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

by Peter Empringham

  Geoffrey, from the floor, looked distinctly envious, as though viewing the catwalk at a particularly grubby Paris fashion show. He was prostrate at their feet, with his head raised up like a turtle basking in the sun. Just because the second visitor was visually unimpressive and stunk the place out was no bar to his deep and abiding respect.

  “And who, pray, is your esteemed comrade?” came the voice from the floor. The second God stared at the contorted figure as though it was beyond his comprehension that he had not been recognised immediately. He seemed not in the slightest disconcerted that the others had covered their mouths and noses with whatever cloth they could lay their hands on.

  “I am Sterquilinus.” He now seemed certain that recognition would follow, but there was no immediate evidence of that. Janus looked at him with two self-satisfied faces.

  “And you are the God of what, exactly?” asked Marcel.

  “I am Sterquilinus,” his voice had dropped a tone or two to add drama, “the God of fertilizer.”

  “No shit.” The cloth covering his face muffled Justin’s voice.

  Marcel had managed to pull Geoffrey back upright, and wasn’t about to let him resume scraping to these two.

  “Fertilizer? And do you have any followers? Apart from flies, of course.”

  There were guffaws from Mary and Justin, and even Hermes smirked.

  “I am a follower.” Geoffrey bowed deeply.

  “Since when?” said Marcel.

  Geoffrey gave Marcel a withering look.

  “Marcel, you were a city dweller. I was a farmer, kind of. You have no idea what this stinking pile of shit did for me.” He smiled at the less than delighted Sterquilinus. Marcel noted that in spite of several hundred years under his cultural tuition, Geoffrey’s grasp of praise remained mired in the sludge and root vegetables of his life.

  “We have many places to go.” He said, “and many people to see. We have to inform you that most of you are invited to a bit of a do at Dionysus’ temple. Wine and cheese to be exact. There’ll be a few party games too. Pin the tail on the satyr, ping-pong, that kind of thing. Might be alright.”

  “You said ‘most of us’.” Said Mary quizzically.

  “That’s right.” Janus waved airily at Marcel. “He’s not invited. No-one damned, we don’t want any fighting.” Marcel did not look unduly concerned.

  “Well,” said Mary, “if we can’t all go, I’m not sure any of us should.”

  “Bollocks to that.” Justin said loudly. “If I’m here forever, I’m not passing up any party invitations. Can’t imagine it would appeal anyway, what with Marcel’s cursed taste buds. What do wine and cheese taste like, Marcel?”

  The Frenchman indicated the fertilizer God.

  “Pretty much how he smells. Go, anyway. I’m not bothered by the opportunity to watch some more jumped up deities trying to impress each other.”

  “Excellent.” Said Geoffrey. “You can watch the shop, Marcel, make sure everything is going along nicely.”

  “Thanks Geoff. If it’s a choice between watching an endless list of names scroll up a screen or spending a few hours with you at a party I’ve been invited to by the God of Crap, I’m happy to plump for the former.”

  “Dedicated!” Geoffrey beamed at the Gods in admiration of his friend. “See how he is prepared to sacrifice his own enjoyment for the sake of the Afternet?”

  “Strictly speaking, Geoffrey,” Justin said, “he wasn’t invited so it wouldn’t really qualify as a sacrifice.”

  “What does this do?” Sterquilinus seemed entranced by the Extinction Clock.

  Marcel looked at him with utterly unconcealed contempt.

  “It’s an extinction clock. It tells us when a species has died out. We’re all holding our breath for the moment it comes up with ‘Turd God’.” Hermes suppressed a guffaw.

  One eye still on the clock, Sterquilinus handed over an invitation card that detailed where to attend the party the next day.

  “Bit short notice, isn’t it?” said Justin

  “Well,” Hermes sneeringly glanced around the Control Room. “What else were you going to do?”

  “Good point.”

  They left, Hermes jogging backwards and exhorting the fertilizer God to keep up.

