by Mike Bursell
Anyway, it was quite clear where Mo's expertise lay. No – that's not fair. Mo didn't just have expertise: he had genius. I'd been keen to stop him getting into trouble with his grandiose claims about bringing down the Government, but I was beginning to realise that he maybe did have the ability to do it, as long as he didn't get caught.
And finally, he did find a way for us to talk. During break one morning I picked up a note from him, taped under the lid of the piano in the music room. It told me to look at the back of the right-hand equipment cupboard in the gym. I didn't have the chance to get there until after lunch, and was wondering why he'd chosen somewhere new. I'm not particularly known for hanging out watching people basketball: not really my thing. I waited around outside, trying to avoid attention, but I needn't have worried – no-one paid me the slightest bit of notice, as usual. A couple of boys who'd been shooting hoops left after a few minutes, and I wandered over and opened the cupboard. I had to rummage around at the back of the space, but there, behind an old, broken tennis racket, was a package, about the same size and weight as a single, large shoe, wrapped in a piece of paper. I quickly slipped it in my school bag, and got out of the gym before someone wondered what I was doing there. I headed off to the toilets, and had a quick check to see if there was anyone else around. There wasn't, so I went into a cubicle, locked it and opened my bag, taking out the package. Pulling off the paper, I was amazed when something big and plastic fell out. I caught it on my knees. It seemed that it was actually a phone, but it wasn't a modern one. It looked something from the end of the last century: a huge, quite heavy thing with an actual wire attached to it. I looked at the piece of paper it had come wrapped in, and realised that there was a handwritten note on it.
Hi: bet you didn't expect this! When you get home, and your Mum's not around, check around to see if there's a little white box, probably low down on the wall, probably in the hall. If there is, plug this phone in, and pick up the receiver. If you hear a tone, then I've managed to get things working: press “1”, and wait.
There was no name at the bottom, but this was clearly a note from Mo, as it was in the pretty awful, and painfully printed capital letters that he used for all his notes – but I was more interested in what he'd been up to. I was on tenterhooks all afternoon, waiting to get home. And then, of course, Mum didn't leave for ages as she was on a late shift, so I had to wait.
She and I had never really had a good chance to talk over the night when we'd watched the first children being sent to the Child Internment Camps together. We'd skirted round it a few times, nearly talking, but never really sitting down and going over what we thought. I'd noticed that Mum was giving me more hugs, though, and had no problems about that. In fact, I was reciprocating, and always made sure that I gave her a kiss before she left for work, and either made her a mug of tea when she returned, or had some food ready for her to reheat if I knew she'd be arriving when I was at school, or might already be in bed. Sometimes, when she got back, she'd be so tired she fell asleep on the sofa, and I had to take the tea from her hand before she spilled it. On other occasions, she'd sit and stare at the wall until I put some food in front of her and made her eat it. I was pretty sure that a couple of times she'd sat in the car crying before getting out, wiping her face on coming into the house, because her eyes were red and bloodshot, but I hadn't known what to say or do, and she didn't want to make the first move, either.
We'd always been fairly content as a family - just me and Mum - and it had always been her that was the strong one, looking after me when I was ill or upset, putting up with my tantrums or moods (yes, even I have them from time to time). Now, I was beginning to realise how hard it could be to see someone you loved having serious problems getting on with life. I'd never really thought about it, but assumed that she hadn't had an easy time when my Dad left – or she'd kicked him out: I didn't know the details – but that must have been a long time ago, as I didn't remember him. Apart from the odd grumble about work, some tears in front of films, and at a funeral after one of her colleagues had died from cancer, Mum had always seemed had always seemed happy. Now, I could see her beginning to break down, and I frankly had no idea what to do about it, or how to help her.
I wasn't sure whether she was having to go to the Camps, or whether they were making her arrest people, or take their children away from them, but whatever she was having to do, it was clearly taking its toll on her. I wondered how many other police officers were faced with the same duties, and how they coped. I wished I had some clue, to maybe I could find a better way to help her. But all I could do was give her the support I could, and, if she did want to talk, some time, to be there to listen. Whether I'd have any idea what to say, or how to help her if she did, I didn't know, so for now, I'd just wait.
