The Fandom of the Operator

by Robert Rankin

  ‘It’s a fair cop,’ said Mr Justice D. ‘Let’s fry Mr Cheese and take lunch.’

  ‘No, hang on,’ I said. ‘This isn’t fair.’

  ‘Why?’ asked the magistrate.

  ‘Because I’m me. I’m Gary Cheese. I know I’m me. I can feel I’m me. But if all the bad things aren’t my fault, they’ve been caused because something out there somewhere in space has been getting into my head and making me do them, then it’s not fair. It’s not my fault, so I shouldn’t fry.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Ms Ferguson.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Justice Doveston. ‘I do so agree. It’s terribly unfair. It is terribly unjust. But it is the way things are. There are plenty of us, from elsewhere, running you lot by remote control. But we are outnumbered by those amongst you we cannot control. Some of them even infiltrated their way into the Brentford Telephone Exchange. Into Developmental Services. Some who were wholly human, who our over-talkative operative Eric identified to us, and we dealt with them. But the status quo must be maintained. We enjoy what we are doing. It is a great game, playing with humans. It is the great game. Our race loves the game. We don’t want it to end.’

  ‘You bustards!’ I said.

  ‘You bustards!’ agreed Ms Ferguson.

  ‘So you must die, Mr Cheese,’ said Mr Justice Doveston. ‘We must cut off the line of communication from the escaped psychopath Valdec Firesword. We’ll try to catch up with him before he finds another human being to play with.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘This isn’t right. It isn’t true. I am me. I know I’m me.’

  ‘And I’m me too,’ said Ms Ferguson.

  ‘And me,’ I heard Dave shout.

  ‘It’s of no consequence,’ said Mr Justice D. ‘I’ve heard all I need to hear. And as I knew it all anyway, it doesn’t matter. Time is drawing on and all it needs is for me to pronounce you guilty. So, guilty it is. Will someone please pull the switch?’

  ‘Can I do it?’ asked the prison officer. ‘Surely you know me, sir? I’m Caracki Maldama, honorary consul of Vega.’

  ‘I knew your father,’ said Mr Justice D. ‘Go on, then. Pull the switch.’

  And, what would you know, but what you know, he did pull the switch.

  And he electrocuted me.

  And it didn’t half hurt.

  And I died.

  24

  And then I was dead.

  And then I remembered.

  All those missing pieces from my life. All those times that it had seemed I’d slept through. Those were the times when I was truly me. Not possessed by some alien psychopath orchestrating my movements, beaming thoughts into my brain, making me his puppet, to kill folk as suited his whims.

  I knew then that it hadn’t been me who’d done those terrible things. It had been him: Valdec Firesword, Archduke of Alpha Centuri.

  It hadn’t been my fault at all. None of it. I was an innocent victim. And, it was quite clear to me, one of many, many, many others before me. Driven to extreme acts by the voices in their heads.

  And now that I knew all this, it was too late. I was dead, and the thoughts of Valdec Firesword were no longer in my brain. I was dead and he was gone. Off to torment some other innocent victim of cosmic circumstances.

  What an absolute frip shugger.

  And oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. How much more of it made sense to me now. How many times in my short life had I meant to do something positive? Something big. But hadn’t. And why hadn’t I? Because Valdec Firesword had altered my mode of thinking. Stopped me from being me.

  I could remember it all now. All those missed opportunities. I’d had a hot line to the dead at my disposal. To the dead, who know everything. But had I asked them anything? Anything worthwhile? No, I hadn’t. I’d wasted my opportunities, because he had made me waste them. He didn’t want me to know the truth while I was alive, because I might have been able to fight him, if I’d known. To drive him out of my head and let myself be me.

  I’d been used, used, used. I felt soiled, dirty, abused.

  And dead.

  Dead, me, at my age! Only rock stars died at my age. And accident victims, of course, and murder victims. But it wasn’t fair, for me to die, when I could have had so many happy years of my life still to come. Or could have if he hadn’t been inside my head. But instead, I was dead, leaving behind me only an evil memory.

