by Ross Welford
Sir! I’m nervous, but there’s something about this that makes me want to laugh. I bite my cheek to stop myself from giggling.
“You makin’ fun of me? How old you?”
“Erm…erm…” Ramzy is trying to think of the right answer.
“I am waitin’. What year you born in, huh?” And before Ramzy can answer, Norman says, “You not sixteen, right? You gotta be sixteen to buy Jackpot ticket. Why not you pulling my other leg, huh? He’s got jingly bells on it.”
It’s “jingly bells” that does it. I just snort with laughter, and Norman turns his wrath on me.
“Oh, you fink is funny ha ha, little missy, huh? Come in here, makin’ fun out of poor Sanjiv, right? When we all gonna die soon from Dog Plague, huh? See how funny you fink I am then, eh? When you lyin’ dead, you not gonna be laughin’ ha ha ha then, right? Go on! Get lost and come back when you sixteen, if you make it.” He starts to come round from behind the counter, and we bolt out the door and down the street.
When we’re a safe distance, we look back and he has taken up his position again, glaring at us and guarding his doorway against potential customers.
I start to laugh. “Geez, Ramz! There’s our answer! We’ll just have to check the numbers without having a ticket. No million quid for us!” I chuckle some more.
Then I notice Ramzy isn’t joining in. Instead, he’s pale and looking at me with a disappointed expression, his eyes narrow slits. We stop walking. “Erm…you OK, Ramz?” I’ve never seen him look so defeated, so…small. It really seems as though he has shrunk and his eyes are shining as though he’s blinking away tears.
“I don’t believe I’m hearing this. ‘No million quid for us!’ you say, like it’s nothing. Well, it might be nothing to you, Georgie Santos, in your converted farmhouse, with your rich dad, and—”
“Hey, he’s not rich, Ramzy. He’s—”
“When was the last time you were told you couldn’t even take a bus ’cause there was no money? Do you live in a tiny, damp flat, and go to bed hungry so your little brothers can eat more? Do you—”
“Ramzy, I’m sorry. You never said!”
“Of course I never said. What am I gonna say? ‘Hi, I’m Ramzy the poor kid—can I have some money?’ Look at me: I’m the kid who has to wear his school uniform on no-uniform day ’cause I don’t have the charity money. Back home? Back home, we had plenty of money. My dad was a government engineer. Now he’s a delivery driver when he can get the work, and he’s gonna lose that job soon because some stupid drone can do it.”
“I know, Ramzy.”
“You know nothing, Georgie. You’re just like the rest. Everything’s in front of you but you can’t see it. And so I get the chance to win a million pounds snatched from me, and you’re like, ‘Hey ho, never mind!’ Never mind?” He flings up his arms in disgust and stalks off.
“Wait!” I say, but he doesn’t, so I run after him. “What about your aunty Nush? She can buy a ticket.”
“Oh right, that’s really gonna happen, isn’t it?” Ramzy’s tone has become bitter and sarcastic. “So far as Aunty Nush is concerned, buying a Geordie Jackpot ticket would send her straight to hell for gambling. I’d probably get to go as well, just for asking her, and as an added punishment for writing all over my school shirt, which was due to be handed down to my little brother. Not a chance.”
“Your dad?”
“He’s not as hardcore as Aunty Nush, but…no way. He’s not back till the weekend, anyway. Besides—what about your dad?” He shouts these last words over his shoulder as he strides off furiously.
I knew he’d ask that. Thing is, given Dad’s attitude to our adventures in the dome, I can’t imagine he would agree to it. I mean, I’d basically be asking him to buy me a Jackpot ticket because I saw the numbers when I visited the future in Dr. Pretorius’s lab, and that is not going to go down well.
Ramzy is staring out to sea, his hands gripping the rusty iron railing. I can see his shoulders shaking because he’s crying, and my first thought is to go over and comfort him, but then I think of the Wisdom of the Dogs poster.
If someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit near, and nuzzle them gently.
