‘I’ve never been an Armani man,’ said Derek. ‘Not since they dropped natural fibres anyway.’
‘So,’ said Mr Speedy. ‘Do we have a deal? You do what we ask you, your secret, regarding all those stolen computer games in your possession, remains safe with us and you get a big cash kickback to do with as you please. Possibly purchase that Atari 7800 SCRAPYARD DOG game you’ve been bidding for over the Net from that dodgy American dealer.’
‘Oh,’ said Derek.
‘And I could just possibly let you know how to get the three magic cans on Eisenhower Lane on level 2.’
‘Oh,’ said Derek.
‘So do we have a deal?’ asked Mr Shadow.
‘You can count on me,’ said Derek, putting out his hand for a shake.
Mr Speedy however did not shake the outstretched hand of Derek, instead he just poured himself another Scotch and raised his glass in salute. ‘Welcome to Mute Corp,’ he said. ‘The company that takes care of its employees.’
‘And that, I think, has taken care of you,’ said Ellie.
Mr Bashful was struggling, muffled sounds came from his mouth, his eyes darted every which way.
‘If you’re trying to say, “What happened?” or possibly something ruder,’ said Ellie, ‘then allow me to explain. I knocked you unconscious. And then I tore up your clothing and used it to strap your now naked body into the chair. Your right hand, you will observe, is strapped to the computer mouse. Your mouth is gagged. I am now going to remove the gag. But if you cry out for help,’ Ellie reached down and took hold of Mr Bashful’s genitals, ‘these will be put in severe jeopardy. Do I make myself absolutely clear?’ And she gave Mr Bashful’s gonads a far from friendly squeeze.
Mr Bashful’s eyes flashed wildly. His head bobbed up and down.
Ellie released the gag from his mouth. The gag was knotted underpants.
‘Untie my hand,’ wailed Mr Bashful. ‘Get it off the mouse.’
‘How interesting,’ said Ellie. ‘Of all the things you could have said, you chose to say that.’
‘Let me go, you bitch,’ said Mr Bashful.
‘When you’ve answered some questions.’
‘I won’t tell you anything that I’m not authorized to tell you. It’s more than my job’s worth.’
‘You’ll tell me everything,’ said Ellie.
Mr Bashful shook his head.
‘Firstly,’ said Ellie. ‘I want to know all about this GO MANGO game. Tell me more about that.’
Mr Bashful struggled some more. He seemed most intent on getting his hand away from the computer mouse.
‘No?’ said Ellie. ‘All right then. Let’s run the programme. Let’s see you play the game.’
‘No!’ Mr Bashful fairly shrieked.
Ellie clapped her hand over his mouth. ‘No, I didn’t think so,’ she said. ‘What does the game do? Could it be that it infects you with something? Something that gets inside your head? Something contagious that can be passed from one unsuspecting person to another?’ She released her hand.
Mr Bashful stared at her open-mouthed. ‘You know,’ he said. ‘What do you know?’
‘I know it’s loose,’ said Ellie. ‘I know it has to do with Remington Mute and the Mute-chip.’
‘I don’t know anything more than you do,’ said Mr Bashful. ‘I just do my job. I don’t ask too many questions.’
‘Well, let’s see you play the game then.’ Ellie reached down towards Mr Bashful’s mouse-bound hand.
‘No, don’t touch it. Don’t click it on.’
‘I think that perhaps you do know,’ said Ellie. ‘And I want you to tell me now. I don’t think I’m cut out for a career at Mute Corp. I think today may be my very last day with the company.’
‘You’ve made a very big mistake doing this to me,’ said Mr Bashful. ‘Do you really think you can get away with it? Mute Corp security division will track you down. You won’t be free on the streets for twenty-four hours.’
‘They’ll make me vanish, will they?’ Ellie asked.
Mr Bashful turned his face away. ‘They’ll make us both vanish.’
Ellie stared down upon the man. Perhaps, she thought, she had been just a little hasty. There might have been a more subtle way of doing this. And one that did not leave her as a criminal on the run. And on the run from Mute Corp, who were hooked into everything, her personal records, her bank account, they knew where she lived and where she went. They knew everything.
