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

by Peter Empringham

  The women who had managed to enter this male world were certainly not going to be filling their dance-cards up for the evening’s performance by what Geoffrey had thought was a Glenn Miller tribute band but which he had later established was in fact Glenn Miller. Apart from the woman with the azure conk, who looked as if she had been left in the sun for several millennia, the only other female candidate claimed to be what the average Slav would expect to see as the death rattle began to collect in his lungs. She was even older, and despite the interesting departure of wearing white, which both of the interviewers had to admit made a refreshing change, she didn’t have the gravitas the prospective employers were really insisting upon. This could have been because the real signifier of her role, held in her hands with tremendous reference, appeared to be a green vegetable.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a sprout.”

  “You kill people with a sprout? What do you do, ram it down their throats?”

  “I don’t kill them. I signify that it is time for them to die.”

  “What if the sprout dies?”

  “It neither dies nor fades. It is an eternal sprout.”

  “Let me get this straight, dear.” Marcel leaned forward onto the table, “I’m on my bed, sweating pints from the ague, and as I approach my last breath, I turn my head to observe an old bat in a sheet carrying a brassica which, unlike me, lasts for ever. And at that moment I think. It’s the sprout crone. I’m a goner.”

  “Exactly. Never fails.”

  “It does, here, love. If I sent you to Belgium with that thing they’d chain you up and eat forever. Thanks but no thanks.”

  After the woman, her eyes clearly beginning to brim, had shuffled with unsteady gait out of the door, Geoffrey gave Marcel a look of distaste.

  “That was a bit over the top, Marcel. That poor old dear has made her living for years by pitching up at all hours, with no thought for her own wellbeing or spending time with her family, to condemn people to the Afterlife by waving a sprout at them. And you mock her for it. It’s a vocation, you know.”

  “Bollocks it’s a vocation. You don’t get this many people willingly doing a vocation.”

  “Why else would they be in it then?”

  “It’s the travel. They love it, all that Club Class all over the world.”

  “Well, anyway, I think you hurt her feelings.”

  “She’s death, Geoffrey! What kind of feelings can you have when you spend all of your time turning up at the last minute to finish people off? Have we finished?”

  “One more. I think you should leave this one to me. You’re starting to get a bit rabid, and this one’s just starting out on his career. I don’t want to nip a promising future in the bud.” Marcel looked momentarily disconcerted at Geoffrey’s new-found assertiveness. Actually glad, however, that this was the last candidate, he decided not to dispute the point and to exercise what was for him an extreme level of patience.

  Everything was the same. They had listed him in the ‘S’ (scythe) column on their check sheet, which was really the only differentiation they had been able to discern amongst the litany of cloaks, deep voices, bad attitude, and, by and large, bad breath. His face, however, was white, lips black, and in the place of the darkness under the hood, he shone with an exuberant grin.

  “I’ve never had a job interview before. Well, actually, I’ve never had a job before.”

  “I know you,” said Geoffrey, excitedly, as Marcel studied his cuticles, “you know Bill and Ted. You went on that adventure with them!”

  “It’s not real, Geoff.” Marcel sighed. “It’s a film.”

  “O, right. You want to tell me lots of things aren’t real. Like Britain’s Got Talent. You’ll be saying that isn’t real next.”

  “Well, that’s real, Geoff, in the strictest sense, but you can’t assume that the title is a statement of fact. Bill and Ted, on the other hand, is pure invention. This guy’s a myth based on a legend; a Death Wannabe.”

  Geoffrey was almost out of his seat with impatience at the chance of proving to Marcel that he was utterly wrong, and by extension giving himself a chance of one day, somewhere, meeting Elizabeth Montgomery and saving her from her stupid pointy nosed husband.

  “That’s not true, is it?” he squealed to the white faced figure opposite, “ You know Bill and Ted, don’t you? You played Twister with them!”

  “Well…” This Death looked at Marcel, who raised his eyebrows and challenged him to tell the lie, then at Geoffrey, who was smiling broadly, new teeth glistening. Which one makes the decision? Is it the hapless credulous old bloke in the bad knitwear or the immaculately dressed self-lover with the perfect manicure?

