Bright Young Things

by Scarlett Thomas

  ‘So what happened with this competition with your friends?’ Thea asks Paul.

  ‘Well,’ he says. ‘The problem is that the game really gives you the feeling of being in another world. My two friends, Nick and Tony, shared a flat and they became totally absorbed in the experience, and also in the competition between them. But the worst thing they did was to decide to do their competition in real time. Instead of comparing memory card times, they were just going to see who finished first. It was a big mistake. For two days and three nights, they didn’t move from their PlayStations. They both believed they were Cloud. They both loved the same female character. The trouble is that one of the themes of the whole game is the idea of the split between good and evil, not just in the world but within people. Even the good characters have weaknesses they have to overcome, and some of the bad characters have interesting motivations that aren’t entirely evil. Anyway, the main good character, Cloud, is linked to the main bad character, Sephiroth. In a way they are two halves of the same thing; a living dialectic. Only by the fusion of Sephiroth’s desire for evil and Cloud’s desire for good can the world be changed and ultimately saved. Anyway, in the game there are scenes where Cloud becomes confused and is almost controlled by Sephiroth. At about the time that this was happening in the plot of the game, Tony started to become a bit unhinged. He’d been up for about forty-eight hours by this point; his vision had long gone and his brain was starting to go a bit messy. On all games it says you’re supposed to take breaks every hour or so, or at least look at something other than the screen for a few minutes. But Tony never looked away from the screen in all that time.’

  ‘What about Nick?’ asks Emily.

  ‘The same, but he wasn’t as mad as Tony.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asks Thea. ‘Why was Tony mad?’

  ‘He started believing that Nick was Sephiroth. At the point in the game where you’re supposed to go into the North Cave and face Sephiroth for the last time, Tony abandoned the game and decided to invade Nick’s bedroom instead. Nick had put up this joke sign saying “North Cave – abandon hope all ye who enter here”, which Tony may have taken literally. They both kept ornamental Samurai swords in the house, and Tony had already decided that this would be his best choice of weapon. So he burst into what he clearly thought was the North Cave, to defeat Sephiroth with his sword. Forced to defend himself, Nick grabbed his own sword. They both swung at each other at exactly the same moment. The police found their two headless bodies one week later, when people started missing them and their corpses started to smell.’

  There are a couple of moments of silence.

  ‘Is that true?’ asks Thea

  ‘Of course not,’ says Paul. ‘I don’t have any friends. Brilliant game though.’

  Chapter Seven

  Anne is woken by the sound of Jamie swearing. She yawns and turns. She’s now facing Paul, although he’s facing Thea. The whole group looks like a party that’s just passed out mid-conga. She props herself up on her elbow. Bright sunlight picks out little bits of ash on the carpet, some pairs of shoes and socks. It’s a warm morning, a complete contrast with the cold night. Everyone seems to be stirring. It looks like Jamie woke them all up.

  ‘What time is it?’ asks Thea sleepily.

  ‘Ten,’ says Jamie.

  There are yawning sounds and a lot of stretching.

  ‘I had the strangest dream,’ says Anne sleepily. ‘I was skiing down this slope and—’

  Paul laughs. Emily giggles sleepily.

  ‘Very funny, Anne. We all know the joke,’ says Thea.

  ‘I don’t,’ says Bryn.

  Emily sighs. ‘You must know it. It’s the one where these two blokes and a girl are in a hotel, and for whatever reason, like the hotel’s full or something, they all end up having to share a bed – and of course the girl goes in the middle, between the two blokes. In the morning, the first guy says he’s had this amazing dream that he was being wanked off by a beautiful woman. The second guy says, “God, that’s a coincidence, I had exactly the same dream,” and the girl says, “Men are so typical. I had a nice innocent dream about skiing down a lovely snowy slope.” Or whatever. I’m shit at telling jokes.’

  Bryn thinks for a minute, then laughs. ‘I get it,’ he says.

  Anne quite likes Bryn.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Emily asks Jamie.

