The Parodies Collection

by Adam Roberts

  ‘Hello,’ said Gordon. ‘How do you do?’

  ‘There’s no time for a shower,’ said the stranger. ‘And you shouldn’t talk so amiably to the software. That’s collaboration.’

  ‘I’m sorry, do I know you?’ asked Gordon.

  The small man blinked. ‘You have been disoriented by the McAtrix, so perhaps you do not recognise me. I am Smurpheus.’

  ‘But you’re tiny!’ said Gordon, before thinking. Then he thought, ‘I mean,’ he added awkwardly, ‘hello, hello there, great to meet you. Again. Good to meet you again.’

  Smurpheus’s expression had condensed into a fierce pout. ‘Tiny?’ he repeated menacingly. ‘Did you say tiny?’

  Gordon could sense that he had stumbled into sensitive territory. ‘By no means,’ he said slowly. ‘Not in the least. I said,’ he went on carefully, ‘that I need a shower. That I need a shower. That’s it – I said that I need a shower.’

  Smurpheus gave him a long look.

  ‘I see,’ he said shortly. ‘I’m afraid there’s no time for it. We have to get away. The SQUIDS are almost upon us. We have to fly. Come with me. You can wipe yourself with a rag when we get aboard the Jeroboam.’

  He stomped away down the corridor with great speed, and Gordon fell into step alongside him. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To my ship, the Jeroboam,’ replied Smurpheus. ‘You’ll have to get rid of the dressing gown. It’s logo’d. There are no logos allowed on the Jeroboam.’

  ‘But I don’t have any clothes,’ Gordon pointed out.

  ‘We’ll provide you with clothes.’

  ‘Like yours?’

  ‘Honest, decent hand-knitted human clothes,’ confirmed Smurpheus.

  They were at the end of the corridor, and started down a series of stairways. Although every wall was crammed with various forms of advert, there seemed to be no windows anywhere in the building, and it was therefore impossible for Gordon to orient himself. He had the sense that they were going deep underground.

  ‘Can’t I just wash some of this gunk off of me?’ Gordon complained as they descended.

  ‘No,’ said Smurpheus.

  ‘But it’s foul. What is it anyway?’

  ‘Lubricant.’

  ‘Lubricant? Lubricating what?’

  ‘Lubricating,’ said Smurpheus, ‘you. It stops you getting bedsores. It’s an intelnano gel; it moves very slowly over your body in phased pulses, cushioning your weight and massaging your skin.’ They had reached the very bottom of the stairwell, and were facing a door. ‘Through we go,’ he said.

  | -P

  ‘I know you’re bewildered,’ said Smurpheus. ‘I know this is all impossibly confusing to you. But the answers will soon come.’

  ‘I’m all right actually,’ said Gordon brightly. ‘I think I get it. I’ve been in a computer simulation, haven’t I? And this must be the real world.’

  They had emerged on some sort of balcony, one storey high, overlooking a beautiful and deserted city. The sun was setting. Indeed, although Gordon had seen sunsets before, or thought he had, he had never seen anything like this. Half the sky was washed an achingly vivid orange-gold, the colour of tea before the milk goes in. This extraordinary glowing hue was spilled and spread through a network of torn-tissuey clouds that lay horizontally in layers over the horizon. The sky burned more intensely in the spaces between.

  ‘Fantastic!’ Gordon breathed. ‘The sun looks enormous!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Smurpheus.

  ‘It’s the perspective, I read somewhere. I think it was in a factoid in the Metro newspaper. When the sun is in the apex, it looks smaller because there’s nothing near it with which to compare it. But when it’s on the horizon it’s amongst the houses, so our brains assume it’s, like, skyscraper-sized . . .’

  Smurpheus was looking intently at him.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m rambling.’

  ‘We have to get to my craft,’ said Smurpheus. ‘If we loiter, then the machines will zero in and that will be the end of us.’

  ‘Your craft?’

  ‘The Jeroboam. I lead a dedicated group of freedom fighters in the unending battle against machine domination of our planet. The Jeroboam is our mobile base of operations.’

  ‘Well,’ said Gordon. ‘That is impressive. Do you find the work stressful?’

  ‘Work?’

