by Al Ewing
The critics, of course. Critics, Niles Golan believed, came in two varieties – insightful, and jealous. The insightful occasionally compared him to Clancy, or Crichton, which was flattering, although Niles really saw himself as being closer to a young Thomas Pynchon. The other kind of critic, meanwhile – the jealous kind – used words like ‘cosy’ and ‘predictable.’ Which was obviously ridiculous, especially after Niles had ended Down To The Woods Tonight: A Kurt Power Novel by having the Teddy Bear Killer murder Power’s new girlfriend in cold blood, just to cruelly mess with Kurt’s head and drive him back to the drink. How could anyone have predicted a finale like that?
No, obviously whichever small-minded hack had called that stroke of brilliance ‘predictable’ – it was Lance Pritchards, writing in the Topeka Examiner – was suffering from a touch of the green-eyed monster. How depressing it must be, Niles thought, to sit behind a desk all day, being called on to write wretched little hit-pieces about wordsmiths who could out-write you in their sleep! No wonder Lance Pritchards so envied Niles that he had to use what meagre power he had to poison the well against him. Lance Pritchards and all those bastards on Amazon, giving their meagre three-star reviews to books like The Saladin Imperative: A Kurt Power Novel, even though it had surely completely changed their understanding of Middle Eastern politics.
Bastards, all of them.
CUTNER SMILED. “RIGHT, right. Nineteen books. And, obviously, you know Kurt Power could end up being translated any day now” – he was actively smirking now, in a way Niles didn’t much like – “just as soon as the studios realise what a hit they’d have on their hands. Which, I guess, makes you something like a minor God compared with me...”
“I didn’t create you.”
“No, but you...” He coughed, in a way Niles couldn’t help but notice. “You easily could have done. Ahem.”
The Fictional’s thoughts were as visible to the author as words on a page, Niles thought. Anyway, he could have easily thought up a character like Ralph Cutner – easiest thing in the world. He’d just had his hands full with Kurt Power, that was all. Who, by the way, was a vastly more complex creation, what with his father having been murdered by the leader of the very terrorist organisation he found himself regularly defending the world from.
Ralph read his expression. “Of course, as a writer – a wordsmith – you can probably see all my motivations, my inner workings, my tropes and tics, just the way you felt Loewes could see yours. Am I warm?”
Niles grimaced. “Not even slightly. You’re stone cold,” he said bitterly.
Cutner shrugged. “Well, that’s why you come to me, to hear things you can dismiss easily.”
“That’s not true,” Niles scowled. “I just, ah, find you a little more...” – Niles searched for the word, not wanting to be drawn into any more discussions of his supposed realist tendencies – “more relatable than Loewes was. That’s all.”
Cutner chuckled. “Well, of course you can relate to me, I’m an acerbic genius who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Relating to me strokes your ego.”
Niles gritted his teeth. It took an incredible display of iron will for the author to resist rising from the chair and punching the smirk off the man. How dare he?
He forced himself to relax, and pointed to the decanter. “If it’s not too much to ask, could you pour me a glass of that?”
“Sure.” Ralph poured another apple juice and handed Niles the glass, a look of distaste crossing his face for a moment. “You’re not alone, you know – well, when it comes to the ego-stroking, at least. Most of my clients aren’t like you. They’re real fans of the show – they can quote every line. They don’t want treatment, they just come here to re-enact old scenes, or make out we’re friends. Very occasionally” – a look of disgust crossed his face – “one makes an appointment just to tell me they’re in love with me.”
Niles was shocked. “Wait, they say this to your face?”
“What can I say?” Ralph shrugged. “Some people are freaks.”
THERE WAS NOTHING particularly sick or wrong or unpleasant about a human becoming attached to a fictional character. That had been something for writers to aim for since literature began.
No, it was simply a question of degree.
