Lust

One half of the brains would be reduced to their chemical components, which would be analysed. The other half would be stained and then frozen immediately in the cold room for slicing. The results would be compared with the control groups, who would die without ever seeing any light whatsoever. The bodies were thrown limp into the bags, which were then sealed.

Michael ran with the tray towards the cold room. The Fridge was a big white box, and it shivered to the touch, like Michael’s slightly sick stomach. The tray was numbered and it was placed on a shelf space with a matching number.

When Michael returned, the centrifuge was humming, and the clean draining board was being dried, and the garbage bags were in hessian sacks stencilled with the words WATERLOO FEED COMPANY.

‘Well done, gang,’ he said. He had to go into his office and sit down.

Well, you knew it would be like this when you set up the experiment, Michael. The same fate awaits every hen in Britain at some point, even free-range ones.

But they, at least, have some kind of life.

Did it make any difference that they were trying to provide answers to some truly big questions? Michael loved science and he loved life somewhat less, and he had faith that in the end the two would support each other. But he still felt sick.

He felt compromised. This affected his self-esteem in other areas. He had to go for a walk in the park to clear his lungs. He sat on a bench and ate his sandwiches, which fortunately were cheese and not chicken. Nevertheless, he found the sweaty taste of animal fat unappetizing. He crunched his way through his apple.

You know, Michael, it is not everyone who can call up simulations of people from thin air. This … this miracle … arrives. And what do you use it for? You use it to turn tricks. Which is what you always do. You can turn tricks in Alaska Street. What if this isn’t about sex?

The more Michael thought, the more unlikely it seemed that the universe would change all its rules to keep him supplied with fancy men. Suppose I could clone Einstein and set him to work solving equations? What are the limits of this thing?

Michael wrote in his notebook.

Hypothesis: I can call up copies of people but I do not have to fancy them.

Method: Try to call up someone for whom you feel not a trace of lust and note the result.

Michael decided to call up Mother Theresa.

He admired her, he wanted to talk to her, perhaps about the morality of animal experimentation. And it was a certainty that he felt no lust whatsoever for her.

It was a brilliant diamond of a spring day. The light seemed to have edges and cut. Why not just do the show right here? What better church to call up Mother Theresa than Archbishop’s Park?

He felt the sun on his face. It was as if the light was reflecting off the daffodils. He called out. With his eyes closed, it seemed to him, he reached out into darkness hidden behind the light.

Nothing happened.

He opened his eyes. A football team from a local office, in mismatched T-shirts and shorts, loped towards the red-grit soccer pitch. Michael closed his eyes, and asked again. The bench next to him remained stubbornly empty.

He got out his notebook, feeling disappointment. Just to be sure, he looked over his shoulder, and called up the Cherub. There was the faintest wuffling sound as the air seemed to fold itself into a green and pink origami. The Cherub sat next to him on the bench.

‘Keep your clothes on,’ whispered Michael.

So, thought Michael. This is about sex. He felt a further degree or two of increased disappointment.

‘I don’t suppose,’ he whispered to the Cherub, ‘you know how this works?’

The Cherub stared ahead like a starship captain gazing at a far galaxy. Michael suddenly saw how the real Tony would look when he was older: solid, pale and a bit blank. ‘It goes all the way back,’ the Cherub said. Then he turned and looked at Michael with a sudden urgency. ‘The back of the head.’ And he jerked it behind him.

‘You wouldn’t happen to know what part of the anatomy?’

‘So far back it goes outside.’

Yes, well, it was possible that being copied induced mild brain damage. Michael gave him instructions. ‘Stand up and walk away towards the alley between the two brick walls. If there’s no one there, disappear.’

The Cherub stood up and more tamely than a Labrador walked towards his own oblivion.

Well Phil, Michael thought: there is one element you left out of pornography. Power. In pornography, you have the power to make people behave. Michael began to wonder how good this thing might be for what he still had to call his soul.

