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

by Peter Empringham

  Although he may have made the environment familiar, his own emotions were not the same. In his final years of life, the security of his room had allowed him to wander free, the computer and internet his gateway to a world of imagination. Increasingly, though, when he had been working on the computer in the afterworld, he had found himself looking over to where his new friends were. He would see Ron and Ethel, seldom more than a few metres apart, and wondered what such an umbilical connection might be like. The Visigoths would be playing. The most violent play he had seen, always with massive physical contact, but punctuated by bursts of huge, guttural laughter. The American girls, bonded by both their friendship and their demise, wandered in buzzing groups, always talking, talking.

  The computer, his work on it, began to be something that took him away from where he wanted to be; previously it had allowed him to escape the barren, breathing world in which he was forced to live. After his brief exposure to some kind of community, finding himself sequestered with Slaven was like a return to the life he knew, and his response, solitary hours in front of a screen, closed the circle. That was okay. He had work to do and when it was done he would go back and test out the waters of social interaction once more.

  The night before had been the only time he had actually walked outside the suite, and braved the biting evening air. Slaven had refused to have more takeaway or room service food (“I’m only here for a week, I’m not existing on burgers and pizzas”), and had both booked a restaurant, not always easy at that time of year, and told Jenkin that he too was going. Little by little the Devil’s emissary was either more trusting of Jenkin, in terms of leaving him on his own, or just lazy and careless with the role he was supposed to be undertaking. He wasn’t ready, however, to leave the young man on his own for the couple of hours he wanted to spend out of the hotel.

  They hunched against the cold, and walked towards Hyde Park. The streets were strung with lights and to Jenkin had that particular smell that came around at Christmas, which had always promised so much and delivered so little. Slaven kept up a running commentary on the streams of people they passed. There were large groups clearly on the way to parties, faces lit with glitter, reindeer horns on their heads, flashing-brooched. ‘Happy Christmas’ they yelled, sang or muttered, as the pair passed. Girls arm in arm, grinning broadly, skirts at a height in inverse proportion to the temperature, sharp-dressed young men pushing each other around and bumping shoulders as they walked, some families, children with gifts in their arms. All, according to Slaven, sluts, tossers and adulterers, all doomed to wallow in filth of their own making. Jenkin, who had never been in the middle of so much jollity, nodded and gave his best wishes, as Slaven raved, kept his mouth in a tight line and drank in the lights, the smell, and the smiles and laughter.

  They ate in a very upmarket restaurant where the food arrived arranged like a still life and then exploded into flavour that bore no relation to the apparent ingredients.

  “I thought everything tasted like shit to you?” said Jenkin, licking popcorn and chilli ice cream from the back of a spoon.

  “It does,” said Slaven, “but if He’s paying I might as well eat really expensive stuff that tastes like shit.”

  It may not have tasted great, but Slaven was certainly giving the wine a chance. He troughed through a bottle of white and then a very large Barolo and still found a way to get some effluent notes from a single vineyard Armagnac. He was unsteady on his feet as they walked back through streets even madder than before. The office parties were chucking out of the pubs and restaurants and the bonhomie seemed somehow more forced than earlier, the male collisions more rigorous, the laughter and shrieks of the girls louder and more hysterical.

  As they approached the hotel, a group of three young men lurched from a pub, laughing loudly. One of them was walking backwards in front of the other two, conducting them in an ill-made chorus of “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day”. As he lurched onto the pavement he collided with Slaven, who didn’t need a lot of help to crash to the pavement.

  The first response of the trio was to bellow with laughter, then the one who had made contact turned and looked down at the thin bespectacled man trying to pull himself to his feet.

  “Sorry mate, no really.” He held out his hand. Jenkin wanted to tell him just to get out of there, but Slaven had already grabbed the proffered hand and was hauling himself upright. The man’s two friends were tittering as they leaned against a table, their breath wreathing eerily around their heads.

  “Really sorry. Didn’t see you there. Still, no harm done, eh? Happy Christmas.”

