A wallpad ORANGE – Opening Chapters

1

THE ULTIMATE ENGLISH VICTORY

London, June 21st, 2138

LONDON WAS WAKING up to another day dominated, as usual, by the world’s leading organisation, the omnipotent and ubiquitous wallpad ORANGE corporation (wallpad always in lowercase and ORANGE always capitalised) …

The lead newsreader on the internet’s most popular news channel, wallpad channel WP1, allowed a gloriously superficial smile to stretch cheesily across her pretty face before announcing:

“Good Morning from London, my happy wallpadders! Last night, as Big Ben struck 23, wallpad ORANGE (incorporated) decreed that forthwith all stories will be written in English. The entire text on the wallpad megasite compendium is now in English. If translation wallwidgets have failed to translate stories as writers prefer, then by all means edit them. Although wallpad aims for British English, for now, any form of English will be accepted. So my happy wallpadders, you may merrily type away in African, Asian-Block, British, Caribbean, Chinese, Indian, North American, Scandinavian or any other type of English you prefer. We’re all one big happy family now. We live the most wonderful life on Earth.

“Some worldwide non-English text translations into English will no doubt affect some fictional prose (most from wallpad’s ancient story data banks). So be aware, as the translation wallwidgets might create some amusing, if not incongruous, segments of text.

“Finally, on this matter, please note that the wallpad ORANGE motto, Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno (which was written in the now extinct Latin language) has been translated into English. That is to say: All for one, and one for all.

“There have already been some complaints from many Filipino wallpadders over the translations of zombie boy band True Infection resurrection stories, which, until last night, were, for some obscure reason, always written in the Filipino Tagalog language. In a most audaciously unfriendly and unusual move, these complaining Filipino wallpadders deleted all their stories and comments. In a show of sympathetic support, other more compliant Filipino writers have deleted their English stories—though it is interesting to note that a surprising number of new Filipino wallpadders have joined wallpad ORANGE as writers over the last few hours. Conclude what you like from that!

“Well, my happy wallpadders, things should be easy now and much friendlier. English rules! So it’s goodbye from me, and it’s goodbye from wallpadORANGE dot com. Hashtag: NoHaters. Hashtag: NoBullying. Hashtag: wallpadORANGErules.”

Thirteen-year-old Julie Burns XIV watched all of this out of the corner of her eye on her wallpad slate as she was polishing off her cornflakes, sitting as she was in her London flat’s cosy kitchen.

After taking her empty bowl to the WP-dishwasher, Julie, whose WP username was WP-Julie1313, started typing a message on her slate using the wallpad ORANGE talk system, which she was permanently logged into …

WP-Julie1313 @WP-Saladcream Hi Sally! Did U hear the WP news about going English?

Julie expected her best friend and classmate Sally, whose WP username was WP-Saladcream, would answer by voice-call almost immediately because her school morning routine was pretty much identical to her own.

Julie was wrong in her expectations, but at least a text message arrived instantly from Sally …

WP-Saladcream @WP-Julie1313 Oi, Jules babe! Did U hear it? WP has gone English?

“Damn!” cursed Julie. “What an idiot, she must have messaged me while I was messaging her.” Julie stroked her chin, thinking … “I know, I’ll just wait until she replies to my message, or we’ll end up never having a proper talk.”

Julie waited … and waited … and waited …

Minutes later, her doorbell buzzed like an angry bumblebee. She bustled hurriedly to her front door and opened it …

“Sally!” exclaimed Julie, her eyebrows wriggling, her mouth forming a crooked smile.

“Well, I do live next door. I didn’t want to message you while you were messaging me, see?” Sally laughed and waved her wallpad slate in Julie’s face.

“All right, then,” responded Julie, waving her own wallpad slate in Sally’s face, “off you go! You send a reply now, then I’ll be in sync.”

“You’ll never be in sync, Jules babe.”

