Prologue 1.  On Earth

I have heard that people can get really annoyed with their SatNav when it seems to nag them, when it tells them they are taking the wrong turning or not driving within the speed limit.

I’ve also been told that some people end up throwing their SatNavs out of the window just to stop the nagging.  It’s even worse when you know the information your SatNav gives you is wrong, totally wrong.  As Jake had also discovered, it’s yet a hundred times worse when its nagging you, the data is wrong and additionally you’ve just paid a small fortune to have your own voice dubbed onto your SatNav as the ‘calm, reassuring voice of reason’ but then find the manufacturers have given your voice a strange regional accent and an intermittent, and very annoying, speech disorder.

For several miles on the M25 Jake had been driven frantic by his SatNav’s repeated instructions to “fffind a ssssafe ppplace to pppull over and dddo a U U U turn,” and “ShTurn shright at the nexsht shoopportunity.”  It wasn’t that his driving was in any way below par; the problem was that the SatNav had placed his car a mile south of the M25 in the middle of a Surrey farmer’s field and heading for a large lake, and it was now regaling Jake with directions back to the motorway.  All very wrong.

Looking ahead and then in his mirror, Jake’s view of reality confirmed he was in the middle lane of the M25, somewhere near Leatherhead, and pootling along at some speed or other.  His increasingly incomprehensible voice was getting increasingly animated, exhorting, no begging Jake to “ssschange coursssshe, pleaeese oh pleaeese!”  There was obviously something wrong with the SatNav in addition to the regional speech impediment and incorrect positioning; now it was getting emotional.

Maybe the satellites were out of synch due to increased solar radiation and they were all doomed; maybe accelerated global warming was melting the circuitry in his SatNav and so he was even more doomed; and maybe he would be doomed to ride the doomed Marie Celeste around the doomed M25 forever!  What fun.  Jake loved to play ‘The Indie Game’, where you had to imagine your life as if it were the front page headline of the Independent Newspaper.  The more doomed you were, the better the headline.

On the other hand the M25 did seem to be swinging a lot further south than he remembered from yesterday afternoon.  Something strange was happening, something that was brought sharply in focus around the next corner when a bright Christmas tree of activity hove into view.  It was a panoply of flashing emergency arrows as big as houses, traffic cones of every conceivable shape and size, and warning lights bright enough to land a jumbo jet during a volcanic eruption.

Along both hard shoulders and the central reservation were caravans and huge earthmoving vehicles painted in the instantly recognisable InstaBuild yellow, a colour defined as Pantone IB.  They were funnelling the speeding traffic into a narrowing dead end canyon just up ahead.  Hundreds of InstaBuild workers, in their yellow coloured hats and jackets, scurried around like well oiled ants on a mission.  Working at their usual breakneck speed the seemingly identical workers, none of whom were more than four foot six tall, had a mesmerising and relaxing effect on Jake.  The M25 was being re-built metre by metre in front of his very eyes, like the output from a huge tarmac making pasta machine.

Amazing and awe inspiring though it was to see this secretive and illusive workforce in action, Jake’s instincts kicked in and he knew he needed to take rapid evasive action; and so, indicating to the left, he sought out a car sized gap in the long line of yellow construction vehicles

The driver in the car to his right, a polished, blue rep-mobile with no real distinguishing features except fluffy dice hanging from the rear view mirror, raised his hands in the universal sign of frustration, annoyance and “look I’m not holding the steering wheel”, as he too realised that something needed to be done about the situation ahead.  However the driver’s anticipation and reactions to the conditions ahead were not as good as Jake’s.  A momentary lapse in attention combined with not holding the steering wheel, speaking on his mobile, eating a sandwich and shouting mindless abuse into the ether was all it took for Newton’s first law of blue-car motion to be empirically proven again.  The car ploughed into the wall of traffic ahead at 70mph, thereby ensuring he’d never need to worry about reporting that scratch on his bumper to his boss or tell his wife he’d forgotten the lettuce and milk on the way home from work.  A similar red rep-mobile followed suit and thudded into the growing wall of steel; it was not a good day to be a sales rep on the M25.

White vans spun and pirouetted with atypical beauty; wheels screeched in discord and huge articulated lorries slid and wiggled like drunken ice dancers learning a new routine.  In other circumstances it would have seemed artistic, humorous, innovative, worthy of an Arts Council Grant, but not today.  The last few chords of today’s live destruction concerto reverberated between daffodil rich embankments.  Staccato crescendo segued into staccato diminuendo, then silence.

There was no applause; just silence, then moaning.

Jake slipped between two silent InstaBuild lorries and parked his car high up on the new, virgin earth embankment.  Stepping into the bright sunlight, he took out his mobile and sent a live video feed to the BBC news desk.

