fn1 Aka the G&T, formed by an alliance of international powers in 2002 to deal with extraordinary threats to global civilisation.
fn2 See FILE NO: GNTRC 9437549-OP/BLAKE~∞ TOP SECRET: an attempt by transnational terror czar D.A.P Kaparis to blackmail the G&T into handing over the secrets of the Boldklub process by releasing a doomsday bioweapon, the Scarlatti Wasp, and threatening Armageddon. The attempt was thwarted by a military kill team shrunk to hunt down the wasp, and by the heroic actions of Infinity Drake.
fn3 Named after the Danish football club Akademisk Boldklub, who Nils Bohr, the father of subatomic physics, used to play for.
fn1 Neuro-Retinal Programming aka NRP – an accelerated learning and personality control process whereby a probe, inserted directly through the eye, connects to the optic nerve and delivers information (specialist knowledge, emotional association, ideology, etc.) straight to the brain’s cerebral cortex.
fn2 In computing an executable file contains actionable program code rather than just data. It’s the bit that says Do This, Do That, and Stop Complaining.
fn1 Hudson had won a Hertfordshire Schools anti-bullying poetry prize for ‘Willow: Bowed, Yet Ye Stand’.
fn2 Reducing matter collapses the electro-magnetic spectrum in such a way that nano radio transmissions cannot be picked up on macro radio receivers and vice versa. An nPhone is a tiny macro phone carried in a backpack with a keypad that allows texting on the regular phone network. It also allows constant tracking.
fn3 “The greatest thing to come out of 1969, after the moon landings by NASA and Abbey Road by the Beatles” – Al.
fn4 Sphalerite possesses a quality called triboluminesence, which means it glows when scratched.
fn1 G&T official history, Forbidden City operational timeline starts: DAY ONE Sep 30th 00:00 (GMT+1).
fn2 See Operation Scarlatti.
fn3 Nano-radar is limited in range but because nano-material is so dense even the tiniest objects shrunk by the Boldklub process are easily detectable in flight.
fn1 An unbreakable radio-signal-fracturing program that allows Kaparis’s operatives to communicate securely across the globe.
fn2 Boolean logic, the system of logic that allows binary computers to process information, does not accept paradox (e.g. two different right answers to the same problem) thus computers can never choose between answers of equal value (I mustn’t eat the chocolate it will make me fat vs I must eat the chocolate I will feel good): therefore computers can never be independently intelligent. Only humans can pull this trick off (mostly they eat the chocolate). And quantum computers (mostly they don’t).
fn1 Special martime commando force co-opted to the G&T following assault action in the Bay of Biscay during Operation Scarlatti.
fn2 Fun physicist par excellence.
fn1 Nano food and water packs that had been shrunk in large quantities to keep the Sons of Scarlatti fed and hydrated wherever they were.
fn1 Organised criminal gangs, often violent, based in Hong Kong but operating through East Asia, akin to the Italian Mafia.
fn1 Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode.
fn1 Pretending a variety of problem behaviours in order to punish his parents for separating.
fn1 K. Eric Drexler, nanotech pioneer who first proposed the idea of self-replicating nanoscale assemblers.
fn1 Survived following 8 hours of surgery. Awarded the Order of the Medal for Bravery (Gold) – Hong Kong.
fn1 Super-organisms are groups of individual organisms that gather together to better ensure survival – e.g. an ants’ nest, a coral reef, human society. As a young scientist Kaparis developed a theory that super-organisms worked to serve a super-few special individuals (such as himself). His theory was demolished during a lecture in Cambridge in 1993 by Ethan Drake when he pointed out a simple mathematical error in the statistical method.
fn2 Wendy Sowberts, Northumberland Champion Sheepdog Trainer 1976-79. Subject of Stubbs’s affection 1973-2001. ‘I was stunned for 28 years, like a hare before a serpent’.
fn3 A form of camping practised by the clinically insane. To be avoided at all costs.
fn1 Severed cockroach heads can survive for several hours after disconnection from the body. Headless cockroach bodies can survive for weeks.
fn1 An electric motor is a magnet in a coil of wire. If you put electrical current through the coil the magnet rotates. Similarly, and conversely, if you physically rotate the magnet you generate electrical current in the coil. It’s called ‘Mutual induction’. A self-taught South London nobody, Michael Faraday, discovered this in 1831. It has been very, very, very, very, very useful.
fn1 Drop a 9-volt battery (the rectangular ones) into a glass of salt water and see for yourself.
fn1 Al Lampo Dell’Armi – Handel.
fn1 Latin word for tortoise. Defensive military formation pioneered by the Legions of Ancient Rome, characterised by a shell of aligned or overlapped shields.
fn2 Experience from Operation Scarlatti showed that Tyros were fitted with suicide capsules, tiny compressed air vessels planted in their brains that could be set off by scratching sensors on their scalp, causing a sudden fatal brain haemorrhage.
fn3 Heads Up Display: information projected on to a transparent surface in the user’s line of sight, e.g. cockpit canopy or helmet visor.
fn1 [REDACTED]
fn1 Thrip – Order Thysanoptera – a fringe-winged insect with cigar-shaped body, usually 1mm in length, aka – stormbugs, thunderbugs, stormflies, thunderflies.
fn1 299, 792, 458 metres per second
fn1 “He may not have actually presented his card,” she said in later testimony, “but it felt as if he did.”