The Parodies Collection

by Adam Roberts

  But Thinity seemed to be ignoring him. She shifted Smurpheus’s supine weight across her shoulders, and took three steps along the pavement to a red post box. For a moment it looked as though she intended to stuff Smurpheus’s body in the post slot. ‘Of all the useless, non-No One idiots in the world, I have to get saddled with you,’ she complained. ‘What have I done to deserve this?’

  Nemo felt the urgency of the situation. ‘Thinity,’ he called to her. ‘Thinity!’ He launched himself after her, but his footing was uncertain. Standing, as he had been, on the very edge of the kerb, he stumbled when he tried to push off into a run. His foot twisted on the step and his ankle gave way. Before he knew what was happening, he was staggering helplessly, flailing his arms, right into the road.

  His brain spoke clearly, a death-knell sentence: You’re going to die. It added, In less than a second you’re going to find out what it feels like to get a Peugeot 308 in the small of your back.

  Nemo did what anybody would do to protect their body, as far as possible, from such an impact. He scrunched up his eyes.

  For a moment he only stood there with his eyes closed.

  Then, cautiously, he opened his eyes. He didn’t risk opening them entirely. That would have been reckless. But through his half-open eyes he saw a strange sight: cars streamed away from him, like great black globs of molten plastic spat from a giant industrial manufacturing device. Identical tailgates receded, identical aerials wobbled, identical registration plates blurred, one after the other.

  Slowly, Nemo turned his head to look the other way. The sight of an endless stream of Peugeot 308s hurtling directly towards him made him scrunch his eyes up again. But after a few moments, he hazarded the half-open position and saw a prospect normally enjoyed only by the wall against which crash-test dummies drive their vehicles in safety centres. Car after car boomed up towards him.

  He looked down. Where the cars intersected his body something strange was happening. To Nemo’s first glimpse, it looked as though his own torso had become fuzzily indistinct, hologrammatical. But when he looked again, it was the cars that became transparent, and his own body that was the only real thing. He tried to bring the image into focus, but it refused to resolve itself. It was impossible to see where ghost image and real image began or ended.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Christ in a bucket. Thinity!’

  Thinity, standing on the pavement with Smurpheus draped over her shoulders like an enormously exaggerated fox fur, was looking directly at him. ‘Nemo!’ she called. ‘I was wrong. You are the No One!’

  ‘I don’t like it!’ Nemo quavered. ‘It’s spooking me out. Thinity, help!’

  But their exchange was interrupted by another voice, a penetrating and snidely evil voice. Nemo recognised it at once: the original gent, the one who had interrogated him days before, the one from the dentist. He was standing a few yards from Thinity and Smurpheus; and behind him was another gent. Two more stepped forward to take up positions immediately behind the first two.

  ‘The famous Thinity!’ called the first gent, raising his voice so that it carried over the surf of traffic. ‘I am honoured. And what is she wearing? Fox? Mink? No, I do believe it is the mighty Smurpheus. Two birds with one stone.’

  Nemo was frozen with fear, flicking his glance from the four gents to the lone Thinity with her floppy burden. How could she possibly fight one gent, let alone four of them, with Smurpheus weighing her down? And yet, how could she escape? Where could she go?

  Thinity, for a moment, caught Nemo’s eye. She began to bend, slowly, at the knees, as if the weight of her burdens, literal and metaphorical, were finally overcoming her, and she were preparing to lay Smurpheus on the ground at the gents’ feet as a spoil of war.

  The first gent took a single step forward. The expression on his face was as close to triumphant as a machine could manage.

  But, suddenly, Thinity straightened her legs: she leapt. With a rapidly graceful movement she put her right foot in the post slot for intermediate support and stepped neatly on to the top of the pillar box. Then, hardly pausing, she leapt into space.

  Nemo’s head went back trying to follow her trajectory. For a second she passed directly between him and the sun creating a localised and temporary eclipse. It was at that moment that Nemo realised what her plan was.

  He didn’t have time even to cry out. Thinity’s designer-shod right foot, its wedge of black plastic heel and painfully tapering toe, smacked into Nemo’s face. Her left foot landed on his right shoulder with bruising force.

