Beachland

By Antony Mann

What happens when a megalomaniac TV star slings his conscious mind into the mass subconscious of humanity? Generally speaking, nothing good.

Unfortunately for everyone, it's only unassuming middle manager Ralph Prate who can hope to save the world. Can Ralph defeat twisted superstar Dregg Dormann before he wins the struggle against the Archetypes of the Unconscious and ushers in the Last Age of Man? Ralph must find Dormann's off button before it's too late, or see everything he loves destroyed.

 

BEACHLAND is a satirical science-fiction novel about one man's quest to save a world steeped in mediocrity from an even greater mediocrity, in the face of overwhelming indifference, ennui and remarkably wicked evil. Years in the writing, with attention spans so short these days, this book could well be years in the reading too. An epic yet trivial novel for the last ages of humanity, written to be savoured over decades – if we have that long.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Antony Mann
• Release date: Jul 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393949015

Antony Mann

Antony Mann's short crime fiction has appeared many times in Crimewave and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He is a winner of the Crime Writer's Association UK Short Story Dagger and has been nominated for the same award.  

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

A light and oily rain was falling as Ralph Prate stepped out of Midpark Subway Station onto the crowded footpath of a Hupert City winter. The faces of the early shoppers and commuters on Trent Avenue were hard and unsmiling under the streetglobes. Their darting eyes revealed the frenzy of living, the instinctive drive to get from one place to another as quickly as possible and then go somewhere else. By contrast, out on the streets, the slow-moving traffic, bumper to bumper beneath the skyscrapers, seemed sullen and resigned.

Wearing a dark blue suit, Prate flicked open his umbrella and eased himself into the flow of pedestrians which moved uptown towards the Jonko Building.

Prate was a skilled jostler. His elbows rotating, leaning slightly forward, he moved in a small-stepped barging trot. Ever ready to slip deftly into the narrow gaps which occasionally appeared in the close-set throng, he directed glancing blows from the sharpened fin-points of his umbrella off the bobbing heads around him.

Good jostling, Prate, came a voice from beside him. It was Ernie Drell from Survey Analysis.

Well jostled yourself, Prate nodded.

Near enough to fifty, Drell was twice Ralph’s age, yet what he lacked in athleticism he made up for in sheer bulk. Sweat dripping from his red face onto the lapels of his grey fabron suit, he grinned eagerly as he forged a way ahead with his bulging stomach. They co-jostled for a time. The threat of Drell’s mass coupled with accurate stabs from Ralph’s umbrella soon cleared a path.

Working the early shift again? asked Ralph.

Nuhghng, Drell grunted as he shoved a small boy down onto the pavement. I’ve got a Peakists Anonymous meeting in half an hour. Thought I’d have a jostle beforehand.

Ralph frowned.

I thought the Peakist sessions were designed to help people overcome their addiction to peak hour commuting.

Sure, said Drell, but the meetings operate on a mutual support basis. How can the other Peakists be supportive if I don’t have a relapse to confess?

Don’t you want to get over your Peakism?

I kind of like it, said Ernie. Don’t get much time to relax these days.

So why go to the meetings?

They’re tax deductible.

Oh! Why didn’t you say so! exclaimed Ralph. They both had a good laugh.

How’s life in Survey? asked Ralph as they neared the Jonko Building.

Sixty-eight percent of the time it’s just fine, Ernie conceded with a frown. The other twenty-seven percent...you know how it is.

That’s only ninety-five percent, said Ralph.

Ernie shrugged expansively.

Expenditure redirection. We just can’t afford the other six percent if we’re going to stay within budget.

Five percent, Ralph corrected him. He sympathised, Times are tough. We’re feeling the pinch everywhere. Funds are being redirected to finance the redirection of funds.

That’s right, agreed Drell, keen to show his understanding of things about which he knew little. Time cuts may well increase exponentially. He was concerned. Some people say it’s going to reduce the average employee lifespan by up to sixty percent, and that’s just in the short term.

