by Ben Elton
It was incredible, wonderful. This girl, whom he had scarcely even noticed at the office (which surely, he recognized now, was a part of her genius), had posted nothing but lies about herself. Or at least, and much more importantly, she had failed to reveal one single solitary truth. As with her blog, she had simply uploaded a few stolen moments of other people's self-obsession, making a passing effort to avoid obvious physical differences, and left it at that.
It was clear to Trafford that this extraordinary girl had come to the same conclusion as Cassius had, that a bold front was the best disguise. She had guessed that nobody was interested in her. They were all too interested in themselves; self-obsession was, after all, high piety. If anybody – her Confessor, for instance – did happen to Goog' her or Tube her up, a glance would be enough to see that she was doing what society expected of her, even if the footage was of rather poor quality.
As Trafford closed Sandra Dee's pages (or, more accurately, the pages full of nobodies behind whom Sandra Dee hid) he was certain of one thing: Sandra Dee was by an immeasurable distance the most exciting woman he had ever encountered. He would say nothing, of course; certainly nothing to her. She had made a secret of her life and he had no right to intrude on it. Besides which, he didn't want to, because that would spoil it.
He would keep her secret a secret.
It would be his secret.
Trafford typed 'birthing' on to his computer and Goog'ed it. Within a second there were millions and millions of hits. He added 'girl' and halved the number. Next he chose the ten thousandth Goog' page and began to punch up the hits. Within three tries he had found what he wanted, the agonized, screwed-up face of a woman of similar colouring to Chantorria giving birth to a girl.
Trafford downloaded the tape and then copied it on to his own Face Space page. He titled the document 'Hello Caitlin Happymeal and welcome to the world! Trafford and Chantorria Sewell's birthing video.'
14
He told Chantorria what he had done when she came home from the gym. Wanting to get it out in the open, he risked muting their community podcast long before dusk had fallen when it would have been socially acceptable to do so.
He had expected her to be horrified and she was.
'You put up somebody else's birthing diary on to our vid blog? A complete stranger's! Why?'
'Because I wanted to keep ours private.'
'You can't keep things private, Trafford! You'll get us into the most terrible trouble. They might even charge us with abuse and take Caitlin away.'
'Abuse?'
'Caitlin has as much right to be bigged up as anybody else. To be loved and admired. You're denying her that right.'
'Nobody would have watched it anyway.'
'Why do you have to be so weird?' Chantorria wailed. 'You have to upload the real vid right now. Just do it.'
'I don't think that would be a good idea,' Trafford replied. 'Putting up a hoax tape is one thing but then swapping it around is quite another. Like returning to the scene of the crime. That's always what gives people away in the end.'
'So everybody is going to be staring at our baby and it won't be our baby at all! Or my cooch for that matter. I don't want people looking at some stranger's cooch and thinking it's mine. It's not natural.'
'I've told you, nobody's going to look at it. Don't you see? That's the point. We could put up any footage of any baby and it wouldn't matter because no one will look at it anyway. Confessor Bailey will check that it's been posted for the sake of orthodoxy but after that it'll never get a hit again. Who is interested in us? Nobody. Who could possibly want to see Caitlin being born apart from you and me? Nobody. We are nobodies. Isn't that good? Doesn't that make you feel just a little bit more free?More liberated?'
Chantorria clearly took no comfort from Trafford's bleak analysis of their social position. 'Nobodies?' she said, suddenly more sad than angry.
'Well, aren't we?'
'No! Nobody is a nobody. We're all special. Everybody is special.'
'Well, if everybody is special then special must be pretty ordinary.'
'And that's good! Ordinary people are special.'
'Which means being special is completely ordinary.'
'I don't know what you're talking about! I just know you've done a really stupid, pointless thing and you don't play stupid games with Confessor Bailey. Privacy is a perversion, Trafford, you know that and you know what the Inquisition does to perverts.'
'No one will—'
'What about Barbieheart!'
'Barbieheart does not want to share your joy, Chantorria. She is only interested in sharing people's pain. She might glance at it but I doubt it. Please, Chantorria, think about it. Half the people in our tenement are uploading their entire lives on to the web, fights, fucks, births, funerals. How can anybody watch any of it?'
'My mother will watch ours.'
'You sent her a file, she's seen it. Why would she Tube it?'
'She might.'
'She won't.'
'Her friends might.'
'Chantorria, nobody is interested in anybody but themselves. Besides which, who cares if your mother's friends look at a fake video?'
'I care!'
'Well, I don't.'
'It isn't your vagina!'
'Oh please.'
'Why do you have to be so weird?'
'Stop calling me weird. That's all you ever call me these days.'
'Well, you are weird.'
Trafford shrugged and turned away.
They did not have time to argue any more as they were going to a concert that evening. Their tickets had been texted to them the previous day, and although they were both horribly tired there was no option but to put on their ribbons and wristbands and make a banner. Failure to attend a Faith Festival mega gig when you were lucky enough to have drawn an e-ticket was unthinkable; it would without doubt result in denunciation from the pulpit at the next Community Confession.
