Ogg Page 20

Leaving Antonia safely sitting at the bottom of the fire escape, Ogg dragged a reluctant Peregrine off in the direction of the city.

  “I think we should stay and keep an eye on her,” Perg protested. But Ogg had one hand in the small of his back and was propelling him past the sign which said ‘City Centre 15 kilometres’.

  “It’ll be a long walk,” Ogg complained.

  In the real world, he would just have whisked them instantaneously to their destination, but here in the virtual world his powers were useless. It was, however, Peregrine’s virtual world, a world where all the powers normally reserved for Great Beings were firmly in his hands. Peregrine didn’t really fancy a fifteen kilometre walk himself. So Ogg found himself transported to a rather beautiful square in the Central European baroque style.

  “Wow! I wasn’t expecting that. I feel a bit dizzy,” he confided to Peregrine.

  “Now you know how we feel when you do it to us,” Perg replied.

  “You know, Perg, if you have so much control over your virtual world, you should be able to watch over Ant and come exploring with me at the same time.”

  “Of course, I never thought of that.”

  Maybe that was the difference between ordinary beings and Great Ones like Ogg. Ordinary beings have a tendency to miss the subtleties of the obvious.

  Ogg looked round at the cobbled squares and the stuccoed facades in their pastel paint.

  “Nice architecture, Perg! I have to admire your taste.’

  “Yes, I’m rather proud of it.”

  The idea suddenly came to him that perhaps certain ordinary beings, not all of course, could in some ways be superior to Great Beings. Not only did he have all of Ogg’s exceptional powers in his own virtual universe, but he was totally responsible for its creation.

  “Did you play any role at all in the creation of the real world?” he asked. “And if you did, what exactly was it?”

  “Great Philosophical Question, Perg!”

  Peregrine sighed, knowing this was Ogg-speak for ‘I’m not going to tell you.’ Peregrine really believed in Ogg and he trusted him completely. But all the same, there was something shifty and ephemeral about him. You could never get a straight answer from him, and sometimes Perg found himself wondering if, in fact, Ogg really actually knew no more than he did himself. Maybe he and Antonia could figure it out between them later. She seemed to have forgotten about his mad proffering of undying affection. Perhaps they could still be good friends.

  The square was swarming with purposeful activity. The waiters and waitresses in the pavement cafes fetched and carried, wiped and cleared up, wrote orders and added up bills, took money and handed out change, always on the move. The stall holders worked their queues, handing over snacks and souvenirs and throwing in warm welcomes and snatches of local history as added value. The tourists listened attentively to their guides, consulted their maps, discussed their experiences over their beers and their coffees, hailed taxis, ordered and bought, ate and drank, asked and answered, moved this way and that, in a frenzy of relaxation. The background brouhaha buzzed constantly in Perg’s ears. Ogg stood motionless in the wave of movement, silent in the swirl of sound, taking everything in, his eyes darting from one promise of experience to another.

  “Where will we go?” he mused. Museums, art galleries, shops, restaurants, cafes; all offered their wares to him. His wide eyes jumped from one thing to the next, like a small child in a theme park. Peregrine was struck by an endearing naivety that he had never noticed before in Ogg. Great Beings sometimes seemed to be the exact opposite of what he expected. Where he looked for faded familiarity with the things they must have seen a million times, he found instead an omnipresent wonderment of discovery. Where he thought he would get deep and difficult perorations on weighty topics, he found himself listening to ideas expressed with illuminating simplicity and clarity. And, the thing which really pissed him off, his hopes of lucid answers to life’s great questions were invariably answered by even more questions.

  “There’s a Tourist Information Office over there,” Peregrine pointed out. It seemed to him the most logical place for first time visitors to go to, but Great Beings tend to prefer the unexpected.

  “No, let’s go there!” Ogg said, pointing to the most elegant building in the square, with its enormous heavy ornate doors and its discreet brass plaque engraved with the single word ‘Parliament’.

  “We should get a better quality of conversation here,” Ogg explained. Perg smiled. It was his world, his parliament and his politicians, and he knew pretty well what Ogg was likely to hear. But he wasn’t at all sure that even in the real world what tourist guides said was less useful than the pontificating of politicians.