People could fill blogs and tumblrs with adoring gifs of a particular character, a cartoon or comic-book icon – there was nothing strange about that. Nobody saw much difference between a tumblr devoted to Thor or Loki and one devoted to James Dean or Brad Pitt.
Some, admittedly, took it a little further. They might start sleeping with a body pillow or a ‘real doll’ of their favourite character, touching and stroking it in the night. Or they might photoshop a cartoon horse into their arms or their bed and put the resulting pictures up on Facebook. That might make the general public feel a little queasy.
As it was generally understood, real people could love each other. Real people could have affection for fictional characters. But if a real person loved a fictional character – well, then something had gone very, very wrong with them. There was a necessary distance between the real and the imaginary.
And when the imaginary was walking around in the world of the real, it made things even more complicated. Those queasy feelings – pity, revulsion, an overriding sense of creepiness – didn’t go away just because the fictional character in question had been translated into a clone body instead of onto a pillow. Fictionals were still imaginary beings. If anything, those feelings of disgust became even more pronounced. The idea of a human being and a Fictional having sex produced an almost phobic reaction in many people, including Niles.
There were, occasionally, human beings who slept with Fictionals, even fell in love with them. On the rare occasions when human/Fictional couplings had been admitted to – only twice since the first Fictional was translated, once in 1991 and once in 2000 – it had been professional and social suicide for both parties. The gutter press had had a field day, subjecting the couples in question to as much muck as they could hurl without fear of litigation, and the public had been happy to lap up every salacious detail. No studio would take a chance on casting a Fictional who’d been subjected to that kind of public gaze, and their human partners tended to be ‘let go’ for vague and spurious reasons, such as ‘bringing the company into disrepute.’ Eventually, they’d been forced to leave Hollywood altogether. It was a taboo that had a frightening amount of power to ruin lives.
Fictionals paired off with each other occasionally, although rarely. The ratio of male to female Fictionals – mostly Fictionals were male, white and straight, thanks to the prejudices of the Hollywood system – meant such couplings were few and far between. When they did happen, the press found such ‘slash pairings’ utterly adorable, like a wedding between two of the cutest little puppies in the world.
Other Fictionals usually didn’t comment.
But Fictional sex – no matter who with – was a very rare thing. In the main, Fictionals were carefully designed to sublimate their sexual desires into their roles – there was nothing unusual in a Fictional falling deeply in love with an actor’s portrayal of a character, and then treating the actor his-or-herself as a completely different person, a fellow professional doing a job. For a Fictional to fall in love with a human being rather than a fellow fictional character would be a rebellion against everything they knew, against their very nature.
They just weren’t built that way.
RALPH GROANED, AND Niles could see the distaste in his face deepening to disgust. “Some days, I wish I was a real therapist. Some of these people need help.” He shuddered. “Try this on for size – I had a client once who walked in, dropped his trousers and started literally beating off in the chair. I tried dragging him out of it, but that just sent him over the edge. He was calling me his Daddy.”
Niles blinked for a moment. “Wait. When you say over the edge...” He shifted in the chair, nervous.
Ralph had the decency to look embarrassed. He nodded
to the chair. “I did clean it. Thoroughly. With bleach. It’s been completely disinfected – hell, I’d sit in it myself.” Noticing the look on Niles’ face, he indicated the chair he’d been sitting in earlier – a stiff-backed wooden chair that looked like it would have been more at home around a dining table. “But feel free to sit in that one.”
Niles hesitated for a moment.
The author was a man of the world, of course. He didn’t want to give the impression that he was bothered by something as minor as sitting on a chair that had once been –
– he got up hurriedly.
Ralph sighed, looking at the chair with venom, and then returned to the sideboard to pour another drink. Niles opened his mouth to ask for one, but he reminded himself that it was only apple juice. What he needed after that revelation was whiskey.
Ralph took a sip of the drink and smiled. “You’re meeting Maurice after this?”
