The Complete Afternet: All 3 Volumes In One Place (The Afternet)

by Peter Empringham

  “Got it! Afternet. Problems, I believe. Aphrodite got hold of the Committee, they agreed. You can get someone to fix it. Terminate someone early who knows how to make it work. There you go. No idea what it means, but that’s the message.” Hermes, visibly pleased with himself for retrieving the message and delivering it, dusted more rubbish from his smock and began to walk to the door.

  “Is that it?” Marcel stared at him. “No instruction as to how?”

  “That’s it.” Said Hermes, “Free hand, whatever resources you need, all of the usual promises which won’t be kept. It’s been minuted, though, so I would get it sorted if I were you, or this dump might be feeling like a little nirvana; I know Gods and demons are getting a bit fed up with being harassed by beggars every time they get offa their clouds.” He walked to the space where the door had been. Marcel and Geoffrey exchanged a look- they had a result, but as was the way of things each result carried an implicit threat.

  “O, and another thing,” Marcel and Geoffrey turned to Hermes, framed in the vacant doorway, “Aphrodite. She says she’ll see you Friday.” And with that he was gone. Marcel dropped into his chair. A stack of dust rose into the air. A group of Visigoths populated one of the screens, rapt in attention to a single figure in a Goatskin coat and RAF uniform. The Alpine Mauve Edelweiss became extinct.

  “Shit.” said Marcel.

  In the contemplative silence which followed the departure of both Hermes and an ultimately obsolete item of mountain flora, Geoffrey made a big play of being concerned with computer operation. On the one hand he was delighted that all the stops were now pulled out to help them solve the issues with the Afternet; on the other hand he was internally wallowing in ecstasy at the thought that, having not invited him to the party, Marcel would have to pay the price in the dubious company of the rather warty Goddess of Love. Marcel just felt vaguely sick.

  Neither of them, however, had much time to develop the paths of their inner thoughts. The Afternet control room had not seen a visit from anyone for decades, let alone Gods, but the dust had barely settled on the wreckage caused by the messenger before it began to rain elephants and dogs.

  Marcel was gazing at the space which had until recently been the far wall of the room, his mind working overtime to think how he could extricate himself from the situation he himself had created, when two figures emerged from the gloom. The darkness beyond the wall was almost increased by the first, a grunting multi-armed and hugely corpulent figure who picked his way through the rubble with some difficulty. His trunk arrived first, but the rest of Ganesha picked its way past the wreckage and surveyed the office with a mixture of distaste and hope. Marcel nudged his workmate, who turned from the screens and looked with some wonder at the elephantine God of Knowledge and, oddly, given the trouble he had getting into the room, Remover of Obstacles.

  As if that weren’t enough for Geoffrey’s simpering at the sight of deities to go into overdrive, Ganesha was followed almost immediately by an agile figure with the head of a jackal who scrambled adroitly over the fallen wall and stood before them brushing the debris from his clothes.

  “Hermes?” said Anubis. Geoffrey and Marcel nodded mechanically.

  “Thought so. Even after all this time he can’t figure out how to stop. It’s like a bloody graveyard in here.” said the God of Tombs.

  His voice had an air of total certainty in his own authority; even Marcel was held temporarily in its thrall. The pair looked up from where they were seated to the haughty face of the jackal, their concentration broken only by the persistent snuffling coming from the area of the control room out of their view. Eventually, both they and the Egyptian Deity had to break the eye contact and look over to the side of the room where Ganesha was levering dusty piles of paper with his many arms and sniffing heartily with his trunk. As they looked at him, he turned to face Geoffrey and Marcel.

  “Got any food?” He said, hopefully.

  As Ganesha munched on the ageing remains of a meat feast pizza Geoffrey had managed to liberate from a filing drawer (M-P), Anubis laid down the law in no uncertain terms.

