from another. The mountain air's beginning to get to me a bit, and the lack of oxygen's making my head spin, which in a perfect world wouldn't be allowed.

I guess I'm what you might call a 'traveller'. I've been around a bit - in fact, so much that all of my trips now seem to have stumbled into just one, long cascading fall of memories. I've seen things that you've never dreamed of, or only read about in your history books. I think somewhere an archaeologist unearthed a fossilised toenail that dated back to before mankind existed, and I like to think that it was me.

At least, I think it's been discovered. I definitely remember the headlines - 'Saturn's Toenail Proven Real,' screamed the Guardian, 'The End Of Science,' proclaimed the Times, while the Sun went with 'Man Eats Own Head,' and a mention of the fossil somewhere on page twenty-three below a car ad. But maybe it's yet to come, for you.

But all this usually gives me a colossal headache, not least remembering what tense to use, and I don't have very much oxygen reaching my brain as it is. I think I'll settle on firmer territory.

Where did I start? Oh - yes - where it all began. I think that at one point I was a university student. I certainly never bathed and had a traffic cone in my room, so I'm sure that 'student' is implied. I was studying Computer Science - mainly because I was no good at anything else.

Ah, it's coming back. And I'm actually getting used to this sparse air, it's quite bracing. No wonder Sherpas live longer than most, really.

So, yeah, Computer Science. It was a bit of a cop-out subject, I suppose. The course wasn't specific enough to be too difficult, but it was challenging enough for me not to lose interest. And my parents had money, which helped.

So I undertook the daunting task of the fabled degree path. And it wasn't long before I realised that there was something slightly - well, odd - about the lecturers. For a start, they all seems to have wild grey hair, wire-framed spectacles (some of them even half-mooned) and a jittery voice. It was as if they were in some sort of cult. Being quite quick on the uptake myself, when they all started turning up to lectures with unexplained burns on their coats and smelling slightly of sulphur, I began to notice. It was especially prominent whenever they shouted "Gouranga!" in the middle of a full lecture theatre, and especially surprising for the multitude of students who awoke with a start and had to explain their sudden outbursts of arbitrary words in a subject-specific context. I was greatly amused by the kid who stuttered out how bicycles related to a complex spatial placement algorithm, having muttered "Go on your bike, Jim," on awakening.

The behaviour of our tutors went on for quite a while before anyone mentioned it in conversation - possibly even noticed it. I think this was largely due to the fact that 90% of my circle of friends were the ones who fell asleep and had to ratify their statement of "Eleven rats! Incomprehensible!" or suchlike, and the other ten per cent were either the sort of layabout who sleeps in until six in the afternoon, goes out drinking all night, and never learns anything other than how to make a beer bong out of some rubber bands and a ping-pong ball, or the ones who were only there to do my homework for a cash sum.

It was my good friend Nem, while playing pool in the Student Union - it was short for Nemesis, by the way, but that's a story for later - who said, "Hey, that Patten - he doesn't half talk a lot of tosh sometimes, yeah?"

After severely ridiculing him for his serious use of the word 'tosh' in a sentence, I replied, "What was that thing he was on about yesterday?" I asked, lining up my shot on a cunningly-placed red ball. "The temperature in Middlesex?"

Ooka - so called for her alarming ability to play Counter-Strike, and we couldn't very well call her Baz - gave a snigger, but we all ignored her. She was the token girl in our little gang, and as such both the scapegoat and lust object at the same time. I had a dodgy feeling that she fancied me a bit, too, so I ignored her a bit more, and angled my shot slightly to the left.

I don't know why we let her hang around, or anything. It wasn't as if she could hold her beer, have two-hour long discussions about the fate of City under their new manager, or fart fairly loudly, the only qualities that most blokes look for in a friend. I think it was more to do with the fact that Nem had a thing for her. But this book isn't about a love triangle, no - if it were, knowing me, there would probably have been a hot lesbian threesome by now, probably involving that cute girl behind the counter at the coffee shop. Yes...

