Geek Tragedy

by Nev Fountain

  ‘Simon!’ shouted one of them, a big man with a heavy ponytail and an exhausted scrappy beard that had tried to reach his face but had given up and died somewhere below his chin. ‘What do you want us to do with this?’

  Simon. Simon Josh. It all came flooding back. Simon Josh, convention organiser and über-fan. How could he have ever forgotten?

  ‘Careful with that, Morris!’ Simon snapped. ‘That’s an original Styrax Sentinel from series two. It’s irreplaceable, and very delicate.’

  ‘But where, Simon?’ gasped Morris.

  ‘Now you know where you’re supposed to put that,’ said Simon to Morris.

  Morris stared breathlessly up at Simon, bent double with his hands on his knees. His eyebrows were raised helplessly, as if to say ‘How the hell should I know?’ Simon gave a long-suffering sigh.

  ‘It goes on the middle stand of course. In amongst my most precious collection of knick-knacks.’

  From the expression on Morris’s face, Mervyn had an idea which particular precious collection of Simon’s ‘knick-knacks’ he’d like to put it amongst, but all he managed were a few breathless nods.

  Simon beamed, and rested his hand on the Sentinel’s flaking carapace as if posing for a photo. ‘Marvellous isn’t it, sir? I bet it takes you back. What does it feel like to once again be in the presence of the most evil creature in the universe?’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t put yourself down, Simon.’

  Simon stopped talking for a few blessed seconds, then he realised what Mervyn meant. ‘Oh very droll,’ he said, flashing one of those smiles given by those who are congenitally humourless but have learned to detect the shape of a joke and move their faces accordingly. ‘You writers!’ he clucked. ‘Your schedule’s in this programme leaflet.’ He handed Mervyn a programme ‘leaflet’, which was about the size of a telephone directory for a large village. With no small effort, Mervyn stuffed it in his pocket. ‘Autographs at eleven, panel at one, and I know you’re going to love this, you’ll be judging the fancy dress in the evening.’

  Mervyn looked around at the foyer, at the creatures clad in cardboard, tissue paper and bubble wrap. Fancy dress? Surely everyone here had peaked far too soon? There was nowhere else for them to go in the ‘acting like an evil alien’ stakes, unless they went down the road and invaded Brent Cross shopping centre.

  Simon was talking Mervyn through the schedule, running his finger along some insanely complicated boxes and offering a translation. ‘You’ll be signing autographs in “Arkadia’s Boudoir”—that’s what we call it. It’s actually room 1013. And after that it’s the panel in what we call “Vixos Central Nerve Centre”, and that’s the main hall here, and the fancy dress is also in “Vixos Central Nerve Centre”. I’ll get someone to show you up to your room.’

  ‘And what’s my room called?’

  Simon grinned a humourless grin, and Mervyn caught a flash of something nasty beneath. He realised he’d made one joke too many.

  ‘Room 2224,’ Simon said, a little too loudly.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Mervyn noticed a hairy herd of bespectacled creatures in rock T-shirts and jeans. They were shuffling in their direction. He was sure some of them had overheard where his room was.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Mervyn, ‘I’ll find my own way.’

  He started to walk away.

  Very, very fast.

  CONVIX 15 / EARTH ORBIT ONE / 9.00am start

  EVENT: REGISTRATION AND IDENTITY TAG COLLECTION.

  LOCATION: Prison Planet Docking Bay (hotel foyer)

  EVENT: ‘THE BURNING TIME’ EPISODE SCREENING.

  LOCATION: The Catacombs of Herath (video lounge room 1024)

  EVENT: WHY VIXENS FROM THE VOID IS BETTER THAN STAR TREK FAN PANEL with Graham Goldingay, Fay Lawless, Craig Jones, Darren Cardew.

  LOCATION: The Seventh Moon of Groolia (room 1002)

  Tomorrow People and Blake’s 7 schedules are found inside free copies of Into the Void available from Checkpoint Doomworld (reception desk).

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Happy Traveller hotel was tucked behind a slip road somewhere around the M25. It was a modern hotel, a square ugly building in orange and yellow brick. The only difference between it and an open prison was that the hotel had a bigger sign, smaller rooms and palm trees in the car park.

