Star Sailors

by James McNaughton

  Jeremiah sighs again. He wonders if he became a Golden partly through an ability to foretell the future. Or an ability to actually create the future? Or create unlikely futures? He tells himself to check in with himself on that later. A rare and unexpected feeling of pride and wellbeing surges through him. It keeps coming of its own accord, out of nowhere, unwilled and uncontrollable. He stops in his tracks as tingles surge up his spine as if he were a fountain.

  Bill’s struck by the change in Karen. She’s radiant. While Trix had been keeping him in the loop (back when they were speaking) regarding her new career at TS Stanaway, it didn’t really register. Karen felt like one of Trix’s charity cases, a fleeting interest among many or a hunch that wouldn’t pan out in the end, or even just a topic of common knowledge for them during his awkward calls from New Hokitika, which felt increasingly and disturbingly like his acting for the camera during vigils. He sees that Karen really has changed since she was doped-up in an oversize incontinence suit at the Beach. Now bright-eyed and immaculately attired in designer gear in her expansive Golden kitchen, she has got away with another subtle variation on the compulsory stuck-on smile such shoots require. She looks fun and lively, as if she considers the whole exercise farcical rather than an important first step onto the glittering stage of celebrity.

  In the image of Jeremiah firing his Magnus, for example, she and Mandela stand opposite each other behind their private shooting range with a red soccer ball, wearing matching red ear-muffs, white T-shirts and capri pants. She is a fraction overeager, a little bit robot-with-a-loose-transistor-set-on-happy. Then again, he thinks, the Wairarapa is very much like that. The oppressively strange social conventions inside the Golden Gate make the Mount look like the wilds of North Karori. He hopes she’s not driven by her paradisiacal new life near Masterton into consolation tranquillisers again.

  No, that would be terrible, he thinks, as he checks out the curves of her leg revealed by the hip-high split in the white dress she wears for lunch at home with Jeremiah, apparently, while sitting on a tall stool at the kitchen counter. Ludicrously, Jeremiah stands behind the bench over a large cutting board, on which a single halved apple sits. The little paring knife lays neatly beside it. Their white clothes and the kitchen whiteware and stainless steel ovens and appliances remind him of a sterile hospital room—something he doesn’t want to be reminded of. He travels up Karen’s leg again. It may have been touched up—it’s perfect. Two tall orange juices provide colour in the whiteness, along with a side window admitting blurry green, sun-dappled vegetation. The unusual thing about this generic photo is that Jeremiah looks as if his wife has just said something that genuinely interests him. She’s gifted him with new information. Bill knows that Jeremiah’s expression would be impossible to produce in post-production. They are genuinely happy.

  Karen smiles at Jeremiah from her bar stool in front of the kitchen bench. Their knees are nearly touching. The camera shutter trips rapidly, cueing more of the same. ‘You’re saying I can’t invite guests to our housewarming?’

  ‘No, I’m not saying that,’ Jeremiah replies, choosing his words. ‘I’m just saying we restrict it to your friends from the Mount for this particular party.’

  ‘And the guests I actually want?’

  ‘Can come to another party whenever they like.’

  ‘But there can only be one housewarming party, darling, one triumphant arrival in the Golden Gate.’

  Jeremiah displays his best smile. ‘Perhaps we should discuss this later, dear.’

  ‘Flash coming up, folks.’

  Paf.

  The photographer adjusts the bulb. ‘Pretend it’s lightning in Valhalla, Jeremiah.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll invite the photo crewto the housewarming,’ she tells him through gritted teeth, ‘and then you’ll have to explain to the nation why they became uninvited and why my real friends have been banned.’

  ‘Up the charge and bounce it off the ceiling, Florian.’

  ‘We’ll need another bulb.’

  Gods in Valhalla, Jeremiah thinks as an assistant comes forward and powders his nose. I’m not squabbling through this shoot.

  ‘We’re having a big party up here in a fortnight,’ Karen trills to the girls attending her. ‘You’re all invited.’

  ‘Karen?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s a work thing.’

  ‘But parties are life things, darling.’