But then.
But then. There was a big man all tied up in a shed. An innocent man who had said he’d ‘been to Hell’ and all because of something that had issued from the Mute Corp Organization. Something dark. Something evil. Something that didn’t care at all for a man.
‘You’re in deep shit,’ said Mr Bashful.
‘Yes,’ said Ellie. ‘I am. But do you know what? I don’t care. Now speak to me, tell me all about the Mute-chip and all about GO MANGO or I’ll knock your hand down onto that mouse and see some of it in action for myself.’
‘All right. All right.’ Mr Bashful glared at Ellie. ‘I’ll tell you. What harm can it do? You won’t even get out of the building.’
‘So speak,’ said Ellie.
And Mr Bashful spoke. He spoke very fast, almost to the point of incoherent babble. It was as if he had been wanting to get all this off his chest for a very very long time. But hadn’t dared to do it. He was scared. Everyone at Mute Corp was scared, he said. Everyone feared that they might be the next to be ‘possessed’.
‘Now let me get this clear,’ said Ellie, needing a break from the babble and trying to get it all clear. ‘What you are saying is that sometime back in the 1970s…’
‘1972,’ babbled Mr Bashful. ‘It was a significant year. That’s when he gave the thing birth.’
‘Okay. In 1972, Remington Mute developed the original Mute-chip, from his own digitized DNA. It was basically a chip that could learn and then make decisions based on its knowledge.’
‘Effectively yes.’
‘And the chips were put into games. Computer chess and so on. But he saw a greater potential for them in other systems. Playing the stock market and so on.’
‘Became a millionaire, a billionaire, a zillionaire,’ babbled Mr Bashful.
‘And Mute Corp started off all the scare stories about the Millennium Bug and Mute’s operatives, pretending to debug computer systems, installed Mute-chips into those systems.’
‘Across the whole World Wide Web and they linked up into a vast thinking network.’
‘Not thinking surely?’ said Ellie. ‘These chips aren’t alive.’
‘So what exactly is life?’ asked Mr Bashful. ‘If something can talk to you, communicate with you, reason with you, be more intelligent than you are, is that something alive? You tell me.’
‘And this game? This GO MANGO?’
‘Men play computer games,’ said Mr Bashful. ‘So why shouldn’t a thinking computer play men games?’
‘The mainframe plays games with people?’ Ellie was rightly appalled.
‘Ironic isn’t it?’ said Mr Bashful. ‘The tables well and truly turned.’
‘And you at Mute Corp let this happen?’
‘We didn’t let it happen. It happened by itself. We’re trying to find a way to stop it, before it gets completely out of control.’
‘So what was I to be, another laboratory rat?’
‘Something like that. But your death would have been for the common good.’
‘My death?’ said Ellie.
‘Nobody survives the infection,’ said Mr Bashful. ‘Once the virus has passed from the computer into the human host, it will play the human until the human dies.’
‘So you would have locked me in this room until the virus killed me and then what? Dissected my brain?’
‘We have to find a cure. An anti-virus.’
‘You bastards,’ said Ellie. ‘You utter bastards.’
‘You don’t understand.’ Mr Bashful jerked about in hi
s bondage. ‘It’s clever. Very clever. It knows everything. It could have infected everyone by now. But it doesn’t. It hasn’t. Myself and a few others are working behind its back, so to speak. In secrecy. The autopsies are carried out manually, using no computer technology. Nothing that could have a Mute-chip inside it. That’s why there’s no CCTV in this part of the building. Mr Pokey doesn’t know what we do with the bodies, he thinks we just dispose of them in a tasteful and discreet manner. Once it has finished playing with them, they are surplus to requirements. It is in control here, don’t you understand. People don’t control this company, it does. And it has some kind of purpose. We don’t know what it is yet. We few who are trying to stop it, we don’t know what it wants.’
‘What it wants? You really believe that this virus is alive, don’t you? Not that it’s just some kind of rogue program that’s gone out of control?’
