“They’re not real, Geoff.” His voice was a little Afterworld-weary.
“Of course they’re real. Look at their legs. And they’re really trying to put those things in those things.”
“Well, I mean they’re real, but the heads aren’t.”
“Oh, of course! You must think I’m an idiot. As if people would put enormous heads on and hit each other with pillows. They might be from Easter Island; I’ve seen those statues. Well, on Life On Earth, obviously. I thought it was really clever the way they had some real stuff and some made-up stuff on that. Like volcanoes. As if!”
The rumbling from outside the room wouldn’t normally have concerned them in the slightest; noises off were a feature of life in a virtual unreality. This shaking, though, was something else. It still would not have shaken them from whatever it was they were doing had it not made it impossible to do what they were doing because of the shaking. Water poured through the gap under the door, and the roaring sound became louder until it swung violently open. A torrent of seawater swirled into the room, lapping around their ankles.
They didn’t get clouds and massive claps of thunder unless a God was in the vicinity, and Geoffrey was already beginning to tremble in orgasmic weakness at the knee, when a bare-chested figure with flowing hair and curled beard waded into the room.
“Neptune?” Justin suggested.
“Poseidon, you tit.” Said Poseidon.
“Same thing.” Justin had unwittingly taken on Marcel’s role, almost sub-consciously sneering at the Gods. He may have been frightened once. Now he was much less impressed by someone who had the supernatural ability, on a whim, to cause an earthquake and flood a room, as opposed to doing something useful, such as, for example painting a really straight edge between a skirting board and a wall. There’s no god for that.
“Have we crossed the equator?” asked Justin.
“That’s Neptune. Funny, I’d heard about you lot having no respect, but they all said it was that self-important French dandy.”
Justin stared at him. There was water six inches deep sloshing around, the walls still quivered, and fish writhed and gasped on the floor. The massive figure caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror and gently shaped the curls on his head.
“You’re calling someone self-important?” He may have gone on, but he heard muffled growls and squeaks from somewhere on the floor, and they were both forced to look down to try to identify the source.
It could have been the visible part of a humpback whale, but was in fact the arched spine and rump of the turnip picker. The groans were an inevitable consequence of the necessary prostration before a deity causing his face to be entirely submerged. His head popped up, cheeks purple, and he took a massive gulp of breath.
“O Great Poseidon-“ whatever other obsequies he might have uttered were lost in the bubbling brine around his re-immersed face. Poseidon turned to look at Justin, blank amazement on his face. The ancient gods had had to become used to minimal unthinking worship over the centuries, any temporary relevance gnawed away by monotheism.
“Shall I save him?” asked Justin, thinking for Heaven’s sake put a shirt on, we all know you’re ripped.
“I think you’d better.”
Justin sloshed through the increasingly grubby water, now topped with a thin scum, testament to the collective laziness on the vacuuming front that had crept in over recent months. There was a healthy flotsam of post-its, pencils, tea bags, and other abandoned office necessities. He reached down and grabbed the hair at the back of Geoffrey’s head and pulled him into the air. He took hold of his shoulders, turned him over and leaned him against the wall, where he spluttered and coughed. It struck Justin that this could be the first wash for some time, and that it may have been more effective with clean water..
“Poseidon says he’ll take the worship as understood, Geoff.” The god was thanked from the bottom of Geoffrey’s heart between racking wet coughs and gulps of air.
“So, what is it you want? I assume you haven’t just dropped in for a cup of tea?”
“Wouldn’t mind one actually.” His voice was gruff, but had a vague susurrus, like the ocean lapping gently on a Caribbean shore. Justin pointed to the tea bags and a mug floating past at ankle height.
“Help yourself.”
“Well, perhaps I’ll pass. Would have been quite nice, actually, earl grey and a chat.” He looked suddenly older, a little sad. “Days seem a bit long recently, I have to say. You know, get up, have a swim. That’s about it. Not really allowed to send seafarers to a watery grave any more. Frowned on by the establishment.”
“You could save some?”
“Thankless task. They end up thanking God, not me. I wouldn’t mind a bit of recognition, you know.”
