by Ben Elton
The rupture was complete; the oil was out. The booms were already being breached, the detergents washed about pathetically on top of the impenetrable slick. There could not have been a worse mess if it had been created by a giant two-year-old with bad hand and eye co-ordination, instead of responsible adults. Adults with awesome technical skills and a wealth of bitter experience to guide them.
They just don’t learn, do they? thought Plastic, as he watched the last two people being winched off the fast disintegrating tanker.
On the horizon he could see the Natura ship approaching at speed.
‘Wow, those Natura protest people got on the case fast,’ the news reporter said, and inside the VR helmet it seemed as if he was addressing Plastic personally.
‘They sure did,’ Plastic murmured in reply, ruefully comparing their performance with that of his own sales team, who had let a donut ad get between them and their target.
Further investigation.
Judy Schwartz was also marvelling at the rapid appearance of a Natura protest vehicle.
‘How the hell did those guys get here so quick?’ he remarked to Jackson as they swung together on the line hanging from the coastguard helicopter.
‘They’ve been trailing us for days,’ Jackson replied.
‘Interesting, isn’t it?’
‘What?’ snapped Jackson. She was getting a bit tired of Judy being interested in everything.
‘That they’ve been trailing you. There are literally thousands of supertankers at sea at the moment, and Natura just happen to be hanging around the one that goes down.’
‘Tankers sink all the time,’ Jackson replied. ‘There’s so much oil in the Atlantic, you could use it to make french fries.’
At that point, further conversation was cut short because they had to clamber into the helicopter and be disconnected from the wire that had winched them up.
‘Well, Agent Schwartz,’ the pilot said sarcastically, ‘if you’ve seen everything you wanted to see, perhaps we might go home now.’
Judy did not answer. He was watching the Natura ship through the open door of the helicopter. He turned back to Jackson.
‘How well did you know your crew?’ he asked.
‘Not well. It was a short trip. Why?’ Jackson replied.
‘So they were all new to you?’
‘Not all, there were some faces from previous trips. What are you getting at? You think one of us deliberately ran the ship aground?’
Judy looked around the interior of the helicopter, and wished
Jackson would keep her voice down. There were some very tough types lining the walls of the craft, and he didn’t want them to think he was accusing them of being saboteurs.
‘Give me a break, will you?’ he said. ‘I have to write something down in my report, don’t I? Who recruits the crew?’
‘The oil company, of course.’
‘Not the captain?’
‘Well, obviously not. He doesn’t pay the wages, does he? If the captain isn’t happy with a sailor then he can ask the company to change him. That’s all.’
‘And the captain was happy? I mean, apart from killing himself, obviously.’
‘It was a good ship and a good crew, OK?’ Jackson was getting angry.
‘Until you ran aground.’
‘OK, mister, that’s it. I don’t know what you’re getting at and I don’t care. Maybe you think we sank our own ship, I don’t know, but I’m fed up with your questions and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll shut up. Because you’re looking at one lady who’s getting ready to throw you out of this helicopter and there’re twenty-five witnesses here who’ll swear an oath you tripped.’
Dressed to kill.
Meanwhile, Nathan was still negotiating with the private cops at the gates of the Beverly Hills Fortified Village.
‘So you’re meeting with Plastic Tolstoy, huh?’ they said, not really wanting to believe it. ‘OK, writer, let’s just check this one out.’
They strutted back to their little hut, positively sparking in their gleaming black BioTech flak suits. Their shiny boots crunched on the ground in a tough aggressive manner. Not for the first time, Nathan reflected on the dubious value of allowing policemen to dress up like Nazis.
They wouldn’t look so tough if they took off all their guns and stuff, he thought. Which was true but, since they were not likely to, rather irrelevant.
Cops had not always looked like this. Once upon a time, when policemen were first invented, they had looked rather stupid in a cosy sort of way. In Britain they wore top hats and frock coats and often sported enormous side whiskers, in which it was possible for small criminals to hide. On the continent of Europe their brother officers strutted about the place in shiny breastplates, big hats and any amount of plumes and feathers. Streets had to be widened in the Paris of Napolean III, simply to make room for the epaulettes.
It was a wonderful system whereby those in authority were brought face to face with their own human frailty by being made to look very silly. It’s rather difficult to act like an arrogant bully when you’re dressed like a complete twerp. Sadly, things changed. First, a leather jacket appeared. Next, a peaked cap, then a pair of shades. Slowly but surely, over the years it became commonplace to see those in whom the community were expected to place their trust decked out like a cross between a Hell’s Angel and Heinrich Himmler.
Nathan resented it deeply. Before leaving Britain he had actually recorded a Whinge about it for the Boring Channel. Whinge was an open access programme, where members of the public (preferably university lecturers) were invited to whinge for fifteen minutes on a subject of their choice. Nathan had chosen to pontificate on police uniforms.
‘Those entrusted with power and authority should not be encouraged to strut around the place getting a great big stiffy about it,’ he had argued earnestly. ‘I mean why do people become police officers?’ he asked. ‘There are basically only two reasons. It is either because they want to serve the community or because they like being paid to look tough and push people around. The latter should not be encouraged with fascistic paraphernalia.’