Don’t listen to those idiots, scoffed Ralph. It’s a restructuring exercise designed to show that corporate goals have been met statistically. Apparently, we’re all getting pay rises to compensate for the wage cuts.

Well that’s a relief, said Ernie, though he didn’t seem convinced.

An elderly woman carrying half a dozen bulky parcels loomed up in the small space in front of him. Drell gave her a push and she tottered on one leg before crashing to the ground with a resigned squawk.

Watch where you’re going, lady! Drell shouted. He checked his watch, Gotta go, Ralph. I’ve lost three minutes in the last hour and I’m not even working overtime. Thanks for the jostle. See ya later buddy!

The Jonko Building loomed up ahead. Ernie steeled himself for the long haul back down Trent Avenue. Ralph gave him a friendly farewell poke in the ear with his umbrella before turning his attention to the solo push into the tower block.

––––––––

Up on the 47th floor, Prate stood at his desk and looked out through the shatter-proof glass to see what he could see. To his left was the Stimmins Building, to his right rose the massive Vault Towers. Directly in front, blotting out the rising sun, stood the Grantby Complex, and he paused for a moment to admire its blank façade. Although they were in any case subsidiaries of Jonko, Inc., he noted with a ticklish pride that the Jonko Building was the tallest of them all.

Hovering some distance off above the murky skyline and visible through a gap between two skyscrapers was the Radegar Bleep blimp. Striped green and white, it hung like a fat, glossy watermelon suffused by an aura of blanched grey light. Not that Jonko-affiliated Radegar Broadcasting was in need of such advertising gimmicks. The blimp was more an icon.

Prate pressed his nose against the window and looked down. There they were, in the anthill streets below. In a few hours their shopping bags would be expanding along with their credcard balances – the people of Hupert City, Jonko customers all. With a smile he crossed to the dispenser, depressed a key and watched the Jonkoffee pfft gently into the plast cup. Then he turned to survey the rambling pastureland of the open plan office.

Down the narrow, sleepy laneways between the desks rolled office boys and girls on noiseless rollerblades, delivering memos and collecting the Jonkpaper documents with barely a pause. The sleeker and more inherently beautiful members of the management classes strolled casually along the wider pathways. On the desks themselves the networked terminals sang their soothing songs under the practiced touch of the operators. In the distance, behind glass, was the empty office of Ralph’s direct superior – Isabel Stallard, Special Projects Officer (International Division).

It was felt by those who felt such things that one day soon Prate would take the seat behind that window. It was not because he himself had said or done anything to indicate it. In fact, the idea had never occurred to him. Nonetheless, it was incontrovertible. The Jonko spiral coiled with a seductive certainty, and Ralph Prate was headed in towards the centre.

Right now though, Ralph had a meeting with Isabel, and prior to taking the lift skyward, Prate checked his hair in the washroom mirror. The floor was a thick transparent slab of glass through which employees could watch the aimless meandering of a hundred different species of automated plasti-fish. The aquatic bathroom was now standard across the corporation, and many employees felt uneasy in restrooms not host to at least some form of pseudo-marine life.

Several of the quasi-fish, programmed to react to movement from above, darted up towards the soles of Ralph’s black leatheroid shoes as he leaned forward unselfconsciously to sight himself better for the delicate task of hair strand adjustment. He glanced at the Jonko, Inc. motto above the mirror, preaching its wisdom from the understated earthiness of a mock-antiquated wood-substitute plaque:

––––––––

WE JUST MAKE THE CRAP

––––––––

He finished the implied sentiment in his mind: We just make the crap, you buy it. The motto was attributed to Jonko’s founder Undine Trent, but nobody knew its origins for certain. Many books had been written about Undine Trent. The esteemed Reynard Calvin – one of the more intelligent members of the Satchmo Intelligent Persons’ Trust – was alone responsible for eight. Undine Trent was long gone, but she lived on in the Jonko motto, tacked on to the walls of the corporation’s offices and production facilities across the globe.

