Something Rotten (Thursday Next 4)

'Nostrud laboris nisi et commodo consequat,' replied Friday with great indignation. 'Excepteur sint cupidatat non proident!'

'Serves you right,' I told him. 'Here, have a cucumber sandwich.'

'What did my grandson say?' asked my mother, staring at Friday, who was trying to eat the sandwich all in one go and making a nauseating spectacle of himself.

'Oh, that's just him jabbering away in Lorem Ipsum. He speaks nothing else.'

'Lorem . . . what?'

'Lorem Ipsum. It's dummy text used by the printing and typesetting industry to demonstrate layout. I don't know where he picked it up. Comes from living inside books, I should imagine.'

'I see,' said my mother, not seeing at all.

'How are the cousins?' I asked.

'Wilbur and Orville both run MycroTech these days,' answered Joffy as he passed me a cup of tea. 'They made a few mistakes while Uncle Mycroft was away, but I think he's got them on a short leash now.'

Wilbur and Orville were my aunt and uncle's two sons. Despite having two of the most brilliant parents around, they were almost solid mahogany from the neck up.

'Pass the sugar, would you? A few mistakes?'

'Quite a lot actually. Remember Mycroft's memory erasure machine?'

'Yes and no.'

'Well, they opened a chain of high-street erasure centres called Mem-U-Gon. You could go in and have unpleasant memories removed.'

'Lucrative, I should imagine.'

'Extremely lucrative – right up to the moment they made their first mistake. Which was, considering those two, not an if but a when.'

'Dare I ask what happened?'

'I think that it was the equivalent of setting a vacuum cleaner to "blow" by accident. A certain Mrs Worthing went into the Swindon branch of Mem-U-Gon to remove every single recollection of her failed first marriage.'

'And—?'

'Well, she was accidentally uploaded with the unwanted memories of seventy-two one-night stands, numerous drunken arguments, fifteen wasted lives and almost a thousand episodes of Name That Fruit! She was going to sue but settled instead for the name and address of one of the men whose exploits are now lodged in her memory. As far as I know, they married.'

'I like a story with a happy ending,' put in my mother.

'In any event,' continued Joffy, 'Mycroft forbade them from using it again and gave them the Chameleocar to market. It should be in the showrooms quite soon – if Goliath haven't pinched the idea first.'

'Ah!' I muttered, taking another bite of cake. 'And how is my least-favourite multinational?'

Joffy rolled his eyes.

'Up to no good as usual. They're attempting to switch to a faith-based corporate management system.'

'Becoming a . . . religion?'

'Announced only last month on the suggestion of their own corporate precog, Sister Bettina of Stroud. They aim to switch the corporate hierarchy to a multi-deity plan with their own gods, demigods, priests, places of worship and official prayerbook. In the new Goliath, employees will not be paid with anything as unspiritual as money, but faith — in the form of coupons which can be exchanged for goods and services at any Goliath-owned store. Anyone holding Goliath shares will have these exchanged on favourable terms with these "Coupons" and everyone gets to worship the Goliath upper echelons.'

'And what do the "devotees" get in return?'

'Well, a warm sense of belonging, protection from the world's evils and a reward in the afterlife ?

? oh, and I think there's a T-shirt in it somewhere, too.'