At last, a line of green script appeared. Then another and then a torrent of lines sliding up the screen, incomprehensible, becoming a green blur, then it stopped. A cursor again. Inexorable, binary, on and off.
“Has it-” Mary held up a hand. The screen flickered and then turned aquamarine. The words THE AFTERNET appeared in a deep red wine colour.
They disappeared, the screen cleared. A square of white blinked in the bottom left hand corner. Somewhere in the forests, fields, deserts, shanty towns and dark streets of the world between earth and infinity, a small segment of the fabric of space wobbled for a flake of time.
The square spewed a line of script as the hands of the control room clock pointed vertically.
DE RIOS, SALOME. B. 12/02/1731. D. 12/02/1731. HEAVEN.
A child. Crying on the mortal coil for mere hours.
The script jumped upwards as another line filled, then another and then the screen was a flow of data, streaming upwards, names and dates, decisions. Mary leaned her forehead forward onto the cool table, and then stared back at the screen which jumbled with words as The Afternet worked its magic.
“We have lift off.” She said. They jumped in the air, high fives all round, whooping and turning back to repeatedly confirm to themselves that this was not a drill, that at last the dead were meeting their makers. They hugged, laughed, and pointed to the screen in amazement.
After a few moments they stopped, and gazed at the stream of information on the screen. There was a relieved, awful silence.
It was broken by Ganesha. “Can I have this Naan?” He said.
In a field somewhere in the Afterlife, where thousands had gathered to listen to music, hold long philosophical conversations and suffer the effects of deeply unhygienic waste management, the sky had darkened and spits and spots of rain were falling, largely ignored by the throng. Ron, Ethel, and Guntrick were relaxing towards the back of the crowd, lulled into inaction by the lengthy guitar noodling of a group of hairy men on the stage in the distance. They were immune to the irony of being dead, surrounded by thousands of dead people, listening to The Grateful Dead. Live.
Adwahl had been engrossed in a deep discussion with two women who were making batik; putting forward his own ideas about potential colour mixes, but now rumbled towards them, picking his way gently through seated groups of fellow festival-goers. Ron, who had over the years learned that in general the actual interest quotient of Adwahl’s information was generally in inverse proportion to his level of excitement, scratched the edge of his steering wheel and hoisted himself onto one elbow. The Visigoth stood before them hopping from foot to foot.
“What is it Adwahl?” asked Ethel, gently.
“There’s a woman over there who says her baby’s gone.”
“She’s probably just joining in with one of the songs,” said Ron, “that’s what they are all about.”
“No, really. I was standing right by her, trying to convince the fabric ladies that cerise and mauve don’t go, then she started crying and shouting.”
Ron knew that this was the downside of the authority and esteem he had generated amongst the Visigoths. Just because he had thrilled them with tales of the evolution of the vacuum cleaner (though he had not entirely convinced them of the technology behind bagless suction, largely because he was making it up), they had a touching belief in his knowledge of all subjects and expected him to fix problems for everyone.
He sighed briefly and struggled to his feet. He helped Ethel to stand, and, joined by Guntrick, followed the bouncing Adwahl to the scene of the drama, the grass now slippery beneath his feet. It was only when picking his way through a large company of Chinese men talking very loudly and cooking something unspeakable in a large pot, that he glimpsed behind him. True to form, like a magnet he drew behind him the entirety of the Visigoth battalion, the stately black clad figure of Abraham Lincoln, and Staveley-Down, back from swapping war stories. When he stopped, they stopped; when he strode onwards, they did the same. ‘How did this happen?’ he thought. The little man with the steering wheel in his chest had become a guru in nylon.
Adwahl looked pleased that the very localised rumpus he had described was still in spate. A very tired woman was being hugged and comforted by another as she sobbed. At her side was an empty crib made from ill-matched bits of wood they had gathered over time.
“What happened, love?”
Ethel touched the woman softly on the shoulder. She looked up, her face moving from a look of gratitude at the concern from the matronly lady to a hint of concern as she took in the accompanying retinue. Through her sobs she said that she was rocking the baby to sleep, and talking to her friend on the other side of the crib when just suddenly the baby disappeared. She said she had barely taken her eyes off the child.
“Is she your baby? I mean really yours?” asked Ethel.
“Well, she kind of is now. I died about a week after I had my own baby, and then when I came here, I found her just lying there crying, hungry. I fed her. I’ve been feeding her for thirty years, so I guess she is mine, kind of.”
“You’ve been breast-feeding for thirty years?” exclaimed Ron. The woman nodded tearfully. “Ouch!” he said.
He looked around the surrounding crowd. After some initial interest in the plight of their neighbour, they had returned to their various activities as the music continued unbroken for what seemed like hours. There was no sign of a baby, and besides, the woman said she had been right beside the crib. It seemed just to be one of those strange things that happen when you have a few billion people milling around with not much to do; could even be that in her own grief she had imagined having the baby all this time. But then she said something else which made him start.
“It was just like when people appear, you know? That wobble in the air? Then my baby was gone.” She burst into a new flood of tears.
