FSF, August-September 2009 Read online

  As a member of the British Dragon Advisory Committee, I was given a serviced apartment in a building patrolled by security guards. I had broadband Internet, satellite television, and high-level communications links to realtime cameras trained on the dragon, along with terabytes of images of its earlier rampage. Every few days we would meet at Melbourne University. We did little else other than cover the same ground, but we did manage to look busy and write lots of reports. We also spent a lot of time in bars, getting drunk and hoping for inspiration.

  "If I wanted to knock out an enemy, I'd knock out his communications, infrastructure, and surveillance capability,” sighed the SAS major as he nursed his drink. “The dragon's actions make no sense. It's left all our military smarts intact."

  "Except for a few communications towers that were a little too aesthetically pleasing,” Glenda pointed out.

  "But this is no way to fight an enemy."

  "It's not our enemy,” I suggested, and not for the first time.

  "It might be trying to intimidate us,” continued the major. “You know, destroy art, which is not useful, but leave the world's economy and defenses intact. That lets us know that fighting back is not an option, but the economy is okay and nobody gets hurt."

  "Apart from a few art lovers who could not run fast enough,” I reminded him.

  "And quite a few religious worshippers,” said Glenda. “That must be significant."

  "That's not true,” I said. “A lot of famous churches, mosques, cathedrals, temples, and shrines were attacked and pulverized, yet only the worshippers who tried to be human shields were killed. It's letting us know that worshipping is okay, as long as we don't let a lot of art get in the way."

  "In that sense the dragon is telling us quite a lot,” said the major. “We just don't understand it yet."

  "I disagree,” said Glenda. “A lot of people already have the dragon's message. All around the world there are bonfires of art books, paintings, religious art, art archive tapes, computer graphics software, and even blank sketch pads. In the past people worshipped on the basis of faith in holy writ, but now we have two miles of invincible dragon that anyone can watch and learn from. There are already twenty-three thousand Dragonists living in tents along the cliffs, worshipping it continually. Some even sacrifice themselves by leaping from the cliffs and smashing against its body."

  "They are going to look rather silly if it moves on.” I laughed.

  "The faithful are sure that it will stay,” said Glenda emphatically. “It's a matter of symmetry: the dragon started in Paris with the Eiffel Tower, and it finished in Melbourne by eating the spire of the Victorian Arts Centre. Melbourne was once known as the Paris of the South."

  "Is that true?” exclaimed the major.

  "About a century ago, yes,” I agreed, standing up. “My round, who is drinking what?"

  "Scotch, with ice,” said the major.

  "White rum, with a dash of Coke,” said Glenda.

  "I've been reading folklore stuff,” said the major. “Why all the business of sacrificing virgins to dragons? Why are virgins special?"

  "I think you will find it's virgin girls,” I explained. “It's all symbolism. Fathers, brothers, suitors, all the warrior types are very protective about young and innocent girls. If a dragon can demand them as a sacrifice, it's won the ultimate symbolic victory over warriors. The dragon has not moved since the art-burning movements got going, so maybe it prefers art to virgins."

  "Virgins are irrelevant,” Glenda agreed. “The dragon could be a religious oracle with a message about the waste and futility of art."

  "That's hardly a sharing, caring religion,” I said as I waved for the barman.

  "All religions sound extreme when they begin,” said Glenda.

  "You sound like a believer yourself,” I observed.

  "I'm just a method sociologist, don't worry.” She laughed, her expression suddenly changing as rapidly as a computer image being morphed. “You know, get right into the minds of those you study."

  "The SAS has a similar approach,” said the major. “It's the only way to infiltrate convincingly."

  "Now come on, confess, I had you fooled, didn't I?” she asked.

  "Well, yes and no. I must admit I was getting a bit nervous about you, so I checked your background. You had a fine career in acting for about five years."

  "I only went into acting so that I could do some fieldwork in method sociology."

