After a few seconds of frustrating nothing, suddenly the cursor started to move, racing across the screen from left to right, leaving four lines of text in its wake.
>: Congratulations, Jackson.
Welcome to MeX.
You will be contacted again soon.
Goodbye.
There was a faint throb from under Jackson’s desk, which he suspected was his hard drive, and a moment later his computer closed down.
Jackson stared at the empty screen, a dry patch forming in the back of his throat.
CHAPTER 3
The Hummer H3R sports utility vehicle hurtled down the stony path at almost 80 kilometres per hour. Brooke English clung nervously to the armrest of the passenger seat, head down, laptop bouncing off her knees. No one was driving.
‘Ow!’ she yelped. ‘Goddamit!’ as her ruggedized metal laptop landed square on her kneecap for what felt like the thousandth time. The vehicle was driving itself, but in spite of the bank of four multi-core processors that filled the back seat and enough hardware on the roof to keep a space program happy, it seemed intent on changing the route at every opportunity. Brooke had built several automated robots before, but she’d never tested one by riding shotgun.
‘Mom!’ she yelled, trying to keep hold of her laptop with one hand, a rubber two-way radio in the other.
‘Yes, darlin’,’ came her mother’s calm reply.
‘Where did you say the canyon was?’ yelled Brooke.
‘That’ll be north-west, honey … don’t go north-west.’
‘Then we might have a bit of a problem,’ replied Brooke in a voice that she hoped veiled genuine panic. She stared at the full-colour readout from the Global Positioning System receiver she had Velcroed on to the dashboard. In big letters it read ‘300 DEGREES. NORTH-WEST.’
Brooke and her mother had been working on the ‘X Car Challenge’ for the last six months. The aim of the extreme engineering competition was simple: design and build a vehicle capable of driving itself from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Not by road, that would never be allowed, but via the safer route offered by the deserts and scrubland that knitted a patchwork between the two cities. Not that Brooke’s test route felt all that safe now as she hurtled towards a 400-metre-deep ravine. She checked the moving map to see how much time she had left. The canyon wasn’t marked, but she guessed it was the blank section, the all-swallowing featureless bit at the top of the screen, which she’d be reaching in less than thirty seconds.
There is a time for theory and a time for getting your hands dirty, and this mess qualified for the latter. Unstrapping herself, Brooke closed the laptop and wedged it into the door pocket before pulling herself into the driver’s seat. In front of her was a steering wheel with a heavy-duty hydraulic arm clamped to it. The arm snaked its way back behind the dashboard where, via a series of cables and pulleys, it terminated at a junction box controlled by one of the computers on the back seat. But which one? There were four to choose from, each with backup batteries designed to kick in if they lost primary power. She could pull a cable, but which one? There were thousands of them, making the back-seat wells look like two big vats of multi-coloured spaghetti. The computers were the domain of her dad, MIT’s famous robotics professor, J.P. English. But her nutty father hadn’t been around recently to keep a check on Brooke’s latest, lethal creation. Indeed, the reason why things were looking so decidedly dodgy for Brooke was due, in part, to the fact that Professor English had spent the last few weeks away, attempting to woo funding from a group of Chinese businessmen for his experimental asteroid-mining project.
Grabbing a pair of pliers and a spanner from the leather toolbelt that swung from her hip, Brooke got to work on the heavy-duty control arm, the galvanized steering mechanism that she’d personally designed to manoeuvre the two-tonne vehicle a brutal 400 kilometres.
The first bolt proved stubborn; hopefully the next ten or so would go easier, but a quick heads-up told Brooke that even her dexterity with a spanner wouldn’t save her and the two-million-dollar robo-car.
Through the mud-smeared windscreen she could see the end of the road and a coachload of tourists running for cover.
CHAPTER 4
‘Come on, boy! Get a move on!’ said Mr Farley, scooping a handful of socks and pants off the floor and throwing them in his son’s face on his way past his room.
