Stagonza

Please read the following carefully, you will be given a choice of possible endings:

It’s hard to talk when you’re dead. It was, therefore, difficult for Chamille Tola to talk to Trisha Andrews. Chamille wouldn’t have chosen to ‘chew the fat’ with Trish, even in life. But you can’t be too choosy when you are reduced to a series of electronic impulses (although arguably that is all anyone of us is). Chamille had a mission which relied on Trisha’s involvement.
‘The Electronic Blindfold’ was a gadget seen by millions, every Saturday, on television’s ‘BIG QUEST’. Ordinarily it delivered a mix of abstract images and music. Today, on the head of Trisha Andrews, ‘The Electronic Blindfold’ was to bring a profound and impassioned request from ‘beyond the grave’.
Paul McGee, genial host of ‘BIG QUEST’, smiled to camera 3 and announced breathlessly, “Okay, so into the final round with John and Trisha Andrews”. There was prompted applause. “Stella, can I ask that you place ‘The Electronic Blindfold’ onto Trisha’s head whilst I say.... John will you join me first to face ‘The Big Brain Challenge!’ John stepped forward to meet the challenge.
‘The Big Brain consisted of a huge video screen connected to the largest computer currently assigned to any T.V. show, ‘Mr. Big’. Stella came forwards too. With the poise of an ex-fashion model she lowered, what appeared to be, a high-tec bucket over Trisha’s head, carefully tucking in stray ends of Trisha’s expensive ‘I’m on T.V.’ hairdo.
“Thankyou Stella.” said Paul McGee to camera 3, then turned to say more on camera 4. “Now Trisha will only hear or see what ‘The Big Brain’ chooses, until we ask her back to complete the challenge”. Stella turned smiling dutifully to camera 4 then elegantly exited, tracked by camera 1. Stella received fan mail every day. Men wrote to Stella with all manner of requests and offers, from sad sincere proposals of marriage to perverse promises of weird or wonderful sex acts. For her own amusement Stella was compiling a scrapbook of her fan mail, she had also considered publishing it. As Stella walked off the set, she thought of these things:
1 The spot forming under her chin below heavy ‘T.V’ make up.
2 The fact that an imminent period was making her stage outfit all the more uncomfortable.
3 That she would soon be in comfortable clothes, being driven home by the woman she loved, Doreen who operated camera 1.
Paul McGee was uncomfortable too. As he thanked Stella once more, his corset rubbed and squeezed like a boa constrictor. He gave thanks to God that this was the last round, it was the same god that had guided Paul through three messy marriages; problems with drink, drugs, prostitutes and gambling. It was a bloody handy god actually. Each Sunday a certain Newspaper printed ‘Shocking New Allegations’ connecting McGee with organised crime, drug orgies, etc. Paul then confessed to anything vaguely resembling truth: God forgave: Viewing figures increased. All in all a rather handy arrangement.
He whispered his usual final round prayer, “Oh God, don’t let me sweat too much, fart loud or call a contestant a stupid fuckwit audibly. Amen.”
John’s mind had been fixed, for weeks, on winning ‘The Big Challenge’ and driving home with Trisha in the Stagonza. He was pleased that they had beaten ‘that Asian couple’ to the final. ‘Smelly Pakis,’ he concluded incorrectly. He was also pleased at the number of times that he had managed to ‘rub up against’ Stella, during rehearsals and recording. ‘She’s hot for me,’ he concluded incorrectly. Trish’s new hair-do pleased John too, he visualised it flopping forward and back with his wife's head in his lap. ‘My girl loves to gobble,’ he concluded, this time more correctly than he realised. John was not the only man privy to that particular gem of information. Despite John’s pleasurable distractions, a seed of doubt persisted-would he know the answers in ‘The Big Challenge’. He was also anxious that his lovely wife would ‘fuck up big time’.
Trisha was obvious to exterior tensions. Her head was in the high-tec bucket known as ‘The Electronic Blindfold’. However this time, instead of the pretty pictures and music that she had been led to expect during rehearsal, all that the blindfold contained was darkness and the voice of Chamille Tola. The former South American citizen, now Trans-global entity, was speaking English for Trisha’s benefit.
Chamille, the journalist and political activist, was dead. Bodily and officially she no longer lived. The impulses that were once in Chamille's brain, her emotional responses and mental energies had, at the moment of her death, been subsumed by the Transnet International Computer Network. In a sense she existed in the cyberspace of the Transnet which was, ironically, the reason she was killed . Tola had uncovered “things" using the Transnet - she had found out too much. She had discovered corruptions and conspiracies of global proportions. Consequently the corrupt and conspiratorial had wanted her dead. At first (with bullets), they had failed. Late one Wednesday evening, Jesus Consuelius, an assassin posing as a doctor, went to ‘pull the plug’ on the troublesome young journalist. Jesus turned off the machine that was keeping Chamille alive. A bizarre phenomenon occurred in the last 14 seconds of Chamille's mortal existence. Machines still connected Chamille’s brain to the hospital computer network . The hospital was connected to the Transnet and this is the route by which all Chamille Tola’s ‘persona’ was ‘down loaded’ . In order to store the ‘information’ that had once been Chamille Tola, the Transnet found it necessary to close down parts of the world’s biggest computer systems. This caused global mayhem: money markets crashed; transport stood still; there were blackouts. It seemed the world would end by Friday, then everything stabilised overnight. There were three popular theories concerning the events of ‘chaos Thursday’ and the causes thereof. Only one living soul knew the truth. Trisha Andrews, game show contestant shared the knowledge with a trans-global network of computers and a dead woman. Trisha did not question Chamille’s explanation of ‘Chaos Thursday’, she could not question it, she didn’t understand it. Chamille sensed that her words were afloat on shallow water, and kept them simple. Her time was limited by the Transnet’s constraints.
