‘So what about this one?’ said Cooper. im s0 1337 taht i pwn ur @ss n00b!!!!
‘Okay, that’s easy,’ said Irvine. ‘A zero is used in place of an “o”. That’s an obvious one — so “n00b” instead of “noob”.’
‘Yes.’
‘Common mis-typings come into leet — so “taht” is deliberate, not a mistake. So is “pwn” which originally meant “own”, the “p” being next to the “o” on the keyboard. And the “@” symbol replaces an “a”.’
‘Okay so far,’ said Cooper.
Irvine looked up. ‘It feels strange just explaining this letter by letter. It’s not what you’re supposed to do with it. The idea is, you either understand it straight off, or you don’t. You’re either leet literate, or you’re not. There’s no in between.’
‘Well, I think I’m getting there,’ said Cooper. ‘Of course, “ur” is “your”, yes?’
‘Correct.’
‘But what’s this “1337”? What’s the significance of the number?’
‘Well, that’s leet,’ said Irvine.
‘I know, but — ’
‘No, I mean “1337” is leetspeak for “leet”.’
‘Say that again.’
Irvine grinned. ‘The numbers stand for letters, Ben. The one is “1”, the three is “e”…’
‘…and the seven is a “t”.’
‘You got it: “1337” is “leet” in leetspeak.’
Cooper blew out a breath, as if he’d been working physically hard for the last few minutes.
‘It makes your brain hurt a bit.’
‘So the sentence reads…?’ asked Irvine.
‘I’m so leet that I own your ass, noob.’
‘w00t!!!!!’
‘What?’
‘That’s a leet expression. w00t!!!!! It’s an exclamation of joy, or success.’
‘You should use it with lots of exclamation marks, I imagine,’ said Cooper.
Irvine laughed. ‘Yes, I did.’
‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, Luke?’
‘It’s good to get a chance to show off your talents.’
‘I’m so leet that I own your ass, noob. A bit American, but I suppose we get the message.’
‘The kid probably copied a lot of this stuff from someone else’s profile, you know.’
‘Probably.’
‘Right down at the bottom, we’ve got brb kk?? You see those a lot in messages — “brb” is “be right back”. You say “brb” when you’re ending a conversation. Sometimes you’re not coming back at all, it’s just a way of getting rid of someone you don’t want to talk to. And “kk??” is just “okay?”’
‘Some of it is just decoration, though,’ said Cooper. ‘The sword and the face.’
‘Yeah, just ASCII art.’
‘Art?’
‘That’s what they call it.’
‘These city names don’t mean anything to you, do they? Engine House, Dutchman, The Folly.’
Irvine shook his head. ‘Can’t help you there. They’re plain vanilla. Ordinary English. They must have particular meaning for the user.’
‘And is this just for decoration? It looks like something to do with money.’
Cooper pointed at the repeated characters.?0$7?0$7?0$7?0$7?0$7 R1v32
‘No, that’s leet,’ said Irvine. ‘A slightly different use of the character set, but you would do that to confuse the issue.’
‘Successfully, in this case.’
‘You see, the pound sign stands for an “1”…’
‘Maybe,’ said Cooper, ‘you could translate the words, rather than doing it letter by letter.’
Irvine shrugged. ‘Okay. This is what it says.’
He drew a message pad towards him and wrote it out in big capital letters that could be understood even by the most ignorant noob.
Cooper ripped the paper from the pad and stared at it. It read:
LOST
LOST
LOST
LOST RIVER
19
The Indian restaurant was having a busy evening. Its windows were steamed up with hot breath and curry, the front was propped open to let a waft of curry drift out on to the pavement.
On a warm night like this, doors and windows would be standing open all over the city, everyone desperate to get a bit of cool air. Not many in Birmingham thought it worthwhile to install air conditioning. Well, some of the smart new office blocks down by Holloway Circus had it, perhaps. But not here in the streets of Handsworth. Here, everyone expected grey clouds and rain, even in the summer. Anything else took the entire city by surprise. Ironic really, that even the original generation of Asian migrants had forgotten the heat of the Indian subcontinent so thoroughly. Birmingham certainly got into your blood, didn’t it?
But those open doors and windows were also an invitation. Burglars everywhere wouldn’t believe their luck tonight.
Diane Fry saw a wino sheltering in the doorway of an offlicence. A ghetto blaster on wheels roared past, doing well over the speed limit for a city street. But you could never find a police officer when you needed one, could you?
Outside a bank, a woman was using the cash machine, hunched over the hole in the wall while a friend stood cavey, eyes alert for skimmers or an opportunist mugger. Safe? Of course the city was safe — provided you were sensible, and took a few precautions.
Fry remembered her old bus route to college at Perry Barr. The number 51 or 16, she wasn’t sure. But she recalled with absolute clarity that the route had seemed to pass through all the scariest parts of the city. Aston, Handsworth, Lozells, Newtown. All the places she would have avoided in any other circumstances. Some of those streets she would never have walked down alone. She only viewed them from the top deck of the bus, surrounded by other passengers, eyes glued to the greasy windows as she stared at the people on the street, as if she were a visitor to a wildlife park, observing the big cats at a safe distance. Travelling home on the bus at night could be quite an adrenalin ride. Maybe that was why she’d always wanted to go back and do it again.
Vincent Bowskill was waiting for her in the entrance to an alley full of grey city council wheelie bins bursting with plastic bags. He was smoking a cigarette, his face washed sickly green by the restaurant sign. Through the plate-glass window, Fry glimpsed gold-embossed wallpaper, tables covered in plumcoloured cloth and sheets of glass, a few customers mopping up curry with their naan bread.
The streets were all yellow glare and deep shadow. A pair of black ghosts moving soundlessly between the streetlights turned out to be two women in black burqas, their eyes covered by concealing grilles. They wore the full Afghan chadri — the type some Pakistanis called a ‘shuttlecock burqa’. Purdah clothing.
Fry had passed a row of shuttered shops, barricaded against the possibility of riot or ram-raid. On the corner, there used to be bullet holes visible in the concrete wall, at the scene of another notorious shooting. But the wall itself had been pulled down now. One more re-development site.
In some parts of Handsworth, fear prowled the streets like more black ghosts. If you lived in a place like this, it was best to keep your head down, filter out the things you don’t want to see. Close your eyes, and the world
