by Nigel Kneale
OPIE: Look, Nat—
NAT (snapping his fingers): Come on. Back-up tapes, quick! (Opie stabs a button. Heavy passionate breathing instantly swamps everything, mingled with gurgles and gasps. Much too loud) Take it down!
OPIE: Okay, okay—
Flustered, he mutes the volume. Nat checks the Audience Sampler, finds no change in the faces.
His wrist contact shrills again.
NAT: Yes? . . . Deanie, I tell you no . . . Sick? How sick? When? You see her? . . . Look, we talk later—
He cuts the contact. Misch has raised her plastic dome and turns towards him.
MISCH: Deanie? (Nat nods) You shudder me, Nat. That Deanie, she was . . . how many ago?
NAT (shrugging): Thirty—forty—
MISCH: Forty girls ago. That’s real old-days! You want her still?
NAT: We talk.
MISCH: Oh.
NAT: We got to talk. The kid’s sick.
MISCH: You had a kid? You and Deanie?
Opie, watching the big screen, is suddenly worried.
OPIE: Hey—hey, look at these two! The way they act.
Nat and Misch look. We see only their reactions.
MISCH: The new two.
NAT: Getting down to it . . .
OPIE: No, not getting down to it. They just . . . mess about and . . . Look at that! What she doing?
MISCH (giggling): Crazy!
OPIE: Where you pick ’em?
NAT: Audition. New bodies.
OPIE: They act like this?
NAT: Well, I—
OPIE: I bet not.
MISCH: I picked ’em.
OPIE: You? Nat, you let her?
MISCH: Why not?
NAT: Make a funny pick, put some buzz in it.
OPIE: Buzz . . .
MISCH (at the Audience sampler): They need buzz. What it always says.
OPIE: Buzz means just . . . not asleep. This not buzz, this . . . got ’em all . . . well, look at ’em!
The Sampler groups are uneasy, moving about in their seats.
NAT: They not like it.
He turns to the main screen to watch the competitors.
NAT: What got those two? Can’t they do it?
MISCH: Just fun.
OPIE (disgusted): Aah!
MISCH: Just play.
OPIE: Just nothing. No sex, not anything.
NAT: Studio fright, maybe.
OPIE: Babies!
NAT: Okay, take ’em out. Just the two.
MISCH: Aw . . . !
NAT: Flash the judges. Our decision.
Opie presses a button. For a moment a muffled voice is heard.
VOICE OF JUDGE: . . . Number Nine Team, 57 faults . . .
OPIE (to desk): Control Pod to judges. Number Nine team is out.
He briskly presses more buttons to eliminate the offenders’ image.
MISCH: But why? Just the audience?
NAT: Got ’em jumpy. You saw.
MISCH: It’s good for ’em.
NAT: Bad.
MISCH: Aaagh!
NAT: Apathy Control. Very tricky.
OPIE: First rule on the tape. Keep Cool, Cool the Audience, Cool the World.
NAT (watching the Sampler): Better now.
OPIE: Hey, Misch—(He nods at the main screen) That’s sex.
MISCH: I know what sex is!
NAT: She knows.
OPIE (conciliatory): I mean . . . Sportsex. Like it got to be. Look at those other twos. Look at ’em! Super-king bodies, the toppest in the whole area. Moving lovely, who can beat that? See that two now. That pretty, that style! Clean action!
MISCH: She not so pretty.
OPIE: To you not, to them yes. To that audience she’s like the toppest. See the ratings?
The ratings-strip in the desk glows and throbs with the audience’s contentment.
NAT (slowly): They got to feel: “I can not do like that, I not even try. Sex is not to do, sex is to watch . . .” That’s what they got to feel. So . . . they watch.
Small sounds of ecstasy come from the competitors on the big screen.
OPIE: Pretty. So nice and pretty. Oh . . . lovely . . .
He touches a button.
VOICE OF JUDGE (muffled): Number Four Team, 11 faults total.
NAT: Misch—Round Two coming up.
MISCH: Okay, coddy.
She returns to her dome.
VOICE OF JUDGE: . . . Number Nine team out. So Number Five leads, with only three faults. Melamine Tarr and Jay Fowler.
Synthetic applause.