So I didn't mind too much that I had to wait, and saw her out of the door with a kiss and a hug at half past seven. As soon as she'd gone, though, I checked the door was locked, rushed to my bag, pulled out the phone and plugged it into the little box that I'd noticed as soon as I'd walked in when I got back from school. It was odd – it must have been there all the time, but I'd never noticed it. In fact, once had found it, I had a look around the other rooms in the house, and there were at least three other outlets. I'd found one in the sitting room, one in the kitchen and one in my bedroom, round the back of my bed. I suspected there was one in Mum's room, too, but I'd not had the chance to scout around in there, as she'd been around. I crossed my fingers, picked up the top bit of the phone, and put it to my ear.
At first, I couldn't hear anything, but then I heard a faint buzzing come from the other end of the handset. I'd had it the wrong way round, and when I put the other end to my ear, I could hear a clear tone. I picked up the other part of the phone, which was attached to the handset with a curly wire, and pressed the number “1” on the keypad.
There was a little beep, similar to what you'd get when you used a normal mobile phone, and then it started ringing.
It only took two rings, and then it was picked up. “Mo here.”
“Um, hello.”
“Hi, Lena. Impressed?”
“Should I be? And don't use my name on the phone.”
“Yes, you should! Very impressed. Have you any idea what I've done? And what should I call you, then? L for Lena?”
I thought for a moment before replying, “if you're going to go with a letter of the alphabet, call me C.”
“Why C? That's not one of your initials, is it?”
“No, it's not, which is why it's an excellent name. Who knows who could be listening in on this line?”
“I do. No-one.”
I was silent for a moment. He must be joking. The Government could access any communications that went anywhere near the Net or the mobile network. I told him so.
“Which is why we're not using the Net or the mobile network,” he replied. “You're talking to me over a land-line.”
"What's a land-line.?" I asked.
"It's a non-mobile phone. It uses wires that go from house to house, or to exchanges nearby. It's old."
“So you've found a way to get a land-line connected to the mobile network. That doesn't make it safe.”
“Ah, but that's exactly what I haven't done.” He waited, clearly expecting me to say something.
It's going to be like that, then, is it? I thought to myself. He's going to make me ask him. Well, I suppose if it keeps him happy. “So, M...” I stopped myself just in time – even if this was a safe as he seemed to think, there was no point in using our real names – and had a quick think. I tried to think of something non-obvious, and my mind settled on something in my roo, and I said: “...Floyd, what has the clever boy done?”
He ignored the mocking tone, and responded, “I've got the local telephone exchange working. And why Floyd?”
I ignored his question. I wanted to know more about this: I was hooked. “What's a telephone exchange?”
“It's what used to control all the landl
ines – the phones that were connected to the wall – and the local one is just round the back of Leather Lane, near the electricity substation. I read somewhere that they were all mothballed – kept ready to run, but not actually functional – when everybody ended up using mobiles. I think the government forced the phone companies to keep them ready to use in case the mobile networks ever broke down completely for some reason. A national emergency or something.”
“So, if they're ready to run, but not actually functional, how are we talking on landlines now?”
“That was the tricky bit. I broke in last week... ” he heard my intake of breath, “... yes, I know, it was risky – but it backs onto fields and there are no windows, so it was pretty safe. I did it at night, pretended I was asleep with pillows under a duvet and left my mobile under my bed. Anyway, I managed to get in, and had a bit of look around. It turns out that the equipment's still there, and you can see where all the lines from the houses come into all the switches. Whoever mothballed the exchange did a good job of labelling everything up in case it was ever needed again, so it wasn't that difficult to work out which switches our two houses were connected to.”
“So, you just turned all the switches on, and it all worked?”
“No!” He sounded a little hurt. “Then I had to do the clever stuff. Most of the switches were still on – what I had to then was re-program them.”
“And was that hard?” I knew what his answer would be, but I was baiting him, now, but it was fun.
“Yes, it was hard. I had to work it all out from playing round with the system, without any documentation. It took over six hours.”
I suspected that something that took Mo six hours would probably have taken most people around six days, so I was actually quite impressed. “Well done, then,” I said, trying not to show it.
He humphed down the line, but I could tell I was forgiven. “So, how sure are you that nobody can hear what's going through the exchange, then?”
“Well, I've got root access on the exchange system ...”
“You mean that you control them?” I interrupted.
