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

by Peter Empringham

  “This is like Poirot.” Said Geoffrey, suddenly excited. “Are you going to tell us where we all were when it happened, Mary?” He leaned forward in his seat.

  Justin looked worried. When he was at school, it would have been guaranteed that he would get the blame, even if he wasn’t involved. He was scrawny and spotty. He wasn’t stupid enough to mix with the troublemakers and not clever enough to mix with the cocky clique. This meant that they both routinely framed him. Marcel leaned way back in his chair, his arms folded, an unconcerned look on his face. Mary actually didn’t really have any idea, despite Geoffrey’s assumption that she was about to do a dramatic reveal.

  “Do you want us all to stand over there? As if we were in the drawing room?” He stood up and walked towards the sink in the corner.

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” said Marcel. “When did anyone go out on their own?”

  “No-one has. Well, apart from, you know…functions.” said Geoffrey from the corner.

  “Ok, so when has anyone been out as a group?”

  Silence, until the Extinction Clock pinged the death knell of the Madagascan Tuber Orchid. Geoffrey raised his hand excitedly.

  “I know, I know. The party. Mary, Justin and me went to the party.” His face fell. “You mean one of us took the Key with us? But which one?” He stroked his chin in a gesture he had procured from any one of a thousand TV detectives. Justin was also shaking his head as though the answer was so close but somehow out of reach. Marcel threw his hands in the air.

  “Come on! Who was left here on their own?” Geoffrey searched the floor for an answer, then again sprang into animated motion. He pointed, quivering, at Marcel.

  “You! You were.” He paused. “Did you see who took the Key?” Marcel and Mary sunk their heads into their hands, and Geoffrey looked at them, then to Justin, then back to Marcel. Realisation often came slowly to him, but always with a revelatory dawn upon his face.

  “It was you. Marcel. You gave away the Key.”

  The Frenchman pursed his lips and shrugged. He turned to Mary, who was gazing at him with a look he knew only too well as disappointment.

  “Why did you tell us?” she asked.

  “Because you knew, hence all this,” he gestured around, “drama.”

  “I had no idea. I hadn’t thought of you.”

  “Shit.” He said.

  It wasn’t a very difficult or vicious interrogation, not least because once he had admitted to giving up the Key it felt to Marcel that there was little point in being coy with the details.

  Justin really had only one question, and that was whether or not it would interfere with A-Bay. Once he found out that it only really impacted on the judgement delay for millions of lost, suffering souls, he rather lost interest. Geoffrey suggested a laser creeping towards Marcel’s genitals, knuckledusters, and the application of electrical devices. When asked (by the intended subject) who was going to administer this treatment, Geoffrey looked to Mary but was disappointed to see her shake her head. He satisfied himself with turning an upright wooden chair around and sitting on it back to front as he had seen so many interrogators do, assuming that it was threatening in itself.

  Marcel sighed once more and faced his interrogators.

  “Say the word and I’ll tell you everything.” He said.

  “What’s the word?” asked Geoffrey.

  “Tell me everything.”

  Mary asked him to tell them everything, so he did. He described how he had been approached with a demand for the Key but didn’t know what it was required for. He also admitted that when the person for whom he ultimately worked demanded something, if it was within your power, you generally gave it up.

  “That ‘only obeying orders’ defence didn’t cut much ice for the Nazis.” Said Justin, who had been listening in as he watched, amazed, the escalating price of umbrellas on A-Bay.

  “They only had death to worry about, Justin. My punishment would be rather longer lasting.”

  “Will be rather longer lasting, you mean.” Said Geoffrey, resting his chin on his hands.

  “Geoff,” Marcel said in a voice betraying years of suffering, both real and imagined, “that’s the whole point. It won’t be because I’ve done what I was told, so I’ll just have to stay here listening to you gibbering rather than actually staring at my small intestine.”

  Geoffrey coughed slightly, looked at Mary, and then told Marcel about his encounter with Slaven at the party. He told him how the tipsy servant of The Devil had revealed that he was going to be given Marcel’s job when Jenkin Furvill had done his work. He also, perhaps unnecessarily, pointed out that without the Key the task could not have been fulfilled, and so Marcel was very much the author of his own downfall.