The concert, as with numerous previous concerts, was to be called Big Love Live and it was a major event, awesome in its scope, its ambition and its line-up of A-list celebrities. This concert wasn't just for London either: it was to be global in its outreach and would mark a new beginning in the way people thought about themselves, about poverty, about the environment and about their relationship with God and with their fellow men. After this concert (plus its accompanying blanket media coverage) nothing would ever be the same again.
The evening crackled with excited anticipation. It was most inspiring to live in a world where 'people power' could mean so much, where a single concert could change the world irrevocably for the better, where things could be improved just because the people wanted them to improve. Simply by massing, cheering, listening to music and eating enormous amounts of takeaway food everyone knew they could make a real difference.
News was already filtering through that this concert was to be even bigger and even more globally life-changing than the one held the previous week. This was astonishing, stunning news – particularly in the light of the fact that the previous week's concert had, up until this point, been considered the biggest and most epoch-making Faith Festival of all time, having spectacularly surpassed the one before.
Crammed in among the mass of sweating humanity, Trafford wondered in his secret self whether the following week's Faith Festival might be even bigger and more significant than the one which he and Chantorria were attending, but of course he said nothing. The thought was just another little secret he would keep to himself and enjoy in private. Outwardly he joined his voice to those of the quarter million other people who poured forth from the boats in which they had crossed Lake London and began making their way up Wembley Hill.
The message which flashed from every street screen and every communitainer could not have been clearer.
You can make a difference!
If you want it, it will happen.
After endless shuffling and pushing, sweating and gasping in the dank, fetid, malari
a-buzzing air, Trafford and Chantorria finally gained access to the stadium. The concert had begun already, of course; everything had always begun already. Trafford had scarcely ever in his life witnessed the beginning of any entertainment for which he had queued. Few people ever did. Only those whose faith was so fervent that it led them to push and shove to the front ever saw the start of anything, and as these people tended to be the largest and most aggressive it was often not possible to see anything beyond their massive frames even when you did find a position.
'We can do it!' a well-known pop star was shouting from the stage. 'It will happen because we want it to happen! It's up to us!'
The cheer was deafening.
'Here today,' the pop star said, 'right now at this time and place. We say NO to hunger. We say NO to poverty. We say to our leaders that it is time they listened to the people.'
'Yes! Yes! Yes!' the people replied, punching the air in massed unison, hamburgers held aloft, hot dogs and doughnuts crushed into every fist. 'Oi Oi Oi!' they cried, stamping the ground with feet shod in training shoes that had been made far, far from Wembley and, coincidentally, by people who lived in the very poverty which the crowd were calling upon their leaders to eradicate.
Between each exhortation that the world should be improved there was music. The biggest bands played the biggest hits and the people bobbed up and down. This was the part of the proceedings that Trafford dreaded most, the part when he was required briefly to carry Chantorria on his shoulders. It was an important element of the ritual of Faith Festivals that at some point the girls sat on the boys' shoulders, their arms spread, their banners held high and their breasts proudly displayed. Of course most of the women were far too large and the men far too unfit for this to be possible, so the Temple organizers provided aluminium frames like stepladders upon which the women would sit and inside which the men would stand. Inevitably there were never enough and of course Trafford had not been able to grab one and so, like many others, he was forced to do his best unaided. Chantorria was not particularly heavy but then Trafford was not particularly strong and he struggled to hold her aloft even for the entirety of one song, which was the minimum that strict piety allowed.
Between each song there were more speeches. Chat show hosts and reality stars of whom nobody had ever heard ran on to the stage and exhorted the crowd.
'Each individual can make a difference! Poverty, war, crime, drugs and intolerance can change! They will change if we want them to! Every one of us is important! Every journey starts with a single step.'
There were films showing people dying in the flood plains of the Other World, and heartbreaking mini-features in which major reality stars spoke of the drug hell they had experienced prior to learning how to love themselves.
Then came a surprise. It was a wonderful surprise, a surprise that sent the crowd into even greater ecstasies of frenzied anticipation than they had so far experienced. Tonight, if the people so ordained it, there was to be made a new Wembley Law.
A hush fell as the stage was cleared of the anonymous celebrities who had dominated it so far and filled instead with elders of the Temple. Each community that had been ticketed for the concert was now represented on stage by their Confessor, and Trafford recognized the big red face of Father Bailey as it appeared among all the other big red faces on the massive TV screens which framed the stage.
Slowly more senior figures of the Temple began to emerge – evangelists, healers, preachers and latter-day born-again sinners – and finally, to an ecstatic welcome from the crowd amid fanfares and fireworks, a member of the High Council appeared, Bishop Confessor Solomon Kentucky, High Prophet of the London diocese.
