The Year of the Sex Olympics and other TV Plays

by Nigel Kneale

  She ducks and dodges before an imaginary barrage of custard. She rolls her eyes, squints, mugs furiously. Nat turns to the Audience Sampler. There is no reaction whatever. He looks at Priest, who shakes his head hopelessly.

  INSIDE THE STUDIO

  A studio hand walks along a steel gallery set high in the wall. The instant he passes out of sight, Kin Hodder slithers down a tied-off rope and drops on to the gallery. He glances about, then creeps off in the opposite direction.

  INSIDE THE PRODUCTION POD

  Misch has run out of invention.

  MISCH: . . . Next we got Nell Garner and Diggy Wilson. Now in hard training for the Sex Olympics, this top two took time—phew, my top teeth stuck—took time off to join our show—

  While the next competitors acknowledge their applause, a warning lamp flashes fast and repeatedly on the desk. Opie flips a switch.

  VOICE OF STUDIO CREWMAN: Somebody up the studio wall.

  OPIE (sharply): Who is it?

  VOICE OF STUDIO CREWMAN: Dunno. Do we get after him?

  NAT: Hold it!

  He turns to a small shutter in the wall of the pod and flips it open. Priest scrambles across to another. Isolated in her plastic dome, Misch stares wonderingly. Opie flaps a hand at her to carry on.

  MISCH: . . . And . . . and next, that super kingstyle two . . . that top pal team . . . my pals and your pals . . .

  No use. She has dried. She looks out and shrugs.

  Priest starts excitedly.

  PRIEST: Tell them quick. Get him!

  Nat turns to give the instruction. But in the three paces back to the desk something happens to him. He halts, strangely, and then moves on.

  On the big screen are the faces of the next two competitors, looking about them in some confusion.

  Nat motions Opie aside. Opie defers, puzzled. Nat deftly handles the controls—and the main screen cuts to a blur that sharpens rapidly in to a shot of Kin Hodder. He is climbing down a huge rectangular frame towards the plastic competition booths just below.

  PRIEST: Nat! Are you crazy! (Nat ignores him) Don’t you see—he got those pictures—he going to try—! (To Opie, waving frantically at the control desk) Stop it! Stop him!

  Opie makes a loyal dive at the controls. Nat grabs him. Neither man has the least skill in fighting, but Nat gets a hand over Opie’s face and flings him suddenly back. Opie crashes down with a howl. Nat turns to find Priest moving closer on the other side, and crouches protectively over the controls.

  NAT: Get back!

  Priest staggers back in alarm against Misch’s dome. It flies open and Misch screams. Nat flips the controls to hold Kin Hodder in vision. He is at the bottom of the frame now. He wedges himself and pulls the roll of drawings out of his belt.

  PRIEST: Look at him!

  The cry inspires Opie. He claws his way to the desk and yells before Nat can stop him.

  OPIE: Production pod to studio! Get that man!

  He twists round to protect the flush-fitted microphone from further interference, covering it with his back. Nat grapples with him.

  On the screen behind him studio crewmen, who have only been waiting for the word, start scrambling down the frame towards Kin Hodder. He sees them and tries to escape, clinging to the frame with one hand and waving his unrolled drawings in the other. He is shouting something indistinct.

  Nat thumps Opie’s head against the desk, stunning him enough to push him aside. The shouts into the microphone.

  NAT: Kin Hodder! Show them!

  Hodder looks wildly about, as if wondering where the shout came from. Hands are grabbing at him. He holds up his drawings, guessing at the direction. One of them goes fluttering away.

  Nat tightens the shot.

  Then, with a cry. Kin loses his grip and drops.

  Nat drops the shot past the pursuing studio crewmen on the frame, down past the shaken competitors, to where Kin is lying. The image boosts to a shock close-up.

  Blood is streaming from the young man’s ears and mouth. He lies quite still.

  Nat stares.

  Then he hears a strange sound. For a moment he hardly takes it in. He turns slowly to the Audience Sampler. The faces there are breaking into life . . . laughing! They are coughing and spluttering with the unaccustomed sound they are making. It comes trickling, then flooding, from the monitor.

  THE STUDIO FLOOR

  Competitors, huddling in their drapes round the body, look up in amazement as the studio is flooded with the roars of laughter. It continues as studio crewmen, who have been joined by a First-Aider, examine the crumpled body.

