Why are you laughing like that, Jide? I almost slit your throat there.

It’s this crazy story in the paper. Mad stuff really. Some fellow drove his model K9 Ford for two years, - you know that type that’s programmed with your birthday and moods—

— that one that needs to be taken back for deprogramming before you can resell it?

That’s the one. He bathes it every morning like a lover, only thing he didn’t do was sleep in it. Then he buys the model K14.

Hold steady now, you want to keep this Hitler tuft or what?

Let it be, the new missis likes it, so two weeks pass and he doesn’t enter the old car. One day — this is crazy, Akpo — no, skip the aftershave, it’s supposed to be carcinogenic — one day he takes the old car out for a warm-up and the car goes out of control, smashes into a pole...

Happens everyday, so what’s so funny about that?

He came out swearing his car was trying to kill him! Said it veered off the road on purpose, that he — get this! He heard the computer laugh before it smashed into the pole. I bet the fellow was high on something, must be whiskey laughing inside his head that night — Hey Akpo, you look like you’ve seen a ghost!

It’s happening. It’s happening..

Are you talking to me, my man? And quit shaking, you’ll nick my chin with your shaver trembling like that!

I never told you why I chucked my job at The MeriBank, did I?

You never told anybody. Fifteen years on the trading floor scrapped overnight. I'll be frank, Akpo, I’d thought you were dead when you dropped out of circulation... then I stumbled across your shop last month and you told me you chucked The MeriBank job for this... I thought you were nuts! Dammit, you don’t need six years of university to run a barber shop!

How's the beard looking?

Just a little more off. Tell me why you chucked The MeriBank job.

Hold on, I’ll just put up the closed sign.
There, now we can talk privately. This stays between us, right?

Get on with it! I'm not a gossip!

You know what I like about this shop? I live and work on ground zero. That’s real sand outside my window. My living quarters are right behind that door. See that ‘Cash Only’ sign? I do my business in cash, no cards no cheques. I cut your hair and you put some coins in my palm. That’s how I buy my groceries too. I have no truck with plastic and all that widgetry gadgetry of swipe boxes, thumbprint credits, retinal authorisation…

I’ve got friends who haven’t used cash in months. You know how much you’re losing? You know —

If I was thinking of money will I be doing this job? I closed my bank accounts the day I left The MeriBank. I’d been maxed out already, anyway. Threw all my plastics into the trash. I haven’t entered a lift or a chute in eighteen months.

How do you get to the upper levels then?

I don’t, period.

What?

I’ve opted out of the Vertical City, Jide. If a fellow lives higher than I can climb a staircase, I scratch him out of my address book. If the Lord meant for us to live with the birds He’d have given us wings.

I don't know, ground zero’s full of lowlife — present company excepted of course — but personally I won’t give up my level 39 condo for anything. And I know fellows who haven’t been down at street level for a couple of weeks. It's a whole new world up there, barberman.

Every monkey to his own medicine, Jide.

And you’re sounding pretty fundamentalist, if you don’t mind my saying so, the espressochute is excellent these days, it's a long time since anyone was air-sick. Anyway, what’s this got to do with your leaving your job?

Everything. It started one night when I arrived at The MeriBank for my graveyard shift. It was midnight, but I had business with the Osaka Emergent Exchange. The streets were dead. The lights of the lobby winked on as I approached. They say it’s environment friendly, I say it’s eerie.

There was no one else on duty?

Oh, there was — no humans, mind you, just the pseudo-receptionist and the pseudo-janitor. — Yes, and the omni-cleaner was sudding and mopping like there was no tomorrow, stabbing its laser alarms to keep me out of its wet-areas.

I hate those omnis. Too damn officious if you ask me... they've got to learn how to build politeness into those bots...

So I got out of the ‘chute at level four and entered the lift of The MeriBank Building. I pressed the button for the 310th floor. My brother Jide, that was when things went mad.

Why, what happened?

I almost died in that lift! I’ll tell you the kind of lift it was. It was one of those glass cages that run from the lobby, outside the skin of the tower block so that you’re going up like a spider on a silk webbing! — I’ve seen grown men cowering on the wall side of the lift...

Did you cower on that day, Akpo?

I’m used to it, you see. That was my fifth year in the building. Anyway, the lift took me up to the 208th floor and stopped there. I mean stopped. The lights died. I punched and punched the buttons until my fingers were sore. Then I yanked up the emergency phone and dialled the security desk. You know what happened?

How can I? Tell me your story, my friend.

