Élite
A soft sci-fi short story.
A little bit of soft sci-fi this time. This one’s for my nephews, and for C. J. W. Armstrong.
Through the thick dim of the corridor that leads to the stage, the strings are singing. I close my eyes and wait for the synths to swell and my heart to soar with the music. The stage door opens and shuts quickly — the lighting man — and in the second that the door is open, the full sound of the theatre tumbles, careens, splatters down the corridor like a river in spate. Under the flood of the music I can hear the velveteen thump of front-row seats flipping, the caws of peacock-gowned women, the brays of laughter from cummerbunded men. And then the door swings closed and the noise of the audience is no more than a whispering of undergrowth. I savour the music again. I’ve heard it a hundred times or more, but it still fills me with a dancing as of pine trees in a summer breeze.
The bell rings.
Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. This evening’s performance will commence in five minutes.
The lighting man slips back through the stage door and in a lull in the music I hear the tide of the audience reach its crescendo. I’m not close enough to make out individuals, but I’ve been around the theatre long enough to know the kinds of things people are saying.
I hear Hearth is simply a fabulous performer.
This was Prahlow and Beachum’s first collaboration, wasn’t it?
What you have to appreciate with these lesser-known works is, there are so many subtleties, so many nuances that escape the mainstream critics… so many deep, even existential, questions.
I retreat back down the corridor and knock softly on Alex Hearth’s dressing-room door.
“Five minutes, Alex!”
“I know!” She sounds angry. I take a long breath. It’s going to be one of those nights, then.
“Can I come in?”
“Can I stop you?”
The door slaps open. Alex is bouncing on the balls of her feet in the entrance.
“I’ll never come in if you don’t want me to,” I reply, as mildly as possible.
I’ve got used to her pre-performance jitters over the three months we’ve been touring together. She’s the star, I’m just the fixer. The star-whisperer. The dogsbody who fetches her electrolytes and massages her hands and makes sure the hotel room is between 20 and 23°C exactly and that there are fried potatoes and hens’ eggs for breakfast the night after a performance. And sometimes, I’m a shoulder to cry on and a companion for long dark walks in the speckled night of a strange city, trying to find the nearest kebab shop or a place to see streaked reflections of lights in black water. She talks to me then, and she sometimes listens when I talk to her, as I sometimes do. Because when all’s said and done, Alex Hearth and I are from the same world. We’re both children of the ghetto. And we’ve both made it out into the upper strata, though her talent has shot her up far higher than I’ve yet been able to climb.
She turns back into her dressing-room and looks at her reflection in the mirror.
“Do I look alright?”
I check her dress — the dark brown velvet tonight, with the shimmery silver spines — and her hair, tied into a glossy knot on top of her head.
“All good,” I reply. “Maybe tomorrow night leave the hair down? Audience likes that.”
“The audience has no business with my hair.”
“I know, I know. The art is the thing. But you know how it is.” I brush a stray thread from the shoulder of her gown, and wish I don’t have to remind her so often of the coarse reality. “Higher scores from the audience, more tips for us, all that means we live to play another day.”
In the mirror, scorn and pain both show in her dark eyes. She swivels and puts her hands, those fine, muscled artist’s hands, on my shoulders, searching my face. This close, I can see beneath her make-up to the mossy shadows below her eyes.
“What if I don’t want to play another day? What if I just want to go home and work in the dumpling shop?”
I stay steady. She needs me most in moments like these.
“Think of your family,” I say. “Think how proud your parents are. Think how much you help them. And your brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and aunties. Think how few people have the chance to do what you do. You’ve got this.” I know that by the time the curtain comes down at the end of tonight’s show, she’ll be high on endorphins and applause.
The one-minute bell chimes.
“Time to go,” I say. “You’ve got this.”
