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

by Peter Empringham

  “Are you alright, Jenkin? You’re spending a lot of time up here on your own.”

  The boy shrugged.

  “What happened to you? Why are you here, so young?”

  Jenkin gazed into the distance.

  “I don’t know, Ethel. Don’t know why I’m here, even what here is. My mum died at the same time as me, so she’s here somewhere. I’m all right, though. I’ve got lots to do.”

  Ethel was surprised. “Your mum’s here? Is that what you’re doing, looking for her?”

  “ No.” Jenkin kicked at a few stones at his feet. “She never cared for me when I was alive. She’s not going to start now.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true.” Ethel looked at the young, closed face. Jenkin was staring down the hill and she followed his gaze. A slim figure in a suit was marching up towards them. As he came closer, she vaguely recognised him from the ice cream parlour. Jenkin seemed suddenly a little nervous.

  “Who is he, Jenkin? If you don’t want anything to do with him, we can sort that out you know? Guntrick and his friends are quite good at keeping people away.”

  The youth looked as if he were considering this for a moment.

  “No, it’s ok. I’m doing something for him and he’s doing something for me, so it works out.”

  The man approaching made Ethel nervous. There was just something about him that she didn’t like, and she couldn’t put her finger on it. She stood up and brushed the grass off the back of her dress.

  “Just…if you need anything, or need to talk about anything, come to me, ok?” Jenkin looked back at her but didn’t say anything.

  Slaven was annoyed that Jenkin wasn’t alone. The last thing any of them needed was for someone to find out what they were doing. Even though it was unlikely that they could do anything to stop the Afternet doing whatever Jenkin devised, it would not help his status should this woman somehow provoke a fit of conscience in the boy.

  “You were just leaving.” He said to Ethel.

  “Well not really, I-“

  “It wasn’t a question. I need to talk to Jenkin.”

  “Well perhaps I should stay, you know. We’ve quite taken to Jenkin.”

  “Really Ethel,” said the youth, “it’s alright. I’m just doing some stuff Mr Slaven might be interested in.”

  Ethel wondered what kind of thing might interest Mr Slaven, but decided she would rather confront that issue when she wasn’t alone. Jenkin didn’t seem to be worried about what it was the thin man might want.

  “Alright then. Come down when you’re ready, Jenkin. Maybe we’ll have a game of Scrabble with Hansi and Adrael.”

  “Thanks Ethel. I’ll be down soon.”

  Ethel looked at Slaven, who was watching her impatiently. She could tell that he was willing her to leave, and had the feeling that he would push her off the hill if she didn’t.

  “Goodbye Mr Slaven.” His look didn’t change.

  Ethel walked slowly back down the hill, after a hundred metres or so glancing back. Slaven was standing with his back to Jenkin, watching her go, and the boy was sitting looking at the floor. Something was wrong with this but she couldn’t quite figure out what it might be.

  Slaven waited until Ethel reached the flatter floor of the natural amphitheatre and then turned to Jenkin.

  “Why do you have anything to do with these losers?”

  Jenkin looked up, squinting against the sun, which was lowering its arc over Slaven’s shoulder.

  “They’re okay, Slaven. They’re not hurting anybody, are they?”

  “No, they’re not, but in my experience that isn’t any kind of recommendation. Football! For God’s sake, they’re dead! What’s the point of starting a game of football?”

  They looked down to where people milled around on the valley floor. Jenkin clasped the closed laptop tightly to his lap, smiling as in the distance he saw Vorg fall over attempting a stepover under the instruction of Stacie.

  “So.” Slaven drew the boy back to the immediate issue. “How’s it going?”

  “Nearly there.” Said Jenkin. “ I’m just doing the opening pages, you know the ones that will get people’s attention. Then whenever anyone goes onto the terminals, it will automatically flash up before they can do anything else.”

  “I hope it’s selective. I don’t want anyone like that homely bint being able to get onto it.” He gestured towards where Ethel was talking to Ron way below them.

