Contents
Cover
Title Page
Only You Can Save Mankind
Dedication
1. The Hero with a Thousand Extra Lives
2. Operate Controls to Play Game
3. Cereal Killers
4. ‘No-one Really Dies’
5. If Not You, Who Else?
6. Chicken Lumps In Space
7. The Dark Tower
8. Peace Talks, Peace Shouts
9. On Earth, No-one Can Hear You Say ‘Um’
10. In Space, No-one Is Listening Anyway
11. Humans!
12. Just Like The Real Thing
Johnny And The Dead
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Johnny And The Bomb
1. After the Bombs
2. Mrs Tachyon
3. Bags of Time
4. Men in Black
5. The Truth is Out of Here
6. The Olden Days
7. Heavy Mental
8. Trousers of Time
9. ‘Every Little Girl . . .’
10. Running Into Time
11. You Want Fries with That?
12. Up Another Leg
13. Some Other Now . . .
Also by Terry Pratchett
Copyright
Also by Terry Pratchett
The Discworld® series
Have you read them all?
1. THE COLOUR OF MAGIC
2. THE LIGHT FANTASTIC
3. EQUAL RITES
4. MORT
5. SOURCERY
6. WYRD SISTERS
7. PYRAMIDS
8. GUARDS! GUARDS!
9. ERIC
(illustrated by Josh Kirby)
10. MOVING PICTURES
11. REAPER MAN
12. WITCHES ABROAD
13. SMALL GODS
14. LORDS AND LADIES
15. MEN AT ARMS
16. SOUL MUSIC
17. INTERESTING TIMES
18. MASKERADE
19. FEET OF CLAY
20. HOGFATHER
21. JINGO
22. THE LAST CONTINENT
23. CARPE JUGULUM
24. THE FIFTH ELEPHANT
25. THE TRUTH
26. THIEF OF TIME
27. THE LAST HERO
(illustrated by Paul Kidby)
28. THE AMAZING MAURICE AND
HIS EDUCATED RODENTS (for young adults)
29. NIGHT WATCH
30. THE WEE FREE MEN (for young adults)
31. MONSTROUS REGIMENT
32. A HAT FULL OF SKY (for young adults)
33. GOING POSTAL
34. THUD!
35. WINTERSMITH (for young adults)
36. MAKING MONEY
37. UNSEEN ACADEMICALS
38. I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT (for young adults)
39. SNUFF
Other books about Discworld
THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD
THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD II: THE GLOBE
THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD III: DARWIN’S WATCH
THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD IV: JUDGEMENT DAY
(with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)
TURTLE RECALL: DISCWORLD COMPANION ... SO FAR
(with Stephen Briggs)
NANNY OGG’S COOKBOOK
(with Stephen Briggs, Tina Hannan and Paul Kidby)
THE PRATCHETT PORTFOLIO
(with Paul Kidby)
THE DISCWORLD ALMANAK
(with Bernard Pearson)
THE UNSEEN UNIVERSITY CUT-OUT BOOK
(with Alan Batley and Bernard Pearson)
WHERE’S MY COW?
(illustrated by Melvyn Grant)
THE ART OF DISCWORLD
(with Paul Kidby)
THE WIT AND WISDOM OF DISCWORLD
(compiled by Stephen Briggs)
THE FOLKLORE OF DISCWORLD
(with Jacqueline Simpson)
THE WORLD OF POO
(with the Discworld Emporium)
THE COMPLEAT ANKH-MORPORK
THE STREETS OF ANKH-MORPORK
(with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player)
THE DISCWORLD MAPP
(with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player)
A TOURIST GUIDE TO LANCRE – A DISCWORLD MAPP
(with Stephen Briggs, illustrated by Paul Kidby)
DEATH’S DOMAIN (with Paul Kidby)
A complete list of Terry Pratchett ebooks and audio books as well as other books based on the Discworld series – illustrated screenplays, graphic novels, comics and plays – can be found on
www.terrypratchett.co.uk
Shorter Writing
A BLINK OF THE SCREEN
Non-Discworld books
THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN
STRATA
THE UNADULTERATED CAT (illustrated by Gray Jolliffe)
GOOD OMENS (with Neil Gaiman)
THE LONG EARTH (with Stephen Baxter)
Non-Discworld novels for young adults
THE CARPET PEOPLE
TRUCKERS
DIGGERS
WINGS
ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND
JOHNNY AND THE DEAD
JOHNNY AND THE BOMB
NATION
DODGER
THE
JOHNNY MAXWELL
TRILOGY
ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND
JOHNNY AND THE DEAD
JOHNNY AND THE BOMB
Terry Pratchett
THE JOHNNY MAXWELL TRILOGY
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 409 09808 9
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2013
Text opyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett, 1999
First Published in Great Britain by Doubleday, 1999
Only You Can Save Mankind
First published by Doubleday, 1992
Copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett, 1992
Johnny and the Dead
First published by Doubleday, 1993
Copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett, 1993
Johnny and the Bomb
First published by Doubleday, 1996
Copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett, 1996
The right of Terry Pratchett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Yet another one
for Rhianna
I would like to thank the Meteorological Office, the Royal Mint and my old friend Bernard Pearson – who, if he doesn’t know something, always knows a man who does – for their help in the research for this book. When historical details are wrong, it’s my fault for not listening. But who knows what really happened in the other leg of the Trousers of Time?
The Mighty ScreeWeeTM EmpireTM is poised to attack Earth!
Our battleships have been destroyed in a sneak raid!
