r, and then the GGL falled!

I did think that I would you smugly thinking "well I never publish another AH- have a better one than that" This issue is devoted 64 but the quality of the well don'tjust sit there, mail to the stories that you have submissions was so high I me. My sources are sacrotold us in your own way. thought that they deserved sanct. The editor, Jan. 1997 There is no doubt that a wider audience. Those of the job of a Schlumberger engineer is a tough one. From a district managers start-of-year pep e-mail to all staff:

H-64 brings you YOUR magizine.

But despite all the skill,

>>>199"7 ==>

Lets make it successfukl,

FROM THE BEGINNING I I

preparation and sheer effort

that goes into the work

things have a nasty habit of

unravelling at the worst

possible moment.

CONIENTS
Explosive revelations

.,....

..... ...2

This publication

is

dedicated to the heroic and sometimes hilarious efforts that engineers have to make to get thejob done (or not). It is a tribute to their professionalism and sense of

A definition of a fiasco with worked examples .........3

From a small acorn mighty disasters grow .............4

Witnesses, who needs

them? cables

..........s ............6

humour.

War stories 'R us

All of these stories were sent to AH-64's web-site by wireline engineers past and present.

Indian rope tricks with wireline

One problbm fixed, one not and no problem

at all..Z

The Provider describes from personal experience an obscure sect that may seem strangely familiar....8

AH-54 website: http : / /www. caliach . com/ Lu.a+ / index. html editori-a1 : AH64@paulross . demon. co. uk

Getting in to trouble with explosives...

Lets just hope customs don't want to use their hair dryer. I n Engineer in the 11 ef,ittipines badly needed a roll of primacord at the location, but knew that it

would take ages to get there. He took a complete roll of primacord and attached a female and male 110 volt plug on each end. When quizzed at customs he replied, "Oh that, It's an extension cord of course"

started to look dodgy the baby started crying from the heat, right on cue. The customs officer dithered for a moment then waved them to the car. The engineer dumped the detonators on the FSM's desk in Basrah but the Army never queried where they came from, after all production is all!
Go

straight to jail, do not

Is that a supergun in your pocket or are youjust pleased to see me? f ust before a ma.jor J production campaign in Iraq it was discovered that there were no pressure tight
detonators. One engineer had to take the sales managers car to Kuwait for a service and a quick phone call revealed that the Kuwait base was well stocked. All that needed to be done was to get them into Iraq. He hid about 25 detonators in his boots, pockets and jacket he prepared for the drive back. He also took the FSM's wife and baby daughter along lor cover, after all every smuggler needs a moll. The sun reached its zenith as they approached the Iraqi border and the temperature hit
125 DegF (52 DegC). As usual

pass GO. rew on the Ninian South f lr.-z was running scallop guns late on Christmas Eve. Helicopter coming in five hours. Can you guys make it? Haste makes for problems and a misrun ensued...

reckons its safe as long as if I'm going to stand there. The welder cuts the lock, I swing the door open and grab the deto container. Leave for town the next morning. Tell the dispatcher the explosive store is coming in and it'll need to be repaired. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy inspector has visited the rig and is not a happy man when he sees an explosive store with a nice torch mark right through the door... Worse to come as the explosive store goes back to the manufacturer. Trouble is, nobody's cleared it out or sent along the keys. So they cut the other locks open with a torch and are really upset when they see what's still inside it... Never leave home without

Quickly POOH, fix the head, rearm the gun, put the old deto in the old shirt pocket (fully meaning to store it away correctly later), run back in the hole, shoot, get out of the hole, rig down! rig down! Throw personal stuff in the offshore bag and run like hell and jump on the chopper back to Sumburgh and whewl Made it! Customs man at Sumburgh meeting arrivals... "And what's that you have in your shirt pocket, sir?" Ooops...
Who needs a key when you have a Birmingham

the lraqi customs officers wanted to take the car apart and the engineer had to stand outside in the sweltering heat

wlth his leather jacket tightly wrapped around hjm. The customs officer became more and more suspicious "Why don't you take that offl2" he enquired. "Er well I don't want to get it dirty and er I suppose that you won't be long." The customs officer returned to the car but started giving more and more suspicious glances at the engineer. Just when things

spanner? hevron, Ocean Kokuei, f lr.-z North Sea. Special 2am chopper to the rig for a backoff. Feeling worse for wear having been calleil from a party. Arrive at the rig but can't get the explosive store open. Finally get all but one of the four locks open and manage to twist the key off in the last one. On my (pissed) advice rig superintendent agrees to cut the lock off with an acetylene torch. All other explosives removed from the main bunker section so only detos and CST igniters left in the broken lock section. Welder says he
AH64@paulross
demon. co. uk

