Content warnings & prelude for this story as a whole:This story takes place in an alternate universe, where many historical events have gone quite differently, and technological development has been halted at the fax machine, knowingly and purposefully, although it will later be detailed that there are some minor exceptions to this rule. The society in England remains quite conservative and this is reflected in language somewhat. 

As for content, there will be flowery but explicit sex eventually. The story deals with topics like war, colonialism and homophobia (mostly internalised) but rather lightly. Mostly it's just privileged men writing about matters that are important but don't touch them in any real way so they may treat these topics quite flippantly. 


 

STOP THE FAX MACHINES or: epistolary faxpunk seduction

CHAPTER ONE 


Barnaby Rheaw turned the letter over with his fingers. Neatly typed on a modern machine, it was two pages long. The envelope it came in was a pale mint colour, and the address was scribbled by pen. The penmanship was hurried, slanted to the right yet perfectly legible. 


Benfred Wilf

Box 3482

Londinium


He had opted for a pseudonym close to his own first name, and couldn’t put his finger on why. Perhaps the exchange would be more intimate that way, less of play acting and more a touch of genuineness. The advertisement in the paper had been so simple, yet intriguing, he had been certain others would take up correspondence. It read, simply.


Gentleman sought for intellectual exchange. Brown eyes preferred, ages 35 to 55. Slow letters only, faxes refused. Send to A. Barnes, Box 653, Londinium.


Marre had told him he’d better get out more. Meet new people. But Barnaby wasn’t the meeting sort. He could scarcely think of a worse way to spend an evening than in the company of new people, their unpredictability and his own need for comfort clashing awkwardly. He was much better alone in the evenings, with his books and his letters. So Marre had come upon this idea: exchange letters, see who you might get to know through that. 


He opened the letter, pressing down on the paper, and began reading. 


Dear Benfred,


I thank you for your letter. It was inquisitive and solemn in all the right ways. First, let me make your acquaintance in full. My pen name for our purposes today, will be Acgard Barnes. My real name shall be hidden, at least for the time being, due to my professional position, which would not allow me to write to you as earnestly as I wish to do. 


You questioned my purpose for soliciting this exchange. And indeed, it shall be just one exchange. I got plenty of letters for the advertisement but none that I wish to respond to even half as much as I do to you. I’m too busy to respond to others, as it were. I picked the best and you got chosen. Perhaps that will flatter you, perhaps you will simply see it as an obvious appraisal. I don’t know you that well yet, Benfred, but you seem like the type of person who would take some measure of pride in being chosen, however small. 


The reason I named brown eyes in the ad is quite simple. My own are blue, a tepid colour of the sky after it has finished an summer rain shower. I enjoy the contrast. I enjoy the warmth of brown eyes, the golden flecks or the deep darkness within them. The hints of more. I could study such eyes for hours, and while it is clear that I can’t see them through a man’s penmanship, I like to use my imagination, just this tiny bit.


As for the age range mentioned, I confess I am rather prejudiced in this area. I’m myself a ripe old 38 years old, and I’ve noticed people much younger than me lack a certain maturity to their thinking. They think of various things but don’t wish to sit down and ponder them; the truths are too obvious to them. And yet, the older one gets, the more ground in one’s ways. You couldn’t talk to an old man and convince him of new ideas that he wouldn’t argue with, not because they lacked merit, but because they were so new. 


The way you presented yourself captured my interest immediately. You described brown eyes, very well, but more it was how you wrote about your schooling, the ways it had shaped you and the ways you found comfort in books, continuing to educate yourself even if for no other purpose than to ease your own curiosity. I am rather busy, and I also have a bad habit of finding joy in endless distractions. One rather wonders how I have ever finished schooling myself, or whether the many books in my library have ever been opened. They have, but I must admit, not often and not long enough to be finished. 


So I hope to engage in some ideas with you, Benfred, as you are beyond me in your reading and possibly your thinking as well, as it has been informed by your reading. The thought excites me, and your careful questions about thinkers of old have left me reeling. Of course we read Seneca at school, studied him at length. And Marx, well, I daresay I know more about him than your average working man (although I wouldn’t call myself a working man, or an idle man - I simply am, my work intellectual and foolish at once). 


