“Shallow but a terrific laugh.”
“You’re still up for it, huh?”
“You kidding? I’m having a ball, mate. Don’t you remember? I turned twenty and I thought I was going to die a virgin. Girls wouldn’t have a bar of me. I used to pretend to be a bit godly, a bit of a Christian, just so it would look as if morally I was above all that, but Christ, I was dying for sex! Gagging for it! Desperate! And now look at me. Look at us.” I waved my arm to indicate the entire city. “It’s Babylon out there. A fucking frenzy. No pun intended. I’ve had more sex in the past few months than I’d probably have had in a lifetime, under normal circumstances. And I’ve experimented with all kinds of stuff—stuff I mightn’t otherwise have had the courage to try. I don’t give a toss about my health any more. I don’t have to worry about what goes into my body, or what comes out of it, for that matter. I could have contracted fucking AIDS for all I know and be spreading it around like cough germs. What does it matter? Who gives a shit? This is paradise, Ash, and I’m determined to enjoy it, every minute of it, right to the bitter end, whensoever that may be.”
Ash regarded me sidelong, evenly. “I envy you, I suppose,” he said. “I’ve never managed to get so deeply into it. There’s always been a part of me going, ‘Maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe you should stop there. Maybe you should feel guilty about this. Maybe you should think about God and that. What’s He going to say when He sees how you’ve frittered away your last days on Earth?’”
“Oh, don’t you worry yourself about God. The way I see it, if He exists then He’s responsible for this whole mess. It’s His fault, so He can hardly blame us for behaving the way we have. In fact, He ought to be apologising to us.” I adopted God’s voice. “‘SORRY, EVERYONE. MY MISTAKE. BUT NEVER MIND. SIN AWAY. I WON’T HOLD IT AGAINST YOU. PLENTY OF ROOM IN HEAVEN FOR YOU ALL. EXCEPT THE POLITICIANS, OF COURSE. WANKERS.’”
Ash laughed and glugged down some more vodka.
“You know,” I said, to fill a silence, “it’s funny, in a way, isn’t it? How it’s going to be so utterly final, so utterly total. How there’s no way to avoid it. We’re not going to come up with some cunning eleventh-hour solution that’ll save the day. We’re not going to discover at the last moment that someone somewhere made a critical miscalculation, misplaced a decimal point, and actually we’re going to be all right. We’re not going to build a space ark and send specially-selected representatives of the race out beyond the Solar System to colonise a habitable planet and start again. None of that’s going to happen.”
“Some people still believe it might,” said Ash. “Hope springs eternal and all that.”
“But it’s sensibler, saner, not to have that hope. It’s sensibler just to accept that it’s all going to be over soon and take it from there. After all, they’ve called it a Terminal Event because that’s what it is—terminal. It’s not a Slightly Dangerous Event. It’s not a Potentially A Bit Dodgy Event. It’s a No-Escape, No-Reprieve, Terminal-Means-Fucking-Terminal Event. It’s bend-over-and-kiss-you-arse-goodbye time. And that is funny in a way.”
“In a very dark way,” Ash said, slightly smiling. “Did you hear about Japan?”
“What about Japan?”
“Apparently—I saw this on TV so it may be true—the Japanese have held a referendum or something, and ninety-eight per cent of them have agreed to a state-organised mass suicide. They’re going to detonate a dozen nuclear devices simultaneously all across the Japanese archipelago. The Russians have generously donated the bombs. It’s set to take place a week from now, so as to give the two per cent who don’t want to take part a chance to say sayonara to their loved ones and get the hell out of there. The Koreans are pissed off, naturally. But the Japanese have promised they’ll only do it if the weather conditions are exactly right, so that the fallout wafts out over the Pacific, and if the wind’s blowing in the wrong direction then they’ll delay the explosions. But isn’t that brilliant? National hara-kiri. Can you imagine any other country getting ninety-eight per cent of its population to agree to that? It’s so dignified.”
“Verily, it is an extraordinary thing. Unless you’re Japanese, of course, in which case it probably makes perfect sense.”
