‘He had to be Norman,’ said Wobbler, ‘otherwise he couldn’t be Stormin’. You couldn’t have Stormin’ Bruce. Come on.’

J&J Software was always packed on a Saturday morning. There were always a couple of computers running games, and always a cluster of people gathered round them. No one knew who J&J were, since the shop was run by Mr Patel, who had eyes like a hawk. He always watched Wobbler very carefully, on the fairly accurate basis that Wobbler distributed more games than he did and didn’t even charge anyone for them.

The four of them split up. Bigmac wasn’t much interested in games, and Yo-less went down to look at the videos. Wobbler had found someone who knew even more complicated stuff about computers than he did himself.

Johnny mooched along the racks of games.

I wonder if the ScreeWee do this, he thought. Or people on Jupiter or somewhere. Go down to a shop and buy ‘Shoot the Human’ games. And have films where there’s a human running around the place terrorizing a spaceship—

He became aware of a raised voice at the counter.

You didn’t often get girls in J&J Software. Once, quite a long time ago, during a bit of time she’d set aside for parenting, Johnny’s mother had tried playing a game. It had been quite a simple one – you had to shoot asteroids and flying saucers and things. It had been embarrassing. It had been amazing that the flying saucers had even bothered to shoot back. More likely they should have parked and all the aliens could have looked out of the windows and made rude noises. Women didn’t have a clue.

A girl was complaining to Mr Patel about a game she’d bought. Everyone knew you couldn’t do that, even if you’d opened the box and it was full of nothing but mouse droppings. Mr Patel took the view that once the transparent wrapper had come off, even the Pope wouldn’t be allowed to return a game, not even if he got God to come in as well. This was because he’d met people like Wobbler before.

The boys watched in fascinated horror.

She kept tapping the offending box with a finger.

‘And who wants to see nothing but stars?’ she said. ‘I’ve seen stars before, actually. It says on the box that you fight dozens of different kinds of alien ships. There isn’t even one.’

Mr Patel muttered something. Johnny wasn’t close enough to hear. But the girl’s voice had a kind of penetrating quality, like a corkscrew. When she spoke in italics, you could hear them.

‘Oh, no. You can’t say that. Because how can I tell if it works without trying it? That comes under the Sale of Goods Act (1983).’

The awed watchers were astonished to see a slightly hunted look in Mr Patel’s eyes. Up until now he’d never met anyone who could pronounce brackets.

He muttered something else.

‘Copy it? Why should I copy it? I’ve bought it. It says on the box you meet fascinating alien races. Well, all I got was one ship and some stupid message on the screen and then it ran away. I don’t call that fascinating alien races.’