So tell me of all of these things, my dear Benfred. Talk to me about your thoughts on governance, the state of the world. The war in the East - does it bring you down as it does me? Tell me about your past as well, quench my thirst for knowledge. Where were you when the fax machines stopped time in its tracks? Where were you when Londinium burnt down? You said you were 39, advanced one year over me. How did life lead you here? How do you pronounce your vowels? I await your next letter. 


With quiet calm,


Acgard Barnes

Box 653

Londinium 


Why this advertisement of all, Barnaby didn’t quite know. Something about the way it dismissed the most modern of technologies – the only technology that could be the most modern – fax machine messages, was appealing to him. He preferred the slowness of letters, too, the consideration one had to put into them. Faxes were so crude, informational. Worse, they could be instant, obtuse with their messaging. 


He’d remember Marre telling a story of her own fax love story, as penny to a pound as they were. She had sent one from the office they shared, to a wrong number, and got back a heated message, how dare she fax somebody so late at night. Turned out she’d simply typed the country code wrong and instead of sending a missive to their clients in Maryland in the Federates, she had fired one off to the Bahamas. The Bahaman on the other end had quickly endeared himself to her, and they flirted like this, burning paper and annoying Barnaby in the process. Marre had heated cheeks for a week, practically living in the office, until the cold hard truth of the mysterious Bahaman had emerged; he was a married gent, and two decades her senior. 


Barnaby didn’t want to end up in a similar position. Slow letters were more conducive to getting to know another gradually, and legitimately. Sure, they would opt for pen names, but that didn’t matter. The intimacies exchanged, if they would ever get so far, would be based on their true intentions, not those quickly made up to carry out some tawdry textual affair. 


Something about the letter left Barnaby unable to settle. The man’s word choices were puzzling yet thrilling to him. Thirst for knowledge, golden flecks, the younger man trying to engage the old man in new ideas. He ran his fingers through his brown hair, muddy in its colour, none of the romance his pen pal had infused into the description of eyes. 


Acgard flattered him, that much was certain. Or rather, he flattered Benfred. Barnaby tried to imagine Benfred, the alias, as another man. Perhaps one a bit bolder than himself. Benfred, who was so eager to make new friends. Benfred, who had finished schooling and applied himself to bigger and better things in his professional life. Benfred, who wasn’t stuck in a grey-walled office with three booths, one for himself, one for his department senior and one for Marre, the younger accountant. 


But Benfred ought not to be too far removed from himself. Benfred should be just as he is, a bit bland around the edges, but with hidden layers, secret knowledge. Private thoughts. Benfred could have gold flecks in his eyes, sparkling with enthusiasm as he spoke of Seneca. Benfred could open up in ways that Barnaby himself didn’t particularly enjoy doing. Benfred could make a friend who wasn’t Marre or his own brother, who did respond to correspondence but at a very slow pace, always forgetting half the things Barnaby had written to him about. 


Benfred could be happier, with his golden flecks and his knowledge, happier than Barnaby found himself at present.


He sat back on his chair, arranging some of his books on the desk so they could make space for his typewriter. He pushed back his cherrywood chair, to make room for his elbows at his sides as he typed. And then he thought of Benfred, and thought of Acgard with his tepid blue eyes, and began crafting a response.



*


Edgar thought it such a stupid idea, he would surely disengage by letter number two or three. Honestly, what on earth was he thinking, and no doubt the answer came to him immediately, with his groin. Lertre had shared with him his latest novella, a very flimsy story of two men and their secret encounter behind masks, secret names and letters. The thought had immediately burned a fire through him. Lertre always wrote of such things, affairs and mysteries, and his writing was poor, but his command of ideas that excited the mind and the body was beyond exceptional. 


Edgar eyed the letter his private secretary had picked for him from the Post Office Boxery. He couldn’t be seen doing such a thing on his own, being next to the High Chancellor of the land. The envelope was smudged with a stain, like an ink blotch watered down, rubbed away with thick fingers. The thought raised the hairs in the back of his neck. Indeed, the thought was exhilarating. A true stranger, a true mystery, and himself, the perfect fantasy. He understood why Lertre had written such a novella, and why the thought had stuck to him like sap residue. Thick fingers, brown eyes, a man around his own age and stature - an educated man, no less, not some stupid boy off the streets who could barely read and write. 


Yes, he would write back, at least for a while. See how the idea morphed, suited to his liking. Perhaps the other man would be a bore and of no use to him - nevermind then, he would write letters to other people. 


