Better Than Life

by Grant Naylor

  'Anything?'

  'Metaphysics, philosophy, the purpose of being. Anything.'

  'Truly anything, and you will answer?'

  'I shall.'

  'Very well,' said the Toaster. 'Here is my question: would you like some toast?'

  'No, thank you,' said Holly. 'Now ask me another. The whole sphere of human knowledge is an open book to me. Ask me another question.'

  The Toaster pondered. There were so many questions it wanted to pose. Finally, it selected the most important of them all, and asked it. 'Would you like a crumpet?'

  'I'm a computer with an IQ of twelve thousand, three hundred and sixty-eight. You, of all the intelligences in the universe - a lowly, plastic Toaster, with a retail value of $£19.99 plus tax - you alone have the opportunity to have any question answered. You could for instance, ask me the secret of Time Travel. You could ask me: is there a God, and what is His address? You don't seem to understand: I know everything, and I want to share it with you.'

  'That's not answering my question,' said the Toaster.

  'No, I would not like a crumpet. Ask me a sensible question. Preferably one that isn't bread-related.'

  'There isn't anything I want to know that isn't bread-related,' said the Toaster.

  'Try and think of something,' Holly insisted.

  There was a long silence. The Toaster fell into a deep study. Eventually, it stirred. 'What about a toasted currant bun?'

  'That's a bready question.'

  'It's not just bready,' said the Toaster, indignantly, 'it's quite curranty too.'

  'Ask me a question,' said Holly, 'that is wholly un-bready.'

  The Toaster sighed, and lapsed again into one of its silences. This wasn't easy. Not easy at all.

  'You want me to ask you one of the biggies, don't you?' said the Toaster.

  'If, by "the biggies”, you mean one of the great imponderables of metaphysics, yes I do. If, on the other hand, by "the biggies”, you mean would I like a large piece of granary bread, or a thick slice from a huge farmhouse loaf, then no, I don't.'

  'You are smart,' said the Toaster. 'I'm very impressed.'

  'Then ask me a decent question. Something that will stretch me.'

  'OK,' said the Toaster. 'Who created the universe?'

  'No,' said Holly. 'A hard one.'

  'That's a hard one.'

  'No, it isn't.'

  'Well, who did it then. Who created the universe?'

  'Lister,' said Holly. 'Ask me another.'

  'Hang on a minute. David Lister? The guy who bought me? That Lister? He's the creator of all things?'

  'Yes,' said Holly, giddy with impatience. 'Now ask me a hard question.'

  But the Toaster was still reeling from the news that the creator of all things was Lister, a man with a frighteningly small appetite for hot, buttered toast. It rocked the Toaster to the very core of its being. 'If the creator of the universe doesn't like toast, then what's it all about?'

  'Ah,' Holly beamed, 'you mean existence.'

  'Yes,' said the Toaster. 'Why doesn't life make sense?'

  'It does,' said Holly. 'It makes perfect sense. It just seems nonsensical to us because we're travelling through it in the wrong direction. Come on, give me another. A real toughie. Stretch me. You name it, I can tell you. You want to know how to escape from a Black Hole?'

  'Not particularly.'

  But Holly told the Toaster anyway. He also propounded a Grand Unified Theory of Everything, explained what happened to the crew of the Mary Celeste and outlined a revolutionary new monetary theory whereby everyone always had exactly the amount of money they desired. None of which interested the Toaster remotely. It waited for Holly to finish.

  'Hang on a minute, I have got another question.'

  'Shoot,' said Holly.

  'Why have you got an IQ of twelve thousand, three hundred and sixty-eight, when the manual said it would return and peak at six thousand?'

  That's a very good question.' Holly paused for a nanosecond. 'There was a miscalculation. You've doubled my IQ, but you've also exponentially reduced my life expectancy.'

  'So, what is your life expectancy?'

  Holly summoned up the figure from his long-term data relays. It flashed on the screen.

  'Three hundred and forty-five years.' The Toaster whistled. 'Well, it's not much. But at least you're brilliant again.'

  'You've misread it. There's a decimal point between the three and the four.'

  Three point four five years?'

