by Joe Stretch
She locates an empty jetty and walks to the end. Below her, little red boats bob in the repeating motions of the blue sea. In the distance, the sun is setting, changing to beautiful colours, completing its graphic cycle. It’s strange, thinks Life, even though this sun is fake, it still makes me sombre and keen to reflect. Somehow I still feel its warmth. Life’s mind turns to Joe. The boy she left behind.
He wasn’t trying to nest in my arse, she thinks. I shouldn’t say that to people. It was affection. It was only affection and I just crushed it. But we got too close. We were so close we were touching and the air around us was a cocktail of Joe’s real smell and my real smell, and I watched him breathe that odour with closed eyes and pure pleasure. It put me off him. I sniffed it and I winced. I wanted more. I always thought there was a world and a way of life that was . . . I don’t know – light without light bulbs, smiles without brains, love without odour and sex without stains. But really, if that’s what you want, you can only ever live virtually. Like this.
A shadow floats on the water. Life points her graphic eyes at the sky and sees a large bird flying above her in the blue and the yellow. The bird is too big to be a native program of Wow-Bang. It is a human. A human who has chosen to appear here as a bird. Life realises that it is, in fact, a puffin. The national bird of her homeland, the Faroe Islands. She knows that it is Joe. I know it’s you, she thinks, following the flight of the puffin. He does not fly too close to her. He keeps a respectful distance, just flitting back and forth with his black wings outstretched. She considers hovering up next to him. Every citizen of Wow-Bang can fly, not just those who choose to look like birds. But she doesn’t join Joe in the sky. She points her head at the ground and teleports away.
Life teleports to the pier on the other side of Wow-Bang harbour and hopes that Joe does not follow her. The sun is disappearing quickly. The digital night is falling. Life begins turning round aimlessly in a circle. She feels anxious. She considers instructing her hands to cover her face in sorrow, but what would be the point? She considers making her eyes cry. Same problem though. What’s the point?
Instead she keeps turning in a mechanical circle. She thinks about Janek Freeman. He’ll be in Wow-Bang tonight. Is he everything that Joe isn’t? He’s solvent, sure, a successful musician, involved in the Wild World. But he’s cold. He makes love a bit like a zombie. And he never stopped playing his bass. Nice at first, but it’s not the most melodic instrument. He is handsome. But is love really just a medium-paced queue of boys in un-ideal trousers and a variety of shirts and T-shirts, bad shoes, good shoes, strange dicks, standard dicks, underwear, trips away, sayings and hairstyles? Is Janek really the kind of boy that I should kiss while I’m alive? I don’t know. Pointless thinking about it, thinks Life. She does not like to reflect. I should not come to the harbour, she decides. I should not watch the setting of this impeccably programmed sun.
Life leans out over the wooden walkway and stares down at the unimpressive tide beneath her. The tide comes in and out rather crudely. Too quickly and completely. Waves should leave wet-looking, dark sand when they retreat, not bright yellow sand. Bad programming, thinks Life, noticing that, below her on the beach, a man is shooting a woman repeatedly in the head with a grey pistol. They’re both knee-deep in the water. Circles of red blood keep spurting from the woman’s head. They land in the sea and then disappear. You still see bollocks like this, even at the harbour.
As for the Wild World, thinks Life, turning away from the murder and continuing along the raised wooden promenade, through the fading golden light, I’m not sure the Wild World is quite what I’m looking for. At first, I was impressed by the organisation. Everyone spoke with so much excitement and confidence. People bought me drinks and gave me advice. We snorted cocaine till early in the morning in their Bethnal Green homes. They told me I had a good attitude and that a beautiful girl would go far in the Wild World. But they’re using me. I know for a fact that they’re using me.
Life notices that the man with the pistol has finished killing the woman. He has climbed up onto the promenade and started killing other people who have just come to stare out at the sea. Although the man looks old, it’s likely he’s being controlled by a group of teenage dickheads in America, Russia or China, who knows? Life can picture them, gathered round the computer screen in a dark room, laughing, mouths full of saliva, spitting accidentally, shouting, ‘Kill them, kill them all.’
