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

by Peter Empringham

  “What has your advantage got to do with it?” Guntrick asked. Marcel gave him a blank look.

  “None of this is yours. You didn’t have the idea for Everland, build it, open it up. Why would you gain any advantage from any of this?”

  Because that’s what I do, thought Marcel. That’s what people do.

  “Of course,” Kierkegaard said, “all of this assumes that we believe any of these are g gods, or demons, or whatever.”

  “”Sorry?” Marcel said, “What do you mean?”

  “Belief is everything, isn’t it?” Søren continued. “The power they have over us comes from within ourselves; the respect, love, or fear are products of the conscious mind. Who knows what happens to the object of belief, to the power it has over us, if we stop believing in its power?”

  Marcel stared at Kierkegaard, the blankness of his expression belying the frantic activity within his head as he processed this statement. He became vaguely aware that someone was nudging him.

  “What?” he said.

  “What happens next?” Ron asked again. “So they use Everland, but what do you lot do?”

  “Ah. I didn’t tell you, did I?” He said. “It seems that not content with just managing the entire processing procedure for millions of souls a day, Geoffrey and I are also Project Managers for the last and greatest Jeux sans Frontières.” He glanced at Geoffrey, who had found a boiled sweet adhering just below the knee of his calico trousers and was in a foetal position attempting to inhale it.

  “Most of that might fall to me. Look, what I’m saying is that even though none of us have a choice about whether we eventually provide what they want, there has to be some way to get something in return. We don’t have to make it easy. Look at Geoffrey. He can be utterly useless and incompetent even when he’s trying his best.”

  Geoff looked up. A pear drop of indeterminate vintage had become glued to his lower lip, and their eyes followed its motion as he spoke.

  “It’s true;” he said, with misplaced pride. “you won’t believe the mistakes I’ve made without realising it.”

  No-one, contrary to his statement, had any difficulty believing this might be correct.

  “So we go along with it?” asked Ron, glumly.

  He cast his eyes around the happy crowd in the centre. They were in the main in a conga as the band Mutti Ford und Söhne, a bunch of middle class German hippies who passed away in a carbon monoxide incident in a Volkswagen campervan, played a folksy version of Song for Guy.

  “Can I design the sets?” Maggsy asked.

  23

  The closure of Everland in order to prepare it to host the final battle caused a wave of disappointment amongst those who had made advance bookings. The more intelligent amongst them were not mollified by the assurances that these would be honoured after the event, being aware that such an eventuality would depend almost entirely on the outcome. Even a week in a tin chalet wasn’t going to make a devil-led Armageddon a barrel of laughs.

  The camp became, once again, a hive of activity, as Chippendale and his disciples leapt into action to bring to life Maggsy’s designs for the contests that would comprise Jeux Ultimes sans Frontières. The Visigoths set about a serious cull in the woods at the far end of the site, dragging lumber into the camp where it was sawn, hewn, and hammered by the carpenters, before Maggsy and his crew began painting it. Goodtime was ramping up the fermentation of a specially designed brew he named Final Battle (“a dark, hoppy ale with hints of ambrosia and a lingering schadenfreude aftertaste”). Obadiah had an entire factory floor of child seamstresses from Bangladesh churning out flags, gold and white with a central halo, or black with centred fiery red horns. In addition they took some time to move the structure of Lucky Obie’s (which turned out to have been built on an area of quicksand) having turned up one morning to see only the top of the roof remaining above ground.

  It was after the conversation with Kierkegaard, during these days of preparation, that Marcel began to go missing for hours on end. He would leave Everland and disappear among the crowds lining the perimeter. Back in the park he was sullen and uncommunicative, shrugging off attempts at conversation. Even Mary was unable to bring him out of this mood. Eventually, one afternoon she followed him at a distance, when he marched off with apparent purpose, into the throng. She watched as he engaged groups of people, the mish-mash of ages and races, drawing them close and talking animatedly, gesturing to them across the crowds as if exhorting them to some action. When he moved on, she passed the groups he had addressed and found them in deep discussion, or moving off and talking quietly but vigorously with their neighbours. He did this for hours, the process repeating, and eventually Mary turned away and returned to Everland. Marcel arrived much later, at dusk, looking tired and dusty, avoiding contact with the others. Mary smiled at him, but he simply returned a grim face. He was at work on something, but she had no idea what it might be.

