Bright Young Things (16 page)

‘Why are you doing that?’ asks Jamie.

Paul shrugs. ‘I hate mess,’ he says.

All the junked up mobile phones are on the cleared table in pieces. Jamie’s glad he didn’t have a mobile, although none of the others seem to mind Paul completely taking theirs apart. Paul dries his hands and sits down. He seems to have made coffee, and places a mug in front of Jamie.

‘Thanks,’ says Jamie.

‘No problem.’

‘So what’s all this?’ Jamie asks, pointing to the heap of electronics on the table.

‘What, the phones?’

‘I mean, what are you making?’

‘What have I made, you mean,’ says Paul, smiling. He picks up a concoction of wires, LED displays and numeric keypads. ‘Look.’

Jamie looks. He sees nothing.

‘It’s “Ultimate Snake”,’ explains Paul.

‘“Ultimate Snake”?’

‘Yeah. You know “Snake”, the computer game you have on your mobile?’

‘I don’t have a mobile.’

‘But you know some of them have little games programmed into them?’

Jamie nods. He sort of wanted to get one, but Carla disapproved.

‘Well, the best one is “Snake”. The object is to move this snake-shaped thing around the screen, guiding it to little bits of food. You’re not supposed to let the snake touch the edges of the screen, or its own tail. The thing is, as it eats the food, it gets bigger, and it’s harder to stop it touching its own tail.’

‘So what’s “Ultimate Snake”?’ asks Jamie.

‘I’ve made it two-player,’ says Paul. ‘Look.’

He hands Jamie a numeric pad from one of the phones. Seems like this is going to act as some kind of joypad. The pad is attached to a small LED screen, which has another pad attached to it, which is what Paul’s holding. He presses a few keys.

‘Right. You can see there are two snakes on the screen now,’ he says. ‘That one’s you and that one’s me. We’re both going for the same bit of food, which is that dot in the far left-hand corner at the moment. And we’re trying not to touch our own tails, the edges of the screen or each other. Amazingly improved, I’d say.’

There is a little bleep and Jamie’s dead.

‘What are the controls?’ he asks.

An hour later the score is Paul fourteen, Jamie eight.

‘Didn’t you tell the others you were making some kind of radio transmitter?’ Jamie asks, furiously hitting the number 2 on the pad to try to get his snake up to the piece of food faster than Paul’s.

‘Yeah, but wait till they see this,’ says Paul.

Eventually, the battery starts to run down. Jamie lights a cigarette.

‘More coffee?’ asks Paul.

‘Sure,’ says Jamie.

Paul gets up and finds some clean mugs. ‘What do you think of this whole
it’s a really weird job interview
notion?’ he asks.

‘Crap,’ says Jamie. ‘What about you?’

‘Dunno,’ says Paul. ‘Could still be, I guess.’

They sip coffee.

‘Where are you from again?’ asks Jamie.

‘Bristol,’ says Paul. ‘Well, just outside Bristol. You?’

‘Taunton,’ he says, lighting a cigarette. ‘You did art at university, didn’t you?’

Paul laughs.

‘Why are you laughing?’

‘You’re still acting all polite,’ he says. ‘It’s sweet.’

‘Sweet?’

‘Yeah, sweet. It’s not an insult. You’re not trying to be cool like the others.’

Jamie doesn’t know if Paul’s being nice or not. He sticks to his original question. ‘It
was
art, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah,’ says Paul. ‘How about you?’

Jamie tells him about his maths, and he’s as impressed as Anne was. What is it with these arty people who think numbers are so romantic? He’s still trying to locate the part of Paul’s past that taught him how to fuse together four mobile phones, and also the part that made him opt to create ‘Ultimate Snake’ rather than a more useful device (like an escape pod – they’d do it on
The A Team
). Trouble is, Paul’s not keen to talk about himself. Jamie establishes that he did some kind of postgraduate cross-over and now works with computers. Other than that, Paul leaves him in the dark.

