by Adam Roberts
‘He can’t afford anything more upmarket?’
‘He prefers this.’
‘Doesn’t he have a name?’
‘He is like a father to us,’ said Thinity. ‘He is Abraham to our people. His name is Smurpheus.’
‘Smurpheus,’ said Gordon. ‘Right.’
They rode up in an elevator that had been decorated, according to the spray-painted inscription, by a gentleman called ‘Skuzzman’. He had managed to deconstruct traditional notions of elevator decoration by drawing an enormously exaggerated diagrammatic representation of the male generative organ on the left-hand wall. On the door he had experimented boldly with form and linguistic content, writing out a list of a number of variant spellings of the word ‘bollocks’, as if hoping to arrive by trial and error at the correct one. The word was spelt with an ‘a’, with an ‘oo’, with two ‘l’s, and one ‘l’, and finally, oddly, without the initial letter at all.
Gordon had finished reading this list when the door opened. He followed Thinity out into a dim, ammonia-smelling corridor. Thinity knocked on one nondescript door.
It was opened.
Inside, the room was almost bare. Two claret-coloured leather armchairs stood facing one another. The only light was from candles positioned on top of an empty bookcase. Otherwise the room was entirely unfurnished. Olive-green wallpaper peeled; the corners of the room were shadow-threaded.
The door had been opened by a skinheaded bloke in an Armani waterproof coat. And in the centre of the room was the man he had come to meet: Smurpheus, sitting in one of the armchairs. He wore a long leather duster-overcoat. His head was perfectly bald, and tiny blue sunglasses perched on the bridge of his nose without the help of sidebars. His skin was blue-black, and his expression calm to the point of serenity. At the same time, coexistent with this serenity, there was an unmissable intensity to his presence. He radiated authority. He was, Gordon guessed, at least six foot eight tall. More like eight foot six. An aura of power, competence, intelligence and wisdom emanated from him. His hands were positioned in front of his chest, fingers pressing against fingers and thumb against thumb in an inverted cat’s cradle.
‘Nemo,’ he said, without turning his head or looking in Gordon’s direction. ‘Come in. How glad I am to meet you.’
‘Oh, hello, hello,’ said Gordon, stepping forward. ‘Likewise, I’m sure. Great. Hi. Hi there.’ He grinned at the people in the room, trying to convey delighted to be here. But he was overdoing it, he could tell. It was more gurn than grin, which in turn conveyed a look-at-me-aren’t-I-ugly vibe that wasn’t the effect he was going for at all. Feeling foolish as well as nervous, he stopped smiling completely. Then, thinking that he was looking too sombre, he smiled faintly. Thinking, in turn, that this looked supercilious, he widened his smile and parted his lips, which brought him perilously close to a return of the gurn. ‘Fantastic,’ he said, since talking was easier than trying to gauge the precise tenor of his own smile. ‘Fantastic to be here. Just great. Hi. Hello. How are you all? Splendid.’
There was a silence.
‘You have come seeking answers,’ Smurpheus boomed. ‘And I can provide you with them. I know,’ he said, severely, ‘the question you are about to ask.’
‘Do you mind if I sit down?’ asked Gordon.
Smurpheus’s face registered the slightest tremor before settling back into a Zen master’s calm. ‘Yes, yes, sit if you like,’ he said. ‘I meant the question after that.’
Gordon lowered himself into the leather armchair opposite. Its seat was slung very low indeed, and Gordon had to squat lower and lower, hoping his bum would soon come into contact with the upholstery. He contemplated simply letting go and trusting that the fall into the chair wouldn’t be too far, but that could look ungainly, especially if the distance were, say, a foot, or more. Better to maintain a controlled descent as far as possible. Accordingly he strained lower and lower, his knees creaking. He pulled a tight face, as if the narrowing of his eyes might help hold him up in midair, perhaps by tightening his skin minutely over his whole body thus providing him with some sort of hammock-style support on his underside. But by now he had passed the point of no return, and he was committed to slumping backwards. His hands went up inadvertently.
As he landed in the chair the friction of his trousers against the squeaky fabric of the chair resulted in a noise like farting.
‘That,’ he said, meeting Smurpheus’s steady gaze, ‘was the chair.’
