White Goods | Gary Budgen
The presentation was coming to an end, or at least Rence hoped it was. He had lost count of the number of slides, fairy dust transitions between each one spraying the screen with sparkles. He hadn’t taken in the content except to note the absence of the usual blue and white colour scheme of Task B Industries.
He exhaled and pressed his fingers against his head. He could nod off, he could easily fall asleep but someone was sure to notice. He looked up at the screen for a moment. Another bullet pointed list with words that meant nothing and the presenter, Haynes, his red hair slicked back, compulsively pushing his glasses up his nose bridge and droning on in his nasal voice.
“…and so with Notice we confidently believe we will dominate everything within six weeks of the launch.”
Rence swallowed a yawn. There was no way this project, this Notice, was going ahead; this had to be one of the worst presentations he had ever seen.
Then everyone was rising to their feet, clapping and cheering. Next to him some twerp he vaguely recognised as being from Accounts was saying, yes, yes, exhaling as though he was about to come.
Notice was going to be Task B’s greatest ever launch. And Rence realised he had no idea at all what it was.
As everyone filed out of the meeting room, back to their offices, he overheard their talking; phrases like ‘revolutionary concept’ and ‘game changing’ filled the air. He edged up to one of his colleagues, Colin, who was engrossed in conversation with that Janice from HR. They were smiling as they spoke, nodding. For the first time in weeks everyone had stopped talking about the latest pandemic that had already caused hundreds of deaths in Hungary.
“What do you think?” Colin asked Rence, “so simple isn’t it? But then I suppose all the great ideas are.”
Rence nodded in time with them, but he must have given something away.
“You don’t seem to be too enthusiastic,” Janice said loudly. A few heads turned at that, began to look at Rence.
“No, no,” Rence held up his hands, “it’s brilliant isn’t it?”
Back at his computer Rence emailed Haynes immediately.
Wonderful presentation. Could I have a copy of the slides?
The reply came about half an hour later.
Thanks, much appreciated. Slides attached.
But when Rence opened the slides the PowerPoint file consisted of thirty mostly plain white slides; a few had bullet points. Just bullet points without text.
He emailed back.
Some mistake. Wrong presentation?
Rence hadn’t even dared to go to the toilet. He could hear people still enthusing about Notice. They were sure to want him to join in. When he finally couldn’t hold on any longer he put his head down and fast-walked straight for the door. He made it as far as the small crowd around the photocopier, where Colin appeared in front of him. Rence looked up and saw that almost everyone in the office was standing around talking.
“Need the loo…”
“What’s the matter with you?” said Colin, “relax a bit…look, we’re all going down the Crown tonight…”
“It’s Tuesday.”
Rence’s bladder really hurt now. He took a few steps towards the door.
“God, Rence,” Colin said, “what is the matter with you? Don’t you get it?”
“Sure,” said Rence, “sure.”
And he ran as fast as he could to the door.
*
Because Colin insisted he went to the pub. The mood was joyous, even ecstatic. Managers were buying enormous rounds of drinks so that everyone was soon tipsy. Rence knew he would have to be careful.
“So what,” asked Colin as they stood by the jukebox, “do you make of the implications?”
Rence opened his mouth, trying of think what to say but then the loud-speakers, up on the wall above their heads, mercifully burst into life with loud thrashing guitar music.
“Brilliant,” Colin said.
“I mean when Notice is…launched,” Rence had to shout.
Colin was nodding in time to the music. “When it goes live? Yeah. Nothing will ever be the same again.”
“So we’ll corner the market?” Rence said.
“Corner the market!” Was Colin actually pogoing? “You’re thinking too small. This is the biggest thing ever.”
Then Colin bounced away, into the crowd of Rence’s workmates who were already dancing, glasses held high in the air, beer and wine spilling on the floor as the power chords and drumbeat accelerated.
