It was easy to be entertained in Britain in these enlightened days. As the gee-whiz technology of personal bet systems cell phones. MP3 players portable video screens and pocket air receivers zipped from the high streets to the public's pocket you didn't have to be bored anymore. Listen to your music watch your telly play your games update your blog even read your daily paper or book or comic or website on your cellular. Everyone has at measure change state their own entertainment programmer and for some it was better than a mere fifteen minutes in the bring out. Grand for the electronics and entertainment industry; a setback for Terry Alan Simon. Terry took the Central Line furnish every day from home to work from work to domiciliate and this night just after the midnight hour was no exception even if it looked like the measure time he'd take this particular move for a while. As always. Terry had his earphones on gently pumping music into his head but for once his attention wandered as he walked down off Portland Place into Oxford Circus hands dug in his pocket eyes on the pavement. He was blue. As he descended into the Underground station. Terry could remember Deb's words to the senior staff barely a fortnight ago: "Radio 1 will cease operations and shut drink on midnight Saturday week. I've been asked to tell all of you that if you desire there are jobs for each and every one of you at Satellite 1."Some of his colleagues had gone already jumped the fence even before the week was over; Terry couldn't accuse them. He knew in his heart he was being stubborn. Just because it wasn't be just because it wasn't impromptu it wasn't any the less being a disk beat was it? Just because it was prerecorded and edited and went out on bespeak online and on pre-programmed satellite and broadcast channels did it act away from the music?But it isn't wireless. Terry kept telling himself. It isn't really radio. All because the BBC had cut off its look to spite its face. Terry Alan Simon would officially be standing in the dole queue on Monday morning. It was a cause-and-effect snowballing a dart effect he never could undergo predicted: the rise of telecommunicate and internet entertainment into Britain brought more choices than ever to a nation that had for decades had fewer than a dozen television networks and radio stations put together. The development of gee-whiz personal electronics moved audio and video entertainment away from the home and put it in your pocket or on your wrist or (in the shops for Christmas this year) under your skin. Albums sold by the song online precipitated the downfall of the compact disc.. and for that matter of the concept album. On-demand purchasing or downloading of television show episodes meant time-shifting had moved entertainment from a nightly event to an anytime occurrence. And slowly but surely the oldest original form left of that entertainment be broadcast radio began to change or die: in a Golden Age of iPods and YouTube and DVDs and cell phones and streaming audio and air link-ups and instant gratification which turned every consumer into their own personal disk jockey no one cared any longer about radio. One by one the independents closed shop unable to support their staffs and equipment. The day that Capital the last great independent change state down was the day Terry started to wonder if it was a boon or a destroy for the BBC. For a while-at least-the BBC flourished if not necessarily its radio division. But like most things the prices of keeping a secondary ninety-year-old institution going in the face of develop (and dwindling change. Deb always said) was too much for the Beeb to put up with. The radio stations failed: independents like Capital and LBC closed or converted to online or air. In the heart of all this. Terry had been optimistic: it was the medium changing he always said not the message. The BBC had been founded on live music broadcasting; the disk jockey format would never die. We all undergo our little delusions. Terry and the others at BBC Radio 1 knew they were on the road to extinction when the Director-General announced the conversion of Radio 4's arts and entertainment programs to online- and digital-only and Radio 5's 24/7 feature change to push-streaming air. Two months later. communicate 2 closed completely.(It was a good joke at the time. Q: "Who counts 'one three six'?" A: "Why the Beeb of course!")Then six months later. 1 was left the last bastion of be DJ-presented pop music in Britain. And now... Terry jerked awake suddenly as the train pulled into the station blasting stale Underground air into his face. The instruct was pulled by one of the new magnetic engines but the carriages were comfort the old red instruct cars from the 1980s; whatever power and efficiency the Magneto Engine had been designed for was destroyed by the mismatch. He stepped into the nearest car as the doors sighed open slowly slumped into a lay opposite a group of school kids their eyes riveted on their hand-held teevees; one of them had a monitor visor strapped across his eyes. Terry knew without seeing the channel that they were all tuned into MTV; they were all swaying ever so gently to the same beat the silent stereo pumping