Wildlife

by Joe Stretch

  The dickheads and the wanker look confused. They look at Life and shake their heads, the end of their penises bouncing around their noses.

  ‘So you’re Janek, you’re Life’s boyfriend?’ says Dickhead 1.

  Boyfriend? thinks Janek. The N-Prang rhythms in his real brain accelerate and then syncopate with joy. She told them I was her boyfriend!

  ‘No doubt,’ says Janek. ‘I’m her lover, I’m the one who sucks her titties when we’re underneath the covers . . . check it out . . .’

  Janek’s about to launch into a romantic rap about the sex session he and Life had enjoyed at the Columbia Hotel, when his computer screen suddenly goes blank. In the real world, he starts slapping his monitor with one hand, turning up the volume on the N-Prang with the other, shouting, ‘What the fuck? What the fuck?’

  In the Real Arms, Life puts away the pistol she used to shoot Janek and takes a seat next to Anka. To be honest, she’s got half a mind to kill Anka, too, given the state of her body. But then one of the dickheads shakes Anka’s hand and says, ‘Anorexic chassis,’ in the same way that boys sometimes say ‘Ferrari chassis.’ So Anka survives. She and Life sit opposite the three dickheads and the wanker, who incidentally, is still at it underneath the table.

  ‘In fact,’ Dickhead 2 is saying, ‘we really want to rebrand eating disorders in the Wild World. Anorexia, we reckon, is a good way for women to enjoy short but successful lives. High death rate, sure, but other women envy you before you die, which is quite pleasant, you know, pretty cool.’

  On hearing this, in the real world, one Anka frowns, the other smiles. In Wow-Bang, her avatar doesn’t move. She doesn’t want to say the wrong thing in front of the Wild World guys. Life, on the other hand, is full of energy. She puts two fists on the table and leans forward.

  ‘Listen,’ she says. ‘It’s time I was told what the Wild World is. It’s getting ridiculous. It’s embarrassing.’

  Dickhead 1 smiles. He pushes his penis back over his head like a greasy strand of hair. ‘You should relax. I can’t believe you just shot your boyfriend.’

  ‘Answer the question. What’s gonna happen to Joe’s child? She’s practically in London. Do you guys have any idea what you’re doing?’

  ‘Of course we do,’ says Dickhead 2, twisting his penis round with his finger and thumb then releasing it, letting it unravel and spin. ‘It all begins in a matter of days. I think it’s going to be great.’

  ‘You hired me to throw a party,’ says Life, ‘and I’d really like to know what the fuck I’m throwing it for. I’ve got three days and I’m on my own. I think it’s time I heard the truth, you know?’

  There is a silence. All four men turn to each other, confident that one of them is going to speak up and offer a simple and accurate description of the Wild World. None of them does. The Wanker stares down nervously into his lap at his blurring hand.

  ‘Well,’ says Dickhead 1, tentatively breaking the silence like an egg tapped against the edge of a bowl, ‘I’m only really involved in the marketing sides of things, you know, distribution and whatever. So . . . well . . . the Wild World is about empowerment, isn’t it, guys? It’s about giving individuals complete responsibility for the creation of their identities. Giving people total control over who they want to be. The way we do this is simple. We dismantle all hierarchies. Celebrity, government, the economy, beauty. Any system that differentiates between individuals is going to be abolished. After that, it’s dead simple. We just have to stop people from getting into groups. This’ll be a piece of piss because we’re going to give them loads of great ways of designing really strong images and personalities for themselves. Consequently, they won’t want to get together with others that much because, well . . . they’ll be too afraid of others finding out that their identities are basically bollocks, you know, that they’re technological, in essence, just a complete invention. It’ll be great. The Wild World will be full of wacky, fascinating people, all of them separated and cheerful, all of them silently sustaining society’s central lie –’

  ‘Which is what?’ interrupts Life.

  ‘Which is that human beings are in some way interesting,’ says Dickhead 1.

