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PopCo Page 37

by Scarlett Thomas


  *

  Ben and I wake up at dinner time. He gets out of bed with messed-up hair and walks through to the bathroom. I can hear him peeing and then the taps running.

  ‘What do you want for dinner?’ he asks me when he comes back.

  ‘You don’t have to …’ I say.

  He smiles. ‘Shut up. Just give me your order.’

  ‘Oh. Well, just bring me whatever you’re having.’

  ‘Do you mind if I eat here too?’

  ‘Of course not.’ I yawn. ‘Bloody hell. I didn’t think it was possible to sleep as much as I have over the last couple of days.’

  ‘You need rest,’ Ben says, walking to the door. ‘Oh. There’s something here.’ He bends down and picks up a white envelope. ‘There’s nothing written on the front. Do you want me to ….?’

  ‘No,’ I say quickly, holding out my hand. ‘That’s OK.’

  He passes it to me. ‘All right. Well, I’ll see you in a bit.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Is this the longer message from my unknown correspondent? I tear open the flap and pull out the contents of the envelope. It’s definitely not the longer message. There is just one thing in here: a white business card with a mobile phone number on it. There is a message in blue ink on the back. Alice, it says. Forgive my jealousy. If you ever change your mind …??? Oh, well. Here’s the number again anyway. G.

  My heart is beating fast. Shit. What if Ben had seen this? It’s not just that this is a secret note from another man; this is evidence that I have had/will have some sort of romantic entanglement with one of the PopCo Board. This isn’t just ludicrous, it’s deeply, deeply lame and uncool. Of course, I don’t care about being cool most of the time but this is the one issue on which I think cool has it right. Creatives are creatives and bosses are bosses. That’s it. You can’t mix the two groups. Also, though, I think about the way Georges stood here in his suit looking down at me. I think about Doctor Death and his Vicodin. Then I think about Ben. Suddenly, it’s not just sex with him. With a strange sense of déjà vu, and without thinking any more about this, I get out of bed, find my lighter and burn the business card.

  ‘What’s that smell?’ Ben says, when he comes back.

  ‘What smell?’ I say.

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ Ben puts down the two trays he is carrying.

  ‘So what have we got?’ I ask.

  ‘We have got … Um … Sticky onion tarts; braised red cabbage with apple and red wine sauce; and potato, parsley and celeriac mash. There was beans and chips but I thought I’d get the posh stuff. For pudding we have lemon cake with mint leaves. One of the chefs said they call it Let Them Eat Cake cake. Some kind of Marie Antoinette thing. I think they’re a bit bored down there. I brought you some green gunpowder tea as well. I’ve had a real thing about gunpowder tea lately.’

  ‘I love green tea,’ I say. Ben passes me my tray. ‘This looks amazing. Is it all ….’

  ‘What, vegan? Yep.’

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘Shall we have the radio on?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘It’s just up there, on the windowsill.’

  Ben gets up. ‘What station?’

  ‘Um … Well, it’s not late enough for Radio 3 to be any good. I don’t know. Maybe 4? You choose.’

  Ben fiddles with the dial, switching reception from FM to SW. It crackles and hums a lot and then, suddenly, an intense bass noise kicks in, with ethereal flute sounds. The two melodies, high and low, twist around each other like alien tentacles.

  ‘Cool,’ Ben says. ‘They’re on.’

  ‘Who’s “they”? What’s this?’

  ‘Zion Radio.’

  ‘Pirate?’

  ‘Yeah, sort of. As much as anything is on short wave.’

  ‘Zion as in Neuromancer?’

  ‘Yeah. These two postgrad students in Poland run it. They play math rock, experimental jazz, classical, drum and bass and … oh, here you go.’

  A woman’s voice fades up over the track.

  ‘She’s speaking Polish,’ I say.

  ‘Wait,’ says Ben.

  She stops speaking and then starts again, this time in English. A new track starts softly in the background. It is one of Bach’s fugues – something my grandmother used to play all the time. But there’s something else coming in and out of it, another track; very faint drums. The woman keeps speaking, the English words softened by her accent. I recognise that she is reading something, and I quickly realise that it’s Gibson, but I’m not sure which one. Then I hear the word Wintermute and smile.

