Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two

by Short Story Anthology

  Nor could people get used to having their lives repeatedly broken at random.

  For this was not simply like fainting or falling asleep. When awareness resumed…and who could promise that it would, next time?…all the world's activities were found to have flowed on as usual. Airplanes had jetted to and fro between London and New York. Contracts had been signed, and babies born. Newspapers had been printed…and the newsdealers' cry of "Read all about it!" was now an imperative, for how else could anyone find out in detail what had happened? A woman would find herself locked in a jail cell, but the police would have to consult their records before they could break the news to her that she had murdered, say, her husband…which raised strange new questions about guilt and innocence.—

  Distressing it was indeed, to find oneself suddenly at the controls of a jumbo jet heading in to land at an unexpected airport, or lying in a hospital bed after a mysterious operation, or running down a street — for what reason?

  · · · · ·

  "What if we find ourselves in the middle of a nuclear war, with all the sirens wailing?" asked Alison. "I can't stand it. It's driving me mad." She poured herself another glass of gin.

  "It's driving everybody mad," said Don. They were in Hugh's flat. "It's like that old Chinese torture."

  "Which, the water dripping down on your skull till it wears a hole in it?"

  "No, I mean the Death of a Thousand Cuts. I always wondered if the poor victims died from loss of blood. But it must have been from the accumulated shock. One painful shock after another. One, you could survive. A dozen, you could survive. But a thousand? Never! That's what'll destroy the human race. This is the Life of a Thousand Cuts."

  "Good heavens," said Hugh, "you've got it." He rubbed his hands briskly. "Cuts! That's brilliant."

  "It means we're like robots," Don went on, ignoring him. "We don't need consciousness. We don't need to be aware. A bird isn't aware. But that doesn't stop it from courting and raising young and migrating. Actually, it helps. No swallow with self-awareness would bother flying all the way to the tip of South Africa and back every year."

  "Do you mean we've evolved too much self-awareness, and it's a dead end?" asked Alison.

  "And now we're going to become robots again, and the world will run a lot more smoothly. But we won't know it. Any more than a sparrow or a mouse knows. They just are. Martha, you mentioned nuclear war. But have you realized how smoothly the Arms Limitation Talks are going all of a sudden?"

  "That's because both sides are more scared of an accident than they've ever been."

  "No, it isn't. I've been checking back. All the significant advances have occurred during breaks." Don chuckled softly. "Breakthroughs, during breaks! And remember, too, that the Petrushkasiege ended peacefully…during a break."

  "During a cut," Hugh corrected him.

  "The Petrushka thing could so easily have ended in a bloody shoot-out, with the restaurant being stormed. But it didn't happen that way.—"

  Don was driving his red Metro along the elevated section of the motorway into Central London, in fast heavy traffic. Some distance behind, a Volkswagen failed to overtake a large tractor-trailer. The tractor-trailer rammed it, skidding and jackknifing. As following traffic slammed into the wreckage, a ball of flame rose up.

  "Bloody hell!" Don glanced at the calendar watch he had thought to equip himself with in the aftermath of the first break, before stocks ran out. "Two days, this time."

  Alison was sitting next to him. Hugh was in the back seat. No sign of Martha. He hoped she was still alive.

  "For Christ's sake, get us off here!" begged Alison. "It's a death trap."

  "More like a bloody buffalo stampede! Why don't the idiots slow down?"

  Somehow, Don reached the next exit ramp safely. The ramp was crowded with vehicles descending. Horns blared. Fenders and bumpers scraped and banged.

  "Mustn't forget what we were talking about," Hugh reminded him, over his shoulder. "The life of a Thousand Cuts."

  "There'll be a thousand cuts in the paintwork of this baby …"

  "Stop at the nearest pub, Don. We have to talk before we lose the continuity."

  "About cuts," said Hugh, cradling a double Scotch.

  The bar of the Duke of Kent was packed, but remarkably hushed as people waited for the filler music on the landlord's radio to stop, and the first hastily assembled news to take its place. Many people were not drinking at all, but merely waiting.

