WTF is SHUT?

Kristoffer Lawson

3rd April 2003

I knew a boy once with a crazy set of marbles. Blue ones,
green ones, purples ones and even some golden ones. He could
do almost anything with them, if he felt like it. Control
spaceships, make politicians trip on their laces, set off
a bomb in New Israel. Everyone liked the boy, everyone wanted
to play with him, everyone was his very bestest friend of
all. Of course his marbles were what they really wanted,
but the boy didn't mind too much. You see, he realised the
importance of his possessions. He knew what very bad men
and women could do with them. He knew people were greedy,
violent and wanted their mother-in-laws to die peacefully
in their sleep. So he wasn't about to give them away to
just anyone.

Most of the folk in the area focused on the boy and his amazing
toys. Even The Government had concentrated their surveillance
efforts on him. In actual fact, the boy himself was far
less interesting than his mother, Elisa. She was a sorceress
of the highest order, with all the alien gadgetry that the
title implies. The reason why nobody was interested in her
background was simply because she had been extremely good
at her job: nobody knew. Ever her son's marbles were not
her doing but a present from Mr D, the SHUT president. Few
dared to ask more. An ignorant Old Worlder had onced asked
loudly about SHUT, using rather vulgar language. He was
promptly beamed away for storage.

Anyway, on to the boy's mother. The first time I met her
she was reading poetry aloud in the bathroom with the door
open. Joseph, the boy with the marbles, had asked me into
his place for some weird game he wanted to show me. I was
several years older than him, but not old enough to posess
the skills of diplomacy that come with age. I peeked right
into the bathroom from which a string of thous and metaphors
were floating. There she was, standing in a corner, half
naked with a book in her hand. Her expression said it all.
I had destroyed her perfect moment.

"Hey, brat, can't you see I'm reading poetry?"

"Why are you reading it in the bathroom?".
I thought it was an innocent enough question.

She flung out and I recoiled, expecting a blow, but her hands
were directed at the door. As I blinked the door slammed
shut and a moment later the poetry continued, albeit in
a muffled tone.

To be quite honest, Elisa was a kind-hearted person who just
happened to carry the fate of many. Later on in the day
she presented us with a smile, coupled with biscuits and
lemonade. She just cannot stand interruption and, I suspect,
she had grown quite tired of the pool of so-called friends
Joseph hung out with.

Joseph's father, Terry, was an intellectologist. He had gained
a small amount of respect for adding 1% to the IQ rating
of the population. During his short period of fame he met
many high-profile individuals. Among them was Maria Imonnelli,
an actor of quite notable beauty and charm. Scientists,
especially intellectologists, were quite fashionable at
that time and she didn't find him repulsive. Terry left
Elisa, hooked up with Maria and lived happily ever laughter.
For shortly after his break-up with Elisa his career went
downhill in a series of embarassing, and rather gruesome,
accidents at the lab. Many reckoned they were not accidents
at all, but horrific experiments which had suddenly become
public. Intellectology was, quite understandably, no longer
fashionable. Maria left Terry and his whereabouts are now
unknown. He never knew his ex-wife was a sorceress of the
highest order.

Meanwhile Elisa, mother of Joseph, had become good friends
with Mr D of SHUT. SHUT was a secretive agency back in the
days before the Great Strike. Publicly its purpose was to
form good relations with the alien species humans had come
into contact with. Many suspected that, instead, they existed
to spy on people and pass that information on to the aliens.
In reality their purpose was to form good relations with
aliens while making people think they were spying and passing
on information to those aliens. 

This was all to make the politicians happy and the leaders
rich. SHUT was highly successful. Since the first alien
confrontation, they had managed to guarantee a high degree
of funding, year after year. In fact, SHUT had been in existence,
in one form or other, for over 300 years, although before
the confrontation as a rather minor organisation for a strange
bunch of alien-fanatics. In the end, as the Great Strike
proved, aliens had hacked into SHUT's data-systems and picked
out information on humans to help in their forthcoming invasion.
That made everyone happy, except the aliens, who were swiftly
wiped out.

Once I got over my greed for Joseph's marbles, we became
good friends. To a certain extent I was really his only
friend. For years we did everything together. He even taught
me how to use his toys to cause famine and disease in remote
parts of the world, which was immensely funny at the time.
His mother still continued with her poetry, usually in the
bathroom. Mr D visited often and joined Elisa in what was
referred to as 'a different kind of poetry', also in the
bathroom. We all had a great time until one day Joseph lost
his marbles. He said I did it. His mother said I did it.
Mr D said I did it. I said he'd probably stuffed them up
his arse.

There was no sorcery involved, but I've never met Joseph
since that day. I cried about how unfair it was and how
he had no other friends and how could he manage. I tried
ringing but was neved allowed through. In the end our family
moved away from the area and we went on our own sad ways.
On with our boring lives. I started my career as a biologic
programmer. Elisa and Mr D married. She and Joseph both
became involved with SHUT . Nobody knew what they did. 

Then all of a sudden there was that Great Strike. As a result
of the post-strike revalations, SHUT was buried deep and
lives were ruined, including Mr D's, Elisa's and Joseph's. 

I've still got the marbles. They gleam nicely in the sunlight.