Only You Can Save Mankind by Pratchett Terry

Author:Pratchett, Terry [Pratchett, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Google: Kn5FGwAACAAJ
Amazon: 0060541873
Publisher: HarperTrophy
Published: 1992-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

The Dark Tower

It was 61:41° by the thermometer. Time was different in game space.

No matter how often you died, you never got used to it. It wasn’t as if you got better with pract—

She’d heard him. Inside the game.

He sat up.

The ScreeWee were inside the game because it was their world. Wobbler and the rest hadn’t really been in it; he was pretty sure he’d just dreamed them in because he needed someone to pilot the food tankers.

But he’d heard her in Patel’s. That ringing, sharp voice, which made it very clear that its owner thought everyone in the whole world was dim-witted and had to be talked to like a baby or a foreigner.

On the screen, empty space rolled onward.

He had to find her. Apart from anything else, no one who flew like that should be allowed anywhere near the ScreeWee.

Wobbler’d probably know who she was.

He found the room moving around him when he stood up. He probably really was ill, he thought. Well, not surprising. What with Trying Times and stupid school and parents trying to be friends and now having to save an entire alien race instead of getting proper sleep, it wasn’t surprising.

He made it to the hall and took the phone off its base and brought it back upstairs. He’d just extended the antenna when it rang.

“Um, hello—Blackbury five-five-five nine-eight-zero-who’s-that-speaking-please?”

“Is that you? This is me.”

“Oh. Hello, Wobbler.”

“You ill or something?”

“Flu. Look, Wobbler—”

“You seen the papers today?”

“No. Mum and Dad take them to work with them. Wobbler—”

“Thing in the papers about Gobi Software. Hang on…says ‘NO ENCOUNTERS OF THE TWENTY-FIRST KIND.’ That’s the headline.”

Johnny hesitated.

“What does it say?” he asked, very cautiously.

“What does ‘inundated’ mean?”

“’S like ‘overwhelmed,’” said Johnny.

“Says that Gobi Software and computer game shops have been…inundated with complaints about Only You Can Save Mankind. Because they made that offer of five pounds if you shoot all the aliens, and it says people aren’t finding any aliens. And Gobi Software is in trouble because of the Trades Descriptions Act. And they keep on using the word hacker,” said Wobbler in the sneering tones of one who knows what a hacker really is and knows that most journalists don’t. “And there’s a quote from Al Rampa, president of Gobi. He says they’re recalling all the games, and if you send back the original disks they’ll send you a voucher for their new game, Dodge City 1888. That got four stars in FAAzzzzAAAP!”

Recalling the games…

“Yes, but you haven’t got the original disks,” said Johnny. “You hardly ever have any original disks.”

“No, but I know the guy whose brother bought it,” said Wobbler happily. “So it was just a problem with the game, right? You weren’t crazy after all.”

“I never said I was crazy,” said Johnny.

“No, but…well, you know,” said Wobbler. He sounded embarrassed.

“Wobbler?”

“Yes?”

“You know that girl who was in Patel’s?”

“Oh, her. What about her?”

“D’you know who she is?”

“She’s someone’s sister, I think.”

“Whose?”

“Goes to some kind of special school for the terminally clever. She’s called Kylie or Krystal or one of those made-up names.

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