  A titter ripples through the kitchen.

  Har har har, he thinks. This new high-fashion persona gives him the shits. Although it’s not so new now and appears in real danger of becoming permanently established. The hair and make-up crew are a bit like Karen’s lovey-dovey fashion crowd, prone to peeling off scathing witticisms and making him feel surrounded and outnumbered. Marshmallows and acid. The fashionistas will certainly not be coming to his party, either.

  Paf.

  ‘One more.’

  Karen’s three assistants linger around her, giggling over some secret. The problem is, Jeremiah thinks, is that other people like the “new” her. And pay her good money for what she does. The money cannot be argued with. It simply cannot. Flux, he always secretly maintained, was a hobby—she now undoubtedly has a career. For that, he is pleased and proud. It was bad on the Mount, where she got jobs but couldn’t hold on to them. And with the disappearances, taking Mandela with her, and leaving him behind, helpless, with the police being so limited in what they could legally do. He’s grateful those days have gone.

  ‘Okay, people.’

  Karen has three attentive assistants to his one perfunctory one. They find a reason to linger a second longer over her flawless complexion before withdrawing.

  Valhalla, Jeremiah thinks.

  Paf.

  ‘Um, okay. Drink your orange juices and smile at each other… Mmm. Okay. Um, Karen, can we get you behind the counter preparing something? Like a salad or something?’

  Karen sniffs. ‘Put Jeremiah behind the counter. He’s not wearing a split like this.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right. Jeremiah? It’ll be a fun shot.’

  Bill picks up Trix’s note and checks the back. Nothing. The reason he should enjoy this puff-piece, or the black Magnus watch, remains unclear. He can see that Jeremiah’s suffered through the shoot in much the same way he has himself on similar occasions. Jeremiah’s beefcake display was never really that funny, he thinks. What was I so superior about?

  He scrolls past the happy family relaxing on the couch to the grand finale in the master bedroom. Another family portrait. The three of them sit up in bed, on big pillows. It’s Sunday morning, according to the caption. They’re all in buttoned-up pyjamas; Jeremiah and Mandela in matching blue-and-white stripes, Karen in crimson silk. Mandela, in the middle, holds an expensive suborbital spacecraft toy. Jeremiah and Karen have tablets on their laps. Their matching bedside tables display coffee mugs and croissants stuffed with ham, cheese and tomato, possibly made of plastic. The three of them smile photogenically. Mandela is a good mix of both parents, with his father’s brown hair and bearish build, and his mother’s sharper, more interesting features.

  ‘Pah.’ Bill closes the screen, screws up Trix’s note and heads to the kitchen to throw it out and get a glass of something decent.

  21

  An empty bottle of Sun Station chardonnay sits next to a three-quarter full one on the coffee table. The room is darkening. Bill opens the curtains. Under the empty bottle sits Trix’s crumpled note, retrieved from the bin and uncurled. No, there was definitely nothing written on the back.

  Bill knows that Trix would love the vineyard. Her eye would be delighted by the possibilities for architecture, landscaping and gardening the property offers. Like the real estate ad said: All kinds of transformations are possible. She’d work her magic further afield as well and connect with the brightest and best in the area, attract young clear-eyed people full of energy and idealistic ambition. Very refreshing it would be, and in controlled doses, which
the property is big enough to allow. I’d provide the wine, he thinks, and host a writer-in-residence or an artist, a potter or something, during the endless summers, make a real creative community here.

  But Trix won’t be coming and none of that will happen because of a technicality, a quibble over chronology. Releasing the words after the mouth had closed. Nothing more than a temporal hiccup. Like a movie when the speech lags. Her high-handed decision means they’ll both miss out on this idyll. And it’s not only them who will miss out, in fact, but the local community, the whole region.

  He pours another glass of wine although he has no thirst for it.

  Move on, he tells himself.

  The last of the sun is falling on the other side of the house. Through the window he sees light in the sky, but gloom gathers around him.

  Perhaps I should move, he thinks, to the barbecue area. Cook something.