“Just start tapping and shut up, you idiot. Meanwhile, I’ll get my blazer and backpack.” Julie disappeared into the depths of her flat.

Less than two minutes later, she returned to join Sally at the front door, and the two of them headed to the lift to start their ten-minute walk to school.

“You took your time?” complained Sally, as the two of them approached the nearby lift.

“What! I was only a minute.”

“You were one minute, fifty-two seconds, mate. I started a timer on my slate. How can putting a blazer and a backpack on take that long?”

“I had to brush my teeth, you numpty.”

“Oh, all right then, I’ll let you off.” Sally smiled.

“You’re lucky I didn’t have to go for a Number Two,” added Julie, and they both laughed heartily.

The lift descended from Floor 64 to the Ground Floor in less than thirty seconds, as luckily there were no others calling it. This was not surprising because the skyscraper block was due for demolition in a few months’ time, and Julie and Sally’s family were among just ten families who were allowed to stay until their children finished their school’s summer term in mid-July.

As they spilled out of the lift and onto the pavement, Julie eagerly pressed a button on her slate to inspect her wallpad ORANGE talk system.

“Oh shite!” cursed Julie, her eyebrows arching over her surprised, bulging eyes.

“What’s up, Jules babe?”

“Well, I wanted to read the text message you sent me while I was getting my stuff, but half the school’s messaged one another, and all their messages have queued up for me.”

“So you’re WP-following half the school, are you?”

“Something like that.”

“Who’s a numpty now?” Sally laughed at her wittiness.

Julie ignored Sally’s jibe and swiped her finger up, and up, and up, scrolling through an army of messages, the words British English prominent on many of the message headings.

“Ah, got it!” Julie announced victoriously. She opened Sally’s latest text message. And this is what her classmate had written while she was getting her blazer and backpack and brushing her teeth:

WP-Saladcream @WP-Julie1313 Oi, Jules babe, hurry up or we’ll be late for school! Yes, I heard WP has gone global with English. But do you see what this means?

Julie looked at Sally and was about to speak to her, when Sally said, “Answer me on the slate, or there’s no record, babe.”

Julie rolled her eyes, raised her slate, and quickly tapped out her reply:

WP-Julie1313 @WP-Saladcream Hi Sal, you prize numpty! I hope you’re enjoying your walk to school. Nice day and all that, but wot in particular does WP going global English mean?

Sally looked down at her slate at Julie’s reply. In response, her fingers danced on her slate like a manic Irish dancer. For some reason, she seemed very excited. She wrote:

WP-Saladcream @WP-Julie1313 It means we lost our Empire, we lost every battle imaginable, we lost America, Canada, India, Australia, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and loads of other countries—BUT WE WON THE BLOODY WAR! Now that wallpad ORANGE is more or less everything and they’ve gone English, then this means everyone’s gone English. And it’s not just that wallpad ORANGE has taken onboard English, their end game is to institute British English—even if Britain broke up years ago. Jules babe, we’re bloody well Number One.

Julie stopped for a second and looked at Sally. “You serious?”

“You betcha. I’m deadly serious.”

Julie slowly shook her head condescendingly. “You numpty.”

“Oh yeah. You think so? Look at your slate now!”

Julie lifted her slate and gasped. She read a single line that contained a number that was increasing at an incredible rate. Seven of the least significant digits were changing so rapidly that they were just a blur. She paused the line so that she could read the number where she had paused it. The line read:

You have 5,812,324,076 unread messages.

 

2

THIS IS MY LUCKY DAY!

London, June 21st, 2191

 

JULIE CHANG-BURNS-XIV WAS an old age pensioner now. A widow, sixty-six years old. The world had changed at a rapid rate during her life, and it was hard for her to keep up with things. Government cutbacks and high unemployment rates meant she was living from hand-to-mouth—literally. The attritional World War Infinity had been raging for over four decades.

