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  ‘Well all I want is to use it for a while.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Derek. ‘Don’t you have your own?’

  ‘Not with me. I have my palmtop, but that won’t do. I want to use one that is locked into a landline.’

  ‘Why?’ Derek asked once more. But for a different reason this second time.

  ‘It’s just a theory. Something to do with your aunty describing Mute Corp Keynes as the black hole of cyberspace and the fact that mobile phones don’t work there.’

  ‘All right,’ said Derek. ‘But if you’re not going to have sex with me…’

  ‘Derek, I’m never going to have sex with you.’

  ‘All right. Then you will really have to promise that you will never see or speak to me again. Women like you are nothing but trouble.’

  ‘I shall ignore that remark,’ said Ellie. ‘Take me to your house.’

  Derek lived with his mother. Strangely this fact didn’t surprise Ellie one little bit. Derek insisted upon a lot of creeping on tip-toe through the house and up the stairs to his room. It’s a funny thing about men who live with their mothers, that they are always really proud to show off their rooms to young women. And they are really surprised when the young women they’re showing their rooms so proudly to, stare about with their jaws hung slack, then turn upon their heels and take their leave at the hurry-up.

  ‘Wallah,’ said Derek when he and Ellie were in his room, the door was shut and all the lights were on. ‘My private domain. My holy of holies. My inner sanctum. All pretty fab, isn’t it?’

  Ellie stared about the room and Ellie’s jaw hung slack.

  ‘I think,’ said Ellie, her jaw now moving again. ‘I think that you possess a very great many computer games.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Derek, his head nod-nod-nodding. ‘Over ten thousand. A lifetime’s collection. They date back to the 1970s. I’m really an Atari man. I’ve got an early Atari 2600 Video Computer System and the ‘86 compact version.’

  ‘You haven’t got an Odyssey have you?’ Ellie asked.

  Derek was taken slightly aback by Ellie’s question but carried on.

  ‘Sure. I’ve got the Magnavox Odyssey, an absolute classic. It was innovative, first home game system they released. But the Odyssey II…’

  ‘49-key pressure-sensitive keyboard, 1978. Pure genius.’

  Derek looked oddly at Ellie. ‘They just don’t compare with the Atari in my eyes. I’ve got the 5200 too.’

  ‘Who, Pam? What about Candy and Colleen, did you ever manage to get your sweaty mitts on those two lovely ladies?’

  ‘Well the 5200, Pam, is really just a stripped-down Atari 400, Candy, solely for game-playing. As for Colleen, the Atari 800, of course she’s here, but she was always too expensive to take out.’

  ‘Boxed and stored?’

  ‘Dust-free storage environment along with the Atari 7800. Only the best for my girls. So what do you think?’

  Ellie stared at Derek.

  And Derek stared right back.

  ‘I think it’s incredible,’ said Ellie. ‘I mean, well, I’ve never seen a collection like this before. I’m absolutely knocked out. You don’t by any chance have ADVENTURE?’

  ‘Warren Robinette, Atari 2600 VCS, 1979.’

  ‘You mean Warren “Easter Egg” Robinette, he was the catalyst for all the cheats and hidden stuff. He was the one who got the ball rolling back in ‘79.’

  ‘Well, that was Atari really. It was their policy that prevented the designers from getting any sort of recognition in the game or in the packaging. The designers were bound to rebel.’

  ‘But moving an invisible “dot” to above the catacombs with the bridge and all the rest. Trust a twelve-year-old to find that one out.’

  ‘Robinette thought he’d really get busted for that, but the gamers loved it. Atari couldn’t help but add hidden features in nearly all its new games from then on. He was the start of the Easter Egg phenomena.’

  Ellie whistled. Women don’t generally whistle as a rule. Some do, when they’re really impressed. Or when you do that special thing to them. And most women will only let you do that special thing to them once, anyway.

  Ellie whistled again. ‘I’ve surely misjudged you, Derek,’ she said. ‘You may be a spineless wimp, no offence meant…’

  ‘None taken, I assure you.’

  ‘…but I never had you down as a collector of twentieth-century console games.’

  ‘You approve then?’

  ‘God yes.’

  Derek grinned. ‘Brilliant,’ he said.

  ‘Do you have CANYON BOMBER, Atari 2600 VS, 1978?’