  “Don’t worry,” said Jenkin, “when it first runs it will search the whole system and allow only those with a sufficient FQ to join.”

  “FQ?”

  “Fiendishness Quotient. You’ve got to have been pretty horrible to become a member. Which will still mean there are millions here.”

  “Excellent.” Slaven put on a self-satisfied smile. “I’m quite looking forward to getting hold of whoever else is out there.”

  Jenkin looked pleased for the first time for a while.

  “You only just make it, Slaven. You’re small beer compared with some of them. Which means you are barred from the Gold Membership Area. That’s where all the real action will probably take place.”

  Slaven stared at Jenkin with a withering look, although the boy seemed immune.

  “Very funny. When will you be done?”

  “Couple of days. When do I get my trip to the other side?”

  “When this goes in and we can see that it works. Why do you want to go back, anyway? I thought your mother was here somewhere.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go back for my family, that’s for sure. I’ve just got a bit of unfinished business.”

  Slaven nodded and turned again to stare at the scene below them. The sun was low now and the pitch itself deserted.

  “Just remember who you are doing this for. Don’t go all soft spending too much time with your new mumsie. Mail me when you’re done.” Jenkin watched the tall, thin man walk slowly down the hillside. At he bottom he absently cuffed a child around the head when its playing threatened to interrupt his progress. Jenkin could vaguely hear the kid’s crying floating up into the air. Slaven, who must also have heard it, walked on and then was lost behind trees.

  Jenkin flipped up the lid of the laptop. The screen burst into life. To be truthful, Fiends Reunited was complete, but for a couple of colour choices to ensure it attracted the wrong kind of attention. The trouble was, over the last few days, he had started to have second thoughts about whether he should deliver on his promise.

  The site he had created would enable the worst people in the afterlife to be able easily to find each other, and encourage them to co-operate in acts of perfidy. It offered rewards to them for recruiting others to help them perform such acts, particularly if they could attract souls of previously good character. He thought of the community that had recently built up around the football pitch created by Ron and the Visigoths. Broadly speaking, everyone behaved well towards the others; there was a great deal of enjoyment, banter, and co-operation. Jenkin had spent more time with others in recent weeks than he had in his teenage years; he had been insulted less, pushed around less, and welcomed into conversations more than he had in his entire life. He wondered whether the person who had accepted the contract with the Devil was the same as the one now looking down from this hill, laptop clasped tightly in his arms.

  That thought triggered his memory, and he flipped the machine open and worked a few keys. Result. Grimsby had beaten Real Madrid on penalties and were through to the final. The winning penalty had been converted by Samuel Eto’o. He, thought Jenkin, would have loved the freezing North Sea breezes howling in across the redundant fish docks. Still, Barcelona in the final, and Jenkin would have to conjure tactics to defeat the wiles of Lionel Messi.

  He wandered back down as the dusk drew in. As he walked across the now empty football pitch, Ethel spotted him and waved him to come over. Ron was talking to a couple of the American girls, Vorg, and Hansi.

  “Hey Jenk!” one of the girls yelled, “Come over he
re, we need your help.”

  Jenk?

  The girl was Melinda. She was smaller than many of the others and quite boyish, and Jenkin found her very attractive indeed. He wasn’t sure whether that was because she actually was attractive, or because in the football match she had gone in for a 50:50 with Zoltan, who was six feet three and sixteen stone, and left him writhing on the ground in agony. The resultant uncontrollable hilarity from the Visigoths had contributed to them conceding the eighth goal.

  Ron seemed very excited by what was going on. Guntrick and his men, who had spent years with the small Englishman, could now recognise in him the gestures and demeanour which signified that he had either had a brilliant idea or was about to lay claim to someone else’s. Either way, it could lead to decades of diversion.

  “We’ve had a brilliant idea.” Said Ron, fulfilling the prophecy. “We’re going to organise a football tournament.”

  Jenkin looked through the increasing gloom to the bizarre collection of ancients, African tribes, aboriginals of various continents and who knows what else and thought that ‘brilliant’ could be pushing it.

