They're Ready...

They’re ready

A short story of what might have been…with apologies to Ben Ockrent

Wednesday lunchtime in the common room of Rosewood Academy was as busy and bustling as ever.  A big spacious room filled with an assortment of chairs, benches and tables and students of all ages and sizes, it had that energy only a place filled with young people can have.  Over the last month there had been a number of additions to it’s number as the residents of MOE’s Bar had re-infiltrated it’s ranks.   This, much like their absence when the Hackerspace had become available, had gone largely unseen by the regular residents of the school common room, not one of them having any sense of it’s significance.

The builder’s portacabin on the other side of the quad stood empty.  A film of dust confirmed the instinctive impression anyone had on entering it that it was an abandoned place…a place from which a hasty exit had been made and to which the occupants were unlikely to return…there was a sense in the fabric of the room that it had been witness to something game changing but unless you knew what to look for you would have no idea what that was.

Back inside the common room Steve and Jess were stood behind a table covered in posters, information leaflets, lists and forms.  After “that evening” they had decided that they were the ones that now needed to make amends and were organizing the biggest charity day that Rosewood had ever hosted.  Every lunchtime they recruited more participants, elicited more sponsor money and generally championed the causes that would benefit from their efforts.  This way they could forget about what had happened, it was their way to move on.  Interestingly their right hand man in all of this was Daniel Cooper.  He’d become invaluable as their assistant and the trio seemed destined for fund raising success.

Daniel Cooper on this particular lunchtime was deep in talks with Tania, Sophie, Elouise and Jenny.  They were organizing one of the centrepieces of the charity day, a cultural festival that would include theatre, music and poetry.  A school band that were enjoying a current surge of success were going to play and they’d managed to get a cult fan fiction author to do a reading and Q and A.  The head teacher was delighted with them and kept making comments about how they were destined for great things.  What she didn’t know was that they were destined to a life where they needed to forget and the event was a way of doing this.  Happily they were enjoying it and of course the new found attention of Daniel.  Occasionally Jenny would go out of her way to irritate them but that was just Jenny…it was nothing they couldn’t handle.

They had asked Nisha when the idea was originally hatched to get involved but to no avail.  After what happened at the Hackerspace she had decided to commit herself entirely to her studies.  After all the uncertainty that she had experienced recently she needed some stability and so she had consciously eschewed all of her dreams of being in the centre of anything, of being popular…and gone back to what she was good at.  Her grades were tracking as the highest ever achieved at the school, it was a bittersweet success considering what had been sacrificed.   Essentially she was lonely but she tried to ignore this as much as she could.  Telling herself that this part of her life was just a stepping stone to getting to where she belonged…things would be very different at university – very different.

Pez also cut a lonely figure as he sat at the other side of the common room reading his book.  The events of a month ago and taken their toll on him and since that fateful afternoon he hadn’t been able to touch a computer…he knew he was going to have to get over it but somehow the sheer weight of what he had initiated clung to him like a shroud.  It was him that had decided to teach Daniel Cooper a lesson, him that had made contact with Ziyou, him that had had the intellectual and technical wherewithal to make the virus possible.  Looking at him you could tell that he was a person for whom the future and perhaps even the present was entirely changed.   However nobody did see, nobody cared enough to see…apart from Nisha who occasionally glanced over to him from her studies utterly unsure how to start a conversation despite how much she missed her best friend.

Hugs and Mel were sat drinking vending machine coffee.  Those who bothered to take any notice of them would have questioned why they seemed to have an endless supply of coffee without ever putting any money in the machine. If questioned they would have said that their lack of wealth was a barrier to them getting the amount of caffeine they needed and therefore what was needed was a hack.  They would have resented the intrusion however as these two were the only erstwhile members of MOE’s bar who were still plotting.  Their days of innovation and big ideas were not over, something inside them would not let them resign themselves to a life of mediocrity and so any spare time would be spent searching for what would become their next big thing.  Today they seemed to have something pressing on their mind, frequently looking at their watches…as if they were expecting something…news of some sort.  Their edginess thankfully for them went unnoticed.

Denise, Siobhan and Cath were also in the full flow of animated conversation.  Of all the hackers these three had emerged the most unscathed.  Their role had always been to serve and so they were able to walk away without the weight of responsibility the others had.  Their chatter was light, animated, frivolous and just as it should be for girls of their age.  If occasionally one of them thought back to what had been they didn’t mention it…it had become instinctive to block it out, move on in their head, not worry about the past and enjoy the present.  On the rare occasions that Pez looked up and noticed them he couldn’t help but marvel at their enviable freedom and normality.