  Derek grinned again and pulled a cartridge from his shelf. ‘Of course I do,’ he said.

  Ellie said, ‘Can I touch?’

  ‘Certainly you can.’ Derek passed the precious thing in her direction. And Ellie ran a finger lovingly across it.

  ‘But this must be worth a fortune. It’s a compilation of those arcade coin-operated machine classics CANYON BOMBER and DEPTH CHARGE. Now that was a marriage made in silicon heaven.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Derek. ‘I got it in a car boot sale.’

  ‘No, you never did.’

  ‘You can play me at it, if you want. Can you play?’

  ‘Can I play? I can play them all. I spent my first ever wage packet at the Museum of Video Games in Penge. Ten hours on KABOOM!’

  ‘Oh yeah, I’ve got that here somewhere. Larry Kaplan game… 1981.’

  ‘Based on AVALANCHE in the arcade. Totally addictive, you could be there for ever if allowed. Kind of like TETRIS in that respect.’

  ‘I know where you’re coming from, I assure you,’ said Derek.

  ‘Money well spent. Although my mum thought I should have given her some of my wages. Mothers eh? What do they know about video games?’

  ‘Damn all,’ said Derek. ‘My mum thinks they’re stupid.’

  ‘Because she’s never played NIGHT DRIVER.’

  ‘You’ve played NIGHT DRIVER.’

  ‘Rob Fulop, 1979, Atari 2600 VCS. Only 2K of programming you know.’

  ‘Also famously featured in the video-arcade sequence in George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, of the very same year.’

  ‘Like I didn’t know. I snapped that one up pretty damn quick. I got paid the second week too. And the third. My mum never got any room and board though. Eventually she said that I’d have to go out and make my own way in the world. As I had enough qualifications, I went off to uni. Studied computer tech.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what’s coming. You got access to their games archive.’

  ‘Downloaded the lot into my PC. I’ve got 700 games on CD.’

  ‘I’ll bet you haven’t got this,’ said Derek. And he did some furtive lookings both ways before dropping down to his knees.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘You’ll have to stand back. I have to lift the carpet.’

  Ellie stared. ‘Derek,’ she said. ‘You appear to have a floorboard with a combination lock on it.’

  ‘So would you,’ said Derek. ‘If you had what I’ve got.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Ellie. ‘Don’t tell me you have a copy of…’

  ‘I have,’ said Derek, twiddling the combination.

  ‘You don’t have. I don’t believe it.’

  Derek lifted the floorboard and brought out a metal box. He fished into his shirt and displayed the key that he wore on a chain around his neck.

  And then he opened the box with it.

  ‘Behold,’ said Derek. ‘IMPOSSIBLE MISSION.’

  Ellie’s eyes widened. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I thought that this was just a myth. No.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Derek. ‘Yes indeed.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Ellie. ‘But this is the Holy Grail that game-collectors dream about finding. What system does it run on?’

  ‘It’s for the Atari 7800,’ said Derek. ‘And it’s in its original case, as you can see. And I have the game guide. And I know where the
Easter Eggs are.’

  ‘Is it the early or the late release version?’ asked Ellie.

  ‘It’s an early one,’ Derek said confidently.

  ‘And have you reached the deadlock point?’

  ‘Deadlock point?’ said Derek. ‘Are you kidding?’

  ‘You mean you have? What happens?’

  ‘No,’ said Derek. ‘I mean I haven’t. I haven’t played this. This isn’t for playing. It’s for owning. It’s for, dare I say this? Yes I dare. This is for gloating over. I wouldn’t play this game.’

  ‘But,’ Ellie stared at the original case. ‘What if it doesn’t work?’

  ‘It would work,’ said Derek. ‘I paid a fortune for it. It would work okay. But it’s too precious a thing to actually play. That would be like sacrilege somehow.’

  Ellie stared now at Derek. ‘You paid a fortune for it,’ she said. ‘And you’ve never dared to play it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dare,’ said Derek. ‘What if I broke it, before I got to the deadlock point?’

  ‘But what if it doesn’t work? What if it doesn’t run? What if it’s a fake? Or a later version without the deadlock point?’

