Web Site Story

'Where?' Kelly asked.

Derek put his finger to his lips. 'There are people in Mr Shields's office. You can make them out through the frosted glass partition. I can see a fuzzy pink shape and a fuzzy red one and a large fuzzy Mr Shields-looking one.'

'Nothing unusual in that, surely.'

'Are you kidding? Mr Shields never has visitors. I don't know how you ever got through.'

'Dettox offered to make me a cup of tea. What are you doing?'

Derek was beckoning. 'Come with me quickly, to my office.'

Kelly shrugged and followed.

Derek's office was a dire little room that looked out onto a blank brick wall. There were no signs here of Derek's private obsession. Just a desk, a chair, a filing cabinet and a Mute Corp 4000 word processor. And a telephone with a voice broadcaster attachment jobbie. Derek picked up the receiver, tapped out several numbers then dropped it into the voice broadcaster attachment.

'What are you doing now?' Kelly asked.

'Being nosey. I took the liberty of installing a bug in Mr Shields's office. It helps me keep ahead of him and not get sacked.'

'Very enterprising.'

'Ssh,' said Derek and listened.

Kelly shushed and listened. She heard first the voice of Mr Shields.

'I'm sorry,' said Mr Shields. 'But I don't think I quite understand what you're talking about.' His voice sounded fierce. It didn't sound very happy at all.

'It is very straightforward,' said the voice of one of his visitors. 'My companion and I represent a multinational corporation. My card.'

There was a pause.

'Oh,' said the voice of Mr Shields. 'I see, that organization.'

'That organization, yes. They don't come any bigger, I'm sure you'll agree.'

'I'm very busy,' said Mr Shields. 'Perhaps this could wait until another day.'

'No,' said the voice of visitor number two. 'Our organization never waits. It gets things done at once.'

'Not here it doesn't,' said Mr Shields. 'This is Brentford.'

'Exactly!' said visitor number one. 'This is Brentford. Which is why we are here.'

'I've told you that I don't understand and I still don't.' Mr Shields was still keeping it fierce. The voices of his visitors were, however, calm.

'Do you know what data reaction is?' asked visitor number one.

'No,' said Mr Shields. 'And neither do I care.'

'It is what keeps our organization at the cutting edge of technology and everything else. Our mainframe scans the world for data. It assesses, it assimilates, it correlates, it sorts the wheat from the chaff and then it makes informed decisions.'

'Have you been sent by head office?' asked Mr Shields.

'Our organization owns head office,' said the voice of visitor number two. 'It owns the newspaper.'

'But you can't close it down. You can't touch it. I have a contract for life.'

'We have no wish to tamper with the way you run this newspaper. We have merely come to inform you of the organization's plans for the borough, so that you can play an active promotional role.'

Mr Shields made grumbling sounds.

'Data reaction,' said visitor number two. 'The mainframe received a sudden inrush of data from this borough, the evening before last, at precisely eight minutes past eight. Much of it was jumbled nonsense. But some of it was pertinent and of commercial value. Regarding something called Suburbia World Plc. Does this mean anything to you?'

'No,' said Mr Shields in a voice both fierce and puzzled.

'No-one has ever spoken to you about Suburbia World Plc?'

'No,' said Mr Shields. 'Never. What is it?'

'A theme park,' said visitor number one. 'It concerns turning the whole of Brentford into a suburban theme park.'

'What?' went Mr Shields.

'What?' went Derek.

'What?' went Kelly.

'Your week in Suburbia World Plc would not be complete without a boat trip to Brentford's own Fantasy Island.' Visitor number one spoke in a curious tone, as if he was a voice-over to a web site commercial. 'See the creature of myththat once inhabited this enchanted realm in the dream worlddays of the magic distant past. Take a safari through the wildlife sanctuary and rare bird reserve of Allotment World. You have to picture the images, sweeping aerial shots of the borough, taken from a helicopter. This will be big, very big.'

'But that's outrageous!' The voice of Mr Shields reached a level of fierceness beyond any as yet known to Derek.

'It is,' whispered Derek. 'It well and truly is.'

'Nevertheless,' said visitor number one, in a voice as calm as ever it had been. 'These concepts are now the property of our organization.'

'Hold on! Hold on!' The voice of Mr Shields was accompanied by the sounds of his chair being pushed back. 'You just stop right there. You said that your mainframe thingy received this information. That someone fed it into a computer somewhere.'

'It entered the databanks.'

'Then it is not your property. It's someone else's. Someone who could possibly be reasoned with.'

'What are you suggesting?' asked visitor number two.

'I don't know. But I know you can't do this. Brentonians won't stand for it. This isn't Disney World. This is a real place with real people in it.'

'That's what makes the concept so interesting. What invests it with such enormous commercial potential.'

'Get out of my office!' roared Mr Shields. 'Iconoclasts! Despoilers! Unclean spirits! Out demons out!'

'He's certainly loyal to the borough,' whispered Kelly.

'Mr Shields,' said visitor number two. 'We approached you because you are the editor of the borough's organ, as it were. Brentford is the only town in England, possibly the only town in all of the world that does not have its own official web site. Brentford appears to all but ignore the world that exists beyond its boundaries. It's an anachronism. It has enormous novelty value.'

There came crashing bashing sounds.

Derek said, 'I'd better get in there, before he goes completely berserk.'

'I think you should,' said Kelly.

Derek dashed off and Kelly continued to listen at the voice broadcaster attachment jobbie. She listened to the sounds of crashing and bashing. To the cries for mercy. To the further crashings and bashings. To the voice of Derek calling for reason. To further crashings and bashings and the voice of Derek calling for mercy also.

And then Kelly went in to sort things out.