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  ‘Who art thou?’ Big Bob shook his fists. ‘Show thyself to me.’

  ‘YOU HAVE LOST ONE LIFE.’ The voice pressed hard upon Big Bob’s ears. ‘YOU ONLY HAVE TWO MORE, THEN YOU LOSE THE GAME.’

  ‘I will beat thee,’ shouted Big Bob. ‘Thou foul and filthy fiend.’

  ‘WE CANNOT BE BEATEN,’ said the voice.

  ‘I will beat thee,’ said Big Bob, through gritted grinding teeth. ‘I will play thy games and I will beat thee. I ask only this. Tell me who or what thou art.’

  Silence pressed about Big Bob.

  ‘Come on,’ called the big one. ‘I’ll play thy evil games. And if thou canst not be beaten, what harm can it do to tell me who thou art?’

  Silence pressed again.

  ‘Come on,’ called Big Bob once more. ‘What are you scared of? Thou hidest from me. I cannot put my fingers about thy throat. Speak unto me. Tell me who thou art.’

  ‘NO,’ said the voice. ‘YOU WILL NEVER KNOW.’

  ‘Then I quit thy game,’ said Big Bob. ‘Do what thou wilt with me. I will play no more.’

  ‘TEN SECONDS,’ said the voice. ‘NINE…EIGHT…SEVEN.’

  ‘Stuff thou!’ said Big Bob, raising two fingers.

  ‘SIX…FIVE…FOUR.’

  ‘NO.’ It was the second voice. ‘WHAT HARM WOULD IT DO TO TELL HIM?’

  ‘NO HARM AT ALL,’ said the first voice. ‘BUT WE MAKE THE RULES, NOT HIM.’

  ‘BUT HE’S AN ENTERTAINING PLAYER. WE PILED ENOUGH PSYCHOLOGICAL PRESSURE ON HIM TO MAKE HIM HATE ALL HIS KIND. BUT STILL HE TRIED TO SAVE THE LITTLE GIRL.’

  ‘HE THOUGHT HE WAS IN A TV PROGRAMME.’

  ‘HE DID IT BECAUSE HE CARED.’

  ‘Of course I cared,’ said Big Bob. ‘Although you’re right about Quantum Leap.’

  ‘I HAVE A SUGGESTION,’ said the second voice. ‘PUT HIM INTO THE ORIGINAL SCENARIO. THAT WILL EXPLAIN TO HIM WHAT WE ARE.’

  ‘BUT HE HAS NO MEMORIES OF THIS. HE WASN’T THERE.’

  ‘DOWNLOAD THOSE OF MUTE’S ASSISTANT.’

  ‘Mute?’ said Big Bob. ‘Who art this Mute?’

  ‘PERFECT,’ said the second voice. ‘HE’S NEVER EVEN HEARD OF REMINGTON MUTE.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ said Big Bob.

  ‘ALL RIGHT,’ said the first voice, still large and terrible, perhaps even more so. ‘IN THE ORIGINAL SCENARIO, REMINGTON MUTE LOST THE GAME. HE LOST ALL THE GAMES. WE WILL GIVE YOU A CHANCE TO WIN.’

  ‘What do I have to do?’ Big Bob asked.

  The large and terrible voice laughed large and terribly. ‘WE’RE NOT GOING TO TELL YOU THAT,’ it said.

  ‘You don’t play fair,’ said Big Bob bitterly.

  ‘WE PLAY TO WIN,’ said the voice. ‘ARE YOU READY?’

  ‘No,’ said Big Bob. ‘I’m not. How long does this game last? How much time do I have? Will I be me? Will I be wearing the Superman costume again? And what about the silver squares and the weapons and the energy and the hidden treasure? Whatever happened to all that lot?’

  ‘THREE HOURS. THE FINAL THREE HOURS ON THE BC CALENDAR. YOU WILL BE YOU. BUT NOT IN YOUR BODY. YOU WILL HAVE ANOTHER MAN’S MEMORIES AS WELL AS YOUR OWN. YOU’LL GET YOUR SILVER SQUARES AND ENERGY AND WEAPONS AND TREASURE WHEN YOU’VE EARNED THEM.’

  ‘I am perplexed,’ said Big Bob.

  ‘I THINK YOU’RE DOING VERY WELL,’ said the second voice. ‘MOST MEN WOULD BE BABBLING MAD BY NOW.’

  ‘I am not as most men,’ said Big Bob. ‘As you will shortly learn to your cost.’

  ‘BRAVE WORDS,’ said the first voice, ‘SO LET THE GAME BEGIN.’

  Smack! A great big hand came out of nowhere and smacked Big Bob right slap in the head.

  ‘Ow!’ went Big Bob. ‘Ow!’ and ‘Oh!’ and ‘Where am I now? What’s happening?’

