2023: a trilogy (Justified Ancients of Mu Mu)

by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu

  She keeps running.

  A small cloud passes between her and the sun.

  On the opposite bank are warehouses. Or that is what they used to be. They are now lived in by the young art crowd. The post-hipsters, the post-hack generation. The ones who can’t remember what it was like before FaceLife. The ones who don’t care. Winnie looks up at the open double door on the first floor of one of these warehouses. There is a woman standing there. Black boots, black jeans, black T-shirt, black hair. On the T-shirt is a stencil of ‘2023: WHAT THE FUUK IS GOING ON?’, the same as she had seen on the poster the young man had been putting up opposite her apartment. Their eyes meet. But only momentarily.

  Meanwhile:

  Yoko Ono, the young one whose real name is not Yoko Ono, is standing at her open doors looking down at the canal where she dropped the body of her boyfriend earlier that morning. And she is wondering why she still feels nothing. No regrets. No pain. No guilt. She thinks about John’s mum. She likes John’s mum. How will she explain John’s disappearance to her? But really she doesn’t give a shit. And one thing John taught her is to sometimes not give a shit. She can hear him saying right now as she stares down at the water: ‘If everybody gave a shit about everything, nothing would ever get done. It is our job to get things done.’

  She then notices the woman with the mousey hair running along the towpath on the opposite bank. She runs past every day. And Yoko thinks, ‘I wonder what she does and I wonder if she gives a shit? I wonder if she would kill her boyfriend?’

  This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing room. Virginia Woolf

  Meanwhile:

  Stevie Dobbs, whom many used to consider the most powerful person on Earth, when those sorts of things were considered, is sitting with her back against a giant redwood, taking a short break from her hike. She is thinking about the deal she did with TREE back in 2020. She is now wondering if it was worthwhile for the world at large.

  TREE (Trading Russian Empire Equity) was formerly Yandex, Russia’s top online trading company through the Teens. It was the deal between Apple and TREE that brought about the end of the war in the Ukraine and the other former Soviet states. It was the deal that bought out Putin in exchange for crowning him the Czar of the Russian Empire – a purely honorary position. Stevie Dobbs knew none of this would have been possible if the price of oil had not kept falling from 2014 until it reached zero in 2019, when the whole world switched to renewables.

  But Stevie Dobbs is thinking way back. Way, way back to when she was only a teenager. A genius teenager. A teenager The Beatles signed to Apple to invent the computer programme that would bring about world peace. And to the bitter rivalry she felt with that Hagbard Celine, as she was then. So why did she feel the need to fuck John Lennon? Just because she knew she could? And why did she have to let Yoko Ono know? And why did she trust George Harrison when he told her he would give her 50 per cent of the royalties from that charity single of his, when she knew in her heart Harrison would promise the same offer to Hagbard?

  But Stevie knew where John, Paul, George and Ringo hid their store of Achilles heels. She knew the secrets locked in the vaults of Apple. She knew of their ties with The American Medical Association. It was because of this knowledge – and John, Paul, George and Ringo’s knowledge of her knowledge – that she was able to do the deal that gave her the rights to take over all their future Beatles royalties and the very name of the company Apple itself. On 1 April 1976 she launched Apple Inc., and she never looked back.

  So why in 1980 did she feel the need to go and fuck John Lennon again? And why did she suspect – no, not suspect, but know – his murder was a set-up job? And she knew for almost certain who was behind it. And it wasn’t Yoko Ono.

  ‘I don’t know how to stop,’ states Trane.

  ‘Try taking the fucking horn out of your mouth, man,’ responds Miles.

  Stevie Dobbs invented a brother and called him J. R. ‘Bob’ Dobbs, who in turn invented a religion called the Church of the SubGenius. She still does not know why she did this, but her therapist thought it might be something to do with trying to get her own back on George Harrison.

