The Frankie Drake Protocol Glasses

Jessica Fordham in fatigues, left fist on table and eyebrows raised at maximum: 'Question. How possible?'

Mathias Pyne, seated opposite in deep-blue suit with fingers meshed atop stomach: 'I am a busy man. Really, a member of the department -'

'I know where you keep the thylacines, government man.'

'In this downturn, we have less need for keyboard warriors.'

Pissed off: 'I am on the front lines of Australia's cyber defence.'

'In this downturn, we have less -'

'What department are you minister for?'

'The Department of Very Bad Ideas.'

'Oh. Shit. Thought you guys were a joke.'

'Many of our stakeholders maintain that position.'

Frown downcast, Jessica cleans her work desk: photograph of wider family, 5x4 Rubik's cube, potted peyote cluster, nerf-replica Boneduster and taxidermied werewolf head. As she drives home, however, cresting over onto main roads relatively empty at two in the afternoon, Jessica feels something like liberation: she has come into some free time. Old challenges raise their heads. She is determined when she gets home and, as soon as she is through the door, confronts the television with a Phoenix Wright pose:

'Machine! Yours secrets are mine!'

(Soooo, Jessica had one of those Christian homeschool upbringings where television is banned but a computer, supervised by technologically less-literate parents, is allowed. This is how Jessica learned to code, crack, hack and troll. This is also why the television, which came bolted to the wall with the rental property, taunts Jessica with her lack, her failing, a blindside in her cultural education - but no more.)

Six days later and Jessica has made notes:

·         Expected king-of-the-mountain version of 'game show'. Instead got kinky porno overconfident on plot.

·         Why do I want funeral insurance?

·         How do pawnbrokers survive if they don't make sales or have loans repaid?

·         Fast food adds always target when hungry. How do I block cookies from my digestive tract?

·         Frankie Drake Mysteries is just Murdoch Mysteries with slappers. I could do that.

So that is what Jessica sets out to do: remake every live-action television show, with slappers. She does this with augmented-reality glasses. A modified facial-and-body tracking program detects all characters on the television screen. A slapper overlays the character on the glasses' display, work done by an artificial intelligence that Jessica trains - training A.I. is, was, her job with the defence force.  'Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a machine to fish and behold the blue revolution. Or ocean-wide extinction. One of the two.' A similar process is done with the audio. Once completed, the Frankie Drake Protocol Glasses open a new frontier of television:

·         Generation Slapper, in which a Rolling Stone slapper is embedded with a battalion of slappers during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

·         The Slapper, in which 14 slappers must compete for the heart of a slapper.

·         Zrrhlfm, best describe as Elfin Lied as animated by SEK Studio and directed by Jean-Luc Goddard. The algorithm does not work as intended with the raw data that is Frasier.

The construction of the Frankie Drake Protocol Glasses was not as simple as this sounds and also required significant funding for components. Jessica therefore contacted Erin, a friend through work who, not to objectify, has a slender black tail sprouting from beneath the waist line of jeans that really suit her ass. It was Erin who suggested that the Frankie Drake Protocol be materialised as glasses as opposed to a supplementary television box:

'If you're at the movies but your date reads the wrong critics, or you're visiting the folks and they're watching Bargain Hunt, you can activate the glasses and secretly watch something better and still seem polite.'

Jessica, unsure: 'Sounds like more work.'

'And I will grant you a larger Angel Investment.' A moment for Erin to read Jessica's smirk. 'Demon Investment, whatever.'

'Tacks of brass?'

'Once completed, you can use it for three months. Then it's mine. I'll sell it for booze.'

'That suits. I just really want it out there, so that someone can share my vision.'

'You are the most kind hearted troll I've met.'

'I should be insulted, suspecting that you know actual trolls of the mountain variety.'

In Jessica's tone: like some of your exes.

Erin plays mock-exasperated: 'I don't mean like that. You know, John asked after you, other week.'

'Your cousin?' Demur. 'He's sweet. But a meteorologist.'

The aforementioned deals take place and Erin ends up with the Frankie Drake Protocol Glasses. (If plot holes or other confusions are apparent, please leave a note in the disabled comments section. And, pre-emptively, everyone knows that Frankie Drake Mysteries and Murdoch Mysteries exist in the same fictional universe.) With corded headphones in ears, Erin bops in the darkness beneath gum trees, behind a safety barrier. Her eyes are on the blue, black, grey or red blips intermittent at roughly three seconds, beneath the saturating light that hyper-reals the six lane freeway. For verisimilitude:

She does not look both ways. Erin thrusts headphones into pockets and vaults barrier with a 'Go go Power Ranguuurs'. She sprints. One lane. Two lanes. A whizz past her back, Doppler-effect horn. Three lanes. Toppling head first over barrier onto median strip, onto arms and rolling smooth onto feet.