  ‘She’s reading Neuromancer,’ I say, bemused.

  ‘Yeah. They do this most nights. They don’t read a whole book, or even the same one, they just broadcast music and excerpts of whatever they choose to read that night. It’s brilliant.’

  ‘I love this,’ I say. It’s an odd experience, sitting down to eat while a Polish woman reads William Gibson on short-wave radio, but odd in a very, very good way. ‘Oh yum,’ I say, trying some of the mash. ‘This is amazing.’

  ‘Those chefs are pretty good.’

  We are silent for a while, listening to the radio and savouring our food.

  ‘Ben?’ I say eventually.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Thanks for looking after me.’

  He smiles back at me. ‘Any time,’ he says. He finishes his onion tart. ‘Do you really like this?’ he asks.

  ‘What?’

  He gestures at the radio. ‘The Gibson stuff?’

  ‘God yes. Especially done like this. I wrote my thesis on cyberpunk at university.’

  ‘As part of what degree?’

  ‘English.’

  ‘I thought you’d done maths or something like that.’

  I smile. ‘You’re not the only one. Violet thought so, too. I had a mathematical grandmother, which is how I know the few bits of maths I do.’

  ‘Had?’

  ‘She died. Just after I finished university.’

  I tell him briefly about how I lived with my grandparents when I was a child and what a good job they did of bringing me up, even if I didn’t always appreciate it. I tell him about my mother dying and my father disappearing. Even the short version takes almost an hour, during which time it gets dark outside, the bird finally stops singing and Ben smokes a cigarette out of the window while I enjoy the passive smoke. We drink gunpowder tea.

  ‘So your father just went?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘With no explanation?’

  ‘No.’ I don’t tell Ben about the necklace and all that stuff. There are lots of reasons not to tell him but at the moment the main one seems to be that I want him to be intrigued and fascinated with me, not with my past. If that’s not possible, then the programme can terminate. I will not put an artificially infinite loop into this relationship. The algorithm is already wonky but is at least looping at the correct point. I will not make him want me because of intrigue/money.

  ‘That’s horrible,’ Ben says, about my father.

  ‘Yeah.’ I want to change the subject. ‘What did you do at university?’

  ‘Philosophy and Theology.’

  I hadn’t expected this. ‘Wow.’

  ‘Yeah. Doesn’t make you very obviously employable. It was interesting, though.’

  ‘So how did you end up in the videogames division of PopCo?’

  ‘That’s a pretty long story.’

  Ben starts clearing the trays away. He pours more gunpowder tea for both of us and passes me my cup. I smell the smoky, green tea aroma. I hadn’t had gunpowder tea for ages before tonight. It’s amazing.

  ‘Too long?’

  ‘Probably. But the bare bones are that I needed money fast, for various reasons. I’ve always coded, ever since I got my first BBC Microcomputer in the 80s. I used to create Othello games for fun, and little text adventures. Obviously, as a kid, I got heavily into science fiction and fantasy. I was a right little geek. I started wondering about other worlds, and other forms of consci
ousness. I ran these crazy astronomy programmes on my computer and persuaded my parents to buy me a telescope. It’s …’ He laughs. ‘It’s a long story, like I said. I basically became obsessed with making contact with other worlds. Then, when I hit about fifteen, or so, I suddenly started thinking about things in a different way. What would it mean if there were other worlds? Could computers ever develop consciousness? How do you define life? When it came to choosing A levels, I decided to go for Religious Studies, Philosophy and Psychology. I left science behind. There was also this girl …’

  ‘Isn’t there always?’ I say, feeling an unfamiliar discomfort. Jealousy? What was this girl like? Did he reject her or she him? Does he still dream about her?

  ‘At university I became interested in thinkers like Deleuze, Baudrillard, Virilio. I think I may have done the same as you – left the scientific stuff behind and then picked it up again as part of an arts degree.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s exactly what I did.’ For a moment it all comes back to me; how quickly it happened. One minute I was playing chess and doing maths all the time, the next I had been re-routed into more ‘normal’ girls’ activities: reading, writing stories and worrying about my clothes. ‘How did you do it?’ I ask him. ‘What sorts of things were you interested in?’