  Ron and Ethel gave every impression of being utterly bewildered by the turn of events, an impression confirmed in their first Aftervision interview. Marcel and Geoffrey were tasked to organise the broadcast coverage promised to Satan, and as gigantic screens popped up throughout the Afterworld through the simple expedient of miracle, Mary had run an exhaustive search through the database to locate people who could be persuaded to provide content.

  The natural history film crew who had been seeking the first ever footage of the Antarctic Gibbon, but became frozen in a glacier with all of their equipment, were a real coup. Of course, had they had access to the Extinction Clock, they would have known that the last Gibbonia Antarcticus had choked on a seal in 1721, and that their expedition was pointless. Marcel was persuaded to not tell them their search had been futile only by Mary’s assertion that most lives are, anyway.

  Finding a suitable presenter was more difficult. Strangely, the first few they approached were reluctant to relive their earthly occupations. Some had given in to the shyness that drove them to put themselves in the public eye in the first place. Others weren’t going to do it without significant reward (even Marcel knew that the recompense could be eternal damnation); or in some instances simply said that they ‘can’t be arsed’. The single candidate who grasped the opportunity with both hands and an unearthly white smile was Strand Crantum, an erstwhile weatherman from WZBU-Chugwater, a Nebraska TV station serving a population of millions, most of them cattle. Strand died in his sixties, largely as a result of his pursuit of never, ever looking more than forty. His face had been tugged in more directions than a weathervane, and with such enthusiasm (Chugwater General Hospital not being at the forefront of cosmetic surgery) that he looked like a photofit assembled by someone who couldn’t decide whether the perpetrator was Chinese, African-American, or the Joker as played by Jack Nicholson. His downfall was an addiction to self-tanning agents, most of which, somewhere on the bottle below the helpline number, warned against exposure to the greatest tanning agent of all. He died fried, and he died orange.

  The opportunity to be the anchor of the biggest event ever, anywhere, was much too attractive for a man who would have taken the opportunity even had it been the sixth biggest event this week in a no-horse town. He always wanted to move on from weather, which to be frank in Nebraska was somewhat repetitive, but the other four people at WZBU had cornered the market in reportage of tumbleweed accidents and unintentional indecent exposure. This was the chance, his swansong, and his teeth would be flashed to an audience of billions.

  “This is Strand Crantum reporting live from outside the wunnerful, wunnerful Everland chalet and entertainment park, where preparation for the biggest rumble we have ever seen continues. I have with me Ron and Ethel, who created Everland, and are now watching over its transformation into the location for Jewx Sense Frontiery, the God-Devil showdown everyone has been waiting for. Ron. It’s a lovely day here, some high cloud, a thirty percent chance of precipitation, howsitfeel?”

  “It’s very odd, actually Mr Crantum-“

 
; “Strand.”

  “Eh?”

  “Call me Strand. It comes across more relaxed.”

  “Your name’s Strand?”

  “It is. Strand Crantum reporting.”

  “I’ve never met anyone called Strand. We knew a Dan once, didn’t we Eth?”

  Ethel nodded. There was a Dan in the street behind, she remembered. No Strands, though.

  “Well, that’s dandy. So, rilly. Howsitfeel?”

  “As I said, er, Strand, it’s very odd. We had no idea that after we died and walked around a world full of dead people for years, then built our own chalet park, we would be selected as the venue for the final and irreversible battle between good and evil, a battle that will define the future of the living for eternity.”

  “Sure, sure. Ethel, what does the future of the human race mean to you?”

  “I haven’t really thought about it, to be honest.”

  “Yep, yep. Do you think it’ll stay fine for the big event?”