them. /- oing on vacation lrom U Llnya via lreland. There are the usual couple of steely eyed Special Branch officers watching passengers from Belfast. They pulled me over. "Why were you in Belfast" "Oh, just visiting my sister." He grunted. "Do you have any identification?" I handed over my passport and my heart sunk as this was the time of Colonel Quadaffi being so generous to the IRA. The officer flipped it open and stiffened as he saw the Libyan stamps, pages of them. "Mind if I look in the tool box sir." he said. I opened it up. He picked out an odd tool. "What is this then?" My mouth ran dry. "Er... its a tool for crimping detonators onto detonating cord." I gulped. After a not unreasonable time in one of their back offices they realised that I was not the mad bomber they were after. It was the FOMs that did the trick, after all even the IRA are r,ot crazy enough to carry their manuals with them. I think this was one of the lew times that FOMs came in handy. Apart from propping Lhe door open Lhat is.

r!fi-64 websiLe: http: f f www.caliach.com/eue +/index.html

editorial :

fiasco /fi'resko/ n. (pl, fiascos) Iudicrous or humilitatiing failure.

Take the Job one

step at a time
Except failures, they come trulk issue. /\ District Engineer writes from Russia: The engineer ran in with RFT and HPAA. No seal after several
attempts. Pulled back up into casing, still no seal. Began to pull out. At 1000 ft lost HP signal. Checked RFT packer at rotary and it was fine. Checked HP gauge and found gauge had fallen downhole. Client could

When the means

RFT

cable fault light really

decided that he had two dud sets of RFT and called for the third. When it turned up it also showed a Cable Fault. They had another go at checking the cable again but still could not find anything wrong. Now they had 243 possible combinations to try. But the company man had got rather bewildered by the growing pile of RFTs and finally lost his patience. He called for a new crew. The new crew found the problem immediately: lines 5 & 6 crossed in the head. The first crew had missed it because it turned out that both the guy on the rig floor and the guy in the truck had a jumper in his hand but neither had a Simpson meter. They both were happily moving the jumper round each conductor in sequence and yelling "OK" at each other. Each thought that the guy at the other end was doing the testing.

Dickhead!"

11

Or, it was all right for me, how was it for you darling? A major fiasco occurred in l1' lndonesia a little while
back after an RFT refused to

work. The panel showed that there was a cable fault, so the
engineer and crew immediately checked the cable. That was fine and they could find no other problem so they called for a new set of equipment. This arrived after a while and the crew hooked it up. Same thing though, big red Cable Fault light, but of course they knew that the cable was fine. At least now they had two sets and could swap panels, cartridges and sondes in an effort to find the problem. In fact they now had 32 possible combinations of panels,/ cartridges,/sondes to play with.
No

not drill ahead. Ran RFT back in after replacing HP gauge. Found cable birdcaged and strand missing from 7820 to 7940 ft. Cable swapped with back-up. After fitting back-up found cable shorted. Short found after making three 200 ft cuts (cause: bad handling). Ran in with CST. After taking third core at 12145 ft, lost all air to winch. Found that Air Filter bowl had been blown off its thread and smashed. Could not move winch up or down due to low air. The District Engineer came out and took a bowl from the Onan and tried to screw it on but there was too much air coming out. He decided to kill the engine to stop the compressor. Having checked the hand brake they stopped the engine. After about five seconds the tool began to accelerate downhole. At 12250 feet it began to slow down and finally stopped once the tension had reduced enough. They then screwed on the bowl from the Onan and started the engine but the air pressure blew the bowl off and smashed it. They stopped the engine and fitted the bowl from the other Onan. It too, was

By this time, most people would have begun to get

success.

suspicious, but this

guy

blown off and smashed. Finally they took the bowl from the Denyo. This held. The tool was picked up and got normal logging tension at l24lO ft, indicating that the tool had not gone to TD. Upon trying to bring the tool up hole, the chain began to slip on the smaller sprocket. While trying to investigate the cause of this, the glass bowl again blew off the thread and smashed. They immediately fitted a T-clamp to

the cable The Engineer then got the rig mechanic to bypass the filter with a short piece of copper pipe. Started the engine and tried to POOH but the chain was still slipping on the lower sprocket. He investigated the

chain problem and found the chain tension adjusters fully extended. He slackened off the adjusters and found he had enough slack to remove one link, which he did with an angle grinder and a punch. They were then able to POOH.. The District Engineers final comment on this: "The thing I like best is that the guy has obviously replaced his cable drum with one of the older WDRs with the smaller sprockets and hence had problems with his chain length. Now, when he gets a newer type of WDR with a bigger sprocket his chain will be too short. But of course, he's already figured this out, right? Right!"

