Only You Can Save Mankind

4

'No-one Really Dies'

'I reckon,' said Bigmac, 'I reckon ...' 'Yes?' said Yo-less.

'I reckon ... Ronald McDonald is like Jesus Christ.'

Bigmac did that kind of thing. Sometimes he came out with the kind of big, slow statement that suggested some sort of deep thinking had been going on for some time. It was like mountains. Johnny knew they were made by continents banging together, but no-one ever saw it happening.

'Yes?' said Yo-less, in a kind voice. 'And why do you think this?'

'Well, look at all the advertising,' said Bigmac, wav- ing a fry in the general direction of the rest of the burger bar. 'There's this happy land you go to where there's lakes of banana milkshake and - and trees covered in fries. And ... and then there's the Hamburglar. He's the Devil.'

'Mr Zippy's advertised by a giant talking ice cream,' said Wobbler.

'I don't like that,' said Yo-less. 'I wouldn't trust an ice cream that's trying to get you to eat ice creams.

Occasionally they talked like this for hours, when there was something they didn't want to talk about. But now they seemed to have run out of things to say.

They all looked silently at Johnny, who'd hardly touched his burger.

'Look, I don't know what's happening,' he said.

'Gobi Software're going to be really pissed off when they find out what you've done,' said Wobbler, grinning.

'I didn't do anything!' said Johnny. 'It's not my fault!'

'Could be a virus,' said Yo-less.

'Nah,' said Wobbler. 'I've got loads of viruses. They just muck up the computer. They don't muck up your head.'

'They could do,' said Yo-less. 'With flashing lights and stuff. Kind of like hypnosis.'

'You said before I was making it all up! You said I was projecting fantasies!'

'That was before old Patel went through half a dozen boxes. I'm glad I saw that. You know she actually got another copy and her money back, actually?'

Johnny smiled uncomfortably.

Wobbler drummed his fingers on the table, or partly on the table and partly in a pool of barbecue sauce.

'No, I still reckon it's just something Gobi Software did to all the games. Cor, I like the virus idea, though,' he said. 'Humans catching viruses off of computers? Nice one.'

'It's not like that,' said Johnny.

'They used to do this thing with films where they'd put in just one frame of something, like an ice cream or something, and it'd enter people's brains without them knowing it and they'd all want ice cream,' said Yo-less. 'Subliminal advertising, it was called. That'd be quite easy to do on a computer.'

Johnny thought about the Captain showing him pictures of her children. That didn't sound like hyp- nosis. He didn't know what it did sound like, but it didn't sound like hypnosis.

'Perhaps they're real aliens and they're in control of your computer,' said Yo-less.

'OOO eee OOO,' said Bigmac, waving his hands in the air and speaking in a hollow voice. 'Johnny Maxwell did not know it, but he had just strayed into

the Toilet Zone ... deedledeedle, deedledeedle, deedledeedle . .

'After all, you're supposed to be leading them to Earth,' Yo-less went on.

'But that's just their own name for their own world,' said Johnny.

'You've only got their word for it. And they're newts, too. You could be bringing them here.'

They all looked up, in case they could see through the ceiling, T&F Insurance Services and the roof to a huge alien fleet in the sky above.

'You're just getting carried away,' said Wobbler. 'You can't invade a planet with a lot of aliens out of a computer game. They live on a screen. They're not real.'

'What're you going to do about it, anyway?' said Yo-less.

'Just keep doing it, I suppose,' said Johnny. 'Who was that girl in Patel's?'

'Don't know,' said Wobbler. 'Saw her in there once before playing Cosmic Trek. Girls aren't much good at computer games because they haven't got such a good grasp of spatial . . - something or other like we have,' he went on airily. 'You know. They can't think in three dimensions, or something. They haven't got the instincts for it.'

'The Captain's a female,' said Johnny.

'It's probably different for giant alligators,' said Wobbler.

Bigmac sucked a sachet of tomato ketchup.

'Do you think IT might still be going when I'm old enough to join the army?' he said, thoughtfully.

'No,' said Yo-less. 'Stormin' Bruce'll get it all sorted out. He'll kick some butt.'

They chorused 'Some but what?' like tired monks. They went to the cinema in the afternoon. Alabama Smith and the Emperor's Crown was showing on Screen 5. Wobbler said it was racist, but Yo-less said he quite enjoyed it. They discussed whether it could still be racist if Yo-less enjoyed it. Johnny bought popcorn all round. That was another thing about Trying Times - pocket money was erratic, but you tended to get more of it.

