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

by Peter Empringham

  “Shame,” said Marcel, “I aspire to be a whole one.” Since their return from the Hermit Heaven he had been surly, rude, very much the nasty piece of work she had first met after her untimely death. Where was the other one, the one who seemed so close to telling her what he really felt? If he really felt it.

  “Anyway,” she said, “Is this going to be it?”

  They all looked around. The crowd were happy, wandering to and from the bar, chattering, calling out to the stage. Mary looked at Marcel.

  “I think it’s perfect. Unfortunately.” He said.

  Ron didn’t always attend the events in the centre. He enjoyed sitting outside in the dusk, feeling the cold of the evening closing in, hearing the muffled sounds of laughter and cheering from inside the building. It was different, this thing, when you had it all the time. He found enjoyment in something other than that which he loved in life, because then it was one chance, one fortnight to take it all in; now his satisfaction came from providing it, from being the source for others who came to stay.

  Guntrick emerged from the shadows on the deck, loomed massively, baffling the noise of laughter and surprise.

  “Have you seen who’s here, Ron?” He pulled a chair back and sat opposite the little man.

  “Difficult one to answer, Guntrick.” He sounded mildly amused, but there was something about the way his friend spoke that caused him concern. “There are hundreds of people here.”

  “It’s them. The people from the Afternet.”

  Ron had to think for a moment.

  “Oh. Right. Is that a problem? Where?”

  “They’re inside.” He cocked his head towards the building. “Adrael saw them. He fancies that Burkina Faso woman. Lurks.”

  “I don’t see what the issue is. They seem to be really nice people.”

  Guntrick sniffed. “I don’t know Ron. They do, but every time we see them something happens, and usually not something good.”

  Ron looked at the darkening sky. It was only because of meeting the Control Room team that they all knew about the Afternet, and what was going on with the processing of souls.

  “They’ve protected you, Guntrick. You asked them to make sure you didn’t get processed and you haven’t been.”

  “Maybe we would still be here anyway. I just know that they don’t seem to come around here unless there’s a problem of some kind.”

  “Well,” Ron adjusted his windcheater and pulled himself up from the chair. “I suppose we could ask.”

  22

  “Nice to see you all again.” he said, pulling up a chair between them and the stage. The contest had an intermission while the finalists were selected, so a man with a kazoo was playing a medley of Carpenters’ hits.

  “And nice to see you, Ron.” Geoffrey said. Marcel leaned back in his chair like a louche teenager, redundant dark glasses reflecting Ron and Guntrick. “This place is great. I don’t get the picture, though.” He gestured to Maggsy’s mural.

  “Me neither, to tell you the truth. Still, brightens the place up, eh?” He said, doubtfully. “Anyway, what brings you to these parts? Computer blown up again?”

  “Oh no,” said Mary. “It’s chuntering away good as new.”

  “So?”

  Marcel leaned forward, slid the Aviators from his nose. “Something’s come up. We’re going to need your little place here.” He stared at Ron’s stony face. “Well, not us exactly. Our sponsor needs it.”

  “Your sponsor? What’s that? McDonald’s or something?”

  “I don’t know what that is, but I’m pretty sure his surname isn’t McDonald. Or anything really. I don’t think they were big on surnames when he emerged. You know, you don’t hear of Mars Del Piero, or Ganesha Patel, do you?”

  “What’s he talking about?” asked Ron, looking at Guntrick, who shrugged, but whose face did not send Marcel the message that he was in the mood to listen to much more of that kind of stuff.

  “Let me, Marcel.” Mary threw him a look. “It’s God actually, Ron.”

  “What, God God?”

  “Yes, that one. He wants your holiday camp.”

  “He created the earth in seven days and he can’t make his own holiday camp?”

  “Well, it’s a real skill, you know.” she said soothingly, “Just because he’s good at worlds and civilisations, it doesn’t mean he knows how to do everything. It was man that created the holiday camp, wasn’t it? Adam and Eve weren’t in Butlin’s. What you’ve done is very special. Very…human.”

