This Other Eden (16 page)

‘Like
the consumer knows anything!’ Plastic and a few like-minded visionaries had
complained at the time. ‘Remind me because I forget, did the consumer write
Oliver
Twist?
Or Beethoven’s ‘Fifth’? No, I don’t think so. As I recall it was
artists
who did those things, people with special talents. And what did the
consumer do? The consumer
consumed
it, didn’t he? Sucked it right up and
went away with his life enriched.’

But for
a while the revolution was unstoppable. It was presumed that since the
technology existed by which an audience could be presented with an infinite
number of possible solutions to a drama, then that must be what they would
want. Likewise, since it was now possible for a viewer to don a helmet and a
suit which would enable them to enter the action along with their favourite
heroes, then it was presumed that the public would jump at the chance.

Plastic
still felt bitterly about the way art had been hijacked by technology. He
ranted at Nathan as if it had been Nathan who was responsible for the
development of interactive entertainment.

‘The
public
always
had the technology to get involved with the action if it
wanted to. Right back to the Greeks. All they had to do was get up on stage and
join in. But they didn’t do it, did they? Weird, huh? Maybe, just maybe, they
kind of guessed that it would completely screw up the show. The public could
always
choose their own endings when they read books. All they had to do was get a
damn pen and write in that Scrooge never got nice and Moby Dick was a chipmunk.
But they didn’t, and why? Because the public don’t pay for entertainment in
order to have to provide it themselves. The whole damn nightmare was a
conspiracy by scientists and computer brains to make everyone in the world as
boring as them.’

But now
the tide was turning. The public were returning to more traditional forms of
entertainment; movies, in particular, and it seemed that Nathan was being
commissioned to write one. What is more, Max Maximus, who was just driving up
to the house with Rosalie fidgeting nervously at his side, was going to star in
it.

Stormy meeting.

‘Here’s what I want,’ said
Plastic. ‘I want a straight mega-buck advertainment to sell new generation
Claustrospheres. It’s got to be the biggest hit of the year. I want everybody
to go and see it and I want it to star Max Maximus, OK?’

The
BioLock entry-screen leapt into life. An electronic voice announced that Max
and a friend were outside. Max and Rosalie appeared on the screen.

‘Come
on up, Max. We’re in the Claustrosphere,’ Plastic said. The screen went dark
and he turned to Nathan. ‘Can you believe this guy, brings a chick to a
meeting? I’ve got a good mind not to put him in the picture. Chicks always
distract things. Am I right?’

Plastic
was about to find out how right he was.

Max and
Rosalie emerged through the BioLock.

‘Hi,
Plastic. Great ‘Sphere, cool,’ said Max, like an over-eager schoolboy visiting
a much respected master at his home. ‘Wow, you have a mini-mountain,’ he said,
referring to a hundred-metre-high rock structure complete with snow on its
upper reaches. ‘I’ve been thinking of putting one of those into mine, but I’d
have to extend. I don’t have the height for a split-level climate.’

If
Rosalie had been having trouble making her decision, that was behind her now.
The sheer obscenity of what she was looking at confirmed her resolve. She did
not consider herself Plastic’s judge and jury. That task lay with all the dead
animals and sick dying people she had encountered in her years of struggle. The
devastated areas where peasant populations skulked in the shade, nursing their
tumours, waiting for night to fall so they could harvest their mutated crops.
They
had tried and convicted Plastic Tolstoy. It was merely Rosalie’s job to
carry out the sentence. Of course, she knew it wasn’t all his fault, but there
he was, inside a private paradise that he had built for himself in a doomed
world, and Rosalie was in no mood to make excuses for him.

‘So,
who’s your little pal?’ Plastic said, turning to Rosalie only to find himself
staring down the barrel of a gun.