Nothing can stand between Earth and the terrible vengeance of the ScreeWeeTM!
But there is one starship left ... and out of the mists of time comes one warrior, one fighter who is the last Hope of Civilization!
YOU!
YOU are the Savior of Civilization. You are all that stands between your world and Certain Oblivion. You are the Last Hope.
Only You Can Save Mankind!TM
Action-Packed with New Features! Just like the Real Thing! Full-Color Sound and Slam-VectorTM Graphics!
Suitable for IBM PC, Atari, Amiga, Pineapple, Amastrad, Nintendo. Actual games shots taken from a version you haven’t bought.
Copyright 1992 Gobi Software, 17834 W., Agharta Drive, Bhambala, Tibet. All Rights Reserved. All company names and product names are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies.
The names ScreeWea, Empire and Mankind are trademark of Gobi Software 1982.
ONLY YOU
CAN SAVE
MANKIND
Terry Pratchett
JOHNNY
AND THE
DEAD
Terry Pratchett
JOHNNY
AND THE
BOMB
Terry Pratchett
1
The Hero With A Thousand Extra Lives
Johnny bit his lip, and concentrated.
Right. Come in quick, let a missile target itself – beep beep beep beebeebeebeeb – on the first fighter, fire the missile – thwump – empty the guns at the fighter – fplat fplat fplat fplat – hit fighter No. 2 and take out its shields with the laser – bwizzle – while the missile – pwwosh – takes out fighter No. 1, dive, switch guns, rake fighter No. 3 as it turns fplat fplat fplat – pick up fighter No. 2 in the sights again up the upcurve, let go a missile – thwump – and rake it with—
Fwit fwit fwit.
Fighter No. 4! It always came in last, but if you went after it first the others would have time to turn and you’d end up in the sights of three of them.
He’d died six times already. And it was only five o’clock.
His hands flew over the keyboard. Stars roared past as he accelerated out of the mêlée. It’d leave him short of fuel, but by the time they caught up the shields would be back and he’d be ready, and two of them would already have taken damage, and . . . here they come . . . missiles away, wow, lucky hit on the first one, die die die!, red fireball – swsssh – take shield loss while concentrating fire on the next one – swsssh – and now the last one was running, but he could outrun it, hit the accelerator – ggrrRRRSSHHH – and just keep it in his sights while he poured shot after shot into – swssh.
Ah!
The huge bulk of their capital ship was in the corner of the screen. Level 10, here we come . . . careful, careful . . . there were no more ships now, so all he had to do was keep out of its range and then sweep in and We wish to talk.
Johnny blinked at the message on the screen.
We wish to talk.
The ship roared by – eeeyooowwwnn. He reached out for the throttle key and slowed himself down, and then turned and got the big red shape in his sights again.
We wish to talk.
His finger hovered on the Fire button. Then, without really looking, he moved it over to the keyboard and pressed Pause.
Then he read the manual.
Only You Can Save Mankind, it said on the cover. ‘Full Sound and Graphics. The Ultimate Game.’
A ScreeWee heavy cruiser, it said on page 17, could be taken out with seventy-six laser shots. Once you’d cleared the fighter escort and found a handy spot where the ScreeWee’s guns couldn’t get you, it was just a matter of time.
We wish to talk.
Even with the Pause on, the message still flashed on the screen.
There was nothing in the manual about messages. Johnny riffled through the pages. It must be one of the New Features the game was Packed With.
He put down the book, put his hands on the keys and cautiously tapped out: Die, alein scum/
No! We do not wish to die! We wish to talk!
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, was it?
Wobbler Johnson, who’d given him the disc and photocopied the manual on his dad’s copier, had said that once you’d completed level 10 you got given an extra 10,000 points and the Scroll of Valour and moved on to the Arcturus Sector, where there were different ships and more of them.
Johnny wanted the Scroll of Valour.
Johnny fired the laser one more time. Swsssh. He didn’t really know why. It was just because you had the joystick and there was the Fire button and that was what it was for.
After all, there wasn’t a Don’t Fire button.
We Surrender! PLEASE!
He reached over and, very carefully, pressed the Save Game button. The computer whirred and clicked, and then was silent.
He didn’t play again the whole evening. He did his homework.
It was Geography. You had to colour in Great Britain and put a dot on the map of the world where you thought it was.
The ScreeWee captain thumped her desk with one of her forelegs.
‘What?’
The First Officer swallowed, and tried to keep her tail held at a respectful angle.
‘He just vanished again, ma’am,’ she said.
‘But did he accept?’
‘No, ma’am.’
The Captain drummed the fingers of three hands on the table. She looked slightly like a newt but mainly like an alligator.
‘But we didn’t fire on him!’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘And you sent my message?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘And every time we’ve killed him, he comes back . . .’
He caught up with Wobbler in Break.
Wobbler was the kind of boy who’s always picked last when you had to pick teams, although that was all right at the moment as the PE teacher didn’t believe in teams because they encouraged competition.
He wobbled. It was glandular, he said. He wobbled especially when he ran. Bits of Wobbler headed in various directions; it was only on average that he was running in any particular direction.
But he was good at games. They just weren’t the ones that people thought you ought to be good at. If ever there was an Inter-Schools First-One-To-Break-The-Unbreakable-Copy-Protection-on-Galactic-Thrusters, Wobbler wouldn’t just be in the team, he’d be picking the team.
‘Yo, Wobbler,’ said Johnny.
‘It’s not cool to say Yo any more,’ said Wobbler.