The soup queue in a nondescript London East End slum that Julie found herself in was shorter than usual today, because just yesterday wallpad ORANGE had conscripted anyone under the age of sixty for the anti-Filipino Alliance war effort. Julie didn’t know whether she was lucky or not. She didn’t give her prospects of even short term survival much chance, as the laser bomb attacks in London’s skies were more frequent and heavier now. At least the conscripted could die with a weapon in their hands.

As Julie mused at the queue of destitution ahead of and behind her, she started to reminisce of days gone by. Days when she was young …

I wonder what happened to Sally. I’ll never forget that day when we heard that wallpad ORANGE went English. Fat lot of good that did. It was supposed to unite the world, but did the opposite. So now we all speak English. And now we can kill one another in English. Oh, if only I had a friend like Sally. No, not a friend like Sally, but Sally herself. She ran off with that American boy. Just sixteen and got herself up the duff. Ran off to New York. Fat lot of good that did. New York was the first peacetime city to be flattened by a nuclear bomb. Suicide job of a Filipino terrorist cell that heralded in a chain of retaliatory nuclear attacks on this troubled Earth. ‘Course wallpad ORANGE eventually got rid of them nasty rotten nuclear bombs. But now we’re in an age of nasty rotten laser bombs! Cylindrical-shaped bright-red-tipped laser beams bursting with energy. All you see is the bright-red tip, but the energy of the entire length of the beam is delivered to the tip when it hits a solid mass. Oh Sally, what a mess we humans have made of our world!

Julie decided to immerse herself in more pleasant memories. Why ruin what few years, possibly days, possibly hours, she had left on this Earth?

Eventually, after only an hour, the glacially moving queue had delivered Julie near to the soup distribution area. She could smell the cabbage and tofu. Boring, but filling; especially when you’re hungry.

Minutes later, she was next in line to be served when suddenly the sound of a wailing siren blared out.

“Sod it!” she cried.

Amid the cries of fear and the undulating wail of the siren, the noisy sound of chains being pulled and steel shutters falling filled the air.

The soup distribution area shut up shop within a minute.

Everyone around Julie had already started to charge for the nearest underground station. And now the soup servers were fast on their heels.

But Julie was fed up with running. She just stood her ground and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She watched the receding panicking exodus with a sarcastic smirk.

“Mugs!” she cried. “Don’t you think the underground stations will be especially targeted! This isn’t World War Two, sunshine. This is World War Infinity. Laser bombs can fire through ventilation shafts and station entrances with ease. Yeah, some of them can change direction in mid-air just like that nowadays.”

When everyone had all but disappeared, Julie turned about and noticed, with great surprise, a huge steel canister and six loaves of packed, sliced wholemeal bread.

“Aha, left behind in the rush. Well worth dying for!” She rubbed her hands together gleefully.

She examined the huge canister.

It was hot.

She quickly wrapped her beloved dirty, well-used “snot-rag” around her hand, grasped the steel handle, and lifted the hot canister lid.

The canister was full to the brim of thick steaming tofu-cabbage soup.

“YES! This is my lucky day!”

Quickly looking around, she spied a robust red-painted iron hand barrow.

“Blimey, this is definitely my lucky day! And the hand-push barrow even has air-filled tyres!”

Then for a split second, Julie had doubts. “I hope this isn’t some sort of wallpad setup? But no, even I’m not that paranoid. I might be a little mad, and talk to myself and all, but I’ll bet my bottom walldollar this is not a wallpad setup.”

She swivelled the huge canister back and forth on the edge of its circular base, manoeuvring it onto the bottom ledge of the hand barrow. She shoved the six loaves into a plastic carrier bag that was conveniently lying nearby and tied the bag to the top horizontal rung of the vertical backing of the hand barrow. She did all this at lightning speed. She wasn’t hanging around.

Off she set for her East End basement one-room flat.

“This is my lucky day!”

All the while, the siren was wailing away in its undulating fashion, like a mad mechanical monster screaming for death.