A grey, bland man scrambles into the production pod. In his late forties, Co-ordinator Ugo Priest is a senior citizen of Output. He is worried.
PRIEST: So, Nat.
NAT: So, Co-ordinator.
PRIEST: What went on?
NAT: A dud team. Non-starters.
PRIEST: I saw. Audience upset?
NAT: Ten points.
Priest whistles.
OPIE (treacherously): Misch picked ’em.
PRIEST: Misch? Nat, you let her?
NAT: I let her.
PRIEST: Why? (Nat shrugs. He watches the transparent dome descend over the girl’s head) That bust a rule, Nat.
NAT: Yes.
PRIEST: Apathy Control rule. Boss of show to check on all triers. Check means you carry the can. You, Nat. Not Misch. (Gratified, Opie lowers his head to enjoy this the better. But not before Priest notices and continues the reproof more quietly) They got to be top stuff, Nat. The complete toppest. They got to giddy the whole audience every time, make ’em feel: “Aaah . . . !” (An eloquent sigh of despair) “. . . I can’t compete!”
NAT: Hard to find the top ones.
PRIEST: Don’t tell me. When I had your job I used to wait for that “aaah” inside me here. (Patting his middle) Then I knew. I’d found one. Didn’t happen often. (He turns to the screen, anxious to say something approving now. He nods) Those are good.
OPIE: Round Two just coming up.
Misch’s voice floats mechanically from the system.
MISCH: This round we got some real old pals. Bob Hartshorn and Dibby Shale, outright winners of the Casanova Cup—
Through the burst of mechanised applause, Priest turns to Nat.
PRIEST: Got a moment?
Nat follows him towards the exit. Opie watches them go, itching with malicious curiosity. Misch notices too, as she continues her patter.
MISCH: Know something? Each time they come on this show, Dibby got her hair done special by—guess who!—Bob!
But the Sample Audience is not amused.
PASSAGE NEAR STUDIO
A few competitors pass by, loose drapes covering part of their bodies. All have competition numbers stuck on them.
Priest and Nat appear. Priest looks after the competitors like a farmer appraising pigs.
PRIEST: Good, Nat. Look like real top stuff. (Quietly) You didn’t let Misch pick any others?
NAT: No.
PRIEST: Good. Have a brightener.
From a wall dispenser they draw small plastic shapes like lollies. Nat cracks his in his mouth and sucks it dry in a moment, then tosses the empty plastic husk in a disposer. Priest drains his more slowly.
PRIEST: You know, I was in on the very start of Apathy Control. (Smiling) “I remember . . . I remember”. That’s my vice.
NAT: Vice? (He grins) A real old-days word.
PRIEST: Yes. I’m an old-days man. (Nat takes another brightener, feeling already cheered by the first) The big breakthrough . . . when they found out the sheer power of watching. It took ’em a long time. Old-days, they always said there were things you couldn’t show, things you mustn’t say. You ever hear the word “pornography”? (Nat shakes his head) “Censor”? (Nat shakes his head again) Ah. Meant a man that . . . well, he’d have put a stop to all this. All of Sportsex, Artsex—the lot.
NAT (baffled): Why?
PRIEST: Stupidness.
He takes another brightener. Nat wonders obscurely if he is being got at
.
NAT: Like . . . like I stop that kinky team in there?
PRIEST (shaking his head): A censor stopped things for going too far. We stop ’em for not going far enough. (He sucks at the brightener) But then this breakthrough. They found that if they screened everything . . . and screened it real kingstyle . . . then basically the audience would make do with that. In place of the real thing. Take all experience at second hand and just sit watching, calmly and quietly.
NAT: Watch, not do.
PRIEST: Watch, not do—that’s when it started. Of course they wondered if it would work. Well, it’s what we got out there now. And we know it does. The vicarious society.
Nat, who has been sucking brighteners fast, stares.
NAT: Vic—victorious?
PRIEST: Vicarious. Means substitute. This-for-that.
NAT: Oh, this-for-that.
PRIEST: Sorry, Nat, dropping into old-days words. With thinking about those times. (Kindly) There was such a word, “victorious”. To do with war.
NAT (more confidently): War was . . . a kind of tension.
