by Indra Sinha
The usual crowd are there, Jarly of course, Gawain, Branwell, Arifax, dear old Icecold. But I can’t concentrate. The huge phone bill. I don’t mention the family missing. I don’t know what to do, some part of me is frozen. I can’t believe she has left. I examine and re-examine the envelope for a note, but she has left no comment, just placed the bill inside and taped it to the screen.
I switch off and sit in the dark. Should I be making phone calls? Who could I ring? Where would she go? Should I ring her mother? What could I say? ‘Molly, Eve has vanished, I think she may have walked out because I’m addicted to the computer.’
Doesn’t sound possible.
But I am on the point of picking up the phone when the door goes, the noise of tired children. Eve’s voice. I rush out into the hall.
‘Thank God you’re back’ I exclaim, while another, smaller, voice wants to whine, ‘That bill, it’s not what . . .’
But she doesn’t mention it. Smiles, explains that she’d taken the children to the cinema and then because they were hungry, took them off for something to eat. Says she’s sorry if I was worried. Was sure she’d left a note with the telephone bill. Hadn’t she? I stare at my wife’s neat figure, fair hair touching her shoulders, green eyes glinting at me, slanted like almonds. How well, how little, I know her. She is a mystery to me. Like the sea, deep, quiet, but imbued with immense, giant, horrific strength. Who is she roleplaying?
The immortals meet on Olympus
Gawain has laid on a feast fit for gods: mussel-and-cod chowder, a tureen of Mediterranean fish soup (the original plan, only Gawain, unable to decide between them, has done both), langoustines, three pyramids of artichokes, a vast tarte à l’oignon . . . The food is laid out on a polished mahogany table which runs the length of a burr-walnut panelled dining room. On the walls are military prints: the Cherry Bums at Balaclava, the Relief of Lucknow, Gordon shooting a fuzzy-wuzzy at Khartoum. Wiggle-edged daggers from Tangiers and Marrakesh are arrayed round a dented shield. Tulips of pink and blue glass sprout from the walls to light the table which, to resume, groans under . . . a tarte tatin, a tray of partridge pasties farci avec gammon and pine kernels, a whole cold salmon, a pike (stuffed and steaming), slices of boar poached in milk with mace and cloves (looks like ‘doves’ on Gawain’s elaborately printed menu), a small cauldron of cassoulet de Toulouse (for which the right sausage and a supply of confit de canard had been sent for well in advance). Also, venison (mulled in red wine with oriental spices, mace, nutmeg, peppercorns from the Spice Islands, bay leaves from the garden, juniper berries, button mushrooms and shallots from Waitrose), the meal to be concluded with zabaglione, white chocolate mousse with cappucino cream, plain chocolate mousse with pistachio nuts, and profiteroles filled (as Gawain is at pains to point out to his disbelieving guests) not with cream but cream cheese: all in all a most extraordinary and opulent spread, entirely wasted on the milling horde of witches and wizards.
Hmm, perhaps not entirely wasted for here is Jarly, plate heaped high. Jarly’s natural condition, like that of a wolf in the wild, is one of near starvation, so he gorges himself when he can and measures the value of an invitation by the number of meals it can be stretched to cover. Thus he had taken care to arrive in good time for lunch and has spent the afternoon upstairs logged into Shades. It’s now nearly ten. The guests, immortals all, have been arriving since eight. The crowd is thickest round an ice-filled bathtub from which the long necks of champagne bottles rear like monsters from an embrackled Loch Ness. Gawain himself, the Green Knight Wizard, wearing a surcoat appliquéd with a coat of arms which he describes, giggling, as ‘Gules a lion rampant wink between jambes no don’t dare say it counter-embowed,’ is bustling about directing operations. He has hired three resting actors to fill glasses and pop partridge pasties into people’s mouths, and these thesps, impeccable in white jackets and bow ties, could hardly be in greater contrast to the guests.