  "You mentioned the Death of a Thousand Cuts, and of course, those were cuts in the flesh with a knife. But what do we mean by cuts?"

  "A film," said Alison. "Editing. Switching scenes."

  "Good girl!"

  "I'm not a girl. Girls are twelve years old or less."

  "Okay, sorry."

  "That's why I wouldn't ever go to bed with you."

  "Okay, okay. I prostrate myself. Now, that's it exactly, the editing of a film…the cutting from one scene to the next. You don't need to see your characters drive all the way from A to B. They just leave, then they arrive. Otherwise a film would last as long as real life. Or the director would be Andy Warhol."

  "As long as real life used to last —"

  "Quite. And what if reality itself is really a sort of film? A millennia-long Warhol movie with a cast of billions? Suppose, as holography is to flat photography, so to holography is — solidography.Suppose the world is being projected. It's a solid movie made of matter, not of light. We're an entry in the Film Festival of the Universe. But —" He paused emphatically.

  "— Are we the completed masterpiece? Or are we the rushes on the cutting room floor — of reality? Because suddenly we've lost our own sense of continuity. Two days drop out. Three days drop out."

  The music on the radio stopped.

  "Shush!" hissed a roomful of snakes.

  This is the BBC Emergency Service and I am Robin Johnson. The date is September the first. The time is one-twenty-five in the afternoon. The most recent break measured approximately fifty hours. At the Helsinki disarmament talks, preliminary agreement has been reached on the reduction of —."

  "Come on, we can read all that stuff later."

  Don had not yet started the engine of the Metro. "Wouldn't it spoil the natural flow of this film of yours if all the characters suddenly became aware that their lives are just a fiction?" he asked. "Maybe this is a very subtle, artistic touch. Maybe the director has suddenly gone into experimental cinema. He was making a realistic film before. But now he's into New Wave techniques…meta-film…like a French director. I still say we're all really living robots. But we never knew it before. Now we do," Don concluded.

  "But that isn't a decline of awareness," Alison pointed out. "That's an increase in awareness."

  "It's a bloody decline in our sense of control over what happens in the world. The important things are all happening offstage. They're happening off everybody's stage. Look at this progress in arms control — you heard Robin on the news."

  "Maybe," said Alison, "God has decided to cut reality, and re-edit it. Because it wasn't working out. Or it didn't work out the first time. It bombed out, literally. We're in a remake of the film of the world."

  Hugh teased her, saying, "Maybe these breaks are for advertisements. Only, we can't see them any more than the characters in a film can see the commercials!"

  "Rubbish. When you have a commercial," said Alison, "the film just stops. Then it starts up again from the same moment."

  "In that case, you're right. Something must be editing reality," Hugh acknowledged.

  "How can I possibly agree with that? But I can't disagree, either. Lord knows, reality needsediting."

  An ambulance wailed by, bearing someone from the motorway pile-up. A police car raced the other way, blue light flashing on its roof.

  "It's the Thousand Cuts," said Don. "And it'll drive us mad with stress. Like rats in an electrified maze. We'll go catatonic. We'll become a planet of zombies…a world on autopilot. Like the birds and th
e bees."

  He started the engine. Driving out of the car park of the Duke of Kent, he turned left because it was easier to do so, before remembering that he had no idea where they had been heading. He slowed, to let another ambulance race by.

  Hugh suddenly began to laugh.

  "I've just got it! Don't you see, we've got a way to test my idea. We may even have a way to communicate with the director himself! Listen, we'll do a special show. We'll do a show about editing reality. We'll make a film within the Film…a film about that Film. I'll package this as a great morale-booster, which indeed it might well be! We'll get the whole country laughing at what's happening. It'll help keep people sane during the Thousand Cuts."

  Alison clapped her hands.

  "Thank you."

  "Just so long as we aren't cut off," said Don. "You know, 'Normal transmission resumes as soon as the show is over.'"

  "If we are cut off, we'll still be going full steam ahead. We can watch it all on videotape afterward — Swing us around, Don. We're going back to my flat to get the whole thing set up. And we'll need to get hold of Martha. If somebody's editing reality, I'm joining in. We'll call the show 'The Making of Reality, the Motion Picture'!"

