Chapter 1: The Programme

"Jesus wept!"

The frustration I felt ever since I installed this spooky little programme on my Mac suddenly got the better of me. Yes, I admit I am a bit of a gadget freak. And, no, this wasn't a freebie, because I always buy my programmes and submit contributions for shareware and even cardware. People programming for a living have a right to be paid and since I live, used to at least, by setting type and producing books, I like to be paid as well. Bits for tat.

Still, this programme I bought for recreation only. Creating graphics from photographs is all nice and well, but sometimes I would have liked to combine 3D visuals with my own 2D images to liven things up a bit. I fiddled around with a few demo versions off the net, but didn't want to spend more than was absolutely necessary to pander to my hobby. Eventually, MasterBuilder promised to be exactly what I wanted and at barely 30 Euro shareware fee, it was well worth a shot at it.

Instead, I found myself in very deep water right from the word Go. Installation was a nightmare with continuous demands for information about myself: name (You may choose any pseudonym), secure alpha-numeric password (Not less than 12 characters), gender, age, size, hair colour, eye colour, health, dexterity, educational level, skills, interests, blood group, sexual preferences for God's sake. No way. I hit OK, ready to kick the programme into touch. There was only the slightest hiatus, the small pop-up window shimmying on the screen for a moment, before another window appeared: This information will be needed at a later stage. However, you may now transfer the small shareware fee, if you wish, and start a project to create your dream. Not surprisingly, the money transfer went without a hitch. Pondering what I should try first, I suddenly heard this tinny, screechy yet distinctly male voice hustling me.

"Thank you for registering and submitting the tiny fee. Start the programme. There are wonderful things waiting just for you. You don't want to waste any time now."

For how long I sat there, stunned, I don't know. Was this the kiss of death by friend Alzheimer, was I rushing ahead on the road to becoming a full-blooded raving, spitting, drooling lunatic? Because the voice did not come out of my cheap speakers, it seemed to float on the air around me, sounding exactly like the inane phone ad voices which have become the bane of everybody's life lately. Reluctantly, I complied with the request, barely able to suppress a premonition of doom.

The programme opened to a beautifully landscaped scenery, rendered in very high definition. A lovely lake in the foreground, set against a backdrop of gentle hills and vales, while, far in the background, a spectacular mountain range soared up to meet the sky, reflecting the sunlight off its glaciers and snow-fields. Almost simultaneously, all kinds of hot buttons began to pop up: Create New Project – Now; Rework Existing Project – Now; and, decidedly weird, Do You want to be Happy – Now?; Do You Wish to go there – Now? All except the first being greyed out.

As far back as I can remember I always hated being pushed around. At home – clean the dishes, tidy your room, give your father a hand; at work – finish the job, here is your next one; in the army – hurry, hurry, wait, wait. Now, now, now. It still pisses me off just to think about it. Small wonder that I left home when still in my teens, and not surprisingly I got into trouble with my bosses more often than not. I won't even mention my successes in the bloody army. If you don't count extended stays in the detention barracks as such, there were none. To be honest, I wasn't kicked out, much as I had hoped, but I got myself kicked about a hell of a lot.

Here I was facing the same shit again. Now. Now. Now. Irksome though it was, the fact remained I wanted to try my hand at designing 3D scenery, I did pay for the pesky software after all and I always liked a minimum of prompts in unfamiliar programmes. But why shout, why push where a mere whisper, a little nudge would suffice? Sighing, I hit Create New Project. Perhaps I should have been prepared for it, instead I nearly popped a rivet. This bloody voice again.

"Welcome and congratulations. You have taken the first step to change your life. Carry on now; don't be afraid to try anything this programme has to offer. What do you have to lose?"

Just my mind, just that tiny bit of sanity left to me, and I am going to lose that right now. Pondering for a moment of just what I wanted to try out first, Screechy was with me yet again.

"I repeat, don't waste our time. Just do whatever you feel like doing."

Hell, give a man a gap, I heard myself scream inwardly. But yes, I wanted to create an island which I would populate with the people I had created, people of all kinds, all ages and races, in all stages of life. Besides, I had often dreamed about having an island refuge where I could withdraw to when all this pushing and shoving going on in my life became too much to bear. So I clicked on a list of projects which suddenly popped up. Was Screechy a mind reader as well as a flaming nuisance? Amongst the more exotic themes like creating a Railway Station, a Zoo, Armageddon even, I found Island and clicked on it hastily before interruptions would start again. In vain, of course.