Life stays to watch the man kill four or five innocent, unarmed people but then decides to teleport away. She hasn’t got time to die tonight. Not with Janek and Anka Kudolski in town to see her. She hasn’t got time to start searching the cemeteries of Wow-Bang for her dead body and then waiting for it to reanimate. Here, death is inconvenient.
Just as Life is teleporting away and the graphics of the Wow-Bang harbour are dismantling, she catches sight of the puffin again. It’s flying through the sky above her head, flying at speed towards the murderer, its red beak open with rage.
Roger Hart rises to applaud the cast of virtual actors who are virtually breathless and bowing on the stage above him. There’s something about the virtual performance of Cats that Roger really enjoys. In the real world, the cat costumes worn by the actors suggest to the audience that it might be absolutely fine to fuck a cat. It positively promotes cat-fucking. Roger finds this odd. But in the Wow-Bang production the cats are pretty much the same as cartoon or video game characters. The spectacle is less erotic, allowing one to enjoy the incredible Rice/Lloyd Webber score.
Behind Roger, also applauding, are about seven hundred teenage avatars. They are Roger’s fans, or, more accurately, they are fans of the El Rogerio blog. They agreed that since Roger is turning into a computer, it might be nice for them all to go to a virtual musical together in his honour.
Most of the seven hundred have programmed themselves in quite similar ways. They are all incredibly skinny, limbs literally as thin as cocktail sticks. They are all dressed in tight black clothing with the occasional splash of yellow or pink neon. On top of their big heads, they have outrageous haircuts full of bright colours and large, daring shapes. On their faces they have programmed enormous sad eyes which contrast with their small mouths and barely noticeable noses.
They are all applauding Cats along with Roger, mainly out of politeness having actually found the production to be deeply boring. But they feel strangely drawn to Roger, to the man they used to call El Rogerio. In fact, he is close to being a prophet in their massive teenage eyes.
Roger turns to wave at his fans. His Wow-Bang avatar bears a striking resemblance to his real-life appearance before he started getting all technical. He has a large bespectacled head. Stocky body. Nondescript clothing. He is genuinely moved by the amount of people who have turned out to meet him. He instructs his face to smile as they all cheer and chant his name. I’d have told the truth earlier if I’d known they’d love me more, he thinks. After minutes of cheering, Roger is overwhelmed. He turns to the stage where the cast of Cats is a little confused by the rapturous applause. Overcome with emotion, Roger executes them all.
Janek Freeman is frantically searching for a decent dick. He’s scouring the boutiques of Wow-Bang’s ‘Lower East Side’ in a desperate attempt to find a cock that will satisfy Life.
This is Janek’s first time in Wow-Bang. He’s unfamiliar with the format. He’s got less than an hour before he has to meet Life in the Real Arms and his avatar looks alarmingly basic. He’s managed to design a head that looks like his own insofar as it’s wearing a beanie. He met a man with the head of a rhino who helped him to acquire some clothes. A red T-shirt and a pair of jeans. But as they parted company, the rhino guy said, ‘If you’re meeting a girl, be sure to find yourself a good-looking cock.’
‘Where do I find that?’ Janek asked.
‘Penis Street, Lower East Side.’
Janek’s on Penis Street now, staring into the shop windows wondering what constitutes a good-looking cock. He can see all shapes
and sizes. Pierced, tattooed, horses’. He can’t decide. He’s never had to pick a dick before. He’s wondering whether he should try and find a circumcised one to match with real life. Or maybe I should branch out, go crazy, get a dog’s dick. This is ridiculous. Life’s seen my real dick, maybe she’ll think it’s tragic if my virtual dick deviates noticeably.
At the far end of Penis Street, a man wearing a pink tuxedo starts randomly killing people with a machete, so Janek hurries inside Cock Heaven to be safe.
‘Hey there, what are you after?’ says a naked man with several penises growing around his waist from front to back.
‘I need a penis.’
‘Sure,’ says the man, performing a camp pirouette, causing his belt of penises to fly horizontally like a grass skirt would in reality. ‘Well, our most popular penises are Afro-Caribbean and donkey. Can I ask, do you have a girlfriend here in Wow-Bang?’
