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

by Peter Empringham

  “What do you call a French philanderer with singed fingers?” asked Krake. Rotherham said he didn’t know.

  “Burn.” Said Krake, and Rotherham willingly cackled.

  “You do know you’ve only got eight hours to get it going again?” Hermes watched Geoffrey, who seemed to be spending rather too much time making sure all of the boxes were the same way around. Which, to be fair, he was, in an attempt to stave off the awful moment when he might have to actually try to make the thing work. Ganesha had found an empty Quaver packet at the bottom of one of the trolleys and was snorting the thin coating of grease.

  And so it continued. The three of them laboured, in fact staving off the moment when one of them would have to refer to Mary’s instructions, their stacking of the unloaded electronics ever more perfect, lining up edges, coiling and recoiling cables. The four interlopers sat on the sidelines and basically heckled. As you would expect, the Devil’s workers fervently hoped for failure; God’s just expressed the opinion that it depended on the worker’s commitment. It wasn’t really a fair fight.

  At last, after stringing out the organisation of equipment for as long as possible, the constant harping from the sidelines became too much for Justin.

  He stood up, his back aching from the unaccustomed labour, shook a frond of houndstooth trouser leg free from his sock, and looked Krake in his disconcertingly scarlet eye.

  “You! Shut it! I didn’t ask to be here, but I am, and I’ve had enough of your pathetic jokes and griping. If I see that scaly tongue once more I’m going to chop it off, fry it, and eat it with some fava beans. And tell your pathetic sidekick that he’s an ugly little git, and I reckon given the right conditions I could get his horrible tail down his filthy throat, so he would be best to keep his mouth shut. I don’t care anymore, there’s nothing you can do to me worse than has already happened.” Marcel shuddered, both impressed with Justin’s sudden attack of spine and concerned at his naïveté at what punishments were available. Marchant wasn’t finished however.

  “And you.” Hermes had been sniggering at the attack on Krake, and was now leaning forward to perform some hamstring stretches. “Sit down, sit still, and shut up. These people have got serious work to do. Oy, fatso!” Justin drew the attention of the Elephant God, who was rummaging through a cupboard. As he did so the God screamed, leaped backwards and in blind panic, jumped onto a chair, which wobbled precariously.

  “A mouse!” His trunk wavered tremulously towards the cupboard, where, sure enough, some rodent, or possibly Buddhist, was sniffing at the skirting. Justin went to Ganesha and thrust his face close.

  “Shut up, lose some weight. And possibly some arms.”

  Marcel and Geoffrey stared at Marchant. Two silent devils stared at the floor like naughty schoolboys, a preening deity, choirboy incarnate, clasped his hands in front of him and did not stare lovingly at his new trainers, and a small elephant perched silently on a quivering secretary’s chair.

  “Right,” said Justin, picking up the handwritten manual. “Let’s get on, shall we?”

  It cost Mary as much to carry the curry in the taxi as it would have for the taxi. She didn’t blame the driver, because for sure the aroma was going to linger for some time, but she also found she didn’t care. Cash, all of a sudden, had lost it’s allure. The car park at the Edgware Road branch of Aldi was deserted apart from a white Transit, parked in a cavalier fashion as close as possible to the doors. The rain still fell steadily as Mary pressed her face to the glass, banged on it with her open palm, looking for any signs of life within. The taxi pulled away behind her. She drew away and looked for handy tools in the event that she would have to break into Aldi. Which, she assumed, would be a first.

  In the Staff Relaxation Facility, at the rear of the store, Deniece Murray had been in a kind of reverie. The facility, which was actually a cordoned off part of the stock room, had no cappuccino machine, croissant toaster, or even chocolate dispensing machine. It had a kettle, cappuccino sachets (which are not the same thing), and a microwave for cuppa soup, layers of which graced its interior.

  Deniece, blessed with the responsibility for locking up tonight, had treated herself to a Coba Cola, which tasted nothing like the real thing. Despite the dreariness of the surroundings, she was happy to delay the moment she had to lock the doors and head for home; the bus ride cheek to cheek with strangers, the inevitable arguments with her parents, the showdown with her car-thief brother. She heard the banging from the front of the store only after it had happened a few times. She sat upright, then picked herself up, drained the remains of the Cola, and walked into the store.