  The reason why hotels wedged in such sweaty rectums of the country decorated themselves with palm trees always eluded Mervyn; presumably to entice the kind of person who gets impressed by pineapple and ham on pizza.

  The carpet that Mervyn jogged along was from the same identikit book of bland hotels. It was covered in a pattern of vomit-coloured splat shapes arranged about 10 inches apart, designed that, should anything vomit-coloured and splat-shaped descend upon it, the mess would be cunningly disguised. Unfortunately, as no one has ever yet learned to vomit precisely 10 inches apart (even engineering undergraduates), the nastiness usually showed up anyway.

  Why was he running? Because he was special.

  Not special in many respects, of course. He was in his late 40s, hovering on the wrong side of stout, with soft, perplexed features and a large nose. Middle age had mercifully left him his hair, which was grey and thick, and grew in every conceivable direction but down. Mervyn looked like a hedge that had been dragged through a man backwards.

  His dress wasn’t particularly exceptional either. He wore the standard uniform of television writers everywhere; black jeans, black shirt and black corduroy jacket. There were certain writers’ panels he’d been on in years past that looked more like a convention of retired and rather portly Milk Tray men—the ones who’d skipped the speedboat, given up on the sexy lady and kept the chocolates for themselves.

  No, he wasn’t special. Not in any respect. Except one.

  Mervyn had Vixens from the Void on his CV, and that made him very special indeed.

  *

  The Happy Traveller had played host to a lot of strange and wonderful gatherings in its history, but this particular event took the complimentary plastic-wrapped biscuit.

  The convention—known as ‘ConVix’—had been in existence for 15 years now. It was a convention devoted to many forms of cult television. For this event, there were a smattering of Tomorrow People cast members, a few luckless red-shirted extras from Star Trek and one rather dog-eared space rebel from Blake’s 7—but mostly ConVix was concerned with celebrating the exploits of the Vixens from the Void.

  Mervyn had co-devised and script-edited a brazenly cheap and exploitative piece of sci-fi kitsch that cast a day-glo spell over the BBC1 schedules in the late 80s to early 90s.

  In the mid-80s, TV sci-fi was unfashionable at the BBC. Doctor Who had been prescribed a rest, Blake’s 7 had been tragically cancelled, and The Tripods had been even more tragically made. It would have been suicide to propose another space series in this climate, but BBC drama, with that appetite for suicide shared by most publicly funded organisations, decided to make one.

  Mervyn came up with an epic that contained elements of classic BBC serials such as I, Claudius and Fall of Eagles, but on a much larger scale, recounting the decline and fall of a vast intergalactic empire through in-fighting, betrayal and war.

  That wasn’t how he pitched it to the BBC, of course. He wasn’t completely mad.

  He sold it shamelessly like a whore, dressing it in primary colours and daubing it with cheap lipstick, showing it off in a way that would make sense to the brain of the average BBC boss. He winced as he remembered the first line of his proposal document: ‘Think of Dallas meets Dynasty…but in space!’ Mervyn reasoned that, even if they didn’t understand science-fiction, they might at least understand science-fiction containing nubile young women in corsets and skin-tight lycra a little better.

  He wasn’t alone in pitching an SF series—not by a long shot. There was also an ‘I see this as Howards’ Way—but in space!’, an ‘Imagine the kids from Fame—but in space!’ and then an ‘It’s like The Money Programme—but in
space!’ Mervyn couldn’t imagine how that one would have worked. He’d even heard of one old and rather baffled producer who went into a meeting with the words: ‘Think Star Trek—but in space!’

  *

  Mervyn found his room. The moment he placed his suitcase on the bed, he noticed the revving of engines. He crossed over to the window and peered out, his spirits sinking. A Mondeo Moron and a BMW Bastard were having a ‘Who’s Got the Smallest Penis?’ competition in the hotel car park. Mervyn was a light sleeper, and he just knew that he would have problems with sales reps from Crawley gunning their engines in the early hours. He needed his sleep; if he couldn’t move rooms, he would have to resort to the little coloured pills in his suitcase.