  Justin ran to the computer and very rapidly managed to locate on A-Bay someone selling nearly two dozen cans of air freshener, which he successfully procured.

  “Who dies whilst holding onto twenty three cans of Febreze?” he asked, having dramatically thumped the ‘Buy Now’ button. The others shook their heads, simply pleased that someone had. It was actually a looter, who had arrived late to exercise his democratic right to burn down retail outlets, and had simply grabbed the nearest thing before battling back through the flames. The twenty-fourth can had exploded, bringing an abrupt end to a career in petty crime.

  Irrespective of their amazement at the availability of the product, Justin’s return from the Everywhere Door led to a frenzy of spraying, in an attempt to rid the room of the heavy lingering stench of Sterquilinus. The air became so filled with the chemical reproduction of a spring forest that they all had to repair to the corridor whilst the balance in the air returned to something like normal. This in turn meant they spent even longer in the company of the aftermath of Sterquilinus’ trademark aroma.

  Mary, Justin, and Geoffrey were all very excited about the prospect of the next day’s entertainment. They chatted animatedly about what form, exactly, a wine and cheese party held by a deity may take. Marcel did his best to throw cold water on their anticipation, citing the size of the egos likely to be on view, drawing pictures of a certain amount of jockeying for position, and suggesting that deities and ping-pong were not necessarily designed for each other. It didn’t work. They remained excited.

  Ten

  Jenkin had quite quickly discovered the main issue with his task of designing Fiends Reunited. He had unlimited confidence in his ability to hack into any computer system and insert a new piece of code which would make it behave in a different way. He had a particular belief in his ability to do this where the result would be unpopular with the majority of users.

  However, what he didn’t have, was a Key. The Afternet was not password controlled. The designers had seen little point in protecting the system in that way given that when it worked, the newly deceased only occupied a microscopic amount of it for a picosecond or so. The machine was sponsored and approved by God and the Devil, which just about wrapped it up as far as policing was concerned, so the system had been left open. Open, that is, to the terminals in the Control Room.

  The new terminals, which had sprung up throughout the afterworld, were technically dumb. They just sent and received data from the Central Processing Unit, the banks of processors Saint Peter had seen aeons ago and which had more recently been repaired and extended by Geoffrey, Justin, Marcel, and Mary. Well, Mary. The terminals picked up A-mail, and now A-Bay, but all of the thinking that went on behind them was a long way away.

  When Jenkin came to attempt to break into the programming he was repulsed at every step. For hours he sat hunched over the terminal, punching instructions into the keyboard, but to no avail. He realised that he needed a Key to turn the dumb terminal into an administration terminal; not a physical key, but a set of instructions that would let him pursue his objective. So he played Football Manager instead.

  Ethel watched from a distance as the boy hunched over the keyboard.

  “He should be out in the fresh air, not spending all his time on that computer.”

  Ron pointed out that Jenkin was in the open air.

  “I mean running around. Scrumping apples or something.”

  “He could help us with the football, but I don’t think that physical stuff is his kind of thing.”

  “Well,” said Ethel, “you keep trying to get him involved. It would do him good.” Ron promised that he would, and left Ethel, arms folded and shaking her head as she watched the youth, to head back to the foot
ball pitch.

  Which it now was. It was also the best-attended football stadium in either life or death never to have held a match. There was always a crowd, most of whom were not particularly interested in what it was that was going on, as much as that there was anything going on at all.

  Guntrick and his followers had proved to be the prime movers behind creating the stadium. Ron had seen this throughout his entire time with them; that when they had an objective they were absolutely driven to ensure it was achieved. For sure it was the reason they had been able to lay siege to the gates of Rome itself. This had become clear to him when, many years ago, he had decided it would be a really good idea to teach them table manners.

  The friendship between them was strange enough, and the fact that it was so rarely strained even more so. Alive, Ron’s main concerns had been the welfare of his wife and the cleanliness of his garage. Guntrick’s had been the welfare of his axe and the hope that he could evade boiling oil. Whenever the Visigoths had eaten it was after a period of extreme hunger or immediately prior to some bloodletting, so the main driver was consumption rather than decorum.