I smacked the cue ball rather harder than I should have done, that mental image playing over in my head. It hit the red, which hopped off the cushion, rolled along the side of the table and fell into the middle pocket with a satisfying 'thunk'. I tried immediately to look as if it was intentional. Ooka clapped in delight, but stopped abruptly when she realised no-one else was doing so.

"Flukey bastard," spat Nem.

"Hey, if it happens this often, there must be some sort of innate skill," I declared.

I lined up for the next shot, and pulled the cue back.

"Temporal matrices," said Git, causing me to miscue violently and knock a yellow ball into the pocket.

"What?!" I asked angrily, as Nem muttered something about 'innate skill'.

"Not the temperature in Middlesex. Temporal matrices," repeated Git, somewhat smugly. "That's what Patten was talking about."

"And they are?" I asked, impatiently, my residual anger blocking any attempt at witticism. "Something insane, like you?"

"Well -" started Git, just as Nem yelled "Arsebandits!" at the top of his voice. I turned around. Somehow his cunningly-placed array of yellow balls around the table had become dislodged, and I was in a perfect position.

"Second shot?" I suggested, my conscience winning over my sense of asshattery.

"Nah, had it," was Nem's dejected reply.

My conscience gave my asshattery the finger and a smug look, and I took aim.

I smacked the red ball nearest me into the far pocket, where it just clipped the corner of the cushion, and knocked a different one into the middle pocket. I lined up again, and knocked it into the far corner again. Thankfully, this time it sank.

I took aim on the black. I'd like to say that everyone waited with bated breath, but in all likelihood it was probably only Ooka. I gently tapped the ball, and with a nice, satisfying 'click' it came to rest just centimetres from the pocket.

"Bugger!" I yelled, too loud. That was one of the things we like about pool - it gave us an excuse to swear like a redneck at every opportunity.

"So," I said, turning back to Git, "what's this about the Matrix?"

"I don't know. I've been trying to find out. The definitions I know don't seem to correlate at all."

"It probably doesn't mean anything," I assured him. "I mean, you know what old Patten's like - I keep expecting the men in white coats to come in at any second and drag him away."

"Oi! Clo!" yelled Nem. "Are you going to watch me kick your ass or what, yeah?"

Oh, yeah, that's me. Sorry, that was rude of me, I should have introduced myself, but it's hard to remember social niceties when you've just been denied them so thoroughly, and tied to a glorified tree on top of the world. I guess we'd better do it now.

Hi, I'm Clover, but my friends call me Clo - this isn't because of some cruel parents, though, as is usually the case. I have a rather bizarre lucky streak in me that appears in the most unexpected places. No matter what I do, I seem to get away with the most astonishing stuff. Take yesterday, for example. I walked into university slightly late. Usually, I have to walk around the main building to the main entrance and work my way back through to the computer lab. But yesterday, as I was walking towards the building, a fire exit opened right next to me. I wouldn't have noticed it, had it not been for the sharp, piercing bell that split my head in two.

Not smelling smoke, I nipped in and closed it behind me. I took some time to comfort the cowering freshman who was behind it - "I didn't know it was a fire door, I'm in trouble, aren't I?" - and got to the lab before the tutor arrived.

And, of course, as narrative structure decrees, this pool match was no exception. Nem potted his remaining yellow balls, and twatted the black with an unnecessary flourish, and the white careered off it after it had gone in, teetering on the edge of a pocket. Just then, someone opened the door of the union. I could feel the resultant displacement of air rush past the hairs on the underside of my forearm - which was odd, because I wasn't aware that I had any hairs on the underside of my forearm - and as they rose in protest, the cue ball plopped into the hole.

Ooka let out an uncontrollable shriek of triumph. Nem looked at me.

"You really are a lucky bastard, yeah?" he told me.

There was a pause as I revelled in my victory via Nem's uselessness. Then -

"I could work out exactly how lucky, if you like," said Git.

"And you wonder why we call you Git," I sighed back.