AH-64 website: http : / /www. caliach .com/aUe+/ index. html ediLorial : AH64@paulross. demon. co. uk

lts the little things really, the little things...

From routine to disaster in 5.0s
Or, when I say'open' I really mean'close.' f r was a simple job, a final log Ion a 10,000 well on a Russian rig in southern Libya. Everything was working well and the crew were relaxed, well fed and rested (for a change). Rigging up went smoothly, the first tool string was picked up all nicely shackled together. As it went in the hole the operator on the rig floor turned casually round to the Russian driller and gestured for the blind rams to be opened. Unfortunately it wasn't the driller on the rig floor but his assistant who prodded the lever in the wrong direction which closed the rams nipping the sonde. The engineer on the wlnch saw the tool string stop and thought that the sonde
had sat down on top ofthe rams. He quickly picked up the slack and as the cable went taut it ripped the weak point out of the jammed tool string. At this very instant the assistant driller realised his error and opened the rams. The sonde, cartridge and head surprisingly finding themselves neither supported from below by the rams or above by the cable took gravity's choice and rattled down to TD.

ln the desert any

tow is a good tow

Or, you can't always believe what you see until you see it. .. T ibya, midsummer. Coming I-r back from the well site the
Land Rover was suddenly shaken by a loud and terminal bang from the gearbox. The vehicle puttered to a halt under the hot sun. Still it was really no problem as the truck was following about half an hour behind so
The

It was all over in a few

seconds. Except of course the

just time for a snooze.

fishing job. This was rather complicated as the head was shackled to the tool so it was

truck rolls up, out with the tie down chain, hook up the tow
and lets go. The only problem is that as they pick up speed the truck kicks up so much dust and sand that the driver of the Land Rover could hardly breath let alone see. After much hooting and flashing they stop to solve the problem. A suggestion was made. Why not tie the Land Rover tight against the back of the truck then everyone can travel in relative comfort in the cab? Duly done the trip to base was
made without incident. I should mention one thing

not standing up straight but lying jammed across the well. Still, what is a couple of days of rig time between friends?
depth of 9409 feet. The engineer turns to the Geologist and says "OK to shoot?" The Geologist checks everything and says "Go ahead, shoot!" The engineer sends power, the cable kicks. The gun works! As they are pulling out the Geologist idly fishes the Telex out of his pocket. He turns to the engineer "It was 9490 we shot at wasn't it?" The engineer checks his notes "No you mean 9409" Oopsl Dyslexia rules KO! So now they are both in trouble (after all the Geologist did check "and authorise the shot). But the engineer comes

A trouble shared is no trouble at all

Or, when Shoot! means Shit!
senior engineers found an neat way of getting out of trouble. The exploration well was finished, logged, cased and we were waiting for Houston to decide where to perforate. They had a lot riding on this as, so far, the client's exploration programme had been pretty disappointing. The Geologist on site was by coincidence had been to the same university as the engineer. They soon became firm friends. A telex comes from town with orders. Something like six feet of lour shots/foot, top perforation at 9490 feet. We load up and run in. The Geologist is sitting in front of the monitor. The engineer correlates and the Geologist conlirms it. They drop down and pull up to the shooting
AH-

W i-"J"1 J;'" :"' :?'[T *."

up with a solution. They go into the company man's office and on the desk is a typewriter. Taking out the ribbon they very carefully smudge the telex at the crucial point. Along with a little bit of crumpling the shooting depth could be read as 9409, 9490 or even 9499. Face is saved. Now all we need is an unperforating gun. With unshaped charges?

about desert driving with the 9900 trucks. They were so under-powered that a slight patch of soft sand would drag the speed down dramatically. These soft patches were invisible to the eye so it was routine to find the truck slow down for no apparent reason. So back to their intrepid trio who climbed out of the truck at base and walked round the back where they found... A totally wrecked Land Rover. It had worked loose and had started weaving behind the truck. It ended up being dragged on its side (ooh a bit of soft sand), on its back (ooh, er that's really soft) and back on its wheels (ah, that's better) all the way back to base.

64 websiLe : http : / /www . caliach. com/ Aue+ / index . html editorial : AH64@paulross . demon. co. uk

Witness or just witless?