Then, as if in answer, darting jet planes screamed back at the siren. And they opened their mouths and spat their venom. Laser bombs of enormous energy pinged down from the London sky.

Julie simply cackled aloud like a mad woman—which perhaps she was.

Buildings all around her were slammed by laser bombs, exploding into deadly plumes of chunks and shards of molten metal and glass.

Craters were forming randomly on the road ahead of her, bearing witness to the deadly laser bombs.

Still, Julie stubbornly shuffled on unhindered in a death-defying act of stupidity through the Hell on Earth, exploding all about her.

“Ha ha! Get stuffed, you silly laser bombs! Go shove yerselves! Don’t you see? This is my lucky day!”

And it certainly was her lucky day, because just then an amazing thing happened …

As she trundled along defiantly with her hand barrow bearing its huge canister of thick steaming glorious tofu-cabbage soup and the carrier bag of six loaves of sliced wholemeal bread, she was approaching a metal shuttered-up wallpad ORANGE eyeglass shop, when suddenly the metal shutters of the shop’s front door clattered upwards with great speed. A voice from a speaker shouted loudly. Julie could only just about hear it because of the mayhem exploding all around her.

“Julie! Julie! It’s me, Sally! Quick! Get down to the basement! It’s bomb proof, just about! Julie! Julie! Can you hear me, you numpty?”

Julie quickly entered the shop along with her goodies and located a safety elevator that Sally’s voice guided her to. She realised Sally was probably observing her with the shop’s wallpad ORANGE closed circuit security cameras.

The elevator’s steel double doors were open, showing the inviting view of an empty elevator cab. Julie urgently wheeled her load into the cab.

“Press the big button with the letter ‘B’ on it,” sounded Sally’s voice, this time from the cab’s speakers.

“Doing it!” shouted Julie, pressing the over-sized plasticised “B” button.

The cab doors closed in perfect synchronisation with the outer elevator doors.

Julie felt a shudder, followed by a temporary loss of weight as the cab accelerated on its journey down to the basement.

“Can it really be Sally?” questioned Julie excitedly. “This is unquestionably, quite definitely, without doubt, beyond doubt, shake it up and all about doubt, my lucky day!”

The cab decelerated to a comfortable stop within thirty seconds.

The cab’s double doors opened simultaneously with the elevator’s outer doors … and there was her long-lost friend to greet her.

“Julie!” cried Sally.

“Sally!” cried Julie.

And the two of them hugged and cried their eyes out.

 

3

THE WALLPAD ALL-SEEING EYE

JULIE AND SALLY eventually untangled themselves from each other’s welcoming, needy arms.

“Quick!” said Sally warningly. “Let’s get into the bomb-proof control room. There’s still a small chance that a direct hit by a laser bomb on the safety elevator might yet deprive you of your claim to be having a ‘lucky day’.”

“What? How d’you know about that?”

“You’ll soon see. Come on, now.”

Sally attempted to lead Julie by the hand, quickly away from the elevator. But …

“Hey, hold on a minute,” said Julie, pulling her hand free and causing Sally to lurch forwards clumsily. “I’ve got some goodies to bring.”

“Oh, yeah, of course. Your canister of tofu-cabbage soup and half-a-dozen loaves of sliced wholemeal bread.”

Julie gave Sally a quizzical look before rushing back into the elevator cab. She levered back the hand barrow into a comfortable pushing position and trundled out of the elevator cab to join Sally.

“Come on, follow me!” said Sally.

“What’s all this about a control room?”

“You’ll soon see. All will be revealed.”

And so, Sally led Julie—and her loaded hand barrow—along a long corridor that led to the control room.

The double doors of the control room swished open the moment Sally reached within a foot of them.

“Oh my gawd!” exclaimed Julie as she swept into the huge circular control room behind Sally. There were monitors wall-to-wall, and desks full of complicated-looking surveillance slates, but there was no-one except herself and Sally in the room.