  It was Mervyn’s deep-held conviction that, throughout his life, he was destined to be forever in the wrong place at the wrong time. He measured how badly located he was in life by degrees of wrongitude and crapitude. ‘20 degrees wrong…30 degrees crap,’ he muttered.

  Today was particularly wrong and crap. He knew where he should be, of course. He should be lying in bed, contemplating a shower, and then a quick Tube ride to ITV’s magic castle of opulence, where the lifts contained live jazz bands, and the automatic urinal cleaners in the men’s toilets gushed forth vintage claret. He should be having a power lunch of milk and rusks with a bunch of fresh-faced media toddlers, and they would ask him how many shovelfuls of cash it would take for him to agree to adapt his best-selling novel into a stupidly successful TV series.

  Yes, that was definitely where he should be.

  The best-selling novel was, of course, unwritten as yet. It was nothing more than a few kilobytes lurking in his laptop, and the ITV toddlers weren’t having any meetings with any writers, particularly not him. They were all probably sitting in a room working out if it was in poor taste to do a mini-series on the life of Pope John Paul II starring Ross Kemp. Still, until the non-existent novel magically wrote itself and leapfrogged over the Dan Browns in the bestseller lists, the Happy Traveller would have to do.

  It felt like a grim penance for his indolence: to return to the convention circuit after all these years; to be forced to return to the endless rounds of anecdote-telling and autograph-scribbling due to an irritating lack of cash. Something had gone badly wrong somewhere.

  He toyed with the idea of seeing if he could get a change of room, but decided against it. He’d had quite enough of Simon’s benevolent tyranny for one morning. Perhaps later.

  Mervyn unpacked, then had a shower, made himself a cup of tea with the tiny plastic kettle, ate the plastic-wrapped digestives, ordered a burger and chips from room service, examined the quality of the adult channels on the television, received and ate the burger and chips from room service, re-examined the adult channels, and, when he had finally exhausted the delights his room had to offer, went downstairs to brave the convention.

  He opened the door, and was immediately faced with a Vixens fan standing across the way, emerging from an adjoining room.

  The fan did a double take in his direction. A meaty grin slowly smeared its way across his face and he gave a wave.

  ‘Hi, Mr Stone!’

  Something deep inside Mervyn instinctively recoiled. He had a notion that he was going to be in for an awful time.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘Hello, my name is Mervyn Stone, and here I am at ConVix 15 having a wonderful time!’

  Blast it.

  ‘Um…’

  His mind always went blank at times like these. In all of his friends’ video cabinets, there were home movies containing parties, weddings, christenings, and a few seconds of Mervyn going ‘Um…’

  ‘Anyway…hope to see you soon!’

  Morris looked up from the camera tripod, and held his thumb aloft. ‘Perfect. Great. Thanks. I’ll play it back in a minute.’

  It didn’t sound very great, judging from Morris’s reaction, but then Morris always sounded bored. Morris was Simon Josh’s lieutenant. He handled the audio-visual equipment and was the guy who really ran the convention while Simon Josh gibbered from one room to the next.

  They were all in the convention’s hospitality room, a room distastefully covered in avocado wallpaper. It was Friday morning and the guests were starting to assemble; people Mervyn hadn’t seen in years, and some he hadn’t much liked when he did.

  Feeling self-conscious, Mervyn needed a friendly face to latch on to. Luckily he saw just the chap.

  He helped himself to a filter coffee from the refreshment table and slumped down in an armchair next to Roddy Burgess, who, as usual had his nose deep in a glass of something liquid and amber-coloured.

  ‘How go things at the front, Major?’

  The actor beamed woozily at Mervyn. He was a man in his late 60s, the personification of ageing ham, complete with immaculate grey hair, moustache and silken cravat. His eyes twinkled above silver-framed half-moon glasses. ‘Oh, tip top, old boy, tip top, enjoying myself terribly. The troops are awfully well drilled.’ The ‘troops’ was Roddy’s pet term for the hotel and convention staff. If they fed him, gave him drink and led him around the hotel so he didn’t have to read a schedule or think for himself, they were ‘well drilled’. If they allowed him to look after himself at any point they were ‘a bit of a shower’.

