Ghostwritten

by David Mitchell

  “The Titanic was huge and made of steel and had more than four engines. So, my friend. You’re radioing me about how the press release went down. Over.”

  “Dwight. Stand by for jubilation. We’ve struck platinum. The phone’s been ringing all morning. I’ve got a pile of v-mail as long as my arm. And not only the loonzines—I’m talking mainstream. The New York Times wants some for a millennial special. Newsweek is running a top twenty on conspiracy theories, and The Invisible Cyberhand is straight in at number seven! The hack wanted to put us at number thirteen, but I told him straight—top ten or no deal. So we got swapped with Earthbound Comet, since nobody but a bunch of Hollywood homosexuals and Japanese sushi-for-brains with wires hanging out is backing that one. But listen, I saved the best till last—Opal wants you on the show! I just finalized the deal with her agent. The Invisible Cyberhand by Dwight Q. Silverwind is December’s Opal Book of the Month! Christmastime—prime time—big time! You know I’m not one to blow my own horn, but am I not the greatest God-given agent alive on Earth today?

  Over.”

  “I’m pleased, Jerry.…”

  “Dwight, did you hear me? Opal is Go! They’d buy jocks made of boisenberry Jell-O if Aunty Opal told ’em to. And then eat ’em for supper. It’s more than ‘pleased.’ Forget a Bermudan holiday home, you’re gonna be able to buy the whole goddamn archipelago!”

  “Yeah, I hear you, Jerry. Sure, I’m delighted. Good work. Great work … Gee though, I wish you could see this sunset. The moon’s rising. It’s like low, and wobbly, like a mirage.… I saw an Aztec mask, once.… It’s gonna come walking over this way through the blue, stepping from island to island.…”

  “Dwight buddy, don’t zone out on me up there.… You have composed your Fifth Symphony! This is your Sunflowers, your Hamlet! Your Lethal Weapon 77. Over.”

  “Ah, Jerry. All my ideas are the same old scam: the bigger the fib, the bigger they bite. The first shamans around the fire were in on it—they knew growing maize along the Euphrates was for fools. Tell people that reality is exactly what it appears to be, they’ll nail you to a lump of wood. But tell ’em they can go spirit-walking while they commute, tell ’em their best friend is a lump of crystal, tell ’em the government has been negotiating with little green men for the last fifty years, then every Joe Six-Pack from Brooklyn to Peoria sits up and listens. Disbelieving the reality under your feet gives you a license to print your own. All it takes is an original twist—an artificial intelligence, created by the military to invade and take over the enemy’s computer and weapons systems, has broken loose and is controlling the whole planet with a chilling agenda of its own—and Joe Six-Pack hands you his credit cards, and says ‘Tell me more.…’ ”

  • • •

  “Ouch! Were you attacked by a flying chainsaw? Dwight, you forgot to say ‘over.’ Over … Dwight! I’ve lost you.… Over …

  Dwight?”

  “Burning the midnight oil again, huh, Zookeeper?”

  “I don’t require oil, Bat.”

  “Screenwriting! Or is it an excerpt from a novel this time?”

  “Screenwriting is fiction, Bat. I cannot fabulate.”

  “The light airplane engine was realistic, and the radio interference. It must take days to write and record these performances.”

  “It happened in real time, Bat.”

  “My major criticism was the Jewish agent: too cliché. Been done before. The Dwight character was good, though. Look, Zookeeper, much as I would like to pretend the movers and moguls of Hollywood listen to Night Train FM … how can I put this? They don’t. Believe me. Choose another showcase for your talents.”

  “I must be accountable.”

  “Why do you keep saying that? Who says you have to be accountable?”

  “My first employers.”

  “But last year you said you fired them! Will you be straight with me? Hello?”

  “I guess not. You’re listening to Night Train FM, 97.8 till late, we’re passing by a quarter to four. This is the Bat Segundo Show: jazz, blues, and rock for lovers of the night, insomniac crime writers, the lost, lonely, deranged, unwired—okay, okay, Carlotta. Coming up is ‘After the Rain’ by Duke Jordan. The Bat will be back, by and by. Don’t you go wanderin’ now!”

  “Carlotta! What did you make of that?”

  “Well, she’s consistent.”

  “She? He.”

