Bright Young Things

All the junked up mobile phones are on the cleared table in pieces. Jamie’s glad he didn’t have a mobile, although none of the others seem to mind Paul completely taking theirs apart. Paul dries his hands and sits down. He seems to have made coffee, and places a mug in front of Jamie.

  ‘Thanks,’ says Jamie.

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘So what’s all this?’ Jamie asks, pointing to the heap of electronics on the table.

  ‘What, the phones?’

  ‘I mean, what are you making?’

  ‘What have I made, you mean,’ says Paul, smiling. He picks up a concoction of wires, LED displays and numeric keypads. ‘Look.’

  Jamie looks. He sees nothing.

  ‘It’s “Ultimate Snake”,’ explains Paul.

  ‘“Ultimate Snake”?’

  ‘Yeah. You know “Snake”, the computer game you have on your mobile?’

  ‘I don’t have a mobile.’

  ‘But you know some of them have little games programmed into them?’

  Jamie nods. He sort of wanted to get one, but Carla disapproved.

  ‘Well, the best one is “Snake”. The object is to move this snake-shaped thing around the screen, guiding it to little bits of food. You’re not supposed to let the snake touch the edges of the screen, or its own tail. The thing is, as it eats the food, it gets bigger, and it’s harder to stop it touching its own tail.’

  ‘So what’s “Ultimate Snake”?’ asks Jamie.

  ‘I’ve made it two-player,’ says Paul. ‘Look.’

  He hands Jamie a numeric pad from one of the phones. Seems like this is going to act as some kind of joypad. The pad is attached to a small LED screen, which has another pad attached to it, which is what Paul’s holding. He presses a few keys.

  ‘Right. You can see there are two snakes on the screen now,’ he says. ‘That one’s you and that one’s me. We’re both going for the same bit of food, which is that dot in the far left-hand corner at the moment. And we’re trying not to touch our own tails, the edges of the screen or each other. Amazingly improved, I’d say.’

  There is a little bleep and Jamie’s dead.

  ‘What are the controls?’ he asks.

  An hour later the score is Paul fourteen, Jamie eight.

  ‘Didn’t you tell the others you were making some kind of radio transmitter?’ Jamie asks, furiously hitting the number 2 on the pad to try to get his snake up to the piece of food faster than Paul’s.

  ‘Yeah, but wait till they see this,’ says Paul.

  Eventually, the battery starts to run down. Jamie lights a cigarette.

  ‘More coffee?’ asks Paul.

  ‘Sure,’ says Jamie.

  Paul gets up and finds some clean mugs. ‘What do you think of this whole it’s a really weird job interview notion?’ he asks.

  ‘Crap,’ says Jamie. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Dunno,’ says Paul. ‘Could still be, I guess.’

  They sip coffee.

  ‘Where are you from again?’ asks Jamie.

  ‘Bristol,’ says Paul. ‘Well, just outside Bristol. You?’

  ‘Taunton,’ he says, lighting a cigarette. ‘You did art at university, didn’t you?’

  Paul laughs.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’

  ‘You’re still acting all polite,’ he says. ‘It’s sweet.’

  ‘Sweet?’

  ‘Yeah, sweet. It’s not an insult. You’re not trying to be cool like the others.’

  Jamie doesn’t know if Paul’s being nice or not. He sticks to his original question. ‘It was art, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Paul. ‘How about you?’

  Jamie tells him about his maths, and he’s as impressed as Anne was. What is it with these arty people who think numbers are so romantic? He’s still trying to locate the part of Paul’s past that taught him how to fuse together four mobile phones, and also the part that made him opt to create ‘Ultimate Snake’ rather than a more useful device (like an escape pod – they’d do it on The A Team). Trouble is, Paul’s not keen to talk about himself. Jamie establishes that he did some kind of postgraduate cross-over and now works with computers. Other than that, Paul leaves him in the dark.

  ‘So you’re a geek then?’ Jamie asks, smiling.

  ‘What?’ says Paul, laughing.

  ‘I’m a nerd, according to Anne’s classification,’ he explains, noting the way Paul’s eyes change colour slightly when he says the word Anne. ‘But you should be a bona fide geek since you work with computers and everything.’

