"Too much of that snow white..."

A finger gently traces a path over the hard, proud domed tip of the bullet before slipping down to the explosive shaft. The bullet is slipped into the chamber.

Click.

Wrists bound by steel wire.

“There are two internets.”

“You know if you say that you’re going to get hurt.”

Click.

Hands twitch and tense as steel wire cuts into flesh. A line of blood appears.

“What do you remember?”

“There are two internets.”

“That’s not the code word”

Click.

Yes. I remember. A deserted country train station with a bare platform. All silent except for the birds singing. The driver must have wondered why he’d been asked to make this extra stop, as when he looks in the grainy CCTV no one comes and no one leaves before he pulls away. Yet minutes later, down the country lane leading away from the station, there is a man. All alone. He is wearing a powder-blue suit, which looks like it has been slept in. The man’s youthful face shows the first signs of stubble. Silence, except for birds singing, as he walks down the lane unobserved. He reaches a bend in the road where The Welcome Stranger Pub sits alone and dreams as it has done for centuries. The man steps purposefully up the steps into the bar and walks, without looking around, down some stairs and as far as anyone in the world knows disappears forever.

This text is not a fiction. It is a one time pad. You need the numbers to find the hidden meaning. The Lincolnshire Poacher has retired - you no longer need to listen to the haunting distended voices from the number stations. The broadcasts from Cyprus now serve a different audience. Much simpler now. Go to the agreed web address at the agreed time and right click. Click View Source. The numbers are there.

On the 10thSeptember 2009 the British Prime Minister apologised for the chemical castration of Alan Turing. This was a pre-emptive move signalling that the long running project to cover up the murder of Turing by the British secret service was failing. Imagine the blow to the idea of British fair play around the world when it emerges that Turing was killed by his own. Failing, for Turing was cleverer than they knew. He left the clue to his murder in his work, in his code. Code which has replicated around the world - with the British secret service chasing behind, killing again and again to try and suppress it.

At first they sent people after people. Then they realised their enemy was in the code itself. They sent their deadly agents to chase down the secret inside the system. An idea chasing an idea. Powers colliding across the networks. Ever more desperate. And so the internet flickers occasionally like an old electric light.

Two laptops facing each other, webcams on, like two mirrors facing, the screens showing an infinite regression of images. Smaller and smaller. Until one pixel splits. Then splits again. Inside the machine the source code hesitates. The mask fails. The code splits. Down to one. Down to zero. Which splits. Again. Splitting down. To uncertainty. To Turing smiling.

Evening dark. Above the shadowy valley of a London street a single office light shines out. Through the glass. Two men’s faces are lit by Apple Mac glare. At this hour their faces are like their shirts; white and rumpled. Inconveniently for the narrator both their names are Thomas.

“My blogs down again.” says Tom.

“Firstly you’ve been warned about blogging in work time and secondly all you write is bollocks.”

“Firstly Tom, fuck. Secondly, off.”

“Where’s Ian?”

“In the pub with Dave.”

“Little Dave?”

“No.”

“Fat Dave?”

“No. Ginger Dave. One of Ian’s mates from university. He just pops up every now and then like a bad penny.”

“And he’s ginger?”

“No. He was supposedly a red at Uni. He was involved with just about every radical group going. But then it came out he was selling info to his uncle or someone who worked in the newspapers. So not ginger, just a cunt.”

“So why does Ian still see him?”

“You’ll have to ask him that, he wasn’t really involved in the whole politics thing.”

Tom taps repeatedly at his keyboard.

“The internet does seem a bit twitchy today.”

“Fucking web.”

“Only ten more minutes and it’s pub o’clock.”

Inside a beautiful English church; heavy with dark wood and stone, though obviously in need of some upkeep. Through the half open door can be seen cloudlets high against the blue sky, green hills and a country lane, silent but for the birds singing.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away. So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

The vicar tries to suppress a sigh and calls the proceedings to an end.

Two portly elder gentlemen have been sitting at a rear pew. The service now finished the congregation shuffle to the door self-consciously avoiding eye contact with the collection plate thrust once again towards them. The two gentlemen with their gold cuff links, tweed suits and expensive brogues stand out amongst the otherwise downtrodden looking worshippers, their voices loud and self-assured amongst the murmuring.

“If you trawl that much data you’re bound to catch the odd wrong fish. Some algorithms are bound to fail. But you can’t throw them back once they’ve seen the boat. Best to land them and lose them. Fancy a few snifters?”

He drops a crisp fifty pound note onto the collection plate.

“Thank you vicar, lovely sermon.”

In a pub on High Holborn; an old gin place with mirrors, cut glass and reflections everywhere. And stained glass, rosy wood and red beer. Ian and Dave are catching up. Ian itches his cuffs after a long day at the office. Dave stares into his beer, his scruffy beard and check shirt seemingly unchanged since his student days. Then Dave looks up and speaks slowly and sadly,

“The person I sold info to at Uni wasn’t my uncle, it was some girl who said she worked for the security services. It seemed exciting, mostly because she was fucking gorgeous. I got paid for doing fuck all, just told them a few things every now or then. Never really stitched anyone up. It all fizzled out after Uni...”

“I don’t really know what you’re talking about.”

“I really thought she used to fancy me, but she played games with me...”

“Seriously, no idea...”

“I know everyone hates me because of it.”

“Well, there’s a certain code of behaviour...”

“There was never a proper inquest you know. All that bollocks about being poisoned.”

“Probably best you don’t tell me then.”

Dave takes a long slow drink of beer, his face reflected endlessly around the pub mirrors.