  I could just imagine what the papers would be saying:

  SERIAL KILLER GETS JUST DESSERTS.

  Or in the case of the Brentford Mercury:

  TOASTED CHEESE.

  And of course there would be no mention of what actually went on and was said at my trial. People would probably be partying in the streets, burning me in effigy. This was all too much. I was angry, really, really angry.

  Angry. And dead!

  Dead angry!

  Now, what you might be wanting to ask me is a question that I should have asked the dead when I had the chance, but never got around to, the question being: ‘Just what is it like to be dead?’ And, for that matter, ‘Where is it?’

  Both good questions, and pertinent. And I will answer them now.

  What is it like to be dead? Well, I’ll tell you.

  It’s empty.

  That’s what it’s like to be dead. We never realize it when we’re alive, but what we are is full of life. That’s what it is, you see.

  We’re all filled up with life. It bubbles through our veins and arteries; it jiggles about in our cells; it’s in our hair and up our noses; it’s all over us, inside and out. We’re full of life. But when we’re dead, we’re all drained of life.

  We’re empty.

  And I was empty. And where was I? Well, I’ll tell you that. I was sitting upon the marble tomb bed of the late Mr Doveston, puffing on a post-life Woodbine and wondering how I would spend the day ahead.

  Yes, that’s where I was, or wasn’t, depending on your point of view. I was there, I knew that; I could see it all around me. But I could tell instinctively that it wasn’t the real McDoveston’s marble wonder-bed. It was a kind of approximation, a dream landscape, if you will, made up of memories, but slightly fuzzy at the edges and all just a tad out of focus.

  I suppose that we never look at things as closely as we should when we’re alive. But then, we’re not expecting that we’ll have to call upon these memories when we’re dead to establish some kind of environment for ourselves to exist in.

  I must have spent so much time at Mr Doveston’s tomb that it seemed a natural place to recall when I died, so I suppose that it was the reason I was here.

  Of course I’d spent a great deal more time in the bulb booth at the telephone exchange, but I had no wish to revisit that in the afterlife. And so I was here. And I wasn’t alone.

  I could see them, drifting about, wraith-like, pale and pasty. Other dead folk, and a lot of them.

  I had no intention of sticking around here for too long. I’d finish my fag and take a wander home. To my memory of home. I wondered why this lot were hanging around in the graveyard. Some of them looked pretty ancient, by their costumes. Victorians, many of them seemed.

  But as they showed no interest in me, I sat and puffed on my fag and pondered upon eternity and determined that it was going to be very long indeed and hoped that I’d find plenty of interesting and entertaining things to fill it with.

  After I’d got the revenge out of the way. Oh yes, I was altogether certain about that.

  I’d had my life taken from me because I had been manipulated into taking other people’s lives from them. And someone, or something, or lots of someones and lots of somethings, were going to pay for that.

  I intended to get even.

  ‘Be careful what you think.’

  I looked up and saw her and she was beautiful. An angel, I supposed, for no Earthly woman ever looked as good as that. She conformed to all the average-male stereotypes of how-a-good-looking-woman-should-look.

  Tall and blonde and shapely. Big blue eyes and tiny nose
and mouth so large that you could stick your fist in it.

  ‘That’s not very nice, Gary,’ said the angel.

  ‘Was I speaking?’ I asked. ‘Or was I thinking aloud? And how do you know my name?’

  ‘I know who you are and we can hear each other’s thoughts here,’ said the angel.

  ‘I can’t,’ I said, cocking my palm to my ear.

  ‘Well, you should be able to. Probably it will come in time and time we have here to spare.’

  ‘But not to waste,’ I said. ‘Not for me. I have things that need doing, somehow.’

  ‘You mustn’t think like that,’ said the angel. ‘You’ll end up like these.’ And she gestured to the wraiths who drifted aimlessly about and paid her no attention, even though they really should have. Because she was an absolute stonker of an angel.

  ‘You will become stuck,’ said the angel. ‘You must let go of any thoughts of revenge. Such thoughts will weigh you down and you’ll be stuck here at your grave, for ever.’