Niles fell greedily on the change of subject. “That’s right. I am indeed.” He leaned back on the creaking new chair, trying to keep his voice from getting too smug. “Apparently, he’s been talking to a studio – one of the big ones, in fact. Talisman Pictures. They might just have some screenplay work lined up for me. According to Maurice, it could – could – be the big one.”
Cutner raised an eyebrow. “You’re kidding. They’re doing a Kurt Power movie?” He sounded shocked.
Niles ignored the implicit criticism in the tone. He’d been wanting to see a Kurt Power film for years, ever since he’d created the character in his exciting debut novel, Power Of Attorney: A Kurt Power Novel. (He’d dropped the lawyer angle after he’d realised how much research was involved.)
For the leading man, he could just about see Cruise, or Clooney, or Pitt. But those were second choices. He knew there was only one person who’d really be perfect for it.
He could picture the scene now.
The author watched, breathless, as the adult body of Kurt Power grew in the translation tube, day by day. Like a proud papa, he would lay his hands on the tube, gazing in wonderment at the creation of life taking place before him. A life that could not have been without the first spark of genius that had come from his very pen.
Then the first meeting with him, in some executive’s office. They shook hands, the author smiling paternally. “Welcome to the world,” he said, in gentle tones that rang with a hidden steel. Kurt Power could only look upon his Creator in silent wonder.
Niles knew that Kurt Power, when he emerged, would know all about him – what he’d done, the part he’d played in Power’s existence. He’d be grateful for that – intensely grateful. But it wouldn’t stop the two of them becoming close friends. After all, Niles reflected, Niles Golan, ground-breaking author, was just the sort of person Kurt Power would count as a close friend. Just the kind of person he’d respect.
“You’re a good Joe, Niles,” Kurt drawled, in the authentic voice of the American working man. “You sure are a gosh-darned good Joe.”
And people would see him on the streets, on sets, in gossip magazines. “That’s Kurt Power,” breathed the beautiful stenographer, her full, firm breasts heaving with undisguised admiration. “The new Fictional. Based on the Niles Golan books – have you read them? He’s like a young Thomas Pynchon, with just a hint of Ernest Hemingway,” she sighed, orgasmically.
It would be all he’d ever wanted.
Niles couldn’t help but smile. Cutner was right - it would be like being a god. A benevolent god.
He chuckled modestly.
“Well... we’ll see.”
CHAPTER TWO
THE MAN FROM Talisman Pictures had the smile of someone intimately acquainted with success, used to getting exactly what he wanted. The easy smile of a winner at the game of life.
The author, not to be outdone, shot back a steely grin, fire glinting in his elegant hazel eyes. He was amused at all the Hollywood game-playing, but he knew he could eat this man for breakfast, if necessary.
Niles smiled back, weakly, his clammy hands shifting to and fro as he tried to work out where to put them. After another few awkward seconds, he stuck out his hand to be shaken, hoping his palm wasn’t too sweaty.
“Miles!” said The Man From Talisman Pictures, smiling wider. “Baby!”
NILES HAD MOVED to Los Angeles eleven years earlier, after a brief period in San Francisco. He’d moved to America on a whim, after England lost its appeal for him following a particularly scathing review in the Times Literary Supplement.
During his first month in San Fran, he’d met a young and vivacious woman named Iyla Johri, with a smile that – at the time – he’d found captivating. On their second meeting, he’d compared it to the smile of the Mona Lisa, and he’d been able to tell just by her surprised reaction – “really?” – that nobody else had had the imagination to make such an off-beat comparison.
By their fourth date, he’d found out that she handled public relations for a publisher of children’s books, she liked tea with a dash of honey and lemon, and she had two small moles on the back of her shoulder, like a figure eight. The two of them were soon living together, and when Iyla found a much higher-paying job with an animation studio in Los Angeles, Niles had followed her there. On their first night in the new place, he’d proposed.