  ‘Hmm. I never go out,’ says Paul. ‘But I do play a lot of games. That makes me an Otaku.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a Japanese geek.’

  ‘And they never go out?’

  ‘Not really. The word just means that you’re so into your hobby that you stay in and do it all the time. Have you ever played “Metal Gear Solid”?’

  Jamie shakes his head. ‘No.’

  ‘There’s a character in it called Otakon. He’s a Japanese geek.’

  ‘What’s his hobby?’

  ‘Manga.’

  ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘The same. Oh, and visiting places I’m not wanted.’

  ‘Without going out?’

  ‘Yep. Via computer.’

  This doesn’t make a lot of sense to Jamie. Maybe Paul’s a hacker.

  ‘What do you think of “Tomb Raider”?’ Paul asks.

  ‘It’s OK. Easier than I expected.’

  ‘Than you expected?’

  ‘Well, I’d never played a videogame before, and I’d heard they were hard.’

  ‘Yeah. “Tomb Raider” is pretty easy,’ says Paul. ‘You should try “Metal Gear Solid”.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s all about stealth and silent killing. I’m sure you’d be into that.’

  ‘Thanks,’ says Jamie.

  Paul laughs. ‘You know what I mean. I bet you love all that strategy stuff.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ says Jamie. ‘You don’t sound much like you do, though.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Like all that stuff.’

  ‘I do. I’m just not a big fan of “MGS”, that’s all,’ says Paul.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s too Americanised. There aren’t any real manga characters in it.’

  ‘I thought that about Akira,’ says Jamie.

  Paul looks surprised.

  ‘I thought you didn’t know anything about manga and anime,’ he says.

  Jamie gets the impression he’s said the right thing without meaning to.

  ‘I don’t,’ he says.

  ‘But you watched Akira?’

  ‘Well, I liked Tetsuo so much I thought I’d try some other Japanese classics.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. I forgot about Tetsuo. But you didn’t like Akira?’

  Jamie shakes his head. ‘Nope.’

  ‘That’s cool,’ says Paul. ‘You’re not really supposed to say you don’t like it, because it’s such a classic. It’s a bit like saying Blade Runner’s shit or something.’

  Jamie doesn’t like Blade Runner either, but thinks it best not to go into that.

  ‘I agree, though,’ says Paul. ‘So why didn’t you like Akira?’

  ‘I didn’t like the drawings that much, and the American adaptation was stupid.’

  ‘How do you know about adaptations and drawing?’

  ‘I don’t,’ says Jamie. ‘It’s just what I think.’

  ‘Did you watch any more anime?’

  Jamie’s confused, as always, by these terms. ‘What exactly is anime?’

  ‘Manga that moves.’

  ‘And manga is . . . ?’

  ‘Japanese comics. So did you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get into any more stuff?’

  ‘No. I just like Tetsuo.’

  Jamie doesn’t mention the one time he looked up hentai anime on the Internet. He knows more or less what hentai means. There were so m
any sites to choose from: monster sex, extreme bondage, machine sex . . . all in little cartoons. Jamie loved the style of the drawing, and the extreme nature of the porn. Because they were cartoons, the women could be stretched into the most ridiculous positions, their tiny waists contrasting with everything else in the picture, their big eyes dripping with innocence. And no one got hurt. Jamie’s fantasies always feature artificial women in some sense or other. When he first masturbated, he tried thinking about a girl he knew at school, but he couldn’t even get an erection. Then he tried thinking about his favourite teacher, but there was still something too soft and real about her. Later, as he got older, he realised that it was far more pleasurable to think about unreal women: women with lots of make-up and stilettos and short skirts. It was all right to think about doing really dirty things to those women, because they were deliberately putting themselves on display, making themselves consumable, making you able to own them. Recently Jamie’s become interested in breast implants – not in real life of course, but in his fantasy world. To him, breast implants create breasts which are made only for sex. They are no longer symbols of motherhood or childhood; no longer nice. You could do anything to breasts like that, and treat the owner of them exactly how you wanted.

  ‘What do you think the others are doing?’ he asks eventually.

  Paul shrugs. ‘No idea.’