CHAPTER TWO

Prate alighted from the lift on the 71st floor, at the Paradise Room. Standing on the threshold, he sought out Isabel.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. He was looking out across a large and circular windowless hall with a low ceiling. It was lit dimly by a studied arrangement of fake candles, either pendent from the ceiling in compact bronzoid chandeliers or set in the marbloid pedestals which formed an inner ring. For those who chose to bring paperwork or tabloids to their meetings, there were tiny spot lamps on the polished tables. Barefoot waiters in silken underwear and topless waitresses, all wearing velvetoid black eye masks, delivered drinks and snacks. The gentle stroking of electronic jingles pulsed in the background.

The room was crowded, and it was a moment before Prate was picking his way between the conversations to where Isabel lay sprawled across a sofa chair, a half-empty cocktail glass balanced on her thigh. Prate eased himself onto the deep red cushions beside her as a slender waitress with mousy brown hair and pendulous breasts homed in, her eyes green behind the mask. He couldn’t help staring at her nipples as he ordered a Jonka-Cola and two packets of Jonko Cheez-E Zootmunchers. The waitress, unmindful of Ralph’s wandering eye, departed with the order.

I don’t like Zootmunchers, Ralph, Isabel drawled, shifting slightly in her seat so that the split in her beige skirt rode further up her leg.

They’re for me, said Prate. Get your own.

Would you do it for me?

You just said you didn’t like them.

I don’t, she said.

Exactly how long have you been here, Isabel? Prate glanced at the glass in her hand and the three empties on the table beside her. It’s not even eight in the morning.

She tilted the glass towards him. Braincrushers. You know I like them.

Isabel was not unattractive. She was thirty-five years old, but Jonko Plastibod treatment had seen to that. Once she had looked maybe thirty-two. Then it had been the sweet road back to the mid-twenties, the long dark hair and the fair unwrinkled skin. Her body, always slim, had kept its shape with a helping incision here and there.

It’s the eyes, thought Ralph as he regarded her. The Plastibod operations were effective, but no amount of cosmetic surgery could preclude the disconcertion one felt when looking into thirty-five-year-old eyes stuck in a twenty-five-year-old head. Still, no doubt they’d come up with something one day.

Having a good day, Ralph? asked Isabel.

Can’t complain so far. He looked about the room. Crowded today.

Sweat and conversation. It enhances the ambience, don’t you think? said Isabel. Makes me feel sexy.

Especially after four Braincrushers.

I’m immune to them. I can drink them all day. Sometimes I do. She was toying with a stray tress of her dark hair, an inward smile on her lips. Coming over tonight?

Unmarried and without children, Isabel lived on the nth floor of an apartment block overlooking the pleasant curve of Hupert City’s bay area.

You want me to?

Sure.

All right then. Fine.

Marriages had been made – and broken – here. Appointments set for casual trysts. Late-night toilers had fallen for each other after hours amidst the upholstered furniture. And skyrocketing corporate wonderkids had misplaced their careers and identities after struggling through tangled emotional mazes which had affected their judgement and impaired their ability to function during work hours. But meltdowns were uncommon. Jonko employee policy did not blind itself to either natural or unnatural urges – the Paradise Room was proof enough of that – but it did not condone self-indulgence. Most people privy to this inner sanctum knew well enough the limit of their privilege and let themselves be guided by it. Ralph and Isabel had been seeing a lot of each other for four months now. It was a satisfactory arrangement.

Isabel straightened in her seat. She slid the glass onto the table, pulled her skirt down towards her knees and smoothed the ruffles from her white blouse. The meeting had begun.

I like it best over there, she said, nodding towards the hologram near the bar. Prate could just make it out through the smoky light, beyond a gaggle of executives gesticulating importantly around their high-piled filtrescent butts and powdered beers.

Apparently suspended in thin air near the wall was a three-dimensional depiction of Undine Trent by Eliza van Snood. The Jonko founder had been imagined sitting naked in a bathtub surrounded by dozens of small creatures of indeterminate nature. Furry and grey, they had large eyes and thin, leathery tongues. Prate knew the scene well. It formed a necessary part of their pre-meeting empathisation. Ritual was of great importance in the creation of a rapport. The success of a meeting depended on establishing open lines of communication. Isabel always began with the same words, and Ralph or Charlie White invariably replied with,

What are those little creatures in the tub?