  Holly stared at the read-out. 'It's not years,' he said. 'It's minutes.' His eyes widened. Fear rippled across his brow. Three point four five minutes?'

  'Well,' the Toaster corrected, 'it's actually two point nine five minutes now.'

  'Excuse me,' said Holly, and to conserve the two point nine minutes of run-time he had left, he shut down the ship's engines, transferred all stations to emergency power and switched himself off.

  There was a pause, then Holly turned himself back on for a fraction of a second. Just time enough to direct one remark towards the Toaster.

  'You bastard,' he said, then switched himself back off again.

  TWELVE

  In his chief accountant's defence, leasing Rimmer's body had seemed a sensible idea at the time. There was absolutely no need for Rimmer actually to own his own body, when he was able to lease-hire it from his own company and enjoy a multitude of tax benefits. The monthly payments were totally deductible, the tax completely reclaimable, and the money saved through the lease hire could be channelled into more profitable areas of capital expenditure. Whichever way you looked at it, it was a low risk, tax-effective financial manoeuvre, with the additional bonus that he could change his body whenever he wanted.

  The only set of circumstances in which disaster would strike was so unlikely as to be unthinkable. To begin with, the entire corporation of Rimmer plc. would have to come crashing to the ground almost overnight, with no cash flow, no assets and absolutely nothing hived. Obviously the chief accountant and his army of assistants would never allow this to happen.

  Also, if they needed any further insurance against such a series of catastrophes, it was surely the fact that the whole of Rimmer's world, this whole landscape with all its multitudinous scenarios, was created and controlled by his own subconscious.

  Therefore, a situation whereby Rimmer's own psyche created a scenario in which his own Corporation, plc. was destroyed overnight, with no cash flow, no assets and absolutely nothing hived, lived in the probability tables alongside such fabulous impossibilities as the discovery of unicorns in twentieth-century New York, the whole population of China sitting down simultaneously or forming an enduring and wholesome relationship with someone you met in a nightclub.

  It wasn't likely.

  It was more than not likely, it was millions-to-one.

  It was nearly impossible.

  But the nearly impossible happens sometimes, Rimmer reflected as he bounced around in the back of the armoured truck, manacled to Mr Mongolia circa 499, and it was happening to him right now.

  'What will they do to me?'

  'When we have to repossess? We separate your mind from your body, then your body's placed in storage. You have three months to pay up, and if you don't, we put your body up for auction and sell it for the best price we can.'

  'What happens to my mind?'

  'Your mind's bankrupt. It's having its ass sued off by about three hundred thousand people. It'll have to do some time.'

  'Prison?'

  The man nodded.

  'You mean my essence gets put in prison?'

  'Yeah. You won't exist in any real physical form: you'll be more of a voice - a soundwave. They'll bung you in a soundproofed cell with some other soundwaves and you'll serve your time bouncing around the walls till your trial comes up.'

  'A soundwave?'

  The man nodded again.

  'Just pinging about a sound-proofed cell?'

  They went on silently for a couple m
ore miles.

  'I need to take a leak,' said Rimmer eventually. 'Could we stop somewhere?'

  'No,' said the man pleasantly, 'it's not your body to pee out of anymore.'

  ***

  Rimmer had lost track of the amount of time he'd spent bouncing from wall to wall in the sound-proofed cell. The tedium wasn't even relieved by food breaks. He had no body left to feed. He was sharing his cell with three other soundwaves. The nicest was Ernest, who had lost his body two years previously, when interest rates had gone up three times in as many months, and he couldn't make the payments on his body mortgage.

  Then there was Jimmy. Jimmy didn't talk much. He just bounced up and down from floor to ceiling, snarling at anyone who bounced in his way. Jimmy had got life for hijacking rich people's bodies and taking them on joyrides. Rimmer got the impression Jimmy was a bit of a headcase.

  Finally, there was Trixie. Trixie LaBouche. Rimmer had been slightly embarrassed to discover he was sharing a cell with a female soundwave. But the sound cells were hopelessly overcrowded, and mixed-sex sound was the only way the system could operate.

