Wildlife (19 page)

Roger has lost count of how many times he's used the Passionate Snog Code with Anka. He can't stop himself. She keeps asking for it, too. They feel a sublime frustration.

Life has never witnessed such sincere passion in Wow-Bang.
When Roger and Anka inevitably start snogging she turns to look at Janek. Janek is behaving strangely. He is not the boy who smoked cigarettes and sipped coffee with Peter Gabriel. He is not the boy who played his bass dispassionately into her brain in every imaginable style. Janek has discovered talking. When people discover talking, it is terrible.

‘So when I next see yer, I'm deffo gonna shag yer, it feels like years since I last had yer.'

‘Stop doing that.'

‘Doing what, princess?'

‘Talking in rhyme,' snaps Life. ‘And don't call me princess.'

‘But we made a connection, I got an erection, and I'm so tired of introspection,' says Janek, shooting the air with a finger pistol and then blowing away the imaginary smoke.

‘What's happened to you?' says Life. ‘I liked your introspection. And just to make it clear, we're not together.'

Janek sighs, half smiling to himself, nodding understanding. ‘Maybe not today, bitch, maybe not tomorrow, but one day soon I'll be forcing you to swallow.'

‘What?' says Life, in disbelief. ‘You'll be forcing me to swallow?'

‘Suffice to say,' mumbles Janek, his real brain feeling like it's doused in vinegar. ‘Suffice to say, I'm a sex buffet and you sure look ready to feast.'

Life pulls out her pistol and presses it into Janek's side. ‘Shut up. I don't know what this is, but shut up.'

Janek doesn't tell Life that in the real world, as they speak, he is using the N-Prang. That since he arrived in Wow-Bang he's found it difficult to fulfil his desire for a brilliant,
easy-going fuck festival of an existence. After the incident with Joe Aspen and the digital dicks, he didn't know what else to do but put the N-Prang into his real ears. The N-Prang changes the world. Janek wants the world to change.

‘Remember what happened with that machine, Life,' says Janek, trying desperately not to make his words rhyme. ‘Remember what we learnt. Funky life, that's what we all need. We're here to have fun. This is fun. So ride my cock . . . until . . . you . . . come . . .'

Life ignores him and turns to watch Roger and Anka Passionately Kissing. When they've finished, Roger puts a hand on each of Anka's cheeks with the intention of executing the Thoughtful Kissing Code. But he doesn't. She's changed her body again, he notices, staring at the same pencil-thin limbs that Anka had been wearing earlier.

‘Why?' he says. ‘Why would you go back? You looked beautiful.'

‘Because,' squirms Anka. ‘Because this is me, Roger. Seriously. This is me and I've got to be myself when the Wild World people arrive. Haven't I? I want a job. If I can't be Jackson Pollock then I'm going to work for the Wild World. OK?'

Roger shakes his head, suddenly anxious, slightly disturbed. ‘I've got to go,' he says. ‘I've never gone this long without blogging. It's like an itch. I've got to go.'

‘Are you angry with me?' asks Anka.

In the real world, neither Anka can believe they've just said this. Are you angry with me? Jesus. They both deny saying it, but one of them must have. It's the kind of question idiots ask other idiots. Back in Wow-Bang, Anka looks at Roger, thinking, this man wanked over me. He wrote a description of it. I wanked over his description.
If that was madness, how have things become so suddenly normal?

‘We've both got our problems, Anka. Wait for me in your flat. I'm going to figure out a way of opening my front door.'

Roger's getting up, pursued by Anka's hands. ‘Are we OK?' she says. Again, neither Anka can believe they've just said this. In life, they decide, you're either fucked up or you're a fucking idiot. It's that simple. ‘Go. It's fine,' they say, emotionally backtracking. ‘We've never even met each other.'

‘No,' says Roger, glaring at Anka's limbs. ‘We've never even met each other.' And with that he disappears.

When the ‘key players in the Wild World' arrive, it comes as no surprise to anyone that three out of four are literally dickheads. Longish, brown, digital penises grow from their foreheads and fall between their eyes. Testicles hang tight above their eyebrows. The fourth man, the one who's not a dickhead, is literally a wanker. That is to say, one hand is rubbing up and down on the digital dick that's poking out of his flies. When he sits down with his dickhead mates, he doesn't stop wanking. Life can see his hand moving swiftly under the table.