Jackson had hardly slept, puzzling over the meaning of last night’s events. He should have been exhausted but he wasn’t. It was certainly strange to have been contacted in that way, but it was also exciting. Very exciting.
He climbed out of bed and was rooting through his drawer for some clean school socks when his dad called from the kitchen.
‘You’ve got a parcel through here. I had to sign for it. If it’s another eBay, I want to see that you’ve sold something first – remember our little chat?’
Jackson definitely didn’t remember ordering anything recently. With his mind still buzzing from everything that had happened just a few hours ago, he threw on his ready-made school shirt-and-tie combination and almost wedgied himself as he hurried to put on his trousers which were similarly configured ‘To-Go’ with boxers already inside. Then he pounded through to the kitchen to see what else lay in store for him.
His dad had laid out breakfast. It was the same arrangement as always: a bowl of Cheerios, a piece of toast with far too much butter on it and a glass of orange juice. It was a morning ritual that hadn’t changed in the four years since Jackson’s mum had died. It was exactly how she had prepared breakfast, and neither he nor his dad wanted to change it.
‘So, what is it?’ Jackson’s father asked, handing him a box-shaped package.
‘I haven’t a clue,’ replied the twelve-year-old, draining the glass of juice in one big gulp, before scooping up the toast and cereal bowl in one hand and carrying them and the parcel back down the corridor to his room.
He felt bad about not staying in the kitchen and letting his dad see what might be in the parcel, but if it was anything to do with last night Jackson knew he couldn’t risk it. His dad’s suspicion of the Internet, coupled with his grumpiness at having just arrived home from his night shift, might lead to him making Jackson answer the usual round of questions. How long were you on the Net last night? Aren’t you bored of that blasted game yet? What do you think kids found to do with their evenings before the invention of instant messaging? There was no time for that this morning.
Using the penknife from his bedside drawer, Jackson scored open the packing tape and peered inside. Through the thick soup of polystyrene chippings, he could see the edge of a small envelope.
‘You are a winner!’ read the letter, in big blue writing.
You are this month’s Blue Storm Games prize winner! Having stacked up the highest number of online hours this month we are proud to present you with a collection of free and exclusive merchandise. Your prize bundle includes: a pen, a limited-edition mobile phone cover and a chance to win some serious cash!
Who on earth is Blue Storm Games? thought Jackson as he dug into the sea of plastic packing material.
The first thing to surface was a pearlescent-blue pen with BLUE STORM embossed along its shaft. Instead of the usual clip, three curious metal rivets lined up along the length of the pen’s top, one blue, one red and one chrome. Jackson unscrewed the lid and was disappointed to find a gold-coloured fountain-pen nib. He disliked fountain pens. Despite repeated demands to use them from certain teachers who believed they encouraged a degree of legibility in even the messiest of scribblers, he insisted on using the Fisher Space Pen his mum had given to him. ‘My pen writes at minus twenty degrees centigrade. It writes underwater and in the gravity-free vacuum of space … can you do that with a fountain pen?’ It was the closest Jackson came to insolence and that’s probably why they let it go.
Eager to understand more about the mysterious package, Jackson turned the box upside down. White polystyrene pieces drifted out across the duvet like a
mini-avalanche. A little more foraging and he recovered a Manila envelope and a tight roll of bubble wrap bound with tape.
On the outside of the envelope he read, ‘Up to £s;1,000 could be yours in our cash bonanza! Open up and good luck.’ He tore open the envelope, revealing a postcard inside with the words ‘Ooops! Better luck next time’ printed in big black letters on one side. Turning the card over, he found a line of three one-pound coins held in place by tape. He starred quizzically at the golden coins, the jaded smirks of three Queen Elizabeths leering back at him in perfect symmetry. Jackson was disappointed; it didn’t look like the package was going to fulfil his expectations after all. But still, there was something strange about it. For a start, he’d never heard of Blue Storm Games. And he found the coins odd too; in the age of Internet shopping and e-commerce, why give coins away to a competition winner – why not a coupon or a voucher? And just three of them? They were hardly worth their weight in postage.