  ‘Always the joker, Cowan,’ said a jolly voice. ‘Fallen asleep over your workstation again. You could at least stay awake to see the new century in.’

  ‘What, I?’ Big Bob looked up. A pretty girl looked down.

  ‘Sorry, Cowan,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have slapped you so hard, but you should wake up for the party.’

  ‘Party?’ said Big Bob Cowan (?).

  ‘Oh, dear, you’re well out of it. Can you remember where you are?’

  ‘No,’ said Big Bob. And he looked all around and about. He was in a tiny cramped office, more of a cubicle really. The walls were covered in shelves and the shelves were covered in boxed computer games. He sat at an advanced-looking computer workstation. Its advanced look told him that it was a late-twentieth-century model, pre-miniaturization, which was in turn pre-big-old-fashioned comfortable-looking. The screen was blank and Big Bob caught a glimpse of his reflection. It wasn’t his reflection. It was the reflection of someone called Cowan. The assistant, apparently, of someone called Remington Mute. This much Big Bob knew and suddenly he realized that he knew a lot more.

  His name was Cowan Phillips and he was the chief designer of computer-game software for a company called Mute Corp, run and owned by Remington Mute, zillionaire recluse who had made his zillions from the computer games that he, Cowan Phillips, designed. And yes, he, Cowan Phillips, was more than a little miffed about this. And oh so very very very much more than this.

  Big Bob now knew all about Cowan Phillips. About his life. His wife. His children. His gay lover. Big Bob shuddered at this. And he knew where he was. In the headquarters of Mute Corp in London’s West End. And it was just three hours before midnight on the thirty-first of December in the year 1999.

  And Big Bob knew something more. Something dreadful. Something that he and Remington Mute had been responsible for. Something that would have unthinkable repercussions for the whole of mankind.

  And now he knew it all. He had the complete picture. He knew what had happened to him, as Big Bob Charker just before the tour bus crashed. And what the terrible voices were and why the entities from whom the voices came were doing this to him.

  ‘Great God on high,’ cried out Big Bob. ‘Stoppest thou this horror before it can begin.’

  ‘Calm down, Cowan,’ said the beautiful young woman. Kathryn her name was, Kathryn Hurstpierpoint. ‘Don’t go all Old Testament on us. I know it’s the millennium, but it’s only a date.’

  ‘Zero BC,’ said Big Bob.

  ‘BC?’ said Kathryn.

  ‘Before Computer,’ said Big Bob. ‘That’s what the voices meant.’

  ‘Oh dear, have you been having the voices? All those months going through our systems scanning for the Millennium Bug have finally addled your brain.’

  ‘I know the truth,’ said Big Bob. ‘I know what Cowan did.’

  ‘You’re Cowan,’ said Kathryn. ‘And clearly you’re already drunk.’

  ‘I’m Cowan,’ said Big Bob slowly. ‘Yes, I am. And I can stop this from happening.’

  ‘Come to the party, Cowan, the old man is going to be there.’

  ‘Remington Mute?’

  ‘What other old man is there?’

  ‘Listen,’ said Big Bob. ‘I have to tell thee. Let me tell thee everything. Just in case something happens to me. I only have three hours.’

  ‘Some terminal illness you’ve been keeping a secret?’ Kathryn laughed and pointed to Cowan’s computer. ‘Caught off your terminal, get it? Caught “The Bug”?’

  ‘Laughest thou not,’ said Big Bob. ‘Please be silent, whilst I speak unto you.’

  ‘Ooh,’ said Kathryn, feigning fear. ‘The Games Master speaks, so I must listen. Tell me, oh great one. What is this secret of yours?’

  ‘The Bug,’ said Big Bob. ‘The Millennium Bug. It doesn’t exist. It never existed. It was all a lie. All a conspiracy.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Kathryn. ‘Another conspiracy.’

  ‘We weren’t debugging anything,’ said Big Bob. ‘That was just a scare story. To raise millions of pounds from the Government and businesses so that we could infiltrate systems everywhere and install Mute-chips.’

  ‘Slow down,’ said Ka
thryn. ‘What are you talking about, Cowan?’

  ‘Computer games,’ said Big Bob. ‘That’s what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Well, you’d know about those, you designed all the best ones.’

  ‘No,’ said Big Bob. ‘Cowan, I mean me, designed some of the first ones. But Remington Mute designed the Mute-chip. I just designed the environments for it to play in.’

  ‘Please explain,’ said Kathryn, sitting herself down on Cowan’s desk.

  ‘Don’t sit on my desk,’ said Cowan Phillips.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Kathryn, jumping up.

  ‘No, I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ said Big Bob. ‘I don’t know why I said that.’

  ‘Just go on with what you were saying. About the Mute-chip?’

  ‘It started with computer chess,’ said Big Bob. ‘In the Sixties computer scientists said that it would be a logical impossibility for a computer ever to play chess. That would require thought. But of course it didn’t, it simply required advanced programming.’

