Cosmic (4 page)

“Oh. Thanks. But it doesn’t really work like that.”

“How does it work then?”

So I tried to explain Warcraft to Dad, but honestly—where
do you begin? He didn’t even know what an avatar was.

I said, “Like when we play Monopoly and you are always the top hat? Well, it’s like that, only more complicated. That’s me on the screen, look, that elf.”

He squinted at the screen. There were hundreds of avatars across the vast desert of the Blasted Lands. I showed him which one was mine and I introduced him to all my other guild members. We’re mostly very heavily armed Night Elves. I think he was impressed.

“You see,” I said, “in Monopoly, you get as much money as you can, right? And that’s it. In here you have to get money. And health. And experience. And skills. And then…you use them. For a quest.”

“What kind of quest?”

“Well, there’s all kinds. Some of them are dangerous and complicated and some are simple. And you meet hazards and monsters. Sometimes serious monsters—so you run away or get help. And sometimes trivial monsters—so you fight them. And if you complete the quest, you gain experience and new skills and maybe some strength and wealth. So then you can level up…”

“What?”

“See, I’m a Level Forty elf, but what I want to be is a Level Seventy elf. Then I can Engage with really serious monsters. When you Engage, that’s called an Instance. We’re having a
bit of an instance right now with this dragon.”

The dragon had ambushed us, but the Wanderlust Warriors stood their ground and fought like a well-oiled machine. Soon the dragon was dead. So were two of my Warriors, but that was okay because I’ve got healing powers. I brought them back to life and we looted the dragon’s hoard.

That’s what was happening in my head. Of course, to Dad it just looked like I was sitting there clicking the mouse so fast it sounded like castanets.

“Cosmic!” I yelled. “Look what we found: Elixir of the Mages. If you use that just before an instance, it doubles your brain power.”

“This,” said Dad, “is not a game. This is a career.”

“But it’s good on here because people just accept you for what you are.”

“Namely an elf with magical healing powers. Is that what you really are, Liam?”

“No, but in-game, if I have experience and strength and stuff, I can go out on quests and do things. In-life, you can look like a grown-up and shave like a grown-up and be Gifted and Talented and everything, and you’ve still got to sit in a class full of kids who call you ‘freak’ and ‘Wolverine’ and stuff.”

Dad nodded his head like it all made sense to him. Then
he got my profile up so he could have a proper look at my avatar.

“It says here he’s shorter than average.”

“If you’re short you get extra agility. Plus you can sneak up on people.”

Dad said, “A shorter-than-average magical being with lots of friends. Well…that’s a very nice avatar. Good night.”

I did offer to tell him something about the history of Azeroth and who the Horde were and about the Alliance, but he said, “That’s enough for one night, thanks all the same. You get back to your quest. Don’t stay up too late—you’ve got school.”

It was only when he’d gone that I noticed he’d left his phone on my desk. And only when I picked it up that I remembered that my phone was a clone of his. So the number he’d deleted from my in-box should still be there in his. It was. I copied it back into my phone.

I made the call on the bus to school next day. I remember looking out of the window at all the people: queuing outside the post office, standing at the pedestrian crossing, going in and out of 24-hour Tesco. None of them looked to me like they’d been specially selected. I was going to win. I dialed.

The woman with the friendly voice answered right away. “Drax Communications. D’you want the opportunity to be the Greatest Dad Ever?”

“Yeah, I do. I really do. I was thinking about it all night….” I talked for about a minute before I realized she was a recording.

“…if you accept the terms and conditions of this competition, please press the star key now.”

I did.

“We’ll take your call as soon as we can. In the meantime,
please hold. Remember: all you have to do is get put through.”

They started playing classical music. They were still playing when the bus pulled up at the school gates half an hour later. Every now and then the music would stop and the friendly-voiced woman would say, “Your call means a lot to us. Please hold.” There must be a lot of people in the queue. Maybe Dad was right. Maybe I wasn’t that special.

I was walking in through the school gates when I got a text alert: “Yes! We have our 1st winner!”

