‘No,’ went Russell. ‘No no no.’ He snatched up the remote control and pressed the eject button. The cassette slid out from beneath the screen. But the face stared on.
‘No,’ went Russell, pushing the ‘off’ button.
‘Yes,’ went the dreadful voice, and the leering face stared on.
‘Oh my God.’ Russell snatched at the cable, wrapped his fingers around it and tore the plug from the wall socket.
‘You have deviated,’ boomed the voice, and the eyes that bulged from the screen stared into Russell’s. ‘You have deviated from the script. You must be rewritten.’
‘You can go to hell.’ Russell took the monitor in both hands raised it high above his head and dashed it down to the floor.
Sparks and crackles. Silence.
Bobby Boy’s voice broke that silence. ‘You shouldn’t have done that, Russell,’ it said.
Russell swung around to gawp at the long thin fellow. He stood beside the sliding door of the hangar. Mr Fudgepacker was with him.
‘Very expensive SFX,’ said the old boy. ‘That will have to come out of your wages.’
‘What wages? I mean, my God, what have you two done? What was that creature? What is this movie? Why is it about me? Why ...’
Bobby Boy shrugged his high narrow shoulders. ‘So many questions. And you really shouldn’t be asking them. You’re the star player in all this. You started it. But you have to follow your script. You’ve deviated from the plot. You weren’t supposed to do this.’
‘We could write it in,’ said Mr Fudgepacker, scratching at his baldy head and sending little flecks of skin about the place. ‘It might make an interesting sequence.’
‘No,’ the thin man shook his head. ‘I think we should just write Russell out. As of now.’
‘What?’ went Russell. ‘What are you talking about?’
Bobby Boy sidled over. ‘You don’t get it anyway,’ he sneered. ‘But then, you were never supposed to.’
Russell had a good old shake on. He reached for the Scotch bottle.
‘And drinking my booze.’ Mr Fudgepacker threw up his wrinkled hands. ‘That’s definitely not in the script. I’d never have put that in the script.’
‘What script?’ asked Russell. ‘The script of this abomination? I don’t want to be in your script.’
‘But you’re already in it. You’ve watched the videos. You’ve seen what you do, what you’re going to do.’
‘You’re mad,’ said Russell. ‘This is all insane.’
‘Sit down,’ said Bobby Boy.
‘Stuff you.’
‘Quite out of character,’ said Mr Fudgepacker.
‘Sit down, Russell,’ said Bobby Boy.
Russell sat down. And then he jumped up again.
‘Sit down and I’ll tell you what you want to know.’
Russell sat down again.
Bobby Boy took the Scotch bottle from his hand. He hoisted himself onto a table and dangled his long thin legs. ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Well never mind,’ Bobby Boy put the Scotch bottle to his tricky little mouth and took a big swig.
‘Oi,’ croaked Mr Fudgepacker. ‘My booze.’
‘Shut it old man.’
‘Well, really.’
‘Tell me, Russell,’ said Bobby Boy, wiping his slender chin, ‘what do you remember?’
‘About what?’
‘About your childhood, say.’
‘Mind your own business.’
‘Come on now. What school did you go to?’
‘Huh?’ said Russell.
‘Come on, tell me. I’ll give you a nip of this Scotch if you tell me.’
‘I can take the bottle from you whenever I want.’
Bobby Boy produced a gun from his coat pocket. ‘I’ll bet you can’t,’ he said.
‘Come off it.’ Russell put up his hands.
‘Tell me which school you went to.’
‘I ... ’ Russell thought about this. ‘I ... ’
‘Slipped your mind?’
‘I ... ’
‘Tell me your earliest memory, then.’
Russell knotted his fists.
‘Careful.’
‘All right. My earliest memory, all right. It’s, it’s .’ Russell screwed up his face. ‘It’s ...’
‘Come on, spit it out.’
Russell spat it out. ‘It’s Morgan,’ he said. ‘Morgan telling me about The Flying Swan.’
‘And nothing before that?’
Russell scratched at his head of hair. Before that? There had to have been something before that. But what had it been?
