Kid City's First Case
This is another one of those tales the Can Man told me. I remember after the day’s solemn business was over and it was time for the evening festivals, all the children would sit in a semi circle round the old stone bench at the top of the green, eating roast potatoes and sausages. The fire light would already be contending with the early evening gloom as the adults cleared the field. Glass bottles of liquor passed freely from hand to mouth and the joking began. There’d be music later and dancing before bedtime, but for now we seemed to be suspended in another corner of the world, happy spectators waiting to be entertained. I was usually sleepy from a day spent chasing rabbits with the dog pack or gathering gulls’ eggs on the promontory. The old man’s voice whispered, cracked and sparked like the chattering flames on the dry autumn tinder, holding us in suspense between dreaming and waking. He had a long grey beard and rheumy eyes, did the Can Man, and he wasn’t too quick on his feet anymore, but his wits were still sharp, his smile was like lightning and his laughter infectious. His ears were twisted and huge, like overripe sprouts full of crinkly secrets and his mind was full of stories from the old days. They were stories we loved to hear, even when we’d heard them before. In the morning he’d be moving on down the coast to Loadsville, Flamborough or New Kingston, but for tonight he was done with the concentration of shaking, listening, and proclaiming with accuracy on the subtleties of our forefathers - “Rice Pudding”, “Processed Peas”, “Stewed Steak”, “Oxtail Soup”, “Baked Beans” - until the elders had pronounced themselves satisfied and the celebrations could begin.
Kid City was a favourite with us. We always liked to hear of his many adventures in the olden days when the Great EcoBlocks ruled from their palaces called ‘Banks’, and those terrible beasts called ‘Free Markets’ fought over economic scraps. The Kid fought for the down dwellers and ‘The Man In The Street’, as I’m sure you know.
But let me tell you this story as I heard it from the Can Man. It began in Amsterdam, an ancient city far away under the Tunnel...
Once upon a time there was a young programmer called Charles Stuart. He was an English refugee from the Great Intercontinental Trade War and he was making a poor living converting stock objects into metacell format for one of the Retail Giants. It was boring work and the Retail Giant was a hard task master, keeping all its programmers hunched over their keyboards seven days a week. But Charles always knew that he was destined for greater things. He had fiery red hair, a lean wiry body and a sharp mind which noticed much and forgot little. One day the project supervisor came to Charles and said, “The Giant needs some of our best programmers to work on a new project and I have nominated you. I’ll be sorry to see you leave our happy little team but Supplier Integration will just have to manage without you.” In truth the project supervisor was not sorry to see Charles Stuart go. He was worried that the young upstart might take his job. In those days the Market beasts roamed at will over land and sea, respecting no frontier so that the whole world trembled. When people woke in the morning, the first thing they heard was news of the Markets, and last thing at night, more news of the Markets. Everyone listened anxiously to find out where the beasts were going next; up, down or round about. And everyone was in a dreadful state because at the mere twitch of an index a Market could lay waste to thousands. Now some Markets were regulated and some were controlled but the Free Markets answered to no ruler and ravaged the land just for fun! The Presidents of the EcoBlocks and the stewards of the Banks made regular sacrifices to propitiate them. Even the Giants were a little afraid of them although they never admitted it in public. What each Giant really wanted was a Captive Market on a leash to parade up and down before the others, intimidating their foes. When a Market pounced it could tear a centuries old infrastructure to shreds in a matter of weeks. The Retail Giant had a plan. Its plan was to Capture a Market. On the night before his internal transfer, Charles Stuart descended into the currents of the old quarter. The December streets were crowded with citizens, refugees and soldiers; a multiethnic stew bubbling in and out of the shop keeps, the preserved museums and the apartment blocks of the controlled zone. Heavy barges, light motor gondolas and canal busses nosed slowly through the thick, traffic black waters of the Kloveniersburgwal. At the bridge before the junction with the Raamgracht was a CNN sponsored peace gun, manned today by a bored looking crew of McDonalds troops in their distinctive yellow and red uniforms. A patrol of Coca Cola soldiers pushed through, fingering their light automatics with casual assurance. Their ostensible duty was maintenance of civic order, but there’d probably be trouble if they ran into any Pepsi men. Despite last year’s franchise agreements, most people expected the Cola wars to flare up again sooner or later. Charles slipped past and cut through Zandstraat, reaching the old metro entrance to the Nieuwmarkt and on to the wide steps of the Core Bore lobby. In common with many of the pre war European cites, Amsterdam had engaged in an extensive program of ‘downward development’. Below the natural cycles of day and night, lay the artificial nether world of the Minus Towers, the Sleeping Caverns and the Low Stores, known collectively as the Underground - the land of the down dwellers. The Core Bore was the most luxurious of the Minus Towers, at least on the upper levels. In the lobby, a licensed market stall sold television sets, reminding Charles that his own was broken. A detector van cruised round the entrance. Since the end of the war it was compulsory to keep a TV set operational all day and the CNN patrols prosecuted those who didn’t. Charles brushed the thought of fines to one side, figuring he’d be unlucky to be caught. A fast lift went down to minus thirty and from there he took a long gallery road into the district of warehouses and Deep Clubs that was ‘Nieuwdam’. Ten minutes later he arrived at the Temple of Bass(ment), a Resistant European sonic house. Down here in the Underground, Charles Stuart went by another name. Down here they were starting to call him ‘Kid City’. In the Temple of Bass(ment) they believed in the magnetism of video, the fire of the strobe light and the catharsis of the beat. They played nineties, zeros and teens retro; old fashioned nostalgia really but nostalgia was fashionable. ‘Kid City’ tolerated the throwback tracks but in his Underground persona he had a musical mission to move on. The band were waiting at a table by the stage. There were four of them; Piet thrashed the drums, Louis and Paulo played lead and bass guitar, and Gottfried controlled the keyboard. Above ground, Piet and Louis were video feed comms engineers, Paulo worked in Storage Services and Gottfried - well Gottfried sort of did his own thing and what that was exactly, no one was quite sure. “I thought you weren’t going to show,” Paulo grumbled in the curious Italian/Dutch accent he had acquired since moving to Amsterdam. He was drinking an Eastern European lager and from the look of the bottles crowding the table he’d been drinking a lot. The Kid didn’t bother to answer. He was studying the tattered yellow poster advertising their appearance.
