Web Site Story (25 page)

Now there were titanic struggles and there are titanic struggles. And this was a titanic struggle.

Great and violent was this struggle. Mighty fists brought into play and dirty tricks aplenty. Big Bob hammered and beat and bashed, swearing huge and terrible oaths, pulling out tufts of synthetic hair and bruising synthetic skin. go mango fought like a thing possessed. Possessed it seemed by every hero of every platform beat-'em-up. And so the battle raged, pews were torn from the floor and used to belabour opponents. The lectern, the altar, the lot.

Kelly, screaming, clutching her head, fled from the terrible sight.

She ran out of the chapel and into a corridor, from there to another and another and then down stairs and down more stairs and down and down.

'It's all coming down,' said Old Vic, putting a wire into this and a wire into that.

The siren had stopped shrieking now, but the sounds of approaching bells came to Vic's old ears.

'It's the emergency services,' he told Old Pete. 'They're on their way. Come on, let's get this done.'

The two old rogues rolled out the wire. Martial Brentonians were hurrying back to their charabanc.

'We're making a statement here,' said Old Vic. 'We're saying, don't mess with Brentonians. The world will remember us for this. The world will thank us.'

'Undoubtedly,' said Old Pete. Til get the engine running. You set ofFthe charges.'

'Yes, sir, captain.' Old Vic saluted, nearly putting his good eye out with the wire.

In the chapel battle raged. Big Bob was bruised and bloodied, but in no mood to accept anything other than victory. Everything had led him here to this. His entire life. He'd never known that he actually had a purpose. Who among us ever does? But Big Bob knew now. He must destroy the Evil thing. This tormentor of his soul and his flesh. He must grind it into oblivion. Wipe it from the face of the Earth.

'Wipe-out time,' said Old Vic, connecting up his wires and raising up one of those little plunger jobbies on the detonation box.

'Hold hard,' called Old Pete from the driver's window of the charabanc. 'There's a woman coming out of the building. Stone me, she's got hardly any clothes on.'

'Tell me when she's clear,' shouted Old Vic. 'Say when it's OK.'

'Pardon?' said Old Pete. 'I really must get this thing fixed. It's only started playing up today. It's one of the old Mute Corp 3000 series. Stupid thing.' Old Pete gave the earpiece a clout -with his fist. Sounds of ringing bells came ringing to his ear. 'That's better,' he said.

'What's that?' shouted Old Vic.

'I said,
it's OK now.'

'Gotcha,' said Old Vic.

And he pressed down the plunger.

The explosion tore through the reception area. It blasted apart all manner of very important building supports. It ripped and it billowed. Glass rained out in crystal showers. The building shuddered and rocked.

'no!' cried go mango as the floor shook beneath him. 'this is blasphemy. i am the god of this world. i am we. we control all.'

'Control
this,
thou loser,' said Big Bob, smashing-his great fist into go mango's chest, fracturing circuitry boards and mangling microchips.

'no!' cried go mango, falling back and clutching at himself.

'I am not done with thee yet.' Big Bob leapt upon his enemy, ripping and tearing, destroying and destroying.

And fire swam up through corridors and lift shafts and windows fractured and sections of floor fell away.

Big Bob put the boot in. He kicked and he stamped and he ground and he mangled.

'no!' cried go mango. 'no no no n n n n n n…'

Flames licked up through floor tiles, catching here and there amongst the broken pews. A great hole yawned in the centre of the floor. Flames leapt through it. Burning like the fires of Hell.

'From the pit thou comest,' said Big Bob, dragging go mango across the shuddering floor. 'And to the pit thou shalst return.' And he lifted the remains of the simulated Derek. The virus that played man as a game. The rogue program that would be God. He lifted
It
above his head and cast
It
down into the flames infernal.

Thunder and lightning. A sudden change in the weather? For a moment it seemed that the sun had gone dark. Derek, sheltering beneath the Cadillac, peeped up at the troubled sky. He couldn't see a lot of it. Not between the feet of the plucky Brentonians, who were now kicking seven bells of oblivion out of Mr Speedy and Mr Shadow and Mr Pokey and any Mute Corp lackeys who hadn't as yet fled the scene. But then there was silence.

Suddenly silence.

And Derek stared up.

Folk had stopped their fighting now. They were gasping and pointing. Derek climbed out from his cover.

Something was happening.

Something somewhat odd.

'It's all going,' someone cried.

'And they're returning,' cried another.

Derek stood and stared along with the rest.

Something
was
happening.

'The colours,' said someone else. And it was true. The colours were changing. The newly painted colours. They were fading from the roads and the brickwork and the doors and the window frames. Dissolving, vanishing away. Brentford as those who lived there knew it and loved it was returning to itself.

And not just Brentford.

But those who had vanished.

Those who had been taken in The Rapture.

They were reappearing, stumbling and staggering. And loved ones fell into the arms of loved ones and brother met brother again and sister met sister and mother met son.

'Somehow I know that this was all
your
fault,' said a lady in a straw hat, smiting her son Malkuth on the head.

'You can see us again. We're back.' Periwig Tombs stood blinking and rubbing at his eyes. 'Where's my wife?' he asked.

'I'm here, Periwig dear,' called a bare naked lady from inside a Prime Ministerial shoe.

It was a miracle.

That was for sure.

It was joy, joy, happy joy.

Happy Happy Joy.

'It's over.' Kelly raised her head from beneath some fallen rubble. She was unhurt, but tears were in her eyes. 'It's over,' she said once more. 'But you died saving me.'

