介绍:
Written by Gary Russell
Read by Paramecium
BGM: Love Zombies - Chris Garneau
又挂一个小哥，默默点蜡
Upstairs, in the penthouse suite, Johnnie Bates was linking all the computers into the main admin server of the Oracle Hotel, shining beacon of the architectural brilliance that was the Western Business District Development, commonly known as the Golden Mile, just on the left- hand side of the M4 motorway out of London.
But to the man who owned the hotel, Johnnie was just a little man in grey overalls doing something with wires.
Dara Morgan had, according to the biographies he carefully maintained on his company websites, made his first million in Derry when he was just 26, by creating a popular music torrent site that enabled cheap downloads at six times traditional speeds and with four times traditional MP3 quality.
The music industry loved him. The punters loved him. The government loved him. His mum loved him (well, he assumed she did; they didn’t talk so much these days, what with her being kept in a silver urn on the mantelpiece next to his dad).
And the business world loved him. Four years later, and MorganTech was the funding behind the new WBDD, bringing work and development to Hounslow, Osterley and all those other areas of London between Brentford and Heathrow Airport that he’d never heard of prior to buying up the land.
With a personal portfolio of around £65m, he was one step away from being a megastar, already wining and dining with the Trumps, Gateses, de Rothschilds, Gettys and half a dozen more movers and shakers with unpronounceable names from around the world. Actually, the names weren’t unpronounceable, but Dara Morgan couldn’t be bothered to remember them. They just didn’t matter to him enough.
What mattered to him right now was getting the suites of his new hotel ready for the demonstration of his new handheld computer. And the little man in the grimy grey overalls was not going quite fast enough.
‘Cait?’ He clicked his fingers and a power-dressed redhead with thin metal specs and insanely high heels sauntered over.
‘Mr Morgan, sir?’
Dara Morgan pointed towards the grey overalls man. ‘How much longer?’ he asked, his soft Northern Irish accent unusually snappy.
Caitlin nodded her understanding and strode over to ask the man for information.
Dara Morgan smiled inwardly, watching Caitlin move. He appreciated her on so many levels, but her beauty was pretty high on the list.
Everyone in his organisation was from Derry or surrounding districts of Northern Ireland. More importantly, they were all people he’d grown up with. All hearing stories from parents and older siblings about the strife, the killings, the honour. The marches, the troops, the recriminations and punishment beatings.
It was history to Dara Morgan, something from another age, almost. His generation had no time to care about the Struggles, any more than they cared about supposed potato famines or Oliver Cromwell. That was ancient history. Dara Morgan and MorganTech were the future. In so many ways.
He ran a hand through his shoulder-length hair and then took out his mobile, pausing to smell the scent of shampoo on his fingers.
It was so important to be clean. To look nice and smell better.
At school, they’d diagnosed it as a form of OCD, as if an obsessive compulsion to wash his hands any time he came into contact with another person was something bad! People carried germs and, while he didn’t think for one moment he was going to be struck down with malaria just by shaking hands with a stranger, it wasn’t unreasonable to groom oneself every so often.
School never understood him, he recalled vaguely. It was too small, probably too focused on curriculums and timetables and sports.
He couldn’t wait to leave, and had done so the moment he’d finished his exams. No sixth form, college or university for him. Straight into business, straight into IT, the future of the world, straight into creating an MP3 system for the troglodytes who thought Big Brother and The X-Factor were the be all and end all of television culture. He’d needed them, of course, because they’d helped him reach his potential – they’d been the first rungs on the ladder to success. To ruling the world, through business. He had no desire to actually rule the world, it was full of too many thick people fighting over oil and territory and God to be a sensible plan to run it. But he could dominate in technology, see off the current so-called giants and buy access into the homes and workplaces of everyone on the planet.
That was enough.
And at tomorrow’s press demonstration, that plan would be taking its first step.
Caitlin returned and said the man was waiting on a call from another man in some service area on the mezzanine floor and he’d be done.
Dara Morgan glanced over – the overalled man was trying to call.
‘Tell your friend,’ Dara Morgan said to Caitlin, ‘that he won’t get through to his colleague. The service areas are blocked to cellular signals. Tell him to use a terminal. If the fibre optics are connected, it’ll link straight to his associate’s mobile.’
Caitlin nodded and passed the message on.
Dara Morgan watched as the overalled man inserted the fibre-optic connection into the back of his laptop and dialled via that.
There was a flash of purple and, where the workman had been kneeling, there was now just a pile of ashes. A burnt, acrid smell wafted over, and Dara Morgan wrinkled his nose in distaste. Burned flesh, melted fabric and sweat. Vile.
‘Well,’ said Caitlin, ‘that bodes well, sir.’
Dara Morgan clapped his hands loudly, and everyone else in the room, all of whom had ignored the death of Johnnie Bates, turned to face him.
‘People, it would appear the hotel is wired. Or “fibred”, I should say.’
There was a polite ripple of laughter.
‘Tomorrow, we take over the world.’
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