Michael’s father had been a Marine. There was a plaque somewhere in Camp Pendleton that bore his name and a gravestone somewhere in Orange County that Michael had never seen. In America, everyone went to church, especially in the military. Every Sunday, he and his father would go to a bare and unvarnished Catholic church. Michael ate wafers, drank wine, and learned about sin, and then in the afternoon played touch football on the beach. The exposure was enough to make him feel regretful rather than indoctrinated.

Michael watched Tony’s retreating back, wearing only a T-shirt on an icy spring day. The Cherub entered the funnel of brick between two high walls. There was a whisper in his head, and Michael knew the Cherub was gone.

So, he thought. I’ve learned I can’t call up just anyone. It could be that I can’t call up women. Or maybe I can only call up copies of people I’ve actually met. He stood up to go.

Or, it could be that they have to be alive. I’ll have to go on asking question after question.

He left the green and the trees. Traffic and black brick made him feel English. God made him feel American. Michael would shift between American and English selves and accents without realizing it. His English self went back to work.

His American self thought of his messengers, how they came and went. Angels, Michael decided. Until I know them better, I will call them Angels.

Can Angels be dead? (#ulink_b7f69e6b-e882-5bdd-960c-dda53bea43df)

When Michael was ten years old, he was sent to spend the summer with his father for the first time. He had cried alone in the airplane with his ticket pinned to his little grey dress jacket. He had to change in Chicago and everything looked like a Dirty Harry movie. Bleached blonde women wore denim suits and chewed gum and talked like gangsters’ molls.

Michael knew his Dad was going to meet him at LA International. He arrived exhausted and trying not to cry and he looked at all the waiting people and he saw this huge man who looked like Burt Reynolds and wore a uniform. He carried a big sign with Michael’s name on it.

‘Hiya Mikey, howya doin’?’ the man said in a mingled mouthful of words and chewing gum. He wore mirror shades.

Michael forgot to say anything. He gaped. This was his father? His father looked like something out of a movie too.

He chuckled. ‘Come on, guy, we’ll get you home.’ Dad scooped up Michael’s bag and threw it over his shoulder. Michael dragged his feet, walking behind. His father chuckled again, leaned over, and simply picked Michael up whole. His big arm folded into a kind of chair and Michael fell asleep being carried, his face resting warm against his father’s chest.

After that, every two years Michael lived for the summer near San Diego with his Dad.

He loved it. Southern California is the perfect place in which to do nothing. Indeed, everything is so far apart, and it takes so long to drive anywhere, that it is very difficult to do anything other than nothing. You call it going to the beach.

On the beach at twelve years old, Michael felt he was immortal. He would take the big green bus out of Camp Pendleton, past the Rialto cinema with its delectable range of kung fu and horror movies. He would reach the cliffside park and the earthen cliffs of Oceanside, California. Once there, he would throw himself in front of a few waves and call it body surfing. Then he could do nothing but lie on his back for three hours, toasting. This was before skin cancer was invented. He went from lobster-red to California-brown in less than two weeks. His bright grin beamed from his newly darkened face – he felt like something from an American situation comedy: the young teenager part.

Resting on the beach, the idea came to him, that he could stay in America and become American. He could do it. After all, his father was American. He could stay in the sunshine with the movies and the skateboards and the long hikes in hills that Camp Pendleton protected from development.

The thought made something inside him flutter with fear. The part of him that fluttered spoke with an all-purpose London accent that was another layer of self. His mother spoke with a Sheffield bluntness. Michael felt himself stretched. Michael felt himself in danger of being torn.

‘Whatcha do today?’ his Dad would ask. Dad was trying to get to know his son. He had abandoned England and his wife when Michael was three.

‘Went to the beach,’ Michael said proudly.

‘D’ja meet any girls?’

Michael did not say: Dad, I’m only twelve and um … but I have noticed that I’m not even looking at girls yet.