  In my experience, that sort of banter is a play for a night's entertainment in bed, so I pulled back from the conversation. On the bar's television I watched a news item about an artist being beaten to death in public while riot police stood by and watched. Such incidents were becoming ever more common. Artists were dying, either by mob violence or at the hands of individual murderers. The civil and military authorities could do little. It was like watching old videos of the Berlin Wall being demolished. The old Communist regime had lost power, yet nobody had been ordered to clean out their offices and leave, so they just watched. Many government opportunists even joined the Dragonists. The screen switched to a purification rally where artists were marching through a city square, beating themselves with whips while a pile of paintings from some gallery burned fiercely.

  "Scott, you're still here."

  Glenda sat down beside me, swayed slightly, then drained her glass.

  "I am the genuine, original, non-virtual Scott,” I replied. “Accept no substitutes, they are all very inferior."

  "The bar's about to close."

  "Is it as late as that?” I said as I looked around. “Where's Mr. Special Air Service?"

  "Already gone. He has to get up at dawn and run ten miles or something. What are your plans?"

  "Go home, go to bed, think about dragons, go to sleep. Yourself?"

  "Well, I'm a bit tired of trying to get into the heads of Dragonists. How are you with the dragon?"

  "I'm a bit short on inspiration, as usual."

  "Then we have something in common. How do you feel about some company at your place tonight? We'll declare it a dragon-free zone."

  In a way I was rather flattered that I had something the SAS major did not, but I was not interested.

  "Look ... don't take this the wrong way, but I'm not comfortable with that sort of thing."

  "You mean you're gay?"

  "No, no, it's just human contact that worries me."

  "Human contact?"

  "I'm ... squeamish. No offense, but ... like, it's about germs."

  "Ah, I see! You wear gloves all the time, and only drink from bottles you unseal yourself. You go to meals in restaurants with the rest of us, but never eat. You're a hypochondriac, aren't you? A really extreme hypochondriac."

  "It keeps me healthy."

  "How fascinating,” she said with a very odd intonation.

  What I had told her was true, but there was more. Much, much more. I returned to my apartment, changed into overalls, then went out again, this time to a municipal sanitary services depot. I had set up a double life. Three years earlier, a less than stable artist in London had paid me back for a bad review of his exhibition by hurling a beer bottle filled with petrol through my window. Fortunately the burning rag had come off in mid-flight, but ever since then I had been very careful about letting people know where I really live. Now I had a feeling that I might need to vanish into a new identity, and what more unlikely identity for a hypochondriac artist than one who drives garbage trucks?

  * * * *

  More weeks passed, during which public order did not so much break down as modify itself to purge society of anything that the dragon might not like. That included certain people, and I was highly qualified in fine arts. On the day that Glenda left the British Dragon Advisory Committee and declared herself a Dragonist, I abandoned my government-sponsored apartment, broke all contact with the BDAC, and became a garbage truck driver with no artistic interests at all. There was always a lot of wreckage to clean off the streets of Melbourne, wh
at with the ongoing art purges, so I had found a job easily. I worked night shifts, because it made me less conspicuous. My work involved collecting an ever-increasing number of bodies, and from time to time I recognized a famous face or Australian colleague.

  Concentration camps, supposedly for the protection of artists, were established in the countryside near where the dragon lay dormant. Each of these had Protective Enclave for Artists written prominently on every roof and above the gates. Nobody said as much, but this was clearly to encourage the dragon to have a country picnic rather than cause destruction in the cities, should it decide to go on the rampage again. Pictures of the camps and large maps were projected onto huge screens before its face, but it did not so much as twitch. The reputations of some senior Dragonists in the government were beginning to look a little insecure. To maintain their authority, they needed the dragon's sanction, yet the dragon was putting its seal of approval on nothing. Soon they would resort to even more extreme measures, I was sure of that.