‘It’s eight fifteen! Get a move on!’ boomed his dad from the kitchen, the three hard kicks on the wall deliberately hard enough to make it all the way through the bathroom to resonate in Jackson’s wardrobe.
Jackson felt harassed. ‘I’m just leaving!’ he shouted back, without any intention of complying with his dad’s demands until he’d seen everything the package had to offer.
He put the coins aside and, three mouthfuls of bubble wrap later, was cradling the final prize, the phone cover. But the carefully engineered aluminium case in his hands didn’t seem at all like a phone cover. It had the weight and feel of a fully functional handset. Jackson flipped open the matt metal clamshell lid. He was sure he was right. The lower section featured a wafer-thin metal keyboard and a raised directional pad that felt solid to the touch. The top section was taken up by a large screen with a tiny camera lens above it and BLUE STORM GAMES etched beside it. He couldn’t immediately see how to power it up, but Jackson was certain this was much more than just the phone cover that the competition blurb had promised.
‘What have you got there?’
He hadn’t noticed his dad in the doorway. ‘I … I won a competition,’ Jackson stammered, his attention still on the phone.
‘Come off it! D’you think I was born yesterday. You know what we agreed about online auctions,’ his dad said, adopting the serious tone that Jackson always suspected he was uncomfortable with. Some adults did ‘serious’ really well, but his dad was rubbish at it. Instead of serious, he was more deadbeat. He did the screwy thing with his eyebrows like some of Jackson’s teachers, but while the best of them could easily hit scary with a mere forehead flex, his dad just ended up looking kind of worn out, old, browbeaten.
Jackson smiled and handed him the letter. ‘Read this if you don’t believe me.’
‘I don’t know whether I’m supposed to be impressed or not.’ Mr Farley sighed. ‘My son, rewarded, for wasting his time on the Internet.’
‘Remember what Mum used to say,’ Jackson said, grinning. ‘Time spent doing something you love is never wasted.’
His dad, as usual, had the last word on the matter. ‘Yes, well, unless you want to waste some of your precious time in detention, then you’d better get off to school – sharpish! I’m popping out for some milk. You’d better be gone when I come back.’
As soon as the front door shut behind his dad, Jackson placed the pen and the three coins in front of him and flipped the phone back open. He held it up and examined its sleek metal surface more closely. There were the familiar green SEND and red END keys, as well as the number keys in the usual configuration. Above the screen sat the tiny camera lens. But there was a surprising lack of anything else. No apparent way of turning it on, no battery cover, no power socket and no slot for memory or SIM card. As for the back of the phone, it looked like a solid piece of aluminium, its brushed surface only interrupted by a tiny logo embossed in the centre. This wasn’t the Blue Storm branding. Jackson looked more closely. The logo was a combination of a capital ‘M’ and an ‘X’. The logo for MeX.
Deep in thought, the sudden ringtone took Jackson so much by surprise that he almost fell off his bed. It was a cheap, tinny ringtone, quite out of character for such a sophisticated-looking handset. And unless Jackson was mistaken, the tune he could hear it playing was ‘Rule Britannia’. He composed himself, pressed the answer button and held it to his ear.
‘Hello. Who is this?’ said a woman’s raspy voice on the other end.
‘Er … you should know, you called me,’ replied Jackson, confused.
There was a momentary pause before the woman’s voice continued. ‘Voice identification positive for Jackson Farley. Initiating data connection … Welcome to the MeX network.’
CHAPTER 5
‘Brooke,’ her mother’s voice crackled from the walkie-talkie that was bouncing around on the dashboard. ‘Brooke, can you hear me?’
The young engineer was halfway out of the driver’s side window, having decided that bailing out was her only option before certain death, and it didn’t help that her mother was still prattling through the radio.
‘Brooke! The keys … take the keys out of the ignition!’
Brooke paused mid-escape, her eyes fixed on the impending precipice of the very big canyon, and realized that actually wasn’t a bad idea at all.
