Theologos is twenty-two years old and nearing the end of his national military service. He’ll be relieved in two hours. Since the end of the Cold War it’s about as boring as it gets monitoring absolutely nothing of interest in the radar sweeps. Most of it is out of his control anyway. There’s so little need for him to do anything that one of his predecessors spent a few months in military prison for getting his mother to cover for him while he went to a party in nearby Sidari.
He’s thinking about breakfast when there are six loud alert sounds. A message in French and English appears on his main comms screen: Baltic terrorist alert level orange. HQ Brussels assuming control. Ensure backup systems online and secured.
The radar control settings screen shows the scanners switching to m-band frequency 107.43 GHz.
The radar sweep images from Peroulades appear on one of the big screens. Danny points to the chair in front of it. Sunil sits down. “Your turn, fella,” he says.
Lynne is feeling better and pacing the room, angry. “They’re calling all the shots here,” she says bitterly. “We’re running after them. I don’t like being screwed around by these bastards!”
Danny leads her to the far end of the room and speaks very quietly. “This is the full picture,” he says. “Universa are way behind on production of their EMO set-top boxes. The first batch they had from a plant in China was rubbish, and there were design faults anyway. They are shitting themselves that we’ll get our stuff out first. But here’s the thing: they’ve switched production to Korea. They’re tooling up for a production run of seventeen million units. Single source. They’re depending on a custom chip-set. We may be able to help them. But you don’t need to know.”
Ice-cold blue eyes stare into his. “Do it,” she says. “And if you can kill a few of them while you’re at it I sure don’t need to know but I want to see the newspaper clippings.”
Sunil jumps up and shouts, “Got them!” On the monitor the radar is painting a bright dot that fades on several sweeps and then flares again. There’s a smaller, fainter dot next to it. The track is moving slowly up the west coast of Corfu.
Danny flips his mobile open and speed-dials Spiros.
It’s a beautiful morning. The sunlight dances on the tiny whitecaps of the waves. The sea is ultramarine and the wake of the fishing boat is pure gleaming white foam flashing with rainbows. A dolphin flips out of the water for a moment and vanishes. Two coast guard single-prop planes come over the hills to the east and zoom loudly overhead. They bank steeply and turn back over the boat at five hundred feet.
The boat’s captain goes to full throttle and keys his radio. He talks rapidly in Albanian, and then shouts. He takes a handgun from the hatch and sticks it under the belt of his shorts as he runs for the stairs down to the lower area.
Selina says nothing as he hoists a body bag over his shoulder and goes up again. She can’t hear the splash over the engine noise. He returns and takes the second body bag. Then he comes back down again.
He holds the gun at her head as he cuts the rope tying her to a stanchion on the hull. “Up!” he says in Greek. Selina tries to stand on cramped legs and winces with the pain. “Hurry!” he shouts, waving to the stairs with the gun. She moves slowly. He hits her across the face and her nose starts to bleed. He pushes her up the stairs and onto the deck. He gestures towards the side of the boat. She moves across the planks until her thighs are against the rail. As he lifts the gun, there’s an explosion of noise as a helicopter roars at low-level over the hills towards the boat. He looks up. When he looks down again, she’s gone.
Maybe every human has a moment of katharsis—purification, release. Selina is feeling this now. The engines stop. She is under the boat, kicking slowly with her legs to conserve oxygen, when the dolphin comes up to her and nuzzles her gently. Maybe Poseidon has sent Delphinos to bring her the good luck she badly needs.
On the deck the captain raises his handgun towards the helicopter and is instantly shredded with machine- gun fire.
The technical centre is a wreck. The studio capsules are dead without their source. The computers are inert. There’s water everywhere from the Fire and Rescue damp-down. This is a billion-pound insurance claim.
Lynne stands there with Sunil and Jack. “How long to be up and running again?” she asks.
“It took two years last time,” Sunil says, “so let’s be optimistic and say one.”
They’ve never seen her cry before.
“We can finish the movie,” Sunil says quietly. Lynne laughs through her tears and Jack puts his hand to his head. “And just how are we going to do that?” Lynne asks.
“Go out and shoot with real actors,” Sunil answers.
“What?” She waves her arms around. “Which particular century are you in? We can borrow brains and do anything we like. We can shoot movies in three weeks that would have taken six months. You designed this stuff, for Christ’s sake! Are you really suggesting that we go back to pointing cameras at real people? You’re mad, isn’t he Jack?”
Jack walks over to a pile of cable and stirs it with the toe of his Adidas trainers. “I’d like to do it, but we don’t have anybody left in the country capable of manning an old-fashioned unit. Cameras, lighting—it’s all gone.”
“Here, maybe,” Sunil says, “but not everywhere. By the way, can I borrow the jet?”
“Why?”
“I’ve got an appointment with a doctor.”
Bright green motherboards move down the production line. The main processing chips have arrived from the fab unit. The chips have been made without human intervention, their millions of transistors carefully crafted from design templates on the central computer. The motherboards pause and chips are inserted by robotic units. They move on and pass through a bath of liquid solder. They arrive at the point where cables are attached and then into a bay where they are married with their shiny black set-top boxes. From here the units reach the packaging area and slide neatly into the colourful cardboard boxes with pictures of fantastic movie scenes and the word EMO coming out like a stereoscopic projection. The slogan the world’s been seeing day after day in an expensive advertising campaign runs across the boxes in a diagonal stripe: See it, Feel it, Be it!
The production lines move swiftly and efficiently, as they must, because they have seventeen million EMOs to produce, and that’s just the start.
The little road through the village centre is blocked for traffic. Two nine-thousand watt lighting brutes are standing in the road outside The Little Prince. Thick cables run from the lights to a generator parked outside the bakery. The camera is on a jib arm and looks down on the taverna terrace from ten feet above. Jack stands next to the jib talking quietly to Elena Vafiadou, the camera operator.
Alexandros is wearing black trousers and a white shirt. Makeup assistants are gently tapping powder onto his face. He’s a waiter who falls in love with an English girl and discovers that he has the power to manipulate people. He’s going to have to make some big choices between using his powers for good or evil. Nearby, Alice Walton sits alone at one of the tables whilst a young woman from Frocks adjusts the straps on her dress.
At another table sit Spiros and Maria. Spiros wrinkles his nose and says, “I hate this makeup.”
She smiles in a feline way and says, “See what I’ve had to put up with all these years for your pleasure, Spiros!”
He sighs. “I’m still not sure Alexandros is doing the right thing.”
“I am,” she says. “If you were younger and better looking I’d have put you up for the job!”
The Assistant Director picks up a megaphone. “We’re going for a take. Starting positions, please. Is the kitchen ready?” There’s a quick burst of affirmative radio traffic from the AFM in the kitchen. The Sparks hits the big switch and the lights come on, brighter even than a Corfu noon. “Quiet, please, and stand by!”
Jack says, “Turn over.” Camera and sound operators confirm that they’re rolling. “And—action!”
The music begins and Alexandros puts down his tray and begins to dance, his arms held out wide, his feet swinging back and forward and across and check and back again. He’s light on his toes. He spins and kneels.
Michalis comes from the kitchen wreathed in steam as he carries Sizzling Steak across the terrace and puts it down on Spiros and Maria’s table. Alice lifts her beautiful sad downcast eyes and watches Alexandros dance. This is