He let his long legs stretch out beneath the antique desk. His suit was rumpled, open at the collar, he had slept in it and sauntered into the morning meeting dressed as the day before, a truly rakish move. His hair, a wooden blond, was sticking out in all sorts of places and he felt positively debauched. But he was so bored of sex. Even if he still visited the gentleman’s clubs a couple of nights a week, they held no mystery to him anymore. The bodies were lovely, behind the masks and the holes made in the velvet-robed facades. And yet so dull. What of it, he wondered? How easily could one get bored of the earthly pleasures? Did he have to do something new, take a wife now?


No, not if he could help it. He would give the letters a try, exciting his imagination. Maybe, if things went well, and they just might, he was certainly determined toward it, he would invite this Benfred to his estate, and play out the reveal in person. Perhaps they would never meet. It would remain to be seen.


He unfurled the letter, its neatly typed pages, without any further stains. 


Dear Mr Barnes,


I hope the letter finds you well. Yours certainly compelled me, even if I hesitated at first. Your command of language is more flowery than I myself am used to. Even if I’m widely read, I do not read poetry or novels. I am afraid to find myself lacking in such grace. I do not understand its beauty. Perhaps you can teach me a thing or two about such matters. If not, I won’t take offence. This is an exchange of minds, not a teaching session. 


As you may have guessed by my turn of phrase, I was initially schooled in the north. I moved to Londinium to attend university, where I found myself quickly thriving in the more liberal intellectual atmosphere. It was indeed here that I watched the city burn. I was in the library at the time, a man of mere 20, standing there in shock as the flames grew in the distance. If your knowledge of geography is as good as your understanding of poetry, you will have surmised it quickly: I went to school in the South Bank University. The library overlooks the water, usually a stunning sight, but that day was just frightening. 


We hurried off, me and a friend from a different discipline. He took me to his quarters and then crossed the bridge to find his sister. As you may remember, the fax machines weren’t working at the time and neither were phones. It was impossible to find information beyond the sound of the sirens. My friend never returned and I think to this day I shouldn’t have let him go. He died in the flames, along with his little sister. I hope they found each other, before the fire met them, too. 


As for the day the fax machines stopped time, I remember it well. I was watching the broadcast at my first real job as an accountant. Did I mention my profession? After all, there is no use in hiding it. Accountants are as numerous as fallen leaves on an autumn pavement (can I do poetry, too?). I can be an anonymous accountant to you, just as easily as I am one in my everyday life. Regardless, back to the story. The High Chancellor Halm announced it in parliament and I felt an odd chill in the air. Could it really be so easy? To end all technological advancement?


Of course we now know the fire was started by a computer. We know that it could have been stopped, had the building updated its electrical components. We know that the computer perhaps wasn’t the biggest issue. But the conclusion seemed so evident at the time. Who even had a computer? The solution seemed so mild and indeed, we may never what might have happened, had progress carried on as it used to. 


Stop the clocks. Keep the faxes. That was the campaign slogan, remember? My friend M was 10 when it was aired every night on television, she remembers the jingle and sings it in a very funny manner, like a child would, even though she is a grown adult these days. 


I didn’t mind the change at the time but now my mind wanders back, thinking of the world that took after our decision - our decision, why do I call it that? – and stopped time altogether. What could be if that hadn't happened, and where would our society be now? Would the High Chancellor Tamfer be in power? Would we have a parliament at all, or would politics be conducted via television and the connections between computers? I am not a fanciful person, but such alternative histories can be rather interesting to me. They offer an insight into the things we find important. 


Mr Halm valued stability and indeed life has been stable ever since. I perform my duties with the help of the typewriter and the calculator. Do I need more? Probably not. I require just my books and my letters. Am I too boring to you, Mr Barnes? Your way with words tells the tale of a man who requires excitement and beauty in his life. I'm afraid I may disappoint you there.


If you would be interested, I can send you some writings by G. L. Wrights, who is my favourite author on the topic of governance and morals. He came up with the idea of appointing Chancellors by lottery, to diminish the opportunity that somebody who wants to be Grand gets selected over someone who wishes to be Good. The paradigm has its problems but also its advantages. 


