WAR!Fair4.com
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4. The Banker and The Clerk.
The investment merchant-Banker sat-back, and glanced across at the administrative accounts’-Clerk, sat in the opposite seat, fixed-table between. Travelling on this same-train same-time, same-carriage.
For the-Clerk the same-seat, if that or any other was to be had amongst the everyday commuters seated and a few standings, today. Usually crammed-in each weekday, early-morning into The City.
For the-Banker, this day too-early for the usual-reservation. With, or today without, waiter-served breakfast or a free-morning newspaper. Only those freely given-away and piled-up in the station forecourt to be taken-away. That had to be paid-for anyway by publicising the latest model and version, and most reasonably-priced.
Like copies of The Big Issue sold-on by Homeless-people in Metropolis’ around the world: no such thing as a free-lunch the-Banker reasoned. First-Class: The Financial-Newspaper paid-for anyway by The Railway Company: Public-Private Infra-Structure: ticket-seated and breakfasted comfortably with:
The-Financial Newspaper
at massively discounted market-rate or cost-price freely as-advertising encouraging in-someway paid-for, and for: returns…
The Newspaper could be easily afforded, anyway. Today’s loss-leader, tomorrow’s winner paid-for upfront from the station kiosk, day upon day.
The Newspapers Corporate-Investment: at-least knowingly borrowed-on:perma-Credit: Merit: Staff-Cost(s): paid-off and on continuing steady-sales to be recouped; shorted, daily, and long-term investment…
Achieved…
Today, The Newspaper not given-away with the extortionately, and exclusively permissive over-priced pass this day into the City’ Stock-Exchanges and Financial-Markets.
Staff-costs and paper and inks, magazine as affecting the World. The Annual-Executive rail-ticket paid-for, whether used or-not. This day the first train out and apparently all carriages only Standard-class available.
A single First-class carriage was filled-up quickly by anyone who had a ticket and conceivably some who did-not: there were no-tickets being checked or paid-for apparently the barriers left-open and inviting all-comers.
For the-Banker, for another-time that morning, something mildly, now-seconded, and markedly unusual. The earlier, when the radio alarm-clock had switched-on routinely with the early-morning fishing, farming, road, and rail conditions.
Airline and shipping delays, arrivals, and departures, and speculative forecasts: weather-reports, from around the world, local, and global, political-economic and media-news: with the previous-nights’ closing market-prices from around The World…
There had been developments overnight, that needed attending-to. From the emptying platform, the-Banker and the-Clerk boarded the train together more or less equal. The-Clerk with a Free advertising Newspaper and headphones, plugged-in to a mobile Media-Centre.
The-Banker with a bought-copy of The Financial-Newspaper from the trains’ limited half-empty double-decker, food and drinks re-freshments’ trolley.
Having taken the first seat-available in the nearest Standard-Class compartment coupled with a foul-stench reeking drain-leaking latrine literally retching between the brown and grey-green patterned seats along the narrow aisle way, the-Banker waving the newspaper ahead as if to clear-the-air.
Un-wavering when shunted across by the next-passenger inline, to the only vacant window-seat glanced across-to and sedentarily leaned-forward across the table between them and asked of the-Clerk, already sat down-opposite:
‘So, what do you make of it all then…?’ in the customary easy clear voice of one born, with the interrogative confidence of swift appraisal. As in-stantly as if mysteriously-accusatory…as if with some felt need for validation, valediction, justification, testimony, guilt? Even before any evidential fact, or fiction? With a self and other-deceiving finality, justifying, with instant-conviction…but of who? By whom? Despite the original opening-question, it seemed as if with no real right-of-reply. The initial conversational-question asked as if intended not to be replied-to or any other-mindedly mitigating circumstances, or any-answer-at all, particularly, or generally, listened-to.
Or so the younger-Clerk surprised to be spoken-to then considered: perhaps like a nurture-nature kind of thing? Possibly a-Plebeian enquiry? Selected-standard flagged with no-probation the-Clerk decided: more likely a command, to make something of IT, and to-be-taken-notice-of.