*
In the morning Rence vowed to forget about Notice, to concentrate on his usual work. He told himself that it was all Emperor’s New Clothes. That it would pass. But when he got to work, his usual five minutes early, every desk was occupied. Even the usual slackers were in. Far from being a load of hung-over slatterns they were all banging and clicking away at their computers.
When he passed Colin’s desk Colin looked up and shook his head. Rence saw the screen of Colin’s PC, saw the blank document, the white screen. All around the office everyone was staring into white screens, blank Word documents that remained blank even as they typed away. By the time he sat down he was sweating. There was an e-mail from Haynes with a cc to Rence’s line manager Getch (who was off sick).
You seem to have some hesitation about fully endorsing Notice. Why don’t we have a chat in my office? Say 2pm. Nothing formal.
Nothing formal. And yet the cc. It smacked of the usual sort of middle management tactics. But Rence knew there was something different going on here.
There was one other e-mail, from the MD himself and addressed to everyone. Work was to cease on all other projects. All efforts were to go into developing and launching Notice as soon as possible.
But Rence had nothing to do. He had not been given a specific task. He went on the internet where the story had already leaked. Task B Industries. Their product. Innovative. Revolutionary. Columnists were already speculating that it would be bigger than the I-phone, possibly of mobile phones in general. There was general speculation about the role marketing played in modern society and the impacts of innovative design on life.
It was hard to find any other news but scrolling down Rence saw that the pandemic had reached Vienna. Schools were shut and the army had been called out to distribute food to outlying districts. The Swiss were considering closing their borders.
Somewhere, across the office someone sneezed. Rence decided to get on with what he had been doing before: preparing a set of slogans that would later be incorporated into a press release for a new type of drill bit. But when he checked on the shared drive he saw that all his files were gone.
“Hey,” he shouted, then looked around. A few people glanced at him but then focused on their screens. He logged a call with IT support and then played Pac-Man on the Arcade Classics site.
*
Haynes usually slicked back hair was awry, stuck out at angles like odd vegetation. His eyes were red as though he hadn’t been sleeping.
“Rence,” he said, his voice was loud but he was not shouting, rather it was like he had been turned up a notch. “I’ve heard you’re not really on board with Notice…”
“No…it’s….It’s not that…”
“Listen, you have to understand how important this is.”
Haynes banged his fist down on the desk then looked at it surprised.
“I do…” said Rence, nodding away.
“Do you know,” said Haynes, “why there is something rather than nothing?”
Rence tried to think of what to say to this but Haynes was already talking again.
“Perhaps I’m being unfair to you, perhaps we should accept this unevenness, this lack of understanding in some. I think the best thing we can do with you is to start you off on something small, some part of Notice that you might be able to understand. Take this.”
He handed Rence a pocket folder.
“Now be off with you.”
Back at his desk Rence opened the pocket folder. He expected it to contain blank pages but this was not so. It was a set of designs, drawings and schematics. Then there were some instructions like those for flat-packs from Ikea.
Rectangular boxes. Each with a lid that would hermetically seal and keep the contents fresh. He tried to make sense of the dimensions. Were the units in metres or centimetres? Then he saw the key at the bottom of the page. The units were hand-spans. And there was tiny writing, like the legal conditions on an agreement, a note.
Each corpse will be a slightly different size. It is best to measure before death ideally before the onset of illness. Size may be adjusted with the insertion of section B panels on construction. Additional section B panels may be purchased for your Notice retailer.
These were the manufacturing specifications for Notice. How was this a small part of the project as Haynes had said? Surely it was the most important. But as Rence worked on over the next few weeks, contacting the factories, scanning and sending the specifications, it became clear that what Notice actually was was not at all the most important part of it.
People in the street began to use the word “Notice’ in a different way, with a sort of ironic twist.
Don’t you notice how good it is?
Have you noticed?
And they would laugh.
When the launch came it happened simultaneously across the world.
TV ads were mini-epics as popular soap operas were cancelled to screen them. Colin was enthusing about the ‘localised global’ approach.
