Geek Tragedy

by Nev Fountain

  In short; it looked like a penis. A monstrous strap-on wanger for a gigantic porn actress. A six-and-a-half-foot stiffy with huge bloated testicles that spat laser bolts, with the camera-like eye mounted in the head looking like a rather gruesome cock stud. It wasn’t surprising that they became known among the production team as Maa-gonads. They looked obscene, sounded stupid, and kept toppling over on the set. It was safe to say that, had the mythical season eight happened, the Maaganoids wouldn’t have made a return appearance.

  So here he was, sweating slowly into oblivion, in a papier-mâché-filled iron maiden with only a huge fibreglass cock for company. He knew certain colourful individuals in television who’d pay for an experience like this, but at this particular moment the attraction eluded him.

  ‘90 degrees wrong, 120 degrees crap,’ he muttered to himself.

  ‘What?’ said a voice.

  Mervyn fell silent.

  ‘Who’s there?’ The voice seemed quite near.

  Despite the heat in the Styrax, Mervyn suddenly felt chilled. Someone had heard him. Someone else was in the hall with him.

  ‘Hello? Hello? Who’s that?’

  Whoever it was, they didn’t sound like they were going to forget they’d heard him. Too late to lie low now. He’d just have to brazen it out.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello?’ Mervyn replied.

  ‘Mr Stone?’

  ‘Is that…um… Stuart?’

  ‘Yes. It’s me. Where are you?’

  Thank heavens. Special constable Stuart might be a bit weird, but Mervyn was sure he could rely on him to be discreet.

  ‘Listen, Stuart. You see the Styrax by the stage?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m stuck in there.’

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘I’m stuck inside the Styrax.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It’s been sealed.’

  ‘Um… Is that a Vanity Mycroft sex thing? I don’t want to intrude.’

  ‘No. You wouldn’t be a life-saver and undo this thing? I’m getting steamed like a haddock in here.’

  ‘Um… I’d love to. But… I can’t at the moment.’

  ‘What? What do you mean “can’t at the moment”?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What do you mean you “can’t”?’

  ‘Um…’

  ‘You’re not blackmailing me, are you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not a form of police persuasion, regarding our little “chat” at the station?’

  ‘Gosh, no!’

  ‘Sure it’s not a subtle “I’ll let you out but only if you agree to play Holmes and Watson with me” kind of thing?’

  ‘Honestly, no, really. It’s not that at all. It’s just that… Erm… You see the Maaganoid by the stage?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m stuck in there.’

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘I’m stuck inside the Maaganoid.’

  ‘Oh.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  There wasn’t much to say after that. Mervyn was speechless.

  Unfortunately, ‘speechless’ wasn’t a word in Stuart’s vocabulary. There were loads of other words in his vocabulary, however, and he was determined to use every one. He droned happily away inside his prick-shaped prison; having his childhood hero as a captive audience was too good an opportunity to miss.

  ‘Gosh, the inside of this Maaganoid is a bit ropey. Cheap and nasty. The one we made for our fan videos was much better. We didn’t have to lag the insides with papier-mâché to stop the sharp edges jabbing into the operator. Gosh, this is a funny situation isn’t it? I mean talk about coincidence! I mean, even when Elysia and Professor Daxatar crash-landed on Prendulum Major…and they’d crashed on the same planet where Medula had been hiding since the second assault on Chevron! That wasn’t as much of a coincidence as this! I mean, my gosh that was a coincidence! Talk about contrived! Um… Not that I’m saying it was a bad thing, Mr Stone, but I do actually address that plot hole in my fan video. We remade it shot for shot, except we inserted a scene where the magnetic core of the planet that dragged them down was the reason why Medula was hiding there, because it was the only planet in the galaxy that Vixos sensors couldn’t penetrate. So we made it a bit better than the original, if you like. I really wish I could show you my improved version…’

  ‘Perhaps if we ever get out of here you can.’