It was raining harder, the drops now pattering audibly onto the makeshift shelters all around. From the stage there was a loud buzz and a shriek which may well have signified an electrocution. Guntrick had noticed Ron’s puzzled gaze turned upwards.
“What is it, Ron?” he asked.
Ron looked at Guntrick, his glasses speckled with the rain, and then put his arm around Ethel, pulling her close to him.
“ I think they’ve done it, love. I think it’s started, Guntrick. Babies first, that would make sense, wouldn’t it? Easy decision, if you don’t go for Original Sin.”
“What do you mean?” the woman looked to the guru.
“Your baby’s gone to Heaven.” He smiled. “Whatever problem was keeping us here has been fixed. We’re all going to get to where we should be.” His tears joined the rain running down his face.
Guntrick turned to look at his followers, who had taken in Ron’s words, and stared back at their leader. He shrugged, knowing they were all thinking the same thing, wondering if Mary could, would, keep her promise to help them. Looking back to Ron and Ethel, he grabbed them in an enormous hug, oblivious to the animal stench the rain had awakened in his clothing.
“I am pleased for you, my friends. I am happy that you will finally get your just rewards.” Said Gruntrick, emotionally. After what he felt to be the minimum reasonable duration for the demonstration of gratitude at the sentiment, Ron pulled himself from the stifling embrace and took a deep gulp of air.
“I hope you’re right, Guntrick,” said the little man, “I have the feeling this has got a long way to go yet.”
The noises from the stage had silenced the band, their interminable extemporisation replaced by some recorded music. A different voice pealed through the stiffening rainfall as people ran for cover.
The man on the stage asked everyone not to worry about a thing, because everything was going to be alright.
That, thought Ron, remains to be seen.
The plates were smeared with the remains of hot sauces, the odd chickpea, a sliver of chicken here and there. The depth of the feeling of satisfaction was palpable, the system si
lently streaming its heads or tails, even the ultimate demise of St Biza’s Wort unable to dispel the good mood. They sat four abreast, their collective attention drawn from the inexorable progress of The Afternet to the screen above. Around it, there were the feeds from earthly TV; gameshows, cabaret, Italian housewives with their tops off. But they were all glued to the slow action on a monochrome screen, an aircraft hangar, the buzz of an engine, the dark sky. A man in uniform was having a conversation with another in a suit.
“I love this,” said Geoffrey, “it’s so much more realistic.”
“Well, apart from the black and white.” Justin placed his head on his hands, replete.
“That’s why it’s realistic.” Geoffrey looked at the others.
“Oh come on Geoff.” Marcel was feeling good at having eaten food which may or may not have tasted disgusting. “Life’s not in black and white.”
“Mine was.” Said the turnip man.
The others laughed, together, this strange combination of characters. They turned back to the screen, the vicious murdering philanderer, the early English smallholder, the woman who chose death over life. They were rapt at what they watched, almost mouthed the words with the man on the screen, the hard man, his weathered face finding humour in his dire situation “I think,” he said, “this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship”.
End of Book One
FOUND FOOTAGE
It wasn’t ‘found’, and it isn’t strictly speaking footage, but the following fragments are here to add to your enjoyment of this compendium of Afternettery.
CAN YOU FEEL THE FORCE?
To his knowledge, he never met his father. He had the misfortune to spend many miserable hours with the serial cuckold married to his mother, but never had any doubt that the loins of the man who shared his mother’s bed at night were not those of which he was the fruit. How could Marcel be so certain, even at the age when he ran around in a filthy jerkin and hose with the local ragamuffins? What was it about the fifth Vicomte de Branleur that even then established the firm suspicion that another was his true sire?
Whatever planted the seed of doubt (as it were), it was at the age of fourteen that certainty arrived, long after his eye level rose above those unrelated loins. The man was a fool, and he, Marcel, could not possibly be the issue of a fool. That, and the realisation that apparently endless stream of fops, rakes and buff labourers strolling through the kitchens and up the servants’ staircase to his mother’s boudoir were delivering something more rigid than silks, fragrances, or pottage.
Marcel was already ploughing a plentiful supply of furrows amongst the daughters of the tenant farmers (he tried a son, but found the view of pustular shoulder-blades off-putting) by the time his mother’s husband took him to one side to proffer education on the subject of l’amour. He at first had no inkling why this man had suggested they go into the library. It certainly wasn’t to discuss literature- the Vicomte couldn’t read his name without moving his lips.
“It is time, my boy,” the Vicomte adjusted his extravagantly ruffled cuffs, “for you to understand the forces of nature. The blessed intercourse between un homme et une femme.”
From above, his mother’s boudoir, there was a rhythmic thudding interspersed with high-pitched shrieks and moans. It seemed evident that une femme was enjoying blessed intercourse with at least un homme, at least, because Marcel had spotted the muscled twin sons of the blacksmith lurking in the courtyard less than an hour since. As far as he knew, it wasn’t the metal of the chateau that was in need of a pounding. The Vicomte caught his glance to the ceiling.
“Your mama is pursuinga fashionable regime of exercise in the pursuit of vitality and longevity. Downward dog and lunges so she informs me.”