The witness is

always right
Or, in lifes trials its best if you arejudge andjury too. f n the midst of a five well PLT I campaign, tired and wondering whether the damn gradio was going to survive another run, the Shell PE said, 'Do you know this is the deepest well in the North Sea?' Instant panic'Oh, really?' Nonchalantly standing up and stretching, I leaned casually against the developing tank and gazed sideways out the front window of the unit at the l-32 cable zipping into the 'deepest well in the North Sea' and wondering if that last engineer kept his cable record in the unit up to date. 'What's up?', asked the Shell PE. 'Oh, just stretching... You know... Long hours in front of the CSU, blah, blah, blah...'. 'No, I know what you're worried aboutl You don't think

whether on depth or not. Have been advised by the witness to perforate anyway." And the name of the witness for the perforating? Yep... the same guy witnessing the PLT. No wonder the water cut was astronomicall

lf in trouble ask for help - or make a fool of yourself

But hey, why not both?
to celebrate yet another record month (halycon

Qcene: party in'Iunisia U

a workshop

Do I know you?
Or, Shell needs a witness protection programme. A n ensineer fondlv

days eh?).

4."-i.,i.."=,

Many years ago an elderly former field engineer, Michel, who is no longer alive, came to
Aberdeen as part of a round

the world trip to interview clients about the typical lengths and diameters of wells that they drill. Its the sort of

stuff that you should think we would know given the data is recorded it all in the log headers. Anyway this was going to be used for the plans for future tools, so at least they would fit inside the holes. you've got enough cable!' I took Michel to see Shell. We Smart ass... How'd he know? went to see the chief Fortunately, there was a petrophysics guy as is normal wrap and a half of cable left at in these cases. After the formal TD, the panic died and the PLT introductions, the topic was survey started normally. Until I discussed and it didn't take noticed that all the production very long to establish Shell's was coming from places where North Sea practices. there were not meant to be any At the end of the meeting, the holes! Grabbing the perfo log Shell guy said to Michel "You from the file and checking... know, I am sure we have met Yep, the perfo depths were before. Were you in... and gave confirmed. Yep, even as tired a list of places where he had as I was, I'd entered them worked...? correctly for the PLT, and I was Michel said that he was sure on depth with the gamma ray. they had not met before, and 'Hey Shell PE, you know this he had never been in any of well has been shot off depth?' those places. 'Really? Oh, I wouldn't worry As we left the Shell building, about it. And don't make any Michel turned to me and said. "I remembered that fucking comments in the heading' Huh? A Shell PE not worried bastard alright. When he was a about a well perforated off wellsite geologist in xxxx he depth? And no comments? used to stand on the cat walk Until I noticed the comments with a fucking stop watch in the perfo log from the timing my operation. No way engineer who'd done the was I going to give that perforating: "Unable to cocksucker the pleasure of ascertain with 100% certainty being remembered".
AH-

Enter, stage left, a crew back from a long and exhausting job. They dive straight into the food and, of course, the wine. The four wheel drive vehicles that we had were converted Peugeot 504s with a increased ground clearance and a rather flimsy suspension. The operators loved cruising around town in them particularly outside the schools when the girls were coming out. Some hours later tired, and made very emotional by copious quantities of wine at the party, the crew chief leaps into one of these 504s and races into town. However he forgets that there is a huge ditch across the road caused by last months flash floods and hits it at about 100 km/hr. The front makes it across just fine but the rear axle is neatly ripped
off.

As he slithers to a halt 10m further on with the nose pointed in the air a curious crowd gathers. Somewhat confused as to his location he guns the engine in an attempt to get out of the ditch. When this doesn't work he starts

yelling at the bemused crowd 'well don't just stand there - push!' Just think, if he was in four wheel drive he could have made it home.

64 websit.e : http : / /www . callach. com,/AX5a / index . html ediLorial : AH6 @paulross. demon. co. uk

There may not be water in the desert but there is lots of cable lying around...
The importance

of cable length
Especially when ground...

it is on the

trip of 100km. One such deep exploration final logging was in progress. The truck had ground its way
there over a period of two days and now everything bar the kitchen sink was being run. Just before the RFT it was time for a wiper trip which gave the crew a break. But these operators were conscientious men and they wanted to get everything ready for the next rig up including spooling a bit of cable out on to the ground. Now it can be a little awkward spooling out cable Rigging up in the middle of the night and had just got the
ISF-MSFL-SLS-SGT string

f, astern Libya was a difficult I--r place to move around,

towards the Egyptian border the exploration rigs drilled in a huge sand sea surrounded by soft dunes 100m high. A well driven Toyota could make good progress but trucks had to take the long way around. Sometimes it could take a truck 24 hours to make direct

with only two men when the truck is close to the catwalk so the Libyan operators had developed a trick. One man drove the winch whilst the other pulled the cable to one side. The winch operator then left the winch turning slowly and ran out to pull the cable out to the alternate side. This
way two operators could zig-

zagthe cable behind the truck with the minimum of effort. On this job they did this before quickly turning their attention to knocking down the tools. After all dinner was
calling. The engineer meanwhile was hunched over the CSU doing his Cyberlook but gradually became aware that the rig

