Robert Rankin - Web Site Story

'A fireman nicked my helmet, guv.'

'And the spotted cravat? Did he nick your tie too?'

'Oh no, guv. The lads and I were discussing the Hegelian dialectic up in the canteen. The cravat is merely symbolic.'

Chief Constable Westlake sighed wearily. 'Just get this woman a printout of all persons reported missing in the London area during the last two months. And take a statement from her about a missing person of her own.'

'Can I use the big new computer, guv?'

Westlake raised his eyebrows. 'What big new computer would that be, then?'

Constable Meek whispered into the ear of his superior officer. Kelly caught the words 'raid on the premises of… dodgy gear… open and shut case… friend of the DI… same lodge… two hundred pounds each hush money… new computer for the station… no more questions asked.'

'Ah,' said the chief constable. 'That computer. Well lad, crank it up and give this woman the printout. And take off that bloody silly hat, you look like the Cisco Kid.'

'The Cisco Kid?' asked Constable Meek.

'Hero of the popular 1950s American TV series,' said Kelly. 'The Cisco Kid was played by Duncan Renaldo. His comedy relief sidekick, Pancho, by the now legendary Leo Carillo. Every episode ended with the lines "Oh Cisco", "Oh Pancho". There were three hundred and thirty-two episodes. And the series ran up until 1961 when Leo Carillo sadly passed away at the grand old age of eighty.'

Constable Meek and Chief Constable Westlake stared at Kelly Anna Sirjan.

'How on Earth did you know that?' asked Westlake.

'I read a lot,' said Kelly. 'Should I follow you, Constable Meek?'

The big new computer stood upon a desk in an otherwise empty office on the second floor of the Brentford nick. Although it was clean and new-looking, it was actually an out of date Mute Corp 3000 Series. The office was not entirely otherwise empty. There were cardboard boxes in evidence. And wires. And complicated keyboards and user's manuals and more wires and a number of dangerous-looking black boxes with warning stickers on them.

Kelly viewed all with an interested eye. 'Who has been wiring this up?' she asked.

Constable Meek reddened slightly in the cheeks. 'Well, most of us, really,' he confessed. 'We haven't made too much progress yet, but we remain confident that our endeavours will be rewarded with a satisfactory conclusion to the operation in the fullness of time. So to speak.'

'Would you like me to put it online for you?'

'Oh would you really? Oh yes please.'

Kelly applied her talents to the job in hand. Shortly thereafter her endeavours were rewarded with a satisfactory conclusion.

'There you go,' said Kelly. 'Now I'll need the password so that I can access the police databanks.'

'Yes,' said the constable, nodding his head.

'So, what is it?'

'What is what?'

'The password.'

'Password,' said the constable.

'Yes, password. What is the password?'

'Password,' said the constable once more.

'You're telling me that the password, is password?'

'Yes,' said the constable. 'Password is the official password for all government computers. Even MIS and Department S. Not to mention GHQ.' The constable paused.

Kelly typed in password.

'You're supposed to say "GHQ?"' said the constable. 'And then I say, "I told you not to mention that." It's a running gag.'

'How amusing,' said Kelly. 'Now I just type in a request for a list of missing persons and request a hard copy, do I?'

The constable shrugged in a petulant manner. 'A running gag isn't a running gag if people refuse to run it,' he said.

Kelly typed in her request. Pressed PRINT and waited.

'Actually I really love technology,' said the constable. 'And I love the way that computers have got all big again. This is a Mute Corp 3000, one of the biggest you can get. All those miniaturized jobbies that came in around 2010. The ones that you wore inside your contact lenses. I could never be having with them.'

'No-one could,' said Kelly. 'People felt cheated by microtechnology, computer systems that fitted on a pinhead. People like plastic boxes with gubbins inside them. Plastic boxes are comforting.'

'And black ones are really macho,' said Constable Meek. 'Oooh, what's it doing now?'

'It's printing out,' said Kelly.

And printing out it was.

Paper spilled from the printer. Paper from a big roll at the back. Jack Kerouac typed On the Road in the 1950s upon a specially converted typewriter that had a spool of paper on the back. It took him only three weeks to type out his best-seller and it was all on a single piece of paper. Not a lot of people know that interesting fact.

Kelly did.

'There's at least a page full,' said Constable Meek, preparing to rip it from the roll.

'There's more coming,' said Kelly.

And there was.

And more.

'That's fifteen pages' worth,' said Constable Meek, fourteen pages later.

'There's more coming.'

And there was.

And more.

'Jumping Jesus on a rope. Give me joy and give me hope,' went Constable Ronald Meek, son of the famous Nigel and brother to the pirate Black Jake Meek (who always wore a wooden leg but never owned a parrot). 'There's fifty pages, no sixty, no maybe seventy. Half of the population of London seem to have all gone missing.'

Kelly tore off the paper. 'It's hundreds,' she said. 'But not thousands. But it's far too many people. This isn't good. It isn't.'

'It's The Rapture,' said the suddenly enlightened Constable Meek. 'The good are being carried off to Glory. I must tell the chief constable.'

'Don't do that,' said Kelly.

'But I must. If I am to be lifted bodily into Heaven, he'll need to call in a replacement for me from the Met. There's a lot of paperwork involved. He'll want to get started at once.'

'It isn't The Rapture,' said Kelly, who, truth to tell, was almost beginning to wonder. 'And I wouldn't go bothering the chief constable with it. Well, not at least until I've left the building.'

'Oh must you go?' asked Constable Meek. 'I was hoping to ask you out to lunch. There's this restaurant I know, the Laughing Sprout. You are a vegetarian, aren't you?'

Kelly smiled and nodded. 'However did you guess?' she asked.

'Call it intuition,' said the unintuitive constable.

'Could you just give me half an hour alone with this computer first?' asked Kelly. 'Before you take me out to lunch.'

'Oh yes,' said Constable Meek. 'Half an hour. I'll change out of my cravat. I'll see you in half an hour.'

Half an hour later the constable returned, but Kelly Anna Sirjan had, like Elvis, left the building.

Kelly sat once more in the saloon bar of the Flying Swan. Before her on the table was the stack of computer printouts, torn into page-sized portions. Beside this lay something most intriguing. It was another printout, but this one came in the form of a map of Greater London. Kelly had programmed the computer to print out this map, dotting the last known addresses of the listed missing persons, along with the dates of their disappearances. The map made for interesting viewing.

Most of the disappearances appeared to have occurred during the last fourteen days. And there was a definite pattern. There were no dots in Brentford, which meant that Dr Druid had not as yet made a report to the police. But a trail of dots led directly to the borough. It was one of eight such trails. They spread over the map like the legs of some titanic spider, the body of which was splattered black with dots. And appeared to cover most of an urban conurbation known as Mute Corp Keynes.

'Mute Corp Keynes,' said Kelly to no-one but herself. 'The new town Utopia built in 2002 by Remington Mute the computer billionaire. "The town of tomorrow, today", if I recall the advertising slogan correctly, and I do. Turned out to be not so much a Utopia as a dystopia, a regular ghetto. He never invested in any more new towns after that. Significant? Perhaps.'