The Foundation Doktor is relaxing on a day off, after three gruelling 12-hour shifts. She has been reading 2023: A trilogy in her time off. She likes the references to children’s books. And she has spotted from GANTOB’s social media activity and pamphlets that that tradition has continued with Judith Kerr’s Mog and Julia Donaldson and Alex Scheffler’s Squash and a Squeeze* both mentioned.
The Foundation Doktor thinks that it is time to introduce a book that she enjoyed from her childhood – Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart. She loves the idea of characters stepping out of the page, into the real world. There are parallels with Pandora’s box, but she is confident that such perils can be avoided. No goat-themed villains for this blog.
The following day she is back on The Benefaktor’s ward, doing her usual rounds. She has a wrench, some brown tape and a change of clothes with her. She closes the door behind her, draws the internal blinds to the corridor, and forces the external window open. She steps out and jumps onto the grass below her, enjoying the softness after 23 years stuck in her paper prison. She tapes the window shut, aware of The Benefaktor’s querulous voice shouting from inside.
Changing out of scrubs into the clothes that she has carried with her she steps out into our world. She folds her clinical garb neatly and packs it down in her bag, placing her sandwiches carefully on top. Her paperback copy of 2023: A trilogy is slipped into the document section of her rucksack. She starts running.
The Foundation Doktor has Bill Drummond’s The Man on her phone. It is not traditional running music, but somehow it hits the spot. She is thinking through some of the reviews of the original 2023: A trilogy. A meta-narrative, beholden to its sources, purposefully creating confusion, understood only by existing fans of The KLF. She is keen to learn from that feedback, and extend the appeal of the blog. But that risks losing the KLF-centred readership GANTOB’s built up.
The slide guitar and upbeat acoustic rhythms take her somewhere else, so the pavement, tachycardia and dyspnoea are barely perceptible even as she increases her speed. She slips another phone out of a zipped pocket, and turns it on. The Benefaktor’s screensaver (a cat) fires up. She types in the too-obvious password, and dials GANTOB for the first time.
THE FOUNDATION DOKTOR
25 Oktober 2023
* Or KLFRS.com/gantob, pamphlet 8
GANTOB blog 