This Other Eden

For
Sophie

Chapter
One

In which a much-loved man

pursues the elusive green light

A
rat’s tale.

A rat feeds greedily on
rotten meat.

A rat
feeds greedily on rotten
human
meat. A rotting, human limb, attached to
a living body.

The
desperate man knows it will be easier to detach the limb from the body than the
rat from the limb. The diner is stronger than the dinner, for the diner has no
drug to numb its pain. The rat’s head is buried deep in the silver green flesh,
its claws hidden beneath the blackened skin. Only its plump body and twitching
rump can be seen as it pushes deeper and deeper into the decaying muscle. The
desperate man knows that the hungry rat will never let go. Yet if it remains,
how long before it or its friends and relations discover the living meat beyond
the putrid thigh? Not very long, surely, and even a rat must prefer fresh meat
to foul.

If one
is to die, then there are better ways than being eaten alive by enormous
flea-ridden rats; even in his weary, drifting state, the man can see that.
Swallowing two sparkling capsules, the only bright thing in his dull world, the
man waits for the drugs to rush his brain and then takes up his big knife. The
knife is blunt, but the flesh is rotten and falls apart before the blade, as if
it has been braised. In a moment, man and leg are parted. His mind on other things,
he pulls himself away, leaving the rat to its refreshment.

This is
how it will be in the century to come. No savage biker tribes, no lone still-human
heroes, no Mad Max millennium, only ill, old people and large hungry rats
eating them.

Those
who love you hurt you most.

Nathan knew it was good;
it was the best work he’d ever done. That was why he so desperately wanted the
job. This was more than just a bit of seriously good copy. This was prophecy,
this was the truth.

But
telling the truth is never easy. Nathan was drained. The night Los Angeles
re-ignited, as it did at regular intervals these days, he had been a prisoner
in his hotel room for a week. Held captive not by a gunman or a sex criminal or
even the fantastical illusion that the room service he had ordered in a
previous life might one day arrive, but by a great and terrible desire to
please.

There
were people in that town who loved Nathan and he had to justify that love. He
knew they loved him, for they had told him so many times, and they had also
sent a limousine to collect him at the airport, when they might easily have
suggested that he take a cab and keep the receipt. For a man used, as Nathan
was, to the finances of British radio this was big love indeed.

Sometimes
though, mere love is not enough. In Hollywood one can be embraced and rejected
with equal fervour and integrity by the same people and at the same time. This,
over the years, had led to movie people getting something of a reputation for
craven hypocrisy. But there is nothing disingenuous about combining love with
rejection. It is quite possible, and indeed reasonable, to like and admire,
yes, even love somebody without wishing to commit hundreds of millions of
dollars on the strength of their script.

Every
day, all over town, writers faced producers, producers faced bigger producers,
bigger producers faced studio heads and the same tortured mantra was heard:
‘You are a great artist and we all love you. Speaking personally, yours is the
kind of talent that was the reason I came into this business in the first
place. Will we be picking up your project? No, I don’t think so, but that’s
about us, it isn’t about you.’

Nathan
understood his position. They loved him, but he frustrated them for, try as he
might, Nathan had so far been unable to produce a scenario in which the plot
curved
sufficiently or in which the characters possessed heart, moral worth and,
above all, warmth.

‘It’s
no good this guy dying, one-legged in a polluted world,’ the men who loved
Nathan would tell him, ‘if we don’t
care
that he dies.’

Nathan
understood what was required of him. He returned to his room and tried to make
the people who loved him care; for if they cared, then so would Mr and Ms
America, and if Mr and Ms America cared then it was a reasonable presumption
that the whole world would care. That was Nathan’s brief, to make the whole
world care. If he could achieve that then he would truly have justified the
faith which Plastic Tolstoy had placed in him. With this thought Nathan turned
wearily back to his computer. For when Plastic Tolstoy placed faith in you, it
was wise to justify that faith. For Plastic Tolstoy was the most important man
in the whole communications industry. It was his job to market the end of the
world.

Everything
is fascinating when you should be working.

All week Nathan had moped
from his bed to his desk to his bathroom and back to his bed. Trying to think
of ways to make those who loved him, Mr and Ms America, the world in general
and above all, Plastic Tolstoy, care. But everything is fascinating when you
should be working, and Nathan had also spent his week fighting the desire to
stare out of the window, leafing through magazines and flicking through the
endless permutations available on the in-room entertainment system.

The
Hitler trial was reaching its climax. That sad, grey monster stood before the
cameras every day, his shocked and baffled face devoid of any real understanding
of the crimes they told him he had committed. Under normal circumstances DNA
cloning was banned; the world was overcrowded enough without people re-growing
the dead. However, when a lock of Hitler’s hair had been unearthed, the World
Court ruled that an exception might be made, the general feeling being that
Hitler was one villain for whom being dead should not prevent justice being
done. Besides, the UN was as always hugely in debt and the TV rights to the
trial were worth a fortune.