“This control room is the central hub of the wallpad ORANGE East Ender surveillance system,” announced Sally proudly. “This is a not so common Surveillance and Security Unit.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!”

“Nope. This is the real McCoy.”

“But there are no Orange Shirts here to control everything.”

“Ah, but there is.”

“Where?” Julie looked around, her eyes full of fear.

Sally smiled, almost sickly.

“No, there are definitely no Orange Shirts here,” whispered Julie. Then in a more confident tone, she added, “Oh Sally, you are a one. You’re just joshing me, mate.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Jules babe. But there is an Orange Shirt in here.”

“Where?” Julie looked at Sally in a perfect state of befuddlement.

“You’re looking at one.”

Julie gasped. Her eyes bulged and her eyebrows arched high.

Sally slowly nodded her head. Her almost sickly smile melted into a definite sickly grimace.

“No, it can’t be! Sally, this is madness. A sixty-six-year-old woman, an Orange Shirt?”

Sally backed away from Julie, walking backwards, not for one second taking her eyes off her.

She reached the nearest desk, and without even turning around to face it, she put her hands behind her back, and swiped and pressed on the surface of the desk’s main built-in slate.

In response to her finger presses and swipes, a circular section of the reinforced steel ceiling opened up, and down lowered a polished titanium ball.

Terrified, Julie was mesmerised by the lowering ball. She knew the power of the technology of the wallpad ORANGE security systems.

She was not to be disappointed.

A stream of sizzling green-glowing wriggling strings of Intelligent Plasma (an invention of the wallpad ORANGE Creativity Unit) shot out of the ball and enveloped Julie. She was immobilised, and the feeling was painful—pain was something wallpad was particularly adept at providing.

Having ensnared her quarry, her ex-classmate, Sally took the opportunity to turn around and face the desk she had been backed up to. She picked up a small slate controller device.

She swivelled back around to face Julie, and using the slate controller to instruct the Intelligent Plasma, took control of Julie’s body.

Julie found herself marching against her will, robotic-like, to a robust chunky Beechwood chair.

She found herself forced to sit on it.

Steel clasps snapped out of the chair’s arms and front legs, and locked Julie’s wrists and ankles to the chair.

The strings of Intelligent Plasma released her, and with a noisy sizzling swishing sound withdrew back into the polished titanium ball.

The steel clasps on her chair were not so charitable.

She was trapped.

She knew she was doomed.

Oh dear, this is not my lucky day, after all!

Meanwhile, Sally swivelled around and turned her attention back to the desk’s main built-in slate. The titanium ball rose up and disappeared into the closing steel ceiling.

“How could you?” attempted to roar Julie angrily, but her words came out as a murmuring slur as the Intelligent Plasma had taken its toll. Julie coughed, spluttered and shook her head, determined to shake off the after-effects of the Intelligent Plasma, so she could speak her mind with a modicum of clarity. “A member of the Orange Shirts! You should be ashamed of yourself.” She sounded normal again. “Captured and condemned by my old classmate, my old next-door neighbour. What a bloody liberty!”

“I had no choice,” said Sally, turning around to face Julie.

“Of course you had a choice. You could have let me carry on to my basement flat.”

“You would never have made it to the end of the street. I checked the probabilities of your survival chances with a wallpad CA5.”

“Bish bash bosh, what a load of old tosh. I would have made it.”

“Because it was your lucky day?” questioned Sally sarcastically.

“Yeah. Anyway, it’s my life. You could have turned a blind eye.”

“Unfortunately, I couldn’t.”

“Why on earth not?”

“Because the all-seeing wallpad eye does not turn a blind eye to anyone—least of all me.”

Sally then splayed an arm theatrically, and each and every one of the wall monitor screens filled with a woman’s face.

The wallpad face.

Wallpad woman.

The face literally and figuratively of wallpad.

