Pirate Cinema (45 page)

Mum and Dad took us out for curry that night, a posh place with a huge menu that went on for pages and pages and a long wine list. Dad had an expression on his face like he was some kind of millionaire out on the town, and Mum kept reaching over to pat us on the shoulder or the leg, or touch our cheeks. Cora and I were the stars of the night, and we felt it. Big grins all round, and I slept like a baby that night, getting up early for a bowl of cereal with Cora before I dashed out to catch my coach to London -- back to 26, back to the the Zeroday, and back to my new life.

It was a beautiful day in the Kensal Green cemetery, the grass so green it looked artificial, watered into a lush growth by a wet and miserable spring. There were fresh flowers on the newer graves, and families strolled through the grounds with broad-brimmed anti-mosquito hats, the sound of zapped mosquitoes a punctuation to the cars in Hornton Street.

I squeezed 26's hand, and said, "I don't understand, why is Letitia meeting us here?"

26 squeezed back. "Like I said, I have no idea. But she insisted and it sounded important. I'm not bothered, anyway -- much nicer to be out here than in her office, right?"

"Yeah," I said. "But I've got a bad feeling about this. Why wouldn't she want to meet us in her office?"

We found out soon enough. Letitia was right where she said she'd be, on a bench near a slip road behind the crematorium. She was wearing a broad-brimmed sun-hat and sunglasses and a sun-dress, but for all that, she didn't look very sunny. As we drew near to her, I could see the slump of her shoulders, and it was pure defeat.

She patted the bench beside her and we sat down. She didn't bother with any niceties, just started in with, "First of all, let me say that I think the two of you have been
magnificent
. When I first discussed this with you, I never
dreamed
that you and your friends would be able to drum up so much support for my bill. You have every right to be proud of yourselves."

"But?" I said. I could hear the
but
waiting to come out.

"But," she said. "But. But politics are an ugly business. I have had a series of increasingly desperate meetings and calls with various power brokers in my party, and, well, let me say that I was lucky not to have to withdraw the bill altogether. But they made it very, very clear that all the whips had been firmly told by the party bigwigs that my bill must not pass, under any circumstances. I think it's likely that I will be expelled from my party if I vote in favor of TIP-Ex. Despite that, I plan to do so, because -- well, because, all jokes notwithstanding, a career in politics shouldn't mean a life without integrity."

We sat there in numb shock.

26 said, "I don't understand."

I said, "She's saying that we've lost. It doesn't matter what we do. It doesn't matter how many voters shout at their MPs. It's fixed, it's rigged. It's done. Parliament is going to vote against her bill. End of story."

"But I thought with the election coming up --"

Letitia looked grim. "The election only matters if some MPs vote for the bill. If all the parties vote against it, there'll be no one to vote against, because there'll be no one to vote
for
."

"Someone got to them," I said. "The big film studios, or maybe the record labels, or maybe the video-game companies."

"Lobbyists from all three, I rather suspect," Letitia said. "They can be very persuasive. My guess is that there've been a number of very good, lavish parties lately, the kind of thing that's just packed with film stars and pop stars and that, and MPs and their families were invited -- maybe weekends in the country where your wife gets to go to the spa with a famous film star while your kids frolic in the pool with their favorite musicians and you go for cigars and golf with legendary film directors. The content people can be very persuasive at times. It's their stock in trade, really."

"We didn't stand a chance," I said. "Might as well have stayed at home. What a shitting waste."

Letitia slumped further. "I'm sorry," she said. "I thought you could win it. I really did. I thought that my party, at least, would welcome the chance to distance itself from unpopular legislation just before the election. But the simple fact is, I was outgunned and outmaneuvered. These people are very, very good at playing the politics game. Better, I'm afraid, than I can ever hope to be. I am so, so sorry for this. I know it must break your heart." She drew in a shuddering sigh. "It's certainly broken mine."

None of us said anything. Then 26 stood up, and said, "Well, there you go. Bugger it all. Government's for sale to the highest bidder. Always has been, always will be. No wonder someone always ends up throwing bombs. No matter who you vote for, the arsing government always gets in, doesn't it?"

Letitia looked like she wanted to die. I knew how she felt. I was torn between wanting to sit and comfort her and wanting to chase after 26, who was walking away as quickly as she could without breaking into a run. I went after 26. Of course I did. Letitia was a grown-up, she could take care of herself. 26 and I were a unit.