Yes!? What’s “Yes!” about that exactly?

Our first winner is Klaus from Hamburg in Germany, and his daughter Anna. Anna’s two great passions are thrill rides and helping others, says her father. “She once spent twelve hours on the Space Mountain roller coaster at EuroDisney in order to raise money for a local hospital. She hopes to get people to sponsor her to ride the Rocket and so raise money for children who were injured in wars around the world. When her school friends heard about this, they wanted to help her. We knew there might be a problem getting through to the number so they all came to school early and all called the number simultaneously. A boy got through and gave the phone to Anna immediately. She is a worthy winner.”

In other words, she cheated.

I was still on hold during registration. Registration’s a noisy business so no one noticed the music. But first lesson was math with Ms. Jewell, and math with Ms. Jewell is always full of long silences, for instance:

So this morning I tried to answer all her questions, just to keep up the noise level and stop her noticing the phone. When she asked something about calculating the volume of a cylinder. I shouted, “Miss, miss…”

“Liam, there is no need to shout, ‘Miss, miss,’ if no one else is offering to answer the question. There is no need to try to attract my attention if you have no competition.”

“Yes, miss. Anyway, miss, it’s pi times the—”

“Thank you, Liam. I already know the answer. I already know
you
know the answer. I’m hoping to find out if anyone else knows the answer.”

“Wayne probably knows, miss. He’s good at math, miss, but he doesn’t always have the confidence to put his—”

“Liam, I’m only too happy to hear your thoughts on geometry. I don’t want your thoughts on your fellow pupils.”

“Just going back to the volume of the cylinder then, miss, isn’t it—”

“Don’t go back to it, Liam. Let someone else have a go.”

“Yes, miss.”

“So…volume of a cylinder. Anyone? Anyone at all?”

Long pause. But not silence. A tinny little orchestra fiddling away.

She frowned. She prowled up and down. You could see that she thought it might be in the next room. Or in her head. Finally she said, “Can anyone else hear music? Or are the angels finally coming to carry me away?”

I laughed at this—probably too loud and definitely too long. No one else joined in but everyone did stare at me—including Ms. Jewell, who stared at me and then at my pocket. “It’s Holst, isn’t it?” she said.

I said, “No, miss, it’s me,” thinking, Who’s Holst?

“This music was written by Gustav Holst. It’s called
The Planets
. It’s not the usual rubbish. Why’re you playing it?”

“Well, miss, I saw a thing on TV about how if you play classical music in the background your brain really likes it and it makes extra pathways through your synapses. You can get brainier just by listening to classical music. It definitely works, miss—look how many questions I’ve answered this morning….”

She was sort of humming along to the music now. I took
the phone out so she could hear better and asked, “Why’s it called
The Planets
, miss?” I know this was cynical. But she’s a teacher. She loves questions.

Ms. Jewell talked nonstop for the whole lesson about music, about Greek mythology and about the solar system. At one point she tried to explain just how far away Neptune was, and everyone gasped. And then she said, “And it’s a near neighbor compared to the stars…,” and she did a massive calculation on the board to show how far away the nearest star was in both kilometers and light-years. It was the best lesson she ever gave us.

But I was still on hold at the end of it.

I did get another text alert though:

Our second winner is Samson Two Toure from Waterloo in Sierra Leone. Samson Two is the cleverest boy in the country. Recently his class was given a geography project about irrigation. Some of the other boys got A grades. Samson Two’s project was so good that the government bought it. His father says, “It is important to push your children hard to fulfill their ambitions. Samson Two and I have fun setting achievement targets. For instance, on his tenth birthday he set himself the target of becoming president of our country. I set him the target of winning this competition to ride the Rocket and he did it by writing a computer program that bypassed the ‘on hold’ part of the phone
call and put him straight through to the operator. Although he is not interested in fairground rides, he is looking forward to this opportunity to study one of the Wonders of the World.”