‘I know it was,’ returned Smurpheus, with the inscrutable air of somebody who knows many things about many things.
‘Anyway,’ said Gordon, shifting himself in the seat a few times to get comfortable, thereby reproducing the unfortunate noise twice more. ‘Anyway. You were saying?’
‘You want to ask me a question,’ said Smurpheus. When Gordon didn’t say anything, he went on: ‘You want to ask me about the McAtrix.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Gordon. ‘Sure, why not?’ He laughed nervously.
‘I cannot tell you what the McAtrix is,’ said Smurpheus sombrely.
‘Oh,’ said Gordon, disappointed. ‘You can’t? That’s a shame.’
There was a pause.
‘Can’t you try?’ said Gordon. ‘Have a go?’
‘A go?’
‘Give me a clue? Try telling me what it is. You don’t know, you might do a better job than you think.’
‘No, no,’ said Smurpheus, as if Gordon were missing the point. ‘You have to experience it for yourself.’
‘Yes, fine, I see. But can’t you tell me a little bit about it? General description? Précis? Ballpark? It needn’t be overly detailed.’
‘Nobody,’ repeated Smurpheus in a slightly ruffled tone, ‘can be told what the McAtrix is, they have to experience it for themselves.’
‘Not even a hint of a telling?’ pressed Gordon.
‘No.’
‘Go on.’
‘No.’
‘Please?’
‘You don’t understand the subtlety of—’
‘I’m not asking for a blow by blow,’ wheedled Gordon. ‘Just the rough outline.’
‘You’re not listening to me. It’s not something that can be simply—’
‘Pretty please?’
‘It’s a virtual-reality prison,’ snapped Smurpheus, ‘in which we are all trapped and enslaved.’ He shut his eyes and breathed out to regain his calm.
‘You see,’ said Gordon, trying to be encouraging, ‘that wasn’t too hard, now was it? That was very good, gave me a good idea. Obviously, I need to know more by way of specific details. But in general, roundabout terms I’d say I grasp the notion.’ He smiled.
‘But you don’t take the force of the concept unless you experience it, unless,’ said Smurpheus, ‘unless you make the choice.’
‘Make the choice?’ repeated Gordon.
Smurpheus pointed to a low table beside his chair. On the table were two small glasses, each roughly the size of a halfpint cup. One of the glasses contained a red fluid, and the other a blue. ‘You must choose one of these drinks,’ said Smurpheus. ‘Drink the blue drink, and you wake up in your bed, where you can think this whole meeting was a dream, and get on with your life. Drink the red one, however, and you’ll find out for yourself precisely what the McAtrix is.’
Gordon looked at the two glasses. ‘What’s the red drink?’ he asked.
‘Cranberry juice,’ said Smurpheus.
‘Right. And the blue one?’
‘Toilet duck. Alpine Fresh.’
‘Well I don’t want to drink that,’ said Gordon.
‘The choice,’ said Smurpheus impassively, ‘is yours.’
Gordon contemplated for a while. ‘If I drink the blue one I’ll end up back in my bed you say?’
‘Back in your bed,’ confirmed Smurpheus. ‘Or,’ he added, as if in afterthought, ‘in a hospital bed with your stomach pumped. But it amounts to the same thing.’
‘Hmm,’ said Gordon.
Smurpheus stared at him for a w
hile. He turned his head to look at Thinity, standing by the door, dislodging the bridge-of-nose-hugging shades with the motion. He pressed them back into place, and turned to face Gordon again, keeping them there with a carefully placed finger. ‘Look,’ he said, starting to sound just a tad impatient, ‘I don’t mean to hurry you . . .’
‘We’ve been detected,’ said the skinheaded man. ‘The SQUIDS are at Monument. We have to move fast.’
‘Mr Nemo,’ said Smurpheus, smiling and leaning forward. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to choose right now.’
‘Hmm,’ said Gordon.
‘Seriously,’ said Smurpheus. ‘Now. Now this second.’
‘The SQUIDS are moving closer,’ said the skinheaded man. ‘Smurpheus, now.’
‘I think,’ said Gordon, reaching out with his right hand and pausing it in midair with a pincer grip, as if about to make a crucial move in a chess game. ‘I thi-eee-ink, that . . . I’ll choose . . . hmmm . . .’