  ‘Really? Gosh, you’ll be so impressed. We’ve made so many improvements on the original you would not believe it. We corrected all the things you did wrong at the time, you know, just little things, Mr Stone—’

  ‘Please, call me Mervyn. If we’re both going to sit and suffocate together, then we might as well use first names.’

  ‘Okay Mr S—Mervyn.’

  ‘And Stuart, perhaps you can bear in mind that sometimes fate is stranger than anything we can imagine,’ said Mervyn testily. He was getting tired of this ‘improving on the original’ stuff. He was very aware of the shortcomings of the old series, but he didn’t like the shortcomings rubbed in his face by someone who was, after all, supposed to be a fan. ‘As you say, the fact we’re here is a coincidence. Coincidence is something that can happen in drama, and coincidence is just as valid as anything else. You don’t have to explain everything.’

  ‘That’s just an excuse for sloppy writing.’

  ‘No it’s not. Because life’s like that. Coincidence. You said it.’

  The Maaganoid went silent, thinking. ‘Well not really…because we didn’t get here randomly. After you left I thought, “Okay, I’ll do a bit more investigating.” You know, poke about a bit, see if anyone was acting suspicious, maybe get some evidence to convince you that my suspicions are correct. Anyway, I thought I’d hide in the Maaganoid because they were keeping it in the convention office where everyone was coming and going, and I thought that would be an excellent place to hear a few unguarded comments. So I crept in and hid myself inside.’

  ‘And someone fastened the catch, trapping you inside?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And then they wheeled you in here.’

  ‘Exactly. Just like you. You were investigating, just like me. Because you think Simon was murdered too. So it’s not a coincidence, really.’

  Mervyn closed his eyes wearily.

  ‘Mr Stone—Mervyn.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t wish to alarm you, but the gas canister under your seat—the one that powers your flame gun? I think it’s leaking. I can hear a hissing noise coming from your Styrax.’

  ‘No. That’s just me. Sighing.’

  ‘Are you sure? Because I can hear the noise a lot.’

  ‘No. Just me. Sighing. A lot.’

  ‘You see, it’s not random at all. We’re both investigating.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘And I’m glad you are. You’re very good at it. Catching Bernard Viner like that. I mean, however you did it… You know… You’ve never told us how you caught him.’

  ‘Told “us”?’

  The Maaganoid seemed to blush. ‘The fans.’

  ‘I didn’t really want to talk about it.’

  ‘Oh I understand. I quite understand. There are some things that should be kept private, and that privacy should be respected. Absolutely. Discretion is a much underated virtue. I mean, when Arkadia told the House of Mistresses that Major Karn died like a hero when in reality he’d hadn’t, that was quite noble, but a bit odd, because if you think about it, they’d have known what he’d done anyway through the Osmosis Focuser that transmits soldiers’ dying thoughts into the central—Mr Stone, are you sure you don’t want to check under your seat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because it’s a very loud hiss.’

  ‘It’s fine. Really.’

  ‘Right. His thoughts should have been transmitted via the Osmosis Focuser—unless someone intercepted them and beamed them somewhere else, which would explain that weird bit in se
ries five when Medula knew what happened on Spartus despite not being anywhere near it at the events of the time. I actually took those plot errors and did something with them. I took the original footage, got some actors and revoiced it, matching the lip movements exactly, saying that the Osmosis Focuser didn’t exist, and it was a lie designed to instill loyalty in the Vixos troops. Much more neat, don’t you think? And then I took footage—’

  ‘Okay! Okay… Would you like to know how I discovered it was Bernard who was stealing from the studio?’

  ‘Gosh, would I?’ The Maaganoid wobbled excitedly. ‘I’d be thrilled in the extreme.’

  ‘Well it looks like we’re not going anywhere, and I’m entertaining a faint hope that if I do tell you, you might stop talking for five minutes, so… All right. But this goes no further. I’ve done enough to ruin his life without the details finding their way into some photocopied fan rag.’

  ‘I promise I won’t tell. I swear.’