  Meanwhile:

  Winnie keeps running. Up past the Hackney Marshes, with their goalposts as far as the eye can see. Then up Springfield Park, and she is bang into the Jewish Orthodox area. And she thinks how weird it is they have changed. Not in the way they look. The men still wear the same hats and the women still wear the same wigs, but it is their attitude that has changed. Five years ago, if you had come up here, there is no way you would have got a smile out of them. Now they are all smiles. Anti-Semitism for three thousand years, and bang, within three months it is all over. You can even go into a Kosher butcher’s and ask for a half-kilo of beef sausages and they don’t look at you funny.

  Up Clapton Common she runs, until she gets to Stamford Hill. There she sees the massive new billboard for FaceLife. As much as she now hates FaceLife, she can’t deny the billboard looks great. It’s the one with the leaves on a branch of a tree, with the FL logo cut out of the leaves and the sun shining through. It is one of those digital billboards where the images move. On this one you don’t notice to begin with, but the movement of the air makes the leaves flutter slightly. Very subtle.

  Winnie then heads up Amhurst Park until she gets to the New River. She follows the course of the New River. She is now in a trance. She can’t feel her body, it just runs and runs. And her mind has risen above the city. She can see the world stretching to the horizon. She can see the curvature of the Earth. But then she sees the Shard again, with that giant eyeball spiked on top of it. That eyeball staring back at her. And the loathing and the rage return.

  She will not hit ‘Send’.

  She will not save mankind from death.

  She will start a new chapter in her life.

  She will find that man with the bare back who was putting up the poster with ‘2023: WHAT THE FUUK IS GOING ON?’ on it.

  She will fuck him and fuck him, and when she can’t fuck any more she will nail his hands and feet to the floor and leave him to …

  But she knows she won’t. She never does.

  Just as she is about to enter Victory Mansions, by the Arcola Theatre in Dalston, she sees a woman pasting up one of the ‘2023: WHAT THE FUUK IS GOING ON?’ posters. It is the same woman she saw standing in the warehouse down in Hackney Wake, by the Lee Navigation.

  She stops running and goes over to ask her—

  Meanwhile:

  Jonathan King sits in a Starbucks somewhere South of the river. He is editing the Jonathan King Wikipedia page.

  Barnhill

  Jura

  24 April 1984

  Dear Diary,

  Tonight has been a great night at the bar. Not only was Francis in a good mood, one of his mates was up from Devon. He drives a Bonneville. And there was a rock band playing in the village hall. They are called Echo & His Bunnymen. They are from Liverpool, I think. Seems they are quite famous. The whole population of Jura was there and half of Islay. Me and Francis’s friend and the manager of the band got talking afterwards. He was quite mad. All he seemed to want to know was how he could take his band off to some Neolithic standing stones he had read about on the island. Then when they learnt it was me that had written Fish Farm, they were all incredibly impressed. The guitarist from the band, whose name was Will, swapped me his favourite comic for my autograph. The comic was called Swamp Thing. Then the drummer of the band, who was exceedingly cute, saw my Brough Superior Motorcycle, and that was it. They all wanted to have their photographs taken sitting on it. There was a journalist and photographer up from London doing a feature on the band for one of the music newspapers called the New Melody Express.

  And then this friend of Francis – his name was Jimmy, I think – it turns out he is famous as well. When he was only fourteen, he did this drawing based o
n a character from a book and then sent it off to one of his favourite bands called Led Zephyr, or something, and they used it on the cover of one of their records. It seems this record was a number one around the world. Then they made a poster out of his drawing and it became the biggest-selling poster of all time in the world. Not that I know anything about posters. Maybe I should tell Dog Ledger about him. Maybe he could work on the animated version of Fish Farm. Or maybe chapter plates for my new book.

  I won’t deny I attempted to persuade the cute drummer from Echo & His Bunnymen back to the cottage. He was very courteous about it, but he did tell me that although he thought me very attractive, I was older than his mother, and maybe we should just stay friends.

  This morning I woke early, read this comic called Swamp Thing. It was like no other comic I have ever read before. Nothing like Topper or Whizzer, which I used to read when I was at school. While eating my kippers and home-baked soda bread, I remembered a conversation I had with the manager of the band last night. He was telling me how he used to go to art school in Northampton, and the person who wrote Swamp Thing also lived in Northampton and he was called Alan Moore. One night in 1970 they were both at the same rock concert. Four bands were playing and it only cost a penny to get in, and this gave him an idea.

