Roshan put his hand up. “Your Honor?”
“Yes?”
“May I bring to your attention the fact that most mobile phone calls, chip-and-PIN purchases, and public transit ticket sales make use of the Internet? A prohibition on using the Internet for any purpose amounts to house arrest. Was that the court’s intention?”
The judge snorted. “Fine, fine. This court orders you to abstain from directly using the Internet for the purposes of browsing the World Wide Web, making a nontelephonic voice or video call, partaking in an email, instant message, or social network exchange, playing a networked game, or substantively similar purposes.” He made a little “so there” nod, and said, “I’m not a complete Luddite, you know. I’ll have you know I once played Counterstrike for England on the national team.” The court spectators buzzed with excitement. The judge stared at them until they fell silent. “For your benefit, young sir, I’ll explain that Counterstrike was a paleolithic video game that we oldsters played before we got wiped out by MMOs and Xbox Live. I’m not unsympathetic to your plight, but the law is the law, and you’ll need to find a way to change it that doesn’t violate it.”
He wiped his glasses, then said, “Ms. Murdstone, if you wouldn’t mind running that video one more time?” It rolled along for ninety seconds, and even in my horrified state, I took in the fact that the judge was really enjoying it, and that the studio lawyers were furious to have it shown three times. When it was done, he murmured, “Hilarious,” and raised his finger again.
My lawyers each took an elbow and steered me out of the courthouse, my wooden legs thumping ahead of me lifelessly as I contemplated spending the next two weeks without the Internet without losing my mind or the fight. I was also trying to work out what role Katarina had played in all this. If she’d wanted to get me in trouble, there were lots more direct ways than by leaking my video. She was Scot Colford’s granddaughter, for God’s sake. And what about all that footage she’d given me? I’d been cataloging it nonstop since I’d got it, thinking about how I could fit it into my ongoing projects. Was it some kind of trap?
Roshan and Gregory were sad and angry with me, I could tell. We sat down in a café across from the courthouse and Gregory brought us cups of milky tea and the two stared at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know I was an idiot. I didn’t think it’d get out. I only showed it to one person.” I didn’t mention who that person was, because I was sure they’d never believe that Scot Colford’s granddaughter was on my side; they’d think I was a naive kid who’d got suckered.
Roshan shook his head at me (I could tell I was in for a lot of head-shaking) and said, “I’d kick you up the bum about this, but you’re the one who’s going to suffer the most for your mistake. And it could be worse. By capping the ban to two weeks, the judge was telling the other side that they’d better not try a bunch of expensive delaying tactics to get the case put off and off and leave you in limbo forever. But I hope you’ve learned that we’re on your side, and when we tell you to do something, we mean it.”
I nodded miserably.
Roshan said, “All right, go on then. 26 is sitting her last exam this morning and I expect she’ll be wanting to see you this afternoon, yeah?”
I nodded again, and headed for the bus stop.
Chapter 13
SHOPPED!/ON THE ROAD/FAMILY REUNION
26 was outraged on my behalf and was sure that Katarina had shopped me. I told her she didn’t know what she was talking about, that the lady had been so supportive of me. 26 demanded Katarina’s email address so she could send an angry message to her, but I said that wouldn’t be fair.
“How about if I write her a message on a piece of paper and you take a picture of it and email it to her?” I said.
She shook her head at me (I was already getting sick of this). “You poor sod, you’re really stuck, aren’t you? Am I going to end up being your Seeing Internet Dog for the next two weeks, then?”
“Come on,” I said. “I need to know whether she betrayed me or whether it just got out.”
26 rolled her eyes at me. “Fine,” she said. She dug through the piles of junk in her room and came up with an old school notebook. She tore a page out of the back of it, handed me a biro, and passed them to me. I shut my laptop lid and used it for a desk.
I started to write, got as far as “Dear Katarina, I was in court today” and balled up the paper and chucked it aside.
“Paper,” I said.
“Maybe you should do it in pencil, Cecil,” 26 said.
“Shaddit,” I said, and she swatted me and handed me more paper. It took three tries, but this is what I got:
Dear Katarina, I had my hearing today, about the court case where all the film studios are suing me for millions of pounds for remixing your grandad’s films. They wanted the court to take my Internet access away and they got what they wanted. The reason that happened is that they had a copy of the video I gave to you, the one about the security checks at the cinema. You were the only person besides me who had a copy. I don’t remember if I told you not to distribute it. I guess I just wanted to know if you passed it on to those lawyers to get me in trouble, or what?
I included my phone number and signed it, and 26 shot it with her phone and attached it to an email and sent it off.
“How’d the exams go?” I said. She’d been playing nonchalant about them all along, but I knew that her guts’d been in knots about it. 26 was smart, the kind of smart they love at school, and she’d always got fantastic marks, but that seemed to make her more anxious about succeeding, not less. Figure that one out.
“I can never tell. I think it all went well, except, well, maybe I’m wrong, right? Like the calculus—it seemed too easy, like maybe I was just not understanding the questions right.” She shook her head hard and went Waaaaargh! and jumped up and down on the spot a while. “That’s better. It’s over in any event. And it’s just going to start again at uni next year, of course.”