  For an instant too fleeting even to count, technically, as an instant (a moment of time that should more properly be described as a demiinstant, or perhaps demihemiinstant) Nemo was aware of the shocking pressure of Thinity crushing down upon him. Then the pressure lifted, granting Nemo the freedom of airway to cry out ‘Oww!’ and ‘ooooOO!’ as he started falling backwards. He had one last glimpse of Thinity, from below, as she sailed through the air over him and over the incessant cars to land safely on the far side. Then he was down.

  As the back of his head struck the road he found himself in a shadowy world of holographic exhaust pipes, unreal wheels, the weirdly corrugated undersides of cars passing over him and through him. His face stung, and his shoulder felt dislocated. He was half dazed. But the backwards tumble had given him momentum to roll a little, and he slid further across the road before getting unsteadily to his feet.

  He was past the flow of traffic, although only just. Wings, doors and spoilers flickered past him, centimetres from his chest. He could see the four gents on the far side of the road looking angrily at Thinity as she pressed the receiver of the public phone to Smurpheus’s ear. Their anger was mingled with noncomprehension. It was plain they could not deduce how she had managed such a leap.

  With an elation that only partly compensated for the battered feeling of his face and shoulder, Nemo realised that the gent could not see him at all. He truly was the No One. He had achieved it.

  The gent’s expression changed from angry puzzlement to a more straightforwardly angry anger. His eyes connected with Nemo’s. ‘Mr Everyman!’ he bellowed, noticing him for the first time.

  The wing mirror of the next passing Peugeot 308 clipped Nemo’s left arm. It was a whumping blow, spinning Nemo through an instant half circle and tipping him away. Clutching his arm and squealing in pain he fell on the pavement at Thinity’s feet.

  As he struggled to get to his feet again he could see the four gents scowling at them from the other side of the interminable flow of cars. ‘Come on, Nemo,’ Thinity urged. ‘Back through the node.’

  ‘My arm,’ he complained. ‘My left arm. And my right wrist – I hurt my wrist with that stupid gun in the dentist’s. And my bloody face. You trod on my face! Without so much as a by your leave! Not to mention my shoulder. And I banged the back of my head falling down—’ The phone was being held against his ear as he complained, and with a tingling sensation he downloaded from the McAtrix and reappeared in the Jeroboam.

  :+(

  It was a relief to find himself back in the real world, where none of the injuries he had accrued in the McAtrix any longer applied. Indeed, when both Smurpheus and Thinity emerged from their respective chairs unharmed and unblemished, Nemo began to feel pretty smug about everything.

  ‘What did I say?’ said Smurpheus, through his unharmed real mouth. ‘I told you that he was the No One.’

  Nemo grinned. He beamed. He felt as if he were on top of the world.

  ‘Smurpheus,’ said Thinity. ‘You were right; I’m sorry I doubted you. He is the No One.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Smurpheus complacently.

  ‘I am, though, ain’t I?’ agreed Nemo. ‘Blimey, fantastic. Just how was I able to stand in that stream of cars?’

  ‘The system didn’t recognise you. As far as the McAtrix was concerned, you’d ceased to exist. You believed you were the No One, and so you were.’

  ‘You could still see me, though.’

&nb
sp; ‘I,’ said Thinity proudly, ‘am not the system.’

  ‘But that one car thwacked my arm with its wing mirror, didn’t it?’ Nemo said. ‘It treated me as real.’

  ‘That happened when the gent recognised you. Before that moment he couldn’t see you, just as the cars didn’t register your presence. It was how things should have happened at the building yesterday. But then, for some reason, he saw you. Perhaps you started thinking of yourself as a Someone again.’

  Nemo remembered his pride, his exhilaration, and said nothing. ‘It’s not easy being No One,’ he said eventually, a little crestfallen.

  ‘Still, you succeeded pretty much,’ said Thinity brightly. ‘Several crucial minutes of No One-ness. I’m sorry I lost my temper with you, Nemo; I’m sorry I got mad. I shouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Nemo, his heart swelling. ‘Think nothing of it. You know? It may have been you losing your temper that was the catalyst. May have saved all our bacon. It squashed my ego somewhat, you see, and that seemed to help my turning into the No One. I tell you what,’ he added. ‘The Orifice said that I’d have to choose between Smurpheus’s death or my own death – but she was wrong, wasn’t she? We saved Smurpheus, and I didn’t die. She was wrong!’ He felt like laughing.

