Listen, I don’t mean to be condescending but I don’t suppose you’ve ever linked computers together before, using cables and stuff?
It’s not that I don’t think you could. You totally could. It’s just that most people don’t bother. Why would you? I mean, you can link computers up on a home network as easy as pie, but doing it physically, with extra bits and bobs, and a motherboard (two actually), connecting all the other bits – the CPU, the hard drive and what not …
Well, all I can say is that I couldn’t do it, but Pye makes it look easy.
Not that I’m concentrating much. Nor would you if you were stuck in a past dimension of spacetime and your only way back was currently drying out over the back of a fridge or covered in used cat-litter. I keep going over to it and lifting it up and looking at it, as if it would make any difference.
“Mr Melling, the tech teacher? He lets me in here at lunchtimes during term, and he lent me all the stuff to make my own computer,” Pye is saying as I watch him use a soldering iron to attach a long wire to a printed circuit board. He nods towards the corner of the room. There’s a TV screen, a keyboard and a metal tray with all the insides of a computer revealed.
“It’s like a computer’s died and that’s the post-mortem,” I say.
Pye laughs. “Yeah, but this one lives! Look.” He goes over to it, plugs in a cable and switches it on. A few seconds later, the screen lights up with the words ‘ZZZZZAP!! BY PYE CHAUDHURY’ in blocky letters.
“Wanna game?”
“You invented a game?”
“It’s not all that good, there’s a few glitches, like when you get a new high score, you go back to zero which I haven’t worked out how to fix yet, but –” he gives a shy half-smile – “yeah. I wrote the code for it. Took me ages!”
In fact, the idea is pretty good: using the left, right, up and down keys on the keyboard you have to move your cursor around to dodge this random creature that looks like a bear with a big mouth, and at the same time pick up boxes with points in them. OK, compared even with simple stuff like Donkey Kong, ZZZZZAP!! is rubbish, but of course I don’t tell Pye that, and in truth it’s pretty good fun, although Pye totally beats me because – as he eventually admits – he has a good idea where the bear is coming from next because he hasn’t got the random bit working completely.
“Randomness – like, proper randomness – is really hard to program.”
Still, he made it himself. The guy is a genius.
After about ten minutes of this, Pye turns back to the main table. As he turns, his elbow catches my backpack, which falls, spilling the contents on the floor.
“Hey – sorry,” he says, and he starts picking the stuff up and then stops. He stands up holding the family photo I grabbed from my bedside table.
“This your mum and dad?” he asks looking at it closely. My mouth goes dry. “They look nice. What are they called?”
I have thought about this, but – so far – reached no conclusion. The thing is, I just can’t decide. I’ve had this debate going on in the back of my head for days.
So for now, I reply, “Albert. Like me. And my mum is Sarah.”
He stares at the picture very closely, then smiles. “He looks just like my dad. They could be brothers, in fact.”
“Like us.”
“Hey – maybe they are! Separated at birth and their parents never told them about each other …”
“No,” I say, quickly, “that can’t be true. Besides, they speak with different accents.”
“Well, one could have come to Britain before … hang on, how do you know how my dad speaks?”
Whoops.
“Just guessing. Does he have an Indian accent?”
“Yeah. But we’re not allowed to speak Punjabi at home. He says, ‘Dat is de language of another time, another life, Pythagoras. Ve are British now.’” Pye wobbles his head like Grandpa Byron does, and I’m suddenly filled with regret at how we parted.
I know it would be wrong, it could threaten everything, but I blurt out, “Can I meet your dad? He sounds great!”
“Of course you can. He’s working late tonight, but you can come round tomorrow after we’ve been on my go-kart. I mean, if you want to. And we’ve still got this to finish,” he adds, pointing at the central table with five of the six computers now linked up.
“Your go-kart?” Of course, I know all about this, but I’m doing pretty well at not showing it, I think.
“Yeah. I built it with my dad. It’s not a real go-kart, it’s just a bogie, but it’s completely ace!”
I’m back at the fridge now, looking at my laptop. Outside the sky has begun to darken earlier than usual with a big black cloud looking grim and threatening.
“I’d leave it overnight, if I were you. Looks like it’s gonna rain. We should be getting back.”
Pye puts the key back in the brick hole. We hop over the low wall and he turns to me, hunching his shoulders as the rain begins to fall.
“You go that way, I guess.”
“Yeah.”
“Um, Al? I’ve had a really good time today. Thanks for, um …” he tails off, and I let him take his time. He chews his lip and looks down, like he’s searching for the right words on the ground.
“I don’t … I don’t really have many … look, Macca? He’s not much of a friend, you’re right, but, well, it was better than nobody.” There’s a long pause then he adds, “Till now.” And he gives his shy half-smile again and walks away quickly. Ten metres later, he turns back. “See you right here tomorrow?”
I decide to risk something. “With The Lean Mean Green Machine?”
A broad grin splits his face. “How the …? Yeah!” And then he adds, “And I still want to meet your hamster!”
I wait till he’s gone, then turn back and run back to the rusty blue door, letting myself in with the key and shaking the rain off my hair.
Alan Shearer, Alan Shearer, Alan Shearer. How am I going to get him back?
I look around the tech lab. This will be my bed for the night. Half a packet of biscuits and an apple later, it’s beginning to get dark and I’m dozing off and then …
It’s a thunderclap that wakes me, the boom making the school windows rattle and I think, as I often do when the weather’s bad at night, how lucky I am to be human and indoors and not an animal outside. Or indeed a hamster in a drawer in an underground bunker.
I take a long breath, as I realise something: I’m not going to sleep again until I have rescued Alan Shearer.
I have to go back to Macca’s house.
How Thunder Works
My dad used to tell me that thunder is the noise that the rain clouds make when they bump together, then they crack and all the rain spills out.
I believed him for ages.
In truth, thunder is lightning. At any rate, it’s the noise of lightning. It’s just that lightning travels at the speed of light, so you see it pretty much as soon as it flashes.
The sound of the lightning – thunder – travels much, much slower, so you hear it afterwards.
When you see lightning, start counting slowly until you hear the thunder. Then divide the number you get by three. That’s how many kilometres away the storm is.
If the number gets smaller then the storm is getting closer.