A dropped string
Or, the stupid things that you do when the cable breaks at surface...

f r was a period when there I *as terrible shortage of

cables in Libya. Stuck in

customs, wrongly ordered or whatever. The cable on truck 9906 was so worn that the outer armour was down to almost half its normal thickness and badly corroded by H2S. It was in such poor

connected. I gently started it down when TWANG! the cable snapped two feet from the head. The string wobbled down the hole, the operators diving for cover from the coils of cable dropping down from above.

condition that it wouldn't even spool properly on the drum. I was so desperate for a replacement that I had taken a sample up to the Tripoli office a month before to prompt them into more decisive action. The surface was as smooth as a bass guitar string and when you flexed it there was a cracking sound and rust particles fell out. Their response was a shrug. All of our equipment was badly overstretched but I had made a standing order that 9906 was only to do cased hole jobs so at least fishing would be easier. Despite the best laid pians I got caught out on a month were we were desperate. A major final log came up and only 9906 was available. I chopped a few hundred feet off and built a new rope socket.

If you ever have this misfortune you will probably then do the same futile thing that I did which was to leap out of the truck, run up to the rig floor and peer down the hole. Ah well. A bugger of a fishingjob but two days later the tools were returned to surface. The induction sonde was looking decidedly second-hand being about a foot shorter than originally designed but the rest was OK. Our workload was so high that "they went on to do two more final logs before we had time to Q check them... A day or two later I had a highly unofficial radio conversation with the District Engineer in Tripoli which basically boiled down to 'Paul, file no fishing report, file no accident report'. I thought of that piece of rotten cable lying in his office for the last month and thought'how wise'. Lost time reported: Nil. A new cable arrived five days later.

lights behind him were dimming. Puzzled, he turned round and saw the window almost obscured by a forest of cable coils, the winch drum still turning mutely inside. The operators were by now well into their first course. A layer or two can sometimes be coaxed back into position but this was a lost cause. The engineer got on to the radio and called for another truck. The only one available had to come from central Libya and would be free in half a day. It would take 24 hours to reach the rig. It was going to be a long wiper trip. When the truck finally arrived the engineer checked it over. It wasn't a full drum of cable by any means but the plate inside said 18,000' of cable so that was all right. The rig pulled out and wireline rigged up. He was still 400' off the bottom of a 16,000' well before he lost his nerve having only four turns of cable left on the bare drum. Someone had not been keeping the cable information up to date. A third truck, with enough cable, arrived two days later.

AH-64 website: http: / /www . caliach .com/lJJe +/ index. html editorial : AH64@paulross . demon. co. uk

This rising crime rate is really

terrible
Or, your Dipmeter data is in the trash. I good friend of mine was fL working in Holland some years back when he slipped neatly out from under a fiasco. He had gone on a routine final log but there had been a few problems that had made it longer than usual [I think that this means Lost Time - Ed.l. So he was rather tired when he came to the last run, the dipmeter. One of the problems he had had throughout thejob was that he was using a new, and slightly experimental, version of CSU software. The CSU used a slightly odd log format for the dipmeter. The fast channels are recorded as a special input (RHDT - Raw HDT). For some reason the vital fast channels were disallowed by default on this new software version. The engineer was tired and not really expecting this so didn't notice. The dipmeter was run, lots squiggles on the log etc., but it was useless for anything except as a quality check of non-existant data. The job was done, he rigged down and the rig started running casing. On the way back from the job something was nagging at the back of his mind. He stopped for lunch and wondered why the data tape had turned so slowly. Over coffee he suddenly realised what must of happened, the data tape was useless and the well was, by now, cased. Then inspiration came. He went out to his car, picked up a brick and threw it through the side window then chucked his case away. Then he phoned up the base and claimed that whilst having lunch someone had broken into his car and stolen his briefcase which held the vital dipmeter tape. AH- 64 websi-te

Where's the bit or will drill collars do?

Or, don't count your chickens until... well until you have counted your chickens l\Tew Years day. Libya. A I\ radio call. dne of-the Russian rigs has twisted of its bit. Do we have a magnet? No. There followed three days of fishing for the elusive thing. Two fishing companies were employed then run off. I ran some open hole CCLs in a desperate effort to locate anything. Nothing worked. The common consensus was that there was something down there but none of the magnets orjunk baskets were strong enough to pick it up. Perhaps if we could break it up into smaller pieces we could fish it. My, rather desperate, proposal was to weld together Enerjet strips on the bottom of a weight with about a dozen Enerjet charges firing downwards. Lower it to TD and blast the fish to bits. Then dip in with the magnet and get the junk out. Everything else had been tried with no success so the client went for it. At least it will be a bit of fun I thought. So that afternoon I was