The first half of the show is exquisite. Alex plays like an angel, as if the spirits of the director and coders and artists and musicians have infused her very nerves and muscles. Her fingers dance on the controller, every reflex perfect. On the screen that fills the stage behind her, her clunky little spacecraft is balletic, every thrust of acceleration in joyous time with the music. She glides effortlessly between the planets, soaring on the music of the spheres. Tonight’s show takes us to a tricky section of the game and there she toys panther-like with the audience, waltzing them between terror and catharsis, taking herself to the edge of death again and again without ever getting killed. When the curtain drops for the interval, I wonder how she’s planning to play it in the second half. It’s the penultimate show of that week, and she often likes to amp up the drama ahead of the grand finale. But it all depends on her mood. I’ve seen her run through the whole game dozens of times by now. Every week is different, and every week is beautiful. Outer Wilds is still one of her favourite compositions, though of course she has that broad mastery of the classical canon that all graduates of the People’s Academy of Performing Arts do. I hug her when she comes offstage.
“That was amazing,” I tell her. She’s still standing in the stage door, looking over her shoulder at the audience.
I check the tip counter, and see the tenners trickling in, and smile to myself. Most of it goes to the agency, of course, but Alex gets 20% and I get 10%, and every little helps.
“Did you see that?” she asks, coming down the step into the corridor and finally allowing the stage door to close. There’s a wildness in her eyes.
“What?”
“I can’t believe this.” She shakes her head and sweeps past me, her lips tight.
In the dressing-room, I massage her fingers while she sips coffee and nibbles on sweet yellow pea cake. The dressing-room door has shut out the buzz of the audience as they stretch and meander in and out of the auditorium buying ice-cream and peanuts and watery gin drinks. Some of them have come every night that week, following the whole game, paying as much for tickets as I earn in a month. Others have come for that one night. I know that some have scraped together the cash for what might be their one extravagance of the year; those are the ones in the funguswool suits and patched patent-leather shoes, sitting up in the gods and wondering if they dare eat the snacks they’ve sneaked into the theatre in their pockets. High class or low, the manager’s hope is to entice as many as possible back for the grand finale, the climax, before we leave for the next stop on the tour.
I move on to massaging Alex’s shoulders. She’s even more tense than she was before the show started, unusually.
“Fin, I don’t want to do this any more,” she says. Her voice is so quiet I almost don’t hear her. The clock on the dressing-room wall is showing two minutes to the end of the interval.
I squeeze her shoulders encouragingly.
“You got this,” I say. “One more night here, then we got a day off, then we move on. Rome is meant to be beautiful this time of year.”
“I’m tired, Fin.”
“And after Rome we get to go to Budapest, and then Baku, and then home. Think about that, darling.”
“I’m tired of being.. élite.” She cracks her coffee cup down onto its saucer. The half-inch of liquid left at the bottom shivers and peaks in tiny standing waves that flutter then sink into nothing. “I’m tired of being a pampered performing monkey while our people struggle.”
A sourness dampens the small of my back. I keep my voice level, keep massaging and soothing.
“You’re not going political, Alex. You can’t. We can’t. You know that.”
Out in the theatre, the announcer’s voice is asking the audience to resume their seats.
“I can’t do this any more.” Alex gets to her feet, straightens the long thorn-brown gown, and stalks out the door. I sigh and follow her, making sure she goes back onto the stage before I slip into my cubby-hole. She’s worse than usual tonight. I need to find a way to cheer her up before the finale. Tips are one thing, but more important is keeping the show on the road. Even with ticket prices for classical performances as high as they are, funding for videoludic art is shaky. Most performers have to do without a personal fixer, and if I can’t show the agency that I can handle a star like Alex Hearth, they’ll send me back to third-tier Honor of Kings arenas. After some thought, I slip back out of my booth and go to chat to the doorman. He might know if there’s a good kebab shop in the area.
When I get back a few minutes later, I know immediately that something’s gone wrong. Alex has aimed the spacecraft out of the solar system. Now she’s exited the ship and jetpacked into nothingness, facing away from the sun so that the screen shows darkness pierced by a hundred tiny stars. And then she sets down the controller.
I scramble to my feet and run to the side of the stage, just behind the curtain. There’s nothing I can do. I watch as she turns to face the audience. Her hands are on her hips and her chest is heaving.
“Ladies, gentlemen, and those of you who are neither,” she begins. “Neither, because being a lady or a gentleman implies a certain standard of behaviour, and what I’ve just witnessed is most definitely not of that standard.”