I look forward to hearing from you, 


With warmth,


Benfred Wilf 


Edgar smiled to himself. Something about the man's penmanship, his choice of words, his hesitant questions, was so appealing to his imagination. There was a purity to it, a quiet innocence that made him think of someone who hadn't ever been the object of true, overwhelming lust. A man who touched himself at night but was never touched in return.


This Benfred hadn't replied to flattery, brushing it aside like it wasn't anything special. Perhaps he was a true intellectual, one told compliments on his thinking on a daily basis. And by whom? He had mentioned a friend, younger, female. No wife, married men didn’t keep younger friends like that, except in secret. The way she was mentioned, amusing in her youth, felt very fond but in a fraternal manner.


The table was set, all he had to do was take his seat and see where the night would take them.


His next letter would be shorter, bolder.


*


Dear Benfred, 


I beg of you to call me by my first name as I have done with you. I feel it lends an intimacy to our correspondence that appeals to me. I want to know you, your brilliant mind and your true self. If that seems too greedy, I apologise. I am new to these matters.


All my friends call me Acgard and I already consider you a friend, if one I don't yet know very well.


Your story of the fire was chilling. I remember it, too, though I was visiting home at the time. Saw the flames on television and called everyone I knew in London in quick succession. 


South Bank is a good school. I imagine you in your youth, with your warm brown eyes and a figure that hasn't yet filled out, lanky but firm. An inquisitive mind. A hunger unlike no other. That youth, that hunger, do you miss it? I do. 


I assure you Tamfer would be in his position, even had history taken a different turn. The man is determined, more so than anybody on this green earth of ours. I do sometimes wonder if the stoppage was the right decision. Like you, I was young at the time. Now I wonder if we should reconsider and allow development for some of our key interests, not just medicine. 


I find myself thinking of what your life must be like. I am not an accountant, but my life consists of meetings and discussions, and it is very boring. I am a bachelor, as you may have surmised. I am great at my pursuits but I don't have that yearning for what fulfils the soul quite satisfied. Do you understand what I speak of, Benfred?


Send me writings of this Mr Wrights. And answer me this, if you could? Can a man be both Good and Grand? How tall are you? Which boutique do you buy clothes from?


With ferocity, 


Yours,


Acgard 


*


Barnaby browsed the paper and Marre forked her lunch on the other side of the table. She was in a good mood, a lightness to her steps as she walked in that morning. Barnaby didn't ask, because it was evident her mood switched back and forth based on the status of her interactions with their senior, Mr Chavisham. He was a prickly man, one prone to critique more often than praise. Marre didn't make intentional mistakes but she had a habit of not dotting every I and crossing every T. She was good at her job, but on idle moments Barnaby sometimes wondered if she wouldn't be better suited for another profession, one where she would meet more people, not just numbers. She infected him with some of her charm, however, and he was glad she stayed.


"Forqand rumoured to stage takeover?" she read the headline on the page Barnaby hadn't yet turned. "Blimey, is Tamfer in such deep trouble? His own bloody First Chancellor staging a coup?"


Barnaby shrugged. "Forqand won't do it now that the press knows."


"How do you suppose?" Marre asked, but soon her eyes widened with understanding. "That's right. Edgar is a friend of yours."


"Used to be," Barnaby said pointedly. "Haven't spoken to him in years, have I."


"I wish you would," Marre said, swinging one leg over the other, her lunch forgotten. "I would be curious as to how such a man of low moral fibre made it so high up in politics. I read he is friends with French pornographers."


"He wasn't always that incorrigible," Barnaby said, giving some measure of grace to an old friend.


Edgar was like a whirlwind he had entered during his second to last year at South Bank. Handsome, a bit taller than Barnaby and of better breeding, he had for some reason taken to the other and nestled him under his influence. Edgar was blond, with limited attention span, never settling on anything for too long and easily bored, but Barnaby never failed to engage him for reasons he didn’t quite understand to this day. For the first time in his short life he had felt like what magnetic people such as Edgar himself must feel like all the time, important and worthwhile.


Edgar, his first love and his first kiss and his first regret as well, Edgar of such moral flexibility that it enraged Barnaby in retrospect, Edgar with his egotism, Edgar who lied so easily.


No, he had no trouble believing that Edgar Forqand would betray his mentor Tamfer and go for the party leadership even when the party's popularity was at an all time high. Edgar had little use for such considerations as loyalty or a sense of duty. 