  With amazing speed, Slaven had the man’s hand in an iron grip. He pulled them both into the middle of the street and whipped the young man around to face a taxi, which was approaching at some speed, having just turned the corner.

  Jenkin and the other two men were frozen, unable to react. He saw the look of horror on the driver’s face and could almost count the reaction time as he applied the brakes. Slaven and his hostage were facing the oncoming black vehicle, its wheels juddering as it sped closer. There was no singing any more, in fact Jenkin could hear nothing but the scrubbing of the tyres on the asphalt. Miraculously, the cab stopped within inches of the young man, whose face was frozen in a silent scream. Smoke rose from the tyres and a ticking from underneath the bonnet joined the background noises of revelry that had re-emerged. The driver stared forward, his face a mirror of the one gasping in front of the cab.

  After a few seconds, Slaven threw the young man onto the steaming bonnet of the car.

  “Happy Christmas.” He said, gesturing to Jenkin to follow as he turned sharply and strode away. Jenkin had to half-trot to keep up with Slaven, who appeared so furious he was almost giving off heat in the freezing night air.

  “How did you know it would stop?” He panted, both from the exertion and the terror of what he had just seen.

  “I didn’t.” said Slaven. “What’s it to me?”

  The hotel room seemed stiflingly warm when they returned, and Jenkin, leaving his door ajar so as not to annoy his companion, who was clearly on the edge, threw his window open. The sharp air streamed past him into the room and a cacophony of traffic noise, music from a dozen directions, and high-spirited shrieks and laughs filled the night.

  The young man leaned against the window sill and gazed out at the city, which never really became dark. Although, looking up, the sky was black and clear, there was a stratum of light over the buildings all the way to the horizon, dimming to merge with the blackness but hiding the stars in the clear sky. His window let to the east, and the towers of Canary Wharf blazed their confidence and power up into the night. They seemed to dominate the space, making it impossible to believe that at their feet were spaces where thousands moved, and somewhere a black river winding its way in old age out to the sea.

  For the umpteenth time he conjured the picture of his father, the man he had seen in the expensive suit, laughing and joking outside the tower. He pictured him inside, confident and easy in company, almost the opposite of his son, leading his people on to ever greater success, wealth, and happiness. For the first time he wondered what his father was doing at this minute.

  Was he still suited and booted, grinningly entertaining some wealthy clients in one of a string of seasonal dinners, charming them with his confidence and wit as they all congratulated each other on their success during the year? Or at whatever home he had now, with whatever family, relaxing with a glass of wine? Children, if he had them, in bed, ready to turn out the lights and rest before the next day’s work? And for the first time since he had died, Jenkin thought of his mother, and wondered where in the wilderness she was, lonely and wandering, or had she too happened upon some companionship? He shook his head as if to wipe away the pondering, pulled the window closed to shut out the noise, and opened up his laptop.

  While Mary had made herself comfortable in the café, Marcel had been deputed to find them somewhere to sleep. Despite the Reaper
’s protestations that they were very welcome to stay, neither she nor Marcel were keen on sharing a single bedroom with Death for longer than they had to, and he managed to locate a small guest house around the corner which was comfortable enough for what they needed. She had bought a mobile dongle, which connected her to the Internet and was able to track Jenkin’s computer activity in his fuggy hotel room.

  Even after a couple of days she wasn’t clear what it was he was doing, but eventually put together a picture as to why.

  “Look at this.” She said, turning the computer so that Marcel could see. They were back in the café, just for a change of scenery. The Reaper had gone to work, a prospect he seemed to approach with a good deal more enthusiasm than most people who clocked into the battery farms that were call centres. Perhaps when your calling is delivering to unknowns the coup de grace, calling unknowns to pester them to profit from just such a moment feels like a charitable activity.

  Marcel, who had been reading the newspaper and thinking that his boss would need to be building an extension, looked at the screen with no hint of absorbing whatever it might be telling him.