It's Life who introduces everybody. She's met the three dickheads and the wanker before. She's even met them in the real world. At a house party in Clapham shortly after she'd started working for the Wild World. All of them have made at least one attempt to have sex with her, either in reality or in Wow-Bang. None of them has succeeded. Not even the wanker, who in the real world is quite sweet and called George. Life lied to them, said she was going out with the bass guitar protégé, Janek Freeman. In view of
Janek's current behaviour, she's regretting having done this. She watches as Janek tries shaking hands with the dickheads in an American, hip-hop style. But he doesn't have the right code. It's a fiasco. He's rapping. ‘
I see you're a dickhead, how have you found it? I like my cock with lips wrapped round it
.'

The dickheads and the wanker look confused. They look at Life and shake their heads, the end of their penises bouncing around their noses.

‘So you're Janek, you're Life's boyfriend?' says Dickhead 1.

Boyfriend? thinks Janek. The N-Prang rhythms in his real brain accelerate and then syncopate with joy. She told them I was her boyfriend!

‘No doubt,' says Janek. ‘I'm her lover, I'm the one who sucks her titties when we're underneath the covers . . . check it out . . .'

Janek's about to launch into a romantic rap about the sex session he and Life had enjoyed at the Columbia Hotel, when his computer screen suddenly goes blank. In the real world, he starts slapping his monitor with one hand, turning up the volume on the N-Prang with the other, shouting, ‘What the fuck? What the fuck?'

In the Real Arms, Life puts away the pistol she used to shoot Janek and takes a seat next to Anka. To be honest, she's got half a mind to kill Anka, too, given the state of her body. But then one of the dickheads shakes Anka's hand and says, ‘Anorexic chassis,' in the same way that boys sometimes say ‘Ferrari chassis.' So Anka survives. She and Life sit opposite the three dickheads and the wanker, who incidentally, is still at it underneath the table.

‘In fact,' Dickhead 2 is saying, ‘we really want to rebrand eating disorders in the Wild World. Anorexia, we reckon,
is a good way for women to enjoy short but successful lives. High death rate, sure, but other women envy you before you die, which is quite pleasant, you know, pretty cool.'

On hearing this, in the real world, one Anka frowns, the other smiles. In Wow-Bang, her avatar doesn't move. She doesn't want to say the wrong thing in front of the Wild World guys. Life, on the other hand, is full of energy. She puts two fists on the table and leans forward.

‘Listen,' she says. ‘It's time I was told what the Wild World is. It's getting ridiculous. It's embarrassing.'

Dickhead 1 smiles. He pushes his penis back over his head like a greasy strand of hair. ‘You should relax. I can't believe you just shot your boyfriend.'

‘Answer the question. What's gonna happen to Joe's child? She's practically in London. Do you guys have any idea what you're doing?'

‘Of course we do,' says Dickhead 2, twisting his penis round with his finger and thumb then releasing it, letting it unravel and spin. ‘It all begins in a matter of days. I think it's going to be great.'

‘You hired me to throw a party,' says Life, ‘and I'd really like to know what the fuck I'm throwing it for. I've got three days and I'm on my own. I think it's time I heard the truth, you know?'

There is a silence. All four men turn to each other, confident that one of them is going to speak up and offer a simple and accurate description of the Wild World. None of them does. The Wanker stares down nervously into his lap at his blurring hand.

‘Well,' says Dickhead 1, tentatively breaking the silence like an egg tapped against the edge of a bowl, ‘I'm only really involved in the marketing sides of things, you know,
distribution and whatever. So . . . well . . . the Wild World is about empowerment, isn't it, guys? It's about giving individuals complete responsibility for the creation of their identities. Giving people total control over who they want to be. The way we do this is simple. We dismantle all hierarchies. Celebrity, government, the economy, beauty. Any system that differentiates between individuals is going to be abolished. After that, it's dead simple. We just have to stop people from getting into groups. This'll be a piece of piss because we're going to give them loads of great ways of designing really strong images and personalities for themselves. Consequently, they won't want to get together with others that much because, well . . . they'll be too afraid of others finding out that their identities are basically bollocks, you know, that they're technological, in essence, just a complete invention. It'll be great. The Wild World will be full of wacky, fascinating people, all of them separated and cheerful, all of them silently sustaining society's central lie –'

‘Which is what?' interrupts Life.