Nathan demanded that police uniforms should be changed. That all officers, male or female, should be required to carry out their duties in stripy lycra tights, pink dresses and enormous leprechaun hats with shiny silver buckles on them. According to Nathan, the effect would be immediate. Cops would feel too self-conscious to intimidate people, crooks would not be able to bring themselves to shoot such jolly looking officers, victims of crimes would suddenly feel relaxed about approaching the police, witnesses would come forward. The whole community would rise up in support of such brave men and women, who were prepared to uphold the law no matter how stupid they looked.
Nathan extended his idea to include the military.
‘While I accept the need for some form of collective security,’ he said, ‘I object strongly to the constant glamorisation of something which is, when all’s said and done, an unpleasant necessity. I mean, calling ships things like HMS Indomitable is just silly.’
Nathan argued that there was something dangerously seductive about giving weapons tough macho names. Nothing made a politician happier than being able to announce, ‘HMS Indomitable was deployed today in the Gulf, carrying officers and men of the Second Armoured Division’. Would it not be better to rename these things? A politician pandering to jingoistic public opinion would find it much less tempting to deploy ‘HMS Dubious Use of the World’s Resources, carrying officers and men of the Very Small Penis Division’.
The programme format of Whinge allowed for a right of reply by anyone taking issue with the speaker. Strangely, nobody from the police or armed forces took up the offer. The entertainments industry, however, sent along a spokesperson to object in the strongest possible terms to these pernicious efforts to undermine their livelihood. Geared, as it is, to providing entertainment exclusively for mentally challenged teenage boys, film and television programme makers found
the idea of policemen dressed as clowns and battleships called the USS Stupid entirely unacceptable. There was simply nothing exciting about a Terminator in a dress.
Fool in Paradise.
The guards checked their list. The clipboard and ballpoint pen seemed curiously anachronistic in the hands of these distinctly high-tech bobbies. The reason for such archaic communications technology was, of course, that, unlike with computers, it was very difficult to hack into a Biro. If you want to change a name that’s been written on a piece of paper in ink, you have to scribble it out and write another one over the top. A subterfuge that even the stupidest goon could recognise.
Finding that his name was indeed on their list, the guards waved Nathan through the huge electric gates. As he let his window down and let in the clean, filtered air of the Fortified Village, Nathan’s mood lightened.
Beverly Hills! he thought. He was driving through Beverly Hills on his way to play tennis and make a pitch to the most powerful communications mogul in the world. It didn’t get any bigger than this. He was inside the oyster, inside the pearl. What would Flossie make of it?
Damn! He’d done it. He’d let his mind wander and of course it had wandered straight back to Flossie, as it always did. Nathan had to be constantly vigilant because the moment he let his guard drop, the little devils that lived inside him would put that big heavy piece of lead in his stomach again.
‘Screwed it up, didn’t you?’ the little devils would whisper in his ear. ‘You had a beautiful, perfect girl and you screwed it up… and why did you screw it up?’ they asked, although they already knew the answer. ‘Because you’re a complete git, that’s why. What are you?’
‘I’m a complete git,’ Nathan whispered to himself. Then louder, ‘I’m a complete git. A complete and utter git!’ His voice rose to a shout and he banged his head on the steering-wheel as he drove.
Suddenly his car was surrounded by Beverly Hills private cops. They leapt in droves from out of the lush plastic vegetation that enclosed the quiet road. Shouting at yourself, and banging your head on a steering-wheel was crazy behaviour in anybody’s books. The Beverly Hills Private Cops were certain that they’d caught themselves a live one.
Some say love is blind but in fact it doesn’t see half that well.
‘Why were you shouting to yourself and banging your head against the steering-wheel?’ the first leather-clad gunman demanded of Nathan.
Nathan faced a positive sea of ballistics. One wrong move and he’d be vaporised. He decided honesty was the best policy.
‘Because I spent two years trying to leave my wife, under the impression that I didn’t love her and also because I wanted to screw other women. Then one day she left me and I realised that I did love her madly, and ever since then my life has been a pointless joke.’
The cops considered this for a moment. Weighing their response. Eventually their leader spoke.
‘You have to fly to her,’ said the tough, hard-bitten cop. ‘You have to fly to your beautiful lady and smother her with wild, burning kisses. You have to put a cartload of flowers on her bed and say, “Hey, sexy pants, I made you a meadow, get in it so I can bang you till your ears rattle”. That’s what you have to do. Otherwise, you ain’t even a man.’
Nathan thanked the officer for his advice, adding that this course of action had not occurred to him before, but now that it had been pointed out, it was certainly what he would do. Secretly, however, he suspected that these were not tactics which would work on his beautiful Flossie.
