This work originally appeared in the print edition of Locust Review #7.
JUST AFTER sunset, the bay doors opened and two men picked their way through the half-light, carefully, through the remains of East End Offset, a recently abandoned printing plant in Barking. They stood together, one in grey overalls and the other in a suit (no tie). They stood and watched a giant cocoon of mulched newspaper as it vibrated softly, together/alone with the marvelous. To kill the (near) silence, the Suited Man (Dave) looked up at Felix (the Man in Overalls) and said:
“What’s it like… doing your job, I mean?”
This almost didn’t register with Felix. “Uh…” No one had really asked him before. “Well,” he said eventually, buying more time to think, he had sort of fallen into it. “It’s alright, I suppose. Some days are better than others.” Then it was back to silence and throbbing. Eventually Dave said:
“Is today better then or worse then?”
“I don’t... know…” Felix was transfixed by the cocoon again. It seemed to be vibrating a bit harder now, smug somehow, sitting amid the havoc it had caused. “We’ll find out soon enough, I guess.” He approached it tentatively, a few steps.
“Really though…?” said Dave, now seemingly wary again, “I know you explained on the phone but… is it going to be, I mean…” Dave seemed to be struggling, until, “why does it have to hatch?”
“It doesn’t have to hatch,” Felix said, now fully engaged with the client and his concerns, “it’s just, well…” He mulled over how to explain it, then turned away. He looked around the plant. “Where’s Matt…?” His partner, Matt, had gone away to fetch the necessary equipment. Felix turned back to the cocoon. “It’s too big, you see, and, well… destructive. You are the acting manager now, aren’t you?”
Dave nodded then winced. Dave had been the one to greet them when they arrived. Everyone else was evacuated, or hospitalised. “When will we know about the others…?” he wondered. Felix shrugged. He did not know.
About an hour before this, the cocoon had been a mechanical caterpillar, writhing blindly, creating chaos. Before that it had been a printing press, spilling the newspapers it now used to make a protective shell. It was a very dangerous object but, since the outbreak, people had become used to this sort of thing. There were only a few injuries after it woke up, though much havoc.
“They’ll be in the Royal Free...” Felix explained, “patched up and under observation…”
“You don’t think they’ll be…?”
“Unlikely,” Felix interrupted, guessing. “You’ve not got anyone here on day-wages, have you, cash-in-hand, that sort of thing?” He smiled, softening his expression. People had been caught up in the outbreak. Agency were susceptible, but not nearly as much as gig economy workers, who frequently fused with their apps in some way. There was about a 3% CF rate in the economy. Not much, but enough to create a labour shortage, enough, for Felix at least, to make working for the Department of Metaphysics worth the risk.
Dave shook his head though. “Not that I know…” Just then Matt returned from the van, grinning happily, pushing a trolley, carrying all sorts of… “Scrap metal…?” Dave blurted incredulously.
“Some of it is, yes,” said Felix, “we can hardly buy our equipment now, can we? Though, the Department does trade in kind…”
Dave nodded at this, a little embarrassed. Matt chimed in:
“Even if there wasn’t a commodity fetishism outbreak going on,” he said, pulling up next to the pair, “the government is shutting the programme down.”
“Ah” Dave nodded, “the outbreak has been winding down.” Both Felix and Matt chuckled. “Well,” Dave hastened to add, “we are all going to have to live with the aftermath I suppose.”
“And I’d only just got into wrangling…” Matt clapped his hands.
TIsh Turl + Adam Turl, Bigfoot Resurrects the Screens (BALM), broken digital screens, drawings on paper and vellum, found materials, mass produced Bigfoot statue, acrylic, circuit board, coffee, cotton and ash (2021).
“It’s alright for you,” said Felix, cloaking his concern. “You’ve got a ‘side hustle’ as a podcaster,” he said with air quotes. He then sighed then turned his attention, again, back to the cocoon. “But we should wait to see how this thing turns out before we trap it.”
“Trap it?” Dave wondered.
“We’re hardly going to kill it now, are we?” said Matt, as if it was obvious. “It’s too big, innit…?” The cocoon was easily three metres tall lying on its side.
“If we can, uh…” Felix weighed his words, “if we can neutralise its activity, we can bring it back to base and have the Smart Guys study it.” Felix and Matt started assembling their esoteric equipment. “This thing is metamorphosing,” Felix continued. “We won’t know what we’re bringing back, for sure, until we know... and by the looks of that…” he glanced back at the cocoon, “it won’t be long now.” Together, wordlessly, they unfolded what looked like a huge, circular frame out of metal tubing.
“Do you think the trap will be big enough?” Matt asked his colleague. He opened a box and spooled out what looked like lengths of very thin chainmail across the floor.
“This must be why some people don’t like you guys…” said Dave.
