Of Elephant Girls and Fucking Huge Spiders

By

Jan Atle Ramsli

It was spring 1985 and lunch time around the oval redwood table in the conference room.

I, Evan Bergstrom, rebel computer geek without a job title, sat with the secretaries -- two ladies in their early forties, one blonde, one dark, both unapproachable with their business suits and their hair tied in Samurai knots. They didn’t work because they had to. They did it because they wanted to. The dark-haired one, Evelyn, was the wife of a fearsome judge. Greta, the blonde, had connections to the city council and beyond.

Gregory McMasters, CEO and major shareholder, known in the trenches as Grievous McMonster, presided over the silently chewing congregation, flanked by Lard Ass Larry Ås, conceptual designer, and Sven the Snake Svensson, director of Sales and Marketing.

Grievous seemed to have something on his mind. He downed a Coke, burped, and squinted at the secretaries. Turning to me, he asked, “So, Bergstrom, what was that phone call about? Last Friday, wasn’t it?”

Shit. Of all the things he could possibly interrogate me about, it had to be that phone call -- as if I had any control over who calls me and who doesn’t.

I had been sitting right here, and he’d been sitting right over there, red-faced and surly, listening to my nervously stuttering progress report, when Evelyn knocked on the door, opened and said there was an urgent phone call for Mr. Bergstrom.

However, from the look I got from Gregory McMasters, it was clear that nothing in this world could be more pressing than a progress report. From my point of view, the verbal report consisted mostly of responses to questions beginning with ‘Why in the goddamn hell’.

The latest stock market updates were almost a week old, and for fuck’s sake, how in the hell was anybody going to get any work done around here.

My ingeniously crafted, automated download scripts had failed, time and time and time again because the modem dialed the wrong number, hung up in the middle of a transfer, and sometimes even interfered with the switchboard in the reception. Everybody wanted me fired.

The sad reality was that converting manual dial-up modems into autodial modems had proven more difficult than initially thought. Though quite interesting to contemplate, the result resembled a crow’s nest, and the home-made tone generator needed constant adjustment.

But, McMonster had been adamant. “You’ll find a way.”

I was about to explain how that way might eventually lead to the purchase of a Hayes-modem from America, a five hundred and forty-nine dollar super-gadget capable of solving all our problems, when Evelyn explained that there there was a life or death situation at my home. I had to take it in the reception.

With an angry frown, McMonster had let me go.

“So, what was it? Tell us.” Larry Lard Ass never missed a chance to mock the proletariat. He’d start with an innocent question like this, then wiggle his way through my brain until he had enough information to make me look like an idiot. He was the one who had tricked me into admitting that yes, in theory, a manual modem could be converted into an autodial modem using only a couple of relays and a tone generator.

That despicable, lazy crook wasn’t very intelligent--far from it--but he had such a God-given gift for leading innocent people into misery.

If my legs were more flexible, I’d kick my own ass for talking to him.

All of his WordStar files were about 15-25 kilobytes in size, and they all began with with the word ‘Outline’, followed by a couple of pages worth of bullshit, bait and platitudes, stinking of swindle to high heaven. How people could invest millions in underground factories that only existed on two pages of printout was beyond my comprehension, but Lard Ass drove a Mercedes to prove that ‘yes, they can’.

According to himself, Larry Ås was the most creative, the most productive, the most deserving of all, and the rest of us losers were but bleak copies of his scintillating genius.

One day, that pig-eyed flesh mountain was going to get what’s coming, if only I could figure out how.

“Come on. Tell us.” Sven the Snake. Tall and skinny, he got his name for the way he slithered around the office, not for being more devious than Lard Ass. He was an honorary member of the Credit Union, with a dozen bankruptcies under his belt. Lately, he had been forced to downsize. He used to drive a Jaguar, but now he drove an Audi Quattro. His wrinkled face and pointy nose made him look so miserable that it was hard to decide whether he was evil or naive. He wasn’t on my shitlist just yet, though by joining this fucked-up lunch table inquisition, he was getting there fast.

Alright, then, whatever. “It was my wife, sir. She was standing on a chair in the living room and couldn’t get down.”

McMasters raised an eyebrow. “Then why in the goddamn hell did she climb onto the chair in the first place?”

“There was a fucking huge spider on the floor, sir. She needed me to come home and kill it.”

Could we leave it at that?

Of course, not. Larry Lard Ass broke out in laughter. “Haha. That sounds like a book title.”

“What does?”

“Of Mice and Men, only this one is called Of Elephant Girls and Fucking Huge Spiders.”

Even the secretaries laughed.

I cringed. My dear wife Elisabeth was busty, yes. And she had a round, lovely face. But she was no elephant girl.