Notice-given of anyway disregarding of the possibly-paranoid maniacal rhetorical-answer awaited, or not, by either, or Both, regardless of the-Other: The subtler -Inquisitor? The Quicker to-the- Draw? The original-recipient by-assumption looking-up from a streaming mobile smart-phone camera and video-games-console: USB-4slot-machine…game: WarFair4 downloading…
PER (personal electronic reader)/de-pocketed-information-recorded singularly removing the ear-phone microphone-socketed-lead off-line searching for the source of the mildly-irritating openly questive-words’ spoken as directly-to, or so it seemed to the-Clerk, in almost immediate reply:
‘Don’t know what to make of what?’ then:
‘Senseless.’ as to The-Banker as to The Newspaper headline shaken-out, the whole carriage could now view.
The-Banker sat-back purposefully, purportedly, and provocatively, to-unfold The Financial-Newspaper with the headline outermost, upper-most:
WORLD MARKETS IN TURMOIL! and seen again that photograph taking up the whole of the rest of the grey-top printed front-page remaindered, pictured in the minds’ eye.
Now, turned inside-out and with a staring squeezed blink of the eyes, fumbled as if in a freak storm, a blown umbrella, quickly folded-away. To the-Clerk: hung-out to dry: having seen earlier the front-page photograph, and one-liner top headed:
WORLD MARKETS IN TURMOIL! re-conceived on-line connected…down-loaded and updating second to second milli-second, minute-to-minute mobile-version uploading freely…with-advertising: optional:
Free view choice or fee skipping…
The-Clerk looking-down and into the same recently concealed picture, and slowly re-storing from browsing-history, as accurately acutely-historically as-depicted. As veritably verifiably unfaked updated un-tampered-with: mobile cell-phone-photographed syndicated and World-Wide-Web: networked-scene: as at the end of the previous day: the-City: stocks and bonds’ markets as then as now: seen news-printed and pictured from the evening before: a litter-strewn like old ticker-tape across The Trading-Room floor.
Forsaken, and an unforgiving-blankly waiting-screen strap-line banded: Markets Closed. Markets Closed. Markets Closed…the single-slogan as about to go up or down was not possible to tell diagonally, from one corner of the screen to the other perhaps tangentially-to slip-backwards flickering erratically across continuously stuttering…across perhaps, another:
Markets Closed.
Only-slightly blurred from the-top aloft above, or below, the perfect: the-normal midway ideally-positioned not at the-extreme outer-fielded or even ever truly evenly-centred: but as inside-out and now, as stilled. As then, as now: as if no-longer existent as of now, and then, no-longer anymore unchanging exchange ever more exchanged until stopped perfectly still in its tracks, nowhere at all. Except: now, there: only as stop-framed time-up: b(l)eeped.
Cinematographically stilled, to be recorded, and repeated any movement as any-moment only impendent…in the-cloud…that bold bland statement flickering nonetheless-memorific ally fuzzily held in-abeyance:
Markets Closed.
shimmering-pixelated grid-table mapping diagrammatic…a flickering…
A coming-together. As a vertiginous horizontally remote-geometrically sited as a new dawn held rising, over the Worlds’-Edge. The-Cityscape-skyline…diverting…
>Banking-details…scams threateningly un-throated, of undeclared-bribery and corruption and fraud on-consultancy and management-only contracts hostaged hi-jacking debt-ransoming-deals projected unfounded optimism, pessimistically keeping quiet: the-private/public purse: tax-dodging as if this would be enough to boost-real confidence on-fixed and unfixed violin-fiddling burning-figures re-vealed:
> Weaknesses:… Strengths and:…
sub-titling screen-fantasy theme: distinctive emblematic-corporate-creations: dis-owning any real-identity or real-personality patched-together buffer-zone: video-text typeset: cast-role freely-played-ambiguously between Good and Evil.
Between:
‘O.K.?’ and not too-bad.
‘One -price and another and downright-incorrectly dis-honestly and non-rightly irresponsibly: stealing: sealing The-Deal: Generic-key: Designer-rip-off: online:
Dialogued. Options: with-structure and series arcade-style deviation from the normal…
too complex-to-control, if at all cutting-edge cut:
>To: the Cit(y)ies: How We Live: Where and between each-other: with people we look like who we think looks like ourselves, we ghettoize whether in the City or Countryside families living close or close to close to until they, we feel less, or more, than 20-25% until we feel uncomfortable threatened or angry. Then, we move, or we move, anyway, somewhere with a higher perceived proportion, as ourselves. Through the wall(s): the closest neighbor family and friendship(s) sailing and re-turning daily, Community-Street: weekly, monthly, and for years on end, for Many Millennia on the Globe.