"Very good. Now enter the specifics."

An ice-cold rage gripped me. I would have liked to jog the prog in my own leisurely fashion, try this, look here, poke yonder, I did not want to be pushed around like an overstuffed Teddy bear on fairy-wheels. Possibly, my frustration might have filtered through to the Little Man, since he left me alone to search through the long list of features and properties to be chosen from. First, however, the location. Yes, definitely, it should be in the Pacific. And it should be well below the equator, out of the way of monsoons, typhoons and all kinds of crappy weather, with moderately lush vegetation. – I think of myself as a man of few extremes, so the island and everything on it should complement my disposition. While thinking that a map would be a nice thing to have handy just now, a new window popped up.

"Pinpoint a location on the map to be shown. Geographic and climatic facts as well as feasible fauna and flora will be provided interactively on-screen."

Pinpoint I did. The map was excellent. It showed sea currents, the varying depths, prevailing wind conditions, even shipping lanes, and, most surprisingly, air lanes as well. The latter caused me to ponder. Suddenly it dawned on my dim brain: an island refuge would be of little use if the airspace above me is cluttered with noisy flying things. It did cross my mind that I was engaging in a very foolish line of thought. For crying in a bucket, I only wanted to create a digital visual of an ideal place, why should I worry about climates and flowers and little bees and such? I decided reluctantly that there must be a reason for the programme to request all this information and, after considering all the pertinent facts the map told me, I chose a position. Moderate subtropical climate, no shipping lanes within 200 sm, no air routes passing overhead. Fresh water of course, streamlets, a small lake, a couple of hills, not too high, and the island itself not too big, so that I could view everything from the top of one of its hills.

"This location is not suitable for your purposes. Severe tectonic faulting. Seaquakes a distinct possibility in the near future. Select anew."

I threw away my mouse in disgust. Death by apoplexy suddenly seemed a desirable fate. So much for interactivity! But I had an idea and did what I should have done in the first place. I checked out the Help function. And there it was: FAQ. Click.

"Don't be silly. Nobody ever asks any questions about this magnificent programme. You have me to guide you!"

Like hell, like bloody hell. This preposterous twit got onto my nerves so badly I would strangle him blissfully, could I only get my hands around his scrawny neck. But then, still in the Help window, I spotted a tiny button: Ask, if you have to. Yes, I had to. Click!

I typed. "Can I talk to you, you arrogant, nagging wretch?"

"There is no need to insult me. Of course you can talk to me. And you don't have to type. Just talk. As you would have found out already if you weren't so damn slow on the uptake. You have no idea about the magnitude of my programme. Now get on with it."

Of course I felt extremely silly, sitting at my keyboard and talking to some voice. Thank God, I have my own study in the basement. If my wife heard me she would be on the phone in a flash, pleading with the white-coated chaps to come and take away the old man at once.

"The only thing of great magnitude is your unsurpassed arrogance. Have you forgotten about interactivity? I'm sick and tired of this nonsense. You select an island to my parameters, without underlying fault lines. And hop to it, now!"

"Oops. A little glitch. Here you are. Perfect in every way. Now add all the features you want. Start logically. Outline your island, then design any hills first."

As if I wouldn't have done that in any case. Still, the next hour or so was quite pleasant. The programme, this part at least, was extremely well-designed and intuitively structured. After laying out the island itself, I could draw in the hills, move them, make them steeper here, add some gentle slopes there. I shaped a few interesting rock formations of weathered granite, carved out a large cave in one of them and stuck the whole thing on top of the highest, not very high hill. A 150 metres, all told. Then I took the whole set-up, moved it around, aligned it to the compass facing north so I could watch both the rising and setting sun from my vantage point without getting a crick in my neck. – Again, I would have liked to kick myself back in line. Why bother with sunrises and sunsets at all? But who knows, perhaps the visuals would look more authentic that way.

