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staring listlessly at Cokes and coffees; behind them, lying on a counter, was a selection of ‘food’ that could have been mistaken for one of Quatermass’s failed experiments.
    Noble had parked his car and come straight into the arcade, Larkin following at a discreet distance. Larkin kept a linen jacket in the boot of the car in case he had to smarten himself up on an assignment; he’d swapped his leather for this, as a makeshift disguise, in case Noble should spot him. The gloom of the place was working in his favour. As his eyes adjusted, his ears were being battered by the machines’ random cacophony of beeps, squeals, snatches of irritating tunes, electronic pulses. Thirty years ago the
avant garde
would have paid good money to listen to this, thought Larkin, but now it was no more than a soundtrack to squalid lives.
    Larkin could remember when he was a kid: playing the nick from school and coming to the arcade for an afternoon. Donkey Kong and Space Invaders hadn’t grabbed him the way it had some of his peer group and he’d eventually drifted off. The ones who stayed,who couldn’t find anywhere else to go, soon developed an
idiot savant
mastery of the machines that they found they lacked in all other aspects of their lives. They began to live only to see their names on the screen in the Hall of Fame. This was the pinnacle of achievement, a standard by which all challengers would be judged; it made them heroes, the nearest thing to immortality they would ever grasp. It didn’t last long. Someone else came along who was quicker and younger, and there they were: energy dissipated, burnt out at seventeen.
    Larkin scanned the aisles. The machines had changed but the principles remained the same. Amongst the rapt teenagers, however, was a smattering of old, empty-eyed women, staring fixedly ahead. They shuffled from bandit to bandit, mug-punting the last of their pensions in desperate belief. Larkin knew they would turn up, week after week, to make their devotional offerings to an ungrateful, selfish god, living in hope until death released them from their slavery.
    Larkin quickly ducked behind a fruit machine as he caught sight of Noble, who was prowling the aisles, scrutinising everyone like a film director waiting to pick a star from a bunch of unknowns. Noble’s attention seemed to be drawn to a couple of teenagers who were becoming voluble over a video game; he stopped dead in his tracks and stared at them. His expression sent an involuntary shiver down Larkin’s spine.
    Larkin moved closer and looked at the two boys, trying to discover what it was about them that so interested Noble. One of them seemed to be a bit older than the other and affected a streetwise manner beyond his years; how much of this was assumed, Larkin couldn’t tell. The other one was smaller, slighter, wearing glasses and a distracted air. They didn’t strike Larkin as being distinctive in any way. Suddenly the bespectacled one spoke.
    “Howah, man – gis a go.”
    “My turn. Fuck off,” the cool one replied and shrugged. This annoyed the gauche one even more, and his voice raised in pitch. When he spoke, his words were loud, somehow slurred, as if his jaw and brain were running at different speeds. “Is it fuck your turn, you lyin’ get! It was your turn last time, it’s my turn now.”
    “Not finished.”
    “Aw, haway, man, it’s my fuckin’ fifty pee! Giz it.”
    And he grabbed hold of the other boy, momentarily distractinghim from the screen and allowing a ninja to jump out from behind a pile of cartons and ambush the heroically-proportioned Virtual Cop, kicking him to death with a series of synthetic grunts and sprays of cyber-blood. The two-dimensional dead body lay there covered in bright red globules as the machine played its obligatory, annoying signature tune and the screen flashed up: GAME OVER. The boy who had been playing turned and faced his distractor.
    “Look what you done now! That’s our last bit o’