  “So why does he want it? The gods have got loads have places to go, haven’t they? Didn’t even know they had holidays.”

  There was a burst of cheering and applause as the finalists for Miss Everland were announced. Their coaching was uniform, so the poor people and furry animals everywhere were assured of a heap of attention should the winner stop globetrotting for long enough. Geoffrey was swaying from side to side to try to see past the massive form of Guntrick.

  “How much do you charge?” Justin said. Mary and Marcel looked at him askance.

  “What?”

  “How much? How much do they pay to be here?”

  “We don’t charge.” Ron was incredulous. “What would we do with money? Even if they had any.”

  Justin sniggered. “You can never have too much money, Ron.”

  “You can if there’s nothing to buy with it. Then you just end up carrying it around.”

  “But you have beer! Surely the man who makes it wants paying? And a shop.”

  “Goodtime just loves making beer. Obadiah spends most of his time rebuilding the shop after it’s blown down, or blown up, or burned or whatever. The currency around here is time, and we’re all loaded.”

  “We don’t want money.” Guntrick growled.

  “I wasn’t offering you any.” Justin said, blithely unaware that the Visigoth was not in the best of moods. Mary stepped in again.

  “It’s actually, I suppose, an honour.” Mary said, trying to convince herself. “God wants to use Everland for the final battle with the Devil. And broadcast it live! Think of the publicity.”

  “What comes after the final battle?” asked Ron.

  “What?”

  “Well, it’s the final battle. As in final. So what happens after?”

  “Depends who wins.” Marcel interrupted. “If it’s God, lots of singing, possibly a bit of an amnesty for the least bad sinners, better weather. On the other hand, if he loses, the nasty folk take over, civilisation, insofar as we have any, is set back millennia, millions are subjugated, and despotic viciousness rules. A bit like Saudi Arabia, only even hotter.”

  “And what form does this battle take? We’ve spent months building this place. If we’ve got goblins and little fat winged kids with trumpets lobbing grenades at each other it’s going to ruin the landscaping.”

  “I think it might be best if Geoffrey explains.” Mary said, unaware that Geoffrey was at that moment entranced by a woman sashaying across the stage who bore the merest hint of a resemblance to Elizabeth Montgomery.

  “Geoff?” she said.

  “Eh?” He tore his eyes away and looked at them distractedly.

  “Explain the format for the final battle, since you seem to be most familiar with it.”

  “Ah, yes. Oh, alright. They’ve decided, well, agreed, that the final showdown between good and evil, defining the fate of civilisation and all people living and dead, will be a series of events like those previously featured on something called It’s A Knock-Out.”

  Guntrick looked predictably blank. Ron’s face displayed the internal grinding of memory gears, his hand scratching habitually at the plastic of his steering wheel.

  “Wasn’t that something to do with pallid people in t-shirts and knee socks hitting each other with things in Filey and Minehead?”

  “Very good, Ron.” Geoffrey replied. “The top men, though, have decided to go for the upmarket version, Jeux Sans Frontières. I’ve been watching it, and it seems to be people wi
th oversized heads hitting each other with things all over Europe.”

  “They haven’t got oversized heads, Geoffrey, for the fiftieth time,” Marcel sighed, “they are people with normal sized heads wearing fake oversized heads. And boots, and whatever.” Geoffrey looked dubious, but took out the copies they had brought of stills from the series and laid them out for Ron and Guntrick to peruse.

  “Is that an enormous cardboard castle?” Marcel nodded before Geoffrey had the chance to question the material used. The Cumbrian had no concept of the art of stage scenery.

  “There’s a lot of lubricant involved. And very strong rubber. Who are these people?” He indicated a picture of half a dozen grinning men, their arms around smiling young women in damp t-shirts displaying the name of their teams and evidencing the chill in the air.

  “They were the adjudicators and referees.”

  “And where are they now?”

  Marcel pointed in turn to the self-confident characters staring from the picture.

  “Dead, jail, jail, dead, coma, Head of The European Union Culture Committee.”

