“If you get a hundred deals like that, we can make our own camel.” suggested Geoffrey, in a Frankenstein moment. Yeah, right, thought Justin, not bothering to reply, a camel with a hundred tails and no head.
After a while, organisation of the incoming tithes had become a necessity, as everyone was forever crashing over pennies, stirring up a storm of dollars, or sliding on bloody chunks of beast of burden. Justin had, with the help of a bored Marcel, sent out to Stores for a number of boxes and had spent a good deal of time categorising and organising his loot. When the cardboard holding animal off cuts began to leak fluid, he was finally persuaded that it really should, and could, be dispensed with.
“Why are you keeping it? It just stinks.” Asked Mary.
“It’s currency, Mary. People value it.”
“No, people valued the things to which it was attached. You will not find anyone willing to sell you anything for assorted chunks of animal.”
“Oh, really.” Justin marched to his terminal and spent an hour on A-Bay before finally admitting that there seemed to be no market to speak of in mule hoof or ear of ox. They dumped the boxes in the trash chute, only to get a memo a week later reminding them that disposal of animal waste required a licence, and that they were therefore subject to a fine. Justin grumpily paid up.
Geoffrey, the others had decided, would never entirely grasp the difference between fact and fiction. The root of the problem was his enduring belief in visual processing. For example, if someone told him that a man could fly, he would of course snort derisively, perhaps point out the absence of wings or other means of achieving propulsion and lift. If, however, he were to happen upon the film Superman on one of the constantly streamed channels, he would have no doubt whatsoever that it was entirely natural, but you needed a blue skin-tight suit and a red cape.
“No Geoffrey.” Justin had taken over from Marcel who was having a well-earned rest. “I can’t fly, you can’t fly. We just aren’t made to fly.”
“That’s because we haven’t got a cape. If we had a cape like that we could fly. Batman’s cape is different from that so he can only jump a long way.”
“It’s not real, Geoff. This is just a story. There are no flying men.”
“You told me that was real when there were all those men flying down from that aeroplane.”
“They were parachutists. That was World War Two. They were landing in France to try to fight the Germans. ”
“They should have called for Superman. He would have sorted them out.” Justin looked at him and sighed.
“As long as the Germans didn’t have any Kryptonite.” Said Geoffrey, and returned his eyes to the screen.
Justin had to admit that the feed of television was confusing and didn’t help to educate the hapless peasant. One of the channels was interspersing The World at War with Hogan’s Heroes, and he naturally believed that the first was ridiculously far-fetched, and the second gripping, which in a way was no less stupid than the truth.
Mary was in some confusion. Since the party at Dionysus’ place, she had been getting constant A-mails from War, which she desperately tried to read whilst hiding them from the others. The first had been very low-key and she had responded in kind.
To: Mary
From: War
Hey Mary! Or should that be Hail Mary (haha)? Great to bump into you at that terrible party, didn’t really get a chance to say goodbye properly. We left in a bit of a rush because Conquest kept beating Death at Hopscotch. Hope we can catch up some time.
Missing You Already (lol)
W.
Mary had simply said that she too had been pleased to meet him, hoped Conquest and Death were still friends, and thought no more of it, not least because the next mail arrived over a week later.
To: Mary
From: War
Hi Mary, hope you are well. Sorry haven’t been in touch but had to go to Somalia (I should move in I’m there so often rofl). Thinking maybe we could get together. Love to show you what I am up to in the Middle East.
All The Best
W
She forgot about that for a couple of days and hadn’t got round to replying before she received the next communication.
To: Mary
From: War
Mary. You didn’t come back to me. Perhaps you have some issues with your mail, in which case you should get a man in to fix it. What about that poncey barrow boy who was with you at the party? I’m unbelievably busy but can always find time to fit in a drink with you. I think you might be able to help me with my anger issues. Otherwise I might get angry (joking I think!). Gotta go, Gotta Belgian Congo go go.
Your One and Only
War
She replied to that one, just saying that things were crazy at work (Geoffrey was trying to figure out The Mighty Boosh), but then wished she hadn’t offered even that encouragement. Mails began to arrive a couple of times a day, and Mary couldn’t help but feel that their tone seemed to be getting a little more heavy each time. She dropped them into a password protected file, but kept going back and re-reading to see if she was imaging the change in tone. How things had changed. A year ago she had been telling people to turn their computers off and turn them on again, and now here she was, dead, being stalked by a personification of endless conflict. She realised she must have been a touch naïve, and that things were a little different in her new environment. She hadn’t really taken his name as a succinct description of his purpose in life. A bloke at work was called Mike but people didn’t try to sing into him.
Marcel noticed that she was looking worried and hadn’t really taken much notice of what was going on for the last few days. It wasn’t in his nature to care less, but he was a bit bored, or at least that’s what he told himself.
“What’s up, Mary?”
She was gazing into the far top corner of the room, and at first didn’t register the question. The she glimpsed Marcel sitting down out of the corner of her eye.
“Sorry? Oh, sorry, I was miles away. What did you say?”
“You seem a bit preoccupied. Is something wrong?”
