Talk about taking a chance. Benny pushed through the crowd, moving slowly forward until only one nasty securiblurb was looking directly into his face, sting extended.
It recognized him. Or rather, what he carried, and left him alone.
But Benny would not be left alone; to the blurb he raised his fist and shouted: ‘I’m not doing it! Do you hear me, Mister Million? The game’s over.’
Have you ever heard a thousand blurbflies laugh? (As Jazir, in his Rusholme bed, raised up suddenly and flung back the sheets.) Have you ever heard a thousand blurbflies scream? (As Jazir saw, through a thousand eyes, all that was about to take place, and placed his hands over his eyes as though not to see.) The blurbs were moving in even as Benny made his decision, there was only one way, taking a long-bladed kitchen knife from under his coat, bringing it up quickly, and with no thought at all in his mind, only pure emptiness and the total need to be killed, turning the Joker upon itself, hearing it scream inside and then plunging the blade (as Jazir screamed at a million miles per hour) straight, straight into his black, tender-hearted, waiting chest…
Play to lose
What was she looking for, or even expecting? If only Jaz had come along. (Stop thinking like that.) Some sign of a cover-up, perhaps? The downstairs rooms had been clean but untidy, or else tidy and dirty, in the correct student style. Nothing out of place, nothing in its place. With torchlight only, Daisy had searched everywhere for evidence of a disturbance (as Crawl had called it). The kitchen, the living room, back room. All clear, all disturbed, slightly. Now she was upstairs, looking in the bathroom (clean, dirty), first bedroom (clean, but unlived in), main bedroom…
Immediately, she knew something was wrong.
Couldn’t quite finger it, but whatever had happened, if it had happened, it had happened here. Just stepping in there told her so. The smell of disinfectant. Movement in the corner. The dancing man…
This wasn’t the place for torches (too cold, too scary), so she chanced a table lamp, with the curtains well drawn. Let’s see…
Was this the bedroom of a DJ with green hair and a headful of music? Sure, there was a mega-mixing system against one wall, vinyl neatly stacked, alphabetical by artist, DJ-style, that was fine. What else? Frank Scenario poster: ‘Cool down, baby, don’t you blow your top.’ A bed, unmade. A chair, a desk with a computer and various pieces of equipment. Frank Scenario screen saver, hat and shades, the dance of the cool at the end of the world, animated style. The movement she had seen from the doorway. What’s wrong with this room? What’s wrong with it?
There’s nothing here, nothing missing. Just this air of something having happened…
It took a while, a few seconds… then she got it. Frank. Something was wrong with Frank Scenario. Daisy went over to the computer, watched the screen saver go through a full motion. She knew the dance well enough, having seen Jazir copy it. So how come Frank himself was getting it so wrong? One two, one two three, slide. The system was corrupted…
Hadn’t Dopejack claimed he knew who Mister Million was?
Daisy hit the space bar to activate the computer. The desktop came up OK, no windows open. She pressed on the hard-disk icon. Nothing. The cursor was frozen, dreaded stopped-clock symbol. ‘Please assume the crash position.’ Someone had been at this, made a mess of it. Couldn’t see Dopejack doing that; for all his faults, the DJ was an expert surfer. And how come Frank was still alive on the saver, albeit slightly drunk? Shouldn’t he have gone down with the hard ship? And where were all the floppies kept? Just a new box of them, factory-sealed.
Daisy tried a soft reset, got nowhere, so took the manic step of turning the computer off at the mains. The screen popped to black. Daisy knew you were supposed to wait a minute before turning it back on, but time was not her favourite friend. Click! Got a smiling Whoomphy, and a welcome to Burgernet message, and then the desktop again. But the hard drive still refused to open. It really was having problems. Maybe…
A little touch of Vaz in the night often brings delights. Following invisible instructions, Daisy fed some grease onto a new disk, which was then slotted home. The double-six icon came on screen, so no problems there. Over rider bone. A double click let the blurbs out, but what would they eat this time? Nothing to eat. Daisy tried the hard disk again; still sealed. Parched, the blurbs were flying in crazy shapes. An offshoot group was even trying to nibble away at the little burger symbol on the top-left corner of the menu bar. Owner’s medallion. Daisy pressed on this with the still locked-out cursor…
Working!
The usual menu: About Burgercom, Calculator, Chooser, Control Panels, Fax Centre, Key Caps, Notepad, Puzzle, Scrapbook.