  He’s taking his nerd thing a bit far this morning, sweating over more bits of paper. He makes Anne think of an antique computer, slowly and painfully creating data because it just can’t do anything else. She looks over his shoulder. He’s making notes on his list from last night.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asks.

  ‘Still trying to work this mess out,’ he says.

  ‘Why?’ asks Anne.

  ‘Because we’re still here.’

  Half an hour later, everyone except Thea is in the kitchen. She’s washing the duvet covers in cold water in one of the upstairs bathrooms, which seems stupid to Anne, since they’ve only slept in them for one night. Maybe Thea’s got OCD or something. Anne read a book about that once.

  Getting up turned out to be a slow, leisurely affair. Some people are still complaining of sore backs from sleeping on the floor; others are commenting on the peace and quiet. For some reason Anne starts thinking about her parents at the flat in Islington. They’ll both be at work now, sweating in the London heat, probably trying to conduct extra-marital affairs as well as fitting in too many clients and too many lunches. They’ll work all week and barely see each other. The cleaner will come every other weekday. There’ll be the usual Chattering Class discussions about art and politics and literature and restaurants and gardening and which play they’ll see on Saturday. They’ll accumulate about six newspapers between them by the end of each day, which Anne’s mother will recycle every Sunday morning. On a Sunday afternoon she’ll play tennis and Anne’s father will play golf. The whole of London, including them, will not stop. People will be hurrying to work or to enjoy themselves or just to nowhere, caught in the slipstream of everyone else’s hurry. But on the island everything is perfectly still and calm and no one is hurrying, because no one has anything particularly important to do.

  Emily’s cooking breakfast, loudly frying bacon, sausages, eggs, mushrooms, bread and tomatoes. Jamie, Paul and Bryn are sitting at the table. Jamie’s still doing something with his stupid list. Bryn’s smoking. Paul’s trying to make a two-way radio out of everyone’s mobile phones. Or at least that’s what Anne assumes he’s doing. Unless he’s just taking them all apart for fun, which isn’t that unlikely.

  ‘Do you think it might be revenge?’ suggests Emily.

  ‘What?’ says Jamie.

  ‘Being here, dummy. Do you think someone’s trying to teach us a lesson?’

  ‘Eureka,’ mumbles Paul, as he drops a rubber keypad under the table.

  Anne’s already considered the revenge thing, and rejected it.

  Jamie’s getting excited. ‘We have to make our lists or we’ll never find out.’

  Emily walks over and opens the back door. Some fresh air comes in, but not much.

  ‘What, you mean like we all bullied the same kid at school?’ says Paul.

  ‘And he died during the initiation ceremony for our gang,’ adds Anne.

  ‘In a grey scene in a forest in winter,’ says Paul.

  ‘With the sound of children’s laughter carried on the cold wind . . .’ giggles Anne.

  ‘And now it’s the anniversary of his death and someone’s having a party.’

  ‘Will you two stop being so cynical,’ says Jamie.

  ‘We’re not,’ says Anne defensively. ‘We were just saying.’

  Bryn flicks his fag end out of the back door.

  ‘Wouldn’t we remember if we’d all bullied some kid at school?’ he says.

  ‘Maybe we’ve forgotten,’ suggests Jamie.

  ‘Right,’ says Bryn. ‘Anyone else go to school in Southend?’

&n
bsp; Everyone shakes their heads.

  ‘Bit unlikely, then, isn’t it?’ he says.

  Thea comes into the kitchen and sits down.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asks.

  ‘We’re going to do our lists,’ says Emily.

  ‘Oh,’ says Thea. ‘I thought we were doing that anyway.’

  ‘Well we’re including our pasts now,’ says Emily.

  ‘She thinks it might be revenge,’ says Anne.

  Jamie’s counting out six fresh sheets of paper.

  ‘Right,’ he says. ‘I want everyone to write down the following: date of birth, place of birth, mother’s maiden name, schools attended, towns lived in other than your home town, names and details of siblings, and names and details of partners or ex-partners.’

  ‘Why?’ asks Thea.

