Tomas (17 page)

The four words, reduced to three in translation, compel the hearer to undress immediately and prepare for coupling. While this satisfies the President, it's rather less obvious what benefits accrue to the recipients of his largesse. It's one of the great unanswered questions of history. The girl fucks instantly and without ceremony. Then what? A mention in the credits?

As the new Messiah's girlfriend, it's not difficult for Tereza to arrange a meeting with the President. Now, she stands before him in the private salon of the presidential residence not far from Cannes.

‘To what do I owe this pleasure, madamoiselle?' the President asks.

Tereza looks coy. She twists one leg suggestively but keeps her eyes fixed on the President.

‘Madamoiselle, may I help you?' he says.

Tereza bites her lip lightly.

The President rises from his desk of state – here Napoleon once sat – and walks towards Tereza.

She wears a simple brown dress, with matching high heels. Her only jewellery is a chunky pendant the size of a small camera lens. Her smooth legs shimmer with a hint of oil. As he approaches, the President catches a glimpse of her perfect upturned breasts. Just as he reaches her, she lowers her eyes, sways shyly and twists a strand of hair.

This is it. One, two, three.

‘Madamoiselle, I am the President,' he says.

Nothing. Tereza remains impassive.

‘I repeat. I am the President.'

Tereza turns a foot inwards.

‘Do I make myself plain, mademoiselle?' the President asks, his passion rising.

‘Forgive me, Monsieur le President,' Tereza says. ‘I'm so sorry. I don't understand what that means.' Thrusting out her chest, she raises her eyes to meet his and opens her mouth.

The President explodes with frustration and desire. ‘Fuck me immediately!' he shrieks. ‘Immediately, I say. Fuck me immediately.'

‘Very well,' says Tereza and turns on her heel and leaves the room.

Moments later, their meeting is broadcast worldwide on Shit TV.

In the battle between sex and something else
…

… something else always loses. The presidential election is one such battle.

Tereza's broadcast meeting with the President is a ratings triumph on a par with her Hank-torture series. She becomes Shit TV's new star. And why not? She is young, sexy and the girlfriend of the new Messiah, with endless potential for mischief. What else does a star need? Or a President for that matter?

In unleashing its campaign, Shit TV finds that the President is an easy target: the French don't object so much to the use of the presidential aphrodisiac as to its failure. It shames the
Patrie
for the President to command ‘open sesame' only for the magic portal to remain shut.

He doesn't go down without a fight. He closets himself with his advisers. They go days without sleep. The presidential nails are bitten to the quick. As much French blood, sweat and tears are shed as on a Napoleonic battlefield. At last, one early dawn – eureka! The President hits on a winning idea, a political ideology of such brilliance and originality that all will be swept before it.

Change! A concept so unfamiliar in contemporary politics that – who knows? – he may even be hailed as the second Napoleon.

He had been planning a campaign based on truth: ‘Citizens! I regret there's not much we can do with our great nation. We're stuck. Whatever is promised, nothing ever happens. It's all just talk and air. Let's not worry. Water has a way of finding its own level. Time will resolve
what we politicians are unable to do. I, at least, am straight about the situation. So vote for me.'

The new version: ‘Citizens! You're not stupid – you would never fall for an idea that's been used a thousand times before. Especially not a political cliché that is as old as the hills and is known never to work. So here's a brilliant new one – change! Never promised before by any politician, and guaranteed to work. So vote for me.'

Although the President doesn't realise it, the world is, in fact, the subject of a cosmic joke perpetrated by God. One day, for no particular reason, he waved his hand and fixed the world in a perpetual time warp, the effect of which was that nothing has ever changed in politics. It is almost as if the world gets into a giant time machine, ready for an exciting political journey, only to hear a crunching of gears and a loud bang. Instead of travelling among the stars, we are stuck for eternity. Luckily, the people are unaware of this celestial prank and exult in the President's brilliant new idea.

Election day arrives and Tereza and Shit TV have a problem. What can compete with the President's superb political marketing of rupture, the need for change, a break with the past, a fresh beginning, the nation reborn, the dawning of a new day?

