‘PLAYER ONE HAS BEEN DOWNLOADED FOR DATA REACTION. PLAYER TWO, DO YOU WISH TO PLAY?’
‘Is that me?’ Big Bob was trembling.
‘NO YOU’RE PLAYER THREE. PLAYER TWO, LADY WITH THE UNPRONOUNCEABLE NAME.’
‘Me?’ said the lady. ‘I’m a little confused at the present. Why can’t the doctor see us and who am I talking to?’
‘Oh,’ said Big Bob. ‘I understand.’
‘Do you?’ asked the lady.
‘I do,’ said Big Bob. ‘I’m sorry to have to break this to thee. But thou art dead and me also. Surely this is the voice of God.’
‘HA HA HA HA HA,’ went the voice, from everywhere and nowhere all at the very same time.
‘Oh my goodness me,’ said the lady. ‘And me hatless and all. Did I get struck by lightning? It was such a joyous sunny day.’
The large voice went ‘HA HA HA’ once again.
‘I fear that this is not the voice of God,’ said Bob the Big. ‘In fact, I fear it is the other.’
‘PLAYER NUMBER TWO. DO YOU WISH TO PLAY OR NOT? COUNTING DOWN. TEN SECONDS. NINE. EIGHT. SEVEN.’
‘Tell me what to do,’ the lady implored of Big Bob.
‘Say you’ll play,’ answered Bob. ‘Say it rather quickly.’
‘I’ll…’
‘ZERO,’ said the large and terrible voice. For terrible indeed it was, there was just no getting away from it.
‘No,’ cried Big Bob. ‘Please have mercy.’
But the hatless lady simply vanished.
She was gone.
‘PLAYER THREE…’
‘I’ll play. I’ll play. I’ll play,’ cried Bob. ‘Doctor please help me, please, can’t you hear me?’
But Dr Druid was leaving the ward, the glamorous nurse’s arm about his shoulder. Pearson Clarke was leaving too, he was trying to look very brave, but he wasn’t making much of a job of it.
‘Come back.’ Bob struggled up from his bed and hopped about on his good right foot.
‘PLAYER THREE.’
‘Yes I’m listening, I’m listening. What do you want me to do?’
‘THE GAME IS CALLED GO MANGO,’ said the large and terrible voice. ‘THERE ARE THREE LEVELS BASED ON THE THREE AGES OF MAN. ASCEND THROUGH THE LEVELS AND FIND THE TREASURE. FIND THE TREASURE AND YOU WIN THE GAME.’
‘Treasure?’ said Big Bob, trying to remember whom it was he knew, whose brother was a pirate. ‘Buried treasure?’
‘YOU HAVE THREE LIVES. YOU GAIN ENERGY FROM THE SILVER STONES. IN ORDER TO ACCESS WEAPONS, YOU WILL HAVE TO CRACK THE CODES.’
‘Weapons?’ Big Bob hopped about. ‘Please, I really don’t understand. Am I dead? Am I in limbo? Why speakest thou of weapons?’
‘GAME ON,’ said the large and terrible voice.
‘No, wait, ouch my toe.’
‘GAME ON…’
‘…NO HOLD IT.’ It was a second voice that spoke. As large and terrible as the first, but ever so slightly different.
‘GAME ON,’ said the first voice once more.
‘NO HOLD IT. THAT’S NOT FAIR. HE CAN’T RUN ON ONE FOOT.’
‘HE CAN HOP.’
‘HOPPING ISN’T FAIR. GIVE HIM BOTH HIS FEET TO RUN ON.’
‘Art thou God?’ asked Big Bob.
‘ALL RIGHT,’ said the first large and terrible voice. ‘BOTH FEET. HE WON’T MAKE IT PAST THE FIRST LEVEL ANYWAY.’
‘Level?’ said Big Bob and then he went, ‘Aaaaagh!’
Because his left big toe stretched out from his foot like an elasticated sausage and then sprang back with a ghastly twanging sound. ‘Ouch!’ and ‘oh,’ and ‘aaah,’ went Big Bob. ‘Ah, my toe is better.’
‘HAPPY?’ said the first voice.
‘Not really,’ said Big Bob.
‘NOT YOU!’ said the first voice.
‘HAPPY,’ said the second voice. ‘GAME ON THEN, I’LL KICK YOUR ARSE THIS TIME.’
‘YOU WISH,’ said the first voice. ‘AND GO MANGO.’