  “God’s deeply unhappy. He’s had to go back to cranial osteopathy because it’s making Him feel so bad. There are eighty thousand people dying every day and hardly any of them are getting their just desserts, and worse, this has been going on for too long. Nearly half a million people a week kicking the bucket, having every reasonable expectation that those long hours spent singing His praise are about to be rewarded, and what do they get? The holding area! Purgatory! Wandering around often with bits of themselves missing with no idea why they are where they are or when they might get to where they should be. Then they run into a conquistador and realize how long this could take! There might as well be no afterlife for all the good you’re doing.”

  “But-” Geoffrey spoke for the first time since the Gods had arrived.

  “No buts. It’s a disaster. We’ve got a soul lake. A spirit level. You’re lucky He’s gone New Age, because in the old days there would have been a lot of wrath by now.”

  Ganesha belched, sniffed hopefully around the rest of the filing system. Anubis sighed, looked at Geoffrey, the wreckage of the wall, the piles of files and paper.

  “You’ve had it good for too long. We’ve spent eternity getting people to believe in us despite the fact that we might look like dogs, or have ridiculous beards, or,” he glanced at Ganesha, who was opening each filing drawer with diminishing hope, “are morbidly obese. The problem is, when you keep all of these people waiting, the nasty bastards get on with recreating the perfidy of their lives and the good firstly behave well and then either get corrupted or lapse into disbelief. He won’t have it, and neither will we. You’ve got five days, Geoffrey. If it’s not starting to work by then, you’re out.”

  Geoffrey was mortified, not just at the thought that he could be returning to the eternal turnip patch, but more at the dressing down from a God. Marcel had remained silent throughout, having previously had something of a contretemps with Anubis at a wine and cheese do for Tutankhamen’s 3000th. Marcel had drunkenly thrown a stick and commanded the Dog-headed God to ‘fetch’. Having heard the threat to Geoffrey however, he became emboldened and nodded his assent.

  “He’s right Geoff. If you’re not up to it, you’ll just have to go. I can’t have you holding me back.”

  Jackals are, by and large, expressionless, but there was a certain hint of satisfaction on the God’s snout as he turned his head slowly to face the smirking representative of the Dark Side. Something in the glistening brown eyes told Marcel that Anubis was not about to roll over and play dead.

  “Do you think,” the dog licked its lips, “that we are about to heap all of the blame for this catastrophe in the lap of this hapless idiot? All of these delays benefit only the sinners, and can only corrupt the good. Believe me, if we have cause to remove our man, the message will go to he you worship that your punishment should be of the utmost severity, and make any suffering you endured prior to taking up this position look like, well, being a turnip picker living in a field full of turnips.”

  Marcel stared at the visitor. Geoffrey was studying his sandals like a naughty schoolboy. The only sound, as Anubis let his threats sink in, was a chomping from the corner of the room.

  “What are these?” Ganesha held up an empty tube, small gobbets of chewed matter flying from his mouth as he spoke.

  Marcel tore his eyes away from the hypnotic stare of the jackal and glanced at the Elephant God.

  “They’re screen wipes. For the VDUs.”

  “Quite nice.” Said Ganesha, reading the empty carton in search of a supplier from whom he could order more.

  Anubis grabbed one of the beast’s arms, which admittedly still left three to attempt to pick up anything which looked vaguely edible, and marched him towards the gap in the wall. After a dramatic pause, he turned and surveyed the sheepish pair slumped in their typist’s chairs.

  “Five days. Five days to get this piece of e
lectronic rubbish working again. And get this lot cleared up. It needs to be tidy for the next occupants.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The 43rd Trades Congress of the Allied Association of Reapers, Grim and Horrible (AARGH) was heaving. The pre-plenary coffee and shortbreads was looking a little ravaged, but Geoffrey, standing in line behind a very tall figure in a black cloak, was spitting feathers and determined to get some refreshment. Marcel, behind him, leaned on the wall and surveyed the room through his mirror shades, arms folded in clear body language shouting ‘I am bored and want to get on with it’. Even after all this time, Geoffrey struggled with the sourcing of Marcel’s impatience; when you have forever, what’s the rush?

  “Two coffees please.” The green haired hag expelled something from her nose behind the table and, yawning, poured the steaming liquid into two polystyrene cups. Geoffrey felt a nudge from behind. He turned and stared into the endlessly black chest of a ridiculously tall figure; looking up he took in the name badge, which read ‘Death’, as indeed did they all.