“In California they’re sold as cryogenic chambers or zero rooms. In India as karmic isolation booths. In China they are gates to the ancestors. The same box becomes the dream of whoever purchases it. Notice is the perfect product.”
The news showed footage of airports mobbed as the white boxes were unloaded; shops were overrun. There were riots in queues to purchase Notice. Everyone had to have it. Everyone took Notice.
Over the next few weeks the office, like the streets became emptier as people went off sick. But it was all right because they had their boxes at home.
Colin kept coming in to the last. He collapsed at his desk and one of the remaining security guards hauled him away. He had the privilege of being put in one of the original prototype Notice boxes that had been kept in the basement storage room.
Rence remained in robust health, walking to work because there were no longer any buses, getting askew looks from the few other people around because he didn’t wear a facemask. He passed billboard after billboard, white, blank except for the slogan: It’s time to give Notice.
The last day he came to work he walked through empty streets. He passed a car that had crashed into the window of a boutique. Tied to the roof was a Notice box, the car driver was dead at the wheel; he hadn’t quite made it home.
The office was empty too and Rence wandered through the building going from room to room, turning off computers that had been left on, switching off lights.
In Haynes office he stumbled into the Notice box that was laid on the floor the top sealed. He was about to leave when he heard scratching and a moan from inside.
He took the lid off to find Haynes there, his skin pale and nose running. His eyes, glaucous and magnified through the lenses of his glasses, looked like stranded jellyfish.
“Rence…” Haynes croaked.
Rence had to kneel down to try and catch the words.
“It’s been such a tremendous success,” Haynes said, “our best launch ever.”
Rence waited until Haynes died with a broad smile on his face. Then he put the lid on the box.
After he had turned out the last of the lights in the building he realised that he had never really understood what was going on and that if he tried to turn it into a story it made no sense at all. Better to think of it as a launch, a project and so conclude, as Haynes had done, that it had all been a tremendous success.
The presentation was coming to an end, or at least Rence hoped it was. He had lost count of the number of slides, fairy dust transitions between each one spraying the screen with sparkles. He hadn’t taken in the content except to note the absence of the usual blue and white colour scheme of Task B Industries.
He exhaled and pressed his fingers against his head. He could nod off, he could easily fall asleep but someone was sure to notice. He looked up at the screen for a moment. Another bullet pointed list with words that meant nothing and the presenter, Haynes, his red hair slicked back, compulsively pushing his glasses up his nose bridge and droning on in his nasal voice.
“…and so with Notice we confidently believe we will dominate everything within six weeks of the launch.”
Rence swallowed a yawn. There was no way this project, this Notice, was going ahead; this had to be one of the worst presentations he had ever seen.
Then everyone was rising to their feet, clapping and cheering. Next to him some twerp he vaguely recognised as being from Accounts was saying, yes, yes, exhaling as though he was about to come.
Notice was going to be Task B’s greatest ever launch. And Rence realised he had no idea at all what it was.
As everyone filed out of the meeting room, back to their offices, he overheard their talking; phrases like ‘revolutionary concept’ and ‘game changing’ filled the air. He edged up to one of his colleagues, Colin, who was engrossed in conversation with that Janice from HR. They were smiling as they spoke, nodding. For the first time in weeks everyone had stopped talking about the latest pandemic that had already caused hundreds of deaths in Hungary.
“What do you think?” Colin asked Rence, “so simple isn’t it? But then I suppose all the great ideas are.”
Rence nodded in time with them, but he must have given something away.
“You don’t seem to be too enthusiastic,” Janice said loudly. A few heads turned at that, began to look at Rence.
“No, no,” Rence held up his hands, “it’s brilliant isn’t it?”
Back at his computer Rence emailed Haynes immediately.
Wonderful presentation. Could I have a copy of the slides?
The reply came about half an hour later.
Thanks, much appreciated. Slides attached.
