The Fairy Godmother Part 39

“You could have chosen something a little less dangerous Enid!” I thought as another explosion showed us with soil.

“Is there anywhere quieter that we could talk?” I shouted at Tom.

“I suppose we could go into my office,” he said looking round at the chaos.

“That might be an idea,” I said on the principle that the office must have a roof or something to stop the almost constant rain of soil.

“After you,” he said opening a door just behind him, the strange thing was that I couldn’t remember it being there until that point.

I walked through the door and found myself in an office, through the windows I could see blue skies and distant hills, but there were no explosions. I walked back out and the explosions continued. Tom cleared his throat behind me, so I continued into the room.

“So,” I said walking over to the window. “I hope you can explain this?” I asked looking down at a view of rural tranquillity.

“It’s difficult,” he sighed.

“Start at the beginning and work your way through, omitting nothing,” I said. “Without all the facts it is going to be extremely difficult to unravel this mess.”

“That is part of the problem, I don’t think I have all the facts,” he said.

“Meanwhile, they are hammering your people out there,” I said.

“I know that,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Yet we see none of that in here,” I added.

“Are you saying we should being them in here?” he asked.

“The wounded at least,” I replied.

“But this is my office, my command post,” he said looking stunned.

“To command you need followers,” I replied. “You are loosing them with every passing minute.”

“But,” he said as I opened the door again.

“I think the hospital is being targetted,” said Ethel, looking confused, not that that was any different from normal.

“Right,” I said turning to one of the people who were peering over the top. “We need to evacuate the hospital into here.”

He looked from me to Tom.

“Do as she says,” Tom sighed.

“Yes Sir,” he said, heading down the trench.

“And get everyone you see to help you with it,” I shouted after him. “The sooner this is done the better.”

“As she says,” shouted Tom.

“In here,” I said to Ethel.

“But they’ll need my help,” she said.

“I think you can help them more from here,” I replied. “Now, this game?” I asked Tom.

“When young Tom came back from school for the summer holidays, he brought a friend with him, his parents were on some archaeological expedition and he was going to spend the summer with us. I thought it would keep young Tom out of mischief, give him something to occupy his time at any rate.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“The lad had some computer game, they spent all the hours of the day and night on the thing, it didn’t seem right, so I thought I aught to do something about it,” he replied, stepping to one side as the first stretcher arrived, the lead person carrying it looked round as if to ask what to do next.

“This way,” said Ethel gesturing for them to go through a door which I hadn’t seen until then.

“Thank-you Miss,” he said and following her directions, the other stretcher bearers behind followed suite.

“What do you know about computer games?” I asked.

“They’re a bloody waste of time,” he muttered.

“So what did you do to the game?” I asked.

“I went into the controls of the program and changed a few settings,” he explained.

“Can’t you just change them back?” I asked.

“You think I hadn’t thought of that?” he asked.

“I assume you can’t, but I had to ask,” I replied. “What happened when you tried.”

“It asked for a password that it hadn’t needed when I made the changes,” he said.

“And you didn’t have a password?” Ethel asked.

“No,” he said. “And after three attempts at guessing I was locked out.”

“What were these changes?” I asked.

“I thought the characters in it weren’t very real,” he said. “So I input some photos in from the local fairs, from the local newspaper web site and it populated the game with them.”

“That’s a breach of copyright,” said Ethel.

“And they are all here?” I asked.

“Them, and any friends or family that weren’t at the fair,” he said.

“How did that happen?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he sighed. “When I closed out of the program, they and I were here. I tried to get back onto the program to send them back, but it locked me out.”

“What else did you change?” I asked.

“There was a setting for safety,” he said.

“And what did you change it to?” asked Ethel, sounding somewhat more angry than I had ever heard her sound.

“It was a shoot-em up sort of program, but,” he looked at the ceiling. “When someone died, well, ten minutes later they came back. I didn’t think they were learning anything.”

“So, what did you do?” Ethel asked.

“I took the safety off,” he said. “I didn’t think it would have this effect!”

“So this is all your fault,” said Ethel, getting her laptop out of her bag.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I’m going to try and undo the mess you have made,” she said.

“Is there anything I can do to help you?” he asked.

“Find young Tom’s friend,” I suggested. “He might have some insight into how to tackle this.”

“Yes, he might and that would speed things up,” Ethel said, backing up my suggestion.

“A bit difficult,” said Tom looking a bit uncomfortable.

“Why?” I asked.

“He was one of the first casualties,” Tom replied looking a bit sheepish.

“I might be able to help,” said young Tom cautiously.

“Right,” said Ethel, putting the laptop down on a table that hadn’t been there a couple and pulling up a chair.

“Do your best son,” said Tom.

“Is this the last of the casualties?” I asked the last person in the line of stretcher bearers.

“Yes Miss, well unless someone else has been hit,” he replied.

“You need to get the rest of the people in here,” I told Tom.

“I can’t do that,” Tom blustered.

“Why not?” I asked.

“There will be no one manning the defences,” he replied. “You can’t leave the defences unmanned!”

“Why not?” I asked.

“The enemy will come in and take over,” he spluttered.

“From what I can see, if we keep them the other side of that door, they can’t get at us and we are safe,” I replied.

“The war wont progress if we stay holed up here,” he snapped.

“This isn’t a war, it’s a computer game,” Ethel snapped.

By Janice Nye © 2020