Patrick Thompson - Execution Plan

‘I thought it was my funeral.’

‘And it’s my fault. Do they have beer in here or is it all wine and shite in bottles?’

‘They have beer.’

‘In tiny fucking bottles or in pints?’

‘Both.’

‘Fair enough. You had enough of that?’

I had. I dropped it into the next bin.

‘First sensible thing you’ve done. For the second one, you can buy the drinks.’

‘I’m buying the drinks?’

‘Of course you are, you cheeky cunt. I bought lunch .’

If you’re old enough to remember a time when there were no video games, then you’ll know that the first time you saw Pong it was a vision into a new place. Cyberspace is the place you look into when you look into a monitor, past the screen and into the game world. In there – out there – everything is possible. You can control events there.

In the real world, events control you.

I used to be a student. You don’t need to be a student to get into software. Most early coders – the ones on the frontier, the ones on the cutting edge – taught themselves. They had to. There were no landmarks. Now, you need qualifications and experience. I learned how to code from a ZX Spectrum, trying to write games that would make me a millionaire like Matthew Smith. You’d see pictures of him in computer magazines, this long-haired seventeen-year-old said to have a million-plus bank account. This was in the early eighties, when a million was big money. The computer magazines of the time used to have long listings of programs, endless pages of hopeless code for you to type in at the keyboard of your computer. They always contained typos. If you typed them in correctly, they failed to run. You had to interpret and debug the code. You’d spend days typing this stuff in, saving it to a C90 cassette every now and then. Saving took minutes in those days. You had to watch the tape run and listen to a high-pitched electronic squealing.

Sometimes, even now, I hear that sound as I fall asleep.

I corrected the code in magazines and got programs to run. I got jerky stick-men to stroll across the screen. I got fifty bad versions of Space Invaders to run. I got bad eyesight and pale skin.

I gave up on programming games. With games the cutting edge is always somewhere else. In computing the cutting edge is in all directions, and you can’t keep up with it. You have to find a wave and ride it. You have to pick a direction and head that way.

I learned computing by myself, and then couldn’t get a job. The first wave had gone. The second wave was coming up behind me, schools full of kids learning to program. I didn’t have a wave to go with, so I got stuck in the trough. I needed more experience. I had some money in my bank account, left to me thanks to helpful deaths on remote branches of the family tree. I invested it in myself and took a degree course at Borth College. That’s where I learned about other worlds. That’s where I learned that they’re bad places. And then, like all students, I forgot everything I’d learned.

Dermot looked at the interior of the restaurant.

‘Look at the state of this place. Is this tacky or fucking what?’

A barman in an anonymous black suit watched us nervously. He looked too young to be behind a bar. He looked much too young to deal with Dermot.

‘We want beer,’ Dermot told him. ‘We need beer. We’ve been having a hard old time. I’ve been shifting commodities all morning and I’m thirsty. What have you got?’

The barman listed drinks; designer lagers made up most of the options.

‘Two pints of lager then,’ Dermot said. ‘Fizzy piss but you haven’t got anything else. You want to talk to the brewery about it. I have friends in catering. I could put a word in. Would you like me to do that? Would you like me to see what I can do?’

‘It’s not up to me,’ said the barman.

‘No, I wouldn’t have thought so,’ said Dermot. ‘I’d imagine not. We’ll have two whiskies to go with them.’

‘I’m driving,’ I said.

‘I’ll drink them then. That’s two lagers, two whiskies, and have one yourself.’

‘I’m not really allowed to drink.’

‘But I want you to have one. I’ll be offended. I’d take it as a rebuff. Who says you can’t have one?’

‘It’s how it works.’

‘Don’t say I didn’t try. Don’t say I didn’t offer. Just the lagers and whiskies then, thanks. He’s paying.’

I checked my wallet. I didn’t know what the prices were like. The training people had paid for all of the meals until then. Which was fair enough as the training was costing thousands of pounds. I checked the room for clues about costs. There was a lot of flimsy wood panelling and acres of flat red cloth. Glass ashtrays the size of dustbin lids held mounds of smouldering butts. The waitresses were teenage girls with the facial expressions of expiring fish apart from one older woman who, on first inspection, appeared to be dead. They wore unmarked uniforms, somewhere between French maids and policewomen. Someone in procurements had overlapping fetishes.

Clusters of men wearing Armani suits they couldn’t quite afford or carry off talked about deals they were involved in. Dermot and I were easily the oldest people in the room if you discounted the older waitress. Which, as she seemed to be dead, you could.

‘ School holidays , is it?’ asked Dermot. ‘Didn’t tell you, did I? The name’s Dermot. My mother was from Cork, so she used to say. Course she was off her head , she could have been from Mars for all I know. Didn’t know my father, he fucked off to Belgium before I turned up. Belgium! Who goes to Belgium ?’ He had a drink and thought about it. ‘That’s my family history done. Who are you then?’

‘Mick Aston.’

‘Mick? That’s what you’d call a sheepdog. We can work with it though. Could be Mickey, could be Michael, could be Mike. You’re stuck with Aston, though. You not drinking that?’

He pointed at my whisky and I shook my head. He downed the drink.

‘Tell you what , tell you what I think. I think we need to get out of here. Out of this fucking business park. You up for it? We can go into town and have a real drink.’

‘I have a course to finish.’

‘Well finish it then. Finish it now. You can always do another course. You might not see me again. What have you got to lose?’

‘My job. My liver.’

‘There are other jobs out there. I can get you a job.’

‘Selling burgers?’

‘Not fucking likely. You don’t have the skill set. You don’t have the aptitude. We can use the van to get to town.’

‘You’re drunk.’

‘I’ve had a drink. There’s a difference. Having a drink is sociable. Getting drunk is disgraceful. I don’t get drunk.’

The barman eyed him warily.

‘I get rat-arsed ,’ Dermot told him. I get arrested. Nice place, hope it takes off. You’re fucked if it doesn’t. You coming?’

Of course I was. I didn’t know what to make of him but it’d be an interesting night. You’d have thought that after Dr Morrison I’d know better, but after Dr Morrison I really didn’t know what I knew.

‘Good man. Fair play. We’ll take the van. You’ll need to be careful in there.’

‘Why? The fat fryer?’

‘No, fuck that. We can dump that. You’ll have to watch out for the mirrors. There are the wing mirrors, the driving mirror, might even be some shiny surfaces in there somewhere. I doubt it, it’s filthy. I honestly doubt it. But there might be some chrome or something.’