Big Bob now felt a kind of shivery juddery feeling creeping up and all over. He stared down at himself and was more than a little surprised to discover that he was no longer wearing the embarrassing tie-up-the-back gown thing that doctors in hospitals insist that you wear in order to make you feel even more foolish and vulnerable than you’re already feeling. Big Bob was now wearing a tight-fitting one-piece syntha-vinyl-poli-lycra-spandex-athene superhero-type suit with a big number three on the front. It actually made him look rather splendid, what with his great big chest and shoulders and all. On his feet were silver boots, and they looked rather splendid too.
Very Arnold Schwarzenegger. Very Running Man perhaps?
‘Very nice indeed,’ said Bob the Big. ‘Although somewhat immodest about the groin regions. But how dost…’
‘RUN YOU SUCKER,’ said the second voice. And Big Bob suddenly felt like running. He felt very fit indeed.
‘Find the treasure and I win?’ he said.
But the voices said no more.
‘Thus and so.’ Big Bob took a step forward. And ‘Oh,’ he said, as he did so. He certainly felt light upon his feet, a single step carried him forward at not inconsiderable speed. He appeared to be possessed of extraordinary fitness and agility. He’d never been a sluggard before. He’d always kept himself in shape. But now. But now.
But now.
‘Oh yes,’ said Big Bob. ‘Oh yes indeed.’ And he took another step and then another. And off he went across the ward and right out through the wall.
Bob paused upon his springing steps. He had just done that, hadn’t he? He had just stepped right through the wall? Why had he done that? Why hadn’t he just used the door?
Big Bob turned to look back at the wall. But the wall wasn’t there any more. He was standing now in the middle of the Butt’s Estate. Brentford’s posher quarter. On two sides of him rose the elegant Georgian houses built so long ago by the rich burghers of Brentford. Behind him the Seamen’s Mission and before him the broad and tree-lined thoroughfare that led either in or out of the Butt’s, depending on which way you’re travelling.
Big Bob looked all around and about. This was the Butt’s, and he was here. Well, he was here, but somehow this wasn’t.
Big Bob looked all around and about just a little more. This wasn’t quite right, not that anything was. But this wasn’t right for sure. It looked like the Butt’s Estate. The Butt’s Estate he’d known for all of his life so far. Possibly all his life, if he was, as he feared, now dead. But this wasn’t quite the Butt’s Estate.
The evening sky above was a curious violet hue and all that it looked down upon was slightly out of kilter. The Butt’s Estate wasn’t real. It was more like a copy. More like a model. The colours here were too bright. The mellow bricks of the elegant buildings were unnatural, they lacked definition, everything had a flattened quality about it.
It was a copy. It was a model.
‘Model?’ said Big Bob to no-one but himself and then something inside his head went click. ‘Model,’ he said again. ‘Computer model. This is like one of those holographic computer models of towns that architects create on their Mute Corp holo-cast computers.’ And then Big Bob’s brain went click just a little bit more. And then the light of a revelation dawned, as it was bound to sooner or later.
Though for some, it would have been sooner.
‘Game on?’ whispered Big Bob. ‘Three lives? Silver stones? Weapons? Find the treasure? It’s a computer game. I’m in a computer game.’
And then Big Bob began to laugh. He laughed and laughed and laughed. It was all so obvious, wasn’t it? But he hadn’t realized. He hadn’t seen through it. What a fool. What an oaf. What a grade A buffoon.
Big Bob sighed. And it was a sigh of relief.
‘I’m dreaming,’ he said. ‘I’m asleep. There was a film once. I saw it when I was a lad. Tron, that was it. A chap finds himself inside a computer game. Thou art a twotty git, Big Bob,’ Bob told himself. ‘But clearly thou dost have quite an imagination.’
br />
‘Okey-dokey,’ said Big Bob, smiling all over his great big face. ‘Enough of all this. Time to wake up, I thinkest.’
Well, you would think that, wouldn’t you? You would try to wake up. And if it was a dream, and you’d twigged it was a dream, you probably would wake up. Or if, like those lucky blighters who are skilled in the art of lucid dreaming, you knew you were in a dream, you’d just stay asleep and really get into it. Because when you know you’re in a dream, you can do anything you want to. Anything. And as men who are skilled in lucid dreaming never tire of telling you, you can have some amazing sex with some really famous women. But sadly, even if he had wanted to, which he wouldn’t have done, as he was loyal to his wife, Big Bob wouldn’t be having any amazing sex with any famous women.
Because Big Bob wasn’t asleep.
Big Bob wasn’t dreaming.