‘Choose now, please, Mr Nemo,’ said Smurpheus sharply.
‘Right, right, right,’ said Gordon. ‘Red. No, blue. No, red. No blue. Redblueredblue. Oooh, it’s hard though, isn’t it?’
‘Just drink the red drink,’ said Thinity, from the door.
‘Oh, you reckon?’ said Gordon. ‘OK, red it is. Red. If it’s good enough for you, then it’s good enough for me.’ He tried to angle a winning smile in her direction, but the effect was closer to a seedy leer.
In a moment Smurpheus was on his feet. ‘And we’re off,’ he announced.
‘Shouldn’t I drink the . . . you know . . .’ said Gordon.
‘Well, there’s no need,’ the big man gabbled. ‘It’s only a symbol. Come on.’ He took hold of Gordon’s arm.
‘But I’m actually quite thirsty,’ said Gordon plaintively, as he was rushed out of the room.
(:-D
The four of them went through to a back room. Gordon hurried behind Smurpheus, and tried to speak to him discreetly. Since this involved standing on the tips of his toes whilst hurrying along behind him, it gave Gordon the unfortunate aspect of a ballet dancer. Not that there’s anything unfortunate in being a ballet dancer per se, of course; but Gordon was not per se. He was considerably wor se. He also had to position his mouth close enough to Smurpheus’s ear to be able to whisper, but not so close as to give the impression that he were trying to kiss his earlobe, an action which, since he had only just met the man, might have been considered impertinent.
‘Hello, Mr Smurpheus,’ he said, trying to keep his voice down.
‘Yes,’ returned the big man, without looking at him.
‘Look,’ said Gordon. ‘Can I level with you? I’m not so interested in the, you know, McAtrix thing. Really I’m only here because I fancy Thinity. Um, I mean, I’m not sure that phrase, saying “fancy” you know, not sure it really does justice to my feelings. My feelings for her. Something more than fancy. It’s not just her clothes, it’s her mind, really. Her personality. Obviously I’m not immune to the, eh, attractions of her physical form, but I wouldn’t want you to think that – um.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Anyway, not to beat around the bush, to get straight to the, to the, straight, to the, straight to the, you know. I was hoping to get to know her better. One latte and two straws, you know? On a date.’
‘You are the chosen one, the saviour of humanity,’ boomed Smurpheus. His eyes, behind their improbable sunglasses, were unreadable.
‘The saviour, um, saviour? Am I? That’s nice, only I was thinking. You know Thinity, yeah? You’re, like, a friend of hers, yes? So you can tell me if she’s seeing anyone. You see? Um?’
‘Seeing?’
‘Does she have a boyfriend? A girlfriend? Any kind of friend?’
‘Naturally she has friends.’
‘Not friends,’ urged Gordon. ‘Friends. You know?’
‘Nemo,’ said Smurpheus severely. He had stopped walking, and Gordon looked about himself. They were in a room filled with telephones. Hundreds of phones, on every surface, over the floor, on brackets all over the walls. These were, Gordon noticed with a half-aware sense of the oddity of it, all old-fashioned phones; black bakelite devices with dials and massy receivers that resembled in shape some obscure bone from the pelvis.
‘Hey,’ said Gordon, settling off his toes on to the flats of his feet. ‘A whole bunch of phones.’
Smurpheus, Thinity and the others were standing looking at him. He smiled weakly.
Suddenly all the phones started ringing at once. Their rings were produced by actual metal bells inside the body of the phones, and were accordingly a much more piercing noise than the artificial ringtones of more modern phones. It was a shrill and clattering cacophony. Gordon jumped.
‘Nemo,’ said Smurpheus again, raising his voice to cover the massed chimes of the ringing phones. ‘You need to prepare yourself. The McAtrix has you. You are about to leave it. We’ll meet you at the exit.’
‘Right,’ said Gordon. ‘Could I just ask . . .’
But everything had gone blank.
Chapter 5
Waking Up Covered
in Slime
For long moments everything was dark. Then Gordon opened his eyes to find himself in a strange bed. He blinked, looked around, and noticed that he was covered in slime. He said, ‘Urgh’.
It was the obvious thing to say.
The light was grey, fuzzy, and far-far away a tiny voice seemed to be singing, barely audibly, A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut.