  “Explain.”

  “I’ve been following what the kid is doing, but I can’t tell at the moment where it’s all leading. A lot of what he’s been doing, though is linked to this investment bank, Lion Marshall.”

  “Investment bank?”

  “People give them their money to speculate on what will happen with the price of things. Anything from the price of a company, to coffee, or gold.”

  “They gamble? This is like playing a game of cards, yes? Wagering money on what the next card will be?”

  “Pretty much, although the people who work in a bank like Lion Marshall will tell you that they know better than you what the next card will be. So you give them your money and they place the bet. This is just one of many banks like this. They invest billions of pounds of people’s money.” Marcel looked askance, but nodded for her to continue.

  “Anyway, he’s spent a lot of time inside their system. How he got in, I have no idea; he’s really good this kid. So I had a look at the Bank to see if I could get a clue, and I found this chap.” She pointed to the picture on the screen, a tanned large face with a self-assured smile, a mane of wavy dark hair flecked with silver. Marcel thought he recognised the type, one to whom success came naturally, who people wanted as a friend, with the authority of an inbuilt sense of capability. He had skewered a few of those in his time.

  Mary pointed to the text underneath the picture, and Marcel leaned closer.

  ‘Douglas Furvill’, it said, ‘President-Managed Funds’.

  “His father.” Said Mary. “So I dug a bit further into him, and found that he had moved to the company twenty years ago and has lived in London for sixteen. He has a family in London, two kids, public schools, house in Hampstead, holiday home in the Caribbean. All the trimmings.”

  “So why would Jenkin want to cause him some problems, whatever they may be?”

  “Because those kids, and that family, and that life, don’t include Jenkin. At some point he has left Jenkin, and his mother probably, and moved down here and started again. I reckon that because of that Jenkin’s got it in for him, and he’s here to do something to get revenge.”

  “Would you really come all the way back here just to get a bit of revenge on your father?”

  “Would you?”

  That night, the Reaper was going out with some people from work, and insisted that they accompany him. When Marcel and Mary arrived to pick him up, the door of the flat was opened, as always seemed to be the case, by Mungo, in what looked like the self same shirt and waistcoat as a few days earlier. The simple act of opening the door caused a huge plume of smoke to be pulled into the freezing hallway, and they almost staggered at the intake of the pungent cloud.

  Mungo, who had clearly been indulging himself, looked at them through bleary half-closed eyes. Having established that they hadn’t got his stuff, they were shuffled inside the flat where they were informed that Mort was drying his hair. He certainly wouldn’t have had to race Mungo to the shampoo. They could vaguely hear the whirring of a hairdryer above the distorted voice of Joe Walsh singing Rocky Mountain Way, apparently live from Mungo’s bedroom, to judge by the volume.

  “Come in a minute, people.” He shuffled back into his room, which appeared to be victim to some kind of highly localised smog. A set of traffic lights pulsed dimly in the corner, red-green-orange-green, and there was a comatose girl slumped against an unmade bed.

  “Is she alright?” asked Mary. Mungo managed to turn enough on his feet to take in the sight of the girl.

  “She’s more than alright, man. Try this, you’ll see how alright she is.” He proffered a spliff the length of a ruler and girth of a whiteboard marker. Mary shook her head, thinking she’d probably had quite a bit already, but Marcel took the joint without hesitation and looked at it with suspicion.

  “What is it?” He sniffed the burning end redundantly, given that he had been inhaling it since the door first opened.

  Mungo did something with his mouth, which could have been a smile.

  “It’s my own mix. Red Leb and home grown. It’s smooth and tangy, with Listerine notes.”

  Marcel took a deep drag, the end of the joint matching the traffic lights, then exhaled.

  “Hold it in, man. Hold it in.” He did as he was told the next time.

  Mary wandered out of the room and knocked on the Reaper’s door, hard enough to be heard over the din from Mungo’s musical selection.