  “Sorry mate, can you pass the sugar?” Geoffrey quaked, turned to the table, and picked up the bowl containing the irregular agglomerations of demerara.

  “Cheers”. The dark voice croaked. Funny how even when you are already dead there is nothing like the personification of the end to make your sphincter twitch. Geoffrey quickly grabbed a plate of biscuits, took the two cups and wriggled his way across the floor back to Marcel. He handed over one of the coffees, took a sip of his own, which was surprisingly good, strong and full of flavour, and surveyed the room, heaving with visible representations of the bucket being roundly kicked. Marcel sipped his coffee and spluttered.

  “Good grief, what’s yours taste like?”

  “Really nice, actually. Yours?”

  “It tastes like donkey shit. Or at least how I imagine donkey shit to taste.” He reached to the plate and took a triangle of sugar encrusted shortbread, took a bite, and after a brief chew his face contorted and he spat a large ball of shortbread and saliva mixture which attached itself to the hem of a black cloak behind Geoffrey. “So does that. God, I hate this death.”

  “Mmm, this is lovely” said Geoffrey, slowly savouring the butter flavours, and only partly trying to annoy his partner even further. A loud voice came over the PA and asked everyone to take their seats for the beginning of the conference, and as the delegates began to shuffle towards the entrance, both Geoffrey and Marcel watched nervously to see how much attention their advert, hand written and coloured-in, and attached to the main door, was attracting. They needed a harbinger of doom, and this place had to be the main chance of getting one, so had managed to procure a side room for interviews during the lunch break; they had thought about doing it after the conference finished on the second day, but had heard that the first night party was murderous (sometimes literally), and if there was one thing you didn’t want to do it was to reject a hungover Reaper, even if the worst he could do was re-kill you.

  From the auditorium, they heard the heavily amplified music of ‘Simply The Best’, in which the word ‘Best’ had been wittily replaced with ‘Death’. Marcel groaned at the lack of originality even as Geoffrey began to move in a very strange way as though suffering the effects of a joint epileptic and diarrhoea attack. After a moment he realised- largely, it has to be said, because of the rather dreamy look which had entered Geoffrey’s rheumy eyes- that this could well be what might have passed for dancing in a sodden field in Carlisle 1400 years ago.

  “This is horrendous.” Marcel muttered under his breath, threw the coffee and biscuit to the floor and headed off to prepare himself for the interview process.

  The thumping disco beat of ‘(What have you done today) to make me feel dead?’ cranked through the walls of the side room, accompanied by the foot stamping of a clearly hyped up bunch of Deathbringers, marked the end of the morning session. Marcel once again re-ordered the pencils on the desk in front of him in preparation for what he assumed would be a total lack of interest. He had tried to spice up the notice, from Geoffrey’s original draft. The representative of the light side had twirled in his chair for several minutes, his eyes cast to the ceiling in what he clearly thought was an indication of deep thought and creativity before throwing his arms into the air, and as though unveiling the sketches for the Sistine Chapel drew one hand in front of him in a line as he said, with some portent, “What about, ‘DEATH WANTED’?”. Marcel gave him a look of such utter derision that had Geoffrey had the slightest hint of self-awareness it would have caused him to reach for the hemlock. The actual notice, prepared by Marcel, had promised rich reward, which of course he had no way of fulfilling, heavenly sponsorship, which to some extent was true, and a thrilling hint of espionage and rule-breaking. He may have been only trying to attract Death, but these bringers of eternal sleep fancied a pop at the shady world of James Bond as much as the next mythical character.

  Geoffrey burst into the room from his excursion to the toilet, where he had found it hard to pee in close proximity to the aura of so much doom. He was clearly excited.

  “It’s packed outside! A load of them actually left before the end to get in the queue. I knew my poster would bring them pouring in.” Marcel toyed with the idea of telling Geoffrey that his advert was complete and utter rubbish but found he could not be bothered. It worried him momentarily, this uncharacteristic failure to find the motivation to disappoint and undermine another. Instead, he nodded as Geoff bounced with excitement.