  “Yah.” Said Melinda. She too was excited, but then when you have nothing to wear forever but football kit, a football tournament must seem quite attractive. “We were like, kinda thinking that we could use the Afternet to like get some other sarker teams, y’know?”

  Jenkin thought about that. “Ok, I know there seem to be lots of people here, but how often do you think whole teams might have been wiped out at the same time?”

  It was as if he had punctured a balloon. Ron stopped his excited twitching, and Melinda’s face crumpled. She stared at the young man through tears, turned, and marched away.

  “Oh, Jenkin.” Said Ethel, reprovingly, “Think before you speak. She’s young, she doesn’t know why she’s here, and she just wants something to look forward to.”

  Don’t we all, thought Jenkin, and then set off at a trot after the girl.

  “Melinda!”

  She kept walking, her shoulders hunched. He moved faster and grabbed her by the shoulder, turning her around. She stood facing him, her arms folded tight beneath her chest, lips pursed as she stared off to one side.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-“

  “Oh yeah,” she interrupted, “you go off and play on your computer all day. Some of us have to think about what we do for the rest of- whatever-, and when we have an idea you just diss it.”

  “No, no, no. I didn’t.” His voice was reaching, “I just meant you, we, need to think it through. It’s a great idea, but we’d have to figure out how to get players.” She still stared at him, wiped her eyes.

  “You can’t keep playing Guntrick’s lot. You’re too tough for them.” He gestured to where the Visigoths were playing ‘Stack the Boulder’. She cracked a smile.

  “Come on. Let’s go back and think how it might work.” After a moment she nodded, and they walked slowly back to the others. This was both the closest he’d been to a girl outside a classroom, and the most words he’d exchanged with one. And she was dead, and wearing football kit.

  They talked long into the evening. Ron, Ethel, Jenkin, Guntrick, Melinda, and Stacie, who wasn’t about to miss out on anything. It was actually she who had the bright idea. On the pitch, by the light of a flickering fire, the Visigoths were having an arm-wrestling competition with the Masai. Crowds had aligned behind each side, cheering on the contestants.

  “My Gahd, lookit that!” she said, “It’s like a World Championship of grunting.”

  “That’s it!” said Ron. “We’ll have a World Cup. I’ve heard of that. There’s every race under the sun here, we’ll get them to organise themselves into teams and have a World Cup.”

  “I guess we won’t get to play, if you’re gonna ask everyone.” Melinda looked crestfallen.

  “Oh come on,” said Jenkin. “Americans can’t play football. You’ll be it.” She thumped him on the arm, which really hurt.

  “Jenkin,” said Ethel, “you know about computers. Can we get something on those computers to ask people to apply?”

  Not if you don’t have the Key, thought Jenkin.

  “Easy.” He said.

  “Can we play, Ron? Seeing as we won the game?” Guntrick asked.

  “You so did not!” Stacie jumped to her feet. “You lost big time.”

  “Tell her, Ron.” Said Guntrick.

  Ron had been trying for a while to convince the Germans that scoring the last goal was not enough to overturn a thirteen goal deficit, but when you come from a background in which the last blow is decisive it’s hard to get your head round the idea of it being only a consolation.

  “Listen Grizzly,” said Stacie, having brought with her the death wish that had characterised much of her life, “you lost. You got beat by a bunch of girls, so suck it up.”

  “Suck what up?” asked Guntrick, who quite liked being called Grizzly.

  “It’s a figure of speech.” Said Ron, although he wasn’t entirely sure.

  “What’s a figure of speech?”

  “It’s like kiss my ass.” Said Stacie.

  “You haven’t got an ass.” Guntrick was sure he would have noticed any kind of equine companion.

  “That’s another figure of speech, Guntrick,” said Ron, who had seen the Simpsons once by accident, and so had an idea what the misunderstanding may be, “an ass, is, in this instance, er-“ he looked at Stacie, Jenkin, and Melinda, who were grinning at his discomfort. Stacie helped him out.

