Authors: Bill Williams
He slowly opened his bedroom door and winced as the noise from the hinges seemed amplified ten times over. He halted on the landing when he heard the rasping noise coming from his parent’s bedroom. At least his dad’s snoring helped mask the noise from the creaking floorboards, but he still breathed a sigh of relief as he carefully closed the door of the computer room.
Jamie pressed the on switch of the machine that he was expecting would soon be working. With luck, Uncle Steve had given him the correct bit of information. He had told Jamie that his Great Granddad wasn’t John Edward George and his middle name was actually Edwin and not Edward.
Jamie was nervous as he checked the answers over and over, knowing that this was his last chance of being able to use the computer in its present state. The original warning message had stated that he had forty eight hours to come with the answers and had not mentioned that he would only be allowed a limited number of attempts. He pressed the enter key and closed his eyes, but opened them when he heard the loud applause and cheering from the speakers, but it only lasted a few seconds. The cheering had reminded him of his times on the Kop at, Anfield, the home of Liverpool FC and was followed by a flashing ‘
Congratulations Jamie’
message on the screen.
Jamie punched the air with delight and was amused by the welcome. Uncle Stanley really did have a sense of humour.
‘Huh huh, what’s this,’ Jamie said as another message flashed up:
My Solemn Promise
I, Jamie Tranter, promise not to:
Divulge the specification of this computer to anyone.
Let anyone use this computer unless I am present.
Reveal details of any communications that I have with a secret source.
‘You’ve got a deal Uncle Stanley,’ Jamie said as he placed the cursor over the ‘I Promise’ box and pressed the enter key.
Jamie couldn’t quite understand why Uncle Stanley had wanted all this secrecy, but now that he would be able to use the PC he didn’t mind all the hassle. He had even enjoyed it in a funny sort of way. Uncle Stanley had got him interested in his family history and he intended to research the family, but that could wait.
The odd thing that Jamie had first noticed about the computer display was that it was round and much bigger than anything he had ever seen and more like a radar screen, but the quality of the images on the screen were stunning. The menu on the screen listed the usual things like WORD and SPREADSHEET and there was even a GAMES folder, but the one that he clicked on first was SYSTEM.
Jamie read the system details on the screen and then laughed out in disbelief. He knew that his PC was no ordinary machine, but these figures had to be Uncle Stanley having a bit of fun. The CPU was listed at 1000,000 Ghz which would have made it more powerful that all the supercomputers in the world put together. The installed memory (ram) was claiming to be 50,000 Gb, which was theoretically possible, but would have been very, very expensive. The surprising one was the Disk drive which had 50 Tetrabytes of storage and was quite modest compared to the other claims.
Jamie had used the Internet at school often enough, but he had never felt the buzz of excitement that he was experiencing now as he waited while watching the ‘
Trying to Connect to the Internet
’ message flash on the screen.
He let out another muffled, but excited, ‘Yes.’ When he saw the ‘
Connected
’ message flash up followed by, ‘Scrambler Activated’ He still didn’t understand how he could connect without being linked to the telephone. Anyway, he would look into that later.
‘Now where’s the browser?’ he asked himself as he studied the various icons on the screen. A click on to the Earth Browser icon opened up the BBC News website. A few clicks around the various links revealed a very impressive turn of speed and much, much faster that he’d ever experienced on the school computers. Uncle Stanley’s Favourites Menu revealed an odd selection of sites, mostly techie things and military sites. The one that caught Jamie’s attention was
PLANET TITANTULA
. There’s that name again, he thought and clicked on the icon. He groaned as the screen went blank, but was relieved when it came back again showing a new window with Titantula displayed across the top.
Jamie jumped when a short blast of music came out of the speakers followed by a posh sounding English voice declaring, ‘
You have Mail from Titantula
’ and he directed the mouse pointer over the Mail Inbox icon and was poised to click on the mouse when he heard the call from outside the door and it made him jump again.
‘I’m coming, Dad,’ Jamie shouted in reply to his dad’s angry enquiry asking what he was doing up in the middle of the night.
