Thursday 13 June 2024

Callie Cooke


            On Wednesday morning I finished revising my translation of “On fait des rêves” (We Dream and Dream) by Boris Vian. Tomorrow I’ll run through singing and playing it. 
            I finished transcribing the chords for “Et quand bien même” (And Even If) by Serge Gainsbourg that were posted on Ultimate Guitar. I searched for more but found none and so I started working them out for the intro. 
            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the last of four sessions. 
            I weighed 88.2 kilos before breakfast. 
            I prepared to transfer files from my old external hard drive to the new Samsung. The old hard drive is a device that connects to one of my old computer hard drives but the connectors don’t always fully connect and so it takes several tries to open the drive. Most of the files transferred easily but my thousands of photos took hours. Sometimes I had to click “retry” a few times. 
            I weighed 89.2 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been at midday this year. I kept the photo transfers going while I took a siesta. I slept for an hour and a quarter longer than usual, probably because I only got two hours sleep last night. My struggles with the new Samsung had been time consuming and I didn’t get to bed until after 2:30 this morning. So it’s understandable that I napped for so long. 
           When I woke up it was too late for a bike ride downtown so I just rode to Dundas and Gladstone. I notice that part of Gladstone has a bike lane now.
            I weigh 88.6 kilos at 17:41. 
            I finished transferring all my photos but about ten of them were corrupt. I noted their names and I think I have uncorrupted versions of them on my main hard drive. Just before dinner I was 42% of the way through transferring my videos, with no problems so far.
            I was caught up on my journal at 20:23. 
            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sourdough bread with Basilica sauce, a sliced beef burger, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 14, episode 5 of Doctor Who
            In the world of Finetime Lindy Pepper-Bean lives a happy life almost entirely on social media. She and everyone else in this world have their lives regulated each by a tiny robotic ball called “Dot” that projects a social media bubble around their heads. Inside the bubble are multiple screens that show all of Lindy’s friends who she has never met. As soon as she wakes up she calls out “Dot and bubble” and she is immediately in the chat with her friends. One of her friends mentions that some of their other friends are missing. Lindy also notices one of her friends doesn’t seem to have woken up yet. When Lindy gets out of bed all of her movements are directed by the voice of Dot, even just to go to the bathroom and brush her teeth she needs to be told when and which way to turn and when to walk forward. The Doctor enters the chat to warn Lindy that there are monsters trying to get her. She blocks him. Lindy goes to work and on the way she wears her bubble for direction and to interact with her friends. She doesn’t notice that people are being killed and eaten as she passes. At work doing data processing for two hours a day she continues to interact with her friend but then Ruby enters the chat. She pretends she is doing research on Finetime and asks Lindy several questions. She learns that Lindy has six co-workers in the same room with her. One of them, Danny is missing from the chat. Ruby wants Lindy to look to see if her co-workers are there, but she refuses because she would have to turn off her bubble. There is a space between each screen of her bubble through which she can see world outside and Ruby asks her to look through that space to glance over at her co-workers. She does so but there is no-one at the desk to the left. She turns to the right sand sees one of her colleagues being eaten by what looks something like a giant upright grub. The person is being held by multiple legs and pulled inside of the creature’s stomach. The Doctor appears on the screen next to Ruby’s and tells Lindy she needs to leave the building but she needs to do it without her bubble because there are more creatures she could walk right into otherwise. She turns off the bubble but doesn’t know how to walk without it so she turns it back on. She reaches the elevator but inside is one of the creatures. Curiously however it exits and walks past her. Once she is on the street the Doctor asks her to drop the bubble and look around. She sees the creatures everywhere but some people, like Lindy are not being eaten. Ruby asks about Finetime and Lindy explains condescendingly that it is populated by wealthy rich young adults between the age of 17 and 27. Lindy gets a message from her mother but the Doctor and Ruby recognize the woman as at least two different people on other worlds. The Doctor informs Lindy and her six remaining chat friends that there is a means of escape to a river under the city. The conduits leading to the underground are locked but the Doctor can send them the codes. The power charge for Lindy’s bubble runs out and so she tries to make her way to a conduit without it. She walks into the same metal pole twice. Between her and the building she needs to reach are several of the monsters. Lindy could get through between them if she could walk straight but she can’t. Suddenly a voice starts giving her directions. She looks toward it and sees her pop idol crush, Ricky September standing there in the flesh. Ricky is very good at walking without a bubble. He explains that he just turns his on to drop his songs and then turns it off for the rest of the day. She is so thrilled to be with Ricky that she says it’s the best day of her life. He reminds her that thousands are being eaten to which she responds, “Yeah, but…” They reach the building and there is power there. Ricky tries to call the home world and sees that it is dark and dystopic and has a population of zero. They reach the door below and the Doctor sends the code. The Doctor figures out that the people are being eaten in the alphabetical order of their last names. If that is the case that means they have been created or guided by an intelligence that knows the alphabet. He concludes that it’s the Dot. Ruby and the Doctor tell her to turn her Dot off. She says “Dot off” but the Dot is sentient and Lindy is next on the list. The Dot begins attacking her. Ricky grabs a stick and starts batting the Dot away while Lindy punches the codes. But it gets past Ricky to attack Lindy again as she struggles with the door. Lindy has been a fan of Ricky for a long time and knows everything about him. She informs the Dot that Ricky’s real surname is Coombs and so it turns back to kill him while she escapes through the door. She makes it to the underground river where there are others who have made it. She also meets the Doctor and Ruby. They ask where’s Ricky and Lindy lies that he went back to save others. She meets her online friend Hoochy Pie and a new friend Brewster Cavandish. They are going to take a boat to the wilderness. The Doctor offers to take them all to a safe place in the Tardis. Lindy tells the Doctor they couldn’t travel with him because he’s not one of them. I hadn’t noticed before this point that everyone in Finetime is white. It seems that racism returns in a big way in the future. Lindy says it was his duty to save her. This is the first time the Doctor has experienced racism since he regenerated. He says he doesn’t care what they think. He just wants to save their lives. Brewster tells Lindy and Hoochy to turn away before they are contaminated. 
            Lindy was played by Callie Cooke, who trained at the Arts Educational School London and earned a BA in acting. Her stage debut was in Firebird. Her first professional screen role was in an episode of The Doctors, and then in the series Britannia. Her feature film debut was in Blithe Spirit. She co-starred in Rules of the Game, Cheaters, and Wedding Season. She co-stars in Henpocalypse.



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