by Joe Stretch
‘So what do you think of Wow-Bang?’ asks Life.
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather we actually met?’
‘This is cheaper.’
‘Doesn’t the Wild World pay?’
‘The Wild World doesn’t even know what it’s meant to be. How was the funeral?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘You didn’t go?’
‘No. I went. I’m just not sure how it was.’
Life becomes quickly annoyed. Janek’s not getting into the spirit of Wow-Bang. She goes to the bar to buy the Heroin Code. She wouldn’t normally do this, but she wants Janek to see that this virtual world is more exciting than he realises. Janek watches her and wishes that this was reality. He’d like to touch her cheek and tell her how he feels. Tell her he’s ready to live, to run away and join the Fuck Festival, ready to be less bogged down in the horrors of existence. Ready to have fun and fuck with an open mind. But instead he watches as a man with a scrotum instead of a head tries to force his digital dick into Life from behind. He watches as Life turns and slits the man’s wrinkled throat with a knife and then returns to the table and begins injecting heroin pointlessly into her arm.
‘Life, listen, I’ve been thinking a lot about stuff. And I’m pretty sure it’s possible to enjoy being alive.’
‘You are?’
‘Definitely I am,’ says Janek, standing up with excitement and bumping into Life over and over again. ‘Nothing matters, obviously, but that doesn’t mean we can’t lead great lives . . . even a fuck festival. You and me, even.’
‘What do you mean, a fuck festival?’
‘I feel stupid saying this here, Life. But meeting you has made me realise how much I’ve been missing out on. The simple stuff, you know, sex and laughing?’
‘Really,’ says Life, wondering whether Janek is familiar with the concept of playing it cool. ‘What’s brought all this on?’
‘The N-Prang.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yeah. Because life is meant to be fun. It makes you realise. We’re born, and then everything should be insane and fun . . . and you know, a fuck festival?’
Life sighs. She instructs her lips to purse and exhale. She wonders how a promotional MP3 player could have changed Janek’s outlook on life in just a few days.
‘I know what you mean, Janek,’ she says. ‘But I think I’m heading in a different direction. I’ve had enough of all that living-for-the-day stuff. I don’t get much out of it any more, you know, drinking, going mental, shagging, breathing. I’m really getting into this.’
The two of them turn and look around the Real Arms. It’s getting busier. Giant knobs nod at the bar, bullshitting each other about the Wild World. Naked girls with eyes instead of nipples snort coke from the tables causing the lids of those eyes to rapidly blink. People’s clothing and appearance are constantly changing in radical ways; faces and outfits alter as regularly as second hands as avatars trot across the dance floor to talk to someone new.
‘But, Life,’ says Janek, ‘do you not find this a little sad?’
‘No. It’s not sad,’ replies Life. ‘It’s just really easy.’
The door of the Real Arms bursts open again and a loud squawking can be heard. People turn to watch as an enormous puffin enters the bar with its black wings outstretched. A few of the dancers instruct their faces to show anger. A lot of the dicks in the place become erect with rage and one guy alters his appearance so he’s just a middle finger raised in insult. The Wild World lot don’t like people who pretend to be animals. They hate them, in fact. They’re not welcome in the Real Arms. Most animal avatars are members of the Dead Animals gang, a group of hippy terrorists who think Wow-Bang is destroy ing natural human instincts. They blow themselves up in busy places, infecting those around them with viruses.
Life recognises the puffin straight away and stands up. A man with a vagina where his Adam’s apple should be is firing up a flame-thrower and preparing to attack the puffin.
‘Don’t,’ says Life, rushing over. ‘It’s my ex-boyfriend.’
‘Are you sure?’ says the guy, flame-thrower poised.
‘Yeah, I’m sure. It’s you, isn’t it, Joe?’
The puffin nods. ‘I’ve come to find out about Sally.’
‘The baby?’ says Life, smiling at the guy with a fanny on his throat and guiding Joe to the table where Janek is walking quickly against a wall. ‘What’s the matter with her?’
‘I don’t know. But I took her south of Birmingham. I thought it was bullshit and I wanted to see you.’
