Yoghurt and Junket

The interns had eaten all my cornflakes again. And being interns, and thus totally obsessed with excelling at their various degrees, they’d taken the cornflakes packet and some of them had written a penetrating essay on the veridical effect of the serving suggestion photograph on the front, while others had literally deconstructed the box to make a model bridge using only cardboard and blu-tac. Those were the engineering student interns, the most wily breed of all.

The whole problem with the cornflakes had come about because, as related, I had taken up custodianship of the old PCPP offices. My rent was nominal but a condition of the lease was that I would dedicate every free waking hour to eradicating the interns.

I watched a brace of them sniffing around the trigger mechanism of the elaborate trap I’d built out of old ATX towers. Just as they were about to pull on the five dollar bill and bring the whole thing crashing down on them, the buzzer on the main roller door went and the interns scurried away into the darkness.

“Consarnit,” I said, shifting my grip on the pitchfork. I got up and went to push the big red button. The roller door lurched upward with a terrible squealing sound.

On the far side, as I should have known, stood my crazy ex-third flatmate Victor Ninox. He was dressed in full rubberized protective gear and gas mask. On the breast of the gear was the logo of a second-tier fumigation company that I had seen operating in the local area.

“I got a new job and this is my first assignment,” said Vic through the gas mask, “what a co-incidence, huh?”

“What job?” said I. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I’ve come to fumigate to help you with the interns. The boys at head office reckon if we can just knock off the bulk of the population with the nerve gas, you’ll be able to pick off the surviving individuals. Should have this place sterile by Christmas.”

He stomped past me and started making professionally appraising noises about airflow and venting, almost but not quite failing to look like a total noob while doing so.

“Nerve gas?” I squawked. “That gear is deadly! What am I supposed to do for…?”

“Four days.”

“Four days!”

“Unless we don’t get a southerly, in which case better make it six.”

Vic handed me an invitation to a major overseas press event that William Liability of Blind Drunk had organized to promote a bunch of games that his company probably would indeed publish if they were ever in fact released. And so off I went.

We flew on one of those new ultra-budget airlines. The plane itself was a refitted Boeing 727 and seemed solid enough, but I did have to pay $2 at the door to get a seat cushion. And another $2 during the safety demonstration for a lifejacket. The cheerful girl at the front of the cabin then explained to us that in the event of a water landing we would need to exit the aircraft via the slides and then inflate the jacket by inserting $1 or $2 coins into the indicated slot.

We landed hard in New Caledonia, paid a modest sum to facilitate the release of our luggage, and stood squinting in the airport car park, such as it was.

“They better have PS3 code for Barbarian Axe Fight 3D,” rumbled my old friend Meatloaf. I regarded him, standing there, resplendent in his black trenchcoat and filthy MGS T-shirt. He had been the editor of an I’m-almost-ready-to-call-it-definitely unofficial PlayStation magazine. I had no idea what he did now. There was something odd about him, something different and strange.

He saw me looking. “It’s the sunlight,” he said, “my face always looks weird in direct sunlight.”

“Are you still at the mag?” I asked.

“Nah mate, I’m online. Everyone is going online. The future is online. The PC is dead man, the future is online.”

I thought about this for a while.

“And what do you use to do all your writing online?”

“Shut up,” said Meatloaf, and stalked away.

I’d love to relate that the next three days were a sensory overload of awesome games and awesome company, but this was Blind Drunk. Unlike such world-famous events as the Ubidays and Activate, even the flagging E3, this was mostly just us wandering around a two-and-a-half star resort. And the cruellest part of all was the way the sun beat down mercilessly on the empty swimming pool which, thanks to clever architecture, could be seen from every room in the resort.

When the cyclone hit on the third day, we at first welcomed its cooling breezes and refreshing rains. But then we had to fly out in the middle of it all, and I ran out of dollar coins for airsick bags less than two hours in to the scheduled 45-minute flight.

Junkets. Just like the dairy by-product they’re named after, the reality rarely matches the promise.