The Person Controller. David Baddiel
Читать онлайн книгу.
hit the ball square in the middle of his left boot.
Square in the middle of his triple bow.
So the ball went almost nowhere near his actual foot. It went almost entirely near the big knot of his shoelace. Fred, to be fair, had been right. A bow that size was too bulky. Which wasn’t much comfort to him as the ball spun backwards over his head, hitting Mr Barrington full in the face. “Ow!!!” said Mr Barrington, as his rhino-foot-lens glasses flew off his face and into the mud.
Everyone apart from Fred laughed, loud and long. Fred himself just turned and walked off, knowing that he certainly wasn’t going to get into the school team this time.
Now let’s go back to the main story.
So that’s why Isla and Morris making fun of his footballing ability did touch a nerve with Fred. And why he told them to shut up.
It felt good, saying shut up. It felt, to Fred, that the time had come to stand up and be counted, and he had stood up and been counted. He had said: This much and no more. He had drawn a line in the sand and told the bullies not to cross it.
And that feeling – that he had stood up and been counted, that he had said this much and no more, that he had drawn a line in the sand and told the bullies not to cross it – was certainly some small comfort to Fred as Morris proceeded to give him a dead leg, an elbow drill and a wedgie.
“I feel really bad,” said Ellie, trying to help Fred out of the dustbin. (Isla and Morris’s last move, a classic bit of bullying, was to plonk Fred in the computer-room bin bottom first, so that his legs stuck out like wheelbarrow handles.)
“Don’t feel really bad,” said Fred.
“What did you say?” said Ellie.
“I said …” said Fred, trying hard this time not to groan as he said it, “don’t feel really bad.”
“But I’m your sister.” She grabbed hold of his legs and pulled. “And just because I’m a girl shouldn’t mean that I can’t protect you from the bullies and …”
As she spoke, her weight finally pulled her brother – and the bin attached to his bum, looking not unlike a snail’s shell – forward. Two seconds later, the bin clattered to the floor, popping Fred out as it went. He picked himself up.
“I know that, Ellie. But you tried your best. It wasn’t your fault that Isla’s arm is quite long.”
This was a reference to the fact that, while Fred was getting his dead leg and his elbow drill and his wedgie, Isla had been holding an arm out and blocking Ellie from getting close enough to help her brother by putting her palm on Ellie’s forehead. Ellie had swung her arms a few times, but sadly got nowhere near landing any punches.
“Anyway, where’s the laptop?” Fred said.
They both looked around. It wasn’t on the shelf any more. It was on the floor next to some scrunched-up sweet wrappers that had fallen out of the bin. It had landed upside down, in the shape of a tiny tent.
“Oh my God!” said Ellie.
She lifted it up carefully, as if it was a bird whose wings had folded down across its body after an injury. But it was fine when she turned it round. More than fine actually. The screen seemed to be glowing brighter than ever.
And on the screen the browser had clicked through to a new page on which was shown this:
It was an amazing-looking controller. It was black, but with blue lines running across its body. There weren’t four buttons on the top right-hand side, as normal, but six; and they weren’t lettered, or numbered, or ordinary colours: red and green and yellow. They were jewelled: silver and gold and diamond and emerald and amber and ruby.
The control stick, which also had a jewelled top, appeared to be reaching out of the screen, as if in 3D. Its central button had no recognisable trademark, but just an image of something. It might have been a person, or an animal, or a ghost dancing.
“Wow …” said Fred.
“Yeah. Wow …” said Ellie. She clicked on the screen for a closer view.
At which point the blue lines running across the body of the controller lit up and began to pulse. The blue light washed across Ellie and Fred’s spellbound faces.
“What is this website?” said Fred.
“I don’t know.” Ellie was still staring enraptured at the screen. “But I do know that this … is my controller.”
“Really?” said Fred.
“Yes,” said Ellie. “I can feel it.”
Fred nodded. He knew there was no point in arguing with Ellie when she had set her mind on something.
“OK … but … how do we pay for it?”
Ellie frowned. “Uh …”
A link popped up that simply said:
So she did.
There was a moment of computer fuzz. And then, in a little window next to the controller, a man, bald but with long hair at the back, wearing very small square sunglasses and a head mic, appeared on screen. He looked directly at the twins.
“I am … oh blast. Wait a minute.” He flicked a switch on his head mic.
“I am …” he said again, but now his voice had a slight electronic echo, “… the Mystery Man!!”
Fred and Ellie exchanged glances.
“Right …” said Ellie. “Nice to meet you.”
The man nodded. There was a long pause. The Mystery Man seemed to be sizing them up from inside the screen. Eventually, he said, “Answer me this: are you nerds?”
“Sorry?” said Ellie.
“Are you … NERDS?!!” he said, more loudly.
Fred and Ellie looked at each other. They took in each other’s V-necks, glasses and braces. They thought for a moment about their joint liking for superheroes, comics, Japanese fantasy animation films, maths and video games. And they realised that the answer was:
“Well, yes. I suppose so,” said Ellie.
“Yes, I suppose so too,” said Fred.
“No, that’s not good enough,” said the Mystery Man from the laptop screen. “You need to say it loud and say it proud. You need to own it. So once more: are you … NERDS?!”
Fred and Ellie looked at each other again. Ellie shrugged.
“Actually,” she said, “we’ve got these other friends …”
“Sort-of friends,”