  All of which proved you can take the weather out of the man…

  In those days immediately before the big event, as the sound of hammering and sawing, the falling of trees, became more intermittent, they sat on the terrace of the Entertainment Complex and gazed across the fields before them, the chalets glistening in the late afternoon sun, the structures for the games hooded, their decoration taking place in secret. Mary, Geoffrey and Justin were there (Chalet 6), Marcel would sit silently with them when he wasn’t out on his secret excursions through the crowds. Guntrick and his men spreadeagled themselves across chairs or on the floor; it should have been sociable and relaxed, but as the big day approached, it became anything but.

  “What actually happens to us,” asked Ethel, “if the Devil wins?”

  “I think all bets are off. He’s not big on honouring agreements. ” Marcel said. The statement sounded personal.

  “I don’t know what that means, dear. Me and Ron didn’t place any bets. We didn’t go to church, but if you looked at what we did and how we lived you probably would be able to say we were good people.”

  “Well,” said Marcel, “as things stand, you’ll probably get a reward for that. Your heaven, whatever it might be. Strictly speaking, this is a final battle for dominion over earth, so anyone already here shouldn’t be affected.”

  “And you?” asked Ethel. “You go back to Hell, or what?”

  “Well, that’s why I use ‘should’. I’ve kind of been promised a pardon for doing all this, but that would mean I would be putting my trust in the Devil. It ‘shouldn’t’ affect what happens to anyone already dead; it ‘should’ mean I will be rewarded. Big leap of faith there. Satan’s been known to be susceptible to a little mission creep in my experience. We could get something we really didn’t expect.”

  Ethel looked out over the busy campsite, at the crowds growing outside its perimeter, felt the presence around her of Guntrick, and Adreal, and Lucius and the others, glanced at the rebuilding of the sunken shop.

  “I already did, Marcel. Get something I didn’t expect, I mean.” She reached out her hand and took Ron’s, slid her fingers between his. “We’ve had more time together. We’ve made new friends, friends we love. They can’t take this away from us, can they?”

  Marcel thought of his time in hell, the pain, the heat, the sardonic laughter. He thought of the casual sadism of the Devil and his disciples, the disregard for humanity, the actual hatred of it. He looked at Mary, the dark hair bubbling onto her shoulders, the caramel skin, dark eyes looking at him almost asking a question.

  “No, Ethel, they can’t.” He lied.

  24

  The massive head filled the screen. Behind it, blurred out of focus shapes wavered to and fro. It was bright, bright orange, topped with hair impossibly black but for a line of pure silver, and when it opened its mouth behind a fat microphone, there was a streak of pearly white. Millions wondered whether there was a way to control the colour or contrast, but the Aftervision screens were beyond adjustment. Soon they would wish they had a button to adjust the reality.

  “I’m Strand Crantum, reporting from day one of the final showdown, the rumble in the, er, chalet park. This is the Superbowl, the Stanley Cup, the Chugwater County Softball League Play-offs rolled into one. The weather here is a little overcast and we expect showers later. Satan, how are you feeling as the moment approaches when your team takes to the field?”

  The Devil was still suited and thinly bearded. Were it not for the nubs of the horns peeking from his dark wavy hair he could have been a very successful accountant.

  “Well, Strand,” he said, his voice mellifluous, his face set in a smile, the bland nothings of the sports manager tumbling easily from his lips, “we’re just here to compete. It’s most important that belief is the winner here, and we’ll be looking to play the games in the right spirit -if you’ll forgive the pun- and make all of our supporters proud.”

  There was a roar of anticipation from the crowds gathered on the perimeter of Everland as Strand stared once more into the camera.

  “Well, we don’t have the man himself from the opposition to tell us about their approach to this contest, but hey, we’ve got the next best thing. Jesus, what’s the feeling in your camp?”

  “We’re very confident. We feel like we can walk on water.”

  “You can, can’t you? Walk on water?”

  “Well, yes, but it’s a bit like being able to touch your nose with your tongue. Not much real application for it. Anyway, we think we’re the underdog, but we’ve got a chance.”

  “Strategy?” Said Strand. “You guys have tended to turn the other cheek. Do you think you might need to be a little more proactive here?”