It was another feature of the process that Isabel’s answer to this question differed from one meeting to the next. Today, she threw her head back, shook out her hair, made a kind of flatulent bubbling noise through her lips and said,

I can’t see too clearly from here, but to me they all look like my Uncle Eduardo. On one of his better days.

Charlie White would have retorted quickly. White was Isabel’s senior assistant, and it was Prate’s job to assist him in his assistance. But Charlie was off sick. Prate fumbled around in his mind for a Charlie-like quip that would prolong the sequence.

Your Uncle Eduardo must be like, ugly, yeah? he muttered somewhat feebly.

To be sure, Isabel responded, he has won several awards for his grotesqueness. He was semi-finalist in the Hupert Mr Unattractive Quest five years running and would have made the finals except for all the other ugly fuckers. His tongue is not quite that long, but his mouth is as wide as a bucket and...meh, this isn’t going to work. Improvisation isn’t really your strong suit is it, Ralph?

No, he agreed. Sorry. I mean, if there were some kind of system or set of guidelines...

She sighed and sank back into the cushions.

Do you even know what improvisation is? So now we’re going to have to assail this meeting through a different porthole. Or else just get pissed. Do you think you can do it?

Who knows? said Ralph.

That’s the spirit!

Ralph sat up straight. His bones felt stiff, and there was a sudden adrenaline soup churning in his gut. This wasn’t the first time the smooth passage of a meeting had been exposed to chance. They had always overcome the problem in the past, but such a situation was naturally imbued with uncertainty. E. D. Martin’s classic text The Mechanics of Business Congress clearly outlined the dangers, when fashioning the initial parameters of a meeting, of venturing into the boundless unknown. On the other hand, it also documented several cases of middle managers, some as young as Prate, who had turned imminent catastrophe into celebrated hyper-productivity through the sheer brilliance of their improvisation. Nevertheless, Prate was glad of the interruption when the waitress returned.

He watched her bend and set his Jonka-Cola and Cheez-E Zootmunchers on the table. As she did so her breasts wobbled back and forth in front of him not unlike very large conkers on strings. This time, it was her left nipple in particular which transfixed him. It was a lighter shade of yellow than the right.

Interesting variance in the nipple shadings, he said conversationally.

You like? The waitress smiled. All the girls are doing it these days. The guys too.

You should try it, Ralph, said Isabel. Paint one of your nipples blue.

The waitress, unsure whether to laugh, contrived a polite nod before departing. Ralph sipped thoughtfully on his drink.

I could do that, he said, or maybe I could daub my elbows with war paint and terrorise strangers on the subway while I howled like an idiot.

Isabel leaned forward, sitting on the very edge of her chair. She grabbed a packet of Zootmunchers and tore it open.

You said you didn’t like them, said Prate.

I don’t. I just like the sound of ripping plastoid. And I like where you’re coming from, Ralph. I like the implications of your idea. Eventually maybe you could convert your whole neighbourhood to some kind of pointless kooky tribalism and wage a futile war on something completely irrelevant!

Ralph grimaced, his brain clanking, hardly daring to move. This is it, he thought. The E. D. Martin dilemma, the improvisational crux where you stand, or you fall. The choice is yours. Or not, as the case may be. He sucked in a cool breath and closed out any doubts.

That would be ideal. Encourage supervised subversion and instigate a massive fake news propaganda campaign. We’d make people listen, even if they were busy doing something else!

Isabel was getting excited, running a finger up and down her neck, looking into his eyes.

More than that! The words bubbled up loosely out of her throat, We’d make them believe! We’d raise you up, Ralph, a new spiritual media figure!

I can see it, he muttered, straining, his feet tapping nervously, and you would join me there at the pinnacle of my manufactured godhead!

You can count on it, Ralph! she panted. I’ve always wanted to sleep with an out-of-control megalomaniac and join him in his delusional belief system!