The computer laughed at me —

Whoa, whoa, what d’you mean ‘the computer laughed at you’. You mean the Emergency Manager laughed at you?

Don’t rile me Jide, that’s why I haven’t bothered to talk to a soul for the last year. I said the bloody computer laughed at me! I worked in Computer Interneural Systems for three years and I’m old enough to tell when a computer’s laughing at me —

Keep your shirt on, Akpo, and put down your blade, eh, the shave’s cool now. Just give my sideburns a once over with the trimmer. Okay, so the computer laughed at you, how did it sound, this computer that laughed at you?

You see what I mean? You see how you’re looking at me now? That’s why I clammed up all these months. I haven’t told you anything yet, and you’re looking at me like that.

You’re too suspicious man! It’s just my eyes itching man!

Then scratch it and pay attention to what I’m saying! I tell you, the computer laughed at me. You know that voice that says to you, first floor, second floor, tenth floor, — you know that voice that says door opening, door closing, — well, it was that same voice that laughed — let me tell you something about this laughter, Jide,

Spare me, Akpo, a laugh’s a bloody laugh!

You’ve got to see how it is, Jide, you know me, I don’t spook easy. It is not like some boys in the office pulled a gag on me or something.

I worked a two month internship for OtisExpress lifts back in my college days, man, it’s chips you’re talking to man, transistors and chips. You don’t get into an argument with a piece of circuitry. It pulled a malfunction on you, that’s what happened, same things that pull planes out of the skies, same thing that pulls up the slickest limos to the side of the road, that’s all that happened, man.

You want a tangerine?

... You don't have tangelos?

Nah, it’s either a tangerine or an orange for me, none of that grafting one into the other and genetic tinkering and soldering of one thing and another —

Just give me the damn tangerine then, spare me the green lecture, here, help me out of your apron.

It’s no apron, it’s a smock, I’m the one that wears the apron. Here’s your tangerine, the easy chair’s easier on the waist than my barbing chair,

Thanks. You were telling me about your lift arrest.

You’re mocking me now, eh, go on, laugh. I bet the guy in the car crash doesn’t find it funny anymore. I bet you won’t find it funny if a lift locked you in and pulled a Maputo Reversal on you, taking you from the 208th floor to the 10th basement floor in three seconds.

In three seconds? That’s a fatal accident man. That didn’t happen to you, did it?

No, it happened to the Osagyefor. You’re the first person I’m opening up to on this weird thing so you better shut up and listen. It dropped me to the basement, my friend, I hit the roof and picked myself up from the ground. My legs felt like soggy vegetables. I thought I was dead! Then it started up again, ten, twenty, thirty,

You didn’t press the button to go up?

Am I crazy? What I pressed was 999. On my mobile phone,

999? What’s the Police going to do for you then? Me, I’d have pried the lift doors open! Once it stopped, I’d have yanked those doors apart in the basement...

Yah, Yah, yanked the doors apart. Like I won’t have thought to try that, you’re the spectator sipping sherbet for whom the wrestling is dead easy. As soon as I put my fingers into the gap between the doors I felt like a copper wire, yaya!!...

...a copper wire?

I felt like the end of a lightning strike. A bolt of electricity went through me, I felt my eyes go bug-eyed, I smelt my nostril hairs singeing....

So you dialled 999, so what happened?

Now don’t you dare laugh, you hear me? The lift started to laugh.

Come on Akpo, come on! You mean the cop at the other end of the phone was laughing.

No, the phone didn’t work. The laughter was coming from the lift cage.

The phone didn’t work? Akpo! Reception coverage is now 101% of AfricaSix. Downtime last year was nil.

Now you see what I mean! There I was on the middle of the sky and I get no signal. You grab that? Fifty floors high and I dial 999 and get no signal and the lift is laughing and a stainless steel plate slides off the ‘Don’t Dare Smoke’ notice and there’s a payment card console looking face-to-face at me and the voice is telling me to slot my payment cards, including my pensions card into the slot and punch the appropriate PINs or its my corpse that’s going to leave the lift...

No,

Yes!

You’re not telling me what I think you’re telling me...

‘pends on whether you’re a dunce or not — this time last year I’d had 45 million Inter Units saved up on my pension...

Do you carry your pensions card around? Pretty dumb if you ask me.

I carry it once a month, same as you and any other worker in ‘Burg, to make my monthly contribution.

What you’re saying sounds like blackmail to me, looks like some high tech criminal organisation is carrying out a blackmail scam, terrifying folks into signing off funds.