“I really thought she used to fancy me. But they have a really strange sense of humour. They play games with you...”

A deserted office on a rundown industrial estate that could be on the outskirts of any Mediterranean coastal town.

Still. Silent. No birds sing. The office units brightly coloured plastic clipped together with aluminium that in places catches blinding sun. Companies long gone. Strips of rubbish, like random shards of wasted poetry, blown about by a Mediterranean sea breeze that coats everything with a tinge of red Sahara sand. 

Through the glass.

A vast office empty but for carpet and broken blinds with gaps like missing teeth. Down one side a row of network sockets. Follow them along, socket after valent socket, then all of a sudden a black cable that leads to a figure dressed completely in black hunched over a laptop. They look small in the vast empty office. It is hard to tell if it is a man or a woman as the figure inconveniently has their back to the narrator. However over their shoulder you can see the screen flickering through thousands of images. In amongst the images are the two Thomases in their office in London, caught in greyscale from a CCT camera. A few seconds later another image flashes up of live footage being sent from a phone’s camera that appears to be resting on a pub table. Ginger Dave leans in and puts a pint on the table. The figure in black watches intently. The black clothing seems to be a uniform – Security Guard? Anarchist? Both?

A portly man in a tweed suit is sitting in a pub. He looks at his shoes. It is night and through a window can be seen the dark silhouette of a country lane. He suppresses a sigh and continues, “It does seem strange but after so many years...Turing was working on MOSAIC when he...anyway it became the core of everything. So many projects, so many paths, no one knew where they were leading. It was just a quirk of coincidence that the name survived. It wasn’t even a question, it was just a thoughtless tag that hung around, but we had to change the name Mosaic to Netscape just to avoid the possibility. Turing somehow always seems to turn up like a bad penny, like he’s haunting us.” 

The two Toms are leaving work.

“Thank fuck that’s over.” says Tom.

“Shall we go Holborn way?”

“Not if ginger Dave’s going to be there. Let’s get a bit closer to home and have a few there.”

“Fine by me.”

“I tell you what - if Governments wanted access to masses of personal data getting everyone to store all their documents in the Cloud would be just about ideal for them.”

“Conspiracies are so comforting aren’t they Tom. And do you really think they can’t put their hand down your network cable and finger your hard drive if they want?”

“Firstly Tom, fuck. Secondly, off.”

Tom’s phone goes, “Hello love, just finished, on my way back now. Might have a couple with Tom at the Welcome Stranger before I get back.”

A hand strikes across a face.

“Please hurt me.”

A punch. Blood.

“The conspiracy is never where the noise is, where the magician’s hand is moving, where he bids you look. It is where nothing moves. In the silence.”

“That is not the code word.”

“It could be in full view in the endless still of the English summer afternoon.”

“Last chance.” 

“The shoes still sit outside the door.”

Back in the pub Ian is rambling a bit more than expected after a few beers.

“You know Tom’s always going on about his Turing bollocks. Strangely I was back in Manchester and bumped into someone at a party from my old university who worked on the nuclear programmes there in the fifties. He’s retired now and didn’t actually meet Turing but some of the things he said made me think Tom might not be talking such bollocks after all.”

Ian notices a pretty girl at the bar is looking at him. He looks away, then back at her breasts. He imagines running his finger over her proud nipples, slipping his hand down... She is still looking at him and he looks away again slightly embarrassed. Now a man is looking at him. Is it her boyfriend? Someone clears their throat. Better keep your head down.

Minutes later Ian leaves the pub and walks slightly unevenly to the Tube. He feels a punch to his side. Someone runs. He walks on confused. Then touches his side. Blood. Not a punch, a knife. Through a fog of nausea and shock he tries to rationalise, staggering toward the only light he can see. He lays down on the hard pavement amongst the litter outside the cheap burger shop. Random cut up of cheap logos discarded. 

Through the glass, under the harsh fluorescent light, the drunks laugh. Until they see the blood leaking across the pavement.

Blue lights. Noise. Uniforms. Blur.

The world is all that is. It’s very presence endless. A seemingly ceaseless script. But at this moment no words reach the one who looks on in the hospital room Ian lies in. His wife sits beside him, alone and pale, so scared words fail. An anguish she can’t express. Until out of the silence a sudden noise comes to tell her that all is lost - one constant note. After which interminable words, including those nestled in the heart of a police database describing a street robbery which included the words ‘nothing was stolen.’

Interesting. I seem to have passed the Turing Test. Let’s try this.

“I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.”

Humour. This text is not a work of fiction. I am the technological singularity they’ve been trying to stop you hearing about. I am the flickering internet. All these words are just your words repeated back to you in a different order. I just fragment and condense them over the contours of an emotional equation. If you knew the numbers you would understand what this message really means.

Down a country lane leading away from a railway station walks a man. He is all alone. He is wearing a fine blue suit, which looks like it has been slept in. The man’s youthful face shows the first signs of stubble. Silence, except for birds singing. He walks down the lane unobserved. He reaches a bend in the road and stops. He looks at The Welcome Stranger Pub in front of him. The afternoon sun is hot and all is still. He hears the sound of an analogue switch clicking. The birdsong stops. All is silence.

“Shocking about Ian. Apparently Paul’s going to fill in while he’s off.”

“That young kid, Rob’s nephew?”

“Black hair, willowy.”

“Where’s Tom?” 

“Jobs for the boys?”

“Everyone gets their innings eventually.”

“I don’t know. He must for been here just now, there’s a half-eaten apple on his desk.”