The House of Jones reverberated with the sounds of carefully layered beats, a cacophony of sound so overwhelming it allowed no room for thought. One could only surrender to the sound, like an infant in a womb.

The moment the noise ends, Dan Ashcroft is awake. It's like being born again every morning. Each day finds him being expelled from the warm security of mindless comfort into the ugly world of Nathan Barley.

The idiots aren't winning, they've won. Dan is a dinosaur.

xxx

Dan 'The Preacher Man' Ashcroft is a fucking hero for our times. If you, like, totally hate things that are, like, fake and shit - you'll love Dan Ashcroft 'cause he keeps it fucking real.

Dan 'The Preacher Man' Ashcroft was considering keeping it well real by tying together some .ck tee-shirts together and hanging himself in Nathan Barley's living room. Maybe he'd do it on Christmas morning so the little tit could wake up and find his hero turned blue, tongue protruding from his mouth and reeking from having shit himself. Nathan could take a picture and turn it into a tee-shirt to celebrate the martyrdom of the one man in England who truly understood the phrase, "Well futile."

After the atrocities of the day Dan tried to destroy Nathan Barley, the human equivalent of a cockroach, Jonatton Yeah? had offered him twice the usual price for a feature story.

"Self-loathing, authenticity, bad language, etcetera? The usual Dan Ashcroft bit. Mention idiots? Just, you know, make it..."

Jonatton made his melodramatic 'Dan' face.

Dan had been selling his soul on the cheap for the past year, it was about time he got some decent money for it.

He wrote an article called Dan "the Preacher Man" Ashcroft: King of the Idiots. It was a tribute to self-loathing (check), a scathing indictment of idiots (double check), contained lots of salty language (triple check) and Claire assured him it was full of the usual 'Dan Ashcroft bullshit': Connect four. Pretty sneaky, sis.

The article was adored by the very people it was meant to alienate. Nathan Barley thanked him for the name check.

Among the most loathsome of idiots is Nathan Barley. He has no room left for a soul because he's too full of catch phrases. He can barely form a coherent sentence and yet he is the voice of thousands. His website, ., lacks the substance to be put in a bag, set on fire and left on someone's doorstep and yet his shit has disciples. They go to the church of bat droppings to find out how low they can sink before they simply disappear.

The article led to a huge surge in hits for the website, doubling Nathan's followers. If there was enough humanity left in Nathan to be wounded by the article, the twit hid it well and continued to treat Dan as though they were bosom buddies and not mortal enemies.

Maybe Dan wouldn't kill himself in Nathan's flat. Maybe he'd just kill Nathan. Would prison really be so bad? Regular meals. His own bed. No one expecting him to pay his bills or be a useful member of society. He'd finally have to sober up. Claire would come visit him with little cakes instead of just glaring at him for being such a terrible brother.

Yes, he was a terrible brother but, surely, she was used to it by now. It's not like being self-absorbed was a personality trait he'd only recently acquired. He'd always been a bit of a dick. He was eight when Claire came into his world and he'd resented her bitterly for intruding. Nearly thirty years later, he was no less self-centered and selfish but he did rather love his sister. It was hard not to love someone who loved you and admired you for absolutely no good reason.

Unless that person was Nathan fucking Barley.

xxx

There was never a point that Dan was happy to be working for Sugar Ape. It was never a good magazine, but it was a magazine willing to hire one Dan Ashcroft straight out of university. The former editor, Mars, had hired Dan without an interview based on one article, The Non-Dream of the Nineties. It was about wanting to work part-time and be in at least three bands while living in a filthy squat. She called him the voice of his generation.

In those days, he had honestly believed he could change, if not the world, then at least the crappy magazine where he worked. He believed thoughtful, well-written and challenging articles would shake the place up, get the other writers out of their trendy fog. Dan had believed, back then, that he could change things for the better.

Nothing really changed when Jonatton Yeah? came aboard. It was the same bullshit, different day but, by then, Dan had given up. Mars still remembered a hopeful and enterprising Dan Ashcroft. Jonatton only knew the wreck he had become.

xxx

Checking his e-mail had become a full-time job since his appearance on "Trash Bat on Telly". The Preacher Man was gaining disciples by the day; Idiots tripping over themselves to worship Dan as some kind of Hipster Messiah.

Most of the e-mails could be deleted based on their subject lines.

"Preacher Man!"

"Fuck the idiots"

"Best thing about TBOT"

"Your sister is hot"

Today, there was a subject line that made him smile.

"Marilyn Arthur"

Mrs. Arthur.

The only thing in school that had ever interested Dan was writing. That was why his mother signed him up for a weekend writing course when he was sixteen, she hoped it would foster his interest in 'bettering himself' and that he would go to university, or at least stop smoking so much pot.

He didn't have to hear Mrs. Arthur speak to know she was an American. One look at her and you knew she was, well, fucking American. She was into yoga and karma and giving a shit about things. At the time, she had seemed so wise. In retrospect, maybe she was just a run of the mill hippy, but she had taught Dan a lot of things.

And not just about writing.