  Thinity walked over to him and kissed him, lightly, on the lips.

  Nemo’s eyes popped open. His heart bloomed, like a stop-motion film of a chrysanthemum turning from bud to bouquet. He felt a glorious sense of life flooding him. With that kiss he was alive. ‘Thinity,’ he said, careless of the fact that both Smurpheus and Tonkatoi were standing watching him. ‘Thinity, I love you. Will you – will you go out with me?’

  There was a moment’s pause.

  ‘Oh,’ said Thinity, almost tenderly, ‘of course not, Nemo.’ She kissed him again, more lightly still. ‘Of course not. Not in a million years. Sorry.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Nemo, his smile smeared stickily all over his face. ‘Oh. OK.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Nemo,’ said Thinity, stepping away from him.

  ‘No, that’s all right. Sorry for. Sorry myself. I’m not too bothered, actually. You know.’ There were, ridiculously, tears growing in his eyes. Inside his breast he could feel the rush of life shrink away, could feel his heart die, actually die, moment to moment, each beat like a hammer knocking in a coffin nail. It did not feel good.

  ‘Mate,’ said Tonkatoi, looking mournfully at him. ‘Bummer.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Nemo, as brightly as he could. ‘Really it is.’ But this was a bald lie.

  ‘Right,’ said Smurpheus. ‘Let’s sort out this flying submarine. After that: food. And after that, we need to discuss the best way to utilise our new secret weapon, the No One.’

  ‘Righto,’ said Nemo weakly.

  Part 2

  Chapter 1

  When SQUIDS Attack

  The Jeroboam rattled along the old District Line, hurtling through immaculate but empty stations. Nemo sat at one of the windows, looking out. The soot-blackened walls of the tunnels, wreathed with peculiar serpentine cables and cords, fluttered past him. For one breathtaking minute the train passed from tunnel into the outer world, and Nemo could see the sunset-coloured sky above him. He looked more closely. The huge red basketball-like setting sun was reflected in the shining mosaic of tower block windows: not a single one was broken; not a single missing piece in that wine-dark jigsaw of light. What, he wondered, are the odds on that? It was hundreds of years in the future – he didn’t even know how far this future was – and yet these buildings had all survived without so much as a scratch.

  The red light thrown off by the enormous setting sun didn’t hurt the eyes as midday sunlight would have done. Nemo stared at it for long seconds. Then the Jeroboam whished into a tunnel again and the windows went dark.

  {[:]-)=

  But Nemo was a broken man. The artificial brightness and energy of Smurpheus, Thinity and Tonkatoi only made him feel his own misery more intensely. Every time he was in close proximity to Thinity he blushed red as bleeding. It was a sort of agony. It was bad enough to have been rejected; had Nemo been able to crawl away to some pitiable hole and lie in melancholy solitude, with the salt, unplumbed and estranging sea between himself and the woman he loved so hopelessly, and nothing but a bottle of cheap brandy for company – then matters would have been bad enough. But it was much worse to have to encounter Thinity every day; to work through the usual social niceties, to say hello and goodbye, to smile when everybody smiled, and to dissemble the misery inside himself.

  Thinity, meaning to be kind, made matters worse. ‘You OK?’ she said, the day after shredding his heart and jumping up and down on the remnants.

  ‘Fine,’ he said, beaming. ‘Great! Excellent! Never better – really. Never better.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she said.

  The day after that, coming through and finding Nemo staring moodily out of the window at yet another sunset splendour of orange and gold, she had taken a seat beside him and tried to console him.

  ‘Hey, I’m sorry,’ she had said, ‘if I hurt your feelings.’

  Nemo tried to reply to this with a dignified, ‘That’s quite all right, I understand my love for you is hopeless and void, that you feeling anything at all for me is an utter impossibility, please leave me alone in my philosophical isolation to contemplate the barrenness of the cosmos.’ In the event he didn’t quite manage to say this. Instead he said: ‘It’s aw-aw,’ and stopped. Then he tried again, ‘It’s aw-aw.’ Then he sniffed noisily, pressed his eyeballs with the heel of his hand, one after the other, to try and squeeze away tears. Then he looked more intently at the view from the window as the submatrain careered into another tunnel. A voice was chanting in his head: Pathetic! It was saying. Pathetic!

