Read The Alternative Hero Online
Authors: Tim Thornton
As my mother would say:
Hell’s teeth
.
Two questions immediately spring to mind.
Not, you may be surprised to hear, “How the hell has that total dweebhead loser boy managed to become such a super-successful, globally inspirational graphics megabloke?”—which is certainly the first thing that would emerge from Alan’s lips. In fact, I can
totally
see how the Billy I knew became the high-achieving eccentric guru who stares at me from his home page. It was all there from the very start. All he needed was to
not be at school
. No—the question I really want an answer to is “How the hell did I manage to miss it?” Granted, I pay about as much attention to the ins and outs of the comics industry as I do the history of agriculture in Lithuania, but
you’d think I’d have spotted his (far from common) name at least somewhere.
The other question I’m now pacing up and down my room mumbling to myself is the following: If he’s this successful, this busy and this artistically satisfied, what on earth is he doing plastering stickers of his long-forgotten indie fanzine on a signpost outside a former scuzz-rock venue in Islington?
And the immediate explanation my dazed, confused and self-centred brain settles for? That Billy Flushing—wherever he is now—is trying to communicate with
me
.
I click on his website’s “contact” page—annoyingly, it’s just one of those mailing-list forms, and there’s no actual address. Returning to my original Google search I get myself to the Xcarto website and do the same. There are two addresses—one in New York (but of course) and one in London. A glance at the postcode—EC1V—tells me the London office can’t be more than a few streets away from my old work. Who knows, I could have been buying my lunch from the very same Tesco Metro as Billy—when he wasn’t having his caviar coptered in and carried to his drawing board on a velvet cushion by a team of trained meerkats.
(A quick aside to this fascinating stuff: in all seriousness, I sometimes wish there was a Web site that could tell you other people’s movements throughout their life in relation to yours, so you could type in their name and see a kind of joint route map; how many times have people said, “Oh, I was at that gig too” or something. With this site you could see how close you actually got; perhaps you were unwittingly waiting next to each other at the bar or some such … but then I also wish there was a device that could magically tell you all sorts of random facts and figures about your life, e.g., how many Jaffa Cakes you’ve eaten, which is the bus you’ve taken most often, how many times you’ve been through East Croydon station,
which is the person you’ve had sex with the most. Like a sort of itemised phone bill of existence … a universal statistics engine … hmm …)
The Xcarto site’s contact page displays a few email addresses—the standard “info@” one, a few named entries for the sales and marketing people, but nothing for their exalted CEO. However, I notice the format is pretty standard, “firstname.surname@”—so, it being too late at night for procrastination, I take a wild stab in the dark and quickly bash out this:
| From: | CLIVE BERESFORD ([email protected]) |
| Sent: | 27 April 2007 01:57:04 |
| To: | [email protected] |
| Subject: | the geeks shall inherit the earth |
Dear Billy
I hope this has reached the correct destination! Blast-from-the-past time. Yes, it really is
that
Clive Beresford. Sorry. Imagine my surprise when I passed the old Powerhaus on Liverpool Road this evening and saw an
Alternative Heroes
sticker on the signpost. Can’t imagine it’s been there for over a decade, so I figured maybe you’d been feeling nostalgic? You seem to be one of the few people from school doing something slightly interesting with their lives. Glad to hear it. It’s amazing what dull jobs people have ended up with! I’ve actually lost touch with almost everyone, apart from Alan Potter, who you probably remember. You may shudder at the name, but Ben Simons sent me an email recently (maybe he did the same to you?), which I have to admit I completely ignored. If the photo on his MySpace page is anything to go by, he’s exactly the same—slightly overweight and perpetually angry.
Despite my cynical tone I haven’t become some completely bitter 33-year-old drunken mess. I’m actually quite happy with life, doing what I want (most of the time). Hope you are too—it appears so. Drop me a line if you get a sec—take it easy.
Clive
p.s. sorry about Spike Island
Okay, so there’s a couple of fibs in there to give it a bit of sparkle. I refresh my inbox page a couple of times and nothing comes hurtling back at me saying the email address doesn’t exist, so it seems to have gone somewhere. Well then, we’ll see.