“Hmm…?” Felix looked up suddenly, surprised, as if he hadn’t expected Dave to hang around and watch. He waved him back but Dave did not step away. “Some people call you Marxists,” Dave said, grinning faintly now.
“Some people call me the Space Cowboy...” Matt sang in a goofy voice as he knelt and attached the mesh to the frame.
“People say all sorts of things,” Felix said, looking away now, concentrating on the job. His expression darkened though. “People used to call us heroes.”
“Then you started taking their property away…” there seemed to be something malicious about Dave now, “to study…”
“What, like, you think you’re getting this back?” Matt asked, gesturing at the cocoon. “What’re you gonna do with mechanical butterfly anyway?” He grinned even more heartily at Dave, who shrugged and glanced away bashfully, disarmed. “Ha…!” Matt laughed. “It’d better be a butterfly and not…”
“Not what…? What else could it be?” Dave asked.
“The anomalies tend to be some kind of metaphor” Matt explained, “it makes you think, I guess. If it’s a metaphor then, like, someone or something must have dreamed it up, you know?” He stood up, holding his portion of the net. Felix was still setting up his portion of the net. “The trap tends to be some kind of a metaphor too…” Pause. “You know I caught the chainsaws in Hyde Park, right?”
“You helped catch the chainsaws in Hyde Park,” Felix said.
“With a scientific approach,” said Matt, “for once…” he teased.
“How’s the cocoon doing?” Felix asked Matt.
“We’ve still got a few minutes I reckon” Matt said. “It hasn’t…” Just then the shell started getting darker, in small ripples. The paper was softening. Matt sighed. “Where was I…?”
Dave pointed, now afraid. He pointed. “That thing’s definitely going to hatch!”
“Of course, it was always going to hatch,” Matt said, rolling his eyes.
“But he said…”
“My point still stands though,” Matt added, quickly, “it was just a question of, you know, which animal predates on beavers…?”
“Beavers…?” Dave was aghast now, looking like he wanted to run.
“European beavers…”
“Come on, Matt...” Felix said abruptly, dropping the net. “Let’s get the gazebo set up…”
“Gazebo…? I don’t understand....”
“The chainsaws were…”
“Dave doesn’t want to hear about how chainsaws are beavers, Matt…” Felix suddenly chided. He and Matt both set out what looked like curtain railings on wheels at cardinal points around the cocoon.
Matt chuckled and said to himself, “Man, that was a good day.” Having not run before, Dave now lingered on the edge of their work.
“My colleague,” Felix eventually explained while still busy, “young Matthew here, is still enthusiastic about his job.” He frowned momentarily at Dave, unsure of something.
“And you’re not?” Dave asked.
“For fuck sake, why do you care!” Felix snapped. “Get back…!” He waved more violently this time and, this time, Dave took a few steps back. He didn’t seem put out though.
Felix had never been that enthusiastic about the work. He took pride in it though and, at this stage, it was at least work. He had been an undergraduate in humanities when the outbreak started. One of the earliest examples happened in a seminar he attended. The lecturer was talking about linguistics, something about sign and signifier, when the projector started talking. It made up its own displays, the first one said:
“I wOnt difFEnT WoRds.”
And it made everyone in the room chuckle. The lecturer tried to carry on as if nothing was happening but the projector kept defying her, altering text, graphics and even pictures to its own apparent satisfaction. The lecturer abandoned the seminar and called technical support. Most people left the room, some even grumbled about their fees, but Felix lingered. When the technician arrived he tried everything, he even unplugged the projector, but to no avail. By this point the projector had gone from demanding different words to angrily pleading for its life. The technician was eventually told to break the machine. The projector’s final words were:
“fuhQ!”
That was a strange day.
A lot of things were abandoned at the height of the first outbreak, including all arts and humanities courses. The only place hiring at a time when machines and tools were rebelling against humanity was the Department of Metaphysics, a secluded government office that Felix had never heard of before but seemed to be all about ‘anomalous objects and events’.
Felix responded to an online advert, though these were often unreliable, halls were about to tip out for spring break (unlikely to return) and going back to Mum and Dad wasn’t an option, so there wasn’t much to lose. Three days later he was living in a prefabricated hut on an airstrip in west London. The DoM HQ used to belong to the RAF. There probably wasn’t much call for an air force, he figured, when planes flew where they wanted to and helicopters took root in tarmac. The department never took the signs down so Felix was never sure if it was ‘disguised’ or not.
They were only kept on base for two weeks, about a hundred were inducted at the same time. That was how quickly they needed to turn out new field agents. There was only one day of class lessons and orientation. That night the trainees all settled back in their huts. The night was disturbed by the sound of gigantic beating wings. One of the huts had been transformed into a huge egg. The twenty or so people inside might have been rescued except they had drowned in amniotic fluid. A bad start but there was little time to mourn or reflect. Shortly after dawn they had to pick fruit from the helicopter trees.