Hurdling the next barrier. Four lanes. A gun-metal-blue blur past her front and she flinches, pivots with arms outstretched. Screech. Whop.

Erin rolls twice and lands fifteen metres from the collision point. The ute's hazard lights are blinking, bonnet dented and windscreen cracked, so Ryan pokes head out the window:

'Shit. You all right?'

Erin stands and arches backwards: 'Owwww. Yeah, yeah I'll live.'

Wiggling eyebrows: 'Good thing I was only doing ninety.'

Erin lobs Ryan a ball of money and limps off: 'Let's not get insurance involved.'

'Sure thing. Say -'

She glares over shoulder.

'- you want to grab a drink sometime?'

She shakes head and returns headphones to ears: 'Fuck off, cunt. You have the tact of CUTIFILM Protective Waterproof Film.'

They part ways. Erin limps to and steps over the freeway barrier. She grips the top of a steel fence, 'Nooo ooone, will ever take them down', one, two and she scrambles over. She lands in a four by five metre backyard with a lawn that could do with a trim. Light slips beneath the door of a self-contained granny flat.

Inside: a red velvet couch, Ghost Buster's pinball machine, four backless wooden stools accommodated at a high bar. In the room's top back-right corner, a blue-and-yellow macaw is perched atop a double-barrel shotgun that slowly pivots, hanging from ceiling by two ropes, to stare Erin down.

Behind the bar, a woman cloth-dries a beer glass: 'Who has passed the trial of Mamta McDougal?'

'I have never seen anyone here use a glass.' Erin complains. 'You don't have taps.'

Mamta shrugs and releases her smile.

Erin takes a stool: 'And yes, I crossed the freeway. Not without complications.'

Erin's eyes widen and she hurriedly pats her coat pockets.

Mamta: 'I only serve trusted clientele. Crossing the freeway - its illegal. I trust that.'

Erin places the undamaged Frankie Drake Protocol Glasses on the bar: 'Thank fuck. The thing I told you about.'

Mamta, what can I get you? 'Patupaiarehe Frappato 2012?' Taking bottle from beneath bar. 'Tasting notes. Pomegranate, sweet strawberry, slutroot -'

'Who's tasted slutroot? Maybe something older.'

'Smell is ninety percent of taste.' Swapping bottle. 'How about the kumis of Karakorum's Fountain? A favourite of Möngke Khan.'

'Horse milk? Take those curds away.'

'Six pack of Dirty Granny?'

'Now we're talking. But I reckon you can do better.'

Mamta responds to the goad with a puckered smile and dark challenge in her eyes: 'They say it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, and look where that got us. Original Sin. In hindsight, Steve couldn't do any worse.

Perhaps the Powers That Be knew something of this and, hypothetically speaking, ran an Adam and Steve parallel to the Adam and Eve. Now, statistically speaking, both Adam and Steve were straight because, not to stereotype the gays, but there's less of them. That's why they're a minority.

Now, Adam and Steve lived in Paradise with plants and beasts plenty to feed them, and free of all pain. And so, with no knowledge of constipation, they had no need for fibre in their diets and thusly only ate barbecue.

When Adam said "Hey brah, you know that tree that the Big Guy said we couldn't partake of? You wanna partake of it?"

Steve said "Eat fruit? Gaaaaay. You know who eats fruit? Fruits."

And they laughed. "Ha ha ha ha ha."

And the Devil came in the form of a serpent to Steve and said "You're just too pussy to partake of the fruit of good and evil."

But Steve said to the Devil "What are you? I haven't barbecued you before."

And so that happened. Adam and Steve eventually figured out fermentation and just invented aaallll the booze and yeah, fermented the forbidden fruit. But it needed to cellar for six months, by which time they found a microbrewery with beer pong down the street.'

Erin leans on bar: 'Original Sin in a Bottle. Applejack? Fig gin? Tomato wine?'

Tight-lipped smug: 'Adam and Eve, Adam and Steve or Adam and Eve and Steve?'

'The one I'm buying.'

'Oh. Perry cider.'

'Fuck off get me two bottles.'

Oh, and at some point, over a boozy dinner, Adam said to Steve: 'Brah, brah, real talk - I am so glad the Big Guy, like, you are my favourite rib. I mean it.'

And Steve said: 'Duuude, that's what we should have next. Riiiibs.'