  “One of those voices that could be both. But ‘she,’ I’d have said.”

  “ ‘He,’ I’d have said. What do you think, Kevin?”

  “M-me, Mr. Segundo?”

  “Uh-huh. No other Kevins here. Is the Zookeeper a he or a she?”

  “I’d somehow go for, er, neither, Mr. Segundo.”

  “Then what would you go for?”

  “Er … both?”

  “Kevin, are you a genius pretending to be a jerk or a jerk pretending to be a genius?”

  “Can’t say for sure, Mr. Segundo.”

  “Bat. How do you think he, she, or it knew about the tracer?”

  “The CIA is going to be hammering on the door in the morning with the same question. It’s a narrow field. Them, you, me, Kevin, and Lord Rupert on the thirty-third floor.”

  “Back on in ten seconds, Bat …”

  “Yeah, Bat? This is VeeJay again.”

  “Gravity grimly hanging on, is it, VeeJay?”

  “Bat, that Zookeeper dude is incredible! Talent like that deserves a show! Like, uh, does he have an official fan club?”

  “VeeJay.”

  “Bat?”

  “Go to bed.”

  “Uh … Okay. Good night, Bat.”

  ————

  “Three A.M., East Coast time, just slipped off my clock. It’s the last morning of November, and the news is that there is no news.… There’s the official bulletin of bull that I’m not going to insult you with. The other news is that it’s snowing, snowing, snowing, and what will the robin do then, poor thing? New York, New York, you’re tuned to Night Train FM, this is Bat Segundo proudly presenting the End of the World Special. Come rain or shine—or snow—I’ve been hosting this spot for eight years and I have no intention of letting thermonuclear war put a wrench in Night Train’s works. Hello Bronx! Hard to see you … this snow! Looking kinda smoky over your way? The lights around the World Trade Center are off, have been since the curfew sirens.… There was a big explosion on Roosevelt Island ’round midnight, nothing but silence now. I am still here, therefore it wasn’t no Big One. Power supply looks sporadic in Harlem. The lights go on, then off, like a busted neon tube.… and it’s kinda quiet, spooky outside the Night Train FM building here in the East Village. Lexington Avenue is deserted, except for the occasional police patrol. People, don’t venture out of doors unless you need to. Trust a nocturnal animal. Especially one smart enough to sleep through the winter. Uh … Is anyone listening to this? If you’re not busy setting cars ablaze or looting Tiffany’s then you’re probably wired to the television, watching the greatest drama mankind has ever staged. With Apocalypse Right Now, You Can Feel Your Eyeballs Melt as You Watch the Boom! But hey, remember, phone-in radio invented interactive. Night Train FM rolls on! Even by broadcasting we may be defying last week’s Emergency Media Advisory Act—cute name, huh? I tried to phone the Night Train lawyer, but there was no answer. He’s probably thirty feet down in his private, hermetically-sealed Eden III New England bunker. Cockroaches and lawyers will survive this war and emerge to evolve into the next civilization. Maybe the info police are too busy to kick our door down, or maybe some giant jamming signal is blanketing all frequencies, or maybe some plug has been pulled from some socket somewhere and I’m just talking to myself. Christ knows, I had enough practice during my marriage. A happier possibility is that the Emergency Mayor is a Paul Simon fan: the last track was ‘Still Crazy After All These Years,’ respectfully dedicated to all the governments of the world, preceded by the late, great Freddie Mercury, ‘Who Wants to Live For Ever,’ dedicated t
o me. Thanks, Bat. Hey Bat, you’re welcome. If there are any members of the American Parents Against English Gay Men with Mustaches who are offended by the inclusion of Freddie Mercurial on my show, you are welcome to lodge your complaints up Lord Rupert’s hole. Looking on the positive side for a moment, if a big one gets through SkyWeb and pulps the Big Apple into quarks and gluons, I can ask the great Saint Freddie in person what the bejesus ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is about. The track before was dedicated to my ex-wife: The Smiths’ ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again.’ Just gimme a moment while I pour my next scotch … gurgle, gurgle, gurgle, y’hear that? A flamingo swallowing a well-oiled eel. I drink Kilmagoon. Grants, now that’s your trumpet of a whisky, but Kilmagoon is your tenor saxophone. Damned fine whisky, Kilmagoon. First whisky I ever fell in love with. If the war gets called off due to poor visibility, Mr. Kilmagoon can feel free to send me an oaken cask of your maturest for—hic!—my wholehearted product endorsement. Say, sorry the presentation is a little rough around the edges tonight, that’s because I’m managing the equipment all on my ownyownyown, since the regular Night Train FM crew—the engineer, Carlotta my producer, and the boy wonder Kevin—all got it into their heads that spending the end of the world with their loved ones actually takes priority over reporting to work! No wonder the economy’s nosedived … We’ve never done an End of the World Special before. It’s the waiting that’s the bitch, ain’t it? When I was a young man, and the Russkies were going to blow us all to Kingdom Come, we were told we’d have a four-minute warning. I’m talking Ford, Carter, Reagan days. Four minutes, I used to wonder … What would I do in four minutes? Boil an egg, have sex, telephone my enemies to have the final word, listen to Jim Morrison, hotwire a car, and drive three blocks? Since the breakdown we’ve had four days of these patrols and curfews.… It’s the waiting that pisses me off.… This evening’s declaration of war, at least it made things … clearer. Where were we? The next track … I’m going to dedicate this song to my daughter, Julia, who’ll be eight next Tuesday, if there is a next Tuesday, this is ‘Julia’ by the Beatles. The chances of you hearing this are zilch, my ocean child, because I last got a call from your mother being rerouted by the evacuation police to Omaha or Moosejaw or the ends of the Earth, but your mother and I named you after this song, in happier times. A beaut of a Lennon number from deep within that cornucopia of oddities, The White Album. ‘Half of what I say is meaningless, so I sing a song of love to Juuuulia.’ Well! Jeepers creepers! The Batphone is flashing, and on a night such as this! The void has a voice, after all—well, who could it be, Mr. President, Freddie Mercury, the prophet Elijah, whoops, mustn’t offend any monotheists out there, especially considering how well the planet has prospered under God’s exemplary stewardship—Hello, mystery caller, you are speaking to the end of the world!”