Jamie hadn’t locked the door like he usually did, but he wasn’t going to leave the room without reading the mail message, even if his dad blew a casket.
‘I’ve got to close the computer down, Dad. I’ll be back in bed in just a sec,’ Jamie promised and clicked on the mouse and read the message.
‘Welcome back, Soranmalvor,
I thought you had disconnected. There has been no atmospheric disturbance within our galaxy or other abnormalities detected. Have you had technical problems?
Your Trusty Friend,
Koolhebron
‘Weird. Is that Spam or what?’ Jamie said out loud.
‘Are you talking to yourself, our Jamie?’ asked Kevin as he entered the room, startling Jamie, who thought his dad had gone back to bed. Jamie’s hand flashed towards the computer and pressed the power off button.
‘No, I was just packing in, Dad. It was so hot in my room and I couldn’t sleep so I came up here. I managed to get on the internet and it was great.’
‘I’ll be having words with you in the morning,’ Kevin said. ‘Now get back to bed.’ His dad waited by the door for Jamie to leave the room and ended any chance that Jamie might have of getting back on line by locking the door and taking the key with him.
* * *
It was quite some time before Jamie eventually slept after he had mulled over the strange email. Perhaps those odd names and the mystery planet that he’d never heard of was some kind of joke. Before he’d drifted off to sleep he’d decided that he would reply to the email, explaining about his Uncle’s demise. If the email was genuine then it was possible that Uncle Stanley and Soranmalvor had been one and the same person. Maybe Uncle Stanley had belonged to some sort of Star Wars or Star Trek club.
* * *
Jamie sighed when he heard the bang on his bedroom door followed by his dad’s order for him to ‘shake a leg’. He wouldn’t mind doing just that, but getting up and ready for school would be much more difficult.
Jamie was in a daydream as he went through the motions of eating breakfast.
‘It’ll be an early night for you, me laddo,’ Kevin said, after Jamie had failed to respond to his dad’s remark about Liverpool being interested in a Spanish striker.
‘I think I’m suffering from jet lag.’ Jamie said after he had shaken his head trying to force away the tiredness.
‘Jet lag,’ Kevin and Debbie said in unison.
‘Well, you know what I mean. That was a long journey in your old bone shaker, Dad.’
‘So, that’s your excuse for playing with that computer during the early hours. Now let’s have no more of that or I’ll ban you from that room for a week. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, Dad,’ Jamie groaned.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jamie had managed to get through most of Mr Clough’s morning geography lesson, but it had been embarrassing when he gave the answer as the Manchester Ship Canal instead of the Suez Canal. The class had been discussing Egypt while Jamie had been dozing. He had made it sound as though he was only messing about and managed to laugh it off.
When the morning break arrived he headed for the corner of the playground and set about eating the sandwiches intended for his lunch, wishing that he had eaten more of his breakfast.
He was startled by Ethan’s enquiry, ‘Why have you been staring up at the sky, Jamie?’
Jamie had been too preoccupied to notice Ethan and tried to make an excuse by claiming that he had been looking at a jet’s vapour trail.
Ethan looked at the sky and said that he couldn’t see any jets in the sky.
‘It must be behind the clouds. Anyway, Ethan we’d better get back for our next lesson.’
Jamie felt stupid as they made their way back to the school building. What had he been expecting to see during his skyward gazes, a planet with Titantula written on it? Come on, Jamie. Get real.
There was more embarrassment for Jamie during the history lesson which was the last lesson of the day. Mr Cole was discussing the great wars and was getting annoyed at the apparent lack of interest and near the end of the lesson he reprimanded Isobel for being more interested in Jamie than the topic that they were discussing.
‘But I am interested, sir, I was just imagining Jamie with a sword and fighting those nasty Romans.’
There was a chorus of wolf whistles and cheering, but the real reason for Jamie’s embarrassment was when the noise died down and Mr Cole asked him to name one of the Roman generals that they had been discussing.
‘Isobel,’ replied Jamie and before he could correct his answer Mr Cole had ordered him to stay behind after class.
Mr Cole had reminded him of his dad when he’d said, ‘We need to have a talk, young man.’
