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

by Peter Empringham

  “Justin, how are we going to have time to take the van back and get you guys to the tunnel?”

  Justin smirked. “Easy. We’re not taking the van back.”

  “What?” Marcel looked as though he was slipping into murderous mode. “What about that ring? It’s got to be worth thousands. If I’d have seen it in the stuff we won I would have stolen it myself.” Mary gave him a look. He shrugged. “I would.”

  “You wouldn’t have seen it in the stuff we won. I stole it before anybody saw it.”

  “I can’t believe it!” Mary looked from Justin to Marcel and back. “You’re just a bunch of criminals. Thanks God I’m staying here. I couldn’t trust either of you.”

  “But you gave him the ring!” Marcel said, voice reaching a threatening pitch.

  “Relax,” said Justin, “it’s a fake.”

  “Really?” Marcel looked, for the first time with Justin, impressed.

  “Oh yeah. Realised when I looked at it again. Good fake, though. Lot’s like Capone, a bit impressed by the shine on things, so it will take him a while to find out whilst he’s trying to find a market for the silver plate from the sacking of the churches. Meanwhile, we’ve got transport.”

  Marcel was definitely feeling more commonality with the driver. Mary was shocked.

  “You’re unbelievable, the pair of you. What a pair of crooks. Thank heavens you haven’t corrupted Geoffrey, although God knows how. Alright Geoffrey?” she said over her shoulder.

  The turnip puller, jostling around in the back of the van amongst the racks and cables, didn’t answer, finding ample entertainment in the reflections from the disco ball he had smuggled out of the lock-up in his borrowed tank top.

  CHAPTER 19

  To most people, whether arriving, departing, or driving past as fast as possible, the shopping nirvana that is Brent Cross, North London, is an architectural canker on the scale of Eastern Europe in its entirety. Even those odd people who find the simple act of shopping a source of enjoyment find the anticipation sucked from them as they wait in the line of Japanese family saloons queuing for the retail experience. Their shopaholics’ sullen demeanour is as nothing compared with the hysterical regret of those who idiotically thought ‘I’ll just pop into Brent Cross for a sandwich.’

  Geoffrey, and, despite himself, Marcel, had been amazed by the constant stream of light and noise in this visited environment, the colours from the shops and stores, the tower buildings glowing with energy. The sheer teeming weight and infinity of the activity in the streets was breathtaking after years in the control room. Geoffrey had seen more people in the few hours in this place than he had seen in his life. As they had driven to the Shopping Centre, the eternal ebb and flow of the traffic, the blinking lights, the occasional roar as a motorcycle zipped by, the endless rows of houses, had an almost hypnotic effect.

  The entrance to the Cross, though, was like a Rubicon, as though the slip road had some unseen opening to a world of pain. The van inched forward in the slow moving traffic, and then repeatedly picked up speed and halted sharply as unseeing and unhearing pedestrians meandered around the car park laden with their purchases, oblivious to existence of any other. Justin finally found a roadway devoid of both vehicular and human traffic and gunned the van towards the huge store with the red neon signage that lay ahead. He parked, appallingly, in the closest space he could see.

  They stepped from the van and helped Geoffrey to climb, still clutching his turnip, out of the rear doors. Marcel sniffed the air and looked around. At this end of the car park, away from the main body of retail activity, it was very quiet. The sun had disappeared and the evening was beginning to grow chill; a breeze wafted a discarded Monster Munch packet past their feet, and a mangy brown dog sniffed around the corner of the brick walls.

  “What is this place?” Marcel thrust his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders as though freezing.

  “Last Stop.” Said Justin, cheerily. “Come, on, let’s get this done. Oh, and don’t get frustrated. It will only slow us down.”

  The dog had trotted closer, and was only a few feet away when it stopped as if hearing a silent whistle, pricked up its ears and stared at them. Justin and Geoffrey had begun to walk towards the store, but Mary noticed Marcel staring at the dog and then casting a quick glance at Justin, who hitched up his trousers as he walked.

  “Oh shit.” Said Marcel.