  Every morning, after my night-shift ended, I would slump in front of the television and watch the news shows. Nearly every one started with a few seconds of live coverage of the unmoving dragon, then crossed to the latest anti-art riot, beating, or rally.

  "Our minds are trapped by what we desire,” I said to the screen, which was displaying a bonfire of paintings in some anonymous-looking city square. “We prize memories, images, artifacts, and beautiful things, and art gives us all those. What else? Experiences, I suppose: we love the thrill of one's football team winning, the rush from seducing someone desirable, the satisfaction of owning the most stylish car on the block. Beyond that, security, wealth, and reputation, but where does all that lead?"

  The screen had no answer, and neither did I. No matter how hard I tried to distract myself and let my subconscious produce a brilliant insight, my subconscious remained in bed with a pillow over its head. I made a salad washed in antiseptic for what was a sort of morning dinner, and arranged the individual pieces as the mosaic of a dragon eating an artist. It gave me no inspiration, so I in turn ate the image.

  Having made a mug of coffee, I turned my attention back to the television. It was now showing a comedy skit set on the beach in front of the dragon. A man wearing the stylized badge of three brushes in an A shape that was now imposed on artists was being tied to a pole that had been erected in front of a wall of sandbags. The camera panned across to a firing squad of people dressed only in blankets. It returned to the artist, who was shouting and struggling, condemning all art and swearing that he had never touched a paintbrush in his life. The commentator read out his name, principal works, awards, and Arts Council grants. Somebody shouted, “Fire!” No special effects could replicate what I saw next.

  "This is real,” I said aloud, numb with shock.

  The camera panned to a queue of artists waiting their turn near the sandbags. Some were on their knees, praying, others struggled with their guards, and a few actually managed a display of dignity. Two guards untied the body of the late artist from the pole and dragged him away. Another artist was dragged forward. The sandbags behind the pole had been so badly flayed by bullets that the sand had mostly leaked out and the wall was sagging in the middle. The commentator asked us to stand by for an important announcement.

  Suddenly my door was smashed in.

  The strangest thing about the raid was that nobody spoke to me directly. Someone called out, “That's him!” and I was seized and secured by hands that had evidently become well practiced at this sort of thing. Every twist and wriggle that I attempted was easily countered. People with cameras and sound booms crowded into my apartment.

  "Not only is he a highly qualified art critic and academic, he is also a virgin!” cried a journalist wearing a microphone headset who was bracketed by at least a dozen others with cameras.

  On my own television I could see myself being held down and bound. I was symbolic, according to the journalist. I held the very last Ph.D. in art history to be issued before what was now being called the Age of the Dragon. He also kept saying I was a virgin, and from this I deduced that Glenda was involved. After that evening in the bar, she probably followed me for the whole night, learning about my secret identity's job and apartment.

  "A virgin artist, ladies and gentlemen, I know it sounds like a contradiction in terms, but there you have it,” babbled the commentator. “He is to be sacrificed to the dragon itself as proof of—"

  The one sure way to have the sound killed on a lunchtime TV show is to shout obscenities, and I now did precisely this.

  * * * *

  I have little shame when it comes to staying alive. I was dragged struggling and screaming from my apartment, and continued to make an undignified fool of myself in front of several dozen cameras on the street outside as I was held down by eight men and strapped onto a medevac stretcher. I screamed and shouted myself hoarse with some very nasty language until one of my guards inserted a roll of bandage into my mouth. This allowed the television coverage to broadcast sound again, so the journalists returned and explained repeatedly about me being a virgin. Relief from the humiliation came when one of the helicopters hovering above let down a cable which was attached to my stretcher. I was winched up while other helicopters circled, doubtless transmitting high-definition images of everything to the television screens of everyone with an inclination to watch.

  Being unable to struggle or scream, I now lay limp. The irony was that I was actually not a virgin. I had experienced a single sexual encounter at the age of seventeen, from which I had contracted NSU. Being a person with a phobia of contracting anything at all, this had put me off further sexual encounters. Obviously the prospects of getting a sworn statement that I was not a virgin were not good, however. I could not even remember the girl's name, only that she had been the nude model for a painting class.