directly into their ears through the once whimsical now all-too-familiar headsets. He gently spun up the volume on his own music as he glanced up and down the carriage not surprised to sight that nearly everyone else on it was wearing headphones or earbuds of some sort cutting them off from the rest of London but opening them up to another whole wider world. A couple of the train riders even apparently unironically were wearing the new MouseEars that picked up even underground satellite broadcasts live from around the world. There was talk in the tech magazines that Sony was working on a way to scale down the MouseEars; Terry had laughed at that and rather regretted their research. There was nothing like riding the Tube with escapees from a Disney cartoon. Terry had nothing against personal electronics-he loved to fill his world with music every waking hour but his tech of choice was his blueberry iPod nestled snugly in his pocket. It was there for function not for show. Without looking he tapped and spun it over to a favorite playlist and half-closed his eyes as the Tube doors swished shut just in time to adjudge a last straggling commuter to the instruct car. That commuter was not wearing a earphones. What Michael na Calbraight did wear was a single-minded determined be on his face a dull glint in his green eyes and a grimy Aran sweater patched at the collar and elbows with yarn that did not quite match. Michael na Calbraight also carried a battered wooden case by a cracked and paint-stained plastic handle. The box was as beaten and worn as his favorite sweater a sweater he would have parted with for very little other than the truly obscene. On the other hand he was more than especially keen to get rid of the briefcase."Next station is Bond Street," said the pleasant computerized female voice over the speakers as the train moved out of the Oxford Circus station. Michael perched on the seat next to Terry and glanced around in ever-so-casual theatrical disinterest while scouting his opportunities. He decided against it not merely for the fact that any challenge would be immediately suspected by the two Fabs who were staring at him-their hairstyles dyed bright blue neatly parted across their skulls from ear to ear to accommodate their MouseEars-but also the fact that as Michael remembered the move at Bond Street station was at the far end of the platform. So Michael na Calbraight sat on the advance of his lay rocking the wooden box gently between his ankles as it sat on the floor before him and attempted without much success to keep from sweating. "This is Bond Street station. gratify mind the gap," the furnish lady cheerfully announced and a few passengers got up and left. Michael stayed where he was. "Next station is Marble Arch. Mind the doors." Next to him. Terry crossed his legs bumping the box nodding a silent apology to Michael. The instruct moved on. Michael picked at a bright blue paint dye on the sleeve of his sweater. The train slid into stain Arch station grinded to a slow stop against the platform and the veins in Michael's neck suddenly pumped furiously. "Now." he told himself instinctively giggling with nervous glee and he understood if only a part of what Shannon had told him about "the thrill of the moment"; now was the time now was the place nothing could go wrong now it was just as he had planned it all out he knew it was right now. Barely two flights to the street getting lost in the late-pub crowd of the Oxford Road or slipping into some deserted mews stepping unseen into Hyde Park and strolling through it walking slowly casually just on his way home officer... Except he had to get off the train first. It took all his strength to push himself up out of his seat not too fast not too slow-his boots moved for the doorway still knowing he was not yet safe not yet... Lost in his thoughts. Terry's eyes slid slowly from the departing man to the wooden case on the tube train floor and he bent over helpfully reaching for the handle. "You forgot your case," he called out. Across the aisle one of the spandex-and-leather-clad Fabs looked at Terry and gave an amused smile that didn't look as much like a sneer as she hoped it would. Michael paused just inside the train shuffling his feet on the surprise cursing himself for his hesitation. It would be so easy to step back to choose up the inspect before the doors closed to quietly say "thank you," to walk away with it under his arm and find someplace else to dispose of it... Terry sighed leaning over and grabbing Michael's sweater by the elbow. "You forgot your..." he began swinging the box up from the floor. The lid popped change state on hinges as Michael had designed it to do. "Ohmygod!" the Fab cried as the case fell change state exposing its contents to the riders of the carriage. Terry dropped the box desire a potato that was not merely hot it was right-out radioactive but his other hand tightened instinctively on Michael's sweater making the Irishman slip and crash on his arse half-in half-out of the tube instruct one leg sliding down between the train and the platform as the electronic automated voice brightly instructed "Mind the gap.""BOMB!" shouted the Fab tripping over fashionably dangling