  The dog suddenly shot across the ground and seized Justin by the leg, clawing at his trousers and snarling, wild-eyed. Geoffrey tried to shoo it away in a rather effete manner, but Justin was more animated, not surprisingly, and fiercely shook the attacked leg whilst kicking at the beast with the other. Mary watched open mouthed. The fabric ripped, and the dog snatched a mouthful of the cloth, worrying and pawing it on the ground as Justin and Geoffrey took the opportunity to make their escape, running to the automatic doors. The dog looked up, abandoned the destroyed length of cloth, and hurtled after them; the two men dodged inside as the yapping behind them approached, and there was a thud as the dog crashed against the closed glass.

  Mary looked at Marcel, whose face was impassive. “The suit?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Houndstooth. Real Hound.” They followed the others to the store.

  Aiden Dunne, Junior Sales Consultant at PC World Brents Cross, was in view of the end of his six month trial period with the company. In fact he was approaching the end of his sixth six month trial period with six different companies, having thus far failed to impress any employer sufficiently to have the privilege of being taken on to the permanent staff complement. He had, thus far, failed in beds (Snoo’s of Streatham), carpets and tiling, industrial shelving, incontinence devices for care homes, telesales for a freesheet, and a job supposedly driving for somebody called Lot The Latvian.

  He was a very pleasant and enthusiastic young man, but he knew as much about Computing and IT as he had about lumbar support, and his sales for the month of two memory sticks and a three pin plug put his dream of Employee of The Month as far away as the likelihood of him not being back amongst the jobseekers in a week’s time.

  Being relatively shy, and finding it difficult to communicate (in contrast with most of the other staff, who were not shy, and found it difficult to communicate), he had decided to base his approach to sales on approaching people who were like him, on the grounds that this may establish an immediate bond and rapport. Unfortunately, most of the other solitary, sex-obsessed young men with worrying skin conditions who came into his branch of PC World were, by definition, geeks with a deep knowledge of computing and gaming. Not surprisingly, he therefore more often than not found himself gazing blankly at gangly youths banging on about gigahertz, megapixels, and BIOS sub-routines, at which point he had to go and get Kevin, who had been there nearly a year and knew how to bullshit.

  Times being desperate, with only two days to go before another failure to win the top employee prize and indeed to secure further employment, he had already decided to relax his rule about which customers to approach when the automatic doors opened and an unlikely group strolled into the store. There was a good looking bloke in a sharp suit and wraparound shades, with an attractive woman who was probably his wife or girlfriend, if only on the grounds that she looked assured and self-confident and it seemed unlikely that she would be with the harassed, spivvy looking guy in a houndstooth suit with torn trousers at least two sizes too big. The other man, with a hunched demeanour and weathered face, clutching a root vegetable, must be the granddad on day release from wherever he was being treated.

  “Be bold,” he thought, “strange group, can’t want anything too technical, just a flatscreen TV or a mobile phone with big buttons for the old geezer.”

  Aiden went across with his best purposeful stride, smiled at the woman and addressed himself to the man whose clothes fitted best. He briefly saw himself reflected in the sunglasses, which nearly broke the patina of assurance he was trying to project. The face in the mirror looked too nervou
s and young to know anything.

  “Hello, I’m Aiden, how may I help you?” The sunglasses stared blankly back.

  “We need some external storage.” Said the woman. Aiden thought of directing them to IKEA further down the North Circular and then realised that maybe she was talking computing.

  “Of course,” he said, stalling, “come this way.” The three who followed did not notice the older gentleman, whose head had been jerking frantically around the ever-changing displays, wander as though hypnotised towards the display of massive screens at that moment showing in unison an ancient episode of Gilligan’s Island.

  Aiden led the woman and the two men through the aisles, past mobiles, cameras, and the Special One Day Only Printer Offer to the shelves he vaguely remembered as having something to do with data storage. With some relief he saw the pricing cards proclaiming the amazing value of his store’s range, and with renewed confidence plucked a USB flash stick from a metal peg.