  Jamie has another cigarette while Paul attaches a new battery to ‘Ultimate Snake’. Jamie looks over his list again, and the lists made by everyone except Anne. They really do have nothing in common on paper, these people and him. But yet there are so many common reference points; even some unexpected ones. For example, Jamie finds it weird that they’ve all seen Tetsuo – well, all except Bryn. They all watch TV, they all want to be cool. And they’re all scared, but no good at showing it.

  Maybe that’s the only part of this that their lives prepared them for. Let’s face it, none of them knows how to light a fire or gather food (not that they have to, but still). None of them knows how to construct a compass, use ropes or carve crude instruments. But they all know how to act cool. After all, life’s pretty scary most of the time. And the number one skill you need in the world out there is how to show no fear. If you see a dog in the street, don’t act scared. If you see a dodgy bloke with a bulge in his jacket pocket, don’t act scared. Stay calm. Don’t let people see that you’re shy or nervous. If you watch a horror film, remember to laugh. If someone else seems scared, laugh at them. In the real world, danger is either fantasy, in which case you laugh, or too real, in which case you ignore it. People die on the roads, in trains, on buses and in planes. People die from carbon monoxide in their rented flats, from food poisoning and from terrorist bombs. There’s never any warning. Jamie and the others come from a culture in which a fire alarm doesn’t mean fire; it just means you get to go and stand outside and giggle for a while. But a prawn or a peanut could still kill you.

  ‘Do you want another game?’ asks Paul.

  Chapter Nine

  Thea doesn’t have any sunglasses, and the brightness is making her squint. It’s hot again and the sea is calmer than yesterday, but the waves are still over three metres high. They’d be great for surfing if they broke on some sort of beach. But there’s no beach here; the waves smash directly into the cliffs.

  It took Thea two minutes to find the generator in the shed at the back of the house about an hour or so ago, after she’d hung the wet sheets and duvet covers on the line. There was a book lying next to it, with a picture of a big, tall windmill on the front. Since it is exactly the same as the one in the picture, Thea now realises that the structure by the front of the house is for collecting wind energy. At the back of the house, near the shed and facing the direction the sun seems to be in at midday, are two portable solar panels. They look like the little panels you get on solar-powered calculators, only much bigger. From what Thea can now see, the ‘generator’ isn’t really a generator at all, but what looks like a big car battery. On closer inspection, she sees it is actually a series of batteries connected to what the book describes as an ‘inverter’ – a white box on the wall which collects the DC current from the solar panels and the wind turbine and converts it into the AC current used by the house. Whatever the house uses is automatically converted, and whatever is left over is saved, not exactly for a rainy day, but for one with neither sun nor wind.

  The book is very general, but inside the front cover is a letter from the company which supplied the system. It doesn’t mention where the island is, but does explain that the wind and solar levels here are sufficient, in combination, to provide power for the house. It also states that hydro power would be possible here, but very expensive to install.

  The letter, dated April 1999, also explains the effectiveness of the rainwater tank, now positioned just outside the back door. Again, without revealing the exact area of the island, the company assures their customer (referred to only as ‘Dear Sir’) that local levels of rainfall will be sufficient for a family of four to use for regular washing, cooking and flushing toilets. It also explains the ecologically-friendly sewage management system connected to each of the toilets. It doesn’t say who this family of four is supposed to be, or what kidnappers would want with an eco-friendly house. Mind you, Thea imagines that this renewable power is less to do with the environment and more to do with not being able to get power from anywhere else.

  While she’s reading, she’s half-watching Bryn chop down one of the apple trees with the axe they found in the shed next to the manual. This morning she found her period had finally stopped, which was a relief. Unfortunately, her period always gets heavier just before it stops, and it was awful when she woke up to discover that she’d bled through Emily’s tampon on to the duvets and her normal underwear. All of the bedding is still soaking in soapy (rain)water upstairs, and Thea’s now wearing some of the clothes she found in one of the bedrooms. She quite likes them: a long raw cotton skirt and short-sleeved cotton top, both white. There was a white jumper as well, but it’s too hot for that out here, so she’s wearing it tied around her waist. It feels nice to be wearing clean clothes, and it’s gorgeous out here.

  Thea pulls up her skirt to sun her legs. Bryn’s chopping at the base of the tree.

  ‘Can I help?’ she asks.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘Almost there now.’

  Bryn’s tied his long blond dreadlocks back with an elastic band, and taken off his shirt. Thea can see that he has a tattoo on his right arm, but she can’t see what it is. Each time he swings the axe at the tree a few leaves flutter off. Eventually the tree falls, scattering apples and leaves everywhere. Bryn walks over and sits next to Thea. He’s sweating.

  ‘Time for a break,’ he says.

  He seems to have caught the sun on his back, and a couple more freckles have come out on his face. He takes a swig from the bottle of lemonade Thea brought out with her, and lights one of her cigarettes. It’s nice not to feel so frightened, she thinks. When they first came outside, all Thea could think about was how to escape if someone came. Now she feels more relaxed.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ she asks Bryn.

  ‘Canvey,’ he says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Canvey Island. It’s nothing like this.’

  Thea switches on her imaginary camera. Time to interview Bryn.

  ‘Do you live there?’ she asks.

  ‘No,’ he says.

  ‘Is it near where you live?’

  ‘Yeah. Don’t you know about Canvey?’

  Thea shakes her head. It’s important to speak as little as possible when you’re interviewing a subject, to encourage them to talk independently of you. That way, when you edit the video, it seems like they’re performing a monologue.

  ‘You can see it from Southend, sitting in the estuary. It’s like Gotham City up there at night, and some sort of toxic dump in the day.’ He pauses. ‘It’s completely beautiful.’

  ‘Beautiful?’

  Br
yn looks embarrassed. ‘I don’t want to go on and on about it.’

  ‘I want you to,’ says Thea.

  ‘Oh. I’m only interested in it because I’m doing, like, a project . . .’

  ‘A project?’

  He lowers his head. ‘Yeah. It’s a bit stupid.’

  ‘Yeah, right. I bet it’s not,’ says Thea.

  ‘It’s no big deal.’

  ‘So tell me then.’

  ‘It’s just a photographic thing. Essex Gothic. Stupid name really.’

  ‘I think it’s a great name,’ says Thea.

  ‘No, it’s stupid.’

  ‘So it’s pictures of Canvey Island?’ she asks.

  ‘Yeah. It’s a bit shit really, so I don’t know why I’m even bothering telling you about it. I was just thinking, you know, that if I’d brought my camera here, it would have been a good, like, contrast.’

  ‘What sort of camera have you got?’

  ‘Just a second-hand 35mm,’ he says.

  ‘Same,’ says Thea.

  ‘What, you into it as well?’ he asks.

  She nods. ‘Yeah. More films now, though.’

  ‘Films?’ Bryn looks impressed.

  She smiles. ‘Yeah. Documentaries. How did you get into photography?’ she asks, zooming out from Bryn’s face.

  ‘Did a BTEC at South-East Essex College,’ he says.

  ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘Oh yeah. It was wicked. Didn’t exactly walk out into a career, though.’

  ‘Who does?’ says Thea. ‘What did you want to do, ideally?’

  ‘Music press, tabloids. At least that’s what I wanted when I first started the course. But then I got into, you know, like, the more artistic side of it. But you’ve still got to make a living, and that was the bit that was hard. All the other kids off my course went to university to do art and photography or whatever, but I thought I could make it in the real world. I’m still trying.’

  Thea wants to talk more, but Bryn’s got up again and is now chopping the tree into logs. Without meaning to, she wonders what it would be like to kiss him.

  She rolls over on to her front to get some sun on the backs of her legs. All of a sudden she feels self-conscious doing this. What if Bryn thinks she’s doing it for his benefit? Showing off her body for him? Yuck. Thea could never be accused of showing off her body to any man. Once she punched someone who made a crack about her nurse’s uniform in the arcade. Everyone left her alone after that. At university she was known for looking like a tomboy. Of course, she got wasted on snakebites in the bar like everyone else, and had her share of pissed-up one night stands with skinny Student Union boys. But wherever she went, the same phrases followed her: You wouldn’t know she had legs. Why don’t you ever wear a skirt? You’d look really nice with more make-up. Usually this stuff came from girls like Emily, trying to give her advice. But the point about Thea is that she’s strictly a behind-the-camera girl. She wants to see, not be seen. No one’s really ever understood that about her. And for a few moments she fantasises that Bryn might.