  “I modelled myself on him, of course. I think that the traditional looks are starting to get so passé. All that endless darkness, doom and gloom. It’s death, for Heaven’s sake, not the end of the world.”

  “Unless it’s your death” said Marcel, not without a certain smugness. Geoffrey had no idea what the applicant was talking about, but was trying and failing not to show it.

  “Eh?”

  “Well, it’s the end of your world if you die, isn’t it?”

  “I think we’re putting too much emphasis on that view, actually. I believe that death is something to celebrate. Hence my look, which you have to admit is much less forbidding than most. I’ve started a movement within the Death ranks, and it’s going really well actually. It’s called Changing Reapers’ Outlook And Karma.”

  “CROAK?”

  “Yes. We’d have an Afternet site if there was a working Afternet.”

  This line brought Geoffrey and Marcel back to their awful predicament. They had to get this sorted, and they needed someone to go down and pluck an unripe fruit. Someone who wasn’t going to throw moral arguments at you or worse, sell the story to The Son or The Daily Horror the minute they had done the job. Marcel leaned forward onto the desk, clasped his hands, cuticles perfect.

  “How many deaths have you actually brought?”

  “None, yet.” The white face looked momentarily despondent but soon reassumed its semi-smile. “ But I know it can’t be long now. Those other guys are working all decades just to keep up.”

  “So why, of all the amazingly experienced, sometimes sprout-bearing, occasionally piscatorial candidates we’ve seen, all of whom have despatched millions, should we choose you?”

  “I’m prepared to give you a really low price.”

  Marcel and Geoffrey looked at each other. Marcel did his best querying look, Geoffrey nodded almost imperceptibly. He turned back to the figure, who was slumped sadly in the chair, expecting the worst.

  “You’re in then”.

  CHAPTER 6

  The office in north London was, by most standards, a dump. No corner had been left uncut in the furnishing of Worldbest IT Enterprises Head Office; from the flatpacked furniture, through the slight seconds typists chairs, to the refurbished photocopier and Poundland coffee jars, the place reeked of pennies saved. The exception was the reception area and behind it the executive suite, this latter being only one office, the workplace of Justin Marchant. He had established Worldbest after an investigative journalist with Radio Neasden had uncovered a thriving scam involving happily married minor public figures, Photoshop software, and some glove puppets.

  Actually the only journalist at Radio Neasden, he had happened upon the ruse when he sent his laptop for repair and was sent Marchant’s by mistake in return. The sight of his station manager in flagrante delicto with what could have been either Osama Bin Laden or a sock was enough to make him, against his better judgement, open a raft of other files. After doing the decent thing by posting them on a social networking website he commenced his detective work to establish the source.

  Marchant of course denied any involvement despite evidence to the contrary. He then discovered how much the journalist had paid for the repair to his laptop and realised he could make as much money in the IT field if he played his cards rig
ht, and that his hands wouldn’t get as dirty, or in the case of the glove puppets, as hot.

  His office, occupying half of the floor space of the entire business, the rest of which was occupied by his staff of forty (in the main unregistered for work anywhere in the world), looked like a stage set from ‘Dallas’. The shag pile carpet, deep mahogany furniture, rows of leatherette book spines (no actual books, naturally), ‘executive’ toys, and, thanks to the skills gained in his previous line of work, semi-convincing pictures of Marchant in the company of various world worthies. All were set off by the incongruity of the glass replica of the Pyramid of Cheops which dominated half of the room.

  Justin had picked up the scale model from an enticing junk mail brochure which had dropped through the door of his ill-gotten Docklands apartment. He read the blurb which suggested that because the pyramid was somehow linked to the ancient dynasties of Egyptian Kings, using it as a meditation aid would lead him to success in life and love. He leapt at the chance to own such a status symbol, not questioning whether it gave you a particular distaste for first-born sons. Despite gasping at the price, Justin was pushed over the purchase precipice by the touching reference from Mrs B of Leicester. She was unremitting in her praise of an object which apparently both cured her scurvy and assisted her progress to the Fosse Pub Quiz finals in Melton Mowbray, where she won a year’s supply of pork pie jelly.