He had spaghetti hoops when he got home, and watched TV for a while. The pyramid-shaped man disguised as a desert seemed to be on a lot now. He told jokes sometimes. The journalists laughed a bit. Johnny quite liked Stormin' Norman. He looked the sort of man who could talk to the Captain.

Then there was a programme about saving whales. They thought it was a good idea.

Then you could win lots of money if you could put up with the game show's host and not, for example, choke him with a cuddly toy and run away.

There was the News. The walking desert again, and pictures of bombs being dropped down enemy chimneys with pin-point precision. And Sport.

And then . .

All right. Let's see.

He switched on.

Yes. Space. And more space

No ScreeWee anywhere.

Hang on, he thought. They're all in the big fleet, aren't they. Following me. They followed me out of - out of - out of game space. You must be able to get there from here, if you keep going long enough. In the right direction, too.

Which way did I go?

Can I catch myself up?

Can anyone else catch me up?

He watched the screen for a while. It was even more boring than the quiz show.

Sooner or later he'd have to go to sleep. He'd thought hard about this, while Alabama Smith was being chased by bad guys through a native market-place

... Johnny had a theory about these market-places. Every spy film and every adventure had a chase through the native market-place, with lots of humorous rickshaws crashing into stalls and tables being knocked over and chickens squawking, and the theory was: it was the same market-place every time. It always looked the same. There was probably a stallholder somewhere who was getting very fed up with it

Anyway...

He'd take his camera.

He went to bed early with the camera strap wound around his wrist. Cameras didn't dream.

The ship smelled human.

There were no alarms, no hissing noises.

I'm back, thought Johnny.

And there was the ScreeWee fleet, spread out across the sky behind him.

And the camera, with its strap wrapped around his arm. He untangled it quickly and took a photo of the fleet. It whined out of the machine after a few seconds. He held it under his armpit for a moment, and it gradually faded up. Yep. The fleet. If he could get it back, he'd have proof.

There was a red light flashing beside the screen on the console. Someone wanted to talk to him. He flicked the switch.

'We saw your ship explode,' came the voice of the Cap- tain. The screen crackled for a moment, and then showed her face. It looked concerned. 'And then it returned again. You are alive?'

'Yes,' said Johnny, and then added, 'I think so.' 'Excuse me. I must ask. What happens to you?'

'What?'

'When you ... go.

Johnny thought: What do I tell her? I stay awake in school. I stay in my room a lot. I hang out with Wobbler and the others. We hang around in the mall, or in the park, or in one another's houses, although not my house at the moment because of Trying Times, and say things like 'I'm totally splanked' even though we're not sure what they mean. Sometimes we go to the cinema. We live in Blackbury, most excellent city of cool.

I must have the most boring life in the entire universe. I expect there's blobs living under rocks on Neptune that have a more interesting life than me . .

'It'd be too hard to explain,' he said. 'I-'

There was a ping from the radar.

'I have to go,' he said, feeling a bit relieved. Facing someone else in mortal combat was better than trying to tell a giant newt about Trying Times.

There was a ship coming in fast. It didn't seem to notice him. Its screen must be full of ScreeWee ships. It was in the middle of his targeting grid. Around him, the starship hummed. He could feel the power under his thumb. Press the button and a million volts or amps or something of white-hot laser power would crackle out and - His thumb trembled. It didn't seem to want to move. But no-one dies! he told himself. There's just some- one somewhere sitting in their room in front of a computer! That's what it looks like to them! It's all just something on a screen! No-one really dies!

I can fire right into his retro-tubes with pin-point precision!

No-one really dies!

The ship roared past him and onwards, towards the fleet.

On the radar screen he saw two white dots, which meant that it had fired a couple of missiles. They streaked towards one of the smaller ScreeWee ships, with the attacker close behind them, firing as he went.

The ScreeWee burst into flame. Johnny knew you shouldn't be able to hear sound in space, but he did hear it - a long, low rumble, washing across the stars.

The human ship turned in a long curve and came back for another run.

The Captain's face appeared on the screen. 'We have surrendered! This must not be allowed!'

'I'm sorry, I-' 'You must stop this now!'

Johnny let his own ship accelerate while he tried to adjust the microphone.