  ‘It’s so we can see who or what we’ve got in common,’ explains Paul.

  ‘We could all have shagged the same person or something, you see,’ says Emily. ‘And we wouldn’t even know we’ve got them in common.’

  ‘I get it,’ says Thea.

  ‘I don’t think that’s going to be the answer,’ says Anne. ‘Considering that I haven’t ever shagged anybody.’

  ‘Get over yourself,’ says Thea.

  ‘I think she’s telling the truth,’ says Paul.

  ‘What about holiday destinations?’ says Thea, ignoring Paul. ‘Maybe we all pissed off the same beach bum or something.’

  ‘Cool,’ says Emily.

  ‘What about jobs?’ says Bryn. ‘Maybe we all worked for the same boss.’

  ‘There are lots of possibilities,’ admits Jamie.

  Anne wonders if this task is going to be a bit big. She gets what they’re doing, but, you know, maybe they were all in the same nightclub one night and didn’t help someone who was ill, or maybe they all inadvertently saw something they shouldn’t have seen, or bought a traced product. Hey, maybe they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time – like at a job interview on Monday 6 September 1999. In any case, if they want to be scientific about this and find an actual connection, it’s basically going to take feeding everyone’s entire lives into a database and then doing a really sophisticated search. Anne starts writing the program in her head for just such a database, and then she embarks on a pleasant fantasy about her system being used in international espionage and possibly detective work. Her sheet of paper remains blank.

  Emily’s serving the fried breakfasts.

  ‘How do you stay so thin eating stuff like this?’ asks Thea.

  ‘I don’t eat it,’ she says. ‘I just cook it.’

  Breakfast is quiet, since everyone’s writing their lists. Soon people start to ask for another sheet of paper, and then another. Anne wonders why Jamie’s not freaking out about paper supplies. After eating most of her breakfast she gets up and leaves the room. The frying smell’s getting to her, and this enforced task is completely pissing her off. She doesn’t like enforced tasks. She heads for the library.

  ‘Where’s she going?’ asks Jamie.

  ‘Who cares,’ says Thea.

  The library is soothing, which is why Anne goes there. No one goes into libraries really, certainly not cool people, or people who want to get laid. Anne’s good at using the cool conspiracy for her own purposes. If you convince people something isn’t cool, at least you can enjoy it on your own. If people are convinced that somewhere isn’t cool, you can go there on your own and cry.

  She doesn’t really know why she’s crying now. Maybe it’s just habit, the thing she always does when she leaves a room full of people. Who knows? Maybe she doesn’t like being held on this island against her will. But when she tries to think of the things she really misses, there isn’t much worth mentioning: Home and Away, Superdrug cherry hair conditioner, her dog hairband with the little bell, her things. She misses her evening walk across London a bit, and her thoughts. Maybe she’s just naturally tearful. She doesn’t even really hate the people here. They’re all fairly nice, except Thea, and she seems like she could be nice if she tried.

  There are four copies of The Tempest in the library. All in English. Anne wipes her eyes. While the others are still playing exam room in the kitchen, she’s actually learning something about whoever brought them here, or at least, the person who owns this house. This person is clearly an English speaker, probably a university graduate – unless there’s some other demographic Anne’s forgotten whose members are likely to own four copies of The Tempest. The Tempests are in what must be the ‘Literature’ section of the library. Other noticeable sections include Philosophy, Religion, Psychology, The Environment, Politics and Utopias. The Utopia section is bigger than Anne would have expected, and includes obscure sci-fi novels as well as theoretical works.

  Anne wonders who put this library together and why. The books don’t seem as dusty and old as books you’d get in a natural collection built up over time. She checks the inside jackets of some of the classics and finds that they are mostly modern reprints. There are several books on renewable energy. Anne is surprised to see that one of their covers has an image of a pylon-windmill structure like the one outside. A quick read of the dust jacket confirms that it is a wind-powering device for a renewable energy system.

  Back in the kitchen, Jamie seems to be interpreting data, reading all the sheets of paper the others have fed to him. Anne sits down at the table.