Joe watches as Life instructs both her hands to cover her face. ‘You didn’t,’ she says. ‘Tell me you didn’t.’
‘I did,’ says Joe, tucking his wings into his body and attempting to touch Life with his beak.
‘Don’t,’ says Life, looking at Janek and then turning to face the huge puffin, her former lover, saying, ‘Where are you now? Where is the baby?’
‘I’m in a Travelodge at Watford Gap services. We got thrown off the Megabus. Sally’s back in the room. She’s ill. I need to see you, Lie.’
Life doesn’t say anything. She pulls Janek away from the wall and gestures that he and Joe take a seat. They do. Janek looks at Joe, wondering what Life ever saw in this enormous puffin and wondering what the fuck he’s doing here, obstructing happiness with his black wings. Joe shows no interest in Janek at all. He just watches Life as she instructs her face to look like it’s thinking. Eyes shut and forehead creased. Life looks at both boys and thinks about being alone. And, of course, she is alone, in reality. In reality, they all are.
15
YOU CAN’T SPOT a cock for love nor money in the Rib Cage. Among the young, the EMO kids, the fairly thoughtful teenagers, dicks are seen as sad or fucking crude. Unlike the rest of Wow-Bang, naked flesh is rare in the Rib Cage.
Occasionally you’ll see two teenage avatars, dressed in black with blue hair heading upstairs or outside together. Chances are, they’ll be en route to get their digital sex organs out and put one inside the other. But only in private, not like the huge Wild World knobs and the literal dickheads at the Real Arms. These teenagers still uphold a sexual morality. Mainly out of immaturity.
The Rib Cage is four or five times bigger than the Real Arms. It’s a club. Pop metal is blasted out across the dance floor, which is covered in the young. They dance with chins held against their collarbones staring at the floor. If a heavy tune comes on then they mosh, stamping their feet and shaking their ridiculous hair with their eyes shut. But they’re a lovely lot, these kids, despite their dark clothes, their pale faces and the slogans on their digital clothes that seem to beg for death. They’re actually nice, good fun, well behaved in a cool way. There’s hardly any murdering in the Rib Cage and, as I say, you can consider yourself lucky if you see a pink penis or an attempted rape. What you do get here is a hell of a lot of light-hearted suicides. The long bar at the back sells the Hanging Code, the Overdose Code and the Slit Wrist Code. None of which kill you, only seem to. They’re what make the teenagers such pleasant company. They’re far too busy killing themselves to kill anyone else and so it’s easy to relax.
Anka Kudolski and Roger Hart are both perched in silence on two skull-shaped stools at the back of the Rib Cage. They are surrounded by gawping teenage avatars, some of which have been instructed to kneel in the direction of Roger and pray. On his way here from the Cats show, Roger was followed by hundreds of his adoring fans. They shouted questions about his condition in the real world. ‘In reality, El Rogerio,’ they asked, ‘how close to death are you? When will you be only technology?’ Roger didn’t answer. He was a little bit annoyed by their company. His plan had been to expose them to a musical and, by so doing, lessen their adoration and fuck them off for the night, if not forever. He certainly had no desire for an audience when he met Anka for the first time. But that’s what he’s ended up with. Now neither he nor Anka has the nerve to speak.
It’s Roger who eventually
breaks the silence.
‘I actually came to apologise,’ he says, the crowd shifting forwards as he speaks.
‘To me?’ says Anka, unfolding her barely visible limbs. ‘Why?’
‘Because,’ Roger continues. ‘Because just because you’re on TV doesn’t mean I’ve got the right to wank over you, and I certainly shouldn’t have blogged about it. But all that El Rogerio stuff was a lie. I mean, I did do it, I did wank over you, but only because you’re pretty. Thin, but pretty. But since I started turning into technology I’ve realised I don’t want to be horrible any more. The annoying thing is, this lot don’t seem to mind.’
Roger gestures to the crowd, more and more of whom are knelt in prayer.
‘Who do they think you are?’ asks Anka.
‘I don’t know. Some sort of prophet. Since I told them I’m infested with technology they seem to think I’m the Second Coming –’
‘We don’t,’ interrupts a boy at the very front of the crowd, his graphic eyes lined with graphic make-up. ‘We don’t think you’re a prophet, El Rogerio. We think you’re cool.’