Nathan
carried on through the news channels. They were all pretty similar which,
considering they were all owned by the same company (Plastic Tolstoy
Communications System), was hardly surprising. The daughter of the British king
had been videoed turning tricks in Piccadilly, although a lot of people said it
was just a clever hologram. Jurgen Thor was to address the European parliament
yet again, on the subject of banning or at least massively taxing
Claustrospheres. A new fish had been developed that was capable of surviving in
the dead waters of the Atlantic; a fish which had the added advantage of being
so radioactive it could cook itself while the busy house-spouse prepared a
salad.

Under
normal circumstances Nathan would not have dreamt of watching a news item about
marine research. Nor would he have allowed himself to get sucked into a public
forum-style chat-show, where victims of pedestrian-dog faeces encounter were
brought together with dog-owners, in order to come to terms with their anger.
But everything is fascinating when you should be working.

Making
them care.

Nathan snapped the TV off,
as he had done a hundred times that week. He dragged his hand angrily from deep
within the great plastic sack of Bacon Cheezos on his lap. He resisted the
colossal temptation to spend twenty minutes staring at the wall and scratching
his balls. He avoided the Virtual

Reality
helmet beckoning him from the coffee table. He must concentrate, he must focus.
He had to make those who loved him care.

‘What I
need,’ Nathan mused to himself, ‘is a kid… a cute kid who is in some way
relying on the dying man who chops off his leg . .

Nathan
grabbed his Voice to Screen DictaType Transmitter. Suddenly, after all the
waiting and prevaricating, inspiration struck. The words tumbled out.

‘All
right, so the man has a child … a tiny little girl who peeks out from her
hiding place amidst the mountain of rotten garbage … rotten
stinking
putrid
garbage … Uhm … she’s dirty and thin… but cute, very
cute… the dying world has yet to dull her bonny beauty … nice sentence,
good
sentence

OK, so
somehow we know that the half-dead man with the big knife is the little girl’s
father.., a signet ring? Maybe the same haircut?… Or else we see her mouth
the word “Daddy”

…yes,
that’s it, she mouths the word “Daddy” so we know he is her father, her last
chance, her only protector. Then we see him drug himself into oblivion and cut
off his own leg.

…beautiful,
that is
great..
. So the gorgeous little girl knows that she is now in
deep doo doo… Uhm… her sparkling eyes fade to dull despair as her dad… no, as her
last best hope
drags himself away to die … Then what
happens? What’s the punch?’ … Nathan paused for a moment, willing his
little flight of fancy to see him through to some stunning conclusion. Yes! He
had it. Breathlessly he spoke again into the DictaType micro p hone: ‘The
little girl retreats back into the rotting garbage which provides the only
warmth available to her now… and the rat is left on its own, eating her
Dad’s leg… great image, hold on that a moment… Then the rat’s head
emerges from the severed leg … its snout all twitching and gruesome . .
uhm… The white fangs show amid the soft maggoty meat bulging in its mouth… good sentence, good sentence, keep that … So why has the rat stopped
eating? Because it’s
heard something,
that’s why!.. . Something
tempting.., something exciting. The evil rat turns and stares towards the place
in the garbage where the tiny child is hiding. Freezeframe … Cue Voiceover… Doesn’t your child deserve a better tomorrow? Invest in Claustrosphere
today.’

Nathan
turned off his DictaType machine.

‘It’s
good,’ he told himself. ‘They’ve
got
to pick it up.’

And as
the flames which a few hours earlier had burnt only in the hearts of an angry
people began yet again to engulf large sections of one of the world’s premier
cities, Nathan sat, hand clamped unconsciously on his crotch, hoping that those
who loved him, who had failed to care about a dying man, might now care about a
threatened little girl. Hoping that his assuredly fine treatment for a
Claustrosphere commercial, his unquestionably brilliant vision, would also now
have that all-important factor, ‘warmth’. That those who loved him might love
him all the more, love him, perhaps, even enough to suggest to Plastic Tolstoy
that his project be green-lighted.

Nathan
did not resent the compliant, entirely reactive nature of his creative
endeavours. That was the town, he thought, and, indeed, as the flames danced
outside his window, he was right.

If
I should get lost in development, think only this of me. That there is some
corner of the US entertainment industry that is for ever England.

Nathan was British, but
despite this, he did not suffer from that terrible anger that many Brit artists
who visit Hollywood feel. That private shame that comes from the knowledge that
you
have come to
them.
That, for all your babble about seeking a
more vibrant culture, about fleeing the anally-retentive, small-minded
snobberies one encounters at home, they know and you know that the only reason
you have come is because they have more money. Much, much more money.

Brits
in Hollywood divide largely into two categories: the ones who are living there
and the ones who would like to live there. The ones who are living there tend
to be aggressively Yankophile, partly taking on the characteristics and
language of the town. When they say things like ‘if we pass, it’s my arse’, ‘pass’
still rhymes with ‘farce’, as it used to in Kensington and Soho, but ‘arse’ now
rhymes with ‘mass’. They will say, ‘If we parce, it’s my ass’. They wear
loafers, or smart deck, shoes, sometimes without socks, and drink Lite beer and
dry martinis, ordering them by brand name. ‘Get me a Beefeater martini and a
twist please.’