  ‘Where’s your list?’ Jamie asks her.

  ‘I don’t have one,’ she replies.

  ‘Why not?’ asks Emily.

  ‘Couldn’t be bothered,’ she says, and makes a strawberry milkshake.

  Jamie sighs. ‘Paul and Thea have a Bristol connection,’ he says. ‘Paul was born in Bristol and Thea went to university there. But according to the other lists, no one else has even been to Bristol.’

  ‘I went to Bristol once,’ says Bryn.

  ‘Why didn’t you put it on your list, then?’ says Jamie.

  ‘Forgot,’ says Bryn. ‘It was only for the day. I was five.’

  ‘I’ve never been to Bristol,’ says Anne.

  ‘This isn’t going to work,’ says Thea. ‘There’s too much human error.’

  ‘Three of us have sisters called Sarah,’ says Jamie.

  ‘So?’ says Thea.

  ‘Just thought it was interesting, that’s all. Anyway, there isn’t much else.’

  He lights a cigarette and sits back in his chair.

  The kitchen is a mess. The sink is now full of dishes. There’s so much debris on the table that Paul has been forced to move on to the floor by the back door, where he seems to be continuing his electronics research, apparently unconcerned about everything else. The sun falls on his head, making his dark hair shine. Maybe he feels Anne’s stare, because he looks up and half-smiles at her. She looks into her glass and blows some pink bubbles in the froth of the milkshake.

  ‘I know something we all have in common,’ says Bryn.

  ‘What?’ says Emily.

  ‘Well, the job interview. Maybe it’s just that.’

  Anne’s intrigued that no one’s doing the survival thing yet. No one’s talked about escape. No one’s made a play for leader. She’s not a real weirdo and Jamie’s not a real nerd. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. No one here has any va va voom.

  ‘So, are you going to sabotage the generator as well?’ Thea asks Anne.

  ‘What, as well as your stupid research—’ begins Anne.

  ‘All right,’ interrupts Emily. ‘I think me and Anne are going to go upstairs.’

  ‘Why?’ says Anne.

  ‘You can help me, uh, organise the bedrooms,’ says Emily.

  ‘Well, I’m going to go and find the generator,’ says Thea. ‘Anyone going to help?’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Bryn. ‘I’ll come. I’ll chop some wood for the fire as well.’

  ‘I thought we should have a talk,’ says Emily once they get upstairs. She’s multi-tasking, taking on the oh-so-important job of bringing Anne in
to line, and combining it with the equally urgent job of plucking her eyebrows. God knows where she found tweezers, but this girl could be Jamie’s new model army all by herself with these survival skills.

  ‘OK,’ says Anne. ‘What do you want to talk about?’

  Emily’s eyebrows are dark. So are her roots, which Anne can see now she’s put her hair up. She’s already beginning to get a rash where she’s plucked and she’s mumbling something about needing witch hazel.

  ‘You want to talk about witch hazel?’ says Anne.

  ‘No. Just . . . Look. Could you chill out a bit?’

  ‘Me?’ says Anne. ‘What did I do?’

  Emily’s right eyebrow is now completely red, so she starts on the left one.

  Chapter Eight

  Jamie’s thinking about Jerry Springer. And Bryn.

  He can’t believe that they’re back on to that whole ‘interview’ thing. As if this is a job interview. Where’s the panel? The questions? The reason Jamie’s thinking about Jerry Springer is because he feels that Bryn would be better off as a guest on his show than as a man in a crisis. Jamie might not know all the names of the shows like Emily, but he saw the one called Honey, I’m really a man. Maybe Bryn’s could be called Honey, I’m really stupid – don’t listen to my screwed up logic. Jamie is also severely pissed off that no one asked him to go and chop wood or find the generator. He’s so pissed off that he doesn’t even feel like himself. He’s not usually bitchy, for God’s sake. Not even in his head.

  Paul’s finishing off the washing up.

  ‘Why are you doing that?’ asks Jamie.

  Paul shrugs. ‘I hate mess,’ he says.