‘Plastic
Tolstoy!’ Rosalie announced, her hand trembling on the trigger. ‘I am a Mother
Earth activist. Dedicated to the principle that the ultimate human
responsibility is to the planet which supports us. The idea that we can exist
separate from the planet is treason. You are the principal perpetrator of this
fiction and therefore, on behalf of the planet Earth and all the people,
animals and plants that live on it, I am now going to execute you

Rosalie
had never been so lucid in her life. Conviction lent her eloquence. Plastic
Tolstoy was dead. She knew it, and he knew it. Rosalie’s finger tightened on
the trigger.

It was
pure ambition and naked careerism which saved Plastic.

For a
moment, both Max and Nathan had simply watched in horror whilst Rosalie
announced her sentence of execution. Then, separately and simultaneously, it
dawned on them that this mad bitch was about to murder the biggest break either
of them had ever had. For Nathan in particular it would be an unbearable fate… to be commissioned to write a screenplay by the top producer in the world,
only to have that producer murdered, minutes later. People spent their whole
lives looking for a break like this. Nathan couldn’t let it go now. The planet
was all very well, but this was a
movie,
for God’s sake!

Max was
in a similar position. He needed Tolstoy badly. Yes, he already had a huge
career but, as his agent Geraldine never tired of pointing out, it was
trend-based. He was the current big thing, a teen idol. He had to move on from
that; he had to mature and become a genuine star. A Tolstoy project was his
chance at real longevity.

For
both Nathan and Max, saving Plastic Tolstoy was a career move, pure and simple.
Hence, just as Rosalie’s finger began to tighten on the trigger, the two of
them launched themselves at her, and as the gun fired, all three collapsed
together on to the ground. As she fired, the gun flew out of Rosalie’s hand.
The bullet went wild, missed Plastic, bounced off the geodesic wall and
rebounded, killing a rare breed of domestic pig which was feeding on supa-grass
concentrate by the pond. The noise of the shot rang round the dome, causing a
cloud of airborne wildlife to rise in fear above the canopy of the rain forest
and an androgynous self-breeding bullcow to emerge from its stable and tread on
all the chickens.

Around
the world in eight minutes.

Rosalie was up in a moment
but Plastic, who had to defend himself before, already had the gun.

‘OK,
stay where you are, young lady,’ he said as two armed servants appeared at the
mouth of the BioLock.

But
Rosalie had no intention of staying where she was. Instead, she dived into the
dense vegetation of the rain forest. In a moment she had disappeared within its
generous foliage. The two muscular servants plunged in after her, trampling
down millions of dollars-worth of Tuf-Plant. Tuf-Plant was greenery genetically
engineered to withstand pretty much anything, although not, as it happened, a
couple of fifteen-stone armed thugs jumping all over it.

‘Watch
out for the fucking rain forest!’ Plastic shouted, ‘And don’t kill her. Dead
babes look bad!’

Rosalie
plunged on through the jungle which covered about a third of an acre of the
whole Claustrosphere. Plastic tried to run around it to cut her off on the
other side, but was prevented from doing so by the babbling stream.

‘Nathan,’
Plastic yelled over his shoulder. ‘You’re a writer, make a note. I have to have
a bridge built.’

Rosalie
emerged from under the dark canopy of the rain forest and jumped into a small
field containing various giant Hi-Yield cereal crops. Pushing through that, she
leapt over a small mangrove swamp and started to skirt around the rocky
outcrops at the bottom of the mountain.

‘Where
is she?’ shouted Plastic, as the two servants thrashed their way out of the
forest.

‘I
think she headed for the hills,’ one of them replied.

Rosalie
continued skirting the mountain, the foothills of which lay at the very edge of
the Claustrosphere, right up against the walls of the geodesic dome. As she
crouched behind a large rock she could hear her pursuers circumnavigating the
foot of the mountain from both sides. Her only option was to head upwards. As
she broke cover to scramble up the scree which lay all about on the lower
slopes, one of the servants spotted her. He fired a couple of warning shots,
hitting a small herd of geep.

