Half-Man, Half-Hamster

Legendarily troubled SF author Philip K Dick once described having a life-changing experience. A pink beam from outer space made contact with his mind and revealed the truth of the world to him. It's fair to say that the truth it delivered would give some of the most fervent conspiracy theorists pause for thought. It was, to the outsider, not so much a revelation of truth as one of underlying mental illness. Still, it makes for a great talking point when trying to avoid discussing why most of his books end so inconclusively.

Whatever the reason for it, for poor Philip himself it must have been a difficult thing to go through. I went through something similar myself recently. Just before Christmas, I contracted covid for the third and undoubtedly not the last time. That in turn provoked a full-blown abscess in a back tooth, leaving me with one cheek ridiculously swollen. I was half-man, half-hamster. I bunkered down with antibiotics and codeine, and waited the miserable experience out. However at the height of my delirium, I was also contacted by an entity. Sadly there was no pink beam of light from outer space. There were more convenient means of communication available to bridge consciousnesses in 2024. In this case, it was a call on my mobile phone.

I don't normally answer calls from unrecognised numbers, but I wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders, and having been flat-bound for a couple of days I was quite bored of the isolation. A random phone call, sure! Why not. I paused the TV and pressed the little green handset icon on my phone.

"Hello?" I enquired. My voice sounded like gravel. I coughed, holding the phone away from me.

"Hello?" I asked again once I'd regained control of my phlegm.

All I could hear from the phone's tiny speaker was a static hiss with occasional crackles. I should have just hung up at that point, but something made me keep listening. Or perhaps I was just whacked out on co-codamol. Either way, the static was mesmerising. The more I listened to it, the more of it I heard. It was enormous. Not loud, but expansive. Fathomless, like the fullest reaches of the sea, or wherever books you self-publish on Amazon go once you've run out of friends and family to buy them.

I turned that thought over. It's the biggest challenge of self-publishing - having enough of an audience to maintain a presence so your book isn't all too quickly lost in the murky depths of Amazon's ever-expanding catalogue.

The subject was fresh on my mind, because prior to catching covid I had been putting a lot of effort into building a social media presence that I hoped would turn into an audience. But as I listened to the vastness of the static on the phone call, it communicated to me the futility of my effort. I had thought that Amazon was huge, but to think that social media, spread like so much argumentative jam all over the internet, was any more of a manageable medium was absolute folly.

Crackles washed through the static and my sluggish mind attempted to shift up a gear. Should I give up? Suddenly aware that I was asking this question while lying under a blanket on my sofa, I had to concede that perhaps I already had. And perhaps that was okay. I was ill. My tooth hurt. I was half-hamster and lying on a sofa with a blanket over me could be construed as half-hamster behaviour.

The previous clarity of my revelation was gone, lost in the moment. I was just very tired. Of course I wouldn't be able to build an audience overnight. I might not be able to do it at all, but I could at least try. Try later, that is. Once things were more normal. Less hamster.

The crackling abated and a voice was now speaking to me.

"Hi, is this Mr Lambert I'm speaking to?"

I froze. Was it? For a moment I wasn't sure whether I was Mr Lambert or Mr Marx.

"I think so," I said uncertainly.

Undeterred, the voice continued its scripted lines. "Did you know that now is a great time to upgrade to a smart meter?"

The voice was far too chirpy. The real conversation was long over. I hung up.