The Fictional Man
PRAISE FOR
THE FICTIONAL MAN
“Intriguing and entertaining, at times not far short of a modern classic.”
The SF Site
“From
Episodes
to
The Player
, Tinseltown has made a habit over the years of satirising its own superficial, self-obsessed ways. But none have exposed the cynical inner workings of the Hollywood movie-making machine quite as brilliantly as Al Ewing’s
The Fictional Man
.”
SFX
“This is a solid piece of sci-fi that deals with the nature of self, and is worthy of comparison with Philip K. Dick's
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale
and Grant Morrison’s
The Invisibles
. It’s an effortless and rapid read, and works perfectly. Highly recommended.”
Starburst
“Once in a while I pick up a gem of a book that blows my friggin’ mind and takes me places I did not even know existed... I assure you, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that
The Fictional Man
is just such a book. Ewing is a goddamn genius.”
Den of Geek
First published 2013 by Solaris
an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,
Riverside House, Osney Mead,
Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK
ISBN (epub): 978-1-84997-538-4
ISBN (mobi): 978-1-84997-539-1
Copyright © 2013 Al Ewing
Cover art by Pye Parr
The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
For Sarah,
who helped unlock this when I needed it most.
CHAPTER ONE
R
ALPH
C
UTNER WAS
fictional, but Niles didn’t hold that against him.
T
HERE WERE ADVANTAGES
in having a fictional human – a Fictional – for a therapist.
Niles could still remember the four fruitless months, four and a half years ago, two hours a week, when he’d perched uncomfortably on the edge of a teal suede couch belonging to one Dr Mary Loewes.
She’d done most of the talking. Niles, for his part, would hesitate for long seconds, then nod silently or make small meaningless noises. On rare occasions, he might actually manage to answer one of her questions – though guardedly, with a drawn-out, one-word answer, as if he was sitting in an interrogation cell instead of a tastefully-appointed office.
Inside Niles’ head, it was a different story.
“What you don’t understand, Mary,” the author snapped,
(he would narrate to himself)
“is that I was attempting a last-ditch attempt to save my marriage. That’s why I slept with that woman – to wake my wife up to the problems we were going through before it was too late!”
“Mr Golan, I understand perfectly well,” Dr Loewes said, understandingly, “and I agree completely with everything you just said.”
Niles Golan had a habit of internally narrating his own life story, usually improving on it as he went. Mostly, it was the romance of a juicy internal monologue, a quirk that – like the habit of rolling golf balls around in his palm, which he’d claimed was how he came up with new ideas, at least until he’d lost one of the golf balls – he assumed made him deep. Partly, it was born of a neurotic desire to always be working, or at least pretend to be working – the kind of thing that Dr Loewes could have helped with, if he’d opened up to her for half a second.
Laughing inwardly at the obviousness of her technique, the author deflected her foolish questions with a practiced panache,
Niles would think, or something like it. And later, as he signed over the four hundred dollars she required per hour, he would feel a warm glow of satisfaction, as if he’d won a game he was playing with her. Another session finished – another session with the walls of his mental fortress still unbreached.
After thirty-four sessions – coming to thirteen thousand, six hundred dollars in total – he had decided that therapy was too expensive a hobby to pursue any further.
“A
ND YET...
”
SAID
Ralph Cutner, four and a half years later, as Niles Golan relaxed in the sumptuous brown leather chair he kept for his patients, “...here we are.”
“Well, this is hardly the same,” Niles muttered, leaning back into the warm recesses of the brown leather. It was the same chair that had been on the show – as far as possible, Ralph had tried to duplicate the set of
Cutner’s Chair
to the last degree when setting up his practice, and obviously the chair itself played a large part of that. He’d bought it from a memorabilia collector for twelve thousand dollars and a signed photo.
“Isn’t it?”
“Well, no. I mean, it’s different, isn’t it? The sessions with Doctor Loewes... they were something I promised Iyla I’d do. Before the divorce, I mean.”
