Wildlife

by Joe Stretch

  Joe closes his large puffin eyes and awaits the sensation that comes when a bullet travels through your head in Wow-Bang. But what he hears is the clatter of a door. His eyes open with a blink: a big-headed boy in spectacles and a blonde with limbs as thin as cigarettes come falling into the room, hands moving all over each other. Janek’s distracted and Joe takes his chance. He puts his beak through the small window at the end of the room, hops out onto the ledge, spreads his wings and flies off; bullets from Janek’s pistol chase him through the purple sky. If I get hit, I get hit, thinks Joe, staring at the night. Every bullet misses.

  Back in the simple red room, Anka Kudolski is standing in front of Life, saying, ‘Life, is that you?’ But Life is not responding and Anka notices that Roger is almost naked in the corner of the room. ‘Life?’ she says one more time, before concluding that Life is not at her computer and therefore can wait. ‘Would you mind leaving?’ she says to the young man in the beanie who’s shooting maniacally through the smashed window. ‘We’d like some privacy, please.’

  Janek turns to her, gun in hand.

  ‘Don’t even think about killing us,’ warns Anka, hopelessly trying to shield the naked Roger with her scrawny body.

  ‘I won’t,’ mutters Janek, dropping the pistol noiselessly onto the floor. ‘I need the N-Prang. I need to go back.’

  Anka and Roger watch as Janek thrusts his erection several times against Life’s vacated body, before rushing out of the room muttering the word ‘festival’ over and over again. Weirdo, they both think. What’s an N-Prang?

  Anka turns to Roger and places kisses on his cheek. ‘Are you ready?’ she whispers, into his large and undetailed ear.

  ‘Not quite,’ says Roger. ‘Look. My dick’s bigger than your body. How’s this gonna work? Would you be prepared to –’

  Anka closes Roger’s mouth with a delicate finger. A second passes. Anka switches to the larger avatar she’d first designed before she realised that the anorexia had returned. Roger smiles, saying, ‘You see? You can do it.’ Anka shuts her eyes and nods. Then she grins at her tits and at her curvy limbs. ‘What codes have you got?’ she asks.

  ‘Let me surprise you,’ says Roger, embracing Anka and executing the Arse Grope Code; taking a handful of her buttock and twisting it with force. ‘All right,’ she whispers, and before she knows it, she’s completely naked and Roger’s steering both their bodies towards the painless black floor.

  It had taken Roger a while to drag himself back to his office chair in the real world, but once he was back in Wow-Bang he knew exactly where to go to get good prices on numerous sex codes. Anka couldn’t have chosen a better-equipped virtual lover. But buying sex codes is easy. Using them can be tricky. Down on the floor, Roger is struggling to make decisions. He’s wondering whether it’s presumptuous to begin with a blow job. He has, generously, brought along the 69 Code and the Pussy Licking Code as well as the Blow Job Code. He’s thinking he should start with one of the former, the 69 maybe, make a case for equality in the hectic world of oral sex. But he really wants a blow job. Really, really wants to watch his cock being sucked.

  Roger pushes Anka’s legs apart and executes the Pussy Licking Code. He buries his bespectacled face in her digital loins and licks her first tenderly, then vigorously. A minute or two of this and maybe she’ll mutter what most girls mutter while being badly licked out: ‘Stop – let me suck your cock.’ Lick in hope.

  Both Ankas are enjoying themselves. It’s ages since they’ve had any kind of sex. Anka’s adult sex life never got off the ground because of her eating disorder. Most of her sexual memories date back to her Goldsmiths days, falling into bed with fine artists, far too fucked, high on coke, waking the next day not knowing whether they’d done it or not. Then before you know it, you’re wasting away, your sex drive stops and no one wants to kiss you. Being with Roger makes sense, even given the origins of their relationship, even though they’ve never met in the flesh. They are both in trouble and in need of support and love. Anka looks down her body at Roger’s bobbing head. She touches his cheek. ‘Stop,’ she whispers. ‘Let me suck your cock.’