'Game player! Game player! Stop now! Stop now or -

Or what, he thought - or I'll shout 'stop' again? He raised his thumb over the Fire button, took aim at the intruder ... 'Please! I mean it!'

It was plunging on towards another ship, taking no notice of him.

'All right, then-'

Blinding blue light flashed across his vision. He shut his eyes and still the light was there, purple in the darkness. When he opened them again the ship ahead of him was just an expanding cloud of glittering dust.

He turned in his seat. The Captain's ship was right behind him. He could see its guns glowing.

They never did this in the game. They had much more firepower than you, but they used it stupidly. It had to be like that. You could only win against hundreds of alien ships if they had the same grasp of gunnery techniques as the common cucumber.

This time, every gun had fired at exactly the same time.

The Captain's face appeared on the screen. 'I am sorry.

'What? What happened?'

'It will not happen again, I promise you.'

'What happened?'

There was silence. The Captain appeared to be look- ing at something beyond the camera range.

'There was an unauthorized firing,' she said. 'Those responsible will be dealt with.'

'I was going after that ship,' said Johnny, uncertainly.

Yes. It is to be hoped that another time you can do so before one of my ships is destroyed.'

'I'm sorry. I - I didn't want to fire. It's not easy, shooting another ship.'

'How strange that a human should say that Clearly the Space Invaders shot themselves?'

'What do you mean?'

'Were they doing you any harm?'

'Look, you've got the wrong idea,' said Johnny. 'We're not really like that!'

'Excuse me. Things appear differently from where I sit.'

It would have been better if she had shouted, but she didn't. Johnny could have dealt with it if she had been angry. Instead, she just sounded tired and sad. It was the same tone of voice in which she'd spoken about the Space Invaders wreckage.

But he found he was quite angry too.

She couldn't be talking about him.

He picked spiders out of the bath, even if they'd got soapy and didn't have much of a chance. Yet she'd looked at him as if he was Ghengiz the Hun or some- one ... after blowing a ship into bits.

'I didn't ask for this, you know! I was just playing a game! I've got problems of my own! I ought to be getting a good night's sleep! That's very important at my age! Why me?'

'Why not?'

'Well, I don't see why I should have to be told how nasty we are! You shoot at us as well!'

'Self-defence.'

'No! Often you shoot first!'

'With humans, we have often found it essential to get our self-defence in as soon as possible.'

'Well, I don't like it! Find someone else!'

He switched off the screen and turned his ship away from the fleet. He half expected the Captain to send some fighters after him, but she did not. She didn't do anything.

Soon the fleet was merely a large collection of yellow dots on the radar screen.

Hah! Well!

They could find their own way home. It wasn't as if they needed him any more. The game was ruined. Who was going to spend hours looking at stars? They'd have to manage without him.

Serve them right. He was doing things for them, and they were only newts.

Occasionally a star went past. You didn't get stars going past in real space. But they had to put them in computer games so that people didn't think they'd got something like Wobbler's Journey to Alpha Centauri.

Interesting point. Where was he going?

The radar screen went bing.

There were ships heading towards him. The dots were green. That meant 'friendly'. But the missiles streaking ahead of them didn't look friendly at all.

Hang on, hang on - what colour was he on their radar?

That was important. Friendly ships were green and enemy ships were yellow. He was a starship. A human starship.

But on thc other hand, he'd been on the same side as the ScreeWee, so he might show up- He grabbed the microphone and got as far as 'Um, I' before the rest of the sentence was spread out, very thin, very small, against the stars.

He woke up.

It was 6:3=.

His throat felt cold.

He wondered why people made such a fuss about dreams. Dream Boat. Dream River. Dream A Little Dream. But when you got right down to it dreams were often horrible, and they felt real. Dreams always started out well and then they went wrong, no matter what you did. You couldn't trust dreams.

And he'd left the alarm set, even though this was Sunday and there was nothing to do on a Sunday. No- one else would be up for hours. it'd be a couple of hours even before Bigmac's brother delivered the paper, or at least delivered the wrong paper. And he was all stiff from sitting at the computer, which wasn't switched on.

Maybe tonight he'd put some stuff on the floor to wake him up.

He went back to bed, and switched the blanket on. He stared at the ceiling for a while. There was still a model Space Shuttle up there. But one of the two bits of cotton had come away from the drawing pin, so it hung down in a permanent nosedive.