‘Which is that human beings are in some way interesting,' says Dickhead 1.

Dickheads 2 and 3 and the wanker all started giggling the moment Dickhead 1 started talking. When Life and Anka began nodding with comprehension, the three of them started rolling around in hysterics.

‘What's so funny?' asks Dickhead 1, angrily. ‘That's basically it, isn't it?'

‘No,' cries Dickhead 2, the penis flying round his forehead like a lasso. ‘You must have missed a meeting. That whole idea was only a joke. We were on drugs. I can't believe you took that seriously.'

Dickhead 1has instructed his cheeks to glow red. His penis
shrivels upwards towards his hairline. Life is still leant forward, staring with annoyance across the table.

‘The Wild World,' chuckles Dickhead 2. ‘The Wild World's got nothing to do with any of that. If anything, the Wild World's just old-fashioned moneymaking. After all, we're heading for a recession. You see, and I will try to be brief, research recently revealed that hatred no longer exists. We couldn't believe it. To us, everyone seemed to hate immigrants, terrorists, natural disasters, death, economic meltdown, being alone etc. But we dug a little deeper, and found that, basically, no one really gives a running fuck about any of those things. We found that most people consider life to be slightly overrated, so-so, a bit dull, you know, fairly pointless but, essentially, not that bad. And this is a bad thing, this kind of indifference towards being alive. The cornerstone of the economy has always been a firm and widespread hatred of being alive, particularly among women. Hatreds of various kinds are often fundamental reasons to spend money. But things are changing. People are increasingly less willing to buy away their hatred of life. They're no longer willing to try and be happy. They just bob along, pointlessly, thinking it's OK, not that good, not that bad, average, which doesn't inspire the necessary consumption. And so the Wild World is just a threat, a way of scaring people, an attempt to frustrate them and cause them to worry and to revive their hateful approach to the issue of living, get them into the shops, get them talking to each other, get them speculating about the world again, hating it. It'll be great, right?'

‘Wrong,' says Dickhead 3, neatly tucking his penis behind his ear and shaking a pitying frown at Dickhead 2. ‘The Wild World has got nothing to do with the economy.
And, in any case, the living will always buy.'

Across the table, Life shrugs. Anka plays with her minuscule wrists while the wanker wanks.

‘The Wild World,' continues Dickhead 3, ‘and this is an absolute fact, is nothing more than an excuse for a party.'

Life instructs her hands to cover her face in frustration. With each attempt to describe the Wild World she has become increasingly annoyed. After all, she sacrificed a lot to work for it. She left Manchester. She left Joe. She's spent every night schmoozing in Wow-Bang trying to make connections.

‘Think about it, Life,' says Dickhead 3. ‘Just lately, all the big parties have become a bit boring. People just aren't enjoying them as much as they used to. For example, everyone's pretty much figured out that Christmas is crap, that it's very depressing. Even little kids are pretty cynical about it. Easter, obviously, is rubbish, completely meaningless. But the problem goes much wider. Stuff like the football World Cup, the Oscars, St Patrick's Day, the MTV Awards, the Proms, the Queen's Jubilee, right down to things like birthday parties, weddings, office summer parties. People just aren't getting much out of these things any more. They try and everything, but, you know, they tend to feel pretty let down, like they've seen it all before. The idea behind the Wild World is simply to tell the people that the world is new and wild and to encourage them to party in celebration of this fact. The Wild World is little more than something for people to do. And that,' says Dickhead 3, ‘is the truth.'

The word ‘truth' hangs in the air like stubbornly stained underwear on a backyard washing line. Anka doesn't know what to make of any of this. Each dickhead's explanation
contained the rickety, creaking sounds of lies. She and Life watch, confused, as the dickheads nod to each other and whisper sagely, that, in effect, they're all right. ‘Yes, of course, in a way, all of us are right.' Then over the course of a silent minute the atmosphere around the table sinks like an object accidentally swallowed and everyone is briefly pleased that the wanker has decided to speak.