Louis noticed the direction of his gaze. “We finally made it to the top of the bill,” he said. “They got smart,” Piet contributed. “They know we were the ones filling this place the last couple of times.” Characteristically, Gottfried said nothing but shifted his hulking form uneasily in the plastic chair that was far too small for him. He was always nervous before a gig. The Kid called him Leibnitz, ‘because he lives in a world of his own’. (I asked the Can Man to explain that once, but he just muttered something incomprehensible about monads so I don’t suppose I’ll ever understand it.) Gottfried was an electronics expert. He had manufactured his own synthesiser and dabbled in all the band’s equipment. That was part of the explanation for their unique sound. “Let’s get up there then,” the Kid said. There was a good gathering in the Temple tonight - maybe three hundred or so. You could sense anticipation in a dozen half heard conversations as the lights went down. Only the violet neon strips properly punctured the white and grey drifts of smoke, which gasped through asthmatic ventilators. The optics at the bar were distant green and red beacons in the dark and the bank of inevitable TV screens merely a series of the faintest spectral images. They opened with ‘Incinerator’ - a long drum solo introduction, heart beat slow at first but quickening in tempo to a frantic pounding before the rest of the band kicked in almost simultaneously on a staggered beat. That got them hot and sweaty. Then they hit into ‘Feeling better now’ before the extended modulated synthesiser note Leibnitz delivered at the beginning of ‘Sky Dying’, all arctic isolation and purity. When Louis finally added the melody, his guitar dancing over the top like gulls in a storm, the Kid knew they’d never played it better. Next came their only cover, a clinically cool version of Baby Bird’s ‘Atomic Soda’, and so on to the main part of the set, picking up the pace again and lifting the Temple faithful with them, only to dash them on the harsh rocks of uncompromising bass. They were loving it. The Kid’s own voice rasped at, agonised with, and seduced the melody, whilst the angst ridden guitars bled wounded sound over the rich sympathetic passions of the keyboard. When they finished with the raw emotion of ‘Bad Advice’ the Temple shouted its acclaim and they walked off stage to prolonged applause. “There’s someone wants to see you,” the bartender said. He jerked his head in the direction of a small booth in the corner. “Says he’s a fan and he’s got something to tell you.” He was a small man in a black leather jacket, slashed with orange silk in the fashion of the Restoration gangs of five years or so ago. His hair was long, swept back black with a single thin yellow dyed streak braided with blue beads. He looked lean and keen. “Quark sharp,” he said. “I’ve seen you three times now. That was the best.” “We’re learning,” the Kid said with a smile. He took a long drink feeling the excitement of the performance drain out of his cells. The rest of the band were propping up the bar as the Temple mellowed with zeroes chillers. “You’re a programmer, right?” The Kid was suddenly wary. “I know where you work. They’ve got problems. Actually we’ve all got problems - especially if they carry on with what they’re doing.” That was when the Kid realised there was something odd about his face. It was nothing you could spot right away. At first sight it had seemed ordinary enough, even a little bland. But now…. Now it looked as through his features had engaged in a heated debate and hadn’t quite agreed on the outcome. When the Kid glanced away, they seemed to rearrange themselves in a subtle but disconcerting way so that his appearance shifted and flowed in the shadows of the Temple. “Who are you?” he said, startled. The stranger grinned. “The magicians and the soothsayers conjured me into being,” he said. “The pollsters worshipped me and I was Summoned by the Focus Groups. The Market Testers made sacrifices to me and the Data Sellers spread my name round the Net. The Superforecasters claimed they knew where I was going and the Advertisers sought to Nudge me with their sharp little elbows. They all thought they had bound me in their pentagrams of Normal Distribution and Standard Deviation but I escaped. I am the ‘Man In The Street’. And I have a job for you.”
From the top of the Giant’s Keep the smoked windows of the high offices, looked down on the citizen’s of Amsterdam with a speculative eye, like a raven contemplating carrion from the castle battlements. ‘Customer Care’ occupied the tenth floor. Day in and night out the Giant’s minions telephoned their clients; questioning ‘regulars’ (with concern and disappointment) who’d bought less than their usual weekly quota of shopping; urging ‘casuals’ to visit them again and cold calling for new custom; twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year. The Keep never slept. The programming offices were on the eleventh floor, a sorcerer’s lair. Soft green light washed the walls. Old magazines and abandoned coffee cups teetered on piles of hastily scribbled notes and manuals full of the syntax of arcane spells - invocations to the gods of the operating systems. The Machine was on the twelfth floor; a beast in a room of pure air, held enchanted by the programmers’ nightmare weavings and made to do the bidding of its master, the Giant. On the thirteenth floor were the security rooms and regional director’s offices. That was where the Kid went on the following day. Frans was in his late thirties with slick black hair, oiled and combed into shiny ridges. He wore thin silver frame glasses, a crisp cream suit with wide lapels and maroon pin stripes, and an ornate silver pocket pad. He was Charles Stuart’s new boss and he spoke an idiosyncratic version of the English/Dutch patois they called Enguch. “Welcome to Department L,” he said. “If you reveal a hint of our operation you will be removed from the register. You will never work here again. Your programming licence will be revoked so you will never work anywhere again. We can make sure of that.” His smile revealed gums torn back from the base of his teeth and a single artfully blackened tooth. “There are issues of commercial confidentiality. The Giant doesn’t want it’s rivals to know what we’re doing. Now let me introduce you to the rest of the team.” They walked past the holding cells down the stairs to the eleventh floor where, one by one, Frans named the members of the secret project. For the most part they were pretty much what the Kid had expected : your usual programmer types raised to a few powers, clever, intense and looking in need of a little social adjustment - but who didn’t these days? Then there was Isabella. “Isabella is a trained statistician and she’s going to do some of the analysis,” Frans said. “She’s English like you. She only joined the team last month so you both have a lot to learn. You’ll be working on the ‘Trend Projection’ routines..” Isabella was in her mid twenties with light brown hair tied loosely behind her head and a fringe. She had a pale complexion with wide brown eyes, high cheek bones and full red lips. Her laugh was spontaneous, unselfconscious, raw, sweet and a little chesty; like thick honey melting in a glass of hot orange juice. She laughed often and each time she laughed, the Kid wanted to hear it again. “We plot product sales against time, grouped by these C-series keys,” Isabella explained. The Kid looked at his graphs at the end of the day. He didn’t know a lot about retailing but surely there was something very odd about these peaks and troughs. Perhaps he should take that weird encounter with the so called ‘Man In the Street’ more seriously. He started to consider what he should do. He started to consider what he could do. In the shopping levels below, the crowds struggled round the aisles with frenzied commitment, like soldier ants in a disturbed nest. Voices were raised, children squealed, security looked nervous but the tills were always gorging on an endless stream of trolleys. The Giant was content. The Giant was getting fat.
