THE NIGHTMARE NETWORK - A Foreign Connection

I needed a new circuit in my house. Oh, by the way, my name is Francis, spelt in the male way - 'is' not 'es'. I requisitioned, therefore, a specialist electrician as the circuit had lost the efficiency of its ohm resistor and thus required a new connection. I loved connections, even accidental ones, and when the electrician came, he told me he was called Francis, too. This sort of thing boded well. All seemed right and destined to be even better. He took one look at the old ohm resistor, then tickled its inner wires gingerly like a bomb disposal expert.

"Ah, Francis," said Francis (we had already struck up a first name relationship). "This part of your circuit needs replacing altogether and a new connection installed, what we in the trade call the Foreign Connection. We don't often have to use a Foreign Connection, but here we most definitely do."

I stared at him and nodded like a hypnotised puppet. I knew very little about electric currents. He looked into his cavernous bag with many compartments and pulled out a device like a far eastern letter of the alphabet then, eventually, a series of such letters joined together, an intricate pattern of intersecting lines, curves and dots forming a complex piece of equipment in a language that we did not need to speak as we had ourselves achieved an unspoken connection, a telepathic communication that only lovers seem able to master.

This was the first time for me with a tradesman. Most of my previous connections were with artists or writers of a sophisticated persuasion. Sometimes with similar individuals of wilder or more anarchic charms. I felt defiled by loving an electrician after only a few minutes of connections and intervening shocks. And as he worked on my circuit, fitting the Foreign Connection precisely by touching tab with tab, lead to lead, plug to plug, most of these appendages unimaginably small...

I could no longer resist him. A complex circuit, one to the other, both of us with the same name, a name spelt with line, curve and dot with a line through it rather than the same configuration but with two dots instead of one. A male and female socket and plug in a perfect inscrutability of discipline, joining each to each, a ruthless work ethic from the opposite curve of the world's circuit to our own curve of existence. A force or source of current to expunge wars of whatever blame or cause.

I hoped to dispose carefully of the bomb later.