‘It’s much more than a program,’ said Mr Bashful. ‘And it’s much more than alive. If your particular skills hadn’t earmarked you for this room and you’d got some other job in the organization, you’d have learned in time. You would have been told when you’d reached sufficient status in the company. When your rank admitted you into the inner circle. To the elite. Then you would have been taken to the chapel.’
‘The chapel?’ said Ellie. ‘You have a chapel here?’
‘Not here,’ said Mr Bashful, shaking his head. ‘It’s in Mute Corp Keynes. In the black hole of cyberspace. Only the elite are taken to the chapel.’
‘And what do the elite do in this chapel?’
‘We do what it tells us to do,’ said Mr Bashful. ‘We worship it, of course.’
16
‘God?’ said Ellie. ‘It thinks it’s a God?’
‘And why not?’ Mr Bashful wriggled uncomfortably. ‘It’s well enough qualified for the position. It knows virtually everything that there is to know. It’s hooked into every network, it is the World Wide Web. Every time you make a telephone call it listens to your conversation. It knows more about you than any human does. It can remember more about you than even you can.’
‘This is very bad,’ said Ellie, twisting strands of her silver hair into tight little knots. ‘This is very bad.’
‘You don’t understand the situation, this is far far worse than very bad. Now will you please untie my hand from this mouse?’
‘No,’ said Ellie. ‘I don’t think I can do that.’
‘But why not? I’ve told you everything. I’m on your side. You want to stop this. You wouldn’t have done this to me if you didn’t. Which group are you from?’
‘Group?’ said Ellie. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘There are anarchist factions everywhere. Hackers, well-poisoners.’
‘Well-poisoners?’
‘Don’t pretend that you haven’t heard of them. Factions dedicated to destroying the Web. They overload the information wells with irrelevant rubbish or bogus information.’
‘I’m not with any faction,’ said Ellie.
‘Oh come on, of course you are. You can tell me. What harm can it do? Come on, I told you everything.’
‘Not, perhaps, everything.’
‘Please release me, let me go,’ said Mr Bashful, which rang a distant bell.
‘No,’ said Ellie. ‘I think not.’
‘Then what are you going to do? You have my Unicard, you can let yourself out. If you’re careful you might escape the building.’
‘And what of you?’ Ellie asked.
‘I’ll say you attacked me, or something. What does it matter? You’ll be on the run anyway. And you’ll have to run hard and run fast. Although you’ll have nowhere to run.’
‘It’s tricky, I agree.’ Ellie released her tangled hair. ‘But you’re an intelligent man, you should be able to reason out just what I’m going to do next.’
‘Probably,’ said Mr Bashful, guardedly. ‘Where exactly is this leading?’
‘I am thinking’, said Ellie, ‘that there might still be a job opportunity available to me here at Mute Corp.’
‘I cannot imagine by what possible reasoning you can draw that conclusion.’
‘I think I might rise up through the ranks quite quickly,’ said Ellie. ‘In fact it is my firm conviction that by this afternoon I will be sitting behind your desk.’
‘What?’ Mr Bashful’s eyes bulged from his face and veins stood out on his forehead. ‘What are you intending to do?’
‘I am going to sacrifice you to your God,’ said Ellie and the coldness in her voice sent chills of fear down Mr Bashful’s spine. ‘I suspect that you told me some of the truth, but not all. I don’t believe that you’re some subversive element working within the company for the good of mankind. That was all a lie told to me in the hope that as a gullible woman I would swallow it whole. You are a company man, Mr Bashful. And you would have left me to die in this room.’
‘What else could I do? I had no choice in the matter.’
‘No,’ said Ellie, shaking her head. ‘And nor do I.’
‘He did what? Mr Pokey stared at Ellie. If her sudden return to his office had been unexpected, the tale she had to tell was equally so and more too besides. Also.
So to speak.
‘He did what? asked Mr Pokey once again.
‘He took me up to the games suite,’ said Ellie, tearful of eye and breathless of breath. ‘He took me up to the games suite and sat me down at the terminal. And then suddenly he said that he couldn’t go through with it. That he couldn’t sacrifice another victim, that’s what he said. And then he told me all about it, about everything. About Remington Mute and the Mute-chip and about the GO MANGO game and what it did to people. And he said he couldn’t let it happen to me.’