“Well, anyway, beyond the opportunity to break up your tedious non-existence, you want what?”
“What’s that?” Poseidon had wandered to Geoffrey’s TV screen, and stroked his beard. Geoffrey leaped to his sodden feet, and walked in a half-bowing crouch to stand next to the massive muscled figure of the God of the Sea. He wrung his hands and bowed his head rhythmically as he spoke. It was like watching the repetitive behaviour of a caged polar bear in a zoo.
“It’s called a television, O Great Wet One.”
“I know it’s a television, you bloody idiot. I mean what’s this thing that’s going on?” The thing that was going on, at that particular moment, was that two pallid people in very short bathing trunks were seated on a pole above a swimming pool. They were bashing each other with long foam rubber cudgels, until balance was lost, the pole rotated, and one or both were pitched into the water.
“I think,” said Geoffrey, “it’s an ancient ritual. Well not ancient like you are ancient of course, but a bit old. It seems to be a way of settling conflicts between warring provinces. Look,” he said, as the picture changed to two lines of people dressed as mice trying to carry bags up the greased side of a ten foot high cheese wedge, “this one is between Minehead and Cleethorpes. Wherever they might be. I think they must be ancient kingdoms, once mighty but fallen upon harder times.”
Poseidon was rapt. The mice running up the greasy cheese were now being chased by giant cats.
“No wonder they fell on hard times. It looks as if the beasts ate all the food.”
Justin rolled his eyes. Geoffrey had found someone with as little grasp on reality as him. Poseidon had an excuse, he supposed, being even more ancient and tasked mainly with causing earthquakes and tsunamis. He stood, up to his calves in filthy water, watching the pair of them discuss the intricacies of bean bag transport on a greasy slope and pondered, not for the first time, that the gap between a god and a root-vegetable farmer from the seventh century really wasn’t that wide.
“Poseidon. POSEIDON!” The god, who was laughing along with Geoffrey at the sight of a massive cat plunging on its arse into an inflatable pond filled with soapy water, turned at the sound of his name being shouted. He withdrew his arm from around Geoffrey’s shoulder and drew himself up into a more godly stance, puffing out his pecs.
“What do you want? Why have you come here and flooded our room?”
Poseidon raised a large hand, one finger in the air, bowed his head gravely towards the surface of the scummy water. “Give me a moment, it will come to me.” he said.
It turned out that he wasn’t really there on official business at all, although he did pass on a message from Aphrodite that Marcel still wasn’t returning her calls.
“I’ve seen this thing…” he squeezed a stress toy in the shape of Marilyn Monroe he had absently picked from the shelf behind Justin’s terminal, “Dead Gorgeous? I understand it offers the opportunity to meet…interesting people?”
“Offers. No guarantee.” Justin said, worried about whatever version of the Trades Descriptions Act might be applicable here.
“I am not sure that you know of my,” he paused, sloshed his feet around as if the word he was seeking might be flipping around beneath hi
s feet, “-reputation.” Geoffrey and Justin looked blank.
“I go with both the ebb and the flood tide.” He arched an eyebrow, as if all were now clear. Geoffrey and Justin exchanged looks, returned their view to Poseidon and shook their heads.
“Ah! It’s delicate, I know. Let me put it this way. I swim breaststroke and backstroke.” His knowing wink was met with a shaking of heads.
“I am, as you know, the God of earthquakes. How shall I put it? I like shake, but I also love rattle and roll.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” asked Justin.
“I’m bisexual.”
“Why the hell didn’t you just say so?” Justin splashed over to his screen, pressed some keys. “Look, we’ve got pages of them.”
“What’s a bisexual?” asked Geoffrey. Poseidon and Justin looked at him, both playing in their minds the amount of time this could take out of their day.
“It’s a person who buys sex, Geoff.” said Justin, pleased to see the hint of understanding in his companion’s face. “Unlike Pozzy here,” he clapped the God on a massive wet shoulder, “who just wants company.”
Together, they filled in Poseidon’s profile.