  ‘I know it’s hard,’ she said, with a pained expression that might have been trying to convey her empathy with Nemo’s sufferings. Nemo wished she wouldn’t try to convey her empathy with his sufferings. His dearest wish – or his second dearest wish (since his first involved Thinity changing her mind about him and pulling off her sweater) – was for her to go away and leave him alone. But he couldn’t say this; and he couldn’t find solitude in the narrow compartments of the Jeroboam.

  He dreamt about her every night.

  <:o=)>

  ‘Would it be possible,’ Nemo suggested the following morning, ‘to – you know. Upgrade my fighting ability.’

  ‘Nemo, I won’t lie to you,’ Smurpheus said severely. ‘Judas was our expert in uploading skills.’

  ‘Ah. You mean, I’m stuck at the level of dancing, rather than fighting?’

  ‘Your dancing was quite effective, I thought,’ said Thinity.

  It was still ridiculously painful to Nemo even to talk straightforwardly to Thinity. It was crazy. It was absurd. He needed to be stronger. He girded his metaphoric loins, smiled back and said, ‘Right, right,’ breezily. ‘Yes, I guess so, ahhhh.’ This last word was the start of a sob, which drew out for almost a second before Nemo clamped down on it. He smiled bravely with glittering eyes.

  The others looked at him queerly for a moment.

  ‘I’ll ’ave a go, owi?’ said Tonkatoi. ‘But it’s a tricky process, uploading fighting skills.’

  ‘Don’t mean to be a bother,’ said Nemo in a small voice.

  ‘’Sowi,’ said Tonkatoi. ‘Only you got to understand, Judas was expert – expert – at packing a complex zip-complete set of coordination programs directly into the hindbrain. I’ll have to do it piece by piece, build it up over time.’

  ‘I see,’ said Nemo. ‘I suppose it’ll be better than nothing, though, eh?’

  ‘If you like. Come on through.’

  ..oo00800oo..

  Nemo unbuttoned the flap at the back of his pants, took his place in the chair and resigned himself to yet another insertion. Tonkatoi sat in the control seat, fussing over the machinery. ‘’Sall Judas’s stuff, y’know?’ he said. ‘I’m not too familiar with it. But
I’ll start with some basic fighting skills.’ He pulled down what looked like an eight-track cartridge marked ‘Playground: Primary’ and fed it into a Cherie-Blair-mouth-style slot.

  Nemo’s eye’s widened once again as the probe went in, and for long seconds he felt the sputtering, fax-like sensation of data buzzing up his spine. He squeezed his eyes shut as the sensations accumulated unpleasantly, like nausea building towards the purgative vomit, and then, suddenly, he felt the probe being withdrawn, and he opened his eyes.

  The upload machine was on fire. Tonkatoi was hopping from foot to foot and trying to beat out the fire with the sleeve of his jumper. This meant that the sleeve of his jumper also started burning. ‘Oi!’ he was calling. ‘No!’

  A fire alarm was sounding in the compartment. It acted as fire alarms have always done: to add aural panic to the physical panic of proximity to a fire, and thereby make it harder to concentrate on the job of putting the fire out.

  Smurpheus and Thinity came hurrying through. The flames were leaping from Judas’s console and blackening the ceiling. It occurred to Nemo (he was not sure why he had this thought at this particular time, but nevertheless) that the flames were the exact opposites of icicles. Icicles hang down, where these flames leapt up; icicles are cold, where these flames were evidently very hot; and icicles are frozen and immobile, where these indulged in fantastically wriggly motion. He could not imagine a more perfect mirror image of icicles, try as he might. Tonkatoi was copying the flames, insofar as he was dancing energetically with an upward-hanging fringe of fire on his sleeve. ‘Oi!’ he said. ‘No! Oh!’

  Thinity, hefting a fire extinguisher, pointed it at Tonkatoi. She depressed the button and, in an eyeblink, provided herself with a teetering white Father-Christmas-style beard. Accordingly, she cried out in her own alarm and surprise, and dropped the extinguisher. Smurpheus picked it up, swivelled it through a half turn, and pressed the button again. A plume of foam leapt through the air and affixed itself to Tonkatoi’s arm. Smurpheus re-aimed and extinguished the fiery equipment.