  Twice in her short career she had come to the door after everyone else had gone, and both times it had been an unpleasant experience, confronting firstly glue sniffers, and then a determined flasher. She held little hope of not seeing a runny nose, or worse, this time. The rain was running down the outside of the glass, but as she went closer to the door she realised that this time it was a woman outside, which at least reduced the odds on a pressed willy.

  Deniece knew that whatever time you close a shop, there is always someone who remembers that they need some bread just too late. They reached for the ketchup, or the salt, or milk for their tea (or indeed the cans of extra strength Scandinavian Pilsner) and it wasn’t there. They threw on a coat over whatever man made fire risk fabric they were wearing and padded in their slippers to the locked and barred doors of the store. They then looked askance at the enormous sign with the opening times in bold type, and went off, grumbling, to pay twenty percent more at a shop which could be bothered to stay open longer. Then, bizarrely, a few days later they did the same again.

  The staff became accustomed to ignoring the whole process. They would catch a glimpse of a shuffling character out of the corner of their eye. From what they assumed to be an invisible vantage point they would watch as the face pressed against the glass, feel able to move again as the figure moved away. This evening, Deniece, who had been cleaning one of the check outs and was therefore in full view of the door, knew she had been spotted, heard the insistent tapping, and wandered over simply to direct the interloper to the sign with the opening times though a combination of silent mouthing of words and very basic mime.

  She could hear the rain thrum on the glass porch at the front of the store as she walked towards the doors to drive the woman away so that she could finish up and go home. Something about the face against the glass looked familiar, though, and the unpleasantness of the weather outside made her, for some reason, open the doors enough for the woman to come inside.

  She was in a state. Drenched, hair flattened against her skull, make up running, and with the heavy carrier bags in her hands. Deniece realised she had just admitted a bag lady, albeit one with a tinge of familiarity.

  “What have you got there?” Deniece nodded towards the bags, which the woman had gratefully placed on the floor.

  Mary looked down, wondering what that had to do with anything.

  “Rogon Josh, Chicken Jalfrezi, Chicken Do Piaza, Sheek kebabs, lots of pilau rice, channa massala, mushroom bhaji, three onion bhajis, twelve popadoms, two plain, two keema naan, raita, tarka dal. And a side of vindaloo sauce.”

  “You must be very hungry.” Mary, head dripping, looked down at the food, which she had ordered, almost in a daze, from her flat. She realised it was if she had ordered for four. She looked back up at Deniece.

  “Can I get into your freezer?” Deniece realised where she had seen the woman before, but much drier and without the bags. She had, so much earlier, walked out behind the cold cuts with the three men. The freezer had become so much more interesting then it had ever been before. She looked at the woman.

  “Do you live in there?” she asked, as though this were a logical explanation. Mary wiped her face, wondering what possible rational explanation she could give. She couldn’t find one.

  “No,” she said, “it’s a portal to another dimension.”

  Deniece stared, im
passive. Mary couldn’t be sure whether she was wondering whether to call Social Services or had gone into a coma. Finally she spoke.

  “And in this other dimension, they like curry?”

  “That’s what I intend to find out. It could save the world.”

  Deniece sniffed and cast her eyes around the supermarket.

  “What would be the point of that?” she said, which was not quite the response Mary had been seeking. Despite her apparent indifference to the continuing existence of humanity, Deniece thought that all in all there could be little harm caused by letting a saturated woman with a huge curry into the freezer. She had sneaked a quick peek after the three men had entered with their laden trolleys, and there was not a trace. So either this woman would disappear in the same way or someone would find a frozen stiff with a takeaway in the morning. No real skin off her nose either way. She turned to walk down towards the back of the store and Mary followed.

  When they reached the cold meats counter, now shorn of its contents, and humming quietly white, she turned and gestured to Mary.

  “There you go,” she said.