I’ve worked out what it was. You know anything about the Metusellah Project?

I know it was scrapped two years ago. That was the project trying to build an ego into a consortium of supercomputers. That was the key to self-sustaining networks. Pity.

It wasn’t scrapped. It just ran out of public funding.

Public opinion swept against the project.

Yes, with the pseudo-bot networks, supercomputers already had Modular Multiplication and Cellular Maintenance. Synthesised Ego would have given personality and Self-Actuating-Motivation to the most powerful intelligence on the planet. And of course, computers never die. They have perpetual succession. So that natural leveler in humanity does not apply. They’ll just keep growing stronger and stronger, with no—

— That's scare-mongers' spiel. What does this have to do with anything?

The Metusalleh Project had gone underground. They were...

We’re getting rather far from your lift, Akpo. I’ve got this speech I’m delivering right after I leave here.

Okay, so there I was in the lift, asked to feed my cards into a console. I figured that if I signed over my pension, whoever was behind the lift was going to have to make sure I didn’t go to the police as soon as its doors were opened. You see what I mean? I remembered the twelve chute deaths that happened over the previous year. Officially attributed to the so-called Chute Syndrome, which is now receiving research funding at Legon University. I knew Metusalleh wasn’t going to let me leave the lift alive, whether I signed or not.

So what did you do?

What I did was stall. You don’t like the tangerines?

Too many damn seeds. Why don’t you buy seedless?

If God made them seedless how would they have come down to us? I have no truck with genetically —

So you stalled, so what?

Lift was climbing, ten, twenty, thirty floors a second — I punched the buttons like a maniac. I raised my boot and kicked the damn console, the lift stopped.

It broke down?

I wish! My brother, what happened next, I swear to God, I just pissed my trousers.

What happened, dammit Akpo, tell this story or shut up!

I’m telling it, I’m telling it, the most electric voice I ever heard — that’s why I tell you it was no human on the other end of the phone — the voice said <do that again, and you’re dead> I tell you, I just messed myself up there. You’ve got no dignity left, Jide, when you’re standing in a lift with urine all the way between your pants and your boots. You’re messed up and you know it. All I wanted was to get the hell out of there, alive. If you know what I mean.

I know what you mean my friend, but, I’ve got to be straight with you man, I don’t believe you.

Well I’m not looking to convince you any more, you hear me, I’m just telling you how it was. Haven’t told a soul this story for months and it’s eating me. The cage takes me up, right up to the 355th floor and stops. Then the nice voice, the Kingsway voice, asks me if I want another quick trip to the basement or if I was going to slot in all my plastics.

What did you do?

Am I crazy? What do you do when you run into an armed robber who asks you for your money AND your lifel? I slotted in my plastics one at a time. I tapped in my PINs every time and the highway bandit maxed me out.

Then?

The Kingsway voice said: <kindly slot in your Pensions card>.

What did you do?

I said it was at home.

And?

The lift said <My pulse-sensors indicate that your bp is 189/98 up from 180/90 three seconds ago and your heart beat is 89bpm, up from 73bpm three seconds ago. My conclusion: You’re lying.>

You’re good Akpo! I gotta tell you, I don’t believe your story but its definitely giving me the shivers. You’re a new generation Cyprian Ekwensi or something. What did you tell the... lift?

I said it was fear that made my heatbeat skip that fast.

And? Talk, Akpo, talk faster!

The lift said: <my sweep-sensors can detect one more Smart card in your hip pocket.> I felt the pulleys tense. I heard the motors whir.

That cooked you, that did — not that I buy all this crap, eh Akpo, I know you’re going to tell me this is an April-fool-trick...

That would have cooked you, but it didn’t cook me, no sir, I thought to myself, I thought: I’d worked twenty-five years of overtimes and unholy hours. I wasn’t going to be snuffed out in a crummy lift, have my life’s savings and pensions bled out of me and erased like a damned number. I was going to be their number 13, yes! I was going to be their nemesis.

Hold on barberman. Now you’re talking like some comic book hero. Where’s the poor sod pissing his pants just now.

I’m telling you a story, yes? So I put my hand in my south pocket, I pulled out my Pensions card. I had 45 million Inter units raw in it, I tell you.

Wow. You were a miser Akpo, I haven’t saved 300,000 iu yet.

Its your three divorces eating you.

So you chickened out, eh? Where’s the action hero shooting from the hips?

