unquenchable greed of e-commerce and the great e-future. Is it possible that the still, small voice of the Family can stand up to such howling din? Can the British Family truly resist… The Threat of The Net?’
Music. Applause. Titles. A collage of images showing Ashley Barson-Garland, bald, unprepossessing, ugly even, but somehow made glorious by his very ordinariness. He stands, he swoops, he glides, he bobs his way through ranks of admiring studio guests. There are stand-up rows and tearful reconciliations. The face of Barson-Garland stands above them all. The final image: his summing-up, directly into camera, his eyes holding yours as he weaves together the threads of the week’s debate. End music. End titles. End applause.
A double-sided plasma wide-screen television was hung high in CotterDotCom’s atrium. The atrium café, as usual, was busy. At eight in the evening most offices are the lonely province of security guards, cleaners and a handful of career climbers. Simon Cotter found that often he had to remind his staff, gently, to go home and help themselves to a life. He was there himself in the atrium that night, laughing with the others at Barson-Garland’s introductory speech.
‘Dear me,’ he said, peering over the top of his sunglasses as the title sequence played. ‘It seems that the Net is in for a spanking, guys.
‘He talks,’ said Albert Fendeman, who was sitting at the same table, ‘as if everyone who has anything to do with the net comes from another planet. I mean, we’ve all got families too. Doesn’t he realise that?’
‘It’s hard to imagine that
‘Actually,’ said Albert sheepishly, ‘he’s an old friend of
‘Really?’ Simon was intrigued. ‘We should be polite about him then.’
‘Christ no, I never
‘And you’re so old now, of course,’ said the girl, who was one of the best programmers in the country, but barely twenty herself.
‘Sh!’ hissed someone from another table. ‘There’s Brad Messiter.’
Barson-Garland was standing in front of a guest known to everyone at Cotters. Brad Messiter had founded the fastest growing free Internet Service Provider in the country and Ashley was preparing to roast him whole.
‘You advertise during children’s television programmes and in children’s magazines. Your give-away CDs are available on sweetshop counters, packaged with cartoons and the faces of football stars. Yet your service offers no filters and no parental lock-outs …‘
‘Parents can buy fully functional gatekeeper packages which…’ the hapless Messiter began, but Ashley swept on regardless.
‘You’ll get your chance to speak later. For the moment let’s just set out what you do. You offer a full internet package, including unrestricted access to newsgroups of the most revolting kind. We’re all familiar with commercial web sites, many of which, it’s true, are guarded by some kind of credit card security. But newsgroups offer pictures and movies to anyone.
‘There are thousands of magazines and photographs currently in the postal system.
‘True or not true, Mr Messiter?’
‘Currently being processed by the Royal Mail, technically the property of the Queen, which you would find just as offensive and which…’
‘True or not true, Mr Messiter?’
‘True or not true!’ chorused the studio audience. ‘True or not true?’
‘Yes, it’s true, but as I say …
‘It’s true!’ Ashley whipped the microphone away and walked towards the camera. ‘Mr Messiter’s twisted logic would have us believe that Her Majesty the Queen is somehow a pornographer, which tells us all we need to know about Mr Messiter, I think. We’ll be returning to him later, but meanwhile, let’s follow our researcher, Jamie Ross. For six months now, in the guise of twelve-year-old Lucy, Jamie has been conducting a romantic relationship with a boy of thirteen called Tom. Innocent, charming, perfectly acceptable. Nothing more than a pen friendship. Tom has now suggested they meet. Our language experts have analysed the emails and messages that Tom has been sending Lucy and they have determined that they were composed by an educated adult. Jamie.’
The Cotter Atrium watched with barely suppressed giggles as an earnest reporter stood on the corner of Argyll Street and Marlborough Street talking in a hushed whisper. A small girl stood nervously beside him.
‘Any moment now, I will be going into Wisenheimer’s, a hamburger restaurant popular with young people, just fifty yards from London’s famous Oxford Circus, for an assignation with “Tom”. He will be expecting a small girl, so I have brought along my daughter, Zoл. In my rucksack I have a hidden camera and sound recorder. The police are standing by to make an arrest if it turns out, as we strongly suspect, that “Tom” is an adult, masquerading as a child. Here goes.
A grainy but acceptable picture came on screen as the reporter, Jamie Ross, entered the restaurant and sat at a table, pointing his wide angled briefcase at the door. His daughter Zoл came in a second or two later and sat at another table.
