Dave The Penguin (19 page)

He didn’t like all these new
multi-player fighting games, or interactive virtual roleplaying
games, perhaps he was just an old fashioned sort of penguin, or
just a bit or a hermit when it came to online gaming or social
networking.

He didn’t have a
PenguinBook
account and he certainly didn’t tweet.

Anyway,
that was all
quite a while ago now
, he thought, as he
walked on his own across the plateau, with his new shiny laptop
under his wing.

Looming up in front of him now
was the blue and black snow covered mountain that overshadowed the
colony valley, and it looked daunting.

Its steep slopes were white
with ice and snow formations. In the mirrored frozen ice lake,
towards which he walked it was reflected it perfectly as an upside
down mirror image, forming two blue-white mountains.

He had always wanted to climb
right to the top of the mountain; nobody else had been that
interested.

But now he had decided
that it
had
to be done, and so he had set off, just like
that, with his laptop.

He had a purpose, a need to
climb and be up there, to see what was there, and use his laptop to
explain everything of what he knew, to whatever was up there.

He had the idea of finding
whatever was there, the overall operating system network, and
plugging his laptop into it, so it could see, show it, get it to
understand, change, and do something.

The journey took him several
hours but eventually he reached the plateau of the mountain top,
and he looked back and down.

He had come a very long way, it
was very very cold and his breath was just vapour.

The process reminded him
of his favourite 1970’s TV series
Monkey,
in which all the animal
gods were made to go on a spiritual- journey- pilgrimage-holiday
thing. Walking to a mountain, somewhere important in ancient India,
with the nice priest - Tripitaka, who was really a girl. It was all
long before cars or planes and G.P.S.

Dave had always wondered why -
since the Monkey God could fly - they weren’t just allowed to all
to go straight to where they needed to go. Just in the same way
that Gandalf could have used the Eagles to drop the Ring off
directly to Mount Doom.

It’s probably
the journey that is the important bit
, he
thought, or just another way for something to put controls in place
to stop you getting too far too quickly, assuming of course that
the thing that was sending you on that journey knew what it was
doing.

Besides there wouldn’t be any
story to tell.

However today on this
particular journey, he wished it had got into its mind that ski
lifts were allowable, he was having a bit of trouble with his legs
and breathing, and so he put it down to the weight of the
laptop.

Dave liked Monkey and Tripitaka
- he had always wondered what had happened to them. Perhaps they
had retired on a beach somewhere, and were happy ?

The wind was stronger now, and
he looked down the steep, icy snow covered slopes down to the
glass-like ice lake, over which he had journeyed hours ago.

It was a very, very long way
back, and down. The frozen lake reminded him of one his father had
shown him when he was a young chick, but one that had melted in the
sun in the long summer days.

He had learnt to skim stones on
it and throw rocks into its clear mirrored surface which made
ripples. He had also written messages on the stones to sort of say
something.

Dave had written ‘Penguins’ on
his, but then he had been very young.

It reminded him of some
lyrics in a Genesis song from the 1970’s – “
Ripples never come back
” - but that wasn’t true - you just had to wait a while and
look carefully, like using radar or synchronistic sonar, and see
what was going on collectively. Other animals did it, penguins had
just forgotten how, but then you only needed to see these things
out of necessity, natural survival, evolution.

If you were a penguin in the
middle of nowhere, with nothing attacking you, you didn’t need to
see these things, or care what it meant, they became
irrelevant.

He remembered the final thing
his Dad had said to him; “If you are going to throw a rock in son,
make it a big one.” Which was good advice, as long as you didn’t
cause some tsunami and drown yourself. He thought about it for a
while.

It was one of those important
moments.

He had come up the mountain,
but really he knew there would be nobody else to see up here, he
knew there would be nobody to talk to, nobody higher thing, no god,
no collective something. However that wasn’t the reason he had
come; he had made the climb for himself.

There was no point falling into
the trap of looking for something higher, an escape, a way up and
out far away, ascending to ‘somewhere else’ - which to Dave always
seemed a concept that was suspicious - and ignoring basic
children’s maths, not to mention being irresponsible and
elitist.

Just running away from your
problems, into an ever expanding getaway virtual realm-scape of the
collective penguin imagination wouldn’t help. What he was
interested in was right here, in one way or another, besides he
liked it here, it had potential, it just needed a bit of sorting
out really, a bit of a kick up the backside, or a poke with a sharp
stick.