  INSIDE THE PRODUCTION POD

  Priest comes forward, his outrage at Nat’s behaviour already overlaid by wonder at this new phenomenon. He and Nat gaze at the convulsed, streaming, uproarious faces on the Audience Sampler. Opie is on his feet again, equally amazed.

  NAT (in horror): Laughing at him . . . on account he’s dead!

  PRIEST: No. No . . . it’s because they’re not. (Wrapt excitement in his face) You know . . . I think we just found the fruit-skin!

  He looks from one to another, eyes shining, sharing his discovery.

  THE STUDIO FLOOR

  It is a short time later. A grotesque white outline painted on the studio floor marks the place where Kin Hodder’s body lay. The body has been lifted on to a metal trolley and covered with a silver sheet. Deanie is there with it, looking at the face. She is dry-eyed.

  MISCH’S VOICE (echoing behind): . . . There they are . . . tonight’s overall winners . . . Polly Miro and Karl Chen! (Synthetic applause) So, till tomorrow night, everybody—so!

  A blast of closing music.

  Competitors pass, arguing among themselves, hardly giving Deanie a glance. The First-Aider approaches. Deanie lowers the sheet over Kin’s face as the man prepares to wheel the trolley away.

  DEANIE: The pictures? (He stares at her) Who got his pictures?

  The First-Aider shrugs as he wheels the body away. Deanie looks up towards the production pod . . .

  INSIDE THE PRODUCTION POD

  The show over, Misch frees herself from her plastic booth. Opie switches off the monitor screens. Priest is walking up and down, profoundly pleased with himself. Only Nat, seated at the desk, is brooding.

  NAT (gnawing his knuckles): Sorry.

  PRIEST: Eh? No matter all that now. You just got upset.

  NAT (distinctly): I’m sorry on account of . . . maybe I helped to kill him.

  PRIEST (in concern): Nat! (Turns to Opie) We need some brighteners—get ’em. (Opie hastens to obey) Nat, we just made a great breakthrough! That's what matters!

  NAT: Breakthrough?

  PRIEST: To perfect Apathy Control!

  NAT: It was accident.

  PRIEST: We got the laugh! You heard it! The classic laugh—the fruit-skin. They don’t expect it—it happens—they glad it not them—jumbo relief, jumbo laugh! In the whole area—! (Tapping the desk) See those ratings? Toppest in six months!

  NAT: What we do? Kill somebody every night? They soon get fed up with that—(He turns. Opie is back, with a fistful of brighteners, and Deanie is with him. Nat comes to his feet)—Deanie.

  DEANIE: Where are the pictures?

  Nat turns to Priest. Priest is almost surprised to be asked.

  PRIEST: Gone.

  DEANIE: Disposed?

  PRIEST: What else? (Her eyes flash with anger. Priest takes a couple of brighteners from Opie and offers her one. She shakes her head) Go on. You’re in shock. (She shakes her head emphatically. He sucks one himself) Deanie, take time off. We get his life record up for you. Run it. Think about him. Do you good.

  DEANIE: More than him . . . is what he made.

  She looks from Priest to the others, searching for a response. She finds it only in Nat, unspoken.

  PRIEST (solemnly): What he made most of all . . . what he give us here today . . . was this breakthrough. (Deanie turns away. Nat moves closer to her) Our job is to act on it.

  OPIE: Find how
to make it happen?

  PRIEST: On cue.

  MISCH: Look, I try to make ’em laugh—

  PRIEST (kindly): I know, bubby, you nearly bust. It needs more.

  MISCH: What kind of more?

  PRIEST (less certainly): Let’s just pick it over. We get One, shock. Two, glad-it-not-me! Three, the boffo.

  MISCH: Boffo?

  PRIEST: Old-days name. Top jumbo laugh.

  OPIE: Wait a minute—maybe there more to it. (Concentrating) Lemme—lemme get to this. Like . . . some deep-down pattern. Old-days, the world was totally randomised—all life—?

  PRIEST: Right. Nobody knew what’d happen next.

  OPIE: Maybe that what they miss. Deep down.

  PRIEST: I dunno . . .

  MISCH: Lasar, you crazy!

  OPIE: Why?

  MISCH (pointing to Deanie): Her coddy’s picture was like old-days. It just upset ’em.

  OPIE: They got no feel of “It-not-happen-to-me”. That did happen to ’em. It hurt ’em.

  PRIEST: True. (Considering Opie) Maybe you on to some—

  MISCH: We got to shock ’em but not upset ’em. Easy! How we do it?