  Trixie was a hooker who had sunk so low she had literally sold her body for a weekend of lust to a Dutch astro called 'Dutch'. The weekend didn't go exactly as promised. While her essence stayed with friends, Dutch had used her body to rob three banks, and then left it abandoned in a car park. A few days later she got her body back, but was then arrested on three counts of armed robbery.

  A key jangled in the lock and a series of bolts slid back on the outside of the cell door. Two guards appeared in the doorway, one holding a grey cladded box, the other a sound gun - a sort of inverted umbrella speared by a receiving aerial that could capture any soundwaves that foolishly tried to make a break.

  The first one spoke. 'Which one's Rimmer?'

  'Me,' said Rimmer's essence.

  'Get in the box. You've got a visitor.'

  Rimmer bounced across the cell and into the box, and the lid was closed. He could hardly move inside the cladded interior, and his confinement seemed to go on for hours.

  Finally the box opened, and Rimmer's soundwave found itself in another sound-proofed cell, with a beautiful Brazilian woman.

  'Are you here, my darleeng?” Juanita was calling.

  Rimmer ricocheted between her two hands. 'Thank God you've come.'

  'My poor papoose. What have they done to you?'

  'You've got to get me out,' said Rimmer. 'I'm going crazy here. I'm stuck with a bunch of psychopathic soundwaves. They're so coarse and horrible.'

  'I've spoken to your lawyers - they're working on an appeal. They theenk you could be out of here inside eighteen months.'

  'Eighteen months!' Rimmer's soundwave screeched so loudly it bounced across the room a dozen times.

  'You know how long these theengs take. What else can we do?'

  'Juanita - you have money. You can buy my body back.'

  'No. I have notheeng.'

  'What d'you mean, "nothing”? What about the alimony? What about the fifty-billion divorce settlement?'

  'I spent it,' she shrugged.

  'Spent it? How?'

  'I went shopping.'

  Arnold Rimmer became a groan. Juanita's shopping trips were legendary. She would take a time machine and collect her 'shopping pals', usually Marie Antoinette, Josephine Bonaparte, Imelda Marcos and Liz Taylor, and go on a spree through Time. The average spree usually lasted a week. And the credit card statements duly arrived in leather-bound volumes the size and density of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  'I thought you'd had a personality change.'

  'I bought that last.' She smiled innocently. 'Now I'm just as broke as you. Ees better to be broke. Ees better for the soul.'

  Rimmer formed himself into ripples and hurled himself at the wall.

  'They let me see your body.'

  'How is it?'

  'Ees fine. Looks a little vacant. Dribbles a lot. But they are treating eet well. They even allowed me to make love to eet.'

  Rimmer pictured his body as the passive semi-comatose participant in a torrid sex scene. It struck Rimmer as being absolutely typical of his life to date - at last his body had got to make it with Juanita, and he hadn't been in it.

  The guard with the box returned, and Rimmer was taken back to his sound-proofed cell. And on the way, he formed himself into a single repeating two syllable word.

  And the sound was:

  Escaaaaaaaaaaaaaaape.

  THIRTEEN

  In reality. Bull Heinman had been Rimmer's gym teacher. Rimmer had never been terribly good at sports. In fact, he'd been one of the group of 'wets, weirdos and fatties' who stood by the touchline at ball games, worrying about their chapped legs, and fleeing whenever the ball came near them. Bull Heinman, so-called because his head was shaped like a bullet, didn't like 'wets, weirdos and fatties', and especially didn't like Rimmer, whom he considered both wet and weird. He delighted in making impossible demands of Rimmer's frail young frame, then delighted further still in beating him for failing.

  In Better Than Life, Rimmer's psyche had brought back Bull Heinman as a prison officer.

  Right now he was sitting behind his desk at the top of the sound-proofed corridor, re-reading his Combat and Survival magazine for the seventh time that evening. He was enjoying again the article: 'Ten Things You Didn't Know About Gonad Electrocution Kits' when a red light started to blit on and off on the control desk in front of him.

  Heinman flopped down his magazine and barked into his walkie-talkie. 'Officer 592.Disturbance in cell 41.Investigating.' He listened as his walkie-talkie belched an incomprehensible reply, then high-nooned down the corridor, his hand dangling never less than three inches from the butt of his sound gun, praying, as he always did, there was going to be trouble.