‘Yes,’ Janek lies, the image of Life flashing through his real brain.
‘And are you together in real life?’
‘Of course.’
‘In which case I suggest you splash out on a realistic and beautifully rendered phallus. One that won’t disrupt your sex life in the real world.’
Janek’s confused. Through the window of the shop, the guy with the machete is still killing people. Slitting their throats, causing them to disappear.
‘You see,’ the penis seller is saying, ‘if I sell you a whale’s dick your girlfriend might get used to it. We’ve found that frequent exposure to a novelty Wow-Bang phallus can breed apathy towards real human dicks.’
‘I don’t understand any of this,’ says Janek.
‘There’s nothing to understand,’ says the man. ‘It’s just fun.’ As he says the word ‘fun’, every dick on the man’s waist goes hard. It looks like his torso is sitting in a flesh salad bowl. A minute later and Janek has left the shop. He exchanged thirty Wow-Bang dollars for a six-inch, white, uncircumcised erection.
Anka Kudolski is eating a virtual cheeseburger in Eddie’s, a popular fast-food restaurant in central Wow-Bang. She’s watching people. Watching as they move awkwardly around each other, their movements stiff and quite random. She watches as people form rough circles and try to start conversations. On the table next to her, a guy and a girl sit down and speak.
‘Where are you from?’ asks the girl, she’s wearing a latex catsuit and she has whiskers sprouting from below her nose.
‘Detroit. You?’ says the man. He’s wearing a Chelsea FC kit with the name ‘Lampard’ on the back. He’s even got the socks.
‘I’m from Nanjing,’ says the girl. ‘Do you like football?’
The man in the football kit leans towards the girl, blows her a kiss and says, ‘No. Do you like throat sex?’
Anka watches as the man gets up without warning and charges towards the exit. In his effort to leave quickly he ends up walking against a transparent wall for a few seconds before finally finding the door. The whiskered girl from Nanjing gets up and starts walking round the restaurant bumping into people. This is a stranger’s paradise, thinks Anka. She’s reminded of those people who decide to knock on the door of their childhood homes and get shown around by the present occupant. It’s just not quite right. It feels wrong. Strangers are lurking in the background of your family photos. Former friends are watching from the shadows as you kiss your current lover. Your enemies are licking their lips over lists of your latest friends. The living are haunting the living.
Anka looks down at the half-eaten burger on her plate. She looks at her excruciatingly thin wrists and instructs her face to grimace. She redesigned her avatar on arriving in Wow-Bang this evening. She went to a shop on Torso Road and demanded the thinnest body available. That turned out to be an under-the-counter job. Not strictly legal, even in Wow-Bang. She positioned her new body in front of a mirror for no reason. The shopkeeper smiled, saying, ‘You’re nothing but a skeleton with huge tits, aren’t you?’ Anka nodded.
She’s due to meet El Rogerio in the Rib Cage at around nine. She’s arranged to meet Life in the Real Arms at ten. She wonders whether either will sense that there are two of her, that she has a double. Will they realise that in her bedroom, back in Manchester, two identical pairs of hands are tapping at the keys.
She has only made half of her cheeseburger disappear. Nevertheless, Anka leaves the restaurant. As she does so, people stare. They are horrified by the skeletal avatar. Her body is terrifyingly thin. People instruct their faces to show pain.
14
THE SKY ABOVE central Wow-Bang darkens realistically. The streets begin to get busier as, in the real world, wives, husbands, siblings and parents turn in for the night, leaving the citizens of Wow-Bang alone at their computers. Shit gets said: ‘I promise I won’t be too long, I just want to see who’s around.’
Life walks into the Real Arms and is greeted by several people. It’s a small place, just one room. There’s a dance floor in the middle where people congregate and show off the latest moves they purchased on Dance Street. Around the dance floor are tables and chairs programmed to appear wooden. Against the back wall is a bar where you can buy the Cocaine Code and the Heroin Code, each as popular as they are pointless.
Life instructs her hand to wave at the people who grin at her.
‘All right, Life?’ says a guy with two pink erections sprouting like wings from each of his shoulder blades.
‘All right, Jimmy,’ says Life, instructing her mouth to open wide with excitement.
