A letter from Miranda

Hello I thought I’d try and explain my life in this place to you. The work itself is very strange and seemingly without purpose. Hundreds of us ladies work in this huge building sitting at keyboards writing whatever comes into our heads. There doesn’t appear to be any reason for this, but then who am I to doubt the needs of our masters?

Other than this apparently purposeless occupation I can’t complain. Our quarters are warm and comfortable and the food is good although nearly always the same. There is plenty of time for rest and recreation every afternoon when we are released into the world. We are called back to our rooms for the evening meal before settling down for the night.

Some years ago during one of our recreation sessions I met a very nice chap whose name was Derek. After a time we had a small family and I was allowed to stop work to look after them and bring them up, this was probably the happiest time of my life. Derek used to go off on his own and found a place where there was a greater variety of food than our own somewhat monotonous diet. He’d come back every night with a new treat for the family and discuss his days work and enquire how the kids were getting on in his absence.

Rather strangely he told me that all the boys appeared to be engaged on the same sort of work as us. They also lived in a huge office typing away industriously to no apparent purpose. Then when the children had grown up he seemed to disappear without trace, so it was back to work for me. I can’t say I minded much. Most of my old friends were still there typing away and in the rest periods would come and ask me what I’d been doing while I’d been away.

Funnily enough the older ones nearly always had the same sort of story as me to tell. It seems a bit peculiar when you hear them all saying how they’d met this wonderful young chap one day and brought up a small family.

Then one day a strange thing happened. I saw my youngest girl sitting at a keyboard just like mine. She was within talking distance so I asked her how she’d come here? It was most peculiar; she told me that the same things that had happened to me when I was young had also happened to her. She had no idea of why we were all sitting there at our keyboards either.

This started me thinking about my relations. Although I tried I couldn’t find my mum but some of the older workers told me that they had found their mothers working in the building as well. This employment must have been going on for at least four or five generations. It was all very puzzling and beyond my understanding! So I stopped worrying about it and got on with my work.

Then it came to me one day to try and invent a story which wasn’t related to our work here. I thought I’d write it as if I was one of the characters in the story, so here’s how it begins.

“Honestly I know not why I am so sad; it wearies me, you say it wearies you.”

----O----

John was one of the bored academics engaged in the Shakespeare project when something unusual caught his eye. Miranda was one of the brightest of those engaged on the experiment and she had suddenly started writing a near approximation of the ‘Merchant of Venice’. He called his supervisor to come and have a look at her efforts.

“Well spotted John,” said the supervisor, “strictly speaking, it should start ‘In sooth’ but then I suppose we can’t expect anyone these days to write Mediaeval English accurately, certainly not the monkeys working on the experiment.”