  He’s not hungry. Memories well with the shadows. A procession of them will rise if he allows it. They’re solidifying now, apt to arrive out of nowhere and stop him in his tracks for a moment. While they’re not yet the transfixing living memories caused by long-term NST, they’re definitely the entrée. He fears his living memories, fears what will become all-consuming when he is super-elderly, because almost none of his past rewards close scrutiny. There’s a sore point or loss tied up in everything, it seems. His memories abound with people who have disappeared from his life. Not because of death, in most cases, but acrimony or fading interest. Burned, rotten and forgotten bridges. Always a pervading sense of loss and guilt in the memories that arrest him. He hopes to get lucky with living memory and relive something joyful and pure, like the eating of an ice cream when age five. Long hot grass, a clean river running nearby, his mother singing tunefully in the background. Occasionally people get that kind of thing, a pure moment of sunshine. It won’t fall that way for himself. No, the odds are stacked too high against it. Times of peace have turned out, upon examination, to be periods of gross complacency; another kind of loss, of time and life. Happiness has only ever been momentary, like a train emerging from a tunnel into a blast of sunlight, only to be immediately plunged back into darkness again. Bad marriages, resentful children, professional jealousy, financial fuck-ups. Times when the booze got on top. Times when the work ran out, or the work was bad. And all the time, the background to it all, ever since he started out in adult life, people suspecting he was insane. Bill the Baptist, they whispered behind his back—and said to his face. Yes, if not actually clinically mad, he was deluded, or worse of all, grossly egocentric. The absolute worst of it was his suspicion, throughout his entire professional life, that the doubters were right, that Sam was a conman without a passport. Bill always felt he’d built his house on shaky ground, even though in the end it was proved not to be shaky. Sam II was a vindication of his personal religion, the second coming. But to erase all the world’s wrongs and justify all the commotion he created, Sam II needed to wake up. Just wake up. A tiny little electrical pulse was all that was needed, something like an idea’s near imperceptible transfer of chemical energy. Yet all the coal stations in the world couldn’t power the subtle pulse needed to wake the person who could wake the world and lead it. Ah, but regret is tedious! Better to be free of doubt and disappointment and humanity’s protracted scrabbling slide into the abyss. To just have a good woman by my side, Bill thinks, and make wine in the sun. The end. Thank you. But no, it’s not to be. More disappointment must be had—decades of it, probably, thanks to NST.

  Women. A feeling arises—not strong, not much of anything, but a possibility, something like the first pang of real hunger and thirst. He pushes it, imagines bringing up a holofeed just to see if he can still feel something primal, even though he’s not in the mood and it’s a bad idea. The image of Karen in the split dress comes to mind. She’ll have a profile now, he thinks, or a proto-profile at least. ‘Check out the technology,’ he tells himself, ruefully, as if the content meant nothing. Anyway, what else is there to do?

  Activating the holostage in his dark ‘media room’, he feels the first pulse of actual excitement. He increases his My World channel options to include Celebrity Visits for a free one-month introductory deal and automatically accepts five screens of terms and conditions. Ten long seconds later, a menu appears. He selects Women. The thumbnail faces of the five top-rating simulations appear on his screen. He recognises the actress Töndri, renamed Tina for legal reasons, he guesses, but Karen’s image isn’t there or on the next screen. He searches K. Her profile pops up, rechristened Kelly Baldwin. ‘Huh.’ He selects it. An ad pops up for Companionship. The celebrity of your choice becomes a permanent fixture in your home. It wakes you in the morning, waves goodbye, sends you messages through the day, turns on lights and music, and regulates heat for your homecoming. Bill shakes his head at the thought of the loneliness saturating that scenario and selects Visit.

  A 60-centimetre tall, ultra high-definition hologram of Karen materialises on his Viewing Stage. She wears the white, high-split dress of the Magnus shoot. Spectacular. Smiling up at him, she puts her hands on her hips. The quality and realism of the projection causes his eyebrows to raise. It’s so realistic that he passes his hand through the passively smiling figure to confirm she’s not flesh and blood.

  ‘Oh,’ she says.

  She’ll say that, he discovers, every time she’s touched.