  “But that’s appalling!” Marcel fulminated. “He’s making contracts behind my back and he’s plotting to replace me with that smooth tosser Slaven? It’s just wrong.”

  “He’s the Devil, Marcel,” said Mary gently, “you have to kind of expect the odd bit of nefarious practice from time to time.”

  The Frenchman stormed around the Control Room for a couple of minutes, kicking things, turning over filing cabinets, headbutting screens. He seized the grinning Kraken gonk and hurled it across the room. By the time he had finished it looked rather like it had prior to God sending in the cleaners.

  “That’s a hell of a mess, Marcel. I hope you’re going to clear it up.” Marcel gave Geoffrey a condescending stare.

  “You’ll have to get your little birdies to do it for you, won’t you? I’m not going to be here, am I? I’ll be French toast. Skewered, superheated, chopped to pieces and stuffed with maggots. And you’ll be here in this pile of shit, in your shitty man-made knitwear, with Junior Richard bloody Branson and Saint bloody Mary the War-lover. I’m glad I’ll be going. You’re all soooo boring. I’d rather sit in a vat of steaming vomit and have my head stuffed up my bottom until I can see my lungs out of the corner of my eyes.”

  He stopped, saw three pairs of eyes staring at him, amazed by the outburst. It was Justin who broke the awkward silence.

  “Funnily enough, Marcel, that’s probably exactly where you’ll be.”

  Fourteen

  Jenkin showed Ron, Ethel and Millie his screen flash for the Afterworld Cup. It was designed to appear every time a different user accessed an Afternet terminal, and would not go away until it had finished. It was an explosion of martial music, pictures of footballers scoring great goals and making great saves and a call to get together a team of the same nationality and enter the tournament.

  “It’s very nice, Jenkin.” Said Ethel, giving him a warm smile, although in truth she found it a little brash.

  “Awesome.” Millie also smiled at him. Jenkin hung his head shyly. He also thought it was quite good, but his previous work on computers had been entirely for his own consumption and almost certainly would not have gained the same approval.

  This was also true of the invitation to join Fiends Reunited, which opened with a screen of swirling black and red and asked “THINK YOU’RE BAD, DO YOU?”. As Mary had found, those who entered their names were checked against the Afternet database, and only allowed to go further if they reached the right level of appalling lifetime behaviour. The superbad were given Gold Membership, which allowed them to have their own dialogue as well as monitor the messages flowing between those scheduled for hell but without the cachet of truly, exceptionally evil lives.

  Jenkin did not appraise Ethel and the others of the fact that he was also the author of this troubling piece of software. He simply hoped, for their sakes, that his Afterworld Cup invitation proved as popular as the nastier side of his work. Fiends Reunited had taken off beyond belief, as though the doomed had been sitting around for years waiting for the chance to get together and create some havoc. Which, on an industrial scale, they had.

  Given the approval for his work, Jenkin uploaded the software to The Afternet, and closed his laptop. They were sitting in a field adjacent to the footba
ll pitch, which was now a hive of activity, not least for the Visigoths, who continued their efforts to master the fiendish arts of football. Stacie was trying to explain the concept of the ‘pass’, and had been for some days now. The idea of voluntarily handing over a precious commodity to someone else was proving a difficult one to get across.

  Jenkin was becoming attuned to being in company, with this group whom he could by now have termed ‘friends’. He spent time with them just sitting quietly; sharing food, stories, or jokes; or wandering around continually amazed by the sheer range of characters in this strange environment. He still strolled off regularly, and wrapped himself in his computer work, but oddly he had found some community in this mish-mash of American teenagers, Home Counties couple and early marauders.