Edgar, who told him, "We're not betrothed, Barns. Are we? So why do you demand so much out of me?"


Edgar, who kissed him at graduation, after they had decided to move in together. "Now we may truly cause havoc together."


Edgar, who stripped him the night that Thirnbush's Law was passed, and two men could do such things without scrutiny from law enforcement or even the eyes of God. Thirnbush, who made it possible for Barnaby to fall in love with Edgar so deeply and hold that feeling as a part of himself, etched in his very being.


Edgar, who left him behind whenever life got too busy and exciting and Barnaby was just a nuisance. Edgar, who told him in equal measures, that Barnaby was brilliant and a wonder, and also that Barnaby was dull and dimmed Edgar's own shine. Edgar, who didn't write to him once after the acrimonious breakup. 


Yes, Barnaby could easily believe that Edgar could rise in politics despite his lack of moral fibre or perhaps precisely because of it. It would not hold him back. And he could also believe that Edgar still shared a taste for the lurid, having taught Barnaby everything he knew about sexual congress, in ways that made Barnaby flush to this day.


"And what of your letter exchange?" Marre thought to ask suddenly. "Bore any fruit?"


"Quite," Barnaby replied, relaxing in his seat and putting the paper away. "I just received a new letter this morning."


Acgard wrote to him with a sharpness that shocked him. His questions made Barnaby sit back, think deeply about how to answer or how to avoid answering them.


I don't have that yearning for what fulfils the soul quite satisfied.


How was one to answer how that yearning could be satisfied? And yet Barnaby knew exactly what Acgard meant. It was romantic, but not in the same way he had once understood romance. The feeling of purpose, the desire to be a part of the world. As Acgard had so well put it later in his letter, how to be both Grand and Good at the same time, follow both ego and virtue.


"How exciting," Marre said. "Maybe I should take up letters, too. Spruce up my existence."


"It can be enjoyable," Barnaby said, not wanting to betray his own giddiness at the thought of writing Acgard a letter in the evening. He anticipated it already.


"But who should I write to? Another Bahaman with a belly and a bride? The thought is harrowing." Marre sighed.


"Perhaps another young woman in some faraway place?" Barnaby suggested. "Do you speak French or Spanish?"


"I don't, no," Marre said. "I don't suppose I could write to an old school friend who lives in the Federates"


"Is she married?" 


"No, she shares my condition."


Marre smiled and Barnaby returned the smile. "I think that's a wonderful idea, then. Me and this man I am in correspondence with share many things, too. Our education, our interests in intellectual matters. It seems quite promising."


"Promising, how?" Marre asked, with a tilt of the head, suggestive.


Barnaby blanked. "No, nothing of the sort."


"Then why did he want to know what your eyes looked like?" Marre was being playful now, her eyes sparkling. 


"He appreciates the contrast."


The explanation didn't make much sense to Marre, that much was evident but their lunch break was over by this point.


At home, Barnaby re-read the previous letters before writing his latest one.


Dear Acgard, 

 

Your letter found me well. I will address you with your first name, that is not a problem. You've made yourself familiar to me and I hope to return the favour. It's been a while since I have made a friend on a first name basis.

 

I don't suppose accepting development in other fields would hurt. If we hand the keys of progress to responsible people, it may benefit us in the long run. But such matters aren't discussed in politics today, I don't think.

 


You ask incredibly poignant questions, I fear I can't satisfy all curiosities. I am but a metre and 85 centimetres tall. My hair is brown, a similar brown to my eyes. I don't shop at boutiques, I get my suits tailored by a midmarket tailor whose accent sounds like my uncle's. My mother used to say I favour colours that made me fade into grey walls and dark corridors, so now I try to wear one colourful thing per day. A red scarf or a jade green tie. I, too, am a bachelor. 

 


I have attached you writings by Mr Wrights. I believe that it would be difficult to be both Grand and Good. The power that being Grand allows one too much leeway and too many difficult decisions that being Good at all times may become something that doesn't seem necessary or even desirable. You are a poet but you are surely a philosopher, too, Acgard, for asking such questions. 

 


I don't miss youth. My body doesn't hurt yet, and my mind is calmer now. I miss the connections made at university, but that is all. Apart from one, where the severance was painful but necessary. 

 


Do you use fax machines in your profession?

 


Be well, my friend,

 


Benfred 

 

 
 
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