The day’s warmth, and something more, pulsed between us.
“Thank you for coming, Paul,” Ash said. “I mean it. It would have been lonely otherwise.”
I shrugged.
“You’re OK with this?” he asked.
“Would it make any difference if I wasn’t?”
“Suppose not. You can sympathise, though, even if you don’t approve.”
“Yeah. I can.”
“What do you think? About death, I mean.”
What should I tell him? Was he looking for reassurance or an honest opinion?
“I don’t know,” I said, opting for the latter. “When I’m in a good mood, I feel that all sorts of things are possible, all sorts of sentimental, superstitious, supernatural things. I think—I like to think—that there’s more to life than just this existence, just the material world. But when I’m feeling down, or simply indifferent, I’m pretty sure that death is the end. Oblivion. And it seems terrible: to no longer be aware of anything at all. All those pleasures and memories and sensations, gone. But then, of course, when it happens I won’t be any the wiser, will I? I won’t know I’m dead. I’ll just be dead. So the reality of it isn’t that awful, even if the theory is.”
“That’s pretty much how I look at it. If it turns out there is an afterlife—well, it’ll be a pleasant surprise.”
“Is there anyone dead you’d particularly like to meet?”
“Elvis. Just to make sure he’s there.” Ash took another swallow of Stolichnaya, a long one, then rose to his feet. “Right. Enough of that. Let’s go downstairs and get this over with.”
The government-issue self-euthanasia kit came in a shrinkwrapped polystyrene-foam container. Ash cracked the cellophane with his thumbnail and peeled it off, then split the two halves of the container apart to reveal the ampoule and hypodermic syringe embedded inside. An instruction leaflet was provided, although how to use the Kit was pretty self-evident. The ampoule slotted into the shell of the syringe, whereupon its seal was automatically broken. Off came the plastic cap that sheathed the needle, and then it was necessary to depress the plunger slightly to test that the flow of liquid from the ampoule to the needle’s tip was unimpeded, and that was that.
All this Ash did carefully and methodically, as though he were putting together a scale-model Stuka. The liquid inside the ampoule was clear, like the vodka in the Stolichnaya bottle. Its transparency was somehow a mark of its deadliness. It had a look of venomous purity.
Ash sat. He owned an old, plush armchair, inherited from his parents when they moved out of the family home to a retirement bungalow. It was bulky and incongruous in his small flat, but it had always been his centre of operations, the place where he watched television and read books and strummed his guitar and ate most meals. Enthroned in it, he held the syringe up to the light from the windows and examined it for a while, turning it this way, that.
About three metres away, ineffectual, impotent, I stood and watched Ash gaze at the instrument of his own death, a mass-produced utensil of plastic and poison. Everybody had been sent one. When news of the Terminal Event broke, and after the panic died down and resignation set in, the government decreed that the choice of taking your own life in advance of the coming End was a basic civil right and, accordingly, manufactured and distributed the self-euthanasia kits nationwide. Parents of minors could administer the injections to their children if they so desired. So far, approximately a hundred thousand people had elected to take this way out. I could not decide whether this statistic seemed high or low, and at that moment, as Ash prepared to increase the figure by one, it did not really seem to make any difference.
“It’s so intricate,” he said, referring to the syringe. He sounded like someone on acid or ’shrooms, fascinated by detail.
“So cunning.”
“Ash …”
I saw him, aged nine, spreadeagled in a patch of sunlight on his parents’ living-room carpet, with comics littered all around him, and it was the beginning of many hours he and I spent comparing our favourite superheroes and compiling league tables of who was more powerful than whom, who would defeat whom in a straight fight.
He brought the syringe down to his left arm.
I saw us, when we were fourteen, blasting away at Coke cans with my older brother’s air-pistol, and we used to score crosses in the ends of the pellets with a penknife in the solemn conviction that it would make them more destructive, like dum-dum bullets.
The veins were prominent in the underside of his forearm, as though eager for what was coming, swollen with anticipation.