  ‘All right… Well, let me think… It all started during filming at TV Centre. It was a hectic day. Not enough bodies on set, as usual… Not quite as bad as the last day of filming series two after that bloody general election, but still pretty bad. Anyway, one of the Styrax got damaged. The paintwork got chipped when it ran into a wall or something, and Nicholas wrote a note for Bernard to fix it urgently. He would have told him personally but things were getting very fraught. He fixed a Post-it note on his desk in his workshop and rushed off. The next thing I knew there was uproar on the floor. They’d started filming again after lunch, but when the Styrax got wheeled out it was still broken. Nothing had been done to it.’

  ‘Wow. You mean the note had fallen off?’

  ‘No. It was still there, in plain view on Bernard’s desk where Nicholas had stuck it. Naturally Nicholas was furious with Bernard—didn’t understand why he hadn’t fixed it. Bernard was giving him all this flannel about being rushed off his feet that day, but that was nonsense.’

  ‘Was Bernard bunking off somewhere?’

  ‘No. He’s just not that type. Bernard—well, he’s unpleasant, rude, bad-tempered and a right pain in everybody’s arse… But he’s not lazy.’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘It was only much later that I realised that his assistant had called in sick that day. That this was the first time I’d seen Bernard do any work on his own.’

  ‘Then why didn’t he fix the Styrax?’

  ‘Only one possible explanation. Bernard couldn’t read.’

  ‘Couldn’t read? No!’

  ‘Yes. Couldn’t read. He was illiterate… Or perhaps extremely dyslexic. I’ve never been particularly friendly with him, as you can guess, so I never had the guts to ask which.’

  ‘But… How?’

  ‘How what?’

  ‘How could he get a job at the BBC? How could he even function on a show like Vixens and not be able to read?’

  ‘Oh, there are ways. I did a bit of reading up about it. You’ll be amazed at the things people who can’t read do to try to keep their secret. Writing certain words on their sleeves so they can recognise them in everyday situations, “questioning” the fine print of documents so they can get someone else to unwittingly explain what’s on them… And it was especially easy for Bernard. He originally came in as a freelance contractor because Nicholas liked his work on another show. He insisted on bringing in an assistant. His girlfriend. She must have explained all the paperwork to him.’

  ‘Wow. That’s just… Just… Wow.’

  ‘Anyway, it was pretty obvious that’s what was wrong—to me, at least. Nicholas just assumed Bernard had been playing silly buggers, so I didn’t let on what I knew. I didn’t want to get Bernard into trouble. Ironic really.’

  ‘So when things started disappearing from the studio…’

  ‘It took a while for me to cotton on, but I did start to suspect Bernard. A lot of the stolen stuff was just too specific; obvious valuable stuff was ignored in favour of props that collectors might be interested in…’

  ‘Lots of people would know how valuable they’d be.’

  ‘That’s true. But these were props that we’d practically finished using, so they wouldn’t be missed for days. None of the stuff went missing in a way that was inconvenient to, or made work for, the design department. So I thought it was one of them—and Bernard had been very vocal about being short-changed by the corporation.’

  ‘Yes, I read about that. He was annoyed about designing the Styrax and you getting all that money for the Styrax merchandising and him getting…sod…all…’ Stuart’s flow of words dried to a trickle. The gigantic penis seemed to shrivel with embarrassment. ‘I was just saying what he said in his interviews,’ Stuart mumbled, lamely. ‘I don’t agree with it, necessarily.’

  ‘Quite. Anyway, I thought it was Bernard, and as I knew he had reading difficulties, I decided to use that knowledge to test my theory. I got the pilot episode out of the BBC archive and left it in the production office.’

  ‘The pilot episode? The unscreened one?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the one. I thought that, of everything we had, it would be worth the most to any collector.’

  ‘Cor yeah… You could say that. I mean, before the BBC videos came out, I used to dream of seeing that episode… I remember at university someone got hold of this manky tenth-generation copy from a mate in this fan club in Exeter and we all squeezed into Nigel’s bedroom to watch it, because he was the only one with a VCR. My goodness it was ropey. The special effects were even worse than the series proper. I’ve done that episode too, updated the ships, new gun blasts, improved it, added more effects, and as it was a third-generation copy, I’ve managed to get rid of the hiss—’ Mervyn’s Styrax hissed too, loudly and meaningfully. ‘Sorry. Carry on.’

