Wildlife (20 page)

‘What about the human engineering?' he says, wrist still working overtime beneath the table. ‘What about the N-Prangs?'

Life bursts into life. ‘Well? What about those things? What about Joe's child?'

The wanker stands and, quite reasonably, everyone wishes he'd remained seated. It's a bit disgusting and off-putting, the constant masturbating. But still they listen.

‘The idea of Wild World,' the wanker begins, ‘came about because of certain scientific developments. Mainly, the ability to build human beings to any specification. They thought about putting this ability to all sorts of uses. Honestly, for the past few years they have thought long and hard about the different types of humans they could build. For example, they thought about growing organ donors to cure the ill, but they couldn't muster enough enthusiasm. They thought about designing intelligent, diplomatic creatures, strong ones, servile ones, loving ones. They even thought about creating beautiful, sexually flawless creatures, perfect boyfriends and perfect girlfriends for everyone. But none of these things seemed quite right. And no one involved had any strength of vision. In fact, the rumour is that everyone thought it was a bit old-fashioned to be scientifically engineering perfect humans and radically affecting the future. They couldn't
agree on anything. It was ridiculous. In the end, having failed to build a consensus for any of the more ambitious plans, it was decided that the creatures should just be engineered in the interests of a very humorous future. You know, they all agreed that they could just design funny creatures, half-human, half-scientific joke. They figured it would be pretty cool if the creatures could provide those that met them with a bit of amusement, not in terms of what they say, as such, but in terms of what they are, what they do. Everyone involved agreed that this was the best idea. In fact, they saw it as the only option left open to them really. And so they got on with it. The job of dictating the behaviour of the creatures was given to mates of the scientists, guys who they considered to be a right laugh, really funny, or eccentric, or fucking nuts. You must know the types of people. Those half-young men from pubs, well known for their amusing stories.'

The wanker is wanking more vigorously than ever. Life leans in and whispers to Anka: ‘You don't want to work for the Wild World. Trust me, it's not worth it.' Anka has already jumped the short distance to this conclusion. She has returned to other concerns, like which one of her real-world selves is the anorexic. Which of them must she try to destroy? And what of Roger? Could he be one of these Wild World jokes of human engineering? She hopes not. She hopes that he is becoming electronic naturally and that he's real and that when she sees him, she likes him, and maybe they can help each other. The wanker is wanking more vigorously than ever.

Life is thinking about Joe. She's looking at the fuck-ups and the literal dickheads she dumped him for and wondering whether it was worth it. She's wondering
whether there is less to life than meets the eye. Less to herself and less to life itself. Maybe the Faroese have it right. Maybe they're right to dry out mutton in small outhouses and eat it through the seasons. Maybe the world of events management and three-dimensional social-networking environments is the biggest pile of shit of all. Maybe we should embrace the simple disaster of being alive by curing meat and planning meals.

‘Why don't I believe you?' says Life, sickened by the fact that the three dickheads have become erect and are clapping and nodding to the accelerating rhythms of the wanker. ‘In England, everything sounds like a fucking lie. And what about the baby?'

‘If it's true,' hisses the wanker, through gritted teeth, ‘and she has been taken south of Birmingham, then there's nothing your friend can do. Chances are the baby is already pregnant.'

In the virtual city of Wow-Bang, in the Real Arms, the wanker ejaculates and the dickheads cheer. Life and Anka stare at each other. There is a virus contained in the large, unrealistic drops of semen that settle on the table and then disappear. Yes, there must be a virus in the liquid because within seconds Wow-Bang crashes. The walls and decor of the Real Arms freeze on the computer screens of these people. Its graphics dislocate and die leaving each of them, the two girls, the three dickheads and the wanker, breathing quickly in England, in actual rooms, on chairs, each of them truly alone, and suddenly real.