I didn’t say anything. We both knew that she was going to go off to university eventually. She was such a brain-box, and her parents would flay her alive if she didn’t. She kept talking about taking a gap year and working, but the parental authorities were very down on the idea, and besides, it was only delaying the inevitable.
26 caught it. She always caught it. “I’ve been reading up on the law program at University College London. There’s an Intellectual Property specialist course that looks perfectly awful, raw propaganda for the entertainment industry. I was thinking it’d be a fun place to go and shout at people for the next four years.”
I smiled. “Really? UCL? As in, right here in London?”
She’d put in for Oxford and Cambridge, of course, and Sheffield and Nottingham. But this was the first she’d said about UCL.
“Right here,” she said.
“But I thought you wanted to do public policy, right? Oxford?”
She looked away. “Oh, Oxford’s overrated. It’s all rah-rah punting and snobbishness. Besides, law’s just another side to public policy. And with a law degree, I could defend people like you! Public policy’s just a fast-track to being a career bureaucrat or a politician.”
“I think you’d make a great MP,” I said. “You’d be the first woman with a shaved head and facial piercings to sit in the Commons!”
She bit my earlobe. “Do you want me to go away?”
I shrugged. “Of course not. But I don’t want you to waste four years doing a degree you’re not interested in just to be around me. I don’t have to live in London, you know. Doesn’t really matter where I am. I just want to make films. I could do that anywhere.”
“You going to find a squat in Oxford?”
“Why not? There’s empty buildings everywhere. Or,” I held her gaze, “you could squat with me.”
“That’s the most romantic proposal I’ve ever had, Cecil B. DeVil. I think it’s a little early for us to be playing house, though, don’t you think?”
&
nbsp; It’s weird. I’d said it as a joke, but her refusal skewered me. Which was stupid, because here she was ready to pick a second-choice university because it would mean being nearer to me. Love makes you into an idiot. Well, it makes me into an idiot, anyway.
Neither of us said anything. Her room, which was always a tip, had grown even more chaotic, what with all the work on TIP-Ex and all the time spent at mine or on her exams. I suddenly felt exhausted. I pushed aside some of the crap on the bed and crawled along it face down until I had a pillow under my head and I buried my nose in it—26’s scalp smell, delicious and familiar—and squeezed my eyes shut.
26 belly-flopped on top of me and chewed my hair. “Poor Cecil. It’s all a bit much, isn’t it?”
It was. In a short year, I’d moved to London, been robbed, squatted, been chased, squatted again, taken every conceivable substance including sugar and lived to tell the tale, lost a legislative fight, made dozens of films and screened them all over the city, traveled up and down the countryside giving speeches, reconciled with my parents, broken into a sewer, learned to build a laptop, and been sued for tens of millions of pounds. And lost my virginity. “It’s been a busy season, I’ll give you that. Dizzying, really.”
“I know what you mean,” she said. For a moment, I felt irrationally irritated with her. This was my moment to be miserable, not hers. What had she gone through, anyway? But a few seconds later, I came up with the answer: political campaigning, arrest, falling in love (yay!), a boyfriend who ran out and left her to give a speech with no prep, the business with her biological dad, and her A levels and impending graduation.
“What a pair we are,” I said.
“We’re a good team,” she said, and chewed my hair some more, pulling at the roots.
“We’ll figure it out,” I said.
“We always do.”
* * *
Living without the net was impossible. At first, I tried to stay off my laptop altogether, because once it was on, the temptation to log in and just have a poke around was enormous. I’d promised Roshan and Gregory that I wouldn’t log in, not even a little, not even if I was dead certain no one could catch me. I’d learned my lesson about leaky secrets with the video I’d given to Katarina.
But with no laptop and no Internet, I started to go absolutely mad. I really liked Jem’s mural, and it had got smudged or wiped away in places, so I tried my hand at fixing it up, but this involved asking Jem for loads of advice, and he soon bored of it. So I switched to cooking, which was Chester’s major lookout, and we made good progress on things like soups and stews before he got utterly sick with googling recipes for me and he went out and bought me an armload of ancient Jamie Oliver cookbooks from the one-pound bin at the Age Concern charity shop. I got bored of being alone in the kitchen, so I went and bothered Rabid Dog, who was going through a phase of trying to perfect the artificial wound. He worked with unflavored gelatin, paint, food coloring, and various breakfast cereals and sand to create the most revolting gashes, slashes, scars, and scabs you’d ever seen. He had a half-formed plan to shoot his own slasher pic in the Zeroday some time, but mostly he just loved mucking about with all the gore and goop. Dog was very good about tolerating my ham-fisted attempts to create a realistic entrail-squib, a flesh-colored belly pouch filled with revolting viscera that could be slit open, spilling them down your front. But I wasn’t very good at it, to tell the truth, and what’s more, I kept forgetting to wash the brushes and cap the paints, and so after a day of this, he told me I’d need to get my own supplies if I wanted to go on. I swore I would, but never got round to it.