Part of him had expected Hollywood to open itself up like a flower within a few weeks, bestowing the sweet nectar of celebrity on him almost the moment he arrived. He’d imagined that people would know him there – know Kurt Power, at least – but, as it turned out, he was just one more D-List semi-somebody in a city that had far more than its fair share of them. Like everyone else in town, he had a screenplay he’d made a couple of desultory attempts to sell – a powerfully erotic thriller centred around the outbreak of an infectious skin disease, which he still secretly believed was a masterpiece. His agent, however – a conservative woman in her sixties named Agnes Cowan who lived in Dorset – was far more interested in keeping the Kurt Power money flowing than in helping his client on any risky changes of career. Before long Niles was back to his old routine, putting out at least one new Kurt Power novel every year and spending the remaining time on other projects, which somehow never included the movies.
And so things had continued for almost eleven fruitful years – punctuated here and there by a little personal stress, but that was life – until the summer of 2012, when Agnes had died suddenly after being gored by a ram during an ill-fated visit to a petting zoo, a tragic event that had forced Niles to take on a new agent. Maurice Zuckerbroth, who claimed to be thirty-nine – and had been making that claim for years – was a short, chubby, slightly oleaginous man with a black moustache, a dyed-black comb-over and a perpetual air of slightly anxious over-enthusiasm. Niles wouldn’t have gone to a man like that under ordinary circumstances, but Zuckerbroth was the man who’d somehow sold The Wizard Games to Fantasia Films, which had made the original author – Helen something – a household name. If he was willing to do something similar for Kurt Power... well, Niles wasn’t about to say no.
Maurice, on their first meeting, had promised faithfully that not only would he keep all Niles’ current contracts running smoothly, but he would personally see to it that Kurt Power was given the green light for a big-budget picture within the year.
And now, just over eight months later, here they were.
NILES HAD EXPECTED to be having the meeting in the Talisman offices – he’d had visions of dazzling a trio of sharp-suited executives at a mahogany boardroom table until they rose as one to deliver him a standing ovation – but instead Maurice had taken him to a greasy diner with a badly-painted mural taking up one wall, which was apparently where the man from Talisman Pictures liked to have his lunch meetings. As they sat and waited for their entrées, Niles found himself trying not to look at the poorly-proportioned Elvis, or the lumpy Marilyn, or the Bogart whose arm didn’t seem to be connected to his torso in any meaningful way, but he couldn’t quite tear his eyes away. They looked disdai
nfully back at him. “So retro,” said The Man From Talisman Pictures, whose name, it turned out, was Dean.
He wore a grey suit of undistinguished cut, close-cropped blonde hair and an uneven tan. Niles wondered if his slightly shabby look was a sign that he had less power within the studio system, or more. “I just can’t get enough of the décor here. It’s like outsider art. You should try the fries, they’re just... like a statement, you know?” Dean already had a bowl of the fries in front of him – they were cold and greasy, thin strips of potato that seemed like they’d been made days before and then left in a dingy corner of a walk-in fridge to congeal. Dean picked one up, looking at it for a moment, and shook his head. “It’s the irony, you know? I think Adam Sandler eats here.”
“They’re fantastic, buddy. I’ll get a bowl myself. Oh, waitress!” Maurice lifted his pudgy fingers, trying and failing to snap them. The waitress brought laminated menus, handing them over with a disdainful roll of her eyes. Maurice scanned the plastic for a moment, then shook his head. “I’m gonna have to go off-menu here, honey bun. Give me a hummus wrap, feta salad with aioli and a diet old-fashioned lemonade – no corn syrup.” He grinned wide enough to show the gold of his left molar. The waitress looked back at him as if he was an ant.
Niles coughed, feeling sheepish. “I’ll, ah, just have a glass of water.” The waitress narrowed her eyes.
“Just water?”
Niles smiled brightly. “Ah, yes. Thank you.”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t know if we do just water.”
Niles’ smile became fixed. “Tap water,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be bottled.”