I’ve finally found someone who fancies me and it’s War, she thought.
“No, no. Really. Just a bit tired, probably.”
There was a ping from the computer terminal in front of her to signify that she had received a mail. She ignored it and continued to look at Marcel, smiling weakly.
“Don’t you want to look at that?”
“Oh, no rush. Let’s face it, we’ve got forever, haven’t we?” she trilled an unconvincing laugh. Marcel stared at her hard, his face impassive. He was good at this. The other guy always blinked.
“Oh, alright,” she said at last, turning to the screen and pressing a key to open the email. Marcel didn’t move to read it.
Mary did.
To: Mary
From: War
Mary. I should tell you that as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse I am not familiar with being ignored. I wouldn’t be very apocalyptic if I was, would I? You should think twice before you lead on the embodiment of human conflict, because when I get angry the results can be terrible, and my analyst says that I should avoid situations of conflict that I don’t myself cause. I have a bit of a cold at the moment because Pestilence licked my fork, but when I recover, which will not be long, I expect you to be prepared for us to meet and resume our great adventure.
Kind Regards
W
“Problems?” asked Marcel. Mary looked at him and thought for a moment and then turned the screen so that he could read the note. He raised an eyebrow.
“Oh dear. You really aren’t safe to let out on your own are you? Or with these idiots come to that. Of all the people at the party, you go and encourage the advances of an apocalyptic madman.”
“He had a nice horse. And his eyes were quite, well, deep.”
“Your eyes would be deep if they had seen what his have seen. Besides, given what’s happened to mankind, he’s hardly require
d these days is he? War? Huh, what is he good for?”
“Absolutely nothing. Say it again.” said Mary.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why say it again?” asked Marcel.
Mary looked at him, realised the likelihood of him ever having heard of Edwin Starr was unlikely and that therefore it could be a long story if she didn’t abbreviate it.
“It’s a song,” she said, “Popular song.”
“Popular? About War?”
“Well, against war actually, but anyway. What do I do about this?”
Marcel thought for a moment. The last thing he wanted was an irate Horseman of the Apocalypse getting upset with any of them, not least on the grounds that he might start dropping round, and with Pestilence in tow you never knew what might be left behind.
“What’s that thing you put on to say you’re not around for a while?”
“Oh, you mean Out of Office?” Mary looked intrigued.
“Yep, that’s it. Put one of those on, say you’ve gone to Switzerland for a while. There’s no way War’s going to try to follow you there.”
Mary looked unconvinced, but put the message on anyway. It had to at least buy some time until she could think of a longer-term solution. As she did this she realised that it was some time since she had checked on the progress of the Afternet itself; like the others she had spent more time on the peripheral programmes the system provided than its’ core purpose. She flipped her screen to mirror the Master Screen, and was more than a little surprised. Although the list of names being processed was still a blur as it whizzed up the screen, the counter was telling her something was not entirely right.
“Guys” she said, “come and look at this.” Geoffrey reluctantly tore himself away from Hogan’s Heroes, and Justin from counting his money, and with Marcel, they gathered behind her and looked at her screen.
“Make it quick” said Justin, “I’m quite busy you know.”
Mary pointed to the counters at the bottom of the screen.
“Look. The system had got up to nearly ninety percent of maximum speed when it was doing the babies. Then it started to have to do a bit of work, and we put A-Bay and the games on, and it slowed down a bit, to about seventy percent. Now it’s at less than four hundred and fifty a minute. That’s only sixty percent or so.”
“Maybe it’s run into some difficult decisions, “said Marcel, “ you know, violent people who like animals, that kind of thing.”
Justin looked at him askance. “What? You really think it’s going to have a problem dealing with someone who beat up his wife but fed his rabbit regularly? That doesn’t seem very likely, Marcel.”
“Just trying to think of an explanation, that’s all. Have you got a better idea, businessman?”
“At least I have got an idea. You haven’t had one for centuries.”
Mary was entering commands on the keyboard, but was vaguely aware that the tension within the team could be mounting.
“Wait, wait! Look at this.” She pointed to the screen, which was showing a list of the programmes and applications running throughout the network.
At the top, of course, was the Afternet itself, quietly sending a quarter of a million people every hour to their Heaven or Hell. Immediately underneath on the list were a number of programmes Mary had disabled when she first arrived, amongst them a record of every meal eaten by Geoffrey and Marcel in the last two hundred years, and GodTrack, which pointlessly showed the location of the virtually innumerable deities in real time.
Below those were the programmes added to the system since God had facilitated the installation of thousands of terminals around the Afterworld. The biggest was A-Bay, and it was clear that the unbelievable popularity of this was using more processing power than anyone could have imagined, although by no means enough to explain why the system had slowed down so significantly. Next were the games, like Pac-man and Donkey Kong, which similarly had really taken off amongst people with huge amounts of time to kill. They were so popular, in fact, that Mary had had to build in a time out feature to avoid a terminal being monopolised for hours on end by some bored Japanese rice farmer or Peruvian priest.
And at the bottom of the list, it said ‘FR’.