  They went into the building. There was the usual queue at the security barriers; people were filling in forms, being x-rayed and body searched. Bona fide players of Perg’s games had to deal with these barriers the best way they could. But Perg thought that subjecting Ogg to the hassle would serve no useful purpose and used his privileged position to whisk them directly into the debating hall. His head spinning, Ogg shook it to restore his sense of balance.

  “You don’t need to let being a virtual Great Being go to your head,” he chided, gently.

  The debating hall was a perfect blend of traditional and high-tech. Rows of green leather benches were arranged in tiers around three walls of the debating hall, and a tall edifice like a pulpit stood in front of the other wall. Men and women in modern clothes were scattered lazily around the green benches, while the personage seated in the pulpit was dressed in a somewhat ridiculous kind of scarlet robe and what looked like a wizard’s pointed hat. He was holding a kind of ornate wand which added less to the feeling of pomp and circumstance and more to the impression of the ludicrous. There was little screen in front of each seating position on which the politicians could read their speeches, look up answers to awkward questions or, more frequently, play computer games. One of them was standing, and stumbling awkwardly over the words he was trying to read from his personal monitor. Of course, the words he was reading were generated by computer and not by him personally, as this was a virtual reality world, and the idea crossed Ogg’s mind that it might be better if real world politicians were controlled to the same extent.

  The speaking politician sank back silently into his seat without a murmur of recognition from any of his colleagues. Heads stayed down in front of computer screens, yawns were ostentatiously stifled. It seemed that something had come to an end but no one was sure what, or what was to happen next. Then the wizard in the pulpit rose, stamped his wand on the ground three times, and said

  “Pray silence for the right honourable Minster of Defence!”

  Heads lifted and a murmur crept around the chamber. A tall, grey haired and extremely well-dressed man rose very slowly to his feet, smiling and nodding all around him. He kept smiling and nodding as crowds appeared from the background and filled up the rows and rows of benches, watching and waiting until everyone was seated, until every eye was turned towards him. He leaned towards his screen, and everyone waited. He looked at, it then he looked away. He turned back to it, then turned away again. Finally, he began to speak.

  “ Ladies and gentlemen, fellow representatives,” he began, his voice deep and gravely, his speech slow, confident and deliberate. Ogg and Perg could see the women on the benches shiver with pleasure as they listened, while the men gazed in open-mouthed awe.

  “We live in troubled times. Ogg help us!”

  Ogg flinched. What the minister meant of course was ‘Ogg help me and to hell with the others’. Do these people never learn from their own history? Well, not this time! He wouldn’t be tempted, he would not. Let them stew in their own juice! What did they expect from him anyway? He was beginning to feel ill, something that should never happen to a Great Being. Then he remembered he wasn’t in the real wor
ld, but Perg’s virtual universe. He noticed gratefully that his hands had stopped shaking, but he also noticed Perg looking at him out of the corner of his eye with the barest trace of a smile playing on his lips.

  “Our interests are being threatened everywhere,” the speaker went on, “our very way of life is under fire. Let us make no mistake, they are targeting our economy, our security, our jobs and our livelihood.”

  How many times had Ogg heard this? The silvery voice of rich people getting ready to send their poorer compatriots in to defend their wealth! Why does no one ever think of just saying ‘let’s share’?

  “The enemy is gathering to take advantage of any sign of weakness and indecision. We must be strong. We must determined. We must be ready to do whatever is necessary.”

  Preparing lambs for the slaughter! Ogg was getting distinctly uncomfortable. He willed the chamber not to listen.

  “We must act now, act with conviction, act with resolve. Let those who would destroy us tremble! Let those who would steal from our children’s mouths fear for their own offspring! Let the evil ones feel their own evil thrust back on them! And let them not be mistaken, we will not tolerate their aggression, we will act to defend ourselves! We will not stand idly by and see our interests compromised.”

  Ogg groaned inwardly. However troubled the times were now, they would soon be much worse. If only there was some way to shut this idiot up. Ogg didn’t know how much more of this he could take.

  “We have to build our alliances. We have to know who our friends are, who our enemies are. The good of the world have to unite against the evil. Those who think like us will join us; the rest are our enemies. Ask yourselves, are you with us, or are you against us?”

  Suddenly, all this got too much for Ogg. He rose to his feet, screaming.

  “Don’t listen to him! Don’t listen to him! He’s talking nonsense! I’ve never heard such illogical rubbish. Don’t be fooled!....”

