LoveStar (6 page)

IDEAS

Not many people fully understood LoveStar, not even his closest colleagues. Sometimes they couldn't tell whether he was joking or serious, but he got things done, whatever it took.

When asked about his ideas, he claimed he wasn't responsible for them. He did not get ideas; it was the other way around. The ideas got him. The ideas took over his body and used him as a host to launch themselves into the world, leaving him empty, worn, and tattered (and disturbingly rich and powerful, as those who had less sympathy with him pointed out). He said he had no control over the consequences when an idea took up residence in his head. “An idea is a dictator,” he maintained in one of his best-selling books:

An idea hijacks the brain, pushes away feelings and memories, makes you neglect friends and relations, and drives you toward a single goal, that of launching the idea into the world. An idea takes over the speech centers, allowing access only to itself, it steals your appetite, reduces your need for sleep, and induces the brain to produce a chemical that is stronger than amphetamines and can keep you going for months at a time. Once the idea is born, the person it possessed is left empty. Even if he tries to hang on to the idea, basking in its limelight and taking care to link his name to it, even naming it after himself, he will not enjoy the same sense of fulfillment. He who has felt an idea growing inside him, he who has been its slave for months and years, knows that there is no point in having once had an idea. To be content with having had an idea is like being content with having once had an orgasm, being content with having once eaten or drunk. Once someone has acquired the taste, he desires nothing more than to be enslaved by a new idea. Nothing is more pitiable than a man who has hit upon one tune, one story, one idea, and then no more. He will never be anything but a spent shell. It would have been better if he had never acquired the taste. Ideas are drugs. Someone with a predisposed weakness is doomed to put aside his nets or computer, throw away his wealth and belongings, and put everything at stake. When an idea says: “Follow me!” he follows it all the way.

He who is infected with an idea is not responsible for his actions. His only thought is to launch it. The idea permits no contradiction or doubt. The man is not responsible because he does not own the idea. The idea already existed. The atom bomb existed before it was worked out and built. It was imminent. It was biding its time. It had to be built. And it had to be detonated. Even though people calculated a 20 percent risk that the explosion would set off a chain reaction that would ignite all the oxygen in the atmosphere, they still had to try. It wasn't enough to calculate. They had to take it out into the desert, and, once they had seen its power, other people were seized with an uncontrollable urge to see it explode over a city. It was enough to do it once or twice. Someone who is possessed by an idea is beyond good and evil. His thinking is not on that scale. An idea is an uncontrollable hunger. An idea is a long suppressed lust. Those who get ideas are the most dangerous people in the world because they are ready to take the risk. They just want to see what happens; their thinking goes no further.

—
The Ideas
by LoveStar

LoveStar was not dangerous by nature. He sometimes said crazy things but that was only because they entered his head, not because he meant what he said. He just wanted to see what would happen.

LoveStar directed his binoculars away from the halo around the sun to watch the Statoil helicopter vanish over the mountains, minus the church. He turned to the glass table and drew a line on it. Above the line he began to sketch a bird but was interrupted mid-wing.

“The author's here,” announced his secretary. “He wants to show you the first chapter of the biography.”

The author from the Mood Division walked in. He was a rather foppish young man with round glasses and a frayed tweed jacket.

“Morning,” said the author, looking at him oddly. LoveStar was appearing a bit rough; he hadn't slept for weeks and probably hadn't eaten either; his skin was a size too big for him. Realizing that he was staring, the author turned to the window that faced the Oxnadalur valley.

“Fantastic view,” he said.

“Good,” said LoveStar. “Look out the window. Not at me.”

“I'll begin, then,” the young man said and commenced reading.

“LoveStar was born the day that man first set foot on the moon. His birth lasted nine hours. As his mother, Margret Petursdottir, a thirty-year-old assistant nurse from Siglufjord, groaned from the first contractions, the world watched the astronauts bounding like overgrown children across the lifeless gray landscape. Five hours later his mother had dilated seven centimeters and begun to whimper from the pain, while the midwife watched in suspense as the astronauts fiddled silently with their machines, which for some unaccountable reason would not start up again. Four hours later the machines were still down and they were busy doing something around the lunar module, talking little and then only in technical jargon. But when there were only fifty minutes' worth of oxygen reserves left in the tanks, it became clear that they would not succeed in relaunching. The camera angle was adjusted and the astronauts cantered hand in hand toward the horizon. Their gait is unlikely to have illustrated their innermost feelings, but for some reason it was only possible to bound gaily on the moon. It took less than half an hour for them to disappear over the horizon. Their heads went down like three white suns. At precisely that moment, LoveStar's cranium appeared. After the astronauts had vanished from the screen, there was nothing to see but the naked landscape. They were still in radio contact but said nothing more; nothing but their breathing could be heard. Some would perhaps have taken the opportunity to convey an important message to the world, but they simply breathed slower and slower until they could breathe no more. At that moment LoveStar filled his lungs with air for the first time and screamed with all his life and soul.

“The image remained on the screen for the next hour. Gray sand, black space, and silence. During the following days TV stations and the president tried to convince the world that it had merely been a hoax, a modern televisual equivalent of Orson Welles's immortal War of the Worlds. Stanley Kubrick was persuaded to own up to the hoax. The film set was opened to the public. Here people could see tracks in the sand, the waxing earth painted on a black screen, and the rigid flag. ‘This is the glue that was used to stiffen the flag,' said the female guides, allowing people a sniff.

“Since special effects this realistic had never before been seen on screen, few were willing to fall for this. So Kubrick received a ten-million-dollar grant to make a sci-fi feature film, proving not only that the hoax had been child's play, technically speaking, but that it could even be improved on. When the new movie premiered ten months later, people claimed they could see clear evidence of his signature style on the moon landing. Endless silence, heavy breathing, and a slow death.