  A silence.

  OPIE: Maybe . . . randomised computers . . .

  Nat’s eyes are strange.

  NAT: Suppose . . .

  PRIEST: Nat?

  NAT: Suppose you got just a few people to live like old-days? And watched ’em, to make a show?

  OPIE: Out there?

  PRIEST: Need to be right out of everything. Like savages. Wild men.

  MISCH: Ugh!

  NAT: But alone. Nobody ever tell ’em what to do, nobody come near.

  MISCH: Not ever?

  NAT: Not ever. Get their own food, make things they need—

  PRIEST: No help at all?

  NAT: No.

  PRIEST: At total risk?

  MISCH: Get sick? Even die?

  NAT (nodding): That’d be the show.

  They look at each other. Priest chuckles, drawn to the fancy of it. Opie gives a humourless splutter of laughter.

  OPIE: Who you get to do it?

  DEANIE: I’d do it.

  Her voice is cold and serious. She looks at Nat. After a long moment he nods . . . and nods again.

  MISCH (screaming): Nat—!

  INSIDE PRIEST’S OFFICE

  Pictures of islands flash before us on a giant screen. Flickergraph-style, there is a rapid succession of rocky islets, palm-covered atolls, volcanic piles, grassy flat islands. They are of many shapes but have one thing in common. They appear to be completely isolated. The flicker stops.

  The island that is held on the screen is bare and steep-cliffed. It swells to fill the frame.

  PRIEST: This is the one . . .

  He is in his office with Nat and Deanie. It is not an office in our sense, of course. The screen is the dominating object in it, and instead of a desk there is a low-level projection-and-tape complex. Priest being an old-days man, a few antiques make up the rest of the furnishings—some chairs and art objects from the late 20th century.

  PRIEST: . . . We ran over two thousand islands. This came out best. Computation said, not got to be too warm, too easy. Now this place is cold but not too cold. Things can grow.

  DEANIE: Things?

  PRIEST: To eat. Get fish in the sea there, too—big fish, not like custard krill. You got to go down those rocks and get ’em, catch ’em.

  DEANIE: You can fall—

  PRIEST: You can fall a hundred metres. Do that and you’re dead. (Drily) But as to living—there’s a place for that, too. Old-days place. No auto-conditioning, you need fires.

  NAT: Fires?

  PRIEST: Flames . . . like . . . you got to make. You find out. And you need clothes. Not joy-rigs like you got here. Thick, heavy things to keep warm. Or you get sick.

  NAT: Not easy.

  PRIEST: Not easy. Like you said, that’d be the show. (He switches off the screen and turns to them, seriously) Now. We got the okay on this.

  NAT: You did?

  PRIEST: Today. (Nat and Deanie look at each other, tensing) For a pilot run.

  NAT (half-relieved): Just a pilot?

  PRIEST: Be for a year, to start. Then . . . you stay on, if you want.

  NAT: How long?

  PRIEST (reluctantly): No limit. (It is what they have been waiting to hear) Now you got three days to back out.

  NAT: Not needed.

  DEANIE: Co-ordinator, we done all the talk and thought.

  NAT: We want to do this.

  PRIEST: Crazy!

  NAT: We mean it.

  PRIEST: You don’t know what to mean. (He sighs) Okay, it fixes problems—you get away from the ones you got now, but . . . Old-days once, I went that far. Listen—(He holds up a hand for silence)—You hear?

  NAT: Nothing.

  PRIEST: The noise of Output Area 27. You don’t hear it cause you never not heard it. And the standard smell, you don’t smell it. But out there . . . it was terrible. Know what I did? I sat and cried for that smell. And the noise . . . and the shelter. (Moved by the memory, he fumbles for a brightener, then turns on them almost angrily) What’s it for? You not kids on heat—you had your spell together, you know each other—

  NAT: No, we don’t! Maybe on that island, not here. Not ever here. Nobody knows anybody.

  After a moment, Priest gives a small, bitter smile.

  PRIEST: Or even . . . himself.

  NAT: No.

  PRIEST: Okay. I get things started . . .

  THE CLOTHING STORES

  Steel shelves are laden with heavy protective clothing . . . jackets of synthetic fur and nylon . . . vests, seaboots, knitted caps, canvas coats. An attendant is helping Nat to get kitted up. The chosen clothes are being packed in a huge basket.

  Nat looks round. Misch is approaching. She stands watching uncertainly.

  MISCH: I never see rigs like this.