I saw Ash, at seventeen, coming second in the Inter-Schools 100 Metres final, beaten by a nose by the favourite to win, Simon Ogunkwe, who had limbs like liquorice whips, and Ash went up to Ogunkwe after the race and shook his hand and congratulated him, and it was the most admirable example of grace in defeat I had ever seen.
The needle tip trembled slightly as it touched Ash’s skin, creating a tiny dimple.
I saw us, twenty-three years old, on a trip to Morocco, watching the snake-charmers in the Djemaa el-Fna in Marrakesh, as fascinated by the cobras as they apparently were by the men handling them, and it was then, we would realise later, that Ash had his wallet and passport stolen, plucked from his pocket while we stood entranced by the mesmerised snakes.
Ash nudged the needle into the vein, and a bead of blood welled. He hissed and winced.
It was not too late, even then. It was not irrevocable. I could have crossed over to him, three quick paces, and grabbed the syringe and yanked it out of his arm and tossed it to the floor and stamped on it. I could have saved him. That would have been the morally righteous thing to do. It would also have been the selfish thing to do. Ash did not want to be alone when he died, but what about me? Why did I have to be left behind, without my lifelong friend to share the moment when annihilation came? We should have seen it out, as we had experienced so much else, together.
It was probably the most generous act of my life, letting Ash push the plunger on that syringe.
The ampoule emptied, and Ash gasped, perhaps in disbelief. He had done it. No going back now. The toxin was in his veins. He had seconds left.
With the syringe still protruding from his left arm, he reached out to me with his right. His hand trembled in mid-air. I took it in mine; clasped it.
I needed him to smile, but there was no ease in his face. Only exhilaration, and trepidation.
“Ash,” I said.
“Fuck,” he said. “Fuck. This is it.”
He was breathing fast, like a kid on a rollercoaster.
“Ash, if there isn’t a hereafter …”
But he wasn’t listening. He did not seem to be hearing anything except, perhaps, the drum of his last few heartbeats.
“Hah!” he said—a sharp outgoing breath.
His hand spasmed, clenching mine hard enough to hurt.
“God!” he said—a sigh.
He was staring straight ahead, eyes wide, as if viewing some dim and distant prospect.
“Ahhh,” he said, finally.
His chest rose and fell rapidly a few times. His hand shuddered. I saw veins in his neck palpitating, writhing beneath the skin. His face was flushed.
Then it was over. Slackness in his hand. Slackness in his face. He was still staring, but whatever had given his body its animation, its essential Ash-ness, was no longer present. The stare was empty. Gas gurgled deep in his gut like a rumble of far-off thunder. Bacterial life continued inside him, but Ash himself, the principal tenant of his body, was gone.
I crouched next to him for a long time, holding his dead hand, while the day brightened and the sunlight steepened. Eventually, around midday, I stood up, disengaged his rigid fingers from mine, and went to the telephone. I called the body-disposal hotline and gave Ash’s name and address. Volunteers would be round shortly to bag and remove the remains. I had no desire to be there when they arrived.
I left the flat and headed downstairs, emerging into the heat of the street.
I made my way homewards slowly and circuitously. Everywhere I went there was laughter and goodwill. Drunks roared. Children played. Strangers nattered to one another like old friends. I passed a car park that had been turned permanently into a fairground. Rides whirled and lights flashed. A man screamed as he plummeted from the top of a crane, a bungee cord tied around his ankle. At the perigee of his fall the cord caught him and plucked him soaring back heavenwards. His eyes bulged with the thrill of cheating death.
Everything was free. No money any more. Everyone was happy. No more wars, no more pogroms, no more iniquities and injustices. The fear of how we were abusing the environment, and how the environment might in turn abuse us, had ceased to be of relevance. Diseases still killed. Some people still starved. But it did not matter. A huge weight had been lifted. Humankind, always irresponsible, now had a licence to be so. The Terminal Event was coming—some time, any day soon, no one could say exactly when, but it was definitely on its way. And it wasn’t our fault. It was just one of those things. We were not to blame. A cosmic hiccup. A galactic accident. We were innocent victims.