  "Don't you mean 'Remaking'?"

  "Yes, I do. Quite right, love. 'The Remaking ofReality, the Motion Picture'…that's it. I stand corrected." He slouched back in the seat of the Metro.

  "So do we all, Hugh, if you're right. So do we all."

  "Do what?"

  "Stand corrected.—"

  · · · · ·

  Two weeks later, Hugh cradled a phone and turned to his friends.

  "Well, I don't know exactly what I've been doingthe past four days. But I must have been busting my ass, as our American friends so colorfully put it. Our show's been given the green light for October the fourth, right after the nine o'clock news. Seven European countries are hooking up, using subtitles…and two major networks in the States are running us the same evening, with Australia and Japan following suit the next day. Even Russia is going to screen the show…subject, that is, to content analysis."

  Martha sneezed. She had caught a cold. "Shouldn't be a problem," she sniffled. "Soviets have always laughed at God."

  "Okay, so where were we, Don?" asked Alison.

  "I've been going through this heap of notes. I'll get them knocked into shape with Martha, then we can start rehearsing on videotape, Thursday. See what runs, and what doesn't run."

  "Could we please switch the radio on for a moment?" asked Alison.

  "Why? Oh, to check out what's been happening in the," and Hugh grinned broadly, "real world? Why not? We might harvest some more ideas."

  Fetching the radio, she set it on the bar.

  " — Helsinki. This agreement represents a major advance in the lessening of international tension …"

  "How on Earth can an advance lessen something?" Martha asked.

  "You should meet my publisher," quipped Don.

  "— first genuine reduction in weapons systems, with inspection and verification by neutral observers from the Third World. The actual dismantling and downgrading of —"

  "It seems even God can't manage miracles overnight," Hugh remarked.

  "Blah to that," said Alison. "They're all scared of what could happen during one of the zombie intervals. Or just after one, when everyone's confused."

  "— reported casualty figures following the most recent break are already in the thousands. The worst disaster occurred at Heathrow Airport, where —"

  "See? It just takes one poor jerk to jab his finger at the wrong button. And poof. If this is an example of divine intervention, it's the most ham-fisted miracle I've ever come across," Alison said.

  "When you're cutting film, love," said Hugh, "you waste a lot of good material for the sake of the picture as a whole."

  "You sound as if you sneakingly admire what's going on," protested Don. "All this bloody cutting of our lives."

  Hugh poured himself a brandy, and squirted some soda into the glass.

  "No, it's ludicrous, and dangerous, and it's soul-destroying. But you've got to laugh at it, to get it in the right perspective…and yes, to keep our dignity and free will. It's a mad universe…and it's just turned out to be even madder than anybody could have imagined. Well, in my humble opinion the highest human art isn't tragedy. It's satire. And," here he nodded derisively toward the ceiling, "speaking as one trickster to another, I want whoever or whatever is directing this big show, Life, to notice that I've spotted what's going on. I've found out that reality is just a movie…and I can stay home and even laugh."

  "— have been inundated with requests for Librium and Valium —"

  "I laugh, therefore I am. Birds don't laugh. Cows don't laugh. There's the difference. Now let's get on with it. Let's make everyone kill themselves laughing. They deserve it."

  · · · · ·

  "The Remaking of Reality, the Motion Picture,"was prerecorded during the afternoons of October the first and second…with Hugh Carpenter in the role of Cosmic Director and the lovely Alison as his continuity-person…and it was edited into shape on the third.

  It was, in the opinion of all concerned, just about the sharpest and funniest half-hour of TV in the history of the world.

  Hugh turned from the video monitor to wave back to the technicians. Peter Rolfe, who had produced the show, pumped Hugh's hand and slapped him on the back, then embraced Alison and kissed her. After a moment's hesitation, he kissed Martha too. Though the show was prerecorded, the whole team had decided to be present for the transmission.

  Hugh popped open one of the champagne bottles he had brought along.