He was gritting his teeth for punishment. You see, I fooled you just like I fooled the thieving lift. You know computers, 1 + 1 equals 2 forever. That’s a computer’s basic logic. Well, I figured that since I nearly got electrocuted when I tried to prise the doors open, I’d try again. So I put my hand in my south pocket, the greedy console blinked in expectation, but, soon as I had the card in my palm, I dived at the doors again.

You fool!

I slot the card between the doors just as the electricity charge hit me. It must have been a thousand volts my brother, or maybe a hundred thousand, it was mega.

Clearly you don’t know the first thing about electrics. A hundred thousand volts would have burnt you into toast. Stick to storytelling man.

Well it sure toasted my smart card. It scrambled all the info on the chip, I mean, I fell down there into my piss, all humble and beaten, I got up, took my card, slot it into the console, tapped in my pin codes...

Wow. And?

And nothing. The console said: <wrong code, PXWT.2567387, this is your last opportunity>

What were you playing at?

I was stalling. I told the lift to check out my pulse and vital signs. I had slotted in my pensions card and I had keyed in the right PIN codes.

Come, the computer should have sussed you out.

Well it thought it did. It thought I was genuinely mistaken. I had five chances before the card was locked and boy did I stretch out those chances.

What was your game?

Simple. Pensions cards have the highest security features of any other plastics. Normally the Triple AAA Immobilisation only kicks in after you try three wrong numbers. In this case, it kicked in as soon as I keyed in my pensions PIN.

What are you yakking about?

Think about it. The electric charge corrupted the information on my Pensions plastic and when I keyed in my pensions PIN, it registered as an attempted fraud...

I see...

...which immediately kicked in the Triple AAA Immobilisation.

That would normally immobilise an ATM and notify police.

Normally. Fortunately, in my case, because the console was a mobile electronic teller, the Security switches triggered a GPS alert. I had just keyed in my second attempt when I heard the police chopper...

Wow.

‘Wow’ as in ‘incredible’ or ‘wow’ as in ‘impossible’

‘Wow’ as in ‘come on!’. This is elementary chess — even for a legacy computer you pull out of the museum! It would have figured you out ten moves ago!

Aha! But legacy machines don't come with synthetic ego, and when pride comes into the picture—

—Just tell your story man!

The searchlight zapped me out of the darkness, Jide. I was there on the 158th floor, tapping digits into an Electronic Transfer Teller in a lift cage. Plastic coppers are trained in rapid deployment, Plastic thieves have been known to wire millions of iu into untraceable trusts within minutes.

So what did they do?

Of course the cops thought I was the plastic thief. A Tripple AAA fraud alert is financial bigtime. They authorised the emergency power shutdown for The MeriBank Building by Remote Routine Protocol. That was standard interdiction procedure. My lift was going into the basement at 200 mph when the power was cut.

Wow!

‘Wow’ as in...

‘Wow’ as in 'tell your story or you'll get your tangelo back, very fast!'

It would have been curtains for me, Jide. I tell you the truth. Curtains for sure. The power failure caught me just at the beginning of the murder attempt. The Metusellah Project was trying to cover its tracks, you see, kill the only witness...

And?

The police was trying to disable any computerised transfer till they had the fraudster in the net, but their power shut-down also killed the power in the pulleys. As the chopper landed on the roof and police cars assembled around me, the lift dropped gently to the ground floor!

You don’t say!

They hacked the lift open. You know their SWAT mindset, they pulled me out, got the plastic out of my hand, and called off the emergency shutdown. I had cuffs on my hands before I could explain that I was me. I had never been so happy to be arrested. By the time I got to explaining about the lift, the power was back on The MeriBank Building and the sprinklers were working.

Sprinklers?

The lift had self-destructed. In fact it was burning within seconds of the power coming back on. That was how I knew I was dealing with something bigger than just a lift bandit. Metusellah.

So how come police investigations didn't ...

Police? Am I crazy? Why should I tell the police a thing. Who won the Police Award last year?

The DNA Database?

There you are. A human being hasn't won it in decades. The real Police Commissioner is a super computer. It was an insane story and my only corroboration had just been incinerated. If I had told them what I’m telling you now I’d be in a loony farm, not a barbershop now. I’d have been wearing a strait-jacket! Nah, I just told them that my card must have malfunctioned. They did a retinal scan, an IQ match, a finger/toeprint match and let me go.