Suddenly, breaking the stillness, a helicopter appeared from nowhere, hedge-hopping its way towards the crash scene in a manner that defied normal flying conventions and possibly another Newtonian law, that of gravity.  At times flying backwards, the helicopter wobbled and banked precariously, avoiding the electricity pylons and InstaBuild’s lighting towers by mere millimetres.  The spinning and rolling finally came under control and it landed on the hard shoulder with a bone-shaking thud.  The rotors may have stopped, but the helicopter continued to rotate, and so the tyres on the landing gear marked out their own neat circular landing pad in the new tarmac.  The insignia on the side of the helicopter was that of HyperCare, and it sent a cold ripple down Jake’s spine.  His hand slid behind his jacket lapel and he unconsciously stroked the carefully hidden HyperCare membership brooch with its many embedded, painfully earned gemstones.  He had reason both to thank and fear HyperCare.

Two huge, burly and very distinctive men dressed in scruffy serge overalls jumped out of the helicopter either side and fell to the ground, laughing hysterically as they rolled onto the grass verge.  One of them spotted Jake up on the embankment and waved in drunken recognition at him, shouting something that Jake hoped he had misheard.  He shuddered and sweated.  Jake recognised the ubiquitous and brutish Barovians who seemed to be muscling in on every type of job that required brutish or burly behaviour.  Predictably, pockets in their serge overalls were packed with their favourite anaesthetic tipple, Albatross Super Strength Lager, a can of which was being swigged whilst fumbling attempts were made to find something else secreted in another pocket.  Eventually, and with accompanying laughter, a huge aerosol spray was found, shaken and tested on the back of a grubby hand.  It left a gruesome red slash mark.

The two men sauntered over to the crashed cars and at each vehicle they lent through the window or opened up a door to check the occupants.  Each check took no more than ten seconds; sometimes it was followed by a huge, red, dripping cross being sprayed on the door of the car, other times nothing happened before moving on to the next car.  The occupants of the cars they did not spray, and this was the majority of cars, were shouting, screaming, and banging on windows with their fists, desperately trying to attract attention: the others were eerily quiet and still.

The stillness was then again shattered by the sounds of a badly tuned, backfiring engine with a much perforated exhaust pipe.  The caustic noise echoed across the motorway, heralding the appearance of a rusty, dented, battered, white Transit van.  It had no number plate or wing mirrors and only a partial front bumper, but there was an attempt at an emergency light in the form of a blue carrier bag taped over a head light being turned on and off by the driver.  Smart new HyperCare branding down the side covered over rust holes and scratches.  Just below the HyperCare logo, crudely written in wide black marker pen strokes, was the critical word ‘Ambulance’.  The cavalry had come to rescue the wounded, or so the people in the crashed vehicles might have believed.

Arms now waved limply out of car windows, helping to identify the locations of those requiring assistance; some of the walking wounded tried to further attract the attention of the ambulance crew by waving their blood-stained jackets above their heads.  The ambulance sped towards the crash scene in a crabwise manner, followed by clouds of black smoke and sparks like a steam train.  Jake knew the waving and screaming would be to no avail, the HyperCare operatives had their own agenda.  The transit stopped with a judder at the first vehicle marked with a red cross and two more burly Barovians in dirty overalls jumped out of the van.  The door of the car was wrenched open and a passenger was forcibly dragged out.  As the limp figure fell to the ground Jake noticed there was a matching red cross sprayed on his clothes.  Bundling the body into the back of the van like a sack of potatoes, they ignored the screams of the driver still remaining in the car and moved on to the next one marked with a cross.

The lines of police and InstaBuild workers stood back and did not interfere as the commercially motivated triage continued, and the van was soon filled with the selected dead and wounded.  The others were all totally ignored, not even receiving any first aid.  The ‘ambulance’ was soon completely full and the driver shouted over to Jake in a rough, heavily accented voice, offering him a lift home.  Jake declined the offer; the sickening, toothy leer on the driver’s sweaty face, and rising bad memories of a previous van ride, sparked off another bout of shaking and sympathetic pains in his right buttock.  A similar offer of a lift from the now extremely drunk helicopter pilot, also accompanied by a twisted leering smile, was also declined.  Both vehicles raced off towards the nearest HyperCare site, one zigzagging at ground level and the other zigzagging at tree height.  Job done; all paid-up members rescued.

Then the real cavalry arrived; a stream of more conventional ambulances and fire engines were allowed through the police cordon and they raced along the motorway to the scene of the crash.  With bright blue flashing lights; efficient functioning engines, fully trained personnel and modern medical equipment - the other accident victims could now receive the attention they so desperately required.