"Hey," I said as I caught up with her. She kept walking quickly, head down, arms swinging.

"Hey, I said again. "Hey, 26. Come on, it's going to be okay. You explained this to me, remember? We'll build momentum up. People will see how unfair this is and more of them will come out next time. It's awful, sure, but it'll get better eventually. They can't put us all in jail, right?"

She stopped and whirled to face me. I took a step back. Her lips were pulled back from her teeth, and she'd cried mascara down her cheeks in long black streaks. She had her hands clenched into fists and her arms were held straight down at her sides. For a second, I was sure she was going to hit me. "Forget it, Cecil. Just forget it. My stupid father was right. This is a ridiculous waste of time. We'll never, ever change anything. Rich, powerful people just run
everything
and the whole world is tilted to their favor. We were stupid to even think for a second that we had a chance of changing things. All those people who believed us and worked with us? Idiots. Just as crapping stupid as we are. I'm going to go to school, keep my stupid head down, get a stupid degree, get a stupid job, grow old, die, and rot. Might as well face it. None of us are special, none of us are geniuses. We're just little people and we're lucky that the giants let us go on living and breathing."

It was worse than being slapped. "Twenty --" I said.

But she was already stalking off. I turned back to where Letitia had been sitting, but she was gone now, too. I found my hands were shaking. I wanted to run after 26 and tell her she was wrong.

The problem was, I really felt like she might be right.

Trent has a lot of obsessions. In this regard, he is much like his creator -- me. One obsession we share is coffee. Really, really good coffee. I cold brew it, Aeropress it, order it at the local cart. Many's the city I've roamed, looking for really top-notch beans, or a beautiful cup to take me through a jetlagged day.

Coffee doesn't come cheap, if you follow my meaning.

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I thought about calling Annika or one of the organizers or politicos I'd met along the way, but in my head, the conversation got as far as "We've lost, there's no point, we might as well chuck it in," and then trailed off.

So I went home, sulking the whole way, the now-familiar long journey across London to the Zeroday. It was Friday, and the TIP-Ex vote was due on Monday. On Tuesday, I was scheduled to go on trial for £78 million worth of copyright infringement.

For all that, London seemed unaware that it had only days to go before all hope would be lost. The streets were full of people who clearly didn't give a toss about copyright, about TIP, or about anything apart from getting rat-arsed and howling through the night, vomming up their fried chicken into the gutter or having sloppy knee-tremblers with interesting strangers in the doorways of shuttered shops.

26
was
right. These people would wake up on Tuesday morning and see some hard-to-understand headline about the defeat of some bill they'd never heard of and they'd ignore it and go back to talking about who had the West Nile virus, who had been rubbish and who had been brilliant on
Celebrity Gymnastics
, and which clubs they'd get blotto at
next
weekend. And if some of their mates went to jail, if their parents lost their livelihoods, if their kids couldn't make art or get an education, well, what could you really do about it? Just a fact of life, innit, like earthquakes or tsunamis.

Rabid Dog and Chester had scored some truly amazing food down at Borough Market and Jem had decided it was time for a feast. He'd been in the kitchen all day with Dodger, who had invited Rob over. Chester had brought along Hester, 26's old mate from Confusing Peach, and Aziz had come by with three kids about our age who'd been staying at his and helping him with a massive haul he'd brought in, turning it into saleable merchandise and moving it out through a small network of car-boot sale retailers he'd put together. They were your basic gutterpunks, but clever and moderately sober.

I'd invited 26 and she'd agreed to come and naturally we'd both forgot about this, so I came home just as Dodger was serving up a massive humble pie, stuffed with livers and heart and tripes in a simmering, rich brown gravy that was as thick as custard. The crust was yellow-gold and crackled like parchment when he sliced into it, releasing first a waft of butter smell, and then the meaty smells from within.

"Sit down, Cecil," he said. "And shut your gob, you're letting the flies in and the dribble out."

Something about coming through my familiar door and into a candle-lit room dominated by a huge table (okay, it was a bunch of little wobbly pub tables pushed together) ringed by friends and friends-of-friends, drinking wine, laughing, and this big, beautiful, ridiculous pie in the middle of it all -- it made me think that maybe, just maybe, my problems might be solved. Why not? We were the Jammie Dodgers, and we could do anything!