merrily welding together a highly unusual tool. Halfway through my labours came a radio call that solved everything. This was what really happened. Russian rigs in Libya were fine except for two things; Mud and bits. Mud was dealt with in the usual fashion and drilling bits were imported (probably illegally) from the US by the Libyans and doled out one by one to the Russians. New Years eve. Its a Russian rig. The bit is worn so one crew starts out. They knock the old bit off and run a couple of bare stands in, close the rams and go off to the party. Several hours later the relief arrive somewhat worse for wear for Vodka and see the pipe in the hole. They have had a somewhat garbled message about a bit change so they just run on down. When they hit TD with the collars they don't make much progress but that doesn't stop them from trying. After a while they pull out to see what is going on and 1o and behold the bottom of the collar is chewed up just as if the bit had twisted off. The Russian crew'fished' it merely by getting around to adding up all the bits on site. They tal lied perfectly.
communicated to the Division Manager in Aberdeen who just happened to be in a meeting with both the Shetland District Manager, the FSM and clienrs FSM. "Why was there a detonatorln the doghouse?" The FSM discretly excused himself and went to call the engineer. The answer came and was passed back around the table to the DM. "It was a dummy detonator that had been used during safety meetings with the rig crew" We all know how to tell a dummy deto from the real thing don't we? Well at least the Safety Manager shouldl

There is a dummy on this rig but Whefe?

And, more to the point, who? '|here was a safety drive on I so the Shettand's FSM had been encouraging his engineers to hold regular safety meetings
offshore.

,.t 4T""ffi'"i3il",1frixi,i

Sometime later, the

Safety Manager made a rig in the absence of the

Division visit When

Schlumberger field crew.

he was 'checking' the doghouse he was stunned to find a detonator in the engineer's drawer. This was a serious offence which was immediately
: :

editorial

http: / /www.caliach.com/xle +/ AH54@paufross . demon. co . uk

index.hrml

This is

the Story of

accepted as equals!

the Provider
The Beginning f n the beginning life was Igood. As a member of the workers aristocracy I could aflord to go anywhere or to buy anything I wanted. I had no linancial worries and had the prospect that some day I would be able to reach a real position of power within the System of the Provider. The price for this was a bargain made right at the start. In a sort of wedding ceremony, I sold my soul to the Provider for all of this wealth and made vows to always follow the rules and the system set-up by him. As I embarked on my chosen path, little did I know that within a few short years, the ideals described to me by the Provider would begin to shatter and all that would remain would be a faint memory of the great enthusiasm and anticipation with which we all had started with. All that we had heard and the promises that we had been given turned out to be nothing but lies. Lies told with no other objective than to sustain the Provider and his chosen ones.
The Honeymoon Q ix oi us arrived on our first t-l day in the far north lor the signing ceremony and to begin tralning as workers. We were

in the best hotel and then in a fine house, both of which were provided at no cost to us. Every morning, a limousine was sent to collect
We stayed

force-fed the Provider's ideology by three of his henchmen who had been given the task. All of the normal methods were used to wear us down almost to the

us after breakfast and every

evening we were taken home

by the same means. In the office, which was in fact the largest of all the Provider's service centres, we were meant to learn and be taught the essence ofthe tasks that we would be obliged to perform later on but in fact, nobody really paid any attention to us and we were free to do as we pleased. Life was good and it could only get better.

breaking point: sleep deprivation, starvation and brutal interrogation sessions held once a week on Mondays. If you gave a single wrong answer in one of these sessions, the punishment which followed could be severe. In the worst cases people would simply disappear and
never be seen again.

"What happened to Pierre?"

we would ask one of the

The Gulag /\ tt tnis changed afrer a 11. month. Just as we had

received a huge payment of

henchmen. "He failed to perform to the standards required by the Provider," they would say,

cash in our bank accounts, we

were transferred to the gulag! When we arrived, we were put

all of different nationalities. This was part of the interesting environment given to us by the Provider: we would be working all over the planet with our comrades from different countries. The good thing about this was the fact that nationality, race, colour or creed would not be taken into account in assessing our abllity to rise up through the Provider's hierarchy. Progress would be allowed to those of us who performed our tasks well. Was the Chief Provider himself not once a lowly worker? This only proves that all men are

to work immediately. We lived in small concrete boxes where the other residents, not of the Provider, threw stones and fence posts at our cars in the mornings. Every day we followed the same schedule indoctrinating us in the ways of the Provider. The "ways" were written down in five small black leatherbound books which had pages covered in plastic so that signs of the previous owner's demise could be quickly and cleanly washed away. "Now that you are one of the Provider's chosen ones, you have joined an elite force of workersi" they said. "You will be respected because the Provider only chooses the best. When you are released from here you will go out into the world to supply others with the Provider's service. The people you meet will always treat you in the way which is reserved only for members of the workers aristocracy." These statements made us feel good of course but as the weeks slipped by we became more and more tired of being

