'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.