“Department L’s the name, Loyalty’s the game!” Frans said. It was the start of the Kid’s second day in the Keep. Frans clapped his new programmer on the back with unwelcome bonhomie. “Well Charlie m’ lad,” he said. “I think it’s time you learned a little bit more about our operation here. Time for some secrets eh?” He was relishing this. There was a great deal of the ham actor to Frans and he was playing now to an audience of the other programmers - those already in on the know who were grouped round in a grinning semi circle. Isabella was not amongst them and the Kid wondered why. “It’s all about market share,” he said. “Protecting it and making it grow. It’s a tough world out there. We have to fight hard to keep what we’ve got or the other giants will step in and seize it. Loyalty - that’s our watch word at Department ‘L’. We have a new kind of customer loyalty scheme. The best kind there is…” He waved his hand and seemed to pluck something from the air with all the showmanship of a skilled conjurer. It was a glass phial containing some white powder. “Do you know what this is?” “I expect you’re going to tell me,” the Kid said, unwilling to be bulldozed by the rhetorical question. Frans looked only momentarily deflated. “It’s loyalty in a glass, that’s what it is! We sprinkle some of this on selected products and hey presto, we create a harmless little addiction. It’s brilliant. The customer never even realises why they have such a craving for our food and drink. And only our food and drink will do!” He seemed to be waiting for a round of applause. “We’re researching a range of chemicals in different lines. That’s where this department comes in. You’re analysing the results. And speaking of loyalty”, he said, “I have some bad news for you.” His voice assumed a sorrowful tone. “It seems our lady analyst didn’t have the Giant’s best interests at heart. I’m afraid we’ve had to take Isabella in for interrogation.” The first thing the Kid did on taking his seat was to cancel the private message flag before his new partner could see it. He had an instant suspicion who’d sent it. The Amsterdam evening lights swam in the torpid canals as the Kid made his way to the contact point. He avoided disaster only by one of those strokes of good fortune which flavour all the best stories. A cream suit sprang out of a doorway only a few seconds before he arrived. Even in Amsterdam there could only be one suit like that. Frans was facing away from him and the Kid immediately turned to stare in a shop window. Frans spoke loudly into his phone. “Stavros! Good to hear from you. Yes. We need our files back but I think she’ll tell us where they are,” he was saying. “If you get them first, your information will be rewarded in the usual way.” The Kid went hot and cold. He had the files. “I trust you,” Isabella’s message had said, “You’re not one of the Giant’s lackeys. If I ‘go missing’ take the unlabelled zip disk from your left hand draw, and go to Stavros. He can help me.” Well he wasn’t going to be helping her now. Plainly Stavros was a double agent. Stavros had sold Isabella out. “Tut, tut,” the man beside him said. The Kid gave a nervous start. “What are we going to do about this then?” “Oh it’s you,” the Kid sighed when the ‘Man In The Street’ did a brief metamorphosis to identify himself. “We’d better make some plans,” the Man said. “Let’s round up your friends and see what’s on those files.”
Simply break into the security block, free Isabella from the Keep and rendezvous with the gang in the Underground. Easy. Yes, thought the Kid, except I haven’t he faintest idea how to do it. And I have to hurry! Getting up to the eleventh floor would be straightforward. He was authorised to go that far. After that he’d have to improvise. He didn’t know the codes for the top floors and any attempt to break through the doors would set off a security alert. However, the Kid reasoned, there was a problem with the system. The fire alarm and the intruder alarms shared the same circuits. If he couldn’t stop the sirens, why not start them somewhere else? With attention distracted he might sneak onto the thirteenth floor unnoticed. Possibly. He found a quiet spot on the tenth floor, set a fire in a waste bin and triggered a couple of alarms. Then it was out onto the fire escape and up to the top floor. With any luck, a fire alarm ought to release all the locks… “Ah Mr. Stuart, hello,” a familiar voice said. “The prodigal returns.” Frans was holding a gun. “I’ve been reading your messages. You forgot to delete the backup audit log, didn’t you? I hope you haven’t forgotten to bring back our files. Perhaps you’d better join your accomplice whilst I get this irritating racket silenced.” At least she’s still alive, the Kid thought, with a surprising degree of relief. Then he remembered their situation and suddenly he didn’t feel so good. “Did you get the data to Stavros?” Isabella demanded when Frans had shut the door. “No,” he admitted, “I didn’t”. He told her about Stavros. “Then we’re dead,” she said. She lit a cigarette with a shaky hand. She looked as if she was going to cry. “Maybe not,” The Kid whispered, daring to squeeze her hand. “There’s a plan.” She looked extremely dubious. The Kid really wished it was a better plan. It didn’t seem particularly good now, in the hard reality of the prison cell. He couldn’t tell her anymore. There’d be bugs. “How did you get mixed up in this anyway?” he asked. “I’m a government intelligence agent,” Isabella said. “Your taxes pay for me”, she added dryly. “You mean people still pay taxes?” He was a little surprised. Since the zero government initiatives he’d sort of supposed taxation was illegal. The European Parliament had certainly been disbanded after the war and as far as he knew, that was that. “We still get a bit of income from the rebels. And we still try our best to run a government, even if nobody seems to have heard of it. So what do we do now, according to this brilliant plan?” “We wait,” he said. And hope, he decided against adding.
“This is the place. The artery feed comes out here.” A gusty wind wrapped round the tower making the three climbers huddle closer to the rough metal grill on the narrow platform. “You do know what you’re doing, don’t you?” Louis said doubtfully, but Leibnitz was already absorbed in the problem. Electronics was electronics, wherever it was. This had better be is worth it, Louis thought. The trouble we go to for that Kid City. I’ll lose my job if they find me up here, and that’s assuming we don’t fall off this blasted thing. “We’d better hurry,” Piet said. “We don’t know why the Kid missed the rendezvous.” Or even if he’s still alive, Louis thought gloomily. But Piet was right. They had to carry on, and carry on quickly. He hoped Paulo had managed to do his stuff. Paulo he could trust. As for this so called ‘Man in the Street’… Well, there was nothing they could do about him now.