  Dickheads 2 and 3 and the wanker all started giggling the moment Dickhead 1 started talking. When Life and Anka began nodding with comprehension, the three of them started rolling around in hysterics.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ asks Dickhead 1, angrily. ‘That’s basically it, isn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ cries Dickhead 2, the penis flying round his forehead like a lasso. ‘You must have missed a meeting. That whole idea was only a joke. We were on drugs. I can’t believe you took that seriously.’

  Dickhead 1has instructed his cheeks to glow red. His penis shrivels upwards towards his hairline. Life is still leant forward, staring with annoyance across the table.

  ‘The Wild World,’ chuckles Dickhead 2. ‘The Wild World’s got nothing to do with any of that. If anything, the Wild World’s just old-fashioned moneymaking. After all, we’re heading for a recession. You see, and I will try to be brief, research recently revealed that hatred no longer exists. We couldn’t believe it. To us, everyone seemed to hate immigrants, terrorists, natural disasters, death, economic meltdown, being alone etc. But we dug a little deeper, and found that, basically, no one really gives a running fuck about any of those things. We found that most people consider life to be slightly overrated, so-so, a bit dull, you know, fairly pointless but, essentially, not that bad. And this is a bad thing, this kind of indifference towards being alive. The cornerstone of the economy has always been a firm and widespread hatred of being alive, particularly among women. Hatreds of various kinds are often fundamental reasons to spend money. But things are changing. People are increasingly less willing to buy away their hatred of life. They’re no longer willing to try and be happy. They just bob along, pointlessly, thinking it’s OK, not that good, not that bad, average, which doesn’t inspire the necessary consumption. And so the Wild World is just a threat, a way of scaring people, an attempt to frustrate them and cause them to worry and to revive their hateful approach to the issue of living, get them into the shops, get them talking to each other, get them speculating about the world again, hating it. It’ll be great, right?’

  ‘Wrong,’ says Dickhead 3, neatly tucking his penis behind his ear and shaking a pitying frown at Dickhead 2. ‘The Wild World has got nothing to do with the economy. And, in any case, the living will always buy.’

  Across the table, Life shrugs. Anka plays with her minuscule wrists while the wanker wanks.

  ‘The Wild World,’ continues Dickhead 3, ‘and this is an absolute fact, is nothing more than an excuse for a party.’

  Life instructs her hands to cover her face in frustration. With each attempt to describe the Wild World she has become increasingly annoyed. After all, she sacrificed a lot to work for it. She left Manchester. She left Joe. She’s spent every night schmoozing in Wow-Bang trying to make connections.

  ‘Think about it, Life,’ says Dickhead 3. ‘Just lately, all the big parties have become a bit boring. People just aren’t enjoying them as much as they used to. For example, everyone’s pretty much figured out that Christmas is crap, that it’s very depressing. Even little kids are pretty cynical about it. Easter, obviously, is rubbish, completely meaningless. But the problem goes much wider. Stuff like the football World Cup, the Oscars, St Patrick’s Day, the MTV Awards, the Proms, the Queen’s Jubilee, right down to things like birthday parties, weddings, office summer parties. People just aren’t getting much out of these things any more. They try and everything, but, you know, they tend to feel pretty let down, like they’ve seen it all before. The idea behind the Wild World is simply to tell the people that the world is new and wild and to encourage them to party in celebration of this fact. The Wild World is little more than something for people to do. And that,’ says Dickhead 3, ‘is the truth.’

  The word ‘truth’ hangs in the air like stubbornly stained under
wear on a backyard washing line. Anka doesn’t know what to make of any of this. Each dickhead’s explanation contained the rickety, creaking sounds of lies. She and Life watch, confused, as the dickheads nod to each other and whisper sagely, that, in effect, they’re all right. ‘Yes, of course, in a way, all of us are right.’ Then over the course of a silent minute the atmosphere around the table sinks like an object accidentally swallowed and everyone is briefly pleased that the wanker has decided to speak.

  ‘What about the human engineering?’ he says, wrist still working overtime beneath the table. ‘What about the N-Prangs?’

  Life bursts into life. ‘Well? What about those things? What about Joe’s child?’

  The wanker stands and, quite reasonably, everyone wishes he’d remained seated. It’s a bit disgusting and off-putting, the constant masturbating. But still they listen.