  Mary looked at the young woman, then at the huge, solid freezer door. This was mad. For all she knew, she’d dreamed the whole thing. “Nice brooch.” She said, looking at the beautiful fleur de lys of diamonds glittering incongruously on Deniece’s breast. The girl looked down at it, felt it with the tips of her fingers, smiled wistfully.

  “Thanks. He gave it to me, the good looking one.”

  “I’ll bet he did.” Said Mary. With a deep breath she opened the freezer door, poked her head inside. Cold air rose in wisps from the shelves of deep frozen goods. She was about to find out if the dim light at the back of the container stayed on when the door was closed, wondered whether, should it transpire that by some irrationality this was not the portal to another dimension after all, smearing herself in curry would protect her from the cold.

  She nodded to Deniece, and the trainee manager smiled weakly at her, sensing the trepidation, before closing the door with a thud. Inside, the truth about the light was revealed. The darkness was almost sharp with the cold. What happened now? How did this repository of pizzas and oven chips become her passport to eternity? One obvious way, of course, was that she would simply die, but having seen the chaos for those who didn’t control their entry to the afterlife, Mary was loath to submit to the randomness of it. She closed her eyes for a moment, tried to picture how she had arrived here before, felt a floating as her body temperature plummeted.

  When she opened her eyes again, she was still enveloped by the dark, but either she was beyond saving or the cold had somehow dissipated. A soft orange lamp she couldn’t remember seeing when she entered was glowing pathetically on the wall beside her; she looked closely and saw that it was ineffectively illuminating a small lever. With difficulty, the handles of the carrier bag cutting into her hand, she raised her arm and pressed it. With her luck the lever would simply turn out the orange light. Then there would only be darkness and oblivion.

  In fact, either death by freezing was characterised by the sensation of having your internal organs removed one by one, inspected by invisible eyes and then replaced in more or less the same place, whilst songbirds swooped around your head humming the theme tune from The Flintstones, or the lever was doing what she had hoped.

  When it all stopped and she pushed open the door, the short Spaniard was still lounging in the departure area, flicking in a bored manner through a tattered copy of Time Out which probably came back unnoticed from a no so recent visit.

  “Alright Gary?” she said, trying to ignore the queasiness in her stomach. He glanced up, eyed her up and down.

  “I remember when this place used to have some class. People went through there with a real purpose, like making a relative’s life a misery by moving furniture or helping hacks make cable TV programmes. Now you get sent for a takeaway.” He resumed his assessment of live gigs in London in 1996. Mary set down the bags and spent a moment tidying her hair, a glimpse of which she had caught in a shiny metal panel. She looked like Sideshow Bob.

  More happy with her physical appearance, she wearily picked up the heavy bags.

  “No chance of a hand, is there, Gary?”

  He eyed her wearily, tucked the magazine under his arm and slowly applauded.

  “Oh, very good. Everyone’s a comedian.Which way did they go?” He gestured to turn left, and she turned and walked away. As she trudged slowly down a seemingly infinite, dull corridor, she realised that were she to repent this decision, the leisure in which to do it would be endless.

  To no-one’s amazement greater than their own, Justin, Marcel, and Geoffrey had hooked up all of the purchased equipment to the Afternet computer. Mary had taken the trouble to provide diagrams which would have graced IKEA, and they had diligently connected cables, plugged in modules, and watched with mounting disbelief and relief in equal measure as LEDs lit, then flashed, then remained steady exactly as she had described.

  Hermes, who had practised some sprint starts in the cavernous equipment room, had without cessation picked holes in their activity, as though he had the faintest idea of what they should be doing. Ganesha constantly inspected his several watches and complained about having been sent to monitor this activity, which was clearly interfering in some way with his dietary habits.

  The high spirits they had taken back to the control room did not take long to dissipate. After the elation of following the picture story to assemble the kit they were confronted with written instructions as to how to programme The Afternet to begin the lengthy process of catching up on the backlog of millennia. They tried looking at it together, then individually, then stared at the keyboard as they read the notes as though this would help.

  “Time’s running out, you know.” Hermes’ relish in this statement was disconcerting, “Old Nick must be licking his lips around now, Marcel, waiting for your ass to be his again. And, well Geoffrey, it’s turnip time!”