He placed his laptop carefully
on the ground in front of him, and he flipped it over shiny side
down.

The underside was exposed, and
the battery compartment underneath was empty. He did however know
that that was the case, since he had handed the battery back to the
surprised shop assistant when he had bought it.

He had also handed back the
packing material, instructions, and receipt. After all, he liked to
be as eco-friendly as possible with these things.

His real reason for having one
of these was for a different sort of surfing, one that outsmarted
the collective penguin hive mind control structure thing , with an
unexpected move in the game.

Dave
then put on his knowing smile, stood up straight, and gave
a quick
Happy Feet
dance.

He put one foot carefully onto
the back of the laptop, and slid the device back and forward,
testing its feel and glide on the ice. He then took up his surfing
stance with his other foot conveniently fitting into the slot where
the battery should have been.

Dave had no flip-out
drink holders on his machine, Oh No, he had no need for stabilisers
and marketing supports.

It was a bloke thing, he was a
rebel without a course, and a penguin who knew too much, and was
proving a point, explaining something IT needed to learn.

He hadn’t come up here to show
IT anything, he knew there was nothing physical up here, he knew
everything, he just wanted to be, to show, to do.

He chose to ignore IT, knowing
what it was, which of course ‘IT’ couldn’t stand. He was now taking
control away from it, and making a statement, an ‘in the moment’
thing, trying to get it to see that he would only help it on his
terms, and by taking the initiative.

He did not want any more
‘enlightenment’, any more knowledge, any pseudo promises or pseudo
power. He was looking after his own self for the moment, and in
doing so, everyone else’s.

He was on strike.

Besides he didn’t actually
‘like’ IT very much, this collective penguin mind thing. It just
seem to make his life hard, attack him, try and control him, and
use up all his energy.

His laptop, like him, had
evolved
too, adapted to his need, it was
survival of the fittest in a world of demanding nature, and need
for perfect design. You could almost hear the collective intake of
breath, the gasp of shock, and feel the conscious surprise in the
air.

Everyone would now also be
getting his thoughts, his ideas, his views, his understanding.

He had outsmarted it, at least
for the moment, but in a balanced, shared benefit, sort of way. He
wasn’t turning his back on it; he was simply making a point.

He looked down at the
back of the laptop again and noticed something. There was a small
blue sticker on the back, on it was written in small neat
handwriting,
I Love you, and
be careful
.

She knew, but then she always
knew, in a sort of holistic, patient sort of way. “I love you too”
he whispered.

He then looked left - there was
the elephant again next to him, looking down the slope - “Bloody
hell, rather you than me mate” said the elephant to Dave, still
looking down the almost sheer drop.

He then placed his dark blue
and black ‘Animal’ bandana around his head, onto and above which he
had added the words ‘Living The’ in biro.

Dave lowered his shades over
his eyes, adjusted his headphones, and selected an appropriate
Meatloaf track on his tape player.

It was at that moment
that a butterfly landed on the front end of his laptop, which was a
very odd thing to see up on this remote mountain, its blue and
black wings opened for a moment and then closed again, preparing
itself.

It was not facing Dave, it was
looking down the slope as if it were looking forward to the
ride.

Dave thought for a moment about
shooing it off, but he was worried about what effect that may have
- he had read stories about butterflies and the effects they could
create - besides it seemed to know what it was doing, and it was
almost prophetic that it should be there.

Dave carefully pushed himself
off down the hill, and was gone.

He was flying now, with his
determined face on, surfing down the icy mountainside, with a long
shout of “Yeehaa” echoing over the valley as he went.

He finally reached terminal
velocity on the lower slopes, his bandana flapping in the wind as
he plummeted, in full view of the colony, faster than any bloody
seagull could ever go.

Then it was all over.

Several hours later, all the
other penguins would be doing the same, a wake-up call for them
all, with a long line going up the mountain, carrying their own
converted synchronistic surfing equipment.

They would all be getting
flashes of inspiration, motivation, coordinated genius ideas, the
need to ascend the mountain, no longer so blind as they were.

In time they would all climb
higher, and develop more extreme ski slopes, developing new skills,
to slide all the way down, and beyond.

The penguin world would be a
different place.

That after all was what life
was all about, and all part of the game that you played.

With rules that worked
both ways, on a never end
ing
journey…

but now possibly, a much
happier one ...