Three Nilth - a work of 'faction'

Remarkable occurrences happen all the time, usually to unremarkable people. They are ubiquitous. The TV news is a crazed messenger, churning out up-to-the-minute, remarkable stories of woe, dread, disease and instability. Each one claimed as an ‘exclusive’ and yet all still appear on every channel.

The written word was a remarkable occurrence in itself. It propelled man from Neanderthal beast to knowing being. Its linear text in every volumous tome contains whimsical remarkable moments. Occupying every shelf in every bookshop is an infinity of narrative explorations into moments of remarkable achievement, behaviour, vision and reflection. Without these chapters of captured remarkableness, we, the remarkable humans, would undoubtedly fail to ask questions of our existence.

However, rare are those remarkable moments, those glitches in the psychic system, those question marks in a sentence that delightfully occupy those regions of the ‘unknown’, or the state that we do not yet know. Occasionally, our remarkable moments are remarkably co-existent.

Agnetha, Anni-Frid, Benny and Björn were, as a collective, unequivocally remarkable. They were the harbingers of Euro-vision, a mantle they wore with gleeful, Scandinavian recklessness. Yet, on this particular date, and despite its befitting nature, their performance was to fashion their very future together.

They had been invited to put their talents on display before royalty. The cream of the Swedish entertainment world had gathered together to applaud the marriage of their King, Carl XVI Gustaf Folke Hubertus, and his German-Brazilian wife, Silvia Renate Bernadotte Sommerlath. The song chosen by the band to mark the occasion was ‘Dancing Queen’.

Although the auspicious show and the consequent engagement was an implicit success, the subsequent deluge of events was truly extraordinary. The Swedish press hounded the band for writing what they deemed an inappropriate song for a royal occasion. The band was distraught, and innocently claimed the song was born some six months previous. Ravaged by the media’s campaign to ignite national animosity towards the band, the four members fled overseas in order to use their fame to it’s the full advantage. Sweden would never witness their brilliance, as a complete entity, again.

Soon, cracks started to make themselves known and load bearing shoulders drooped in accord with their heads. The tension filtering through the band steadily grew inescapably until nothing but a split was satisfactory.

Agnetha, Benny and Björn reunited just once to perform ‘Dancing Queen’ live on stage – at a gala held by the King of Sweden to celebrate his 30th wedding anniversary with his Queen Silvia. Anni-Frid did not attend, although she had been invited. She was the song’s original author and gave her consent for it to be played with great, yet furtive, anguish.

Had the true meaning of the song been leaked to either the band or the Swedish press, there would have been a greater understanding of the real reasons she left the band. Her initial penned formula, during her formative fjord-dwelling years, depicted a metaphorically, fictional and unrelenting autobiographical account of a young woman’s desire to lay claim to the Swedish King. For Anni-Frid the song represented everything she had once felt for a King she did not know.

As Anni-Frid began to sing the “young and sweet, only seventeen” chorus, keeping an exemplary, shining entertainer’s exterior, in the presence of the King and his wife, she inwardly felt every word as a blow from a knife.

At that very same moment, separated by some three thousand miles and eight different time zones, Pak Poon, a young biology student and scientific visionary, was sat at his desk in the Biochemistry Department of the Arizona State University. His only companion was his radio, clumsily wedged between a book about the binary system and an Arizona State snow storm he’d once bought because he liked the irony. He was tuned in locally to WKRB…

“…and this is one goes out to all those stargasers out there, searching for the answer to all your dreams. This is Abba and ‘Dancing Queen’….”

Being that it had been Pak’s favourite song of the year to date; ‘Dancing Queen’ was instantly recognisable as a relative soundtrack to his life at the present time. And the fact that the DJ had introduced it in such a manner meant that this remarkable defining moment mirrored that of Anni-Frid’s. Pak was waiting on some news, and Abba were the mediator’s choral backing.

Many arduous months and a scattering of short seasons had passed since Pak and fellow scientist, Michael Wells, had begun working on this latest project. Little else had been their existence since they had first met. In that time Michael’s hair had grown from army-surplus style to dangling-in-his-cereal style. Michael lived for cereal and science. The paper they were writing was based around the ‘Ultracentrification of hydrated egg lecithin in benzene solution’, and their ferocious work ethic had augmented into feisty quarrels at times. Michael suffered substantial losses in his personal life, Pak suffered substantial losses to his hair.

Anni-Frid was just beginning her chorus when Michael tumbled through the doorway with a demented glare upon his face. Their project had been accepted. They had finally been published.

Remarkably, whilst Pak had been alone in the office, awaiting yet another disappointment, he had toyed with the idea of capitulating to the Gods of science and decreeing self-banishment from the subject for lack of qualification. He meandered, instead, around the recollections of his youthful aspirations and the pursuit of a fire-fighter’s commission. Of course, once Michael had delivered, there was no need to follow on. It had been purely by accident that he was in the field of science after a bizarre twist of fate had placed him in the wrong class.

As a young, ebullient boy he absorb every story he could find about Red Adair, the lauded fire-fighter and national hero; the man who had fought the 137-metre tall ‘Devil’s Cigarette’ pillar of fire in the Sahara in 1962; the man that only John Wayne could play in the movie version of the same feat, Hellfighters; the man who, unbeknownst to Pak, was eating his celebratory 61st birthday lunch as Pak revisited those childhood dreams.

Red also liked music. He enjoyed the way the southern drawl of a country song helped to eradicate any moment of doubt that came before the danger zone. Equally, he was partial to the twee soulfulness of any American female vocalist who would subsequently bring him back from the brink. Now beginning his 62nd year, this remarkable man planned to spend the day relaxing. Ted Nugent had personally invited Red to his concert at the Sam Houston Coliseum in Red’s beloved Texas. Nugent had heard rumours that Red had once successfully tackled a raging oil refinery blast only moments after listening to his Free-For-All album. Nugent wanted to ask Red in person if this was just pure speculation.

“No, no. That’s not true; it was actually Fleetwood Mac,” Red confessed, immediately wishing he hadn’t.

“Wassat, Red. You’ll have to repeat what you said? I can’t hear you too well. I’m deaf in this left ear,” Nugent replied loudly.

Luckily for Red a vociferous sound check was in process just metres away from Nugent’s good ear. Red never liked to upset or disappoint anyone and this noisy blessing gave him the opportunity to spin a white lie; thus feeling more gracious about accepting such a friendly invitation on his birthday.

“Yep, it sure was. Funnily enough I had been list ‘Turn It Up’ when the call came in. We’d already known about the fire a few hours earlier but me and the crew hadn’t got the call up until that point. But sure enough there I was…,” and sure enough Red launched into the other aspect of his personality that he excelled at, namely telling stories about himself. Besides, it was his birthday and he had rescued 28 people from a fire that eventually lasted 36 hours.

Once Red got rolling with his stories, it would need a mighty big fire to put him out. Predictably, Nugent soon began to bore of the Texan, almost snidely wishing he hadn’t invited him. The copious amount of cigar smoke blowing from his Red’s gills, although an appropriate prop for tales about fire, only added to Nugent’s growing misery as a recent non-smoker.

(FOR THE REMAINDER OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CONTACT CHRISTIAN)