Junk Mail

Chapter Six - Discs, Dilemmas and Disasters

"A disc?" Ben echoed. "I can get one from the shop if you want. What movie do you want to watch? Or is it a CD? I can hook you up with some free music for some cash if you want, Mr Illuminati sir."

"I don't want a movie, you idiot!" Andrew Davis practically screamed. "I want you to get me a CD with over a million valid email addresses on it, so we can expand on the number of spam emails we send, and therefore make more money. There's a girl who hands us over these discs on the condition that we pay her, so I need you to meet with her and get me that disc without anyone else finding out.

Ben was honoured that his future stepfather trusted him so much that he was letting Ben go on this special mission for him. Ben didn't understand how people sold email addresses, but assumed it was a very simple business that any fool could do. Perhaps even he could do it, since he was a university graduate with a degree in Online Activities.

Unbeknownst to Ben, Andrew Davis needed someone who was stupid and gullible to collect the CD so he had specifically chosen Ben. Jeff, who used to do the job, had died from dysentery so Andrew Davis needed someone to replace him. In the case that Ben got caught by someone and got in trouble, the company could blame Ben and leave him to fend for himself because Ben was stupid and had nothing to his name but a degree in Online Activities - something that no employer (or normal person) would value.

Andrew Davis thought that he had done a fairly good job recruiting Ben by sending Jeff up to one of the upper floors at just the right time, so that Jeff could bring Ben down to level negative five. Good old Andy had been watching Ben for a long time (ever since Jeff had been diagnosed with dysentery), using the cameras lining the office windows of the multi-storey building Ben worked at. He'd spent months watching Ben falling over air and on to the pavement outside the building. Andrew had seen Ben wiping bird poo off his head, using a little kid for a piggyback ride and setting fire to the warehouse behind the multi-storey building Ben now worked at.

"Well where do I have to go then?" Ben asked. "Do I have to meet the girl in a cave? How old is she? Also, is she actually a girl? Because I don't believe in child labour and why did you say recover a disk, if you wanted me to just collect a new one from this girl? Anyway, do I have to meet this girl in a cave? How old is she? Also, is she actually-"

Andrew Davis sighed and put his head in his hands. "I'll go over the details with you in private. Right now, I need you to pretend to get back to work because all the other employees are going to turn up any minute and I don't want anyone else to hear about this disk. I think there may be a mole in the company and I don't want them to find out where we're getting our email addresses from, because they might rat out our source to another spammer. Do you understand, Ben Hughes?"

Ben froze for a second. He didn't hear the pause in Andrew Davis's voice after he said the word "understand", so Ben took the question to be "Do you understand who Ben Hughes is?" Ben fell into another existential crisis, and tried to discover who he was. He felt momentarily removed from the situation at hand, and briefly remembered another time he had experienced the same feeling of uselessness and hopelessness. Who was he? What was he? What was his purpose? Last time he had been trapped under a sofa so could think in complete and utter darkness. This time, he was standing near a glowing triangle which was slightly distracting so he closed his eyes and began chanting, so he could clear his mind and figure out who he was. After an entire five seconds, he had gotten nowhere and grew so panicked that he feared he would have a heart attack. Luckily Andrew Davis got attached to a computer cable at that exact moment and was electrocuted (but not so much that he experienced any severe injuries, like death). Ben was safe and the heart attack died down.

The sight of Andrew Davis experiencing electrocution also made Ben imagine he was being electrocuted, so Ben was shocked back into entering the situation at hand and exiting his existential crisis.