The Fandom of the Operator Read Online Free PDF

certainly felt as if I was.
    “It smells horrible down here,” said the owner of the first voice, the taller – and also the thinner – of the two young men.
    The other man said, “Shut up, Ralph.”
    The thinner man’s name was Ralph.
    “Don’t tell me to shut up, Nigel.”
    The other man’s name was Nigel.
    “Smells like something’s died in here,” said Ralph.
    “It’s the smell of magic,” said Nigel. “Magic always smells like this. It smells a lot worse when it’s being worked; this stuff’s only idling.”
    “I should never have taken this job,” said Ralph. “I should have stayed in the drawing office.”
    “You wanted action and adventure and now you’ve got it.”
    Nigel was nosing about the bookshelves. “There’s some great stuff here. I think I might take one or two of these home to add to my private collection.”
    “Mr Boothy would know if you did. He knows everything, you know that.”
    “It’s tempting, though, isn’t it?”
    “It doesn’t tempt me at all.”
    “Well, let’s just get what we’ve come here for and then we’ll leave.”
    “Yes, please, let’s do that. What have we come here for anyway?”
    Nigel rooted about in his jacket pockets and brought out a slip of paper. “
Alondriel’s Trajectories
,” he said, “Arkham, 1705.”
    “Bound, no doubt, in human skin.”
    “Just red cloth. I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
    “I’m not disappointed at all. So what is to be found in
Alondriel’s Trajectories
and what does the old man want it for?”
    “Old man Boothy doesn’t confide in me. Perhaps it’s something to do with the communications project.”
    “Oh,
that
,” said Ralph, scuffing his heels and hunching his shoulders. “I don’t think I believe in all that.”
    “No?” Nigel asked, as he ran his fingers over book spines and peeped and peered and poked. “You know better, do you? You know better than the experts? All the boffins? All the ministers? All the brains behind these projects? You know better than all of them?”
    “I’m not saying that I know
better
. I just said that I don’t think I believe in it.”
    “It’s only a theory so far, but I think it makes a lot of sense,” said Nigel, still peering and prodding and poking. “And if it’s true, then it answers a whole lot of big questions and opens up a lot of opportunities.”
    “Receivers,” said Ralph, with contempt in his voice. “That we’re all just, what? Radio receivers?”
    Nigel turned upon him. “Receivers and communicators,” he said. “But what we really are is not up here.” He tapped at his temple. “It’s out there somewhere.” He pointed towards out there generally. “It works through us, but it’s bigger than us.”
    “All right,” said Ralph. “Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the theory in essence. The theory is that human beings – that’s you and me and everybody else – are not really thinking, sentient life forms. We
are
alive – we eat, we breathe, we reproduce – but we don’t actually think.”
    “In essence,” said Nigel. “It’s a bit like television sets. You sit and watch them, you see the pictures, you hear the sounds, but they’re being broadcast from somewhere else. The TVs are only receivers that pass on information.
    “And the theory is that human beings are like that. Our brains don’t actually do our thinking. Our thinking is done somewhere else, by something other than us, then broadcast to our brains.
    “And the brains send messages to our muscles and make our bodies function. Move our eyes about, make our voices work, make our willies get a stiffy when we want a shag.”
    “So I’m not actually
me
,” said Ralph. “I’m a sort of puppet being moved by invisible strings by something that I have no knowledge of?”
    “That’s the theory.”
    “Well, it’s a duff theory. If it were true, then I’d know, wouldn’t I? The ‘I’ that is pulling the invisible strings, I’d be aware that I was