“When people asked whether either of the superpowers were aiming to win the real race to put a man on the moon, their spokesmen shrugged and asked why the human race should waste money landing on a barren gray rock when so much of life remained unexplored here on earth. It sounded like a reasonable question. Yet even today not everyone is reconciled to the events of that day and some cannot look at the moon without shuddering and thinking of the astronauts lying up there in a gray crater. It is less well-known that on that very day LoveStar was born. The man who has had a greater impact on the world than any moon landing could ever have had. The man who converted dead space into the climax of life with the magnificent LoveDeath program. The man who found love, not for himself, but for the whole world. The man who will always be linked to love and death in the memory of mankind.

“What do you think?” asked the author, looking over his shoulder but taking care not to meet LoveStar's eye.

LoveStar looked over the text and read a sentence aloud.

“‘It is less well-known that on that very day LoveStar was born.' That's news. I myself didn't know I was born that day.”

Blushing slightly, the author cleared his throat. “I felt we should link you in better with major events.”

“Aren't there enough major events?”

“Not in your youth.”

“Isn't it a cliché? To link someone's birth to a major event? You know I wasn't born that day; I was born the day the Reynimelur brothers died of exposure on Kjolur.”

“The Reyni-what?”

“They ran out of petrol in a blizzard and froze to death because they were only wearing T-shirts.”

“Never heard of them,” said the author, scratching his head.

“Nothing was ever found but their bones and the skeletons of their jeeps. Someone had stripped the cars of anything valuable: engine, tires, winch, radio, all stripped. The remains can still be seen up above the Krakshraun lava field. The remains of the cars, I mean.”

The author waited patiently but was plainly not listening. He put himself in persuasive gear. “As I said, I wanted to place you in a larger, more international context. The Reynimelur brothers are hardly headline material abroad.”

“But it's not true; I wasn't born that day. It contradicts the documentaries, the homepages, and the other biographies.”

The author shrugged. “Then we'll correct them; it won't take more than a couple of minutes to update your date of birth.”

“But it's not right!”

“The year's right, which is more than can be said of most celebrities.”

LoveStar stood up and regarded the author who was staring at the floor. “No! Not even the year is right! Must I change my date of birth just because you want to begin the story this way and not that? This chapter has nothing to do with me! It's bullshit! There was no television in the maternity ward when I was born.”

“It's a question of mood. The guys at iSTAR said we needed to sharpen up the image.”

“Wasn't my birth enough of a major event in itself?”

“Yes, of course, but . . .”

“It's so predictable! To draw breath just as they breathe their last. Why did you have to link my birth to such a depressing death?”

“That comes later, in the chapter called ‘The Father of Death.'”

“‘The Father of Death?' Is that supposed to be me?”

“LoveDeath was your idea . . .”

“Will you please leave me alone! Will you please get out!”

“Should I make changes?”

“You're not writing another word of this book!” announced LoveStar with finality. “The Mood Division should stay away from literature. It's supposed to sell books, pep them up, not write them.”

“GOOD!” yelled the author, now looking LoveStar straight in the eye. “I'm not allowed to talk to friends from your childhood or schools, that's to say if you had any friends. I'm not allowed to use old photos or mention anything that could be classed as trade secrets. I'm not allowed to know why the Million Star Festival is being held. You forbid me to write about your parents, not a word about your sons or daughter, and nothing about Helga. I'm not even allowed to reveal your real name! WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO WRITE?”

LoveStar flushed crimson and trembled with fury. “GET OUT!”

LoveStar shook as the author stormed out. He strode back and forth across the room, then sat down at the glass table again but was too restless to draw.

“Goddam impudence,” he muttered. “Damn fucking impudence.”

He followed the author with his lens but retained his ears. Cursing, the author took the elevator down to the iSTAR headquarters. LoveStar hardly recognized the surroundings there; workmen had turned the whole place upside down. A few weeks ago the entire wing had been white; before that everything had been smothered in antique furniture and flowers. Mood people were restless by nature; they had shake-ups at regular intervals and chucked out all the furnishings. The author went into an office, threw up his hands, and tossed the manuscript on the floor. A moodman with a neat suit and dyed hair hushed the author and pointed out the recording butterfly in the corner. The author looked at the butterfly and, seizing a rolled-up poster, squashed it against the wall. Blinded, LoveStar rubbed his eyes, groped around in the darkness, and almost fell off his chair when normal eye-contact was re-established. He swore, grinding his teeth, and sent his secretary a message:

“Send the jerk a thousand Hail Maries and a Trap.”

“A cry-trap, cramp-trap, heartburn, lumbago, pins and needles, erection, hiccups, or urination trap?” she asked instantly.

“Use your imagination!”

He activated a new butterfly and watched the author running bent double into the men's room, muttering ceaselessly: “
Santa Maria madre di Dio prega per noi. Santa Maria madre di Dio prega per noi
 
. . .
”

LoveStar's jet flew through the night. He had set in motion a chain of events with no end in sight and was feeling deeply concerned about the Mood Division. It was capable of anything. He had a lot to be grateful to the mood guys for; they had followed him through thick and thin. They looked up to him, flattered him, quoted him, and followed his ideas single-mindedly. They undertook the dirty work, dealing with any problems, whether they were accidents, ethical questions, politics, or religion. Moodmen managed to convert all ideas and discoveries into pure, clear Mood. Without ever specifying exactly what their goal was, they had gradually infiltrated the innermost core of the organization. LoveStar was confident he could control the moodmen during his lifetime, but what then?

The jet flew at three times the speed of sound at an altitude of forty thousand feet. Outside the sky was dark and a star fell. Someone's just died, he thought. In three hours' time more falling stars could be expected when the Million Star Festival began.