However bad a day Ramzy is having, I know he would not want me to nuzzle him gently. But I can do the rest. I sit on the next bench over and say nothing.
Eventually, he comes and sits next to me. We watch the circling seagulls.
We’ve got to get a lottery ticket somehow. But how?
And then I have an idea.
“Let me get this straight,” Clem says. “If I buy you a Jackpot ticket with your money, then I get to keep half of anything we win?” He’s lying on his back under the campervan, and I’m actually having this conversation with his feet.
“That’s right,” I say. “Just sign here.”
Ramzy has written this “contract.” He copied something he saw on the Internet, added words like “herewith” and “notwithstanding” and printed it off in a fancy font. He was quick, but he still didn’t want me coming up to his apartment, so I waited outside, quite happy not to risk bumping into Aunty Nush.
To whom it maye concern
I, the undersinged, heretofore do solemly swear to give half of my winnings to Mr. Ramzy Rahman in the event of that I am winning the Geordie Jackpot herewith.
Being of sound mind notwithstanding.
By the power invested in me, in the event that I do not win anything, then I do not owe Ramzy Rahman nothing at all.
Singed this _______ day of ____________ in the year of our Lord 20_______
Clem wriggles out from under the van to look at Ramzy’s contract. He pushes his glasses up his nose and curls his lip doubtfully.
“And this is all because you reckon you saw the numbers when you played that weirdo’s stupid game? I thought we’d established that that was a load of old nonsense?”
“Listen, Clem, I know it doesn’t sound likely. But, well…with all the chaos going on outside, it’s a bit of hope, eh? And if the numbers are right, everyone wins. If they’re not, then no one loses. And we’ll give you the money to buy the ticket.”
I have to say it sounds good. Clem takes his phone from out of his overalls pocket. “We can do it right here,” he says. “I can download the Geordie Jackpot app and buy a ticket online. You got your money, Ramzy?”
“No!” I say. “It has to be a ticket. An actual ticket.”
“Why?”
“Because it was bought from Norman Two-Kids’s shop. I…I saw him talking about it. When I, erm…visited the future. Doing it differently will, erm…” Of course, I don’t actually know what doing it differently would do.
Clem snorts. “What? Punch a hole in the space–time continuum?” He waves his hands in the air and adopts a scared voice. “Oh, help me, Doctor, the TARDIS is about to blow up! You’re mental, the two of you, you know that? Now, if you wanna be useful, start rubbing the rust off that bumper over there. Otherwise, get lost. I’m busy.” He puts his phone back in his pocket and turns back to the campervan.
“Clement, please listen,” says Ramzy, using Clem’s full name for added emphasis. It sounds weird but it gets his attention. “Have a look at this.”
Ramzy takes out his own phone, which has the clip of me outside Norman Two-Kids’s shop recorded in Dr. Pretorius’s control room.
Clem looks at it carefully and frowns in appreciation. “This,” he says, as if he knows what he’s talking about, “looks like very superior 3-D CGI. And you were in it? Impressive.” Then he says, “Hang on.” He looks closely at the screen of Ramzy’s phone. “I know who that is.” He points to one of the people who were talking to Norman Two-Kids. “That’s Anna Hennessey. She was in my class. She’s doing an internship as a journalist at the Evening Chronicle this summer. We can settle this right away.”
Anna Hennessey. Sass’s older sister.
Clem taps in a number on his own phone and holds it to his ear.
Speaking into the phone, Clem’s voice drops about an octave. It’s hilarious. It sounds as though he has a cold, but it seems that this is his “talking to girls” voice.
“Hiii! Anna. Yeah! Clem here…Clement Santos? From school…yeah, that one…Look, I’ve got a silly question, and don’t take this the wrong way…No, no, no, not that. Listen…At any point in your work experience have you spoken to the guy who runs the corner shop on Marine Drive? Or…or…or been asked by anyone to pretend to interview him…? [LONG PAUSE] Erm, no…no reason, it’s just [Clem hasn’t thought this bit through, and he’s struggling]…I spoke to him today and, erm…he said he’d done an interview with the Chronicle and I thought it might have been you, that’s all.”