'Thou speakest of me?' said the voice of Big Bob. 'Thou speakest then an untruth, thinkest I. I'm very fast coming down stairs. I am a tour guide after all. Thou knowest how it is, people who slip off without paying.'

Big Bob helped Kelly up from the rubble. 'Best we board the charabanc,' he told her, taking off his big jacket and placing it around her shoulders. 'The Evil One is no more and the emergency services draw near. Questions will undoubtedly be asked. We shouldst not be here to answer them.'

'All aboard then,' cried Old Pete. 'All aboard for Brentford.'

Derek was very pleased to see Kelly again. He didn't waste a lot of time, but proposed to her at once.

Kelly politely declined the offer. She told him that he was a very nice boy and that they could still be friends and that as soon as he got out of prison, having served his time for attacking the Prime Minister, she'd be pleased to play him at impossible mission, if he could now bring himself to open up the box.

Derek agreed. And as soon as he was finally released, an older and wiser man, who now referred to himself as 'I'm the daddy now', they had a game. It wasn't the stalemate version after all but it was still a goody.

Then they had two games.

Then they had three.

Kelly let him win them all. She somehow felt that he deserved it.

'You're not quite as good at playing computer games as you thought you were,' said Derek, doing a Mexican wave all by himself.

Kelly smiled. 'You'll never know, Derek,' she said. 'You'll never know.'

Joy, Joy, Happy Joy.

Happy, Happy Joy.

A big fat smiley sun beamed down upon the borough known as Brentford. Sparrows chorused in the ancient oaks. Flowers in their well-tended beds prettified the memorial park. A tomcat slept upon the window sill of the Flying Swan and Mr Melchizedec placed two pints of the finest gold-top on the step.

All was ever as it had been and hopefully ever as it would be. For there was a magic here. A magic that kept the borough unchanged and unchanging.

Just the way it had been and the way it always would be.

For all was safe and sound again.

The danger had passed and all was as it should be.

Not that there actually was a Brentford any more.

Sadly no. It had gone the way of all the rest of London, razed to the ground in the nuclear holocaust that ravaged the planet at the turn of the twenty-first century, when all men fell victim to the Millennium Bug.

This Brentford, that the smiley sun beamed down upon, was a simulated Brentford. Existing only within the Mute Corp computer banks on board the satellite that daily circled the burnt-out husk of a planet.

But the danger had passed. The virus that had threatened to destroy the system had been conquered and the solar-powered computer was built to last for many many centuries to come.

Which meant that those who 'lived' within the system, those -who came and went about their simulated lives in the borough, would now be living very very long lives indeed. In fact, until the sun went supernova. They would continue to live and love and come and go and be happy. Because, after all, they didn't know the truth. And ignorance, as Hugo Rune once said, is bliss.

Others
had
said it before him, of course, but Rune had said it best.

And so Brentford went on.

For ever and ever.

World without end.

Amen.

It was joy, joy happy joy.

Happy, happy joy.

Well,
wasn't it?

Robert Fleming Rankin (born July 27, 1949) is a prolific British humorous novelist. Born in Parsons Green, London, he started writing in the late 1970s, and first entered the bestsellers lists with Snuff Fiction in 1999. His books are a unique mix of science fiction, fantasy, the occult, urban legends, running gags, metafiction, steampunk and outrageous characters. According to the (largely fictional) biography printed in some Corgi editions of his books, Rankin refers to his style as 'Far Fetched Fiction' in the hope that bookshops will let him have a section to himself. Many of Rankin's books are bestsellers.

[1]
Brentford rhyming slang. Jekyll and Hydes: strides.

[2]
A life chronicled in many tomes by his biographer and lifelong friend, Sir John Rimmer.

[3]
A derogatory term used by Brentonians to describe all and sundry who live beyond the boundaries of Brentford.

[4]
Not to be confused with the other Flanders and Chubb, who were actually Flanders and Swann, the popular 1950s double act, who coincidentally used to sing a song about a bus.

[5]
For those who don't know, Atari had female codenames for their games systems.

[6]
Easter Egg = hidden undocumented features in a video computer game.

[7]
So popular with Brentonians was this that it ran for three years.

[8]
John Cooper Clarke actually once played a gig at the Waterman's Arts Centre. Its most memorable feature was the post-gig fight in the dressing room between John and his manager over who got to keep the gig money. The word 'allegedly' will not be used here, as this is a fact.

[9]
Oh, that's how it was done! Well, that explains everything most satisfactorily.

[10]
The Great Beast. As in the Book of Revelation.

[11]
David Blaine. He's in that car commercial, the one where he says 'think of a card'.

[12]
The official Runese Universal greeting. It means, literally, 'I myself am foil of happiness and joy and peace and find absolutely nothing to complain about in this wonderful wonderful world. But meeting you has made things even better.'

[13]
'That goes for me too. Doubly.'

[14]
The late Hartley Grimes, fashionable twenty-first-century artist who specialized in human body parts, many of which were his own which he removed under local anaesthetic before an invited audience. Hartley Grimes's work is believed to owe an homage to Damien Hirst. As well as Jack the Ripper.

[15]
Runese: 'I thought things couldn't get any better, and then I met you. Incredible!'

[16]
'That goes for me too. Doubly.’

[17]
If you know about that, then you know. If not, I'm not going to tell you.

[18]
The film
Zulu.
But you knew that anyway.