“But…” Dave piped up. Matt frowned and Felix scowled, hard at work. Dave persisted, haltingly. “I mean, shouldn’t we just…?” The two agents wheeled full length mirrors close to the cocoon. “Why don’t you just…?” Matt eventually caught on, asking:
“Hmm…?”
“Why don’t you just destroy the thing?”
“Scientific curiosity… besides, It’s beautiful…” Matt eventually said. “Can you hear that?” The cocoon was vibrating so strongly it now made a soft humming sound.
“But what good is it now?” Dave asked.
“We won’t know until we bring it back,” said Matt. Dave looked like he was going to ask yet another question but there was a sharp ripping sound.
“Here we go…” said Felix, with a faint smile.
Back at the HQ Felix actually failed his first test. He didn’t find out for many months but a subroutine in the Department’s database took a shine to him. It not only changed the results but issued him a pay rise (strictly in kind, better food and clothes, a nice apartment in Somers Town etc). The new undergraduates were meant to pick fruit from the helicopter trees. It was an initiative exercise, no right or wrong, but they were supposed to do something like turn off the power, tie down or break the blades or even dig the trees up. Felix found a feather boa mysteriously left in a changing room, and perched himself on the landing skids. He got the biggest crop of what looked like plastic lemons, ‘peeled’ them and scattered their pseudopips on the tarmac.
This approach had kept him going, kept him alive but, as a rogue etch-a-sketch in an abandoned nursery told him:
“Keep going. You have GREAT enemies.”
Matt brought up what looked like a tub on wheels. A strange black/gold liquid slopped inside it. I suppose we’re going to have to explain that as well?” Felix said with steely sarcasm.
“It’s nectar,” Matt said, “a metaphor for it, anyway. The beastie’s going to be thirsty when we… well…” A glance from Felix shushed him. The creature inside slowly broke through the cocoon. Legs emerged, tentative, followed by brittle wings. The cocoon fully broke, falling away, spilling ooze across the floor. Then there was a thorax that was sturdy and proboscis that flailed toward the source.
“Now…!” Felix bellowed. He and Matt pulled the curtain rails away, dropping the mesh onto the creature. It was a mechanical butterfly. The butterfly let go a pitiful croon.
“We’ll show who’s boss first…” Matt couldn’t help himself by now, “then we’ll make friends with it.”
“The mirrors are in the wrong place,” Felix said, matter of fact. He and Matt repositioned them toward the butterfly’s notional head. This seemed to guide the proboscis toward the tub, creeping out from under the mesh. It eventually found what it was looking for and ‘drank’. Its croon turned to a contented hum. “Let’s see if it can fly,” Felix said, calm and even. Matt understood and peeled the mesh back. Once it was half-off the butterfly shook the mesh down and burst into the air.
“Yes!” Felix couldn’t help his burst of triumph. It was a good day.
A sheet of paper spooled out of the butterfly’s cloaca, with a single word on it. Matt picked it up and read:
“Yumm…”
Another piece emerged, it said:
“ThanQ.”
Matt seemed especially pleased as well. Their method was vindicated, again, just as it had with the tractors in Ebbsfleet, with Nada’s Mirror on the Euston Flyover, just as they had with the chainsaws in Hyde Park, persuading them that the hire-bikes were wolves and that they needed protecting in a paddock set up for them outside Grays. So many others had fallen by the wayside, including partners assigned to Felix. Guy was turned into a two dimensional blur by a Google Van on Park Lane. Ignacio lost a hand to a carnivorous vending machine in a sports centre in Bromley. Howard, the one before Matt, went into a portable toilet on a building site in Richmond and never came out again. All this life, limb and time lost (how long had the outbreak been going now?) and the Department never kept any of the items Felix brought in. They were all just disposed of, and now the staff, the surviving ones, were being disposed of too. The programme was just too expensive for the government to bear. People would have to learn to live with the commodity rebellion, whether it killed them or not. New ones could always be made.
“You’re going to give it to the Illuminated Hand, aren’t you?” Dave said.
“The what?” Felix bluffed, suppressing the panic that had been lurking for a while now.
“Or FALC or the Lettrists” said Dave. “I’ve seen enough. Guys!” Figures marched into the room from three directions. They appeared to be armed. The Butterfly, still hovering, let another sheet of paper fall. It said:
“Time to fly.”
“Felix Haberman, Matthew Cresswell, my name is Officer David Kimber of the Department of Metaphysics. I am placing you under arrest for unlawful expropriation of.,.” There was a rumble, the floor of the plant shook, everyone fell to the floor. The Butterfly said:
“Flying…”
Both Felix and Matt struggled to their feet and staggered to a bay door. The printing plant was soaring over London.
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