“Yup – I'm the administrator for all of the computers in the exchange. I can tell if anyone so much as connects to them. There seems to be a weekly systems check to see if everything's fine, but I've made sure that that won't pick up on the changes I made. If anyone else were to log into the systems, I've set up a little program to watch what they do, and if they do start poking around, the program will leave enough logging information for me to know about it.”
“Wouldn't that mean you'd need to log into the systems even to discover that we'd been rumbled?”
“Ah,” he said, a little crestfallen, “good point.”
“Could you change the program just to wipe the changes you've made completely?”
“I could, yes,” he said thoughtfully. “So, if they start looking for traces that someone's been in their systems, it would erase all the changes. We wouldn't be able to use these phones after that.”
“That would be a pain, but it would be better that than being discovered, don't you think?”
There was silence while he thought for a moment. “Yes, you're right, C. I'll go and make the changes tonight. It'll only affect us if somebody gets suspicious anyway.” He sounded a little embarrassed that he'd not thought of that himself.
I was glad that he got it. As I mentioned before, Mo was a bright guy – very, very bright – but he wasn't paranoid enough. I was pretty sure I was going to need to train him up to take more notice of the dangers of what he was doing, but then again, that's what a team's for, right? Play to our strengths. He's the bright one, I'm the paranoid one. And at least when I explained it, he agreed, and he wasn't the kind of insecure guy who won't accept suggestions from a girl on principle. Just because, well, because it was a girl who came up with it.
“Look,” I said, in an attempt to divert him from his embarrassment, “I noticed another of these little white boxes in my bedroom – like the one I’ve got this phone thing connected to. Do you think that one'll work?”
“Um – might do. Just depends if anyone ever disconnected it.”
“Why don't I give it a try? I'll ring you back.”
“Nah – let me try ringing you, see if I've got things working in both directions.”
“OK. Give me a couple of minutes.” I hung up, and removed the plug from the socket in the box. It didn't come out at first, and then I realised that there was a little bit on the side that I needed to squeeze in before it would come free. I gathered everything together and ran upstairs. Pulling my bed out a bit, I pushed the plug in. When I lifted the main bit of the phone and heard the dial tone again, I felt quite excited, and put it back down to wait for Mo's call.
It felt like an eternity, and I kept glancing at my watch. After six minutes of waiting, I was about to pick up and try ringing him when a little red light on the phone started flashing and the phone started making an enormous racket. I jumped half out of my skin, and then recovered enough to pick up the phone.
“Hello, C here,” I answered.
“You need to explain why I'm called Floyd,” came Mo's voice from the other end of the line.
“What took you so long?” I asked, ignoring his question again.
“I thought it was worth finding out if there was a socket in my room, too. My parents are out at the pub tonight, but I'm not sure what time they're back. If we can easily use our own rooms, it's going to be much safer.”
“Well, was there one?” I asked.
“Yup, sitting on my bed right now. It took me a while to find it, was all.”
It was a bit odd to think that I was chatting to him in his bedroom, and I tried to imagine it: what it might look like, whether there were any old kid's toys around that he hadn't thrown out. What special personal items he kept close. For some reason, it felt different to talking on the mobile, because there was some physical connection. I wondered if he was thinking the same about me, in my bedroom, because there was an awkward silence for a few moments. I decided to break it. “Is there a way to change the ring tone? It's really loud – there's no way I can leave this plugged in if it's going to make that sort of racket every time it rings. I had a look around at it early on, but I couldn't see any sort of user interface.”
Mo laughed. “Too old for that. I don’t think they even had the idea of a ringtone. They just ring, that’s all. I found them in the attic years ago, and suddenly remembered them the other day. Have a look on the receiver: there should a switch on the side.”
“What's the receiver?” I asked.
“It's the bit you're holding: the bit you talk into.”
I held it away from my ear, and, sure enough, there was a little switch with four settings. There was some sort of picture - like an icon, but actually stamped into the plastic - next to each, three of which had a simple picture of a phone in varying sizes. The last one was a little cross. I chose the smallest picture, guessing that it would be the quietest ring. “I see it. I've chosen what I think's the quietest option.”
“I've turned mine off completely. The light still flashes when it's ringing. I reckon we're likely to have a good idea when we're going to get a call, so that's safest.”
I agreed, and changed mine to that as well. I was about to start asking some more about the telephone exchange when I heard a faint voice from the other end of the line.