The noises above suggested that both may have been in employment at that very moment.
The thin, effete man, his lips slivers of moisture in a bony face, drivelled on for a while about the process of reproduction, the understanding he had that young blood ran hot, that Marcel would of course, as he had himself (although Marcel doubted it) widely sown some wild oats. He had a way of talking that suggested he was sucking a humbug, his lower lip slithering beneath the upper, mottling the skin of his chin.
‘So.” The Vicomte sniffed deeply upon his scented pomade. “Your status of course means that when you marry, sire children, it will be with a lady; a woman of nobility. Naturally as you are young and riven with desire, women of low birth and lower morals will seek to have the benefit of your manhood. So, when that occurs, and in order to avoid dozens of little Marcels running around, pox-ridden former beauties thumping on the kitchen doors demanding additional scraps, you should use one of these.” With a flourish, he produced a flaccid white tube from the pocket of his breeches, dangling it from pinched fingers. Marcel recoiled.
“What is it?” he gasped.
“It is the intestine of a pig.”
“And what pray, papa, do I do with that?”
“You insert your penis into it, and tie off the end.”
“Of my penis?”
“Of the intestine.”
“Is this instead of inserting my penis into the willing farm-girl?” Marcel appreciated that this circumstance would entirely avoid the problem of misplaced seed.
‘No. As well as.” The Vicomte said.
Marcel took a moment to envisage the scene in his mind’s eye.
“Ha!” He barked a laugh even as the lunges from above reached an accelerated climax. “As if anyone, anywhere, ever, would be bothered to cloak their penis in some kind of sheath when a woman lies gasping legs akimbo.” As he had thought. A fool.
A long time dead, Marcel sometimes just had to get away. He knew of course that his position as co-manager of The Afternet was infinitely preferable to what had gone before, but even so there were times when an eternity spent in the company of a dull-witted, TV-obsessed philistine was a particular and peculiar kind of torment. He had no idea, of course, that millions of people in the living world were going through exactly the same thing. He, though, when it all became too much, spun Geoffrey a yarn about some important appointment, cajoled and threatened any minor jobsworth standing in his way, and played Potluck Heaven.
It was an eye-opener, exposure to the realisation of people’s dreams and aspirations. It had never concerned him when he was alive to pursue understanding of his fellow man, and Potluck Heaven only served, at least in his own mind, to justify this lack of interest.
There were places where people spent forever playing a game with bats and a ball, on a large field, in white uniforms- a game that went on for that forever with no apparent outcome. There were beaches where people simply lay in the sun all day and drank foul-tasting concoctions, their containers sprouting slices of fruit, umbrellas, sparklers. Worse, there were places where people worked! Yes, actually chose to labour, eternally. His own Heaven was realised when he happened upon an environment populated only by women. He needed a significant amount of verbal and ultimately physical persuasion to accept that he was absolutely not welcome.
Even in pursuit of escape from the vapid conversation of his colleague in the Control Room, his greatest disappointments were in Heavens where people just sat around, read books and wasted time talking about them, or tried to learn something (for Heaven’s sake what’s the point?). Distaste for these places or no, his need for occasional escape was such that he tended to hang around, this being the lesser of two evils.
It happened in one such environment, which appeared to be a literally interminable wine and cheese party for windbags. He found himself cornered between shelves of leather-bound books and a bay window offering a view of manicured lawns and hedges, trying to decide which of those he believed to be the biggest waste of time. In the garden, other dead people were being rewarded for their lack of sin by being allowed to engage in endless play with whippets.
They were a crusty bunch, but Marcel had long accepted that the point of Potluck Heaven was that he turned up w
herever he turned up. Whatever it was he came to, it had to be at least a marginal improvement on listening to Geoffrey wittering on about that blonde witch. There were times when he even considered playing Potluck Hell, but in his heart he knew that the best Hell could not be any better than the worst Heaven.
Some bloke in a tweed jacket was leaning against a massive globe, the top of which could be lifted to reveal a cornucopia of alcoholic drink, pontificating about the effect of factories on weather and the importance of rural handicrafts. He was a man of some bulk, with whiskers and a beard that made his head look rectangular. Those talking to him seemed delighted by his expositions, sipping their drinks as they nodded or laughed at things he said, occasionally posing questions, suggesting alternatives.
“Ruskin.” said a voice by his shoulder.
“And.”
“Genius.” He was short, somewhat overweight, face florid.
“Easy, when you’ve got all the time in the world to learn.”
“You mistake learning for intelligence.” Worse. Black robes, splash of white at the throat. A priest.
Marcel shrugged. Just because he was in some kind of intelligentsia milieu he didn’t have to join the self-satisfied exchange of ideas.
“I see you’ve learned French,” he said, “was that intelligence or just time on your hands?”
“Or just because I am French?” A French priest. Heaven save us.
“We don’t find that many of your type- priests I mean- in Heaven. Well, about 50:50 maybe.” The priest smiled at him.
The Complete Afternet: All 3 Volumes In One Place (The Afternet) Page 28