The relief in Clem’s voice at having thought up that lie is obvious. He’s even forgotten his deep voice.
“No? You sure? No, of course I don’t think you’re lying! I just wanted to be…Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Anna…By the way, if you’re not doing anyth— No. Sure. No. Bye.” He ends the call.
I raise my eyebrows at him.
“Nice girl,” he says.
Imitating his deep voice, I say, “Very nice!” and he shakes his head in irritation.
“She’s never been near Norman Two-Kids’s shop. So I have no idea how this was done,” he said, pointing to Ramzy’s phone. “It’s one thing to create lifelike avatars, AI bots, and so on, but this is, like, real people.”
For a moment, none of us says anything. Then Clem says, “It’s obviously just someone who really looks like her.” But he doesn’t sound convinced.
He reads over Ramzy’s contract again.
“Got a pen?” he asks.
Half an hour later, the three of us have come out of Norman Two-Kids’s shop again and Clem is clutching a Jackpot ticket bearing the numbers I saw in Dr. Pretorius’s studio.
“Just for the record,” Clem says, “I think this is nonsense. I’ve no idea how that recording was done, but it’s still impossible.”
Ramzy’s cheeky grin has returned. “So why’d you do it, then?”
Clem looks up and down the deserted street and shrugs. In the distance, a police siren yowls.
“I guess…it is good to hope for something. It seems like everything’s going wrong. In less than a week, everything’s been turned on its head.”
The siren gets louder as it comes down the street, and when it passes, we see that it isn’t a police car but an ambulance heading to the seafront. We’re walking in the same direction, and a hundred yards later, we see it parked outside one of the cafes at the front of the Spanish City. A small crowd is gathering, and we watch from a distance as two paramedics get out of the back with a stretcher and a box of equipment and dash inside. We hear people talking, some of the voices muffled by face masks.
“…just collapsed, poor thing…”
“Eee…I hope it’s not that dog thing…I’m terrified…”
A few moments later, the small crowd parts, and the paramedics reappear, pushing someone on a wheeled stretcher. One of them is carrying a yellow canvas beach bag, and I know straightaway. The huge ball of white hair poking out from under the red stretcher blanket confirms it.
I push my way through to the front and cry out, “Dr. Pretorius!” but her eyes are shut. One of the paramedics is holding up a bag of something (a drip? I don’t know the terms) and a tube leads from it to Dr. Pretorius’s thin brown arm lying on top of the blanket. She has one of those oxygen masks over her nose and mouth.
“Out the way, dear, out the way,” says one. “Comin’ through…”
Ramzy elbows his way to the front and walks straight up to the paramedic. “Is she dead?” he asks.
The paramedic doesn’t look at him. “No, son. Heart attack. Prob’ly gonna be OK.”
Seconds later, the rear doors of the ambulance slam shut. The siren wails and the vehicle moves off the wide pedestrian area and onto the road, heading north.
With the drama over, the people who were watching drift away, leaving me, Ramzy, and Clem standing in the open entrance to the Spanish City complex. The amusement arcade is empty, its gaming machines blinking and bleeping at no one; I see Sass Hennessey’s mum staring out the window of the Polly Donkin Tea Rooms.
“So that was her?” says Clem. “The weirdo with the time machine?” His tone is mocking, and—having just seen her carted off in an ambulance—pretty insensitive if you ask me.
“It’s not a time machine, Clem. It’s multisensory virtual reality.”
He’s unimpressed. “Whatever.”
A voice speaks up behind us. “That was your friend, wasn’t it, Georgie?” It’s Sass’s mum.
I don’t know what to say except, “Yeah.”
“Mad as anything, y’know. You wanna be careful. I’ve told Saskia and Anna they’re to have nothing at all to do wi’ her.” She purses her lips disapprovingly.
“What happened?” asks Ramzy.