Where do you live? Oceans mainly. Non-smoker, then. Pets? Only if they can swim. Underwater; say a ray, or, wait, an aquarium. Do you think there will be many people wandering the Afterworld with their own aquariums, Poseidon? How many people will have died from being impaled on a fish tank? Good sense of humour? Well that’s a given, isn’t it? I haven’t got one so my partner would need to make up for that. Hobbies; what do you do in your spare time? Let’s not put random flooding, I’m not sure that had broad appeal. Do you work out? You certainly look as if you do. No, okay, can I say strong awareness of keeping myself in trim? Favourite band? Ocean Colour Scene. Really? That’s a first. And so it went. Geoffrey returned to the strange competition between little-known seaside resorts to complete tasks while dressed as rodents and either tied up with strong elastic or covered in grease, and Justin and the bare-chested God worked on a profile that would attract the right kind of person. Justin had a suspicion that this would actually be just a ‘person’, but played along anyway.
“What are they doing, Geoffrey?” asked Poseidon, eventually, as Justin pressed ‘enter’ to lodge the god as someone seeking a relationship with, well, anyone, really.
“It’s the people with massive heads, again, only these ones have got huge feet as well. Must have been a nuclear accident in the vicinity. Anyway, they’ve got to ride a bike between walls that move. Why is everyone laughing? It must be really hard for people like them to do this kind of thing. Look! There’s a bloke with an accent like Marcel, and he just takes the piss. I think.”
“Bye folks, gotta run.” said Poseidon, who had somehow become their new best friend. He said this from the door, waves lapping around his legs.
“Er, Poseidon. The water?” said Justin, nodding in the direction of the filthy wash slopping around the room.
“Oh, right.” Poseidon pursed his lips and basically inhaled the fluid laying two feet deep above the floor of the Control Room. A few fish flapped helplessly on the sodden carpet left behind, amidst pens, scraps of paper, lots of tea bags and, bizarrely, a kite.
“Laters.” Justin waved a hand without moving his gaze from the screen before him.
10
Dissociative Identity Disorder, what was once known as schizophrenia, is tough enough to handle if you are just some unlucky soul sleeping in a Zanussi box under Vauxhall Bridge. If you are freezing cold, haven’t washed for days and are self-medicating with strong cider, the voices in your head at least provide some kind of company. Even when you are God, safe and warm in your Heaven, confident that you are eternal and not going to be beaten up by passing bankers on a night out, the effect of being confronted by the myriad versions of yourself can still be disconcerting.
Even though He knew that all of those present were simply bits of Him, versions of Him, his inability to muster these parts and bring them under control was a source of deep irritation. He had taken lately to transcendental meditation in order to maintain calm, and most of the time, even when surveying the complete dog’s breakfast humanity was making of His greatest gift, it staved off wrath pretty effectively. Confronted with his own internal schisms he found himself with worrying regularity forced to go and have a nice lie down.
He was trying to herd these particular cats, however, to find a way to help win the final battle; a battle which, if it actually turned out to be a fight, was not going to end well for the forces of good. The gods decided that they needed to put together some kind of plan to confront the marching supremacy of Satan’s hordes, and that to this end they would split into working groups, and dispatched an angel to bring them a suitable moderator.
It was a bit of a shock for Sun Tzu, to be truthful, ensconced as he was in a Heaven that broadly resembled Hawaii, in which no-one at any point mentioned war. To his surprise he had taken to surfing in a big way, and found the counterpoint of the gently lapping water, the massive breakers further offshore, and the lilting guitar music a supremely relaxing way to spend forever. In the morning, he would strip off his heavy robes, lay down his ceremonial sword and head off in his Bart Simpson shorts, board under his arm, in search of The Big One. He was in mid-suck of the straw in a tequila sunrise when a figure so light as to be almost translucent appeared between him and the sea.
“Wo, man, you’re like in my rays?” said Sun, pulling himself up off his sunbed to look at the figure, the face indistinct, the edges of its body shimmering.
“You’re wanted.” The voice was musical, the words felt rather than heard.