How ironic that the human race should achieve Utopia only when, and only because, our destruction was imminent. How typical.
I wandered, feeling as though I were the only sombre person in the city that day. I wandered with the gutting knowledge of Ash’s absence, a space inside me in which the joy of others echoed hollowly. I wandered and wondered about the coming End.
Scientists had predicted it would begin with a noise—a sound like none we had ever heard before. Unmistakably strange yet somehow immediately recognisable. There would be the noise, starting as a hum, rising to a howl. Immense. A scream that would fill the world. And then, as in the opening verses of Genesis, there would be light. Dazzling. Blinding. And then –
Extinction.
The sun shone on. I trudged on. And all around me, in widening circles of which I considered myself the focal point, the party continued, and there was Eden again.
Across the city.
Across the country.
Across the world.
OUT OF THE BLUE, INTO THE RED
“The Cedars”
Upper Wolcott
near Middleton
Glos.
Dear Richard,
I suppose, if you’re reading this, the first thing I should say is congratulations. I‘ll confess to you now, I had my doubts about whether you would make it, and happily, I was wrong. And if you’re not reading this—well then, I derive no satisfaction at all in knowing that I was right.
It required some subterfuge, I can tell you, to get this letter to you (assuming all has gone as arranged). The plan is as follows: Isobel will be taking it over to America with her when she goes to watch the launch, and she’s going to pass it on to your mission controller who’ll get it to the relevant technician who’ll tuck it somewhere safely away in your—I think it’s called—“environment suit locker”, which you won’t have access to till after you touch down. Quite a chain of potential foul-ups there, starting with your sister who, let’s be honest, doesn’t always keep as firm a grip on things as she should. (Or am I judging her too harshly? You would probably say that I am.)
Anyway, the mission controller seemed quite taken with the notion of this letter being there for you to discover after you land. He got all sentimental over it and said it would be good for your morale and he wished he had had a father like me. He also advised me that the letter shouldn’t weigh more than an ounce, otherwise it might throw out the “onboard weight-distribution ratios” or some such thing, so I’m using airmail paper, as you see, and I’ll try to keep this as short as I can. I never appreciated just how exact a business spaceflight is!
I suspect your
mission controller thinks this’ll be a nice surprise for you.
It’ll be a surprise, anyway.
Now that I’ve got this far in, I still don’t actually know where to begin. I suppose it won’t hurt to say that you mother and I are very proud of you, Richard. I know you know Mum is, not least because of the way she embarrassed you when you were over here last month. She all but dragged you round the village to show you off to the neighbours, didn’t she? And then that party she insisted we have! All those friends of ours swarming around you…I felt sorry for you, but you handled it all very well, I thought. Very graciously. But that’s your mother for you: so up-front, so demonstrative about everything. Over the years I’ve rather let her take over that aspect of life from me. She has such a capacity for it—the emotions, all that stuff—that it’s become simplest for me just to confer the responsibility to her and let her act on my behalf in that arena.
But be under no illusion, Richard. Though I’ve not said as much, I am proud of you too. Even prouder than your mother is, possibly.
And that’s because of, not in spite of, our frequent differences of opinion. When you first announced your intention to become an astronaut, remember the argument we had? Well, strictly speaking, the first time you announced you were going to become an astronaut you were five years old, and we didn’t have an argument. All I said was, I think, something like “Oh, that’s interesting”, because every small boy wants to be astronaut at some time or other, doesn’t he? But I’m referring to the time when you were twenty-three—or was it twenty-four?—and we were having that discussion over supper about what you were going to do with your life, because let’s face it, Richard, at that point you were a bit of a wastrel. You had a splendid engineering degree and you were just arsing around, doing odd jobs, living in London and, I don’t know, getting “potted” all day and listening to music, or whatever it is young people get up to when they should be earning a living and getting a career off the ground. You said you needed time to “sort your head out”. You wanted to travel, see a bit of the world, and then—and these were your exact words—“maybe I’ll go and be an astronaut or something”.
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