laughing as they did so. "He has been terminated and if you don't want the same you'd better learn the five black books by heart." I, like all of the other JAWs, (Junior Aristocratic Workers) had previously been to university where we were given an understanding of the subjects being taught. It was always important to understand and notjust memorise because from understanding comes the ability to develop further ideas and the ability to pass the same understanding on to others. This is the reason that mankind is not still living in
,

CAVCS.

The university method was completely alien to Provider Services Inc. Memorisation of the black books, an ability to push buttons, (mostly marked 'CR'), and the learning by rote of a lot of incomprehensible acronyms was all that was required. I have mentioned the first acronym above. This is JAW and reflects the first rung on the ladder of the aristocratic workers progression. The others are as follows: AW Aristocratic Worker SAW Senior Aristocratic Worker GAW General Aristocratic Worker

AH-64 website: http: / /www. caliach .com/AUe+/ index.html editorial : AH64@paulross. demon. co. uk

The acronyms are appropriate for several reasons. When you are a mere Junior Aristocratic Worker, you are expected to hold those higher up the ladder with awe. As a
SAW, you are thought to be a cut above a mere AW and as a GAW you are most likely to hear people refer to you as, "oh GAWd!" Once you become a GAW you are eligible for the first of the "management" positions. The first one is PRAT which stands for Provider, Raw And unTrained. This refers to the fact that ifyou ever reach this level, no one will bother to give any management training or direction and it is assumed that to be a successful PRAT you have what it takes anyway. After this you can become a PLONKER. That is a Provider Liaison Officer, No Knowledge Ever Required. This reflects the reasoning that if you have the qualities inherent to be a PRAT then to be a PLONKER requires

even less.

At the end of three months, from the twenty six comrades who had entered the gulag at the start, only eight survivors were released having passed all interrogations successfully. We could now recite the five black books by heart, or had managed to learn only the parts which we knew would form part of the sessions with the henchmen. This in itself had been a risky business as we could never be sure if we would be caught out. In celebration of being released, we were taken to a restaurant for the first real food we had seen in months. It must have been this shock to the digestive system that made most of us extremely ill the next day.

The World A tt of the comrades were 11' split up on leaving the gulag. I think that this was because towards the end of our ordeal, we were actually beginning to form into teams

and become motivated in the ways of the Provider or maybe it was to prevent any seed of dissent which may have been planted, from propagating and growing into a full scale counter AW revolution. As the years went by, I would sometimes hear news about their fates. Some were terminated and others seemed to lose their faith and convert to social realism. We were often warned about this by our PRATs and PLONKERs. "Life as we know it doesn't exist outside of PS Inc." they would whisper, mainly at parties after a few too many fruit juices had been consumed. "If you want to succeed.just remember what the Provider has told us. Follow his ways and soon you will be a PRAT like us!" During the first few years of being an aristocratic worker it was fairly easy to progress up through the Provider's hierarchy. This simply involved "being there," and gathering a few signatures for tasks performed in the training programme. This programme was called RIPE (Regional Indoctrination of Provider Employees) and because the signatures required came mainly from older GAWs, it was never a problem to obtain these in return for various liquid favours. The most difficult aspect of RIPE was to submit the six compulsory interpretations based on the sixth black book. This was hard because the sixth book had never been seen by anybody and many said that it only eiisted in the minds of the PRATs and PLONKERs. This was the way that they would always be able to terminate any of the AWs who did not fit the Provider's profile. The sixth book was entitled, "The Provider's Guide to

to the Provider's Clients for hundreds of thousands of dollars, were presented in the form of squiggles drawn by a computer. On their own they were useless and so in order for the Clients to make sense of them, they had to be interpreted. This was the aim of the six compulsory interpretations which had to be made by all of the AWs. We found that the only way to submit a successful interpretation was to find an old one and copy it. This was never discovered because noone could ever refer to the sixth book to check Even reaching the level of GAW was easy but this is where the problems began. The act of producing the results of the Provider's Service is actually mind-bogglingly tedious. As we used to say, "A monkey could do this but it