PRIEST: Right. And riots, and crises. Worst of all was the explosion. Of people. Too many people in the world. I remember the old slogan: “Fight fire with fire, sex with sex!” They doused it—(He waves a hand round them)—with this. Doused everything in the end. No more tensions, nothing. Just cool. (After a moment) So you see, Nat, I’m not just old but I know. I know the reasons. I can help you.
NAT (surprised): I need help?
The contact shrills at his wrist. Mildly annoyed, he answers it.
NAT: Yes . . . Deanie? No, I still not . . . Not now . . . no . . . well, what she sick with? . . . Okay, look I come down to Foodshow and talk. Soon. Soon. (He cuts the contact, turns in slight embarrassment to Priest) Just about a kid.
PRIEST: Your kid?
NAT: Yes.
PRIEST: Bother you?
NAT (shrugging): Look, Co-ordinator, you say I need help. What about?
PRIEST: Your job. You comfy in it?
NAT: Comfy? Yes.
PRIEST: Area 27 is big. Big audience, big network. A lot to see to. You ever think of a switch to—well, say a light area like 222 or 950?
NAT: I been run over?
PRIEST: Just the regular computer-check.
NAT: How was it?
PRIEST: Not so good, Nat, not quite so good. So I wondered, just then, about the kid?
NAT: No. Not that.
PRIEST: What, then?
NAT: I don’t know.
PRIEST (seriously): This summer we got the Sex Olympics. Nat, you got work there, getting in all the high-drive talent, grabbing new triers. Screen tests, all kinds of tests, meetings and talks non-stop. That’s a four-hour show every night, the Olympics.
NAT: I know the programme.
PRIEST: It’s a great trust, Nat. A good Olympics is overpowering, cuts the population graph right down. Now—
NAT: I can do it.
PRIEST: I can only help if you let me. I can only feed the computer what you tell me.
NAT (nodding): So, Co-ordinator. You’re good. I—I better get back now.
PRIEST: No. Go down to Foodshow, like you said. See about the kid.
NAT (nodding again as he moves off): So.
PRIEST: So, Nat . . .
FOODSHOW STUDIO
Blazoned across the side of a glass booth is the caption:
“THE HUNGRY ANGRY SHOW”
Inside the booth there is a roar of rage. A fat man is suddenly smothered by a faceful of flung custard. Instead of wiping it off, he crams all he can catch into his mouth. He is stripped to the waist, like his equally fat opponent at the other end of the narrow glass booth. At waist level they are canvassed in like kayak paddlers. This canvas, which thus stretches between them, is divided halfway by a low plastic wall. Both ends are piled with the synthetic custard, and the men are plastered with it as they fling it at each other and gobble it down. They snarl and roar in deadly earnest all the time.
Outside the booth a couple of assistants are preparing another tub of custard, stirring up powder and water. And other fat contestants sit waiting their turn.
A young woman is watching, stop-watch in hand. This is Deanie Webb. She is pretty, but in a characterful way, quite unlike Misch. Nat comes in and joins her.
NAT: Deanie.
DEANIE (pleased): Nat. Glad you come.
She returns to the stop-watch.
NAT: Taping this?
DEANIE: Foodshow’s never live.
NAT (studying the contestants): How you tell which eats more?
DEANIE: We got scales under them.
She works the bell to end the round. The referee, a little man who has been hovering by the booth near the halfway mark, turns to assess the scores. Attendants jump forward and open up the booth and free the custardy contestants from their canvas. As they step out the referee lifts the arm of the winner, to a roar of synthetic applause . . . this is a purely conventional noise, with almost no pretence to realism.
As attendants get busy preparing the booth for the next round, Nat turns Deanie aside.
NAT: What’s with Keten?
DEANIE: I saw her two days ago.
NAT: You said she sick?
DEANIE: A bit sick.
NAT: Just a bit?
DEANIE: Some virus. All okay now, but—
NAT: Then why all this “Nat, we got to talk” stuff?
DEANIE (carefully): Can we go see her, both the same time? Do her good, they say.
NAT: I don’t know—
DEANIE: Long time since we did.
NAT: Got a lot of work.
DEANIE: I know.
NAT: The Sex Olympics. How old she now?
DEANIE: Nine years.
He looks at her, remembering.
NAT: Okay, you fix it. I come if I can.
He dips a finger in the tub of custard and tastes it. He grimaces.