THREE DAYS PASSED
. These days behaved like recipients of intensive care. They were rushed in on stretchers to the distant sound of sirens. They screamed. They were sedated, surrounded by a chaos of keen and skilful humans who did everything they possibly could to revive these days and make them last, if only for a little while longer. But they died. The days died one after another and the humans regretted this. Tired and desperate to make amends, they scrubbed their hands with soap and stared at their reflections. But the fact was, what no one seemed to notice, was that the days were happy to die. They were more than willing. They were, in truth, desperate to die. Because although their lives were short, each had seen as much of human life as they could take.

To think that all this happened in January. It makes me laugh. Just another nervous January. We can collapse as fast as buildings. We can be demolished fairly safely. I was still calm, as I remember. I was knock knock and I was scratch.
I was, as we often are, thinking of other things. It's like I said at the start, the Wild World meant nothing to me.

Life invited Anka, Roger, Janek and Joe to the Wild World launch party in London. She emailed the invites with a click and then leant back in her chair and closed her eyes.

It was January. What else was going on? What else was going on?

Knock knock.

I remember the Premiership title race was exciting, as it tends to be after Christmas. It was Man Utd against Chelsea. Manchester against London. United were playing the best football. Scholes was on fire, Ronaldo and Rooney, too. And then you had Chelsea, dull but resolute. Shevchenko had been misfiring all year but Drogba was unreal and Lampard was getting more than his fair share of goals. I do not know who won in the end. If beauty matters in this corporate world, then it would have been United. And, yes, everyone was invited to the launch party, to the Event in London.

It was January. The Wild World competed for the newspaper headlines with kidnapped children, car bombs in Iraq, hostage disasters, university massacres and the news that former pop star Asa Gunn was selling six-inch sections of his veins over the Internet and encouraging their use as friendship bracelets. The weather was sunny and it was winter, prompting people to worry about global warming and offset their carbon consumption by writing songs about natural beauty and posting them on the Internet. It was January. Selfridges started to sell small scraps of paper with the words ‘You're a thick twat' written on them in a stylish
font. They cost a tenner. They were popular. Channel 4 commissioned a programme to help a group of young people to reinvent the West End stage musical for the modern world. The programme's commissioners had brains that looked like sheep shit, which, if you've seen it, looks like hand grenades. They called the programme
Musicool
. It was January. Someone filmed a really fat bloke in a crop top dancing to Peter Gabriel's ‘Sledgehammer' and posted it on the Internet. A million people around the world watched this video. It was January and, Jesus, I could talk like this all day. I know my bollocks off by heart and the past is in my head, the birthday cake is in my fucking head. But what matters is . . . well, I'm tempted to say nothing, but.

Knock knock.

Scratch.

What matters is the living.

Scratch

JANEK IS BACK
at the Columbia Hotel. It's three in the morning. The manager's head belongs in a taxidermist's dustbin. His clothes, a dying pair of blue pyjamas, belong in a ghost's wardrobe. Janek stares into the man's seventy-year-old nostrils, at his cheeks, sucked colourless by night, and at the countless, miserable folds of his forehead. Janek can't understand why the manager's eyes are disappearing with rage.

They're standing at the reception, in the light of an orange standard lamp. Janek's shoulders are gripped by a huge night porter. At the foot of the stairs, Janek can see the maid in her pink dress with her apron wrapped around her hands, her head bowed.

‘If her status in this country wasn't as delicate as it is, you'd already be in a cell.'

Janek does hear the words of the manager, his voice a violent whisper, but everything that enters his mind lately gets set upon by a gang of minstrels with cloaks and musical instruments; they seize each word from behind as soon as
one enters Janek's head, they retreat to a brothel in the cellar of his brain and play new meanings into their prisoners. Lately Janek listens to the N-Prang even while he sleeps.

Tonight, a dreamworld mixed effortlessly with a real one, like the harmless combining of two vaguely different airs.

Janek had been smiling in an outdoor jacuzzi with several women of every different race. It was somewhere in California. The sky was cloudless and deep blue. Behind the jacuzzi, a new, white mansion echoed with music. Women and men danced on every balcony. Women lay on the bonnets of fast cars in the driveway where men also congregated, guns tucked into their underpants. A large film camera hovered, unheld and unsupported in the air above the jacuzzi. Janek looked into the lens. He brought his fist out of the hot, bubbling water and made it dance for the floating camera. On such occasions when one of the women would clamber over Janek's lap and display her damp backside for him much like the court painters of the seventeenth century might hold up a still wet canvas for the king to behold, Janek would stroke it as one might a much-loved pet. He dirty-grinned at the camera.