‘Is it rad to say cool?’ said Johnny.
‘Cool’s always cool. And no-one says rad any more, either.’
Wobbler looked around conspiratorially and then fished a package from his bag.
‘This is cool. Have a go at this.’
‘What is it?’ said Johnny.
‘I cracked Fighter Star TeraBomber,’ said Wobbler. ‘Only don’t tell anyone, right? Just type FSB. It’s not much good, really. The space bar drops the bombs, and . . . well . . . just press the keys, you’ll see what they do . . .’
‘Listen . . . you know Only You Can Save Mankind?’
‘Still playing that, are you?’
‘You didn’t, you know, do anything to it, did you? Um? Before you gave me a copy?’
‘No. It wasn’t even protected. Didn’t have to do anything except copy the manual. Why?’
‘You did play it, didn’t you?’
‘A bit.’ Wobbler only played games once. Wobbler could watch a game for a couple of minutes, and then pick up the joystick and get top score. And then never play it again.
‘Nothing . . . funny . . . happened?’
‘Like what?’ said Wobbler.
‘Like . . .’ Johnny hesitated. He could tell Wobbler, and then Wobbler would laugh, or not believe him, or say it was just some bug or something, some kind of trick. Or a virus. Wobbler had discs full of computer viruses. He didn’t do anything with them. He just collected them, like stamps or something.
He could tell Wobbler, and then somehow it wouldn’t be real.
‘Oh, you know . . . funny.’
‘Like what?’
‘Weird. Um. Lifelike, I suppose.’
‘It’s sposed to be. Just like the real thing, it says. I hope you’ve read the manual properly. My dad spent a whole coffee break copying that.’
Johnny gave a sickly grin.
‘Yes. Right. Better read it, then. Thanks for Star Fighter Pilot—’
‘TeraBomber. My dad brought me back Alabama Smith and the Jewels of Fate from the States. You can have a copy if you give me the disc back.’
‘Right,’ said Johnny.
‘It’s OK.’
‘Right,’ said Johnny.
He never had the heart to tell Wobbler that he didn’t play half the games Wobbler passed on. You couldn’t. Not if you wanted time to sleep and eat meals. But that was all right because Wobbler never asked. As far as Wobbler was concerned, computer games weren’t there for playing. They were for breaking into, rewriting so that you got extra lives or whatever, and then copying and giving away to everyone.
Basically, there were two sides to the world. There was the entire computer games software industry engaged in a tremendous effort to stamp out piracy, and there was Wobbler. Currently, Wobbler was in front.
‘Did you do my History?’ said Wobbler.
‘Here,’ said Johnny. ‘“What it was like to be a peasant during the English Civil War.” Three pages.’
‘Thanks,’ said Wobbler. ‘That was quick.’
‘Oh, in Geog last term we had to do one about What it’s like being a peasant in Bolivia. I just got rid of the llamas and put in stuff about kings having their heads chopped off. You have to bung in that kind of stuff, and then you just have to keep complaining about the weather and the crops and you can’t go wrong, in peasant essays.’
Johnny lay on his bed reading Only You Can Save Mankind.
He could just about remember the days when you could still get games where the instructions consisted of something that said, ‘Press < for left and > for right and Fire for fire.’
But now you had to read a whole little book which was all about the game. It was really the manual, but they called it ‘The Novel’.
Partly it was an anti-Wobbler thing. Someone in America or somewhere thought it was dead clever to make the game ask you little questions, like ‘What’s the first word on line 23 on page 19 of the manual?’ and then reset the machine if you didn’t answer them right, so they’d obviously never heard of Wobbler’s dad’s office’s photocopier.
So there was this book. The ScreeWee had turned up out of nowhere and bombed some planets with humans on them. Nearly all the starships had been blown up. So there was only this one left, the experimental one. It was all that stood against the ScreeWee hordes. And only you . . . that is to say John Maxwell, aged twelve, in between the time you get home from school and get something to eat and do your homework . . . can save mankind.
Nowhere did it say what you were supposed to do if the ScreeWee hordes didn’t want to fight.
He switched on the computer, and pressed the Load Game key.
There was the ship again, right in the middle of his sights.
He picked up the joystick thoughtfully.
There was an immediate message on the screen. Well, not exactly a message. More a picture. Half a dozen little egg-shaped blobs, with tails. They didn’t move.
What kind of message is that? he thought.
Perhaps there was a special message he ought to send. ‘Die, Creep’ didn’t seem to fit properly at the moment.
He typed: Whats hpaening?
Immediately a reply appeared on the screen, in yellow letters.
We surrender. Do not shoot. See, we show you pictures of our children.
He typed: Is this a trick WObbler?
It took a little while before the reply came.
Am not trick wobbler. We give in. No more war.
Johnny thought for a while, and then typed: Youre not supoosed to give ni.
Want to go home.
Johnny typed: It says in the book you blue up a lot of planets.
Lies!
Johnny stared at the screen. What he wanted to type was: No, I mean, this cant happen, youre Aliens, you cant not want to be shot at, no other game aliens have ever stopped aliening across the screen, they never said We DonT Want to Go.
And then he thought: they never had the chance. They couldn’t.
But games are a lot better now.
They never made things like the old MegaZoids seem real, with stories about them and Full-Colour Graphics.
This is probably that Virtual Reality they’re always talking about on the television.
He typed: It is only a game, after all.
What is a game?
He typed: Who ARE you?
The screen flickered. Something a bit like a newt but more like an alligator looked back at him.
I am the Captain, said the yellow letters. Do not shoot!