I took off my jacket, went into the kitchen and maneuvered around Jem -- resplendent in an apron, working madly at five bubbling pots on the massive cooker -- and washed my hands in the sink. Back at the table, someone had poured me a glass of wine, and Dodger had dished me up an enormous slice of pie. Jem burst out of the kitchen carrying platters of roast parsnips, duck-fat potatoes, tureens of white sauce, and a massive loaf of thick-crusted brown bread studded with olives and capers. It steamed when he tore off hunks and chucked them at us, and the air was filled with baked-bread perfume. There were saucers of coarse salt and saucers of dark green olive oil, and we dipped the bread in the oil and then the salt and chewed it like gum, hot and fatty and salty and so fresh it almost burned your mouth.

Then we attacked the pie and the veg and there was wine-guzzling and arms reaching across the table to top up everyone's glasses whenever they ventured even a little below the full line. We didn't talk about copyright or film remixing or finding £78 million with which to pay off the nutters at the film studios. Instead, we gossiped about friends; Dodger told near-death electrocution stories; Hester regaled us with stories of drug-fueled excess from a party we'd all missed; Rabid Dog had a new joke he'd made up about three children who go wandering in a woods filled with serial killers (it went on and on, getting funnier and funnier, until it came to the punchline: "I thought
you
were going to chop the firewood!" and we fell about laughing); Aziz and his minions explained a gnarly driver problem they were having with a load of de-authorized sound-cards and solved it for themselves as they described it and cheered and slapped one another on the back; Chester had just read a mountain of downloaded ancient comics called
Transmetropolitan
that he couldn't shut up about... In other words, it was a brilliant table full of amazing, uproarious conversation, piled high with delicious food.

It was just the tonic I needed, and two hours later, as we mopped up the last of the custard-drowned sweet suet pudding with our fingers and piled the plates up and shuttled them into the kitchen, I once again felt like, just maybe, the world wasn't an irredeemable shit-heap.

I volunteered to be Jem's coffee-slave as he hand-brewed us cups of gritty Turkish coffee, and once we were all fed, we loosed our belts and took off our shoes and lay on cushions on the floor or on the sofa and Hester got out her mandolin and played a few old Irish folk songs that Chester knew the words to, and one of Aziz's helpers had a tin whistle and she played along with Hester and they got us to sing along on a gaggingly hilarious version of "The Rattlin' Bog," which went on and on, until we stumbled through the final chorous: "And the grin was on the flea and the flea was on the wing and the wing was on the bird and the bird was on the egg and the egg was on the nest and the nest was on the leaf and the leaf was on the twig and the twig was on the branch and the branch was on the limb and the limb was on the tree and the tree was in the hole and the hole was in the dirt and the dirt was in the ground and the ground was in the bog -- the bog down in the valley-o!"

And then it got quiet.

"So, Cecil," said Jem, "are you going to tell us what's got you looking so miserable, or are we going to have to beat it out of you?"

I shook my head. "Nothing's wrong, mate, it's all fine."

"You're not fooling anyone. You came in here looking like your whole family had just been killed in a traffic accident. So spill. What is it? 26 angry at you?"

I shook my head. "So much for my career as a cool, collected man of mystery."

Aziz patted my shoulder. "Cecil, you have many virtues, but you're as easy to read as a book. Never take up a career as a poker player, that's my advice."

I told them. It's not like Letitia had asked me to keep it a secret, but still, I didn't exactly mention how I knew that the fix was in. Chester and Rabid Dog knew that I had a personal connection with Letitia, so they'd probably guess at the connection, but I had some feeling that putting up Letitia's name would just be getting her in trouble.

Hester shook her head. "What a right pissing mess," she said. "No wonder you're so miserable."

"The worst part is that it makes me want to give up. I mean, I knew it was going to be hard when we started, but for so long as I thought it was
possible
that we could win, I wanted to keep at it. Now I can't even release my new video or I could end up in actual
jail
for violating the judge's order."

Jem fingered his scar. "Not worth it, chum. You want to stay out of His Majesty's clutches, trust me."

"Well, let's see it, then," said Dodger. He'd been spinning up a Dodger-style spliff, big as a cigar, stuffed with skunk so pungent I could smell it through my ears. "World premiere an' that."

"Go on, then," Aziz said. The rest nodded.

Funny, I felt embarrassed. I'd shown my films to audiences of hundreds, uploaded them for millions to see. But my new video, made with the Scot footage that no one else had ever worked with, felt like a piece of me. I overcame my shyness and got out a laptop and found a beamer among the box of electronic junk. We had cleared a wall and whitewashed it, and we used it whenever we had film nights. The beamer focused itself and I started the video.

