Hole Punch by Simmons, Garth (the dot read aloud TXT) 📕

“Ninety cycles?! I want to speak to the Supervising Intelligence!”

“Yes sir. One moment.”

There was a little whirring noise.

“I am the Supervising Intelligence. I can assure you that we are dealing with the issue. Law enforcement are calculating how long it will take to legally move the Traveler Encampments from Plootoid Prime. I guarantee that these calculations will be complete within ninety cycles.”

BADGER AND HIS BIKE

The cute, happy, anthropomorphised badger rides down the grassy hill on his bike. He arrives at Rabbit's house and knocks on the door. Rabbit opens the door and Badger shows her his bike.

“I've got a new bike,” says Badger.

Rabbit hops about with excitement and asks if she could try it.

“Try not to break it,” says Badger.

Rabbit hops on the seat, the bike topples to the side.

“Don't break it,” says Badger.

Mr Frog walks around the corner.

“What is this I see?” says Mr Frog. “A rabbit on a bike?”

“I've never rode a bike before,” says Rabbit, looking shamefully at the ground. “I'm not sure I will be able to balance properly.”

DICTIONARY

They took me to see Mr Barber every Sunday afternoon. On the car journey I would put my coat over my head and watch my brain-television. I liked to announce what show was on next. I would hum the theme tunes.

I saw robots, mutants, spaceships, knights, wizards, aliens, the future, the past, time machines, guns and monsters. I saw all of these in the back of the car, under my coat, on the way to see Mr Barber every Sunday afternoon.

Mr Barber was a speech and language expert. He did tests on me to see if I knew what each letter of the alphabet did. One test was to be told a letter of the alphabet and then open the dictionary, by sense of touch, at the correct letter.

“Open the dictionary at the letter L,” he said.

I opened it at the letter L.

“Well done.”

Mr Barber had a very expensive looking house, lots of big rooms and lots of expensive looking things. Mr Barber was a speech and language expert. He was an expert and experts deserve money.

“Open the dictionary at the letter O.”

I opened it at the letter P.

“That's not right,” said Mr Barber. “But you got very close. Well done.”

I remember those Sunday afternoons with my brain-television and I remember my letter tests with Mr Barber. Life seemed so much simpler then.

RADICAL

The polygon-haired computer game character punched a massive polygon and big polygonal coins flew all over the screen.

Paul Speed looked up from his game with a big smile.

“RADICAL!”

Time for work, he saved his game and grabbed his skateboard.

He skated down the street and descended at faster and faster speeds. He slowed himself down with a sparky grind.

“WOAH!”

He straightened his sunglasses.

He arrived at work, the beach was busy that day.

“Look after my skateboard babes,” he said to a group of women in bikinis.

He grabbed a surfboard and ran towards the waves.

“SURFS UP!”

He surfed on the waves and held himself steady as he played a battery-powered, electric guitar.

REVOLUTION

Lines of product in all directions! So I kick over a box of washing up powder! The other shoppers look at me but so what? What are they going to do? Call security or something?

I leap on top of a box of coke bottles and I spread my arms wide:

“I am king of this fucking mountain!”

Massive laughs from me! This is the best day of my ever continuing existence! When I stand above the insects!

“I fucking win! I stand above YOU insects!”

I throw my mobile phone at the roof and send a whole row of strip lights snapping down at the shoppers. The strip light smashes through the tinned food section and collides into the cash register. The check-out girl crashes through the window and splats on the car roof of the chief executive of Worldwide Mega Global.

I flex my muscles and laugh.

BLIMS

Bolsey the snub crips all bent through the hills of broken boxes. His slow eyes glurp on a leaky crate of plastic blims.

“Faaa,” breathes Bolsey. He pulls at the blims with his pincers and he drops them onto some slimed corrugates.

Bolsey drags the blims up to the Crook Alcove.

“Aram! Aram eez bor!” Bolsey shouts to the sleeping Blous.

The Blous lay under his blanket, around his sleeping place is a display of bubbling bidas in bootank walls.

“Aram! Aram eez bor!” Bolsey shouts to the sleeping Blous.

Blous vooms himelf awake at the sound of Bolsey.

“Aram! Aram eez bor!” shouts Bolsey again. He points at the piles and piles.

The Blous cumbers over and looks through the green rectangles, his round cheeked head turned negative spirals.

“Nat nat nat nat nat ANAT!” he declined.

Never.

The blims were Tee Bee blims whereas the blims the Blous wanted were Tee Cee blims.

Bolsey backs away from the Blous as he knew this was no time to barter.

BONE SHATTER SPUNK

"Teeth jellied cardboard in a burst gut sack of pain," intoned the poet. "Inconsequentially they drizzle glazing foam on preformed cakes. Crumbs a bitter wreckage of Bone Shatter Spunk."

Everyone clapped at the poet's counter-cultural abstraction.

"So edgy," said the girl with blonde hair and a turtle-neck sweater.

"Very edgy,” said the man with a quiff and a leather jacket. “He is edgy in the way that all the things we like are edgy. I like his edge very much."

"So visceral and political!" said the forty-nine year old lecturer in his mottled twenty-nine year old cardigan.

Up on the stage the poet continued:

"Bone Shatter Spunk! Bone Shatter Spunk! Bone Shatter Spunk inscribed the echo of a million dead and a million more dead tomorrow. Bone Shatter Spunk declared the television unit oligarchy: upgraded from analogue right through to digital then right into your BONE SHATTER SPUNK!"

"So current," said the stubble-head DJ in his T-shirt of angular graphic