  “We tried to find the dead ones, thought they might be able to help run the thing,” said Mary, “but they’re in a particular pit of torment I’m afraid.”

  Ron was aghast. There was a huge cheer from the happy campers as an Argentine nun was crowned Miss Everland, a plastic crown placed precariously on her wimple. Chairs clattered as everyone rushed for the bar, and they could see Søren picking his way through the crowd towards them. He stopped for a moment to talk to a figure dressed in a paint-spattered t-shirt, trousers worn so low that the gusset resembled a basinette, a baseball cap with the peak pointing sideways. They chatted for a moment and then glanced towards the table where the interchange was taking place, and after a moment continued towards them.

  “Yo, Ron! Wos happ’nin?” asked Maggsy.

  Ron explained that somehow, this holiday camp had become an intrinsic part of the so-far eternal struggle between good and evil. As he spoke, the artist flicked through the still photos of the TV programme.

  “It’s bloody madness.” Ron concluded. “And inconvenient. We’ve got bookings and they want to commandeer the place for their bloody Apocalypse, whatever that is.”

  “It’s the final showdown between God and the Devil, Ron,” Mary said, “it’s kind of a big deal.”

  “Well ok, but it’s still blooming inconvenient.”

  “But, this is fantastic!” the artist said, waving the pictures. “Whoever did this has caught the entire spirit of surrealism. The trompe l’oeil constructions; the maddening costumes and other restrictions on human endeavour- elastic, greased platforms and such like- the diminution of physical excellence in favour of chance and the reductio ad absurdum. This is the work of a genius!”

  “It was just a TV programme, mate,” Justin said, bored, “designed to capture the attention of the bloody hoi-polloi.”

  “And art is what?” asked Maggsy.

  “This contest seems,” said Kierkegaard, “to offer significant opportunities for the expression of creativity. It is not boring, and boredom is the root of all evil. This seems to me to be experiential, and life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.”

  “Oh what are you, a bloody philosopher?” sneered Justin. Søren smiled benignly back at him.

  “Do I have a choice in this? We. Do we have a choice?” asked Ron, knowing the answer. They had none in wandering this void and would have no influence on their final judgement; why would they have any say in this? They had created something actually wonderful, but they knew in reality that someone more powerful would feel it entirely within their rights to take it and use it as they would. As in life, so in death, it seemed.

  He looked at the faces of the visitors around the table. Geoffrey was excited, his patchy stubble twitching at the thought that he would get to see Jeux Sans Frontières live; Marcel, dark glasses, casual slouch, wishing simply that the whole thing had taken much less time; Justin flicking his eyes around, his mind working through the opportunities the enforced scenario may offer; Mary watching Ron as he struggled with the inevitable, feeling his disappointment at the dismantling of his creation, wondering in what way this could ever turn out well.

  His glance over his shoulder for a sight of Ethel was involuntary, a tic in certain stressful circumstances over which he had no control. Simply the search for reassurance, the need to see that even as the roof of the temple collapsed, the pillars were still in place. She wasn’t there. Ethel was backstage, gently trying to convince the nun that she had not just found the door to fame and fortune.

  “We can take them on, Ron.” Guntrick leaned his massive hairy hands on the table. “If you say so, the lads will take them on. They can send their gods and demons, what can they do to us? We’re dead. It took us a hundred years to realise that, but we know it. What can they do?”

  Marcel raised a finger.

  “If I may.”

  Guntrick turned to him, a look that could have caused the walls of Troy to crumble.

  “It actually can get a lot worse. I’ve seen what those cursed have to go through, and it is, if you’ll pardon the bon mot, no holiday camp.”

  “Philistine!” Guntrick stood, casting a shadow and a whiff of ancient animal. “You can’t just destroy everything people have made, things they’ve sweated blood over. It can’t be.”

  Marcel rose in response.

  Mary had a momentary tremor. The one, possibly, that the girls and women of nightclub-land get when they see their man suck in his abs and face the imagined insult. It was visceral and unasked-for, but she could not ignore the sinking in her pelvic floor, at least until she looked again at the svelte Frenchman looking a long way up to the Visigoth, and appreciated the scale of the mismatch.