Wallpad woman’s eyes burned into Julie’s with a scorn that scolded Julie’s very, and so precarious, existence. The woman’s distinctive long eyelashes batted like the flapping of a pair of poisonous black-winged moths.

Wallpad woman never talked, and no one in the general public knew her identity. But everyone knew her stare. Often when you thought you were alone, on a slate, eyeglass or wall monitor, she might appear.

Staring …

Eyelash batting …

Staring …

Eyelash batting …

And seconds later, when she had your full undivided attention, a timely reminder of wallpad’s omniscient controlling system mantra would gently, but ominously, in the form of words, scroll down the viewing area, and overlay her mocking face. The ubiquitous wallpad words of warning and illogical wisdom. Words, the true controllers of the wills of humanity.

And true to form, right now, this is exactly what Julie experienced on every single one of the surrounding wall monitors.

Scrolling down the monitor screens, overlaying wallpad woman’s face, slowly, inexorably, slid the following four ubiquitous centred wallpad lines of plain white text:

 

wallpad IS WATCHING YOU!

FAKE is REAL.

FAILURE is SUCCESS.

STUPIDITY is BRILLIANCE.

 

It was typical of wallpad ORANGE’s methods to use words and images in the form of nightmarish parodies of literary dystopian classics to aid their all-encompassing power and control. In this case, George Orwell’s 1984 was the genesis of the words, and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange was the genesis for the appearance and behaviour of wallpad woman’s face.

The scrolling words briefly paused in the centre of the screen before continuing on their downward course to disappear off the bottom of the screens. Following that, after a last flutter of wallpad woman’s eyelashes, her face slowly faded away.

Julie was glad to see the chilling face disappear, but she guessed wallpad woman was probably still looking at her.

The monitor screens were now showing a compendium of surveillance transmissions showing ordinary people living their ordinary but challenging lives.

“It’s easier to keep a wallpad all-seeing eye on everyone in London now,” said Sally. “There are so few people left.”

“And yet you do your best to kill the remainder!” said Julie angrily, scowling at Sally.

“Obedience and loyalty have to be maintained. And now that you have reminded me, it’s time to show you why you were taken prisoner, and why I knew about your ‘lucky day’, and the stolen tofu-cabbage soup you have in your canister, and the stolen half-a-dozen loaves of sliced wholemeal bread you have in your stolen plastic carrier bag, not to mention the stolen hand barrow you transported them with.”

Sally pointed to a screen. Recorded highlights of Julie’s escapade with the bread and soup were plainly played out.

Julie sat in awe, looking at her aged body pushing her hand barrow through streets exploding with the pummelling of laser bombs. She didn’t know she could be so brave, stupid, or desperate—or suicidal.

“And the wallpad CA5 concludes”—Sally pointed to a red-blinking text box that appeared at the bottom of the screen—“Major Theft. Sentence: Death.”

“Oh, up your where-the-sun-don’t-shine with your silly wallpad CA5.”

“That wallpad blasphemy will now earn you a Level 2 painful death.”

“Big deal,” said Julie, and she spat on the floor angrily, in a brave, possibly stupid, show of defiance.

“Well, I don’t think you should underestimate the wallpad CA5, Julie,” said Sally.

There was an uncomfortable period of silence …

“Well?” said Julie.

“Well, what?” replied Sally.

“When do I die? I hear you Orange Shirts don’t like to hang around.”

“According to our hub’s wallpad CA5, you have less than two minutes before the Ball of Justice makes its second appearance of the day.”

“Two minutes! That’s a bit steep!”

“Time enough to put on a blazer, back pack and brush one’s teeth.”

“Huh?”

“Just before we left for school, the day wallpad went English. Remember?”

Julie did remember. That was a morning no one would ever forget. But Julie didn’t answer Sally’s question. She decided to use what little time she had left to give Sally a piece of her mind.