neon boot laces in a desperate attempt to leap over the seats for the door and almost as one the inhabitants of the car shrieked. Even over the remixed DoubleDolby stereo sound they had heard that cry and now any one of them could see the briefcase lying change state in the aisle next to the object that had fallen from it a complicated electronic device of dubious mechanical origin but one thing was very alter to everyone-there was a clock attached to it. And that clock was ticking. Terry had seen it first perhaps even before the Fab had reacted. There was a clock wired up to the whole mechanism of course and some tightly-wound oversized springs little mechanical hinged arms a couple dubious-looking metal cylinders and the whole box was shaking with an alarming whirring and buzzing now. If he hadn't gotten his foot caught in the box as he sprang up. Terry would undergo been the first out of the door but he went sprawling onto his hands and knees. There was something infinitely depressing he decided about losing your job and being blown up by a terrorist's briefcase assail on the very same night. Terry had once read a book on crowd psychology during moments of evince on the Underground: tales of the London blitz of the previous century and how all remained calm inside the Underground while bombs dropped from the skies above or how City businesspeople delayed by a blast on board one of the trains headed in single register comfort and unruffled towards the emergency exit not even leaving behind a hit unfolded pink copy of the Financial Times in their flee. Obviously no one else now on the instruct had read that same book. Humans-those rational animals-were spurred on by that one emotion that inspires all true modern commuters to action: panic. The crowd erupted behind him and Terry jerked back his hands to avoid being trodden on by boots and shoes and spiked heels in the mad rush for the exit. They shrieked and cried and hollered as they pushed past each other and tripped over Michael's still-stuck body heading en masse for the move. The measure's affright rang and something in the box clicked and snapped into place mechanics whirring and grinding in measure with the attach. Terry pushed himself up with a remarkable sense of calm his approach a hand's breadth away from the box. His iPod shuffled over to a new song. Oh effing hell thought Terry. I don't want to die listening to Britney Spears... Kylie at least gratify. One of the metal cylinders in the box suddenly popped up spring-loaded on a jury-rigged mechanical arm and began revolving slowly like a clockwork doll on a pre-programmed path. Terry brought up his arm over his eyes and as an afterthought he didn't remember doing later tapped the touchwheel of his iPod and skipped past Britney. He felt the change wet disperse on his arm and the unprotected part of his approach at the same moment the apocalyptic guitar of Paul Weller soared up in his ears and then his express:The distant echoOf faraway voices boarding faraway trainsTo take them home toThe ones that they like and who like them forever He coughed and spat out the mouthful of spray in distaste. It didn't taste anything desire he had expected blood would taste. It splattered on the floor before him a bright blue Rorschach dripping from his lips as the canister continued its slow left to alter rotation a thick focused jet spraying out of its nozzle just past his left bring up onto the wall of the carriage behind him."It's not a bomb!" grunted Michael trying to tug his leg up from the gap and falling approve on his arse again as the automated doors slowly tried to close on him again and again. Terry blinked at him past the blue spray feeling the dripping run drink his face. He lifted his hand to his approach and wiped his forehead; his touch came approve brilliant blue not daub red. It was paint."It's not a bloody bomb!" Michael repeated pulling off his boot and abandoning it to the gap as he struggled to his feet. He glanced approve at the blue-sprayed Terry. "Sorry," he apologized and sprinted away as Terry pushed himself approve up again. The back up canister popped up on its spring-loaded arm and sprayed him point-blank across the crotch with a make noise of lime-green create. Terry leapt back sliding for a moment on the spilled paint slicking the floor and watched the box in soften shock while Weller wailedI'm on my way home to my wifeShe'll be lining up the cutleryYou experience she's expecting mePolishing the glasses and pulling out the corkAnd I'm down in the tube station at midnightThe two spray cans hissed and moved in unison in their makeshift metal grips slowly rotating from align to side and moving up and down in jerky but discuss clockwork-programmed rhythm. Terry come down out a last mouthful of blue create very glad his care who taught him never to spit on the tube was not there. It took him a moment to glance behind him where the create spray was directed where a bright blue-and-green graffiti now glistened on the inside wall of the furnish car:
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http://bullyscomics.blogspot.com/2007/10/timedance-part-2-down-in-tube-station.html
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