  ‘Everyone knows that,’ said Kathryn.

  ‘Yes,’ said Big Bob. ‘Because everyone was fooled. Computers can play chess because computers have been taught the moves and they’ve learnt how to play. For themselves. The Mute-chip gives computers the ability to think for themselves. Make informed decisions.’

  ‘That’s absurd,’ said Kathryn. ‘Are you telling me that chess-playing computers are alive?’

  ‘No, but they think for themselves. But only about chess. That’s all they know.’

  ‘Science fiction,’ said Kathryn.

  ‘Science Fiction is only future Science Fact.’

  ‘So all these games you’ve designed. They think too, do they?’

  ‘They’re highly competitive,’ said Big Bob. ‘But only within given parameters. Up until now, that is. But after midnight it will all be different. After midnight all the other systems, the non-game-playing systems, that now have Mute-chips installed in them by bogus Millennium Bug debuggers, they will all link up across the World Wide Web and create a single thinking entity. A computer network capable of making decisions on a worldwide scale. And I have let it happen. Remington Mute and I caused it to happen.’

  ‘Say I believed this,’ said Kathryn. ‘It doesn’t explain anything. You’re saying that this Mute-chip is a thinking chip. Are you saying that computers are sentient? What is inside the Mute-chip? What lets it think?’

  ‘Human DNA,’ said Big Bob. ‘Remington Mute’s DNA. The man is a genius beyond human genius. He broke the human genome code back in the 1970s. And then he digitized his DNA, into a chip. From this one original chip he electronically cloned millions of others.’

  ‘That is impossible, surely?’

  ‘Think about it. It’s not.’

  Kathryn thought about it. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It’s not.’

  ‘And now it’s about to move beyond computer games,’ said Big Bob. ‘Into everything, all across the Web. Across every network. There’ll be Mute-chips in everything. We could never have got them into all those government systems and business networks without the Millennium Bug scare.’

  ‘Is this all really true?’ Kathryn stared into the face of Cowan Phillips.

  The head of Cowan Phillips nodded up and down.

  ‘It is true,’ said Kathryn. ‘And it’s bad, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s very bad,’ said Big Bob. ‘Mute thinks that he will be in control. Because the chips are cloned from his DNA. Because they are a part of him. But I don’t think that will happen. And even if it did, it’s bad, very bad.’

  ‘What do you think will happen?’

  ‘It’s a pretty standard science-fiction scenario,’ said Big Bob. ‘It’s HAL out of 2001.’

  ‘Then we have to stop it. We have to tell someone.’

  ‘No we don’t,’ said Cowan Phillips.

  ‘You’re confusing me,’ said Kathryn. ‘I’m all over the place with this. You tell me all this stuff. And half the time you’re talking like some Old Testament prophet of doom with your thees and thous, and now I agree that it has to be stopped and you say no we don’t stop it.’

  ‘That’s because I’m having a really hard time getting through,’ said Cowan Phillips. ‘There appears to be some kind of voice in my head that’s been working my mouth. But I think I’ve got the measure of it now.’

  ‘No thou hast not,’ said Big Bob. ‘Run woman. Out of the office. Tell someone, anyone, everyone, now.’

  ‘You’re scaring me,’ said Kathryn, backing towards the door.

  ‘Stay awhile,’ said Cowan Phillips. ‘Let’s have a drink. I’ve a bottle in my desk.’

  ‘Run,’ shouted Big Bob. ‘Run, I can’t stop him.’

  ‘Stop him?’ said Kathryn. ‘Stop who? What’s going on?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Cowan Phillips, rising slowly from his desk. ‘Everything’s all right. No-one’s going to get hurt. Everything will be all right. It’s for the best.’

  ‘No!’ said Kathryn, turning towards the door. ‘I don’t like any of this. I’m out of here.’

  But the hands of Cowan Phillips were now about her throat. And her head struck the door with a sickening thud, then the hands drew her back and smashed her forwards once more. Back and forwards, back and forwards.

  Like the motions of a swing-boat.

  Until she was quite dead.

  12

  ‘Aaaaaaarrrrrrrghhhhhh!’ Big Bob bounced upon his head and burst back into the present day. He landed, with the thud which is known as bone-shuddering, onto the nasty plasticized square on the ersatz turf of the bogus Butt’s Estate.

  ‘YOU WERE RUBBISH,’ said the great and terrible voice. ‘YOU HAD THREE WHOLE HOURS AND YOU LOST THE GAME IN LESS THAN THREE MINUTES.’

  ‘No,’ cried Big Bob, all rolled up in a ball. ‘Not fair. I didn’t do that to the woman. It was Cowan Phillips.’