‘So you’re a geek then?’ Jamie asks, smiling.

‘What?’ says Paul, laughing.

‘I’m a nerd, according to Anne’s classification,’ he explains, noting the way Paul’s eyes change colour slightly when he says the word
Anne
. ‘But you should be a
bona fide
geek since you work with computers and everything.’

‘Hmm. I never go out,’ says Paul. ‘But I do play a lot of games. That makes me an Otaku.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a Japanese geek.’

‘And they never go out?’

‘Not really. The word just means that you’re so into your hobby that you stay in and do it all the time. Have you ever played “Metal Gear Solid”?’

Jamie shakes his head. ‘No.’

‘There’s a character in it called Otakon. He’s a Japanese geek.’

‘What’s his hobby?’

‘Manga.’

‘What’s yours?’

‘The same. Oh, and visiting places I’m not wanted.’

‘Without going out?’

‘Yep. Via computer.’

This doesn’t make a lot of sense to Jamie. Maybe Paul’s a hacker.

‘What do you think of “Tomb Raider”?’ Paul asks.

‘It’s OK. Easier than I expected.’

‘Than you expected?’

‘Well, I’d never played a videogame before, and I’d heard they were hard.’

‘Yeah. “Tomb Raider” is pretty easy,’ says Paul. ‘You should try “Metal Gear Solid”.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s all about stealth and silent killing. I’m sure you’d be into that.’

‘Thanks,’ says Jamie.

Paul laughs. ‘You know what I mean. I bet you love all that strategy stuff.’

‘I suppose so,’ says Jamie. ‘You don’t sound much like you do, though.’

‘What?’

‘Like all that stuff.’

‘I do. I’m just not a big fan of “MGS”, that’s all,’ says Paul.

‘Why not?’

‘It’s too Americanised. There aren’t any real manga characters in it.’

‘I thought that about
Akira
,’ says Jamie.

Paul looks surprised.

‘I thought you didn’t know anything about manga and anime,’ he says.

Jamie gets the impression he’s said the right thing without meaning to.

‘I don’t,’ he says.

‘But you watched
Akira
?’

‘Well, I liked
Tetsuo
so much I thought I’d try some other Japanese classics.’

‘Oh, yeah. I forgot about
Tetsuo
. But you didn’t like
Akira
?’

Jamie shakes his head. ‘Nope.’

‘That’s cool,’ says Paul. ‘You’re not really supposed to say you don’t like it, because it’s such a classic. It’s a bit like saying
Blade Runner
’s shit or something.’

Jamie doesn’t like
Blade Runner
either, but thinks it best not to go into that.

‘I agree, though,’ says Paul. ‘So why didn’t you like
Akira?
’

‘I didn’t like the drawings that much, and the American adaptation was stupid.’

‘How do you know about adaptations and drawing?’

‘I don’t,’ says Jamie. ‘It’s just what I think.’

‘Did you watch any more anime?’

Jamie’s confused, as always, by these terms. ‘What exactly is anime?’

‘Manga that moves.’

‘And manga is . . . ?’

‘Japanese comics. So did you?’

‘What?’

‘Get into any more stuff?’

‘No. I just like
Tetsuo
.’

Jamie doesn’t mention the one time he looked up
hentai anime
on the Internet. He knows more or less what
hentai
means. There were so many sites to choose from: monster sex, extreme bondage, machine sex . . . all in little cartoons. Jamie loved the style of the drawing, and the extreme nature of the porn. Because they were cartoons, the women could be stretched into the most ridiculous positions, their tiny waists contrasting with everything else in the picture, their big eyes dripping with innocence. And no one got hurt. Jamie’s fantasies always feature artificial women in some sense or other. When he first masturbated, he tried thinking about a girl he knew at school, but he couldn’t even get an erection. Then he tried thinking about his favourite teacher, but there was still something too soft and real about her. Later, as he got older, he realised that it was far more pleasurable to think about unreal women: women with lots of make-up and stilettos and short skirts. It was all right to think about doing really dirty things to those women, because they were deliberately putting themselves on display, making themselves consumable, making you able to own them. Recently Jamie’s become interested in breast implants – not in real life of course, but in his fantasy world. To him, breast implants create breasts which are made only for sex. They are no longer symbols of motherhood or childhood; no longer
nice
. You could do anything to breasts like that, and treat the owner of them exactly how you wanted.

