Imagine an Exit
Rob Grant has died. He co-created Red Dwarf, my favourite TV comedy sci-fi thing of the 1980s and 90s. As well as the TV series, there were some fab novels.
The second novel was called Better Than Life and involved a virtual reality game that made your wildest dreams come “true” but trapped you inside them. In the real-world, meanwhile, your biological body withers and dies.
While the three main crew are trapped in the game, Kryten, the ship’s service robot, attempts a rescue mission:
In theory, leaving BTL was simple. All the player had to do was want to leave. All the player had to do was imagine an exit, and pass through it, back to reality.
Kryten had imagined his gateway easily enough, but as he was about to pass under the pink neon ‘Exit’ sign, a cafeteria materialized to his right. In the window was a handwritten card which read: ‘Dishwasher wanted.’
The cafeteria was deserted, but in the kitchen, stacked ceiling-high, were several huge towers of dirty dishes piled around a sink. Now, what kind of sanitation Mechanoid would he have been if he’d ignored those greasy, food-stained plates?
I’ll just wash a few, he’d thought. Reduce the pile a bit.
Eight months later, he was still there, still washing, still surrounded by stacks of dirty dishes. Finally he realized he’d been duped – the Game had found his innermost desire – and he’d scurried off, ashamed.
Mechanoids weren’t supposed to have desires.
It’s all there, isn’t it? The need to feel useful. The job that traps you. The technology that needs your attention. The vampiric theft of your life force. The door being open all along – so long as you want to see it.
Rest in peace, Rob Grant, whose name means to take and then give.
A great old Red Dwarf line is that “death isn’t the handicap it used to be in the olden days. It doesn’t screw your career up the way it used to.” Well, oddly enough “stiffie” Grant’s got a book coming out in July.
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I Look for Exits
I look for exits. I mean, if you can get in you must be able to get out. I think to myself. How do you open a door that won’t open? Do you kick it down? Break it down? Set fire to it? Locksmith? Wishful thinking? Secret codes? Magic words? I can’t help feeling there’s something I ought to do.
From On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle, the seven-volume literary time loop sensation currently sweeping Europe.
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