“I hope you rot in Hell for this.”

“I’m just following orders. Anyway, as I said, never underestimate the wallpad CA5. Of all the tasks it performs, it is in the computation of predictions of events that it excels.”

“That and passing death sentences. By now, I must have all of one minute left to live.”

Sally seemed to ignore what Julie was saying. She ducked down and pulled open a drawer just to the side of the desk. She reappeared with what looked like a lunchbox. She opened it and took a bite out of a sandwich.

“What a bloody liberty. You’re going to eat sandwiches while I’m tortured to death!”

At that moment, the ceiling once again opened a circular hole and the Ball of Justice began lowering.

Meanwhile the Beechwood chair raised an inch off the floor and started to move. It came to a halt and lowered gently to the floor.

Julie looked up to see the huge polished titanium ball right above her. It was still ominously lowering, suspended by a length of super-strengthened, twisted cabling. Her breathing grew fast and furious. She started to sweat and struggled in vain to free herself from the chair’s steel clasps.

Sally looked on nonchalantly.

“Any moment now and it’ll all be over,” she said between lazy munches of her sandwich that she held in her left hand. As the Ball of Justice came to a halt a few yards above Julie’s head, Sally looked down at a slate she had in her right hand. “I’m using this slate to monitor the wallpad CA5 computing system.”

“Big deal,” said Julie in a rasping tone, struggling to sound as defiant as possible, such were her dire circumstances.

A dim, glowing red light pulsed into life on the bottom of the Ball of Justice.

“Hold on Julie, it’s coming!”

“Up yours!” roared Julie, leaning forward against her restraints towards Sally.

A smooth male voice sounded from unseen speakers:

“Offender: Julie Chang-Burns-XIV. Crime against wallpad ORANGE incorporated, and therefore humanity: Major Theft. Sentence: Death. Type of death: Level 2, due to additional wallpad blasphemies.”

“It’s coming!” shouted Sally. “Any second now. HOLD ON, JULIE!”

 

4

THE INCREDIBLE TWIST, COURTESY OF THE CA5

JULIE HAD HER eyes tightly shut and her teeth tightly clenched. Her entire body was rigid with fear. She awaited the inevitable …

A huge crash sounded above the reinforced steel ceiling of the Surveillance and Security Unit control room, the noise buffeting through the hole that had opened up for the Ball of Justice.

Then another crash, followed by another … and another.

The room was shaking. A low-pitched rumbling accompanied the crashing. Julie thought it was the beginning of her torture and subsequent death. She heard a wailing piercing scream in the far distance, yet she knew it was her own. The crashes above her muffled her scream.

Then she heard and felt among this sickening cacophony a burst of thuds sounding like arrows being fired into the wood of the Beechwood chair.

Am I being skewered, or what? Funny, but I can’t feel any pain yet. I suppose it’s delayed shock.

Then the last thing she expected happened. Someone was shouting at her and shaking her shoulders.

“Julie! Julie! Get up, you’re free!”

Julie opened her eyes and saw Sally. She realised the thuds she had heard were the sounds of the metal clasps as they had sprung back into their passive positions inside the wood of the chair.

“Quick!” shouted Sally, amid the continued crashing noises overhead. “The laser bombs are targeting the hub’s surveillance and security systems. The whole system’s down! See, all the monitors have gone blank. Only emergency lighting and localised equipment will work now. Luckily for us, I knew the Ball of Justice requires external commands, which aided the Filipino Alliance attack. But, hurry, this system will reconnect itself and boot up if you don’t quickly help me! I told you not to underestimate the CA5, didn’t I? I was banking on its accurate predictions. Quick!”

Julie shook her head as if in an effort to clear it. This day was like something out of a nightmarish thriller. It was too impossible to be true, yet, paradoxically, too impossible to be false.

Sally led Julie to a desk, reached into her large plastic sandwich lunchbox, and plucked out two pairs of pliers. One of which she palmed to Julie.