  “Let’s get going then”.

  On the other side of the desk the enormous cowled figure hunched on a chair much too small, his face hidden in the blackest depths of the black hood, his voice sonorous and full of portent.

  “Where’s your scythe?” asked Marcel.

  “I’m from the traditionalist wing” the voice created a surround sound, and both Marcel and Geoffrey looked around the room as the words bounced from the walls and back to their ears.

  “Death has a radical wing?” asked Marcel, when his ears had stopped humming.

  “Radical might be overstating it, but you’ll find-” it paused, and was possibly deep in thought, though it was impossible to tell without a face to look at. “that the scythe is a later addition to our particular representation, to be honest due to a spelling mistake by some halfwit Greek, who mistook Chronos, or Time, for Cronus, a minor farming deity. It quite appealed to some of the younger Deaths, and they went for the scythe in a big way.” It sniffed, looked down at its long, shell-like fingernails. “Arrivistes.” It intoned.

  “How” asked Geoffrey, clearly struggling with some issue of moment, “ do you reap, without a scythe.”

  “Ha!” The ‘laugh’ was reverberant and horrible; the interviewers involuntarily drew back. “Reap? New-fangled nonsense. In the traditional wing we follow the real modus operandi, a true skill. We scare the shit out of people. One look at my terrible visage, their mouths drop open, aghast. With a drop of gall from my sword into their open mouths, they are despatched. Terror and timing, that’s my art.”

  “What if they’re blind?” asked Geoffrey, blithely.

  “What?”

  “If they’re blind. If they can’t see you, they can’t be stricken with terror, can they?”

  “Erm…that’s, well, in that instance, er…”

  Marcel waved a hand to stop the stumbling. “Next!” He cried.

  The stream of tall, forbidding, hooded characters seemed never ending. Thankfully, the odd interviewee broke the tedium. A delegation from the Tibetan chapter in various Buddha forms waved their arms animatedly and chanted a song of death which sounded like a walrus breaking wind through a trumpet.

  “You’re not scary.” Said Geoffrey to one, which, considering his very low terror threshold, which included fear of falling, standing up, sleeping, waking up, all insects and arachnids and the colour beige, left the Buddha somewhat lost in the fearfulness stakes.

  “We’re not supposed to be.” The figure, lotus pos
ition and all, was calmness personified. “There is nothing to fear in death, it is but a transition.”

  “A transition to endless impalement in my case, mate,” said Marcel wearily, “NEXT!”.

  The old woman with the bright blue nose hunched in the chair, looking nervous.

  “So you lead the bucket-kicking movement in Lithuania, Mrs er… Giltme?”

  “O yes. I am the bringer of death throughout that country and have considered branching out into other Baltic States. When I get the time.”

  “The job we have to fill is probably in Western Europe, actually, unless there’s a hidden motherlode of computer experts in Lithuania we don’t know about. What makes you think you can function adequately in an environment where a blue nose may not signify the end?”

  “I am death. I have a poisonous tongue.”

  “Sorry love, that just makes you a woman in my book.” Marcel looked at his watch. “NEXT!”

  It was clear that the glass ceiling existed throughout Reaperdom, and that the only non-men who put themselves forward for Marcel and Geoffrey’s task were the one previously mentioned and an Indonesian version with the body of a man and the head of a dolphin. This seemed a very complicated construct for such a universally simple process and although Geoffrey was clearly fascinated by the beast and kept throwing it fish, neither he nor Marcel were convinced that its chitter-chatter and squeaks added up to anything more than random noises. After it had left at Marcel’s repeated request for another candidate, Geoffrey turned to his partner.

  “Even if you were really ill and knew you were on the way out, what would you think if that turned up at your bedside?”

  “God knows.” Marcel shrugged expansively. “perhaps that my family had been out fishing for tuna. Carelessly.”

  “We’re going to have to go trad, aren’t we? I think the target has to know that he is being stalked by Doom, don’t you? Not a large fish.”