  ‘The, you know, the leading. What you just said. It sounds terribly exciting, but I can imagine it’s pretty much wearing also. Any kind of managerial position carries a degree of stress with it, I’d say.’

  Smurpheus looked blankly at Gordon. ‘We need to get down.’ He started hopping down one of the stone staircases that flanked the balcony.

  ‘Down,’ said Gordon, following. ‘Where, precisely, is this ship you mentioned?’

  ‘Under the city.’

  ‘Under? I see. Is that the best place for it?’

  They were at ground level now. Casting nervous glances left and right, like a fox about to cross the road, Smurpheus scurried out into the middle of a broad, deserted esplanade. Gordon jogged after him.

  ‘What kind of ship is it?’ he called after the tiny man.

  The, er, little man had stopped at a manhole and was hauling at it with both hands.

  ‘Are we going into the sewers, then?’ Gordon pressed.

  Smurpheus looked at him. ‘You ask many questions.’

  ‘I’m just curious what sort of ship you’re talking about.’

  ‘A flying submarine, that hurtles through the dried-out sewer tunnels of this apocalyptic city,’ replied Smurpheus.

  Gordon digested this. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really,’ replied Smurpheus, deadpan.

  ‘Not a very big submarine, then?’

  ‘Not enormous, no.’

  ‘And you live . . . ?’

  ‘Inside this flying submarine.’

  ‘I see.’ Gordon thought about this. ‘Inside the sewers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But not under the water inside the sewers?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just sort of flying through the air?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At great speed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Gordon was silent for a moment. ‘Really?’ he asked.

  ‘Really,’ said Smurpheus.

  ‘Really really? Or – not really?’

  ‘We must keep moving continually,’ said Smurpheus, ‘or police machines will catch us.’ He dropped down inside the manhole.

  ‘OK,’ said Gordon, laughing nervously, and clambering down after him. ‘Because you had me going there for a mo. I was half starting to believe you about the enormous flying-through-air submarines.’

  [(:-o]

  They dropped to a tunnel, crawled through it and down a ladder before emerging in an arch-ceilinged ceramic-lined corridor. It was brightly lit. As they ran along, and down a slope, Gordon realised that he was in an empty underground passenger tunnel. ‘These aren’t sewers,’ he said. ‘This is the tube network.’

  ‘Sewer system,’ said Smurpheus, without looking round.

  But sure enough, they soon emerged on to a platform. The floor was a little dusty, but otherwise everything was in perfectly good condition. All the lights were on. Posters advertised day trips to Windsor and a new High Octane Corporate Thriller. A sign advised people to MIND THE, but the thing they were to mind had been spray-painted out of legibility by the zealous censors. Gordon was fairly impressed by their thoroughness.

  A lit tube train was waiting for them. ‘Oh,’ urged Smurpheus, shoving Gordon through the double doors. He barely had time to register his location – Holborn – before the train lurched into life and he almost fell.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘This is your submarine.’

  ‘This is the Jeroboam,’ replied Smurpheus.

  ‘Your submarine.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘And it is definitely a submarine?’

  ‘Precisely so.’


  ‘You wouldn’t say it’s any kind of train?’

  ‘Precisely not,’ said Smurpheus confidently.

  ‘It’s just that it looks—’ Gordon began to say, but at that precise moment the submatrain took a sharp bend to the right, and he almost fell.

  When he regained his balance he could see that the carriage was full of people. He recognised Smurpheus, and a couple of the other folk from the room in Isleworth, and there were some people he did not recognise. Most of all, heart-stoppingly, he saw Thinity across the way. No longer dressed in skin-tight latex, or plastic, or leather, but still beautiful.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, eager as a puppy, and starting over towards her to shake her hand (kiss her, said his inner voice, push her to the floor and climb on top) – just to shake hands, say hello properly, and—

  With a thwack he reeled backwards and collapsed to the wooden ribs of the train floor. Sparkles were fireworking in his eyes. ‘Ow,’ he said, more in surprise than pain.

  ‘You OK?’ said a shaven-headed man bending over him. ‘You kinda walked into the perspex there.’

  ‘Perspex,’ said Gordon.

  ‘Separating the passenger compartment from this one. It’s kinda old perspex, covered in scratches. I’m kinda surprised you didn’t see it.’