The interrogation room felt like some corny set left over from a nineteen seventies cop show - a bare metal table with an angle poise lamp, rivet studded walls and hard plastic chairs. Two of the ubiquitous television sets buzzed in the corner, tuned to the Amsterdam primary and secondary channels. On one side of the desk, Frans and Heinrich sat contemplating their prisoners. On the other side, Charles and Isabella sweated in the light. Heinrich was Frans’ boss, a balding old man with liver spots and a squashed nose. “Where are the files?” he asked softly. “The Giant is extremely angry. Stealing information is treason.” The Kid and Isabella exchanged a tight-lipped glance but neither spoke. Vital seconds passed. “You present us with a problem,” Frans said at last with a sigh. “A pretty little puzzle if it weren’t so important, but as it is, a rather infuriating one. What are we to do with you? Personally, I feel inclined to take a chance and terminate you both, but my boss is a bit more lenient. He’s giving you an opportunity to redeem yourself. Don’t disappoint him.” “Isn’t this all rather a cliché?” Heinrich put in with nervous discontent. “Let’s not over do it.” “It’s traditional.” Frans’ reply was incisive and blunt. “This is the point where the menacing gets done. You wouldn’t want to go against tradition would you?” he asked sweetly. (And of course he was right. These things are traditional). “Now,” he said, turning back to the prisoners, “why shouldn’t I just kill you?” The Kid looked over to the TV set and sideways to Isabella. Perhaps he could make these two worry a little while. He had to try. “You didn’t really think I’d have come here without some sort of security did you? I used to work in Supplier Integration and I still have access to their process control systems. You know the brand labelling print routines that match the artwork to the packaging? Probably not, but take it from me, it’s very easy to redirect them to pick up a different set of pictures. "That’s what I’ve done. It will be activated in the production environment in...”, he looked at his watch ostentatiously. It was important to milk this. “…less than an hour unless I clear it with my own pass codes. The way the Keep works, everything will go straight to the shelves before the end of the day. "Tell me how it’s going to look when all the Giant’s own brands come with pre printed addiction warnings. Do you imagine it’ll be good for sales?” “Can he do it?” Heinrich did sound anxious as he turned to Frans. The Kid held his breath wondering if it might be his last. The supervisor reached into an inside pocket and drew out an orange sheet of card. His face was expressionless as he wrote slowly with a black felt tip pen. Only when he turned it round to show the prisoners did he grin his favourite grin. There was one word on the card. The word was “Bluff”. “I rather fancy he can’t, sir,” he said. His eyes remained fixed on the Kid’s like a snake on a rabbit. “Not very impressive Mr. Stuart. Not if that is all you can come up with. We’ll have a backup environment on line in minutes, whilst we trawl through the Machine clearing up your tinkering. I’ve dealt with this sort of business before from malicious ex employees. You haven’t had time to do a proper job. I’ll stick with my gamble.” The other pocket of his jacket held a small black pistol with a silencer. He withdrew it and fingered it lovingly. Matters were starting to look serious. “I’ll ask you one more time. Where are the files?” At that moment the files in question were passing an ESAB, an electronic signature authentication barrier. Paulo signed off the upload and reviewed the site. It was an unauthorised data area, but so what? Most of the Internet was unauthorised. It should be able to withstand external shut downs for a couple of days and that would be long enough. Now if only the others had done their jobs… “Very well, I’ll start with our analyst shall I? Ladies first - it’s only polite. Sand up against the wall please.” Isabella swallowed, whilst the Kid considered their options. Well, they could only delay this for so long. The game was up. There was no more time. “All right… all right I’ll tell you. They’re on the Internet. They’ve been put on a public domain site where everyone can read them.” He wasn’t sure if it was wise to add a last piece of defiance but he did it anyway. “You can’t stop it now. The word is out.” There was a moment of silence and then Frans began to laugh. Slow chuckles at first, then hearty guffaws that brought tears to his eyes. “Oh Mr. Stuart, you are funny!” he managed at last. “I couldn’t have put them in a safer place myself. Nobody reads the Internet. Don’t you know that? I thought you were going to hurt the Giant and instead you put the files on the Internet!” He laughed his mirthless laugh for a full minute then stopped as suddenly as if it were a recording. His expression flowed instantly back into the mask of frozen calm. The Kid gulped. He wasn’t sure whether he preferred the psychopathic laughter. Heinrich was looking almost equally discomforted but he wasn’t staring down the barrel of a gun. “Now, where was I? Ah yes. I see no reason not to finish you both. After all, I’m sure the files are secure, now. On your feet please Isabella.” And at that moment the signal on the TV screens flickered and changed. Isabella bit back a flood of nervous relief, tipped her chin up defiantly and stared her prospective executioner straight in the eye. “I think your files will be read,” she said. “I think there’ll be a lot of interest in this story. Look behind you.” They’ve done it, the Kid thought. They’ve done it! All over Amsterdam, on primary and secondary channels, on all the compulsory television sets, and on the sets in the holding cell, a new item was showing. Against a backdrop of the forbidden flag - the EC ring of yellow stars on a blue background, Isabella was presenting a public information broadcast. The Internet address of the supporting data files was plastered at the bottom but the simple message came clearly and powerfully from her lips. Beware of the Giant. The Giant is drugging you. She’s wonderful, the Kid thought. Magnificent. Before it ended Heinrich was on the phone. “I want antidote shipments out fast. I want the PR men to prepare a statement and I want it broadcast as soon as possible. We distribute from the shops and we set up advice lines in ‘Customer Services’ now. Get it done!” Frans had remained motionless during the broadcast. He stood up as his boss finished speaking. “Congratulations,” he said to the prisoners. “It seems you two were smarter than I thought. Unfortunately it doesn’t really change anything.” He took the gun out again. “Frans!” Heinrich shouted. His balding head seemed to have gone as white as an egg and the liver spots on his hands were brief brown soot on trembling ice. “Frans, we don’t need to do this now! Leave them alone.” The supervisor turned to his boss with a weary sigh. “Of course we don’t need to do it. I just want to, that’s all. It will make me feel better.” Before he had time to think, the Kid grabbed Isabella’s arm and yanked her towards him. The bullet spanked into the wall behind them and then he had pushed the table over and was trying to get close enough to grapple with the man. It was hopeless. I’m going to die, the Kid thought. And at that very instant, the door slammed open and a security man ran in. Completely ignoring the situation in the room he addressed himself directly to Frans. “There’s been a security breach, sir! The Keep’s being invaded! Come quickly!” With an indulgent smile Frans slipped the pistol back into his pocket. “It seems I must leave you for a moment Mr. Stuart. Don’t go away. I shall be back shortly.” “He’s a mad man!” Heinrich said, slumping in a chair and shaking from head to foot. “Someone has to look after the Giant’s interests,” Frans said darkly. He took a heavier calibre weapon from the security guard, poked his head though the door and stepped cautiously outside. Not cautiously enough. A burst of gunfire tore apart his chest, and in seconds the room was filled with armed invaders. An officer came over to take their surrender. “Ah,” the Kid said with his first real smile in what seemed like forever. “Colonel Saunders, I presume!” The storming of the Keep