Dave The Penguin (12 page)

On the fifth page, along with
lots of other adverts for things you may want but didn’t need, like
trousers, there was one for remote controlled collars, which were
decorated with diamantes in a choice of colours from red to
blue-white with LEDs, and there were even invisible ones.

Apparently the remote
control was for training purposes, to give instructions and
administer correction. The advert had a banner across it

Black Friday Special

Now
with free bag of reward
treats

for the
little hero in your home
.

Dave put the magazine down
quickly, and was careful to avoid any eye contact.

The lady who ‘owned’ Miffy
eventually came back. Luckily she didn’t blame Dave and seemed to
be quite polite about it all. She picked up a newspaper from the
table and started to read it. Dave couldn’t help looking over her
shoulder.

The articles in the paper all
seemed to be all about violence, politics, and worldwide chaos.

She eventually closed up the
paper and started re-reading the front cover again; it was all
about soap operas, explaining which TV, film, and sports stars were
sleeping with who, what they were wearing, and who had operations
to make them look strange.

“Isn’t it terrible all this
news?” said the woman putting the paper back down on the table and
gesturing at it to Dave.

“Why is everything in such
chaos, and why doesn’t someone just do something about it all?”

She looked at Dave, Dave looked
at Miffy, who gave him that ‘See? I told you’ and then that ‘duhhh’
exasperated look.

Any potential to cause change
by this ‘hero’ had been effectively countered by a whole range of
subtle and sophisticated control systems, from attitudes,
chemicals, beliefs, and physical constraints.

It was hard to be a tall poppy
when someone has cut your leaves off.

When it was eventually Dave’s
turn, the nurse was very kind and gentle bandaging his wing up,
explaining that that sort of thing happened all the time and that
this had been the third one that day. Which had made Dave feel a
little better, she was very kind and Dave liked her a lot.

Dave looked down at the ground,
sighed, and shuddered again in embarrassment.

Dave thought that the
fundamental problem in general was perception; after all the cat
knew it was in the box, it knew if it was alive or dead or not, and
that knowledge was probably coming from the cat’s mind. Probably
the box knew too, and everything else around did as well.

It was just Dave that didn’t,
or perhaps he did, but he wasn’t letting himself know, after all he
didn’t need to know everything.

So this view of reality that we
had was somewhat fundamentally flawed. We were perhaps looking at
everything in the wrong way, from the wrong direction, and only in
part. He was trying to describe it all from one way, of what we
knew, understood, and what we could perceive as physical
reality.

Which obviously was a limited
perception, a small piece of it all, from a narrow set of
dimensional thinking. So with only one side of the story, you could
only describe what the other side was like by what you knew, which
was fine up to a point.

We were trying to organise it
all, make sense of it from the wrong direction or context, when of
course it didn’t if you only had a limited scope. There was perhaps
a more complex reality of which we were only seeing part, a sort of
reality within reality, of which we could only make part sense of
and perceive, or only needed to, as the other larger part didn’t or
wasn’t useful or have meaning, yet.

Perhaps it was all evolving
together, one big system, one within another, all exchanging
programming information, defining and influencing one other, and
that it had all that had been going on for a long time.

Dave had also read another
article in the magazine that said that everything was a hologram,
and that everything could exist anywhere in the universe instantly,
and that things only existed if you saw them with your mind,
whatever that was, and wherever it lived.

It sounded like an odd way of
looking at things, especially as they all obviously weren’t
everywhere.

If everything
was
a
hologram or software or information, then we were only able to see
things from that perspective, and in that context. So when you went
down to the basic binary code and pixels, there was nothing below
that that made any sense.

Obviously that
information was being created or projected from something else that
did, something that was trying to make sense of itself, like iron
filings in a field, that gave you the shape, direction and scope of
a field as it changed and developed; but you couldn’t actually see
it, but it
was
there, and you were only seeing the shape of
it.

But the field was not there to
see - it was like gravity you couldn’t see that – you could only
perceive it by what it affected.

Dave liked gravity, he was very
grateful for it, equally he liked the ground, they were both very
much ‘in the now’ things, and you knew where you were with both of
them.

It was probably where his mind
was - in that field thing all around him like a bubble but with no
time or space to it. It was translating part of itself into
something he could see and feel, along with everything else. But
not all at once. It probably knew the cat was in the box, as the
cat was part of it, and the box too.

Perhaps it knew everything, or
was just like some sort of mind operating framework, on which
everything existed. If it knew about the cat he wished it had told
him - told him if it was still there or not, and or, dead.

He rubbed his wing where it
still ached from the memory; somehow it didn’t feel like a
hologram.

The next day he had taken the
cat back to the pet shop and asked for a refund. He explained that
the problem was that the cat wasn’t dead, it hadn’t ‘shuffled off
its mortal coil’, and worse than that, he could still see it, so it
also hadn’t ‘ceased to be’. He had then waved his bandaged wing at
the shopkeeper as evidence.

The shopkeeper was surprisingly
friendly, and very quick to exchange the cat for some fish, he even
helped Dave out of the door, and put some extra fish in his box
free of charge.

The problem now was that Dave
had to try and start thinking ‘bigger’. He had to put himself into
something that had a bigger perspective, look at things from
another direction, and think of things in a different way, outside
physical reality, in a different way to that which he had evolved
to do so in the past.

Which meant he was going to
need a bigger box.

One that was big enough even
for an elephant.

Dave didn’t like Christmas. It
wasn’t that he had anything against it; it was just that he was
expected to do so many things, and it was always a bit of a
let-down, you know, always somewhat disappointing, overhyped,
predictable?

He was supposed to get all
excited for weeks beforehand; he was supposed to get presents and
cards for people, relatives, even ones he didn’t like. He was
supposed to sing songs, eat too much, see the same old movies, and
watch everyone else having a great time, just doing the same old
thing year after year.