  Ben sips his tea. ‘Artificial intelligence, machines, control screens … I loved all that stuff. In Theology, I did a lot of work on Indian religions. Going back to my roots, kind of. I’m half Indian but I had pretty much repressed my Indian side for years, especially at school, where you just try not to be too different. People would think I was Greek, or maybe Italian. I didn’t correct them. In my final year thesis I looked at Artificial Intelligence, Otherness and the Enslavement of Consciousness. It was something to do with reading the capitalist economy as an AI programme. I had stopped looking for aliens by that point. Anyway, I started an MA immediately after I graduated – I wasn’t about to go and start working for the establishment I’d been criticising – but then my dad was made redundant and I had to leave the MA rather quickly, get my hair cut and get a job.’

  ‘You had to leave?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t have to. My parents didn’t ask me to or anything, but they had a huge mortgage and no income. I had to help them. So I started sending my CV out to, well, everywhere really. So many of the people on my degree had ended up in call-centres or doing media sales and these did seem to be the only jobs you could apply for with an arts degree and no real work experience. I even applied for work at fast-food chains, can you believe that? I had this vague idea that I would try to get the most pro-capitalist job ever and try to screw the system from the inside. But these places know better than to employ philosophy graduates. Anyway, I also sent my CV to a few videogames companies. Amazingly, one of them picked me up. My coding skills weren’t that up-to-date by then but they liked my degree, combined with my background. They put me on story-lines, continuity and tea-making with the RPG team. A year later the company was bought by PopCo and I paid half my parents’ mortgage with the bonus. PopCo liked me and soon they paired me up with Chloë and told us to create and project-manage a game of our own. So we came up with The Sphere. And now here I am.’

  I finished my tea a while ago so now I reach for my little bottle of Arsenicum. You need to take homeopathic remedies on a clean mouth, so it’s good to wait five minutes or so after finishing tea or whatever before taking them. I tip a little pill into the lid and then chuck it onto my tongue. In the background, the Polish woman is still reading Neuromancer, this time with Miles Davis in the background.

  ‘I’m glad we ended up here together,’ I say.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘If only I didn’t feel so ill …’

  ‘What’s that you’ve just taken?’

  ‘Arsenicum. It’s homeopathic. I don’t think it’s the right remedy but it’s the closest one I’ve got.’

  ‘What happens if it’s not the right remedy but close?’

  ‘Um, it doesn’t really work properly. But I haven’t got anything else.’

  Ben looks concerned. ‘Where would you get the right remedy?’

  ‘The Internet. Or, if it was a low potency, from a health-food shop. But I don’t know what the right remedy is. I have to note down all my symptoms and then look them all up. I don’t have any of my books here, so …’

  ‘Is there no other way?’

  ‘Well, yeah. They have online repertories. But there’s no Internet here so I’m just going to have to make do.’ I smile. ‘It could be a lot worse. Mind you, I really could do with some nicotine gum as well. And …’ I sigh. ‘I really, really feel like some sweets. I don’t know. It’s hard with there being no shops here.’

  ‘I could go to the shops for you.’

  ‘No, really …’

  Ben gets up and pushes his black glasses up his nose. ‘Hang on,’ he says. ‘I think I have an idea. I may be able to get you on the Internet. Back in a bit.’ Then he leaves the room.

  If he is going to get me on the Internet (I can’t think how) then I will need to have my symptoms ready to look up. How am I feeling? It is very odd, trying to repertorise your own symptoms and prescribe yourself a remedy, but I don’t really have much choice. So, how do you feel, Alice? I feel like shit. Can you be more specific? I think about what I would do with a patient. I have never had any patients, of course, not real ones. I have prescribed for Atari, for Rachel and for Dan. This is how a lot of homeopathy occurs. Someone learns the art and then uses it casually with friends, colleagues and relations, like the neighbourhood witch. I imagine myself with a cape and a pentagram, and smile. This isn’t helping. I take out my notebook and a pen and flick to a new page before writing my name and the date at the top of it. On the way to this clean, new page, I pass my idea: pages and pages of brainstorm-style notes and diagrams. Is this idea any good? Do I care? I’m not sure.