There was a click, and then silence.
Gordon’s arms were free, and he moved his hands, a little tremblily, to explore the gunk that covered his body. It was all over him, and had the consistency of cold K-Y Jelly. He felt like the pork in a pork pie, surrounded by a snot-like gel. It was not a pleasant thing to feel like.
The quality of light changed.
A lid, like the lid of a swing-top bin only longer and larger, swung open above him. It rose to be completely vertical, and Gordon found himself looking directly up at a ceiling. It took a moment for his eyes to focus, but when they did he could see a large logo printed there. It said, ‘McPod: For All Your Pod Entertainment’.
In the new light Gordon could see that he was completely naked. He was aware of a pressing need to empty his bowels, and then with a click and whirr, that need disappeared. Disoriented, and somewhat afraid, Gordon worried that he had lost control of his sphincter, with bed-dirtying implications, but when he struggled into a sitting position and looked down the mattress was unsullied – although it was smeared in a thick layer of transparent goo.
‘Urgh,’ he repeated. It was only a small word, but it packed a great deal of meaning. In fact it was so expressive of his state of mind in this strange new circumstance that he said it a third time, in elongated form: ‘Uurrrgh.’
The bed he was lying on was a narrow metal frame truckle-bed, with a thin plastic mattress. The lid that had been over him, like a cockpit canopy, was now fully open and resting against the wall behind him. As he looked left and right he saw other similar pods, stretching away down the wide space in which he found himself. His pod was one of a row of a hundred similar devices; and directly opposite him was another row of as many again, and behind that another, and another one behind that. Counting carefully Gordon made out six rows in all, at least six hundred pods in one room.
There was a pinging noise that made him twitch; and he twitched a second time (or twicetched) when a ghostly and disembodied head emerged from the foot of his bed. The head rose slowly until it was hovering over Gordon’s feet. Then it smiled at him. The head spoke. It said, ‘Thank You For Using McPod! Please Come Again!’ Its voice was easy, pleasant, Midwestern-accented.
‘Not at all,’ said Gordon quaveringly.
The holographic head swivelled all the way around, three hundred and sixty degrees, and then vanished. In its place were the words ‘Exit ←’ eighteen inches high and pulsing in green neon.
‘Right,’
said Gordon, getting unsteadily to his feet. He was awkwardly aware of his own nakedness. As if reading his thoughts, a panel opened in the low ceiling just above his head and a package dropped down to dangle, on a string, before his face. When he opened it he found inside a pressed white hessian dressing gown. Across the back of the garment was the logo GAP.
Gordon dressed in the gown gratefully, and spent some time looking about himself.
He was in what appeared to be a large warehouse. Almost all the wallspace was taken up with adverts for products with which he was familiar enough: designer jeans; designer cars; designer sunglasses; designer desk-tidies; designer dessert spoons; designer desert boots; designer descenders, designer deseeders, designer descant recorders and all manner of designer desirables, descriptively and delightfully designated. The place was cluttered with logos.
As Gordon walked, or stumbled, up the aisle between two rows of pods, helpful holographic inscriptions kept popping into existence before him (‘Exit ↑’).
This is all (he thought to himself) terribly helpful. It was also, he thought, eerily deserted.
He came to a door at the end of the room marked ‘Exit’ and passed through into a wide corridor.
‘What I really need,’ he said aloud to the emptiness, ‘is a shower to wash off this gunk.’
Instantly a hologram appeared in the air before him: ‘Showers ↑’.
‘Thank you,’ said Gordon, pleasantly surprised.
‘Don’t thank it,’ said a voice behind him. It sounded a little like Smurpheus’s voice, only higher-pitched; and when Gordon turned to see who had spoken he saw a diminutive man who somewhat resembled Smurpheus facially. But although his features were similar, this man was half Smurpheus’s height, and instead of wearing the designer sunglasses and the designer leather duster Gordon had just seen, he was wearing what looked like a hand-knitted sweater. It was beige, and it was badly fitting; dangling almost to the man’s knees whilst its hem described a series of elliptical unevennesses. Moreover, the quality of the knitting was poor: not so much chain stitch, more mass-of-overcooked-spaghetti-lifted-out-of-the-panon-a-big-fork stitch.