  “There you go,” he said to the man in the shades, one eye on the pack in his hand so as to read the product description, “twenty gigabytes. That should get all of your photos.” He saw the man glance towards the woman, and followed his look, holding the device towards her. “What colour would you like?” he asked.

  Mary, containing her fury at being bypassed, eased him aside to better observe the available range of devices. She seemed to have been ‘dead’ for ages, but now back on earth the same casual disregard for her knowledge and ability continued to reign.

  She picked up a flat black slab of plastic from the shelf.

  “How much does this hold?” She watched him peer at the product description, recognised his desire to help despite apparently knowing nothing about the subject, felt the anger dissipate. He was just a kid trying to do a job.

  “Er, that would be a terabyte.” Aiden read from the box. Marchant snorted, spotting a chance to demonstrate his superior knowledge.

  “I think you’ll find that”s a cartoon character.’ His voice oozed disdain. Aiden and Mary stared at him. Marcel could have been looking anywhere. Aiden remembered the twenty minutes of customer training he had been given, kept his voice modulated and tried to avoid the condescension of the one who knows a little to the one who knows nothing.

  “I think you’ll find that you’re thinking of Terrahawks.” He said. Mary, not feeling the same restraint, laughed briefly as Marchant suddenly paid particular attention to the overlong sleeves of his borrowed suit.

  Aiden felt the necessity to break the silence which ensued.

  “A terabyte.” He said. “That’s like…loads.”

  “Thank you Aiden.” Said Mary. “That’s very helpful. We’ll take it.”

  His heart leapt. A sale. With a new assurance he guided them to the payment counter, promising to check that it was in stock. The smartly-dressed man fingered with distaste the display of garish ‘phone socks’ as the young man keyed information into the computer.

  “You’re in luck,” he said, “it’s in stock. I’ll go and get it for you.”

  “Wait.” The words from the woman were like a dagger to his soul. She had changed her mind. She would buy a £9.99 battery charger and he would lose his job, by the middle of next week he would be wearing a red hat and asking people whether they wanted fries.

  “How many have you got?” she said. A little bewildered he jerked back to the screen and told her they had eight.

  “We’ll take them.”

  “What? All of them?”

  “All of them.” He was in such a state of shock he hadn’t the will to stop her from coming around the counter where CUSTOMERS ARE NEVER ALLOWED and playing with his stock computer. He was looking at her as she did it, but his eyes were glazed as he tried to figure out the commission on eight times £88.99, and she had to prod him to make them actually see anything again. On the screen was the stock list of all of the large external storage devices. There were a dozen different types, with stocks ranging from two to twenty five.

  “We’ll have all of these.” She kept his gaze. He gulped.

  “I’ll go and get them.” He said weakly.

  “No, Aiden. Send someone else. We need some more stuff and we don’t have much time.”

  It was pure serendipity that it Kevin happened to be passing at that moment. Aiden had lost count of the number of times that Kevin had sneeringly sent him to the stock room for his latest sale, or blithely told a customer “Sorry about Aiden, he’s new here” as the youth had struggled to explain the difference between hi-fi and wi-fi. And he had a Ford Fiesta Ghia with expanded wheel arches. And he was allegedly knobbing Sharon from the camera counter. And his picture always adorned the employee of the month Hall of Fame. Well, no longer. With bad grace, Kevin, who had assumed that Aiden’s call to him would once again lead to another sale, more commission, another month as top dog, shuffled off to the stockroom to gather together several grand’s worth of computer storage.

  Within another twenty minutes, the aisle of PC World was littered with the packaging of PCs as Aiden, Mary, Justin, and Marcel made use of the 125 piece tool set to remove the processors and memory cards from the entire stock. Kevin, with increasing bad grace, ferried the pristine kit to the dis-assembly line.

  It was the best day of Aiden’s brief life. When he pressed the ‘Total’ key on the payment computer the number read £93,222.99. He resolved to use some of his commission to buy a book to tell him what a terabyte may be.