“Well, I didn’t see exactly,” says Sass’s mum, but she seems pleased to be asked and smooths down her little white waitress’s apron. “But I heard her calling, ‘Help me!’ Well, it’s a good thing it’s quiet, or I wouldn’a heard her. When I got there, she’d passed out on the floor in a puddle. At first, I thought she’d…Well, turned out to be seawater ’cause she was all wet from her swim. And so I called the ambulance and stayed with her till they came. She wasn’t makin’ any sense, mind.” She turns her head to look into the cafe. “I’ve got a customer. But mark my words: she’s an odd duck, that one. The last thing she said before she passed out was something about scorpions.”
“What about scorpions?” I say, a bit too eagerly, because Sass’s mum gives me a funny look.
“Just that. ‘Stop the scorpions’ or summin’ like that. Like I say, mad as.” She taps her temple with her forefinger; then she hurries off.
“Come on,” says Ramzy. “Let’s have a look.”
“A look?” says Clem. “What for?” He isn’t used to Ramzy’s sudden bursts of enthusiasm the way I am. He really does think that we’re just stupid kids: it’s written all over his face.
“Clues. Obviously!” says Ramzy as if Clem is the stupid one.
At the back of the passageway between the tea rooms and the amusement halls is the door that leads to the dome. The cleaners obviously don’t come this far very often because the floor is littered with candy wrappers and wooden Popsicle sticks, and more recent debris like the empty packages with medical labels used by the paramedics.
Clem is impatient. “Does this actually matter? I mean…what difference…”
“If she was coming in, she would have her key out. And if she collapsed with it in her hand…” Ramzy starts kicking aside some of the litter, and after only a few seconds, stoops to pick up a key.
Clem at least has the good grace to look impressed when Ramzy turns the key in the lock and opens the door.
I know I’m showing off, but when I say “Studio lights!” and they come on in the dome, I am so pleased to hear a little gasp come from Clem’s direction.
We stand at the edge of the wide circle filled with ball bearings. The pin lights in the black ceiling glow like stars.
As I show it off to Clem, it’s almost as though this massive dome, and everything that goes with it, is mine. It’s not often, I don’t think, that an eleven-year-old gets to impress her sixteen-year-old brother, and Clem is definitely impressed. He hunkers down to pick up some ball bearings and lets them trickle through his fingers.
“It’s still switched on!” calls Ramzy from behind us. He’s in the control room, and there we see it all: the huge computer screens, the colored keyboard, Little Girl the quomp with her blinking lights—everything. My heart is thumping.
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br /> At the end of the long desk is the bicycle helmet with the bumps all over the inside.
This was my plan, and it is going better than I could have ever hoped! The only thing missing is Dr. Pretorius.
All that’s left to do is:
Put the helmet on, making sure it’s tight.
Align the satellite receiver on the roof outside with the satellite Hawking II at the exact time the satellite passes over.
At the same time, launch the program that creates the 3-D game, and…
Make the quomp analyze the likely future.
Input the coordinates for where I want the studio projection to place me.
Link up my helmet to the whole computer simulation.
Travel to the future and bring back the cure. Somehow.
Ta-da!
I slump down on Dr. Pretorius’s swivel chair. Of course, I have no idea how to do any of that. Especially the bits that only Dr. Pretorius knows how to do, like aligning the satellite and setting up the computer and, well, pretty much all of it.
I explain this to Clem, who comes over all big-brothery again.
“You didn’t seriously think all that was possible, did you? I mean—that was your plan?”
I’m angry at myself more than at him, but I reply, “Have you got a better one? One that doesn’t involve tinkering around with old engines? I mean, that’s what you’re good at, isn’t it? Well, it doesn’t help us here, does it? If you think—”
Ramzy interrupts. “Hey, hey, come on,” he says. “We just need to wait till Dr. Pretorius gets back.”
“And what if she doesn’t come back?” I say.
“They said it was a heart attack, right? I’m sure she’ll, um, get better.”
“Right. And how long will that take?” I say.
He turns his mouth down and shrugs. “No idea. But it’s our only hope. We could try to launch all the software and everything ourselves, but we’d probably wreck it.”