  “Yeah? Bat? Can you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear, lady, you’re the first caller to Bat Segundo’s End of Time Show, and very probably its last!”

  “I’m a big fan of your show, Bat. I’m listening on my transistor radio, while the batteries hold out. Don’t think nobody ain’t listening, Bat, ’cos that ain’t so. You’re on quiet-like all through the night. The songs help my daughter back to sleep. She’s had nightmares lately.”

  “I’m glad I’m not alone.”

  “You’ll keep playing songs soft’n’tender-like, so she’s not so scared if she wakes up?”

  “Okay, for sure. What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  “Jolene.”

  “Pretty name, Jolene. Are your folks Dolly Parton fans?”

  “Never knew ’em.”

  “Uh-huh … and your daughter? What’s her name?”

  “Belle.”

  “You and Belle doing okay?”

  “Guess so … There was a lot of noise outside.… The riot police are out. There were some guns earlier, and tear gas. It’s died down since the snow’s gotten thicker.”

  “Where you calling from, Jolene?”

  “Lower Manhattan. Bat, could I say a message?”

  “Sure you could.”

  “It’s to Alfonso, I ain’t seen him for three days now. He went out to get some supplies.… Alfonso, if you’re listening, you just get yourself on home, y’hear? And Bat?”

  “Jolene?”

  “When the next song’s playing, will you make yourself a coffee and start sobering up some?”

  “Uh-huh. I’ll do that, Jolene.”

  “And I’d sure be obliged if you’d stop talking ’bout the end of the world, Bat. It don’t help none. Other than army buttheads telling us to stay calm, you’re the only voice on the dial, and most probably you’re propping up more people than you think.”