Nonetheless, this creation business I rather enjoyed. I had Genesis flitting through my mind while I added and shifted features, made a path go up the highest hill and around the island, placed a lake in the gently undulating flatlands, drew in a shallow, well-protected bay and made a streamlet flow off my hill to feed into the lake, draining from there towards the bay. From a pop-up list I added trees, a veritable forest even, shrubs, some edible berries, grasses, flowers and weeds as well as quite a few creepies and crawlies. Lots of birds too, some smaller mammals, buck and antelope, hares and squirrels and the like, a few foxes, but no large predators, no monkeys and apes, but yes, all kinds of amphibious, aquatic and marine life for lake and bay. Forget about old Darwin and his cumbersome evolution: if the choice were mine, I would be God anytime!

Every now and then I would switch to full-screen mode, viewing my creation, turning it this way and that and felt, rightfully so I think, quite proud of my achievements so far. Saving the document to my hard drive, I went for a cup of coffee. My wife asked me if I wasn't fed up with crouching in front of my computer all day, weren't my eyes turning into little pixels yet? But I just pointed towards the windows. Sleet was still coming down since early this November morning, whipped along horizontally by a fierce gusting wind, howling mournfully in the shrubbery of a dreary dishevelled mini-jungle that used to be my pleasant summer garden, sounding much like unpaired lurs announcing ragnarok, demise of the gods.

Back to my cosy shelter. As soon as I sat down the Screech let me have it.

"Where have you been for so long? It is very irresponsible of you to waste so much time, all the time. At this rate, we won't ever finish your project."

"For God's sake, Screechy. I'm retired! I have all the time in the world."

"Don't you dare call me that! No, you don't have much time at all. And certainly I haven't. If you would just get on with things a bit faster, you would find out what I mean."

"Listen, we can go backwards and forwards like that for hours. You seem to know me, but you never found it necessary to introduce yourself. Rude, that's what you are, rude and pushy to the extreme. I don't know why I put up with this crap at all."

"You are so dense. My name is in the copyright line of the programme you are, rather should be using. But before you go and waste more time checking, just call me Alfred. Not Fred, not Al, not Alf, and if you call me Alfie even once, I will frag this programme to hell and gone. Now, can we go on?

"Please?"

It was his reluctant attempt at politeness, which made me carry on with this joint exercise in futility. Alfred then, for better or worse. On screen, a prompt showed up: Continue with your design project, now. Ha, got you, I thought, since I spotted a Complete button in the file menu. Click! Immediately, thick shit started to percolate down the funnel.

"You fool, you dim-witted punk, you nearly destroyed the whole project and the programme with it! I do not know why I bother with somebody as ignorant as you! Talk about 3D: dense, dumb, difficult! You are nowhere near finished! This project will be complete when I tell you!"

Yes, our Alfred was in a towering snit, even I could hear that. Great rhetoric. Each sentence was punctuated with a virtual shout and his feeble voice attempted to span a few octaves as he kept ranting about my stupidity. He would have gone on for quite some time, wound up as he was, but I cut him short.

"Alfred, calm down. It would appear to me that there are two kinds of fools involved here. Why don't you tell me what you have in mind? If you don't, I will crash the project wilfully and be done with this ruckus. It's aggravation I can well do without!"

No, I didn't shout like Alfred, I merely spoke very forcefully. But my vociferous tutor seemed to understand, all of a sudden.

"I am sorry, I do apologise. You are right; you cannot know yet what this is all about. I will tell you eventually, but for now you have to be patient and when I urge you on, you must believe me that it is for your own sake. We really cannot waste any more time."

"Well, Alfred, since time, for whatever reason, seems to be important, why don't you ask whatever needs to be asked and I will supply the answers as we go along. This should speed up things considerably."

"You are right. We start at the top. The cave. What is it for?"

Now, a cave is a cave, I thought. But if I was living on this imaginary island, I sure would like to have some shelter from wind and weather.

"Shelter it is. Now think about the inside. What do you need?"

This question-and-answer game would take a couple of years of Sundays yet if he went on and on about every tiny detail.

"Alfred, we are still going about this the wrong way. You seem to know where we are headed with all this, I don't. So you show me prompts and I select whatever comes to my mind. I may appear dense to you, but I am a right fast clicker."