was complete. The Kentucky Fried army had routed the Giant’s own defenders. Red and white stripped soldiers patrolled all the administrative floors and were maintaining an unobtrusive presence in the shopping levels. “We had a tip off from someone calling themselves the ‘Man In The Street’. Strange sort of a fella. He told us to watch for a broadcast and to be ready to move against the Keep. We were a little bit doubtful at first but we took the warning seriously.” “Well I’m glad you did,” Isabella said with feeling. “Just ‘Protecting the Brand’,” the officer said. “Heinrich’s made a good start. We’ll withdraw from the Keep once we’re sure the Giant’s following through with its promises. We can’t have our name getting muddied. You see, the Giant retails our product and if word got round they’d put their ‘loyalty compound’ in our chickens we’d be dragged down with them. That’s why we acted fast. Our reputation was at stake.” “As long as it was for something important,” the Kid said with heavy irony. “I wouldn’t want you to feel you’d wasted your time rescuing us.” The army man only managed a little embarrassment but Isabella gave the Kid one of her laughs, so that was all right. After that, there were only a few loose ends to be tied up. The Kid decided to get a new job as a matter of simple prudence but the others had got clean away with it. “They knew someone must have shown the ‘TV hijackers’ to the arterial feed but they couldn’t prove it was us,” Louis said. “Leibnitz put a delay in his interrupt signal so we were off the tower when the broadcast went live.” There was a party at the Temple of Bass(ment) and a new song to add to the EuroKings repertoire - ‘Food Scare’. It was an instant success. “I have to go,” Isabella said afterwards. “I have to go to another country. The EC needs me as an agent in a war torn part of Europe - somewhere where they have to bring peace. That’s my job and I want to do it.” “I have no claim on her,” he thought. “No real claim at all.” He couldn’t help his feelings. “But even so. Even so… I wish she weren’t going. I wish… I wish …” But he didn’t really know what to wish, and that was his problem. In the meantime he could make the best of it… The ‘Man in the Street’ cycled into the controlled zone, wearing the form of a fat market trader on his way to work. He smiled, watching the Kid cross the bridge over the Nieuwe Heregracht, hand in hand with Isabella as they walked into the botanical gardens. It was a rare day of wintry sunshine, fragile as gauze and mild as buttermilk. The gardens would be spare and thin at this time of year. Somehow, he didn’t think they’d mind. And that was how Charles Stuart rescued the beautiful Isabella and helped to free the people from the yoke of the evil Giant. And so was born the legend of Kid City and the EuroKings; whispered at first but later shouted aloud. Many are the stories of their exploits, and (so the Can Man says) maybe some of them are true… DMFW - 06/01/98
Once upon a time there was a young programmer called Charles Stuart. He was an English refugee from the Great Intercontinental Trade War and he was making a poor living converting stock objects into metacell format for one of the Retail Giants. It was boring work and the Retail Giant was a hard task master, keeping all its programmers hunched over their keyboards seven days a week. But Charles always knew that he was destined for greater things. He had fiery red hair, a lean wiry body and a sharp mind which noticed much and forgot little. One day the project supervisor came to Charles and said, “The Giant needs some of our best programmers to work on a new project and I have nominated you. I’ll be sorry to see you leave our happy little team but Supplier Integration will just have to manage without you.” In truth the project supervisor was not sorry to see Charles Stuart go. He was worried that the young upstart might take his job. In those days the Market beasts roamed at will over land and sea, respecting no frontier so that the whole world trembled. When people woke in the morning, the first thing they heard was news of the Markets, and last thing at night, more news of the Markets. Everyone listened anxiously to find out where the beasts were going next; up, down or round about. And everyone was in a dreadful state because at the mere twitch of an index a Market could lay waste to thousands. Now some Markets were regulated and some were controlled but the Free Markets answered to no ruler and ravaged the land just for fun! The Presidents of the EcoBlocks and the stewards of the Banks made regular sacrifices to propitiate them. Even the Giants were a little afraid of them although they never admitted it in public. What each Giant really wanted was a Captive Market on a leash to parade up and down before the others, intimidating their foes. When a Market pounced it could tear a centuries old infrastructure to shreds in a matter of weeks. The Retail Giant had a plan. Its plan was to Capture a Market. On the night before his internal transfer, Charles Stuart descended into the currents of the old quarter. The December streets were crowded with citizens, refugees and soldiers; a multiethnic stew bubbling in and out of the shop keeps, the preserved museums and the apartment blocks of the controlled zone. Heavy barges, light motor gondolas and canal busses nosed slowly through the thick, traffic black waters of the Kloveniersburgwal. At the bridge before the junction with the Raamgracht was a CNN sponsored peace gun, manned today by a bored looking crew of McDonalds troops in their distinctive yellow and red uniforms. A patrol of Coca Cola soldiers pushed through, fingering their light automatics with casual assurance. Their ostensible duty was maintenance of civic order, but there’d probably be trouble if they ran into any Pepsi men. Despite last year’s franchise agreements, most people expected the Cola wars to flare up again sooner or later. Charles slipped past and cut through Zandstraat, reaching the old metro entrance to the Nieuwmarkt and on to the wide steps of the Core Bore lobby. In common with many of the pre war European cites, Amsterdam had engaged in an extensive program of ‘downward development’. Below the natural cycles of day and night, lay the artificial nether world of the Minus Towers, the Sleeping Caverns and the Low Stores, known collectively as the Underground - the land of the down dwellers. The Core Bore was the most luxurious of the Minus Towers, at least on the upper levels. In the lobby, a licensed market stall sold television sets, reminding Charles that his own was broken. A detector van cruised round the entrance. Since the end of the war it was compulsory to keep a TV set operational all day and the CNN patrols prosecuted those who didn’t. Charles brushed the thought of fines to one side, figuring he’d be unlucky to be caught. A fast lift went down to minus thirty and from there he took a long gallery road into the district of warehouses and Deep Clubs that was ‘Nieuwdam’. Ten minutes later he arrived at the Temple of Bass(ment), a Resistant European sonic house. Down here in the Underground, Charles Stuart went by another name. Down here they were starting to call him ‘Kid City’. In the Temple of Bass(ment) they believed in the magnetism of video, the fire of the strobe light and the catharsis of the beat. They played nineties, zeros and teens retro; old fashioned nostalgia really but nostalgia was fashionable. ‘Kid City’ tolerated the throwback tracks but in his Underground persona he had a musical mission to move on. The band were waiting at a table by the stage. There were four of them; Piet thrashed the drums, Louis and Paulo played lead and bass guitar, and Gottfried controlled the keyboard. Above ground, Piet and Louis were video feed comms engineers, Paulo worked in Storage Services and Gottfried - well Gottfried sort of did his own thing and what that was exactly, no one was quite sure. “I thought you weren’t going to show,” Paulo grumbled in the curious Italian/Dutch accent he had acquired since moving to Amsterdam. He was drinking an Eastern European lager and from the look of the bottles crowding the table he’d been drinking a lot. The Kid didn’t bother to answer. He was studying the tattered yellow poster advertising their appearance.