There was something in the bed. He fumbled under the covers and pulled out his camera.

Which meant

Some more fumbling found a rectangle of shiny paper.

He looked at it.

Well, yes. Huh. What'd he expect?

He got up again and turned the computer on, then lay in bed so that he could watch the screen. Still more fake stars drifted past.

Maybe other people were doing this, too. All over the country. All over the world, maybe. Maybe not every computer showed the same piece of game space, so that some people were closer to the fleet than others. Or maybe some people were just persistent, like Wobbler, and wouldn't be beaten.

You saw people like that in J&J Software, some- times. They'd have a go at whatever new game old Patel had put on the machine, get blown to bits or eaten or whatever, which was what happened to you on your first time, and then you couldn't get rid of them with a crowbar. You learned a bit more, and then you died. That's how games worked. People got worked up. They had to beat some game, in the same way that Wobbler would spend weeks trying to beat a program. Some people took it personally when they were blown to bits.

So the ships he'd seen, then, were the ones who wouldn't give up.

But the Captain hadn't been at all grateful to him! It wasn't fair, making him feel like some kind of monster. As if he'd like shooting anyone in cold blood! They'd just totally destroyed another ship. OK, it was attacking them after they had surrendered, but after all it was a only a game .

Except, of course, it wasn't a game to the ScreeWee.

And they'd surrendered.

That didn't make them his responsibility, did it? Not the whole time? It had been OK for a little while, but he was getting tired of it.

He padded downstairs in the darkened house and pulled the encyclopedia off its shelf under the video. It had been bought last year from a man at the door, who'd persuaded Johnny's father that it was a good encyclopedia because it had a lot of colour pictures in it. It did have a lot of colour pictures in it. You could grow up knowing what everything looked like, if you didn't mind not knowing much about what it was.

After ten minutes with the index he got as far as prisoners of war, and eventually to the Geneva Conven- tion. It wasn't something you could illustrate with big coloured pictures so there wasn't much about it, but what there was he read with interest.

It was amazing.

He'd always thought that prisoners were, well, prisoners - you hadn't actually killed them, so they ought to think themselves lucky. But it turned out that you had to give them the same food as your own soldiers, and look after them and generally keep them safe. Even if they'd just bombed a whole city you had to help them out of their crashed plane, give them medicine, and treat them properly.

Johnny stared at the page. It was weird. The people who'd written the encyclopedia - it said inside the cover that they were the Universal Wonder Knowledge Data Printing Inc, of Power Cable, Nebraska - had shoved in all these pictures of parrots and stuff because they were the Natural Wonders of the World, when what was really strange was that human beings had come up with an idea like this. It was like finding a tiny bit of the Middle Ages in the middle of all the missiles and things.

Johnny knew about the Middle Ages because of doing his essay on 'What it felt like to be a peasant in the Middle Ages'. 'When a knight fell off his horse in battle the other side weren't allowed to open him up with a can opener and torture him, but had to look after him and send him back home after a while, although they were allowed to charge for the service.

On the whole, the ScreeWee were letting him off lightly. According to the Geneva Convention, he ought to be feeding all of them as well.

He put the book back and turned the television on.

That was odd. Someone was complaining that the enemy were putting prisoners of war in buildings that might be bombed, so that they could be bombed by their own side. That was a barbaric thing, said the man. Everyone else in the studio agreed.

So did Johnny, in a way. But he wondered bow he would explain something like this to the Captain. Everything made sense a bit at a time. It was just when you tried to think of it all at once that it came out wrong.

There was too much war on television now. He felt it was time to start showing something else.

He went out into the kitchen and made himself some toast, and then tried to scrape the burnt bits off quietly so as not to wake people up. He took the toast and the encyclopedia upstairs and got back into bed.

To pass the time he read some more about Switzer- land, which was where Geneva was. Every man in the country had to do army training and keep a gun at home, it said. But Switzerland never fought anyone. Perhaps that made sense somewhere. And what the country used to be known for was designing intricate and ingenious mechanical masterpieces that made a little wooden bird come out and go cuckoo.

After a while he dozed off, and didn't dream at all.

On the screen the fake stars drifted by. After an hour or so a yellow dot appeared in the very centre. After another hour it grew slightly bigger, enough to be seen as a cluster of smaller yellow dots.

Then Johnny's mother, who had come to see where he was, tucked him up and switched it off. 'I cannot believe this! Why can't we fight!'