‘What do you think the others are doing?’ he asks eventually.

Paul shrugs. ‘No idea.’

Jamie has another cigarette while Paul attaches a new battery to ‘Ultimate Snake’. Jamie looks over his list again, and the lists made by everyone except Anne. They really do have nothing in common on paper, these people and him. But yet there are so many common reference points; even some unexpected ones. For example, Jamie finds it weird that they’ve all seen
Tetsuo
– well, all except Bryn. They all watch TV, they all want to be cool. And they’re all scared, but no good at showing it.

Maybe that’s the only part of this that their lives prepared them for. Let’s face it, none of them knows how to light a fire or gather food (not that they have to, but still). None of them knows how to construct a compass, use ropes or carve crude instruments. But they all know how to act cool. After all, life’s pretty scary most of the time. And the number one skill you need in the world out there is how to show no fear. If you see a dog in the street, don’t act scared. If you see a dodgy bloke with a bulge in his jacket pocket, don’t act scared. Stay calm. Don’t let people see that you’re shy or nervous. If you watch a horror film, remember to laugh. If someone else seems scared, laugh at them. In the real world, danger is either fantasy, in which case you laugh, or too real, in which case you ignore it. People die on the roads, in trains, on buses and in planes. People die from carbon monoxide in their rented flats, from food poisoning and from terrorist bombs. There’s never any warning. Jamie and the others come from a culture in which a fire alarm doesn’t mean fire; it just means you get to go and stand outside and giggle for a while. But a prawn or a peanut could still kill you.

‘Do you want another game?’ asks Paul.

Thea doesn’t have any sunglasses, and the brightness is making her squint. It’s hot again and the sea is calmer than yesterday, but the waves are still over three metres high. They’d be great for surfing if they broke on some sort of beach. But there’s no beach here; the waves smash directly into the cliffs.

It took Thea two minutes to find the generator in the shed at the back of the house about an hour or so ago, after she’d hung the wet sheets and duvet covers on the line. There was a book lying next to it, with a picture of a big, tall windmill on the front. Since it is exactly the same as the one in the picture, Thea now realises that the structure by the front of the house is for collecting wind energy. At the back of the house, near the shed and facing the direction the sun seems to be in at midday, are two portable solar panels. They look like the little panels you get on solar-powered calculators, only much bigger. From what Thea can now see, the ‘generator’ isn’t really a generator at all, but what looks like a big car battery. On closer inspection, she sees it is actually a series of batteries connected to what the book describes as an ‘inverter’ – a white box on the wall which collects the DC current from the solar panels and the wind turbine and converts it into the AC current used by the house. Whatever the house uses is automatically converted, and whatever is left over is saved, not exactly for a rainy day, but for one with neither sun nor wind.

The book is very general, but inside the front cover is a letter from the company which supplied the system. It doesn’t mention where the island is, but does explain that the wind and solar levels here are sufficient, in combination, to provide power for the house. It also states that hydro power would be possible here, but very expensive to install.

The letter, dated April 1999, also explains the effectiveness of the rainwater tank, now positioned just outside the back door. Again, without revealing the exact area of the island, the company assures their customer (referred to only as ‘Dear Sir’) that local levels of rainfall will be sufficient for a family of four to use for regular washing, cooking and flushing toilets. It also explains the ecologically-friendly sewage management system connected to each of the toilets. It doesn’t say who this family of four is supposed to be, or what kidnappers would want with an eco-friendly house. Mind you, Thea imagines that this renewable power is less to do with the environment and more to do with not being able to get power from anywhere else.