  ‘Anyway… I left it in the production office. Only I didn’t. I took the tape out first and then left the canister in the office—with a note on it which said something like “To whom it may concern. I would like to emphasise to anyone reading this missive that the tape within this case is not, despite appearance to the contrary, THE PILOT EPISODE OF VIXENS FROM THE VOID. It does however, contain within its confines a rather mediocre edition of Blankety Blank, which I’m reliably informed has little fiscal value to the myriad legions of Vixens fandom’—something like that. I filled it with big long words and put the important bit—‘the pilot episode of Vixens from the Void’—in big, heavy capital letters. To anyone else it just looked like some kind of incomprehensible practical joke; but to Bernard it must have looked like ‘blah blah blah blah blah PILOT EPISODE OF VIXENS FROM THE VOID blah blah blah’. If it went from the office, I’d know for sure. And sure enough, last thing on Friday, it disappeared. I checked no one had cleared it away, and then I went to see Nicholas. Ten minutes later we were watching a security guard forcing Bernard to open up his car and Bernard throwing every expletive at us he could think of. We found the canister under a travel rug, along with two Groolian blasters and a laser probe from Professor Daxatar’s toolkit.’

  ‘Wow, that’s amazing… Brilliant. You must have been so excited.’

  ‘It was one of the worst days of my life. He was the one exposed as a thief, and I’d never felt so embarrassed.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Wait a minute Mr St—Mervyn… He was signing autographs, yesterday. I saw him.’

  ‘He’s learned how to do that. He’s got his reading up to elementary standard. Were you there when he threw a fit about doing lengthy personal messages? Shouting that he’s only prepared to do his signature and nothing else? That’s why. He can copy out a few words, but not much more.’

  ‘Wow. Just. Wow.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The conversation between the Maaganoid and the Styrax glided to a halt, save for an occasional ‘wow’ ejaculated by the Maaganoid.

  Suddenly, Mervyn saw salvation. Salvation wearing tweeds, a cravat and a fancy waistcoat.

  ‘Roddy! Major! Over here!’
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  The crusty old actor gave a start. He froze mid-amble. ‘Who the devil’s there? Show yourselves!’

  ‘Over here! By the stage.’

  Roddy wandered up, his eyes roving around the ballroom.

  ‘Look, Major, I know this is a bit odd, but my friend—well, associate—and I are both trapped inside these things, and we’d really appreciate it if you could let us out.’

  Roddy was listening, definitely. Mervyn was sure he could hear them. But the old actor’s expression was one of benign disbelief, a half-amused, incredulous face that looked like it was all too used to the old hearing-voices-come-from-nowhere game.

  ‘Major?’

  He gave a slow grin; a wise, comprehending smile that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a small boy on his first visit to Disneyland—meeting Mickey Mouse and noticing the mouse’s face didn’t move when it spoke. ‘Don’t you worry old chaps. You just sit tight. I’ll just head off and organise a rescue mission.’

  ‘No wait! You’ve just got to undo the latches!’

  ‘Sit tight. I’ll be back in a jiffy.’ He disappeared from the room.

  ‘Oh. Well, not to worry,’ said Stuart brightly. ‘He’ll probably be back in a minute.’

  ‘Somehow I’m not filled with confidence that we’ll ever see Roddy again. He’s not the sharpest pencil in the desk.’

  ‘Wait!’ said Stuart excitedly. ‘I can see your latch from here. It’s not been fastened properly.’

  ‘It has. I can’t get the hatch open—I’ve tried.’

  ‘No, it’s only been half-done. It’s like those big latches you used to get on old-fashioned vacuum cleaners. The catch is in two parts. You pull the metal loop over a notch, then push the handle down so it locks with the loop fastened underneath. Yours only has the loop pulled down. The handle hasn’t been locked in place.’