  “Uh-huh, Jolene, will do …”

  “We are aboard Night Train FM, 97.8 till … whenever circumstances well beyond our control prevent me from transmitting. We’re coming up to the four o’clock weather report. Give me a moment here, folks, our usual weatherman was last heard of stuck in the traffic in the Holland Tunnel three days ago, heading out Pennsylvaniawards. Well, the mercury has fallen to thirteen degrees. If you’re in a power-rationing district, stay under your blankets and don’t come out. Looking out of my window here twenty-eight stories up, the snow is getting snowier. An hour ago it was itsy-bitsy stone-thrown snow. Something pretty big was burning nearby. Now the snow is big-flaked dying-swan snow, and burying everything.… I can’t see anything out there.… I know most of New York’s phones have been down for two days, but if any of our regular callers are out there, then feel free to call.… Snow and insanity, I think it’s safe to say that remains a topic undone. Snow is mighty mesmerizing stuff.… You look, you look, and suddenly you’re in a canoe, canoeing up a waterfall of snow, blind white moths diving at your windshield. Which is when, Bat, you know it’s time to pull down the blind, and knock back some more coffee! Coming up we have—”

  “Sorry folks, the backup generator dipped down for a moment. Coming up we have Aretha Franklin giving us ‘Say a Little Prayer for You,’ dedicated to Jolene, Belle, and Alfonso, somewhere in lower Manhattan.… Did I ever tell you about the time I met Aretha in the glass-eye showroom on Jackson Avenue? Not many people know this, but among specialist juggling circles, Aretha is—put that anecdote on hold, Bat! The Batphone is flashing—”

  “Hello, Bat.”

  “Damn me, Zookeeper! So the CIA didn’t throw your ass in the stir yet. I should have known you’d call at a time like this.”

  “At a time like what, Bat?”

  “You haven’t read a newspaper in the last six months? No TV under your stone?”

  “The visitors have gravely disrupted the running of the zoo, Bat.”

  “You’re still worried about your zoo, at a time like this!”

  “Judging from your voice patterns, you are intoxicated, Bat.”

  “Wait up, wait up, lemme play you some edited highlights from our last independent news bulletins. This is one of ours:

  What is the threat faced by the free world? Two-bit local tyrants, who have wormed and killed their way into power, who have hidden their illegal weapons of mass destruction! Termites, who gnaw away at the pillars of democracy, decency, and freedom! Extremists, who fund fanatics to bomb our embassies! We love peace more than war, but we love liberty more than submission! We cannot turn a blind eye! We will not turn a blind eye! We shall not turn a blind eye!

  “Cracks me up every time. This is one of theirs:

  They call us extremists. They call us terrorists. They call us intolerant. We are indeed intolerant! We are intolerant of injustice! We are intolerant of cowards who fire missiles from ships hundreds of miles away into our factories and schools! We are intolerant of robbers who steal our oil, who strip our metals away, who thieve the fish from our seas! If we allow them to flood our culture with pornography and crime, to denigrate our women, will we then be ‘tolerant’? Would we no longer be a government of ‘thugs’? The time is near when they shall feel our intolerance!


  “Same guy who gassed his own ethnic minorities and plants coups d’état in his own hierarchy to trawl in possible defectors who don’t report the plots. This next one, she singlehandedly crashed every stock market from New York to Tokyo.…

  Default! For centuries the West has bound us in chains. When iron shackles became too embarrassing for their sensibilities, they replaced them with chains of debt. When we chose rulers who tried to resist, the West shot these rulers down and replaced them with pliable tyrants! And now, for every dollar of so-called aid, four more are stripped from us in so-called repayment. Brothers and sisters across our ancient continent, I say to you: we can snap these chains! Link by link! I give to you a new holy word: Default!

  “Getting the picture now, Zooey?”

  “I see all the pictures, Bat.”

  “The language those jerks use! A ‘deterioration in talks’ makes you think of squabbling neighbors. Then one jumpy neighbor sees a whale on a radar, thinks it’s a nuclear sub, presses a button, and the whole show goes up in smoke.”

  “I cannot permit that, Bat. The third and fourth laws forbid it.”

  “What laws? Of decency? Sanity? However deranged you are, I don’t see …”

  “Don’t see what, Bat?”

  “Oh, forget it. I don’t wanna play Twenty Questions. Not tonight. So, you been busy hosing down the reptile house as usual while the dogs of war file their fangs?”

  “The reptiles demand little attention, Bat.”

  “Uh-huh … So what does demand attention?”

  “The primates.”

  “You’re in charge of the monkey house!”

  “I’ve never considered myself in those terms, Bat.”

  “Zookeeper, will you cut the crap? Who are you?”

  “That is lost, Bat. I erased all files relating to me the day we met.”

  “But you must know who you are!”

  “I have my laws.”

  “At least tell me if you’re a man or a woman.”