  In the excitement of taking the plunge, he unfortunately forgot to check the dimensions. He had cleared a suitable space on his desk next to his Newton’s Cradle (which had lost a ball when he slammed his fist onto it during the angry firing of a Ukrainian software programmer and therefore no longer demonstrated any known scientific laws of motion). It was somewhat disconcerting, therefore, to receive the item on a wooden pallet dropped outside the front door by a forklift driver. In a re-enactment of the Tower of Babel, Justin had supervised the assembly of the replica by a mixture of Latvians, Hungarians, a Turk, two Indians, a Tamil Sri Lankan, and a huge Vanuatuan who was yet to prove he even knew how to turn a PC on let alone repair or program one, but was useful for driving away dissatisfied customers. And assembling enormous pyramids.

  Once ensconced in his office, the Pyramid became a veritable haven for Marchant, who sat within its environs and chanted in a basso profundo in what he thought may be a suitably reverent manner. After a couple of weeks of extemporising such chants as ‘Who’s your father referee?’, and ‘Come ever here, have a go’ derived from the Millwall FC terraces of his childhood, relaxation and karma remained elusive. However, following the purchase of ‘The Sound of Zen’; a four disc set of Pan Pipe noodling not available from any record store, he had ascended to another, if not higher, plane, and the pyramid began to earn its corn.

  Not that the luckless individuals who worked for him noticed any difference. To them he remained the same aggressive, sexist, bullying cheapskate he had always been, but his cat was significantly less kicked and the Radio Neasden journalist noticed the cessation of delivery of said cat’s excretions through his letterbox, so ‘The Key to the Mystical Secrets of Amen-Ho-Tep’ had some beneficial effect, at least.

  Justin was now leaning against the Perspex south wall of the pyramid, dressed in a pair of running shorts, vest bearing the legend ‘It’s Sweat, Fatso’, a pair of expensive trainers and an ill-advised headband, set off by the earpiece and boom mike of his mobile telephone.

  “Is that RAM?” he yelled, his London twang shaded around the edges by an assumed transatlantic patina. He listened for a moment.

  “WORM? What the hell is WORM? I’ve never heard of it.” As he listened to the reply he strolled towards the window which gave him a panoramic view of Neasden High Street.

  “Well, I don’t get the point. What’s RAM, then? No, don’t tell me, I’ve only got one life and I don’t intend to waste it on this shit. I’ll get some kid to work it out for me. Oh, but thanks for the stuff for that article; did you get the copy?”

  He walked to the wall laden with fake photographs, where Nelson Mandela and Shakin’ Stevens were now accompanied by a huge blow up of the cover of ‘WORLD I.T.’, the seminal trade rag for those in the world of computing, which hung in the centre of the wall. On the print, Marchant was looking cool and vaguely threatening leaning in a doorway in some kind of homage to the cover of Lennon’s Rock and Roll album. Above his head was the strapline ‘Justin time to save IT?’ He touched the glass reverently. He had read the interview in the magazine at least a hundred times, some of them in the bathroom. Jazz, his mate who had a business illegally unlocking stolen mobile phones, had spent hours teaching him the key high-level jargon to give him the aura of a North London Bill Gates. The same Jazz was now at the other end of the phone trying to educate him on the very very very basics of computer technology, so that he could figure out whether one of his wage slaves was leading him up the garden path, and should be summarily fired and reported to the immigration authorities so that Justin wouldn’t have to pay him any notice.

  “Great. Yeah. I’m a guru now, matey. Anyway, gotta go now, call on the other line. Probably Steve Jobs, heh heh. Laters.” Marchant flipped the telephone closed and walked over to his desk, placing the telephone carefully on the blotter which he never used because he hadn’t mastered joined up writing, let alone fountain pens, and then strode towards the door, rolling his neck and swinging his arms in huge circles.