  Apart from Millie, he had found himself spending a lot of time with Ethel, who was constantly coming to fetch him when she felt he had spent too much time alone staring at a screen. She revealed that she and Ron had never had children (problems ‘down there’ whatever that meant), but they had myriad nephews and nieces, on whom she would shower affection. Ron, she hinted, tended to save the love he may have had in hand for his child on the immaculate chrome and paintwork of his beloved A40, which meant that he really rather treasured the steering wheel protruding from his chest.

  She didn’t mother Jenkin in a way he was familiar with. She scolded him for spending too long on the computer, but it was a scold, not a tongue-lashing. She joshed him about the budding friendship with Millie, but it was gentle teasing rather than slurred interrogation as to why he didn’t have any friends. And she asked him if he was alright, and if there was anything he wanted to do, in a way that seemed truly concerned, as opposed to meaning why don’t you get out of here for a couple of hours so that I can be wanton with your non-related uncle.

  “I’m going to have to go away for a little while, Ethel.” He told her. He was lying back on his elbows, feet crossed, eyes squinting against the sun. Ethel was next to him hugging her knees. She looked at him with what may have been real concern.

  “What do you mean, Jenkin? You can’t have to go away. No one has to do anything here, as far as I can tell.”

  He sat up as she stretched her legs in front of her and leaned back a little on hands set just behind.

  “Well, there’s something I need to do. It won’t take long.” She was looking closely at his face, and he looked down. “I’ll be back for the World Cup.” He tried to brighten the mood.

  He saw that Ethel was staring off beyond the football pitch, and was concerned that she was angry with him.

  “It’s something to do with him, isn’t it?” Ethel pointed beyond the football pitch to where an unmistakeable undernourished, sandy haired figure in a suit was marching purposefully in their direction. Jenkin shrugged.

  “Who is he, Jenkin? There’s something about him I really don’t trust.”

  Slaven had now reached the pitch and was struggling to cross in the face of the activity. One of the American girls was keeping the ball in the air with her head, feet and shoulders, to the amazement of the Visigoths, who were staring as though it were some kind of witchcraft. After waiting for a minute or so, Slaven stepped forward and hoofed the ball far into the distance, the Germans turning to watch it go.

  Ethel and Jenkin gazed on as the young girl turned and gesticulated at Slaven. He said something to her and received a clear mouthful in reply, almost certainly not ‘that was a jolly good kick’. Slaven glared at her for a moment, and then marched onwards towards them.

  Ethel looked at Jenkin with an expectant face. He looked away.

  “I can’t help it Ethel, I don’t like him either, but I need him at the moment, to do something for me. So I have to go away for a little while.”

  “Ron!” Ethel tried to attract her husband’s attention.

  “Don’t tell Ron, Ethel, really. I can look after myself.” He stood up, determined to get away before anyone else was involved in this.

  “You don’t have to, though Jenkin, not all on your own. Not now.”

  He shrugged and walked off to head off Slaven, who was probably quite surprised by the crowds who had accumulated near the only entertainment for miles around. He was haphazardly pushing anyone smaller than him out of the way as he progressed slowly towards them.

  Ethel saw the young man, laptop under his arm, meet up with Slaven and exchange a few words. The sun glinted off the tall, well-dressed man’s glasses. Jenkin looked back towards her. She waved, and he raised his arm briefly in her direction, and then the pair turned and were lost in the throng.

  Ethel found herself suddenly in the shade and realised that Ron was standing in front of her.

  “It’s on the screen, Ethel.” He said excitedly, “The Afterworld Cup! Who knows how many people we’ll get around here now?” Despite her concern for Jenkin, Ron’s periodic joy at a new adventure rarely failed to lift her spirits, and he had that effect now. She held out her hand and he helped her to her feet.

  Together they looked at the scene before them. Every day, new people arrived and decided to stay, so that the crowd had spread out some hundred yards from the pitch on either side. The pitch itself was sparsely populated, for several reasons. The first was that there was still only one ball, and therefore actual play was limited. The second was that even had there been more footballs, very few of the crowd would have had the faintest idea what to do with them, they were there simply because something marginally less dull was going on. Thirdly, the Visigoths had taken to guarding the playing surface as though it were Wembley Stadium. Few were inclined to disbelieve them when told “Move on please, nothing to see here”.