  ‘Hi, William.’ It’s not Karen’s voice, but some generic high-pitched composite. ‘Can I call you Bill?’

  He won’t speak to it. He types instead, testing the technology: how are you?

  ‘I’ve missed seeing you.’ The lip movements are really pretty good.

  really?

  ‘I’ve been a fan of your work for years. I loved your work on Sam Starsailor. What are you doing now?’

  ‘Ugh.’ I should’ve read the terms and conditions, he thinks. His online past has been mined for information. The hologram has access to everything about him in the public arena and on social media in order to create the illusion of intimacy.

  Because she is just emerging into the public eye, the verisimilitude of Karen’s hologram will depend to a large degree on her social media activity. The more active she is, the more realistic she’ll look and behave. Only 300 online likes and 50 posts is enough for the algorithm to predict more about a person’s beliefs than most real spouses know. Interactive celebrity holograms of models, entertainers, film and reality stars and athletes look and move extremely realistically.

  Bill types, walk.

  Karen walks the metre-long viewing stage like a model on a catwalk. He notices that she’s braless. Long of limb and neck, lithe yet strong, with winged shoulders and a big bust. Her raven-black hair is glossy. At the end of the stage she holds a pose, turns and struts back.

  run.

  Karen laughs. ‘In heels, William? I’d like to see you try that.’

  take them off.

  ‘Just my shoes?’

  yes.

  She holds his eyes, smiling as she crouches. One shoe is undone, and then the next. Each finger is exact, each pearl fingernail detailed. She stands and shakes one off one shoe, then the next. ‘Oh, that’s better.’ She points a toe at him and giggles. ‘Do you like my feet?’ She giggles again, waiting for his response. And again.

  The girlish giggle grates. It’s wrong. Her voice is deeper than that and Karen is not given to giggling. He’s not sure if he’s even heard her laugh. The whole thing’s vile anyway. I’ll have a cigarette, he thinks. But first, what else can it do?

  strip.

  ‘I’d love to. How about some music? Choose something.’

  nothing compares to u.

  ‘Well,’ she giggles, ‘that’s kind of slow, Billy.’

  satisfaction.

  ‘Hot! Have you heard Otis Redding’s version? It’s my favourite.’

  Bill’s screen pings. The song costs $2.99. He clicks Buy Now.

  Karen high-steps down the runway again, faster
this time, in sync with the driving brass riff, her breasts bouncing. At the end of the runway, she stops. She reaches back. Here the technology cheats: the long zip is suddenly undone. She eases each strap off its shoulder, turns to Bill and bites her bottom lip.

  No, he thinks. I’m not doing this. He stands.

  ‘Billy?’ Her brow furrows. The fake woman’s voice calls after him as he leaves, ‘What’s wrong? What did I do? Please tell me.’

  The warm evening air embraces him. He can’t enjoy it. As he drags the cigarette down, his mind flutters like a bird in a dust bath. He flicks the butt away and strides back to the media room to turn the hologram off.

  The hologram sits on the kitchen stool of the Magnus shoot. Her dress remains unzipped, her shoulders bared. She runs her hands down the front of her body. ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘I wish I had some of my toys with me. Would you like to buy me a present, Billy?’

  A pink vibrator materialises before her, standing up on its end. She runs her hand over it, caresses it.

  Bill looks over the hologram at the media room’s drawn curtains.

  ‘If you buy this for me now I can bring it every time I visit.’

  ‘No,’ Bill says. ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’ Karen giggles as another, larger, vibrator materialises. ‘Do you think I could handle this one? I’m not sure if I could, but I’d love to try. Oh, baby, would you buy—’

  The media room is dark. Bill holds the plug he yanked from the socket in his hands. The relief of silence and darkness slips into slow, spinning motion.

  22

  Karen stands in the master bedroom in the split white dress, shaking her head at the rack of sleepwear. ‘I’m not wearing any of those.’

  An assistant lifts a flimsy purple hem. ‘This one will look devastating.’

  ‘It’s not TS Stanaway. I can’t wear it.’

  ‘But the tunnel… It was meant to come this morning on the train.’