  “We’re happy with our approach, Strand. We’ll play the game the right way, and we’ll kick the shit out of anyone who suggest we won’t.”

  “And the weather? What will that be like?”

  “Whatever we decide.”

  Justin was running a book.

  “This is a goldmine.” he said, watching the bets come in. “I think I’ll do it live? You know, stand on a box and wave my arms around.”

  “Like one of those nutters who tells you God is about to bring about the apocalypse?” asked Mary.

  “No, like a bookie.” said Justin, for whom irony might just have been a derivative of an element, like palladiumy or arsenicy.

  They were waiting for Marcel and Geoffrey to come out of the changing rooms where they were getting into their costumes as adjudicators for Jeux Ultimes sans Frontières. The whole thing seemed, to Mary, to be ridiculous; that anyone, God or Devil alike, could hang the entire future of humanity on the variable bounce of a rugby ball or the relative greasiness of a vertical pole. She wasn’t religious; hadn’t been brought up that way, but there is a corner of the psyche of everyone in the western world that tries to not entirely disown beliefs handed down through centuries. Her experience since her death, the regular meetings with those defined as gods, confrontations with evil, served only to reinforce her amazement at the whole shebang. Niche deities who couldn’t hold their drink, embodiments of badness whom she had seen line dancing to Shania Twain. It was just like the world, only with, it seemed, more widespread consequences.

  The curtains of the changing room were flung aside, and Geoffrey, followed by a more recalcitrant Marcel, stepped out in front of them. For both, it was a transformation.

  They wore blazers that could have been cut from deck chairs and white shirts with ruffles down the front. Geoffrey preened in front of the full-length mirror; Marcel slunk. Just slunk.

  “Let’s have a look, Geoff.” Mary said. The turnip man made an effort to draw himself up from his habitual hunch, a posture born of some years of farming root vegetables whilst fending off starvation and a couple of centuries working at a computer. He twirled in front of them and posed hand on hip, smiling broadly. Mary was drawn, despite every effort, to his mouth. Lunch, or at least recent meals, had included pizza, broccoli, and what sh
e hoped was mozzarella.

  “You look amazing.” She said. “Marcel? Let’s have a look.”

  “That’s not necessary.” He had his back to them, apparently intent on inspecting the curtain of the changing room.

  “Oh,” Justin looked up from the copious notes he had made of bets placed, odds offered, profit to be realised, “I think it is, Marcel.”

  The Frenchman turned reluctantly and held his arms wide, the sour look on his face giving the lie to the expansive gesture.

  Mary and Justin stared. Mary kept her face straight for as long as she could before her shoulders began to shake and she hid her mouth behind her hand. Justin just guffawed.

  “Game show host. Well-dressed man-about-death becomes game show host.” His words were forced between barks of laughter.

  “I am a game show host, apparently.”

  “Oh, we know, don’t worry. You could go in an identity parade for game show hosts. It was that one. Stripey.” Marcel looked at him sourly, as though he were storing up something to bring to the fore later.

  “It’s not that bad, Marcel. It looks good on Geoffrey.” Mary said.

  “That’s the best you can do? It suits a man who thinks the smock is a fashion statement? This is synthetic fibre, you know, all of it.” He rubbed the fabric of the jacket disgustedly between finger and thumb. “I’m a fire risk.”

  “Look,” said Geoffrey, holding out one of his lapels, “inside pockets.” For the sense of wonder this seemed to elicit, he might as well have been describing a rocket ship. “I could keep my sandwich in here.”

  “Good idea.” said Marcel. “Just as the wrath of the devil is unleashed on earth you can take a bite on a marmite and peanut butter bap. Have I got to wear this shit?”

  “Oh yes.” Justin said, with ill-concealed relish.

  It wasn’t as if their responsibilities could in any way overcome the embarrassment of the outfits. Their main role was counting, a task Marcel considered so far beneath him it was positively subterranean, and so far beyond Geoffrey it was stratospheric. They did, though, also have to figure out if anyone was cheating, which would prove considerably more taxing.