Between the Sun and Moon: Lunar drawing onto Land, and into the skies Dinosaurus Birds and:
‘Unsinkable: Air-Craft Carrier.’
‘Space-Red: Sea-Monster.’
‘Mean Blue-Oceanic:’
‘Technological and Fiscal ex-pan(s)(i)on…’
‘Printing-Money…’ screen-pixelated:
‘Perhaps, bringing the-City down?’
‘The-Country? Whole-Continent(s):’
‘Un-like amoeba bacteria cytoplasm lichen on the surface…’
‘Into the air and space-breathing-Glaciers below::…’
‘Iced-up Market:’
‘Co-Lateral!! Being brought-down!!!’
‘Financial-Pricing System Monetarist: The-World!’ ethno-linguistically gender and cultural-ability driven:
‘Merit-(o) Crass!’
‘Us! Plut(0)cracies!!! Dictatorship!’
‘Of: The Proletariat?’
‘Eradicate-Poverty.’
‘Eradicate the-Gentry!!’
‘Eat The Rich!’
‘Socialist-Dictatorship!’
‘Free-Trade?’
‘Social-Democracy!’
‘Communist: Individual Wealth Gap (I W G):’ nonetheless…
‘Democracy…’
‘Dictatorship of a Minority, first past the post…’
‘Then. There to stay…’
‘Familial. Monarchial.
‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Of the Soviet Military Bureaucrat. China. 5G U.S. Eyes in the Sky.’
‘Smart-Plane…Everywhere. Solar-Wind.’
‘Buy-Out?’
‘Good-tactics?’
‘Global? Know of Any?’
‘What?’
‘Tactics?’
‘Civilization? Rule of Law?’
‘A good idea…but…’
‘But what?’
‘Brought-down!’
‘Bought-up!’
‘Bought out!’
‘By? Who? Why?’
‘Grotesque Over:(I)nvestment: GOB: (i)n:’
‘Commercial and Re-sidential: sold-as:’
‘Leisure-Property: Port-Folio (LPPF):…’
‘Strategically-falsely promoted tactics…’
‘Dot-Comms….’
‘Buildings…’
‘Land. And destroying…
‘Forest-Funding’ by incomprehensible debt-instrument…
‘The-Peoples’ ourselves?’
‘Governments?’
‘Sovereign Presidential.’
‘Big-Business?’
‘Areas of Expertise (AoE)’
‘Core in-Corporations:’
‘Banks! Funding-Investment. Growth!’
‘False growth.’
‘Too-quickly…’
‘Too-slowly…’
‘To get-out.’
‘Or not at all?’
‘Now? Greed…’
‘Spent on Charity Big-Projects (CBPs).’
‘Perhaps the-Price of Civilisation?’
‘Bringing in the goods…’
‘Taking-out.’
‘Buy-low. Sell-High:…’
‘Of-course.’
‘Build-High.’
‘City-Skyline.’
‘Same as it’s ever been…’
‘Bringing in the-Harvest…’
‘Or-not…’
‘Global-failure:
‘Fear-0f.’
‘F. Off! Declaring: Price-War!’
‘Hiked Interest-Rate(s): for Currency-Exchange:’
‘Goods and Services: hitched un-hinged:’
‘Trade-Wars? list…’
‘US: U.N.: China-Russe-Euro: BrISA. Crisis…’
‘Pound-PIGS. Farming. Industrial and Servicing: Development Bank(s):’
‘Everywhere. Asia Africa and the southern Americas to Mexico:’
‘Asia-Europe: Global-failure bailed-out:’
‘USA. Of the Money-Banking System this-time.’
@Money-Go-Round(MGR) fun(i)mation:
‘Not harvest(s)?’
‘Bubble?’
‘Media. Double.’
‘Trouble? Your-Own?’
‘Triplicate, now?’
‘Quadratic….The Great North-Sea!’
‘Arctic-Circle saw nothing like this!’
