Not Out* (Part 1)

(Part 1 of 3) An absurdist documentary looks into a well-known and broadly accepted conspiracy theory.

Original absurd, satirical and funny fiction. Influences include Pynchon, DeLillo, Vonnegut, Adams, and Norm Macdonald (all lovers of SEO).

First an image: From the water comes an ominous tartan figure in a straw hat. The figure glides fast and strikes the lens in a flurry as though it has eight arms. It swallows the camera. Muted screams are followed by silence...

The suggestion to meet at a bar/seafood restaurant overlooking Port Phillip Bay nearly cost us the interview. Bruce reacted by swearing down the line (cuss words you’ve never heard) and hanging up. For three months, he blocked our calls. The next time we spoke to Bruce, his new condition was that the interview occur at his property in Victoria’s north-west, away from the water. 

Bruce lived in a series of detached shipping containers and tin sheds on a dusty farm near Merbein VIC. We set our cameras up in a shed with no air vents or windows, only a discoloured patch on the wall where an air conditioner once hung. As our entire crew crammed in the hot tin shed, Bruce Archibold Grey (‘Bags’) offered one of those quintessential, cheeky Australian smiles.

“You get used to the sweat,” he said, and wiped his brow with a stained beach towel.  

We centred the shot on Bruce and asked him to start at the beginning. 

“I first realised something was up at the docs,” he began. “I was seeing my cardiologist - a bloke no older than fifteen. This bloke had to fold his coat sleeves to type. His voice was breaking. Well, he reads my results and turns to me and says, ‘Mr Grey, do you want to die?’ Listen, I’m ex-Army, so I don’t mind being direct, but I demand a little respect. Let’s just say I got worked up. The doctor called it ‘fainting’, but I’ll tell you what happened: I deliberately shut my body down so I wouldn’t belt him; that was part of Army training - blood and fire. 

“Anyway, I had to stay a mandatory twenty minutes before I could leave. I didn’t mind though; the cricket was on the tele: Aussies v Windies. I’m sitting there with my feet up and soon there’s a wicket. The ads came on: Harvey Norman, JB HiFi, Fujitsu. That’s when I first saw it. Mark ‘Tubby’ Taylor, standing under a Fujitsu air conditioner (‘Australia’s favourite air’), was staring into the waiting room. It was like he was talking to me. You see, I was a codebreaker in the Army, and Tubby, well, he was blinking secret messages in morse code.”

It was that claim, located by our research team, that led to our initial interest. Before agreeing to meet with Bruce, however, we did our due diligence (background checks). 

Growing up, Bruce Grey was a gifted cricketer. Local papers in Ballarat and other regional cities often referenced the gifted leg-spinner. All through juniors he played at a state level. Myths began to grow about his ability: he could talk to the ball; his wrist had a brain of its own. Bruce looked set for an Australian debut but then, in 1983, he refused to play. No reason was provided. The next article about Bruce came in 1992. It was a special interest piece about a unique code breaking unit in the Salvation Army. Bruce, pictured still holding a cricket ball, was named as the unit’s morse code expert. 

The use of morse code blinking, it turned out, was not unprecedented.

In 1966, during the Vietnam War, an American POW named Jeremiah Denton blinked a secret message in morse code. The message was relayed during a televised appearance. Denton, who would later reach the rank of Rear Admiral and become a US Senator, was praising his captors for their kind treatment. Secretly, he was blinking a different message, a single word: "T-O-R-T-U-R-E". 

Jeremiah Denton, 1966

“The main difference between Denton and Taylor,” explained Bruce, “is the sheer volume of blinking.”

On the workbench, Bruce opened several scrapbooks. Each bulging book was filled with reels of Mark Taylor blinks. Images of fast blinks and slow blinks, each the size of a postage stamp, were accompanied by scribbled annotations, decodings, thoughts…

“Denton had one televised appearance in ‘66 to communicate his message. Taylor, however, is in every Fujitsu advert, he commentates nearly every game of cricket, he’s played 104 test matches and 113 ODIs. Why do you think he fielded at slip? That way he was always in shot. He had more screen time then to broadcast more elaborate messages, which he did…” 

One of the shed walls was covered in red string and thumbtacks and post-it notes. The wall resembled either a city street layout with eight arterial roads branching from a central point or some eight limbed animal, attacking. Bruce removed a sliver of paper from the string wall and placed it on the table. He explained this was the earliest message he decoded. It read: 

Blackmail and deceit, Spread by wind and air and breeze, Blows a bleak future. 

“It’s not hard to read between the lines of that one,” said Bruce. “‘Wind and air and breeze’. Think about it: air conditioning. ‘Blackmail and deceit’. Taylor was a brand ambassador for Fujitsu. So: Taylor was being blackmailed by Fujitsu.”   

Fujitsu today has a market cap of over $24b USD. Their air-conditioners are in millions of homes worldwide, and the brand seems to have a unique connection with Australia, which most assume is due to the country’s climate and affluent population. 

In recent decades, however, the idea of ‘air-conditioning’ has faced some heat due to concern around climate change. Bruce believed, after deciphering dozens of Mark Taylor’s secret messages, that Fujitsu was blackmailing not only Taylor but climate lobbyists, government officials, and even going as far as to plant agent provocateurs in climate protests to delegitimize the movement. He showed us the following message:

New Hiroshima, A corporate greed unbound, Airborne in nature. 

“A massive corporation being greedy, dishonest,” said Bruce. With his towel, he cleared more sweat. “That would’ve been simple. But this goes deeper, much deeper.”

For one thing, corporate greed alone didn’t explain Taylor’s involvement. Bruce had a theory about life: cricketers know cricketers. He said it multiple times throughout our interview. The theory, however, goes beyond just the physical acts of cricket (catching, throwing, hitting) and extends to life. For example, Bruce believed cricketers approach risk in a certain way. They know when to be bold, when to be safe… 

“So I asked myself, why the hell is Tubby doing this? Why doesn’t he just leave this one? He’s squeaky clean. They’ve got nothing on him. He doesn’t need the money. Something didn’t add up. And that’s when I found this.” Another thumbtack plucked; another sheet of paper shown: 

If we are to live, Makoto Matsumoto, Must be shown the way.

Bruce poked the sheet like it was an invoice he wished to dispute. 

“Makoto,” he said. “Makoto Matsumoto, that son of a gun.” 

Continued below.

Thank you for reading Not Out* (Part 1 of 3).

Click the link below to read Part Two and discover:

• who Makoto Matsumoto is and what he has to do with Fujitsu.

• the true motives behind Fujitsu’s conspiracy.

• why Mark Taylor is involved.

• how deep this all goes.

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Profitron contains absurd, satirical and funny short fiction and prose. Literary influences include Pynchon, DeLillo, Vonnegut and Norm Macdonald. That’s all we have time for, folks.