  “Just busting your balls, Grizzly.” Guntrick looked down to see whether this might be true. “You an’ me will spend a little time teaching you some young American, and at the same time I’ll prove you lost the goddamn game.”

  Guntrick allowed himself to be led away, holding his hands over his groin in case any more busting may be about to occur.

  The remaining group talked about how they might organise the World Cup. They broadly agreed that the odds were against large numbers of intact teams wandering this particular parallel universe, and that they didn’t want to have to spend ages getting teams together themselves. Jenkin was pretty sure he could get the advert to pop up on A-Bay, or when anyone tried to play any of the Afternet games. It would tell people that if they could find others from their nation, form an XI, and pitch up at the arena, they could enter the Afterworld Cup.

  “What about a deadline?” asked Jenkin, who was already working at the keyboard. Melinda laughed. “What?” he said.

  “Deadline. Very good, seeing as we are all, y’know.”

  Jenkin tried to remember the last time he had cracked a joke, however inadvertent.

  They finished planning the detail, Ron of course delving into minutiae which even Ethel told him could be completed whilst they waited for responses, and then, tired, decided it was time to hit the sack (figure of speech) and that Jenkin would get to work tomorrow, there being plenty of those.

  He walked Melinda back to her friends, where Stacie had them in tears at her description of Guntrick’s introduction to youngspeak.

  “Night then, Melinda.” He said.

  “Call me Millie.”

  “Why?” Jenkin’s grasp of human interaction remained tenuous.

  “Because it’s what my friends call me.”

  Crikey, thought Jenkin, as he wandered back. I’m a friend.

  Thirteen

  Marcel was almost the only one in the Control Room who paid much attention these days to the progress of The Afternet. Since it had been repaired it was much less time-consuming than previously, when he and Geoffrey had made many of its’ decisions on a whim, or at least the toss of a coin. It had rattled through the morass of infants and was now working on the general population of the waiting area with a binary efficiency.

  Of course, ‘paid attention’ has to be put into context, since in general this meant occasionally casting an eye at the Master Screen, which was a blur of personal details, with a large counter in the bottom right hand corner.
He, in common with the others, barely registered any more the clicking over of the Extinction Clock (which most recently had developed its’ own sense of humour, and declared The Greek Taxpayer no more), but spent much of his time searching A-Bay for haute couture, Swiss Army Knives, and expensive timepieces.

  A-Bay was similarly the centre of Justin Marchant’s attention. Had he been honest, which admittedly would have required a significant change in his nature, he would have said that he had thought that the website was as much a way of passing time as one of making money. It turned out, though, that it took up most of his time and was generating an unbelievable amount of cash.

  The system was set up so that Justin took one percent of the value of every transaction; he had originally argued for something more like sixty percent on the assumption that there would probably be four transactions ever, but had finally accepted that this may be a disincentive to trade, and agreed to ten percent. Mary had changed it to one percent when his back was turned.

  So, if you can, picture yourself as an un-judged soul, wandering up to an Afternet terminal wondering what you might do with the bicycle pump you were holding when you kicked the bucket. On the A-Bay website, you find that there are ten people looking for bicycle pumps, for reasons unknown, and that you can get cash in many forms in exchange. You choose the deal you want, put the pump into the box next to the terminal, and when the buyer coughs up, you get the cash and spend the next fifteen minutes trying to figure out where one percent of it (rounded up) has gone. The answer being, to Justin. What’s left can get you a really nice gelato at Rossini’s.

  In general this was not an issue, both due to a general lack of numeracy and the tiny size of the deduction. It turned out not to be an issue for Justin either, because the number of transactions was astronomical. His problem, insofar as it was one, was that what amounted to currency for some didn’t cut a lot of ice with him. Amongst the coins and notes of every imaginable currency and denomination, he had large numbers of beads; beans and other pulses; human hair; some soup; and what were almost certainly one-hundredth parts of camel.