“So you’re like a ghost on the ‘Trance Net’?” Trisha inquired, almost insistently. Chamille did not disagree, though she believed ghosts, monsters and gods were all part of ancient conspiracies; rumours encouraged by the powerful to draw the attention of the masses away from more frightening truths.
“Trisha, this will all sound very corny but I have a vision in which the world is free from war, hunger, environmental degradation, poverty, mass manipulation and other big bad things. I can’t make the world perfect but I can tell you a way that we can make it much better.”
“Blimey Camellia, you don’ ‘arf talk posh like John Lennon or somefink!”
“Trisha please listen we have little time. You know that the Transnet is supposed to be a global sharing of information? Well it’s much more than that now. It is just another means of control for those agencies big enough to control it and us. We can find out all manner of things but we cannot change anything! In the information age , as always, the small individual is powerless against economic or political interests promoting and supporting oppression.”
“Not quite wiv you there Carmillia.... John and me uses the Trance Net, well John the most, but we just talk to a nice couple we met on ‘oliday in America... Joyce and Alvin. John says if we wins the money today then we’ll go back and visit ‘em...Lovely couple....Course John really got his ‘art set on that car though.”
At this point Chamille began to suspect that if a freak electrical accident had sucked up Trisha’s intellect and persona, it would probably have been adequately housed in a pocket calculator. And from that pocket calculator, Trisha would find greatest amusement in displaying the number 55378008, waiting in giggling anticipation for a flat chested friend to spot the inverted message.
“Anyways,” Trisha continued, “John deals with all the politics in our ‘ouse”.
Chamille, being part of all electronic information, could see John’s politics clearly and they frightened her. She tried a new approach on Trisha.
“You were political once, when you were with Mike, you went on marches even.”
“How d’you know ‘bout Mike?”
“Trisha, I am on the Transnet, I am the Transnet. I know everything it knows and some of it is not nice at all !”
“ Blimey!”
Chamille wanted Trisha to understand the reality of her absurd predicament. Proof that her blunt journalistic account of Transnet misuses was true, came to Trisha via closer to home aspects: The registration of John’s car; Her mother’s phone number; Her brothers criminal record; The exact words that Mrs Miller had written about the ‘condom incident of ‘92’. Chamille made it clear that she knew more than anyone had the right to know . She spoke of the social disease that Mike had given to Trisha, that John had then contracted but not told Trisha for fear he had caught it elsewhere. Trisha was, by this point , more than flustered.
“ You...You’re not ... Not God are you?”
Chamille laughed and replied, “ It’s not a matter of who or what I am, it’s where I am that counts. When you take your turn on ‘The Big Challenge’ we, via ‘The Big Brain’, can change the future. Through the power of the Transnet and my intervention, you have the ability to restore rain forests, stop hunger and poverty, force the powerful to heed ‘the will of the masses’!”
“Sounds very important....Will we get all that stuff about me and my John wiped off that informational highway-Network?”
“We certainly will Trisha and it is the single most important thing since humans learned to talk!”
“What do I ‘ave to do?”
“On the very last question just press button B that will start the process. B equals beautiful future, better World...” she searched for another b and failed “...global utopia! are you with me now Trisha?”
“ Yea, too bloody right I am! And will we win the car?”
Without thinking Chamille asked philosophically, “What use is a nice car in a nasty world?”
“So we won’t win the car?”
“ I have no idea.” Questions on ‘The Big Challenge’ were selected and displayed by ‘The Big Brain’ in a total random process. Chamille toyed with the idea of claiming to be God and commanding Trisha to push button B. It was too late.
Trisha suddenly found herself face to face with Stella again. The blind fold was off, it was her turn to take ‘The Big Challenge. Forty three seconds passed and the Transnet ‘shut down’ Chamille Tola, it was no longer able to sustain the journalist. Chamille was off line now. Chamille was no more.
Standing facing ‘The Big Brain’, Trisha’s obvious lack of composure engendered waves of empathy from the studio audience. She had struggled and fidgeted but so far pushed all the right buttons, revealing five ‘correct answer icons’ (big ticks) on the huge screen. Trisha was more flustered and confused than she had been on her wedding day. Had she heard the word of God? Was she the chosen one? She certainly hoped not.
“The sixth and final question...For the Stagonza!” Paul McGee crooned to camera 2. An unprompted whoop burst from the audience. Paul shouted, “Mr. Big, please reveal question six!” The computer delivered the most simple question ever, so simple in fact, that a giggle of relief ran through audience, host , hostess, camera crew and husband. John just could not believe his luck, he thrust his fists upwards in triumphant soccer star style and mouthed the word,“yes!”.
Possible answers to question six soon appeared. Answers A B C and D, and the obvious answer, to the simplest ever question, was D.
Trisha swayed and starred in bemused anguish. In her left ear she fancied she heard John's voice, “Go on girl, we’re home and dry!” In her right ear simultaneously, she fancied she heard Chamille Tola, “Remember button B for a beautiful future!”
With a sweeping gesture Paul McGee quieted the excited audience to suggest, “Well Trisha, Looks to me like you may be driving home in style! It may hardly be worth my asking but..” Then he read aloud question six followed by his weekly request, “Choose your answer and press that button now!”
Make your choice:-
A Trisha fainted.
B “Oh shit” said Trisha accidentally pressing button A..
C Trisha yelled, “Sod ‘global utopium’... Whatever that means!” As she hammered a fist on button D....
D Trisha swallowed hard and pressed the B button.
“You stupid fuckwit!” Paul McGee shouted, sweating profusely and farting louder than thunder.

Next