‘Dress in character,’ the invitation had said, but few have made the effort. Qadile is wearing stovepipe headgear which, taken with the lanky stoop, makes him look like the Cat in the Hat. Branwell the Happy Dead Wizard is carrying an old leatherbound copy of Jane Eyre and has carefully-observed ink-stains between the thumb and first two fingers of his quill-bearing hand. Calypso, portraying a sea-nymph, wears an extremely short ‘grass’ skirt (confidential memos courtesy of the office shredder, ‘I suppose it is a bit tiny, but what could I do, the memos were A4?’) and scarlet paper hibiscus in her dark hair. For once she is sans husband. Sprawled across their host’s red leather sofas are the Archwizard Hellborn and his cyber consort the Archwitch Mehitabel (his ‘real’ wife is at home putting the kids to bed), surrounded by a knot of courtiers, who keep them supplied with champagne, food and cigarettes. Besides these are gathered in the house of Gawain: Icecold the Ice Cool, Scorpius the Sting-King, Merlin the Original, Nullpoint the Norwegian, Aphrodite, XParrot the Ceased 2B, Kaddish the MadFatOldGit, Stiffy the Up-for-It Wizard, Fineas, Sinistar, Mak, Wizzo, Hypatia (Witch and ‘real’ life girlfriend of Branwell), Rosy the Cheeky, Devil the Incarnate Wizard, Phaid the Weird, Minotaur, Mglwlxyz the Unpronounceable and many others. Upwards of three dozen Shades witches and wizards have come to celebrate Gawain’s fortieth birthday.
Moving among these folk, one overhears strange snippets. An elderly man who looks like a vicar is deep in discussion with a huge earringed biker wearing a Metallica tee-shirt.
‘. . . lost six fights on the trot to Dandy,’ the vicar is saying, ‘so I decided the only strategy was to bang in the steals, get ahead, then flee down and repeat process’.
‘Got to cripple first,’ says the biker.
‘Oh I always cripple,’ says the vicar and smiles as if giving benediction to a parishioner.
Calypso leans in the kitchen doorway laughing, her long legs shown off by the skirt of shredded secrets. I notice Cabbalist’s eyes on her and Morgan’s resentful eyes on him.
Calypso spots them and smiles. ‘Well, the invitation did say to dress up,’ she tells Morgan. ‘But I see you haven’t bothered.’
‘I asked Gawain,’ says Morgan. ‘He told me “Come as you are”.’
‘Come as you are.’ A more misleading instruction is hard to imagine for, by definition, no-one here is what they seem. To the non-initiate, the crowd appears to consist of human beings. Of all possible types, classes and morphologies, their ages range from 15 to 73. Ask their occupations and you will hear: casino teller, travel agent, schoolboy, bus driver, advertising copychief, bank manager, housewife, computer engineer, senior ward sister, paleontologist, hospital matron, biker, British Telecom manager, jazz musician, debt collector, traffic warden, canalboat builder, long distance truck driver, university lecturer, forecourt attendant, actor, consultant paediatrician, travel writer, supermarket manager, solicitor, police officer, part-time go-go dancer . . . all utterly misleading.
In this gathering, no-one is interested in what you look like, how you dress or what you do for a living. The only thing that matters is who you are on Shades. The ‘real’ people in the room were never invited to this party. They’re here on sufferance, mere emissaries of the real guests: it’s the personas who are meeting here.
‘Hi, I’m Louella the half-Elven,’ a forty-five year old man with an alcohol- and tobacco-ravaged face announces and, turning to his shy girlfriend, adds, ‘and this is Psychopath the Singing Blade.’
No wonder so many people are loth to reveal ‘real’ names. Remember when you were little and your mum took you to school and kissed you in front of your friends? How embarrassing it was, how you wished she’d go away? That is pretty much how Shades personae feel about their real life owners.
Barbarella
Few cyber-personalities are so powerful that the flaws of their human chaperones can’t touch them, but one such stands nearby, draining a glass of Gawain’s champagne. Middle aged, firkin-shaped, Pat might be in the dull light of face-to-face reality, eyes magnified to twice life size by lenses desi
gned for extreme myopia, her lack of conventional sex appeal exacerbated by a sixty-a-day habit, the air round her head blue with cigarette smoke and hoarse, softly-uttered obscenities, but to her friends and fans she is, and will always be, Barbarella the Hot Blonde Witch.
Barbarella, celebrated for equally vicious use of sword and tongue, stares coolly at Gawain’s outrageous table. Lifting a langoustine by one leg, she calls out, ‘Gawain, can you please tell me what this is? Are you supposed to eat it? Or fight it?’
The courtiers dutifully laugh.