  On the other hand, distract yourself by screaming hysterically for long enough and your subconscious gets a chance to do some serious thinking. Perhaps my subconscious was just as averse to firing squads as I was, for I suddenly realized that I had the answer to the whole question of the dragon.

  The helicopter landed. From the television, I already knew to expect the pole, the wall of sandbags, the line of men and women wearing blankets and holding automatic rifles, the man holding a ceremonial officer's saber, the naked Dragonist high priests, the television cameras, and the fluffy sound booms. Glenda was with the Dragonist priests, as naked as all the others but standing in front of them in some position of honor. Dragonist theology had now decreed that only those in the totally natural state could become saints of the dragon. I struggled as the guards began unfastening me. The camera crews crowded in: evidently this was good television.

  My academic record and achievements in art history were read out, it was announced yet again that I was a virgin, then I was invited to confess my sins to the dragon. The roll of bandage was removed from my mouth. Now I had the undivided attention of the world's media, but I did not give them inane babble, abuse, or pleas for mercy. Hoping that my voice would carry, and hoping that the dragon was paying attention, I looked straight up into the enormous face and blank, black eyes.

  "I know you,” I said with the defiance of one with nothing left to lose. “I know what you are. You are all of us. You have come from the combined subconscious of all humanity. We created you without knowing it. Our superconsciousness created you to tell us that art is a mistake. Humanity is on the wrong path! The glories of human art, everything artistic, all that we hold most dear, all of it is a terrible mistake."

  I paused for breath. The man with the saber looked to the Dragonist priests. Glenda frowned, then nodded. The saber began to rise and the members of the firing squad released their safety catches.

  "Forty thousand years ago we started painting on cave walls, but we were on the wrong path!” I screamed desperately. “For a third of humanity's existence we've been building an enormous playground. Now it's time to start again, to get
it right."

  "Take aim!” cried the man with the saber as I paused to try to remember what else I had thought of.

  I remember a brilliant flash of light and a blast of heat. For some moments I was convinced that I was dead and having an enforced out-of-body experience, then I saw the patches of melted sand and metal where the Dragonist priests, guards, helicopter, firing squad, and man with the saber had been. Those with the cameras and boom microphones had been spared, along with myself.

  There was a great, deep rumbling, akin to some giant ship grinding against a reef. The dragon's head began to rise, the neck extended, and its face approached me. For an eternity it loomed larger and larger, then it stopped. Had my hands been free I could have touched its lower jaw, yet its eyes were hundreds of feet above me. Moments passed. I remained alive. I had made a claim, I recalled. It was showing that it was interested.

  "What do we do?” squealed one of the camera operators.

  "Keep covering all this,” I advised. “I think the dragon wants the world to hear what I have to say."

  Every camera turned away from the dragon's head and onto me. I collected my thoughts as best I could and took a deep breath.

  "Why are humans special? Rats outnumber us. The krill have a greater biomass. Termites have survived at least a thousand times longer than humans."

  Again I paused for breath, and the entire world watched me breathing. I had only one key point, and I had no idea whether it was enough.

  "Our brains did not evolve specifically so that we could build a space station or hunt for microbes in the Martian permafrost. We can do those things, but we don't exist to do those things. We can produce beautiful art, but we don't exist to do that, either. We're like children who became so good at playing in the sandpit that we never left it. Now we're teenagers, and an adult has come along, kicked over our wonderful sand sculptures, and told us to get a life. Of course we're upset, of course we're confused, but that's tough."

  I had no more to say, yet still the head the size of an office block loomed over me. For what? Was it waiting for me to tell the world what to do? If so, I was dead. Nothing was left to me but the truth, and the truth was that I knew nothing else. I prepared as best I could for vaporization.