by Adam Roberts
‘I know one thing,’ said Palpating, softly. ‘I know an ordinary person has no chance of deciphering this puzzle, this rebus. But I find myself wondering – could a person at the very top of things . . .’
‘A powerful person,’ agreed Tyrannical.
‘The most powerful person in this virtual cosmos – a president, say, or emperor – I wonder whether such a person might not be better placed to uncover this great truth?’
‘I see,’ said Wobbli, turning to face Tyrannical. ‘Is that why you went over to the Dark Side of the Farce? Is that why you have plotted to accumulate power at any cost?’
‘Is it?’ said Tyrannical, offhand. ‘Perhaps it is. It’s hard to be precise. I believe my initial conversion to the Dark Side of the Farce was predicated upon my realisation that I was trapped inside this virtual world. It seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, that the least I could do was oppose this sham. To fight it, to attempt to wreck it, to destroy. What else was I to do? To collaborate with it? To go along with it, meekly, whilst the mysterious programmer pushed us around like clockwork toys? No! I resist.’
‘Except,’ Pkme pointed out, ‘that your attempts to wreck the virtual reality in fact rebound upon the people trapped within that virtual reality. You don’t injure the fabric of this imaginary cosmos; you only injure people.’
‘That,’ said Tyrannical, ‘is indeed a problem. Well, I have surrendered. My particular rebellion is at an end. Perhaps all rebellions are doomed from the beginning; every rebellion must end.’
‘If what you say is true,’ said Wobbli, who was still struggling with the concept, ‘then we must alert the Galactic population.’
‘Must we? I suppose so. I think you’ll find that they won’t care. As long as they can get on with what is important – living, loving, party-going – they are happy. Why would it matter to them whether the backdrop to their lives is a real reality or a simulated reality?’
At this point there came a cry from the cave-mouth: ‘ Tyrannical!’
It was Master Yodella.
‘Found you I have! Your rebellion end I will.’ ‘Wait,’ called Wobbli. ‘Master Yodella, it’s alright, he has surrendered to . . .’
But Yodella, crying yodella-i-heeeee, was oblivious, as if he could not hear Wobbli’s words. Terrier-like, the tiny green figure leapt through the air. His light-sword flared with light, briefly; with one stroke Yodella broke it against the rock floor of the cave; and, following through with a fluid movement, the Jobbi Master jumped up and severed Tyrannical’s head from his neck with the jagged end.
The head bumped onto the floor rather like a football, albeit an irregularly-shaped football with a bony core and filled with fluid.
‘Master!’ cried Wobbli. ‘He had already surrendered!’
‘He had?’ said Yodella. ‘Had he? Dear, oh. Mind, never.’ He strolled out of the cave, whistling Yankee doodle dandy with the notes backwards.
Chapter Three
On Ya!Boo!
Councillor Palpating and Pkme Amidships were strolling by the turquoise lakeside on Ya!Boo! In the distance, Jane Seespotrun was trying to skim pebbles over the calm waters. ‘It’s so hard to accept,’ Amidships was saying, ‘that all this, which seems so real – that it’s nothing but an elaborate computer simulation of reality?’
‘I’m afraid it’s true, my dear,’ said Palpating.
‘But I feel devalued . . . as if my life doesn’t really count.’
‘You shouldn’t feel that way, my dear girl. Tyrannical, before his unfortunate demise, did make one very important point. It’s our consciousnesses that matter, not the environment in which we find ourselves. There’s validity in our thoughts, in our hopes, dreams, loves and passions. Our minds are the same.’
‘I suppose so,’ she replied. ‘I suppose we must go on living, as before. Only the question nags at my mind. Why?’
‘Why, yes,’ agreed Palpating. ‘Why is a very good question.’ They had come to a marble bench. ‘Shall we sit?’
‘Yes.’
For a while the two of them simply sat, breathing in the air which, although it wasn’t real, still tasted cool and fragrant in their mouths; admiring the view which, though artificially constructed, was still beautiful. The plop-plop-plop of Jane’s pebble skimming over the water was just audible.
‘You’re unattached, I think?’ asked Palpating shortly, in his quiet voice. ‘No partners? Boyfriends, girlfriends, significant others?’
‘Not really any of your business, I’d say,’ replied Amidships, smiling pleasantly.
‘No, quite, quite,’ conceded the Councillor. He looked, theatrically, away into the middle distance. ‘It’s just that I happen to know young Seespotrun has – what shall we say? Developed a tender passion for you.’