There’s a murmuring in the audience. In the background, the music is still soaring, and over it the hiss and drain of the character’s breathing.
“I’ve had enough,” she says. “I’ve put up long enough with you pretentious upper-class twats and your need to feel élite. I’ve put up long enough with your turning a blind eye to those who insult and mistreat those who sell you your ice-cream and shine your shoes. I saw what you just did to that usher, mister.” She stabs a finger at a portly man in the second row. “Yes, I saw you. And I’ve had enough.”
She walks forward a few paces, right into the centre of the stage. Behind her, on the screen, her character suffocates as their oxygen runs out. The audience is deathly quiet.
“And I’ve had enough of treating as a sacred cow what was meant to be something for everyone. Videoludic arts were meant for everyone, do you get that? Before the Crash, this was for people, ordinary people, plebs like me and that usher over there, to play with their pals at home, not for watching in a massive theatre with everyone in cummerbunds and tailcoats. Do you get that?”
At the other side of the stage, the theatre manager is signalling something to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a stagehand preparing to drop the curtain if needed.
“Instead of preserving this as some weird performance art for the upper classes, why don’t you do something about giving your so-called social inferiors just a little bit of a happier life? Why don’t you find a way to let them play, just for fun, not just the so-called lucky ones who get hothoused through a conservatoire?”
She stalks back to the controller, high heels stabbing the stage. She grabs the handset and holds it aloft.
“Why don’t you have a go at playing yourselves, come to that? Do you even know how to have fun? Maybe that’s a little hard to do while you’re trampling the poor, is that it?”
The people in the front rows are looking at each other and whispering. I can’t see what those further back are doing.
“Come on!” She waves the controller at the audience. “Who wants to have a go?” She points at an elderly lady in violet squirrelskin. “You?” She points at a middle-aged man in a pink silk sash. “You?”
I start edging towards her, but I’m too late. The violet-suited woman has got to her feet.
“I’d like to play,” she says.
What a performance!
Trailblazing. Very meta, don’t you think? Breaking the fourth wall like that. Who do you think scripted her speech?
That lady who stepped up must have been a plant.
Oh, no, no, didn’t you recognise her? That was Dame Edith Obra, don’t you know?
I weave through the foyer, listening, watching, as the audience disperses. I hear plenty of wealthy blowhards spouting their whale-like pretensions into the crowd. I also see those who look irritated or angry or just confused. A young man from the cheaper seats, about my age or a little younger, is standing in front of the highlights screen. He has a sadness about his eyes and mouth, and I can’t tell whether the sadness is disappointment or bewilderment or the unhappiness of remembering his position in life. I wonder how long he’s saved for this evening, and whether he’s ever been at a classical videoludic performance before. I suppress the urge to tug at his threadbare elbow and apologise.
The manager catches me on my way back to the dressing-room.
“I’m so terribly, terribly sorry,” I say, bowing as deep as I can go, before he can say anything. “This hasn’t happened before. It’s been a long tour. The strain, you know. Artistic nerves. Won’t happen again.”
The manager stops me. “Do you know what we’ve brought in tonight?”
I’ve been too anxious even to check our own tip counter, let alone the theatre’s reviews.
“Tomorrow night will make up for it, I promise,” I blab. “We can even talk about an extra show, if it would help.”
The manager grins and slaps me on the shoulder. “Nearly double what we normally make in scores! And it’s still going! We might even make the highlights on tonight’s Showtime!”
I stop, and try to rearrange my expression.
The manager slaps me on the shoulder again. “I know, she had you worried. Me too. Thought she was cracking. Happens sometimes, I know. But she’s a true star, isn’t she? Brilliant stuff. Don’t worry, I’ll give you a good score too.”
I slowly make my way backstage and knock on the dressing-room door. I need to break the news to Alex.
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this story, let me know with a like, comment or share!
If you liked this story, you might also enjoy:
Elite was one of my favourite games back in the 80s!
And I can well imagine videoludic art will be a thing in the future, in a soma sort of way...
Strong “Harrison Bergeron” vibes in this one, but with class consciousness!