  In the early days, Ethel had often had to walk away when confronted with the mashed contents of a Visigoth’s gob or some horrendous fart delivered in appreciation of the food being served. So it was that Ron and Ethel decided that, since they were all here, for all they knew, for eternity, the rampaging Hun had to be educated in the ways of polite dining.

  Ethel prepared three courses, and the Visigoths were made to sit in a decorous circle, with the middle-aged Englishwoman in the centre. They had enormous leaves for bibs, which were thrust into the collars of their jerkins. They obediently spooned their soup away from them before bringing it to their mouths (a convention which Ron would happily have admitted he had never understood), before basically inhaling it.

  Ron watched with shivers up his spine as Ethel commanded the attention of the circle, who as one, when commanded, replaced their spoons in their bowls and said with guttural depth, “This is really lovely, thank you.”

  Ethel surveyed the circle, and her own eyes were moistening. Forty or so children of hers, in the full flood of their adult prime, muscled, fearsome, and now gazing at her awaiting further instruction. She took a deep breath and held her hand in air, a fork daintily held in the fingers.

  “So,” she said, “we hold the fork by the handle like this, between the thumb and first finger, and we must be sure to point our little finger at the sky.” She slowly turned her head to take in the circle.

  The Visigoths obediently sliced their meat and transported morsels to their mouths; Ethel counted as they chewed each piece twenty five times, pacing the interior of the circle to ensure that mouths remained closed during the process. It took a little longer to eradicate the belching and cheering when plates were cleaned, but the Visigoths took it on their hairy chins. After a lot of practice, they took to placing their cutlery back on their plates rather than playfully jabbing forks into each other’s eyes. For the next few days, Ron and Ethel had noticed small groups of them practicing difficult tasks like balancing a pea on a fork or not reverting their hands at the slightest reversal. They were completer/finishers, that’s for sure.

  The young Brazilian man who had been cheering when he watched the first goal scored on the pitch had been co-opted as a consultant to help move the project forward. This, on the grounds that he had appeared to understand what the act of scoring might comprise. He had helped with an approximation of pitch marking, and the patch of sparse grass and earth between the goals was now striated with lines carved with a sharp implement. The boy had also been asked to explain the basic rules, Ron passing off the enquiry to his friends as a desire to involve the general population rather than a lack of knowledge on his part.

  “So, it’s like war, Ron.” Said Guntrick, with some glee.

  “In what way?” asked Ron, whose marginal knowledge of the game had no memory of weapons or carnage.

  “You invade the territory of the others, through physical superiority or tactics outmanoeuvre them, and win by penetrating their innermost defences. It’s fantastic! And we’re the biggest and strongest, so we can’t lose.”

  For all Ron knew, that could well have been the truth. What they really needed, to prove the theory, was an opponent.

  The Pennystone, Ohio High School Eleventh Grade Girls’ Soccer Team (also known as ‘The Pumas’ for no logical reason, had suffered an end of indescribable tragedy to their season. This wasn’t in results, because actually they had never won a game, but was much more serious than that. Travelling home from a defeat against the Washataw Wildcats, whose name was at least alliterative, their bus was pitched over the edge of a collapsing bridge and plunged into the river below. Mercifully, the drop was insubstantial and the end swift, but for all that they left behind them a diaspora of grief which seeped like an invasive gas through their small community.

  For a couple of years, they and their driver (who had actually been stoned at the time, not that it would have made any difference), wandered around fields, plains, and communities in the Waiting World. It would have been reasonable for them to have expected that if they had to die so young they would have been whisked to Heaven in an instant. And so they would, apart from Stacie, the centre forward, but that’s another story. Even the driver would have been on the cusp and may just have got the benefit of the doubt.