“Well, like, that’s nice bro, but they say the waves are gonna be off the hook, this a.m. Surf’s up, man, and I’m stoked.”
“Surf will be up tomorrow. And the next day. God gave you this, he wants a little payback.”
“Didn’t I pay it forward, dude? Anyway, I don’t believe in God. That shit’s just too goofy, man.”
“Well, let’s change that, shall we?” The light from the angel grew very bright and then Sun had a feeling for an instant of being turned inside out.
The presence in the meeting room of a frankly overweight Chinese man in board shorts didn’t immediately spread confidence through the assembled gods and ancient heads of religions, not least because he expressed his confusion in the language of a shaggy haired beach-bum. Sun changed his mind about a number of things, though, when he was shown to a side room for a brief audience with the God in whom he did not believe.
“Wow!” he said. “Are you really like the Big Dude, man?”
“Drop that now Sun. You can go back to all that when we’ve finished here. For the moment I think it might just annoy a lot of the gods here and some of them shouldn’t be annoyed.”
“Oh. Ok. Sorry.”
Sun Tzu listened intently as God briefed him on the situation, reluctantly bringing himself to recall the theories, espoused in The Art of War, that had caused him to be selected for this task “You write one bloody book,” he thought, “and no-one lets you forget it.” Even two and a half thousand years after you’ve bought the farm. Deep in the recesses of his memory, though, he knew that even the most idiotic general would know when it was simply best to do what you were told. The angel was right, he supposed; the waves would still be there tomorrow, wherever ‘there’ was.
Sun, having dressed more in keeping with the task at hand, wasn’t enlivened by his first exposure to the miscellany of gods, which came as they debated the constituent members of the various working groups. Zeus called Jupiter a ‘Johnny-come-lately’ and forbade any of the Greek Gods to work with the Roman ones, whom he described as ‘copycats’. Mars and Ares started pushing each other and trading insults.
“Come on then, if you’re so tough.” (Push to the shoulder)
“Right! Someone had better hold me back, or so help me-“ (nervous glance around for someone to hold him back)
<
br /> “I’m warning you!”
“Outside! Come on, if you think you’re tough enough.”
After a little of this everyone just let them get on with it.
Sunni and Shia refused to co-operate with each other, the Buddhists would only work on administrative tasks, the Confucians and Jains claimed that they should lead the groups as they were the oldest religions, which upset Anubis, who howled until Ra gave him a biscuit. The Tao Three Pure Ones wanted nothing to do with the Japanese Kami in response to alleged atrocities throughout history, and Bacchus, Dionysus and the Mayan Acan proclaimed themselves in charge of refreshments and proceeded to get pissed.
Sun Tzu surveyed the scene, listened to the bickering and accusations, winced at the pathetic pushing and shoving, and turned to God, who had a weary look on his face.
“How did you let this happen?” he said.
God shrugged. “Laissez-faire, I suppose.”
What Sun didn’t see was the internal turmoil this deity was suffering, not only rent by the conflict before him but carrying the weight of those religions who couldn’t even be bothered to invent their own Gods. As the ferment outside continued, within him was a battle between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, shades of Protestantism, High and Low Church, the desire for decoration and panoply and the attraction of belief stripped bare.
“What proposals have you had so far?” asked Sun.
“Izanagi suggested we cheat.”
“Give him a gold star.” said Sun.
It was only because God finally laid down the ultimate law about which deities would be in which work-groups that the project got under way at all. At that point he declared that he was going for a massage and the application of hot rocks and left Sun Tzu to attempt to make the shambles work. Sun organised the groups to each address one of the five key points of his treatise on war, a work which bafflingly had become a mainstay of business training in the late twentieth century. He liked to tell himself that this was because the principles were timeless and applicable to a whole range of activities (though when he wrote them he was armed to the teeth and theorizing on how to generate the greatest carnage). More likely, it was because pallid businessmen in expensive suits liked the vicarious thrill of contemplating the jeopardy of battle as they sat in air-conditioned rooms wondering how to sell more soap powder.
The Complete Afternet: All 3 Volumes In One Place (The Afternet) Page 71