Having accomplished this task of dubious benefit, I’m just about to shut down and finally make a move towards bed when I remember bloody Webster and this fabled novel I’m meant to have started. Satan’s arse. As I’m meant to be seeing a job agency tomorrow morning, I really need to have a go at the bloody thing now.
Wearily, I open up a new Word document and—risking a second encounter with my naked, toast-eating flatmate and her bit of equally naked posh totty—return to the kitchen to put the kettle on.
[From the
Sunday Times Magazine
, Sunday, 4 May 2025.]
A Life in the Day of GAVIN SMITH
Gavin Smith, 32, has been an inventor since the age of 4. In 2015 he became the youngest scientist selected by NASA to work on the Martian element Quartaneum, which led to the invention of the Universal Statistics Engine (USE) in 2017. He lives in Cambridgeshire with his dog, Ivan
.
Ivan wakes me up by licking my face at around 6 a.m. He’s been a lot happier since we moved out of London, as have I—the media attention was starting to get on our tits. I make some toast for Ivan (with butter and honey, spoilt son of a bitch, quite literally, ha ha) but just a coffee for me. I’ve normally got a raging hangover, so I can’t think about eating anything until I’ve had my oxygen hit. I might also plug in for some saline if I’m feeling extra rough. Then I check my emails: the usual boring crap, although there might be something from one of my collaborators in the States. I choose the people I work with extremely carefully—especially since the USE was stolen.
I take Ivan for a quick walk and then it’s time to start working. I mainly work in a little back room, just as I’ve always done. It’s cheaper than renting a lab, and it means I don’t have to travel or talk to anyone, unless I really want to. Ivan’s all the company I
need. I’ve had better conversations with him than with any human being.
People ask me why I started to invent things, and the answer is simple: I wanted to perform a certain task, so I invented the tool I needed to do it. For some reason this came naturally to me. The first thing I invented was an intruder alarm for my bedroom when I was four years old. I made it out of a couple of shoelaces and my sister’s old mobile phone. I did it so that my mother would stop going in there and wrecking the bloody place with her so-called “tidying.”
At around midday I stop and go to the pub to have something to eat. The Prince Albert round the corner, usually—Ivan’s allowed in, the landlord is bearable and the regulars leave me alone. I might read the paper if I’m bored, not because I want to know what’s going on in the world, but because I find it so hilarious how stupid people are. A newspaper to me is just like one big joke book.
I have a few pints and then it’s back to my room. Sometimes I listen to music while I work, depending on how menial my current task is. I’m not really fond of modern music—I’m one of those people who reckon that nothing good’s been recorded since about 2007.
I’ve been working on the same invention since I was 18. Everything I’ve invented in the meantime has been accidental—or because I needed the money. That’s why I invented the USE. I never had any personal interest in it, but I knew it would be lucrative. Which of course it has been—although not for me.
I’ll probably crack open the first beer at about three, but I usually carry on working until at least six o’clock, when my mind starts to wander and Ivan begins to get restless. That’s when he gets his long walk—perhaps along the disused railway line and
across one of the smaller fens, or sometimes just along the river. Ivan doesn’t care, there are always new pieces of shit to smell and birds to hassle. Then I grab a takeaway from somewhere and head home.
Most of my evenings are spent drinking and flinging stuff around the house for Ivan to chase. Why do I drink so much? Because it helps me forget that I’m human, and that I exist in 2025. That’s why I’m trying to build a time machine. One day I’ll finish it and fuck off to another dimension, where I’ll stay. If those cunts hadn’t stolen the USE I’d have enough money to build it by now, but I don’t care—I’ll do it eventually.
I pass out at around midnight. Hopefully I’ll have managed to get myself into bed by then, but it’s not unusual for me to wake up anywhere in the house—sometimes even the garden. It doesn’t matter, I sleep anywhere. I never dream.
Alan does his best sceptical belch-scoff, casts the sheaf of papers aside and takes a sip of his organic coffee.
“What do you think?” I ask.
“What do
I
think?”
“No,” I reply, rolling my eyes. “All the other people I’m currently talking to.”
“I don’t know?” he shrugs.
“Is that a question or a statement?”