  Ogg was still shouting as the security guards threw him back into the street. He landed with a painful bump on the pavement and looked up so see Perg grinning at him.

  “What do you find so funny?” Ogg asked.

  “I’m really sorry, Ogg,” (in fact, he really wasn’t, and Ogg could tell this. And it certainly wasn’t helping put him back in a good mood. Great Beings are not supposed to be temperamental and emotional and Ogg was conscious of the fact he was letting the side down a bit, but he really couldn’t help himself.)

  “I’m really sorry, Ogg,” Perg repeated, “but that’s the point of the game.”

  Ogg was beginning to regret agreeing to this visit to Perg’s virtual world. He had been made to look like a fool, bad enough for any human but the ultimate degradation for a Great Being. But what was worse is that he was deprived here of his usual powers, and it was causing him some concern. For instance, he had no idea what Perg was thinking, and it put him at a big disadvantage.

  “What point?” Ogg snapped.

  “Well, you see, to solve the game you need to use clear correct logical thinking at every stage. Now, I’m sure that this is a sentiment with which you heartily approve”

  Ogg had to nod, but he was getting suspicious.

  “But for good players, at the highest level, who are almost perfect correct thinkers, this would be too easy, don’t you think?”

  Ogg wasn’t so sure abut this. If someone thought perfectly, in the correct way, shouldn’t they be entitled to win whatever Perg’s silly game was? Wasn’t this the point?

  “So the computer tries to throw them off their correct thinking. It discovers what makes every player upset and then tests them. If they can still think correctly when they are angry, then they will be OK. But, as you found out, it is a hard thing to do, even for Great Beings”

  “I don’t believe I was thinking incorrectly”

  “But you were angry”

  “Justifiably angry!”

  “No doubt, but how effective was your intervention? Did you succeed in changing anything?”

  Ogg looked down at his shoes and, with his hands in his pockets, kicked up the dust at his feet. Who would have thought a Great Being was capable of such sulking? He supposed that was what friends were for, pointing out your mistakes, but it was hard to take. He felt the need to justify himself, at least to himself.

  “I don’t think I would have done such a thing in the real world, I’m not really myself in your virtual world.”

  Ogg wasn’t enjoying this turn of events. Of course he shouldn’t have let his feelings get the better of him, but in his view it was a dirty trick that Perg had played on him, and the best he could hope for was that he had tried the same sort of thing on Antonia. Antonia didn’t have a good record of letting reason obliterate her natural emotions. And if Perg’s ‘game’ pushed her towards the edge, he, Ogg, would allow himself the privilege of enjoying the sight of Peregrine Pratt quaking in the fallout. That would teach him!

  “I think we should go and see how Antonia’s getting on. We’ve left her on her own long enough, don’t you think?”

  Antonia was fortunately still sitting at the top of the stairs, which was actually the bottom as Perg’s world was currently in its upside down mode, when gravity suddenly changed direction, spilling Antonia onto the floor. Her first reaction was surprise, then fear, and finally, when she realised what had happened and that she wasn’t physically damaged, anger took over. So when she looked up from the floor and saw Ogg and Perg hovering over her, she fell into a blazing temper.

  “What are you playing at, Peregrine Pratt? Are you trying to kill me?”

  “It’s just a game, Ant”

  “Just a game? You know, when you turned the world upside down I nearly fell right into the sky. I could have ended up lost in space.”

  “It wouldn’t have been that bad!”

  “How could it have been worse, you fool? And what are you grinning at, Great Being? I rely on you to protect me, and you let him bring me to his crazy world and put my life in danger, I’m not going to forgive you, either of you, anytime soon.”

  “Maybe we should go back,” Ogg suggested, in a small voice. “We’re not learning very much about the end of the world here anyway.”

  “I’ll second that!” Antonia said. Perg clicked on the red cross on the top right hand corner of his miniature lap top screen and they found themselves back in Perg’s work room.

  “Thank goodness for that” Ogg said. “And I see you agree with me, he added, before Antonia could open her mouth.

  “Up to your usual tricks, I see,” she replied, coldly.

  “Well, did that help us in any way?” Perg asked, hoping to divert Antonia from her seething rage. It didn’t work.

  “No use whatever as far as I could see,” she told him. “Whisk me back home, Ogg, I’ve got homework to do.”

  And suddenly Perg found himself alone, wondering when, or even if, his only two friends in the whole world would get round to forgiving him.