I’m sorry, but if you already live in the Waterloo in Sierra Leone, instead of the Waterloo near Bootle, then you really don’t need to go and see the Wonders of the World. Because you already are one of the Wonders of the World—you’ve got jungles and rivers instead of gaso-meters and bypasses. It’s like the Grand Canyon wanting to come and look at the crack in my bedroom ceiling.

Still two lucky winners left to go. During the kerfuffle between lessons the next one was announced:

Our third winner is Max Martinet of Lille in France. Max’s father believes in discipline. “So many children today are allowed to run wild,” he says. “Not Max. I insist that he does exactly what he is told to do. If children are bad, you must punish them. If they are good, you must reward them. Max does as he is told. I told him to win this competition and he did.”

See? All these other kids are getting help from their parents. What’s my dad doing? Valeting the taxi.

The next lesson was media studies with Mr. Middleton, who blatantly hates me. We watched a DVD about the history of washing-powder adverts. No one noticed my phone playing in the background. I wondered how my credit was holding up. I’d now been on hold for three hours. Did it make me want to give up? No. What made me want to give up was the next text message. There were only going to be four winners in the competition, and this was the fourth:

We have a new winner: Hasan Xanadu from Bosnia. Hasan’s father, Edhem, says, “Childhood is a happy time, and how can we be happy if we don’t have the things we want? So I give Hasan everything he wants. After all, it’s only money. And I can always get more money. For instance, he really loves thrill rides and he wanted to be the first ever to ride the Rocket. So I found the number of the girl who won it for charity. I phoned her and I offered to give the charity twice as much money as she could raise with sponsors. Simple! Everyone has their price!”

If the competition was over, then the music should stop and the lines should be closed. But the music was still playing. Then I realized that if he’d bought the German girl’s place, then he wasn’t the fourth winner.

He was a replacement first winner.

There was still one chance left.

And now the music had stopped and there was a ringing sound. I was being put through! I pulled the phone out of my pocket and got ready to speak.

A hand snatched the phone out of my hand. It was Mr. Middleton.

I pleaded with him not to hang up. “I’m in a queue, sir. I have been since eight o’clock this morning.”

“No mobiles in class—an invariable rule and basic good manners. You should know that.”

“Please don’t hang up.”

I could hear a friendly woman’s voice talking on the phone. I was through!

He snapped the phone shut and smiled. “Tell me,” he said, “what was important about the new ideas that Omo used to promote their washing powder in the 1960s?”

“What was important about them?”

“I’ll give you a clue. Suds. Longer-lasting suds. Now then. Anything? No. You weren’t listening to me, were you? What were you listening to? Little voices in your head? Or on your mobile? Maybe you’d like to tell the rest of us what they were saying.”

It was a Level Seventy Monster Question, the kind you’re supposed to walk away from. But I Engaged instead. I said, “Recent studies have shown that the chances of an asteroid hitting Earth any time in the next hundred years are five
thousand to one. Blatantly the odds get stronger with every day that passes. A big enough asteroid could cause total global extinction. And therefore, it doesn’t matter how long your suds last. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve been specially selected or not.”

Sometimes you don’t need to take the Elixir of the Mages first. Sometimes if you simply step up to the monster, the elixir just comes.

He sent me out of the class.

That was the night I finally took down my “It’s Your Solar System” glow-in-the-dark mobile. It wasn’t even astronomically accurate. It still had Pluto on it. Everyone knows that Pluto’s not a planet anymore. It’s something a bit too big for an asteroid, but too small for a planet. It’s nothing.

Like someone who’s too big to be a kid and too young to be an adult.

Then the phone rang.

A friendly voice said, “Hi. Drax Communications. Still want to be the World’s Best Dad?” This time I waited for the options to come up. But they didn’t. There was a pause and the friendly voice said, “Hello? Mr. Digby?”

“Oh. What? Yeah. Yeah, that’s me. Who’s that?”

“Dr. Dinah Drax here. I’ve been waiting for your call.”

“
You
’ve been waiting for
my
call?!”

“Yes.”