  “It’s fantastic, isn’t it?” said Ron, “Everyone just comes together when they get the chance. It’s like Deadstock, only with football” Ron referred with reverence to the Rock Festival they had happened upon some time earlier.

  “Well, without any football, actually Ron.” Ethel corrected.

  “You just wait, Ethel. That Afternet gets everywhere. There’ll be football, don’t you worry.” He performed a strange double take whereby his neck sprung his head forwards. “Look over there, behind that group of Afghan herdsmen. Isn’t that, whatsname, Mary, from wherever? And the shifty one, with the nice suits and the shades.”

  Ethel picked out the Afghans only because there were twenty of them, who had died together in a landslip near Kandahar. Sure enough, now walking past them and looking around, she saw what Ron was talking about. The pair from the Afternet were picking their way through the crowds, looking amazed at the size of the gathering, but clearly heading somewhere with a purpose. She saw them stop and say something to each other and then they both scanned the area surrounding the pitch. Mary was looking off to the left, but Marcel’s shades swung slowly around the crowd, his mouth set in an unamused line, then coming to a stop as he stared towards them. He nudged Mary, who turned to look, and he pointed directly at Ethel. They exchanged a couple more words and then started to head straight across the pitch in their direction.

  After his outburst, Marcel had slumped on the floor in the corner of the Control Room, elbows on knees, head in hands. He couldn’t believe it. What kind of people would get him to be the engine of his own demise? What kind of people pretended to be working with you, whilst all the time intending to stab you in the back, twist the knife until you screamed, and then cast you on the scrapheap? His conclusion was inescapable. People like him.

  Or more accurately, people like he had been. He realised, whilst contemplating the sheer audacity of their using him in this way, that he had grown soft. He hadn’t killed anyone for years; he had listened relatively patiently to Geoffrey when once he would have smashed his head through the wall. He had even let Justin play the big shot, when the old Marcel would have taken enormous satisfaction in pointing him out for the snivelling, low rent, petty scam merchant he really was, at least in Marcel’s view. Worse, he had found himself attracted to Mary and done nothing. Not forced hims
elf upon her, held her family hostage until she bowed to his charm, drugged her, nor left her bleeding and sore in an alley. How had this happened?

  Geoffrey was squatting in front of him, and put a hand on the Frenchman’s shoulder.

  “Come on Marcel. You weren’t to know. If it helps, if I’ve got to have someone degenerate and hateful in here, I’d rather it was you than that Slaven. I don’t like him at all. He was drunk, for Heaven’s sake. What kind of behaviour is that?”

  Marcel raised his head briefly and looked at the lined face in front of him, bearing a half-hearted smile. He’d known this person for over two hundred years.

  “My guess, Geoffrey, is that it is nothing like the behaviour that brought him here in the first place.” Over two hundred years and Geoffrey still worked from the premise that everyone was basically nice, a view Marcel had spent those two hundred years trying to undermine.

  Justin joined Geoffrey in front of the seated libertine, but didn’t go so far as to lower himself to eye level.

  “You need to get a grip, mate.” Justin had delved deep into his GCSE psychology, and emerged, as he always did, clutching ‘tough love’. Unfortunately, with Marchant, this therapy usually came with a dose of ‘London Cabbie’.

  “What’s done’s done, innit? You coughed the code, you been done over like a kipper, now you better sort these geezers before they sort you.”

  Marcel looked at him. Cough? Kipper? He wondered what that was all about, not knowing that said London cabbies used this nonsensical argot in order to distract you from the mounting fare, so that they could get back earlier to their mock-Georgian mansions and discuss Proust. He managed to conjure a weak withering look.

  “He’s right, Marcel.” Geoffrey still had a hand on his shoulder and had conjured a facial expression of ‘priest addressing the bereaved’. Everyone was morphing before Marcel’s eyes. His companion went on.

  “ It’s coughed and you’re a kipper.” He was gibbering. “You’re a plonker, Rodney.”