In fact, she really didn't teach him much about writing at all. She was more interested in openness and honesty than comma splices or learning how to use a semicolon. Her own writing was impeccable but, from her students, punctuation was secondary.

She taught him not to be afraid to swear in front of adults and not to be afraid of writing things that would hurt the people he loved. She said a good writer had to be ruthless. She taught him to take chances, and expose himself.

She taught him how to perform cunnilingus and he was pretty sure the skills he'd learned at sixteen were the only reason any woman ever slept with him twice.

For the first time in a year, Dan was happy to open an e-mail.

Dear Mr. Ashcroft,

I'm sorry to inform you that Dr. Marilyn Arthur passed away in June. I understand you knew my mother twenty-two years ago. In fact, briefly before her passing, she informed me that I am the result of your 'knowing' my mother. I'm not looking for anything, other than a little medical history, but I would like to meet you while I'm in London. I'm spending a year at Cambridge so, while there's no rush, I can't help but feel it would be creepy for us to continue walking around the same town without meeting.

My mother spoke highly of you in the end. She said she didn't want to tie you down with obligations for which you were not ready. It was very important to her that you explore your gift as a writer, and she was pleased with your success. I've seen your work at Sugar Ape. Although I don't quite understand why you've chosen this particular publication, I really enjoyed some of your articles.

Please contact me, either by e-mail or by phone. I don't want much of your time. I know this must be quite a shock for you. It's still a bit of a shock for me. I had no idea she was certain of my father's identity.

Sincerely,

Lenore Arthur

Dan read the message twice.

He hit delete.

He could hear his own voice yelling, "idiot" over and over. It was Ned Smanks playing with the Preacher Man app on his phone.

He had a child.

He had a fully grown child who'd walked the Earth for two decades without him having a clue.

He retrieved the e-mail from his 'recently deleted' file.

Possibly the only sexual encounter in his life that hadn't started with hard liquor and ended with self-loathing had produced a human being.

Maybe she wasn't his.

It was a matter of minutes to track down his alleged daughter on the internet. She was as plugged in as one would expect for her age. He pulled up her Facebook page and stared at a picture of a young woman with curly dark hair and small, worried looking eyes.

Fucking hell.

Claire would be happy. Everything about the overly serious expression on Lenore's face told him that she and Claire would get along.

It would take pressure off Claire to start producing grandchildren. And to think, their parents had already given up on Dan. Wait until he told his mum to start knitting an extra large pink blanket for his baby girl.

He hit delete and tried to go back to writing his article about the imminent death of the written word.

People can't the bollocked to write out words anymore, why the fuck would they read? Do u c the point in magz?

He retrieved the deleted e-mail.

He needed someone to support him in his old age.

xxx

Claire looked annoyed, odds were always good that Dan was the cause, but it could also be Nathan Barley. She was even more trapped in Barley's loathsome web than he.

"How's your article going?" Claire asked as soon as he sat down. He had no delusion it was idle banter, she wanted to know if he would actually be finishing this article, and paying her the 500 pounds he owed her. Claire was trying to finish her god-awful junkie film and wasn't taking bailing Dan out of jail for 'drunk and disorderly' conduct with her usual aplomb.

He'd written 100 words in three days.

"I have a daughter."

"I need that money, Dan. I'm close to having this film finished and... What did you just say?"

A man with shame would have admitted he was struggling with the article - feeling blocked - but Dan continued on his current track. Maybe having a child wasn't so bad after all.

"I just found out today. I have a daughter. I'm a dad. More or less."

Claire's look of horror bordered on offensive. It couldn't be that terrible an idea that Dan should have passed on his genes. He was tall, he didn't have any food allergies and he could curl his tongue. A fetus would be lucky to have half his genetic code.

A fetus was lucky. That fetus was now an adult. Dan scanned the room, looking for any young girls with curly dark hair and squinty eyes. She could be anywhere.

"Who is she? Are you sure? What are you going to do, Dan? You can barely take care of yourself. You live in a squat and you're still barely surviving! How are you going to support a child?"

Dan took a moment to relish Claire's concern which, though still borderline offensive, made him feel loved.

"She's an adult, twenty-two... twenty-one... I'm not sure exactly. She's doing a year at Cambridge and wants to meet me."

Claire furrowed her brow as she did the math, and looked disgusted.

"Who were you getting off with when you were fifteen?"

"Sixteen," Dan corrected, "I know I was sixteen because the course was a birthday gift..."

"No!" Claire yelled in horror, "Not Mrs. Arthur! She wouldn't! Not with you."

Dan wanted to explain that Mrs. Arthur had seen something in a young Dan Ashcroft, a sensitivity and a soulfulness beyond his years, but it seemed much more likely Mrs. Arthur just liked getting off with younger men.