Johnny typed: I shoot at you and you shoto at me. That is the game.
But we die.
Johnny typed: Sometimes I die. I die a lot.
But YOU live again.
Johnny stared at the words for a moment. Then he typed: Dont you?
No. How could this be? When we die, we die. For ever.
Johnny typed desperately: No, thats not right because, in the first mission, theres three ships you have to blow up before the first planet. I@ve played it lots of times and there@s always three ships there—
Different ships.
Johnny thought for a while and then typed: What happens if I switch of tthe machine?
We do not understand the question.
This is daft, thought Johnny. It’s just a very unusual game. It’s a special mission or something.
He typed: Why should I trust you?
LOOK BEHIND YOU.
Johnny sat bolt upright in his chair. Then he let himself swivel around, very cautiously.
Of course, there was no-one there. Why should there be anyone there? It was a game.
The newt face had disappeared from the screen, leaving the familiar picture of the inside of the starfighter. And there was the radar screen—
—covered in yellow dots.
Yellow for the enemy.
Johnny picked up the joystick and turned the starfighter around. The entire ScreeWee fleet was there. Ship after ship was hanging in space behind him. Little fighters, big cruisers, massive battleships.
If they all had him in their sights, and if they fired . . .
He didn’t want to die.
Hang on, hang on. You don’t die. You just play the game again.
This was nuts. It was time to stop it.
He typed: All right what happens now?
We want to go home.
He typed: All right no problem.
You give us safe conduct.
He typed: OK yes.
The screen went blank.
And that was it? No music? No ‘Congratulations, You’ve Got the Highest Score’?
Just the little prompt, flashing on and off.
What did safe conduct mean, anyway?
2
Operate Controls To Play Game
You never said to your parents, ‘Hey, I really need a computer because that way I can play Megasteroids.’
No, you said, ‘I really need a computer because of school.’
It’s educational.
Anyway, there had to be a good side to the Trying Times everyone was going through in this house. If you hung around in your room and generally kept your head down, stuff like computers sort of happened. It made everyone feel better.
And it was quite useful for school sometimes. Johnny had written ‘What it felt like to be different sorts of peasants’ on it, and printed them out on the printer, although he had to rewrite them in his handwriting because although the school taught Keyboard Skills and New Technology you got into trouble if you used keyboard skills and new technology actually to do anything.
Funnily enough, it wasn’t much good for maths. He’d always had trouble with algebra, because they wouldn’t let you get away with ‘What it feels like to be x2’. But he had an arrangement with Bigmac about that, because Bigmac got the same feeling when he looked at an essay project as Johnny did when he was faced with a quadratic equation. Anyway, it didn’t matter that much. If you kept your head down, they were generally so grateful that you were not, e.g., causing policemen to come to the school, or actually nailing a teacher to anything, that you got left alone.
But mainly the computer was good for games. If you turned the volume control up, you didn’t have to hear the shouting.
The Scree Wee mother ship was in uproar. There was still a haze of smoke in the air from the last bombardment, and indistinct figures pattered back and forth, trying to fix things up well enough to survive the journey.
The Captain sat back in her chair on the huge, shadowy bridge. She was yellow under the eyes, a sure sign of lack of sleep. So much to be done . . . half the fighters were damaged, and the main ships were in none too good condition, and there was hardly any room and certainly no food for all the survivors they were taking on board.
She looked up. There was the Gunnery Officer.
‘This is not a wise move,’ he said.
‘It is the only one I have,’ said the Captain wearily.
‘No! We must fight on!’
‘And then we die,’ said the Captain. ‘We fight, and then we die. That’s how it goes.’
‘Then we die gloriously!’
‘There’s an important word in that sentence,’ said the Captain. ‘And it’s not the word “gloriously”.’
The Gunnery Officer went light green with rage.
‘He’s attacked hundreds of our ships!’
‘And then he stopped.’
‘None of the others have,’ said the Gunnery Officer. ‘They’re humans! You can’t trust a human. They shoot everything.’
The Captain rested her snout on one hand.
‘He doesn’t,’ she said. ‘He listened. He talked. None of the others did. He may be the One.’
The Gunnery Officer placed his upper two front hands on the desk and glared at her.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve talked to the other officers. I don’t believe in legends. When the full enormity of what you have done is understood, you will be relieved of your command!’
She turned tired eyes towards him.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘But right now, I am Captain. I am responsible. Do you understand? Have you got the faintest idea of what that means? Now . . . go!’
He didn’t like it, but he couldn’t disobey. I can have him shot, she thought. It’d be a good idea. Bound to save trouble later on. It’ll be No. 235 on the list of Things to Do . . .
She turned back to continue staring at the stars outside, on the huge screen that filled one wall.
The enemy ship still hung there.
What kind of person is it? she thought. Despicable though they are, there’s so few of them. But they keep coming back! What’s their secret?
But you can be sure of one thing. They surely only send their bravest and their best.
The advantage of the Trying Times was that helping yourself from the fridge was OK. There didn’t seem to be any proper mealtimes any more in any case. Or any real cooking.
Johnny made himself spaghetti and baked beans. There was no sound from the living-room, although the TV was on.
Then he watched a bit of television in his room. He’d been given the old one when they got the new one. It wasn’t very big and you had to get up and walk over to it every time you wanted to change channels or the volume or whatever, but these were Trying Times.
There was a film on the News showing some missiles streaking over some city. It was quite good.
Then he went to bed.
He was not entirely surprised to wake up at the controls of a starfighter.