  He was accustomed, though, to having the glass of champagne dashed from his lips at the last moment, and his heart fell when, as he was clearing his throat to say “Cash or card?” there was a cheer from a far corner of the store and in unison the heads of the three customers turned with what he took to be looks of long-suffering dismay.

  “Just a minute.” the well-dressed man spoke for the first time, a distinct French accent. In unison they turned and walked towards the source of the noise.

  A small crowd had gathered around a huge video display. In front of them, a man in a shirt of frightening texture and a tank top of garish design was waving his arms in triumph. He faced a large screen on which a pudgy computer generated character in tennis whites and a headband was holding aloft an enormous trophy. The man (the real one, not the one on the screen) caught sight of the arrival of the threesome and spoke excitedly.

  “Marcel! You’ve got to try this! It’s fantastic! You wave this thing around” he indicated a plastic tablet in his hand “and that fat kid on the screen does what you do. I’ve just beaten Robert Fedburger to win Wimbledon or something. It’s fantastic! Can we get one? Oo, and look at this!”

  Mary grabbed Marcel’s arm as he tried to head off Geoffrey’s move to the X-Box dance mat, having detected that the Frenchman may not have been looking to gently lead his comrade back into reality.

  “Leave him there. It’s quicker.” She said, and thrust a Wii and a pile of games into Marcel’s arms. They turned and walked back towards the counter as Geoffrey, arms flailing and eyes glued to the flashing screen before him, began to stomp incompetently through One Nation Under A Groove.

  Their return was met by a hyperventilating Aiden, who was looking at the three feet high stack of memory units and the empty PC boxes piled high around the aisles having convinced himself that he had been the victim of some terrible practical joke. It was only when Justin pulled out the biggest pile of cash the young man had ever seen that his heartbeat began to return to normal. Between them they counted out the ninety-odd grand for the computing and the three hundred quid for the Wii, and Aiden stashed it under the counter, the till not having been designed for such quantities of notes. In every space on the notes reserved for the monarch he saw his own, grinning from the Hall of Fame wall display. And possibly even from the pillow of Sharon from accounts.

  He handed over to Mary the longest till receipt the shop had ever seen, and the two pence change.

  “Would you be interested in extended warranty for only…” he glanced at the screen
, “three thousand seven hundred and twelve pounds?”

  Justin snorted. “I don’t think so mate. Where this is going I don’t think we’ll be popping back for an exchange.”

  Marchant pushed the huge stock trolley laden with electronics towards the door. Marcel grabbed Geoffrey from the dance-mat, where he was struggling with YMCA, and the troupe began their trek back to the Afterlife.

  CHAPTER 20

  There were no organisers of Deadstock. There were no online ticket agencies, no advertising campaigns, no bookings of acts or petty artistic spats about who was headlining, no security goons and no police raids. In that respect, it was infinitely more akin to its seventies inspiration at Yasgur’s farm than the early 21st century money-sucking industry which followed. Just as Devil’s Docks had become a magnet for those of a nefarious bent, Deadstock was a vision of what the living could achieve once given the freedom granted by being dead.

  It had started with just a few people singing songs and making music to pass the time, but they were catalysed by the gradual arrival of those who, in life, had captured the imagination of the listening public. The light aircraft industry may not have done much for providing living teenagers with lengthy output from their idols, but it certainly helped Deadstock along by delivering a steady stream of musical legends who had foolishly entrusted their lives to an underdeveloped technology.

  Time, of course, was the other great contributor. This part of the Afterlife was, after all, a group of people bigger than the population of China, the USA, and Europe combined. And they had nothing whatsoever to do.

  It is deemed a truism that the Devil makes work for idle hands, but even Old Nick has to prioritise when faced with billions of them. There were many souls caught in the Afternet’s malfunctioning web much easier to twist to his way of thinking than those who had gravitated to Deadstock, so he generally left them alone. Naturally enough, there were still, over twenty-five years, plenty of instances of theft, physical confrontations, fraudulent sale of green stuff with no mind-altering properties whatsoever, and the other variants on petty crime which would characterise any such musical gathering even pre-death.