Janek left the jacuzzi dripping and pulled on some jeans. He led the camera inside the mansion where he showed it the contents of his fridge, pointing out for specific attention the champagne, the foie gras and some old-style bottles of Coca-Cola. He led the floating camera to the indoor swimming pool where men and women played volleyball half-heartedly, making their wet muscles ripple and their wet breasts yell. He showed the camera his gymnasium where he climbed onto an exercise bike and pedalled furiously for a while, pulling a serious grimace at the camera. Janek showed the camera every room in the mansion. The
dining room, the games room, the home cinema, the home studio, the basketball court, the library. All was going nicely until he took the floating camera to his bedroom and nodded with odd eyebrows at the large and psychotically made bed, intimating that this is where the magic happens, you know, this is where I stick it in. He made a quick call on the phone beside the bed and, having hung up, he leapt horizontally onto the bed itself and plunged his backside down into the mattress, making it depress and bounce, as if to say, this is pretty much how my mattress moves when I'm having sex on it, absolutely, it's almost exactly the same. He used a remote to make a TV screen descend from the ceiling. He winked at the camera, smiling, suggesting undoubtedly that it wasn't unknown for Janek to watch television on this massive television, maybe even while naked and with a girl, maybe even porn. Meanwhile, a girl's arrived holding a tray of bread and miniature chunks of vacuum-packed cheese. The girl is plain, her complexion full of Eastern European shadows and soft yellows. To impress the floating camera, Janek begins grinding on the girl's behind, holding her hips, guiding her clothed bottom around his denim dick area. And he's smiling, oh, he's really beaming with pride, even though the girl is slapping his cheeks with desperate knuckles and trying to get away. In fact, it's only when the girl is really beating the shit out of him that Janek becomes a little embarrassed by the presence of the floating camera and, amid the throws of the girl's punches, intimates that it doesn't need to see this and should probably float elsewhere. Next thing he knows he's being marched down the grand mansion staircase by a man with fingers as thick as wrists. Only it's not the mansion now, it's a hotel, and outside the windows is night.

‘Get your stuff and fuck off,' says the hotel manager, his grey face slashed by red pillow lines.

‘Easy,' mutters Janek, his voice weak, dragged through sleep. ‘I ain't a player hating motherfucka,' he whispers, with no conviction.

‘Pardon?' shouts the manager.

‘Nothing,' says Janek.

Half an hour later and he's walking through a deserted Hyde Park. He tries Life on her mobile, knowing it's far too late for her to answer. He listens to the ringing, desperate for that moment when the tone is interrupted by a human voice, Life's voice, a sleepy inhalation and a croaky hello. It doesn't come:
Hi, this is Life's phone. Leave a message.
Janek chooses not to, but he does register yet another change to Life's recorded message. No more bright and breezy invitations to the Real Arms, Wow-Bang. He's pleased about this. But still, since she killed him, Life has ignored all his calls.

Janek makes immediately for the shelter of a large poplar tree. He lays out his coat on the rough ground and sits on it, pulling off his beanie and covering his face with it. Where have I been? he thinks. What have I been doing? He recalls the past week, his attempt to get giddy and find the festival. His attempt to live for the moment. The moment, thinks Janek. Better to live curled up in a car boot than kicking and screaming inside a moment. In fact, there are no fucking moments, only sickly sweet cocktails of solitude. There's boring truth in the complex crap that we contain. It gets pumped round our body, makes our dicks and nipples hard, makes us blush, makes us faint. Janek's beanie is wet with his tears. No real life, he concludes, should ever be lived in moments.

Janek looks up through the branches above him at the purple sky. The leaves randomly sway and the sky randomly arcs and alters its colours in small ways. Not even the hopeful humans can connect all this shifting debris together any more. We can't be arsed.