‘Antarctic: Gas and Oil. Seas and Ocean(s)…’
‘Fresh-Water: underground: Plastic(s):’
‘Pipeline: Money:’
‘Of-Course! Metals and minerals from the poorest to the richest:’
‘Richest back to the various-Elite. Europe and North America stitching trainers in Cambodia and Bangla-Desh: East-Pakistan…’
‘Western-Afghanistan and …
‘Iran? Persia?’
‘Africa?’
‘Back to that?’
‘Australia&New-Zealand. Pacific China-Seas Indo-Nesia. IsLand Pygmies&more:be-side(s:..’
‘Russe-Desert and Caucasian-Mountains…’
‘UAE. Israeli Irani and Iraqi and Syrian Des/serts…’
‘Turkeys’ Anatolia. Amazonian. Amazon…’
‘India. Vast G-Forest Pangea…’
‘Polar: Equator:…’
‘Oceanic-Deserts?’
‘Ice and Sand:’
‘Shale.’
‘POGS: PlasticOilGasSilicon/Salt/Sand…’
‘Pipeline(s):’
‘To: Space?’
‘Broken-into:’
‘Under-the-Sea(s)!’
‘Carbon-fibre and Oxygen:’
‘Hydrogen and more besides….’
‘Clean-Water:’
‘Monetised:’ lo-mo/L0aned…
‘Digital: Macro-Economics for:’
‘Outright-Profit.’
‘Max. of: The People?’
‘Minority-Dictatorship of the Elite:’
‘Workers’ Class?’
‘Military.’
‘Businesses:’
‘Bureaucratic.’
‘Anti-Trust?’
‘Government Nationalistic Exceptionalism Corporations (GNECs): Characteristic(s):’
‘New-Era: Global: five and six at sevens…’
‘All-Sector Energy and Material Goods…’
‘Stocked and Stored.’
‘Shared. Bought and Sold.’
‘Fixed far-ahead:’
‘Registered-Bank(s): As if…’
‘Bonus on top of that! Paying no-Taxes.’
‘None-seen.’
‘Who pays Taxes? Offshore Banking Business OBB)?’
‘Share-Holders…’
‘Infra-Structure: Their-Customer-Base? Worker(s)-Peoples’ Beneficent Practical: (I)n-vestment-Future(s) (B(I)F(s):’
‘P(I)S(s)(i)?’
‘Poor?’
‘Pension?’
‘In-surance?’
‘Savings?’
‘(i)nvestments?’
‘Of course.’
‘All: HiStory?’
‘Herstory@Secured?’
‘Profit: at any Cost?’
‘Subscribed regular income.’
‘Un-secured Privately-secretive private-ownership of the means-of-production.’
‘Private-Property by Capital-Accumulation.’
‘Cloudy?’
‘Pissing-down!’
‘Crapping-away!’
‘Scrapping…’
‘Or?’
‘Taxes? If You’re the-Revenue. I don’t owe…’
‘Revenue?’
‘Police and Thieves?’
‘Riot?’
‘No!’
‘Low Social Mobility (LCM).’
‘As: against High Social Mobility?’
‘Where?’
‘Anywhere?’
‘No Where! Lowest: poor and homeless…’
‘Sovereign-City: Nation: State:’
‘Less.’ Coastal-Town(s): piss-poor: apart from: Tourism: Guide: Taxes and fund(i)ng(s): supports taken-away: online: Social-Structure: Austerity. Bubble-burst gave-up. All its’ gains tech. screen(s): Stocks and Shares.
Anti-Trust Corporate-Monopoly.
Non-monopoly bought-out, sell-off, and monopoly takeover. merger-Monopoly. Despite competition, rules and usual behavior. Quantity-costs and price. Bonded-Global Government (BGG) GDP securities...
Cyber-Security Sanction(s) busting back-door: Tech-Hostage. Front-Door: Arrest and re-lease and re-leased and arrested, again, for a very long time, or self im-posed exile abroad-Robbers all.
Trade-less so, more-than:Government.
Public/Private. Data-sharing: Comms hacking Cyber-Attack. Viral.
Impact peaks and depressing troughs’ costs’ rise and fall. Faster and slower.
Impact on price-cost of: Tariff(s): on imports from abroad; equal out across different goods costs and services. Stronger and weaker revenue-growth, any growth, domestically, and abroad, gone too far out.