‘No?’ asked Bobby Boy. ‘Lost your memory?’
‘I’m drunk,’ said Russell. ‘I don’t feel very well.’
‘There’s nothing before it, Russell. You didn’t exist before that. You were called into being, Russell. So that you could fulfil a particular role, play a certain part. And you were playing it well, before you started to deviate. Opening the safe? An honest fellow like you, quite out of character.’
‘I am not a bloody character,’ said Russell. ‘What are you implying? That I’m just a made-up character in a book?’
‘Character in a book?’ Bobby Boy laughed his grating laugh. ‘Now that really is absurd. No, Russell. But you’re not a real person. You’re a construct. A bit of this person, a bit of that.’
‘Crap,’ said Russell. ‘And so what does that make you?’
‘Oh, I know what I am. I’m a tricky lying villain. And Mr Fudgepacker here is a clapped-out old pornographer.’
‘How dare you!’ gasped the old one. ‘I am a maker of Art House movies.’
‘A clapped-out pornographer who has sold his soul to—’
‘Don’t say His name.’ Mr Fudgepacker began to totter. Russell leapt up and guided him into his chair.
‘Thank you, Russell,’ said Mr Fudgepacker. ‘You’re such a nice young man.’
‘Well, you’d know,’ said Bobby Boy. ‘You made him up.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Russell.
‘Just tell him, Bobby Boy.’ Mr Fudgepacker scratched at a bubo on his wrist. ‘I want to get home and rub some pig fat on my scrofula.’
‘Okay. Russell, you have been brought into existence to achieve a great end: to aid the changing of the world. You see everyone’s confused. What am I here for? What does it all mean? Have you ever asked yourself those questions?’
‘No,’ said Russell. ‘I don’t think I have.’
‘We wrote it out,’ said Mr F. ‘It was very slow and it didn’t say anything new.’
‘Accidental movements of the gods,’ said BobbyBoy. ‘Everything that goes on on Earth. We dance to the tunes the gods don’t even know they’re playing.’
‘Strangely enough, I don’t understand a word of that.’
‘People aren’t important,’ said Bobby Boy. ‘Not singly. It’s what they do en masse that matters, the direction mankind goes in as a whole. Mankind is really a vast multi-cellular organism, spread across the face of the planet. Or like billions of tiny silicone chips that when all wired together would form this single planetary brain. That’s the way forward, you see. That’s the ultimate purpose of it all.’
‘Well,’ said Russell, ‘at last I’ve met the man who knows the meaning of life. This is a privilege.’
‘Are you taking the piss?’
‘No, I thought you were giving it away.’
‘In the beginning the way was clear. All men spoke the same language. All the little chips were wired together. Remember the story of the Tower of Babel?’
Russell wondered whether he did.
‘You do,’ said Mr Fudgepacker. ‘You’ve got Christianity programmed into you.’
‘Oh, I’m so glad.’
‘All spoke the same language and so they could function as a mass mind. But the gods weren’t too chuffed with that, so they knocked down the tower, which was really this huge transmitting device to communica
te with other worlds, and they scrambled the language. Mankind has been fighting amongst itself ever since.’
‘Very interesting,’ said Russell. ‘So just where do I fit into all this?’
‘Your job was to raise the money for the movie.
‘There isn’t going to be any movie,’ said Russell. ‘I’m going to put a stop to the movie. The movie is evil. You’ve done something evil and I’m going to stop it.’
‘You can’t stop it now. The movie will be shown and all who see it will be converted. It’s not the plot of the movie that matters, Russell, it’s what’s in the movie.’
‘And what’s that going to be?’
‘Have you ever heard of subliminal cuts?’
‘I’ve heard of them, but that’s like Satanic back masking. It’s rubbish. It doesn’t work.’
‘Ours will work. But then ours came straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were. Or rather, straight from the mouth of God.’
‘That thing?’ said Russell. ‘That thing on the screen?’
‘You shouldn’t call your God a thing, Russell.’
‘That’s no God of mine.’