And you? You couldn’t work that night I'm sure,

Work? I never stepped into The MeriBank Building again! I went home. Took me ninety minutes to get into the flat. We lived on the 140th floor and I took the fire escape. Told my wife we were leaving for Western Europe the next day. I wanted a rudimentary society where retinal scanners were not as popular as CCTVs in public places.

You were ready to go into radioactive Europe?

Southern Europe wasn’t carpet-bombed like North America during the nuclear holocaust. There’re still pockets of places along the Spanish coastline were near-normal radioactive-counts have been recorded. Anyway, those living there are human beings, aren’t they?

What did she say to that?

The very next morning she filed for divorce. She put ‘insanity’ in the‘cause’ box of the computerised Self-Divorcement Form. Can you imagine that? I sent a postcard to The MeriBank, resigning my post.

Her divorce settlement must have cleaned you out.

Nah. We signed a pre-nup deal. And she's richer than me anyway. She got the dogs though.

You are so lucky...

The next day I sold my 140th floor apartment at a discount, got the bucks in cash, I cashed my terminal pay at an ATM, I cashed out my pensions account, closed my bank accounts, incinerated my plastics and went to the airport.

You actually planned to emigrate!

For the sake of my life, I did. I wanted to live somewhere that Metusalleh’s networks hadn’t penetrated. You see, I’d known their secret.

Why are you still here?

Everytime I try to buy a ticket the booking engine returned a null entry.

Sorry, you’ve lost me there.

Security Services have a watchlist of people who cannot leave AfricaSix. You know, draft dodgers, Bailbonders, that sort of thing. Somehow, Metusellah’s entered my ID into that list. I had to move sharp when I figured out what was happening.

So you can’t leave the country?

Not until Metusalleh is convinced that I’m dead and deletes my ID from the border watchlist. That’s why I bought a barbershop and disappeared into this slum. I bought myself black sunglass — retinal scanners in tubes and public buildings, you understand.

But supermarket checkouts, public libraries, there are hundreds of doors with fingerprint scanners that will get your prints on database...

Look at these:

Skingloves! That’s illegal!

Exactly. If I ever leave this room, I'm wearing sunshades and skingloves. I don’t leave my ID anywhere. I’m no fool, Jide, no matter what you think. What does my signboard say?

Billy’s Barbers.

Exactly. It’s only old friends like you who know I’m Akpo. I don’t have any truck with computers.

How do you enter your car? Cars have satellite security features locked to your fingerprints...

My car is a 100% mechanical 1990 classic Citroen. It’s got no chips, no brain, no satellite hook-up, and nobody wants to steal it...

1990? No satellite hook-ups? You’re one stone age museum relic! How do you track down addresses?

Paper maps, my dear, paper maps.

But you pay taxes. You’ve got to pay your tax in your name and that will get your address and id into a database.

Nah. I opted out. I pay in cash through Incorporated Trustees. — That’s the system used by filmstars who don’t want their filings connected to their names on public databases. It’s perfectly legal; I pay a higher rate because of the higher administrative costs, but it’s worth it.

Well, thanks for the tangerines. Where’s my bill? — And thanks for the story as well. You were in the wrong profession in The MeriBank — and you’re still in the wrong profession.

What do you mean?

You should have been a novelist. I’m telling you honestly. That is your gift from God. This is the most exciting barber’s yarn I ever heard! Look at the time! I didn’t even see the time fly!

You don’t believe me? After all I said, you don’t believe me?

Now, come Akpo, I’ve just paid you a compliment and I don’t praise easy, believe me. What more do you expect from me. I don’t go around insulting your own intelligence, do I? I accept your story as a great tale, and as a storyteller, you’re up there with the greats. Where’s your bill, I’m running late for my club meet.

You owe me eighty units. — And I’m not billing you for the time I wasted telling you my story.

Don’t take it like that, Akpo, I’ve felt like you after watching those old-time horrors flicks — Exorcist is the worst. I step out at night and every shadow is like…yaay.
…Well, maybe you actually believe it, nobody would wreck his life like this otherwise... If I were you, Akpo, speaking as your old friend, I’d see a doctor. There’s this gym-mate of mine, an excellent psychiatrist on Level 60 Sithole…

It’s time for you to catch your appointment.

Here’s your money.

Oh, and I forgot 1.5 iu for your tangerine.

Well, here’s your 1.5 iu, and you don’t have to take it so personally.

Oh no, I’m not taking it personal. Just promise me that everything I said today stays right here. I’ve stayed alive so far because of my secrecy.