For Jake, it was time to make his way into London.  He had a meeting at his office with his Advertising Agency, which they had insisted was of mega-paramount importance, life affirming significance and would change his life and blow his ears off; or something similar that related to another part of his anatomy.  They always operated in hyperbole, Jake was sure they had been weaned on Reggie Perrin videos.  Whilst his Agency would camp out in his office until his secretary joined a nunnery, he didn’t trust them in any company facility with Wi-Fi connectivity, no matter how secure it was claimed to be.  Not since the Berlin Incident.  He could never forgive them for the Berlin Incident.

With the wind buffeting his dark sleek hair Jake’s attention was drawn down and then a bit further down, as a diminutive InstaBuild worker tugged at his jacket hem.  This close up, Jake could still see nothing about his appearance that would help him distinguish this specific worker from any of the thousands of workers seen on building projects across the world.  A small badge on the IB’s yellow hard-hat identified him as fluent in ‘Big-Language’, a term they used for English.  This also indicated that he was a supervisor; which Jake knew was a sort of hereditary, quasi-religious ceremonial function.  It was claimed by InstaBuild that they could trace the holders of various offices back over many thousands of years, but who would ever be able to validate that bit of information as they were the most reclusive and secretive organisation outside of the legendary Descaled Caramelised Nuns, who were even more compulsively secretive, repeatedly reclusive and also very bad spellers.

A rough skinned, stubby hand offered Jake a crumpled note.  With a mumbled comment including the name of his sister Mirabelle, the small worker, generically referred to as an IB, turned round and fled back to the safety of the rest of his work group with an amazing burst of speed and agility.  Jake smoothed out the note to read,       

Jake, sorry about the trouble on the motorway, InstaBuild are putting in a new intersection for me this morning, but to meet my deadlines they had to omit any diversions or signs that there were no diversions.  However I’ve told them to get your car back on the road for you.  Okay? Now wave to me.  It’s the camera to your right.  No the other right dumbo!  Now eyes up a bit.  A bit higher.  Hello Jake.  Wave nicely.  Not like that, nicely.  See you later, Sis. X X 

Jake’s sister knew him so very well and he followed the instructions to the letter.  His eyes eventually panned from left to right, then up a few degrees, then across a bit further to find a motorway camera pointing at him and nodding acknowledgement.  He waved a bemused response and went off after his car, which by this time was being towed back to the M25 by a small team of construction workers.  It was as much as he could do to keep up with them even though there were only four IBs pulling his car.  If they ever became less shy as a people, and Tug-of-War was included as an Olympic event, and InstaBuild could be declared a nation state, then they would win every medal on offer.  It might be difficult to identify which IB won which event though, as every IB looked almost identical!

Jake’s car was soon back on the old part of the M25.  Since the accident in which he had been involved some action had been taken and warning signs were being hastily erected.  They confirmed that the work would last until lunchtime, at which time the M25 would have a brand new junction and a southern spur solely for his sister.

The temporary warning signs were truly huge, gigantic, and Jake noticed that they complied with the new European Directive that required them to feature every language in the EU.  Jake smiled, this was one of his more novel ideas at work and Acme Holdings had made him temporary Special Projects Director to see it through.  He had coordinated Acme Holdings’ ‘sponsored’ Euro-MPs right across Europe to ensure they gave their support to a minor and virtually un-noticed amendment to Directive 2004/38/EC on the right of citizens of the EU and their family members to move and reside freely (Freedom of movement for workers) within the territory of the Member States.  The minor amendment Jake and the Legal Team had written slipped through easily, as it was superficially just about ensuring clarity of communication to all nationals on any topic that might affect their welfare and safety.  The lobbying, sponsored EMPs were seen as doing their job with exemplary diligence when they added this amendment, not an expression often associated with Euro-MPs, particularly the deadbeats and deviants that Acme sponsored.

As soon as the Directive was in place, Jake’s new company Acme Reliable Safety Equipment and Signage launched an entire range of street signs featuring all twenty three official languages.  The impact on street signs was immediate and dramatic.  Signs like ‘Stay in Lane – Maximum Speed 30mph’ were now ten times larger, they were thirty feet tall and six feet wide to ensure that all nationals could be ‘safe in their free movement within the EU’, basically Acme had now added every other EU language to this everyday road sign.  It would be a complete blight on the landscape, but also a license to print money for another division of Acme.  The future would be even more profitable when the other forty five regional and minority EU languages were introduced into the scheme in 2012.

Humming happily to himself, Jake turned up the sound system, put his iPod on random, and sped off to the office to the sounds of Kylie Minogue, Kiss and Stockhausen, what a great mix.