  The idea was that if he ever managed a band, they should play in strange far-off places, not to make lots of money but to give the band a strange and far-off-places type of mystery. He said it was a much better way to get people to want to buy their records than to play in boring places like Northampton and only charge a penny to see them.

  He said Echo & His Bunnymen are currently on a tour, following a ley line from the Callanish Stones on the Outer Hebrides to the Albert Hall in London. I don’t know whether to believe him or not.

  Then after this concert in Northampton in 1970 he got talking to someone called Alan, who turned out to be this Alan Moore, and he also thought it was shit. He said Titus Groan was one of the best books he had ever read, and was the name of one of the bands. And then it turned out that the picture on the record sleeve, which Francis’s friend from Devon had drawn, was based on one of the characters in Titus Groan. What were the chances of all that happening in one night?

  I think I will rewrite some of yesterday’s chapter to include some of this. The fax machine at the hotel is broken, so I was not able to send anything through to Dog. I am quite relieved. I could do with a break from his daily criticism.

  Today is looking like it is going to be good, and once I have reworked Chapter 4 I will plough straight into Chapter 5. Things are about to start getting dangerous.

  Love,

  Roberta X

  5: EVERYONE’S GONE TO THE MOON

  13:29 Sunday 23 April 2023

  Whatever Winnie was going to ask her has gone, evaporated, irrelevant. The girl standing in front of her, with the black boots, black jeans, black ‘2023: WHAT THE FUUK IS GOING ON?’ T-shirt and black hair has a far more distinguishing feature. Across her mouth is a broad strip of Gaffa Tape. And this girl, who was in the process of pasting up the next ‘2023: WHAT THE FUUK IS GOING ON?’ poster, is indicating to Winnie for her to pull the Gaffa Tape from her mouth. Winnie is understandably confused, but the confusion does not stop her immediately and without further thinking from tearing off the Gaffa Tape from this stranger’s mouth.

  But what happens next shocks Winnie even more. And remember this is all happening at lunchtime in a busy part of Dalston. This stranger, now without her mouth taped over with Gaffa, drops the wallpapering brush from one hand and bucket of paste from the other, embraces Winnie and attempts to snog her.

  Winnie pushes her away. The girl laughs loudly. The girl then pulls a book out from the bag that holds the roll of posters yet to be fly-posted. The book is yellow, hardback; there was no time for Winnie to see the title or the cover properly before this strange girl opens the book seemingly at random. The left-hand page is blank. The right-hand page has four words on it. Note: this girl has still not uttered a single word. Winnie reads the words on the page. There are only four words on the page. They are ‘GAFFA TAPE YOUR MOUTH’. She then turns the page. Again the left is blank and on the right are a few words: ‘ASK A STRANGER TO RIP THE GAFFA TAPE OFF YOUR MOUTH’. She turns the page again, and again there is a blank page opposite a page with a few words. In fact, only three words: ‘SNOG THE STRANGER’.

  Winnie is confused, amused and somewhat alarmed. This girl then flicks through the book to another page and gesticulates to Winnie to read it. Winnie reads:

  Throw a dice

  If it turns up one, stop talking for one hour

  If it turns up two, stop talking for one day

  If it turns up three, stop talking for one week

  If it turns up four, stop talking for one month

  If it turns up five, stop talking for one year

  If it turns up six, stop talking for the rest of your life

  The last line has been heavily underlined with pencil, and the girl is pointing at it. She shoves it towards Winnie, insisting in no uncertain terms that Winnie has this copy of the book. For some reason, Winnie does not ask her questions. She is assuming the girl is dumb and maybe to talk to a dumb person is in some way insulting. Maybe this girl is deaf and dumb.

  Winnie takes the book. Crosses the road and enters Victory Mansions.