“What’s FR?” asked Geoffrey, pointing to the offending item.
“Don’t know.” Said Mary, her bottom lip thrust out in puzzlement. “I don’t remember putting it on there. Let’s have a look.”
She opened up the details of the programme. All of them, for different reasons, looked at its’ description in deep concern.
“It’s a massive programme,” she said, “whoever did this is really good.”
“I don’t understand.” Said Geoffrey. “What’s it for?”
“Well, it’s hard to say from here. It’s called Fiends Reunited, though, so it doesn’t sound like it’s designed to generate peace and harmony. I need to be on an Afternet terminal to really see what it’s about, though. Let’s have a look.”
Next to Mary was a dumb terminal which acted as did those in the Afterworld, and she moved across to it and brought up the opening screen. There on the welcome screen was the list of options, and listed in bright, flashing letters, was ‘FIENDS REUNITED. NEW!! JOIN NOW!’
“Big on the exclamation marks.” She said. She clicked on the icon and they were taken to an opening screen, which was black, but didn’t tell them much more. It just asked for the user to enter his or her name. Mary did so.
‘SORRY. YOU DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO THIS PROGRAMME. DO SOMETHING HORRIBLE AND TRY AGAIN LATER.’
The screen was returned to the homepage.
“I don’t get it.” She said. “Why would I not have access to the programme? Everything we put on the Afternet is open to everyone.”
“Maybe you have to be a fiend. You know, to be reunited.” Geoffrey had a rare moment of clarity, something which happened every decade or so. They turned as one to look at Marcel.
“What?” he said.
They diplomatically pointed out to Marcel that he was the only one of them there who had actually been judged bad enough to go to Hell.
“What about him?” Marcel said, less diplomatically, pointing at Justin. “Small-time shyster who probably ruined the lives of almost anyone who used his dubious services.”
The only thing Justin found to argue with was the use of the words ‘small-time’.
“It’s you, Marcel.” Geoffrey put on his firm but fair voice. “See if you can get into this system for us.” Marcel reluctantly pulled his chair to the desk.
He entered his name. The cursor blinked as the machine paused for a moment. The screen sprang into life.
“WELCOME MARCEL!” It screamed. “YOU HAVE A 7.2 FIEND RATING!”
“Gosh!” Said Geoffrey, hoping to make up to Marcel for being the only one of them with access to the programme. “Seven point two. That’s good.”
Justin smiled at Marcel. “Depends what it’s out of, really.” The Frenchman was also secretly thinking that it didn’t seem particularly far up the high achiever scale.
They looked at the Home Screen, which offered options to find people you knew, people you didn’t know but would like to, upcoming events, and also the option to create a page for yourself. Mary pointed to the latter choice.
“Let’s have a look at that, see who’s using this.”
Marcel clicked on the box and the system began to flick through a bewildering range of pages.
Each one had a name and picture of its’ owner, a brief description of their crimes during life, and a broad statement of the kind of things they would be interested in doing to pass the time between death and judgement.
Hence, beneath a photo of a smiling, moustachioed man, the greeting: ‘Hi, I’m Joe Stalin.’ Joe had so much entered on his list of crimes during his years leading Russia on behalf of the people, that the reader was pointed to several extension pages should they wish to know more. Joe said he was looking forward to meeting like-minde
d dictators to discuss the application of brutality as a means of creating a happy populace, and to look for projects suited to their talents.
“What the hell is this all about?” asked Justin. Mary clicked back to the Home Page and then onto upcoming events. There was a meeting scheduled. It became clear what it was about. This was a way of finding those in the Afterworld with a track record of perfidy, and bringing them together. It was reasonable to assume that Joe S wasn’t going to be going to these meetings to help find a cure for the common cold.
Mary leaned back in her chair, hands behind her head, and sighed deeply.
“It’s not so much what it’s about, as how on earth did it get on there?”
“Well, one of the dead people must have done it, mustn’t they?” said Geoffrey, “I mean, they can do mail and stuff, so someone just probably knew how to write one of these things. Like you did, Mary.”
She looked from him to the other two. Marcel was looking at his nails, as though this new issue was of no import whatsoever.
“Maybe they did, Geoff, but they couldn’t have done it without the Key.”
“What Key?”
“This system is protected. Anyone who wants to put a programme like this onto the Afternet has to have the Key to get at the operating system.”
“Where is it?” asked Geoffrey. “I haven’t seen a Key.”
“Well, you might have done, but you probably wouldn’t have known. It’s on that terminal, the master one.”
“Maybe the Gods or whatever have got a copy.” Marcel said with a studied yawn.
“Well,” Mary thought for a moment. “I don’t think they know that much about the system; if they did, they wouldn’t have needed you to find me to fix it, would they? I think that either Fiends Reunited was done in this office, or one of us gave someone else the Key.”
There was silence as each of them let that sink in. She continued, “And none of you is capable of building this.” Another silence as this statement of their incompetence was also assimilated. They all looked slyly from face to face for any sign of guilt.
The Complete Afternet: All 3 Volumes In One Place (The Afternet) Page 41