He gave Claire what he hoped was a sufficiently apologetic look for having sullied her hero. Claire was a big fan of Marilyn Arthur and envied the time Dan had spent with her. Claire had given up on writing, she really was hopeless in that department, but she relished the work of anyone she believed to be utterly sincere. Dan had been at university when Claire discovered Marilyn and his weekends home were spent with a wide-eyed Claire, metaphorically at his feet, eager to hear tales of intellectual thrills from going to university (getting pissed and writing papers containing swear words) and having been taken under the wing (they did spend time on his writing as well) of Marilyn Arthur. The hero worship of those days wasn't completely destroyed when a plucky young Claire left her familial home in Leeds, and struck out to see the wonders of London with her brother - the big shot magazine writer. In fact, she'd been excited by the squat during her first visit. Jones, who had been living on his own since the age of fourteen, had been a Dickensian hero for a young Claire.

A bit of the shine had worn off over the years, but she clearly still loved Jones and Dan. As the woman of the house, she had taken on the stereotypically feminine tasks of monitoring their nutrition (yelling at them to eating some "fucking vegetables before you die of scurvy!"), encouraging good hygiene (by saying, "Dan, you smell like hot garbage," or putting deodorant on Jones while he slept) and, of course, house cleaning. Dan had more than one relaxing shower destroyed by Claire handing him bleach and a rag through the curtain, and making him scrub out the shower since he was, "already in there." She could get Jones to spend hours mopping if she played the right mix.

"So? When are you going to meet her? Where is she staying? What is she studying?"

Dan shrugged and Claire looked - surprise - disgusted.

"This is your child, Dan. Hopefully the only one you'll ever have. Or already have. You are being safe, aren't you? I know you're usually shit faced when you pull but... Christ. There could be more."

Dan and Claire looked out the window of the coffee shop, and watched all of Dan's potential spawn go by.

xxx

Lenore suggested a trendy, outdoor cafe near the Sugar Ape offices. Dan's first instinct was to suggest somewhere less insufferable but decided it was probably best that they see one another in a place that was proud to serve ethically raised meat, organic fruits and veggies and fair trade coffee, but somehow never managed to hire anyone that wasn't young, white, thin and beautiful. Liking a place like that wouldn't necessarily make his daughter a bad person, but it would be a good indicator that they weren't going to have much in common.

Part of Dan hoped that Lenore would hate the place, not so much to prove she was like Dan, but to show the influence of Marilyn on her psyche. Marilyn Arthur was the queen of seeing through the bullshit and the idiocy.

Dan spent the morning working on his article. It was going badly. He had 1,000 words but all but 233 were just the work 'fuck' copied and pasted over and over again.

"You fucking cunt. You fucking cunt. You fucking cunt."

Dan wearily raised his head at the sound of his own voice. It was Ned, again. He had been downloading the new ringtones from .ck. It was well plastic to have Dan Ashcroft growling obscenities from your mobile. Dan didn't even remember when he'd called Nathan a fucking cunt, it could have been during any of their interactions, and it was unnerving to hear his response out of context. Human interaction is all about context, but Nathan stripped the world of its humanity in order to make a few quid for his website.

He was the antichrist.

Claire thought Dan was too hard on Nathan because he 'didn't mean any harm.' Dan knew that Claire was being too soft. The Nathan Barleys of the world were able to continue their reign of terror because they seemed too daft and weak to be 'reigning' anything. That was how they were slowly destroying the civilized world.

Ned smiled at Dan and held up his phone, "Well fucking futile, Dan. Preacher Man. Spreading the gospel."

Dan just stared until Ned stopped talking. He had advocated for the hiring of Ned Smanks five years ago. Ned had been fresh from studying at the Rhode Island School of Design in the states. He'd been young, talented and full of potential.

He had been an idiot in sheep's clothing.

Dan believed there was still hope for Ned. He'd caught his co-worker staying late to work on his asinine designs. Actually, the design wasn't terrible. The content was garbage, but the graphics were beautiful. The fact that Ned stayed late to work on a picture on Brad Pitt getting fingered by George Clooney for the "Clooney Rules the World" edition of Sugar Ape told Dan that there was someone in the office still taking pride in his work.

Dan was in the office late because he'd fallen asleep at his desk after a heavy lunch (and some whiskey).

Even the atrocity that was Dan's current profile picture for Sugar Ape was beautiful. It was too beautiful. They had replaced the picture of young, clean shaven, sober Dan with a new picture in which he looked like a cross between James Dean and Jesus. Dan's guess was Jonatton had said to Ned, "Get a new profile pic for Dan Ashcroft. Try to make him look like a cross between James Dean and Jesus Christ?" Dan had yelled at Ned for tampering with the picture but after seeing the negative, he had to admit the photo was accurate. It was of Dan smoking outside the office, squinting because of the sun. With everything stripped from the photo, Dan appeared to be gazing thoughtfully into the horizon. Stripped of context, Dan looked like a mixture of a Hollywood bad boy and a messiah. No wonder Nathan Barley wouldn't leave him alone. Nathan had no use for context.

Dan pulled up Lenore's Facebook page. They weren't 'friends' so he couldn't see much but her picture and her current status.

Meeting my father for the first time, today. I wonder if he'll drink coffee or tea.

Dan spent the next two hours wondering if he should order coffee or tea.