“Right, right. This would have been after the thing with Justine.” Ralph smiled. Like most Fictionals created specifically for the small screen, he was a handsome man – a little craggy, perhaps, not quite as unnaturally gorgeous as some of the soap-opera Fictionals, but definitely the better looking of the two men. Not that Niles had much to worry about – obviously his chin was weaker, and he’d been going bald for some time, and his nose was perhaps a little long, but all that added character.
And he was real, of course. That made a difference.
“Whereas this, on the other hand,” he said, ignoring the mention of Justine Coverly – he really didn’t want to talk about
her
today, or any of the others, or his ex-wife – “these weekly sessions with you... that’s something I came to of my own accord. It was
my
decision to come and see you, I wasn’t pressured into it by anybody, so...” Niles shrugged, waving a hand idly. “There we are. Completely different situations.”
Ralph half-smiled, raising one eyebrow – the imperfections of which had been discussed by the studio’s design team for some days. He paused dramatically for a moment before speaking.
“That’s the
only
difference?”
Niles swallowed. “Well, yes. Absolutely.” He coughed. “The only difference that matters – to me, I mean.” He leaned forward, scratching the back of his head. Ralph’s arms were folded now, and Niles had a feeling he’d seen that particular fold of the arms on the ‘very special episode’ of
Cutner’s Chair
where Ralph Cutner had analysed a Grand Wizard of the local Klan.
“Do, um... do
you
think there are any other differences?” Niles tried to make his voice as innocent as possible. “Between you and her? That matter?”
Ralph raised his other eyebrow and said nothing.
Niles sighed. “It’s going to sound insulting.”
“How so?”
“It’s going to sound as if... well, as if I don’t consider you a real...” He swallowed. “You know.”
Ralph’s eyes crinkled just so, in a way that hadn’t been designed into him but was encouraged by the director all the same, particularly for close-ups. The crinkle of Ralph’s eyes was a happy accident for the translation team. “No, I don’t know. You’re going to have to tell me.” He chuckled. “A real therapist? A real jerk? A real human being? What?”
Niles shifted uncomfortably in the chair for a moment. “...A real
therapist,
” he finished, weakly.
Ralph leaned back against the wall, lowering and raising his eyebrows in a little ballet. His eyebrows were very expressive, when he wanted them to be. “Hesitation. That’s very interesting.”
The author stared Ralph Cutner right in the eye as his ridiculous eyebrows waggled like caterpillars. With one insouciant glare, he dared the man to make his accusation and be done. Instead, the Fictional crumbled, utterly defeated.
Niles didn’t look at Ralph. He looked at the floor. The silence stretched on.
“Here’s the thing, Niles.” Ralph suddenly grinned, showing teeth. “I’m
not
a real therapist – I mean, I made that clear when you started coming to see me. Technically, I’m a life coach. Because to call yourself a therapist, you need to get certain degrees. I don’t have those. I never went to college – I was never the age you go to college at. I’ve always been thirty-five – or able to
play
thirty-five, I should say. In real terms, I’m nine.” He leant forward, jerking a thumb conspiratorially at the certificates on the wall. “The moment I came out of the translation tube, those degrees were waiting for me. They’re not real, either. Just props, from the show.” Another dry little chuckle. “But you knew that.”
Niles flushed red. Of course, he knew all about the show:
Cutner’s Chair,
a one-hour weekly drama about a curmudgeonly psychiatrist with a heart of gold who (with the help of a clutch of beautiful interns) solved one crippling neurosis per week in time for a montage of learning moments cut to some unobjectionable indie song aimed at the dad demographic. It had run for seven seasons, leaving behind a large albeit steadily shrinking fan base, several dozen tumblr accounts, a small ocean of memorabilia – and the Fictional, Ralph Cutner.
T
HERE WERE STILL,
occasionally, in far-flung corners of the world, people who didn’t know what Fictionals were.
Strictly speaking, a Fictional was a cloned and modified human being. If you’d worked in the fast food industry, you’d probably have an understanding of cloning – since the big genetics breakthroughs of the ’seventies and ’eighties, it was where the meat came from. The higher class of restaurant still used ‘real’ chickens, pigs and cows, but anyone who told you they could taste the difference was a liar, and a pretentious one at that.