  ‘My grave,’ I said. ‘Here? I thought they’d probably cremated me and dumped my ashes in a dustbin at the prison, or something.’

  ‘Whatever made you think that?’

  ‘Well, it’s what happens in the movies and in real life, isn’t it? Executed killers end up in unhallowed ground in the prison boneyard.’

  The angel smiled. ‘Your friend Dave nicked your body from the prison. Very enterprising of him, very brave. He thought you’d like to be buried here. He brought you here at night and slipped you into Mr Doveston’s tomb.’

  ‘Nice one, Dave,’ I said. ‘What a bestest friend.’

  ‘You can’t buy that kind of friendship,’ said the angel. ‘You should dwell on thoughts like that. And then you will be able to fly from here. To wherever and whenever. All the universe is here to be seen. It will take you for ever to see it all.’

  ‘So,’ said I, and I smiled. I did, I really did. ‘So that’s the point of death. I wondered about that when I was a child. I could see the point of being alive, to be aware of the world and everything around us. But I never could see the point of death. But that’s it? What you’re saying? When you’re dead you can fly off and see all of the universe? Isn’t that incredible? Isn’t that utterly beautiful?’

  And I thought about it and, as I thought, the terrible emptiness seemed momentarily to leave me. Or to change, as if, perhaps, I was filling up with something new: not life, but something even more marvellous than life. A kind of universality of being, that I was part of everything and everything was part of me. It was utterly wonderful and it made me feel that now nothing else mattered, nothing that I’d done or not done, nothing that I’d known. I just wanted to fly, to be at one with everything. To be eternal.

  ‘So that is the purpose of it all,’ I said.

  ‘There is a purpose to everything.’ The angel smiled at me. ‘Especially death.’

  ‘And these dead people here, these dead souls? They got stuck, did they? Because they had thoughts of revenge?’

  ‘Or couldn’t draw themselves away from their memories. They yearned to be alive again.’

  ‘Shame,’ said I. ‘You might have mentioned this to them. It does seem a bit of a pity. Still, I suppose God knows his own business best. If He decided they should stay here, then there s probably a good reason for it.’

  ‘God?’ said the angel. ‘What are you talking about? God?’

  ‘Your governor,’ I said. ‘The big fellow. The bloke who pays your wages.’

  ‘My wages?’ The angel looked genuinely baffled.

  ‘You look genuinely baffled,’ I told her. ‘You are an angel, aren’t you?’

  And at this the angel began to laugh. She laughed right in my face and all over me generally. And I remembered how much I’d hated people doing that. Especially Sandra.

  ‘Oh, careful,’ said the angel(?). ‘Bad thoughts, heavy thoughts: wipe those thoughts from your mind.’

  ‘Is Jupiter nice at this time of year?’ I asked, rapidly changing the subject.

  ‘Don’t know,’ said the angel(?). ‘Never been there.’

  ‘But you must get around a bit. After all, you are an – you know – or aren’t you?’

  The beautiful being, whatever it was, shook its beautiful head. ‘I’m not an angel,’ she said. ‘There aren’t any angels, or, at least, none that I’ve seen. I’m just another dead person.’

  I whistled. Loudly. The drifting wraiths paid no attention to my whistling. ‘What a pity,’ I said. ‘I am so sorry.’

  ‘Why?’ asked the beautiful being. ‘I had a good innings.’

  ‘Good innings? But how old are you? How old were you when you died? Nineteen, twenty?’

  ‘Ninety-eight,’ said the beautiful being.

  ‘Ninety-eight? You’re having a laugh, surely?’

  ‘Here, we look how we truly look,’ said the beauty, ‘no matter what we looked like when we were alive.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said and my hands slowly moved up to my face.

  ‘Are you sure you want to?’ the beauty asked. ‘Are you sure you want to know what you truly are?’

  My hands retreated at speed and found their way into my trouser pockets.

  ‘I’m sure I look fine,’ I said. ‘In fact, I must look the same, because you recognized me.’