“Both, I guess. I mean, I’m not really sure what you want me to say, Clive. You know I never read, for a start.”
“Sure, but that doesn’t matter. Did you enjoy it?”
“Um … yeah?”
“What did you think of the character?”
“Um …”
He looks frantically around the café, as if he’s going to see the word he’s looking for emblazoned on one of the posters. Then he gives up and takes a bite of his vegan brownie.
“Did you like him?”
“Er … he’s a bit … um … odd.”
“Odd, yes.” I nod. Adjective. Houston, we have an adjective. I pop the last piece of free-range garlic-and-birdseed flapjack into my mouth and sit back, hoping for further commentary. Instead, he fiddles with his tie and looks at his watch.
“Gotta go in a sec.”
“Okay … but did anything else strike you? I mean, did you think it was … you know … funny?”
“Yeah, it was funny.”
Christ on a bike.
“Okay—well, thanks for all of that, Alan. This is what I’m going to show him when he appears anyway. It should be enough, I guess.”
“Enough … yeah, I s’pose.”
Amazing how such a high-flying, overachieving entrepreneur can be so alarmingly useless sometimes. He stands to leave, then sighs.
“Sorry I haven’t been much help, man. I’m finding it all a bit strange, really.”
“Strange?”
He frowns.
“Clive, you’re about to meet our biggest teenage musical hero for coffee, pretend you don’t know who he really is while you show him highlights from a book you haven’t written, after being warned by his bodyguards about your stalking, which you’re also going to pretend hasn’t happened.”
I can’t resist raising my eyes in mock astonishment.
“And what, may I ask, is so strange about that?”
“Nutter,” Alan concludes, striding off.
“Vorsprung Durch Peanut,” I shout after him.
“Up yours.”
As he vanishes through the door I grab my handiwork for a final study. But half a minute later, he is back.
“Hey, man, I’ve just thought of something.”
“What?”
“Are you gonna give him this stuff to keep?”
“Might do. Dunno.”
“There’s no copyright notice on there.”
“Eh?”
“You can’t give it to him unless it’s got a copyright notice. He might try to nick it.”
“Oh, I don’t really think that he …”
“Clive, at least follow this one piece of advice on a subject I
do
know something about,” he instructs, taking a pen from his bag. “Just write ‘copyright, two thousand and seven, Clive Beresford.’”
“Okay, I will.”
“Well, do it now,” he commands, pushing his Biro at me.
“Uh, I’ll do it when you’ve gone.”
“Why? He’ll be here any minute.”
“Uh, I need the loo.”
“Well, fuck it, don’t bother,” he gruffs, stomping off again. “If your stuff gets pinched I don’t give a toss.”
I wait until he’s out of sight, fish my own pen out of my pocket and quickly scrawl “Copyright
©
2007 Alan Potter” on each of the pages.
Lance Webster—sorry, fuck—
Geoff
Webster slurps his apple-and-ginger herbal tea and carefully reads my paltry creation. I’m trying not to watch him, but it’s nigh-on impossible. Particularly because
(by accident, he alleges) I have nothing of his to read. He’s had a haircut since we last met, and he’s wearing black-rimmed reading glasses and a dark grey polo-necked sweater. None of which helps to dispel the unsettling realisation that he looks slightly like Matthew Broderick. Claiming to have eaten nothing today (it’s about quarter past three), he’s ordered the vegetarian all-day breakfast (organic duck eggs, dolphin-friendly mushrooms, plywood and nutmeg sausage), which hasn’t yet arrived, and toast, which has. He clearly knows the place, not needing to look at the menu, addressing the female proprietor (perhaps of Dutch origin?) as “Marzy.”
“This is seriously good stuff,” he frowns.
“Thanks,” I mumble, assuming he’s talking about my writing and not his toast.
“You immediately get a sense of the character.”
“I’m glad about that.”
He reads on. I sip my third coffee—which is starting to make me feel sick—and wait for him to finish, but once he does (he reads the “I never dream” bit out loud, with a laugh) he shuffles the papers and starts all over again. When he reaches the second page he adjusts his seating position and kicks his legs out so they rest heavily against mine. I freeze, then cough, and he looks up.