But as Big Bob didn’t know this yet, Big Bob tried to wake up.
Big Bob stretched out his big arms and did yawnings and stretchings and closings and openings of eyes and made encouraging sounds to himself and then began to wonder just why it was that he wasn’t waking up and then he became very confused.
And very frightened also.
‘I’m not waking up,’ said Big Bob. ‘I dost not like this at all.’
‘GO ON THEN,’ said the large voice suddenly. ‘SHIFT OFF THE SQUARE. GET MOVING. GO TO LEVEL ONE.’
Big Bob ducked his head. Then looked up fearfully towards the violet sky. ‘I am dreaming this, aren’t I?’ he said. ‘Tell me I’m just dreaming this.’
‘OFF THE SQUARE. GET MOVING.’
Big Bob now looked down. Although he stood upon the little grassy area of land before the Seamen’s Mission, his feet did not rest upon the grass. His feet, encased as they now were within their rather dashing silver boots, stood upon a silver square. Rather plastic-looking. Rather unreal. Not very nice at all. Big Bob almost took a step forward.
‘Er, hello,’ called Big Bob. ‘Hello up there, God, or whoever thou art. I don’t like this. I don’t want to play. I want to wake up please.’
‘YOU HAVE TO PLAY NOW. YOU’RE IN THE GAME,’ said the large and terrible voice. The first one, not the second one. The second one said, ‘DO IT. GO MANGO!’
Big Bob fretted and dithered and worried and then he said, ‘I’m going home to my bed. I’m bound to wake up in there.’
And then Big Bob took a single step forward.
And entered a world of hurt.
10
A great big hand swung down from on high and caught Big Bob in the side of the head.
‘Why you bastard!’ Big Bob rarely swore, but that hand hit him hard.
‘What did you say, Charker?’
Big Bob glared towards the sky. But the sky wasn’t there any more. Where the sky had been was ceiling, and a ceiling Big Bob knew.
‘I said, oh…’ Big Bob coughed, there was something strange about his voice now. And…He blinked and stared and gawped. From the ceiling to the walls, to the window, to the blackboard to the teacher Mr Vaux.
Mr Vaux, his primary-school teacher. Mr Vaux who had flown a fighter plane in the war that few remembered any more. Mr Vaux who had been a prisoner of war. Mr Vaux who had no truck with ten-year-old boys who swore.
‘Sleeping, were you, Charker?’ asked Mr Vaux. ‘Daydreaming? Wistfully staring out of the window thinking of home time and Pogs in your own back passage?’
‘I? What? How?’ went Bob the Big.
‘And what was that you called me?’
‘I?’ went Big Bob. ‘I?’ He looked and he blinked and then looked some more. His classroom at Grange Primary School. And all the class were there. Trevor Alvy who bullied him. David Rodway, his bestest friend. Periwig Tombs with his Mekon head. Phyllis Livingstone the dark-haired girl from Glasgow, the very first love of his life. And there, over there in the corner, where she had always been, until her desk became empty, Ann Green, the little girl with the yellow hair, who had died in that final summer at the primary, when the swing-boat in the memorial park hit her in the throat.
‘I?’ Big Bob gagged. There was something wrong with his voice. He raised his hands towards his throat and then he saw his hands. They were the hands of a child. His hands when he’d been a child. In the days when his hands had been skinny little hands. Skinny and grubby and stained with ink.
Nasty little hands, as his mother always said. ‘Nasty little naughty little hands.’
‘What?’ went Big Bob, Small Bob now, in his squeaky ten-year-old voice.
‘Oh we have been sleeping, haven’t we?’ said Mr Vaux and he caught Big, no it was Small Bob now, another clout across the head.
‘Keep your hands off me, thou…’
‘Thou?’ went Mr Vaux, laughing. ‘Are we “thouing “ again? I thought we’d cured you of all that nonsense. One hundred lines, wasn’t it?’
‘This is madness.’ Big, no, Small Bob rose to take his leave.
‘Sit down, boy,’ cried Mr Vaux. And Small Bob stared at him in awe. The class was laughing now. The boys and girls nudging each other, whispering behind their hands and laughing.
‘Charker’s a loony boy,’ Trevor Alvy chanted. ‘Charker’s a loony boy, loony boy, loony boy.’
‘Shut it Alvy,’ shouted Mr Vaux.
And Trevor Alvy shut it.
‘It’s the headmaster’s office for you, sonny Jim,’ said Mr Vaux and he took Small Bob by the ear.