‘It’s the only one you’ve got. The others are gone, long gone. They tired of playing games with man. Once in a while they think of us in passing and their accidental thoughts, their accidental movements of thought, cause waves on the planet. Religious fervour. Holy wars. But they play no active part. All but one of them, that is. He likes the place. He sticks around. He has the time for us.’
‘No,’ said Russell. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying. That thing’s the devil. You shouldn’t worship that.’
‘There’s no devil, only rival gods.’
‘You’re barking mad. I’ll stop all this.’
‘Enough,’ said Mr Fudgepacker. ‘Quite enough. All who see the movie will be converted. A new order of life, Russell. A new order of being, freed from all worry. You should appreciate that. To be free of all worry and care, all hatred, all doubt. Free to merge into the whole. A new future, Russell. Sadly you will not be here to see it.’
‘Because we’re writing you out,’ said Bobby Boy.
‘Oh no you’re not.’ Russell launched himself at the thin man on the table. But the thin man ducked aside and he hit Russell hard on the top of the head.
And then things went very dark for Russell.
14
THAT LUDICROUS ‘IT WAS ALL JUST A TERRIBLE DREAM’ BIT THEY ALWAYS HAVE
Russell awoke with a groan and a shudder. He jerked up and blinked all about the place. The place was his office (suitably grim). He’d been sleeping in his chair.
Sleeping?
Russell yawned and stretched and then the memories came rushing back like bad beer from a banjoed belly.
‘Oh my God!’ went Russell, as this phrase seemed to find favour with him at the present. ‘Oh my good God.’
He floundered about and tried to get up, but his knees were all wobbly. On the desk before him was the bottle of Glen Boleskine. Without so much as a second thought, Russell took a mighty swig from it.
And then coughed his guts up all over the floor. ‘Oh my God.’ Russell’s eyes went blink again, all about the place again. The safe door was closed. Sunshine streamed in through the skylight. Russell turned his blinking to his wristwatch. It was just after three and that would be three in the afternoon.
The office door swung open. ‘Ah, you’ve broken surface, have you?’ Bobby Boy breezed in with a grin.
‘Get away from me.’ Russell snatched up the whisky bottle and swung to his feet.
‘What’s all this?’ asked the thin one. ‘Are you all right, Russell?’
‘Are you kidding?’ Russell displayed his spare hand. He’d made a useful-looking fist out of it. ‘I’ll stop you. I’ve seen the tapes. You’ve made a big mistake not killing me when you had the chance.’
Bobby Boy made tiny smacking sounds with his tricky little mouth. ‘I don’t think you’re very well, Russell. Mr Fudgepacker said I should let you sleep. You’ve been over-working, you’ve not been yourself.’
Bobby Boy spied the mess on the floor. ‘Thought I knew that smell,’ he said. ‘That’s pretty disgusting, isn’t it?’
‘You’re finished,’ Russell brandished the bottle. ‘Finished.’
‘Come on,’ said Bobby Boy. ‘We’ve a big surprise for you.
‘Yeah, I’ll bet you have.’
‘There’s something we want you to see.’
‘Some ... thing?’ Russell’s eyes widened and his face, already pale, grew paler.
‘That thing is out there,’ croaked he of the pale face. ‘That terrible thing.’
‘That’s no way to speak about Frank.’ Russell waggled the bottle, spilling Scotch down his trousers.
‘I won’t let you show it. I’ll destroy the movie.
‘What? You don’t like it before you’ve even seen it?’
‘Oh, I’ve seen it all right. You know I’ve seen it.
‘You have not.
‘I have too.’
‘Have not.’
‘Have too.’
‘Russell, you can’t have seen the movie. We’ve been keeping it as a special surprise for you.’
‘Back off.’ Russell menaced with the bottle. Bobby Boy backed off in an obliging manner.
Russell pulled open the desk drawer and sought his magnifying glass. It wasn’t there. ‘Fair enough,’ said Russell, ‘it’s daylight. I’ll be able to see the numbers.’
‘What numbers?’
‘You know what numbers. The combination numbers.’
‘Yeah, right.’ Bobby Boy shook his long thin head.