  Roger is excited. He executes the Blow Job Code and watches as Anka crawls down his body and drapes her lips over his oversized penis. He’s not had a blow job since the 1990s, when an overweight IT student with invisible tits had licked half-heartedly having met him at a Gilbert and Sullivan Society meeting. But that hadn’t lasted long, she’d barely licked the tip before she stopped, saying, ‘It doesn’t taste right.’ Roger is pleased that this virtual blow job is progressing nicely, with meaning and good rhythm. If his real-world penis hadn’t been replaced by a numerical keypad he’s pretty sure it would be standing tall and that he’d be stroking it joyfully, having curtained off the nerdy, less erotic sections of his brain. Yes, this is great. And with Anka Kudolski, too. The girl on TV who’s as fucked up as me. We’re mates. Virtually lovers. Roger is happy and confident. He executes the Deep Throat Code and watches as his huge erection disappears down a non-existent throat.

  The motionless body of Life Moberg stands above the blow job, but Roger and Anka have forgotten about her. They are both wrapped up warm in the programming language of human sex. In the real world, both Ankas watch, hands held, as their avatar performs oral sex on the screen. They picture Roger in the flat next door and realise that this is as close to romance as they have been in a long time. They are pleased when Roger executes the Deep Throat Code. After living so precariously under their own influence, the Ankas are elated to be moved and influenced by someone else.

  In the absence of any real physical pleasure, virtual sex demands regular aesthetic change, just to keep the excitement levels up. The same is true of real sex, I guess. Roger knows the blow job has lasted long enough. Where do I go from here? He thinks about the Tit Wank Code but that just can’t be right. He needs to keep it intimate. This is meant to be romantic. He’s finding it hard not to imitate the sexual choreography of the Internet porn he’s spent years of his life glued to. He fights off the urge to double-click the Fisting Code. This isn’t porn. We are real people. In a sweet homage to average intercourse, he gives Anka ten seconds of the Fingering Code, rubbing at her detail-less loins with his simple fingers, then he launches emphatically and unexpectedly into the Missionary Code. The Missionary Code! The cheapest of all the sex codes. Roger pushes and pulls between Anka’s legs, his head bent upwards above hers like the head of a swimming dog. This is wonderful. If romance is anything, it is imitating ordinary old missionary in a world where anything is possible. Anka and Roger both realise this. They watch themselves having such simple sex and feel an incredible empathy for each other. Sometimes you need to step outside yourself to realise just how cute and phenomenally unserious you actually are. Anka smiles. She does a little moan like she used to while having nervous teenage sex. Roger grits his teeth, just like the real boys do. It is at this moment, as they obediently replicate normality, that Roger and the Ankas feel that this may indeed be a kind of love, come to rescue them both.

  And, of course, love is little more than a green light to perversity. Having dug love up, scraped it clean and having agreed between the two of you that it is, beyond doubt, true love, anything is possible. The dirty becomes clean. Crap becomes romantic. Fists become affectionate. Arseholes become beautiful and spanks become kind.

  ‘Can I turn round?’ says Anka.

  ‘Sure,’ says Roger, double-clicking on the Doggy Code, almost adding, ‘I love you,’ but checking himself.

  So Roger’s behind Anka now, she’s on all fours. But because it’s love, this isn’t dirty. Oh no. Because it’s love this is metaphoric. Both lovers looking in the same direction, staring into the distance at their shared future. Though in actual fact, Anka and Roger find their attention drawn to Life, who is still motionless in the middle of the red room. This is a little weird. But because of the genuine sense of affection, they bang on unashamed.

  A minute or two of doggy and Roger kno
ws what to do. What else can you do after missionary and doggy? Roger double-clicks on the On Top Code with such a sense of pride. Anka, suddenly riding Roger triumphantly, once again gets a rush of empathy for herself and for Roger. How sexy and lovely the normal is, she thinks. To follow such a standard progression of sexual positioning in a world where he could be fucking me with a seal’s dick and badger’s balls and Gwyneth Paltrow’s face. It’s so sensitive. Just what I need. He even resisted anal. So he should have done. But it would have been so easy to have clicked it in. Anka smiles as Roger feigns serious excitement, just like lovers in the real world do.

  By this time, Roger is planning the finale. He can make Anka come whenever he wants, simply by feeding her the Orgasm Code. He can even dictate the volume of her orgasm. But should they come simultaneously? This would surely be the most romantic thing. But then again, Roger remembers, we’re experiencing romance when we replicate the real. Is it realistic to orgasm together? It’s certainly ideal. But I’m out of touch with this sort of thing, he thinks. I’ve been watching too much porn, where sex ends in other ways. In the real world, on the computer screen, Roger’s cursor hovers over the Facial Code, then the Pearl Necklace Code. It would have been different if I’d got that door open, it would have been a threesome. This might be my last chance, he’s thinking. My last chance to be daring and disgusting. By tomorrow I could be technical and dead. Love is one thing to experience, but dying without having been very perverted might be difficult to bear. He looks down at Anka. I could just use her. I could just come on her face and leave her on the floor.