‘So far,’ breathed Jamie into his radio mike. ‘Nothing. Mostly young people here, tourists by the look of them, a few adults spread out at different tables. The ideal spot for this kind of rendezvous perhaps. Ah, what’s this?’
A small nervous looking boy of twelve or thirteen had entered the restaurant, taken one look at Zoл, another at the table where Jamie sat with his camera bag and then sat down at an empty table.
‘Well, perhaps, our experts were wrong,’ the disappointment in Jamie’s voice was palpable.
‘Experts? Wrong?’ The crowd gathered in the Cotter Atrium were enjoying themselves hugely. ‘Surely not?’
‘Perhaps I should ask him what he’s doing there…’ Jamie picked up his camera bag and moved towards the young boy. ‘Hello, there,’ he said, placing the bag on the table between them. ‘Your name isn’t Tom by any chance?’
The boy made no verbal reply but stood up and pointed. Instantly, from different tables, half a dozen men and women sprang forward and surrounded the astonished Jamie.
‘You are under arrest,’ said one, attaching handcuffs, ‘on suspicion of luring a minor…’
‘Wait a minute, I’m Jamie Ross from the BBC…’
‘You do not have to say anything in your defence, but I must warn you that silence may be interpreted…’
The screen went blank for a second before cutting back to the studio and a rather flustered Ashley Barson-Garland.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘It looks as though… that is to say…’ In the CDC Atrium, Albert and the female coder were rolling around honking with laughter like seals.
‘Sh!’ said Cotter. ‘Let’s not miss the rest of it.’
‘It seems that perhaps this was a case of two minds with but a single thought,’ Ashley continued, drawing on all his reserves of aplomb, ‘two hearts, ah, beating each to each.’
‘Robert Browning,’ said Simon. ‘When the mind goes, reflex literary quotation takes over.
‘But none the less, a lesson to be drawn there. The world of the chat room clearly arouses enough parental concern to cause a great deal of worry. We will bring you, of course, news of Jamie Ross’s release as soon as it comes.
‘Who’s looking after Zoл?’
‘Ah, well no doubt…’ Ashley looked up at the bank of studio audience to identify the heckler. ‘I’m sure she’s …
‘Someone has just left a twelve-year-old girl alone in a West End burger joint. I can see it on the monitor above. She’s just sitting there on her own.
‘I’m sure Jamie will inform the police right away…’
‘Call that responsible?’
‘Ah, Mr Messiter. It’s you.’
‘Too right it’s me. Hoist with your own petard there, weren’t you?’
‘Mr Messiter seems very interested in the fate of unprotected children, ladies and gentlemen.’ Ashley swiftly regained his composure. ‘Yet his company continues to open the porn portals of the internet to all, without accepting responsibility. He even manages to blame the parents. It’s their fault. If they only bought expensive and complex software to guard their children’s access, then all would be well.’
‘It isn’t expensive, it’s available free on…'
‘Well, let me now introduce you to an expert in the field of internet security. From CotterDotCom, Cosima Kretschmer!’
The Atrium fell silent and all eyes turned from the screen to Simon. He shrugged lightly. ‘You’re all free,’ he said. ‘If Cosima wants to speak and share her expertise on television, how could I possibly stand in her way?’
All heads turned back to the screen. It was rumoured that Cosima, whom Simon had brought back from the Geneva office, was more than just the head of the Secure Server Research Division. She and Simon had recently been photographed together coming out of the Ivy Restaurant. It seemed doubtful that she would consent to appear as a witness for Ashley Barson-Garland without Simon’s express wish. Albert frowned as he watched her take the microphone. He could not believe that his mentor, his hero, his god, would lend support to anything that threatened the sanctity and autonomy of the net.
Simon was watching the screen with a look of bland benevolence.
‘Fräulein Kretschmer, I’m sure only those who’ve holidayed on Mars for the last two years have failed to hear of CotterDotCom. You specialise in internet security, is that right?’
‘That is quite correct.’
‘I believe service providers can choose to make available all or only some newsgroups on their news servers, is that also correct?’
‘Certainly.’
‘So Mr Messiter’s company, the largest free provider in the United Kingdom, isn’t
‘For sure.
‘Now, as you may know, I proposed a bill which would have allowed the monitoring of such obscene transactions and I was told by the so-called “internet community” that such a course was “impractical”. Were they right?’