  The men stared at each other.

  “Shall we sit down?” Marcel said eventually. There was a hesitation and they slowly took their seats. A collective release of breath eddied around the table.

  “Let’s get this straight.” Marcel removed his glasses with a dramatic flourish. “We have no say over anything. Any of us. We can persuade ourselves that we do, but deep down we know the truth. Here, this place, is no different from the world we knew when we were alive. We can play with detail; drink different wine, be nicer to people, buy new clothes, but we aren’t the ones in control. Here? It’s a computer. It is dispassionate. It is fed your name on a list and boom! You go wherever. Before? You spend all your money on a house with lots of windows and they put a tax on windows. Boom! You have to sell the house, but not until the windows are bricked up. You people choose to be good all of your lives,” he glanced at Guntrick, “well, some of you, and find that whoever you worshipped has actually absolved himself from responsibility for whatever happens to you when you die. Boom! All that bowing and scraping, singing praise, it’s just loaded into a kind of accounts book. We’re nothing. Flies to wanton boys.”

  Silence.

  “But.” he said, looking around the faces at the table with the air of one about to make a portentious pronouncement, “ Sometimes even wanton boys are in a situation where they can take advantage. I wish I thought this was one of them”

  “I will say now,” said Guntrick, “that you have a very small amount of time before I call in the lads to beat you into a pulp. You need to stop talking in riddles and put this in terms that someone like me will understand.”

  Marcel considered his options, and came to the conclusion that none were particularly attractive; a fact that seemed to bedevil most situations in which he found himself. He took a deep breath and explained to all of them his view that in essence they were all fucked. For Geoffrey and Mary, who were familiar with Marcel’s world-view, this appraisal was nothing new. They had spent days in the Control Room trying to find other things to do as he ranted about the unfairness of everything from the lack of imagination in gentlemen’s hosiery to the pre-eminence of gods who invariably failed to live up to any
thing like their billing.

  “Were you religious, Ron?” he asked.

  “No, not really. I went to Sunday School when I was a kid.”

  “Doomed, then. Haven’t given the gifts, have you.”

  “So I’ll go to Hell?”

  “Well, probably not, from what I’ve seen of you, but you won’t be one of the chosen because you haven’t kissed ass. Guntrick? Worship?” This seemed unlikely.

  “We prayed to the Gods every night. For fair weather, sometimes for winds and rains. We loved a bit of fog. Then we could kill our enemies.”

  “Well, yes, there you go. ‘Please, God, give us the best circumstances under which we can slaughter people.”

  “That’s it.” Guntrick said, “That’s what I meant to say.”

  Kierkegaard, who listened to this exchange with rapt attention, leaned forward.

  “I spent a lot of time thinking about God. You know, he makes saints out of sinners, the power of prayer, that kind of thing; all pretty standard I suppose. Are you actually saying that he doesn’t care?”

  Marcel looked to the beautifully honed wood of the bar and back up to the expectant face.

  “I’m saying that just because you are dead, nothing changes. Nobody cares. I’ve seen God…”

  “You’ve seen God?” said Kierkegaard, his mouth open in awe.

  “At a distance, at a party.” Said Marcel. “Well it was probably Him. Fancy dress, so always hard to tell.”

  “And the Devil?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. On many too many occasions.”

  “And lots of other gods.” Geoffrey said, enthusiastically, “Hermes, Neptune, Ganesha (he’s never far away), Aphrodite, loads of them. Mary had a bit of a thing with War.”

  “I did NOT have a thing with War! Anyway, he’s not a god he’s an embodiment.”

  “Oh, you did,” Justin said, “there was a definite frisson, there.” Mary blushed and looked at her toes.

  “Anyway.” Marcel said. “It’s like everything else. Never meet your heroes, or your gods. It can only lead to disappointment. What I was going to say was, even on the basis that none of us have any choice in this, there must be a way to turn it to our advantage.”