There were two characters that shunned the common room, shied away from the too many questioning faces, too many unspoken questions.  Archie and Beth preferred the quiet of the library.  They had become almost inseparable, their relationship one of mutual need and respect.  In Archie, Beth had found someone to hold onto who listened without judgment, with whom she could be herself and for the first time someone who she could be utterly honest with.  In Beth, Archie had found someone who needed him, who listened without dismissing him…someone who he could help to make whole again.  Gradually Beth was learning not to mask her pain in control and violence but to deal with it.  Gradually she was being healed.  Was there a spark of romance between them?  Undeniably.  Would they do anything about it? Who knew…

So what had happened that Wednesday evening? What were the events that sealed the fate of the Hackerspace, MOE’s bar and every individual within it?

Pez’s announcement that Ziyou was ready after the revelations about Beth was met with a moment of total paralysis and then complete chaos.  Everyone was shouting as Pez’s finger hovered over the go button, which when pressed would spark a chain of events, the consequences of which were unimaginable even to those people who had thought of nothing else for the last week.  The shouting became more ragged, more desperate and as they screamed at each other Pez knew that powerful people in another continent were waiting and that they were all in too deep to back out…pressing that button was the last thing he wanted to do and yet there was no choice.  He looked up at Archie, then at Beth – the only other silent people in the room – for some sort of sign, some sort of lifeline but in that moment saw that they had disconnected from what was going on and only had eyes for each other…they were engaged in a sort of silent dialogue, the content of which he could only guess at…how Pez wished he had listened to Archie…not allowed himself to be dazzled by Beth and her visions of grandeur. 

He lifted his hand to initiate what could not be avoided and all went still as the collective acknowledged the significance of what was about to happen and then…blackout…lights, monitors, everything…all instantly expired…the hum of electricity ever present in the portacabin now absent.

Denise lit a torch…the faces of the students haunted in strange half light and the uncertainty of what was happening, she crossed to the window pulling away the blackout screen…

“Power outage…the whole streets gone.”

Cath’s voice sounded small in the darkness, “What happens now?”

A moment of silence and then Archie, sounding in absolute possession of himself spoke, “We walk away…this is your…our chance.”  There was a beat as everyone took this in…was that really a possibility? Was there really going to be a final means of escape from the web they had spun for themselves?

Finally Pez cut through the silence, “Archie’s right, the power outage will have wiped everything…everything we did to be able to make this happen, all the progress we had made.  This is our chance to get out…we need to send a message to Ziyou that we’ve been disabled, not now…I can do it later, I’ll tell them we think someone is on to us…that we need to go quiet…all of you get out.” 

Once again and for the final time the portacabin was a hive of activity as the collective vacated the building.  Steve, filled with regret for having obeyed Beth’s instruction, cut the tape from Archie’s wrists.  Torchlight allowed all of them to gather anything that they needed to take with them…it was done in silence…a silence heavy with what might have been.  One by one they left, each aware that for the first time in recent history their future was uncertain, until only Beth and Archie remained.  Archie looked at her and realized she wasn’t really there, she had gone to some other place where the hurt and fear she lived with was raw and real.  He took her by the hand and gently led her out of the building.

A month later in the common room the power cut was old news and about to be replaced with something much more dramatic, as the general hum of lunchtime conversation was pierced with a fire alarm.  Students filed out as rumours abounded – was it a drill?  A false alarm?  Then they saw the smoke and flames…fire was engulfing the builder’s portacabin – the whole thing was alight…there was going to be nothing left of it.  As Pez looked at it mesmerised the Head and Deputy rushed past…muttering hurriedly about electrical faults and that it should have been torn down months ago.

Pez swung round as he was tapped on the shoulder, Hugs and Mel were smiling at him…

The evidence in there was a potential barrier to our future,” said Mel, Hugs finished the thought for her, once a hacker, always a hacker, “It was a barrier that needed to be overcome.”

“How did you do it?” asked Pez, intrigued despite himself.

“You don’t need to concern yourself,” replied Hugs, “That chapter of our lives is over now….time to move on mate.”  She smiled at him and walked off to line up with Mel, neither of them betraying any sense of guilt…Pez took a breath and then suddenly fired into action, there was somebody he needed to see…needed to talk to…he picked up his pace seeking her face out in the crowd of students until he was halted by his name being called…

“Pez?” Nisha was hesitant…

“You’re here?”  It was a stupid thing to say but Pez was having something of a day and definitely wasn’t at his best.

“I never went away.”