  Above the sex, Life’s avatar comes back to life with a jolt. She turns and looks down to where a girl is riding a boy. Her first instinct is to kill them both. Life dislikes the constant shagging in Wow-Bang. In the real world, she loves it, but she becomes bizarrely moral in virtual places. She takes out her pistol and points it at the lovers. They’re about to come, Life realises. And then she notices how banal their sexual position is, how normal and unadventurous. She’s never seen such standard sex take place in Wow-Bang. The sex here is usually barely recognisable as sex, or else it’s rape. Life puts her pistol down by her side. It’s so romantic that this isn’t rape, she thinks, and that he only has one penis, and that no part of her is animal or bleeding. Life watches with squinted, smiling eyes as the blonde girl and the bespectacled boy climax simultaneously, as both bodies spasm with pleasure. She watches as their eyes open with quick, joyful blinks. Roger executes the Affectionate Kissing Code and Life is overcome with emotion. The two lie naked, Roger and Anka, side by side, legs entwined, leaning towards each other; they give small kisses to each other with digital lips.

  ‘That’s so beautiful,’ says Life, walking backwards towards the door.

  ‘Life?’ says Anka, placing a hand on Roger’s shoulder while turning to the door. ‘Life, it’s me, Anka.’

  By the time Life has walked across the room both Roger and Anka are fully clothed. She and Anka embrace and Life executes a Cheeky Smile in Roger’s direction.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Anka. ‘This is Roger. Roger, this is Life. She works for the Wild World.’

  Roger shakes Life’s hand without taking his eyes from Anka. He realises that double-clicking on the Simultaneous Orgasm Code is the best thing he’s ever done in his whole life. It wasn’t strictly an honest thing, he would like to have ejaculated on her face. But honesty is not the thing. The thing is to be creative, kind and dishonest.

  Roger’s deep in real thoughts. Can there really be two identical creatures sitting in the flat opposite mine? How am I ever going to get to them? He becomes ambitious: Before I die, he thinks, or before the technology takes me over, I am going to actually feel them. I am going to kiss them both and then fall into all their arms.

  ‘Nic told me about your eating problems, Anka. Is that going to be an issue?’

  Anka puts an arm round Roger. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘To be honest,’ says Life, ‘I don’t know whether anyone should be getting involved with the Wild World.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m worried about a child and, if I’m honest, I’m not even sure what the Wild World is.’

  17

  IT’S LATE NOW in the Real Arms. Most people have left for the sex dives, the brain brothels and the skeleton clubs. At the bar, only a single helping of humans remain. Avatars slump, tired, pointlessly using the Cocaine Code, asking the barman if he sells the Slit Wrist or the Overdose Code, then sighing when he shakes his head apologetically. It is the end of the night.

  Only Joe Aspen has left Wow-Bang and returned to the real world. Having flown from Janek’s bullets he abandoned his puffin avatar. Now he’s stroking Beak in a Travelodge on the M1, watching Sally nervously. But the rest of them are still here. At a table in the corner of the Real Arms, Anka and Roger sit with Janek and Life waiting to talk to a group of men that Life is calling the ‘key players in the Wild World’.

  Roger has lost count of how many times he’s used the Passionate Snog Code with Anka. He can’t stop himself. She keeps asking for it, too. They feel a sublime frustration.

  Life has never witnessed such sincere passion in Wow-Bang. When Roger and Anka inevitably start snogging she turns to look at Janek. Janek is behaving strangely. He is not the boy who smoked cigarettes and sipped coffee with Peter Gabriel. He is not the boy who played his bass dispassionately into her brain in every imaginable style. Janek has discovered talking. When people discover talking, it is terrible.

  ‘So when I next see yer, I’m deffo gonna shag yer, it feels like years since I last had yer.’

  ‘Stop doing that.’

  ‘Doing what, princess?’

  ‘Talking in rhyme,’ snaps Life. ‘And don’t call me princess.’

  ‘But we made a connection, I got an erection, and I’m so tired of introspection,’ says Janek, shooting the air with a finger pistol and then blowing away the imaginary smoke.