The lunch was over. Gregory and Larry returned to their offices, Evelyn took up position in the Antechamber, and Greta shuffled out towards the reception.

… and I hadn’t even finished the story. After I told my dear Elisabeth to roll up a newspaper and bludgeon the spider to death, then take a cigarette lighter and cremate it, she stumbled and fell off the chair. She hit her arm against the table, broke her wrist, and ended up in hospital. Yes, she’s all right now, thank you for asking.

The solution came to me while reading about the advent of digital cameras, capable of storing several rolls of film on a floppy disk. Larry had small hands. It wasn’t an optical illusion brought on by the fact that his fingers resembled bratwurst. His hands were really that small. He always fumbled a lot at the urinal. Perhaps he had a small penis, too?

I bet he did. Now, combining this with state-of-the-art hardware and software, the photocopier in the reception and the impending teambuilding session next weekend, I had a recipe for revenge.

Digital cameras would be here Real Soon Now, but I couldn’t buy one just yet. I could, however buy a digitizing board for my home PC and hook it up to the TV output from my Panasonic VHS OmniMovie Camcorder PV-200D.

The digitizing board cost a fortune, but it was worth it.

Now, unable to resist a challenge, Larry would never know what hit him.

I aimed the camera at my home office chair, adjusted the focus, then removed the chair.

Bending forward over the keyboard with my pants around my ankles, I now stood where the chair had been, watching my naked backside on the screen.

I pressed ‘Rec’. The cursor traveled downwards, scanning each line of my glaring, green behind.

A photograph can never lie, they say. Welcome to the future: PC Paintbrush for MS-DOS. I loaded the file, cleared enough pixels along the thighs and butt cheeks to make it look as if they were squeezed against a glass plate, then saved a new file.

Perfect. I pressed ‘Print’.

Oink, oink, oink, oink, the printer grinding made me wish I had the money to buy a laser printer, but my computer equipment already cost more than a small house, and Elisabeth was a wonderful, forgiving wife, but even she had her limits.

The next day, I brought my printout to the office. In the reception, I made a copy, folded it up and kept it, waiting, scheming, grinning, machinating, occasionally doing enough useful work to keep the vultures at bay.

Weekend. Yay. Drinks in the boardroom. Gregory insisted. “Anyone who doesn’t get properly drunk at this party will get fired.”

He was probably hoping to grab the secretaries by their most intimate body parts, haul them into the antechamber and have his way with them.

I had other plans. As soon as Larry Lard Ass’ voice began to slur, I staggered his way. “Hey, Larry, how’s it hanging?”

Larry grinned. “Slightly to the left. How about yours?”

Bingo. I pulled my photocopy. “I dunno, Larry. See for yourself.”

“What is that? It looks like a … is that a butt?”

“That there is proof that not only am I the hardest drinker, but I’m also the most creative. The rest of you losers are but mere copies of my genius.”

He snatched it. “You mean it’s your butt? How the hell did you do that?”

“Gregory said that whoever doesn’t get properly drunk will get fired. That’s my proof, right there.”

“Yeah, but … did you sit on the copier?”

I laughed. “How else would I have been able to copy my own ass?”

“And it didn’t break?”

“The glass is made of a composite material to prevent dust particles from settling on the surface. Bulletproof glass, my friend. Bulletproof glass. You can go and check it out if you want to.”

He tilted his head at the paper. “You’re joking.”

“Keep it. You can say it’s yours. I’ll just make another copy. Hey, I could make a copy for everyone--”

Larry’s eyes darted between the antechamber and the reception. “No. Don’t do that. Let’s keep this to ourselves, shall we?”

I sniveled. “Sure, man. Whatever.” As I shuffled towards my seat at the oval redwood table, Larry had left the room.

Ten minutes later, a rumbling crash and a scream told me my plan had worked.

Gregory looked up. “What in the goddamn hell was that?”

Sven the Snake turned toward the reception. “It sounded like Larry.”

I stood up and followed them at a safe distance.

Larry stood, butt naked, gaping at the broken photocopier. Glass splinters stuck out of his bottom, dripping with blood.

There was a sheet of paper in the outbox.

I strolled over and seized it.

Ha. Though I had been right in my conjecture about the size of Larry’s penis, it didn’t matter. There would be no investigation to find out whodunit.

“What in the goddamn hell are you doing?” Gregory roared.

Larrys’ face was a giant tomato. “I, uh, thought it would be stronger--”

My turn. “It reminds me of a new, revolutionary operating system for personal computers.”

“What?” Gregory turned.

“Microsoft Windows, graphical user interface. Only this one is called Micropenis Broken Window, catastrophic loser interface.”