Despite herself, Amidships blushed a little. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘He told me he’d got a bit of a crush on me. It’s kind of awkward.’
‘You do not reciprocate the sentiments?’
‘Jane’s good-looking, and kind of fun to be around,’ said Amidships. ‘And his Farcical powers are impressive. And entertaining. But – love him? He’s just too young. Who knows, maybe in five years. Or ten.’
‘Well,’ said Palpating smoothly. ‘I may have a proposition to put to you. In the way of a business proposition. I want you to think carefully about it before you reply. And before I say anything else, I want to make it plain: I intend to become the most powerful individual in the Galaxy before very long. And I intend to make young Seespotrun my deputy.’
Amidships held her breath. A chill seemed to have settled over the scene. ‘That,’ she said, eventually, ‘is quite an announcement to make.’
Palpating waved his hand dismissively, and adjusted his bowler hat. ‘You know I’m not merely boasting; I’m speaking the plain truth. It’s an inevitability. The Council is in the palm of my hand already.’
‘You’d need a big hand for that!’ Amidships joked, trying to lighten the mood.
‘Not a big hand,’ said Palpating, darkly. ‘Just a big palm.’
Amidships tried briefly to work out what this meant, but couldn’t fathom it.
‘Allow me, my dear,’ said Palpating, ‘merely to tell you a few home truths. As it stands, I shall soon be the most powerful person in the cosmos, and Jane Seespotrun the second most powerful. Were a young woman to marry my second-in-command, she would be in a position of enormous influence. She would be close to the centre of power. She might,’ and here Palpating’s soft voice became even softer, ‘be in a position to find out more about this SF-based universe in which we are trapped . . . maybe even find a way out . . .’
For a long moment, and despite her better instincts, Amidships’s eyes grew wide with the possibilities.
‘I can see you are interested, my dear,’ said Palpating, getting to his feet. ‘I can see it in your eyes. Just think it over, that’s all I ask. And remember this: although you do not, perhaps, find young Jane very attractive right now, they do say that power can be a very effective aphrodisiac. And he will become very powerful in due course.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Amidships. ‘What do you get out of this?’
‘What do I get? I get to keep my powerful young deputy happy. I get to say to him “you want Amidships? I’ll get you Amidships”, and thereby impress him with my power to command and bind him to me with bonds of gratitude. That’s what I get. Goodbye my dear. Oh – and one more thing.’
Amidships’s head was reeling. ‘What?’
‘That list of SF classics, from which this enormous, complex simulation had been derived – you remember it? Dune, Foundation, Tron, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy . . .’
‘I remember,’ said Amidships.
‘There was one SF text that Tyrannical didn’t mention, but which is in fact the most important of all. Most important because it underlies everything else.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Carcinoma Angels,’ said Palpating, smiling as if
at some secret joke.
‘I’m afraid I haven’t read it,’ said Amidships.
‘You haven’t? That’s a pity. Because it’s really most illuminating, for circumstances such as ours. Goodbye my dear.’
Episode Three:
REVENGE OF THE RETURN OF THE SON OF PSMYTH RIDES AGAIN: THE NEXT GENERATION – THE EARLY YEARS
LORD TYRANNICAL WAS DEAD AND THE FANS-OF-TRON HAD BEEN CONTAINED. AND YET THE DARK SIDE OF THE FARCE – THAT HIDEOUS PERVERSION OF JOBBI PRINCIPLES KNOWN ONLY AS ‘THE PSMYTH’, STILL SPREAD, TENTACLE-LIKE, THROUGH THE GALAXY. ON A THOUSAND WORLDS, DARK DEEDS WERE DOING AND INDEED DONE. NOBODY KNEW WHERE THE CENTRE OF THIS DARK POWER MIGHT BE. IT WAS A MYSTERY. I MEAN, OBVIOUSLY, YOU KNOW WHO THE SECRET LORD OF THE PSMYTH IS, IT’S PALPATING OBVIOUSLY; BUT YOU’VE GOT THE BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT, HAVEN’T YOU. YES, YES, JANE SEESPOTRUN TURNS INTO DARK FATHER; AND YES COUNCILLOR PALPATING TURNS INTO THE IMPERIAL EMPEROR AND THE OPEN EMBODIMENT OF EVIL, AND SO ON. WHAT I’M SAYING IS THAT PEOPLE AT THE TIME COULDN’T SEE IT. THEN AGAIN, THERE WAS THE STARTLING REVELATION, IN THE LAST EPISODE, THAT THE WHOLE GALAXY WAS NOT SO MUCH REAL, MORE A MATRIX-STYLE VIRTUAL REALITY, CONCOCTED BY WHO-KNOWS-WHOM OUT OF QUOTATIONS FROM TWENTIETH-CENTURY SCIENCE FICTION, FOR WHO-KNOWS-WHAT PURPOSE. THAT WAS UNEXPECTED, THOUGH, WASN’T IT? GOOD GRIEF. DO YOU THINK THAT PARTICULAR REVELATION’LL HAVE SOME CONSEQUENCES FOR THE NEXT EPISODE? WHAT DO YOU RECKON?