Russell backed over to the safe and keeping Bobby Boy at arm’s length, he sought the little numbers. He squinted at the big brass boss.
And then he squinted again.
‘There’s no numbers,’ gasped Russell.
‘There’s no combination lock,’ said Bobby Boy.
Russell stared at the safe door. ‘Bloody hell,’ said he.
The safe did not have a combination lock. It had a big keyhole.
‘But ...’ went Russell. ‘But ... but ...’
‘I don’t know what you were on last night,’ said Bobby Boy, ‘but if I were you, I’d give it a miss in the future.’
‘Yeah yeah, well you’d know all about the future, wouldn’t you? Having been there, and everything.’
‘Me? Been to the future? What are you talking about, Russell?
‘I’m talking about the Cyberstar program. The one you stole.’
‘The Cyber-what?’
‘The hologram film stars. There’s no point in denying them. The movie’s full of them.’
‘There’s nothing like that in our movie,’ said Bobby Boy. And it did have to be said that he looked and sounded most genuine, even though, of course, he was a professional liar. ‘Mr Fudgepacker isn’t much of a one for modern technology. He’s a pretty basic fellow.’
‘You bastards!’ Russell had a serious shake on. ‘You can’t trick me. No, hang about, I get it.’
‘What do you get?’
‘There’s always a bit like this, isn’t there? Where something devastating happens to the hero and then he wakes up and it was all a dream. Or it wasn‘t a dream, but the villain is making it seem as if it’s a dream. It’s a right hacked-out cliché, that is.’
‘Tell it to Hollywood.’
‘It’s a trick. That isn’t the same safe. You switched it while I was unconscious. You knocked me out.’ Russell felt at the top of his head. It did not have a bump on it. ‘Oh,’ said Russell.
‘People are waiting for you,’ said Bobby Boy. ‘This is all very childish.’
‘Yes!’ Russell shook his fist. ‘My childhood. What about my childhood?’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, I can’t remember it.’
‘Can’t you?’
‘I ... ’ Russell thought about his childhood. He could remember it. He could remember lots
and lots and lots of it. ‘I can remember it,’ he said slowly.
‘Well, bully for you, Russell. Now, are you going to come out and get your big surprise, or not? There’s food. Although most of it’s been eaten now. There’s a few ham sandwiches left.’
Russell nodded his head. ‘Yes,’ said he. ‘All right.’
‘After you then.’
‘No, after you.’
‘What a weirdo you are,’ and Bobby Boy led the way.
As Russell emerged from his office a great cheer went up and ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ was sung at full blast with much gusto.
Russell blinked anew.
There was bunting hanging here, there and all about the place. There was a table, with the remnants of a mighty spread upon it. There were chairs set out in rows before a viewing screen. And there was quite a crowd of people.
Mr Fudgepacker was there. And Morgan was there. And Julie was there. And Frank was there (with a bit of paperwork he wanted Russell to take a look at). And several local publicans were there. And several production buyers were there (ones who hadn’t come into the Emporium to hire anything in months, but always have that knack of turning up when there s a free drink). And Russell’s mum was there. And even Russell’s sister, who Russell was quite sure lived in Australia. Even she was there. And a few other folk also.
And they were all cheering and singing ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’, although they’d got to the ‘and so say all of us,’ bit by now.
‘What’s going on?’ Russell viewed them with suspicion. He was still not utterly convinced.
‘It’s all for you,’ said Bobby Boy, reaching over to give Russell’s back a pat, but then thinking twice about doing so. ‘After all, if you hadn’t had that win on the National Lottery and put it all into the movie to help Mr Fudgepacker out and save the Emporium, none of this would have been possible.’
‘You’re very thorough,’ muttered Russell, beneath his breath. ‘You haven’t missed a trick.’
‘What was that?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
‘Well, come and have a sandwich and watch the movie.’
‘Hip hip hoorah!’ went all present, with the exception of Russell, who was looking from one to the other of them and worrying. Oh yes he was worrying all right, and he was in a state of stress. And he was thinking many thoughts.