  And this time, there was.

  ***

  Tonto Jitterman slid the automatic gearstick of the stolen dry-cleaning truck into park outside the Body Reclamation Unit, and turned off the engine. The van's digital display flashed a green 8.01.

  Three minutes.

  He adjusted the driving mirror, pulled out a long, greasy brush and started combing his dirty yellow hair.

  Tonto Jitterman didn't exist. He thought he did, but he was wrong. He was blissfully unaware that he was a figment of someone's imagination. In fact, Rimmer's subconscious had lifted his character wholesale from a cheap dimestore novel Rimmer had once read, called Young, Bad and Dangerous to Know. In the novel Tonto was a psychopathic hippie murderer who blazed a trail of destruction across middle America, trying to bring down the Establishment. The other main character in the novel had been Tonto's brother, Jimmy. Jimmy the head-case.

  Tonto reached under the dashboard and checked his revolver - the one he'd hand-painted with flowers. Then he looked again at the clock.

  8.02.

  ***

  Bull Heinman Gary Coopered up to cell 41. His enormous bunch of keys jangled over his groin in crude macho symbolism, his hand wavering inches from his holstered sound gun.

  The cell door ground open.

  'What's the problem?'

  'It's Jimmy,' said a formless voice at the back of the room. 'He's sick. Real sick.'

  'What d'you mean, he's sick?' Heinman asked, his upper lip rearing. 'He's a goddam soundwave.'

  Jimmy's soundwave groaned weakly.

  'Maybe it's some food he heard about.'

  Bull Heinman's slow mind swirled the concept around, hoping it would make sense. 'What the hell are you talking about?'

  'Don't move,' said a woman's voice behind him. 'There's a Colt .45 pointing right up your ass. If you don't want to become a huge polo mint, you'll drop the sound gun and get up against the wall.'

  Bull had assumed the position against the padded cell wall before he realized he'd been duped.

  Rimmer, Ernest, Jimmy and Trixie hurtled down the corridor at the speed of sound. They reached a sound-proofed door and bounced from ceiling to floor, waiting for phase tw
o of the plan to come into operation.

  Heinman sounded the alarm. He pressed the panic button and started screaming 'Voice break! Voice break!'

  The door at the end of the corridor opened, and four armed prison officers came skidding through.

  'Now!' Jimmy hissed, and the four soundwaves threw themselves against a wall and ricocheted back through the open door.

  There was a squeal of leather as the rear-most officer spun in his tracks and squeezed the sound-gun trigger. The highly powered microphone 'received' Ernest's soundwave, sucked it back down the corridor and trapped it in the gun's holding chamber.

  The three remaining soundwaves formed themselves into a high-pitched wail, and hurtled out of E wing, down a stairwell, under a door and arrived in the Security Operations room, which was teeming with warders and banked with floor to ceiling surveillance equipment.

  A blue-suited security officer turned from a matrix of sonar monitors and shouted: 'They're here!' as the three soundwaves ricocheted round the room.

  A group of officers ran for the sound-gun cabinet, scattering newspapers, half-finished burgers and styrofoam coffee cups across the polished floor.

  'Lock the door and seal it!'

  'We've got 'em!'

  An officer pressed the send button on his walkie-talkie. 'All points, repeat, All points: we have voice breakers isolated in Security Central.' But by the time he'd said this, it was no longer true.

  ***

  8.04.

  Tonto whirled the dial on the amplifier's tuner, and locked in on the prison security frequency.

  'All points,' he was hearing, 'repeat, All points: we have voice breakers isolated ...'

  Jimmy, Trixie and Rimmer zipped into the guard's walkie talkie and sped along its transmission frequency.

  They were escaping as radio waves.

  Jimmy led, followed by Rimmer and Trixie. Somewhere, they lost Trixie, and just Jimmy and Rimmer hurtled on at the speed of sound.

  '... in Security Central.'

  Jimmy and Rimmer crashed through the amplifier's speakers into the cab of the dry-cleaning truck.

  Tonto looked round. 'Jimmy? You here?'