It had been like that with Captain Zoom. You couldn’t get it out of your head. After an evening’s concentrated playing you were climbing ladders and dodging laser-zap bolts all night.
It was a pretty good dream, even so. He could feel the seat under him. And the cabin smelled of hot oil and overheated plastic and unwashed people.
It looked pretty much like the one he saw on the screen every evening, except that there was a thin film of grease and dirt over everything. But there was the radar screen, and the weapons console, and the joystick . . .
Hey, much better than the computer! The cabin was full of noises – the click and whirr of fans, the hum and buzz of instruments.
And better graphics. You get much better graphics in your dreams.
The ScreeWee fleet hung in the ai – hung in space in front of him.
Wow!
Although dreams ought to be a bit more exciting. You got chased in dreams. Things happened to you. Sitting in the cockpit of a starfighter bristling with weapons was fun, but things ought to happen . . .
He wondered if he should launch a missile or something . . . No, hang on, they’d surrendered. And there was that thing about safe conduct.
His hands wandered over the switches in front of him. They were a bit different from the computer keyboard, but this one –
‘Are you receiving me?’
The face of the Captain appeared on the communications screen.
‘Yes?’ said Johnny.
‘We are ready.’
‘Ready?’ said Johnny. ‘What for?’
‘Lead the way,’ said the Captain. The voice came out of a grille beside the screen. It must be being translated by something, Johnny thought. I shouldn’t think giant newts speak English.
‘Where to?’ he said. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Earth.’
‘Earth? Hang on! That’s where I live! People can get into serious trouble showing huge alien fleets where they live!’
The grille hummed and buzzed for a while. Then the Captain said: ‘Apology. That is a direct translation. We call the planet that is our home, “Earth”. When I speak in Scree Wee, your computer finds the word in your language that means the same thing. The actual word in ScreeWee sounds like . . .’ There was a noise like someone taking their foot out of a wet cowpat. ‘I will show our home to you.’
A red circle suddenly developed on the navigation screen.
Johnny knew about that. You just moved a green circle over it, the computer went binkabinkabinka, and you’d set your course.
They’ve shown me where they live.
The thought sunk in. They trust me.
As he moved his fighter forwards, the entire alien fleet pulled in behind him. They eclipsed the stars.
The cabin hummed and buzzed quietly to itself.
Well, at least it didn’t look too hard . . .
A green dot appeared ahead of him.
He watched it get bigger, and recognized the shape of a starfighter, just like his.
But it was a little hard to make it out.
This was because it was half-hidden by laser bolts.
It was firing at him as it came.
And it was travelling so fast it was very nearly catching up with its own fire.
Johnny jerked the joystick and his ship rolled out of the way as the . . . the enemy starfighter roared past and barrelled on towards the ScreeWee ships.
The whole sky full of ScreeWee ships.
Which had surrendered to him.
But people out there were still playing the game.
‘No! Listen to me! They’re not fighting any more!’ The starfighter turned in a wide curve and headed directly for the command ship. Johnny saw it launch a missile. Someone sitting at a keyboard somewhere had launched a missile.
‘Listen! You’ve got to stop!’
It’s not listening to me, he thought. You don’t listen to the enemy. The enemy’s there to be shot at. That’s why it’s the enemy. That’s what the enemy’s for.
He swung around to follow the starship, which had slowed down. It was pouring shot after shot into the command ship . . .
. . . which wasn’t firing back.
Johnny stared in horror.
The ship rocked under the hail of fire. The Gunnery Officer crawled across the shaking floor and pulled himself up beside the Captain’s chair.
‘Fool! Fool! I told you this would happen! I demand that we return fire!’
The Captain was watching the Chosen One’s ship. It hadn’t moved.
‘No,’ she said. ‘We have to give him a chance. We must not fire on human ships.’
‘A chance? How much of a chance do we have? I shall give the order to—’
The Captain moved very fast. When her hand stopped she was holding a gun very close to the Gunnery Officer’s head. It was really only a ceremonial weapon; normally ScreeWee fought only with their claws. But its shape said very clearly that things came out of the hole in the front end with the very definite purpose of travelling fast through the air and then killing people.
‘No,’ she said.
The Gunnery Officer’s face went blue, a sure sign of terror. But he had enough courage left to say: ‘You would not dare fire!’
It’s a game, thought Johnny. There’s not a real person in that ship. It’s someone playing a game. It’s all a game. It’s just things happening on a screen somewhere.
No.
I mean, yes.
But . . .
. . . at the same time . . .
. . . it’s all happening here . . .
His own ship leapt forward.
It was easy. It was so easy. Just line up circles on the screen, binkabinkabinka, and then press the Fire button until every weapon on the ship was empty. He’d done it many times before.
The invader hadn’t even seen him. It launched some missiles – and then blew up in an impressive display of graphics.
That’s all it is, Johnny told himself. Just things on a screen. It’s not real. There’s no arms and feet spinning away through the wreckage. It’s all a game.
The missiles arrived . . .
The whole cockpit went blinding white.
He was aware, just for a moment, of cold space around him, with things in it . . .
A bookcase. A chair. A bed.
He was sitting in front of the computer. The screen was blank. He was holding the joystick so hard that he had to concentrate to let go of it.
The clock by his bed said 6:3 ≡, because it was broken., But it meant he’d have to get up in another hour or so.
He sat with his quilt around him watching the television until the alarm went off.
There were some more pictures of missiles and bullets streaking over a city. They looked pretty much the same as the ones he’d seen last night, but were probably back by popular demand.