  Derek nodded slowly. ‘My thoughts entirely,’ he said. ‘Which is one of the reasons I’ve never played it. What if it is a fake? I have faith in it. The way Christians have faith in Christ. But what if there was suddenly some proof available, some unarguable proof that Christ didn’t exist? That he never existed? And you could give this proof to a Christian, all packaged up in an original case like this one. What would you, as a Christian, do? Would you open the case? Or would you refuse to open it and go on believing in Christ?’

  ‘I’d open the case,’ said Ellie.

  ‘But what if you didn’t want the existence of Christ to be disproved? What if you wanted Christ to exist?’

  ‘Hm,’ said Ellie. ‘If I wanted it more than anything else in the world, then I suppose that I wouldn’t open the case, original or not.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Derek. ‘Which is why I’ll never play this game. I own it. It’s a collector’s Holy Grail. I believe in it totally. As long as I never slot it into the console, then it remains the centrepiece of my collection and I can believe in it totally.’

  ‘Let’s play it,’ said Ellie.

  ‘No way!’ said Derek. ‘No way at all.’

  ‘All right,’ said Ellie. ‘You go out of the room for half an hour and I’ll play it.’

  ‘No way at all!’

  ‘Ah,’ said Ellie. ‘But I might not play it. I might just look at it.’

  ‘You’d play it,’ said Derek.

  ‘But I wouldn’t tell you. I won’t tell you whether I did play it or whether I didn’t. Whether it works or whether it doesn’t. I promise I won’t tell you anything.’

  ‘No,’ said Derek. ‘What if you played it and you broke it?’

  ‘You’d never know. You’ll never play it and I’ll never tell you, it will be exactly the same for you as before.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Derek. ‘Because you’ll know and I’ll know you know.’

  ‘I’ll give you money,’ said Ellie.

  ‘No,’ said Derek.

  Ellie chewed upon her Cupid’s bow. ‘I’ll er…’

  ‘Er?’ said Derek.

  ‘I’ll give you a blow job,’ said Ellie.

  ‘You’ll what?’

  ‘I will,’ said Ellie. ‘If you let me play.’

  Derek dithered, but it did have to be said, although only to himself and only to himself when alone in his room, that Derek had never actually had a blow job.

  ‘Well…’ said Derek.

  ‘You’ll have to wear a condom,’ said Ellie. ‘But I will give you a blow job.’

  ‘Right here and now?’

  ‘Afterwards,’ said Ellie. ‘After I’ve played the game.’

  ‘And what if it doesn’t work?’

  Ellie looked at Derek. It would be so easy. And so so cruel.

  ‘Whether it works or not,’ she said.

  Derek looked at Ellie. Here she was, one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen in his life. And she was here in his bedroom and she was prepared to give him a blow job, if he let her play one of his video games. This was heaven, wasn’t it? This was joy, joy, happy joy.

  Happy Happy Joy.

  But.

  Damn it. But.

  But this was his game. This was his Holy Grail of games and this game, owning this game, owning the very concept of owning this game, this was his. It was something of value. Something that mattered, something that he cared about. Not everyone could understand a principle like that. Most men would just say, ‘Go for the blow job, are you mad?’ But collecting games was Derek’s life. And things that mattered, things that had value, that deserved to be respected, that deserved respect, you didn’t mess with things like that, you didn’t devalue them. Not if you really cared. You didn’t sell them out.

  Derek looked once more upon Ellie. That body, those breasts, that face, that mouth.

  ‘No,’ said Derek, shaking his head. ‘I won’t do it. No.’

  Ellie looked at Derek, and then she slowly smiled. ‘Derek,’ she said. ‘You have just passed up the blowjob of a lifetime.’

  Derek sadly nodded his head. ‘Yes, I know,’ he said.

  ‘But,’ said Ellie. ‘In doing so, you have made a friend for life.’ And she put out her hand to Derek. And Derek shook that hand.

  Derek didn’t know quite why he shook it. Well, perhaps he did, but he smiled with some relief as he shook it, and shook it firmly, did he.

  So to speak.

  ‘Well,’ said Derek, when all the shaking was done. ‘That was very stressful. And I’m glad it’s over. Would you, er, care for a game of PONG?’

  ‘Oh God yes!’ said Ellie.

  ‘Then be prepared to have your arse most well and truly kicked.’

  ‘Boy, by the time I’m finished with you, you won’t be able to sit on yours for a week.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘I reckon.’

