Making an Entry
I pulled up at the side of the road and looked around to make sure no one was watching me, then I turned into the alley and drove slowly along until I saw the place. There it was: JS Engineering, Repairs and Customisations; the faded lettering almost lost against the weathered signboard. It looked just like any other backstreet garage – rundown and disreputable.
I parked and got out, then, after a final furtive glance round at the empty alleyway, went up to the side door and knocked. It was opened almost immediately by a short, fat, greasy-haired man in overalls who gave me a carefully neutral look.
‘I… I’m… Simon,’ I said, annoyed to find myself stammering, ‘I made an appointment…’
‘Simon. Yeah. Course y’are.’ He laughed, revealing blackened teeth. ‘Come on in, Simon. Job’s just about done. Right through ’ere, mate.’
I followed him into a large, cluttered office labelled ‘Mr Rhetoric – Manager’, with windows on two walls that looked out onto the main shop floor. The panes were dusty, but I could see people moving around, carrying boxes, while others were sitting or standing at various unidentifiable machines. They all looked pale and worn, men and women alike, and I was shocked to see children there too – one was carrying a large wooden box marked ‘Unaccented vowels’, and was clearly struggling under the weight. I turned away, ashamed, for I, and people like me, were responsible for the sweat-shop conditions these people worked in.
As Mr Rhetoric scrabbled through the paperwork I glanced round the cabinets which lined the remaining walls of his office. I found my eye drawn to the ones in the middle of the ‘S’ section.
Shanest, I read out to myself. Sheneverlearns, Shianan, Silentwhispers… Simon… SliveredMoon, Slut, Smotlock… ‘Smotlock?!’ I realised I had spoken out loud, for Mr Rhetoric had turned and was looking at me, eyebrows raised. ‘You mean… you mean that Smotlock… you do entries for Smotlock? I didn’t realise he…’
‘Now then lad,’ Mr Rhetoric said warningly. ‘Those entries are ones we do fer people who want to do Smotlock parodies. Only Smotlock’ – he paused and genuflected, and I found myself doing the same – ‘can write the genuine article. You want to be careful with your allergations or you might find yourself in trouble.’
‘Allergations?’ I stuttered. ‘I would never write that!’
‘Look,’ said Mr Rhetoric. ‘Who’s doing this – you or me?’
‘I thought I was,’ I answered weakly. ‘Anyway, that should be ‘you or I’, not ‘you or me’ – the verb to be always takes the nominative case.’
‘Now then,’ Mr Rhetoric was leaning forward across his desk aggressively. ‘Do you want this entry written for you or not? Cos if so, I’m the one who makes the rules, right?’
‘Right, yes, I’m sorry,’ I said humbly. ‘But I have a good reason – I have other things to do, things in real life. And I’ve been trying to finish a short story for about three months now. I can’t spend all my time writing Journalspace entries. I’d be doing nothing else.’
Mr Rhetoric relaxed at my apology, and suddenly became expansive. He gestured to the windows overlooking the shop floor. ‘You think you’re the only one? ’Ow many others do you think ’ave the time? We’re the best fabricators in the business. Start out with raw vowels and consonants and build them into words – nouns, verbs, conjunctions, prepositions, gerunds, what ’ave you. Then it’s finely crafted phrases and sentences – hand-tooled aphorisms… well, machine-tooled aphorisms – you can’t compete with modern equipment, ’owever low paid the labour is.’
‘Low paid?’ I said uneasily. ‘I just hope they get the minimum wage, that’s all. And those children should only be part-time employees…’
‘Employees?’ Mr Rhetoric looked genuinely shocked. ‘Those children aren’t employees – they’re slaves! Illegal immigrants from Eastern Europe, or sold by their families from the Far East! We don’t pay them! They’re glad of the work!’
‘Slaves?’ I said numbly, leaning against a filing cabinet. ‘Immigrant labour?’
‘Of course they are – that’s why the spelling and grammar is so bad in the low-cost entries we do for schoolkids and college students! You don’t get something for nothing, you know.’
‘I think I’ve heard enough, Mr Rhetoric,’ I said stiffly, making my way to the door. ‘I shall write an entry about this, and expose you for what you are.’
Mr Rhetoric was unmoved however. ‘Fer a start, who do you think is going to believe you who doesn’t already use us? Secondly, do you really think that the others at Journalspace didn’t know about this setup? Grow up, lad!’ He sank back in his chair with all the ease of someone who knows exactly the way things work. ‘You write your own entry if you like, but you see what difference it makes.’ He grinned broadly. ‘And wait until you see the comments you get too. Do you think any real person actually bothers to write comments in your journal?’
I staggered out into the alleyway, his words ringing in my ears. Was what he said true? Or was he cruelly taunting me? ‘I can rely on my readers!’ I shouted back defiantly through the now closed door. ‘You’ll see!’
But as I got back into my car I felt less comfortable. What would actually appear in my journal entry? Some twisted travesty designed to make me look foolish and paranoid no doubt. Who would ever know the truth of the synthetic Journalspace entries? The idea seemed absurd even to me…
NOTES
The names will of course mean nothing to those who weren’t a Journalspace member, but I think everyone will understand the premise.
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