But not Dave. This year he just
couldn’t see the point.

Worst of all though, and this
really was the most awful bit, he was supposed to wear his
Christmas Hat; the red woollen itchy one, with the white pom-pom on
the end of the pointless floppy cone. Every year it came out of the
Christmas box.

Every year, he had to put it
on, and every year he had to keep it on, for days.

Of course, it itched like mad,
especially in the heat, and he looked really stupid in it.

He really hated that hat.

So Dave was not a happy bunny,
and even though he didn’t know what a bunny was, he was sure he
wouldn’t be a happy one. The only thing he knew about bunnies was
that they lived down rabbit holes, and they lived in fear and
ignorance, and were controlled by chemicals.

In any case he certainly wasn’t
one, and he certainly wasn’t a happy penguin, that was for
sure.

He could never understand what
Christmas was all for, and why it was all during the hottest time
of the year, when the sun never went down, so you couldn’t sleep
off the hangovers.

His wife seemed to love
Christmas though; she would get all excited - looking forward to it
all, wrapping presents, sending cards. Which to Dave was all a bit
odd and pointless, as they saw all the same penguins every day
anyway, so what was the bloody point.

She also spent a lot of time
deciding what she was going to wear, and getting anxious if ‘the
big day’ would all go ‘OK’, and everyone be ‘merry’.

She always wanted everything to
be ‘just right’, ‘perfect’, ‘happy and jolly’, spending almost all
day putting up bits of coloured seaweed here and there, on bits of
stupid driftwood. Which he had to help with, because it was
‘traditional’, oh and did he mention ‘stupid’?

He had tried to work out why it
had all started, and when it had all began, and what exactly was
being celebrated. He asked his best mate –

“Well,” said his mate “its
traditional innit? You know one of them pagan festival fingies, wot
sort of got taken over? All to mark the end of the year, and get
rid of all the food, you know, and everyone hopes it will be a
white Christmas?”

And he laughed.

Dave looked confused.

“Look, it’s a laugh!!” His mate
continued, “Something to get everyone together, have a bit of fun,
a bit of a singsong, you know, tell a few stories, jokes, games,
dancing that sort of fing - catch up on some gossip. Nuffin’ wrong
with that is there?”

And he looked at Dave
questioningly.

Dave wasn’t so sure though, and
after several hours of asking around, nobody could really give him
a proper answer. It seemed that nobody knew why they were doing it,
or what it was really for.

But of course, in doing so he
had also made everyone else think about it, and he had started to
make people worry, and now he was also worried; worried that he may
be turning into a bit of a grouch.

So he just got on with it, and
went with it for the next few days.

So the night finally came -
well it wasn’t really a night more of a slightly less intense
bright glare -everyone was ready, and all the little penguins and
chicks were busy trying to pretend to be asleep.

It was at that point, when it
was all quiet, that Dave decided to wander off to get some peace.
To try and think things through a bit, on his own.

He walked away from the colony,
and up one of the small hills at the base of the mountain that
overlooked the valley of the penguins. He wanted to be away from
everyone, to have a bit of space, to rest, and not be in danger of
waking up with a red nose wedged on the end of his beak, and being
surrounded by sniggering, pesky chicks.

He made a last check around,
leaned with his back against the rocks, looked over the whole
valley for a moment, gave a sigh, and then closed his eyes.

Then, no more than a few
moments later there was an awkward cough next to him. Dave didn’t
open his eyes, he was too scared, nobody ever came up here but
him.

“Blimey, it’s cold out here”
said the voice.

Then there was another voice
that came from to Dave’s other right, “You’re telling me” said the
other voice. Dave opened his left eye and caught sight of a ghostly
penguin figure next to him.

The ghost penguin was all in
white, with a white light around his head. Dave wasn’t frightened
at all, even though this was the first ghost he had ever seen. The
ghost penguin looked at him and nodded and continued to blow
virtual hot breath in-between his transparent flippers as he rubbed
them together.

“Who are you?” asked Dave.

The ghost puffed himself up and
waved his flippers around expansively, and spoke in a deep, echoing
voice. “I am the penguin Ghost of Christmas Past, and I am here to
show you your life and what you have done wrong until now, and why
you are so bad, bitter and cold-hearted, even though so many people
have helped you.”

Dave looked worried. “What
should I call you?” asked Dave tentatively. “You can call me ‘IT’
if you like - everyone else does.”

“
Here we go!” said the
ghost and there was a
whoosh
in the air, and then –
nothing. “There you go, that didn’t take long did it?” asked the
ghost.

Dave looked very confused.

“Now I will pass you on to my
colleague on your right, the penguin Ghost of Christmas Present.”
Dave looked to his right, and there was another ghost standing
there; but this one was much larger, rounder, jollier, and more
colourful, and was busily tucking into a tray of sushi.

“Hang on…” said the Ghost of
Christmas Present, his mouth full of fish and rice, “Be with you in
a minute. That went a bit quick sorry, wasn’t expecting you back so
soon”

Then, before anyone could say
anything the wind changed and became quite chilly – which was going
some. The air took on a feel of darkness and oppressiveness, the
same as Dave had once felt when he was a small boy waiting outside
the Headmaster’s office.

Then another ghost appeared in
front of him, but old, withered, and fearful. Dave looked sideways
to the first ghost but he had vanished, and so had the second one,
along with the sushi.

“Dave,” came the voice from the
last ghost “I am the penguin ghost of Christmas Future. I am here
to show you what will happen to you if you do not change, if you do
not become a better penguin and mend your ways. You have been shown
what you have done wrong, and why that is bad, and you have been
shown what that has led to today and what people think of you. Now
I will show you what will become of you if you stay on that
path.”