Cowboys
Six thirty on a Saturday morning, the pair stumbled through the ancient oak bound front doors to Bwain’s offices, quite dishevelled and much the worse for wear, desperately trying to remember the combination to the burglar alarm, which they’d argued about all the way from Mayfair, driving the cabbie crazy.
“1-4-6-9-5,” said Bleep.
“1-6-4-9-5,” argued Babyface.
“Where have you two been?” demanded Reg the second Babyface set foot on the premises, causing the duo to jump out of their skins, screaming. “And the answer better not be the strip club I think it is.”
“Petrollica!” stuttered Bleep defensively. “It’s six bloody thirty in the morning Reg, what the hell are you doing here? You’re supposed to be tucked–up in bed, not trying to scare the living bejesus out of us.”
“That’s none of your business,” retorted Reg, turning crimson. “Babyface…”
“At least let me get my coat off.”
“What’s in those carrier bags?”
“That would be 12 telex boxes,” stated Bleep matter-of-factly.
“You promised me you’d fit them,” said Reg. “This better not be a disaster in the making, because if it is I promise you they’ll be publications.”
“Faulty hardware, Reg. Bad batch,” replied Bleep.
“More naughty than bad,” added Babyface. “So naughty it took us all night to figure it out. I’m going to my desk now, to have a large mug of coffee and a serious sit on my best thinking cushion.”
“Then I’m following you, because if I don’t you’ll be asleep within the minute.”
“Impossible,” slurred Bleep. “Even with a bucketful of Dumbo tranquilisers, I guarantee you there’s no way we’re taking a nap until halfway through tomorrow at the earliest.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Go figure.”
Babyface settled down with a super-large mug of filter coffee, which he took time to personally supervise the creation of to his exacting specification, pulled out a bronze and aquamarine Indian thinking cushion, positioned it atop the desk, folded his legs into a full lotus beneath him, uttered the briefest of ‘Ommm’s, and without further ado got down to the serious business of thinking outside the box whilst pumped full of hardcore stimulants.
He reasoned it couldn’t be the software that was broken, as he’d installed a basic copy of Telex Exec, to prove the special modifications weren’t at fault, it couldn’t be the hardware as a quick test of the purported bad batch of boxes in the Bwain test lab while the coffee brewed proved a random pair worked perfectly fine and much as he hated to say so, it couldn’t be Hooverstein either, as a quick test on-site using a length of co-ax cable which they knew to be good didn’t fix the problem with the frakked telex data. As he worked through the possibilities on a mental whiteboard, Reg, like a dose of herpes, popped up at regular intervals to provide motivation by reminding him that the Sunday Sport’s submission deadline was looming ever closer, and the fix window was diminishing accordingly.
While the Babyfaced one sat in silent contemplation, running scenario after scenario through his splendidly wired brain, Bleep made himself useful by dusting off the Support File and reading through the many installation reports, starting at ‘A’, in the hope of finding something that might give them a lead.
“Frak me!” exclaimed Babyface, jumping to attention, with just five minutes left to go. “I think I know what it is. I can’t remember the name of the company, but they deal in inflatables. Based in Rotterdam. Ring any bells?”
“Already been there,” said Bleep, thumbing his way back to the correct set of pages. “I’m on the E’s now, they were back in with the ‘Cs’. Clogplast are your boys. Manufacturers of puncture repair kits for inflatable clogs. That was Denzil the Cradlesnatcher’s patch.”
“And what does the Cradlesnatcher have to say about the install?”
“Nothing unusual that I recall.”
“And in the section on troubleshooting?”
“Here it is. If the telex box starts misbehaving or sending and receiving corrupted messages, make sure the cleaner hasn’t untied it from the radiator.”
“Bingo!”
“Babyface. I don’t understand, what does that mean?”
“It means we go back to Petrollica with 24 lengths of copper wire and hunt down a bloody great big metal radiator and when we find one, we tie the telex boxes to it.”
“With what? Copper wire? Why? My brain hurts, I don’t understand.”
“All will be revealed. In the meantime, as we’re going to have to do something we swore we’d never do – like take the floor up, to disguise the evidence, I suggest we set Reg to work procuring more lead. There’s no point in doing a half job and leaving that monster only half encased, we might as well finish it off properly.”
By Saturday lunchtime the Petrollica installation was running like a dream, totally fixed with all 24 telex boxes purring their little hearts out, the creeping corruption at the flick of a light switch gone, not a single bit of a single byte of data out of place. The monster under the floor was finally done for, turned into a tasty lead sandwich with a supernatural filling. In the space of 24 hours Petrollica had gone from Nightmare Number One to perfection in a nutshell, a technical paradise city. Naturally Reg was delighted, so much so that he offered to take Bleep and Babyface out to the Ritz for a slap-up lunch, feigning disappointment at their refusal, all the while knowing that Babyface had an unbreakable appointment to keep with his father and Bleep had promised his girlfriend he’d go shopping for curtains, upon pain of torture, having already wriggled out of the same appointment several weekends on the trot, citing work issues on both occasions, only to come home ridiculously late and very drunk, either with a pocketful of slot machine tokens or a badly crushed rugby ticket which in his inebriated state he’d found quite impossible to throw away.
“So what was it?” I asked curiously.
“Cowboys,” grinned my pal.
“Cowboys?” replied I. “I always thought Bwain were the biggest cowboys in town.”
“Not this time. What the Cradlesnatcher’s site report failed to mention was the cause of the problem, which Babyface remembered with absolute clarity: there was no Earth rail, the building didn’t have one. Not that uncommon on the continent, but here in the UK, all our sockets have to have an earth rail by law.”
“Except the electricians that did Petrollica were wearing spurs.”
“Exactly. At the time, Babyface reckoned that Hooverstein had eaten the entire circuit, and as I was feeling totally paranoid, I just agreed with him. In retrospect, it all seems a little far-fetched. Cowboy electricians are the obvious answer, I just couldn’t see it at the time. Anyway, once we’d earthed the telex boxes, we still had to earth the PCs. Conveniently, they all had one thing in common: the network. So Babyface took two spare tentacles and tied those to the radiator too. And that as they say was the end of the monster under the floor.”
“Nice,” I said, proposing a toast. “To Babyface van Helsing.”
“To Babyface,” answered Bleep.
“That’s the end of the story?”
“Hell, no. All that tying things down might have put an end to the troubles with the network, but it sure as shit didn’t prepare us for what was coming next.”
“You mean there’s more?”
“Oh, man! You haven’t heard the half of it. It’s gonna cost you mind and cost you big. I suggest we retire to a reputable pizza emporium, where you’ll flash your credit card and in return I’ll tell you what happened next.”
The Ferret Files 
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