Only You Can Save Mankind

by Terry Pratchett

  ‘Wish I was in the army,’ said Bigmac, wistfully. ‘Blam!’ He shot the double-glazing lady, who didn’t notice. Bigmac had a habit of firing imaginary guns. Other people played air guitar, he shot air rifles.

  ‘Couple more years,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘You ought to write to Stormin’ Norman,’ said Wobbler. ‘Ask him to keep the war going until you get there.’

  ‘He’s done pretty well for someone called Norman,’ said Yo-less. ‘I mean . . . Norman? Not very mackko, is it? It’s like Bruce, or Rodney.’

  ‘He had to be Norman,’ said Wobbler, ‘otherwise he couldn’t be Stormin’. You couldn’t have Stormin’ Bruce. Come on.’

  J&J Software was always packed on a Saturday morning. There were always a couple of computers running games, and always a cluster of people gathered round them. No one knew who J&J were, since the shop was run by Mr Patel, who had eyes like a hawk. He always watched Wobbler very carefully, on the fairly accurate basis that Wobbler distributed more games than he did and didn’t even charge anyone for them.

  The four of them split up. Bigmac wasn’t much interested in games, and Yo-less went down to look at the videos. Wobbler had found someone who knew even more complicated stuff about computers than he did himself.

  Johnny mooched along the racks of games.

  I wonder if the ScreeWee do this, he thought. Or people on Jupiter or somewhere. Go down to a shop and buy ‘Shoot the Human’ games. And have films where there’s a human running around the place terrorizing a spaceship—

  He became aware of a raised voice at the counter.

  You didn’t often get girls in J&J Software. Once, quite a long time ago, during a bit of time she’d set aside for parenting, Johnny’s mother had tried playing a game. It had been quite a simple one – you had to shoot asteroids and flying saucers and things. It had been embarrassing. It had been amazing that the flying saucers had even bothered to shoot back. More likely they should have parked and all the aliens could have looked out of the windows and made rude noises. Women didn’t have a clue.

  A girl was complaining to Mr Patel about a game she’d bought. Everyone knew you couldn’t do that, even if you’d opened the box and it was full of nothing but mouse droppings. Mr Patel took the view that once the transparent wrapper had come off, even the Pope wouldn’t be allowed to return a game, not even if he got God to come in as well. This was because he’d met people like Wobbler before.

  The boys watched in fascinated horror.

  She kept tapping the offending box with a finger.

  ‘And who wants to see nothing but stars?’ she said. ‘I’ve seen stars before, actually. It says on the box that you fight dozens of different kinds of alien ships. There isn’t even one.’

  Mr Patel muttered something. Johnny wasn’t close enough to hear. But the girl’s voice had a kind of penetrating quality, like a corkscrew. When she spoke in italics, you could hear them.

  ‘Oh, no. You can’t say that. Because how can I tell if it works without trying it? That comes under the Sale of Goods Act (1983).’

  The awed watchers were astonished to see a slightly hunted look in Mr Patel’s eyes. Up until now he’d never met anyone who could pronounce brackets.

  He muttered something else.

  ‘Copy it? Why should I copy it? I’ve bought it. It says on the box you meet fascinating alien races. Well, all I got was one ship and some stupid message on the screen and then it ran away. I don’t call that fascinating alien races.’

  Message . . .

  Ran away . . .

  Johnny sidled closer.

  Mr Patel muttered something else, and then turned to one of the shelves. The shop watched in amazement. There was a new game in his hand. He was actually going to make an exchange. This was like Genghis Khan deciding not to attack a city but stay at home and watch the football instead.

  Then he held up his hand, nodded at the girl, and stalked over to one of the shop’s own computers, the ones with so many fingermarks on the keys that you couldn’t read them any more.

  Everyone watched in silence as he loaded up the copy of the game that the girl had brought back. The music came on. The title scrolled up the screen, like the one in Star Wars. It was the usual stuff: ‘The mighty ScreeWee fleet have attacked the Federation,’ whatever that was, ‘and only you . . .’

  And then there was space. It was computer space – a sort of black, with the occasional star rolling past.

  ‘There ought to be six ships on the first mission,’ said someone behind Johnny.

  Mr Patel scowled at him. He pressed a key cautiously.

  ‘You’ve just fired a torpedo at nothing, Mr Patel,’ said Wobbler.

  Finally Mr Patel gave up. He waved his hands in the air.

  ‘How d’you find the things to shoot?’ he said.

  ‘They find you,’ said someone. ‘You should be dead by now.’

  ‘See?’ said the girl. ‘You get nothing but space. I left it on for hours, and there was just space.’

  ‘Maybe you’re not persevering. You kids don’t know the meaning of the word persevere,’ said Mr Patel.

  Wobbler looked over the shopkeeper’s head to Johnny and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘It’s like persistently trying,’ said Johnny helpfully.

  ‘Oh. Right. Well, I persistently tried the other night and I didn’t find any, either.’

  Mr Patel carefully unwrapped the new copy of the game. The shop watched as he slotted the disc into the computer.

  ‘Then let us see what the game looks like before Mr Wobbler plays his little tricks,’ he said.

  There was the title screen. There was the story, such as it was. And the instructions.

  And space.

  ‘Soon we shall see,’ said Mr Patel.

  And then more space.

  ‘This one was only delivered yesterday.’

  Lots more space. That was the thing about space.

  Mr Patel picked up the box and looked at it carefully, but they’d all seen him take off the polythene.

  They’ve gone, thought Johnny.

  Even on the new games.

  They’ve all gone.

  People were laughing. But Wobbler and Yo-less were staring at him.

  Chapter 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, waving 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 hypnosis. 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.

  ‘OOOO – 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 S. 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 whirred 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 Captain. 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 someone 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 on
e 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 looking 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.