Re-trenchment in the surrounding countryside, and see out the winter-Benchmark:Marker-Price: N/n: Global Interest Rate. Gross, and Net Domestic Product, PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) as costs and expenditure to the thousands and millions and billions that make up Global Trade. As we go along. US Dollar and China Yuan. Argentina and Turkey. Indonesia, and Australia. Africa digital knowhow and skills to produce doctors and scientists better employed up to now, abroad. Over reliant on Foreign Capital: U.S. Dollar or Yuan: to base currency: and know-how, from all over.
Empiric. Chinese Indian Arabic Roman Anglo-English French and Spanish and Portuguese as Dutch or lastly and most terrorisingly terrifyingly, perhaps, until the next Reign of Terror. The French Revolution and Germanic Belgian Nazi Monastic Congo. The British Empire, and America, North.
Speaking, all over the world. Chinese, Arabic and Hebrew. Latin, English, and Urdu/Hindi. Spanish…All: the same now, as far as either of them or anyone on the train there, or anywhere-else knew as of: All: Business-Dealings: Commerce, that evening, instant, before: Put(s). Stayed. Both now in the knowledge assumed of the other. Both assumingly knowingly, unknowingly, yet simply pictorially- imagining that morning, the scene as unchanged from the nighttime before.
Then, as now: inside the City Stock-Market Building heavy-teakwood mahogany doors, tightly-closed, hermetically-sealed a normally fluorescent glow turned-off. Except for a single computer-screen presence, remaining-there:
Markets Closed as if readied for all time, previously, for this day.
As if this had never happened before. Yet it had. From the evening-before, as in pointless pointed dire-warning: once installed, as if permanently. Equivocally, perhaps, warnings, automatically, not to be taken too-literally, ignored, or ind(e)finitely normally meaning: before the cleaners had cleaned-up and some, but then, not-everyone- else had been cleaned-out.
Before nightlife restaurant and television cabaret, the latest news and sport, weather then repose-taken. The on-message only that:
‘The-Markets will be open again, and sooner rather than later…’
‘This same-day?’
Both:
‘As any other day?’
‘Business as Usual.’
‘This day…’ taking-over the competing computer-programmers’ co-operatively collectively collaboratively algorithmically metering as an unlicensed taxi-cab carrying and insuring business-plans financially under-written and over-insured. Under-insured, over-written, or re-insured, or not-insured at all:
Violence-suspected…
‘Different.’
‘Difference…An Act of God?’
‘In:surance? Broking breaking-eggs? The Markets on Auto-Selling…’
‘A.I. One I owe U.’
‘An Act of Us!’ pre-programmed virtual-win, lose, or draw, cancelled postponed, and re-negotiated. The animal-urge to risk, and win or destroy through mistake, error…
Circumstances un-fathomable into living-obliteration, nevertheless, unconstrained. Imposing the investment- and Merchant-Bankers’ insuring not ensuring the values of private-equity stock in Government and Peoples’ currency-bonds individually personally self-owned, by self, or other. Priced-out, cash-back, borrowed on payday loan Accountant-Clerks’ savings-account pension and insurance, and country clear profit-to Government-Taxes, paid-in, or not.
Unemployment-Benefit, or not.
Disability and Illness payment as compensation, in sickness and in health. Or, not.
Un-paid breaks taken:
Abroad. Suitcases full of cash it may as well be, except electronically and to-be taken-back with inward-investment, repayment in compensation hitting-growth. Yet hardly covering the original computer-crime in sin in-bribes and back-handers’ dodgy-deals, reneged on, millions of them, billions. Of fixed-rates, false-accounting cash-in-the-bank. Cash that stayed out-of-the-bank.
Gold and Gems. Stayed-out. Moved. Ill-liquidated, stashed-away: unavailable to-government, or to the-People to spend. Of the-Family-Business and as of small-Company-Name(s): seen briefly as painted hoarding pasted on the side-of-buildings.
Plastic: Advertising as along the embankment railway-track, alongside sidings and stations to be passed-through at high-speed, non-stopping…
All else, stopped.
Closed, shrunk, and engulfed by-globular enlarged Corporations’ advertising-hoardings for Banks’ Currency Economic-Zone and Country-Town passed-through.
High-Street: branches, shops and currency-exchanges, as-laundering risked domestic clearing-houses for returns, or no-return:
‘By the end of this-day?’
