Altered States (22 page)

‘Five hundred million dollars. Let me put that another way.’ The man spoke each word in turn for emphasis. ‘Half ... a
billion
... dollars. In a world with as many problems as this one, how can it make sense to spend half a billion dollars on the production of two hours of cinematic entertainment? There is way too much profit being made in the movie business. And profit is
bad
.’

‘Profit is
bad
?’

‘Of course.’

‘Why?’

‘By definition it means that a firm has overcharged its customers. Consumers are being screwed. There shouldn’t be
any
profit in a perfect economy. It means something is going wrong in the market. There is some sort of barrier to competition, which ultimately means the guy on the street is losing out. Just the same in the music industry. And the big sports. Too much money is made by too few people.’

Conner didn’t usually question the ways of the world like this. He didn’t generally set out to scrutinize things that seemed in no need of analysis. Now he was realising that far more of the world’s accepted facts were open to be challenged.

‘Well, I can’t condone people doing it on a mass scale, people making money out of it. But as far as copying the occasional movie or music track is concerned, and passing it around for free, I can’t argue against it.’

Conner frowned at the suggestion. The thought was not sitting nicely with his sensibilities.

‘Why do you say that?’ he asked.

‘Because it’s helping. It puts a squeeze on the industry profits, which fortunately affects the big firms most. Those with the ridiculous marketing budgets and endless payrolls. Piracy happens to re-distribute spending from the big players to the small.’

‘How come?’

‘Because almost everyone has a conscience that kicks in somewhere, and people are far less inclined to screw over the small-time players than the mega-rich superstars. Someone will pay to go to see a local band, might even buy a copy of their album whilst they’re there. Then they’ll go home and illegally download a Madonna track and not give a damn about it. That’s the way it goes. It’s a weird state of affairs but piracy is doing good right now.’

Conner gazed wistfully back at the TV screen. ‘It’s kind of crazy that something that’s supposedly bad, illegal even, can have such a positive effect on society.’

‘Things are never black and white,’ the man confirmed.

Conner nodded slowly. ‘I’m starting to realise that.’

The two guys talked for a while longer before Conner finally left and returned to the path he had set out on earlier that day. Shortly he found Crystal Seth loitering lucratively out the back of one of his favourite dives.

‘Hey man,’ said the dealer. ‘What can I score you?’

Only at this point did Conner question what he was seeking. He thought for a moment about the various wares offered by this man and what effect they would have on him, then replied.

‘Actually, nothing.’ He walked away and headed home. He couldn’t quite explain it. There was no doubt he’d had a run of Bad Days, yet something was different.

As he walked, he started to consider the conversation he had had in BlueJay and in particular how it related to his own line of investigation. Was there any difference between pirated media and counterfeit clothes? The big name clothing manufacturers – the Branding Machines –were just as profitable as the major movie studios and music producers, so maybe the same arguments applied: that the extent of their profit margins was a metric for their exploitation of the public. So maybe they only had themselves to blame for creating an environment where counterfeiters could flourish. Did that make rug trading okay? Probably not. But did it make it bad – a bad thing for society? Or was it the ultimate form of competition? That was a question Conner found harder to answer.

The counterfeit clothes industry did seem to draw many parallels with the drug trade that it had replaced, and the drug trade surely
was
bad. Or was it only really the tabloids that aligned these two industries? It was true that the dealers themselves were just as unsavoury. Many of them were the actual same people. But the product was quite different. The product of the rug trade was not addictive and deadly. It was, well, t-shirts.

As if the arguments were not complicated enough, there were now an increasing number of mind-altering drugs that were legal, albeit ‘natural’ and supposedly less harmful.

To Conner, nothing seemed to be clear anymore. Particularly his own thought process. Where there were once neatly delineated boundaries, there was now just an amorphous blur.

In many ways the conversation this evening echoed that of his last one with Mila. Together they compounded the realisation that he just didn’t know what he believed in anymore. What was right and what was wrong. What was black and what was white. And maybe that wasn’t a problem. Maybe he could live with that uncertainty. But there was one thing he
did
need to know.

He needed to know what he wanted.

What
did
he want?

* * * * *

That weekend Conner found himself doing something he would not normally seek to do. He was looking out at the ocean. He was here at this specific spot for a reason. He needed to be here to learn something about himself.

When he and Lisa had got married they had no grand designs to travel anywhere exotic for their honeymoon. Instead they hired a car and did the whole West Coast thing. They stopped off at the major cities, of course, but for most of the driving they stuck to the coastal route, picking out motels they liked the look of to stay in each night.

Conner and Lisa both grew up in the land-locked state of Nevada, and went to college in New Meadows where they met. This inland upbringing affected them in quite different ways. For Conner, it released him from an ancestral throwback; freed him of the constant need to be near water, which he was aware afflicted so many. He knew that for most people a vacation was simply not a vacation if a lake or river or ocean was not involved. Conner saw this as a needlessly restrictive response to a time when local expanses of water were vital to survival.

For Lisa though, her early years of growing up far from the smell of salt air had given the ocean a mystical allure. She was drawn to it.

They spent two weeks travelling down the coast, which was the longest period of time, before or since, that Conner had ever had off work. Near the end of their trip they shared one of those magical, timeless moments; the kind that will always stand out as a time when things were just … well … right. Simple as that. Such a moment can never be planned. The mere act of forethought denies the chance of such an experience.

Serendipity is king.

Sometimes the planets just align.

The morning when the planets were aligning for Conner and Lisa had begun with them sneaking a few items out of the breakfast buffet at the motel they had stayed at the night before. The hoard consisted of a few rolls, ham, cheese, and some pieces of fruit; with which they made up sandwiches for lunch. It’s not that they were cheap, or particularly poverty-stricken. It was just that, like many, they both got a surge of satisfaction from making the most of a situation – of not letting things go to waste.