  "Out she flies, out she flies! To Manchester and Munich, to Tulsa and Tel Aviv! To Alpha Centauri and all points in the universe, if there's anybody out there! Cheers!"

  Before long, Rolfe's telephone was flashing for his attention.

  "Yes? Really? Oh superb!" he enthused. "Hugh! The switchboard is absolutely jammed. The viewers are just bubbling over. You've stopped them from throwing themselves under a bus tomorrow. You've stopped them from overdosing tonight. You've made the first real sense out of this ghastly mess. You've made the world funagain!"

  "What, no negative reactions at all?" interrupted Don.

  "Oh, there's a teeny little bit from the blasphemy brigade. But, my dear fellow, you can expect that."

  "I do. I look forward to it. The negative reactions are so comical."

  "Not this time, old son. It's heartfelt gratitude all round. The country's laughing its collective head off."

  · · · · ·

  "Do you realize," asked Rolfe, as he hosted the celebration party at his Hampstead house the next evening, "this has been a new high for TV? In the last twenty-four hours, you must have clocked up viewing figures of half a billion people? Give or take the Soviets, who don't believe in ratings, mean beasts."

  The carpet was strewn with telegrams. Kicking his way among them, Rolfe pressed another whiskey and water on Alison and kissed her again.

  "You've probably outdone Armstrong stepping onto the Moon," he called to Hugh.

  Tipsy people sprawled on the floor, watching a rerun of the show, chortling and whinnying at the high points. It was almost all high points.

  "Salud!" Rolfe toasted. "The whole world must be laughing tonight. —"

  · · · · ·

  "Damn!" swore Don. He glanced at the passing road sign. "Petworth, half a mile — We must be heading down to the cottage."

  Hugh was hunched tensely on Don's left, with Martha and Alison behind. Martha was wearing an orange headscarf tied tightly around her black curls…which was remarkably impromptu of her, for a weekend with friends.

  The fuel gauge was showing empty, though Don always kept the tank well filled.

  Slowing…and really, he had been speeding, doing nearly sixty along this country lane…he relaxed and admired the trees in the reddening sunset of their foliage.

  Hugh loosened up too. "You'v
e got to laugh, haven't you?" he asked reflectively.

  And then Don looked at his watch. It wasn't the weekend at all; it was midweek.

  "Good God, it's October the twentieth. That's the longest break yet. We're at Peter's place in Hampstead, on the fifth…I mean, we were. That's a cut of two whole weeks."

  "I've got the radio here," said Sarah.

  The filler music was Beethoven's. It played jubilantly on and on.

  "There's a lot to catch up on," remarked Hugh idly.

  Finally the music died away.

  "— and I am Robin Johnson. The date is —"

  "We'll be at the cottage in another ten minutes," Don said. "I've got a couple of spare gallons I keep there."

  "— news will come as a grave shock to you all. Briefly, the Helsinki disarmament talks collapsed in ruins on the eleventh of October. Yugoslavia was invaded by Warsaw Pact forces on the eighteenth, two days ago. Currently, Soviet armor is massing on the West German border. The NATO Alliance is on full alert, but so far — Wait! — I've just received an unconfirmed report that several tactical nuclear weapons have exploded inside West Germany. This report is as yet unconfirmed —"

  "But," said Hugh lamely.

  "So that's why we're all trying to get down to the cottage on an empty tank — We're trying to be the lucky ones."

  The engine missed several times, coughed, then quietly gave out. The Metro coasted to a halt.

  "It seems," said Alison quietly, "that we did killourselves laughing, after all."

  "Do you mean," whispered Martha, "'God…or something…is not mocked'?"

  "I don't know about 'God…or something'," said Don bitterly. "But I suppose we have to describe this as, well, a negative reaction. And somehow it doesn't seem comical. The movie's been axed."

  "Post-holocaust scenes now, I presume," grumbled Hugh. "No damn sense of continuity —"

  He wound the window down.

  "Cut!" he screamed at the sky. "Cut! Cut!"

  But the sky in the north brightened intolerably for a few seconds. Not long after, a fierce hot wind tore the red and gold leaves from the trees.