  NAT: Kept for special trips.

  MISCH: Like yours? Fun trips?

  NAT (wearily): My trip is real.

  MISCH: Fun. You start here and you end there and in between you not go anyplace. I know you, Nat. (Nat doesn’t argue. The attendant helps him into an enormous Arctic-style fur-lined coat. Misch feels the fur sensuously) Mmmm! Room in here for two. Coddy, let’s go back and try it? (No reply) Funny hats, too.

  She pulls a knitted cap on, rakishly. And a canvas coat over her shoulders. Their coarseness contrasts with her fragility. She giggles and strikes an attitude. Nat looks at her coolly.

  NAT: You come with me, Misch? (The giggle dries up) When I go? For all our life?

  She stares at him.

  MISCH: You gone real madhead! (Angrily incredulous, she tears the things off as if they are dangerous. The attendant picks them up and takes them to the basket. Misch throws herself against Nat’s chest) That true, then? On an island all your life? Alone?

  NAT: Not alone.

  MISCH: Worse than alone, with that Deanie. I don’t get you, Nat. Just one girl—when you sick of her, be nobody else. Listen, she might have kids—a lot of kids!

  NAT: Yes.

  MISCH (desperately): Nat, she get old, she get so awful!

  NAT: I get old, too.

  MISCH (with distaste): Both . . . aagh!

  She draws away. Nat goes after the attendant, peeling off the fur-lined coat. Misch glances about. She pulls a furry parka from a shelf, throws it round herself. Nestling her face luxuriously in the hood, she drifts away . . .

  PRIEST’S OFFICE

  It is the last briefing. Priest faces Nat and Deanie. Lasar Opie is in attendance, too.

  PRIEST (briskly): . . . Living quarters all checked. Enough food there to start you off. Seed for growing. Full instructions.

  NAT: And the show?

  PRIEST: Starts as you go in. It’s all wired up. Right, Lasar?

  OPIE: The links are set.

  PRIEST: He runs it.

  NAT: Oh. Good.

  OPIE (smiling): In safe hands, Nat.<
br />
  NAT: Yes.

  OPIE: Goes out on a special channel, non-stop. We call it the Live-Life Show. (To Priest) Title okay?

  PRIEST (nodding): Passed. (To Nat) We see you all the time, but you won’t see us. Miss you, Nat, on the Sex Olympics—

  NAT: Just one thing. Nobody left behind? No technical staff?

  OPIE: Nobody.

  PRIEST: Why?

  NAT: Oh. Want to be sure . . . it’s just us . . .

  ANTE-ROOM, CHILD ENVIRONMENT CENTRE

  As before, Keten comes through to the ante-room. This time a nurse is holding her hand, and transfers it to the waiting Deanie as they reach her. The nurse has a plastic pack of the child’s belongings.

  Keten is clutching a bedraggled, chewed rag doll.

  DEANIE: Keten. (To seem friendly) What this?

  KETEN: Timbo.

  DEANIE: Can I see? (Keten offers it for inspection but Deanie can make nothing of it except faint distaste) You come with us now?

  KETEN: Timbo sleep in my bed. I said to you last time.

  DEANIE: Oh. Yes. Keten, you and me and Nat Mender, we go a long way.

  Keten looks doubtfully at Nat waiting in the doorway.

  KETEN: Timbo my best friend.

  DEANIE: Timbo? (Failing to recognise defensive evasion, she is at a loss. To the nurse:) She been told? (The nurse nods. To Keten again:) We want you to come. We be . . . something called a family. (An apologetic glance at the nurse) Old-days.

  KETEN: Out there?

  She seems rigid with fear.

  DEANIE: What is it? (With sudden instinct, she pulls Keten close to her for the confidence she must make, and whispers:) What’s wrong, Keten?

  KETEN (whispering): They send children out there. I know. Some of the big ones.

  Deanie clutches Keten to her, unable to answer for a moment. She is surprised at the strength of the forces rising in herself.

  DEANIE: Not you! Not in the Audience! You be with us, right out past all that. You be with us all the time . . . !

  IN THE PRODUCTION POD

  Opie is at the control desk. Priest sits beside him.

  A giant caption fills the screen, and for the many who cannot read, a voice repeats it boldly:

  “THE LIVE-LIFE SHOW”

  The island fills the screen, as from a helicopter speeding down upon it. A small thatched cottage appears, coming closer . . . and closer.

  OPIE: Going inside . . . now.

  He flips a switch.