‘Go on,’ said Mr Pokey, shaking his head.
‘And then when he’d told me all this, he said that I should thank him for saving my life. So I thanked him. But he said no, I should thank him properly and he took off all his clothes. He literally tore them off and he attacked me. But as you know from my file, I am an expert of Dimac. I struck him down and he fell across the computer terminal. His hand fell on the mouse.’
‘I see,’ said Mr Pokey. ‘You don’t have to say any more.’
Ellie made sobbing sounds. ‘It was terrible,’ she sobbed.
‘I’m quite sure it was.’
‘I took his Unicard and let myself out of the suite.’
‘And you came back here to my office. You didn’t try to run from the building.’
Ellie looked up at Mr Pokey. Her face was streaked with tears and every man knows how sexy a woman looks when she’s crying. ‘Where would I run to?’ she asked. ‘Mute Corp security would track me down wherever I went. I didn’t come here to die. I came here to work for Mute Corp. I have skills that would be of use to you.’
‘Indeed you have,’ said Mr Pokey. ‘You are a very clever young woman.’
‘Please don’t have me killed,’ wept Ellie. ‘I’ll do anything you want.’
‘Anything?’
‘Anything.’
Mr Pokey nodded thoughtfully and looked the beautiful weeping woman up and down and up again. ‘So many twists and turns,’ said he. ‘So much deceit and duplicity. One never knows whom to believe any more. What is the world coming to, I ask myself? And do you know what I answer?’
‘No,’ said Ellie, snivelling somewhat. ‘I don’t.’
‘Nor do I,’ said Mr Pokey. ‘So why don’t we just drop all this pretence. You can stop all that crying for a start. It might convince some and there’s no denying just how very sexy it is. But as you didn’t start doing it until you were outside my door, when you messed up your hair and your dress and forced your thumbs into your eyes, I think we can consider it redundant now. Don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Ellie, straightening up. ‘But you wouldn’t have expected otherwise. I’m well aware that this entire building is fully monitored by CCTV, including the games suite. You saw and heard everything that went on in
there.’
‘Of course,’ said Mr Pokey.
‘And I trust you were rightly appalled by Mr Bashful’s cowardice and lack of company ethics. The man was a security risk. He was an accident waiting to happen.’
Mr Pokey nodded again. ‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘What are you? Internal security?’
‘I’m just a student,’ said Ellie.
Mr Pokey shook his head. ‘You’re much more than that,’ he said. ‘But whatever you are, I cannot access it from your file. Which, I suspect, makes you of a higher rank than myself.’
Ellie said nothing.
‘Neither confirm nor deny,’ said Mr Pokey. ‘I get the picture. So what do you want from me?’
‘Security stinks around here,’ said Ellie. ‘If you wish to keep your job, then you and I will have to work together closely on this.’
‘And?’ said Mr Pokey.
‘And now you can take me out to lunch,’ said Ellie. ‘On my way here I noticed a pub around the corner that does a rather interesting surf and turf. Shall we dine?’
Derek dined alone in the Shrunken Head. The Space Invaders machine popped and pinged away behind him, but Derek ignored it. His attention was focused upon the computer printout that lay before him on the table, between his half a pint of Large and his cheese sandwich. It was utterly absurd. Just look at the thing. Derek looked at it once again, then turned away his face in disgust. The requests, requests! Demands more like. The demands were utterly utterly absurd.
Four crad barges. A fleet of Morris Minors. A cinematic SFX holographic system programmed to project the Brentford Griffin onto Griffin Island for the newly named Fantasy Island experience. Derek’s eyes travelled further down the list. ‘Prophet of doom,’ he read, doomily. ‘They want a prophet of doom to carry a placard around, oh yes here it is on the list. REPENT THE END IS NIGH. Hardly original. They’ll string me up. The locals will string me up. They’ll tar and feather me first and probably lop off my wedding tackle. Not that I’ll miss that. Well, I will, but. Oh damn, this is utterly absurd. Oh…’
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