  ‘I say, don’t think I’ve seen you in active service for a while, have I?’

  ‘No Major. It’s been seven years since I last did one of these.’

  ‘Thought so…thought so… Seven years eh? Long time to go AWOL,’ he rumbled.

  ‘Oh I don’t know,’ Mervyn nodded at the over-familiar faces dribbling into the room. ‘Things don’t seem to have changed much.’

  There was a meaningful cough from behind the video camera. ‘Mr Burgess, would you mind taking a seat, please…?’

  Roddy Burgess groaned. ‘Do I have to, old boy? I’m not on duty until 1100 hours.’

  ‘Just a little message will do. It’s to put on the official website.’

  ‘Ahm… Don’t think so, old chap. Remaining incognito for this mission, I think. Maybe next time.’

  Morris let loose a sigh. ‘I think you were told in your letter that part of the requirement for guests was to contribute to publicity when requested—’

  ‘Are you giving orders to a senior officer, corporal?’ Roddy snapped.

  ‘No, but…’

  ‘Then until fresh orders come through, I’m staying posted right here.’ Roddy pointed his nose back into his glass of scotch.

  After years of being worshipped and lauded by obsessives, trawling around the country from hotel to hotel and forced to recount the same anecdotes, it wasn’t surprising that a few stars of Vixens from the Void had gone ever so slightly doolally. It was even less of a surprise that they’d grown into complete barking head-cases. There was only one reason they hadn’t been given a cell with double-quilted walls long ago; the convention circuit provided better secure accommodation than the state ever could. Constant supervision, regular meals and whole roomfuls of people willing to humour any delusion they had, no matter how deranged.

  Roddy was a case in point. He’d played Major Karn, the head of the Vixen guard. He hadn’t had a large role in the series, but he was fondly remembered for dying nobly in a favourite episode, and he was a good convention guest—when they were able to lever him out of the comfy chair where he’d managed to wedge himself.

  He’d also been deferred to as ‘Major’ for so long he seemed to believe he was ex-army. He’d started to scatter military jargon erratically into his speech, and developed a gruff no-nonsense delivery. Truth was, the nearest he’d been to any kind of military rank was the Private Hospital he’d kept finding himself in after a variety of blurred drink-related accidents.

  Morris scratched his beard wearily. ‘I do really need you to say a few words. Simon’ll be upset if you don’t.’

  Roddy pretended not to hear.

  ‘I will have to tell him…’

  ‘Hello all. Everything all righ
t?’

  Speak of the devil, Mervyn thought.

  Simon Josh had glided back into the green room on one of his irrelevant missions to nowhere in particular. All of his errands had the same purpose; to make Simon Josh look busy and important. He was like a shark; he had to keep moving otherwise his existence had no meaning. He smiled like a shark, too.

  Morris cleared his throat slowly and deliberately and nodded towards Roddy. ‘Roddy doesn’t want to say hello to our online customers,’ he said darkly.

  ‘Really?’ said Simon brightly. ‘I think I need to explain to Mr Burgess how important our official website is in our public relations arsenal.’

  Here we go… Mervyn turned back, anticipating an explosion from the old warhorse bigger than anything the BBC special effects department ever produced.

  But Roddy wasn’t there.

  To Mervyn’s astonishment, the old man had sprung out of his chair and was sitting happily in front of the camera. ‘Hello chaps,’ he chirped, ‘the Major here… Having a marvellous time at this convention… First-class billets, excellent tuck and well-drilled troops!’ He signed off with a brisk salute, and sprinted out of the room, casting a wary eye back at Simon.

  The old man looked almost terrified.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  As was now traditional at these conventions, Vanity Mycroft was holding court in the middle of the hospitality room, glass of champagne held carelessly in one hand, dwindling cigarette in the other. Slumped gracefully on a high-backed chair, she had a semi-circle of adoring faces listening to her impromptu lecture and chuckling dutifully at her outrageous statements. She looked utterly at home with her ‘audience’, as all true stars do.