  ‘The idea of Wild World,’ the wanker begins, ‘came about because of certain scientific developments. Mainly, the ability to build human beings to any specification. They thought about putting this ability to all sorts of uses. Honestly, for the past few years they have thought long and hard about the different types of humans they could build. For example, they thought about growing organ donors to cure the ill, but they couldn’t muster enough enthusiasm. They thought about designing intelligent, diplomatic creatures, strong ones, servile ones, loving ones. They even thought about creating beautiful, sexually flawless creatures, perfect boyfriends and perfect girlfriends for everyone. But none of these things seemed quite right. And no one involved had any strength of vision. In fact, the rumour is that everyone thought it was a bit old-fashioned to be scientifically engineering perfect humans and radically affecting the future. They couldn’t agree on anything. It was ridiculous. In the end, having failed to build a consensus for any of the more ambitious plans, it was decided that the creatures should just be engineered in the interests of a very humorous future. You know, they all agreed that they could just design funny creatures, half-human, half-scientific joke. They figured it would be pretty cool if the creatures could provide those that met them with a bit of amusement, not in terms of what they say, as such, but in terms of what they are, what they do. Everyone involved agreed that this was the best idea. In fact, they saw it as the only option left open to them really. And so they got on with it. The job of dictating the behaviour of the creatures was given to mates of the scientists, guys who they considered to be a right laugh, really funny, or eccentric, or fucking nuts. You must know the types of people. Those half-young men from pubs, well known for their amusing stories.’

  The wanker is wanking more vigorously than ever. Life leans in and whispers to Anka: ‘You don’t want to work for the Wild World. Trust me, it’s not worth it.’ Anka has already jumped the short distance to this conclusion. She has returned to other concerns, like which one of her real-world selves is the anorexic. Which of them must she try to destroy? And what of Roger? Could he be one of these Wild World jokes of human engineering? She hopes not. She hopes that he is becoming electronic naturally and that he’s real and that when she sees him, she likes him, and maybe they can help each other. The wanker is wanking more vigorously than ever.

  Life is thinking about Joe. She’s looking at the fuck-ups and the literal dickheads she dumped him for and wondering whether it was worth it. She’s wondering whether there is less to life than meets the eye. Less to herself and less to life itself. Maybe the Faroese have it right. Maybe they’re right to dry out mutton in small outhouses and eat it through the seasons. Maybe the world of events management and three-dimensional social-networking environments is the biggest pile of shit of all. Maybe we should embrace the simple disaster of being alive by curing meat and planning meals.

  ‘Why don’t I believe you?’ says Life, sickened by the fact that the three dickheads have become erect and are clapping and nodding to the accelerating rhythms of the wanker. ‘In England, everything sounds like a fucking lie. And what about the baby?’

  ‘If it’s true,’ hisses the wanker, through gritted teeth, ‘and she has been taken south of Birmingham, then there’s nothing your friend can do. Chances are the baby is already pregnant.’

  In the virtual city of Wow-Bang, in the Real Arms, the wanker ejaculates and the dickheads cheer. Life and Anka stare at each other. There is a virus contained in the large, unrealistic drops of semen that settle on the table and then disappear. Yes, there must be a virus in the liquid because within seconds Wow-Bang crashes. The walls and decor of the Real Arms freeze on the computer screens of these people. Its graphics dislocate and die leaving each of them, the two girls, the three dickheads and the wanker, breathing quickly in England, in actual rooms, on chairs, each of them truly alone, and suddenly real.

  THREE DAYS PASSED. These days behaved like recipients of intensive care. They were rushed in on stretchers to the distant sound of sirens. They screamed. They were sedated, surrounded by a chaos of keen and skilful humans who did everything they possibly could to revive these days and make them last, if only for a little while longer. But they died. The days died one after another and the humans regretted this. Tired and desperate to make amends, they scrubbed their hands with soap and stared at their reflections. But the fact was, what no one seemed to notice, was that the days were happy to die. They were more than willing. They were, in truth, desperate to die. Because although their lives were short, each had seen as much of human life as they could take.