  The key to this is writing down what you would notice about yourself if you were an impartial observer. My necklace idea at least proves my mind is active. Is my mind unusually active, though? I’m not sure. Maybe I should do the ‘generals’ before I do the mentals. I am cold and I have a desire for warm drinks (especially gunpowder tea and – still – miso soup). Miso soup is salty, as well. In fact, I am craving salt. I imagine plates of chips and crisps and soy sauce. I feel better keeping still in bed and movement makes me worse. But do I feel better from coughing, or talking? These are forms of movement as well. I cough experimentally. Nope. Don’t feel any better from that. I make some notes. Is there anything else that makes me feel better or worse? I feel better when Ben is here. I add Better from company to my notes and then think some more. Following my strange dream on Saturday night, all I have dreamt of is birds, oddly enough. Dreams of birds, I write down. It is so hard to try to note your own mental symptoms. Come on, Alice. What thoughts are you having? What, if anything, has you obsessed?

  Here’s one thing. Earlier, when I was talking to Ben about milk, something happened in my mind. I can’t exactly describe it but something changed. All I’ve been thinking since then is this: just because everyone does something, does that mean it is correct? Mark Blackman proved that people will do something just because everyone else does. And I’ve been wondering: since I have devoted a lot of my life to not doing what everyone else does, why is it that I accept so much that is obviously wrong? Why is it that even I assume that some things are OK simply because everyone accepts that they are? Of course, I always knew that bad things happen in the world. I am not an idiot. But my attitude has always been that you just have to try to get through life, for as long as possible, without deliberately making things worse but, also, aware of the fact that you can’t make anything better. In the end, there’s probably no four-dimensional being watching us to see if we make the right choices. There is no judgement. You live your life and hope that you won’t be involved in any wars and then what? It’s all over, and you become earth.

  War. When Hitler was around, it
was quite clear who the enemy was. But who, or what, do people fight now? I sense that people simply fight their own, individualistic wars against their noisy neighbours, or drug addiction, or the mobile phone receiver in their garden (but not the one in the next town, or the unjust war 1,000 miles away). Perhaps the world seems like too big a thing to try to save, especially when there are so many enemies out there. It’s too late! Save yourself! Does that make more sense? I have always felt incapable of ‘saving’ anything: myself, the world, whatever. One person doesn’t matter. One person can’t matter, unless that person is a head of state. I think about my grandfather and all the small personal battles he fought. He was against greed, and acquisitiveness, and plundering the environment for whatever treasure you thought it might contain. If he received bad service in a shop, he would never confront the assistant. Instead, he would come home and write a long letter to the Managing Director of whatever company it was, complaining about their exploitation of their staff and how, since this company so obviously exploited its staff, and since this led to a bad service, he wouldn’t be shopping there again. One time I suggested to him that perhaps the member of staff was to blame. Surely people should take some responsibility for their actions? If their company was that bad, surely the employee could just leave? ‘We all have to fight the system,’ he said to me. ‘Otherwise no one will.’

  Another strange memory: an essay I did at university. Is The Tempest a racist text? I remember drawing meaning out of the word ‘text’, using Barthes to argue that text lives in a dimension of its own, not stuck in its own time, and needs the reader to take things to it in order for it to make sense. As a text, The Tempest is racist if you read it as a story about Caliban, the indigenous inhabitant of the island, being colonised and enslaved by Prospero. But what about theatre companies who cast Caliban less as a ‘monstrous’ native and more as an ambiguous magical creature? Are those texts racist? Is it OK to enslave magical creatures? No one seems to mind Prospero’s domination of Ariel, after all. At the time of this essay, we had a seminar in which someone argued that The Tempest could not be seen as a racist text because in Shakespeare’s time people hadn’t been educated to recognise racism or be against it. You couldn’t blame Shakespeare and his audiences for their attitudes, this person argued, because they hadn’t been educated to have different attitudes. Educated by whom? The Disney Corporation? I argued back that everyone is capable of logic, and everyone is capable of moral reasoning. Just because most people think something is OK does not mean you should think so too. Slavery would never have been abolished if everyone just sat back and said, ‘Oh, everyone else says this is all right and after all it is jolly convenient …’ I remember at the time wanting to mention Francis Stevenson, who was against slavery before it even became popular. But no one had heard of Francis Stevenson, or (officially) proved he existed, so I didn’t say anything.

 

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