Mr Horton paused to take a sip of wine that was an unusual green colour, and then leant in, as if imparting a confidence.
‘The problem is, of course, that there aren’t enough celebrities to go around,’ he said. ‘It’s almost impossible to find a celebrity who hasn’t already been signed up for some cause or other such as disappearing frogs or fracking.’
Grafton had to admit that he didn’t know there were frogs capable of disappearing. Perhaps, like chameleons, they had the capacity to vanish into the background. Fracking, he presumed, was some form of sexual assault.
‘The solution is,’ continued Mr Horton, building the tension, ‘to create your own celebrity using the Internet. If you can post things that go viral, you will get Followers.’
‘Like Jesus?’ said Grafton.
‘Very much like Jesus,’ agreed Mr Horton. ‘Once you get a critical number of Followers, you become a Presence, a Voice, an Agent of Change, a Political Force. If Jesus had the Internet he wouldn’t have had to go traipsing all round Judea; he could have sat home in Nazareth posting memes from his laptop – “Blessed are the poor in spirit”; “The meek shall inherit the Earth” – and watched them go viral.’
‘So now anyone can be Jesus,’ said Grafton, sipping his mineral water and pondering the implications of this.
‘Yes, providing they can come with some zingers like Jesus did.’
‘Have I come up with any zingers?’
‘Indeed you have,’ replied Mr Horton. ‘And as a result, your digital footprint is the size of King Kong’s.’
‘What have I been I saying?’ Grafton was intrigued to know what his digital doppelganger had been up to.
‘Everything and nothing,’ replied Horton. ‘Your utterances have had the virtue of lacking specificity because the Internet precludes any form of complexity. Ideas have to be reduced to a single phrase.’
‘Like “It’s Time, Stop the Boats, Make America Grate Again”,’ suggested Grafton with a mouthful of veal.
‘Yes.’ Mr Horton interjected quickly to stop the trickle of slogans. ‘Mind you,’ he added, ‘all this only applies to people who get all their information from social media. To the others, you are still the anti-Christ.’
To most people, this codicil would have come as a letdown but Grafton found it strangely comforting. In this mad new world it was a relief to find something that he was used to and seemed normal. One thing, however, remained unclear.
‘But with the new rules, the Australian population doesn’t choose the President,’ he said. ‘They’re chosen from a short list by both Houses of Parliament. How did I win that vote?’
‘Again, easily,’ said Mr Horton. ‘It is essential that the President have no fealty to any particular political party. You have worked for the People’s Party and the Workers’ Party and betrayed both of them, thus showing you can be relied on to have no loyalty to anybody or anything. You are absolutely neutral.’
‘I see,’ said Grafton, intrigued that these days everything that was once considered a fault was now a virtue. ‘So, Mr Horton,’ he began. But Mr Horton cut him off.
‘You know, Grafton, I really think it’s time you called me Lee,’ he said. ‘We’re not in school now. We’re both grown up, and pretty much in the same age bracket.’
Grafton furrowed his brow. How big a bracket was Mr Horton talking about?
Something didn’t ring true even to his egregiously unmathematical mind.
‘When you taught me at Forrest Hills High,’ he said, ‘I was fifteen and you must have been …?’
‘Forty,’ said Mr Horton.
‘That means you were …’ He tried to do the maths but got stuck.
‘I’m twenty-five years older than you,’ said Mr Horton in the same tone he used when leading Grafton through a simple science problem.
‘Which means you’re now …’ Grafton stopped again, not because he couldn’t add twenty-five to his own age of sixty-four, but because the answer did not seem possible.
‘Eighty-nine. In Earth years,’ replied Mr Horton.
Grafton was suddenly treading water in a sea of confusion. Mr Horton looked only a few years older than himself. Then he realised Mr Horton had been looking directly at him throughout the meal, not to mention reading the menu.
‘And I thought you were blind,’ said Grafton trying to clear his mind. ‘Didn’t you have some sort of sonic …’
‘Sonar implants, yes,’ replied the mysteriously non-aging scientist. ‘When I lost my eyesight I had an ultrasonic navigation system implanted – along with a few other things – but then a new technology came along and I had my eyes fixed.’
‘How?’ asked Grafton, both puzzled and slightly unnerved.
‘I’ll explain it all to you at another time.’ Mr Horton glanced up with what Grafton saw were unnaturally clear blue eyes. ‘The main thing now is that you need to meet with the Prime Minister and sort out what your duties are going to be as President.’
‘Duties? No one told me I’d have duties,’ stammered Grafton, suddenly terrified that he might have to do work in this new position.
‘You weren’t supposed to, but there’s been a bit of a mix-up. Nothing serious but the Prime Minister wants to talk to you tomorrow,’ said Mr Horton with an unnerving degree of casualness. ‘Coffee?’
‘Dessert,’ said Grafton decisively and sat back while the waiter cleared the plates – his having been mopped clean right down to the porcelain – and went to fetch the dessert menus. Grafton hated the modern fashion of having a separate dessert menu. His practice had always been to order dessert first, then turn to the front of the menu and consider what kind of main course would lay the appropriate foundation for the chosen sweets.
While he waited, he covertly studied Mr Horton, wondering how his former teacher could look so healthy while he himself was falling apart. He recalled that Mr Horton had once written in a letter, ‘Watch your health. Any neglect now will endure hordes of demons with whips assailing your old age.’ Well, he was certainly feeling the sting of those whips now, but even his egregious neglect could not explain the difference in their appearances. Mr Horton looked younger than any eighty-nine-year-old he had ever seen.
He thought about it but, since not even the most tenuous answer suggested itself, his mind soon gave up and he returned to considering his new and wholly undeserved fame as a font of wisdom and contemporary morality. Je suis Jesus, he thought, and dwelt on the idea for a while not only because it amused him but because, for the time being, it stopped him thinking about The Move and the Other Thing.
Chapter 2
The Republican form of government is the highest form ofgovernment; but because of this, it requires the highest form ofhuman nature – a type nowhere at present existing.
– Herbert Spencer
‘It’s a complete balls-up,’ ranted Scott Braggadocio.
Grafton was sitting in the living room of Kirribilli, the Prime Minister’s residence in Sydney, drinking tea and wishing there were more interesting biscuits on the plate before him, while the PM strode up and down in a fury.
It turned out there was a slight problem with the republic.
The PM’s Chief of Staff, Angus Morlock, who was