Three minutes and eighteen seconds later, I switched off the beamer. No one said a word. I felt a sick, falling feeling, and I felt like I might toss up the incredible meal, bread and tripes and suet and custard and all. Then Jem said, "'Ken hell, mate."

"Fwoar," agreed Chester. Then it was nods all round. Finally, Rob began to applaud:
Clap. Clap. Clap.
In a second, everyone had joined in, and they whistled and cheered and stamped their feet. Aziz thudded me between the shoulder-blades and Hester gave me a hug and yeah, that was about as good as it got. Some people are great artists -- I think all my mates were, of one kind or another -- but it takes a special kind of person to be a great
audience
.

And they were.

You've seen the video, I suppose. What happened next guaranteed that practically
everybody
had seen it; what's more, there's whole libraries' worth of remixes of it, and if you ask me, plenty of them are better than anything I could have come up with. Still, I made that first mix, and I'm going to be proud of it for my whole life. Even if I never do anything else anyone gives a wet slap for, I made
Pirate
.

And since I'm writing all these adventures down and trying to tell them as best and truthful as I can, I figure I should set down a few words about
Pirate
, too.

It opens with Scot at his prime, thirty-some years old. He's not a teen heartthrob anymore, nor a twentysomething actor being cast for increasingly improbable teen roles. Now he's done four summers of Shakespeare at the Globe and had his directorial debut with
Wicked. Cool.
, a brutal film about a British foreign service bureaucrat who cynically funnels money and weapons to the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, despite their horrible atrocities and use of child soldiers, because they promise access to a rich deposit of coltan mud for a firm listed on the London Stock Exchange in return. He's put on some wrinkles and a few pounds, but he's better-loved than ever. Girls -- grown, married women -- fling themselves at him. The tabloids are obsessed with who he's shagging. He is a stunner, and he knows it.

Oh, he clearly knows it, The opening shot is him, sitting behind his desk, a humble little table, much-loved and clearly a working tool, not a status symbol. He's grinning at his screen with supreme confidence. Cut to his screen, where I matted in a little VLC window showing another clip of Scot, much younger, teenaged, horsing around with half a dozen nameless starlets on the set of some film. I'd done a little jiggery-pokery so that you could see his face reflected in the monitor, an expression that wasn't quite a smirk and wasn't quite a smile on his face. It was one of those unguarded, unself-conscious expressions that Scot was so famous for, the face of someone who you would swear had
no idea
that a camera was pointed at him. Another trick shot, zooming back so that now we're looking over his shoulder.

As the video on his screen runs out, he leans forward and takes the mouse, and I'd matted in the distinctive anonabrowser that The Pirate Bay had introduced, with its pew-pew laser effects as it zapped every tracking bug and cookie; the groovy animations of it hopping through all its proxies before plundering the world's treasurehouse of films, music, and games. Reflected in the screen, his expression changed to one of fierce concentration. In the search-box, the words "Scot Colford." The mouse glided to the SEARCH button. More clicking.

Scot's door interior -- the door of the house in Soho he'd lived in for thirty years, a fixture there, now celebrated with a blue disc. Scot crosses to the door, looking fearful (footage from a spooky Halloween short he'd made), opens it. Someone outside. We don't see who. We just see Scot's reaction shot, the fear turning into horror, the horror to terror, the terror to abject, weeping pleading. He'd played it for laughs, but with the right music and a v-e-r-y subtle slowdown of the framerate, it looked like he was shattering inside. I knew how that felt. I'd been there. I new exactly how I wanted Scot to look, and that's how he looked. Just like I'd felt.

Now we see a young Scot, not even a proper teenager, and he's alone, staring abjectly at the blank eyes of a brick school, a massive place that might as well be a fortress or a prison.

An old Scot next, carrying a box of office things out of a glass tower somewhere in the financial district, suit rumpled, shirt untucked.

Another Scot, lying in a hospital bed, emaciated, tube up his nose. In the seat next to him, the young Scot again. Fingers on a keyboard. A screen. NETWORK ACCESS SUSPENDED.

Now the original Scot, and a zoom out to reveal him sitting on the floor of a grim cell, tiny. He is sunken and sallow, and he slowly, slowly raises his hand to cover his face.