‘Mind
my geep! You asshole!’ Plastic shouted.

Geep
were one of the most successful products of a genetic engineering revolution
which had been going on in deadly secrecy for years. The original genetic
project had been started by a group of very rich men who had been hoping to
breed a camel that would fit through the eye of a needle. They spent years on
it, until one day it occurred to them that it would be easier and cheaper to
simply build an enormous needle. They got out of genetics immediately, selling
their research to the Claustrosphere company.

Geep
were a cross between a sheep and a goat. They were incredibly hardy, living for
over a hundred years, and all the while provided wool, milk and, quite
astonishingly, meat. So resilient were these creatures that you could cut glamb
chops out of their hind quarters for supper and the animal would have healed up
by the next morning. This Kwik-Heal flesh was developed out of DNA isolated
from those insects that grow another leg if you pull one off. Therefore Plastic
Tolstoy need not have worried about his geep. The bullets scarcely made them
flinch. They had been the result of such brutal grafting and cloning
experiments, that being shot at was just like the old days in the lab to them.

Rosalie
reached the snowline and looked back. Seventy-five metres below, in near
tropical conditions, she could see one of her pursuers beginning to climb up
after her, whilst Plastic and the other guard doubled back round the base of
the mountain, clearly planning to cut off her descent. She had no choice but to
press on. She breasted the summit and began to run back down the opposite
slope, hoping to arrive at the bottom before Plastic came around through the
foothills. It was a tough descent, with alpine conditions for the first twenty
feet. Almost inevitably, she slipped on a glacier and fell into a mini-gully.
Fortunately, nothing was broken, but she was pretty winded and it slowed her
down. So much so that, by the time she had completed her descent, the first of
her muscular pursuers was emerging round the mountain with Plastic Tolstoy
puffing behind.

‘OK,’
said the pursuer, by way of a warning, ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

‘Whereas
I do want to hurt you,’ replied Rosalie.

She had
taken the precaution of picking up a fist-sized boulder on the lower slopes of
the scree and she smashed this into the face of her assailant, causing him to
offer no further opinions. Plastic arrived next, just in time for Rosalie to
deal him a mighty kick in the balls before running for the BioLock.

Career
decision.

Unfortunately for Rosalie,
by now, the second of the muscular types had descended the mountain. He charged
after her, covering the entire desert in four strides before bringing her down
with a flying tackle. The man was an Aikido master and, despite Rosalie’s
formidable fighting skills, he was easily able to fix her in a body-lock.
Crushed as she was by a large martial arts expert, Rosalie knew that the game
was up.

Max had
to make a career decision. This woman had just tried to murder the most
powerful producer in the world, a producer for whom Max very much wanted to
work. On the other hand, this same woman was very attractive indeed, and her
announcement of execution had contained some extremely valid points. What to
do? Max usually left difficult decisions to his agent but he knew that she
would have been in no doubt. There was no point even calling her to ask. Max
knew what her answer would be, ‘Stand back and let the girl be taken,’
Geraldine would have said, ‘and just pray Tolstoy forgets you were the one who
brought her here.’

Yes,
that is certainly what Geraldine would have said. Then, again, Geraldine was
not in full possession of the facts. For one thing, she did not fancy the girl.
In fact, to the best of Max’s knowledge, Geraldine had not even met her, and
had she done, Max doubted that she would have found something wild and
compelling about the girl’s behaviour. Max certainly did. Everything about
Rosalie spoke to Max’s very soul. She seemed to throw his own pointless and
dissolute existence into shameful contrast. Max was by nature both romantic and
a bit mad. It was these two factors which led him to decide to lay professional
considerations aside and be romantic and a bit mad now. Except that he did not
really decide; he just did it, because, as has already been pointed out, he was
a bit mad. Running over, he took a huge kick at the Aikido master’s head.
Rosalie rolled the unconscious man off her and leapt to her feet.