Now is your big chance! Prate rejoined. The words reverberated inside his skull. He was tempted to grapple with their significance, but a part of him knew it would be folly. Instinctively he released himself to the teachings of E. D. Martin. The artificial boundary of self-consciousness had to be crossed if they were to link psyches in the artificially-created meeting phase. There could be no standing back to gauge the progress of their empathisation. He felt a tiny tug from his rationality, like a psychic warning buzzer, but inwardly he shrieked out in mad, triumphant laughter and the rational impulse vanished in the wake of a beautiful strangeness of which Isabel and he were now part. They had but to cement the link.

We’d have to live in a wigwam, she said, rocking back and forth.

Tee-pee, he replied immediately.

House!

Break!

Destroy!

Burn!

Fire!

Death!

Birth!

Baby!

Breast!

Mother!

Strong!

Wise!

Powerful!

True!

Jonko!! they crowed simultaneously.

Isabel collapsed back into her seat in the breathy rapture of success. Her feet and armpits were sweating. She kicked off her shoes and ran her toes through the plush pile of the synthoid carpet. She was purring, and their fellow workers chattered and slurped all about them, but Ralph heard nothing. In his transcendence, more intense than her own, his ears were corked. To his eyes all that remained of the candlelight was a bright but dissipated glow, yet it served to highlight the details of the 3D image of Undine Trent near the far wall. Though he saw, he did not differentiate: there was no space in his mind for thought.

The founding mother of Jonko was sitting in the bathtub. Her shoulders were round and white, her hair lank and wet and fine, obscuring her high cheek bones and the soft curve of her jaw. Her breasts were petite ski slopes. She scratched herself behind the left ear, then picked up the soap from the bottom of the tub and began to wash herself. The bug-eyed furry creatures which sat in waiting on the sides of the tub assumed positions of abject slathering and licked the soap from her body as soon as it was applied. It pleased her.

Now Undine Trent stepped from the bath, dripping water and suds as she crossed the room towards Ralph. The small creatures pranced about her, their tongues snaking around her ankles.

It is said that the deities of men and women appear in many forms: as huge, winking dollar signs flapping lazily across the sky, or as carefree missiles swanning down the air currents, bound for the final points of enlightenment. Automated cattle tenders have recorded the passage of mysterious satellites blinking across the plains; omens of the cataclysm have been found in packets of Jonko Kornykrunch Diet-Fibre Brekko Organo-Puffs.

Now before Ralph there stood Undine Trent, unclothed and wet, an authentic van Snood, her pubic hair matted into short tresses, her nipples erect with the cold. There was kindness in the rivers of her eyes as she stooped and kissed him gently on the lips, while behind her the train of imaginary creatures yabbered their glee and danced their mutant hamster dances on the floor.

Wow! Ralph heard someone say. It might have been himself.

The touch of her skin on his own was like hammers beating on metal inside his head, a sweet medley of industrial sounds. His lips tingled as though brushed by snow. A drop of ambrosia dribbled down his chin and fell, to become a point of gold upon his shirt. He looked up to see where Undine Trent, the Jonkmother, might lead him, and she spoke, saying,

"We just make the crap. You buy it."

Prate knew truth.

It was as his hand reached out to touch her that she vanished, fading back into the hologram, her furry, drooling retinue following after like fumes tracing their way towards a ventilator. Prate was left staring through the haze, kneeling as a beggar, cradling the memory of the realisation of the impossible. Slowly, the outside world came knocking once more.

Ralph? Are you all right? Isabel’s blurry face came into focus, mere centimetres away. She was shaking him by the shoulders.

Ughh? he said.

What happened, Ralph?

He smiled, a post-trance dumb grin.

"I just...you won’t believe it...hyper-real manifestation. Undine Trent. She...kissed me. She kissed me! She was all wet and soapy."

I thought you were dead, said Isabel. You dribbled all down your chin. See? It’s all over you. Yecch.

He took a tissue from his pocket and wiped the muck from his shirt, then held it close and inspected it.