I come upon Branwell and Merlin sitting in a corner. ‘Hello Bear, you’d better speak slowly,’ Branwell tells me. ‘I’ve had so much champagne, I’m lip-reading double.’
‘Big mistake, the champagne,’ says Merlin. ‘Shh ... am ... p ... p ... ainuh ... nuh’, enunciating each syllable with exaggerated clarity for the sake of Branwell who, as he has frequently said himself, is far too lazy to practise his lip-reading.
But Merlin isn’t talking about Branwell. ‘I told Gawain he was a pillock ... pi ... llock. This lot don’t appreciate it, they just think he’s just showing off.’
Halfway through the evening, it’s obvious that there’s going to be trouble. Probably it’s when Gawain raps on the table with a soup ladle and announces his plan to massacre the Shades mortals.
‘Friends, immortals, Shades has eighty-five immortals. I for one think that’s enough. The time has come to say stop! No more mortals seeking asylum in immortality. Jarly, Graeme, Wake, Fineas and I have decided to form an alliance. Instead of our “seconds” fighting each other, we’ll band together to wipe out all high level mortals. Let’s keep immortality for immortals! Join us! I give you HAWK, The Honourable Association of Wizardly Killers.’
People had been wandering about with glasses and plates. But during this speech, the room resolves to two camps, divided by the overladen table. Barbarella and her allies are ranged on one side, Gawain and his friends along the other. As in some vast heroic canvas, their expressions and the attitudes of their bodies silently yell their hostility. But no painter could sketch these figures, the task is made impossible by the cloudy presence of invisible immortals. Pat, for instance, besides being Barbarella, is simultaneously twelve other witches and wizards, all of whom are here in spirit, or more accurately, like a host of spirits which continuously flit in and out of Pat’s dumpy frame.
I have been enunciating Gawain’s plan to Branwell.
‘What do you think of it?’ Branwell asks Merlin.
‘It is an idea of bru ... tal ... stu ... pi ... dity.’
‘Well, yes, of course it is,’ booms Branwell, ‘but he may have a point. Stopping the mortals becoming immortal might be sparing them a great disillusionment. If we’re honest, we must admit that once we are immortal life becomes strangely boring.’
There is a kerfuffle near the front door.
‘You’re not supposed to be here, Lilith,’ I hear someone say. ‘It’s immortals only.’
‘Ach, don’t be pompous,’ drawls a voice which I recognise as belonging to my friend of the leather trousers. Now she appears, clad as the last time I had seen her. On her arm is a woman, tall, aloof and hollow cheeked. She wears a short charcoal grey skirt and white blouse; her long legs are cased in grey silk stockings, her feet tucked into black stilettos. Her skin is painted a matt white and her hair, which must naturally be blonde, is dyed an ultra-pale Wehrmacht grey.
‘This is Garbo,’ says my friend.
The perfect facsimile of a black-and-white movie star, Garbo sucks greedily on Lilith’s exuberant cigarette holder and smiles.
‘Kindly inform Gawain,’ says Lilith, ‘that two immortals of the Vortex are here.’
A lipsdropped conversation
‘Look at Calypso,’ I tell Branwell.
Calypso is staring at the new arrival, Garbo.
‘Oh that’s not why she’s grim,’ Branwell tells me. ‘She has just had a spat with Morgan.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Lipsdropping.’
‘Lipsdropping?’
‘They were standing near me. I had a good view. They knew I was there but of course they also know I’m deaf . . .’
‘But I thought . . .’
‘I’m not brilliant at lip-reading, but I’m not all that bad.’
The exchange, more or less as lipread, went as follows:
Morgan said, ‘Why are you avoiding me?’
Calypso replied, ‘I’m not.’
He: ‘. . . (unclear) love you. I want you to be happy.’
She: ‘You’re crowding me.’
Morgan says, ‘It’s been like this since the holiday.’
She: ‘I told you . . . (unclear) your jealousy.’
He: ‘. . . (unclear) wished you’d spend less time with (unclear).’
She: ‘You’re always on at me! You never let up.’
He: ‘. . . (unclear) be together. I know you feel guilty . . .’
She: ‘No!’
He: ‘You’re unhappy . . . (unclear, possibly “darling”)’
She: ‘Stop saying that!’
He: ‘You need someone to take care of you.’