She then urgently accompanied Julie over to a place in the circular wall where an olive-green compartment covering was facing them.

“Watch carefully,” shouted Sally above the crashing and rumbling overhead that, though diminishing, was still extremely noisy. Sally pressed two yellow buttons, and a clunking noise sounded from behind the covering. She pulled at the covering, which was magnetically held into position, and it came free, revealing a bank of printed circuit boards. She threw the covering over to the side and onto the floor.

“Now pay attention, right?” she shouted, imploringly. “See these two blue wires between these two cards? Each must be cut.” Sally demonstrated her instruction by urgently cutting the two wires. “See? Simples. And be careful not to cut any other wires—just in case. Got it?”

“Yeah,” shouted Julie, still trembling from her ordeal, but at least the noise above was diminishing yet further.

“Well, there are sixty-five more of these wall-tech compartments to disable. You start on that side of the room, and I’ll carry on, on this side. Got it?”

“No probs,” shouted Julie. “I’ll race you!”

“Just like old times, hey?”

Julie sprinted to her first wall-tech compartment covering, determined to beat her friend Sally to the final sixty-sixth compartment.

After Julie had completed nineteen wall-tech compartment disablements, the crashing of laser bombs fizzled out.

“Phew!” she said aloud. “That’s a relief, I couldn’t hear myself think.”

“Yeah, but it’s bad news,” called back Sally while busily continuing with her task. “Now that the attack on our hub is over, the Filipino Alliance will be concentrating their attacks on other targets. You see, despite the ear-shattering laser bomb pummelling, they can’t hope to completely destroy the hub. And if we can finish this job before wallpad can prevent us, we can disable a major wallpad nexus. And the Filipino Alliance will almost instantly notice. And while this control room’s Surveillance and Security Systems are down, the Filipino Alliance will start injecting viruses and taking advantage in all kinds of sophisticated ways. So you go like the wind, Jules. This is our chance to be part of that advantage!”

And so, Julie found more strength in her sixty-six-year-old body than she thought possible, working frenetically in an effort to beat the almighty wallpad.

“Looks like the monitors are booting up,” warned Julie, noticing the sea of wall-to-wall monitor screens scrolling an avalanche of blue text on their black backgrounds.

“Ignore the monitors!” insisted Sally. “Keep cutting the wires, we’re nearly done!”

Thirty seconds later, Julie had just finished her twenty-seventh wire-pair disablement when she realised Sally was lifting off the covering on the adjacent compartment.

Seconds later, the task was complete. All sixty-six compartments, one for each year of the women’s lives, had been disabled.

“You were quick,” said Julie.

“I’ve had a lot of surreptitious practise.”

They both looked at the monitor screens. They were all still booting up. The blue text had changed to green, a sign that the boot up process was almost complete.

“I hope you didn’t miss any wires,” said a concerned Sally.

“No chance,” retorted Julie. “I might be slower than you on my feet, but I spent twenty years in the computer hardware factories. I must have spent at least five of those years cutting and soldering wires when the robots broke down. Shame wallpad phased out the robots. Cost me my best job ever.”

“Well, we’ll soon find out,” said Sally with a shiver of fear. “The last stage of the boot up requires external verification from the wallpad satellite server system. Hold your breath, here it comes …”

On the monitors, the green text scrolled down, disappearing beneath the screens. Then, the orange lowercase “w” logo of the wallpad ORANGE corporation scrolled down and paused in the centre of each screen.

“If that orange ‘w’ logo bursts into a rainbow of colour,” explained Sally, “then the boot up will have been successful and we’ll be stuffed. And I’m sure if the boot up succeeds, the first image we’ll see on the screens will be wallpad woman’s bitch of a face.”

Julie and Sally hugged each other for comfort, anxiously staring at the wallpad “w” logo, willing it not to burst into a rainbow of colour.

The logo began to bulge and then it …