Robert Rankin - Web Site Story

'Find the treasure and I win?' he said.

But the voices said no more.

'OK.' Big Bob took a step forward. And 'Oh,' he said, as he did so. He certainly felt light upon his feet, a single step carried him forward at not inconsiderable speed. He appeared to be possessed of extraordinary fitness and agility. He'd never been a sluggard before. He'd always kept himself in shape. But now. But now.

But now.

'Oh yes,' said Big Bob. 'Oh yes indeed.' And he took another step and then another. And off he went across the ward and right out through the wall.

Bob paused upon his springing steps. He had just done that, hadn't he? He had just stepped right through the wall? Why had he done that? Why hadn't he just used the door?

Big Bob turned to look back at the wall. But the wall •wasn't there any more. He was standing now in the middle of the Butt's Estate. Brentford's posher quarter. On two sides of him rose the elegant Georgian houses built so long ago by the rich burghers of Brentford. Behind him the Seamen's Mission and before him the broad and tree-lined thoroughfare that led either in or out of the Butt's, depending on which way you're travelling.

Big Bob looked all around and about. This was the Butt's, and he was here. Well, he was here, but somehow this wasn't.

Big Bob looked all around and about just a little more. This wasn't quite right, not that anything was. But this wasn't right for sure. It looked like the Butt's Estate. The Butt's Estate he'd known for all of his life so far. Possibly all his life, if he was, as he feared, now dead. But this wasn't quite the Butt's Estate.

The evening sky above was a curious violet hue and all that it looked down upon was slightly out of kilter. The Butt's Estate wasn't real. It was more like a copy. More like a model. The colours here were too bright. The mellow bricks of the elegant buildings were unnatural, they lacked definition, everything had a flattened quality about it.

It was a copy. It was a model.

'Model?' said Big Bob to no-one but himself and then something inside his head went click. 'Model,' he said again. ' Computer model. This is like one of those holographic computer models of towns that architects create on their Mute Corp holocast computers.' And then Big Bob's brain went click just a little bit more. And then the light of a revelation dawned, as it was bound to sooner or later.

Though for some, it would have been sooner.

'Game on?' whispered Big Bob. 'Three lives? Golden stones? Weapons? Find the treasure? It's a computer game. I'm in a computer game.'

And then Big Bob began to laugh. He laughed and laughed and laughed. It was all so obvious, wasn't it? But he hadn't realized. He hadn't seen through it. What a fool. What an oaf. What a grade A buffoon.

Big Bob sighed. And it was a sigh of relief.

'I'm dreaming,' he said. 'I'm asleep. There was a film once. I saw it when I was a lad. Tron, that was it. A chap finds himself inside a computer game. Thou art a twotty git, Big Bob,' Bob told himself. 'But clearly thou dost have quite an imagination.

'Okey-dokey,' said Big Bob, smiling all over his great big face. 'Enough of all this. Time to wake up, I think.'

Well, you would think that, wouldn't you? You would try to wake up. And if it was a dream, and you'd twigged it was a dream, you probably would wake up. Or if, like those lucky blighters who are skilled in the art of lucid dreaming, you knew you were in a dream, you'd just stay asleep and really get into it. Because when you know you're in a dream, you can do anything you want to. Anything. And as men who are skilled in lucid dreaming never tire of telling you, you can't half have some amazing sex with some really famous women. But sadly, even if he had wanted to, which he wouldn't have done, as he was loyal to his wife, Big Bob wouldn't be having any amazing sex with any famous women.

Because Big Bob wasn't asleep.

Big Bob wasn 't dreaming.

But as Big Bob didn't know this yet, Big Bob tried to wake up.

Big Bob stretched out his big arms and did yawnings and stretchings and closings and openings of eyes and made encouraging sounds to himself and then began to wonder just why it was that he wasn't waking up and then he became very confused.

And very frightened also.

'I'm not waking up,' said Big Bob. 'I don't like this at all.'

'go on then,' said the large voice suddenly. 'shift off the square. get moving. go to level one.'

Big Bob ducked his head. Then looked up fearfully towards the violet sky. 'I am dreaming this, aren't I?' he said. 'Tell me I'm just dreaming this.'

'off the square. get moving.'

Big Bob now looked down. Although he stood upon the little grassy area of land before the Seamen's Mission, his feet did not rest upon the grass. His feet, encased as they now were within their rather dashing golden boots, stood upon a golden square. Rather plastic-looking. Rather unreal. Not very nice at all. Big Bob almost took a step forward.

'Er, hello,' called Big Bob. 'Hello up there, God, or whoever thou art. I don't like this. I don't want to play. I want to wake up please.'

'you have to play now. you're in the game,' said the large and terrible voice. The first one, not the second one. The second one said, 'do it. go mango!'

Big Bob fretted and dithered and worried and then he said, 'I'm going home to my bed. I'm bound to wake up in there.'

And then Big Bob took a single step forward.

And entered a world of hurt.

A great big hand swung down from on high and caught Big Bob in the side of the head.

'Why you bastard!' Big Bob rarely swore, but that hand hit him hard.

'What did you say, Charker?'

Big Bob glared towards the sky. But the sky wasn't there any more. Where the sky had been was ceiling, and a ceiling Big Bob knew.

'I said, oh…' Big Bob coughed, there was something strange about his voice now. And… He blinked and stared and gawped. From the ceiling to the walls, to the window, to the blackboard to the teacher Mr Vaux.

Mr Vaux, his primary-school teacher. Mr Vaux who had flown a fighter plane in the war that few remembered any more. Mr Vaux who had been a prisoner of war. Mr Vaux who had no truck with ten-year-old boys who swore.

'Sleeping, were you, Charker?' asked Mr Vaux. 'Daydreaming? Wistfully staring out of the window thinking of home time and Pogs in your own back passage?'

'I? What? How?' went Bob the Big.

'And what was that you called me?'

'I?' went Big Bob. 'I?' He looked and he blinked and then looked some more. His classroom' at Grange Primary School. And all the class were there. Trevor Alvy who bullied him. David Rodway, his bestest friend. Periwig Tombs with his Mekon head. Phyllis Livingstone the dark-haired girl from Glasgow, the very first love of his life. And there, over there in the corner, where she had always been, until her desk became empty, Ann Green, the little girl with the yellow hair, who had died in that final summer at the primary, when the swingboat in the memorial park hit her in the throat.

'I?' Big Bob gagged. There was something wrong with his voice. He raised his hands towards his throat and then he saw his hands. They were the hands of a child. His hands when he'd been a child. In the days when his hands had been skinny little hands. Skinny and grubby and stained with ink.

Nasty little hands, as his mother always said. 'Nasty little naughty little hands.'

'What?' went Big Bob, Small Bob now, in his squeaky ten-year-old voice.

'Oh we have been sleeping, haven't we?' said Mr Vaux and he caught Big, no it was Small Bob now, another clout across the head.