So I went back to the one thing I was good at: editing video on my laptop. I had a bunch more long bus and train trips to kill time on—talks at rallies in Cardiff, Bath, and then one in good old Bradford, so I reckoned I could spend the time editing the one video I was reasonably sure I couldn’t get into trouble for playing with: the footage of Scot Colford that Katarina had given me.
I set to work cataloging this the day before I hit the road, and I was deep into it when 26 showed up at my door. I’d talked her into spending the night since we were going to be apart for so long.
“I got an email back from your doctor,” she said, after she’d kissed me hello. “You’re going to love this.”
Dear Cecil,
Oh god, I’m mortified. I was so delighted by that video that I sent it around to some friends (well, many friends—practically everyone I know, in fact). I hadn’t realized that it was meant to be confidential, though I suppose I should have worked that out. I can’t apologize enough for having landed you in the soup. If there’s anything I can do to help, please let me know (I was serious when I told you you should feel free to tell people that Scot Colford’s granddaughter heartily approves of your efforts). I just googled and saw you’ve got a talk coming up in Bath; I grew up there and have emailed all my friends and told them to go and see you. I know this won’t solve your legal woes, but I hope it helps a little.
Best of luck,
Katarina
That certainly put me in a better mood—and my mood got better still when 26 dragged me up to my room for a serious and steamy snog. Afterward, we lay on my bed, sharing a big glass of ice water and occasionally sneaking cubes out of the glass and pressing them to one another’s exposed skin, which was 26’s idea of comedy.
“Do you think we’re going to win?” I asked.
She didn’t say anything for a long time. “I think we might,” she said, finally.
“Oh, that’s encouraging.”
She sat up. “It’s just that most MPs still don’t see this as a big deal. They’re more concerned with health care and jobs and education and the economy. They just don’t understand that today, all those things depend on the Internet. My mum decided that we needed a new garden shed last week and she discovered that the council doesn’t even have paper building-permit forms anymore! You can’t get a recycling box, you can’t complain about your neighbors, you can’t report a pothole, none of it unless you’ve got the net.”
“Do you remember you once said we should get every MP cut off from the net for piracy? Grass on the whole lot of them?”
She snorted. “Yeah, but I don’t know how we’d pull that off. I’m sure that when an MP gets an infringement notice, she can just make it all go away. One law for them, another law for us. I bet that there’s also plenty of chances for rich parents to pay a little ‘fine’ and stop their Internet being taken away or their kids going to jail.”
“I keep coming back to it, though. It’s like you said: the reason they voted this in is that they just don’t think of Internet access as being anything like a right. They think the whole Internet is just a glorified system for downloading films for free and getting music without paying for it. If we could just show them what it’s like to lose access—”
“You’re right, but it’s just a dream. A pretty dream, but a dream nonetheless.”
But I couldn’t get it out of my head. When I got on the train to Bath the next day, I found myself roughing out a video in which Scot Colford loses his Internet access. There was so much stuff in the footage dump that Katarina’d given me that lent itself to this, I could already tell that I’d be able to show Scot flunking out of college, losing his housing benefit, failing to help his kids with their homework, and not being able to produce a film. He loved to make comic short films where he played a bumbler or sad-sack, and once I had the idea, the video practically put itself together.
I got about half the rough cut done on the bus, chortling evilly to myself as I went, and then I was at the demonstration and giving a speech, which seemed to go well, but I couldn’t tell you what I’d said, because all I could think of was my video, my video, my video. I was being hosted that night by some people from the local hackspace, a kind of technology co-op where everyone paid subscriptions to use a bunch of really fantastic communal kit: laser cutters and 3D printers and computer-controlled mills and lathes. The hack-space was
in an old industrial estate that reminded me of Aziz’s place, and it was even more cluttered than Aziz’s, because they had less space and more people using it. They made their own beer, and it was quite good, and I chatted politely for as long as I could.
Finally, I had to say, “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve got this thing I’m making and I can’t get it out of my head and I just want to get stuck in with my lappie. I know it’s horrible guest behavior, but—”
The assorted hackers immediately rushed to say, no, no, by all means, get stuck in mate, if you’re in the creative fog, don’t let us get in your way. Of course I should have guessed that they’d understand. (Later, I found myself reading the hack-space rules that someone had posted in the toilet, and the third rule was “If someone’s in the groove, don’t bother them.”) (Rule two was “If you don’t know how to use something, ask someone who does before you try.” And rule number one was “Don’t be on fire.” Which struck me as eminently sensible.)
Work, work, work. I wished like fire that I could use the net and email some of the other Colford freaks I knew and get their advice, and I burned to drop in some of the official Scot clips from his classic films—some of which I’d used in dozens of projects before, so that I knew exactly how many seconds they lasted and could even give you their timecode from memory.
But the constraint of having to work with nothing but the new footage meant that I couldn’t use my familiar, lazy shortcuts. I had to think my way around each scene and cut, coming up with really inventive solutions. It was the best kind of puzzle-solving, something I’d been training for all my life, really.
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