Kid City and the EuroKings
Louis noticed the direction of his gaze. “We finally made it to the top of the bill,” he said. “They got smart,” Piet contributed. “They know we were the ones filling this place the last couple of times.” Characteristically, Gottfried said nothing but shifted his hulking form uneasily in the plastic chair that was far too small for him. He was always nervous before a gig. The Kid called him Leibnitz, ‘because he lives in a world of his own’. (I asked the Can Man to explain that once, but he just muttered something incomprehensible about monads so I don’t suppose I’ll ever understand it.) Gottfried was an electronics expert. He had manufactured his own synthesiser and dabbled in all the band’s equipment. That was part of the explanation for their unique sound. “Let’s get up there then,” the Kid said. There was a good gathering in the Temple tonight - maybe three hundred or so. You could sense anticipation in a dozen half heard conversations as the lights went down. Only the violet neon strips properly punctured the white and grey drifts of smoke, which gasped through asthmatic ventilators. The optics at the bar were distant green and red beacons in the dark and the bank of inevitable TV screens merely a series of the faintest spectral images. They opened with ‘Incinerator’ - a long drum solo introduction, heart beat slow at first but quickening in tempo to a frantic pounding before the rest of the band kicked in almost simultaneously on a staggered beat. That got them hot and sweaty. Then they hit into ‘Feeling better now’ before the extended modulated synthesiser note Leibnitz delivered at the beginning of ‘Sky Dying’, all arctic isolation and purity. When Louis finally added the melody, his guitar dancing over the top like gulls in a storm, the Kid knew they’d never played it better. Next came their only cover, a clinically cool version of Baby Bird’s ‘Atomic Soda’, and so on to the main part of the set, picking up the pace again and lifting the Temple faithful with them, only to dash them on the harsh rocks of uncompromising bass. They were loving it. The Kid’s own voice rasped at, agonised with, and seduced the melody, whilst the angst ridden guitars bled wounded sound over the rich sympathetic passions of the keyboard. When they finished with the raw emotion of ‘Bad Advice’ the Temple shouted its acclaim and they walked off stage to prolonged applause. “There’s someone wants to see you,” the bartender said. He jerked his head in the direction of a small booth in the corner. “Says he’s a fan and he’s got something to tell you.” He was a small man in a black leather jacket, slashed with orange silk in the fashion of the Restoration gangs of five years or so ago. His hair was long, swept back black with a single thin yellow dyed streak braided with blue beads. He looked lean and keen. “Quark sharp,” he said. “I’ve seen you three times now. That was the best.” “We’re learning,” the Kid said with a smile. He took a long drink feeling the excitement of the performance drain out of his cells. The rest of the band were propping up the bar as the Temple mellowed with zeroes chillers. “You’re a programmer, right?” The Kid was suddenly wary. “I know where you work. They’ve got problems. Actually we’ve all got problems - especially if they carry on with what they’re doing.” That was when the Kid realised there was something odd about his face. It was nothing you could spot right away. At first sight it had seemed ordinary enough, even a little bland. But now…. Now it looked as through his features had engaged in a heated debate and hadn’t quite agreed on the outcome. When the Kid glanced away, they seemed to rearrange themselves in a subtle but disconcerting way so that his appearance shifted and flowed in the shadows of the Temple. “Who are you?” he said, startled. The stranger grinned. “The magicians and the soothsayers conjured me into being,” he said. “The pollsters worshipped me and I was Summoned by the Focus Groups. The Market Testers made sacrifices to me and the Data Sellers spread my name round the Net. The Superforecasters claimed they knew where I was going and the Advertisers sought to Nudge me with their sharp little elbows. They all thought they had bound me in their pentagrams of Normal Distribution and Standard Deviation but I escaped. I am the ‘Man In The Street’. And I have a job for you.”
From the top of the Giant’s Keep the smoked windows of the high offices, looked down on the citizen’s of Amsterdam with a speculative eye, like a raven contemplating carrion from the castle battlements. ‘Customer Care’ occupied the tenth floor. Day in and night out the Giant’s minions telephoned their clients; questioning ‘regulars’ (with concern and disappointment) who’d bought less than their usual weekly quota of shopping; urging ‘casuals’ to visit them again and cold calling for new custom; twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year. The Keep never slept. The programming offices were on the eleventh floor, a sorcerer’s lair. Soft green light washed the walls. Old magazines and abandoned coffee cups teetered on piles of hastily scribbled notes and manuals full of the syntax of arcane spells - invocations to the gods of the operating systems. The Machine was on the twelfth floor; a beast in a room of pure air, held enchanted by the programmers’ nightmare weavings and made to do the bidding of its master, the Giant. On the thirteenth floor were the security rooms and regional director’s offices. That was where the Kid went on the following day. Frans was in his late thirties with slick black hair, oiled and combed into shiny ridges. He wore thin silver frame glasses, a crisp cream suit with wide lapels and maroon pin stripes, and an ornate silver pocket pad. He was Charles Stuart’s new boss and he spoke an idiosyncratic version of the English/Dutch patois they called Enguch. “Welcome to Department L,” he said. “If you reveal a hint of our operation you will be removed from the register. You will never work here again. Your programming licence will be revoked so you will never work anywhere again. We can make sure of that.” His smile revealed gums torn back from the base of his teeth and a single artfully blackened tooth. “There are issues of commercial confidentiality. The Giant doesn’t want it’s rivals to know what we’re doing. Now let me introduce you to the rest of the team.” They walked past the holding cells down the stairs to the eleventh floor where, one by one, Frans named the members of the secret project. For the most part they were pretty much what the Kid had expected : your usual programmer types raised to a few powers, clever, intense and looking in need of a little social adjustment - but who didn’t these days? Then there was Isabella. “Isabella is a trained statistician and she’s going to do some of the analysis,” Frans said. “She’s English like you. She only joined the team last month so you both have a lot to learn. You’ll be working on the ‘Trend Projection’ routines..” Isabella was in her mid twenties with light brown hair tied loosely behind her head and a fringe. She had a pale complexion with wide brown eyes, high cheek bones and full red lips. Her laugh was spontaneous, unselfconscious, raw, sweet and a little chesty; like thick honey melting in a glass of hot orange juice. She laughed often and each time she laughed, the Kid wanted to hear it again. “We plot product sales against time, grouped by these C-series keys,” Isabella explained. The Kid looked at his graphs at the end of the day. He didn’t know a lot about retailing but surely there was something very odd about these peaks and troughs. Perhaps he should take that weird encounter with the so called ‘Man In the Street’ more seriously. He started to consider what he should do. He started to consider what he could do. In the shopping levels below, the crowds struggled round the aisles with frenzied commitment, like soldier ants in a disturbed nest. Voices were raised, children squealed, security looked nervous but the tills were always gorging on an endless stream of trolleys. The Giant was content. The Giant was getting fat.
“Department L’s the name, Loyalty’s the game!” Frans said. It was the start of the Kid’s second day in the Keep. Frans clapped his new programmer on the back with unwelcome bonhomie. “Well Charlie m’ lad,” he said. “I think it’s time you learned a little bit more about our operation here. Time for some secrets eh?” He was relishing this. There was a great deal of the ham actor to Frans and he was playing now to an audience of the other programmers - those already in on the know who were grouped round in a grinning semi circle. Isabella was not amongst them and the Kid wondered why. “It’s all about market share,” he said. “Protecting it and making it grow. It’s a tough world out there. We have to fight hard to keep what we’ve got or the other giants will step in and seize it. Loyalty - that’s our watch word at Department ‘L’. We have a new kind of customer loyalty scheme. The best kind there is…” He waved his hand and seemed to pluck something from the air with all the showmanship of a skilled conjurer. It was a glass phial containing some white powder. “Do you know what this is?” “I expect you’re going to tell me,” the Kid said, unwilling to be bulldozed by the rhetorical question. Frans looked only momentarily deflated. “It’s loyalty in a glass, that’s what it is! We sprinkle some of this on selected products and hey presto, we create a harmless little addiction. It’s brilliant. The customer never even realises why they have such a craving for our food and drink. And only our food and drink will do!” He seemed to be waiting for a round of applause. “We’re researching a range of chemicals in different lines. That’s where this department comes in. You’re analysing the results. And speaking of loyalty”, he said, “I have some bad news for you.” His voice assumed a sorrowful tone. “It seems our lady analyst didn’t have the Giant’s best interests at heart. I’m afraid we’ve had to take Isabella in for interrogation.” The first thing the Kid did on taking his seat was to cancel the private message flag before his new partner could see it. He had an instant suspicion who’d sent it. The Amsterdam evening lights swam in the torpid canals as the Kid made his way to the contact point. He avoided disaster only by one of those strokes of good fortune which flavour all the best stories. A cream suit sprang out of a doorway only a few seconds before he arrived. Even in Amsterdam there could only be one suit like that. Frans was facing away from him and the Kid immediately turned to stare in a shop window. Frans spoke loudly into his phone. “Stavros! Good to hear from you. Yes. We need our files back but I think she’ll tell us where they are,” he was saying. “If you get them first, your information will be rewarded in the usual way.” The Kid went hot and cold. He had the files. “I trust you,” Isabella’s message had said, “You’re not one of the Giant’s lackeys. If I ‘go missing’ take the unlabelled zip disk from your left hand draw, and go to Stavros. He can help me.” Well he wasn’t going to be helping her now. Plainly Stavros was a double agent. Stavros had sold Isabella out. “Tut, tut,” the man beside him said. The Kid gave a nervous start. “What are we going to do about this then?” “Oh it’s you,” the Kid sighed when the ‘Man In The Street’ did a brief metamorphosis to identify himself. “We’d better make some plans,” the Man said. “Let’s round up your friends and see what’s on those files.”