Roger tuts and turns to Anka. ‘Right. They think I’m cool. But the important thing, Anka, is that you forgive me for the things I wrote about you.’
‘I do.’
‘Really?’
‘I definitely do.’
Neither Anka nor Roger realise that as they sit, watched by hundreds in Wow-Bang, they are, in reality, separated by just a couple of doors and about fifteen metres of space. They do not realise that they are neighbours in the real world. That the computers on which they nervously type are essentially sharing a power source in a crumbling Edwardian building in Manchester. But they do feel a warmth as each of them looks into the screen at the other in Wow-Bang. They feel a warmth, isolated and vulnerable as they are.
‘So I’m guessing you live in Manchester, if you saw the show, yeah?’ Anka asks.
Roger nods. ‘But I haven’t left the flat in months.’
‘We could meet up, maybe.’
‘We couldn’t, sadly. I can barely move and I’m dying.’
‘Yeah, so am I if I’m honest. I’m probably starving to death.’
Roger leans in to Anka, trying to hide from the teenagers.
‘It’s crap, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘You’re growing up and it all seems OK. You’re getting taller and taller and saying all sorts of things. In your late teens you get some cheap thrills wanking, buying booze or ordering food in restaurants without your parents. And then . . . and then you just plunge. Reality’s like a siren, it drives you mad, and then you’re full of technology and barely any feeling –’
‘Exactly,’ interrupts Anka, ‘or you’re dancing in front of a camera, pleased that men are rubbing their cocks hard, and you’re not eating –’
‘I don’t eat either. Apart from crisps.’
‘How come you never leave your flat?’
Roger and Anka are standing up now. They have formed a triangle with the wall so that the teenagers can’t see their faces, which are now held closely together so that they can both make out the pixelated colours in each other’s eyes.
‘I started blushing,’ says Roger. ‘When I was outside I’d feel my face heating up to unbearable temperatures. It felt awful. I’d remove my glasses and stare at my reflection and see that it was all red. The worst thing was, it was a vicious circle. I’d be so shocked and ashamed of the blood inside my head that I would blush more. My career was in tatters. You only had to look at me to know that I was unsuccessful and had only the slimmest chance of ever being happy. Then one day I logged onto the Internet as El Rogerio. I started writing. Now I can’t stop.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If I’m not writing, I’m only dying. It’s hard enough being here.’
‘You know what I think?’ says Anka, raising her skeletal fingers and touching the inexpensive skin tone of Roger’s cheeks. ‘I think we’re lonely.’
Roger locates the Bashful Grin Code from among his facial expressions and executes it, saying, ‘I think we’re lonely, too.’
The two of them turn to face the large crowd of teenagers. They watch as heads rise from their praying positions and faces open. Lidless graphic eyes that seem to stare through everything at nothing. Lips that can’t taste. Shitless bodies that will never feel a thing.
Roger is trying to work out how he can disperse this crowd of admirers. He’s wondering what he could say. He notices, suddenly, that Anka is holding his hand in hers. She must have programmed them into this position without him noticing. He smiles. Suddenly ecstatic. It only takes a second. Life is shit unless people are holding you or stroking you. Roger feels like the small featherless bird that lives inside his heart might be coming back to life, trying to open its sealed-up eyes.
‘Leave me alone,’ he shouts, wishing this wasn’t Wow-Bang but the real world instead. Wishing he could strengthen his grip on Anka’s hand as he shouts at the crowd of teenagers, all their bodies dug like dirt into angles of fashion. ‘Please,’ he shouts, hands in the air. ‘I’m running out of time. Leave us alone!’
Just as the crowd of teenagers begins to smile in protest and to grumble with too black lips, ‘But you’re so cool,’ there is a commotion at the entrance of the Rib Cage. A man with a naked, neutered, dickless body and the head of an Alsatian dog storms across the dance floor. He’s enormous. He’s muscular. He’s barking loudly over the American pop metal causing the little graphic people to turn in aimless circles, panicking, attempting to teleport away. ‘Dead Animal!’ they scream. ‘Dead Animal!’