  To think that all this happened in January. It makes me laugh. Just another nervous January. We can collapse as fast as buildings. We can be demolished fairly safely. I was still calm, as I remember. I was knock knock and I was scratch. I was, as we often are, thinking of other things. It’s like I said at the start, the Wild World meant nothing to me.

  Life invited Anka, Roger, Janek and Joe to the Wild World launch party in London. She emailed the invites with a click and then leant back in her chair and closed her eyes.

  It was January. What else was going on? What else was going on?

  Knock knock.

  I remember the Premiership title race was exciting, as it tends to be after Christmas. It was Man Utd against Chelsea. Manchester against London. United were playing the best football. Scholes was on fire, Ronaldo and Rooney, too. And then you had Chelsea, dull but resolute. Shevchenko had been misfiring all year but Drogba was unreal and Lampard was getting more than his fair share of goals. I do not know who won in the end. If beauty matters in this corporate world, then it would have been United. And, yes, everyone was invited to the launch party, to the Event in London.

  It was January. The Wild World competed for the newspaper headlines with kidnapped children, car bombs in Iraq, hostage disasters, university massacres and the news that former pop star Asa Gunn was selling six-inch sections of his veins over the Internet and encouraging their use as friendship bracelets. The weather was sunny and it was winter, prompting people to worry about global warming and offset their carbon consumption by writing songs about natural beauty and posting them on the Internet. It was January. Selfridges started to sell small scraps of paper with the words ‘You’re a thick twat’ written on them in a stylish font. They cost a tenner. They were popular. Channel 4 commissioned a programme to help a group of young people to reinvent the West End stage musical for the modern world. The programme’s commissioners had brains that looked like sheep shit, which, if you’ve seen it, looks like hand grenades. They called the programme Musicool. It was January. Someone filmed a really fat bloke in a crop top dancing to Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’ and posted it on the Internet. A million people around the world watched this video. It was January and, Jesus, I could talk like this all day. I know my bollocks off by heart and the past is in my head, the birthday cake is in my fucking head. But what matters is . . . well, I’m tempted to say nothing, but.

  Knock knock.

  Scratch.

  What matters is the living.

  III

  The Event
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  Scratch

  18

  JANEK IS BACK at the Columbia Hotel. It’s three in the morning. The manager’s head belongs in a taxidermist’s dustbin. His clothes, a dying pair of blue pyjamas, belong in a ghost’s wardrobe. Janek stares into the man’s seventy-year-old nostrils, at his cheeks, sucked colourless by night, and at the countless, miserable folds of his forehead. Janek can’t understand why the manager’s eyes are disappearing with rage.

  They’re standing at the reception, in the light of an orange standard lamp. Janek’s shoulders are gripped by a huge night porter. At the foot of the stairs, Janek can see the maid in her pink dress with her apron wrapped around her hands, her head bowed.

  ‘If her status in this country wasn’t as delicate as it is, you’d already be in a cell.’

  Janek does hear the words of the manager, his voice a violent whisper, but everything that enters his mind lately gets set upon by a gang of minstrels with cloaks and musical instruments; they seize each word from behind as soon as one enters Janek’s head, they retreat to a brothel in the cellar of his brain and play new meanings into their prisoners. Lately Janek listens to the N-Prang even while he sleeps.

  Tonight, a dreamworld mixed effortlessly with a real one, like the harmless combining of two vaguely different airs.

  Janek had been smiling in an outdoor jacuzzi with several women of every different race. It was somewhere in California. The sky was cloudless and deep blue. Behind the jacuzzi, a new, white mansion echoed with music. Women and men danced on every balcony. Women lay on the bonnets of fast cars in the driveway where men also congregated, guns tucked into their underpants. A large film camera hovered, unheld and unsupported in the air above the jacuzzi. Janek looked into the lens. He brought his fist out of the hot, bubbling water and made it dance for the floating camera. On such occasions when one of the women would clamber over Janek’s lap and display her damp backside for him much like the court painters of the seventeenth century might hold up a still wet canvas for the king to behold, Janek would stroke it as one might a much-loved pet. He dirty-grinned at the camera.