This was gold, Isabel. Pure frikking gold.

Well now it’s slime. You’re weird, Ralph. She stood hands on hips, gazing down at him. That whole improvisation was weird. Brilliant, but weird.

Ralph nodded. The last tremors of his vision were fading, ripples dying on a pond. He put the tip of one finger between his lips and wet it with his tongue, remembering.

You ought to be careful. Isabel resumed her seat. You know what happened to Eugene Plenk.

Eugene Plenk was a nutcase.

He slipped through screening, didn’t he? He used to go dancing with Undine Trent every time he empathised. As I heard it, one day she waltzed him up to the observation deck, over the balcony, and all the way down to the pavement. Ninety-two floors. Talk about Jonko Strawberry-Flavoured Conserve.

I know the story, said Ralph.

Still, they had attained a plateau of connection, which meant the meeting could proceed. It was as yet unclear how near to the Gretz Point they had come, but they must have been pretty close. For one thing, Ralph could tell at once that Isabel was holding something back.

He asked her outright, What is it?

There was no point her trying to hide it.

Your last three or four psych evaluations. I’ve seen the reports. They indicate a growing tendency towards a conscious/subconscious states overlap.

And?

And so, I’m not surprised that you manifested Undine Trent. Have you been dreaming more vividly than usual?

Now that you mention it, yes! Last night I dreamt of an assortment of extremely vivid...

Shut it, Ralph. Nobody wants to hear about another person’s dreams, unless they’re in them of course. Booorrring!

Maybe I ought to see a shrink.

She shrugged,

Maybe. Although it doesn’t seem to be affecting your work performance. You did handle the improvisation well. E.D. Martin would be proud of you. Are we in tune?

Ralph looked into her thirty-five-year-old eyes stuck in her twenty-five-year-old head. The meeting began in earnest. Isabel tested the water.

Small pieces of plast, she said.

Ralph knew immediately what she was referring to. Product Effect Evaluation forecasts had predicted that the corrosive ingredients in Jonko’s experimental Yummo Fizz-Aid Pop, shipped to the Middle East in staggering quantities twelve months earlier, would soon be taking their toll on teeth and gums throughout the region. The export of a small batch of Readyfix Gumspray would normally have been the first stage in the consumer need follow-up procedure. But the wrong specifications had been fed into the automated factory and instead of gum medicine, out had popped four hundred million small, flat circular pieces of black plastoid. The error had been corrected and the gum spray had already been shipped out, but there was left to Isabel Stallard and the Special Projects Division the problem of the superfluous plast. Crunching on his Zootmunchers, Ralph considered the options.

Drinks coasters? he suggested. It was, at least, an idea, and it also informed Isabel that the Gretz Point – the theorised nexus where two or more minds became one – was indeed within reach. Actually reaching the Gretz Point was of course impossible, but it was well known that the longer one had successfully practiced empathisation, the closer to the Point one might come. Senior managers well versed in the technique often spent whole afternoons in the Paradise Room in near silence, saying barely one or two words to each other, and these were usually hello and goodbye. On scheduled meeting days, most of the old souls who comprised the Jonko Board stayed home and fried themselves under Jonko-Lamps while glued to the Wide Screen. Of those who did attend, half usually slept through proceedings. The rest played quiet games of poker for filtrescents and bubblegum or swiped through porn comics. Decisions on major policy issues were made unwaveringly in the back rooms of their empathically-linked minds. Members of the Jonko Trade Council – the leaders of the major global administration centres – hardly spoke to each other more than once a decade. It was the same for Departmental Heads.

Another excellent way to approach the Gretz Point was by getting together with someone and overdosing on Vebnol.

Not as they stand, said Isabel.

It was true, thought Ralph. Small pieces of black plastoid would never sell as drinks coasters without decorative alteration. He smiled. He had an idea.

Authentic souvenirs, he said.