In the commotion, Roger turns to Anka, placing his hands around her straw-thin waist. ‘I’ve still got a bit of warmth inside me. Do you like musicals?’
‘No,’ she replies, half an eye on the blood that drips then disappears from the Alsatian’s jaw. ‘I hate musicals, Roger. But I have a little bit of warmth left, too. I’ve been such a dickhead lately.’
‘I’ve been a dickhead, too. We’ve got things in common. Haven’t we?’
‘We have,’ says Anka, remembering the black carrot that haunts her fridge and how she had answered her phone to herself. ‘You and me do have things in common!’
Roger laughs. His lips parting quickly in what is a commendable imitation of happiness. He is leaning in to kiss her. He is craving that senseless moment when his red, programmed lips will meet with hers.
Too late. The Alsatian detonates his virus and Roger finds himself ripped back painfully into the real world. Suddenly Manchester. In his flat, his lukewarm flat, Roger watches as his and Anka’s avatars freeze and dismantle on the computer screen, lips just inches from each other. He cries out. With his real voice Roger cries out. ‘But I was making a connection!’ he screams, at the ceiling. Screams at the god who crouches on the ceiling making hoax calls on a shit-hot mobile. ‘I was making a connection, you wanker! Anka!’
Roger tries to get up from his office chair but his huge, heavy legs won’t budge. His stomach bleeps and he punches it in anger, causing it to whirr. ‘Fucking bullshit,’ he mutters, tears in his voice. ‘Anka!’ he screams again in abject frustration, before settling painfully in his chair to reboot his computer.
‘Roger?’ comes a voice from the distance, somewhere beyond the door. ‘Roger, is that you?’
Both Ankas had heard a voice calling out their name. They had heard the cry and turned to each other, staring at themselves like the normal stare at their reflection. One Anka is terrifyingly thin and the other Anka is a healthy, responsible weight. The problem is that neither of them can agree who is the skinny one and who is the healthy one. They argued about it all last night. Similarly, neither can agree as to which of them is the real Anka. Since they spoke on the phone and moved in together they have both staked a claim to being the genuine, authentic Anka Kudolski. Neither ever agrees with the other. But as they turned away from the crashed computer screen, they both agreed that someone was calling out their name. Neither had any idea who it
could be. Certainly they know none of their neighbours and they’re only on second-name terms with the caretaker. ‘It’s Roger,’ said one Anka. ‘It could be, I suppose,’ said the other. ‘Think about it. He said he liked musicals.’ There was a silence as both Ankas put two and two together, made four and then crept towards the door.
‘Answer me, Roger,’ says an Anka, out in the corridor now, staring uncertainly at the flat opposite hers. ‘Is that you?’
‘Please,’ adds the other Anka in an identical voice. Both Ankas are suddenly nervous about meeting a person. Since they were reunited, they have stayed indoors.
In his flat, Roger is staring at the door and then staring back at his computer screen. He’s wondering whether it’s finally happened. It must have done, he thinks. My brain can’t distinguish reality from reality. Am I still in Wow-Bang? Fuck knows. Who cares? I care, thinks Roger. I haven’t used my voice to communicate in a year.
‘It’s me, Roger. It’s me, Anka,’ says the voice beyond his front door. When he hears that name, Roger’s belly makes an embarrassing noise, like a loud electronic fart. How can it be? wonders Roger, like we all wonder when the empty carousel of coincidence is spinning around us.
‘Anka?’ Roger shouts, neck twisted, anxious in his office chair. ‘Anka, is it really you?’
‘Yes!’ shout both Ankas in unison. ‘Come to me, Roger. Let me in.’
Bugger me, thinks Roger Hart. One day you’re crapping a motherboard and the next you’re falling onto the floor, dragging yourself wilfully in the direction of happiness.
‘Open the door, Roger.’
I’m trying, thinks Roger, gripping the hard carpet with his fingernails and pulling himself frantically towards the front door. But his legs are so heavy. It feels like they’re full of cement and not computer technology, it’s like trying to lift a fridge.