‘You’ve got kind of fat,’ said Jane Seespotrun, as he walked arm-in-arm with his wife, the beautiful, full-figured mature woman Pkme Amidships. They strolled along a marble palisade beside a turquoise lake, past the red and yellow fruiting blooms of the rhinodendron bushes, on the garden planet of Ya! Boo!
‘I beg your pardon?’ returned Pkme.
‘Kind of,’ said Janey, looking over the water, ‘fat.’
‘Janey,’ she replied. ‘I think it’s time to be open with you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m pregnant, Janey.’
‘Gosh!’
‘Well yes. In fact, I’ve been pregnant for eight and a half months now.’
‘Is that good?’
‘Um . . . I think so.’
‘Right. Will you get better?’
‘Better? Janey, I don’t think you understand . . . pregnancy is a state in which a child develops in a female’s uterus.’
‘Crikey! Can I go play with the paravideo game console now? Please?’
‘Janey, in a minute. This is important. You do know what happens when pregnancy comes to an end?’
‘Only I’ve got this new game, Brian Lara Croft IV – it’s a combination cricket-simulator and zombie-shoot set inside an ancient Mayan pyramid. It’s just wizard.’
‘Look, for just one minute I want you to be grownup about this. When this child is born, you and I are going to have to look after it: to raise it. It’s a big responsibility . . .’
‘Alright, alright,’ said Jane Seespotrun, twisting away from his wife’s arm, ‘you don’t need to keep going on about it. I’ll help you raise the stupid child. Can I go and play the paravideo now?’
‘Alright. Give me a kiss first . . .’
But Jane had run lopingly away. Princess Amidships stood looking after him, a mixture of affection and infuriation on her face. From behind one of the rhinodendron bushes a familiar figure stepped: Wobbli Bony K’nobbli. He stepped beside the Princess. ‘Has he gone?’
‘Off to kill zombies in a computer-constructed virtual reality,’ said Pkme, sighing. ‘I sometimes wish that he’d grow up just a little.’
‘Well,’ said Wobbli, slipping his arm around Pkme’s waist. ‘If he’s going to be submerged in his Vid-R, that at least gives us a little time together . . .’
Later, in a white marble chamber with a broad casement looking over a broad sunlit fields of feather-grass, Pkme and Wobbli were lying on a large bed together. Curtains of white samite billowed like jelly-fish at the open window. From a hidden speaker there came the soothing sound of lute music.
‘I hate,’ said Wobbli, ‘that you’re married to him. I hate that you can’t marry me.’
‘I know,’ said Pkme. ‘You don’t need to be jealous, you know. He’s sweet, in his way; but he is only a kid. He’s not a mature man, like you. But let’s look at the two sides. On the one hand, there’s Jane – he’s Palpating’s favourite disciple, and when Palpating seizes control of the Senate (apparently that’s set for next Thursday) he will become second-in-command. If I am his wife, and you his friend, then we will have tremendous opportunities for influence. And influence, at that level, means power. On the other hand, there’s you – and much as I love you, Wobbli, you’re a junior Jobbi, concerned largely with arcane and piffling matters. You’re mistrusted by many on the Council because your accent keeps wobbling from Cheltenham to Edinburgh-Morningside. And I’m just another civil servant from a rural backwater world. Without this leg-up we’d never be in the position we are now in. If you and I were married we’d be condemned to a life of poverty and exclusion from the corridors of power. It’s better this way.’
‘He has got a temper on him,’ said Wobbli. ‘Your husband. Only a kid he may be, but he’s taller than me, more muscled and considerably less arthritic . . . if he finds out about us two . . .’