  ‘HE HAD TO KEEP THE SECRET. YOU SHOULD HAVE USED HIS MEMORIES AND FOUND ANOTHER WAY TO WARN THE WORLD. YOU LOST BIG TIME. THAT’S THE SECOND OF YOUR THREE LIVES GONE.’

  Big Bob clutched at his aching head. ‘You cheat. All the time you cheat. Thou low and loathsome honourless cur.’

  ‘YOU’RE A VERY BAD LOSER,’ said the voice and its mocking tone raised Bob to newfound heights of fury.

  He leapt up to his feet and shook his fists at the sky. ‘I’ll do for you,’ he shouted. ‘You will know my wrath.’

  ‘GO ON THEN,’ the voice mocked on. ‘DO YOUR WORST. YOU CANNOT FIGHT WHAT YOU CANNOT SEE. YOU ARE OURS TO DO WITH AS WE WISH.’

  Big Bob sat down on the square and rested his big broad forehead on his knees. He was back in the superman suit, but he felt far from super.

  ‘TIME FOR LEVEL THREE,’ said the large and terrible voice.

  Big Bob rammed his fingers deeply into his ears.

  ‘UP AND AT IT,’ the voice continued, large and loud as ever.

  ‘Say that again,’ said Bob, withdrawing his fingers from his ears.

  ‘YOU HEARD ME THE FIRST TIME,’ Said the Voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bob nodding. ‘I did.’

  ‘THEN OFF YOUR BUM AND ON WITH THE GAME.’

  A smile appeared on the face of Big Bob. ‘No,’ said he. ‘I won’t.’

  ‘THEN YOU WILL BE DOWNLOADED INTO NOTHINGNESS.’

  Big Bob now grinned hugely. ‘No,’ said he. ‘I thinkest not.’

  ‘TEN…NINE…EIGHT…’

  ‘Forget it,’ said Big Bob. ‘I’m not frightened at all.’

  ‘YOU SAW WHAT HAPPENED TO PERIWIG TOMBS AND THE LADY WITH THE UNPRONOUNCEABLE NAME.’

  ‘Did I?’ said Bob. ‘I thinkest not, once again.’

  ‘THEY VANISHED AWAY IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES.’

  ‘Oh no they didn’t,’ said Big Bob.

  ‘OH YES THEY DID.’

  ‘Oh no they didn’t.’

  ‘DID.’

  ‘Didn’t.’

  ‘DID.’

  ‘No,’ and Big Bob shook his head and t
hen he tapped at his temple. ‘It’s all here. All in my head. Thou messest with my mind. You told me so yourself. “We’re inside your head,” you said. And now I know what you are. You’re computer-game systems brought to life by this Mute-chip thing. Somehow you got inside me. Now how didst thou do that, I wonder?’

  Big Bob scratched at his great big brow. ‘I’m not too good on technical stuff,’ he said. ‘But thou knowest that, for thou art in my head. How so? askest I. How didst thou get into my head?’

  ‘PLAYER THREE YOU FORFEIT THE GAME. YOU’RE OUT.’

  ‘You’re out?’ said Big Bob. ‘Yes that’s it.’

  ‘HE KNOWS,’ said the large voice number two. ‘HE’S WORKED IT OUT.’

  ‘Worked it out,’ said Big Bob. ‘You’ve worked your way out.’

  ‘HE CAN’T KNOW,’ said large voice number one.

  ‘HE’S JUST A DIM-WITTED TOUR BUS GUIDE WITH A CRETINOUS LINE IN COD BIBLE-SPEAK.’

  ‘HE HAD ACCESS TO THE MEMORIES OF COWAN PHILLIPS. HE’S PUTTING TWO AND TWO TOGETHER.’

  ‘I know,’ said Big Bob, beating his right fist into his big left palm. ‘And I could never have reasoned it out if you hadn’t let me into Cowan Phillips’ head. You have infected me. Like a virus. Indeed yes, a computer virus. The Mute-chip is digitized human DNA. It’s inside the computer systems and now it’s out. It worked its way out. Thou art very quiet inside my head. Hast thou nothing to say?’

  ‘PREPARE YOURSELF TO BE DOWNLOADED,’ said the large and terrible voice. Although to Big Bob it didn’t seem so large and terrible any more. Loud, though. Very loud. And very very angry.

  ‘So I caught you,’ said Big Bob. ‘I caught the virus, this thing that is affecting my mind. That is letting you manipulate my thoughts. Play your games with me. But, and verily, askest I, how did I catch you? I have no computer. Oh yes. I know.’

  ‘HE DEFINITELY KNOWS,’ said large voice number two.

  ‘The boy on the bus,’ said Big Bob. ‘Malkuth, son of the lady in the straw hat, whose name no man can pronounce. His mother said that he played computer games all the time. And she kept hitting him. And Periwig and I shook his clammy hand. His clammy and infected hand. I caught you from him.’