But when Rence opened the slides the PowerPoint file consisted of thirty mostly plain white slides; a few had bullet points. Just bullet points without text.
He emailed back.
Some mistake. Wrong presentation?
Rence hadn’t even dared to go to the toilet. He could hear people still enthusing about Notice. They were sure to want him to join in. When he finally couldn’t hold on any longer he put his head down and fast-walked straight for the door. He made it as far as the small crowd around the photocopier, where Colin appeared in front of him. Rence looked up and saw that almost everyone in the office was standing around talking.
“Need the loo…”
“What’s the matter with you?” said Colin, “relax a bit…look, we’re all going down the Crown tonight…”
“It’s Tuesday.”
Rence’s bladder really hurt now. He took a few steps towards the door.
“God, Rence,” Colin said, “what is the matter with you? Don’t you get it?”
“Sure,” said Rence, “sure.”
And he ran as fast as he could to the door.
*
Because Colin insisted he went to the pub. The mood was joyous, even ecstatic. Managers were buying enormous rounds of drinks so that everyone was soon tipsy. Rence knew he would have to be careful.
“So what,” asked Colin as they stood by the jukebox, “do you make of the implications?”
Rence opened his mouth, trying of think what to say but then the loud-speakers, up on the wall above their heads, mercifully burst into life with loud thrashing guitar music.
“Brilliant,” Colin said.
“I mean when Notice is…launched,” Rence had to shout.
Colin was nodding in time to the music. “When it goes live? Yeah. Nothing will ever be the same again.”
“So we’ll corner the market?” Rence said.
“Corner the market!” Was Colin actually pogoing? “You’re thinking too small. This is the biggest thing ever.”
Then Colin bounced away, into the crowd of Rence’s workmates who were already dancing, glasses held high in the air, beer and wine spilling on the floor as the power chords and drumbeat accelerated.
*
In the morning Rence vowed to forget about Notice, to concentrate on his usual work. He told himself that it was all Emperor’s New Clothes. That it would pass. But when he got to work, his usual five minutes early, every desk was occupied. Even the usual slackers were in. Far from being a load of hung-over slatterns they were all banging and clicking away at their computers.
When he passed Colin’s desk Colin looked up and shook his head. Rence saw the screen of Colin’s PC, saw the blank document, the white screen. All around the office everyone was staring into white screens, blank Word documents that remained blank even as they typed away. By the time he sat down he was sweating. There was an e-mail from Haynes with a cc to Rence’s line manager Getch (who was off sick).
You seem to have some hesitation about fully endorsing Notice. Why don’t we have a chat in my office? Say 2pm. Nothing formal.
Nothing formal. And yet the cc. It smacked of the usual sort of middle management tactics. But Rence knew there was something different going on here.
There was one other e-mail, from the MD himself and addressed to everyone. Work was to cease on all other projects. All efforts were to go into developing and launching Notice as soon as possible.
But Rence had nothing to do. He had not been given a specific task. He went on the internet where the story had already leaked. Task B Industries. Their product. Innovative. Revolutionary. Columnists were already speculating that it would be bigger than the I-phone, possibly of mobile phones in general. There was general speculation about the role marketing played in modern society and the impacts of innovative design on life.
It was hard to find any other news but scrolling down Rence saw that the pandemic had reached Vienna. Schools were shut and the army had been called out to distribute food to outlying districts. The Swiss were considering closing their borders.
Somewhere, across the office someone sneezed. Rence decided to get on with what he had been doing before: preparing a set of slogans that would later be incorporated into a press release for a new type of drill bit. But when he checked on the shared drive he saw that all his files were gone.
“Hey,” he shouted, then looked around. A few people glanced at him but then focused on their screens. He logged a call with IT support and then played Pac-Man on the Arcade Classics site.
*
Haynes usually slicked back hair was awry, stuck out at angles like odd vegetation. His eyes were red as though he hadn’t been sleeping.
