that struck the EUR tank and slashed across the faces and bodies of the EUR operators, who fell back writhing dramatically. The new war machines swarmed across the stage and pounced on the bodies and on the enemy tank.
The action speeded up, becoming intentionally more chaotic, the music more urgent and discordant: people and machines surged in from both sides of the stage, those on the USA side becoming caught up in the rainbow trance of the glowing sphere, those on the EUR side fighting and falling to the machines. Every so often a flashbulb flared, leaving afterimages through which what was seen on the stage became a glimpse of a memory you wanted to forget.
The lights went off. The hologram sphere expanded to fill the stage, then vanished like a popped soap bubble in sunlight. The music softened. When the lights slowly rose again the stage was filled with a massed choir. They wore academic robes over leotards. None of the singers was Eurydicean. There was something shocking and beautiful in the rank on rank of unoptimised faces and wildly variant heights and skin-tones.
‘Wow,’ breathed Winter. ‘That’s your—’
Ben-Ami raised a hushing finger, intent on the stage. The song began.
‘Curtain,’ said Ben-Ami. There was no curtain, but the stage lights went off and the room lights came on. The people on stage stood blinking and smiling self-consciously. Applause, scattered but fervent, echoed around the building. Ben-Ami leaned back, smiling. His surprise, and his entrepreneurial flair, had worked—seizing the literally heaven-sent opportunity of having all this talent and historical authenticity fall from the sky. The America Offline population included a remarkable number of trained and practised singers, mostly choral—tabernacle, temple, gospel, union—and some individual, whose rural and religious roots meshed perfectly with the show’s themes.
‘Did you write that?’ asked Calder.
Ben-Ami leaned his elbow on a beam at the side of the room, near the table around which the cast and crew were taking their lunch-break, and sipped umami tea and looked anxiously at Winter and Calder. Calder had taken up tobacco-smoking again in a big way since the AO folk had arrived. It was frowned upon by most of their sects, and was therefore a gesture of rebellion. The hunchbacked musician was taking this for all it was worth. Ben-Ami could see the point, but preferred to stay upwind of it. Winter eyed choristers in leotards.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Ben-Ami, ‘a moment. What did you think?’
Calder stubbed his cigarette. ‘The choir, that was good,’ he said. ‘Makes a neat sort of backwards link between us and the new cultures that we didn’t know about. Not so sure about the run-up, though. The war and Singularity stuff.’
‘Ah,’ said Ben-Ami. That was what he’d been worried about, but he still felt a stab of dismay. He’d put a lot of effort and thought into that scenario.
‘Visually it’s fine,’ said Calder, sounding slightly apologetic. ‘It’s just not very clear what’s going on, you know? Not even with one of our most crap songs as commentary. Half the people in your audience, maybe more, wouldn’t have a clue what “USA” and “EUR” stood for—in any sense of the words.’
‘Well, that’s hardly relevant,’ said Winter. ‘Everybody knows there was a world war and that one side’s forces and most of its population went through a hard-take-off Singularity in its first minutes. That’s all they need to know.’
‘Exactly!’ said Ben-Ami.
‘But that’s not the problem,’ Winter went on. ‘It’s too bloody abstract and evenhanded. I mean, I know “Giant Lizards from Another Star” is kind of bitter about both sides, but fuck.
‘Correction,’ said Calder. ‘
Winter moved his hand as though dashing something to the ground. ‘Technicality. It was a preemptive strike, everybody knew it was us or them. They were the ones going for one world empire. It doesn’t give the feel of how it was, back in the old Axis. We felt we were standing up for humanity, for
Ben-Ami crushed his empty cup and threw it away. ‘You’re missing the point,’ he said. ‘This is just a prelude. An overture. An introduction! What I’m trying to do here is show the catastrophe, the tragedy of it all, for both sides and for everyone. The whole tone changes later, as you know, you have seen it, when it’s the remnants of Europe and the space settlers and space forces against the war machines. But for this part, you have to remember, we had—we have—people originally from the American side in the resistance—scientists, astronauts, even space marines who didn’t get caught up in the Hard Rapture thanks—ironically enough—to the superior firewalls built to guard them from our side’s hacking. Certain of our institutions are of American origin: for one, the
‘Yeah,’ said Calder, ‘fair enough, but you haven’t shown how the civilians got caught up—’
‘Fine, fine,’ said Ben-Ami, furiously. ‘I shall make sure we have at least five people off to one side watching television or on-line or playing virtuality games and becoming entrained like the soldiers. Would that satisfy you?’
‘Sure,’ said Calder. ‘You can’t have everything, but you got to be realistic.’
‘I’ll try to bear that in mind,’ snarled Ben-Ami, and stalked off to talk to the nearest Latter Day Adventist.
It took another day to get on to rehearsing the second act, in which ragged people scrabbled in polystyrene ruins and squinted along rifle barrels while holograms and models of ESA aerospace fighter-bombers strafed war machines and the choir sang
‘