Simply break into the security block, free Isabella from the Keep and rendezvous with the gang in the Underground. Easy. Yes, thought the Kid, except I haven’t he faintest idea how to do it. And I have to hurry! Getting up to the eleventh floor would be straightforward. He was authorised to go that far. After that he’d have to improvise. He didn’t know the codes for the top floors and any attempt to break through the doors would set off a security alert. However, the Kid reasoned, there was a problem with the system. The fire alarm and the intruder alarms shared the same circuits. If he couldn’t stop the sirens, why not start them somewhere else? With attention distracted he might sneak onto the thirteenth floor unnoticed. Possibly. He found a quiet spot on the tenth floor, set a fire in a waste bin and triggered a couple of alarms. Then it was out onto the fire escape and up to the top floor. With any luck, a fire alarm ought to release all the locks… “Ah Mr. Stuart, hello,” a familiar voice said. “The prodigal returns.” Frans was holding a gun. “I’ve been reading your messages. You forgot to delete the backup audit log, didn’t you? I hope you haven’t forgotten to bring back our files. Perhaps you’d better join your accomplice whilst I get this irritating racket silenced.” At least she’s still alive, the Kid thought, with a surprising degree of relief. Then he remembered their situation and suddenly he didn’t feel so good. “Did you get the data to Stavros?” Isabella demanded when Frans had shut the door. “No,” he admitted, “I didn’t”. He told her about Stavros. “Then we’re dead,” she said. She lit a cigarette with a shaky hand. She looked as if she was going to cry. “Maybe not,” The Kid whispered, daring to squeeze her hand. “There’s a plan.” She looked extremely dubious. The Kid really wished it was a better plan. It didn’t seem particularly good now, in the hard reality of the prison cell. He couldn’t tell her anymore. There’d be bugs. “How did you get mixed up in this anyway?” he asked. “I’m a government intelligence agent,” Isabella said. “Your taxes pay for me”, she added dryly. “You mean people still pay taxes?” He was a little surprised. Since the zero government initiatives he’d sort of supposed taxation was illegal. The European Parliament had certainly been disbanded after the war and as far as he knew, that was that. “We still get a bit of income from the rebels. And we still try our best to run a government, even if nobody seems to have heard of it. So what do we do now, according to this brilliant plan?” “We wait,” he said. And hope, he decided against adding.
“This is the place. The artery feed comes out here.” A gusty wind wrapped round the tower making the three climbers huddle closer to the rough metal grill on the narrow platform. “You do know what you’re doing, don’t you?” Louis said doubtfully, but Leibnitz was already absorbed in the problem. Electronics was electronics, wherever it was. This had better be is worth it, Louis thought. The trouble we go to for that Kid City. I’ll lose my job if they find me up here, and that’s assuming we don’t fall off this blasted thing. “We’d better hurry,” Piet said. “We don’t know why the Kid missed the rendezvous.” Or even if he’s still alive, Louis thought gloomily. But Piet was right. They had to carry on, and carry on quickly. He hoped Paulo had managed to do his stuff. Paulo he could trust. As for this so called ‘Man in the Street’… Well, there was nothing they could do about him now.
The interrogation room felt like some corny set left over from a nineteen seventies cop show - a bare metal table with an angle poise lamp, rivet studded walls and hard plastic chairs. Two of the ubiquitous television sets buzzed in the corner, tuned to the Amsterdam primary and secondary channels. On one side of the desk, Frans and Heinrich sat contemplating their prisoners. On the other side, Charles and Isabella sweated in the light. Heinrich was Frans’ boss, a balding old man with liver spots and a squashed nose. “Where are the files?” he asked softly. “The Giant is extremely angry. Stealing information is treason.” The Kid and Isabella exchanged a tight-lipped glance but neither spoke. Vital seconds passed. “You present us with a problem,” Frans said at last with a sigh. “A pretty little puzzle if it weren’t so important, but as it is, a rather infuriating one. What are we to do with you? Personally, I feel inclined to take a chance and terminate you both, but my boss is a bit more lenient. He’s giving you an opportunity to redeem yourself. Don’t disappoint him.” “Isn’t this all rather a cliché?” Heinrich put in with nervous discontent. “Let’s not over do it.” “It’s traditional.” Frans’ reply was incisive and blunt. “This is the point where the menacing gets done. You wouldn’t want to go against tradition would you?” he asked sweetly. (And of course he was right. These things are traditional). “Now,” he said, turning back to the prisoners, “why shouldn’t I just kill you?” The Kid looked over to the TV set and sideways to Isabella. Perhaps he could make these two worry a little while. He had to try. “You didn’t really think I’d have come here without some sort of security did you? I used to work in Supplier Integration and I still have access to their process control systems. You know the brand labelling print routines that match the artwork to the packaging? Probably not, but take it from me, it’s very easy to redirect them to pick up a different set of pictures. "That’s what I’ve done. It will be activated in the production environment in...”, he looked at his watch ostentatiously. It was important to milk this. “…less than an hour unless I clear it with my own pass codes. The way the Keep works, everything will go straight to the shelves before the end of the day. "Tell me how it’s going to look when all the Giant’s own brands come with pre printed addiction warnings. Do you imagine it’ll be good for sales?” “Can he do it?” Heinrich did sound anxious as he turned to Frans. The Kid held his breath wondering if it might be his last. The supervisor reached into an inside pocket and drew out an orange sheet of card. His face was expressionless as he wrote slowly with a black felt tip pen. Only when he turned it round to show the prisoners did he grin his favourite grin. There was one word on the card. The word was “Bluff”. “I rather fancy he can’t, sir,” he said. His eyes remained fixed on the Kid’s like a snake on a rabbit. “Not very impressive Mr. Stuart. Not if that is all you can come up with. We’ll have a backup environment on line in minutes, whilst we trawl through the Machine clearing up your tinkering. I’ve dealt with this sort of business before from malicious ex employees. You haven’t had time to do a proper job. I’ll stick with my gamble.” The other pocket of his jacket held a small black pistol with a silencer. He withdrew it and fingered it lovingly. Matters were starting to look serious. “I’ll ask you one more time. Where are the files?” At that moment the files in question were passing an ESAB, an electronic signature authentication barrier. Paulo signed off the upload and reviewed the site. It was an unauthorised data area, but so what? Most of the Internet was unauthorised. It should be able to withstand external shut downs for a couple of days and that would be long enough. Now if only the others had done their jobs… “Very well, I’ll start with our analyst shall