Isabel thought it through. It was a plan they had used before when faced with worthless merchandise. Of course, useless products would shift automatically over time – people would buy any old crap – but for the quick sales necessary to make up shortfalls arising from errors, a hook could be useful. The preferred method was to create a bogus anniversary of an invented historic occasion, then promote it on personal tabloids and on the Wide Screen for a few weeks before releasing the limited-edition authentic souvenirs, perhaps running a worthless competition at the same time. She knew it would work. It always did. She nodded.

I’ll get on to Marketing.

The meeting proceeded in this manner for some time. They obliquely discussed the successful introduction of Jonko Gunbarrel Cleanwipes to rebels fighting in the Anglo-Caledonian border skirmishes, and the problems inherent in convincing the few remaining natives of New Chile that their Sun God drank Jonko Vita-Juice. It felt good. Things were going well. Then, halfway through his second packet of Zootmunchers and Isabel’s third, Ralph sensed an unexpected change in the direction of his boss’s thinking. He paused with his greasy fingers still inside the packet.

What is it, Isabel?

At length, she sighed.

I knew I couldn’t hide it from you. Ralph, I have some news, and I may as well tell you straight out. I’m sending you overseas.

What?!

The equilibrium they had built crashed down around them as they returned to the realms of normal communication.

I was afraid that would happen, she said.

You surprised me, he said. I thought you said you were sending me overseas.

I did.

That’s what I thought you said. What’s happened? What have I done?

You haven’t done anything. Alvin Dyson in Leisure Expansions has dropped a project on us. They’re snowed under up there, we have to take some of the load.

But why me? he complained. I’ve got my apartment, and my weekly Satchmo meetings. And my job here. What about that? And all the other things! What about my ant farm?

This is a professional call. You’re the best man for the job, that’s all. Trent knows I’d prefer that your rather unremarkable body was still going to be within shagging distance.

But how long is this for?

Could be some time.

But...days? Weeks? Months? How long, Isabel?

She smiled,

Don’t sweat it, Ralph. I’ll look after your ant farm for you.

CHAPTER THREE

The bottleneck slowed movement through the entrance to Midpark Subway Station and down the travelators into the underground complex. Ralph closed his umbrella and settled into an easy routine of nudge and counter-nudge until he reached Platform 16. Passing his credcard under the glowing nozzle of the vidi-sensor, he pushed through the turnstile and out onto the personal space grid. Its one-metre squares delineated by criss-crossing black tiles on white, the grid was filling up quickly and in orderly fashion from the front of the queue. Once he was on his own square, Ralph could relax.

To his left, further down the platform beyond a sturdy wire fence, the semi-skilled workers stood like pencils, their shoulders hunched as they strove to remain within the bounds of the smaller, cheaper squares. Just visible even farther distant was the top of the human pyramid formed by the unskilled labourers and the unemployed, able to afford only the bargain-priced fifteen centimetre squares. The distasteful noise of their grunting and bellowing occasionally floated above the soothing rhythms of the jingles and popular organ tones which emanated from the subway loudspeaker system between the indecipherable arrival and departure announcements, but Ralph felt unthreatened as he stood in his temporary sanctuary.

It was a curious effect of the more expensive personal space grids that the boundaries of one’s own area created a sense of isolation bordering on the illusion of invisibility. All around Ralph, executives in their featureless suits were frantically scratching between their legs or plucking nostril hairs as if making up for lost time. Some practiced the next day’s facial expressions and hand gestures, others squatted and rummaged through small piles of credtabs, chuckling and hissing or muttering account receipt numbers to themselves.

To his right, past the tasselled pseudo-silk cord which demarcated the spacious senior management grid, the effect was even more pronounced. Cut off from the rest of the world, senior staff prowled their generous three-metre squares like caged animals, occasionally halting to lift their heads and bay at the fluorescent tubes above. Argleson from Communications had torn open his shirt and was combing his chest hair. Harvardly Preston, Section Head of Image Manipulation, had backed into a corner of her grid square, shrieking mad thoughts which she thought nobody could hear.

They’ve all gone away again! she cried. There’s nobody left but me! Who can I have lunch with?

Hands shaking, she opened her briefcase and pulled out a Jonko Mothercomf Securi-Doll and clutched it to her breast. Soon her insane cries faded into a placid gurgling, like dishwater draining from a sink.