  “Just a minute!” She leaned against the wall and waited, and finally the Reaper emerged. He twirled dramatically.

  “What do you think?” She thought he looked exactly the same as always, but somewhere in the marijuana haze she could detect a hint of Fructis, so she smiled and nodded as though he had emerged onto the red carpet at The Oscars.

  “Where’s Marcel?” She nodded towards Mungo’s door, from which was issuing what looked like the harbinger of a major blaze. “Ah.” He said.

  Marcel was, in a minor way, banging his head to ‘Paranoid’, and Mary had to grab him by the sleeve and gently pull him from the room. On the stairs she was pleased to be able to take a deep breath, and the icy air in the street clearly hit Marcel like a hammer. His legs almost gave way and they paused a moment with him leaning against a wall.

  “That song was brilliant! Paranoid! Why wasn’t there music like that when I was alive?” In his euphoric state he didn’t consider the lack of electricity and amplification, or the rarity of chamber orchestras biting the heads off bats.

  The evening in the pub with the Reaper’s workmates was actually great fun, Mary thought. Whenever she had been to such affairs before, she had got drunk and become almost desperate in pursuit of a mate; this time she drank very little and felt comfortable simply talking to the others.

  “Mort?” said a young man whose piercings looked as if a magnet had been dunked into a bag of nails. “He’s a right laugh. Has us in stitches at work.” She glanced over to the Reaper, who appeared to be doing some kind of frug as he tossed back a tequila slammer.

  “Mind you.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “He’s a bit over the top on the calls sometimes, suggest people should take the plan out before certain dates and stuff.”

  No shit, thought Mary.

  Marcel didn’t drink much either, but had a whale of a time. For some reason he giggled at almost everything anyone said, and went through a dozen packets of nuts even though they tasted vile.

  They left in good spirits, the Reaper high fiving all and sundry, Marcel doling out hugs to anyone who didn’t move fast enough. They had walked along a side street, Marcel softly mangling the words of ‘Wombling Merry Christmas’, when they came to the junction with the main thoroughfare and Mary flung out an arm to stop them in their tracks.

  Two men were standing in the middle of the road, one holding the others’ arm firmly. On the pavement behind them, two ot
her men and a youth stared aghast, because a taxi was sliding inexorably towards the pair in the road. The screaming tyres had dulled all other sounds, and stopped when the vehicle came to a halt inches from the man held in front of him by the other. They watched in silence as he was thumped onto the bonnet of the cab and the other strode angrily away. The youth from the pavement, his face a picture of terror, had to almost run to catch him up.

  “Is that them?” said the Reaper, holding up Marcel, who was hypnotised at the sight of a Christmas mobile in a shop window. Mary nodded.

  “He’s a piece of work, isn’t he?” Mary nodded. She feared for the young man, in prolonged company with this streak of anger.

  “We need to figure out what’s going on, Rea-, Mort. Nothing about this feels good.”

  Twenty One

  Isaac Gildenstern died in Hanover in 1930 when he fell from a tram, which, given his religion, may well have saved him from a terrible future. He still bore the scars on his temple of the fatal blow. That didn’t stop him, however, from bringing down the long pass swung over from the wing, pushing the ball past a New York Italian (who had met his own demise through a stray bullet during a trattoria shoot-out), and thumping a shot into the top corner of the net.

  The crowd went wild. There were only seconds remaining, and Germany had secured a place in the semi-finals of the Afterworld Cup. The Visigoths, hulking on the hillside, leapt up and down with extravagant fervour, not least because one of their number, Sturm, had played a blinder in central defence. As the referee blew his whistle to signal the end of the game, they hugged each other joyously and ran down towards the pitch to congratulate their comrade and their adopted compatriots.

  The four quarter-final matches had been a triumph, and for the assembled crowd, even those feeling the disappointment of seeing their own nations beaten, there was a magnificence about the event. For Ethel, standing above the crowds, switching her gaze between the action below and the husband who had brought this about, there was an immense feeling of pride.