DEANIE: Fish.
She smiles—the first time she has—and he is reminded again. After a moment, he glances round for something to wipe the fish custard on, notices an Audience Sampler monitor set in the wall close by. Its screen is blank. He presses the button beside it and the usual collection of apathetic faces appears. He offers his blob of custard to one. Deanie laughs.
DEANIE: Nat!
Nat wipes the custard on the screen, on an unseeing face.
NAT: Don’t like it.
DEANIE: Not meant to like it.
She turns to the booth, now nearly ready for the next contest.
NAT: Your work . . . cosy in it? (She shrugs) My work. (He scrutinises the screen, the blank faces) Put ’em off food, put ’em off sex. Or . . . explosion.
DEANIE: It works.
NAT: Still two hundred of ’em to each one of us in Output. Just sitting. Get their babies done at fifteen and then just sit. For most no work to do, all autoed for ’em. Just sit. Dead by thirty.
DEANIE (catching his arm): Nat—(Turning, he notices her face is suddenly haunted) People ever get sent out there?
NAT: Out with them?
DEANIE: Yes.
NAT: Sometimes, to work—
DEANIE: No, to stay. To be like them.
NAT (incredulously): How can we? All high-drive people in the networks. Out there it’s low-drive. How can we be sent? Look at them . . . low-drive. (He watches the unseeing faces on the screen for a moment) What are they for!
On an impulse he smears the blob of custard all over the screen, blurring the faces.
DEANIE: Keten had a test.
NAT (after a moment): What?
DEANIE: A metabolic test.
NAT: And?
DEANIE: I don’t know.
NAT: Clever kid . . . got two high-drive parents.
DEANIE: But not like us.
NAT: How not?
DEANIE: More slow and . . . quiet. Nat, if she got low-drive—
NAT: How can she?
DEANIE: Just if. Nat?
He says not
hing. He glares at the dim faces on the screen. He hits the button and the screen goes blank behind its permanent caption.
RECREATION AREA
Along one wall of the Recreation Area is a huge screen, at present filled by an Artsex show. The fleeting glimpse we get of it gives the general idea—a montage of bosoms and swirling drapes, like ‘artistic studies’ in motion but quite unteasing, almost unerotic.
Nobody here is taking the slightest bit of notice of it. This is a meeting-place for off-duty Output personnel. There are a dozen or so here, all with their backs to the screen. A few are sucking brighteners, others nibbling globular meringue-like confections, sitting or standing round a circular bar, talking animatedly.
There are two or three things like pin-tables, labelled “Auto-Chess”. A thin young man is settling down at one of them, picking a plastic programmer from a shelf of “Ploys”. He presses it into a slot. Instantly the machine buzzes, and lights up. Its chessmen start to move by themselves, playing both sides of the game at once . The young man crouches, watching concentratedly. He has a sensitive, nervous, tense face.
Nat and Deanie come into the recreation area. They take brighteners from a dispenser.
NAT: Fix it for tomorrow if I can. We both go see her, find out about this . . . test.
DEANIE: Thanks, Nat. (For a moment they say nothing) What girl you got now?
NAT: Oh . . . some girl name Misch. You?
Deanie nods at the young man at the Auto-Chess. He is frowning in utter absorption and has not noticed them.
DEANIE: There, waiting for me. Name Kin Hodder. (The name means nothing to Nat, who shakes his head) Works in Artsex. Got time to meet?
NAT: Well—
DEANIE: We quick it up.
She crosses to the young man and puts her arm round his neck. He starts, then sees who it is and is enormously pleased, like a puppy. He kisses her. He is several years younger than her.
KIN (indicating the Auto-Chess): Just trying this—no good, no real help.
DEANIE: Coddy, this—Nat Mender.
KIN: Oh. Kin Hodder.
NAT: Sportsex.
Kin tries to look interested.
DEANIE: Nat and me got a baby.
KIN: Oh. (After a moment) You not told me.
DEANIE: Long time ago.
NAT: Not a baby now.
DEANIE: Nine years old.
NAT: We were picked.
KIN: I see. Top material.
Nat shrugs modestly. But Kin does not look as impressed as he should.
NAT: You work in Artsex?
Kin nods. He indicates the big screen.