Hauling herself back inside, Brooke reached for the ignition and turned the keys. The engine cut out instantly and the steering arm hissed and went limp. She yanked the heavy steering wheel to the left, throwing the vehicle into a dramatic and final broadside.
Brooke emerged through a cloud of dust, a vision in white Converse baseball boots folded at the heel, denim hipsters and a baseball cap with the words ‘Spanner Head’ written on it. A young boy who had been left behind in the tourist stampede stood open-mouthed in the adjacent car park.
‘Hey, kid,’ said Brooke, patting herself down as she walked towards him, ‘mind if I have a swig of that Coke?’
The boy, who was all of eight, remained frozen as Brooke extended an oily hand and grabbed his drinks can. She necked its contents then crushed it in a fist before handing it back to him.
‘Thanks,’ she said, before turning to scrutinize the SUV which, now the dust had finally cleared, she could see was no more than a few centimetres from the canyon’s edge. The radio spluttered into life again and Brooke could hear her mother fretting from inside the cabin.
‘Are you receiving me, honey? Over.’
‘Yes, ma’am!’ Brooke replied. ‘But you’d better come out and pick me up. I swear this tin can is trying to kill me.’
‘Roger that. Just wait till I see that damned father of yours,’ said Brooke’s mother. ‘I’ll give him a piece of my mind … leaving you to finish off that overgrown toaster on wheels. Stay where you are; I’m on my way. Over and out.’ It was a mystery to Brooke why her mother felt compelled to use military-speak whenever she used a two-way, or even a mobile phone for that matter. ‘Oh, yes,’ Mrs English’s voice crackled back over the radio. ‘FedEx dropped something off for you. You want me to bring it?’
Brooke wondered briefly if this was anything to do with yesterday’s mysterious instant-message conversation. She had spent last night, like she spent every night, juggling a hundred instant-message conversations to a thrash-metal soundtrack. She’d thought the Irish chick, Elan, was just peddling something and Brooke had only stuck with her persistent line of questioning because Brooke’s uncle had filled her head with the romance of ‘the auld country’, as he called it. But the extraordinary pop-up had left Brooke staring at her screen, dumb-founded. She’d scoured the Net until the early hours, looking for any information on this MeX organization that could prove the whole thing was a hoax. She’d come up with nothing.
So Brooke English, thirteen-year-old ‘wrench monkey’, as her dad called her, youngest-ever graduate of the prestigious Centre for Robotic Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), decided that yes, she would check out this FedEx parcel, just in
case it had anything to do with her recent MeX selection.
‘OK, thanks, Mom.’
‘Over and out,’ said her mother.
CHAPTER 6
Dear [Headmaster/mistress],
Please excuse [full name] from [school/lesson] on [day/ month/year]. [First name] is not feeling well and I have decided to keep [him/her] at home in bed for the [morning/afternoon/day].
I will keep a check on [first name]’s condition and send [him/her] to school at the earliest opportunity.
Kind regards,
[Parent’s name]
[Father/Mother full name]
Jackson didn’t take skiving lightly. Until the start of this year he hadn’t bunked off once. But since starting back after Christmas, things with Tyler Hughes had become hazardous. Hughes was like bad weather; he was always unpleasant, but sometimes he’d whirl himself into a fully fledged storm. Jackson had chosen to stay off school once or twice, while the storm blew itself out. This was a different case entirely. Jackson was sure not even the sick buzz that Tyler Hughes obviously got from publicly humiliating him could beat the adrenalin rush of what was happening to him right now. He had been selected by MeX, only he was good enough – not Tyler or his overgrown cronies – and Jackson wasn’t wasting time at school until he found out exactly what else was involved. He had acquired one or two techniques that helped the process of skiving from school run smoothly; the free email account he reserved for ‘special circumstances’ was one of them. He logged into the webmail application, pasted the bogus excuse note he’d found by entering ‘Excuse Letters’ on Google into a new mail, then ticked the OUT OF OFFICE AUTO-REPLY option, just in case his headmaster felt inclined to reply.
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