‘All-won or lost?’
‘Banks?’
‘Shops. People…’
On screen:
‘Purchasing-Power?’
‘Profit-to-Interest Rates.’
‘Equity!!’
‘Or still stood still?’
‘Quits? 50/50%?’
‘Who wins does not lose.’
‘Who loses does not win.’
‘Really?’ All investing higher-and-higher with insecure unsecured funds in stocks and insurances: inter-bank loans re-insurances, and re-sales…within (closed-text) the listings…
Over and into… almost as suddenly as the whole front-page picture re-pasted into-memory…
For the-Clerk far from assuaging the culpability of the-other now exposed as the deplorably irresponsible and reckless lender. Not, as yet, wrecked-borrower, wreaked havoc-upon.
To the-Banker, the- Clerk cast now as the likely irresponsible, yet hapless helplessly indebted, no-deposit poor credit-rating history first-time mortgaged and-possibly employee. As in: Bank-loaned as salaried, invested monthly paid-off to be paid-back payday pay-check paper-money on-screen backed and banked:
The-Bankers’ Newspaper front-page pictorial held-out, taut-and-proud, as a flag of convenience.
Or as a crumpled bank-note.
Opened, to the light of day, as checking the veracity of foldin’ money: cash: Bill-Fold
Bank-Account the-Clerk knew; and returned, momentarily to the hand-held, now re-opening news-filtering-screen newspaper heard again as the rustling of dry-leaf cadaver.
‘Plastic-Age.’
‘Ex-e-cutive: Golden-Account!’
‘Oil&Gas:’
‘Paying-over again…’
‘Techno-Digital Geek-World: General Engineering & Electro-Knowledge: (I)(n)formation:
Outside the Train-Carriage: the weather not that inclement, or autumnal for the leaves to be springing, rising from their-branches, or:be freely-falling as snow-covered as foraging nuts and berries, for the long cold winter.
The Newspaper turned crisply inside-out and halved-again. Both to the same page skim-read by the-Clerk earlier: pre-registered up-front…next page…and as World-Wide-Web free and as-expected to be paid-for not:- freely-enabled seen with advertisements, and scammed, both skipped…to:
The (I)nsider-Report:
As of today there is so much owed, by so many, that cannot start to be paid-out or paid-back this day, or the next. This morning the stock-markets are closed. Once more World-Trade has ground a halt. All Credit-Trading, has been suspended. The trading of stocks and shares in recent times has left prices at such all-time high-levels, that, overnight, have collapsed. We are yet again in the grip of the greatest global fiscal and financial- fiasco, the greatest ever Economic-Crisis, ever, again.
Further-down:
This morning in Geneva there is to be an announcement of the International Conference on Monetary Compliance (ICMC). There is to be a declaration of economic policy and intent. This announcement is expected to stabilise major-global currencies and exchange-rates, at some mutually-agreed rate. To boost-confidence in the banking-system and in Global Fiscal-Policy and World-Trade. A shared-protocol, at Midday, world mean-time today, by the International Date-Line will…
Then:
‘There will be winners, and there will be-losers…’ spoken outloud.
Looking-up The-Banker as from The-Clerks’ laid-back attitude, drawn from the impending appended silence. The-Banker now self-imposed imaged point-of-view of the pictured closed-markets of:
The-Barrel:
‘The Photo: AKA: The-Cage?: calculated-risk? Join the-Game?’
‘Game?’
‘Markets Closed? No-real-risk…then?’
‘Limited-liability…’
‘Only the-details to be added.’
‘Then?’
The-Banker, on mobile cellphone earpiece bartered furtively and openly and loudly and confidently as if now confidentially swapped hand-signals and punched the air slapped both-palms together:
‘High-fives! We are in the tens…six…seven!’
‘Billions?’
‘ If you Will!’ and holding a-hand over the heart openly-palmed, and as sat, bowed slightly winked, a single staring- eye, as stooped to conquer:
‘Trillions, now…’
‘Quadrillion?’
With on-screen confirmation…re-directing…confirming… password…and printed-off paper-copy waved-frantically financial-agreement-stipulating:
‘Only to be signed-off…’ lifted from the floor brief-case revealed laptop lapped at reading-off as: The-Clerk now speaking:
‘700-billion assets signed-off for Every One of US on this Planet@Hell! No!’