‘There's nothing for it,' says Tereza.

She strips live on Shit TV. And wins by a landslide.

Rats and respect
…

A rat can fit through a space the size of a pencil. Millions of rodents now perform this trick to invade every place of incarceration in the world that houses violent criminals: murderers, armed robbers, weapon-toting narcotics and people traffickers, street thugs and mafiosi.

The rats squeeze and scurry through holes and up drainpipes carrying tiny pieces of equipment, which they deposit in every prison canteen before scuttling off for more. Groups of technicians assemble the equipment with twitching whiskers and busy paws. The process is arduous and assembly slow but the rat sea swarms and surges and each tide brings a little more progress. Gradually the equipment begins to take shape.

The precursor to this global infestation was the Great Bear's angry summons to King Rat. Tereza's election is inconsequential; she and the fake Messiah will be swept aside in the coming deluge but for Shit TV to endorse her in its desperation for ratings is an abomination. The Great Bear knows that the fake Messiah despises Shit TV; the network was responsible for his death and his very existence is an antidote to everything it stands for. Doesn't the network know it's being played for a fool? That by conniving with him, it sows the seeds of its own destruction?

This is King Rat's mission: to return Shit TV to the Great Bear's cause; to promote licentiousness, the worship of money, depravity of every hue and colour – all to soften the West for the final broadcast which his master has
prepared a thousand times in his mind. That of his new world empire. For the army is half mobilised, its weapons almost ready and with the Cocksacks disgorged of their venomous load and Tomas's broken body at his feet, the Great Bear will finally emerge from his lair. Only the biggest network in world history will suffice as a platform from which to proclaim the new Russian hegemony.

For King Rat, it's an easy mission. Shit TV's only interest is programming. He just needs to think up a suitably profane show in order to be guaranteed a platform for his master's message come the great day.

In perfecting his plan, he plays on the one characteristic that is shared by all men of violence – stupidity. How fortunate for him that the global justice system, so obsessed with reason and fairness, has failed to exploit this flaw. It would have saved a lot of trouble. King Rat is about to conduct a masterclass in annihilation without even breaking the law.

As prison canteens around the world fill for the morning meal, convicts are greeted by a giant screen set up against a wall, with a projection device attached to the ceiling overhead. Cameras and other broadcasting paraphernalia are positioned around the eating areas. The criminals collect breakfast, scratch their heads and sit down to watch.

The screens flicker into life and King Rat appears. ‘Today I want to talk about respect,' he says. This is a word they understand. They lean forward to listen. ‘What's the difference between you and other men? Why do they scuttle like ants while you walk like lions? The answer's
simple. Respect. You have it – they don't. They know nothing of the street. Of real life. Of what it takes to be a man.

‘Each of you wears a badge of honour. Prison. Doing your time. The elementary mark of respect. Without it no other honours are possible. It is an absolute necessity.

‘There are grades to this order, aren't there? Your second, third, fourth, fifth sentences. As you reoffend and return to gaol, fellow inmates nod in deference and make gestures of solidarity and obeisance to the really hard man. You can take it. Even more respect.

‘Most of you here have earned the second badge of honour – violence. The rite of passage: to cut and be cut. That's your motto. Smash his arm; break his leg; splinter his nose. You're men of blood. Other people – get the fuck out of the way. Respect.

‘A few of you wear the third badge – murder. The final mark of manhood. Shoot your enemy in the face. Stab him through the heart. Respect.

‘If a man snatches a glance at your woman, knife him in the eye. If he dares a second glimpse? Kill the bastard. Disrespect. He deserves it. Then do your orang-utan walk, roll your hips; slouch, sway, swagger down the street. Do your special clicks and flicks. Curl your lip in a menacing snarl. You're in the jungle now, an animal. That's it. That's the way. Perfect. Respect.

‘But as I look about me now I see no one bearing the badge of the highest order: the ultimate accolade in respect's pantheon of greatness. How could I? You're all alive.