  ‘True,’ said the beauty. ‘I know who you are. But it doesn’t mean that you look the same. You must have noticed that now you’re dead, things are the same, but different.’

  ‘You’re my mum,’ I said, a look of enlightenment no doubt appearing upon whatever kind of face I had.

  ‘Your mum isn’t dead.’

  ‘Oh no, I suppose not. I’ve rather lost touch with my mum. Then who? Sandra, is that you?’

  The beautiful being shook her golden head and rolled her eyes of summertime blue.

  ‘You young dodder,’ she said. ‘I’m Mother Demdike!’

  Now, I have to confess that this caught me by surprise.

  It did.

  It really did.

  But if that caught me by surprise, then what happened next and what happened after that, caught me by even greater surprise. And, as surprises had never been particularly happy things for me whilst I’d been alive, I suppose I should have had no good reason to suppose that they would be any better at all now that I was dead. So to speak.

  And they weren’t.

  ‘I can’t stay for long,’ said Mother Demdike. ‘I have a lot of bad memories and I don’t want to dwell upon them here and find myself stuck. I just wanted to tell you that I don’t bear you any malice for what you did.’

  ‘And quite right too,’ I told her. ‘Because none of it was my fault. I was used. I was manipulated.’

  ‘That is true up to a point,’ said the hag who now was beautiful. ‘You were not responsible for all of your actions later.’

  ‘Never,’ I said. ‘None of it was my fault.’

  ‘I’m afraid that is not true. The being that chose to use you did not choose you at random. It chose you because you were a suitable vehicle. The badness was already in you. You were already a wrong’n, Gary. A bad, bad boy.’

  ‘I never was,’ I protested. ‘What makes you say such a thing?’

  ‘I thought you could remember all of your life, Gary. All the missing pieces. All the pieces that it seemed that you slept through.’

  ‘I can,’ I said.

  ‘So you’re not, perhaps, blocking one or two of them out?’

  ‘Why would I want to do that?’

  ‘Because you don’t want to remember what you did. Not what the being that controlled you did. But what you did, when you were young.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I know what you’re talking about. You’re talking about Mr Penrose. How I brought him back from the dead. Well, I am sorry about that and if I see him I will apologize for that.’

  Mother Demdike shook her head. ‘Not him,’ she said. ‘Before him. What you did to me.’

  ‘To you?’

  A
nd then I remembered. Oh yes. I remembered what I’d done to Mother Demdike.

  ‘I…’

  ‘Say it, Gary.’

  ‘I...’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I... killed…you…’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mother Demdike. ‘You did. That night in my hut. You said that I was hideous. Ugly. You said that you were doing me a favour. Doing everyone a favour. And you cut my head off and used my skull to mix up the herbs you needed to re-animate Mr Penrose. You said that at last I’d be useful for something.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I said. And I wept. I did, and the tears fell down whatever face I had. ‘I did do it. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You were psychopathic from childhood. You were just the kind of person Valdec Firesword was looking for. He entered you moments after you killed me. You opened yourself up for him, Gary, once you had murdered someone by your own hand.’

  And I wept some more. Like a child, like a baby. Because it does make you weep when you find out for the first time in your life, or in my case for the first time after you’ve died, that you really are a psycho.

  A thing like that can really upset you.

  ‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ I said with a sob.

  And Mother Demdike smiled and patted my shoulder. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I knew that you would be. Which was why I came to see you. And to see the look on your face, of course.’

  ‘When I found out what I’d done?’ I blubbered.

  ‘That too.’

  ‘That too?’

  ‘It was the other look I wanted to see. And I think I’m about to see it now. Oh yes, here it comes.’

  I stared at her and I’m sure some strange kind of look must have come over the face I had. Because I could feel something altogether odd happening to me. Something really uncomfortable. Painful, in fact. Really, really painful. Something was pulling at me. Pulling in all directions at the same time. As if all the little bits of universality that had been filling up my emptiness were being torn right out of me again. And it hurt like crazy, it really, really did.