He felt sick.
Yo-less could help, Johnny decided.
He normally hung out with Wobbler and Bigmac on the bit of wall behind the school library. They weren’t exactly a gang. If you take a big bag of crisps and shake them up, all the little bits end up in one corner.
Yo-less was called Yo-less because he never said ‘Yo’. He’d given up objecting to the name by now. At least it was better than Nearly Crucial, which was the last nickname, and MC Spanner, which was the one before that. Johnny was the official nickname generator.
Yo-less said he’d never said ‘crucial’, either. He pointed out that Johnny was white and never said, ‘YerWhat? YerWhat? YerWhat?’ or ‘Ars-nal! Ars-nal!’ and anyway, you shouldn’t make jokes about racial stereotyping.
Johnny didn’t go into too much detail. He just talked about the dream, and not about the messages on the screen. Yo-less listened carefully. Yo-less listened to everything carefully. It worried teachers, the way he listened carefully to everything they said. They always suspected he was trying to catch them out.
He said, ‘What you’ve got here is a projection of a psychological conflict. That’s all. Want a cheese ring?’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s just crunchy cheesy-flavoured—’
‘I mean the other thing you said.’
Yo-less passed the packet on to Bigmac.
‘Well . . . your mum and dad are splitting up, right? Well-known fact.’
‘Could be. It’s a bit of a trying time,’ said Johnny.
‘O-kay. And there’s nothing you can do about it.’
‘Shouldn’t think so,’ said Johnny.
‘And this definitely affects you,’ said Yo-less.
‘I suppose so,’ said Johnny cautiously. ‘I know I have to do a lot of my own cooking.’
‘Right. So you project your . . . um . . . suppressed emotions on to a computer game. Happens all the time,’ said Yo-less, whose mother was a nurse, and who wanted to be a doctor if he grew up. ‘You can’t solve the real problems, so you turn them into problems you can solve. Like . . . if this was thirty years ago, you’d probably dream about fighting dragons or something. It’s a projected fantasy.’
‘Saving hundreds of intelligent newts doesn’t sound very easy to solve,’ said Johnny.
‘Dunno,’ said Bigmac, happily. ‘Ratatatat-blam! No more problem.’ Bigmac wore large boots and camouflage trousers all the time. You could spot him a mile off by his camouflage trousers.
‘The thing is,’ said Yo-less, ‘it’s not real. Real’s real. But stuff on a screen isn’t.’
‘I’ve cracked Stellar Smashers,’ said Wobbler. ‘You can have that if you want. Everyone says it’s a lot better.’
‘No-oo,’ said Johnny, ‘I think I’ll stick with this one for a while. See if I can get to level twenty-one.’
‘If you get to level twenty-one and blow up the whole fleet you get a special number on the screen, and if you write off to Gobi Software you get a five pound token,’ said Wobbler. ‘It was in Computer Weekly.’
Johnny thought about the Captain.
‘A whole five pounds?’ he said. ‘Gosh.’
It was Games in the afternoon. Bigmac was the only one who played. He’d never been keen until they’d introduced hockey. You got a club to hit people, he said.
Yo-less didn’t do sport because of intellectual incompatibility. Wobbler didn’t do sport because the sports master had asked him not to. Johnny didn’t do sports because he had a permanent note, and no-one cared much anyway, so he went home early and spent the afternoon reading the manual.
He didn’t touch the computer before tea.
There was an extended News, which meant that Cobbers was postponed. There were the same pictures of missiles streaking across a city that he’d seen the night before, except that now there were more journalists in sand-coloured shirts with lots of pockets talking excitedly about them.
He heard his mother downstairs complain about Cobbers, and by the sound of the raised voices that started Trying Times again.
There was some History homework about Christopher Columbus. He looked him up in the encyclopedia and copied out four hundred words, which usually worked. He drew a picture of Columbus as well, and coloured it in.
After a while he realized that he was putting off switching the computer on. It came to something, he thought, when you did school work rather than play games . . .
It wouldn’t hurt to at least have a game of Pac-Man or something. Trouble was, the ghosts would probably stay in the middle of the screen and refuse to come out and be eaten. He didn’t think he could cope with that. He’d got enough to worry about as it was.
On top of it all, his father came upstairs to be fatherly. This happened about once a fortnight. There didn’t seem to be any way of stopping it. You had to put up with twenty minutes of being asked about how you were getting on at school, and had you really thought about what you wanted to be when you grew up.
The thing to do was not encourage things, but as politely as possible.
His father sat on the edge of the bed and looked around the room as though he’d never seen it before.
After the normal questions about teachers Johnny hadn’t had since the first year, his father stared at nothing much for a while and then said, ‘Things have been a bit tricky lately. I expect you’ve noticed.’
‘No.’
‘It’s been a bit tricky at work. Not a good time to start a new business.’
‘Yes.’
‘Everything all right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nothing you want to talk about?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
His father looked around the room again. Then he said, ‘Remember last year, when we all went down to Falmouth for the week?’
‘Yes.’
‘You enjoyed that, didn’t you?’
He’d got sunburnt and twisted his ankle on some rocks and he had to get up at 8.30 every morning, even though it was supposed to be a holiday. And the only TV in the hotel was in front of some old woman who never let go of the remote-control.
‘Yes.’
‘We ought to go again.’
His father was staring at him.
‘Yes,’ said Johnny. ‘That would be nice.’
‘How’re you getting on with Space Invaders?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Space Invaders. On the computer.’
Johnny turned to look at the blank screen.