For Ralph, the brief meditative interlude on the grid always presented a chance to review his work performance. Today, he looked back on his morning meeting with Isabel in the Paradise Room with modest recognition of his own accomplishment. To have stood on the brink of E. D. Martin’s theoretical abyss and gazed into the depths of ignominy, where lesser men floundered, would have filled lesser men with a sense of crowning achievement, had they not been floundering, or lesser. To have leapt across that abyss into instigation of the gretzoidal decision-making process would perhaps have torn the minds of even lesser men apart...but admirably, Prate was able to keep things in perspective.

The most successful person he had ever met was an old man who had done nothing of note in his entire life but who wore a badge which read:

––––––––

I am the most successful person you have ever met.

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Even though the old man had been kicked to death by jealous contemporaries, at least he had died successful. It was unlikely that Ralph would scale the heights attained by that old timer, yet was he not the second youngest sub-assistant ever to walk the 47th floor and marked for greater things? Ridley Quasto, author of Quasto: Sub-Assistant, had been younger but was generally regarded to have been an authentic freak.

But then, there was that other thing. Reflecting on Undine Trent’s mystical and enticing breasts, Ralph wondered briefly if he were losing his marbles. He recalled the day of Eugene Plenk’s last hyper-real manifestation. Eyes sunken through unrest, clothing in disarray, the emaciated Plenk had burst into Prate’s office and attached the electrodes of Ralph’s Jonko Portable Stressometer to his temples before sinking mutely into the vibrachair.

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Taking a break, Eugene? Ralph had asked, glancing up from Jonkpaperwork. Plenk whispered hoarsely above the hum of the chair’s motor,

What’s the reading, Ralph?

Ralph glanced at the Stressometer’s fluttering needle.

High level of delta-wave activity...that’s odd...according to this, you’re asleep. We all get bored sometimes, Eugene, but this is ridiculous. Have you thought about requesting a transfer?

Plenk’s bony face seemed to crumple inwards. A loud hiss escaped his lips.

It’s not just sleep. It’s REM sleep. I’m dreaming. I’m awake, but I’m dreaming! It’s Undine Trent. I saw her again this morning. She wanted me to follow her down the shaft of Elevator 19. I would have done it, too, if Dolby hadn’t happened by with the sixthly figures. Ralph, I’m afraid. When she first began to appear to me, I was transfixed. She was beautiful and warm, and she knew so much about upper echelon management techniques. She showed me things. There would be a thing, and she’d show it to me, and I’d say, what is it? and she’d say, it’s this, or that. Depending on what it was. She even taught me how to apply for discount travel vouchers. But that’s all changed. The things she reveals to me now, they’re... Plenk’s face crumpled and his hands trembled as his mind’s eye surveyed some inexpressible horror. He looked at Ralph with beseeching eyes, What did I do, Ralph? What am I guilty of?

Ralph stroked his chin, seeking the right words to placate the distraught figure before him.

You want my honest appraisal? My good man, you’re fucked up.

Plenk gave his colleague a watery smile.

Thanks, Prate. I knew you’d understand.

According to the Bockmann Chart your stress factor is Negative Eighteen, Ralph said, opening a plastique folder and shoving it in Plenk’s face. Most people with similar readings are Wide Screen Receiver addicts. Don’t worry so much about being so relaxed. I’d suggest taking a holiday, but you’d probably sleep through that too. You need to do something to raise your stress levels. Don’t you have any personal failings or problems you can mull over in your spare time? Why don’t you run up some debts?

The look of solicitude had been ebbing away from Plenk’s face. Then, he started, and his eyes filled with fear.

She’s closing in, Ralph. I’d know that fragrance anywhere. I...uh...I have to go.

They were the last words anybody heard Eugene Plenk speak. Nobody knows what he said to Undine Trent as he leapt from the observation deck to the ground, ninety-two floors below.

Or what she said to him.

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Now, waiting for the next shuttle, Ralph tried to imagine