  ‘What’s happened to you?’ says Life. ‘I liked your introspection. And just to make it clear, we’re not together.’

  Janek sighs, half smiling to himself, nodding understanding. ‘Maybe not today, bitch, maybe not tomorrow, but one day soon I’ll be forcing you to swallow.’

  ‘What?’ says Life, in disbelief. ‘You’ll be forcing me to swallow?’

  ‘Suffice to say,’ mumbles Janek, his real brain feeling like it’s doused in vinegar. ‘Suffice to say, I’m a sex buffet and you sure look ready to feast.’

  Life pulls out her pistol and presses it into Janek’s side. ‘Shut up. I don’t know what this is, but shut up.’

  Janek doesn’t tell Life that in the real world, as they speak, he is using the N-Prang. That since he arrived in Wow-Bang he’s found it difficult to fulfil his desire for a brilliant, easy-going fuck festival of an existence. After the incident with Joe Aspen and the digital dicks, he didn’t know what else to do but put the N-Prang into his real ears. The N-Prang changes the world. Janek wants the world to change.

  ‘Remember what happened with that machine, Life,’ says Janek, trying desperately not to make his words rhyme. ‘Remember what we learnt. Funky life, that’s what we all need. We’re here to have fun. This is fun. So ride my cock . . . until . . . you . . . come . . .’

  Life ignores him and turns to watch Roger and Anka Passionately Kissing. When they’ve finished, Roger puts a hand on each of Anka’s cheeks with the intention of executing the Thoughtful Kissing Code. But he doesn’t. She’s changed her body again, he notices, staring at the same pencil-thin limbs that Anka had been wearing earlier.

  ‘Why?’ he says. ‘Why would you go back? You looked beautiful.’

  ‘Because,’ squirms Anka. ‘Because this is me, Roger. Seriously. This is me and I’ve got to be myself when the Wild World people arrive. Haven’t I? I want a job. If I can’t be Jackson Pollock then I’m going to work for the Wild World. OK?’

  Roger shakes his head, suddenly anxious, slightly disturbed. ‘I’
ve got to go,’ he says. ‘I’ve never gone this long without blogging. It’s like an itch. I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Are you angry with me?’ asks Anka.

  In the real world, neither Anka can believe they’ve just said this. Are you angry with me? Jesus. They both deny saying it, but one of them must have. It’s the kind of question idiots ask other idiots. Back in Wow-Bang, Anka looks at Roger, thinking, this man wanked over me. He wrote a description of it. I wanked over his description. If that was madness, how have things become so suddenly normal?

  ‘We’ve both got our problems, Anka. Wait for me in your flat. I’m going to figure out a way of opening my front door.’

  Roger’s getting up, pursued by Anka’s hands. ‘Are we OK?’ she says. Again, neither Anka can believe they’ve just said this. In life, they decide, you’re either fucked up or you’re a fucking idiot. It’s that simple. ‘Go. It’s fine,’ they say, emotionally backtracking. ‘We’ve never even met each other.’

  ‘No,’ says Roger, glaring at Anka’s limbs. ‘We’ve never even met each other.’ And with that he disappears.

  When the ‘key players in the Wild World’ arrive, it comes as no surprise to anyone that three out of four are literally dickheads. Longish, brown, digital penises grow from their foreheads and fall between their eyes. Testicles hang tight above their eyebrows. The fourth man, the one who’s not a dickhead, is literally a wanker. That is to say, one hand is rubbing up and down on the digital dick that’s poking out of his flies. When he sits down with his dickhead mates, he doesn’t stop wanking. Life can see his hand moving swiftly under the table.

  It’s Life who introduces everybody. She’s met the three dickheads and the wanker before. She’s even met them in the real world. At a house party in Clapham shortly after she’d started working for the Wild World. All of them have made at least one attempt to have sex with her, either in reality or in Wow-Bang. None of them has succeeded. Not even the wanker, who in the real world is quite sweet and called George. Life lied to them, said she was going out with the bass guitar protégé, Janek Freeman. In view of Janek’s current behaviour, she’s regretting having done this. She watches as Janek tries shaking hands with the dickheads in an American, hip-hop style. But he doesn’t have the right code. It’s a fiasco. He’s rapping. ‘I see you’re a dickhead, how have you found it? I like my cock with lips wrapped round it.’