‘He won’t.’
‘But if he does?’
‘He won’t,’ repeated Pkme, firmly. ‘We will just have to make sure he never does. Do you understand?’
‘Well I’m certainly not going to tell him.’
‘Or anybody.’
‘No – or anybody.’
‘Promise?’
Wobbli sighed. ‘Pkme, a Jobbi’s promise is a powerful thing; an utterly binding thing. If I promise, then I can never break that promise.’ Amidships looked sternly at him. ‘And,’ he added, ‘I promise.’
‘Good,’ she said, moving her pregnant but still highly desirable body closer to his.
Later, when they were lying in one another’s arms restfully for the second time that afternoon, Pkme said, ‘it’s strange.’
‘What is?’
‘All this,’ she gestured with her eyes at the window.
‘What – the curtains?’
‘I mean, everything in the cosmos. To think it’s all nothing but a metaphor – an elaborate virtual reality. It seems so real.’
‘It is real. It’s real to us, and we’re what matters. Besides, you’re forgetting: the consciousnesses within this Virt-Re are actual consciousnesses. We’re real – our thoughts, our dreams, our loves and desires. That’s all real. As a great philosopher once said: cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I can add up. And I think that you and I add up to something special, regardless of whatever environment we find ourselves in. You need to hold on to what’s important.’
‘I suppose so,’ replied Pkme, taking hold of something important. ‘But that’s why we must get to the top – or at least close to the top – of the structures of power. We need to be in a position to find out everything we can about this science-fiction virtual reality. We need to find if we can get out . . .’
‘From where I am right now,’ cooed Wobbli, ‘staying in looks pretty good.’
Days passed. One day a Council shuttle dropped through the perfect blue sky, bearing the Councillor. He made his way into the palace, and up the marble stairs.
‘Good afternoon, young Jobbi,’ said Councillor Palpating, stepping through the doorway into Jane Seespotrun’s rumpus room.
‘Golly! Hello!’ said Jane, leaping up from the floor (on which he had been lying stomach-down, playing The Sims: Recursive). ‘How wonderful to see you!’
‘You know, young Jane, I regard myself as your patron.’
‘I’ll always be phenomenally grateful to you for everything you’ve done for me, sir,’ gushed Jane. ‘If it weren’t for you, I don’t suppose I would ever have been able to woo my beloved, or to have accumulated so much power and respect.’
‘We help each other, my friend. We hel
p each other. I draw on your strength in the Farce. You make an excellent deputy. Together we’re a team.’
‘It’s awfully nice of you to say so,’ said Jane, beaming.
‘I do say so. I just saw Amidships, walking along the marble promenade.’
‘Isn’t she wonderful!’ said Jane. ‘I’m so lucky to have her – I know I owe it all to you sir.’
‘And I hear you’re soon to be a father?’
‘That’s right. The scans say the child is a boy. I’ve already decided on a name – Luke. What do you think?’
‘I think it’s a wonderful name. Actually I wanted to have a chat about something else. You know that this Thursday . . .’
Jane’s grin grew even wider. He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, and tapped the side of his nose with one long finger. ‘Nuff said, sir,’ he said. ‘I know. I’ll be there, sir. At your side.’
‘Yes,’ said the Councillor. ‘Well, without the amateur dramatics, we both know that on that day I shall use Council protocols to have myself declared Emperor for Life, and have my opponents imprisoned. And you shall be my deputy. Yes? Second in command of the whole Galaxy?’
‘Yes sir!’ beamed Jane. ‘I’m looking forward to it most awfully.’
‘Well – there’s one final piece of the political puzzle I have yet to explain to you. Take a seat, dear boy, and I’ll tell you all about it.’
Jane sat down. Palpating similarly lowered himself into a chair.
‘Now,’ the Councillor said. ‘You’ve heard, I’m sure, of the Dark Side of the Farce? The Lords of the Psmyth?’
‘Yes sir,’ said Jane, his brow creasing in disapproval. ‘Awful coves.’
‘That is the common prejudice,’ agreed Palpating. ‘So how would you feel if I told you that I, in fact, were one of their number? That, in fact, I was the chief architect of Psmyth power?’
‘I’d be pretty jolly ghastly-flabbered, to be honest, sir,’ said Jane, looking simultaneously puzzled and astonished – a combination of emotions that few faces can pull off, but which Jane Seespotrun managed with ingenuous ease.