Joe Taylor the class joker suggested that Isobel should stay behind as well if Mr Cole was going to talk to Jamie about relationships. The ensuing laughter resulted in Mr Cole deciding to dismiss the class a few minutes early.
Jamie was surprised how understanding Mr Cole was during their ‘talk’. He had offered to move Jamie to another desk away from Isobel’s, but Jamie didn’t think that was a good idea because it might mean that she would start passing him notes across the classroom.
When he left the classroom he headed for his locker to pick up his football kit and was in a quandary about whether to skip practice and head home and see if he had any more strange emails.
Then he remembered the threats that Jason Patmore had made and decided that he would go and play in case Jason thought he had scared him off. Jamie was confident that he would be able to cope with Jason’s dirty tricks and hopefully Mr Mortimer would make sure that Jason didn’t do anything too damaging if Jason caught him off guard.
* * *
Jason Patmore pulled his bootlace tight, stood up and began glowering at Jamie who was on the opposite side of the changing room. Jamie smiled when Jason began punching his open hand with his other fist, like a boxer waiting for the bell to sound.
Jason gave a half grunt, half sigh when Mr Mortimer announced the two practice teams that that had him on the same side as Jamie.
Jamie had only been regarded as a good player at his old school that had several players who attended a football academy, but he was by far the best player in his new school team.
‘Good ball, Jamie,’ Jason mimicked with derision after Mr Mortimer had praised another of Jamie’s brilliant passes.
By half time Jamie’s team were leading five goals to nil, thanks to a Jamie hat trick
and two assists, but Jason wasn’t pleased with the result even though his team were winning.
‘This game’s a bit boring, sir,’ Jason moaned. ‘Why don’t we change the teams to make it more even? I don’t mind playing on the other side.’
‘What a good idea, Jason. Perhaps you’ll be able to shackle Jamie. You two on opposite sides will be interesting to watch.’
Jason gave a smirk that left Jamie in no doubt what bully boy’s intentions were and he hoped that Mr Mortimer could keep up with the play.
By midway through the second half Jamie had scored another two goals and he’d managed to evade a couple of crude challenges from Jason, the last one had resulted in a warning from Mr Mortimer. The warning appeared to be working until a group of spectators arrived and began chanting, ‘Jamie, Jamie,’ led by Isobel who was wearing a red and white Liverpool scarf.’
Mr Mortimer had just finished writing in his small notebook when he saw Jason’s lunge at Jamie. Luckily for Jamie he only suffered a torn sock and a painful shin, thanks to his pad.
‘Now that’s enough, Jason,’ Mr Mortimer roared and following a chant of, ‘OFF, OFF,’ he ordered Jason to apologize to Jamie and then to go and get changed.
Jason trudged over to Jamie and offered out his hand, taking the opportunity to squeeze Jamie’s fingers and tell him that he would have him soon. He said that he didn’t want Isobel for his girlfriend anymore, which amused Jamie because Isobel had made it clear that she thought Jason was the school moron and she wouldn’t be seen dead with him.
After the match Jamie stayed close to Mr Mortimer as they walked towards the school prior to heading home. Jamie wasn’t seeking protection from Jason who had left before the match finished, but Mr Mortimer’s presence would keep Isobel at bay, at least for the moment.
CHAPTER NINE
Jamie arrived home from football practice and following no response to his call, ‘Anyone at home.’ he remembered that his parents were going with Leanne to see her teacher to discuss how she had settled in, so Jamie headed straight upstairs to his special room. Jamie was still curious to know what was behind the mystery email and wondered if Uncle Stanley had been some kind of eccentric, like one of those Star Trek fans. Perhaps Koolebron was actually an old mate, probably a Fred Smith who pretended to be a character from outer space.
As he waited for the PC to boot up he decided that he would risk making a fool of himself and stick to his plan to send a reply to Uncle Stanley’s old mate. After several attempts Jamie settled on the following message:
Dear Mr Koolebron,
I received a message from you on my great uncle’s computer. I am afraid that my Great Uncle Stanley (Soranmalvor) died some months ago. We are now living in his old house.