Before 24 Billion and Counting

Chapter 1 Part 1 Charles is intrigued

"There is one advantage in sending hardcopy," Kelly volunteered, "it's got past our computer Junk-out programme without being looked at and straight onto the bosses desk." 

I smiled, and picked up the letter knife, "Let's hope that not too many advertisers catch on to the same scam - we might need a waste bin again." 

Before I had brought the knife into contact with the envelope I realised that I was falling behind schedule. I was soon due at the studios, where I had a meeting, and so I put the letter in my pocket and carried on with the day. 

Our business was an uneasy blend of hard practical production and scheduling of physical things like making sets, whether in software or hardware, getting actors to act or buildings or products to look good whilst they were filmed, and the almost uncontrollable problem of creating a new idea and then persuading someone else to do it or buy it at the right price. This mix meant that problems referred to me were inevitably tortuous and full of competing, and for the moment irreconcilable views held by people with one thing in common - robust egos. Once I entered the studios I was drawn into the vortices of discussions to unscramble the latest crop of crises, real or imaginary.

Surfacing at sixish when the sky was now dark, and the Southern Cross sparkled above, I walked to the monorail. 

Home was a ranch style bungalow in a hectare of ground at the edge of a deciduous forest almost in the country. The four kilometer trip from the station to home was in the town car. I put the car on charge in the garage, and entered through the kitchen. All was serene - too serene. Beatrice had died three years ago, victim to a malignant growth, and even now I could not reconcile myself to the stillness of the house. If she had been out, there would have been the subtle signs of her recent presence when I returned like this. Now the house was in stasis between the time I left and now. I mentally shook myself, turned on some more lights and lit a fire to cheer the room up, and took a whisky to cheer me up. 

Pottering around to make myself a meal, wash up, catch some news on the TV, look at the home E-mail and tidy some paperwork brought me to ten or so, sitting in front of the fire with a nightcap just filled, and Bach on the quad. I suddenly remembered the letter delivered to the office. 

The paper was good quality; the address "Charles Berisford, Berisford International Publications, Park House, Wellesley Street West 214, Auckland, New Zealand" was in unremarkable laser print. The sender "Ms A England, Flat D 181, Ebury Street, Victoria, London SW1 lAG, U.K.E.U." I knew London fairly well and could visualise the area, bounded by the transport terminal, the Thames, and the Westminster government complex. The flat, one in a number of now fashionable nineteenth century buildings usually gutted and modernised within, and sandblasted and restored without, providing those keen on metropolitan life with easy access to all that great City had to offer. 

Inside the envelope one sheet of paper: 

1st June 2050 

Dear Mr Berisford, 

I have heard and admired your talks on old science fiction, and have been told of your fabulous collection of SF art and artifacts. I remember your father fondly and am glad you carry on some of his enthusiasms. In these days of factory produced art you must find it hard to continue the pursuit of the unusual. A late 20th century SF manuscript has come into my possession, together with a related painting and sculpture, which I am sure would interest you. 

You would be able to view the items when you are next in London. Could you visit me? I could then show you if you wish to take matters further. 

Yours very sincerely, 

Alicia England O.B.E. 

The signature bold, flowing, elegant, expansive and askew in the space allowed by the printer. 

Straightforward, if somewhat formal for our times. Usually authors sent an unannounced summary, but they didn't have the magic magnetism of a past supreme ballerina and choreographer, nearly all of whose performances I had on flat, holo or CDR recordings. I thought she must be in her sixties now, but even so any arts journalist would have given their right arm for such an invitation, and publishers are first cousins to journalists. 

I recalled what I knew of her. Born around the nineties of the last millenium in a county town in the commuter belt north of London. A father talented in exquisite and disturbing surrealist oil paintings, not then popular, and requiring a day job of creative Director in an advertising partnership. An equally talented amateur artistic mother. Alicia's own talent was in acting and dance, but being small for the classic ballerina she had to wait for fashions to change. As soon as classical ballet finally gave way to modern dance and as the new broadcast and software technologies gave dance its real mass exposure her talent shone through. This became even more apparent when she created her own 

choreography. 

She had come to work with my father on her greatest hit. Alicia was the first, and so far the last, choreographer to exploit zero gravity as a dance environment. NASA had gone through one of its convulsions with the US government, and had suffered a major budget cut, after having set up in orbit a partially completed interchange satellite for an inner-planet manned expedition. One completed unit was a pressurised, air conditioned "hangar" for maintaining the outer hulls of earth shuttles. It was this unique and huge enclosure that was used for the ballet that Alicia created. 

The cost was phenomenal, but the concept so unusual and tempting that a consortium of Warner, Sony, and Sanyo backed the project with a number of other smaller fry one of which was my father. The cost overrun was unbelievable, and even my father's miniscule percentage stake nearly bankrupted the company at that time. However they knew they had an all time hit, and the steady stream of royalties that even today came to those involved proved to be a financial saviour. It became universally popular because there was something of quality for everyone. The master software was digitised in three dimensions from ten holographic cameras and six audio channels and could be recut and reformed to suit almost any taste and any medium, and it was thus timelessly contemporary. 

Not since the freedom given by flat film animation in Walt Disney's Fantasia in the 1940's had imagination been extended so far. The acclaim to this work of art was worldwide and probably made anything afterward an anticlimax for the creator. Anyone actively associated with the production side of the project was assured a remarkable career. 

The hangar at the satellite was never again available, and a similar large pressurised no-gravity volume was never again created. Father had kept in contact with Alicia until his death, but had told me she wished to maintain anonymity, and I had respected what seemed to be their joint wish. Now here was the opportunity to find out more concerning this remarkable and historic woman who had touched my family, and I resolved to follow this call. 

My last action that evening was to create a letter for Kelly to send off in the morning (there was no E address on the letter from Alicia) saying I would certainly be visiting her in the next three weeks and suggesting some suitable dates. 

A trip to Europe was always worth making, but I just couldn't go on the strength of the one vague, uncommercial looking prospect from a retired ballerina, however famous - at least not without my board grumbling about my "pet obsessions". However after a couple of weeks I managed to get a reasonably business-like itinerary together which dovetailed with a three day slot in London, and Alicia's dates. 

It was always a scramble to get the business straight before a trip away, and it was no different this time. Kelly accompanied me to the airport at eleven in the morning taking notes, and briefing me with final instructions and requests. I left her in the taxi and then became another unit in the throng of the travelling public, following the signs and the instructions of the various helpers, machine and human, that funnelled us to our destinations. The checks of tickets, baggage, security, customs and emigration followed each other as a series of queues. 

In one of three transit lounges serving the 1000 seater Airbus Industrie 880, I relaxed. For the next few hours someone else would do the driving for my life. After the half hour it took to load the plane, the four seven metre diameter turbofan engines came to life. There is no other sound like these engines at take off. It is a threnody that typifies machine power, and I always thrill to it and the exhilarating take off run and the initial steep climb away from the ground.