‘No-one-else but Us?’’
‘No-one else? But? Us? Paradise.’
‘Fire Fighting.’
‘Forest-Fire.’
‘Ultra-Power: Corruption and Lies...’
‘Oil, Gas and Water-supplies cut-off.’
‘Internet…’
From: Ho-spit-able Colonial-Farm: Petty-Plantation: Factoryies’ Floor: UnderGround-Railroad tunnel and Own-Home Own-owned…at Home.
The-Clerk continuing:
‘But the Markets are Closed. Deal(s) to be added, then? Details? How many-Trillions-more?’
‘Before-what? All is Lost? De-valued? Bought-out. What? Sold-off? That is the name of the Game? Selling-off?’
‘Buying-up…to the lowest bidder(s).’
‘People bought-off…’
‘Same.’
‘Difference…’
‘To the-Buyer. Or to the-Seller? Buyers’ market? Seller?’
‘Dealt-with.’
‘Deals?’
‘Done.’ and with a nod, laterally entrusted, undisputed, and further endorsed over-lengthy client midday luncheon.
Tied-in: gifting as charity by guilt-association expense-account accounted-for and through electronic-signatory: pass-name and number and as a matter of public-record:
‘Details?’
‘No longer negotiable…’
‘Always…’
‘Or ever-were?’
The-Banker:
‘Then?’
Tapping keyboards:
‘Then?’
Then:
‘All to-be ironed-out today…’
‘By the all the-Clerks’ of All the-Worlds’ Works!’
As if spoken be-fore, many-times, both.
Informa(t)(e)-kwiki: transparent liquid-like, solicited. Solid as an assignment.
Scenario: Proposition. Projected, through the air cloud-like as before the-bell was rung for-departure.
As a warning to anyone last-boarding the train doors closed the train-carriage sealed and seated aside up-front:
‘I don’t know what to make of ‘It’.’
‘What?’
‘Yet…’
pause…
Then The-Clerk bought the-thought snickered slightingly to-self, as if spoken to self. Then: that sarcastic thought or was it sardonic? outlined out loud:
‘But I’ll bet we will find out soon-enough anyway? Don’t you?’ sounded differently. As if someone-else had spoken the words instead. As a gauntlet-glove thrown-down, to be picked-up:
‘O.K. If that’s what you make of it what will you make out of it, eh?’
Only as instantly-realised now, and as at the time-of-speaking earlier; and that short-moment-later as-spoken now irritatingly intimating imitating only-now at the-Gamble, seemingly committed-to.
The un-certainty now at such a communally yet privately, and now seemingly shared-venture. This seemingly reasonable or un-reasonable; as yet un-priced, as yet only a projected-proposal. There would be a price; and a cost too:
‘Purchase-Price Initiative (PPI) and re-sale onward: that is all you need to know’…as yet, an un-bidden offer in-prospect, to follow-up the seemingly automatically-accepted challenge, as yet to be fully realised:
‘O.K.’ as well as the-other, each spoken now and heard, and now seen:
‘No going-back now.’
Both now considering the import of these words, the more thoroughly, thoughtfully, perhaps, than said and heard; those out-spoken mere words, as to the-enterprising enquiry, requiring further-reply? In-turns? Or not?
Now: the earlier previously saved in-memory and as the first respondent again.
The-Clerk ignoring the possibility again of turn-taking, with another supplementary, yet elementary question:
‘Why?’
‘Why?’
‘Who?’
‘Is?’
‘What?’
Puzzlement pre-dicated predicament: seconded now by both-speakers. Triplicated, as here, almost-identically mindfully apart reflected against all others on the train.
On the Train. (i)n the Train-Carriage: others-visible and seeing, through adjoined metal and plastic cloth air-cooled compartment and as if no further-apart or closer-to or from each other’s-truth and in each-others’ minds: and all this meant? Exactly? And how soon?
How soon, is now? How much is-enough?
And: How much is at stake here? Exactly? as instantly both now regretting the opening-given to the exclusion of anyone-else in the rumbling bone-rattling carriage. As both-enjoined, as advertently now in a two-way dialogue, of which at that immediate-point there was persisting yet only limited dis-or mis(t)(y)(f)ying or any verifiable: Group-Loop: (i)(n)formation…