‘No,’ cried Bob. ‘Unhand me. You understand not. Something’s happened to me. I shouldn’t be back here. I’m a grown-up man now. Not a child, I’m not a child.’
‘Charker’s a loony boy,’ whispered Trevor Alvy.
‘The class will remain silent,’ said Mr Vaux. ‘I am taking Charker to the headmaster’s office where he will have his trouser seat dusted by six of the very best.’
‘You’ll do no such thing, thou odorous wretch.’ Small Bob writhed and twisted, but he couldn’t break away, he didn’t have the strength. And there were tears coming to his eyes. Tears of rage and frustration. He glared bitterly up at Mr Vaux. The schoolmaster glared right back at him.
He was a helpless child, caught by the ear by a schoolmaster and now being dragged from the classroom.
‘You don’t understand,’ he continued, as Mr Vaux hauled him along the school corridor. ‘Something’s happened to me. The tour bus crashed and I woke up in hospital. But the doctors couldn’t see me and then there was this terrible voice and it said that I was in a game and…’
Cuff, went the schoolmaster’s non-ear-gripping hand. Cuff about Small Bob’s other ear.
‘You’re a dreamer, boy,’ quoth Mr Vaux. ‘A dreamer and a wastrel. You’re no good for anything. Never have been, never will be. You’re a waste of space.’
‘No, I…no stop hitting me.’
Mr Vaux drummed a fist upon the glass panel of the headmaster’s office. Sounds of hurried movement issued from within.
‘Just a moment,’ called the voice of the headmaster. ‘I’m just attending to something. Just one moment please.’
Memories returned to Bob. Troubling memories. Memories of the headmaster. And what the headmaster had done.
It had been years after Big Bob left the primary school. He’d been in his early twenties. The scandal had been in the local newspaper. About the headmaster and how he’d ‘interfered’ with little boys for years.
‘Release my ear, thou wretch,’ demanded Bob. ‘I will not enter the lair of that paedophile.’
Silence, terrible silence. The corridor seemed filled with silence now. Oppressive silence pressing in.
Bob stared up at Mr Vaux. The schoolmaster’s face was cherry red, great veins stood out upon his neck.
‘You foul-mouthed little piece of filth,’ cried Mr Vaux, shattering the silence into a million fragments. ‘You disgusting little––’
The headmaster’s door swung open. A pale-faced youth pushed past, tears in his frightened eyes. He limped up the corridor and vanish
ed into the boys’ toilets. Mr Vaux dragged Small Bob into the headmaster’s office.
Bad boys had to stand at the bench at break times.
The bench was in the main corridor. It stood between the showcase that displayed the trophies won by boys of athletic bent in many a county championship, and the barometer, brassy and mysterious inside its mahogany case. What were barometers really for? How did they work?
Big Bob had never known. He hadn’t known when he was Small Bob. He was Small Bob now.
Small Bob stood at the bench. His face was streaked with tears. Tears of rage and frustration and from the pain. The pain of the terrible thrashing the headmaster had dealt him out.
Mr Vaux had had to hold Bob down whilst the head went about his torturing. The pain had been excruciating. It still hurt more than any pain that Bob had ever known.
And he was here. He was here. Really here. Back in the primary school. And he wasn’t dreaming. You couldn’t stand pain like that in a dream without waking up. He was here and he was him. Himself. Bob Charker. But Bob Charker, ten years of age.
‘I was wrong,’ said Small Bob to himself. ‘So wrong. I got the wrong movie. This isn’t like that Tron at all. This isn’t even a movie, this is like unto that old TV series Quantum Leap. I’ve leapt back into the past. But I’m not someone else, I’m myself. And I am me. I am. I’m real, I can feel myself.’
He could certainly feel the pain in his behind.
‘I have to think this through,’ said Small Bob to himself. ‘There must be some way to get forward again to the future. Some wormhole, or doorway, or something. I just have to figure it out. Then I can be free of this horror.’
Trevor Alvy walked past him. Small Bob lowered his eyes. It had never been wise to look Alvy full in the face. Trevor Alvy stopped, looked up and down the corridor then returned to Bob. He grinned at Bob, who tried to grin back, but couldn’t.
And then Alvy kicked him right in the ankle and ran off laughing evilly.
‘You bastard, you bastard, you bastard.’ Bob hopped up and down. ‘I’ll get you for that. Thou wilt suffer at my hands. Oh yes thou wilt.’
The corridor was empty and Bob wondered now whether he should simply run away. Why not? Just go, run home. Run home? Home to his mum?