She looked him in the eye and said, ‘. . . (unclear) what I did with Cabbalist and Chorley? Okay, I’ll tell you, since you’re so desperate to know. I screwed them. Okay? I fucked them.’
The death of Hagstor
In any cybergypsy social gathering – and nowhere among all the cybergypsy clans is this truer than of the Shades tribe – there comes a moment when a computer must be switched on. One person will then log on to the game, bulletin board or whatever is their current focus, and all the others will stand around and watch. At Gawain’s party this ritual was initiated by a witch called Hypatia, a peaceful person who was determined to live out non-violent principles even in cyberspace. Hypatia rummaged in her bag of characters, chose Poppy, an enchantress of middling level, and sent her down into the game, which as ever was full of quarrelling, treasure-hunting mortals. Poppy pootered around saying hello to people and was soon being chased by a raggedy arsed seer waving a longsword. Disgraceful, chorused the watching immortals. Several offered to take over and teach the upstart a lesson, but predictably it was Pat, mother of a dozen immortals, who squeezed herself into the chair and addressed the keyboard. The character who materialised in the land was the most powerful and feared of all her mortals, Hagstor the Horrific. Hagstor was a Warlock, which is the highest level a mortal can attain in Shades. His bare knuckles delivered a massive seventeen-point punch and, when wrapped round one of the power swords, tore from his opponents nearly 50 points of stamina per blow. Hagstor was fast and dangerous and arrogant. None could withstand him. Thrice in single combat he had mastered Jarly’s Eiger the North-Facing Warlock and forced him to flee. Jarly nurtured a deep grudge and a lust to kill Hagstor.
Hagstor moved out into the game like a giant predator going among prey. He magically summoned the seer who had chased Hypatia’s enchantress, wrenched the sword from his grasp and despatched him in four blows. As news of the seer’s death flashed across the game, the immortals in Gawain’s house cheered and urged Hagstor to fight again. It was incautious advice, for Pat was playing from Gawain’s computer not her own and Hagstor was thus without the protection of her customised f-key program. However, his warlock’s strength was so awesome and her fingers so quick that there was no real threat. The only people who might have been a danger were Jarly and a handful of other class fighters, but Hagstor would not be attacked by any of their ‘seconds’, for they were all in the room with her, watching.
Now Hagstor was out in the land and all those near him felt the weight of his tread. Smaller beings scurried from his path, scattered into the woods, or hid in corners of the ruined city. The mortals were on in force and their Amazons, Seers, Mysticals, Soothsayers, Enchanters and Sorcerers fled in horror at his approach. He soon found a new victim. Farinsnod the snork-nosed Sorcerer was a peaceful if argumentative soul who had on
ce accused Pat of being a bully. The Warlock’s blows destroyed him in a few seconds and he died trying to flee for his life.
Those watching saw Hagstor check to see ‘who’ was on and the name of Wyrd the Weland’s Necromancer flashed up. An unknown character. He had gone from 0 to the Necromancer threshold of 80,000 points in just two days. This was dedicated, expert playing. Almost certainly Wyrd was a wizard’s or a witch’s ‘second’, but nobody could think whose, since most people capable of such a feat were at Gawain’s house armed with nothing more deadly than a glass of wine. For a moment Hagstor hesitated. Prudence dictated that he should seek safety, test Wyrd’s fighting skills with a fighter of lower level. But stiff-necked Hagstor, 100,000 points senior to Wyrd and within two hours of reaching immortality (should he want it, which he did not), rejected this idea. He had never fled before anyone in his life, much less a lower level. Besides which, Pat had drunk deep of Gawain’s champagne and had an audience. She announced that Hagstor would wait to see if Wyrd attacked. She was certain that even without f-keys, the Warlock’s powerful spells would easily drive off the lesser warrior.
Now Wyrd, across the game, shouted surprising words: ‘At last, Hagstor. You killed my friend. It’s revenge time.’
Hagstor smiled. ‘Words don’t frighten me. Come on, then. Who knows, you might get lucky?’
While Hagstor was still speaking, Wyrd leapt through the air, a mighty jaunt that carried him soaring over forest and river to light down beside the high-souled Warlock, who was waiting outside the gates of the city, leaning on his heavy shield. In the same instant the watching immortals saw on Hagstor’s screen the amazing information that Wyrd had attacked.