Life has met Jimmy in the real world. He’s gay. In reality, Jimmy’s sitting at his laptop in his parents’ living room in Crawley, occasionally quitting Wow-Bang to scan Gaydar for potential lovers in the Sussex area.
‘How’s work going on the launch party?’ asks Jimmy.
‘Oh, pretty good, still a bit vague. I’m meeting that guy Janek tonight.’
‘Oooh,’ says Jimmy, making the helmets of his erections flash like disco lights. ‘The lucky fucker himself. There isn’t a digital dick in Wow-Bang that doesn’t want to program its way into your pants.’ Jimmy’s two dick-wings spurt large drops of semen which disappear the moment they hit the floor. Life and Jimmy laugh and instruct their bodies to embrace.
Life takes a seat alone in the corner of the bar. Most of the people in here have some connection to the Wild World. Jimmy, for example, has got something to do with marketing. In fact, everyone involved with the Wild World seems to have something to do with marketing. Life has never heard anyone describe their involvement in any kind of detail. Even Bossbitch, even the bald-headed guy who asked if she knew a Northerner who could be trusted with a child. They all talk in shallow code and it makes Life uneasy.
She sits and stares nervously at the door. She’s got a bad feeling that Janek is going to have a very unattractive avatar. She hopes he’s had the sense to buy a hairstyle and some decent clothes. The Wild World lot all have crazy avatars and frown on those who don’t.
Having thought about it, Life’s decided she’s attracted to Janek’s quietness. In a world of too many words Life is glad to have met a man of few. But sometimes few words means more thoughts and more thoughts often means complication and then failure, lack of joy, unhappiness. But what can you do? You can’t do anything. You can carry on.
Two things strike Life as odd about Wow-Bang. Firstly, the speedy growth of commerce. Originally intended as a utopian society where people could meet each other without having to be constantly buying crap, capitalism developed in Wow-Bang faster than in any other human society in history. It took about a week for most major corporations to buy land in Wow-Bang and to build huge towers displaying their logo on their roofs. Also, people quickly found that they struggled to sit at tables and get to know each other without having first bought something. Within a day or two people started opening shops and bars that sold the Cocaine and Heroin Codes, the Cappuccino Code and the Champagne Code, all of which are, in essence, total bollocks.
The second thing that
Life has noticed about Wow-Bang is the quantity of penises. They are everywhere. It is impossible to walk down a street without seeing a whole bunch of people with erections jumping hugely from their trouser flies. The penis has been craving mainstream attention since the twenty-first century began and tits and fannies became as breathable as air. The erect penis is pretty invisible in culture. It is a veined source of shame. So when men entered Wow-Bang and found they could program penises onto any part of their body, they got really excited and set about doing just that. The employees of the Wild World are no exception. It’s rare to meet a guy in the Real Arms who has resisted the temptation to adorn his avatar with a cock. Some avatars are only cocks: pale shafts as tall as humans with ballsacks that waddle along like fat feet. There’s a few of those here tonight. On the dance floor. Life thinks it’s quite sweet. The quantity of erections in Wow-Bang doesn’t add up to an atmosphere of sexual aggression. On the contrary, it’s almost like men want women to meet their chubby little penises in a normal environment. As if for some time men have been meaning to clear their throats and say, deep, deep down, we are only dicks.
The door of the Real Arms swings open and Janek shuffles in. He has no cocks on his body. Life sees he’s wearing a beanie and finds this cute. He’s replicated his real-world image. Bless him. She watches as he takes in the atmosphere of the Real Arms. The tall penises disco-dancing on the floor. The numerous people snorting cocaine off the tables or injecting heroin into their arms. She watches as people angle their bodies away from Janek when they register his normal appearance. She warms to him. When he finally scans the room and spots her, she instructs herself to smile and to blow him a kiss.
Janek steers his body through the crowd towards Life. She’s not as beautiful in Wow-Bang as she was in that hotel in London. But unlike most girls here Life has resisted the temptation to program a ridiculous cleavage for herself. Janek’s glad about this. The other girls here have tits like home-made babies’ heads. Full of migraine, Janek takes a seat and manages to work out how to smile.