“Rence,” he said, his voice was loud but he was not shouting, rather it was like he had been turned up a notch. “I’ve heard you’re not really on board with Notice…”
“No…it’s….It’s not that…”
“Listen, you have to understand how important this is.”
Haynes banged his fist down on the desk then looked at it surprised.
“I do…” said Rence, nodding away.
“Do you know,” said Haynes, “why there is something rather than nothing?”
Rence tried to think of what to say to this but Haynes was already talking again.
“Perhaps I’m being unfair to you, perhaps we should accept this unevenness, this lack of understanding in some. I think the best thing we can do with you is to start you off on something small, some part of Notice that you might be able to understand. Take this.”
He handed Rence a pocket folder.
“Now be off with you.”
Back at his desk Rence opened the pocket folder. He expected it to contain blank pages but this was not so. It was a set of designs, drawings and schematics. Then there were some instructions like those for flat-packs from Ikea.
Rectangular boxes. Each with a lid that would hermetically seal and keep the contents fresh. He tried to make sense of the dimensions. Were the units in metres or centimetres? Then he saw the key at the bottom of the page. The units were hand-spans. And there was tiny writing, like the legal conditions on an agreement, a note.
Each corpse will be a slightly different size. It is best to measure before death ideally before the onset of illness. Size may be adjusted with the insertion of section B panels on construction. Additional section B panels may be purchased for your Notice retailer.
These were the manufacturing specifications for Notice. How was this a small part of the project as Haynes had said? Surely it was the most important. But as Rence worked on over the next few weeks, contacting the factories, scanning and sending the specifications, it became clear that what Notice actually was was not at all the most important part of it.
People in the street began to use the word “Notice’ in a different way, with a sort of ironic twist.
Don’t you notice how good it is?
Have you noticed?
And they would laugh.
When the launch came it happened simultaneously across the world.
TV ads were mini-epics as popular soap operas were cancelled to screen them. Colin was enthusing about the ‘localised global’ approach.
“In California they’re sold as cryogenic chambers or zero rooms. In India as karmic isolation booths. In China they are gates to the ancestors. The same box becomes the dream of whoever purchases it. Notice is the perfect product.”
The news showed footage of airports mobbed as the white boxes were unloaded; shops were overrun. There were riots in queues to purchase Notice. Everyone had to have it. Everyone took Notice.
Over the next few weeks the office, like the streets became emptier as people went off sick. But it was all right because they had their boxes at home.
Colin kept coming in to the last. He collapsed at his desk and one of the remaining security guards hauled him away. He had the privilege of being put in one of the original prototype Notice boxes that had been kept in the basement storage room.
Rence remained in robust health, walking to work because there were no longer any buses, getting askew looks from the few other people around because he didn’t wear a facemask. He passed billboard after billboard, white, blank except for the slogan: It’s time to give Notice.
The last day he came to work he walked through empty streets. He passed a car that had crashed into the window of a boutique. Tied to the roof was a Notice box, the car driver was dead at the wheel; he hadn’t quite made it home.
The office was empty too and Rence wandered through the building going from room to room, turning off computers that had been left on, switching off lights.
In Haynes office he stumbled into the Notice box that was laid on the floor the top sealed. He was about to leave when he heard scratching and a moan from inside.
He took the lid off to find Haynes there, his skin pale and nose running. His eyes, glaucous and magnified through the lenses of his glasses, looked like stranded jellyfish.
“Rence…” Haynes croaked.
Rence had to kneel down to try and catch the words.
“It’s been such a tremendous success,” Haynes said, “our best launch ever.”
Rence waited until Haynes died with a broad smile on his face. Then he put the lid on the box.
After he had turned out the last of the lights in the building he realised that he had never really understood what was going on and that if he tried to turn it into a story it made no sense at all. Better to think of it as a launch, a project and so conclude, as Haynes had done, that it had all been a tremendous success.