  ‘Um,’ said Gordon. ‘Wasn’t really looking where I was going.’

  Chapter 6

  Inside the Jeroboam

  Gordon, or Nemo (as everyone called him), was given what looked like a charity shop pair of combats, complete with various stains that had resisted the washing process. Or he hoped they had; because the alternative was that the pants had never been washed, and that wasn’t a comfortable thought. He was also given a holey hand-knitted sweater. In return the crew took his logo-stamped dressing gown and chucked it out of the door at a brief stop in Baker Street station.

  Smurpheus did not bother with formal introductions, but over the course of the day (or, Nemo thought, bearing in mind the extraordinary sunset above ground, over the course of the evening) he met the few select members of the Jeroboam crew. There was a stocky fellow called Tonkatoi, with a broad Tokyo face and a cockney accent. His black hair was trimmed short, and reminded Nemo somewhat of the fuzzy plastic material that coated the dashboard of his old Ford Cortina – the only car he had ever owned. Tonkatoi could do amazing things with the word ‘all right’, keeping only the ‘i’, metamorphosing the ‘al’ to a twisty ‘o’, the ‘r’ to a ‘w’ and eliminating the final letters altogether. This mutated word was his most commonly used expression.

  ‘Hello,’ Nemo had said, ‘excellent, excellent to meet you.’

  ‘Owi,’ Tonkatoi had nodded.

  The skin-headed feller who had spoken to Nemo when he’d banged into the perspex was there too, although he seemed to spend a lot of time examining his face and head in the mirror of the communal washroom, which rather got in the way of Gordon getting to know him.

  And, of course, Thinity was there. And despite the tatty, grubbiness-covered sweater and dubious baggies, still to Gordon’s, I mean, Nemo’s, eyes she looked wonderfully beautiful. Beautifully wonderful.

  After several hours he found himself alone in a compartment with her. Now’s the chance, he thought to himself. Go up. Say hello properly. Make up for all the stumbling embarrassments that had passed for his earlier conversational gambits. Show her that I’m a normal guy who’s interested in her in a normal way.

  He took a deep breath and walked over to her.

  ‘Hi,’ he said to her, blushing like a schoolboy. ‘Great finally to meet you. I mean, I know we met before,’ he said, ‘in the virtually, that time and – after that, you know. When you took me to meet Smurpheus. But it’s really great to actually meet you. I’m glad to have met you in the flesh. Great. Really great to see you. Just great finally to see your flesh. Not,’ he continued, as his speech began speeding up, ‘that I can see your flesh. Your dress isn’t see-through after all, God no, ha! ha! ha!’ His laugh sounded like a desperate cough. ‘I don’t mean your flesh in that sense, I’m not trying to say that I’m only interested in meeting you for your flesh, you know, your body, your skin and, um, organs, and so on – that’s not it, at all, I mean it’s only an expression after all, the whole flesh thing. Look, I’m not interested in your flesh at all, or, well, actually, well there’s nothing wrong with your flesh, I’m not suggesting that you’ve got unpleasant flesh of course, not scabby or anything, absolutely not, on the contrary, it’d be great to, you know, get to know more about it, after all it’s nothing to be ashamed of.’ He had started speaking at a metaphorical twenty miles per hour; but he finished, panting, at the equivalent of eighty.

  ‘OK,’ Thinity replied. ‘I gotta go do some work now on the factor-access coding modulator.’

  ‘Great!’ Nemo enthused. ‘Aye aye, captain! Fantastic! See you later then!’

  When she had left the compartment, Nemo put both his hands side by side on the top of his head, bringing his elbows up before his face, and bent his legs to shrink down to the floor. He was moaning faintly.

  His problem, he decided, was that he was tongue-tied in the company of this beautiful woman. But then, thinking it through a little, he decided that the phrase ‘tongue-tied’ was precisely the wrong one to describe his problem. A person with a knot tied into the muscle of their tongue would, after all, be able to say little more than ‘euh! ouh! agh!’ Nemo’s problem was something the reverse, a helpless dribbling diarrhoea of the tongue, an inability to stop himself. And so he went back to his moaning.