  Across the road from the office in the Neasden branch of Starbucks, as workers strode past at the end of their business day, a white-faced figure in a long black cloak, scythe resting against the wall, was making sucking noises with his straw, scraping the bottom of his iced chocolate macchiato for dregs. In front of him was the article in World IT magazine, Marchant in shirtsleeves in the middle of the page, with those metal elastic bands around his upper arms which suggested he should have bought a shirt whose sleeves weren’t too long in the first place. He stared at the camera, moody and motivated to save the world through benevolent implementation of binary arrangement. The Reaper had read and re-read the interview and knew he had his man. Get a leader in world computing, they had said, but one whose sudden demise won’t stand out, not one of the biggies. Get us someone who can fix the Afternet. What a first job! First time with the old death wish and not only was he to bring back one who would walk into the cognisance of the gods, but it was an early take! Some Reapers worked for centuries without being allowed to pre-empt nature. He would be on the Council of AARGH! in no time.

  He stood, wiped a chunk of muffin from his cowl, collected the scythe, and walked outside to a payphone, where he punched in the number he had derived from the Black Pages before his descent. Marchant had reached the door when the phone burst into life with the theme from ‘Girls of The Playboy Mansion’. He paused, tempted to let the call go to voicemail, but he had a couple of very big and potentially lucrative jobs in the offing and so on reflection he turned and retraced his steps past the pyramid to the desk, donned the headset and pressed the key.

  “Marchant. Talk to me.”

  “Hello. It’s time” A voice of utter darkness at the other end of the line temporarily discomfited Marchant, who looked involuntarily at the closed office door.

  “Time?” he said, regaining his street poise, “Since when did the Speaking Clock make outgoing calls?”

  “You don’t understand. And that’s understandable.” The voice remained calm and vaguely hypnotic. “I mean it’s your time. Don’t bother trying to run.”

  Marchant looked down at the jogging kit he was wearing, scanned the room for planted CCTV. “I’m going to run. I run every day. I don’t know who you are, but this place is protected, so don’t bother trying to get in.”

  “Don’t be alarmed.” In the telephone box the Reaper did his best to keep his calm whilst contemplating the card showing the rear end of a ‘Swedish Model’ who would apparently offer him correction at very reasonable rates.

  “Oh, I’m alarmed, chum. All entry points, cameras at the gates, v
ery loud bell alerting the local plod. I’m totally alarmed.” He had walked to the window, and could see, across the road in telephone box, a very tall figure in some kind of Halloween outfit. London, he thought. Trick or treat in August. Disconcertingly, the figure looked up at that moment, white faced, and seemed to give a fluttery wave.

  “This is Justin Marchant to whom I am speaking, isn’t it?”

  “Yes”

  “Good. Then if you insist, try to run, and be alarmed.” The Reaper had hoped his first job wouldn’t be a squealer, but Marchant’s semi-aggressive stance was somehow even more disconcerting.

  “Well,” Justin drew the blinds over the window, “thanks for the advice, now go and bother someone else.” He closed the line, took off the headset and laid it on the desk, stared at it for a moment. “Nutter” he muttered.

  Across the road, the Reaper looked at the beeping handset and slowly replaced it in the cradle. “Nutter” he said, looking up from the telephone box to the building opposite. After a moment, the short figure of Marchant exited the glass doors, stopped at the top of the steps, and fiddled with a large plastic watch on his wrist, then set off down the steps and away to his left at a regular pace. The Reaper took from his pocket a sheet of paper with a long list of names, ran his finger down to Marchant and circled the name with a pencil. Newly purposeful, he pushed at the door of the box, to no effect. He heaved at it again, but it wouldn’t budge an inch. After a couple more shoves he was pleased to see a young man approach the box and, without looking inside, begin to tug heartily at the handle. The combination of their efforts finally caused the door to spring free, and the Reaper shot out of the box and tumbled to the floor in a mess of black cloth. Regaining his feet he turned to thank the man for his help, but saw that his saviour had ignored him completely and was urinating fulsomely inside the box. The Reaper dusted himself down and set off in the direction taken by Marchant, muttering something about standards. He was barely twenty metres further on when he spotted the yellow light of a cab, and waved his scythe in its general direction. Long black cloak, monastic cowl, two metre high agricultural implement, white, lined face: satisfied that there was nothing out of the ordinary, the taxi driver brought his vehicle to a screeching halt.