‘What’re Space Invaders?’ he said.
‘Isn’t that what they’re called any more? Space Invaders? You used to get them in pubs and things, oh, before you were born. Rows of spiky triangular green aliens with six legs kept on coming down the screen and we had to shoot them.’
Johnny gave this some thought. ‘What happened when you’d shot them all, then?’
‘Oh, you got some more.’ His father stood up. ‘I expect it’s all more complicated now, though.’
‘Yes.’
‘Done your homework, have you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was it?’
‘History. Had to write about Christopher Columbus.’
‘Hmm? You could put in that he didn’t set out to discover America. He was really looking for Asia and found America by accident.’
‘Yes. It says that in the encyclopedia.’
‘Glad to see you’re using it.’
‘Yes. It’s very interesting.’
‘Good. Right. Right, then. Well, I’m going to have another look at those accounts . . .’
‘Right.’
‘If there’s anything you want to talk about, you know . . .’
‘All right.’
Johnny waited until he heard the living-room door shut again. He wondered if he ought to have asked where the instruction manual for the dishwasher was.
He switched on the computer.
After a while, the screen for Only You Can Save Mankind came on. He watched the introductory bit moodily, and then picked up the joystick.
There weren’t any aliens.
For a little while he thought he’d done something wrong. He started the game again.
There were still no aliens. All there was, was the blackness of space, sprinkled with a few twinkling stars.
He flew around until he was out of fuel.
No ScreeWee, no dots on the radar screen. No game.
They’d gone.
3
Cereal Killers
There was more news these days than normal. Half the time the TV was showing pictures of tanks and maps of deserts with green and red arrows all over them, while in the corner of the screen would be a photo of a journalist with a phone to his ear, talking in a crackly voice.
It crackled in the background while Johnny phoned up Wobbler.
‘Yes?’
‘Can I speak to Wob . . . to Stephen, please?’
Mutter, clonk, bump, scuffle.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s me, Wobbler.’
‘Yes?’
‘Have you had a look at Only You Can Save Mankind lately?’
‘No. Hey, listen, I’ve found a way to—’
‘Could you have a go with it right now, please?’
Pause.
‘You all right?’
‘What?’
‘You sound a bit weird.’
‘Look, go and have a go with the game, will you?’
It was an hour before Wobbler phoned back. Johnny waited on the stairs.
‘Can I speak—’
‘It’s me.’
‘There’s no aliens, right?’
‘Yes!’
‘Probably something built into the game. You can do that, you know. A kind of time bomb thing. Maybe it’s programmed to make all the aliens vanish on a certain date.’
‘What for?’
‘Make things more interesting, I expect. Probably Gobi Software will be putting adverts in the computer papers about it. You all right? Your voice sounds a bit squeaky.’
‘No problem.’
‘You coming down to the mall tomorrow?’
‘Yeah.’
‘See you, then. Chow.’
Johnny stared at the dead phone. Of course, there were things like that on computers. There’d been something in the papers about it. A Friday the 13th virus, or something. Something in the program kept an eye on the date, and when it was Friday the 13th it was supposed to do something nasty to computers all over the country.
There had been stories about Evil Computer Hackers Menacing Society, and Wobbler had come to school in home-made dark glasses for a week.
Johnny went back and watched the screen for a while. Stars occasionally went past.
Wobbler had written an actual computer game like this once. It was called Journey to Alpha Centauri. It was a screen with some dots on it. Because, he said, it happened in real time, which no-one had ever heard of until computers. He’d seen on TV that it took three thousand years to get to Alpha Centauri. He had written it so that if anyone kept their computer on for three thousand years, they’d be rewarded by a little dot appearing in the middle of the screen, and then a message saying, ‘Welcome to Alpha Centauri. Now go home.’
Johnny watched the screen for a bit longer. Once or twice he nudged the joystick, to go on a different course. It didn’t make much difference. Space looked the same from every direction.
‘Hello? Anybody there?’ he whispered.
He watched some television before he went to bed. There were some more missiles, and someone going on about some other missiles which were supposed to knock down the first type of missile.
The fleet travelled in the shape of a giant cone, hundreds of miles long. The Captain looked back at it. There were scores of mother ships, hundreds of fighters. More and more kept joining them as news of the surrender spread.
The Chosen One’s ship flew a little way ahead of the fleet. It wasn’t answering messages.
But no-one was shooting at them. There hadn’t been a human ship visible for hours. Perhaps, the Captain thought, it’s really working. We’re leaving them behind . . .
Johnny woke up in the game.
It was hard to sleep in the starship. The seat started out as the most comfortable thing in the whole world, but it was amazing how uncomfortable it became after a few hours. And the lavatory was a complicated arrangement of tubes and trapdoors and it wasn’t, he was beginning to notice, entirely smellproof.
That’s what the computer games couldn’t give you: the smell of space. It had its own kind of smell, like a machine’s armpit. You didn’t get dirty, because there was no dirt, but there was a sort of grimy cleanliness about everything.
The radar went ping.
After a while, he could see a dot ahead of him. It wasn’t moving much, and it certainly wasn’t firing.
He left the fleet and went to investigate.
It was a huge ship. Or, at least, it had been once. Quite a lot of it had been melted off.
It drifted along, absolutely dead, tumbling very gently. It was green, and vaguely triangular, except for six legs, or possibly arms. Three of them were broken stubs. It looked like a cross between a spider and an octopus, designed by a computer and made out of hundreds of cubes, bolted together.