  The twelve teenage girls had found little to attract their attention, there being in the Afterworld limited supplies of cosmetics, popular music, social networking sites, or groups of a dozen buff teenage boys. It was something of a surprise to them then, that they should crest a hill one day and see below them a large number of people surrounding what was obviously something very like a soccer pitch.

  They shared exclamations and expressions of amazement, high-fived, and marched en masse down the hillside to the arena.

  In an attempt to move forward his plan to keep the Visigoths entertained, Ron was trying to pull together a scratch team from the audience lolling on the hillside. It wasn’t going well.

  He seemed to remember that South America was a hotbed of football talent, but the attempt to involve two 19th century gauchos from the pampas of Patagonia had not had the required result. The pair were short, swarthy, and thickset, with beards made for smuggling contraband. They had died when one of their compatriots went behind a boulder to relieve himself and discovered them in the midst of a ‘Brokeback Mountain’ moment. This was in the days before the Rio Carnival had even been considered, and the reaction of the other cattle herders, although brutal, was sociologically understandable.

  They stood slump shouldered in their dully-striped ponchos, occasionally baring browned and sparse teeth as they watched the small man with the car wheel in his chest tapping the ball to and fro and gesturing for them to join in. The fact was, in the long years since their death their relationship had dulled, and when Ron tossed the ball at their feet they began to wildly kick at each other, yelling incomprehensible curses. After a couple of minutes of this, one pulled the other one’s poncho over his head, and whilst he was blinded landed a swinging right foot in his nuts. The victim fell to the floor and rolled around in agony, cursing. For some reason the sight of a footballer in some kind of screaming death throe was the first thing Ron had seen which brought back memories of watching the game.

  When given the ball, a family of Eskimos had be restrained from trying to skin it; a Navaho brave ran off with it and had to be tracked for six hours before it was retrieved; and a two hundred year old Pathan walked around with it balanced on the top of his head.

  The sight of a group of people in football kit was thus a source of great joy and Ron yelled to the others to come and see what had turned up. His excitement was diminished first when they came closer and he realised they were girls, since he didn’t know girls played football. It disappeared completely when they spoke and turned out to be American because he was certain they didn’t.

/>   Guntrick and a few of his men wandered over and stood behind Ron. The centuries in this purgatory had still not prepared them entirely for all of the sights it presented. The two groups looked at each other. A dozen young women dressed in shorts, track suit tops, and football boots, in many cases made up, hair gleaming, in the full flush of youth. A similar number of grubby men, strong, armed to the teeth, firm of jaw and hirsute. One of the groups was tittering and hiding blushing faces behind hands, and it wasn’t the girls.

  “Hello.” Said Ron, struggling for a suitable welcome. “Those are interesting outfits. Are you a netball team?”

  The girls laughed raucously.

  “As if! Like, that’s for the doofuses. We play sarker.” This from a tall blond who had led the group down to the arena. The Visigoths gawped at her mouth full of silver.

  Ron mulled over what the meaning of these words may be. Doofuses. Sarker. He was saved from certain embarrassment by a voice behind him.

  “We call it football, but I guess you’ve come to the right place.” Ron turned to see that Jenkin had been lured from his terminal by the arrival of the young girls, and, accompanied by Ethel, had made his way over to the pitch. All Ron had to do now was try to figure whether football was doofuses or sarker.

  “Wow.” Said the girl. “That’s, like, so random? Like, here, you know? All we’ve seen is like dead people and whatever, and now there’s a sarker field! That’s awesome.” Ah! It was sarker.

  “Yeah. Well.” Jenkin looked at his feet. “These guys built it. You should give them a game.” He gestured at the hairy giants surrounding him. To a man they had also found something incredibly engaging on the floor by their feet.

  Another of the girls, shorter, with a dark bob hairstyle, chimed in, looking somewhat dubiously at the warlike characters shuffling around in front of them.

  “They don’t look a lot like sarker players. They’re kind of, well, y’know. Grizzly Adams?”