His beautiful Flossie! Ha! Nathan had not called her that twelve short months before. No, then Flossie’s charms had been lost to him. They had been together for eight years, and for the final two Nathan had wanted out. He had wanted to sleep with other women. He had wanted to sleep with just about every woman he passed in the street. What’s more, he had wanted to sleep with women who put the top back on the toothpaste after they had used it. He had wanted to sleep with a woman who always left her keys and money in the same place, and hence was able to find them again when they were next needed. Flossie never knew where her keys were and Nathan had hated it. Most of all, he had hated it when she stole his and lost those too. Nathan always always put his own keys back in the same place, so he always knew where they were. Unfortunately, so did Flossie, and it was a source of constant irritation. She never put the milk or the butter back in the fridge after using them either.
Nathan often reflected that the God of Love was at best a fickle, indecisive type and at worst a total raving schizo and bastard. When Nathan had first known Flossie he had been obsessed with her sexuality. Later he grew indifferent to her charms and now here he was again, desperate to take her to bed. How could such conflicting passions exist within the same person? Every aspect of his attitude to Flossie had swung like a pendulum. It was absurd that a woman’s personal habits could appear cute one day, utterly irritating the next and back to cute again the day after. Nathan, who only a year before had thought Flossie’s lifestyle bordered on the disgusting, now longed to see her knickers flung anyhow on the bathroom floor and to discover his special bedroom nail clippers in the larder. Flossie never finished a cup of coffee; she always left it half-full to be knocked over at a later date. There was a time when this habit had wrenched Nathan’s guts with frustration. Now he looked back upon it as the most endearing of characteristics.
Yes, the God of Love was fickle, and he had turned Nathan upside-down. A year ago Nathan had almost hated Flossie. He was sick of her and their relationship. He had moped through his life, cold and distant, wondering how he could get away from this woman whom he no longer loved.
‘Do you love me?’ Flossie would ask.
‘Of course I love you,’ Nathan would reply.
‘It doesn’t seem like you love me,’ Flossie would insist and, although Nathan denied it, he knew she was right. A combination of sexual frustration and domestic irritation had convinced him that he wanted out.
Every day he had tried to think of a way to leave. He didn’t want to hurt her and he didn’t want to have a row about who owned the house, but he had to get out. The months went by, while he continued to assure her that he loved her … and continued to try to figure out a way of escape. He was a coward and he could not face the unpleasantness, but he knew that he would do it soon.
Then, one day, Flossie had announced that she was leaving him for another man and from that second onwards he had loved no one but her.
Terror hit.
As Max drove into the DigiMac Studios for lunch with his agent, having left his beautiful, nearly ex-wife Krystal (who will play no further part in this story) slumbering on their satin bed, he too was reflecting on affairs of the heart. Although he did not feel quite as desperate as Nathan, he could certainly take no satisfaction from his position.
Being asked for a divorce by a wife whom he did not even recognise had really brought it home to Max just how aimless his life had become. It was all very well being a great big star, but if you were also a sad drunk whose idea of a long relationship was making it to the second screw, then surely something was wrong. There was a hollow feeling inside him which he could not place. Was he hungry? Starting a cold, perhaps? No, it did not feel like either of those things. It was sort of empty and melancholic. Max arrived at the studio gates and drove through on to the main boulevard. There he saw two young lovers strolling arm in arm inside the sidewalk BioTube. The scene touched a nerve. That was it! He had it now. Max recognised the hollow sensation. He was feeling lonely.
Inside the commissary, Max’s agent, Geraldine Koch, was waiting to have lunch. She had great news; news that instantly returned Max to his customary good humour.
‘You have a meeting with Plastic Tolstoy at three forty-five today.’
Max’s eyes widened with excitement and Geraldine could not restrain a grin of triumph from spreading across her face. A face which was usually so sour, people’s jaw muscles prickled just looking at it.
‘He wants to
put you together with a British writer called Nathan Hoddy. I believe he has a feature in mind.’
‘You mean a full-length commercial?’ Max asked, trying not to get over-excited.
‘No, I mean a feature, Max. He’s planning a huge advertainment around the theme of the battles between Claustrosphere and the Green Movement. I’ve convinced his people that you’re mature enough now for major adult leads.’
This was just the kind of break Max needed. He and Geraldine had been discussing for months how he was going to make the difficult transition from idol to icon. There were some stars who were merely of the moment and some, a few, who became stars for life. Despite his huge celebrity, in many ways Max was still the Levi’s guy. That all-important leap from being a fashion to being an institution had so far eluded him and the sands were running out. Working for Tolstoy would change all that. It would confirm Max as a proper, grown-up mega-star and place him on an exalted level from which he could never be knocked.
As Geraldine was giving Max the details of the meeting, Rosalie and the terrorists arrived. Not at the table; they landed on the translucent BioDome roof of the commissary with a loud thudding. Everybody looked up at the shadowy figures moving about on the dark blue tinted filter-shield. Most people, including Geraldine, were rather scared, but Max loved any kind of excitement and found the scene exhilarating.
‘Look at those guys,’ he said. ‘They certainly know their stuff.’
‘The security people should shoot them,’ Geraldine replied. Max watched, fascinated, as above him the five masked figures in green fatigues mined the BioShield with well-rehearsed efficiency. They laid the charges at five-metre intervals across the great domed canopy whilst their helicopter clattered above them.