The law which Solomon Kentucky had come forth to proclaim (should the people so ordain it) was one that had been a long time coming; a law which was needed now more than ever before; a law from which the people could draw the strength they needed in order to go forth and do the work of the Lord and the Love on Earth; a law which would make them worthy of the sacrifices that Baby Jesus and Diana had made for them; a law which had long since been on the spiritual statutes of the beacon land across the Atlantic sea and which now finally was to be proclaimed here, in Great England, in Great Scotland, in Great Wales and across the water in the Emerald Country, that it might give strength and succour to the faithful.
Henceforth, from this time and place and across the whole land, Solomon Kentucky wished it to be known (should the people so ordain it) that every single person would by law and by statute be famous.
'That's right!' Solomon Kentucky bellowed as the phlegm from his throat danced in the glare of the massive spotlights. 'As of today, should you wish it, every single one of you is famous! By law! By statute! By holy writ and by divine right you are famous! Full stop, no argument. No back-pedalling. No false witness and no Devil-born trickery. Famous. Short and sweet. Famous. Simple and to the point. Famous. Nothing more and nothing less. Do you want it?'
The response was so thunderous it hurt Trafford's ears.
'I said DO YOU WANT TO BE FAMOUS?' the Bishop Confessor roared back at them.
'Yes! Yes! Yes!' the answer came in solid walls of sound.
'It's a simple straightforward question, people! I want a simple straightforward answer. No half-truths. No wishy-washy demi-faith. Only the Devil procrastinates. Only Satan drags his feet. People of the Lord BELIEVE! Do you believe? Do you believe that you have enough love, enough beauty, enough FAITH to be famous?'
Once more two hundred and fifty thousand voices (including Trafford's) screamed the affirmative.
'Then you ARE famous!' the Bishop Confessor replied. 'It's the law and you can't argue with the law. You'd be a fool to try. Each one of you is famous. Every person of faith in this city, in this country, is famous! Does it feel good?'
It did feel good and the crowd let the Bishop Confessor know it.
'Let me hear you say Yeah!' Kentucky shouted.
'Yeah!' the crowd shouted back.
'A'let me hear you say Yeah yeah!' Kentucky demanded.
'Yeah yeah!' roared the people.
'A'let me hear you say Yeah yeah yeah!' Kentucky insisted.
'Yeah yeah yeah!' came the emphatic response.
'I'll bet it does,' Solomon Kentucky replied. 'I'll bet it feels good. Let me hear you say Love!'
'Love!' they screamed.
'Let me hear you say Everlasting Love!'
'Everlasting Love!' came the reply.
'Ev Love!'
'Ev Love!'
'Ev ev ev Love!'
'Ev ev ev Love!'
'All right!' said Solomon Kentucky by way of conclusion.
And then the great book of statutes was brought forward and this latest one was duly inscribed therein.
Everyone is famous. By law.
After this stunning and thrilling interlude the concert reached its emotionally draining conclusion. The only possible end to a vast gathering such as this one was a solemn tribute to the departed children, a mass keening for the born-again babies, those infants who had died here on Earth but who were most certainly living again in Heaven.
There was weeping, there was singing, people tore at what few clothes they wore until they were entirely naked. They pulled at their hair, beat their chests and fell upon the ground. They hugged each other, kissed each other, rolled about together in great sweaty huddles; many made love and some began speaking in tongues.
They cried that they would make a difference. They committed their lives to love, to Jesus, to the kiddies and to themselves, that they might be worthy of the solemn responsibilities that fate had placed upon them.
The concert ended as it did each week, with the stars gathering on stage together with the political and spiritual leaders to sing 'We Are The World'. As they did this, the screens filled with the faces of dead babies and tens of thousands of people writhed on the ground, on the carpet of discarded food wrappings.
Trafford and Chantorria did not join the orgy. They hung back wi
th those who, while voluble in their emotional support, could not quite summon enough ecstasy to have sex with strangers to prove their faith.
Finally, as the last bars of music faded and the last voice from the stage commanded the crowd to 'go home and make a difference', Trafford heard another voice calling out nearby.
'Repent your sins!' the voice shouted. 'You who worship pleasure in the name of God, repent your sins.'
People turned their faces towards a slight figure in a loincloth. The man had brought a box to stand on and from it he was haranguing those around him.
'Jesus cleansed the Temple!' the figure said, waving in his hand a plain-covered book that looked like no self-help manual Trafford had ever seen. 'He turned out the greedy, the gluttonous, the fornicators and those who sought only bodily pleasure! He believed in modesty and fidelity . . .'
It was a Chris-lam, a man who purported to love Baby Jesus but who did so in the shameful, shame-ridden, life-denying manner adopted by those who worshipped the anti-God of Islam. Trafford had heard of such people but he marvelled that any had the courage to show themselves publicly, particularly among a crowd whose emotions were running at fever pitch.
'Oi!' screamed a voice at Trafford's ear. 'You fucking paedo! I find your point threatening! You are making me feel uncomfortable!'