Geek Bomb part 3

The authors reading before me are all awful and tedious and I find the whole thing embarrassing. Authors should be secretive, shadowy figures, a figment of the reader’s imagination, something otherworldly lurking out of sight. Here they are now on a makeshift stage just metres away from normal people, desperately flogging their work and stripping the process bare of magic and mystery.

Cheryl and Jason come in and sit next to me and I kiss my wife on the lips, not to claim ownership of my property but to taste for cock or spunk. There is only wine.

There are about fifty people in the audience when I am called to the stage, mostly men, mostly in their twenties and thirties with beards. To my annoyance I am nervous.

“Clear History is my first novel and will be released in October,” I tell them, and explain the basic plot. “I’d like to read chapter five to you now. Here, the President is preparing to make a speech.

‘SECRETARY SCOTT stood with his PDA and watched Wilson sitting in the chair. He was covered with a body cloth, while an assistant pressed powder onto his face. Wilson looked into the mirror, watching for any shiny patches the assistant might leave.

“How long do I have?” he asked.

“Just under five minutes, sir,” said Scott.

Wilson sighed. He looked tired, thought Scott. Just slightly, over the last few months, he had begun to show the strain.

“What is the status of Agent Reece?” asked Wilson.

“Unchanged, sir,” Scott told him. “He remains in a vegetative state, but the Strident techs are working on ways to bring him back.”

“And his family? His wife and children?”’

The audience are laughing loudly. I am confused and my anger rises. “Actually, it’s not supposed to be funny,” I tell them, and they quiet down. Flustered, I begin to read again, inadvertently skipping ahead.

‘Wilson stopped in his tracks and turned to face Scott, who was barely able to stop short of colliding with him. Wilson was reddening with anger that he failed to suppress in his tone. “We cannot risk falling further behind!” he snapped. “I will not tolerate it.”

Scott felt his hand rise, and was unable to stop his fingers pushing his glasses up again. He saw it as a submissive gesture, and felt weaker for it. He could understand Wilson’s impatience with the cybernetics. He had always been a pioneer, and Lumecorp, controlling the Central Territory, had always been at least one step ahead of its enemies. Wilson, essentially a peace-keeper when wars almost certainly could have been won, now had confirmed intel that the Northern Alliance had been making great strides in the last few months. Always more aggressive than Lumecorp, the threat, should they become stronger militarily, was potentially devastating.’

They are laughing again, but for some reason my embarrassment turns to amusement and I play along with it, putting on funny voices for the characters and even acting out their gestures. It goes on too long and everyone is bored by the end. I am exhausted and as they clap I flop into the leather chair on the stage, picking up a wireless microphone from a table.

Someone takes a microphone into the audience. A bearded man stands up. “That was extraordinary,” he says.

“Thank you.” They laugh again but it has a nasty, snide edge.

“Yes. How did you get interested in sci-fi?”

“I’m not,” I say without thinking. “I mean, I am, but I’m not a sci-fi nerd or anything. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” I am sweating and glad that Pauline and Mavis aren’t here. “I wrote a sci-fi book by mistake and now I’m a sci-fi author.”

Another bloke takes the microphone. “So your next book will be within the same genre?”

“I’m glad you’re so confident there will be another book. Can you talk to my publisher?!” No one laughs. “Yes, the next book will be in the same world. That’s how they hook people in and get them to buy the whole series. But you don’t need to know that.”

“Sometimes I feel that series’ can become lazy and repetitive for that reason, though.”

“Look,” I say. “Terry Pratchett’s going mental and when he does you’re going to want a replacement for that Discworld stuff.”

“But Pratchett writes fantasy.”

“Sci-fi, fantasy, same thing,” I say. The audience actually murmurs. “In a good way,” I add.

The compere appears from backstage and adjusts the podium mike. “Thank you to Christopher Hardy,” he says. “I’m sure we all wish him luck with his book.”

I say something but they have already killed my mike. I am urged offstage by the girl with the clipboard.

“They seemed to enjoy it,” I bluff to Cheryl.

She nods, silent, and I can see she is embarrassed by the performance. (I realise later she is angry at the audience’s response. Which is nice).

“Well, there was certainly a lot of laughter,” Jason says. “I didn’t realise it was supposed to be a comedy though.”

“It can be…anything you want,” I shrug. “Once the words have left the writer they are in the readers hands.”

They nod. The room is filling up for Michael Marshall Smith.

“I don’t think I’ll do this again,” I say.

“They don’t deserve it,” Cheryl says, and we go home and we’ll almost certainly never go back to Doncaster.