“But I tried to call this morning and I was on hold for about a year. I thought there must’ve been a million people in the queue.”

“But I told you that you were specially selected. Didn’t you believe me?”

“Yeah. But…the on-hold thing went on so long.”

“I really wanted to share that piece of music with you.”

“Well…thanks. I enjoyed it.”

“And to find out how patient you were. Patience will be an essential quality on this trip.”

“Oh, I can be patient. Really. I can sit for hours.”

“Good. Well, Mr. Digby, you’re through.”

“That is completely cosmic.”

“A car will collect you from your registered address at oh-eight hundred on Tuesday morning—”

“Dr. Drax…the Rocket…What kind of ride is it? Is it a reverse bungee? Or a roller coaster? Or—”

“Wait and see. That’s one of the ways in which you can exercise your patience. Now tell me a little bit about the child you’ll be bringing….”

I’d completely forgotten that dads have children.

“…I do hope it’s a girl. We’re very short on girls.”

“Oh. She’s a girl then. Definitely. Anything you say.”

“And what’s her name?”

“Who?”

“Your daughter, Mr. Digby.”

“My daughter?” Time to Engage. I said the name of the only daughter I’d ever had. I said, “It’s Florida. Her name is Florida.”

If Liverpool city center was Level Two, a secret location in China must be Level Fifty at least. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake as last time. This time I was going to skill up before leveling up. In World of Warcraft you can have weapon skills, gathering skills or trade skills. You can have mining skills too, but they’re a bit rubbish and you have to buy a pickax.

If I was going on a quest disguised as Florida’s dad, I would need dad skills.

I went through all the books on my dad’s bedside table. They were mostly color charts of quick-drying low-odor bathroom paints with mad names like Antarctic Glow, but there was one called
Talk to Your Teen
, which was all about how to trick your teenage son or daughter into talking to you.

Un.

Be.

Liev.

Able.

It was like finding the cheat sheet for Orbiter IV. Except it wasn’t Orbiter IV; it was My Life. Look at this:

In other words, meals are traps. Except what sane person would bait a trap with pasta?

It also said:

So he was never interested in the history of Azeroth or the Wanderlust Warriors’ weapons at all! He was just keeping me talking.

I should’ve realized this before, because when I carefully monitored my dad’s conversations for several days, I
discovered that they can all be broken down into five headings, namely:

1. How we got there.
   
2. What the parking was like.
   
3. What it was like in the old days.
   
4. Something thoughtful which it made you think.
   
5. Something to do with last night’s soccer.
   

For instance, on the Saturday morning we went to the New Strand to look for new handles to put on the new kitchen cupboards. We didn’t find any (though we did get an amusing cactus holder, shaped like a donkey). This is what Dad said:

1. The main road was so choked, we’d’ve been better off walking.
   
2. Two pounds to park for two hours! And it takes you half an hour to find a space.
   
3. In the old days, if the shop didn’t have the right door handles for your cupboards you came home empty-handed. Nowadays, with shopping malls and what have you, if they haven’t got door handles, you buy a cactus holder. It makes you think…
   
4. …are we really any happier now than we were then? Are we happier because we’ve got a cactus holder? It’s not like we’ve got a cactus.
   
5. It’s no good scoring lots of goals if you also concede lots of goals. We need a terrifying central defender.
   

These five headings apply to anything. For instance, if my dad ever did go to Azeroth, he’d probably say:

1. We took the Deeprun Tram to Stormwind (Dwarven District).
   
2. The tram is free. It’s very reliable and you don’t have to worry about parking. On the other hand, it was raided by the undead Scourge and a lot of us were killed. Luckily my guild companions have healing powers.
   
3. There was no such place as Azeroth when we were little. If we wanted to play a fantasy game we had to use sticks for swords and run round on pretend horses. The sticks really hurt.
   
4. We looked stupid, but we did get lots of fresh air.
   
5. Money has spoiled soccer. Players now spend more time advertising hair products than they do training.
   

I felt I’d mastered Level One of Being a Dad. Now I had to get myself a daughter.