A few hours later they pulled into an innocuous viewing-point, one of the many thousand dotted along the coastal route. It was just a small one and there were no other cars around. There was an information board detailing the local wildlife and a map of a footpath that trailed along the cliff. They set off along the path which wound its way through the coarse bushes along the cliff top. After a short while they came across a rickety wooden bench, which they decided to camp at to feast on their illicit luncheon.

Either side of them stretched the majestic white face of the cliff. The sun was warm on their bare arms and faces. There were no people, no traffic, no pressing time constraints. And in front of them there was a one-hundred-eighty degree view of the ocean.

And that was the moment. Nothing complicated. Just a place. A time. A person. That’s all it takes.

And sandwiches sometimes.

It is moments like this that make two people become a couple. Some people believe that there is only one person in the world for each of us. This is a fallacy. There are, in fact, none. Zero. Not to begin with, that is. Because your
one
does not exist until
after
you have met them. Until after you have shared moments like this. That is why they are so important.

And if you lose your one, then you have to start over. From scratch. From zero.

Conner and Lisa returned to this spot in the years that followed, before the birth of their son. Lisa always insisted that the outlook from this place was her favourite view in the whole world.

Conner didn’t agree with her, not about the view. His feeling was that the ocean was always the same. Always flat.
His
favourite view was from a lookout atop the hills that flanked New Meadows. From there he could see the whole town. And it was never the same; it evolved. Buildings would be flattened. New ones would spring up, one floor at a time, seemingly at the will of the spindly looking cranes that perched on top. Lights would buzz up and down the highways, and ping on and off at windows. There was always something different to see. Always something going on. That was why Conner preferred that view.

But now he sat once again at their spot near the ocean, as serene and beautiful as ever – as even he would admit – and sure enough it was exactly the same. He dug deep to see if his feelings had changed. But no, for him the New Meadows cityscape was still the more awesome of the panoramas.

Their difference of opinion over the matter of scenic beauty did not trouble Conner when they had sat there all those years before. Why should it have done? It was only a small thing. But it is hard to tell which little differences will open up into massive fissures, far too vast to cross. Conner wondered briefly whether this difference was the beginnings of the fracture that drove them apart. His horizons had always been close by. He had no great desires to move from the region in which he’d spent his life; no wish to escape his career. Maybe Lisa’s love of this vista, out over the ocean, to a horizon as distant as one could be – maybe that was indicative of a deep-seated desire that was at odds with his own. Maybe he could have seen that way back then.

Conner considered this possibility for a moment and he eventually came to a conclusion that it was all hokum. It was the kind of sentimental, poetic nonsense that you’d find in a romantic novel. The truth is that to every personality there are a million different facets, and no two people’s are angled exactly the same way – that’s just a statistical impossibility. There is no pattern, no rhyme or reason, no magic formula. Some couples just work, some don’t; and some have to
make
it work. All outcomes are possible. And having differing opinions over scenic spots or sports teams or sandwich fillings, does not manifest as a fundamental stumbling block; does not
mean
anything at some higher level. It’s just part of the minutia that makes a relationship interesting.

But there was one fundamental point Conner could draw from his trip to the coast. As he sat there, the significance slowly dawned on him. The salient truth was this. In his time of troubles, when everything had got too much for him, when he needed to seek answers ...
this
place was where he chose to run to.

This place ... so intrinsically connected to Lisa.

There was no tenuous link to be drawn from this fact. It was all very clear.

She
was what he sought.

She was what he wanted.

Opening Up

The evening after first meeting Karla, we met up again and went for a meal. After that, we saw quite a lot of each other.

She was different from Gemma. Gemma was comfortable, easy to be with, funny. If I were to make a TV analogy then being with her was like watching a good comedy. Karla, on the other hand, was more like a documentary. She was intense, fascinating; harder work sometimes, but entertaining, definitely. That’s not to say that Gemma wasn’t interesting or Karla wasn’t funny, but there are degrees of everything. You know where I’m coming from.

On our second night out we got to the subject of what she did for a living. And it turned out to be something I didn’t even know existed as a career – which was kind of the point.

First, let me give you some background. About the curious anomaly of fashion.

Some people say that they are not affected by fashion. They say they just wear what they ‘look good in’. But here’s the rub: what they think they look good in changes with time. Even for those who are not fashion ‘victims’.

Some clearly take their appearance to the dangerous extremes of fashion and dress up like clowns, presumably for the entertainment of the rest of us. But aside from these, us Average Joes and Janes are also affected, just more subtly. The width of our lapels, the size of our hair, the flare of our legs, the cut of our jib. The fact is that we can look back at old pictures of ourselves and be appalled by what we see, by what we once truly believed was totally
groovy
.

This
would
be unremarkable. After all, everyone’s tastes change with age, be it food, music or holiday destinations. But with
aesthetic
taste something spooky is afoot: everyone’s palate changes together – in sync. And not just with respect to clothes. Any product of design – be it furniture or buildings or cars or company logos – can look ‘modern’ for a limited period of time only. Thereafter, any item will begin to look dated or indeed ‘old-fashioned’. Yet it’s the
same
thing. It hasn’t changed. And it’s not that it’s worn or tatty; it can be in mint condition. So what’s going on? Something has guided us to look upon it differently. And the
really
weird thing is that this trait seems to be entirely instinctive. People do not need to spend time analysing what the stars are wearing on TV or in magazines, to gain the appropriate response when they are trying on clothes at the store. Even people who you would not consider as particularly hip or trendy – who you might even label as old-fashioned – still don’t look like they’ve stepped out of the seventies. There’s a certain modernism to their outdatedness, if you know what I mean.