Nothing was spoken, but I felt more than heard a heavy sigh in the air. And yes, the prompts came at me swiftly and in great numbers. After some initial hesitation, I soon got into the swing of it. Look and click. Do you want to live in the cave? Stupid really, but yes, click. Furniture? Yes, click. Shelves? Yes. Books? Yes, plenty. Yes, yes, philosophy, a few of the old Greeks but not in their language, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche & Co., biographies, pre-history, anthropology, a bunch of crime novels, John D. MacDonald, Janwillem van de Wetering. Go for it. TV, radio? No question at all. I never owned a TV set and rarely bother with radio or recordings. Why should I, when I have books? And music, after all, is only so much more noise. Besides, where would the electricity and the broadcasts come from? We settled into a nice rhythm after that. Of course, I still didn't have the faintest clue where my Great Weird Leader was taking me with all this. But the island took on a much more defined look, better too I have to admit.

But we weren't finished by far. Where do you want your bathroom? What about ablution facilities? Hell, did Jesus invent aquaplaning? What about them? Put them in of course. Yes, damn you, European style; I don't want to crap over a hole in the floor. And, yes, I want to piss and wash right after I wake up. There cannot be running water at the mountaintop? For Christ's sake, talk about dense. Think artesian, I want water at my front door, you...

Our off-screen communications were improving in but the most minuscule steps. We still misunderstood each other with great regularity, though we avoided excessive shouting and slanging matches, relatively speaking. So I got my wish, even if Alfred complained that an artesian well on top of a mountain was something hitherto unheard of. With a few prompts we settled for a small pool, not large enough to swim in, but good for a full-blown dunking and open-air ablution was set up well behind my cave. Alfred thought of leading running water through there and made me create a nice philosopher's throne to go with it. To my specs, not his.

I won't bother to talk of all the details of establishing the island, but be advised that Alfred was finicky in the extreme. Fauna and flora were eventually sorted out by him and completed to his satisfaction. After all, why should I worry about food chains and such? I let him go over the top with everything but put my foot down when it came to snakes and mosquitoes, nits and gnats. And that was it. I was quite knackered by now and wanted to call it a day. I said as much to Alfred.

"Okay. It is high time for me to log off as well. Save the project. I will be here when you start up tomorrow. But start up you must. It's imperative. No excuses."

Sleep did not come to me easily. Tossing and turning, I kept thinking about this bizarre business of talking with friend Alfred, wondering how a simple 3D programme could lead me so far astray and, especially, what the hell I would do with this creation, if ever it would be finished.

I am not a morning person at all. I don't talk much before my third cup of coffee, managing to eat something only at the second attempt, which takes place at about 10 o'clock, and generally am best left alone for the first half of the day. Having set my alarm at an ungodly hour, I got up miserably, stubbed a great toe against the bedpost, re-distilled the remainder of yesterday's coffee to the flavour of paint thinners with a top note of sewage effluent, burnt my lips of course, tried brushing my teeth with my wife's peeling lotion. God, the state I was in! That I bumped my blundering head when I stumbled down to my den I considered to be an improvement. I was finally humming and ready for Alfred!

"It's about time you showed up. We have lots to do still!"

Alfred was trying his utmost to match my own cheerfulness.

"And a lovely good morning to you, too, my friend. What do you mean: we have lots to do? The island is finished, I like it and I want to get on with my things now. Thank you very much."

"You dim-witted fool – again, the island will be complete when I tell you. You really have no idea how much work is yet to be done. We haven't even touched on the subject of all the features and their properties you will need. Let's get a move on. I will prompt you again, since you are too slow on your own."

A twenty-four-carat, dyed-in-the-wool prince of a fellow, no doubt about it. But as I looked at the prompt coming up, I nearly blew a gasket. Consider your health. What do you want to improve?

"For God's damn sake, Alfred, are you spinning totally out of control now? I want to create an island, I do not want to consult a bleeding doctor!"

"I told you not to swear at me, so stop it at once. And I know that you never see a doctor. But I also know that you will not be able to enjoy this wonderful island of ours, because right now your pancreas as well as your prostate are cancerous, your heart is dangerously arrhythmic, some major blood vessels in your brain are heavily clogged, a fatal stroke imminent. Not to mention all your other little ailments as you call them, when you do talk about them at all to your lovable, loyal wife. Must I continue? Now do as you are told, you stubborn old crank."