‘Think about it. Who do you honour most? Who is
spoken of with the greatest reverence and awe? Whose lives and deeds are told and retold without end? The answer is the dead. The narco slaughtered in a hail of bullets. The Mafia boss killed from behind with a knife. The gang member murdered with a machete. Theirs is the true greatness that comes only with death. The ultimate respect.

‘What is prison, violence and murder compared to dying a real man's death? Aren't all heroes remembered thus? Why are you still alive? What are you waiting for? Do you have girls' parts beneath those breeches?

‘Get up! Earn the highest badge of honour. It makes perfect sense. Kill and be killed. Take up your chairs. Smash each other's heads! Jab a spoon into the next man's eye! Throttle him! Pulp his face!

‘Do this so that this day will be remembered, and your names with it. The day when the hardest men in history came together with one voice, and in one moment joined in a final fraternal embrace, together glorying in the highest order of respect – death.'

Educational time travels
…

Tomas and Tereza are amazed. A group of Taiwanese schoolgirls in pretty red uniforms are smiling, laughing and waving at them – two thousand feet up in the air. They're in the time machine gliding over the South China Sea in the year 3000, and are joined in flight by an altogether bigger craft – the island of Taiwan!

This odyssey follows the mutual annihilation of two
million violent criminals live on Shit TV, the biggest ratings triumph of all time – with the promise at the end of the show of an even bigger surprise next week. This is it. The Great Bear's final plan.

Tomas visits the Emperor urgently to give him a situation report. The Cocksacks are massing on the Polish border; their testicles carry a secret weapon he assumes to be lethal; the West has been weakened by Shit TV and people are so venal and stupid that they might even support the invasion in the belief that it is connected to next week's programme; power has been gained via Tereza's presidency but this alone can't withstand the Russian attack. The position is desperate. What must he do?

In response to his breathless plea, Napoleon delivers a history lesson.

When I fought Russia two hundred years ago,' he says, ‘my army advanced into the Great Bear's motherland. The Russians joined battle from time to time but always retreated, drawing us in deeper. The winter brought a cold so chilling that fingers froze on cannons and breath became ice in the air. Eventually my army was immobilised. Only then did the Great Bear leave his lair to annihilate us.

‘One hundred and fifty years later, in another great war, exactly the same thing happened. An army attacked Russia, it was drawn in and destroyed. You now have the power over men and machines. So you tell me, what must you do?'

Tomas and Tereza have set off in the time machine to find out how to draw the Great Bear out and trap him. This
seemingly impossible mission isn't helped by their bizarre first encounter. The console provides an explanation.

A few centuries earlier, the ingenious Taiwanese invented a technology whereby the atoms of their island's submerged landmass were violently vibrated together. When particles in the atmosphere were similarly treated, a vacuum was created, the effect of which was to lift the island off the seabed. With a speed and steerage system attached, the island became mobile.

Taiwan is on its way to its annual holiday in the Caribbean. But the technology provides an unexpected bonus. On its travels, the island stops over China, where the population leans over the edge to hurl insults and rotten things at its hated neighbour.

China's loss of pride here is regained elsewhere. Travelling over another landmass, Tomas and Tereza notice a remarkable transformation – Africa has become Chinese.

While other empires messed about over the millennia, the Chinese got busy. Looking at the long term, underdeveloped Africa was identified as having potential, with the consequence that, over centuries, Chinese money, technology and knowhow flooded its shores. By 3000 the dark continent has become yellow. It speaks, eats and even breakbeats Chinese.

America has undergone a similar transformation. This started in the mid twenty-fifth century when Mexico, tired of playing the poor relation, hatched an ingenious plan. Over decades, a giant subterranean cavern was built in secret on the American border. Tens of millions of Mexicans were assembled. On the appointed day, a whistle blew and
a thousand pontoon bridges straddled the Rio Grande. Within days, fifty million Mexicans crossed the border, aided by generations of previous immigrants. The border guards put up a fight and several thousand intruders were captured. But in the end numbers prevailed and Mexico took over. The eagle replaced the Stars and Stripes. Americans now sleep in the afternoon, have dinner at ten and love their mothers. The result? A much happier nation.