I? Ladies first - it’s only polite. Sand up against the wall please.” Isabella swallowed, whilst the Kid considered their options. Well, they could only delay this for so long. The game was up. There was no more time. “All right… all right I’ll tell you. They’re on the Internet. They’ve been put on a public domain site where everyone can read them.” He wasn’t sure if it was wise to add a last piece of defiance but he did it anyway. “You can’t stop it now. The word is out.” There was a moment of silence and then Frans began to laugh. Slow chuckles at first, then hearty guffaws that brought tears to his eyes. “Oh Mr. Stuart, you are funny!” he managed at last. “I couldn’t have put them in a safer place myself. Nobody reads the Internet. Don’t you know that? I thought you were going to hurt the Giant and instead you put the files on the Internet!” He laughed his mirthless laugh for a full minute then stopped as suddenly as if it were a recording. His expression flowed instantly back into the mask of frozen calm. The Kid gulped. He wasn’t sure whether he preferred the psychopathic laughter. Heinrich was looking almost equally discomforted but he wasn’t staring down the barrel of a gun. “Now, where was I? Ah yes. I see no reason not to finish you both. After all, I’m sure the files are secure, now. On your feet please Isabella.” And at that moment the signal on the TV screens flickered and changed. Isabella bit back a flood of nervous relief, tipped her chin up defiantly and stared her prospective executioner straight in the eye. “I think your files will be read,” she said. “I think there’ll be a lot of interest in this story. Look behind you.” They’ve done it, the Kid thought. They’ve done it! All over Amsterdam, on primary and secondary channels, on all the compulsory television sets, and on the sets in the holding cell, a new item was showing. Against a backdrop of the forbidden flag - the EC ring of yellow stars on a blue background, Isabella was presenting a public information broadcast. The Internet address of the supporting data files was plastered at the bottom but the simple message came clearly and powerfully from her lips. Beware of the Giant. The Giant is drugging you. She’s wonderful, the Kid thought. Magnificent. Before it ended Heinrich was on the phone. “I want antidote shipments out fast. I want the PR men to prepare a statement and I want it broadcast as soon as possible. We distribute from the shops and we set up advice lines in ‘Customer Services’ now. Get it done!” Frans had remained motionless during the broadcast. He stood up as his boss finished speaking. “Congratulations,” he said to the prisoners. “It seems you two were smarter than I thought. Unfortunately it doesn’t really change anything.” He took the gun out again. “Frans!” Heinrich shouted. His balding head seemed to have gone as white as an egg and the liver spots on his hands were brief brown soot on trembling ice. “Frans, we don’t need to do this now! Leave them alone.” The supervisor turned to his boss with a weary sigh. “Of course we don’t need to do it. I just want to, that’s all. It will make me feel better.” Before he had time to think, the Kid grabbed Isabella’s arm and yanked her towards him. The bullet spanked into the wall behind them and then he had pushed the table over and was trying to get close enough to grapple with the man. It was hopeless. I’m going to die, the Kid thought. And at that very instant, the door slammed open and a security man ran in. Completely ignoring the situation in the room he addressed himself directly to Frans. “There’s been a security breach, sir! The Keep’s being invaded! Come quickly!” With an indulgent smile Frans slipped the pistol back into his pocket. “It seems I must leave you for a moment Mr. Stuart. Don’t go away. I shall be back shortly.” “He’s a mad man!” Heinrich said, slumping in a chair and shaking from head to foot. “Someone has to look after the Giant’s interests,” Frans said darkly. He took a heavier calibre weapon from the security guard, poked his head though the door and stepped cautiously outside. Not cautiously enough. A burst of gunfire tore apart his chest, and in seconds the room was filled with armed invaders. An officer came over to take their surrender. “Ah,” the Kid said with his first real smile in what seemed like forever. “Colonel Saunders, I presume!” The storming of the Keep was complete. The Kentucky Fried army had routed the Giant’s own defenders. Red and white stripped soldiers patrolled all the administrative floors and were maintaining an unobtrusive presence in the shopping levels. “We had a tip off from someone calling themselves the ‘Man In The Street’. Strange sort of a fella. He told us to watch for a broadcast and to be ready to move against the Keep. We were a little bit doubtful at first but we took the warning seriously.” “Well I’m glad you did,” Isabella said with feeling. “Just ‘Protecting the Brand’,” the officer said. “Heinrich’s made a good start. We’ll withdraw from the Keep once we’re sure the Giant’s following through with its promises. We can’t have our name getting muddied. You see, the Giant retails our product and if word got round they’d put their ‘loyalty compound’ in our chickens we’d be dragged down with them. That’s why we acted fast. Our reputation was at stake.” “As long as it was for something important,” the Kid said with heavy irony. “I wouldn’t want you to feel you’d wasted your time rescuing us.” The army man only managed a little embarrassment but Isabella gave the Kid one of her laughs, so that was all right. After that, there were only a few loose ends to be tied up. The Kid decided to get a new job as a matter of simple prudence but the others had got clean away with it. “They knew someone must have shown the ‘TV hijackers’ to the arterial feed but they couldn’t prove it was us,” Louis said. “Leibnitz put a delay in his interrupt signal so we were off the tower when the broadcast went live.” There was a party at the Temple of Bass(ment) and a new song to add to the EuroKings repertoire - ‘Food Scare’. It was an instant success. “I have to go,” Isabella said afterwards. “I have to go to another country. The EC needs me as an agent in a war torn part of Europe - somewhere where they have to bring peace. That’s my job and I want to do it.” “I have no claim on her,” he thought. “No real claim at all.” He couldn’t help his feelings. “But even so. Even so… I wish she weren’t going. I wish… I wish …” But he didn’t really know what to wish, and that was his problem. In the meantime he could make the best of it… The ‘Man in the Street’ cycled into the controlled zone, wearing the form of a fat market trader on his way to work. He smiled, watching the Kid cross the bridge over the Nieuwe Heregracht, hand in hand with Isabella as they walked into the botanical gardens. It was a rare day of wintry sunshine, fragile as gauze and mild as buttermilk. The gardens would be spare and thin at this time of year. Somehow, he didn’t think they’d mind. And that was how Charles Stuart rescued the beautiful Isabella and helped to free the people from the yoke of the evil Giant. And so was born the legend of Kid City and the EuroKings; whispered at first but later shouted aloud. Many are the stories of their exploits, and (so the Can Man says) maybe some of them are true… DMFW - 06/01/98
Link to the band's only cover song... Atomic Soda - Baby Bird
Comments