  R-)

  Gordon-Nemo explored his new environment as thoroughly as he could, wandering from compartment to compartment. It was clearly a tube train. But when he taxed Smurpheus with this obvious truth, the small man continued to assert that the Jeroboam was actually a flying submarine. ‘So why is it, then,’ Nemo prompted, ‘that your submarine runs on rails through these tunnels?’

  ‘It needs to make the connection with the metal rails below us in order to pass the signal to and from the McAtrix,’ said Smurpheus smoothly.

  ‘So when you’re not jacked in to the McAtrix,’ Nemo asked, ‘do you take off and fly?’

  ‘We find,’ Smurpheus replied a little haughtily, ‘that it’s best to maintain a constant connection. That way we don’t have to dock, connect and sign in every time we want to upload ourselves into the system. It’s the principle of Access Anytime.’

  ‘Right,’ said Nemo, in his most disbelieving voice.

  It may not have been a flying submarine, but the Jeroboam was certainly unlike any other tube train Nemo had ridden before. Most of the seats had been taken out and replaced with an array of bizarre, Heath Robinson-esque machinery. None of these devices were polished or tooled; all looked as though they had been assembled in a lock-up garage out of old washing machines and fridges. The only chairs that remained looked like ancient barber’s chairs: old leather rubbed smooth, with metal handrests, supported by a single metal stalk instead of chairlegs. ‘From these,’ Smurpheus explained, ‘we enter the McAtrix.’

  ‘Really,’ said Nemo. ‘How interesting.’

  Finally Smurpheus gathered everybody together. Gor—er, Nemo, his heart wriggling, tried to catch Thinity’s eye, but she seemed pointedly to be looking away.

  ‘Everybody,’ Smurpheus announced to his assembled crew. ‘This is Nemo!’

  ‘Gordon,’ said Gordon, in a low voice.

  ‘Nemo!’ repeated Smurpheus loudly. Everybody cheered.

  ,o’V

  The Jeroboam hurtled relentlessly through the tunnels, taking random turns at junctions, stopping for half an hour in some hidden siding only to lurch out again and rattle around the network.

  ‘It’s an unavoidable necessity,’ said Smurpheus, ‘to avoid the Evil Machine Intelligences.’ He paused, and considered his sentence. ‘Unavoidable to avoid,’ he said musingly. ‘That’s not very well expressed, I’m afraid.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ reassured Tonkatoi. �
�I thought it was rather good.’ His cockney accent rendered ‘thought’ as ‘fought’, although there was no ambiguity in what he meant.

  ‘Evil Machine Intelligences?’ said a crinkle-browed Nemo.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Smurpheus.

  ‘EMI?’ Nemo pressed.

  Smurpheus nodded. ‘Is something the matter with that acronym?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Nemo. ‘Not at all.’

  The train rattled through tunnel after tunnel. At one point, as they flashed through a deserted Kennington, the train came to a full stop and lurched backwards, retreating up the City branch. It stopped, and everything was shut down whilst everybody rushed to the front of the train. Nemo went too, in time to see three somethings hurry past and skeeter down towards Morden in a flash of metallic skin, grape-bunch eyes and a writhe of jointed tentacles.

  ‘What were they?’

  ‘SQUIDS,’ replied Smurpheus. ‘They patrol the sewer system on behalf of the EMIs. We need to keep constantly on the move to avoid them. At all times we must avoid being backed into a dead end.’

  ‘Like Pac-Man,’ said Nemo.

  Smurpheus gave him a severe look.

  II

  Tonkatoi showed him his sleeping compartment, a cupboardy space at the back of one of the train’s compartments. ‘I don’t know how easy it’ll be to sleep,’ said Nemo, ‘with the train lurching and running all the time.’

  ‘The what?’ asked Tonkatoi.

  ‘The submarine, I mean.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Is it always in motion?’

  ‘Well, we got to stay clear of the EMIs, so we can only ever stop for a bit. Except at Syon Lane.’

  ‘Syon Lane?’

  ‘Yeah. S’owi there.’

  ‘Is that some kind of sanctuary?’

  ‘Yeah. The EMIs patrol this network of tunnels, yeah? It’s a constant flow, everything linked to everything else – that’s how any circuit-based organism must live. But Syon Lane,’ he continued, his voice going dreamy, ‘is not on the network. It’s a parallel location, can’t be reached through these tunnels. It’s where our non-logo community live. Its owi.’