  Back in her apartment she engages with her post-run ritual by slicing a grapefruit in half and squeezing the juice into a glass. Then she goes out onto her balcony with the glass in one hand and the book she has just been given in the other. The deaf and dumb girl has gone from the street below. Nowhere to be seen.

  Winnie sits down on her balcony chair and takes a sip of the grapefruit juice and looks at the book. On the front cover is a grapefruit. On the back is a grapefruit sliced in half. Winnie knows coincidences are meaningless. Winnie knows humans projecting meaning onto ‘coincidences’ is just part of the weakness of the human condition.

  She reads the words on the front cover: ‘Grapefruit Are Not the Only Bombs by Yoko Ono’.

  At this point in this chapter we have to step back and consider some things.

  The author of this book made a decision earlier today, when she was drinking her own freshly squeezed grapefruit juice in a cottage at the northern tip of Jura. The decision concerned how to present the character of the other Yoko Ono. Her problem had been to work out how important a character she should be in the book. Should we the readers want to project ourselves onto her in the same way we may already be projecting ourselves onto Winnie? Or would that weaken Winnie as the protagonist and possible heroine of the book? The author already knows she wants to develop a relationship between Winnie and this Yoko Ono, but in so doing does not want to weaken Winnie’s position in these pages of a story (or is this literature? I hope it isn’t genre). She knows it is important for there to be an evolving backstory to Winnie. It is this backstory that drives her. But with this other woman (note: no longer girl), maybe she should remove any suggestion of a backstory. That she should be a dark, threatening other, more a shadow of ourselves. It was on squeezing the second half of her grapefruit that she decided from now on in this story this Yoko Ono does not speak. And we never learn any more about where she comes from and why she does the things she does. She just does.

  That said, there is one thing I know and you are about to know and she will never know. And it is this: during John Lennon’s lost weekend (1973–5), he fathered a child. A girl, Lennon’s only daughter. This is kept a secret from both the world at large and Lennon himself. This daughter goes on to have a child of her own in the year 2000. This girl grows up to have her own suspicions and fantasies about her own background. This girl becomes a woman and decides to call herself Yoko Ono and write a book called Grapefruit Are Not the Only Bombs. This Yoko Ono considers herself to be an artist. An angry artist, even if not a very original or good artist. But certainly a very motivated artist.

  This book is simple
. It contains a hundred instructions. A less than sympathetic reader of the book might claim she has just ripped off Grapefruit by the real Yoko Ono, or maybe even Oblique Strategies by the composer Gavin Bryars.

  She has it designed and typeset but printed in an edition of only 23 copies. That is all she needs.

  There is something else you should know about her. She has a private income. She does not know where it comes from, but every six months several thousand ZitCoins are added to her account. This troubles her but she never questions it.

  Jonathan King is still sitting in a Starbucks somewhere in South London. In fact, we now have confirmation about where he is: it is a branch of Starbucks at Borough Market. It is near his recording studio. He is updating on his Wikipedia page the amount of records he has sold, both as a solo artist and as a producer. He has decided that for each album he sold when he was producing The American Medical Association back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, the sales can now be multiplied by ten, in that each album would have included at least ten tracks, and in the world of downloads (circa 2000 to 2017), each download of an individual track can be counted as a record sale. Much to Jonathan King’s satisfaction, he has now not just sold 213,569,213 albums but 2,135,692,130 tracks. That is much more impressive.

  Now that all recorded music is streamed, actual sales do not exist and no one really gives a shit how many records, tracks or downloads were sold back in the pre-streaming era. But for Jonathan King these historic facts are all-important.

  What Jonathan King is not satisfied about is that he has not had a hit record for the last thirty years, since he was producing The American Medical Association, before they ‘retired’ after their performance at the Brits in 1992. And what is even worse is that his nemesis Pete Waterman is back in business and having hits. And not just any old hits: worldwide epoch-defining hits. Pete Waterman went and signed the two most media friendly of those Russian feminist provocateurs Pussy Riot. What Jonathan King wants to find is two London-based women who can compete and beat Pussy Riot at their own game.