... Ah, I don’t know what to say about that, Akpo. I can keep quiet about the skingloves, but as for the rest, I just happen to be giving the speech this evening at our annual Snooker Club dinner. And what you’ve told me is the most interesting after-dinner-speech material I ever heard. Besides, it’s not as if it cost me nothing. — It was thirty minutes of my time you’ve burnt, spinning me this yarn. You know my hourly rate is now a solid 2000 iu.

Surely you understand, Jide, Metusellah is still hunting me. I’m the one reason why there’s not been another chute death. I did a search-word analysis at a public library last week. A remote computer in Bulawayo does an hourly www search for my name. This is a matter of life and death for me. If you repeat what I’ve just told you in a clubhouse, in 24 hours it will hit the net, before I know it, Metusalleh will zero in on me...

I can see it in your eyes, Akpo, you really believe this bull. You know we go right back to the uni days. If you won’t listen to your wife, at least take your good friend’s advice and see the psychiatrist. If it’s a money thing, I can spring for your first consultation.
Where’s my jacket? Oh, thanks. On a different note, you really should make time to visit my snooker club. After tonight, I know my members will be dying to meet you.

You’re just putting on a brave face. I know you’ll never see the insides of a lift again. It’s like all those Exorcist films you saw...

You misjudge me my good friend. You story’s interesting but it doesn’t faze me one bit.

If you’re not scared then take this scrap of paper, key this number into your car’s computer console.

PXWT.2567387? What’s this? And why should I do that?

That’s my ID number. If you want proof of what I say, if you’re not scared witless, then take my skinglove and sunglasses, open your car with your key instead of your fingerprint and drive off.

My car is a top of the range 2090 model. If it doesn’t recognise my fingerprints or retinas when I enter it will only drive one kilometre before locking up and broadcasting for the police.

I know, but before it locks up, it will prompt you for your ID and PIN. When it does that, enter PXWT.2567387.

What will that achieve?

That’s for you to tell me, isn’t it. It will be an interesting epilogue to your story at the snooker club. See you next month, Jide, if you still have the courage to drive your hi-tech car…

Very funny! Give me those gloves — and try and see a doctor, Akpo.

***

Oh, hello officer, want a barb?

No thanks. I’m here on business.

It’s not about my local permit...

Nothing of the sort, I’m with Homicide, just a routine enquiry. Are you the proprietor of this barbershop.

That’s me all right, Billy the Barber. You’re sure I can’t interest you in a quick trim? It’s on the house.

No thank you. I’m afraid I have sad news, one of your customers died yesterday. I’m just trying to reconstruct his last steps.

Really, who was that? Not that I know most of their names of course, still...

His name was Jide Ofor. Does that ring a bell?

I’m afraid not.

We saw two receipts from your establishment on his corpse. One for 350iu and another for 1.5iu...

My standard barbs are 300 units, I toss in a shave and mustache-trim for 50 units. Any fruit from my fridge is 1.5 units. Would you like a tangerine? The real stuff, not those grafted and gene tampered mutations...

Well, to a tangerine, I won’t say no.

Do sit down. Since you won’t take a trim you’ll be more comfortable on the easy chair.
Yes, as it happens I only sold one tangerine yesterday. So Jide Ofor was his name? What a pity. He was such an amiable man. Came in once a month for his haircut, regular as clockwork. But yesterday he was quite upset about his finances. Spent about thirty minutes after his hair cut — it was a slow day yesterday — telling me about his three divorces...

That explains it. He had a lot on his mind when he left here?

That’s putting it mildly. You know how it is with your local barber, customers feel they can confide in us. Sometimes I feel like a psychiatrist, the kind of confidences I’ve had! How did he die?

It was really peculiar. Really peculiar. It was just off the highway 234 loop. The sort of thing we call a solo event. Perfect lighting, perfect driving conditions, and the car swerved off the highway and crashed three hundred feet into the gorge below. He died on the spot.

Nothing from the VIOs yet?

Preliminary Accident Reconstruction Reports suggest an autopilot malfunction in the car, but that’s most unlikely, the car was a top of the range model, barely ten months old. Most likely, the poor sod stopped in a beer parlour after leaving your shop. Still waiting for the Post Mortem report but it won’t surprise me to find that it was a jug of whiskey driving that car.

Not a laughing matter anymore.

Sorry?

Oh. Nothing. Nothing.

Thanks for the tangerine. 1.5 iu you said?

Nah, its on the house. I’m cleaning out the fridge anyway. I’m taking a long overdue... holiday.