Meanwhile (in a sense)…
Elsewhere…
Thrimp
Wiltshire
United Kingdom
Earth
-Lee-
Bradley, have you taken the washing out?
The song only had one purpose, and that was to entertain Lee, which it did. A complementary sub-purpose was to annoy his mum, which it also did. By those criteria, if no others, it was excellent.
His mother’s voice filled the room.
Wa- wa- washing, wa- wa- wa- washing
I’ve t- t- told you, t- t-t-t-told you
Don’t leave it in the machiAAAOOOUUUWWWWWWWWWWNNNNN’
It gets all smelly, sme- sme-sme-
‘Bradley!’
The sound of his name came not from the computer speakers now but from the larynx of his actual mother, who was behind him, and upset.
‘Why is my voice coming out of your computer?’
‘It’s a song,’ he explained. ‘I made it.’
‘How did you?’
‘I recorded you shouting at me yesterday.’
‘What? How? When did y-’
‘Do you like it?’
‘What? No! I do not like it.’
‘Aaah!’ He responded more to the physical assault than the verbal, hunching over defensively in his computer chair. ‘What are you doing, it’s good!’
‘It doesn’t sound very good Bradley, it sounds like me talking to you about the washing over a load of horrible boom-boom.’
‘Horrible boom-boom?’ he laughed, shielding his head.
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‘Yes, horrible boom-boom! It’s horrible and it goes boom boom, and don’t laugh at me please!’
Bradley! Bradley! Wawawawa- washing!! sang the computer.
‘Ha why are you laughing then if it’s so horrible aagh!’
‘It sounds like a cow stuck in a lawnmower!’
‘Don’t talk about yourself like that aaargh! Everyone is saying it’s good in the comments!’
‘Comments? You’ve put this on the internet?!’
‘No, I only uploaded it to aaaargh stop it!’
‘This is on the internet!?’
‘No, well yeah, but only people who follow me are gonna see it and there are only forty-seven of them’.
‘I do not want my voice going around on the internet singing about the washing!’
‘It’s not ‘going around’ is it, there’s only forty-seven people who can see it. Don’t worry you’re not gonna hear it on the radio.’
‘Good’, she said. ‘Now take it down please.’
‘What do you mean take it down, it’s not up.’
‘Well whatever it is, just undo it and don’t share it with anybody else please. Besides which, you’re not to sit wasting time on computers and phones today.’
Two weeks into the summer holidays, Lee was having the time of his life. There was no more college, his mum was at work all day, and the rest of his life stretched out before him like a film he was only ten minutes into but could already tell was going to be the best film he’d ever seen.
‘I’m not, I’m gonna do millions of things.’
‘Housework, please. Washing, vacuuming, dinner.’
‘Yeah, I’ll do loads. I’ll have the whole house done by the time you get home, watch.’
‘And if you get all those finished, which really should only take you about two hours, you could apply for a few jobs.’
This was a new item that had recently cropped up in her nagging repertoire, and he resented it bitterly. It was two weeks since he’d finished the exams that allowed him to legally cut himself loose from the government-mandated misery of school and start to actually enjoy being alive. Two weeks and she was already trying to sell him on to the next master.
‘Yeah, I’ll apply for loads of them. I’ll have six jobs when you get back.’
‘Just the washing, vacuuming and dinner will do.’
‘Yeah, have a good day.’
‘Bradley are you… have you been to bed? You’re not still up from last night, are you?’
‘No.’
‘No to which one?’
‘I’ve been to bed.’
‘When?’
‘Well, I had a nap after dinner yesterday,’ he confessed.
‘Oh, Bradley!’ Her eyebrows beetled with concern and disappointment. ‘You’ve been up all night on that stupid computer again!’
‘It’s fine, I’m going to have another nap after you go out.’
‘Well… don’t sleep too much. Make sure you’re tired enough to go to bed properly tonight. And put the washing out before you go to sleep please. It’ll go off in seventeen minutes.’
‘There’s more washing today??’
‘There is washing every day, Bradley.’
‘Fine, no problem.’
‘Do not forget again.’
‘I’m hardly gonna forget it when you’ve just gone on at me about it AND I’ve made a song about it, am I?’
She fixed him with a knowing gaze.
‘Alright, yeah I won’t forget the washing. Go to work, you’ll be late.’
‘Not the internet song washing, the real washing’
‘Yeah, I know. Bye’.
Lee was not wasting time. By his own criteria, he was operating in the upper echelons of human productivity. The fact that his criteria for gainful employment of time consisted of creating novelty electronic music, and that everyone else’s consisted of things like jobs, didn’t worry him; in fact, he harboured strong suspicions that everyone else in the world was jealous of him for knowing how to be happy.
He turned off the song and loaded his savegame. He’d been relentlessly killing giant warcrabs and harvesting their shells for the past three days and he nearly had enough for the armour upgrade he needed, which was going to make him pretty much invincible. He didn’t know what he was going to do once he was pretty much invincible—in fact he was secretly worried it’d take all the fun out of it—but he was determined to get there anyway.
A few more hours’ hunting should do it.
He was having the best time of his life.