Making Sense of all those Squiggles." This referred to the results of the Provider's Service for which we had spent the three months in the Gulag. These results, which were sold

would have to be a trained one!" This meant that within six months of becoming a GAW, we were all ardently looking forwards to becoming a PRAT, if only to release us from the boredom. What happened next was to shatter our perception of PS Inc. slowly and surely over the following years. GAWs who had no potential or ability what-soever would suddenly be made into PRATs. This was for one of two reasons: either they had become so indoctrinated into the ways that they could act like a PRAT already i.e. they had grown to resemble the Provider's own image or they happened to belong to some third world nation who required the services of PS Inc. The Provider would always promote these people in order to place them in their home countries as PLONKERs and higher later on. For the rest of us who merely did a good job, were intelligent, bright and efficient it made no difference. We never stood a chance from the beginning but had been taken on by PS Inc. as a disposable source of labour to

AH-64 website: http: / fwww. caliach .com/lJ-e+/ index.html editorial : AH54@paulross. demon. co.uk

be terminated when no longer

required. If you belonged to either of the two preferred categories, your name would be put on the

Company, then my name was immediately removed from the nomenklatura and I was left in a period of stagnation.

list of nomenklatura. This was a list of those for whom it had

been decided, by the Provider's highest PLONKERs, that they

could eventually hold positions of authority within the Provider's system. This meant that if you appeared in the nomenklatura, you had to forget about any original thoughts and merely follow the course mapped out for you and become an Aparatchik. How did you do this? The answer was simple: you acted and said the things which the Provider expected to hear, no matter whether this was in line with improving or even maintaining the system. Eventually the system would fail but by that time you had hopefully managed to make yourself a nice comfortable nest for the future. All of the Aparatchiks knew that the system was false and

The Period of Stagnation f t was shortly after I was I made a PRAT that the golden years of Provider Inc. came to an end. For those of us within the system this was not obvious at the time and only after about four years did the cracks in PS Inc's ideology
become obvious.

unsustainable but were only

maximising their own fortunes within it. Of course, a few of us slipped through the net and managed to become PRATs and even PLONKERs. This was due to a third mechanism: the Godfather Connection. The way of utilising this method was to be lucky enough to have a boss with whom you got on very well. If you were of the same

nationality this was even better. Usually this type of person had also used the third mechanism and as such was an anomaly within the system. They generally had the same prolile has we did i.e. intelligent, bright and efficient but for some reason had managed to slip through. In this way I finally became a PRAT and then very quickly I was made a PLONKER. This was fine but unfortunately time was not on my side. As soon as my Godfathers had been terminated or had left the
10

Due to the policy of promoting those who would not question the system, the Period of Stagnation began. All those who questioned or suggested better ways to carry on business were either terminated or just ignored. PS Inc. found itself unable to cope with a fundamental change in the market which was settling down and becoming mature after the heady days ofthe first few decades. Instead it tried to maintain itself in the old ways of making a huge profit. Of course the profits made during the first decades were obscene and at that time PRATs and PLONKERs were promoted extremely quickly. This is because they could do nothing wrong. Whatever their abilities or lack of them, the machine kept on turning out the obscene profits and so they were all heroes. At the beginning of the Period of Stagnation, all of these whizkids were at the highest levels of management and of course they were all intent on maintaining things as they had always been. The last thing they would do would be to change the system which had put them in the highest
echelons.

"OK so our profit margins are not great enough, our income is reduced as we have had to drop our prices because of competition so how can we fix this? Easy, we n-rust cut our own costs. Personnel costs are the highest so let's reduce these. There are several ways to do this. First we fire all unnecessary personnel. We can get rid of a lot of maintenance personnel and expensive older engineers. Then we can let inflation gradually erode the salaries of our workers and reduce the compensation package. We can reduce daysoff and finally we can replace expensive engineers with much cheaper technicians. That should do the trick." This didn't work so the following year it was decided: "OK so our profit margins are not great enough, our income is reduced as we have had to drop our prices because of competition so how can we fix this? We must cut costs..." Deja vu? So, this has happened during successive years for the last

ten with no result. Many older GAWs and people who were generally held in esteem have finally wondered why they bothered to stay around for so long waiting for things to get back to normal. Discontentment and disillusionment is now rife

Trying to maintain things didn't work. The next thing to happen was the ten years of cuts. Funnily enough this is something that is only apparent when looking backwards. The way it worked was like this:

throughout all levels of PS Inc. Even the nomenklatura know this so it is only a matter of time before the inevitable onset of the Period of Perestroika. This will involve the complete collapse of PS Inc. and the emergence of a new system in which everybody is equal and has the same chance of being promoted based on their ability. This will be a kind of Aristocratic Workers Utopia based on equal opportunities and rights for all!

Perestroika

f Jnfortunately this has nol L,/ yet happened. When it

does we can finish the storv.

AH-64 website : http : / /www.caliach . com/A1164/index.html editorial : AH64@paulross. demon. co. uk