As the giant hulk turned he could see huge gashes in it, with melted edges. There was a suggestion of floors inside.
He switched on the radio.
‘Captain?’
‘Yes?’
‘Can you see this thing here? What is it?’
‘We find them sometimes. We think they belonged to an ancient race, now extinct. We don’t know what they called themselves, or where they came from. The ships are very crude.’
The dead ship turned slowly. There was another long burn down the other side.
‘I think they were called Space Invaders,’ said Johnny.
‘The human name for them?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought so.’
Johnny was glad he couldn’t see the Captain’s face.
He thought: No-one knows where they came from, or even what they called themselves. And now no-one ever will.
The radar went ping again.
There was a human ship heading towards the fleet, at high speed.
This time, he didn’t hesitate.
The point was, the ScreeWee weren’t very good at fighting. After the first few games it was quite easy to beat them. They couldn’t seem to get the hang of it. They didn’t know how to be sneaky, or when to dodge.
It was the same with all of them, come to think of it. Johnny had played lots of games with words like ‘Space’ and ‘Battle’ and ‘Cosmic’ in the titles, and all the aliens were the sort you could beat after a few weeks’ playing.
This player didn’t stand a chance against a real human.
You got six missiles. Johnny had two streaking away before the enemy was much larger than a dot. Then he just kept his finger on the Fire button until there was nothing left to fire.
A spreading cloud of wreckage, and that was it.
It wasn’t as if anyone would die, after all. Whoever had been in there would just have to start the game again.
It felt real, but that was just the dream . . .
Dreams always felt real.
He turned his attention to the thing by the control chair. It had a nozzle which filled a paper cup with something like thin vegetable soup, and a slot which pushed out very large plastic bags containing very small things like sandwiches. The bags had to be big to get all the list of additives on. They contained absolutely everything necessary to keep a star warrior healthy. Not happy, but healthy . . .
He’d taken one mouthful when something slammed into the ship. A red glare filled the cabin; alarms started to blare.
He looked up in time to see a ship curving away for another run.
He hadn’t even glanced at the radar.
He’d been eating his tea!
He spun the ship. The multi-vitamin sandwich flew around into the wiring somewhere.
It was coming back to get him. He prodded furiously at the control panel.
Hang on . . .
What was the worst that could happen to him?
He could wake up in bed.
He took his time. He dodged. He weaved. Another missile hit the ship. As the attacker roared past, Johnny fired, with everything.
Another cloud of wreckage.
No problem.
But it must have fired a missile just before he got it. There was another red flash. The lights went out. The ship jumped. His head bounced off the seatback and banged on to the control panel.
He opened his eyes.
Right. And you wake up back in your bedroom.
A light winked at him.
There was something beeping.
Bound to be the alarm clock. That’s how dreams end . . .
He lifted his head. The flashing light was oblong. He tried to focus.
There were shapes there.
But they weren’t saying 6:3 ≡.
They were spelling out ‘AIR LEAK’, and behind the insistent beeping was a terrible hissing sound.
No, no, he thought. This doesn’t happen.
He pushed himself up. There were lots of red lights. He pressed some buttons hurriedly, but this had no effect at all except to make some more lights go red.
He didn’t know much about the controls of a starship, other than fast, slow, left, right and fire, but there were whole rows of flashing alarms which suggested that a lot of things he didn’t know about were going wrong. He stared at some red letters which said ‘SECONDARY PUMPS FAILURE’. He didn’t know what the secondary pumps were, either, but he wished, he really wished, they hadn’t failed.
His head ached. He reached up, and there was real blood on his hand. And he knew that he was going to die. Really die.
No, he thought. Please! I’m John Maxwell. Please! I’m twelve. I’m not dying in a spaceshi –
The beeping got louder.
He looked at the sign again.
It was flashing 6:3 ≡.
About time, he thought, as he passed out . . .
And woke up.
He was at the computer again. It wasn’t switched on, and he was freezing cold.
He had a headache, but a tentative feel said there was no blood. It was just a headache.
He stared into the dark black screen, and wondered what it felt like to be a Scree Wee.
It felt like that, except that you didn’t wake up. It was always AIR LEAK, or *Alert* Alert* Alert* beeping on and off, and then perhaps the freezing cold of space, and then nothing.
He had breakfast.
You got a free alien in every pack of sugar-glazed Snappiflakes. It was a new thing. Or an old thing, being tried again.
The one that ended up in his bowl was orange and had three eyes and four arms. And it was holding a ray gun in each hand.
His father hadn’t got up. His mother was watching the little television in the kitchen, where a very large man disguised as an entire desert was pointing to a lot of red and blue arrows on a map.
He went down to Neil Armstrong Mall.
He took the plastic alien with him. That’d be the way to invade a planet. One alien in every box! Wait until they were in every cupboard in the country, send out the signal and bazaam!
Cereal killers!
Maybe on some other planet somewhere you got a free human in every packet of ammonia-coated Snappicrystals. Hey, zorks! Collect the Whole Set! And there’d be all these little plastic people. Holding guns, of course. You just had to walk down the street to see that, of course, everyone had a gun.
He looked out of the bus window.
That was it, really. No-one would bother to put plastic aliens inside the plastic cereal if they were just, you know, doing everyday things. Holding the Cosmiczippo RayTM hedge clippers! Getting on the MegadeathTM bus! Hanging out at the Star Thruster Mall!
The trouble with all the aliens he’d seen was that they either wanted to eat you or play music at you until you became better people. You never got the sort that just wanted to do something ordinary like borrow the lawn mower.
anyway