  ‘Let’s play.’

  7

  As Ellie didn’t get back to her digs until after five in the morning, she lay rather longer in bed than normally she would have done.

  She didn’t raise her silver head until half past ten, which didn’t give her much time to get showered and dressed and breakfasted before she met up with Derek at eleven.

  She had arranged to meet him in the saloon bar of a Brentford pub called The Shrunken Head.

  Starting off the day in a pub might not have seemed to many people the right and proper thing to do. But then many people wouldn’t have known, as Derek did, and as Derek told Ellie, that in the corner of the saloon bar of the Shrunken Head there was an original Space Invaders machine in fully working order.

  And, as they’d come up even in the previous night’s playing of PONG, a decider would have to be played. So why not play it out upon this very machine?

  ‘Why indeed not?’ Ellie had said.

  Ellie’s breakfast plate was puce, as was the tablecloth it sat upon. Ellie’s landlady, Mrs Gormenghast (daughter of the remarkable Zed and sister to Zardoz, the ornamental hermit, who lived all alone in a tree), stoked up the fire in the front sitter, where Ellie sat late-breakfasting. Mrs Gormenghast wore a pucely hued jumpsuit of a type which has happily gone the way of the split-knee loon pant and the Beatle wig. Not to mention the stylophone.

  As if anybody would.

  Ellie wore a simple summer frock of turquoise blue. It had no buttons to loosen, which given the fire’s heat and all the closed windows, didn’t help in the ever-warming atmosphere.

  ‘Is that fire really necessary?’ Ellie asked, as she mopped at her brow with a puce napkin.

  ‘It keeps the Devil out,’ said Mrs Gormenghast. ‘Always keep a fire in your hearth and you’ll never have to fear the Devil. My late husband used to say that. He knew what he was talking about.’

  ‘Was he a preacher man?’ Ellie asked.


  ‘No, he was a coalman.’

  ‘How do you get your fried eggs so puce?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘It’s an old Indian trick, taught to me by an old Indian woman trickster. Puce is the colour of at-oneness. Did you know that if you take every single colour there is, about an ounce of each and mix them all together in a big pot, a very big pot obviously, the end result will be puce. Explain that if you will.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Ellie. ‘But I suppose that…’

  ‘You can split light with a prism, can’t you?’ asked Mrs Gormenghast.

  ‘As far as I know,’ said Ellie.

  ‘Invisible light, it contains all the colours of the rainbow.’

  Ellie nodded.

  ‘So how come, if you mix all colours together in a pot they don’t end up as an invisible transparent liquid?’

  ‘Well…’ said Ellie.

  ‘Yes, that’s easy for you to say. Well, well, I’ll tell you why, well. Because prisms don’t tell all of the truth. Nothing tells all of the truth. Nothing and nobody. The ultimate colour of the universe is puce. Mrs Charker down the road is of the mistaken belief that it is pink. Naturally, I respect her opinions, even if I know they are wrong.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Ellie. ‘That would be Mrs Minky Charker, wife of Big Bob Charker who was in the bus crash.’

  ‘That’s her,’ said Mrs Gormenghast. ‘Her husband was carried off in The Rapture, I’ve heard. Not that it makes any sense to me, I’ve been keeping the Devil out of my fireplace and painting my house puce for years. If The Rapture’s on the go, I should have been amongst the first of the blessed to be carried off to glory.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s happening in shifts,’ said Ellie.

  ‘Probably,’ said Mrs G. ‘God knows his own business best. The world can all go to pot at a moment’s notice, my late husband used to say, but as long as you’re all stocked up in nutty slack, you’ll always have a welcome in your hearth. That man was a saint. It was a shame the way he met his end.’

  Ellie didn’t ask.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ said Mrs Gormenghast. ‘By the way, did you hear what happened to that nice Dr Druid at the cottage hospital, last night?’

  ‘No,’ said Ellie. ‘What?’

  ‘Raptured,’ said Mrs Gormenghast. ‘One moment he was giving an internal examination to a young woman suffering from verrucas, the next up and gone. I’m going to keep this fire well stoked today. I don’t want the Antichrist coming down my chimney. And I shall be keeping this jumpsuit on indefinitely now. I want to look my best when my turn to be Raptured comes.’