  Justin gave the blond haired speedster a withering look. “Has anybody told you Hermes that you are a real shit?” Marcel looked at him with something like admiration. Justin felt good. He had just dissed a God. Again.

  “What’s a DOS Prompt, Justin?” Geoffrey was still looking at Mary’s briefing as though there must be some simple clue.

  “I know it only confirms the view you already have of me, but I have no idea.”

  “What about ‘Enter the Boot Sequence?’”

  “I dunno. Sounds like an unsuccessful Bruce Lee movie.”

  They looked at the big clock on the wall, the hands inexorably edging towards their deadline. Marcel had a vision of the fires being stoked anew in preparation for the torture of the flesh that had avoided the pain for so long. He grabbed the written notes.

  “It’s got to be here! It can’t be that hard! We’ve managed to put all that stuff together; the lights are on like she said. It’s got to be simple from here, surely?”

  “Only if you know what you are doing.” Mary’s voice said, in his head. The threesome stared at the screen in front of them, which just read: SYSTEM FAILURE>. The game was up.

  “Easy for you to say.” Muttered Justin.

  Marcel shot him a glance. “What?”

  “Oh, nothing. I just heard that know-all telling me I need to know what I am doing.” Geoffrey and Marcel both looked at him.

  “Me too.” Said Geoffrey. They sat and thought how easy this would be were Mary there to solve the problem for them.

  “Oh, wow!” They heard Ganesha lumber across the room. “Is that for me? What is it?” The snorting and sniffing he took up was so distasteful they glued their eyes to the screen as though it would leap into life at any moment.

  “Curry. For four.” It was Mary’s voice, then Ganesha grunting in disgust.

  “I don’t really like Indian food”, said the elephant God.

  It was Geoffrey who first made the connection. They were all hearing her voice in their heads. There
was a pervading aroma of fenugreek and chilli. He turned to look at the woman standing at the door, two large bags at her feet.

  “Mary!” he yelled, leaping out of his chair and running over to embrace her. Justin and Marcel, who to be fair, had a more complex view of human nature, and would not be convinced by mere physical proof that someone had given up life to join them, swivelled slowly towards the kerfuffle. Geoffrey was weeping copiously, his back (which had a large piece of chewing gum attached to the borrowed tank top) shuddering as he hugged Mary. She looked over his shoulder to Justin and Marcel, nodded towards the bags on the floor.

  “I brought us a curry.” She said.

  Marcel, hunched on the secretary’s chair, couldn’t take his eyes off the girl. Justin couldn’t take his eyes off the bags.

  “What did you get me?” he asked. “It’s mine, by the way. I don’t know how you do it, but I don’t go for all that sharing everything stuff. I like to have my own curry. Can I have a look?”

  Even though the hands of the clock were inching towards the feared deadline, Mary worked with precise calm. She over-rode the failure, programmed The Afternet to see the huge new amounts of memory and processing as part of itself, and wrote a script which, she hoped, would leave the Visigoths free to roam until they decided otherwise.

  “This is it,” she said, as the scuffling sound of foil trays being opened and plates being laid out filled the room behind her. Like millions before her she applied herself to the keyboard and whispered the most important three words in the English Language. CONTROL, ALT, DELETE. The Afternet, brainless but intelligent, a trivial agglomeration of sand, metal, and plastic, stopped for the first time for centuries. As if it were drawing a breath, the equipment room fell silent, and then a single light blinked, others joined, sequences were engaged as the system rebooted.

  Mary watched the blinking cursor on the screen. Behind her all was silent. Even Hermes had ceased hamstring stretches and watched the VDU; in its black screen the faces of the God, Justin, Marcel, and Geoffrey reflected, anxiety in every feature. An elephant’s trunk waved above their heads. The clock ticked, unnoticed. The display beneath it trumpeted that under the umbrella of a dripping rainforest in Venezuela, the very last- and very lonely- Vinton’s Auto-Rectal Vine Slug disappeared up it’s own fundament. Spiced food cooled unnoticed on the counter. Breath was held, and death fell silent.